The Commentariat -- June 1, 2019

The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

"Some Episodes." CBS News: "Asked about the fundamental difference between his and [Robert] Mueller's views on what the evidence gathered during the Russia probe means, [AG William] Barr said, 'I think Bob said he was not going to engage in the analysis. He was not going to make a determination one way or the other. We analyzed the law and the facts and a group of us spent a lot of time doing that and determined that both as a matter of law, many of the instances would not amount to obstruction.... As a matter of law. In other words we didn't agree with the legal analysis, a lot of the legal analysis in the report. It did not reflect the views of the department,' Barr said. 'It was the views of a particular lawyer or lawyers and so we applied what we thought was the right law.... And the bottom line was that Bob Mueller identified some episodes. He did not reach a conclusion. He provided both sides of the issue, and he -- his conclusion was he wasn't exonerating the president, but he wasn't finding a crime either.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: "Didn't find a crime," Bill? First, Mueller explained what the crime was, then he cited the applicable laws, then he related all the stuff Trump did that fit the criminal definitions he'd laid out. You'd have to be (1) stupid, (2) naive or (3) lying to say Mueller didn't find a crime. I'll guess (3). Frankly, I thought the Mueller report so evidently condemned Trump that Mueller was rather disingenuous in declaring that it would be "unfair" to indict Trump for crimes he could not defend in court until he was no longer president*. The report is an indictment in all but name. ...

... Here's the transcript of the CBS interview. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Are You Lying Now or Were You Lying Then? Nicole Lafond of TPM: "According to one legal analyst, the comments [Barr made to CBS News] appear to differ from what Barr said during his press conference before releasing the Mueller report on April 18, as well as during congressional testimony in May. Ryan Goodman, a law professor at NYU and former Defense Department special counsel, pointed out that Barr previously said he accepted Mueller's 'legal framework.'... 'May 1 to Congress: "We accepted the Special Counsel's legal framework for purposes of our analysis...in reaching our conclusion" May 31 to CBS: "We didn't agree with ... a lot of the legal analysis in the Report.... So we applied what we thought was the right law."' [-- Ryan Goodman, in a tweet]" ...

Yeah, I mean, I guess ['spying' has] become a dirty word somehow.... It's part of the craziness of the modern day that if a president uses a word, then all of a sudden it becomes off bounds. It.s a perfectly good English word, I will continue to use it. -- Bill Barr, interview with CBS

Poor Bill Barr. He just doesn't understand why spying has suddenly gotten a negative connotation that it never had before Trump mentioned it. Prior to 2017, it was just an ordinary, nonjudgmental English word that everyone used for any kind of police investigation. But these are hyperpartisan times, so what can you do? -- Kevin Drum ...

... ** Jonathan Chait: "... Barr's long, detailed interview with Jan Crawford [of CBS News] suggests the rot goes much deeper than a simple mania for untrammeled Executive power. Barr has drunk deep from the Fox News worldview of Trumpian paranoia.... Barr, as he has done repeatedly, provides a deeply misleading account of what Robert Mueller found.... Later in the interview, Barr grossly contradicts Mueller's findings with regard to Trump's ties to Russia. 'Mueller has spent two and half years, and the fact is, there is no evidence of a conspiracy,' he says. 'So it was bogus, this whole idea that the Trump was in cahoots with the Russians is bogus.' This is just a wild lie.... Nowhere does the Mueller report say there's no evidence of a conspiracy.... Barr, amazingly, goes even farther to say the report proved 'this whole idea that the Trump was in cahoots with the Russians is bogus.'... The report in fact finds extensive evidence that Trump was in cahoots with Russia.... Barr goes on to repeat Trump's obsession with texts capturing the political chatter of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two romantically-involved FBI agents.... Even more astonishingly, Barr proceeds ... to liken the FBI's counterintelligence investigation of Trump to right-wing birther conspiracies[.]... Barr portrays the Russia investigation as an effort to overturn Trump's election[.]" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Bill Barr is your Uncle Fred. Sure, Uncle Bill is smarter & has a better vocabulary, but when it comes to owning right-wing conspiracy theories & Fox-"News"-marinated views, Uncle Fred has nothing on Bill. It is kind of nice that in the CBS interview, Barr is wearing an Uncle-Fred outfit -- flannel shirt & vest -- (on account of his being on vacation in Alaska).

Elizabeth Warren Read the Mueller Report, AND She's Got a Plan: "First, a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help candidate Donald Trump get elected. Second, candidate Donald Trump welcomed that help. Third, when the federal government tried to investigate, now-President Donald Trump did everything he could to delay, distract, and otherwise obstruct that investigation. That's a crime. If Donald Trump were anyone other than the President of the United States right now, he would be in handcuffs and indicted. Robert Mueller said as much in his report, and he said it again on Wednesday.... Mueller's statement made clear what those of us who have read his report already knew: He's referring President Trump for impeachment, and it's up to Congress to act.... This is not about politics  -- it's our constitutional duty as members of Congress. It's a matter of principle.... Congress should make it clear that Presidents can be indicted for criminal activity, including obstruction of justice. And when I'm President, I'll appoint Justice Department officials who will reverse flawed policies so no President is shielded from criminal accountability." Emphasis original. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Lock Him Up! Paul Blest of Splinter: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign has garnered a reputation for being policy heavy and generally wonky, but perhaps no idea she's had is more simple or obvious than the one she rolled out today: reversing Department of Justice policy saying a sitting president can't be indicted.... There's not a whole lot to say about this other than: good! Not only is it plainly obvious ... that the president shouldn't be the only person in the country immune to federal indictment, but this is also a very easy way for the eventual Democratic nominee to flip the script on Trump, whose rallies in 2016 regularly featured claims that if anyone else in America had done what Hillary Clinton did with her emails, they'd be in prison."

... Andrew Prokop of Vox: "Robert Mueller's report makes the stirring claim that 'a fundamental principle of our government' is that no person, not even the president, 'is above the law. But the special counsel's ultimate legacy may well be the exact opposite -- because of his controversial decision not to say whether Trump committed criminal obstruction of justice.... It was the punt heard around the world.... It effectively 'removes the president from the scope of generally applicable criminal laws,' Cornell law professor Jens David Ohlin recently told my colleague Sean Illing.... Even though Mueller made clear this was his own decision, it will inevitably set a precedent for future investigations into presidents -- a problematic one.... Mueller's considered decision not to decide was immediately thrown out the window by his superior [William Barr].... Perhaps hanging over all this is the fact that, if Mueller had submitted a report to Barr concluding that Trump committed a crime, it would have initiated a crisis." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

DOJ Is Above the Law, Too. Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutors rebuffed a judge's order to release by Friday highly classified transcripts of discussions that Michael T. Flynn, the president's former national security adviser, had with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition. The transcripts between Mr. Flynn and Sergey I. Kislyak, formerly Russia's top diplomat in the United States, were expected to show that they talked in December 2016 about sanctions that the Obama administration had just imposed on Russia.... The order this month from the judge, Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court in the District of Columbia, was unusual. The transcripts came from a secret F.B.I. wiretap of Mr. Kislyak, and their release would have provided an extraordinarily rare look at the fruits of the government's eavesdropping.... The Justice Department's refusal to comply with the judge's order made clear that prosecutors had no interest in confirming the wiretap, which was approved by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.... Prosecutors asserted that they did not need to provide the transcripts because they were, in the end, not vital to the prosecution of Mr. Flynn." ...

... Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "The Justice Department on Friday released a more complete transcript of a voice mail from Donald Trump's attorney John Dowd to Rob Kelner, the lawyer for ... Michael Flynn, where he sought information about Flynn's discussions with the special counsel on the eve of his cooperation deal.... The voice mail highlights a call that special counsel Robert Mueller investigated as potential obstruction of justice by the President. Dowd had made the call on November 22, 2017, after Flynn's team said it could no longer communicate with the White House, just before Flynn pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in Mueller's investigation. In the voice mail transcript, most of which was previously documented in the Mueller report, Dowd said it 'wouldn't surprise me' if Flynn was about to make a deal, but if it 'implicates the President, then we've got a national security issue, or ... some issue ... not only for the President, but for the country.' He then asked for a 'heads up,' according to the transcript. Dowd also wanted to remind Flynn about 'the President and his feelings towards Flynn.' The call 'could have had the potential to affect Flynn's decision to cooperate, as well as the extent of that cooperation,' Mueller wrote in his report on potential obstruction of justice by the President during the investigation. 'We do not have evidence establishing whether the President knew about or was involved in his counsel's communications with Flynn's counsel.'" ...

... James Meek & Soo Rin Kim of ABC News have the full transcript of Dowd's voicemail here. Mrs. McC: Sounds like what you might hear from your better class of mob lawyers.

More Tariffs. Ana Swanson & Vindu Goel of the New York Times: "The Trump administration announced on Friday that it was stripping India of a special status that exempts billions of dollars of its products from American tariffs, part of a deepening clash over India's protections for its market. The White House said that it would terminate India's preferential market access to the United States as of June 5. The notice claimed that India had not given the United States 'equitable and reasonable access to its markets.' The administration said that it would also apply to India tariffs on solar panels and washers that President Trump announced last year, suspending an exemption it had granted to certain developing countries.... Mr. Trump's move could set off yet another trade war with an allied country."

Rebecca Shabad, et al., of NBC News: "Several Republicans in Congress and major business groups on Friday slammed ... Donald Trump's threat to impose a 5 percent tariff on all Mexican goods starting next month, warning that the move would hurt both the U.S. economy and the chances of Congress approving a major trade deal with Mexico and Canada.... A senior administration official and two sources familiar said business groups and federal agencies were not informed of the president's tariff threat ahead of time. A fourth source familiar said the relevant congressional committees were not notified. Trump's threat was 'hurried out the door' by White House aides to appease the president, an administration official said Friday. Behind the scenes, the official said there has been some 'squabbling at the staff level' about the threat and potential blowback to the USMCA and overall economy. A second administration source described the situation as 'flying blind' and there was no internal guidance on how to explain the tariff threat to the business community. The tariff strategy was spearheaded by White House adviser Stephen Miller, two sources said, who had Trump's ear on his trip last weekend to Japan." ...

... Jacob Pramuk, et al., of CNBC: "U.S. business groups are considering suing the White House over the Trump administration's new tariffs on Mexican imports. The powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce is mulling its legal options in response to the duties, the group's senior vice president of international affairs, John Murphy, told reporters Friday. Murphy said the group has no choice but to look into every option to push back against the tariff policy.Business groups more broadly are discussing the possibility of suing the White House, a source told CNBC. A decision on how to proceed is expected by Monday. While top business organizations have repeatedly slammed tariffs Trump levied on trading partners such as Mexico, Canada and China, a lawsuit would mark a major escalation in their opposition to White House trade policy." ...

