<1



A Reporter at Large

The Making of the Fox News White House

Fox News has always been partisan. But has it become propaganda?

By Jane Mayer

March 11, 2019 Issue

In January, during the longest government shutdown in America’s history, President Donald Trump rode in a motorcade through Hidalgo County, Texas, eventually stopping on a grassy bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. The White House wanted to dramatize what Trump was portraying as a national emergency: the need to build a wall along the Mexican border. The presence of armored vehicles, bales of confiscated marijuana, and federal agents in flak jackets underscored the message.

But the photo op dramatized something else about the Administration. After members of the press pool got out of vans and headed over to where the President was about to speak, they noticed that Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, was already on location. Unlike them, he hadn’t been confined by the Secret Service, and was mingling with Administration officials, at one point hugging Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security. The pool report noted that Hannity was seen “huddling” with the White House communications director, Bill Shine. After the photo op, Hannity had an exclusive on-air interview with Trump. Politico later reported that it was Hannity’s seventh interview with the President, and Fox’s forty-second. Since then, Trump has given Fox two more. He has granted only ten to the three other main television networks combined, and none to CNN, which he denounces as “fake news.”

Hannity was treated in Texas like a member of the Administration because he virtually is one. The same can be said of Fox’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch. Fox has long been a bane of liberals, but in the past two years many people who watch the network closely, including some Fox alumni, say that it has evolved into something that hasn’t existed before in the United States. Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor of Presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the author of “Messengers of the Right,” a history of the conservative media’s impact on American politics, says of Fox, “It’s the closest we’ve come to having STATE TV.........CONTINUED ”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019 ... hite-house

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Dems won't let Fox News host primary debate

BY REID WILSON - 03/06/19 01:33 PM EST

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) said Wednesday it would not permit Fox News to host a presidential primary debate, citing an explosive story this week alleging deep ties between the conservative network and President Trump’s inner circle.

In a statement, DNC Chairman Tom Perez said he had held conversations with Fox News about potentially allowing the network to host a primary debate. But he said the story, published in The New Yorker, caused him to end conversations with the network.

“Recent reporting in The New Yorker on the inappropriate relationship between President Trump, his administration and FOX News has led me to conclude that the network is not in a position to host a fair and neutral debate for our candidates. Therefore, FOX News will not serve as a media partner for the 2020 Democratic primary debates,” Perez said in the statement.

The Washington Post first reported the DNC’s decision to exclude Fox News.

The DNC has already announced they will hold as many as 12 debates during the primary contest, including six this year. The first debates are scheduled for June, on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo, and July, hosted by CNN.

Fox News had been lobbying to get its own debate, and Perez had considered partnering with the conservative outlet.

In a statement, Fox News senior vice president and Managing Editor Bill Sammon said the network hoped the DNC would reconsider, citing the network’s journalists Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, “all of whom embody the ultimate journalistic integrity and professionalism.”

“They’re the best debate team in the business and they offer candidates an important opportunity to make their case to the largest TV news audience in America, which includes many persuadable voters,” Sammon said in an emailed statement.

“I believe that a key pathway to victory is to continue to expand our electorate and reach all voters. That is why I have made it a priority to talk to a broad array of potential media partners, including FOX News,” Perez said.

The New Yorker article, by correspondent Jane Mayer, detailed deep ties between Fox News and the Trump White House.

Former Fox executive Bill Shine is now the White House communications director, and Mayer reported on allegations that former Fox News chief Roger Ailes had given Trump a heads-up about potential questions he would face in a 2016 primary debate.

After leaving Fox News amidst a sexual harassment scandal, Ailes — who has since died — advised the Trump campaign.

Fox News has not hosted a Democratic presidential debate for several election cycles. In 2016, the DNC partnered with Fox News on a primary debate in San Francisco, though that event was later canceled.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4328 ... ary-debate

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Trump threatens to block networks from hosting debates after Dems reject Fox

BY TAL AXELROD - 03/06/19 07:29 PM EST

President Trump on Wednesday responded to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) refusing to let Fox News host a Democratic primary debate by threatening to “do the same thing” with other networks during the general election.

“Democrats just blocked @FoxNews from holding a debate. Good, then I think I’ll do the same thing with the Fake News Networks and the Radical Left Democrats in the General Election debates!” Trump tweeted Wednesday.

Trump has maintained a bitter relationship with the press since the campaign trail, often painting mainstream media outlets as “fake news” following critical coverage of himself or his administration.

The president alone would not have the power to prevent outlets from hosting a general election debate.

The DNC and Republican National Committee (RNC) work with media outlets on arrangements for hosting their respective primary debates. The Commission on Presidential Debates, which the DNC and RNC jointly sponsor, sets up the general election debates.

The DNC announced that it would not allow Fox News to host a primary debate after The New Yorker reported on the network's deep ties to Trump.

“Recent reporting in the New Yorker on the inappropriate relationship between President Trump, his administration and Fox News has led me to conclude that the network is not in a position to host a fair and neutral debate for our candidates. Therefore, Fox News will not serve as a media partner for the 2020 Democratic primary debates,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in the statement.

Among other things, the article reported allegations that late Fox News founder Roger Ailes passed along questions to Trump prior to a 2016 Republican primary debate and noted that former Fox executive Bill Shine is now the White House communications director. Several other former Fox News employees and contributors work in the Trump administration.

In response, Fox News Senior Vice President and Managing Editor Bill Sammon praised his news staff, including hosts Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, saying they and the network would offer candidates an ability to reach key voters during the 2020 cycle.

“They’re the best debate team in the business and they offer candidates an important opportunity to make their case to the largest TV news audience in America, which includes many persuadable voters,” Sammon said in an emailed statement.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... after-dems

<4



SCIENCE & HEALTH

‘School Strike for Climate’ Teen Movement Swells

Markus Meyer-Gehlen

Last Updated: March 06, 2019 8:51 AM

WASHINGTON —
For months, school students in various countries have been protesting against the climate policies of their respective governments. In Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Britain and more, they attend weekly rallies to call out politicians who, in the student's minds, are doing too little to combat climate change.

What's controversial about it: The rallies take place while the kids should be in school.

The numbers are steadily increasing. Every week, tens of thousands of teenagers and young adults skip class, mostly on Fridays their so-called "Fridays for Future." The protests are expected to hit even more countries on March 15, making it the biggest international school strike yet.


The Guardian published an open letter by the "global coordination group" of the strikes, announcing protests on every continent. While there have been some participants in the United States, on March 15, American students are expected to join in the movement in a big way.

*Small steps for a big movement

What has become a global phenomenon started with one teenage girl in Sweden, now-famous activist Greta Thunberg. Originally, she skipped her Friday classes to protest in front of the Swedish parliament because of upcoming elections, but she decided to keep going until significant progress on the issue is made.

Documenting the strikes on her Twitter page, Thunberg gained international recognition and was invited to speak at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018. The world watched as a 15-year-old girl accused world leaders of not being "mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children." Thunberg has been the spearhead of the youth movement ever since, regularly attending Friday strikes in different European countries.

Reactions internationally have been mixed: While most politicians acknowledge the importance of their cause, some have taken issue with the students' flagrant violation of mandatory school attendance.

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Theresa May said that skipping school means wasting lesson time that teachers have carefully prepared - time that would be crucial for education which will help solve the climate issue in the long run.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel sparked controversy when she suggested that the strikes are possibly being initiated by outside influences. Later, she backed down, clarifying that she very much welcomes the student strikes, partially going against her own, conservative party.

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has endorsed the strikes as well, saying that he has often regretted that today's youth seemed to be politically uninvolved.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has pointed out that young women are leading the movement in most countries. The inner team behind "Youth Climate Strike US,” the biggest American participant in organizing the global school strike in March, consists exclusively of girls in their teens and younger, according to their website.

Scientific support

Still, commentators ask if politicians would be equally supportive of the students' political involvement if their cause were more controversial, say, open borders or gay rights. But as it stands, a large community has gathered to back the school strikes.

In mid-February, the Guardian released an open letter by more than 200 scientists who claimed to be inspired that children are making their voices heard. The German Tagesspiegel exclusively reports on another statement from more than 700 scientists pledging their full support of the school strikes, which is to be released on March 12 three days before the global strike day.

The movement is now global.

It is still run by young people, but highly professionalized and coordinated quite a change from the individual protest Greta Thunberg started in the summer of 2018.

The question remains: How big will the impact be in the end?

In the U.S., student protests have made headlines, and occasionally, led to policy change.

Last year's "March For Our Lives" for stricter gun policies after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting helped inspire Thunberg to start her strikes. And with discussion about the Democrat's "Green New Deal" bringing climate change into the center of the public's attention, the March 15 Global school strike will come at an interesting time.

https://www.voanews.com/a/school-strike ... 15221.html

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CONGRESS

‘It gets real personal, real fast’: Dems fear targeting Trump kids could backfire

They worry zeroing in on Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric would be politically perilous.

By ANDREW DESIDERIO and JOHN BRESNAHAN 03/06/2019 06:48 PM EST

House Democrats have already gone to war with President Donald Trump. But there’s one target they're skittish of hitting too hard: his children.

In public and private, Democrats see potential pitfalls in dragging Trump's adult children into their political squabbles with the president. So even as they ramp up their investigations into Trump, senior Democrats are reluctant to scrutinize Trump's adult children too much as part of their sprawling probes into Trump's administration, campaign and business empire.

Democrats, in fact, would prefer to let federal prosecutors handle the family while they take on the president themselves.

Yet Trump’s family members — including Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner — are so deeply involved in his business and presidency that it likely would be impossible to take a completely hands-off approach.

“Getting to family members I think is dangerous,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a senior member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. “Only because it gets real personal, real fast. And it risks backfiring.

“Maybe at some point we have to call them in,” Connolly added, “but I’d rather let prosecutors look at that.”

Those concerns have more to do with political optics than investigative necessities: Democrats fear that the appearance of going after Trump’s children is the one thing that could elicit sympathy for a president who has attacked Democratic investigations as “a big, fat, fishing expedition desperately in search of a crime” and “presidential harassment.”

A Democratic source said Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) has privately expressed reservations about directly investigating Trump’s adult children. Last week, Cummings said the committee would follow up on all potential leads from former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s bombshell testimony before the panel. Cummings is expected to seek interviews with individuals implicated in Cohen’s testimony.

Cummings declined to comment.

The Oversight panel is battling with the White House over the process for approving Kushner's security clearance, including whether Trump intervened in getting the clearance approved. The White House has refused to turn over documents related to Kushner’s clearance, and the committee is likely to issue a subpoena as early as next week, according to Democratic sources. Ivanka Trump could soon find herself ensnared in that probe, the Oversight chief said.

Moreover, the House Judiciary Committee has demanded documents from Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and dozens of others as part of a sweeping probe into allegations of obstruction of justice, corruption and abuses of power.

Cohen gave lawmakers a road map for their myriad investigations into Trump and his inner circle. He name-dropped several individuals who purportedly have knowledge of crimes Cohen has pleaded guilty to and crimes that he said the president committed.

That list includes three of the president’s adult children and the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, among others.

The White House declined to comment.

Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, backed the president’s criticisms of the congressional investigations and said Democrats are overreaching not just with Trump’s children but with the entire inquiry.

“I think they need a whole reassessment of what they think looks bad. What looks bad is coming up with a conclusion and then trying to find the facts that fit it,” Collins said in an interview.

Democrats have expressed great interest in Trump Jr. given his deep involvement in and knowledge of several aspects of his father’s campaign and finances. He has already testified before the House Intelligence Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee in closed sessions. But many House Democrats are urging caution when it comes to Trump's adult children who do not serve in the government. Kushner and Ivanka Trump both serve as senior advisers to the president and are subject to congressional scrutiny like any government official.

“We have to distinguish members of the Trump family who are actually in the government or playing public roles from those who are not,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Oversight Committee, said in an interview. “As for Trump family members who are not members of the administration or taking decision-making roles, they should only be called if there’s a compelling reason that goes to questions of public importance and public policy.”

But Trump Jr., who does not have an official position in the administration, is still of interest to Democratic investigators given Cohen’s characterizations of the president’s eldest son’s alleged involvement in hush-money payments and other incidents that are central to ongoing federal inquiries.

For that reason, some Democrats believe Trump Jr. is fair game — and they aren’t worried about how it plays in political spheres.

“Don Jr. is right in the middle of all of this. … He’s like everywhere. And certainly in that case I think he would be fair game for questions,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), a member of the Oversight and Intelligence committees. “In his case, he is a material witness.”

Cummings has been tight-lipped about his intentions with Trump’s adult children and others implicated in Cohen’s testimony, and members of the committee said in interviews that they would defer to the chairman despite their strong feelings.

“Congress doesn’t have the right to prosecute. We have the right to ask questions. And if asking questions offends somebody, then I think their sensitivity is a little bit too high,” added Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), a senior member of the Oversight panel.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/ ... ns-1207640

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POLITICS

Second Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Adding Census Citizenship Question

The Supreme Court is already set to weigh in on the question.

By Sam Levine

03/06/2019 02:55 pm ET Updated 4 hours ago

A federal judge in California blocked the Trump administration Wednesday from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, saying the decision ran afoul of federal law and was unconstitutional.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg is the second order from a federal judge blocking the question. In January, a federal judge in New York blocked the Trump administration from adding the question, saying the administration ran afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that requires an agency to carefully study an issue before implementing a change in policy. Instead of carefully studying adding the citizenship question, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross came up with a “pretextual” rationale for adding it, the judge said.

The Trump administration said it was adding the question to the census because the Department of Justice requested it do so to better enforce the Voting Rights Act. Many critics, including former Justice Department officials, questioned that claim, saying the department already has good enough data. They noted that the decennial census has not asked about citizenship since 1950, while the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.

In the New York case, the Commerce Department produced documents showing that Ross was interested in adding the citizenship question long before the Justice Department made its request in December 2017. Shortly after he was confirmed, he expressed frustration to an aide that the Commerce Department wasn’t moving faster to add the question. Ross also overruled career census staff who produced analyses showing that the untested question was likely to cause fewer people to self-respond to the census. The documents also revealed Ross asked DOJ to make the request for the citizenship question.

Daniel Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University, said Wednesday’s ruling “gives teeth to the Enumeration Clause,” which he described as an unsettled and important area of constitutional law.

“There’s not just a smoking gun here, there’s a smoking bazooka,” Tokaji wrote in an email. “The idea that the purpose of this was to enhance enforcement of the Voting Rights Act doesn’t pass the straight face test.”

“To the contrary, the record leaves no doubt that the purpose was to suppress participation and representation, especially by Latinos,” he continued. “While the Court applies a fairly deferential form of review under the Enumeration Clause, the absence of a legitimate interest is fatal.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has already agreed to hear an appeal of the New York case in April, but Seeborg’s ruling on Wednesday went further than the one in the New York case. He said that adding the citizenship question violated the Enumeration Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which requires the federal government to count all persons in the United States every 10 years. The question was unconstitutional, Seaborg said, because it would cause fewer people to respond to the census.

“The record in this case has clearly established that including the citizenship question on the 2020 Census is fundamentally counterproductive to the goal of obtaining accurate citizenship data about the public. This question is, however, quite effective at depressing self-response rates among immigrants and noncitizens, and poses a significant risk of distorting the apportionment of congressional representation among the states,” Seeborg wrote.

“In short, the inclusion of the citizenship question on the 2020 Census threatens the very foundation of our democratic system ― and does so based on a self-defeating rationale,” he continued. “In light of these findings, Defendants do not get another bite at the apple. Defendants are hereby enjoined from including the citizenship question on the 2020 Census, regardless of any technical compliance with the APA.”

The suit was brought by the state of California as well as several cities and counties there and Black Alliance for Just Immigration, an advocacy group.

“Justice has prevailed for each and every Californian who should raise their hands to be counted in the 2020 Census without being discouraged by a citizenship question. We celebrate this ruling, an important step in protecting billions of dollars meant for critical services Californians rely on, from education, to public health and safety,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D). “And we will ardently defend this important judgment to safeguard fairness in funding and representation for California and its local communities.”

Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represented some of the plaintiffs, released a statement in support of the ruling.

“In no uncertain terms, the plaintiffs have proved that the justification given for the addition of the citizenship question was nothing more than a pretext to carry out the Trump Administration’s racist agenda,” she said.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/census-c ... 2f69e95de8

<7



PEDO PREDATOR

Jeffrey Epstein, Alan Dershowitz and Pals Accused of Sex Trafficking Ring

A lawyer for one of Epstein's victims claims he was trafficking girls to Dershowitz and others—but the Harvard attorney says sealed documents will prove his innocence.

Kate Briquelet

03.06.19 8:23 PM ET

Famed attorney Alan Dershowitz was accused of involvement in billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking ring by an attorney for one of Epstein’s victims, who claimed in federal court on Wednesday that the release of sealed documents will prove it.

Paul Cassell, who represents Virginia Roberts Giuffre, told the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that the testimony of other witnesses will show Dershowitz’s involvement in the alleged trafficking of “his close friend Jeffrey Epstein.”

“When all the records come out it will show that Epstein and [Epstein’s alleged madam Ghislaine] Maxwell were trafficking girls to the benefit of his friends, including Mr. Dershowitz,” Cassell said in oral arguments for a case filed by the Miami Herald to unseal a collection of court documents relating to Giuffre’s now settled lawsuit against Maxwell.

The hearing came nearly two weeks after a Florida judge ruled federal prosecutors violated the law when they inked a non-prosecution deal with Epstein in 2007—and concealed that agreement from more than 30 of Epstein’s victims. The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the secret deal, which was handled by Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta, who was U.S. Attorney in Miami at the time.

Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor, was one member of Epstein’s legal team that helped broker the unusual non-prosecution agreement.

For his part, Dershowitz and his lawyers are also requesting the court release the trove of documents to the public—but they say it’s in order to prove his innocence.

Outside the courtroom, Dershowitz railed against Giuffre and her attorneys, accusing them of fabricating Giuffre’s claims that Epstein forced her to have sex with Dershowitz. He alluded to emails between Giuffre and a friend that he claims will reveal Giuffre made up the claims against Dershowitz at the behest of her lawyers.

“I’ve denied ever meeting her or even knowing who she was,” Dershowitz said.

Moments later, he added of Giuffre, “She is hurting the #MeToo movement terribly. This was all about money and undercuts the many people who are victimized.”

Asked if he still represents Epstein, Dershowitz said, “I don’t represent Epstein” before walking back his answer: “You never stop being someone’s lawyer.”

“I was his lawyer until this deal was made,” Dershowitz added, before claiming he hasn’t seen Epstein in years.

As The Daily Beast previously reported, Epstein faced life behind bars for his alleged sex acts with minors but walked away with a slap on the wrist, pleading guilty to two state charges: solicitation of prostitution and procurement of minors for prostitution. The 66-year-old financier served 13 months of his 18-month sentence in a private wing of a Palm Beach jail and was allowed to leave on “work release” for 16 hours each day.

A recent Miami Herald investigation identified more than 80 women who claim they were molested by Epstein via a “sex pyramid scheme” from 2001 to 2006, at his Palm Beach mansion and elsewhere, though the number of victims is likely in the hundreds. Indeed, Epstein’s former butler kept a black book containing the names of hundreds of girls and young women that the billionaire recruited for sex and massages, the Herald reported.

Epstein hired girls as young as 13 to give him massages. Once they arrived to his home, he would molest his victims or masturbate, according to court records and police reports. In some cases, he forced his victims into intercourse with him or a young woman he called his Yugoslavian sex slave. After his sickening assaults, Epstein allegedly paid the girls $200 or $300, though sometimes as much as $1,000.

One of those victims was Giuffre, who claims she was 15 and working a summer job at Mar-a-Lago in 1998 when British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly recruited her as a masseuse for Epstein. Giuffre said Epstein kept her as a “sex slave” until 2002 and that she was forced to have sex with his friends, including Prince Andrew and Dershowitz. (Both men have adamantly denied the allegations.)

In September 2015, Giuffre filed a defamation suit against Maxwell after she called Giuffre’s claims “obvious lies” and, according to the complaint, “undertook a concerted and malicious campaign to discredit Giuffre and to so damage her reputation that Giuffre’s factual reporting of what had happened to her would not be credited.” The case settled in May 2017, records show.

In April 2018, the Miami Herald asked a federal judge in New York to unseal all documents that had been sealed or redacted in the suit.

“Though two previous motions to unseal have been denied, the reasoning underlying the denial—the imminence of trial, and potential impact on a jury—is no longer relevant because the case has been settled,” one lawyer for the Herald stated in court papers.

Before the Herald filed motions to intervene, Dershowitz and far-right podcaster Michael Cernovich also asked to unseal certain documents. It’s unclear which specific documents Dershowitz wanted to make public because his motion was partially redacted. Cernovich asked the court to unseal Maxwell’s summary judgment pleadings. The court denied both their requests, and they appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

On Wednesday, Sanford Bohrer, an attorney for the Herald, requested the 167 sealed documents in the case be sent to the district court and each one be reviewed for redactions before being released to the public. “Mr. Epstein for good or bad is a focus of some things that are really important today,” Bohrer said.

Ty Gee, a lawyer for Maxwell, indicated his client was the only party who opposed unsealing the court records and pushed for the panel to stick with U.S. District Judge Robert W. Sweet’s decision to keep the records secret.

Gee claimed Giuffre has “woven” a story that’s “become more exotic” all for the sake of making money. “It’s almost like I see a name in the news and I’m going to make an allegation against them,” Gee said.

Cernovich’s attorney, Marc Randazza, declared to the court, “All we have is Maxwell to overcome,” before holding up a black-lined redacted document and comparing the court records to “FOIA documents from the CIA.” The panel asked Randazza about Cernovich’s credentials and whether he should have the same rights as a journalist.

After Randazza spoke, Cassell said he would describe Cernovich as a self-professed “slut-shamer” and “a proxy or a stand-in for Mr. Dershowitz.” The only reason Cernovich filed motions requesting a release of the documents was because Dershowitz tried to do so himself and failed, Cassell told the panel. (This statement prompted Dershowitz, who was seated in the gallery, to whisper, “He’s defaming me in court.”)

Dershowitz’s attorney, Andrew Celli, asked for three documents pertaining to his client to be released immediately because the 81-year-old professor’s “reputation has been besmirched.” Celli denied Dershowitz was collaborating with Cernovich.

“Let me be absolutely clear: Mr. Dershowitz is happy and prepared and eager to unseal all documents in this case no matter what they say about him,” Celli said. “He believes, your honor, in the marketplace of ideas.”

Meanwhile, a collection of news outlets and First Amendment and free press groups filed a brief in support of the Herald’s appeal. The organizations included Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Associated Press Media Editors, POLITICO, FOX Television Stations, and the Washington Post, among multiple others.

“Contrary to the district court’s concern that public access to the Summary Judgment Documents will serve only to ‘promote scandal,’ access will provide the public and the press with information key to their understanding of this litigation, which relates to allegations of serial sexual assault and abuse of minors by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and has implicated high-level public officials and public figures,” the brief stated.

The public interest in the case “is particularly acute due to the variety of public figures and public officials who are alleged to be connected to Jeffrey Epstein and his victims,” the brief added, “such as President Donald Trump, former-President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Alan Dershowitz.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-e ... g?ref=home

<8



U.S. trade deficit grows to 10-year high under Trump

The U.S. trade deficit grew to $621 billion in 2018, its highest level since 2008, according to a Commerce Department report released Wednesday that was delayed by the government shutdown.

The big picture: President Trump has made reducing the nation's trade deficit — especially with China — a major goal of his administration. However, the report showed a record-breaking $891.3 billion trade gap for the U.S. in goods and services and a trade deficit with China for goods that hit a record $419.2 billion.

https://www.axios.com/us-trade-deficit- ... 1d997.html

<9


Wednesday's Mini-Report, 3.6.19

Today's edition of quick hits:

By Steve Benen 03/06/19 05:30PM

* Today, Michael Cohen gave lawmakers documents "that show edits to the false written statements he made to Congress in 2017 about talks on a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News."

* Strike two: "The Trump administration's decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. census 'threatens the very foundation of our democratic system,' a federal judge said Wednesday. Judge Richard Seeborg said the commerce secretary's decision to add the question was arbitrary and capricious and would violate a constitutional requirement that the census count everyone in the country."

* Ohio: "A sprawling General Motors assembly plant near Youngstown will be idled on Wednesday after more than 50 years producing cars and other vehicles, a move that will eliminate nearly 1,700 hourly positions by month's end. GM announced late last year that Lordstown along with three plants in the U.S. and one in Canada would close by early next year."

* Unnecessary secrecy: "In the latest step toward rolling back Obama-era rules for targeted killings, President Donald Trump will no longer require U.S. intelligence officials to publicly disclose the numbers of people killed in drone strikes and other attacks on terrorist targets outside of war zones."

* A heartbreaking story: "Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., a retired Air Force colonel and the first female fighter pilot to fly a combat mission, revealed on Wednesday that she was raped by a superior officer while in the military."

* In pursuit of pay equity: "A federal judge ruled on Monday that the Trump administration must reinstate an Obama-era requirement for companies to report how much they pay their employees, along with their gender and race — a move supporters say would address pay disparities among workers of different groups."

* Escalating trade tensions (again): "President Trump has decided to strip India of a special status that exempts billions of dollars worth of Indian exports from American tariffs, raising new trade tensions with the world's second most populous country."


Scrutiny intensifies into Trump’s role in FBI headquarters controversy

By Steve Benen

03/06/19 04:12 PM—UPDATED 03/06/19 04:18 PM

Donald Trump has been accused of different kinds of financial corruption since becoming president, but his role in the FBI headquarters controversy stands out for a reason. It makes sense that Democratic committee chairs are demanding answers.

*Today, the Chairs of five House Committees and Subcommittees sent a letter demanding documents that are currently being withheld by the Trump Administration relating to the decision to block the longstanding plan to relocate the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters to a suburban location – which would have allowed commercial developers to acquire the existing site and compete directly with the Trump Hotel across the street on Pennsylvania Avenue – and instead raze and rebuild at the existing location.*

For those who might need a refresher, let’s recap how we reached this point.

As regular readers know, Trump’s keen interest in the FBI’s headquarters has been at the center of a controversy for nearly a year. Axios reported last summer, for example, that there was a contentious debate about whether to leave the FBI where it is or relocate the bureau’s headquarters to a nearby suburb.

The president made it clear he was “dead opposed to plans to move it out of D.C.”

Asked for an explanation, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters in October, “The president wanted to save the government money,” which is why he directly intervened in the project. As the Wall Street Journal reported in November, Sanders’ argument wasn’t true.

*New documents suggest the Trump administration was aware that its decision to keep the FBI headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., would cost more than a competing proposal to relocate to the suburbs, contradicting public assertions from the White House that it wanted to save taxpayers money.

A newly released email exchange shows that Andrew Abrams, deputy associate director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, attempting to prepare Emily Murphy, chief of the General Services Administration, for testimony before Congress about the FBI headquarters.

In the email, Mr. Abrams says the toughest question Ms. Murphy could receive is, “How is this a good deal for taxpayers?” The email doesn’t dispute that the proposal to keep the facility in Washington would cost more and be less secure than relocating to the suburbs in Virginia or Maryland.*

Given the last two years, I can appreciate why a “White House lies about a thing” story may seem uninteresting, but don’t be too quick to dismiss this one. We’re talking about a controversy that points to possible presidential corruption, which now also appears to involve multiple officials who haven’t told the truth.

Some geographic context is probably in order. For those unfamiliar with D.C., the Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently located along Pennsylvania Avenue, about four blocks east of the White House.

As we’ve discussed, it’s also about a block from the Trump International Hotel, which the president still owns and profits from. If the current FBI headquarters were redeveloped in its existing space, it’d benefit Trump’s investment. For that matter, keeping the bureau in its current home would guarantee that a competing hotel wouldn’t go in at that location.

All of which makes it interesting that the Trump White House was directly involved in the talks about plans for the building.

Congressional Democrats released materials on a Jan. 24, 2018, meeting at which Trump spoke directly with General Services Administrator Emily Murphy about abandoning the plan to relocate the FBI to a larger campus in a nearby suburb.

In a series of emails in the days that followed, the GSA confirmed that the relocation plan was dead, evidently at the president’s direction. A top GSA official, Brennan Hart, wrote in a Jan 28 email that the FBI project “is a demolition/new construction per the president’s instructions.”

Three months later, during a congressional hearing, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) asked the GSA’s Emily Murphy, “To your knowledge, was the president or anyone else at the White House involved in those discussions, either with your predecessors, people you’re working with now, or yourself?”

Murphy replied, “The direction that we got came from the FBI. It was the FBI that directed to GSA as to what its requirements would be. We obviously did coordinate, given that it is a substantial budget request, we coordinated that request with OMB to provide for funding but the requirements were generated by the FBI.”

Murphy did not, however, mention the White House meetings as part of her answer.

And it now appears she’s not the only member of Team Trump who’s been careless with the truth about this project. The White House knew that Trump’s preferred approach would cost American taxpayers more money, but (a) the president insisted that officials follow his wishes anyway; and (b) Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the opposite.

Common sense suggests Congress should obviously get answers, but House Republicans refused to even consider questions when they were in the majority. Now, it’s Democrats with the reins – and they have subpoena power.

I’m sympathetic to those who find the sheer volume of Trump scandals dizzying, but the FBI story is one with legs. Watch this space.


As the trade deficit soars, Trump fails by his own metric

By Steve Benen

03/06/19 11:20 AM

Donald Trump has long been obsessed with the nation’s trade deficit. I’m not at all sure he knows what those words mean – he frequently talks about the trade deficit in a way that suggests he’s badly confused – but the president has nevertheless labeled it an economic scourge that he’s determined to address.

Indeed, in late July, the Republican assured Fox News that, thanks to the wisdom of his economic agenda, the U.S. trade deficit would soon be cut in half.

Yeah, about that….

*The Commerce Department said Wednesday that – despite more than two years of President Trump’s “America First” policies – the United States last year posted a $891.2 billion merchandise trade deficit, the largest in the nation’s 243-year history.

The trade gap with China also hit a record $419 billion, underscoring the stakes for the president’s bid to reach a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping as soon as this month.*

Keep in in mind, just last week, the Republican boasted to reporters in Hanoi, “You saw trade deficits went down last month and everyone’s trying to figure out why. Well, we’re taking a lot of tariff money. And it has reduced the trade deficit.”

Not in this reality it hasn’t. In fact. six days later, Trump’s rhetoric looks even more ridiculous. As Glenn Kessler explained the other day, “The president keeps seizing on scraps of data – a month here or a quarter there – to falsely claim the trade deficit is being reduced. But over the course of the year, it kept growing. Attributing a small one-month shift to tariffs is especially silly.”

If Trump wanted to argue that the trade deficit isn’t especially important, that would be fine. If he wanted to argue that president’s have limited control over the trade deficit, that would work, too.

But the president has gone out of his way to do the exact opposite – telling the public that the trade deficit is critically important and he knows just what to do to reduce it. At times, the Republican has even felt the need to lie in order to pretend he’s succeeding in reaching one of his most cherished goals.

Reality, however, has intervened. Trump isn’t just failing by his critics’ standards; when it comes to trade, he’s now failing by his own standards.


Evidence shreds GOP argument that tax cuts pay for themselves

03/06/19 12:48 PM

By Steve Benen

It may seem like ancient history, but a decade ago, when Democrats controlled the levers of federal power, Republicans were hysterical about the need to balance the budget. GOP officials not only wanted to amend the Constitution to prohibit deficits, they also condemned any proposal, no matter how beneficial to the public, if it added so much as a penny to the budget shortfall.

It was, even at the time, a ridiculous approach to economic policy. In the midst of a jobs crisis, Republicans saw a debt crisis. When the economy desperately needed more capital, GOP policymakers fought tooth and nail to take capital out of the economy.

Thankfully, the Democratic economic agenda worked, the Great Recession ended, the unemployment rate dramatically improved, and toward the end of Barack Obama’s second term, the deficit had shrunk by roughly a trillion dollars.

That was then, this is now.

*The federal budget deficit ballooned rapidly in the first four months of the fiscal year amid falling tax revenue and higher spending, the Treasury Department said Tuesday, posing a new challenge for the White House and Congress as they prepare for a number of budget battles.

The deficit grew 77 percent in the first four months of fiscal 2019 compared with the same period one year before, Treasury said.

The total deficit for the four-month period was $310 billion, Treasury said, up from $176 billion for the same period one year earlier.

There’s no great mystery as to the contributing factors. The Republican tax plan slashed the corporate tax rate, and as the Washington Post’s report added, the Treasury Department “noted a major reduction in corporate tax payments over the first four months of the fiscal year.”

In case this isn’t obvious, current economic conditions – healthy growth, very low unemployment – suggest the deficit should be shrinking, not growing. Indeed, when Donald Trump spent months leading up to Election Day bragging that he knew how to eliminate – not just reduce, but eliminate – the nation’s budget deficit “easily” and “quickly,” these are precisely the conditions he was referring to.

But the Republican tax cuts make that impossible – because they don’t pay for themselves.

This clearly isn’t what the president and his party want to hear. At the heart of contemporary GOP orthodoxy is the idea that tax breaks for the wealthy fuels growth, which leads to good jobs, which leads to more taxpayers, which leads to increased tax revenue, which leads to shrinking deficits.

Even Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), ostensibly her party’s most moderate federal lawmaker, defended her support for the regressive Republican tax plan in late 2017 by insisting, more than once, that tax breaks would pay for themselves.

Any chance Collins and her colleagues will look at the ballooning budget deficit and acknowledge they were wrong?

Postscript: Every time we discuss the deficit, I feel compelled to point out again that I’m not a deficit hawk, and I firmly believe that larger deficits, under some circumstances, are absolutely worthwhile and necessary.

These are not, however, those circumstances. When the economy is in trouble, it makes sense for the United States to borrow more, invest more, cushion the blow, and help strengthen the economy.

The Trump White House and the Republican-led Congress, however, decided to approve massive tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations when the economy was already healthy – not because they were addressing a policy need, but because they were fulfilling an ideological goal.

http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog

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OSTRICH JACKET, CROCODILE TEARS

‘Humiliated’ Manafort Whines as Judge Sentences Him to Just 47 Months

Manafort served as Donald Trump’s campaign chief and a lobbyist for dictators and torturers.

Adam Rawnsley

03.07.19 7:01 PM ET

Paul Manafort, who served as President Trump’s campaign chief and as a lobbyist for international dictators and torturers, was given a sharply reduced sentenced of 47 months for fraud—by a federal judge who said he had lived an “otherwise blameless life.” REALLY - WHAT STONE HAS THIS JUDGE BEEN LIVING UNDER

THIS GUY SHOULD BE ASHAMED TO BE SITTING ON THE BENCH

The guidelines called for a sentence of 19 to 24 years, Judge T.S. Ellis said that was “excessive” and gave him less than four years after Manafort pleaded for “compassion” and whined that he had been “shamed and humiliated” by scandal.

It remains to be seen how much time Manafort, 69, will end up serving. He faces a second sentencing in another court, and prosecutors have accused him of angling for a pardon from his ex-boss, President Trump.

“The past two years have been the most difficult of my life,” Manafort said, sitting in a wheelchair and wearing a green jail jumpsuit in the Virginia courtroom.

“The person that the media has described me as is not someone I recognize. To say I have been humiliated and shamed would be a gross understatement. The greatest pain I feel is the pain of my family’s. I thank my family for their outpouring of support. I have had much time to repent. I ask you for your compassion.”

Manafort was convicted of eight counts of tax and bank fraud in August 2018 by a Virginia jury that deadlocked on an additional 10 counts.

After that, he pleaded guilty in a Washington, D.C., case to conspiracy against the U.S. government and obstruction of justice charges stemming from an illegal lobbying campaign on behalf of the Ukrainian government.

In the D.C. case, Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Manafort breached his plea agreement by lying to Mueller’s team about his interactions with former business partner Konstantin Kilimnik and in an unspecified investigation in another federal court district. Kilimnik is assessed by the FBI, according to Mueller, of having links to Russian intelligence. Manafort allegedly shared Trump campaign polling data with Kilimnik in 2016.

Manafort’s lawyers asked for a sentencing reduction because of his cooperation with Mueller, but they were denied by Judge Ellis who cited Manafort’s breach. In any event, prosecutors told the court Manafort did not tell them anything they did not already know.

In the Virginia trial, prosecutors showed how Manafort went from evading taxes when his political consulting career was successful to defrauding banks when his business started to fail.

When he was flush, Manafort used a host of offshore companies and bank accounts in Cyprus and St. Vincent to hide up to $55 million and pay the tab for his lavish lifestyle. He failed to report up to $16 million of that money to the IRS, which shaved his tax bills by $6 million.

The Maidan revolution in 2014 threw Manafort’s pro-Russian clients in Ukraine out of power and effectively gutted his consulting business. With no income and mounting bills, he sought to maintain his lifestyle by applying for loans against his various homes based on a series of lies. Mueller’s office charged him with forging phony profit-and-loss statements and lying to secure more lucrative loan terms.

Manafort volunteered in February 2016 to work for the Trump campaign for free as his finances were at their most desperate. The move seemed like a chance for him to cash in on a new set of political allies and revive his failing consulting business. Instead, Trump fired him in August 2016 amid campaign chaos and growing scrutiny of Manafort’s work in Ukraine.

By late 2016, Manafort had already gotten the attention of law enforcement. His offshore transactions racked up nearly two dozen suspicious activity reports over the course of a decade, and the FBI questioned him in 2013 and 2014 about his offshore accounts. Separately, CNN reported that the FBI obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on Manafort in 2014 stemming from suspicions about his lobbying work on behalf of the Ukrainian government.

The special counsel did not take a position on the 19- to 24-year guideline range for Manafort’s sentence but wrote that he “acted for more than a decade as if he were above the law” and that his crimes were “routine” and “brazen.”

Manafort’s lawyers pushed instead for “a sentence significantly below the guidelines” in a blistering memo that took aim at Mueller’s office. They claimed that prosecutors brought the Virginia charges against him after they had been “unable to establish that Mr. Manafort engaged in any such collusion” between Russia and the Trump campaign. The defense team accused Mueller’s office of “pattern of spreading misinformation” to smear Manafort “in a manner that this country has not experienced in decades.”

Those arguments, which track with the “witch hunt” narrative bandied about by Trump, could form the basis of a bid for a presidential pardon. The special counsel’s office believes Manafort is angling for one; prosecutor Andrew Weissman told the judge in the D.C. case that Manafort lied to prosecutors in order to curry favor with Trump and “augment his chances for a pardon.” For his part, Trump has refused to rule out the possibility and told reporters that a pardon is not “off the table.”

Absent any intervention from Trump, the sentence handed down marks an end to Manafort’s career in politics and a turning point for the kind of lobbying he pioneered.

During the 1980s and ’90s, Manafort’s firm—Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly—signed up with brutal foreign dictators and warlords like Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, Angola’s Jonas Savimbi, and Nigeria’s General Sani Abacha for image rehabilitation campaigns in D.C. The clientele earned Manafort’s firm a reputation as “the torturers' lobby” and a first brush with the Justice Department over allegations that the company had failed to properly report some of its foreign lobbying work.

(One of the partners was Roger Stone, who is also being prosecuted by Mueller for allegedly lying to Congress about his contacts with WikiLeaks).

Manafort’s downfall hasn’t stopped Washington lobbyists from signing up an international rogues gallery of clients, but it has made them more attentive to the law. The Justice Department prosecuted only seven cases of failure to register between 1966 and 2015, which led to a lax and freewheeling atmosphere in the foreign lobbying business that allowed Manafort to flourish. Since the 2016 election and Manafort’s indictment, lobbyists have flocked to register their work with the Justice Department amid stricter enforcement by the agency’s FARA unit.

[ WOW PAYS TO BE A REPUBLICAN IN WASHINGTON, WHITE, & RICH, NOT TO MENTION A TRUMP TROLL - THIS SENTENCE IS A TRAVESTY! I AM SOOOOO PISSED. I'M EMBARRASSED TO BE AN AMERICAN! HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN IN OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM OH MY GOD

https://www.thedailybeast.com/manafort- ... ref=scroll

POLITICS

Paul Manafort Sentenced To Less Than 4 Years In Prison In Mueller Probe

Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman still faces a separate sentencing in Washington, D.C.

By Ryan J. Reilly

03/07/2019 07:03 pm ET Updated 22 minutes ago

ALEXANDRIA, Va. ― A federal judge here sentenced former Trump campaign chairman and longtime Republican operative Paul Manafort to less than four years in prison on Thursday in a case that grew out of Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The prison term, handed down by U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis III in a packed federal courtroom in suburban Virginia, is the first of two sentences for Manafort, who turns 70 next month. Judge Ellis said he believed a sentence in the guideline range of 19 to 24 years would be “excessive,” and said Manafort “has lived an otherwise blameless life.”

Before joining the Trump campaign in March 2016, Manafort made his millions working as a lobbyist for an elite group of clients, known colloquially as the “torturers’ lobby.” A 1992 report from the Center for Public Integrity accused Manafort and his team at Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone of lobbying on behalf of dictators and guerrilla groups “identified as abusing human rights.”

Manafort has been in custody since his bail was revoked in June 2018 and still faces separate sentencing in yet another case in D.C. next week.

“The real essence of his violation is that he stole from us, the people who pay their taxes,” Ellis said of Manafort.

Manafort, who was pushed into the courtroom in a wheelchair and remained seated for most of the hearing, made an emotional plea ahead of his sentence, thanking the judge for his fairness in the high-profile trial.

Dressed in a forest green jail uniform, Manafort said the past two years had been the “most difficult” of his life and that his image as depicted in the media “is not someone I would recognize.” He said that he felt punished by the situation already and that he’d had a lot of time “sitting in solitary confinement” to reflect on his actions.

Manafort added that he hoped to turn things around “through the power of prayer and God’s guiding hand” before asking the judge for compassion.

In the Virginia case, Manafort was convicted in August on eight counts involving filing false income taxes, failing to report foreign bank accounts and committing bank fraud. The case revolved around Manafort’s overseas work for oligarchs backing pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine and his efforts to keep that money from the U.S. government.

Mueller’s office took no position on how much time Manafort should serve, but noted that the sentencing guidelines called for between 19 and 24 years and said the sentence should “take into account the gravity” of Manafort’s conduct and deter both him and “those who would commit a similar series of crimes.”

Manafort’s team accused Mueller of attempting to “vilify Mr. Manafort as a lifelong and irredeemable felon,” saying investigators’ actions were “beyond the pale” and “grossly” overstated the facts of the case.

In a response Tuesday, Mueller’s team said Manafort had not provided “complete and honest cooperation” and noted that he still owes the federal government more than $6 million.

Manafort separately pleaded guilty in D.C. federal court in September to two counts involving a range of criminal conduct as part of a plea deal with Mueller’s team. But Mueller’s team said that Manafort lied to investigators after he reached that plea deal, and U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled last month that the special counsel was “no longer bound by its obligations under the plea agreement.”

President Donald Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of pardoning Manafort, and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said he discussed the matter with Trump ahead of Manafort’s August trial. Even after his trial and guilty plea, Manafort’s legal team had an unusual arrangement with Trump’s legal team that gave Trump’s attorneys insight into the questions Mueller’s team was pursuing.

Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos has already served prison time. Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen has been sentenced to three years behind bars. Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign deputy Richard Gates are awaiting their sentences, while Trump associate Roger Stone is awaiting trial.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/paul-man ... c2f29599c5

<1



NAH, SON

Embassy Staffers Say Jared Kushner Shut Them Out of Saudi Meetings

When a member of the administration travels overseas, the embassy often helps coordinate the trip. Not when Jared Kushner meets his buddy MBS.

Erin Banco

03.07.19 4:49 AM ET

Officials and staffers in the U.S. embassy in Riyadh said they were not read in on the details of Jared Kushner’s trip to Saudi Arabia or the meetings he held with members of the country’s royal court last week, according to three sources with knowledge of the trip. And that’s causing concern not only in the embassy but also among members of Congress.

On his trip to the Middle East, Kushner stopped in Riyadh. While there, he met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and King Salman to discuss U.S.-Saudi cooperation, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and economic investment in the region, according to the White House.

But no one from the embassy in Riyadh was in the meetings, according to those same sources. The State Department did have a senior official in attendance, but he was not part of the State Department team in Saudi. He is a senior member of the department focused on Iran, according to a source with direct knowledge of the official’s presence in Riyadh.

“The Royal Court was handling the entire schedule,” one congressional source told The Daily Beast, adding that officials in the U.S. embassy in Riyadh had insight into where Kushner was when in Saudi Arabia. “But that is normal for his past trips.”

Kushner, who has developed a personal relationship with the crown prince, embarked on several trips to Saudi Arabia over the last several years. On one occasion, he traveled overseas without announcing his trip publicly. He often travels to the region with Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt.

When a member of the administration travels to another country, the embassy often helps coordinate the trip and provides some kind of security. This time, though, the Saudi government provided security for Kushner and his entourage, sources said. And the embassy was largely left in the dark on the details of Kushner’s schedule and his conversations with Saudi officials, according to two individuals with knowledge of the trip to the country.

The State Department referred The Daily Beast to the White House for comment. “This reporting is not true and the sources are misinformed,” a senior administration official told The Daily Beast, adding that the embassy in Riyadh was involved in Kushner’s visit and meetings.

The lack of insight into Kushner’s visit to Saudi Arabia has frustrated members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat, who told The Daily Beast that they are actively trying to learn more about the conversations between senior U.S. administration officials and Saudi Arabia.

Lawmakers said they were concerned that the embassy in Riyadh did not have knowledge of what was discussed between Kushner, MBS and King Salman, pointing to the increasingly fragile relationship between the two countries following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Lawmakers are particularly interested in understanding the back and forth between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia regarding a potential nuclear deal.

The Daily Beast reported last week that the Trump administration is still actively working to make a deal to send U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia and that American energy businesses are still hoping to cash in on Riyadh’s push for energy diversification.

Professional staff and officials in the administration said they are interested in the possible connection between efforts by private businesses to engage with Saudi Arabia on nuclear energy and the quiet, ongoing discussions between senior U.S. officials and Riyadh about a deal.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/embassy-s ... s?ref=home

<2



North Korean test site back up and running after Hanoi failure

Dave Lawle r2 hours ago 3.7.19

North Korea’s Sohae rocket launch site is back to “normal operational status” just 1 week after the Hanoi summit ended in “no deal,” according to an analysis of satellite images by 38 North.

Backstory:

North Korea has in recent days been repairing the site, which it partially destroyed following the Singapore summit last year. Joel Wit of 38 North said at a Stimson Center event this week that the regime had poured a lot of money and effort into Sohae, viewed its partial destruction as "above and beyond the call of duty," and felt the U.S. was refusing to make any concessions in return.

Wit said he didn't expect a test at Sohae in the short term and asked: “How can everyone dismiss the importance of this site [when North Korea offered to dismantle it] and now when they start to rebuild it all the alarm bells are going off?”

“The fact that they were willing to dismantle it had larger symbolic meaning,” added 38 North’s Jenny Town. She said it signaled the North Koreans might be willing to eliminate their space program, which is a source of national pride and was a sticking point in past negotiations.

What’s next:

“You don’t know whether this is a bargaining tactic or whether someone has made a decision that now we’re moving on this other track,” Wit said. Noting that neither Trump nor Kim Jong-un is known for patience, he added: “What’s going on at Sohae tells me someone might have said, ‘let’s take a shortcut.’”

“The danger here is we could start spiraling downward as each side takes steps that undermine the process that’s been in place since last June.”

The latest:

Trump was asked today about the activity at Sohae and said he’d be “very disappointed in Chairman Kim” if the news proved accurate, but “it'll ultimately get solved."

https://www.axios.com/north-korea-sohae ... 60aed.html

<3



House passes anti-hate measure amid Dem tensions

BY JULIEGRACE BRUFKE - 03/07/19 05:36 PM EST

he House passed a measure broadly condemning anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred on Thursday after remarks by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) unleashed a torrent of debate in the Democratic caucus, underlining tensions in the party.

The measure condemning "anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry" easily passed the lower chamber in a vote of 407-23.

Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the third-ranking House GOP leader, joined nearly two dozen other Republicans in voting against the measure. Reps. Lee Zeldin (N.Y.) and Louie Gohmert (Texas), who also voted against it, had delivered floor speeches lamenting that the language in the bill had been watered down to the point of taking away attention from Omar's remarks.

The vote had been delayed earlier in the week as Democrats fought over what should be included in the measure, with additional tweaks to the text being made as late as Thursday afternoon.

Lawmakers passed the resolution amid flaring tensions over comments by Omar widely panned as anti-Semitic because they appeared to question whether people advocating for Israel were more loyal to that country than the United States.

The House-passed measure did not specifically mention the freshman congresswoman by name.

While critics argued Omar should have been directly named in the resolution, a number of progressives and members of key minority caucuses stood by her this week, balking at the suggestion she be singled out and calling for the language to be broadened to include the condemnation of other forms of bigotry.

The final version of the resolution “encourages all public officials to confront the reality of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry, as well as historical struggles against them, to ensure that the United States will live up to the transcendent principles of tolerance, religious freedom, and equal protection as embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the first and 14th amendments to the Constitution.”

It also includes language condemning Japanese internment camps in World War II, the century-old Dreyfus affair in France, former President Kennedy being questioned over Catholicism and the white supremacist events in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.

Democrats made a last-minute change Thursday to add Latinos, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, and the LGBT community to the list of "traditionally persecuted peoples" targeted by white supremacists. The previous version unveiled earlier in the day only included "African-Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, immigrants, and others."

The measure was brought to the floor a week after Omar sparked renewed controversy with remarks about Israel that members of her own party, including a number of presidential candidates, condemned.

"I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” she said during a forum last week.

Reporters twice tried to approach Omar in the halls outside the House chamber after the vote Thursday for her reaction. At one point, fellow Muslim Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) protectively put his arm around her.

But Omar did not utter a single word in response to any questions.

While the measure that passed Thursday received broad support on the floor, a handful of lawmakers voiced disappointment that the measure didn't solely condemn anti-Semitic remarks, which spurred the creation of the resolution.

The lawmakers, including several Jewish Democrats, made the case that anti-Semitism is a serious enough issue to warrant a stand-alone bill.

"Why are we unable to singularly condemn anti-Semitism?" Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) said on the floor earlier in the day. "Why can't we call it anti-Semitism and show we've learned the lessons of history?”

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on the floor shortly before the vote Thursday evening that Omar's comments "touched a very real, very raw place for me."

"And my desire for the House to go on record again specifically condemning anti-Semitism wasn't a desire to single the gentlewoman out or to stifle debate on U.S. policy toward Israel," Engel said. "But it was a desire and need to say that certain words, no matter who utters them, have no place in our public discourse and indeed can be very dangerous."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said it was critical that lawmakers condemn rhetoric accusing supporters of Israel of dual allegiance, but said he also felt it was important to come out against other forms of discrimination.

"Accusations that Jews bear dual allegiance because of support for Israel or concerns for its safety are false and they are also hurtful. Comments that must be exposed for what they are — bigotry. They elicit fear and uncertainty in the individuals and communities they target," he said on the floor ahead of the vote. "In much the same way, we have also seen vile examples of hatred aimed at painting Muslim Americans as somehow disloyal to our nation, or not fully belonging, causing similar feel offings insecurity and distress."

Other lawmakers questioned why it took a week to craft the resolution coming out against the inflammatory comments from Omar.

"I am here with my friend from New York debating a resolution that all of us should have learned in kindergarten. 'Be nice. Don't hate,' " Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said on the floor.

"This resolution doesn't need to be seven pages — It's just wordy," he said, noting that he supported the bill. "We don't need to hate. It doesn't matter where it comes from."

In addition to Cheney, Zeldin and Gohmert, Republicans who voted against the bill included: Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Ken Buck (Colo.), Ted Budd (N.C.), Michael Burgess (Texas), Chris Collins (N.Y.), Mike Conaway (Texas), Rick Crawford (Ark.), Jeff Duncan (S.C.), Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Tom Graves (Ga.), Peter King (N.Y.), Doug LaMalfa (Calif.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Steven Palazzo (Miss.), Mike Rogers (Ala.), Chip Roy (Texas), Greg Steube (Fla.), Mark Walker (N.C.) and Ted Yoho (Fla.).

By bringing the bill to the floor Thursday, Democratic leaders were able to tamp down the possibility of Republicans further highlighting divisions in the Democratic caucus by using a procedural motion on a landmark election reform bill scheduled for a vote Friday.

As it stands, that bill — designated as H.R. 1 to underscore its importance — has largely been overshadowed all week by the controversy surrounding Omar.

GOP lawmakers — who managed to overwhelmingly pass a motion to recommit that amended a resolution on Yemen to include language condemning anti-Semitism earlier this year in response to a separate incident involving Omar — called for Democrats to take a harder line with the freshman representative.

Top Republicans including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Minority Whip Steve Scalise (La.) and Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (Wyo.) argued Democrats should have responded in a similar fashion to how they penalized Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) following his controversial remarks on white supremacy.

King was removed from his committee assignments after his remarks. He voted "present" on the resolution Thursday.

“The real issue is why does [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi [D-Calif.] continue to allow Omar to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee? If Pelosi is truly against the anti-Semitic comments that Omar continues to make, then she needs to remove her from the Foreign Affairs Committee,” Scalise told reporters Wednesday.

“And that's the only real action that will prove that she's willing to stand up to that kind of offensive behavior," he said.

But Democratic leaders have asserted they don’t believe likening King and Omar is a fair comparison.

