StupidiNews!

• Both Philadelphia and St. Louis have taken dozens of police officers off duty after identifying their racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic social media posts exposed lat week.
• Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is resisting the Trump regime's contention that he can be removed from the nation's central bank at will as Trump is blaming the Fed for economic woes.
• The Trump regime is threatening sharp cuts in H1-B work visas as India is demanding that US companies in the country store all data locally in order to protect Delhi's economic interests.
• New Zealand police are opening the country's assault weapon buyback program as the country is set to ban many types of firearms in the wake of the recent deadly Christchurch mosque massacre.
• The Trump EPA is rolling out its plan to replace Obama-era power plant emissions rules, giving energy companies far more leeway to keep polluting coal, gas, and oil plants online for decades.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Hope Less Edition

As expected, today's closed-door testimony before the House Judiciary Committee by former Trump regime adviser Hope Hicks was a bust as she refused to answer questions about her time at the White House, claiming immunity via executive privilege.

House Democrats erupted Wednesday at what they said was the White House’s repeated interference in their interview with Hope Hicks, a longtime confidante of President Donald Trump who was a central witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation.

Several House Judiciary Committee members exiting the closed-door interview said a White House lawyer repeatedly claimed Hicks had blanket immunity from discussing her time in the White House. They said she wouldn’t answer questions as basic as where she sat in the West Wing or whether she told the truth to Mueller.

“We’re watching obstruction of justice in action,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.).

“It’s a farce,” added Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who said Hicks at one point tried to answer a question about an episode involving former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski only to be cut off by the White House counsel.

“She made clear she wouldn’t answer a single question about her time unless the White House counsel told her it was okay,” an exasperated Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) said in an interview. “She couldn’t even characterize her testimony to the special counsel.”

Deutch added that the White House was not formally asserting executive privilege to block Hicks from answering certain questions; rather, the lawyer was referring to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s Tuesday letter claiming that Hicks was “absolutely immune” from discussing her tenure in the Trump administration.

Lieu said the White House lawyers were “making crap up” to block Hicks from testifying. He said she answered some questions about her time on the Trump campaign that provided new information, but he declined to characterize her comments.

Jayapal said lawyers even objected to Hicks discussing episodes that occurred after she left the White House — and that Hicks went along with it.

“She is making a choice to follow along with all the claims of absolute immunity,” Jayapal said, adding, “Basically, she can say her name.”

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) took a more forgiving tone, saying Hicks did answer some questions and said a transcript of her testimony released in the next few days would reveal what she said. 

My guess will be it's not much, but what did Jerry Nadler and the Democrats on the committee expect?  Remember that "absolute immunity" means whatever at least five Supreme Court justices decide it means.

On the other side, Nancy Pelosi outright said today that censure of Trump is not going to happen.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi officially shut the door on censuring President Donald Trump Wednesday but plans to view a minimally redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report this week, her latest attempt to juggle the competing impeachment factions within her caucus.

Pelosi initially rejected an offer from Attorney General William Barr in April to view the less-redacted report, rebuffing Barr’s demands that only top congressional leaders have that access. The speaker’s course reversal on the report comes days after key House panels secured agreements to give more lawmakers access to the evidence underpinning the special counsel’s conclusions.

“We will be having access to a less redacted version of the Mueller report,” Pelosi said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Wednesday morning. “I accepted that because I’m afraid — I really don’t trust the attorney general of the United States.”

Pelosi told reporters she has made the request with the Department of Justice to view the report. A Democratic aide later confirmed that is expected to happen this week.

The California Democrat remained firm in her opposition to opening an impeachment inquiry into Trump right now but quashed the notion of censure — a less severe reprimand for public officials. Pelosi’s censure comments are significant because she is leaving the House with one option if they want to punish Trump — impeachment.

“I think censure is just a way out. If you want to go, you gotta go,” she said. “If the goods are there, you must impeach. Censure is nice, but it is not commensurate with the violations of the Constitution should we decide that’s the way to go.”

So, impeachment or nothing.

Your guess as to which one happens.

The Juneteenth Papers

It's no accident that today's House hearings on reparations came today, on Juneteenth. Ta-Nehesi Coates responded in today's hearing to Mitch McConnell's dismissal of reparations yesterday, and it was amazing.

This rebuttal proffers a strange theory of governance: That American accounts are somehow bound by the lifetime of its generations. But well into this century, the United States was still paying out pensions to the heirs of Civil War soldiers. We honor treaties that date back some 200 years, despite no one being alive who signed those treaties. Many of us would love to be taxed for the things we are solely and individually responsible for, but we are American citizens and thus bound to a collective enterprise that extends beyond our individual and personal reach. It would seem ridiculous to dispute invocations of the Founders, or the Greatest Generation, on the basis of the lack of membership of either group. We recognize our lineage as a generational trust, as inheritance, and the real dilemma posed by generations is just that: a dilemma of inheritance.

