Last Call For Border Line Insanity, Con't

In order to deport the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, the Trump regime is set to ship the vast majority of them to Guatemala under a new agreement.

The Trump administration is on the verge of signing a “safe third country” agreement with Guatemala, sources have confirmed to the Prospect. Asylum seekers attempting to enter the United States would be forced to file in Guatemala instead, on the grounds that it would be the first “safe” country they arrived in. Because most asylum seekers are coming from the south, this would allow the U.S. to send thousands of asylum seekers at the southern border back to Guatemala, and render them ineligible to apply for refugee status in the U.S.

Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales is scheduled to be in Washington on Monday, and an announcement of the agreement could be made then. Spokespeople for Morales have denied that the agreement is the purpose of the visit, but said that there is hope that there can be a signing ceremony.

Immigrant rights and refugee activists, as well as lawmakers, have expressed alarm that Guatemala, itself a country wracked with bouts of violence and its own population of asylum seekers, would be considered a “safe” country for migrants in search of refuge. Civil and human rights groups have suggested they would sue to block the agreement, saying it would violate international law. Three former foreign ministers have asked Guatemala’s Constitutional Court to prevent Morales from signing an agreement, arguing that it would be illegal under Guatemalan law.

“The whole idea [is] that we can take people from Honduras and El Salvador and fly them to Guatemala, where they’re absolutely in worse shape, they don’t have friends or family or funds, so they’re much more vulnerable, so they’re going from desperation to desperation,” said Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who has been a leader on border issues in the Senate.

The administration’s desire to sign a safe third country agreement with Guatemala has been known for some time. On June 17, Trump tweeted that Guatemala “is getting ready to sign a Safe-Third [sic] Country Agreement.” Guatemala’s interior minister, Enrique Degenhart, denied that the two countries had reached a deal, though negotiations are ongoing. Then, again this month, Trump said that Guatemala would be signing a safe third country agreement.

It’s just not credible to call Guatemala “safe,” says Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice advocacy organization.

“This requires suspending objective truth,” Schulte says. “I think people are pretty unprepared for the U.S. declaring one of the most dangerous countries in the world … that’s driving the refugee crisis, if we just say it’s totally safe and lie about it for our benefit, that would be unbelievably tragic.”

Trump of course thinks with this he can eliminate southern border crossings by asylum-seekers, or just ship them all to Guatemala anyway.  Ideally, he'd start deporting people to Guatemala even if they weren't from there to begin with.

It'll fail miserably, but there's a lot of death and suffering he can cause even if he is outsourcing the ethnic cleansing.

Dropping One Evil Scheme For A Far Worse One

The Trump regime announced Thursday that it was giving up on the matter of putting a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, instead he announced a far more sinister plan to disenfranchise millions of black, Hispanic, young, and Democratic voters by using Census data to only count "eligible voters" for redistricting purposes.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he is dropping his administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, an abrupt reversal that came after Trump repeatedly insisted he would push ahead with trying to add the question.

Rather than add the question to the 2020 census, which will go to every household in America, Trump instructed other executive agencies to immediately provide all of their citizenship records to the Department of Commerce, which oversees the census. Census Bureau officials authored a memo last year arguing they could better collect citizenship data using existing government administrative records. 

Although the Trump administration has said since 2017 it needed the citizenship question for better enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, critics have long said that rationale is fake. At his Thursday announcement, Trump seemed to confirm that. He did not mention the Voting Rights Act and instead focused on how the data could be used to draw districts based only on the citizen voting-age population.

“Some states may want to draw state and local legislative districts based upon the voter eligible population. Indeed the same day the Supreme Court handed down the census decision, it also said it would not review certain types of districting decisions, which could encourage states to make such decisions based on voter eligibility,” he said.

“With today’s order, we will conduct all of the information we need in order to conduct an accurate census and to make responsible decisions about public policy, voting rights, and representation in Congress,” he added.

Congressional seats allocated to states and districts are drawn based on the total population, and switching to using only the citizen voting-age population would benefit non-Hispanic whites. States could still use citizenship data the Trump administration obtains through other means to draw districts this way.

In other words, under this plan, states would be free to create districts based on "eligible voters" rather than "people who live there." It would allow states to tailor districts to the point where even more Democratic voters could be packed into one district and leave the other districts in the state with a makeup that favors Republicans even more, because they'd be using actual voter data to do it.

