Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Democrats have a ways to go before the public will be convinced that Trump should be removed from office as opposed to wading through another election season.

Donald Trump's approval rating is essentially unchanged at a historically weak 39 percent after the release of the Mueller report, just three in 10 Americans accept the president’s claim to have been exonerated and 58 percent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say the president lied to the public about the matters the special counsel investigated.

Nonetheless, support for impeachment is at a new low, 37 percent, in the national survey, albeit not significantly different from earlier this year. It rises to 62 percent among Democrats but falls sharply to 36 percent among independents and just 10 percent among Republicans. And while nearly six in 10 overall say Trump lied, there’s a closer division – 47-41 percent – on whether or not he obstructed justice.

The public overall appears cautiously supportive of the Mueller report, which Trump has characterized as “a total hit job.” Fifty-one percent in this survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, call the report fair and even-handed – just a bare majority, albeit far more than the 21 percent who say it’s unfair. Still, that leaves many, 28 percent, who are withholding judgment on whether Mueller’s report is fair or not.

While criticizing the report, Trump has claimed “complete and total exoneration” in its findings. Again the public’s response differs: Thirty-one percent say the report cleared Trump of all wrongdoing, almost entirely an ingathering of his political supporters. Many more, 53 percent, say the report did not exonerate Trump. An additional 16 percent have no opinion.

Americans know something is up, but the case against Trump has to be made cleanly and done correctly.  Televised hearings, loads of them, are the way to reach the country.  Democrats appear to be taking that route, and Trump is fighting every summons, every document request, and every subpoena.

Something's got to give and soon.
 

School Choice...Isn't

Democrats have a lot to answer for over the last 20 years when it comes to going along with Republican plans to destroy America's public education system, but nothing has been more of a detriment to America's kids getting a solid foundation than the abject stupidity of school choice.  It's failed spectacularly in Washington DC, it's failed in Ohio and Alabama and North Carolina, and it's failed miserably in San Francisco where the rich now have segregated enclave schools and millions of kids are left out in the cold with zero resources to compete.

For decades, the education mantra from presidential campaign trails to local school board elections has been the same: Your ZIP code should not determine the quality of your school. Few cities have gone further in trying to make that ideal a reality than San Francisco.

But as education leaders from New York to Dallas to San Antonio vow to integrate schools, and as presidential candidates like Joseph R. Biden Jr. are being asked to answer for their records on school segregation, San Francisco’s ambitious plan offers a cautionary tale.

Parental choice has not been the leveler of educational opportunity it was made out to be. Affluent parents are able to take advantage of the system in ways low-income parents cannot, or they opt out of public schools altogether. What happened in San Francisco suggests that without remedies like wide-scale busing, or school zones drawn deliberately to integrate, school desegregation will remain out of reach.

After families submit their kindergarten applications, ranking as many school choices as they like across the city, a computer algorithm makes assignments. Those from neighborhoods where students have scored low on state tests get first dibs at their top-ranked programs. Each child gets an address-based priority at one school, but it is considered only after those with test-score priority are offered seats.

The district had previously used busing to try to desegregate schools, under a 1983 agreement with the N.A.A.C.P. But a group of Chinese-American families sued in the 1990s, saying their children were being denied seats at elite campuses. The city settled the case by devising a choice-based enrollment process meant to be race-neutral but still achieve integration.

Research shows that desegregation can drive learning gains for students of all races. And on paper, San Francisco’s system showed promise. In recent years, it succeeded in breaking up racial concentrations at a handful of schools.

But over all, many parents and city leaders consider it a disappointment. The district’s schools were more racially segregated in 2015 than they were in 1990, even though the city’s neighborhoods have become more integrated, research shows. That pattern holds true in many of the nation’s largest cities, according to an analysis by Ryan W. Coughlan, an assistant professor of sociology at Guttman Community College in New York.

Segregation looks different in San Francisco than in other parts of the country. The district is one of the most diverse in the nation: 35 percent of students are Asian, 27 percent are Hispanic, 15 percent are white and 7 percent are African-American. Schools here are not racially monolithic. But over the past several decades, white, Asian and Hispanic students, on average, have been clustered in schools with more children of their own races.