... Kayla Tausche & Tucker Higgins of CNBC: "... Donald Trump's Treasury secretary [Steve Mnuchin] and top trade advisor [Robert Lighthizer] opposed his surprise plan to impose new tariffs on Mexican imports, according to a source close to the White House who said the idea was pushed by immigration hawk Stephen Miller. The announcement came as Trump was' riled up' by conservative radio commentary about the recent surge in border crossings, according to the source.... Peter Navarro, a White House economic advisor [Mrs. McC: and complete dickhead], told CNBC earlier Friday that Trump's threat of new tariffs came in response to Mexico's 'export' of 'illegal aliens.'" ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: The analyses I heard on the radio & teevee Friday on Trump's new tariff plan for Mexico ranged from "incoherent" to "incredibly stupid." In yesterday's Comments, RAS is checking his mail for his tariff kickback. The odds are that RAS is not a Trump-country farmer. So good luck on that.

Trump Administration Horror Story. Priscilla Alvarez of CNN: "The Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General has found 'dangerous overcrowding' and unsanitary conditions at an El Paso, Texas, Border Patrol processing facility following an unannounced inspection, according to a new report. The IG found 'standing room only conditions' at the El Paso Del Norte Processing Center, which has a maximum capacity of 125 migrants. On May 7 and 8, logs indicated that there were 'approximately 750 and 900 detainees, respectively.' 'We also observed detainees standing on toilets in the cells to make room and gain breathing space, thus limiting access to the toilets,' the report states.... A cell with a maximum capacity of 12 held 76 detainees, another with a maximum capacity of eight held 41, and another with a maximum capacity of 35 held 155, according to the report. '... With limited access to showers and clean clothing, detainees were wearing soiled clothing for days or weeks,l the report states." Mrs. McC: Needless to say, this is a human rights disaster. Hard to complain about the abuses of coyotes when you're treating people as badly as -- or worse than -- they do.

Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "President Trump will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, to the economist Arthur Laffer, whose tax-cutting enthusiasm has shaped decades of Republican policymaking, including Mr. Trump's. Mr. Laffer, 78, was an adviser to Mr. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, helping to craft the candidate's tax plan, and a co-author of the recent book 'Trumponomics,' which is a celebration of the president and nearly all of his economic programs.... Democrats have largely moved away from Mr. Laffer, viewing him as an architect of tax handouts to the rich." Thanks to Ken W. for the link. ...

... Here's a Krugman post on Laffer. ...

... Thornton McEnery of Dealbreaker: "Donald Trump [Is] Using Presidential Medal Of Freedom To Make Paul Krugman's Head Explode. Sometimes the news does its own heavy lifting as a piece of dark satire.... One doesn't think of the Medal of Freedom as a particularly troll-centric piece of hardware, but this choice is a next-level brilliant addition to the medium." Mrs. McC: Yes, let's make that the Presidential* Medal of Freedom. It's nothing but a cheap metal disk on a ribbon.

Emma Anderson of Politico: German Chancellor ";Angela Merkel urged Harvard graduates Thursday to 'tear down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness' in a speech laced with apparent jibes at Donald Trump and his policies. Though she did not name the U.S. president, the German chancellor devoted much of her Harvard University commencement speech to attacking major pillars of Trump's presidency: protectionism, trade wars and building walls.... The audience of students, parents, and alumni gave Merkel a standing ovation when she said it is important not to 'describe lies as truth, and truth as lies.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Presidential Race 2020

Andrew Kaczynski & Em Steck of CNN: "... Donald Trump this week criticized Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for his role in passing 'tough on crime' measures in the 1990s, but Trump once expressed support for some of the same policies Biden championed in the US Senate.... Trump's criticisms of Biden are undercut by positions he took in his 2000 book 'The America We Deserve.' Trump wrote in the book that he supported tougher sentencing and street policing and warned of 'wolf packs" of young criminals roaming the streets, citing since-discredited statistical analysis that was linked to the 'super predator' crime theory. In a pair of tweets sent on Monday during his trip to Japan, the President wrote, 'Anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill will not have a chance of being elected.' He added, '....Super Predator was the term associated with the 1994 Crime Bill that Sleepy Joe Biden was so heavily involved in passing. That was a dark period in American History, but has Sleepy Joe apologized? No!'" Mrs. McC: And neither have you, Don.

Ursula Perano of Axios: "Donald Trump announced in a tweet on Friday that he will be holding his official 2020 campaign launch at the 20,000 seat Amway Center in Orlando, Fla., on June 18...."

David Corn of Mother Jones: "Joe Biden had barely joined the 2020 presidential race when the right-wing disinformation machine began cranking out th newest iteration of its Deep State conspiracy theory, with this version claiming the former vice president was part of a government cabal that cooked up a supposedly phony Trump-Russia scandal to keep the reality television celebrity from gaining the White House. This certainly is an easy charge to debunk -- that is, if you care about facts -- but it's still likely that this unfounded notion will take hold in the fever swamp of Trump-encouraged and Fox-fueled conservative paranoia." --s

Luiz Romero of Quartz: "The Italian government has delivered a potentially fatal blow to Steve Bannon's plans to transform a medieval monastery near Rome into a training academy for the far-right. Italy's cultural heritage ministry announced on Friday (May 31) that it would revoke a lease granted to Bannon after reports of fraud in the competitive tender process. The former Breitbart chief and aide to US president Donald Trump was reportedly paying €100,000 ($110,000) per year to rent the 13th Century Carthusian monastery.... The Italian state allowed the conservative Catholic organization Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI) to use the building early last year. Bannon happens to be a trustee of the institute, and planned to convert the space into a 'gladiator school for cultural warriors,' where students would learn philosophy, theology, history, and economics, and receive political training from the former Trump aide himself. But earlier this month, Italian newspaper Repubblica reported that a letter used to guarantee the lease was forged. The letter had the signature of an employee of Danish bank Jyske, but the bank said that employee hadn't worked there for years, and called the letter fraudulent.... The institute plans to fight the decision in court."

And All the Children Are Above Average. Daniel Victor of the New York Times: "A superhuman group of adolescents broke the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, with eight contestants crowned co-champions after the competition said it was running out of challenging words. It was a stunning result, coming just after midnight Thursday, for the 92nd annual event, which has had six two-way ties but had never before experienced such a logjam at the top. After the 17th round, Jacques Bailly, the event's pronouncer, announced that any of the eight remaining contestants who made it through three more words would share in the prize."

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Oliver Darcy of CNN: "Fox News on Friday afternoon stood by Laura Ingraham after she defended a white supremacist and several other fringe people who have been banned or disciplined by large social media companies.... Ingraham displayed a graphic showing images of people she characterized as 'prominent voices censored on social media.' 'It's people who believe in border enforcement, people who believe in national sovereignty,' Ingraham added. The graphic included Paul Nehlen, a white supremacist who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2016 and 2018. Nehlen, who refers to himself as "pro-white," has had his racism and anti-Semitism well documented. In April, for instance, he appeared on a podcast and admitted to wearing a shirt featuring Robert Bowers, the man accused of killing 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue.... Following [a] backlash, Fox News released a statement saying it was 'obscene to suggest' Ingraham had defended Nehlen."

Beyond the Beltway

Missouri. Jessica Ravitz of CNN: "Abortion services can continue for now in Missouri after a judge ruled that its license would not expire at the end of the day Friday. The state had refused to renew Planned Parenthood's license to continue providing the procedure. Circuit Court Judge Michael Stelzer's ruling does not renew the license. Instead, the ruling allows the current license to remain in effect until the matter can be heard in court again on June 4. Planned Parenthood 'has demonstrated that immediate and irreparable injury will result if Petitioner's license is allowed to expire,' Stelzer wrote in his decision. 'The court finds that a temporary restraining order is necessary to preserve the status quo and prevent irreparable injury to Petitioner pending disposition of the case on the merits.' If the clinic had to stop providing abortion services, Missouri would have been the first state in the nation to block the procedure in more than 45 years."

West Virginia. Karma. Rachel Frazin of the Hill: "A former West Virginia official who gained notoriety after making a racist remark about former first lady Michelle Obama [calling her an 'ape'] was sentenced to prison this week after pleading guilty to embezzling [more than $18,000] federal disaster funds. Pamela Taylor, who served as the Clay County development director, was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison and two months of house arrest, the local U.S. attorney's office announced Thursday. She was also fined $10,000." --s

Way Beyond

Canada. Leyland Cecco of the Guardian: "Three decades of missing and murdered Indigenous women amounts to a 'Canadian genocide', a leaked landmark government report has concluded. The document, titled Reclaiming Power and Place, was compiled over more than two and a half years. Canada's CBC News was given a copy of the report, which is due to be released on Monday.... The report, by the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, determined that 'state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies' were a key driving force in the disappearance of thousands of Indigenous women." --s

North Korea. Gordon Chang of The Daily Beast: "So far, the most important conclusion we can draw from reports North Korea's senior nuclear negotiator and four foreign ministry officials were executed in March is this: Kim Jong Un is not the reliable, trustworthy negotiator President Trump has made him out to be.... Whatever the accuracy of the Chosun Ilbo reporting -- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday said he was looking into the matter -- there is evidence of severe turmoil in Pyongyang political circles, and it appears Kim Jong Un's grip on power has been weakening in recent months.... Trump's four-minute video about the North's bright future, showed to Kim in Singapore, may have had more effect than observers once suggested. By now it's clear that rich and poor North Koreans were sorely disappointed by the breakdown in talks with Trump." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Wouldn't it be something if Trump had blundered accidentally into a means to overthrow Little Kim, free the people from near-slavery, institute some form of democracy, develop North Korea's "beautiful beaches," etc.? Trump of course, rather than admitting he had "fallen in love with" the wrong guy, would claim this was his plan all along &, P.S., what about that Nobel Peace Prize?

