A Supreme Disappointment, Con't

Republicans are now in the process of getting rid of what few campaign finance limits remain, and the next frontier is the Last Frontier, Alaska.  The case is Thompson v Hebdon, involving overturning Alaska's campaign finance donation limit for out-of-state individuals for state races.  It's been bopping around for the last two years in the court system.

The challenger to the law is David Thompson, who in 2015 donated $100 to support the re-election of his brother-in-law, former Republican Alaska state Rep. Wes Keller. Thompson lives in Wisconsin, and Keller had already reached the limit for out-of-state contributions, so the campaign had to return the money. Thompson’s lawyers are aping the arguments in Citizens United, contending that this limit on campaign contributions is an unconstitutional regulation of free speech. Thompson told the Alaska Dispatch News, “I thought it was pretty restrictive and it held up my ability to speak out.”

Attorneys for Alaska are citing as precedent Bluman v. FEC, a 2012 Supreme Court case ruling that foreign citizens do not have the right to contribute money to U.S. elections. The state’s attorneys wrote in their brief, “Just as a Canadian citizen is not part of the political community governed by the U.S. federal government, a Florida resident is not part of the political community governed by the Alaska state government.” Advocacy group Free Speech for People, which filed an amicus brief supporting Alaska in July, points out that the state has long been suspicious of out-of-state actors interfering in its politics. The Alaskan tundra is often the target of companies seeking to tap its natural resources and to influence local elections—presumably for extraction privileges.

Although the decision on Thompson v. Hebdon would only directly affect Alaska’s state-level elections, the legal rationale behind these limits, if upheld in court, could be of consequence for elections in other states, including congressional races. A state’s election laws must abide by the Constitution, so if a federal court decides that a state is not hindering the First Amendment by limiting outside donations, then any future laws imposing similar restrictions on congressional races would also likely be consistent with the Constitution. George Washington University professor David Fontana, whose work was the basis of Free Speech for People’s amicus brief, wrote in an email, “If our argument is accepted, the reason why it would have broader implications is because it would be a federal court interpreting federal constitutional law, and federal constitutional law is relevant everywhere and in every election.”

Republicans had this case on the back burner for a while, but now it's a top priority ahead of the 2020 campaign.  They want the Supreme Court to take up the case now, and that effort is being led by former Bush 43 Solicitor General Paul Clement, as UC-Irvine law professor Rich Hasen details at The Atlantic.

Supreme Court deference to democratically enacted campaign-finance laws changed dramatically as the Court’s personnel shifted, especially with the retirement in 2006 of O’Connor and her replacement with Justice Samuel Alito. In the years since O’Connor’s departure, the Court has not upheld a contribution or spending limitation under consideration, except one related to foreign spending in elections, which it upheld without argument or briefing. In Citizens United, Kennedy resurrected his McConnell argument about ingratiation and access not being corruption, this time for the majority. In a 2014 case, McCutcheon v. FEC, Chief Justice John Roberts all but laid out the road map to finish the work begun in Citizens United and start using much stricter scrutiny to review, and strike down, campaign-contribution laws. The two newest justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, have both expressed great skepticism about the constitutionality of any campaign-finance limits.

And so it is somewhat of a mystery why the Court has not taken more campaign-finance cases as vehicles to free up more big money in politics. The Court has turned down numerous challenges to the soft-money portion of McConnell, which still stands. It has repeatedly turned down an attempt to reverse a 2003 case, which held that corporations cannot contribute money directly to candidates. (Citizens United concerned only corporate spending independent of candidates.) And just this past term, the Court turned down a case from the Ninth Circuit upholding strict Montana contribution limits, and another from the Fifth Circuit, upholding low contribution limits in Austin, Texas. The latter case garnered a scathing dissenting opinion from Fifth Circuit Judge (and former Thomas clerk) James Ho, who said that if people don’t like too much money in politics, the solution was to shrink the size of government.

Perhaps the justices did not take these cases because they did not see them as ideal for overturning more precedent. Perhaps the Court is gun-shy about taking on more controversial issues that it could choose to avoid, when cases about guns, abortion, and LGBTQ rights wait in the wings.