While black children were slightly less racially isolated in 2015 than in 1990, that was largely a result of their lower enrollment in the district, Professor Coughlan said — a change driven by astronomical housing costs.

Putting all the onus of school choice on parents means the parents and families with resources are the ones able to put their kids in the best schools, just like America's college situation.  The result is a stacked deck against black and Hispanic kids for a lifetime and zero social mobility.  It's exactly what Republicans wanted, and more than a few Democrats too.

It was a disaster fated to happen, and we've wasted a generation on it.

Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin is now the least popular governor in the US, and in the era of Trump that's really saying something.

Kentucky's Matt Bevin hasn't won many popularity contests after being elected governor in 2015.

His publicized fights with the teacher's unions over pensions and with people on social media has led to polls consistently ranking him as one of the least popular governors in the country.

Bevin for the first time snagged the bottom spot Thursday morning in a poll released by Morning Consult, a nonpartisan polling firm based in Washington, D.C.

The poll gives Democrats hope since Kentucky's Republican governor faces reelection campaign this year. Democrats will pick their candidate in a May 21 primary.

Kentucky Democrats in the past 20 years have lost both houses of the state legislature and all but one statewide office in Kentucky.

Morning Consult's poll of Kentucky voters showed 33% approved of Bevin while 52% didn't. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1%.

Only one other governor is above 50% disapproval, Rhode Island Democrat Gina Raimondo. Locally, other Republican governors in the Tri-State are doing much better.

It was a positive poll for Eric Holcomb, Indiana's governor. It indicated 49% polled approved of him while 22% disapproved.

As for Ohio, newly elected Republican governor Mike DeWine fared OK. The poll showed 44% liked DeWine while 26% didn't.

And this all happened before Bevin made an ass of himself again yesterday as his crusade to make Kentucky the biggest political cancer in the nation along with Mitch and Rand continues.

Republican Gov. Matt Bevin reopened political wounds with Kentucky teachers on Thursday when he blamed their sickouts for the shooting of a 7-year-old.

During remarks to the Louisville Rotary Club at the Muhammad Ali Center, Bevin responded to a question about what can be done to stem gun violence.

More attention must be spent on looking at behavioral health and firearms safety as opposed to the government creating more gun regulations, Bevin said.

"One thing you almost didn't hear anything about while we had people pretending to be sick when they weren't sick and leaving kids unattended to or in situations that they should not have been in — a little girl was shot, 7 years old, by another kid," he said.

"Because they were somewhere that they weren't intended and because a parent didn't have any option, put them in a situation so that they could go to work, it left these kids in a compromised situation where they encountered a gun and there was not enough awareness."

The governor appeared to be referring to a March 12 shooting in the Shively area when a 7-year-old girl was shot by her 11-year-old brother inside their home while their guardian, their uncle, was outside, officials said.

Bevin's office did not respond to an email asking whether the governor was talking about that incident.

It is unclear whether the children attended Jefferson County Public Schools.

Blaming teachers for Kentucky kids killed in school shootings is a huge reason why Bevin is in the basement, but he keeps doing it.  Sadly, Kentucky Dems seem to be heading for another double-digit defeat to Bevin in November because they can't get their act together.

The Democrats vying to take on Republican incumbent Matt Bevin kept things mostly civil on Wednesday during the first televised debate in the Kentucky primary election.

But fireworks erupted after the one-hour discussion, moderated by "Hey Kentucky" host Matt Jones at Transylvania University, between Andy Beshear and Adam Edelen. They traded barbs over Beshear's representation the Boy Scouts of America six years ago, as it faces new allegations of sex abuse by its leaders.

"If the good thing that can come out of this is that fact that he feels badly about having represented pedophiles in his private practice, then I'm glad that he has come around. My regret is he took the case to begin with," Edelen told a group of reporters.

Beshear, the state attorney general, bristled at that accusation in an interview with reporters.

"He said what?" Beshear asked. "That is desperate, and I expected lies and distortions from Matt Bevin, but coming from a fellow Democrat – that's disappointing."

In 2013, Beshear was working for the law firm of Stites & Harbison, which represented the Boy Scouts in a case against two men who were abused by scoutmasters as minors in the 1970s.  