The Commentariat -- May 31, 2019

Afternoon Update:

"Some Episodes." CBS News: "Asked about the fundamental difference between his and [Robert] Mueller's views on what the evidence gathered during the Russia probe means, [AG William] Barr said, 'I think Bob said he was not going to engage in the analysis. He was not going to make a determination one way or the other. We analyzed the law and the facts and a group of us spent a lot of time doing that and determined that both as a matter of law, many of the instances would not amount to obstruction.... As a matter of law. In other words we didn't agree with the legal analysis, a lot of the legal analysis in the report. It did not reflect the views of the department,' Barr said. 'It was the views of a particular lawyer or lawyers and so we applied what we thought was the right law.... And the bottom line was that Bob Mueller identified some episodes. He did not reach a conclusion. He provided both sides of the issue, and he -- his conclusion was he wasn't exonerating the president, but he wasn't finding a crime either.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: "Didn't find a crime," Bill? First, Mueller explained what the crime was, then he cited the applicable laws, then he related all the stuff Trump did that fit the criminal definitions he'd laid out. You'd have to be (1) stupid, (2) naive or (3) lying to say Mueller didn't find a crime. I'll guess (3).

... Here's the transcript of the CBS interview.

Elizabeth Warren Read the Mueller Report, AND She's Got a Plan: "First, a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help candidate Donald Trump get elected. Second, candidate Donald Trump welcomed that help. Third, when the federal government tried to investigate, now-President Donald Trump did everything he could to delay, distract, and otherwise obstruct that investigation. That's a crime. If Donald Trump were anyone other than the President of the United States right now, he would be in handcuffs and indicted.Robert Mueller said as much in his report, and he said it again on Wednesday.... Mueller's statement made clear what those of us who have read his report already knew: He's referring President Trump for impeachment, and it's up to Congress to act.... This is not about politics  --  it's our constitutional duty as members of Congress. It's a matter of principle.... Congress should make it clear that Presidents can be indicted for criminal activity, including obstruction of justice. And when I'm President, I'll appoint Justice Department officials who will reverse flawed policies so no President is shielded from criminal accountability." Emphasis original. ...

... Andrew Prokop of Vox: “Robert Mueller's report makes the stirring claim that 'a fundamental principle of our government' is that no person, not even the president, 'is above the law.' But the special counsel's ultimate legacy may well be the exact opposite -- because of his controversial decision not to say whether Trump committed criminal obstruction of justice.... It was the punt heard around the world.... It effectively 'removes the president from the scope of generally applicable criminal laws,' Cornell law professor Jens David Ohlin recently told my colleague Sean Illing.... Even though Mueller made clear this was his own decision, it will inevitably set a precedent for future investigations into presidents -- a problematic one.... Mueller's considered decision not to decide was immediately thrown out the window by his superior [William Barr]...."

Mrs. McCrabbie: The analyses I've heard on the radio & teevee today on Trump's new tariff plan for Mexico ranged from "incoherent" to "incrediby stupid." In today's Comments, RAS is checking his mail for his tariff kickback. The odds are that RAS is not a Trump-country farmer. So good luck on that.