"I don't believe it was intended in an anti-Semitic way. But the fact is if that's how it was interpreted, we have to remove all doubt," Pelosi told reporters on Thursday.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4330 ... ions-flare

<4



Omar lauds House passage of anti-hate measure as 'great progress'

BY RACHEL FRAZIN - 03/07/19 07:40 PM EST

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Thursday lauded the House's passage of a measure broadly condemning anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred.

The measure was passed amid flaring tensions over comments made by Omar that had been widely criticized as anti-Semitic.

"Our nation is having a difficult conversation, but we believe this is great progress," Omar tweeted, alongside a joint statement with fellow Muslim lawmakers Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.).

“We are tremendously proud to be part of a body that has put forth a condemnation of all forms of bigotry including anti-Semitism, racism and white supremacy,” the representatives wrote in a statement. “Our nation is having a difficult conversation and we believe this is great progress.”

“Today is historic on many fronts,” they added. “It’s the first time we have voted on a resolution condemning Anti-Muslim bigotry.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar

@Ilhan

Our nation is having a difficult conversation, but we believe this is great progress.

5,100

5:46 PM - Mar 7, 2019

The resolution, which was originally expected to condemn anti-Semitism alone, also included language condemning "Islamophobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry." The measure easily passed the lower chamber in a vote of 407-23.

Lawmakers passed the resolution, which does not mention Omar by name, amid heightened tensions over comments Omar made that were widely considered anti-Semitic. Critics said Omar's remarks appeared to question whether people advocating for Israel were more loyal to that country than the United States.

Her comments were slammed by Republicans and some Democrats as playing into the anti-Semitic trope that people advocating for Israel are more loyal to the country than the U.S.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4331 ... nversation

<5



2020 ELECTIONS

Signs of economic strain emerge in Trump’s home base

The president’s most beloved industry is flashing economic warnings in New York City and key regions across the nation.

By BEN WHITE and KATY O'DONNELL 03/07/2019 05:06 AM EST

NEW YORK — The luxury real estate market in Manhattan is sagging. The GOP tax law is hitting real estate markets across the nation.

And signs of stress across the broader housing market suggest the industry — which made Donald Trump rich, helped thrust him into the White House and remains a constant obsession for him — could also be one that slows his economy and dents his chances at a second term.

The housing market may not cause the next recession like it did in 2008. But weakness in the construction of new homes, sales of existing homes and affordability for millennials looking to buy for the first time could contribute to a recession arriving as soon as next year or prolong any downturn. In addition to 2008, declines in the housing market were tied to recessions in 1974, 1980 and 1990-91, raising concerns that history is about to repeat.

One area in which housing-market stress is obvious is the one Trump knows best: High-end apartments in Manhattan, where prices are now dropping as foreign buyers disappear and wealthy residents flee to lower-tax states.

“When you look at the New York metro area, we are moving from an extended period of stagnation to one of outright softening,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, U.S.

The Manhattan declines are directly linked to the late-2017 tax law that capped the mortgage interest deduction and indirectly to the capping of the state and local tax deduction, Brusuelas said. “People joke that they should have called the tax bill the ‘Everybody Moves to Austin Act.’ This wasn’t virtuous tax policy. It was punitive tax policy.”

Under the new law, individuals can no longer deduct more than $10,000 in state and local taxes from their federal returns. The law also slashed the mortgage interest deduction from $1 million to $750,000.

Trump himself has gotten an earful from wealthy New York friends complaining about the impact of the changes on the high-end real estate market. “There are some people from New York who have been speaking to me about doing something about that, about changing things,” the president said at the White House last month. “I’d be open to talking about it.”

Republicans on the Hill quickly quashed that idea, saying they would not reopen the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Trump’s New York home is not the only blue state where the housing market has taken a hit following the tax law changes. Markets are also suffering across the Northeast, where sales of new homes dropped 16.1 percent in December, according to brokerage firm Redfin.

The cap on the state and local tax deduction is already showing in migration rates, according to Laurie Goodman, vice president of housing finance policy at the Urban Institute. And the changes to the tax law mean “the local housing markets will suffer, particularly at the high end,” Goodman said.

Goodman pointed to data showing New York, California, Illinois and New Jersey topping the states with the largest flows of people leaving from July 2017 to July 2018. The largest in-migration states over that period — Florida, Arizona, Texas and North Carolina — have lower taxes.

The tax-law change isn’t the only thing hurting Trump’s beloved luxury real estate market in New York, according to Donna Olshan, whose firm tracks contracts signed at $4 million and above in Manhattan.

“The luxury market has been slowly coming down since its peak in 2013, 2014, 2015,” she said. “Those were the golden years of luxury development — a lot of new condos were built. There was pent-up demand.”

That boom in luxury development has led to oversupply in high-end housing inventory, she said. The oversupply — combined with stock market volatility, the wane in some foreign-buyer demand and the tax changes — is “eroding the luxury market,” Olshan said.

Weakness in overseas economies is contributing to woes in U.S. housing.

“Ten years ago, the U.S. housing bust caused the Great Recession. That caused a global recession,” said Jack McCabe, owner of McCabe Research & Consulting. “It’s going the opposite way this time, and a global recession is underway in so many countries that have been feeder markets for real estate in the U.S. There is such a synergy between the U.S. economy and the housing market. It’s not the only influence but it’s definitely going to play a role in the next recession.”

A recent decline in mortgage rates following the Federal Reserve’s decision to pause its campaign of interest-rate hikes has improved the demand for new and existing homes somewhat in the last couple of months. But overall, the numbers suggest a broad softening in the housing market. Homebuilding investment shrank 0.2 percent last year, the worst performance since 2010.

So far, weakness in housing looks nothing like the collapse that occurred during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. And economists are mostly not calling for a softening housing market to be the driver of the next recession — though many said the same ahead of the last recession.

But the industry’s doldrums could make an already slowing 2019 even slower and make the next recession even worse when it arrives.

“Once the economy moves into recession, so maybe mid-2020, the significant decline in residential investment will exacerbate affordability problems,” said Brusuelas. “The home affordability index and first-time-buyer affordability index are both showing significant signs of stress.”

Housing starts fell 11.2 percent in December, according to the latest government data, with new apartment construction falling 20.4 percent. Existing home sales fell 1.2 percent in January, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.

“Housing is not contributing its usual punch to the economy,” said Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders.

Yet housing economists are cautiously optimistic that the market will remain steady in 2019, even if it doesn’t match recent growth.

“We’re not projecting broad decline in 2019,” said Todd Teta, chief product officer at the property data company Attom. “We think it’s going to be flat or a slight increase in pricing — not what we’ve seen in the last five years, but certainly not a huge drop.”

Sales at the high end of the market, Teta noted, have slowed down across the board. The sale of homes worth $2 million or more grew just 7 percent from 2017 to 2018, compared with 21 percent growth from 2016 to 2017, according to Attom data.

The breadth of the high-end lag suggests it’s not just the state and local tax issue, Fannie Mae chief economist Doug Duncan said.

“I think it’s the combination of the general slowing of economic activity, the modest rise in interest rates and the volatility of the market in the fourth quarter,” Duncan said. “The higher-end households who have more portfolio to manage would be more impacted by that.”

One of the biggest concerns about the housing market and its impact on the broader economy is the lack of affordability for millennials looking to buy their first homes. While the housing sector itself is only a small slice of the U.S. economy — about 15 percent — the attendant spending on durable goods and other purchases gives the sector larger influence.

A shortage of housing supply — especially in thriving cities where jobs are most plentiful — has led more people to rent. Meanwhile, soaring student-loan debt is preventing some young people from buying a home, according to Federal Reserve research.

In 2005, 45 percent of heads of households between the ages of 24 and 32 owned their homes, compared with 36 percent of the same demographic in 2014. Two percentage points, or a little over 20 percent, of the 9-percentage-point drop can be attributed to the increase in student-loan debt over that time period, the Fed found — “represent[ing] over 400,000 young individuals who would have owned a home in 2014 had it not been for the rise in debt.”

Taken together, the declines in high-end markets and across states hit by the tax law changes — coupled with affordability problems for new buyers and reduced construction of new homes — suggest that the market could contribute to the next recession and make life difficult for Trump.

“I see recession hitting before the 2020 election,” said McCabe. “And it’s going to play a part in that election.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/ ... 20-1247505

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Brennan calls light Manafort sentence 'extraordinarily lenient' in light of crimes committed

BY RACHEL FRAZIN - 03/07/19 09:27 PM EST

Former CIA Director John Brennan criticized former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's 47-month sentence as "extraordinarily lenient" on MSNBC on Thursday.

“It’s an extraordinarily lenient sentence in light of the extent and scope of Mr. Manafort’s criminality,” Brennan said. “I think this sentence says a lot more about Judge Ellis than it does about Paul Manafort.”

Judge T.S. Ellis III, a Reagan appointee, handed Manafort, 69, the almost four-year sentence, which was much lower than the 19 1/2 to 24 years suggested by federal guidelines on Thursday.

"You’ve been convicted of serious crimes — very serious crimes — by a jury,” Ellis said to the court, following Manafort's sentencing hearing, but added “I think that sentencing range is excessive. I don’t think that is warranted in this case."

Brennan criticized Ellis's characterization of Manafort as mostly otherwise blameless.

“That is just mind-boggling,” Brennan said. “Paul Manafort has a demonstrated track record of criminal, unethical, unprincipled behavior.”

In August, Manafort was convicted of eight charges: five counts of filing false tax returns, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to report foreign bank accounts.

Manafort's crimes were revealed as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the 2016 presidential election. Mueller is investigating whether Russia interfered in the election, including whether the Kremlin colluded with the Trump campaign.

https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... lenient-in

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
‏
Verified account

@AOC

34m34 minutes ago

More Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Retweeted Ari Melber

Paul Manafort getting such little jail time for such serious crimes lays out for the world how it’s almost impossible for rich people to go to jail for the same amount of time as someone who is lower income.

In our current broken system, “justice” isn’t blind. It’s bought. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez added,

<

Ari Melber

Verified account

@AriMelber

Paul Manafort’s lenient 4-year sentence — far below the recommended 20 years despite extensive felonies and post-conviction obstruction — is a reminder of the blatant inequities in our justice system that we all know about, because they reoccur every week in courts across America

1,468 replies 5,414 retweets 19,707 likes

Reply 1.5K Retweet 5.4K Like 20K

<9


Thursday's Mini-Report, 3.7.19

Today's edition of quick hits:

By Steve Benen 03/07/19 05:30PM

* What we're waiting for: "Paul Manafort, the political consultant and Trump presidential campaign chairman whose lucrative work in Ukraine and ties to well-connected Russians made him a target of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, faces sentencing on Thursday in the financial fraud case that left his grand lifestyle and power-broker reputation in ruins."

* Cohen said he's owed $1.9 million: "Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer, filed a lawsuit Thursday in New York City against his one-time boss's real estate business over unpaid legal bills."

* This story out of San Diego warrants some additional attention: "Documents obtained by NBC 7 Investigates show the U.S. government created a secret database of activists, journalists, and social media influencers tied to the migrant caravan and in some cases, placed alerts on their passports."

* White House planning seems wise: "The White House made a quiet but notable personnel change a few weeks ago, moving a veteran staff attorney to a press office that is preparing a response to the much-anticipated final report from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — whatever it says, whenever it comes."

* So very disappointing: "The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's controversial judicial nominee on Wednesday who supported a lawsuit challenging Obamacare. In a 52-47 vote, the Senate approved Chad Readler's nomination to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine joined Democrats to vote against the nominee."

* A worthwhile line of inquiry: "The House Oversight and Reform Committee is investigating allegations of voter suppression in Georgia under Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who has since become governor."

* Remember this guy? "Charges against former Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock are set to be dropped in a stunning agreement reached Wednesday with federal prosecutors."


Federal judge: Trump admin broke law with Census gambit

By Steve Benen

03/07/19 09:20 AM—UPDATED 03/07/19 09:26 AM

The Trump administration announced about a year ago that that the 2020 Census would include a question about citizenship status, and as regular readers know, the move immediately drew swift condemnations. The criticisms were rooted in fact: the question is likely to discourage immigrants’ participation in the census, which would mean under-represented communities in the official count, affecting everything from political power to public investments.

In January, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman ruled against the administration and barred it from proceeding with its Census plan. Yesterday, as the Washington Post reported, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg went even further.

*Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted in “bad faith,” broke several laws and violated the constitutional underpinning of representative democracy when he added a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. […]

Unable to find any expert in the Census Bureau who approved of his plan to add the citizenship question, Seeborg wrote, Ross engaged in a “cynical search to find some reason, any reason” to justify the decision.*

The result was a policy intended to undercount specific parts of the population, which in turn ran afoul of the Constitution, the Administrative Procedure Act, and Census Act.

And while there are still additional steps as the matter is litigated, it’s worth re-emphasizing the apparent fact that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross played fast and loose with the truth about how the Census change was made – and he got caught.

Circling back to our earlier coverage, once the legal challenge to the Census policy got underway, the administration disclosed some pretty interesting emails. In May 2017, for example, then-White House strategist Steve Bannon asked Ross to “talk to someone about the census.” Soon after, the Commerce secretary started demanding that his team include the controversial question.

And while that’s notable in its own right, it’s especially important because Ross may have lied to Congress about the series of events. In March 2018, the Commerce secretary testified under oath to the U.S. House that it was the Justice Department that had initiated the request for the question.

In fact, when pressed specifically on whether he’d discussed the citizenship question with anyone in the Trump White House, Ross said, “I am not aware of any such.”

We now know that the cabinet secretary’s under-oath answers were, at a minimum, inaccurate. As Seeborg concluded in his ruling, the “evidence establishes” that the official explanation was little more than “a pretext.” Ross, the judge added, “acted in bad faith” with his misleading explanation.

It was several months later when Ross’ memory was jogged: he conceded in October 2018 that he had, in fact, spoken with former White House adviser Steve Bannon and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions about adding the citizenship question.

As for the road ahead, the U.S. Supreme Court will almost certainly weigh in on the controversy before Census materials are printed this summer.


North Korean officials take full advantage of what Trump gave them

By Steve Benen

03/07/19 10:40 AM

No modern American president wanted to hand North Korea a public-relations coup by rewarding the rogue dictatorship with a bilateral summit. U.S. leaders from both parties realized that Pyongyang would exploit a presidential-level meeting for all its worth.

With this in mind, it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that North Korea’s state-run television is airing propaganda, glorifying Kim Jong-un’s summit with Donald Trump in Vietnam. The Associated Press reported overnight:

*The documentary shows a smiling Kim talking with Trump while walking together inside a Hanoi hotel last week.

It shows Kim’s black limousine passing through a Hanoi street lined with residents waving flags. The footage also shows Kim visiting the North Korean Embassy where some skipped and wept with emotions before they took a group photo with the backdrop of a huge picture of Kim’s late father and grandfather.

The documentary cited Kim as saying North Korea and the U.S. must put an end to their decades-long animosity and confrontation. But it didn’t mention about the lack of an agreement following the Kim-Trump summit.*

This comes on the heels of Donald Trump’s announcement that the United State is ending joint military exercises with our South Korean allies – another concession the American president appears to have made in exchange for nothing.

Complicating matters, NBC News reported this week that North Korea is pursuing the “rapid rebuilding” of a long-range rocket site. The report added, “Sohae Satellite Launching Station, North Korea’s only operational space launch facility, has been used in the past for satellite launches. These launches use similar technology to what is used for intercontinental ballistic missiles.”

The Trump-Kim talks collapsed last Thursday. The renewed activity at the site began two days later.

So, for those keeping score, Kim Jong-un benefits from some new propaganda and the legitimacy that comes with a summit with an American president; he no longer has to contend with U.S. military exercises his country has long opposed; and there’s evidence that North Korea is pursuing the “rapid rebuilding” of a long-range rocket site.

On the other hand, there’s Donald Trump, who doesn’t appear to have anything to show for his efforts.

The American president was asked yesterday whether North Korea is breaking a promise by rebuilding a key missile launch site. “Well, we’re going to see,” he replied. “It’s too early to see…. I would be very disappointed if that were happening.”

It wouldn’t be the only disappointment for this White House.


Facing defeat, White House scrambles to protect emergency declaration

By Steve Benen

03/07/19 11:20 AM

The Democratic-led House has already approved a resolution to block Donald Trump’s emergency declaration, in which the president granted himself the authority to redirect funds to border barriers in defiance of Congress’ wishes. Next week, the Senate will take up the same measure, and a bipartisan majority is already in place to pass it, which will force Trump to issue the first veto of his presidency.

In fact, opponents of the White House’s plan only needed four Republican senators to break ranks – and those four votes are already in place. One member of the quartet, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), said this morning that the total number of GOP votes against Trump’s gambit may very well grow.

It’s an outcome the White House clearly hopes to avoid. It’s why the president tweeted on the subject yesterday …

*“Senate Republicans are not voting on constitutionality or precedent, they are voting on desperately needed Border Security & the Wall. Our Country is being invaded with Drugs, Human Traffickers, & Criminals of all shapes and sizes. That’s what this vote is all about. STAY UNITED!”*

… why Vice President Mike Pence is lobbying lawmakers on the issue …

*Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump administration officials are calling on senators to back President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration to build his southern border wall, citing an increase in illegal border crossings in recent months.

Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday criticized lawmakers from both parties who plan to support a resolution to block the president’s emergency declaration.*

.. and why White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is blaming Congress for not simply meeting Trump’s demands in the first place.

*“My message to that group is to do your job,” she said during an appearance on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.” “If you had done what you were elected to do on the front end, the president wouldn’t have to fix this problem on his own through a national emergency.”*

The broader question, however, is why Team Trump is suddenly making such a hard sell.

Looking ahead, we already know where this fight is likely to end up. The House passed its resolution, the Senate will soon do the same, and the president will veto the measure. At that point, the bill will return to Capitol Hill, where there is very little chance lawmakers will be able to override the veto and kill Trump’s policy.

So why would the White House, confident of the ultimate outcome, feel the need to fight?

Part of this dynamic is purely political. Trump assumed – and publicly predicted – that Republican lawmakers would follow his lead, and when Congress passes this resolution with bipartisan support, it will be deeply embarrassing. Polls already show the public opposing the president’s gambit, and this will only make matters worse.

Trump places a high price on partisan loyalty. Watching his ostensible GOP allies try to block his top domestic priority serves as a reminder of his failure to keep Republicans together and to make a persuasive case.

But I continue to think the legal considerations are just as important, if not more so. Once the veto-override efforts fail, it’ll be up to the courts to consider challenges to the president’s policy, and it’s very likely that judges will take note of the fact that bipartisan majorities in the Democratic-led House and Republican-led Senate both approved a resolution rejecting the president’s scheme.

At least for now, however, there doesn’t appear to be much the White House can do about it.

http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog

<

Our ballooning budget deficit reflects an unhealthy democracy


By Washington Post Editorial Boarcd
March 8 at 6:26 PM

THE FEDERAL budget deficit reached $310 billion in the first four months of fiscal 2019, which began in October. That’s a 40 percent increase over the same period a year earlier (adjusting for technicalities that distorted the previous figures). The United States is on course for a $900 billion deficit this year, just as the Congressional Budget Office forecast — and the causes are plain to see. President Trump and a Republican Congress enacted massive tax cuts in December 2017 while imposing essentially zero restraint on federal spending. Barring policy change, the CBO projects deficits will begin exceeding $1 trillion per year in 2022 and will average 4.4 percent of national output for a decade thereafter, in contrast to an average of 2.9 percent over the past half-century .

Not to worry, the Trump administration responds. “Growth solves the problem,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said, true to supply-side doctrine that holds that tax cuts pay for themselves by stimulating more output. In this respect, Mr. Kudlow is being bipartisan, sort of. Insouciance about deficits is in fashion among Democrats, too, including some who have embraced a dubious new concept known as “modern monetary theory,” a sort of left-wing analog to supply-side that holds, essentially, that the United States can engage in unlimited deficit spending financed by the Federal Reserve. With both political parties sending such blasé messages, and no signs — yet — of harm to the broader economy, it’s little wonder that only 48 percent of the public considers deficit reduction “a top priority,” according to a Pew Research Center poll taken in January.

For our part, we don’t think the deficit per se is likely to cause short-term economic harm, or that there’s a case for immediately adopting a zero-deficit budget. And we don’t know anyone who does think those things — notwithstanding the pummeling that straw man sometimes takes from the deficit doves. What we do believe is that fiscal prudence counsels against accelerated debt accumulation during a time of full employment, as opposed to trimming deficits and preserving fiscal space to deal with the next recession — among other priorities, foreseeable and otherwise, with which the country will be faced. We agree with CBO Director Keith Hall, who examined the latest numbers and remarked that “it’s hard to imagine this is sustainable ,” and with Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell, who told members of Congress at a Feb. 27 hearing that “the idea that deficits don’t matter for countries that can borrow in their own currency . . . is just wrong.”

In a healthy democracy, the budgeting process reflects a reasonable balance between the resources available and policy priorities, both present and future. Leaders persuade voters to accept trade-offs in the public interest. In an unhealthy democracy, leaders pretend that resources are unlimited and compete for voter favor by promising the moon. They engage in magical thinking. They opportunistically abandon their party’s supposed fiscal principles, as the Republicans have done under Mr. Trump. Judged by these criteria, alas, democracy in the United States is not healthy.

<1



POLITICS

Ex-Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort’s light sentence in Mueller case could soon become much longer

KEY POINTS

Paul Manafort’s first sentence in his legal battle with special counsel Robert Mueller shocked experts and energized President Donald Trump’s supporters.

The longtime Republican operative was given a 47-month prison sentence Thursday night — well below the federal guidelines range of between 19 and 24 years.

But Manafort could face a tougher critic in his final sentencing next week when he is sentenced by Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington federal court, in a related case.

Kevin Breuninger

PUBLISHED FRI, MAR 8 2019 • 3:25 PM EST | UPDATED 4 HOURS AGO

KEY POINTS

Paul Manafort’s first sentence in his legal battle with special counsel Robert Mueller shocked experts and energized President Donald Trump’s supporters.

The longtime Republican operative was given a 47-month prison sentence Thursday night — well below the federal guidelines range of between 19 and 24 years.

But Manafort could face a tougher critic in his final sentencing next week when he is sentenced by Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington federal court, in a related case.

Paul Manafort’s surprisingly light first sentence in his legal battle with special counsel Robert Mueller shocked experts and energized President Donald Trump’s supporters.

But Manafort, who ran Trump’s presidential campaign for several months in 2016, could face a less-lenient judge in his final sentencing next week.

The 69-year-old longtime Republican operative was given a 47-month prison sentence Thursday night, after being convicted in Virginia federal court on eight criminal counts including tax and bank fraud.

That was much shorter than the 19-to-24 years in prison recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.

Manafort was also slapped with a $50,000 fine. That was the bare minimum recommended by federal guidelines, which had suggested a fine of up to $24 million.

The sentence was immediately viewed as a crushing loss for Mueller’s prosecutors.

While Judge T.S. Ellis had been widely expected to hand down a sentence below what the guidelines suggested, few had predicted he would give Manafort such a light prison term.

Mueller’s team clearly wanted a more severe punishment.

They had blasted Manafort in recent court filings as an unrepentant felon and liar who gave no indication that he would avoid committing crimes in the future. And while they did not recommend a specific sentence, they did not dispute the hefty prison term suggested by the guidelines.

Charges against Manafort

Most of the charges against Manafort related to income earned from his work as a political consultant for Ukraine’s Russia-backed former president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Manafort was accused by Mueller of defrauding the U.S. and its financial institutions after Yanukovich lost power in Ukraine, which dried up Manafort’s consulting operation there.

Mueller’s team accused Manafort of hiding millions of dollar in income from the U.S. government in overseas accounts, and lying to banks to secure millions of dollars in loans. Much of that money, prosecutors argued, was used to maintain Manafort’s opulent lifestyle.

Despite that long-term misconduct, Ellis said before delivering his sentence that Manafort has “lived an otherwise blameless life.”

Manafort has “been a good friend to others, a generous person,” Ellis added.

While many legal experts were surprised by the leniency in Virginia, they predict that he will be slapped with a harsher sentence next Wednesday, when he appears in Washington, D.C., federal court before Judge Amy Berman Jackson.

After being convicted at trial in Virginia last August, Manafort struck a plea deal with prosecutors on the eve of his second trial in D.C., which would have dealt with crimes related to the Virginia case, as well as to witness tampering.

But that cooperation agreement imploded several months later, when Mueller’s team accused Manafort of breaking the deal by lying to investigators.

A tougher audience

Because of statutory maximum rules, Jackson cannot give Manafort a prison sentence in the Washington case greater than 10 years.

Legal observers say Jackson is likely to apply the harshest sentence possible.

Jackson, who is also presiding over Mueller’s case against political dirty trickster Roger Stone, has been viewed by many as a tougher audience for Manafort’s defense team than Ellis.

That was made clear in June when Jackson ordered Manafort to jail pending trial after Mueller accused him of tampering with potential witnesses in his case.

Jackson “has a different perspective and judicial temperament” than Ellis, defense attorney and former federal prosecutor David Weinstein told CNBC.

Manafort has been held in an Alexandria, Virginia, jail for about nine months. He will get credit for that time against his 47-month sentence from Ellis and whatever Jackson gives him.

Weinstein said he expects Jackson to make Manafort’s sentence in the Washington case consecutive, rather than concurrent, to what he received for the Virginia case.

Despite that expectation, Weinstein said Mueller’s team “needs to use what happened” during the sentencing phase of the Virginia case “to strengthen their arguments” before Jackson.

Weinstein said he was “shocked” by Manafort’s low sentence, calling it “a tremendous defeat for the special counsel’s office.”

Even before sentencing, Ellis had drawn scrutiny from legal experts for his dismissive attitude toward Mueller’s prosecutors during the trial last summer.

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor and Trump critic, noted that Ellis previously accused the special counsel of lodging tax and finance charges against Manafort merely as a fishing expedition to get more information for Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” Ellis fumed to prosecutors last May.

And Ellis’ justification for handing Manafort a relatively light sentence immediately sparked a backlash from Tribe and others.

Tribe said that Ellis “has inexcusably perverted justice and the guidelines.”

Former U.S. attorney Harry Litman called Ellis’ sentence “a totally crazy and exorbitant departure” and “a black eye for the justice system” in a tweet.

*Harry Litman

@harrylitman

Even for this judge— who is known as an arbitrary and capricious sentenced and prone to downward departures in white collar cases— this is a totally crazy and exorbitant departure. Aberrations like this are what led to Guidelines in first place.A black eye for the justice system.*

Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a presidential candidate, called out Ellis in a tweet, saying that Manafort “led far from a ‘blameless life.’”

*Amy Klobuchar

@amyklobuchar

My view on Manafort sentence: Guidelines there for a reason. His crimes took place over years and he led far from a “blameless life.” Crimes committed in an office building should be treated as seriously as crimes committed on a street corner. Can’t have two systems of justice!*

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, echoed that take in her own tweet, which pointed out a disparity between how white-collar offenders are sometimes treated compared to perpetrators of blue-collar crimes.

“The words above the Supreme Court say “Equal Justice Under Law”—when will we start acting like it?” Warren tweeted.

*Elizabeth Warren

@ewarren

Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, commits bank and tax fraud and gets 47 months. A homeless man, Fate Winslow, helped sell $20 of pot and got life in prison. The words above the Supreme Court say "Equal Justice Under Law"—when will we start acting like it?*

In his own tweet Friday morning, the president claimed incorrectly that “both the Judge and the lawyer in the Paul Manafort case stated loudly and for the world to hear that there was NO COLLUSION with Russia.”

*Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Both the Judge and the lawyer in the Paul Manafort case stated loudly and for the world to hear that there was NO COLLUSION with Russia. But the Witch Hunt Hoax continues as you now add these statements to House & Senate Intelligence & Senator Burr. So bad for our Country!*

Ellis actually had said that Manafort’s crimes in that case were unrelated to the question of collusion with Russia. But the judge did not say that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Trump, talking to reporters at the White House on Friday, said, “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort.”

“I think it’s been a very, very tough time for him,” the president added.

[ WATCH THIS SPACE ! WILL JUDGE AMY BERMAN JACKSON GO THE MAXIMUM ROUTE - 10 YEARS

WILL MANAFORT'S LAWYER'S GET THEIR WAY AGAIN BY GOING CONCURRENT ON SENTENCING OR

WILL JACKSON RULE CONSECUTIVE SENTENCING ]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/paul-ma ... chief.html

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House Democrats just passed a slate of significant reforms to get money out of politics

Democrats passed their sweeping anti-corruption bill known as HR 1. It’s already doomed in the Senate.

By Ella Nilsenella.nilsen@vox.com Mar 8, 2019, 11:25am EST

House Democrats officially passed their massive anti-corruption and pro-democracy reform bill known as HR 1 on Friday. The bill passed on a final vote of 234 to 193.

The sweeping bill is aimed at getting money out of politics and increasing transparency around donors, cracking down on lobbying, and expanding voting rights for Americans by implementing provisions like automatic voter registration.

As they passed the bill that was their first priority of the year, Democrats were in a celebratory mood.

“HR 1 restores the people’s faith that government works for the public interest, the people’s interest, not the special interest,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “It is fundamental to our democracy that people believe that actions taken here will be in their interest. That is what this legislation will help to restore.”

But the bill is already dead on arrival in the Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed he won’t bring it up.

“This is a terrible proposal; it will not get any floor time in the Senate,” McConnell told reporters on Wednesday. He said he instead wants to focus on banning the practice of “ballot harvesting,” where volunteers collect filled-out ballots and drop them off at polling places to be counted. McConnell referred to the state of California — where ballot harvesting is legal — suggesting the practice could be why House Republicans lost so badly in the state during the 2018 midterms.

Democrats were under no illusion that HR 1 would get a welcome reception from Senate Republicans or President Donald Trump, but they hope the message they are sending is one the public buys — that money and corruption in politics should be eradicated.

“It is a fight we will not end until we win it,” Pelosi said, adding, “we can save a lot of time by the Senate just agreeing to a vote.”

There’s some evidence to back this up. Recent polling from the PAC End Citizens United found that 82 percent of all voters and 84 percent of independents said they support a bill of reforms to tackle corruption.

HR 1 is Democrats’ attempt to deliver on that promise.

Here’s what’s in the final bill that Democrats passed

HR 1 covers three main planks: campaign finance reform, strengthening the government’s ethics laws, and expanding voting rights. Here’s the important part of each section, briefly explained.

Campaign finance

Establishing public financing of campaigns, powered by small donations. Under the vision of the bill’s main sponsor, Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD), the federal government would provide a voluntary 6-1 match for candidates for president and Congress, which means for every dollar a candidate raises from small donations, the federal government would match it six times over. The maximum small donation that could be matched would be capped at $200. The most substantial change to HR 1 is this program now won’t be funded by taxpayer dollars as originally planned; instead, it will come from adding a 2.75 percent fee on criminal and civil fines, fees, penalties, or settlements with banks and corporations that commit corporate malfeasance (think Wells Fargo). Democrats are using this idea to push back on Republican attacks that taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing campaigns.

“You’re saying look, these big industries that lean on our democracy and are also breaking the law — it’s very appropriate to take a tiny little piece, put it into a fund and say, ‘That’s how we’ll give more power back to everyday Americans,’” Sarbanes told Vox. “We’ve got some big corporations out there who are probably going to keep getting in trouble and having to settle cases, so I think it will be an ongoing and sustainable source.”

Supporting a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United.

Passing the DISCLOSE Act, pushed by Rep. David Cicilline and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, both Democrats from Rhode Island. This would require Super PACs and “dark money” political organizations to make their donors public.

Passing the Honest Ads Act, championed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (MN) and Mark Warner (VA) and introduced by Rep. Derek Kilmer (WA) in the House, which would require Facebook and Twitter to disclose the source of money for political ads on their platforms and share how much money was spent.

Disclosing any political spending by government contractors and slowing the flow of foreign money into the elections by targeting shell companies.

Restructuring the Federal Election Commission to have five commissioners instead of six, in order to break political gridlock at the organization.

Prohibiting any coordination between candidates and Super PACs.

Ethics

Requiring the president and vice president to disclose 10 years of his or her tax returns. Candidates for president and vice president must also do the same.

Stopping members of Congress from using taxpayer money to settle sexual harassment or discrimination cases.

Giving the Office of Government Ethics the power to do more oversight and enforcement and implement stricter lobbying registration requirements. These include more oversight of foreign agents by the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Creating a new ethical code for the US Supreme Court, ensuring all branches of government are impacted by the new law.

Voting rights

Creating new national automatic voter registration that asks voters to opt out rather than opt in, ensuring more people will be signed up to vote. Early voting, same-day voter registration, and online voter registration would also be promoted.

Making Election Day a holiday for federal employees and encouraging private sector businesses to do the same, requiring poll workers to provide a week’s notice if poll sites are changed, and making colleges and universities voter registration agencies (in addition to the DMV, etc.), among other updates.

Ending partisan gerrymandering in federal elections and prohibiting voter roll purging. The bill would stop the use of non-forwardable mail being used as a way to remove voters from rolls.

Beefing up election security, including requiring the director of national intelligence to do regular checks on foreign threats.
Recruiting and training more poll workers ahead of the 2020 election to cut down on long lines at the polls.

Republicans are already trashing the bill

The Trump administration and Senate Republicans had made their opposition to HR 1 known well before it was passed.

McConnell has attacked the bill in op-eds and floor speeches, and the Trump administration issued an intent to veto the bill on Tuesday.

The White House’s statement characterized HR 1 as federal overreach that would “micromanage elections” and “chill free speech.” As for the bill’s ethical reforms, the Trump administration (itself plagued by numerous ethics scandals and a revolving door of White House officials) said the bill had a number of “well-intentioned but misguided ethics reforms for Government officials.”

Democrats, in turn, have expressed incredulity at Republicans’ arguments, saying the majority leader openly embracing making it harder for people to vote isn’t likely to win his party elections in 2020, especially given the strong backlash toward Trump and Republicans in 2018.

The reason the bill is so comprehensive is that Sarbanes, Pelosi, and other top Democrats know that America’s elections issues go far beyond Trump, and they want to demonstrate they are committed to doing something about it that goes beyond talk.

Sarbanes expressed to Vox a need for Democrats to “walk the walk, and we’ve got to walk it quick. To say to the public, from this point forward, if you give the gavel to lawmakers who are interested in being accountable to you, this is the kind of change you can expect to see. If you like this, give us a gavel in the Senate and give us a pen in the White House.”

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/8/18253609/h ... -mcconnell

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THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

Rep. Steny Hoyer The House's 'For the People Act' proves Democrats are delivering on our midterm promises

This landmark legislation will restore public trust in Congress and the federal government in several critical ways.

March 8, 2019, 9:08 AM CST

By Rep. Steny Hoyer, House Majority Leader

Elections have consequences. Last September, I delivered a speech outlining House Democrats’ plans to make government work for the people again by making our institutions more ethical, transparent and accountable. Democrats won the House, in part, on that pledge, and on the very first day of our new majority Democrats began implementing reforms to House rules to honor it. Today, we take the next major step in the process when we bring to the House floor landmark legislation that we think will renew Americans’ faith in government.

Our legislation, the For the People Act, numbered H.R. 1 and introduced by Maryland’s Rep. John Sarbanes, will restore public trust in Congress and the federal government in several critical ways. From redistricting reforms to campaign finance reforms, from strengthening Americans’ access to the ballot box, to higher ethical standards for our nation’s leaders, the For the People Act will protect our democracy and put power back in the hands of the American people.

First, H.R. 1 protects the integrity of our elections by strengthening voting rights protections. These include automatic voter registration, an expansion of early voting and ending the process of partisan redistricting nationwide. I have always said that real redistricting reform must be national to be effective; H.R. 1 achieves this goal. The act would also restore the vote to formerly incarcerated people who have paid their debts to society and deserve to have their voices heard in our democracy once again.

Next, our legislation seeks to reduce the corrupting influence of dark money in our elections by requiring the disclosure of all Super PAC donors. After the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United v. FEC ruling in 2010, vast sums of undisclosed money flooded our politics, crowding out the voices of individual voters and communities. Democrats are determined to put an end to this practice, as well as place reasonable limits on campaign contributions and ensure complete transparency.

Additionally, our legislation imposes new, higher standards of ethics for those running for the highest offices in our land. Under H.R. 1, presidents and vice presidents would be required to disclose their tax returns for the past 10 years. This would include President Donald Trump, who has still refused to release his tax forms notwithstanding the fact that nearly every president since Ronald Reagan has done so, as well as Vice President Mike Pence. Further, presidential inaugural committees would need to reveal their expenditures in order to ensure no one improperly influences an administration. Accountability begins at the top.

Democrats are united in our effort to root out corruption and pass laws that make sure our government acts in the best interests of the American people — not entrenched special interests. While H.R. 1 is a major step forward in achieving both of these goals, it is not the first step. In January, Democrats instituted reforms to House rules that will increase transparency, strengthen ethics standards, promote bipartisanship and encourage diversity among members and staff. Democrats ran on a platform of opening up government and making it a tool for justice, opportunity and economic security. Now in office, we are working hard to deliver results.

As we move H.R. 1 to the House Floor, I am confident it will pass. Once that occurs, however, all eyes will be on the Senate. I hope that senators, Republicans and Democrats, will give this legislation the consideration it deserves.

The House is trying to look past partisanship and politics and embrace major reforms that benefit not one party but our country and our democratic system. Together, we want to renew Americans’ faith that our democracy is indeed a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” and can be a force for progress that benefits all of our people and helps them get ahead.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/h ... ncna980806

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House Passes the Most Significant Democracy Reform Bill in a Generation

The Democratic measure would expand voting rights and crack down on gerrymandering and dark money.

ARI BERMAN MARCH 8, 2019 11:24 AM

The House of Representatives on Friday passed the most significant democracy reform bill introduced in Congress since the Watergate era by a vote of 234 to 193. The sweeping bill, known as HR 1: the For the People Act, would massively expand voting rights, crack down on gerrymandering, reduce the influence of big money in politics, and require sitting presidents and presidential candidates to release 10 years of tax returns.

“It’s one of the most comprehensive packages of democracy reform we’ve seen in a generation,” Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), the chief sponsor of the bill, told Mother Jones.

Every House Democrat present voted for the bill and every House Republican voted no. It passed a day after the 54th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama, which helped spur passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But its prospects are far dimmer in the Republican-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has declared his opposition to the bill, calling it “the Democrat Politician Protection Act.” The Trump administration has also stated its opposition.

The 622-page bill, the first introduced by House Democrats in early January, would establish nationwide automatic voter registration, Election Day registration, and two weeks of early voting in every state. It would curb gerrymandering by requiring independent commissions, instead of partisan state legislatures, to draw congressional maps. To reduce the influence of megadonors on elections, it would create a small-donor matching system to publicly finance congressional campaigns and require dark-money groups to disclose their donors. Finally, it would enact new ethics reforms, among them requiring the president and vice president, along with future candidates for those offices, to release 10 years of personal and business tax returns.

While these ideas have been introduced in different pieces of legislation, HR 1 is the first bill to combine a broad array of reforms aimed at expanding access to—and fairness in—elections. “The public wants to see reform in all of these areas,” says Sarbanes. “It’s not enough if you enhance their opportunities at the ballot box, but they feel like the people they elect get to Washington and don’t behave or get captured by big money. And it’s not enough to fix the influence that money has if it’s still too hard to vote.”

McConnell has expressed his fervent opposition to even relatively uncontroversial sections of the bill, such as making Election Day a federal holiday in order to give people more time to vote. McConnell called this a “power grab” for Democrats, a striking admission that Republicans do better when fewer people vote.

Even though the bill will not pass the Senate anytime soon, Sarbanes thinks Democratic support for it will only increase if McConnell becomes the face of opposition to it. He said House Democrats will now “take HR 1 on tour,” using it to build public support for a democratic reform agenda and lay the groundwork for its passage when there’s a Senate and president more amenable to it, possibly after 2020.

For now, it’s telling that House Democrats made HR 1 the first bill they introduced and one of the first they passed. It shows how once-marginalized “good government” issues have become a top priority for Democrats.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... eneration/

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CONGRESS

McConnell won't allow vote on election reform bill

By MARIANNE LEVINE 03/06/2019 04:42 PM EST Updated 03/06/2019 06:19 PM EST

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn’t shied away from publicly criticizing House Democrats’ electoral reform bill and "Green New Deal." But he’ll allow only the Green New Deal to get a Senate vote on the floor.

Republicans ripped into the House Democrats’ electoral reform bill at a news conference Wednesday, arguing that the legislation is merely a tactic to tilt elections in favor of Democrats. McConnell, who has dubbed the bill the “Democrat Politician Protection Act,” said that the bill is “offensive to average voters” and will not get any floor time in the Senate.

When asked at a news conference why he wasn’t bringing the House electoral reform bill to the Senate floor, McConnell said, with a grin, "Because I get to decide what we vote on.”

“What is the problem we’re trying to solve here?” McConnell asked. “People are flooding to the polls.”

McConnell in February, however, said he’ll bring a vote on the Green New Deal, the resolution led by freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), to challenge Democrats on the measure that Republicans say is far to the left of most Americans.

The bill is slated to pass the Democratically controlled House this week, fulfilling campaign promises many members made in the most recent election cycle to overhaul elections.

The legislation contains a series of voting reforms Democrats have long pushed for, including automatic voter registration, expansion of early voting, endorsement of D.C. statehood and a requirement that independent commissions oversee House redistricting. In addition, the bill requires “dark money” groups to disclose donors.

Democrats argue that the bill would make it easier to vote and crack down on money in politics.

But Republicans said the bill would amount to federal overreach when it comes to elections.

“If the federal government begins to give lots of direction, is the federal government going to give lots of money?” Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri said. “If the federal government give lots of money, the federal government always gives lots of control.”

House Republicans also blasted their Democratic colleagues for rushing the bill through. Rodney Davis of Illinois, the top Republican of the House Administration Committee, said the bill falls under the purview of several committees and that it did not undergo enough review before heading to the floor.

“This bill is being pushed on us,” he said. “What this bill is, is a Democrat push to elect more Democrats.”

Five House committees held hearings on the bill — Judiciary, Homeland Security, Ways and Means, Oversight and Reform, and House Administration — prior to the bill moving to the floor through regular order.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/ ... ll-1207702

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Scoop: White House leak to House Dems on Jared and Ivanka's clearances

Alexi McCammond16 hours ago 3.8.19

From a White House source, the House Oversight Committee has obtained documents related to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's security clearances that the Trump administration refused to provide, according to a senior Democratic aide involved in handling the documents.

Why it matters: The Trump administration's problems with leaks will now benefit Congress, making it harder for the White House to withhold information from Democratic investigators.

The news: The White House this week rejected the committee's request for documents on the process for granting security clearances to staffers.

The twist: But the House Oversight Committee in early February had already obtained the leaked documents that detail the entire process, from the spring of 2017 to the spring of 2018, on how both Kushner and Trump were ultimately granted their security clearances.

The senior Democratic aide who was involved in handling the documents told Axios that two staffers on the Oversight Committee said the documents are "part of the puzzle that we would be asking for" from the White House, "so we appreciate having this upfront."
The House Oversight Committee, via deputy communications director Aryele Bradford, declined to comment.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The documents leaked to the Oversight Committee provide detailed information on the timeline for how Kushner's and Trump's security clearances were approved and who the people were involved in processing and the final decision.

One document, obtained by Axios, provides some details about why Kushner's security clearance was changed to "interim" in September 2017: "Per conversation with WH counsel the clearance was changed to interim Top Secret until we can confirm that the DOJ or someone else actually granted a final clearance. This action was taken out of an abundance of caution because the background investigation has not been completed."

Feb. 23, 2018: "Clearance downgraded to Interim Secret per COS direction" — then-chief of staff John Kelly.

https://www.axios.com/jared-kushner-iva ... d5305.html

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U.S.

NANCY PELOSI SAYS IT'S FAIR GAME TO GO AFTER IVANKA TRUMP, JARED KUSHNER: 'THEY ARE ADVISERS TO THE PRESIDENT... NOT THEIR CHILDREN AT HOME'

BY JESSICA KWONG ON 3/8/19 AT 10:37 AM

While congressional Democrats are divided on how hard to investigate President Donald Trump’s family members—particularly his daughter and senior White House adviser, Ivanka Trump—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said they were fair game for scrutiny.

“Whover falls into that net, falls into that net,” Pelosi told The Washington Post on Thursday. “They are advisers to the president. They have security clearances. This is not their children at home.”

Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have served in the West Wing since Donald Trump took office. Ivanka Trump has been working on issues such as workforce development and paid family leave, while Kushner has been tackling Middle East peace and the U.S. criminal justice reform.

Their top-secret security clearances were controversial. CNN reported that the president pressured then-chief of staff John Kelly and White House counsel Don McGahn to approve a security clearance for Ivanka Trump. And the Post reported that Ivanka then nudged her father to give Kushner security clearance despite career intelligence officials’ concerns that he could be influenced by his foreign contacts.

Two House Democratic committee chairmen shared Pelosi’s view on the matter.

“Jared Kushner and Ivanka don’t receive any immunity from public or congressional investigation because they’re related to the president,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a member of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Reform Committees investigating Trump, told the Post. “A family member who accepts official governmental responsibilities or participates in illegal activity has no special immunity from investigation.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, said, "They have to be as accountable as everybody else. We’ve got to do our job… We are not crossing any lines.”

But other Democratic leaders hesitated to target Trump’s children.

Representative Gerald Connolly of Virginia, who sits on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, told the news outlet it would be “too high-profile” and “very dicey business.”

Representative Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, also on the Oversight and Reform Committee, said that going after the president’s children should be the “last resort” but that lawmakers should get them to testify publicly if there is no other way to question them. “They’re part of the operation, so they’re integral. I think there’s just a sense of decency that you don’t do that unless you really have to. We’re not out there to cause family problems,” Lynch told the Post. “But in this case, like I said, there is no exemption for anyone. If we have to get the information, we have to get it.”

https://www.newsweek.com/nancy-pelosi-s ... re-1356611

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WORLD

CHINA LAUGHS AS U.S. TRIES TO STOP ITALY FROM JOINING ONE BELT, ONE ROAD PLAN

BY TOM O'CONNOR ON 3/8/19 AT 11:55 AM

China dismissed U.S. attempts to discourage Italy from joining a growing number of nations looking to do business with Beijing as part of the global One Belt, One Road initiative.

Chinese President Xi Jinping devised the campaign as a way to expand the country's international economic footprint, investing in infrastructure, resources and construction around the world. In what may be the latest venture, Italy was reportedly considering signing a memorandum of understanding to become a part of the One Belt, One Road. The U.S., however, viewed the project as a threat to its own portfolio and attempted to dissuade countries from accepting China's money.

"This position taken by the U.S. side is laughable," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang told a press briefing Friday, as translated by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. "As a major country, Italy knows exactly what policies serve its own interests and it can make its decisions independently."

The remarks came after a slew of statements from Washington warning Rome that deals with Beijing were too good to be true and would come at a much higher price than anticipated. Financial Times cited White House National Security Council spokesperson Garret Marquis as calling the One Belt, One Road initiative a "made by China, for China" plan Tuesday, and said the U.S. was "skeptical that the Italian government’s endorsement will bring any sustained economic benefits to the Italian people."

The outlet also cited Italian Ministry of Economic Development Undersecretary of State Michele Geraci as having said, "The negotiation is not over yet, but it is possible that it will be concluded in time for [Xi’s] visit" later this month. He added: "We want to make sure that 'Made in Italy' products can have more success in terms of export volume to China, which is the fastest-growing market in the world."

The following day, Geraci told The New York Times that, though officials were still not "100 percent sure" of the decision, "there is a likely, good probability" of it going through. He noted Italy's proximity to Africa, a foreign policy priority for China and the venue for billions of dollars’ worth of projects being undertaken as part of the One Belt, One Road plan. Geraci told the newspaper that Italy was "more able than others to spot any risks" associated with such trade, and was "in no way tilting the geopolitical axis."

The U.S., however, felt otherwise. After a tumultuous year for ties between President Donald Trump and Xi, whose nations launched a trade war that cost both nations billions, Washington has remained suspicious of Beijing's intentions. On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed other governments shared the U.S. point of view as Chinese companies "show up with products that aren’t world-class, with Chinese labor and an enormous debt package which is almost certainly designed for foreclosure."

"I think too America sat still for too long," he added, speaking to the Iowa Farm Bureau. "We didn’t respond to this economic activity, and we’re determined to do it. And so you’re now seeing American businesses, American diplomats showing up in these conversations, making sure that there’s a fact-based discussion about what’s really taking place and how it is the case that there are better alternatives than doing some of these deals with China."

While Italy would be the first G7 nation to join the One Belt, One Road framework, other European Union countries, such as Greece and Portugal, have already signed on to some of the Chinese initiative's project, as have Serbia and other prospective E.U. states in the region, as Deutsche Welles reported Friday. Still, Germany and the E.U. have cautioned against potential Chinese intervention on the continent's internal affairs.

China has remained vigilant, however, in building bridges abroad—both literally and diplomatically. In October, Beijing and Rome formed a joint working group and the two countries came together again in January for the ninth Italy-China Government Committee, during which Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Italian counterpart, "China and Italy have respectively become the birthplaces of Eastern and Western civilizations" and "have had a tradition of friendly exchanges," according to a readout published by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

"Italy is a natural partner in building the One Belt, One Road," the readout continued. "China welcomes Italy to actively participate in the ‘Belt and Road’ cooperation to benefit the two peoples and jointly promote the interconnection and common development of the Asia-Europe continent."

https://www.newsweek.com/china-laugh-us ... an-1356676

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Diplomacy

China tells US to mind its own business after Italy is warned not to join Belt and Road Initiative

Foreign ministry in Beijing says US stance is ‘laughable’ after White House warned Italy’s image would suffer abroad if it signed up for the programme

Zhenhua Lu

Published: 11:02pm, 6 Mar, 2019


China’s Foreign Ministry told Washington to mind its own business on Wednesday after US officials warned Italy that its international image would suffer if it signed up for the Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious intercontinental infrastructure programme.

Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a press briefing in Beijing that Rome does not need Washington’s advice on conducting its affairs.

“This position taken by the US side is laughable,” Lu said. “As a major country, Italy knows exactly what policies serve its own interests and it can make its decisions independently.”

Lu was responding to a report by the Financial Times that Italy planned to sign a memorandum of understanding on joining the Belt and Road Initiative when President Xi Jinping visits the country later this month.

Michele Geraci, the undersecretary in the Italian economic development ministry, told the newspaper: “The negotiation is not over yet, but it is possible that it will be concluded in time for [Xi Jinping’s] visit.”

But White House National Security Council spokesperson, Garrett Marquis, told the FT that the Belt and Road Initiative was unlikely to help Italy economically and could significantly damage the country’s international image.

Xi is expected to visit Italy on March 22 and 23. If Italy signs the memorandum, it will be the first of the seven leading industrialised nations, or Group of Seven, to sign up officially.

On Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went further in criticising the initiative, saying projects under the scheme were “almost certainly designed for foreclosure”.


He told a meeting of Iowa farmers affected by the trade war with China that the projects in the trillion-dollar infrastructure plan “aren’t world-class” and came with an “enormous debt package”.

The initiative has faced increasing scrutiny worldwide amid fears that many participants are running up unsustainable debts to fund infrastructure work.

Asked by a member of the audience if the Belt and Road Initiative could remove European and Asian countries from the US sphere of influence, Pompeo said “these deals are, in fact, often too good to be true, and many countries have already begun to see that”.

Pompeo also accused China of stealing sensitive technology “essential to farming”, citing two cases involving genetically modified rice and corn seeds.

He said a farmer had told him “they’re stealing the research that farmers pay [for] each time they buy a Monsanto seed”, referring to a major US producer of GM crops.

The Belt and Road Initiative, first proposed by Xi in 2013, is a vast China-centred strategy to increase global trade with more than US$1 trillion in investment.

But the US and other countries have been increasingly critical and last year, US Vice-President Mike Pence, in a wide-ranging criticism of Beijing, accused China of using the belt and road to engage in “debt diplomacy”
.
Other critics have complained about a lack of transparency and sustainability in some of the initiative’s projects – including major ports and high-speed railway networks.

There are also concerns that Chinese companies are the belt and road’s sole beneficiaries.

But supporters have argued that the plan will help meet emerging markets’ needs and will boost regional cooperation and globalised trade.

On Wednesday, Lu said the initiative had been welcomed by more than 150 countries and that the US should stop slinging mud at it.

Beijing will hold its second belt and road forum in April, with dozens of world leaders invited, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has criticised the cost of some projects.

The first forum was held in May 2017, with 29 national leaders taking part from countries such as Greece, Pakistan and Russia.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diploma ... warned-not

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Chelsea Manning: Wikileaks source jailed for refusing to testify

3.8.19 7 hours ago

Former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning has been jailed for refusing to testify before an investigation into Wikileaks.

A Virginia judge ordered her taken into custody until the grand jury's work is finished or she decides to testify.

Manning said she shared everything she knows during her court-martial.

Manning was found guilty in 2013 of charges including espionage for leaking secret military files to Wikileaks, but her sentence was commuted.

Manning, 31, told US District Judge Claude Hilton that she would "accept whatever you bring upon me", but would not testify, the Associated Press reported.

Her lawyers had reportedly asked that she be confined at home due to medical issues, but the judge said US Marshals would address her care needs.

US prosecutors have been investigating Wikileaks for years, and in November prosecutors inadvertently revealed possible charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in court documents from a separate case.

On Friday, Manning said in a statement: "I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury."

"Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system."

Skip Twitter post by @xychelseaEnd of Twitter post by @xychelsea
Prosecutor Tracy McCormick said Manning could be freed if she changes her mind and decides to follow the law and testify, according to the Associated Press.

