Last Call For Trump's Emission Mission

Scott Pruitt and the Trump EPA just killed those Obama-era fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, and want to force all states to comply with the new lower standards, including California.

Setting up its most aggressive clash yet with California over environmental standards, the Trump administration signaled Monday it may revoke the state's ability under the Clean Air Act to impose stricter standards for vehicle emissions.

The announcement came as the administration confirmed it is tearing up landmark fuel economy rules pushing auto-makers to manufacture cleaner burning cars and SUVs.

"Cooperative federalism doesn't mean that one state can dictate standards for the rest of the country," Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt said in a statement. "EPA will set a national standard for greenhouse gas emissions that allows auto manufacturers to make cars that people both want and can afford – while still expanding environmental and safety benefits of newer cars. It's in everyone's best interest to have a national standard, and we look forward to working with all states, including California, as we work to finalize that standard."

Pruitt said that the administration will abandon the federal goal of having the vehicles average 55 miles per gallon by 2025. That target will be replaced with a weaker fuel economy standard that the administration will settle on at a later date.

The action sets up the administration for a confrontation with California and a dozen other states that have authority under federal law to continue pursuing the Obama era target. Those states met the administration's action with defiance.

The current national fuel economy targets, which were championed by California, represent the single biggest action the federal government has taken to curb greenhouse gases. They are crucial to California and other states to meeting their goals for climate action and reducing smog and other air pollution. The targets are also essential to an effort led by Gov. Jerry Brown and others to carry the country toward meeting the obligations in the Paris Accord on climate change that the Trump administration is refusing to honor.

The administration's action, which came at the behest of automakers, could have little use to them if California succeeds in holding out. The state has unique authority under the Clean Air Act to impose standards tougher than the EPA, and other states are permitted under federal law to embrace the California rules. A dozen states have. They are poised to join California in fighting the administration.

Automakers were counting on electric cars tipping the scales for their fleet averages enough to get those numbers up to 55 MPG by 2025, but sales aren't going so well (ask Tesla.)  Chevy and Nissan are doing well enough with their electric offerings, but other automakers are struggling, even with the electric car tax credit.

But now the Trump regime is going after the Clean Air Act and this will certainly end up in front of the Supreme Court again, the same Supreme Court that ruled that Obama-era power plant emissions curbs were unconstitutional.  We'll see where this goes, but I expect California to lose, and I expect the standards to be dropped significantly from 55 MPG to something far less.

Good thing we didn't elect that Hillary bitch though, things might have gotten really bad for the environment, I'm sure.

Begun, These Trade Wars Have

To paraphrase Yoda in the Star Wars prequels there, appropriate because our current government is a fantasy with strange-colored puppets and doesn't make a lot of sense.  Despite the notion last month of Beijing coming to the negotiating table in response to Trump's belligerence, China has instead gone full bore on trade retaliation that will quickly begin to harm US farmers and growers and is calling Trump's bluff completely.

China says it's rolling out new tariffs on U.S. meat, fruit and other products as retaliation against taxes approved by President Trump on imported steel and aluminum.

The Chinese finance ministry says in a statement that the new tariffs begin Monday.

The announcement follows through on warnings Chinese officials have made for several weeks in an escalating trade dispute with the United States.

China's Customs Tariff Commission is increasing the tariff rate on eight imported U.S. products, including pork, by 25 percent. It's also imposing a new 15 percent tariff on 120 imported U.S. commodities, including fruits.

The tariffs mirror Mr. Trump's 25 percent charge on imported steel and 15 percent hike on aluminum. Mr. Trump's tariffs are partly a response to complaints that Beijing steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology.

Again, agriculture in Trump states are going to be hurt the most.  Right now the damage is limited to about $3 billion a year, but remember that Trump already wants $50-60 billion in yearly sanctions against China and there will be more coming in the months ahead.  It's a full-scale trade war if Trump continues, and Republicans will pay dearly for it in November.

Meanwhile, Beijing is hitting us where it really counts: Chinese real estate investment has all but vanished in West Coast states.

Chinese companies have been among the biggest commercial real estate investors in the Los Angeles area in the last five years, spending more than $5 billion to buy property in the region during that time, according to brokerage Cushman and Wakefield. That includes the sites of billion-dollar condominium, hotel and retail complexes being built downtown and large airport-area hotels that have been upgraded by their Chinese owners.

But they are withdrawing from some high-profile ventures as leaders in Beijing constrict the flow of money out of the country. In August, China's State Council laid down new regulations on outbound investments to reduce the risk of runaway debt and to blunt capital flight.

Also dramatically on the wane is Chinese investment through the federal EB-5 program, which allows foreigners to apply to become legal U.S. residents in exchange for investing $500,000 or more in a business that creates or preserves at least 10 jobs.

Millions of dollars raised by individual Chinese investors angling for green cards in past years have paid for such major projects as the trendy Dream Hotel complex in Hollywood and the Courtyard Los Angeles L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles.

"There has been a huge fall-off in EB-5 funding," said Los Angeles attorney Jim Butler, who helps arrange investments from overseas through the program.

China can definitely make our lives far more miserable than we can theirs right now.  We import over $100 billion from China a year and Trump wants that to essentially end.