It's going to be a dismal primary, and whoever emerges from this dumpster fire next month will probably be too broken to beat Bevin.

 We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• PepsiCo is suing farmers in India for copyright infringement for allegedly growing a potato the company exclusively uses for Lays potato chips.
• FOX News host Sean Hannity is reportedly considering leaving the network over his colleagues being insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump.
• Turkish authorities have made arrests in connection with a suspected ISIS plot to attack ANZAC Day celebrations at Gallipoli.
• The FAA is calling for a summit of global aviation regulators to meet on Boeing 737 MAX safety issues to coordinate a worldwide return to service of the grounded airplane.
• Amazon says it wants to be in a position to allow next-day shipping for Prime customers nationwide as a default option as the company moves to compete in a tighter market.

Last Call For It's All About Revenge Now, Con't

Some of the most damning information in the Mueller report involves Trump's orders to go after his enemies. We know Jeff Sessions was fired as Attorney General because he wouldn't intervene on the Mueller probe itself, but we also now know he was fired because he wouldn't lock up Trump's political enemies, mainly Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Mueller’s report released last week brimmed with examples of Mr. Trump seeking to protect himself from the investigation. But his request of Mr. Sessions — and two similar ones detailed in the report — stands apart because it shows Mr. Trump trying to wield the power of law enforcement to target a political rival, a step that no president since Richard M. Nixon is known to have taken.

And at the time Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Sessions, the president was already under investigation for potentially obstructing justice and knew that his top aides and cabinet members were being interviewed in that inquiry.

Mr. Trump wanted Mrs. Clinton investigated for her use of a private email server to conduct government business while secretary of state, the report said, even though investigators had examined her conduct and declined to bring charges in a case closed in 2016.

No evidence has emerged that Mr. Sessions ever ordered the case reopened. Like many of Mr. Trump’s aides, as laid out in the report and other accounts, Mr. Sessions instead declined to act, preventing Mr. Trump from crossing a line that might have imperiled his presidency.

Instead, Mr. Sessions asked a Justice Department official in November 2017 to review claims by the president and his allies about Mrs. Clinton and the F.B.I.’s handling of the investigation into ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia. The department’s inspector general had already been scrutinizing the issues and painted a harsh portrait of the bureau in a report last year but found no evidence that politics had influenced the decision not to prosecute Mrs. Clinton.

It was unclear what effect the disclosures about Mr. Trump’s discussions with Mr. Sessions could have on the president as House Democrats consider whether to move forward with impeachment proceedings.

Sessions wouldn't do it.

Do you think Trump would have hired Barr if he wasn't willing to start prosecuting Democrats at Trump's command?

Chasing Those Trump Voters Again

Democratic strategists are once again back to "Only more rural white men can save the party from doom".

Former Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly, who both lost their 2018 re-election races in North Dakota and Indiana, respectively, are launching the One Country Project to help their party win back rural voters ahead of the 2020 cycle. Their team looked at rural votes by county and state from 2000 to 2018 and found that if Democrats don't break their performance with rural voters, they're projected to once again win the popular vote but lose the electoral college in 2020.  

Details: Their focus is primarily on Democratic Senate races and the presidential election, but they eventually want to work with races up and down the ballot in these rural areas.

Heitkamp and Donnelly will work with campaigns before the election, giving them messaging, data, polling, and a strategy to break through with these voters who "didn’t feel that we shared their beliefs" in past elections, Donnelly told Axios in an interview.

"Culturally, they’re focused on faith and family and country, and Donald Trump tells them all the time that we’re not, even though we are."

What they're saying: "What we heard on the ground is that the Democratic Party no longer speaks for the entire country," Heitkamp said. "They’ve forgotten the middle of the country and forgot to even show up. Even past Democratic voters didn’t recognize the Democratic Party of 2018."

By the numbers: Their data, shared exclusively with Axios, projects that Democrats' popular vote would increase from +2.1% in 2016 to +3.6% in 2020.

But, using a similar margin that Obama won by in 2012, One Country Project estimates Democrats would end up with just 232 electoral college votes in the upcoming presidential cycle. (Hillary Clinton won 227 in 2016.)

They also project Democrats would be poised to have a better performance in states like Arizona, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and Georgia.