Chelsea Resists!, a group supporting Manning and seeking to raise money for her legal fees, said grand juries were "mired in secrecy, and have historically been used to silence and retaliate against political activists".

"Chelsea gave voluminous testimony during her court martial. She has stood by the truth of her prior statements, and there is no legitimate purpose to having her rehash them before a hostile grand jury."

Manning was arrested in Iraq in 2010 for disclosing more than 700,000 confidential documents, videos and diplomatic cables to the anti-secrecy website.

While Manning said she only did so to spark debates about foreign policy, US officials said the leak put lives at risk.

She was sentenced to 35 years after being found guilty of 20 charges related to the leak, but only served seven before former President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.

Her sentence was the longest given for a leak in US history. Mr Obama said it was "disproportionate" to her crimes.

Republicans criticised the Democratic president's decision at the time.

Then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan said Mr Obama had set "a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won't be held accountable", the New York Times reported.

President Donald Trump has called Manning an "ungrateful traitor" who "should never have been released from prison".



Friday's Mini-Report, 3.8.19

Today's edition of quick hits:

By Steve Benen 03/08/19 05:30PM

* This is a good bill, which literally every Democrat voted for, and literally every Republican voted against: "The House passed the Democrats’ showcase anti-corruption and voting rights legislation on Friday, an expansive measure that aims to dismantle barriers to the ballot box, end big money in politics and impose stricter ethics rules on federal officials."

* I guess Wilson won't be the new Defense secretary: "Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson announced her resignation on Friday. Wilson said will be leaving in May to become president of the University of Texas at El Paso."

* This is an odd situation driven by Manning's rejection of the grand-jury process: "Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning was jailed on Friday after refusing to answer questions from a federal grand jury in Virginia looking into the release of documents to WikiLeaks."

* A question in need of an answer: "The Department of Homeland Security and the House Homeland Security Committee are investigating whether U.S. border agents have been targeting journalists for questioning, according to a statement from Customs and Border Protection and a letter to CBP from the chair of the committee."

* Setting the stage for the next big legal fights: "The Tennessee House of Representatives passed a controversial bill Thursday that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, legislation that could become among the most restrictive in the nation."

* A "summary" probably won't suffice: "The House Judiciary Committee's top Republican said he expects Congress and the public may get only a short summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's findings from his Russia investigation."


Trump finds a new way to falsely claim exoneration in Russia scandal

By Steve Benen

03/08/19 11:20 AM—UPDATED 03/08/19 12:55 PM

If Donald Trump is an innocent in the Russia scandal as he claims, it’s odd that he keeps lying about the ways in which he’s been exonerated.

On Twitter this morning, for example, the president wrote that the judge in the Paul Manafort trial “stated loudly and for the world to hear that there was NO COLLUSION with Russia.” Soon after, during a brief Q&A on the White House’s South Lawn, Trump repeated the claim, insisting that the “judge said there was no collusion with Russia.”

That’s plainly false.

*Before announcing Manafort’s sentence Thursday, Judge T.S. Ellis reminded the court that the longtime political operative’s crimes were not related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s chief mandate – Russian election interference and whether Trump campaign officials colluded with the Kremlin.*

In Trump’s mind, there’s no difference between a judge saying, “This case is unrelated to Russian collusion,” and, “This case proves there was no Russian collusion.”

It’s as if the president hears a sentence and then mentally edits it, adding and subtracting words, so that the comments reinforce what he wants to believe.

And while that’s unsettling, what makes it significantly worse is that it keeps happening.

In March 2018, Trump claimed that the House Intelligence Committee had completely exonerated him in the Russia scandal. That wasn’t true.

In June 2018, Trump said the Justice Department inspector general’s office had “totally” exonerated him in the Russia scandal. That was both wrong and kind of bonkers.

In February 2019, Trump claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee had also exonerated him in the Russia scandal. That also wasn’t true.

Also in February 2019, after Michael Cohen’s public congressional testimony, Trump said his former fixer agreed that there was no collusion. In reality, what Cohen testified was that he didn’t have any direct evidence of cooperation between Russian operatives and the Trump campaign, though Cohen added that he believes Trump is “capable” of having committed the crime.

Now, in March 2019, he’s convinced himself that Judge T.S. Ellis has exonerated him, too. That didn’t happen in reality, and doesn’t even make sense since Ellis never even considered evidence on the matter.

I can appreciate why the president is scared of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, but he may want to consider how much better off he’d appear if he stopped lying so frequently about an exoneration that hasn’t happened.

http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog

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As budget deficit balloons, few in Washington seem to care

By ANDREW TAYLOR

3.9.19 54 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal budget deficit is ballooning on President Donald Trump’s watch and few in Washington seem to care.

And even if they did, the political dynamics that enabled bipartisan deficit-cutting deals decades ago has disappeared, replaced by bitter partisanship and chronic dysfunction.

That’s the reality that will greet Trump’s latest budget , which will promptly be shelved after landing with a thud on Monday. Like previous spending blueprints, Trump’s plan for the 2020 budget year will propose cuts to many domestic programs favored by lawmakers in both parties but leave alone politically popular retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

Washington probably will devote months to wrestling over erasing the last remnants of a failed 2011 budget deal that would otherwise cut core Pentagon operations by $71 billion and domestic agencies and foreign aid by $55 billion. Top lawmakers are pushing for a reprise of three prior deals to use spending cuts or new revenues and prop up additional spending rather than defray deficits that are again approaching $1 trillion.

It’s put deficit hawks in a gloomy mood.

“The president doesn’t care. The leadership of the Democratic Party doesn’t care,” said former Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. “And social media is in stampede mode.”

Trump’s budget arrives as the latest Treasury Department figures show a 77 percent spike in the deficit over the first four months of the budget year, driven by falling revenues and steady growth in spending.

Trump’s 2017 tax cut bears much of the blame, along with sharp increases in spending for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies and the growing federal retirement costs of the baby boom generation. Promises that the tax cut would stir so much economic growth that it would mostly pay for itself have been proved woefully wrong.

Trump’s upcoming budget, however, won’t address any of the main factors behind the growing, intractable deficits that have driven the U.S. debt above $22 trillion. Its most striking proposed cuts — to domestic agency operations — were rejected when tea party Republicans controlled the House, and they face equally grim prospects now that Democrats are in the majority.

Trump has given no indication he’s much interested in the deficit and he’s rejected any idea of curbing Medicare or Social Security, the massive federal retirement programs whose imbalances are the chief deficit drivers.

An administration official said Friday that the president’s plan promises to balance the budget in 15 years. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss specifics about the budget before the document’s official release and spoke on condition of anonymity

Democrats have witnessed the retirement of a generation of lawmakers who came up in the 1980s and 1990s and negotiated deficit-cutting deals in 1990 and 1993. But those agreements came at significant political cost to both President George H.W. Bush, who lost re-election, and President Bill Clinton, whose party lost control of Congress in 1995.

But the moderate wing of the Democratic Party has withered with the electoral wipeout of “Blue Dog” Democrats at the hands of tea party forces over recent election cycles.

“Concern about the deficit is so woefully out of fashion that it’s hard to even imagine it coming back into fashion,” said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., one of his party’s few remaining deficit hawks. “This is as out of fashion as bell bottoms.”

While in control of the House, Republicans used to generate nonbinding budget blueprints that promised to balance the federal ledger by relying on a controversial plan to eventually transform Medicare into a voucher-like program. But they never pursued follow-up legislation that would actually do it.

Republicans, who seized Congress more than two decades ago promising and ultimately achieving balanced budgets during the Clinton administration, have instead focused on two major rounds of tax cuts during the Trump era and the administration of President George W. Bush in 2001.

Nor are Republicans willing to consider tough deficit-cutting steps such as higher taxes or Pentagon budget cuts. Leading Democratic presidential contenders talk of “Medicare for All” and increasing Social Security benefits instead of curbing them.

“You have to get pretty damn serious about revenue as well as defense spending, and those are two things the Republicans don’t want to bring into the conversation,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. “My Democratic friends who talk about expansion of benefits. I’ve told them to ‘get real.’”

Trump has never gone to the mat for his plan to slash domestic spending such as renewable energy programs.

“If Trump can be criticized I think the perception has been that he has not fought for the spending cuts that he’s proposed,” said former Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. “There’s no upside to trying to cut anything. There’s no political reward. But if you cut something there’s a lot of political downside.”

Neither is there any reservoir of the political will and bipartisan trust required to take the political heat for the tough steps it would take to rein in deficits. And it’s not like voters are clamoring for action.

“There’s been very little dialogue in the last several years about debt and deficit and how to really be able to address it,” said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. “It just never came up” in the 2016 election. “It still doesn’t come up.”

The deficit registered $714 billion during Trump’s first year in office but is projected to hit about $900 billion this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which says Trump’s tax cut will add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.

“One of the short-term goals should be — I know it’s not a lofty goal — stopping things from getting a lot worse. It’s something the Republicans obviously were unable to do. That’s a low bar, but they couldn’t meet a low bar,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

https://www.apnews.com/8f06239173134b3a9da1e1572f4ff10e

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Trump budget won’t balance for more than a decade, sources say

Ylan Mui

PUBLISHED FRI, MAR 8 2019 • 6:05 AM EST | UPDATED FRI, MAR 8 2019 • 6:54 PM EST

KEY POINTS

The White House is expected to unveil a budget on Monday that does not balance, despite optimistic growth projections and deep cuts to discretionary programs, according to two people familiar with the plans.

Budgets recommended by prior administrations have been crafted to ensure the federal budget eventually balances — that government spending does not exceed revenues by the end of the next decade.

The Trump administration abandoned that philosophy in its budget last year, however, and plans to do so again this year, sources say.

The White House is expected to unveil a budget on Monday that does not balance over the next decade, despite optimistic growth projections and deep cuts to discretionary programs, according to several people familiar with the plans.

The administration’s budget is supposed to act as a road map for Congress to begin crafting spending legislation for the next fiscal year. It also serves as a messaging document that lays out the president’s priorities and fiscal principles.

For Republicans, that has traditionally meant ensuring the federal budget eventually balances — that government spending does not exceed revenues by the end of the traditional 10-year budget window. But the administration abandoned that philosophy in its budget last year and plans to do so again this year, the people said.

Over a longer horizon, however, the White House budget will eliminate the deficit, according to a senior administration official. The official said the process would take 15 years.

“Congress keeps sending the President massive spending bills larded up with fat, but this administration will continue to aggressively attack wasteful spending so we can get back to balanced budgets,” he said.

The revenue shortfall over the next decade is particularly notable because the White House budget is also expected to project the economy will grow at an annual rate of 3 percent, higher than many private forecasts. But achieving 3 percent growth has become a mantra within the administration, with officials arguing the expansion is being fueled by the Republican tax cuts.

The deficit would also persist despite the administration’s plans for steep cuts in discretionary programs outside of the Defense Department. In an op-ed last month, Acting Budget Director Russ Vought said the administration will seek a 5 percent cut to all other federal agencies.

But his piece left unclear whether those cuts would be based off current spending levels or some other amount. The administration official said the 5 percent cut would be calculated from the cap on spending for this fiscal year.

The spending limit — also known as the sequester — is part of the Budget Control Act. According to the official, the spending reductions in Trump’s budget will allow them to hit the sequester levels for fiscal year 2020. If Congress does not vote to lift the spending caps, the sequester will automatically take effect.

In his op-ed, Vought said the White House will preserve defense funding by funneling money into an account for overseas contingency operations, which is not covered by the spending caps. The new money is expected to total close to $174 billion — more than double the current tally, according to sources.

Conservatives have previously derided the account as a “slush fund,” including Mick Mulvaney, former White House budget director and now acting chief of staff. In his op-ed, Vought suggested the administration had run out of options.

“As long as Congressional Democrats insist on demanding more social spending in exchange for continuing to fund defense spending, expanding the use of OCO funds remains the administration’s only fiscally responsible option in meeting national security needs while avoiding yet another increase to the spending caps,” he wrote.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/white-h ... s-say.html

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POLITICS 03/08/2019 08:07 pm ET

Rep. Ilhan Omar Wanted To Discuss Palestine. Here’s What’s Happened There Since.

Israeli soldiers have killed two Palestinians just this week.

By Akbar Shahid Ahmed

On Wednesday afternoon, as lawmakers and journalists fixated on efforts to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for saying political influence made American politicians unduly loyal to Israel and afraid of criticizing its policies, 15-year-old Saif A-Din Abu Zaied lay dying in a Gaza hospital after being shot in the head by Israeli soldiers.

Zaied and other Palestinians didn’t get a mention in the resolution Democratic leadership pushed through the next day that condemned various forms of hate, including anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism. And the discussion of Omar’s comments ended up mostly being about America’s national conversation: What’s really shaping policy toward Israel if it’s not, as the congresswoman once claimed, “all about the Benjamins” and how this country has, from the Oval Office on down, kept alive the bigotry she’s accused of invoking.

That left the underlying human rights crisis as overlooked as Omar suggested. “Nobody ever gets to have the broader debate of what is happening with Palestine,” she said last week at the bookstore appearance where she sparked her latest controversy.

So, in the spirit of refocusing a smidgen of the sudden attention to U.S.-Israel relations to the millions whose lives are affected by them on a daily basis, consider the news out of Palestine ― the West Bank, globally considered illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, and Gaza, which Israel has cut off from the outside world since the militant group Hamas took over in 2007 ― since Omar spoke.

(The U.S. today has effectively no relationship with internationally recognized Palestinian leaders as a result of President Donald Trump declaring the disputed city of Jerusalem the capital of Israel, cutting off nearly all American aid and closing their Washington mission.)

The day after Omar’s remarks, the United Nations concluded that Israel had violated international law and potentially committed war crimes by responding to a fresh wave of Gaza protests in 2018 by killing 189 Palestinians, including 35 children, three clearly marked paramedics and two clearly marked journalists, and injuring thousands. U.N. investigators noted one death of an Israeli soldier and injuries to eight others but rejected the government’s claims that the rallies ― aimed at Israel’s blockade of Gaza and refusal to let over a million registered refugees there return to their historic homes ― were overall a military operation.

The next day, Israeli forces again shot at demonstrators at the fence between the country and the Gaza Strip, wounding 17. Some protesters involved in the new “Great March of Return” campaign that began March 30, 2018, have used stones and devices like incendiary kites, but their leaders have urged peaceful activism, and Israeli forces have in many cases attacked people too far from the fence to cause harm.


A new week began with a fresh blow: The U.S. on March 4 shut down the consulate it maintained for decades to deal with the Palestinians, folding it into the new embassy to Israel. The move further undermined the prospects of a lasting, just peace and signaled how little the Trump administration values Palestinian claims or concerns about Israeli behavior in the dispute between the two nations, former negotiators said.

On Tuesday, a group of Israeli settlers in the West Bank attacked a school, wounding a child and damaging several teachers’ cars in the 11th assault on the facility, the Palestinian news agency Maan reported. Violence by settlers ― Israelis who move into areas generally considered part of a future state of Palestine and establish permanent homes ― has increased dramatically in recent months amid Israeli anger over Palestinian attacks and an apparent decline in Israeli authorities’ desire to rein in what they call “Jewish terror.” The U.N. says the settlers’ violence has killed one Palestinian and wounded 14 so far this year.

Wednesday brought an Israeli shutdown of water supplies for 2,600 Palestinians, per Maan, and the nighttime clash on the Gaza border that killed Zaied. The military ― which receives more than $3 billion in U.S. aid per year ― then launched airstrikes into Gaza, one of the poorest areas in the world, hours later in response to the launch of armed balloons and a rocket into Israel.

On Friday, Israeli forces killed another Palestinian protester.

Stateside, the media and political attention to Omar ― and, with it, the news peg to talk about the issues she raised ― began to fade.

Tacitly accepting a status quo in which rights are violated regularly with massive support from the U.S. is, after all, the norm when it comes to Israel and Palestine. It’s what has allowed steady changes, like an uptick in Israeli settlements, and permitted that strategy of expansion to use cynical means to gain more legitimacy by, for instance, selling an opportunity for Americans to profit and have a good time. Airbnb, Expedia and other travel giants are now drawing vacationers to visit some of the disputed regions, Amnesty International recently reported. “This is an illegal practice [but]... tourists are pouring into these areas,” the group’s Philippe Nassif said.

And it’s how the daily injustices in the West Bank and Gaza become so normalized that they’re rarely even mentioned now in coverage that does talk about flare-ups in violence or political shifts. Under the occupation, Palestinians have to travel miles out of their way to avoid the lengthy, potentially violent process of trying to get through settlements and can frequently face sudden lockdowns of their towns or other intimidation from soldiers that they’ve got little chance to complain about since courts are deferential to the Israeli security forces, Eric Goldstein of Human Rights Watch told HuffPost. In Gaza, people’s lives are “on hold,” he added, because of how tightly Israel and Egypt limit the ability to leave to study, work or see loved ones, and basics like electricity and water are in short supply.

Amid the suffering inflicted by Israel, Palestinians find little recourse from their own leadership. Neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank has much appetite for popular representation or questioning of their rule. “If you criticize corruption on your Facebook page or if you’re a journalist who tries to write about this, you’re at risk of not only being arrested but being tortured, whether or not you’re ever charged,” Goldstein said. Because of the stasis in the peace process, which lets them redirect Palestinian anger to Israel and the U.S. and argue change could threaten the community’s already-diminished status, the two governing bodies don’t see much incentive in reform.

Omar raised the need to think about what is happening with Palestine. Maybe now her colleagues ― and their millions of constituents less vulnerable to the political pressure she identified ― will try to do something about it.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ilhan-om ... 3616281ab3

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1. ALL ACCESS

Trump Donor and Spa Owner Li Yang Allegedly Tried to Sell Access to President

9 HOURS AGO 3.9.19

Li Yang, the Donald Trump donor who founded the spa where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was busted, allegedly sold more than sex. According to an exposé in Mother Jones, the 45-year-old entrepreneur also ran an investment firm that peddled access to Trump and his family to wealthy Chinese executives. According to Mother Jones, “The firm notes that its services also address clients looking to make high-level connections in the United States. On a page displaying a photo of Mar-a-Lago, Yang’s company says its ‘activities for clients’ have included providing them ‘the opportunity to interact with the president, the [American] Minister of Commerce and other political figures.’ The company boasts it has ‘arranged taking photos with the President’ and suggests it can set up a ‘White House and Capitol Hill Dinner’.” The Mother Jones piece follows a report published Friday by the Miami Herald exposing Yang’s long-running relationship with Trump that featured social media photos of her mugging with Trump, his sons and high-profile Republicans, including Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Palin. The Herald also said Yang carries around a rhinestone MAGA purse and donated $42,000 to political action committee Trump Victory and $16,000 to Trump’s 2016 president’s campaign.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/li-yang-s ... es-reports

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A Florida Massage Parlor Owner Has Been Selling Chinese Execs Access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago

The strange, swampy saga of Trump donor Li Yang.

DAVID CORN, DAN FRIEDMAN AND DANIEL SCHULMANMARCH 9, 2019 6:26 AM

The latest Trump political donor to draw controversy is Li Yang, a 45-year-old Florida entrepreneur from China who founded a chain of spas and massage parlors that included the one where New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft was recently busted for soliciting prostitution. She made the news this week when the Miami Herald reported that last month she had attended a Super Bowl viewing party at Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club and had snapped a selfie with the president during the event. Though Yang no longer owns the spa Kraft allegedly visited, the newspaper noted that other massage parlors her family runs have “gained a reputation for offering sexual services.” (She told the newspaper she has never violated the law.) Beyond this sordid tale, there is another angle to the strange story of Yang: She runs an investment business that has offered to sell Chinese clients access to Trump and his family. And a website for the business—which includes numerous photos of Yang and her purported clients hobnobbing at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach—suggests she had some success in doing so.

Yang, who goes by Cindy, and her husband, Zubin Gong, started GY US Investments LLC in 2017. The company describes itself on its website, which is mostly in Chinese, as an “international business consulting firm that provides public relations services to assist businesses in America to establish and expand their brand image in the modern Chinese marketplace.” But the firm notes that its services also address clients looking to make high-level connections in the United States. On a page displaying a photo of Mar-a-Lago, Yang’s company says its “activities for clients” have included providing them “the opportunity to interact with the president, the [American] Minister of Commerce and other political figures.” The company boasts it has “arranged taking photos with the President” and suggests it can set up a “White House and Capitol Hill Dinner.” (The same day the Herald story about Yang broke, the website stopped functioning.)

The short bio of Yang on the website, identifying her as the founder and CEO of GY US Investments, shows her in a photo with Trump bearing his signature. It says she has been “settled in the United States for more than 20 years” and is a member of the “Presidential Fundraising Committee.” According to the Herald, Yang is a registered Republican, and since 2017 she and her relatives have donated more than $42,000 to a Trump political action committee and more than $16,000 to Trump’s campaign. Her Facebook page, which was taken offline on Friday, was loaded with photos of her posing with GOP notables: Donald Trump Jr., Rep. Matt Gaetz or Florida, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, among others.

The GY US Investments website lists upcoming events at Mar-a-Lago at which Yang’s clients presumably can mingle with Trump or members of his family. This includes something called the International Leaders Elite Forum, where Trump’s sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau, will supposedly be the featured speaker. Attendees, the site says, will include “Chinese elites from various countries, including the US states, as well as elite leaders from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia, Europe and other countries and regions.” Another event for which Yang’s firm says it can provide access is Trump’s annual New Year’s celebration at Mar-a-Lago. Elsewhere on the website, the firm boasts that “GY Company arranged a number of guests to attend the 2019 New Year’s Eve dinner. All the guests took photos with” members of Trump’s family. This page displays photos of Chinese executives and a Chinese movie star with Donald Trump Jr., suggesting that these pics were arranged by the company, and also includes a photo of Yang with Elizabeth Trump Grau.

Among the Chinese executives who attended that New Year’s event was Huachu Tang, the owner of an electric car company. Tang told Yahoo Finance that he flew 17 hours from Xi’an, China, with his family and an assistant in hopes of meeting with Trump at the party. Though he reportedly speaks almost no English, Tang said he hoped to use a Trump connection to build up his company’s brand before eventually taking it public on the New York Stock Exchange. Trump, however, canceled his trip to Mar-a-Lago due to the government shutdown. Tang and his wife managed to pose for pictures with Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Trump Grau. Tang told Yahoo that he received admission to the New Year’s party through a package offered by a public relations agency—perhaps Yang’s firm. According to Yahoo, the company Tang used declined to reveal the price of the package, citing the confidentiality of the contract.


The GY US Investments website also posted photos of Yang at a White House celebration of the “Asian New Year” in 2018 and at a Chinese New Year dinner celebration that purportedly included Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Transportation Secretary Chao. The firm says it invited 10 guests to the Chinese New Year event and the website shows several of them posing with Chao.

According to the website, the company has offices in Miami; Washington, DC; and Wuhan, China, and is preparing to open an office in Beijing. But the address of its office in the Washington area matches the location of a UPS store.

Yang and her business partners listed on the GY US Investments’ website could not be reached for comment. No one responded to messages left at the number for GY US Investments. A man who answered a phone number listed for Yang hung up. A man who picked up the phone at a number listed for the company’s Washington-area office said, “My English isn’t good,” and hung up. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders and Trump Grau did not respond to requests for comment.

The overall message conveyed by the GY US Investments website seems clear: hire Yang’s company and she can get you close to Trump and his government—at Mar-a-Lago and in Washington. If the posted photos are authentic, she has been able to get Chinese clients at least into the Trump circle for a quick pic. They are a sign that this Chinese immigrant and Trump donor has used her contacts to go from massaging clients to massaging influence.

Update: Yang has been active in Asian American Republican groups. Since 2017, she has participated in the Broward County, Florida Chapter of the Asian GOP, a national Republican group. The chapter’s web page touts the Mar-a-Lago “Safari Night” promoted by Yang’s company – with Trump Grau listed as the host. Yang also visited the White House last year as part of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Initiative, an advisory group Trump formed by executive order.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ar-a-lago/

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1. ON THE ROAD

U.S. Citizens Will Need a Visa to Enter E.U. Schengen Area in 2021

8 HOURS AGO 3.9.19

U.S. citizens will need a visa beginning in 2021 to enter the a zone of 26 European countries that includes Spain, France, Greece, Germany, Italy and Poland, according to CNN. The announcement Friday indicated that Americans will be required to have a European Travel Information and Authorization System(ETIAS) visa, which officials said is intended “to improve [countries] security level to avoid any further problems with illegal migration and terrorism.” U.S. citizens are presently permitted to travel throughout the so-called European Schengen Area for a maximum of 90 days without a visa, per the CNN report. EITAS applicants must have a valid passport, debit or credit card, and email address, but minors will still be able to enter the 26 Schengen area countries without the new required travel document. Schengen countries, among them France, Germany, Spain, Poland and Italy, don’t have internal borders. European parliament and U.S. officials have been in a dispute over travel because citizens of five E.U. member countries, including Poland and Bulgaria, are still required to apply for visa before entering the U.S.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-citize ... ea-in-2021

<7



ASIA

Activity At 2nd North Korean Missile Site Indicates Possible Launch Preparations

GEOFF BRUMFIEL

March 8, 20195:11 PM ET

Commercial satellite imagery of a facility near Pyongyang suggests that North Korea is preparing to launch a missile or space rocket in the near future.

The images are of a site known as Sanumdong — a facility where North Korea has assembled some of its intercontinental ballistic missiles and satellite-launching rockets. The images, taken Feb. 22 by DigitalGlobe and shared exclusively with NPR, show cars and trucks parked near the facility. Rail cars sit in a nearby rail yard, where two cranes are also erected.

"When you put all that together, that's really what it looks like when the North Koreans are in the process of building a rocket," says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif., who has studied the images.


News of the activity comes just days after other satellite imagery showed that North Korea has rapidly rebuilt a satellite launch facility on the country's west coast. Known as the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, the site has been used for several attempted space launches over the years, most recently in 2016.

The Sohae facility, sometimes called Dongchang-ri and Tongchang-ri, was partially dismantled after President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held their first summit in June 2018. Imagery taken Wednesday suggests it may be operational again.

Lewis cautions it's impossible to know whether the North Koreans are preparing a military missile or a rocket that could carry a civilian satellite into space. It's also impossible to know when any launch might happen.

Additional images of the Sanumdong site taken Friday by another company, San Francisco-based Planet, show that vehicle activity has died down and that one of the cranes has disappeared. That could mean that workers have paused work on an ICBM or rocket, perhaps while awaiting further parts.

Or it could mean a missile or rocket has already left the facility.

"According to Planet imagery, I can definitely say the train has left the station," says Melissa Hanham, a North Korea expert with the One Earth Future Foundation. "But I can't unfortunately use X-ray vision to see what's on the train and tell whether it's a civilian space launch vehicle or a military ICBM."

One possible destination would be the Sohae Satellite Launching Station. Lewis says there's no easy way to tell whether a train has carried missile or rocket parts to Sohae because the rail yard there has a roof over it to prevent satellite snooping.

Lewis says he believes it's most likely that the North Koreans are preparing to launch a satellite into orbit. Prior to the 2018 thaw between Kim and Trump, North Korean officials had been saying they planned to launch two satellites, Lewis says. And he says Kim reportedly visited the Sanumdong site at the end of 2017 in order to prepare.

"We know that a space launch was a thing that the North Koreans were talking about doing," he says.

Lewis also says such a launch should not necessarily be regarded as an aggressive move. Rockets used to launch satellites are usually unsuitable for use as long-range missiles, he notes. "They would really make quite a poor ICBM," he says. "I think U.S. foreign policy has been far too obsessed with North Korean space launches."

But speaking at a briefing on Thursday, a senior State Department official said that the U.S. would regard any launch, including a space launch, as a violation of the goodwill between Trump and Kim. "Let me just say, in our judgment, launch of a space launch vehicle from [Sohae] in our view would be inconsistent with the commitments that the North Koreans have made," the official told reporters.

"It seems like the two parties are moving farther apart rather than closer," Hanham says. "I hope that there isn't an overreaction by the United States to a space launch."

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/08/70163038 ... eparations

<8



LAW

Judge Says Government May Have To Reunite More Migrant Families Separated At Border

Richard Gonzales

March 8, 201911:26 PM ET

A federal judge in California who ordered the Trump administration to reunite more than 2,800 migrant families separated at the southwest border says potentially thousands more could be affected by his ruling.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw of San Diego said in a preliminary ruling issued late Friday that parents who were separated from their children on or after July 1, 2017, should be included as part of a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

As NPR's Joel Rose reports,

*"District Judge Dana Sabraw in California has already ordered the Trump administration to reunite more than 2800 migrant children who were separated from their parents under the "zero tolerance" policy last year.

"But a government watchdog report revealed that the administration may have separated thousands of additional families under an earlier pilot program that was not disclosed.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case, argued that those families should be part of the class action, too. And Judge Sabraw agreed."*

Sabraw originally had ruled that his order applied to parents whose children were in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency that handles migrant children, on June 26, 2018.

But in January 2019, the Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General issued a report revealing that the government "began separating migrant families as early as July 1, 2017, well before the zero tolerance policy was publicly announced in May of 2018, and that pursuant to the policy, potentially 'thousands' more families had been separated," Sabraw wrote.

The precise number of families separated before June 2018 is not known because the government did not adequately track them, OIG reported.

Attorneys for the Justice Department had argued that the class action lawsuit should not be expanded because "they assert it would be too burdensome for them to identify the members of the newly proposed class," the judge wrote.

"But it can be done," Sabraw concluded.

"The court made clear that potentially thousands of children's lives are at stake and that the Trump administration cannot simply ignore the devastation it has caused," said Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in the ACLU's family separation lawsuit, in a statement.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department did not immediately respond for requests for comment.

Sabraw said he will hold a hearing later this month to decide whether the government will have to identify and reunite the additional families.

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/08/70181310 ... ted-at-bor

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<1



Is the United States about to lose control of its secretive Diego Garcia military base?

By Jenni Marsh, CNN

Updated 7:42 PM ET, Sat March 9, 2019

(CNN)The secretive Diego Garcia military base may be 1,000 miles from the nearest continent, but it has all the trappings of a modern American town.

The troops here can dine on burgers at Jake's Place, enjoy a nine-hole golf course, go bowling or sink a cold beer at one of several bars. The local command has nicknamed the base the "Footprint of Freedom."

But while cars here drive on the right side of the road, this is not American soil: it is, in fact, a remote remnant of the British Empire.

That is because in 1965, in the middle of the Cold War, the United States signed a controversial, secret agreement with the British government to lease one of the 60 or so Indian Ocean atolls that make up the Chagos Islands to construct a military base.

That deal was secret because the UK was in the process of decolonizing Mauritius, of which the Chagos archipelago was a dependency.

The Chagos Islands never got its independence day. Instead, it was cleaved from Mauritius and renamed the British Indian Overseas Territory, a move that the United Nations' highest court in 2019 ruled was illegal under international law.


Britain has now been instructed to properly finish the process of decolonization, and return the Chagos Islands, located half way between Africa and Indonesia, to Mauritius.

The ruling, though non-binding, potentially creates a huge problem for the United States. Today, Diego Garcia is one of America's most important -- and secretive -- overseas assets.

Home to over 1,000 US troops and staff, it has been used by the US Navy, the US Air Force and even NASA -- the island's enormous runway was a designated emergency landing site for the space shuttle. Diego Garcia has helped to launch two invasions of Iraq, served as a vital landing spot for bombers that fly missions across Asia, including over the South China Sea, and has been linked to US rendition efforts.

Many in Britain, including Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the country's opposition Labour Party, are now calling for the UK to return the islands to Mauritius. Should that happen experts believe the ownership of Diego Garcia could be up for negotiation -- a move that would make Mauritius a much more important country geopolitically.

A UK Foreign Office spokesperson said that the government would look at the judgment "carefully." "The defense facilities on the British Indian Ocean Territory help to protect people here in Britain and around the world from terrorist threats, organized crime and piracy," the spokesperson added.


Covering all bases

From Singapore to Djibouti and Bahrain to Brazil, today the US operates about 800 military bases outside its sovereign territory -- more than any other nation.

"If you take all the other foreign bases owned by countries together there are only about 30," says Daniel Immerwahr, a professor of history at Northwestern University.

Most of America's bases were acquired during the era of decolonization, after World War II, when traditional colonial powers such as Britain and France were shedding colonies around the world, especially in Asia.

As Soviet influence increased during the Cold War era, the shrinking global footprint of its European allies made the United States and its allied partners worried that the West was "losing control of the world," explains David Vine, author of "Island of Shame," which documents the fate of the Chagos archipelago.

It was perhaps no coincidence that during this period America began what experts say was a concerted attempt to create a network of bases that offered military protection without the burden of ruling a colonial population.

"If you look at all the land globally occupied by the US, it's not very much land mass, smaller than the state of Connecticut," says Immerwahr, author of "How To Hide An Empire," about US overseas territories. "But, nevertheless, there are hundreds of points in foreign countries that the US controls and which are really important in protecting its power today."

Many governments, such as South Korea, Japan and Bahrain, have sought long-term defense agreements with the US, viewing an additional military presence as a necessary means of protection.

In 1964, America approached Britain about leasing a tiny dot in the India Ocean.


A chopper picks up mail bag to be taken to Diego Garcia in September, 1990.

"At the outset, the US didn't particularly know what they would do with it," says Vine. "It was a hedge for the future."

In 1966, Britain and America signed an agreement without congressional or parliamentary oversight, which gave the US the right to build a military base on Diego Garcia, until its need for military facilities had disappeared -- wording that was perhaps deliberately vague.

Mauritius was given £3 million ($3.9 million) for agreeing to the deal, and it was settled that America waive $14 million relating to an order of Polaris submarine missiles heading for England.

There was just one problem. The 3,000 Chagosians who lived on the islands.

'Here go some few Tarzans'

In a 1966 memo, as Britain prepared to hand the Chagos Islands to the US, British civil servant Paul Gore-Booth wrote that the aim of the exercise was "to get some rocks which will remain ours."

To which British diplomat Dennis Greenhill replied, in a cable brutally maligning the population of the Chagos Islands: "Unfortunately, along with birds go some few Tarzans ... whose origins are obscure and who are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius."

Had Greenhill illuminated himself he would have learned that the first inhabitants of the Chagos Islands were slaves shipped from Madagascar and Mozambique to work on coconut plantations by the French in the 18th century. After the Napoleonic wars, France ceded the Chagos Islands to Britain.


Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos archipelago and site of a major United States military base, located in the middle of the Indian Ocean, was leased from Britain in 1966.

The Chagosians developed a pleasant lifestyle distinct to that on Mauritius, where back-breaking work was endured on sugar plantations, says Vine. They developed their own version of the Creole language, schools for their children, tended private gardens and led a peaceful way of life.

In 1967, the US and UK began tearing that life apart, exiling all the inhabitants from their land.

"Initially, people who went for special medical treatment to Mauritius were just never allowed to come back," says Pierre Prosper, who was born on Peros Banhos, a northeast atoll of Chagos. "So a mother who gave birth would be left in Mauritius while the rest of the family would be in Chagos."

Medical and food supplies to the island were gradually restricted, until eventually, in 1973, all those remaining were told they had to leave "overnight," Prosper says.


A Chagosian family in the slum of Baie du Tombeau, in Mauritius, with a Chagossian flag.

According to witness testimony provided to CNN by former residents, the Chagosians were herded into the hold of two cargo ships, then dumped on the quayside in Mauritius or the Seychelles. The pets they left behind were rounded up by soldiers and gassed. Their houses left to the jungle.

"People were living in cemeteries or in cattle houses, anywhere they could get a roof over their heads," says Isobel Charlot, whose family wound up in Mauritius. "The Chagos Islands were beautiful. Going to Mauritius abruptly made them depressed, many became alcoholics."

In the 1980s, the UK paid some $5.2 million to more than 1,300 islanders on the condition they renounce their right to return.

Repeated indigenous exile

The exile of the Chagosians was not an isolated incident.

In 1946, 167 natives of the Bikini Atoll were persuaded to leave their paradise chain of 23 coral islands with twisting palm trees and aquamarine waters, after Commodore Ben H Wyatt, the military governor of the Marshall Islands, to which the atoll belonged, told them their land was needed for "the good of mankind and to end all world wars."

In reality, that meant dropping 23 nuclear weapons on Bikini between 1946 and 1958, as part of the Cold War nuclear arms race -- including the most powerful explosion ever detonated by the US.


A mushroom cloud forms after the initial atomic bomb test explosion off the coast of Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands in July 1946.

The islanders were shipped to Rongerik, an uninhabited atoll about 100 miles away, and left food supplies for a few weeks. But crops on the Bikinians' new home produced significantly less food than those on Bikini, and the nearby waters had far less edible catch.

Within two years, the population was on the verge of starvation.

In 1948, the US responded to their plight. Once more the Bikinians were uprooted -- this time to Kwajalein, where they lived in tents next to a cement airstrip used by Americans. Six months later, they were shipped to Kili Island, 400 miles south of Bikini, where they again began to starve.

One attempt was made to resettle the Bikinians in the late 1960s when some 150 residents were returned to their atoll. But in 1978 it was revealed that within one year some residents had seen a 75% increase in radioactive material in their bodies, and all residents were once again moved, this time to Majuro Atoll.

In the early 1980s, the Bikinians filed a class action lawsuit against the US, which eventually resulted in the creation of a $90 million trust fund for their local government for cleanup and resettlement purposes.

'Geopolitical manspreading'

When the US military decides to build a base it commits the "geopolitical equivalent of man spreading," says Immerwahr -- "taking out quite a lot of space for low density uses."

So, on the Chagos Islands, for example, all of the inhabited atolls had to be cleared despite the fact only one would be used by the Americans.

In 2015, Canadian photographer Diane Selkirk moored her sailboat off Ile Boddam in the Chagos archipelago -- sailors who seek permission from the British Indian Overseas Territory can stay for one month.


Overrun graves on the Chagos Islands in Diego Garcia.

Selkirk describes a place more pristine than any Maldivian resort, where she waded among shark nurseries in the shallows and snorkeled through "the most diverse schools of fish" she'd ever seen. In the day, she explored abandoned schools, homes and churches, overgrown by jungle on the depopulated atolls.

"But the gravity of being permitted to use the nation of an exiled people as our personal tropical playground felt deeply wrong," says Selkirk.

"From the US perspective, says Immerwahr, local populations like the Chagosians were "a problem." The government's aim was to create a quarantine zone around the base on the Chagos archipelago, where local people could not infect the operation.

Life on Diego Garcia

The hedge the Americans took on Diego Garcia soon began to pay off.

After the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979, Diego Garcia underwent the biggest expansion of any US military location since the Vietnam War, becoming fully operational in 1986.

One of the first things the US military did was deepen the harbor, says CNN military analyst Cedric Leighton, who was stationed on a US base on the island of Guam in the Western Pacific in the 1990s, from where he provided logistical support to Diego Garcia.


A map of downtown Diego Garcia. Indigenous Chagosians were removed from the island so the base could be built.

Today, that harbor is big enough for an aircraft carrier to use, says Vine. "There are also massive pre-positioned ships in the lagoon, each about the size of the Empire State Building, filled with enough weapons and supplies for material tanks, helicopters for an entire brigade of Marines."

The military also built a 12,000-foot (2 mile) long runway capable of hosting B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers.

Within weeks of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, the base received an additional 2,000 Air Force personnel, says Vine, and a 30-acre housing facility was built for the newcomers named Camp Justice.


A row of B-1 bombers sits on the tarmac at the US base on Diego Garcia in 2001.

Diego Garcia is also one of a handful of stations running the US military's Global Positioning Systems. "If there is any type of conflict in space, Diego Garcia is important in the physical sense and the communications sense," says Leighton.

"One of the jokes about Diego Garcia is that it's basically a floating aircraft carrier. You could almost say the same about Guam," he adds.

But, of course, Guam has a local population, a civilian airport, doesn't boast such close proximity to the Middle East -- and crucially doesn't have such a remote location.

Secret base

Thanks to being miles from anywhere, Diego Garcia has become notorious for its mystery.

Leighton says that while military personnel based on Guam could bring their spouse, those working on Diego Garcia, which is just 38 miles long, had to go alone.

No journalists have ever been, although a Time magazine correspondent filed a dispatch from the tarmac, after he touched there down for a quick refueling stop while aboard Air Force One with President Bush. The reporter described it as "paradise in concrete."

The only people permitted onto the island outside military personnel are the largely Mauritian and Filipino contract staff, who cook and clean for the Americans.

The reason for a level of secrecy higher than on nearly any other US military facility -- even Guantanamo Bay, which journalists have been allowed to visit -- has caused many to question what happens at Diego Garcia.


Razor wire tops the fence of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay on October 23, 2016 at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2008, after years of denials and claims that the relevant flight logs had been damaged by water, the British government finally admitted that two CIA rendition flights containing detainees had transited through Diego Garcia in 2002.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005, later told Vice News that his CIA contacts had indicated "interrogations took place" on Diego Garcia as part of the CIA's rendition efforts.

The US Senate's damning 2014 report on CIA black sites, the culmination of a five-year investigation that shed light on the CIA's interrogation techniques, did not mention Diego Garcia.

In 2008, then CIA director Michael Hayden said in a statement: "There has been speculation in the press over the years that CIA had a holding facility on Diego Garcia. That is false. There have also been allegations that we transport detainees for the purpose of torture. That, too, is false. Torture is against our laws and our values."

Human rights investigators have long been banned from visiting.

The future

The ruling from The international Court of Justice last week is not legally binding, meaning Britain could choose to ignore it.

The matter of who holds sovereignty over the Islands, located more than 2,000 miles off the east coast of Africa, will now be debated by the United Nations General Assembly -- which referred the case to the ICJ despite London's protests.

Stephen Robert Allen, who specializes in international law relating to the Chagos Islands, says that "it will be a very significant thing if the UK decided to ignore such a ruling."

"As the UK forges a path post Brexit these political matters are going to be significant. Adhering to the international rule of law is going to be even more important than it would have been otherwise," he adds.

Pravind Jugnauth, the prime minister of Mauritius, called the ruling a "historic moment for Mauritius and all its people" and said that it paved the way for the Chagossians and their descendants to "finally be able to return home" -- something they have been campaigning for legally for decades.

The Mauritian government did not respond to CNN's emails and phone calls.


An unnamed Diego Garcian at the time of the US encampment, in 1971.

CNN emails and phone calls to the UK Foreign Office requesting comment on the of rendition at Diego Garcia and the expulsion of the people of the Chagos Islands were not returned.

For Emmanuel Ally, a 21-year-old law student living in London who was born in Mauritius after his family was evicted from the Chagos Islands, it's not even about being able to repatriate to Chagos.

"It's not about going back anymore because it's been so long," he says. "The question would be about having a country you could visit or go and stay there. Just knowing that the island is not a military base anymore would be great."

Leighton, who was based in Guam, believes the chances of Mauritius evicting the Diego Garcia military base is minimal, as leasing it would earn the government important revenue and, potentially, military protection.

But there is nothing to say that the Mauritians will continue to lease the base to the same country.

"This could potentially get into an area where there is a degree of competition between the US and China when it comes to access to the Indian Ocean," he says.

For Isabol Charlot, who now resides in London, the dream is for Chagosians to be allowed to return to Chagos. "Already, Diego Garcia has people living there. So why can't I as well?"

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/09/asia/cha ... index.html

<2



OPINION

I'M JEWISH, AND I FIND THE HYPOCRISY OF REPUBLICAN ISLAMOPHOBES HOUNDING ILHAN OMAR BREATHTAKING | OPINION

REBECCA VILKOMERSON


ON 3/5/19 AT 3:59 PM

Representative Ilhan Omar is facing censure in the House, brought in part by her own party leaders. She is also facing shockingly Islamophobic attacks calling her a terrorist, simply because she is a Muslim. And all the while, other congressional leaders are tweeting out unabashedly anti-Semitic messages with abandon.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking enough at its own right, but it is also an indicator of the fight between an emerging progressive coalition that seems different than Congressional generations of old, and which increasingly integrates Palestinian rights into its agenda, based on universal rights and the need for equality and freedom for all people.

Representative Ilhan Omar is also part of a class of newly elected Congresspeople who don’t look much like Congresspeople of generations past: dynamic women of color from communities (Black and Muslim in Ilhan Omar’s case,) who face some of the fiercest racism and xenophobia in this country.

Not coincidentally, it is young people, women, and people of color who make up the emerging coalition of progressive people that support Palestinian rights as a natural part of an agenda based on fairness, dignity and freedom. This is the context around the accusations of anti-Semitism and islamophobia in the last weeks centering on Representative Omar. While some critics of Representative Omar’s tweets made them in good faith, too often they were part of a cynical strategy to paint this emerging progressive coalition as anti-Semitic.

As one of two of the first Muslim-American women in Congress, Ilhan Omar is facing a specific set of demands and attacks.
Accusations of anti-Semitism are being used to silence her criticisms of Israel. An obvious form of Islamophobia coming from the right is attacking her directly for her identity. A soft form of Islamophobia is evident in the lesser degree of concern expressed for the far more outrageous attacks on her personally. And many more liberal elected officials and others are making a false claim of equivalence between calling out of Omar’s tweets (which were about Israel) and calling out Islamophobia against Omar herself.

Rep. Omar has engaged with critics who brought up good faith critiques of her language and has shown true commitment to live up to her values—unlike other members of Congress who continue to promote anti-Semitic messages

Even before the West Virginia GOP posted a heinous Islamophobic poster linking Representative Ilhan Omar to the attacks of 9/11 because she is Muslim, the Islamophobia at play in the attacks on Omar was blatantly clear. As Omar tweeted: “My Americanness is questioned by the President and the @GOP on a daily basis, yet my colleagues remain silent.” At the same time, Congressional leaders are making actual anti-Semitic statements—like the tweet posted over the weekend by Rep. Jim Jordan, spelling Tom Steyer’s name with a dollar sign instead of an S, or then-Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s tweet about Jewish donors which are going all but unnoticed, and certainly unpunished.

anti-Semitism—specifically as an expression of right-wing white supremacy—has never been in such proximity to power, at least in my lifetime, and Jewish people from across the political spectrum are rightfully frightened. Charlottesville, what feels like a cascade of graffiti and physical attacks on Jewish people—and above all else, the murderous attack in Pittsburgh—are making many of us revise our belief of our safety in this country, especially those of us who are white and who have not been singled out as directly for abuse, in recent lived experience.

That makes it confusing when critiques of Israel, support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), or even anti-Zionism are presented as part of the continuum of anti-Semitism that Jews in the U.S. are facing in this era.

It has never been more important to be able to distinguish between the critique—even the harshest critique—of a state’s policies (Israel,) and discrimination against a people (Jews.) Israel does not represent all Jews. Not all Jews support Israel. Speaking out for Palestinian human rights and their yearning for freedom is in no way related to anti-Semitism, though the Israeli government does its best to obscure that. And yes, there are anti-Semites who support Palestinian rights. They have no place in any movement for justice, which Palestinian leaders of the movement have made very clear.

We also know that in the last several months, leading Black scholars and activists, from Angela Davis to Marc Lamont Hill to Michelle Alexander have spoken out strongly on behalf of Palestinians—and found themselves targeted in return. The policing of people of color, including Ilhan Omar, who speak out on Palestine—the higher standards to which they are held, and the assumptions of bad faith by which their words are judged make their leadership on this issue all the more remarkable, but it means they are also paying an almost unbearable cost.

The exhaustion and rage that so many people—Muslims, Palestinians, Black people, Jews of color, and Jews who support Palestinian rights—are feeling as these battles continue to play out does have one silver lining. The only antidote to the pro-Israel lobby is building a strong, grassroots movement of people willing to stand up for Palestinian rights. That’s what ended U.S. support for apartheid in South Africa, its what won limited civil rights victories for Black Americans, and it’s what shifted American views on gay marriage over the course of ten short years. And that’s what we’re seeing today.

It is no surprise that the first elected officials defending Palestinian human rights are facing such fierce opposition from defenders of the status quo. Omar herself is not backing down, firing back at her critics: “Being opposed to Netanyahu and the occupation is not the same as being anti-Semitic. I am grateful to the many Jewish allies who have spoken out and said the same... We must be willing to combat hate of all kinds while also calling out oppression of all kinds.”

Omar will be joined by many more, but only if we’re willing and able to fight to defend them—by speaking about anti-Semitism with precision, by challenging racism and islamophobia, and by holding our institutions and elected officials accountable.

https://www.newsweek.com/ilhan-omar-gop ... sh-1352797

<3



OPINION

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was the only one doing her job during Michael Cohen's hearing

Richard Cherwitz, The Des Moines Register Opinion Published 7:00 a.m. ET March 9, 2019

Too often, members of Congress don't know how to or won't informatively interview expert witnesses, therefore wasting the fact-finding opportunity.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., did a masterful job interrogating former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen during the House Oversight Committee hearing — and in so doing, underscored an inherent rhetorical problem with how members of Congress interview witnesses.

For more than 40 years, I have taught a course in argumentation at the University of Texas. One of the major distinctions discussed in this class is the difference between argument as “advocacy” and argument as "inquiry" — the former focusing primarily on explicit appeals to persuade and the latter emphasizing discovery.

This distinction is especially useful when evaluating congressional hearings. For example, I have observed that more often than not, members of Congress do not know how to — or won’t — ask genuine and useful questions. Their penchant is to practice argument as advocacy.

Rather than engaging in inquiry, members spend their questioning time making speeches and asking rhetorical questions designed to lead to a predetermined political claim. They posture and dramatically draw attention to themselves — which, of course, is why the news media are titillated and hence spend an inordinate amount of time including their questioning in a seemingly endless news loop.

From a nonpartisan perspective, Ocasio-Cortez (and perhaps a few others) were the exception to the rule during the Feb. 27 hearing. She practiced argument as inquiry. Her questions were probative and focused on discovery, setting up future lines of inquiry, obtaining new information, and discerning additional witnesses who might testify. Unlike others, hers was not an exercise in self-promotion.


For example, Ocasio-Cortez asked Cohen several specific questions about how President Donald Trump handled insurance claims and whether he provided accurate information to various companies. “To your knowledge,” she inquired, “did Donald Trump ever provide inflated assets to an insurance company?” He had, Cohen said. She also asked whether Trump had attempted to reduce his local taxes by undervaluing his assets. Cohen said the president had also done that.

Most important, she asked, “Do you think we need to review financial statements and tax returns in order to compare them?” She pressed Cohen for the names of others who would be able to corroborate the testimony or provide documents to support the charges — to which he listed the executives Allen Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman and Matthew Calamari, individuals who eventually may be called to testify.

AOC was refreshing

It was refreshing to see that the rhetorical uniqueness of Ocasio-Cortez’s questioning was noted by the news media and political pundits.

The larger point to be made, extending well beyond the Cohen hearing, is that too often members of Congress — Republicans and Democrats — don’t know how to or won’t informatively interview expert witnesses and persons with relevant personal experience. Whether the subject is environmental, social welfare or other important issues, senators and representatives engage in argument as advocacy; they handpick witnesses who reflect members’ partisan conclusions, cherry-pick answers, and generally substitute posturing, self-promotion and speech-making for questioning.

What a waste of time and ignorance of the fact-finding purpose of questioning.

This might explain why many of our public policies are not grounded in sufficient knowledge of the problems being addressed. Just imagine what these hearings would look like if their primary objective were inquiry rather than advocacy — if witnesses were allowed to testify and interact for the purpose of discovery. As my students learn, this more informative rhetorical format for questioning leads to genuine persuasion and compromise, and that is the ultimate objective of argument and the basis for informed and reasoned decision-making.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ ... 096274002/

<4



Trump's base can't handle the truth: He's wrecking their economy

BY NEIL BARON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 03/09/19 01:30 PM EST

In the first four months of FY19, the deficit grew to $310 billion, up from $176 billion in FY18. To rein it in, the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans have targeted cutting entitlements that many Trump supporters depend on. Yet they remain steadfast. When will they ever learn?

America is now governed by the least educated, least informed and most gullible 34 percent of the electorate — Donald Trump’s base. Their most common delusion is that Trump is responsible for our strong economy.

Yes, we’re experiencing near-record low unemployment and rising wages. But that’s from the momentum of a recovery that started ten years ago, when President George W. Bush convinced an unwilling Congress to pass a $700 billion bank bailout, saving us from another depression. Since then, the U.S. has enjoyed 100 straight months of increased employment.

Trump can’t take credit for that. Nor is this economy the record-breaking, greatest-ever phenomenon Trump and his supporters like to claim.

It’s true that workers’ pay grew 2.9 percent last year — the fastest since the Great Recession. But before that, wages after inflation rose far slower during Trump’s presidency than Obama’s. Obama averaged real wage increases of 0.8 percent, compared to Trump’s average of 0.3 percent.

Trump boasts about GDP growth being the highest ever. But Obama generated four years of higher GDP growth than Trump has in any year of his presidency.

Trump claims he’s produced record-breaking job growth. In fact, more jobs were added during Obama's final 18 months (206,000 per month) than during Trump's first 18 months in office (193,000 jobs per month). U.S. job growth peaked in 2010.

The GDP growth that delights Trump supporters is likely to be short-lived. Trump’s tax cuts failed to launch the promised investment boom that was supposed to lead to long-term growth. In fact, growth may already be slowing. Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, recently rose by 8,000. A growing number of economists and 73 percent of money managers predict a recession later this year or next.

Trump’s tax cuts pose significant risk to the economy, which seems to have escaped the notice of his base. The cuts ballooned the deficit, because they reduced government revenues without generating enough growth to compensate. In FY18, corporate tax receipts shrank by $92 billion, while the deficit grew by $113 billion. And it’s getting worse. Just in the first four months of FY19, the deficit grew another $124 billion.

