The Commentariat -- Nov. 13, 2018
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
John Wagner & James McAuley of the Washington Post: "President Trump unleashed verbal attacks Tuesday on French President Emmanuel Macron, taking aim at his approval rating, his country's employment rate, its trade policies on wine and his vision for the military.... In the first of several barbs Tuesday on Twitter, Trump again misrepresented what Macron had said during last week's radio interview and reminded him of the U.S. military's role in aiding France in World War I and II.... In his tweet on Tuesday, Trump again referenced France's spending, writing: 'Pay for NATO or not!'... Trump's burst of tweets came on the anniversary of coordinated terrorist attacks on Nov. 13, 2015, in France -- a very solemn occasion in the country. The French government declined to comment on Trump's tweets.... Following Trump's Tuesday attack, German Chancellor Angela Merkel came to Macron's defense, echoing his initial call for a 'real European army.'"
Elena Schneider of Politico: "GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin has sued Maine's secretary of state over ranked-choice voting, calling the system unconstitutional as the state elections authority tabulates ballots in Poliquin's too-close-to-call race with Democrat Jared Golden. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, seeks a preliminary injunction against the ongoing ranked-choice count until a judge can weigh in on the system. Poliquin has 46.2 percent of the vote to Golden's 45.5 percent with 96 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Associated Press, with the remainder scattered among third-party candidates.... Exit polling found that voters who supported an independent candidate as their first choice leaned Golden's way on the second-choice ranking, according to the Bangor Daily News."
Kevin Breuninger of NBC News: "... John Kelly may be out of his job soon as a result of a conflict with first lady Melania Trump and other people in the White House, seven sources have told NBC News.... Two White House officials told NBC that Melania Trump had told the president earlier in 2018 that Kelly had repeatedly turned down requests to promote some of her aides, even as Kelly's staff received promotions. Trump reportedly directed Kelly to approve the first lady's requests after learning of the disputes. Melania Trump's spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, told CNBC in a text message that 'Chief Kelly and the First Lady have never "clashed.'"" ...
... Maggie Haberman & Ron Nixon of the New York Times have more on the palace intrigue smooth-running machine."
Brian Stelter of CNN: "CNN has filed a lawsuit against President Trump and several of his aides, seeking the immediate restoration of chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta's access to the White House. The lawsuit is a response to the White House's suspension of Acosta's press pass, known as a Secret Service 'hard pass,' last week. The suit alleges that Acosta and CNN's First and Fifth Amendment rights are being violated by the ban.The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday morning. Both CNN and Acosta are plaintiffs in the lawsuit. There are six defendants: Trump, chief of staff John Kelly, press secretary Sarah Sanders, deputy chief of staff for communications Bill Shine, Secret Service director Randolph Alles, and the Secret Service officer who took Acosta's hard pass away last Wednesday. The officer is identified as John Doe in the suit, pending his identification. The six defendants are all named because of their roles in enforcing and announcing Acosta's suspension."
Katherine Faulders, et al., of ABC News: "... Donald Trump is considering yet another shakeup of his administration, preparing to remove Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and looking at possible replacements for Chief of Staff John Kelly, including Vice President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff Nick Ayers, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter." Mrs. McC: Since Trump goes to his hidey-hole while Kelly tells staff they're fired, who is going to fire Kelly? mike pence?
The prospect of Presidential Harassment by the Dems is causing the Stock Market big headaches! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet yesterday ...
... Stephen Collinson of CNN: "Donald Trump just co-opted a new buzz phrase he hopes will define the next two years in politics: 'Presidential harassment.' His jab at the tactics of the incoming Democratic House represents an early effort to spin a new era of investigations and oversight that is about to shake the White House as a power grab by his opposition. Trump's appropriation on Twitter of a concept first coined by ... Mitch McConnell last week, points to the critical nature of the fight the President must wage to safeguard his hold on power, one that will surely start to feel pressure as lawmakers return to Capitol Hill with newly-elected members in tow."
