The Commentariat -- November 11, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Peter Baker & Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "President Trump's brand of 'America First' nationalism was repudiated on Sunday as leaders from around the globe gathered to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I and reaffirm the international bonds that have once again come under strain. Stone-faced and unmoved, the American leader listened as President Emmanuel Macron of France used the ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe to denounce self-interested nationalism and extol the sort of globalism and international institutions that Mr. Trump has spent the last two years pulling the United States away from. 'Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,' Mr. Macron said in a speech on a dreary, rain-soaked day. 'Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying, "our interest first, who cares about the others?"'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Here's the photo that accompanies the Baker-Rubin story:

"Led by President Emmanuel Macron of France, world leaders marched down the Champs-Élysées in Paris on Sunday as part of events to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I." Where's Waldo? You can supersize the picture by clicking on it, if you think it will help you find Waldo Donald, but it won't.... "Mr. Trump arrived in his own motorcade, traveling separately, aides said, because of security, and joined the world leaders under a transparent enclosure at the arch." ...

... Okay, here he is under the transparent enclosure. Also transparent: Grumpy Trumpy:

... "Well," you say, "Trump is just beaming in this shot:"

... Mrs. McCrabbie: And so he is. That's because that guy at the bottom of the frame -- that guy Trump is beaming at -- is Vladimir Putin (who arrived even later than Trump). Thanks to forrest m. for reminding me I didn't present the full picture, as it were. ...

... Rachel Donadio of the Atlantic: "French television commentators called it 'symbolic' that the U.S. president shunned the group, and also noted, as Trump stiffly took his place next to Merkel, that 'he didn't look very smiley.' He was more smiley when Putin arrived. The Russian president gave Trump a thumbs up and a brief friendly pat on the arm. In a somber speech beneath the Arc de Triomphe, Macron recalled how with World War I, Europe almost committed suicide. He said 'old demons' were resurfacing and history was threatening to repeat itself, and threatening Europe's history of peace. He decried 'the selfishness of countries that regard only their own interests,' which sounded like a remark clearly aimed at the United States.... It was impossible not to hear Macron's words, before so many other world leaders, as aimed at Trump, a sign of how the rest of the world is contending with the repercussions of 'America First.'... On Saturday, while Trump stayed in Paris doing whatever he was doing, Macron and Merkel went to Compèigne, a site outside Paris freighted with 20th-century history. It is the site where Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the supreme commander of the western front, signed the ceasefire agreement with Germany, ending World War I, and where Adolph Hitler forced France to sign a capitulation agreement in 1940.... The vanishing act [Saturday] was classic Trump -- dominating the news cycle, insulting and upstaging his hosts, to say nothing of U.S. soldiers and veterans." ...

... Christopher Dickey of The Daily Beast: "[I]t should not be at all surprising that the history of World War I, commemorated this weekend in France 100 years after its end, would hold little attraction for the American president.... Trump, of course, has declared himself a proud nationalist, and has a long list of those he wants Americans to hate and fear. As for love of country, and indeed of those who loved it enough to die for it, he's not so interested. On Saturday, using a little rain (very little) as an excuse, Trump blew off a long-planned visit to the graves of more than 1,000 U.S. Marines.... No other heads of state failed to make their appointed rounds at battlefield cemeteries. But ironically it seems that Marine One, the presidential helicopter, was deterred by drizzle.... The truth is, Trump never wanted to be here in the first place, and his performance on Saturday reflected his trademark truculent petulance.... Sunday's event was, as long planned, an assembly of more than 60 heads of state and government.... But Trump tweeted that attendance was up because he decided to come. Maybe Trump's die-hard American supporters believe this stuff. But the rest of the world sees it as ludicrous and contemptible." --s

Mike Allen & Jim VandeHei of Axios: "House Democrats plan to investigate whether President Trump abused White House power by targeting -- and trying to punish with "instruments of state power" -- The Washington Post and CNN, incoming House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff said in an interview for 'Axios on HBO.'... Schiff brought up two avenues of inquiry with a press-freedom theme, aimed at investigating possible administration actions to target two of the nation's highest profile corporations. 1) Schiff said Trump 'was secretly meeting with the postmaster [general] in an effort to browbeat the postmaster [general] into raising postal rates on Amazon. This appears to be an effort by the president to use the instruments of state power to punish Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post,' Schiff said. Jeff Bezos is founder, chairman and CEO of Amazon, and owns the Washington Post. 2) Schiff said Congress also need to examine whether Trump attempted to block AT&T's merger with Time Warner as payback to CNN."

Bob Bauer in the Atlantic: "It is a strange turn of events when a president famous for denouncing 'fake news' is discovered to have entered into an agreement with a media organization to finance the concealment of very real, but politically unfavorable, newsworthy information.... The deal that Trump reached and executed with AMI [-- the tabloid publisher --] violates federal campaign-finance laws. AMI made an illegal corporate in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign, and the campaign and Trump share in the liability by accepting this illegal support. As open-and-shut cases go, this one is high on the list. But this is only a part of what makes this a remarkable episode in the history of presidential campaign lawbreaking." Bauer goes on to illuminate the cases against both Trump & AMI, & he further asserts, "A similar issue arises for the Trump campaign in asserting a First Amendment defense in relation to its relationship to WikiLeaks in the strategic publication and dissemination of stolen emails.... The Journal reporting on Trump's active, detailed engagement in the [Karen] McDougal and [Stormy] Daniels pay-offs confirms that this is not how he operates. It gives powerful additional reason to disbelieve his outright denial of participation in the Russian contacts.

Amy Sorkin of the New Yorker: "One of the more dangerous outcomes of the midterms is the belief, in some quarters of the G.O.P., that putting the Party in Trump's hands was worth it.... The midterms were a party-building exercise, if all one was trying to build is the Party of Trump. The G.O.P. is acclimating itself to accepting divisiveness and unconstitutional travesties -- including, perhaps, efforts to end birthright citizenship -- in return for a few Senate seats.... The same appears true of [Matthew] Whitaker.... Whitaker is, in many ways, a walking distillation of Trumpism.... The firing of Sessions is an illustration of how the President's demand for loyalty brings the country ever closer to a constitutional crisis. Whitaker has said that the list of Supreme Court decisions that he thinks are wrong begins with Marbury v. Madison -- the landmark 1803 case that delineated the Court's power to interpret the Constitution, and which is woven into almost every aspect of American jurisprudence. If the Court doesn't decide what's constitutional, who does? Trump?" --s

James Kitfield in The Daily Beast: "Little mentioned in the 'horse race' coverage of the mid-terms, [a] parallel election resulted in a 'reform wave' that may very well have the more lasting impact on our democracy. There were campaign and election reform initiatives on the ballot Tuesday in more than two dozen states and localities, and with a few notable exceptions, they won, sweeping aside defenders of a status quo system that consistently produces incivility, political extremism and government gridlock.... Michigan, Colorado, and Missouri all passed major anti-gerrymandering initiatives, for instance.... Anti-corruption reforms that limit or ban lobbyist gifts to politicians, tighten campaign finance rules and increase government transparency passed in Missouri, New Mexico and North Dakota. A host of voting and anti-corruption reforms passed last week at the city level in Denver, Baltimore, Memphis, Phoenix, and New York." --s

Sarah Jones of New York: "Democrats made real gains in state government on Tuesday. The party nearly doubled its number of trifecta governments, where one party controls the executive branch in addition to each chamber of the state legislature. They now have total control in 13 states versus 21 Republican trifectas.... The Democratic Party's weaknesses in state government are legendary and have probably contributed to its weaknesses at the federal level. State government is an important pipeline to higher office, and as Stateline reported this week, Democrats lost 900 legislative seats during the Obama administration.... But now in states with Democratic trifectas -- or at least a significant number of lawmakers willing to work across the aisle -- Democrats will have opportunities to implement their policies, and demonstrate their effectiveness to voters. Here are some issues they're likely to focus on." --s

Lindsey Joins the Loons. Adrienne Varkiani of ThinkProgress: "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) seems to believe that Democrats' insistence that all votes be counted is a sign of them trying to 'steal' the election in Florida. 'They are trying to steal this election,' Graham said on Fox News' Hannity Friday evening. 'It's not going to work.'" --s

John Bowden of the Hill: "Conservative policy magazine The Weekly Standard on Saturday posted audio of Iowa Rep. Steve King (R) using derogatory language to apparently refer to Mexican immigrants at a campaign event after King and his campaign denied the comments were made. In the audio, the Iowa congressman can be heard joking with a constituent about importing 'dirt' from Mexico, which appears to be a derogatory reference to immigrants coming from Mexico and other Central American countries through the U.S.'s southern border.... After making the remarks, the Standard notes that King reportedly became nervous upon realizing that a reporter may have heard the remarks, and changed the subject.... King and his campaign ... dar[ed] the magazine to post it in a series of Twitter posts.... 'Just release the full tape. Leftists lies exist without original sources because they are false and manufactured accusations. Weekly Standard is transitioning into "Antifa News,"' King [wrote]...."

*****

Trump Debases the Medal of Freedom. Michael Brice-Saddler of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Saturday named seven individuals who will receive the highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.... The awardees are retiring Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), sports legendaries Babe Ruth and Roger Staubach, musician Elvis Presley, the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, former Minnesota Supreme Court justice Alan C. Page, and Miriam Adelson, a physician and wife of Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate." Mrs. McC: I'm saddened that Trump forgot Don King & Ted Nugent.

Hector Becerra of the Los Angeles Times: "California firefighters criticized President Trump for a tweet Saturday that incorrectly stated that this week's devastating fires were the result of poor forest management. 'There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!' Trump wrote. It was not the first time Trump has blamed California for destructive wildfires with dubious claims. California Professional Firefighters President Brian Rice said Trump was out of line. 'The president's message attacking California and threatening to withhold aid to the victims of the cataclysmic fires is ill-informed, ill-timed and demeaning to those who are suffering as well as the men and women on the front lines,' Rice said in a statement.... Mr. President, with all due respect, you are wrong. The fires in So. Cal are urban interface fires and have NOTHING to do with forest management. Come to SoCal and learn the facts & help the victims,' the Pasadena Firefighters Assn. said on Twitter. Experts have said forest management was not a factor in California's two most destructive fires: the Camp, which has burned more than 6,000 structures this week in Paradise, and the Tubbs fire last year in wine country. Forest thinning would not have stopped either fire."

Peter Baker & Adam Nossiter of the New York Times: "After a promising start, the relationship between President Trump and President Emmanuel Macron of France has soured. By the time they met in Paris on Saturday, the trans-Atlantic alliance that was to be showcased by this weekend's commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I appeared to be fraying instead.... During their short appearance before reporters, Mr. Trump remained formal and distant.... The tense meeting ... contrasted with Mr. Macron's joint appearance with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany later in the day.... Mr. Trump ... will not stay for a Paris peace forum that Mr. Macron is sponsoring to bring together world leaders to discuss ways to avoid conflict. 'Trump's absence from the Peace forum tomorrow, apparently alone among the 72 heads of state and government, will have a negative impact -- the man who did not even pretend to work for peace, as it were,' said François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a research organization."

