Last Call For The House That Ruth Built

The Trump Regime needs a win quite badly right now, and nothing would cause Republicans and Trump's rabid base to forget everything more quickly than should Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg be unable to continue on the Supreme Court.

The White House is reaching out to political allies and conservative activist groups to prepare for an ailing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s possible death or departure from the Supreme Court — an event that would trigger the second bitter confirmation battle of President Donald Trump’s tenure.

The outreach began after Ginsburg, 85, on Monday missed oral arguments at the courtfor the first time in her 25 years on the bench. The justice, who was nominated to the court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, announced in late December that she underwent a surgical procedure to remove two cancerous growths from her lungs.

The White House "is taking the temperature on possible short-list candidates, reaching out to key stakeholders, and just making sure that people are informed on the process," said a source familiar with those conversations, who spoke on background given the delicate nature of the subject. "They're doing it very quietly, of course, because the idea is not to be opportunistic, but just to be prepared so we aren't caught flat-footed."

Ginsburg had a pulmonary lobectomy, the Supreme Court said in a statement, and her doctors said that post-surgery there was “no evidence of any remaining disease.” She has also recovered from several past health scares. But her departure from the Court would allow Trump to nominate a third Supreme Court justice — the most in one presidential term since President Ronald Reagan placed three judges on the highest court during his second term.

The nine-member court is currently divided 5-4 between its conservative and liberal wings. Ginsburg’s departure would allow Trump to create the Court’s strongest conservative majority in decades, a scenario sure to bring intense opposition from Democrats and liberal activists still furious over the October confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Needless to say, a 6-3 conservative majority would be the utter end of classic liberalism in America and assure the country's descent into theocratic Christian Dominionism, if not full-on white supremacy as a government imperative.

But the ghouls couldn't slaver any harder from their gaping maws.

Sears No Bucks

Sears, one of America's greatest retail legends, most notable for its commitment to serve black customers through the era of Jim Crow with its mail catalog, was facing imminent liquidation this morning, but this afternoon it appears to have been spared heading for history's scrap heap.

Sears was facing the possibility of shutting down, until it reached an 11th-hour deal Tuesday to stay open, at least for now. 

After two long delays at a morning hearing in bankruptcy court, attorneys for Sears announced it had accepted a revised bid from a hedge fund controlled by Eddie Lampert, the chairman and former CEO of Sears. The deal would keep 425 of the stores open. 

Lampert's $4.4 billion offer does not complete the sale, but rather starts an auction that is due to be completed on January 14. It is still possible that those wishing to shutdown the company will bid more for the assets than Lampert is offering. 

Judge Robert Drain still needs to approve the agreement, but called the deal "a good development." 

It gives Sears a chance to survive, which appeared to be slipping way heading into the hearing. 

Lampert submitted a bid on December 28 and Sears had until Friday to accept it, but the company didn't comment before Tuesday's hearing. That's because attorneys were working feverishly to get it done. 

The deal was reached after days of "virtually round-the-clock negotiations," Sears attorney Ray Schrock told the court. 

The talks continued into Tuesday. A hearing planned for 10 a.m. didn't actually get underway until after 1 p.m. because attorneys were huddled to discuss details of the bid. 

In the end, greed wrecked Sears, it will eventually be pillaged, and 50,000 jobs and 125 years of history will sacrificed on the altar of Wall Street.  JC Penney's is almost certainly next.

Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

Trump's primetime speech Tuesday night was supposed to "win" him the shutdown and bring Democrats crawling on their knees to beg him to reopen the government the next morning.  In reality, Trump threw a hissy fit and stormed out of his own office, because he's a tantrum baby.

Democrats came out of the latest government shutdown talks at the White House on Wednesday claiming that President Donald Trump walked out in a "temper tantrum" when they again refused to meet his demand that they agree to fund his border wall.

After the meeting ended, the president tweeted that the negotiations were "a total waste of time."

Standing outside the West Wing, Republican and Democratic leaders described a meeting in the Situation Room that was dysfunctional, frustrating, and brief, lasting just 14 minutes.

"It’s cold out here and the temperature wasn't much warmer inside the Situation Room," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the talks quickly broke down after Trump asked Democrats if they would agree to fund his proposed border wall.

"We saw a temper tantrum because he couldn't get his way and he just walked out of the meeting," Schumer said, calling the president's decision to not reopen the government without border wall funding "cruel" and "callous" as federal workers will not get their first scheduled paycheck of the shutdown on Friday.

"He sort of slammed the table and when Leader Pelosi said she didn't agree with the wall, he just walked out and said, 'We have nothing to discuss.' So he said it was a waste of his time. That is sad and unfortunate," Schumer said, describing the meeting.

America is now reduced to the capricious whims of a whiny-ass septuagenarian buffoon.  Now, House Republicans are beginning to panic along with their Senate colleagues, to the point where they're starting to vote for Democratic bills to reopen the government.