When it does, it's going to take a lot of jobs with it, particularly retail, agriculture, and manufacturing. I've been saying for a while now that Trump's tax cuts in addition to a Chinese trade war and the housing bubble means a guaranteed recession on the horizon, and soon.  Should that include a shooting war too in Iran or North Korea, very much a possibility now, and you have the recipe for an American economic disaster that will make the last one look like a walk in the park.

Immigration Nation, Con't

Meanwhile in the absence of Republicans who control Congress actually doing anything, America's immigration policy is now being directed by an angry 71-year-old FOX News viewer who keeps screaming at the TV.

President Trump said Sunday that there would be no deal to legalize the status of millions of “dreamers,” undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, and directed congressional Republicans to pass tough new anti-immigration legislation.

Trump also criticized Mexican authorities as being too lax about border security, saying the U.S.-Mexico border was “getting more dangerous.” He threatened to “stop” the North American Free Trade Agreement if Mexico does not “stop the big drug and people flows.”

In fiery Sunday morning tweets, sent an hour after he wished Americans a “HAPPY EASTER” and minutes before he attended a church service here, Trump vowed, “NO MORE DACA DEAL.”

As he walked into an Episcopal service at the Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea with first lady Melania and daughter Tiffany, Trump elaborated on his position on immigration to the traveling pool of reporters. He accused congressional Democrats of stymieing a potential deal to protect dreamers, after Trump canceled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in the fall.

“A lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of DACA,” Trump said. “They had a great chance. The Democrats blew it.”

The president added, “Mexico has got to help us at the border ... They flow right through Mexico; they send them into the United States. It can't happen like that way anymore.”

In his first of three immigration-related tweets, Trump wrote, “Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release. Getting more dangerous. ‘Caravans’ coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!”

The DACA program was begun during the Obama administration to provide temporary protection to dreamers. Trump canceled DACA in the fall but said he would like to reach a deal with Congress to protect the dreamers from deportation in exchange for funding to build his long-promised wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

He, however, went on to reject immigration proposals from congressional Democrats.

Trump's Sunday tweets may have been in response to commentary on Fox News Channel, which he is known to watch regularly. Fox aired a segment earlier in the morning with the headline: “CARAVAN OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS HEADED TO U.S.”

So at this point the best way to reach Trump on taking executive action is to run a story about it on Fox and Friends in the morning.  That makes them one of the most politically powerful players in DC.

And that should scare the pants off you.

StupidiNews!

• British authorities are now saying that the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal had to have been carried out with Kremlin approval due to the rare Russian nerve agent used.
• Botswana President Ian Khama stepped down over the weekend, leaving his office after a decade, saying that the country must preserve its democracy by holding regular elections.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Turkey this week to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to launch Turkey's first nuclear power station.
• Ticketmaster is pushing back against reports that the company is anti-competitive as new antitrust investigations from the DoJ were reported over the weekend.
• China's Tiangong-1 space station burnt up over the Pacific Sunday night after engineers lost control over the station's engines 18 months ago, the station was last used in 2013.

Last Call For Teaching Them A Lesson

Following a successful teacher's wildcat strike in West Virginia that shut down schools for nine days, Oklahoma teachers are following suit with a strike of their own starting Monday.

Craig Troxell steps precariously across a customer's roof, marking hail damage from yet another Oklahoma storm. He still smells of the freshly cut grass from the swanky side of town, where he had just mowed lawns to make a few extra dollars. 

But Troxell, 50, isn't a landscaper nor roof salesman by trade. He's a full-time high school science teacher who works four jobs to make ends meet. 

"Teacher morale gets worse every year," said Troxell, who also drives a school bus before and after school. "I've heard a lot of my (teacher) acquaintances walk away and get a different job. They don't want to do it anymore." 

Oklahoma is among the bottom three states for teacher salaries, where educators often work about 10 years before reaching the $40,000 salary mark. And they haven't gotten a raise from the state in 10 years. 

While educators nationwide have seen slight paycheck bumps over the past decade, when adjusted for inflation, teachers have actually lost 3% of their income from 2006 to 2016, according to the National Education Association. 

Recently, the Oklahoma teachers' union called for $10,000 teacher raises, $5,000 raises for support staff and more than $200 million for education funding. 

Lawmakers agreed on an average teacher raise of $6,100, $1,250 for support staff and a $50 million increase in education funding -- a measure Gov. Mary Fallin signed into law Thursday. 

But many teachers say it's not enough. So on Monday, Troxell and thousands of other teachers will walk out -- prompting some schools to shut down indefinitely. 

"We're at the end of the rope," Troxell said. 

He's far from alone. Several teachers told CNN they're working multiple jobs in food delivery, retail, rideshare driving, restaurants and even surrogate pregnancy to pay the bills. Some now rely on a food bank to feed their own children. 

You have to go into it for the love of the job and kids, because you'll never do the job for the money.  We live in a nation where we value education as the great equalizer, and then make sure the men and women providing it are themselves college graduates and are making less money than retail store managers or kitchen managers.

Then we constantly attack them as greedy agents of a manipulative conspiracy to destroy our kids' minds and cut their salaries as a result.  Ten years ago in the last recession thousands of teachers were laid off and tens of thousands more saw their benefits dismantled by states.

It's gotten so bad that even here in Bevinstan, teachers are taking to the streets this week too.

Multiple school systems in Kentucky were forced to close Friday, as teacher absences soared amid growing protest over legislation that educators say would strike a blow to pension plans.

