The Commentariat -- April 1, 2019

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A group advocating for journalists and First Amendment rights is asking a judge to clear away one of the key obstacles the Justice Department is citing as grounds for withholding portions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's final report: the presence of information gathered through the secret actions of a grand jury. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a petition Monday with Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court in Washington, asking her to rule that officials need not withhold from the Congress -- or the public -- any grand jury material in Mueller's report on his probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The move comes as Attorney General William Barr has pledged to prepare a version of the report for public release ... that the department would have to excise grand jury-related testimony and evidence."

Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "The Supreme Court's opinion in Bucklew v. Precythe, which it handed down Monday on a party-line vote, is at once the most significant Eighth Amendment decision of the last several decades and the cruelest in at least as much time. Neil Gorsuch's majority opinion tosses out a basic assumption that animated the Court's understanding of what constitutes a 'cruel and unusual' punishment for more than half a century. In the process, he writes that the state of Missouri may effectively torture a man to death -- so long as it does not gratuitously inflict pain for the sheer purpose of inflicting pain. And, on top of all of that, Gorsuch would conscript death penalty defense attorneys -- men and women who often gave up lucrative legal careers to protect the lives of their clients -- into the ghoulish task of laying out the method that will be used to kill those clients. It's a breathtaking sign of just how much the Supreme Court's new majority is willing to change -- and how quickly they are willing to impose that change on the rest of us." Read on for the part about Brett Kavanaugh: next: firing squads!

Stupid Presidunce* Tricks. Reuters: "... Donald Trump's threat to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border would hit American consumers -- in the gut. From avocado toast to margaritas, the United States is heavily reliant on Mexican imports of fruit, vegetables and alcohol to meet consumer demand. Nearly half of all imported U.S. vegetables and 40 percent of imported fruit are grown in Mexico, according to the latest data from the United States Department of Agriculture. Americans would run out of avocados in three weeks if imports from Mexico were stopped, said Steve Barnard, president and chief executive of Mission Produce, the largest distributor and grower of avocados in the world." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I suppose this doesn't matter to a man whose favorite meals come from McDonalds. But I want my damned avocados.

Neil Vigdor of the Hartford Courant: "A Connecticut woman says Joe Biden touched her inappropriately and rubbed noses with her during a 2009 political fundraiser in Greenwich when he was vice president, drawing further scrutiny to the Democrat and his history of unwanted contact with women as he ponders a presidential run[.] 'It wasn't sexual, but he did grab me by the head,' Amy Lappos told The Courant Monday. 'He put his hand around my neck and pulled me in to rub noses with me. When he was pulling me in, I thought he was going to kiss me on the mouth.'Lappos posted about the alleged incident on the Facebook page of Connecticut Women in Politics Sunday in response to a similar account by former Nevada legislator Lucy Flores. Lappos, 43, who is now a freelance worker with nonprofit agencies, said she felt extremely uncomfortable when Biden approached her at the 2009 fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th, where she was volunteering. At the time, Lappos was a congressional aide to Himes, who she said was not in the room when the incident took place."

** Rachel Bade of the Washington Post: "A White House whistleblower told lawmakers that more than two-dozen denials for security clearances have been overturned during the Trump administration, calling Congress her 'last hope' for addressing what she considers improper conduct that has left the nation's secrets exposed. Tricia Newbold, a longtime White House security adviser, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that she and her colleagues issued 'dozens' of denials for security clearance applications that were later approved despite their concerns about blackmail, foreign influence, or other red flags according to panel documents released Monday. Newbold, an 18-year veteran of the security clearance process who has served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, said she warned her superiors that clearances 'were not always adjudicated in the best interest of national security' -- and was retaliated against for doing so.... White House officials whose security clearances are being scrutinized by the House Oversight Committee include ... Ivanka Trump..., Jared Kushner and national security adviser John Bolton...." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is another example of Trump tricks that are both legal & impeachable offenses. And yeah, all the best people. ...

     ... Update. The New York Times story, by Nicholas Fandos & Maggie Haberman, is here. ...

... ** Jerry Nadler in a New York Times op-ed: "The entire reason for appointing the special counsel was to protect the investigation from political influence. By offering us his version of events in lieu of the report, the attorney general, a recent political appointee, undermines the work and the integrity of his department. He also denies the public the transparency it deserves. We require the full report -- the special counsel's words, not the attorney general's summary or a redacted version. We require the report, first, because Congress, not the attorney general, has a duty under the Constitution to determine whether wrongdoing has occurred.... The attorney general's recent proposal to redact the special counsel's report before we receive it is unprecedented.... We have every reason to suspect that the unedited obstruction section of the Mueller report resembles the report that Congress received from the Watergate grand jury in 1974. That evidence showed that President Richard Nixon had attempted to obstruct justice. It did not recommend that the president should be prosecuted. It did not say the president should be impeached. It simply stated the evidence so that Congress could do its job.... If President Trump's behavior wasn't criminal, then perhaps it should have been." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Say, maybe the House should impeach Bill Barr for obstruction.

In Case You Wondered if Trump Is a Heartless Ghoul. Jonathan Swan & Sam Baker of Axios: "As he was deliberating last year over replacing Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, President Trump told confidants he had big plans for Judge Amy Coney Barrett. 'I'm saving her for Ginsburg,' Trump said of Barrett, according to three sources familiar with the president's private comments. Trump used that exact line with a number of people, including in a private conversation with an adviser two days before announcing Brett Kavanaugh's nomination. Barrett is a favorite among conservative activists, many of whom wanted her to take Kennedy's spot. She's young and proudly embraces her Catholic faith. Her past academic writings suggest an openness to overturning Roe v. Wade. Her nomination would throw gas on the culture-war fires, which Trump relishes."

Matt Stieb of New York: "According to a new book by sportswriter Rick Reilly, Trump's impulse to cheat also applies to the golf course. In Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, Reilly claims that Trump 'cheats at the highest level. He cheats when people are watching and he cheats when they aren't. He cheats whether you like it or not. He cheats because that.s how he plays golf ... if you're playing golf with him, he.s going to cheat.'... Trump claims he has a 2.8 handicap.... As the [New York] Post notes, 'Jack Nicklaus, winner of a record 18 major golf titles and generally considered the greatest golfer in the history of the game, has a handicap of 3.4.'... LGPA pro Suzann Pettersen says that Trump must collude with his caddy ahead of time, for 'no matter how far into the woods he hits the ball, it's in the middle of the fairway when we get there.' The president also allegedly tampers with the game of others in his party: former ESPN football announcer Mike Tirico recalled that Trump's caddy told him that Trump took a ball Tirico hit onto the putting green and threw it 50 feet away into a bunker." Thanks to Jeanne for reminding me about this stupid story.

Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: "Pete Buttigieg announced Monday that his presidential campaign had raised more than $7 million in the first quarter of 2019, a significant sum for a mayor who was little known outside of South Bend, Ind., only a few months ago."

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David Lynch, et al., of the Washington Post: "The White House doubled down Sunday on President Trump's threat to close the U.S. border with Mexico, despite warnings that the move would inflict immediate economic damage on American consumers and businesses while doing little to stem a tide of migrants clamoring to enter the United States. Sealing the border with Mexico, America's third-largest trading partner, would disrupt supply chains for major U.S. automakers, trigger swift price increases for grocery shoppers and invite lawsuits against the federal government, according to trade specialists and business executives.... Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said on ABC News's 'This Week' that it would take 'something dramatic' to persuade the president to abandon his border-closing plans. And Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway insisted on 'Fox News Sunday' that the president's threat 'certainly isn't a bluff.'"

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump's white supremacist policies are not only immoral & despicable, they're also incredibly stupid. ...

... Simon Romero of the New York Times: "Federal immigration officials appear to have cleared out an enclosure under a bridge in El Paso where they were detaining hundreds of families of asylum seekers, following an outcry over the conditions at the site. But authorities appeared to have shifted some processing of migrants to another site on the other side of the bridge, using a military-style tent near an existing processing facility operated by Customs and Border Protection. A smaller number of migrants could be seen at that site late Sunday afternoon. Separately, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection said on Sunday that the agency was 'in the process of transferring all of the illegal aliens being held temporarily' at the original enclosure under the bridge to a processing station in northeast El Paso." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Note that CBP produces no evidence that the detainees are "illegal aliens." Many are likely asylum seekers, and there's nothing "illegal" about their request for asylum.

... Casey Michel of ThinkProgress: "In an interview with the Spanish outlet La Sexta, Pope Francis called out the president's plans [to build a border wall], saying that the U.S. would end up as a 'prisoner' itself.... Pope Francis's new comments on Trump's proposed wall are the latest in a volley of criticism aimed at White House policies. From presenting Trump with a treatise on climate change to calling on the White House to extend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, to even questioning Trump's professed Christianity, Pope Francis has made a habit of criticizing what he sees as the president's ignorance and nativism over the past two years." ...

... ** Will Bunch of Philly.com: "The cruelty of American policy on the southern border feels intentional -- the kind of thing that fires up Trump's angry base.... And it feeds a xenophobic synergy with his state-run media known as Fox News, which on Sunday showed its colors with a laughable-if-it-weren't-so-racist chyron saying Trump is cutting aid to 'three Mexican countries.'... Trump is rewriting our political playbook in the blood and misery of authoritarianism.... The crisis of Central American migration is a complicated issue, but you don't need a Ph.D in international relations to see that the American president is hellbent on making things worse."

Trump's Katrina. Sam Brodey & Asawin Suebsaeng of The Daily Beast: "[A] year and a half after hurricanes Irma and María ravaged Puerto Rico, the island is grappling with a whole new round of crises, Trump has been telling his GOP allies that Puerto Rico is receiving too much assistance from the federal government, and lawmakers leading an investigation into what happened after the storms are being stalled.... Of course, none of that stopped the president from insisting to White House reporters on Thursday, 'I've taken better care of Puerto Rico than any man ever.'... Trump has shown he feels he 'has nothing to apologize' for and is far more likely to insult Democratic politicians for, in his view, trying to use the disaster and high death toll to make him look bad, than to to talk about ways to ameliorate suffering on the U.S. territory. 'He's still clearly very bitter and sensitive about it,' [a] senior official noted.... According to those close to him, the president has long feared that Puerto Rico's devastation, and his response and reactions to it, would become known as his Hurricane Katrina[.]" --s

Mrs. McCrabbie: I'm going to quit calling Trump a racist; that term seems too anodyne. There are run-of-the-mill, troglodyte racists, and then there's Trump: a cruel, vengeful racist . Instead, I'll call Trump what I think he is: a white supremacist. I wish Democratic politicians would do the same. The worst thing that can happen is that eventually Trump will be forced to deny he's a white supremacist, and that will bum out half his base.

The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Quint Forgey of Politico: "Acting White House chief of staffMick Mulvaney claimed Sunday that special counsel Robert Mueller intended for Attorney General William Barr to determine whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice in the FBI's investigation into Russian election interference. 'What you saw here is simply Mueller saying, "You know what? I'm going to let Barr call this one,"' Mulvaney said, discussing the final report on Mueller's 22-month probe with host Jonathan Karl on ABC's 'This Week.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McC: Thanks for your input there, Mick. Never mind that it makes very little sense. Mueller's job was to impartially follow the facts. Why would Mueller leave it to a political appointee of the President*, only a month on the job, to race through a 400-page report and thousands of pages of appendices to make a snap determination that the President* was not guilty? Either Mueller is a fool or a stooge, or Mick is dead wrong.

Steve Coll of the New Yorker: "Last year, the Times and the Washington Post shared a Pulitzer Prize for 'deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage' of Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. None of the stories established that Donald Trump or members of his campaign had conspired illegally with Russians, though some of the reporting raised that possibility.... President Trump ... tweeted that the media had 'pushed the Russian Collusion Delusion' while knowing that it was false, and reprised his incitements against journalists, saying, 'They truly are the Enemy of the People.'... It does not follow that American journalism failed because the best-resourced newsrooms in the nation chose to report assiduously on the Mueller investigation and its subjects, only to learn that Mueller did not prove that Trump had conspired with Russia.... Voters will benefit most from legions of reporters working without fear or favor."

Daniel Politi of Slate: "... only 29 percent of Americans say they believe the president has been cleared of wrongdoing, while 40 percent say they don't think he was cleared, and 31 percent just aren't sure, according to a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll. Along the same lines, a Washington Post-Schar School poll found that only 32 percent believe Trump was exonerated on obstruction. The NBC-WSJ poll seems to demonstrate that more than anything, the conclusion of Mueller's report hasn't really moved public opinion one way or the other."

Jason Wilson of the Guardian: "An intelligence report [financed by the federal government] produced for law enforcement agencies in the months before the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, in which a neo-Nazi killed one protester by driving a car into a crowd, appeared to endorse a view that leftist demonstrators were 'terrorists' and at least equally as responsible for street violence as white nationalists, the Guardian can reveal.... The report blames the two sides equally for the violence.... The report also extensively sources information from conservative media and rightwing advocacy groups. It quotes a report from Glenn Beck's the Blaze, which cites the Washington Times, and Laura Ingraham's conservative lifestyle website LifeZette alongside more reputable sources, including the Guardian." --s

Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post: "He changed the rules to make it easier to confirm ... Donald Trump's Supreme Court picks. He tossed out Senate traditions to make it easier to confirm Trump's circuit judges. So, naturally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wants to adjust the rules again to make it easier to confirm the rest of Trump's nominees to lifetime seats on federal courts. The Senate will vote this week to reduce its debate time for most nominees ― district court judges and lower-level executive nominees ― from 30 hours to two hours. This will not apply to Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court nominees or circuit court nominees. Without a whiff of irony, McConnell, whose greatest legacy is denying a Supreme Court seat and dozens of other federal court seats to President Barack Obama, said Thursday that the rule change is necessary because of Democrats" 'unprecedented obstruction' of Trump's nominees." ...

... Here's Mitch's Manifesto, published in Politico.

Presidential Race 2020

AP: "Former Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday he doesn't believe he ever acted inappropriately toward women but will 'listen respectfully' to suggestions he did. Biden, who is deciding whether to join the 2020 presidential race, released a new statement in response to allegations from a Nevada politician that he kissed her on the back of the head in 2014 and made her uncomfortable. 'In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. And not once -- never -- did I believe I acted inappropriately,' he said. 'If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Sydney Ember & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. scrambled on Sunday to contain a quickly growing crisis for his likely presidential bid, putting forward several former female aides and allies to praise his treatment of women after Lucy Flores, a former Nevada legislator, accused Mr. Biden of kissing and touching her. Mr. Biden also issued a sweeping statement acknowledging that he had shown 'expressions of affection' to people during his years on the campaign trail, but said, 'not once -- never -- did I believe I acted inappropriately.' It was the second damage-control statement to come from his team since Ms. Flores made her allegation on Friday, and it was released minutes before she appeared on CNN and argued that Mr. Biden's behavior with her at a 2014 campaign event was 'disqualifying' for a presidential candidate." ...

... Biden Rivals Pile on. Marc Caputo & Martin Matishak of Politico: "Several Democrats vying to be their party's presidential nominee are expressing concern about former Vice President Joe Biden after a female politician accused him of inappropriate contact during a 2014 campaign event." ...

... Quint Forgey: "Stephanie Carter, the wife of former Defense Secretary Ash Carter, sought Sunday to 'reclaim' a 'misleadingly extracted' yet oft-mocked picture of her and Joe Biden that has resurfaced amid accusations that the former vice president acted inappropriately toward a female Nevada state assemblywoman in 2014.... In a blog post published Sunday on Medium<, Carter wrote that Biden's display of affection toward her in 2015 was appreciated, as she was 'uncharacteristically nervous' after slipping on some ice ... earlier in the day.... '... The Joe Biden in my picture is a close friend helping someone get through a big day, for which I will always be grateful,' Carter wrote."

Scott Bixby of The Daily Beast: "Mayor Pete Buttigieg's message for fellow Democratic hopefuls is a straightforward one: It's not enough to just attack the president.... The vice president, on the other hand? It's a little more complicated.... [T]he frequency and intensity of Buttigieg's critiques of the vice president speaks to a long shared history, both political and personal -- as well as the young mayor's deep personal disdain for perceived hypocrisy. Pence's outspoken religiosity, the mayor said, is in direct and irreconcilable conflict with his position in the Trump administration, and with Buttigieg's belief in the importance of 'good faith.'... From a purely political perspective, Buttigieg's broadsides against Pence have been a tactical victory.... [His] polling (and fundraising) numbers skyrocketed after a ;breakout performance in a CNN town hall in early March, in which he blasted Pence as 'the cheerleader of the porn-star presidency.'" --s

Sam Fulwood of ThinkProgress: "In a decision that strikes a progressive blow toward gender equality in public education, a federal judge ruled last week a North Carolina charter school's requirement that female students wear skirts is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard in the Eastern District of North Carolina said Thursday that Charter Day School, a high-performing public charter in Leland, North Carolina, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution."

Matthew Yglesias of Vox: "Climate change garners most of the headlines, but the Trump administration is pushing a much larger and broader pro-pollution agenda whose latest manifestation is a push at the EPA to overturn a long-established scientific consensus that fine particulate pollution (colloquially 'soot') kills people. This is critically important for two main reasons." --s

White Supremacists Turn to Fox "News" for Tips on Talking Points. Tamar Auber of Mediaite: "The son of Stormfront founder Don Black revealed on CNN on Saturday that his family watches Fox News' Tucker Carlson for tips on white supremacist talking points.... '... they feel that he is making the white nationalist talking points better than they have and they're trying to get some tips on how to advance it,' [Derek Black told CNN's Van Jones." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Beyond the Beltway

Virginia. Victoria Albert of the Daily Beast: "Days before the two women accusing Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault will appear on CBS This Morning, he announced he's taken a polygraph test that he claims proves him innocent."

Way Beyond

Juan Cole: "As an unprecedented 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza marched for the right to return, marking the one-year anniversary of the beginning of weekly such marches, Israeli snipers shot into the Gaza Strip, killing 4 youth and wounding at least 207.... Shooting civilian protesters who pose no realistic danger to troops is a war crime. Systematically doing so, as Israeli snipers have been ordered to do in the past year by the fascist Likud government of Binyamin Netanyahu, amounts to 'crimes against humanity.'... The US Congress condemned Rep. Ilhan Omar for alleged racism because she criticized the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. Congress has had nothing to say about the sniping at civilian populations on the part of the Israeli army[.]" --s

The Commentariat -- March 31, 2019

Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Last night, I started posting today's Commentariat, which I labelled, "The Commentariat -- April 1, 2019." Ken W. soon pointed out to me that actually, no, today is March 31, a day which I plumb forgot. That is to day, I thought March had 30 days, even tho I know that ditty, "30 days hath September...." So I fixed the heading. Now, to rub it in, Ken sends this along!

... I might be as dimwitted as Doonesbury Donald, but at least I admit -- and correct -- my mistakes. I think I need a vacation in one of those Mexican countries ...

Afternoon Update:

... Yeah, that's a real screenshot of a "Fox & Friends" segment that aired Sunday morning. Avery Anapol of the Hill: "The show later issued an on-air correction and apology, saying the graphic was 'inaccurate' and that the funding was being cut from 'three Central American countries.'" Mrs. McC: I guess since Trump uses Fox "News" as an audition spool to staff the White House, Fox no longer has all the best people. ...

... White Supremacists Turn to Fox "News" for Tips on Talking Points. Tamar Auber of Mediaite: "The son of Stormfront founder Don Black revealed on CNN on Saturday that his family watches Fox News' Tucker Carlson for tips on white supremacist talking points.... '... they feel that he is making the white nationalist talking points better than they have and they're trying to get some tips on how to advance it,' [Derek Black told CNN's Van Jones.]"

AP: "Former Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday he doesn't believe he ever acted inappropriately toward women but will 'listen respectfully' to suggestions he did. Biden, who is deciding whether to join the 2020 presidential race, released a new statement in response to allegations from a Nevada politician that he kissed her on the back of the head in 2014 and made her uncomfortable. 'In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. And not once -- never -- did I believe I acted inappropriately,' he said. 'If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention.'"

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Elisabeth Malkin of the New York Times: "President Trump's plan to cut off aid to three Central American countries for failing to stop the flow of migrant toward the United States breaks with years of conventional wisdom in Washington that the best way to halt migration is to attack its root causes. The decision also runs counter to the approach advocated by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, among others.... The decision turns American policy in the region on its head. Not only will it cut development and humanitarian assistance, but it will also halt joint law enforcement efforts, such as anti-gang units vetted by the United States, that had been supported by Republicans and the Trump administration until now...." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Yes, but past presidents never had vengeance & cruelty as goals.

Calvin Woodward of the AP: "... Donald Trump is misrepresenting the circumstances of a 7-year-old migrant girl's death as he seeks to steer any potential blame for it away from his administration. Trump, after mockingly painting asylum seekers as a 'con job' in a rally the previous night, asserted on Friday that Jakelin Caal Maquin was given no water by her father during their trek to a remote border area and that the dad acknowledged blame for his daughter's death on Dec. 8. Those assertions are not supported by the record. TRUMP: 'I think that it's been very well stated that we've done a fantastic job. ... The father gave the child no water for a long period of time - he actually admitted blame.' -- to reporters Friday. THE FACTS: An autopsy report released Friday found that Guatemalan girl died of a bacterial infection just more than a day after being apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol.... Neither the autopsy report, nor accounts at the time by Customs and Border Protection, spoke of dehydration." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Maureen Dowd went on a field trip to Donald Trump's rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She writes that Trump started the rally "hot," but "For the last hour of the speech, Trump went flat, simply resorting to golden oldies.... It's not clear why, on a night when his aides promised high energy, he seemed to lose altitude.... Did he know in his heart that he was guilty of some of those sins? Is he tired of rallies even before the 2020 race gets well underway? Does he know that his No Collusion' headline will not change the minds of all those Americans who disdain him? Or is he being a sore winner again? Maybe Trump, like America, is just tired of winning." Mrs. McC: I read or heard elsewhere that Trump has told advisors he didn't want to do so many rallies this campaign season & that he's already begged off a few rallies his advisors have suggested. This is no country for old men.

** Tired of Winning, Ctd. Carol Davenport of the New York Times: "In a major legal blow to President Trump's push to expand offshore oil and gas development, a federal judge ruled that an executive order by Mr. Trump that lifted an Obama-era ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic coast was unlawful. The decision, by Judge Sharon L. Gleason of the United States District Court for the District of Alaska, concluded late Friday that President Barack Obama's 2015 and 2016 withdrawal from drilling of about 120 million acres of Arctic Ocean and about 3.8 million acres in the Atlantic 'will remain in full force and effect unless and until revoked by Congress.' She wrote that an April 2017 executive order by Mr. Trump revoking the drilling ban 'is unlawful, as it exceeded the president's authority.' The decision, which is expected to be appealed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, immediately reinstates the drilling ban on most of the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Alaska.... The Arctic Ocean drilling case could give legal ammunition to opponents of Mr. Trump's efforts to roll back protections for two million acres of national monuments created by Mr. Obama and President Bill Clinton. The case adds to a growing roster of legal losses for Mr. Trump's efforts to undo Mr. Obama's environmental legacy."

Michael Paarlberg in the Guardian: "Were it not for this singular obsession [of the Trump/Russia investigation], we might have come to appreciate the full scope of graft, influence peddling and petty theft that has made this the most crooked administration in US history. One doesn't have to go to Moscow to see it; pick almost any country in the world.... For legal scholars, the question of what to make of these gross conflicts of interest is a technical one: do they violate the constitution's so-called emoluments clause, barring presidents from accepting 'any present, emolument....' But there's a simpler term for this: public corruption. It's broader than hacking, and it's well documented, if not nearly as breathlessly discussed on cable news." --s

Justin Baragona of the Daily Beast: "Reacting to conservative commentators and opinion hosts pushing for an investigation of the investigators following the completion of the Mueller report, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace burst Fox viewers' bubble Friday, informing them that the Russia investigation did not begin with the infamous Steele dossier.... 'It [the investigation] started in June and July of 2016 when George Papadopoulos had spoken to a Russian agent and spoke to an Australian diplomat and said he had heard they had information on -- dirt on Hillary Clinton,' [Wallace told Fox 'News' host Bill Hemmer., who got all discombobulated by Wallace's insistance on relaying, you know, facts]." This was some six months before BuzzFeed News published the dossier. Mrs. McC: Trump & other wingers are now conflating Christopher Steele's so-called dossier with the Mueller report, calling Mueller's report "the dossier." Just a slip-of-the-tongue, I'm sure. Ha ha.

E. A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "President Donald Trump handed a victory to a major North American energy company on Friday afternoon with a new presidential permit allowing the controversial Keystone XL pipeline to go forward. Many say the move is an effort to sidestep judiciary and environmental review and is likely to face legal challenges.... The presidential permit revokes and replaces a previous presidential permit granted by Trump in March 2017. In November 2018, a Montana judge invalidated that permit and it is currently being appealed, while a December lawsuit and subsequent injunction largely halted pre-construction activities on the pipeline." --s See also related WashPo story, also linked yesterday.

Trumpish "Values"

** Adam Serwer of the Atlantic: "The president's rhetoric about 'shithole countries' and 'invasion' by immigrants invites dismissal as crude talk, but behind it lie ideas whose power should not be underestimated. The seed of Nazism's ultimate objective -- the preservation of a pure white race, uncontaminated by foreign blood -- was in fact sown with striking success in the United States. What is judged extremist today was once the consensus of a powerful cadre of the American elite, well-connected men who eagerly seized on a false doctrine of 'race suicide' during the immigration scare of the early 20th century.... Perhaps the most important among them was ... Madison Grant. He was the author of a 1916 book called The Passing of the Great Race, which spread the doctrine of race purity all over the globe.... His book went on to become Adolf Hitler's 'bible,' as the führer wrote to tell him.... The president's stated preference for Scandinavian immigrants over those from Latin America or Africa, and his expressed disdain for the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship, are Grantism paraphrased."

Quint Forgey of Politico: "... Donald Trump announced Saturday that a Navy SEAL who is accused of fatally stabbing an Islamic State detainee during a 2017 deployment to Iraq will be 'moved to less restrictive confinement' ahead of his trial in May. 'In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court,' the president tweeted. 'Process should move quickly!' Trump's message follows a request by 40 members of Congress to the Navy on Tuesday to 'analyze whether a less severe form of restraint would be appropriate...' 'We ask that you weigh this decision given the terrible message Chief Gallagher's confinement sends to our warfighters, that they can be confined behind bars away from their family, legal defense, and community for nine months before their day in court,' the lawmakers wrote.... 'To confine any service member for that duration of time, regardless of the authority to do so, sends a chilling message to those who fight for our freedoms,' the lawmakers added.... Apart from the accusation that he murdered a teenage ISIS fighter under his care, military prosecutors contend that he held his re-enlistment ceremony with the detainee's corpse. Gallagher is also accused of shooting two civilians in Iraq and firing inadvertently into crowds." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: That's odd. Trump & these 40 MoCs don't seem all bent out about the plight of Chelsea Manning, who is reportedly being held in solitary confinement for refusing to testify to a grand jury, a decidedly nonviolent crime. Nor were they all upset, as far as I can recall, when in 2011 Manning was held in solitary at Quantico & stripped to her underwear every night, again for a non-violent crime of which she was later convicted. Apparently, one has to allegedly commit a "macho" murder to be awarded "less restrictive confinement" in Trumpworld. There is something really, really wrong with Trumpian "values."

The Great Divide. Paul Waldman of the Washington Post: "... if a Democrat ever insulted the 'heartland,' there'd be hell to pay, while Republicans insult heavily Democratic places all the time. Ted Cruz could sneer at 'New York values' as a way of attacking Donald Trump in 2016, but what would happen to Kamala D. Harris if she told [Pete] Buttigieg that Democratic primary voters didn't want any part of his 'Indiana values'? One more vivid example from recent history: In 2004, the conservative Club For Growth ran an ad against Howard Dean, in which a couple told him to 'take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.' Everyone laughed. Now imagine the outcry if a liberal group told, say, Mike Huckabee to 'take his trailer park-living, tobacco-chewing, NASCAR-watching, squirrel-eating freak show back to Arkansas where it belongs.'... When Buttigieg says that he has to educate people in California on the fact that 'Trump voters actually exist...,' he means that liberals have no conception of who Trump voters are or what might motivate them. But that's also absurd. As Adam Serwer of the Atlantic points out, 'There are more Trump voters in New York than Wyoming, Alaska, and the Dakotas combined.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Let us not forget the weeping & gnashing of teeth when, in 2008, a HuffPost stringer surreptitiously recorded Barack Obama "explaining" to California supporters that (white) working-class voters "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." ...

... digby: "I would just remind Democratic candidates that this is playing into Donald Trump's hands: 'Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen. Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!' -- [Donald Trump, in a tweet January 9] And, by the way, the county most affected by the wildfires he was referencing voted for Donald Trump."

Jon Swaine & David Smith of the Guardian: "Stephen Moore, the economics commentator chosen by Donald Trump for a seat on the Federal Reserve board, was found in contempt of court after failing to pay his ex-wife hundreds of thousands of dollars in alimony, child support and other debts. Court records in Virginia obtained by the Guardian show Moore, 59, was reprimanded by a judge in November 2012 for failing to pay Allison Moore more than $300,000 in spousal support, child support and money owed under their divorce settlement. Moore continued failing to pay, according to the court filings, prompting the judge to order the sale of his house to satisfy the debt in 2013. But this process was halted by his ex-wife after Moore paid her about two-thirds of what he owed, the filings say.... The Guardian revealed this week that Moore owes the US government $75,000 according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Moore disputes the government's claim and blames confusion over tax deductions relating to his child support and alimony payments.... Unlike all current members of the Federal Reserve board of governors, Moore does not hold a doctoral degree." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So now I'll be Donald Trump: "It's a terrible thing the way the fake news attacks a good man. This is a sad day when socialist foreign agitators try to destroy our democracy."

Gavin De Becker, an investigator for Jeff Bezos, in a Daily Beast essay: "Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos' phone, and gained private information.... While both the Daily Beast and the Wall Street Journal reported that Michael Sanchez, the brother of Bezos' love interest Lauren Sanchez had provided material about Bezos' intimate relationship with Lauren to the National Enquirer, the Journal was "able to confirm a claim Michael Sanchez had been making: It was the Enquirer who first contacted Michael Sanchez about the affair, not the other way around.... Obviously..., the initial information came from other channels -- another source or method.... The Saudi government has been very intent on harming Jeff Bezos since last October, when the Post began its relentless coverage of [Jamal] Khashoggi's murder.... In October, the Saudi government unleashed its cyber army on Bezos (and later me).... [There is a] well-documented and close relationship between MBS and AMI chairman, David Pecker.... The tabloid and its chairman have evolved into secretly entangling with a nation-state that's using its enormous resources to harm American citizens and companies. And now they've evolved into trying to strong-arm an American citizen whom that country's leadership wanted harmed, compromised, and silenced." Italization original.

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: If De Becker is right -- and he is confident enough of his research that he's turned it over to federal authorities, according to his account -- then this is yet another Trump scandal that has everything: a gruesome murder, sex, international intrigue, hacking, attempted bribery, betrayal, a sleazy tabloid & connections to Middle Eastern "royalty" and the POTUS*. For decades, we've seen lurid claims against politicians emblazoned on the tabloids that supermarkets urge us to buy. In the past, the politicians have been the targets of the tabs; today our top politician is benefiting from some of these stories.

Ashley Powers of the New York Times on how "sovereign citizen' crackpots help would-be taxpayers swindle at least $1 billion from the federal government. "A loose network of perhaps tens of thousands of far-right antigovernment extremists, sovereigns share certain conspiratorial beliefs and, sometimes, a desire to profit off a government whose legitimacy they deny.... One way sovereigns try to make the imaginary money real is by abusing legitimate I.R.S. forms. Law-abiding taxpayers use Form 1099-OID, for example, to report 'original issue discount' income. But some sovereigns write in fake OID income, and fake withholding, in order to claim illegitimate refunds.... From 2012 to 2014, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the I.R.S. received close to 7,000 sham OID filings. Chronically underfunded and understaffed, I.R.S. investigators refer only about two dozen sovereign-scam cases, on average, for prosecution each year. The agency sometimes misses returns that should raise suspicion. For example, in 2016, the I.R.S. discovered a sizable redemption scheme -- but only after processing 207 bogus returns and disbursing more than $43 million. That's another reason these strange theories persist, and have begun to leach out of the sovereign network and into the general population: Sometimes, improbably, they work." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: The key words here are "chronically underfunded." Cuts by Congressional Republicans have made the IRS enforcement staff a bare-bones operation. Non-enforcement costs billions. In the 1970s, I got audited three years running for prosaic "suspicious" deductions: high childcare costs. (On the last audit notice, I told them to cut it out as their "suspicions" were the same every year, & during audits, I was always able to provide authentic documentation of my expenditures. So they quit.) Now, I have much more complicated -- and equally honest -- returns, & I never get audited. Knock on wood.

Joe Romm of ThinkProgress: "The rapidly dropping cost of renewable energy has upended energy economics in recent years, with new solar and wind plants now significantly cheaper than coal power. But new research shows another major change is afoot: The cost of batteries has been declining so unexpectedly rapidly that renewables plus battery storage are now cheaper than even natural gas plants in many applications.... Costs for lithium-ion battery storage have dropped 76 percent since 2012 -- and plunged 35 percent in the past year alone.

Beyond the Beltway

California. Sleeping While Black. Sam Levin of the Guardian: "Vallejo police have released footage of the killing of Willie McCoy at a Taco Bell, showing six officers shooting the 20-year-old who was sleeping in his car. The disturbing body-camera videos show the young rapper had moved his hand to scratch his shoulder before officers opened fire. The footage is consistent with key claims of McCoy's family, who watched footage earlier this month and said the officers 'executed' him while he was not alert or awake."

Way Beyond

Britain. Carole Cadwalladr of the Guardian: "The all-consuming nature of Brexit left almost no space for us to contemplate the significance of the news from America even as it demonstrated how entwined our fates are and continue to be.... In Britain, the news from America should be a huge red flag.... Mueller's investigation has laid out how a foreign power had used America's own media organisations and technology platforms to subvert its own democracy.... But in Britain, we don't have the bandwidth or the resolve or the understanding of the bigger picture to want to even try to understand this web of interconnected relationships." --s

Saudi Arabia. Nick Hopkins et al. of the Guardian: "Political prisoners in Saudi Arabia are said to be suffering from malnutrition, cuts, bruises and burns, according to leaked medical reports that are understood to have been prepared for the country's ruler, King Salman. The reports seem to provide the first documented evidence from within the heart of the royal court that political prisoners are facing severe physical abuse, despite the government's denials that men and women in custody are being tortured.... A spokesman declined to discuss the issue, despite being given repeated opportunities to do so. Officials did not challenge the authenticity of the reports." --s

Slovakia. Siegfried Mortkowitz of Politico: "Political novice and activist Zuzana Čaputová is on course to became the first female president of Slovakia, swept into office by public outrage at the 2018 killings of an investigative journalist and his fiancée. With around 97 percent of the votes counted the 45-year old lawyer's tally stood at 58.3 percent of the vote in Saturday's runoff against European Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič."

The Commentariat -- March 30, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Jon Swaine & David Smith of the Guardian: "Stephen Moore, the economics commentator chosen by Donald Trump for a seat on the Federal Reserve board, was found in contempt of court after failing to pay his ex-wife hundreds of thousands of dollars in alimony, child support and other debts. Court records in Virginia obtained by the Guardian show Moore, 59, was reprimanded by a judge in November 2012 for failing to pay Allison Moore more than $300,000 in spousal support, child support and money owed under their divorce settlement. Moore continued failing to pay, according to the court filings, prompting the judge to order the sale of his house to satisfy the debt in 2013. But this process was halted by his ex-wife after Moore paid her about two-thirds of what he owed, the filings say.... The Guardian revealed this week that Moore owes the US government $75,000 according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Moore disputes the government's claim and blames confusion over tax deductions relating to his child support and alimony payments.... Unlike all current members of the Federal Reserve board of governors, Moore does not hold a doctoral degree." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So now I'll be Donald Trump: "It's a terrible thing the way the fake news attacks a good man. This is a sad day when socialist foreign agitators try to destroy our democracy."

Calvin Woodward of the AP: "... Donald Trump is misrepresenting the circumstances of a 7-year-old migrant girl's death as he seeks to steer any potential blame for it away from his administration. Trump, after mockingly painting asylum seekers as a 'con job' in a rally the previous night, asserted on Friday that Jakelin Caal Maquin was given no water by her father during their trek to a remote border area and that the dad acknowledged blame for his daughter's death on Dec. 8. Those assertions are not supported by the record. TRUMP: 'I think that it's been very well stated that we've done a fantastic job. ... The father gave the child no water for a long period of time - he actually admitted blame.' -- to reporters Friday. THE FACTS: An autopsy report released Friday found that Guatemalan girl died of a bacterial infection just more than a day after being apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol.... Neither the autopsy report, nor accounts at the time by Customs and Border Protection, spoke of dehydration."

~~~~~~~~~~

The Trump Scandals, Ctd. -- The Barr Cover-up

Scrub-a-Dub-Dub. Katie Benner of the New York Times: "The special counsel's report on the investigation into Russia's election interference will be made public by mid-April, Attorney General William P. Barr told lawmakers on Friday, adding that the White House would not see the document before he sent it to Congress. 'Everyone will soon be able to read it,' Mr. Barr wrote in a letter to the chairmen of the congressional judiciary committees. Prosecutors from the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and other law enforcement officials are scouring the report for sensitive information to black out before releasing it, including secret grand jury testimony, classified materials and information about other continuing federal investigations, Mr. Barr wrote.... It remains an open question whether Justice Department lawyers themselves will excise material they believe could be privileged before sending the report to Congress. It is also not clear whether Mr. Barr or other politically appointed officials would be a part of such a redaction process." ...

... Axios copies Barr's latest cover-up letter here. ...

... Devlin Barrett & Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "Barr's letter aimed to reassure lawmakers and the public that the process for handling the report -- which numbers nearly 400 pages, he said -- would be aboveboard and fair.... In the Friday letter, Barr said he will also redact any information that would 'potentially compromise sources and methods' used for intelligence collection, and any information that would 'unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties. That language suggests Barr wants to keep secret any derogatory information gathered by investigators about figures who ended up not being central to Mueller's investigation."

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: What do you bet "peripheral third parties" include Jared, Ivanka, Donnie Jr. & anyone else who's not on the outs with Trump right now. And why is it that Barr intends to redact classified material which a number of Congressional leaders have clearance to read? Plus, Rachel Maddow suspects, as do I, that Mueller already provided Barr with a version of his report that excluded grand jury material & any information that would compromise ongoing investigations. Anyhow, nice to know that Barr was able to "summarize" in one page a hundred pages of Mueller's report. Impressive. ...

     ... Barrett & Demirjian, Ctd.: "Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Barr's new letter did not satisfy his demands for the complete report. 'As I informed the Attorney General earlier this week, Congress requires the full and complete Mueller report, without redactions, as well as access to the underlying evidence, by April 2,' Nadler said. 'That deadline still stands.' Nadler said Barr is wasting 'valuable time and resources trying to keep certain portions of this report from Congress,' when he should 'work with us to request a court order to release any and all grand jury information to the House Judiciary Committee -- as has occurred in every similar investigation in the past.'"

Congress has asked for the entire Mueller report, and underlying evidence, by April 2. That deadline stands. In the meantime, Barr should seek court approval (just like in Watergate) to allow the release of grand jury material. Redactions are unacceptable. #ReleaseTheReport -- Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), in a tweet Friday

... Marcy Wheeler: "Since [Bill Barr's] obviously limited summary released Sunday night, DOJ has been refusing to provide basic transparency about the Mueller Report or its plans for release. That refusal is best exemplified by DOJ's unwillingness to reveal how long the Mueller Report is. Four days later DOJ has just made public a letter to the Judiciary Committees leaders. And while it doesn't provide an exact page count, it finally offers a ballpark of the page count:' nearly 400 pages long (exclusive of tables and appendices).' It issues a hilarious denial that Barr's four page summary -- which Barr said 'summarize[d] the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation' [my emphasis] -- wasn't a summary but then uses the word 'summary' in describing what it was.... [Barr's letter was] to Jerry Nadler, who has a solid constitutional claim to be entitled to grand jury information -- indeed, to the entire report. So while it may remain a reasonable solution for public release (though, note his silence on the exhibits, which must be released too), it is a absolutely unacceptable response to the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Wheeler notes that it took four days to get a page count (still only estimated) out of DOJ. After Barr spoke to Nadler for 10 minutes on Wednesday, a reporter asked Nadler how many pages the Mueller report was, & Nadler said he couldn't reveal it as Barr would not release him to do so. Why a page count is a state secret is beyond me. But there you have it.

Christian Vasquez of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Friday called for the New York Times and the Washington Post to have their Pulitzer prizes rescinded for their coverage of the special counsel's Russia investigation. 'So funny that The New York Times & The Washington Post got a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage (100% NEGATIVE and FAKE!) of Collusion with Russia - And there was No Collusion! So, they were either duped or corrupt? In any event, their prizes should be taken away by the Committee!' Trump tweeted." Also too, Junior is apparently unaware Pulitzers (or "Pulitzer's," as Junior writes) also are awarded for works of fiction. Mrs. McC: No doubt "The Art of the Deal" was eligible for the fiction prize. In any event, there's no reason to think the NYT & WashPo reports on the Russia investigation were inaccurate. ...

... Susan Glasser of the New Yorker: "What's been remarkable, this week, is how much Trump triumphant has sounded like Trump at every other point in his Presidency: angry and victimized; undisciplined and often incoherent; predictable in his unpredictability; vain and insecure; prone to lies, exaggeration, and to undercutting even those who seek to serve him.... He remains the public figure he has always been: a weird combination of perpetual victim and perpetual bully, whose one constant is to remain on the attack." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Glasser goes on to observe that Democrats won't let it go either, which I find a remarkably stupid observation. Of course Democrats won't let it go. After years in the wilderness, they are just getting started. They, along with the press, are one of the two main institutions to help illuminate Trump's corruption.

Jonathan Chait: "The Barr letter [published last Sunday] is not an exoneration of Trump's conduct. It is something much worse: a vindication of his ethos." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Chait is right. In the teevee shows, the criminals usually get their comeuppance. But in reality, criminals -- especially high-profile white collar ones -- quite often skate. And, as Chait points out, Barr is particularly adept at helping his betters beat the raps: "The attorney general's relevant work history consists of helping a Republican administration cover up a massive scandal (Iran-Contra) and then submitting a private memo trashing Mueller's obstruction-of-justice inquiry." Barr also aided & abetted George W. Bush in his decision to pardon the Iran-Contra Six.

Mrs. McCrabbie: For your weekend reading, I highly recommend Corn & Unger, linked next. What they write is highly disturbing, but it comprises a valid reply to the fallacious TrumpBarr narrative.

... ** "The Real Trump-Russia Hoax." David Corn of Mother Jones: "Two fundamental facts were established long before Mueller completed his investigation. First, the Russians attacked an American election in order to sow chaos, hurt Hillary Clinton, and help Donald Trump. Second, Trump and his top advisers during the campaign repeatedly denied this attack was underway, echoing and amplifying Moscow disinformation (the false claim that Russia was not attacking). Whether or not the Trumpers were directly in cahoots with the Russian government, they ran interference for Vladimir Putin's assault on the United States, and they even did so after the intelligence community had briefed Trump on Russia's culpability.... This is the original sin of the Trump presidency.... Far from cooking up anything, many reporters worked hard to slice through the lies knitted by Trump and his allies and revealed many of the essential facts...." ...

... ** Rinse & Repeat. Craig Unger, in a Washington Post op-ed: "Collusion or not, President Trump and the Russians are thick as thieves. For more than three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to the Russian Mafia held the deeds to, lived in or ran criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties.... Many of them used Trump-branded real estate to launder vast amounts of money by buying multimillion-dollar condos through anonymous shell companies.... The Bayrock Group, a real estate development company that was based in Trump Tower and had ties to the Kremlin, came up with a new business model to franchise Trump condos after he lost billions of dollars in his Atlantic City casino developments, and helped make him rich again. Yet Trump's relationship with the Russian underworld, a de facto state actor, has barely surfaced in the uproar surrounding Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign. That oversight may be explained in part by journalist Michael Kinsley's long-held maxim: The real scandal isn't what&'s illegal; it's what is legal.... It's not hard to conclude that, as a result, the president, wittingly or not, has long been compromised by a hostile foreign power...."

Avery Anapol of the Hill: "Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee plan to hold a vote next week on subpoenaing the former White House personnel security director in their investigation into the White House's security clearance process. Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) has called for a committee meeting on Tuesday to vote on a resolution authorizing a subpoena for Carl Kline to testify 'in connection with the Committee's investigation into the security clearance process at the White House.'"

Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: "Attorneys for Maria Butina and U.S. prosecutors jointly asked a federal judge Friday to order the gun rights activist deported to her native Russia after she is sentenced on April 26 for conspiring with a senior Russian official to infiltrate conservative American groups as an undeclared agent for the Kremlin. Butina has sought removal since pleading guilty in December in a deal with prosecutors, agreeing to cooperate with the investigation into her efforts on behalf of the Russian government to forge ties with the National Rifle Association and other U.S. conservative groups leading up to the 2016 elections. U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Thursday set a sentencing date, after Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Kenerson said prosecutors were ready.... In her plea deal, Butina said she began to act on behalf of the Russian government in 2015 and continued her work after moving to the United States to attend graduate school at American University in 2016."

Manafort Gets to Keep the Swag. Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "The FBI, in searching Manafort's home and other possessions, had taken photos of dozens of hangers full of custom House of Bijan and Alan Couture clothing, including animal skin outerwear that was worth thousands -- the python bomber worth $18,500, a camel hair sportcoat for $6,500, an ostrich track jacket at $15,000, an ostrich vest for $9,500. And the government and Manafort never agreed for him to hand over the menswear as part of his forfeiture. Even so, special counsel Robert Mueller -- whose investigation cost about $25 million as of September 2018 -- got his money's worth out of the Manafort case.... Manafort is turning over property and assets worth at least $36 million to the US government and to his debtors and victims, which are mostly banks, as part of his criminal sentences." (Also linked yesterday.)

Katie Rogers, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Friday that there would be a 'very good likelihood' that he would seal off the United States border with Mexico next week, even as he moved to punish Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for migrant caravans by cutting off all foreign aid to the countries. The moves escalated a sustained berating of countries he blames for being unable to stop the flow of migrants trying to make their way north. 'I will close the border if Mexico doesn't get with it,' Mr. Trump said to reporters who had gathered at Mar-a-Lago, his winter retreat in Florida. 'If Mexico doesn't stop it.'... The State Department issued a statement late on Friday saying: 'At the secretary's instruction, we are carrying out the president's direction and ending FY 2017 and FY 2018 foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle. We will be engaging Congress as part of this process.'" ...

... (Not Just a Racist but) A Remarkably Ignorant Racist. Aaron Rupar of Vox: "During a brief news conference he held at Mar-a-Lago on Friday afternoon..., Donald Trump claimed that closing the border with Mexico would be a 'profit-making operation' because of the United States' trade deficit with its southern neighbor.... As Vox's Dara Lind explained..., closing the border would disrupt supply chains and import/export flows, causing an economic catastrophe: '... Approximately $1.5 billion worth of commerce happens along the US-Mexico border every day. Nearly half a million people cross the border legally every day through Texas ports alone....' According to the Office of the US Trade Representative, Mexico is the US's third-largest trading partner, with the total goods and services trade amounting to over $615 billion in 2017. While the US's overall deficit with Mexico was $63.6 billion that year, an estimated 1.2 million American jobs are based on US-Mexico trade.... Trump may believe American jobs are better guarded through protectionist trade policies ... but he has a long history of either misunderstanding how those policies actually impact the US economy or of making wildly false statements about trade deficits." Emphasis original.

Eric Levitz of New York: "'The next major priority for me, and for all of us, should be to lower the cost of health care and prescription drugs,' the president said in his most recent State of the Union Address.... And yet, the president's new version of NAFTA -- the uncreatively named United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) -- actually forbids the U.S. Congress from curtailing Big Pharma's patent monopolies on some of the world's most expensive drugs. In other words: Trump's 'America First' trade deal restricts U.S. sovereignty, for the sake of locking in high drug prices.... Congressional Democrats have drafted legislation that would cut the duration of biologic monopolies down to seven years [from 12]. But if Trump's revised version of NAFTA takes effect, Democrats will not have the legal authority to advance that legislation -- because the USMCA guarantees biologic makers at least a ten-year monopoly on their new drugs across all three of North America's major economies.... As the administration pushes to get its trade deal through Congress, Nancy Pelosi's caucus has made striking the provision on biologics one of it top demands." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: In fairness to Trump, be assured he has no idea what-all is in NAFTA 2.0, or as Trump would have it, UsMcKay.

Linda Qiu of the New York Times: "At a rally in Michigan, President Trump misstated the findings of the special counsel investigation, misleadingly promised to protect patients with pre-existing conditions and falsely described funding for a restoration program for the Great Lakes.... Mr. Trump's claims of a 'decimated' automobile industry before he took office and its revitalization since are not rooted in fact.... Mr. Trump also repeated more than a dozen [false] claims The Times has previously fact-checked[.]" Mrs. McC: No doubt Qiu only scratched the surface. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

I'm going to get, in honor of my friends, full funding of $300 million for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which you have been trying to get for over 30 years. -- Donald Trump, telling another lie in Michigan ...

... Sabrina Eaton of Cleveland.com: "Less than a month after proposing a federal budget that would have cut Great Lakes cleanup money from $300 million to $30 million..., Donald Trump pledged to provide the full $300 million during a campaign rally in Michigan. During the rally in Grand Rapids, Trump told the audience '... I support the Great Lakes. Always have. They are beautiful. They are big, very deep, record deepness, right? And I am going to get, in honor of my friends, full funding of $300 million for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which you have been trying to get for over 30 years. So, we will get it done.' Since entering the White House, all the yearly budgets that Trump has presented to Congress suggested cuts to the program, but Congress has overruled Trump by giving the program $300 million each year. Over the past two years, Trump proposed a 90 percent cut to the program. During his first year in office, Trump called for eliminating the program.... 'As a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, which approves funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, I would have never allowed Trump's gutting of GLRI make it through Congress without a fight,' said a statement from Toledo Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is another of those "The Lord taketh away & the Lord giveth back" "gifts" for which ignorant Trumpbots express roaring gratitude. (In this case, it's actually, "Obama & Congress giveth, Trump taketh away & Trump giveth back," altho, again, remember that the presidential budget request is merely a statement of preferences, & no money is actually allocated.) As Linda Qiu wrote (linked above), "The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a program for restoring the ecosystem of the Great Lakes, was first implemented by the Obama administration in 2010. Federal funding ranged from nearly $300 million to $450 million every year under Mr. Obama. Mr. Trump requested no funding at all for the initiative in his 2018 budget request, effectively eliminating the program, though Congress ended up appropriating nearly $300 million. His latest budget proposes a 90 percent cut to the program, reducing funding to $30 million." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Toluse Olorunnipa of the Washington Post: "For President Trump, sometimes the easiest problems to solve are the ones created by his own policies. On Thursday, Trump said he was reversing proposed funding cuts to the Special Olympics -- after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and his reelection campaign spent days defending the cuts -- which were outlined in the president's own budget.... He often relishes in the reversals, performing them in front of cameras and without mentioning his role in creating the situation. Praise from Republican officials usually follows." Olorunnipa provides numerous examples of Trump's modus operandi. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: A normal presidential administration would not have zeroed out aid to the Special Olympics. But when other administrations have made unpopular moves, the president or the responsible subordinate admitted the error in judgment & corrected it. Trump called Democrats "sick, sick, sick" Thursday. This is projection.

Steven Mufson of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration has kept secret seven authorizations it has issued since November 2017 allowing U.S. nuclear energy companies to share sensitive technological information with Saudi Arabia, even though the kingdom has not yet agreed to anti-proliferation terms required to construct a pair of U.S.-designed civilian nuclear power plants. The Energy Department and State Department have not only kept the authorizations from the public but also refused to share information about them with congressional committees that have jurisdiction over nuclear proliferation and safety.... Members of Congress are upset about the administration's stance and are trying to learn whether the United States has been sharing information with Saudi Arabia even after the October killing in Istanbul of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and U.S. resident." This is a update to a Daily Beast story safari linked yesterday. (Also linked yesterday.)

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: By "members of Congress," Mufson means Democratic members. Republicans don't give a rat's ass about nuclear proliferation if Trump & his Saudi whisperer Jared are the proliferators. ...

     ... Update: Thanks, Mike Pompeo, for backing up my assertion:

     ... Joel Gehrke of the Washington Examiner: "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Thursday with the Saudi Arabian prince who lied to senators about his role in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. According to the CIA, Prince Khalid bin Salman helped persuade Khashoggi to visit the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where an elaborate operation was in place to have him killed and dismembered. Pompeo, a former CIA director, hosted Prince Khalid in his headquarters at Foggy Bottom to discuss plans for 'countering the Iranian regime's destabilizing activities' in the Middle East. The meeting confirmed Prince Khalid's return to the center of the alliance as deputy defense minister, just months after the former ambassador to the United States gave top lawmakers a transparently false explanation for Khashoggi's disappearance in a Saudi diplomatic facility. 'The secretary congratulated the minister on his new role and looked forward to continuing to work together to advance the U.S.-Saudi partnership,' the State Department said." Mrs. McC: All so diplomatic except for that beheading & dismemberment part. Mike Pompeo is one cold-blooded bastard. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... ** MEANWHILE. David Ignatius of the Washington Post: “Saudi Arabia still hasn't explained officially how and why ... [Jamal Khashoggi] was killed. But Saudi and American sources have begun disclosing new information about the people and events surrounding Khashoggi's fatal visit to Istanbul. They've described secret intelligence deals that are now frozen. And they've explained, in the clearest detail yet, how an operation that began as a kidnapping ended with a gasping, dying Khashoggi pleading: 'I can't breathe.'... After his death, the transcript describes a buzzing noise, perhaps from an electric saw as his body is cut into pieces.... The Saudi machine of repression remains intact.... U.S. officials worry that the young crown prince has become a Saudi version of Saddam Hussein, an authoritarian 'modernizer.'"

Brady Dennis & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "President Trump signed a new order Friday granting permission for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, marking the White House's latest effort to jump-start one of the most controversial infrastructure proposals in recent U.S. history.... The order appears aimed at addressing a ruling from a federal court judge in Montana last fall, who halted the project after finding the [State Department] had inadequately considered the environmental impact of the project.... But because that law applies to agency actions, as opposed to those by the White House, the president may be able to sidestep the issue by granting the permit himself rather than delegating the cross-border permit to the secretary of state.... Trump's move ... does not address a separate legal hurdle that the project faces in Nebraska, where the state Supreme Court is considering a challenge landowners have brought against the pipeline route approved by the Nebraska Public Utilities Commission."

Manu Raju & Jennifer Hansler of CNN: "Jessikka Aro, a Finnish investigative journalist with a history of breaking stories on Russian propaganda efforts, had been slated to receive a prestigious award in Washington along with several other women selected by the State Department for their courage in the face of great risks overseas. Suddenly and without warning, the honor ... was rescinded -- with no explanation from the [State] department. After a Foreign Policy report suggested that the State Department may have retaliated against her because of her criticism of ... Donald Trump on social media, State Department deputy spokesperson Robert Palladino asserted ... she had been 'incorrectly notified' of her award.... But internal communications ... show that the State Department and US embassy officials in Finland had been in talks with Aro for several months, extensively communicating with her about the award, her travel documents, her itinerary in Washington and her bio, which had been approved by eight State Department officials. Then, two weeks after an official asked her to provide a list of her social media accounts, the honor was abruptly rescinded.... The documents were obtained by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...." (Also linked yesterday.)

ICE Gone Wild. Miriam Jordan of the New York Times: "When Donald Trump's children and campaign staff arrived in South Florida during the 2016 presidential campaign, they were often greeted at the airport by Zoltan Tamas in a black Cadillac Escalade. As a senior security guard at Trump National Golf Club in the town of Jupiter, Mr. Tamas was licensed to carry a gun. He bought a home, paid taxes and never ran afoul of the law since immigrating legally to the United States from Romania in 2011. But for eight months, Mr. Tamas, 38, has been locked in a correctional facility six hours' drive from his family as he fights a protracted legal battle to remain in the United States.... Mr. Tamas has fallen prey to the crackdown on immigration that is at the top of the president's national agenda -- and letters of support from high-profile businesspeople and his former bosses have so far not helped him win leniency. Mr. Tamas, a green-card holder, was arrested by immigration authorities after he applied for United States citizenship in 2016 and a background check revealed that he had been convicted in absentia of committing insurance fraud in Romania." Tamas was in the U.S. legally until ICE arrested him. ICE intends to deport him, even though his wife & child are now American citizens. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Say, Donaldo, this looks like another one of those problems you created that you now can fix -- and brag about it. Ivanka will tweet that you're so compassionate & humanitarian.

Erica Green & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "... when President Trump triumphantly declared Thursday evening that he had 'overridden my people' and saved the Special Olympics, [Education Secretary Betsy] DeVos [-- who had been publicly excoriated for slashing all funding for the popular program --] seemed to have taken enough blame. 'I am pleased and grateful the president and I see eye-to-eye on this issue, and that he has decided to fund our Special Olympics grant,' Ms. DeVos said. 'This is funding I have fought for behind-the-scenes over the last several years.' It was an unusual move for Ms. DeVos, who has gone to great lengths to publicly support the president even when she and her staff have disagreed with the administration's policy positions. And it has kicked off fresh speculation that Ms. DeVos might be the next member of the cabinet to fall to the commander in chief's capricious whims.... For months, Mr. Trump has mocked Ms. DeVos to other aides, making clear that he considers her expendable, according to West Wing officials.... Mr. Trump is not fond of her, White House officials said, and he had no problem making her appear to be the bad actor in relation to the Special Olympics." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Green & Haberman cast Trump & the bean counters as the real villains here, & they credit DeVos with fighting for the Special Olympics, then, when she lost the fight, donating part of her government salary to the organization. I'm willing to accept that. I'll find it even more believable if the next time there's a Cabinet meeting/round-robin-Trump-ass-kiss, Betsy skips her turn. ...

... Update. Michael Warren of CNN: "The Education Department failed to include funding for the Special Olympics in its budget proposal this year after it was rebuffed by the White House's budget office, a department official familiar with the process tells CNN. Department officials tried repeatedly to include the nearly $18 million in funding while still coming in under the White House's budget cap, but officials at the Office of Management and Budget rejected each proposal, according to the official."

Kevin Liptak & Jeremy Diamond of CNN: "Linda McMahon, the former professional wrestling executive turned government official, is leaving her post as administrator of the Small Business Administration. McMahon is leaving ... Donald Trump's administration to join his outside political group, America First, two sources familiar with the move confirmed to CNN. The President deemed McMahon a 'superstar' in a send-off from his Mar-a-Lago club on Friday. He said her new role would help him win re-election after she leaves her post.... One of the highest-ranking women in government -- and one of the richest -- McMahon had served largely under the radar in her more than two years at the agency. Unlike some of her Cabinet counterparts, she has not drawn the ire of Democrats in Congress or of ethics experts." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: What Trump means by "superstar" is "not mired in scandal." The bar could not be lower.

Matthew Choi of Politico: "House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Friday urged Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to agree by Monday to provide additional documents detailing why the Trump appointee added a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Cummings complained in a letter that Ross has repeatedly snubbed the committee on document requests related to the contentious 2020 census question. Despite fierce backlash from the public and judiciary, Ross approved a question in the census asking for respondents' citizenship for the first time in 60 years. Cummings suggested the committee would consider forcing cooperation by subpoena during the committee's Tuesday meeting if the secretary does not agree to the terms of the letter. A federal judge ruled in January against asking about respondents' citizenship in the census, arguing doing so could potentially be discriminatory against non-citizens. The question has gone to the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on the issue early next month."

Presidential Race 2020

Lucy Flores, a former Democratic candidate for Nevada lieutenant governor, in a New York essay, recounts the time in 2014 that Joe Biden came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, sniffed her hair, and kissed the back of her head. ...

... Laura McGann of Vox: "It is no secret in Washington that Biden has touched numerous women inappropriately in public. It's just never been treated as a serious issue by the mainstream press.... [Biden's] substantial public record includes a mixed history on women's issues, a legacy that makes his in-person conduct even more worthy of discussion.... Democrats are conflicted about what to do about this category of behavior. It's not the same as what other men of the #MeToo movement have bee accused of, but it's also not what liberals want to endorse. Sen. Al Franken's resignation is still controversial for this reason. Some Democrats feel the party is putting itself at a disadvantage against Republicans, who let the president get away with far worse than any accusation Franken faced." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: In fairness to Biden, he physically embraced me in 2008, and I thought it was sweet, not sexual.

Sebastian Murdock of the Huffington Post: "Infowars host Alex Jones was questioned earlier this month for three hours by the lawyer of a Sandy Hook parent who has accused him of perpetuating an abhorrent hoax. It did not go well for Jones.... The deposition, which was released publicly on Friday, shows Jones in the hot seat as he attempts to explain his reasoning for spending years falsely claiming that the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut ― which left 20 children and six adults dead ― was a hoax.... He denies claims he made in the past just seconds before he is presented those exact claims in video evidence. He admits he didn't prepare for the deposition. He can't recall basic details of the shooting, including the date it happened. And he defends making the [home] address of Sandy Hook father Leonard Pozner public.... By the end of the deposition, Jones presents himself as a martyr who has been victimized, and admits he will not take responsibility for the unfathomable pain he has caused his victims[.]" The story includes a transcript of the deposition & links to videos of the deposition. ...

... Elizabeth Williamson of the New York Times: "How Alex Jones helped a Florida man stalk Sandy Hook families.... Soon after the Dec. 14, 2012, mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., [Alex] Jones, the right-wing provocateur, began spreading outlandish theories that the killing of 20 first graders and six educators was staged by the government and victims' families as part of an elaborate plot to confiscate Americans' firearms. Many of the most noxious claims originated in the mind of [Wolfgang] Halbig, a retired Florida public school official who became fixated on what he called 'this supposed tragedy' at Sandy Hook. Court records and a previously unreleased deposition given by Mr. Jones in one of a set of defamation lawsuits brought against him by the families of 10 Sandy Hook victims show how he and Mr. Halbig used each other to pursue their obsession and promote it across the internet." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: These stories will disgust you. Remember, Donald Trump has appeared on Jones' show & sometimes parrots Jones' conspiracy theories.

Oliver Milman of the Guardian: "An iceberg roughly twice the size of New York City is set to break away from an Antarctic ice shelf as a result of a rapidly spreading rift that is being monitored by Nasa. A crack along part of the Brunt ice shelf in Antarctica first appeared in October 2016, according to ...Nasa. The crack is spreading to the east. This rift, known as the Halloween crack, is set to intersect with another fissure that was apparently stable for the past 35 years but is now accelerating north at a rate of around 2.5 miles a year. Once these two rifts meet, which could happen within weeks, an iceberg of at least 660sq miles is set to be loosened. While the anticipated iceberg is large by most measures, it is dwarfed by other recent Antarctic breakaways.... The long-term future of Antarctic ice shelves will have a major influence on sea level rise around the world." (Also linked yesterday.)

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Yes, but we know these breakaways are not caused by global warming because snow fell on Amy Klobuchar in February in Minnesota.

Jason Bittel of the Washington Post: "There is a plague ripping through the amphibian species of the world. It's caused by fungus that's invisible to the naked eye and spreads easily by many means. It kills by disrupting the way these creatures breathe through their skin, essentially suffocating frogs and salamanders. The disease is called chytridiomycosis, and according to a landmark study published Thursday in the journal Science, it's even worse than we thought. Scientists once estimated that about 200 species of frogs and salamanders have been harmed by the disease, but the study concludes that chytrid fungus has contributed to declines in at least 501 amphibian species. Ninety of the species are thought to have gone extinct because of it. Populations in tropical Australia, Central and South America seem to be hardest hit, though populations in Africa, Europe and North America are also affected. According to this accounting, the epidemic has caused the worst loss of biodiversity of any disease ever recorded." (Also linked yesterday.)

If you like gossip, here's a poorly-written Daily Mail report by Caroline Howe about George W. Bush's long-rumored affair with a aide named Jennifer Fitzgerald. The Daily Mail story is based on material from Susan Page's biography of Barbara Bush, or at least it is, according to Howe.

Way Beyond the Beltway

William James, et al., of Reuters: "Lawmakers rejected Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal for a third time on Friday, sounding its probable death knell and leaving Britain's withdrawal from the European Union in turmoil on the very day it was supposed to leave the bloc. The decision to reject a stripped-down version of May's divorce deal has left it totally unclear how, when or even whether Britain will leave the EU, and plunges the three-year Brexit crisis to a deeper level of uncertainty." (Also linked yesterday.)