Maybe Paul Clement can change that. He has just filed a petition, Thompson v. Hebdon, together with a conservative group, the Alliance Defending Freedom, asking the Court to review a Ninth Circuit decision upholding Alaska’s $500 contribution limits in candidate elections. The petition argues that the limits are too low under existing precedent, but Clement also drops a footnote suggesting that if existing precedent would allow such low limits, the Court should consider overturning such precedent. He hammers home the point, which Roberts reiterated in McCutcheon, that ingratiation and access are not a form of corruption.

Clement’s petition will be noticed at the Court, and not only because he argued the other side of these issues in the McConnell case, defending McCain-Feingold. A new study finds that repeat players have much greater success at the Supreme Court than novices, and Clement is one of the most talented lawyers I have ever seen argue a case. He argues without notes and has a casual, direct, conversational style with the justices. It is pretty remarkable.

If the Court takes this case and reverses the Ninth Circuit, it would not spell the end of all contribution limits immediately. But it could hasten a world in which individuals could give unlimited sums directly to candidates, buying all the ingratiation and access they want. The Court has been moving in this direction; the question is whether it wishes to act now, or delay the inevitable a bit longer.

Such a ruling in June 2020 would be just in time for the heart of the 2020 campaign season, and the wealthy could give unlimited campaign funds to the GOP.  Imagine being swamped with GOP campaign ads everywhere, tens of billions of dollars' worth, for the final five months of the campaign season.

It would be madness...and if you thought lobbying was bad before, imagine corporate giants giving billions to get the exact legislation they want from the candidates they buy in every House and Senate race.  We're essentially at that point now on a lot of things, but the last few limitations on that would be gone.

Everyone would be corrupt as Trump, and anyone who wasn't would be buried in races by people who were.  We're rapidly approaching the era where corporations are the only free speech game in town.

Deportation Nation, Con't

As I mentioned two weeks ago, the Trump regime is trying to use Guatemala as a dumping ground for asylum seekers (and eventually everyone to be deported) but the deal went south when the government of President Jimmy Morales balked at the idea of becoming America's new "safe harbor" asylum friend. 

On top of that, a federal judge Thursday blocked the Trump regime's asylum dumping scheme on the grounds that the Trumpies had no safe harbor nation as a backup.  As recently as 48 hours ago, it looked like Trump was losing this bigly.

But all of that has now gone straight down the crapper as Trump threatened Guatemala with massive economic, trade, and tourism sanctions Thursday night if Morales didn't immediately comply, and on Friday, Morales folded like a cheap card table.

The Trump administration signed an agreement with Guatemala Friday that will restrict asylum applications to the U.S. from Central America.

The so-called “safe third country” agreement would require migrants, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, who cross into Guatemala on their way to the U.S. to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the U.S. border. It could potentially ease the crush of migrants overwhelming the U.S. immigration system, although many questions remain about how the agreement will be executed.

President Donald Trump heralded the concession as a win as he struggles to live up to his campaign promises on immigration.

“This is a very big day,” he said. “We have long been working with Guatemala and now we can do it the right way.”

He claimed, “This landmark agreement will put the coyotes and smugglers out of business.”

The announcement comes after a court in California blocked Trump’s most restrictive asylum effort to date, one that would effectively end protections at the southern border.

The two countries had been negotiating such an agreement for months, and Trump threatened Wednesday to place tariffs or other consequences on Guatemala if it didn’t reach a deal.

“We’ll either do tariffs or we’ll do something. We’re looking at something very severe with respect to Guatemala,” Trump had said.

On Friday, Trump praised the Guatemalan government, saying now it has “a friend in the United States, instead of an enemy in the United States.”

Nothing like mobster threats to get the job done, right?

And now, Trump has somewhere to immediately dump asylum seekers.  Morales wanted a friend in the United States, and he's about to get hundreds of thousands of them.

To make things worse, bet on Trump deporting non-asylum cases to Guatemala.  Potentially millions.

It's going to be bad, folks.  One of the last major logistic pieces for mass deportations has now fallen into place, and that means the ICE raids from earlier this month are going to look like a Boy Scout Jamboree by comparison.

Faster Than A Speeding Bullet

Three asteroid whizzed by the Earth this week, and one missed the planet by less than the distance from the Earth to the moon, in a demonstration of just how lucky we've been so far from a cosmic perspective, according to Alan Duffy, the science head at the Royal Institution of Australia.

