The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Athos_131]

Park Service diverts $2.5 million in fees for Trump’s July Fourth extravaganza

The National Park Service is diverting nearly $2.5 million in entrance and recreation fees primarily intended to improve parks across the country to cover costs associated with President Trump’s Independence Day celebration Thursday on the Mall, according to two individuals familiar with the arrangement.

Trump administration officials have consistently refused to say how much taxpayers will have to pay for the expanded celebration on the Mall this year, which the president has dubbed the “Salute to America.” The two individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, confirmed the transfer of the Park Service funds Tuesday.

The diverted park fees represent just a fraction of the extra costs the government faces as a result of the event, which will include displays of military hardware, flyovers by an array of jets including Air Force One, the deployment of tanks on the Mall and an extended pyrotechnics show. By comparison, according to former Park Service deputy director Denis P. Galvin, the entire Fourth of July celebration on the Mall typically costs the agency about $2 million.

For Trump’s planned speech at the Lincoln Memorial, the White House is distributing VIP tickets to Republican donors and political appointees, prompting objections from Democratic lawmakers who argue that the president has turned the annual celebration into a campaign-like event.

The Republican National Committee and Trump’s reelection campaign confirmed Tuesday that they had received passes they were handing out for the event.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” Sen. Tom Udall (N.M.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the interior, environment and related agencies, said in a phone interview. “No ticketed political event should be paid for with taxpayer dollars.”

The White House referred questions about the celebration to the Interior Department, which declined to comment.

Even as some critics questioned the White House’s handling of access to the Lincoln Memorial, officials from the Pentagon and the Interior Department were scrambling to transform Trump’s vision of an elaborate military and pyrotechnics display into reality.

Two Abrams tanks, two Bradley Fighting Vehicles and an M88 recovery vehicle sat on train tracks in Southeast Washington on Tuesday, destined for the Mall. Administration officials were finalizing aspects of Thursday’s schedule, according to a senior White House official, including a plan to have one of the planes in Air Force One’s fleet zoom overhead as Trump takes the stage.

Separately, according to two individuals familiar with the matter, the White House was negotiating with Park Service officials over whether to project an image from the 1969 Apollo 11 moon mission onto the Washington Monument for the event. Typically the agency does not allow projected images on monuments or historic structures, on the grounds that they should be preserved in their original form.

By tapping entrance fees to cover the presidential event, Interior is siphoning money that is typically used to enhance the visitor experience either on the Mall or at smaller parks across the country, with projects ranging from road and bridge repair to habitat restoration. The transfer amounts to nearly 5 percent of the funds that less-profitable parks used last year for upgrades, according to budget documents.

“This is a breach of trust with the public,” Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in an email. “The public pays parks fees to fix national parks and for educational programs, not the president’s parade.”

Udall said Interior Secretary David Bernhardt had yet to respond to a request he and two other Senate Democrats made two weeks ago for a full accounting of how the event would be conducted and what it would cost.

Amanda Yanchury, a spokeswoman for Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), chairwoman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Interior Department, said in an email that McCollum “takes her oversight responsibilities seriously and will exercise her role as chair to get a full accounting of the taxpayer costs incurred by this event.”

The awarding of tickets to GOP supporters, which was first reported by HuffPost, has exacerbated tensions between the Trump administration and Democratic lawmakers. The White House has also provided a select number of tickets to top staffers at federal agencies, who are free to distribute them as they would like.

An official from the RNC, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the group’s inner workings, said in an email that the Democratic National Committee had received passes to White House events when a Democrat was in the Oval Office.

“It’s standard practice for the RNC to receive a small number of tickets to events just as the DNC did under Democrat Presidents,” the official wrote. “This is routine for events like the White House Christmas Open Houses, Garden Tours in spring and fall, etc.”

Tim Murtaugh, communications director for Trump’s reelection campaign, said in an email that his staff also received passes to the president’s Lincoln Memorial address.

“As a courtesy, the campaign was provided tickets for staff and their families and friends, much like for the Easter Egg Roll or White House garden tours,” Murtaugh said.

While the White House has hosted limited tours for years, this year’s gathering on the Mall marks a departure because presidents have not traditionally participated in the nation’s Independence Day celebration.

