Say What?

Oops: Yesterday in the aftermath of former Special Counsel Mueller’s pop-up news conference Trump woke up with Russia on his mind and tweeted "Russia, Russia, Russia! That's all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax...And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected. It was a crime that didn't exist." With that tweet, he inadvertently admitted what Mueller concluded and the intelligence agencies have been saying for some time, that Russia contributed to his 2016 election victory.   Once he realized what he had admitted, he pulled the tweet.  Shortly afterwards during a brief press moment on the White House lawn he responded to reporters’ questions about his  “accidental” admission by defensively shouting "Russia did not help me get elected. You know who got me elected? You know who got me elected? I got me elected. Russia did not help me at all."  The press also questioned him about reports that the Pentagon had gone out of its way to hide the USS John McCain from his view during his Memorial Day sojourn to see Sumo wrestling in Japan.  Trump replied that he had only just learned about that little incident and had nothing to do with it but then complimented whoever had done it, saying that they were only trying to make him happy because everyone knows how much he hates McCain, the man who doomed Obamacare repeal with his errant thumb.  Later in the day, Trump tried to walk back that comment by asserting that the story about the carrier being hidden from view was just “fake news” but the damage had been done.  Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan will now have one more thing to ‘splain during what is expected to be his contentious Senate confirmation hearing.  A number of Senators from both sides of the aisle are already upset about the administration’s pre-Memorial weekend decision to invoke an obscure state-of-emergency provision allowing the sale of billions of dollars in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates without giving Congress a chance to block the sale.  Before getting on his helicopter Trump also shared a few choice words about Mueller, once again pulling out the debunked story that the much “conflicted” Mueller had accepted the special counsel assignment only because he hadn’t been offered the FBI Director slot, the one he didn’t want. Then Trump threw in his oft repeated statement about Mueller’s eighteen Clinton loving agents, as well as a new one about how much Mueller, that never Trumper, really hates him.  He also weighed in on impeachment, with a nonsensical remark saying that  “I don't see how they (the Democrats) can because they're possibly allowed, although I can't imagine the courts allowing it. I’ve never gone into it.  Adding “I never thought that would even be possible to be using that word. To me, it's a dirty word — the word impeach. It's a dirty, filthy, disgusting word,” unlike all those expletives he regularly uses during his campaign rallies or that whole grab them by the crotch thing.  In any case, Trump needs to brush up on the Constitution, the courts, even “his” Supreme Court have nothing to do with impeachment, and in any case at last count only 50 Democratic Representatives and one Republican are ready to go that route, at least so far.  Attorney General Barr knows a lot more about the  Constitution and the inner workings of the Justice Department than Trump but that didn’t stop him from questioning Mueller’s conclusion that even though Trump had obstructed justice as many as ten times he couldn’t say it because of that Justice Department policy of not indicting sitting presidents.  Barr made that observation during a hastily scheduled fireside chat with CBS News that took place in Alaska because that’s where Barr was when Mueller gave his surprise parting words.  Being out of town couldn’t stop him from trying to poke holes in Mueller’s statement because after all that’s what Trump hired him to do. Makes you wonder whether the Constitution was burning in that fire place

Dead Man Talking:  With all the attention on the spate of newly restrictive abortion laws it would be easy to forget that curtailing women’s reproductive rights is just one of those social engineering things that the conservative leaning Supreme Court is likely to rule on at some point soon.  A ruling on another one of those items, whether or not the administration will be allowed to disenfranchise minority voters by including a question about citizenship status in the 2020 census, is due shortly.  Several lower courts have weighed in with extensive and persuasive argument about why the inclusion of such a question would be a bad thing, largely because it’s likely that many immigrant households, particularly those with undocumented residents, would all together avoid answering any questionnaire that included the immigrant question, skewing census results so that districts and states with larger immigrant populations would get less government funding and would lose Congressional and state house representation.  However, the five conservative members of the Supreme Court all seemed very sympathetic to the administration’s case during recent oral arguments.  SCOTUS is due to hand down a decision on the case by the end of the month and given the questions asked during the arguments and the sympathy to the administration’s position expressed by the conservative five, it’s been widely expected, or feared depending on your view, that they will allow the inclusion of the citizenship question.  That expectation and the court decision may now be up in the air.  Yesterday, the  New York Times reported that new evidence that could impact the outcome of the case has come to light.  That evidence was found in the files of a now deceased prominent Republican redistricting strategist named Thomas Hofeller.  The files reveal that Hofeller “played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question” to the 2020 census in order to “create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, ‘Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.’ ” That evidence has now been provided to the courts along with an additional assertion that administration officials, including Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, intentionally obscured Hofeller’s role in court proceedings. It’s not clear if the newly found evidence is too little too late given how close SCOTUS is to releasing their decision.  We should know soon enough.  As to abortion, proving that its not just Republican Governors who are into restricting reproductive rights,  Louisiana’s Democratic Governor signed another one of those abortion bans into law yesterday.

Holy Crap:  Yesterday it was reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong un, that really nice guy who sends love letters to our exalted leader when he isn’t launching intercontinental ballistic missiles executed his special envoy to the United States following the collapse of the last summit he had with Trump.  That envoy, Kim Hyok Chol, who laid the groundwork for the Hanoi meeting and accompanied the Little Rocket Man on his private train, was executed by firing squad for "betraying the supreme leader" after he was "won over to the US" during pre-summit negotiations.  Four other senior foreign ministry officials were also executed and at least one other was sent to a work camp for reeducation.  It’s also reported that Kim Jong un’s sister is laying low for fairly obvious reasons. No comment yet from Trump but late yesterday he did express his dismay with Mexico about all those migrants seeking refugee status in the US by promising to impose a 5 percent tariff on all imported goods from Mexico beginning June 10, a tax that he plans to gradually increase until the flow of undocumented immigrants across the border is stopped.  Oh goody, another way to increase the cost of goods for US consumers and depress the stock markets, one that former US diplomat John Negroponte says is “both bad politically and bad economically” and that he doesn’t believe will solve the immigration problem, either.

Something to Talk About

Talkin’ About People:  The thing about remaining silent for two years is that when you finally decide to speak people listen.  So yesterday when the Justice Department provided ninety minutes notice that Special Counsel Mueller would be making a “substantive statement” the press, the White House and anyone else with access to a livestreaming device prepared to tune in.  Mueller spoke for only nine minutes, hardly enough time to go into the details of his 400 plus page report but more than enough to deliver his intended message.  He started by stating again, because some people need to hear it repeated, that the Russians attacked our political system in 2016 and ended with the warning that they were gearing up to do it again in 2020. In between he very, very briefly summarized the first section of his report, saying that while there had been plenty of cases of Russian and Trump team interaction there hadn’t been enough evidence to move forward with any criminal cases for any of that behavior so he hadn’t.  He then addressed obstruction, the subject of the second section of his report, making it clear that there had been plenty of obstruction, that you don’t need to establish an underlying crime to prove obstruction because “when a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.”  Then he added the zinger: that because he was bound by the long standing Justice Department policy that wouldn’t let him indict a sitting president he’d known going into the investigation that regardless of what he discovered he wouldn’t be able to indict Trump for anything,  To be clear, if his team “had been confident that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that” but since they determined that there was plenty of obstruction all they could do was detail what they found, leaving it to  Congress, the elected officials who have the authority to punish a president for his “wrongdoing,” by doing something about it, like for example impeaching.  Mueller didn’t just make it clear that had Trump been anyone else he would have gone after him bigly, his reference to the policy against indicting sitting presidents also highlighted just how much Attorney General Barr had misled the public when he claimed that the decision not to indict Trump was not at all influenced by that policy.  Before finishing his remarks, Mueller took a moment to thank his team of attorneys, FBI agents, analysts and professional staff of the “highest integrity” for acting in a “fair and independent manner,” his way of saying that all of Trump’s attacks on their character and the various investigations that Trump has ordered into their actions were unwarranted bull sh-t.   Mueller also stated that he didn’t see the point in testifying before Congress because he wouldn’t say anything there that goes beyond what is already included in the full text of his report.  Despite that, he probably will be “asked” to appear because few have actually read his report and having the public hear from him is an effective way of communicating that this White House is chock full of corruption and criminals.  Mueller’s appearance will take place on his own time because as of now is no longer a Justice Department employee.