This asteroid wasn’t one that scientists had been tracking, and it had seemingly appeared from “out of nowhere,” Michael Brown, a Melbourne-based observational astronomer, told The Washington Post. According to data from NASA, the craggy rock was large, an estimated 57 to 130 meters wide (187 to 427 feet), and moving fast along a path that brought it within about 73,000 kilometers (45,000 miles) of Earth. That’s less than one-fifth of the distance to the moon and what Duffy considers “uncomfortably close.”

“It snuck up on us pretty quickly,” said Brown, an associate professor in Australia with Monash University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. He later noted, “People are only sort of realizing what happened pretty much after it’s already flung past us.”

The asteroid’s presence was discovered only earlier this week by separate astronomy teams in Brazil and the United States. Information about its size and path was announced just hours before it shot past Earth, Brown said.

“It shook me out my morning complacency,” he said. “It’s probably the largest asteroid to pass this close to Earth in quite a number of years.”

So how did the event almost go unnoticed?

First, there’s the issue of size, Duffy said. Asteroid 2019 OK is a sizable chunk of rock, but it’s nowhere near as big as the ones capable of causing an event like the dinosaurs’ extinction. More than 90 percent of those asteroids, which are more than half a mile wide or larger, have already been identified by NASA and its partners.

“Nothing this size is easy to detect,” Duffy said of Asteroid 2019 OK. ″You’re really relying on reflected sunlight, and even at closest approach it was barely visible with a pair of binoculars.”

Brown said the asteroid’s “eccentric orbit” and speed were also likely factors in what made spotting it ahead of time challenging. Its “very elliptical orbit” takes it “from beyond Mars to within the orbit of Venus,” which means the amount of time it spends near Earth where it is detectable isn’t long, he said. As it approached Earth, the asteroid was traveling at about 24 kilometers per second, he said, or nearly 54,000 mph. By contrast, other recent asteroids that flew by Earth clocked in between 4 and 19 kilometers per second (8,900 to 42,500 mph).

“It’s faint for a long time,” Brown said of Asteroid 2019 OK. “With a week or two to go, it’s getting bright enough to detect, but someone needs to look in the right spot. Once it’s finally recognized, then things happen quickly, but this thing’s approaching quickly so we only sort of knew about it very soon before the flyby.”

The last-minute detection is yet another sign of how much remains unknown about space and a sobering reminder of the very real threat asteroids can pose, Duffy said.

“It should worry us all, quite frankly,” he said. “It’s not a Hollywood movie. It is a clear and present danger.”

Duffy said astronomers have a nickname for the kind of space rock that just came so close to Earth: “City-killer asteroids.” If the asteroid had struck Earth, most of it would have probably reached the ground, resulting in devastating damage, Brown said.

“It would have gone off like a very large nuclear weapon” with enough force to destroy a city, he said. “Many megatons, perhaps in the ballpark of 10 megatons of TNT, so something not to be messed with.”

One of these days, a city is going to get erased off the map by an asteroid.  It may not happen in my lifetime, but it's going to happen.  I just hope we have the technology to predict and deal with the situation when it does.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler has finally had enough, and is going forward with impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, among other things.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said Friday that negotiations with former White House counsel Don McGahn over an outstanding subpoena for his testimony, but if the outstanding issues are not resolved soon, the committee plans to go to court to seek enforcement of the subpoena early next week.

Nadler told reporters at the Capitol that the committee would also be filing an application for the grand jury material underlying former special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

"The Department of Justice policies will not allow prosecution of a siting president," Nadler said. "The House is the only institution that can now hold President Trump accountable for these actions. To do so, the House must have access to all the relevant facts."

He added, "We will continue to seek testimony from key fact witnesses," and he added that "our work will continue into the August recess."

McGahn, who was prominently featured in the Mueller report, told the special counsel's team during hours of interviews that the president had ordered him to fire Mueller, and he refused. He has already defied a subpoena by the House panel, declining to testify when the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel claimed executive privilege.

Asked about the growing calls among the Democratic caucus to file articles of impeachment for Mr. Trump, Nadler did not rule out the possibility.

"We may decide to recommend articles of impeachment at some point. We may not," he said. Several of Nadler's colleagues referred to their next step in their inquiry as an "impeachment investigation" into the administration.

This is the Pelosi plan: get the information necessary to impeach Donald Trump into the hands of House Democrats.  Whether or not SCOTUS will agree, or whether or not this will be tied up in the courts until a Trump second term, we don't know.

