The Taxman

You’re Working For Me:   It’s tax day, the day that all of us who haven’t filed our taxes do so or at the very least pay up and request an extension and, in either case, hope not to be audited.  That is everyone but Trump.  Presumably he’s filed something as well, but as to the audit part, according to him he’s under perpetual audit and he likes it that way.  Presidents are routinely audited so he’ll get his wish this year, but it’s fair to assume that those earlier returns are no longer under audit despite Trump’s assertion.  To no one’s surprise, neither the Treasury nor the IRS have yet sent any of Trump’s prior tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee; instead they are engaging in what will likely be a long and possibly never ending review of the legality of the request. For her part Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has weighed in, telling Fox News’ Chris Wallace that the “request itself is a dangerous, dangerous road” and that she doesn’t “think Congress, particularly not this group of congressmen and women, are smart enough to look through the thousands of pages” that Trump's taxes will be.  Sarah’s underestimation of the House’s capabilities aside, over the weekend House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal escalated the battle for the returns sending a letter to the IRS Commissioner insisting that the tax filings be sent to the House by April 23 or else, though it’s not clear how that “or else” part will be enforced. If anything, Trump continues to make it clear that neither laws or norms apply to him.  Late last week after a number of whistleblowers reported that he had seriously considered busing undocumented migrants to “sanctuary cities” in order to punish the politicians from those cities, the White House pushed back on that story, insisting that though the concept had been discussed it was never seriously considered.  Trump almost immediately contradicted his spokespeople by tweeting that he was considering placing illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities. Before the White House press office had a chance to recover from that whiplash, they ran head first into another Trumpism, this time someone from Homeland Security, or more likely someone who had just been forced out of Homeland, revealed that shortly before elevating Kevin McAleenan to Acting Homeland Security Secretary Trump told him to go ahead and close the border despite promising that he wouldn’t do that for at least a year, adding that McAleenan shouldn’t worry about ending up in jail for following through on any illegal orders, because he, Trump, had his back and would send a mighty Trump pardon in his direction if one was needed.  A bit concerned about that leak , Trump and his toadies immediately denied that he’d ever said that, adding that if he had it was most certainly just a joke.  At the same time Trump doubled down saying that if he wanted to close the border he could, then adding that he really was looking into busing migrants to parts of California and New York and those other “crime ridden” sanctuary locales.  In any case, it’s worth noting that the term sanctuary city is a misnomer.  There’s no single definition of what is a sanctuary city, but generally speaking, it’s a city, county, or state that “limits its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agents in order to protect low-priority immigrants from deportation, while still turning over those who have committed serious crimes.” Experience has led officials in those areas to conclude that in addition to being more humane, a concern not shared by anyone in the Trump administration, “sanctuary” policies result in more community cooperation with law enforcement and less, rather than more, crime.  As to the idea of shipping migrants to places like New York and San Francisco, Trump would just be doing a lot of the migrants a favor.  Those are the areas that they tend to want to go to anyway. Sadly instead of coming up with practical policies, hiring more immigration judges, reinstating aid to Guatemala, El Salvador and the Honduras and pushing real bi-partisan legislative solutions Trump who isn’t all that into real solutions is magnifying an already bad humanitarian problem possibly because he knowns that all his base really wants is that WALL he promised to build.  So far Trump hasn’t proposed sending first daughter to Homeland Security to replace any of the many people who were fired last week, but apparently he really did want to her to replace Nikki Haley as UN Ambassador.  He told The Atlantic that he also seriously considered promoting her as the next World Bank President, because she’s unflappable and really good with math.  At the end of the day only the recognition that promoting Ivanka would be a step too far even for him prevented him from acting.

Tax the Heat:  Trump hasn’t just weaponized refugees, he’s also effectively weaponized Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.  He retweeted a video edited to imply that the controversial Minnesota congresswoman was dismissive of the horror of the September 11 attacks.  Her full remarks which were delivered to CAIR, the Council of American-Islamic Relations on March 23 were as follows:  “For far too long we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen and, frankly, I’m tired of it, and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it.” She then went on to say  that CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.” The tweet ran footage of the burning World Trade towers alongside her “some people did something” comments a poor choice of words but not quite as evil as Trump and his supporters made them out to be given their context.  For the record CAIR’s existence predates 9/11, but few have noted that Omar was factually in error about that.  And though, I am no fan of Omar’s, its worth noting that she is one of the co-sponsors of the 9/11 Victim’s Compensation Fund legislation that a number of her most vocal Republican critics including Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw have not signed on to.  In any case, partially as a result of Trump’s retweet, Congresswoman Omar’s office has been bombarded with threats against her, so many that Speaker Pelosi  revealed last night that she’s talked with the House Sargent at Arms about providing Omar with added security. Almost all of the Democratic presidential contenders released a variation of a statement defending Omar, ranging from outright praise for her bravery from Bernie Sanders to a much more measured statement from Amy Klobuchar who said that while she doesn’t always agree with Omar, threatening tweets were out of line.  In any case, Trump has achieved his goal, he’s pushed the Democrats into defending a colleague many would rather ignore, deflected attention from the Mueller report, or at least the redacted report due out this week, and managed to push the tax stuff to the side.  For her part Speaker Pelosi continues to get under Trump’s skin.  Yesterday during an interview with 60 Minutes Pelosi said “There’s nobody in the country who knows better that he should not be president of the United States than Donald Trump.” In response, an unhappy and maybe just a wee bit defensive Trump, tweet attacked Pelosi, something he rarely does, and called the interview a puff piece. Pelosi also slighted Congresswoman AOC, dismissing her renegade posse as “like five people.” Also on the Democratic front, Mayor Pete Buttigieg who continues to be the flavor of the moment formalized his announcement this weekend delivering another coherent speech, this time in his South Bend, Indiana hometown.  He’s off to a remarkably good start for someone who was a relative unknown just a few months ago, but its not clear whether he has staying power or whether so many people are just relieved to hear someone speak in complete sentences.  Though she’s fairly coherent herself, NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, another presidential wannabee, is having some fund raising troubles possibly because she has not been forgiven for her role in the Al Franken debacle.  She raised only $3 million during the first quarter.

Pennies on Your Eyes:  Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, the former Intelligence Committee Chairman who is currently suing both a cow and the McClatchy Report has requested some sit down time with Attorney General Barr to push the Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against all of those conniving FBI officials and “Obama” people who initiated the investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.  It’s not known yet whether or not Barr will take him seriously but since Barr did use the word “spying” to describe the investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russian canoodling, it’s quite possible that he will freak out Democrats even more than they are already freaked out by taking Nunes’ concerns seriously.