The Commentariat -- July 30, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Trump on Monday doubled down on his threat to shut down the government to secure enhanced border security measures. 'If we don't get border security after many, many years of talk ... 'I would have no problem doing a shutdown,' Trump said during a joint press conference with Italy's prime minister."

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "President Trump's defense in the Russia investigation has been a study in goal-post moving -- constantly watering down previous denials and raising the standard for what would constitute actual wrongdoing. But rarely has it been so concentrated in one morning.... Rudolph W. Giuliani appeared on Fox News's and CNN's morning shows.... The most notable portion of the interviews was when Giuliani rekindled the idea that collusion isn't even a crime. Trump's defenders have occasionally noted that the word doesn't appear in the criminal code -- which is true but misleading -- but Giuliani took it a step further: He basically suggested Trump would have had to pay for Russia to interfere on his behalf[:]... 'Hacking is the crime. The president didn't hack. He didn't pay for the hacking.'... Giuliani also seemed to offer a very narrow denial of what happened with the Trump Tower meeting.... Giuliani focused his defense on arguing not necessarily that Trump didn't know about it -- but that he wasn't physically at meetings at which information from Russians was discussed. And he did it on both shows." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "I think we can all agree that Trump lacks the technical expertise to personally design and execute a spearfishing attack on John Podesta or the Democratic National Committee.... What we have seen over the last day is a sharp turn in the pro-Trump message, from denying that any collusion took place to redefining what collusion means and whether it is okay.... If Trump solicited the hacking, or was an accessory to the crime, his lawyer is prepared to paint him as innocent.... As you watch Trump's defenders retreating over the horizon, a salient fact to bear in mind is that there are probably more revelations to come with regard to collusion." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: By Giuliani's standards, most of the famous murdering dictators in history were innocent! because they weren't the ones who actually set the bomb, pulled the trigger or released the bow a million times. ...

... Kevin Drum: "So: Trump didn't pay the Russians to hack the DNC server and he wasn't physically present at the Trump Tower meeting. As far as I know, no one has ever accused him of either of these things, but now that he's denied them I suppose my working assumption is that he did pay for the hacks and he was at the Trump Tower meeting." ...

... Oops! Rudy Let Slip Another Trump Tower Meeting. Josh Marshall: "... from the start, I've had the sense that Giuliani does know specifically what Cohen is talking about but is denying the specifics.... In a back and forth with CNN's Alisyn Carmerota, [Giuliani] appears to say that two days before the meeting with the Russian lawyer there was a planning meeting to prepare for that meeting. This prep meeting would have been on June 7th, 2016. Giuliani says that meeting included Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Manafort, Rick Gates and others.... I don't think I'd ever heard of this planning meeting.... It suggests that the Trump team took the planned encounter with the Russian government emissary much more seriously than they've suggested to date.... Gates is now a cooperating witness. Big problem for the Trump Team, if he was at such a planning meeting.... June 7th. That's the date when Trump made that primary election night victory speech where he teased his upcoming anti-Hillary speech where he'd reveal a bunch of new dirt on Hillary, a speech that ended up never happening.... It lines up perfectly with what many have long suspected: that Trump was so excited about the dirt his campaign was going to receive from Russia two days later that he couldn't help but brag about it in public that night." ...

... David Jackson of USA Today: "Rudy Giuliani ... says his team is preparing a 'counter-report' designed to rebut any accusations that special counsel Robert Mueller makes in his expected report about the Russia investigation. Giuliani told USA Today that he believed Mueller's team is 'writing the report as we speak.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Hold on a minute. If Team Trump is writing a "counter-report," then they must strongly suspect Mueller's report will show some evidence of criminal or civil liability to "counter." You don't write a "counter-report" when the original report is an extended encomium. ...

... Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "... Rudy Giuliani has angrily compared Michael Cohen to famous traitors Benedict Arnold, Brutus and Iago.... Giuliani also called Cohen a 'scumbag' and repeated a claim that investigators have seized more than 180 tapes made by Cohen, which he claimed without offering evidence Cohen had doctored, and said no one on the tapes knew they were being recorded. He said again that only one of those tapes contains Trump's voice."

Patrick Temple-West & Victoria Guida of Politico: "Some of the biggest winners from ... Donald Trump's new tax law are corporate executives who have reaped gains as their companies buy back a record amount of stock, a practice that rewards shareholders by boosting the value of existing shares. A Politico review of data disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission filings shows the executives, who often receive most of their compensation in stock, have been profiting handsomely by selling shares since Trump signed the law on Dec. 22 and slashed corporate tax rates to 21 percent. That trend is likely to increase, as Wall Street analysts expect buyback activity to accelerate in the coming weeks. 'It is going to be a parade of eye-popping numbers,' said Pat McGurn, the head of strategic research and analysis at Institutional Shareholder Services, a shareholder advisory firm."

Josh Eidelson of Bloomberg: "Six years before .. Donald Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh sided with Trump Entertainment Resorts' successful effort to thwart a unionization drive at one of its casinos. Kavanaugh was one of three Republican-appointed judges who in 2012 voted unanimously to set aside an order by the National Labor Relations Board that would have required the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to bargain with the United Auto Workers. The casino has since shut down. But labor advocates point to the case -- as well as ones where he backed management at Sheldon Adelson's Las Vegas Venetian hotel and at SeaWorld after an orca killed a worker -- as evidence that Kavanaugh may hobble enforcement of workplace laws and the already-embattled union movement. 'Kavanaugh, along with Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch -- and Roberts along for the ride -- will comprise the most radical, anti-labor-law Supreme Court in my lifetime," said University of Wyoming law professor Michael Duff, a former attorney for the NLRB...." ...

... Elana Schor of Politico: "Sen. Rand Paul announced his support for Brett Kavanaugh on Monday, cutting short speculation over whether the Kentucky Republican might actually oppose ... Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee over his record on privacy." Mrs. McC: Two people who weren't speculating all that much were Akhilleus & Jeanne (see today's thread).

*****

** Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Trump and the publisher of The New York Times, A. G. Sulzberger, engaged in a fierce public clash on Sunday over Mr. Trump's threats against journalism, after Mr. Sulzberger said the president misrepresented a private meeting and Mr. Trump accused The Times and other papers of putting lives at risk wit irresponsible reporting. Mr. Trump said on Twitter that he and Mr. Sulzberger had discussed 'the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, "Enemy of the People." Sad!' In a five-paragraph statement issued two hours after the tweet, Mr. Sulzberger said he had accepted Mr. Trump's invitation for the July 20 meeting mainly to raise his concerns about the president's 'deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric.' 'I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous,' said Mr. Sulzberger, who became publisher of The Times on Jan. 1. 'I told him that although the phrase "fake news" is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists "the enemy of the people,"' Mr. Sulzberger continued. 'I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.'" Read on. ...

... Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Trump escalated his feud with the news media on Sunday, accusing journalists of being unpatriotic and endangering lives after the publisher of the New York Times disclosed that he had warned Trump recently that his inflammatory rhetoric about the media could lead to violence. Trump ... fired off a Twitter tirade Sunday afternoon from his New Jersey golf estate.... 'When the media -- driven insane by their Trump Derangement Syndrome -- reveals internal deliberations of our government, it truly puts the lives of many, not just journalists, at risk! Very unpatriotic!' Trump wrote." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I missed this WashPo story (July 25) by Isaac Stanley-Becker: "During his speech [to the VFW] in Kansas City, Mo., Trump lashed out at the news media, which prompted some in the audience to boo and heckle members of the press. Within hours, the VFW rebuked its members for taunting the press and distanced itself from the president's words. 'We were disappointed to hear some of our members boo the press during President Trump's remarks,' the organization said in a statement. 'We rely on the media to spread the VFW message, and CNN, NBC News, ABC News, Fox News, CBS News, and others on site today, were our invited guests. We were happy to have them there.' It was an awkward moment for an organization that has hosted presidents of both parties going back years without having to weigh in afterward to clarify its values." Rucker mentions the VFW's rebuking in the story linked above. ...

... David Boddinger of Splinter: "To the surprise of no one, Donald Trump proved once again his word is meaningless. On July 20, Trump privately met at the White House with New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger and Editorial Page Editor James Bennet, in what the Times described as a traditional meeting between a president and a newspaper publisher. The president's aides requested the meeting to be off the record. But the impulsive president couldn't keep his manic Twitter fingers at bay and broke the agreement on Sunday...." ...

... ** AND Across the Pond. Guardian: Editors: "The weekend report by the Commons digital, culture, media and sport committee on disinformation and 'fake news' is a report that deserves to be described as essential reading.... The government's reaction to it will be a defining statement of its own moral seriousness and worthiness to govern. The issues raised in the report are existential for parliamentary democracy and for rational public policy-making.... What is at stake is the threat from unregulated social media monopolies and from bold and well-funded activist conspiracies.... Yet what is ultimately at stake here concerns the future even more than the past. The report is a wake-up call about the failures of traditional governance.... But it can be tackled by absolute clarity about the threat and its impact in every future electoral contest...." --safari

Matt Shuham of TPM: "... Donald Trump capped a day of rambling tweets -- about the New York Times, 'consequences' for people who cross the border illegally and his bizarre and false claim that he has the 'highest Poll Numbers in the history of the Republican Party' -- with a string of provable falsehoods and unspecified accusations about special counsel Robert Mueller[:] 'There is No Collusion! The Robert Mueller Rigged Witch Hunt, headed now by 17 (increased from 13, including an Obama White House lawyer) Angry Democrats, was started by a fraudulent Dossier, paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC. Therefore, the Witch Hunt is an illegal Scam!' 'Is Robert Mueller ever going to release his conflicts of interest with respect to President Trump, including the fact that we had a very nasty & contentious business relationship, I turned him down to head the FBI (one day before appointment as S.C.) & Comey is his close friend..' '....Also, why is Mueller only appointing Angry Dems, some of whom have worked for Crooked Hillary, others, including himself, have worked for Obama....And why isn't Mueller looking at all of the criminal activity & real Russian Collusion on the Democrats side - Podesta, Dossier?'" Shuham debunks some of this nonsense.

Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump threatened Sunday to shut down the federal government this fall if Congress does not pass sweeping changes to immigration laws, including appropriating more public money to build his long-promised border wall. 'I would be willing to "shut down" government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall!' Trump tweeted. 'Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!' Trump's shutdown warning -- which he has made before -- escalates the stakes ahead of a Sept. 30 government funding deadline, raising the possibility of a political showdown before the Nov. 6 midterm elections that Republican congressional leaders had hoped to avoid. A funding fight also could prove a distraction from Republican efforts in the Senate to confirm Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh by Oct. 1. Trump faced immediate words of caution from top Republicans...." (An earlier version of this report was linked yesterday.)

Margaret Hartmann: "As if he didn't have enough on his plate between renovating Air Force One and pondering how to add a ballroom to the White House (and whatever presidential duties he squeezes in after 'executive time'), Axios reports that President Trump has been 'obsessed with the FBI building' for months. The J. Edgar Hoover Building has been added to his list of frequent rant topics, and Axios says he thinks micromanaging the project is a good way for his sidelined chief of staff to occupy his time.... But why is Trump so interested in providing his foes in the FBI with cushier headquarters? Theory 1: Trump Is an Architecture Snob.... Theory 2: Trump Has a Passion for Construction That Won't Be Denied.... Theory 3: FBI Headquarters Is Literally Falling Apart.... Theory 4: The FBI Building Mars the View From the Trump International Hotel[.]" Mrs. McC: I'm with Trump, et al., on the "aesthetics" of the Hoover building. They ain't none.

Sharon LaFraniere & Emily Baumgaertner of the New York Times: "Paul Manafort ... is scheduled to go to trial on financial fraud charges starting on Tuesday in United States District Court in Alexandria, Va. The main points to be aware of: It is the first trial stemming from charges brought by Robert S. Mueller III.... Prosecutors have said they do not intend to delve into questions about collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in this case, which focuses on how Mr. Manafort handled the money he earned working as a consultant in Ukraine. The trial is expected to last at least three weeks, and a second trial is scheduled to follow starting in September. In that case, Mr. Manafort will face related charges in United States District Court in the District of Columbia." The reporters run down FAQs about the cases against Manafort.

Obstruction of Justice, Congressional-Style. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: "... much of what President Trump's House Republican allies have been doing cannot be called oversight; it is political skullduggery intended to protect the president and undermine the investigation into Russian interference with our democracy.... The constitutional provision protects members of Congress from being sued or prosecuted for carrying out their official duties. However, there is nothing official in sneaking over to the White House to review classified materials and then publicly misrepresenting them [as Devin Nunes did]. There is nothing official in outing a confidential source.... Congressmen, Trump lawyers and White House aides conferring with intent to mislead investigators and the public, to disable the inquiry and/or to discredit law enforcement sounds an awful lot like obstruction of justice. Conversations or documents relating to that sort of conspiracy are in no way privileged. An investigation into Republican House members' antics is critical if we want to hold them responsible for actions injurious to our criminal justice system. It is also necessary in order to uncover who if anyone they were colluding with on the White House side of the operation."

Rudy Is Confused. Mitchell Alva of ABC News: "... Donald Trump's legal team [to-wit, Rudy Giuliani] is on the attack against ... Michael Cohen, saying he violated attorney-client privilege by releasing a taped conversation of him and Trump about payments to a former Playboy model. But Cohen attorney Lanny Davis called the attack baseless, and ABC News' chief legal analyst also said Trump's lawyers may have difficulty backing up their claim.... 'Mr. Giuliani seems to be confused,' Davis said. 'He expressly waived attorney-client privilege last week and repeatedly and inaccurately - as proven by the tape - talked and talked about the recording, forfeiting all confidentiality.' On 'This Week' Sunday, ABC Chief Legal Analyst Dan Abrams told Co-Anchor Martha Raddatz that Giuliani has 'waived attorney-client privilege' in regard to the tape." ...

... CBS News: "President Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani says that federal investigators have 183 'unique conversations' recorded by Michael Cohen, the president's former attorney and fixer. Mr. Trump is heard on one of those recordings, which has already been made public, Giuliani said on 'Face the Nation' Sunday. 'We know of something like 183 unique conversations on tape. One of those is with the president of the United States. That's the three-minute one involving the McDougal payment, AMI-McDougal payment,' Giuliani said, referring to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with the president. 'There are 12 others, maybe 11 or 12 others out of the 183, in which the president is discussed at any length by Cohen, mostly with reporters.' Giuliani said he doesn't know the contents of the recordings that don't include or mention Mr. Trump, but said federal prosecutors would have turned them over to him if they related to the president."

** E.J. Dionne: "... Putin's Russia is creating a new Reactionary International built around nationalism, a critique of modernity and a disdain for liberal democracy. Its central mission includes wrecking the Western alliance and the European Union by undermining a shared commitment to democratic values.... The dominant thrust of Putinism is toward the far right, because a nationalism rooted in Russian traditionalism cements his hold on power.... In a prescient March 2017 article in Time magazine, Alex Altman and Elizabeth Dias detailed Russia's 'new alliances with leading U.S. evangelicals, lawmakers and powerful interest groups like the NRA.' Evangelical Christians, they noted, found common ground with Putin, a strong foe of LGBTQ rights, on the basis of 'Moscow's nationalist and ultraconservative push -- led by the Russian Orthodox Church -- to make the post-Soviet nation a bulwark of Christianity amid the increasing secularization of the West.' Altman and Dias highlighted the role of Maria Butina, a Russian national who was in court last week following her indictment for conspiring to act as a foreign agent.... Republicans should bear in mind that disrupting Robert S. Mueller III's probe serves Putin's interests, not just Trump's." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: I missed Susan Glasser's commentary last week (New Yorker -- July 27) on Mike Pompeo's Helsinki-cleanup testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but it's still worth reading.

Frank Bruni of the New York Times: "There are problems with impeaching Donald Trump. A big one is the holy terror waiting in the wings. That would be Mike Pence, who mirrors the boss more than you realize. He's also self-infatuated. Also a bigot. Also a liar. Also cruel. To that brimming potpourri he adds two ingredients that Trump doesn't genuinely possess: the conviction that he's on a mission from God and a determination to mold the entire nation in the shape of his own faith, a regressive, repressive version of Christianity. Trade Trump for Pence and you go from kleptocracy to theocracy."

Politico staff run down a list of 52 "train wrecks" since the arrival of hapless Gen. John Kelly. --safari ...

... Eliana Johnson of Politico: "A year into the job, [John] Kelly's attempts to implement traditional processes in an untraditional White House have failed.... Many of Trump's friends and advisers have concluded the president doesn't really want a chief of staff -- and he has several confidants urging him to operate without one. But for this president, keeping Kelly around offers the best of both worlds: somebody to blame when things go awry but nobody fettering his freedom of action. Kelly, people around him say, no longer works to keep his mercurial boss on task or on message, with a Republican close to the White House referring to him as a 'chief of staff in name only.'" --safari

Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "In one of his first acts as President Trump's Veterans Affairs secretary, Robert Wilkie intends to reassign several high-ranking political appointees at the center of the agency's ongoing morale crisis and staffing exodus.... Wilkie, who will be sworn in Monday, wants to form his own leadership team..., and to ease lawmakers' continued concern that VA, historically a nonpartisan corner of the government, has become highly politicized. He discussed the proposed personnel moves with Trump in recent days aboard Air Force One, while en route to a veterans convention in Kansas City, Mo.... Announcements could come as soon as this week, pending approval from the White House Personnel Office." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Say what? A Trump cabinet member who wants to do a good job & actually drain Trump's swamp? This guy is not fitting in. Howevah, he has previously worked for Sens. Jesse Helms & Trent Lott, so I'm guessing he is not all bipartisany.

Jacob Soboroff & Julia Ainsley of NBC News: "The federal judge overseeing the court-ordered reunification of 2,551 migrant children separated from their parents ordered the Trump administration to provide detailed information in order to locate hundreds of what he called 'missing parents' the government had deemed ineligible for reunification. Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California on Friday mandated that the Trump administration turn over a list by Wednesday of all parents deemed 'ineligible' for reunification by the government, including those who have been deported, those who have been released into the United States and those who were not reunited because of criminal history." ...