Although Obama and Bush added more to the deficit than Trump, they had to spend billions to recover from the Great Recession. Trump on the other hand took office when the economy, wage and job growth were strong, yet he cut taxes and blew up the deficit and debt anyway.

Historically, low unemployment and GDP growth meant more people paid more taxes and deficits shrunk. But because of Trump’s tax cuts, that’s not happening now. Other than during wartime, this decoupling of the deficit from the business cycle has never happened before.

Debt has soared under Trump, and the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio has grown to 105 percent, the highest since 1950. Rising debt-to-GDP ratios often signal a recession. Every percentage point of debt above 77 percent reduces economic growth by 1.7 percent, which means we’re losing over half of our potential GDP growth to debt.

Trump’s tax cuts will also widen the income and wealth gaps between Trump’s cheerleaders and the very rich. According to bond ratings firm Moody’s, it will likely put pressure on the U.S.’s fiscal strength and weigh on its credit profile.

The threat of a credit downgrade is implicit in Moody’s narrative. A lower rating will lead not only to higher Treasury rates but also to higher rates on residential mortgages and consumer spending (which is two thirds of our economy).

John F. Kennedy said, “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” It was pouring rain when George W. Bush and Obama were president. But Trump took office when the sun was out. He should have fixed the roof, but chose instead to blow a bigger hole in it.

Congressional Republicans need Trump’s base to win elections, so they are very reluctant to oppose his policies no matter how damaging they may be.

That leaves truth-telling up to the Democrats. They must pound away at the facts until they convince enough Trump supporters of the true impact of his policies and weaken Trump’s political leverage over Republicans in Congress. Only then will they be able to vote their conscience.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... ir-economy

<5



MEDIA

Omarosa Names The Insider Whose Testimony ‘Will Be The End Of Donald Trump’

The former White House aide believes there’s one longtime insider whom Trump fears the most as a witness.

By Ed Mazza

03/05/2019 11:43 pm

Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman said Tuesday that there’s one longtime member of President Donald Trump’s inner circle who could reveal everything if called to testify.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews spoke with the former “Apprentice” contestant about the new investigation into Trump launched by House Democrats, who sent document requests to 81 people and entities close to the president.

“Who do you think Trump fears most will be brought in?” Matthews asked.

“One name: Rhona Graff,” Manigault Newman replied without hesitation, referring to Trump’s longtime personal secretary.

“She knows everyone. She knows the role they play. She knows who said what and when. She set up the meetings,” Manigault Newman said. “If she is called to testify, that will be the end of Donald Trump.”

However, she also said it’s possible Graff won’t spill the beans on her longtime boss.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she pled the Fifth,” she said, meaning she would refuse to testify. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all, because she’s been fiercely loyal to the president of the United States.”

Graff has worked for Trump for around 30 years, Politico reported in a profile published in March 2017, noting that many people seeking access to the president still go through her rather than via the White House.

“I go through Rhona,” Roger Stone told the website at the time. “She’s a woman of excellent judgment who reflects her boss’ views. She has to field requests from a lot of people.”

Stone was arrested and charged in January in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The Politico profile also noted at the time that former campaign manager Paul Manafort kept in touch with Trump via Graff, albeit infrequently.

Manafort is in jail and awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty last year in connection with the Mueller investigation.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/omarosa- ... 2f69e792c5

<6



Here’s Why America Is Dumping Its Trash in Poorer Countries

The filthy secrets of the multibillion-dollar global recycling industry.

DOMINIQUE MOSBERGENMARCH 9, 2019 6:00 AM

Bales of plastic garbage, stacked 15 feet high, shimmered in the 100-degree heat. They gave off a faint chemical smell as they warped and softened under the equatorial sun.

A canary-yellow Walmart clearance tag poked out from one of the dirty heaps. Wrappers and packages from American products were visible nearby. These items had likely traveled 10,000 miles to this unmarked and apparently unauthorized dumpsite in a quiet industrial neighborhood in northwestern Malaysia.

Ad hoc dumps like this one, teeming with foreign waste, have popped up across Southeast Asia in recent months —each an ugly symbol of a global recycling system that regional activists and politicians have described as unjust, inequitable and broken. In January and February, HuffPost visited several of these sites in Malaysia to see what really happens to much of the plastic trash that originates in the US and other wealthy nations.

Last year Malaysia became—virtually overnight—the world’s largest importer of plastic scrap, receiving hundreds of millions of tons from the United States, Europe, Japan and elsewhere. Malaysia’s neighbors, including Thailand and Vietnam, endured a similar deluge. The results have been shocking.

In Malaysia, shipments of imported plastic are piling up at ports, and a robust underground industry of illegal recyclers has spread across the nation, affecting the health and safety of local communities.

“What’s happening in Southeast Asia, what’s happening in Malaysia, shows just how bankrupt the recycling system really is,” said Von Hernandez, the global coordinator for the Break Free From Plastic initiative, speaking from the Philippines in February. “Consumers, especially those in the West, are conditioned to believe that when they separate their recyclables and throw them out, that it’ll be properly taken care of. But that’s been exposed as a myth.”

US companies, despite making broad promises about reducing waste and promoting recycling, are often unaware of where their used products and packaging end up.

Walmart, which has vowed to reduce waste and to invest in recycling infrastructure, did not respond to questions about the bale found in Malaysia, but Jerry Powell, the executive editor of the industry publication Resource Recycling, said the company was likely clueless as to how plastic waste apparently generated at one of its US stores traveled thousands of miles across the ocean only to pollute a Malaysian neighborhood. A Walmart store might send its plastic rubbish to a local recycler, he said last week from Oregon, “but what their local recycler does with it, they have no idea. They don’t track where it goes from there.”

Only about half the trash at the Ipoh dumpsite appeared to be from Malaysia. The other half was a hodgepodge of waste from countries like the US, China and New Zealand. The bale with the Walmart tag was tightly packed with an array of other plastic waste, including a bag that once contained cheese from Wisconsin cheesemaker Sargento with a US 800 number printed on its back and a bright blue Oreo Mini container, empty and crushed flat. The bale was wrapped in a plastic sheet stamped with “Sigma Supply of North America,” a packaging company based in Arkansas—the state where Walmart has its headquarters. (Sigma Supply did not respond to a request for comment.)

Most of that trash had been sitting there for at least eight months, according to activists from Greenpeace Malaysia who discovered the unlicensed dumpsite last year. Ben Muni, a Greenpeace campaigner, said the piles of unsheltered waste may eventually be burned illegally or left to decompose in the heat and humidity—a process that could take hundreds of years. “This is probably just going to be left here to rot,” he said.

For months, Greenpeace has been sounding the alarm about Malaysia’s plastic crisis.

“America and other wealthy nations are sweeping their waste to Malaysia and other countries,” said activist Heng Kiah Chun. “Southeast Asia shouldn’t be the world’s dumping ground.”

The filthy secrets of the multibillion-dollar global recycling industry became apparent in the summer of 2017, when China—which had for decades been the world’s largest importer of recyclables—suddenly announced its intention to close its borders to 24 categories of recyclable waste, including several kinds of scrap plastic and mixed paper. The ban was enforced on Jan. 1, 2018, and its effects rippled around the globe.

The move hit hard in the US, which has historically exported about one-third of its recyclables annually, most of it to China. Across the US, mountains of plastic, paper and other materials began piling up at recycling facilities or ended up in landfills. A number of municipalities—from Sacramento, California, to Hooksett, New Hampshire—canceled or significantly curtailed their recycling programs. Cole Rosengren, a reporter for Waste Dive, a DC-based publisher of waste industry news, told HuffPost last July, “There is no state in the country that has not felt at least something because of the [Chinese] ban.”

But US recyclers soon found new buyers and destinations for Americans’ garbage, particularly their plastic waste. Starting in late 2017 and escalating through 2018, Malaysia and other nations in Southeast Asia were flooded with recyclable plastics from the US. The region’s imports from other developed nations like the UK, Germany, Japan and Australia also skyrocketed.

The firehose of trash caught these recipient countries by surprise. None had recycling facilities that remotely compared with China’s, noted Hernandez. In the first half of 2018, imports of plastic trash doubled in Vietnam and increased in Thailand by a staggering 1,370 percent compared with the same period the previous year, according to an October report in the Financial Times. At one point last June, Thailand reportedly had 30,000 containers full of imported plastic waste sitting in its ports because of a lack of capacity and issues with import permits. Vietnam reported some 9,000 idle containers of plastic waste, according to Resource Recycling.

From January to November 2018, Malaysia imported about 435 million pounds of plastic scrap from the US alone, according to data provided by Resource Recycling. Over the same period in 2017, US exporters sent just over 220 million pounds of scrap plastic to Malaysia.

To understand why a country like the US ships so much of its plastic recyclables abroad, one must first understand the complexities of recycling plastic, particularly postconsumer plastic like used food containers and packaging. It’s a notoriously difficult and labor-intensive process—one that’s so complex, in fact, that the bulk of discarded plastics, including the stuff thrown into recycling bins, don’t end up being recycled.

From 1950 to 2015, a staggering 6.9 billion tons of plastics were thrown out worldwide; of that, only an estimated 9 percent has been recycled. In the US the 2018 plastic recycling rate was projected to be an abysmal 4.4 percent.

Experts generally point to two major flaws in the plastic recycling process as the reasons behind these low numbers: The rules about what can be recycled are confusing, and they differ depending on where you live. As a result, many well-intentioned people toss items into the recycling bin that shouldn’t be there.

Sorting, often by hand, is thus a necessary first step before recyclers can process postconsumer plastic. Colored soda bottles need to be separated from clear ones. Plastic bags and cling wrap, known to gum up recycling equipment, have to be fished out. Items heavily contaminated with food bits need to be removed too.

But since sorting is such a labor-intensive exercise, it usually doesn’t make economic sense for many recyclers in the US and other developed countries.

So-called clean plastic recyclables like industrial plastic waste are mostly recycled in the United States, but “easily 80 percent of America’s mixed plastics are getting sent abroad,” said Powell. “They’re too dirty to do anything with [here] in a cost-effective way.”

For decades, China bought this waste for cheap from America and other developed nations to feed its flourishing manufacturing sector. Before its 2018 ban, China processed about 45 percent of the world’s plastic waste. From 1992 to 2016, the country imported more than 110 million tons of plastic scrap.

But as its pace of manufacturing slowed and labor costs rose, Beijing’s desire to be the world’s recycling bin rapidly diminished. Much of the imported recyclable waste was so contaminated that it could not be recycled anyway, Chinese officials complained, and piles of imported waste were ending up in China’s landfills and polluting the country’s waterways.

“Recycling is such a moral gray area,” said Adam Minter, a recycling expert and the author of Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade. “When you put your recyclables in the bin, you want it to feel green, but it’s really very complicated. If you think you’re not wasting resources and not making an environmental or social impact, then you clearly don’t understand what’s happening.”

This moral grayness has been thrown into sharp relief in Malaysia, where hundreds of plastics recyclers from China—lured by cheaper labor and less stringent environmental regulations—have relocated their operations in the aftermath of the Chinese ban.

Activists say these Chinese recyclers have been setting up factories, often illegally, across Malaysia and have been processing and disposing of waste without regulatory oversight. Whatever they manage to recycle is allegedly flowing back to China, where it’s used for manufacturing. “China still needs a lot of raw materials,” Minter said.

“You have to understand that recycling is really about manufacturing, and it’s only about manufacturing,” continued Minter, whose family has operated a scrap business in Minnesota for several generations. “We’ve come to see recycling as this environmental thing that’s dusted with green fairy dust—but [recyclables] are really raw materials, and the reason they went to China in the first place is because all the manufacturing was happening there. And it continues to go there now because manufacturing is still happening.”

A Malaysian environment official explained that while legal recyclers may be unwilling to import contaminated plastic recyclables, unauthorized recyclers have no such qualms. “It’s lucrative for them,” said Phee Boon Poh, the chairman of the state environment committee in Penang, speaking from his office in February.

Processing contaminated plastic recyclables requires more sorting (to sift out the good stuff) and incurs additional costs for legal recyclers, which need to meet regulatory requirements and shell out cash to discard whatever waste they aren’t able to recycle.

Unlicensed recyclers, however, can set up factories and hire workers cheaply, Phee said, and illegally access groundwater for the recycling process. Without any environmental regulations to worry about, the recyclers can leave contaminated water untreated — which, Phee said, has been affecting local waterways and biodiversity. Leftover recyclables that can’t be processed can then be dumped illegally (in other words, for free). Often these dumped plastics are then burned, their noxious fumes polluting neighborhoods and sickening residents.

“These naughty boys are importing a lot of what’s basically just rubbish,” said Johnson Lai, a licensed recycler based near the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, referring to the rash of illegal recycling facilities that have cropped up around the country. “The recyclables they import, they’re [so contaminated and poorly sorted] that only approximately 30 percent of it can be used.” The rest ends up getting dumped.

At one illegal dumpsite in Jenjarom, a small industrial town about 40 miles south of Kuala Lumpur, HuffPost found plastic waste from the US, the UK, Germany and elsewhere in Europe piled high in charred heaps, the result of an attempted burning. In one blackened bale, apparently from America, various colorful plastic bags and packaging items had melted into one another—a 7/11 bag with a US phone number on it for potential franchisees to call, a torn Sour Patch Kids packet singed on one side and a wrapper from an Arizona green tea container. “An American Company,” the wrapper boasted.

Local firefighters went to this site a few weeks earlier to put out the blaze after plumes of white smoke, thick with pollutants, choked the surrounding neighborhood. The people who set the trash alight—presumed to be the unlicensed recyclers who dumped it there — were never caught.

“They’ve given us legal recyclers such a bad name,” Lai lamented. “It’s been very bad for business.”

But these “naughty boys” in Malaysia aren’t the only ones to blame for this crisis. According to Powell, recycling exporters in the US should be scrutinized as well.

Exporters have been known to hide bales of contaminated plastic waste in shipments that contain otherwise clean plastics, he said. “American recycling processors may not want to pay to dump stuff in landfills here. It could be easier and cheaper to just shove them in the back of a container and ship them off.”

Low shipping costs could be encouraging this behavior, Powell said.

Shipping containers are constantly arriving in the US from Asia, “filled with Nike shoes and Apple phones,” he said. But since American goods aren’t getting shipped back to Asia in the same quantities, freight companies—rather than ship empty containers—offer low rates to recycling exporters to ship recyclables there.

“It might cost $3,000 for a 24-ton container to be shipped from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, but the return journey could cost as low as $400 or even $200,” Powell said. “It costs more money to move a bale across Los Angeles than from the Los Angeles pier to Hong Kong.”

Yeo Bee Yin, Malaysia’s minister of environment, said she had no clue just how much plastic waste was being traded globally—that is, until bales upon bales of the stuff began appearing on her country’s shores.

“We didn’t feel the impact of just how much trash we have in the whole world until China banned it,” she said from her office in Putrajaya. “It wasn’t just a wake-up call for us. It was a wake-up call for the world.”

Yeo was appointed to her post last year after embattled Prime Minister Najib Razak’s Barisan Nasional party, which had ruled Malaysia for over 60 years, was ousted in the national elections.

There were, quite literally, fires for her to fight from Day One. Malaysians across the country complained of plastics being dumped and illegally burned in their neighborhoods. In Jenjarom, a group of community activists raised the alarm after locals, including children, began suffering en masse from headaches, respiratory problems, skin allergies and other ailments. Activists blamed the illnesses on the incessant and widespread burning by unlicensed recyclers around town.

One resident-turned-activist, Pua Lay Peng, said she noticed fewer butterflies and other insects on her walks around Jenjarom. “The sky was always hazy,” she said. “I felt so lethargic all the time.”

Since Yeo took office, she and her ministry have shuttered more than 130 illegal plastic waste recycling facilities, many of them in Jenjarom. Several of these recyclers have been charged in court and slapped with significant fines. She has vowed to be tough on unlicensed operators and said Malaysia is putting together new recycling-related regulations to ensure the country never becomes the “world’s dumping ground” again.

Malaysia, like Thailand and Vietnam, temporarily banned the import of plastic scrap last year. Yeo said that the ban will eventually be lifted but that the new regulations—which will be permanent and are slated to be introduced in the coming months—will limit the amount of contaminated plastic scrap allowed into the country. The rules governing recycling permits will also be strengthened, she said.

But activists have expressed skepticism about Malaysia’s plan to eradicate illegal recyclers. “The problem will be the same because enforcement and monitoring will be weak,” said C.K. Lee, a Jenjarom resident and community activist. “If they couldn’t properly enforce the earlier regulations, what makes them think they can do it now with even more rules?”

On a bright Saturday morning in February, Lee and other local activists alerted HuffPost to an illegal dumpsite that had been set alight on a Jenjarom palm oil plantation. Plumes of toxic smoke mushroomed out of the burning piles of plastic scrap. Local firefighters, none of them wearing masks, were already on site when we arrived, struggling to put out the blaze.

One firefighter told HuffPost that plastic fires are notoriously difficult to extinguish. Plus, since many of them in Malaysia are started in isolated areas, finding water to put them out can be an additional challenge. The fire we saw that morning took the firefighters hours to douse, after multiple trips back to the fire station to refill their water tanks.

“I wish the ministers could come here to see this for themselves,” said Pua, gesturing at the clouds of smoke as she covered her face with a mask.

Exacerbating the situation is the apparent resilience of the network of unlicensed recyclers. Akin to the Hydra from Greek mythology, two seem to appear for each one cut down.

While the illegal recycling activity was largely limited to the southern part of Peninsular Malaysia (like the town of Jenjarom and its surroundings) in early to mid-2018, that activity has steadily traveled north (to Ipoh and beyond) as the government has cracked down on unlicensed operators.

“They haven’t disappeared,” said Pua. “They just move somewhere else.”

Still, Yeo said she’s confident that Malaysia will soon be able to get the situation under control. But, she stressed, the conversation cannot stop there.

“This is a global problem” that requires a global solution, she said. “Yes, we can solve this domestically here in Malaysia, but we are all sharing the same ocean. The trash may end up in neighboring countries … and it will eventually come back to us. These are transboundary issues.”

Yeo said an international treaty aimed at making the global movement of plastic scrap more equitable and transparent is a critical and necessary step forward.

She said Malaysia supports a 2018 proposal from Norway that suggested adding plastic scrap to the list of materials covered by the Basel Convention, a 1992 treaty on the movement of hazardous waste between nations.

If such an amendment is approved, there would be stricter controls over the movement of plastic scrap across borders, and countries would not be allowed to export such materials to nations lacking the technical capacity to manage and dispose of that scrap in an environmentally sound manner.

It would also mandate that exporting countries seek consent from receiving nations before shipping the scrap. “It would give the recipient country an opportunity to say ‘no’—instead of being surprised, like in the case of Vietnam and Thailand, which were shocked when plastic waste started piling up last year,” said Hernandez.

For the United States, the world’s top exporter of plastic scrap, such an amendment could have an even greater impact. Though 185 countries and the European Union are parties to the Basel Convention, the US is not. If the amendment is approved, “many Basel Convention countries would be barred from accepting scrap plastic from non-party countries,” whether they give consent or not, Resource Recycling noted last year.

Yeo said citizens need to press their governments to embrace such an amendment or a treaty similar to it.

“The citizens of the developed world need to demand that their governments be transparent about the way they track their waste. Where exactly is your trash going? Where is your plastic going?” she said.

“[What] irritates me is the injustice. The injustice seeing people in the developing world suffering from the rubbish [originating] in developed countries. I don’t think citizens of these countries know what’s happening, maybe even lawmakers don’t know,” she added.

Yeo, who recently introduced an initiative to ban all single-use plastics in Malaysia by 2030, said people the world over also need to fundamentally change their relationship with plastic.

As the world’s population continues to balloon, the need to dramatically reduce plastic consumption will become ever more pressing, she said. One way to achieve this is to find viable, more sustainable alternatives to the ubiquitous material; improving recycling technology and infrastructure worldwide is also key, she added.

“It cannot be business as usual,” Yeo said.

https://www.motherjones.com/environment ... countries/

<7



POLITICS

CONGRESS

HOW DEMOCRATS WILL USE 'DRAIN THE SWAMP' AGAINST TRUMP IN 2020

BY ALANA ABRAMSON MARCH 8, 2019

The measures are a three-fer for Democrats: They address what the party’s leaders think are serious problems with the nation’s politics, they highlight areas where they can criticize Trump’s actions in office and they are attractive to the suburban moderates who helped them regain the House in the midterm elections.

“I do not know how you can have the hypocrisy and gall to support a presidential campaign that calls for the swamp to be drained and then say this [bill] is dead on arrival,” Rep. Max Rose, who unseated a Republican incumbent in a conservative New York City district last November, told reporters the day before the bill passed. “We are going to pose the question to the Republicans: are you on the side of the voters or the special interests?”

The bill, officially called the “For the People Act” and given the number H.R. 1 to signal its primary importance, passed strictly along party lines. It would require automatic and same-day voting registration across the country, revamp the stalled Federal Election Commission, require every organization involved in political lobbying to disclose its donors, give the states money to improve voting machines and seek to mitigate gerrymandering, among other things.

Pointedly, it also includes a stipulation that presidential and vice presidential candidates must disclose ten years worth of tax returns — a not so subtle shot at Trump, who has yet to release his returns and could soon be embroiled in litigation as House Democrats try to obtain them.

“The fact that many provisions are ones that would certainly, if they were in law, constrain some of the bad behavior we have seen from this administration I think just punctuates why we need these kinds of things,” said Rep. John Sarbanes, the primary architect of the bill.

Republicans unilaterally oppose the measures, with McConnell calling it a “power grab.”

“Democrats want to convince everyone that our republic is in crisis,” he said on the Senate floor this week. “But when you scratch the surface of these scare tactics, their two main complaints seem to be that Democrats don’t win enough elections and people Democrats don’t like also happen to have First Amendment rights.”

But Democrats argue that could backfire on the GOP. People like Rose, who face reelection in competitive districts, said that the themes in the bill aligned with key concerns their constituents voiced during the campaign.

“There was no single issue that was more resonant with the voters of the 7th district in New Jersey than this and … it’s completely bipartisan,” said New Jersey Rep. Tom Malinowski, who also ousted a Republican incumbent last November. “I look forward to being able to say, if we pass this in the House because the voters of the 7th district flipped the House, we can do the same thing in the Senate if voters in the United States make the change that New Jersey helped make with the House in 2108.”

All of this points to corruption being a key factor in the 2020 presidential race, particularly in the Democratic primary. Already, presidential candidates have stared incorporating themes from the bill into their campaign strategies. Several candidates, for instance, have already said they will forgo donations from corporate political action committees.

“[Candidates] will all be able to point to this kind of baseline standard of what strong pro democracy reform looks like which is H.R.1,” said Sarbanes. “The fact that when Democrats got the gavel back the first thing we did was put these reforms out there and say this is what we stand for? I think that will be a huge driver of the election narrative.”

Donald Trump used arguments about a “rigged system” and pledges to “drain the swamp” in Washington to win the presidency in 2016. But Democrats signaled strongly this week that they’ll use the same lines against him in the next election.

On Friday, House Democrats unanimously voted to pass a broad package of reforms on voting rights, campaign finance, election security and gerrymandering, among other topics, that would be the biggest changes to elections and anti-corruption statutes in years.

The bill is dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized it as a “Democrat Politician Protection Act” and said he would not bring it up for a vote.

But the ideas in it are almost certainly headed to the next Democratic presidential nominee’s platform, and, if the party is successful in 2020, could be one of the first issues Congress takes up.

http://time.com/5548014/democrats-hr1-e ... orruption/

<8



NEWS

North Koreans Go To Polls: Turnout Will Be 100 Percent, Results Unanimous

March 10, 2019 01:56 GMT

North Koreans are going to the polls -- and turnout of near 100 percent is assured, along with a 100 percent result for the ruling Workers' Party, since it is the only choice available.

The election on March 10 for the Supreme People's Assembly, the country’s rubber-stamp legislature, is the second to take place since leader Kim Jong Un took power.

An election is held every five years in the communist country for the legislature. There is only one approved name on each of the ballot papers.

Voters theoretically could cross out the name before casting the ballot, but that is not known to have ever happened.

North Korea analyst Fyodor Tertitsky, who is based in the South Korean, told the BBC that if someone were to cross out a name, it would almost certainly lead to the secret police coming for the voter, who would likely be declared insane.

The official KCNA news agency said turnout five years ago was 99.97 percent, with only those who were out of the country or "working in oceans" at the time not taking part.

The vote was 100 percent in favor of the named candidates.

Citizens 17 years of age or older are required to vote.

https://www.rferl.org/a/north-korea-ele ... 12889.html

<9



HEALTH

Medieval Diseases Are Infecting California’s Homeless

Typhus, tuberculosis, and other illnesses are spreading quickly through camps and shelters.

ANNA GORMANKAISER HEALTH NEWS

MAR 8, 2019

Jennifer Millar keeps trash bags and hand sanitizer near her tent, and she regularly pours water mixed with hydrogen peroxide on the sidewalk nearby. Keeping herself and the patch of concrete she calls home clean is a top priority.

But this homeless encampment off a Hollywood freeway ramp is often littered with needles and trash and soaked in urine. Rats occasionally scamper through, and Millar fears the consequences.

“I worry about all those diseases,” said Millar, 43, who has been homeless most of her life.

Infectious diseases—some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages—are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard.

Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus—a disease spread by infected fleas on rats and other animals—in downtown streets. Officials briefly closed part of City Hall after reporting that rodents had invaded the building.

People in Washington State have been infected with the diarrheal disease shigella, spread through feces, as well as Bartonella quintana, or trench fever, which spreads through body lice.

Hepatitis A, also spread primarily through feces, infected more than 1,000 people in Southern California in the past two years. The disease also has erupted in New Mexico, Ohio, and Kentucky, primarily among people who are homeless or use drugs.

Public-health officials and politicians are using terms like disaster and public-health crisis to describe the outbreaks, and they are warning that these diseases can easily jump beyond the homeless population.

“Our homeless crisis is increasingly becoming a public-health crisis,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in his State of the State speech in February, citing outbreaks of hepatitis A in San Diego County, syphilis in Sonoma County, and typhus in Los Angeles County.

“Typhus,” he said. “A medieval disease. In California. In 2019.”

The diseases have flared as the nation’s homeless population has grown in the past two years: About 553,000 people were homeless at the end of 2018, and nearly one-quarter of homeless people live in California.

The diseases spread quickly and widely among people living outside or in shelters, helped along by sidewalks contaminated with human feces, crowded living conditions, weakened immune systems, and limited access to health care.

“The hygiene situation is just horrendous” for people living on the streets, says Glenn Lopez, a physician with St. John’s Well Child & Family Center, who treats homeless patients in Los Angeles County. “It becomes just like a Third World environment, where their human feces contaminate the areas where they are eating and sleeping.”

Those infectious diseases are not limited to homeless populations, Lopez warns: “Even someone who believes they are protected from these infections [is] not.”

At least one Los Angeles city staffer said she contracted typhus in City Hall last fall. And San Diego County officials warned in 2017 that diners at a well-known restaurant were at risk of hepatitis A.

There were 167 cases of typhus from January 1, 2018, through February 1 of this year, up from 125 in 2013 and 13 in 2008, according to the California Public Health Department.

Typhus is a bacterial infection that can cause a high fever, stomach pain, and chills but can be treated with antibiotics. Outbreaks are more common in overcrowded and trash-filled areas that attract rats.

The recent typhus outbreak began last fall, when health officials reported clusters of the flea-borne disease in downtown Los Angeles and Compton. They also have occurred in Pasadena, where the problems are likely due to people feeding stray cats carrying fleas.

Last month, the county announced another outbreak in downtown Los Angeles that infected nine people, six of whom were homeless. After city workers said they saw rodent droppings in City Hall, Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson briefly shut down his office to rip up the rugs, and he also called for an investigation and more cleaning.

Hepatitis A is caused by a virus usually transmitted when people come in contact with the feces of infected people. Most people recover on their own, but the disease can be very serious for those with underlying liver conditions. There were 948 cases of hepatitis A in 2017 and 178 in 2018 and 2019, the state public-health department said. Twenty-one people have died as a result of the 2017–18 outbreak.

The infections are not a surprise, given the lack of attention to housing and health care for the homeless and the dearth of bathrooms and places to wash hands, says Jeffrey Duchin, the health officer for Seattle and King County, Washington, which has seen shigella, trench fever, and skin infections among homeless populations.

“It’s a public-health disaster,” Duchin says.

New York City, where the majority of the homeless population lives in shelters rather than on the streets, has not experienced the same outbreaks of hepatitis A and typhus, says Kelly Duran, an emergency-medicine physician and assistant professor at New York University. But Duran says different infections occur in shelters, including tuberculosis, a disease that spreads through the air and typically infects the lungs.

The diseases sometimes get the “medieval” moniker because people in that era lived in squalid conditions without clean water or sewage treatment, says Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine and public health at UCLA.

People living on the streets or in homeless shelters are vulnerable to such outbreaks because their weakened immune systems are worsened by stress, malnutrition, and sleep deprivation. Many also have mental illness and substance-abuse disorders, which can make it harder for them to stay healthy or get health care.

On one recent February afternoon, the Saban Community Clinic physician assistant Negeen Farmand walked through homeless encampments in Hollywood carrying a backpack with medical supplies. She stopped to talk to a man sweeping the sidewalks. He said he sees “everything and anything” in the gutters and hopes he doesn’t get sick.

She introduced herself to a few others and asked if they had any health issues that needed checking. When she saw Millar, Farmand checked her blood pressure, asked about her asthma, and urged her to come see a doctor for treatment of her hepatitis C, a viral infection spread through contaminated blood that can lead to serious liver damage.

“To get these people to come into a clinic is a big thing,” she said. “A lot of them are distrustful of the health-care system.”

On another day, 53-year-old Karen Mitchell waited to get treated for a persistent cough by St. John’s Well Child & Family Center’s mobile health clinic. She also needed a tuberculosis test, as required by the shelter where she was living in Bellflower, California.

Mitchell, who said she developed alcoholism after a career in pharmaceutical sales, said she has contracted pneumonia from germs from other shelter residents. “Everyone is always sick, no matter what precautions they take.”

During the hepatitis-A outbreak, public-health officials administered widespread vaccinations, cleaned the streets with bleach and water, and installed hand-washing stations and bathrooms near high concentrations of homeless people.

But health officials and homeless advocates said more needs to be done, including helping people access medical and behavioral health care and affordable housing.

“It really is unconscionable,” says Bobby Watts, the CEO of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, a policy and advocacy organization. “These are all preventable diseases.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... ss/584380/

<10



Donald Trump should know to give up on his trade or currency wars because they are easy to lose and impossible to win

Japan could be next on Trump’s hit list for a trade deal, and there may be a currency element in it

Any attempt by Team Trump to regulate the yen’s value – or the renminbi for that matter – will prove as futile as it is risky

Anthony Rowley

Published: 9:04am, 10 Mar, 2019

Donald Trump in effect declared defeat as he walked away from his Hanoi summit with Kim Jong-Un last month, and he might well be advised to do the same in trade negotiations with China before he stumbles even deeper into trouble.

Team Trump has opened up a Pandora’s Box and is ill-equipped to deal with what’s inside.

Japan could be next on Trump’s hit list for a trade deal and Tokyo fears there could be a currency element in the deal, as there may be yet with China. If so, this would take Trump’s trade policies even further into the realm of fantasy than they have strayed already.

Japan is vulnerable because its continued monetary easing at a time of tightening by the US and Europe looks increasingly like a device to stem the yen’s appreciation.

Even so, any attempt by Team Trump to regulate the yen’s value – or the renminbi for that matter – will prove as futile as it is risky.

Achieving balanced trade on a bilateral basis is complicated enough as it is, whether we are talking about barter or monetised commerce. Trade is measured by value rather than volume, and any attempt to control the value of the medium of exchange as part of a trade agreement is naive at best.

The value of currencies is determined by international capital flows, allowing trade deficits to be financed. The US economy, which runs a huge deficit in merchandise trade, uses the dollar’s status as a reserve currency to attract huge capital inflows, effectively funding the deficit.

Instead of wasting time on currency wars with China or Japan, Trump’s negotiators should educate themselves better on how today’s semi-globalised economy works, and then resolve either to push on toward full economic globalisation or retreat altogether from international trade. There is no viable halfway house.


Production centres no longer correspond to national borders. They are strung out as supply chains across the world, and this is largely what determines trade balances; not the trade or monetary policies of individual countries.

Yet, US negotiators cannot seem to see beyond their own borders. They are like aircraft pilots of yesteryear, thinking they can still pull or push a few simple controls in a small plane, when the global economic system has become as complex as a jumbo jet. The dangers of pushing the system into a stall and crash, taking us all with it, are very real.

There is no longer such thing as a “simple” trade agreement between nations. Trade is one element of a complex economic relationship between countries. As former US senior trade official Clyde Prestowitz said, the question is not whether countries are playing fair, but whether they are even playing the same game.


When Prestowitz was negotiating in the 1980s over Japan’s trade surplus with the US, it dawned on him that the two countries were not playing the same game. Japan’s government-guided economic structure was fundamentally different to America’s free market.

It is now dawning upon US negotiators that much the same applies to China. China’s economy is centrally planned while the US is market-based. Since China under President Xi Jinping is moving toward even more centralised control, the chances are slim of persuading, or coercing China into behaving like a market economy.

The US may try to become more like China, Prestowitz said. He is promoting the idea of an industrial policy under which resources can be directed toward planned targets rather than leaving everything to the wisdom or whim of the market. A Senate Committee report has inclined in a similar direction.


This can be part of a great reversal dating to early 2018 when the traditionally pro-free-trade Economist newspaper ran a cover story entitled “The West Made the Wrong Bet” in believing that China would become a market economy under the World Trade Organisation.

On one hand, we have Trump’s trade officials pushing for China to conclude a trade deal as though between two equal partners, while influential figures in the US establishment favour “fighting like with like” in making their economy more like China’s.

This will lead to more friction and even more harm to the international trading system than Trump’s policies have done. If the US-China deal crash lands in the same way that the US-North Korea negotiations did in Hanoi, US tariffs could even go higher, with damage all round.

Whatever the outcome of the US-China trade war – or looming conflicts with Japan and others – the way forward is not through confrontation but mutual trade and monetary reforms that recognise the implications of globalisation for political and economic sovereignty. Recognition of the fact that there is a problem would be at least a step toward resolving it.

The danger is that the Trump administration will be tempted to double down on trade and currency wars in view of the latest data showing that a 12.4 per cent jump in US merchandise deficit in December contributed to last year’s record US$891.3 billion trade shortfall.

It may take a crisis to force more rational solutions.

https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-f ... rency-wars

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Politics

China plans law to make reviving rural areas a priority in modernisation push

Lawmaker Chen Xiwen says committee is drafting legislation to set out status of Xi Jinping’s campaign to develop countryside

Rural areas, where incomes and living standards are significantly lower, have been left behind in China’s urbanisation drive

Zhuang Pinghui

Published: 7:03am, 10 Mar, 2019

Beijing is drafting a law to underpin an ambitious campaign to revitalise its rural areas – part of President Xi Jinping’s plan to make China a strong modern country by 2050.

The campaign, initiated by Xi when he started his second term in 2017, marks a shift in focus for the ruling Communist Party – prioritising the country’s rural areas over the urban development that has fuelled breakneck economic growth for decades.

Xi’s vision is for rural areas that have prosperous industries and farmers with raised living standards, but not at the expense of the environment, by the time 2050 rolls around. The ultimate aim is for the party to “build a modern, socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious” by the time the People’s Republic of China marks its 100th anniversary in 2049.

Speaking in Beijing on Saturday, Chen Xiwen, a National People’s Congress lawmaker for agriculture and rural affairs, said the new law would set out the priority status of developing China’s rural areas.


He said Xi had made rural revitalisation a top priority for the party and vowed to address the gap between agriculture and industries, and between urban and rural areas, and improve the system to advance rural development.

“All these guiding principles need to be stipulated in legislation,” said Chen, a former deputy director of the central agricultural work leading group.

For decades, rural areas, where incomes and living standards are significantly lower, have been left behind in China’s urbanisation drive. Millions of farmers have gone to the cities in search of work in factories, leaving behind their homes, land and children in the care of elderly relatives.

Meanwhile, the wealth gap has continued to widen. The gap in annual disposable income between rural and urban dwellers reached 24,634 yuan (US$3,664) last year, up 45 per cent from 17,038 yuan (US$2,534) at the end of 2013, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Beijing’s campaign is set out in three phases – building an institutional and governance framework to revitalise rural areas by 2020, modernising rural areas and agriculture by 2030, and realising “all aspects” of the revival and completing the project by 2050.

Chen said the law would also aim to put a stop to the destruction of the Chinese countryside, including the loss of farmland to development and environmental damage.

“It’s common knowledge that rural areas have suffered during industrialisation and urbanisation,” he said. “We need to have policies and laws that not only promote rural revitalisation but also restrict and regulate behaviour that damages the environment, such as setting up polluting factories.”

Zhao Xijun, a professor of finance at Renmin University of China in Beijing, said enshrining the campaign in law would help to ensure it is continued over the years, even after a change in leadership.

“There has been an uneven allocation of resources favouring industrialisation for decades and it is unrealistic to try to resolve everything in a short period of time,” Zhao said. “A long-term plan is needed, and a law is the best way to put a stable, systematic arrangement in place to ensure consistent policies and actions.”

The NPC agriculture and rural affairs committee expects to release a draft for consultation to legal experts, government agencies and local legislatures within the year and the bill would be presented to lawmakers next year.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politic ... ernisation

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<1



1. MOOLA

6 HOURS AGO 3.11.19

Trump Proposes Record $4.75 Trillion Budget—With Additional $8.6 Billion for His Border Wall

President Trump proposed a record-setting $4.75 trillion budget on Monday. The proposal includes an increase in military spending and sharp cuts to education and environmental protection for the 2020 fiscal year. The budget, “A Budget for Better America,” asks for an additional $8.6 billion for construction of a border wall, and includes a five percent increase in military spending, which is more than the Pentagon had asked for. Also included is a $1.9 trillion cut to safety net programs, like Medicaid and Medicare. Democratic leaders in both the House and the Senate pronounced the budget dead on arrival on Sunday. Actual spending levels are controlled by Congress. Trump’s previous budgets have largely failed to gain traction, even when fellow Republicans controlled both chambers. The budget is an outline of Trump’s re-election campaign priorities, replete with deep cuts to programs that Democrats hold dear.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-pro ... order-wall

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WHITE HOUSE

Trump broke his promise to fix the debt. He'll blame Congress in 2020.

Analysis: The president said he'd eliminate the debt. Instead, he borrowed trillions more. But he's betting the red ink won't stain him in 2020.

March 11, 2019, 3:19 PM CDT

By Jonathan Allen

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's budget is the confession of a broken promise.

As a candidate, Trump famously vowed to eliminate the national debt in eight years.

But under the spending blueprint he released Monday — which has "promises kept" in its title — the federal government wouldn't start paying down debt for 15 years. Until then, even under the rosy projections of Trump's budget-writers, Washington would run annual deficits adding to a red-ink total that already stands at more than $22 trillion.

Of course, Trump's initial promise was fantastical. But his tax cuts and defense buildup ushered in a new era of trillion-dollar annual deficits. His own budget projects that next year's deficit will weigh in at $1.1 trillion.

That's despite calling for massive cuts to entitlement programs, headlined by a plan to force recipients of Medicaid, food stamps and federal housing subsidies to work or otherwise engage in their communities.

There was no way, given the state of the national debt or of his preferred policies, that Trump could begin to entertain the idea that he would be able to campaign in 2020 on having kept the promise that he would eliminate the national debt.

Instead, what he's setting up to do with this budget is fight with — and blame — members of Congress as he frames his re-election message. The fiscal failure is their fault because they didn't follow his lead, his allies say.

"Congress just hasn’t been willing to play ball," Russ Vought, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, said Monday at a White House press conference. The deficits in Trump's early years in office were necessary, Vought said, "to get the economy going," which was essentially the reasoning for the deficit-financed Obama stimulus plan a decade ago.

Now, administration officials and Trump allies say, it's time for Congress to make trade-offs that reflect Trump's priorities.

Democrats say he's asking them to harm the poor and the middle-class to maintain low tax rates for individuals and corporations and to continue building up the Pentagon at the expense of non-defense agencies, which would see a 5 percent cut in discretionary spending.

"The cruel and shortsighted cuts in President Trump’s budget request are a roadmap to a sicker, weaker America," Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement. "House Democrats will reject this toxic, destructive budget request which would hollow out our national strength and fail to meet the needs of the American people."

Trump "is committed" to cutting deficits and eliminating the debt, said Michael Caputo, who worked on his 2016 campaign. "I think he’s now accustomed to the unfortunate reality of the situation, which is neither side has any interest in proper stewardship of the taxpayers’ money."

That means hammering lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for blocking his proposals to eliminate federal programs and even spending requests — like the $8.6 billion he wants for a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico — that would add to the expenditure side of the ledger.

Already, he's getting pushback from members of his own party on specific provisions. For example, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, dashed out a press release vowing to fight Trump's proposal to slash funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative by 90 percent.

On a more global level, lawmakers are also sure to refuse his calls to make massive cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, where his budget envisions reaping savings from kicking the poor and elderly off social insurance programs if those aid recipients don't work.

And Democrats say his request for more wall money — in the midst of a fight with Congress over whether he can shift previously appropriated money around for that purpose — is a non-starter. Moreover, they say he's pinching the poor and middle class through programmatic cuts for what Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., the vice chairman of the House Budget Committee and a possible 2020 presidential candidate, called "narrow personal political priorities" like tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and the border wall.

"The president’s budget is a chance to challenge the country to think big," said Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., the vice chairman of the House Budget Committee and a potential 2020 presidential candidate. "President Trump just delivered a budget that challenges America to look backwards to a 1970s economic vision and a 5th century national security vision with a silly wall."

Even if Congress enacted every line of Trump's budget — and make no mistake, it's actually headed straight for a waste bin in Pelosi's Capitol office — he would start next year's campaign stretch run having added trillions of dollars to the debt he promised to eliminate.

More than that, he has now shown he has no plan for the budget being balanced in any single year until he's been out of office for at least a decade.

He can blame Congress all he wants. But the numbers — even the optimistic figures pumped out by his budget office — don't lie. Trump didn't just break his promise to eliminate debt; he reversed it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... ss-n981866

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Pelosi, Schumer push back on new Trump demand for wall funding: 'We hope he learned his lesson'

BY BRETT SAMUELS - 03/10/19 01:33 PM EDT

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) indicated on Sunday that President Trump's reported plan to ask for $8.6 billion in the fiscal 2020 budget to fund a wall along the southern border was a non-starter.

"President Trump hurt millions of Americans and caused widespread chaos when he recklessly shut down the government to try to get his expensive and ineffective wall, which he promised would be paid for by Mexico," the Democratic leaders said in a statement.

"Congress refused to fund his wall and he was forced to admit defeat and reopen the government. The same thing will repeat itself if he tries this again," they added. "We hope he learned his lesson."

Pelosi and Schumer instead suggested that Trump put money that could be used on the border wall toward education and workforce development programs.

The statement served as a preview for what is likely to be a contentious negotiation on the president's budget proposal, which is due to be released on Monday.

Multiple reports indicated that Trump will request $8.6 billion for barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The funding would reportedly pull $5 billion from the Department of Homeland Security budget and $3.6 billion from the military construction budget at the Pentagon, according to the news service. The budget proposal also would include $3.6 million in military construction funding to help fund projects affected by the wall.

The president triggered a government shutdown in December over his demand for $5.7 billion in wall funding.

Congress ultimately approved $1.375 billion for border barriers, and the president issued a national emergency to bypass Congress and spend roughly $8 billion to construct his long-desired border wall.

The emergency declaration proved controversial, with the House voting to terminate it and the Senate likely to do the same this week. The rebuke sets Trump up to issue his first veto of his presidency.

Congress must approve funding for fiscal 2020 by Oct. 1, or funding could lapse and the government could shut down.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4334 ... we-hope-he

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Omar thanks Fox News for publicly condemning Pirro

BY JOE CONCHA - 03/11/19 01:55 PM EDT

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) thanked Fox News on Monday after the network condemned host Jeanine Pirro for remarks suggesting the first-term lawmaker's Islamic beliefs put her at odds with the Constitution.

“Thank you, @FoxNews,” Omar tweeted to her more than 720,000 followers. “No one’s commitment to our constitution should be questioned because of their faith or country of birth.”

Pirro had argued on her weekly Fox News program, "Justice with Judge Jeanine," that Omar is not committed to upholding the Constitution due to her religious beliefs and because she wears a hijab, an Islamic headscarf.

“Think about it: Omar wears a hijab,” Pirro said during her opening monologue Saturday night. “Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?”

Fox News followed with a statement the next day condemning Pirro’s remarks.

“We strongly condemn Jeanine Pirro’s comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar,” the network said. “They do not reflect those of the network and we have addressed the matter with her directly.”

Criticism from within Fox News also came from a Muslim producer who works on Bret Baier's "Special Report" program.

“@JudgeJeanine can you stop spreading this false narrative that somehow Muslims hate America or women who wear a hijab aren’t American enough?” tweeted Hufsa Kamal Khan.

“You have Muslims working at the same network you do, including myself," she tweeted. "K thx.”

Pirro in her own statement pushed back on the criticism and attempted to clarify her comments.

“I’ve seen a lot of comments about my opening statement from Saturday night’s show and I did not call Rep. Omar un-American,” Pirro said. “My intention was to ask a question and start a debate, but of course because one is Muslim does not mean you don’t support the Constitution.”

Pirro added that she invites Omar “to come on my show any time to discuss all of the important issues facing America today.”

Omar, 37, has drawn criticism from Republicans and members of her own party for what have been deemed by many as anti-Semitic remarks regarding Israel and the U.S. lawmakers who support the Jewish state.

On Thursday, the House passed a bill condemning hate. The bill was prompted largely by Omar's comments since taking office but the bill did not specifically name the congresswoman.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4335 ... ning-pirro

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POLITICS

Trump Administration Still Wants To Gut Popular Land Conservation Program

Just last week, the acting Interior Department chief said the Land and Water Conservation Fund was an agency “priority.”

By Chris D’Angelo

03/11/2019 07:26 pm ET

In a case of “If you love me, why don’t you show it?” the Trump administration is again asking Congress to all but eliminate funding for the popular Land and Water Conservation Fund, which protects natural areas and water resources, just days after the Interior Department’s leader called the program a priority.

The proposal to slash its budget by 95 percent is part of President Donald Trump’s $4.75 trillion 2020 budget blueprint released Monday. But last week, acting Secretary David Bernhardt told those gathered at a conservation conference in Denver that funding the program, considered one of America’s most important conservation tools, was a “priority” for the administration.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund, established in 1964, uses offshore fossil-fuel revenue to acquire land and establish and protect parks, wildlife refuges, forests and important wildlife habitat. It also provides matching grants to states and local governments to fund recreation areas, recover endangered species and protect forest lands and other habitats.

Funding lapsed in late September, but a bipartisan public lands package passed by both chambers of Congress last month would permanently reauthorize the fund. Trump is expected to sign the bill as early as this week.

However, the Trump administration’s budget for 2020 calls for a 14 percent cut at the Interior Department, which has an overall budget of $12.5 billion. The plan would slash the federal portion of LWCF from $156 million down to just $7.6 million. That closely mirrors the administration’s 2019 budget request, which also sought a 95 percent cut.

Last month, Bernhardt took to Twitter to applaud the Senate’s passage of the sweeping public lands bill.

“The Trump Administration fully supports reauthorizing #LWCF and we included it in our budget last year,” he wrote.

And during a speech last week at the North American Wildlife & Natural Resources Conference, Bernhardt said that “many of the provisions” within the public lands package, including reauthorizing LWCF, were “priority projects” that the department has “been working on for the last several years.”

Scott Cameron, the principal deputy assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, briefed reporters on the Interior Department’s budget proposal during a call Monday. The request, which would boost funding for energy and mineral development on public lands while making deep cuts to conservation programs, “reflects the president’s commitment to continue to strike the right balance of conservation and sustainable use of resources,” he said.

Cameron did not mention that the proposal calls for a $454 million cut in discretionary LWCF spending, including zeroing out the Forest Service’s Forest Legacy Program, which protects privately owned forest land through easements and land purchases. Instead, he highlighted that the administration is requesting a $41 million bump for the LWCF state grant program, which he said “encourages outdoor recreation and land conservation at the state and local levels.”

Interior took only three questions before ending the briefing, which it held before circulating a line-by-line breakdown of the funding request for the Department of the Interior. Asked by one reporter about programs identified for total elimination, Cameron said the agency “had to make some tough choices.”

“In the ideal world, of course, with unlimited funding, there are all sorts of things one would like to invest resources in,” he said.

Reducing funding for land acquisition would allow the department “to focus resources on supporting activities and asset repair in existing national parks, refuges, and public lands which encompass more than 500 million acres,” the White House wrote in the budget proposal released Monday.

Jonathan Asher, government relations manager at conservation nonprofit The Wilderness Society, said in a statement that the 2020 budget shows the administration is “out of touch with the people and communities who treasure our public lands.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/land-and ... 5b78648689

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Monday's Mini-Report

Today's edition of quick hits

By Steve Benen 03/11/19 05:30PM

* An important ruling from Friday night: "A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration is responsible for migrant children separated even before it instituted a 'zero tolerance' policy."

* Ports of entry: "Authorities have seized the biggest shipment of cocaine recovered at the ports of New York and New Jersey in almost 25 years."

* As U.S./China trade talks continue, Donald Trump doesn't want to answer our allies' calls: "Trump continues to keep European allies at arm's length, declining to share details of the draft trade agreement -- which he has called 'my deal,' according to these people, who include officials from several European countries."

* The effects this spiral will have on our democracy matter: "Town by town, local journalism is dying in plain sight."

* A wild story out of Lewiston, Maine: "A Republican mayor in Maine resigned on Friday after a woman he was having an affair with released a racist text message he sent her, according to several local media reports."

* Making a difficult situation worse: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is the homeland 'only of the Jewish people,' in a new jab at the country's Arab minority ahead of April's election."

* Important domestic-security findings: "Most people arrested as the result of FBI terrorism investigations are charged with non-terrorism offenses, and more domestic terror suspects were arrested last year than those allegedly inspired by international terror groups, according to internal FBI figures reviewed by The Washington Post."


It’s not just Medicare: Trump budget eyes Social Security cuts, too

By Steve Benen

03/11/19 04:25 PM

“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Donald Trump declared in 2015. “Every other Republican’s going to cut, and even if they wouldn’t, they don’t know what to do because they don’t know where the money is. I do. I do.”

It became a staple of his entire national candidacy: no matter what, Americans could count on him to champion these social-insurance programs.

Four years later, the president is, in fact, proposing deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. As the New York Times reported, Trump’s newly proposed budget completes the trifecta by targeting Social Security, too.

*The administration also proposes spending $26 billion less on Social Security programs, including a $10 billion cut to the Social Security Disability Insurance program.*

As we discussed earlier, the problem with a proposal like this one isn’t necessarily practical: with a Democratic-led U.S. House, there’s simply no way policymakers will endorse the White House’s budget blueprint or enact the cuts Trump supports.

Rather, what this represents is a political problem on a variety of fronts. It’s obviously, for example, a profound broken promise: as a Republican candidate, Trump swore up and down for months that he’d never try to cut Social Security, but here he is anyway, doing the opposite of what he said he’d do.

It’s also a policy failure: a whole lot of us predicted that the president and his allies would go after popular social-insurance programs – often referred to as “entitlements” – as a way to help pay for the Republican tax breaks for the wealthy. With his new budget plan, Trump is helping prove the point.

But of particular interest is a period of time known as “last fall.”

As regular readers probably recall, as the 2018 midterm elections drew closer, a variety of Republican leaders, cognizant of broad public support for programs like Medicare and Social Security, said it’s GOP officials who really support the programs – reality be damned.

Trump led the way, going so far as to argue just six months ago, “We’re saving Social Security; the Democrats will destroy Social Security. We’re saving Medicare; the Democrats want to destroy Medicare.” The president has pushed the same message at many of his campaign rallies.

Soon after, voters handed Democrats their biggest wins in U.S. House races since the Watergate era – which, for some reason, the president interpreted as a justification to betray his own assurances to voters.

When House Republicans are invited to vote up or down on the Trump budget, it’ll be an interesting test of just how far they’re willing to go to align themselves with an unpopular president’s unpopular agenda.


On Medicare, Trump arrives at his ‘Read My Lips’ moment

By Steve Benen

03/11/19 12:42 PM

In 1988, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush was seen by some in his party as too moderate, and he sought to assuage those concerns by vowing not to raise taxes. It became a central pillar of Bush’s national campaign, and was a key element to his success as a national candidate: “Read my lips,” he said. “No new taxes.”

As we’ve discussed before, it was a promise Bush decided not to keep. The Republican, needing to cut a budget deal with a Democratic Congress, eventually agreed to some tax increases, reluctantly abandoning his pledge as part of a 1990 package. Two years later, he lost his re-election bid.

Three decades later, another Republican is in the White House, and with the unveiling of his new budget, another Republican president has arrived at a “read-my-lips” moment of his own.

There’s a lot to chew on in Donald Trump’s new budget blueprint, but the Washington Post highlighted one of the key takeaways.