The House passed a bill Wednesday evening that would reopen the Treasury Department and ensure that the IRS would remain funded.

The measure passed on a 240 to 188 vote, with eight Republicans breaking ranks to vote in favor of the bill. A handful of Republicans also joined Democrats last week in voting for the measure as part of a broader package.

The legislation has no current path to passage. Trump has said he will not sign legislation reopening the government unless it includes taxpayer funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — and both Trump and Vice President Pence have visited the Capitol this week urging GOP lawmakers to vote down any such Democratic proposals. 

Something's got to give, and soon.

StupidiNews!

• House Democrats have passed legislation defending the Affordable Care Act, but the bill has no future in the GOP-controlled Senate.
• California investigators using DNA evidence have cleared the Golden State Killer of a 1975 murder, prosecutors remain confident that the man that was convicted was the correct culprit.
• Senate Finance Committee Chair Republican Chuck Grassley says that Donald Trump will not receive expanded tariff authority as requested by the White House.
• Tech giant Oracle has bought the naming rights to San Francisco's Giants Stadium for more than $200 million as AT&T will not renew its current deal with the baseball team.
• Walmart is testing autonomous delivery van service for customers in Phoenix, the retail chain is partnering with automated driving startup Udelv.

Last Call For Food For Thought(lessness)

As we come up on the end of Week 3 of the Trump shutdown, please keep in mind that FDA food inspections aren't considered government-essential services and right now most food is not being inspected at all, so hey, I hope you haven't eaten anything in January.

The furloughing of hundreds of Food and Drug Administration inspectors has sharply reduced inspections of the nation’s food supply — one of the many repercussions of the partial government shutdown that are making Americans potentially less safe.

The agency, which oversees 80 percent of the food supply, has suspended all routine inspections of domestic food-processing facilities, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in an interview. He is working on a plan to bring inspectors back as early as next week to inspect facilities considered high-risk because they handle sensitive items such as seafood, soft cheese and vegetables, or have a history of problems.

“We are doing what we can to mitigate any risk to consumers through the shutdown,” Gottlieb said.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit advocacy group, described the inspection reductions as unacceptable.

“That puts our food supply at risk,” said Sarah Sorscher, deputy director of regulatory affairs at the group. “Regular inspections, which help stop foodborne illness before people get sick, are vital.”

Foodborne illnesses are a major problem in the United States, sickening 48 million people each year and killing 3,000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.

Food inspections are just one of the public health and safety efforts that have been cut or curtailed during the shutdown, now deep into its third week. The federal government also keeps airplanes from colliding, inspects pharmaceutical drugs, pursues criminals and defends against possible terrorist and cyberattacks. It is a 24-7-365 effort to make Americans safer.

But a shutdown upends the calculus of risk management as agencies including the FBI, Coast Guard, Secret Service, FDA, Federal Aviation Administration and Agriculture Department face drastically reduced resources.

Again, Trump thinks this is a hostage situation where he can win by making Democrats fold through attrition, and once again the cruelty is the point.  A national outbreak of E. coli or the FAA shutting down all flights because of downed systems will start getting people's attention, I guess.

Worth noting that a government already wrecked when it was operation is now broken, and even if people got back to work tomorrow, it would be quite some time before we got back to even nominal 2018 levels of Trump regime "broken on purpose" government-run disaster.

That Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein is now expected to leave the Justice Department to make way for the expected confirmation of Attorney General William Barr.

Rosenstein has communicated to President Donald Trump and White House officials his plan to depart the administration around the time William Barr, Trump's nominee for attorney general, would take office following a Senate confirmation.

Sources told ABC News Rosenstein wants to ensure a smooth transition to his successor and would accommodate the needs of Barr, should he be confirmed.

Rosenstein apparently had long been thinking he would serve about two years, and there was no indication that he was being forced out at this moment by the president.

Upon the termination of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, speculation mounted that Rosenstein would depart shortly thereafter, yet he's remained in his post as Matt Whitaker has served as acting Attorney General since late November.

Rosenstein oversaw special counsel Robert Mueller's probe for more than a year, after Sessions had recused from the matter over his role in Trump's presidential campaign.

Like other senior leaders within the Justice Department, Rosenstein became a frequent target of Trump's on Twitter, with the president recently re-posting an image of Rosenstein and others behind bars.

As far as the Mueller probe goes, Rosenstein is no longer Mueller's boss anyway with the summary firing of Jeff Sessions, acting AG Matt Whitaker is. Whitaker hasn't so far chosen to interfere overtly in the Mueller probe yet, that may be up to William Barr after he's confirmed by the Senate GOP.

Still, it looks like to me with the Mueller probe and his expected report coming in the next several weeks, Rosenstein realized that he's not going to be able to stay past Barr's confirmation.  Of course, the part about the Trump regime not forcing him out is probably a lie too.

