The Commentariat -- September 2, 2017
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Trump on Friday said he would announce a decision by Tuesday on whether he will end the Obama-era program that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation, declaring 'We love the Dreamers' even as his White House grappled with how to wind down their legal status.... Several administration officials have said in recent days that Mr. Trump is likely to phase out the program, but his advisers have engaged in a vigorous behind-the-scenes debate over precisely how to do so, and the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no decision was final, cautioned that the president was conflicted about the issue and could suddenly change his mind. As a candidate, Mr. Trump pledged to immediately terminate the program, but he has stalled for months.... He told reporters he had 'great feeling for DACA,' while declining to answer repeated questions about whether he believes the program is legal. But in recent days, Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, and Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, have made it clear that they could not defend the program in court, and a group of state attorneys general have threatened to mount a legal challenge if Mr. Trump did not act to end it by Tuesday." Mrs. McC: Let's give a special shout-out to the Evil Elf. ...
... Tal Kopan & Jim Acosta of CNN: "House Speaker Paul Ryan on Friday gave a major boost to legislative efforts to preserve protections for young undocumented immigrants -- and urged ... Donald Trump to not tear up the program. Responding to a question about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, on his hometown radio station WCLO in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan said Congress was working on a legislative fix to preserve the program. 'I actually don't think he should do that,' Ryan said of Trump's consideration of terminating the program. 'I believe that this is something that Congress has to fix.'" Mrs. McC: Good thing I took over here. Ryan never paid any attention to the Constant Weader, but he listened to me. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Joanna Walters of the Guardian: "Many of America's world-leading technology chiefs and dozens of business leaders have sent an open letter to Donald Trump urging him not to kill off the special legal provisions offered to 'Dreamers', people brought to the US illegally as children -- in a drastic move widely expected from the White House on Friday. The Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and other business titans such as Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard, Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Tim Cook of Apple and the fashion design legend Diane von Furstenburg appealed to Trump to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or Daca, the policy generated by the Obama administration to protect those who arrived in the US as undocumented children. The letter tells the president that such Dreamers are critical to the future success and competitiveness of American companies, and that the US economy will suffer if the young peoples' job security and protected residency status are stripped away." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... The letter, with a list of its signers, is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... And Then There Were Nine. Adam Tamburen of the Tennessean: "Republican Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery no longer supports an effort to pressure ... Donald Trump to end a program that allows young immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally to stay in the country. Slatery announced the reversal Friday in a letter to Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker. In June, he had joined a coalition of [ten] conservative state attorneys general who had threatened to challenge DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, in court if Trump did not eliminate it by Sept. 5. But in his Friday letter, Slatery said his office would not participate in the litigation 'because we believe there is a better approach.' He urged Alexander and Corker, both Tennessee Republicans, to use legislation to establish a permanent policy that would address undocumented immigrants who came here as children."
Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "The White House is asking Congress for nearly $12 billion as a down payment on Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts, sending Republican leaders a request late Friday for $5.9 billion in immediate aid that will be quickly followed by a request for another $6 billion, administration officials said. The initial funding represents only a fraction of the long-term storm relief for flood-ravaged parts of Texas and Louisiana, which is likely to far exceed the $50 billion in funds allocated to northeastern states in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. President Trump is expected to make a pitch for quick passage of storm funding legislation when he travels on Saturday to the Houston area and to Lake Charles, La., his second trip to the region in the week since the hurricane made landfall at Rockport, Texas, inundating the Gulf Coast with record-breaking floods and rainfall." ...
... New York Times: "Fire engulfed part of a chemical plant northeast of Houston on Friday evening, sending thick black smoke high into the sky, a statement from Arkema, the owner of the plant, confirmed. It was the same facility where, on Thursday, a chemical storage trailer exploded, setting off a fire. Flooding from Harvey, once a Category 4 hurricane that hit southeast Texas last week, had knocked out the refrigeration system needed to keep the chemicals stable. Two trailers were on fire Friday evening, Rachel Moreno, a spokeswoman for the Houston Fire Marshal's office, confirmed. 'There are six more trailers there with the potential to do the same,' she said, but she could not predict whether any more trailers were immediately at risk. The company said in the statement Friday evening, 'We will likely see additional incidents. Please do not return to the area within the evacuation zone until local emergency response authorities announce it is safe to do so.'" Mrs. McC: Is Arkema going to compensate the people who had to leave their homes solely because of the mandatory evacuation caused by their burning mystery chemicals? ...