Emma Anderson of Politico: German Chancellor "Angela Merkel urged Harvard graduates Thursday to 'tear down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness' in a speech laced with apparent jibes at Donald Trump and his policies. Though she did not name the U.S. president, the German chancellor devoted much of her Harvard University commencement speech to attacking major pillars of Trump's presidency: protectionism, trade wars and building walls.... The audience of students, parents, and alumni gave Merkel a standing ovation when she said it is important not to 'describe lies as truth, and truth as lies.'"

~~~~~~~~~~

There He Goes Again. Annie Karni, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump said Thursday that he would impose a 5 percent tariff on all imported goods from Mexico beginning June 10, a tax that would 'gradually increase' until the flow of undocumented immigrants across the border stopped. The announcement, which Mr. Trump made on his Twitter feed, said the tariffs would be in place 'until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP.' In a presidential statement that followed, he said that tariffs would be raised to 10 percent on July 1 'if the crisis persists,' and then by an additional 5 percent each month for three months. They would remain at 25 percent until Mexico acted, he said. An across-the-board tariff on all Mexican goods would exact a serious toll on American consumers and corporations.... Rufus Yerxa, the president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents the nation's largest exporters, called the move 'a colossal blunder.'... [The tariffs] could derail another of his chief goals: Revising the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico." ...

... John Bowden of the Hill: "The Dow Jones futures dropped more than 100 points on Thursday after President Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on Mexico until the flow of immigrants to the southern U.S. border is cut off. The index saw losses of almost 200 points by 8:15 p.m., less than an hour after Trump tweeted to announce a 5 percent tariff on all imports from Mexico that would "gradually increase" until the flow of migrants stopped." According to Niv Elis' report linked below, "Dow futures plummeted more than 200 points on Thursday evening after the president announced the new tariffs."...

... Niv Elis of the Hill: "Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) condemned President Trump's new tariffs on Mexico late Thursday, calling the move a 'misuse' of presidential tariff authority and cautioning the levies could derail passage of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.... 'I support nearly every one of President Trump's immigration policies, but this is not one of them,' he added." ...

... Rafael Bernal of the Hill: "Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador blasted President Trump's decision to impose tariffs on exports from his country in response to an immigration crisis on the border, writing in a letter that Trump's 'America First' policy was a 'fallacy.' 'With all due respect, although you have the right to express it, 'America First' is a fallacy because until the end of times, even beyond nationa borders, justice and universal fraternity will prevail,' López Obrador wrote in the two-page letter to Trump. The Mexican president said his country was doing 'as much as possible' to stem the flow of Central American migrants through his country to the United States, and 'without violating human rights.' He also wrote that Mexico wanted to avoid a confrontation with the United States on the issue." ...

... Matthew Yglesias of Vox looks at some of the ramifications of the plan, including the possibility that it's a fake threat: "One complicating factor here is that migration flows are at least in part a function of seasonality, with spring normally being the high point for border-crossings and summer a low point. Whether or not Mexico changes anything, in other words, numbers will almost certainly fall in July.... That means six to eight weeks from now, Trump should have a pretty easy off-ramp from this policy and an opportunity to declare victory even if the concessions he manages to wring from Mexico are relatively minor." ...

... Jonathan Swan of Axios: "As Trump announcements go, his planned tariffs on Mexican goods appeared more orchestrated than most with a tweet, a presidential statement from the press office and a background call with reporters. But behind the scenes, it was an administration-wide scramble. As with many presidential 'announcements,' this once sprang from intense frustration and boiled over quickly with staff rushing to react.... While the plan was hurried out the door to appease Trump, he has been privately talking about doing this for a while, per two sources who've discussed it with him."

Ian Kullgren, et al., of Politico: "... Donald Trump is considering sweeping restrictions on asylum that would effectively block Central American migrants from entering the U.S., according to several administration officials and advocates briefed on the plan. A draft proposal circulating among Trump's Homeland Security advisers would prohibit migrants from seeking asylum if they have resided in a country other than their own before coming to the U.S., according to a Homeland Security Department official and an outside advocate familiar with the plan. If executed, it would deny asylum to thousands of migrants waiting just south of the border, many of whom have trekked a perilous journey through Mexico.... The move could reach beyond Central America, affecting asylum seekers in other parts of the world, according to an activist who has been briefed on the issue." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Obviously, this is a Catch-22 for migrants from Central American countries other than Mexico. To get to the U.S., they have to travel through Mexico (unless they fly over it), but if they travel thru Mexico, they can't get into the U.S. Not only that, as Samantha Grasso's report (linked next) suggests, Trump has set up these migrants. It seems to me this plan would violate U.S. & international asylum laws, but that's what Trump does. ...

... Samantha Grasso of Splinter: “Reports of the proposal come nearly six months after the Trump administration fully enacted its 'remain in Mexico' policy, requiring Central American migrants seeking asylum to return to Mexico and wait 45 days for their court date. The ACLU has legally challenged the policy, though a Ninth Circuit Court has allowed the policy to continue as the government's appeal goes through the courts. Last week, BuzzFeed News reported that some migrants had been told that they'd have to wait more than a year before their court date."

The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Charlie Savage & Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times explain how impeachment works. Mrs. McC: I hope Trump reads the story (as if he will), because he demonstrated Thursday that he doesn't understand impeachment. In his chopper presser, he claimed that he would have to be guilty of high crimes "AND, not with or for" misdemeanors to be impeached, & he was innocent, he said, on both counts. He said he couldn't "imagine the courts would allow" the House to impeach him. (He also has claimed in the past that he couldn't be impeached because the economy was strong & he's doing a great job.) Since the Congress decides what constitutes impeachable offenses, neither the target of impeachment proceedings nor "the courts" has a say-so The House could decide that dying your hair & face orange constituted high crimes & misdemeanors, & that would be that.

Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump tweeted on Thursday that Russia helped 'me to get elected,' and then quickly retracted the idea. 'No, Russia did not help me get elected,' Mr. Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for Colorado Springs. 'I got me elected.' He spoke less than an hour after his Twitter post. The original comment, a clause in one of several Twitter posts this morning, is an extraordinary admission from Mr. Trump, who has avoided saying publicly that Russia helped him win the presidency in 2016 through its election interference.... Speaking to reporters outside the White House and in a subsequent Twitter post, Mr. Trump revived personal attacks on Mr. Mueller, asserting that the special counsel should never have been chosen for that position -- he was 'highly conflicted'-- and had failed to get the job he really wanted, F.B.I. director, an allegation addressed and countered in Mr. Mueller's final report. Mr. Mueller, who had previously served in that role in two administrations, did not go to the White House looking for a job, one of president's senior advisers, Stephen K. Bannon, told investigators.... 'I think Mueller is a true never Trumper,' Mr. Trump said on Thursday. 'He is somebody that dislikes Donald Trump, he's somebody that didn't get a job that he requested that he wanted very badly, and then he was appointed.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Mueller, a Republican, has never publicly expressed his political opinions about Trump. Also, he was not interested in returning as FBI director; he met with Trump to give him an idea of the qualities of a good director. ...

... Colby Hall of Mediaite: Trump deleted the "admission" tweet, then reposted it with a change in a word that does not change the "admission." "It's unclear why he did not delete the admission in his reposted tweets, given he just disavowed it in comments to reporters."

Lying Machine Turned up to High. Elizabeth Thomas & Katherine Faulders of ABC News: Trump told reporters as he left for a trip to Colorado, "'He [Robert Mueller] said, essentially: "You're innocent." There was no crime, there was no charge because he had no information.'... 'The whole thing [the Mueller investigation] is a scam. It's a giant presidential harassment,' Trump said. 'Russia did not help me get elected. You know who got me elected? I got me elected. Russia didn't help me at all,' Trump said, adding that, if anything, Russia helped 'the other side' get elected. 'I believe Russia would rather have Hillary Clinton as president of the United States than Donald Trump,' the president said. 'The reason is nobody has been tougher on Russia than me.... I think it was the same as the report,' Trump said when asked for his reaction to Mueller's statement. 'There's no obstruction. There's no collusion. There's no nothing. It's nothing but a witch hunt.... There was no high crime and there was no misdemeanor,' Trump said when asked about impeachment. 'I don't see how... I can't imagine the courts allowing it,' Trump said. 'To me, it's a dirty word, the word 'impeach.' It's a dirty, filthy, disgusting word, he said.... The president also said that Mueller was 'totally conflicted' because of a business dispute he claimed he had with Mueller, discussions he had with Mueller about the position of FBI director early in the Trump administration and called him a friend with former FBI director James Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Peter Baker & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump lashed out angrily at Robert S. Mueller III on Thursday, accusing him of pursuing a personal vendetta as Mr. Trump sought to counter increasing calls among Democrats for his impeachment.... Mr. Trump's assertions of conflict of interest have been refuted not only by Mr. Mueller but even by some of the president's own former aides. But Mr. Trump appeared determined to undermine the credibility that Mr. Mueller has developed over a long career as a lawyer, prosecutor and the second-longest-serving F.B.I. director in American history who worked under presidents of both parties.... Mr. Mueller ... said he could not clear the president of obstruction of justice and essentially suggested that Congress take up that question. Mr Trump fumed with friends that Mr. Mueller was out to get him. Bill O'Reilly, the former Fox News host, told WABC-AM radio that Mr. Trump called him at 11 that night and complained about Mr. Mueller's supposed conflicts." The report implies that Trump is one crazy, mixed-up dude. ...

... Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "Mercedes Schlapp, White House director of strategic communications, said Thursday that President Donald Trump is 'moving on' after special counsel Robert Mueller closed his investigation, urging the rest of the country to do the same. Minutes earlier, however, Trump's tweets about 'presidential harassment' made it clear he had no intention of focusing on anything else." --s

Barr Plays Dumb. Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News: "Attorney General William Barr said he believes special counsel Robert Mueller could have reached a decision on whether President Trump committed obstruction of justice, regardless of long-standing Justice Department policy that prohibits the indictment of a sitting president.... 'I personally felt he could've reached a decision,' he told CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford during an exclusive interview in Anchorage, Alaska, on Thursday. 'The opinion says you cannot indict a president while he is in office, but he could've reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity,' Barr added. 'But he had his reasons for not doing it, which he explained and I am not going to, you know, argue about those reasons.' When he became aware that Mueller would not make a determination in his obstruction of justice probe -- which investigated 11 instances in which Mr. Trump tried to derail the Russia investigation -- Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein 'felt it was necessary' for them to make decision on the issue.... Mueller said the U.S. Constitution 'requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.' Many Democrats said the special counsel's remarks represented a referral of his investigation to Congress, which has the power to impeach and remove a president from office. Barr said Thursday he did not know what Mueller was 'suggesting' in his statement." ...

... Not His Fault. In the same interview, Barr blamed the "hyper-partisan age" for charges that he was protecting and enabling Trump. Mrs. McC: Right.

Video released by Republicans for the Rule of Law:

... Rebecca Klar of the Hill: "Republicans for the Rule of Law announced Thursday it will deliver a copy of the report with highlighted sections to Republicans in Congress.... Along with the letter and highlighted report, Republicans for the Rule of Law released a video [embedded above] with three GOP-appointed federal prosecutors claiming Trump would have been indicted if he were not president. The prosecutors also discuss ways in which the report outlines Trump's alleged obstruction of justice." Mrs. McC: That's a pretty good idea because ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Conservatives ... erupted in outrage [at Robert] Mueller's curt affirmation of his previous conclusions[.]... It seems ... that they believed their own propaganda about what Mueller had (and had not) found. Presented even briefly with reality, their minds have reeled in shock. Mueller produced massive evidence that President Trump committed Nixonian-scale obstruction of justice in office.... Trump, William Barr, and the Republican Party followed a strategy of systematically lying about this." ...