Brendan Fischer, federal reform director for the Campaign Legal Center, said in an interview that while it may not violate federal ethics law to distribute limited tickets to the president’s speech to party contributors, “it certainly looks bad.”

“Limiting public access to a public monument on Independence Day in favor of wealthy donors just sends a signal that our political system favors the wealthy and well-connected,” he said.

Since federal appropriations law prohibits using public money for political purposes, Fischer noted, the issue will depend on what Trump says in his speech. If he refers to some of the 2020 presidential hopefuls, or polling related to the race, Trump’s reelection campaign may be required to reimburse the U.S. Treasury.

“The content of the event, and the nature of the event, is probably the determining factor,” as opposed to donors getting to see Trump up close, he said.

A U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly, said the Pentagon was not planning for tanks to be involved in the July Fourth event until late last week. But after the president requested them, they were shipped up by rail from Fort Stewart in Georgia and first spotted by an Associated Press photographer Monday night.

The list of fighter jets and other planes involved in Thursday’s military flyover also has grown, with the Pentagon carrying out requests from the White House while Interior officials organize the overall celebration. As late as last week, according to two defense officials, the military was planning to have only about 300 service members involved in the celebration, primarily from drill teams and bands.

“The military isn’t in charge of this thing,” said one defense official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “This is a Department of Interior event that DOD is giving support to, and the White House is giving guidance on how they’d like us to celebrate the Fourth.”

The “Salute to America” marks the culmination of Trump’s two-year quest to mount a military-style extravaganza inspired by his visit to a Bastille Day celebration in Paris in 2017. His previous efforts to stage a Veterans Day military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in 2018 were scuttled after estimated costs ballooned to the tens of millions of dollars.

The Pentagon has referred virtually all questions about the celebration and the military’s involvement to the White House — a function, officials said, of the president’s desire to have some surprises during the event.

“We are referring everyone to the White House, who will be making announcements about the event timeline and participants,” said Jonathan Rath Hoffman, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman.

But the department is devoting significant resources to the celebration that are likely to measure in the millions of dollars, given the additional construction, transportation of heavy equipment and personnel, additional security, the price of fuel, and overtime pay that federal employees will receive.

The event will include appearances by the Blue Angels, an F-35 jet from the Navy, at least one aircraft from Marine Helicopter Squadron One and one of the planes used in the fleet for Air Force One, the specialized airliner that carries the president.

It will also include a B-2 stealth bomber, the batwing-shaped jet that debuted in the 1990s, and F-22 Raptor fighter jets, said a defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans before they are announced. Those details were first reported Tuesday by CNN.

Trump touted Salute to America twice on Tuesday, sharing a link to an Interior press release and publicly thanking the two companies that have donated pyrotechnics, Phantom Fireworks and Fireworks by Grucci.

“CEO’s Bruce Zoldan and Phil Grucci are helping to make this the greatest 4th of July celebration in our Nations history!” the president tweeted.

This is illegal, Donnie.

#Resist

[joan1984]

Fake News, it seems.

President Trump still is working on the Citizenship Question to be asked in the 2020 Census, despite CNN and leftist leakers they and other 'news' organizations are "quoting"... as if... anyone actually gets "quoted" by our Fake News anymore.

We shall see. Is the correct answer.

[Athos_131]

Fake News, it seems.

President Trump still is working on the Citizenship Question to be asked in the 2020 Census, despite CNN and leftist leakers they and other 'news' organizations are "quoting"... as if... anyone actually gets "quoted" by our Fake News anymore.

We shall see. Is the correct answer.

Yeah, uhh no.



#Resist

[Athos_131]

HOW TRUMP’S 4TH OF JULY HIJACKING COULD VIOLATE THE HATCH ACT

Is President Trump trying to hijack the Independence Day celebration on the National Mall by turning it into a taxpayer-funded campaign rally? If he does, the Trump administration will violate federal appropriations law and the Hatch Act. In that case, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale had better have the campaign’s checkbook handy and be ready to write plenty of zeros.

