The Commentariat -- March 25, 2019

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Marc Tracy of the New York Times: "Michael Avenatti, the lawyer best known for representing Stormy Daniels in her lawsuits against President Trump, was arrested Monday as federal prosecutors filed charges accusing him of attempting to extort millions of dollars from Nike by threatening negative publicity right before an earnings call and the N.C.A.A. men's basketball tournament. In court documents filed Monday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said that Mr. Avenatti and a client, a former A.A.U. basketball coach, told Nike that they had evidence Nike employees had funneled money to recruits. The prosecutors said the men threatened to release the evidence in order to damage Nike's reputation and market capitalization unless the company paid them at least $22.5 million.... The court documents were filed around the same time Mr. Avenatti, in a post on his Twitter account, had announced that he would hold a news conference on Tuesday to accuse Nike of 'a major high school/college basketball scandal.'" Mrs. McC: Trump couldn't have a better day if he found out he was as rich as he claims to be.

Laura Jarrett of CNN: "Roughly three weeks ago the special counsel's team told Attorney General Bill Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that Robert Mueller would not be reaching a conclusion on obstruction of justice, according to a source familiar with the meeting. The source said that conclusion was 'unexpected' and not what Barr had anticipated."

From a report by Josh Dawsey & others of the Washington Post: "Within an hour of learning the findings, Trump called for an investigation of his critics and cast himself as a victim. Aides say Trump plans to highlight the cost of the probe and call for organizations to fire members of the media and former government officials who he believes made false accusations about him, while aggressively mocking his critics and one of his favored enemies, the news media. 'Hopefully somebody is going to be looking at the other side,' Trump said, describing the Mueller investigation as 'an illegal takedown that failed.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Reminds me of O.J. going after the "real killers." We've just experienced a "Barr nullification," and now Trump plans to go after the "real criminals." ...

... ** Brian Beutler of Crooked: "Notwithstanding Barr's heroic, lawyerly effort to create a sense that Mueller has exonerated Trump, the letter he delivered to Congress on Sunday is nearly silent on all of these questions, and actually suggests that the report's contents are deeply damaging to the president. On close reading, Barr's putative summary of the Mueller report clears Trump of only the most narrowly drawn accusations, which nobody was making.... The entire letter is drafted to suggest practically the opposite of what it actually says.... [Barr's] omissions help explain why, despite his gloating today, Trump behaved until the very end like a guilty man and endeavored ceaselessly to terminate and compromise the investigation.... I anticipate that Trump will go to great, telling lengths to conceal [the Mueller report] -- in ways that sit uncomfortably alongside today's credulous headlines, and Republican insistence that he has been vindicated. But that's exactly why we need to see it in full, and quickly." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Beutler calls out "today's irresponsible headlines and chyrons," and we should do the same. Peter Baker & his headline writer at the NYT should be demoted to covering the local police blotter; the headline on the Times' online front page: "Special Counsel's Conclusions Lift a Cloud over Trump's Presidency."