What effect this will have on the Mueller probe, we may not know for a while.

Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

Trump's propaganda dog and pony show last night wasn't worth covering, so I won't.  He spent the bulk of the time lying about the border, immigration in general, and the Democratic party.  The American people aren't falling for it, either.

A growing proportion of Americans blame President Donald Trump for a partial government shutdown that will cut off paychecks to federal workers this week, though Republicans mostly support his refusal to approve a budget without taxpayer dollars for the U.S.-Mexico border wall, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday.

The national opinion poll, which ran from Jan. 1 to Jan. 7, found that 51 percent of adults believe Trump “deserves most of the blame” for the shutdown, which entered its 18th day on Tuesday. That is up 4 percentage points from a similar poll that ran from Dec. 21 to 25.

Another 32 percent blame congressional Democrats for the shutdown and 7 percent blame congressional Republicans, according to the poll. Those percentages are mostly unchanged from the previous poll.

A majority now blame Trump, nearly 60% blame Republicans in general.  Not good numbers for the GOP, and they are well aware of the peril they are in.

Republicans face a tooth-and-nail struggle to keep their Senate majority in 2020 under the best of circumstances. But the prolonged government shutdown has gotten them off to a rough start, exploiting party divisions on immigration and giving Democrats fodder to attack Republican incumbents out of the gate.

Though the shutdown is likely to be long forgotten by November 2020, it’s already laid bare the schism incumbent senators will have to navigate — between President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration backers and independent voters who polling shows oppose the shutdown and the president’s border wall.

Two of the most vulnerable Republicans on the ballot next year, Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado and Susan Collins of Maine, have already broken with Trump and called for the government to reopen even without an agreement on the border wall. Other Republican senators haven’t gone there yet but are growing increasingly frustrated by the impasse.

“It hurts all of us and everybody that’s looking from the outside. They’re like: What is wrong with you? Why can’t you find a solution?” said Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, one of the Republicans up for reelection next year.

I don't think America is going to forget the shutdown between now and 2020.  I think this is going to stick for a while.  We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• UK Prime Minister Theresa May has lost another key Brexit vote, this time Parliament voted to curb government spending powers if no Brexit deal has been reached by the deadline.
• The District of Columbia water board is considering cutting off the White House after the partial shutdown has caused the Trump regime to miss a payment on the Oval Office water bill.
• With Senate Democrats vowing to block all non-shutdown related bills, a measure to allow state and local governments to punish Americans for boycotting Israel failed to overcome a filibuster.
• The National Association of Realtors says that shutdown-related damage to consumer confidence is starting to weigh on the US housing market in January.
• The family of a Florida man killed in a accident is suing electric automaker Tesla, alleging the battery was defective and resulted in the car's speed governor malfunctioning.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

So here's what we know about Paul Manafort and his lawyers right now: First, Manafort should immediately fire his legal team because they accidentally (or on purpose maybe at this point, who knows) forgot to make the redactions stick in his latest court filing with the Mueller team, and second, because of those missing redactions, we know get to see that  Robert Mueller believes Paul Manafort has been a very, very bad boy.

Paul Manafort shared 2016 presidential campaign polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former employee whom the FBI has said has ties to Russian intelligence, according to a court filing.

The apparently inadvertent revelation indicates a pathway by which the Russians could have had access to Trump campaign data.

The former Trump campaign chairman on Tuesday denied in a filing from his defense team that he broke his plea deal by lying repeatedly to prosecutors working for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III about that and other issues.

In his rebuttal to the special counsel’s claims of dishonesty, Manafort exposed details of the dispute, much of which centers on his relationship with Kilimnik. The Russian citizen, who began working for Manafort’s consulting firm starting in 2005, has been charged with helping his former boss to obstruct Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference into the 2016 election. He is believed to be in Moscow.

The special counsel alleged Manafort “lied about sharing polling data with Mr. Kilimnik related to the 2016 presidential campaign,” according to the unredacted filing, and discussed Ukrainian politics with Kilimnik during that time.

“Manafort ‘conceded’ that he discussed or may have discussed a Ukraine peace plan with Mr. Kilimnik on more than one occasion,” his attorneys quote the special counsel as saying, and “’acknowledged’ that he and Mr. Kilimnik met while they were both in Madrid.”

In his filing, Manafort’s lawyers said any inconsistencies in those interviews were unintentional.

“Issues and communications related to Ukrainian political events simply were not at the forefront of Mr. Manafort’s mind during the period at issue and it is not surprising at all that Mr. Manafort was unable to recall specific details prior to having his recollection refreshed,” they wrote. 

Mueller also said Manafort lied about contacting Trump administration officials after Trump took office. Manafort had told investigators he had no direct or indirect contact with White House officials since Trump’s inauguration, but Manafort had been in touch with officials as recently as the spring, according to the filing.