A Little Too Loud:  Trump, who like Attorney General Barr, had been given a bit more notice about Mueller’s impending statement than the rest of us, reacted to Mueller’s comments with a modified version of his “no collusion, no obstruction” message by tweeting “Nothing changes from the Mueller Report.  There was insufficient evidence and therefore, in our Country, a person is innocent.  The case is closed! Thank you.”  The charming Press Secretary Sanders followed with her own no collusion, no conspiracy, no obstruction statement, adding “after two years, the Special Counsel is moving on with his life, and everyone else should do the same” and spokes lawyer Rudy Giuliani spent the evening parroting a twisted version of the same message.  While they tried to dismiss Mueller’s statement as just more background noise, some of their colleagues at Fox News were less sanguine. Host Brett Baier pointed out that Mueller contradicted Barr’s earlier statements, and added that  "This was not—as the president says time and time again -- 'no collusion, no obstruction.’ It was much more nuanced than that.”  Fox legal commentator Judge Napolitano said there is "no way to reconcile" what Mueller said today with Attorney General Bill Barr's previous assertion that the Justice Department guidelines were not the reason Mueller declined to recommend an obstruction charge, adding that he could not say exactly why Mueller decided to speak publicly, but the result would not be good for Trump because Mueller “has ginned up all the Democrats to believe there must be a there there.”  Former Governor and sometime Trump supporter Chris Christie said essentially the same thing.  As to those Democrats, a few more presidential candidates jumped on the “impeach now” bandwagon, Judiciary Chairman Nadler said that “all options are on the table” while the ever cautious and extremely strategic, freshly coifed Speaker Pelosi, continued to apply the brakes.  Sticking to her strategy of focusing on the endgame she said that “We won't be swayed by a few people who think one way or another who are running for president as much as I respect all of them …. we have the responsibility to get a result for the American people and that's where we're going."  For his part Senate Majority Leader McConnell who is on record saying that he’ll do his best to quickly quash any impeachment charges if they make it to the Senate, continues to also sit on election security legislation, because even acknowledging the need to protect the election system offends Trump’s sensibilities and McConnell wouldn’t want to do that, especially since he too is up for reelection in 2020.

A Little Rumor:  The Wall Street Journal reports that Pentagon officials went out of their way to keep the USS John McCain out of Trump’s sight during his recent visit to Japan because they know how upset he gets whenever he’s reminded that McCain was a “real” war hero. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu failed to put together a governing coalition so Israel has scheduled an election “do over” for September, not a good sign for Netanyahu’s long term viability and probably just another impediment to Jared Kushner’s much awaited peace plan, the one that he’s been busy presenting to everyone in the Middle East, that is everyone except for the Palestinians.  And though Mueller is no longer a Justice Department employee, his cases continue to percolate through the courts.  Yesterday Andrew Miller, a protégé of Trump’s long term eccentric buddy Roger Stone, who has been fighting a subpoena to appear in front of a grand jury since all the Mueller related investigations were initiated has finally agreed to appear and the fact that prosecutors still want his testimony is viewed as an indication that they need more from him for the WikiLeaks collaboration case against Stone.  Abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s debut on the twenty dollar bill has been put off from 2020 to 2028.  Last week Treasury Secretary Mnuchin claimed the delay was due to the need for Treasury to focus on more pressing anti-counterfeiting methods but who is he kidding, it’s far more likely that Trump has put Tubman into the McCain bucket and doesn’t want to see her image on any of “his” money any time soon.       

Groundhog's Day?

Abortion Politics:  Yesterday, in an unsigned opinion the Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that had invalidated part of an Indiana abortion law that was first passed back when that noted protector of morals and values  Vice President Pence was governor of the state. The case involved two aspects of the law: one part required fetal remains to be disposed of separately from surgical byproducts following an abortion and the other prohibited abortion when the decision was based on the sex, race, or possible disability of a fetus. The Supreme Court disagreed with the circuit court’s decision that had blocked the part of the law involving the disposal of remains, instead ruling that because the Indiana law did not present any burden against a woman's ability to get an abortion, it only needed to pass the low level of scrutiny that requires it to be "rationally related to legitimate government interests." The court found that it met that requirement, in that it was related to the interest of "proper disposal of fetal remains."  As to the prohibition on race, sex, or disability-based abortion, the Court left in place the circuit's decision against it, effectively allowing such abortions to proceed. However, at the same time the Court made a point of saying that their decision was based on the fact that only one circuit court had ruled on the issue so far, meaning they could rule against such a law in the future by revisiting this case or taking up another one of those restrictive laws percolating in their direction.  In other news, Missouri, one of those states that recently passed one of those absurdly restrictive abortion laws that are now the “thing” among states hoping to win the “overturn Roe v Wade race” is on the verge of becoming the first US state without a functioning  abortion clinic since the 1973 passage of Roe.  Planned Parenthood, Missouri’s only clinic operator, said that the state’s health department is refusing to renew its annual license to provide abortions.  Basically the state has come up with additional requirements, at least one of which is practically impossible for the facility to meet, which is essentially the whole point of the new restrictions.  Planned Parenthood has filed a lawsuit requesting a restraining order against the state, hoping to restore the license and avoid service disruption. With time running out a circuit court judge is expected to hear arguments today.  In an unrelated decision that concerns bathroom use, because who uses which bathroom is now an issue that ends up in the courts, the Supreme Court refused to “second-guess” a Pennsylvania school district's policy that allows transgender students to use bathrooms matching their gender identity. The action, with no noted dissents, represented a victory for the transgender rights movement and a defeat for those religious wingnuts like VP Pence who fear that unless birth gender is used to determine which bathrooms and locker rooms students use the world will explode.  As to the Court itself, to no one’s surprise Senate Majority Leader McConnell who quite effectively barred former President Obama’s Supreme Court choice, Merrick Garland, from even having a confirmation hearing by asserting that it was inappropriate to consider a new Court nominee during the run up to a presidential election told an audience in Kentucky yesterday that he would have no qualms about allowing the confirmation of a Trump Court nominee to go forward in the run up to the 2020 presidential election to the extent he was lucky enough to have that opportunity, as in lucky enough to have one of those liberal judges die on his watch.  He said that while giggling gleefully.  Notably, Senator Lindsey Graham is on record saying that as chair of the Judiciary Committee he wouldn’t allow such a thing to happen, but then again Graham, who is himself up for reelection in 2020 isn’t known for consistency and has already shown that he will do whatever it takes to insure his own reelection, and getting one of those uber conservative justices confirmed could be the clincher he needs.  