In other words, they've dropped the pretense and are now directly advocating using state eligibility formulas to make new hyper-gerrymandered districts to harm Democrats.  The situation in Ohio, where Democrats won half the vote but have only 4 of 16 districts, or North Carolina, where Democrats actually got a majority of the House votes but 3 of 13 districts, will now become the new normal. 

Imagine NC Democrats getting another majority of total House votes but only two Democratic Representatives out of 13.  The Supreme Court just ruled that's okay and that the federal courts have no business interfering in that.

Imagine Texas, which could have as many as 40 Congressional districts in 2022, with Democrats getting something like 48%-50% of the House vote, but only having 8-10 Democrats.  Imagine Florida, Wisconsin, Virginia, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Missouri, all gerrymandering one or two Democrats right out of their districts on a new permanent basis.

It would be a permanent 20-seat shift to the GOP.  Maybe more.

That's the point.

The Acosta Of Failure

Trump regime Labor Secretary Alex Acosta has failed the one ironclad law of the Trump regime: he made Dear Leader look like an idiot, so now he's being forced out.

Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta is stepping down from his post, just two days after he held a news conference to defend a plea deal that he brokered for wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while serving as a U.S. attorney in Florida more than a decade ago.

Acosta, a 50-year-old Harvard-educated lawyer, came newly under fire for the lenient 2008 plea deal after Epstein was re-arrested July 6 in New York City and charged with sex trafficking. Under the earlier plea agreement, Epstein served only 13 months of an 18-month term and was permitted daily furloughs to go to the office. Epstein also was required to register as a sex offender and to pay restitution to his underage victims.

Things began to unravel for Acosta in November, when the Miami Herald published a lengthy reexamination of the case, and accelerated in February, when a district court judge ruled that the 2008 plea deal violated the Crime Victims Rights Act because Acosta never revealed the terms of the deal to Epstein's victims before it was finalized. Also in February, the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether Acosta’s prosecution team committed professional misconduct in its handling the Epstein case.

Key details of Acosta's plea agreement with Epstein were known to senators at the time Acosta was confirmed as labor secretary, though initially these seemed minor compared to domestic abuse allegations against Trump’s first pick for labor secretary, Andy Puzder. Acosta defended his actions at a congressional hearing this past April, saying he entered the case only after a state grand jury recommended that only one charge be filed against Epstein — a course of action that would have resulted in no jail time for Epstein, no restitution to victims, and no registration as a sex offender.

Acosta went down because his press conference defending his plea deal with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was an absolute disaster.

Acosta, who at the time served as the U.S attorney in south Florida, said in a news conference that his office intervened in the case after state prosecutors failed to secure a plea deal that would have resulted in jail time for Epstein and give justice to his victims.

"Times have changed, and coverage of this case has certainly changed," Acosta said, adding, "the facts are being overlooked."

“I wanted to help them, that is why we intervened, and that’s what the prosecutors of my office did," he said. "They insisted that he go to jail and put the world on notice that he was and is a sexual predator."

Acosta added: "Epstein's actions absolutely deserve a stiffer sentence."

Acosta secured a federal non-prosecution agreement with Epstein as part of the plea deal, which critics have blasted as too lenient.

"I think what they would find is that the office acted appropriately," Acosta said at the news conference when asked about the criticism. He also pushed back against an assessment that he violated the law by not informing Epstein's victims about the non-prosecution agreement.

Calling the case "complex," Acosta argued that he and the other federal prosecutors were following Justice Department policy. They waited until they secured the plea deal with a provision that would require Epstein to pay restitution to his victims before notifying them, he said, in case the deal fell apart and the defense tried to use any payments as a way to undermine the victims' credibility.

The labor secretary's role in the administration has come under scrutiny after Epstein, 66, was arrested over the weekend and charged Monday with sex trafficking of minors in New York and Florida from at least 2002 through 2005. Epstein has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

I was convinced Acosta was going to survive until this press conference.  Trump used his usual "We'll see" hedge afterwards, indicating that Acosta didn't discharge his only actual duty, insulating Trump from the Epstein fallout.  This morning, Trump fired Acosta.  Even Republicans were glad to see Acosta gone.

Of course, the real problem is that Acosta was confirmed by these same Republicans in the first place.

Bonus StupidiNews:  Acosta's replacement, Deputy Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella, is a friend of disgraced lobbyist and criminal Jack Abramoff and a child labor "enthusiast".