... Benjamin Wallace-Wells of the New Yorker on the self-fulfilling prophecy of stripped-down governmental resources: "There is a cyclic pattern to the erosion of faith in government, in which politics saps the state's capacity to protect people, and so people put their trust in other institutions (churches; self-organizing volunteer navies), and are more inclined to support anti-government politics. The stories of the storm and the navies exist on a libertarian skeleton. Through them, a particular idea of how society might be organized is coming into view."
Damian Paletta of the Washington Post: "The White House has signaled to congressional Republicans that it will not shut down the government in October if money isn't appropriated to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, potentially clearing a path for lawmakers to reach a short-term budget deal. Congress has only appropriated money to fund government operations through the end of September, and President Trump has threatened to shut down the government if lawmakers don't include $1.6 billion in new funding so that 74 new miles of wall and secondary fencing can be added to the border.... Trump could still follow through on a threat to shut down the government in December, but this marks the second time he has pulled back from the wall demand to allow lawmakers to pass a budget bill.... Trump has been threatening to shut down the government for months. In May, he said in another tweet that the government needed a 'good shutdown' to break the gridlock in Congress." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
The Russia Scandal
Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Trump on Friday lashed out anew at the F.B.I. director he fired in May, charging that James B. Comey had 'exonerated' Hillary Clinton before fully completing the investigation into her use of a private email server.... 'Wow, looks like James Comey exonerated Hillary Clinton long before the investigation was over,' Mr. Trump wrote on Friday. 'A rigged system!' Two Republican senators said on Thursday that Mr. Comey had begun drafting his statement recommending not to charge Mrs. Clinton before interviewing key aides in the investigation. The president's message came at the end of a week during which Mr. Trump and his aides have worked to portray the president as singularly focused on the devastating toll of storms pummeling Texas and Louisiana, and to project a more empathetic image for Mr. Trump. Just before posting his complaint about Mr. Comey, Mr. Trump used Twitter to praise the response to the storm, although with a trademark spelling error. 'Texas is heeling fast thanks to all of the great men & women who have been working so hard,' Mr. Trump wrote. 'But still, so much to do. Will be back tomorrow!'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... James Downie of the Washington Post on why this attack on Jim Comey is fake: "On Thursday, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) released a letter in which they claim Comey 'prejudged' the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices. Trump latched onto the story ... Friday morning.... Grassley and Graham's letter and the reactions by other Republicans show again that they'll use any excuse to hurt Comey's credibility and by extension special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's inquiry.... [The Grassley-Graham letter provides as 'evidence' the fact that] Comey began to work on a statement exonerating Clinton as early as April 2016, before Clinton herself and some key aides were interviewed.... But it's far from unusual for prosecutors and investigators to draft statements about their conclusions before the investigation is over.... As Washington veterans (and in Graham's case, a former lawyer), the senators likely know this.... If Comey and his team had taken weeks after interviews were finished to draft and announce his decision, Republicans would have claimed he was trying to slow-walk the case.... Besides, as the president admitted and as Grassley and Graham certainly know, Comey was not fired because of his treatment of Clinton.... It's a cheap stunt that both senators should be ashamed of." ...
... Michael Schmidt & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has obtained a letter that President Trump and a top political aide drafted in the days before Mr. Trump fired the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, which explains the president's rationale for why he planned to dismiss the director. The May letter had been met with opposition from Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, who believed that some of its contents were problematic, according to interviews with a dozen administration officials and others briefed on the matter. Mr. McGahn successfully blocked the president from sending Mr. Comey the letter, which Mr. Trump had composed with Stephen Miller, one of the president's top political advisers. A different letter, written by the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, and focused on Mr. Comey's handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server, was ultimately sent to the F.B.I. director on the day he was fired. The contents of the original letter appears to provide the clearest rationale that Mr. Trump had for firing Mr. Comey. It is unclear how much of Mr. Trump's rationale focuses on the Russia investigation, although Mr. Trump told aides at the time he was angry that Mr. Comey refused to publicly say that Mr. Trump himself was not under investigation." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "The multi-page letter enumerated Trump’s long-simmering complaints with Comey, according to people familiar with it, including Trump's frustration that Comey was unwilling to say publicly that Trump was not personally under investigation in the FBI's inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.... Mueller is likely to look into whether Trump, in consulting the Justice Department's top two officials, was seeking a pretense to remove the FBI director...." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Neither the Times nor the WashPo reporters divulge much of what was in the letter, but it sounds as if they know more-or-less what it says. ...