It is impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery. As historian Ed Baptist has written, enslavement “shaped every crucial aspect of the economy and politics of America,” so that by 1836, more than 600 million, or more than half of the economic activity in the United States, derived directly or indirectly from the cotton produced by the million-odd slaves. By the time the enslaved were emancipated, they comprised the largest single asset in America: 3 billion in 1860 dollars, more than all the other assets in the country combined. The method of cultivating this asset was neither gentle cajoling, nor persuasion, but torture, rape, and child trafficking. Enslavement reigned for 250 years on these shores. When it ended, this country could have extended its hallowed principles: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all regardless of color. But America had other principles in mind. And so for a century after the Civil War, black people were subjected to a relentless campaign of terror. A campaign that extended well into the lifetime of Majority Leader McConnell.

It is tempting to divorce this modern campaign of terror, of plunder, from enslavement. But the logic of enslavement, of white supremacy respects no such borders. And the God of bondage was lustful and begat many heirs, coup d’etats and convict leasing; vagrancy laws and debt peonage; redlining and racist G.I. bills; poll taxes and state-sponsored terrorism. We grant that Mr. McConnell was not alive for Appomattox. But he was alive for the electrocution of George Stinney. He was alive for the blinding of Isaac Woodard. He was alive to witness kleptocracy in his native Alabama, and a regime premised on electoral theft. Majority Leader McConnell cited Civil Rights legislation yesterday, as well he should, because he was alive to witness the harassment, jailing, and betrayal of those responsible for that legislation by a government sworn to protect them. He was alive for the redlining of Chicago, and the looting of black homeowners of some $4 billion. Victims of that plunder are very much alive today. I am sure they’d love a word with the Majority Leader. What they know, what this committee must know, is that while emancipation dead-bolted the door against the bandits of America, Jim Crow wedged the windows wide open. And that is the thing about Sen. McConnell’s “something”: it was 150 years ago and it was right now. The typical black family in this country has one-tenth the wealth of the typical white family. Black women die in childbirth at four times the rate of white women, and there is of course the shame of this land of the free boasting the largest prison population on the planet, of which the descendants of the enslaved make up the largest share.

The matter of reparations is one of making amends and direct redress, but it is also a question of citizenship. In H.R. 40, this body has a chance to both make good on its 2009 apology for enslavement, and reject fair-weather patriotism. To say that a nation is both its credits and its debts. That if Thomas Jefferson matters, so does Sally Hemings. That if D-Day matters, so does black Wall Street. That if Valley Forge matters, so does Fort Pillow. Because the question really is, not whether we will be tied to the “somethings” of our past, but whether we are courageous enough to be tied to the whole of them.

As I keep saying, the white supremacy of the Trump regime is merely America returning to form.  It's becoming more and more obvious that the Civil Rights era of the last 50 years was not the direction of America's bright future, but an aberration diverting from America's dark past, and Donald Trump is the figurehead of the violent reversion to the mean.

The Drums Of War, Con't

As legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager would say, Trump's Pentagon just "augured into the ground" and is about to take America with it.

Patrick Shanahan withdrew his nomination to become the next secretary of defense, U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Twitter Tuesday, leaving the Pentagon without a permanent head for the foreseeable future. 

The withdrawal of the former Boeing executive’s nomination came on the heels of multiple media reports Tuesday chronicling a history of domestic violence and assault in the Shanahan family. According to the Washington Post, Shanahan’s son William assaulted his mother, Kimberley, with a baseball bat in 2011. In 2010, police in Seattle arrested Kimberley after a violent confrontation between her and Shanahan, her then-husband, according to USA Today. They subsequently divorced. 

The FBI has been investigating the domestic violence issues as part of its background investigation into the nominee, and that has delayed Shanahan’s nomination process. Shanahan was originally supposed to go before the Senate for his confirmation hearing on Tuesday. It is not clear why these issues did not come up during his confirmation process to be deputy secretary of defense in 2017. 

In a statement on Tuesday, Shanahan said he decided to withdraw his name from consideration for the top Pentagon job because “my continuing in the confirmation process would force my three children to relive a traumatic chapter in our family’s life and reopen wounds we have worked years to heal. Ultimately, their safety and well-being is my highest priority.” 

“After having been confirmed for Deputy Secretary less than two years ago, it is unfortunate that a painful and deeply personal family situation from long ago is being dredged up and painted in an incomplete and therefore misleading way in the course of this process,” Shanahan said. “I would welcome the opportunity to be Secretary of Defense, but not at the expense of being a good father.” 