... Lydia Wheeler of the Hill: "The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from a mystery company over a grand jury subpoena tied to ... Robert Mueller's now completed Russia probe. The justices gave no explanation for denying the request that was submitted by the company, and there were no notable dissents from the nine-member court. It takes four justices to agree to hear a case."

~~~~~~~~~~

The Trump Scandals, Ctd. -- The Fix Is In

** Mark Mazzetti & Katie Benner of the New York Times: "The investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III found that neither President Trump nor any of his aides conspired or coordinated with the Russian government's 2016 election interference, according to a summary of the special counsel's findings made public on Sunday by Attorney General William P. Barr. Mr. Barr also said that Mr. Mueller's team drew no conclusions about whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed justice. Mr. Barr and the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, concluded that the special counsel's investigators lacked sufficient evidence to establish that Mr. Trump committed that offense, but added that Mr. Mueller's team stopped short of exonerating Mr. Trump." ...

... Barr's supposed summary is here, via Voxx. ...

... Devlin Barrett & Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Mueller 'ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment,' Barr wrote, leaving it up to the attorney general and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to decide whether the president had committed obstruction. Rosenstein and Barr 'concluded that the evidence developed during the special counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction of justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president,' Barr wrote." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: You can see here why Barr asked Rosenstein -- who had intended to leave the DOJ last week or so -- to stay on a little longer: just as Rosenstein was the original fall-guy in the firing of Jim Comey -- until Trump admitted to Lester Holt that he fired Comey because of "this Rusher thing" -- so now Rosenstein is providing cover for Trump's appointed fixer at Justice. ...

... John Wagner of the Washington Post: "President Trump took to Twitter early Monday as his surrogates prepared to fan out on television a day after a summary released from ... Robert S. Mueller III's report cleared Trump of coordinating with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. While Trump and his allies claimed he been exonerated by the two-year investigation, Democrats pushed for full disclosure of the report and what led to conclusions contained in the four-page summary released Sunday by Attorney General William P. Barr. Russian officials, meanwhile, continued to insist their country had not interfered in the election despite findings by Mueller to the contrary." Wagner is updating reactions & developments.

... Neal Katyal said on MSNBC, "It looks like a whitewash here." He said, "We should be very concerned about 'even-handedness.'" ...

... Kevin Drum: "... you should consider Barr's summary to be the rosiest possible interpretation of the Mueller report.... It's possible, of course, that Mueller concluded in his report that none of [the Trump campaign's suspicious contacts] amounted to collusion in any criminal sense, but surely he at least addressed this stuff? So why doesn't Barr mention it?... 'While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime,' [Barr's letter] says, 'it also does not exonerate him.' Needless to say, this did not stop Trump from tweeting his take on 'does not exonerate: 'No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!' [Trump tweeted.]... If even Barr's summary was forced to tiptoe so conspicuously around Mueller's conclusions, I think we can assume that the Mueller report itself is at least moderately damning. Let's see it." ...

... Dara Lind of Vox: "Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein have concluded that 'the evidence is not sufficient' to charge Trump with obstruction of justice. But as a letter written by Barr to the House Judiciary Committee Sunday (summarizing the still-confidential Mueller report submitted to Barr and the Department of Justice on Friday) makes clear, that was Barr and Rosenstein's decision -- not Mueller's.... Because Barr's views on presidential prosecution are well known -- and because Barr was appointed by Trump while the Mueller investigation was ongoing, and resisted Democratic calls to recuse himself from overseeing the investigation -- Democrats and other Trump critics are likely to reject Barr's conclusions as biased at best and corrupt at worst." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: So answer me this: how is it that Bill Barr decided Trump didn't obstruct justice? Bob Mueller has had a long career in which he's had to make countless decisions on "difficult issues." After all these decades of deciding, did Mueller suddenly choke? Or was the fix in from the git-go? -- did Rosenstein tell Mueller he could investigate -- but not charge or find fault with -- Trump? And why would Mueller -- whose job it was to be an impartial actor -- casually leave the charging decision to a recent political appointee who wrote a 19-page memo in which he argued that Mueller's theory of obstruction was nonsense; that is, Barr wrote a position paper stating that the person who nominated him, the same person whom Mueller was investigating for obstruction, could not be charged with obstruction. Further, there's no information, available publicly, that Barr gets to decide whether Mueller's findings about obstruction -- whatever they are (and we don't know) -- constitute criminality. If Mueller really did choke (doubtful), Barr could have left it at that; Barr did not have to be the "decider." That would be Congress's job. Whatever good reputation Mueller may have enjoyed, he'll have to go on a Comey-style excuse tour to try to get it back. ...

... Kevin White of the Atlantic: "... crucially, Mueller reported that his investigation 'did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,' whether expressly or tacitly, [according to Barr].... Trump's triumphant supporters notwithstanding, we don't yet know what that means. When prosecutors say that an investigation 'did not establish' something, that doesn't mean that they concluded it didn't happen, or even that they don't believe it happened. It means that the investigation didn't produce enough information to prove that it happened. Without seeing Mueller's full report, we don't know whether this is a firm conclusion about lack of coordination or a frank admission of insufficient evidence.... Crucially, we don't know whether Barr concluded that the president didn't obstruct justice or that he couldn't obstruct justice, [as he argued in his infamous 19-page memo]." ...

Can't think of a more important occasion for close reading, but almost nobody is doing it. Barr's letter asserts only that Trump associates did not participate in the specific crimes charged in the IRA and GRU indictments. Not that they didn't /work w/Russia.' -- Brian Beutler, in a tweet ...

... William Saletan of Slate does do a close reading, & finds a host of "weasel words" in Barr's letter. For instance, "The letter quotes a sentence from Mueller's report...: Mueller says his investigation didn't prove that members of the Trump ' campaign 'conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.' The sentence specifies Russia's government. It says nothing about coordination with other Russians."

... Marcy Wheeler has a great post titled, "How William Barr Did Old Man Back-Flips to Avoid Arresting Donald Trump." Its pretty readable! Here's one piece: "... at least given what [Barr & Rosenstein] lay out here, they only considered whether Trump was covering up his involvement in the hack-and-leak operation. doesn't consider whether Trump was covering up a quid pro quo, which is what there is abundant evidence of. They didn't consider whether Trump obstructed the crime that he appears to have obstructed. They considered whether he obstructed a different crime. And having considered whether Trump obstructed the crime he didn't commit, rather than considering whether he obstructed the crime he did commit, they decided not to charge him with a crime." ...

... Wheeler elaborates in a New Republic piece: "The hack-and-leak is not the crime Trump may have committed. It is, instead, a quid pro quo deal by which Russia would help Trump win and Trump would relieve Russia of the sanctions imposed for engaging in human rights violations, annexing Crimea, and hacking the election to help Trump win.... In Barr's confirmation hearing in January, Senator Amy Klobuchar asked him whether a president 'persuading a person to commit perjury [or] convincing a witness to change testimony would be obstruction.' He said yes, both would. And yet he just decided that a president who has apparently done both of those things did not commit obstruction of justice.... The Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee now has abundant reason to get all the underlying materials from the Mueller inquiry, because the attorney general just cleared the president of something he agreed constituted a crime just a few months ago." ...

