Last Call For That Poll-Asked Look

Generic ballot numbers in the last couple weeks have definitely favored the Democratic party, with Republicans wilting under the twin spotlights of Trump's trade war and Trump's immigration policy.  A new Quinnipiac University poll indicates that the divisions in America are stark, and women especially are abandoning the GOP in droves.

If the election for the U.S. House of Representatives were held today, 50 percent of American voters say they would vote for the Democratic candidate, as 41 percent say they would vote for the Republican candidate.

Independent voters back the Democratic candidate 49 - 35 percent.

There are wide gender and racial gaps: 

Men go Republican 50 - 42 percent as women go Democratic 58 - 33 percent; 

White voters are divided 46 - 46 percent.  Backing Democratic candidates are black voters 80 - 13 percent and Hispanic voters 60 - 35 percent. 

American voters disapprove 78 - 15 percent of the way Congress is handling its job.

Immigration is the most important issue in deciding how they will vote in November's election for the House of Representatives, 27 percent of voters say, with 23 percent citing the economy, 22 percent listing health care and 13 percent saying gun policy.

"Is it a signal of a blue wave? Four months until elections for the U.S. House of Representatives and 50 percent of American voters say they plan to vote for Democratic candidates," Malloy added.

Trump's trade policies are bad for the U.S. economy, voters say 50 - 39 percent and bad for their personal financial situation, voters say 46 - 35 percent.

Trump's trade policies will result in a trade war, voters say 52 - 38 percent and say 73 - 17 percent that a trade war would be bad for the U.S. economy. 

Democrats with a whopping 25-point lead among women though still may not be enough.  It's goog to see that white voters are at best tied between the parties, and that to me is a much better sign for the Dems overall, especially in states with smaller minority populations (like say, Kentucky.)

Still, if Dems are now running even with white voters, and up 25 points with women overall, the Republicans are going to get slaughtered.

We need to make sure that trend continues.  A lot can happen in four months still.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Another week, another recap of the Mueller investigation into Donald Trump's collusion and corruption, and while the Trump regime keeps claiming that the Mueller probe will be over any tie now and that the pressure is on the special counsel to wrap up "or else", in fact just the opposite is true.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is tapping additional Justice Department resources for help with new legal battles as his year-old investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 election continues to expand.

As Mueller pursues his probe, he’s making more use of career prosecutors from the offices of U.S. attorneys and from Justice Department headquarters, as well as FBI agents -- a sign that he may be laying the groundwork to hand off parts of his investigation eventually, several current and former U.S. officials said.

Mueller and his team of 17 federal prosecutors are coping with a higher-than-expected volume of court challenges that has added complexity in recent months, but there’s no political appetite at this time to increase the size of his staff, the officials said.

According to his most recent statement of expenditures, more money is being spent on work done by permanent Department of Justice units than on Mueller’s own dedicated operation. The DOJ units spent $9 million from the investigation’s start in May 2017 through March of this year, compared with $7.7 million spent by Mueller’s team.

Mueller’s probe has come under attack from President Donald Trump and his allies who say it’s going on too long, expanding too far and costing too much. But the special counsel’s charter, issued by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, includes investigating whether Trump or associates colluded with Russia and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

Investigators in New York; Alexandria, Virginia; Pittsburgh and elsewhere have been tapped to supplement the work of Mueller’s team, the officials said. Mueller has already handed off one major investigation -- into Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen -- to the Southern District of New York.

“Whatever you got, finish it the hell up because this country is being torn apart,” Republican Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina told Rosenstein during a June 28 hearing. Rosenstein said Mueller knows he must move expeditiously.

A heavy investigative load for Mueller had been anticipated from the start, the officials said. The special counsel has already issued 20 indictments and secured guilty pleas from five individuals, and some of the defendants are mounting stiffer-than-expected battles in court.

So no, the Mueller investigation is not "wrapping up soon" and while it would make political sense to do so before the November elections, it looks very much like the Mueller team is setting up multiple parallel investigations in case Trump starts ordering firings, something that is becoming increasingly likely as we get closer to the midterm contests on November 6.

As such, the Trump regime is laying down a new strategy to "work the refs" on public opinion by throwing down the gauntlet before Mueller's feet.

President Trump’s lawyers set new conditions on Friday on an interview with the special counsel and said that the chances that the president would be voluntarily questioned were growing increasingly unlikely.

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, needs to prove before Mr. Trump would agree to an interview that he has evidence that Mr. Trump committed a crime and that his testimony is essential to completing the investigation, said Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lead lawyer in the case.

His declaration was the latest sign that the president’s lawyers, who long cooperated quietly with the inquiry even as their client attacked it, have shifted to an openly combative stance.

Mr. Giuliani acknowledged that Mr. Mueller was unlikely to agree to the interview demands. Mr. Mueller could subpoena Mr. Trump to answer questions if he does not agree to voluntarily sit for an interview. Mr. Giuliani left open the possibility that the president, who has said in the past that he would be eager to sit down with the special counsel, would still agree to be interviewed.

Mr. Giuliani appeared to be in part trying to shift responsibility onto the special counsel for the lengthy negotiations over an interview — and was most likely prolonging them himself.

“If they can come to us and show us the basis and that it’s legitimate and that they have uncovered something, we can go from there and assess their objectivity,” Mr. Giuliani said in an interview. He urged the special counsel to wrap up his inquiry and write an investigative report. He said Mr. Trump’s lawyers planned to write their own summary of the case.

Can you imagine any other time where the subject of an investigation said "Show us all your evidence before we agree to cooperate" and wasn't laughed out of the halls of justice?  Me either, but this is where Trump, who clearly now believes that he not only is above the law, but is the law itself, thinks he is and thinks he has the power to use.

If Mueller is going to continue, then Trump will simply do what he does best: make up his own reality and tell the media to report it as such or lose access to the White House.  They've been playing along for 18 months now, and nothing makes me think anything will be different. Rudy's "summary of the case" will become the new narrative going forward, and tens of millions will believe Trump, confirming that the Mueller probe is "over".