Manafort told a colleague in February — four months after he was indicted — that he was in contact with a senior administration official through that time, prosecutors said. And in a text message, he authorized another person to speak with a White House official on May 26, they alleged.

In Tuesday’s filing, Manafort’s attorneys said that person was “asking permission to use Mr. Manafort’s name as an introduction in the event the third-party met the President,” which “does not constitute outreach by Mr. Manafort to the President.”

Sorry Don.  Your campaign chairman gave internal campaign data to a foreign power in exchange for help.  That's collusion, period.  At this point, Marcy Wheeler figures, Manafort is going to keep letting redactions slip until Trump pardons him.

I have no idea whether this non-redaction was a colossal mistake or whether this was a cute way to disclose what evidence Mueller has shared with Manafort (remember: these five lies were not the only ones that Manafort told; just the only ones that Mueller wanted to describe).

But even ignoring the redaction fail, the filing feels very contemptuous, as if they’re still playing for a pardon.

Effectively, they’re admitting their client maybe lied or just conveniently forgot to minimize his ongoing conspiracy with someone even Rick Gates has said has ties to Russian intelligence — the same Russian intelligence agency that hacked Democrats. But they don’t think that’s a big deal. They’re just going to double down on obtaining more information on the evidence Mueller has while they wait for the pardon.

Seems about right.

The Cruelty Is The Point, Con't

Trump voters elected Donald Trump because he would not only use the power of the federal government to "Make America Great Again" but to specifically crush Obama coalition voters, so that never again would those people be allowed to elect a black president...or a woman.  They voted specifically for a government to help the "good, Christian people" of rural America and let urban America burn to the ground.

That's the implicit covenant Trump made., to roll back rights, to remove political and economic power, to put us in our place. Trump voters voted for payback, they voted for  punishment, they voted for, as Adam Serwer says to make cruelty the point. And under the tariffs and market plunges and now the government shutdown, in the Florida panhandle where Hurricane Michael ripped through not three months ago,  Trump voters are openly starting to question whether Trump is holding up his end.

Though Mr. Trump said on Twitter over the weekend that “most of the workers not getting paid are Democrats,” that is far from true in places like Jackson County, Fla., where Marianna is the county seat. It is a Republican bastion so deeply conservative that it was illegal to sell liquor by the drink until November 2017. The president and his plan for a wall along the border are popular here, as they are across much of the state, which might explain why Florida Republicans in Congress have done little to pressure party leaders in the Senate to put an end to the shutdown.

“Everybody I talk to wants the wall,” James Grover, 72, a car salesman from nearby Blountstown, said over breakfast on Saturday at the Waffle Iron, a diner on Route 90 that opens six days a week even though its facade, destroyed by the hurricane, is temporarily made up of plastic sheeting and plywood.

Few prison guards interviewed leveled any criticism at the president or his border policy, instead blaming the impasse on both Republicans and Democrats in Congress who have failed to reach any agreement.

“You can point fingers at both sides,” said Jason Griffin, 44. “I point fingers at everyone. If they want to get something done, they can.”

Mr. Vinzant, the union president, said he believed a wall was necessary because he trusted fellow public employees who work for the Border Patrol. “Those guys will sit there and say, ‘We need help,’” he said. “So I have to agree with it. We don’t have a choice.”

But that solidarity does not make the prison officers’ situation any easier, especially since they face an added stress: The Bureau of Prisons as a general condition of employment requires that its workers pay their debts in a timely fashion. Failure to do so can result in discipline.

“I hate the shutdown,” said Joseph Sims, 37, a corrections officer of six years. “Sometimes you’ve got to do stuff to get stuff done,” he said of Mr. Trump’s stance, “but now it’s starting to take a toll on everybody at work.”

On Saturday, Mr. Sims stood in his living room as his wife, Melissa Sims, a prison nurse, prepared to hug their 3-year-old twins before embarking on the nearly seven-hour drive to work for two weeks in Mississippi.

“Mommy’s got to go bye-bye,” she told her son, Eli, who shrieked: “No! You can’t!”

“Oh my gosh, don’t make me cry,” said Ms. Sims, 39.

The day after she is scheduled to return, her husband will have to leave for Yazoo City himself, so they will hardly see each other. And the shutdown seems likely to delay repairs at the Marianna prison, which workers fear will remain effectively closed for at least a year.

“We can handle a month or two, but if it gets much longer than that, I’m going to look for another job — a job in the private sector,” Ms. Sims said of working without pay.

She blamed Mr. Trump for the shutdown, a point on which she disagreed with her husband and most of her colleagues. “This definitely is making me more political than I have been in the past,” Ms. Sims said. She has been researching how Congress passes budget bills.

“My stance is that if there’s a wall, they’re going to find a way to get past it — legal or not,” Ms. Sims said.

“I believe there should be a barrier,” her husband countered.