Shanahan has served as acting defense secretary since his predecessor, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, resigned in December 2018. Shanahan’s nearly six months in office is the longest period in U.S. history in which the Pentagon has gone without a permanent chief. 

The top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry, urged the president to fill the top post at the Pentagon “in a matter of weeks, not months.” 

“The uncertainty surrounding this vacant office encourages our enemies and unsettles our allies,” he said in a statement. 

But it does not look like the top Pentagon job will be filled anytime soon. Trump left Shanahan hanging for months before he announced his intent to name him to the permanent position; any new nominee will still have to be subjected to an extensive background check, noted Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha. Meanwhile, the Senate will break for recess in August. A new nominee will likely have to wait until the fall for confirmation, at the earliest, Callan said. 

If Esper is the nominee, Callan speculated, he will likely be confirmed. But under the Vacancies Act, once nominated, Esper would have to step aside as acting until confirmed, noted Arnold Punaro, a former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Vacancies Act did not apply to Shanahan, as he was already the deputy secretary of defense. 

The withdrawal of Shanahan’s nomination leaves the Pentagon without Senate-confirmed leadership at a time when the Defense Department is confronting a serious crisis. This week, the Pentagon announced it would deploy an additional 1,000 troops to the Middle East amid escalating tensions with Iran after Trump administration officials accused Tehran of masterminding an attack on two oil tankers.

With Shanahan out, Army Secretary Mark Esper, a former Army infantry officer and lobbyist for the defense firm Raytheon, will take over as acting secretary of defense, Trump wrote on Twitter.

The domestic violence story is the official reason for his complete departure from the Pentagon. By itself, it is breathtaking malfeasance.  This is a man who should not be in government at all, but again, nobody cared about the family's staggering history until Tuesday morning.

But he already had gotten Senate confirmation as Deputy Secretary of Defense in 2017, meaning he had already been through a background check, meaning this was all known to the White House.  He was the nominee and the process was going forward anyway.  Shanahan was all set for his Senate confirmation hearings this week.

And then something went horribly wrong. The plug was pulled.  Shanahan went to the press Monday and the story came out Tuesday.

My theory is that the unofficial reason this is happening is that Shanahan, like Mattis before him, wouldn't carry water for military action against Iran.  Certainly the generals and admirals and intelligence agencies laid out what a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities or against the Iranian navy would entail, and it would be nothing short of disaster.

Understand that John Bolton's mustache is now running our military as well as our foreign intel apparatus. Shanahan was the last major holdout.  2019 so far has been a huge purge of Trump cabinet members that weren't with the new autocracy.  The same day Shanahan goes, Bolton makes his move.

Staff changes are coming to the National Security Council this summer as national security adviser John Bolton elevates some of the senior officials he brought on and bids farewell to some of the people he inherited from his predecessor. 

The NSC’s top official dealing with Russia, Fiona Hill, will return to the Brookings Institution, two administration officials told me. She will be replaced by Tim Morrison, who currently serves as NSC senior director for weapons of mass destruction and nonproliferation-related issues. Anthony Ruggiero, who joined the NSC last year to work on Asia, will take the helm of the WMD bureau as senior director. 

Rear Adm. Doug Fears, homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser on the NSC staff, will leave the White House soon as well and return to the Coast Guard. His successor will be Coast Guard Rear Adm. Peter Brown, who currently commands the Seventh Coast Guard in Miami. This is the job once held by Tom Bossert, but the post was downgraded and folded into the NSC when Bolton came on. 

The NSC’s senior director for Africa, Cyril Sartor, will also leave the White House and return to his home agency, which has been publicly identified as the CIA. Elizabeth Erin Walsh, the current NSC senior director for international organizations and alliances, will move over to lead the NSC’s Africa team. Walsh served during the presidential transition in charge of State Department personnel appointments, where she worked closely with Bolton’s former deputy Mira Ricardel. Ricardel later was pushed out by Melania Trump’s press secretary. Jason Chao will be acting senior director of the international organizations and alliances at the NSC. 

Bolton has slowly but surely changed the makeup of the NSC staff and tightened its structure since assuming office. He has replaced senior staff gradually as their details expire, and he now wants his senior team in place to establish stability in the run-up to the 2020 election, officials said. 

“This is part of Bolton’s effort to bring his own people on and promote them up,” said one administration official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. "He’s putting his people in places where they can execute the president’s agenda.”

This is happening as Shanahan is being dismissed from the Pentagon, as Trump is kicking off his 2020 reelection campaign, as tensions with Iran are ripe for a catastrophic scenario, and as Trump is purging his internal pollsters for the crime of revealing that Trump is well underwater right now is almost every battleground state.