But the dice have been rolled.  This path, by the way, is exactly what Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent recommended this morning.

Fortunately, there is an answer to this problem: The House Judiciary Committee can launch an impeachment inquiry independently, without any vote by the full House.

In an interview, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, suggested to me that it’s only a matter of time until the committee formally considers drafting articles of impeachment on its own.

“Somebody has to write articles of impeachment to focus this investigative and analytical process,” Raskin told me. “If not the Judiciary Committee, who is going to do it? This is our job.”

Raskin suggested that this is where the process is inevitably heading already.

“The Constitution leaves it up to Congress how to structure impeachment proceedings,” Raskin told me. “There are many different ways to get there. It can arise from floor action. It can arise within the Judiciary Committee itself.”

“I’m convinced that articles of impeachment are going to originate from the House Judiciary Committee,” Raskin said. “The question is just when.”

The timeline on the inquiry part of impeachment has been answered, and that is now.

No wonder then that Trump is now specifically calling for investigations into President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

President Trump on Friday lashed out at Democrats over their ongoing investigations into his administration, suggesting there should instead be probes into former President Obama's book deal and other activities under his predecessor.

"They want to investigate, they want to go fishing and I watched Bob Mueller and they have nothing," Trump said of Democrats during an Oval Office gathering to announce an agreement with Guatemala.

"It’s a disgrace," he continued. "We want to find out what happened the last Democrat president. Let’s look into Obama the way they’ve looked into me. From day one they’ve looked into everything we’ve done."

"They could look into the book deal that President Obama made. Let’s subpoena all of his records," Trump continued. "Let’s subpoena all of the records having to do with Hillary Clinton and all of the nonsense that went on with Clinton and her foundation and everything else."

It's about damned time, Democrats.  Trump is terrified and is already lashing out in response to Democrats being serious.  He will start putting you in jail in order to save himself if you don't stop him...

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Yesterday I talked about how Robert Mueller's testimony on Wednesday included the fact the Russians are currently attacking our voting systems and have been since 2016, and that Republicans refuse to lift a finger to stop them, blocking measures to help beef up voting system security yesterday. Now we find out the Russian attack on our voting system in 2016 was so massive that they hit all 50 states over three years and absolutely interfered in the presidential race.

The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded Thursday that election systems in all 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016, largely undetected by the states and federal officials at the time, but at the demand of American intelligence agencies the committee was forced to redact its findings so heavily that key lessons for the 2020 election are blacked out.

The report — the first volume of several to be released from the committee’s investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference — came just 24 hours after the former special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, warned that Russia was moving again to interfere “as we sit here.”

It also landed hours after Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, personally stepped forward to block consideration of a package of election security bills.

While details of many of the hackings directed by Russian intelligence, particularly in Illinois and Arizona, are well known, the committee’s report describes a Russian intelligence effort more far-reaching than the federal government has previously acknowledged.

It concluded that while there is no evidence that any votes were changed in actual voting machines, “Russian cyberactors were in a position to delete or change voter data” in the Illinois voter database. The committee found no evidence that they did so.

While the report is not directly critical of either American intelligence agencies or the states, it described what amounted to a cascading intelligence failure, in which the scope of the Russian effort was underestimated, warnings to the states were too muted, and state officials either underreacted or, in some cases, resisted federal efforts to offer help. 

Once again, the Russians were deep into our voting registration and tally systems in all 50 states and could have done anything they wanted in 2016.

Once again, Mitch McConnell was aware of all of this from the beginning.

Once again, McConnell and the GOP have done everything they can to block efforts to increase security in voting registration and tally systems.

And if you don't believe the Russians changed any votes while being in a position to do so in all 50 states, well, I don't know what to say.  The Senate Intelligence Committee may have found "no evidence" but that's like saying police knew of a group of bank robbers had access to a bank vault but there was "no evidence" of anything taken...admitting to the crime would have of course destroyed the bank, and that's what's happening here.

Of course, as several of you have suggested in the comments over the last few months is that the Russians broke into the bank vault only to discover another robbery in progress.

Only in this case, it's our election systems.  But it's fine, right?  The good guys will prevail?

Plat du Jour: Jambons Cuits à la Vapeur

Europe is broiling under all-time record temperatures, well above 40 degrees Celsius, and the world should get used to baking like this right up until the last Republican who says anthropomorphic global warming is a hoax dies from heat exhaustion.