KKK Steven Miller Runs TrumpenMerika. Dara Lind of Vox: "A lawyer claims that several fathers have been separated from their children by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for a second time.... The fathers say that shortly after being reunited with their teenage children, they were presented with forms that gave them three 'options' ... -- with the option for deporting the child along with the parent already selected.... Parents who attempted to cross that out and choose the second option -- being deported while allowing their children to pursue their case and stay in the US -- were yelled at by the ICE agents or told they simply were not allowed to select another option.... When, ultimately, the four fathers whose accounts are represented ... succeeded in selecting the option of getting deported on their own, they were prevented from saying goodbye to their children." --safari

... Addy Baird of ThinkProgress: "The Republican National Committee railed against the 'mainstream media' on Twitter Saturday afternoon, hitting the media for its 'negative' coverage of President Trump's immigration policies. 'New study from the Media Research Center finds that 92% of news coverage related to @realDonaldTrump';s immigration policy is negative,' the GOP tweeted.... It's hard to put a positive spin on stories about children telling their loved ones they're being abused by government officials in jail-like conditions." --safari

TMZ: "Donald Trump's [Hollywood] Walk of Fame star has been a lightning rod for violence, but it's going to ... stay put because cops and the group that manages the Walk of Fame don't want it 86'd.... As we reported, violence erupted Thursday night where protesters punched, kicked and otherwise abused their opponents. And, the star has been destroyed twice ... most recently this week when a Trump foe went at it with a pickax." (Also linked yesterday.)

William Saletan of Slate: "[Jim] Jordan -- one of the most sanctimonious ideologues in Congress -- is wading ever deeper into a cover-up of his own.... But now Jordan is going further. He's denying not just that he knew about abuse, but also that other coaches or administrators did.... But by escalating his denials, Jordan is exposing himself to ever greater legal and political jeopardy.... The OSU scandal is likely to get worse.... On July 20, OSU said its own investigators had already interviewed 'more than 100 former students who report firsthand accounts of sexual misconduct committed by Strauss.'... OSU's investigators interviewed Jordan on July 16..., and attorneys for plaintiffs in at least one of the lawsuits expect to call him as a witness." --safari

Congressional Races

George Packer of the New Yorker: "... three months from now, American democracy will be on the line. The midterm elections in November are the last remaining obstacle to President Trump's consolidation of power.... [Despite Republican advantages in every corner of government & social media,] public opinion still plays a central role in safeguarding democracy, and it becomes decisive through voting. Demonstrations can capture attention and build solidarity, books can provide arguments, social media can organize resistance. But if the Republicans don't suffer a serious defeat in November, Trump will go into 2020 with every structural advantage."

Meet Your GOP. Kelly Weill of The Daily Beast: "Corey Stewart, the Republican candidate for Senate in Virginia, has been shunned by his own party over his ties with neo-Confederate groups and his refusal to condemn white supremacist violence. That hasn't stopped several activists who express similarly extreme views from working for Stewart. One of Stewart's spokespersons, Rick Shaftan, tweeted that three majority-black U.S. cities were 'shitholes' and repeatedly warned against opening businesses in black neighborhoods.... Shaftan has also worked for a political action committee that supported Paul Nehlen, a far-right candidate running for a House seat from Wisconsin. Nehlen has long expressed anti-Muslim views, and beginning late 2017 started posting explicitly anti-Semitic content, including an image of Jews' heads on pikes in the Oval Office." --safari

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Now that President Trump has nominated Judge [Brett] Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the opacity of his testimony about [George W.] Bush's signing statements, including about the torture ban, is becoming a case study for Democrats' vehement arguments that the Senate must see his staff secretary files before any confirmation hearing.... Senate Republicans are pushing to move forward on the nomination without asking the National Archives to provide those documents.... Emails disclosed last year during the confirmation of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, another Bush administration veteran, revealed that there had been a high-level internal fight about what the signing statement on the torture ban should say. But those emails did not show how Judge Kavanaugh eventually presented the matter to Mr. Bush."

Dan Berman of CNN: "Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she hopes to stay on the Supreme Court until the age of 90. 'I'm now 85,' Ginsburg said on Sunday. 'My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five more years.' She has already hired law clerks for at least two more terms."

Deanna Paul of the Washington Post: "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit scolded a veteran judge for making sexist comments in his Houston courtroom, calling his remarks 'demeaning, inappropriate, and beneath the dignity' of his profession. U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes had been presiding over a criminal case against Simone Swenson, an adoption agency owner charged with fraud." Hughes dismissed the Swenson indictment because a female federal prosecutor turned over discovery documents at the last minute, although federal rules permit such late submissions. "Then he said, 'It was a lot simpler when you guys wore dark suits, white shirts and navy ties,' ... according to the 5th Circuit. 'We didn't let girls do it in the old days.'... In reinstating the Swenson case, the appellate court also took an unusual action: It ordered Hughes, now 76, to be replaced with a different judge." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Hughes is a Reagan appointee. Apparently he doesn't care much for women. Here's one of his rulings that shows up on his Wikipage: "In the case of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Houston Funding II, Ltd. et al...., Donnicia Venters, a mother represented by the EEOC, claimed that she was fired from Houston Funding due to her request to be allowed to pump breastmilk upon her return to work after giving birth.... Venters sued Houston Funding, alleging that the company had discriminated against her based on her sex.... Judge Hughes explained that breastfeeding is not covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.... '... lactation is not pregnancy, childbirth or a related medical condition. She gave birth on Dec. 11, 2009. After that day, she was no longer pregnant and her pregnancy-related conditions ended. Firing someone because of lactation or breast-pumping is not sex discrimination." Hughes was overruled by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals...." Trump will probably give the old codger a presidential medal. He thinks pumping breastmilk is "disgusting."

Rebecca Berg of CNN: "The influential conservative Koch network opened up their summer meeting with an emphasis on bipartisanship while also delivering sharp critiques of ... Donald Trump and his administration. 'The divisiveness of this White House is causing long-term damage,' said network co-chair Brian Hooks, who also chided elected officials who are 'following' his lead.The Koch network's influence, even among Republicans, has come into question in the conventional-wisdom-shredding era of Trump. The network has during the past year and a half fruitlessly pushed for comprehensive health care and immigration reform; and like other leading conservative groups, the network has been powerless to persuade the President to rethink his strategy on trade generally and tariffs specifically.... The network, led by billionaire Charles Koch, [is gearing] up to spend millions to protect Republican majorities in Washington." ...

... Michelle Lee of the Washington Post: "Top officials with the donor network affiliated with billionaire industrialist Charles Koch this weekend sought to distance the network from the Republican Party and President Trump, citing tariff and immigration policies and 'divisive' rhetoric out of Washington. At a gathering of hundreds of donors [in Colorado Springs]..., officials reiterated their plans to spend as much as $400 million on policy issues and political campaigns during the 2018 cycle. Earlier this year, they announced heavy spending aimed at helping Republicans to hold the Senate. But in a warning shot at Trump and the GOP, network co-chair Brian Hooks lamented 'tremendous lack of leadership' in Trump's Washington and the 'deterioration of the core institutions of society.'" ...

... Mercers 1 Kochs 0. Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon tore into the powerful Koch political network Sunday, accusing it of undermining President Donald Trump ahead of a midterm election that threatens to derail his presidency. 'What they have to do is shut up and get with the program, OK?' Bannon said in an interview with Politico. 'And here's the program: Ground game to support Trump's presidency and program, [and] victory on Nov. 6.'...'They were the first people to put the knife in his back,' he said. A Koch network spokesman, James Davis, shrugged off the criticism." --safari

Robert Booth of the Guardian: "A senior MP [Damian Collins] has called for a 'proper independent investigation' into claims Qatar launched a secret campaign to discredit its rivals to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.... [Qatar allegedly] hired a PR agency and former CIA operatives to disseminate fake propaganda about its main competitors, the USA and Australia..., included paying a professor $9,000 (£6,900) to write a damning report on the economic cost of a US World Cup, recruiting journalists and bloggers to promote negative stories in the US, Australian and international media, and organising grassroots protests at rugby matches in Australia.... A group of American PE teachers had been recruited to ask congressmen to oppose a US World Cup on the grounds the money would be better spent on high school sports.... Qatar's organising committee said it rejected the allegations." --safari

** Macroeconomics 101. Robert Reich in the Guardian: "The official rate of unemployment in America has plunged to a remarkably low 3.8%.... But the official rate hides more troubling realities: legions of college grads overqualified for their jobs, a growing number of contract workers with no job security, and an army of part-time workers desperate for full-time jobs. Almost 80% of Americans say they live from paycheck to paycheck.... Although the US economy continues to grow, most of the gains have been going to a relatively few top [earners]. America doesn't have a jobs crisis. It has a good jobs crisis. When Republicans delivered their $1.5tn tax cut last December they predicted a big wage boost for American workers. Forget it. Wages actually dropped in the second quarter of this year. Not even the current low rate of unemployment is forcing employers to raise wages." Read on.

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: If Democrats could distill Reich's longish essay into a campaign slogan, no one except those top earners & some blinded Trumpbots would vote Republican again.