... ** David Corn of Mother Jones: "... the hyper-focus on [a direct, organized conspiracy] -- as if Trump instructed Russian hackers on how to penetrate the computer network of the Democratic National Committee -- has always diverted attention from a basic and important element of the scandal that was proven long before Mueller drafted his final report: Trump and his lieutenants interacted with Russia while Putin was attacking the 2016 election and provided encouraging signals to the Kremlin as it sought to subvert American democracy. They aided and abetted Moscow's attempt to cover up its assault on the United States (which aimed to help Trump win the White House). And they lied about all this.... Trump and his gang betrayed the United States in the greatest scandal in American history." ...

... Bob Bauer in a New York Times op-ed: "... the Mueller report marked a low point for more substantive norms of presidential conduct. It shows that a demagogic president like Donald Trump can devalue or even depart radically from key norms, just short of committing chargeable crimes, so long as he operates mostly and brazenly in full public view. For a demagogue, shamelessness is its own reward." Mrs. McC: The WashPo's newish tagline "Democracy Dies in Darkness" does not apply. In Trump's USA, democracy dies in plain sight. And that, apparently, is okay with Trump's subordinates & enablers. ...

... Neal Katyal in a New York Times op-ed: "The special counsel regulations were written to provide the public with confidence that justice was done. It is impossible for the public to reach that determination without knowing two things. First, what did the Mueller report conclude, and what was the evidence on obstruction of justice? And second, how could Mr. Barr have reached his conclusion so quickly? Mr. Barr's letter raises far more questions than it answers, both on the facts and the law.... Mr. Barr says that the government would need to prove that Mr. Trump acted with 'corrupt intent' and there were no such actions. But how would Mr. Barr know?" ...

... Yay! Trump Is Just a Dimwitted Stooge! David Frum of the Atlantic: "Good news, America. Russia helped install your president. But although he owes his job in large part to that help, the president did not conspire or collude with his helpers. He was the beneficiary of a foreign intelligence operation, but not an active participant in that operation. He received the stolen goods, but he did not conspire with the thieves in advance. This is what Donald Trump's administration and its enablers in Congress and the media are already calling exoneration. But it offers no reassurance to Americans who cherish the independence and integrity of their political process.... In this hyper-legalistic society, those vital inquiries got diverted early into a law-enforcement matter. That was always a mistake.... Now the job returns to the place it has always belonged and never should have left: Congress." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: So what we have here is a gang too disorganized & stupid to effectively coordinate with a foreign entity but not too disorganized & stupid (1) to welcome foreign assistance, and (2) to mount an effective cover-up of its wrongdoing. We should know by now this has been Trump's modus operandi for decades: first, skirt or break the law; then loudly & ruthlessly defend himself; third, keep on keepin' on.

... Rick Hasen, writing in Slate, sees Mueller's failure to charge Don Junior & Paul Manafort for soliciting foreign contributions to the Trump campaign -- which is illegal -- as a danger to future U.S. elections: "... we need to know [Mueller's reasoning], because it means that Department of Justice officials will not see the need to stop foreign governments from sharing information -- even information obtained from illegal hacking -- with campaigns, for the purposes of influencing the 2020 elections." ...

... Fox/Russia/Trump Messaging. Julia Davis of The Daily Beast: "When news broke [about] Special Counsel Robert Mueller's [findings]..., Russian officials and the state media reacted with fiendish delight.... Citing Fox News, Russian state news agency TASS reported that the findings represent a complete victory for President Trump.... Russian state news outlet RIA Novosti predicts that the Russian election interference will soon be replaced by 'Ukrainegate,' based on the conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the U.S. elections on the side of Hillary Clinton. Trump recently tweeted the link to an article, widely promoted by the Russians, stating: 'As Russia Collusion fades, Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges.' The same narrative of Ukrainian -- not Russian -- election interference was promoted by Fox News host Sean Hannity in 2017. Right on cue, Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. jumped on the Ukraine bandwagon by tweeting a[ related] article.... The Kremlin's scribes predict that the grand finale of such an investigation would be perfectly timed to unfold immediately prior to the 2020 election." --s

Dylan Matthews of Vox: "Ending the Trump presidency will not fix, or even substantially ameliorate, most of the problems plaguing the American political system. They were mounting for years before he took office -- indeed, they made him possible -- and will continue to plague us for years after he leaves.... And more importantly, as this week clarifies, there will be no dramatic end for Trump.... The glib answer is that if you don't want Trump to be president, you should make sure he loses the 2020 election.... Absent a revolutionary shock to create a radically new political order, the best we can do is just muddle along." --s

Presidential Race 2020. Steve M.: "[T]he GOP is not 'a political party reduced to know-nothing cultists' -- it's 'a political party reduced to know-nothing cultists' plus people with such intense negative partisanship that they'd vote for a Charles Manson/John Wayne Gacy ticket if the ticket promised to lock up Hillary Clinton.... A large subset of the GOP voter base is supposed to care about character and traditional morality, but these people are Trump's most unswerving loyalists, because, to them, character and traditional morality mean hating Muslims and Mexicans.... Trump has an excellent chance of winning next year, especially in a three-way race, which seems inevitable." --s

Quint Forgey of Politico: "Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh will join George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School as a distinguished visiting professor, the university confirmed Saturday. Kavanaugh will co-teach a two-credit summer course in England from July through August.... Justice Neil Gorsuch ... will also co-teach a summer class in Padua, Italy.... The news of Kavanaugh's role at George Mason ... comes five months after Harvard Law School announced that he would not return to campus in Spring 2019 to teach his previously scheduled course.... [During his confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh whined,] 'I love teaching law, but thanks to what some of you on this side [Democratic] of the committee have unleashed, I may never be able to teach again.'" Mrs. McC: Okay, so not Harvard, but a right-wing lawyer mill. Good enough.

Martin Ferrer of the Guardian: "Shares in Asia Pacific have slumped after a key market indicator flashed an 'amber warning' that the United States could be heading for a recession. Bond yields also continued to fall across the world with Australian 10-year treasury yields falling to a record low on Monday of 1.756% in what analysts see as a strong indicator of a downturn hitting the resource-rich country.... The market action on Monday was a response to the biggest losses in US shares since the beginning of January on Friday when the Dow Jones sank 1.8%, the S&P 500 was off 1.9 percent and the Nasdaq dropped 2.5%." --s

The Commentariat -- March 24, 2019

Afternoon Update:

** Mark Mazzetti & Katie Benner of the New York Times: "The investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III found that neither President Trump nor any of his aides conspired or coordinated with the Russian government's 2016 election interference, according to a summary of the special counsel's findings made public on Sunday by Attorney General William P. Barr. Mr. Barr also said that Mr. Mueller's team drew no conclusions about whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed justice. Mr. Barr and the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, concluded that the special counsel's investigators lacked sufficient evidence to establish that Mr. Trump committed that offense, but added that Mr. Mueller's team stopped short of exonerating Mr. Trump." ...

... Barr's supposed summary is here, via the New York Times. ...

... Devlin Barrett & Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Mueller 'ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment,' Barr wrote, leaving it up to the attorney general and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to decide whether the president had committed obstruction. Rosenstein and Barr 'concluded that the evidence developed during the special counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction of justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president,' Barr wrote." ...

... Neal Katyal said on MSNBC, "It looks like a whitewash here." He said, "We should be very concerned about 'even-handedness.'"