Political Machinations:  Republican Congressman Justin Amash who so far remains the only Republican member of Congress to actually read and understand what the Mueller report says held a town hall meeting back in his Michigan district last night.  He was greeted by a packed house of largely supportive constituents, though not everyone present agreed with his call for Trump to be impeached or his critical assessment of Attorney General Barr’s performance they mostly appreciated his independence, probably not all that surprising given that he’s always been one to question authority and they voted for him in the first place.  He told the crowd that his job is to uphold the Constitution and that rather than rubberstamping Republican leadership that’s what he plans to do, pointing out that “I haven’t changed … I’m a principled, constitutional conservative who has stayed consistent, regardless of whether we’ve had President Obama in office or President Trump.”  The first Democratic presidential debate is scheduled to take place in late June, with the second scheduled for late July.  Though some of the twenty-three or twenty-four, its hard to count, more recently announced candidates have not yet achieved the polling and/or funding raising thresholds for participation in debates one and two, it is highly likely that most if not all of them will make it to the debate stage.  However, in an effort to push the winnowing process along, yesterday the DNC announced that the thresholds for the third debate, scheduled for September, will be about twice as high,  candidates will have to earn 2 percent support in four party-sanctioned polls between late June and August. In addition, they will have to show they’ve attracted at least 130,000 donors since the start of the campaign, including at least 400 from 20 different states.  So, if you’ve lost count or have given up memorizing the names of all of the people running don’t worry, by September the list will be shorter, hopefully.                 

Other News:  Late last week  a Federal Judge in California issued a ruling blocking Trump’s plan to redirect $1 billion in funding that had been  previously allocated to specific military projects to the building of his precious WALL.  The judge ruled that presidents can’t circumvent Congress’ funding authority saying “That when Congress declines the Executive’s request to appropriate funds, the Executive nonetheless may simply find a way to spend those funds ‘without Congress’ does not square with fundamental separation of powers principles dating back to the earliest days of our Republic.”  Trump, of course, attacked the judge for being one of those biased Obama appointees.  Although a few hours remain, it’s looking more and more likely that Israel is closing in on a “do-over” election.  As of now Prime Minister Netanyahu still hasn’t managed to put together a ruling coalition, if he doesn’t come up with one at the last minute, his only choice will be to dissolve parliament and move forward with new elections because the alternative,  giving his main opponent Benny Gantz of the Blue and White party the chance to try to put together a government, would not be in Netanyahu’s interest. Polls indicate that the results of a new election will probably be the same as the results of the old one.  How do you say Groundhog’s Day in Hebrew?      

Carbon, Coups and Treason

Tokyo Fun:  Trump spent his Memorial Day weekend in Japan, becoming the first official visitor since the coronation of the new emperor.  In addition to seeking out tips on how he too can become an emperor he played golf and attended a Sumo wrestling match, an event near and dear to his heart because watching truly chubby guys go at it makes him feel comparatively svelte.   He boasted about the truly special relationship between the US and Japan, saying that because he’s in charge it’s better than ever but then went on to criticize Japan for its trade imbalance with the US, one that will be fixed with that very bigly trade agreement that he insists will be announced over the next few months.   While in Tokyo, he slammed the US Fed for raising interest rates, saying that the US stock markets would be way higher if it wasn’t for the Fed’s action because he criticizes Fed policy whenever he has a chance and no one really expects him to acknowledge that his trade war with China might be the biggest contributor to the stock market’s current downward trend.  Then Trump went on to contradict national security advisor John Bolton for saying that was there  was “no doubt” that North Korea’s recent missile launches violated UN resolutions and ignoring that his Japanese hosts agree with Bolton by tweeting that “North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me. I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me.” Notably experts say that the weapons that North Korea tested, the ones that Trump described as small, are new solid-fuel missiles that are potentially nuclear capable and would strengthen their ability to conduct strikes on targets throughout South Korea.  Trump also  made it clear that he agreed with Kim’s statement that VP Joe Biden’s was “a fool of low IQ” by stating that “he probably is, based on his record” because what US president doesn’t attack the former US Vice President while attending formal state meetings or side with a brutal authoritarian whenever possible?  Trump doubled down on that statement about Biden when asked about it during a press opportunity as did Press Secretary Sarah Sanders who told Meet the Press’ Chuck Todd that there is nothing wrong with Trump and Kim agreeing “in their assessment of former Vice President Joe Biden” because you know, that’s what BFFs do, they agree.

Military Exercises: In one piece of good news, or at least good news for now, Trump did not grant a Memorial Day pardon to any of those servicemen who are being prosecuted for some really heinous war crimes even though he is being pressured to do so by Fox and Friends host Peter Hegseth, among others.  That said, Republican California Congressman Duncan Hunter, who was reelected even though he is himself facing some corruption charges, bragged that he like Edward Gallagher, the Navy SEAL who has been charged with stabbing to death an injured teenage Islamic State fighter under his care in Iraq in 2017 and then holding a reenlistment ceremony with the body, wants us all to know that he too has taken and displayed photos with dead combatants.  Hunter is fully supportive of Trump granting Gallagher one of those pardons.  Also on the military front, on Friday as he was departing for Tokyo Trump announced that he was sending 1500 more troops to the Middle East to serve a “mostly protective” function.  Though 1500 is far less than the 100,000 number that had been bandied about last week, it could be just the start of something more ominous.  Democratic presidential wannabee Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who earlier said that he took a “pretty dim view of Trump’s decision to use his privileged status to fake a disability in order to avoid serving in Vietnam,” noting that some other less privileged guy had to go in his place, and who has himself served in Afghanistan expressed his concern for the military build-up saying that it's unclear what the administration's policy is, adding “I'm afraid this could actually get away from the president, “it wouldn’t be the first time” that Trump has “lost control of an international dynamic.” Trump “could be starting a chain reaction that even the White House can’t stop.” Though Trump is all in on ignoring war crimes, he and his enablers continue to build the case against all of those really true criminals, the ones who he says committed “treason” by opening the investigation into his crowd’s dalliances with Russians during the 2016 campaign.  To that end, Congresswoman Liz Cheney, a chip off the block of her father former VP Dick Cheney, told ABC on This Week with George Stephanopoulos that those sexting messages between then FBI officials Strzok and Page remind her of a coup that “could well be treason.” Putting aside that neither Trump nor Cheney appear to know or care about the true definition of treason, the fact that they continue to attack the intelligence agencies for doing their jobs is truly scary.  To that end Thursday night Corey Lewandowski, one of those former Trump campaign managers who remains in the Trump orbit, told Fox’s Gregg Jarrett who was sitting in for that other Fox luminary Lou Dobbs that come next April James Clapper, Jim Comey, John Brennan, Andrew McCabe and even former VP Biden will all be on trial for trying to launch that coup against Trump.  Sounds crazy but then again last week Trump did give Attorney General Barr the authorization to release any confidential information that he sees fit to release, and the selective release of information is one really effective way of manipulating public opinion, especially in the run up to an election.  Anyway Lewandowski who figured prominently in the Mueller Report for saying that Trump tried to get him to help him engage in some obstruction of justice by  getting former AG Sessions to fire Mueller may just be trying to win back a few points with Trump or it may really be time to break out the bananas.  