*****
The actual news stories today, no matter how disturbing or destabilizing, are secondary to some of the analyses I've linked, particularly Kaplan, Roth & Hasen. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
Nick Miroff, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump has told advisers he has decided to remove Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and her departure from the administration is likely to occur in the coming weeks, if not sooner, according to five current and former White House officials. Trump canceled a planned trip with Nielsen this week to visit U.S. troops at the border in South Texas and told aides over the weekend he wants her out as soon as possible, these officials said. The president has grumbled for months about what he views as Nielsen's lackluster performance on immigration enforcement and is believed to be looking for a replacement who will implement his policy ideas with more alacrity.... Chief of Staff John F. Kelly is fighting Nielsen's pending dismissal and attempting to postpone it, aides say. But Kelly's future in the administration also is shaky, according to three White House officials."
Eileen Sullivan & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "President Trump, fresh off an international display of unity among global leaders to mark the end of World War I, renewed his attacks on America's longtime allies on Monday, and demanded fair treatment for the United States. In a trio of Twitter posts, Mr. Trump said that the United States pays 'for LARGE portions' of other countries' military protection and loses money on trade with the same countries.... As for the trade deficits, most economists do not see any gap as money 'lost' to other countries and do not agree with the president's view that the trade imbalance shows America's weakness on trade policy." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... ** Fred Kaplan of Slate: "The most disturbing thing about President Trump's disgraceful performance in France this past weekend is the clear signal it sent that, under his thumb, the United States has left the West. He came to the continent to join with other world leaders to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. But the significance of the armistice is not so much to commemorate the fallen in an absurd and ghastly war as it is to celebrate the special peace -- grounded in a democratic European Union and a trans-Atlantic alliance -- that grew in its wake and the greater war that followed.... Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, George Santayana once wrote. The problem with Trump is he never knew history -- and doesn't think he needs to learn it. His election marked Year Zero, as far as he is concerned.... At [the] occasion [of the armistice commemoration] so rife with moment and symbolism, any other American president would have felt compelled to repair and strengthen this union. If there were any doubts that President Trump understands little about his mission, and cares even less, this trip dispelled them once and for all." ...
... Ex-Republican Max Boot of the Washington Post: "It seems that soldiers who were captured aren't the only ones that President Trump doesn't like. He also apparently doesn't care much for the ones who died for their country.... The White House explained that bad weather grounded the helicopters that Trump and his entourage were planning to take [to honor fallen soldiers at the Aisne-Marne American cemetery].... [T]he low-energy president remained behind at the U.S. ambassador's residence.... Odds are that his room didn't have Fox News. So he was probably reduced to watching CNN all afternoon. If the New York dating scene was Trump's personal Vietnam, this was his personal Verdun.... Trump shows what he really thinks of the troops by using them as political props.... [A]s the New York Times reports, the troops [he sent to the border pre-election] are still in the field, without electricity or hot meals -- or a mission. They will likely spend Thanksgiving away from their families. Naturally, Trump will not bother to visit them.... He still has not visited U.S. troops deployed to a war zone.... To add insult to injury, consider Trump's reaction after Ian David Long, a Marine veteran of Afghanistan, killed 12 people in a Thousand Oaks, Calif., bar this past week. Trump called him a 'very sick puppy' and blamed his rampage on post-traumatic stress disorder without any actual evidence.... This is precisely the kind of pernicious stereotype -- that veterans are ticking time bombs -- that veterans groups have worked so hard to refute.... Through his words and deeds, the commander in chief shows his contempt for the men and women in uniform." --s (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Jim Fallows of the Atlantic: "Helicopters can fly just fine in the rain, and in conditions way worse than prevailed in Paris on November 10.... Why didn't an American president go to a once-in-a-lifetime ceremony? Might it have been a still-undisclosed security threat? Something else that Donald Trump had to do? I don't know. I do know that whatever the obstacle was, it wasn't that 'helicopters can't fly in the clouds and rain.'"
** Understanding Trump. David Roth of Deadspin: Trump's "politics, to the extent that they've ever been legible, have always been off-the-rack big city tabloid bullshit -- crudely racist exterminate the brutes/back the blue authoritarianism in the background and ruthless petty rich person squabbling in the front. His actions since becoming president have been those of a dim, cruel child playacting at being a powerful -- giving orders without quite knowing what they mean or how they might be carried out, taunting enemies, beating up the people he can afford to beat up without having to be called to account for it, lying as needed or just for yuks.... It's been clear for decades that Trump was both an asshole and a dummy; this is now a problem not just for the odd unlucky cocktail waitress and his staff of cheesy apparatchiks but literally every person on earth." Read on. Roth isn't writing much you don't already know, but he writes it well.