Assuming these trends among rural voters continue, the team predicts Minnesota, Maine and New Hampshire will become even more competitive in 2020.

The reason why Republicans are doing better in those states is massive voter suppression efforts of black and Hispanic voters, not because of "rural white voter trends".

We can do both, but getting rid of the voter suppression is far more important than making Trump voters comfortable enough to maybe not vote for Trump.

Another Hat Lands In The Ring, Con't

And it's the big one for Dems, the one we've been waiting for, good or bad.  Former VP Joe Biden has officially announced his candidacy for president in 2020.

Biden leads off with Charlottesville, Virginia's white supremacist march and why it shocked the nation, a move that frankly I didn't expect from him.

“I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time. If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation,” Biden says in the video, showing images of the August 2017 protests by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

Biden called those demonstrations “a defining moment” for the country. 

“Our standing in the world, our very democracy — everything that’s made America America is at stake. That’s why I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”

If anything, opening up with this is a clear message to voters in both parties, but Biden still has a ton of baggage to deal with and four decades of a problematic voting record.

Joe Biden's mission in the presidential bid he launched on Thursday is to prove he's not a man out of step with the times. 

He must convince a Democratic Party pulsating with forces of youth, gender and racial diversity that is moving left on health care and college funding to ultimately turn to a traditional middle-of-the road nominee to take on President Donald Trump. 

Biden is an aging white male, a physically expressive old-school pol with a nose for the ideological center who still believes a political opponent is not a blood enemy. 

And his third try to finally reach the political summit comes at the one moment in American history when such qualities have turned into liabilities. 

But Biden has one huge card to sell to Democrats desperate to oust Trump: He might be their best hope of beating the President, especially in the Midwestern, blue-collar heartland. And his experience and dignity could be the antidote to Trump's rage. 

Biden enters the crowded primary after months of soul searching as a clear but not prohibitive front-runner. 

Invoking America's better angels, Biden is offering experience and a character forged by tragedy to purge the scandals, lies and constitutional chicanery of the current President and to close the societal schisms he has widened.

Again, if Biden is the nominee, he'll have my support in 2020 because Donald Trump and the GOP can go to hell.  If it takes Biden to get him out of there, great.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• The second of three men convicted in the death of James Byrd Jr. has been executed in Texas, Byrd's 1988 death, dragged behind a pickup truck by three white men, inspired new federal hate crime laws.
• White House adviser Jared Kushner is promising to "privately" pressure Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sultan after appearing on Netflix's "Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj" this week.
• Measles cases in the US have hit their highest number since eradication of the disease in 2000, most of the nearly 700 cases are in Washington state and New York.
• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a summit that is expected be a direct rebuke to Donald Trump.
• AT&T says 5G mobile internet access pricing will look "similar" to current broadband pricing, with faster speeds of up to 1Gbps fetching premium monthly payments from consumers and businesses.

Last Call For Her Turn

Hillary Clinton takes to the Washington Post to opine on what Dems should do in the post-Mueller report era, and frankly, it's solid, reasonable advice.

First, like in any time our nation is threatened, we have to remember that this is bigger than politics. What our country needs now is clear-eyed patriotism, not reflexive partisanship. Whether they like it or not, Republicans in Congress share the constitutional responsibility to protect the country. Mueller’s report leaves many unanswered questions — in part because of Attorney General William P. Barr’s redactions and obfuscations. But it is a road map. It’s up to members of both parties to see where that road map leads — to the eventual filing of articles of impeachment, or not. Either way, the nation’s interests will be best served by putting party and political considerations aside and being deliberate, fair and fearless.

Second, Congress should hold substantive hearings that build on the Mueller report and fill in its gaps, not jump straight to an up-or-down vote on impeachment. In 1998, the Republican-led House rushed to judgment. That was a mistake then and would be a mistake now.

Watergate offers a better precedent. Then, as now, there was an investigation that found evidence of corruption and a coverup. It was complemented by public hearings conducted by a Senate select committee, which insisted that executive privilege could not be used to shield criminal conduct and compelled White House aides to testify. The televised hearings added to the factual record and, crucially, helped the public understand the facts in a way that no dense legal report could. Similar hearings with Mueller, former White House counsel Donald McGahn and other key witnesses could do the same today.