International Politics:  Though most of us here in the US hardly noticed that any elections took place, the results of last week’s high turn-out European Parliamentary Elections are in.  In a nutshell, it looks like the center left and center right parties lost their majority with both far right nationalist parties and liberal, left leaning pro- European groups gaining seats at their expense. The gains by the right wing nationalists were notable, not as bad as had been feared, but still significant and an indication that liberal democracy remains under attack by the right.  European centrists will have to reach out to and unite more broadly with liberal coalitions in order to maintain authority in the EU.  Israeli politics took an unpredictable turn.  Prime Minister Netanyahu only has two more days to put together a governing coalition.  So far he has been unable to do so largely because one of his usual coalition partners, Avigdor Lieberman’s ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, whose constituents are mostly secular, Russian-speaking Israelis, wants to see a military draft law that exempts ultra-Orthodox men from military service replaced with one that sets modest quotas for enlisting them, which the religious parties that make up a part of Netanyahu’s coalition oppose. Unless these groups reach agreement by Wednesday night, Israel may end up facing a new election.  Trump, of course, has weighed in, once again throwing his support behind Netanyahu.

Other News:  Maggie Haberman, the New York Times Trump Whisperer thinks that we should all feel really bad for former Trumpster Hope Hicks and her “existential crisis,” the one that she is facing as she decides whether to honor the subpoena commanding her appearance before Congress to testify about all those things she witnessed and participated in while serving as Trump’s gal Friday and Communications guru.  For the record, if any of the rest of us failed to show up when subpoenaed we’d be in bigly trouble, but for Hopey it’s just one of those maybe I will or maybe I won’t decisions, kind of like should I wear blue or teal eye shadow today.  On a more serious note, the Times also reports that the Trump administration plans to ramp up its attack against climate science.  To that end National Security Council member William Happer, who is leading a “climate review” panel, has likened efforts to reduce carbon emissions to the “demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler” because what better way to get people on the side of pollution that to invoke the Holocaust?    

Ugly Talk, Uglier Actions

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly:  Okay, forget about the good, yesterday was mostly about the ugly.  In response to Nancy and Chuck’s comments about his Oval Office outburst and Pelosi’s comments about him being a “stable genius” in need of a family intervention, Trump went into full attack mode, only this time his target wasn’t Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or any of the other too numerous to name Democratic presidential candidates, it was Speaker Pelosi.  First, he lined up a number of his staff members and had each one of them including such notables as Kellyanne Conway, Larry Kudlow and Press Secretary Sanders swear that he’d been calm as a cucumber during the aforementioned Oval Room hissy fit.  He even had Hogan Gidley attest to his sanity, notable because Gidley wasn’t even present at the meeting in question.  Niceties aside,  Trump then went on to  pounce on Pelosi’s stammer calling it out as evidence of her mental decline.  To be fair, Pelosi does stammer but let’s be real here, someone who has been called out by his own Secretary of State for being a moron, whose vocabulary includes mostly mispronounced single syllable words, whose handwritten notes included the word “achomlishments” and who himself appears to be mentally diminished really should stay away from commenting on others’ mental acuity, especially when that other person is, like her or not, the shrewdest and most powerful woman in the country.  Pelosi is a favorite Republican target so she’s used to being slammed but Trump’s use of a doctored video to make it appear that she was inebriated rather than just tongue tied represents a new low, even for him.  In any case, Pelosi appears to be handling the situation in stride, with or without a stammer, her criticisms of Trump and his behavior appear to be hitting home and as a number of people have pointed out, the mother of five and grandmother of eight knows how to deal with whiny, obnoxious babies, big and small.  On the good side, because there always has to be something good, the Senate finally passed disaster relief legislation.  The bill doesn’t include any of that extra border money that Trump wanted but does including the funding for Puerto Rico that he said he would oppose. Trump who earlier in the week said that he’s not going to agree to anymore legislation until Nancy stops the “witch hunt” says he’ll sign it when it gets to his desk.  He’s also in the process of signing away $16 billion in aid to farmers to compensate them for the losses they’re suffering from those tariffs on Chinese goods, the ones costing each and every American household about $831, not to mention the added impact they’re having on the stock markets.  

Coyote Ugly: With the exception of former Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson, most people really hate Julian Assange.  He’s scuzzy, being investigated for rape by Swedish authorities and his alliance with the Russians, the one that facilitated the publication of the Democratic National Committee emails on his WikiLeaks platform may well have led to Trump’s presidency.  So in April when it was revealed that he’d been indicted in absentia by US authorities for trying to help one time US soldier Chelsea Manning  crack a password for a computer storing sensitive government files most people yawned because helping crack passwords is not considered something that a journalist is supposed to  do.  However, people, or at least most of the free press aren’t yawning now.  Yesterday, US authorities amended the Assange indictment adding 17 counts of violating the rarely used Espionage Act for his role in obtaining and publishing secret military and diplomatic documents in 2010.  Mainstream journalists are concerned that going after Assange for publishing secret information is the opening salvo in a war against them because “the charges rely almost entirely on conduct that investigative journalists engage in every day,” and can be seen as a “frontal attack on press freedom” by an administration led by a president who attacks the press daily and has even gone so far as to suggest that his critics are treasonous purveyors of “fake news” who should all be jailed or worse.  Notably, the Obama administration debated going after Assange using the Espionage Act but ultimately did not because of the implications for press freedoms.  For now Assange remains in the UK, its not clear whether authorities there will extradite him to the US, they may find the new charges a step too far for them, and in any case Assange might end up first in Sweden facing those rape accusations.  Because targeting press freedom wasn’t enough for one day, last night Trump ramped up his battle against the investigators who initiated what he likes to call that “witch hunt.”  He signed an order giving Attorney General Barr “sweeping new authorities to conduct a review into how the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia were investigated, significantly escalating the administration’s efforts to place those who investigated the campaign under scrutiny.” Trump order the CIA and all the country’s other intelligence agencies to cooperate with the review and granted Barr the authority to unilaterally declassify their documents.  In addition to giving Barr “immense leverage” over the entire intelligence community, Trump’s move also gives him “enormous power over what the public learns about the roots of the Russia investigation.” So Barr, who misrepresented the conclusions of the Mueller Report and who continues to sit on some of its content will now get to control everything the public sees.  The timing of the release of Trump’s pronouncement is not accidental.  The FBI Inspector General is due to release his report on the use of FISA warrants, a report that Trump’s spokes piece Sean Hannity has already “promised” will be “devastating” which could be typical Hannity hyperbole or could contain a kernel of truth, one that Barr will get to manipulate and exaggerate to his heart’s content.  Oh and yesterday, Trump called the actions of those two sexting FBI agents, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, treasonous, possibly even deserving of the death penalty.       

The Ugly Truth:  Yesterday Stephen Calk, the former CEO of Federal Savings Bank of Chicago was indicted for trying to leverage an inexplicably large loan to one time Trump campaign manager, current jailbird Paul Manafort into a very senior role in the Trump administration.  The indictment references a “Transition Official-1,” who appears to be none other than Jared Kushner, the chief Middle East peacemaker, who was the person who received and then forwarded on the recommendation from Paul Manafort that Calk be considered for one or more high positions.  In any case, the news about Calk isn’t all that surprising, we learned about the accusations against him and about Kushner’s small but probably not all that criminal role earlier as a result of Mueller’s investigation into all things Manafort.  As to Robert Mueller, last night House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler confirmed what has been earlier reported, that negotiations to get him to appear in front of the Judiciary committee are ongoing.  No date has been set largely because Mueller’s representatives say that though he’s willing to making an introductory statement in a public setting, he wants the rest of his testimony to be behind closed doors which kind of defeats the purpose of having him testify in the first place because the whole point is to get the widest audience possible hearing those damning things that he uncovered.  Former Trump Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is speaking and has been getting a few things off of his chest, he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Putin was more prepared for his meetings with Trump than Trump was because unlike Trump he actually prepared for those meetings. That “discrepancy” in preparation “created an unequal footing” for their talks.  Trump of course has a retort for that, he tweeted “Rex Tillerson, a man who is “dumb as a rock” and totally ill prepared and ill equipped to be Secretary of State, made up a story (he got fired) that I was out-prepared by Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Hamburg, Germany. I don’t think Putin would agree. Look how the U.S. is doing!”  It’s doubtful that Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon, is all that dumb and at least he, unlike Trump, can spell and has many “accomplishments.” Lastly, this morning UK Prime Minster Theresa May announced that she is stepping down.  Someone else is going to have to deal with that whole Brexit thing. Good luck with that.

