The Replacements

Road Trip:  Trump is off to El Paso and Dayton today to embrace law enforcements officials for their bravery and to express his condolences to the families of those who died in last week’s murder sprees.  To put it mildly, neither cities’ leaders seem all that enthused about his visit. Dayton’s Democratic Mayor Nan Whaley has been pretty outspoken about her views and though El Paso’s Republican Mayor Dee Margo (yesterday I mislabeled him as a Democrat) has been a little more muted, he too has expressed reservations.  Also, he’s still waiting for Trump’s campaign team to reimburse the city for the $500,000 they owe from their last visit.  After the White House rebuffed her efforts to speak directly to Trump, Veronica Escobar, El Paso’s Congresswoman, declined an invitation  to participate in Trump’s visit saying that she refuses “to be an accessory” and “to join without a dialogue about the pain his racist and hateful words and actions have caused our community and country.” As to those hateful messages, the diatribe posted on the 8Chain website by the El Paso shooter included a lot of Trump’s usual talking points about invading hordes and other such things.  The shooter appears to be a believer in the white supremacist, anti-Semitic  “replacement theory,” that claims Jews are conspiring to replace white people with brown people in part by funding all those “Mexican caravans”  that Trump cites when he’s in fearmongering mode.  The replacement theory crap is the source of the hateful “Jews will not replace us” mantra that was chanted by those neo-Nazis and “other fine people” during their march through Charlottesville, the march that ended with the murder of Heather Styer.  Trump has already gone off message, last night he tweet attacked former Congressman El Paso, current presidential Beto O’Rourke saying “Beto (phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage) O’Rourke, who is embarrassed by my last visit to the Great State of Texas, where I trounced him, and is now even more embarrassed by polling at 1% in the Democrat Primary, should respect the victims & law enforcement - & be quiet!” For the record, O’Rourke has been called Beto since he was a child to distinguish him from his father, both of whom are named Robert.  On the gun control front,Trump insists that by backing a minor fix to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and administratively banning bump stocks his administration has done ”much more than most” to help curb mass shootings, however, that’s just more bunk. The reality is that his administration has actually eased gun restrictions, implementing more than half a dozen policy changes that expand access to guns by lifting firearms bans in certain locations and limiting the names on the national database.  Additionally, his administration has asked the Supreme Court to overturn NYC’s restrictions on transporting handguns outside of home and it pushed to allow US gunmakers to more easily sell guns including automatic weapons overseas. On the Congressional front since last weekend’s shootings there’s been a lot of talk but still no action.  Moscow/NRA Mitch continues to refuse to bring the Senate back from its August break, Lindsey Graham, the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, continues to insist that assault weapons and oversized magazines aren’t the problem and is instead focused on “red flag” legislation that would help states keep guns out of the hands of those who present an imminent threat to themselves or others and Mike Turner, the Republican Congressman representing the Dayton area now says that he backs a ban on sales of military style guns, magazine limits and “red flag” legislation, notable because last year Turner, who has, or at least until now had a prized NRA “A” rating, opposed any restrictions on assault weapons.  As to that “red flag” legislation, its mostly just low hanging fruit, better than nothing but hard to administer and won’t do much to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people, although, if passed the legislation will allow all those NRA fearing politicians to say that they did something. It would be nice to believe that we’ve finally reached an inflection point on gun legislation, but don’t count on it.   

2020:  The post-debate polls are in and despite a few better than average performances nothing much has changed.  According to Quinnipiac former VP Joe Biden is hanging in the lead with 32 percent of Democratic voters, followed by Elizabeth Warren, who has moved up a little to 21 percent, Bernie at 14 percent and Kamala who’s slipped back to 7 percent.  They’re followed by Mayor Pete with 5 percent and Beto and Cory Booker each with 2 percent. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro and entrepreneur Andrew Yang register at 1 percent – with everybody else at less than one percent.  So far Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Harris, Klobuchar, O’Rourke, Sanders, and Warren have qualified  to participate in the next round of debates.  Yang, Castro, and Gabbard, who appears to be getting some of her  contributions from Republican donors and the social media support of a number of Russian bots, have reached the September debate fundraising threshold but still need to do better in a few more polls to qualify for the stage.  Though he’s still running for president, Colorado’s John Hickenlooper, is hedging his bets by positioning himself for a Colorado Senate run, a good thing because winning the Senate and displacing Moscow Mitch is almost as important as winning the presidency.     

Litigation:  Peter Strzok, the “sexting” FBI agent with the otherwise impressive record of service who was fired last year is now suing the FBI and the Justice Department for  violating his First and Fifth Amendment rights by firing him over the texts and then depriving him of due process to challenge his expulsion. Further Strzok argues that the Justice Department’s decision to release his texts to reporters before handing them to Congress, generated “blaring headlines” and was “deliberate and unlawful,” a violation of the Privacy Act.  His lawyers also point out that despite recommendations that she be fired over her multiple Hatch Act violation, that Kellyanne Conway still has her job is proof of his unfair treatment.  The Barr/Trump Justice Department has weighed in on Trump’s side by filing a friend of the court brief that argues that the House Oversight Committee hasn’t adequately clarified why they need the Trump Organization financials that they are seeking from the Mazars accounting firm.  Lastly, yesterday the Trump campaign and the Republican Party sued California over a new law requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns to run in the state's primary.  What is in those tax returns?