StupidiNews!

• Four Republican senators have come out against Donald Trump's nomination of Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve, meaning his confirmation is all but dead and Cain is expected to withdraw.
• Texas is refusing a House Oversight Committee letter to hand over information on the state's attempts to purge millions from voter rolls in 2016, saying it reserves to right to deny a public information request.
• House Democrats plan to introduce a $2 trillion infrastructure bill, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer saying they will meet with the White House.
• Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has been ousted from power and arrested by the country's army as a military coup deposed him on Thursday, a transitional council will rule for the next two years.
• Disney's new streaming service, Disney+, will launch November 12 for $6.99 a month with movies and new shows set in the Star Wars and Marvel universes as well as Fox's entire Simpsons library.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

The more we learn about the Trump regime's mass deportation scheme, the more it becomes clear that Trump is using the autocrat playbook, trying to deliberately create a situation so chaotic and broken that he believes the country will turn to him in order to save America.  

The first step was his emergency declaration, followed by the disaster situation on the border right now with DHS, ICE and the Border Patrol in total disarray and tens of thousands trying to cross the southern border.

Now we see that the Trump regime wanted to create chaos inside the US, with a plan to deliberately release ICE detainees onto the streets of "sanctuary cities" in order to weaken Democratic opposition in urban areas.

White House officials have tried to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to release detainees onto the streets of “sanctuary cities” to retaliate against President Trump’s political adversaries, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and email messages reviewed by The Washington Post.

Trump administration officials have proposed transporting detained immigrants to sanctuary cities at least twice in the past six months — once in November, as a migrant caravan approached the U.S. southern border, and again in February, amid a standoff with Democrats over funding for Trump’s border wall.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco was among those the White House wanted to target, according to DHS officials. The administration also considered releasing detainees in other Democratic strongholds.

White House officials first broached the plan in a Nov. 16 email, asking officials at several agencies whether members of the caravan could be arrested at the border and then bused “to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities,” places where local authorities have refused to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.

The White House told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the plan was intended to alleviate a shortage of jail space but also served to send a message to Democrats. The attempt at political retribution raised alarm within ICE, with a top official responding that it was rife with budgetary and liability concerns, and noting that “there are PR risks as well.”

After the White House pressed again in February, ICE’s legal department rejected the idea as inappropriate and rebuffed the administration.

A White House official and a spokesman for DHS sent nearly identical statements to The Post on Thursday, indicating that the proposal is no longer under consideration.

“This was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion,” the White House statement said.

Sure, it was just a proposal.  And now all the officials that rebuffed that proposal are gone, having been summarily fired by Trump in the last week, with the agencies in question now run by "acting" heads loyal to Trump and Trump alone. 

I'm sure it's a total coincidence.

The First Rule Of Trump Club

The first rule of keeping your creepy and dangerous Trump cult secret in DC is to talk to Politico about how cool Trump club is, I guess.

The club, an informal gathering that provides solidarity and networking opportunities in a hostile Washington, is open to what it calls “the Team” — Trump administration appointees as well as alumni of the campaign, transition and inaugural committee. Members wear a lapel pin fashioned after the butt end of a .45 caliber bullet casing and attend semi-regular gatherings that often feature remarks by better-known Trump-world figures such as Brad Parscale, Corey Lewandowski and Scaramucci.

Its operations, described here for the first time, offer insight into how the anonymous foot soldiers of Trump’s Washington have organized their social lives: discreetly, with an eye toward exclusivity and the aspirational lifestyle that has always marked the Trump brand.

Not quite a secret society, the club nonetheless goes to some lengths to fly under the radar: Public hints of its existence are scarce, and the locations of its events are withheld from attendees until they RSVP, all the better to evade the notice of pesky activists and nosy reporters. “In this political climate, there’s a lot of people who would not have pure intentions of coming to network,” explained a former campaign staffer familiar with the club. “They may be trying to infiltrate.”

This is totally normal behavior for people old enough to have drivers' licenses.