Enjoy the Memorial Day holiday. 

Tantrum in the Rose Garden

Hissy Fit:  Trump should really stop pretending that he wants to do anything about the country’s infrastruture, that is anything outside of that very beautiful slat wall on the Mexican border.  Yesterday during a meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and their traveling squad of senior Democratic leaders that was supposed to be a follow-up to the meeting that they had a few weeks ago, the one where he freaked out budget tightwad Mick Mulvaney and Senate Majority Leader McConnell by agreeing to spend $2 trllion that he didn’t have and that they didn’t want to give him on infrastructure, Trump threw a bigly hissy fit.  His temper tantrum was purportedly in response to statements made by Speaker Pelosi during and immediately following an earlier morning meeting that she had with House Democrats.  In that meeting she pressed her crowd to go slow on the whole impeachment thing and then told the press that “We do believe that it’s important to follow the facts. We believe that no one is above the law, including the president of the United States, and we believe that the president of the United States is engaged in a cover-up.”  Claiming that he was outraged by her cover-up accusation, because after all no one is as transparent and forthcoming with information as he is or at least so he wants us to believe, Trump showed up late for the meeting with the Democrats, greeted no one, never sat down, told them that he wouldn’t cooperate with them on any future legislation unless they ended all those investigations into his misdeeds,  and then stormed out to the Rose Garden where he then gave what his staff insisted was an impromptu tirade, one in which he incoherently expressed  his outrage about Pelosi’s cover up assertion, again asserting, contrary to all available evidence, that he was the most transparent president ever and publicly repeating that he wouldn’t cooperate on anything going forward until all those investigations were halted. Despite that staff assertion that his speech was unplanned, he was conveniently surrounded by large signs emblazoned with his “no collusion, no obstruction” mantra as well as a few inaccurate statistics about the Mueller investigation, proof that his hissy fit was totally orchestrated.  Getting back to the reason for the staged fit, though Nancy’s cover-up accusation was annoying because who likes to be accused of engaging in a cover-up, it’s the specter of his finances getting closer to seeing the light of day that’s really causing him angst.  To that end, citing passages from Washington DC judge Amit Mehta’s decision that upheld the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena for a trove of Trump’s financial information,  New York federal judge Edgardo Ramos ruled in favor of Congress in another case involving Trump and his company’s Deutsche Bank and Capital One records at the same time that the New York State Legislature passed their “share Trump’s tax returns with Congress bill.”  Trump’s lawyers have already appealed the Washington court decision  and are expected to do the same in response to the New York one, but the writing is on the wall, that transparency that Trump likes to brag about is on its way.  In fact some of it is already here, Congresswoman Maxine Water’s Financial Services Committee has already received records from TD Bank and Wells Fargo and yesterday, the Justice Department agreed to share much of the disputed “redacted” sections of the Mueller report as well as a lot of the back up material about the related counter intelligence investigation into Russian election interference with Adam Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee in exchange for getting Schiff to drop his promise of pursuing contempt charges against Attorney General Barr.  Moving back to infrastructure, the stated but mostly phony reason for Trump’s temper tantrum, there will be no projects of note because there is no money in the budget.  Between the tax cuts, the increases in military spending and all the entitlements, all funds are already allocated so the only way to pay for infrastructure is with tax increases and Mitch McConnell will not allow any of those to happen, not on his watch and not in the run up to the 2020 election because despite Lousiana Senator John Kennedy’s lament that the Senate has done zilch other than confirming all of those uber conservative judges, McConnell likes it that way.  As to that threat to never cooperate with Democrats again, it will prove hollow.  Trump needs Nancy’s support to get his renamed  NAFTA treaty passed, a budget approved, an Agriculture bill passed and they all need to cooperate to get the debt ceiling raised. Bottom line, histrionics aside it was just another day in the Trump altered universe.

What Else?  The Pentagon wants to send 10,000 more troops to the Middle East to beef up defenses against Iranian threats even though it’s not all that clear that the threats coming out of Iran are any higher than they were last month or last year which is to say Iran is a problem, it’s just not clear that they are a bigger problem than usual, although if Trump and his John Bolton inspired policy continue they probably will be.   Secretary of Agriculture Perdue has come up with a solution on how to deal with statistics that contradict Trump administration policy related to things like climate science and the impact of Trump deregulation.  His plan is to disrupt statistical collection and analysis by moving as many of those troublesome research scientists away from Washington.  Sadly in response many of those long term dedicated government professionals have started jumping ship, which is the whole point of Perdue’s plan.  A 10-year-old girl from El Salvador died in US custody last year, a previously unreported case that brings to six the number of migrant children known to have died after being detained by border authorities in eight months.  That’s not normal, before 2018 no children had died while in Customs and Border Protection custody in a decade.  Just another one of those “problematic” statistics?  Beyond sad.      

Oreos Anyone?

Closing In:  As expected former White House counsel Don McGahn did not testify yesterday.  Instead Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler held an abbreviated “empty desk” hearing, one without McGahn but with his tag prominently displayed in front of an empty seat.  Nadler began the meeting by summarizing McGahn’s interactions with Trump, focusing on all those times that Trump tried to get McGahn to obstruct the Mueller investigation on his behalf and then went on to attack Trump for  calling McGahn a liar and intimidating him into staying away by threatening any work that his law firm Jones Day does or will ever do for Republican related entities or any Republican led government. Nadler also went after McGahn, reminding him forcefully that House subpoenas are not optional invitations, Nadler’s way of saying that he’s about to throw McGahn into that “Held in Contempt” club.  Republican Doug Collins, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, then loudly criticized everything that Nadler said, calling him out as being politically motivated, one of those criticisms that Republicans who held countless Benghazi hearings and are still calling for the locking up of Hillary Clinton have no problem throwing around despite the extreme irony of doing so.  After the meeting ended, the Judiciary Committee issued a few more subpoenas, these went to one time Trump Gal Friday/Communications Director Hope Hicks and to Annie Donaldson, who served as McGahn’s deputy in the White House counsel’s office.  Donaldson “figures prominently in the Mueller report,” she was responsible for taking the notes at McGahn’s meetings many of which were cited throughout the report.  Another fight with the White House about their appearances is now imminent.  McGahn’s failure to show up for his testimony may well have been the final straw for many of the Democrats who were on the fence about initiating impeachment proceedings.  More and more of them, including even a few of the more vulnerable purple district newbies are now leaning in that direction.   Texas Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee said she will introduce a "Resolution of Investigation" this week, asking the full House to authorize an investigation intended to determine whether impeachment powers should be exercised, the thought being that opening the inquiry would help streamline investigations and strengthen their hand in the courts as they battle with Trump over information and testimony without necessarily leading to a full House vote to refer the matter to the Senate for a trial.  Speaker Pelosi who still isn’t ready to do talk impeachment is expected to hold a closed door session with Democrats this morning, an attempt to put the brakes on the most agitated among them, to get them all on one page, hers.  As to that one page thing, apparently the staff at the IRS and Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin need to spend a little more time coordinating their thoughts.  Someone at the IRS leaked a copy of a confidential internal legal memo to the Washington Post.  The memo which was written last fall says that the disclosure of presidential tax returns upon request of the House Ways and Means committee “is mandatory, requiring the Secretary to disclose returns, and return information, requested by the tax-writing Chairs.”   The memo contradicts the Trump administration’s justification for denying the Ways and Means Committee request for Trump’s tax returns.  Trump has refused to turn over his tax returns but has not invoked executive privilege and though the IRS draft says that invoking executive privilege would be an option for a president (the memo doesn’t explicitly name Trump), other experts say that the whole executive privilege thing wouldn’t apply to tax returns as it is only supposed to protect discussions related to policy and personal returns have nothing to do with policy.  Anyway, Mnuchin denied turning over the returns by arguing there is no legislative purpose for demanding them, a rationale that never made much sense and now appears even more questionable.  For their part, IRS officials now want us to believe that the memo which was labeled “Congressional Access to Returns and Return Information,” was just one of those draft documents written by a lawyer in the Office of Chief Counsel for his or her own amusement and that contrary to appearances it does not represent the agency’s “official position,” or at the very least wasn’t meant to be shared.  It’s fair to assume that a few of those IRS “jokesters” heads are now being used as bowling balls at the White House bowling alley that Melania recently had refurbished.   