David Sanger & William Broad of the New York Times: "North Korea is moving ahead with its ballistic missile program at 16 hidden bases that have been identified in new commercial satellite images, a network long known to American intelligence agencies but left undiscussed as President Trump claims to have neutralized the North's nuclear threat. The satellite images suggest that the North has been engaged in a great deception: It has offered to dismantle a major launching site -- a step it began, then halted -- while continuing to make improvements at more than a dozen others that would bolster launches of conventional and nuclear warheads. The existence of the ballistic missile bases, which North Korea has never acknowledged, contradicts Mr. Trump's assertion that his landmark diplomacy is leading to the elimination of a nuclear and missile program that the North had warned could devastate the United States." Includes a couple of satellite images. (Also linked yesterday.)
Election 2018
Florida, Florida, Florida. Frances Robles of the New York Times: "The chief state judge in Broward County, Fla., urged the lawyers involved in the battle over the state vote recount on Monday to 'ramp down the rhetoric' and take any accusations of electoral fraud where they belong: to the police. Chief Circuit Judge Jack Tuter refused a request by Gov. Rick Scott to order the county police to impound voting machines and ballots when they are not in use, but both parties accepted his recommendation to add security in one of Florida's most hotly contested vote counts in years.... The judge was critical of comments made by Mr. Scott's lawyers on television and social media, in which they suggested, with no substantiation, that they had seen evidence of fraud in the continuing vote count. The judge said that anyone with proof of any irregularities should report it to local law enforcement, or to get the person who had witnessed irregularities to swear out an affidavit." ...
... AND that goes for this despicable yahoo, too:
The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged. An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night! -- Donald Trump, November 12
On Veterans Day, Trump is saying he doesn't want ballots from overseas military voters to count. They have until Nov 16 to be counted according to state law. -- Ari Berman of the Nation, in a tweet ...
This also is the POTUS* saying election officials should break the law & violate their oaths of office to give him the results he wants. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
... Sean Sullivan, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Monday called for stopping the recounts in Florida's votes for Senate and governor, alleging without evidence that many ballots are missing and forged and that a valid tally is not possible. In a morning tweet, Trump suggested that the results from the night of the Nov. 6 election should stand, handing victories to fellow Republicans Rick Scott, the governor, in the Senate race and Ron DeSantis, a former congressman, in the gubernatorial contest.... The recounts are happening in accordance with Florida law because of the tight margins in the votes. On Sunday, Scott went on national television to accuse Sen. Bill Nelson (D), whom he is hoping to unseat, of trying to 'commit fraud to try to win this election.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Jeremy Peters & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "The concerted effort by Republicans in Washington and Florida to discredit the state's recount as illegitimate and potentially rife with fraud reflects a cold political calculation: Treat the recount as the next phase of a campaign to secure the party's majority and agenda in the Senate. That imperative -- described by Republican lawyers, strategists and advisers involved in the effort -- reflects the G.O.P.'s determination to tighten its hold on power in the narrowly divided Senate.... With the Democrats capturing a Republican-held Senate seat in Arizona on Monday night, the recount fight in Florida becomes even more consequential.... The effort that [Rick] Scott and Republican allies are waging today is strikingly similar to that multifront war in 2000 led by the George W. Bush campaign and an army of party consultants.... Republican officials said more than 100 staff members from the Republican National Committee are in Florida, and thousands of trained volunteers. The party, along with Mr. Scott's campaign, has also undertaken a new fund-raising effort to cover the mounting costs...." ...
... Jane Lytvynenko & Kevin Collier of BuzzFeed News: "After circulating online both ahead of the midterm elections and after them, bogus claims of voter fraud spread to the president's Twitter feed, despite having no basis in reality. Hashtags like #StopTheSteal and #VoterFraud2018 were part of what seems to be a coordinated push by conspiracy-oriented Twitter accounts to spread bad information and amplify certain conversations. They were also themes on Instagram and Facebook as officials rushed to recount votes in races in Florida and are still counting ballots in Arizona and Georgia. The president repeated baseless claims pushed by those accounts." ...
... Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "Trump's call to stop counting and, somehow, t revert to election night totals is bizarre and impractical for a slew of reasons. But it also means disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters deliberately.... Trump wants to go back to the vote counts at the end of election night for the simple and obvious reason that he wants Scott to win. The president is raising unfounded accusations of fraud to shift a result to his favor. We've seen this before: Two years ago, he leveled a nonsensical allegation of rampant fraud in California that he used to explain how badly he lost the popular vote.... Scott will likely win anyway, just as Trump did. To bolster that result, Trump is undercutting confidence in the electoral system. Just as he did in 2016." ...
... James Downie of the Washington Post: "Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott's apparent victory over incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) was one of Democrats' bigger disappointments on Election Day. But the margin was close enough to trigger an automatic recount, and since Tuesday, Scott's lead has narrowed from 56,000 votes to just more than 12,000 votes. So, in a preview of the toxicity Scott (if he wins) will bring to Washington, he deployed a standard GOP response when Democrats gain votes: accuse them of voter fraud.... One irony here is that Scott has been governor for eight years, which means he's had the ability to fix Florida's election system that he now implies is broken.... Rather than reject conspiracy theories that undermine faith in the electoral system, Scott has opted for slime." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
It is now the official White House position that constitutionally-mandated recounts are illegitimate.... This development is ... almost incalculably bad for American democracy. I now assume that a substantial minority of Americans believe that the results of the elections in Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and California are democratically illegitimate unless the Republican candidate wins.... When electoral procedures lose popular legitimacy, it is nearly impossible to get that legitimacy back. -- Tom Pepinsky of Cornell U. ...
... Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy in a New York Times op-ed: "On Sunday, the Republican secretary of state of Arizona, Michele Reagan..., explained ... why it was taking so long to count the ballots in Arizona's unresolved Senate race.... Arizona's Republican governor, Doug Ducey, tweeted over the weekend: 'Let's get this right. All legally cast votes must be counted.' These actions shouldn't be surprising, but they're in stark contrast to what we're seeing from those overseeing the close statewide races in Georgia and Florida. In Georgia, Brian Kemp, as secretary of state, used his office to accuse his opponents, without evidence, of hacking into the state election database; he posted this unfounded allegation on the same secretary of state website where voters go to check their polling location. In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott made similarly evidence-free allegations of electoral fraud and then ordered state law enforcement to investigate the county officials who oversee the vote count in two counties where his opponent performed well.... Mr. Kemp and Mr. Scott are also the candidates in those close races; Ms. Reagan and Mr. Ducey are not.... Today, Protect Democracy filed a lawsuit ... against Mr. Scott to bar him from having any further official role in overseeing the Florida election in which he is a candidate. Our organization filed a similar lawsuit last week against Mr. Kemp.... Over the weekend [President Trump] tweeted about the Arizona race: 'Electoral corruption -- call for a new election?' We should all find this chilling. How might ... he use the levers of the federal government... as votes are tallied in 2020?" ...
... Steve M.: "I'm not terribly concerned that President Trump is delegitimizing American elections now because he and other Republicans and right-wing media propagandists have been hard at work delegitimizing our elections for years.... I think that explains why right-wingers will tolerate just about anything Donald Trump does: They don't believe any Democrats, or at least any Democrats outside coastal California, New York, Chicago, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia, are legitimately elected. They believe all the others reached office via fraud. Under those circumstances, of course they don't worry about the norm-shattering [Mrs. McC: Ugh!] things are done by Trump or Mitch McConnell. It's all necessary, you see, because any government with more than a handful of Democrats is by definition illegitimate." ...
... ** Rick Hasen in Slate: "... the way [the Florida] election fight has played out so far has been an absolute nightmare. Perhaps most terrifyingly of all, the 2018 Florida elections have demonstrated the real possibility that ... Donald Trump might attempt to ignore an unfavorable 2020 election outcome if the result is a slim loss by the president, a possibility that should give us all chills.... We are entering into a dangerous new phase in the voting wars. Last week, various election calamities were fueled by incendiary and unsupported claims by Trump and others of fraud, by pockets of incompetence of election administration, by partisanship in election administration, and by continued fundamental defects in how our elections are conducted.... I'm not holding my breath, because I and others have been sounding this alarm since 2000, and not nearly enough has changed." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: If you thought Trump couldn't really become dictator-for-life because our federal government has all these great checks & balances, the American people would never permit it, & blah blah blah, these two posts by Steve M. & Rick Hasen, read in tandem, should rattle your cage, as they have mine. Until now, I have thought Trump would do it if he could, but I couldn't figure out how Trump could do it. Now I know how. This is not a crazy chicken-little hypothesis. It's a real possibility. And Trump thought of it before I did. P.S. David Roth's assessment, also linked today, helps explain why Trump would do such a thing.
