Thanks for the new thread!

Some light reading from the Guardian: 'Jesus never charged a leper a co-pay': the rise of the religious left.
From healthcare to tax and immigration, Rev William Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign are driven by faith to focus on the disadvantaged

Also (dragging this over from the previous thread):

Politico has launched the Women Rule Candidate Tracker, which will track how women’s political representation is changing — or isn’t changing — in the 2018 midterm elections. More women are running for office than ever: 600 women either ran for office this year, are currently running for office, or have said they'll run for U.S. House, Senate or Governor.

As of May 16, 80 women had advanced in primary elections, 444 women are awaiting primaries and 76 women have lost.
posted by zarq at 11:23 AM on May 21, 2018 [29 favorites]

Jesus never charged a leper a co-pay...

There wasn't a cover charge for the loaves and fishes, either.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:29 AM on May 21, 2018 [35 favorites]

Abusing public office for private enrichment

which I'm pretty damned sure has been at the heart of the Mueller investigation from the get-go
posted by philip-random at 11:30 AM on May 21, 2018 [9 favorites]

Some food for thought 538 cooked up on Friday. Fair warning: it's about polls and Twitter.

Very Few Voters Actually Read Trump's Tweets: Perry Bacon Jr. & Dhrumil Mehta

A recent Gallup poll indicates only 8% of American adults admit to following 45's account, but only 4% admit to following and regularly reading the tweets.

This amounts to approximately 10 million people who consume the—holy shit, I just realized the mascot for Twitter is a bird because it regurgitates food into its babies' mouths.

Anyway, 10 million isn't a small number, but it's less than the official follower numbers being claimed. This would make sense, after discerning the demographic and robotic nature of the claimed followers.

Only about 15% of Republicans who have an account admit to following. Of course these days, this raises the question of "What is a Republican?" Despite this, Democrats apparently have more exposure to Trump's tweets than Republicans do.

538 comes to the agreeable conclusion that Twitter is ultimately just a stream-of-consciousness rather than a megaphone. And that various media outlets are doing the amplifying for him and should be more careful regarding this press coverage. On the other hand, these things are also treated variously as Schrödinger's Official Presidential Statements, ridiculous trial balloons, and extremely telegraphed decisions.

Personally, I'm curious to see information regarding the tweets we know were written by 45 versus those written by someone like Stephen Miller. I know someone was looking into a way to decipher the tweets written by different people on that same account, but I'm interested in pattern recognition for the content and topics covered as well as things like vocabulary, grammar, and syntax.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 11:41 AM on May 21, 2018 [17 favorites]

‘The Onion’ Has Finally Read Michael Cohen’s 2013 Email Regarding His Client Donald Trump And Would Like To Discuss The Matter Further At His Convenience

In 2013, we published a piece by Mr. Trump titled “When You’re Feeling Low, Just Remember I’ll Be Dead In About 15 Or 20 Years.” Mr. Trump’s column, which was thoroughly vetted by our editors, simply endeavored to offer any of The Onion’s over 10 billion readers who had found themselves depressed about the state of the world a hopeful reminder that he would mentally and physically deteriorate and most likely die very soon.

Shortly thereafter, we apparently received an email from Mr. Cohen. Unfortunately, this email must have been improperly sorted by one of the Malaysian children who work in our mailroom, and was only discovered crumpled up under a pile of journalism awards in a remote corner of our offices last week. We read the email, and given Mr. Trump’s ascension to the presidency since its writing, we want to apologize for the delay and would be delighted to meet with Mr. Cohen in person—at the White House, perhaps?

In the spirit of transparency, here is Mr. Cohen’s letter, printed in full:
...
We believe the removal of the piece in exchange for influence over the president’s decision-making constitutes a more than reasonable deal, and we implore Mr. Cohen to meet with us without delay. We are happy to schedule around his upcoming court appearances.

Politico discussed the email in their How Trump changed everything for The Onion
posted by zachlipton at 11:50 AM on May 21, 2018 [77 favorites]

This is a good OP. Its good to see this finally distilled down to the essence of what it is - corruption. As one of the articles mentioned, if foreign policy can be bought, not to mention trade wars diminished into disputes, then who can trust this admin? Who in this case referring to the rest of the world, and the so called allies the US media keeps referring to, without acknowledging that that they change according to their budget and the leader's whims and fancies.
posted by infini at 11:51 AM on May 21, 2018 [6 favorites]

Those "shaping reality" don't seem to understand the world outside of their hyper screened bubble. Reality doesn't change, nor the floods, droughts, typhoons, tsunamis, and all the signs of the end of bees and insects.
posted by infini at 11:54 AM on May 21, 2018 [5 favorites]

That would be some quite astonishing and frankly implausible reach for Twitter, which has never had the same numbers as Facebook. Are you sure they are not just getting them second hand?
posted by Artw at 11:55 AM on May 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

NBC White House Correspondent Geoff Bennett @GeoffRBennett: Sarah Sanders tells NBC News Pres. Trump will meet at 3pm today at the WH w/ Dep AG Rosenstein, DNI Coates, FBI Dir. Wray and Kelly to “discuss their response to congressional requests on a range of topics.”

n.b. Coates is an addition to Rosenstein and Wray that ABC's Jonathan Karl first reported were the meeting's DoJ attendees.

CNN's Laura Jarrett @LauraAJarrett: As we wait to see how this plays out, recall how it began--when DOJ first told Nunes it couldn't risk placing the specific individual in danger, it said that decision was reached after consultation with the ODNI, FBI and the White House. Only 1 of those has changed its position.
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:57 AM on May 21, 2018 [11 favorites]

This was a good read this morning - The Coup Has Already Happened
posted by msbutah at 12:03 PM on May 21, 2018 [18 favorites]

On May 14th, the New Poor People's Campaign launched a "season of organizing" -- 40 days of action -- that includes voter registration drives and a mass mobilization/recommitment in D.C. on June 23rd.

(NY Mag) Unlike the original Poor People’s Campaign headed up (in the days soon after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination) by Ralph David Abernathy, its revival a half-century later is by design not focused on Washington, D.C. As co-organizer Reverend William Barber II (already famed for the Moral Mondays movement he led in North Carolina) told the Los Angeles Times last week, a truly national movement is needed to reverse the many measures against poor people that have intensified in the last several years:

Much of what happens to hurt poor people happens in state capitols, not in the Congress. Healthcare is blocked in state capitols. Voting laws are written in state capitols. Denial of living wages happens in state capitols. Cutting money from public education happens in both federal and state, but so much of it happens at the state level.

If like me, thinking about Trump and Congress engenders more unfocused internet despair-reading than actual on-the-ground organizing energy, look up what the Poor People's Campaign is doing (in your neck of the woods and nationwide).
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:04 PM on May 21, 2018 [29 favorites]

Over the past year, my personal, mental relationship with Robert Mueller has made me understand why some people venerate saints. Not that I think he is one, but

1. seeing his picture calms me down and makes me feel that someone, somewhere, is working against evil

2. I'm hopeful that someday, somehow, he will do something that will ease my psychic burdens

I never really got why someone would, say, have a little picture of Saint Whoever in their pocket, but now it totally makes sense to me. I don't know if the Mueller investigation will really add up to much -- the part of my brain that thinks it will is the same part that thought Hilary was a lock-in -- and I'm not sure how healthy it all is, but man, it makes me feel a little better that it's going on.
posted by Rinku at 12:06 PM on May 21, 2018 [130 favorites]

but man, it makes me feel a little better that it's going on.

Yes same and it's a very interesting frequent mental derail for me to ponder the comforts of idolatry here and now in 2018.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:15 PM on May 21, 2018 [11 favorites]

So, SCOTUS just delivered a potential death-blow today to enforcement of any workers' rights by ruling employees cannot organize as a class in a dispute with employers, and must accept individual forced arbitration.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:20 PM on May 21, 2018 [15 favorites]

New Yorker, The Diplomat Who Quit the Trump Administration

John Feeley, the Ambassador to Panama and a former Marine helicopter pilot, is not averse to strong language, but he was nevertheless startled by his first encounter with President Donald Trump. Summoned to deliver a briefing in June, 2017, he was outside the Oval Office when he overheard Trump concluding a heated conversation, “Fuck him! Tell him to sue the government.” Feeley was escorted in, and saw that Mike Pence, John Kelly, and several other officials were in the room. As he took a seat, Trump asked, “So tell me—what do we get from Panama? What’s in it for us?” Feeley presented a litany of benefits: help with counter-narcotics work and migration control, commercial efforts linked to the Panama Canal, a close relationship with the current President, Juan Carlos Varela. When he finished, Trump chuckled and said, “Who knew?” He then turned the conversation to the Trump International Hotel and Tower, in Panama City. “How about the hotel?” he said. “We still have the tallest building on the skyline down there?”
...
“In private, he is exactly like he is on TV, except that he doesn’t curse in public,” he told me. Feeley sensed that Trump saw every unknown person as a threat, and that his first instinct was to annihilate that threat. “He’s like a velociraptor,” he said. “He has to be boss, and if you don’t show him deference he kills you.”

posted by zachlipton at 12:25 PM on May 21, 2018 [89 favorites]

Great FPP link for this incarnation of the US Politics Quarantine thread -- thanks carsonb and zachlipton.

I think you could make an argument that there really is more than one Trump scandal, but the central premise of the Grand Unified Trump Scandal Theory, that all the seemingly-disparate scandals are just manifestations of one or a few underlying scandals, is important and correct.

I'd argue that there are at least three related but somewhat independent scandals here. One is as identified by the FPP: the boundless corruption of Trump and his cronies. But there is also the incredible incompetence of Trump and his cronies, which is slightly different. Arguably, the complete inability of the Trump administration to fulfill basic requirements of the federal government, like adequately staffing the State department, is better seen through the lens of their inability to govern and their fundamental indifference towards governing, rather than personal enrichment. Not that these are entirely unrelated; the appointment of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State probably at least partially involved a hope that a businessman in that role would make it easier for the Trump syndicate to enrich themselves through international business deals. But this is a case where their incompetence actually conflicted with their corruption, ultimately leading to Tillerson's departure.

The third semi-independent scandal here is the corruption of the GOP. If the corruption of the Trump syndicate were the only scandal, then there would be no responsibility to place on those members of the GOP who are outside Trump's orbit. But of course, the entire GOP party leadership and apparatus willingly yoked themselves to Trump, and continue to protect him and his cronies, using the levers of government that they control to obstruct justice at every turn. This is a tremendous scandal in its own right, independently of any specific corrupt act that Trump performs.

Each of these three scandals was on display well before the election. Trump's utter corruption through numerous statements and actions, of course, but perhaps the most significant moment was when he stated during the debates that he'd accept the results of the election "if I win." This was as clear a rejection of the rule of law as anyone could make. Trump's incompetence was also clear, of course, throughout the election season, as numerous policy proposals and statements about plans for his presidency revealed a complete lack of understanding of how government works in America. Numerous news reports made it clear that Trump had little to no idea of how bills become law, how the executive and legislative branches interact, etc. And the GOP's corruption was incontrovertible as soon as the party embraced Trump, as one "NeverTrump" leader after another backed down and ate his meatloaf.

Which leads to a fourth scandal, more fundamental than the others. All of these scandals were clear well before the election, and the American people still elected Trump. Yes, there was voter suppression and Kremlin psy-ops and ratfucking of various sorts, and by the popular vote the American public in fact rejected Trump, but the fact is that the only reason any of that mattered is because it was close enough. As someone said closer to the aftermath of 11/9 (I can't remember if it was someone here or linked from here), the 2016 presidential election was the easiest ethics, civics, and basic reasoning test of our lifetimes, and the American people failed it. Trump should have received only a lunatic fringe of voters. The real scandal is our racist, misogynist, nativist, know-nothing, irrational, greedy, selfish, violent, cowardly, and fame-obsessed society. Trump and his scandals are merely the apotheosis of everything that is worst in us.
posted by biogeo at 12:26 PM on May 21, 2018 [173 favorites]

seeing his picture calms me down and makes me feel that someone, somewhere, is working against evil

Just a reminder that these candles are available on Etsy for your Mueller idolatry needs.
posted by kelborel at 12:28 PM on May 21, 2018 [20 favorites]

I am absolutely serious about getting a portrait tattoo of Mueller on my back ala roger stone's Nixon, just as soon as a trump immediate family member (including by marriage) goes to jail.

my wife isn't wild about the idea but I keep trying to focus her on the fact that by the time she has to deal with it one (or more!) of these repugnant pieces of shit will have lost their freedom.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:52 PM on May 21, 2018 [4 favorites]

Thorzdad: So, SCOTUS just delivered a potential death-blow today to enforcement of any workers' rights by ruling employees cannot organize as a class in a dispute with employers, and must accept individual forced arbitration.

Elaboration: Supreme Court Decision Delivers Blow To Workers' Rights (NPR, May 21, 2018)

In a case involving the rights of tens of millions of private-sector employees, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote (PDF), delivered a major blow to workers, ruling for the first time that workers may not band together to challenge violations of federal labor laws.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act trumps the National Labor Relations Act and that employees who sign employment agreements to arbitrate claims must do so on an individual basis — and may not band together to enforce claims of wage and hour violations.

"The policy may be debatable but the law is clear: Congress has instructed that arbitration agreements like those before us must be enforced as written," Gorsuch writes. "While Congress is of course always free to amend this judgment, we see nothing suggesting it did so in the NLRA — much less that it manifested a clear intention to displace the Arbitration Act. Because we can easily read Congress's statutes to work in harmony, that is where our duty lies."

GOP's stalling Obama's Supreme Court nomination pick pays off ... for now. Congress wrote the (now dated) law, and Congress can re-write it. 2018 is looking to be a(n even more) tumultuous year.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:54 PM on May 21, 2018 [39 favorites]

This was explicit in the NPR article posted by flt:

Notably, Ginsburg's dissent is five pages longer than the majority's opinion. And Gorsuch spends time in his opinion to respond point by point to the minority's arguments.

Just a bit of pointed snark.
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:57 PM on May 21, 2018 [22 favorites]

Bernie Sanders to Seek Reelection to U.S. Senate

According to campaign spokesperson Arianna Jones, Sanders plans to seek the Democratic nomination in Vermont’s August primary. If he wins, she said, he would “respectfully” decline the nomination and run as an independent in the general election. Sanders would, however, accept the endorsement of the Vermont Democratic Party.

“That is what he has done in the past, and that is what he looks forward to happening in 2018,” Jones said, referring to Sanders’ 2006 and 2012 Senate runs.

Man...this guy.
posted by zachlipton at 1:05 PM on May 21, 2018 [43 favorites]

Bernie...time to sit down and let somebody else be the firebrand progressive. You're squandering your goodwill, buddy. We need to all hang together or we will hang separately, etc.

GOP's stalling Obama's Supreme Court nomination pick pays off ... for now. Congress wrote the (now dated) law, and Congress can re-write it. 2018 is looking to be a(n even more) tumultuous year.

All the more reason to have a Blue Wave. As was pointed out in the previous thread, many Democrats have not necessarily been that great on labor (I would add from the 90's on when the Third Way held sway). We need More and Better Democrats (tm) or at least Democrats who are willing to have their colleagues' backs if we're talking red-state Dems. The good news is that it's a law, and laws can be re-written; it's not like it's enshrined in the Constitution and will need an amendment.

P.S.: thank you for the new thread!
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 1:19 PM on May 21, 2018 [20 favorites]

If he wins, she said, he would “respectfully” decline the nomination and run as an independent in the general election.


Which — props to Bernie for his politics which I really, really like — but this just seems rather dickish.

Basically, it allows him to reap the benefits of the Dem primary cycle to hone his brand, crowd out any Dem competition from getting the nom, and then turn around immediately after he’s cleared the field and stick his thumb in the Dem party’s eye.

I know he has his issues with the official Dem party, but it seems that integrity would lead one to not seek their nomination if you already know you wouldn’t accept it.

As long as he caucuses with the Dems once elected, I guess it’s a wash and the party is otherwise happy to let it happen. Glad to have him in the Senate, in any event.
posted by darkstar at 1:20 PM on May 21, 2018 [26 favorites]

NBC's Meet the Press FIRST READ: Don’t Get Distracted. The Biggest Weekend Story Was the Other 2016 Trump Tower Meeting

On Sunday, President Trump asked the Justice Department to investigate whether anyone infiltrated or surveilled his campaign — reacting to the reporting that an informant talked to two Trump officials (George Papadopoulos and Carter Page) after the FBI received evidence that the two men had suspicious links with Russia.[...]

But ask yourself the question: What will this past weekend be known for — Trump’s saber-rattling, or the reporting that the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign is MUCH MORE COMPLEX than we originally knew and that those 2016 contacts could have formed the administration’s foreign policy?

We’re putting our money on the latter development.

Here was The New York Times from this weekend [Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election]

“Three months before the 2016 election, a small group gathered at Trump Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. One was an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation. Another was an emissary for two wealthy Arab princes [of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates]. The third was a Republican donor [Erik Prince] with a controversial past in the Middle East as a private security contractor. The meeting was convened primarily to offer help to the Trump team, and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months — past the election and well into President Trump’s first year in office, according to several people with knowledge of their encounters.”

Don’t get distracted — that reporting of a second Trump Tower meeting in 2016 was the biggest news from the weekend.

The very first thing Sunday morning, Trump tweeted, "Things are really getting ridiculous. The Failing and Crooked (but not as Crooked as Hillary Clinton) @nytimes has done a long & boring story indicating that the World’s most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!" (The article's co-writer Ronen Bergman @ronenbergman tweeted, "I wish we could have made it even longer. So many interesting details had to be left out.")

See also: Washington Post: There Was A Second Trump Tower Meeting, And Yet Again It Contradicts The Trump Team’s Past Collusion Denials
NY Magazine: Why the New Times Report on the Gulf Meeting Is Freaking Trump Out

Comic Relief: Tina Fey as Natalia Veselnitskaya explaining the original Trump Tower meeting on last weekend's SNL.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:29 PM on May 21, 2018 [45 favorites]

Hmmmm: Mick Mulvaney: Make House Democrats 'Put Up or Shut Up' About Pelosi

The backstory here isn't entirely about forcing a vote on Pelosi so they can cut yet more attack ads about how terrible she is. It's about this weekend's story about trying to shove Paul Ryan out the door before the midterms.

"Hey we should have a stunt vote for speaker to attack Pelosi" is an unubstle excuse for "Kevin McCarthy is plotting a coup."
posted by zachlipton at 1:36 PM on May 21, 2018 [10 favorites]

Basically, it allows him to reap the benefits of the Dem primary cycle to hone his brand, crowd out any Dem competition from getting the nom, and then turn around immediately after he’s cleared the field and stick his thumb in the Dem party’s eye.

It looks to me more like a kind of fusion voting in which Democrats in the district can vote to have the party endorse Sanders whether or not he runs as a Democrat. It's not the only system you could have for primaries and it has advantages and disadvantages, but it's not unique to Sanders or obviously unfair.
posted by This time is different. at 1:36 PM on May 21, 2018 [9 favorites]

At a conference in Colorado sponsored by THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Fox News host Bret Baier asked Mulvaney what he thought of the idea that Ryan should step down and allow his likely successor, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, to become speaker this year.

"I've talked with Kevin about this privately but not as much publicly,” Mulvaney replied. “Wouldn't it be great to force a Democrat running in a tight race to have to put up or shut up about voting for Nancy Pelosi eight weeks before an election? That's a really, really good vote for us to force if we can figure out how to do it."

The Republicans are going to pick the House Speaker regardless of what the Democrats do. Why would the Democrats have to vote for Pelosi, or for anybody at all? A natural reaction to such a foolhardy stunt would be to abstain, and let whatever crackpot the Republicans pick drag down their popularity some more.

It says much, though, about Republican unpopularity in that they're trying their usual tactic of pointing and shrieking and demonizing someone (and a woman, of course). Nice of you to admit Republicans have stitch-all to run on after a year and a half on your watch, Mulvaney.
posted by Gelatin at 1:36 PM on May 21, 2018 [9 favorites]

Mick Mulvaney is the White House Budget Director. So of course he’s engaging in explicit, hyperpartisan electioneering, because having members of the President’s budget staff doing that is a thing now.
posted by darkstar at 1:37 PM on May 21, 2018 [33 favorites]

...ruling for the first time that workers may not band together to challenge violations of federal labor laws.

I eagerly await (not) the inevitable move to ask a court to invalidate unions based on this ruling. This could easily be another Citizens United in its disasterous (for the non-wealthy) follow-on effects.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:39 PM on May 21, 2018 [4 favorites]

It's not the only system you could have for primaries and it has advantages and disadvantages, but it's not unique to Sanders or obviously unfair.


Ah — that makes sense...thanks for the clarification!
posted by darkstar at 1:40 PM on May 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Axios, Peter Navarro pushed Stefan Halper for Trump job

Halper reportedly was interested in an ambassadorship in Asia sometime after he finished up meeting with Page, Papadopoulos, and Clovis for the FBI's investigation during the campaign. I don't even...what?
posted by zachlipton at 1:44 PM on May 21, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'll have to read that SCOTUS decision and dissent later because whether I agree or not they'll probably have more information than my 5 minutes of googling. It just seems like the newer law should have priority over the older law and the newer law makes it sound like arbitration agreements that prevent employees from engaging "in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection" would be illegal to me and making a class action lawsuit sure sounds like concerted activity for the purpose of mutual aid or protection to me. But I'm not a lawyer so...
posted by Green With You at 1:47 PM on May 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Shiva Ayyadurai, the Man who Invented Email (tm), who is now running as an independent against Elizabeth Warren, dropped his First Amendment lawsuit against Cambridge, MA after the city dropped its demand he stop parking his campaign bus, emblazoned with a tasteful "Vote for the Real Indian" banner, outside his campaign HQ (after the city learned it was not parked there permanently). Of course, he couldn't leave well enough alone - he also filed a demand the city acknowledge "terms of surrender" that, among other things, it knew he would expose Warren's role in the city building commissioner issuing the equivalent of a stop-order against the bus. The city basically responded, "Nuts" only in a few more words. The judge ignored his demand and simply dismissed the case.
posted by adamg at 1:49 PM on May 21, 2018 [6 favorites]

WH statement following Trump's meeting with DOJ officials:

“Based on the meeting with the President, the Department of Justice has asked the Inspector General to expand its current investigation to include any irregularities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s or the Department of Justice’s tactics concerning the Trump Campaign. It was also agreed that White House Chief of Staff Kelly will immediately set up a meeting with the FBI, DOJ, and DNI together with Congressional Leaders to review highly classified and other information they have requested.”

posted by zachlipton at 1:49 PM on May 21, 2018 [3 favorites]

Axios: Exclusive: Peter Navarro pushed Stefan Halper for Trump job

President Trump's top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, recommended appointing Stefan Halper, an academic and suspected FBI informant on the Trump campaign, to a senior role in the Trump administration, Axios has learned.

During the presidential transition Navarro recommended Halper, among other people, for ambassador roles in Asia. A White House official said Halper visited the Eisenhower Executive Office Building last August for a meeting about China.

[...] Halper, who already knew Navarro in the context of being a China scholar and interviewing for his anti-China book and film, pitched himself for an ambassadorship in Asia, according to a source briefed on their interactions. Navarro says he submitted Halper’s name for the Asian ambassadorship — we have not been able to confirm the country — along with around a dozen other people for roles in the region. [...]

This is personal for President Trump, who yesterday demanded a Justice Department probe into the FBI. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein then authorized an Inspector General probe into the FBI's use of FISA for counterintelligence operations.

Add this to Navarro's clashes within the Trump White House over China trade policy and "unprofessional behavior", and his odds of being the next departure from the administration have shot up.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:59 PM on May 21, 2018 [8 favorites]

Meanwhile in further "dehumanization of latinx immigrants" news we have this official white house statement: What You Need To Know About The Violent Animals Of MS-13
posted by poffin boffin at 2:00 PM on May 21, 2018 [9 favorites]

There's a jaw-dropping five alarm scandal involving the middle east here. AP, The princes, the president and the fortune seekers. It's long, read it all.

After a year spent carefully cultivating two princes from the Arabian Peninsula, Elliott Broidy, a top fundraiser for President Donald Trump, thought he was finally close to nailing more than $1 billion in business.

He had ingratiated himself with crown princes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who were seeking to alter U.S. foreign policy and punish Qatar, an archrival in the Gulf that he dubbed “the snake.”

To do that, the California businessman had helped spearhead a secret campaign to influence the White House and Congress, flooding Washington with political donations.

Broidy and his business partner, Lebanese-American George Nader, pitched themselves to the crown princes as a backchannel to the White House, passing the princes’ praise — and messaging — straight to the president’s ears.

Now, in December 2017, Broidy was ready to be rewarded for all his hard work.

It was time to cash in.

In return for pushing anti-Qatar policies at the highest levels of America’s government, Broidy and Nader expected huge consulting contracts from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, according to an Associated Press investigation based on interviews with more than two dozen people and hundreds of pages of leaked emails between the two men. The emails reviewed by the AP included work summaries and contracting documents and proposals.

AP dumped a pile of relevant documents. You can scroll down to "Nader passages messages from the UAE for Broidy to deliver to the President" and "the Oval Office meeting."

Included is a summary by Broidy of his meeting at the White House. For example:

I highlighted that Qatar has strengthened its rela tionsh ip with Iran and continues to dest abilize Libya and Syria.Jared offered no immediate comment but asked what the administration should do about the dispute with Qatar and its neighbors. I told him we should do nothing and allow the disagreement to run its course. We cannot accept their role as sponsors of terror.

Finally, I told Jared that I hoped the administrat ion w ould examine this closely and not allow this unacceptable behavior to continue. I asked Jared if he knew that Qatar was paying Cory Lewandowski $500,000 per month to represent their efforts. Jared was shocked and repeated it back to me. Jared offered no further comments to my remarks.

Broidy goes on to describe how he pitched a meeting between Trump and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and bashed Qatar to Trump. The taking points communicated in Broidy's meeting with Trump all nicely match up with exactly the messages Nader sent Broidy from the UAE government.
posted by zachlipton at 2:02 PM on May 21, 2018 [71 favorites]

> It was time to cash in.

Perfectly aligned with the thread title, and the motto/epitaph for the Trump administration.

> I asked Jared if he knew that Qatar was paying Cory Lewandowski $500,000 per month to represent their efforts.

$500,000 per month. This is fine.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:13 PM on May 21, 2018 [39 favorites]

From zarq's Politico link in the last thread: Bernie’s army in disarray about the Our Revolution article. Here are two quotes that really sum up the problems (or, the amazing bullshit) of the politics of purity.

'Our Revolution leaders said that what they’re building goes much deeper than winning elections. The focus, said Larry Cohen, the group’s volunteer chairman, “is not that scoreboard. The focus is: Can we grow in actually measurable ways in this movement?”'

and

'As for Our Revolution’s record in elections, Weaver said, “They’re trying to focus on getting the right shade of blue — they’re not always focused on the transactional approach of ‘electability.’”'

WTF?! An embarrassing waste of time and energy. And I'm worried that the scorched earth tactic the article describes about their endorsement of Stacey Abrams (who I support) will hurt her campaign in the general.
posted by feste at 2:14 PM on May 21, 2018 [3 favorites]

There's now a White House Military Office coin for the upcoming Trump Kim Jong Un summit. The North Korean dictator is referred to as "Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un."

Commemorative coins for some, regime change for others! (Maduro, Iran...)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 2:16 PM on May 21, 2018 [20 favorites]

poffin boffin: Meanwhile in further "dehumanization of latinx immigrants" news we have this official white house statement: What You Need To Know About The Violent Animals Of MS-13

I want to make a kids book about real animals that are dangerous to people, like the koala ("These are koalas. Although they appear cuddly, they have sharp teeth and claws that they will use to defend themselves") and compare them people who have been falsely accused of being associated with MS-13 ("this is a teenager who was imprisoned for 7 months for flashing a gang sign, and was accused of being in MS-13 because of that. Gang signs aren't violent, and he is a person, and thus not a "violent animal," unlike a threatened koala.")

You know, for the kids this administration and all the xenophobic hate-mongers who fan the flames of fear to bolster their own political careers and normalize the abnormal behavior of Donald Trump.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:28 PM on May 21, 2018 [23 favorites]

The Hill: DOJ, Trump reach deal on expanded Russia review

So much for Rosenstein blockading this meddling.
posted by cudzoo at 2:40 PM on May 21, 2018 [3 favorites]

Worthy of its own FPP (along with the guardian and other PPC links) is this : THE SOULS OF POOR FOLK, an audit of America 50years after the first Poor Peple’s Campaign, grim but essential reading from the IPS
posted by The Whelk at 2:43 PM on May 21, 2018 [10 favorites]

It appears that the UAE/Saudi princes don't think to highly of Jared Kushner (From the AP's Broidy-Nader article, linked above by zachlipton):

Broidy met Trump once again on Dec. 2. He reported back to Nader that he’d told Trump the crown princes were “most favorably impressed by his leadership.” He offered the crown princes’ help in the Middle East peace plan being developed by Jared Kushner. He did not tell Trump that his partner had complete contempt for the plan — and for the president’s son-in-law.

“You have to hear in private my Brother what Principals think of ‘Clown prince’s’ efforts and his plan!” Nader wrote. “Nobody would even waste cup of coffee on him if it wasn’t for who he is married to.”

Is Nader the first to adopt "Clown Prince"? Has a nice ring to it.
posted by pjenks at 2:48 PM on May 21, 2018 [33 favorites]

Let me see if I've got this straight. The story we've been told is that Elliott Broidy supposedly hired Michael Cohen to negotiate a $1.6 million payout for his affair, funneling money through Essential Consultants and pulling the same shenanigans Trump used for the Stormy Daniels deal. This was leaked publicly, almost preemptively, and Broidy stepped down as the RNC's deputy finance chair.

Following the election, both Cohen and Broidy went into business, separately, in which they'd take large sums of money from people who wanted stuff from Trump. Broidy's effort, after teaming up with Nader, makes Cohen's look like peanuts; the AP says up to $600M over five years was involved (assuming the AP's documents are really genuine, and how we've come to see them has got to be an even more interesting story, because this is pretty clearly email hacking (by Qatar?) to throw people under the bus big time).

Per Avenatti's leaked SARs, Cohen/Broidy payments continued as late as March 2018.

So what's the chance the two stories are really unrelated? Both these guys are pulling the same scam, money is going back and forth. I don't think it's really outlandish to think there's a connection here. And Broidy was an RNC officer while he was doing all this.

Please also enjoy the bit where Nader calls Jared the "Clown prince" and says his mid-east clients mock his peace plans: "nobody would even waste cup of coffee on him if it wasn’t for who he is married to."
posted by zachlipton at 2:49 PM on May 21, 2018 [44 favorites]

cudzoo: So much for Rosenstein blockading this meddling.

The details are still pretty vague:

President Trump and the Department of Justice on Monday reached an agreement to allow the inspector general to investigate conservative claims of FBI wrongdoing in the Russia probe, diffusing at least for now a burgeoning crisis between Trump and senior law enforcement officials.

"Based on the meeting with the President, the Department of Justice has asked the Inspector General to expand its current investigation to include any irregularities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's or the Department of Justice's tactics concerning the Trump Campaign," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

The Justice Department had already made the referral to Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Sunday, in an apparent effort to ratchet down tensions.

But the White House also announced that chief of staff John Kelly will "immediately set up a meeting" with Trump allies on Capitol Hill to "review" the classified materials that had sparked the standoff. It is unclear whether Trump ordered the Justice Department to turn over the documents.

(The Hill via MSN.com, because I can't access The Hill at the moment)

I appreciate that this was spun (here, at least) as a "conservative claim" of FBI wrongdoing, then as a "burgeoning crisis between Trump and senior law enforcement officials."
posted by filthy light thief at 2:52 PM on May 21, 2018 [3 favorites]

Maybe Broidy took the public blame for the 1.6 mil playmate affair as the cost of doing business
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:54 PM on May 21, 2018 [9 favorites]

Fun fact: Even criminals are actual human beings. They might not be nice people, but they are people.
posted by Daily Alice at 2:55 PM on May 21, 2018 [19 favorites]

Is Nader the first to adopt "Clown Prince"? Has a nice ring to it.

First definite (non-OCR error) example in Google Books is for a poem mocking Crown Prince Wilhelm's military failures in World War I.
posted by The Tensor at 3:09 PM on May 21, 2018 [9 favorites]

Adam Schiff @RepAdamSchiff sees through Trump's demands: "Giuliani removes all doubt – the White House effort to force DOJ to give investigatory materials to Congress is really about the defense team getting their hands on them. If the President is charged with a crime, he has a right to see the evidence. Not before."

If this DoJ deal means that they have to share information with Devin Nunes—whom Trump called "a very courageous man" at the Gina Haspel's CIA swearing-in ceremony today—that means the Trump White House gets to see it.

Politico: DOJ, Trump Strike Murky Deal in FBI Informant Spat

The breadth of the agreement was not immediately clear. The Justice Department had previously indicated that sharing details about its informant could risk lives and endanger national security. It's also unclear who will be permitted to view the documents. The Justice Department typically shares its most sensitive information with the so-called "Gang of Eight" — the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, as well as the Republican and Democratic leaders of each chamber's Intelligence Committee.[...]

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said the documents requested by Trump will "indicate what the informant found." He also said the memos "should be made available to us on a confidential basis," he added. "We should be at least allowed to read them so we know this exculpatory evidence is being preserved.” It's unclear if there were any arrangements made for the White House to view the documents.

Trump’s lawyers also want to interview the FBI officials who made the decision to connect the informant with the campaign.

“It’s the FBI who has the onus for having invaded the campaign,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani predicted the Justice Department would place redactions on some parts of the material.

“But as long as they turn over the vast majority of it it gives you a real sense” of what the FBI was doing. “The question is what are the justifications for it? Did the justifications continue? Did they pick up anything valuable? That’s the most important thing to do. We think they didn’t.”

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the Trumpists there are pressing their advantage—Grassley Seeks DOJ Documents on Official’s Contacts With Dossier Author, Politico reports. "In a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the Iowa Republican requested emails, phone logs, handwritten notes and text messages regarding former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr’s communications with Christopher Steele, who wrote the dossier. The report was commissioned by Fusion GPS, where Ohr’s wife worked."
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:16 PM on May 21, 2018 [11 favorites]

ruling for the first time that workers may not band together to challenge violations of federal labor laws.

Don’t worry, the pickets outside your homes are /individual/ pickets.

Which is to say, there is a solution to this ruling, and its name is Direct Action. I don’t know how the “traditional” unions will be handling this, but unless they’re planning to call out the national guard to deal with wildcat strikes (which tbh is always possible in this reality) I don’t see how they plan to stop the workers from organizing.
posted by corb at 3:19 PM on May 21, 2018 [24 favorites]

More hints at what's coming in the DOJ IG report, about which we're going to have a lot of competing leaks now that the draft is completed and interested parties are looking at it. AP, Watchdog report to fault FBI for Clinton probe delay

An upcoming report from the Justice Department’s internal watchdog is expected to criticize senior FBI leaders for not moving quickly enough to review a trove of Hillary Clinton emails discovered late in the 2016 campaign, according to people familiar with the findings.

The FBI’s timing has been a sore point for Clinton supporters, who say then-director James Comey’s announcement of the new review less than two weeks before the Nov. 8, 2016, election contributed to her loss. The agency’s findings affirming its decision not to pursue criminal charges against Clinton were disclosed two days before the vote — too late, her supporters say, to undo the damage.

Some FBI officials knew in September 2016 of the emails on former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop but the bureau did not obtain a warrant to review them until the following month. Clinton allies say the candidate’s name could have been cleared much faster if the FBI acted on the emails as soon as they knew of their existence.

An inspector general report examining a broad range of FBI actions during the Clinton email investigation will criticize officials, including Comey, for not moving fast enough to examine the email trove and for a weekslong delay in getting a warrant, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press.

So when Comey did his whole nationwide media tour to discuss how he had two options, disclose or stay silent, he was apparently missing the third option, which was to manage his department in such a way this didn't happen in the first place.
posted by zachlipton at 3:21 PM on May 21, 2018 [53 favorites]

WSJ, Michael Cohen Helped Trump Donor Seek Investment From Qatar Fund

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer helped a major donor to Mr. Trump’s inauguration pitch a nuclear-power investment to the Qatari sovereign wealth fund at a meeting in April, according to people familiar with the matter.

The donor, Franklin L. Haney, is seeking to complete a pair of unfinished nuclear reactors in Alabama known as the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant. His company is lobbying the Trump administration for an extension of tax credits, federal disclosures show.

Mr. Haney, 77, recently hired Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, as a consultant, one of the people familiar with the matter said. It isn't clear how much Mr. Haney paid Mr. Cohen. On April 5, Messrs. Cohen and Haney met with the vice chairman of the Qatar Investment Authority, Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohamed al-Thani, to seek an investment in the plant, the people familiar with the matter said.

posted by zachlipton at 3:40 PM on May 21, 2018 [11 favorites]

Dam Friedman, Mother Jones: "Michael Cohen Met With Qatari Official and Nuclear Plant Owner Last Month"

At a meeting in Miami on April 5, Franklin Haney, the owner of an inoperative nuclear power plant in Hollywood, Alabama, sought a major investment for his facility, according to two sources familiar with the gathering. His target, the sources say, was Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani, Qatar’s minister of economy and commerce and deputy chairman of the Qatar Investment Authority, the $300 billion sovereign wealth fund of the natural gas-rich Persian Gulf state. Also at the meeting, according to the sources, was Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer. (Several days later, Cohen’s office and home would be raided by federal agents.) Now, as the Trump scandal expands to include Cohen’s business deals and possible interactions between Trump associates and officials of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, any relationship between Cohen and Qatar would likely be of interest to federal investigators.

posted by OnceUponATime at 3:46 PM on May 21, 2018 [6 favorites]

Interesting to see Qatar pop back up in the news again after last summer's diplomatic crisis that 45 had some bizarre (or par for the course, I guess) tweets about.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 3:48 PM on May 21, 2018 [4 favorites]

Some reactions to the Gorsuch Court from:

Matt Stoller: It was Obama DOJ #resistance hero @neal_katyal who both endorsed Gorsuch and argued the case that just gutted labor law. #Resist

Brian Highsmith: I know this is an uncomfortable conversation, but progressives must understand+confront role that Big Law—including heroes who’ve done great work serving in Dem admins—has played in undermining legal rights of vulnerable workers and consumers, esp through attack on class actions

Zach Carter: 1. It is remarkable how much right-wing economics work isn't really about markets at all, just straight up power 2. This isn't about efficiency or distribution or productivity. It's about how prohibitions against outright theft are enforced. 3. There isn't really a serious neoliberal / libertarian argument in *favor* of violating contracts and stealing wages -- it undermines the whole theory, in fact 4. But there will be a whole libertarian barrage behind the freedom to agree to forced arbitration and contract away your right to hear a case in court 5. Which just shows that when push comes to shove, libertaria is more interested in rule by employer than rule of law. It likes private courts more than real courts. 6. There's a bunch of stuff you can't contract away because it's foundational law stuff. Imagine an employer asking workers to sign a contract forfeiting their right to own a firearm as a condition of employment. 7. But hey, your right to be heard in a court of law? Exactly the sort of thing a private center of power should be able to wrest away from you.