~~~~~~~~~~~

The Trump Scandals, Ctd. -- Waiting for Bill Barr

Eric Tucker, et al., of the AP: "Attorney General William Barr scoured special counsel Robert Mueller's confidential report on the Russia investigation with his advisers Saturday, deciding how much Congress and the American public will get to see about the two-year probe into ... Donald Trump and Moscow's efforts to elect him. Barr was on pace to release his first summary of Mueller's findings on Sunday, people familiar with the process said. The attorney general's decision on what to finally disclose seems almost certain to set off a fight with congressional Democrats, who want access to all of Mueller's findings -- and supporting evidence -- on whether Trump's 2016 campaign coordinated with Russia to sway the election and whether the president later sought to obstruct the investigation." ...

... Heather Caygle, et al., of Politico: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Democrats on Saturday she'll rebuff any efforts by the Justice Department to reveal details of ... Robert Mueller's findings in a highly classified setting -- a tactic she warned could be employed to shield the report's conclusions from the public. Three sources who participated in a conference call among House Democrats said Pelosi (D-Calif.) told lawmakers she worried the Justice Department would seek to disclose Mueller's conclusions to the so-called Gang of Eight -- the top Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate -- which handles the nation's most sensitive secrets. The substance of Gang of Eight briefings are heavily guarded." ...

... Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "... Trump allies claimed vindication while Democrats demanded transparency and vowed to intensify their own probes. Trump and his attorneys and aides were clouded by uncertainty because they did not yet know the contents of the Robert S. Mueller III's report.... Ensconced for the weekend in Palm Beach, Fla., Trump exuded optimism while playing golf, lunching at the clubhouse and chatting with friends. At the urging of his advisers, he also exhibited uncharacteristic caution, refraining from publicly crowing that the 'witch hunt' was over or declaring victory prematurely. Asked mid-Saturday to evaluate the president's mood, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said simply, 'He's good.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Here's hoping Mueller passed off his Donnie Junior & Jared dossiers to prosecutors in New York (or elsewhere) & we'll see a few perp walks yet. ...

... Neal Katyal in a Washington Post op-ed: "The public has every right to see Robert S. Mueller III's conclusions. Absolutely nothing in the law or the regulations prevents the report from becoming public.... [The] that text [of the special counsel regulations, which I helped write,] expressly included a key provision saying the 'Attorney General may determine that public release of these reports would be in the public interest,' even if the public release may deviate from ordinary Justice Department protocols. The regulations at their core are about a central problem that can be traced back to the Roman poet and satirist Juvenal many centuries ago: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes: Who will guard the guards? Whenever there are allegations of high level executive branch wrongdoing, there is a justifiable worry that the executive branch itself cannot adequately investigate it.... Fears of a government coverup are at their apogee when we are talking about a criminal investigation of the president." ...

... All Quiet on the Palm Beach Front. J.M. Rieger of the Washington Post: "On Friday night, just hours after ... Robert S. Mueller III delivered his report to Attorney General William P. Barr, President Trump got up to give a speech. Addressing guests at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, during a Republican fundraiser that was closed to the media..., Trump [made no] ... mention of Mueller or collusion." Mrs. McC: I checked Trump's Twitter account at 8:30 pm ET Saturday, & so far not a peep about the report. Surely someone confiscated Trump's phone. ...

... MEANWHILE. Ben Protess, et al., of the New York Times: "Even as ... Robert S. Mueller III submitted his confidential report to the Justice Department on Friday, federal and state prosecutors are pursuing about a dozen other investigations that largely grew out of his work, all but ensuring that a legal threat will continue to loom over the Trump presidency. Most of the investigations focus on President Trump or his family business or a cadre of his advisers and associates, according to court records and interviews with people briefed on the investigations. They are being conducted by officials from Los Angeles to Brooklyn, with about half of them being run by the United States attorney's office in Manhattan. Unlike Mr. Mueller, whose mandate was largely focused on any links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government's interference in the 2016 presidential election, the federal prosecutors in Manhattan take an expansive view of their jurisdiction."

Manu Raju of CNN: "... Jared Kushner is providing records to the House Judiciary Committee for its probe into obstruction of justice, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Committee chairman Jerry Nadler had sent Kushner a letter requesting information about a wide range of topics spanning the 2016 campaign, transition, inauguration and Kushner's time in the White House. The New York Democrat asked Kushner to tell the panel about matters that include the firing of James Comey as FBI director, his role in a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Russians, his knowledge of the pursuit of a Trump Tower Moscow project and documents about Trump's hush-money payments to silence his alleged affairs."

Steve M.: "Watergate spoiled us. No scandal has worked the way Watergate worked in the years since, and for the foreseeable future nothing will. We certainly won't bring a Republican president down the way we did then -- whoever said that Nixon would have survived if Fox News had been around during Watergate was absolutely right.... We live in the apparently endless Reagan and post-Reagan era. Sacred cows aren't slain. Masters of the universe -- Jamie Dimon, Jeffrey Epstein, Robert Kraft, even Michael Jackson -- don't go to jail. They're better at defending themselves, and they're more ruthless -- plus, we don't like to jail the men at the top. Which is why I believe that no Trump or Kushner will ever spend a day in jail. Prosecutors and investigators won't save us.... We have to save ourselves.... We do have to elect the Democratic nominee in 2020, but after that we have to fight on issues as if we haven't accomplished anything by electing the Democrat, because on many issues the system just wants to revert to the mean, and the mean is plutocratic conservatism." ...

... digby: "Putting so much weight on the Mueller probe was risky. Unless this report is an extremely compelling narrative of Trump's unfitness, a lot of people may just agree that it's time to 'move on.'"

Rachel Frazin of the Hill: "Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) blasted former FBI Director James Comey for not doing enough to stop Russian election meddling in 2016 in an interview that aired Sunday. 'In the last Congress that I served in, I wrote a letter in August to the director of the FBI Comey and said "Russia is meddling with our elections and you need to do something about that" and by October he had done nothing,' Reid told radio host John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York.... 'The hindsight from his troops are "well he didn't do it because he thought Hillary would win the election. He therefore thought It'd be too political for him to get involved,"' Reid added." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: In fairness to Comey, he has spent the last two-and-a-half years making excuses for the many screw-ups he made in the run-up to the 2016 election "because he thought Hillary would win" & because he was skeert Republicans would criticize him.