During Watergate, the House Judiciary Committee also began a formal impeachment inquiry that was led by John Doar, a widely respected former Justice Department official and hero of the civil rights struggle. He was determined to run a process that the public and history would judge as fair and thorough, no matter the outcome. If today’s House proceeds to an impeachment inquiry, I hope it will find someone as distinguished and principled as Doar to lead it.

Third, Congress can’t forget that the issue today is not just the president’s possible obstruction of justice — it’s also our national security. After 9/11, Congress established an independent, bipartisan commission to recommend steps that would help guard against future attacks. We need a similar commission today to help protect our elections. This is necessary because the president of the United States has proved himself unwilling to defend our nation from a clear and present danger. It was just reported that Trump’s recently departed secretary of homeland security tried to prioritize election security because of concerns about continued interference in 2020 and was told by the acting White House chief of staff not to bring it up in front of the president. This is the latest example of an administration that refuses to take even the most minimal, common-sense steps to prevent future attacks and counter ongoing threats to our nation.

Fourth, while House Democrats pursue these efforts, they also should stay focused on the sensible agenda that voters demanded in the midterms, from protecting health care to investing in infrastructure. During Watergate, Congress passed major legislation such as the War Powers Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973. For today’s Democrats, it’s not only possible to move forward on multiple fronts at the same time, it’s essential. The House has already passed sweeping reforms that would strengthen voting rights and crack down on corruption, and now is the time for Democrats to keep their foot on the gas and put pressure on the do-nothing Senate. It’s critical to remind the American people that Democrats are in the solutions business and can walk and chew gum at the same time.

We have to get this right. The Mueller report isn’t just a reckoning about our recent history; it’s also a warning about the future. Unless checked, the Russians will interfere again in 2020, and possibly other adversaries, such as China or North Korea, will as well. This is an urgent threat. Nobody but Americans should be able to decide America’s future. And, unless he’s held accountable, the president may show even more disregard for the laws of the land and the obligations of his office. He will likely redouble his efforts to advance Putin’s agenda, including rolling back sanctions, weakening NATO and undermining the European Union.

Of all the lessons from our history, the one that’s most important may be that each of us has a vital role to play as citizens. A crime was committed against all Americans, and all Americans should demand action and accountability. Our founders envisioned the danger we face today and designed a system to meet it. Now it’s up to us to prove the wisdom of our Constitution, the resilience of our democracy and the strength of our nation.

 While the first piece of advice is wishful thinking, as the Republican party is hopelessly and completely corrupted and produced the Trump cancer on the body politic, the rest is absolutely correct.  We do have to get this right, and that means laying out the case with subpoenas and using the tools House Democrats have available.

It also means giving Trump enough agita that he slips up and very possibly commits even more impeachable offenses trying to cover up the mess he's in now.  And yes, it means proving Dems can chew gum and walk at the same time and pressing on the Democratic agenda as a positive alternative to Trump's garbage universe while pursuing impeachment at the same time.

Again, this is eminently solid advice from Clinton.  Will anybody listen or even remember she said this when the "Where was Hillary when the impeachment debate was going on?" inevitably begins?

We'll see.  Mark this one down.

Meat The Press, Con't

Donald Trump's slow vengeance against a free American press who dares to question him continues, this time with his edict banning anyone from the regime attending the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner this weekend.

The White House has ordered Trump administration officials to boycott the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, according to a senior administration official. 

The order was issued Tuesday morning by White House Cabinet Secretary Bill McGinley, who announced that all Trump administration officials are being ordered to boycott the dinner, scheduled for Saturday night. 

An administration official adds that the order came from Trump personally, though staffers have been trying to talk him out of it. 

The move marks yet another deterioration in relations between the White House press office and the press corps, though President Donald Trump had announced earlier this month that he would be skipping the annual dinner for the third year in a row. The President will instead hold a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the same evening. 

"The dinner is so boring and so negative that we're going to hold a very positive rally," Trump told reporters at the time. 

The usual tensions between reporters and government representatives have escalated to extreme levels in the Trump age, due largely to the President's near-daily attacks against the media. His portrayal of the people who cover him as his "enemy" and the "enemy of the people" has been denounced by historians, press freedom advocates and politicians in both parties. 