When we look back on this week in history and the reporting is written and published, I am nearly certain that we will find out (much too late of course) that this was the week where Trump and Bolton's facial hair made the decision to attack Iran.

What that means for America and the world, I can only speculate.  It will not be good.  It will most likely be a disaster of epic proportions.  Between this and Trump's threat of mass deportations starting next week, we know what his 2020 reelection platform is.

War and ethnic cleansing.

StupidiNews!

• DEA officials say more than 16 tons of cocaine were seized from a container ship at the port of Philadelphia on Tuesday in the largest bust in state history, worth more than $1 billion.
• United Nations diplomats are worried that the Trump regime may be planning a military strike against an Iranian nuclear facility in retaliation for attacks on oil tankers earlier this month.
• The US and China are restarting stalled trade talks ahead of this year's G20 summit in Japan later this month, trade analysts are hopeful that a full-scale trade war can still be averted.
• Donald Trump reportedly asked for options to remove Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell earlier this year after the Fed refused to cut interest rates like Trump wanted.
• Facebook says it will spin off a new company called Calibra to handle its cryptocurrency payment systems as the social media giant plans a partnership with Visa, Mastercard and others.

Last Call For No Place Like Home, Con't

Even Google realizes that investing in affordable housing in the Bay Area is a necessity or workers will be completely priced out of their campus.

Google is committing $1 billion to try to provide more affordable housing in the San Francisco Bay Area, where big tech firms have been blamed for putting home prices out of reach for anyone without a rich stock-option plan. Google says the money should result in 20,000 new homes added to the local market, over 10 years.

"We hope this plays a role in addressing the chronic shortage of affordable housing options for long-time middle and low income residents," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement unveiling the plan Tuesday.

As Google and other big tech companies have thrived, many people have struggled to find housing in the region or have been forced into lengthy commutes — 90 miles in at least one case.

People earning $100,000 can afford to live in only 28 percent of the Bay Area's neighborhoods, member station KQED reported last month, based on a review of housing costs and median rent rates. And a study published in April found that the Bay Area had the third-largest population of people experiencing homelessness in the U.S.

Google's announcement comes one week after Mountain View's city council postponed a move to ban RVs from parking overnight on the city's streets — a phenomenon that made headlines last month when reports emerged that hundreds of people were living in RVs to escape high rents.

As Bloomberg reported in May, RVs and vans line the streets of some neighborhoods. Some of the people who live in them have been in the area for decades; others are lower-paid Google workers who can't afford to pay the rent on an apartment close to their jobs.

The problem is nobody already living in Silly Valley wants affordable housing, especially multi-family housing, because that means those people will move in and crash property values.  The NIMBY factor for affordable housing on the West Coast is off the charts.

Google is helping at least, but the real problem is zoning.  And zoning won't change because politicians who do re-zone will be slaughtered at the polls.

Here's the thing though, housing markets eventually crash.  When it happens in the Bay Area, watch out.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

California Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter lays out the case for impeachment in a really helpful PDF as she is the latest House Democrat to call for an impeachment inquiry to begin.

Freshman U.S. Rep. Katie Porter on Monday threw her support behind an impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump, adding another Democratic lawmaker to those clamoring for the move.

The congresswoman from Irvine, California, announced her decision in a video statement. About 60 other lawmakers support opening an inquiry, a far cry from a majority in the 435-seat House.

Porter said she believes Congress must investigate after special counsel Robert Mueller said he couldn't exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice in a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and didn't have the option to indict a sitting president.

"I cannot with a clean conscience ignore my duty to defend the Constitution. I can't claim to be committed to rooting out corruption and putting people over politics and then not apply those same principles and standards in all of the work I do," Porter said.

She called out the administration for ignoring subpoenas and directing officials to disregard summons to testify before Congress.

"The administration has refused to respect the rule of law," Porter said. "The question is not whether a crisis is in our midst but rather whether we choose to fight against it."

Porter, a consumer protection lawyer and law professor at the University of California, Irvine, was elected last year in one of several contested races that put all the traditionally Republican districts in Orange County under Democratic control amid Trump's low approval ratings.

But Republicans still outnumber Democrats in her district covering a swath of eastern Orange County and hold a slight edge in the county as a whole. Porter already has a number of Republican challengers seeking her seat in 2020.

Fred Whitaker, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, called Porter "too far left" for her district and "out of touch."

"She doesn't have the support of her district. She doesn't even have the support of Speaker Pelosi," Whitaker said.

Whitaker's argument is actually pretty sound.  She does not have the support from Nancy Pelosi, because Nancy Pelosi does not believe the case has been made to the American public in order to begin an impeachment inquiry.  Pelosi has made it clear that there has to be a sea change in public opinion before she will commit to such a move.