*Trump’s “Budget for a Better America” also includes dozens of spending cuts and policy overhauls that frame the early stages of the debate for the 2020 election. For example, Trump for the first time calls for cutting $845 billion from Medicare, the popular health care program for the elderly that in the past he had largely said he would protect.

His budget would also propose a major overhaul of Medicaid, the health care program for low-income Americans run jointly with states, by turning more power over to states. This would save $241 billion over 10 years.*

We could turn our attention to the fact that Republicans spent much of the last decade falsely accusing Democrats of supporting Medicare cuts through the Affordable Care Act, only to have a GOP White House actually propose taking an ax to the social-insurance program.

We could also point out how many of us said Trump and his party, unable to pay for their massive tax breaks for the wealthy, would invariably go after Medicare and Medicaid to help finance the tax giveaways – just as Republicans are doing now.

But as important as those details are, I’m especially interested in the scope of Trump’s betrayal.

It’s easy to forget, but when Trump launched his presidential candidacy nearly four years ago, he was very far to the right on issues such as race and immigration, but he went out of his way to appear moderate on many other issues, especially social-insurance programs often known as “entitlements.”

As Trump argued in 2015, “I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid. Every other Republican’s going to cut, and even if they wouldn’t, they don’t know what to do because they don’t know where the money is. I do. I do.”

It was a staple of the Republican’s platform. In his campaign kick-off speech, Trump said he’d make no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. He bragged about the vow via Twitter, over and over and over again.

This promise played a key role in the inexperienced television personality’s bid to win the GOP nomination and ultimately the presidency. And yet, here we are, watching Trump, unable to pay for his tax breaks, go back on his word.

It’s possible, if not likely, that Trump and his political operation will say this doesn’t count as a broken promise because Congress won’t actually approve the proposed Medicare cuts. It’ll be a tough sell: the White House budget plan is supposed to reflect the president’s vision for federal investments. It’s a blueprint for how Trump would like to govern if he controlled all of the levers of power.

In other words, a budget makes plain a president’s values – and in 2019, this president values deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, despite all of his assurances to the contrary.

Postscript: Don’t be surprised if House Democrats bring Trump’s budget to the floor for a vote, just to see how many of the president’s GOP allies are prepared to go on the record supporting his vision.

Update: Trump didn’t just “evolve” on Medicare over the course of three years. As recently as November 2018 – just four months ago – the president told voters, “Democrats want to raid Medicare to find socialism. It won’t last long. Republicans will protect Medicare for our great seniors who have earned it.”


New questions surround Mar-a-Lago guest allegedly selling access to Trump

By Steve Benen

03/11/19 08:40 AM

When New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft was first charged with solicitation, it didn’t appear to be much of a political story. It was of mild interest that Donald Trump was quick to give his friend/donor the benefit of the doubt, but this didn’t appear to be the kind of story that would capture the political world’s attention.

That’s starting to change – for reasons that have very little to do with Kraft.

The Miami Herald reported late last week that Trump hosted a Super Bowl party last month at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida country club he still owns and profits from, and smiled for a picture with Li Yang (who goes by Cindy Yang), who created a chain of spas that “gained a reputation for offering sexual services.” In fact, the New England Patriots owner was arrested at a spa created by Yang.

Mother Jones advanced the story several steps further over the weekend, noting that Yang also runs an investment business that has “offered to sell Chinese clients access” to the Republican president and his family.

*Yang, who goes by Cindy, and her husband, Zubin Gong, started GY US Investments LLC in 2017. The company describes itself on its website, which is mostly in Chinese, as an “international business consulting firm that provides public relations services to assist businesses in America to establish and expand their brand image in the modern Chinese marketplace.” But the firm notes that its services also address clients looking to make high-level connections in the United States.

On a page displaying a photo of Mar-a-Lago, Yang’s company says its “activities for clients” have included providing them “the opportunity to interact with the president, the [American] Minister of Commerce and other political figures.” The company boasts it has “arranged taking photos with the President” and suggests it can set up a “White House and Capitol Hill Dinner.”*

Yang, a registered Republican and Trump donor, featured a photo of her and the president on the company’s website. (Coincidentally, the site was apparently taken down after the Miami Herald’s initial report was published.)

Mother Jones’ report added, “The overall message conveyed by the GY US Investments website seems clear: hire Yang’s company and she can get you close to Trump and his government – at Mar-a-Lago and in Washington.”

In some cases, Yang’s company may have done more than just offer access to Trump World, it may have also successfully made connections. The Miami Herald had a related report over the weekend, noting that the massage-parlor entrepreneur “arranged for a group of Chinese business executives to attend a paid fundraiser for President Donald Trump in New York City at the end of 2017.”

None of the recent reporting points to anything specific that the American president did wrong, but let’s not miss the forest for the trees. As Chas Danner explained, “The reports not only raise another red flag about how political influence has been monetized during the Trump presidency, but provide new evidence of how Trump-branded properties have become magnets for corruption and grift.”

Yang has denied any wrongdoing. Nevertheless, I have a hunch we haven’t heard the last of this story.



Authorities make largest cocaine seizure at N.Y.-area port in 25 years

The 3,200 pounds seized have an estimated street value of $77 million.

By Janelle Griffith

March 11, 2019, 11:31 AM CDT

Authorities have seized the biggest shipment of cocaine recovered at the ports of New York and New Jersey in almost 25 years.

The massive bust Feb. 28 at the Port of New York/Newark in Elizabeth came after authorities checked a shipping container entering the country. They found 60 packages containing 3,200 pounds of a white powdery substance that proved to be cocaine, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement Monday.

The seizure, which has an estimated street value of $77 million, is the biggest cocaine bust at the ports since 1994 when about 6,600 pounds were seized, according to a CBP spokesman.

The container was recovered from a ship that originated in South America, the spokesman said.

Customs officers turned the drugs over to federal Homeland Security officials for investigation.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/au ... 25-n981736

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http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog

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SOFTWARE QUESTION

Ethiopian Airlines crash came after US shutdown delayed Boeing 737 Max fixes

By Heather TimmonsMarch 12, 2019

The cause of the Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed 157 people is still being investigated but similarities to the Boeing 737 Max 8’s flight path to that of Lion Air flight 610, which plunged into the sea off Indonesia last year, have been noted by air-safety experts, airline regulators, and worried passengers.

While the US’s airline regulator says the plane is still safe to fly, Boeing said yesterday (March 11) it has been working on a new software update for the planes with US officials for “the past several months” and planned to release it “no later than April.“

One thing that is known: Both planes—new versions of the Boeing aircraft—took erratic up-and-down journeys marked by “unstable vertical speed” before taking fatal dives minutes after takeoff, according to FlightRadar24.

Several countries have grounded their Boeing MAX fleets, including China, Ethiopia, and Indonesia, and Australia. Yesterday, the Association of Flight Attendants formally requested the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) conduct an investigation into the 737 Max.

In the Lion Air crash in November, investigators determined that a faulty instrument reading forced an automated “safety feature” to send the plane into the sea even as the pilots struggled to keep it aloft. All 189 on board were killed. (Boeing put out a bulletin afterward advising airlines on how to deal with erroneous sensor information that would lead to “uncommanded nose down” maneuvers.)

After the Lion Air crash, the FAA—which, with EU airline regulators, generally sets the tone for aviation safety worldwide—issued a new “airworthiness directive” to US operators of the Boeing 737 8 and 9 planes, warning that an “unsafe condition” exists on the models and providing flight crews “with runaway horizontal stabilizer trim procedures to follow under certain conditions.”

Straightforward safety upgrades to the jets’ software to fix the automated safety feature, were originally expected in January according to multiple reports. But they were delayed until April, the Wall Street Journal reported Feb. 10, because of “engineering challenges,” “differences of opinion” between federal and Boeing officials, and the 35-day government shutdown, during which “consideration of the fixes was suspended.”

It remains to be seen whether any software fix would have prevented the Ethiopian Airlines crash this week. In a statement yesterday, the 61,000-member Air Line Pilots Association cautioned “against speculation about what may have caused this tragic accident.”

Warnings on how shutdown affected safety

During the shutdown, the longest in US government history, FAA activities deemed crucial, including air-traffic control and safety oversight, continued, although the workers involved were unpaid. Many other activities were stopped.

Donald Trump forced the shutdown after refusing to sign a government spending bill that didn’t have billions he wanted to build a wall on the US southern border. After 35 days, he signed a spending package that didn’t have the budget, then declared a “national emergency” to get the funds from the Pentagon instead. Warnings about the Transportation Security Administration and the FAA being stretched too thin during the shutdown brought the political situation to a head.

The 61,000-member pilots association warned Trump of the dangers in a letter on Jan. 2, noting specifically that complicated oversight of manufacturing activities had stopped or were “significantly reduced”:

For example, at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) there are fewer safety inspectors than are needed in order to ensure the air traffic control infrastructure is performing at its peak levels of performance. There are also airline and aircraft manufacturing oversight activities that either stop or are significantly reduced. These safety and oversight inspections will potentially allow for the introduction of safety issues that put passengers and airline crews at risk.

The pilots, sounded the alarm again Jan. 10, in a letter to Trump, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell:

Most of the FAA staff who certify the safety of aircraft have been furloughed and safety reporting and oversight systems have been suspended. This is critical to resolving identified issues. The continued shutdown of these certification functions will also delay some companies in bringing their products to market and hurt deliveries and exports…

This will slow the introduction of new products and technology and result in airlines not being able to add new planes to their fleets, hindering planned routes and potentially resulting in flight cancellations. Certification and work on safety-related airworthiness directives are curtailed during the shutdown and aircraft that have been delivered to airlines are idled…

https://qz.com/1570266/ethiopian-airlin ... max-fixes/

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Countries and carriers around the globe ground the 737 Max 8

35 minutes ago 3.12.19

SINGAPORE (AP) — A growing number of airlines around the world have grounded their Boeing 737 Max 8 jets following the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that killed 157 people on Sunday, five months after a similar Indonesian Lion Air jet plunged into the ocean, killing 189. Some countries have also closed their airspace to the jets. Here is a list of airlines and countries that have grounded the aircraft so far.

AUSTRALIA

Australia has announced a temporary ban on flights by Boeing 737 Max aircraft, although none of its airlines currently operate them. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority said Tuesday that the ban will affect two foreign airlines — SilkAir and Fiji Airways — that use them for flights to Australia. The authority said Singapore’s SilkAir has already grounded its 737 Max jets, and that it is working with regulators there and in Fiji to minimize disruptions. It said that Fiji Airways has two 737 Max 8 jets in its fleet. Fiji Airways and Fiji’s Civil Aviation Authority said they would ground the fleet until more information is known about the cause of the Ethiopian Airlines accident.

BRAZIL

Brazil’s Gol Airlines has suspended the use of seven Max 8 jets. The airline said it is following the investigation closely and hopes to return the aircraft to use as soon as possible. Gol said it has made nearly 3,000 flights with the Max 8, which went into service last June, with “total security and efficiency.”

CAYMAN ISLANDS

Cayman Airways, a Caribbean carrier, said it stopped using its two Max 8 jets starting Monday. President and CEO Fabian Whorms said the move will cause changes to flight schedules. Cayman is the flag carrier of Cayman Islands, a British overseas territory.

CHINA

China has 96 Max 8 jets in service, belonging to carriers such as Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines. The civil aviation authority directed the planes to be grounded indefinitely on Monday. It said the order was “taken in line with the management principle of zero tolerance for security risks.” There were eight Chinese citizens on the Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed shortly after taking off on Sunday. The authority said it will consult the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing before deciding when to lift the ban.

ETHIOPIA

A spokesman for Ethiopian Airlines says it grounded its remaining four Max 8 jets as an “extra safety precaution” while it investigates Sunday’s deadly crash. The airline is awaiting the delivery of 25 more Max 8 jets.

EUROPE

The European Aviation Safety Agency has issued a directive grounding all Boeing 737-8 “MAX” and 737-9 model aircraft following two recent accidents.

EASA said in its emergency airworthiness directive Tuesday that “at this early stage” of the most recent investigation, “it cannot be excluded that similar causes may have contributed to both events.”

“Based on all available information, EASA considers that further actions may be necessary to ensure the continued airworthiness of the two affected models.”

It says companies may make one noncommercial flight to return their planes to a location where they can be inspected. The grounding applies to all European Union airspace.

INDIA

India says it is immediately grounding all Boeing 737 Max 8 planes after Sunday’s deadly Ethiopian Airlines crash. A statement late Tuesday says the planes “will be grounded till appropriate modifications and safety measures are undertaken to ensure their safe operations.”

The statement does not say how many planes are affected.

INDONESIA

Indonesia said it would temporarily ground Max 8 jets to inspect their airworthiness. Director General of Air Transportation Polana B. Pramesti said the move was made to ensure flight safety. A Lion Air model of the same plane crashed in Indonesia in October. Indonesian airlines operate 11 Max 8 jets. Lion Air, which owns 10 of them, said it will try to minimize the impact of the decision on operations. The other Max 8 jet belongs to national carrier Garuda.

MALAYSIA

The Civil Aviation Authority said in a short statement Tuesday that no Malaysian carriers operate the Max 8, but that foreign airlines are banned from flying the plane in Malaysia, and from transiting in the country, until further notice.

MEXICO

Mexican airline Aeromexico has suspended flights of its six Max 8 jets. Aeromexico said it “fully” trusts the safety of its fleet but ordered the grounding to ensure “the safety of its operations and the peace of mind of its customers.” It said other planes will take over the routes usually flown by the Max 8.

OMAN

Oman said Tuesday it was “temporarily suspending” all flights by Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in the sultanate following the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jetliner, becoming the first nation on the Arabian Peninsula to ground the planes.

Oman’s Public Authority for Civil Aviation made the announcement, without elaborating on its reasoning. The state-owned Oman Air, which operates five Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft, said flights operated by those planes “will be suspended as soon as possible.”

SINGAPORE

Singapore has temporarily banned Max 8 jets — and other models in the Max range — from entering and leaving the country. The civil aviation authority said it was “closely monitoring the situation” and the ban will be “reviewed as relevant safety information becomes available.” SilkAir, a regional carrier owned by Singapore Airlines, has six Max 8 jets. It said the ban “will have an impact on some of the airline’s flight schedules.”

SOUTH AFRICA

Comair, the operator of British Airways and Kulula flights in South Africa, says it has grounded its Boeing 737 Max 8 while it consults with Boeing, other operators and technical experts.

A statement does not say how many planes are affected. It says the decision was made without intervention from regulatory authorities.

SOUTH KOREA

South Korean airline Eastar Jet said it would suspend operations of its two Boeing 737 Max 8 planes and replaced them with Boeing 737-800 planes starting Wednesday on routes to Japan and Thailand. The airline says it hasn’t found any problems, but is voluntarily grounding the planes in response to customer concerns.

TURKEY

In a statement on Twitter Tuesday, Turkish Airlines CEO Bilal Eksi said all Boeing 737 Max flights are suspended until the “uncertainty affecting safety is cleared.” He added that passenger safety was the company’s priority.

ICELAND

Icelandair Group says it has temporarily suspended operations of its three Boeing 737 Max aircraft until further notice.

President and CEO Bogi Nels Bogason said Tuesday that the company will follow developments closely and work with local, European and U.S. authorities on any steps that need to be taken.

He said the temporary suspension won’t impact the company’s operations, as it only affects three aircraft out of a fleet of 33.

NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand and Fiji have suspended Boeing 737 Max 8 flights in and out of the two countries following the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jetliner.

The decision only affects one operator, Fiji Airways. No New Zealand airlines use the Max 8 planes.

https://www.apnews.com/64698c6e79be4e6ca109f9c9d3e5e86a

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Jet that crashed in Ethiopia grounded in much of the world

By ELIAS MESERET and YIDNEK KIRUBEL

an hour ago 3.12.19

HEJERE, Ethiopia (AP) — Much of the world, including the entire European Union, grounded the Boeing jetliner involved in the Ethiopian Airlines crash or banned it from their airspace, leaving the United States on Tuesday as one of the few remaining operators of the plane involved in two deadly accidents in just five months.

The European Aviation Safety Agency took steps to keep the Boeing 737 Max 8 out of the air, joining Asian and Middle Eastern governments and carriers that also gave in to safety concerns in the aftermath of Sunday’s crash, which killed all 157 people on board.

Referring to the Lion Air crash in Indonesia that killed 189 people last year, European regulators said that “similar causes may have contributed to both events.”

British regulators indicated possible trouble with a reportedly damaged flight data recorder, saying they based their decision on the fact that they did not “sufficient information” from the recorder.

Turkish Airlines, Oman Air, Norwegian Air Shuttle and South Korean airline Eastar Jet were among the latest carriers to halt use of the Boeing model. Ireland, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Australia and Singapore suspended all flights into or out of their cities.

A Turkish Airlines official said two Britain-bound planes returned to Istanbul after British airspace was closed to the aircraft. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

U.S.-based Boeing has said it has no reason to pull the popular aircraft from the skies and does not intend to issue new recommendations about the aircraft to customers. Boeing’s CEO Dennis Muilenburg also spoke with President Donald Trump and reiterated that the 737 Max 8 is safe, the company said. Its technical team, meanwhile, joined American, Israeli, Kenyan and other aviation experts in the investigation led by Ethiopian authorities.

The Federal Aviation Administration also backed the jet’s airworthiness and said it was reviewing all available data. It said it expects Boeing will soon complete improvements to an automated anti-stall system suspected of contributing to the deadly crash of another new Boeing 737 Max 8 in October.

“Thus far, our review shows no systemic performance issues and provides no basis to order grounding the aircraft,” acting FAA Administrator Daniel K. Elwell said in a statement. “Nor have other civil aviation authorities provided data to us that would warrant action.”

Some U.S. airlines expressed support for the Boeing model, and American Airlines and Southwest continued flying them. A vice president for American, the world’s biggest carrier, which has 24 Max 8s, said they had “full confidence in the aircraft.”

Safety experts cautioned against drawing too many comparisons too soon with the Lion Air crash in October. But others in the U.S. began pressing for action.

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents more than 26,000 flight attendants at American Airlines, called on CEO Doug Parker to “strongly consider grounding these planes until an investigation can be performed.”

Consumer Reports called on airlines and the FAA to ground the jets until a thorough safety investigation is complete.

Even Trump weighed in, tweeting that additional “complexity creates danger” in modern aircraft and hinders pilots from making “split second decisions” to ensure passengers’ safety.

He did not specifically mention the crashes but said, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot.”

The Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed six minutes after taking off for Nairobi, killing people from 35 countries.

A pilot who saw the crash site minutes after the disaster told the AP that the plane appeared to have “slid directly into the ground.” Capt. Solomon Gizaw was among the first people dispatched to find the plane. The wreckage was discovered by Ethiopia’s air force.

“There was nothing to see,” he said. “It looked like the earth had swallowed the aircraft. ... We were surprised!” He said it explained why rescue officials quickly sent bulldozers to begin digging out large pieces of debris.

Ethiopian Airlines, widely seen as Africa’s best-managed airline, grounded its remaining four 737 Max 8s until further notice. The carrier had been using five of the planes and was awaiting delivery of 25 more.

As night fell, the airline offered no new updates on the investigation. An airline spokesman said victims’ remains should be identified in about five days.

Some insights into the disaster and its cause could take months, aviation experts said.

“The conclusions that will come out of its probe will be beneficial to the rest of the world,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said Tuesday at a news conference with visiting French President Emmanuel Macron. “These types of accidents break everyone’s heart. I hope we will learn from this crash.”

On Tuesday a group of officials from China, which also grounded planes, paused in their work at the scene to reflect with an offering of incense, fruit, bread rolls and a plastic container of the Ethiopian flatbread injera.

As the global team searched for answers, a woman stood near the crash site, wailing. Kebebew Legess said she was the mother of a young Ethiopian Airlines crew member among the dead.

“She would have been 25 years old but God would not allow her,” she wept. “My daughter, my little one.”

The British ambassador to Ethiopia, Alastair McPhail, visited the scene where at least nine of his countrymen died. “We owe it to the families to understand what happened,” he said.

https://www.apnews.com/81bd51c541324176b571ac2787a13e05

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TRANSPORTATION

Trump's FAA increasingly isolated as other countries ban Boeing jet

Boeing's CEO spoke with Trump by phone on Tuesday morning.

By BOB KING 03/12/2019 12:21 PM EDT Updated 03/12/2019 06:56 PM EDT

The Federal Aviation Administration refused again Tuesday evening to ground Boeing’s beleaguered 737 MAX 8 jetliner, despite pleas from lawmakers of both parties who said the U.S. should join a growing list of governments that have barred the plane amid questions about two deadly air crashes.

The FAA's action avoided the major disruptions that could occur if regulators were to sideline a plane that's important to the operations of some domestic airlines and a moneymaker for one of the nation’s top manufacturers. But it left the agency increasingly isolated amid pressure from members of Congress, labor unions and dozens of countries and foreign-based airlines responding to Sunday's disaster in Ethiopia and an apparently similar crash last fall in Indonesia.

"Thus far, our review shows no systemic performance issues and provides no basis to order grounding the aircraft," acting FAA Administrator Dan Elwell said in a statement just after 6 p.m. "Nor have other civil aviation authorities provided data to us that would warrant action."

Elwell promised that "the FAA will take immediate and appropriate action" if such evidence emerges.

The statement came hours after President Donald Trump spoke by phone with Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who assured him that the 737 MAX is safe. An administration official later said the White House has been in "constant contact" with the FAA about the issue.

Sunday's Ethiopian Airlines crash killed 157 people, including eight Americans. Though the cause of the crash has not been determined, it bears similarities to an October air disaster in Indonesia in which 189 people died, raising questions about whether a Boeing stall-prevention system on the MAX 8 sent the plane into a fatal dive just after takeoff.

Six years ago, the Obama administration's FAA had ordered the temporary grounding of another Boeing plane — the 787 Dreamliner — amid questions about a spate of fires linked to its lithium ion batteries.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said Tuesday that the FAA shouldn’t wait for answers before taking the MAX 8 out of service — echoing similar statements Monday from Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

"Today, immediately, the FAA needs to get these planes out of the sky," Warren said Tuesday. She also called for congressional hearings on "whether an administration that famously refused to stand up to Saudi Arabia to protect Boeing arms sales has once again put lives at risk for the same reason."

Meanwhile, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and Germany became the latest governments Tuesday to jump into the fray, barring 737 MAX planes from their airspace. They joined a flood of other nations that have barred the Boeing jet, including China, Australia, Malaysia, Oman and Singapore, as well as airlines based in countries such as Mexico, Norway and South Korea.

Seven British, seven French, five German and one Irish citizen were among those killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash.

The cascade of groundings represents a break from decades of other countries largely following the FAA’s lead on the safety of U.S. aircraft. It comes just two years after the global aviation industry registered its safest year ever, with no passenger jet fatalities reported anywhere in the world in 2017 — a feat for which Trump claimed credit last year.

But fatal airline accidents still occur despite being far less frequent than in decades past. Last year, a Southwest Airlines passenger died after being partially sucked out a window on a Boeing 737 whose engine had fallen apart during a New York to Dallas flight.

Investigators are also trying to determine the cause of crash in February of a Boeing 767 cargo plane outside of Houston that killed all three pilots on board. An initial investigation turned up signs that the crash might have been intentional.

The crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia bore unnerving likenesses to each other, with both involving new aircraft with experienced pilots that plunged into the earth soon after takeoff. A preliminary investigation of October’s Lion Air crash in Indonesia raised questions about a new Boeing safety feature that could have forced the plane’s nose down despite the pilots’ efforts to right its course — as well as complaints from pilots’ groups that the manufacturer failed to ensure that airlines knew about the change in technology.

Boeing and the FAA have said they’re working together on a software update, but in a bulletin Monday, they said it would not be implemented until April.

Trump weighed in Tuesday with a complaint on Twitter that "airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly" — echoing a debate within some aviation circles about a growing reliance on autopilot technology and its impact on pilots. He added that "the complexity creates danger. ... I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot."

But the White House did not take a stand on whether the FAA should order the 737 MAX grounded. "We are going to be in constant contact through the Department of Transportation, the FAA, to make determinations at the appropriate time," press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Fox News on Tuesday.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said Monday that her agency is "very concerned ... and we're monitoring the situation very carefully."

"I want people to be assured that we take these accidents very seriously,” she said.

The FAA is so far sticking to its position that it’s too soon to declare the plane unsafe to fly. “[T]his investigation has just begun and to date we have not been provided data to draw any conclusions or take any actions," the agency said in a notice Monday.

Some lawmakers were standing by the FAA's position.

"I just think we need to have the facts and the evidence in," said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), a former chairman of the Senate committee that oversees air travel. He added, "I think the FAA is trying to move forward in a way that's deliberative and get into a place where they can make a decision about that."

The MAX 8 is a variation on the 737, the most widely sold jetliner in the world, and is a significant money-maker for Boeing, with thousands of the planes on order to airlines around the world. The plane is intended to be a fuel-efficient competitor to the already more-popular Airbus A320neo, which may well pull even further ahead amid the ongoing turmoil. It’s also a significant part of the fleets of Southwest and American Airlines, which have about 60 of the Max 8 planes between them.

Boeing said Tuesday that “we have full confidence in the safety of the 737,” despite the growing number of countries abandoning its plane.

“We understand that regulatory agencies and customers have made decisions that they believe are most appropriate for their home markets,” the company added. “We’ll continue to engage with them to ensure they have the information needed to have confidence in operating their fleets.”

Southwest has said it remains "confident in the safety and airworthiness of our fleet of more than 750 Boeing aircraft," and American said it will "closely monitor the investigation via Boeing and the NTSB."

But not all employees of the airlines are feeling reassured.

The national president of a union representing American Airlines flight attendants said it has asked CEO Doug Parker to "strongly consider grounding" MAX 8 jets "until a thorough investigation can be performed."

"Our flight attendants are very concerned with the recent Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash, which has raised safety concerns with the 737 MAX 8," the Association of Professional Flight Attendants' Lori Bassani said in a statement. "Many respected global carriers are grounding the planes."

Bassani added that flight attendants won't be "forced to fly if they feel unsafe."

The Transport Workers Union of America, whose 150,000 members include aircraft mechanics, baggage handlers and flight attendants, said it too was urging the grounding of the plane "in an abundance of caution" until the cause of the two crashes has been determined.

"People must always be put over profits," the union tweeted at the FAA.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/ ... an-1261915

<5


Tuesday's Mini-Report, 3.12.19

Today's edition of quick hits:

By Steve Benen 03/12/19 05:30PM

* Venezuela: "As growing chaos took hold in Venezuela, a country whose people have had little power, water and communications for days, the United States announced plans to withdraw all remaining personnel from its embassy there this week."

* Afghanistan: "The United States and the Taliban now have a draft agreement on two thorny issues that signals concrete progress toward a peace deal to end the 17-year-old war in Afghanistan, U.S. presidential envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said Tuesday."

* For now, the U.S. appears increasingly isolated on this: "The European Union Aviation Safety Agency has grounded the Boeing jet involved in two crashes that have killed more than 300 people."

* On a related note: "U.S. lawmakers of both parties called Tuesday for the FAA to join a growing list of governments in grounding Boeing's beleaguered 737 MAX 8 jetliner -- a step that would threaten major disruptions of some domestic air traffic and one of the nation's top manufacturers."

* Brexit: "For the second time in as many months, British lawmakers rejected Prime Minister Theresa May's divorce deal with the European Union. Tuesday's defeat comes only 17 days before the United Kingdom is due to leave the 28-country bloc. It also casts doubt on whether Britain's departure will occur as scheduled -- or even at all."

* The White House probably isn't pleased: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, extended a bipartisan invitation on Monday to the head of NATO to address a joint session of Congress, in an unsubtle jab at President Trump's foreign policy that is meant to underscore broad congressional support for the alliance."

* As the budget debate unfolds in earnest, keep this detail in mind: "Trump's budget hinges on economic growth numbers no one believes."


Trump’s approach to the climate crisis gets even more embarrassing

By Steve Benen

03/12/19 11:10 AM

The National Climate Assessment, reflecting the combined judgment of 13 federal agencies, from NASA to the Pentagon, was originally scheduled to be released late last year. The Trump administration, however, decided to move up the release date to Nov. 23 – the day after Thanksgiving – to help ensure the smallest possible audience for the information.

That’s probably because the report was quite terrifying, warning of dramatic environmental, economic, and national security consequences resulting from an intensifying climate crisis. Asked for his reactions to the document, Donald Trump briefly pretended he’d “read some of it,” before adding, “I don’t believe it.”

And who, pray tell, does the president believe? Some guy he saw on Fox News this morning. Trump published this tweet a few hours ago:

*“Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace: ‘The whole climate crisis is not only Fake News, it’s Fake Science. There is no climate crisis, there’s weather and climate all around the world, and in fact carbon dioxide is the main building block of all life.’ @foxandfriends Wow!”*

As is too often the case, Trump has no idea what he’s talking about. As Greenpeace USA explained soon after, “Patrick Moore was not a co-founder of Greenpeace. He does not represent Greenpeace. He is a paid lobbyist, not an independent source.”

The environmental organization added on its website that Moore has been a “paid spokesman for a variety of polluting industries for more than 30 years.”

Moore also happens to be an adviser to the Heartland Institute, a conservative advocacy organization that rejects the mainstream scientific consensus on the climate crisis.

Oddly enough, Trump neglected to mention any of this in his misguided tweet.

But stepping back, the larger problem is the president’s strained relationship with reality. When it comes to global warming, Trump has a choice between believing scientists and officials in his own administration, or accepting the word of some guy he saw on Fox News. Naturally, the Republican chooses the latter without hesitation.

This same epistemological dynamic has come to define his presidency.

As we discussed in November, one of the most important jobs of any American president is applying sound judgment while processing an enormous amount of information. To a very real extent, it’s how a president spends most of his or her day: people come to the president with challenging issues, and he or she makes the best decisions possible based on the available information.

A president has to make snap judgments all the time about what information to value, what to discard, and what to remember for future reference. Given the panoramic nature of a president’s responsibilities, it’s profoundly difficult.

And unfortunately for all of us, Trump is tragically bad at this part of his job. It’s evident in his embrace of ridiculous conspiracy theories, and it’s equally clear in his rejection of facts bolstered by evidence.

Trump believes what he wants to believe. He starts with the answer that satisfies him and works backwards to rationalize the version of “reality” that satisfies him.


Cocaine bust makes White House talking points look a little worse

By Steve Benen

03/12/19 09:48 AM—UPDATED 03/12/19 10:01 AM

About a month ago, while announcing his emergency declaration for the southern border, Donald Trump focused his attention on the illicit drug trade. “[W]e have tremendous amounts of drugs flowing into our country, much of it coming from the southern border,” the president said. “When you look and when you listen to politicians – in particular, certain Democrats – they say it all comes through the port of entry. It’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s just a lie. It’s all a lie.”

He was badly confused. For one thing, the claims aren’t just coming from “politicians”; the statistics come by way of Trump’s own DEA. For another, new incidents like these keep coming to the fore that help prove how wrong the president is.

*Authorities have seized the biggest shipment of cocaine recovered at the ports of New York and New Jersey in almost 25 years.

The massive bust Feb. 28 at the Port of New York/Newark in Elizabeth came after authorities checked a shipping container entering the country. They found 60 packages containing 3,200 pounds of a white powdery substance that proved to be cocaine, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement Monday.

The seizure, which has an estimated street value of $77 million, is the biggest cocaine bust at the ports since 1994 when about 6,600 pounds were seized, according to a CBP spokesman.

The container was recovered from a ship that originated in South America, the spokesman said.*

If Trump were right, busts like these wouldn’t happen. According to the president, who has no use for his own administration’s evidence, drug smugglers, moving drugs from South America, avoid ports of entry like these.

The argument might be more believable if reality didn’t keep getting in the way.

Indeed, as we discussed a month ago, if Trump doesn’t want to believe the Drug Enforcement Administration, he could check out press releases from Customs and Border Patrol officials, which say the same thing.

Alternatively, the president could watch news coverage of the recent trial for Joaquín Guzman (“El Chapo”), which featured ample discussion about his criminal operation smuggling drugs through ports of entry.

And yet, Americans keep hearing from their president that they should look past all of this, and instead accept his baseless assertions as fact. It’s bizarre.


White House suggests Obama’s to blame for Trump’s budget mess

By Steve Benen

03/12/19 09:29 AM

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made a rare appearance in the briefing room yesterday, in large part because it was a special occasion: yesterday was the unveiling of Donald Trump’s new budget blueprint. After greeting reporters, Sanders declared, “President Trump’s 2020 budget, which was released today, builds upon incredible success and keeps his promises to the American people.”

That wasn’t a great start. After all, Donald Trump promised voters he wouldn’t cut Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security – and the new White House budget plan cuts all three. This was not an ideal time to boast about “keeping promises.”

But as part of the same briefing, a reporter asked Russell Vought, the president’s acting budget director, about a different Trump promise.

*Q: One, you mentioned what the president promised during the campaign. During the campaign, he also promised that he would eliminate the national debt within eight years. And as you know, the debt at the end of his first year was at $20 trillion; last year it went to $21 trillion; last month, $22 trillion. So what happened to that promise? I mean, the president has added historically large numbers to the national debt instead of keeping a promise to actually pay it off.

VOUGHT: Look, again, the last administration nearly doubled the national debt.*

Well, sort of. The national debt grew in the Obama era, just as it has in every modern presidential administration, but the annual budget deficit shrank considerably. In fact, during Obama’s first five years, the deficit was cut in half, and by Obama’s seventh year, it was down a trillion dollars as compared to when he took office.

To hear Russell Vought tell it, the deficit is still too large to start paying off the national debt. That’s true. The president promised Americans he’d start shrinking the debt “very quickly,” but that’s only because Trump is so unfamiliar with the most basic elements of fiscal policy.

The real trouble, however, is the idea that this is Obama’s fault. Eventually, the White House should probably recognize Trump’s responsibility for creating his own mess. Perhaps a chart would help.


This image, which relies on Congressional Budget Office data, shows annual budget deficits since the Reagan era. Red columns point to Republican administrations, blue columns point to Democratic administrations, and red-and-blue columns point to years in which the fiscal year was split between presidents from two different parties.
Pay particular attention to the right side of the image. Those shrinking blue columns? Those are the deficits in the Obama era. The growing red columns? Those are the deficits in the Trump era. (The $900 billion deficit for this year is a projection that may yet change.)

According to the new Trump budget, the annual deficits will soon top $1 trillion – and stay there until at least 2022.

To hear the White House tell it yesterday, we should apparently blame Obama for Trump’s deficit, which would make sense if Obama forced Republicans to pass massive tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, but since the president and his allies did that all on their own, Vought’s argument doesn’t really make sense.

As Catherine Rampbell explained, “Federal deficits have widened immensely under Trump’s leadership. This is striking not only because he promised fiscal responsibility – at one time even pledging to eliminate the national debt within eight years – but also because it’s a historical anomaly. Deficits usually narrow when the economy is good and we’re not engaged in a major war. Trump’s own policies are to blame for this aberration.”

I realize that there’s a reflexive “blame Obama” talking point on Team Trump. But the new White House budget plan calls for deep cuts to the safety net and social-insurance programs because of a mess Republicans created, not one they inherited.


New York AG’s office issues bank subpoenas on Trump projects

By Steve Benen

03/12/19 09:42 AM

This New York Times report seems like the sort of thing that might get Donald Trump’s attention.

*The New York attorney general’s office late on Monday issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank for records relating to the financing of four major Trump Organization projects and a failed effort to buy the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League in 2014, according to a person briefed on the subpoenas. […]

The request to Deutsche Bank sought loan applications, mortgages, lines of credit and other financing transactions in connection with the Trump International Hotel in Washington; the Trump National Doral outside Miami; and the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, the person said.*

As viewers of The Rachel Maddow Show know, Deutsche Bank was, for quite a while, one of the few lending institutions that was willing to work with Trump. It’s also become the focus of renewed interest following Michael Cohen’s recent congressional testimony, in which Trump’s former fixer suggested the president engaged in alleged bank fraud before taking office.

Indeed, as Bloomberg News recently reported, “How President Donald Trump may have inflated and deflated his personal wealth is more than mere curiosity: “It could be of keen interest to any authorities trying to figure out if he misrepresented himself to insurance companies and lenders…. If falsehoods went to financial institutions, that would provide fertile ground for prosecutors in New York.”

It’s against this backdrop that the office of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, started issuing subpoenas yesterday about Trump-specific projects. In fact, the reference to the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago stood out for a reason.

The Washington Post last week obtained copies of some of the president’s financial statements, some of which seemed to exaggerate the value of assets, and some of which “exaggerated his wealth by leaving things out. In 2011 and 2012, for instance, the Statements of Financial Condition omitted his hotel in Chicago, which was carrying a high debt load. The likely result: Trump’s overall debt seemed smaller.”

This is now one of the projects of interest to the New York AG’s office.

Given the scope and scale of the scandals surrounding Trump, some may assume this line of inquiry is less provocative than other ongoing controversies. I’d suggest ignoring that assumption.

Circling back to our coverage from last week, it is a felony to perpetrate a fraud against financial institutions – and given the timeline for the incidents in question, the statute of limitations has not expired for actions Trump may have taken earlier this decade.

What’s more, we know this isn’t some kind of financial version of jaywalking, which no one is ever prosecuted for. In fact, we were recently reminded of the opposite: Paul Manafort, who led Trump’s political operation in 2016, was convicted on a variety of felony counts, including defrauding banks and other financial institutions.

What’s more, Michael Cohen himself will soon go to jail for, among other things, making “false statements for the purpose of influencing the actions of a financial institution.”

At this point, I imagine some of the White House’s allies will compare going after the president for financial fraud to going after Al Capone for tax evasion. In fact, last year, some Trump allies pushed this exact line – as if other misdeeds, outside of possible “collusion” with Russia, don’t really count.

Unfortunately for the president, criminal law doesn’t work this way. When prosecutors are presented with evidence of a felony, the accused doesn’t get to say, “Yeah, but those crimes aren’t as dramatic as some of the other stuff I was investigated for doing.”

http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog

<1



IDEAS

Four Lessons From the Manafort Sentencing

This is bad news for Trump, and good news for the system.

Paul Rosenzweig

MAR 13, 2019

Earlier today, Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison by Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C. This sentence will run concurrently with the 47-month sentence that Manafort received from Judge T. S. Ellis III in Alexandria, Virginia, last week. Moments after Manafort was sentenced, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. unsealed a 16-count indictment against the man for mortgage fraud, alleging that he falsely inflated the value of certain properties he owned in New York to secure larger mortgage loans. It’s been a busy day in the court system, and not an especially good day for Manafort.

But what are we, as citizens, to take away from today’s events? Here are a few thoughts:

First, and most obviously, the criminal-justice system seems to have worked. Last week, many commentators were decrying the perceived lenity of Ellis’s sentence. Today Jackson offered a systemic correction. Given Manafort’s age and the severity of his crimes, seven and a half years seems about right. It’s actually on the high end for similar offenses. And given his age, Manafort may well die in jail, which cannot be a happy prospect for him.

Second, and more important for the American public, the New York authorities have made clear that they are willing to serve as a pardon insurance policy for America. In recent months, much has been made of the possibility that Trump will issue pardons to his friends and relatives as a way of insulating his conduct from criminal scrutiny. Were he to do so, the only legitimate federal response would be to consider that conduct as a potential ground for impeachment—a highly problematic endeavor, to be sure. But the president’s pardon power runs only as far as federal law goes. It does not, and cannot, reach allegations of state criminal conduct. Thus, even were Trump to issue a full and complete pardon to Manafort for all the crimes he has committed, that move would not excuse Manafort from answering the New York State charges.

A caveat: There might be issues about the provability of these state-level crimes, and there is even a possibility that unique New York law might give Manafort a double-jeopardy claim to avoid prosecution. But overall, the New York indictment is a reminder that the states (all 50 of them) have a function in the criminal drama that is playing out on the public stage. And Vance just auditioned for a starring role.

Third, the New York indictment is not good news for Trump, personally. The Manhattan prosecutor has brought charges of fraud against Manafort for falsely inflating the value of certain real-estate properties he owned for mortgage purposes. Those allegations find a strong echo in the recent congressional testimony of the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who said the president engaged in the exact same course of conduct in his personal capacity—inflating real-estate values to increase his net worth when it suited him, and then deflating those same values to avoid taxation. The parallelism cannot have been accidental, and might indicate that New York authorities are examining how the president conducted his real-estate business with a fine-tooth comb. Trump may yet come to regret having won the election for the unwanted scrutiny it has brought him.

And finally, as bad as this news is for Trump, it is likely even worse news for the Trump Organization—now also possibly in Vance’s crosshairs for real-estate shenanigans. An individual’s criminal liability often turns, in the end, on his intent, or what lawyers call his mens rea. And in a big organization, it is sometimes plausible that top-level leadership was unaware of activities occurring within the company. Or, more accurately, it is often the case that prosecutors cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a particular individual knew what was happening. In the long run, that might be the case with Trump and his empire.

But what is true for an individual is generally not true for an organization. The organization’s intent is the sum of the knowledge of all its employees and managers. And thus, for an institution such as the Trump Organization, the question is not so much “Who knew what?” as “Did someone in the company know something?”

This was not a good day for Manafort. In the larger context of America’s interest in the rule of law, it may well be remembered as an excellent one.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ng/584842/

<2



Senate slaps down Trump border emergency; Republicans defect

By LISA MASCARO, ALAN FRAM and CATHERINE LUCEY

59 minutes ago 3.14.19

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a stunning rebuke, a dozen defecting Republicans joined Senate Democrats Thursday to block the national emergency that President Donald Trump declared so he could build his border wall with Mexico. The rejection capped a week of confrontation with the White House as both parties in Congress strained to exert their power in new ways.

The 59-41 tally, following the Senate’s vote a day earlier to end U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen, promised to force Trump into the first vetoes of his presidency. Trump had warned against both actions. Moments after Thursday’s vote, the president tweeted a single word of warning: “VETO!”

Two years into the Trump era, a defecting dozen Republicans, pushed along by Democrats, showed a willingness to take that political risk. Twelve GOP senators, including the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney of Utah, joined the dissent over the emergency declaration order that would enable the president to seize for the wall billions of dollars Congress intended elsewhere.

“The Senate’s waking up a little bit to our responsibilities,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who said the chamber had become “a little lazy” as an equal branch of government. “I think the value of these last few weeks is to remind the Senate of our constitutional place.”

Many senators said the vote was not necessarily a rejection of the president or the wall, but protections against future presidents -- namely a Democrat who might want to declare an emergency on climate change, gun control or any number of other issues.

“This is constitutional question, it’s a question about the balance of power that is core to our constitution,” Romney said. “This is not about the president,” he added. “The president can certainly express his views as he has and individual senators can express theirs.”

Thursday’s vote was the first direct challenge to the 1976 National Emergencies Act, just as Wednesday’s on Yemen was the first time Congress invoked the decades-old War Powers Act to try to rein in a president. Seven Republicans joined Democrats in halting U.S. backing for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in the aftermath of the kingdom’s role in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Even though there’s not likely to be enough numbers to override a veto, the votes nevertheless sent a message from Capitol Hill.

“Today’s votes cap a week of something the American people haven’t seen enough of in the last two years,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, “both parties in the United States Congress standing up to Donald Trump.”

The result is a role-reversal for Republicans who have been reluctant to take on Trump, bracing against his high-profile tweets and public attacks of reprimand. But now they are facing challenges from voters — in some states where senators face stiff elections -- who are expecting more from Congress.

Centrist Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins, who’s among those most vulnerable in 2020, said she’s sure the president “will not be happy with my vote. But I’m a United States senator and I feel my job is to stand up for the Constitution, so let the chips fall where they may.”

Trump’s grip on the party, though, remains strong and the White House made it clear that Republicans resisting Trump could face political consequences. Ahead of the voting, Trump framed the issue as with-him-or-against-him on border security, a powerful argument with many.

“A vote for today’s resolution by Republican Senators is a vote for Nancy Pelosi, Crime, and the Open Border Democrats!” Trump tweeted. “Don’t vote with Pelosi!” he said in another, referring to the speaker of the House.

A White House official said Trump won’t forget when senators who oppose him want him to attend fundraisers or provide other help. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on internal deliberations.

“I don’t think anybody’s sending the president a message,” said Jim Risch of Idaho, the GOP chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He blamed the media for “reaching” to view every action “through the prism of the presidency, and that isn’t necessarily the way it works here.”

Trump brought on the challenge months ago when he all but dared Congress not to give him the $5.7 billion he was demanding to build the U.S.-Mexico wall or risk a federal government shutdown.

Congress declined and the result was the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Against the advice of GOP leaders, Trump invoked the national emergency declaration last month, allowing him to try to tap some $3.6 billion for the wall by shuffling money from military projects, and that drew outrage from many lawmakers. Trump had campaigned for president promising Mexico would pay for the wall.

The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, and lawmakers seethed as they worried about losing money for military projects that had already been approved for bases at home and abroad. The Democratic-led House swiftly voted to terminate Trump’s order.

Senate Republicans spent weeks trying to avoid this outcome, up until the night before the vote, in a script that was familiar -- up until the gavel.

The most promising was an effort from Sen. Mike Lee of Utah for legislation that would impose limits on future presidential actions. That would give senators some solace as they allowed Trump’s order to stand. GOP senators huddled with Vice President Mike Pence and seemed optimistic the White House might support their plan. Then Trump called Lee in the middle of a private Republican lunch meeting and, in the time it took the senator to step out of the room to take the call, it was over. Trump was opposed.

Lee and other senators were peeling off against the president. In a last-ditch effort the night before the vote, Lindsey Graham and other senators dashed to the White House to try once again for Trump’s support to broker an alternative plan. Trump was frustrated by their arrival. They mostly failed.

Trump did tweet ahead of the vote that he would be willing to consider legislation to adjust the 1976 law at some later time.

That was enough of a signal for GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, who faces a potentially tough re-election in North Carolina, to flip his vote, according to a person unauthorized to discuss the private thinking and granted anonymity.

Tillis had been one of the first senators to say he would oppose the declaration, writing in a Washington Post opinion column last month that there’d be “no intellectual honesty” in backing Trump after his repeated objections about executive overreach by President Barack Obama. But on Thursday, he did.

Trump’s public support in that tweet also helped bring on board several other Republicans, including Ted Cruz and Ben Sasse, who had been part of the private huddles, the person said.

For some, said Sen. John Thune, the GOP whip, “the emergency declaration was just a bridge too far.”

https://www.apnews.com/57d35e5635dd47b3a736d2fbe0066e05

<3



Trump tweets 'VETO!' after Senate rejects border emergency

BY JORDAN FABIAN - 03/14/19 03:27 PM EDT


President Trump on Thursday delivered a concise response to the Senate’s vote to nix his national emergency at the southwest border: “VETO!”

Trump tweeted the message minutes after the Republican-controlled Senate passed a resolution of disapproval 59-41, a stinging rebuke that will tee up the president using his veto powers for the first time.

The president has not yet officially vetoed the measure, which has not been enrolled and delivered to the White House, but was instead reiterating his plans to do so.

“I look forward to VETOING the just passed Democrat inspired Resolution which would OPEN BORDERS while increasing Crime, Drugs, and Trafficking in our Country,” Trump wrote in a subsequent tweet.

A dozen Republicans broke with Trump and voted with all Democrats to pass the resolution on Thursday, with many lawmakers saying the emergency declaration violated the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Trump has framed the vote as a referendum on his immigration policies and harangued GOP senators to stand by his side, saying the issue will play well in the 2020 election.

“I thank all of the Strong Republicans who voted to support Border Security and our desperately needed WALL!” the president tweeted Thursday afternoon.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... -emergency

<4



In 420-0 vote, House says Mueller report should be public

By MARY CLARE JALONICK

2 hours ago 3.14.19

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House voted unanimously Thursday for a resolution calling for any final report in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation to be made public, a symbolic action designed to pressure Attorney General William Barr into releasing as much information as possible when the probe is concluded.

The Democratic-backed resolution, which passed 420-0, comes as Mueller appears to be nearing an end to his investigation. Lawmakers in both parties have maintained there will have to be some sort of public resolution when the report is done — and privately hope that a report shows conclusions that are favorable to their own side.

Four Republicans voted present: Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie.

The resolution is unlikely to be passed in the Senate, where Democratic Leader Charles Schumer tried to bring it up hours after House passage. He was rebuffed when Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham objected. But the House vote shows that lawmakers from both parties are eager to have a look at Mueller’s findings after almost two years of speculation about what it might reveal.

Though Mueller’s office has said nothing publicly about the timing of a report, several prosecutors detailed to Mueller’s team have left in recent months, suggesting that the investigation is winding down. On Thursday, Mueller spokesman Peter Carr said in a statement that Andrew Weissmann, one of the most prominent prosecutors on the team, would be concluding his work “in the near future.”

The nonbinding House resolution calls for the public release of any report Mueller provides to Barr, with an exception for classified material. The resolution also calls for the full report to be released to Congress.

“This resolution is critical because of the many questions and criticisms of the investigation raised by the president and his administration,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called the probe a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.”

It’s unclear exactly what documentation will be produced at the end of the probe into possible coordination between Trump associates and Russia, and how much of that the Justice Department will allow people to see. Mueller is required to submit a report to Barr, and then Barr can decide how much of that is released publicly.

Barr said at his confirmation hearing in January that he takes seriously the department regulations that say Mueller’s report should be confidential. Those regulations require only that the report explain decisions to pursue or to decline prosecutions, which could be as simple as a bullet point list or as fulsome as a report running hundreds of pages.

“I don’t know what, at the end of the day, what will be releasable. I don’t know what Bob Mueller is writing,” Barr said at the hearing.

Democrats have said they are unsatisfied with Barr’s answers and want a stronger commitment to releasing the full report, along with interview transcripts and other underlying evidence.

Republicans agree — to a point. In making an argument for transparency, Republican leaders have pointed to Barr’s comments and the existing regulations, without explicitly pressing for the underlying evidence.

The top Republican on the House Judiciary panel, Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, voted for the resolution but said it was unnecessary. He defended Barr, saying he “understands the questions, the turmoil this has caused.”

Collins also had a warning for Democrats: “What happens when it comes back and none of this is true, the president did not do anything wrong? Then the meltdown will occur.”

At least one Republican is siding with Democrats. Texas Rep. Will Hurd, a member of the House intelligence committee, said he believes the resolution should have been even broader.

“I want the American people to know as much as they can and see as much as they can,” said Hurd, a former CIA officer. He added that “full transparency is the only way to prevent future innuendo.”

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley called the resolution “ridiculous.”

“They came in and so many of them said they wanted to work with the president and get things done for infrastructure and health care and instead they’re moving on all these radical ideas,” Gidley said of Democrats in an interview on Fox News.

Gidley said he hadn’t spoken with Trump about whether the report should be made public.

If a full report isn’t released, House Democrats have made clear they will do whatever they can to get hold of it. Nadler has said he would subpoena the final report and invite — or even subpoena — Mueller to talk about it.

The Senate has been less eager to push Barr on the release of the report, despite some in the GOP caucus who have said they want to ensure transparency. Graham, a close ally of Trump’s, said he would only allow the Mueller resolution from the House to move forward if it were amended to call for a new special counsel to investigate misconduct at the Justice Department surrounding the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the abuse of the secret surveillance warrant process.

Schumer objected to those additions, and the bill did not get a vote.

Afterward, Graham was equivocal on whether the full report should be released.

“We’ll see,” he said.

https://www.apnews.com/e25f4c83cb61416c90f8de3b36023c5f

<5



Graham blocks resolution calling for Mueller report to be made public

BY JORDAIN CARNEY - 03/14/19 03:55 PM EDT

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Thursday blocked a resolution calling for special counsel Robert Mueller's report to be made public after it passed the House unanimously.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked for unanimous consent for the nonbinding resolution, which cleared the House 420-0, to be passed by the Senate before they leave town for a weeklong recess.

"There is no good reason, no good reason that the special counsel's report should not be made public. The American people are overwhelmingly for the report being made public. They have a right to see it. No one should stand in the way of that," Schumer said from the Senate floor.

But Graham, a close ally of Trump's who chairs the Judiciary Committee, objected after Schumer refused to amend the House-passed resolution to include a provision calling on the Justice Department (DOJ) to appoint a special counsel to investigate DOJ misconduct in the handling of the investigation into 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's email use and the Carter Page Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications.

Graham stressed that he supported Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and predicted that it would wrap up shortly. But he added that he had been "trying to find balance" by also supporting an investigation into Clinton-related scandals.

"Was there two systems of justice in 2016? One for the Democratic candidate and one for the Republican candidate?" Graham asked.

Under Senate rules, any one senator can try to pass or set up a vote on a bill, resolution or nomination. But, in turn, any one senator can block their request.

Schumer fired back that Graham appeared to be using a "pretext" for trying to block the Mueller resolution.

"I have absolutely no idea why a member of this body would object to this basic level of transparency whatever their concern or other issues," he said.

The House-passed resolution argues there is “overwhelming public interest” in the government releasing the contents of the high-profile report. The resolution calls on the DOJ to fully release the report to Congress and to release it to the public “except to the extent the public disclosure of any portion thereof is expressly prohibited by law.”

Attorney General William Barr was asked about releasing Mueller's report during his confirmation hearings.

Barr said he would release as much of Mueller’s findings as possible, but was careful not to commit to releasing the report in full — something that rankled Democrats who argue that the high public interest surrounding the investigation demands its release.