At a kick-off rally for his re-election campaign last week, Trump sounded a lot like he was laying the groundwork for politicizing America’s birthday party—

This election is not merely a verdict on the amazing progress we’ve made. It’s a verdict on the un-American conduct of those who tried to undermine our great democracy, and undermine you. And by the way, on July 4th, in Washington, D.C., come on down, we’re going have a big day. Bring your flags, bring those flags, bring those American flags, July 4th. We’re going to have hundreds of thousands of people. We’re going to celebrate America. Sounds good, right? July 4th. Celebrate America. This election is a verdict on whether we want to live in a country where the people who lose an election refuse to concede and spend the next two years trying to shred our Constitution and rip your country apart.

The very next day, Trump’s Interior Secretary, David Bernhardt, responded by issuing an announcement confirming that the July 4th event “will feature remarks by President Donald J. Trump.” Trump’s participation in the event will likely command the attention of major television networks and thousands of event goers on the National Mall. It’s the kind of advertising no other presidential candidate could buy, and it appears Trump’s campaign won’t be buying it either. The plan, it seems, is to stick you with the bill.

If Trump is careful and has the self-discipline to talk only about government policies, the event may amount to little more than a garish display of nationalism. Tacky? Probably. Illegal? Probably not.

But when has anyone ever accused Trump of being predictable or sounding like a dry policy wonk? It seems far more likely that he’ll talk about his reelection bid or fling schoolyard nicknames at his political rivals. That sort of bombast would be a whole lot more fun for Trump than having to deliver dull prepared remarks. And, hey, it’s a party after all. Right? The problem – as is so often the case for the Trump administration – is the rule of law.

Federal appropriations law prohibits using the government’s money for purposes Congress has not authorized. Also, section 501 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 (and the pending bill for a Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2019) specifically prohibits the use of federal funds for unauthorized “publicity or propaganda.” The Government Accountability Office, which issues guidance on the use of appropriated funds, has said political activity can run afoul of these prohibitions. The Justice Department, too, has held that “If . . . there is no reasonable connection between the expense incurred and the official purposes to be served by an appropriation—as, generally speaking, there would not be when an expense is incurred purely for partisan political purposes—official funds may not be used to pay the expense.”

That’s why, for example, travelers and political organizations have to reimburse the government when the President travels to a campaign rally. If a trip is for a mix of political and governmental activities, they use a formula to calculate how much to repay the government for the costs of the political activities. In addition, campaigns are also covered by Federal Election Commission regulations that similarly prescribe reimbursement of allocated costs for mixed official and political travel.

The Hatch Act also prohibits the use of appropriated funds for political activities, whether travel is involved or not. An exception to the Hatch Act allows top presidential appointees to engage in some political activity, but it expressly bars them from engaging in any political activity that is “paid for by money derived from the Treasury of the United States.” Likewise, regulations implementing the Hatch Act state plainly that costs associated with political activities “may not be paid for by money derived from the Treasury of the United States.”

When the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) found that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius advocated for President Obama’s reelection at an event while on official travel, the Democratic National Committee reimbursed the government for costs associated with the event. OSC explained: “Secretary Sebelius admitted her error, stating ‘I . . . regret the fact that I clearly made a mistake. I was not intending to use an official capacity to do a political event. I think it veered into political space at an official event and I regret that it occurred.’” Despite her acknowledgment that she made a mistake, OSC decided the reimbursement was warranted and, in fact, “some additional costs” needed to be reimbursed. Secretary Sebelius then ensured that the government was reimbursed for these additional costs.

OSC has also enforced the Hatch Act prohibition on using government funds for political activity when no travel was involved.  After some of President Bush’s appointees engaged in political activities on government property in Washington, D.C., OSC determined that “failure to reimburse the U.S. Treasury for the costs associated with that activity violated the Hatch Act.” In addition to appointees directly involved in the political activity, OSC found violations by appointees who had “instrumental roles in coordinating and scheduling” their activities.

The Trump administration will similarly violate the appropriations laws and the Hatch Act if Trump turns the July 4th event into a campaign rally. The Hatch Act doesn’t cover Trump himself, but federal appropriations laws cover him. The Hatch Act and federal appropriations laws cover White House staff, all cabinet officials, and every political or career employee in the Department of Interior, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and other agencies involved in coordinating the July 4th event. Therefore, if Trump gets political during his speech this July 4th, his campaign manager will need to write the government a check.