A few miles away, another prison employee, Crystal Minton, accompanied her fiancé to a friend’s house to help clear the remnants of a metal roof mangled by the hurricane. Ms. Minton, a 38-year-old secretary, said she had obtained permission from the warden to put off her Mississippi duty until early February because she is a single mother caring for disabled parents. Her fiancé plans to take vacation days to look after Ms. Minton’s 7-year-old twins once she has to go to work.

The shutdown on top of the hurricane has caused Ms. Minton to rethink a lot of things.

“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

He's not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.

That's why they voted for him, you know.  This isn't a retired boomer in her 70's saying this, the typical example of "dying racism" in America.  This is somebody my age, my generation, saying this.  This is somebody born in 1981, a older Millennial.  Somebody who works in a prison as a secretary in the state with the highest incarcerated black population in America.  She knows exactly what she means when she says "the people he needs to be hurting" about Donald Trump.

The cruelty is the point.  I will keep saying this until people get this. Not just of Trump's cruelty, but the cruel power fantasies of Trump voters.  They voted for cruelty against people they feel aren't representative of their America.  They voted to get rid of us, to make us a permanent underclass in their America, so it is "great again".  They voted because their parents grew up in a time where black folk and brown folk had no rights, weren't their co-workers, definitely not their bosses, absolutely not their president.  They want that back because they are miserable under Trump, and they voted for making us miserable, not themselves.

Trump's getting close to blowing it.  That's why he needs the wall.  Everyone knows it.

The cruelty is the point.

Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

Donald Trump has already lost the government shutdown fight that he stupidly picked, and only now are Republicans in Congress beginning to realize just how much of a disaster this is going to be for them.

Several dozen House Republicans may cross the aisle this week to vote for Democratic bills to reopen shuttered parts of the federal government, spurring the White House into a dramatic effort to stem potential GOP defections.

White House officials and Republican congressional leaders worry that GOP support for the shutdown is eroding, weakening President Donald Trump’s hand as he seeks billions of dollars for a border wall that Democrats have vowed to oppose, according to GOP lawmakers and aides.

Hoping to sway skeptics in his party and the broader public, Trump will make an Oval Office address Tuesday night to discuss what he called the “Humanitarian and National Security Crisis on our Southern Border," he announced on Twitter. That will be followed by a Trump trip to the border region on Thursday.

Vice President Mike Pence and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will address House Republicans on Tuesday evening. The House on Wednesday is scheduled to vote on a Democratic bill designed to fund the IRS and several other agencies, the first of four bills Democrats hope to use to peel off Trump's GOP support in the House.

Without more money, the IRS could have a problem processing tax refunds. Russ Vought, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, reversed course on Monday and said refunds will be paid out, another move by the White House to ameliorate the impact of the shutdown.

It's very possible that Trump's primetime address tonight isn't to sell the Democrats on the wall, or even to declare a national emergency.  Maybe it's to sell his base on losing the wall fight.  If that's the case, tonight ought to be a lot of fun for the Democrats.

On the other hand, the kinds of things Trump can do right now under existing national emergency scenarios is outright frightening.

The premise underlying emergency powers is simple: The government’s ordinary powers might be insufficient in a crisis, and amending the law to provide greater ones might be too slow and cumbersome. Emergency powers are meant to give the government a temporary boost until the emergency passes or there is time to change the law through normal legislative processes.

Unlike the modern constitutions of many other countries, which specify when and how a state of emergency may be declared and which rights may be suspended, the U.S. Constitution itself includes no comprehensive separate regime for emergencies. Those few powers it does contain for dealing with certain urgent threats, it assigns to Congress, not the president. For instance, it lets Congress suspend the writ of habeas corpus—that is, allow government officials to imprison people without judicial review—“when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it” and “provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

Nonetheless, some legal scholars believe that the Constitution gives the president inherent emergency powers by making him commander in chief of the armed forces, or by vesting in him a broad, undefined “executive Power.” At key points in American history, presidents have cited inherent constitutional powers when taking drastic actions that were not authorized—or, in some cases, were explicitly prohibited—by Congress. Notorious examples include Franklin D. Roosevelt’s internment of U.S. citizens and residents of Japanese descent during World War II and George W. Bush’s programs of warrantless wiretapping and torture after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Abraham Lincoln conceded that his unilateral suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War was constitutionally questionable, but defended it as necessary to preserve the Union.

The Supreme Court has often upheld such actions or found ways to avoid reviewing them, at least while the crisis was in progress. Rulings such as Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer, in which the Court invalidated President Harry Truman’s bid to take over steel mills during the Korean War, have been the exception. And while those exceptions have outlined important limiting principles, the outer boundary of the president’s constitutional authority during emergencies remains poorly defined.