... "Old News." Quinta Jurecic of Lawfare in the Atlantic: "Based only on the reaction to Mueller's appearance, you could be forgiven for assuming that he had dropped a bombshell. The fact that this material is being treated as new when it has been available for weeks is indicative of a vast failure on the part of American institutions, which have not adequately grappled with the information conveyed in the Mueller report or presented it to the public with sufficient clarity.... The difficulty in communicating the substance of the Mueller report began even before the report itself was released. When Barr first released his letter describing Mueller's top-line conclusions weeks before the report itself became public, the press struggled to respond to the spin campaign mounted by the president and his allies..... The New York Times and The Washington Post both said a 'cloud' had been lifted from over the White House.... The status of the report as an impeachment referral should have been obvious [to members of Congress] the moment the document was released." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I do think one of the reasons the vast majority of House Democrats are willing to go along with Nancy Pelosi's "no impeachment now" decision is that they -- and perhaps Pelosi herself -- have not taken the time to read Mueller's report. Mueller should be smart enough to figure this out for himself & quit kvetching about sitting for a public hearing. The fact that he thinks it's more important to appear "above it all" suggests he too longs for an age when the only voters were rich white men who had time to sit around & discuss the issues of the day while wives, servants & slaves took care of the mundane chores of daily life. ...

... Marina Pitofsky of the Hill: "An American University professor who has correctly predicted the last nine presidential elections says President Trump will win the 2020 election unless congressional Democrats, 'grow a spine,' CNN reported [in a tweet]. Allan Lichtman, a political historian, said Democrats only have a shot at the White House if they begin impeachment proceedings against Trump, calling the decision both 'constitutionally' and 'politically' right in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election."

Olivia Messer of the Daily Beast: "President Trump said Thursday that he wasn't aware of a reported White House request to keep the USS John S. McCain 'out of sight' on his trip to Japan this week.... During a gaggle with reporters on the White House lawn, Trump said, 'I wasn't a fan, but I would never do a thing like that. Now, somebody did it because they thought I didn't like him. They were well-meaning, I will say.' Minutes later, Trump picked the topic back up again, noting that whoever made the request 'thought they were doing me a favor because they know I am not a fan of John McCain.' He added, 'John McCain killed health care for the Republican Party, and he killed health care for the nation.... I disagreed with John McCain on the Middle East. He helped George Bush to make a very bad decision of going to the Middle East. So I wasn't a fan of John McCain and I never will be. But certainly I couldn't care less whether there's a boat named after his father.'" Mrs. McC: A boat?? How nice that Trump used the bizarre move to protect his fragile ego, not to chastise his staff, but to attack a deceased Senator again. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Wesley Morgan, et al., of Politico: "Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan's quest for the Pentagon's top job faced a new obstacle Thursday amid outrage over an aborted attempt to hide the name of the destroyer USS John S. McCain during ... Donald Trump's visit to Japan.... Shanahan initially told reporters Thursday that he learned about the effort through media reports and declined to comment further. He later said he would never dishonor the memory of the late Sen. John McCain and promised to get to the bottom of what happened.... [He] said he has tasked his chief of staff with finding out who knew what and when. Yet critics say Shanahan is responsible for the military's actions.... '[Shanahan] ought to take responsibility no matter what, and he ought to demand that whoever in the White House made this request be fired,' former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in an interview. 'Whether he knew about it or not, declining to take responsibility in his initial reaction ought to be looked at carefully' by Congress during Shanahan's upcoming confirmation hearing.... Trump appeared to confirm Thursday that someone in the White House had made the request.... Trump later tweeted that the Navy had 'put out a disclaimer' on the story. 'Looks like the story was an exaggeration, or even Fake News - but why not, everything else is!'" ...

... Yvonne Sanchez of the Arizona Republic: "Sen. Martha McSally said an investigation is warranted to get to the bottom of an order to keep the warship named for the late Sen. John McCain, his father and his grandfather out of ... Donald Trump's view during his trip to Japan earlier this month. McSally, R-Ariz., now holds the seat McCain once held before his death and sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which McCain chaired before his death in August 2018. 'I am appalled to hear of the allegations surrounding the USS John S. McCain,' McSally said in a written statement." ...

... Eliot Cohen in The Atlantic: "Dishonor. Not to to the late senator [John McCain], nor to his father and grandfather of the same name, who rendered the same distinguished service in war and peace. Their deeds and reputations are far beyond such mean contrivances. But dishonor indeed to the civilians and officers who hold the lives of young Americans in their hands and went along with this.... That this could happen to the mightiest armed forces on Earth should worry Americans far more than reports of Chinese hypersonic missiles or ace Russian-military hacking teams. When large elements of the chain of command yield to illegitimate and morally corrupt demands of this kind, there is reason to fear veins of rottenness in the whole structure.... In a just world, [those that acquiesced to the request] would lose their commissions or resign their posts, but they will not. They will burrow more deeply in. They will do so because it is the nature of the moral compromise of someone sworn to a demanding code that weakness begets weakness, yielding begets yielding, and cowardice begets still more cowardice." --s

Andrew Restuccia of Politico ruminates on Trump's weird obsession with IQs. (Also linked yesterday.)

Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "The federal government now owns condo 43G in Trump Tower because of the Mueller investigation, a judge certified Thursday. Judge Amy Berman Jackson's order was the final move seizing the apartment from former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his wife Kathleen after he admitted to illegal foreign lobbying and money laundering and was convicted by a jury of fraud and other financial crimes during the Mueller probe. Manafort is now serving a prison sentence in western Pennsylvania. Manafort bought the 1,500-square foot, 2-bed, 2.5-bath Fifth Avenue condo more than a decade ago for $3.675 million through a shell company that hid his riches from US authorities.... In 2015, Manafort and his wife mortgaged it for $3 million, when his long-successful Ukrainian lobbying business dried up. He had paid off none of the mortgage, according to court filings."

"Only The 'Best' People," Ctd. Priscilla Alvarez, et al. of CNN: "President Donald Trump appears to have set his sights on a North Dakota construction firm with a checkered legal record to build portions of his signature border wall. The family-owned company, Fisher Sand & Gravel ... has a history of red flags including more than $1 million in fines for environmental and tax violations. A decade ago, a former co-owner of the company pleaded guilty to tax fraud, and was sentenced to prison. The company also admitted to defrauding the federal government by impeding the IRS." --s

Justin Wise of the Hill: "Vice President Pence on Thursday suggested that the Democratic Party supported late-term abortion and 'infanticide' while speaking alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa. Pence said, among other things, that he was bothered by the Democrats 'in our country, and leaders around the country, supporting late-term abortion, even infanticide. But those are debates within the U.S., and I know that Canada will deal with those issues in a manner the people of Canada determine most appropriate,' he continued.... Trudeau, who had vowed to confront Pence over America's 'backsliding' on women's rights, said that he told the U.S. vice president that Canadians have concerns about the 'anti-choice laws' its state lawmakers have passed. 'It was a cordial conversation, but it is one on which we have very different perspectives,' Trudeau said. Trudeau has repeatedly spoken out against restrictive abortion policies."

Jonathan Chait of New York: "The Congressional Research Service ... has a new paper analyzing the effects of the Trump tax cuts. It finds that ... growth has not increased above the pre-tax-cut trend. Neither have wages. After a brief and much smaller than expected bump, repatriated corporate cash from abroad has leveled off.... [K]eep a close eye on the number of Republican officials or conservative policy-makers who revise their position on the Trump tax cuts in light of the data. So far, the number of Republicans reassessing their support for the Trump tax cuts is, give or take, zero. What this suggests is that ... the primary effect -- giving business owners more money &-- was the hidden main goal all along." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: The Congressional Research Service, as the name suggests, is a non-partisan operation controlled by the Congress for the purpose of analyzing (and predicting) the effects of legislation. It would be nice if members of Congress familiarized themselves with its reports.

The Week: "A seemingly bipartisan disaster aid bill has just stalled out in Congress for the third time. The Senate overwhelmingly passed a $19.1 billion bill last week, even getting support from President Trump. Yet just one voice in the House has caused the bill to crash and burn, given that Congress is still on Memorial Day recess and would need unanimous support to pass the bill before it reconvenes. Rep. John Rose (R-Tenn.) said he wanted more debate over the bill before approving it, and asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to call the House back early to get it done."

Secrets of the Dead. Michael Wines of the New York Times: "Thomas B. Hofeller achieved near-mythic status in the Republican Party as the Michelangelo of gerrymandering, the architect of partisan political maps that cemented the party's dominance across the country. But after he died last summer, his estranged daughter discovered hard drives in her father's home that revealed something else: Mr. Hofeller had played a crucial role in the Trump administration's decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Files on those drives showed that he wrote a study in 2015 concluding that adding a citizenship question to the census would allow Republicans to draft even more extreme gerrymandered maps to stymie Democrats. And months after urging President Trump's transition team to tack the question onto the census, he wrote the key portion of a draft Justice Department letter claiming the question was needed to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act -- the rationale the administration later used to justify its decision. Those documents, cited in a federal court filing Thursday by opponents seeking to block the citizenship question, have emerged only weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of the citizenship question.... The disclosures represent the most explicit evidence to date that the Trump administration added the question to the 2020 census to advance Republican Party interests." Read on. Mrs. McC: The secrets of dead Republicans are not pretty. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... It's a Feature, Not a Bug. Rick Hasen in Slate: "If we had a fair Supreme Court not driven by partisanship in its most political cases, Thursday's blockbuster revelation in the census case would lead the court to unanimously rule in Department of Commerce v. New York to exclude the controversial citizenship question from the decennial survey.... But this revelation ... is ironically more likely to lead the Republican-appointed conservative justices on the Supreme Court to allow the administration to include the question that would help states dilute the power of Hispanic voters.... At the Supreme Court oral argument, as Mark Joseph Stern reported for Slate, the conservative justices on the court offered disingenuous arguments in favor of the government." ...

... Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "Coming up with a transparently feeble pretext for justifying what everyone knows to be racial discrimination to make it easier for Republicans to win elections and then lying about your real motives is essentially a summary of the Roberts Court&'s voting rights jurisprudence. The fact that disenfranchising Hispanic voters was the real reason for (illegally) adding the census question probably just makes it more appealing to the Court's neoconfederate majority, and someone having said the quiet part loud is highly unlikely to change that." ...

... Jay Michaelson of the Daily Beast: "This is worse than anyone thought. This is white supremacy.... Coincidentally, two major gerrymandering cases, both descended from Hofeller's REDMAP efforts, are also being considered by the Supreme Court at the moment -- and like the census case, it is likely that the Court's conservative majority will rule for the gerrymanderers.... None of [Hofeller's dirty work] was disclosed by Trump administration officials. On the contrary, they baldly lied about it, denying that Hofeller had anything to do with the citizenship question when in fact he had written the DOJ letter requesting it. Indeed, senior DOJ official John Gore testified under oath that he drafted the letter, which we now know was copied from Hofeller.... The Court can and does consider new evidence when it enables the disposition of a case. And here, the memo, the letter, and the lies all amount to a gigantic violation of the law.... Apart from the legal issues..., today's revelation is a bombshell even by the standards of the Trump administration. It reveals a years-long effort, led by the White House, to rig the electoral system for partisan and racist goals." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: No one should be shocked. The Republican party became the white supremacist party well before Trump was peddling birthism.

MEANWHILE, on White Supremacy Watch. Driving While Hispanic ... Owen Daugherty of the Hill: "A video of a California man berating a teen girl he thought was his Uber driver has gone viral showing the man harassing her for parking in a community lot and questioning her immigration status. The cell phone video from last week depicts a man leaning outside the girl's passenger window in Laguna Community Park and threatening her with the police, saying 'she barely speaks English' and 'you don't belong here,' according to CBS Sacramento. The girl repeatedly tells the man she is a citizen, as the man refuses to step away from her car, saying he's called police and will report her to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The confrontation started when the teenage girl pulled up and the man thought she was his Uber ride, according to the outlet. When the girl told him she was not an Uber driver, the man reportedly became incensed and began questioning her citizenship." Mrs. McC: I've always thought the worst thing about immigrants is that they might take "my" parking spots.