Marshall Steinbaum: Mandatory arbitration & class action waivers in employment (or any) contract aren't just exploitative to the parties to those "contracts;" they're also against policy. Our antitrust laws, among others, rely on private actions to **enforce the law**. /1 Right-wing judges don't think that those laws should exist, but instead of overturning them by legislation they whittle away their enforcement mechanisms by over-reading the Federal Arbitration Act as a blanket application of the Coase Theorem. /2 All of this is motivated by the deep-seated libertarian hatred for democracy. To them, it's fine as long as it protects property and expansive rights for property owners. But the moment it acts to limit those rights, undemocratic application of state power is justified.

Also Steinbaum: The New Deal settlement took direct action & radical unionism off the table in exchange for a seat at the table. That settlement is long gone; it's time for working people to act accordingly.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:55 PM on May 21, 2018 [78 favorites]

The Qatar/UAE/Saudi situation is in the news because those countries are putting it there. This isn't an accident; it's been carefully orchestrated. BuzzFeed has an interesting story on this a little while back: How Two Persian Gulf Nations Turned The US Media Into Their Battleground, "For the last year, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have been leaking emails to journalists." The story goes into some detail on Broidy's emails, "which hackers apparently accessed after tricking his wife into providing credentials to access Broidy’s email accounts and the email server of one of his companies, Broidy Capital Management."

And there are a lot of ethical issues here. Much of this material does seem to have been hacked by nation-states. That doesn't mean ignoring blockbuster stories like Broidy and Nader's schemes, but we're going on about a year now of information warfare between the two countries, largely waged in the US press, and essentially nobody seems to be interested in covering that story instead of what the documents say.

The comparison to the Podesta emails is tempting, but doesn't really hold up. Emails, even hacked emails, containing evidence of potential crimes (failure to register as a foreign agent if nothing else) and foreign entanglements by associates of the President have inherent news value that vastly exceeds the sum total of anything contained in Podesta's Gmail account. But there's a danger in what the press keeps doing here, which is to make the story entirely about the contents and not at all about how the emails came to be. We certainly saw this in 2016, where the DNC and Podesta emails were treated as manna from heaven and the question of where they came from wasn't discussed until it was far too late. This isn't the same thing, but it's the same pattern of behavior where another extremely important story, the hacking, is largely being ignored in favor of what is in the hacked documents, assuming they are all, in fact, genuine.

Also, I'd just like to register a complaint that someone burst into a pizzeria with guns over Pizzagate, yet this article discusses how Trump sold a photo op with someone convicted of 10 counts of sexually abusing minors despite unspecified objections from the Secret Service and nobody seems to care
posted by zachlipton at 4:10 PM on May 21, 2018 [60 favorites]

infini: "This is a good OP. Its good to see this finally distilled down to the essence of what it is - corruption."

They should have been impeaching him on day one for emoluments clause violations. It's not as salacious as a blow job but it has implications for actual bad things happening to the state.
posted by Mitheral at 4:14 PM on May 21, 2018 [18 favorites]

It sounds like the UAE and Saudi Arabia were trying to buy influence in the Trump administration through Cohen, Broidy, Flynn, Bannon. Qatar in turn tried to buy it from Kushner and through purchasing Trump condos.

This is "diplomacy by other means" in the hybrid warfare era.
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:15 PM on May 21, 2018 [4 favorites]

I just want to suggest that the best part of the AP's scoop on George Nader is that he used the codename.... "Vader" to conceal his identity.

“We ran all data bases including FBI and Interpol and found no issues with regard to Mr. Vader.”

Fire the writers.
posted by schmod at 4:17 PM on May 21, 2018 [26 favorites]

Speaking of hacking and a Presidential campaign that treated email security as the most important issue facing the nation, Politico, ‘Too inconvenient’: Trump goes rogue on phone security

The president, who relies on cellphones to reach his friends and millions of Twitter followers, has rebuffed staff efforts to strengthen security around his phone use, according to the administration officials.

The president uses at least two iPhones, according to one of the officials. The phones – one capable only of making calls, the other equipped only with the Twitter app and pre-loaded with a handful of news sites – are issued by White House Information Technology and the White House Communications Agency, an office staffed by military personnel that oversees White House telecommunications.

While aides have urged the president to swap out the Twitter phone on a monthly basis, Trump has resisted their entreaties, telling them it was “too inconvenient,” the same administration official said.

The president has gone as long as five months without having the phone checked by security experts. It is unclear how often Trump’s call-capable phones, which are essentially used as burner phones, are swapped out.

posted by zachlipton at 4:19 PM on May 21, 2018 [68 favorites]

Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock.... nobody?
posted by contraption at 4:31 PM on May 21, 2018 [12 favorites]

Speaking of hacking and a Presidential campaign that treated email security as the most important issue facing the nation, Politico, ‘Too inconvenient’: Trump goes rogue on phone security

D.C. is filled with illicit cell phone trackers, the local NBC TV reported: Potential Spy Devices Which Track Cellphones, Intercept Calls Found All Over D.C., Md., Va.

The technology can be as small as a suitcase, placed anywhere at any time, and it's used to track cell phones and intercept calls. The News4 I-Team found dozens of potential spy devices while driving around Washington, D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia. [...] The device, sometimes referred to by the brand name StingRay, is designed to mimic a cell tower and can trick your phone into connecting to it instead. [...]

The News4 I-Team asked Turner to ride around the capital region with special software loaded onto three cell phones, with three different carriers, to detect the devices operating in various locations.[...] And the I-Team found them in high-profile areas like outside the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue and while driving across the 14th Street bridge into Crystal City. The I-Team got picked up twice while driving along K Street — the corridor popular with lobbyists.

It's estimated only half of these cell phone trackers belong to US law enforcement—the rest are espionage hardware.
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:39 PM on May 21, 2018 [36 favorites]

> The president, who relies on cellphones to reach his friends and millions of Twitter followers, has rebuffed staff efforts to strengthen security around his phone use, according to the administration officials.

>D.C. is filled with illicit cell phone trackers

Yeah, it is 100% certain that those Trump cell phone conversations are intercepted routinely by various foreign governments.

It is simultaneously too high value and far too easy pickings for the situation to be otherwise.
posted by flug at 4:59 PM on May 21, 2018 [12 favorites]

I almost forgot that John Kelly's phone had been hacked at some time before the transition.

One can only hope that the various Russian/Turkish/Israeli rootkits will try to coexist on his phone(s) and pull a Reservoir Dogs. Or that so much intel is leaving through the front door anyway that this won't even matter.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:07 PM on May 21, 2018 [6 favorites]

It's amazing that George Nader has been in the news this long (though I've lost all ability to estimate time) and only today have I learned about his sex abuse convictions. And even more wild, I have no idea whether or not they'll ultimately prove relevant to everything else he's up to here. Probably not but, ugh, who knows.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 5:10 PM on May 21, 2018 [4 favorites]

Yeah, it is 100% certain that those Trump cell phone conversations are intercepted routinely by various foreign governments.

Why would they even need to do so when twitter exists.
posted by poffin boffin at 5:17 PM on May 21, 2018 [8 favorites]

From that article in Politico

Giuliani predicted the Justice Department would place redactions on some parts of the material.

“But as long as they turn over the vast majority of it it gives you a real sense” of what the FBI was doing. “The question is what are the justifications for it? Did the justifications continue? Did they pick up anything valuable? That’s the most important thing to do. We think they didn’t.”

That doesn't sound like the sort of thing a lawyer should say, and it's definitely not the sort of thing you'd say if you thought your client were innocent. “Did they pick up anything valuable?”, forsooth.

I mean, the whole thing is fundamentally incoherent: Giuliani is Trump's private lawyer, and in that capacity he has no grounds for seeking disclosure from the prosecution before charges are laid. But here he is, arguing that Trump in his role as Chief Executive is entitled to know details of an investigation into alleged crimes. That may be a plausible legal argument, if only because it's a weak spot in the US Constitution, but in context it's an “Ain't no rule says a dog can't play basketball” argument. This obviously isn't the sort of accommodation Trump could get from a court, so Giuliani – an officer of the court! – is basically telling Trump how to stymie an investigation. In fact, Trump has a duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”, so the advice is possibly not just a breach of Giuliani's duty to the court, it's an act of collusion with a criminal.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:22 PM on May 21, 2018 [36 favorites]

In Missouri's multifaceted governor's scandal Judge Eric Burlison has named the Special Prosecutor who will decide where or not to re-file charges related to Greitens' sexual misconduct in 2015.

Special Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker is Jackson County Prosecutor. Jackson County is the second largest county in Missouri, in the Kansas City area and on the opposite side of the state from St. Louis, where the crime took place and where Gardner is located. FYI Baker is a Democrat, so we are certain to keep hearing bleating about the charges being politically motivated.

In his order, [Burlison] noted that Baker's office would serve as special prosecutor 'with regard to the investigation and possible prosecution of Eric Greitens in alleged criminal activity in regard to an incident on March 21, 2015, and other incidents involving the same victim from that date through September 1, 2015.'

It wasn't clear whether additional charges beyond invasion of privacy are possible.

Due to the statue of limitations, the Special Prosecutor will have about a month to decide whether or not to re-file charges related to the original charge. Statute of limitations issues may affect some of the other charges available for filing, as it has now been over three years since at least some of the events that happened.

In related news:

• FBI now investigating strongarming of state legislators by Governor in impeachment-related votes
• Greitens' abuse victim finally speaks publicly
• Side-scandal involving taxpayer funding of lawyers defending Governor from impeachment
• federal election malfeasance clear but not punished
• County Prosecutor declines to file charges related to false campaign finance forms filed by Greitens. The reports were corrected campaign finance reports filed after complaints were received about use of donor contact information lists from The Mission Continues, which Greitens founded before leaving to run for Governor. Per the House Committee Report #2 (see below), the corrected reports were false and knowingly filed falsely and deceptively. It is unclear why the County Prosecutor declined to file charges.
• House Committee Report 1 (sexual misconduct/abuse)
• House Committee Report 2 (campaign finance malfeasance)

posted by flug at 5:25 PM on May 21, 2018 [24 favorites]

It's amazing that George Nader has been in the news this long (though I've lost all ability to estimate time) and only today have I learned about his sex abuse convictions. And even more wild, I have no idea whether or not they'll ultimately prove relevant to everything else he's up to here.

This is from AP story:

When Nader landed at Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C., a team of FBI agents working for Mueller was there to meet him. He was relieved of his electronic devices and later agreed to cooperate.

This detail lends itself to a pretty obvious guess why a pedophile might quickly decide to cooperate with Mueller's team.
posted by peeedro at 5:28 PM on May 21, 2018 [25 favorites]

I know this genre is played out but...

If Obama summoned the FBI Director and Attorney General to demand the evidence in an investigation into his conduct, he would've been impeached by the end of the day.
posted by chris24 at 5:43 PM on May 21, 2018 [78 favorites]

WaPo: The slippery slope of the Trump administration’s political embrace of calling MS-13 ‘animals’

The problem with that language and with turning it into the same sort of politicultural fight that we see with, say, kneeling in the NFL is that Trump’s rhetoric about MS-13 is not now or ever has really been about MS-13. Instead, it’s directly about the threat posed by immigrants to the United States, an argument that took another form in the very first minutes of his presidential campaign, when he called some immigrants from Mexico criminals and rapists. The idea has been to use specific examples of bad actors within or associated with the immigrant community as avatars for that community on the whole and to then enact policies that target immigrants broadly.

[emphais mine]
posted by triggerfinger at 5:54 PM on May 21, 2018 [48 favorites]

The idea has been to use specific examples of bad actors within or associated with the immigrant community as avatars for that community on the whole and to then enact policies that target immigrants broadly.

They give Trumpism too much credit to suggest that only immigrants are being demonized and will be targeted. Next on the "animals" list will be all the other street gangs, because the Trumpist rank and file already knows what kind of people are in those. After that will be the "deviants".
posted by Etrigan at 5:59 PM on May 21, 2018 [23 favorites]

D.C. is filled with illicit cell phone trackers

Serious question: If this is true, which I don't doubt, how come we don't have recordings of Trump talking to Hannity or something like that? Sure it would be illegal, but also ratings gold.
posted by Dr. Send at 6:07 PM on May 21, 2018 [6 favorites]

Don't forget the "agitators". It's a term out of vogue, but I'm sure we can .. wait, I googled and Trump said it last year.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:08 PM on May 21, 2018 [8 favorites]

I cannot believe how much I cannot believe. That document calling human beings animals over and over again is from whitehouse.gov? This is an actual white house release?
posted by agregoli at 6:09 PM on May 21, 2018 [55 favorites]

Next on the "animals" list will be all the other street gangs, because the Trumpist rank and file already knows what kind of people are in those.

But gangs like the Klan? "Very fine people."
posted by triggerfinger at 6:11 PM on May 21, 2018 [34 favorites]

I think reminding each other frequently of the difference in the treatment of Trump versus Obama by the GOP and the corporate media is an important vaccination against normalization, and it's never played out. This is not normal, and it's not acceptable.
posted by biogeo at 6:14 PM on May 21, 2018 [51 favorites]

Daily Beast, Elliott Broidy’s Company Got Its Biggest U.S. Government Contract Ever While He Pitched Trump Administration, in which Broidy's just cashing checks from everybody.
posted by zachlipton at 6:16 PM on May 21, 2018 [21 favorites]

how come we don't have recordings of Trump talking to Hannity or something like that?

Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to intercept some conversations with solicitations for bribes. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.
posted by duoshao at 6:17 PM on May 21, 2018 [12 favorites]

GOP's stalling Obama's Supreme Court nomination pick pays off ... for now. Congress wrote the (now dated) law, and Congress can re-write it. 2018 is looking to be a(n even more) tumultuous year.

I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but in order to rewrite the law, Democrats need to win the House, Democrats need to win the Senate, Democrats need to win a super-majority in the Senate because McConnell will filibuster everything, and then Democrats need to win the White House to avoid a veto. This ain't happening in 2018.

The best Democrats can hope for is to win at least one house of congress and slow down the terrible things Trump and the Republicans want to do going forward. That would be a valuable accomplishment.

But Democrats are a long, long way from being able to undo the damage already done. Elections have consequences and the 2016 election will have very long lasting consequences.
posted by JackFlash at 6:27 PM on May 21, 2018 [17 favorites]

I've come to think of Trump's rise to power as part of a larger trend: the counterreaction of authoritarianism, or the Dictators Strike Back. Democracy was on an upswing throughout the last half of the twentieth century, along with concepts like human rights and international rule of law. This trend really picked up steam in the '90s, but before that there was significant pushback with the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. While authoritarian states were collapsing elsewhere, Jiang Zemin's China was figuring out how to combine one-party rule with a free market economy.

Then in the 21st century two things happened:

1. The election of Putin in Russia, who figured out his own (perhaps China-inspired) solution to running a successful dictatorship in the modern world - the Kleptocracy, or mafia state.

2. The American reaction to 9/11 showed the world that the United States was no longer willing to lead. Without an existential threat like the Soviet Union, America became preoccupied with its own fears and internal divisions. This has given hope to the leaders of other world powers that they can make their own impression on the globe and expand their influence without hindrance.

Since 2000 Kleptocracies have been on the rise, both because of countries attempting to duplicate China's example and because of the active efforts by Russia to sabotage the political process in other nations. Trump is a wannabe kleptocrat. That's all he is, right to the bones, and his era is an attempt (by him and the Republican Party) to remold the United States into something more like Russia. They're doing this for self-interested reasons rather than ideological ones, because that's what kleptocracy is: the victory of self-interest over ideals and rule of law.

I don't think Trump or the Republicans will succeed in changing the United States, because their preferred way of doing things is just too foreign to take permanent root in American soil, and American institutions are too strong. But the struggle continues.
posted by Kevin Street at 6:31 PM on May 21, 2018 [32 favorites]

I don't think Trump or the Republicans will succeed in changing the United States, because their preferred way of doing things is just too foreign to take permanent root in American soil, and American institutions are too strong.

I was born in the 70s, and for the entire time I've been politically conscious (which started sometime around the end of the Reagan era) we've been moving, in an accelerating way, back toward the plutocratic, mafia-like politics of the Gilded Age. And as in the Gilded Age, the air of magical thinking, unvarnished greed, and total, soul-rotting hypocrisy has been thickening all along the way.

There is nothing foreign about what is happening under Trump.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:39 PM on May 21, 2018 [107 favorites]

I don't think Trump or the Republicans will succeed in changing the United States

See, I disagree because I don't think Trump and the Republicans are trying to change the United States; I think they're a reflection of the United States. At least roughly half of it.

They aren't an aberration, they are an emergent property.
posted by Justinian at 6:39 PM on May 21, 2018 [66 favorites]

They are a retrograde death spasm. All this stupid bullshit shall be retconned.
posted by vrakatar at 6:51 PM on May 21, 2018 [6 favorites]

They're an emergent property, but right now they're greatly aided by this worldwide trend of rising authoritarianism. As the most naked kleptocrat, Trump only got into office with Russian help. America is many things, but it's not as fundamentally corrupt as Trump would like it to be, and I don't think he'll have much success in changing it. He's more like a virus that will ultimately strengthen the organism by alerting its immune system to a new threat. Nor will the Republicans succeed in changing America into the Randian fantasy world that they want to achieve.
posted by Kevin Street at 6:51 PM on May 21, 2018 [5 favorites]

America is many things, but it's not as fundamentally corrupt as Trump would like it to be

I really hope you’re right but I’m fearful of how quickly this can change. One of the more toxic things the right-wing propaganda organs have spread is the idea that the status quo was already that corrupt, more or less excusing everything as either inevitable or even balancing things out. It’s disturbing how many people are willing to respond to provable corruption with some babble about the Clinton Foundation, equate police shooting someone with a crook shooting an officer, etc.
posted by adamsc at 6:58 PM on May 21, 2018 [22 favorites]

Boston Globe: Federal judges in Boston are often sharply critical of ICE tactics.

In January, Chief US District Judge Patti B. Saris likened a group of Indonesian Christians facing possible deportation by the Trump administration to Jewish refugees trying to escape the Nazis. In April, Judge Indira Talwani rebuked ICE for arresting a Chinese national outside the courtroom after she had been placed on probation for fraud.

posted by adamg at 7:02 PM on May 21, 2018 [23 favorites]

ELECTIONS NEWS

** 2018 House:

-- SC-05: Archie Parnell, who as the special election candidate came surprisingly close to flipping this seat is resisting calls to drop out after it has come to light he has a history of spousal violence. Ugh, very disappointing.

** MI-13: John Conyers III, son of the former holder of this seat has been ruled to not have met signature requirements to run in the primary (he is, of course, appealing). The challenge was ultimately from IAN Conyers, JCIII's cousin, who is also running for the seat.

** 2018 Senate:

-- WV: As discussed in the last thread, murderer Don Blankenship now plans to run as candidate for the Constitution Party. Online legal opinion seems divided on whether he has much of a chance getting around the state's sore loser law. If he gets the go ahead, this would seeming be a considerable boost to Manchin's chances of getting re-elected.

-- Politico roundup of WV and OH internecine tensions.

** Odds & ends:

-- Longtime North Dakota SOS Al Jaeger had dropped out of the GOP primary after a state convention endorsed his opponent Will Gardner (who had campaigned mostly on a strong voter ID platform). Gardner dropped out today after it came to light that he pleaded guilty a few years ago to peeping through women's windows. Jaeger is now jumping back into the race as an independent.

-- Federal court orders Texas to implement online voter registration for DMV interactions within 45 days.

-- New York Democrats to consider resolution to kick turncoat state Senator Simcha Felder out of the party.

-- Sounds like the right-to-work amendment that Missouri gov Greitens refused to move from the November general to the August primary has been moved to August by the legislature. The goal here is to suppress turnout.

====
Tomorrow: two special elections in Arkansas (both in very red districts), plus primaries in Arkansas, Georgia, and Kentucky, plus runoffs in Texas. Also of interest, a special election that would give Dems control of the Miami-Dade County government.

Previews: WP on GA gov, Vox on GA gov, Vox on TX gov, Vox on AR gov, DKE general roundup, 538 general roundup.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:03 PM on May 21, 2018 [28 favorites]

Boston Globe, Trump’s tweets include grammatical errors. And some are on purpose

But it’s not always Trump tapping out a Tweet, even when it sounds like his voice. West Wing employees who draft proposed tweets intentionally employ suspect grammar and staccato syntax in order to mimic the president’s style, according to two people familiar with the process.

They overuse the exclamation point! They Capitalize random words for emphasis. Fragments. Loosely connected ideas. All part of a process that is not as spontaneous as Trump’s Twitter feed often appears.

Presidential speechwriters have always sought to channel their bosses’ style and cadence, but Trump’s team is blazing new ground with its approach to his favorite means of instant communication. Some staff members even relish the scoldings Trump gets from elites shocked by the Trumpian language they strive to imitate, believing that debates over presidential typos fortify the belief within his base that he has the common touch.
...
Staff-written tweets do go through a West Wing process of sorts. When a White House employee wants the president to tweet about a topic, the official writes a memo to the president that includes three or four sample tweets, according to those familiar with the process.

Trump then picks the one he likes best, according to the two people, neither of whom wanted to be named because they’re not authorized to talk about the operations. Sometimes Trump will edit the wording and sometimes he’ll just pick his favorite for blasting out to his 52 million Twitter followers.

Looking stupid to own the libs is what we've reduced the presidency to.
posted by zachlipton at 7:09 PM on May 21, 2018 [88 favorites]

In a turf war with Trump White House aides, free-range Trumpists are strategically leaking to CNN: Trump Listening to Outside Advisers, Not Insiders, On Fight With DOJ—Outsider advisers urged Trump to attack DOJ

A loose and informal group of Trump advisers outside the White House, some of whom think the President is being ill served by White House chief of staff John Kelly and White House counsel Don McGahn, have been aggressively campaigning to attack Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as part of a "deep state" plot against the President. The campaign has focused on pressing Trump-friendly media and the President himself to push Rosenstein to reveal details about the investigation that both the Justice Department and FBI do not want disclosed.[...]

The members of this group working to persuade the President and Trump-friendly media include ousted former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, former deputy campaign manager David Bossie, President of the Trump Hispanic Advisory Council (and CNN commentator) Steve Cortes and many others. None of those reached for comment wanted to talk on the record. It was not clear how much Nunes is part of any of these conversations.[LOL–ed.]

The group over the weekend seemed to win a battle with White House insiders and succeeded in convincing the President to formally side with Nunes over his own Justice Department.[...]

Sunday morning, the group was trying to convince Trump to write a letter demanding that Rosenstein turn over material about the confidential source to Nunes. By Sunday afternoon, the President had tweeted what seemed to members of this outside group to be such an order.[...]

A member of the outsider group tells CNN that he felt the President was formally ordering the Justice Department to turn over the documents to Nunes, but that since Rosenstein attempted to blur that issue with others by assigning it all to the inspector general of the Justice Department to sort out, they would keep pushing for the President to issue a more direct order.

But some allies of the President believe that his push might actually hurt the cause of releasing this information. GOP congressional sources told CNN's Sarah Westwood that Trump's latest intervention might instead make the Justice Department less inclined to hand over the documents requested by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. If the FBI's use of a confidential source becomes the subject of an active investigation, the sources said, Justice Department officials might have even more reason to withhold records from lawmakers than they do already. That's why Trump's allies on Capitol Hill had pressed the President to assist them with their quest for documents—not to help them get a separate investigation opened. Now, some members and staffers fear Trump's attempts to help may backfire.

It seems ludicrous of CNN to give the likes of Lewandowski and Bossie the benefit of anonymous leaking when they both appear regularly on their network, especially when Trump supposedly "hates leaks". What's the betting that Bannon et al. are doing this because they have Trump's tacit approval to put pressure on Kelly and McGahn to let the Trumpists fight this out?
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:20 PM on May 21, 2018 [8 favorites]

"There was some talk about the Libyan model last week, and you know, as the President made clear, this will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong Un doesn't make a deal," Pence said in an interview that aired Monday evening on Fox News.

When it was noted that the comparison could be interpreted as a threat, Pence replied: "Well, I think it's more of a fact."

Why would North Korea show up to talk now that the President, Vice President, and National Security Advisor have all threatened to kill Kim in a particularly painful fashion?
posted by zachlipton at 7:27 PM on May 21, 2018 [33 favorites]

This is an actual white house release?

Honestly when I first saw it I immediately assumed it was fake, because surely? right? come ON. So I searched the document title on the white house website. And there it was, oozing disgustingly everywhere like an infected butt abscess.

my desired outcome is no longer impeachment but old testament judgment. i have my seder plate and my glass of wine ready.
posted by poffin boffin at 7:45 PM on May 21, 2018 [82 favorites]

HuffPo: Blake Farenthold May Have Been Hired Illegally At His New Lobbyist Job | A Texas newspaper filed a lawsuit alleging the Calhoun Port Authority hired the disgraced former lawmaker without public notice, in violation of state law.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:51 PM on May 21, 2018 [9 favorites]

They don't know what the Libyan model is. Actually, Pence might know but is acting like he doesn't so as not to make Trump look even worse. What a craven toady.

This summit is in two weeks. Are they going to go ahead with it without a deal already worked out? That's insane. And a recipe for disaster. These things aren't where you work out a deal, they are photo ops where you sign an already-agreed-to arrangement!
posted by Justinian at 7:51 PM on May 21, 2018 [15 favorites]

I don’t see how they plan to stop the workers from organizing.

Same as they always do. Fire a few, and see who crosses that line. Fire a few more and repeat.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:05 PM on May 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

One of the more toxic things the right-wing propaganda organs have spread is the idea that the status quo was already that corrupt, more or less excusing everything as either inevitable or even balancing things out.

Right, just like workplace discipline, there is eventually a tipping point where even the good ones decide "fuck it, why would I be the only one following the so-called rules?"
posted by ctmf at 8:13 PM on May 21, 2018 [11 favorites]

Tomorrow: two special elections in Arkansas (both in very red districts), plus primaries in Arkansas, Georgia, and Kentucky

The primary in KY-6 has turned ugly late, Gray got a fair bit of pushback in the district (and national condemnation) for turning negative after promising not to. Gray's ad wasn't that bad, the other candidate in the race State Sen. Reggie Thomas has been calling McGrath a "carpetbagger" from the beginning, but maybe the first time Gray has seemed worried.

All these candidates are good, for Kentucky values of "good" Democrats, it's a shame they're all packed into one district. Although this is the only other plausibly Dem district in the state and John Yarmouth has a well deserved lock on Louisville. I still think Gray is the only one that can actually win here, so I hope he pulls it out tomorrow.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:15 PM on May 21, 2018 [3 favorites]

That's one of a couple tomorrow I'm a little worried about losing a winnable general race.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:37 PM on May 21, 2018 [4 favorites]

There are not many Trump scandals. There is one Trump scandal. Singular: the corruption of the American government by the president and his associates, who are using their official power for personal and financial gain rather than for the welfare of the American people, and their attempts to shield that corruption from political consequences, public scrutiny, or legal accountability.

Called it:

This is a thing everybody is very reluctant to accept, that despite his slogan Trump has no loyalty, not even a twisted one, to America. What he has is a loyalty to money & its sources. If those sources are Russian or Chinese, that is where his loyalties lie for as long as their money is streaming towards him. As a narcissist who can only comprehend atomic (as in unitary not nuclear) transactions, as soon as the transaction (the side directed at him at least) is complete he loses loyalty to its source. He is the personification of greed.

posted by scalefree at 9:00 PM on May 21, 2018 [21 favorites]

D.C. is filled with illicit cell phone trackers

Serious question: If this is true, which I don't doubt, how come we don't have recordings of Trump talking to Hannity or something like that?

Probably three reasons:
1) Cellphones promiscuously broadcast so-called metadata ("Hello! I'm a phone! My home service provider is XXXX and my number is YYYYYYY!"). This can't be encrypted, so all you need to do to pick it up is pretend to be a cell phone tower;
2) Actual calls are encrypted, and even if the encryption isn't strong, the fact that it's there means it would be illegal to intercept the call;
3) Publicly admitting you hacked the President's calls would probably earn you a visit from very serious people in dark suits.

But as a matter of fact there are undoubtedly people with those recordings, taken by cellphone interception or otherwise, and the reason we haven't heard them is that proof of wrongdoing is more valuable as evidence/kompromat than as material for the gossip pages of a newspaper.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:07 PM on May 21, 2018 [7 favorites]

** MI-13: John Conyers III, son of the former holder of this seat has been ruled to not have met signature requirements to run in the primary (he is, of course, appealing). The challenge was ultimately from IAN Conyers, JCIII's cousin, who is also running for the seat.

Do you want A War of the Roses? Because this is how you get a War of the Roses.
posted by happyroach at 9:19 PM on May 21, 2018 [12 favorites]

Nunes and Meadows Are Undermining Trump’s Argument Against the Mueller Investigation (ASHA RANGAPPA and JED SHUGERMAN, Slate)

The text of Article II or the rest of the Constitution does not support the unitary theory. Rather, proponents of the unitary executive look to Justice Scalia’s lone dissent in Morrison v. Olson, a 1988 Supreme Court case which challenged the law giving Congress authority to appoint an Independent Counsel as a violation of the separation of powers. In Morrison, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for a 7–1 majority, upheld the constitutionality of Congress’ creation of an independent counsel, selected and supervised by judges. But Justice Scalia disagreed, stating, “We should say here that the President’s constitutionally assigned duties include complete control over investigation and prosecution of violations of the law, and that the inexorable command of Article II is clear and definite: the executive power must be vested in the President of the United States.” (That’s Justice Scalia’s own original emphasis on the word “complete.”)

One of us has argued previously that Scalia was wrong on his own originalist terms. Historically, most prosecution in England and America was private prosecution until the end of the 19th century. The first Congress also allowed some law enforcement officials to be removable by federal judges, and it contemplated giving the Supreme Court the power to appoint the attorney general and giving district judges the power to appoint district attorneys. Many early state constitutions also reflected that prosecutors had a mixed judicial role. Scalia’s dissent was contradicted by American history.

If supporters of the unitary executive really believe these powers are exclusively committed to the executive branch, why are they silent about such congressional overreach?
But Scalia also overlooked Congress’ investigatory and prosecutorial powers, in some of the ways that Nunes and Meadows are illustrating now.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:40 PM on May 21, 2018 [13 favorites]

WOSU (Ohio public media), Study: Plan Exempting High Unemployment Counties From Medicaid Work Rules Benefits White Areas

Many people who receive Medicaid in Ohio could soon have to work at least 20 hours a week to receive the government health insurance. The Ohio Department of Medicaid is waiting for federal approval of the plan.

But under the state’s proposal, people in counties with high unemployment would fall under a special exemption.

The proposal, which would exempt people in 26 overwhelmingly white Ohio counties from the work requirements, has officials at the Center for Community Solutions concerned.

John Corlett, president of the nonpartisan policy and advocacy group, says the new proposal would disproportionately affect urban Medicaid recipients in cities like Cleveland. It all comes down to county unemployment figures compared to city unemployment rates, he said.

“They don’t allow the requirements to be waived for communities within a county where the county may not have a high unemployment rate, but a particular community within a county, like for example the city of Cleveland, has an unemployment rate as high as some of these other communities that have been exempted,” he said.

First Michigan, now Ohio. These plans all just magically happen to exempt rural white unemployed Medicaid recipients from work requirements while targeting black communities.
posted by zachlipton at 9:45 PM on May 21, 2018 [69 favorites]

Going to be hi-lareous if it results in unemployed PoC moving to white areas.
posted by Mitheral at 9:57 PM on May 21, 2018 [14 favorites]

> Johann Georg Faust:
"Some food for thought 538 cooked up on Friday. Fair warning: it's about polls and Twitter.

Very Few Voters Actually Read Trump's Tweets: Perry Bacon Jr. & Dhrumil Mehta

A recent Gallup poll indicates only 8% of American adults admit to following 45's account, but only 4% admit to following and regularly reading the tweets.

This amounts to approximately 10 million people who consume the—holy shit, I just realized the mascot for Twitter is a bird because it regurgitates food into its babies' mouths.

Anyway, 10 million isn't a small number, but it's less than the official follower numbers being claimed. This would make sense, after discerning the demographic and robotic nature of the claimed followers.

Only about 15% of Republicans who have an account admit to following. Of course these days, this raises the question of "What is a Republican?" Despite this, Democrats apparently have more exposure to Trump's tweets than Republicans do.

538 comes to the agreeable conclusion that Twitter is ultimately just a stream-of-consciousness rather than a megaphone. And that various media outlets are doing the amplifying for him and should be more careful regarding this press coverage. On the other hand, these things are also treated variously as Schrödinger's Official Presidential Statements, ridiculous trial balloons, and extremely telegraphed decisions.

Personally, I'm curious to see information regarding the tweets we know were written by 45 versus those written by someone like Stephen Miller. I know someone was looking into a way to decipher the tweets written by different people on that same account, but I'm interested in pattern recognition for the content and topics covered as well as things like vocabulary, grammar, and syntax."

I don't follow 45 but I do grab all his Tweets (since March at least) into a Google Spreadsheet. Help yourself if it looks useful.
posted by Samizdata at 9:57 PM on May 21, 2018 [6 favorites]

Kaye Brennan writing in Just Security takes care not to bury the lede:
Getting to the Bottom of the Trump Tower Meeting

Donald Trump Jr. has no memory of Rinat Akhmetshin attending the infamous June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting, even though he was apparently dressed entirely in pink, and according to at least one attendee, did most of the talking.

([real], although I had to check)
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:59 PM on May 21, 2018 [51 favorites]

Presumably the Secret Service has a cell repeater and portable jammers to keep dipwad in a bubble?

If you rely on jammers and repeaters then you just know some weird radio shadow will mess things up for you. I mean, you have to presume that people might be trying to attach to Trump's phone all the time. I suppose the right thing to do is rewrite the phone's firmware so it declines to connect to unauthorised cell towers, but apparently the USA's IT budget doesn't stretch that far. At least, they declined to give Obama a guaranteed-secure phone capable of running arbitrary apps.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:38 PM on May 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

I don’t see how they plan to stop the workers from organizing

Same as capitalist gangsters always do. See: Ludlow massacre
posted by benzenedream at 11:19 PM on May 21, 2018 [17 favorites]

At least, they declined to give Obama a guaranteed-secure phone capable of running arbitrary apps.

Isn't that ("guaranteed security" and "arbitrary apps") impossible?
posted by entity447b at 11:42 PM on May 21, 2018 [10 favorites]

With all this animals talk I'm reminded of how often Trump uses the phrase "fired like a dog" "moved on her like a bitch"

It's part of his personality, rendering people he doesn't like into animals that can than be abused.

And given that he apparently likes to contemplate hurting animals, we now have a president that Tony Soprano would find morally disgusting.
posted by angrycat at 3:27 AM on May 22, 2018 [33 favorites]

fwiw, re: iran
EU to reactivate 'blocking statute' against US sanctions on Iran for European firms - "EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced that the bloc plans to kickstart a 1996 law that would prohibit European companies from complying with US sanctions on Iran."

also btw from last year...
If the U.S. Reimposes Sanctions on Iran, Allies Will Follow[?] - "When I asked SWIFT's lawyers [in 2012] if they would voluntarily cut off Iran from their network, they arrogantly refused. When the White House found out that I was drafting an amendment for an upcoming Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs markup, Szubin put on a full-court press to stop it. But once again, thanks to some bipartisan negotiating, the amendment was adopted by the committee and within hours SWIFT was working with the European Union to find a way to comply." (emphasis added; SWIFT)
posted by kliuless at 3:33 AM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

If you rely on jammers and repeaters then you just know some weird radio shadow will mess things up for you. I mean, you have to presume that people might be trying to attach to Trump's phone all the time. I suppose the right thing to do is rewrite the phone's firmware so it declines to connect to unauthorised cell towers, but apparently the USA's IT budget doesn't stretch that far. At least, they declined to give Obama a guaranteed-secure phone capable of running arbitrary apps.

There are anti-stingray apps on Android, so it would be possible to hook up some level of protection. I would however assume that more serious adversaries would seek to 0-day compromise the legitimate cell towers.
posted by jaduncan at 3:46 AM on May 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

Same as capitalist gangsters always do. See: Ludlow massacre

Or the Battle of Blair Mountain. There are dozens of similar examples.
posted by ryanshepard at 4:29 AM on May 22, 2018 [7 favorites]

Last night, Trump endorsed Asa Hutchinson (a Chamber-of-Commerce-type Republican) for Arkansas governor over Jan Morgan (a person who declared her gun range a Muslim-free zone).

I want this to be something else, but two weeks of early voting have already happened, so it's probably just that a)polling says Morgan isn't going to win and that b)Asa would probably win in the general, while Morgan would probably be another Roy Moore (that's election Roy Moore, not teenagers Roy Moore).
posted by box at 4:56 AM on May 22, 2018 [6 favorites]

Yesterday I was offline and driving, so I turned on the radio to hear how things were going with Trump's tweet-declaration. As it turned out, there was some other scandalous development instead, I don't even remember wether it was the one about N Korea or the one about Iran, and I suddenly realized that no news editor is going to let three Trump-related disasters into one ten-minute newscast, let alone the hourly 3 minute versions. It's just too much crazy. I am not in America, but I'd bet it isn't much different if you are getting your news in your truck somewhere in the US.
Most people don't follow these endless threads, so the get the edited version of the insanity, and they have no idea how crazy it is. And I can actually follow the editors' reasoning. If our daily news looked like these threads, a lot of people wouldn't believe it. Even more people would believe Trump calling it all fake news. I was working at a left-wing paper during the run-up to the Iraq war, and when we reported the facts we were accused of propaganda, even by otherwise smart people, because they could not imagine that the US government would lie to their allies. This now is a hundred, or several hundred times worse. I don't know what the solution is, but there is a huge information gap, and the Trumpists are using it to their advantage.
posted by mumimor at 5:16 AM on May 22, 2018 [62 favorites]

Lawmaker introduces crowdfunding bill to pay for Trump's wall. I had 2 reactions to this:
A) Why don't you grow a brain and use the funds from all the coffers you assholes are looting for your fucking wall?
B) The people who will donate to this crowdfund are fewer than you think, and have fewer nickels to rub together.

Pardon me while I try to put even one Even together to Don't.
posted by yoga at 5:47 AM on May 22, 2018 [11 favorites]

I’m wondering how much of this federal insanity state and local governments can survive. Like, what degree of collapse of our federal institutions will start to have knock-on effects that people in far-flung states can’t ignore? I’m not talking about active policy changes (which I know are already affecting people in practical ways). I’m talking about the federal government functioning poorly because of incompetence, understaffing , and/or being at war with itself. So far the insanity is both more and less than I predicted - I never thought so much scandal would accumulate and come out in a year and a half, but somehow life in my midwestern state capital, in my federally funded research group, is proceeding as ever.
posted by eirias at 6:21 AM on May 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

Crowdfunding for government projects

What a great idea

We could call it "targeted accruals across economic systems"

TAxES for short
posted by saturday_morning at 6:22 AM on May 22, 2018 [164 favorites]

Eirias, I'm wondering about the same thing - when will people in blue states and cities start feeling the pinch? California, where I live, is: blue, wealthy, and has good people in government for the most part. And yet, even here, we have the Stephon Clark police shooting and the unfortunate guy who had the nerve to be found with Mentos (!) by an off-duty police officer, meaning, police violence against young men of color is an issue even here in blue, well-governed Arcadia.