It's far from over, as Trump will discover to his own detriment.

Prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller intend to present evidence at the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort that a banking executive allegedly helped Manafort obtain loans of approximately $16 million while the banker sought a role in the Trump campaign. 

Manafort faces trial on bank fraud and other financial charges in the Eastern District of Virginia beginning July 25. Until now, there had been no indication that his role in the Trump campaign would become part of the trial, and he had asked the judge to keep details about his ties to President Donald Trump out of the trial. Prosecutors say any alleged collusion with the Russian government won't come up at the trial. 

The allegation of a possible quid pro quo came amid several court filings Friday as both sides count down the remaining weeks until the trial. While prosecutors filled in the Trump campaign details, Manafort's team was busy filing requests with the judge to move his trial location and date, to look into possible leaks from the prosecutors and to keep Manafort out of the public eye. 

"The government intends to present evidence that although various Lender D employees identified serious issues with the defendant's loan application, the senior executive at Lender D interceded in the process and approved the loan," according to the filing from Mueller's team. 

The bank executive "expressed interest in working on the Trump campaign, told (Manafort) about his interest, and eventually secured a position advising the Trump campaign," the filing said. The unnamed man "expressed an interest in serving in the administration of President Trump, but did not secure such a position." 

While the senior executive is unnamed in this filing, in a previous court filing prosecutors identified Lender D as The Federal Savings Bank. 

"Here, it would be difficult for the jury to understand why the loans were approved without understanding that the lender approved the loans, in spite of the identified deficiencies, because the senior executive factored in his own personal ambition," prosecutors wrote in the filing.

Not all of the Trump money laundering scheme leads to Russia, but following the money will lead you a lot of places where Trump doesn't want to revisit, and Mueller knows it.  The Manafort trial gets underway in less than three weeks, and it's going to be nothing but daily bad news for Trump.  Both sides know it.

Stay Tuned.

The Jordan Rules, Ohio Version

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, leader of the House GOP Freedom Caucus, is now in the endgame of the "long-time enabler of sexual abuse finally facing justice" scenario that we've seen play out all too many times in the last year or so, especially with powerful Republicans.

New allegations in the Ohio State University sexual abuse scandal are threatening to intensify the political firestorm facing its onetime assistant wrestling coach, powerful GOP Rep. Jim Jordan.

A half-dozen ex-wrestlers told POLITICO they were regularly harassed in their training facility by sexually aggressive men who attended the university or worked there. The voyeurs would masturbate while watching the wrestlers shower or sit in the sauna, or engage in sexual acts in the areas where the athletes trained, the former wrestlers said.

Larkins Hall, the building that housed athletic teams, became such a well-known target that people who frequented it at the time have reminisced in anonymous postings online how easy it was to ogle naked members of the wrestling team.

The situation was so egregious that former wrestling head coach Russ Hellickson would at times have to physically drag the gawkers out of the building, several sources familiar with his actions at the time said. Hellickson also pleaded with the university multiple times to move their athletes to a private facility, the sources said. Jordan served as Hellickson’s No. 2, and the coach has been described as Jordan’s mentor.

The accusations could exacerbate Jordan’s troubles. He was the wrestling team’s assistant coach from 1986 to 1994 and has adamantly denied knowledge of any sexual abuse.

“I never knew about any type of abuse,” Jordan said in an interview this week. “If I did, I would have done something about it.”

The notion that Jordan had no idea this was going on for eight years is ludicrous to the point of insanity.  He looked the other way as it went on, something he continues to do today with his constant enabling of Donald Trump and other Republicans.

Though none of the wrestlers and coaches interviewed blamed Jordan for the inappropriate behavior they experienced in Larkins Hall, they said he would have had to know about it. One former wrestler told POLITICO he saw Jordan yell at male voyeurs to get out of the sauna, though Jordan’s office refuted this account. Even three wrestlers who defended Jordan said it would have been impossible for him not to notice the pervasive toxic atmosphere surrounding the team.

“Coaching my athletes in Larkins Hall was one of the most difficult things I ever did,” said a former wrestling coach who worked with Jordan but asked not to be named. “It was a cesspool of deviancy. And that’s a whole ’nother story that no one has addressed.”

“Was there some deviant behavior? … Was there behavior when guys were coming into the sauna and showers, was there sexual misconduct? No one is denying that,” said ex-OSU wrestler George Pardos of Larkins Hall in an interview. He defended Jordan as “one of the most honest men I’ve ever known.”

Multiple former wrestlers have accused Jordan, a National Wrestling Hall of Fame inductee, of being among the faculty members who turned a blind eye to inappropriate behavior by the late Richard Strauss, the university’s former athletic doctor. Strauss allegedly preyed on male students during physicals, groping them to the point of making them ejaculate, according to one nurse who witnessed it and recounted the story in a video produced by alleged victims and obtained by POLITICO.

Ohio State has launched an investigation into Strauss’ behavior. Strauss worked at the university from 1978 to 1998. He killed himself in 2005.

This scandal is an important reminder that systemic sexual abuse happens because the powerful enable it, and that men can be victims of sexual abuse as well as women.  It's about power and manipulation of the powerless.

Jordan is of course blaming the "Obama Deep State", because the "party of personal responsibility" takes none for itself.

Mr. Jordan, a 54-year-old congressman in his sixth term, was defiant Friday night on Fox News, in his first extended response to the emerging charges. He disparaged some of the former college wrestlers who have come forward to say he knew of allegations that the team doctor, Richard H. Strauss, had fondled them. He said he could not explain why other more friendly wrestlers had leveled similar charges.

“I never saw, never heard of, never was told about any kind of abuse,” said Mr. Jordan, whose in-your-face brand of politics has made him the choice for speaker of the House by an array of conservative groups. “If I did I would have dealt with it. A good coach puts the interests of his student-athletes first.”

When the show’s host, Bret Baier, read a quotation by a former Ohio State wrestler and Ultimate Fighting Championship star, Mark Coleman, that Mr. Jordan would have to have dementia to have forgotten what happened, the congressman offered little explanation.