Trump takes sale of Lincoln Bedroom to new extreme. Remember those Photoshopped pictures of "White House for Sale"? They were supposed to be parodic metaphors. Once again, Trump proves he cannot be parodied. ...... Mary Papenfuss of the Huffington Post: "... Donald Trump has emblazoned the 'Trump' brand name on images of the White House to sell in his Trump Store and at the Trump International Hotel in the capital. The products give the bizarre impression that the White House is a Trump hotel. Walter Shaub, who was director of the Office of Government Ethics..., sharply criticized the products as the latest move to 'monetize the presidency' for private gain.... The products among the new 'Cherry Blossom Collection' now online bearing the White House image include soap, mugs, a T-shirt and a long-sleeved shirt."

Lloyd Green of the Guardian: "Vicky Ward's book is subtitled: 'Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.' It is a damning depiction of the Kushner clan and 'Javanka'.... If nothing else, Kushner, Inc reinforces the well-founded conviction that we are governed by a kakistocracy, from the president on down." --s

Once a Con Man, Always a Con Man. Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "Prosecutors suspect Paul Manafort might be trying to secretly claw back about a million dollars he agreed to hand over to the government for his financial crimes -- and he could be using the same type of shell company at the core of his legal problems to fake a loan. A mysterious shell company named Woodlawn LLC -- which formed in the middle of ... Robert Mueller's investigation into Manafort in August 2017 -- claimed in court that it deserves $1 million from Manafort's forfeiture proceeding. The company says Manafort ... still owes that amount to pay back a 2017 mortgage loan. In a court filing Saturday, the prosecutor said he could not tell if the Nevada-registered corporation's $1 million loan to Manafort was a real or sham transaction. The prosecutor says more evidence collection 'is necessary because the United States lacks information to be able to discern whether Woodlawn is a person other than the defendant,' the court filing said.

Trevor Aaronson of The Intercept: "An Intercept analysis of federal prosecutions since 9/11 found that the Justice Department has routinely declined to bring terrorism charges against right-wing extremists even when their alleged crimes meet the legal definition of domestic terrorism: ideologically motivated acts that are harmful to human life and intended to intimidate civilians, influence policy, or change government conduct.... According to The Intercept's review, 268 right-wing extremists prosecuted in federal court since 9/11 were allegedly involved in crimes that appear to meet the legal definition of domestic terrorism. Yet the Justice Department applied anti-terrorism laws against only 34 of them, compared to more than 500 alleged international terrorists." --s ...

... Alleen Brown of The Intercept: "[In the late 1990s, s]o-called eco-terrorism became the Justice Department's No. 1 domestic terror concern -- 'over the likes of white supremacists, militias, and anti-abortion groups,' as one senator pointed out at the time.... [T]here's a reason law enforcement took a less aggressive approach to right-wing white supremacists and anti-government attackers. In the case of the eco-extremists, the government had a powerful ally: industry.... Now, in the wake of the 2017 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the murder of counterprotester Heather Heyer..., Justice Department officials have argued that a new domestic terrorism statute is necessary to better respond to far-right violence.... But law enforcement and federal prosecutors already have powerful counterterrorism authorities at their disposal.... No new law was required to treat eco-saboteurs as terrorists in the wake of 9/11." --s

Bankrupting America. Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "According to a Bloomberg report on Friday, the monthly budget deficit for February was $234 billion -- the largest in American history. A year ago, February's gap was a mere $215.2 billion. A significant part of this gap came from declining revenue, especially from corporations. Corporate tax revenue so far in 2019 has been just $59.2 billion. Bloomberg noted that, in 2018 as the tax cuts were partially in effect, corporations paid $73.5 billion over a similar time period. In 2017, before the Trump tax cuts, corporate revenue was $87.4 billion at this point in the calendar. This $28.2 million dollar drop-off means that corporate revenue has dropped by almost a third since before the cuts." --s

Conservative economist Greg Mankiw: "... [Friday] the president nominates Stephen Moore to be a Fed governor. Steve ... does not have the intellectual gravitas for this important job. If you doubt it, read his latest book Trumponomics (or my review of it). It is time for Senators to do their job. Mr. Moore should not be confirmed."

Cashing the Check. Lauren Gardner of Politico: "If Ambassador Kelly Craft ends up before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the ritual grilling of presidential nominees, she'll be looking back at some of her favorite Republican senators.... President Donald Trump has said he'll nominate [Craft] to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.... At least half of the GOP members of the panel, which would have to vet the current U.S. ambassador to Canada again should Trump officially nominate her, have received donations from Kelly or Joe Craft since the 2012 cycle, according to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Politico." --s

Capitalism is Awesome, Ctd. Joe Romm of ThinkProgress: "Just before the [December 2015] Paris [climate agreement], JPMorgan Chase signed a statement with Bank of America, Citi, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and other big financial companies embracing the need for strong action.... But since the Paris Agreement, those institutions have devoted $700 billion in financing to fossil fuel expansion, including coal mining, coal power, the tar sands, and oil drilling in remote locations like the Arctic.... In 2017, [JPMorgan CEO Jamie] Dimon also said he 'absolutely' disagrees with President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the historic climate deal. However, this week's report shows that JPMorgan Chase has since become the leading banker of fossil fuels and fossil fuel expansion.... Both Dimon and JPMorgan Chase have spent this week trashing the Green New Deal[.]" --s

People Power. Joanna Walters of the Guardian: "Earlier this year at the Guggenheim in New York, activists objecting to donations from the Sackler family draped protest banners from the museum's famous spiraling balconies, dropped flyers down through the atrium and pretended to die all over the floor. A gobsmacked public looked on. Tate Modern [in London] has just escaped a similar fate. On Thursday, the Tate group announced it would not take any more donations from the Sacklers, the family whose most prominent billionaire members own the company that makes OxyContin, a prescription painkiller implicated in America's opioids crisis.... The Tate decision came two days after the National Portrait Gallery in London said it was not going to take a £1m gift offered by the Sacklers.... The controversy has echoes of fights over cultural sponsorship by tobacco companies and the oil industry and comes at a time when many in the arts are strapped for cash." --s