It will have to be a big check, at that. Trump’s participation in the event will cause the government to incur significant additional costs. To accommodate his “Salute to America” segment, the government likely will have to build a second stage, move the fireworks to a new site closer to the river than originally planned, set up additional media equipment, add more security and crowd control measures, arrange for clean-up of the second venue, arrange for the local travel of Trump and his appointees, reimburse the District of Columbia for its added costs, and make a variety of other costly arrangements. The campaign will need to reimburse the government for its share of these costly arrangements.

A related concern is the troubling link between this event and Trump’s private business interests. Trump will be speaking within walking distance of his hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. This proximity raises a question of misuse of position by White House staffers involved in coordinating the event for their boss. The government’s ethics regulations provide that employees, including presidential appointees, “shall not use public office for private gain” – in this case, Trump’s private gain.

Profits from the Trump Organization go to Trump himself, and the Trump Organization is working hard to make sure the July 4th festivities are as profitable as possible for Trump. CREW  recently revealed that Trump’s “hotel, which almost never sells out, is sold out on the 3rd and 4th of July” and that, on the 5th of July, “the prices are double the average for the cheapest room available in comparable luxury hotels.” The overnight rate on July 5th is also “more than double the average for comparable Fridays at the Trump Hotel.” At a minimum, Trump’s participation in the July 4th celebration creates an appearance that he has used his authority over government personnel, resources, property, land, and funding for his private gain. Though he’s not covered by the misuse regulation himself, his conduct fits the very definition of corruption: “abuse of entrusted power for private gain.”

While the abuse of governmental power to benefit Trump’s business is clear, we’ll have to wait and see if the administration’s plans for the July 4th event violate federal appropriations laws and the Hatch Act. We’ll be watching Trump’s speech for the following indicia that would suggest he has turned the event into a campaign rally:

Trump uses one of his campaign slogans: “Make America Great Again” or “Keep America Great”;
Trump mentions the election, his reelection, or a desire to stay in office;
Trump mentions election polling, his approval rating, or his fundraising efforts;
Trump mentions a candidate vying for a rival party’s nomination for president;
Trump mentions his political party or a rival political party;
Volunteers hand out campaign signs, banners, or flyers;
Other speakers on the stage mention Trump’s campaign, reelection or a desire for Trump to remain in office;
Other speakers on the stage mention one of Trump’s political rivals, Trump’s political party, or a rival political party;
Trump campaign officials are present at the event; or
Any other indicia of political activity.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

From 2017:

Some Trump supporters thought NPR tweeted ‘propaganda.’ It was the Declaration of Independence.

For about 20 minutes Tuesday, NPR traveled back to 1776.

To echo its 29-year on-air tradition, the public radio network’s main Twitter account tweeted out the Declaration of Independence, line by line.

There — in 113 consecutive posts, in 140-character increments — was the text of the treasured founding document of the United States, from its soaring opening to its searing indictments of King George III’s “absolute tyranny” to its very last signature.

Who could have taken issue with such a patriotic exercise, done in honor of the nation’s birthday?

Quite a few people, it turned out.

Perhaps it was the Founding Fathers’ capitalization of random words or the sentence fragments into which some of the Declaration’s most recognizable lines were broken. But plenty of Twitter users reacted angrily to the thread, accusing NPR of spamming them — or, worse, trying to push an agenda.

“Seriously, this is the dumbest idea I have ever seen on twitter,” a Twitter user named Darren Mills said after NPR had only gotten as far as the Declaration’s dateline. “Literally no one is going to read 5000 tweets about this trash.”

One user wondered if NPR’s social-media accounts had been hacked, and the network lost at least one follower who called the tweets “spam.”

The blowback increased when the tweets reached the portion of the Declaration that outlined, in unsparing detail, all the ways Britain’s George III had wronged the then-Colonies.

“He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers,” read one line of the document.

“A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people,” read another.

Some people — presumably still in the dark about NPR’s Fourth of July exercise — assumed those lines were references to President Trump and the current administration

“Propaganda is that all you know how? Try supporting a man who wants to do something about the Injustice in this country #drainingtheswamp,” tweeted one user whose account has since been deleted but whose messages were captured by Winnipeg Free Press reporter Melissa Martin.

Upworthy writer Parker Molloy took images of several more indignant replies to NPR, including one who told the media organization to “Please stop. This is not the right place.”

By Wednesday morning, many of the replies above had been deleted. However, at least one Twitter user admitted he had “screwed up” and apologized to NPR.