"Real Low Energy." Carol Lee & Kristen Welker of NBC News: "... Donald Trump was scheduled to take a 30-minute helicopter ride from Paris to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in Belleau, France. But a rainy forecast for the city made it too risky for him to safely fly there, the White House.... White House chief of staff John Kelly and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the roughly 50-mile long trip to the cemetery in a small motorcade of vehicles. The drive took about 90 minutes each way. Separately, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel traveled a similar distance by car to a commemorative event in northern France.... Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also participated in armistice events outside the city today, at a battle site about two hours north of Paris by car.... A member of the British Parliament and grandson of legendary British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Nicholas Soames ... call[ed] Trump 'pathetic' and 'inadequate' on Twitter because he 'couldn't even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen' who 'died with their face to the foe.'...Kelly Magsamen, who served on the National Security Council under bot Republican and a Democratic presidents, said it displayed 'real low energy,' for Trump 'to not bother to honor the sacrifice of American soldiers in WWI due to some rain. Somehow everyone else was able to do so today.'" Thanks to OGJerry for the lead. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: I'd guess Trump was concerned about having another bad hair day. Or maybe Trump was concerned about umbrella logistics, especially with the problem of his wife's standing beside him. ...

... Noah Lanard of Mother Jones: "Trump's announcement sparked skepticism disbelief, and disdain. Luke Baker, Reuters' Paris bureau chief, questioned the timing of the cancellation, noting that French officials told reporters a day earlier that Trump was unlikely to visit the memorial, which is about 55 miles from Paris.... Unlike Barack Obama, Trump still hasn't visited troops serving in combat zones.... Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser, wrote [on Twitter]: 'I helped plan all of President Obama's trips for 8 years. There is always a rain option. Always.'" Lanard's post includes a photo of John Kelly & Joseph Dunford arriving at the Aisne-Marne cemetery, and there is nary a raindrop in sight. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: President Obama, you may recall, did not let a little rain bother him....

     ... Neither did this unnamed woman:

... David Nakamura, et al., of the Washington Post: "Trump was in France in body but appeared unenthusiastic in spirit.... Trump held a bilateral meeting with [Emmanuel] Macron, but the U.S. president appeared subdued, almost sullen, as Macron tried to mask growing tensions between them.... So began a weekend in which Trump -- battling on a number of political fronts in Washington -- seemed distracted and disengaged.... Thomas Wright, a Europe expert at the Brookings Institution, noted Trump announced he was going to France on a whim in August after abruptly canceling his order for the Pentagon to stage a parade. The Peace Forum [-- a three-day event Macron organized --] was intended 'a bit as a counterpoint to "America First,"' Wright said.... 'Now they have this weird situation of Trump being there [in Paris] but the forum going against everything he and [National Security Adviser John] Bolton stand for...."

SNAFU. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "President Trump doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to high-profile appointments -- remember Ronny L. Jackson? -- and the hasty installation of Matthew G. Whitaker as acting attorney general looks like it ranks up there. Ever since Whitaker was tapped to replace ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday, red flags have been popping up. And in nearly every major facet of Sessions's removal and Whitaker's appointment -- the legality of it, the appearance of it, the prosecution of it and Whitaker's background -- those red flags are significant."

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "In the three days after the Democrats captured the House, President Trump fired his attorney general and replaced him with a loyalist critical of both the courts and the Russia investigation. He banned a CNN correspondent from the White House, while threatening he would do the same to other journalists. And he accused election officials in Florida and Arizona of rigging the vote against candidates he had campaigned for. It was a remarkable assault on the nation's institutions, even by a president who has gleefully taken a hammer to the press, to judges and prosecutors he does not like, and to an electoral process he has denounced as fraudulent since the day he took office. Mr. Trump's actions suggested a president lashing out after a midterm election loss that he had initially cast as a victory.... For the most part these days, Mr. Trump speaks less in sorrow than in anger." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Maureen Dowd writes a film review of "Vice," Adam McCay's film about Dick Cheney. But she (& McCay) make a point which some are forgetting: "War criminals-turned-liberal heroes are festooned with book and TV contracts, podcasts and op-ed perches. Those who sold us the 'cakewalk' Iraq war and the outrageously unprepared Sarah Palin and torture as 'enhanced interrogation,' those who left the Middle East shattered with a cascading refugee crisis and a rising ISIS, and those who midwifed the birth of the Tea Party are washing away their sins in a basin of Trump hate. The very same Republicans who eroded America's moral authority in the 2000s are, staggeringly, being treated as the new guardians of America's moral authority.... After a screening of 'Vice' Thursday, I asked McKay which of our two right-wing Dementors was worse, Cheney or Trump. 'Here's the question,' he said. 'Would you rather have a professional assassin after you or a frothing maniac with a meat cleaver? I'd rather have a maniac with a meat cleaver after me, so I think Cheney is way worse. And also, if you look at the body count, more than 600,000 people died in Iraq. It's not even close, right?'"

See Patrick's commentary in yesterday's thread on But the Emails! He puts the whole "scandal" is perspective.

Election 2018

$$$ David Wright & Aaron Kessler of CNN: "Campaigns and PACs spent at least $3.2 million at Trump-owned and branded properties throughout the two-year midterm election cycle, a CNN analysis of Federal Election Commission filings shows. And the total could rise after post-election financial reports are published by the commission. No single group spent more than the Republican National Committee, which spent at least $1.2 million at the properties since the start of 2017.... Trump's own presidential reelection campaign was also among the groups spending the most at Trump properties throughout 2017 and 2018, despite not being on the ballot. The campaign has spent more than $950,000 at Trump properties since the start of 2017. And America First Action -- a pro-Trump super PAC founded early in 2017 and funded primarily by GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson -- was another top patron of Trump properties, dropping at least $360,000 throughout the cycle."

Michelle Goldberg: "There was no immediate catharsis on Tuesday, no definitive national rebuke of a president whose bottomless depravity continues to dumbfound more than half the country. But the steady work of citizens who've been trying, over the last two years, to fight the civic nightmare of Trumpism bore fruit. It was a slog, pockmarked with disappointments. At the end, though, there was hope.... After this past week, people in the Resistance are exhausted. But they're not resting."

Arizona. Scott Bland of Politico: "Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema has expanded her lead over GOP Rep. Martha McSally in Arizona after another day of ballot-counting in the state's Senate race. Sinema stretched her lead to 28,688 votes on Saturday evening as officials in the two most-populous counties, Maricopa and Pima, counted tens of thousands more absentee ballots, though that margin could shrink slightly if smaller counties where McSally has an edge report new totals later Saturday evening. Sinema now has 49.5 percent of the vote to McSally's 48.2 percent, with hundreds of thousands more votes still left to count."

California. Adam Nagourney of the New York Times: "Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican fixture in California who represented Orange County for 15 terms, has lost his bid for re-election. His defeat underlines the party's setbacks in a part of the state that was long a symbol of its political dominance. The Associated Press called the race on Saturday, with Harley Rouda receiving 52 percent of the vote to Mr. Rohrabacher's 48 percent. Mr. Rouda, 56, is a former Republican turned Democrat who became a symbol of the Democratic efforts to win back Congress this year. Mr. Rohrabacher, 71, was viewed as particularly vulnerable because he defended Russia in the midst of allegations about its efforts to intervene in elections in the United States."

Florida. Frances Robles & Patricia Mazzei of the New York Times: "Florida began the first full, statewide vote recount in its history on Saturday after authorities found that tallies submitted by its 67 counties left the contests for Senate, governor and agriculture commissioner too close to call. Recounts were also ordered in a State Senate race and two contests for the State House, a measure of the slender margins in the nation's largest swing state that have left two of the most closely watched races in the country still undecided, four days after the midterm elections. After unofficial results came in shortly after noon on Saturday, Gov. Rick Scott's edge in the race for the Senate had slipped to nearly 12,600 votes over the Democratic incumbent, Bill Nelson. Andrew Gillum, the Democratic Tallahassee mayor who on election night had conceded his loss in the governor's race to Ron DeSantis, rose to within 33,600 votes, and retracted his earlier concession." ...

Trying to STEAL two big elections in Florida! We are watching closely! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet Saturday

Because in Trump's America, it's illegal to count votes that could be for Democrats. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

Loveday Morris & Louisa Loveluck of the Washington Post: "An audio recording tracking the dying moments of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has been shared with Saudi Arabia, Britain, France and Germany in addition to the United States, the Turkish president said Saturday. 'We gave it to Saudi Arabia,' said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke at Ankara airport before departing for Paris for commemorations to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. 'We gave it to America. To the Germans, French, English, we gave it to all of them.' The tape is a critical piece of evidence that Turkey says backs up its assertion that Khashoggi, a contributor to The Washington Post World Opinions section, was killed by a Saudi hit team after he entered the consulate on Oct. 2." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

News Lede

"Paradise Is Gone." New York Times: "Fires continue to rage on both ends of California, spreading with breakneck speed and displacing hundreds of thousands of people in a state where a once-seasonal worry has become a near-constant terror. At least 23 are dead in the so-called Camp Fire, about 100 miles north of Sacramento, and two others have died in fires near Los Angeles. With the discovery of 14 more bodies on Saturday, the Camp Fire surpassed the death toll in last year's Tubbs Fire, which killed 22 people and was the third-deadliest fire in the state's history until now. The deadliest, the Griffith Park fire in 1933, killed 29 people."

The Commentariat -- Nov. 10, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

"Real Low Energy." Carol Lee & Kristen Welker of NBC News: "... Donald Trump was scheduled to take a 30-minute helicopter ride from Paris to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in Belleau, France. But a rainy forecast for the city made it too risky for him to safely fly there, the White House.... White House chief of staff John Kelly and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the roughly 50-mile long trip to the cemetery in a small motorcade of vehicles. The drive took about 90 minutes each way. Separately, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel traveled a similar distance by car to a commemorative event in northern France.... Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also participated in armistice events outside the city today, at a battle site about two hours north of Paris by car.... A member of the British Parliament and grandson of legendary British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Nicholas Soames ... call[ed] Trump 'pathetic' and 'inadequate' on Twitter because he 'couldn't even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen' who 'died with their face to the foe.'... Kelly Magsamen, who served on the National Security Council under both Republican and a Democratic presidents, said it displayed 'real low energy,' for Trump 'to not bother to honor the sacrifice of American soldiers in WWI due to some rain. Somehow everyone else was able to do so today.'" Thanks to OGJerry for the lead. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I'd guess Trump was concerned about having another bad hair day. Or maybe Trump was concerned about umbrella logistics, especially with the problem of his wife's standing beside him. ...

... Noah Lanard of Mother Jones: "Trump's announcement sparked skepticism, disbelief, and disdain. Luke Baker, Reuters' Paris bureau chief, questioned the timing of the cancellation, noting that French officials told reporters a day earlier that Trump was unlikely to visit the memorial, which is about 55 miles from Paris.... Unlike Barack Obama, Trump still hasn't visited troops serving in combat zones.... Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser, wrote [on Twitter]: 'I helped plan all of President Obama's trips for 8 years. There is always a rain option. Always.'" Lanard's post includes a photo of John Kelly & Joseph Dunford arriving at the Aisne-Marne cemetery, and there is nary a raindrop in sight. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: President Obama, you may recall, did not let a little rain bother him....