Kyla Mandel of ThinkProgress: "Devastating floods across the Midwest are expected to cost the country at least $3 billion in damages to homes and farms. This is likely only the beginning as unprecedented flooding is expected to continue into the spring across the United States, according to a new forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), putting millions of Americans at risk of serious inundation. According to NOAA, an extremely wet winter is driving the flood risk, as 'several portions of the country received accumulated precipitation exceeding 200 percent of average to date.'" --s

Gina Salamone of the New York Daily News: "Barbra Streisand is under fire for comments she made about two men accusing Michael Jackson of sexually assaulting them as children. The legendary singer and actress said that Wade Robson and James Safechuck -- whose allegations against the late King of Pop resurfaced in the recent documentary Leaving Neverland -- 'were thrilled to be there' and that what allegedly happened to them 'didn't kill them.' Streisand, 76, made the strange comments to British newspaper The Times in a piece out Friday, in which she also said that Jackson's 'sexual needs were his sexual needs.'" Mrs. McC: Nice of Barbra to make Steve M.'s point (post linked above). Probably you think she is a talented singer (I don't & never did), but it's impossible to be more tone-deaf. To say the least.

Beyond the Beltway

Idaho. GOP Disdains Democracy. Dylan Scott of Vox: "Idaho Republicans are working to roll back the Medicaid expansion approved by their voters in November, another case of GOP lawmakers refusing to accept a Democratic mandate to expand health care to their constituents under the Affordable Care Act.... The Idaho ballot referendum passed overwhelmingly in November, 61 percent to 39 percent.... If implemented, it would offer health insurance to an estimated 120,000 of the state's poorest residents.... The fight in Idaho is following the same arc as the previous debate in Utah, where voters approved a full Medicaid expansion and then Republican policymakers sought to undo it." --s

Virginia. Trump's Amerika. Luke Barnes of ThinkProgress: "More than 4,000 students in Charlottesville, Virginia, were forced to stay home for the second straight day after an anonymous poster threatened to launch an 'ethnic cleansing' at one of the city's high schools. Residents say it's further proof of the persistent danger of white supremacy in the United States. The threat targeting Charlottesville High School originated on Wednesday from the imageboard 4chan and was quickly endorsed by other users.... On Friday morning, police arrested a 17-year-old boy in connection with the comments, charging him with threats to commit serious bodily harm to persons on school property, a felony, and harassment by computer, a misdemeanor." --s

Way Beyond

U.K. BBC: "Hundreds of thousands of people have marched in central London calling for another EU referendum, as MPs search for a way out of the Brexit impasse. Organisers of the 'Put It To The People' campaign say more than a million people joined the march before rallying in front of Parliament. Protesters carrying EU flags and placards called for any Brexit deal be put to another public vote. On Thursday, European leaders agreed to delay the UK's departure from the EU." ...

... Toby Hill & Michael Savage of the Guardian: "In one of the biggest demonstrations in British history, a crowd estimated at over one million people yesterday marched peacefully through central London to demand that MPs grant them a fresh referendum on Brexit."

... Lizzie Dearden of the (UK) Independent: "Islamophobic incidents have rocketed by almost 600 per cent in Britain following the New Zealand terror attack, a monitor has reported. Tell Mama said that in the week after 50 Muslim worshippers were gunned down, offenders used 'language, symbols or actions' linked to the atrocity to target Muslims in the UK. 'Cases included people making impressions of pointing a pistol to Muslim women and comments about British Muslims, and an association with actions taken by the terrorist in New Zealand,' the monitor said."

News Lede

New Your Times: "Rafi Eitan, the canny Israeli spymaster who commanded the Nazi-hunting team that captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and many years later was unmasked as the handler of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the American Navy intelligence analyst who pleaded guilty to passing on more than 1,000 secret documents to the Israelis, died on Saturday in Tel Aviv. He was 92."

The Commentariat -- March 23, 2019

The Trump Scandals, Ctd. -- Friday Night Mueller Dump

Sharon LaFraniere & Katie Benner of the New York Times: "The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has delivered a report on his inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election to Attorney General William P. Barr, according to the Justice Department.... Mr. Barr told congressional leaders in a letter late Friday that he may brief them within days on the special counsel's findings. 'I may be in a position to advise you of the special counsel's principal conclusions as soon as this weekend,' he wrote in a letter to the leadership of the House and Senate Judiciary committees.... Only a handful of law enforcement officials have seen the report, a Justice Department spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, said. She said a few members of Mr. Mueller's team would remain to close down the office. Mr. Mueller will not recommend any new charges be filed, a senior Justice Department official said.... In a joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York..., warned Mr. Barr not to allow the White House a 'sneak preview' of the report before the public views it." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: What this means to me is that Donald Trump, Donnie Junior & Jared Kushner (and others, like K.T. McFarland & Julian Assange) escaped indictment for the Trump Tower meeting, Trump Tower Moscow negotiations, & their other attempts at getting help from Russia. This looks to me like a huge win for Trump. He can't be an unindicted co-conspirator in or the director of a criminal conspiracy with Russians to manipulate a U.S. election if there are no co-conspirators. And there are not. Trump's talent for skating consequences is truly awesome. ...

     ... Update. The Unindicted. Devlin Barrett, et al., of the Washington Post: "A senior Justice Department official said the special counsel has not recommended any further indictments.... [AG William] Barr said there were no instances in the course of the investigation in which any of Mueller's decisions were vetoed by his superiors at the Justice Department.... Around 4:35, White House lawyer Emmet Flood was notified that the Justice Department had received the report. About a half-hour after that notification, a senior department official delivered Barr's letter to the relevant House and Senate committees and senior congressional leaders, officials said. One official described the report as 'comprehensive,' but added that very few people have seen it.... Immediately after the news of Mueller's report broke, Democrats demanded that its contents be made public." ...