... Josh Marshall speculates on what happened during a "mystery hour" on Air Force 1 -- an hour in which Trump met with Stephen Miller & Jared Kushner -- on the tarmac at Andrews AFB. The meeting took place on the night before Trump called Jeff Sessions & Rod Rosenstein about firing Jim Comey. "However that may be, I think Kushner's role in all of the entire Trump/Russia story is bigger and more central than most of us have understood. One day will find out what happened in that 45 minutes."
Nicole Perlroth, et al., of the New York Times: "After a presidential campaign scarred by Russian meddling, local, state and federal agencies have conducted little of the type of digital forensic investigation required to assess the impact, if any, on voting in at least 21 states whose election systems were targeted by Russian hackers, according to interviews with nearly two dozen national security and state officials and election technology specialists. The assaults on the vast back-end election apparatus -- voter-registration operations, state and local election databases, e-poll books and other equipment -- have received far less attention than other aspects of the Russian interference, such as the hacking of Democratic emails and spreading of false or damaging information about Mrs. Clinton. Yet the hacking of electoral systems was more extensive than previously disclosed, The New York Times found." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Joy Reid explains how the hacking can -- and probably did -- work against Democratic voters. The segment begins at about 3:40 in:
... CBS News/AP: "Acrid, black smoke was seen pouring from a chimney at the Russian consulate in San Francisco Friday, a day after the Trump administration ordered its closure amid escalating tensions between the United States and Russia. Firefighters who arrived at the scene were turned away by consulate officials who came from inside the building. An Associated Press reporter heard people who came from inside the building tell firefighters that there was no problem and that consulate staff were burning unidentified items in a fireplace.... Normally cool San Francisco temperatures had already climbed to 95 degrees by noon." ...
... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Mrs. McCrabbie: Last month, the Constant Weader posted a link to a Nation story by Patrick Lawrence which argued that Russia did not hack the DNC's system. The Weader (and I), especially given the source, found Lawrence's conclusion weird. It turns out, so did a number of his sources, as well as his editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, & other Nation reporters. Erik Wemple of the Washington Post reports. In an e-mail to Wemple, Nation writer Katha Pollitt didn't hold back:
Matt O'Brien of the Washington Post: "President Trump has made the economy so much better that it has added 186,000 fewer jobs in his first seven months than it did in President Barack Obama's last seven months.... It shouldn't be surprising that the economy isn't doing any better under Trump, since Trump really hasn't done anything to make it better. There hasn't been a dollar of new infrastructure spending, let alone the trillion that Trump's since-departed ideological consigliere Steve Bannon promised. And despite the administration's tax cut bravado, it's looking pretty iffy whether it will get that done either.... It is fitting that Trump has tried to take credit for the same economy he said was a disaster.... That's just him running the government like a business -- at least his own. After his casinos went bankrupt in the early 1990s, you see, Trump figured out that it was a lot easier to let other people put his name on things they'd built rather than do so himself. (Well, that and a lot of Wall Street banks wouldn't lend to him anymore). This is no different. Trump is just putting his name on a recovery that Obama put in place with his stimulus and his Federal Reserve picks."
Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: Jim Mattis & Gary Cohn imply what they really think of Donald Trump.
Drew Harwell of the Washington Post: "The U.S. Treasury's Office of Inspector General is reviewing the flight taken by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and his wife, Louise Linton, last week to Louisville and Fort Knox, Ky., following criticism of their use of a government plane on a trip that involved viewing the solar eclipse." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
"Hi, I'm a Right-wing Nutjob!" -- Mick Mulvaney. That's how Trump's budget director introduced himself to White House economic advisor Gary Cohn. Michael Grunwald of Politico writes a longish piece that verifies Mulvaney's self-description. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Glenn Thrush & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times look at the relationship between Donald Trump & Chief-of-Staff John Kelly. It's not all that good. After Trump lashed out at him last month for no good reason, Kelly told White House staffers "he had never been spoken to like that during 35 years of serving his country. In the future, he said, he would not abide such treatment, according to three people familiar with the exchange.... How long Mr. Kelly and the president, two men with such divergent approaches to the common goal of Mr. Trump's success, will be able to coexist is unclear."