Olivier Knox, president of the White House Correspondents' Association, responded to the boycott saying: "We're looking forward to an enjoyable evening of celebrating the First Amendment and great journalists past, present and future." 

I would expect that House and Senate Republicans and their staff will skip the dinner as well.

Trump has always held a special hatred of this event and this is why.




He's all but destroyed it in three years, along with our free press (although to be fair they have done plenty of work in destroying themselves.)  But there's still a lot of damage Trump will continue to do to the media.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Greg Sargent argues that Donald Trump is 100% terrified of former WH lawyer Don McGahn going before the House to testify, because he's got the keys the kingdom...and Trump's jail cell.

Democrats have now subpoenaed former White House counsel Donald McGahn to appear before Congress and testify about his direct involvement in some of the most explosive revelations in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report.

Trump’s allies, led by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, have ramped up their attacks on McGahn. The New York Times reports that they are escalating for a very specific reason: because they fear that McGahn will help build the case for Trump’s impeachment.

As the Times reports, some White House officials believe the attacks on McGahn are counterproductive. But the most important White House official of all sees things quite differently: 

Mr. Giuliani’s attacks on Mr. McGahn have unnerved some senior White House officials, who have argued privately that the president and his legal team should stop drawing attention to damaging episodes in the report, according to two people close to the White House.

But Mr. Trump has privately complained about the accounts, particularly the ones given by Mr. McGahn, and has said the only way to protect himself from impeachment is to attack Mr. Mueller and Mr. McGahn, the people said.

Why would Trump fear such a thing, if the Mueller report totally exonerated Trump? Because Mueller’s recounting of episodes involving McGahn are profoundly damning, and highlight Trump’s corruption, bottomless capacity for official deception and contempt for our democracy and the rule of law with great vividness.

As Mueller documents, McGahn testified that Trump tried to instruct him to carry out one of his most glaring efforts to obstruct justice — and then to lie to cover it up. After the Times reported that Trump had ordered McGahn to fire Mueller, and then backed down when McGahn threatened to quit, Trump dismissed the story as “fake news.”

Trump then tried to get McGahn to deny this had happened — and even tried to get McGahn to put that in writing. But McGahn refused, claiming the story was accurate.

As Mueller recounts, Trump then demanded this in a face-to-face meeting with McGahn, claiming: “You need to correct this. You’re the White House counsel.” As always, here Trump seemingly treated McGahn as his personal lawyer, not the White House’s institutional one.

In a particularly revealing passage, Mueller recounts that Trump repeatedly told McGahn that despite any recollections otherwise, he never ordered Mueller’s firing. As the report puts it: “McGahn thought the President was testing his mettle to see how committed McGahn was to what happened." In other words, Trump was probing how much he could get away with in pushing McGahn to lie for him.

And then the Mueller report ties it all up in a neat little bow:

The President then asked, “What about these notes? Why do you take notes? Lawyers don’t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes." McGahn responded that he keeps notes because he is a “real lawyer” and explained that notes create a record and are not a bad thing. The President said, “I’ve had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn. He did not take notes."

Hopefully, McGahn will soon testify to all this — and much, much more — on live television.

McGahn under oath on national television is going to make for some riveting drama, and Donald Trump will do anything to stop that from happening.

The White House plans to fight a subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee for former White House counsel Donald McGahn to testify, according to people familiar with the matter, setting up another showdown in the aftermath of the special counsel report.

The Trump administration also plans to oppose other requests from House committees for the testimony of current and former aides about actions in the White House described in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report, according to two people familiar with internal thinking who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke of the plans on the condition of anonymity.

White House lawyers plan to tell attorneys for administration witnesses called by the House that they will be asserting executive privilege over their testimony, officials said.

So there's little hope this will happen.  Again, the battle will be tied up in the courts, ideally for Trump past November 2020. 

On the other hand, Trump may decide he'll stop anyone from testifying by obstructing justice again...