Teachers from across the state descended on the capitol in Frankfort, outraged about what they described as a surprise move to pass legislation their union said Friday would mean existing employees pay more for pension benefits and new hires don’t get the same plan that previous generations relied on.

The protesters hung a sprawling banner from a capitol balcony — “Kentucky deserves better” — as hundreds converged, according to the Louisville Courier Journal. A rally is planned for Monday, when lawmakers return to the Capitol and most teachers are on spring break, union officials said.

The action in Kentucky came as the latest flash point over pay and benefits for the nation’s teachers. In West Virginia,educators closed schools for nine days as they held out for a 5 percent raise, which they won for teachers and all state workers in March.

More recently Arizona teachers, among the nation’s lowest-paid, threatened to strike over raises and funding cuts to school programs. Oklahoma teachers are planning a walkout Monday if they don’t get what they want before then.

In Kentucky, the teacher absences touched off school closings in the state’s largest school systems, in Louisville and Lexington. School officials in Lexington said more than one-third of school employees did not show up Friday, and they did not have enough substitutes to compensate.

The Courier Journal found more than 20 counties announcing school closures Friday, as tensions flared. Kentucky has 173 school systems, located in 120 counties.

The state teachers’ union, the Kentucky Education Association, with a membership of 45,000, had not called on teachers to skip the workday but issued a sharply worded statement about the legislative action.

“This kind of backroom dealing is shameful,” the statement said. “Pitting government interests against the interests of current and future educators is cowardly.”

The walkout here in Kentucky is expected to continue tomorrow with a major protest in Frankfort with thousands of teachers coming in from across the state.

Arizona will most likely be next.

Hold on, folks.  We're seeing something work this time.

Bibi Wags The Dog

Facing an increasingly growing bribery and corruption scandal involving payoffs to the media, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is struggling to keep his government afloat as calls for his resignation are getting louder and louder.  As a result, the Israeli military went into Gaza on Friday as Palestinians living there marched to protest the ongoing blockade and opened fire on Palestinians, killing at least 15 and injuring hundreds in the resulting bloodbath.

Israel will target militant groups inside Gaza if violence along the territory’s border with Israel drags on, the chief military spokesman warned on Saturday, a day after 15 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the area’s deadliest violence in four years.

The violence significantly diminished Saturday as just small groups of Palestinians threw stones in several areas near the border fence, drawing Israeli fire that injured 25 people, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

Friday’s mass marches were largely led by Gaza’s ruling Hamas group and touted as the start of a six-week-long protest campaign against a stifling decade-old blockade of the territory.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel congratulated soldiers Saturday for allowing the rest of the country to celebrate the Passover holiday safely.

“Israel is acting determinedly and decisively to protect its sovereignty and the security of its citizens,” he said.

Palestinian health officials said 15 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire and more than 750 hit by live rounds Friday, making it the bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 cross-border war between Israel and Hamas.

Naturally, the Trump regime is providing full cover for the attack. CNN reports even higher numbers for the dead and wounded.

The US blocked a United Nations Security Council statement Saturday morning, which called for an independent inquiry into Friday's violence in Gaza that left at least 17 Palestinians dead and more than 1,400 injured, two UN diplomats tell CNN. 

Following Friday's escalated confrontations, Kuwait drafted a statement asking the Security Council to take action. 

It is unclear if other countries would have also objected, UN diplomats tell CNN. If one country objects, then the statement cannot be adopted. 

But Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon lodged a complaint with the United Nations Security Council for holding an emergency session on the first night of Passover -- a major Jewish holiday -- according to a statement released by Israel's UN Mission on Sunday. 

Danon claimed Kuwait intentionally called for the session as Israel's UN Mission was observing Passover, thus barring their participation while they observed a religious holiday. 

He said the move "exploited procedural rules" and is "antithetical to the spirit of the UN," according to the Israeli Mission statement. 

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had called for an independent inquiry into Friday's violence. 

Guterres made his comments late Friday before the emergency UN Security Council meeting to address the issue. UN spokesman Farhan Haq relayed his statement to the media. 

"This tragedy underlines the urgency of revitalizing the peace process aiming at creating the conditions for a return to meaningful negotiations for a peaceful solution that will allow Palestinians and Israelis to live side by side peacefully and in security," Guterres was reported as saying.

Netanyahu is promising more military action if the protests are not stopped.  It will come anyway, and of course we can't possibly change horses in midstream like this when there's a war going on...

Wag the dog.

The Rise Of Trump's State Media

The running joke for years is that FOX News has been the propaganda arm of the GOP and in many ways it has been, replete with attacks on Democrats and liberals for well over a decade, but here in the Trump era there's a far more sinister attack on on the nation's free press, and it isn't coming from cable news at all.

Rather it's coming from your local network news affiliate, and those affiliates are increasingly owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative far-right media conglomerate that has been quietly buying up the news stations that you've watched and trusted for years.  I've talked about Sinclair before as they moved to buy dozens of local TV stations in markets across the country and then forced those stations to run pro-Trump segments on their local news broadcasts and "terror alert" segments that attack immigrants and especially Muslims.

Now Sinclair is forcing their local anchors to attack non-Sinclair stations as "fake news".

Seattle-based ABC affiliate KOMO-TV says its owner, the conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, is forcing its reporters to air pre-scripted segments about fake news media, in an attempt to undermine non-Sinclair stations.