Personnel:  Yesterday, Ben Carson the one time pediatric neurosurgeon who is still the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development proved again how ill suited he is for that position.  During a Congressional hearing Katie Porter, a freshman Congresswoman from California, asked him a question about disparity in REO rates.  Instead of replying he glared back at her with one of his “I have no idea what you are talking about” blank stares; she then asked him if he knew what REO stood for.  The hapless Carson responded by asking her if she was questioning him about Oreos.  His next attempts to explain the acronym were less amusing but equally pathetic.  For the record REO stands for “real estate owned,” a term used to refer to foreclosed properties owned by lending institutions such as banks and while that term might not make it into most people’s conversations it is a commonly used term in the housing finance arena and most certainly something that the Secretary of HUD should be familiar with, but apparently Carson has been too busy purchasing $31,000 office tables and $7000 dishwashers to get up to speed on housing finance terminology.  He does however have a sense of humor so later in the day he sent Congresswoman Porter some Oreo cookies.  Not to be outdone the company that makes Oreos tweeted that “REO stands for ‘Really Excellent OREO (cookie).’ Everyone knows that.”   In other personnel news, two members of the Trump staff announced their exits yesterday.  Legislative Affairs Director Shahira Knight who previously worked on the Trump tax plan is returning to an as yet undisclosed job in the private sector and Johnny DeStefano, a Trump fave who had run the White House personnel  office is leaving to advise Juul, the e-cigarette maker.  Though its looking like Trump’s whole Immigration Czar idea is up in the air, Kris Kobach, the former Kansas Secretary of State who hates immigrants as much as Trump does and who Trump had earlier tasked with finding all those non-existent fraudulent voters who voted for Hillary is in the running or at least was in the running.  Someone in the White House leaked the list of Kobach’s must haves, probably part of an effort to make sure that he isn’t offered the position.  The list includes things like access to an on call plane, weekly trips back to Kansas, walk in privileges to the Oval Office, being the face and only face of immigration policy and a guarantee that he will ultimately become the Secretary of Homeland Security.  Those last two are somewhat problematic.  Trump is his own face of immigration policy, a spot he shares sometimes with Stephen Miller, it’s not clear that either would relinquish that position, and Trump has already been advised that getting Kobach confirmed by the Senate into a cabinet position would be difficult if not impossible.  In any case it now looks like the czar position has been downsized and that Trump will instead fill it with Kenneth Cuccinelli, a former Virginia Attorney General who is also an immigration hard-liner but probably has fewer demands and anyway weekend trips back to Virginia are a whole lot easier than those trips back to Kansas.  Even Toto knows that.  One other thing, New York State just made it a little harder for Trump to pardon any of his compatriots who commit any New York laws by passing legislation closing what had been a loophole in state regulations.   

Spelling

Give Me an I:  Former White House Counsel Don McGahn was due to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee today, however those plans are now off, or at least off for now.  Yesterday the White House went ahead and did what everyone paying attention pretty much expected they would do, they effectively blocked McGahn from showing up for his scheduled testimony.  First current White House Counsel Pat Cipollone wrote Chairman Nadler that the Justice Department had advised him that McGahn is “absolutely immune from compelled congressional testimony with respect to matters occurring during his service as a senior advisor” to Trump, a view that is not widely held except by people like Attorney General Barr who believe in the all-powerful unitary presidency and in in any case makes little sense since, with White House permission, McGahn already cooperated with Special Counsel Mueller and his hours of interviews served as the basis for all those examples of Trump’s obstructive actions included in the publicly released redacted Mueller report.  Driving home Cipollone’s message, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders released a statement repeating that McGahn “cannot be forced” to testify and that he had been “directed to act accordingly,” adding we shouldn’t think that the Justice Department has taken that position just to protect Trump because it’s a position that will  “ensure that future presidents can effectively execute the responsibilities of the office” and Trump really cares about future presidents and wouldn’t want any of them to have to worry about having their efforts at obstruction aired in public.  Later in the day McGahn’s lawyer, because in Trumpland all lawyers need and have their own lawyers,  advised Nadler that McGahn wouldn’t be appearing today because as with the subpoena for his notes  he “again finds himself facing contradictory instructions from two co-equal branches of government, and "under these circumstances, and also conscious of the duties he, as an attorney, owes to his former client, Mr. McGahn must decline to appear at the hearing." To be clear McGahn could show up and testify if he wanted to but he’d rather maintain all those important relationships he has with Republican party bigwigs so cooperating with a bunch of Democrats just isn’t something he wants to do.   A less than pleased Nadler then sent a letter of his own to McGahn, warning him that the Judiciary Committee would use "all enforcement mechanisms at its disposal" to compel his testimony. It’s reported that behind the scenes Democrats had some very heated discussions last night about initiating impeachment proceedings.  Speaker Pelosi is still pushing back but it’s highly likely that the “I” is coming.

M is for Mazars:  The Democrats did move a few steps closer to getting a peek at some of Trump’s financial information yesterday.  Circuit Court Judge Amit Mehta told Trump’s accounting firm Mazars to turn over the Trump and Trump Inc financial records that had been subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee.  The judge rejected Trump’s lawyers’ attempts to block the subpoena saying that "It is simply not fathomable that a Constitution that grants Congress the power to remove a president for reasons including criminal behavior would deny Congress the power to investigate him for unlawful conduct -- past or present -- even without formally opening an impeachment inquiry." Pleased as punch with Mehta’s view and impressed by his lengthy and thorough analysis House Democrats moved quickly to bring the ruling to the attention of the judge in New York who is considering challenges to House subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Capitol One for more Trump records.  Trump’s legal team plans to appeal Mehta’s decision, but will have to act fast because though the Judge gave the Mazars firm seven days to provide the requested information to Congress, confident that his decision will be upheld, he refused to issue a stay saying instead that "The court is well aware that this case involves records concerning the private and business affairs of the President of the United States. But on the question of whether to grant a stay pending appeal, the President is subject to the same legal standard as any other litigant that does not prevail."  The Trump appeal will be heard by the Washington DC Court of Appeals, which is the headed by Merrick Garland, the judge who was screwed out of becoming a Supreme Court Justice when Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell sat on his nomination. Karma? On a separate front, New York State lawmakers struck a final deal on legislation that will allow Congressional Democrats to get their hands on Trump's state tax returns. A final vote on that legislation is expected to take place tomorrow, Governor Cuomo has already said that he will sign it into law as soon as it makes it to his desk.   