While it is common for veterans of presidential campaigns and administrations to form alumni groups, the 45 Club has taken on an outsized role as a refuge for junior operatives and appointees who have few connections in the capital. Barack Obama’s young staffers were the toast of Washington, and George W. Bush rode into town with a clubby, multi-generational political network that was heavy on the GOP establishment. But, in a reflection of his outsider campaign, Trump’s hires often came from outside the traditional feeding grounds of Republican politics. And in a city that has largely shunned them — dating app profiles here often declare an unwillingness to meet Trump’s supporters, let alone his aides — Trump’s young aides have formed an insular social scene.

“When you’ve kept the Washington Illuminati at a distance, I think you’re more likely to form groups of your own,” explained one club member.

Of course, because this is the Trump administration, there has been infighting: The 45 Club has been the subject of internecine sniping over charges that it is run by hangers-on bent on exploiting their tenuous connections to the president.

“They’re trying to create an exclusive club because they’ve been banned from every other exclusive club in D.C.,” sniped one former campaign staffer.

“Ironically enough, the two guys who started it were never on the campaign, never in the administration,” lamented Kevin Chmielewski, a member of the campaign’s advance team who went on to serve at the Environmental Protection Agency. “We were all kind of pissed about it, because it’s like, ‘Who are you to do that?’”

I can understand that when everyone in DC hates you because Trump is human filth, and that outside their little White House fiefdom, Trump people are rightfully shunned, that you would want your little clubhouse so you can commiserate in how awful the world is for white guys.

But these guys are all nursing a grudge against the country just like their boss, and I'll be damned if these guys don't have visions of being Trump's army to take over DC.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

So it turns out that Russian hackers hit voter registration systems in all 50 states during the 2016 campaign and not just the 21 states previously disclosed.  Surprise!

A joint intelligence bulletin (JIB) has been issued by the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation to state and local authorities regarding Russian hacking activities during the 2016 presidential election. While the bulletin contains no new technical information, it is the first official report to confirm that the Russian reconnaissance and hacking efforts in advance of the election went well beyond the 21 states confirmed in previous reports.

As reported by the intelligence newsletter OODA Loop, the JIB stated that, while the FBI and DHS "previously observed suspicious or malicious cyber activity against government networks in 21 states that we assessed was a Russian campaign seeking vulnerabilities and access to election infrastructure," new information obtained by the agencies "indicates that Russian government cyber actors engaged in research on—as well as direct visits to—election websites and networks in the majority of US states." While not providing specific details, the bulletin continued, "The FBI and DHS assess that Russian government cyber actors probably conducted research and reconnaissance against all US states’ election networks leading up to the 2016 Presidential elections."

DHS-FBI JIBs are unclassified documents, but they're usually marked "FOUO" (for official use only) and are shared through the DHS' state and major metropolitan Fusion Centers with state and local authorities. The details within the report are mostly well-known. "The information contained in this bulletin is consistent with what we have said publicly and what we have briefed to election officials on multiple occasions," a DHS spokesperson told Ars. "We assume the Russian government researched and in some cases targeted election infrastructure in all 50 states in an attempt to sow discord and influence the 2016 election."

In fact, DHS Assistant Secretary Jeanette Manfra told the Senate Homeland Security Committee in April of 2018 that Russia had likely at least performed reconnaissance on election infrastructure in all 50 states. The bulletin raises the confidence in that estimate, however, saying:

Russian cyber actors in the summer of 2016 conducted online research and reconnaissance to identify vulnerable databases, usernames, and passwords in webpages of a broader number of state and local websites than previously identified, bringing the number of states known to be researched by Russian actors to greater than 40. Despite gaps in our data where some states appear to be untouched by Russian activities, we have moderate confidence that Russian actors likely conducted at least reconnaissance against all US states based on the methodical nature of their research. This newly available information corroborates our previous assessment and enhances our understanding of the scale and scope of Russian operations to understand and exploit state and local election networks.

Please keep in mind the Trump regime has done everything possible to weaken US defenses against Russian hacking, including shutting down defense efforts at both the Pentagon and in the White House since taking office.

And if you don't think current Russian efforts to hack state voter registration rolls in order to help Trump purge Democrats aren't already underway right now, you've not been paying attention.

And speaking of Russian efforts to undermine the 2016 election, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange finally got tossed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London into the waiting arms of UK police and Justice Department espionage charges.