Sinclair has long produced “must-run” segments for its stations, dispersing them to its various subsidiaries and requiring the local stations to run controversial, typically conservative commentary promos alongside their regular news coverage. However, in recent weeks, it’s begun turning its sights on the competition, throwing in mentions of “fake news,” among other things.

“The promos, which began airing on the station last week, are part of a Sinclair campaign that forces local anchors to read Sinclair-written scripts warning of the dangers of ‘one-sided news stories plaguing our country,'” the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on Thursday.

The Post-Intelligencer published one of the scripts this week; in it, the authors lament the “trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories” and the “sharing of biased and false news,” referencing President Trump’s preferred term for the press, “fake news.”

These Sinclair stations are literally being given scripts to read, because they are Trump state media stations now.

(A) But we’re concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country. The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media.

(B) More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories… stories that just aren’t true, without checking facts first.

(A) Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think’…This is extremely dangerous to a democracy.

Don't believe me?  Here's video of Sinclair station anchors all over the country in the last couple of weeks reading this exact script.

How America's largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump's war on the media: https://t.co/iLVtKRQycL pic.twitter.com/dMdSGellH3

— Deadspin (@Deadspin) March 31, 2018

This would be cute if Sinclair wasn't so obviously sinister.  And yes, these are all Sinclair stations in America.

Sinclair regularly runs disinformation segments favorable to President Trump: one of its staples is a recurring pre-taped segment featuring Sinclair’s chief political analyst, Russian-born former Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn. As ThinkProgress previously reported, those segments frequently include misleading talking points and misinformation from the Trump administration, packaged as actual political analysis and news coverage.

Another previously recurring segment, “Behind the Headlines” with Mark Hyman, Sinclair’s vice president for corporate relations, frequently parroted administration talking points on controversial subjects like health care, immigration, free speech, and extremism, functioning as right-wing and white nationalist propaganda.

More recently, Sinclair pushed a must-run segment featuring former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka complaining about the existence of the so-called “Deep State,” and unelected group of government officials who are supposedly manipulating policy and controlling the public narrative. The segment was reportedly produced by Sinclair national correspondent Kristine Frazao, who previously worked at Russian state-run media outlet RT.

If you're getting your news from one of these stations, be aware they are Sinclair-owned and producing pro-Trump propaganda on a regular basis.  They have been for years now.  Here in Cincy they run the CBS and CW affiliate, WKRC, the area's most popular local news station, where you get happy stories like this about the "Deep State".

Welcome to the era of the regime's state-run media.  You're living in it, and odds are increasingly goo that you and your family are getting their local news from it too.

Sunday Long Read: Helping Houston, See Ya San Juan

Our Sunday Long Read comes to us from Politico's Danny Vinik, where his wide-ranging investigation into the Trump regime's FEMA response to last year's deadly hurricanes (in what should come as a surprise to precisely nobody) finds our petty child-in-chief and his GOP enablers made sure Texas got all the funds it could for disaster relief last year after hurricane Harvey, but he made absolutely sure that Puerto Rico is still ravaged, still has thousands without power, and is still tens of billions in debt.

As Hurricane Maria unleashed its fury on Puerto Rico in mid-September, knocking out the island’s electrical system and damaging hundreds of thousands of homes, disaster recovery experts expected that only one man could handle the enormity of the task ahead: Mike Byrne. 

But Byrne, a widely acknowledged star of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, remained in Houston, which had been ravaged by Hurricane Harvey less than a month earlier.

Today, disaster recovery experts still express shock that FEMA kept Byrne in an already-stabilizing Texas and didn’t send him to Puerto Rico for three more weeks. But now, the decision strikes many as emblematic of a double standard within the Trump administration. A POLITICO review of public documents, newly obtained FEMA records and interviews with more than 50 people involved with disaster response indicates that the Trump administration — and the president himself — responded far more aggressively to Texas than to Puerto Rico. 

“We have the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. We go anywhere, anytime we want in the world,” bemoaned retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who led the military’s relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina. “And [in Puerto Rico] we didn’t use those assets the way they should have been used.” 

No two hurricanes are alike, and Harvey and Maria were vastly different storms that struck areas with vastly different financial, geographic and political situations. But a comparison of government statistics relating to the two recovery efforts strongly supports the views of disaster-recovery experts that FEMA and the Trump administration exerted a faster, and initially greater, effort in Texas, even though the damage in Puerto Rico exceeded that in Houston. 

Within six days of Hurricane Harvey, U.S. Northern Command had deployed 73 helicopters over Houston, which are critical for saving victims and delivering emergency supplies. It took at least three weeks after Maria before it had more than 70 helicopters flying above Puerto Rico. 

Nine days after the respective hurricanes, FEMA had approved $141.8 million in individual assistance to Harvey victims, versus just $6.2 million for Maria victims.
During the first nine days after Harvey, FEMA provided 5.1 million meals, 4.5 million liters of water and over 20,000 tarps to Houston; but in the same period, it delivered just 1.6 million meals, 2.8 million liters of water and roughly 5,000 tarps to Puerto Rico. 

Nine days after Harvey, the federal government had 30,000 personnel in the Houston region, compared with 10,000 at the same point after Maria. 

It took just 10 days for FEMA to approve permanent disaster work for Texas, compared with 43 days for Puerto Rico. 