StupidiNews!

• Thousands of Louisiana residents have evacuated from low-lying areas as Hurricane Berry threatens to dump up to 20 inches of rain on the state and head up the Mississippi River valley.
• The US Navy will escort oil tankers in and out of the Strait of Hormuz after Iranian ships reportedly sailed close to British tankers on Wednesday.
• Donald Trump is demanding that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Facebook's proposed Libra become subjected to strict federal and international banking regulations.
• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is considering sending his son to the US as the country's next Ambassador to Washington.
• Google and game developer Blizzard are teaming up to let European Starcraft II players take on its AlphaStar AI in competition.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

The national ICE raids delayed from a couple weeks ago are now back on in full force and set for this weekend.

Nationwide raids to arrest thousands of members of undocumented families have been scheduled to begin Sunday, according to two current and one former homeland security officials, moving forward with a rapidly changing operation, the final details of which remain in flux. The operation, backed by President Trump, had been postponed, partly because of resistance among officials at his own immigration agency.

The raids, which will be conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement over multiple days, will include “collateral” deportations, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the preliminary stage of the operation. In those deportations, the authorities might detain immigrants who happened to be on the scene, even though they were not targets of the raids.

When possible, family members who are arrested together will be held in family detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania. But because of space limitations, some might end up staying in hotel rooms until their travel documents can be prepared. ICE’s goal is to deport the families as quickly as possible.

The officials said ICE agents were targeting at least 2,000 immigrants who have been ordered deported — some as a result of their failure to appear in court — but who remain in the country illegally. The operation is expected to take place in at least 10 major cities.

The families being targeted crossed the border recently: The Trump administration expedited their immigration proceedings last fall. In February, many of those immigrants were given notice to report to an ICE office and leave the United States, the homeland security officials said.

Matthew Bourke, an ICE spokesman, said in a statement on Wednesday that the agency would not comment on specific details related to enforcement operations, to ensure the safety and security of agency personnel.

The threat of deportation has rattled immigrant communities across the country, prompted backlash from local politicians and police officials and stoked division inside the Department of Homeland Security — the agency that is charged with carrying out the deportations. The Trump administration’s goal is to use the operation as a show of force to deter families from approaching the southwestern border, the officials said.

Agents have expressed apprehensions about arresting babies and young children, officials have said. The agents have also noted that the operation might have limited success because word has already spread among immigrant communities about how to avoid arrest — namely, by refusing to open the door when an agent approaches one’s home. ICE agents are not legally allowed to forcibly enter a home.

Immigration defense lawyers are likely to file motions to reopen the families’ immigration cases, which would significantly delay, if not stop altogether, their removal from the United States.

Let's get this straight, these are trial runs of the logistics of much larger raids that will be constantly run around the country.  These raids are a weapon of fear and terror being conducted in our name.  People are going to be hurt and/or killed during these.

In other words, we're taking a major move towards Step 8 of the ten stages of genocide: Persecution.

Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. In state sponsored genocide, members of victim groups may be forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is often expropriated. Sometimes they are even segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved. They are deliberately deprived of resources such as water or food in order to slowly destroy them. Programs are implemented to prevent procreation through forced sterilization or abortions. Children are forcibly taken from their parents. The victim group’s basic human rights become systematically abused through extrajudicial killings, torture and forced displacement. Genocidal massacres begin. They are acts of genocide because they intentionally destroy part of a group. The perpetrators watch for whether such massacres meet any international reaction. If not, they realize that that the international community will again be bystanders and permit another genocide.

At this stage, a Genocide Emergency must be declared. If the political will of the great powers, regional alliances, or U.N. Security Council or the U.N. General Assembly can be mobilized, armed international intervention should be prepared, or heavy assistance provided to the victim group to prepare for its self-defense. Humanitarian assistance should be organized by the U.N. and private relief groups for the inevitable tide of refugees to come.

And yes, people are dying in these camps.  People will die in these raids.  People will continue to die.

This is happening here, now.

The Twitter Twit Army

Donald Trump today gathered his most influential social media sycophants for a White House "summit" that involved rewarding the people who spread hateful, racist, and sexist memes across the planet, and made a point not to invite Twitter or Facebook themselves to his little digital hate rally.

The White House has kept quiet about the guest list. But it seems to consist of the Trump Twitterverse, conservative social media personalities who orbit around Trump's Twitter star.