Under current regulations, Mueller is required to submit a final, confidential report explaining his prosecutorial decisions to the DOJ. It will be up to Barr whether to release part or any of Mueller’s findings.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/434 ... ade-public

<6



1. UHHH

Trump Warns: It Would Be ‘Very Bad’ if My Police, Biker Gang Fans Decided to Get ‘Tough’ on My Opponents

7 HOURS AGO 3.14.19

President Trump issued a bizarre, indirect warning Monday that his supporters could get “tough” on his political enemies at a “certain point,” in a clip of a Breitbart interview spotted Thursday by The Toronto Star. “You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny,” the president told Breibart’s Matthew Boyle. “I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump–I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-war ... -opponents

<7



Dems press Mnuchin on Trump tax returns

BY NIV ELIS - 03/14/19 12:09 PM EDT

House Democrats on Thursday pressed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on whether he would comply with a request to turn over President Trump’s tax returns, a long-sought goal of congressional Democrats.

“Are you willing to provide and fulfill the command of the statute, and your mandatory duty to properly release any personal and business tax returns for President Trump that you’re requested to provide,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) asked Mnuchin during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing.

Mnuchin responded by saying he would first consult with legal counsel at the Treasury Department.

“The answer is, if I receive a request, which I presume from what I’ve read in the press I will receive, I will consult with the legal department within Treasury and I will follow the law,” he said.

Democrats cited section 6103 of the tax code, which instructs the Treasury secretary to turn over any tax returns requested by the chair of the Ways and Means Committee. The provision also allows for the heads of the Senate Finance Committee and Joint Committee on Taxation to request the documents.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) has faced pressure from progressives to request the returns but has yet to formally start the process.

Mnuchin testified that Trump has not asked him to intervene if Congress requests his tax returns, and said he had not discussed the issue with anyone at the White House, including Trump’s attorneys.

But Mnuchin raised questions about whether turning over the returns might violate the president’s privacy, previewing a possible reason to refuse the request.

“I’m not aware if there’s ever been a request for an elected official’s tax return, but we will follow the law and we would protect the president as we would protect any individual taxpayer under their rights,” he said.

Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas) echoed that perspective, saying his constituents “do not want to go to bed at night thinking that there might be some possibility that the IRS or the Treasury could view that tax return or make that tax return public to anybody.”

Trump broke tradition in 2016 when he became the first presidential nominee in decades not to release his tax returns.

Democrats hope that unearthing the president’s returns might expose conflicts of interest or how he ran his business, or perhaps embarrass the president if the documents show his wealth is less than he has indicated.

Democrats on Thursday took the opportunity to pressure Mnuchin to comply with the request if he receives it.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) asked if such a request had ever been denied, saying that in 2017 there had been 151 million such disclosures.

Mnuchin responded that the figures referred to sharing tax information within the government and with states.

“This is a bulk issue. This is different from what I read about in the press,” he said.

Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) pointed to a statute that makes concealing data from a congressional inquiry a fireable offense for IRS employees, and asked Mnuchin if it applied to his agency's staff.

“Should this apply to Treasury employees as well?” she asked.

Mnuchin demurred, saying he wouldn’t engage with hypothetical situations.

“There’s an awful lot of interest in 6103,” he said.

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/4340 ... ax-returns

<8



WORLD

TRUMP’S FORMER ECONOMIC ADVISER SLAMS ADMINISTRATION OVER TRADE WAR, SAYS TARIFFS ‘HURT THE ECONOMY’

BY JASON LEMON ON 3/14/19 AT 2:43 PM EDT

President Donald Trump’s former economic adviser Gary Cohn strongly criticized the administration’s trade policies, slamming tariffs as harmful to the economy and pointing to a record-setting trade deficit in 2018.

“Tariffs don’t work. If anything, they hurt the economy, because if you’re a typical American worker, you have a finite amount of income to spend,” Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who served as Trump’s first director of the National Economic Council, told Freakonomics radio in an interview broadcast Wednesday, CNBC reported. “If you have to spend more on the necessity products that you need to live, you have less to spend on the services that you want to buy.”

Stephen J. Dubner, who interviewed the former Trump adviser, pointed out that the majority of economists agreed with Cohn’s point, except for Peter Navarro, who serves as the president’s director of the National Trade Council. Cohn concurred, saying, “There’s only one in the world” who disagrees, in an apparent jab at Navarro.

Linda Lim, a professor of international business strategy at the Stephen Ross School of Business at University of Michigan, told Newsweek that Cohn’s assessment of tariffs was accurate.

“Cohn is correct that tariffs hurt the country that imposes them—in this case the U.S., because it is American businesses and consumers who incur higher costs and pay higher prices from the tariffs—which are essentially a tax on imports paid by the purchaser of the imports,” she explained.

Trump has defended his use of tariffs, arguing that they have raked in billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury. But analysts have pointed out that the amount taken in by the Treasury from new tariffs is minor compared to the total it collects. The additional money also came from U.S. consumers and not foreign exporters. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has reportedly lost billions of dollars due to its ongoing trade disputes.

The U.S. trade deficit, which Trump has used to justify his trade policies, has actually ballooned to a record high under his administration. Last year, the deficit rose to $891.2 billion. When it comes to China, which has received the brunt of the president's ire for its “unfair” trade practices, the trade gap also reached a new record of $419 billion. The previous trade deficit record of $838.3 billion was in 2006, under President George W. Bush.

Cohn pointed to the deficit as a sign that the Trump’s policies weren’t having an impact.

“Did it hurt the Chinese at all?” Cohn asked of the president’s trade war. “We had record trade deficits,” he pointed out. “The president needs a win. The only big open issue right now that he could claim as a big win that he’d hope would have a big impact on the stock market would be a Chinese resolution. Getting the trade deficit down I will never say is easy, but of the issues on the table, that’s relatively easier.”

Lim explained to Newsweek, however, that the large trade deficit is “mostly” not the result of Trump’s tariffs. “The trade balance of any country is statistically the result of domestic macroeconomic forces, particularly savings and investment, and not tariffs,” the professor said. She pointed to factors such as Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, the U.S. economy’s rapid growth, a strong dollar as well as the impact on exports from the strong dollar and retaliatory tariffs by China and other trading partners.

Trump’s administration should “work with allies through the rules-based multilateral world trading system that the U.S. led in setting up” to address trade disputes with China, Lim said. The U.S. should “strengthen and not weaken the WTO [World Trade Organization],” she added.

Trade tensions escalated with China last summer when Trump added new tariffs to billions of dollars of Chinese imports. Beijing responded in kind, adding retaliatory levies on American goods. Chinese and U.S. negotiators have been discussing a resolution since December, with Trump expressing optimism that an agreement will be reached.

Cohn served under Trump from January 2017 until April 2018. In Cohn’s Freakonomics interview, he also pointed to disagreements with Navarro and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross as major reasons behind his decision to part ways with the administration.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-economic ... my-1363598

<9


Thursday's Mini-Report, 3.14.19

Today's edition of quick hits:

By Steve Benen 03/14/19 05:30PM

* Quite an interesting ruling: "Gun maker Remington can be sued over how it marketed the Bushmaster rifle used to kill 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, a divided Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Thursday."

* The latest Brexit drama: "British lawmakers on Thursday voted to seek an extension to the country's Brexit deadline, throwing further doubt on the U.K.'s impending divorce from the European Union. In a series of votes in another dramatic yet inconclusive week, members of Parliament overwhelmingly voted 412-202 for the resolution."

* Oversight matters: "Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross faced tough questioning Thursday from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee about whether he lied to Congress about his decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census."

* Tea leaves surrounding Team Mueller: "One of the most prominent members of special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russia's attack on the 2016 presidential election will soon leave the office and the Justice Department, two sources close to the matter tell NPR."

* Stone gets a trial date: "Roger Stone's trial will start Nov. 5, and the judge presiding over the case said Thursday that she expects it to last two weeks."

* Facebook's latest troubles: "Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into data deals Facebook struck with some of the world's largest technology companies, intensifying scrutiny of the social media giant's business practices as it seeks to rebound from a year of scandal and setbacks."


On high-profile vote, NC’s Tillis defends principles, then rejects them

By Steve Benen

03/14/19 04:20 PM—UPDATED 03/14/19 07:52 PM

After the Democratic-led House passed a resolution to block Donald Trump’s emergency declaration, it was not at all clear whether it would pass the Republican-led Senate, and at least at first, many GOP senators were reluctant to stick their necks out. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), to his credit, said he’d put principle over party.

In fact, the North Carolina Republican went so far as to write a Feb. 25 op-ed for the Washington Post, explaining why he felt the need to oppose the White House’s legally dubious gambit, even if he agreed with the president’s underlying policy goals on border security.

Those on the left and the right who are making Trump’s emergency declaration a simple political litmus test of whether one supports or opposes the president and his policies are missing the mark. This is about the separation of powers and whether Congress will support or oppose a new precedent of executive power that will have major consequences.

As a U.S. senator, I cannot justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress. As a conservative, I cannot endorse a precedent that I know future left-wing presidents will exploit to advance radical policies that will erode economic and individual freedoms.

A week later, Tillis was unwavering. Defending his position, the Republican added, “It’s never a tough vote for me when I’m standing on principle.”

That’s not a quote that stands up well.

It was easy to admire the North Carolinian at the time for ignoring the pressure and doing the right thing – right up until today, when Thom Tillis flip-flopped. Twelve Republicans broke party ranks and supported the resolution, but Tillis, less than three weeks after taking a bold and principled stand, was not among them.

What caused him to cave under pressure? Only the senator knows for sure what prompted such a dramatic change of heart, but it’s worth noting that in the wake of his op-ed, there was some grumbling in far-right circles about a possible primary challenge to Tillis in 2020.

To be sure, the North Carolina Republican isn’t the only one who put principles aside today. There were about 8 to 10 GOP senators who raised public concerns about the president’s gambit after Trump announced he was redirecting funds in defiance of Congress’ wishes, only to vote with the White House’s position when push came to shove.

But none went quite as far as Tillis. It’ll be a while before he lives this one down.

* Update: I’d be remiss if I neglected to note that Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) wrote a piece on the debate a month ago, arguing at the time, “We absolutely have a crisis at the border, but as a Constitutional conservative I don’t want a future Democratic President unilaterally rewriting gun laws or climate policy. If we get used to presidents just declaring an emergency any time they can’t get what they want from Congress, it will be almost impossible to go back to a Constitutional system of checks and balances. Over the past decades, the legislative branch has given away too much power and the executive branch has taken too much power.”

Today, Sasse nevertheless voted against the resolution and suggested his vote was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) fault. Those who hope the Nebraskan will become Capitol Hill’s exciting new maverick are probably going to be disappointed.


Senate hands Trump an embarrassing defeat on emergency declaration

By Steve Benen

03/14/19 03:42 PM

At a White House event last week, Donald Trump was asked about upcoming congressional votes on his emergency declaration about the border. Would Republican lawmakers stick with him and oppose the Democratic resolution that would block his policy?

“Oh, I think they’ll stick,” the president replied. “Yeah.”

That’s plainly not what happened.

The Senate voted 59-41 on Thursday to cancel President Donald Trump’s national security declaration to fund a wall on the border, picking up the support of 12 Republicans to put the measure over the top.

Trump has vowed to veto the measure, which would block him from making an end run around Congress to obtain billions of federal dollars to build the wall that has been set aside for other purposes.

The vote represents an unusual bipartisan Senate rebuke to Trump’s methods, which could play a role in coming lawsuits against the emergency declaration.

As the dust settles, there were a total of 12 Republicans who broke party ranks and supported the resolution: Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Roy Blunt (Mo.), Susan Collins (Maine), Mike Lee (Utah), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rand Paul (Ky.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mitt Romney (Utah), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Pat Toomey (Pa.), and Roger Wicker (Miss.).

There would have been 13, but Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who said he’d vote “yes,” and wrote an entire Washington Post op-ed stressing how important his principles were, flip-flopped shortly before the vote and ended up toeing the party line.

For the White House, the embarrassment is as unusual as it is deep.

The West Wing didn’t just dispatch officials to Capitol Hill to twist GOP senators’ arms, Donald Trump personally launched an aggressive p.r. campaign, demanding that his Republican brethren endorse his legally dubious gambit.

Before the White House lobbying campaign began in earnest, four Senate Republicans supported the resolution to block the president’s policy. After the White House lobbying campaign, 12 Senate Republicans supported the resolution.

The result is the most direct congressional rebuke of Trump’s agenda since he took office 26 months ago.

The resolution now heads to the president’s desk, where it will receive the first veto of Trump’s presidency. The measure will then return to Congress for a possible veto-override vote, which is very unlikely to pass.

The issue will then move to the courts.

Does that mean all of this legislative drama was just for show? That’s now how I see it. For one thing, as we discussed a couple of weeks ago, courts will likely take note of the fact that bipartisan majorities in the Democratic-led House and Republican-led Senate both passed a resolution rejecting the president’s scheme.

Since this is a controversy in which the president is granting himself powers to spend money in defiance of Congress’ wishes, formal congressional disapproval of the White House’s policy is no small development.

What’s more, while we’ve occasionally seen Republicans offer rhetorical rebukes of Trump, this is qualitatively different. The resolution does more than signal dissatisfaction; it’s a substantive resolution intended to block a presidential policy.

And it passed easily, despite Trump stomping his feet and demanding that everyone respect his authority.


House unanimously passes measure calling for Mueller report’s release

By Steve Benen

03/14/19 12:42 PM

There’s no shortage of questions surrounding a possible report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Will it exist? If so, will it be shared with Congress? Can it be subpoenaed? Will the public ever have access to it?

Evidently, the Democratic-led House has an opinion on the matter.

The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to be made available to the public and Congress.

The measure passed 420 to zero, with four members voting present.

The full roll call is online here. Note, seven members did not vote, there are a few vacancies, and four members - Michigan’s Justin Amash, Florida’s Matt Gaetz, Arizona’s Paul Gosar, and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie – voted “present.”

As a practical matter, measures like these have a limited impact: at issue is a non-binding resolution, which the Republican-led Senate is very likely to ignore. If we assume Mueller completes a report, it will go to Attorney General William Barr, Donald Trump’s newest cabinet member, who may try to keep the document under wraps.

Indeed, that’s a very real possibility. As NBC News’ report this morning noted, while Barr is required to notify Congress after learning of Mueller’s findings, “the rules governing the special counsel say those reports must amount to ‘brief notifications, with an outline of the actions and the reasons for them.’”

What’s more, Bloomberg News reported last week that Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said he’d met with the attorney general and it’s the congressman’s expectation that Congress and the public may only get “a short summary” of Mueller’s findings, not a detailed report.

That’s exactly the outcome congressional Democrats hope to avoid, and the newly passed resolution is intended to keep the pressure on Barr to err on the side of disclosure.


For his part, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told reporters earlier this week, “I think that if the Justice Department either attempts to conceal the Mueller report or the underlying evidence, then requiring Mueller to testify may very well be necessary.”

The California Democrat also said last month that he’s prepared to subpoena the report and “take it to court if necessary.” Schiff added, “In the end, I think the [Justice] Department understands they’re going to have to make this public. I think Barr will ultimately understand that, as well.”

Watch this space.


Trump rejects deal Pence tried to negotiate on emergency declaration

By Steve Benen

03/14/19 10:53 AM

Ahead of today’s Senate vote on a resolution rejecting Donald Trump’s emergency declaration, Vice President Mike Pence took on an unpleasant task: lobbying Senate Republicans to put aside their principles, ignore the separation of powers, and follow the president’s lead in the name of partisan loyalty.

Oddly enough, those lobbying efforts appeared to be having some effect. As we discussed the other day, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has been working on revising the National Emergencies Act – the law Trump abused to redirect funds to the border – in order to restrict the scope of presidential powers going forward. If the vice president could get the White House’s support for Lee’s proposal, Pence was told, it might help persuade GOP senators to reject the bill on the emergency declaration.

As TPM reported yesterday:

[On Tuesday] Vice President Mike Pence indicated to Republican senators in a closed-door meeting that Trump was open to Lee’s legislation as a way to avoid an embarrassing public rebuke that would expose rifts within the GOP.

And right on cue, as the New York Times reported, Trump decided he wasn’t open to Lee’s measure after all.

A last-ditch gambit to spare Senate Republicans a hostile showdown with President Trump over the Constitution’s separation of powers was torpedoed on Wednesday by the president himself, increasing the likelihood that the Senate will vote on Thursday to overturn the president’s emergency declaration and force the first veto of his term.

Soon after, the Utah Republican announced that he, too, intends to support the resolution intended to block Trump’s emergency declaration.

There’s still some last-minute wrangling this morning, and I’ll have a separate item later today on the fate of the measure in the Senate, but for now I have a related question: if Pence can’t speak for the White House, why do people keep trying to negotiate with him?


A couple of months ago, for example, the vice president had a conversation with Juan Orlando Hernandez, the president of Honduras, and the Republican praised Hernandez’s cooperative efforts to limit migrant caravans. Soon after, Trump publicly rejected Pence’s line and said the opposite.

It came on the heels of Pence’s efforts to broker a deal with Democratic lawmakers to avoid a government shutdown, only to have Trump reject the terms his own vice president had offered.

To reiterate a point from our previous coverage, I’m not talking about private deliberations, in which there’s back and forth between a president and top members his team. This is about public disagreements, in which the vice president, under the impression that he’s articulating the administration’s position, says one thing, only to have the president say something altogether different soon after.

The next time Pence tells an official, “Let’s work something out,” why would anyone believe he has any meaningful authority to represent the administration?

http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog



<

<1



POLITICS

A Suspect In New Zealand Mass Shootings Appears To Be A White Supremacist

In a manifesto, the alleged gunman said he was motivated by American extremism.

By Andy Campbell

03/15/2019 02:24 am ET Updated 10 hours ago

A man accused of opening fire Friday at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing dozens of worshippers, appears to have been motivated by white supremacy and extremism that he saw in the United States.

During a news conference, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison characterized the alleged shooter as an “extremist, right-wing, violent terrorist.” Four suspects were taken into custody Friday in connection with the attack. The alleged gunman was later charged with murder.

The suspect, whose identity has not been confirmed, appears to have publicly posted a 74-page manifesto to Twitter and the online forum 8chan in which he declared his hatred for Muslim immigrants in Europe and idolized U.S. extremist movements. He also appears to have live-streamed part of the horrific attack in a now-deleted video on Facebook.

HuffPost has chosen not to provide a link to either piece of media. The author at times wrote in an over-the-top, possibly sarcastic voice, making specific passages difficult to discern, but an obsession with white supremacist ideas persists throughout the manifesto. He also repeatedly stated that he intended to use the media to give a platform to his views.

In the rambling manifesto, he claimed that he donated to white supremacist groups and said he idolized American mass shooters. He also recited the “14 words,” a popular white supremacist slogan that has been repeated by other North American white supremacists, such as Faith Goldy: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

The title of his manifesto ― “The Great Replacement” ― is a reference to a 2012 French book by the same name that has become a talking point for white supremacists all over the world. The book espouses the paranoid theory that mass migration from Muslim-majority countries will dilute and ultimately end white culture and identity. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) ― a white supremacist himself ― brought up these fears when asked last year about the “great replacement” concept during an extensive interview with an Austrian far-right publication.

An image posted to the author’s Twitter account showed rifle magazines with numerous names written on them, including Alexandre Bissonnette, who is serving a life sentence for shooting and killing six people at a Quebec City, Canada, mosque in 2017. Also named was Luca Traini, a far-right extremist suspected of shooting six Africans in Italy in February 2018. The magazines also referenced multiple battles in which the Ottoman Empire was defeated.

The magazines resembled those seen in the extremely graphic live video of the attack that was posted to Facebook. In the footage, various guns appear to be emblazoned with the names of other mass shooters, as well as the number “14.” Body armor he wore featured a black sun wheel, a prominent white nationalist symbol ― the same symbol used by extremist movements and neo-Nazis who marched during the deadly rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

A post on the anonymous message board 8chan thought to be authored by the alleged shooter provided a link to the shooting live-stream before it happened and stated, “Well lads, it’s time to stop shit posting and time to make a real-life effort post.” 8chan hosts many messages peddling white supremacist ideology and conspiracy theories.

Facebook released a statement after the attack, noting that it was removing any post that “praised” the suspected shooter or any crime he committed.

Twitter also released a statement noting that the apparent attacker’s profile had been taken down.

Mass shootings are uncommon in New Zealand, especially those fueled by hate and occurring at places of worship, as NBC News reported. Given the rarity of such a hate crime, the suspect’s movements online and his attention to American politics is particularly striking.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-zeal ... 7da9f17320

<2



NEW ZEALAND SHOOTINGS

New Zealand mosque shooting: Attacker's apparent manifesto probed

Although not confirmed by authorities, a 74-page manifesto titled "The Great Replacement" was posted online that matched several details about the attack.

By Alexander Smith, Caroline Radnofsky, Linda Givetash and Vladimir Banic

March 15, 2019, 7:10 AM CDT / Updated March 15, 2019, 10:13 AM CDT

The main suspect accused of carrying out a massacre at two New Zealand mosques on Friday was described by officials as a "right-wing extremist terrorist," and appeared to post a lengthy manifesto before the attack detailing his white-supremacist worldview.

Authorities charged a 28-year-old Australian national with murder in the shooting deaths of at least 49 people during Friday prayers in the city of Christchurch.

Police sources told NBC News' Australian partner Channel 7 that the suspect's name is Brenton Tarrant.

Three other people have been detained although authorities said it was unclear how they related to the incident. None of the four were on any terrorism watchlists, officials said.

Although not confirmed as the suspect's by authorities, a 74-page manifesto titled "The Great Replacement" was posted online beforehand and matched several known details about the suspect and the attack.

It contains a sprawling array of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and white-supremacist references, repeating common far-right talking points, and refers to President Donald Trump.

"Were/are you a supporter of Donald Trump?" the author of the manifesto wrote. "As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no."

It also condemns attempts to restrict firearms in the U.S. and pledges to start an American race war.

"This conflict over the 2nd amendment and the attempted removal of firearms rights will ultimately result in a civil war that will eventually balkanize the US along political, cultural and, most importantly, racial lines," the manifesto said.

The author said he had been planning the attack for two years and moved from Australia to New Zealand to plan and train. Though New Zealand was not the original target for the assault, he said he chose it because of its image as one of the safest countries in the world.

Paul Spoonley, a professor at New Zealand's Massey University, said that the far-right has "been building for some time but it's still quite a minor part of the political spectrum in New Zealand."

Speaking to Britain's Sky News, he said: "Somehow we thought we were exempt from it but that innocence has been completely blown away today."

Rather than focusing on only domestic grievances, white-supremacist nationalists are increasingly taking their cues from incidents around the world, championing international supporters of their cause and condemning what they see as injustices around the world, Spoonley added.

The author of the Christchurch manifesto also posted it to the fringe message board 8chan. Many of 8chan's members celebrated the attack and lauded the manifesto's references to niche memes and in-jokes.

Anti-immigrant far-right extremism has a long history in Australia and in recent years its focus has shifted to opposing Muslims, according to Mark Briskey, a senior lecturer in criminology at Murdoch University in Perth.

These views have seeped into the political mainstream, echoed and amplified by public figures such as Australian Sen. Fraser Anning who last year invoked the term "final solution" in a call to restrict Muslim immigration.

Briskey said such messages "give a permission for people who may be attracted to this narrative to undertake further acts of vilification against Muslims, and in the extreme, with violence."

The manifesto posted before the New Zealand attack referred to the victims of a terror attack in Stockholm and racial tensions in the Balkans.

The author says he was inspired by Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof as well as Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right terrorist who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011.

He says he aims to spark a civil war in the U.S. along divisions relating to gun rights and race.

Its author also says he is a supporter of President Donald Trump as what he describes as a symbol of white identity, but he adds that he dislikes Trump as a policymaker and a leader.

Hours after the attack, the president condemned the killings.

Although not confirmed by officials, the suspect appeared to film the attack on a head-mounted camera, live streaming the 17-minute incident to Facebook. The footage has since been taken down.

It shows him driving in a car while listening to a Serbian folk song about Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader convicted of war crimes including the 1995 genocide of Muslims in Srebrenica.

He then gets out of the car, retrieves a weapon from the trunk, and walks through the mosque firing at the worshippers inside for several minutes.

He also appears to encourage viewers to subscribe to PewDiePie, one of the world's best known YouTubers who has used racist language in the past and been accused of anti-Semitism.

PewDiePie, real name Felix Kjellberg, tweeted Friday that he felt "absolutely sickened having my name uttered by this person."

The video, and several images posted to social media that appear to tally with the incident, shows weapons scrawled with writing about Serbian knights who fought Ottoman Turks and Bosnians in the Middle Ages.

The manifesto condemns the U.S.-led bombing of Yugoslavia, which began 20 years ago next week, saying that NATO "fought beside Muslims and slaughtered Christian Europeans attempting to remove these Islamic occupiers from Europe."

NBC News spoke with a woman who said she went to high school with Tarrant in Grafton, New South Wales, Australia.

"He was not very popular and was teased a lot," she said, asking to remain anonymous. "He was picked on throughout school. He was always strange."

The woman said Tarrant worked at a local gym, which was also reported by Australian public broadcaster ABC.

"He was a very dedicated personal trainer," gym manager Tracey Gray told ABC. "He worked in our program that offered free training to kids in the community, and he was very passionate about that."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/new- ... it-n983601

<3



Trump deleted a tweet that linked to Breitbart's homepage while the New Zealand mosque shootings were taking place

In a tweet late Thursday night, President Donald Trump without comment posted a link to the right-wing populist website Breitbart.

Only hours before, 49 people in New Zealand were killed in attacks on mosques, with one suspect described as an "extremist, right-wing" terrorist by Australia's prime minister.

Trump had conducted an interview with Breitbart published the previous day.

In the early hours of Friday morning the president deleted the tweet.

Tom Porter

3.15.19

President Donald Trump early on Friday morning deleted a tweet linking to the Breitbart website, a tweet he posted just as the New Zealand mosque shootings were unfolding.

Breitbart is renowned for its hardline anti-Muslim and anti-immigration coverage.

In the now deleted tweet posted late on Thursday, Trump linked to Breitbart's homepage without comment.

Trump recently conducted an interview with Breitbart that had been published the day before.

Trump did not specify what part of Breitbart he wanted followers to see at the time he posted the link.

John Haltiwanger

@jchaltiwanger

Wow. Trump has deleted his Breitbart tweet after the New Zealand massacre. But screenshots are forever.

John Haltiwanger

@jchaltiwanger

Replying to @jchaltiwanger

The last tweet Trump sent before his delayed reaction to the New Zealand shooting promotes Breitbart, a blatantly Islamophobic publication. It’s been barely a month since Breitbart was widely decried for this anti-Muslim tweet (since deleted) around the Super Bowl.

View image on TwitterView image on Twitter
85
7:55 AM - Mar 15, 2019 · Brooklyn, NY

Trump tweeted at about 11 p.m. Eastern time. By that time, news outlets had been reporting on the shooting in New Zealand for about an hour. Breitbart was also running the story.

Critics questioned why Trump chose to link to the site, posting screenshots of anti-Islam comments underneath a Breitbart report on the attacks.

Breitbart was among the first to champion his hard line populist policies and was described by Steve Bannon, its former chairman, as a platform of the "alt right" nationalist movement.

Academic and Washington Post columnist Brian Klaas tweeted: "Trump could have not responded; responded gracefully; or linked to any other website about the NZ terror attack. He chose Breitbart."

MSNBC anchor David Gura commented: "Last night, hours after the terrorist attack in New Zealand, President Trump tweeted a Breitbart News article about the shooting, without comment. Moments ago, 11 hours after the attack, he posted his own tweet. The Breitbart News article no longer appears in his feed."

About 24 hours before Trump's tweet, Breitbart had published an interview with the president in which he warned that things could get "very bad" for his Democrat opponents if his supporters "get tough."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the deletion of the tweet and criticism of the president. Breitbart also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The president early on Friday tweeted an official message of condolence to the victims of the attack, writing:

My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosques. 49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The U.S. stands by New Zealand for anything we can do. God bless all!

Breitbart has long been accused of fostering anti-Islam views with its coverage and in February 2018 deleted a tweet in which it suggested that Muslims would end the Super Bowl if they controlled America.

In manifesto posted online before the shooting in New Zealand, a man reported to be the gunman praised Trump as a "symbol of renewed white identity" in a document filled with alt-right propaganda.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-d ... cks-2019-3

<4



POLITICS

Trump Encourages Violence From His Supporters. They’re Listening.

President Donald Trump riles up his base with veiled threats of violence. His followers at rallies and protests can’t help but latch on.

By Sebastian Murdock

03/15/2019 02:30 pm ET Updated 7 hours ago

President Donald Trump this week issued a thinly veiled threat of violence against his opponents, saying that members of the police, military and biker gangs could “play it tough” if they “reach a certain point.”

It was a disturbing remark, but even more disturbing is the fact that it’s part of a long history of Trump encouraging his supporters to engage in violence. Largely unchecked by his party’s leadership, Trump’s rhetoric has become normalized despite its real-world ramifications.

“I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of Bikers for Trump,” Trump told Breitbart in the interview, which he later tweeted. “I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

“I think it sounds very much to me like he’s encouraging them to engage in something that’s probably illegal such as assaulting people, you know behave in a dangerous way,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told MSNBC. “That sounds like a threat to me. I think it’s appalling.”

The president later deleted his tweet as news began to trickle in of a mass shooting in New Zealand that left at least 49 worshiping Muslims dead on Friday. While there are no signs that the suspect was a close follower of Trump, he did mention the U.S. president once in his rambling manifesto, calling Trump “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.” Trump has previously banned those from majority-Muslim countries from coming into the U.S., keeping families apart under a racist policy.

It’s impossible to ignore how Trump’s continued rhetoric of violence and fear of other ethnicities has inspired his supporters to carry out attacks. Pro-Trump extremists sought to slaughter Somali Muslim immigrants in Kansas before authorities managed to intervene. The men chose their targets after Trump called refugees “the greatest Trojan horse of all time,” according to court testimony.

The case is one of more than a dozen where apparent Trump supporters attacked or plotted to attack Muslims. Acts of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have surged during Trump’s presidency, with more than 150 instances of Trump-related taunts and attacks, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.

But it’s not just hate speech the president gloms onto when encouraging violence. During the 2016 presidential election cycle, Trump continuously called for his supporters to commit violence against protestors.

"If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you?” Trump said at a 2016 rally in Iowa. “Seriously, OK. Just knock the hell — I promise you I will pay for the legal fees, I promise.”

It worked. Videos taken at Trump rallies show his supporters lobbing punches at protestors.

In 2017, a gaggle of white supremacists committed acts of violence in Charlottesville, leading to the killing of anti-racist protestor Heather Heyer. It should have been a layup for the president to condemn the attack. He defended his racist supporters instead.

“You have people who are very fine people on both sides,” Trump said.

GOP leaders have largely ignored Trump’s repeated calls for violence. After Trump claimed to have the might of the military on his side, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stayed quiet. Sens. McConnell and John Cornyn (R-Texas), along with Reps. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) did not respond to HuffPost’s requests asking if they would condemn Trump’s latest remarks.

As the GOP fails to respond to Trumps’ threats, the violence continues. Last October, pipe bombs were mailed to the political enemies of Trump and to the New York offices of CNN, which Trump has consistently deemed the “enemy of the people.” The Florida suspect in that case drove a van plastered with images of the president, and had told coworkers he “wanted to go back to the Hitler days.”

Just days after authorities caught the pipe bomb suspect, another wave of terror hit when a man went into a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 people. Tree of Life Rabbi Jeffrey Myers later met with the president to remind him that “hate speech leads to hateful actions.”

The rabbi’s words apparently fell on deaf ears.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-en ... 7da9f29e07

<5



Trump issues first veto, warning of 'reckless' resolution

BY JORDAN FABIAN - 03/15/19 03:52 PM EDT


President Trump on Friday issued the first veto of his presidency, stymying Congress’s attempt to block him from obtaining funds for his wall at the U.S.-Mexico border without lawmakers’ approval.

Trump vetoed a resolution of disapproval of his emergency declaration that passed the House and the Senate. The measure won support from both parties, including 12 Senate Republicans, in what was seen as a significant rebuke of the president.

In an Oval Office ceremony, Trump said Americans would be put at risk if the “dangerous” and “reckless” resolution became law.

“Today I am vetoing this resolution. Congress has the freedom to pass this resolution, and I have the duty to veto it,” Trump said.

The resolution of disapproval will now return to the Democratic-controlled House, which is expected to hold a vote on March 26 on overriding Trump’s veto, according to a leadership aide. But leaders lack the two-thirds support of the chamber necessary to pass the bill over the president’s objections.

The 59-41 vote in the Senate on Thursday marked the first time Congress has voted to block a president’s emergency declaration. The House passed the measure last month by a vote of 245-182.

Trump’s move capped off weeks of conflict with members of both parties over the wall, an issue that will play a key role in his 2020 reelection race.

Opponents of the national emergency declaration denounced it as a violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers. But Trump framed the vote as a referendum on his immigration agenda, rather than his presidential authority.

“People hate the word ‘invasion,’ but that’s what it is,” the president said of the situation on the southern border.

Trump also said anyone voting to overturn the national emergency is voting “against reality” and asserted that Republican voters were “overwhelmingly” against the resolution.

Trump signed the veto at a made-for-television ceremony flanked by Vice President Pence, Cabinet members, law enforcement officials and others. He handed the pen he used to a so-called “angel mom” whose son was killed by a person living illegally in the U.S., telling family members “they will not have died in vain.”

Despite the veto, the battle over the emergency will continue in court where a number of states and advocacy groups have sued to stop it.

“Even members of President Trump’s own party are beginning to realize that he is a one-man constitutional crisis,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups challenging the order. “The president’s veto is as meaningless as his signature on the national emergency declaration. Congress has rejected the president's declaration, and now the courts will be the ultimate arbiter of its legality.”

Attorney General William Barr said the order is “clearly authorized under the law and consistent with past precedent.” He added the situation at the border “is exactly the type of situation the president is allowed to address” under the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which formalized the president’s emergency powers.

GOP senators voting against the president said the constitutional issues created by the emergency declaration were too great to ignore.

“Never before has a president asked for funding, Congress has not provided it, and the president then has used the National Emergencies Act of 1976 to spend the money anyway,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who is not seeking reelection. “Our nation’s founders gave to Congress the power to approve all spending so that the president would not have too much power.”

The president said he has sympathy for members of his own party who felt compelled to vote for the resolution and that he did not pressure any GOP senators, even though White House officials have said Trump spent time phoning and meeting with them ahead of the vote.

“They’re doing what they have to do, and I put no pressure on anybody,” he said. “I actually said, ‘I could have gotten some of them to come along.’ I said, ‘I want for you to vote your heart. Do want you want to do. I’m not putting any pressure.’”

During his first two years in office, Trump held firm control over congressional Republicans who did little to challenge his authority under one-party rule. But this week’s vote, combined with the Senate’s passage of a resolution against U.S. involvement in Yemen, showed some GOP lawmakers are willing to buck Trump in order to claw back powers of the legislative branch.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) also criticized Trump’s veto, saying “it is no surprise that the president holds the rule of law and our Constitution in minimal regard.”

“There is no emergency,” Schumer said in a statement. “While the president has chosen to trample all over the Constitution, we Democrats in the Senate will never stop defending our country from an overreaching president.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... eclaration

<6



Dems prepare next steps after Trump's veto

BY CRISTINA MARCOS AND MIKE LILLIS - 03/15/19 05:45 PM EDT

Democrats are planning a vote that aims to override President Trump's veto of legislation blocking his emergency declaration, an effort that’s all but certain to fail.

The House will hold a veto override vote on March 26, shortly after lawmakers return from a weeklong recess, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced Friday. The measure is unlikely to garner the necessary two-thirds majority, given that only 13 House Republicans joined with Democrats in support of a resolution last month to block Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall.

And even though 12 Senate Republicans joined the Democrats to send the measure to Trump’s desk, eight more would have to defect in that chamber to override the veto, the first of Trump's presidency.

Even if they can’t force Trump to revoke the national emergency, Democrats are hoping to highlight the constitutional questions surrounding Trump's declaration and the infighting it has prompted within the GOP.

“House Republicans will have to choose between their partisan hypocrisy and their sacred oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Pelosi said in a statement.

Democrats are also eyeing other strategies for preventing Trump from expanding the wall with funds Congress previously allotted for other purposes, including military construction projects.

"Any veto override is difficult, but we keep fighting. Both chambers of Congress — one Republican and one Democrat — are on record to terminate the President's emergency declaration," Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and author of the disapproval resolution, said Friday in an email.

“This will provide significant evidence for the courts as they review lawsuits,” he added. “We will also continue working in Congress to find avenues to terminate the emergency declaration — whether it be through appropriations or other processes.”

One such avenue is simply to bring repeated votes on Castro’s disapproval resolution — a plan suggested Thursday by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). Democrats are also considering efforts to attach the language as an amendment to larger bills, including 2020 spending measures and reauthorization of defense funding — legislation that’s “a natural fit” for the disapproval resolution, according to a Democratic aide.

The Senate cleared a resolution Thursday to block Trump’s emergency declaration, with the support of a dozen Republicans, after the House passed it late last month.

Trump said during an Oval Office ceremony Friday that Americans would be at risk if the "dangerous" resolution became law.

“Congress has the freedom to pass this resolution, and I have the duty to veto it,” Trump said, marking the first veto of his presidency.

Schumer signaled that Senate Democrats would force additional votes on resolutions of disapproval blocking Trump every six months, as allowed under the National Emergencies Act, to prolong an issue that divides Republicans.

"I believe the law allows us to bring it up every six months, and certainly we would intend to do that," Schumer told reporters.

Schumer maintained that senators should challenge the White House even if Trump will veto each of those disapproval resolutions.

"The point of defending the checks and balances that the Founding Fathers put so exquisitely into our government? We've got to defend it 10 times even if they knock it down in hopes of winning the 11th," Schumer said.

House Democratic leaders are weighing the possibility of additional votes as well, a leadership aide said.

It’s also possible that Democrats could file a lawsuit challenging the emergency declaration or join an existing one, but no decision has been made. Sixteen state attorneys general, led by California’s Xavier Becerra (D), filed a lawsuit last month, with more states signing on in recent weeks.

But Democrats said the passage of a resolution — especially under divided government — to terminate the declaration could bolster the legal arguments challenging Trump’s authority.

“Think about it: both chambers of Congress, one Democratic and one Republican, voted to terminate the President’s emergency declaration,” Castro said. “As the courts review this, that will be a significant legal fact.”

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are working on legislation that would overhaul the National Emergencies Act and make it easier for Congress to terminate future emergency declarations.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced a bill this week — ahead of Thursday’s vote on the resolution to block the declaration — that would automatically end all future emergency declarations after 30 days unless Congress votes to extend the emergency. That measure was intended as part of a potential deal allowing Senate Republicans to vote against terminating the border emergency declaration in exchange for Trump endorsing the bill to rein in national emergencies.

But Pelosi made clear that the House wouldn’t take up such legislation “to give President Trump a pass.”

The talks ultimately fell apart, leading the 12 Senate Republicans to vote with Democrats to block the declaration.

But when asked after Thursday’s vote on the declaration if the House could take up legislation to reform the National Emergencies Act, a Pelosi spokesman said House committees are looking into the issue.

“The House Committees are reviewing the President’s unlawful use of the National Emergencies Act. It was never intended — and still is not permissible — to be used by the President to settle a policy dispute in which he miserably failed to convince the Congress and the American people,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said in an email.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4343 ... rumps-veto

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POLITICS

Putin ally Oleg Deripaska sues Treasury and Steven Mnuchin to lift sanctions, claiming ‘utter devastation’ of his wealth

KEY POINTS

Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska is suing the U.S. Treasury Department to lift sanctions imposed on him.

The Putin ally claims his net worth has fallen by more than $7.5 billion, or about 81 percent, since the sanctions on him were imposed.

Deripaska is described in the court filing as a “victim of this country’s political infighting and ongoing reaction to Russia’s purported interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.”

Kevin Breuninger

PUBLISHED FRI, MAR 15 2019 • 1:59 PM EDT | UPDATED 6 HOURS AGO

Businessman Oleg Deripaska, who is known as an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is suing the U.S. Treasury Department to lift sanctions imposed on him, a court filing revealed Friday.

Derpiaska’s lawsuit demands that his name be removed from a list of sanctioned individuals, and that the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, cancel their decision to label him an “oligarch” and disclose records related to him.

He claims that his net worth has fallen by more than $7.5 billion, or about 81 percent, since the sanctions on him were imposed.

The legal complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., names Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and OFAC Director Andrea Gacki as defendants.

Deripaska is described in the court filing as a “victim of this country’s political infighting and ongoing reaction to Russia’s purported interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.”

Deripaska was added by OFAC on April 6, 2018, to a list of “Designated Russian Oligarchs” for allegedly acting on behalf of “a senior official of the Government of the Russian Federation,” and for his operation in the Russian energy sector.

“Deripaska has been investigated for money laundering, and has been accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering,” said a Treasury press release at the time. “There are also allegations that Deripaska bribed a government official, ordered the murder of a businessman, and had links to a Russian organized crime group.”

The Treasury also sanctioned businesses in which Deripaska owns stakes, including aluminum giant Rusal and En+. But the Trump administration lifted sanctions on those companies in January over Democrats’ objections. Deripaska’s personal designation under those sanctions remained, however.

Later Friday, Deripaska said in an Instagram post that he was filing the suit “to clear my name and remove the sanctions that have been arbitrarily imposed on me for political reasons.” He challenged OFAC to produce any evidence it has “to back up the unfounded rumours and innuendo it likes cite.”

A Treasury Department spokesperson declined to comment on the pending litigation.

Deripaska said the U.S. government’s designation of him is “arbitrary, capricious,” and an “abuse of discretion” that has been ruinous for him financially.

“The consequence of Defendants’ unlawful action has been the utter devastation of Deripaska’s wealth, reputation, and economic livelihood,” his lawsuit claims.

“Deripaska has been effectively shut out from the international business community and the global financial system,” according to the court filing. “Indeed, banks and businesses have terminated existing contracts and agreements with him, and businesses refuse to enter into any further dealings with him out of fear of exposure to U.S. sanctions.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/15/putin-a ... lions.html

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Friday's Mini-Report, 3.15.19

Today's edition of quick hits:

By Steve Benen 03/15/19 05:30PM

* The latest from New Zealand: "The main suspect accused of carrying out a massacre at two New Zealand mosques on Friday was described by officials as a 'right-wing extremist terrorist,' and appeared to post a lengthy manifesto before the attack detailing his white-supremacist worldview."

* Changes ahead: "New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Saturday vowed 'our gun laws will change' after mass shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch killed 49 people and wounded dozens more the day before."

* Wasting little time: "President Donald Trump issued the first veto of his presidency on Friday, rejecting Congress' resolution to terminate his declaration of a national emergency on the southern border."

* The word "several" stood out: "Former Donald Trump campaign aide Rick Gates is still cooperating in 'several ongoing investigations,' defense lawyers and federal prosecutors said Friday, suggesting probes stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller's inquiry into Russia's election interference remain active."

* Perhaps Trump shouldn't have claimed victory on this one: "North Korea is considering suspending denuclearization talks with the United States unless Washington changes its stance after the breakdown of a summit meeting in Hanoi between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a senior North Korean official said Friday. "

* ICC: "The United States will repeal or deny visas to International Criminal Court staff seeking to investigate Americans in Afghanistan or elsewhere and may take similar action to protect Israelis or other allied forces from prosecution, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday."

* These were pretty impressive protests: "Thousands of students across the United States were expected to stage school walkouts Friday, joining peers around the world to demand action on climate change."


Trump changes direction, says there ‘should be no Mueller Report’

By Steve Benen

03/15/19 12:43 PM

Donald Trump has thrown plenty of tantrums, online and off. The president has lashed out at Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation; he’s condemned the probe as “illegal”; and he’s accused Democrats of being guilty of the transgressions he’s been accused of. So the fact that Trump did all of these same things in a series of tweets this morning wouldn’t ordinarily be of any real interest.

Except, this time, the Republican, perhaps feeling some anxiety about what’s to come, went just a little further than he has before.

“So, if there was knowingly & acknowledged to be ‘zero’ crime when the Special Counsel was appointed, and if the appointment was made based on the Fake Dossier (paid for by Crooked Hillary) and now disgraced Andrew McCabe (he & all stated no crime), then the Special Counsel should never have been appointed and there should be no Mueller Report.

“This was an illegal & conflicted investigation in search of a crime. Russian Collusion was nothing more than an excuse by the Democrats for losing an Election that they thought they were going to win. THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO A PRESIDENT AGAIN!”

Most of this can be overlooked as stale and tiresome, but six words represented a new posture: “[T]here should be no Mueller Report.”

It’s difficult to say with any confidence what precipitated this little tirade. Maybe the president saw something on television that set him off; maybe he received an unpleasant briefing from his legal defense team.

Either way, the debate of late has been over whether Congress and the public will be able to read the special counsel’s findings if/when it’s prepared and submitted to the Justice Department. Indeed, just yesterday, the Democratic-led House voted 420 to zero on a resolution calling for Mueller’s report to be released if/when it’s complete.

Trump, by and large, has steered clear of that argument, at least publicly. During a brief Q&A with reporters three weeks ago today, the president said he hadn’t spoken with Attorney General William Barr about the matter at all, though he did say, in reference to the special counsel’s eventual findings, “I look forward to seeing the report.”

Evidently, something happened over the last 21 days to change Trump’s perspective – because he no longer “looks forward” to seeing the report he doesn’t think should exist.

Two days before those comments, the president had this exchange with a reporter:

Q: Mr. President, should the Mueller report be released when you’re abroad next week?

TRUMP: That’ll be totally up to the new Attorney General. He’s a tremendous man, a tremendous person, who really respects this country and respects the Justice Department. So that’ll be totally up to him, the new Attorney – the new Attorney General, yes.

Q: Should it be public? Should the report become public, do you think?

TRUMP: I guess, from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General.

This passivity has since been replaced with frantic tweeting. I wonder why.

As is always the case, none of this is happening in a vacuum. The attorney general may soon have to decide whether to disclose Mueller’s findings, and it’s hardly a stretch to wonder if the president’s latest Twitter tantrum was directed at his newly appointed allies in the Justice Department.


Mnuchin may not comply with a request for Trump’s tax returns

By Steve Benen

03/15/19 10:42 AM

Under existing law, some congressional leaders have the power to request individual tax returns from the Treasury Department. That power, created in the wake of the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s, has been rarely used.

But with Donald Trump’s presidency posing novel challenges, congressional Democrats have been moving forward with a slow process, building a case that will culminate with a formal appeal to the administration for the president’s tax materials.

As we were reminded yesterday, to assume that the Treasury Department will comply with the request would be a mistake.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin suggested Thursday he will protect President Donald Trump’s privacy if he receives a request from House Democrats for Trump’s tax returns.

At a House Ways and Means Committee hearing, Mnuchin was asked whether he would meet a request for Trump’s past tax returns. Chairman Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., is expected to formally ask for those as Democrats seek to shed light on Trump’s financial dealings and potential conflicts of interest.

“We will examine the request and we will follow the law … and we will protect the president as we would protect any taxpayer” regarding their right to privacy, Mnuchin said.

The trouble, of course, is the conflict between the first half of that sentence and the second.

Under existing federal law, if the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee requests a specific set of tax returns, the secretary of the Treasury is supposed to “furnish” the documents for the lawmaker. The privacy rights of the individual taxpayer may be relevant, but it doesn’t (ahem) trump the legal mechanism that gives the chairman the authority to access the materials.

Mnuchin specifically told lawmakers yesterday, “We will protect the president as we would protect any individual taxpayer under their rights.”

I suppose some may see some ambiguity in the comments – one House Democrat yesterday described the secretary’s words as “mumble jumble double talk” – but I think it’s fair to say the Treasury chief is not eager to cooperate with a congressional request for Trump’s tax returns.


And what, pray tell, happens if Congress makes a request under existing law and Mnuchin throws the appeal in the trash? The issue would go to the same place too many of our political disputes end up: in the courts.

NBC News’ report on this added, “The unprecedented move likely would set off a huge legal battle between Trump’s administration and Democrats controlling the House. The fight could take years to resolve, possibly stretching beyond the 2020 presidential election.”

I won’t pretend to know how, whether, and when this will be resolved, but after Michael Cohen’s recent testimony, I can say the case for obtaining the president’s tax returns has never been stronger.


Lindsey Graham balks at measure to make Mueller report public

By Steve Benen

03/15/19 10:09 AM

When it comes to controversial issues and contentious debates, congressional votes tend to be split along party lines. Yesterday, however, the House took up a resolution calling for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report to be made available to the public and Congress – and it passed 420 to zero.

The measure, which appears to have been intended to put increased pressure on Attorney General William Barr, Donald Trump’s newest cabinet member, now heads to the Senate where it’s unlikely to fare well.

That’s not just a guess. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) not only balked when Democratic leaders sought unanimous consent to approve the symbolic resolution, the South Carolinian also issued a curious press statement about his position on the matter.

“As currently constructed, I cannot support the House-passed resolution calling for the release of the Mueller report. However, I would agree to the resolution with a simple change – it be amended to call for the appointment of a Special Counsel to:

“Investigate alleged misconduct around the handling of the Clinton email investigation.

“Investigate the abuse of the FISA warrant process against Mr. Carter Page.”

Even by 2019 standards, this is pretty nutty. Graham isn’t necessarily opposed to Mueller’s work, and he’s willing to tolerate a non-binding resolution about making the special counsel’s report available to the public, but only if Congress also endorses the appointment of another special counsel who’d investigate some painfully foolish Republican conspiracy theories.

Remember, this statement wasn’t issued from some fringe backbencher who wrote a weird piece for a right-wing website; this was a press statement from the sitting chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.


There’s been all kinds of speculation in recent months about what in the world happened to Lindsey Graham – a senator who tried to cultivate a reputation as a serious and constructive lawmaker who was eager to work on bipartisan compromises, but who’s since transformed into something very different. I don’t have much use for assorted conspiracy theories about Donald Trump having some damaging information on the GOP senator, forcing him to behave this way.

The truth is almost certainly simpler: many Republicans, especially those from ruby-red states, have come to believe their careers depend on fealty to Trump. Those who stray tend to lose, often in the face of primary challenges from those who swear undying allegiance to the Republican White House.

Graham will seek re-election next year, and as he recently told the New York Times, in explaining his metamorphosis, “If you don’t want to get re-elected, you’re in the wrong business.”

At some point in the future, Graham may look back on this period of his career and reflect on whether it was worth it. I wonder what he’ll say.


Legal case against Trump’s ‘charity’ comes into sharp focus

By Steve Benen

03/15/19 09:20 AM

Donald Trump’s political operation is under investigation. So is his business. So is his inaugural committee. The president himself is the subject of an ongoing probe. But let’s also not forget the investigation into Trump’s charitable foundation.

It’s true, of course, that the Republican’s so-called “charity” permanently closed its doors a few months ago, after having been accused of engaging in a “shocking pattern of illegality.” But as Rachel noted on the show last night, the foundation can be both shut down and still held to account for its alleged misdeeds. As the Associated Press reported late yesterday:

Insider testimony, emails and other evidence show President Donald Trump turned his charitable foundation into a wing of his White House campaign, New York’s attorney general said in a new court filing Thursday.

State Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, detailed her case against the foundation in a 37-page court filing in a lawsuit that seeks $2.8 million in restitution and an order banning Trump and his three eldest children from running any New York charities for 10 years.

That $2.8 million in restitution doesn’t include an additional multi-million fine the state attorney general’s office is seeking as a civil penalty for the foundation’s alleged misdeeds.

And the list of those alleged misdeeds is not short. New York’s AG argued yesterday that there’s evidence of the president using his foundation “for his own benefit and benefit of entities in which he had a financial interest.” Trump is accused of, among other things, using charitable assets to pay for portraits of himself, make political donations, pay for advertisements for Trump Hotels, settle lawsuits involving his business, and improperly intervening in the 2016 election.

The state attorney general’s court filing added that the alleged misuse of the charity was “willful and intentional.” Trump was “aware of” the legal limits, Letitia James added, but he ignored those limits anyway.


As regular readers may recall, let’s also not forget the fact that the president personally signed federal tax returns – under penalty of perjury – swearing that his foundation wasn’t used for political and/or business purposes, and we now know there’s quite a bit of evidence that suggests it was used for both.

Jenny Johnson Ware, a criminal tax attorney in Chicago, told the New York Times last year, “People have gone to prison for stuff like this.”

http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog

<

<1



Democracy Post Opinion

A short history of President Trump’s anti-Muslim bigotry

President Trump speaks during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP)


By Brian Klaas

Democracy Post contributor

March 15 at 3:39 PM

On Friday, 49 people were killed in a terrorist attack at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand — the country’s worst mass killing since 1943. A suspect charged in the attack was reportedly an anti-Muslim zealot.

As news of the attack was unfolding, President Trump tweeted a link to Breitbart — a far-right “news” site. Breitbart has published vile anti-Muslim hatred, including calling Muslims “rapefugees,” mocking the notion of Islamophobia, and absurdly claiming that terrorist attacks are “an expression of mainstream Muslim values.” It’s a site where Muslim-hating white supremacists — like at least one of those who allegedly carried out the attack in Christchurch — would find writers who gave them rhetorical ammunition for their ideologies of hate. (Trump has since deleted the tweet.)

Trump is an Islamophobic bigot. As president, his words matter. He is using them to spread hatred. And deranged, unwell or evil people have allegedly been inspired by those words to target the very people that Trump targets in his speeches and his tweets. The charged suspect in New Zealand cited Trump “as a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose” (though he also said he rejected Trump as a policymaker and leader).