** Arizona. Simon Romero of the New York Times: "Representative Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat and former social worker, scored a groundbreaking victory in the race for a Senate seat in Arizona, defeating her Republican opponent after waging a campaign in which she embraced solidly centrist positions, according to The Associated Press.Ms. Sinema's victory over Martha McSally, a Republican congresswoman and former Air Force pilot, marks the first Democratic triumph since 1976 in a battle for an open Senate seat in Arizona. Ms. Sinema takes the seat being vacated by Jeff Flake, a Republican is leaving the Senate after repeated clashes with President Trump.... Some prominent Republicans, including Mr. Trump, claimed without offering proof that voting officials were engaged in fraudulent strategies to bolster Ms. Sinema as the authorities struggled to count ballots in the days since the Nov. 6 election following a surge in turnout. Michele Reagan, a Republican and Arizona's Secretary of state, refuted those claims." Mrs. McC: Sinema can thank That Lying SOS for her win. Trump's trashing Flake so lowered Flake's status among Republicans that he decided he didn't have a chance to win re-election.
Georgia. Alan Blinder of the New York Times: "A federal judge on Monday ordered a delay in the certification of Georgia’s election results, citing concerns about the state's voter registration system and the handling of provisional ballots.... Although the ruling by Judge Amy Totenberg of Federal District Court in Atlanta formally affected every election in Georgia for state and federal office, it reverberated most immediately and powerfully through the governor's race, in which the Democratic candidate, Stacey Abrams, was within 21,000 votes of forcing a runoff election against Brian Kemp, the Republican nominee."
Adam Peck of ThinkProgress: "Naturally, Republicans are once again distraught at the idea of having every legitimate ballot counted.... But although Republicans are demonizing efforts to count every vote in Florida, a handful of GOP congressional candidates around the country are themselves insisting every vote be counted in their own races, hoping to make up deficits against their Democratic opponents." --s (Also linked yesterday.)
Paul Krugman: "What with the midterm elections -- and the baseless Republican cries of voting fraud -- I don't know how many people heard about Trump's decision to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Miriam Adelson, wife of casino owner and Trump megadonor Sheldon Adelson. The medal is normally an acknowledgment of extraordinary achievement or public service.... Now, this may seem like a trivial story. But it's a reminder that the Trumpian attitude toward truth -- which is that it's defined by what benefits Trump and his friends, not by verifiable facts -- also applies to virtue. There is no heroism, there are no good works, except those that serve Trump.... In Trumpworld, which is now indistinguishable from G.O.P.world, good and bad are defined solely by whether the interests of The Leader are served. Thus, Trump attacks and insults our closest allies while praising brutal dictators who flatter him (and declares neo-Nazis 'very fine people').... You have to be truly delusional to see the Republicans' response to their party's midterm setback as anything but an attempted power grab by a would-be authoritarian movement, which rejects any opposition or even criticism as illegitimate. Our democracy is still very much in danger."
Master Class: How to Turn an Indictment into a Conspiracy Theory. Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "Conservative author Jerome Corsi said Monday that he expects to be indicted by prosecutors working for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on a charge of lying to investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Corsi, a writer who has promoted political conspiracy theories, provided research during the White House race to longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, who Mueller has been scrutinizing for possible ties to WikiLeaks. On Monday, Corsi told listeners of his daily live-stream web program that he turned over two computers, emails and other communications to Mueller and sat for six interviews totaling more than 40 hours since receiving a subpoena two months ago. But he said that his cooperation had 'exploded' in recent weeks and that Mueller's team has said he will be criminally charged.... 'The Department of Justice is run by criminals,' Corsi said, adding: 'I think my crime really was that I supported Donald Trump. Now I guess I'll go to prison for the rest of my life, because I dared to oppose the "deep state."'"
Michael Cohen Sings -- Enough to Cut an Album. Dan Mangan of CNBC: "Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer for President Donald Trump, took a train Monday to Washington from New York to talk to investigators from the office of special counsel Robert Mueller.... Cohen's meeting with Mueller's team was only the latest in a series of sit-downs the attorney has had with the special counsel's office since pleading guilty in August to federal criminal charges. Those included campaign contribution violations related to payments to two women, purportedly at the behest of Trump. That case was brought by federal investigators in the Southern District of New York, not Mueller's team."