Presidents can also rely on a cornucopia of powers provided by Congress, which has historically been the principal source of emergency authority for the executive branch. Throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries, Congress passed laws to give the president additional leeway during military, economic, and labor crises. A more formalized approach evolved in the early 20th century, when Congress legislated powers that would lie dormant until the president activated them by declaring a national emergency. These statutory authorities began to pile up—and because presidents had little incentive to terminate states of emergency once declared, these piled up too. By the 1970s, hundreds of statutory emergency powers, and four clearly obsolete states of emergency, were in effect. For instance, the national emergency that Truman declared in 1950, during the Korean War, remained in place and was being used to help prosecute the war in Vietnam.

Aiming to rein in this proliferation, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act in 1976. Under this law, the president still has complete discretion to issue an emergency declaration—but he must specify in the declaration which powers he intends to use, issue public updates if he decides to invoke additional powers, and report to Congress on the government’s emergency-related expenditures every six months. The state of emergency expires after a year unless the president renews it, and the Senate and the House must meet every six months while the emergency is in effect “to consider a vote” on termination.

By any objective measure, the law has failed. Thirty states of emergency are in effect today—several times more than when the act was passed. Most have been renewed for years on end. And during the 40 years the law has been in place, Congress has not met even once, let alone every six months, to vote on whether to end them.

As a result, the president has access to emergency powers contained in 123 statutory provisions, as recently calculated by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, where I work. These laws address a broad range of matters, from military composition to agricultural exports to public contracts. For the most part, the president is free to use any of them; the National Emergencies Act doesn’t require that the powers invoked relate to the nature of the emergency. Even if the crisis at hand is, say, a nationwide crop blight, the president may activate the law that allows the secretary of transportation to requisition any privately owned vessel at sea. Many other laws permit the executive branch to take extraordinary action under specified conditions, such as war and domestic upheaval, regardless of whether a national emergency has been declared.

So yeah, if Trump wanted to, he could do a lot.  He hasn't.

Yet.

StupidiNews!

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are challenging networks to give Democrats equal time in response to Donald Trump's primetime speech tonight.
• Outgoing Tennessee GOP Gov. Bill Haslam will commute the sentence of Cyntoia Brown, who will be free in August after serving 15 years of a 51-year sentence for killing her attacker.
• North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un is vising China this week just days after threatening taking an "alternate path" if the US does not agree to Pyongyang's demands on rolling back sanctions.
• California's lawsuit against the Trump regime opened in a San Francisco courtroom Monday as both the Golden State and New York are suing over planned citizenship questions on the 2020 Census.
• The 4th Circuit has unanimously ruled that a Virginia county executive who blocked a critic on Facebook is in violation of the First Amendment.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump really, really, really wants to sell America a wall.

President Trump announced on Monday that he would address the nation from the Oval Office on Tuesday evening to discuss what he called the crisis at the southern border, and the White House said that later in the week he would travel to the border as part of his effort to persuade Americans of the need for a wall — the sticking point in negotiations with Democrats which caused a government shutdown.

It was not immediately clear which outlets would carry his address. The four major broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC — confirmed receiving the White House request on Monday for Mr. Trump to speak during the 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time slot, but producers had not decided whether to grant him the time. Pre-empting prime-time coverage is an expensive proposition for television executives, who have sold millions of dollars’ worth of advertising against entertainment programming.

Mr. Trump’s remarks could also be covered by cable news networks, which have a much smaller audience. CNN has agreed to air the address, a spokeswoman said on Monday. But cable news stations are accustomed to cutting in for breaking news, and they reach a far smaller audience than traditional broadcast stations.

In the recent past, White House requests to interrupt prime-time programming on the nation’s broadcast networks were rare and usually reserved for moments of national import, like the death of Osama bin Laden, and networks usually granted the requests. There have been instances, however, where such requests were rejected by producers as insufficiently newsworthy.

So, another loyalty oath check for the news media, and it allows Trump to either scream and threaten the press with destruction again or they cover his sales pitch in prime time, a win-win for Trump.  But Steve M brings up a very good point: when it comes to that national emergency that he wants so badly to declare, why not just get it over with and do it?

I know I'm supposed to regard Trump as a potential fascist dictator, but he seems reluctant to take a heavy-handed approach in this case.

I think I know why. Trump sells himself as the world's greatest dealmaker. He claims to be a guy who always triumphs as a dealmaker (no win-win scenarios for Trump). So it seems that he'd rather be seen as the Great Persuader than as the Great Dictator. He wants congressional Democrats to agree to give him 100% of what he wants.

Trump as the ultimate dealmaker is an important part of his mythos and once again his narcissism is getting in the way of what his party wants.

Trump could try brute force, but it's killing him that he can't sweet-talk America into the wall (especially when Fox keeps telling him that all real Americans want it). This is a weakness of Trump's. His party would let him get away with even greater abuses of power than he's attempted, but he'd rather prove that he's the world's greatest salesman. He really can't bear the thought that this might not be true.

That theory makes a lot of sense, actually.  He knows he needs to get a win on the wall, and he's convinced that he can sell Democrats and the entire country on it rather than try to force it. Of course, the "dealmaker" image is so much garbage in reality, as Bloomberg's Tim O'Brien points out.