And yet, Trump has attacked those same social media platforms that have been so key to his success.

"You look at Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants, and I've made it clear that we as a country cannot tolerate political censorship, blacklisting and rigged search results," the president said last year.

In May, Facebook banned several high-profile social media personalities who they say violated their policies against hate speech that engages in violence, including right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; extremists Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer and Joseph Watson, who works for Jones' Infowars; and white supremacist Paul Nehlen, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2016 and 2018. The platform also banned Infowars, as well as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Twitter had already banned several of these personalities.

Google, Facebook and Twitter all deny that they censor conservatives on their platforms, but a lot of conservatives don't believe that.

Conservative talk show host Bill Mitchell is one of them. He blames Twitter's algorithm for some of his followers not being able to see his tweets. He'll be attending Thursday's social media summit, and he hopes they talk about how social media has become the modern public square and the responsibilities that come with that.

"If you become the public square, you really need to offer First Amendment protections to people," Mitchell said to NPR. "Where everybody can have free and open speech. Let's have the debate. And may the best man win."

What the Trumpies here mean by free speech is "a government takeover of all social media so that America has to see our photoshopped images of various Democrats going into gas chambers"  and I expect it will happen by executive fiat.

At the very least, Trump is telling these digital meme soldiers that if they get blocked to contact the White House for backup.  Gotta have that propaganda flow freely, after all.

It's Time To Ditch Mitch, Con't

Amy McGrath is running for Mitch McConnell's Senate seat, but in a state where Donald Trump won by 30 points, she found out in less than 24 hours that threading the "Trump good/Mitch bad" needle is next to impossible in her first major interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal.

CJ: One of the centerpieces for Sen. McConnell's reelection appears to be his work in reshaping the U.S. judiciary. If you had been a senator, would you have voted for Brett Kavanaugh to be on the Supreme Court — why or why not?

McGrath: Well, that's a good question. I didn't listen to all of the hearings. I don't think there was anything, and I'm not a lawyer or a senator on the Judiciary Committee, so I don't know the criteria. But I was very concerned about Judge Kavanaugh, what I felt like were the far-right stances that he had. However, there was nothing in his record that I think would disqualify him in any way. And the fact is when you have the president and the Senate, this is our system and so I don't think there was anything that would have disqualified him in my mind.

CJ: Did the Democrats treat him unfairly with the accusations that were against him waiting until the last minute, as some said, to try and delay the hearings?

McGrath: The Supreme Court nominees are a lifetime appointment, and I think there needs to be a lot scrutiny for lifetime appointments. I don't fault anyone for bringing up things that could give folks pause about the character of someone getting a lifetime appointment.

CJ: Did you think Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's accusation was credible?

McGrath: Yeah, I think it's credible. I think this is — I think many Republicans thought it was credible. And —

CJ: That wasn't disqualifying then?

McGrath: Well, I mean I think again, I think it's credible but given the amount of time that lapsed in between and from a judicial standpoint, I don't think it would really disqualify him.

CJ: So you would have voted for him to be on the Supreme Court?

McGrath: You know, I think that with Judge Kavanaugh, yeah, I probably would have voted for him.

(Around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, McGrath tweeted that upon further reflection, she would not have voted to confirm Kavanaugh.)

Surprise!

Seriously, as a Democrat, Mitch engineering the theft of not one, but two Supreme Court seats should be an ironclad reason as to why McConnell cannot be allowed to continue to represent the state, and if McGrath can't take a solid side on that, then...Trump or no Trump, it's gonna be a terrible time for her.

It's gonna be a long 15 months.

StupidiNews!

• Louisiana's coast is under a hurricane watch as torrential rain is flooding parts of New Orleans while Tropical Storm Berry is expected to form and reach hurricane status Thursday.
• Donald Trump says economic sanctions against Iran will be "increased substantially" as British naval ships warned off several smaller Iranian boats in the Strait of Hormuz. 
• A second US judge has blocked the Trump regime from replacing its entire legal team in the US Census citizenship question case, ruling the government had not provided any reason for the change.
• Pension legislation in Brazil has passed the country's lower house by a substantial margin, supporters say the bill has a good chance in the upper chamber against President Bolsonaro's protests.
• AT&T says it will add automated fraud and spam call alerts to mobile lines for free, but blocking spam calls will require a $4 per month fee.