Never in recorded history has Paris been hotter than it was on Thursday.

The same was true of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, as temperatures rose and records tumbled one by one across Western Europe, scorching the continent and sending residents scrambling to seek relief from a dangerous heat wave.

In Paris, the temperature soared to 42.6 degrees Celsius (108.6 Fahrenheit), breaking a record set in 1947, 40.4 degrees Celsius, according to the French national weather service, which said the temperatures could rise further. Some 20 million people in northern France were expected to be affected by the heat.

In the Netherlands, temperatures topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), shattering the record high set only a day earlier, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute said. In Germany, the northwestern town of Lingen hit 41.5 Celsius (106.7 Fahrenheit).

And for the second time this week, Belgium measured its hottest day, with a temperature of 40.6 Celsius in Kleine Brogel (105 Fahrenheit) on Thursday passing the mark set a day earlier, 40.2 Celsius. The authorities issued a code red alert for the first time since the weather warning system was put in place 20 years ago.

“It’s really shocking to have this heat in Brussels,” said Francesca Van Daele, a student of political science at the Free University of Brussels-VUB. “Our urban planning is not really made for heat waves like this.”

The hottest summers in Europe in the past 500 years have all come in the past 17 years, scientists say. Several heat waves have been linked to human-caused climate change. In the years ahead, they say, many more are likely to scorch temperate zones like northern Europe.

We're maybe a generation away from London having Barcelona's climate, and Barcelona having Cairo's climate.  But it's all sunspots and cloud cover and really we should just continue to drive SUVs and strip mine the mountains and belch carbon into the air because everything will be fine.

We won't be around when the generational cohort after today's Gen Z are born in 2020 and after and they grow up in a world with dozens of hundred-degree days, critical water and food shortages, and resource wars.  Maybe they'll forgive us posthumously, but I doubt it.

They'll remember my generation especially as cowards who helped elect Trump and wrecked the planet.  Hopefully they'll rise up and remove anybody currently over 40 from ever having any sort of political power again and bury us all as the Moron Generation.

StupidiNews!

• Sixteen US Marines were arrested on Thursday at Camp Pendleton, California in connection with a human trafficking and drug smuggling ring, eight other Marines were questioned by military police.
• The latest defense spending bill includes measures to transfer security clearance approval procedures from the White House to the Pentagon starting in October.
• The House Judiciary Committee is subpoenaing White House emails in connection with government records-keeping laws, Democrats believe the White House has violated the Presidential Records Act.
• The House has passed a debt limit bill backed by Donald Trump, but the measure faces an uncertain future in the Senate where several Republicans have already announced plans to block the bill.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide the the Galaxy is returning as a TV series on Hulu, the Douglas Adams series is slated for a potential 2020 debut.

Last Call For An Eye For An Eye

After a nearly 20-year moratorium on federal death penalty executions, the Trump regime is starting them back up, because the cruelty is the point.

Attorney General Bill Barr announced Thursday the federal government will be resuming capital punishment.

In the announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice said the decision was made related to "five death-row inmates convicted of murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our society -- children and the elderly."

The DOJ further added that Barr had asked Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons to "schedule to executions" of those five individuals.

"The Justice Department upholds the rule of law -- and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system," Barr said in the announcement.
(MORE: New Hampshire bans the death penalty after lawmakers override governor's veto )

According to the Justice Department, the inmates to be executed include a member of a white supremacist group who murdered a family of three and threw them into the Illinois Bayou in Arkansas in 1999. Another is a man who stabbed to death a 63-year-old grandmother and forced her granddaughter to sit next to her dead body on a "30 to 40-mile drive" before then murdering her as well.

DOJ says all executions will take place at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana.

States have been arguing over the death penaly, with several having moved to stop the practice in recent years.  The federal government had stopped too in 2003, arguably the only humane thing Dubya did in his eight years, and that moratorium continued through the Obama administration.

And then, Bill Barr came along.

Funny, I remember all the 2020 Democratic candidates and civil rights activists and criminal justice experts who told me Donald Trump was going to do the right thing on prison reform.

Weird.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

One piece of new information that Robert Mueller did provide yesterday was the fact that the Russians are still, right now, attacking US election security in order to sow chaos and damage the country. 

The biggest takeaway from Robert Mueller's appearances on Capitol Hill is not that Donald Trump may have obstructed justice, although that's what most people continue to argue about. 