The dramatic expulsion follows a year of ratcheting tension between Assange and his Ecuadorian hosts, culminating in Wikileaks publicizing a leak of hundreds of thousands of hacked emails mysteriously stolen from the inboxes of Ecuador’s president and first lady. It was this last move that finally set Ecuador’s government firmly against Assange, who was by then already being treated less like a political refugee than an inmate—albeit one who was free to leave at any time.

“The patience of Ecuador has reached its limit on the behavior of Mr. Assange,” said Ecuador’s president Lenín Moreno on Thursday.
Assange, who has an outstanding warrant for jumping bail in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, was taken into custody after officers were invited inside by embassy officials. It’s a relatively minor charge, but Assange’s imminent freedom is far from assured.

British police confirmed a few hours after the initial arrest that Assange was arrested for a second time on behalf of U.S. authorities on an extradition warrant. The U.K. government didn't reveal much, only saying Assange is “accused in the United States of America of computer related offences.”

CNN reported that the U.S. Justice Department will soon announce charges against Assange and the cause for the extradition request.

Federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, have been working to build a case against the Australian cypherpunk for nearly a decade, and a paperwork error last year revealed they have a sealed criminal complaint at the ready in anticipation of this moment.

That complaint was unsealed today as domestic political pressure on President Moreno from an exposed Chinese corruption deal (lot of those going around) made Assange an albatross around his neck, and weight was finally too much for him to bear.  In fact, Moreno blames WikiLeaks for the documents that Moreno's opponents magically seemed to get their hands on.

Assange is facing conspiracy charges for working with convicted whistleblower Chelsea Manning.  What Assange isn't facing is charges of publishing classified material.  It seems Bill Barr isn't willing to go that far on carrying out Trump's media "enemies of the people" plan quite yet.

For now.  Let's remember that WikiLeaks helped Trump and Roger Stone leak the Russian-provided hacked Podesta DNC memos in 2016.  It's perfectly understandable that they want to toss Assange in a hole before he can bury Trump in one.

StupidiNews!

• Four million Americans in an area stretching from east of Denver to west of Minneapolis are in for a major spring blizzard today and tomorrow, several feet of snow could fall in parts of the Plains.
• With a Friday deadline on Brexit looming, European Union leaders have agreed to a six-month delay with UK negotiators as the government of PM Theresa May tries to find a solution.
• Former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig is expected to be charged in connection with his work for Paul Manafort for the Ukrainian government, stemming from the Mueller investigation.
• New Zealand's parliament has voted 119-1 to ban several types of military-style firearms in the country, the law will include a buyback provision as possession will result in prison time.
• SpaceX has scrubbed a Wednesday Falcon Heavy rocket launch due to high winds, the launch will be rescheduled for Thursday evening.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Con't

Meanwhile, Attorney General Bill Barr is gearing up for yet another investigation into the Mueller investigation.

Attorney General William Barr has assembled a team to review controversial counterintelligence decisions made by Justice Department and FBI officials, including actions taken during the probe of the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, according to a person familiar with the matter.

This indicates that Barr is looking into allegations that Republican lawmakers have been pursuing for more than a year -- that the investigation into President Donald Trump and possible collusion with Russia was tainted at the start by anti-Trump bias in the FBI and Justice Department.

“I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016,” Barr told a House panel on Tuesday.

Barr’s inquiry is separate from a long-running investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters. The FBI declined to comment. Barr said he expected the inspector general’s work to be completed by May or June.

The issue came up as Barr testified before a Democratic-controlled House Appropriations subcommittee. Most of the questioning concerned demands for Barr to give lawmakers Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s full report and the evidence behind it. But the issue is sure to get more attention when Barr appears Wednesday before the panel’s GOP-led Senate counterpart. 

Republican Lindsey Graham, who’s a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has already pledged to pursue the issue in the Judiciary Committee he leads.

The practical upshot of all this is that by July or so, Barr and Graham expect to have the Mueller report safely buried in legal limbo awaiting SCOTUS, and that the IG report and Senate investigation will both call for a special counsel, which Barr will appoint, to investigate Carter Page's FISA applications and the FBI and invariably the Clintons and Loretta Lynch, and all this circus will be drowning out the Democrats for the next year and change.

They really believe they've won now, and that they will get away with it, right into a second Trump term with no holds barred and no accountability whatsoever, depending on the twin threats of a Trump police state and armed Trump voters to keep liberals in line.