P is for Prisoner:  Yesterday, the House Intelligence Committee released transcripts of its February and March interviews with former Trump lawyer/fixer, current jailbird Michael Cohen.  The transcripts reveal that Cohen told the committee that Trump attorney Jay Sekulow encouraged him to testify falsely to Congress in 2017 about the duration of discussions around the Trump Tower Moscow project. Specifically Cohen said that Sekulow advised him to make it clear that the negotiations about the tower had ended before the Iowa caucuses took place because Trump didn’t want anyone to know that he’d been negotiating with Russians while running for president, especially since he had assured all of his voters that he had no current or past business in Russia, a very Trumpian lie but then again that’s what Trump does, a lot.  Cohen also revealed that Abbe Lowell, Ivanka and Jared’s lawyer had him whitewash his testimony to make it appear that Ivanka had been out of the Moscow Tower loop even though she remained involved and up to speed on the project during the entire time that it was alive.  In a carefully worded statement that doesn’t explicitly contradict Cohen, Sekulow’s lawyers said that it “defies logic” that any congressional committee would rely on Cohen’s statements “for any purpose” because you know he’s a convicted liar and a jailbird. Likewise, Giuliani weighed in pointing out that Cohen, unlike Trump, isn’t trustworthy.  

E, A, and You Get the Drift:  In order to make it appear that coal doesn’t really pollute as much as it does the EPA  plans to adopt a new method for projecting the future health risks of air pollution because if you want to keep polluting and causing asthma and early deaths it’s so much easier to just manipulate the statistics than to stop polluting.  On the Iran front, Secretary of State Pompeo and national advisor Bolton are working behind the scenes to lay the groundwork for squeezing the justification of a war with Iran into the AUMF (the authorization for the use of military force) that was passed right after the 9.11 attacks to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in order to avoid having to seek permission from Congress.  The key elements of their strategy involve drawing links between al Qaeda and Iran and casting Iran as a terrorist threat to the US, which is “exactly what administration officials have been doing in recent weeks.”  It’s looking more and more likely that Trump is getting ready to pardon some servicemen who have either been accused of or have been found guilty of committing some really heinous atrocities while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan because what’s a war crime or two among friends?  Lastly, and maybe my favorite news item, Trump is mad at Fox for giving Democratic presidential candidates so much air time.  In particular he’s annoyed that Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who he has started calling Alfred E Neuman (think Mad Magazine)  got so much applause during a recent Fox Townhall.

Consensual?

To Impeach or Not:  Democrats are in a quandary, they don’t want to go down the impeachment track unless and until they can convince more of the public that Trump really did the impeachable things he did.  To do that they need Special Counsel Mueller and former White House Counsel McGahn to appear before Congress because they believe that their testimony will be the vehicle that educates the public about the severity of Trump’s misdeeds, especially his efforts at obstruction.  The problem is that everyone in Trumpland is refusing to cooperate, releasing none of the documents that the Democrats have requested to view and putting limitations on or blocking all crucial testimony.  As a result items like the unredacted Mueller Report, former White House Counsel Don McGahn’s notes and Trump’s tax returns remain out of reach.  Similarly, despite Attorney General Barr’s assertion that he’s not doing anything to prevent Special Counsel Mueller from testifying before Congress, the Justice department has been interfering and as a result Mueller’s testimony keeps getting pushed off, now it isn’t expected until June at the earliest.   Likewise, the White House is still blocking or at the very least trying to block McGahn’s testimony, claiming executive privilige even though that ship sailed when they allowed him to speak with Mueller during the investigation.  Initiating impeachment proceedings would make it legally easier for the Democrats to get hold of the information they want and need to convince the public that Trump is the bad actor that he is but Democratic leadership fears that going that route without first getting the public and a few Republicans on board would be counterproductive and that’s the dilemma, you can’t convince the public that impeachment is justified without first initiating impeachment proceedings to get the airing of the evidence that proves that impeachment is in fact justifiable.  As to Republicans, on Saturday one, Michigan Congressman Justin Amash, announced that he, unlike most of his colleagues and most of the public, has read the Mueller report from cover to cover and as a result has concluded that Trump committeed “impeachable conduct.” Amash also accused Attorney General Barr of intentionally misleading the public.  His view is that Congress should move forward with impeachment hearings. Unfortunately Amash is more independent minded than your typical Republican, he’s known for saying what’s on his mind and has clashed with his party before.  Moreover it doesn’t appear that his move is likely to inspire any of his Republican colleagues to give up what he calls their extreme partisanship.  And of course, the Trump attack has already begun, he tweeted “Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy. If he actually read the biased Mueller Report, “composed” by 18 Angry Dems who hated Trump,.... “  Likewise, the Republican machinery, including Fox have followed suit, threatening Amash with a primary challenger or worse because speaking truth to power is the unforgivable crime. 

Abortion Politics:  Republican leadership has finally woken up to the fact that going after women’s reproductive rights is likely to alienate a number of those already upset about kids in cages women voters they’ll need in 2020 so now leadership is trying to backtrack on last week’s Alabama legislation.  To be clear, they’re not upset about taking away reproductive rights, they’re  just upset about losing votes and the impact that idiotic comments from people like the Missouri legislator who argued against rape and incest exceptions to abortion bans because in his experience as a former prosecutor he knows most of those claimed rapes are just “consensual” ones.  Yes, Representative Barry Hovis really said that though now he too has backtracked. To that end RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said that she personally opposes provisions in the new Alabama law that outlaw virtually all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, but defended the range of views on abortion within her party because “we are a party that is a broad tent. If you agree with us 80 percent of the time, I want you to be a Republican. We don’t have a litmus test as to whether you can belong to our party.”  Really? Likewise while affirming his anti-abortion stance House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that the Alabama bill goes further than he believes.  For his part, Trump who really doesn’t care about abortion but only became a right to lifer to get the support of the religious right tweeted “As most people know, and for those who would like to know, I am strongly Pro-Life, with the three exceptions – Rape, Incest and protecting the Life of the mother - the same position taken by Ronald Reagan.”  He then went on to brag about all of his wonderful new right wing judges.  Ironically, both Republicans and Democrats are in a similar position, neither side wants to see an abortion case get to the Supreme Court until after 2020.  Republicans still want Roe overturned, but only after they get four more years in power.  Democrats want to win, reclaim the Court, and protect reproductive rights.    