It's that Russians are still interfering in US elections. 

"They're doing it as we sit here," Mueller told lawmakers of Russian interference. Earlier he'd said how that aspect of his investigation has been underplayed will have a long-term effect on the US. 

In his report, the former special counsel disclosed that Russian hackers compromised local election systems of two Florida counties in 2016, a development later confirmed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, although he said no votes were changed. And while Mueller did not bring conspiracy charges, it's been well documented that Russians in 2016 were doing their best to help Trump, not Clinton, win. 

Yet despite Mueller's testimony, the special counsel report and alarming statements from elsewhere in Washington, public urgency on addressing Russian interference for the 2020 election appears lacking.

After Mueller's testimony, Senate Democrats tried to get House measures passed that would strengthen cybersecurity measures protecting US elections.

Republicans blocked them all.  Again.

Democrats cited Mueller as they tried to get consent on Wednesday evening to pass their bills.

"Mr. Mueller's testimony should serve as a warning to every member of this body about what could happen in 2020, literally in our next elections," said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

He added that "unfortunately, in the nearly three years since we uncovered Russia's attack on our democracy, this body has not held a single vote on stand-alone legislation to protect our elections."

Warner tried to get consent to pass the Foreign Influence Reporting in Elections Act by unanimous consent. Under Warner's bill, campaign officials would have to report contacts with foreign nationals who are trying to make campaign donations or coordinate with the campaign to the Federal Election Commission, which would in turn notify the FBI.

"If a foreign adversary tries to offer assistance to your campaign, your response should not be 'thank you.' Your response should be a moral obligation to tell the FBI," he said.

But Hyde-Smith objected to passing his legislation. Sen. Marsha Blackburn(R-Tenn.) similarly blocked the legislation in June, arguing that it was overly broad.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) tried to get consent to pass similar legislation that would require candidates, campaign officials and their family members to notify the FBI of assistance offers.

"It differs in some technical aspects [from the Warner bill] … but it is the same idea because it codifies into law what is already a moral duty, a patriotic duty and basic common sense," Blumenthal said.

Hyde-Smith also objected to Blumenthal's bill.

She objected a third time when Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tried to get consent to pass legislation he crafted with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that would allow the Senate Sergeant at Arms to provide voluntary cybersecurity assistance for personal accounts and devices of senators and staff.

"I don't see how anyone can consider what I have proposed to be a partisan issue," Wyden said.

Democrats still haven't figured out that Republicans want elections to be vulnerable so Trump can win.  There's no other explanation.

They know he will lose without Russia rigging the election.

Do we understand the stakes now?

Deportation Nation, Con't

The Trump regime's latest plan to stop essentially all refugees and asylum-seekers from entering the country has been blocked by a federal judge as the fight almost certainly heads for a SCOTUS showdown later this year.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in California issued the preliminary injunction blocking the new asylum restrictions Wednesday afternoon, just hours after a hearing where he grilled a government attorney over the new sweeping change to asylum policy.
The policy, announced by the Trump administration last week, would broadly end asylum eligibility for migrants who pass through another country on their journey to the United States' southern border with Mexico but do not attempt to seek the protection in those other countries first.

During a hearing Wednesday morning in San Francisco, Department of Justice lawyer Scott Stewart defended the new interim rule as “lawful” and “appropriately issued.” The government has said the rule is needed to “address the urgent, ongoing crisis” at the border.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for Constitutional Rights have challenged the policy, saying it violates domestic and international law and the right of migrants to seek asylum in the U.S.

“The court recognized, as it did with the first asylum ban, that the Trump administration was attempting an unlawful end run around asylum protections enacted by Congress,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said after the ruling.

During the hearing, Tigar questioned the ability of countries like Mexico and Guatemala to adequately deal with and process asylum-seekers.

“There’s some pretty tough stuff in there,” said Tigar.

Tigar added that in Mexico, while “applications are up dramatically” there was no indication that Mexico would be able to handle the volume of asylum-seekers and process all of their claims.

The judge added that neither in the rule nor in the government’s administrative record was he able to find a “scintilla of evidence” about the adequacy of the asylum system in Guatemala.

Again, the Trump regime's plan is to start mass deportations and dumping millions of people into Guatemala arbitrarily, some of them almost certainly will be US citizens born in the US, but nobody will care and they will be disappeared anyway.