The Declaration of Independence is, of course, one of the country's most important documents, adopted at the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The text and purpose of the Declaration would likely be recognizable to those who have applied for U.S. citizenship, since questions about the document appear on the naturalization test. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has an extensive list of study materials and other Declaration-related resources for prospective citizens.

NPR’s “Morning Edition” has had a nearly three-decade-long tradition of broadcasting a reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 4 each year. More than two dozen NPR journalists participated in this year's reading, including “Morning Edition” co-host Steve Inskeep, “All Things Considered” hosts Audie Cornish and NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson.

It is “a document from a deeply divided time,” broadcaster Mary Louise Kelly noted in the reading. “It was a time when Americans turned against each other.”

The Twitter exercise this year was a way to include additional people in that tradition, NPR spokeswoman Isabel Lara told The Washington Post in an email statement.

“This year we mirrored that tradition on Twitter as a way to extend to social media what we do on the air,” Lara wrote. “The tweets were shared by thousands of people and generated a lively conversation.”

Here is the full text of the Declaration of Independence:

In Congress, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Snowflakes, indeed.

#Resist

[Lois]

Fake News, it seems.

President Trump still is working on the Citizenship Question to be asked in the 2020 Census, despite CNN and leftist leakers they and other 'news' organizations are "quoting"... as if... anyone actually gets "quoted" by our Fake News anymore.

We shall see. Is the correct answer.

Not fake at all, the Court has so ordered.

However, it would be true to say that once again Trump has betrayed his oath to the Constitution (balance of powers) and has announced his intent to ignore the Court's ruling.

[Athos_131]

Jeffrey Epstein, Billionaire Long Accused of Molesting Minors, Is Charged

Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire New York financier long accused of molesting dozens of young girls, has been charged by federal prosecutors with sex trafficking, a person with knowledge of the case said on Saturday night.

Mr. Epstein had avoided federal criminal charges in 2007 and 2008 in a widely criticized plea deal after he was accused of paying dozens of underage girls for sexual massages in Florida.

He pleaded guilty to lesser state charges of soliciting prostitution, served 13 months in a county lockup and registered as a sex offender. His extraordinary jail arrangement allowed him to get out of the Palm Beach County Stockade six days a week to work out of his office.

The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, which brought the charges against Mr. Epstein, declined to comment on Saturday night.

In the Florida investigation, the authorities found that Mr. Epstein paid cash to dozens of girls, some of them as young as 14 or 15, to give him nude massages that often ended in masturbation, oral sex or, in at least one case, forcible rape.

Some of the girls were runaways or foster children; Mr. Epstein would ask some girls to recruit others to bring to his properties. The encounters took place from 1999 to 2005.

#Resist

[joan1984]

The SCOTUS said the question may be asked in the Census, so far as the law is concerned, AND said they would not rule for the Administration to go forward with it, pending a more suitable explanation of the reason to ask, to satisfy the outstanding lower court ruling, and awaited the reply of the Administration.

So, the Question is legal to ask.

The Administration has legal authority to ask it,

AND, pending a suitable response as to the reason, no ruling was forthcoming at the time.

Statements, and Press coverage, as to the urgency of the print start date, for the Census to be able to begin next year at a suitable date, have been taken as THE limit to the Administration timeline to satisfy the SCOTUS, and get the desired ruling.

President Trump has decided the print date is not THE deciding factor, at least not the only deciding factor.

He made that fact clear to other Administration people, and to Administration lawyers. Options are being weighed by the Administration at this time, regardless of what timetables are supposedly 'set' for printing, addition of addendum(s) later in the printing cycle, and other concerns of the Administration.

The Court has not ruled in any final manner as to the 2020 Census, except as to the legality of asking a Citizenship question, and who is authorized to decide to ask it. Pending ruling has to do with the case brought in this regard, which alleges a challenge to the REASON for said Administration decision. Their ruling, if any, is pending further input by the Administration, if a final ruling is eventually sought.

An Executive Order may be the timely solution, in any event.

The correct answer is: We shall see...

Fake News, it seems.

President Trump still is working on the Citizenship Question to be asked in the 2020 Census, despite CNN and leftist leakers they and other 'news' organizations are "quoting"... as if... anyone actually gets "quoted" by our Fake News anymore.