Other Shenanigans:  The New York Times reports that in 2016 and 2017 anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank, the Trump and Kushner lending institution of choice, flagged a number of financial transactions involving entities controlled by Trump and Kushner.  The staff filled out suspicious activity reports about the transactions but those reports were never filed with regulators because they were overridden by bank management.  For their part, Deutsche Bank, who has gotten into trouble in the past for facilitating money laundering, denies that the bank would ever, ever do that.  Likewise, the Trumps and Kushners insist they are clean as the driven snow  arguing that a lot of things that real estate tycoons do that look questionable aren’t. Trump responded to last week’s news that efforts had been made by one of his lawyers and a person “associated” with Congress to convince former national security advisor Michael Flynn to change his mind about cooperating with the Mueller investigation by saying that he never would have hired Flynn in the first place if only someone had told him about Flynn’s questionable past.  Apparently Trump has completely forgotten that he hired Flynn despite warnings from former President Obama and former Governor Chris Christie and kept him on even after then Acting Attorney General Sally Yates said that he had compromised himself by lying to the FBI.  Okay, maybe Trump hasn’t forgotten all that but he really wants the rest of us to.  He also probably doesn’t want any of us to focus on the whole kid separation thing anymore which may be why his administration waits until Friday afternoons to release more of those little factoids about how many more of those migrant children were separated from their parents than previously revealed.   On Friday the government disclosed that 1712 more separated children have been identified as a result of internal investigations and that the number is likely to grow since those investigations are ongoing.  On the international front on the one hand Trump seems to be trying to pushback against claims that he is seriously considering launching an attack against Iran but on the other he’s on the tweet offensive threatening that "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran, Never threaten the United States again!"  That tweet was in response to a rocket that landed near the US embassy in Baghdad, even though there were no losses associated with the missile, missiles land in that area all the time and at least so far no one has taken credit for its launch. The sad bottom line is that if Trump or his advisors, Secretary of State Pompeo and national security advisor John Bolton, want to justify attacking Iran, they will find a reason, with Iran there are always reaons, its just not likely that any of them are worthy of a long protracted war.          

Voice Messaging

Flynn’s Back: Despite Trump and Attorney General Barr’s best efforts, the Russia investigation is still alive and kicking, kicking up dirt that is.  Yesterday, we learned some more about what Michael Flynn, Trump’s one time national security advisor, told Special Counsel Mueller about his conversations with Russians and about the efforts that a few people from the Trump team made to keep him quiet.  That last part should be of concern to a few of those Trumpkins as it appears that Flynn told Mueller that shortly after his legal team advised Trump’s team that he had decided to cooperate with Mueller, Trump’s personal lawyer called one of Flynn’s lawyers, leaving a voicemail message asking him to inform Flynn that Trump was really fond of him but that those kind feelings would disappear if Flynn went rogue, because what lawyer doesn’t engage in witness intimidation and obstruction on behalf of his client by voicemail especially when his client is the president?   Though the lawyer who left that voicemail message wasn’t named yesterday, given the timing of the call it, the assumption is that it was John Dowd, who subsequently resigned. Not surprisingly, when contacted yesterday neither Dowd, nor Jay Sekulow, who is still one of Trump’s lawyers, responded to questions about the call.  Flynn also told Mueller’s team that a member of Congress made a similar effort to try to convince him not to cooperate with Mueller.   We don’t yet know who that “member of Congress” is though the twitterverse is pointing to the devious Devon Nunes with the brown nosing Lindsey Graham their second choice. US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, the judge presiding over Flynn’s case, ordered that transcripts of the lawyer voicemail as well as another call that Flynn had with the Russian Ambassador be posted on the court website for all to access by the end of May.  Judge Sullivan also ordered that still-redacted portions of the Mueller report that relate to Flynn be given to the court and made public.  As to the rest of the unredacted Mueller report, the White House and Justice Department continue to stonewall Congress, so far refusing to share it with either the House Judiciary or House Intelligence Committees despite the insistence of Chairmen Nadler and Schiff.  Schiff’s committee is also trying to get their hands on anything and everything related to the counter intelligence investigation into Russian election interference, something his committee is entitled to see given its mandate.  The White House is stonewalling them on that too. Though Barr insists that Mueller will be allowed to testify in front of Congress at some point in the near or maybe far future, the Justice Department is slow walking that request and may be trying to impose limitations on what Mueller will be allowed to address. As to that Russian interference, we now know that Trump friendly Washington County in the Florida Panhandle was one of the counties whose data base was breached by the Russians in 2016.  The other county has not yet been named, but reports are that it was a mid-sized county on the state’s south eastern coastline.  

2020:  It’s unclear why, but New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio has thrown his hat into the presidential ring. During his last run for mayor he promised New Yorkers that he wouldn’t run for president, however, the delusional De Blasio has been interested in the job for a while now so his entrance into the race wasn’t unexpected.  Additionally, how could he ignore all the attention being given to South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.  To be fair, like him or not De Blasio, has a point.  NYC has a population of 8.6 million, South Bend’s 102,000 pales in comparison.  That said, few in NYC understand De Blasio’s decision, which isn’t to say that we wouldn’t mind shipping him to Washington, it’s just that we don’t understand why anyone would want him there.  Then again few of us understand why anyone wanted that other New Yorker, the one who currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania, or at least resides there when he isn’t in Palm Beach.  Former VP Joe Biden appears to be having a good week, polls indicate that, at least for now, he’s running circles around his competition and despite efforts by Trump’s fixer/lawyer, ex-NYC Mayor Giuliani to say that he had engaged in dirty politics in Ukraine, the country’s prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko said that his government has no plans to investigate Biden or his son Hunter because, despite Giuliani’s assertion,  there’s no evidence that either of them did anything wrong.  So much for that conspiracy theory, no doubt Giuliani and his dear leader Trump will find another one to propagate shortly.  As to Trump, though we still don’t have his tax returns he has filed his required annual financial disclosure information.  Those forms indicate that he had revenues of $434 million, but that’s revenue, not net revenue so the numbers don’t reveal much.  He also appears to be highly leveraged, again no surprise, and given that the forms require little specificity even that information is fairly vague.  

Abortion Politics:  The competition to get an abortion case to the “Trump” Supreme Court continues.  Missouri, where former Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill lost her seat largely because of her pro-choice stance and vote against Brett Kavanaugh’s court confirmation, is closing in on passing legislation that is just a tiny bit less onerous than the legislation passed in Alabama in that it would ban abortions after eight weeks rather than the six week limit included in the Alabama law.  Missouri will become the eighth state to pass prohibitive restrictions against abortions this year.  In addition to Alabama, the others include Georgia, Kentucky Mississippi and Ohio each of which have passed so-called heartbeat bills and Utah and Arkansas, states which have voted to limit abortions to the middle of the second trimester.  In comparison Roe, the case that each of these states hopes to overturn, permits abortions until viability, somewhere around 24 to 28 weeks.    

Immigration Wars:  Trump took to the Rose Garden to announce his new immigration plan, a plan that will most certainly be dead on arrival in Congress, largely because it provides no solution for the millions of undocumented citizens already here nor does it address the DACA problem; most Democrats and even a few Republicans won’t like it because of that and the anti-immigrant Republicans won’t be all that happy that it actually lets any immigrants in.  Trump isn’t all that concerned that it won’t get Congressional approval because the real objective of his speech was to try to appear as if he’s doing something, shifting the blame for the problem back to those obstructive left wing Democratic wingnuts, a better election strategy for him especially since he is trying to recapture the hearts of those suburban women turned off by the caging of kids and other such things.  Anyway, as expected Trump’s plan would create a system that favors applicants who are highly skilled, well-educated and speak English, as well as have potential employment over family-based immigration.  In other words, it’s a good thing that Melania’s parents have already made it through the door.  In other news, Trump reiterated that despite his national security advisor John Bolton’s saber rattling, he doesn’t want a war with Iran, instead he just wants someone over there to agree to talk with him in one of his favored one on one meetings preferably at Mar a Lago or at another Trump location.