... Here's Barr's letter to Congress, via NPR. ...

     ... Josh Gerstein of Politico has a helpful annotation of Barr's letter. Gerstein appeared on Rachel Maddow's show Friday & said he had "just come" from the DOJ, where he was assured the report Barr received was "comprehensive."

... Ellen Nakashima & Rachael Bade of the Washington Post: "The Democratic chairs of the six House committees investigating potential abuse of power by President Trump and his campaign's business and alleged foreign ties will ask several executive branch agencies to preserve information they provided to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as he investigated Russia's interference in the 2016 election, according to congressional aides.... The six House leaders and their Senate Democratic counterparts have signed a letter that will be sent to the Department of Justice, FBI and White House Counsel's Office, among other agencies, shortly after Mueller submits his report to Attorney General William P. Barr, signaling the investigation's conclusion."

Natasha Bertrand of the Atlantic runs down some of the significant matters Mueller has left dangling. In addition, "former FBI agents have expressed surprise that Mueller ended his probe without ever personally interviewing its central target: Donald Trump." Mrs. McC: Unless Mueller's report satisfactorily addresses these issues, and Barr makes that part of the report public, I'd say Mueller did not earn his paycheck. It was fairly disconcerting to watch a bunch of former prosecutors & other G-men go on the teevee Friday night & praise Mueller for "upholding the rule of law." We'll see. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton must be mighty pissed off, after his having to discuss blow jobs with a grand jury, to know that Donald Trump never had to answer for matters profoundly affecting national security.

On what looks like a dark day for democracy, David Remnick of the New Yorker reminds us of the stakes: "The Trump Presidency has, from the first, represented a threat to truth, liberal democracy, and the rule of law. Donald Trump's contempt for basic norms of governance is accompanied by a lack of decency, empathy, and psychological stability. This was never more evident than this week, when Trump, seemingly rattled by the imminence of the Mueller report, set off a fusillade of unhinged tweets, called the spouse of one of his senior advisers a 'whack job,' raged about the late Senator John McCain in front of a military audience..., and pronounced the Democratic Party 'anti-Jewish,' deepening, at every turn, the impression that he is unfit for government work. The perils of such instability are incalculable.... Trump has the psyche of an emotionally damaged toddler.... Given Trump's skills in the dark arts of campaigning and the general public satisfaction with the economy, no matter its inequities or vulnerabilities, it would be foolhardy to discount his chance of winning reëlection." ...

... Andrew Sullivan of New York: "Trump is showing his foes and friends that he can say anything, abuse anyone, lie about anything, break every norm of decency, propriety and prudence -- and suffer no consequences at all. It's all a dominance ritual." Mrs. McC: I'm no fan of Sullivan's, but he's right in every particular here.

Friday is a day ending in "y', so Donald Trump said offensive, stupid things:

... Tal Axelrod of the Hill: "President Trump suggested the public would view special counsel Robert Mueller's expected report on possible collusion between Trump's campaign and Moscow as illegitimate. 'A deputy, that didn't get any votes, appoints a man, that didn't get any votes, he's going to write a report on me,' Trump told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, referring to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.... 'For two years we've gone through this nonsense. There's no collusion with Russia ... and there's no obstruction. They'll say, "oh, well wait, there was no collusion, that was a hoax, but he obstructed in fighting against the hoax,"' he said." Mrs. McC: Huh. Maybe Trump already knows the gist of Mueller's findings. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Trump on Friday renewed his attacks on Democrats as anti-Jewish' in response to a number of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates deciding to skip the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual conference in Washington. 'I don't know what happened to them but they are totally anti-Israel,' Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. 'Frankly, I think they are anti-Jewish.' Trump's comments come one day after he said the U.S. should recognize Israeli control of the disputed Golan Heights territory." Mrs. McC: This is of course the same guy whose "closing argument" in 2020 was one long anti-Semitic screed., said the white supremacists in Charlottesville who chanted "Jews will not replace us" were "good people," and so forth. (Also linked yesterday.)

Trump Does Kim Another Favor. Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "President Trump undercut his own Treasury Department on Friday by announcing that he was rolling back North Korea sanctions that it imposed just a day ago. The move, announced on Twitter, was a remarkable display of dissension within the Trump administration and represented a striking case of a White House intervening to reverse a major national security decision made only hours earlier by the president's own officials.... Sarah Huckabee Sanders ... said the decision was a favor to ... Kim [Jong-un]. 'Trump likes Chairman Kim, and he doesn't think these sanctions will be necessary,' she said.... Treasury and State Department officials, including career staff members and political appointees, spend months carefully crafting sanctions based on intensive intelligence gathering and legal research. Current and former Treasury Department officials were stunned by Mr. Trump's decision on Friday.... The department did issue a new round of sanctions against Iran on Friday, targeting a research and development unit that it believes could be used to restart Tehran's nuclear weapons program. It also announced new sanctions on Bandes, Venezuela's national development bank, and its subsidiaries, as part of its effort to topple the government of President Nicolás Maduro." ...

... Caitlin Oprysko & Andrew Restuccia of Politico: "... "Donald Trump on Friday declared he would reverse new sanctions on North Korea that his administration rolled out just a day before, deepening concerns that the ostensible leader of the free world is at odds with his own team as he makes American foreign policy in spontaneous 280-character bursts. The sudden move left the White House groping for an explanation, telling reporters only that Trump 'likes' North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.... Trump's announcement surprised many of his senior aides, and even some Treasury Department officials were caught off guard, according to a person familiar with the matter." ...

... Margaret Talev & Saleha Mohsin of Bloomberg News: "'This is utterly shocking,' John Smith, a former director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at Treasury, which issues and polices sanctions, said in an email. 'The president of the United States actively undercut his own sanctions agency for the benefit of North Korea.' Smith left the agency in May. A second former OFAC official, Sean Kane, said in an email that Trump's announcement was 'unprecedented' and 'calls any OFAC action into question when no one can be sure whether they're speaking for the administration.'"