** Thank You for Your Service. Phil McCausland of CNN: "The Department of Veterans Affairs is suffering from a series of information technology glitches that has caused GI Bill benefit payments covering education and housing to be delayed or ... never be delivered.... Hundreds of thousands are believed to have been affected.... Donald Trump signed the Forever GI Bill in 2017 ... [which] greatly expanded benefits for veterans and their families, but it did not upgrade the VA's technical capabilities to account for those changes.... The House Committee on Veterans' Affairs is holding a hearing on Wednesday to investigate the matter.... More than 45,000 jobs sit vacant at VA, according to the agency's own numbers, and the department has not had a permanent chief information officer since LaVerne Council departed the office after Trump';s election." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Pardon my wackadoo conspiracy theory, but I have a feeling the problem has something to do with those three rich Mar-a-Lago friends of Trump who were "advising" the VA on IT matters.
Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The State of Maryland is expected to ask a federal judge on Tuesday for an injunction declaring that [Matthew] Whitaker is not the legitimate acting attorney general as a matter of law, and that the position -- and all its powers -- instead rightfully belongs to the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein. Mr. Trump may not 'bypass the constitutional and statutory requirements for appointing someone to that office,' the plaintiffs said in a draft filing obtained by The New York Times. The legal action escalates the uproar surrounding Mr. Trump's installation of Mr. Whitaker as the nation's top law-enforcement officer, from criticism of his basic credentials and his views on the Russia investigation to challenges to the legality of his appointment."
The Great Public Sellout. Jimmy Tobias of the Guardian: "[Ryan] Zinke rapidly installed a slew of conservative operatives and industry sympathizers in key positions throughout the [Interior Department]. Because these senior advisers, counselors, and other appointees are rarely subject to Senate approval, few people know their names. They nevertheless wield immense power and are responsible for much of the day-to-day work at the interior department. Hundreds of pages of correspondence and calendars reviewed by the Guardian and Pacific Standard show how Zinke and his top aides have favored corporate and conservative calls to prioritize resource extraction at the expense of conservation, while consistently delivering on industry desires -- despite sometimes running afoul of conflict of interest rules.... Zinke is now facing a swirl of misconduct allegations.... But whatever Zinke's fate, he has stocked the department with a slate of committed conservative appointees who will continue to remake the agency in the image of the Trump administration.... 'I have been here a pretty long time and seen different administrations from both sides of the aisle,' [one anonymous] civil servant added, 'but this is the worst I have ever seen.'" --s (Also linked yesterday.)
Julian Barnes, et al., of the New York Times: "Shortly after the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed last month at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, a member of the kill team instructed a superior over the phone to 'tell your boss,' believed to be Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that the operatives had carried out their mission, according to three people familiar with a recording of Mr. Khashoggi's killing collected by Turkish intelligence. The recording, shared last month with the C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel, is seen by intelligence officials as some of the strongest evidence linking Prince Mohammed to the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a Virginia resident and Washington Post columnist whose death prompted an international outcry. While the prince was not mentioned by name, American intelligence officials believe 'your boss' was a reference to Prince Mohammed." ...
... Update. Shibani Mahtani & Louisa Loveluck of the Washington Post: "U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said Tuesday that an audio recording of journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death inside an Istanbul consulate did not appear to provide any link between the killers and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Bolton, speaking on the sidelines of a regional summit in Singapore, said that he had not listened to the tape himself, but that it was the assessment of 'those who have listened to it' that Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler is not implicated."
Yo, Trump. Those Asses Watching You Will Soon Have Subpoena Power. ...
... Zachary Basu of Axios: "Now that they're set to assume control of the House, there are at least 85 topics that Democrats have said they'd target -- or are expected to target -- in the forthcoming torrent of investigations and subpoenas to be directed at the Trump White House, according to Axios' reporting and analysis of members' public comments." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Rep. Adam Schiff, in a Washington Post op-ed: "The president and [acting AG Matthew] Whitaker should heed this warning: The new Democratic majority will protect the special counsel and the integrity of the Justice Department. Should Whitaker fail to recuse himself -- all indications are that he plans not to -- and seek to obstruct the investigation, serve as a back channel to the president or his legal team or interfere in the investigations in any way, he will be called to answer. His actions will be exposed. It is no mystery why the president chose Whitaker, an obscure and ill-qualified official never confirmed by the Senate,* which many legal experts believe makes the appointment itself unconstitutional. Trump chose him to protect himself, his family and his close associates from the special counsel's investigation and other investigations within the Justice Department.... After his firing by President Richard M. Nixon, former Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox said the question of 'whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people.' With this latest, unprecedented action, Trump has put Cox's question once more squarely before the people's representatives." ...