Seventy-eight days after each hurricane, FEMA had approved 39 percent of federal applications for relief from victims of Harvey, versus 28 percent for Maria. 

Those imbalances track with another one: the attention of President Donald Trump. In public, Trump appeared much more concerned with the victims of Harvey than Maria. He visited Houston twice during the first eight days after the hurricane, but didn’t visit Puerto Rico for 13 days. In the first week after the disasters, Trump sent three times as many tweets about Harvey as Maria — 24 about the plight of Texas and eight about Puerto Rico, including a series of comments about Puerto Rico’s debt level and quality of infrastructure that local officials considered insulting and enraging while lives were still in jeopardy. 

“Wow – Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood! We have an all out effort going, and going well!” he crowed about Texas on Aug. 27, two days after the storm made landfall.

At every turn, the Trump regime favored Texas with dollars, manpower, materiel, expertise, planning, infrastructure and medical help and left Puerto Rico in the mud, both figuratively and on a literal level in some locations.

And make no mistake: the US citizens of Puerto Rico are still reeling from neglect today, six months after Maria destroyed the island.

It's Mueller Time

As I've been saying, the leaks coming out on Mueller's activities and specifically what aspects of the Trump/Russia investigation he continues to probe are calculated at this point to put the fear of God into the little orange rat bastard and his team.  Trump's side may be pushing a narrative where there's enough cover to try to fire Mueller, but every time he does we get another leak on what Mueller's looking into, and there's plenty of subjects to cover.

This time around, Mueller's target involves Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Investigators probing whether Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia have been questioning witnesses about events at the 2016 Republican National Convention, according to two sources familiar with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiries.

Mueller’s team has been asking about a convention-related event attended by both Russia’s U.S. ambassador and Jeff Sessions, the first U.S. senator to support Trump and now his attorney general, said one source, who requested anonymity due to the ongoing investigation. 

Another issue Mueller’s team has been asking about is how and why Republican Party platform language hostile to Russia was deleted from a section of the document related to Ukraine, said another source who also requested anonymity. 

Mueller’s interest in what happened at the Republican convention in Cleveland, Ohio in July 2016, is an indication that Trump campaign contacts and actions related to Russia remain central to the special counsel’s investigation.

Trump, who was nominated as the Republican Party candidate for the November 2016 election during the convention, has denied any collusion with Russia during the campaign. Moscow has denied U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings that it interfered in the campaign to try to tilt the election in Trump’s favor. 

Investigators have asked detailed questions about conversations that Sessions, then a Trump campaign adviser, had at a convention event attended by then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, said the first source, who was questioned by Mueller about the event.

The same source said Mueller’s team also has been asking whether Sessions had private discussions with Kislyak on the sidelines of a campaign speech Trump gave at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel in April 2016.

The Ukraine language being pulled from the GOP platform is one thing certainly, but the far bigger issue is Sessions meeting with our old friend Sergei Kislyak (which of course leads us back to Michael Flynn).  The fact that Mueller's team is now openly asking questions about the Attorney General at all should be giving both Sessions and Trump major heartburn.

And that April 2016 meeting between Kislyak and Sessions was always a major issue, we knew that Mueller was probably looking into it, now we know (and Trump knows) he is.

Stay tuned.  Trump always gets grouchy when Sessions ends up in the papers next to Mueller's name.

Getting Tough With Vlad, Con't

The Russians are meeting every expulsion of one of their diplomats by the US, UK, EU and NATO with expulsions of their own as the game of retaliation continues for the chemical weapon attack on British soil earlier this month.

The Kremlin announced on Thursday that it would expel 60 Americans, and probably dozens of other diplomats, and close the American consulate in St. Petersburg, a move that intensifies Russia’s clash with Europe and the United States. 

The action was in retaliation for the expulsion of more than 150 Russian officials from other countries — which was itself a reaction to a nerve-agent attack on British soil that Britain and its allies have blamed on Moscow. 

The United States ambassador to Russia, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, announced. Sixty American diplomats will be expelled from Russia — the same as the number of Russian diplomats whom Washington is expelling. The Americans were given until April 5 to leave the country. 

In addition, Russia plans to expel an unspecified number of diplomats from the more than 20 other countries and NATO that joined Britain and the United States in expelling Russians. Mr. Lavrov said the number would “mirror” the number of expelled Russians, which suggested that the ultimate total might rise above 150. (Britain and Russia have already each expelled 23 of the other country’s representatives.)

The crisis over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter has driven tensions between the Kremlin and the West to their highest pitch in decades. The tit-for-tat responses raise the prospect of further, more serious escalations, either public or clandestine.

Things are only going to get worse from here.  I would expect that the next step will be Putin wanting a little chat with his orange friend and making it clear that things can get much, much more uncomfortable for Trump politically, and soon.

I would expect serious concessions to Russia, mostly involving Turkey and Syria.  We'll see what transpires, but this is the part of the proceedings where we find out just how much of Trump's ass Putin owns.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment

You probably don't know the name Jason Roberts but you should: he's the Senate GOP staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee who has been sabotaging the Trump/Russia investigation since day one, as ProPublica's Robert Faturechi reports.

For the last year, Foster — empowered by his boss, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the committee’s chairman — has been the behind-the-scenes architect of an assault on the FBI, and most centrally its role in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to interviews with current and former congressional aides, federal law enforcement officials and others. 