I can see Pelosi's point.  Democrats only get one shot at this, and right now Trump has all but promised that he will absolutely have us in a shooting war with Iran, deep into a massive ICE deportation pogrom, or indicting FBI investigators who dared to look into his malfeasance (or a combination of all three) as soon as Pelosi makes her move.  And let's face it, Mitch McConnell will never allow a real vote to remove Trump.  A Senate trial will be a voice vote, Democrats will complain all they want to, but it will be over in a day.

Having said that, removing Trump at the ballot box is also going to be problematic.

Again, I don't honestly have the answers here.  But Rep. Porter does a good job of laying out the case as to why Trump should be impeached, and it's worth having that PDF on hand.

Deportation Nation, Con't

If you've ever wondered what would happen if a fascist regime had social media, the answer is "announce mass police action against millions on Twitter" on a random Monday night.

President Trump said in a tweet Monday night that U.S. immigration agents are planning to make mass arrests starting “next week,” an apparent reference to a plan in preparation for months that aims to round up thousands of migrant parents and children in a blitz operation across major U.S. cities.

“Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States,” Trump wrote, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “They will be removed as fast as they come in.”

Large-scale ICE enforcement operations are typically kept secret to avoid tipping off targets. In 2018, Trump and other senior officials threatened the mayor of Oakland, Calif., with criminal prosecution for alerting city residents that immigration raids were in the works.

Trump and his senior immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, have been prodding Homeland Security officials to arrest and remove thousands of family members whose deportation orders were expedited by the Justice Department this year as part of a plan known as the “rocket docket.”

In April, acting ICE director Ronald Vitiello and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen were ousted after they hesitated to go forward with the plan, expressing concerns about its preparation, effectiveness and the risk of public outrage from images of migrant children being taken into custody or separated from their families.

Everything's fine thought, right?

Seriously, I've been warning about Trump's upcoming mass deportation regime as his key to 2020 victory for months, if not years now, and the reality is the only thing we were waiting on was the logistics.  They're in place now, the jackbooted thugs, the concentration camps, and the big ugly is coming.

I'd say something pithy like "Well this is as close to ethnic cleansing as America gets" except even a cursory glance at US history involving the federal government's treatment of Native Americans, black slaves and freemen, Chinese immigrants, and Japanese-Americans interred puts lie to that, so much so that we're just returning to form as a nation.

Things are bad now.  They are about to get significantly worse.

StupidiNews!

• Legendary actress, heiress, writer, fashion designer, and mother of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt, has died at the age of 95.
• A new United Nations study estimates the Earth will add 2 billion more people to reach 9.7 billion in the next 30 years.
• Ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi apparently collapsed in a Cairo courtroom and died from a heart attack during his trial on espionage charges.
• Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan confirms the US will be sending more than 1,000 troops to US bases in the Middle East for "defensive purposes" as tensions with Iran rise.
• Boeing commercial aircraft head Kevin McAllister is apologizing for the two deadly crashes that grounded the 737 MAX jet, saying getting the plane returned safely to service is a top priority.

Last Call For Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Dallas Morning News photographer Tom Fox was at the federal courthouse in Dallas to cover a trial when he snapped a picture of a man in combat fatigues and mask approaching the building.  The story happened from there.

A man in a mask and combat gear was fatally shot Monday morning in downtown Dallas after he opened fire with an assault weapon outside the Earle Cabell Federal Building. No one else was injured.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Matthew DeSarno identified the gunman as Brian Isaack Clyde, 22, at a news conference on a street corner near the federal building. Clyde died at the scene and was taken to Baylor University Medical Center, officials said.

Neither DeSarno nor Erin Nealy Cox, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, gave any indication why Clyde targeted the federal building. They also did not say who shot Clyde after police responded to an active-shooter call.

"We're looking into motive," DeSarno said at an afternoon news conference. DeSarno said the FBI had not investigated Clyde before the shooting and he was not on any watch list. Investigator were "aggressively pursing" his social media presence, the agent said.

Dallas Morning News photographer Tom Fox saw Clyde fire outside the building on Jackson Street and took photos as the shooting occurred.

Fox said Clyde fired from the parking lot across the street toward him, another man, a security guard and a woman who was walking a golden retriever.

The windows in a revolving door and two side doors at one entrance were broken. It was unclear whether Clyde or law-enforcement personnel had shot the door.

Fox's photos show authorities surrounding Clyde as he lay in a parking lot where he'd run and fallen after the shooting.

In one photo, a Homeland Security agent with blue latex gloves is hovering over Clyde. In others, Clyde is shirtless and law enforcement officers, including the agent, kneel around him. On Clyde's left arm, he had a red heart tattoo with the silhouette of a cat inside it.