... * Mrs. McCrabbie: Whitaker "was confirmed by the Senate to be a federal prosecutor in Iowa, but that was 14 years ago."
Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times: "Facing a reignited crisis of credibility over child sexual abuse, the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States came to a meeting in Baltimore on Monday prepared to show that they could hold themselves accountable. But in a last-minute surprise, the Vatican instructed the bishops to delay voting on a package of corrective measures until next year, when Pope Francis plans to hold a summit in Rome on the sexual abuse crisis for bishops from around the world.... The order from Rome is the latest twist in a long power struggle between the American bishops and the Vatican over how to respond to the abuse crisis."
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I wonder what percentage of American boys have not been sexually abused or at least approached by some supposedly "wholesome" authority figure: priest, coach, teacher, Scout leader, etc. Quite a few men have told me they had to fend off unwelcome overtures when they were kids.
Beyond the Beltway
Erik Runge & Gaynor Hall of WGN TV Chicago: "Witnesses said a Midlothian police officer responding to a shooting inside a south suburban bar shot at the wrong person early Sunday morning. [Mrs. McC: Midlothian is a suburb southwest of Chicago.] After security asked a group of drunken men to leave Manny's Blue Room Bar around 4 a.m. Sunday, witnesses said someone came back with a gun and opened fire. Security returned fire, and according to witnesses, 26-year-old armed security guard Jemel Roberson apprehended one of the men involved outside. 'He had somebody on the ground with his knee in back, with his gun in his back like, "Don't move,'" witness Adam Harris said. Soon after, witnesses said, an officer responding to the scene fired at Roberson -- killing him. 'Everybody was screaming out, "Security!"...,' Harris said. 'And they still did their job, and saw a black man with a gun, and basically killed him.'... In a statement, Midlothian police confirmed two officers from the department responded to the scene of the shooting and that one of them opened fire." Roberson was black. ...
... Lindsay Gibbs of ThinkProgress: "Many anti-gun control politicians and advocates, including ... Donald Trump, frequently say that armed security guards are the only way to stop mass shootings. Last month, after eight people were killed at a Pittsburgh synagogue, Trump suggested that there should be armed guards at churches and synagogues. This is an offshoot of a frequent National Rifle Association talking point, that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Roberson was both an armed security guard and a good guy with a gun. He risked his life to apprehend a shooter. And police killed him anyway. Like many NRA-based talking points, this one doesn’t seem to apply to black people."
At Baraboo (Wisconsin) High School, the boys think Nazism is hilarious & the administrators think thought yelling "White Power!" in the halls was a First Amendment right. Now that this behavior has received national & even international attention, the administration -- and the local police -- are "looking into it" or something. Opheli Lawler of New York reports.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Search teams were scouring the devastated town of Paradise on Tuesday with the grim expectation of finding more bodies in the charred remnants of the Sierra Nevada retirement community. With a toll of 42 dead, the blaze is already the deadliest wildfire in California history, and more than 200 people remain missing. Adding to the 13 coroner teams from across the state who were already working to locate the dead in and around Paradise, the Butte County sheriff announced a sharp increase in experts who specialize in finding human remains: 150 additional search-and-rescue personnel, cadaver dogs, and two portable temporary morgue units from the military. The sheriff is also seeking a machine to 'expedite the analysis of DNA' to speed up the identification of remains."
Los Angeles Times: "The death toll from the Camp fire climbed to 42 on Monday, making it the deadliest wildfire in California history, as search teams sifted through rubble and ash in and around Paradise for additional victims."
New York Times: "... Stan Lee... [who ran Marvel Comics], died in Los Angeles on Monday at 95. From a cluttered office on Madison Avenue in Manhattan in the 1960s, he helped conjure a lineup of pulp-fiction heroes that has come to define much of popular culture in the early 21st century."
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