Presidential Elections 2020 & Beyond. Michelle Rindels & Riley Snyder of the Nevada Independent: "Gov. Steve Sisolak [D] has issued his first veto out of the 2019 legislative session, rejecting a proposal that would have pledged Nevada's six electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote for the presidency." ...

... Eric Levitz of New York: "... when Sisolak vetoed a bill that would have committed Nevada to the National Popular Vote Compact (NPVC) Wednesday, he did so in the name of a breathtakingly stupid (but high-minded sounding) principle.... 'Once effective, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact could diminish the role of smaller states like Nevada in national electoral contests and force Nevada's electors to side with whoever wins the nationwide popular vote, rather than the candidate Nevadans choose,' Sisolak said in a statement.... The National Popular Vote Compact would not 'diminish the role of smaller states.'... In fact, in the highly plausible event that Texas becomes light blue, the NPVC could actually prevent the large states of Texas, California, and New York from installing a president over the objections of a large majority of 'small state' voters. Meanwhile, under the Electoral College system, voters in America's eight smallest states by population -- Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Montana -- receive approximately zero attention from presidential candidates."

Mike Spies of Trace: "Like all charitable groups, the NRA is required to describe the amount, nature, and recipients of its grants on its annual tax filings. But between 2013 and 2017, the NRA did not disclose payments to at least one charity -- a Christian organization called Youth for Tomorrow.... Founded in 1986 by the former football coach Joe Gibbs, the charity ... is a favorite of conservative elites. It is not an obvious match for the NRA Foundation. But the two groups do have one point of overlap: Wayne LaPierre's wife, Susan LaPierre, is a longtime member of the YFT board and, until very recently, was its president.... During the time of her involvement with the charity, the NRA Foundation has sponsored at least seven of its events, including its annual Heart 2 Heart Gala.... The NRA Foundation, however, faces potential regulatory problems for not disclosing its YFT event sponsorships, according to two nonprofit experts." --s

Annals of Journalism?, Ctd. Joe Pompeo of Vanity Fair: "On Sunday, May 19, New York Times finance editor David Enrich got a request from a producer at MSNBC to appear on Rachel Maddow's show the following night. Enrich had a red-hot front-page story for Monday's paper, about anti-money-laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank flagging suspicious transactions involving Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, and Maddow wanted to bring him on air to talk about it.... Enrich said yes, but after mentioning the planned appearance to the Times's communications department, he was told he would have to retroactively decline. The reason? The Times was wary of how viewers might perceive a down-the-middle journalist like Enrich talking politics with a mega-ideological host like Maddow.... It's not just Maddow. The Times has come to 'prefer,' as sources put it, that its reporters steer clear of any cable-news shows that the masthead perceives as too partisan, and managers have lately been advising people not to go on what they see as highly opinionated programs. It's not clear how many shows fall under that umbrella in the eyes of Times brass, but two others that definitely do are Lawrence O'Donnell's and Don Lemon's, according to people familiar with management's thinking.... It's not so much a new policy as a reinforcement of an old one."

Beyond the Beltway

Florida. Stephanie Saul of the New York Times: "ederal authorities in Florida have issued an expansive subpoena seeking information related to Andrew Gillum [D] the former Tallahassee mayor, and the campaign for governor he narrowly lost last year, as well as some of his associates. In a statement on Thursday night, Mr. Gillum's lawyer, Barry Richard, acknowledged the subpoena but denied that Mr. Gillum had done anything wrong. 'Somebody is out to damage Mr. Gillum politically and is making allegations to different law enforcement bodies,' he said. The closely watched 2018 campaign ... was shadowed by questions about corruption following a federal investigation into Tallahassee's community redevelopment agency that resulted in three arrests. Mr. Gillum has said that he was never a target of that investigation, in which undercover F.B.I. agents cozied up to a businessman with close ties to Mr. Gillum, eventually meeting the mayor on a New York trip that included a boat tour of New York Harbor. The recent subpoena was unrelated to Mr. Gillum's time as mayor, Mr. Richard said."

New Hampshire. Nathalie Baptiste of Mother Jones: "New Hampshire just became the 21st state to abolish the death penalty. Earlier this month, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed a measure to end capital punishment statewide, but on Thursday lawmakers voted to override the veto." --s

Ohio. E. A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "A Trump campaign official pressured Ohio lawmakers to pass a nuclear and coal plant bailout bill, arguing it would help President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.... The Ohio House passed HB 6 with bipartisan support Wednesday, in a 53 to 43 vote. The bill is an effort to boost struggling nuclear and coal power plants in addition to gutting clean energy requirements currently mandated by the state. The bill must now be approved by the state Senate in order to become law, with the governor already in support." --s

Way Beyond

North Korea. Pompeo & Bolton Beware. Shinhye Kang & Jihye Lee of Bloomberg News: "North Korea executed its former top nuclear envoy to the U.S. and four other foreign ministry officials in March after a failed summit between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported. Kim Hyok Chol, who led working-level negotiations for the February summit in Hanoi, was executed by firing squad after being charged with espionage after allegedly being co-opted by the U.S., the newspaper said Friday, citing an unidentified source. The move was part of an internal purge Kim undertook after the summit broke down without any deal, it said." Mrs. McC: Way worse than getting fired by a presidential aide while on the toilet, then having the aide tell the press about the unceremonious ouster.

Russia. Amy Knight of The Daily Beast: "The bodies had hardly stopped falling from the sky on July 17, 2014, when the trolls of Russia's Internet Research Agency went into action. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 had just been shot down over eastern Ukraine, and the same IRA operation Vladimir Putin would use to influence the U.S. presidential election two years later went into overdrive, pumping out conspiracy theories to exculpate Moscow's murderous clients.... Exhaustive research by two Dutch journalists, Robert van der Noordaa and Coen van de Ven, published in the Dutch weekly Der Groene Amsterdammer, shows precisely the way the Russian trolls worked to shift blame for the massacre and create a dense fog of conspiracy theories to obscure the facts.... Altogether, 111,486 tweets about MH17 were posted by the IRA in just three days, from July 17 through 19. (By comparison, in the 10-week period leading up to the November 2016 elections, the IRA accounts posted 175,993 tweets.)" --s

News Ledes

CNN: "At least 11 people were killed after a gunman opened fire at a municipal building in Virginia Beach, Virginia, police chief James Cervera told reporters Friday night.The shooter is dead, Cervera said. It was unclear whether the shooter was among the 11 dead." Mrs. McC: At a news conference Friday night, the chief said a 12th victim died.

Rolling Stone: "Leon Redbone, the singer who built a career out of performing ragtime, vaudeville and American standards with a sly wink and an unmistakable, nasally voice, died Thursday. He was 69."

The Commentariat -- May 30, 2019

Late Morning Update:

Secrets of the Dead. Michael Wines of the New York Times: "Thomas B. Hofeller achieved near-mythic status in the Republican Party as the Michelangelo of gerrymandering, the architect of partisan political maps that cemented the party’s dominance across the country. But after he died last summer, his estranged daughter discovered hard drives in her father’s home that revealed something else: Mr. Hofeller had played a crucial role in the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Files on those drives showed that he wrote a study in 2015 concluding that adding a citizenship question to the census would allow Republicans to draft even more extreme gerrymandered maps to stymie Democrats. And months after urging President Trump’s transition team to tack the question onto the census, he wrote the key portion of a draft Justice Department letter claiming the question was needed to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act — the rationale the administration later used to justify its decision. Those documents, cited in a federal court filing Thursday by opponents seeking to block the citizenship question, have emerged only weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of the citizenship question.... The disclosures represent the most explicit evidence to date that the Trump administration added the question to the 2020 census to advance Republican Party interests." Read on. Mrs. McC: The secrets of dead Republicans are not pretty.

Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: “President Trump tweeted on Thursday that Russia helped 'me to get elected,' and then quickly retracted the idea. 'No, Russia did not help me get elected,' Mr. Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for Colorado Springs. 'I got me elected.' He spoke less than an hour after his Twitter post. The original comment, a clause in one of several Twitter posts this morning, is an extraordinary admission from Mr. Trump, who has avoided saying publicly that Russia helped him win the presidency in 2016 through its election interference.... Speaking to reporters outside the White House and in a subsequent Twitter post, Mr. Trump revived personal attacks on Mr. Mueller, asserting that the special counsel should never have been chosen for that position — he was 'highly conflicted' — and had failed to get the job he really wanted, F.B.I. director, an allegation addressed and countered in Mr. Mueller’s final report. Mr. Mueller, who had previously served in that role in two administrations, did not go to the White House looking for a job, one of president’s senior advisers, Stephen K. Bannon, told investigators.... 'I think Mueller is a true never Trumper,' Mr. Trump said on Thursday. 'He is somebody that dislikes Donald Trump, he’s somebody that didn’t get a job that he requested that he wanted very badly, and then he was appointed.'” ...  

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Mueller, a Republican, has never publicly expressed his political opinions about Trump. Also, he was not interested in returning as FBI director; he simply met with Trump to give him an idea of the qualities of a good director.

Lying Machine Turned up to High. Elizabeth Thomas & Katherine Faulders of ABC News: Trump told reporters as he left for a trip to Colorado, “'He [Robert Mueller] said, essentially: "You're innocent." There was no crime, there was no charge because he had no information.'... 'The whole thing [the Mueller investigation] is a scam. It's a giant presidential harassment,' Trump said. 'Russia did not help me get elected. You know who got me elected? I got me elected. Russia didn’t help me at all,' Trump said, adding that, if anything, Russia helped 'the other side' get elected. 'I believe Russia would rather have Hillary Clinton as president of the United States than Donald Trump,' the president said. 'The reason is nobody has been tougher on Russia than me.... I think it was the same as the report,' Trump said when asked for his reaction to Mueller's statement. 'There's no obstruction. There's no collusion. There's no nothing. It's nothing but a witch hunt.... There was no high crime and there was no misdemeanor,' Trump said when asked about impeachment. 'I don't see how... I can't imagine the courts allowing it,' Trump said. 'To me, it's a dirty word, the word 'impeach.' It's a dirty, filthy, disgusting word, he said.... The president also said that Mueller was 'totally conflicted' because of a business dispute he claimed he had with Mueller, discussions he had with Mueller about the position of FBI director early in the Trump administration and called him a friend with former FBI director James Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017.”

Olivia Messer of the Daily Beast: “President Trump said Thursday that he wasn’t aware of a reported White House request to keep the USS John S. McCain 'out of sight' on his trip to Japan this week.... During a gaggle with reporters on the White House lawn, Trump said, 'I wasn’t a fan, but I would never do a thing like that. Now, somebody did it because they thought I didn’t like him. They were well-meaning, I will say.' Minutes later, Trump picked the topic back up again, noting that whoever made the request 'thought they were doing me a favor because they know I am not a fan of John McCain.' He added, 'John McCain killed health care for the Republican Party, and he killed health care for the nation.... I disagreed with John McCain on the Middle East. He helped George Bush to make a very bad decision of going to the Middle East. So I wasn’t a fan of John McCain and I never will be. But certainly I couldn’t care less whether there’s a boat named after his father.'”

Andrew Restuccia of Politico ruminates on Trump's weird obsession with IQs.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Trump Scandals, Ctd. -- Mueller Talks! Edition

Trump held a chopper conference this morning in which he piled on the lies:

A Freudian Slip? A Gaffe? Or Just Garbled Grammar? Russia, Russia, Russia! That’s all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax...And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected. It was a crime that didn’t exist. So now the Dems and their partner, the Fake News Media -- Donald Trump, in a tweet this morning ...

In case you didn't notice, Trump admits here that "Russia help[ed] me to get elected." -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie 

Update: In his chopper-chatter, Trump walked back his admission. Update update: Trump has since deleted the tweet. -- Mrs. McCrabbie 

Mueller Delivers His Own Exit Interview. Says Congress Need Not Do One. Sharon LaFraniere & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: “Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, on Wednesday characterized for the first time his investigation of whether President Trump obstructed justice, saying 'if we had confidence the president did not commit a crime, we would have said so.' In what he said would be his only comments on his nearly two-year inquiry, he said that while Justice Department policy prohibits charging a sitting president with a crime, the Constitution provides for another process — a clear reference to the ability of Congress to impeach the president. He suggested that he was reluctant to testify before Congress. 'The report is my testimony,' he said.” ...

... Here's the full transcript of Mueller's remarks, as prepared by Politico. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

The New York Times Editors translate Mueller's remarks into unambiguous English. Mrs. McC: It would be great to hear Robert De Niro reading a version of the editors' translation, but alas, the SNL season is over, so we'll have to be satisfied with this:

... Robert De Niro in a New York Times op-ed: “While I and so many Americans have admired your quiet, confident, dignified response in ignoring that assault, it allowed the administration to use its own voice to control the narrative.... In your news conference, you said that your investigation’s work 'speaks for itself.' It doesn’t.... You’ve characterized the report as your testimony, but you wouldn’t accept that reason from anyone your office interviewed.... The country needs to hear your voice. Your actual voice. And not just because you don’t want them to think that your actual voice sounds like Robert De Niro reading from cue cards, but because this is the report your country asked you to do, and now you must give it authority and clarity without, if I may use the term, obstruction.... You are the voice of the Mueller report. Let the country hear that voice.”

Dominique Jackson of the Raw Story: “On Wednesday, the editorial board at The Washington Post called [on] Robert Mueller to testify before Congress.... However, the editorial board explained that Mueller spoke to[o] late.... 'Mr. Mueller could have avoided much confusion and short-circuited the administration’s attempt to manipulate public opinion if he had made his statement weeks ago, in conjunction with the release of a lightly redacted version of his report,' the editorial board wrote. Adding, 'That may be a principled decision, but Mr. Mueller should not resist appearing before Congress, even if it is to explain why he will not answer certain questions.'” The WashPo editorial is here. ...

     ... Mrs McCrabbie Conspiracy Theory: The reason Mueller waited till this week to deliver his swan song: SNL is done for the year, so Robert De Niro won't satirize his speech. Okay, I'm not serious. After all, who wouldn't be proud to have De Niro play him on teevee?

Abigail Weinberg of Mother Jones gathered tweeted responses from Members of Congress: Rep. Justin Amish (R-Michigan) tweeted, "The ball is in our court, Congress." Jerry Nadler, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee: "Given that Special Counsel Mueller was unable to pursue criminal charges against the President, it falls to Congress to respond to the crimes, lies and other wrongdoing of President Trump – and we will do so. No one, not even the President of the United States, is above the law." From presidential candidates: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): "Mueller’s statement makes clear what those who have read his report know: It is an impeachment referral, and it’s up to Congress to act. They should." Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.): "What Robert Mueller basically did was return an impeachment referral. Now it is up to Congress to hold this president accountable. We need to start impeachment proceedings. It's our constitutional obligation." Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ): "Robert Mueller’s statement makes it clear: Congress has a legal and moral obligation to begin impeachment proceedings immediately." (Oh, and then there was this: Donald Trump: "Nothing changes from the Mueller Report. There was insufficient evidence and therefore, in our Country, a person is innocent. The case is closed! Thank you.") (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Andrew Clark of the Indianapolis Star: "South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg tweeted Wednesday that special counsel Robert Mueller's remarks during a press conference earlier in the day were 'as close to an impeachment referral as it gets.' 'Robert Mueller could not clear the president, nor could he charge him — so he has handed the matter to Congress, which alone can act to deliver due process and accountability,' Buttigieg tweeted." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Jack Crosbie of Splinter: “If only there were strong party leaders who could bring all of these viewpoints together! Alas, we are left with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Pelosi responded to Mueller’s conference with a continuation of the same thing she’s been saying for months: that Congress would 'continue to investigate.' And Schumer made impotent promises about 'following the facts wherever they lead' (they have led to an explicit case for impeachment).” (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) 

Jonathan Allen of NBC News: "... there was something markedly different about the atmosphere in Washington on Wednesday. It was more charged, more combustible. For the first time — and perhaps the last time — Mueller spoke publicly and firmly, if in limited fashion, about what his investigation meant. And, for the trained ear, it was unmistakable. 'He was virtually announcing "Congress, do your job,'" NBC News legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said on MSNBC. That might make him the catalyst for a Democratic caucus that has been deeply ambivalent about the politics of impeaching the president." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Richard Hasen in Slate: "Special counsel Robert Mueller issued a final statement on Wednesday before resigning from the Department of Justice, which clearly appeared aimed at one person: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Mueller’s simple message to Pelosi is that it is the constitutional duty of Congress — and her sworn duty as speaker of the House — to begin an investigation of the president and seriously consider impeaching him." Mrs. McC: If you missed that in Mueller's remarks, Hasen lays it out. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Ken White in the Atlantic: "Wednesday’s press conference was consistent with Mueller’s image as a classic just-the-facts-ma’am G-man, a persona that frustrates anti-Trump partisans who dreamed of him as an avenging superhero. But a bit of passion shone through in two areas. First, Mueller was adamant that his team had not exonerated the president of obstruction of justice.... Second, Mueller seemed concerned that Americans have focused on what Trump did rather than on what Russia did.... Mueller is a man out of time. This is the age of alternatively factual tweets and sound bites; he’s a by-the-book throwback who expects Americans to read and absorb carefully worded 400-page reports. Has he met us?" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Nonpartisan to a Fault. Michael Tomasky in the New York Times: "What we saw on display in Mr. Mueller’s nine-minute statement was his often discussed sense of rectitude and propriety. These are admirable attributes, normally. But we might well wonder whether those attributes are what is needed in the age of Donald Trump, or whether the preservation of our democratic institutions demands more.... Mr. Mueller was the product of an era and a social class to whom the kind of flesh-ripping partisanship we have today was absolutely anathema." Tomasky wonders what a man of Mueller's blue-blood, blue-nosed sensibilities really thinks of Donald Trump. ...

Alex Roarty & Michael Wilner of McClatchy News: “Leading Democrats remain fearful that impeaching ... Donald Trump will bolster his re-election campaign. But if Robert Mueller’s brief, unexpected statement did anything Wednesday, it clarified that a Democratic Party that does not embrace impeachment still faces a potentially sizable political risk — especially from core supporters demanding more loudly than ever before that the House try to remove Trump from office. 'There is a real danger if Democrats fail to have message clarity and moral clarity when it comes to this,' said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the influential liberal activist group Indivisible. 'There will be a real question of how they’ll ever motivate people to vote for them.'... 'The dam has burst,' said Markos Moulitsas, a longtime progressive leader who founded the blog DailyKos.”

David Corn of Mother Jones: “... Mueller’s remarks were also a reminder of the core elements of the Trump-Russia scandal: Moscow attacked the 2016 election to help Trump, and Trump assisted Vladimir Putin’s assault by claiming at the time (and afterward) that it wasn’t real. That is, whether or not Trump had criminally colluded with Russian operatives, he did side with a foreign adversary that attacked American democracy—and that’s treachery.... Trump put his own interests ahead of the security of the nation. And by insisting there was no Russian attack, he helped Putin pull off this caper and made it more difficult for President Barack Obama to enlist Republicans in a united front against Moscow’s attack.... 'I will close,' [Mueller] said, 'by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments: That there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election, and that allegation deserves the attention of every American.' That was certainly a dig at Trump, who has refused to recognize this central allegation.”

Read more here: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article230956313.html#storylink=cpy

Bill Barr's Very Bad Day

Mark Mazzetti & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: “Attorney General William P. Barr stood at the Justice Department lectern six weeks ago and put the best possible spin on the Mueller report for his boss, declaring that the special counsel had amassed insufficient evidence to accuse President Trump of a crime. Robert S. Mueller III delivered a starkly different presentation on Wednesday from the same lectern, saying that charging a sitting president was never an option, no matter the evidence. Instead, his investigators asked another question: Could they clear the president? On potential obstruction of justice, the answer was no. 'If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime,' Mr. Mueller said, 'we would have said so.'... His carefully chosen phrases stood in sharp contrast to Mr. Barr’s portrayal of the investigation as vindicating Mr. Trump from accusations of the crime of obstruction.” ...

... Zack Budryk of the Hill: “Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) on Wednesday said that special counsel Robert Mueller contradicted Attorney General William Barr in comments earlier that morning. 'Those comments by Bob Mueller about the other processes — obviously impeachment being the only constitutional way — definitely contradicts what the attorney general said when he summarized Mueller’s report and said he then had to draw the conclusion on that,' Christie said in a phone call to ABC News. 'Mueller clearly contradicts that today in a very concise way.' Christie, a former U.S. attorney and longtime political ally of President Trump’s, agreed with host George Stephanoupolous that the comments, in which Mueller reaffirmed that his probe did not exonerate Trump, move the discussion 'from the legal processes and put it right back into the political arena.'” (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) 

... Jonathan Chait: “Famously taciturn prosecutor Robert Mueller decided to address the public to make it very clear that he did not exonerate President Trump of committing obstruction of justice. 'If we had confidence that the president did not commit a crime we would have said so,' he said. Mueller cited a Department of Justice policy prohibiting a special prosecutor from charging sitting presidents: 'Charging the president with a crime,' he said, 'was therefore not an option we could consider.' This banal point is important because it pithily clarifies something Trump and his allies have labored, with quite a bit of success, to obscure.” [William Barr misled the public.] Mueller was not failing to draw a conclusion about the conduct. He was concluding decisively that he did not have the power to define Trump’s conduct as a crime." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Bill Barr, Big Fat Liar. Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monthly: “In the month before Robert Mueller’s report was released, Attorney General Barr painted a picture of a special counsel who couldn’t decide whether to charge the president with obstruction of justice, so he simply thew up his hands and left the decision up to the attorney general. During testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee after the report had been released, Barr acknowledged that Mueller explained his position, but suggested that he was 'not really sure of' Mueller’s reasoning on the issue.... [During] the press conference just prior to the release of the report, [and] without Mueller present, Barr took a question from a reporter who asked whether Mueller’s non-decision on obstruction 'had anything to do with the department’s long-standing guidance from the Office of Legal Counsel on not indicting a sitting president.' Barr responded that he had a private conversation with Mueller, who told him that he 'was not saying that but for the OLC opinion, he would have found a crime.' During his remarks at the Justice Department this morning, Mueller demonstrated that Barr has been lying in an attempt to mislead all along.... While he left the conclusions up to us, he just made three things very clear: (1) the attorney general lied about his position, (2) if Trump were not president, they would have charged him with obstruction of justice, and (3) impeachment is the Constitutional remedy.” (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Read more here: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article230956313.html#storylink=cpy

Napolitano Stuns Foxbots. Eric Dolan of the Raw Story: “Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano said Wednesday that special counsel Robert Mueller had indicated that he found evidence that Donald Trump committed a crime — but was unable to indict him because Trump is a sitting president. 'Effectively what Bob Mueller said is we had evidence that he committed a crime but we couldn’t charge him because he’s the president of the United States,' Napolitano explained. 'This is even stronger than the language in his report. This is also a parting shot at his soon-to-be former boss, the attorney general, because this statement is 180 degrees from the four-page statement that Bill Barr issued at the time he first saw the report.' 'Is it that bad?' host Stuart Varney remarked. 'I think so,' Napolitano replied.... Napolitano also said that the evidence that Mueller provided was 'remarkably similar' to the evidence used against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.” (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... MEANWHILE. Jane Coaston of Vox: “Trump-supportive conservatives saw in Mueller’s press conference what they’ve seen since he submitted his full report to Attorney General William Barr back in April: the end of any future investigations into the president. Sen. Lindsey Graham ... tweeted that Congress should move past the Mueller investigation, echoing White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who said (mistakenly) that the special counsel’s report showed 'no obstruction' and that 'everyone else' should move on as well.... Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) argued the same, saying that Democrats should move on to 'work in good faith' with the same president who repeatedly insults Democrats. (Other Trump-supportive commentators simply slammed Mueller instead).”