That's their plan, anyway.  How successful that will be is up to us.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

Texas Republicans want to overturn Roe v Wade so badly they're willing to outright criminalize abortion procedures in the state and subject both medical professionals and women choosing to end their pregnancy to the death penalty, because nothing says "pro-life" like capital punishment. 

House Bill 896 would criminalize abortion and classify it as a homicide. Women who have abortions could be sentenced to the death penalty. 

How essentially one is okay with subjecting a woman to the death penalty for the exact… to do to her the exact same thing that one is alleging that she is doing to a child,” said State Rep. Victoria Neave, a Democrat from Dallas.

“I think it’s important to remember that if a drunk driver kills a pregnant woman, they get charged twice. If you murder a pregnant woman, you get charged twice. So I’m not specifically criminalizing women. What I’m doing is equalizing the law,” said State Rep. Tony Tinderholt, a Republican from Arlington. 

The hearing in the House Judiciary Committee wrapped up at 3 a.m. Tuesday. 

The bill now goes before the full Texas House for debate.

As soon as Roe is struck down by the Roberts Court, this will become law in several red states.  And ladies in red states?  If you conceive, you will bear the child or die.  And the best part is in a state that already has one of the highest maternal death rates in the country, higher than several "third-world" nations, criminalizing abortion is a death sentence anyway.

The road to Gilead is paved with Republicans "equalizing the law".

Out In The Real World

Outside the social media bubble that Democratic activists are in, Democrats who will decide the primaries are increasingly moderate if not conservative, believe political correctness is a major issue, don't follow the news, and most of all, are far more likely to be black voters.

Perhaps the most telling poll of the Democratic primary season hasn’t been about the Democratic primary at all — but about the fallout from a 35-year-old racist photo on a yearbook page. Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia was pummeled on social media after the revelation, and virtually every Democratic presidential candidate demanded his resignation.

Yet the majority of ordinary Democrats in Virginia said Mr. Northam should remain in office, according to a Washington Post/Schar School polla week later. And black Democrats were likelier than white ones to say Mr. Northam should remain.

Today’s Democratic Party is increasingly perceived as dominated by its “woke” left wing. But the views of Democrats on social media often bear little resemblance to those of the wider Democratic electorate.

The outspoken group of Democratic-leaning voters on social media is outnumbered, roughly 2 to 1, by the more moderate, more diverse and less educated group of Democrats who typically don’t post political content online, according to data from the Hidden Tribes Project. This latter group has the numbers to decide the Democratic presidential nomination in favor of a relatively moderate establishment favorite, as it has often done in the past.

Even these results might understate the leftward lean of the most politically active, Democratic Twitter users, who often engage with political journalists and can have a powerful effect in shaping the conventional wisdom. In an informal poll of Democrats on one of our Twitter accounts on Monday, about 80 percent said they were liberal, and a similar percentage said they had a college degree. Only 20 percent said political correctness was a problem, and only 2 percent said they were black.

The relative moderation of Democrats who are not sharing their political thoughts on social media, and therefore of Democrats as a whole, makes it less surprising that Virginia Democrats tolerated Mr. Northam’s yearbook page. It makes it easier to imagine how Joe Biden might not merely survive questions about whether he touched women in ways that made them feel uncomfortable, but might even emerge essentially unscathed.

It also helps explain why recent polls show that a majority of Democrats would rather see the party become more moderate than move leftward, even as progressives clamor for a Green New Deal or Medicare for all.

Obama understood this.  Clinton did too.  Social media/beltway bubble activists are not the base, and Bernie Sanders found that out the hard way.  And if you think the nominee is going to be from the far left of the party, I've got news for you.

They won't be.   For all the yelling I do on here, I'm under no illusions that somehow I'm going to make a difference in a red state other than my own voice and my own vote.

StupidiNews!