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• At least three are dead and 50 missing after mudslides blocked a jade mine in Myanmar, officials say many of the missing miners are presumed dead.
• Texas state Republicans are considering a bill that would allow users to sue social media companies to sue over being moderated on free speech grounds.
• The Justice Department is charging two people in connection with stealing defense secrets from GE for China, according to an unsealed indictment.
• Donald Trump will meet with Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats next week over passing infrastructure legislation, Senate Republicans are already attacking the talks.
• Australian researchers have found that Van Gogh's Starry Night actually does accurately describe turbulent nebula clouds that form stars.

Last Call For It's About Suppression, Con't

If Tuesday's Supreme Court arguments were any indication, we'll soon have a 5-4 SCOTUS decision on the Census question of citizenship that could terrorize millions of undocumented in America as the Trump regime gears up for mass detainment and deportations, and cost blue states several congressional districts starting in 2022.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday appeared inclined to hand President Donald Trump a victory on his administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, a move opponents call a Republican effort to deter immigrants from taking part.

During arguments in the closely watched case, conservative justices rallied in defense of the administration’s stated justification for using the citizenship question in the decennial population count, while their liberal counterparts remained skeptical. 

The court has a 5-4 conservative majority. Among the conservative justices indicating support toward the administration’s stance were Trump’s two appointees, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, as well as Chief Justice John Roberts, considered the court’s pivotal vote. 

Lower courts have blocked the question, ruling that the administration violated federal law and the U.S. Constitution in seeking to include it on the census form. A ruling by the Supreme Court is due by the end of June. 

Opponents have said inclusion of a citizenship question would cause a sizeable undercount by frightening immigrant households and Latinos from filling out the census forms, fearful that the information would be shared with law enforcement. This would cost Democratic-leaning areas electoral representation in Congress and federal aid, benefiting Trump’s fellow Republicans and Republican-leaning parts of the country, they said.

The census is used to allot seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and distribute some $800 billion in federal funds. 

During extended arguments that lasted about 80 minutes, Roberts and other conservative justices appeared to embrace the administration’s argument that the question would yield better data to enforce the Voting Rights Act, which protects eligible voters from discrimination. 

Roberts challenged New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood, whose state sued the administration over the plan to add the question, saying citizenship is critical information for enforcing the Voting Rights Act. Roberts also said it is “quite common” for census questions to capture demographic information.

This ruling could very well seal a permanent Republican government for at least another decade, if not longer.  If you think the GOP of today is bad, wait until they start rounding up "illegals" and political foes and using force of the state to punish those would protect them.

It's already ugly.  It's going to get lethal, and fast.  The real issue is that Republicans are counting on this to starve blue states of federal money, and to redistribute dozens of House districts from blue states to red, locking in a permanent GOP majority.

This one's going to be bad, guys.  America may not recover from the Trump regime.

But her emails though, right?

Soccer It To Me, Cincy, Con't

Pretending that Cincinnati's newly minted Major League Soccer team, FC Cincinnati, isn't extremely popular around town is ludicrous, but FC Cincinnati pretending like they're not buying up land around their West End stadium site and throwing black residents out is just as stupid.  Enquirer politics columnist Jason Williams:

FC Cincinnati's stop-and-go roller coaster of spin and parsed words needs to be parked for good.

Will we ever get the actual truth from the soccer club about its West End stadium site plans and what the team wants to do near it?

In January 2018, team president Jeff Berding told WCPO-TV: “Let me stress this: We’re not taking anyone’s homes. We’re going to increase home ownership. We’re going to increase the number of people living in a neighborhood. The notion that we’re somehow going to try to buy people’s homes out, move people out of the neighborhood, that’s just false. That's just made up.”

Today, at least 17 residents have been or are being told to get out of their homes.
Oh, FC Cincinnati would say the people being displaced are renters – not homeowners – and none of them live on the actual stadium site. Those folks live in buildings adjacent to the approved stadium site, properties bought by none other than FC Cincinnati.

Excuse me while I regain my balance from all the spin.

Fact: Whether it's the actual stadium site or adjacent land, if FC Cincinnati owns it, then it's all related to the new 26,500-seat venue. The adjacent land might be used for parking or fan plazas or even new condos, but it's all owned by FC Cincinnati and centers on the club making its new home in the West End.

Why can't the team just be upfront about that?

Maybe the team is worried about another public relations hit. Too late.