     ... Neither did this unnamed woman:

Florida. Max Greenwood of the Hill: "Three statewide races in Florida are heading for recounts after a key deadline for county election officials to submit unofficial vote tallies came and went Saturday. The first round of machine recounts, which must be completed by Thursday, sets up a bitter fight to the finish in Florida's races for Senate, governor and agriculture commissioner."

See Patrick's commentary in today's thread on But the Emails! He puts the whole "scandal" is perspective.

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "In the three days after the Democrats captured the House, President Trump fired his attorney general and replaced him with a loyalist critical of both the courts and the Russia investigation. He banned a CNN correspondent from the White House, while threatening he would do the same to other journalists. And he accused election officials in Florida and Arizona of rigging the vote against candidates he had campaigned for. It was a remarkable assault on the nation's institutions, even by a president who has gleefully taken a hammer to the press, to judges and prosecutors he does not like, and to an electoral process he has denounced as fraudulent since the day he took office. Mr. Trump's actions suggested a president lashing out after a midterm election loss that he had initially cast as a victory.... For the most part these days, Mr. Trump speaks less in sorrow than in anger."

Loveday Morris & Louisa Loveluck of the Washington Post: "An audio recording tracking the dying moments of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has been shared with Saudi Arabia, Britain, France and Germany in addition to the United States, the Turkish president said Saturday. 'We gave it to Saudi Arabia,' said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke at Ankara airport before departing for Paris for commemorations to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. 'We gave it to America. To the Germans, French, English, we gave it to all of them.' The tape is a critical piece of evidence that Turkey says backs up its assertion that Khashoggi, a contributor to The Washington Post World Opinions section, was killed by a Saudi hit team after he entered the consulate on Oct. 2."

*****

Maegan Vazquez & Michelle Kosinski of CNN: "... Donald Trump picked a fight with French President Emmanuel Macron over European defense just as Air Force One landed in France on Friday. 'President Macron of France has just suggested that Europe build its own military in order to protect itself from the U.S., China and Russia. Very insulting, but perhaps Europe should first pay its fair share of NATO, which the U.S. subsidizes greatly,' Trump tweeted minutes after landing in France. He is set to spend the weekend in Paris to commemorate the centennial of the end of World War I. Tuesday on Europe 1 radio, Macron called for a 'real European army' within the European Union, according to AFP. 'We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America,' Macron said. Macron also suggested that since the start of Trump's presidency, the US has been seen as a less reliable ally. 'When I see President Trump announcing that he's quitting a major disarmament treaty which was formed after the 1980s euro-missile crisis that hit Europe, who is the main victim? Europe and its security,' he said. Macron has been advocating a similar position for months." ...

... Alexander Mallin of ABC News: "... Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron appeared to mend fences Saturday just hours after Trump fired off an angry tweet toward his host upon arriving in Paris...."

Say, Let's See How Much Damage Trump Can Do in 20 Minutes of Chopper-Chat:

I know Matt Whitaker. -- Donald Trump, October 10, 2018

I don't know Matt Whitaker. -- Donald Trump, November 9, 2018 ...

... All the Best People, Ctd. Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Friday that he has not yet spoken to the new acting attorney general, Matthew G. Whitaker, about the special counsel investigation.... Mr. Whitaker, who now oversees the investigation, has visited the Oval Office several times and is said to have an easy chemistry with the president, according to people familiar with the relationship. 'I don't know Matt Whitaker,' Mr. Trump told reporters as he left Washington for a weekend trip to Paris. 'Matt Whitaker is a very highly respected man.'... Mr. Trump on Friday said Mr. Whitaker 'was confirmed at the highest level' when he served as the United States attorney for the Southern District of Iowa during the George W. Bush administration. Mr. Trump incorrectly asserted that [Robert] Mueller had not been confirmed by the Senate.... Mr. Mueller has been confirmed by the Senate several times -- to become the head of the F.B.I.; to serve as the United States attorney for the Northern District of California; and to serve as the assistant attorney general at the Justice Department in 1990. The special counsel position is not one that requires Senate confirmation." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Two days after he hired a transparent political hack to run the Justice Department, President Trump has failed to come up with a remotely plausible cover story. 'I didn't speak to Matt Whitaker about' the Russia investigation, Trump told reporters this morning, 'I don't know Matt Whitaker. Matt Whitaker has a great reputation and that's what I wanted.' None of those things are [Mrs.McC: IS!] true. Whitaker does not have a 'great reputation.' He lost a race to be the Iowa Republican Senate nominee in 2014, and spent the next few years working for a scam patent company that was shut down as a fraud while getting Trump's attention by engaging in low-rent pro-Trump punditry that he leveraged into a chief of staff job. Trump does know Whitaker, and has spoken about the Russia investigation with him." Chait elaborates on this last point, then goes on to mention this:

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Chait doesn't say so, but I will: It's not because Phillip works for CNN that Trump attacks her; it's not because the question she asked was impertinent or irrelevant; it wasn't; it's because (a) she's a woman & (b) she's a black woman. Tom Boggioni of the Raw Story reports that in the same chopper-presser: "... Trump insulted well-respected White House correspondent [April] Ryan as a 'loser' who 'doesn't know what the hell she is doing.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Paul Farhi of the Washington Post: "President Trump has made no secret of his contempt for reporters... He's also had unkind things to say about women and people who are African American. This week, he hit a trifecta, singling out three African American women who are journalists. The women -- Abby Phillip, April Ryan and Yamiche Alcindor -- earned his contempt apparently just for asking him questions. Trump called one of Phillip's questions 'stupid,' described Ryan as 'a loser' and brushed off Alcindor, saying her question was 'racist.'... He suggested he was considering pulling other reporters' press credentials to cover the White House, as he did with CNN reporter Jim Acosta on Wednesday. Among those he brought up in that context was Ryan. 'You talk about someone who's a loser,' Trump said of Ryan, a reporter for American Urban Radio Networks and a contributor to CNN. 'She doesn't know what the hell she's doing. She gets publicity and then she gets a pay raise, or she gets a contract with, I think, CNN. But she's very nasty and she shouldn't be. You've got to treat the White House and the office of the presidency with respect.' Trump's 'loser' comment came two days after he admonished Ryan at a White House news conference." ...

... David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "President Trump's verbal assaults against black reporters, candidates and lawmakers has renewed criticism that the president employs insults rooted in racist tropes aimed at making his African American targets appear unintelligent, untrustworthy and unqualified.... 'His supporters are right, he does attack everyone...,' said Adia Harvey Wingfield, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis.... 'But there's also a clear commonality in the attacks he levels against people of color and black professionals. These are straight out of historic playbooks about black workers and professionals in particular -- not being qualified, not being intelligent or having what it takes to succeed in a predominantly white environment.'" ...

... Andrew Prokop of Vox lists more reports of the "close" relationship between Trump & Whitaker -- the guy Trump suddenly claims he "doesn't know" -- and the irregular way Trump appointed Whiteaker. "All of this stinks to high heaven. And Trump's comments did nothing to clear up that stink." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Adam Goldman, et al., of the New York Times: "People close to Mr. Trump believe that he sent Mr. Whitaker to the department in part to limit the fallout from the Mueller investigation, one presidential adviser said. White House aides and other people close to Mr. Trump anticipate that Mr. Whitaker will rein in any report summarizing Mr. Mueller's investigation and will not allow the president to be subpoenaed." ...

... Winger Bret Stephens of the New York Times: "Of all the ways in which Donald Trump's presidency has made America worse, nothing epitomizes it quite so fully as the elevation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general of the United States. Intellectually honest conservatives -- the six or seven who remain, at any rate -- need to say this, loudly. His appointment represents an unprecedented assault on the integrity and reputation of the Justice Department, the advice and consent function of the Senate, and the rule of law in the United States." Stephens elaborates on each of the following qualities that define Whitaker & his appointment: "Unqualified. Shady. A hack. A crackpot. Barely legal. Dangerous. It's quite a good summary. "It says something about how atrocious this appointment is that even Trump is now distancing himself from Whitaker, falsely claiming not to know him despite the latter's repeated Oval Office visits. It's the Michael Cohen treatment. When a rat smells a rat, it's a rat. Only a Republican in 2018 could fail to notice." ...

... Washington Post Editors: "From approximately the second President Trump ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and tapped Mr. Whitaker to temporarily exercise the office's vast authority, legal experts have sparred over whether Mr. Trump can unilaterally elevate someone from a role that does not require Senate confirmation to one that does. But regardless of whether the promotion is legal, it is very clear that it is unwise. Mr. Whitaker is unfit for the job.... It took less than 24 hours for material to emerge suggesting he could not survive even a rudimentary vetting." ...

     ... See also safari's commentary at the top of today's thread. ...

... Another Winger Whitaker Idea. Andrew Kaczynski of CNN: "Matthew Whitaker ... has said that states have the right to nullify federal law, but that they need the political courage to do so. Whitaker ... made the comments during a failed 2014 run for the Republican Senate nomination in Iowa. 'As a principle, it has been turned down by the courts and our federal government has not recognized it,' Whitaker said while taking questions during a September 2013 campaign speech. 'Now we need to remember that the states set up the federal government and not vice versa. And so the question is, do we have the political courage in the state of Iowa or some other state to nullify Obamacare and pay the consequences for that?'" He has made similar comments elsewhere. ...

... ** The Two Faces of Matt Whitaker. Murray Waas of Vox: "Matthew Whitaker ... privately provided advice to the president last year on how the White House might be able to pressure the Justice Department to investigate the president's political adversaries, Vox has learned.... [N]ew information suggests that Whitaker -- while working for Sessions -- advocated on behalf of, and attempted to facilitate, Trump's desire to exploit the Justice Department and FBI to investigate the president's enemies.... Whitaker was the chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and in that role was advising Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on how to counter the president's demands. But according to one former and one current administration official, Whitaker was simultaneously counseling the White House on how the president and his aides might successfully pressure Sessions and Rosenstein to give in to Trump's demands." --s ...

Erin Banco of The Daily Beast: "Inside the Department of Justice ..., Whitaker is seen as a rogue and under-qualified new leader whose impact won't just be felt on the Mueller probe but throughout the federal government. 'He's a fucking fool,' one trial attorney inside the department said of the new AG.... 'We've seen this over and over again with the Trump administration. They never vet these people,' said one former official from the department.... Inside DOJ, Whitaker's political views are known to be similar to Sessions'. But officials there said that his unpredictability, and lack of institutional experience, could lead the department in a more conservative direction." --s ...