We shall see. Is the correct answer.

Not fake at all, the Court has so ordered.

However, it would be true to say that once again Trump has betrayed his oath to the Constitution (balance of powers) and has announced his intent to ignore the Court's ruling.

[Athos_131]

The SCOTUS said the question may be asked in the Census, so far as the law is concerned, AND said they would not rule for the Administration to go forward with it, pending a more suitable explanation of the reason to ask, to satisfy the outstanding lower court ruling, and awaited the reply of the Administration.

So, the Question is legal to ask.

The Administration has legal authority to ask it,

AND, pending a suitable response as to the reason, no ruling was forthcoming at the time.

Statements, and Press coverage, as to the urgency of the print start date, for the Census to be able to begin next year at a suitable date, have been taken as THE limit to the Administration timeline to satisfy the SCOTUS, and get the desired ruling.

President Trump has decided the print date is not THE deciding factor, at least not the only deciding factor.

He made that fact clear to other Administration people, and to Administration lawyers. Options are being weighed by the Administration at this time, regardless of what timetables are supposedly 'set' for printing, addition of addendum(s) later in the printing cycle, and other concerns of the Administration.

The Court has not ruled in any final manner as to the 2020 Census, except as to the legality of asking a Citizenship question, and who is authorized to decide to ask it. Pending ruling has to do with the case brought in this regard, which alleges a challenge to the REASON for said Administration decision. Their ruling, if any, is pending further input by the Administration, if a final ruling is eventually sought.

An Executive Order may be the timely solution, in any event.

The correct answer is: We shall see...

Fake News, it seems.

President Trump still is working on the Citizenship Question to be asked in the 2020 Census, despite CNN and leftist leakers they and other 'news' organizations are "quoting"... as if... anyone actually gets "quoted" by our Fake News anymore.

We shall see. Is the correct answer.

Not fake at all, the Court has so ordered.

However, it would be true to say that once again Trump has betrayed his oath to the Constitution (balance of powers) and has announced his intent to ignore the Court's ruling.

Oh my cowardly little racist Yellow Wall, once again you are wrong. 

And once again I get to expose your lying.

I should mention this in "What made your day today?" and it's only 5:30 a.m.

Trump just admitted something he probably shouldn’t have about the census citizenship question

President Trump just explained why he thinks we need a citizenship question on the census. But in doing so, he seems to have said the quiet part out loud — and conceivably could have undercut the Justice Department’s legal case.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said you need the census citizenship question “for many reasons.”

“Number one, you need it for Congress — you need it for Congress for districting,” he said Friday. “You need it for appropriations — where are the funds going? How many people are there? Are they citizens? Are they not citizens? You need it for many reasons.”

Take note of that first one. Not only was a redistricting rationale not mentioned by the administration in its failed legal defense of the question, but it was actually something the other side argued was the administration’s true motivation. The plaintiffs in the case — and many who oppose the citizenship question — have argued that this is a thinly veiled attempt by Republicans to gain a potential game-changing tool in redistricting.

It’s a little complicated, so bear with me. Basically, Republicans would like to be able to draw districts according to the number of voting-age citizens, rather than total population, because that would increase the power of rural and more conservative areas with fewer noncitizens. The problem is they don’t have the data necessary to attempt it — and then hope it passes legal muster. Adding a citizenship question would give them the data tool they need.

You can read more on this here, but suffice it to say: The U.S. Supreme Court has said congressional districts must be apportioned to the states according to total population, but it has not said those states cannot then draw those districts according to citizen voting-age population (CVAP).

This is more than hypothetical. It has been studied by some of the party’s most influential voices on redistricting. One study of how this might play out in Texas — a state with a large noncitizen population — said drawing districts using CVAP “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,” while diluting the political power of Latinos.

The 2015 study was written by the late Republican redistricting guru Thomas Hofeller. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the guy whose fingerprints appear to be on the Justice Department’s legal rationale for the census citizenship question. We learned that after Hofeller’s daughter discovered some relevant documents on his computer after his death last year.

What’s more, in arguments to the Supreme Court, U.S. Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco explicitly said that drawing the districts according to citizen voting-age population was not part of the administration’s rationale.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross “did not rely on that rationale in his decisional memorandum,” Francisco said. “Instead, he relied on DOJ’s explanation — which respondents, despite hundreds of pages of briefing, have never challenged — that citizenship data from the [American Community Survey] has substantial limitations.”