My assumption is, as I've said before, that the people who will feel the pinch first and hardest are the ones who live in pockets of blue in red states (and thus are more dependent upon the federal government being on their side), as well as vulnerable people (in particular, immigrants, young men of color, and LGBT-especially-T folks). Well-heeled suburbanites, otoh, probably won't be affected unless and until the economy crashes.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 6:31 AM on May 22, 2018 [5 favorites]

Just a reminder that runoff elections are happening in four states today. I can only speak to Texas, but the dems are facing off for governor are Lupe Valdez and Andrew White. Lupe is the first Hispanic lesbian sheriff elected in Texas, she served for ten years, and is slightly left of White. White is the son of former governor, and is a centrist democratic who believes he can peel off republicans from Gregg Abbott.

In district 32, Pete Sessions, this good progressive dems are running, I'm going for Lillian, but won't be devastated if her opponent wins. Since he's a former football player, and he's flush with cash, the odds are in his favor.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:40 AM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

meaning, police violence against young men of color is an issue even here in blue, well-governed Arcadia.

Has anyone ever suggested that police violence is less of a problem in blue, well-governed Arcadia? That strikes me as one of those problems, like school segregation, that is not actually better in blue states than in red ones.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:44 AM on May 22, 2018 [15 favorites]

zachlipton: Boston Globe, Trump’s tweets include grammatical errors. And some are on purpose

Presidential speechwriters have always sought to channel their bosses’ style and cadence, but Trump’s team is blazing new ground with its approach to his favorite means of instant communication. Some staff members even relish the scoldings Trump gets from elites shocked by the Trumpian language they strive to imitate, believing that debates over presidential typos fortify the belief within his base that he has the common touch.

Looking stupid to own the libs is what we've reduced the presidency to.

Counterpoint: they're (unwittingly?) employing scammer email tactics, namely to filter out smart users who would immediately recognize the scam, thus ensuring that only the most gullible users respond, and to fool the victim into believing the scammer is not very sophisticated and can be tricked by the victim -- he's a great business man, but also a man of the people who's telling it like it is and not bothering with fancy words and formatting!
posted by filthy light thief at 7:08 AM on May 22, 2018 [44 favorites]

but somehow life in my midwestern state capital, in my federally funded research group, is proceeding as ever.

This is what fascism looks like, this is what the banality of evil looks like.
posted by nikaspark at 7:13 AM on May 22, 2018 [42 favorites]

Guardian: Rudy Giuliani won deal for OxyContin maker to continue sales of drug behind opioid deaths

I'm not saying that Giuliani should be executed, I'm saying that Trump says it.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:15 AM on May 22, 2018 [72 favorites]

Education Department Launches 'Top-To-Bottom' Review Of Teachers' Grant Program (NPR, May 22, 2018)

It's a financial nightmare for public school teachers around the country: Federal grants they received to work in low-income schools were converted to thousands of dollars in loans that they now must pay back.

NPR revealed these problems in a series of recent stories. The Department of Education now tells NPR it has launched a new, "top-to-bottom" internal review of all aspects of the TEACH grant program. Officials say the review is aimed at fixing the issues and that the department is "absolutely committed to improving" the program.

FUCKING HELL. Are you sure that this isn't a feature, not a bug? "Oops, those lazy/ liberal teachers don't get *free government money,* now they'll have to pay back their loans! Our bad! Let's convene another working group to investigate this. We'll have a meeting in June to plan for this commission, and then another in ... oh, how does October look?" (Yes, as of May 20, DeVos' national school safety commission has met twice so far, including an earlier meeting that was focused on planning, and it was only 4 strong, at least as of March 21, 2018 -- DeVos, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar -- a stellar line-up from Ms. "I trust parents and teachers, not Washington")

Fuck this sham of an administration and their grift that damaging America.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:21 AM on May 22, 2018 [73 favorites]

There’s definitely a lot to unpack in Trump’s fundamental carelessness and lack of competency. It goes all the way back to his campaign announcement speech and was on full display at the RNC, and his administration has been more and more of it. All the theories fit — it helps the scammer ID the mark. It shows his common touch. It helps the tribe sneer at the other and it helps them virtue signal one another. But the worst, maybe, is after all of that it tells us that competency and care simply do not matter — power and social position do. That’s a fundamental attack on the promise (however yet unrealized) of democratic meritocracy.

Frightening.
posted by notyou at 7:24 AM on May 22, 2018 [11 favorites]

Going to be hi-lareous if it results in unemployed PoC moving to white areas.

I get you’re coming from a good place, but I don’t love the implications either of “ha-ha, now you’ll have to live with POC!” or that unemployed POC would just move to jobless counties so they could get state aid - it ties into a lot of negative stereotypes about people not wanting to work.

Honestly I also think it’s reasonable to exempt people who will have an exceedingly hard time finding jobs from employment requirements, but also think it should be expanded to urban areas as well. More people getting good things rather than less.
posted by corb at 7:25 AM on May 22, 2018 [14 favorites]

Joanna Smialek, Bloomberg News: "Twitter Bots Helped Trump and Brexit Win, Economic Study Says"

Automated tweeting played a small but potentially decisive role in the 2016 Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s presidential victory, the National Bureau of Economic Research working paper showed this month. Their rough calculations suggest bots added 1.76 percentage point to the pro-“leave” vote share as Britain weighed whether to remain in the European Union, and may explain 3.23 percentage points of the actual vote for Trump in the U.S. presidential race.

posted by OnceUponATime at 7:26 AM on May 22, 2018 [16 favorites]

First Michigan, now Ohio. These plans all just magically happen to exempt rural white unemployed Medicaid recipients from work requirements while targeting black communities.

It's amazing how the only time I ever hear about counties, it's in the context of a policy that somehow just happens to make life shittier for people who aren't cis white hetero men.
posted by Etrigan at 7:32 AM on May 22, 2018 [13 favorites]

Poll: Support for vaccines falls

The number of Americans who believe vaccinations are crucial to public health has fallen by ten percent in the last ten years, according to a new survey. A poll for Research America found that 70 percent say vaccinations for diseases like measles and polio are “very important.” That number is down from the 80 percent in November of 2008 who said the vaccines are crucial.

We're all getting stupider and the stupid is encroaching on all fronts. America is gorging on irrationality and the destination will be calamitous beyond reckoning.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:34 AM on May 22, 2018 [73 favorites]

Probably three reasons:
1) Cellphones promiscuously broadcast so-called metadata ("Hello! I'm a phone! My home service provider is XXXX and my number is YYYYYYY!"). This can't be encrypted, so all you need to do to pick it up is pretend to be a cell phone tower;
2) Actual calls are encrypted, and even if the encryption isn't strong, the fact that it's there means it would be illegal to intercept the call;
3) Publicly admitting you hacked the President's calls would probably earn you a visit from very serious people in dark suits.

But as a matter of fact there are undoubtedly people with those recordings, taken by cellphone interception or otherwise, and the reason we haven't heard them is that proof of wrongdoing is more valuable as evidence/kompromat than as material for the gossip pages of a newspaper.

The metadata is still pretty useful.

Even if the president's phone is secured the people he calls probably don't have the same level of IT support and you can target them for some spearfishing in order to capture the president's conversations from the other side of the call.
posted by srboisvert at 7:37 AM on May 22, 2018 [7 favorites]

Surprise, surprise - trying to undo rules that everyone was planning to address, even if they were complaining and lobbying against them IS BAD FOR BUSINESS -- Nothing Certain In Search For 'Regulatory Certainty' At EPA (NPR, May 22, 2018)

In his first address to career employees last year he told the gathered room at the EPA, "Regulators exist to give certainty to those that they regulate. Those that we regulate ought to know what we expect of them, so that they can plan and allocate resources to comply."

He's cited this in his efforts to delay, repeal or roll back the Clean Power Plan, the Waters of the U.S. Rule, and a string of other measures.

But some argue that many of his actions as EPA administrator are having the opposite effect, and that they could be setting a troublesome precedent going forward.

With so many regulations now in limbo, farmers, agriculturalists and others who are regulated by the EPA are "in a state of sort of perpetual uncertainty," says Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union.

Nothing like trying to budget and invest for Trumpian uncertainty. In the words of our brave leader: "if it happens, it happens."
posted by filthy light thief at 7:41 AM on May 22, 2018 [10 favorites]

B) The people who will donate to this crowdfund are fewer than you think, and have fewer nickels to rub together.

So, funny thing... in 2011, a year after passing SB1070, Arizona passed a bill to create a fund to build border fencing in the state. It was launched with a lot of hoopla and publicity. Real Americans were going to secure the borders, no matter what Washington thought. They were planning to raise $50 million.

The fund closed down at the end of last year after raising the massive sum of $270,000. So, if crowdfunding is the way you think you can build the wall, please proceed, lawmaker.
posted by azpenguin at 7:47 AM on May 22, 2018 [54 favorites]

EPA bars AP, CNN from summit on contaminants

The Latest on a hearing with EPA chief Scott Pruitt on a widespread contaminant in drinking water: [...] Guards barred an AP reporter from passing through a security checkpoint inside the building. When the reporter asked to speak to an EPA public-affairs person, the security guards grabbed the reporter by the shoulders and shoved her forcibly out of the EPA building.

All perfectly normal.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:50 AM on May 22, 2018 [63 favorites]

> Automated tweeting played a small but potentially decisive role in the 2016 Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s presidential victory

"Hey, that angry Twitter egg is right!" *goes off to vote against my own interests*
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:50 AM on May 22, 2018 [6 favorites]

That would be a n00b move. What you want to do is have all your angry Twitter eggs ceaselessly amplify news stories, real and fake, that reinforce your goals then let the social media’s feed sorting algorithms plop them down in front of people so they don’t even know eggs were involved. THEN you have your angry Twitter eggs go harass normal people because, hey, tradition.
posted by Artw at 7:54 AM on May 22, 2018 [14 favorites]

NBC News: Interior Dept. moves to allow Alaska bear hunting with doughnuts, bacon

The Trump administration is moving to reverse Obama-era rules barring hunters on some public lands in Alaska from baiting brown bears with bacon and doughnuts and using spotlights to shoot mother black bears and cubs hibernating in their dens. [...] Under the proposed changes, hunters would also be allowed to hunt black bears with dogs, kill wolves and pups in their dens, and use motor boats to shoot swimming caribou.

Cruelty shall be the whole of the Law.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:57 AM on May 22, 2018 [51 favorites]

Automated tweeting played a small but potentially decisive role in the 2016 Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s presidential victory

I’m not sure how we can really stop this honestly, and it’s a real problem that is only going to increase. People are easily influenced and now the tools to influence them are relatively cheap and easy for agents of all types to use. While I’m indignant about Russia, I would also be indignant if it was all homegrown.
posted by corb at 7:59 AM on May 22, 2018 [10 favorites]

“While aides have urged the president to swap out the Twitter phone on a monthly basis, Trump has resisted their entreaties, telling them it was ‘too inconvenient,’ (an) administration official said.

I know it's fun to dump on this clown and I'm not giving him a pass from showing some willingness to engage in proper security practices. But if the IT staff can't handle this process in the manner of walking up and handing him an identically configured app-only phone and walking away with the old one then he's right, that is more inconvenient than it needs to be.

I'm more disconnected from this space than I used to be, but in years past there was a small but steady business in doing minor surgery on smartphones to remove the cameras so they'd be acceptable for use in medium-security environments. People I knew in DTRA or who worked at Navy Yard would get their iPhones altered in this way so they could take them to work. There's no reason that sort of thing can't be done for Trump's phones, but including removing the microphone from a data-only phone.

In some ways this is identical to the way that State Department IT failed Clinton (and Powell and Rice and Kerry etc) by being unable/unwilling to set up a proper solution. Personally I think it's stupid in a multitude of ways that Trump is a tweet-raging manbaby who can't be deprived of his rant receptacle, and ultimately it's his Executive branch and if their IT blows that's on him. But that's about larger process and care - of which they show none - and we should avoid dunking on users for insisting on getting their jobs done. Sadly, rage-tweeting horseshit is the job our country elected Trump to do.
posted by phearlez at 8:01 AM on May 22, 2018 [19 favorites]

I’m not sure how we can really stop this honestly, and it’s a real problem that is only going to increase.

“Computational propaganda” is a developing field of study.
posted by XMLicious at 8:08 AM on May 22, 2018 [15 favorites]

LRB - The Drift towards War.
This does not mean that war is inevitable, but the drift towards it is unmistakable and accelerating, whether or not anyone actually wants it. Trump, who has done nothing to stop gun violence in the US, has shown no more inclination to prevent regional warfare in the Middle East.
posted by adamvasco at 8:15 AM on May 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

Under the proposed changes, hunters would also be allowed to hunt black bears with dogs, kill wolves and pups in their dens, and use motor boats to shoot swimming caribou.

The Trapper and the Furrier by Regina Spektor gets more apt for this administration by the day.
(It inspired my 2017: Despair and Hope playlist)
posted by mikepop at 8:25 AM on May 22, 2018 [6 favorites]

But if the IT staff can't handle this process in the manner of walking up and handing him an identically configured app-only phone and walking away with the old one then he's right, that is more inconvenient than it needs to be.

I would not at all be surprised to learn that he doesn't want the IT staff to have any of his passwords, and then complains that having to re-input them on a new phone is too much effort.
posted by Etrigan at 8:27 AM on May 22, 2018 [16 favorites]

SecretAgentSockpuppet: "Just a reminder that runoff elections are happening in four states today."

Primaries are in four states today, one of which (Texas) is having primary runoffs.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:36 AM on May 22, 2018 [7 favorites]

I'm trying to imaging a worse job than doing IT support in the current Whitehouse.
posted by octothorpe at 8:37 AM on May 22, 2018 [35 favorites]

but somehow life in my midwestern state capital, in my federally funded research group, is proceeding as ever.

I spent a year as a contract archives cataloger at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, working mainly with SS records related to deportations of Jews to death camps and the seizure of their assets. Maybe the most unnerving thing about it was the commonplace, bureaucratic banality of the documentation of the destruction of thousands of lives - all rubber stamped, signed, and in duplicate. Right down to the coffee stains and the occasional cigarette ash burn. Hundreds of rolls of microfilm worth of it. ^*

Fascism doesn't represent a stark departure from the norm of a modern state, but the re-purposing of its machinery for evil (or still more evil) purposes. For those who weren't the targets of the Nazis, it very much felt like things were "proceeding as ever", or even improving.

I've said in the past here that I don't think the US is likely to be susceptible to a broad, Nazi-style campaign against racial / ethic minorities, and I still think that's the case. But serious damage is obviously being done to the democratic institutions that serve as a bulwark against fascism here, and I don't think we should let the fact that they continue to function for the time being lull us into complacency about the danger we're facing.

* And, contrary to stereotypes of German efficiency, filled with the same errors, inconsistencies, and angry handwritten annotations from up and down the chain of command.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:42 AM on May 22, 2018 [109 favorites]

Cook moves four House seats right:

CA-39 (R - open) | Lean D => Toss-up
CA-49 (R - open) | Lean D => Toss-up
NE-02 (R - Bacon) | Toss-up => Lean R
SC-05 (R - Norman) | Likely R => Solid R

Rationales are: possible top two primary lockout in the CA seats, not nominating Ashford the other night in NE, and this spousal abuse thing in SC. No argument on SC, I think the other three remain to be seen.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:45 AM on May 22, 2018 [12 favorites]

For those who weren't the targets of the Nazis, it very much felt like things were "proceeding as ever", or even improving.

In the diaries of Victor Klemperer there's an anecdote in which a non-Jewish friend of Klemperer tells him that the situation must be improving for Jews in Germany, because he was suddenly seeing more and more Jews walking openly in the streets: he had no idea that this was because Jews had been forbidden from using public transportation. That's what it's like.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:53 AM on May 22, 2018 [130 favorites]

I’m not sure how we can really stop this honestly, and it’s a real problem that is only going to increase.

Something like:

(1) Social media companies, you have to ensure that all the ads on your platform are legal and that any directly or indirectly paid activity on your platform is legal. That is, if someone hires people to do stuff on your platform, you have to make sure that those people are legally permitted to do that stuff for pay, and that the legal stuff they're doing has whatever disclaimers or disclosures are required.

(2) Every year, we are gonna audit your asses, and you gotta pay us 1.0003^(number of times someone is exposed to illegal activity) dollars. That is, for 10,000 impressions it's a pittance, and at 100,000 impressions your fine is more than half of US GDP.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:59 AM on May 22, 2018 [10 favorites]

Honestly I also think it’s reasonable to exempt people who will have an exceedingly hard time finding jobs from employment requirements, but also think it should be expanded to urban areas as well.

Not it's not reasonable, because it against the fucking law. Obamacare, the law of the land, says that the only requirement for Medicaid eligibility is income. Not work status, not health status, not wealth status and not drug status. Income. That's it.

Trump is simply failing to enforce the law and allowing red Republican states to receive waivers to the law in order to keep people from receiving the benefits they are due according to law.

This work requirement is similar to the drug testing requirement. When states required drug testing requirements for food stamps they found that 99% of recipients passed. The cost of the testing was greater than the money saved. The only purpose was to create bureaucratic barriers to eligibility.

The fact is that 80% of Medicaid recipients live in homes that have working adults. For those not working, the most common reasons not working are caring for family members, because they themselves are ill or disabled, or going to school.

And further, the working percentage is even higher in the states that expanded Medicaid because the working poor, those below the poverty level, are now eligible for Medicaid.

The purpose of these work requirements is not to encourage work. It is simple cruelty, to create more barriers, more hoops, more paperwork, more bureaucratic bullshit to discourage participation in Medicaid. If you don't fill out your documentation properly, you can be excluded from Medicaid for the next year.

And these dumbass Republicans don't even know that the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't even reliably measure the employment rate in rural counties. They simply do not have the sampling resolution to do so. Just to get a reasonable approximation, the BLS has to lump together several rural counties in order to have enough samples to come up with a number. The only reason for Republicans' county level exemptions is to hurt people of color and help white people.

The beauty of Obamacare Medicaid is that it eliminated the patchwork of arbitrary, differing, and confusing requirements in each state. There is now one simple requirement across the country -- low income. (In states that accepted Medicaid expansion money)

So no, these aren't reasonable exemptions because there should be no exemptions to a requirement that shouldn't even exist.
posted by JackFlash at 9:00 AM on May 22, 2018 [110 favorites]

ryanshepard, thank you for that horrible and unsettling image - as it should be.

I don’t feel complacent exactly. I feel like I’ve been on the crescendo of some kind of slow-motion panic attack for some time, especially this week (though perhaps this is the wrong thread for feelings). The fact that everything around me is proceeding as usual while it looks from the news like our democracy is dying is jarring. Is this what gaslighting feels like?

Rosie M. Banks, I guess you could say I live in that sort of place (reddish-purple state, blue city). I am dependent on two layers of government for my salary and I guess three layers for transportation (transit subsidies etc). I would think people in other parts of this red state would be more vulnerable than I am, because we are a rich city and much of the rural part of the state is poor and actually receives higher per capita government support, but I guess I can’t be sure.
posted by eirias at 9:03 AM on May 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

Security guards forcibly remove AP reporter from EPA building.
posted by Melismata at 9:08 AM on May 22, 2018 [26 favorites]

Ella Nilsen, Vox: The Democratic establishment torched this woman veteran in a Kentucky congressional race

Amy McGrath has been a fundraising and viral success — and voters will decide today if they’ll listen to the establishment.

posted by ZeusHumms at 9:10 AM on May 22, 2018 [8 favorites]

I've said in the past here that I don't think the US is likely to be susceptible to a broad, Nazi-style campaign against racial / ethic minorities, and I still think that's the case.

The US has a long history of Nazi-style campaigns against minorities. It's why Hitler believed he'd get away with it.
posted by Merus at 9:17 AM on May 22, 2018 [17 favorites]

Vox, don’t use figurative stuff in headlines in 2018. I had to check that a woman wasn’t literally set on fire.
posted by erisfree at 9:20 AM on May 22, 2018 [59 favorites]

Today is Primary Runoff Election day in Texas. The big one is the Democratic nominee for Governor, the candidates are Lupe Valdez, former Dallas County Sheriff, and Andrew White, son of former governor Mark White. Valdez was leading White by about double in the primary election, but fell short of 50% so it moved to runoff.

The Texas Tribune has a good rundown, but the question basically boils down to the now standard Democratic infighting over the question of electibility, White is seen as more electable by many and not just centrists. Houston's biggest LGBT group endorsed White, which many outsiders found surprising since Valdez is a lesbian. Their rationale is that while White is explicitly running as a conservative Democrat he has a better chance of winning than Valdez and even a conservative Democrat would be better than another term of Greg Abbott.

In the closely watched District 21 race to determine who will replace outgoing long term and extremely influential Rep Lamar Smith (you may remember him as the Republican chair of the House Science Committee who denies global warming), the primary election has gone to a runoff for both the Democrats and the Republicans. Despite Smith handily winning reelection year after year this is seen as a possible pickup for Democrats which has given the seat more attention than it otherwise might get.

On the Democratic side the two entering the runoff are Mary Wilson and Joseph Kopser. In that election, as in the runoff, Kosper was the choice of the Democratic establishment getting both money and endorsements from the national party and prominant Democrats. Kosper outspent Wilson by close to 20 to 1. Wilson ran a grassroots campaign against the active opposition of the national Party and came in first in the primaries by a hair: 30.93% of the votes for her vs 28.98% for Kosper.

Again, the debate centers around electibility and the belief by some that only a conservative Democrat can win in Texas. It got ugly when Kosper put out what was seen by many as a push poll to emphasize the fact that Wilson is a lesbian. The San Antonio Express News has a good rundown of the primary election and its outcome.

On the Republican side, which is more likely to win TX-21 in the general election, both are far right wing Republicans and the real debate is over who is the most right wing.

Chip Roy is Ted Cruz' former chief of staff, he argues that birthright citizenship should end, the IRS should be abolished, and the US should adopt a national sales tax.

Matt McCall has run Tea Party supported primary challenges against Lamar Smith in prior elections and pledges that he will not vote for any debt limit ceiling increase that doesn't also include eliminating at least one department of the government. McCall would also like to abolish the 17th Amendment and end direct election of Senators.

Both candidates went for personal attacks during the primary, and are continuing that during the runup to the runoff.

Roy is the likely victor on the Republican side. The Austin-American Statesman has a good rundown of the two Republican candidates.

The TL;DR is that if the Republicans win in TX-21 (as is likely) then the person replacing Lamar Smith will, somehow, be even more of a right wing extremist than Smith was.
posted by sotonohito at 9:21 AM on May 22, 2018 [12 favorites]

Joanna Smialek, Bloomberg News: "Twitter Bots Helped Trump and Brexit Win, Economic Study Says"

Good news everybody! Twitter Is Going To Limit The Visibility Of Tweets From People Behaving Badly -- Act like a jerk, and Twitter will start limiting how often your tweets show up. (Alex Kantrowitz for Buzzfeed, May 15, 2018)

But of course Twitter explains (again) why it won't block Trump (back in January 2018) -- Twitter said that blocking or censoring the accounts of world leaders runs contrary to the social network's goal of fostering a "global, public conversation."
posted by filthy light thief at 9:31 AM on May 22, 2018 [6 favorites]

Kevin Drum at MoJo has a couple of interesting items back-to-back today.

First, Who Did Playboy Model Shera Bechard Really Have an Affair With?

It always seemed odd that Broidy had paid Shera Bechard $1.6 million for her silence ... [leading] Paul Campos to make the case that it was actually Donald Trump who had the affair, with Broidy taking the fall for him. [But the case was purely speculative.] ... After reading this AP story it sure seems a helluva lot more likely that Campos was right. By last November Broidy could practically smell his deals finally coming together. There was the $600 million deal with the UAE plus another deal worth $1 billion that he was pitching to Saudi Arabia. If he thought that taking a fall for Trump could be the final brick that would bring this all together, why wouldn’t he do it?

Next, and again perfectly in line with the thread title again, ZTE Lives! Thanks, Donald.

China recently invested $500 million in an Indonesian project that will feature Trump-branded hotels and a golf course. The investment looks like it’s already paying off.

Abusing public office for private enrichment? They're using anti-corruption guidelines as a To-Do list, and national security can get fucked as long as the spice keeps flowing.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:33 AM on May 22, 2018 [27 favorites]

It's estimated only half of these cell phone trackers belong to US law enforcement—the rest are espionage hardware.

Strictly speaking, they are all espionage hardware. I think this means that half are foreign espionage hardware.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:33 AM on May 22, 2018 [18 favorites]

That Vox story on the Kentucky race is weak tea. "The Democratic establishment" apparently just means Amy McGrath's opponent Jim Gray, who once said the DCCC encouraged him to run, though the party hasn't made any endorsements in the race. In fact, various national Democrats chastised Gray for an ad that points out that McGrath moved to the district specifically to run for Congress and had never lived there before (she had been in the military and is a Kentucky native, but from further north in the state). Gray apparently constitutes the Democratic establishment because he has prior political experience as mayor of Lexington and 2016 Senate candidate, not because the party is doing anything at all to tilt the scales on this race, and his ad constitutes "torching" McGrath because Vox likes it when people click on articles.
posted by vathek at 9:34 AM on May 22, 2018 [25 favorites]

There is only one Trump scandal.

A/K/A GUTTS: Grand Unified Theory of Trump Scandals.
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:39 AM on May 22, 2018 [13 favorites]

1. seeing his picture calms me down and makes me feel that someone, somewhere, is working against evil

I wonder if the best possible thing for Donald Trump wouldn’t be a Mueller investigation of infinite length. The knowledge that he’s there keeps us calm, myself included (and I suspect many on both sides of the aisle in Congress included), and that calmness works to Trump’s advantage. As Rebecca Solnit said, we keep waiting for the coup, and it already happened.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:40 AM on May 22, 2018 [11 favorites]

sotonohito: "The Texas Tribune has a good rundown, but the question basically boils down to the now standard Democratic infighting over the question of electibility, White is seen as more electable by many and not just centrists. Houston's biggest LGBT group endorsed White, which many outsiders found surprising since Valdez is a lesbian. Their rationale is that while White is explicitly running as a conservative Democrat he has a better chance of winning than Valdez and even a conservative Democrat would be better than another term of Greg Abbott."

There's also been a lot of talk that Valdez hasn't been running a very strong campaign - it took her weeks to name a campaign manager, etc. Maybe some of that's politically motivated, but it does seem like she's not meeting the O'Rourke standard.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:40 AM on May 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

@BenjaminWittes writes about the maneuvering and compromises of Wray and Rosenstein:

If Wray and Rosenstein can reach an accommodation they can live with—even a bad one—the exigent need to protect the Mueller investigation may well justify a step that would otherwise be unacceptable...

Second, let’s all be a little bit humble about judging these men. I have had harsh words for Rosenstein in the past, and Wray has handled some things suboptimally, in my view. But they are both right now in a simply impossible situation. And they are playing a critical role.

posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:44 AM on May 22, 2018 [16 favorites]

> The Democratic establishment torched this woman veteran in a Kentucky congressional race

That Vox article is making plenty of flawed assumptions, and it's one in particular that drives me nuts - It's assuming that they need to win over Trump voters, and that because there are 100,000 more registered democratic voters than Republican, that the Registered democratic voters that "flipped" to Trump are the decisive voters.

The reality is:
- Democratic turnout was very poor in that region over the past few elections, so it's not that Democratic voters "flipped" - they didn't vote in the first place.
- "Trump voters" cannot be "won over" in this election. You are not going to get someone who is a Trumpist to vote for EITHER an openly gay man or a woman for a position of authority.
- KY regional results are not always correlated to national results
- The KY democratic party is weird and frustrating, and any rational analysis of the party cannot be based on behavior of the nation as a large

Beyond that, that article is painting Gray in an extremely negative light- Outside of being a "big-city, older millionaire", Gray is someone who is very beloved for his past leadership as Mayor of Lexington, and is viewed in an extremely positive light by the people in the region - and he has been successful as an openly gay man in a region that is, putting it lightly, not the most tolerant of LGBT folk. He's had to overcome a lot of adversity to get to where he is. I don't think he should have run an attack ad against her, I think that was a really giant mistake - but to paint this as "Woman veteran newcomer attacked by THE ESTABLISHMENT" is conveniently ignoring a significant portion of Grays story, and it's also ignoring a significant amount of HER story...

It's really frustrating that the focus is on McGrath's lack of political experience as a virtue. She has actual positions that are much more engaging to those who would vote for her than 1. Veteran and 2. Outsider - For example, she believes strongly that healthcare is a human right, and that's one of her top campaign points.

This article is everything wrong with election coverage distilled into a single piece.
posted by MysticMCJ at 9:46 AM on May 22, 2018 [43 favorites]

McGrath and Gray are both good candidates. The DCCC did encourage Gray to get in the race after McGrath had already declared, but he might have done that anyway, he'd been openly debating his next political move ever since losing the Senate race. I've talked to some people in KY and they got the impression McGrath wasnt getting a lot of donor response at first, and that's why Gray got another call. McGrath has seemingly closed that initial money gap with more name recognition, she'd probably be fine from that perspective in the general now.

The DCCC does candidate recruitment, pretty much the whole point of their existence is to call people like Jim Gray and Phil Bredesen and ask them to run. They haven't pulled any underhanded tricks against McGrath like they did against Laura Moser in TX-7.

I do think Gray has the better chance to win, but that's based on his actual record as Mayor, it's not because he's going to win over Trump voters as some kind of stealth DINO. He's the most popular Mayor of Lexington in my lifetime, basically no one I know has a bad word to say about him. McGrath could win too in a wave environment, but she's going to have a lot more work to do without Gray's track record and popularity, and she might only be in office two years, where Gray could win several terms. If I had to pick, let's just take the lay up here please. Gray would be a bog standard business friendly Democrat that won't be a progressive firebrand like maybe McGrath would, but I can't see him voting against the party line much at all either.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:09 AM on May 22, 2018 [9 favorites]

It always seemed odd that Broidy had paid Shera Bechard $1.6 million for her silence ...

Why indeed would he do this...

Susan Simpson (The View From LL2)
Dec 1, 2017: Elliott Broidy makes first payment under a $1.6M hush agreement negotiated by Michael Cohen, the president's personal attorney, that prevents Brechard from speaking of her affair/abortion with David Dennison.

Dec 2, 2017: Broidy gets a private meeting with Trump. ARTICLE SCREENSHOT

Dec 4, 2009: Broidy pleaded guilty to bribing a political official as part of a pay-to-play scheme by giving ~$140K to a model that the political official was having an affair with.
posted by chris24 at 10:15 AM on May 22, 2018 [41 favorites]

octothorpe: I'm trying to imaging a worse job than doing IT support in the current Whitehouse.

What's that you say? Well, maybe just barely. [YT]

--
odinsdream: This is emphatically not the case with the fucking President, where likely most or all of the attacks are going to be APTs.

I've heard the infosec staff from Harvard deliver talks at the springtime Security Camp in Boston a few times in recent years, and they are under constant, agile, thoughtful attack at all times, in addition to the same flood of garbage probes that everyone faces 24/7. Ugh, it was exhausting just getting walked through some of the timelines of particular incidents. Godspeed to you, nerds.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:18 AM on May 22, 2018 [7 favorites]

Israel and Evangelicals: New U.S. Embassy Signals a Growing Alliance

While Israel has long depended on the support of the Jewish diaspora, the Netanyahu government has made a historic and strategic shift, relying on the much larger base of evangelical Christians, even at the risk of turning off American Jews who may be troubled by some evangelicals’ denigration of their faith.

The paradox is well known: The beliefs of many evangelical Christians that Israel is special to God — and, for some, a marker in apocalyptic prophecies — lead many to hawkish support of the Jewish state while they simultaneously insist that salvation awaits only those who accept Jesus as their savior.

Mr. Netanyahu’s calculation mirrors that of his strong ally in Washington, where Mr. Trump has tapped a wellspring of evangelical support. Many of his top evangelical advisers attended the embassy dedication as well as private meetings with Mr. Netanyahu last week.

But liberal Israelis warn that the increasingly close ties between the Israeli right and the Christian right are accelerating a polarization that is turning support for Israel into a partisan question in Washington; not one Democratic lawmaker attended the embassy opening.

Liberal Jews also complain of a double standard, noting that Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government is far more vigilant about allegations of bigotry on the political left than among its conservative backers.
[...]
David M. Friedman, the American ambassador to Israel who presided over the embassy dedication, said evangelical Christians “support Israel with much greater fervor and devotion than many in the Jewish community.”

“You’re running a country, you need friends, you need alliances, you need to protect your people,” he said in an interview.

posted by zombieflanders at 10:29 AM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

As an IT guy, yeah. Trump seems like a nightmare to try and work with. He's one of those people who has to be right about everything, and who believes they already know everything so you can't tell him anything. My guess is that since most tech is likely completely opaque to him, Trump has decided it's just unimportant toys and that anyone who really pays much attention to technology is a fool and probably some sort of overgrown child.

Result is that he does stupid stuff with his tech, you can't tell him not to, you can't explain why doing what he did is a bad idea, and he will continue to do it because he sees any sort of security arrangements as just overgrown children playing with meaningless toys.

Naturally all of that masks a fundamental fear of technology that has developed since his formative years. Note his fascination with the White House phone system, which is old school enough he can at least sort of pretend to get it, his declaration that digital catapults for aircraft carriers were crap and everyone should use steam, and so on.

He's the sort of client every tech has had experience with, and that every tech dreads. When they're above you in a company it's time to dust off the resume because sticking around will be a miserable experience.

Chrysostom Yes,it's also true that Valdez has run a strangely incompetent campaign (her debate performance was also awful). I left that off though because despite her campaign being seemingly incompetent, she's got a double digit lead over White so clearly she must be doing something right even though it looks really incompetent from the outside.

Either that or the insider/outsider, more left / less left, straight white guy / lesbian Latina, dichotomy is more significant than her not very well run campaign.
posted by sotonohito at 10:30 AM on May 22, 2018 [12 favorites]

Twitter explains (again) why it won't block Trump (back in January 2018) -- Twitter said that blocking or censoring the accounts of world leaders runs contrary to the social network's goal of fostering a "global, public conversation."

Then don't block POTUS45. RealDonaldTrump is just a personal account; it should be subject to the standard terms of use.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:32 AM on May 22, 2018 [53 favorites]

Mark Zuckerberg's face as Nigel Farage praises the social network for enabling Brexit, Trump, and the Italian election results

Is he happy? Sad? One can never tell with replicants.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:34 AM on May 22, 2018 [13 favorites]

Someone has to nail the Twitter leadership down on the question of whether it's conceivably possible for a world leader's account to violate the rules so egregiously that it is blocked. If the answer is no, then perhaps for the sake of honesty they should just remove the "report" button from those accounts. (Although the resultant excitement from deplorables about an "officially" unchained Donald might not be worth it.)
posted by InTheYear2017 at 10:39 AM on May 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

“We’re moving along. We’ll see what happens," says Pres Trump of planned summit with Kim Jong-un. But in Oval Office photo op with Pres Moon, @POTUS prepared for a postponement. "If it doesn’t happen, maybe it will happen later.” "It may not work out for June 12th."

He never fucking knows. He says stuff like this all of the time because he has no clue what's going on and tries to bluff his way through these statements to sound like a big man, and because he thinks keeping people guessing helps his ratings (not his approval ratings, his TV ratings which are the only ratings he cares about). He's a fool and the longer the world has to deal with him, the worse off we all are.
posted by Servo5678 at 10:40 AM on May 22, 2018 [31 favorites]

An actual sinkhole has opened on the White House lawn. It’s growing Heather Timmons, Quartz [real]

“It was noticeably bigger between Sunday and Monday,” Herman said. “It’s more than a foot long right now,” he said. A second sinkhole has opened up right next to it, he said.

Pithy metacommentary on irony and/or narrative made manifest is left as an exercise for the reader.
posted by Freon at 10:46 AM on May 22, 2018 [64 favorites]

CBS's Bianna Golodryga @biannagolodryga from Trump's pool spray with President Moon today: “What’s your next question?” Trump’s response after being asked if he has confidence in Rod Rosenstein.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:47 AM on May 22, 2018 [8 favorites]

Daniel Nexon, LGM: The Constitutional Crisis is That There is No “Crisis”

Of course, we’ve been in a constitutional crisis, at the very least, since Trump fired FBI director James Comey under transparent pretenses, only to immediately admit that the real reason was Comey’s handling of the Russia probe. Subsequent revelations have clarified that, prior to the firing, Trump pressured Comey to order the FBI to limit its investigation. [...]

Thus, various commentators have called for “red lines,” such as the “firing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Attorney General Jeff Sessions” or “Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.” A number of senators, including Republicans, have proclaimed “red lines,” such as firing special prosecutor Robert Mueller. But it remains unclear whether any such “red lines” exist, and for whom they matter. [...]

In his classic work, Arms and Influence, Thomas Schelling writes that:

“Salami tactics,” we can be sure, were invented by a child…. Tell a child not to go in the water and he’ll sit on the bank and submerge his bare feet; he is not yet “in” the water. Acquiesce, and he’ll stand up; no more of him is in the water than before. Think it over, and he’ll start wading, not going any deeper; take a moment to decide whether this is different and he’ll go a little deeper, arguing that since he goes back and forth it all averages out. Pretty soon we are calling to him not to swim out of sight, wondering whatever happened to all our discipline

Salami tactics work by exploiting ambiguity. They involve incremental violations—of borders, political commitments, or institutional norms—that can be excused away; they always seem to fall short of inviting retaliation. [...]

We might argue that Trump is a creature of “probes” and “testing.” That’s always been the nature of his confidence game. It would follow that salami tactics are a basic part of his arsenal. But I think this misreads the situation. Trump is also a creature of impulse. Whether the issue is withdrawing American troops from the Korean peninsula or firing Mueller, we see a pattern in which his advisors and aides constantly run interference. Trump wants to do something risky, for national security or his own political survival, and those around him scramble to ‘satisfy’ him while avoiding a crisis—or preventing the crisis from, so to speak, going nuclear. Everyone involved then breathes a sigh of relief.

The problem: in practice, this process produces a steady stream of “small violations” that are never enough to shift GOP elites, or provide a clear rallying cry for Democrats, and that buy even more time to propagandize the Republican base. [...]

The crisis never comes, and thus we continue on a very dangerous path.

posted by tonycpsu at 10:49 AM on May 22, 2018 [76 favorites]

Speaking of The White House lawn, did that tree French President Emmanuel Macron brought make it out of quarantine and get replanted?
posted by jazon at 10:54 AM on May 22, 2018

> It is absolutely worth it to spend enormous amounts of resources (money, people, time) to target Trump's personal phone, especially because of how he uses it.

Yeah, if I'm a nation state, maybe I break into every Apple Store in DC and replace their entire stock of iPhones with my slightly modified version of the hardware, which features always-on, always transmitting microphones.

Just in case some staffer gets the bright idea of walking to a store to buy a "random" iPhone with the belief that it might be safe to do so - like Trump ordering food from McDs.

Sure, it would be somewhat expensive. But imagine the payoff.