Last Call For The Trump Trafficking Jam

Not only will current Trump regime Labor Secretary Alex Acosta not be fired because of his sweetheart deal with convicted billionaire pedophile, human trafficker, and inhuman monster Jeffrey Epstein a decade ago, but Acosta is once again trying to dismantle the budget to stop human traffickers like Epstein by slashing funds by 80 percent in Trump's proposed 2020 budget plan.

The International Labor Affairs Bureau’s office of child labor, forced labor and human trafficking has several functions, including producing an annual authoritative, congressionally mandated report on child labor and human trafficking globally as well as maintaining a list of products and source countries that the office has reason to believe use child and forced labor. It also helps fund programs in countries through civil society organizations and others non-governmental groups to address the root of child labor and trafficking, according to a source with knowledge of the bureau’s operation.

The Department of Labor did not respond to a request for comment as to why this program chosen for cuts, but a 2017 press release announcing the department’s 2018 budget request states the government will save, “$68 million by refocusing the Bureau of International Labor Affairs on ensuring that U.S. trade agreements are fair for American workers.”

In an interview on Wednesday, [Democratic Rep. Katherine] Clark said the attempt to defund this program “ speaks to the priorities of this administration and specifically the Secretary Acosta that they would in essence make the bureau inoperable.”

“This is the program within the Department of Labor that really promotes a fair global playing field for workers in the United States and specifically it does it by looking at forced labor for children and human trafficking all that sexual exploitation that sadly we see too often,” she said.

She added, “What it showed me is that Secretary Acosta has a pattern of not recognizing the priority of these issues. He certainly did that in Florida when he chose the powerful and the wealthy over child victims and a 53-page indictment that had been put together by his office."

Advocates have also decried recent decision by the Department of Labor to stop issuing certain visas to victims of human trafficking or other workplace crimes until the victims consult with another law enforcement agency like the FBI.

Erika Gonzalez, an attorney with the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, told The Daily Beast the change means victims will have to jump through “a lot more hoops” to get the relief they need. She compared the policy change to the Epstein plea deal, which Acosta did not clear with the billionaire’s victims before accepting.

“What the Epstein case shows is when these policies around human trafficking are implemented, they’re not necessarily considerate of the impact on the victims themselves,” Gonzalez said. “With the Department of Labor asking the FBI to look into [workplace violations] first, they’re adding another barrier for victims of trafficking to access the services the Department of Labor has.”

Other anti-trafficking organizations went further, saying the Epstein case shattered their trust in Acosta’s ability to protect victims of sex and labor exploitation. ECPAT-USA, and anti-child-trafficking organization, wrote a letter to Trump this week calling for Acosta to be fired.

“How can you in good faith be trusted to carry out labor laws when you can’t even enforce sex trafficking laws among children?” Joe Huang-Racalto, ECPAT’s government relations director, told The Daily Beast.

“With the scourge of labor trafficking in this country, the refusal to address recruiter fees, and companies that aren’t playing by the rules, we should [be able to] depend on the Secretary to enforce them—and we don’t.”

He's not going to.  Trump hired Acosta specifically because he was going to dismantle the agency responsible for human trafficking enforcement, so that the powerful could continue to exploit children.  The sheer amount of evil would be laughable if it wasn't for how serious the situation is.

This is the Trump regime.  We spend too much money on preventing child trafficking, I guess.

This is America, and half of us will vote for him anyway.

Bangers And Mashed

Sir Kim Darroch, the UK Ambassador to the US, has quit his post after diplomatic cables were leaked over the weekend showing he considered the Trump regime to be "inept".

Kim Darroch submitted his resignation on Wednesday as Britain’s ambassador to the United States, following the leak of his candid observations about the Trump administration and the subsequent fierce criticism of him and the British government from President Trump.

“Since the leak of official documents from this embassy there has been a great deal of speculation surrounding my position and the duration of my remaining term as ambassador,” Mr. Darroch said in his resignation letter. “I want to put an end to that speculation. The current situation is making it impossible for me to carry out my role as I would like.”
“Although my posting is not due to end until the end of this year, I believe in the current circumstances the responsible course is to allow the appointment of a new ambassador,” Mr. Darroch wrote.