For now, the plan is being blocked, but the Trump regime will almost certainly want expedited rulings on this when SCOTUS's term begins in October.  They want that deportation train rolling in time for the 2020 campaign.

StupidiNews!

• Hungarian swimmer Kristof Milak has won the World Swimming Championship's 200-meter butterfly, the 19-year-old shattered the long-time world record held by American Michael Phelps.
• Legendary actor Rutger Hauer passed away this week at the age of 75, the Golden Globe-winning Dutchman was featured in movies like Blade Runner, Ladyhawke, The Hitcher and Blind Fury.
• Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rossello has resigned after weeks of protests and pending impeachment proceedings after leaked text messages revealed his disdain for constituents.
• Donald Trump has issued promised vetos against a bipartisan measures that would have blocked the sales of arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
• The Federal Trade Commission has nailed Facebook with an unprecedented $5 billion fine for privacy violations, but critics say the deal doesn't hold CEO Mark Zuckerberg accountable.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

To sum up how today went in Washington DC, Robert Mueller testified for five hours in front of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.

Democratic Representative Ted Lieu asked if the reason Mueller did not indict Trump was the Justice Department’s long-standing policy against charging a sitting president. Mueller replied: “That is correct,” but in his appearance before the House Intelligence Committee later, he corrected himself.

“We did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime,” he said.

Asked whether the report exonerated Trump on the question of obstruction of justice, Mueller said: “That is not what the report said. “The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed.”

Asked if Trump wanted Mueller fired for investigating possible obstruction of justice: “That’s what it says in the report, yes.”
Asked if the president could be prosecuted for obstruction of justice after he leaves office, Mueller said: “True.”

Democratic Representative Val Demings mentioned people who were charged with lying to Mueller’s investigators and asked if there were lying witnesses who had not been indicted.

“I think there’s probably a spectrum of witnesses in terms of those who are not telling the full truth and those who are outright liars,” he said.

When she asked if lies by Trump campaign and administration officials had hindered his work, Mueller said: “I would generally agree with that.” 

Asked about Trump’s comments on WikiLeaks, including “I love WikiLeaks,” after it released emails stolen from the Clinton campaign, Mueller said: “‘Problematic’ is an understatement in terms of what it displays in terms of giving some ... hope or some boost to what is or should be illegal activity.”

As for communication between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks, Mueller said, “Disturbing and also subject to investigation.”

After the Mueller testimony, Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders held a press conference covering what Mueller said and their plan, or lack thereof.

Following former special counsel Robert Mueller’s congressional hearings, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on Wednesday that she still isn’t ready to begin impeachment proceeding against President Donald Trump.
“My position has always been whatever decision we made in that regard would have to be done with our strongest possible hand, and we still have some outstanding matters in the courts,” Pelosi said at a press conference alongside Intel Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA), Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MA). “It’s about the Congress, the Constitution and the courts. And we are fighting the President in the courts.”

When reporters pressed her on impeachment a few minutes later, Pelosi said Democrats have “several considerations,” likely referring to Democrats’ lawsuits on obtaining Trump’s financial information.

“It’s about what information is there,” Pelosi said. “And this isn’t endless. This isn’t endless.”

Thus, we have CNN boiling the day down to a five word headline:

And that's that.

Hungry Hungry Hypocrites

The Trump regime's new SNAP program rules will kick over three million Americans off the program, mostly in blue states.  Surprise!

The proposed rule by the U.S. Department of Agriculture comes after Congress initially failed to come to an agreement on the issue in the 2018 farm bill, and looks to limit access to SNAP benefits by not automatically enrolling individuals who are also receiving minimal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF.

On call with reporters, Acting Deputy Under Secretary Brandon Lipps said the proposed rule would result in saving an average of $2.5 billion per year.

The department in a press release on Tuesday said the move closes a “loophole,” and said that the program should provide benefits “with consistency and integrity to those most in need.”

“For too long, this loophole has been used to effectively bypass important eligibility guidelines. Too often, states have misused this flexibility without restraint,” said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in the news release.
(MORE: Trump's new budget resurrects controversial 'harvest box' proposal for food stamps as part of broader welfare reform )

“The American people expect their government to be fair, efficient, and to have integrity – just as they do in their own homes, businesses, and communities. That is why we are changing the rules, preventing abuse of a critical safety net system, so those who need food assistance the most are the only ones who receive it,” he said.