“I feel sorry for him,” he said of Mr. Coleman. “It’s just not accurate.”

Instead, Mr. Jordan continued to fan conspiracy theories connecting the emergence of the charges to his aggressive questioning last month of Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, the man many Trump supporters hold responsible for the Russia investigation.

“I think the timing is suspect when you think about how this whole story came together after the Rosenstein hearing and the speaker’s race,” he said.

FOX News has been ruthlessly attacking the victims for days now, just as they did with the women who came forward to speak out against Donald Trump.

Fox News on Friday suggested one of the wrestlers accusing Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) of ignoring sexual abuse claims at Ohio State had a “credibility problem” because he was recently released from jail.

Guest host Leland Vittert, filling in for America’s Newsroom anchor Bill Hemmer, was speaking with a panel of media guests during a segment of the show’s second hour about recent allegations against Jordan by former Ohio State wrestlers who claim he was dismissive of sex abuse claims involving former team doctor Richard Strauss in the 1990s. Jordan, an assistant coach there at the time, has denied the allegations, saying he was unaware of the sex abuse claims.

Strauss died in 2005.

“…You have the accusations going back more than a decade against Jim Jordan. How do you prove whether any of this is true?” Vittert asked the panel Friday. “You certainly think the timing is coincidental.”

James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal responded, suggesting Jordan may have made “a lot of enemies in Washington, often for good reason [because] he has been quite persistent demanding accountability out of federal agencies,” and adding that the case against him was likely shaky at best.

Vittert agreed, saying the issue was “interesting.”

“The one wrestler who claims that he directly reported this to Jim Jordan also reportedly had just gotten out of 18 months in jail for bilking investors out of about $2 million. Credibility problem […]?” he said.

The answer to "Why didn't the victims come forward until now?" is always "because they will be attacked by assholes like this."

Jordan's opponent in OH-4 is Democrat Janet Garrett, by the way.  She lost rather big in 2016.

I think it will be a lot closer this November.

Will Louisville Become The New Charlottesville?

Things could quickly turn ugly in Louisville today as armed white nationalists from our old friends, the Three Percenters, plan to show up Saturday to confront the ongoing Occupy ICE protest.

Louisville police are bracing for a clash outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building downtown as a militia group confirmed it is planning to counter an ongoing demonstration on Saturday.

Occupy ICE Louisville has been posted outside the federal agency's downtown office for almost a week in opposition to President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. The group's Facebook page says they are "aware of the intention of counterprotesters to make themselves known" at 9 a.m.

Gary Foreman, a spokesman for the Kentucky chapter of the Three Percenters, said on Friday the group would be stationed at 7th and York streets Saturday morning to "ensure everyone expresses their thoughts in a peaceful environment."

Foreman said the group applied for and received a permit for the protest from Louisville Metro Police. He expects somewhere near 100 people to attend, he said, including members of state chapters in Tennessee and Indiana.

Jesus Ibañez, a member of Occupy ICE, told the Courier Journal his group learned of the counterprotest through their attorneys and a review of social media.

"We're just going to get people up early and have brunch and rally," Ibañez said.

Metro Councilwoman Barbara Sexton Smith, who represents the downtown area, told the Courier Journal she spoke with Police Chief Steve Conrad on Thursday about this weekend’s protests. She said they didn’t talk about specific organizations, but that the police chief emphasized the importance of public safety.

"I do think folks should exercise caution and I do that based upon my own research," Sexton Smith said. "The chief wouldn’t have called me to inform me about their plans had he not thought this had risen to a level where we need to exercise caution."

And yes, the Three Percenters were among those at the Charlottesville white nationalism rally that turned deadly last year.  They happily provide "security" for neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and other white supremacist rally groups.

Now they are coming to Louisville, weapons in hand.

Conrad says @LMPD is asking the opposing sides to enter from different parts of the closed area. He mentions how they don't wanted what happened in #Charlottesville, Virginia to happen here but that residents should be prepared for violence.

— Philmonger (@phillipmbailey) July 6, 2018

It's going to be a long, hot summer here in Kentucky.

Last Call For Trump Trades Blows, Con't

As steep new retaliatory tariffs on US exports to China are now in effect, even the Wall Street Journal is warning that the biggest losers in Trump's trade war with China are the very "economically anxious" people who voted for him in rural, agricultural, mining, fracking, logging and manufacturing counties.

The fallout from President Donald Trump’s tariffs and China’s countertariffs—which formally went into effect on Friday—will have the greatest impact on the U.S. counties that voted Mr. Trump into office.

The U.S. tariffs on China will initially hit about $34 billion of goods, with plans in place to raise that total to $50 billion. The tariffs will fall mostly on Chinese aerospace products, information technology, auto parts and medical instruments. Beijing is retaliating with tariffs on $34 billion of American goods, aimed at farm products, cars and crude oil.

The U.S. tariffs will provide a protective buffer for some companies that compete with Chinese imports, but Beijing’s retaliation will affect huge swaths of the American heartland, according to an analysis from Moody’s Analytics, which calculated how much of gross domestic product in each county is in industries that would benefit from the protection or be hurt by the retaliation.

The retaliatory tariffs will fall especially hard—affecting more than 25% of a county’s economy—in nearly 20% of the counties that voted for Trump, affecting eight million people. Only 3% of the counties that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton, with a total population of 1.1 million, would be so heavily hit. In contrast, only 8% of counties that voted for Mr. Trump, a Republican, have protective buffers for more than a quarter of their economy.

“The beneficiaries are pretty narrowly regionally concentrated, right in the industrial Midwest. Outside of that, it’s hard to identify anyone who benefits to any significant degree,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The areas that suffer are broader and more diffuse. The agricultural areas get nailed. Some of the manufacturing centers get hurt as well.”

The Trump administration has argued that China engages in unfair trade practices with the U.S. that need to be countered, even at the cost of pain to the U.S. economy.