On Monday, Mr. Trump said the White House would no longer deal with Mr. Darroch after the leak of confidential emails written by the ambassador that had described the Trump administration as “clumsy and inept.”
Mr. Trump also accused Prime Minister Theresa May of ignoring his advice and mismanaging Britain’s tortured efforts to leave the European Union, a departure now delayed at least until the end of October. As for Mr. Darroch, the president described him as “wacky,” a “very stupid guy,” and a “pompous fool.”

The dispute has cast a shadow over ties between London and Washington and has taken center stage in the contest to succeed Mrs. May as prime minister.

During a TV debate Tuesday night, Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and favorite to succeed Mrs. May, refused several opportunities to say that he would keep Mr. Darroch in his post until a scheduled departure date in January. He also declined to criticize Mr. Trump and played down the rift.

His comments probably made Mr. Darroch’s position untenable, given that Mr. Johnson is the clear front-runner in the contest and is likely to become prime minister later this month.

By contrast, the rival candidate, Jeremy Hunt, the current foreign secretary, described Mr. Trump’s comments as “unacceptable” and said that he would keep Mr. Darroch in his job.

I absolutely believe Boris Johnson's allies leaked those cables to the British press.  Johnson's not only measuring the drapes at 10 Downing Street, he's already cleaning house of anyone who could cause problems between himself and Dear Leader Trump.   Johnson says he'll hunt down whoever the leakers were, but I believe that about as far as Theresa May can throw me.

The good news is that Brexit will eventually finish off Johnson's career as well as May's, and maybe our friends across the pond can get it together.

Alas, we're still stuck with the Orange Imbecile.

It's All About Revenge Now, Con't

At the behest of Dear Leader, Attorney General Bill Barr continues his quest to find reasons to punish those who dared to investigate Donald Trump, and while Trump was in the UK last month, he had his goons grill British agent Christopher Steele over his now infamous dossier last month for a 16-hour London session, but Steele apparently remained as cool as a North Sea spring.

Christopher Steele, the former British spy behind the infamous “dossier” on President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, was interviewed for 16 hours in June by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The interview is part of an ongoing investigation that the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, has been conducting for the past year. Specifically, Horowitz has been examining the FBI’s efforts to surveil a one-time Trump campaign adviser based in part on information from Steele, an ex-British MI6 agent who had worked with the bureau as a confidential source since 2010.

Horowitz’s team has been intensely focused on gauging Steele’s credibility as a source for the bureau. But Steele was initially reluctant to speak with the American investigators because of the potential impropriety of his involvement in an internal DOJ probe as a foreign national and retired British intelligence agent.

Steele’s allies have also repeatedly noted that the dossier was not the original basis for the FBI’s probe into Trump and Russia.

The extensive, two-day interview took place in London while Trump was in Britain for a state visit, the sources said, and delved into Steele’s extensive work on Russian interference efforts globally, his intelligence-collection methods and his findings about Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who the FBI ultimately surveilled. The FBI’s decision to seek a surveillance warrant against Page — a warrant they applied for and obtained after Page had already left the campaign — is the chief focus of the probe by Horowitz.

The interview was contentious at first, the sources added, but investigators ultimately found Steele’s testimony credible and even surprising. The takeaway has irked some U.S. officials interviewed as part of the probe — they argue that it shouldn’t have taken a foreign national to convince the inspector general that the FBI acted properly in 2016. Steele’s American lawyer was present for the conversation.

Oops.  It's almost like unlike the Barr DoJ, Steele and the FBI are career professionals instead of flunkies and idiots. Steele not only survived, he actually convinced the agents interrogating him that he was right about Trump.

No wonder we didn't hear about this when it happened.

It didn't fit the narrative.

StupidiNews!

• Cleveland Clinic doctors have delivered a healthy baby from a woman with a transplanted uterus, a first for the US as the woman has the transplant to correct uterine factor infertility.
• Nicki Minaj has cancelled a concert in Saudi Arabia that was scheduled for next week as activists blasted the superstar on social media for rewarding the country's human rights abuses.
• House Democrats are moving to subpoena multiple Trump White House aides and advisers, as the battle over testimony over the Mueller probe continues.
• In a major setback for the Trump regime, a federal judge has denied the Justice Department's request for new lawyers on the 2020 Census citizenship question case.
• Legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin is looking to revitalize NASA as the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing arrives next week.

Last Call For Coming For Your Healthcare, Again, Con't

A three-judge appellate panel heard augments today by several Republican attorneys general that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, and the two GOP-appointed judges on the panel appeared to have heavy skepticism that the law should be allowed to continue.