• Acting Homeland Security Secretary Claire Grady is resigning immediately, less than 24 hours after Kirstjen Nielsen, this clears the way for Trump to name Kevin McAleenan to run DHS.
• The Dalai Lama has been released from a New Delhi hospital after a "routine" check-in for chest pains, the 83-year-old Buddhist monk is reportedly in "good" condition.
• Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be on his way to an unprecedented fifth term after Tuesday's national elections, despite facing indictment for corruption and bribery.
• Illinois lawmakers are moving forward with Democratic Gov. J.D. Pritzker's plan to scrap the state's flat tax, the bill would put the question of a 4.95% tax on the state's wealthiest 3% before voters.
• China's government is considering a total ban on using computers in cryptocurrency mining, Beijing currently dominates the global production of Bitcoin and other blockchain-based currencies.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Con't

As I keep saying, Attorney General Bill Barr will never release the actual Mueller report.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will be released “within a week,” Attorney General Bill Barr promised Tuesday at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing.

“Within a week, I will be in position to release the report to the public,” Barr testified.

“This process is going along very well,” Barr said, adding that the “original timetable of being able to release this by mid-April stands.”

The Attorney General said his office was working with Mueller’s team to identify information that falls under four categories Barr previously said would need to be redacted. Those include matters related to ongoing investigations, information that would damage innocent third-party individuals, secret grand jury materials, and classified intelligence.

Barr said that that information would be color-coded and that his office would provide “explanatory notes for each redaction” in the report that goes to Congress.

Chairman Jose Serrano (D-NY) asked if the report would include the potential instances of obstruction of justice that Mueller investigated but had not yet been publicly reported.

“As things stand now, I don’t think that they will be redacted so they will be identifiable,” Barr replied.

It is this color-coded version that will be handed over to Congress, and, Barr said, hopefully made “available to the public.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) is among the Democratic leaders saying nothing less than the full, unredacted report is acceptable.

Barr said the redacted version was a “first pass.”

Expect massive redactions in the report that Barr will control completely in order to minimize the damage to Donald Trump.

Attorney General Bill Barr has no plan to try to seek the public release of secret grand jury materials included in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

“My intention is not to ask for it at this stage,” Barr testified Tuesday before the House Appropriations subcommittee.

Democrats on the committee asked if Barr intended to seek a court order to make those materials public, as House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) has pressed him to do. He offered only to listen to Nadler’s case on why that would be necessary.

The attorney general also testified that he had grand jury material in mind when he made the decision to write a March 24 letter offering what he claimed were Mueller’s “principal conclusions.” He confirmed that he declined to use the multiple report summaries that Mueller’s team had reportedly already prepared. Every page of the report Barr received from the special counsel’s office was marked by the indication that it may contain secret grand jury material, he testified.

Barr said he took the restriction barring the release of grand jury material seriously, citing a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last week affirming that there were only five exemptions that would allow a court to release grand jury materials.

Barr struck a somewhat defensive tone in explaining his letters to Congress characterizing the report. He repeatedly insisted that he tried to use “as much of the special counsel’s own language” as possible without revealing any classified grand jury information.

Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL) asked about press reports that members of Mueller’s team were frustrated that Barr did not accurately describe their extensive, serious findings about President Trump’s obstruction of justice.

“I suspect that they probably wanted more put out,” Barr replied. “But in my view I was not interested in putting out summaries or trying to summarize because I think any summary regardless of who prepares it not only runs the risk of, you know, being under-inclusive or over-inclusive but also would trigger a lot of discussion and analysis that really should await everything coming out at once.”

The theory is that Democrats in Congress will only see the full, unredacted Mueller report if they impeach Donald Trump and subpoena the report as evidence.

One of the exceptions to grand jury secrecy is disclosure “preliminary to or in connection with a judicial proceeding.” To authorize disclosure of the Watergate grand jury information, the special prosecutor’s office argued that the House had authorized its Judiciary Committee to conduct a formal impeachment inquiry and that such an inquiry could be fairly analogized to a “grand jury” investigation and thus a judicial proceeding. Both the district court and the court of appeals agreed, and the Judiciary Committee obtained both the report and the underlying evidence.

Significantly, the appeals court decision several days ago reaffirmed that exception. All three judges agreed that an impeachment inquiry falls within the “exception for judicial proceedings” and “coheres” with other rulings about the proper scope of grand jury secrecy.