And if I can imagine this scenario, I am sure that foreign intelligence services have done better. Maybe they suborn the gold master iOS (and Android, equal time) software to behave in a certain way only when the GPS coordinates are in a certain range. Why not? It would be undetectable in usage testing, and all you need is to bribe a few people with access to the code and the two engineers who audit that obscure module.

If your target is the President himself, what level of investment might be justified? What pressure might you bring to bear?

Meanwhile, this jackass can't even be bothered to listen to basic advice from his own experts.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:55 AM on May 22, 2018 [13 favorites]

An actual sinkhole has opened on the White House lawn.

Maybe that's what happened to that tree they planted.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:58 AM on May 22, 2018 [9 favorites]

Re: Broidy and Bechard: let’s imagine that Campos’ and Drum’s speculation is right, the affair was Trump’s, and Broidy’s money was meant to buy access. That happened in December and we found out about Daniels in January. The different price tags for the two hush payments surprised me. Is that why Daniels spoke up? Because she got wind of this other case somehow and realized she’d been stiffed? Or do we already have some other explanation for the timing?
posted by eirias at 10:58 AM on May 22, 2018 [5 favorites]

Don't be ridiculous; nobody would replace an entire iPhone store on the off-chance that the President's new phone is going to be one of them.

They just need to plant an intern near him so that when the president mutters something about "damn network is slow" the intern says "I can fix that for you! Let me install this app that speeds up the access!" And what they've got is some 99-cent "security speedup" app in the iStore that mostly does some pointless "monitor your batter life" activity, but is written to allow backdoor access if a specific password is given on installation.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:01 AM on May 22, 2018 [8 favorites]

And if they want to plant someone near him, they don't go for White House staff; that place has actual security. (Sort of.) They look for waiter openings at Mar-a-Lago.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:03 AM on May 22, 2018 [10 favorites]

Or you know, just have Trump give up allied sourced intelligence directly to your face in the Oval Office.
posted by PenDevil at 11:08 AM on May 22, 2018 [54 favorites]

Rationales are: possible top two primary lockout in the CA seats

If we don't take the House because a bunch of narcissists wouldn't drop out of the primary despite being behind in the polling... well, I actually won't be surprised. But seriously, drop the fuck out of these races if you're not one of the top 2 polling Democrats. Or I will be very cross with you.
posted by Justinian at 11:15 AM on May 22, 2018 [11 favorites]

Really, though, pour one out for the foreign intelligence agencies that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on 0-day exploits to compromise the President's phone only to realize that audio feeds of Fox & Friends are already widely available.
posted by 0xFCAF at 11:15 AM on May 22, 2018 [35 favorites]

> They just need to plant an intern near him

Maybe that's what the Germans did.

> They look for waiter openings at Mar-a-Lago.

And maybe that's what the Ukrainians did.

> nobody would replace an entire iPhone store on the off-chance that the President's new phone is going to be one of them.

If I'm the Chinese intelligence service, are you *sure* I wouldn't? Actually, maybe I suborn FoxConn.

> just have Trump give up allied sourced intelligence directly to your face in the Oval Office.

Yeah, if you're the Russians, you don't really need any of this, do you?
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:15 AM on May 22, 2018 [11 favorites]

I imagine the Russians' main concern is how to avoid the other countries' surveillance operations when getting information from the White House.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:20 AM on May 22, 2018 [20 favorites]

But seriously, drop the fuck out of these races if you're not one of the top 2 polling Democrats

On top of too many giant assholes running, part of the problem seems to be the lack of reliable polling in House districts. There's pretty much just internal poll results, which lets the trailing candidates claim that they're not actually trailing.

If billionaires like Tom Seyer wanted to do some actual good with their money, paying for some legitimate polling in key House races could help. It's not the first thing I'd do with a billion dollars, but it's better than an impeachment billboard.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:24 AM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

I imagine the Russians' main concern is how to avoid the other countries' surveillance operations when getting information from the White House.

The Oval Office is probably bugged like a Cuban embassy. It's a wonder all the competing frequencies aren't making people's ears bleed.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:25 AM on May 22, 2018 [6 favorites]

ErisLordFreedom: RealDonaldTrump is just a personal account; it should be subject to the standard terms of use.

Except Tweets by @realDonaldTrump are official statements of the @POTUS, per Justice Department back in Nov. 2017.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:28 AM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

It's not the first thing I'd do with a billion dollars, but it's better than an impeachment billboard.

But that might mean only running his self-aggrandizing television commercials every 15 minutes instead of every 10 minutes. Crazy talk. Good point about the polling though. There's got to be someone who can intervene here. We've got a golden opportunity to pick up a bunch of seats here in CA and we're on the verge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
posted by Justinian at 11:29 AM on May 22, 2018

Yeah, if I'm a nation state, maybe I break into every Apple Store in DC and replace their entire stock of iPhones with my slightly modified version of the hardware, which features always-on, always transmitting microphones.

I'm kinda wondering if doing something similar hasn't occurred to the WH IT guys? There's probably big bucks out there for some recordings of SCOTUS/Hannity late-night love calls. You could always blame it on "hackers."
posted by Thorzdad at 11:29 AM on May 22, 2018 [5 favorites]

An actual sinkhole has opened on the White House lawn. It’s growing Heather Timmons, Quartz [real]

Soon, The Orb will rise.
posted by mikepop at 11:40 AM on May 22, 2018 [51 favorites]

An actual sinkhole has opened on the White House lawn. It’s growing Heather Timmons, Quartz

That's an odd combination of growths
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:48 AM on May 22, 2018 [41 favorites]

Something weird is going on with the Ipsos generic ballot poll. Sample seems to have changed to far more Trump voters.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:50 AM on May 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

Something weird is going on with the Ipsos generic ballot poll. Sample seems to have changed to far more Trump voters.

That may be true but the charts at that link aren't saying anything like that? It's just another way of expressing the generic ballot margin over time? Or are you basing the claim on info from someplace else.
posted by Justinian at 12:01 PM on May 22, 2018

Trump admits North Korea nuclear summit 'may not work out'.
The Bolton Administration Has Already Begun - Foreign Policy In Focus - May 16th. The hard-right national security adviser successfully tanked the Iran deal. His next target? The North Korea talks.
posted by adamvasco at 12:02 PM on May 22, 2018 [5 favorites]

This seems to be real? Shining achievement: is Trump’s celebratory Kim​ Jong-un coin a little premature?

The newly minted coin commemorates a summit that hasn’t happened yet – let’s hope the North Korean leader turns up

From The Guardian.
posted by mumimor at 12:05 PM on May 22, 2018 [7 favorites]

CBS's Bianna Golodryga @biannagolodryga from Trump's pool spray with President Moon today: “What’s your next question?” Trump’s response after being asked if he has confidence in Rod Rosenstein.

“My next question is ‘Why don’t you want to answer my question about your confidence in Rod Rosenstein?’”
posted by msalt at 12:05 PM on May 22, 2018 [54 favorites]

But it remains unclear whether any such “red lines” exist, and for whom they matter.

That's polite of the author to say, but it's pretty clear to whom they don't matter.

Why is anyone surprised when the party has made it an article of faith that the institutions of government are a problem to be rid of is not particularly interested in making sure those institutions can operate without interference? Why is anyone surprised when the core value of the modern GOP is doing anything at all to avoid accountability of private power ... doesn't want leadership to be accountable to public institutions, even if it's leadership they may privately/quietly recognize as corrupt and incompetent?

Modern Republican core values are operating as expected here. The fact that they have little to do with loving the institutions that have made America great isn't a shock.
posted by wildblueyonder at 12:06 PM on May 22, 2018 [8 favorites]

From a few weeks ago, Dutch news magazine Zembla released a ½-hour documentary “Pounds And Poison From Moscow” (in English; “pounds” as in £) about Sergei Magnitsky's murder, the U.S. Magnitsky Act, the 2016 Trump Tower meeting (the one with Russia, obv), the repeated frustrated attempts during the last 6 years to get an equivalent to the Magnitsky Act enacted in the Netherlands, and the numerous assassinations in London by the Russian government.

(content warning: descriptions of murders and close-up forensic photos of injuries on Magnitsky's limbs)

Includes extensive interviews with Ben Browder, the American-British friend and associate of Magnitsky who champion the legislation in the U.S. and has been working in the Dutch and EU legislatures, and an interview with Heidi Blake, a Buzzfeed journalist whose book Poison In The System about the London killings was nominated for a Pulitzer.

There's also an interview with Natalia Veselnitskaya who alleges that Browder has “killed too many people already”. I guess because the Russian government claims that the financial fraud Magnitsky, Browder, and others were investigating when he died—supposedly due to a heart attack in their version—was actually perpetrated by them and they have been trying to cover it up? And she didn't meet with the Trump campaign on behalf of the Russian government, but “it would have been an honor” if she had.

At the end the Zembla documentary suggests that the Skripal poisoning has prompted... the Dutch Parliament, I think? to reconsider their own version of the Magnitsky Act. English Google results seem to indicate that nothing conclusive has happened yet.

Also btw last year Nikolai Gorokhov, a lawyer for Magnitzky's family, mysteriously fell from a fourth-story balcony in Moscow. He survived but suffered a skull fracture that put him in the hospital for quite a while and has no memory of what happened, but believes someone was trying to kill him.
posted by XMLicious at 12:09 PM on May 22, 2018 [14 favorites]

Stopped Clock Jennifer Rubin, WaPo: Did Rosenstein and Wray play Trump?

I would suggest a third take on the meeting: Wray and Rosenstein, with Mueller’s full backing, might be setting up Trump. We know Mueller is already pursuing an obstruction-of-justice inquiry that might relate to acts such as Trump firing former FBI director James B. Comey, falsely accusing him of illegally leaking confidential material, pressuring Comey to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn, helping draft a phony cover story to explain the June 9 Trump Tower meeting and conducting an extended campaign to smear, discredit and disrupt the work of the FBI and the special counsel. In that vein, wouldn’t a meeting directly ordering Wray and Rosenstein to conduct what amounts to a wild goose chase and to put confidential material into the hands of congressional allies be part of the pattern of possible obstruction they are investigating?

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:23 PM on May 22, 2018 [18 favorites]

NYT, Chances of China Trade Win Undercut by Trump Team Infighting. This is just a long litany of how not to have a trade negotiation. As Ilan Goldberg summarizes:

As someone who was part of diplomatic talks, this story on how Trump team screwed up China negotiations is a textbook case of nearly EVERY SINGLE THING you should NOT do. Bodes badly for North Korea summit. Let’s pick it apart step by grueling step

Before the talks. Fail to prepare. Don’t have sufficient deliberations to come to a common negotiating position as a team. This is where you need an engaged POTUS to listen to the disagreements among the team & set guidance. Of course Trump won’t do that.

During the talks. Because you failed to prepare have “profanity laced shouting matches” amongst yourselves in front of the Chinese encouraging them to exploit splits in the US team.

Have the President publicly tweet sensitive concessions he plans to make causing a backlash in Congress that shuts down those options before they’ve even been offered or negotiated. now you’ve taken away your negotiating space.

Also leak China’s concession to the press causing them to have to deny the concessions publicly and forcing the Chinese to & take a harder line. Now you’ve taken away your counterpart’s negotiating space.

After the talks fail have various members of the team come out with different positions that publicly criticize the results of the negotiations and each other. Because that sends a good signal before the next negotiating round.

Top it off with a front page NY Times story where clearly many of the US negotiators disparaged each other to the press. Because I’m sure they’ll now work really well as a team going forward.

Good luck with the North Korea summit. Glad we got rid of the JCPOA to negotiate a better deal. And of course we’ll get the ultimate deal on Israel-Palestine. God help us all

And remember, this is yet another problem entirely of Trump's own making. He's the one that started these trade talks and hired a bunch of idiots to run them.

----

McClatchy, Trump works to cut high-skilled visas in NAFTA deal

The administration wants to limit the number of eligible professions and decrease the number of visa renewals of Treaty NAFTA , or TN, visas as the countries renegotiate the 1994 trade deal. Trump, who has forced the renegotiation, has threatened to scrap it unless it addresses the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico.

“At the negotiating table, the U.S. statements have been basically, ‘Look, we want to scale this back, we don’t want to agree to expand it (visas),’" said Eric Miller, a trade consultant who has worked for the Canadian government and continues to advise them on the negotiations.

The discussions over the visas are continuing even though Congress passed a bill in 2016 barring any administration from trying to change the number of visas granted to a country as part of trade negotiations, after past presidents did just that.

Some people on Capitol Hill who have studied the 2016 law’s language say the administration can work around it by modifying the existing trade agreement instead of writing a new one.
...
Negotiators from the United States, Canada and Mexico missed an informal deadline last week set by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. to complete talks to allow lawmakers to vote on a new treaty this year. Talks continue, but it's highly unlikely now that Congress will consider the treaty this year, given their schedule and the upcoming midterm elections.

posted by zachlipton at 12:35 PM on May 22, 2018 [22 favorites]

Stopped Clock Jennifer Rubin, WaPo: Did Rosenstein and Wray play Trump?

"People" have been saying that the result was going to be DOJ throwing this to the Inspector General, i.e. "somewhat of a black hole," since about an hour after the tweet went out. Furthermore, would that Rubin exercised as much curiosity about DOJ regulations regarding its leadership acting as undercover agents as much as she does toward her own imagination.
posted by rhizome at 12:36 PM on May 22, 2018

Just got a fundraising email from CREW:

As you may have seen in the news last week, President Trump’s 2018 public financial disclosures were just released, and they immediately raised some very serious questions. By finally disclosing his payment to Michael Cohen, President Trump called the accuracy of his 2017 disclosures into question as he failed to report the Cohen loan in them, despite the fact that he was legally required to do so. (For a few links to articles covering last week’s breaking news, please see below.)

In response to this discrepancy and referencing CREW’s prior complaints on the matter, Office of Government Ethics Director David Apol referred these disclosures to the Department of Justice, publicly signaling that the government’s main ethics office believes the loan from Michael Cohen should have been disclosed on President Trump’s 2017 public financial disclosure. This kind of letter from OGE to the Justice Department about a potential disclosure violation by the president is extraordinary (it appears to be a first in OGE’s 40-year history), and it is gratifying that CREW’s complaint helped to spur it.

What does this mean? If the President intentionally failed to disclose the loan from Cohen last year, that is a crime. Failure to properly disclose information required to be reported can result in civil penalties of up to $50,000 and criminal penalties including imprisonment of up to one year. Federal law further prohibits anyone from knowingly and willfully making “any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch, with violations punishable by up to five years in prison.

What happens next? In response to this groundbreaking news, we have filed a criminal complaint against President Trump, calling for an investigation into whether he knowingly and willfully failed to report the Cohen loan on his 2017 disclosure forms. There is substantial evidence that President Trump had knowledge of the loan when he filed his public financial disclosures last year, despite his failure to report it. If the DOJ is not already investigating the president’s failure to disclose the loan last year, it should open an investigation immediately to determine whether there is evidence of a crime, including whether the President did, in fact, knowingly and willfully fail to disclose the loan.

This complaint is one of more than 200 legal actions we have taken concerning this administration. We are working to counter seemingly daily ethics violations from the White House, Administrator Scott Pruitt and the EPA, dark money groups, and others. We couldn’t do any of this without your much-needed support.

I gave. I'll give again.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:41 PM on May 22, 2018 [23 favorites]

How anti-abortion forces learned to love Trump

President Donald Trump on Tuesday night addresses the anti-abortion group that calls him the most "pro-life president" ever. It's the exact same group that just two years ago begged Iowa caucus voters to nominate “anyone” but Trump.

“I’m totally eating my words,” said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser, who's feting Trump at the group's annual gala in Washington. “It’s the happiest wrong I’ve ever been."
...
The Title X changes come on the heels of executive actions to undo an Obamacare requirement that most employers provide contraception in their employee health plans; the expansion of federal prohibitions on foreign aid to nongovernmental organizations that even mention abortion; the establishment of a federal office to review complaints from health care workers who have moral objections to performing some procedures; and deep cuts to the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.
...
The Trump White House and SBA List are so in sync that the group encouraged guests at Tuesday's bash to stay at the Trump International Hotel. The organization even held a contest to win a trip to the gala that includes free accommodations at the venue. An SBA List spokeswoman said the group had already reserved a bloc of rooms at the Trump hotel, adding that it was “fun” for its attendees to stay at a Trump venue.

posted by zachlipton at 1:08 PM on May 22, 2018 [10 favorites]

@chrisgeidner: Meanwhile, @MichaelAvenatti is back in court in New York, claiming: "We have reason to believe that plaintiff Michael Cohen, or members of his team, have begun to leak select audio recordings to the media that were seized in the FBI raids" — specifically about Stormy Daniels.

I'm not sure Avenatti is the most credible person to complain about leaks right now, but this seems to be entering a newly disturbing phase.
posted by zachlipton at 1:17 PM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

Justinian: "That may be true but the charts at that link aren't saying anything like that? It's just another way of expressing the generic ballot margin over time? Or are you basing the claim on info from someplace else."

Here's the data. On April 1, Clinton voters were 48% of respondents. On May 17, 43.8% of respondents.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:21 PM on May 22, 2018 [9 favorites]

@W7VOA: "I do have a real sense" that Kim Jong Un would find American investment, technology and know-how of "real value to his people," says @SecPompeo.

@Joshua_Pollack: NK Vice FM, last week: "The U.S. is trumpeting as if it would offer economic compensation and benefit in case we abandon nuke. But we have never had any expectation of U.S. support in carrying out our economic construction and will not at all make such a deal in future, either."

@nktpnd: It's amazing how the administration has a completely made-up version of North Korea in its head that's entirely divorced from everything North Korea is saying and doing. This isn't to say Kim Jong-un isn't interested in pursuing reform under his New Strategic Line, but he's not interested in total liberalization—rather, he'll want to see scores of Kaesongs around North Korea. What Pompeo is offering is effectively a poison pill for the regime.
posted by zachlipton at 1:29 PM on May 22, 2018 [14 favorites]

"I do have a real sense" that Kim Jong Un would find American investment, technology and know-how of "real value to his people," says @SecPompeo.

Even the most amateur NK pundit would know any investment into NK is going straight into the DPRK leaderhip hidden bank accounts. This is just outright bribery.
posted by PenDevil at 1:32 PM on May 22, 2018 [9 favorites]

Thanks Chrysostom. There does seem to be a meaningful change in the partisan makeup of the respondents in the last few weeks. The number of Republicans (and thus Trump voters) is up significantly while the number of Democrats is down marginally. But they aren't using special sauce to weight the respondents as far as I can tell? They're just reporting the raw results.

That partisan swing, plus a modest uptick in Republican support for Republican candidates (from very very high to very very very high) would be enough to account for much of the shift. So the question is whether that represents Republican enthusiasm kicking in or is a statistical anomaly. Perhaps previously depressed Republicans are now more likely to pick up the phone and say "yes, I am liking the racist and warmongery policies I am seeing and will now definitely vote for more racism and warmongering."
posted by Justinian at 1:42 PM on May 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

OR maybe the Hillary voters are all out organizing and are too busy to respond?
posted by contraption at 1:44 PM on May 22, 2018

Could be a lot of reasons, we won't know until we see some more votes!
posted by Justinian at 1:46 PM on May 22, 2018

I just find it interesting that other pollsters have shown broadly similar trends to each other, and then we have Ipsos falling very suddenly off of a cliff.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:48 PM on May 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

@MichaelAvenatti is back in court in New York, claiming: "We have reason to believe that plaintiff Michael Cohen, or members of his team, have begun to leak select audio recordings to the media that were seized in the FBI raids" — specifically about Stormy Daniels.

I'm confused. The FBI seized materials from Cohen's office. So doesn't he have the right to release any of them any way he likes (unless he has promised confidentiality to his client)?
posted by msalt at 1:51 PM on May 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

Just ran across this 1951 quote from Senator Fulbright (Arkansas)

Scandals in Government are not a new phenomenon. What seems to be new about these scandals is the moral blindness or callousness which allows those in responsible positions to accept the practices which the facts reveal. It is bad enough for us to have corruption in our midst, but it is worse if it is to be condoned and accepted as inevitable.

posted by spamandkimchi at 1:56 PM on May 22, 2018 [14 favorites]

I think I see whats leading to the partisan shift, Chrysostom, though it just pushes the question of causation back one level. The change in the age of respondents from early-mid april to now is striking. 18-34 is down from 36% of respondents to 28%, while 65+ goes from 10% to 18%. 35-49 is down about 4% while 50-64 is up about 4%

So the shift in the age histogram is huge with the fraction of the youngest respondents down the most, then the next youngest down half that, the next oldest up the same amount, and the very oldest up the most. Since age is hugely correlated with support for Trump that'll almost by itself explain the change.

Like I said that just pushes the question back one level though. Maybe young people are busy, like, living their lives what with the warm weather arriving while old folks are still sitting in front of Fox News waiting for the call.
posted by Justinian at 2:05 PM on May 22, 2018 [8 favorites]

@ACLU: BREAKING: A federal court in Virginia has sided with Gavin Grimm saying that federal law protects transgender students from being forced to use separate restroom facilities. [article; opinion]
posted by melissasaurus at 2:11 PM on May 22, 2018 [94 favorites]

@ACLU: BREAKING: A federal court in Virginia has sided with Gavin Grimm saying that federal law protects transgender students from being forced to use separate restroom facilities. [article; opinion]

GOOD!
posted by zarq at 2:14 PM on May 22, 2018 [12 favorites]

Mueller tightens the vice:

Michael Cohen’s Business Partner Agrees to Cooperate as Part of Plea Deal
A significant business partner of Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer, has quietly agreed to cooperate with the government as a potential witness, a development that could be used as leverage to pressure Mr. Cohen to work with the special counsel examining Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Under the agreement, the partner, Evgeny A. Freidman, a Russian immigrant who is known as the Taxi King, will avoid jail time, and will assist government prosecutors in state or federal investigations, according to a person briefed on the matter.
posted by PenDevil at 2:17 PM on May 22, 2018 [37 favorites]

Inae Oh, Mother Jones: "Lesley Stahl Shares Anecdote Explaining Why Trump Keeps Attacking the Press"

At one point Trump started ranting against the press, and Stahl said she took the opportunity to ask him what the point of his attacks were.

“Why do you keep hammering at this?” she recounted to PBS’ Judy Woodruff.

According to Stahl, who was paraphrasing, Trump replied, “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”

posted by OnceUponATime at 2:27 PM on May 22, 2018 [66 favorites]

*State* or federal. No federal pardons for state crimes!
posted by kerf at 2:27 PM on May 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Paul Campos has more deeply irresponsible yet increasingly compelling speculation on the Broidy affair: Hey, Look: More Evidence That Broidy May Have Been Covering for Trump in That Playmate Affair

The story as we've been told it doesn't make a ton of sense. Broidy has a past history (yes yes, eponysterical, no relation to the best of my knowledge) of making payments to the mistress of the public official he's bribing.

A couple days after the Cohen raid, somebody calls up the Wall Street Journal to explain that there's another NDA on behalf of "David Dennison," but this David Dennison isn't Trump; it's Broidy. And Broidy promptly announced the affair with Shera Bechard and the subsequent pregnancy and abortion. Sure, there's getting out ahead of the story, but this was really convenient.

And then two days before Broidy gets his Oval Office meeting with Trump last November, the one where he repeats the Saudi/UAE talking points he's been handsomely compensated to pass along, Broidy wires $200K that ends up with Keith Davidson, followed by further payments that end up with Essential Consultants and Michael Cohen.

Again, this is a guy who has a prior conviction for bribing public officials, a scheme that involved paying the woman an official was having an affair with. And somebody (Qatar?) has hacked his emails and is spreading all kinds of dirt around. There isn't much in the way of actual evidence for Campos's theory that Broidy is covering up an affair for Trump, but it's hard to ignore the theory. And it's surely in both of their nature. I hear Trump has a story he likes to tell about that; something about "you knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in."
posted by zachlipton at 2:28 PM on May 22, 2018 [37 favorites]

phearlez: "I know it's fun to dump on this clown and I'm not giving him a pass from showing some willingness to engage in proper security practices. But if the IT staff can't handle this process in the manner of walking up and handing him an identically configured app-only phone and walking away with the old one then he's right, that is more inconvenient than it needs to be."

It's likely that the Cheeto insists on installing some questionable piece of malware and the "difficulty" is the time it takes him to get D.Jr to install some tetris knock off.


RedOrGreen: "Yeah, if I'm a nation state, maybe I break into every Apple Store in DC and replace their entire stock of iPhones with my slightly modified version of the hardware, which features always-on, always transmitting microphones.

Just in case some staffer gets the bright idea of walking to a store to buy a "random" iPhone with the belief that it might be safe to do so - like Trump ordering food from McDs.

Sure, it would be somewhat expensive. But imagine the payoff.

And if I can imagine this scenario, I am sure that foreign intelligence services have done better."

I'm reminded of this pair of stories:

By the way, the gentleman also told the story of how [the British] also bugged every new car going into Northern Ireland, and thus knew everything [Sinn Fein leader] Gerry Adams was discussing. They did this because Adams always conducted mobile meetings and always used new cars.

posted by Mitheral at 2:33 PM on May 22, 2018 [36 favorites]

> There isn't much in the way of actual evidence for Campos's theory that Broidy is covering up an affair for Trump, but it's hard to ignore the theory.

It's just that it would be unbelievably stupid for the same person to pull the same stunt (bribing someone by paying off his mistress) twice, and it would be monstrously idiotic for Trump to agree to such a scheme.

Which means, basically, it must be true.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:34 PM on May 22, 2018 [14 favorites]

The Onion finally reads Michael Cohen's email from 2013 ...

Five years ago: this happened.

This week: this happened.
posted by WaspEnterprises at 2:36 PM on May 22, 2018 [21 favorites]

John Ward, Florida congressional candidate, is under fire for saying that he didn’t believe hurricane evacuees from Puerto Rico should be allowed to register to vote in the Sunshine State.

He's trying to walk it back, sort of:

“First of all, I don’t think they should be allowed to register to vote,” Ward said. “And it’s not lost on me that, I think, the Democrat Party’s really hoping that they can change the voting registers in a lot of counties and districts. And I don’t think they should be allowed to do that.”

Anyone know of a good ass mechanic? I may need a new one.
posted by Mitheral at 2:43 PM on May 22, 2018 [11 favorites]

Congress passes rollback of banking rules put in place after financial crisis, sending bill to Trump to sign

The House voted to exempt small and regional banks from some of the most stringent rules put in place after the financial crisis, while also loosening some of the rules aimed at keeping the biggest banks from failing. The measure does not repeal the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, as some in the GOP had hoped, but it does represent the most significant scaling back of the rules to date.

Supporters say the rollback frees banks from needlessly onerous rules and will boost economic growth, while critics say it exposes the economy to unnecessary risks at a time when banks are posting record profits.

The bill is near certain to become law. It is backed by the White House and was passed by the Senate in March.

posted by zachlipton at 2:43 PM on May 22, 2018 [10 favorites]

Yeah, that bill was the second strike against Sen. Warner. His vote for Haspel was the third. THROW THE BUMS OUT!
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:48 PM on May 22, 2018 [8 favorites]

Beware the “Reasonable” Take on the Mueller Investigation

So far, I’m sticking to my belief that Donald Trump probably didn’t personally collude with Russia. Beyond that, though, there’s just a mountain of evidence that points to massively illegal and unethical activity running through every facet of both the Trump campaign and the Trump White House. And that mountain is just what’s on the public record now. Once we learn everything that Mueller has discovered, the mountain is likely to turn into a super volcano.

I’m not surprised to hear some conservatives promoting the “reasonable” version of the Mueller investigation. But I am surprised that even some liberals are starting to hint at accepting it. I sure hope this doesn’t gain any more traction. There’s no need to go all X-Files on this, but there’s also no reason to downplay any of it. What Trump has done, and is still doing, almost certainly is Watergate 2.0.

I think it's possible Trump didn’t collude personally with Russia during the campaign, but I have no doubt the campaign was full of collaborators and Trump is totally guilty of obstruction of justice (and other corruption).
posted by kirkaracha at 2:48 PM on May 22, 2018 [24 favorites]

Under the proposed changes, hunters would also be allowed to hunt black bears with dogs, kill wolves and pups in their dens, and use motor boats to shoot swimming caribou.

this attitude combined with the administrations frankly prurient glee in calling people "violent animals" is extremely disturbing to me.
posted by poffin boffin at 2:51 PM on May 22, 2018 [49 favorites]

> XMLicious:
"“Computational propaganda” is a developing field of study."

Yeah, but effectively counterattacking programmatically is an issue. I am pretty sure you folks know I am no bot (because none of you have talked to my ex-wife), but, in the last 30 days, I have had my Twitter account frozen THREE times for "automated activity" which, for reasons of security by obscurity, no one will tell me what triggered said blocks.
posted by Samizdata at 2:52 PM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

John Ward, Florida congressional candidate, is under fire for saying that he didn’t believe hurricane evacuees from Puerto Rico should be allowed to register to vote

The other option would be to adapt to the changing district and earn the votes of these new constituents from Puerto Rico. /shrug
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 2:54 PM on May 22, 2018 [13 favorites]

We already know Trump probably "colluded" with Russia. It's in the open! Don Jr was offered a meeting with Russian intelligence at which dirt on Clinton would be provided. He agreed enthusiastically and immediately called a blocked number. He met with the agents of the Russian government along with the most senior members of the campaign. He again called the blocked number immediately after the meeting. Donald Trump has a blocked number.

So we know based solely on public information that Trump probably colluded. I say only probably because it's kinda possible the number Don Jr called was't Trump. But who else would it have been? Besides Trump himself the only person senior to Don Jr in the campaign apparatus was Lewandowski the campaign manager and he was present at the meeting. Occam's razor and common sense both suggest the number Don Jr called before and after the meeting was Trump. They further suggest the conversation wasn't about the Yankees.

That's collusion. Or, as Mueller may view it, conspiracy to defraud the United States.
posted by Justinian at 2:57 PM on May 22, 2018 [53 favorites]

Nixon did’t personally break into the DNC’s Watergate offices, either. But that’s a distinction without a difference.
posted by msalt at 3:00 PM on May 22, 2018 [72 favorites]

didn’t collude personally

My opinion is pretty much the same as it was back in Sept, 2017.

"I totally believe that Trump "doesn't know anything" about the collusion his son, son-in-law, campaign manager, national security adviser, and attorney general, along with his laywer and some old friends, were getting up to. Of course he doesn't know. Who would tell him? The idiot confessed to obstruction of justice on national TV and leaked classified intel to the Russian ambassador in the Oval Office. Why would you tell him anything? But he knew one thing: he knew he was not supposed to ask any questions. He is good at not asking questions. He is good at forgetting things. And that what people have paid him for, his whole life."

(Original comment cites examples involving violations of labor laws at Trump Tower, money laundering at Trump Taj Mahal, and more money laundering, probably, at Bayrock.)

But now Trump himself is linked not only by his behavior encouraging and covering for Russia, and his citing of Russian propaganda on the campaign trail and amplification of the leaks... But also by the money from Viktor Vekselberg, the meetings with Torshin and Butina (including a public promise to Butina that he would consider scaling back sanctions), his false statements on behalf of Don Jr about the Trump Tower meeting, and his obstruction of the investigation by firing Comey.

So while he may not know all the details ("I don't ask questions!") I can no longer doubt that he knew something was up with his campaign's relationship with Russia, and was okay with it, and is now working to cover it up.
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:03 PM on May 22, 2018 [32 favorites]

The Quvenzhane Wallis version of "Annie" I watched recently has a Michael Cohen-like fixer character. At one point he says to his politician boss: "You pay me a lot of money not to tell you about stuff like that."

I assume that's how it works with Trump too.
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:12 PM on May 22, 2018 [11 favorites]

Johnny Wallflower: "Yeah, that bill was the second strike against Sen. Warner. His vote for Haspel was the third. THROW THE BUMS OUT!"

Better put a note on your calendar for 2020, then.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:17 PM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

Reason, Prison Reform Bill Passes The House; Is Prison Reform Dead?. This is a good quick look at the state of the FIRST STEP Act, which just passed the House, and the problems with doing prison reform without sentencing reform, which Sessions adamantly opposes.
posted by zachlipton at 3:22 PM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

John Ward, Florida congressional candidate, is under fire for saying that he didn’t believe hurricane evacuees from Puerto Rico should be allowed to register to vote in the Sunshine State.
He's trying to walk it back, sort of:
“First of all, I don’t think they should be allowed to register to vote,” Ward said. “And it’s not lost on me that, I think, the Democrat Party’s really hoping that they can change the voting registers in a lot of counties and districts. And I don’t think they should be allowed to do that.”

I mean, I'd kind of say that is not so much walking it back as explicitly reaffirming his view that they shouldn't be allowed to register to vote.
posted by jaduncan at 3:34 PM on May 22, 2018 [25 favorites]

The laws of the United States speak to something re: culpability called "willful blindness,"

"the situation where the actor, aware of the probable existence of a material fact, does not take steps to ascertain that it does not exist. Willful blindness would require an awareness of a high probability of the existence of the circumstance. United States v. Jewell, 532 F.2d 697, 700 n. 7 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 426 U.S. 951 (1976)."

Thus the prosecution's task would be to show he WAS aware of the issue of conspiracy with Russian criminals, and didn't do anything to ensure it would not happen.

For example, by not publicly asking the Russians to hack his opponent's emails
posted by mikelieman at 3:34 PM on May 22, 2018 [12 favorites]

CNN, Trump's lawyers seek to narrow scope of special counsel interview

"We said we wanted the questions limited to Russian collusion," one of the sources with knowledge of the President's legal strategy tells CNN. Since that aspect of the investigation deals with the Trump campaign and transition team's interactions with Russians, it would exclude questions about Trump's actions once in office. And even within the pre-presidency category, Trump's lawyers want to narrow what questions the prosecutors can ask.

The focus on Trump's conduct prior to assuming the presidency also would exclude questions about the firing of then-FBI Director James Comey and possible obstruction of justice. One possibility Trump's lawyers are discussing is a combination of in-person and written answers: a limited Trump interview on Russia pre-presidency matters plus written answers to questions regarding obstruction. Trump's lawyers are insisting on an audio recording of any interview with the President, so there is no question exactly what was said.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

----

Politico, GOP fundraiser subpoenas AP over hacked emails, setting up legal showdown

A top Republican fundraiser has subpoenaed the Associated Press for information about the source of hacked emails that formed the basis of recent reports about him, people familiar with the matter tell POLITICO.

The AP has received the subpoena from Elliott Broidy — the subject of several recent articles about his efforts to lobby President Donald Trump and the U.S. government to adopt a hard-line stance against the Persian Gulf state of Qatar — and is planning to resist it, according to the outlet’s director of media relations, Lauren Easton.

The impasse sets up a potential legal standoff over press protections at a time when political battles are increasingly being waged via leaks of hacked data. A copy of the subpoena obtained by POLITICO demands the AP turn over all its information about its sources, including their names, along with information about how the AP obtained the hacked emails.

posted by zachlipton at 3:37 PM on May 22, 2018 [12 favorites]

Cohen's business partner strikes plea deal. Cohen's tough talk about not flipping might evaporate sooner than later.

A thought experiment: how much leverage would you have to have against you to flip if the Mafiya knew the intimate details of all of your family, could almost certainly drop a world of physical/legal hurt on all of them, and quite aside from just them flipping would make an instant enemy of both an unhinged US President and a famously murderous Putin?
posted by jaduncan at 3:39 PM on May 22, 2018 [8 favorites]

But Cohen's partner did just flip. So it's clearly not out of the question.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:42 PM on May 22, 2018 [5 favorites]

I honestly don’t think Trump is physically capable of answering a direct question with a clear answer, which makes a lot of this lawyerly quibbling moot.
posted by valkane at 3:43 PM on May 22, 2018 [15 favorites]

Depends what his allegations are. He might have quite a lot to worry about from Putin if said allegations are likely to provoke a new range of sanctions or solidify Western/EU resolve to keep the existing sanctions going.
posted by jaduncan at 3:43 PM on May 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

I don't really care all that much how Trump answers, but he needs to be asked questions under oath like Bill Clinton had to do.

I mean, sure, I'd love something along Caine Mutiny/A Few Good Men lines as a bonus, but we need to follow precedent and the rule of law.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:48 PM on May 22, 2018 [18 favorites]

As one might expect, in KY-06, Gray doing well in Lexington, McGrath doing well in outlying areas. Still up in the air.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:51 PM on May 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Trump’s tweets include grammatical errors. And some are on purpose

Lousy Grammar Doesn't Make You a Working-Class Hero

Here’s the thing, Embattled White Working Class Voters. By and large, the people you’re taught to hate have your interests somewhat at heart when they get into government. Forget what kind of coffee they drink, movies they watch, or leafy greens they gobble down with their tofuburgers. Forget all you’ve been told about coastal elites and their condescension. Stop falling for this hooey.

The president* and the people around him think you’re all sub-literate morons to whom broken gorilla English will appeal. They think you love him for his misplaced commas, dangling modifiers, and weird CapiTalization FeTish. They think you will identify with a high-end Manhattan con-man because he talks like you do, and they think you talk like you took an ESL class on Neptune. They think your very real economic anxiety is best expressed in language one small step above grunts, groans, and banging on rocks with heavy sticks.

posted by kirkaracha at 3:51 PM on May 22, 2018 [45 favorites]

I don't really care all that much how Trump answers, but he needs to be asked questions under oath like Bill Clinton had to do.

While that's true, it should be noted that lying carries the same penalty whether or not he is under oath. It's just charged under a different section of the USC.
posted by Justinian at 3:52 PM on May 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

Trump's lawyers are insisting on an audio recording of any interview with the President, so there is no question exactly what was said.

Lordy, I hope there are tapes.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:53 PM on May 22, 2018 [36 favorites]

> [...] in the last 30 days, I have had my Twitter account frozen THREE times for "automated activity" which, for reasons of security by obscurity, no one will tell me what triggered said blocks.

> I don't follow 45 but I do grab all his Tweets (since March at least) into a Google Spreadsheet. Help yourself if it looks useful.

Not trying to be a smartass or anything; in fact, I sincerely appreciate the gesture. Just trying to highlight some of the potential rules for the game we're playing right now. For example, I'm not surprised about which of my actions resulted in receiving unsolicited calls from Russia's country code.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 3:55 PM on May 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

The impasse sets up a potential legal standoff over press protections at a time when political battles are increasingly being waged via leaks of hacked data. A copy of the subpoena obtained by POLITICO demands the AP turn over all its information about its sources, including their names, along with information about how the AP obtained the hacked emails.

Could be a guy sitting on their bed who weighs 400 pounds, someone in the Ecuador embassy, a GRU agent, who knows?

HURF DURF BUTTER EMAILS
posted by benzenedream at 4:20 PM on May 22, 2018 [5 favorites]

Cooper Fleishman
Donald Glover fans have taken over Trump fanpage /r/thedonald and now they're waging war on /r/The_Donald
http://www.reddit.com/r/thedonald
posted by chris24 at 4:35 PM on May 22, 2018 [89 favorites]

KY-06 still tight, but it looks McGrath may have it.

Abrams looks she may wrap up GA gov pretty early.
posted by Chrysostom at 4:46 PM on May 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

And Amy McGrath has won the Dem nomination in KY-06, Gray conceding.