And of course, the gunman was a white ex-military type.

Attacking a guarded federal courthouse went as it should, the gunman was shot and killed and nobody else injured.  But as always, this will be dismissed as a "crazy lone wolf" and not be flagged as part of a deadly pattern that has only grown worse over the last 25 years.

America has a serious problem with its military and police being infested with white supremacists and outright Nazi fascists.  The fact this isn't Moday's top story tells you just how bad the problem of Trumpian stochastic terrorism is.

A Supreme Victory In Virginia

In a 5-4 decision Monday, the US Supreme Court blocked Virginia Republicans from redrawing the already redrawn district maps in the state in place to prevent racial gerrymandering favoring the GOP.

In the 5-4 ruling, the justices found that the House didn't have the standing to appeal a lower court ruling that found that the new district maps must be used ahead of the 2020 elections. Those new maps are already in use.

Democrats claimed that the districts were unlawful because they featured too many black voters, diminishing their power across the state and in other districts.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch.

Justices Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Stephen Breyer and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.

Virginia Democrats had challenged the 11 districts for the state’s House of Delegates, which were drawn after the 2010 census, and each have a population with at least 55 percent black residents of voting age.

The Supreme Court has previously held that race can’t be the leading factor in the creation of state districts. The justices first took on the case in 2015, but sent it back down to a lower court for reconsideration.

But lawyers for the GOP-held House of Delegates claimed that by making sure that each legislative district had 55 percent black voters, the state was ensuring that their voting power wasn’t diminished.

Virginia House Democrats celebrated the ruling in a statement Monday, calling it "a major win for voting rights and civil rights in our Commonwealth.”

"House Republicans have spent millions of taxpayer dollars defending racial gerrymandering in a protracted legal battle - a battle in which they lacked legal standing," House Democratic Leader Eileen Filler-Corn and Caucus Chairwoman Charniele Herring said in a joint statement.

In other words, Gorsuch pulled a Scalia and sided with the Court's four liberals, finding them to be correct on a technicality.

This should have been a 9-0 ruling for the same reason, but of course there's almost always 4 votes for the "whatever we can justify helping the GOP" position, which Scalia was often guilty of (see Hobby Lobby) and Gorsuch is no different.  He just decided the battle was a moot point, as new maps will be created in 2022 anyway.

Still, a win is a win.

The Sleeper Awakens

My big complaint about the Democratic primary season so far is that Democrats are basically making zero national effort to go after Donald Trump in the meantime, while he gets the bully pulpit and free TV coverage every time he goes after a Democrat in the race.  As the first Democratic debates draw near, national Democrats are finally mobilizing against the real threat, and in a huge way.

Democrats are preparing to kick off a campaign totaling hundreds of millions of dollars to blunt Donald Trump’s head start in the 2020 campaign as their party's candidates slug it out for the right to take him on.

Democratic super PACs are set to soon launch a yearlong $150 million advertising onslaught countering the millions the president’s campaign has already spent targeting voters. On top of that, billionaire Tom Steyer is funding other groups testing a range of strategies to register and turn out people to vote. And the Democratic National Committee this week began training hundreds of college students to work as field staff in battleground states, an effort that will continue throughout the election.

The efforts, described to POLITICO by operatives involved in the plans, come as some Democrats worry that Trump is going largely untouched during the Democratic primary, amassing huge sums money and lobbing bombs at his would-be rivals as they wage war among themselves. Those concerns were given voice last week by former Obama adviser Ben LaBolt, who wrote in an op-ed in The Atlantic that Trump is “running unopposed” in the 2020 race as his would-be rivals scrap for position in the Democratic primary.

But Democrats interviewed by POLITICO insist that while LaBolt put his finger on a critical imperative, the party apparatus is not sitting on its hands. Instead, they are taking early steps to build a massive anti-Trump effort, preparing to shoulder the load until well into next year, before the eventual nominee’s campaign can build back up its bank account after a depleting primary.

The work to counter Trump, who formed his reelection campaign within weeks of being sworn in as president, needs to start early and build to a massive effort, Democrats say — especially because the party’s primary is expected to last well into 2020 and deplete the eventual nominee’s bank account.
“It’s nuts for us to spend money on Democrats fighting Democrats,” said Andrew Tobias, a former DNC treasurer who plans to mostly forgo activity in the primary and focus instead of raising money to power the DNC’s youth field program. “I’ve given 2 percent to one primary candidate, but 98 percent of my budget [is for] the early organizing and registration we need to build a massive blue wave. And I’ve done it now — not next year when it will be flooding in — because giving it now is so much more powerful.”

The effort is ramping up months after the president’s campaign began the nuts-and-bolts work to secure his reelection, hosting rallies and unleashing close to $6 million in advertising on Facebook alone, according to the company’s political ad disclosures.