But Pelosi has declined to allow the Judiciary Committee to open even a preliminary impeachment inquiry, asserting rather bizarrely that Trump is “not worth it.” That decision may hamstring Nadler’s quest for the complete Mueller report. Nothing in the federal rules creates an explicit exception allowing congressional committees exercising general powers of government “oversight” to demand access to secret grand jury material. So, Pelosi and Nadler are confronting a dilemma of their own making: either revisit the politically fraught impeachment question or concede that the House is at the mercy of whatever judgment the attorney general makes in excising grand jury information, which may include the most salient material about possible collusion and obstruction of justice.

For his part, Barr also has delicate judgments to make. If he is so inclined, the attorney general could properly opt to exclude only the names and actual testimony of grand jury witnesses while nevertheless informing the Judiciary Committee — and the public — about the substance of the information developed during the proceedings. Unfortunately, Barr has given every indication that he intends to make needlessly sweeping redactions, especially having ruled that, in his judgment, the evidence of obstruction of justice did not rise to the level of a prosecutable crime. Trump’s selection of his new attorney general may prove to be his best line of defense — unless Pelosi revisits her stance and directs the House Judiciary Committee to include impeachment within its investigatory ambit.

Whatever the decision, expect the fight over the Mueller report to drag on for months, if not years.

Republicans Get Drugged Up

The House Republican Freedom Caucus for some reason certainly doesn't seem to be too concerned about prescription drug prices or the older Republican voters suffering because they're so high, going so far as to publicly warn pharmaceutical companies not to cooperate with the House Oversight Committee's investigation to determine why Americans pay more for prescription drugs than any other country on Earth.

In an unusual move, House Republicans are warning drug companies against complying with a House investigation into drug prices.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent letters to a dozen CEOs of major drug companies warning that information they provide to the committee could be leaked to the public by Democratic chair Elijah Cummings in an effort to tank their stock prices.

Cummings requested information from 12 drug companies such as Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis AG in January as part of a broad investigationinto how the industry sets prescription drug prices.

In their letters, Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows — leaders of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus — imply that Cummings may be attempting to collect the information in order to bring down the industry’s stock prices.

They write that Cummings is seeking sensitive information “that would likely harm the competitiveness of your company if disclosed publicly.” They then accuse Cummings of “releasing cherry-picked excerpts from a highly sensitive closed-door interview” conducted in an investigation into White House security clearances. “This is not the first time he has released sensitive information unilaterally,” says the letter. The authors say they “feel obliged to alert” the drug companies of Cummings’ actions.

Democrats expressed bafflement at the letters. While politicians routinely spar over committee work, warning companies not to comply with an investigation is unconventional — perhaps even unprecedented, Democrats say.

“Rep. Jordan is on the absolute wrong side here,” Cummings said in an emailed statement to BuzzFeed News. “He would rather protect drug company ‘stock prices’ than the interests of the American people.”

In their letter, Jordan and Meadows say that “while we cannot speculate about Chairman Cummings’ motives,” the committee should not pursue an investigation designed to impact stock prices.

It's ridiculous on its face, and I can't see how siding with the folks making insulin cost thousands of dollars per dose over Americans is going to help the GOP in 2020, but hey, keep making this about health care, guys.

Deportation Nation, Con't

As I said on Sunday, the next step after the summary firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is for the Trump regime to purge all officials not on board with Stephen Miller's hard-line white supremacist immigration policy.  We're seeing that purge happening now in real-time.

United States Secret Service director Randolph "Tex" Alles is being removed from his position, multiple administration officials tell CNN. 

President Donald Trump instructed his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to fire Alles. Alles remains in his position as of now but has been asked to leave. 

The Secret Service director reports directly to the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, who resigned on Sunday amid growing pressure from the President. The director oversees the Secret Service's work on both protection and investigations. 

"There is a near-systematic purge happening at the nation's second-largest national security agency," one senior administration official says. 

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services director Francis Cissna and Office of the General Counsel's John Mitnick are expected to be gone soon, and the White House is eyeing others to be removed. 

The President in recent weeks empowered Stephen Miller to lead the administration's border policies "and he's executing his plan" with what amounts to a wholesale decapitation or the Department of Homeland Security leadership, the official says. 

Neither the USSS nor the White House immediately responded to CNN's request for comment. 

Anyone who could possibly be in a position to object to what's coming or to stop it is being publicly removed.  Trump already says he wants to reinstate child concentration camps for kids separated from migrant families, but if that were the full extent of Miller's plan, Nielsen would still be on board. When Trump says that America is "full" he means it. Trump means to end immigration, legal and illegal, by any means necessary.  Those not on board with this are being removed.  I've been saying this for years now, and it's all finally coming into focus.