It's been pointed out that there was a huge increase in turnout in the rural counties of the district from the 2016 primary, not much change in the more Gray-favoring areas. So she may be a stronger candidate for the district than some have been saying.
posted by Chrysostom at 4:58 PM on May 22, 2018 [17 favorites]

If McGrath does win tonight and can win the general, that's the kind of statement victory in a Republican strong lean district the progressive wing desperately needs. These are the races progressive candidates need to win to take a much bigger role.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:02 PM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

So she may be a stronger candidate for the district than some have been saying.

10 seconds early. I'm surprised she's done this well, but that's a good surprised, she's a great candidate on policy and personally. Winning the general would be huge.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:05 PM on May 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

The one and only Steve Kornacki notes a couple of small factoids about the Georgia gov. race:

In tiny, 99% white Towns County in far northern Georgia, Stacey Abrams looks like she's edged out Stacey Evans in the early vote -- 61 to 59.

Meanwhile, in equally small Terrell County, which has the fifth highest concentration of black residents of Georgia's 159 counties, Abrams is crushing it in the early vote, 73-27%.

posted by FelliniBlank at 5:16 PM on May 22, 2018 [5 favorites]

Trump is working his way through a teleprompter speech, and then: "your vote in 2018 is every bit as important as your vote in 2016, although I'm not sure I really believe that. I don't know who the hell wrote that line." Then he goes back to bashing Schumer and Pelosi, claiming that Pelosi is in favor of MS-13 (he's going to Long Island tomorrow to bash immigrants some more).
posted by zachlipton at 5:21 PM on May 22, 2018 [38 favorites]

Trump's decompensating before our eyes/TV cameras.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:27 PM on May 22, 2018

Then he goes back to bashing Schumer and Pelosi, claiming that Pelosi is in favor of MS-13

At a "Campaign for Life Gala" he ridiculed Nancy Pelosi for claiming that all human beings are people.

Then, exactly as at the State of the Union Address, he brought up to the stage another white couple who "adopted" a white child from an opiate-addicted mother. Then he groped the child.

Just having a regular one.
posted by Rust Moranis at 5:28 PM on May 22, 2018 [12 favorites]

Fletcher with substantial lead over Moser in TX-07.

Allred way up on Salerno in TX-32.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:28 PM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

Paul Campos has more deeply irresponsible yet increasingly compelling speculation on the Broidy affair: Hey, Look: More Evidence That Broidy May Have Been Covering for Trump in That Playmate Affair

Paul Waldman, in a WaPo opinion piece, officially goes there and adds this layer to the theory:

There’s one more piece to this puzzle. We all know about Trump’s weird relationship with his daughter Ivanka Trump, how he often comments on her body and says things like “If she weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” Both Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, the Playboy model who says she had an affair with Trump, said that Trump compared them to his daughter, which is a rather odd thing to say to a woman you’re having sex with. Whatever the true nature of Trump’s feelings, it’s clear that he’s attracted to women who remind him of Ivanka Trump. I bring this up because Shera Bechard is a dead ringer for Ivanka Trump. An absolute dead ringer.

posted by peeedro at 5:31 PM on May 22, 2018 [45 favorites]

@daveweigel:

Every Dem establishment-preferred candidate in the TX runoffs won the early vote big: Fletcher in #TX07 (70-30), Kopser in #TX21 (60-40), Ortiz Jones in #TX23 (78-22), Hegar in #TX31 (59-41), Allred in #TX32 (71-29).

(note that's early vote only, today's in-person vote yet to be counted)
posted by Chrysostom at 5:33 PM on May 22, 2018 [5 favorites]

Bechard (and Daniels, to an extent) do look like Ivanka.

The creepy interpretation is as stated in the WaPo piece. The less creepy (but still creepy given Trump's statements in the past) interpretation is that Trump obviously has a type; thin, modely blondes with a certain look. Ivanka's mother Ivana looked like that (and therefore resembled Bechard and Daniels) so it is no suprise that Ivanka also looks like that. So Trump doesn't creepily lust after these other women because they look like Ivanka, he makes creepily lusty comments about Ivanka because she looks like Ivana, and Bechard, and Daniels etc.

I can't believe this is real life.
posted by Justinian at 5:38 PM on May 22, 2018 [36 favorites]

I don't know who the hell wrote that line

Here's the clip, which is worth watching to see just how surprised Trump is by the words that are coming out of his mouth.

For all the things Trump upends, he doesn't really do things so much as observe things happening around him and periodically yell unhelpful suggestions in their general direction. He's still just the guy watching cable news yelling at the set about how he could do a better job; he just now gets to enjoy seeing how much people care about his pronouncements.
posted by zachlipton at 5:38 PM on May 22, 2018 [20 favorites]

> Johann Georg Faust:
"> [...] in the last 30 days, I have had my Twitter account frozen THREE times for "automated activity" which, for reasons of security by obscurity, no one will tell me what triggered said blocks.

> I don't follow 45 but I do grab all his Tweets (since March at least) into a Google Spreadsheet. Help yourself if it looks useful.

Not trying to be a smartass or anything; in fact, I sincerely appreciate the gesture. Just trying to highlight some of the potential rules for the game we're playing right now. For example, I'm not surprised about which of my actions resulted in receiving unsolicited calls from Russia's country code."

Нет, приятель, совсем нет. Not thinking you are a smartass at all. (Although my opinion on 45 is not good and I am far from subtle.) I just have this weird thing about archiving information. I still have a complete archive of all the Ferguson documents that were released.
posted by Samizdata at 5:40 PM on May 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

Here's a surprise from Kentucky: the incumbent GOP House Majority Leader, Jonathan Shell, has apparently lost the primary in HD-71, 51-49.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:43 PM on May 22, 2018 [36 favorites]

No AP call yet, but all the online punditry are calling GA gov for Abrams. If she won in November, she'd be the first black woman governor.

On the GOP side, LG Cagle is leading with 41%. He needs to break 50 in order to avoid a runoff (which would presumably help out Abrams).
posted by Chrysostom at 5:47 PM on May 22, 2018 [10 favorites]

G. Elliott Morris (Crosstab)
Voters will cast about 100,000 ballots in #KY06 Democratic primary tonight tonight. They cast under 80k there in 2016. We’ll see if that sticks in November!

---

25% increase over a presidential election year primary in a midterm primary. D enthusiasm even in red Kentucky.
posted by chris24 at 5:49 PM on May 22, 2018 [37 favorites]

In the special to determine control of the Miami-Dade County Board of Commissioners, we're heading to a runoff. The race is nominally non-partisan, but Democrat Eileen Higgins finished first with about 35% over two Republicans.

She might have a shot in a runoff - south Florida has a lot of turf wars between political families, two of whom were the Republicans. Might supress some turnout on the right in round 2.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:52 PM on May 22, 2018 [5 favorites]

Programming note: no Kornacki on MSNBC yet, but he's doing periodic cheap-ass live primary coverage from his office on Twitter.
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:58 PM on May 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Here's a surprise from Kentucky: the incumbent GOP House Majority Leader, Jonathan Shell, has apparently lost the primary in HD-71, 51-49.

To a high school math teacher angry about the bill stripping teachers of their pensions.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:00 PM on May 22, 2018 [85 favorites]

Gina Ortiz Jones looks to have won TX-23 Dem primary handily. She will face off with incumbent Will Hurd, race is probably a toss-up.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:01 PM on May 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

Thanks, T.D. Strange. Always appreciate your KY insights.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:02 PM on May 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

>John Ward, Florida congressional candidate, is under fire for saying that he didn’t believe hurricane evacuees from Puerto Rico should be allowed to register to vote

>The other option would be to adapt to the changing district and earn the votes of these new constituents from Puerto Rico.

And of course the best option would have been to help the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico rebuild their infrastructure so they wouldn't have to flee to the mainland.

It's a crime that the press has allowed Trump to get away with his depraved indifference to U.S. citizens that aren't white men.
posted by JackFlash at 6:05 PM on May 22, 2018 [41 favorites]

In AR GOP gov, incumbent Asa Hutchinson (regular crazy) has won over gun range owner Jan Morgan (industrial strength crazy) handily.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:34 PM on May 22, 2018 [12 favorites]

Looks like former Rep John Barrow will be the Dem nominee for GA Secretary of State. There have been some pretty eyebrow-raising shenanigans in this office, so a pickup is important; Barrow is seen as the strongest candidate.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:36 PM on May 22, 2018 [9 favorites]

Brian Beutler (Crooked Media)
“It was sort of like a gift,” Giuliani said of stolen emails that Trump campaign officials solicited publicly and privately, retaining his title as America’s worst lawyer.
HuffPo: Giuliani’s New Stance On Russian Collusion: So What? It’s Not Illegal.

In a recent interview with HuffPost, Giuliani initially disputed the notion that Trump’s daily citing, in the final month of his campaign, of Russian-aligned WikiLeaks and its release of Russian-stolen emails constituted “colluding” with Russia.

“It is not,” Giuliani said.

Then he switched tacks.

“OK, and if it is, it isn’t illegal... It was sort of like a gift,” he said. “And you’re not involved in the illegality of getting it.”

---

Matthew Segal (ACLU)
Literally the “it fell off a truck” defense.
posted by chris24 at 6:49 PM on May 22, 2018 [91 favorites]

For all the things Trump upends, he doesn't really do things so much as observe things happening around him and periodically yell unhelpful suggestions in their general direction. He's still just the guy watching cable news yelling at the set about how he could do a better job

But when he changes the channel to someone with whom he totally agrees, such as cynical conspiracy theory–purveyor Sean Hannity, he can't stop agreeing with the screen about how THAT'S TOTALLY RIGHT!

e.g. His tweets this evening (because his speech today to the pro-life zealots didn't provide enough of a narcissistic fix): "If the person placed very early into my campaign wasn’t a SPY put there by the previous Administration for political purposes, how come such a seemingly massive amount of money was paid for services rendered - many times higher than normal...
"...Follow the money! The spy was there early in the campaign and yet never reported Collusion with Russia, because there was no Collusion. He was only there to spy for political reasons and to help Crooked Hillary win - just like they did to Bernie Sanders, who got duped!"

Please note, the Trump White House has almost finished its second month without the calming influence of Hope Hicks.
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:02 PM on May 22, 2018 [7 favorites]

GA GOP gov looks virtually certain to go to a runoff between LG Cagle and SOS Kemp.

Pleasingly, Michael Williams, the "deportation bus" guy, got about 5%. He had also given up his state senate seat to run.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:07 PM on May 22, 2018 [38 favorites]

He was only there to spy for political reasons and to help Crooked Hillary win

Exactly. Which is why the FBI didn't say anything about the investigation until AFTER the election.

And how many Republicans are we up to who were helping Hilary win?
posted by chris24 at 7:10 PM on May 22, 2018 [6 favorites]

TX-07 Dem is over, goes strongly for Lizzie Fletcher over Laura Moser, about 68-31.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:10 PM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

TX-32 Dem also over, with well-funded ex-football player Colin Allred winning about 69-30 over Lillian Salerno.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:11 PM on May 22, 2018 [5 favorites]

In AR-02, nationally backed candidate Clarke Tucker wins with about 58%, avoiding a runoff.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:13 PM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

Trump: "If the person placed very early into my campaign wasn’t a SPY put there by the previous Administration for political purposes..."

I must once again applaud Mueller's team. Their style of keeping it close to their vest, giving no-one anything to work with until indictments drop, has Trump and Giuliani pretty much free-associating their worst fears to the general public.

( Narrator: The CI wasn't a political agent )
posted by mikelieman at 7:15 PM on May 22, 2018 [14 favorites]

TX-21 Dem goes to Joseph Kopser, about 58-41 over Mary Wilson.

Texas Dems consistently going for the more moderate candidates tonight.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:16 PM on May 22, 2018 [6 favorites]

Follow the money! The spy was there early in the campaign

The Qanon folks have already brought this back around to their theories, claiming that "follow the money" is something their supposed 4chan informant says, in case you're wondering how this is playing in cuckoo land. This crap has a direct line into the White House.

Meanwhile, they don't seem to care that someone with an actual child porn conviction is now involved in these scandals, if you somehow thought any of this involved good faith.
posted by zachlipton at 7:19 PM on May 22, 2018 [30 favorites]

Re: the racist NY attorney from the previous megathread: And don’t miss the riff track of him hiding behind his umbrella.

Oh my god, that was amazing. I really needed that. I strongly recommend viewing that for anyone who needs a bit of catharsis right now.

posted by biogeo at 10:11 AM on May 19 [6 favorites +] [!]

Citizen acts like a dick to immigrants, gets hounded night and day by the media. President does it and gets normalized.
posted by Mental Wimp at 7:19 PM on May 22, 2018 [7 favorites]

WSJ, Israeli Intelligence Company Formed Venture With Trump Campaign Firm Cambridge Analytica

A company owned by Joel Zamel, an Israeli entrepreneur whose work has drawn the scrutiny of special counsel Robert Mueller, formed a strategic partnership with a data firm for President Donald Trump’s campaign in a joint bid to win business from the U.S. government and other clients after the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Psy-Group, one of Mr. Zamel’s firms, signed a memorandum of understanding with Cambridge Analytica LLC, a digital media firm that helped propel Mr. Trump to the presidency, these people said, Facebook Inc. in March suspended Cambridge over allegations that it improperly harvested the data of millions of Facebook users, accusations that in part led to the firm’s closure earlier this month.

The Dec. 14, 2016, memorandum, as described to The Wall Street Journal, outlines a partnership whereby the two firms could cooperate on a case-by-case basis to provide intelligence and social-media services, or pitch business to an array of clients.

A person familiar with the work of Psy-Group, a private intelligence firm, said the partnership was intended in part to help win government contracts—something that Cambridge and its parent company, SCL Group, were aggressively seeking to do as their allies in the Trump administration took power, according to people familiar with the efforts.

posted by zachlipton at 7:30 PM on May 22, 2018 [17 favorites]

“Your vote in 2018 is every bit as important as your vote in 2016 — although I’m not sure I really believe that,” Trump ad libs. “I don’t know who the hell wrote that line.”

Wasn't Trump the one who criticized Obama and Hillary for using a teleprompter?
posted by msalt at 7:50 PM on May 22, 2018 [30 favorites]

In TX Dem gov, Lupe Valdez has won the runoff, 53-47 over Andrew White.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:50 PM on May 22, 2018 [14 favorites]

In more Texas politics on the "Who will replace Joe Straus?" front we've got a series of 4 articles from the Texas Monitor profiling 4 candidates for the speakership, the first from March with the rather unsettling series of paragraphs:

King says he wants to create a system where bills, even marginal or unpopular, get to the floor without arbitrary intervention by the speaker or leadership of either the majority or minority party...

...All of this might sound to hard-line conservatives like a candidate throwing bones to moderates and Democrats for support. King calls it “treating everyone the way they want to be treated.”

“Everybody in the House has to have a role. One of the ways you do that is to level the playing field — is to set up the rules of order to allow people to get their bills to the floor, to have votes. If I were to completely cut out the Democrats — someone once told me that if your opponents don’t have something to do, they’re going to find something to do and you’re not going to like it.”

That “something to do,” in past sessions was form alliances that allowed Straus to block bills like property tax reform and several important to social conservatives like the “bathroom bill.” (link contained in the original article)

Second in the series is Tan Parker, who seems like a total ass, which means he's probably the perfect person to get the speaker role.

Thirdly, we have a profile of John Zerwas, who, according to the article is on a list of "...'bounties' on what they (Joe Straus' opponents) called a 'Dirty Dozen' of those priority House incumbents." of which "...Zerwas was at the top of its list."

Basically the article goes on to say that Zerwas is probably the only Republican who has the temerity to stand against tea party republicans in the 2019 Texas Lege Session, but he most likely doesn't stand a chance in hell of winning the speakership.

Moving on to the last in the series is a profile of Eric Johnson, a Democratic representative and the first african-american rep to run for speaker of the house, who appears to have a bad ass progressive voting record, but, who unfortunately doesn't stand a chance

I weep, I weep for my home state
posted by nikaspark at 8:03 PM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

TX-32 Dem also over, with well-funded ex-football player Colin Allred winning about 69-30 over Lillian Salerno.

ahahahaha yesssssss THERE WAS A REASON I LEFT, Y’ALL
posted by dogheart at 8:08 PM on May 22, 2018 [6 favorites]

From the end of the last thread, regarding finding perfectly contrary comments for he same politician:

It's a text search of closed captioning files, time-indexed to the source material.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:44 AM on May

Is there a search engine for this? Or does one leech a bunch of .sub titles from the network's webpage, or -? Asking for a friend.
posted by petebest at 8:09 PM on May 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

i mean i’m sad for the team and the volunteers, who were amazing, but i have a certain bittersweet satisfaction here
posted by dogheart at 8:14 PM on May 22, 2018 [4 favorites]

Another nice surprise: in GA HD-180, incumbent GOP member Jason Spencer - who you might remember threatened to lynch a former colleague for calling for removal of Confederate statues - has lost his primary.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:20 PM on May 22, 2018 [38 favorites]

NEWS: White House [through Sarah Huckabee Sanders] says meeting between DOJ and lawmakers will be Thursday [May 24th]. Reps. NUNES, GOWDY, FBI Director Wray, DNI Coats and DOJ's Ed O'CALLAHAN. No White House officials.

Adam Schiff @RepAdamSchiff:
"The White House has directed the DOJ and FBI to hold a partisan briefing on infomation the President wants given to his allies in Congress. No Democrats allowed.
"This is another serious abuse of power. There’s a bipartisan mechanism called the Gang of 8. They need to use it."

The Hill's Katie Bo Williams @KatieBoWill:
"House Intel Ranking Member Adam Schiff says they have been told by the Department of Justice and FBI that Chairman Nunes has “refused” to receive briefings alongside Democrats.
"Having spoken with Schiff, it sounds like he still anticipates that he will receive a separate, identical briefing on the same material that the DOJ briefs Nunes on—they just won’t receive it together.
"To clarify: DOJ is still providing the same information to Schiff, they’re just not receiving the briefings at the same time."

Abuse of power issues aside, this sounds as though Nunes is almost frightened of being in the same room as Schiff during these tense briefings—this won't be the first time the DoJ had to separately pass along the same exact information to the HPSCI Dems.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:26 PM on May 22, 2018 [65 favorites]

TX-32 Dem also over, with well-funded ex-football player Colin Allred winning about 69-30 over Lillian Salerno.

Yeah, I was afraid of that when I was getting a 4-color card stock giant flyer every day from Allred's campaign, and nothing in the last two weeks from Lillian. I know we had at least one Mefite working on Lillian's campaign, including, iirc, moving down here to the Dallas area to do so. My sympathies to everyone who worked so hard for a really great, truly inspirational woman.

But, Colin looks to be a good man. He says the right things, and in any case, he's a fuckton better than Pete Sessions, that old collaborating two-faced reprobate. So, even if it's not our preferred candidate, we need to keep action going to defeat Pete.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:27 PM on May 22, 2018 [17 favorites]

TX-07:

“The key objective here is to beat John Culbertson ... if this night turns out like it looks like it’s going to turn out, I encourage everyone to support [Lizzie Fletcher],” Moser says, to applause

I know it's not as colorful, but I'm seeing mostly party unity coming out of Dem primaries so far. Evans also endorsed Abrams immediately in GA gov.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:35 PM on May 22, 2018 [43 favorites]

i had moved down to dallas to work for lillian, but i got off that race a month ago for. well. very valid reasons, let’s say that. i would work for her again in any other endeavor. but i cannot say i’m displeased with this result.

(i’m gonna go work for the next six months to displace bruce rauner, because i love chicago and i love illinois, but mostly because my boss there will be my boss from hillary, who is a man i know i can trust absolutely. that’s important to me, after texas.)
posted by dogheart at 8:42 PM on May 22, 2018 [52 favorites]

Texas Tribune: GOP state House primaries almost all went for the more moderate candidate.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:43 PM on May 22, 2018 [12 favorites]

I wasn't expecting to come here and post a review of the Roseanne season finale, but I'm doing that, because it's about more than Roseanne: The Roseanne Season Finale Is a Fairy Tale

The trials and tribulations of the Conner family have been touted as representative of a “real” America, as one of the few stories to give us a picture of the forgotten white working class. But again and again, the show refuses to connect any of Roseanne Conner’s cracks about Trump or fake news with the real ramifications of her positions. She believes that the government shouldn’t pay for people’s health care, but she’s thrilled to take FEMA assistance when their house floods. Her knee surgery will still be paid for with federal money, but because they’re getting the money after a flood rather than the basic need for health care, it’s acceptable. Earlier in the season, we were supposed to smile Roseanne as opened her heart to the new neighbors, a Muslim family that she initially assumed had purchased fertilizer to make bombs rather than to fertilize their lawn. But we’re not supposed to draw any through line between that grudging tolerance and the MAGA hat she keeps hanging in her laundry room.

With the end of the revival’s first season and the early glimmers of what fall TV will bring, ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey has suggested that new episodes of Roseanne will now lean less on the politics, and instead will stick more to stories about “family trials and tribulations.” This looks like a way to emphasize universality, but it’s also precisely the problem with this entire season: It rejected the idea that there is a meaningful connection between politics and the family, and instead posited that you can draw a line between stories about a down-and-out working-class family without affordable health care and sufficient employment — that they are either about the family, or they are about politics. That line of thinking suggests that if Roseanne just stops joking about Hillary Clinton, the show will no longer be about politics in America. That if the Conners just hang in there long enough, their house will flood and they’ll be rescued by a potent, metastable mixture of Trump, God, and aid from the federal government — and somehow it won’t be about politics.

If the best future Roseanne can offer for working-class families is to wait around for a flood, then it’s not actually a show about an underrepresented reality in America. It’s a fairy tale masquerading as gritty realism. At their very best, fairy tales use fantasy to elucidate buried truths of the human condition — mermaids demonstrate the pain of transformation, and witches are a tangible embodiment of threat — and they use unbelievable plots to illuminate the unseen darkness and beauty of human existence. But Roseanne’s season-ending fairy tale, its final gesture of improbable wish-granting, is not illuminating. It’s a way for the show to hide.

The show is as much a fairy tale as the politician she praises. The working class struggles are rooted in the real problems we face as a country, but the answers are fantasy. That disconnect between politics and family is everywhere; you see it in all the "oh it's just politics; can't they get along?" talk. There's no recognition that people's political choices are directly correlated with policies that impact their family, that not being able to afford a necessary knee replacement has nothing to do with immigrants, isn't a normal state of affairs in countries with the wealth we have, and has an awful lot to do with voting for the people who have spent the past decade fighting efforts to try to make health care affordable. Roseanne, the modern GOP, there's no policy there, just team loyalty. And when you dramatize that, you're left with a deep nihilism: politics has nothing tangible to offer, it's just a team sport, so you might as well wear your team colors and hurl insults at the other guys. And then you cash your FEMA check and reassure yourself that you're not like those people, because you've earned it somehow, that all your problems are magically solved by God and the benevolence of Trump's disaster declaration rather than the hard work of slowly trying to make this country better a little bit at a time. GOP voters voted for a fairy tale, and now they got one for political entertainment too.

p.s. you're awesome, dogheart!
posted by zachlipton at 9:02 PM on May 22, 2018 [57 favorites]

In the charming GOP Dallas County Commissioner race, the really amazingly racist guy loses by an eyelash to the only quite racist guy.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:45 PM on May 22, 2018 [12 favorites]

ELECTION RESULT

GOP HOLD in Arkansas Senate 16:

Davis [R] 76.7%
Gallegos [D] 23.3%

Margin changes compared to previous races:

vs 2016 presidential result margin: Dem underperformance of about 1 point.
no good district margin numbers -a Dem has not run in this race in several cycles
posted by Chrysostom at 10:15 PM on May 22, 2018 [6 favorites]

Remember the sinkhole outside Trump's Mar-A-Lago resort which appeared almost exactly a year ago? Now there is a sinkhole on the White House North Lawn, just outside the Press Briefing room. Sadly, there has been a cover-up at the White House. There is a Team Sinkhole T-shirt for sale at Amazon. Or you can follow the White House Sinkhole's own twitter account.

Could this be a sign of things to come for America? Best laugh I've had all morning.
posted by whitelotus at 12:19 AM on May 23, 2018 [18 favorites]

That is a pickle, I have to admit. And what about Trump? Is he worried too?

Kim Jong Un is said to be worried about North Korea falling to a military coup while he's rubbing shoulders with Trump in Singapore.
posted by scalefree at 1:58 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

Betsy should be given a failing grade & made to repeat her confirmation hearing. This is just embarrassing. Every day it becomes clearer & clearer that the primary policy of the Trump administration is to leverage & sell off America itself, its resources, reputation & alliances to the benefit of Trump & his cronies.

Betsy DeVos doesn’t know the mission of her own civil rights office.

At a hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) asked DeVos what should have been a simple question.

“I am concerned about the low performance of your civil rights office,” Fudge said. “Could you please just state for me the mission of your civil rights office?”

“The office of civil rights is committed to protecting the civil rights as determined under the law of this land,” DeVos replied. “And we do so proudly, and with great focus each day.”

“That’s not the mission statement,” Fudge noted. “Do you know what it is?”

Apparently, she does not.

“Perhaps you can share it,” DeVos said. “I have not memorized the mission statement.”

The Department of Education Office of Civil Rights mission statement consists of a single sentence that would fit in a tweet: “The mission of the Office for Civil Rights is to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation through vigorous enforcement of civil rights.”

posted by scalefree at 2:19 AM on May 23, 2018 [49 favorites]

She actually did the thing where you just restate the question as an answer and hope no one notices. Teachers around the world just face palmed themselves.
posted by xammerboy at 2:44 AM on May 23, 2018 [51 favorites]

I think the sinkhole means the first lady will have to start a new tunnel
posted by mbo at 2:52 AM on May 23, 2018 [85 favorites]

John Ward, Florida congressional candidate: “First of all, I don’t think they should be allowed to register to vote,” Ward said. “And it’s not lost on me that, I think, the Democrat Party’s really hoping that they can change the voting registers in a lot of counties and districts.

This is your regular reminder that "Democrat Party" is a sophomoric but intentional insult, and every time the media prints or airs a quote with this phrasing, they're handing the Republican an opportunity not only to air their talking points but also publicly insult their opposition without criticism, repercussion, or even passing comment. It's an inherently biased act in favor of Republicans, and news media should stop treating is as "misspeaking" and refuse to air or print any quote that contains that petty garbage.
posted by Gelatin at 3:25 AM on May 23, 2018 [21 favorites]

Dave Weigel (WaPo)
Georgia Republicans outvoted Democrats by around 50,000 ballots in #GAgov primary. Four years ago, the margin was around 290,000 votes.


Matthew Isbell
Votes cast in the respective primaries has broken down to 55% GOP, 45% Dem. This is a stark improvement from 2014, where it was 65% GOP to 35% DEM. Dems did well around the black-belt of Georgia and made gains in Atlanta suburbs #gagov #GAPrimary
TURNOUT MAP


PublicPolicyPolling
With late reporting Democratic areas in, looks like Dems cast 48% of the vote in Georgia’s open primary. In 2016 it was only 37%, and Hillary still only ended up losing the state by 5. Another strong marker of comparative enthusiasm in 2018
posted by chris24 at 3:55 AM on May 23, 2018 [26 favorites]

The US has a long history of Nazi-style campaigns against minorities. It's why Hitler believed he'd get away with it.

We obviously have a history of it, but I do not believe that we're facing extermination camps for, say, Arab-Americans or Latinos in the US in 2018. We'll see.
posted by ryanshepard at 4:22 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

friends, I read that article about the possible upcoming civil war in the democratic party over impeachment in The New Yorker and it's truly bumming me out. Mostly because I am scared and angry and ready to march, and yeah I know the numbers don't support impeachment because there is zero GOP support, but fuck me. Are we really supposed to take Mueller's findings and say, 'hmmm, yes, the madman who has already caused calamity and is poised to do much worse has committed serious crimes, but let's carry on for another two years?

I mean, I can understand in that context why a voter would be apathetic and not vote (2018) or angry and take to the streets (post 2018 or who the hell knows).

A couple of organizers at yesterday's Tuesday's with Toomey were talking about how they were frightened apropos of what had happened w/r/t Trump and the DOJ in the last few days, and the guys on Pod Save America sound freaked. I'm freaked.
posted by angrycat at 4:32 AM on May 23, 2018 [13 favorites]

I've said in the past here that I don't think the US is likely to be susceptible to a broad, Nazi-style campaign against racial / ethic minorities, and I still think that's the case.
---
The US has a long history of Nazi-style campaigns against minorities. It's why Hitler believed he'd get away with it.
---
We obviously have a history of it, but I do not believe that we're facing extermination camps for, say, Arab-Americans or Latinos in the US in 2018. We'll see.

We're separating children from their parents and basically putting them in concentration camps. We're sending former refugees -- people who have been here decades, in some cases with US citizen family -- back to countries like Honduras where they will be in extreme danger of harm and death. We have rightwing individuals and groups plotting and attacking mosques and black churches and killing Sikhs, blacks, liberals, Muslims while the president calls them fine people. A president and White House and Party that calls immigrants animals, not people. A president's son who says Democrats - a party dominated by POC - aren't people. A president who tried to ban a religion that's 98% POC. A president who pardoned a man who ran latino concentration camps. A White House that puts out press releases of crimes by minorities.

We're already in 30s Germany. We're already in a Nazi-style campaign against racial/ethnic minorities.
posted by chris24 at 4:39 AM on May 23, 2018 [138 favorites]

There were 10 years between Nazis coming to power and the implementation of the Final Solution. It's been 16 months since Republicans took all three branches of government.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:03 AM on May 23, 2018 [29 favorites]

Our president on Twitter this morning: Everybody is with Tomi Lahren, a truly outstanding and respected young woman! @foxandfriends
posted by octothorpe at 5:06 AM on May 23, 2018

I think it's very difficult to use actual 1930s Germany as a comparison point to the US, while at the same time it's rhetorically useful and has emotional resonance. 1930s Germany was organized very differently from the US and was coming off of a series of crises very different from those the US has experienced. We're simply not going to see identical actions and social formations, and I think that it's very tricky to argue "we are in Nazi Germany"/ "No we're not". I think that the use of Nazi Germany as a metaphor is substantially about waking people up/emotional stuff rather than an invitation to argue whether X American thing is the equivalent to the freikorps.

It's also important, IMO, to remember that Germany wasn't a utopia pre-Hitler - the Weimar Republic had many admirable features, but it still had prisons, poverty, discrimination, totally normalized violence against women, violent strike-breaking, etc. I think what's important about the German example is the move from bad to worse - what was sudden, what was rooted in already-existing practice, what was popularly supported, what was enforced by violence, etc.

I also think it's important not to forget scale, and scale of dissent. In Nazi Germany and in territories conquered by the Nazis, dissent started out as very dangerous and became completely deadly. We have operating room right now that the left did not.

Germany is small, at least compared to the US. It's easy to govern from the center. It's far easier to enforce uniform policies. In the US, we have areas of relatively decent governance, we have basically dissident federal courts, etc. We have tools against the center that the left in Nazi Germany did not have.

This isn't, like, a call to complacency - it's a call to action. We have people in power who are morally no different from Nazis, but they also face constraints that the Nazis didn't, and we have to work those constraints as hard as possible. It would be better to hold the line even at today's atrocities than to slide further into the pit.
posted by Frowner at 5:08 AM on May 23, 2018 [90 favorites]

So while [Trump] may not know all the details ("I don't ask questions!") I can no longer doubt that he knew something was up with his campaign's relationship with Russia, and was okay with it, and is now working to cover it up.

Since Trump also seems to have been involved in money laundering shenanigans for the Russians that at best follow that same pattern (and at worst involve Trump's direct and criminal participation), this analysis appears to be sound.

From the information in the public domain, there's no question that Trump's campaign received illegal assistance from Russia -- campaign contributions from foreign nations are illegal, and that goes for in-kind contributions. It's also clear from the information in the public domain that Trump and his people -- including several Congressional Republicans -- are working furiously to cover it all up. The only question is how much more Mueller knows, and what charges will be forthcoming.

As Doonesbury's Mark Slackmeyer once said, everything known to date could lead one to conclude he's guilty. That's guilty! Guilty, guilty, guilty!
posted by Gelatin at 5:17 AM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

It's more interesting to compare nazi germany to US history as it had already existed. We had examples like institutional slavery by private ownership, and the profitability of repeated genocide for them to consider. Also the ideas (modern at the time) of eugenics and redlining for them to ponder.
posted by Harry Caul at 5:23 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Julian Sanchez
Just so we’re clear...

Guy who had a couple meetings with Papadopolous: basically a mole inside the campaign.

Papadopolous himself: basically a coffee boy; not even really part of the campaign.

🤔


Will Saletan
Ditto for Carter Page: a freelancer we barely knew, but surveillance of him = surveillance of Trump.
posted by chris24 at 5:42 AM on May 23, 2018 [72 favorites]

A useful recap of what Mueller's investigation is doing and likely outcomes. NYT. For me, I hope this drags on until 2020. The thought of Pence becoming president is gawdawful.
posted by bluesky43 at 6:00 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

Trump's lawyers are insisting on an audio recording of any interview with the President, so there is no question exactly what was said.

I'm sure Mueller's people will have, ah, no objections whatsoever -- they'll want something they can play in court, after all. But for crying out loud, Trump's poor syntax, off-the-cuff delivery, and tendency to tailor his speech to what he thinks his audience wants to hear means there is question exactly what Trump said plenty of times, even when he's on tape. Only recently, his defenders reinterpreted his "animals" comment ("he isn't referring to immigrants in general, just MS-13!"). And his apologists pretend he didn't actually confess to obstruction of justice to Lester Holt on live TV.
posted by Gelatin at 6:06 AM on May 23, 2018 [6 favorites]

And I should also say that the high school math teacher who won the primary in Kentucky gives me great hope. Mobilize the teachers too!
posted by bluesky43 at 6:07 AM on May 23, 2018 [9 favorites]

Can't wait to see the equivalencies drawn today about how a drink thrown on Tomi Lahren is a form of violence the left is totally ignoring, too busy with their whining about police violence and alt-right rallies and sexual assault and all...
posted by Rykey at 6:09 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

Letter to the editor, LA Times:

To the editor: So, the president wants to investigate the FBI to see whether his campaign was infiltrated.

What makes this all so unbelievable is the fact that it was his son and campaign manager who met with Russians to see whether they could get dirt on their opponent. It was Michael Flynn who was in Moscow being charmed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was son-in-law Jared Kushner who wanted a loan from Qatar (and after Kushner was denied the investment, Qatar was subject to a sudden change in U.S. foreign policy by the Trump administration).

If this is indeed a "witch hunt," then why has so much turned up?

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has been proceeding methodically. Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort has been indicted, and Flynn has pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller. Donald Trump Jr. has been called out for his phony Russian adoptions story.

If our president has nothing to hide, let's see his tax returns and his business' complete financial records.

Robert G. Brewer, Sherman Oaks

posted by ZeusHumms at 6:12 AM on May 23, 2018 [47 favorites]

Kim Jong Un is said to be worried about North Korea falling to a military coup while he's rubbing shoulders with Trump in Singapore.

Trump guaranteed his security. Presumably we'd drop in the 101st to restore the regime.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:14 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

zachlipton: The Qanon folks have already brought this back around to their theories, claiming that "follow the money" is something their supposed 4chan informant says, in case you're wondering how this is playing in cuckoo land. This crap has a direct line into the White House.

Meanwhile, they don't seem to care that someone with an actual child porn conviction is now involved in these scandals, if you somehow thought any of this involved good faith.

For what it's worth, a quick Twitter search for "qanon nader" shows a number of people musing about the same thing... but also some probably-genuine QANONers reckoning with the issue. One expresses disappointment in the president (really!), but the main line of rhetoric is to present George Nader as "Robert Mueller's star witness" and such, which is about what I'd expect here. Oh, and also that he's a "friend of the Clintons" like that doesn't apply equally to Trump (in terms of the time periods when the three of them traveled in the same circles).

Gelatin: But for crying out loud, Trump's poor syntax, off-the-cuff delivery, and tendency to tailor his speech to what he thinks his audience wants to hear means there is question exactly what Trump said plenty of times, even when he's on tape.

One key difference is that questioning involves follow-ups that he is legally obligated to answer. No one in the room at the meeting about ICE was going to ask "Hold on, Mr. President, precisely who are you calling animals?" but investigators would do the same for whatever word salad he concocts about "no collusion!", and expertly enough to lead him to spilling at least a few beans.

I don't have the highest hopes for testimony ever happening, but if it did the actual output should be meaningful, and the subsequent debate will be more like "Is it really fair to hold Dear Leader to any kind of legal standard at all, what about Crooked H", etc, rather than a question over whether or not Trump admitted to anything. (Which is close to where we are now anyway, considering how Trump's own defenders talk about "flipping" and such.)

octothorpe: Our president on Twitter this morning: Everybody is with Tomi Lahren, a truly outstanding and respected young woman! @foxandfriends

It's not as bad as "Melanie", but still a bit embarrassing to misspell Tammai Lorrond's name like that
posted by InTheYear2017 at 6:23 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

per zarq:

Some light reading from the Guardian: 'Jesus never charged a leper a co-pay': the rise of the religious left.
From healthcare to tax and immigration, Rev William Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign are driven by faith to focus on the disadvantaged


As someone who is constantly driven crazy by how the moniker of "Christian" has been co-opted by ultra-right evangelicals and Prosperity Gospel shitheads, I find this incredibly exciting.
posted by Anonymous at 6:28 AM on May 23, 2018

Trump: "If the person placed very early into my campaign wasn’t a SPY put there by the previous Administration for political purposes..."

I must once again applaud Mueller's team. Their style of keeping it close to their vest, giving no-one anything to work with until indictments drop, has Trump and Giuliani pretty much free-associating their worst fears to the general public.

The obvious pushback from the Democratic camp would be to point out six or seven of Trump's public own-goals and deplorable statements -- including the Access Hollywood tape -- and then say "we didn't need a spy."

(Also too, "follow the money?!" I realize Trump is all about projection, but he really, really is tempting fate by so many public invocations of Watergate.)
posted by Gelatin at 6:29 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

A useful recap of what Mueller's investigation is doing and likely outcomes. NYT. For me, I hope this drags on until 2020. The thought of Pence becoming president is gawdawful.

Seconding your recommendation of that NYT flowchart. But I keep in mind that Flynn has flipped, and if Pence is lying about not knowing Flynn was compromised, perhaps because of the WH briefing Yates had given prior, then Pence could be Spiro-Agnewed out before The Shit Hits The Fan.
posted by mikelieman at 6:33 AM on May 23, 2018 [10 favorites]

The thought of Pence becoming president is gawdawful.

I know this is ye age-old debate, but for as evil as Pence is he is not the type to send off nuclear missiles in a fit of pique. He'd be more effective at some evil things but less people might die worldwide. I don't know if he has the same boner for gutting the State Department, and most of the terrible things he'd do (stacking the courts, destroying the rights of marginalized groups, anti-choice measures, etc) are happening anyway because they're under the purview of current appointees who are actually capable of doing their jobs. We might also see less defects of civil servants--it's easier to combat a sane enemy and he's not leading the Deep State charge. He also hardly inspires the same level of fervor.
posted by Anonymous at 6:36 AM on May 23, 2018

I'm sure Mueller's people will have, ah, no objections whatsoever -- they'll want something they can play in court, after all. But for crying out loud, Trump's poor syntax, off-the-cuff delivery, and tendency to tailor his speech to what he thinks his audience wants to hear means there is question exactly what Trump said plenty of times, even when he's on tape.