Beyond the Beltway

Health Alert. E. A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "Michigan is once again grappling with water issues following a warning issued to two communities over dangerously high levels of industrial chemicals found in their drinking source. Residents of two Kalamazoo counties will receive bottled water on Friday morning after 'high amounts' of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, were detected.... A PFAS test yielded 1,410 parts per trillion in their drinking water, 20 times higher than the lifetime health advisory given by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).... In a news release circulated Thursday, the 3,000 residents of Parchment and Cooper Township were warned to 'immediately stop using their water for drinking, cooking, making baby formula and food, or rinsing fruits and vegetables.'" --safari

Way Beyond

Amrit Dhillon of the Guardian: "About 4 million people who live in the Indian border state of Assam have been excluded from a draft list of citizens, as Bengali-speaking Muslims fear that they will be sent to detention centres or deported.... Hundreds of thousands of people fled to India during Bangladesh's war of independence from Pakistan in the early 1970s. Most of them settled in Assam.... The list aims to identify every resident who can demonstrate roots in the state before March 1971. [This has been a] mammoth three-year-long exercise to prove the identities of 33 million people.... There have been longstanding social and communal tensions in the state, with locals campaigning against illegal immigrants -- a fight championed by the Hindu nationalist-led government of the prime minister, Narendra Modi. In 1983, scores of people were killed by machete-armed mobs intent on hounding out Muslim immigrants." --safari

"Arab Nato." Juan Cole: "The Trump White House is again hoping for a summit of Gulf Arab leaders this fall, after the last one collapsed. The idea is to establish a Middle East Strategic Alliance against Iran.... That the 'America first' guy who alienates even allies can craft a new alliance in the fractious Arab world seems a little far-fetched. So here are the problems with this Arab NATO.... The anti-Iran bloc of the old Gulf Cooperation Council ... is just Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE.... [They are] offset by Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, which are all pro-Iranian.... The UAE citizen population is about 1 million, and Bahrain is less than half that. Saudi Arabia probably actually only has 20 million citizens. The core of the Arab NATO is only about 22 million people. Iran's population is 80 million." --safari

The Commentariat -- July 29, 2018

Late Morning Update:

Washington Post: "'I would be willing to "shut down" government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall!' Trump tweeted. 'Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!' Trump's threat raises the stakes ahead of a Sept. 30 government funding deadline, a political showdown before the November midterms that Republican congressional leaders had hoped to avoid."... This is a developing story.."

Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "In one of his first acts as President Trump's Veterans Affairs secretary, Robert Wilkie intends to reassign several high-ranking political appointees at the center of the agency's ongoing morale crisis and staffing exodus.... Wilkie, who will be sworn in Monday, wants to form his own leadership team..., and to ease lawmakers' continued concern that VA, historically a nonpartisan corner of the government, has become highly politicized. He discussed the proposed personnel moves with Trump in recent days aboard Air Force One, while en route to a veterans convention in Kansas City, Mo.... Announcements could come as soon as this week, pending approval from the White House Personnel Office." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Say what? A Trump cabinet member who wants to do a good job & actually drain Trump's swamp? This guy is not fitting in. Howevah, he has previously worked for Sens. Jesse Helms & Trent Lott, so I'm guessing he is not all bipartisany.

TMZ: "Donald Trump's [Hollywood] Walk of Fame star has been a lightning rod for violence, but it's going to ... stay put because cops and the group that manages the Walk of Fame don't want it 86'd.... As we reported, violence erupted Thursday night where protesters punched, kicked and otherwise abused their opponents. nd, the star has been destroyed twice ... most recently this week when a Trump foe went at it with a pickax."

*****

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: "A closely watched British parliamentary committee examining Russia' exploitation of social media to try to influence elections has called for sweeping new regulations on tech companies, and has accused Facebook of providing 'disingenuous answers' to some questions while avoiding others 'to the point of obstruction. A report from the House of Commons panel, which is investigating 'fake news' on the internet, cited Facebook's resistance to disclosing information as evidence of the need for more stringent rules to hold social media giants accountable for content.... The panel -- the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee -- collaborated with the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington, which on Friday announced that it would hold its own hearing in the coming week on foreign influence operations over social media." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... ** The Big Picture. Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post: "A wing of the Republican Party is preparing to double down and support the Russian autocracy, which it believes, mistakenly, is 'Christian.' While the Pentagon and parts of the bureaucracy -- the State Department, the FBI -- certainly understand the need to push back in Europe, the White House certainly does not... Authoritarian tactics, from pressure on the media to pressure on the courts, clearly appeal to the party's base. This matters because [Mariia] Butina is at most the tip of the iceberg, one of the sillier, more junior players in a broader game. Far more important are Russian oligarchs bearing bribes or Russian hackers probing vulnerabilities in our political system as well as our electrical grid. To push back against them, as well as their equivalents from the rest of the autocratic world, we will need not only to catch the odd agent but also to make our political funding systems more transparent, to write new laws banning shell companies and money laundering, and to end the manipulation of social media. It took more than a generation for Americans to reject the temptations of communist authoritarianism; it will take more than a generation before we have defeated kleptocratic authoritarianism too -- if we still can." (Also linked yesterday.)...

... The Clean-up Crew

     ... (Defense 1) Conspiring with Russian Ops Is No Big Deal. John Bowden of The Hill: "Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Saturday downplayed renewed scrutiny over whether President Trump knew in advance about his son's meeting with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election, saying 'nobody's going to be surprised.' Issa was pressed by Fox News's Neil Cavuto.... 'You don't think this has any long-term impact?'...'He wouldn't be the first politician, or president for that matter, to maybe just misrepresent things?' [Cavuto asked]. 'Businessmen listen to almost everyone who might be helpful, and by the way, they make pragmatic decisions about how to make bad stories go away,' Issa replied." --safari ...

     ... (Defense 2) Cohen & Davis Doctored the Tape. Ellison Barber & Matt Leach of Fox "News": "... Rudy Giuliani tells Fox News two experts and retired FBI agents have analyzed the secretly recorded Trump-Cohen tape and believe it was 'played' with. 'Now that we've seen the full scope of [Michael] Cohen and Lanny Davis' deception, we don't trust anything,' Giuliani said.... According to Giuliani, analysts say the public audio is a 'tape of a tape,' and because of that, they are unable to determine if Cohen cut off the recording in the room, in real time, or altered and/or erased parts of it at a later date." Mrs. McC: This of course is a subset of the overarching defense of all things Trump: "Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening." Also, similar to Trump's claim that the "Access Hollywood" tape may be fake.

Maureen Dowd: "Trump's like a mobster, [Trump biographer Michael] D'Antonio said, in the sense that he 'does not believe that anyone is honest. He doesn't believe that your motivations have anything to do with right and wrong and public service. It's all about self-interest and a war of all against all. He's turning America into Mulberry Street in the '20s, where you meet your co-conspirators in the back of the candy store.'" Mrs. McC: The pathetic part: this will probably be DiJit's favorite MoDo column evah. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: My late husband, BTW, is yelling from the ether as he hears intelligent people taking to the airwaves & describing Giuliani as Trump's consigliere, which they pronounce "con-sig-lee-air-ee." It s/b more like "cone-seal-yair-ay."

Trump Family Values, Deleted. Nick Miroff, et al., of the Washington Post: "Compounding failures to record, classify and keep track of migrant parents and children pulled apart by President Trump's 'zero tolerance' border crackdown were at the core of what is now widely regarded as one of the biggest debacles of his presidency. The rapid implementation and sudden reversal of the policy whiplashed multiple federal agencies, forcing the activation of an HHS command center ordinarily used to handle hurricanes and other catastrophes. After his 30-day deadline to reunite [what the command center called] the 'deleted' families passed Thursday, U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw lambasted the government for its lack of preparation and coordination. 'There were three agencies, and each was like its own stovepipe. Each had its own boss, and they did not communicate,' Sabraw said Friday at a court hearing in San Diego.... The government did not view the families as a discrete group or devise a special plan to reunite them, until Sabraw ordered that it be done." ...

... So this is Trump's response to "one of the biggest debacles of his presidency": "Democrats, who want Open Borders and care little about Crime, are incompetent, but they have the Fake News Media almost totally on their side! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet Saturday

Now that a court has told Trump he can't block people from his Twitter feed, I see a lot of ordinary people are giving him grief on the feed. Please feel free to join them. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

Thomas Gibbons-Neff & Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "The Trump administration is urging American-backed Afghan troops to retreat from sparsely populated areas of the country, officials said, all but ensuring the Taliban will remain in control of vast stretches of the country. The approach is outlined in a previously undisclosed part of the war strategy that President Trump announced last year, according to three officials who described the documents to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity. It is meant to protect military forces from attacks at isolated and vulnerable outposts, and focuses on protecting cities such as Kabul, the capital, and other population centers. The withdrawal resembles strategies embraced by both the Bush and Obama administrations that have started and stuttered over the nearly 17-year war. It will effectively ensure that the Taliban and other insurgent groups will hold on to territory that they have already seized, leaving the government in Kabul to safeguard the capital and cities such as Kandahar, Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad."