... Jon Swaine in the Guardian: "... Matthew Whitaker was involved in a company that scammed US military veterans out of their life savings, according to court filings and interviews. Whitaker ... was paid to work as an advisory board member for World Patent Marketing (WPM).... Earlier this year, it was ordered to pay authorities $26m.... In particular, WPM promoted itself as a champion of those who served in the military." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Whitaker's association with the patent scam has been widely reported, but this is the first article I've seen that emphasized the company's targeting military veterans. Also, too, we learn this from Bret Stephens' column, linked above. (The link in the cited material is to the WSJ story that broke this): "Now it turns out that the Miami office of the F.B.I. is conducting a criminal investigation of World Patent Marketing. This would be the same F.B.I. that Whitaker oversees in his new job." ...

... The Worst Laid Scheme. David Atkins in the Washington Monthly: "The president knew that Democrats would likely take over the House.... He knew that Special Counsel's investigation would likely soon ensnare even more of his top lieutenants, even his eldest son. And he was incensed at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for failing to use the Justice Department as a blast shield to protect him from the explosive consequences of his crimes. So he needed to have a plan prepared for the day after the election. He had to fire Sessions and try to constrain Mueller. The plan, apparently, was to replace Sessions with a wholly unvetted scam artist and wackadoo legal extremist because Trump likes his football player's physique, enjoyed his articles defending the president on far-right websites, and lauded his laughably aggressive performances on television. Just a day's worth of media scrutiny after the appointment has led to a cavalcade of embarrassment.... But what's even more shocking is that the furor seemed to come as a surprise to the Trump Administration[.]... It appears that they sort of knew what they were getting, but not entirely, because they didn't bother to vet or investigate the guy they were counting on to protect the president from possible impeachment and criminal indictment." ...

... Steve Benen of NBC News: "Trump may not rely on intelligence reports, but he does rely heavily on his remote control. In this administration, the key to acquiring power and influence is appearing on the president's television -- and saying what Trump wants to hear. Indeed, much of the pushback against Whitaker is predicated on the obvious fact that he's not qualified to oversee the Justice Department.... But in this White House, qualifications are irrelevant -- a fact Trump has made clear over and over again. It's very easy to believe the White House did no meaningful vetting of Whitaker before the president made him acting attorney general because this White House doesn't seem to do meaningful vetting of practically anyone. The result is a series of fiascos like this one." ...

... Adam Silverman of Balloon Juice: "As expected the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have begun to strategically leak negative information about Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker.... Whitaker will continue to suffer a death of a thousand cuts until the DOJ and FBI gets what it wants, which is, at least a recusal, if not an outright resignation." ...

... ** Chaos at Justice. Evan Perez, et al. of CNN: "On Wednesday, the attorney general [Jeff Sessions] received the call [from] ... John Kelly ... to submit his resignation.... Sessions agreed..., but he wanted a few more days before the resignation would become effective. Kelly said he'd consult the President. Soon ... top Justice officials convened on the 5th floor suite of offices for the attorney general. Eventually, there were two huddles in separate offices. Among those in Sessions' office was Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, his deputy Ed O'Callaghan, Solicitor General Noel Francisco and Steven Engel, who heads the Office of Legal Counsel. A few yards away, [Matt] Whitaker strategized with other aides, including Gary Barnett, now his chief of staff.... The rival huddles ... laid bare a break in the relationship between Sessions and Whitaker that had emerged in recent weeks.... A source close to Sessions says that the former attorney general realized that Whitaker was 'self-dealing' after reports surfaced in September that Whitaker had spoken with Kelly and had discussed plans to become the No. 2 at the Justice Department if Rosenstein was forced to resign.... Soon, Whitaker strode into Sessions' office and asked to speak one-on-one [with Sessions].... Shortly after, Sessions told his huddle that his resignation would be effective that day.... O'Callaghan had tried to appeal to Sessions.... Someone also reminded Sessions that the last time Whitaker played a role in a purported resignation -- a few weeks earlier in September, with Rosenstein -- the plan collapsed." --s

Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Friday called the delay in tallying ballots in Florida 'a disgrace' and sought to tie the ongoing vote count to a conspiracy he claimed exists to undermine Republicans by Democratic operatives. Speaking to reporters before he left for Paris for a World War I commemoration, Trump slammed the hold-up in Democratic-leaning Broward and Palm Beach counties that's thrown the state's gubernatorial and Senate races into flux.... 'If you look at Broward, and Palm Beach to a lesser extent, if you look at Broward County, they have had a horrible history and if you look at the person, in this case the woman, involved, she has had a horrible history,' Trump said, referring to Brenda Snipes, Broward's election supervisor who Gov. Rick Scott ... sued this week for access to ballot information. 'All of a sudden they're finding votes out of nowhere,' Trump claimed Friday, noting that Scott's lead in the Senate race has been narrowing with each batch of votes reported by the two heavily Democratic counties. Trump said that the situation should be 'cautiously' examined because of what he said was a suspect hiring by Scott's opponent, Sen. Bill Nelson. As part of the recount effort, Nelson retained attorney Marc Elias, who has ties to ... Hillary Clinton.... In a tweet aboard Air Force One, Trump called Elias Democrats' 'best Election stealing lawyer,' and claimed that it was only after Elias arrived that Broward 'miraculously started finding Democrat votes,' while offering no proof to support either accusation.... In a subsequent Twitter post, Trump ... wrote, 'I am sending much better lawyers to expose the FRAUD!'..." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I guess I should mention Dr. Snipes is a black woman. (But it is true she runs a very loose ship.) There's more 2018 election news linked below. ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Greg Sargent is thinking what I was thinking: "In the run-up to Election Day in 2016, Donald Trump repeatedly and flatly declared that the outcome of the election would be legitimate only if he won.... In retrospect, this previewed much of what we are seeing right now, in the biggest stories of the moment: The battles underway over the vote-counting in the Florida and Georgia contests; the appointment of a Trump loyalist as the new acting attorney general; the White House's promotion of an apparently doctored video to justify punishing a reporter; and the tactics Trump employed to try to retain the GOP congressional majority. On Thursday night, Trump tweeted: 'Law Enforcement is looking into another big corruption scandal having to do with Election Fraud in #Broward and Palm Beach. Florida voted for Rick Scott!'... This 'big corruption scandal ...' is that Democrats want the votes to be fully counted in Democratic areas." Read on. As Sargent writes, "All of this is likely to get much, much worse." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jeremy Diamond of CNN: "... Donald Trump pushed back at former first lady Michelle Obama and former President Barack Obama over a forthcoming memoir in which the former first lady said she would 'never forgive' Trump for his role in the 'birther' movement. 'She got paid a lot of money to write a book and they always expect a little controversy,' Trump said [during the chopper-chat]. 'I'll give you a little controversy back, I'll never forgive (President Barack Obama) for what he did to our US military. It was depleted, and I had to fix it,' Trump said. 'What he did to our military made this country very unsafe for you and you and you.' The former first lady writes in her new memoir that she will never forgive Trump for his role in promoting the 'birther' conspiracy theory that falsely claimed that her husband was not born in the United States. She writes that Trump's central role in pushing the falsehood put her family at risk." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I guess I should mention here that Michelle Obama is a black woman. Also too, here's NPR's Philip Ewing's 2016 response to Trump's oft-repeated charge that President Obama "depleted the military." AND if Trump was watching anything besides Barack Obama's birth certificate during the Obama administration, he would know that Michelle Obama & Jill Biden worked tirelessly to help military families, so hitting President Obama on the military as a means of criticizing his wife is remarkably stupid.

Michael Shear & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump proclaimed on Friday that the illegal entry of immigrants across the southern border of the United States is detrimental to the national interest, triggering tough changes that will deny asylum to all migrants who do not enter through official border crossings. The proclamation, issued just moments before Mr. Trump left the White House for a weekend trip to Paris, suspends asylum rights for all immigrants who attempt to cross into the United States illegally, though officials said it was aimed primarily at several thousand migrants traveling north through Mexico in caravans.... Mr. Trump's proclamation drew on the same powers to control the nation's borders that he cited when he banned travel from several predominantly Muslim nations shortly after becoming president. The Supreme Court upheld a later version of that ban after a nearly year-and-a-half legal fight. The new proclamation is certain to spark a similar legal battle." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Noah Lanard of Mother Jones: "Trump's proclamation flouts the plain text of US immigration law, which states that migrants are eligible for asylum 'whether or not' they arrive 'at a designated port of arrival.' But, as with his travel ban last year, Trump is using a section of US law that gives him broad power to temporarily ban groups of people from coming to the United States if he deems their entry to be 'detrimental' to the national interest." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jeet Heer: "In a blockbuster investigative article, The Wall Street Journal reports that on two previously undisclosed occasions in 2015 and 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump met with David Pecker, chief executive of the firm that owns The National Enquirer, to plot out strategies for hush money payments to women that Trump had allegedly had extra-marital affairs with. These meetings led to the dispersal of money from The National Enquirer to the model Karen McDougal. If accurate, The Wall Street Journal's account contradicts Trump's frequent denials of involvement in the payouts. They also underscore the possibility the president is vulnerable to possible charges of violating federal campaign-finance laws. The Journal report also indicates further evidence of a parallel arrangement, made by the president's former lawyer Michael Cohen, with the actress Stormy Daniels." ...

... Paul Campos, in LG&$, publishes a long excerpt of the WSJ story. ...

... Rafi Schwartz of Splinter: "After years of denying he played any role in doling out hush money to several women with whom he'd had extramarital affairs in exchange for their silence, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that ... Donald Trump was not only aware of the potentially illegal payments, he was intimately involved in nearly every step of the process. Citing a whopping three dozen 'people who have direct knowledge of the events or who have been briefed on them,' the Journal's report seemingly corroborates testimony given by former Trump attorney/lackey Michael Cohen, who named the president as a co-conspirator when he pled guilty to a series of campaign finance charges in August." ...

... Ronn Blitzer of Law & Crime: "The most damning evidence of all, however, isn't just regarding Trump's involvement in the payments, but the details of discussions of a cover-up.... Campaign finance violations, such as illegal corporate contributions or donations that exceed the maximum allowable amount, require willful violation of federal law. Trump's denials and discussion of how to keep his name out of it would help support allegations that he knew the payments were illegal."

Katherine Faulders, et al., of ABC News: "Talks between Special Counsel Robert Mueller and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort have grown increasingly tense over Manafort's apparent lack of cooperation with the investigation, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Prosecutors from Mueller's office have been asking Manafort about a wide range of topics in nearly a dozen meetings since Manafort agreed to cooperate in September, sources said, but the Mueller team is 'not getting what they want,' said one source with knowledge of the discussions. The consequences of failing to fully cooperate could be dire when it comes time for Manafort to be sentenced."