U.S. regions with more than 25% of their economy affected by the Chinese tariffs are likely to feel a painful fallout if the tariffs remain in effect. Industries such as soybeans in the Great Plains, auto manufacturers in the upper Midwest and oil-producing regions in the Dakotas or Texas will be among the most affected. China imports the most soybeans in the world, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and was the second-biggest destination after Canada for U.S. crude-oil exports in 2017, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

These tariffs will be devastating for states like Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Nebraska, Kansas and the Dakotas, but they will also affect red counties in swing states like North Carolina, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida.  Where I live in Northern Kentucky there won't be much effect, but head south into the bluegrass farmlands or the Bourbon Trail and Kentucky too will be taking serious economic damage.

But there's an extremely good chance that the damage will spread and become far worse, leading to economic catastrophe.

Trump's threats to add more tariffs are what really worry business leaders, foreign governments and even fellow Republican officials. He says he's ready to put tariffs on another $400 billion of Chinese products if China punches back yet again, something most expect China to do either with more tariffs or harsher non-tariff barriers to trade like added inspections of cars and letting fruit rot in Chinese ports while it waits for clearance to come ashore.

And his team is investigating whether to place tariffs on the roughly $360 billion auto, truck and car parts that were imported from foreign nations last year. Either of those moves would immediately vault the number of imported goods subject to the extra tax to close to 20 percent, a far steeper hit. If Trump did both, a third of imported goods would be impacted, an amount that would almost certainly be felt when Americans go shopping.

The damage right now is on about 5% of imports to America.  That number could go higher very quickly, and almost certainly will.

So far, the damage from Trump's trade battle has mainly been on the diplomatic side. China says Trump is “opening fire” on its nation, and Canada, a longtime U.S. ally, called the tariffs “insulting” and “totally unacceptable.” The European Union sent the Trump administration a document Friday warning that adding the auto tariffs would “damage further the reputation of the United States.”

No one is backing down yet, and there's almost no high-level dialogue taking place that could bring an end to the standoff.

“The Chinese have a very high threshold for pain. I don’t think they are going to blink because of a little pain,” said Sung Won Sohn, a former economist in the Nixon administration. “After all, China used to be in much worse economic shape.”

So did we.  It's possible that the real pain might not come ahead of November's elections, but if it does, the blue wave will become a tsunami overnight.  When plants and farms start shutting down and truck and SUV prices skyrocket, when consumer prices jump and the cost of gas hits $4 or $5 a gallon?

People will start voting for "change" real damn fast.

Immigration Nation, Con't

Republicans are quick to claim they are "winning" the public opinion debate on immigration because Americans are against people crossing the border illegally, and that Democrats in turn want "open borders", "no enforcement", and even "anarchy" as Trump has blathered on this week on Twitter about.

Americans are broadly against illegal border crossings, especially in border areas, that's true, but the reality is that Trump's handling of immigration is just as unpopular as Trump himself is, as are the specific actions he's taking in the name of "enforcement".

Americans overwhelmingly oppose the Trump administration’s now-rescinded policy of separating immigrant children from their parents, and smaller majorities also disagree with the president’s call to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and to restrict legal immigration by limiting citizens from bringing parents and siblings to this country, according to a new Washington Post-Schar School poll.

On other aspects of the immigration debate, however, a more mixed picture emerges. Americans are more closely divided on the question of whether enough is being done to prevent illegal immigration and whether the country has gone too far in welcoming immigrants. Also, more people say they trust President Trump than congressional Democrats to deal with the issue of border security. The support for Trump on the border security issue is especially evident in congressional districts considered key battlegrounds in this fall’s midterm elections.

Democrats appear more energized than Republicans about the fall elections, especially in battleground districts. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent voters in those districts, 59 percent say the midterms are extremely important, compared with 46 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Overall, registered voters say they prefer to vote for a Democrat over a Republican for the House, 47 percent to 37 percent. The margin on that question is not statistically larger in battleground districts, standing at 12 percentage points.

The nation remains deeply divided along party lines, as it has throughout and before Trump’s presidency. Two other divisions define the political environment of 2018. On issues of immigration, as well as questions about Trump’s presidency, the gaps between men and women and between white voters with and without college degrees are sizable. Women and white college-educated voters are far more dissatisfied with the president and his policies than are men and white voters without college educations. However, gaps based on education are less significant in battleground districts.

Trump’s overall approval stands at 43 percent, while his disapproval is 55 percent. Among men, 54 percent approve; among women, 32 percent approve.

His handling of immigration draws slightly higher disapproval, with 39 percent approving and 59 percent disapproving. More than twice as many say they strongly disapprove as say they strongly approve. Among men, 51 percent disapprove, but among women, 67 percent disapprove. Among whites with college educations, 68 percent disapprove, but among non-college whites, 56 percent approve.

Approval of Trump's separation policy at the border is a crushing failure for him, only 29% approve.  Even white voters hate it., 65% against and only 33% for.  Hispanic voters are the most opposed, 77-20% against. Independent voters are opposed 74-25%.

Only Republicans think this is a good idea, 61-36% in favor of it.

As far as who is to blame for the separation policy, Trump or immigrants, it's an even split. 37% blame Trump, 35% blame immigrants, and 25% blame both equally.  But there are a lot of splits, men blame immigrants more 43-33% with 23% sharing the blame, while women blame the Trump regime 41-28% with 27% sharing equal blame.

A similar split is among Hispanic respondents, 41-23% blame the Trump regime with 28% sharing the blame, among African-Americans it's also 41%, but a substantial 48% think both the Trump regime and immigrants bear responsibility.  Only 8% of African-Americans blame immigrants solely for Trump's policy, 89% think he shares part or all of the blame.

Any way you look at it, the numbers continue to be bad for Trump and good for Democrats with just four months to go to the midterms.

Thank You For Your Service, Suckers

If there's any doubt left that Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis is still in control of the Pentagon rather than being Trump's lap dog (rather than Mad Dog!) then that just got put to rest with this shameful story.

Some immigrant U.S. Army reservists and recruits who enlisted in the military with a promised path to citizenship are being abruptly discharged, the Associated Press has learned.