Philip Bump of the Washington Post: Sarah Huckabee Sanders has a reputation for putting off reporters' questions by saying she'd have to get back to them. It often hasn't mattered how simple the subject might be; Sanders is regularly loath to offer an answer. On Friday, the last day before the Labor Day holiday, Sanders had even less to offer than normal." Bump provides an edited transcript of the Q&A, & he puts answers that provided some actual response to the questions in bold-faced type. You'll have to do some serious scrolling to get to the responsive answers.
Dana Bash, et al., of CNN: "... Donald Trump's longtime aide and current director of Oval Office operations Keith Schiller has told people he intends to leave the White House, three sources familiar with the decision told CNN.... Schiller has told people his primary reason for leaving was financial, the sources said. Schiller earns a $165,000 annual salary at the White House -- a downgrade from his annual earnings before he followed Trump to the White House. Schiller has been a constant presence at Trump's side for nearly two decades and was among a handful of aides from Trump's previous life as a businessman to follow Trump onto the campaign trail and into the White House. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the story was "not true" and declined to comment further. Schiller declined to comment."
Mr. P*, You Are Not the Boss of Us. John McCain in a Washington Post op-ed: "Congress will return from recess next week facing continued gridlock as we lurch from one self-created crisis to another. We are proving inadequate not only to our most difficult problems but also to routine duties.... Our entire system of government -- with its checks and balances, its bicameral Congress, its protections of the rights of the minority -- was designed for compromise.... We have to respect each other or at least respect the fact that we need each other. That has never been truer than today, when Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct. We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities.... But we are not his subordinates. We don't answer to him. We answer to the American people. We must be diligent in discharging our responsibility to serve as a check on his power. And we should value our identity as members of Congress more than our partisan affiliation." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Laura Litvan of Bloomberg: "The Senate parliamentarian told lawmakers that Republicans' ability to pass an Obamacare replacement with just 51 votes expires at the end of this month, Senator Bernie Sanders said Friday. The preliminary finding complicates any further efforts by Republican leaders in Congress to pass a comprehensive GOP-only replacement for the health-care law. Sanders ... called the determination a 'major victory' for those who oppose repealing Obamacare.... The parliamentarian's new finding doesn't preclude Republicans in both chambers from seeking to restore the ability to use a 51-vote majority for an Obamacare repeal in the next fiscal year that starts Oct. 1." Mrs. McC: Litvan neither explains the reason for the deadline nor provides a link to Bernie's statement. Hey, Litvan: Who What When Where Why & How....
... Rachana Pradhan & John Bresnahan of Politico say it's because September 30 is the end of the fiscal year, & the 51-vote effort was attached to current budget reconciliation rules. AND right now, "the House GOP's budget resolution for fiscal 2018 does not include instructions on health care, which would likely kill the party's chances of an Obamacare repeal redo next year."
Beyond the Beltway
Melissa Gray of CNN: "Salt Lake City police apologized Friday for arresting a nurse who, citing hospital policy, refused to let officers draw blood from an unconscious crash victim. The arrest of Alex Wubbels, who was later released without charge, was captured on body camera video that the police chief said was alarming.... Wubbels, the charge nurse in the burn unit, presented the officers with a printout of hospital policy on drawing blood and said their request did not meet the criteria.... Wubbels' attorney, Karra Porter, said Friday the university and Salt Lake City police had agreed to the policy more than a year ago...." Mrs. McC: Yes, the cops can & will detain & manhandle you for doing the right, lawful thing. I'm guessing that what made the officer so mad was that (1) a woman disobeyed his order, & (2) she provided him with written evidence (and backup from a supervisor) that she was right & he was wrong. As for the Constitution rights of the accident victim, the police officer could not care less.
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Reader Comments (5)
Why is it that every time I see an image of that weasel Stephen Miller (author of the early draft to fire James Comey) all I can envision is what might be in his apartment. I see a closet with those lifelike inflatable dolls from Japan!
@MAG: Don't know if it will help, but you can get a peek here at what Stephen Miller's bedroom might look like -- he owns a nearly-$1MM condo at CityCenter in D.C. Probably has plenty of closet space to fill the needs of a creepy young Washington cosmopolitan.
Mrs. McC, of course Paul Ryan listened to you ~ the recalcitrant incarnation of the Constant Weader. Welcome!
Poor Trump. Turns out that leaders of most corporations are not racists. They want to employ illegal immigrants. The problem is the number of corporate leaders is less that the number of Nazis. So Trump gets more votes by throwing the children out than keeping them. Tough decision.
Ummm, Marvin. Is that employ or exploit or are they the same?