Trump, in reality, was never a peerless or even a particularly skillful dealmaker, and many of the most significant business transactions he engineered imploded. Instead, he made his way in the world as an indefatigable self-promoter, a marketing confection and a human billboard who frequently licensed his name to buildings and products paid for by others.

In Trump’s professional life, his inept dealmaking often came home to roost in unmanageable debts and serial bankruptcies. In his more recent political and presidential life it has revealed itself through bungled, hapless efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act; forge a nuclear agreement with North Korea; wage trade wars with China, Mexico and Canada; retain control of the House of Representatives; turn military and diplomatic strategy on its head; lay siege to sensible immigration policy; and, now, force a government shutdown to secure funding for a prized project — a wall along the U.S.’s southern border.

Striking lasting deals requires intimacy with the finer points of what every party wants out of a negotiation, realistic goals, maturity, patience, flexibility — and enough leverage so the other side can’t simply stall or walk away from the table. Trump hasn’t met any of those prerequisites in his repeated efforts to fulfill his campaign promise to build a wall, a promise that played to the most xenophobic and bigoted portion of his base while not addressing any of the real shortcomings or necessary enhancements of federalimmigration policy.

“Policy” and “Trump” don’t really coexist, of course. The president lacks the interest or sophistication to steep himself in policy details, so he enters the immigration debate and dealmaking for his wall at a distinct disadvantage. For as much as he disparages politicians and public service, Trump is surrounded by Democrats and Republicans who have immersed themselves in immigration discussions for years. Expertise does matter, after all — and Trump doesn’t have it.

The most visible reminder of the raw amateurism that has undermined Trump’s dealmaking came in December during a memorable White House visit with a pair of Democrats, Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer. As the trio gradually became unsettled over policy differences that could lead to a government shutdown, Trump, ready to perform for the media he had invited to observe the chat, sallied forth in a burst of bravado.

“I am proud to shut down the government for border security,” Trump told Schumer. “I will take the mantle. I will shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it.”

Unforced error.

So what happens when Trump is unable to make the sale and once again it doesn't work?

We'll find out soon, I imagine.  It could be that Tuesday's address will be the emergency declaration anyway.

Who knows with Trump?

The Year In Tech Wrecks

It's once again time for Ars Technica's yearly Deathwatch party, where the website predicts the demise of various technology companies (or at least a big enough sea change to merit getting on the list), and I have to say, this year, if correct, is going to be really something.  First, last year's review:

To be a candidate for the Deathwatch, a company or product division of a company should have experienced at least one of the following:

• An extended period of lost market share in their particular category
• An extended period of financial losses or a pattern of annual losses
• Serious management, legal, or regulatory problems that raise questions about the business model or long-term strategy of the company or product line

Last year’s class has a high survival rate (for now). Faraday Future was looking like a dead car company walking before reaching a new investor agreement. Management changes at Uber have kept the company driving despite leaping into other markets—but it now faces a whole host of new competition in every segment, on top of its problems with its driverless car business. Twitter became profitable somehow (at least on paper) in 2018, despite the bad press the company garnered over Twitter being the favorite platform of government-sponsored information operations worldwide.

A few honorees remain on life support, however. SoundCloud has been treading water since it nearly ran out of cash in 2017, and it’s not clear what the survival strategy is for the company. HTC somehow also managed to eke out a profitable quarter in 2018—just one, mostly thanks to a cash infusion from a partial acquisition by Google. But that acquisition basically handed Google most of HTC's cell phone operations, so we’re counting HTC out for this year. LeEco, the company previously managed by Faraday Futures’ CEO, is also looking like roadkill in the US. Much of its operations have shut down as the company explores ways to recover.

We also put network neutrality on the Deathwatch last year. No matter how much the Internet mourns, it’s dead. It probably won’t be back any time soon. 

And this year, after putting Twitter and Uber on notice, Ars Technica goes straight for the jugular: the Social Network itself.

Last year, we left Facebook off our list for a number of reasons, starting with its insane profitability. While some readers called Facebook a “bubble,” it was clear that Facebook is the Internet’s version of “too big to fail”: deep pockets, well-entrenched, semi-diversified (with the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp), and billions of users. Little Twitter may finally be profitable, but TWTR’s most recent quarterly earnings are a mere five percent of Facebook’s.

And yet, here we are, putting Facebook on Deathwatch. The reasons have only a little bit to do with financials. We don’t expect that Facebook will go away, but this year is going to probably determine whether Facebook’s management team will continue as it is—or whether there’s a stockholder rebellion, or a government lawsuit, or some combination of both that drives CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others out.