Elsewhere in the case, the government said such data would be valuable for legal cases involving redistricting and the Voting Rights Act, but it did not say it would be used to actually draw districts.

The trouble with having Trump talk about issues that he isn’t that personally invested in is that he sometimes says more than he should — either because he doesn’t care or because he’s not versed. This appears to be one of those instances.

The question now is whether those fighting the citizenship question in court can use these comments to argue that Trump has revealed the administration’s and the Republican Party’s true goals. The administration has not yet signaled what its new rationale will be, but Trump’s comments certainly point in a different direction than before -- and a potentially partisan one, at that.

I can see where you want to cheat to win Yellow Wall.  It really sucks when your hero is a guy who believes airports were around in 1776.  Maybe stop getting him to say to quiet parts loud.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

President Trump’s Revolutionary War quiz

“In June of 1775, the Continental Congress created a unified army out of the revolutionary forces encamped around Boston and New York and named after the great George Washington, commander in chief. The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our army manned the [inaudible]. It rammed the ramparts. It took over the airports. It did everything it had to do. And at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their star-spangled banner waved defiant.” — President Trump, July 4, 2019

1. Which airports did the Americans seize, and how many did they rename after Ronald Reagan?

2. Where and when did Benedict Arnold utter his infamous words, “Russia, if you're listening”?

3. How much money did George Washington lose while president for failing to turn Mount Vernon into a luxury hotel?

4. When did Washington have Alexander Hamilton deported for being an undocumented immigrant?

5. True or false?: When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” he deliberately did not mention lesbian soccer stars, Muslim mayors of London or kneeling NFL players.

6. True, or fake news?: George Washington did not have any children, but if he did, he would have made himself a king and had his daughter Ivanka Washington succeed him.

7. True or false?: At the Battle of Bunker Hill, there were fine people on both sides.

8. True or false?: When Paul Revere learned that the British were marching on Lexington and Concord, he said, “If it’s what you say, I love it.”

9. True or false?: Washington remarked about Abigail Adams: “She’s not my type.”

10. How many Saudi frigates were there at the Battle of Yorktown?

11. Did George Washington’s shuttle airline go bankrupt before or after he captured LaGuardia?

12. True or false?: The governments of Los Angeles and San Francisco, “so sad to look at” and “run by an extraordinary group of liberal people,” refused to help Washington seize LAX and SFO.

13. Does the “bitter winter at Valley Forge” prove global warming is a hoax?

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Live Fox News Report About World Cup Win Interrupted By “Fuck Trump” Chant

Fox News went live to a sports bar in Lyon, France, right after the United States women’s national team defeated Netherlands to win the World Cup. What could possibly go wrong?

One fan on camera started a loud “Fuck Trump” chant, which led to a crowd joining in. A few moments later Fox News reporter Greg Palkot then somehow ended up interviewing that fan, who said that they needed to “win in 2020” and “get that racist out of the White House!”

Palkot noted that it “was a political thing, too.”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Britain's man in the US says Trump is 'inept': Leaked secret cables from ambassador say the President is 'uniquely dysfunctional and his career could end in disgrace'

Britain's Ambassador to Washington has described Donald Trump as 'inept', 'insecure' and 'incompetent' in a series of explosive memos to Downing Street.

Sir Kim Darroch, one of Britain's top diplomats, used secret cables and briefing notes to impugn Trump's character, warning London that the White House was 'uniquely dysfunctional' and that the President's career could end in 'disgrace'.

His bombshell comments risk angering the notoriously thin-skinned President and undermining the UK's 'special relationship' with America.

In the memos, seen by The Mail on Sunday following an unprecedented leak, Sir Kim:

Describes bitter conflicts within Trump's White House – verified by his own sources – as 'knife fights';

Warns that Trump could have been indebted to 'dodgy Russians';

Claims the President's economic policies could wreck the world trade system;

Says the scandal-hit Presidency could 'crash and burn' and that 'we could be at the beginning of a downward spiral... that leads to disgrace and downfall';

Voices fears that Trump could still attack Iran.

In one of the most sensitive documents, Sir Kim writes: 'We don't really believe this Administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.'