** But the Emails! Marisa Schultz of the New York Post: "Fired FBI chief James Comey used his private Gmail account hundreds of times to conduct government business -- and at least seven of those messages were deemed so sensitive by the Justice Department that they declined to release them. The former top G-man repeatedly claimed he only used his private account for 'incidental' purposes and never for anything that was classified -- and that appears to be true. But Justice acknowledged in response to a Freedom of Information request that Comey and his chief of staff discussed government business on about 1,200 pages of messages, 156 of which were obtained by The Post. The Cause of Action Institute, a conservative watchdog group, filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit for Comey's Gmail correspondence involving his work for the bureau.... Justice released 156 [emails] but refused to hand over seven emails because they would 'disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions.' And another 363 pages of emails were withheld because they discussed privileged agency communications or out of personal privacy concerns.... In one email on Oct. 7, 2015, Comey seems to recognize the hypocrisy of the FBI investigating Hillary Clinton's email practices while he's exchanging FBI info on his own private account because his government account was down.... The inspector general at Justice previously slammed Comey for using his personal account for FBI business, saying it was 'inconsistent' with government policy." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Of course it isn't just Comey's hypocrisy, but the effect it had, which is so stunning. As everyone recalls, Comey bucked the long-standing FBI tradition of making no comment on investigations of matters on which no charges are brought. He held a grand press conference, contra the wishes to the sitting Attorney General, & excoriated Clinton & her correspondents for being "extremely careless" with sensitive and secret information. Now it turns out that the sanctimonious Comey was doing in real time exactly what Clinton was doing: using a personal account (in Comey's case, a very public g-mail account, no less, not one that connected to only a private, protected server) to conduct sensitive government business. I know Hillary Clinton was an awful candidate on many levels, but I feel certain she would have won the 2016 election without Comey's interference, first with his irregular press briefing & then with his October surprise of unnecessarily re-opening, then closing, the Clinton e-mail investigation.

Donald Kirk of The Daily Beast: "North Korea postponed key nuclear talks with the United States this week.... Ignored during campaigning for the midterm elections, North Korea is returning like a ghost from the past. If Trump still fantasizes about his friend in Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un, ever giving up his nukes, the signs are unmistakable that the vaunted peace process is winding down. The U.S. and North Korea have reached an impasse.... In fact, while North Korea clings to its nuclear warheads and the U.S. sticks to 'complete denuclearization,' Trump is adopting a bargaining position that is sure to upset the North Koreans.... North Korea, however, is not yielding to pressure. The North's party newspaper Rodong Sinmun has said the North will resume making and testing nukes and missiles [if sanctions aren't lifted].... Seoul views the impasse with considerable alarm." --s

Reuters: "The United States is halting refueling of aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition engaged in Yemen, the United States and Saudi Arabia has said, ending one of the most divisive aspects of US assistance to the Saudi war effort. Saudi Arabia, in a statement released by its embassy in Washington, said it had decided to request an end to US aerial refuelling for its operations in Yemen because it could now handle it by itself." --s

Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic: "The Trump administration is breaking with 75 years of precedent by attempting to interfere in how science is practiced by the U.S. government, according to three experts who issued a dire warning to their profession in the journal Science on Thursday. The administration is empowering political staff to meddle with the scientific process by pushing through reforms disguised to look as though they boost transparency and integrity, the experts say. 'It is tempting to conclude that recent proposals for reforming regulatory science are similar to what has occurred in the past,' they write. 'The are not.'" --s

More 2018 Election News

Gail Collins discusses the stupidity of voting for third-party candidates. "... people who vote for a third party often wind up helping the candidate they'd least like to see win."

The Kids Are Alright. Jason Linkins of ThinkProgress: "It's a perennial concern among Democrats: The youth vote, will it come through? And will this cohort reveal themselves as liberal-minded as political folklore often suggests? Well, in the 2018 midterms, anyway, the answer to both questions turned out to be a resounding yes -- and this single factor may have saved the Democratic Party's 'blue wave' bacon. As the Center For Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) reported on the day after the midterm elections, voters between the ages of 18 and 29 turned out in their highest number of the past quarter century.... And in many of the races where Democrats needed to eke out victories, they were borne aloft on this tidal wave of young blood." --s

Arizona. Yvonne Sanchez & Rob O'Dell of the Arizona Republic: "Republican Martha McSally's path to the U.S. Senate narrowed with Friday's latest tabulation of votes from Tuesday's election, which showed Democrat Kyrsten Sinema widening her lead in a race that remains in a tortuous limbo. McSally's path to victory requires picking up votes in rural counties where she did well, limiting losses in Democratic strongholds such as Pima and Coconino counties, and then winning Maricopa County by a large margin. About 266,000 Maricopa County ballots remain uncounted. Statewide, about 360,000 ballots remain uncounted. Sinema's lead over McSally grew to about 20,000 votes as of 7 p.m. Friday. Sinema is winning the Republican-leaning Maricopa County. When ballots hav been tabulated, McSally has not won any batch of votes in Maricopa County, including early votes posted on Election Day, votes cast at polling places on Election Day, and early ballots counted since."

Florida, Florida, Florida. Remember "Butterfly Ballots"? It's Déjà Vu All Over Again. Nate Cohn & Kevin Quealy of the New York Times: "As the initial count concludes, one issue will loom over the result: a substantial undervote in Broward County, the state's most Democratic county, and the possibility that the ballot design, which might have made it harder to find the Senate choice, will ultimately cost the Democrats a Senate seat. An undervote is when a voter casts a ballot but doesn't vote in one of the contests on the ballot. At the moment, there are a lot undervotes in the Senate race in Broward. If [Rick] Scott [R] ultimately prevails by a margin of 10,000 votes or less, the undervotes in Broward County could be what cost [Sen. Bill] Nelson [D] the race. Broward County has reported about 25,000 fewer votes cast for Senate than for governor, a difference of about 3.7 percent. That means voters left their Senate choice blank, or the choice was not counted because of a tabulation error.... This is highly unusual, and there's nothing like this discrepancy elsewhere in the state.... In Broward County, the Senate contest appeared in the lower left section of the first page, under a set of instructions rendered in several languages. This design could explain the undervote if even a small fraction of voters, thinking it was part of the instructions, overlooked the Senate race.... The only other race that appeared in the lower-left hand section of the ballot was the race for Congress. It seems there was a similar undervote in those contests." ...

... AP: "A judge ordered Broward County Supervisor of Elections Dr. Brenda Snipes to allow immediate inspection of voter records during an emergency hearing Friday. The court was asked to intervene in the tight U.S. Senate race between Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott as the two sides prepare for a possible recount. Judge Carol-Lisa Phillip said Snipes must allow inspections on or before 7 p.m. Friday evening. Phillips found that Snipes violated that law by failing to turn over the information to attorneys for Scott's Senate campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee." ...

... Steve Bousquet & Nicholas Nehamas of the Tampa Bay Times: "Standing on the front porch of the Governor's Mansion, Candidate Rick Scott accused 'unethical liberals' of plotting to steal a U.S. Senate seat from him and keep safe for his Democratic opponent, Bill Nelson. But it was clearly Governor Rick Scott who moments later asked the state law enforcement agency under his control to investigate Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes' operation, though he did not offer additional specifics. As it turns out, there is no investigation. Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said Scott did not submit his request in writing, and that no allegation of voter fraud in Broward has been sent to the Florida Department of State, which oversees elections.... But the episode underscored the lack of a clear dividing line between his dual roles as candidate for higher office and his current job as governor. The alert calling reporters to Thursday night's news conference came from Scott's Senate campaign -- not his state office. He held the presser at the official state residence, a taxpayer-funded site traditionally off-limits to all partisan political activity."

Texas. Tom Dart of the Guardian: "While Beto O'Rourke's bid to oust Ted Cruz for a US Senate seat may have stolen midterms headlines this week, another 'Texas miracle' was under way in Harris county, where 19 African American women ran for judge -- and all won.... Their victories marked an unprecedented level of success for black female judicial candidates in the county, which includes Houston.... According to figures from The Gavel Gap, an analysis by a progressive legal group, the American Constitution Society found white men make up 30% of the Texas population but 58% of state court judges." --s

Alex Ward of Vox: "A House Democrat will soon introduce legislation to punish Saudi Arabia over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi -- by trying to halt an impending nuclear deal with the country. Obtained exclusively by Vox, the bill -- nicknamed the 'No Nuclear Weapons for Saudi Arabia Act of 2018' -- if passed would be the strongest rebuke to Saudi Arabia yet since the uproar over Khashoggi's fate.... It would come as a big blow to Saudi Arabia: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ... launched a project on Monday to build his country's first nuclear research reactor. There's also some bipartisan support to stop nuclear talks with Riyadh in the Senate." --s

AP: "Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was released from the hospital Friday [link fixed] after having been admitted for treatment and observation after fracturing three ribs in a fall. Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said the 85-year-old justice is 'doing well' and working from home." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Mark Hand of ThinkProgress: "A federal jury in Tennessee on Wednesday sided with a group of workers and their families that alleged a contractor did not take the necessary steps to protect the health of the workers assigned to clean up a massive 2008 coal ash spill. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), owner of the coal-fired Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee, paid Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. millions of dollars to clean up the massive coal ash spill. During the cleanup, however, workers started getting sick. More than 30 workers assigned to cleanup work at the Kingston site have died and more than 250 are sick or dying." --s

News Ledes

Los Angeles Times: "... after a fast-moving wildfire ravaged [a] community of 27,000 people [in California's Sierra Nevada foothills], forcing thousands to flee by car and on foot, Paradise ... has joined the growing list of California towns and cities devastated by one of the worst fire seasons on record. Officials said at least nine people died and more than 6,700 homes and commercial buildings were lost -- making it the most destructive fire to property in state history."

Los Angeles Times: "After forcing 200,000 people to flee and burning scores of homes in Ventura County and Malibu, the Woolsey fire early Saturday morning pushed in several directions and created new dangers. The fire continued to menace Malibu, approaching the beach in several spots and getting closer to Pepperdine University, where some students and staff remain on campus.... Fueled by dry conditions and extreme winds, the blaze charred 35,000 acres and left a path of destruction and chaos as it burned through Oak Park, Thousand Oaks and other Ventura County communities before barreling into Malibu and burning to the water's edge."

The Commentariat -- November 9, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Say, Let's See How Much Damage Trump Can Do in 20 Minutes of Chopper-Chat:

Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Friday that he has not yet spoken to the new acting attorney general, Matthew G. Whitaker, about the special counsel investigation.... Mr. Whitaker, who now oversees the investigation, has visited the Oval Office several times and is said to have an easy chemistry with the president, according to people familiar with the relationship. 'I don't know Matt Whitaker,' Mr. Trump told reporters as he left Washington for a weekend trip to Paris. 'Matt Whitaker is a very highly respected man.'... Mr. Trump on Friday said Mr. Whitaker 'was confirmed at the highest level' when he served as the United States attorney for the Southern District of Iowa during the George W. Bush administration. Mr. Trump incorrectly asserted that [Robert] Mueller had not been confirmed by the Senate.... Mr. Mueller has been confirmed by the Senate several times -- to become the head of the F.B.I.; to serve as the United States attorney for the Northern District of California; and to serve as the assistant attorney general at the Justice Department in 1990. The special counsel position is not one that requires Senate confirmation." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Two days after he hired a transparent political hack to run the Justice Department, President Trump has failed to come up with a remotely plausible cover story. 'I didn't speak to Matt Whitaker about' the Russia investigation, Trump told reporters this morning, 'I don't know Matt Whitaker. Matt Whitaker has a great reputation and that's what I wanted.' None of those things are [Mrs.McC: IS!] true. Whitaker does not have a 'great reputation.' He lost a race to be the Iowa Republican Senate nominee in 2014, and spent the next few years working for a scam patent company that was shut down as a fraud while getting Trump's attention by engaging in low-rent pro-Trump punditry that he leveraged into a chief of staff job. Trump does know Whitaker, and has spoken about the Russia investigation with him." Chait elaborates on this last point, then goes on to mention this:

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Chait doesn't say so, but I will: It's not because Phillip works for CNN that Trump attacks her; it's not because the question she asked was impertinent or irrelevant; it wasn't; it's because (a) she's a woman & (b) she's a black woman. Tom Boggioni of the Raw Story reports that in the same chopper-presser: "... Trump insulted well-respected White House correspondent [April] Ryan as a 'loser' who 'doesn't know what the hell she is doing.'" ...