Facebook is in crisis, thanks to a stream of what some might refer to by the technical term “really bad management decisions” moves made by the company over the past six years to accelerate the company’s growth while skirting the limits placed by a settlement reached with the FTC over privacy issues finalized in 2012. The Cambridge Analytica “data breach” scandal, other privacy concerns, fake news, and Russian troll ops blowback created a perfect storm that left Zuckerberg looking like a deer in the headlights in front of a series of US congressional hearings (and his subsequent refusal to testify before legislators in seven other countries).

I have to agree.  I don't see how Zuck survives as CEO...well, unless he throws COO Sheryl Sandburg into the blender, which he very well might.

Also on Ars's Deathwatch this year: the unholy monstrosity that is the sutured-together corpse of Yahoo! and AOL now known as Verizon's Oath spinoff, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, and Essential, the weirdest smartphone that precisely nobody bought.

We'll see how this all pans out, but if Zuck went out of pasture (along with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos) I think the world would be a much better place.

Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

The Trump Shutdown is now into its third week with no end in sight as the National Park Service has been reduced to taking the technically illegal step of using entrance fees to pay for cleanup and protection of national monuments and lands.

The National Park Service will take the unprecedented step of tapping entrance fees to pay for expanded operations at its most popular sites, officials said Sunday, as the federal government shutdown threatens to degrade some of the nation’s iconic landmarks.

Under a memorandum signed Saturday by the Interior Department’s acting secretary, David Bernhardt, and obtained by The Washington Post, park managers will be permitted to bring on additional staff to clean restrooms, haul trash, patrol the parks and open areas that have been shut during the more-than-two-week budget impasse. In a statement Sunday, National Park Service Deputy Director P. Daniel Smith acknowledged that the administration’s practice of keeping parks open but understaffed has become unsustainable at some of its most beloved sites.

“As the lapse in appropriations continues, it has become clear that highly visited parks with limited staff have urgent needs that cannot be addressed solely through the generosity of our partners,” Smith said. “We are taking this extraordinary step to ensure that parks are protected, and that visitors can continue to access parks with limited basic services.”

The move, which some critics said could be illegal, shows the extent to which the Trump administration’s decision to keep the national park system open to visitors is straining its capacity and potentially exposing public lands to long-term damage. During such shutdowns under the Clinton and Obama administrations, the Park Service chose to block access to its sites rather than leave them open with a skeleton staff on board. Trump officials chose the opposite course, and as trash has begun to mount and key habitat has been imperiled, the administration is struggling to manage the problems.

Congressional Democrats and some park advocates question whether the park-fee move is legal, because the fees that parks collect under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act are expressly designated to support visitor services instead of operations and basic maintenance. The secretarial order authorizes parks that have “available balances” of these fee funds to spend them on operations that include trash collection and sanitation, road maintenance, campground operations, law enforcement and emergency operations, and entrance staff “as necessary to provide critical safety operations.”

Meanwhile as trash and toilet paper overflow the nation's national parks, the nation's air travel system is now bordering on collapse as the nation's largest airline pilots union rips into Trump.

Delta and United Airlines pilots -- and those of JetBlue and many other airlines -- have had enough.

In a scorchingly fact-based letter to President Trump, the Air Line Pilots Association -- which represents 61,000 pilots -- used simple words.

Its president, Captain Joe DePete wrote:

I am writing to urge you to take the necessary steps to immediately end the shutdown of government agencies that is adversely affecting the safety, security and efficiency of our national airspace system.
DePete explained that the Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland Security operate as both regulators and service providers.

Mechanical inspections, drone oversight and new enhanced communications systems are all threatened.

Worse, air traffic controllers, airspace system maintenance personnel and air marshals are working unpaid.

Moreover, CNN now reports that hundreds of TSA screeners are calling in sick. Could the fact that they're not being paid have an influence?

This, too, says DePete, could jeopardize safety:

The pressure these civil servants are facing at home should not be ignored. At some point, these dedicated federal employees will encounter personal financial damages that will take a long time from which to recover, if at all.

By writing directly to the president -- and merely copying congressional leaders -- the pilots appear to be holding him responsible for the potential dangers flowing from the shutdown.

It's a remarkably forthright approach, one that might make some uncomfortable, given that it has inevitable political overtones.

By saying that only the president can and should take the necessary steps, the pilots seem to recognize that, whatever the merits (or demerits) of a wall, it isn't worth risking airline safety for what some believe is a symbol of power, rather than an effective security measure.

And now we find out that thousands, maybe tens of thousands, will start to be evicted as HUD housing grant programs expired on January 1.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development sent letters to 1,500 landlords Friday as part of a last-minute effort to prevent the eviction of thousands of tenants. A lot of those tenants live in units covered by a HUD program that many agency officials didn’t realize had expired on Jan. 1 and that they are now unable to renew.

The letters instruct the landlords to use their reserve accounts so that no one is evicted, HUD spokesman Jereon Brown said. He said the budget and contract staff are “scouring for money” to figure out how to fund the contracts on an interim basis.

And all of that is now solely on Donald Trump's head.