Some of the Democratic operatives most focused on Trump worry that by the time Democrats winnow their 23-person primary field to one, the president may have secured himself a hard-to-beat advantage if Democrats don’t successfully mount a sustained push against Trump in a swath of 2020 battleground states. There are already significant obstacles: The DNC has raised $27 million this year, less than half than the $62 million the Trump-fueled Republican National Committee has pulled in.

“I take very seriously the fact that Republicans and Trump are already communicating under the radar to sets of voters they are already in threat of losing,” said David Pepper, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, who has been working to raise funds and counter the Trump campaign’s advertising online in his state. “If Trump has an entire year to be hitting these voters with all sorts of garbage, the mindset will be cemented in with a lot of voters by the time we find them.”

I'm glad Democrats are finally realizing that being this deep in the hole against Trump is a bad thing, and that they are going to be hitting back hard.  We'll see how the effort goes over the early debates this summer.

But there's a lot of work to be done still, especially if Dems want any headway.  And should Trump start that war with Iran, all those Democratic campaign ads against him go into the trash with Trump wrapping himself in the flag.

It's a race to see who can get their machine going first.

Last Call For He Blinded Science With Me

The autocratic purge of civilian science advisers from the US federal government has now gone into overdrive as the Trump regime is cutting federal agency advisory boards by at least one-third and probably by a lot more.

President Trump is directing all agencies to cut their advisory boards by “at least” one third.

The executive order issued Friday evening directs all federal agencies to “evaluate the need” for each of their current advisory committees.

The order gives agencies until Sept. 30 to terminate, at a minimum, one-third of their committees.
Committees that qualify for the chopping block include those that have completed their objective, had their work taken up by other panels or where the subject matter has “become obsolete.”

Another defining factor listed includes whether the agency itself has determined that the cost of operating the agency is “excessive in relation to the benefits to the Federal Government.”

Critics say the order is another administration attack on experts who provide scientific advice.

“For the past two years they have been shrinking and restricting the role of federal science advisory committees,” Gretchen Goldman, the research director with the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union for Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. “Now they’re removing the possibility of even making decisions based on robust science advice. It's no longer death by a thousand cuts. It's taking a knife to the jugular.”

There are an average of 1,000 advisory committees with more than 60,000 members, according to data from the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), that cover a range of topics including disposal of high-level nuclear waste, the depletion of atmospheric ozone, addressing AIDS and improving schools.

They are often filled by people considered to be at the top of their fields who can provide important technical advice, and GSA said the boards and committees “have played an important role in shaping programs and policies of the federal government from the earliest days of the Republic.”

Friday’s order is the most dramatic step in the Trump administration’s escalating pushback to the advisory committees.

Getting rid of at least 20,000 experts in various fields is a guaranteed path towards a government that doesn't work, which is exactly what Trump wants in order to claim then that only he, Dear Leader, is qualified to run all aspects of the country.   Besides, Republicans don't want experts, they want lackeys.

The Return Of Revenge Of The Son Of Shutdown Countdown

The 2019 budget fight is fast approaching, and Senate Republicans and the Trump regime simply do not know how to handle House Democrats having the power of the purse strings.

Senate Republicans and the Trump administration are struggling to reach an agreement on a path forward on critical budget and spending issues, threatening not only another government shutdown and deep spending cuts but a federal default that could hit the economy hard. 

GOP leaders have spent months cajoling President Trump in favor of a bipartisan budget deal that would fund the government and raise the limit on federal borrowing this fall, but their efforts have yet to produce a deal. And the uncertain path forward was underscored a few days ago at the Capitol, when a budget meeting between key Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and senior White House officials left out Democrats, whose votes will be imperative to avoid a shutdown and an economy-shaking breach of the federal debt limit. 

“We’re negotiating with ourselves right now,” said Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.). “The president, the administration, has some views, maybe, that are a little different sometimes than the Senate Republicans have. So we’re trying to see if we can be together as best we can.” 

The GOP dysfunction — coupled with a new House Democratic majority with its own priorities — leaves the sides much farther apart than they were at this point in last year’s budget process, which ended in a record-long government funding lapse. At the time, Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress, but negotiations stalled over funding Trump’s immigration priorities. 

Trump and Congress face a trio of difficult budget issues. Congress must pass, and Trump must sign, funding legislation by Oct. 1 to avoid a new shutdown. They need to raise the federal debt limit around the same time, according to the latest estimates. Failure to do so would force the government to make difficult decisions about which obligations to pay, and could be considered a default by investors, shaking markets and an economy already showing some signs of alarm.  And by year’s end, they also need to agree on how to lift austere budget caps that will otherwise snap into place and slash $125 billion from domestic and military programs. 