A federal appeals court panel grilled Democratic attorneys general on Tuesday about whether Obamacare violates the U.S. Constitution, as it weighs whether to uphold a Texas judge’s ruling striking down the landmark healthcare reform law.

The judges focused on whether the 2010 Affordable Care Act lost its justification after Republican President Donald Trump in 2017 signed a law that eliminated a tax penalty used to enforce the ACA’s mandate that all Americans buy health insurance.
Republicans have repeatedly tried and failed to repeal Obamacare since its 2010 passage. The Justice Department would normally defend a federal law, but the Trump administration has declined to take that position against a challenge by 18 Republican-led states.

“If you no longer have a tax, why isn’t it unconstitutional?” Judge Jennifer Elrod, who was appointed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals by Republican President George W. Bush, asked attorneys for the Democratic officials defending the law during a hearing in New Orleans.

A coalition of Democratic state attorneys general led by California’s Xavier Becerra stepped up to defend the law. The U.S. House of Representatives intervened after Democrats won control in November’s elections during which many focused their campaigns on defending Obamacare.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is not expected to decide on Tuesday whether to overturn or uphold the ruling by a federal judge in Texas last year that the entire ACA was unconstitutional.

An appellate ruling declaring Obamacare unconstitutional could prompt an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, opening the door for the top court to take up the issue in the midst of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. 

Republicans have been trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act for nine years now.  Making health care and millions of Trump voters losing health coverage the top issue of 2020 seems like a pretty stupid idea, but Republicans are clearly counting on Democrats to vote to overturn it and surrender to a GOP "replacement" bill rather than risk a loss at SCOTUS, where this will be headed either way.

We'll see what the judges do later this year, and how quickly this case gets to SCOTUS.

It's Time To Ditch Mitch

Amy McGrath is officially entering the 2020 Senate race to unseat Mitch McConnell.

Kentucky Democrat Amy McGrath, a former fighter pilot who rose to national prominence last year in her failed campaign for Congress against Republican Andy Barr, is turning her sights on a new target: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. 

In a three-minute video released Tuesday, McGrath said McConnell has "bit by bit, year by year, turned Washington into something we all despise." 

"I'm running for Senate because it shouldn't be like this," McGrath added. 

McGrath's candidacy marks a significant recruiting coup for Democrats. She emerged as an unlikely fundraising juggernaut in her congressional race, bringing in millions of dollars after her campaign released a biographical video that went viral, and becoming a Democratic celebrity in the process. 

McGrath will have her work cut out for her, however. President Donald Trump won Kentucky by nearly 30 points in 2016, and his presence at the top of the ticket in 2020 will likely help drive Republican voters to the polls 

McGrath failed to win her House race in 2018 against Barr, who won by about 3 points, despite being outspent by McGrath by nearly $3 million. 

In the race against McConnell, McGrath appears poised to run as a moderate seeking to break the partisan gridlock in Washington. In an interview Tuesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," McGrath said she had watched the Democratic presidential debate and was concerned that many candidates were positioning themselves too far to the left on issues like health care. 

Meanwhile, McConnell has shown himself to be a canny and ruthless opponent. In 2014, he beat back a much-hyped rival, Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, in a 15-point victory. 

McConnell's team welcomed the challenge from McGrath. 

"Amy McGrath lost her only race in a Democratic wave election because she is an extreme liberal who is far out of touch with Kentuckians," said McConnell campaign manager Kevin Golden. "Comparing President Trump's election to 9/11, endorsing a government takeover of healthcare, and calling the wall 'stupid' is a heckuva platform that we will be delighted to discuss over the next sixteen months." 

On "Morning Joe," McGrath conceded that McConnell "has been formidable" after more than three decades in the Senate. But, she added, "this is a different race." 

"The things that Kentuckians voted for Trump for are not being done," McGrath said. "He's not able to get it done because of Mitch McConnell."

Here's McGrath's announcement video, and it's a great one.




I don't know if she can win. I don't know if any Kentucky Democrat can beat Mitch McConnell. But we have to try, and McGrath is the best chance we've had in a while.  She still has to get past the primary, but she's got my vote already for that next May.

But Mitch now has 15 months to call her extreme and socialist and weak and to fill voters' heads with the glory of defending Trumpland from the Evil AOC menace, and in a state where Trump won by nearly 30 points, he can all but say "You're not seriously going to elect this bitch over me, right?" and get away with it.