The top Democrat on Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, called the move "yet another attempt by this Administration to circumvent Congress and make harmful changes to nutrition assistance that have been repeatedly rejected on a bipartisan basis."

"This rule would take food away from families, prevent children from getting school meals, and make it harder for states to administer food assistance," the Michigan Democrat said in a statement. "The Administration should stop undermining the intent of Congress and instead focus on implementing the bipartisan Farm Bill that the President signed into law.”

And which states automatically enroll families who are receiving TANF benefits in SNAP?  40 states, plus DC do, but the largest numbers in that category are in California, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts, plus DC.

Even worse, the kids who get kicked off of SNAP over this -- and there will be millions of kids, mind you -- will lose their free or reduced price school lunch benefit.  There was no appetite, even among Republicans in Congress, to make these kinds of arbitrary and draconian cuts to SNAP in the Farm Bill last year.

So Trump is doing it anyway.

The cruelty is the point.

An In Defensible Position

Yesterday the GOP-led Senate quietly confirmed Raytheon VP and lobbyist Mark Esper as Defense Secretary, with nary a whimper from Senate Dems...save Elizabeth Warren.

Mark Esper has received enough bipartisan Senate support to be confirmed as the next secretary of defense — the first to permanently serve in that role for seven months.

Esper was President Donald Trump’s second choice after the first, Patrick Shanahan, decided not to seek confirmation due to a sensitive family matter. That opened the door for Esper, previously the Army’s civilian chief and later acting defense secretary, to get the official job.

Esper’s background concerns some people. Although he served as an Army infantryman — giving him a good understanding of everyday soldiering — he later worked as a Raytheon lobbyist for seven years before joining the Pentagon in 2017. That’s potentially problematic as the defense secretary has immense sway over which weapons the Pentagon buys. He may have to recuse himself from any decision related to Raytheon — a major defense firm — vying for contracts.

What’s more, the Trump administration is in the middle of a massive diplomatic spat with Turkey over its decision to buy and use Russian-made missiles instead of Raytheon-made ones.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a top Democratic candidate for president, grilled Esper on his Raytheon past during last week’s Senate Armed Services Committee nomination hearing last week — providing the only truly uncomfortable moment in an otherwise uneventful appearance. Warren wanted Esper to recuse himself from all Raytheon-related matters, but Esper said he didn’t need to after conferring with ethics officials.

And he sailed through 90-8.  Ninety.  To Eight.  If there's one small bonus to all this, it's that Esper has a hard-on for dealing with China and not Iran.

None of that concerned the administration, it seemed, and there may be a few reasons why.

First, Esper was a former classmate of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s at West Point, class of 1986, and Pompeo and Esper reportedly have a friendly relationship. That gives the secretary a likely ally in deliberations on foreign policy against National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Second, Esper has long pushed for the US to take a hardline stance against China. “We may be a little bit late — we are late — coming to the recognition that we are in a strategic competition with China,” he told Reuters in April.

“The issue of China, competition with China, China’s capabilities, is not a new one to me,” said the former combat veteran who served in the first Gulf War. “That is both the foundation and the shaping of my views on these various issues, because I’ve watched this evolution for 20 years now.”

That means Trump now has a like-minded person in the Pentagon when it comes to confronting China, although the president has not shown any appetite for a military fight with that country.

Maybe Esper will stop John Bolton's mustache from taking us to war with Iran, but if newly-minted UK PM Boris Johnson has his way, we'll be joining the Brits very soon in a very stupid war.  Or maybe two if Esper decides China is a threat and convinces Trump as such.

StupidiNews!

• Afghan President Ashraf Ghani says he wants an explanation for Donald Trump's remarks that he could "end the Afghan War" but Afghanistan "would be wiped off the face of the Earth"
• Former Chinese premier Li Peng, the so-called "Butcher of Beijing" for his hardline practices against dissidents, has died at the age of 90 according to Chinese state media.
• Automaker Nissan says it will cut 10,000 jobs worldwide, up from the 4,800 job cuts announced in May after 2nd quarter numbers came in well short of expectations.
• US trade negotiators are headed to Beijing next week for another round of trade talks as China and the US continue to butt heads over Trump regime tariffs.
• Attorney General Bill Barr says Silicon Valley must put back doors in encryption protocols for law enforcement and national security reasons.