Nick Turse of The Intercept: "Press accounts have suggested that the number of special operators on the front lines [in Africa] has been reduced, with the head of U.S. Special Operations forces in Africa directing his troops to take fewer risks. At the same time, a 'sweeping Pentagon review' of special ops missions on the continent may result in drastic cuts in the number of commandos operating there.... While the review was reportedly ordered this spring and troop reductions may be coming, there is no evidence yet of massive cuts, gradual reductions, or any downsizing whatsoever.... In 2006..., just 1 percent of all U.S. commandos deployed overseas were in Africa.... Today, more U.S. commandos are deployed to Africa than to any other region of the world except the Middle East." --safari

Government (In)action. Luke Barnes of ThinkProgress: "On Friday, President Donald Trump finally chaired a meeting of his National Security Council devoted explicitly to combating electoral interference in the United States. The meeting ... reportedly lasted less than an hour and ended with no new directives.... The State Department, meanwhile, was given $120 million to combat election meddling -- and has spent none of it. But current and former officials familiar with the Trump administration's response to electoral meddling told NBC News that in the White House there remains no coherent strategy, no single agency or person in charge.... Instead, over the course of barely an hour, those present mainly re-hashed activities that have already been undertaken." --safari

Allan Sloan of the Washington Post demonstrates how Trump's tax-and-spend policies favor Republican-leaning states over blue states. For some reason, Sloan does think this is an unintended result. He points out how these policies pit Americans against Americans. Mrs. McC: That's the idea, too, isn't it? (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Former USDA administrator Christopher Gibbs in the Sidney Daily News: "Let me be clear. I want to be supportive of the president and his policies.... But the president's trade war, now being supported by hush money to keep agriculture sedated, is a bridge too far for me.... Let me tell you a riddle. 'I slept with a billionaire because he said he loved me. I expected to make love, but in the morning I realized I was getting screwed. When I went to tell the world, I was offered cash to keep my mouth shut.' Who am I? No, I'm not a model or someone named Stormy. I'm the American farmer." --safari

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Trump said Friday that he plans to spends almost all of his time this fall campaigning for the most vulnerable Republican congressional candidates in the midterm elections, a strategy that would have him in many districts where endangered lawmakers in his own party regard him as a liability.... '"I'll go six or seven days a week when we're 60 days out...,'" Trump told Sean Hannity. Mrs. McC: This story has been up for about 24 hours, & I didn't bother to link it till it occurred to me what it means: Trump has zero interest in his day job, and he's not even going to show up for work for two months unless there's some ceremony or visiting dignitary (or dictator) where he can show off. And of course Trump's idea of "campaigning for ... congressional candidates" is to go out into the hinterlands, maybe introduce the candidates, then talk non-stop about himself for about an hour.

Javanka Is/Are Back. Maggie Haberman & Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "... as one staff member after another has disappointed him and has departed or been dispatched, Mr. Trump has retreated into the familiarity of his family -- his daughter, above all, and eventually, her husband. As Mr. Trump, cut off from dissenting voices and convinced of his own popularity, has become more emboldened, so have his daughter and son-in-law." Mrs. McC: Great, because what this country needs is a selfish, incompetent, know-nothing president* whose closest advisors are his know-nothing relatives. ...

... BUT Alice Ollstein of TPM notes, "The New York Times reported Saturday that President Donald Trump's relationship with his son-in-law Jared Kushner has deteriorated over the past few months, and that the president now routinely complains that 'Jared hasn't been so good for me' and that he could have had NFL star Tom Brady as a son-in-law instead." ...

... All the Best People, Ctd. Hiroko Tabuchi & Tryggvi Adalbjornsson of the New York Times: Peter C. Wright, "the lawyer nominated to run the Superfund toxic cleanup program, is steeped in the complexities of restoring polluted rivers and chemical dumps. He spent more than a decade on one of the nation's most extensive cleanups, one involving Dow Chemical's sprawling headquarters in Midland, Mich. But while he led Dow's legal strategy there, the chemical giant was accused by regulators, and in one case a Dow engineer, of submitting disputed data, misrepresenting scientific evidence and delaying cleanup, according to internal documents and court records as well as interviews with more than a dozen people involved in the project.... Wright was nominated in March by President Trump to be assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency overseeing the Superfund program.... He is already working at the agency in an advisory role as he awaits congressional approval.... He spent 19 years at Dow ... and once described himself in a court deposition as 'the company's dioxin lawyer.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Drain the swamp? Ha! Trump is filling it with toxic sludge. You might suspect he asks his staff to come up with the worst possible person for every job, then gives the country -- and in this case Mother Earth, too -- the finger. ...

... All the Best People, Ctd. Robert O'Harrow of the Washington Post: "The White House has assumed control over hiring at a small federal agency that promotes economic growth in poor countries, installing political allies and loyalists in appointed jobs intended for development experts, according to documents and interviews. Until the Trump administration, only the chief executive and several other top officials of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) were selected by the White House.... But starting last year, the White House began naming political appointees to the lower-level positions.... In a statement to The Post, [Sen. Robert] Menendez [D-NJ] ... said..., 'Congress gave MCC special hiring authority so that it could operate with efficiency and effectiveness, not so that it could become a dumping ground for unqualified partisan loyalists and lackeys.'..."

Fake Official Reports. Dan Diamond of Politico: "While every administration puts its imprint on the executive branch and promotes ideas that advance its own agenda, this one has ventured several steps further -- from scrubbing links to climate change studies from an Environmental Protection Agency website to canceling an Interior Department study on coal mining risks and suppressing reports on water contamination and the dangers of formaldehyde. Inside the Health and Human Services policy research shop, staffers say the political pressures to tailor facts to fit Trump's message have been unprecedented.... [One] report suggesting that millions more people would get health coverage if Obamacare were rolled back -- a finding at odds with nearly every independent analysis -- was widely mocked and produced over the objections of career staff...." Another got a "false" rating from PolitiFact."

The "Mulvaney Discount." David Dayen of The Intercept: "There's a hot new trend in Donald Trump's Washington: the 'Mulvaney discount.' After pausing enforcement work when Acting Director Mick Mulvaney took over, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been on a relative tear.... But in at least three [civil settlements], CFPB has explicitly reduced the fine handed down against corporate offenders to a fraction of the initial amount.... 'A pattern is emerging of greater willingness [to discount fines] than we saw in bureau cases in the past,' said Christopher Peterson, former enforcement counsel of the CFPB during the Obama administration.... Peterson could only remember a couple of cases during the previous five years of the bureau's existence when fines were reduced. And in those rare cases, CFPB did so to maximize restitution to victims of fraud and abuse -- the smaller fine left more money for victims. Here, those victims are often being shortchanged." --safari (Also linked yesterday.)

The Literary Experience in the Age of Trump :

     ... One lady is surprised to see Spicer in a bookstore: "The books have spines; Sean does not."

Josh Barro of Business Insider: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren's recent remark that she is a 'capitalist to my bones' is being treated as some kind of news, even though it is consistent with the policies and rhetoric the liberal Massachusetts senator has espoused for her entire career. Warren's major policy project is to make markets work right for regular people. If you want to make markets work well, then obviously you are in favor of markets and capitalism.... Amusingly, one of the politicians in America who best understands the political appeal of this approach is Donald Trump.... But ... his definition of 'where markets have gone wrong' is centered around his personal self-interest.... [And] his public pronouncements are rarely followed up by policy action.... Warren is better positioned than almost any Democrat to point out Trump's hollow approach to fixing markets." Mrs. McC: Barro is (or was) a Republican.

"Capitalism is Awesome," Ctd. Michelle Conlin of Reuters: "Invitation Homes pitches itself as a singular landlord providing unprecedented ease and comfort for renters of its tens of thousands of single-family homes.... As a Blackstone vehicle, Invitation Homes led Wall Street's charge into the single-family-home rental business, snapping up houses at fire-sale prices. After its merger last November with Starwood Waypoint Homes, another private-equity-backed foray into the market, Invitation Homes became the largest landlord of single-family homes in the United States by number of rental units.... Critics of Wall Street's push into the rental market say ... Invitation Homes, like some of its Wall Street-backed peers, adheres to a business model that pressures it to lean hard on tenants to satisfy investors.... Industry critics say that to keep payments to bond investors rolling, companies like Invitation Homes must minimize maintenance costs and maximize rents and fees." A long piece filled with tenant horror stories. --safari (Also linked yesterday.)

Way Beyond

Emily Schultheis of The Atlantic: "It is the final stretch of campaign season in Cambodia.... Yet somehow it still doesn't feel like a parliamentary election is happening on Sunday in this country of 16 million. In large part, that's because there are effectively no longer any independent news outlets left in Cambodia to cover it.... Cambodia is hardly the only country in Southeast Asia experiencing a crackdown on the free press. Never known as a bastion of journalistic freedom, the region has taken a sharply repressive turn, from the jailing of two Reuters journalists in Myanmar, to assaults from armies of online trolls in the Philippines, to the now-infamous Anti-Fake News Act in Malaysia, which imposed harsh penalties on anyone discovered to be spreading what the government deemed 'fake news.'"--safari

News Lede

Los Angeles Times: "Two young children and their great-grandmother are the latest victims of a massive and fast-moving wildfire in Shasta County[, California,] that officials acknowledged Saturday they were making little progress in controlling.... With the unyielding 100-plus degree temperatures and bone-dry vegetation, authorities said there was no end in sight to the fire and expressed particular alarm about its rapid expansion. Between Friday night and Saturday morning, the fire doubled in size. Despite the efforts of 3,400 firefighters aided by bulldozers and helicopters throughout Saturday , the blaze continued spreading toward residential areas west and south of downtown Redding. As of Sunday morning, the blaze had burned 89,000 acres and was only 5% contained, authorities said." At least five people have been killed in the fire. "Authorities are investigating 13 other missing persons cases connected to the fire."