There are worse examples of Trump being deposed. I think this is the most recent example available, and man, I'd PAY MONEY to stream the Mueller's team deposition on PPV.

Donald Trump gives deposition on provocative rhetoric
posted by mikelieman at 6:37 AM on May 23, 2018 [9 favorites]

Pence is incredibly horrible, but keep in mind that he lost Indiana. He's not charismatic, he's not beloved, he has few connections, he doesn't have Trump's ties to the mob and oligarchs worldwide. He may be a clearer thinker than Trump, which should in theory make him more dangerous, but it's precisely Trump's incoherence and loose-cannon qualities which rile up the base. Pence will end up thinking about how to do the horrible things he wants to do, and that will weaken him. Pence is a terrible person, but he will be a lot easier to fight.
posted by Frowner at 6:54 AM on May 23, 2018 [40 favorites]

Guys can we not, we've been round the Pence v Trump carousel a number of times.
posted by Fleebnork at 6:57 AM on May 23, 2018 [20 favorites]

Our president on Twitter this morning [re-tweets Fox News]

He went on a capitalization spree with this one: "SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history!" And then he moved on to "Criminal Deep State", "Phony Collusion with Russia", "a made up Scam", and "a major SPY scandal".

Seriously, though, NYU historian and CNN commentator Ruth Ben-Ghiat has written up a very helpful analysis of how Trump conveys his message to his Twitter followers. "Wherever they are in the message, the all-capitalized words allow this professional marketer to isolate slogans he most wants you to notice and absorb -- usually phrases connected to his aim of discrediting people or media outlets critical of him and his presidency." This is a technique straight out of the political direct mail letters pioneered by the New Right in the 70s and 80s.

In addition, Trump's repetition of key words and phrases is basic advertising and sales practice with which Trump is well aquainted. He's not simply complaining about "Fake News", for example; he's promoting the very concept of "Fake News". This toxic phrase, having entered our cultural lexicon, counts as his biggest rhetorical triumph. Worse, it's succeeded as a propaganda campaign among his followers to discredit critical news sources. The 2017 Gallup/Knight Foundation Survey on Trust, Media and Democracy found, "Four in 10 Republicans consider accurate news stories that cast a politician or political group in a negative light to always be “fake news.”"

Meanwhile, the Top Minds on /r/The_Donald are now promoting "#SPYGATE (Operation Boomerang)" as their next meme project for Internet saturation...
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:11 AM on May 23, 2018 [12 favorites]

GOP lawmaker: Julian Assange is a ‘very honorable man’

If you guessed Rohrabacher, you win absolutely nothing because of course it's Rohrabacher.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:14 AM on May 23, 2018 [39 favorites]

I'd like to remind everyone that Umberto Eco's article Ur-Fascism (which has seen the rounds here before, this is not new information) is a good whetting stone to help keep our minds sharp when pondering "where is the potential rise of fascism occurring?"

The article answers a lot of the preliminary questions for us, and I don't want to derail this thread with that conversation, I just want to put this here as a helpful guide to better shape our sentiments and understandings and perspectives for the days ahead.
posted by nikaspark at 7:29 AM on May 23, 2018 [15 favorites]

Democrats are hiding from the Mueller investigation and have no coherent message on it: despite the indictments and guilty pleas by some of Trump’s top campaign aides, a majority of Americans answer “no” when asked whether the investigation has uncovered any crimes.

Max Bergmann:

Democrats are unbelievably losing the political fight over the Russia scandal. This is of their own doing. They've ceded the field and aren't fighting the fight. They want this to be bipartisan but the GOP has decided to go on offense - "witch hunt!"/deep state/liberal FBI 1/ Meanwhile the public have lost the plot and are lost. They don't know basic facts - 20+ indictments, 4 Trump campaign officials indicted, a suspected Russian agent on the campaign - b/c no one is hammering home these facts. 2/ Reminding the public of known facts is not the media’s job. That is the job of politicians. But Dems have no message on the Russia investigation. Instead they are scared to talk about it and think it’s too confusing. 3/ Instead, Democrats want to talk about process – the need for an investigation! And are literally on the defensive “defending the investigation” or “protecting Mueller,” while the GOP is on offense attacking Mueller. 4/ But by focusing on the process, the public has forgotten what the investigation is all about! And the GOP effort is working. The public now generally views the investigation along partisan lines, despite Dems deliberately trying to avoid being seen as partisan. 5/ However, when the public is reminded of key facts – people have pleaded guilty! - or reminded of why this investigation happened – they had these sketchy meetings they lied about! - it has a real impact. 6/ So for Dems this situation is solvable! But to solve it you need a clear message. 7/ But this is where the political consultant industrial complex says don’t talk about Russia! Polls say talk about Health care and puppies! Yes talk about that! But it is possible to walk and chew gum. 8/ First, Trump scandals are having an impact on his approvals. W/o them Dems in tough spot - w/ 4% unemployment, Trump is drafting off of the Obama economy. So talk about cleaning up Washington, stopping corruption and holding Trump accountable. 9/ Lastly, Dems need to shape the coming battlefield over the outcome of the Mueller investigation. Do you not think Mueller will find evidence of serious of crimes by the POTUS and his associates? If not, I have some land to sell you… 10/ So knowing what’s coming – perhaps it makes sense to spend time NOW working to shape public opinion. 11/ Imagine it is May 2008 and you know the financial crash is coming in September 2008 – what would be the politically smart thing to do? Talk about Wall Street! Subprime mortgages, financial regulations, etc. But pollsters w/d tell you you’re crazy! No one cares... 12/ So knowing what's coming, Dems s/d get ahead of the curve. Convey to the public what the investigation is about, hammer key facts, and make the public question the president's behavior. There is so much to work with. END

posted by T.D. Strange at 7:43 AM on May 23, 2018 [44 favorites]

So, like, which is it? Should we only be talking about red meat issues that effect the daily lives of the American voters because no one but nerds cares about Russia, like I keep getting told? Or should we hammer about Russia day and night, like I have also been told?
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:48 AM on May 23, 2018 [22 favorites]

Reporters are being barred from the EPA's chemicals summit again today.

"I’m standing at EPA’s chemicals summit, where I’m told by security that I can’t enter and can’t stand inside because it is invite only and no press. They were polite but refused to call public affairs staff, even if I gave them the number (which they said they didn’t have)." - Emily Holden on Twitter
posted by marshmallow peep at 7:49 AM on May 23, 2018 [30 favorites]

Democrats are unbelievably losing the political fight over the Russia scandal. This is of their own doing.

Just last week (or more? I don't know how time works anymore) we were talking about how the American people don't care about Russia and it's a losing conversation for Dems to have and instead Dems must STAY ON MESSAGE about JOBS and HEALTHCARE. I wish we could talk about what to prioritize in messaging without this constant lens of "the Democrats managed to fuck everything up again despite the advantages they totally definitely have". Please. I have to get through these 6 months until the midterms and I am an atheist so I have no one to pray to.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:51 AM on May 23, 2018 [52 favorites]

But Dems have no message on the Russia investigation. Instead they are scared to talk about it and think it’s too confusing.

What part of "Trump sold the country out to the Russians to help him get elected" is confusing?

Okay, okay, we can keep it simple: "Trump sold the country out to the Russians." Heck, he himself blew an Israeli intelligence op that planted a listening device at ISIS headquarters by blabbing to the Russians.

And while it may not be "illegal," because the President can declassify whatever he pleases, it's wrong.

So maybe the Democrats should adapt the message of another prominent conservative, Barry Goldawater: "In your hearts, you know he's wrong."
posted by Gelatin at 7:55 AM on May 23, 2018 [8 favorites]

49 Democrats in Congress (16 Senators and 33 Representatives) just voted to roll finance oversight back to the pre-2008 crash days, and six gave cover to appoint a torture fetishist to the CIA. These were battles that were winnable by a united caucus, and yet apparently no one even tried to stop them.

That they can't summon up the courage or organization on something else that should be criminally easy to push back on shouldn't be surprising anymore.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:01 AM on May 23, 2018 [35 favorites]

But Dems have no message on the Russia investigation. Instead they are scared to talk about it and think it’s too confusing.

"The Trump Campaign illegally met with Russian criminals in Trump Tower, and Trump Jr. admitted it on twitter fora all the world to see"

is the most succinct talking point I can distill.
posted by mikelieman at 8:04 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

I don't think Democrats are necessarily fucking things up. I think we may be losing the information war for a number of fascinating reasons that will probably be written about extensively. We know that POTUS colluded with a hostile foreign power to obtain the presidency. How are people not in the streets? I mean, is this even disputable any more? I guess because people have jobs and kids and a limited tolerance for engaging in this bullshit.

I think when the history of this is written, it's going to be about the same human psychology that's created horrors of the past. Apathy. Tribalism. The reaction to limited resources. The reaction to the unknown that's demonized for political purposes. Hate and fear and ignorance. A lack of empathy.
posted by angrycat at 8:06 AM on May 23, 2018 [10 favorites]

Y'all, please see the title of this thread. The Russian collusion and all the illegal, immoral, and unethical acts are not separate from a Democratic message about jobs and healthcare and whatever else "real Americans" really care about. Trump and his cronies, along with the GOP, sold out the American people to enrich themselves, their friends and their corporate donors. It's not hard.

Unrelated, and ignore if derail, but I don't understand the Democrat/Democratic thing and why people are so worked up about it.
posted by runcibleshaw at 8:12 AM on May 23, 2018 [9 favorites]

What good does being in the streets do? It doesn't seem to make a difference.
posted by agregoli at 8:14 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

I don't think Democrats are necessarily fucking things up.

Losing several major battles in a matter of weeks, on decisions that will have decades of impact, when they could have won them is the definition of fucking things up.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:14 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

"The Trump Campaign illegally met with Russian criminals in Trump Tower, and Trump Jr. admitted it on twitter fora all the world to see"

is the most succinct talking point I can distill.

I'm fond of "The Republicans sure act like they think Trump is guilty."

(Or they know it.)

And don't forget that Trump basically confessed to obstruction of justice on live TV and Twitter. With Lester Holt, and again in demanding that the Justice Department justify its investigation of his to his lickspittles in Congress.

The things we know about what Trump and his people did is a massive scandal. The fact that the Republicans are politicizing it means they know they have no defense on the merits. And that's entirely apart from whatever else Mueller knows.
posted by Gelatin at 8:15 AM on May 23, 2018 [8 favorites]

PLEASE do not start a "are the Democrats fucking up/no they are not fucking up" line of argument in here.
posted by agregoli at 8:16 AM on May 23, 2018 [22 favorites]

runcibleshaw:"Trump and his cronies, along with the GOP, sold out the American people to enrich themselves, their friends and their corporate donors. It's not hard."

The problem with summarizing this way is that you'll never convince the average Trump supporter that there is anything wrong with personal encrichment, no matter the circumstances - so even if you can get said Trumpeter to agree that Trump's actions were illegal, they will immediately dismiss the illegality as unimportant.
posted by namewithoutwords at 8:17 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

"In your hearts, you know he's wrong."

In your guts, you know he's nuts.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:21 AM on May 23, 2018 [62 favorites]

It's two different groups of people telling us these things. The "red meat issues only, Russia is a DISTRACTION" crowd is made up of leftier-than-thou Salon / The Nation / Chapo types who were skeptical of the Russia investigation from the beginning and aren't going to let facts get in the way of their story. The "Democrats are doing the Russia thing wrong" crowd is made up lazy mainstream pundits who do believe that there was/is collusion and corruption, but also believe that there's ONE WEIRD TRICK to getting a nation that's been desensitized to scandal to suddenly grab their torches and pitchforks and demand impeachment.

In the world we're actually living in, no amount of Democrats doing anything is going to change what Robert S. Mueller does with his investigation, and that's all that really matters. The noise is just two different constituencies competing for their version of how to blame Democrats for everything.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:23 AM on May 23, 2018 [35 favorites]

We know that POTUS colluded with a hostile foreign power to obtain the presidency. How are people not in the streets?

Because there is a media organization that is working very hard to advance the counter-argument that "no, we don't 'know' that" and that it's "fake news". And that media organization is assisted by the other myth that "you know why you're poor? It's those other people taking your jobs (it has nothing to do with us corporations cooking the books so that we get everything and trying to pit y'all against each other)".

You are assuming htat everyone is working from the same series of assumptions about the state of the world. They aren't.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:27 AM on May 23, 2018 [11 favorites]

I think when the history of this is written, it's going to be about the same human psychology that's created horrors of the past. Apathy. Tribalism. The reaction to limited resources. The reaction to the unknown that's demonized for political purposes. Hate and fear and ignorance. A lack of empathy.
That history may have been recently published. Mishra's Age of Anger.
A history of militant lowbrows engaging in resentful violent nihilism often, as a feature of our post-Enlightenment culture.
posted by Harry Caul at 8:27 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

We're already in 30s Germany. We're already in a Nazi-style campaign against racial/ethnic minorities.

By 1933, Germany had Dachau, by 1937 Buchenwald. I'm not saying that the US is a model of civil liberties or tolerance at all, but some sense of perspective is useful here.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:27 AM on May 23, 2018 [14 favorites]

Basically: what message could Democrats have that would make Fox News turn on Trump? That's not an trivial issue.

There is no message that would make Fox News turn on Trump, short of "the president announced today that he will be changing his party designation to Democratic." Fox News is the party mouthpiece of the GOP. Trying to figure out a strategy to get them to change their stripes is as productive as trying to reach out to Trump voters. You're not going to convince them, because you can't reason your way out of something you didn't reason your way into. Our only chance is to blast an equally loud message from the other side, which starts with high-profile D's trumpeting the Mueller investigation every. single. day. until the press has no choice but to cover it. Take a page from the GOP book of deflection, and pivot every question into talking points about the president's corrupt team and the money he took in exchange for unknown services rendered to hostile foreign governments. Beat that dead horse until the carcass is no longer recognizable. This is an honest-to-god national disgrace, and if the media won't report it of their own accord, it's up to the Dems to goddamn well MAKE them cover it.
posted by Mayor West at 8:28 AM on May 23, 2018 [11 favorites]

In the world we're actually living in, no amount of Democrats doing anything is going to change what Robert S. Mueller does with his investigation, and that's all that really matters.

What Democrats and their media personalities can do is point out that what Trump is doing about the investigation is itself a scandal. Republicans have decades of experience in running fake scandals -- Whitewater, Benghazi, Emailgate, etc etc -- and Democratic presidents did not respond with public acts of obstruction of justice.
posted by Gelatin at 8:34 AM on May 23, 2018 [6 favorites]

We're already in 30s Germany. We're already in a Nazi-style campaign against racial/ethnic minorities.

By 1933, Germany had Dachau, by 1937 Buchenwald. I'm not saying that the US is a model of civil liberties or tolerance at all, but some sense of perspective is useful here.

It's almost as if the growth of an American version of racist fascism and oppression would have different details and different branding than the Nazi Germany of 80-90 years ago.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:37 AM on May 23, 2018 [18 favorites]

What Democrats and their media personalities can do is point out that what Trump is doing about the investigation is itself a scandal. Republicans have decades of experience in running fake scandals -- Whitewater, Benghazi, Emailgate, etc etc -- and Democratic presidents did not respond with public acts of obstruction of justice.

If they really wanted some rhetorical effect, they could emphasize that this is not just a scandal, but that the GOP government is actively disloyal to the United States.
posted by The Gaffer at 8:38 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Beat that dead horse until the carcass is no longer recognizable. This is an honest-to-god national disgrace, and if the media won't report it of their own accord, it's up to the Dems to goddamn well MAKE them cover it.

Adam Schiff has been a good example. His committee's minority report garnered some media attention, feeding as it did into the media's hunger for lazy "he-said, she-said" storylines, and his twitter feed and public statements are both appropriately dramatic for the criminal enterprise currently occupying the White House and for playing to the media's other bias, sensationalism.
posted by Gelatin at 8:39 AM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

By 1933, Germany had Dachau, by 1937 Buchenwald. I'm not saying that the US is a model of civil liberties or tolerance at all, but some sense of perspective is useful here.

Dachau was just a prison for political prisoners (which was also bad) until around 1938.
posted by srboisvert at 8:39 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

For insight on the messaging question, I (unsurprisingly) recommend Alexandra Erin's thread.

Some key points are (1) staying "above the fray" to avoid low blows from the other side is a mistake (one of her catchphrases is "you can't withhold ammunition from a munitions factory") and (2) the notion of Russia-Lago vs "issues" is a false dichotomy, because a corrupt government is also one that isn't working for you, the people.

For more insight and some strong encouragement, I highly recommend this thread of hers. It reiterates another valuable message, which is that when say Democrats will win in November, it's not a prediction, it's a promise.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 8:41 AM on May 23, 2018 [12 favorites]

What good does being in the streets do? It doesn't seem to make a difference.

South Korea, 2016

Ukraine, 2014

We may only need 3.5% of the population.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:41 AM on May 23, 2018 [22 favorites]

I'm fond of "The Republicans sure act like they think Trump is guilty."

From the Washington Post last week: Now We Know What Trump Will Say When We Learn What He’s Hiding—"It has been said many times: For a man protesting his innocence, Trump sure does act guilty. And that, more than anything, creates the air of mystery shrouding this topic. But at least we now know what he’s likely to say if and when we learn what he is hiding."

And last month:
Why Do Trump’s Defenders Assume He’s Guilty?—Atlantic Monthly
Trump Keeps Saying He’s Innocent. So Why Does He Keep Sounding Like He’s Guilty?—Washington Post
Republicans Can't Understand Why Trump Is Acting Guilty—NYMag

And last December:
Republicans Are Acting Like Trump's Guilty—The Week

And last July:
Fmr. Watergate prosecutor: Trump 'is clearly acting guilty'—NBC

And March of last year:
If Trump Is Innocent, Why Is He Acting So Guilty?

Sometimes it takes a lot of repetition for a message to sink in. But note the increasing frequency with which this is occurring.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:41 AM on May 23, 2018 [52 favorites]

> What Democrats and their media personalities can do is point out that what Trump is doing about the investigation is itself a scandal. Republicans have decades of experience in running fake scandals -- Whitewater, Benghazi, Emailgate, etc etc -- and Democratic presidents did not respond with public acts of obstruction of justice.

I'm not sure who "their media personalities" are here, but elected Democrats have been using phrases like "obstruction of justice" in regards to Trump's behavior for at least a year now. If the media isn't set up to allow those statements to rise to the top of the nightly newscasts, no amount of Democratic working of the refs is going to change that, because the media ecosystem generally follows the money rather than the demands of the people they're covering. That the Republican worldview is often more aligned with the corporate interests of media conglomerates is unfortunate, but it's not something Tom Perez, Keith Ellison, Nancy Pelosi, or Chuck Schumer can do a damn thing about.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:43 AM on May 23, 2018 [8 favorites]

the notion of Russia-Lago vs "issues" is a false dichotomy, because a corrupt government is also one that isn't working for you, the people.

Exactly. I like the phrase "Trump is selling you out" because it applies to so many situations (China, big business, drug companies, as well as Russia) and because it's a psychological bridge for Trump fans. Yeah I know he spoke to you and promised a lot, but....
posted by msalt at 8:47 AM on May 23, 2018 [6 favorites]

South Korea, 2016

Ukraine, 2014

Slovakia & Armenia, 2018.
posted by progosk at 8:48 AM on May 23, 2018 [9 favorites]

If the media isn't set up to allow those statements to rise to the top of the nightly newscasts, no amount of Democratic working of the refs is going to change that

I didn't mean to imply that Democrats aren't doing so art all -- as I mentioned, Schiff brings plenty of righteous fire. But yeah, working the media refs seems to be more effective for Republicans than Democrats, in part, perhaps, because the media seems to have accepted that Republican complains about the so-called "liberal media" were made in good faith. And NPR, in particular, seems utterly desperate to normalize this president and pretend that his scandals fit into their normal worldview. (Ron Howard narrator voice: They don't.)
posted by Gelatin at 8:50 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

Reminding the public of known facts is not the media’s job.

This is _exactly_ the media's job. They Are. Not. Doing. It.
(Not doing it well, at any rate. It's arguable they cough up the odd fact in the course of droning a both-sides narrative)
posted by petebest at 8:51 AM on May 23, 2018 [33 favorites]

Meanwhile the public have lost the plot and are lost. They don't know basic facts - 20+ indictments, 4 Trump campaign officials indicted, a suspected Russian agent on the campaign - b/c no one is hammering home these facts. 2/ Reminding the public of known facts is not the media’s job. That is the job of politicians.

Bull fucking shit. That anyone would say this underscores just how completely and effectively the right wing has co-opted the systems of public discourse in our country. This is why everyone seems to feel they need to blame the Democrats for everything: everyone else, including our nonpartisan media, has abrogated all responsibility for maintaining a functioning society.

PLEASE do not start a "are the Democrats fucking up/no they are not fucking up" line of argument in here.

I would love it if people would stop skewing every news story with a "Democrats are fucking this up" angle in here. At this point it's borderline trolling. But as long as that narrative keeps appearing in these threads, I think it's absolutely vital that it be pushed back against. Because it's false, and because it promotes despair, and because it serves the interests of the vast right-wing conspiracy. Criticizing individual Democrats for bad decisions is great: criticism is valuable and how we get better. Criticizing specific Democratic party policies or tactics is great. "Democrats are fucking this up, like they always do" is false and worthless.
posted by biogeo at 8:52 AM on May 23, 2018 [74 favorites]

Vox: After months of debate, the Senate has finally reached an agreement on a bill to curtail sexual harassment on Capitol Hill. And Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell have promised the bill will pass in “short order.”
posted by Chrysostom at 8:57 AM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

This is _exactly_ the media's job. They Are. Not. Doing. It.
Actually their job is to generate revenue for their owners, and most of them do that with consistent professional loyal ingenuity.
posted by Harry Caul at 9:03 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Also, I'm despairing at ever getting final numbers out of the state of Arkansas, but it was a GOP Hold for the other state Senate seat as well, looks like probably about the same performance as the 2016 presidential results (no Dem had run for this seat in quite some time, so no district comparison).
posted by Chrysostom at 9:05 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

BBC: Trump lawyer 'paid by Ukraine' to arrange White House talks

Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, received a secret payment of at least $400,000 (£300,000) to fix talks between the Ukrainian president and President Trump, according to sources in Kiev close to those involved.

The payment was arranged by intermediaries acting for Ukraine's leader, Petro Poroshenko, the sources said, though Cohen was not registered as a representative of Ukraine as required by US law. The meeting at the White House was last June.

Shortly after the Ukrainian president returned home, his country's anti-corruption agency stopped its investigation into Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:17 AM on May 23, 2018 [53 favorites]

BBC: Trump lawyer 'paid by Ukraine' to arrange White House talks

Just a reminder that for some, including myself, the whole "what the heck is the deal with Trump and Russia?" thing began when Trump's people changed a Republican platform plank on Ukraine, and only on Ukraine, prior to the convention.

Trump's campaign has been up to its eyebrows in the Russia scandal since before he was officially nominated.
posted by Gelatin at 9:21 AM on May 23, 2018 [54 favorites]

Just a reminder that for some, including myself, the whole "what the heck is the deal with Trump and Russia?" thing began when Trump's people changed a Republican platform plank on Ukraine, and only on Ukraine, prior to the convention.

Poroshenko has no love for Russia, so I don't think it makes sense to file this under "Trump-Russia".
posted by BungaDunga at 9:26 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Poroshenko came to power after the Russia-backed autocrat was kicked out of the country. If anything, getting him into the room with Trump hurts the Russian line that everyone in power in Ukraine are fascists and that's why they needed to annex Crimea.

Foreign heads of state paying off the President's fixer in order to get face-time with Trump is terrible in ten thousand ways, and it's further evidence that the guys around him are willing to use their proximity to the President for basically anything as long as it comes with a payday.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:31 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

Know what the Democrats aren't fucking up?

Running a candidate in every damn seat. Losing an election in Arkansas with 25% of the vote is still a far cry better than getting 0% of the vote because we didn't run a candidate.

25% is still 1 in 4 people. Those folks have family members, coworkers, and neighbors who voted for the other side. We only need to convince one of the other three to vote for us, and that 25% is now more engaged, more likely to vote in the general elections for statewide/national candidates, and helping keep the Democratic party alive in local races (where we can win local races on local issues and help bolster the Democratic Party's reputation in these not-quite-purple states).

Maybe next time we'll learn some lessons, and get 35% of the vote -- and more the time after that. We aren't going to build momentum by doing nothing, and 25% is a solid foothold. There's a lot we can do with 25%, even if it isn't going to win us any elections today.

Last year, I wrote about finding a small pocket of blue in West Virginia. 1 in 4 people won't win an election, but if they work together, they can still provide a really fucking good support network and provide a strong counter-narrative amid a sea of hatred.
posted by schmod at 9:32 AM on May 23, 2018 [107 favorites]

The payment was arranged by intermediaries acting for Ukraine's leader, Petro Poroshenko, the sources said, though Cohen was not registered as a representative of Ukraine as required by US law. The meeting at the White House was last June.

...

Just a reminder that for some, including myself, the whole "what the heck is the deal with Trump and Russia?" thing began when Trump's people changed a Republican platform plank on Ukraine, and only on Ukraine, prior to the convention.

...

Poroshenko has no love for Russia, so I don't think it makes sense to file this under "Trump-Russia".

It's all part of the same con. Ukraine wants US support in its dormant but hot war with Russian backed separatists. Cohen sounds like he's been in their ears suggesting that if they lay off their guy Manafort and show a little appreciation ($$$) he can see his way to making Trump more agreeable to their cause. The whole point is to use the fact that he's president to shake down everyone they can.
posted by dis_integration at 9:32 AM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

The change involved softening a statement of support for pro-Western elements in Ukraine, which certainly tilted to Russia's advantage.

The issue is of interest to investigators in Congress and the team working for Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller because the idea of arming Ukrainians in the fight against pro-Russian separatist forces was staunchly opposed by the Russian government — and, it seems, the Trump campaign as well.

And according to this story, Trump himself directed the change.
posted by Gelatin at 9:34 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

This BBC scoop is absolutely part of the bigger Trump-Russia scandal, as much a quid pro quo as Ukraine receiving a multi-million dollar missile deal from the Trump administration after they stopped cooperating with Mueller about Manafort. If anything, it's worse that other countries in addition to Russia can use the scandal to leverage Trump.
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:34 AM on May 23, 2018 [12 favorites]

Maybe next time we'll learn some lessons, and get 35% of the vote -- and more the time after that. We aren't going to build momentum by doing nothing, and 25% is a solid foothold. There's a lot we can do with 25%, even if it isn't going to win us any elections today.

idk if it's the terrible chronic pain hangover making me super emotionally labile but this comment gave me a lot of hope, thank you.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:35 AM on May 23, 2018 [35 favorites]

The "is the media doing its job on the Russia investigation?" is missing the point. On balance I think the answer is mostly "yes" except for Fox News... but the majority of Americans either watch Fox News or don't watch/read the news at all. It doesn't matter how well the NYT/WaPo/CNN/MSNBC/whoever covers the story if someone's entire consumption of the news consists of stories occasionally pushed onto their Facebook feed. Or scuttlebutt around the metaphorical water cooler from some dude who watches Fox News and Infowars.

People in this thread who read or watch the news daily, like me, are major outliers.
posted by Justinian at 9:53 AM on May 23, 2018 [9 favorites]

The Committee to Investigate Russia has an Everything We Know About Russia and President Trump timeline.

The timeline was originally at Bill Moyers' web site.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:59 AM on May 23, 2018 [21 favorites]

Trump Is Already the Anti-Abortion Movement’s Best President Ever - Reagan was an inspirational leader for the RTL movement, and George W. Bush was a true believer. But Trump delivers. As president he has done many things to damage his self-proclaimed reputation as a great deal-maker. But the deal he struck with those who desperately want to deny women reproductive rights is going strong
posted by growabrain at 10:01 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

In addition, Trump's repetition of key words and phrases is basic advertising and sales practice with which Trump is well aquainted.

Narcissists use repetition to convince people to go along with their internal script of how things "really are". They also have trouble changing their internal scripts and will, for example, keep complaining about a situation that's resolved or blaming someone for something it's been established the other person didn't do. Maybe there's a little skill involved with his repetition, but mostly it's a narcissistic personality trait being milked by people who know something about marketing.
posted by camyram at 10:03 AM on May 23, 2018 [36 favorites]

The problem with summarizing this way is that you'll never convince the average Trump supporter that there is anything wrong with personal encrichment, no matter the circumstances - so even if you can get said Trumpeter to agree that Trump's actions were illegal, they will immediately dismiss the illegality as unimportant.

I think the low-hanging fruit no one is picking is flagrantly tying everything to the Constitution. Trump, on national television, called for Russia to carry out a cyberattack on the United States. Mike Flynn registered himself as a foreign agent and is now a convicted felon. Paul Manafort registered himself as a foreign agent too.

The important stuff happened in public and can't be explained away as fake news. All the Special Counsel investigation is doing is sweeping away the flimsy lies and pretenses they've been trying to excuse themselves with since it all came out.

The legal details and interpretations of courts' interpretations of interpretations built up like barnacles don't matter, it's like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. The authors of the Constitution wouldn't have known what a cyberattack was, but Trump definitely levied war against the United States and thus committed treason. They also would have never heard of the office of the National Security Advisor and today no one knows what an emolument is but the authors of the Constitution incontrovertibly intended for it to be unconstitutional for someone to become President by trading favors and money with European powers, to install paid foreign agents into the top echelon of the U.S. government, and to proceed with selling the services of said U.S. government to European powers and what they would have called Oriental potentates.
posted by XMLicious at 10:06 AM on May 23, 2018 [20 favorites]

I think the low-hanging fruit no one is picking is flagrantly tying everything to the Constitution. Trump, on national television, called for Russia to carry out a cyberattack on the United States. Mike Flynn registered himself as a foreign agent and is now a convicted felon. Paul Manafort registered himself as a foreign agent too.

Trump's properties, which he didn't even bother to put into a blind trust, routinely take payments from foreign governments in an obvious violation of the emoluments clause. Trump was in violation of the Constitution from the moment he swore, falsely, to preserve, protect, and defend it.

The authors of the Constitution wouldn't have known what a cyberattack was, but Trump definitely levied war against the United States and thus committed treason.

Mitch McConnell was presented with evidence of Russian interference in the election, and told Obama and Biden that he would not only deny knowing about it but also claim that any move by Obama to tell the American people was a partisan attempt to influence the election itself. The Constitution requires an overt act of aiding enemies of the United States before at least two witnesses; there you have it.
posted by Gelatin at 10:13 AM on May 23, 2018 [43 favorites]

Hey, at least not all Republicans are turning a blind eye to obstruction of justice:

Immigration hard-liners’ anger toward Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf for her warning about a federal sweep for undocumented migrants in Northern California led an Iowa congressman to propose criminal penalties Monday for officials who talk about such operations in advance.

Republican Rep. Steve King introduced the “Mayor Libby Schaaf Act of 2018,” which would ban officials from “the purposeful broadcast ... of information relating to any imminent action by a federal law enforcement officer or agent.” Violations could result in up to five years in prison.

King said his bill would make clear that disclosing an imminent enforcement would amount to obstruction of justice.

“I want lawless, sanctuary city politicians to hear this message clearly: If you obstruct ICE, you are going to end up in the cooler,” King said in a statement.

posted by Atom Eyes at 10:17 AM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

NBC's Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1: Federal judge rules that Trump can't block Twitter users.

Naomi Reice Buchwald, United States District Judge, Memorandum And Order, 17 Civ. 5205 (NRB)

This case requires us to consider whether a public official may, consistent with the First Amendment, “block” a person from his Twitter account in response to the political views that person has expressed, and whether the analysis differs because that public official is the President of the United States. The answer to both questions is no.

Let the Great Unblocking begin, @Jack!
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:21 AM on May 23, 2018 [69 favorites]

Trump Is Already the Anti-Abortion Movement’s Best President Ever - Reagan was an inspirational leader for the RTL movement, and George W. Bush was a true believer. But Trump delivers. As president he has done many things to damage his self-proclaimed reputation as a great deal-maker. But the deal he struck with those who desperately want to deny women reproductive rights is going strong
I guess this a clear signal that Pence is getting what he signed up for: Gilead.
posted by mumimor at 10:22 AM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

Waiit, does that mean all public officials are prohibited from blocking people on Twitter? And presumably other social networks?
posted by Etrigan at 10:34 AM on May 23, 2018 [15 favorites]

Seems pretty unambiguous to me.
posted by contraption at 10:38 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

> Republican Rep. Steve King introduced the “Mayor Libby Schaaf Act of 2018,” which would ban officials from “the purposeful broadcast ... of information relating to any imminent action by a federal law enforcement officer or agent.” Violations could result in up to five years in prison.

Oh good. Can we apply this to Devin Nunes for leaking stuff related to an active FBI information? How about applying it to Trump for leaking an active intelligence-gathering operation?

What's that? I missed the little asterisk where it says this law only applies to DemocRATs? Of course, of course.

(And in response to runcibleshaw's question, that stupid childish RAT is the whole reason for the "Democrat party" phrasing favored by Republicans, as Gelatin described way upthread.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:38 AM on May 23, 2018 [16 favorites]

Quoting myself: Trump's properties, which he didn't even bother to put into a blind trust, routinely take payments from foreign governments in an obvious violation of the emoluments clause. Trump was in violation of the Constitution from the moment he swore, falsely, to preserve, protect, and defend it.

I've been thinking about this concept, and believe that pushing the narrative that Trump is a liar should be an easy job for Democrats, and questioning the sincerity of his oath of office could hit Trump where it hurts -- undermining his legitimacy. How could Trump have been sincere about preserving and protecting the Constitution when he was in violation the moment he took the oath? Oh, his defenders say he didn't know what an "emoluments clause" is? How could Trump be sincere about the oath when he doesn't even know what it means?

Trump breaks promises all the time. He's full of big talk and short on hands delivering. So far all he's really accomplished is give corporations a big tax cut, which, let's face it, just shows you where congressional Republicans' priorities really were.

Trump can't be trusted. He's been given a chance, and he's muffed it again and again. He's a phony. There's no "we'll see what happens;" we know what happens. He's full of baloney, the truth is not in him, and it shows, again and again.
posted by Gelatin at 10:39 AM on May 23, 2018 [11 favorites]

Federal judge rules that Trump can't block Twitter users.

So how exactly is something like this enforced? Like, what if he simply ignores the ruling and continues to block people?
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:54 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

Fox and Friends test-running their hot take for when it starts here.

Fox Host: Kim Probably Hates That ‘He Has To Murder His People’
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:56 AM on May 23, 2018 [21 favorites]

David Von Drehle, WaPo Opinion: "Now we know what Trump will say when we learn what he’s hiding"

"Urging [Nunes] to keep at it, Kimberly A. Strassel of the Wall Street Journal wrote that he might sort out “who was pulling the strings” that appear to tie former Trump advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos to Russia, “and what was the goal? . . . Entrapment?”

She was echoing Nunes himself, who during an earlier interview with Fox News used the term “setup” rather than Strassel’s fancier word. But the idea was the same, and by week’s end it was everywhere. The influential Townhall website went with “spying.” The website for radio bigfoot Rush Limbaugh referred to “an infuriating story of entrapment.”
...
Where I come from, only guilty people trot out the I-was-stung defense. Indeed, the most infamous use of this jargon in Washington — the late Marion Barry’s “Bitch set me up!” — followed the mayor’s dismayed realization that his crack-smoking had been caught on hidden camera.
...
But at least we now know what [Trump] is likely to say if and when we learn what he is hiding."

posted by OnceUponATime at 11:05 AM on May 23, 2018 [15 favorites]

msalt: Wasn't Trump the one who criticized Obama and Hillary for using a teleprompter?

And now we know why - teleprompters make you say the darnedest things.

Doktor Zed: Meanwhile, the Top Minds on /r/The_Donald are now promoting "#SPYGATE (Operation Boomerang)" as their next meme project for Internet saturation...

Where the boomerang is the president's own words, swinging around to smack him in the back of the head?

Speaking of fake news, Wired got an exclusive sneak peak at Facebook's three new announcements on fake news:

The first new announcement is a request for proposals from academics eager to study false news on the platform. Researchers who are accepted will get data and money; the public will get, ideally, elusive answers to how much false news actually exists and how much it matters. The second announcement is the launch of a public education campaign that will utilize the top of Facebook’s home page, perhaps the most valuable real estate on the internet. Users will be taught what false news is and how they can stop its spread. Facebook knows it is at war, and it wants to teach the populace how to join its side of the fight. The third announcement—and the one which the company seems most excited about—is the release of a nearly 12-minute video called “Facing Facts,” a title that suggests both the topic and the repentant tone.

posted by filthy light thief at 11:06 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Where I come from, only guilty people trot out the I-was-stung defense. Indeed, the most infamous use of this jargon in Washington — the late Marion Barry’s “Bitch set me up!” — followed the mayor’s dismayed realization that his crack-smoking had been caught on hidden camera.

Let's not forget that the floating of the "perjury trap" trial balloon was to prepare people for the fact that Trump was likely to lie under oath by denying his illegal activities. Activities that Mueller, of course, knows all about.

But it isn't a perjury trap even when it turns out the prosecutor knew you were going to lie. A Morton's fork, maybe, but not a perjury trap.
posted by Gelatin at 11:08 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Gelatin: Oh, his defenders say he didn't know what an "emoluments clause" is? How could Trump be sincere about the oath when he doesn't even know what it means?

In all fairness, nobody reads the terms and conditions

(coming soon: that argument, in non-ironic form, from a Fox News near you)
posted by InTheYear2017 at 11:13 AM on May 23, 2018 [9 favorites]

@awprokop (Vox): Mueller has put off Papadopoulos's sentencing for months while his cooperation has continued. Today he tells court he's ready to move ahead with it.
posted by pjenks at 11:13 AM on May 23, 2018 [13 favorites]

Kushner receives permanent security clearance.

Ctrl+F "backchannel" - 0 results

Ctrl+F "SF-86" - 0 results
posted by Rhaomi at 11:15 AM on May 23, 2018 [42 favorites]

The problem with summarizing this way is that you'll never convince the average Trump supporter that there is anything wrong with personal encrichment, no matter the circumstances - so even if you can get said Trumpeter to agree that Trump's actions were illegal, they will immediately dismiss the illegality as unimportant.

Well.... Almost.

If the **RIGHT PEOPLE** are doing it, then yes personal enrichment no matter what the circumstances is good.

But if the wrong people are doing it, then personal enrichment in the most legal possible circumstances is either inherently bad, evidence of crime, or evidence of racist beliefs about that group.

Personal anecdote. I had a job that involved a lot of driving in the company of a Trump supporter. One one occasion he was complaining bitterly about a contractor, a gentleman from somewhere in India who had moved to the US decades ago. He told me that all "those people" care about is money.

Several days later he was explaining to me that Trump ripping off his contractors was just good business practice and Trump would be a fool to have done anything else.