With Foster in charge of his oversight work, Grassley has openly speculated about whether former FBI director James Comey leaked classified information as Comey raised alarms about President Donald Trump’s possible interference in the Russia probe. Grassley and the other Republicans on the committee have questioned the impartiality of a former member of Mueller’s team, cast doubt on the credibility of the FBI’s secret court application for permission to surveil a Trump campaign associate and called for a second special counsel to investigate matters related to Hillary Clinton. A firm that conducted opposition research on Trump has made clear in court it believes Grassley’s committee, with Foster as its lead investigator, had leaked sensitive information about its business. 

Most recently, many of those interviewed by ProPublica said, Foster engineered Grassley’s highly unusual public announcement asking federal authorities to consider criminal charges against Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy who compiled the dossier warning of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. 

For Foster’s critics, and they include Republicans as well as Democrats, his provocative work on the Trump-Russia investigation is just the latest chapter in the career of a partisan combatant willing to discard norms and indulge in conspiratorial thinking as he pursues investigations favorable to Republicans. 

Foster — who cut his teeth on Capitol Hill working on the staff of former Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., who fueled the theory of foul play in a Clinton aide’s suicide and called for required AIDS testing for all Americans — drew the ire of many for his role in various Judiciary Committee investigations of the Obama administration. 

“That’s the way it seemed to go every time with Jason, conspiracy to the point it was ridiculous,” said one Democratic aide who had dealt with Foster. The aide was one of several interviewed by ProPublica, Democrat and Republican, who would not be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the inner workings of Congress. 

Foster’s career, including his work on the committee’s Russia investigation, has caught the attention of the Trump administration. Foster has twice been approached about a possible job, an inspector general role, with the administration, a situation that some say should have required his recusal from work on the collusion inquiry.

It gets far worse than a simple case of Trump wanting to reward one of his champions in the investigation of the White House. Foster is a dangerous ideologue and partisan bomb-thrower.

In examining Foster’s role in the committee’s Trump-Russia investigation, ProPublica discovered that a decade ago he had written an anonymous blog, using the handle “extremist.” The posts by Foster, who was then working for Grassley on the Senate Finance Committee, made clear he was some sort of D.C. insider, and he came across as a knowing observer as the country navigated the thorny political fights of the Bush and Obama eras. 

But there were also plenty of times “extremist” lived up to his chosen name. 

He warned of an Islamic takeover. He wrote that homosexuality was akin to incest. He questioned whether waterboarding really amounted to torture. He derided Obama’s proposal to negotiate with the Taliban, and was particularly galled that the president doing so had the middle name Hussein. Liberals? They were anti-American. 

He even mused about whether Sen. Joseph McCarthy, condemned as a demagogue for his 1950s anti-Communist crusade, should be remembered more kindly.

And this guy is the chief investigative counsel on the committee, meaning he's running the fieldwork for the Senate Judiciary on this.  If you want to know why the Senate Judiciary hasn't done anything but attack the FBI and Mueller for the last year, now you know why.

The Shulkin Shuffle's Sinister Secret

As Luke Barnes over at Think Progress notes, David Shulkin's tenure as Secretary of Veterans Affairs was on thin ice for months now, but the real reason he was let go is because Trump wants to privatize health care for veterans.

Shulkin was the only holdover from the Obama era in Trump’s cabinet, having been appointed in 2015 to lead the V.A.’s health system. His replacement is the current White House physician who previously lauded the president’s health, but has no experience running a major bureaucratic agency. 

Shulkin’s tenure as V.A. secretary had reportedly been in peril for months. In February, his chief of staff resigned after being accused of “serious derelictions” in expenses during a 10-day trip to Europe in 2017 — including improperly accepting tickets to the Wimbledon tennis championship. Later in February, reports surfaced that senior aides within the V.A. were actively conspiring to have him removed. 

But the major controversy within the V.A. centers around the Trump administration’s plans to offer veterans more privatized medical care at the expense of taxpayers. During his confirmation hearing, Shulkin vowed to resist any privatization efforts, which had been a Trump campaign promise. 

“V.A. is a unique national resource that is worth saving,” Shulkin told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee last February during his confirmation hearing. “The Department of Veterans Affairs will not be privatized under my watch.” 

And it's no longer his watch, now is it?

During the 2016 presidential election, Trump labeled the V.A. “the most corrupt agency in the United States.” But after he won the presidential election, major veterans groups banded together to ask Trump to keep Obama’s secretary, Robert A. McDonald.
“We all want McDonald,” Joe Chenelly, executive director of Amvets, told the New York Times in December 2016. “He has a good business mind, he is experienced and we feel we can trust him.” Trump replaced him anyway. 

Democratic lawmakers warned Wednesday night that Shulkin’s removal paved the way for Trump to move forward with his goal of privatizing the agency. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the removal was “a troubling step towards the Trump Administration’s ultimate goal of V.A. privatization,” while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said that “the struggle at the Veterans Administration is about Trump’s desire to privatize the VA and his belief that Secretary David Shulkin is not moving fast enough in that direction.” 

Veterans groups have also been adamantly opposed to privatization. “We can’t see the number of veterans that VA sees on a regular basis if we’re going to pay the same rates that other health care industries pay in the community,” Verna Jones, executive director for the American Legion, said earlier in March. “One of the things we’re most concerned about is an increased contracting out, when we should be able to do that on VA campuses that will deplete the amount of money that’s available to see veterans.”