The AP was unable to quantify how many men and women who enlisted through the special recruitment program have been booted from the Army, but immigration attorneys say they know of more than 40 who have been discharged or whose status has become questionable, jeopardizing their futures.

“It was my dream to serve in the military,” said reservist Lucas Calixto, a Brazilian immigrant who filed a lawsuit against the Army last week. “Since this country has been so good to me, I thought it was the least I could do to give back to my adopted country and serve in the United States military.”

Some of the service members say they were not told why they were being discharged. Others who pressed for answers said the Army informed them they’d been labeled as security risks because they have relatives abroad or because the Defense Department had not completed background checks on them.

Spokespeople for the Pentagon and the Army said that, due to the pending litigation, they were unable to explain the discharges or respond to questions about whether there have been policy changes in any of the military branches.

If you think for a second that the US Army doesn't know why it's discharging recruits, that's complete nonsense.

Eligible recruits are required to have legal status in the U.S., such as a student visa, before enlisting. More than 5,000 immigrants were recruited into the program in 2016, and an estimated 10,000 are currently serving. Most go the Army, but some also go to the other military branches.

To become citizens, the service members need an honorable service designation, which can come after even just a few days at boot camp. But the recently discharged service members have had their basic training delayed, so they can’t be naturalized.

Margaret Stock, an Alaska-based immigration attorney and a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who helped create the immigrant recruitment program, said she’s been inundated over the past several days by recruits who have been abruptly discharged.

All had signed enlistment contracts and taken an Army oath, Stock said. Many were reservists who had been attending unit drills, receiving pay and undergoing training, while others had been in a “delayed entry” program, she said.

“Immigrants have been serving in the Army since 1775,” Stock said. “We wouldn’t have won the revolution without immigrants. And we’re not going to win the global war on terrorism today without immigrants.”

Stock said the service members she’s heard from had been told the Defense Department had not managed to put them through extensive background checks, which include CIA, FBI and National Intelligence Agency screenings and counterintelligence interviews. Therefore, by default, they do not meet the background check requirement.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” she said.

As with the family separations and permanent immigrant detainment/deportation regime that Trump has created, discharging immigrants from the Army is 100% being done on purpose and at Trump's command. 

Did anyone think that a government run by Donald Trump, a man who regularly stiffed customers,  contractors and vendors as a businessman and got away with it, would keep its word?

The people who voted for him do.  Even when they know he's lying to them.

Getting Out, Scott Free

If there were any more turnovers in the Trump regime, they'd have to hire Karl Malone.

Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, resigned after facing months of allegations over legal and ethical violations.

Mr. Trump announced the resignation in a tweet on Thursday in which he thanked Mr. Pruitt for an “outstanding job” and said the agency’s deputy, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, would take over as the acting administrator on Monday. In his resignation letter, Mr. Pruitt cited “unrelenting attacks on me personally” as one of the reasons for his departure, an apparent reference to the numerous investigations into his stewardship of the agency.

Mr. Pruitt had been hailed as a hero among conservatives for his zealous deregulation, but he could not overcome a spate of ethics questions about his alleged spending abuses, first-class travel and cozy relationships with lobbyists. Earlier on Thursday, The New York Times reported on new questions about whether aides to Mr. Pruitt had deleted sensitive information about his meetings from his public schedule, potentially in violation of the law.Mr. Pruitt also came under fire for enlisting aides to obtain special favors for him and his family, such as reaching out to the chief executive of Chick-fil-A, Dan T. Cathy, with the intent of helping Mr. Pruitt’s wife, Marlyn, open a franchise of the restaurant.

Reminder: he's almost certainly going to be indicted soon.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly told associates that Mr. Pruitt has done what he has wanted in terms of cutting regulations, so he has been reluctant to let him go. Mr. Pruitt has made himself available to the president as a confidant as well as a possible next attorney general.

But White House advisers for months have implored Mr. Trump to get rid of Mr. Pruitt, including his chief of staff, John F. Kelly. Ultimately, the president grew disillusioned with Mr. Pruitt after a cascade of accusations of impropriety and ethical missteps overshadowed Mr. Pruitt’s policy achievements.

In recent days, people who have spoken with Mr. Trump said he sounds exasperated with his EPA administrator’s negative headlines. “It’s one thing after another with this guy,” one person close to Mr. Trump quoted the president as saying.

Uh-huh. 

The real reason Pruitt was fired?

Mr. Pruitt is the subject of at least 13 federal investigations, and a government watchdog agency concluded that he had broken the law with his purchase of a $43,000 secure telephone booth. He was also under investigation for his 2017 lease of a bedroom in a condominium linked to a Canadian energy company’s powerful Washington lobbying firm, and for accusations that he demoted or sidelined E.P.A. employees who questioned his actions.

Of course, there is that whole "wants to be Trump's Supreme Court pick" thing.  Who knows.

By the way, you can argue that Pruitt's immediate replacement will actually be worse because Pruitt's deputy, Andrew Wheeler, is just as awful, but nowhere near as blatantly greedy.

We're still very screwed on climate change.

At Lady Liberty's Feet

Therese Patricia Okoumou climbed up on to the Statue of Liberty's dress on the 4th of July to protest the Trump regime's immigration policies for several hours before police were able to apprehend her.

A woman who climbed up to the robes of the Statue of Liberty to protest the separation of migrant families was taken into custody after a standoff with police on the Fourth of July. 

Authorities had tried to talk the woman down but she refused to leave. For nearly three hours, she crossed the base of the statue, at times sitting in the folds of the statue's dress and under Lady Liberty's sandal. The woman was identified as Therese Patricia Okoumou by a law enforcement source close to the investigation and another source who knows her. 

The woman was part of a group of protesters and had declared that she wouldn't come down until "all the children are released," a source with the New York Police Department told CNN. 

About 16 officers with the New York City Police Department's Emergency Service Unit -- a team trained to perform some of the most dangerous rescues in the city -- took part in the rescue/apprehension effort, Officer Brian Glacken said in a news conference Wednesday evening. 

"At first, she wasn't friendly with us, but we took the time to get a rapport with her so that took a while," said Glacken. 