Jay Weaver, et al., of the Miami Herald: “Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., this week sent subpoenas to Mar-a-Lago..., Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, and Trump Victory, a political fundraising committee, demanding they turn over all records relating to Republican Party donor Li 'Cindy' Yang and several of her associates and companies, the Miami Herald has learned. Yang, a South Florida massage-parlor entrepreneur, is the target of a public corruption investigation seeking to determine if she funneled money from China to the president’s re-election campaign or otherwise violated campaign-finance laws. She became a GOP donor in the 2016 election cycle and opened a consulting company that promised Chinese businesspeople the chance to attend events at Mar-a-Lago and gain access to Trump and his inner circle. Some of those events were campaign fundraisers that required guests to buy tickets for entry, payments that are considered political contributions. Foreign nationals are prohibited from donating to U.S. political campaigns.”

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article230946518.html#storylink=cpy

Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "An associate of Roger Stone has agreed to testify to special counsel Robert Mueller's grand jury on Friday morning, his attorney and a Mueller prosecutor said in a court hearing before a federal judge.The development shows parts of the Mueller investigation related to interference in the 2016 presidential election -- and the grand jury's work -- may still be alive. Andrew Miller, Stone's associate, has fought testifying as he has challenged Mueller's authority since last summer after Mueller's team requested information from him about Roger Stone and WikiLeaks. Miller was held in contempt by Chief Judge Beryl Howell in Washington but will not be sent to jail at this time, the judge said. He lost his attempts at appeal. He did not attend the hearing Wednesday." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) 

Cecilia Kang of the New York Times: “Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday strongly rebuked Facebook, saying the company’s refusal to take down altered videos of her demonstrated how the social network contributed to misinformation and enabled Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. 'We have said all along, poor Facebook, they were unwittingly exploited by the Russians,' Ms. Pelosi said in an interview with the public radio station KQED. 'I think wittingly, because right now they are putting up something that they know is false.' Ms. Pelosi, a Democrat, is the most powerful politician to accuse Facebook of knowingly allowing disinformation to spread through its service during the last presidential election. Many other politicians have stopped short of that, saying only that the company should have acted faster to stop it.” More on Facebook linked below ...

... ** Annals of “Journalism,” Ctd. Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times: “Whatever Facebook decides to do with this weird little video [of Nancy Pelosi appearing to slur her speech] is a big meh, because if you were to rank the monsters of misinformation that American society now faces, amateurishly doctored viral videos would clock in as mere houseflies in our midst. Worry about them, sure, but not at the risk of overlooking a more clear and present danger, the million-pound, forked-tongue colossus that dominates our misinformation menagerie: Fox News and the far-flung, cross-platform lie machine that it commands.... In going after Facebook, many observers forgot about Rupert Murdoch’s empire, whose Fox Business spinoff aired a similarly misleading Pelosi hit job on 'Lou Dobbs Tonight.'... Fox’s editing technique was not novel; this sort of montage is a common feature on Fox and much of cable news.... Pelosi 'STAMMERS THROUGH NEWS CONFERENCE,' the chyron read. While Facebook moved quickly to limit the spread of the doctored Pelosi clip, Fox is neither apologizing for airing its montage nor taking it down, because this sort of manipulated video fits within the network’s ethical bounds.... To focus on Facebook instead of Fox News is to mistake the symptom for the disease.”

Matthew Chapman of the Raw Story: “On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that on the president’s latest trip to Japan, he demanded the Navy move the U.S.S. John McCain 'out of sight.' Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan personally approved the order to obscure the warship so that it would not be visible to the president when he arrived by helicopter — even though he would have only seen it in passing during touchdown and immediately transported to the U.S.S. Wasp, nowhere near the John McCain. While the warship was not actually moved, a tarpaulin was used to cover its name, a barge was used to partially obscure it, and any sailors wearing a cap with the ship’s name were given the day off.” The WSJ report is here. (Surprisingly, I was able to call up the story via the link.) ...

... Elliot Hannon of Slate: "A tarp. Hiding a warship. That’s a real thing that happened. Just a 100-percent normal president doing normal president things." ...

I was not informed about anything having to do with the Navy Ship USS John S. McCain during my recent visit to Japan. -- Donald Trump, in a tweet 

That's quasi-believable. Trump has no idea how much his staff & others in the government do to hide things that will set him off. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie 

Laws Are for the Little People. Brett Samuels of the Hill: "White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Wednesday scoffed at a government office's findings that she violated a decades-old law barring officials from weighing in on elections in their government capacity as she railed against Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's record. Conway tore into the former vice president and senator over his vote on the 1994 crime bill, his role in overseeing the 1991 Anita Hill hearing and his record on immigration as she fielded questions from reporters outside the White House. But she insisted she was not commenting on the 2020 election and that she has a right to size up the record of her boss's potential opponent."

Joe Romm of ThinkProgress: "President Donald Trump’s administration is systematically launching one of the most insidious efforts in American history aimed at not merely ruining our children’s health, but at literally erasing their future entirely.... This includes the announcement that the agency will start taking the position that air pollution does not harm children the way science says it does. At the same time, it is cutting 13 research centers aimed at reducing environmental threats to our children. Meanwhile..., White House appointee running the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) — James Reilly, a former petroleum geologist — is mandating that the agency’s scientific assessments of climate change will only examine climate impacts that may occur between now and 2040. The agency’s standard practice is to look as far ahead as the year 2100." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) 

Luke O'Neil of the Guardian: “Mark W Menezes, the US undersecretary of energy, bestowed a peculiar honorific on our continent’s natural resources, dubbing it 'freedom gas' in a release touting the DoE’s approval of increased exports of natural gas produced by a Freeport LNG terminal off the coast of Texas. 'Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America’s allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy,' he said.... 'With the US in another year of record-setting natural gas production, I am pleased that the Department of Energy is doing what it can to promote an efficient regulatory system that allows for molecules of US freedom to be exported to the world,' said Steven Winberg [of the DOE].”

Michael Calderone of Politico: "The mood in the Pentagon briefing room was tense Friday when officials went on the record for the first time to blame Iran for recent flare-ups in the Middle East.... The Pentagon press corps has chafed for months at what reporters see as a sharp decline in access to information, including limited access to officials during trips.... Friday will be a year since the Pentagon held an on-camera briefing with any department spokesperson." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) 

Shifty Mitch. Carl Hulse of the New York Times writes a make-up article for the paper: “When it came to filling a Supreme Court vacancy during the 2016 presidential election year, Senator Mitch McConnell had a constant refrain: Let the people decide. But should a high court seat become open in 2020, Mr. McConnell has already decided himself. 'Oh, we’d fill it,' Mr. McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and majority leader, gleefully told a friendly Chamber of Commerce audience back home in Paducah on Tuesday. Mr. McConnell regularly celebrates his history-altering 2016 decision to thwart President Barack Obama from filling a vacancy that occurred with 11 months remaining in his term, saying the seat should be kept open until a new president could be elected and inaugurated. But he has been laying the groundwork to change course ever since Donald J. Trump was elected president. Tuesday’s remarks were only his most definitive: He would not be bound by the standard he himself set in preventing Judge Merrick B. Garland from being seated on the high court.” See yesterday's Commentariat for context.

Senate Race 2020. Trip Gabriel & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: “Donald J. Trump is publicly making the case that Roy Moore, the controversial former Alabama judge, could cost Republicans a Senate seat in an overwhelmingly conservative state if he chooses to run again. One person he hasn’t convinced is Mr. Moore himself. 'There’s a lot I have to offer,' Mr. Moore said in an interview Wednesday, adding that he would make up his mind by the end of June whether to challenge Doug Jones, the Democrat who narrowly beat him in 2017. He added, 'Everything seems to be very favorable. President Trump took to Twitter early Wednesday to warn that if Mr. Moore was the Republican nominee in 2020, he would most likely lose again to Mr. Jones, considered the Democratic Party’s most vulnerable incumbent up for Senate re-election next year.”

Jamal Greene of Slate: "Last week, the Washington Post published a profile of Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo, focusing in part on a speech he gave to the Council for National Policy in which he warmly predicted the Supreme Court would soon return to the pre–New Deal era of 'limited, constitutional government.' Leo believes, in other words, that the court’s view of the Constitution was better off 85 years ago than it is today.... Leo has had Donald Trump’s ear on judicial appointments and has been the main curator of the president’s list of Supreme Court candidates.... So when Leonard Leo says he wants to return to a pre–New Deal Constitution, you should listen. And you should be alarmed." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) 

Daphné Dupont-Nivet & Nico Schmidt of OpenDemocracy (May 22): "Google and Facebook pressured and 'arm-wrestled' a group of experts to soften European guidelines on online disinformation and fake news, according to new testimony from insiders released to journalists at Investigate Europe today.... [S]ome of these experts say that representatives of Facebook and Google undermined the work of the group, which was convened by the European Commission and comprised leading European researchers, media entrepreneurs and activists.... Another member, Monique Goyens – director-general of BEUC, which is also known as The European Consumer Association – is blunter. 'We were blackmailed,' she says." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Tim Starks of Politico: "Facebook and Twitter said Tuesday that they have pulled down a network of accounts spreading disinformation that originated in Iran, including some accounts that impersonated 2018 Republican congressional candidates. Acting on a tip from cybersecurity company FireEye, Facebook said it removed 51 bogus Facebook accounts, 36 pages followed by 21,000 users, seven groups joined by 1,900 users and three Instagram accounts followed by 2,600 people. Twitter said it removed 2,800 accounts. The revelations ... serve as a reminder that other governments and foreign adversaries are taking a page from the Russian playbook that disrupted the 2016 presidential election.... The Iranian campaign also succeeded in tricking U.S. and Israeli publications into publishing fake letters to the editor and blogs, according to the report." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) 

Lisa Richwine of Reuters: “Walt Disney Co Chief Executive Bob Iger told Reuters on Wednesday it would be 'very difficult' for the media company to keep filming in Georgia if a new abortion law takes effect because many people will not want to work in the U.S. state.... Some actors and producers have already said they will no longer work in Georgia because of the abortion law, but many of the large production companies have remained publicly silent on the abortion law. On Tuesday, Netflix Inc said the streaming service would 'rethink' its film and television production investment in Georgia if the law goes into effect.”

Beyond the Beltway

Elliot Hannon: "The Louisiana state legislature, on Wednesday, joined the procession of conservative state legislatures challenging abortion rights, voting to pass a so-called heartbeat abortion bill, severely restricting women’s access to an abortion in the state. The Republican-controlled legislature voted 79-23 in favor of the bill and the state’s Democratic governor John Bel Edwards, who has long-opposed abortion rights, said he will break with his party and sign it into law. The new restrictions will outlaw abortions after a fetus’ heartbeat can be detected, which can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women are even aware they’re pregnant."

Way Beyond

Israel. Where's the Magic? Isabel Kershner of the New York Times: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suffered a stunning defeat on Thursday after he failed to meet a midnight deadline to form a new government, casting a cloud over his future as prime minister and thrusting Israel into the chaos of a new election. Just seven weeks ago, when Mr. Netanyahu basked in a postelection 'night of tremendous victory,' he seemed invincible, confident that he would serve a fourth consecutive term and a fifth overall. Despite a looming indictment on corruption charges, he appeared set to surpass the nation’s founding leader, David Ben Gurion, as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. But after weeks of negotiations, his plans ran aground on a power struggle between two blocs of his potential right-wing coalition — the secular ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox factions — who refused to compromise on proposed legislation on military service. The dream collapsed in a breathtaking display of political maneuvering in recent days, as Mr. Netanyahu, long nicknamed 'the magician' for the political wizardry that has kept him in office continuously for the past decade, desperately tried to salvage his fortunes.”

Andy Beckett of the Guardian: "Conservatism is the dominant politics of the modern world.... Yet this aura has led to an overconfidence about conservatism’s underlying health. In Britain and the US, once the movement’s most fertile sources of ideas, voters, leaders and governments, a deep crisis of conservatism has been building since the end of the Reagan and Thatcher governments. It is a crisis of competence, of intellectual energy and coherence, of electoral effectiveness, and – perhaps most serious of all – of social relevance.... The right is still winning elections, from India to the European parliament, but transatlantic conservatism as we have known it since the 80s – pro-capitalist, anti-government, controlled by the traditional parties of the right – may be dying." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)