But you want the plan to get rid of Mitch McConnell?  Her name is Amy McGrath.

Help her win.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Why yes, the Russians absolutely created the idiotic and completely false Seth Rich conspiracy theory to hurt Hillary Clinton in 2016, and the corrupt GOP and their FOX media arm gladly made themselves accomplices in helping a foreign power sabotage our elections in order to gain power.

In the summer of 2016, Russian intelligence agents secretly planted a fake report claiming that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was gunned down by a squad of assassins working for Hillary Clinton, giving rise to a notorious conspiracy theory that captivated conservative activists and was later promoted from inside President Trump’s White House, a Yahoo News investigation has found.

Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, first circulated a phony “bulletin” — disguised to read as a real intelligence report —about the alleged murder of the former DNC staffer on July 13, 2016, according to the U.S. federal prosecutor who was in charge of the Rich case. That was just three days after Rich, 27, was killed in what police believed was a botched robbery while walking home to his group house in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., about 30 blocks north of the Capitol.

The purported details in the SVR account seemed improbable on their face: that Rich, a data director in the DNC’s voter protection division, was on his way to alert the FBI to corrupt dealings by Clinton when he was slain in the early hours of a Sunday morning by the former secretary of state’s hit squad.

Yet in a graphic example of how fake news infects the internet, those precise details popped up the same day on an obscure website, whatdoesitmean.com, that is a frequent vehicle for Russian propaganda. The website’s article, which attributed its claims to “Russian intelligence,” was the first known instance of Rich’s murder being publicly linked to a political conspiracy.

“To me, having a foreign intelligence agency set up one of my decedents with lies and planting false stories, to me that’s pretty outrageous,” said Deborah Sines, the former assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the Rich case until her retirement last year. “Maybe other people don’t think it’s that outrageous. I did ... once it became clear to me that this was coming from the SVR, then that triggers a lot of very serious [questions about] ‘What do I do with this?’”

The previously unreported role of Russian intelligence in creating and fostering one of the most insidious conspiracy theories to arise out of the 2016 election is disclosed in “Yahoo News presents: Conspiracyland,” a six-part series by the news organization’s podcast “Skullduggery” that debuts this week on the third anniversary of Rich’s murder.

The Russian effort to exploit Rich’s tragic death didn’t stop with the fake SVR bulletin. Over the course of the next two and a half years, the Russian government-owned media organizations RT and Sputnik repeatedly played up stories that baselessly alleged that Rich, a relatively junior-level staffer, was the source of Democratic Party emails that had been leaked to WikiLeaks. It was an idea first floated by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who on Aug. 9, 2016, announced a $20,000 reward for information about Rich’s murder, saying — somewhat cryptically — that “our sources take risks.”

At the same time, online trolls working in St. Petersburg, Russia, for the Internet Research Agency (IRA) — the same shadowy outfit that conducted the Russian social media operation during the 2016 election — aggressively boosted the conspiracy theories. IRA-created fake accounts, masquerading as those of American citizens or political groups, tweeted and retweeted more than 2,000 times about Rich, helping to keep the bogus claims about his death in the social media bloodstream, according to an analysis of a database of Russia troll accounts by Yahoo News.
Speaking publicly about the case for the first time, Sines, the former prosecutor, said that the Russian conspiracy-mongering vastly complicated her efforts to solve the murder by forcing her and the Washington, D.C., police department to investigate a blizzard of false allegations in order to make sure there was nothing to any of them. “To waste your time investigating BS is just horrible,” said Sines.

The Russian-inspired conspiracy theories also have had a devastating effect on the Rich family, especially after the theories migrated to alt-right websites and, ultimately, primetime Fox News shows. As they did so, there were repeated suggestions by alt-right commentators that the DNC staffer’s parents and brother were concealing information about his conduct.

“You’re used, you’re lied to, you’re a pawn in your own son’s death,” said Mary Rich, Seth Rich’s mother, who, along with her husband, Joel, was interviewed for the podcast. “I wish they had the chance to experience the hell we have gone through. Because this is worse than losing my son the first time. This is like losing him all over again.”

The Russians did this to hurt Clinton and to help get their preferred candidate, Donald Trump, into the White House.  The entire Republican Party went along.  And we knew this a year ago.

But oh well, it doesn't matter, right?

Let's not strengthen our election defenses and media against Russian propaganda to help Trump.