"She just kind of mentioned the kids in Texas. I guess the whole debate that's going on about that. In the beginning, she threatened to push us off, push the ladder off, but we stayed with her," Glacken added. 

Finally, officers with ropes and climbing gear reached her. 

"At first she was being a little combative, then she was willing to cooperate with us. She actually apologized to us for having to go up and get her," Glacken told reporters. 

Officers put a harness and ropes on her to bring her down, and she crossed to the other side of the statue with the officers where a ladder was propped up on the base of the statue. 

Expect a lot more very public protests this summer and ahead as we move through the Trump era, but the real test will be November.  Trump is convinced that Republicans will not only keep the House and Senate but actually gain seats, and he's heading off to talk to the man who will almost certainly try to help make that happen later next week.

Also in another note, I have the rest of this week off, so posting will be light (as you've already figured out.)

Stay tuned.

Last Call For What It Means To Be A Citizen

As we watch fireworks and enjoy a cookout this evening as we celebrate America's birthday, remember that the Trump regime is actively engaging in not only eliminating asylum applications and all but ending legal immigration (seemingly for anyone who doesn't happen to be from Russia) but actively seeking to remove citizenship and deport previously naturalized citizens.

Oh, but Trump still can't book a real July 4th act at the White House.

So there's that, I guess.

The Next War On The Board

AP's Josh Goodman brings us the story of how Donald Trump was about to get American involved in yet another illegal, costly, and inhumane invasion, this time in Venezuela.

As a meeting last August in the Oval Office to discuss sanctions on Venezuela was concluding, President Donald Trump turned to his top aides and asked an unsettling question: With a fast unraveling Venezuela threatening regional security, why can’t the U.S. just simply invade the troubled country?

The suggestion stunned those present at the meeting, including U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, both of whom have since left the administration. This account of the previously undisclosed conversation comes from a senior administration official familiar with what was said.

In an exchange that lasted around five minutes, McMaster and others took turns explaining to Trump how military action could backfire and risk losing hard-won support among Latin American governments to punish President Nicolas Maduro for taking Venezuela down the path of dictatorship, according to the official. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.

But Trump pushed back. Although he gave no indication he was about to order up military plans, he pointed to what he considered past cases of successful gunboat diplomacy in the region, according to the official, like the invasions of Panama and Grenada in the 1980s.

The idea, despite his aides’ best attempts to shoot it down, would nonetheless persist in the president’s head.

The next day, Aug. 11, Trump alarmed friends and foes alike with talk of a “military option” to remove Maduro from power. The public remarks were initially dismissed in U.S. policy circles as the sort of martial bluster people have come to expect from the reality TV star turned commander in chief.

But shortly afterward, he raised the issue with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, according to the U.S. official. Two high-ranking Colombian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing Trump confirmed the report.

Then in September, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Trump discussed it again, this time at greater length, in a private dinner with leaders from four Latin American allies that included Santos, the same three people said and Politico reported in February.

The U.S. official said Trump was specifically briefed not to raise the issue and told it wouldn’t play well, but the first thing the president said at the dinner was, “My staff told me not to say this.” Trump then went around asking each leader if they were sure they didn’t want a military solution, according to the official, who added that each leader told Trump in clear terms they were sure.

Eventually, McMaster would pull aside the president and walk him through the dangers of an invasion, the official said.

Taken together, the behind-the-scenes talks, the extent and details of which have not been previously reported, highlight how Venezuela’s political and economic crisis has received top attention under Trump in a way that was unimaginable in the Obama administration. But critics say it also underscores how his “America First” foreign policy at times can seem outright reckless, providing ammunition to America’s adversaries.

The problem isn't that Trump was talked out of invading Venezuela.

The problem is that the people that talked Trump out of it, H.R. McMaster and Rex Tillerson, are both long gone and have been replaced with far more belligerent advisers.

There's going to come a point very soon where Mueller and/or the Senate Intelligence Committee reveals its findings, and it will be a very bad time for Donald Trump.  He will of course want to lash out and distract Americans from this news.

A nice little war would get the job done.  North Korea and Iran would draw global condemnation, but Venezuela, non-nuclear, full of people needing "liberation" from leftists?

American leaders have done it before.

They'll do it again.

The Incivility War

An near-unanimous majority of Americans agree that the US has a serious political incivility problem, but we're still rather split on whose fault that is, the GOP or the Dems.

More voters blame President Trump than Democrats for the lack of civility in politics, according to a new Quinnipiac poll.

The survey found that 91 percent of Americans say the lack of civility in politics is a serious problem, with 47 percent of respondents saying Trump is responsible for that. Thirty-seven percent pointed the finger at Democrats.

Additionally, 55 percent of adults said Trump's rhetoric has emboldened people who hold racist views to publicly express those beliefs.

The poll was conducted June 27–July 1 among a group of 1,020 voters. It has a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.

The good news, I guess, is that Americans do seem to agree that Trump is a serious problem across the board.

American voters disapprove 55 - 40 percent of the job President Trump is doing, compared to a 52 - 43 percent disapproval rating in a June 20 Quinnipiac University National Poll and reversing a trend which showed Trump's net approval inching up.

The president gets negative grades on most character traits:

• 58 - 38 percent say he is not honest;
• 55 - 43 percent say he does not have good leadership skills;
• 55 - 43 percent say he does not care about average Americans;
• 62 - 34 percent say he is not level-headed;
• 63 - 32 percent say he is a strong person;
• 57 - 39 say he is intelligent;
• 60 - 37 percent say he does not share their values;
• 62 - 36 percent say he does not provide the U.S. with moral leadership.

But this still won't be enough to motivate people to vote against him, I suspect.  Tens of millions of us long ago made peace with the fact that a screaming racist as president wasn't a dealbreaker as long as people got what they wanted out of him policy-wise. 

Something to remember on this July 4th.

Last Call For Trump's Race To The Bottom

With an impending second Supreme Court pick, the Trump regime is making it very clear what direction they expect the Roberts Court to take over the next year or two: the end of abortion, the end of LGBTQ equality and same-sex marriage, the end of voting rights and civil rights, and the end of affirmative action.