No, after this purge, the real horrors will begin.  Miller will have free reign, and the force of US federal might will be brought to bear against millions inside the country.  Trump has already given the game away.

Two Thursdays ago, in a meeting at the Oval Office with top officials -- including Nielsen, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, top aides Jared Kushner, Mercedes Schlapp and Dan Scavino, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and more -- the President, according to one attendee, was "ranting and raving, saying border security was his issue." 

Senior administration officials say that Trump then ordered Nielsen and Pompeo to shut down the port of El Paso the next day, Friday, March 22, at noon. The plan was that in subsequent days the Trump administration would shut down other ports. 

Nielsen told Trump that would be a bad and even dangerous idea, and that the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, has been very supportive of the President. 

She proposed an alternative plan that would slow down entries at legal ports. She argued that if you close all the ports of entry all you would be doing is ending legal trade and travel, but migrants will just go between ports. 

According to two people in the room, the President said: "I don't care."

That's important, because what followed next is an impeachable offense.

Last Friday, the President visited Calexico, California, where he said, "We're full, our system's full, our country's full -- can't come in! Our country is full, what can you do? We can't handle any more, our country is full. Can't come in, I'm sorry. It's very simple." 

Behind the scenes, two sources told CNN, the President told border agents to not let migrants in. Tell them we don't have the capacity, he said. If judges give you trouble, say, "Sorry, judge, I can't do it. We don't have the room." 

After the President left the room, agents sought further advice from their leaders, who told them they were not giving them that direction and if they did what the President said they would take on personal liability. You have to follow the law, they were told.

This is why Trump tweeted last weekend that he wants to "get rid of judges".  Right now they are ordering Trump to follow the Constitution.

A federal judge on Monday blocked an experimental Trump administration policy that requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases make their way through the U.S. immigration court system, a major blow to President Trump’s efforts to stem the surge of crossings at the southern border.

U.S. District Judge Richard ­Seeborg in San Francisco enjoined the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) policy days after outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pledged to expand the program. The policy began in January at the San Ysidro port of entry in California but has been extended to the Calexico, Calif., entry and to the entry in El Paso, and Seeborg wrote that the approach would have been further extended if the court had not stepped in.

Several hundred migrants have been returned to Mexico under the program after seeking asylum at the border.

It's only a matter of time before SCOTUS sides with Trump again on immigration policy.  He's already telling border agents to violate American law.  Stephen Miller's job is to make sure that when Trump again tells agents to break the law, the leadership in charge of these agencies tells those agents to obey Trump and not the law.

And when they decide to obey Trump and not the law, and not the Constitution, America ends and something far more sinister begins.

History tells us that whatever follows, it will almost certainly be a bloody nightmare.  If you're still wondering how Germans in the 1930s stood by while the Nazi Party put Jews in camps, I remind all of us that we're living that scenario in real time today.

StupidiNews!

• The University of Virginia held off Texas Tech 85-77 in OT for the Cavaliers' first NCAA Men's Basketball title, UVA overcame last year's loss as a #1 to a #16 seed in the first round.
• The US State Department has named several people responsible for the death of Washington Post reporter and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, but Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sultan is not among them.
• A Hong Kong court has found seeral "Occupy" protesters guilty of conspiracy for their role in 2014 protests, activists say they will continue to protest the lack of civil rights in the city-state.
• Donald Trump is threatening another round of $11 billion in yearly tariffs against the EU over what Trump says are "unfair" trade subsidies for Boeing competitor Airbus.
• British lawmakers are considering a package of sweeping online content laws that would hold social media companies responsible to remove content deemed offensive or face heavy fines.

Last Call For Panhandle Mishandled

The Washington Post story headline this weekend is Survivors of Hurricane Michael in the Florida Panhandle fear they have been forgotten while the actual headline should be"Poor white Trump voters discover how inconvenient they are to regime that has abandoned them".

FEMA said it has poured $1.1 billion into Florida in Michael-related response and recovery efforts, the bulk of that in the form of low-interest Small Business Administration loans. It has approved $141 million in individual assistance to 31,000 households affected by Michael, numbers similar to disaster relief provided to North Carolina after Florence.