Personal enrichment, even under blatantly criminal circumstances, is conditional based on the race or other in group/out group status of the person in question.
posted by sotonohito at 11:15 AM on May 23, 2018 [42 favorites]

Trump, on national television, called for Russia to carry out a cyberattack on the United States

Just my two cents -- I don't think this is the best talking point anymore. In the sense that we now have better ones. I mean, you and I agree that it indicates an openness to accepting help.

But for a lot of people, it seems like "If Trump were really up to something shady, would he really announce it like that?"

Tucker Carlson let Rep Eric Swalwell come on his show to try to describe evidence of collusion [Facebook video]. Swalwell did his best to lay out the timeline over Carlson's incredulous chuckles, but when he got to that bit about soliciting hacked emails on national television, he couldn't stop Carlson from derailing the whole segment into an argument over the significance of that one line. "So you think President Trump is so dumb he tries to send secret messages to Russia via televised news conference?" "So DID Russia ever find those 30,000 missing emails? No? They're still missing?" "Do you think its possible he was joking?" "Do you think it's a crime to joke about Russia?"

(And also... "Do you think it's a crime to try to improve relations with Russia?" "Did you know the US killed 200 Russians in Syria a little while ago, and Trump sent weapons to Ukraine and bombed Assad? He's actually TOO tough on Russia.")

Anyway, there's much stronger evidence now against Trump. Maybe if you find yourself arguing with right wingers, try to lead with "Viktor Vekselberg gave Michael Cohen $500,000, why?" And "Paul Manafort offered briefings to to Oleg Deripaska, why?" And "Natalia Veselnitskya attended Trump's inauguration. Why?"

If nothing else you might make them aware of something that wasn't covered on Fox News...
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:18 AM on May 23, 2018 [10 favorites]

@markknoller: "I called them 'animals' the other day and was met by rebuke," says @POTUS of his description of MS-13 gang members. "They're not people. They're animals," he reaffirms.

This is a really messed up event.
posted by zachlipton at 11:21 AM on May 23, 2018 [34 favorites]

Step 1: Use the term "animals" when spewing a response about people crossing the border. Get AP and others to back down, beg forgiveness and murmur "context" after their first, honest reports.

Step 2: Put a document about "MS-13 animals" on the White House web site.

Step 3: Trump on "alien minors" crossing the border: "They look so innocent. They’re not innocent.” (via Daniel Dale's Twitter)
posted by maudlin at 11:21 AM on May 23, 2018 [29 favorites]

Homan just now: "I think the president is too kind describing them as animals. Animals kill for food, MS-13 kills for pleasure."

New Homeland Security head. A lot of people are going to die if this isn't stopped.
posted by Rust Moranis at 11:26 AM on May 23, 2018 [53 favorites]

schmod: Know what the Democrats aren't fucking up?

Running a candidate in every damn seat. Losing an election in Arkansas with 25% of the vote is still a far cry better than getting 0% of the vote because we didn't run a candidate.

25% is still 1 in 4 people. Those folks have family members, coworkers, and neighbors who voted for the other side. We only need to convince one of the other three to vote for us, and that 25% is now more engaged, more likely to vote in the general elections for statewide/national candidates, and helping keep the Democratic party alive in local races (where we can win local races on local issues and help bolster the Democratic Party's reputation in these not-quite-purple states).

Maybe next time we'll learn some lessons, and get 35% of the vote -- and more the time after that. We aren't going to build momentum by doing nothing, and 25% is a solid foothold. There's a lot we can do with 25%, even if it isn't going to win us any elections today.


I flagged your comment as fantastic, schmod. I am heartened to see Democrats both running and winning in races that many haven't touched for years. Even in races where we don't win, merely running candidates is a signal to the other side that we're serious, not cowed or complacent. And running candidates strengthens our local Democratic party apparatus and gives us a deeper bench to draw on in the future.

When we vote, we win. When we build our party from the ground up, we launch our future Barack Obamas, Hillary Clintons, Kirsten Gillibrands, etc. who become stars on the national scene.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 11:31 AM on May 23, 2018 [44 favorites]

Waiit, does that mean all public officials are prohibited from blocking people on Twitter? And presumably other social networks?

Yes, the genie is being let out of the bottle. The collateral damage will be a lot of harassment of government officials in the name of "freeze peach", but it's the long overdue of responsibility of Twitter (and Facebook and Google, et al.) to shut that shit down with some real community moderation and enforcement of T.O.S. participation rules.

So how exactly is something like this enforced?

A nice class action lawsuit against Twitter/Facebook/Google should get their attention.

(And it's another occasion to give thanks to MeFi's dedicated mod team and the site's robust moderation tools. It just goes to show that building a healthy community is easier if taken seriously early on instead of being kicked down the road at every opportunity.)
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:31 AM on May 23, 2018 [31 favorites]

... and Rod Rosenstein (via Dan Dale again): Rod Rosenstein on "alien children": "We're letting people in who are creating problems. We're letting people in who are gang members. We're also letting people in who are vulnerable. Many of these alien children who have no parents, no family structure...develop gang ties."

The Deputy Attorney General. Fuuuuuuuck.
posted by maudlin at 11:34 AM on May 23, 2018 [22 favorites]

CBO report on Federal Subsidies for Health Insurance Coverage for People Under Age 65: 2018 to 2028 is out

The agencies expect insurers to raise premiums for benchmark plans offered through the marketplaces in 2019 by an average of roughly 15 percent over the premiums charged in 2018. Part of that increase is projected to occur because plans are expected to have a less healthy mix of enrollees after the penalty related to the individual mandate is no longer levied beginning on January 1, 2019. In total, CBO and JCT expect, premiums for nongroup health insurance will be about 10 percent higher in 2019 than they would have been if the individual mandate penalty remained in place and was enforced. The lack of a direct payment for CSRs and the rising costs of health care per person are also anticipated to contribute to the overall increase.

A 15% average increase in ACA health insurance premiums, mainly caused by Republican sabotage. Slap that into a 30 second ad and get it in front of every voter in America.
posted by zachlipton at 11:34 AM on May 23, 2018 [46 favorites]

US gov’t employee in China left with brain injury after strange sounds, pressure -- The case draws eerie similarities to mysterious "health attacks" in Cuba. (Beth Mole for Ars Technica, May 23, 2018)

The US government issued an alert Wednesday following reports that a government employee stationed in southern China experienced “subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure” and sustained a brain injury.

The case draws clear and eerie parallels to mysterious health problems that affected US diplomats in Cuba, who also experienced unexplained episodes of unusual sounds and pressure followed by diagnoses of traumatic brain injury.

Responding to an email from the New York Times, a spokesperson for the United States Embassy in Beijing said that the unnamed employee was working in the US consulate in the city of Guangzhou, just northwest of Hong Kong, and experienced a variety of symptoms from late 2017 until April of this year. In statements to the BBC, she noted that the employee had been sent back to the US. Last Friday, the 18th of May, “the embassy was told that the clinical findings of [an] evaluation matched mild traumatic brain injury,” she wrote.
...
Guesses and notions of what could explain their experiences and injuries abound, including malfunctioning surveillance equipment and a covert sonic weapon. But no clear leading hypothesis has emerged, and US officials have not suspected foul play from Cuba or China in either case.

Still, the US government is on edge. The embassy in Cuba remains staffed by a skeleton crew, and a travel alert is still in place. For those in China, the government urges vigilance: “While in China, if you experience any unusual acute auditory or sensory phenomena accompanied by unusual sounds or piercing noises, do not attempt to locate their source. Instead, move to a location where the sounds are not present.”

posted by filthy light thief at 11:35 AM on May 23, 2018 [14 favorites]

Trump is now proposing a scheme by which we deduct "a rather large amount of money" from foreign aid for every person from a country who comes here, "if we give them aid at all, because despite all the reports we hear, I don't believe they're helping us one bit."

Yeah. That will really help improve living conditions in these countries so people don't make desperate journeys to the United States.
posted by zachlipton at 11:36 AM on May 23, 2018 [16 favorites]

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
posted by kirkaracha at 11:39 AM on May 23, 2018 [41 favorites]

Chrysostom: Vox: After months of debate, the Senate has finally reached an agreement on a bill to curtail sexual harassment on Capitol Hill. And Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell have promised the bill will pass in “short order.”

Introduced by Sens. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the bill promises to address major flaws in the current sexual harassment reporting process for members of Congress and congressional staff by reforming the Congressional Accountability Act. (It’s similar to what Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has been pushing.)

Specifically, the legislation eliminates mandatory “cooling off” periods before victims of harassment can file complaints against their harassers, doubles the length of time victims have to file a lawsuit in federal court (from 45 to 90 days, it appears -- ed.), and requires members of the Senate to pay back the Treasury for any settlements related to the harassment they committed.

Currently, if a congressional staffer is harassed, the Office of Compliance initiates a four-step process: a 30-day counseling period, a mediation effort, an administrative hearing or civil action (a lawsuit), and an appeals process. Victims can’t even make a formal complaint about sexual harassment until three months have passed, including a 30-day period after enduring a mediation process with their harasser.
...
In a statement, Gillibrand, who tried to force a vote on a harassment bill in the Senate last week, praised the bill, saying:

Today’s announcement of a bipartisan deal in the Senate that would finally end a system designed to protect harassers in the halls of Congress is an important step forward. By passing this reform, we can finally make sure that when a member of Congress sexually harasses or discriminates against someone on their staff, the taxpayers are not left holding the bag, and it finally removes the barriers that were preventing many victims of harassment and discrimination from reporting what had happened to them, like the absurd “cooling off period” before a formal complaint could even be filed.

posted by filthy light thief at 11:41 AM on May 23, 2018 [15 favorites]

The speed with which his regime is adopting the language of dehumanization and their eagerness in competing to be the most radical is a five-alarm bell. This rhetoric and behavior is self-perpetuating and given enough time necessitates committing actual atrocities. And it's happening very fast, and without any cover of an obvious inciting incident. There isn't much time.
posted by Rust Moranis at 11:42 AM on May 23, 2018 [80 favorites]

Trump is now proposing a scheme ...

I have a rule about political discussion -- if an idea starts with "Why don't we just...", then it is a dumb idea.

Maybe it's dumb because the speaker hasn't thought through the second- and third-order effects, maybe it's dumb because there's no way most people will stand for it, maybe it's dumb because it's already been tried and failed, maybe it's dumb because it's already been tried and is actually current policy. But it's still gonna be dumb.
posted by Etrigan at 11:45 AM on May 23, 2018 [13 favorites]

Betsy Woodruff, Trump Gang Dragnet Caught a Teen Who ICE Said Looked Like He Was in MS-13. He Wasn’t. This is another one, right in Suffolk County where Trump is making declarations about "animals" right now.
posted by zachlipton at 11:47 AM on May 23, 2018 [30 favorites]

triggerfinger: The problem with that language and with turning it into the same sort of politicultural fight that we see with, say, kneeling in the NFL

Speak of the devil: NFL changes national anthem policy to ban kneeling (Sam Farmer for the San Diego Union-Tribune, May 23, 2018)

NFL owners reached a consensus Wednesday on their national anthem policy, addressing the most controversial and divisive issues in recent memory.

Under the new policy, players who do not choose to stand for the anthem before games will have the option of staying in the locker room. But a club will be fined if players or league personnel are on the field and do not stand “and show respect for the flag and the Anthem.”

“We want people to be respectful of the national anthem,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said. “We want people to stand — that’s all personnel — and make sure they treat this moment in a respectful fashion. That’s something we think we owe. [But] we were also very sensitive to give players choices.”

Shortly after the NFL announced its new policy at the league’s annual May meetings, the NFL Players Assn. tweeted its response and lamented it was not consulted about the decision.

That's right, it's a decision by the old white men about what the players, 70% of whom are black, can or can't do before the game starts. Speaking of the players: USA Today's "For The Win" (FTW) section picked up some player responses on Twitter -- my favorite:

Well with all due respect sir, the guys protesting don’t force the networks to show it on TV. They don’t force the media to cover it. The people don’t get to escape their reality’s that players are protesting for. There’s no relax button for them

— Damon Harrison Sr. (@snacks) May 23, 2018

(And football fans mocked Trump's "Spygate" tweet and tied it instead to the time the Patriots videotaped the NY Jets' practice, which was dubbed Spygate ... back in 2007)
posted by filthy light thief at 11:52 AM on May 23, 2018 [24 favorites]

MS-13 is, by almost all accounts, a terrible gang. It's also not one that's big enough to warrant the king of response Trump has on offer -- which makes sense in that Trump is only using the gang as a proxy for immigration writ large.

I would also imagine that Trump's, ah, endorsement can only aid MS-13 by bolstering its rep. Nice job breaking it, hero. (Obligatory warning: TVTropes link)
posted by Gelatin at 12:07 PM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Zephyr Teachout just announced she's running for NY AG. [tweet]
posted by melissasaurus at 12:08 PM on May 23, 2018 [28 favorites]

Kushner receives permanent security clearance.

@lrozen: Kushner’s lawyer Abbe Lowell has excellent PR sensibilities. Got everyone to make this headline, not that JK was questioned by Mueller again.

So, now we know that Mueller's team interviewed Kushner for 90 minutes in November 2017 and for 6-7 hours last month (WaPost, Philip Rucker, today). The first interview is said to have centered on Michael Flynn, while

in mid-April, Kushner sat for six to seven hours of questions that covered many topics, including his work on the Trump campaign, the transition and in the White House, according to the person familiar with the matter. This person said Kushner was asked in the April session about Trump’s decision in May 2017 to fire Comey.

posted by pjenks at 12:12 PM on May 23, 2018 [18 favorites]

Trump: "Our people are rougher than them. Toughness is the only language they understand." [...] "I'll tell you, the ICE guys are rougher than MS-13. They're rougher, they're tougher, they're meaner. They throw these guys into the wagons, the rolling jails, and people are applauding, and it's like a war, like an occupied territory. When you see these guys getting tossed in wagons, people are cheering. And in one way it's wonderful and one way it's terrible."

The audience is applauding. This is not a drill.
posted by Rust Moranis at 12:14 PM on May 23, 2018 [56 favorites]

Loin girding time. Just be here in the morning pls

Opinion: US strategy on Iran entails regime change
The US may have forgotten that Washington toppled Iran's first democratic government back in 1953, replacing it with the Shah's dictatorship — but the Iranians haven't

Iran says U.S. will face same fate as Saddam Hussein if it attacks: TV

The Art of the Regime Change
And make no mistake: If war does come and the result is more lives lost and more dollars squandered, and it maybe even ignites a broader regional conflict, the fault will rest solely with the man who currently sits in the Oval Office. No amount of dust kicking, blame casting, and semiliterate tweeting will be able to disguise that fact.
posted by infini at 12:17 PM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

Trump used to keep a book of Hitler speeches by his bedside and echoed Hitler in his speech withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:18 PM on May 23, 2018 [10 favorites]

MS-13 is responsible for 207 murders since 2012.

I was wondering how this number stacks up against the number of people killed by US police so far in 2018, and I found this WaPo page.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:18 PM on May 23, 2018 [24 favorites]

They're rougher, they're tougher, they're meaner.

dads, hug your fucking sons once in a while. maybe it'll inoculate them from fetishizing this Rough Men Ready To Do Violence shit.
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:24 PM on May 23, 2018 [58 favorites]

melissasaurus: "Zephyr Teachout just announced she's running for NY AG. [tweet]"

Also throwing their hats in: NYCity Public Advocate Letitia James, former Cuomo and Hillary aide Leecia Eve.

All three are women, Eve and James are African-American.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:35 PM on May 23, 2018 [22 favorites]

I'll tell you, the ICE guys are rougher than MS-13.

MS-13 is a bunch of homicidal sociopaths who would kill you as soon as look at you, and are so dangerous that we need to break all the rules to get 'em out of here pronto... but they've got NOTHING on our border patrol guys, who by the way you should venerate unconditionally.
posted by Mayor West at 12:36 PM on May 23, 2018 [114 favorites]

I was wondering how this number stacks up against the number of people killed by US police so far in 2018

Sigh. When I'm benevolent dictator, every public discussion of public health issues (e.g., causes of death) will result in little butler robots showing up with signs indicating just how big of a deal the topic is or isn't.

Some guy's presidential campaign: Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.

Helpful Robot:

 ------------------------------------------------------------------
| Deaths in the US Due to Terrorism Since from 1970-2016: 3,648[1] |
| Deaths in the US Due to Drunk Drivers, Per Year: over 10,000 [2] |
 ------------------------------------------------------------------
                                |
                                |
                                |
                                |

Vote Trolley Problem 2020.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 12:41 PM on May 23, 2018 [43 favorites]

Benjy Sarlin (NBC)
"Giuliani said he was concerned that the president would become a target or that the interview would be a perjury trap because the 'truth is relative'"
WaPo: In reversal, Giuliani now says Trump should do interview with Mueller team
- “They may have a different version of the truth than we do,” Giuliani said.
- Perjury shouldn't really be a thing because the concept of a shared objective reality is itself absurd isn't usually what you hear from former prosecutors
posted by chris24 at 12:41 PM on May 23, 2018 [56 favorites]

Trump's supporters think his corruption is a sign of being a good politician. All politicians are corrupt. Hillary's speaking fees and foundation payments are the same as the payoffs to Cohen, only more transparent and honest in nature.

Trump ran on being corrupt. He doesn't pay taxes, because he's smart. He can fix the loopholes, because he knows best where they are. Trump refuses to stop running his businesses while in office. His tax scam was likely illegal and his businesses almost unquestionably unconstitutional.

I understand that Fox News has created an alternate reality where all politicians are corrupt. I'll even grant there's a point in there somewhere. I also understand making a Faustian bargain that accepts that Trump is crook, but will ban abortion and keep American white.

What I don't understand is that he's transparently selling his country's interests to Russia, China, Qatar, etc. in exchange for personal gain, and no one is even batting an eyelash. I really thought that would be a red line for his base.

Anyway, at first the whole degradation of norms thing didn't really strike me as particularly important, but now that I see half the country doesn't care about Trump's corruption I stand corrected.
posted by xammerboy at 12:54 PM on May 23, 2018 [53 favorites]

From the same article linked by Benjy Sarlin and chris24:

“I guess I’d rather do the interview. It gets it over with it, it makes my client happy,” he said. “The safe course you hear every lawyer say is don’t do the interview, and that’s easy to say in the abstract. That’s much harder when you have a client who is the president of the United States and wants to be interviewed.”

I think this can be filed into the "talking about Trump like a three-year-old" folder. So one question whose answer I honestly don't know: When Trump reads/hears Giuliani saying this, will he be angry at the condescension (which happened in the past)... or simply pleased at what could be read as loyalty ("He wants to make me happy")? Depends on the hour of day, I suppose.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 12:56 PM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

So things seem to be going full murderous authoritarian. What do we do? Who is organizing to stop this? How can I help? (If you tell me to vote in November I will personally come to your house and say very mean things to you)
posted by runcibleshaw at 12:58 PM on May 23, 2018 [12 favorites]

And make no mistake: If war does come and the result is more lives lost and more dollars squandered, and it maybe even ignites a broader regional conflict, the fault will rest solely with the man who currently sits in the Oval Office. No amount of dust kicking, blame casting, and semiliterate tweeting will be able to disguise that fact.


That's all right. It's people's desire to believe that'll do it.
posted by trig at 1:05 PM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

ELECTIONS NEWS

** 2018 House:

-- DCCC dumping in $1.6M into CA-39/A-48/CA-49 in an effort to avoid Dems getting locked out of the top two spots.

-- VA-05: Something weird is afoot with incumbent GOP Tom Garrett, and he may be retiring. District went 53-42 Trump, might be reachable with no incumbent.

** 2018 Senate -- TX: JMC poll finds Ted Cruz up 47-40 on Dem nominee O'Rourke [MOE: +/- 4.1%].

** Odds and ends:

-- Wrap-ups on yesterday's primaries from Vox and 538.

-- TX gov: That JMC poll mentioned above finds LG Abbott up 48-38 on Dem nominee Valdez.

-- OK gov: SoonerPoll finds Dems competitive in potential gubernatorial matchups. Outgoing GOP gov Fallin is massively unpopular, so Dems may have a shot here.

-- WI gov: PPP poll has likely Dem nominee Evers up 49-45 on incumbent Walker [MOE:+/- 3.9%].

-- Court rejects appeal by Kris Kobach of the contempt finding against him.

posted by Chrysostom at 1:09 PM on May 23, 2018 [28 favorites]

- Perjury shouldn't really be a thing because the concept of a shared objective reality is itself absurd isn't usually what you hear from former prosecutors

We're really doing this? This is happening? The defense is going to be that in this post-modernist era there's actually no such thing as truth? I guess I'm not actually surprised but still.

Zephyr Teachout just announced she's running for NY AG

Third times the charm I guess? Teachout seems like a good person but I don't think will go any further than the last two times she ran for office. I still think Preet would be a good AG though I agree it would be symbolically important to elect a woman. Of the declared candidates I lean towards, on balance, Leecia Eve. But I'm not as averse to establishment types as a lot of people.
posted by Justinian at 1:23 PM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

We're really doing this? This is happening? The defense is going to be that in this post-modernist era there's actually no such thing as truth? I guess I'm not actually surprised but still.

"Place your left hand on the Bible and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear to say anything at all that occurs to you to say?"

...might work for Trump at that.
posted by Gelatin at 1:27 PM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

"I'll tell you, the ICE guys are rougher than MS-13. They're rougher, they're tougher, they're meaner."

So ICE is rougher, tougher, and meaner than animals? It sounds like we may have a serious problem on our hands.
posted by flarbuse at 1:32 PM on May 23, 2018 [24 favorites]

I still think Preet would be a good AG though I agree it would be symbolically important to elect a woman.

He hasn't gone full Sherman-esque, but he still sounds like 95% no.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:42 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'll tell you, the ICE guys are rougher than MS-13. They're rougher, they're tougher, they're meaner.

In 2016, 61 alleged MS-13 members in the Boston area were arrested on a variety of RICO charges (hmm, who was president then?). As of yesterday, 48 of the 61 have either pleaded or been found guilty, some for the particularly brutal murders of teens as young as 15 in East Boston (one of whom was both shot and stabbed repeatedly by several MS-13 members). ICE had nothing at all to do with the investigation, the indictments, the arrests, the trials or the sentences (look at who's missing in the long list of credits in this press release). It was dogged and standard police work by the FBI, State Police and local police in several cities that have declared themselves sanctuaries, aided by community members who felt they could trust at least the local police.
posted by adamg at 1:48 PM on May 23, 2018 [67 favorites]

Kushner receives permanent security clearance.

Yesterday, as USA Today reported, Trump signed the security clearance reform bill — but indicated he may not comply with it.

President Trump signed a bill Tuesday aimed at reducing the backlog of security clearance investigations — but later reserved the right not to comply with it on constitutional grounds. In a signing statement Tuesday night, Trump said provisions of the bill — the Securely Expediting Clearances Through Reporting Transparency Act of 2018, or SECRET Act — encroach on his authority as commander-in-chief. Among the provisions Trump objected to: A section requiring the White House Office of Administration to report on its process for conducting security clearance investigations for White House officials.

That process came under scrutiny in January when it was revealed that Staff Secretary Rob Porter — the official responsible for the entire paper flow in and out of the Oval Office — had been working without a permanent security clearance for more than a year. His clearance had been held up because of allegations of domestic violence from two ex-wives.[...]

The security clearance bill passed both the House and Senate unanimously after the National Background Investigations Bureau stopped releasing statistics about the backlog in security clearances. Most of the bill simply instructs the administration to provide Congress with reports on the problems causing that backlog.

But Trump said in his signing statement that the Constitution makes him responsible for the security clearance process. [...] Trump also argued that because the Constitution gives the president the power to recommend to Congress measures he believes are "necessary and expedient," Congress can't tell the intelligence community to make recommendations unless the president signs off on them.

And today, the NYT publishes a story sourced by Kushner's lawyer about how the uncertainty over his security clearance has been sorted out. What a coincidence.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:52 PM on May 23, 2018 [25 favorites]

). It was dogged and standard police work by the FBI, State Police and local police in several cities that have declared themselves sanctuaries, aided by community members who felt they could trust at least the local police

Some months ago I crashed my bike near a park near Boston, right by a group of Salvadorans who were there chilling out.

They helped me to my feet. They checked that I had a working phone and could use it to call 911 if I needed to.
They asked me if I was going to do that. I said I was not sure. So they fled.

Let that sink in.

They fled in fear because someone was about to call 911 to ask for medical help for himself.

Fuck Trump.
posted by ocschwar at 1:53 PM on May 23, 2018 [152 favorites]

Who is organizing to stop this? How can I help? (If you tell me to vote in November I will personally come to your house and say very mean things to you)

The Democratic party is organizing to stop this, and Indivisible (if you can't find a local group go start one!), and Swing Left and Flippable and so on. Also Amnesty International, CREW, and the ACLU, and Moms Demand Action and The Women's March and United We Dream and and Black Lives Matter, and so on. Just... us. That's who is organizing. There's no cavalry. We need to do the stuff we're already doing, but we need more of us doing it.

It may not seem like glamorous work to help those groups by knocking on doors and phone banking and writing postcards and letters to the editor and fundraising and holding house parties and so on, but it's the real work that needs to be done right now. This is what organizing looks like!

I mean... 42% of the country, and all three branches of government are on team Trump right now. Also, pretty much the whole military, and a majority of wealthy people and corporations, and the majority of civilian gun owners. Also several very popular propaganda outlets. Also a bunch of religious leaders. Those are not trivial advantages.

On our side we have 1) the truth 2) the law 3) the bureaucracy 4) The actual majority of the population 5) Trump&co's utter incompetence. Those are not trivial either.

It's not clear who will win. There are no rules to history, and it could go either way. But it's pretty clear to me that we have a better chance of winning elections and court cases than we have of winning a violent conflict.

We should be doing more than just voting. We should continue to protest and donate and write and speak and sue and thwart and try to rally more people to our cause... But we should also appreciate that our best chance right now is still a bunch of indictments from Mueller combined with winning at least one house in November. And we can't do much to help with the indictments.

You can say mean things if you want, but I think voting in November and getting as many other people to vote too is the most important. Do all the rest too, but know that the elections are our best chance, and maybe our last really good chance, for a while.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:53 PM on May 23, 2018 [76 favorites]

Miami New Times, Guard Threatens to Arrest Activist Recording Conditions at Miami ICE Facility

Every day, dozens of elderly people and parents with small children are forced to arrive before the sun rises at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's office in Miramar, where they stand for hours in long lines without shelter from the sun or rain. And there isn't enough parking for everyone forced to arrive for ICE check-ins, so tow trucks have been filmed waiting to haul immigrants' cars away. Some people are detained at their meetings and never return.

Now, after activists have published multiple videos of the horrid conditions outside the facility, security guards have begun threatening to "detain" activists documenting the problems. Yesterday local organizer Maria Asuncion Bilbao was trying to post a Facebook Live stream of the line of immigrants forced to stand in the rain when a guard whipped out a pair of handcuffs and threatened to arrest her.

ICE blames security contractors and says they're not responsible.
posted by zachlipton at 2:10 PM on May 23, 2018 [45 favorites]

The defense is going to be that in this post-modernist era there's actually no such thing as truth? I guess I'm not actually surprised but still.

Gorsuch is the intended audience for the sentiment.
posted by rhizome at 2:29 PM on May 23, 2018

I would also imagine that Trump's, ah, endorsement can only aid MS-13 by bolstering its rep.*

That's a good point, and I wonder if it's a feature, rather than a bug.

1. Exaggerate danger posed by MS-13 (and, by proxy, all immigrants)
2. Exaggeration is pointed out
3. Meanwhile, MS-13 actually becomes more dangerous because of all the free advertising
4. "See, I was right about MS-13!" (and, by proxy, all immigrants)
posted by gurple at 2:31 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

UK, peeps. Bannon's about to be interviewed on Newsnight.
posted by popcassady at 2:33 PM on May 23, 2018

WSJ, Trump Administration Weighs New Tariffs on Imported Vehicles. Up to 25% on imported cars, which will also somehow be justified on national security grounds because words mean nothing anymore and there's no such thing as truth, just ask Giuliani.
posted by zachlipton at 2:33 PM on May 23, 2018 [16 favorites]

Liar: Stop Calling Me a Liar!

Tucked within a fresh New York Times Magazine piece by Mark Leibovich about the White House press office is a gem of an encounter between the author and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“It certainly bothers me,” she said of the “liar” rap. “Because one of the few things you have are your integrity and reputation.” She added that “there’s a difference between misspeaking or not knowing something than maliciously lying.”
...
No one would argue that a person’s integrity isn’t of paramount importance, I said. But I asked Sanders if there is a danger in linking your integrity to a president who might not always be known for accuracy. There have been many instances where the president has not told the truth, I said.

“But you’re asking about me,” Sanders said, not challenging the premise.

True, I said, but she has to speak for him. I asked the question another way: “Is it possible to be factual if you’re speaking for someone who is trying to make a point that is not factual?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” Sanders said. “I’m not following totally.”

posted by kirkaracha at 2:43 PM on May 23, 2018 [55 favorites]

We've got "animals" to label immigrants generally through the MS-13 bit (which doesn't qualify for anything regarding subtlety anymore), large camps of people awaiting deportation, an immigration paramilitary force (and it's actual militia analogues along the border) successfully infiltrated by white supremacists (via FBI reports), and the president shouting about how rough they should be.

Outside of the mass removal part of ethnic cleansing, has the Bosnia level stuff started already and will we actually start to hear about it when it does?
posted by Slackermagee at 2:43 PM on May 23, 2018 [15 favorites]

Brian Beutler, How the Media Rewards Bad Faith

The notion that Republicans didn’t actually care about infosec practices, and that reporters knew they didn’t care, isn’t just bitter gloss on bygone reporting decisions. It is a fact reporters themselves have let on in their collective response to serial Trump-era infosec lapses. It is so taken for granted in the halls of power that Republicans don’t actually care about this issue, and never did, that nobody even bothers to ask them to square their hair-on-fire behavior in 2016 with their insouciance today. Two years ago, House Speaker Paul Ryan repeatedly and publicly requested that Clinton be stripped of her security clearance because of her email practices. On Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the Trump phone-breach story broke, he held a routine Capitol briefing for reporters and fielded zero questions about it.
...
There’s a broad (and correct) media consensus that Republicans feign outrage about alleged infractions, then proceed to do much worse when in power—that right-wing politics is built on a foundation of feigned outrage and bad faith. But there’s also a broad (and incorrect) consensus that this should not factor in to how journalists interpret and report on the parties.

Josh Marshall, Stop Talking about “Norms”

As I said, we’re confusing ourselves, confusing ourselves with the language of norms. Norms are tripwires to avoid abuses of office. But even as we see in front of our eyes the most extreme abuses of office we’re still talking about norms. That’s nuts. The abuses of office are the big thing.
...
The other problem with “norms” – perhaps the really critical one – is that they can easily sound like some precious bureaucratic niceties which simply aren’t that important. I was listening to the aforementioned CNN segment and it started to sound like that to me – ornate concepts from a world of foreign or elusive proprieties. Who before Trump talks so much about “norms”? It can all sound frivolous and precious. Maybe you need a President who will upset the apple cart a bit and try new things?

Again, we’re confusing the issue. It’s not norms. The President is trying to obstruct and stymie and hamstring a lawful investigation into his own crimes and those of his associates: by repeatedly lying, firing and threatening to fire people, intervening in law enforcement decisions in his own interest, fabricating fake stories to impede the investigation. The list goes on and on and even those of who know better are becoming inured to it. The President is in the midst of a massive, more or less public and months long effort to cover up his own crimes and the crimes of his associates. That’s really clear-cut. It’s obvious to anyone why that’s not okay. So we need to state that clearly so everyone will know what is at stake. We should stop talking around the issue and say this as clearly as we can because our future depends on it.

posted by zachlipton at 2:53 PM on May 23, 2018 [50 favorites]

We aren't going to build momentum by doing nothing, and 25% is a solid foothold. There's a lot we can do with 25%, even if it isn't going to win us any elections today.

In Texas in November, the person running against Greg Fucking Abbott will be a lesbian Latina. Do I think Lupe Valdez will win? No, unless something really dramatic happens between now and then. But is it a big deal that she will be on the ballot? That a lot of people will vote for her? That she was the choice of the Texas Democratic Party? Yeah, I think it matters. It's the Overton Window moving, bit by tiny bit.
posted by threeturtles at 3:11 PM on May 23, 2018 [55 favorites]

We aren't going to build momentum by doing nothing, and 25% is a solid foothold. There's a lot we can do with 25%, even if it isn't going to win us any elections today.

It's the Overton Window moving, bit by tiny bit.


I was speaking with my dad on Sunday about gun control, and talking about repeal of the 2nd amendment. He said it could never happen, and I told him it all starts with people talking about it.

There was a time in this country when what is now suggested by members of the GOP was "crazy talk" supported by only a small minority. But they kept talking, and organizing, and running for office and moving the window.

And now we're going to move it back.
posted by rocketman at 3:19 PM on May 23, 2018 [27 favorites]

NFL changes national anthem policy to ban kneeling

Looks like there's at least one halfway-decent owner:

Jets chairman Christopher Johnson says that his players are free to take a knee or protest during the anthem without fear of repercussion.

Johnson tells Newsday he'll pay any fines out of his own pocket and not sanction any players.

posted by zombieflanders at 3:22 PM on May 23, 2018 [109 favorites]

guess there's not gonna be a cushy ambassadorship in his future then.
posted by poffin boffin at 3:26 PM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

Johnson is actually the brother of Jets owner Woody Johnson, who's a Trump supporter and a real asshole (but I repeat myself). Woody is on a leave of absence from the team while he serves as Ambassador to the United Kingdom. There are no halfway-decent NFL owners.
posted by vathek at 3:27 PM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

The TPM article linked by zachlipton also makes a good point about "conflicts of interest" — the phrase is meant as a kind of tripwire to head off the possibility of corruption. The corruption itself, in the near-pure form we're seeing, isn't a conflict of interest, it's mutual interests — the public good doesn't even factor in as an "interest" to conflict with anything.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 3:32 PM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

"Many of these alien children who have no parents, no family structure... develop gang ties."

So... I guess we should go ahead and have ICE separate parents from their children even more. That will solve the problem.
posted by Behemoth at 3:39 PM on May 23, 2018 [19 favorites]

Something weird is going on with Tom Garrett (R-VA-5). The freshman lawmaker says he's not resigning, but his chief of staff no longer works there, suddenly, and he might not run for reelection, though we have no idea why. That could put the likely-R seat (Trump +11) in play.
posted by zachlipton at 3:43 PM on May 23, 2018 [12 favorites]

FBI confirms Trump gave Kushner a security clearance over career professionals:

Rep. Don Beyer:

Today the White House and Jared Kushner’s representatives are saying that the decision to grant Mr. Kushner’s clearance was made by career personnel, and that this decision was the deserved outcome of an above-board process.

Both claims are false or misleading. 1/ he claim that Kushner's clearance was granted by ‘career’ personnel and not the White House contradicts the FBI, which told us "the granting or suspension of Mr. Kushner’s clearance would be the responsibility of the client adjudication entity, in this case, the White House"👇2/ [pic] The suggestion that Mr. Kushner has been adequately forthcoming during this process, or that he deserves a security clearance, is belied by his constant failure to honestly disclose his foreign contacts and business conflicts, and to properly complete his ethics filings. 3/ Kushner had to update his SF-86 multiple times after failing to disclose connections with foreign officials and entities, including an attempt to set up a back-channel communication with the Kremlin. He has also been fined for repeated failure to file ethics disclosures. 4/ JHared Kushner does not deserve a permanent security clearance.

Kushner has been deceptive and dishonest, and there are many reasonable questions about whose interests he is serving in his efforts to influence US foreign policy. 5/ That the White House kept him in his position and granted him a permanent security clearance makes it clear that Congress needs to step in and create new safeguards for this process, which it should do by passing legislation I put forward: the Security Clearance Review Act. 6/6

posted by T.D. Strange at 3:54 PM on May 23, 2018 [47 favorites]

Some legal analysts have said that one potential problem for the President based upon the idea that the President can't be indicted is that he could then lose his 5th Amendment privilege. Because the idea behind the 5th Amendment is that you can't be forced to incriminate yourself, and if you can't be indicted then nothing you say can incriminate you. I'm no legalologist but that seems like a problematic analysis. Because while it may be true (nb: untested) that a sitting President can't be indicted, he or she could be indicted for those crimes once he or she is no longer President.

If you can still be arrested, tried, and jailed for something you still have a 5th amendment privilege even if that arrest etc can't be carried out for a few years. But as I said I'm no lawyerologist.
posted by Justinian at 3:57 PM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm making a special exception-that-proves-the-rule to my "don't quote the nonsense that comes out of Giuliani's mouth" rule because Giuliani now says he last talked to Trump a "couple weeks ago." He says other unspecified lawyers are talking or corresponding with Trump.

This concludes your regularly scheduled reminder that spouting uninformed random nonsense is Giuliani's only purpose in this process and that nobody speaks for Trump but Trump (and he doesn't really speak for himself either).
posted by zachlipton at 4:06 PM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

It's just over a month since Rudy Giuliani said he would be joining Trump's legal team and "I don’t think it’s going to take more than a week or two to get a resolution." Is September 1 sooner or later than two weeks?
posted by kirkaracha at 4:10 PM on May 23, 2018

Looks like there's at least one halfway-decent [NFL] owner
...
Johnson is actually the brother of Jets owner Woody Johnson, who's a Trump supporter and a real asshole (but I repeat myself). Woody is on a leave of absence from the team while he serves as Ambassador to the United Kingdom. There are no halfway-decent NFL owners.

The new terrible policy was decided by unanimous consensus of the owners. This includes Paul Allen (Seahawks) who had previously appeared capable of acting like a decent human being. Jed York (49ers, also previously capable of decency) chose to abstain rather than making a stand against the policy.

There are no halfway-decent NFL owners. Not even the Packers.
posted by saturday_morning at 4:16 PM on May 23, 2018 [26 favorites]

I'm making a special exception-that-proves-the-rule to my "don't quote the nonsense that comes out of Giuliani's mouth" rule because Giuliani now says he last talked to Trump a "couple weeks ago."

Giuliani and Trump were said (by Giuliani!) to have spoken over the phone this past weekend!

WAPO: Justice Department calls for inquiry after Trump demands probe into whether FBI ‘infiltrated or surveilled’ his campaign

“It would depend on if they subpoena him. And if they subpoena him, there will be litigation. So no timeline on that,” Giuliani said. “That’d be unfortunate, but it could happen.”

Throughout the weekend, Trump appeared consumed by the revelations about the role played by the FBI source in the Russia investigation, repeatedly tweeting about the matter and consulting by phone with Giuliani.

“He called me very early, 6:30 a.m., and we spoke Saturday night,” Giuliani said. “We concluded last night that he should do something to ask the Justice Department.”

