Are You a Citizen?

The Korean Peninsula:  Time waits for no Trump, the new national security team still isn’t fully in place but at least for now a meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jung Un remains on the calendar possibly to take place as early as May.  In preparation for nuclear negotiations, or because he’s hasn’t traveled since taking over his country and had an itch to check out China in the Spring, the Little Rocket Man dusted off the family’s  bullet proof train and went for an impromptu two day field trip to Beijing where he met with China’s President for Life Xi . The Chinese News agency reported that Kim told Xi that he was “committed to denuclearization but with conditions,” but provided no explanation as to what those conditions would be.  The White House received notice of the meeting after it had taken place.  To the extent that Kim Jung Un is serious about denuclearizing, he might want to start by halting the firing up of his newest nuclear reactor.  Today’s NY Times reports that it is close to coming on line and though the North Korean’s might want us all to believe that its sole purpose is to provide electricity to nearby towns, the reactor will allow the North Koreans to ramp up plutonium production giving them the ability to dramatically increase their nuclear arsenal.  No doubt the status of this plant will be one of the things that Trump and his team will want to discuss. John Bolton, Trump’s newly appointed national security advisor whose role becomes official in April, has previously suggested that a plant like this one would make a good target for one of those war triggering “limited” preemptive strikes.  Though both Trump and Bolton have it out for the Iran nuclear agreement, despite its limitations, that agreement’s key  achievement is that it resulted in Iran substantially curtailing its nuclear enrichment activities.  Iran could get back into that business quickly if Trump pulls the US from the agreement next month, an odd message to send North Korea in the run up to any negotiations.  In other Korea related news, the US and South Korea have entered into a new trade agreement.  In exchange for the easing of the recently imposed US tariffs on steel, South Korea has agreed to lift their quota for US carmakers from 25,000 per manufacturer to 50,000.  Though that increase sounds notable, last year no individual US carmaker exported more than 11,000 vehicles to South Korea.  Notably, the principles of the agreement were negotiated more quickly than usual, largely because of the impending discussions with North Korea and South Korea’s fear of sending the unpredictable Trump into a trade induced tantrum at a time when US cooperation and military support is needed more than ever.   

Querying Citizenship:  In reaction to Trump’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census twelve states have already  announced intentions to sue to block its inclusion.  They argue that the change would cause fewer Americans to be counted and that it would violate the Constitution.  New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is leading a multistate lawsuit that will be joined by Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington.  Quick to react California filed a separate lawsuit Monday night.  When asked about the citizenship question’s inclusion in the census, Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded that “the question had been included in every census since 1965, with the exception of 2010, when it was removed,” another one of those Trumpian prevarications.  Though a similar question has been included in voluntary polls of a fraction of the population, it was removed from the official census after 1950.  Trump isn’t only pushing the census envelope, he is also looking at creative ways to fund his Mexico Wall.  Stymied by the absence of wall funding in the recently passed Omnibus spending bill, he is now considering redirecting money from the military budget towards the wall.  Having achieved a substantial increase in the military budget, he is hoping to take $25 billion out of the expanded military coffers because they didn’t need that money anyway. Sunday he tweeted "Building a great Border Wall, with drugs (poison) and enemy combatants pouring into our Country, is all about National Defense, Build WALL through M!"  M being the military budget. Trump may have gotten the idea from Ann Coulter, who proposed it where else but on Fox TV.  The fund diversion plan is probably unconstitutional.  Nevertheless, when asked about it at the daily news conference Huckabee Sanders said Trump would work with the White House counsel to make sure any action taken was within his executive authority adding the "continuation of building the wall is ongoing and we're going to continue moving forward in that process."      

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Concerns about Special Counsel Mueller’s continued employment are growing.  Yesterday Republican Senator Thom Tillis joined Democratic Senator Chris Coons by calling for quick passage of their legislation designed to shield Mueller from being fired by Trump.  The legislation has been percolating for a while but Tillis had wavered on whether or not he wanted to move it forward.  Now he’s gung ho, a change of heart that implies that something nefarious is going on behind the scenes causing him to feel an urgency to act.  Before it can move forward the Tillis-Coons bill would have to be merged with a competing bipartisan bill proposed by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Cory Booker.  So far Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has not thrown his support behind either version.  At the same time, led by Connecticut’s Senator Blumenthal, nine of the ten Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee sent a letter to each of the five officials who would be next in line to wield the Trump axe if Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were to be fired, asking them to provide “a written and public commitment that you will not interfere in the Special Counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, possible collusion with such meddling by the Trump campaign, efforts to obstruct justice and any related inquiry.”  Rosenstein already testified that he would not fire Mueller absent any legitimate cause.  At least so far the signature of Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, the tenth Democrat on the committee, was not on the letter but her office noted that she supports the goals of the Mueller protection effort so the reason behind the absence of her signature is unclear.  In other Russia investigation related news, yesterday in a report filed related to the upcoming sentencing of Alex van der Zwaan, the former Skadden Arps lawyer who pleaded guilty for lying about his interactions with Paul Manafort’s partner Rick Gates and an unnamed Russia, more details regarding the unnamed Russian were revealed.  The sentencing report says that Mueller’s  team has connected Gates to a person with ties to a Russian intelligence services and that Gates and that unnamed person were in touch in September and October 2016 and that their contact was “pertinent to the investigation.”  As to Van der Zwaan, Mueller’s team didn’t recommend a specific sentence but they did argue for some jail time because Van der Zwaan lied and hid evidence and they want to make it clear that such activities are bigly bad.  Lastly, Trump still hasn’t found a big name white collar lawyer willing to join his team but he is expected to announce that Andrew Ekonomou, a little known former prosecutor currently working with Jay Sekulow, will be assuming a more prominent role on the Trump defense team. The 69 year old Ekonomou has a doctorate in Medieval History and spends most of his time prosecuting murders.  Defending his role Ekonomou said that “I’ve been tested plenty of times…just because you’re not a Beltway lawyer doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing.”  Trump better hope that he’s right.

The Second Amendment:  Lastly, yesterday in an op-ed published in the New York Times, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens argued that the Second Amendment should just be repealed.  Making a change to the Constitution, particularly one that would be very divisive, is virtually impossible nevertheless his argument against rampant gun ownership is persuasive.  Essentially he said that justifying individual gun ownership because the Constitution included a provision for the arming of militias is ridiculous and an interpretation of its intent that is entirely fanciful (my word, not his).  Conservative columnist Bret Stephens is probably feeling pretty good about an essay he wrote a few months ago that also called for repealing the Second Amendment, his piece inspired a significant amount of criticism from both sides of the aisle.  Needless to say, the NRA and gun owners, are not happy with Stevens or Stephens and others committed to limiting irrational gun ownership fear that even the suggestion of a repeal will make their mission even more difficult.  March for Our Lives!