FC Cincinnati stepped into another mess of its own doing when news broke earlier this month that the team is buying three buildings on Wade Street, a stone's throw from where the north end of the new grass field, er, pitch, will be.

A 99-year-old, bedridden women has been told to move from one of those buildings, feeding a narrative pushed by stadium opponents that the big, bad, billionaire team owners don't care.

I believe Carl Lindner III and his ownership group actually care a lot, and this $250 million private investment in a struggling neighborhood is a good thing for the city. But the lack of transparency, the spin and parsing of words coming from FC Cincinnati's front office is overshadowing the good right now.

Had the team been upfront about actually having to displace residents, most fair-minded and objective people would've understood. It's hard to do any massive development project in an urban-core neighborhood without displacing residents.

FC Cincinnati is a private organization and it's free to make deals with other private businesses, as was the case with FC Cincinnati and the Wade Street building owners. But when you originally tell the public no one will lose their homes to make way for the stadium and then pull a fast one, it can erode credibility. And in this neighborhood, the team needs to build credibility along with its stadium.

And the big problem, and why I can't and won't support FC Cincinnati in any way, is because they lied to black people and then bought their homes out from under them and kicked them out.  Jeff Berding and the club figured they didn't have to tell the truth, because who cares about Cincinnati's black neighborhoods, right?  Nothing they can do anyway, not this late in the game.

I admit it was far worse 60 years ago when Kenyon-Barr and Queensgate in the heart of West End were razed to the ground and tens of thousands of black folk lost everything to "urban renewal" and Interstate 75, but the sentiment sure hasn't changed.

We'll see what happens but at this point any credibility FC Cincinnati had left with West End residents just evaporated, and it's only going to get worse.

Courting Disaster, Con't

The good news is that there's extremely generous odds that Trump will commit more public and obvious obstruction of justice in his efforts to cover-up the Mueller report and to stop House Democrats from getting his financial information, but that means an eventual showdown with the US Supreme Court.

The White House has instructed a former official who was in charge of the security clearance process to not comply with a House subpoena demanding his appearance for an interview, the latest move by the Trump administration to thwart Democratic-led investigations into all aspects of the presidency. 

After a day of tense negotiations, the White House late Monday told the former official, Carl Kline, who now works at the Defense Department, to not appear at Tuesday's deposition, contending that Democrats were seeking access to confidential information that should be off limits. 

The move raises the prospect that the House Oversight Committee could seek to hold Kline in contempt, a step that Chairman Elijah Cummings warned Monday he would take. And it's the latest White House effort to stonewall Democratic investigations, coming the same day the Trump Organization filed a lawsuit to prevent an accounting firm from complying with Cummings' subpoena for President Donald Trump's past financial records. 

Michael Purpura, deputy counsel to Trump, argued that Cummings' subpoena of Kline "unconstitutionally encroaches on fundamental executive branch interests," according to a letter obtained by CNN. 

Kline's attorney, Robert Driscoll, said his client would listen to his employer. 

"With two masters from two equal branches of government, we will follow the instructions of the one that employs him," Driscoll said in a separate letter obtained by CNN. 

The flurry of letters capped a day of tense talks ahead of Tuesday's anticipated deposition with Kline, a key witness as part of Democrats' probe into whether the White House mishandled the security clearance process for top officials, including for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. 

Kline, who was subpoenaed to appear before the committee Tuesday, served as the White House personnel security director for the first two years of the Trump administration. A White House official, Tricia Newbold, told the committee that at least 25 individuals had been greenlighted for security clearances despite serious concerns raised during the vetting process -- and alleged that Kline retaliated against her for speaking out.

I know I keep arguing that there's more than enough evidence to impeach now, but giving the Trump regime enough rope to hang then entire bunch only makes the case against Trump stronger.  There's still a decent chance that the Supreme Court won't take up this fight for some time, saying that Congress and the White House should work it out, and this could very well end up being strung along for 18 months or more.

But there's a chance that these fights build up so rapidly on so many different fronts that SCOTUS feels compelled to act sooner.  Chief Justice Roberts doesn't want to be remembered as a villain, but as a Solomon-like figure of wisdom.

I still don't know the outcome though, and anyone who tells you they do is lying.