Giuliani in the original Italian-American means "squidink nozzle," apparently.
posted by notyou at 4:22 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Josh Marshall caught something buried in a recent NYT story: In Michael Cohen’s Rolodex, an Investor Tied to Russia Saw Pay Dirt. After explaining that Cohen didn't do much for Columbus Nova, pitching them on "alcohol-infused ice pops, distressed taxi medallion loans and an oil and gas operation in the United States" that they didn't want to invest in and not delivering the investors they sought, we get to the ninth paragraph:

The consulting contract, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not specify the services Mr. Cohen was to provide. Representatives for Columbus Nova have said that Mr. Vekselberg, one of seven Kremlin-linked oligarchs who were hit with sanctions in April by the Trump administration in retaliation for Russian meddling in the 2016 election and other aggressions, has never owned the firm and had no role in its decision to hire Mr. Cohen as a consultant. Mr. Vekselberg met with Mr. Cohen multiple times, a person briefed on their discussions said. Although the purpose of those meetings is unclear, Mr. Vekselberg would have an interest in the administration’s stance on Russia.

Seems significant.
posted by zachlipton at 4:34 PM on May 23, 2018 [22 favorites]

There are no halfway-decent NFL owners. Not even the Packers.

I'd boycott the NFL for this but I'm already doing that for a dozen other shitty things that they've done.
posted by octothorpe at 4:39 PM on May 23, 2018 [19 favorites]

Contrast with the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks statement today after police released video of their violent arrest of Bucks player Sterling Brown

The abuse and intimidation that Sterling experienced at the hands of Milwaukee Police was shameful and inexcusable. Sterling has our full support as he shares his story and takes action to provide accountability.

Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated case. It shouldn’t require an incident involving a professional athlete to draw attention to the fact that vulnerable people in our communities have experienced similar, and even worse, treatment.

We are grateful for the service of many good police officers that courageously protect us, our fans and our city, but racial biases and abuses of power must not be ignored.

There needs to be more accountability.

The Milwaukee Police Department and local officials have acknowledged the challenges they are working to address, and we urge them to enact higher standards and more direct accountability. We all want to be able to trust each and every officer serving to protect us.

Incidents like this remind us of the injustices that persist. As an organization, we will support Sterling and build on our work with local leaders and organizations to foster safe neighborhoods and better our community.

posted by T.D. Strange at 5:06 PM on May 23, 2018 [36 favorites]

Waiit, does that mean all public officials are prohibited from blocking people on Twitter? And presumably other social networks?

The ruling looks like it's saying that an official public announcement/discussion platform can't block people:

We hold that portions of the @realDonaldTrump
account -- the “interactive space” where Twitter users may directly
engage with the content of the President’s tweets -- are properly
analyzed under the “public forum” doctrines set forth by the
Supreme Court, that such space is a designated public forum, and
that the blocking of the plaintiffs based on their political speech
constitutes viewpoint discrimination that violates the First
Amendment.

So, presumably, any official who kept a personal account separate from the "elected person in an official role" account would be able to block all they want on their personal account.

So how exactly is something like this enforced?

Assuming the target won't just comply ("we must assume that the President and Scavino will remedy the blocking we have held to be unconstitutional"):
1) Back to court to insist that Twitter be required to enforce this ruling, on the grounds that they're aiding illegal behavior if they won't (this may seem obvious, but it's rather a legal stretch) or
2) Back to court to sue Mr Trump for contempt of the court order, and for denying people access to their elected officials - with a punitive monetary award to the victims, presumably to *handwaves* pay them for the hassle of setting up a second, unblocked account, and the continued hassle of having to deal with two accounts.

I don't assume he'll comply. I do assume Twitter will react to a court order demanding they remove the block button from his account - and that of any other official political accounts. "React to" may not mean "comply" (because among other things, I bet they don't actually have that code written), but since they don't want to be the target of a nationwide class-action lawsuit for voter interference, I expect them to be scrambling to do *something* about it.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 5:06 PM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

There have been a lot of obituaries for amazing people on the front page recently. Luis Posada was not someone who deserves to be in their company. But his story does explain a lot about how our foreign policy in the past has led to problems in Latin America now.
posted by TedW at 5:19 PM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

Bleacher Report points out the obvious with this bullshit NFL anthem policy: Why is the NFL handling this so poorly, crafting a policy based on fear, not practicality? The answer remains clear, according to a variety of league sources: an intense fear of President Donald Trump.

This is a fact. This is the truth. This is the core basis for the NFL's decision. This has been told to me before, and it was reiterated by several people Wednesday.

"Our league," one team official said, "is f--king terrified of Trump. We're scared of him."

What does the NFL fear? It fears boycotts of games. It fears people not watching its product on television. It fears people not buying its products.

There is, however, no proof that any of this would happen.

In fact, the NFL recently signed a streaming deal with Verizon for $2 billion. The NFL's bottom line remains fat and happy.

The NFL's actions reflect something scary about America now. Everything is transactional. Social justice. The plight of civil rights of certain American citizens. All of it is secondary to money, and fear of a boorish president.
posted by TwoStride at 5:20 PM on May 23, 2018 [53 favorites]

Mueller Asked About Money Flows to Israeli Social-Media Firm, Source Says
posted by adamvasco at 5:24 PM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

More on car tariffs from the Post:

German officials have grown frustrated trying to convince Trump that Germans don’t want to buy from American companies, which specialize in large sport-utility vehicles rather than smaller cars more suited to European lifestyles.

Trump has obsessed over German cars above all others, according to a senior White House official familiar with the talks. Though the president is now driven in an armored black Cadillac limousine known as “the beast,” he has owned various foreign models, including Maybach, Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz and McLaren.

Somehow I suspect this has more to do with him not liking Merkel than any actual trade policy, seeing as we've largely stopped making any vehicles that Germans not actively engaged in the construction trade would possibly want to buy (the top three bestselling vehicles in the US right now are all pickup trucks) or pay to refuel.
posted by zachlipton at 5:31 PM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

Waiit, does that mean all public officials are prohibited from blocking people on Twitter? And presumably other social networks?

My non-lawyer read is that the answer comes down to what blocking does on Twitter other than ensuring that you won't see messages from the blocked person: it also prevents the blocked account from seeing tweets, searching for them, or viewing other people's replies in context. Since Trump is using his account officially, the argument is that hinders you from seeing official Presidential communications and participating in the conversations around them. So I'd think the second question is only true to the extent that other social networks follow Twitter's behaviour in this regard: if it works more like Twitter's mute function the argument that you've suffered some injury would go away as long.
posted by adamsc at 5:44 PM on May 23, 2018

Because last time went so well...

@realDonaldTrump
Will be interviewed on @foxandfriends tomorrow morning at 6:00 A.M. Enjoy!

---

And about that Nobel...

Jonathan Cheng (WSJ)
KCNA: "We will neither beg the U.S. for dialogue nor take the trouble to persuade them if they do not want to sit together with us. Whether the U.S. will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision…of the U.S."
posted by chris24 at 6:04 PM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

It's a taped interview so they can edit the unhinged ranting into something barely resembling coherence. Even Fox doesn't trust Trump not to lose it live on air again.
posted by Justinian at 6:08 PM on May 23, 2018 [15 favorites]

"It's a taped interview so they can edit the unhinged ranting into something barely resembling coherence.

Sneak Preview
posted by mrgoat at 6:16 PM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

InTheYear2017 linked to two tweets by Alexandra Erin above. I think they're worth posting, at least partially. They're definitely worth reading.

LRT: Trump is blaming the Democrats for pushing the investigation and whipping up public sentiment against him regardless of what they do. Sitting on the sidelines to try to prove him wrong won't work... they'll still pay the political price for attacking him but reap no benefit.
The media keeps making the same mistake, too: being extra accommodating to try to fend off or disprove Trump's accusations of bias. He happily accepts the concessions and attacks them anyway.

Because the concessions prove that it works.
Trump's goal is not to come to an understanding or an equitable division of anything. His goal is to take all the marbles, have everyone agree that he is the greatest, and destroy anyone who might be a threat.
You can't get on his good side except by showing you are willing to give up everything, to be sacrificed for his gain.
So once you commit yourself to the goal of working with him, finding common ground with him, you will inevitably give up more and more at no benefit to yourself until you wise up or get used up.
The Democrats, I think, want to believe they are better than the man who ran on "lock her up".
They are missing how hard it would be to sink to his level. Just honestly pointing out his corruption would not do it.

The Democrats want to run on the issues.

I say: great!

They need to realize Trump is an issue. His criminal associations are issues. His corruption is an issue. His systematic dismantling of government protections is an issue.

Once they take the idea of running against Trump off the table, what can they run on? Running on health care is impossible if you can't explain how Trump threatens it. Running on real tax reform is impossible if you won't explain the GOP tax scam.
They can't even promise the American people straight talk and a square deal and have it mean anything if they aren't willing to call Trump a liar and point out specific lies.
Hopefully as campaign messaging comes together they will start to realize these things.

In the meantime, if you have any contact with a candidate or their campaign, give them a little nudge.

Ask them what they will do about Trump.
Tell them your number one issue and area of concern as a voter is Trump and the direction he is taking the country.
The left-wing tendency to say "Let them call names, we'll fight them on the issues" has handed the right an enormous weapon for destroying their credibility on the issues.
Meanwhile the right is so audaciously bad on the issues that pointing it out sounds like name calling.
You cannot stay out of the gutter and hope to win a fight when the fight is in the gutter.
Especially not when you are being dragged into it anyway.
The saying "Never mud-wrestle a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it." is cute and folksy but does not apply when the pig knocks you down into the mud and attempts to gore you to death.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, babies, it feels like it's been a while since I've really buckled down and done this, but I want to talk a bit about the State of the Union, so to so to speak, and what is a bit scary to me right now but what fills me with hope.
As many of you know, I met with journalist and fellow weird Twitter pundit @KillerMartinis yesterday and we had a pretty wide-ranging conversation that did touch on politics and where we might be heading.
Right now trying to look ahead to the November elections kind of feels like staring in shock across a blood-drenched battlefield. There's a lot of horror likely to continue unfolding between now and then.
I'm not going to mince words: the fascism is getting more open. Each time it does and we try to sound the alarm and are told "It's too early, you're exaggerating", it helps set a new baseline by which the *next* level will also be treated as no big deal.
But we've got the syllogism of "undocumented immigrants are gang members and gang members are animals" going out in official White House statements and publications, and the less explicit one between "immigrants" and "undocumented", also "Spanish speakers" and "brown people"....
...and the only reason to classify a group of people as animals is to excuse treating them as less than human, and that's where we're at on immigration. Dehumanization and "warehousing" in camps.
I've talked before about how Trump's methodology -- and more generally the fascistic methodology -- is to always double down, always accelerate. The only victory they care about is total victory, so they will push until they fall apart or they win everything.
This is why Trump never walks back these kinds of statements and won't let his PR people walk them back for long, and why it feels like the rate of change itself is changing. We're not just accelerating, we're accelerating by more and more each time.
This is what scares me. I said this the other day, when the White House put out the release with the repeated references to "violent animals", that it downright terrifies me. Because of how open it is. How little hesitation the political apparatus is showing in embracing it.
This, on the other hand, is what fills me with hope: A Fitting End to Paul Ryan's Fraudulent Political Career

It is not possible for Trump to miscalculate in his power grabs because he's not calculating. He *must* keep grabbing more and more, faster and faster all the time, because the whole thing falls apart if he stops.

But it also might fall apart if he keeps going.
The prospect of a GOP defeat in November... look, to be very bluntly honest, not only is it not a sure thing we're going to win, but we don't even automatically win even if we do win.
The rise of fascist autocracy could mean that six months from now, the White House feels perfectly secure declaring any unfavorable election result invalid and enough of the country goes along with it to make it either real, or a real problem (as in: civil war).
But right now, the story is that the GOP is in trouble and expecting a defeat or at least a terribly close contest for control of Congress in November. And as long as that story is still being told, it will be hard for them to convincingly claim they were robbed come November.
I don't want us to be complacent. Our biggest weapon going into November is going to be ENTHUSIASM.

Confidence that we WILL win can be a great way to deflate turnout, sadly.

Confidence that we CAN win might just make it happen.... [remainder at Thread Reader]
posted by triggerfinger at 6:25 PM on May 23, 2018 [30 favorites]

The North Korea statement also takes aim at Pence directly, calling him a "political dummy":

At an interview with Fox News on May 21, the U.S. Vice-President Pence has made unbridled and impudent remarks that north Korea might end like Libya, military option for north Korea never came off the table, the U.S. needs complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization, and so on. As a person involved in the U.S. affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the U.S. vice-president. If he is vice-president of 'single superpower' as is in name, it will be proper for him to know even a little bit about the current state of global affairs and to sense to a certain degree the trends in dialogue and the climate of detente. We could surmise more than enough what a political dummy he is as he is trying to compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya that had simply installed a few items of equipment and fiddled around with them.

Soon after the White House National Security Adviser Bolton made the reckless remarks, Vice-President Pence has again spat out nonsense that the DPRK would follow in Libya's footstep. In view of the remarks of the U.S. high-ranking politicians who have not yet woken up to this stark reality and compare the DPRK to Libya that met a tragic fate, I come to think that they know too little about us. To borrow their words, we can also make the U.S. taste an appalling tragedy it has neither experienced nor even imagined up to now.

Are we going for the Nobel Political Dummy Prize now?

Meanwhile, from our side: Trump administration wants more high-level talks with North Korea before summit

The Trump administration wants additional high-level talks with North Korea and assurances from Kim Jong Un that he is committed to giving up his nuclear program before next month's planned historic summit in order for the meeting to go ahead, a senior administration official involved in planning for the talks told CNN.

"We need to have more conversations about what we would be talking about before we know if this is going to be useful," the official said.

North Korea's statement is obviously inflammatory and threatening, but it also points to a simple reality, which is that the US doesn't have a negotiating position, and everyone in the White House is saying different things all the time. There's no plan here, just people spouting nonsense that range from absurdly high expectations of a deal to threats to violently brutalize KJU's internal organs.

Anyway, do those sound like the words of a country that's about to give up nuclear weapons?
posted by zachlipton at 6:30 PM on May 23, 2018 [15 favorites]

Adam Schiff stated on Maddow just now that the Justice/FBI meeting with Congress tomorrow will be with the Gang of Eight. Which is not at all what Trump, Nunes, Meadows et al. had in mind.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:39 PM on May 23, 2018 [19 favorites]

(or so he was told by "the head of an intelligence agency who is also a cabinet member").
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:41 PM on May 23, 2018

That's Torturer Gina Haspel, yes?
posted by Justinian at 6:45 PM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

Schumer and Warner are in this.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:47 PM on May 23, 2018

I'm betting it was Dan Coats. He's about the most rational person in that clown car.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:56 PM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

Speaking of the "it's not the media's job to repeat facts", Most Don’t Know Mueller Has Uncovered Crimes (via Politicalwire)

A new Navigator Research survey finds that 59% of Americans believe that special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation has not yet uncovered evidence of crimes, even though Mueller has already obtained five guilty pleas and 17 criminal indictments.

Matthew Yglesias: “That suggests that the press as a whole has not done a good job of actually conveying factual information to our audience, that Democrats’ messaging on the investigation has not been clear enough on the most damning point (Trump, even if otherwise innocent, is guilty of hiring crooks and trying to prevent an investigation into their activity), and that Trump’s counterstrategy of muddying the waters around the investigation has been fairly successful.”

We need to get out of this sixties mentality of The News asap. They, more than Trump, are responsible for this continuing. They're responsible for this *existing* too, but we're so far beyond that now. Fire corporate news. Find another way.
posted by petebest at 7:05 PM on May 23, 2018 [39 favorites]

Mueller's office has an interesting filing opposing greater public access to the Manafort search warrants and other documents. It kind of reads as a rebuttal to Giuliani and recent polls of sorts, taking pains to point out that "the Special Counsel's investigation is not a closed matter, but an ongoing criminal investigaiton with multiple lines of non-public inquiry." It includes a reminder as to how many criminal charges they've filed so far (22 individuals and entities) and an appendix listing them all, just for good measure.
posted by zachlipton at 7:08 PM on May 23, 2018 [26 favorites]

Adm. Rogers, maybe? He retires next week.
posted by fluttering hellfire at 7:09 PM on May 23, 2018

@mattzap: From what I understand, there will be 2 briefings on the FBI source tomorrow — the 1st with Nunes/Gowdy, the 2nd with the Gang of 8/Gowdy. John Kelly is going to both — contrary to what Sarah Sanders said. But this has evolved so much today who knows what tomorrow brings.

Yeah this is just all kinds of shenanigans here. Why does Nunes have to have his own meeting first?
posted by zachlipton at 7:26 PM on May 23, 2018 [10 favorites]

There is literally no reason to hold two meetings unless the first meeting with Nunes/Gowdy is completely political in nature and concerns how to weaponize intelligence against Mueller and the Democrats. This is unacceptable and Schiff et al should demand to be let in.
posted by Justinian at 7:30 PM on May 23, 2018 [27 favorites]

So he can have a head start to run over to the White House and blab to Donald?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:30 PM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

Nunes and Gowdy are going to make some demand or threat of Rosenstein that they don't want Democrats to see them make, but fuck me if I can figure out what it is.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:32 PM on May 23, 2018 [8 favorites]

Oh but wait there's more. @burgessev: Speaker Paul Ryan will not attend Gang of Eight meeting, per @AshLeeStrong: "The speaker has a longstanding schedule commitment and will not be attending. Chairmen Gowdy and Nunes will continue to lead in this space for House Republicans."

Ryan could stop this anytime he wanted to. Instead, he's sticking his fingers in his ears and refusing to hear it.
posted by zachlipton at 7:34 PM on May 23, 2018 [36 favorites]

Media Matters's Matt Gretz reviewed all 487 of Sean Hannity’s segments about the first year of Robert Mueller's investigation and has reached a conclusion about his intentions—Study: Sean Hannity Spent The Last Year Laying the Groundwork For an Authoritarian Response to the Russia Probe

To watch Hannity’s broadcast over the last year is to plunge into a strikingly paranoid vision of America today.

“A soft coup is underway right here in the United States of America,” Hannity said last June, “in an attempt to overturn November's election results and forcibly remove a duly elected president from office, sinister forces quickly aligning in what is becoming now, in my mind, a clear and present danger.”[...]

Hannity presents his show as the only venue willing to tell the truth about the story, casting reporting about Trump, Russia, and the 2016 election not as the result of serious journalism, but as part of a plot against the president.[...]

This study reveals the four prongs of the overarching strategy Hannity has followed over the past year: delegitimizing the press, defending Trump from collusion claims, and creating a counternarrative that targets the investigators. All of those build to the authoritarian endgame Hannity's conspiracy theory is courting -- which is supported by the series of guests who help sell his tale to the Fox audience.

I. Delegitimizing the press: “The media has been corrupt and lying to you, the America people.”[...]
II. The defense: “Tinfoil hat conspiracy theories about so-called Trump Russia collusion” (which isn’t a crime)[...]
III. The counter-attack: Trump as victim of “the biggest abuse of power corruption case in American history”[...]
IV. The authoritarian endgame: “Mueller's probe is tainted. Hillary is a criminal.”[...]

Trump is listening. [...] Egged on by Hannity, he reportedly threatened to fire Mueller and Rosenstein in order to curtail the probe into his activities and those of his allies, and he regularly suggests his perceived enemies have broken the law and publicly pressures the Justice Department to respond.

If Trump ever takes such dire steps as firing Mueller and Rosenstein -- or forcing investigations of his enemies -- he has every reason to believe that Hannity’s propaganda effort will keep the Republican base on his side, forestalling any real accountability.

(Incidentally, Gertz was able to get a couple of sentences about this dire situation into the Washington Post article Democratic Leaders Face Pressure To Counter Trump’s Attacks On Mueller’s Russia Investigation.)
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:06 PM on May 23, 2018 [27 favorites]

While we're at it, why is Kelly present at these meetings? His boss is the person under investigation. That the White House has any role here at all is massively inappropriate.
posted by zachlipton at 8:11 PM on May 23, 2018 [49 favorites]

Why does Nunes have to have his own meeting first?

Either the content in the two meetings will be different or Nunes doesn’t want anyone able to contradict his lies about what he is told. Which is silly, because it isn’t like anyone is actually calling out his lies when he makes them.
posted by winna at 8:23 PM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

I think the most plausible explanation is that the meeting with Kelly, Nunes, and Gowdy serves two purposes. One, it lets them coordinate strategy. And two... remember that meeting is first. They get to put out their own spin and framing without rebuttal exactly like they did with the Comey memo bullshit they pulled. A lie travels halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its pants.
posted by Justinian at 8:27 PM on May 23, 2018 [10 favorites]

It's a confused piece, but not necessarily on the part of the German officials. These are giant multi-nationals, and their foreign models are often very different to the American models. The German officials may well be saying 'no-one wants the cars that America makes for its own market' and it's being interpreted by the article as 'no-one wants American cars'.
posted by Merus at 8:44 PM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Ford is essentially stopping manufacture of cars in the US. And it's the cars made in the US that are of concern here.
posted by Mitheral at 8:44 PM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Trump is listening. [...] Egged on by Hannity, he reportedly threatened to fire Mueller and Rosenstein

At This late date, we can safely assume Hannity and Trump are sharing the same 12 neurons. Trump talks to Hannity more than his wife.
posted by benzenedream at 8:47 PM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

In more 'disappointing union news from the front', we have: Planned Parenthood Is Asking Donald Trump’s Labor Board For Help Busting Its Colorado Union.

It's hardly the first progressive organization to engage in union-busting - the NLRB's case files reveal a lot of sad stories, and I know we're seeing a lot of it all over the country - but it still definitely hurts in the current climate. While no one expects for-profit corporations to care about the workers who run their operations, it's reasonable to expect nonprofits to do so.
posted by corb at 9:17 PM on May 23, 2018 [28 favorites]

Sitting on the sidelines to try to prove him wrong won't work... they'll still pay the political price for attacking him but reap no benefit.

I play a lot of video games and doing so has, I think, given me some insights that apply to the larger world. I used to play a lot of Mechwarrior Online. Big, stompy robots that shoot each other. It's a slower and more tactical game than your standard issue military shooter like Call of Duty.

In one game mode one team is tasked with defending a base against attack and the other team must try to capture the base. If you're the attacking team, you MUST attack, you have to be aggressive as it's the obviously the only available strategy. The defenders, on the other hand, can sit back in the base and wait for the attackers to come to them. They can fall back into the base or they can counter-attack. Much as Trump and the GOP are basically stuck being on the attack while the Dems have the option of playing defense or trying to attack the GOP right back.

When you get right down to it, defending has two possible outcomes. You hold the line or your fall back. You might get lucky and fall back slowly while making your attackers bleed more than you. Make it a war of attrition, as it were. That is almost never the case so it's either hold ground or lose ground. You never, ever, gain ground while playing defensively. The attackers generate some momentum and it's hard to turn that back around.

The teams that do the best in that game mode live by the old saying, "The best defense is a good offense." It keeps the attacking from building or maintaining their momentum. Most importantly, it adds the third option of gaining ground.

So, to me, all else being equal the odds break down like this.

Defend:
Chance of gaining ground: 0%
Chance of holding ground: 50%
Chance of losing ground: 50%

Attack the attackers:
Chance of gaining ground: 33%
Chance of holding ground: 33%
Chance of losing ground: 33%

"Ah, but what if you defend until the moment is ripe to counter-attack?" asks the straw-man in the corner.

Well, the teams that are coordinated enough to actually pull that off simply don't bother. Defending is just losing as slowly as you can. You want to win? Attack hard and fast. Teams that start out defending and then counter-attack are teams that start out losing and manage to turn it around. It's orders of magnitude more successful to start out aggressive and stay that way.

That doesn't necessarily mean attacking the same way the other team is but it DOES mean figuring out an effective means of attack and then attacking them HARD and I really think that's what everyone on "our team" should be doing.
posted by VTX at 9:34 PM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

Planned Parenthood, aside from turning to the Trump administration, appears to be playing hardball locally, too. A week after Emily Sirota, a candidate for Colorado House District 9, publicly reiterated her support of the organization’s unionization efforts, Planned Parenthood leadership endorsed her primary opponent Ashley Wheeland, despite Sirota’s longstanding support of reproductive rights.

What the fuck. That does it, I am voting in the Democratic primary this summer and I am voting for Sirota. I hadn't seen a whole lot of difference between the two candidates in that I thought they were both acceptable, though their transportation platforms are both nonexistent. And hey, PPRM: consider my usual charitable priorities altered while y'all keep this shit up.
posted by asperity at 9:36 PM on May 23, 2018 [10 favorites]

@awprokop (Vox): Mueller has put off Papadopoulos's sentencing for months while his cooperation has continued. Today he tells court he's ready to move ahead with it.

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti @renato_mariotti has posted Twitter thread with a very good analysis of all Mueller's possible motives and options behind this (Thread Reader version). His final point, on whether Papadopoulos will be sentenced at the same time as a guilty plea from a completely new target he helped flip or will be thrown to the mercy of the court for not panning out: "Papadopoulos could still be required to cooperate, although it would be harder to motivate him after his sentencing. Realistically, however, prosecutors are cautious about proceeding with scheduling sentencing for cooperators. They don't do it until the cooperation ends."

Given how indiscreet he's been, Mueller may have decided that Papadopoulos would be a liability on the witness stand.
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:50 PM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Planned Parenthood isn't union-busting, and The Intercept should be ashamed for implying that it is; PPRM looks like it is, and they should be yet more ashamed still.

The wording is needlessly confusing, but it's my PP affiliate and my state house district and the flames on the sides of my face didn't stop me from noting the difference between the national org and local affiliate. So much rage for what PPRM's doing here.
posted by asperity at 10:03 PM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

DC Examiner Senior Editor Dave Brown @dave_brown24 zooms in on an AP photo*: Item #9 on Mike Pompeo's to-do list for the 23rd: "Call Lavrov"

Wall Street Journal Seoul Bureau Chief Jonathan Cheng @JChengWSJ notices: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will be heading to Pyongyang, says Chosun Ilbo, citing Russian news agencies. (On May 31st, per Chosun article)

* Why do Trump and his aides have such trouble covering up their goddam notes?
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:04 PM on May 23, 2018 [17 favorites]

Remember how Trump got the unqualified Jim Bridenstine through as the head of NASA? While that remains a thing that totally sucks, it took an unexpected turn:

WaPo: NASA head Jim Bridenstine, once doubtful, confirms he believes humans are the leading cause of climate change

During testimony before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on commerce, justice, science and related agencies, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) asked Bridenstine whether he believes greenhouse gases are the primary cause of climate change. Bridenstine quickly replied in the affirmative.

“The National Climate Assessment, that includes NASA, and it includes the Department of Energy, and it includes NOAA, has clearly stated it is extremely likely, [that] is the language they use, that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming, and I have no reason to doubt the science that comes from that,” Bridenstine said.

Schatz followed up by asking, “Is it fair to call this an evolution of your views?”

Bridenstine replied: “Yes.”

On further questioning from Schatz, Bridenstine also committed to defending the independence and integrity of climate science at NASA.

Whoops.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:13 PM on May 23, 2018 [83 favorites]

In Q1 2018, Ford was the #5 best selling car manufacturer in Germany, behind VW, Mercedes, Audi, an BMW, but ahead of every other brand in the world. Opel, which is part of General Motors, was #6.

Ford of Europe builds cars that Europeans will drive (in countries where roads are narrow and gasoline is more than six bucks a gallon), not F-150's and Explorers; none of them are built in the US. (And Opel and Vauxhall got sold off a few years ago and are no longer part of GM.)
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 10:14 PM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

I got burned a couple of threads back after I enthusiastically scooped everyone with something from The Intercept that later turned out to be highly misleading / actually false. I’ve been keeping an eye on them since, and I have to say that I now treat them as being as reliable as The Daily Mail, which is to say, not at all.

Their bad faith and willingness to lie (or exaggerate to the point of falsehood or whatever), means that they are completely useless as a source, because even if you read very carefully and analytically, separating statements from innuendo, there’s no way to know whether the statements that they’re making are even true to the best of their knowledge.

I’d happily never see a link to them again.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 11:04 PM on May 23, 2018 [41 favorites]

Huh. Watching CNN at the moment and they are not both siding the Nunes shit in the slightest. It’s like they’re growing a spine just when it doesn’t matter any more.
posted by Artw at 11:13 PM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

Given how their bungling incompetence completely fucked over Reality Winner, I've mentally relegated the Intercept to "unserious fringe noise"
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 11:19 PM on May 23, 2018 [26 favorites]

i would advise taking controversial news that causes internal discord from plausibly compromised sources (such as glenn greenwald’s the intercept) critically, with a level head, and prioritize them appropriately..
posted by polyhedron at 1:20 AM on May 24, 2018 [7 favorites]

There have been many instances where the president has not told the truth, I said.

“But you’re asking about me,” Sanders said, not challenging the premise.

That last bit there is how one should do journalism. Bravo.
posted by Gelatin at 2:56 AM on May 24, 2018 [62 favorites]

For the first time in history, D House candidates are approaching gender parity. 43% of candidates thus far are women, by far the highest ever for a major party with the previous high being 29%. And it's 51% of candidates where there's no incumbent.

Meanwhile, Rs are at a 30 year low of 7% women candidates.
posted by chris24 at 4:02 AM on May 24, 2018 [39 favorites]

It's shocking to me that like 45% of women still vote for the Republicans. I mean, it's also shocking that 55% of men vote for them but I grok voting to maintain your own privilege more than I grok voting to maintain someone else's privilege. Or maybe unconsciously white women have decided that maintaining white privilege trumps (hah!) gender inequality? Or even consciously I guess.
posted by Justinian at 4:19 AM on May 24, 2018 [8 favorites]

@axios: Trump on @foxandfriends to NFL players who don't stand for the anthem: "You shouldn't be playing ... Maybe you shouldn't be in the country."
posted by zombieflanders at 4:32 AM on May 24, 2018 [24 favorites]

Plenty of women are fine with male supremacy. Most (all?) Evangelical women, for example. They used to call that “false consciousness.” I personally call it self-defeating, but I’m about as far from Evangelical as you can get.

Also, Elizabeth Drew, who knows from impeachment, has written that the number of Trump’s impeachable offenses keeps growing:

In fact, Trump’s interference with the federal investigation of himself makes Nixon look like a pussy-cat, but then, unlike Trump, Nixon didn’t have a Congress controlled by his own party to protect him. Trump is clearly colluding with some right-wing House Republicans to mess with the Justice Department...

posted by GrammarMoses at 4:33 AM on May 24, 2018 [14 favorites]

Is the number of women candidates as a whole increasing, or is the fall in Republican women candidates swallowing up the gain in Democratic ones?
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:35 AM on May 24, 2018

Is the number of women candidates as a whole increasing, or is the fall in Republican women candidates swallowing up the gain in Democratic ones?

From 2016, D women candidates rose from 29% to 43%. R women fell from 12% to 7%. So still a big net increase.

The graph in the link is really telling. A perfect hockey stick.
posted by chris24 at 4:38 AM on May 24, 2018 [9 favorites]

Ford is essentially stopping manufacture of cars in the US.

Er, I was all like "cite?" but I'd forgotten they said that , it was an FPP as well iirc.

The catch is "cars" - Ford will still make gas-guzzling SUVs and the Mustang. Which . . is a car but also a horse? They're not building horses tho.

But srsly what does it take to put a Tesla-class electric watermelon engine in a Mustang? Have bass speakers pump out burbling idle noises at the stoplight, whatever, just gimmie the EV, Ford!

(Narrator: He doesn't get the EV)
posted by petebest at 4:44 AM on May 24, 2018 [6 favorites]

It's a taped interview so they can edit the unhinged ranting into something barely resembling coherence. Even Fox doesn't trust Trump not to lose it live on air again.

CBS's Mark Knoller @markknoller tallies it up:

By my count, it's Pres Trump's 23rd interview with Fox News since taking office. Far more than any of the other networks:
ABC -1
CBS – 1
CNN – 0
NBC – 3 (4 if you count CNBC).

But Fox got their red meat from Trump—"Maybe you shouldn't be in the country."—and Trump's going to get his distraction in the media from today's Rosenstein briefing on Capitol Hill.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:24 AM on May 24, 2018 [8 favorites]

Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges - bit of a weird one as the company suing is itself some kind of weird privacy violating scraper.
posted by Artw at 6:00 AM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

Now Paul Ryan is attending the Nunes-Gowdy briefing, so he can go ask for another several million dollar check.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:33 AM on May 24, 2018

That Guardian article and headline are misleading, at best.

What happened is that Six4Three is/was an app developer that was entirely reliant on Facebook's "app economy" and had its image-recognition-based business model undermined when FB revised their user data restrictions, and so Six4Three sued FB for unfair competition under California's UCL.

As a part of its campaign it set up a "gripe site" to recruit similarly-burned developers to sign on to its platform of demands for 'developer rights' in the "Facebook app economy." Facebook then went after the "gripe site" on a copyright basis (for use of "Facebook" in the domain name), prompting the Federal action for a declaratory judgment by Six4Three (which was filed in late 2016).
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:45 AM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

“The evidence uncovered by plaintiff demonstrates that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was not the result of mere negligence on Facebook’s part but was rather the direct consequence of the malicious and fraudulent scheme Zuckerberg designed in 2012 to cover up his failure to anticipate the world’s transition to smartphones,” legal documents said. . . .

In its latest filing, Six4Three alleges Facebook deliberately used its huge amounts of valuable and highly personal user data to tempt developers to create platforms within its system, implying that they would have long-term access to personal information, including data from subscribers’ Facebook friends.

Once their businesses were running, and reliant on data relating to “likes”, birthdays, friend lists and other Facebook minutiae, the social media company could and did target any that became too successful, looking to extract money from them, co-opt them or destroy them, the documents claim.

Six4Three alleges up to 40,000 companies were effectively defrauded in this way by Facebook. It also alleges that senior executives including Zuckerberg personally devised and managed the scheme, individually deciding which companies would be cut off from data or allowed preferential access.

If I'm reading it right, Facebook doesn't deny this was their practice. They say they can do it because . . . that's right, Free Speech. Because . . . Okay, I don't know why that's supposed to work.
posted by petebest at 6:46 AM on May 24, 2018 [12 favorites]

Daniel Dale: Breaking: Trump issues letter to Kim Jong Un cancelling their summit.

"You can't fire me! I quit!"
posted by PenDevil at 6:48 AM on May 24, 2018 [34 favorites]

Il Douche is tweeting off the rails again. This time SPYs!, money! etc.
posted by Harry Caul at 6:51 AM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

It's shocking to me that like 45% of women still vote for the Republicans. I mean, it's also shocking that 55% of men vote for them but I grok voting to maintain your own privilege more than I grok voting to maintain someone else's privilege. Or maybe unconsciously white women have decided that maintaining white privilege trumps (hah!) gender inequality? Or even consciously I guess.

Misogyny, and male supremacy, starts as soon as you’re born. It’s there for every developmental stage. It invades your most intimate relationships. Every single thing you’re taught about and by the world is steeped in it from the moment you are born. In general, developmental trauma has a profound effect on your experience of the world, and, more perniciously, on your very sense of self. (I have theories on this, obviously. But the Stepford Wife trope becomes way creepier the more you read about developmental trauma.)

Some day maybe we’ll get serious research on the developmental effects of misogyny, racism, and other minority status — and I do not expect them to be the same — but that day is not today.
posted by schadenfrau at 6:51 AM on May 24, 2018 [25 favorites]

@MolotovFlicker:

Someone just interrupted South Korean Presidential Security Council member Kim Heung-Kyu while he was talking to inform him that the president pulled out of the summit.

"Well that changes what I was going to say."

posted by zombieflanders at 6:51 AM on May 24, 2018 [72 favorites]

What Happened in Vegas -- The days, weeks, and months after the worst mass shooting in modern American history (Amanda Fortini for the California Sunday Magazine)

It's a good, long piece that looks at how Vegas has, and hasn't, changed in the wake of Stephen Paddock killing 58 people and injuring more than 500 more (a figure that has been revised up to 851, encompass not only victims of gunshot wounds but those injured from shrapnel, trampling, and attempts to scale barbed-wire and chain-link fences while fleeing). Unfortunately, the article claims "He didn’t appear to be acting for any ideological cause. His motive remains hazy, mysterious," even reposting some of the conspiracy theories mentioned by locals, when new evidence shows he was probably a far-right extremist. Still, a good in-depth look at what happened before, during and after the shooting.

tl; dr: even though this was a tragedy that has left a mark on many people, the worst worst mass shooting in modern American history became just another forgettable tragedy in a matter of days, in part because of the Harvey Weinstein stories, the aftermath of the devastating hurricanes in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico, and the terrorist attack in Lower Manhattan.
posted by filthy light thief at 6:57 AM on May 24, 2018 [20 favorites]

They say they can do it because . . . that's right, Free Speech. Because . . . Okay, I don't know why that's supposed to work.

Anti-SLAPP motions are about a particular meaning of "free speech," and can have a surprisingly wide application.

Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16(e) divides “protected activity” into four categories. The first two categories include speech or petitioning activity that either occur in or are made “in connection with” legislative, executive, or judicial proceedings. The third category addresses statements made in certain other public forums relating to “an issue of public interest.” Finally, the fourth category serves as a sort of catchall encompassing various other forms of speech or petitioning activity “in connection with a public issue or an issue of public interest.”

This would probably be that last prong. And that may not be wrong, these data privacy questions are indeed a matter of public interest and that complaint is super shady imo. Lots of sensational language about how awful Facebook and Zuck are, but little substance in terms of anything actionable. And the gravamen of the underlying California UCL complaint is that Facebook was wrong to revise its privacy rules because it harmed app developers reliant on all of that personal data, and used its platform to exert leverage and pick winners and losers among those developers. No one is an angel here.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:59 AM on May 24, 2018

So do the taxpayers get refunded for the Kim Jing-Un challenge coins?
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:07 AM on May 24, 2018 [48 favorites]

Breaking: Trump issues letter to Kim Jong Un cancelling their summit.

Dear Mr. Chairman:

We greatly appreciate your time, patience, and effort with respect to our recent negotiations and discussions relative to a summit long sought by both parties, which was scheduled to take place on June 12 in Singapore. We were informed that the meeting was requested by North Korea, but that to us is totally irrelevant. I was very much looking forward to being there with you. Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting. Therefore, please let this letter server to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place. You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but our are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.

I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me, and ultimately, it is only that dialogue that matters. Some day, I look very much forward to meeting you. In the meantime, I want to thank you for the release of the hostages who are now home with their families. That was a beautiful gesture and was very much appreciated.

If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write. The world, and North Korea in particular, has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth. This missed opportunity is a truly sad moment in history.

Sincerely yours,

1) Kim Jong Un demoted from Supreme Leader
2) Royal We
3) Commas on sale at Costco?
4) Non sequiturs à gogo
5) "Mine's bigger"
6) Is "hostages" the diplomatically-correct term?
7) I cancelled the summit but call me if you change your mind. Passive/aggressive much?
8) "great prosperity and wealth." Always be closing.

Also: Nobel Punk Out Prize
posted by kirkaracha at 7:10 AM on May 24, 2018 [60 favorites]

Holy shit, is that the actual text of our cancellation?
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 7:17 AM on May 24, 2018 [59 favorites]

It's real.

Edit: AP article.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:18 AM on May 24, 2018 [10 favorites]

Oh my god. It's happened again. My rage reserves have run dry.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 7:23 AM on May 24, 2018 [8 favorites]

The actual letter says "serve" not "server." Small favors.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:23 AM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]