The Trump administration will encourage the nation’s school superintendents and college presidents to adopt race-blind admissions standards, abandoning an Obama administration policy that called on universities to consider race as a factor in diversifying their campuses, officials said. 

The reversal would restore the policy set during President George W. Bush’s administration, when officials told schools that it “strongly encourages the use of race-neutral methods” for admitting students to college or assigning them to elementary and secondary schools. 

Last November, Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked the Justice Department to re-evaluate past policies that he believed pushed the department to act beyond what the law, the Constitution and the Supreme Court had required, Devin M. O’Malley, a Justice Department spokesman, said. As part of that process, the Justice Department rescinded seven policy guidances from the Education Department’s civil rights division on Tuesday. 

“The executive branch cannot circumvent Congress or the courts by creating guidance that goes beyond the law and — in some instances — stays on the books for decades,” Mr. O’Malley said. 

The Supreme Court has steadily narrowed the ways that schools can consider race when trying to diversify their student bodies. But it has not banned the practice. 

Now, affirmative action is at a crossroads. The Trump administration is moving against any use of race as a measurement of diversity in education. And the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the end of this month will leave the court without its swing vote on affirmative action and allow President Trump to nominate a justice opposed to a policy that for decades has tried to integrate elite educational institutions. 

A highly anticipated case is pitting Harvard against Asian-American students who say one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions has systematically excluded some Asian-American applicants to maintain slots for students of other races. That case is clearly aimed at the Supreme Court. 

“The whole issue of using race in education is being looked at with a new eye in light of the fact that it’s not just white students being discriminated against, but Asians and others as well,” said Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity. “As the demographics of the country change, it becomes more and more problematic.” 

The Obama administration believed that students benefit from being surrounded by diverse classmates, so in 2011, the administration offered schools a potential road map to establishing affirmative action policies that could withstand legal scrutiny. The guidance was controversial at the time that it was issued, for its far-reaching interpretation of the law. Justice officials said that pages of hypothetical scenarios offered in the guidance were particularly problematic, as they clearly bent the law to specific policy preferences.

That policy is now dust, and by the time 2021 rolls around, affirmative action in college admissions will be gone as well, along with a number of other things.  It's going to be a dark time in American history, a time where in the last throes of white dominance of American culture that everything can and will be done to delay, if not reverse the inevitable demographic shift ahead.

And I say inevitable but that's not actually true if Trump starts deporting millions of undocumented immigrants and even legal immigrants, and then robbing the political, social, economic, and voting power of those of us who remain.  There's plenty that Trump can do to shift America back into white supremacy mode as the default.

The Harvard admissions case is particularly important, because "proving" that affirmative action "harms" one minority group (Asian-Americans) to help African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans has long been the holy grail of the "Let's not see race" brigade.  If that gets to Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and a fifth Trump pick, the ballgame is done.

A lot of stuff is going to fall apart on those lines actually, and the goal is to make sure that the coming rightward shift is so vast and generational that it will never be undone in our lifetimes.

We'll see what happens, but it's just a reminder that given the choice, there were tens of millions who sides with giving Donald Trump Supreme Court picks...and tens of millions more who didn't think it was important enough to bother voting over.

By the way, destroying America's public education system and turning it into something only the 1% will be able to afford in the future is absolutely the goal of the GOP right now, and they're hard at work dismantling education as a right.

A Michigan judge ruled last week that children do not have a fundamental right to learn how to read and write. 

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Public Counsel, the nation’s largest public interest law firm, on behalf of Detroit students that sought to hold state authorities, including Gov. Rick Snyder (R), accountable for what plaintiffs alleged were systemic failures depriving children of their right to literacy, according to the Detroit Free Press. 

"I'm shocked," said Ivy Bailey, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, the newspaper reported. "The message that it sends is that education is not important. And it sends the message that we don't care if you're literate or not." 

The suit also sought fixes to crumbling schools that, among other measures, Detroit Public Schools Community District officials reportedly said would amount to more than $500 million.

After all, the future is going to need a lot of prisoners for private lockups.

Sinema Of The Mind

I had high hopes for Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema, who six years ago ran on to the scene as the first openly bisexual member of the House (along with the House's first practicing Buddhist, Hawaii's Tulsi Gabbard!) and it seemed like an exciting time for women Democrats in the Obama era.

And then her votes started coming in, and she's basically the most conservative woman Democrat in either chamber these days, with a FiveThirtyEight Trump Score of  58.5%. Among her fellow Democrats, only Joe Manchin in the Senate and Henry Cuellar and Collin Peterson in the House vote more often with Trump.

Little surprise then that she's now squarely poised to become Jeff Flake's replacement in the Senate where her first vote in the upper chamber will almost certainly be against Chuck Schumer as leader.

All over the country, Republicans are attacking vulnerable Democratic senators as pawns of Chuck Schumer, the most polarizing Democratic leader second only to Nancy Pelosi.
Kyrsten Sinema, one of the party’s most-prized recruits and a keystone of Democrats’ long-shot hopes of capturing the Senate this fall, has a ready rejoinder.

“I am not going to vote for him,” she said matter of factly when pressed on her view of the Democratic leader. 

Sinema’s stance, revealed for the first time in a recent interview with POLITICO, is more radical than any member of the Democratic caucus, even vulnerable senators facing reelection deep in Trump country. But Sinema is staking her surprisingly strong campaign for Arizona’s open Senate seat on her close relationships with Republicans, praise for moderate Democrats and a distaste for the Democratic leader. 

Her opposition to Schumer is just one example of how the three-term House member is carving out a center-left Senate campaign in the Republican state, hoping it’s enough to inoculate herself from the national party’s baggage and land Democrats their first Arizona Senate seat in 30 years. 

She is notably more deferential to Trump than most Democrats are. “He has challenges,” she responded when asked whether Trump is a good president. “Transitioning from a CEO position to a presidency is probably a difficult challenge.” 