Trump’s anti-Muslim bigotry has a long history. In 2011 and 2012, Trump insinuated that President Barack Obama was secretly Muslim. In September 2015, at a campaign rally, Trump nodded along as a supporter claimed “we have a problem in this country; it’s called Muslims.” Trump continued nodding, saying “right,” and “we need this question!” as the supporter then proceeded to ask Trump “when can we get rid of them [Muslims]?” In response, Trump said: “We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things.”

In November 2015, on “Morning Joe,” Trump said that America needs to “watch and study the mosques.” Four days later, he indicated that he would “certainly implement” a database to track Muslims in the United States. Two days after that, he falsely claimed that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims cheered in New Jersey when the World Trade Center collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Then came the most egregious statement — one that should haunt Trump’s legacy forever and taint everyone who supported him subsequently: On Dec. 7, 2015, he called to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. Three days later, Trump tweeted that the United Kingdom is “trying hard to disguise their massive Muslim problem.” On March 9, 2016, Trump falsely claimed that “Islam hates us.”

Upon taking office, Trump surrounded himself with anti-Muslim bigots. Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump adviser, was fired by the FBI for his Islamophobia. Michael Flynn, Trump’s disgraced national-security-adviser-turned-felon, said that Islam “is like a cancer.” And top officials such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton have also stoked hatred of Islam.

In late November 2017, Trump retweeted three videos by Jayda Fransen. She was one of the leaders of Britain First, a neo-fascist hate group. She has been convicted of multiple hate-crime offenses and was involved in organizing “Christian patrols,” which included what Britain First called “mosque invasions” aimed at intimidating British Muslims. While Fransen was out on bail, she appeared on Radio Aryan, a neo-Nazi radio station. Her interview began right after the station concluded its reading from “Mein Kampf.” That is who the president of the United States chose to amplify to his millions and millions of Twitter followers.

The list of Trump’s anti-Muslim bigotry goes on and on. But just imagine replacing the word “Muslim” with “Jewish” or “black” in any of statements above. It immediately becomes clear that there is a grotesque double standard when it comes to the mainstream acceptance of anti-Muslim bigotry without consequence in the United States and the broader Western world. We must never reduce our vigilance toward the dangerous scourges of anti-Semitism and racism, but we must hold anti-Muslim bigots to the same standard that we would hold other bigots.

Last week, a prominent Fox News host and Trump ally, Judge Jeanine Pirro, suggested that wearing a Muslim hijab could be incompatible with believing in the U.S. Constitution. After her remarks sparked outrage, Pirro went on broadcasting as usual, only eliciting a toothless statement from Fox News. It’s clear that in media and in politics alike, vilifying Muslims is not unsavory enough to actually elicit consequences.

Some of the president’s supporters might accuse me of “politicizing tragedy,” but that is the only appropriate thing to do when tragedies are made more likely because of our politics. Hollow statements of condolence are meaningless if you are willing to turn around and support an Islamophobic bigot in the White House who makes those condolences more necessary.

The attack on New Zealand is an attack on religious freedom and an attack on that hallowed principle that worshiping the God of your choice should not make you a target of violence.

But if we want to stop such massacres, we need to work much harder to stamp out hate and bigotry in society — and part of that is to stop electing or supporting hateful bigots.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 121aa7489d

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Australian lawmaker egged after blaming Muslims following attack on New Zealand mosques

BY MORGAN GSTALTER - 03/16/19 07:57 AM EDT

A protester smashed an egg on the head of a right-wing Australian senator on Saturday after he said Muslims were the “real cause of bloodshed” following the New Zealand mosque shootings.

A protester slapped an egg on the back of Queensland Sen. Fraser Anning’s head during a news conference Saturday, Al Jazeera reported.

Anning was restrained by security officials during the confrontation after punching the protester, according to the outlet.

A protester smashed an egg on the head of a right-wing Australian senator on Saturday after he said Muslims were the “real cause of bloodshed” following the New Zealand mosque shootings.

A protester slapped an egg on the back of Queensland Sen. Fraser Anning’s head during a news conference Saturday, Al Jazeera reported.

VIDEO OF EGGING:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1106790914414919681

*Someone has just slapped an egg on the back of Australian Senator Fraser Anning's head, who immediately turned around and punched him in the face.

Henry Belot

@Henry_Belot

@politicsabc @abcnews

12:34 AM - Mar 16, 2019*

The confrontation came after Anning sparked international backlash for his comments about Islam following the massacre at two mosques in New Zealand. At least 49 people were killed and dozens injured in the attacks.

The primary suspect, a 28-year-old Australian man, has been charged with one count of murder in connection with the shootings but will likely face more charges.

Anning wrote in a statement shortly after the attack that while he condemned the violence, the attacks highlighted “the growing fear within our community, both in Australia and New Zealand, of the increasing Muslim presence.”

“The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place,” Anning continued.

Anning, a far-right independent senator elected in 2017, said Muslims “may have been the victims today; usually they are the perpetrators.”

His derogatory comments were quickly condemned by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

“Those views have no place in Australia, let alone the Australian Parliament,” Morrison wrote on Twitter.

Anning has been criticized in the past for his comments about immigration.

He was widely condemned last year for calling for the “final solution” to end what he called an immigration problem in his country, invoking a Nazi euphemism for genocide.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing ... -following

<3



PANDERING TO HATE

Trump Still Won’t Name ‘White Supremacist Terrorism’ and His Base Loves It

Trump's response to the horrific New Zealand terror attack, and his refusal to name white supremacist terror, is a dog-whistle directly to his far-right base.

Dean Obeidallah

03.16.19 11:25 AM ET

Donald Trump understands his base better than anyone. He gets what makes them cheer and what turns them off. And Trump’s response to Friday’s horrific white supremacist terrorist attack in New Zealand that saw 49 Muslims murdered was coldly calculated to play to them, especially his refusal to use the term “white supremacist terrorism.”

But first there was to Trump’s reaction to the terrorist attack on Twitter where he spoke of standing, “in solidarity with New Zealand” and declaring, “We love you New Zealand!” Great sentiment but where was the mention of Muslims, as in, “I stand with the Muslim community today”?! After all, the 49 victims were all Muslims killed in their place of worship because they were Muslim.

There’s no doubt Trump’s failure to say any kind words about Muslims was by design. Trump understands that would likely upset his base whom he has fed a diet of anti-Muslim hate, from declaring that “Islam hates us” to calling for a total ban on Muslims coming to this country, and his 2016 comment that takes on a different meaning after Friday’s terror attack: “We're having problems with the Muslims coming into this country…You have to deal with the mosques, whether we like it or not.”

And then, Friday afternoon, it got worse. Responding to a question by an ABC reporter about whether he believed there was a growing threat of white nationalism worldwide, Trump responded, “I don’t really,” adding, “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.” Our own ears and eyes (as well as statistics) tells us that’s a lie. Again, this reaction is because Trump gets his base better than anyone.

Of course, this is the same Trump who hammered Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign for not saying the phrase, “radical Islamic Terrorism.” As Trump declared then, “Now, to solve a problem, you have to be able to state what the problem is or at least say the name. She won’t say the name.”

But repeating time and time again “radical Islamic terrorism” plays great with Trump’s base. After all 65 percent of 2016 GOP primary voters supported banning all Muslims from entering America. In contrast, if Trump slammed white supremacists, that would not excite them.

I made that very point in my May 2017 article, months before Charlottesville, after two deadly attacks by self-professed white supremacists, one in Portland and the other in New York City. In fact, after the New York City attack by a self-avowed 28-year-old white supremacist who murdered a black man in the hopes of starting a race war, the murderer was even charged with terrorism by the Manhattan District Attorney.

But still Trump refused to use the phrase “white supremacist terrorism.” While Trump remained silent, white supremacists, however, did not. In response to that article, Trump-supporting white supremacists at the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website were so outraged that I would demand this of Trump, they fabricated tweets in my name claiming I was involved in the Manchester, England bombing that had occurred a few weeks before at an Ariana Grande concert. And then they urged their supporters to “confront” me, which they did in a barrage of death threats. (I sued the New Nazi website in a lawsuit in federal court that is still pending.)

And just three months later came Charlottesville, where MAGA hats littered the crowd as did white supremacists who in the past had praised Trump, such as former Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. And after yet another white supremacist terrorist attack on Trump’s watch, with the murder of Heather Heyer at that rally, Trump blamed “both sides” while still refusing to say the words, “white supremacist terrorism.”

At this point, Trump lies somewhere between an apologist for white supremacist terrorism and a person who inspires people to commit such acts. While ultimately those who commit the violent acts are responsible for their crimes, we can’t ignore the connection between people who support Trump and white supremacist violence. For example, the gunman in New Zealand hailed Trump in his manifesto as “a symbol of renewed white identity.”

And we have just recently seen two other groups of self-avowed white supremacist Trump supporters either be arrested to or sentenced to prison for plotting to kill Muslims in America, in attacks that would’ve looked like what we just saw in New Zealand. In January, four young white man were arrested plotting to kill Muslims in Islamberg, New York, a primarily African-American Muslim community about two hours north of New York City. One of the men arrested not only praised Trump but also white-supremacist images like Confederate statues while speaking of killing Muslims on social media, including children: “Kids have been shown to be terrorists too and have killed our people. The Koran tells them to kill us so they’re all GUILTY.”

Also in January, three other self-avowed Trump-supporting white supremacists who had plotted to kill Muslim refugees from Somalia living in Kansas were sentenced to 25 years in prison. These men were trying to “wake people up” to threat of Muslim immigration and one even quoted Trump’s own debunked tale of a U.S. general dipping bullets into pig blood before killing Muslims, while stating, “If you’re a Muslim I’m going to enjoy shooting you in the head.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-sti ... ref=scroll

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Barefoot, handcuffed: New Zealand mosque shooter smirks, flashes 'white power' sign in Christchurch court

U.S.

8CHAN USER CLAIMING TO BE NEW ZEALAND SHOOTER POSTED 'SEE YOU ALL IN VALHALLA' BEFORE MOSQUE MASSACRE

BY JASON MURDOCK ON 3/15/19 AT 7:11 AM EDT

Shortly before the Christchurch mosque terror attacks on Friday in New Zealand, a user of the 8Chan message board website posted about a plan to carry out and live stream an attack. The user posted links to the Facebook page and manifesto files of one of the suspected attackers, who used the name "Brenton Tarrant" on social media.

Roughly half an hour after the post, mass shootings were reported at two mosques in Christchurch. The attacks resulted in the deaths of at least 49 people. Almost 50 people were injured.

Investigators said 41 people died at the Deans Avenue mosque, while seven were killed at Linwood Avenue mosque. Another victim died at the hospital. One suspect, now charged with murder, was referrred to as a 28-year-old man. Two others remain in custody.

A person identifying himself as Tarrant appears to have used online message boards to claim responsibility before the killings. A manifesto was uploaded before the rampage and a live stream of the shooting was hosted on Facebook.

The main image used in the 8chan post appeared similar to the profile picture linked to one suspect’s Twitter account. It contained a link to a now-removed Facebook page. In the days leading up to the mass killing, the Twitter account had been sharing images of weapons.

“Well lads, it's time to stop shitposting and time to make a real life effort post. I will carry out and attack against the invaders, and will even live stream the attack via facebook… by the time you read this I should be going live,” the 8chan post read (accessed via an archived version).

“It's been a long ride and despite all your rampant f***otry, fecklessness and degeneracy, you are all top blokes and the best bunch of cobbers a man could ask for,” the post continued. “If I don't survive the attack, goodbye, godbless and I will see you all in Valhalla!”

8chan has previously been linked to the sharing of “hardcore child pornography,” according to the Daily Dot. It spiked in popularity during the "Gamergate" controversy back in 2014. Valhalla is a place in Norse mythology where the souls of warriors go after being killed in battle.

The upload was also reported by media outlets news.com.au and Adelaide Now. A more detailed rundown of the posts was reported today by investigative outfit Bellingcat, which analysed the term “shitposting” and the references seemingly designed to play to the 8chan crowd. One clip appeared to show one shooter asking people to subscribe to the popular YouTuber PewDiePie.

The first reactions on 8chan flowed in real time. “Stream just cut off, but he deff doing the thing…good god,” one commenter wrote. Another post added: “Back on now. Cops are responding. think he's in for a short run. Dear god delete this thread now.” A third comment noted: "8pol is toast, this is the end."

In a statement shortly before a news conference today, New Zealand police said: “At this stage we will not be discussing the offenders’ possible motivations or the causes of this incident.”

“We have asked all mosques nationally to shut their doors, and advise that people refrain from visiting these premises until further notice. The lockdown of schools through Christchurch has been lifted. We thank the public for their ongoing cooperation. We would like to reassure members of the public that there is a large police presence in the city."

https://www.newsweek.com/8chan-christch ... an-1364129

<5



Man who stood up to mosque gunman probably saved lives

By NICK PERRY

an hour ago 3.16.19

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) — When the gunman advanced toward the mosque, killing those in his path, Abdul Aziz didn’t hide. Instead, he picked up the first thing he could find, a credit card machine, and ran outside screaming “Come here!”

Aziz, 48, is being hailed as a hero for preventing more deaths during Friday prayers at the Linwood mosque in Christchurch after leading the gunman in a cat-and-mouse chase before scaring him into speeding away in his car.

But Aziz, whose four sons and dozens of others remained in the mosque while he faced off with the gunman, said he thinks it’s what anyone would have done.

The gunman killed 50 people after attacking two mosques in the deadliest mass shooting in New Zealand’s modern history.

The gunman is believed to have killed at least 41 people at the Al Noor mosque before driving about 5 kilometers (3 miles) across town and attacking the Linwood mosque, where he killed seven more people. One person died later in a hospital, and police announced Sunday that a 50th body had been found.

White supremacist Brenton Tarrant, 28, has been charged with one count of murder in the slayings and a judge said Saturday that it was reasonable to assume more charges would follow.

Latef Alabi, the Linwood mosque’s acting imam, said the death toll would have been far higher at the Linwood mosque if it wasn’t for Aziz.

Alabi said he heard a voice outside the mosque at about 1:55 p.m. and stopped the prayer he was leading and peeked out the window. He saw a guy in black military-style gear and a helmet holding a large gun, and assumed it was a police officer. Then he saw two bodies and heard the gunman yelling obscenities.

“I realized this is something else. This is a killer,” he said.

He yelled at the congregation of more than 80 to get down. They hesitated. A shot rang out, a window shattered and a body fell, and people began to realize it was for real.

“Then this brother came over. He went after him, and he managed to overpower him, and that’s how we were saved,” Alabi said, referring to Aziz. “Otherwise, if he managed to come into the mosque, then we would all probably be gone.”

Aziz said as he ran outside screaming, he was hoping to distract the attacker. He said the gunman ran back to his car to get another gun, and Aziz hurled the credit card machine at him.

He said he could hear his two youngest sons, aged 11 and 5, urging him to come back inside.

The gunman returned, firing. Aziz said he ran, weaving through cars parked in the driveway, which prevented the gunman from getting a clean shot. Then Aziz spotted a gun the gunman had abandoned and picked it up, pointed it and squeezed the trigger. It was empty.

He said the gunman ran back to the car for a second time, likely to grab yet another weapon.

“He gets into his car and I just got the gun and threw it on his window like an arrow and blasted his window,” he said.

The windshield shattered: “That’s why he got scared.”

He said the gunman was cursing at him, yelling that he was going to kill them all. But he drove away and Aziz said he chased the car down the street to a red light, before it made a U-turn and sped away. Online videos indicate police officers managed to force the car from the road and drag out the suspect soon after.

Originally from Kabul, Afghanistan, Aziz said he left as a refugee when he was a boy and lived for more than 25 years in Australia before moving to New Zealand a couple of years ago.

“I’ve been to a lot of countries and this is one of the beautiful ones,” he said. And, he always thought, a peaceful one as well.

Aziz said he didn’t feel fear or much of anything when facing the gunman. It was like he was on autopilot. And he believes that God, that Allah, didn’t think it was his time to die.

https://www.apnews.com/ccf69233a36446c2b6c9e92f3e6cf417

<6



MEDI

Don Lemon Breaks Down Why He’s Not Buying Donald Trump’s White Nationalism Denial

The CNN host said for Trump “to not be able to know that right-wing extremism is on the rise is very ignorant.”

By Lee Moran

A 03/16/2019 06:48 am ET

Don Lemon explained on Friday why President Donald Trump is “playing people for suckers” with his statement that white nationalism is not on the rise around the world.

The “CNN Tonight” host said he didn’t buy Trump’s claim, which he made in response to the mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which an alleged white supremacist gunman killed at least 49 people.

For Trump “to not be able to know that right-wing extremism is on the rise is very ignorant,” said Lemon, who suggested the president was being politically expedient with his comments.

“He knows that he says he is not racist but the racists think he’s racist and they support him and he doesn’t want to lose that support, ” Lemon continued.

“He cannot win an election with just his base next time and they are a big, they’re a very vocal and active part of his base. I won’t say a big part. But a very vocal and active part of his base and he knows that,” he added. “Donald Trump knows what’s happening. He knows what’s up.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cnn-don- ... f6b0f3ba16

<7



Trump admin to ban entry of International Criminal Court investigators

The U.S. has never signed on to the International Criminal Court and the court has never prosecuted Americans for war crimes since it was set up in 2002.

By Dan De Luce and Abigail Williams

March 15, 2019, 12:19 PM CDT

The United States will repeal or deny visas to International Criminal Court staff seeking to investigate Americans in Afghanistan or elsewhere and may take similar action to protect Israelis or other allied forces from prosecution, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday.

"We are determined to protect the American and allied military and civilian personnel from living in fear of unjust prosecution for actions taken to defend our great nation," Pompeo said.

The unprecedented move came amid a pending request by the ICC prosecutor's office to open a probe into possible war crimes by Afghan or U.S. personnel in Afghanistan and after national security adviser John Bolton, a vehement critic of the court, threatened punitive action in September.

The visa restrictions are "a part of the continued effort to convince the ICC to change course with its potential investigation and potential prosecution of Americans for their activities and our allies activities in Afghanistan," Pompeo told a press conference.

The secretary of state said the administration has already begun to carry out the visa restrictions but did not offer any more details.

Referring to court employees, Pompeo said that "you should know if you're responsible for the proposed ICC investigation of U.S. personnel in connection with the situation in Afghanistan you should not assume that you will still have or will get a visa or that you will be permitted to enter the United States."

Pompeo added that the administration was prepared to impose visa restrictions in other cases involving allies, including Israel. "These visa restrictions may also be used to deter ICC efforts to pursue allied personnel including Israelis without allies consent," he said.

The prosecutor for the ICC has a request pending to investigate possible war crimes in Afghanistan linked to Afghan and U.S. military and intelligence personnel, including at detention sites. A U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report in 2014 concluded that interrogations of detainees after the 9/11 attacks in Afghanistan and elsewhere were "brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others."

Pompeo also said the U.S. was ready to increase the pressure on the ICC if necessary.

"These visa restrictions will not be the end of our efforts. We are prepared to take additional steps including economic sanctions if the ICC does not change its course," he said, without elaborating.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague said it was aware of the U.S. announcement.

"The ICC, as a court of law, will continue to do its independent work, undeterred, in accordance with its mandate and the overarching principle of the rule of law," ICC spokesman Fadi El Abdallah said in an email.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... rs-n983766

<8



Beyond veto: Trump seeks more workarounds to avoid Congress

By ZEKE MILLER and CATHERINE LUCEY

3.16.19

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s first veto was more than a milestone. It signals a new era of ever perilous relations between the executive and legislative branches of government.

Trump’s agenda was stymied even before his party lost unified control of Washington at the start of the year and he has grown increasingly frustrated by his dealings with Congress, believing little of substance will get done by the end of his first term and feeling just as pessimistic about the second, according to White House aides, campaign staffers and outside allies.

Republicans in Congress are demonstrating new willingness to part ways with the president. On the Senate vote Thursday rejecting the president’s national emergency declaration to get border wall funding, 12 Republicans joined Democrats in voting against Trump.

The 59-41 vote against Trump’s declaration was just the latest blow as tensions flare on multiple fronts.

Trump tweeted one word after the vote: “VETO!” And he eagerly flexed that muscle on Friday for the first time, hoping to demonstrate resolve on fulfilling his 2016 campaign pledge.

GOP senators had repeatedly agitated for compromise deals that would give them political cover to support Trump despite their concerns that he was improperly circumventing Congress. But the president was never convinced that any of the proposals ensured the resolution would be defeated, said a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking.

A last-ditch trip to the White House by a group of senators Wednesday night only irritated Trump, who felt they were offering little in the way of new solutions.

As the vote neared, Trump repeatedly made clear that it was about party fealty and border security and suggested that voting against him could be perilous.

“It’s going to be a great election issue,” he predicted.

Looking past the veto, Trump’s plans for future collaboration with Congress appear limited. With the exception of pushing for approval of his trade deal with Mexico and Canada, the president and his allies see little benefit for investing more political capital on Capitol Hill. Trump ran against Washington in 2016, and he is fully expected to do so again.

Trump once declared that “I alone can fix it.” But that was before getting hamstrung in Washington, and he is now exploring opportunities to pursue executive action to work around lawmakers, as he did with his emergency declaration on the border wall. He is directing aides to find other areas where he can act — or at least be perceived as acting — without Congress, including infrastructure and drug prices.

Trump made his intentions clear recently as he assessed that Democrats would rather investigate him than cooperate on policy: “Basically, they’ve started the campaign. So the campaign begins.”

His dealings with Congress were inconsistent even when Republicans controlled both chambers, and he has made few overtures to Democrats since they won control of the House.

Trump initially predicted he could work across the aisle, but that sentiment cooled after the bitter government shutdown fight and in the face of mounting investigations. His frustrations are evidence of the difficulty that the Washington neophyte and former business executive has had with the process of lawmaking, and the challenges yet to come.

The White House argues there are still opportunities for collaboration, listing ratification of the Canada-Mexico trade pact as a priority. But passage is anything but assured.

Trump’s ire has been directed at both parties for some time, aides said. He was upset with the Republicans’ performance during the recent congressional hearing featuring his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, telling allies that he was not impressed with their questioning.

Trump’s budget proposal this past week was viewed as a shot at Democrats, with its proposals to increase money for the border wall and cut to social safety net programs. The plan, which had little in the way of new or bipartisan ideas, was declared dead on arrival by Democratic House leaders.

Further stoking tensions, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., invited NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to address an upcoming joint meeting of Congress, in what was widely seen as a rebuke of Trump’s criticism of the trans-Atlantic alliance. The invitation was backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and followed votes earlier this year in which Republicans voiced opposition to Trump’s plans to draw down U.S. troops in Syria and Afghanistan.

Presidential complaints about Congress — and efforts to find a workaround — are nothing new.

President Barack Obama in 2014 resorted to what became known as his “pen and phone” strategy.

“I’ve got a pen to take executive actions where Congress won’t, and I’ve got a telephone to rally folks around the country on this mission,” he said.

Obama’s strategy yielded years of executive orders and regulatory action, but many proved ephemeral when Trump took office and started unwinding them.

https://www.apnews.com/63cfc25875fe431b9f012554acc72d6f

<9



POLITICS

Chris Wallace: No Way Trump Will Win In 2020 With Just His Base

And that seems to be all the president cares about now, Wallace tells Fox News’ Shepard Smith.

By Mary Papenfuss

03/15/2019 11:38 pm ET

Fox News host Chris Wallace told colleague Shepard Smith on Friday that there’s no way Donald Trump can win a second term with just his base — and the president doesn’t seem to care about anyone else now.

Smith asked if Trump is simply going to “stay with the base, placate the base and forget everybody else and just figure out a way come 2020?”

“You can’t do it,” Wallace responded, “because there’s just not enough votes in the base.” Even with polling that indicates as much as 40 percent of eligible voters may be “ever-Trumpers,” that’s “not enough to win an election,” Wallace emphasized. “So he’s going to have to expand his base.”

While his backers love his border wall, it’s not popular with the majority of Americans, Wallace noted. He’s going to need the “independents ... suburban Republicans, suburban women,” Wallace added.

He suspects Trump hopes the Democrats will nominate someone “so far to the left ... that it’s going to make it easier for him; he doesn’t have to pivot as far to the center” to pick up some of that support, Wallace added.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chris-wa ... 7da9f3758f

<10



BUSINESS

Stock market indexes - Is It Great Yet?:

Trump Trade Wars Ding US Economy $7.8 Bln, No End in SightCC0 / Pixabay

03:14 17.03.2019(updated 03:20 17.03.2019) Get short URL 0 20

Recent trade wars at the hands of US President Donald Trump against other countries have resulted in a GDP loss of $7.8 billion for the American economy, according to a recent study published by economists.

According to a paper published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research authored by economists at the University of California Berkeley, Columbia University, Yale University and the University of California at Los Angeles, imports from trading countries including China have declined 31.5 percent while US exports have decreased 11 percent. In addition, "annual consumer and producer losses from higher costs of imports were $68.6 billion" last year, the report states.

*"US tariffs favored sectors located in politically competitive [US] counties, but retaliatory tariffs offset the benefits to these counties. We find that tradeable-sector workers in heavily Republican counties were the most negatively affected by the trade war," the authors wrote in the report.*

China and the United States have been engaged in a trade war since Trump announced in June that the US would subject $50 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25 percent tariffs in a bid to modify the US-Chinese trade deficit. The two countries have since exchanged several rounds of trade tariffs. Although Washington and Beijing have held off on introducing new tariffs since the December 2018 G20 summit in Argentina, multiple trade consultations have yet to resolve the dispute.

*Trump, who has verbally attacked the European Union over farm policies and agricultural tariffs, has claimed that he will decide by mid-May whether to impose additional duties on car and part imports from the bloc. Such a move, which could hit $60 billion in annual EU exports, would trigger immediate retaliation from Brussels, officials have said, Sputnik previously reported.*

In July 2018, Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed to work toward zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, and zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods. They also agreed to increase trade in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical products and soybeans.

Prior to striking the deal, the US and the EU were locked in what appeared to be an escalating trade war after the Trump administration imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium imported from the bloc, as well as those from Canada and Mexico. The EU retaliated by levying tariffs on over $3.2 billion worth of the US imports. Both sides also threatened to impose reciprocal tariffs on automobiles, agricultural and high-tech goods.

https://sputniknews.com/business/201903 ... s-economy/

<11



Photos: kids in 123 countries went on strike to protect the climate

“This movement had to happen, we didn’t have a choice.”

By Eliza Barclay and Kainaz Amaria Updated Mar 15, 2019, 6:46pm EDT

An estimated 1.4 million young people in 123 countries skipped school Friday to demand stronger climate policies in what may be one of the largest environmental protests in history.

“This movement had to happen, we didn’t have a choice,” wrote the Swedish activist and strike leader Greta Thunberg with other young climate activists in the Guardian Friday. “We knew there was a climate crisis ... We knew, because everything we read and watched screamed out to us that something was very wrong.”


Thunberg, 16, began skipping school to strike in front of Sweden’s parliament in August. Soon students in other countries began to follow her lead in what became the Fridays for Future movement.

As her media presence has grown, Thunberg has become the voice of youth exasperation with policymakers’ failure to take steps to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions in the face of catastrophic climate change. “Our house is on fire,” she said in a January speech at Davos. “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.”

What Thunberg and her fellow protesters want from governments now is to “keep fossil fuels in the ground, phase out subsidies for dirty energy production, seriously invest in renewables and start asking difficult questions about how we structure our economies and who is set to win and who is set to lose,” as they put it in the Guardian. And they have the backing of thousands of scientists who’ve signed letters of support.

Strikes are also expected Friday in more than 100 US cities, and have been organized in large part by three girls: Alexandria Villasenor, Haven Coleman, and Isra Hirsi, daughter of the headline-making first-term Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).

Here are some of the best photos and video we’ve seen of the strikes in the United States and around the world so far. This post will be updated throughout the day.

Sydney, Australia

[ OBVIOUS LARGE TURNOUT HERE WITH ALL THE CLIMATE PROBLEMS THEY ARE EXPERIENCING DOWN UNDER ]


Seoul, South Korea


Delhi, India


San Francisco, California


London, England


Cape Town, South Africa


Washington, DC


Lisbon, Portugal


Dublin, Ireland


Stockholm, Sweden


Dresden, Germany


Tokyo, Japan


Edinburgh, Scotland


https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environm ... -15-photos

<

<1



The US Is Accused of Blocking Global Action Against Plastic Pollution

“We don’t need verbose documents, we need concrete commitments.”

SANDRA LAVILLE

MARCH 16, 2019 6:00 AM

This story was originally published by The Guardian. It appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Environmental groups involved in talks at a United Nations conference in Kenya have accused the US of blocking an ambitious global response to plastic pollution.

Representatives of countries at the UN environment conference in Nairobi this week agreed to significantly reduce single-use plastics over the next decade but the voluntary pledges fell far short of what was required, according to green groups.

Norway, Japan and Sri Lanka had put forward proposals for a legally binding agreement for nations to coordinate action against plastic litter in the oceans and microplastics. India also suggested strong action with a resolution to phase out single-use plastic across the world.

But a coalition of environmental groups at the conference condemned the US for blocking the ambitious attempts to tackle plastic pollution at source as well as downstream.

An initial ministerial statement at the beginning of the event had proposed a commitment to “phase out single-use plastics … by 2025”, a far stronger promise than the compromise nations reached.

On Friday, a series of non-binding proposals were agreed, including the adoption of an action plan by the International Maritime Organization’s marine environment protection committee to reduce plastic litter from ships, and suggestions for better global management of data on plastic pollution. A final statement said countries would “address the damage to our ecosystems caused by the unsustainable use and disposal of plastic products, including by significantly reducing single-use plastic by 2030”.

In response, environmental groups including Break Free From Plastic, IPEN, Plastic Change, No Waste Louisiana and Coare said the proposals did not go far enough.

“Despite sweeping agreement by the majority of countries that urgent, ambitious and global action is needed to address plastic across its lifecycle, from production to use to disposal, a small minority led by the United States blocked ambitious text and delayed negotiations,” they said in a statement.

Countries most affected by plastic pollution including the Philippines, Malaysia and Senegal were against the resolution being watered down.

Large oil firms in the US are investing billions of dollars in petrochemical production over the next decade, particularly shale gas.

The new facilities, which are being built by ExxonMobile Chemical and Shell Chemical, among others, will help fuel a 40% rise in plastic production in the next decade, according to industry experts.

The world already produces more than 300m tonnes of plastic a year.

“It’s hard to find one solution for all member states,” Siim Kiisler, the president of the UN environment assembly, told Agence France-Presse before the final decision. “The environment is at a turning point. We don’t need verbose documents, we need concrete commitments.”

When asked whether the US had pushed to have the commitments watered down during the week’s negotiations, Kiisler said: “I will not answer that question.”

David Azoulay, from the Center for International Environmental Law, condemned the weakening of the commitment.

He said: “The vast majority of countries came together to develop a vision for the future of global plastic governance. Seeing the US, guided by the interests of the fracking and petrochemical industry, leading efforts to sabotage that vision is disheartening.”

https://www.motherjones.com/environment ... pollution/

<2



TERRORISM

It’s Time to Attack White Nationalism for the Terror Group It Is

Nobody can claim, as George W. Bush did, that ‘we’re going to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here,’ because they're already ‘here’ with a vengeance.

Christopher Dickey

03.16.19 9:53 PM ET

PARIS—Donald Trump was right. The special pleading around the question of whether to call terrorism by radical Muslims “radical Islamic terrorism” clouded a critical issue. The fight against extremism must start with ideas, and with language that is clear and unequivocal. Which is why we should be perfectly blunt about what Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old monster of Christchurch, claimed to represent, and did and does represent, which is white nationalist terrorism.

Tarrant may have been a lone shooter when he slaughtered 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand on Friday, but he was not a “lone wolf.” He was part of a much wider movement that is every bit as extensive as Al Qaeda was when it attacked the United States in 2001, and potentially much more dangerous to the future of Western democracies.

Now, before it grows any stronger, should be the time to move against it with the same kind of concerted international focus of attention and resources that were trained on Osama bin Laden. Now is the time for a global war on white nationalist terrorism.

But that’s not likely to happen. As The Daily Beast reported on Friday, fewer than one in five FBI cases target white supremacists.

Nobody can claim, as the George W. Bush administration did, that “we’re going to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here,” because they are already “here” with a vengeance, steadily increasing their power and presence in Western democracies.

Networks of white nationalist apologists, sympathizers, supporters and facilitators—vital to any terrorist movement—are deeply embedded in the political and social fabric. They are literally the enemy within. As an apologist, it should be said, President Donald Trump is in a class by himself. Trump is “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose,” as Tarrant wrote in his manifesto.

The obsession with the border wall, the attempts to ban all Muslims—such measures are trending in Tarrant’s direction because Trump’s base buys into them. And when it comes to feeding the basic instincts of the base in order to hold on to power, it is not at all clear how far Trump will go.

One of the most chilling moments in the congressional testimony last month of Trump’s consigliere, the infamous Michael Cohen, came when he said, “I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

I have been told by a very senior former U.S. intelligence official that he is concerned if Trump is impeached and removed, the result could be violence tearing the country apart. And Trump himself likes to feint in that direction, as he did in his Breitbart interview last week.

In a weird aside, in the middle of an otherwise soporific dialogue about former House Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump declared, “I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

That was widely interpreted as a veiled threat of violence because, clearly, it was one.

So, if we are going to think seriously about a global war on white nationalist terrorism, we have to admit that the American president is an enormous obstacle.

But let’s say he has a radical change of heart or is defeated in 2020 and the American government decides that the time has come to remove those elements from the military and the police that Trump is talking about, those who support his thinly disguised racist agenda—because, let’s be clear, there are many of them, even if they are not in command.

Could that be done? Putting aside the treatment of the Japanese during World War II, among white people there are only a couple of precedents for such a purge in U.S. history: the removal of military officers, diplomats and other officials with real or suspected Confederate sympathies during the American Civil War (many of whom left of their own accord), and the ugly campaign against alleged communists in the McCarthy era of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Provocateurs like Tarrant are hoping for draconian measures, looking to provoke a conflagration. “Civil war in the so called ‘melting pot’ that is the United States should be a major aim in overthrowing the global power structure and the Wests’ egalitarian, individualist, globalist dominant culture,” Tarrant’s manifesto tells us. He’s hoping “the conflict over the 2nd amendment” will lead to that fratricidal fight and “eventually balkanize the U.S. along political, cultural and, most importantly, racial lines.”

When Tarrant writes in all caps “THE MYTH OF THE MELTING POT MUST END, AND WITH IT THE MYTH OF THE EGALITARIAN NATION” he is not coming up with his own lunatic theory, but parroting ones that have been disseminated for years by American racists, and developed into an ideology in Europe as resonant of terror today as Mein Kampf was in the 1920s.

Vladimir Putin and his ideologues are apostles of ethnic and linguistic nationalism, and promote it both overtly and covertly in Western European countries to disrupt and divide their democracies.

Parties running on anti-brown-or-black-immigrant platforms are now significant players in the politics of Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Italy. We know that Tarrant recently traveled to Spain, Bulgaria and other countries where there are active ultra-right movements. In Hungary, where the government of Viktor Orban is rabidly anti-immigrant and obviously anti-Semitic, the New Zealand shooter probably felt right at home.

But as the popular French daily Le Parisien headlined on Saturday morning, “49 Dead in New Zealand: Everything Started in France…”

In 2017, Tarrant came here to watch the presidential election between Emmanuel Macron, who represents everything from globalization to higher education that the Tarrant crowd hates, and far-right Marine Le Pen, who, he concluded, was just not racist enough for his tastes.

But the key to Tarrant’s thinking and to his connections is in the title of his manifesto, “The Great Replacement,” drawn directly from the work of far-right French author Renaud Camus, who has written that the fecund peoples of Africa and the Muslim world will overwhelm and replace European populations.

As the daily Le Monde pointed out, the fantasy of this sinister replacement plot originally was based on the notion that the Jews were out to diminish or subjugate the white population of Europe—a notion that endured in right-wing circles even after World War II and the revelations of the Holocaust. And it is still a common trope among Americans on the far right. When neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville in 2017, they were vowing that they would not be replaced by Jews.

But here in Europe in the 21st century, where many countries treat expressed anti-Semitism as a crime, Renaud Camus put a new spin on that replacement fable following Sept. 11, 2001, by claiming Muslims were colonizing Europe.

On Friday, Camus denied any incitement to terrorism in his own particular way. “The colonized,” he wrote, meaning the embattled white Europeans, “ought not to imitate the methods of the colonizer,” meaning the immigrants to Europe, by adopting terror tactics. “That is to become like him already and give in to colonization.”

It might be possible to silence such voices of hate. Many European governments have tried. But would that be enough to stop the spread of white nationalist terrorism?

Almost certainly not.

At the end of the day, and as difficult as the task may be, the war on white nationalist terrorism must be fought as a war of law enforcement and a war of ideas.

Police and prosecutors loyal to democratic values have to pursue investigations into white nationalist groups with the same zeal that has been applied to radical Muslim terrorist organizations.

Voters in Western nations have to understand that the fellow travelers of white nationalist terrorism are not acceptable participants in modern democracies, and vote them out, or see that they are prosecuted, or both.

And the very first step in that process is to quit making excuses or inventing euphemisms. The fight is not against conservatives, the right wing, the alt-right—it is against white nationalist terrorism and its apologists.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-zeala ... ref=scroll

<3



WORLD

'EGG BOY' WINS MASS PUBLIC SUPPORT;

AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER SAYS SENATOR WHO PUNCHED TEEN SHOULD FEEL FULL FORCE OF LAW

BY KASHMIRA GANDER

ON 3/17/19 AT 1:35 PM EDT

WORLD

Australian Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has expressed his opinion on Saturday's fracas between an anti-immigrant senator and the teenager who smashed an egg on his head during a press event. Morrison said Sunday that Senator Fraser Anning should should feel the full force of the law for allegedly punching the teen who egged him.

On Friday, a gunman killed at least 50 people after he opened fire at the Masjid Al Noor and Linwood Masjid mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand.

Shortly after the shooting, Anning, a senator for Queensland, Australia, put out a statement in which he said, “whilst this kind of violent vigilantism can never be justified, what it highlights is the growing fear within our community, both in Australia and New Zealand of the increasing Muslim presence.

“The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place.”

Anning’s comments were quickly slammed on Friday. Prime Minister Morrison tweeted: “The remarks by Senator Fraser Anning blaming the murderous attacks by a violent, right-wing, extremist terrorist in New Zealand on immigration are disgusting. Those views have no place in Australia, let alone the Australian Parliament.”

And former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called Anning “a disgrace to the Senate.”

“What is worse by spreading hatred and turning Australians against each other he is doing exactly what the terrorists want,” Turnbull said.

The controversy surrounding Anning deepened when he punched a 17-year-old boy after the teenager egged him at a press conference.

Footage of the altercation quickly went viral, and the teenager was dubbed “egg boy” by social media users.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters on Sunday, according to the Associated Press: "The full force of the law should be applied to Sen. Anning."

Australia’s Victoria Police said in a statement it was actively investigating the incident, the Associated Press reported. Anning “retaliated and struck the teen twice,” they said.

Social media users rallied in support of “egg boy,” with one tweet joking he was an Australia hero alongside the late conservationist Steve Irwin.

*
Rossalyn Warren

@RossalynWarren
Australian heroes:

- Steve Irwin (rip)
- egg boy

3,321
5:00 AM - Mar 16, 2019*

“Egg boy showed the world that religion, age or ethnicity doesn`t matter when it comes to standing up against oppression, hatred and evil. You only need a pure heart and the egg boy has a heart of gold! Bless you #EggBoy,” wrote another user.

"I’m not sayyyyiinnngg what #Eggboy did was 'right'. But I AM saying that if I was his mom, he definitely wouldn’t be grounded," a separate Twitter used said.

However, some questioned whether the teenager's actions were appropriate while New Zealand was in mourning.

"This is disappointing," a user posted on Twitter. "We are all hurting right now, but we should NEVER be promoting and celebrating violence. Both ‘egg boy’ was wrong to physically attack the racist senator, and the senator should NEVER have retaliated."

Over the weekend, a petition to see Senator Anning removed from parliament became the largest and the fastest growing in Australian history on Change.Org, executive director of Change.Org Sally Rugg told the Sydney Morning Herald.

In the wake of Friday’s attack, Australian Brenton Harris Tarrant, 28, has been charged with murder. He appeared in court on Saturday morning. Prior to the attack which he live-streamed on Facebook, he shared a 74-page extreme-right wing, white nationalist manifesto online.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the attack as “an extraordinary and unprecedented act of violence.”

She said on Friday: "It has no place in New Zealand. Many of those affected will be members of our migrant communities. New Zealand is their home—they are us.”

https://www.newsweek.com/egg-boy-senato ... en-1365738

<4



NEWS

Ilhan Omar mourns ‘chilling’ attack on New Zealand mosques

By Amanda Woods

March 15, 2019 | 12:43pm | Updated

Freshman Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar mourned the “chilling” attack on two New Zealand mosques early Friday — opening her tweet with a verse from the Quran that is often shared in times of tragedy.

“Inna lilahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un,” Omar tweeted, using the Arabic phrase from the Muslim holy book that means, “We belong to Allah and to Allah we shall return.”

“This is chilling news to wake up to,” she added. “In the face of this horror, I’m mourning with, and holding our community extra close today.”

“Jummah Mubarak,” she added, which translates to, “Happy Friday (day of prayer).”

Omar is a former Somali refugee and the first naturalized citizen from Africa — and Somali-American — elected to US legislative office.

She caused a stir earlier this month when she suggested during an exchange with New York Rep. Nita Lowey that she was being forced to declare loyalty to Israel in order to serve on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Forty-nine people were killed and dozens more injured when at least one shooter — identified as 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant — stormed into Masjid Al Noor mosque in Christchurch and opened fire on Muslims who were there for Friday prayers. Another shooting happened a short while later at a nearby mosque in the city.

https://nypost.com/2019/03/15/ilhan-oma ... d-mosques/

<5



NATIONAL

A 'Mainstreaming Of Bigotry' As White Extremism Reveals Its Global Reach

KIRK SIEGLER

March 16, 20194:39 PM ET

Experts who monitor hate groups say the attacks on Friday at the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, follow a sharp rise in violent white extremism around the globe and especially in the United States.

"They operate in an ideological world of people that reinforce each other's ideas but may never actually meet each other in person," says Kathy Blee of the University of Pittsburgh, who studies white extremism.

It's a common misconception that the average white supremacist is a disaffected white guy with economic anxieties. Blee's research shows that middle-class and even upper-middle-class men from the mainstream are increasingly being drawn into this movement, which is mostly online and worldwide.

"A lot of them are very casual viewers initially, and they get pulled into these very extreme ideas," Blee says.

Blee says this online world is a lot more convoluted and complicated than we think — people who are already spending huge amounts of time online discover or are recruited into racist communities, they become radicalized and some are prone to act on this anger urgently.

"It's more that this world can create people who are aimless, marginalized, isolated and quite extreme in their thinking," she says.

Blee was as horrified as the next person about the murders at the New Zealand mosques, but maybe not as surprised.

Here in the United States, there has been a spike in white supremacist-motivated violence and murders. According to the Anti-Defamation League, ideologically motivated extremists killed at least 50 people in the U.S. last year, and all but one of those murders had at least some links to right-wing extremism. Only one, according to its recent report, was blamed on Islamist extremism.

And therein lies another widespread and dangerous misconception, says Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

"This threat of homegrown, far-right-wing white nationalism, terrorism and extremism is the most prominent threat," Levin says.

Since 2015, Levin says, Islamist extremism directed at Westerners has dropped dramatically — that movement has splintered as white extremism has strengthened. This is also occurring at a time when demographics are changing, Levin says, and there has been a "mainstreaming of bigotry" into public policy debates in the U.S. and around the Western world.

"And during these periods of polarization, and when there is declining trust in communal institutions, who gets targeted? Immigrants, foreigners, people of color and Jews," Levin says.

Levin is calling for better coordination among law enforcement agencies on this growing threat. He also thinks Congress should investigate and devote more resources to it.

Levin and others say political rhetoric from leaders such as President Trump is doing little to help the situation.

"We're not getting much, if any, national leadership in terms of how to respond to hate and extremism," says Pete Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.

Speaking to reporters after the attacks, Trump said he didn't believe white nationalism is on the rise. Experts in white extremism say the hard numbers prove the opposite.

Simi says, whether intentional or not, Trump also speaks the language ​of white supremacists when he promotes a travel ban against majority-Muslim countries and when he repeatedly talks about an "invasion" of immigrants at the U.S.-Mexic0 border.

Trump did so again on Friday, the same day as the New Zealand mosque attacks, when vetoing Congress' attempt to block his emergency declaration: "We're on track for a million illegal aliens to rush our borders," Trump said. "People hate the word 'invasion,' but that's what it is."

Simi says that kind of language sends a message to white extremists "that this is not only permissible — it's encouraged."

A White House spokesperson on Friday called it outrageous to make any connection to Trump, saying the president has repeatedly condemned bigotry and racism.

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/16/70412573 ... obal-reach

<6



Pirro’s show not on Fox lineup, week after Omar comments

today 3.16.19

NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News weekend host Jeanine Pirro’s show didn’t air a week after her comments questioning U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar over her wearing a Muslim head covering. No explanation was given.

Pirro’s show, “Justice With Judge Jeanine,” was replaced Saturday night by other programming. The Fox News schedule for the upcoming weekend doesn’t include the show.

An email seeking comment was sent Sunday to Fox representatives.

President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday morning about Pirro’s absence, saying she should be brought back.

“Stop working soooo hard on being politically correct, which will only bring you down, and continue to fight for our Country. The losers all want what you have, don’t give it to them,” one of his tweets said.

Fox News had “strongly condemned” Pirro’s commentary on Omar, the first-term representative from Minnesota. Pirro had questioned whether Omar’s wearing of a hijab was “indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which is in itself antithetical to the U.S. Constitution?”

Fox said Pirro’s views didn’t reflect the network and it had addressed the issue with her, but didn’t specify what that entailed.

Omar, in a tweet, thanked Fox for the statement, saying no one should question a person’s commitment to the Constitution because of a person’s faith or country of origin. Omar is a Somali immigrant.

Pirro said her intention had been to start a debate, but that being Muslim didn’t mean someone didn’t support the Constitution. She invited Omar to her show.

Pirro is the former district attorney from New York’s Westchester County.

https://www.apnews.com/ce5f057c3da846f7a9a6370e580d4f82

<7



CROSSED THE LINE

Trump Demands: Fox News ‘Bring Back’ Host Jeanine Pirro After She Was Suspended for Rep. Ilhan Omar Comments

News that Pirro had been bumped from the Fox News lineup set off a Twitter tirade from President Trump on Sunday.

Lachlan Cartwright,

Gideon Resnick

03.17.19 12:58 PM ET

Popular Fox News host Jeanine Pirro been suspended for insensitive remarks about Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s patriotism, a source with knowledge of the matter told The Daily Beast on Sunday, hours after President Trump angrily pushed back that one of his favorite TV personalities be put back on air.

It was not clear how long the cable news channel plans to suspend Pirro, but she was bumped from her usual 9 p.m. time slot Saturday night and there has been no statement regarding her return. CNN first broke news of Pirro’s suspension Sunday.

Reached for comment, a Fox News spokesperson declined to talk about Pirro’s status, stating, “we are not commenting on internal scheduling matters.”

News that Pirro had been bumped from the Fox News lineup set off a Twitter tirade from Trump on Sunday morning with the president shooting off a series of tweets urging that Pirro be brought back on the air.

*Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump
Bring back @JudgeJeanine Pirro. The Radical Left Democrats, working closely with their beloved partner, the Fake News Media, is using every trick in the book to SILENCE a majority of our Country. They have all out campaigns against @FoxNews hosts who are doing too well. Fox .....*

“Bring back @judgejeanine Pirro,” the president tweeted around 9 a.m. “The Radical Left Democrats, working closely with their beloved partner, the Fake News Media, is using every trick in the book to SILENCE a majority of our Country,” he charged.

The president continued: “Keep fighting for Tucker and fight hard for @JudgeJeanine,” referring to another of his favorite Fox hosts, Tucker Carlson, who has come under fire for recently unearthed misogynistic comments. “Your competitors are jealous—they all want what you’ve got—NUMBER ONE. Don’t hand it to them on a silver platter. They can’t beat you, you can only beat yourselves!”

Fox had previously rebuked Pirro for her remarks on Omar’s hijab. “Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Shariah law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?” Pirro had asked last week.

Some advertisers protested the remark, and Fox said her views do not “reflect those of the network.” Instead of Justice With Judge Jeanine, viewers saw a rerun of of the documentary series Scandalous in the 9 p.m. Saturday slot.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-ang ... r?ref=home

<8



Fox News host tells viewers to stock up on AR-15s after O'Rourke suggests ban

BY MICHAEL BURKE

03/17/19 02:17 PM EDT

"Fox & Friends Weekend" host Pete Hegseth on Sunday urged viewers to buy more AR-15s after Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke called for a ban on sales of the weapons.

The comment comes after O'Rourke, who last week announced that he is running for president, said Saturday that he doesn't think the U.S. needs to "sell any more weapons of war into this public."

"If you own an AR-15, keep it. Continue to use it responsibly and safely," he said. "I just don't think that we need to sell anymore weapons of war into this public."

*The Hill

@thehill
Beto O'Rourke: "If you own an AR-15, keep it. Continue to use it responsibly and safely. I just don't think that we need to sell anymore weapons of war into this public."

2,177
7:01 PM - Mar 16, 2019*

Hegseth fired back on Sunday, saying: "If I own an AR-15, stocks of gun companies probably will go up after things like this. Responsible gun owners recognize their right to own rifles like that. You can use "weapons of war" or 'assault ban' all you want."

"This will appeal to his base, young people who are uninformed about the difference between an automatic and semi-automatic rifle. But, go out and get your second AR-15 today. Maybe it's a good reason to do so," he continued.

*Media Matters

@mmfa
Fox host Pete Hegseth tells viewers to stock up on AR-15s: "Go out and get your second AR-15 today. Maybe it's a good reason to do so."

10:37 AM - Mar 17, 2019*

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing ... er-orourke

<9



POLITICS

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Mocks Fox News’ Obsession: It’s ‘AOC TMZ’

The congresswoman said the network had heightened her visibility among the GOP.

By Amy Russo

03/16/2019 02:21 pm ET

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has elevated her profile as a freshman lawmaker with remarkable speed, but she credits part of that to Fox News.

In a Saturday tweet, the congresswoman mocked the outlet as “AOC TMZ,” pointing to its relentless coverage of her as “the reason people know more.”

Ocasio-Cortez also gave a shout out to New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer, who reported an exposé on the network earlier this month revealing its cozy relationship with President Donald Trump’s White House.

*Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC
Replying to @AOC
The reason people know more is bc Fox News has turned into “AOC TMZ” (no offense to TMZ), so awareness is growing w/ GOPers.@JaneMayerNYer has reported deeply on this propaganda machine + it will be aimed at any Dem they want. Nothing changes that.

We can’t be scared by that.

Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks were in response to writer Josh Jordan’s tweet sharing a Gallup poll which he declared indicated she was “underwater with every demographic group” other than women, minorities and younger voters.

Jordan, who has bylines in right-leaning outlets like the National Review and RealClearPolitics, was swiftly rebuked by the congresswoman for what she saw as his implication that “older, conservative white men are considered ‘everyone.’”

*Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC
If you want to know what subconscious bias looks like, it’s a headline saying “AOC is underwater with every group EXCEPT women, nonwhites, and 18-34 year olds.”

So older, conservative white men are considered “everyone” and everyone else is discounted as an exception.

Cool https://twitter.com/numbersmuncher/stat ... 2491970562 …

11:18 AM - Mar 16, 2019*

When it comes to Fox News’ fixation on Ocasio-Cortez, the lawmaker isn’t wrong.

In February, a Media Matters for America report indicated the network had mentioned her name over four times more than it had mentioned Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-K.Y.).

Furthermore, during the outlets prime time weeknight shows, an average of roughly 20 to 35 minutes was spent per program on Ocasio-Cortez. That’s nearly half of the three-hour window from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alexandr ... 7da9f3f5a5

<10



FEATURE/ ISRAELI–PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

Why the media fails to cover Palestine with accuracy and empathy

A powerful Israeli lobby, reporting fatigue and the fear of being accused of anti-Semitism harms coverage, say experts.

Alasdair Soussi by Alasdair Soussi

13 hours ago 3.17.19

Glasgow, Scotland - Often dubbed an open-air prison on account of Israel's and Egypt's ongoing air, land and sea blockade of the coastal enclave, Gaza is, according to Amnesty International and several other rights groups, on the brink of a humanitarian disaster.

In February, Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, highlighted the crisis, saying that the near two million Palestinians of the besieged strip "remain mired in increasing poverty and unemployment, with limited access to adequate health, education, water and electricity".

But the mainstream media does not always succeed in telling Palestine's contemporary story with accuracy and empathy.

On Thursday, in the Scottish city of Glasgow, experts discussed the media's role in covering one of the most pressing and divisive issues in international politics.

Al Jazeera interviewed three of the panellists before the event, which was hosted by The Balfour Project, a campaign group created by British citizens to raise awareness over Britain's record in Palestine before and during its Mandate.

"You always come under particular pressure with [reporting on events in Israel and Palestine] because there is an intense and concerted Israeli media lobby - and there always was," said Sarah Helm, a former foreign correspondent for the UK's Independent newspaper. "And that includes a very intense Israeli political lobby working at every single level, which there always was too - and that was no secret and nor would they make a secret of it."