So yes, as with Medicare and Medicaid, expect to see a lot more "public-private partnerships" to bring health care to the nation's nine million veterans: steep cuts in benefits, quality, and longer wait times as caring for our military veterans becomes an issue of profit motive rather than a duty to serve those who served this country.

Shulkin took to the NY Times this morning to remind us that Trump and the GOP will do this unless we stop them.

Until the past few months, veteran issues were dealt with in a largely bipartisan way. (My 100-0 Senate confirmation was perhaps the best evidence that the V.A. has been the exception to Washington’s political polarization). Unfortunately, the department has become entangled in a brutal power struggle, with some political appointees choosing to promote their agendas instead of what’s best for veterans. These individuals, who seek to privatize veteran health care as an alternative to government-run V.A. care, unfortunately fail to engage in realistic plans regarding who will care for the more than 9 million veterans who rely on the department for life-sustaining care.

The private sector, already struggling to provide adequate access to care in many communities, is ill-prepared to handle the number and complexity of patients that would come from closing or downsizing V.A. hospitals and clinics, particularly when it involves the mental health needs of people scarred by the horrors of war. Working with community providers to adequately ensure that veterans’ needs are met is a good practice. But privatization leading to the dismantling of the department’s extensive health care system is a terrible idea. The department’s understanding of service-related health problems, its groundbreaking research and its special ability to work with military veterans cannot be easily replicated in the private sector.

I have fought to stand up for this great department and all that it embodies. In recent months, though, the environment in Washington has turned so toxic, chaotic, disrespectful and subversive that it became impossible for me to accomplish the important work that our veterans need and deserve. I can assure you that I will continue to speak out against those who seek to harm the V.A. by putting their personal agendas in front of the well-being of our veterans.

Trump is about to wreck the VA with Ronny Jackson and our veterans are the ones who will pay for it.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

In a story that should surprise nobody, the NY Times is reporting that outgoing Trump lawyer John Dowd brought up the issue of presidential pardons for Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn last year as Mueller came down on them like the hammer of the gods.

A lawyer for President Trump broached the idea of Mr. Trump pardoning two of his former top advisers, Michael T. Flynn and Paul Manafort, with their lawyers last year, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions. 

The discussions came as the special counsel was building cases against both men, and they raise questions about whether the lawyer, John Dowd, who resigned last week, was offering pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation. 

The talks suggest that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were concerned about what Mr. Flynn and Mr. Manafort might reveal were they to cut a deal with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, in exchange for leniency. Mr. Mueller’s team could investigate the prospect that Mr. Dowd made pardon offers to thwart the inquiry, although legal experts are divided about whether such offers might constitute obstruction of justice. 

Mr. Dowd’s conversation with Mr. Flynn’s lawyer, Robert K. Kelner, occurred sometime after Mr. Dowd took over last summer as the president’s personal lawyer, at a time when a grand jury was hearing evidence against Mr. Flynn on a range of potential crimes. Mr. Flynn, who served as Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, agreed in late November to cooperate with the special counsel’s investigation. He pleaded guilty in December to lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with the Russian ambassador and received favorable sentencing terms. 

Mr. Dowd has said privately that he did not know why Mr. Flynn had accepted a plea, according to one of the people. He said he had told Mr. Kelner that the president had long believed that the case against Mr. Flynn was flimsy and was prepared to pardon him, the person said. 

The pardon discussion with Mr. Manafort’s attorney, Reginald J. Brown, came before his client was indicted in October on charges of money laundering and other financial crimes. Mr. Manafort, the former chairman of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, has pleaded not guilty and has told others he is not interested in a pardon because he believes he has done nothing wrong and the government overstepped its authority. Mr. Brown is no longer his lawyer. 

It is unclear whether Mr. Dowd discussed the pardons with Mr. Trump before bringing them up with the other lawyers.

This is pretty much the standard legal definition of Nixonian obstruction of justice, discussing pardons with potential co-conspirators and witnesses to Trump's misdeeds.   In the last couple of days we've seen a story all but proving collusion between Trump's campaign manager and Russian intelligence, and now we see all but proof of obstruction of justice.

No wonder then that the Trump regime is now laying the groundwork for firing Robert Mueller and soon.

When President Donald Trump lashed out against Robert Mueller by name earlier this month, the president’s supporters sprang into action — treating the chief Russia investigator to political campaign-style opposition research. 

Within hours, the Drudge Report featured a story blaming Mueller, the special counsel leading the Justice Department’s Russia probe, for the FBI’s clumsy investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks when Mueller ran the bureau. The independent pro-Trump journalist Sara Carter posted a story charging that Mueller, as a federal prosecutor in Boston in the mid-1980s, had covered up the FBI’s dealings with the Mafia informant Whitey Bulger. Carter was soon discussing her findings in prime time with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Meanwhile, Trump supporters on Twitter circulated video of testimony Mueller gave to Congress ahead of the 2003 Iraq War in which he endorsed the view, later proved false, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. 

To some, the barrage looked coordinated among pro-Trump allies and media outlets, a concerted effort to tarnish Mueller’s reputation as part of a political strategy to undermine, or even eventually fire, the Russia investigator. 

“It looks like the beginnings of a campaign,” a source familiar with Trump’s legal strategy said. “It looks like they are trying to seed the ground. Ultimately, if the president determines he wants to fire Mueller, he’s going to want to make sure there’s ample public record that he can fall back on.”