Facing a daunting map that heavily favors Republicans, Arizona is a must-win for Democrats’ hopes of capturing the Senate. For Sinema, the race is the culmination of years of careful calculations and transformations that began even before she was elected to the House in 2012. 

Sinema worked for progressive activist Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign and once unsuccessfully ran for the Arizona state House under the Green Party banner. But she has walked a far more moderate path in Congress — sometimes to criticism from her liberal colleagues — joining the conservative Blue Dog Democrats and voting with President Donald Trump nearly 60 percent of the time. 

Now the self-described workout addict and part-time university professor spends weekends and congressional recesses crisscrossing Arizona, running full throttle in a race blown open by GOP Sen. Jeff Flake’s impending retirement. Recent polls have shown Sinema with a sizable lead, and privately top Republicans are alarmed that the race might be getting out of reach. 

While Sinema, 41, builds up her name recognition and a $6 million-plus war chest,Republicans are engaging in a slugfest of a primary that will go on deep into August. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wants Rep. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) to emerge from a three-way primary against former state Sen. Kelli Ward and ex-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, but Democrats say McSally is being pushed too far to the right to beat Sinema. 

With no real opponent — Schumer privately backed her for the seat even before she’d announced, helping clear the field — Sinema can press her advantage. She leads McSally by an average of 8 points, according to Real Clear Politics.

That's Chuck Schumer for you, he clears the decks for Sinema to run unopposed in the primary and she turns around and knifes him in the front.  I've said this before, but dear god I miss Harry Reid.

Still, if Sinema wins, she's going to be another problematic Blue Dog for sure. That's certainly an improvement over Martha McSally, who makes Marsha Blackburn over in Tennessee look sane by comparison, but in a Blue wave scenario, both Sinema and Democrat Phil Bredesen will join the ranks of the Blue Dogs on the D side in red states.  It may be the two pickups the Dems need to control the Senate.

Like it or not, Sinema just might be a key player in 2019.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Apparently former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen is getting tired of being ignored by his one-time boss who kicked him to the curb after his office was raided and is now making it very clear that he plans to talk to Robert Mueller and congressional investigators to save his own ass. WaPo's AAron Blake:

Michael Cohen once said he would “take a bullet” for President Trump. He reportedly said he would rather “jump out of a building than turn on Donald Trump.”

He now sounds ready to leap.

In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos running Monday morning, Trump's former lawyer and fixer sent his clearest signal to date that he is prepared to flip on Trump. And while there have certainly been other signs recently, this one came from the horse's mouth.

“Once I understand what charges might be filed against me, if any at all, I will defer to my new counsel, Guy Petrillo, for guidance,” Cohen said.

Pressed on his past commentary about being willing to do anything for Trump, Cohen again hinted at flipping: “To be crystal clear, my wife, my daughter and my son, and this country have my first loyalty.”

Cohen agreed to this interview knowing that this would be a prominent question. And it can't have been a coincidence that a trio of stories emerged a couple weeks back, all pointing toward possibly flipping on Trump. There was a Wall Street Journal story indicating that he was unhappy with Trump for not helping with his legal bills. CNN quoted an anonymous source close to him saying, “If they want information on Trump, he's willing to give it.” Then Cohen resigned as deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee by citing not just the investigation he faces, but his disagreement with the Trump administration's policy of separating families at the border. That latter justification seemed conspicuous, given Cohen has pledged complete loyalty to Trump and rarely spoken publicly about policy.

And Cohen's interview came with another big signal: the reported end of a joint agreement between Cohen and Trump's legal team to share information. Such things often presage a more antagonistic relationship or even cutting a deal to inform on someone else. Michael Flynn's lawyers stopped sharing info with Trump's lawyers, for example, shortly before he flipped.

Cohen clearly wants Trump to come to his rescue, and everyone knows he has the goods on Donald.  The bigger story is that if Cohen didn't have anything worth giving to Mueller and investigators that was worthwhile at this late date, he would have been charged and would be awaiting his inevitable demise like Paul Manafort is now.  Instead, as Blake has indicated, Cohen appears headed down the Michael Flynn path, where he pleads to a small charge like "lying to the FBI" in exchange for information.  Flynn took the deal, as did Manafort's partner, Michael Gates.  Cohen is clearly next.

On the other hand, the feds already have truckloads of evidence recovered from that raid earlier this year, including shredded documents that the FBI has pieced together, and some of those have been leaked to BuzzFeed News:

When the Department of Justice announced this month that investigators had pieced together records found in a shredder belonging to the president’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, critics, legal experts, and journalists feverishly speculated about what they might contain.

Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for adult film star Stormy Daniels and Cohen's devoted nemesis, tweeted that the shredded documents could be a “huge problem.” MSNBC host Ari Melber devoted a large part of his program in May to the shredded documents and suggested that “something is going down.” Asha Rangappa, a former FBI agent and CNN analyst, tweeted: “This is not going to end well for the defense.”

Now, BuzzFeed News has obtained documents reconstructed by the FBI. A close examination shows that the records are a combination of documents that prosecutors already had, handwritten notes about a taxi business, insurance papers, and correspondence from a woman described in court filings as a “vexatious litigant” who claims she is under government surveillance.

Rebuilt from thin strips of paper, the shredded records are sometimes difficult to comprehend. One page doesn’t include full words and is a jumble of numbers, letters, and bar codes. One document appears to be part of an envelope. There are fragments of handwritten notes. There is an invitation to a reception in Miami to meet with business representatives from Qatar. Several of the records seem to be insurance forms for an apartment.

The clearest page documents a payment that has already been reported: a $62,500 wire transfer from March into a First Republic Bank account controlled by Cohen. This would fit with a series of payments reportedly from the Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy. He reportedly paid Cohen to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement with a former Playboy model with whom Broidy was romantically involved. A federal law enforcement source told BuzzFeed News that prosecutors already possessed some of the records dealing with Cohen’s financial transactions.

So where we go from here may not be up to Cohen at all, but Mueller and his team of prosecutors.  It's entirely possible that Mueller doesn't need Cohen himself at all.

We'll see.