Rukmini Callimachi of the New York Times: "A four-year military operation to flush the Islamic State from its territory in Iraq and Syria ended on Saturday, as the last village held by the terrorist group was retaken, erasing a militant theocracy that once spanned two countries. Cornered in Baghuz, Syria, the last 1.5-square-mile remnant of the group's original caliphate in the region, the remaining militants waged a surprisingly fierce defense and kept the American-backed forces at bay for months. They detonated car bombs and hurled explosives from drones. Suicide bombers ran across the front line under cover of darkness to attack the sleeping quarters of the American-backed coalition. In the last weeks, the militants' families fled for their lives, their black-clad wives streaming into the desert by the tens of thousands, some of them defiantly chanting Islamic State slogans and lobbing fistfuls of dirt at reporters." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: It probably didn't help U.S.-backed forces that Presidunce* Blabber T. Mouth pulled a Geraldo* & told reporters on Wednesday that ISIS "will be gone by tonight." *In case you've forgotten Geraldo Rivera. The Unindicted President* remains the nation's greatest security threat.

All the Best People, Ctd.

Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Friday that he had offered a position on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors to Stephen Moore, a conservative economic adviser who has become an outspoken critic of the Fed's interest rate policy. Mr. Moore has blamed the Fed's rate increases over the past year for slowing economic growth and recently began calling on the central bank to begin cutting rates. An economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Mr. Moore helped draft Mr. Trump's tax proposals in the 2016 campaign and has served as an informal adviser ever since. As a nominee, Mr. Moore, 59, would face intense criticism in the Senate from Democrats, with whom he has clashed on several economic issues in his career as a commentator and policy advocate." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Stephen Moore's career as an economic analyst has been a decades-long continuous procession of error and hackery. It is not despite but precisely because of these errors that Moore now finds himself in the astonishing position of having been offered a position on the Federal Reserve board by President Trump. Moore's primary area of pseudo-expertise -- he is not an economist -- is fiscal policy. He is a dedicated advocate of supply-side economics, relentlessly promoting his fanatical hatred of redistribution and belief that lower taxes for the rich can and will unleash wondrous prosperity. Like nearly all supply-siders, he has clung to this dogma in the face of repeated, spectacular failures."

León Krauze in Slate: "Trump is expected to nominate D.C. attorney Christopher Landau as the next ambassador to Mexico. While an accomplished lawyer, Landau's credentials for the Mexico assignment are virtually nonexistent. Other than being the son of former American ambassador to Paraguay, Chile, and Venezuela, George Landau, Trump's potential nominee has no practical foreign policy experience to speak of. He has never held any sort of diplomatic post, nor is he an expert on Mexico, its politics, its culture, or its current troubles.... If confirmed, Landau would be the least experienced American diplomat to occupy the Mexican ambassadorship in a generation, an indefensible decision at a crucial juncture for the two countries. On the other hand, perhaps Landau's appointment is merely symbolic. After all, when it comes to Mexico, the Trump administration seems to trust only one man: Jared Kushner."

A Hurricane Took Your Home; FEMA Took Your Personal Identity. Joel Achenbach, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Federal Emergency Management Agency shared personal addresses and banking information of more than 2 million U.S. disaster survivors in what the agency acknowledged Friday was a 'major privacy incident.' The data mishap, discovered recently and the subject of a report by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General, occurred when the agency shared sensitive, personally identifiable information of disaster survivors who used FEMA'S Transitional Sheltering Assistance program, according to officials at FEMA. Those affected included the victims of California wildfires in 2017 and Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, the report said. In a statement, Lizzie Litzow, FEMA's press secretary, said, 'FEMA provided more information than was necessary' while transferring disaster survivor information to a contractor." Mrs. McC: Um, yeah.

Devin Nunes Cowed. Rory Appleton of the Fresno Bee: "The Fresno County Republican Party canceled plans for its Lincoln Reagan dinner next month featuring Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, as its keynote speaker after social media calls for people to crash the event. The local GOP is working to reschedule the event, organizers confirmed to The Bee on Friday.... The event was removed from the Republicans' website and Facebook on Thursday."

Brian Lyman, et al., of the Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser: "Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen said in a statement Friday he has asked the board of the troubled organization ... 'to immediately launch a search for an interim president in order to give the organization the best chance to heal,' and took responsibility for problems that have swept out the senior leadership of the group in just a week." Cohen will step down. Mrs. McC: I hope you got a chance to read Bob Moser's takedown of the SPLC, linked yesterday. It was an eye-opener for me.

Beyond the Beltway

Pennsylvania. Adeel Hassan of the New York Times: "A [white] former police officer in Eas Pittsburgh, Pa., was acquitted Friday on all counts in connection with the shooting death of a black teenager who fled during a traffic stop last summer. The verdict in the death of Antwon Rose II came after a four-day trial in downtown Pittsburgh and less than four hours of jury deliberation.... Antwon, who was unarmed, ran after [Officer Michael] Rosfeld pulled over the car he was riding in with another teenager. The car ... matched the description of one involved in a nearby drive-by shooting about 10 minutes earlier.... Prosecutors say Mr. Rosfeld, 30, gave inconsistent statements about the shooting, including whether he thought Antwon had a gun.... Mr. Rosfeld had been on the East Pittsburgh police force for about three weeks and had been officially sworn in just hours before the shooting. Previously, he had been a member of the University of Pittsburgh police force, but he left the job after discrepancies were found between one of his sworn statements and evidence in an arrest, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has reported."

Texas. Thank You, San Antonio. Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "The San Antonio City Council, on a 6-4 vote, removed a planned Chick-fil-A location from an airport concession agreement on Thursday, after a councilman flagged the company's anti-LGBTQ activity. Local media reported that the move followed a ThinkProgress report on Wednesday which noted the company's foundation gave $1.8 million in 2017 to tax exempt groups with anti-LGBTQ records."

Way Beyond

Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "... despite its reforms, Interpol [is] still vulnerable to manipulation by strongmen, despots and human rights violators."

Finally, some good news from London: