The Commentariat -- February 11, 2019
Emily Cochrane, et al., of the New York Times: "Bipartisan talks to reach a border security agreement have stalled, lawmakers and aides said on Sunday, imperiling efforts to prevent another government shutdown days before the Friday deadline. Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the Republican chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a key figure in the negotiations, confirmed the impasse on Sunday, saying that he was 'not confident we're going to get there.'... The 17 House and Senate lawmakers negotiating, known as a conference committee, had set an informal deadline of Monday to reach a deal, because Congress would need that much time to consider the legislation without waiving procedural rules and still pass it by Friday, when funding for several departments and agencies expires. But an aide familiar with the talks said lawmakers had stopped communicating. The hang-up was ... a Democratic effort to force Immigration and Customs Enforcement to focus on detaining migrants with criminal records instead of people who have overstayed their visas by limiting the number of beds it has in detention centers." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "President Donald Trump's acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that the administration 'absolutely cannot' rule out another government shutdown -- even though he also claimed that there is plenty of money already available for Trump to build his unpopular wall along the U.S.-Mexico border...On Fox News Sunday, Mulvaney vowed that Trump is going to build the wall, period." --s ...
... Simon Romero of the New York Times: "Ahead of President Trump's scheduled rally in [El Paso, Texas,] aimed at building support for his proposed wall on the border with Mexico, people from across the ideological spectrum in El Paso had a message for him on Sunday: Don't speak for us. 'The president is just wrong about the wall and wrong about El Paso,' said Jon Barela, a lifelong Republican and chief executive of the Borderplex Alliance, an organization promoting economic development in a cross-border industrial hub with a combined population of more than 2.7 million, taking in the cities of El Paso, Ciudad Juárez[, Mexico,] and Las Cruces[, New Mexico]. Mr. Barela disputed Mr. Trump's widely discredited assertion that border fencing had cut violent crime in El Paso, pointing to F.B.I. data showing that the city has ranked for decades among the safest urban areas its size in the United States -- long before American authorities started building some fencing along the border about a decade ago.... At the same time Mr. Trump is scheduled to speak before about 6,000 people at the El Paso County Coliseum, [Beto] O'Rourke will speak at another rally a mile away. Mr. O'Rourke said in an essay on Medium that Mr. Trump 'will promise a wall and will repeat his lies about the dangers that immigrants pose.'" ...
... Jose Del Real of the New York Times: "Gov. Gavin Newsom of California is expected on Monday to withdraw nearly 400 of his state's National Guard troops from deployment along the border with Mexico and assign them to other duties, according to aides to the governor. The step to rescind state authorization for the border deployment is a sharp rebuke of President Trump's continued warnings that undocumented migrants present a national security risk to the United States. It follows a similar move last week by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico."
The Trump Scandals, Ctd.
Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee expressed concern Sunday that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has not adequately scrutinized President Trump's finances and said House investigators plan to probe Trump's relationship with a bank implicated in Russian money laundering. 'We are not interested in our committee in whether he's a tax cheat or not worth what he says he is,' Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said in an appearance on the NBC's 'Meet the Press' 'What we are interested in is, does the president have business dealings with Russia such that it compromises the United States?' In particular, Schiff said the House panel plans to investigate Trump's two-decade relationship with Deutsche Bank, a German institution that has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties in recent years after admitting its role in a $10 billion money laundering scheme that allowed clients in Russia to move vast sums overseas. Schiff voiced concern that Mueller has shied away from investigating Trump's ties to the German lender, saying that 'if the special counsel hasn't subpoenaed Deutsche Bank, he can't be doing much of a money laundering investigation.' Schiff was referring to reports last year that Mueller's office had told Trump's lawyers it was not seeking Deutsche Bank records related to Trump's accounts or loans. Deutsche Bank became a critical lender to Trump in the late 1990s when major U.S. banks refused to do business with the New York real estate developer after repeated bankruptcies."
Sharon LaFraniere, et al., of the New York Times: "Of the few hints to emerge from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, about evidence of possible collusion between President Trump's campaign and Russia, one of the most tantalizing surfaced almost in passing in a Washington courtroom last week. Comments by one of Mr. Mueller's lead prosecutors, disclosed in a transcript of a closed-door hearing, suggest that the special counsel continues to pursue at least one theory: that starting while Russia was taking steps to bolster Mr. Trump's candidacy, people in his orbit were discussing deals to end a dispute over Russia's incursions into Ukraine and possibly give Moscow relief from economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.... A closer look at the transcript, released late Thursday, shows that the prosecutors have been keenly focused on discussions [Paul Manafort & Konstantin Kilimnik] had about a plan to end the conflict that followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014.... Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kilimnik repeatedly communicated about a so-called peace plan for Ukraine starting in early August 2016, while Mr. Manafort was still running Mr. Trump's campaign, and continuing into 2018, months after Mr. Manafort had been charged by the special counsel's office with a litany of crimes related to his work in the country."
Lachlan Markay of the Daily Beast: "The brother of Jeff Bezos' mistress, Lauren Sanchez, supplied the couple's racy texts to the National Enquirer, multiple sources inside AMI, the tabloid's parent company, told The Daily Beast. Another source who has been in extensive communication with senior leaders at AMI confirmed that Michael Sanchez first supplied Bezos' texts to the Enquirer. AMI has previously refused to identify the source of the texts, but a lawyer for the company strongly hinted at Sanchez's role during a Sunday morning interview on ABC.... Documents reviewed by The Daily Beast show that Michael Sanchez believed the Enquirer pursued its story about Bezos with 'President Trump's knowledge and appreciation' -- a chase encouraged, in Sanchez's estimation, by Republican operatives 'who THINK Jeff gets up every morning and has a WaPo meeting to plot its next diabolical attack on President Trump.'"
Alexi McCammond & Jonathan Swan of Axios: "Our ... leak of three months of Trump's private schedules -- enraged White House officials.... Then Politico scooped (and we confirmed) that the White House has launched an internal hunt to find the leaker. This crackdown has not stopped the leaking. Axios' Alexi McCammond obtained four of the president's private schedules from last week. You can view them here, retyped in their original format for source protection. The schedules show the president spent 50% of the four days last week in non-structured 'Executive Time.'... Trump tweeted today about Axios' previous story. 'When the term Executive Time is used, I am generally working, not relaxing,' he wrote." (Mrs. McC: Where "watching Fox 'News' & "blow-drying long wisps on head" = "working.")
John Bresnahan of Politico: "Freshman Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar ignited a new controversy on Sunday night when she suggested GOP support for Israel is driven by campaign donations from a prominent pro-Israel group. Omar singled out AIPAC, one of the most influential lobbying groups in Washington, as the source of those donations. Omar's comments touched upon a long-running, and particularly ugly, thread of the anti-Semitic movement -- that Jewish money fuels backing for Israel in the United States and elsewhere.... [House Minority Leader Kevin] McCarthy and other Republicans have pressed Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and top Democrats to "take action" against Omar and [Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida] Tlaib, saying he would do so if the GOP were the majority party. McCarthy has noted that Democrats pressed for punishment for [Rep. Steve] King -- an Iowa Republican -- over his racist comments. Yet, King's openly racist statements went on for years while he served in Congress, while Omar and Tlaib have been lawmakers for five weeks." ...
... Mrs. McC: I hate to break it to Bresnahan & McCarthy, but one hardly need be anti-Semitic to consider AIPAC a hard-line, right-wing organization that is dismissive of Palestinian rights & concerns. Calling out AIPAC's strong-arm tactics does not merit any form of censure or admonition. Bresnahan is probably just ignorant, and McCarthy -- who is generally ignorant -- is mostly just displaying his usual partisan hackery here.
Presidential Race 2020
Mitch Smith & Lisa Lerer of the New York Times: "Amy Klobuchar, the third-term Minnesota senator, entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination on Sunday, hopeful that her moderate politics, Midwestern roots and carefully cultivated history of bipartisanship can appeal to a broad swath of voters in contentious times. On a snow-covered stage in Minneapolis along the banks of the Mississippi River, with the temperature barely above single digits, Ms. Klobuchar said that as president she would 'focus on getting things done' and reverse some of President Trump's signature policies. On her first day in office, she said, the United States would rejoin the Paris climate agreement.... While her approach may appeal to centrists and moderate Republicans in her home state, her breaks with liberal orthodoxy risk alienating the ascendant progressive wing of her party. Ms. Klobuchar backs a less expansive college affordability proposal, has not embraced Senator Bernie Sanders's 'Medicare for all' legislation and has not joined the movement to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency." ...
... Justin Wise of the Hill: "Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on Sunday addressed reports that she has mistreated her staff over the years after launching a 2020 campaign for president. 'Yes, I can be tough, and yes I can push people,' Klobuchar told reporters after a rally at Minneapolis' Boom Island Park... 'I have high expectations for myself, I have high expectations for the people that work for me, but I have high expectations for this country.... In the end, there are so many great stories of our staff that have been with me for years,' she added. The comments came after multiple reports surfaced last week including details of how Klobuchar allegedly treated her congressional staff. HuffPost reported that three potential candidates to lead her nascent presidential campaign declined the job due to concerns about the issue. A BuzzFeed News report also included a number of accusations from former staffers about her workplace demeanor. The ex-staffers told the news outlet that the senator often berated employees over small mistakes and created a hostile work environment."
Warren Looks on the Bright Side. Quint Forgey of Politico: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Sunday said that ... Donald Trump 'may not even be a free person' by 2020, suggesting the president might become ensnared by the special counsel's investigation before she has a chance to face him in a general election.... 'By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not even be president. In fact, he may not even be a free person.'"
Eleanor Clift of the Daily Beast: "Anti-Trump strategist and pundit Steve Schmidt is feeling the heat from all sides since his client, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, announced on 60 Minutes that he might run for president as an independent." So when Schultz sat down to be interviewed by colleagues on his own podcast, called "Words Matter," he "railed at having to defend himself ... with a stream of curses a source present in the studio said consumed six minutes." After settling down & sitting for about 30 minutes of the interview, Schmidt couldn't handle what seemed like a pretty fair question (i.e., would a really rich person slack off because he was taxed at a higher rate?). "'This is bullshit,' Schmidt exclaims. 'I'm not doing this.' 'Steve, you've got to answer the questions,' [interviewer, podcast partner & friend of Steve Adam] Levine says. 'I'm not,' and with that Schmidt slams down his headset and abruptly ends the interview. He threatened legal action against the studio if the interview airs, according to a source involved in the discussion. When his legal threat failed, he offered to buy the recording, according to the source. The studio refused." Mrs. McC: Whatever. Steve still has his claim to fame: bringing us Sarah Palin. ...
... Sophie Weiner of Splinter has embedded the podcast at the bottom of her report. Schmidt's podcast cohost, Elise Jordan, who was one of the two interviewers, quit too. Everyone is so touchy.
Robert Downen, et al., of the Houston Chronicle: "In the [past] decade..., more than 250 people who worked or volunteered in Southern Baptist churches have been charged with sex crimes, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News reveals. It's not just a recent problem: In all, since 1998, roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct, the newspapers found. That includes those who were convicted, credibly accused and successfully sued, and those who confessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any other state. They left behind more than 700 victims, many of them shunned by their churches, left to themselves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions. About 220 offenders have been convicted or took plea deals, and dozens of cases are pending. They were pastors. Ministers. Youth pastors. Sunday school teachers. Deacons. Church volunteers." This is the first of a three-part series. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This doesn't surprise me at all. These people are nearly as sexually repressed as Roman Catholic priests. Reminds of the time the married Baptist minister came over to minister to me while I was out in the goat shed milking the goats, and he grabbed my breasts. I knocked him down & in the process upset the goat on the milking stand, who knocked over the milk pail. I found the scene hilarious a few minutes later, but in the moment I was furious. No doubt I took the Lord's name in vain in the course of throwing the pastor off my property.
Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "The world's insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a 'catastrophic collapse of nature's ecosystems', according to the first global scientific review. More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century. The planet is at the start of a sixth mass extinction in its history, with huge losses already reported in larger animals that are easier to study. But insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals, outweighing humanity by 17 times. They are 'essential' for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the researchers say, as food for other creatures, pollinators and recyclers of nutrients.... The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanisation and climate change are also significant factors."
Beyond the Beltway
Virginia. Campbell Robertson & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "A Democratic lawmaker in Virginia on Sunday sent his colleagues a draft resolution that would begin impeachment proceedings against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who is facing multiple allegations of sexual assault. The resolution directs a House committee to determine whether allegations of sexual assault against Mr. Fairfax by two women, Meredith Watson and Vanessa C. Tyson, 'constitute conduct sufficient to provide grounds for impeachment.' In an email accompanying the draft, the lawmaker, Delegate Patrick A. Hope, emphasized that the resolution 'is not impeachment. It is a process to investigate whether the Courts Committee would recommend impeachment.'" ...
... Emily Tillett of CBS News: "Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam says he considered resigning in the wake of the ongoing controversy embroiling his office, but told 'CBS This Morning' co-host Gayle King he's 'not going anywhere.'... The governor said in an interview with The Washington Post published Saturday that he would spend the remainder of his term working toward advancing racial equality. The governor has been speaking with black political and community leaders over the past week, but the Virginia Black Legislative Caucus has called for Northam's resignation more than once." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... ** "Advancing Racial Equality"? Ha! Avery Anapol of the Hill: "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King corrected Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) after he referred to slaves as 'indentured servants.' The comment came in Northam's first televised interview since he began facing calls to resign over a blackface scandal, in which he urged healing. 'We are now at the 400-year anniversary -- just 90 miles from here in 1619. The first indentured servants from Africa landed on our shores in Old Point Comfort, what we call now Fort Monroe, and while--,' Northam said, before King cut him off. 'Also known as slavery,' King said. 'Yes,' Northam responded.... Sunday's exchange was called out on social media, with some Twitter users pushing for Northam to resign." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Northam's wilful ignorance is galling. I grew up in the South & went to public schools with Southern textbooks that shone a very gauzy light on slavery. But I didn't get out of fifth grade without knowing the difference beteen slaves & indentured servants. It is true that some Europeans -- Scottish prisoners of war, for instance -- came to the U.S. under forced indenture, but their terms of service had end dates. And most Europeans who came to America under indenture came voluntarily in exchange for passage, room & board and a "freedom package" bonus at the end of their term of service. They were not enslaved for life as were Africans. They usually had some individual rights during service. Unless Fairfax can clear his name (which seems impossible at this point), Virginians had better get used to the idea of Gov. Mark Herring, because no one should have to live in servitude of Ralph Northam.
... Jenna Portnoy, et al., of the Washington Post: "Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax said Saturday that his encounters with the two women who have accused him of sexual assault were consensual, and he called on authorities -- including the FBI -- to investigate. His statement came as calls for his resignation grew from former allies, including the Democratic Party of Virginia, which had reserved judgment until a second woman came forward Friday to say he sexually assaulted her.... He said he knew both women during the time they allege the assaults occurred. He said that he also knew them afterward and that they never told him their interactions were not consensual or caused 'any discomfort.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
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