The Commentariat -- July 28, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

The "Mulvaney Discount". David Dayen of The Intercept: "There's a hot new trend in Donald Trump's Washington: the 'Mulvaney discount.' After pausing enforcement work when Acting Director Mick Mulvaney took over, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been on a relative tear.... But in at least three [civil settlements], CFPB has explicitly reduced the fine handed down against corporate offenders to a fraction of the initial amount.... 'A pattern is emerging of greater willingness [to discount fines] than we saw in bureau cases in the past,' said Christopher Peterson, former enforcement counsel of the CFPB during the Obama administration.... Peterson could only remember a couple of cases during the previous five years of the bureau's existence when fines were reduced. And in those rare cases, CFPB did so to maximize restitution to victims of fraud and abuse -- the smaller fine left more money for victims. Here, those victims are often being shortchanged." --safari

What is so disqualifying in [Brett Kavanaugh's] record from the White House that they would accede to the administration's wishes and ignore the precedent Republicans set in demanding exhaustive document productions by Obama nominees? -- Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Judiciary Committee member ...

... Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is escalating a battle with Democrats over documents tied to Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination, requesting that only some of the papers demanded by the minority be turned over. Grassley in a letter sent on behalf of the Judiciary Committee requested documents tied to Kavanaugh's work as a White House lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, but not tied to his work as staff secretary for the Bush White House. Democrats on the Judiciary Committee immediately criticized Grassley's decision, which came after days of rhetorical firefighting and a flurry of letters between senators.... Democrats argue documents from Kavanaugh's time as staff secretary are crucial for understanding his thinking on some of the most controversial policies of the Bush administration, including torture and surveillance."

David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: "A closely watched British parliamentary committee examining Russia’s exploitation of social media to try to influence elections has called for sweeping new regulations on tech companies, and has accused Facebook of providing 'disingenuous answers' to some questions while avoiding others 'to the point of obstruction. A report from the House of Commons panel, which is investigating 'fake news' on the internet, cited Facebook's resistance to disclosing information as evidence of the need for more stringent rules to hold social media giants accountable for content.... The panel -- the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee -- collaborated with the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington, which on Friday announced that it would hold its own hearing in the coming week on foreign influence operations over social media." ...

... ** The Big Picture. Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post: "A wing of the Republican Party is preparing to double down and support the Russian autocracy, which it believes, mistakenly, is 'Christian.' While the Pentagon and parts of the bureaucracy -- the State Department, the FBI -- certainly understand the need to push back in Europe, the White House certainly does not... Authoritarian tactics, from pressure on the media to pressure on the courts, clearly appeal to the party's base. This matters because [Mariia] Butina is at most the tip of the iceberg, one of the sillier, more junior players in a broader game. Far more important are Russian oligarchs bearing bribes or Russian hackers probing vulnerabilities in our political system as well as our electrical grid. To push back against them, as well as their equivalents from the rest of the autocratic world, we will need not only to catch the odd agent but also to make our political funding systems more transparent, to write new laws banning shell companies and money laundering, and to end the manipulation of social media. It took more than a generation for Americans to reject the temptations of communist authoritarianism; it will take more than a generation before we have defeated kleptocratic authoritarianism too -- if we still can."

Allan Sloan of the Washington Post demonstrates how Trump's tax-and-spend policies favor Republican-leaning states over blue states. For some reason, Sloan does think this is an unintended result. He points out how these policies pit Americans against Americans. Mrs. McC: That's the idea, too, isn't it?

"Capitalism is Awesome" Ctd. Michelle Conlin of Reuters: "Invitation Homes pitches itself as a singular landlord providing unprecedented ease and comfort for renters of its tens of thousands of single-family homes...As a Blackstone vehicle, Invitation Homes led Wall Street's charge into the single-family-home rental business, snapping up houses at fire-sale prices. After its merger last November with Starwood Waypoint Homes, another private-equity-backed foray into the market, Invitation Homes became the largest landlord of single-family homes in the United States by number of rental units...Affordable-housing advocates, real estate professionals and other critics of Wall Street's push into the rental market say.... Invitation Homes, like some of its Wall Street-backed peers, adheres to a business model that pressures it to lean hard on tenants to satisfy investors.... Industry critics say that to keep payments to bond investors rolling, companies like Invitation Homes must minimize maintenance costs and maximize rents and fees." A long piece filled with tenant horror stories. --safari

*****

Heather Long of the Washington Post: President "Trump cheered the [second-quarter economic] numbers Friday, holding an impromptu press conference outside the White House touting the 'amazing' growth from his tax and trade policies.... But economists cautioned the higher growth is likely a blip." See also NYT story in yesterday's Ledes. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Eric Levitz of New York: "... when the Commerce Department revealed Friday that the U.S. economy had grown 4.1 percent last quarter..., Trump assured Sean Hannity that the economy is 'going to get better'; that he will cut the trade deficit in half; deliver 8-to-9 percent GDP growth; and turn the projected $1 trillion budget deficit into a surplus. Conventional wisdom suggests that it is politically unwise for a president to promise a historically unprecedented (and nigh-mathematically impossible) economic boom. But when one remembers that Trump is perfectly capable of claiming credit for things that did not actually happen, his gambit starts to make a bit more sense." ...

... Eric Levitz: "That 4.1 percent growth rate is partially the product of temporary distortions in patterns of trade, and an ephemeral uptick in government spending.... Trump's various protectionist measures spurred a boom for U.S. exporters -- because foreign buyers were eager to stock up on American goods before their governments slapped retaliatory tariffs on such products.... Similarly, Congress's budget deal increased federal outlays by 3.5 percent in the second quarter, which also provided a short-term boost to GDP. Elevated levels of government spending should continue for a while longer, but economists expect its impact on growth to peak later this year. Meanwhile, private investment actually fell over the second quarter -- a development that contradicts the GOP's economic promises.... The Commerce Department's report offers some unambiguously good news. Consumer spending rose by 4 percent in the second quarter. And the report's revisions of 2017 economic data suggest that American households saved significantly more last year than previously believed...."

Trump Attacks the First Amendment, Ctd. Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump has sought repeatedly to punish journalists for the way they ask him questions, directing White House staff to ban those reporters from covering official events or to revoke their press credentials, according to several current and former administration officials. At various moments throughout his presidency, Trump has vented angrily to aides about what he considers disrespectful behavior and impertinent questions from reporters in the Oval Office and in other venues. He has also asked that retaliatory action be taken against them.... Until this week, the officials said, Trump's senior aides have resisted carrying out his directives. They convinced him that moves to restrict media access could backfire and further strain the White House's fraught relationship with the press corps, whose members the president routinely derides as 'fake news' and 'dishonest people.' On Wednesday, however, newly installed Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Shine and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders took action against CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins.... The move revealed a fresh willingness inside the West Wing to execute the president's wishes to punish reporters. It immediately drew a chorus of protest throughout the media, including from Fox News Channel, Trump's favorite network and Shine's former employer."

Putin Trolls Trump. Rebecca Morin of Politico: "Russia President Vladimir Putin on Friday said he invited ... Donald Trump to Russia for another face-to-face meeting -- a meeting the White House says Trump is open to.... The announcement comes two days after the White House announced it is delaying a second meeting between the two leaders." ...

... Jeff Stein of Newsweek: "Signs are that Vladimir Putin may already be hedging his bets on Donald Trump as a reliable tool for advancing several of Russia's key goals, including his drive to get U.S. sanctions lifted, sow chaos in America's elections and undermine NATO and the European Union, experts say. Following the controversial Helsinki summit between the Russian and American presidents, Moscow's media commentators greeted Trump's deference toward Putin with a mix of concern, pity and ridicule, none of which could have been uttered without the Kremlin's approval, , says Ukrainian-born Julia Davis, an expert on Russian propaganda." ...

... Fred Kaplan of Slate: "The latest example of seeking a rational template for Trump's bizarre behavior, in this case his Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is an article in the Daily Beast, reporting that it was Henry Kissinger who pushed Trump to revive good relations with Russia in order 'to contain a rising China.... It is hard to see how a budding U.S.-Russian alliance would contain China at all.... It's worth noting that Daily Beast's sources are mainly Trump administration officials. Their aim is clearly to present the president's actions as driven not just by a smart, rational strategy but by a Kissingerian smart rational strategy. Good luck on that.... Robert Mueller is looking into less intellectual roots for Trump's kowtowing toward Moscow."

Ken Dilanian of NBC News: "After nearly two years of calling Russian election interference a hoax and its investigation a witch hunt..., Donald Trump on Friday presided over the first National Security Council meeting devoted to defending American democracy from foreign manipulation.... But current and former officials tell NBC News that 19 months into his presidency, there is no coherent Trump administration strategy to combat foreign election interference -- and no single person or agency in charge. In [a] statement, the White House took issue with that, saying a strategy was put in motion when Trump took office. No such strategy has been made public -- or even mentioned before.... 'In a normal White House, there would be a point person on the National Security Council, to coordinate all the different agencies and to work with the states and the social media companies to make sure our electoral systems aren't so vulnerable to attack,' Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia ... told NBC News." ...

... Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "President Trump chaired a meeting Friday of his most senior national security advisers to discuss the administration's effort to safeguard November's elections from Russian interference, the first such meeting he's led on the matter, but issued no new directives to counter or deter the threat.... The meeting focused on the activities undertaken so far.... The meeting, which lasted less than an hour, covered all the activities by federal agencies to help state and local election officials, and to investigate and hold accountable Russian hackers seeking to undermine American democracy.... Ranking [House] Democrats on ... the Homeland Security, House Administration, Oversight and Government Reform, and Judiciary committees ... called on the White House to produce a 'solid plan of action.'"

Tom Hamburger, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Friday issued a fresh rebuttal against his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, maintaining that he did not know in advance about a June 2016 meeting in which Russians had promised to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton.... Cohen's credibility was immediately challenged Thursday evening by the president's current lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.... When asked if Trump would be willing to talk about the Russian meeting with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Giuliani said, 'I still have my doubts about the people around Mueller' and said the president's team remained undecided about whether to agree to a sit-down conversation with federal investigators about that topic and others. 'The president is willing to talk about anything, but it'd be wrong to subject him to that,' Giuliani said, adding that the Russian meeting 'hasn't come up in our conversations' with Mueller and his team." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... William Saletan of Slate points out how tentative were Rudy Giuliani's denials of Michael Cohen's claim that Donald Trump pre-approved the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russian operatives. ...

... Ramsey Touchberry of Newsweek: "Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are calling on Donald Trump Jr. to reappear before the committee and testify -- this time in public [and under oath]. This follows Thursday night's bombshell report that Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, claims the president knew in advance about a 2016 meeting between his aides and a Russian delegation offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont says Cohen's claims 'raise important questions,' according to NBC News.... Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein ... [said in] a statement ... that ... if recent reports were true, 'it would suggest that Donald Trump Jr. may have misled Judiciary Committee staff about the meeting when he was interviewed last fall. It further demonstrates the need to bring him before the committee to answer our questions.'" ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Cohen's apparent testimony merely fleshes the skeleton of a story we already knew. Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg has said, in an interview with Jake Tapper, that Trump knew about the meeting[.]... Steve Bannon has said the same thing. ('The chance that Don. Jr did not walk these Jumos up to his father's office on the 26th floor is zero.')... The night the meeting was set up (but before it took place), Trump excitedly told a crowd, 'I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we're going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons. I think you're going to find it very informative and very, very interesting.' After the meeting failed to produce the hoped-for dirt, the promised speech did not take place.... Trump, who has lied about his dealings with Russia so many times that his word has grown completely worthless, has to resort to the defense of pulling down the value of hostile witnesses to his own level.... The effort to impugn Cohen's credibility naturally impeaches Trump's own credibility." Chait just can't figure out why -- if Trump did nothing wrong -- he keeps lying about this stuff. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Brian Beutler of Crooked: "... someone is lying. And it's probably the guy who's been lying about the meeting all along. If forced to pick a side, I would pick Cohen's.... It ... strains credulity that Trump wouldn't know about a meeting that all of his campaign principals attended, or that he has walked back his initial denial over and over again, and the truth just happens to coincide on the last possible version of events that spares Trump himself any guilt.... The only thing we need to decide whose storyline is more plausible is to hold generous interpretations of both narratives up against one another and pick the one that fits the facts we already know most cleanly. It's Cohen's by a mile." ...

... AND There's This. Josh Marshall: "Mueller's investigators have focused closely on the fact that President Trump dictated a statement which was released in the name of his son Don Jr. about the meeting. It was a false cover story which quickly fell apart. He claimed [the meeting] was about adoptions.... Trump dictated that false statement, with the cover story about adoptions only hours after he had a one on one meeting with Vladimir Putin (with no other US persons involved) which was apparently also about adoptions.... If you put all this information together, there's a pretty strong case to be made that not only did President Trump know about the Trump Tower meeting in advance but that he concocted his false cover story with the assistance of Vladimir Putin." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Why, it's almost as if Vlad has been setting up Trump all along.

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Prosecutors plan to make their tax and bank fraud case against Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, by calling a string of accountants, bankers and luxury-goods vendors before a jury to demonstrate that Manafort's extravagant lifestyle was funded by offshore accounts he never disclosed or paid taxes on, a new witness list made public Friday indicates. Complying with a judge's order, special counsel Robert Mueller's team submitted a roster of 35 witnesses the prosecution may call at the longtime lobbyist and political consultant's trial, set to kick off next week." Gerstein names some of the potential witnesses. ...

... Theodoric Meyer of Politico: "New documents filed in court by Paul Manafort's lawyers appear to contradict his legal team's own claims that the former Trump campaign chairman's team only lobbied on behalf of the Ukrainian government in Europe.... According to prosecutors, Manafort and his longtime associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, pressed those involved in the lobbying campaign to stress that the effort was focused exclusively on the European Union.... Thursday';s documents ... seem to contradict Kilimnik's assertion that the Hapsburg group never lobbied in Washington."

Ken Klippenstein of TYT: "Close Trump associates have been quietly meeting with a controversial Iranian opposition group that was only recently removed from the U.S. terror list, TYT has learned. Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, and John Bolton, Trump's National Security Advisor, met with the group five separate times since Trump's inauguration, according to Justice Department documents reviewed by TYT. The documents were submitted to the Justice Department by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) -- MEK-s political wing -- under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, between July 20, 2017 and June 27, 2018. That group, the People's Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK for short, was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department until 2012, at which point it was removed from the State Department's terror list after an intense lobbying effort. The group was on the terror list for good reason: MEK has killed several American servicemembers and contractors; attempted to assassinate a top U.S. general; and attempted to kidnap the U.S. Ambassador to Iran, Douglas MacArthur II."

Donna Borak & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "The Trump administration is looking into lifting sanctions against a major Russian aluminum company founded by one of Vladimir Putin's closest allies. The Treasur Department is considering relieving Rusal of penalties even though its former owner, oligarch Oleg Deripaska, was sanctioned this year by the US in an attempt to punish the Kremlin for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election. The possible relief for Rusal comes as ... Donald Trump continues to deal with the fallout from his Helsinki summit with the Russian president.... Deripaska also has financial ties to Paul Manafort.... Democrats and Republicans urged Trump to ramp up sanctions -- not dial them back -- and strike at even more sectors of the Russian economy.... While seeking sanctions relief, Rusal has taken steps to water down Deripaska's involvement in the company.... The Treasury Department said a few weeks later that it was considering removing sanctions against the massive aluminum company after a surge in aluminum prices." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So let's see how this works. (1) Congress kinda forces Treasury to impose sanctions on Putin-pal Deripaska's aluminum company. (2) Trump imposes tariffs on aluminum imports from key allies Canada, Mexico & the EU, causing aluminum prices in the U.S. rise. (3) Treasury plans to remove sanctions on Russian aluminum company with ties to Putin because of rising aluminum prices. I'm sure there's nothing nefarious going on here -- like, say, Trump significantly altered world markets to help Putin.

Jonathan Blitzer of the New Yorker: "Earlier this week, attorneys with the Department of Justice provided [federal Judge Dana] Sabraw with a list of nine hundred and fourteen parents who were, in the words of a court filing, 'either not eligible, or not yet known to be eligible, for reunification.'... Some have been accused or convicted of a crime; others appear to have already been deported.... Still more, the government said, required 'further evaluation.'... On Wednesday night, the A.C.L.U. accused the Administration of planning to deport scores of parents immediately after they have been reunited with their children, before they could consult with lawyers to figure out what was best for them or their families. It's the latest crisis in Sabraw's court. In the meantime, the families whom the government has written off as 'ineligible' will continued to languish apart." ...

... ** Michael Grabell & Topher Sanders of ProPublica: "Using state public records laws, ProPublica has obtained police reports and call logs concerning more than 70 of the approximately 100 immigrant youth shelters run by the U.S. Health and Human Services department's Office of Refugee Resettlement.... [T]he records challenge the Trump administration's assertion that the shelters are safe havens for children. The reports document hundreds of allegations of sexual offenses, fights and missing children.... 'If you're a predator, it's a gold mine,' said Lisa Fortuna, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center. 'You have full access and then you have kids that have already had this history of being victimized.'" --safari ...

... Ari Honarvar of The Nation: "According to immigrant-rights advocates, a 6-year-old girl separated from her mother under the Trump administration's 'zero-tolerance' immigration policy was sexually abused while at an Arizona detention facility run by Southwest Key Programs. The child was then made to sign a form acknowledging that she was told to maintain her distance from her alleged abuser, who is an older child being held at the same detention facility. The girl, who is only identified by the initials D.L., and her mother had been fleeing gang violence in their native Guatemala." --safari

"Affordable Housing? Meh." -- HUD Secretary. Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "The country is in the grips of an escalating housing affordability crisis. Millions of low-income Americans are paying 70 percent or more of their incomes for shelter, while rents continue to rise and construction of affordable rental apartments lags far behind the need. The Trump administration's main policy response, unveiled this spring by Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, is a plan to triple rents for about 712,000 of the poorest tenants receiving federal housing aid and loosen the cap on rents on 4.5 million households enrolled in federal voucher and public housing programs nationwide.... As city and state officials and members of both parties clamor for the federal government to help, Mr. Carson has privately told aides that he views the shortage of affordable housing as regrettable, but as essentially a local problem.... When congressional Democrats and Republicans scrambled to save his department's budget and rescue an endangered tax credit that accounts for nine out of 10 affordable housing developments built in the country Mr. Carson sat on the sidelines...."

Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "In his first three weeks on the job, Andrew Wheeler, the acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has sought to halt two major efforts by his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, to roll back environmental regulations, arguing that the policies are legally vulnerable, according to people who have heard his reasoning. Mr. Wheeler's actions signal a strategic shift at the E.P.A., an agency at the heart of President Trump's push to strip away regulations on industry. Under Mr. Pruitt..., the agency pushed for ambitious but fast-paced rollbacks of environmental rules. At least a half-dozen of those have been struck down by federal courts. Mr. Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who served as Mr. Pruitt's deputy, has brought a more disciplined approach to dismantling environmental rules. It is an approach that may take longer, but it may be more effective in standing up to the inevitable legal challenges." See also links in yesterday's Commentariat. ...

... "The Resistance." Umair Irfan of Vox: "Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt's parting shot (or perhaps middle finger) to the environment ... moved to secure a loophole for some of the dirtiest, most polluting trucks on the road on his last day in office.... These trucks, known as 'gliders' ... can emit upward of 55 times the amount of pollutants of trucks that meet current standards. The Obama administration's EPA issued a cap of 300 new glider trucks per year that was supposed to take effect this year. Pruitt said the EPA would not enforce the cap until 2019 as it works to repeal it altogether. Environmental groups like the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defense Fund along with 16 state attorneys general immediately filed lawsuits.... In response, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a stay forcing the EPA to enforce the limit. And on Thursday, acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler ... conceded in a memo ;that the EPA is giving up the fight." --safari ...

... Mark Hand of ThinkProgress: "After less than a month on the job, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acting administrator Andrew Wheeler is already facing a call for an ethics investigation into allegations that he met with former lobbying clients when he was serving as deputy administrator. Wheeler, a long-time coal and industry lobbyist, met with former clients at least three times after being sworn in as deputy EPA administrator on April 20, E&E News reported Thursday." --safari

One of the Best People Has Left the Building. Dan Diamond of Politico: "Ximena Barreto -- a Donald Trump political appointee who used social media to spread conspiracy theories about a supposed pizza shop sex ring [run by Hillary Clinton & others] and made other inflammatory remarks [about President Obama & Clinton] -- was escorted from Health and Human Services Department headquarters Friday, according to an individual with knowledge of the situation.... After Barreto's posts became public this spring, she was placed on review and subsequently reassigned to HHS' Administration for Children & Families. Mrs. McC: Because Barreto seems eminently qualified to "help" children & families.

Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "The chair of the Republican National Committee [Ronna Romney McDaniel] complained on Friday morning that conservatives are being censored by Silicon Valley, citing the debunked conspiracy theory that Twitter and other net platformsBarack Obama explained.... McDaniel's party was outraged.... In an Orwellian 'Protecting Internet Freedom' section of the ... 2016 Republican National Committee platform, they vowed to repeal the protections and to allow companies to censor content as they saw fit.... When Donald Trump came in and appointed a new majority on the FCC, it moved quickly to kill net neutrality."

Tracy Jan of the Washington Post: "Melvin Watt, a former congressman from North Carolina who now heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is under investigation for allegedly sexually harassing a female employee. The woman, whose attorney said does not want to be named, has filed an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint alleging that Watt made unwanted sexual advances toward her on several occasions.... Watt said in a statement issued by the FHFA that he has not broken the law."

Senate Race. Samantha Michaels of Mother Jones: "The country's biggest private prison company may have run afoul of campaign finance law with a donation to Florida Gov. Rick Scott's campaign for US Senate, a campaign finance watchdog says." --safari

Alan Pyke of ThinkProgress: "Cities and states can refuse to answer questions from federal immigration officials, a federal judge ruled Friday in a decision that boosts resistance to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ... Donald Trump's crusade against immigrants -- and illustrates the contortionist flexibility of the law.... Less than a decade ago, it was Republicans and the far right who worshiped at the Tenth Amendment's altar, claiming that everything from Obamacare to the New Deal had violated the Constitution's controls on federal-state relationships.... Now, the same constitutional language that was invoked by Jefferson Davis fans to attack the country's first black president turns out to be useful to the most significant progressive bulwark against Trump's xenophobic cruelty."

Juan Cole: "You've seen the headlines. Dozens of people dead in Japan of heat stroke. Massive forest fires raging in Sweden. Dozens dead in Athens from wildfires. Record temperatures in Oman and Algeria. The world is suffering from heat waves on four continents all at once.... But now heat waves are twice as likely to occur as they used to, and this doubling is caused by you and me, according to a rigorous scientific study. You mostly won't be told this simple fact ... by corporate media. They report the more frequent and more intense heat waves, but do not for the most part tell you why they are happening. The corporations are owned by the rich, who have investments in Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, etc. If people realized that the product these companies sell daily is causing the earth to heat up dangerously, their stocks would suddenly become worthless. Corporate news is all about trying to prevent stocks from becoming worthless." --safari ...

... Scott Bransford, et al., of the New York Times: "Since 2012, according to [California] state emergency management officials, there has not been a month without a wildfire burning -- a stark contrast to previous decades, when fire officials saw the fall and winter as a time to plan and regroup. The recent historic drought and rising temperatures have heightened an already serious risk for widespread fires in the state.... Scientists say that severe wildfire seasons in California may occur more frequently because of climate change. Since the 1970s, temperatures have risen by two degrees Fahrenheit in the western United States." Mrs. McC: As you can see, the story does mention climate change -- in Paragraph 21. Most of the story is about the economic costs & human toll the fires take. ...

Julie Zauzmer of the Washington Post: "Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington and longtime globe-trotting diplomat of the Catholic Church, resigned his position as a cardinal, the Vatican announced Saturday. McCarrick, 88, was found by the church in June to be credibly accused of sexually abusing a teenager nearly 50 years ago. Since then, additional reports of sexual abuse and harassment by the cardinal, over a span of decades, have been reported. The victims include one then-minor and three adults, who were young priests or seminarians when McCarrick allegedly abused them."

Edmund Lee of the New York Times: "The CBS board of directors said on Friday that it would investigate allegations of misconduct against the company's chief executive, Leslie Moonves, the subject of an impending article in The New Yorker focused on claims about his behavior toward women. The statement, which did not specifically identify Mr. Moonves, was released after The Hollywood Reporter posted an article online saying that The New Yorker was poised to publish an article that detailed allegations of sexual misconduct against him. CBS shares fell by more than 6 percent after the report." ...

... Ronan Farrow of the New Yorker: "In recent months, [CBS CEO Leslie] Moonves has become a prominent voice in Hollywood's #MeToo movement.... But Moonves's private actions belie his public statements. Six women who had professional dealings with him told me that, between the nineteen-eighties and the late aughts, Moonves sexually harassed them. Four described forcible touching or kissing during business meetings, in what they said appeared to be a practiced routine. Two told me that Moonves physically intimidated them or threatened to derail their careers. All said that he became cold or hostile after they rejected his advances, and that they believed their careers suffered as a result.... Thirty current and former employees of CBS told me that such behavior extended from Moonves to important parts of the corporation, including CBS News and '60 Minutes,' one of the network's most esteemed programs.... Nineteen current and former employees told me that Jeff Fager, the former chairman of CBS News and the current executive producer of '60 Minutes,' allowed harassment in the division. 'It's top down, this culture of older men who have all this power and you are nothing,' one veteran producer told me. 'The company is shielding lots of bad behavior.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I can tell you from personal experience that "this culture of older men ... shielding lots of bad behavior" at CBS predates Moonves' career at the network.

Beyond the Beltway

Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times: "Sheldon Silver, the former speaker of the State Assembly who rose to become one of New York's most powerful politicians, was sentenced to seven years in prison on Friday for his conviction on federal corruption charges. Mr. Silver, a Democrat from Manhattan's Lower East Side, had served as speaker for more than two decades, and influenced nearly every major aspect of state politics. He was convicted in May after an earlier conviction, in 2015, was overturned on appeal."

Way Beyond

Alex Ward of Vox: "The UN announced that last year was the deadliest year for children in Syria since the war started seven years ago: 910 children were killed just in 2017 alone. And it looks like 2018 will be even worse: In March the UN said more than 1,000 kids were either killed or injured in just the first two months of 2018.... There are many reasons for the increase ... but the two main ones are a 25 percent in the use of child soldiers, and accelerated attacks on schools and medical facilities. All of that, of course, is illegal under international law." --safari

News Lede

AP: "In the small northern California community of Keswick, only a handful of homes remain. The air is thick with the smell of smoke and chemicals. The rubble of people's lives still smoldered a day after the so-called Carr Fire moved through Shasta County like a freight train. The flames so thoroughly ate up homes that it's difficult to tell how many once stood above the pile of ash and smoking rubble that remains.... At least 500 structures ... were destroyed by the fire, which also swept through the historic Gold Rush town of Shasta and hit homes in Redding, a city of 92,000 about 100 miles south of the Oregon border.... About 37,000 people ... remain under evacuation orders Friday. Nearly 5,000 homes in the area were being threatened by the 75-square-mile ... blaze, which is just 5 percent contained."