... Andrew Prokop of Vox lists more reports of the "close" relationship between Trump & Whitaker -- the guy Trump suddenly claims he "doesn't know" -- and the irregular way Trump appointed Whiteaker. "All of this stinks to high heaven. And Trump's comments did nothing to clear up that stink." ...

... Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Friday called the delay in tallying ballots in Florida 'a disgrace' and sought to tie the ongoing vote count to a conspiracy he claimed exists to undermine Republicans by Democratic operatives. Speaking to reporters before he left for Paris for a World War I commemoration, Trump slammed the hold-up in Democratic-leaning Broward and Palm Beach counties that's thrown the state's gubernatorial and Senate races into flux.... 'If you look at Broward, and Palm Beach to a lesser extent, if you look at Broward County, they have had a horrible history and if you look at the person, in this case the woman, involved, she has had a horrible history,' Trump said, referring to Brenda Snipes, Broward's election supervisor who Gov. Rick Scott ... sued this week for access to ballot information. 'All of a sudden they're finding votes out of nowhere,' Trump claimed Friday, noting that Scott's lead in the Senate race has been narrowing with each batch of votes reported by the two heavily Democratic counties. Trump said that the situation should be 'cautiously' examined because of what he said was a suspect hiring by Scott's opponent, Sen. Bill Nelson. As part of the recount effort, Nelson retained attorney Marc Elias, who has ties to ... Hillary Clinton.... In a tweet aboard Air Force One, Trump called Elias Democrats' 'best Election stealing lawyer,' and claimed that it was only after Elias arrived that Broward 'miraculously started finding Democrat votes,' while offering no proof to support either accusation.... In a subsequent Twitter post, Trump ... wrote, 'I am sending much better lawyers to expose the FRAUD!'..." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I guess I should mention Dr. Snipes is black. ...

... Will Sommer of the Daily Beast runs down Republican freak-outs over the state races that are tightening even as Republicans were ahead on election night. Mrs. McC: I like the way Sommer puts Rick Scott's stunt in perspective: "In other words, the state governor used his state-funded official residence to launch legal action against his own state's election officials about an election he was a candidate in." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Greg Sargent is thinking what I was thinking: "In the run-up to Election Day in 2016, Donald Trump repeatedly and flatly declared that the outcome of the election would be legitimate only if he won.... In retrospect, this previewed much of what we are seeing right now, in the biggest stories of the moment: The battles underway over the vote-counting in the Florida and Georgia contests; the appointment of a Trump loyalist as the new acting attorney general; the White House's promotion of an apparently doctored video to justify punishing a reporter; and the tactics Trump employed to try to retain the GOP congressional majority. On Thursday night, Trump tweeted: 'Law Enforcement is looking into another big corruption scandal having to do with Election Fraud in #Broward and Palm Beach. Florida voted for Rick Scott!'... This 'big corruption scandal ...' is that Democrats want the votes to be fully counted in Democratic areas." Read on. As Sargent writes, "All of this is likely to get much, much worse."

Michael Shear & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump proclaimed on Friday that the illegal entry of immigrants across the southern border of the United States is detrimental to the national interest, triggering tough changes that will deny asylum to all migrants who do not enter through official border crossings. The proclamation, issued just moments before Mr. Trump left the White House for a weekend trip to Paris, suspends asylum rights for all immigrants who attempt to cross into the United States illegally, though officials said it was aimed primarily at several thousand migrants traveling north through Mexico in caravans.... Mr. Trump's proclamation drew on the same powers to control the nation's borders that he cited when he banned travel from several predominantly Muslim nations shortly after becoming president. The Supreme Court upheld a later version of that ban after a nearly year-and-a-half legal fight. The new proclamation is certain to spark a similar legal battle."...

... Noah Lanard of Mother Jones: "Trump's proclamation flouts the plain text of US immigration law, which states that migrants are eligible for asylum 'whether or not' they arrive 'at a designated port of arrival.' But, as with his travel ban last year, Trump is using a section of US law that gives him broad power to temporarily ban groups of people from coming to the United States if he deems their entry to be 'detrimental' to the national interest."

AP: "Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was released from the hospital Friday [link fixed] after having been admitted for treatment and observation after fracturing three ribs in a fall. Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said the 85-year-old justice is 'doing well' and working from home."

*****

Springtime for Trump. Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Following this week's midterm elections, President Trump ousted his attorney general, seized control of the Russia investigation for a partisan loyalist and suspended the credentials for a journalist he deemed too adversarial. And that was just the first 24 hours.... After voters delivered a mixed verdict in the first national referendum of his presidency, Trump has been unbound, claiming more of a popular mandate than exists -- 'very close to a complete victory,' as he put it Wednesday -- and moving swiftly to press some of the buttons he had previously resisted pressing. 'All of the guardrails are off and the rule of law is under an unprecedented threat,' said Joyce White Vance, who served as a U.S. attorney in Alabama.... 'This is a unique moment in this administration where the president has thrown down the gauntlet,' Vance said. 'We have this dangerous convergence of walking away from the rule of law and walking away from the First Amendment at the same time.'"

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The Trump administration, invoking national security powers meant to protect the United States against threats from abroad, announced new rules on Thursday that give President Trump vast authority to deny asylum to virtually any migrant who crosses the border illegally. Administration officials declined to say who will be affected by the new rules, but it is widely expected inside the government and by advocate groups that Mr. Trump intends to deny asylum to migrants from Central American nations, some of whom are marching toward the United States in a widely publicized caravan. The president ... is expected to announce on Friday which countries the rules will apply to."

** Devlin Barrett, et al., of the Washington Post: "Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker has no intention of recusing himself from overseeing the special counsel probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to people close to him who added they do not believe he would approve any subpoena of President Trump as part of that investigation.... The two people close to Whitaker also said they strongly believe he would not approve any request from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to subpoena the president.... While Whitaker is now Mueller's ultimate supervisor, it was not immediately clear whether that meant [Deputy AG Rod] Rosenstein would step aside. Justice Department officials said that under normal circumstances, the deputy attorney general would likely play an active, hands-on role in overseeing such a high profile probe, and they had no reason to believe that Rosenstein would now be cut out." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

Josh Marshall: "Presidents have not infrequently used so-called recess appointments to install cabinet secretaries who could not get Senate confirmation or couldn't even receive a vote -- though the courts have now greatly restricted that power.... But what happened yesterday is different from all those cases. This is perhaps the first time when a President has installed a cabinet secretary without senate confirmation for the specific purpose of committing a corrupt act." ...

... ** Neal Katyal & George (Mr. Kellyanne) Conway in a New York Times op-ed: "A principal officer [i.e., one who reports only to the president & whose appointment is subject to the Constitution's appointments clause] must be confirmed by the Senate. And that has a very significant consequence today. It means that Mr. Trump's installation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general of the United States after forcing the resignation of Jeff Sessions is unconstitutional. It's illegal. And it means that anything Mr. Whitaker does, or tries to do, in that position is invalid.... Because Mr. Whitaker has not undergone the process of Senate confirmation, there has been no mechanism for scrutinizing whether he has the character and ability to evenhandedly enforce the law in a position of such grave responsibility. The public is entitled to that assurance, especially since Mr. Whitaker's only supervisor is Mr. Trump himself, and the president is hopelessly compromised by the Mueller investigation." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: As the writers point out, Trump tweeted agreement with this principle when it suited him. In any event Katyal & Conway make such a compelling argument that it seems most likely that some entity will bring a legal challenge against Whitaker's appointment. MEANWHILE, as you learn more about Whitaker's "qualifications," some of which are outlined below, do remember that Donald Trump hires All the Best People. I know it's hard to pick a Lie of the Year with thousands to choose from, but All the Best People is right up there. ...

... Sharon Kelly of DeSmog Blog: "Whitaker ... served for three years as the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), which describes itself as 'a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency in government and civic arenas.' FACT has come under fire for its own lack of transparency, with the Center for Responsive Politics calling attention to FACT's funding, which in some years came entirely from Donors Trust, an organization also known as the 'Dark Money ATM of the Conservative Movement' and whose own donors include the notorious funders of climate denial, Charles and David Koch.... 'In other words, an organization "dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency" gets 100 percent of its funds from a group that exists mainly as a vehicle for donors to elude transparency,' the Center for Responsive Politics wrote in 2016.... In 2016, Whitaker earned $402,000 as FACT's director and president, according to the organization's tax filings. That followed reported compensation from FACT for Whitaker of $63,000 in 2014, and $252,000 in 2015. His work included advocacy for causes backed by the fossil fuel industry." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: $400K/year is damned good compensation for a dimwit. Also, I think it's unfair to pick on a person for his appearance. But it isn't wrong to pick on a person for choosing a particular appearance, and Matt Whitaker has chosen to look like the baddest dude at a Nazis R Us convention. As it turns out, this may be an instance where appearance is not deceiving. ...

... Betsy Woodruff, et al., of the Daily Beast: "Over the past three years, [Matt Whitaker] used his position as the executive director of conservative government watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) as an opportunity to become a right-leaning political pundit, penning opinion pieces in USA Today and the Washington Examiner, and appearing regularly across conservative talk-radio shows and cable news. The majority of Whitaker's media appearances focused on the promotion of one argument: Liberals in government are working to undermine Americans in a variety of troubling and unproven ways. And no one is a bigger threat than Mueller. Before joining the DOJ, Whitaker was one of the biggest critics of Mueller's probe, dubbing it 'political' and criticizing its mere existence in numerous media appearances. During interviews with right-wing radio hosts over the last two years, Whitaker admonished Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for appointing Mu[e]ller last year, characterizing the probe as a drain on department resources, and suggesting the special counsel's allies were leaking information designed to make him 'look productive and on top of things.' He expressed sympathy for former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty as part of Mueller's investigation, and in one interview last year, Whitaker said that 'the real Russian ties were with Hillary Clinton.'" ...

    ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Finally, Trump has an AG who will investigate Hillary's collusion with Russia. ...

... Andrew Kaczynski of CNN: "The new acting attorney general who is expected to have oversight over special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation has expressed deep skepticism of the probe, including calling Mueller's appointment 'ridiculous' and 'a little fishy.'" ...

... Cameron Joseph of TPM: "Matt Whitaker ... has been friends with former Trump adviser Sam Clovis since they both ran for the Senate in 2014.... [Whitaker] later became Trump's 2016 campaign co-chairman and briefly served as the White House adviser to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.... Clovis told TPM that he and Whitaker had developed a solid friendship during that campaign and that he'd used Whitaker as a sounding board during his work on Trump's 2016 campaign.... [T]his is a rather curious case of worlds colliding. Clovis at one point was interviewed by Mueller's team.... Clovis left the Trump administration in May and returned to Iowa after having to withdraw as Trump's nominee to be the USDA's chief scientist, potentially because he was questioned by Mueller's team.... [Clovis] said he thought it would be best to let the Mueller investigation conclude without any meddling" --s ...

... Josh Marshall: "TPM Reader AF puts together the pieces[. S/he start by citing] this CNN story: '"It was [Sam] Clovis, no stranger to TV and radio himself, who encouraged [Matt] Whitaker to get a regular commentary gig on cable television to get President Donald Trump's attention, according to friends who Whitaker told at the time. Whitaker was hired as a CNN legal commentator last year for several months, before leaving the role in September 2017 to head to the Justice Department as chief of staff to now-former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Through his CNN role, where he was deeply critical of the Mueller probe, Whitaker got to know Trump, who saw him on TV and later met in person." So it looks like he was hired (seemingly at Clovis' encouragement at least at some level) as a CNN Commentator right around the time [FBI Director James] Comey was dismissed (May 2017), and within a couple months of Sessions recusing himself (Mar 2017). He floated a way to stop Mueller by reducing the special counsel's budget in July 2017, wrote about the overreach of the Mueller investigation in August 2017, and was hired as chief of staff to Sessions in September of 2017[.]'" --s ...

... Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "In a 2014 interview, the man Donald Trump just picked to run the Department of Justice [Matthew Whitaker] appeared to claim that Social Security is unconstitutional and that basic labor laws like the minimum wage must be struck down. Yet he also seemed to argue that the Supreme Court should not decide constitutional cases at all.... At best, this [interview] suggests that the man running the Justice Department does not understand some very basic legal concepts. At worst, it indicates that he has a disorganized mind that is unable to keep track of what he said just a few seconds ago.... Either Whitaker is a man of no conviction beyond 'the right should always win,' or he lacks the knowledge and intellectual capacity to do his job." --s ...

... ** Whitaker Questions Court Rulings All the Way Back to 1803. Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The acting attorney general, Matthew G. Whitaker, once espoused the view that the courts 'are supposed to be the inferior branch' and criticized the Supreme Court's power to review legislative and executive acts and declare them unconstitutional, the lifeblood of its existence as a coequal branch of government. In a candidate Q. and A. when he sought the Republican nomination for senator in Iowa in 2014, Mr. Whitaker indicated that he shared the view among some conservatives that the federal judiciary has too much power over public policy issues. He criticized many of the Supreme Court's rulings, starting with a foundational one: Marbury v. Madison, which established its power of judicial review in 1803.... Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School constitutional law professor, said that Mr. Whitaker's expressed views of the Constitution and the role of the courts 'are extreme and the overall picture he presents would have virtually no scholarly support' and would be 'destabilizing' to society if he used the power of the attorney general to advance them." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: If there's any settled law, it's Marbury v. Madison. And if there any settled consensus about Whitaker, it's that he's dumb as a post. Echoing Millhiser, Tribe says Whitaker holds an "internally contradictory" and "ignorant" legal philosophy. ...

     ... Update. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post is refreshingly blunt: "The acting attorney general of the United States is a crackpot. Reasonable people can differ over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Maybe there's some space to debate the New Deal-era cases that cemented the authority of the regulatory state. But Marbury? This is lunacy. For any lawyer -- certainly for one now at the helm of the Justice Department -- to disagree with Marbury is like a physicist denouncing the laws of gravity.... If you thought the big worry about Whitaker was how he would handle special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, that might be just the beginning." ...

... White House "Surprised" by Whitaker Criticism. Kaitlan Collins & Betsy Klein of CNN: "There is a growing sense of concern inside the White House over the negative reaction to Matthew Whitaker being tapped as acting attorney general after Jeff Sessions' abrupt firing. Whitaker ... has faced criticism since Wednesday afternoon's announcement for his previous comments on special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Several senior officials told CNN they were surprised by the criticism, and believe it could potentially jeopardize Whitaker's chances of remaining in the post if it continues to dominate headlines.... Whitaker's standing ultimately depends on the President. But continued negative coverage will get Trump's attention." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is hilarious. Staff had no idea a guy with Whitaker's radical, partisan views & cheesy background would be met by a "negative reaction"? Are they all as stupid as Trump?

... Adam Silverman of Balloon Juice: "... Special Counsel Mueller has been planning for something like this to happen. As such he has contingency plans in place and for each contingency plan he has multiple sequels (to use DOD planning terminology). I would expect to see a bunch of indictments, either previously sealed ones or ones prepared and waiting to go, to be dropped in short order. I would also expect that whatever could be farmed out to the Federal prosecutorial districts, such as the Southern District of New York or the Eastern District of Virginia, as well as to the state level, such as NY state, Maryland, Virginia, and DC will be handed off to them. Whitaker will have limited ability to interfere with anything Mueller hands off or farms out to the Federal prosecutorial districts and no ability at all to interfere with state or DC prosecutions.... I also expect, just as we saw with Sessions, that a selected leak or two from the intel community will be quickly released as warning shots across Whitaker's bow." Thanks to OGJerry for the link. ...

... Major Garrett of CBS News: "Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is being considered to replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general, two sources familiar with the matter tell CBS News. President Trump forced Sessions out as the nation's chief law enforcement officer on Wednesday, one day after Democrats captured the House in the midterm elections. No decisions are expected soon, and the list of those being considered -- which also includes Rudy Giuliani, outgoing Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, and former Attorney General William Barr, who served under President George H. W. Bush -- is likely to grow in the coming days...." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Evan Perez, et al., of CNN: "As he was preparing to remove Jeff Sessions as attorney general..., Donald Trump had already begun reviewing with his lawyers the written answers to questions from special counsel Robert Mueller.... Among the questions Mueller has asked the President to provide written responses on are queries about [Roger] Stone and his communications with then-candidate Trump, according to a source briefed on the matter....Trump made clear once again in a news conference Wednesday he believes the investigation is a waste of time and money. 'It's a disgrace, it should have never been started because there was no crime,' Trump said.... Mueller's team has begun writing its final report, multiple sources told CNN." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeed News on arguments in the suit which Andrew Miller, a former associate of Roger Stone, has brought to try to quash a subpoena that Robert Mueller's team issued him. Mrs.McC: From what you learned in reading Katyal & Conway's argument above, you'll easily understand Mueller's argument in the Miller suit.

Matthew Choi of Politico: "Prominent CNN personalities on Thursday accused White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders of posting an altered video to suggest CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta inappropriately made contact with a White House intern over control of a microphone. Sanders posted a video Wednesday of Acosta maintaining his grip on a microphone as a White House intern tried to take it from him during a news conference with ... Donald Trump. Sanders used the video as justification for the White House revoking Acosta's press access Wednesday evening -- a move that was met with immediate and fierce condemnation from other journalists. On Thursday morning, CNN's Matt Dornic, vice president of communications and digital partnerships, and Brian Stelter, chief media correspondent, both claimed the video had altered speeds to make Acosta seem more aggressive and the intern more demure.... Dornic and Stelter suggested the video might have come from the far-right website InfoWars, which has been booted from mainstream social media sites for peddling inflammatory conspiracy theories." (Also linked yesterday.)

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that President Trump cannot immediately end the program that shields from deportation young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children. The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit makes it more likely that the Supreme Court will settle the question. The Trump administration has asked the justices to add it to the docket for this term. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was begun in 2012 by President Barack Obama and has protected nearly 700,000 people brought to this country as children.... in 2017..., then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions advised the Department of Homeland Security to end the program, saying it was probably unlawful and that it could not be defended in court. But a number of courts around the country have ruled that the administration's reasoning was incorrect and kept the program in place. Like the other courts, the panel did not question the administration's power but faulted its approach."

jeff sessions is the only confederate monument trump was willing to take down. -- Clint SmithJeff Sessions' Parting Shot at Civil Rights. Katie Benner of the New York Times: "Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions has drastically limited the ability of federal law enforcement officials to use court-enforced agreements to overhaul local police departments accused of abuses and civil rights violations, the Justice Department announced on Thursday. In a major last-minute act, Mr. Sessions signed a memorandum on Wednesday before President Trump fired him sharply curtailing the use of so-called consent decrees, court-approved deals between the Justice Department and local governments that create a road map of changes for law enforcement and other institutions. The move means that the decrees, used aggressively by Obama-era Justice Department officials to fight police abuses, will be more difficult to enact."

Fred Barbash & Allyson Chiu of the Washington Post: "A federal judge temporarily blocked construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, ruling late Thursday that the Trump administration had failed to justify its decision granting a permit for the 1,200-mile long project designed to connect Canada's tar sands crude oil with refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. The judge, Brian Morris of the U.S. District Court in Montana, said President Trump's State Department ignored crucial issues of climate change in order to further the president's goal of letting the pipeline be built. In doing so, the administration ran afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires 'reasoned' explanations for government decisions, particularly when they represent reversals of well-studied actions. It was a major defeat for Trump, who attacked the Obama administration for stopping the project in the face of protests and an environmental impact study. Trump signed an executive order two days into his presidency setting in motion a course reversal on the Keystone XL pipeline as well as the Dakota Access pipeline."

Laurie McGinley of the Washington Post: "The Food and Drug Administration, alarmed by a huge increase in vaping among minors, is expected to impose severe restrictions on the sale of most e-cigarettes products throughout the United States -- actions that will likely have a significant impact on an industry that has grown exponentially in recent years with little government oversight. As soon as next week, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb is expected to announce a ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes -- the majority of vaping products sold -- in tens of thousands of convenience stores and gas stations across the country, according to senior agency officials.... The agency will also impose such rules as age-verification requirements for online sales."

Election 2018

Paul Krugman: "... economic and demographic trends have interacted with political change to make the Senate deeply unrepresentative of American reality.... We are increasingly a nation of urbanites and suburbanites. Almost 60 percent of us live in metropolitan areas with more than a million people, more than 70 percent in areas with more than 500,000 residents. Conservative politicians may extol the virtues of a 'real America' of rural areas and small towns, but the real real America in which we live, while it contains small towns, is mostly metropolitan.... The Senate, which gives each state the same number of seats regardless of population -- which gives fewer than 600,000 people in Wyoming the same representation as almost 40 million in California -- drastically overweights those rural areas and underweights the places where most Americans live.... So what happened Tuesday ... wasn't just an accident of this year's map or specific campaign issues. It reflected a deep division in culture, indeed values, between the American citizenry at large and the people who get to choose much of the Senate." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Also see Norman Rockwell's "Four Freedoms," under Infotainment. Except no one is wearing either a cowboy hat or a MAGA cap, they represent "Senate America."