Senate Republicans and the administration thus far have not agreed on how to proceed on any of the issues, making it all but impossible for them to enter into substantive negotiations with Democrats. That has left the Capitol in a state of suspension over what the coming months will hold. 

“True to form, Congress and the White House seem to be intent on waiting until the absolute last minute to address all these issues that we’ve known about,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “Basically everything they could do wrong, they are doing wrong.” 

Tensions between key Senate Republicans and White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney have been on display for months, and GOP lawmakers and aides partially blame that frayed relationship for the halting pace of talks. Mulvaney was a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus before he joined the administration, first as White House budget director before becoming acting chief of staff, and he has advocated dramatic spending cuts opposed by lawmakers of both parties. 

Mulvaney has been slow to come around to the need for a bipartisan budget deal that would raise domestic and military spending caps, even after McConnell met privately with Trump last month and got the president’s blessing to proceed with such a deal, said a senior GOP Senate aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

In other words, absolutely count on a government shutdown this fall.  The only question is how long it will be, and how much damage Republicans will do to an already weakening economy.

Sunday Long Read: A Syria's Catastrophe

Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer goes to Syria to cover the civil war there for this week's Sunday Long Read, an indispensable piece on the bloody whirlwind that is the enduring humanitarian catastrophe of our generation. Twelve million refugees, a half-million dead, and a Byzantine proxy war mess that has irrevocably changed Middle Eastern politics and history forever, and most Americans simply don't have a clue.

There are four main types of Americans fighting on the ground in Syria: special forces soldiers, CIA agents, Islamic extremists, and anarchists. As I putter in a motorboat across the Tigris River one afternoon in May 2018, I have no idea which of these, if any, I will encounter in the weeks ahead. The Pentagon already told me I couldn’t tag along with its troops; the CIA doesn’t publicly admit to having anything to do with Syria; the extremists would be happy to see me dead; and the anarchists tend to be cautious about tipping off the feds that they are fighting in a foreign country.

I disembark with a handful of locals and walk up a gravelly slope to a small shack. Iraq, which I just came from, is on the opposite side of the river. Turkey is not far upstream. A man with a wrinkled, sun-worn face and an AK-47 asks for our passports.

I don’t have a visa. One month after I submitted my application for one, the Syrian government dropped a chemical bomb on a building in Ghouta, outside Damascus. The United Nations said it killed 49 civilians, including 11 children. As I was waiting for a decision, President Donald Trump tweeted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—“Animal Assad”—would pay a “big price” for the attack. Less than a week later, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France bombed several research and military buildings. The Syrian Embassy in Beirut emailed me shortly afterward: “We want to inform you that your visa request has been rejected due to the lack of objectivity in the reports approaching the Syrian crisis.”

But this border crossing isn’t controlled by the Assad government. It’s controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of militias backed by the United States and the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. The SDF currently controls about 25 percent of Syria, an area known as the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. The area encompasses largely Arab regions as well as most of the predominantly Kurdish region Rojava. Most of the roughly 2,000 US special operations troops in Syria are based in the region, spread across about a dozen bases.

As the Kurdish border guard with the AK flips through my passport, his face brightens. “Are you American?” he asks. “You are holy to us! The Kurdish people love Americans!” He lights a cigarette and takes a drag. “If it was up to us, we wouldn’t let the Americans leave,” he says. “They would stay here forever.” He tells me Turkish troops occasionally fire mortars at their position, small reminders of what awaits if US forces withdraw.

“Will they leave us?” another man asks me. He is Arab.

“It’s not clear,” I say. Five weeks earlier, Trump had announced he was pulling all US troops out of Syria “very soon,” but he’d walked back his statement a few days later. It wouldn’t be the last time he would do so.

“Maybe they will leave,” the Arab man says.

“No!” exclaims the wrinkled border guard.

“We have oil, so much oil,” the Arab says. “Let them stay and take the oil.”

“If American and Western companies—not Russian companies!—came and explored the region, they’d find more oil than Iraq,” the Kurd says. “There is oil, there is gas, there is phosphorus, whatever you want!” A chorus of birds rises with the waning heat. “We do whatever the coalition tells us to do. Directly! If it wasn’t for the coalition, we wouldn’t be here.” Assad, Turkey, what’s left of the Islamic State, and many of the rebel groups that were armed and trained by the CIA want to see the end of this breakaway territory. “If someone defends you, aren’t you going to give your life and your children’s lives to him? That’s the law of the universe, my brother.”

I've been digesting this piece since Wednesday and I have to say it's one of the best things I've read in years, this is Pulitzer-quality stuff here and while I often say "Read the whole thing" this is one time where I believe it's in your vital interests to do so.