But Congress has failed to pass a major disaster-relief supplemental-funding bill to pay for long-term recovery from Michael and other disasters across the country. The 35-day government shutdown delayed action initially, and then President Trump and his Republican allies clashed with Democrats over funding for hurricane recovery in Puerto Rico.

The partisanship in Washington does not sit well here on the Panhandle.

“We have as many Democrats suffering as Republicans, and we need help. We’re all in the same boat,” said Philip Griffitts, chairman of the Bay County Commission and a Republican.

Al Cathey, the mayor of Mexico Beach, said it’s “beyond my comprehension” how the federal government has failed to pass a disaster bill. Sitting on a pile of drywall outside his hardware store, Cathey surveyed the ravaged landscape.

“That whole bill is being jeopardized because of pettiness,” he said.

Down a country road in Bay County, Sam Summers, a heavy-equipment operator, and his wife, Sherry Skinner-Summers, who works with the sheriff’s department, have opened their five-acre lot to people whose houses and trailers were destroyed in the storm.

The backyard population is down to six tents from 10, occupied by families and individuals who cannot find or afford hotel rooms or apartments and pass a background check. The Summers and their donors provide the tents.

One family of four, including a 6-month-old infant, is living with the Summers in their brick rambler. More families are expected to arrive in the coming days, Summers said, based on requests his wife has fielded on social media.

FEMA said agency representatives, as well as state and county officials, visited the Summers property in mid-March and were shunned by the campers.

“On this and previous visits, all but a couple of the people refused to speak with anyone,” a FEMA spokesman said in an email.

There remains a suspicion among those in the region that the federal, state and local governments are not doing everything they should to help the recovery.

Your federal, state, and local governments are controlled by Republicans.

This is what you voted for.

This is the result.

The Drums Of War, Con't

So, what happened in Venezuela?

Trump was all ready to go in and smack around Nicolas Maduro, you see.  A nationwide blackout caused by "sabotage" at the country's largest hydroelectric dam was the perfect cover to sneak in and pull a Noriega Special, bag Maduro, and triumphantly install Juan Guaido as President.  But something funny happened on the way to Caracas.

Vladimir Putin showed up.  Suddenly Russia was willing to do what the US wasn't able to (or was too slow to pull off.)  They dropped in a hundred or so special operator types as "mechanics" and "trainers" to repair Maduro's Russian SAM defenses, damaged by the blackout, as well as to train Maduro's forces on using and maintaining Russian helicopters.  The one person who actually could have stopped the US from invading Venezuela made his move.

Now Mike Pence is left holding the bag to try to clean this up on Wednesday, while both China and Russia are laughing all the way to Venezuela's massive oil reserve bank.

Pence’s address will shine a global spotlight on the issue, but action by the Security Council is unlikely. The United States and Russia both failed in rival bids to get the body to adopt resolutions on Venezuela in February. 

The United Nations estimates about a quarter of Venezuelans are in need of humanitarian assistance, according to an internal U.N. report seen by Reuters last week, that paints a dire picture of millions of people lacking food and basic services. 

Maduro has said there is no crisis and blames U.S. sanctions for the country’s economic problems. In February Venezuelan government troops blocked U.S.-backed aid convoys entering from Colombia and Brazil. Maduro has accepted aid from ally Russia.

Moscow has also provided military assistance to Maduro’s government. 

The White House warned Moscow and other countries backing Maduro against sending troops and military equipment, saying the United States would view such actions as a “direct threat” to the region’s security. 

Russia has dismissed U.S. criticism of its military cooperation with Caracas, saying it is not interfering in the Latin American country’s internal affairs and poses no threat to regional stability. 

Guaido invoked the Venezuelan constitution to assume an interim presidency in January, arguing that Maduro’s 2018 re-election was illegitimate.

What's Trump going to do, exactly?  At this point Trump has trashed NATO so hard that they're not going to lift a finger to help the US in Caracas.  No, Putin is holding all the cards here, and all of them have Donald Trump's big dumb orange face on them.

No, I was dead wrong about Trump and John Bolton invading Venezuela. I freely admit that.  That ship has sailed.

But brother, the reality is going to be much worse.