Alabama & West Virginia. Alice Ollstein & Rachel Roubein of Politico: "Two states approved ballot initiatives to limit or ban access to abortion, part of a wave of actions that could accelerate a Roe v. Wade challenge before the Supreme Court's new conservative majority. On Tuesday, Alabama became the first state in the nation to enact what opponents call a 'personhood clause' in its constitution, recognizing 'the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.' That makes it possible for the state to ban abortion entirely if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The measure includes no exemptions for abortion in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at risk.... West Virginians approved a measure stripping from the state constitution any abortion rights protections." --s

Arizona. CBS/AP: "Democrat Kyrsten Sinema pulled ahead of Republican Martha McSally on Thursday in the Arizona Senate race by a margin of 2,000 votes. This marked the first time that Sinema has pulled ahead of McSally in the days since the election. An additional 120,000 outstanding ballots were made available from Maricopa County Thursday. The county encompasses Phoenix and some of the state's liberal enclaves. There are an 345,000 ballots that needed to be counted per a knowledgeable source with the Arizona Secretary of State's office. Republicans filed a lawsuit Wednesday night to challenge the way some Arizona counties count mail-in ballots, as election officials began to slowly tally more than 600,000 outstanding votes in the narrow U.S. Senate race. The task that could take days."

California. Michael Finnegan of the Los Angeles Times: "California Republicans lost two House seats in Tuesday's midterm election and could surrender more as tens of thousands of ballots are counted in four other contests that remain too close to call. The party has an exceedingly small chance of holding the seats of Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Jeff Denham, historical voting patterns suggest. Two other Republicans, Rep. Mimi Walters and Young Kim of Fullerton, hold thin leads over their opponents that could also vanish." (Also linked yesterday.)

Florida. Steve Bousquet of the Tampa Bay Times: "As the Senate race between Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Bill Nelson appears headed to a statewide recount, both candidates are mobilizing teams of lawyers and legal skirmishes are well underway. Thursday dawned with Scott leading Nelson by just more than one-fourth of a percentage point. The candidates for agriculture commissioner are much closer, divided by 0.06 points, and in the contest for governor, Ron DeSantis' advantage of 0.52 over Andrew Gillum was close to the threshold for a mandatory machine recount. In a fierce scramble for votes that's expected to soon intensify, thousands of provisional ballots cast by people who didn't have IDs, or who voted at the wrong precinct, are already the focus of both sides in the Senate race." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Patricia Mazzei of the New York Times: "Looming recounts in top Florida election contests, including the bitterly fought races for Senate and governor, erupted late Thursday into a fiery feud as Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican nominee for Senate who claimed victory on Tuesday, sued local elections officials in two of the state's largest counties and accused them of 'rampant fraud.' Standing on the steps of the Governor's Mansion, Mr. Scott announced on Thursday night that his Senate campaign had sued the Democratic elections supervisors of Broward and Palm Beach Counties. He then asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which he helps oversee as governor, to investigate them."

Georgia. Alan Blinder of the New York Times: "Brian Kemp, the Republican who has claimed victory in the Georgia governor's race, said on Thursday that he was resigning as secretary of state, removing himself from the process of determining whether he had in fact been elected. With some ballots still to be counted, his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, is just shy of enough votes to force a runoff. Ms. Abrams has not conceded, and The Associated Press and other major news organizations say the race is still too close to call. Mr. Kemp attracted mounting criticism during the campaign for his management of an election in which he was also a candidate.... Mr. Kemp made no mention of the elections process on Thursday in his resignation letter to the outgoing Republican governor, Nathan Deal, saying he was resigning because he wished 'to focus on the transition to my gubernatorial administration.'" ...

... WSB-TV Atlanta: "Karen Handel [R] has conceded the Georgia's 6th Congressional District race to Lucy McBath [D] Thursday morning." (Also linked yesterday.)

Mrs. McCrabbie: Here's one I forgot:

New York. Dan Mangan of CNBC: "Rep. Chris Collins, the Republican recently indicted on federal insider trading charges, will retain his House seat representing New York's 27th District, NBC News has projected. The three-term incumbent -- the first House member to have endorsed the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump -- apparently defeated Democrat Nate McMurray, an attorney, in the Buffalo-area district. Collins had suspended his campaign in August after being arrested. But he relaunched his campaign in mid-September after efforts by the Republican Party to replace him on the ballot failed." Mrs. McC: GOP voters do love their allegedly crooked reps. (Also linked yesterday.)

North Carolina. How Gerrymandering Works. Brian Murphy of the Raleigh News & Observer: "To critics of the state's Republican-drawn congressional districts, which have been declared unconstitutional by a panel of three federal judges, Tuesday's results provided another example of a broken redistricting process, protecting Republicans from a strong showing by Democrats.... Across the state, Republican candidates for Congress won 50.3 percent of the vote and Democrats won 48.4 percent of the vote, according to a News & Observer analysis of vote totals. Democrats did not have a candidate in Eastern North Carolina's 3rd district, won by Republican incumbent Rep. Walter Jones. But Republicans kept their 10-3 edge in the state's House delegation." (Also linked yesterday.)

North Dakota. Danielle Mclean of ThinkProgress: "In a unified effort to rebuke North Dakota's restrictive voter ID laws and defend their right to vote, the state's Native American population showed up to the polls in record numbers on Tuesday.... According to the North Dakota Secretary of State's website, 1,464 ballots were cast in Sioux County, where Standing Rock is located. That's out of just 2,752 eligible voters. That beat the previous record of 1,257 ballots cast in 2016, according to the Bismarck Tribune. And almost 84 percent of Sioux County ballots were cast for Heitkamp.... Ultimately, and in spite of restrictive laws that complicated the voting process for them, North Dakota's Native Americans by and large made a point with high turnout. And community leaders are hoping turnout only goes up in future elections." --s

Juan Cole: "More progressive Democrats in the House must be prepared to fight like hell against the Pelosi-Schumer establishment, which will try to make them quiescent and go along with corporate priorities. What 2016 showed is that that platform is a formula for humiliating defeat and irrelevance. Democrats have to stand for something or people won't bother to vote for them. Here is the proposed Cole Progressive Platform for the next two years [in 11 points.]" --s

Grumpy Old Men Face Their Future. Dan Spineli of Mother Jones: "When the next speaker takes the gavel in January -- whether it is Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), as is widely assumed, or someone else -- they will preside over the most diverse and progressive Democratic caucus in history.... Sitting across the aisle from this energized group of freshman lawmakers will be the most partisan, unabashedly radical group of Republicans ever assembled in the House. With no interest in challenging Trump, this newly-elected crop of Republicans is expected to include more members of the far-right Freedom Caucus than took office in 2016." --s

Juan Cole: "With some 100 congressional victories, women staged a pink wave in the face of Trump's tone of misogyny and feckless patriarchy. But what is interesting is that the pink wave isn't exclusively white, exemplifying difference feminism more than the old Second Wave. For the first time in history, two Native American women will enter the House of Representatives, after 241 years. One of them is gay. And the youngest woman ever elected to the House is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Perhaps the most remarkable stories are the two Muslim women elected to the House, one from Minneapolis (Ilhan Omar of Somalia) and the other from Detroit (Rashida Tlaib of Detroit but ultimately Palestine).... They aren't only women, and Muslims, but also refugees. They are Donald J. Trump's worst nightmare and the antithesis of what he thinks America is or should be, if you listen to his rhetoric." --s

** All Hands on Deck. Joshua Green of Bloomberg: "The Nov. 6 elections ended two years of ... what will likely be -- despite its exhausting, near-constant chaos -- the smoothest period of Donald Trump's presidency. Really. Things will get even rockier from here.... One reason Trump supporters such as [Steve] Bannon fear Democratic oversight is that Republicans have spent years broadening and weaponizing the already formidable powers of the House majority party.... In addition, Democrats will have weapons they previously lacked. Taking a page from Judicial Watch and other conservative litigation shops, which bedeviled the Obama administration, progressives have created their own groups, including American Oversight, that will use lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests to pry documents from the Trump administration to aid Democratic investigators.... [A]s House Democrats showed a decade ago, oversight power can point a path forward and lay the groundwork for legislative gains." --s

William Cummings of USA Today: "Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in the hospital after falling in her office Wednesday night, the Court announced in a statement on Thursday. Ginsburg, 85, went home after the fall but continued to experience 'discomfort overnight' and went to George Washington University Hospital early Thursday. Tests revealed she fractured three ribs and she 'was admitted for observation and treatment,' according to the statement." Thanks to PD Pepe for the lead. (Also linked yesterday.)

Melanie Schmitz of ThinkProgress: "A shooting at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California Wednesday night is being called the worst mass shooting the country has seen -- in the past 12 days.... The shooting in Thousand Oaks is the worst mass shooting since October 27 ... when a gunman stormed into the conservative Jewish Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, killing 11 people.... The two shootings mark the 297th and 298th mass shootings in the United States since the start of 2018, according to the Gun Violence Archive." --s

Beyond the Beltway

Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "After a six-month investigation, prosecutors said Thursday that they would not pursue criminal charges against Eric T. Schneiderman, the former New York State attorney general who resigned in May after four women accused him of assaulting them. The decision not to file charges was announced in a statement issued by Madeline Singas, the Nassau County district attorney, who was asked by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to investigate the case shortly after Mr. Schneiderman left his post. Ms. Singas said the women who accused Mr. Schneiderman of abuse were credible, but there were legal hurdles to bringing charges. She did not elaborate on those obstacles, except to say that some of the accusations were too old to pursue under state law." (Also linked yesterday.)

Way Beyond

Complicit. Bethan McKernan & Patrick Wintour of the Guardian: "Aid agencies and medical staff on the ground in Hodeidah[, Yemen,] have begged the international community to intervene to stop the violence in the besieged Yemeni city, as coalition and Houthi rebel forces struggle to gain the upper hand ahead of a planned ceasefire at the end of the month. 'The violence is unbearable, I cannot tell you. We're surrounded by strikes from the air, sea and land,' said Wafa Abdullah Saleh, a nurse at the barely functioning al-Olafi hospital in the Houthi-controlled city centre.... 'Even if we try our hardest we cannot treat patients because we lack the necessities for basic operations.'" --s

News Lede

New York Times: "Firefighters in opposite ends of California fought back fast-moving blazes on Friday as wildfires raged out of control near major cities, forced tens of thousands of residents to flee their homes and damaged hundreds of buildings. Dozens of homes were destroyed in Thousand Oaks -- the city grieving from the deadly nightclub shooting earlier this week -- and the authorities ordered the evacuation of parts of Malibu, the affluent community west of Los Angeles that is home to many Hollywood celebrities, as the fire raced through the hills and canyons above the Pacific Ocean. No part of the fire was under control, according to the Ventura County Fire Department. The fire also shut down the 101 freeway, a major transportation artery connecting Los Angeles with points north."