Up until the last month or so, leaks out of the Mueller team were few and far between, especially when it came to coming indictments.  Now we're getting leaks fast and hard as we've seen this week, along with the end of the House investigation into Trump/Russia and the public plan to discredit Mueller, both in response to Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner finding himself to be a major target for Mueller's probe, and subpoenas by Mueller for Trump Organization documents.

Remember that Trump considered Mueller's investigation moving into Trump's finances as crossing a red line.  Mueller jumped all over that line and everything since then has been Trump reacting.

On Mueller's side, there appear to be forces trying to keep him from being fired and these leaks are now appearing regularly, particularly on issues that took place last year.  I don't think it's Mueller himself, but the man's not stupid, either.

We'll see which side wins soon.  Trump is going to need to play his cards before the election season heats up, if he is going to try to fire Mueller it will have to happen very soon.  It's already April practically, it'll have to happen before Congress disappears for six months for recess so they can get their marching orders for the campaign trail.

Stay tuned.  Things are going to start moving fast now.  Trump isn't ruling out pardons either.

The White House on Wednesday refused to rule out the possibility that President Trump would issue pardons to former senior aides facing charges from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. 

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders read a statement from lawyer Ty Cobb saying that there has been no discussion or consideration of pardons “at this time.” 

“There's no discussion or consideration of that at this time,” Sanders told reporters. “The president has the authority to pardon individuals, but you're asking me about a specific case in which it hasn't been discussed.”

It's not obstruction of justice when it's destruction of justice.

StupidiNews!

• In a widely expected move, Donald Trump tweeted the firing of Veterans Affairs Secretary Dr. David Shulkin last night, he will be replaced with the White House physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson.
• Less than a week after Atlanta's city government computer network was hacked and continues to be held for ransom, hackers hit Baltimore's 911 call system on Sunday disrupting service.
• North and South Korea will hold their first summit in more than ten years on April 27, North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un will meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at a border village.
• Japanese automaker Nissan and French automaker Renault are in talks to turn their partnership into a full merger but both Japan and France may have government objections to the deal.
• In a first for the UK, the government has rejected permission to build an open-pit coal mine based on climate change concerns as Britain remains committed to phasing out coal by 2025.

Last Call For America Gets That Poll-Axed Look, Con't

Public Policy Polling's latest national poll has some very interesting findings on guns, Donald Trump, the Mueller investigation and more.

PPP’s newest national poll finds that Americans like the high school students leading protests against gun violence across the country a whole lot more than they like the NRA. The high school students receive a positive 56/34 favorability rating for their efforts, while the NRA is upside down with 39% of voters seeing it favorably and 44% negatively. 

There’s 87% support for background checks for all gun buyers, compared to only 8% of voters who are opposed to that. That policy has the backing of 89% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans and independents. It’s hard to find anything 87% of Americans agree on- in fact on this same poll we found that only 81% think the sky is blue with 11% disputing that notion. 

We also found 64/26 support for a ban on assault weapons, again with bipartisan agreement. Democrats (78/15), independents (61/25), and Republicans (49/40) are all in agreement. In general 60% of voters say they want stronger gun laws to 32% who are opposed. 

One new gun proposal voters don’t like though is giving them to teachers. Only 35% of voters think that’s a good idea, to 53% who say it’s a bad one.

Even Republicans want to ban assault weapons.  And yet, Congress will never touch this with the NRA GOP in charge.  So how are Republicans faring heading into November?

Not well.

Democrats continue to have a solid advantage on the generic Congressional ballot, leading 50-39. That edge grows to 55-39 among voters who say they’re ‘very excited’ to vote this year. Democrats lead by 14 points at 44-30 among independents. 

One piece of the Democratic advantage is that Republican Congressional leaders are extremely unpopular. Only 23% approve of the job Paul Ryan is doing to 58% who disapprove. He is only narrowly popular with Trump voters (44/39) and almost universally disliked by Clinton voters (6/76). Mitch McConnell is even worse off, with only 12% of voters approving of him to 62% who disapprove. He has similar numbers to Ryan with Clinton voters (7/69) but in contrast to Ryan is strongly disliked even by Trump voters (21/54). In 2010 Republicans used Nancy Pelosi’s unpopularity to great effect- Democrats may be able to do the same thing with Ryan and McConnell this time around. 

Another thing causing Republicans trouble is that the tax bill isn’t doing them any favors. Only 31% of voters say they support it to 40% who are opposed. Continuing with that 31% figure, only 31% of voters think the tax plan is actually going to help their family’s finances with 33% saying they think it will actually hurt, and 29% saying they think it will not have any impact. 57% think the tax plan will mostly help the rich to 29% who think the middle class will be the biggest beneficiaries.

The extremely unpopular Donald Trump isn't helping them either, his approval rating is stuck at 39%.  But speaking of 39% as a specific poll result...

So 46% of Americans believe Trump colluded with the Russians, but 39% would want Trump to remain president even if Mueller dropped conclusive evidence that collusion happened. A quarter of Americans in fact want Mueller fired. 37% of people believe the entire Russian collusion issue is fake news anyway.

When people say Mueller will not save us, I'm inclined to believe them if 2 out of 5 people think Trump should stay in office no matter what illegality he has done. Again, the true solution is Democratic domination of the 2018 elections at both the state and federal level.