She was based in Jerusalem in the 1990s.

Helm said that her editors would often come "under pressure from the Israeli lobby in London on what correspondents out in the field were doing in a way that was not really true… [for] other foreign stories".

"Because newspapers have been got at and persuaded and pressurised by the pro-Israel lobby, the upshot over time is that the reader hasn't got a clue what this place [Palestine] is."

Today, similar concerns remain.

David Cronin, for example, who had freelanced for The Guardian, wrote in 2015 about his frustrations with the newspaper in Electronic Intifada, where he acts as an associate editor.

Having reported about atrocities against Palestinians committed by Israel, the paper was later "not keen to have me writing from Gaza", he said, adding that one editor advised him to steer clear of covering the conflict altogether.

Time and space constraints also mean that UK media reports neglect the contextual history of the conflict.

This includes the fact that seven out of 10 Gazans are registered as refugees, with many originating from families who were forced to flee their homes after Israel's foundation in 1948.

"It seems to me that certain absolutely fundamental facts have to be high up in any story," Helm said.

The Western media narrative has been dominated by Israel during the entire 70-year conflict, according to Ilan Baruch, the former Israeli ambassador to South Africa.

"Israel was brilliantly successful in offering a narrative to the western hemisphere that was embraced with little or no objective judgement," said Baruch, who resigned from the foreign service in 2011 because he felt he could no longer represent the Israeli government's policies.

Reporting fatigue also contributes to poor media coverage.

Sir Vincent Fean, a former British consul-general in Jerusalem, said that Gaza's "complex and deep-rooted" struggle has diminished the "appetite of Western media".

"In addition to the fatigue, there is also the fact that other crises in the Middle East are bloodier, like Syria and Yemen," said Fean, who was the UK's top-ranking consular officer in Jerusalem from 2010 to 2014. "They take some of the oxygen away from the issue."

In 2017, Mariam Barghouti, a Palestinian-American writer based in Ramallah, wrote in a column for Al Jazeera: "The mainstream media focus is always on Palestinian reaction and not on Israeli action and it insinuates that Palestinians are on the offence when in fact they are on the defence."

In suggesting a way forward, Helm said: "Editors must have the courage of their convictions" to insist historical context enables the reader, listener or viewer to understand the conflict.

"History has been allowed - and even recent history has been allowed - to disappear into a swamp," she said. "And everyone is terrified of putting a foot wrong and being accused of being anti-Semitic that they daren't even ask the [necessary] questions."

As several critics of Israeli government policy find themselves accused of anti-Jewish racism, Baruch, the former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, said the debate needed to move past conflating these two notions.

"Even criticising Zionism as the inspirational movement that created Israel is not anti-Semitism," he said. "[The anti-Semitism charge] is just a ploy to pull down criticism of Israel."

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featu ... 36995.html

<11



TATAR-BASHKIR

An Incinerator In Tatarstan Is The Latest Battleground In Russia's Garbage Wars

By Ravil Mukmenov
Tony Wesolowsky

March 17, 2019 09:49 GMT

Regina Kalimullina is not convinced the solid-waste incinerator planned for her town in Russia’s southern republic of Tatarstan will be as clean as officials claim it will be.

Like others in Osinovo, a town of some 10,000 about 25 kilometers from the regional capital of Kazan, Kalimullina fears the facility will foul the air, spewing carcinogenic particles in the air and raising the threat of cancer.

“The Health Ministry of Tatarstan now says that every 35th resident has cancer. Here, it’ll be every third [resident]. It’s horrible,” Kalimullina told Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.

The project in Osinovo is part of the nationwide Clean Country initiative launched in 2016. The plan aims to build five solid-waste incinerator plants in Russia by 2025: four in the Moscow region and one in Osinovo. Despite vocal opposition by residents and others to the plant in Osinovo, the local council voted unanimously last summer to hand over land to a private Russian company contracted to build the incinerator.

Russia has a mounting waste problem as landfill space shrinks. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, Russian recycles only a fraction of the waste it produces. Activists say recycling trash is the answer, not burning or burying it.

In Osinovo, where pickets and other protests continue, authorities say residents have nothing to fear from the planned incinerator, noting such facilities can be found smack in the middle of cities in Western Europe.

However, Elena Izotova, a Russian meteorologist versed in the workings of Russian incinerators, says there’s a big difference between technology used in such plants in Europe and those in Russia. She says European facilities are equipped with much more effective scrubbers to make sure dioxins and other pollutants don’t escape into the air.

Russian plants aren’t so lucky, relying on more basic coal-based filtration, according to Izotova.

“What type of coal will stop dioxins? These are nanoparticles,” explained Izotova, noting that after burning the trash, a highly toxic brew of ash and slag remains.

“And this waste will need to be stored somewhere. And they tell us it’s a nonpolluting process. They’re trying to fool the people,” she said.

In mid-2018, public hearings about the planned incinerator were held in Osinovo, although residents say they weren’t given a chance to speak.

“The deputies here are mostly state employees or businessmen, and pressure was put on them,” said Valentina Kuznetsova, who’s lived for years in the town. “The thing is, before the vote, we asked [the deputies], and nine out of 12 said they were categorically against it. But in the end...” she said, her voice trailing off.

The vote by local deputies to approve the tract of open land for industrial purposes -- like the incinerator -- was unanimous. The land where the incinerator is due to be built is now owned by a subsidiary of the Rostec corporation, RT-Invest. The cost of the project is estimated at 28 billion rubles ($428 million).


Rostec is a state-owned holding company for Russia’s defense industry and has been sanctioned by Washington for its role in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is supporting separatists in a conflict that has left some 13,000 dead since April 2014.

A truck dumps garbage at the Yadrovo solid-waste landfill in the village of Yadrovo. On March 21, 2018, dozens of children were hospitalized with suspected poisoning from gases leaking from the landfill.

Activists have also questioned whether there is even a need for the plant.

“Trash incinerator plants are generally not needed in Russia. We need to outlaw their construction,” said local ecological activist Andrei Kitov. “What’s the alternative? Recycling.”

Kitov and other activists reject claims voiced by some government officials that there is little or no demand for recycled material and that it is cheaper and more profitable to burn trash.

The planned incinerator in Osinovo, projected to go into operation in 2022, will have a capacity to incinerate 555,000 tons of trash a year. That’s about half of all the solid waste generated in Kazan in a year.

Osinovo is not the only Russian town alarmed by government plans to handle trash. 2018 witnessed a wave of protests across Russia over government plans to handle solid waste.

Russians were shocked when dozens of children in the Moscow regional town of Volokolamsk were hospitalized in March 2018 with suspected poisoning from gases leaking from a local landfill. Several thousand people turned out for a demonstration there in April 2018.

Nationally, Russia recycles just 4 percent of its waste. Moscow, with less than 10 percent of Russia's population, generates about 20 percent of its solid waste, according to government statistics.

About 90 percent of Moscow’s waste is sent to landfills in the surrounding region. Many of those landfills have exceeded their planned capacity but continue to receive shipments from the capital.

Government plans to ship large quantities of Moscow's garbage by train to a vast new landfill in Arkhangelsk Oblast have been met with anger from locals there.

In January of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to develop a national system of waste disposal and a national oversight agency called the Russian Ecological Operator before the end of 2019. Activists say the government's planning is opaque and the concerns of local residents are systematically ignored.

On February 3, thousands of protesters in about 30 Russian regions took to the streets in a national demonstration under the slogan "Russia is not a dump."

https://www.rferl.org/a/an-incinerator- ... 26105.html

<

<1



U.S. NEWS

Deaths of six men tied to Ferguson protests alarm activists

The six deaths drew attention on social media and speculation among activists that something sinister was at play.

By Associated Press

March 17, 2019, 9:32 PM CDT

FERGUSON, Mo. — Two young men were found dead inside torched cars. Three others died in apparent suicides. Another collapsed on a bus, his death ruled an overdose.

The six deaths, all involving men with connections to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, drew attention on social media and speculation in the activist community that something sinister was at play.

Police say that there is no evidence the deaths have anything to do with the protests stemming from a white police officer’s fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, and that two were homicides with no known link to the protests.

But some activists say their concerns about a possible connection arise out of a culture of fear that persists in Ferguson four and a half years after Brown’s death, citing threats — mostly anonymous — that protest leaders continue to receive.

The Rev. Darryl Gray said he found a box inside his car. When the bomb squad arrived, no explosives were found but a 6-foot python was inside.

“Everybody is on pins and needles,” Gray said of his fellow activists.

No arrests have been made in the two homicides. St. Louis County police spokesman Shawn McGuire said witnesses have simply refused to come forward, leaving detectives with no answers for why the men were targeted.

“We don’t believe either one was connected to each other,” McGuire said, but adding, “It’s tough to come up with a motive without a suspect.”

Ferguson erupted in protests in August 2014 after officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Brown during a street confrontation. Brown was unarmed, but Wilson said he fired in self-defense when the black teenager came at him menacingly.

A grand jury declined to charge Wilson in November 2014, prompting one of the most violent nights of demonstrations, and one of the first activist deaths.

Deandre Joshua’s body was found inside a burned car blocks from the protest. The 20-year-old was shot in the head before the car was torched.

Darren Seals, shown on video comforting Brown’s mother that same night, met an almost identical fate two years later. The 29-year-old’s bullet-riddled body was found inside a burning car in September 2016.

The four other deaths, including the three by suicide, were:

— MarShawn McCarrel of Columbus, Ohio, shot himself in February 2016 outside the front door of the Ohio Statehouse, police said. He had been active in Ferguson.

— Edward Crawford Jr., 27, fatally shot himself in May 2017 after telling acquaintances he had been distraught over personal issues, police said. A photo of Crawford firing a tear gas canister back at police during a Ferguson protest was part of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage.

— In October, 24-year-old Danye Jones was found hanging from a tree in the yard of his north St. Louis County home. His mother, Melissa McKinnies, was active in Ferguson and posted on Facebook after her son’s death, “They lynched my baby.” But the death was ruled a suicide.

— Bassem Masri, a 31-year-old Palestinian American who frequently livestreamed video of Ferguson demonstrations, was found unresponsive on a bus in November and couldn’t be revived. Toxicology results released in February showed he died of an overdose of fentanyl.

The Ferguson protests added momentum to the national Black Lives Matter movement, but they also generated resentment from people angered by TV footage of protesters hurling rocks and insults at police. Amid lingering anger, activists and observers say that while they see no clear connection between the deaths and the protests, they can’t help but wonder about the thoroughness of the investigations.

“These protesters and their deaths may not be a high priority for (police) since there is this antagonistic relationship,” Washington University sociologist Odis Johnson said. “I think there is a need for them to have a greater sense of urgency.”

Activists say that in the years since the protests, they have been targeted in dangerous ways.

“Something is happening,” said Cori Bush, a frequent leader of the Ferguson protests. “I’ve been vocal about the things that I’ve experienced and still experience — the harassment, the intimidation, the death threats, the death attempts.”

Bush said her car has been run off the road, her home has been vandalized, and in 2014 someone shot a bullet into her car, narrowly missing her daughter, who was 13 at the time.

She suspects white supremacists or police sympathizers. Living under constant threat is exhausting, she said, but she won’t give in.

“They shut us up and they win,” Bush said.

It’s unclear if residual stress from the protests or harassment contributed to the suicides, but Johnson said many activists feel a sense of hopelessness.

“This has to have a big impact on their mental health,” Johnson said. “For many, law enforcement is not a recourse. Many times law enforcement is not on their side.”

Experts say the deaths also are indicative of a concern at the core of the protests — the underlying difficulty of life for young people of color. Five of the men who died were black and in their 20s.

Black St. Louis County residents are three times more likely than whites to be poor, often meaning they lack adequate health insurance that could allow them to better address not only physical ailments but mental health issues like depression and anxiety.

They also tend to live in areas with higher crime rates. The 2010 U.S. census showed that while people who live in wealthy and mostly white western St. Louis County can expect to live well into their 80s, life expectancy in parts of mostly black north St. Louis County reaches only into the 60s. Life expectancy in Kinloch, a few miles from Ferguson, is 56.

Forty-five of the county’s 60 homicide victims last year were black in a county where less than a quarter of the population is black, according to police statistics.

“Here in St. Louis, unfortunately, we have allowed the culture of crime and violence to morph into dimensions that anybody’s at risk any day, any time,” said James Clark of the nonprofit Better Family Life.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pu ... ed-n984261

<2



Trump's relationship with Fox News is unprecedented. Sunday's tweets prove it

Analysis by Brian Stelter, CNN Business

Updated 12:49 AM ET, Mon March 18, 2019

New York (CNN Business)Experts say the back-scratching relationship between President Trump and Fox News is unlike anything in the history of American media.

Trump just keeps proving them right.

On Sunday he defended two of Fox's right-wing opinion shows and criticized three of the network's news anchors. Most notably of all, he used Twitter to send a long message to Fox executives, urging them to "stay true to the people that got you there."

It was like Trump was saying to his favorite television network, "keep having my back and I'll have yours."

During a busy day of tweets he also insulted CNN; complained about late-night shows; and mused about a government investigation of the comedy show "Saturday Night Live." The sheer volume of tweets — suggesting a St. Patrick's Day full of TV watching — was a testament to Fox's influence within the White House.

Most of the media outlets and personalities involved just shrugged off the president's missives. Fox News and its parent company declined to comment.

By now it's not news that Trump likes to promote Fox News and disparage its rivals. At times his social media accounts read like giant advertisements for Fox's right-wing view of the world. But he has clear favorites within the Fox world — friends like Sean Hannity, Pete Hegseth and Saturday night host Jeanine Pirro.

When Pirro questioned Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's patriotism last weekend, Fox condemned the host's comments — and, according to a source familiar with the matter, privately suspended her.

The suspension, no matter how short-lived, was an unusual step for Fox to take. And Trump evidently noticed that she was absent on Saturday — because he tweeted "bring back @JudgeJeanine Pirro" on Sunday morning.

Trump said Democrats and the media were trying "to SILENCE a majority of our Country." This was an apparent allusion to a recent campaign by a liberal group, Media Matters, to call out Tucker Carlson and pressure Fox's advertisers.

"They have all out campaigns against @FoxNews hosts who are doing too well," the president wrote, sounding like a concerned fan.

"Fox must stay strong and fight back with vigor," he wrote. "Stop working soooo hard on being politically correct, which will only bring you down, and continue to fight for our Country."

His messages seemed to be aimed at people like Fox patriarch Rupert Murdoch and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. But he did not tag anyone specific in his tweets.

He offered free business advice, claiming that "the losers" — presumably other channels — "all want what you have, don't give it to them. Be strong & prosper, be weak & die! Stay true to the people that got you there."

Trump concluded by telling Fox to "keep fighting for Tucker, and fight hard for @JudgeJeanine."

Perhaps not coincidentally, Carlson and Pirro are two of the president's biggest boosters on Fox News. Both hosts are also known for their harsh attacks against Democrats.

"Your competitors are jealous - they all want what you've got - NUMBER ONE," Trump wrote. "Don't hand it to them on a silver platter. They can't beat you, you can only beat yourselves!"

Nearly half an hour passed between the first tweet to Fox and the last.

Some of his other posts on Sunday seemed to be inspired by segments on Fox. In the afternoon, he said that two of Fox's weekend news anchors, Arthel Neville and Leland Vittert, and one of the network's main weekday news anchors, Shepard Smith, belonged on CNN, not Fox.

In Trump-speak, of course, that's a big insult.

Neville co-anchored the noon Eastern hour on Fox on Sunday alongside longtime co-anchor Eric Shawn. Vittert co-anchored the 1 p.m. hour alongside Laura Ingle. It wasn't immediately clear what either anchor did to draw the president's ire.

One of Neville's segments was about the possibly imminent release of Robert Mueller's report. Another segment was about North Korea threatening to exit nuclear talks and restart missile testing — just run-of-the-mill news.

One of Vittert's segments was about the recent closure of a GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio. Trump tweeted about it later in the hour.

In one respect, Trump's criticism of Fox's news side anchors reiterated a point that Fox often makes in its own marketing. The network likens itself to a newspaper, with news up front and opinion pieces in the back. Fox's many critics take issue with this characterization, saying the entire network pushes right-wing narratives. But Trump, in his own way, is distinguishing between the two divisions and saying he prefers the opinion division.

Later in the afternoon, the president retweeted a fan who told him that "when those three" news anchors "show up, I turn @FoxNews OFF!"

And he retweeted a story that said Fox was "censoring" Pirro's show.

Trump has occasionally criticized Fox in the past, but it rarely lasts long. His support for Fox's talk shows is well-established and would be very hard to shake.

In the meantime, one of Fox's correspondents responded to the president's barb by supporting Neville and Vittert. "They're both incredible journalists, constantly engaged and inquisitive," Jeff Paul wrote. "I'm proud to call them colleagues...as I am proud to work with @ShepNewsTeam each week."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/17/media/do ... index.html

<3



MEDIA

CNN’s Jim Acosta: ‘The White House Can’t Whitewash The White Nationalism’

The CNN reporter compared the language in the manifesto of the alleged gunman in the New Zealand mosque shootings to that used by Donald Trump.

By Lee Moran

03/16/2019 02:53 am ET

CNN’s Jim Acosta highlighted the similarity of the language used in the manifesto of the alleged white supremacist gunman in the New Zealand mosque shootings to that used by President Donald Trump to veto legislation rebuking his declaration of a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Acosta, speaking on Friday’s broadcast of “Anderson Cooper 360°,” noted how the alleged gunman used terms “like ‘invaders’ and ‘invasion’ when talking about immigration and the immigration issue.”

It was “almost the same kind of language that the president was using earlier today when he was vetoing that legislation up on Capitol Hill, rebuking his use of a national emergency declaration to build his wall on the border,” he added.

“So, the White House can’t whitewash the white nationalism every time, Anderson, he claimed.

Acosta later noted how Trump’s claim, following Friday’s attack in Christchurch that left at least 49 people dead, that white nationalism is not a rising threat “stood out as just being contrary to the facts.”

“As we know from recent studies and even FBI statistics in just the last couple of years, that all shows that white nationalism, that right-wing extremism, is on the rise not only here in the United States but around the world.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cnn-jim- ... 83bdc13009

<4



POLITICS

Exclusive: 7 U.S. Military Members Identified As Part Of White Nationalist Group

Leaked chat logs revealed military servicemen with ties to the extremist group Identity Evropa.

By Christopher Mathias

03/17/2019 10:00 pm ET Updated 8 hours ago

Leaked chat logs have connected seven current members of the U.S. armed forces to a white nationalist group, according to a HuffPost investigation.

Two Marines, two Army ROTC cadets, an Army physician, a member of the Texas National Guard and one member of the Air Force all belong to an organization called Identity Evropa, which is listed by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist group.

For years, Identity Evropa members have used a server on Discord, a group chat app popular among the alt-right, to send messages to one another. Last week the independent media collective Unicorn Riot published the contents of that Discord server in its entirety.

A largely anonymous network of anti-fascist activists reviewed the Discord logs, using biographical details mentioned by Identity Evropa members, most of whom posted under pseudonyms, to uncover their offline identities.

Building off that research, HuffPost verified the identities of seven men currently serving in the military. Their messages on the Discord server indicate that they hold deeply racist and anti-Semitic views and participate in Identity Evropa propaganda campaigns, posting stickers and flyers in cities and on college campuses.

The Marine Corps, the Army, the Air Force and the Texas National Guard confirmed to HuffPost that the identified men were active members in those services. After HuffPost’s inquiries, the military is investigating some of the men’s possible ties to Identity Evropa; some servicemen were already under investigation as a result of previous tips. The military is determining whether they violated rules regarding discrimination and extremist activity.

News of Identity Evropa’s presence in the military comes at a time of heightened awareness of white nationalist violence. On Friday, a white nationalist gunman opened fire on two mosques in New Zealand, killing at least 49 worshipers. Asked Friday if he sees a rise in white nationalism around the world, President Donald Trump responded, “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.”

There is growing concern about white nationalists connected to the U.S. armed forces, of which Trump is commander-in-chief.

In February, federal authorities arrested Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Hasson, a white nationalist who prosecutors allege was stockpiling weapons to massacre leftists and reporters in a violent plot to establish a “white homeland.”

Last year, a series of investigative reports by ProPublica and “Frontline” found multiple members of violent neo-Nazi groups among the ranks of the military.

And a 2017 poll conducted by the Military Times found that nearly 25 percent of service members surveyed said they encountered white nationalists within their ranks. That poll found that 30 percent of troops said they saw white nationalism as a bigger threat to national security than the wars in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Kathleen Belew, the author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, told HuffPost that white nationalists in our armed forces pose a clear danger.

Veterans and active-duty personnel, she said, have “played an instrumental role in moving weapons, training and tactics from military to civilian spaces” and “dramatically escalated the impact of white power violence on civilian populations.”

Daryle Jenkins, the founder of the anti-racist group One People’s Project and an Air Force veteran, expressed concern over the safety of nonwhite and non-Christian members of the services who have to work alongside white nationalists in uniform who could “undermine and threaten their fellow soldier,” he said.


Identity Evropa itself was founded by an ex-Marine. The group — distinctive for its blue-and-white dragon eye logo — was instrumental in organizing 2017’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as HuffPost reported from the ground. The group claims to promote white European pride but is decidedly racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant in nature.

Members of the group marched through Charlottesville chanting, “You will not replace us!” One of Identity Evropa’s leaders at the time, Eli Mosley — mere hours after a neo-Nazi drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer — told HuffPost, “Our people are feeling good right now.”

The group’s former leaders are named in a lawsuit for their role in the violence there.

Since then, Identity Evropa — which claims to have hundreds of members — has tried to shake its public association with the violence of the so-called alt-right and to appeal to Trump’s supporters.

The group has been working to infiltrate the GOP — one member won an uncontested seat on his local Republican Party committee — and recruit members on college campuses. A recent report from the Anti-Defamation League found that Identity Evropa’s campus flyer campaigns were partly responsible for record-setting levels of white supremacist propaganda spotted across America last year.

Days after the chat logs were published, Identity Evropa’s leader, 29-year-old Patrick Casey, a resident of Virginia who rose to a leadership role after producing videos for a white nationalist site, announced a rebrand: Identity Evropa is now the American Identity Movement.

A list of the servicemen in Identity Evropa identified by HuffPost is below.

Members In The U.S. Marine Corps


Stephen T. Farrea, 29, is a corporal in the Selected Marine Corps Reserve, a spokesperson for the military branch confirmed. In the chat log, Farrea used the username SuperTomPerry-RI and often noted that he was in the military.

“I have the Marine Corps Ball during the November meetup sorry gents,” he wrote in August 2018.

Photos posted by SuperTomPerry-RI match photos posted on Instagram by his wife; public records show the couple as having lived at an address in Rhode Island. She separately posted a photo of her and her husband at the Marine Corps Ball last November.

In the chat logs, Farrea made racist comments. He wrote, “Portsmouth my town 95 percent white very nice” and said he couldn’t wait to post “It’s okay to be white” flyers in Rhode Island.

Last week, he attended an Identity Evropa gathering in Kentucky. HuffPost called the hotel where members were staying. A hotel employee confirmed that he was a guest there. Later, his wife posted a photo to Instagram from near the hotel.

Farrea did not respond to requests for comment.

Also at the gathering in Kentucky was another Marine, Jason Laguardia, who the Marine Corps confirmed is a lance corporal in the Selected Marine Corps Reserve.


On Identity Evropa’s Discord server, he goes by the name Jason-CT.

Jason-CT regularly posted pictures of Identity Evropa flyers and stickers he placed throughout Connecticut and New York City. He often targeted college campuses with the propaganda, posting photos from Yale University, New York University and Baruch College.

Working from anonymous activists’ research, HuffPost identified Laguardia by linking photos of him from the Discord to pictures on other sites.

In October 2018, Jason-CT posted photos of a trip he took to Fort Nathan Hale on the Connecticut coast near New Haven. The photo shows two men, one of them holding up an American flag and the other with an Identity Evropa flag.

The man with the Identity Evropa flag can also be seen in an unrelated photo posted to a Greenwich news article. The caption of that photo names him as Jason LaGuardia.

In yet another photo, posted by a New Haven TV host, Laguardia can be seen in a Marine uniform.

Laguardia was also pictured at the Kentucky gathering. He hung up on a HuffPost reporter who reached out to him for comment.

Col. Ted Wong, a spokesperson for the U.S. Marine Corps, told HuffPost in a statement that the branch is investigating Farrea’s and Laguardia’s connections to Identity Evuropa.

“There is no place for racial hatred or extremism in the Marine Corps. Our strength is derived from the individual excellence of every Marine regardless of background,” Wong said. “Bigotry and racial extremism run contrary to our core values. The Marine Corps will investigate the allegations and take the appropriate disciplinary actions if warranted.”

Two ROTC Cadets

One of the most active posters in the chat logs was Lawrence of Eurabia.

Lawrence of Eurabia referred to biographical information in his chats. He said he is a member of the ROTC program at Montana State University in Bozeman and is in the Army National Guard. He also said that he was a wrestler in high school from a town in Montana and that his dad worked as a stonemason there.

Those details match publicly available information about Jay C. Harrison, 20, who the Army confirmed is in the ROTC program at Montana State University at Bozeman and is a member of the Army National Guard.

His posts in the chat logs, as well as those on another white nationalist server published by Unicorn Riot, are often racist and anti-Semitic.

“Go play niggerball if you aren’t tough enough for wrestling,” Harrison wrote in one post. “God I hate basketball so much.”

“I wish the holocaust had been real,” he wrote in another. “Not one kike was ever gassed.”

In December 2018 he wrote he was holding off on posting racist flyers until he could join Identity Evropa. By March 1, it appeared Harrison had become a member. He posted a photo of an Identity Evropa sticker he placed on a concrete bollard.

“Montana State University Bozeman,” he wrote in the caption. “Heavy foot traffic area between classes, good spot for my one sticker left.”

HuffPost attempted to relay a message to Harrison via an official at the Montana State ROTC program. He hasn’t responded to that request for comment. HuffPost was unable to contact Harrison directly.

Last fall, Identity Evropa flyers and stickers were posted across Brighton, New York, a town just south of Rochester. Police investigated, pulling fingerprints from the stickers, and this month announced they found a match: a 23-year-old University of Rochester student named Christopher Hodgman, who the Army confirmed is an ROTC cadet and a member of the Army Reserve.

It’s possible that Hodgman also posted on Discord under the name Alex Kolchak-NY.

Alex Kolchak-NY wrote often about Russian politics and history. Since-deleted information on Hodgman’s Linkedin profile notes that he is a Russian studies major.

In September, Alex Kolchak-NY posted photos of stickers he said he placed in Brighton — around the same time Hodgman has admitted he did the same.

A lawyer for Hodgman said in an email to HuffPost that just because his client posted Identity Evropa posters doesn’t necessarily mean he belongs to the group. The lawyer did not confirm or deny that Alex Kochak-NY is Hodgman or that Hodgman belongs to Identity Evropa.

An Army spokesperson told HuffPost that both ROTC cadets were under investigation.

The spokesperson said in a statement that the Army prohibits “personnel from actively advocating supremacist, extremist, or criminal gang doctrine, ideology, or causes” and that “soldiers who choose to engage in such acts will be held accountable for their actions.”

A Doctor In The Army


Christopher Cummins, 44, is a lieutenant colonel physician in the Army Reserve. The website of the Military Order of Stars and Bars, a neo-Confederate organization, lists Cummins’ email address as giuseppe398@*****.com.

A giuseppe398 in the Identity Evropa chat logs refers to many biographical details that match Cummins’: He has four kids, is originally from Mississippi and currently lives in Jackson, Tennessee.

In the chat messages, giuseppe398 bragged about posting Identity Evropa flyers in Mississippi and Jackson and told the Identity Evropa members that he likes Tennessee because it is “conservative & Christian - implicitly white.”

In December 2018, he posted a message to Patrick Casey, the Identity Evropa leader. “If a member is not living very close to other members, what is the best thing or things to do to be active/help?” he wrote.

Cummins — who the Army said has served in the Army Reserve and the Mississippi Army National Guard and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2008 — did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In The Texas Army National Guard


A user going by Kane in the chat logs described himself as married and residing in Texas. He wrote he was in Houston during Hurricane Harvey and that his dad was from a town in Montana.

That biographical information matches details about 25-year-old Joseph Kane, a resident of Denton, Texas, who joined the Texas Army National Guard in 2016 and is currently assigned to the 636th Military Intelligence Battalion, a National Guard spokesperson confirmed.

Before joining the Texas National Guard, Kane served in the Army for four years as an intelligence specialist and was at one point deployed to Kosovo.

On Facebook, Kane liked a Facebook post by a known Identity Evropa member and has shared the “It’s okay to be white” meme, popular among white supremacists.

He was once before accused of being a white nationalist. In 2017, when he was a precinct chair for the Denton County Republican Party, anti-fascist activists noticed that he often posted white nationalist material to Twitter and that his account followed dozens of racists and neo-Nazis.

A local news channel asked Kane if he was a white nationalist. “No, no,” he responded. “This country was made for all people. If you accept the Constitution, you’re willing to live by our values, you’re willing to be a citizen in all that entails, you’re welcome.”

But by July 2018, he appeared to be a member of a white nationalist group.

“I mean, my wife isn’t in IE but she comes to the events same as most our guys wives,” he wrote in one message.

Kane didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokesperson for the National Guard would not say whether he was under investigation.

In The Air Force

In an August 2018 message posted in the chats, a user named DannionP introduced himself as Dannion Phillips of Oklahoma. He then made arrangements to pay his membership dues.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-na ... f6b0f1094b

<5



Man who allegedly killed mob boss flashes pro-Trump slogans on hand in court

BY JUSTIN WISE

03/18/19 06:24 PM EDT

The man who allegedly killed a mob boss in Staten Island reportedly made a court appearance on Monday with messages supporting President Trump written on his hand.

Anthony Comello, 24, was arrested and charged last week in connection with the killing of reputed Gambino crime family boss Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali.

He appeared in a New Jersey court on Monday and flashed a pair of pro-Trump slogans written on his left hand in the direction of journalists, according to The Associated Press.

According to the AP, the messages were "MAGA Forever" and "United We Stand MAGA," references to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."

Another slogan written on his hand said "Patriots In Charge." He also reportedly drew a large circle in the center of his palm. It remains unclear why he drew the circle.

Brian Neary, Comello's lawyer, declined to comment to reporters on the writing Comello's hand. Asked what was on the suspect's hand, he reportedly replied, "Handcuffs."

The AP noted that Neary also declined to comment on whether Comello maintains his innocence. He referred other questions from the AP to Comello's Manhattan lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, whom the news service said did not return two requests for comment.

Cali, 53, was shot and killed outside his Staten Island home on Wednesday. Police have said Cali was shot 10 times, according to the AP.

Cali was referred to by federal prosecutors as the underboss of the Mafia's Gambino family in court filings from 2014, the AP added. He reportedly rose to the top position in the family after that. However, he was never charged with leading the gang.

Police have not indicated if his death was a mob hit or related to something else.

Comello agreed to be extradited to New York during the court appearance on Monday. New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said Saturday that Comello would be formally charged with murder once the extradition occurs, CNN reported.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing ... slogans-on

<6



POLITICS

George Conway Urges ‘Serious Inquiry’ Into Trump’s Mental Health After Latest Lie

The husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway slams the “brazen, pathological mendacity” of the president.

By Ed Mazza

03/14/2019 12:14 am ET Updated 4 days ago

George Conway, an attorney and the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, is calling for a “serious inquiry” into President Donald Trump’s “condition of mind.”

Conway, a persistent Trump critic despite his wife’s position in the administration, slammed the president’s “brazen, pathological mendacity” for lying over even mundane matters.

“Even his donors and supporters wonder, what is wrong with him?” Conway wrote. “Why would he feel compelled to tell such an absurd lie?”

Conway’s first tweet linked to a clip in which Trump suggested that District Judge Amy Berman Jackson found “no collusion” in sentencing former campaign manager Paul Manafort on Wednesday.

“I can only tell you one thing: Again that was proven today, no collusion,” Trump declared, repeating “no collusion” multiple times.

However, the judge in the District of Columbia said no such thing.

“The ‘no collusion’ mantra is simply a non sequitur,” she said, adding that “the investigation is still ongoing.”

Conway also referred to Trump’s shifting story on Apple CEO Tim Cook, whom he incorrectly referred to as “Tim Apple” at a White House meeting last week.

The president reportedly told GOP donors Friday that he had said “Tim Cook, Apple” but that the “Cook” was so fast no one heard it.

The recording of the event proves otherwise. Then, Trump claimed he skipped the word just to save time.

“A ridiculous assertion, of course,” Conway wrote. “He really said ‘Tim Apple’ instead of ‘Tim Cook of Apple’ to save **a third of a second**”

These and other incidents of lying led to Conway’s volley of tweets, concluding with a call for a check on Trump’s mental health.

“Whether or not impeachment is in order, a serious inquiry needs to be made about this man’s condition of mind,” he wrote.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-c ... 892f4a42a1

<7



The Rapid Decline Of The Natural World Is A Crisis Even Bigger Than Climate Change

A three-year UN-backed study from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform On Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has grim implications for the future of humanity.

By John Vidal

03/15/2019 05:45 am ET Updated 2 days ago

Nature is in freefall and the planet’s support systems are so stretched that we face widespread species extinctions and mass human migration unless urgent action is taken. That’s the warning hundreds of scientists are preparing to give, and it’s stark.

The last year has seen a slew of brutal and terrifying warnings about the threat climate change poses to life. Far less talked about but just as dangerous, if not more so, is the rapid decline of the natural world. The felling of forests, the over-exploitation of seas and soils, and the pollution of air and water are together driving the living world to the brink, according to a huge three-year, U.N.-backed landmark study to be published in May.

The study from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform On Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), expected to run to over 8,000 pages, is being compiled by more than 500 experts in 50 countries. It is the greatest attempt yet to assess the state of life on Earth and will show how tens of thousands of species are at high risk of extinction, how countries are using nature at a rate that far exceeds its ability to renew itself, and how nature’s ability to contribute food and fresh water to a growing human population is being compromised in every region on earth.

Nature underpins all economies with the “free” services it provides in the form of clean water, air and the pollination of all major human food crops by bees and insects. In the Americas, this is said to total more than $24 trillion a year. The pollination of crops globally by bees and other animals alone is worth up to $577 billion.

The final report will be handed to world leaders not just to help politicians, businesses and the public become more aware of the trends shaping life on Earth, but also to show them how to better protect nature.

“High-level political attention on the environment has been focused largely on climate change because energy policy is central to economic growth. But biodiversity is just as important for the future of earth as climate change,” said Sir Robert Watson, overall chair of the study, in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.

“We are at a crossroads. The historic and current degradation and destruction of nature undermine human well-being for current and countless future generations,” added the British-born atmospheric scientist who has led programs at NASA and was a science adviser in the Clinton administration. “Land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change are three different faces of the same central challenge: the increasingly dangerous impact of our choices on the health of our natural environment.”

Around the world, land is being deforested, cleared and destroyed with catastrophic implications for wildlife and people. Forests are being felled across Malaysia, Indonesia and West Africa to give the world the palm oil we need for snacks and cosmetics. Huge swaths of Brazilian rainforest are being cleared to make way for soy plantations and cattle farms, and to feed the timber industry, a situation likely to accelerate under new leader Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist.

Industrial farming is to blame for much of the loss of nature, said Mark Rounsevell, professor of land use change at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, who co-chaired the European section of the IPBES study. “The food system is the root of the problem. The cost of ecological degradation is not considered in the price we pay for food, yet we are still subsidizing fisheries and agriculture.”

This destruction wrought by farming threatens the foundations of our food system. A February report from the U.N. warned that the loss of soil, plants, trees and pollinators such as birds, bats and bees undermines the world’s ability to produce food.

An obsession with economic growth as well as spiraling human populations is also driving this destruction, particularly in the Americas where GDP is expected to nearly double by 2050 and the population is expected to increase 20 percent to 1.2 billion over the same period.


Nature is likely to be hit particularly hard over the next 30 years, said Jake Rice, chief scientist emeritus at the Canadian government’s department of oceans and fisheries, who co-chaired the Americas study. High consumption and destructive farming will further degrade land and marine ecosystems, he added, although the pace of destruction is diminishing because so much has already gone.

“The great transformation has already taken place in North America but the remote parts of South and Central America remain under threat. A new wave of destruction is transforming the Amazon and Pampas regions [of Latin America],” said Rice.

All of this comes at a huge cost and has implications for the systems that prop up life on this planet, throwing into doubt the ability of humans to survive.

“The loss of trees, grasslands and wetlands is costing the equivalent of about 10 percent of the world’s annual gross product, driving species extinctions, intensifying climate change and pushing the planet toward a sixth mass species extinction,” says the report.

Future generations will likely experience far less wildlife, said Luthando Dziba, head of conservation services at South African National Parks, who co-chaired the section of the IPBES report that focuses on Africa.


“Africa is the world’s last home for a wide range of large mammals but the scientific consensus is that under current scenarios to 2100 more than half of African bird and mammal species could be lost,” said Dziba.

Around 20 percent of Africa’s land surface has already been degraded by soil erosion, loss of vegetation, pollution and salinization, he said, adding that the expected doubling of the continent’s population to 2.5 billion people by 2050 will put yet further pressure on its biodiversity.

While people are familiar with the threats to whales, elephants and other beloved animals, the problem goes far deeper than that. Animal populations have declined by 60 percent since 1970, driven by human actions, according to a recent World Wildlife Fund study.

And insects, vital to the diets of other animals, as well as the pollinators of our food, are facing a bleak future as populations appear to be collapsing. Land use changes and increased pesticide use are destroying habitats and vastly reducing numbers. In Europe, up to 37 percent of bees and 31 percent of butterflies are in decline, with major losses also recorded in southern Africa, according to the pollinators section of the report.


“Species which are not charismatic have been politically overlooked,” said Rounsevell. “Over 70 percent of freshwater species and 61 percent of amphibians have declined [in Europe], along with 26 percent of marine fish populations and 42 percent of land-based animals ... It is a dramatic change and a direct result of the intensification of farming,” he said.

This destruction is also driving mass human migration and increased conflict. Decreasing land productivity makes societies more vulnerable to social instability, says the report, which estimates that in around 30 years’ time land degradation, together with the closely related problems of climate change, will have forced 50 to 700 million people to migrate.

“It will just be no longer viable to live on those lands,” said Watson.

The study will also recognize that much of the remaining wealth of nature depends on indigenous people, who mostly live in the world’s remote areas and are on the frontline of the damage caused by destructive logging and industrial farming. According to IPBES, indigenous communities often know best how to conserve nature and are better placed than scientists to provide detailed information on environmental change.

Brazil – which nationwide hosts about 42,000 plant species, 9,000 species of vertebrates and almost 130,000 invertebrates – has an indigenous population of almost 900,000 people, says the report.

“What surprised me the most about this study was that it became clear that the older cultures, like the indigenous peoples of the Americas, have different values which protect nature better [than Western societies],” said Watson. “No one should romanticize indigenous peoples, and we cannot turn the clock back, but we can learn a lot from them on how to protect the planet.”

Indigenous people, however, continue to experience discrimination, threats and murder. In Brazil, for example, Bolsonaro’s election has cemented a pro-corporate, anti-indigenous agenda that has already started to undermine the rights of the country’s native communities.


Although their conclusions are stark, the IPBES authors are not entirely gloomy about Earth’s prospects. In offering practical options for future action, they want to show that it is not too late to slow down or even reverse degradation.

The authors are expected to say in their conclusions that to avoid disaster, existing laws will have to be enforced, and further regulations put on, for example, deforestation and overfishing. Reports already published have also called for better protection of pollinators, tighter control of invasive species and greater public awareness of the decline in nature.

They will also recognize that individual and community actions to plant trees, regenerate abandoned lands and protect nature can have a major positive impact.

Many other solutions to save nature have been put forward by individuals and countries.

Veteran biologist E.O.Wilson proposed that half the Earth needs to be protected to have any hope of avoiding disaster. Elsewhere, indigenous people in Latin America have argued for the creation of one of the world’s largest protected land areas, stretching from the southern tip of the Andes to the Atlantic.

Several countries are taking bold initiatives to restore land, both to help meet climate targets and to protect and enhance biodiversity. Pakistan intends to plant 10 billion trees (although its previous billion tree campaign was not without controversy), Ethiopia has mobilized communities to regenerate 15 million hectares of degraded lands and the Green Wall project is pushing for a 4,970-mile long belt of vegetation across Africa. Meanwhile, the U.N. Environment program has reported a surge in the number and size of marine protected areas.

Public awareness of the crisis is also growing, with new social movements setting up to put pressure on governments to act urgently. The Extinction Rebellion movement, which began in London in October, argues that we face an unprecedented emergency. Backed by academics, scientists, church leaders and others, including Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and Vandana Shiva, it claims to have spread to 35 countries in its first two months. Children too are joining in. On March 15, thousands of young people across 30 countries plan to strike from school and protest against inaction on climate change.

But despite these moves to reverse the ongoing destruction of the natural world, the big picture remains worrying. Ambitious global agreements like the Aichi targets set in Japan in 2010 and the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals around protecting nature, may not be met at current rates of progress, say the report authors.

Ultimately, Watson concludes that saving nature will require a major rethink of how we live and how we think about nature, but that it is possible to turn this dire situation around if governments want it to happen.

“There are no magic bullets or one-size-fits-all answers. The best options are found in better governance, putting biodiversity concerns into the heart of farming and energy policies, the application of scientific knowledge and technology, and increased awareness and behavioral changes,” Watson said. “The evidence shows that we do know how to protect and at least partially restore our vital natural assets. We know what we have to do.”

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nature-d ... a6d3bb2d44

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Monday's Mini-Report, 3.18.19

Today's edition of quick hits:

By Steve Benen

03/18/19 05:30PM

* The Netherlands: "The man suspected of killing three people on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht on Monday was arrested hours after the shooting, officials said."

* Flooding: "More than 10 million people in the Midwest and Great Plains remain under flood warnings following what the National Weather Service called 'major and historical river flooding' along parts of the Missouri and Mississippi river basins that left at least three people dead."

* Bad idea: "The man who allegedly killed 50 people last week at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, described President Donald Trump as 'a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.' But White House counselor Kellyanne Conway wants people to study the shooter's manifesto for themselves before drawing conclusions -- even if that means exposing themselves to white supremacist ideology."

* Just when it seemed Brexit couldn't get messier: "The speaker of Britain's House of Commons, famous for his erudite put-downs and booming calls for 'Order!' in Parliament, threw Prime Minister Theresa May's plan to attempt to pass her Brexit deal again -- on a third try, probably this week -- into doubt Monday."

* Elliott Broidy: "Federal authorities raided the office of Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy last summer, seeking records related to his dealings with foreign officials and Trump administration associates, according to a sealed search warrant obtained by ProPublica."

* Nice work if you can get it: "Ben Carson's daily schedule from 2017 shows a HUD secretary who held senior staff meetings once a week, lunched with the author of 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' and the founder of My Pillow, and left work before 2 p.m. on some Fridays to fly to his Florida mansion."

* Kentucky: "A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked a Kentucky law that prohibits abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which typically happens around six weeks into pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant."


White House chief of staff conveniently overlooks Trump’s Muslim ban

By Steve Benen

03/18/19 10:07 AM—UPDATED 03/18/19 10:16 AM

Every week at the White House is a busy one, but last week was especially eventful. Over the course of five days, Team Trump unveiled a new budget blueprint; the West Wing spent days lobbying lawmakers ahead of some high-profile votes; and Donald Trump was even forced to issue the first veto of his presidency. Where was acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney?

Over 2,000 miles away. As the Associated Press reported, during a dramatic week in the West Wing, Mulvaney was in Las Vegas “for an annual getaway with friends and family.” The South Carolina Republican has a reputation for being a hands-off chief of staff, and it appears that reputation is well deserved.

Mulvaney is nevertheless back at work, and yesterday, he appeared on CBS and Fox News, where he argued, “The president is not a white supremacist. I’m not sure how many times we have to say that.”

As a rule, when a White House chief of staff has to publicly declare that his boss is not a white supremacist, it suggests all is not well in the Oval Office. Indeed, “I’m not sure how many times we have to say that” is an amazing sentence in its own right – because it suggests Trump’s aides are frequently asked about the president’s bigotry.

But what struck me as especially notable was this exchange between Mulvaney and CBS News’ Margaret Brennan.

*BRENNAN: During the campaign, as you know, as a candidate, the president called for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States. He said Islam “hates us.” This kind of language in the past leads to these questions of why isn’t the president now directly using that megaphone to condemn it.

MULVANEY: Well, then take the words and put them in one category and take the actions and put them in another.*

This is not a compelling response.

For one thing, “the words” are not trivial. Donald Trump has been a high-profile voice for Islamophobic rhetoric for several years, going so far as to suggest, among other things, that he’d consider closing some American mosques.

Mulvaney added yesterday, “I don’t think anybody could say that the president is anti-Muslim.” Given Trump’s actual rhetorical record, I think it’s quite easy to make that exact claim.

But to hear the acting White House chief of staff tell it, rhetoric is irrelevant compared to actions. In a contest between words and deeds, the latter always wins.

And while I’m not unsympathetic to this as a principle, in Trump’s case, his actions include the creation of a Muslim ban as one of his first acts as president.

Even if generous observers were to dismiss everything the president has said on the subject, and limit the scope to Trump’s actions exclusively, how in the world do the Republican’s actions make his record look any better?
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Trump eyes possible actions against comedy shows that hurt his feelings

By Steve Benen

03/18/19 09:20 AM—UPDATED 03/18/19 09:28 AM

NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” was a repeat over the weekend, but Donald Trump apparently watched anyway, and wasn’t impressed. In fact, the president suggested he’s weighing the possibility of some kind of official inquiry into this and other comedy shows that hurt his feelings.

In a pair of tweets early yesterday, the Republican wrote:

*“It’s truly incredible that shows like Saturday Night Live, not funny/no talent, can spend all of their time knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of ‘the other side.’ Like an advertisement without consequences. Same with Late Night Shows….

“Should Federal Election Commission and/or FCC look into this? There must be Collusion with the Democrats and, of course, Russia! Such one sided media coverage, most of it Fake News.”*

I’ll confess that deciphering Trump’s ideas can be challenging, but as of yesterday morning, the sitting American president seemed to argue that “Saturday Night Live,” Democrats, and the Kremlin are in cahoots, as part of an elaborate scheme to undermine him.

And while most reasonable observers would probably consider that bonkers, it’s Trump’s specific reference to the Federal Election Commission and the Federal Communications Commission that stood out.

The threat escalation has been gradual and one-directional over the course of several months. As regular readers may recall, during his presidential transition period, Trump lashed out at “SNL,” condemning it as “biased,” and suggesting he and his team should be given “equal time.” Last year, the Republican did it again, blasting the comedy show as a “spin machine,” and suggesting that the broadcasts may not be “legal.”

Last month, the president upped the ante, raising the prospect of “retribution” against comedy shows. Yesterday, Trump started referring to specific levers of federal power he’d consider using to punish comedy programs

Circling back to our earlier coverage, I rather doubt anything will come of this, at least in practical terms – Trump often sees chest-thumping bluster as its own reward – but I also think it’d be a mistake to dismiss these presidential antics as meaningless.

Trump is, at a minimum, offering a fresh peek into his authoritarian instincts. Confronted with a comedy show’s mockery, the president has made no attempt to hide his emotional reactions: the Republican has questioned the legality of the broadcasts and told the public he’d consider official reprisals against those who dare to laugh at him.

If we saw this in a country abroad, we’d naturally wonder about the state of the nation’s commitment to liberty.

But taking a step further, Trump’s responses to “SNL” serve as reminders that he still doesn’t yet understand the nature of the American presidency.

Soon after he left office, Lyndon Johnson was asked about the mockery he received from the Smothers Brothers, who hosted a popular comedy show on CBS at the time. “It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists,” LBJ said, adding, “May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.”

We saw other presidents adopt similar postures under similar circumstances. JFK joked about Vaughn Meader’s impression of him. Gerald Ford was mocked mercilessly on “SNL,” but he was a good sport about it. George H.W. Bush actually became friends with Dana Carvey after seeing the comedic actor’s unflattering impression of him.

They each seemed to understand a simple truth: being president of the United States not only makes that person one of the highest-profile individuals on the planet, it also makes him/her the target of jokes. It’s simply a part of the job.

Donald Trump reacts viscerally and unhealthily to ridicule, but it’s also striking just how little he knows about the job he sought without taking the time to learn what it entails.


Even now, Trump can’t let go of his contempt for McCain

By Steve Benen

03/18/19 08:40 AM

In late January, Donald Trump sat down with the New York Times, which asked the president a fairly straightforward question about his re-election plans. His answer meandered a bit, before culminating in a complaint about John McCain. A week later, the Republican huddled with reporters ahead of his State of the Union address, and apropos of nothing, mocked McCain’s book sales.

Seven months after the late senator died of brain cancer, the president still can’t contain his contempt for McCain.

*President Donald Trump on Saturday lashed out against an old nemesis, the late Sen. John McCain, for his crucial vote against repealing Obamacare in 2017.

Trump chastised McCain for his no vote on a bare-bones repeal of President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare legislation, wrongly describing it as a “thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!”*

Yesterday, the president kept the offensive going, ridiculing McCain for his grades at the U.S. Naval Academy, before retweeting a conspiracy theorist who claimed people “hated” the longtime Republican lawmaker.

The larger campaign isn’t exactly new new; Trump has been taking cheap shots at the late senator for months, as part of a creepy and unnecessary display. In this latest case, however, the president apparently feels justified in targeting McCain because of a new conspiracy theory.

According to one of many tweets Trump published over the weekend, McCain “sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!”

It’s obviously classless when the president lashes out wildly at someone who can no longer defend himself, but what makes this tantrum especially offensive is the fact that Trump has no idea what he’s talking about.

At issue is Christopher Steele’s 2016 “dossier” on Trump and Russia, which is neither “fake” nor “garbage,” the president’s incessant whining notwithstanding. Trump wants the public to believe McCain tried to disseminate the document – to law enforcement and the media – before Election Day 2016.

None of this is true.

*The senator was not made aware of the Steele dossier until Nov. 18, 2016 – after Trump had won the election. And there is no evidence that McCain gave the dossier to the media.

Former McCain aide David Kramer, a Russia expert, testified in a deposition in the BuzzFeed libel case in Florida that he gave the dossier to the media in December 2016. McCain himself gave the dossier to the FBI, but there is no evidence that he gave it to the media.*

Trump’s conspiracy theories are often ridiculous, but I don’t even see the point of this one. The president appears to simply hate McCain to such a degree that he keeps talking about – and lying about – him for no particular reason.

If Trump thinks ugly displays like these help him, he’s mistaken.


After New Zealand slayings, Trump flunks another leadership test

By Steve Benen

03/18/19 08:00 AM—UPDATED 03/18/19 08:06 AM

As a rule, it’s difficult for an American president to screw up a response to a foreign terrorist attack, especially in an allied nation. The script, which several U.S. leaders have followed without incident, reflects common sense: a president condemns the violence, extends sympathy to the grieving, and offers American support.

Presidents face all kinds of arcane challenges. This isn’t one of them. It’s a pass/fail test – which is tough to fail.

And yet, Donald Trump keeps managing to find a way.

It was, after all, Friday afternoon when the Republican president held a White House photo-op in order to veto a measure that would block his emergency declaration over border barriers. At the event, Trump extended his condolences to New Zealand – though he made no specific reference to Muslims or the Islamic community – before quickly transitioning to the core argument he was eager to emphasize. In reference to the U.S./Mexico border, the American insisted:

*“It is a tremendous national emergency. It is a tremendous crisis…. We’re on track for a million illegal aliens to rush our borders.

“People hate the word ‘invasion,’ but that’s what it is. It’s an invasion of drugs and criminals and people.”*

The larger context was lost on him: the accused killer in New Zealand was reportedly convinced that his country was under “invasion” by “non-whites.” Trump nevertheless thought it’d be a good idea to use the word “invasion” just hours after learning of the massacre. (A similar rhetorical pattern unfolded in the fall, following a massacre in a Pittsburgh synagogue.)

At the same Oval Office gathering on Friday, the president proceeded to dismiss the significance of white-nationalist violence as a global threat. Asked if he sees white nationalism as “a rising threat around the world,” Trump replied, “I don’t really,” adding that he believes the problem is limited to “a small group of people.”

Early yesterday, Trump proceeded to defend a far-right television personality who was suspended after peddling Islamophobic nonsense on the air.

So to recap, a white nationalist stands accused of launching a deadly terrorist attack targeting Muslims, whom the killer saw as launching an “invasion.” Soon after, the American president echoed the rhetoric, downplayed the rise of white nationalism, and touted his support for an Islamophobic television personality – all over the course of 48 hours.

It’d be easier to look past missteps like these if they weren’t so common – because this wasn’t the first time Trump flunked a leadership test in the wake of global terrorism. As regular readers may recall, his response to attack in Egypt’s North Sinai was awful. His reaction to the attack in Nice, France, was every bit as misguided. The Republican’s response to terrorism in London quickly became an international embarrassment – twice.

Trump’s responses to violent incidents closer to home are no better.

When Trump responded irresponsibly to violence in 2016, his supporters could try to argue that he was a first-time candidate who was still learning how to behave. In 2017, they could make the case that he was still an amateur finding his footing.

It’s 2019, the leadership tests keep coming, and Trump keeps flunking. There are no good excuses.

http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog

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