He also says that he doesn't think Trump's White House will 'ever look competent'.

In reference to Trump's ability to shrug off controversies in a life which has been 'mired in scandal', he says that the President may nonetheless 'emerge from the flames, battered but intact, like Schwarzenegger in the final scenes of The Terminator'.

He warns senior politicians in London: 'Do not write him off.'

The leak is embarrassingly timed for the British Government, coming just weeks after the Queen welcomed Trump and his family with a 41-gun salute and a State banquet at Buckingham Palace as part of a diplomatic drive to secure a post-Brexit free-trade deal.

In a memo sent after the visit, Sir Kim warned that while Trump and his team had been 'dazzled' by the visit, and the UK might be 'flavour of the month', Trump's White House remained self-interested: 'This is still the land of America First'.

The Washington Files span the period from 2017 to the present, covering everything from Trump's policy in the Middle East to his 2020 re-election plans.

One account of a Trump rally says that there is a 'credible path' for Trump to win a second term in the White House – but describes the crowd as 'almost exclusively white'.

In what is likely to be regarded as a patronising passage in the cache, officials in London are told that in order to deal with Trump effectively 'you need to make your points simple, even blunt'.

The most incendiary paper is a letter to National Security Adviser Sir Mark Sedwill sent on June 22, 2017 – 150 days into the Trump administration – and copied to what Sir Kim describes as a 'strictly limited' number of senior figures in Downing Street and the Foreign Office.

The document, sent ahead of a National Security Council discussion on the UK-US relationship, paints a damning picture of the President's personality and leadership style.

It says media reports of 'vicious infighting and chaos' inside the White House – dismissed by Trump as 'fake news' – are 'mostly true'.

And referring to allegations of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia – since largely disproved – the memo says: 'The worst cannot be ruled out.'

The cache also includes diplomatic telegrams – known as 'DipTel' in Foreign Office jargon – updating Downing Street on political events in the US and providing commentary on Trump's foreign policy decisions.

They reveal details of highly sensitive negotiations over efforts to curb Iran's nuclear weapons programme, as well as the disarray surrounding the President's handling of recent attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.

One memo, sent by Sir Kim on June 22, refers to 'incoherent, chaotic' US-Iran policy, adding: 'Its unlikely that US policy on Iran is going to become more coherent any time soon. This is a divided Administration'.

He questioned Trump's recent claim that he aborted a missile strike on Iran because it would have caused a predicted 150 casualties, saying it 'doesn't stand up'.

'It's more likely that he was never fully on board and that he was worried about how this apparent reversal of his 2016 campaign promises would look come 2020' – at the next Presidential election.

Another memo, sent on June 10, warns of tensions ahead over Brexit: 'As we advance our agenda of deepening and strengthening trading arrangements, divergences of approach on climate change, media freedoms and the death penalty may come to the fore.'

The leak of diplomatic cables is extremely unusual and will raise new questions about morale in the Civil Service.

There is mounting evidence that Brexit has politicised many mandarins, with officials who privately support Brexit accusing the Civil Service of trying to stop the UK leaving the EU.

Darroch, who became British Ambassador to Washington in January 2016, is a former UK Permanent Representative to the EU and widely regarded as a europhile.

The Foreign Office last night said that the British public 'would expect our Ambassadors to provide Ministers with an honest, unvarnished assessment of the politics in their countries'.

A spokesman added: 'Their views are not necessarily the views of Ministers or indeed the Government. But we pay them to be candid, just as the US Ambassador here will send back his reading of Westminster politics and personalities.

'Of course we would expect such advice to be handled by Ministers and civil servants in the right way and it's important that our Ambassadors can offer their advice and for it remain confidential.

'Our team in Washington have strong relations with the White House and no doubt that these will withstand such mischievous behaviour.'

Trump's speeches are 'full of false claims' and the White House 'will never look competent': Ambassador's withering views reveal scale of concern British Government has about President

It was summer 2017, and Britain's National Security Council was convening to discuss a problem. President Trump had been in office for 150 days, and Prime Minister Theresa May and her Cabinet colleagues were still struggling to get a handle on his chaotic Administration. They needed advice.

At his desk in his splendid official residence in Washington DC, the British Ambassador, Sir Kim Darroch was trying to help. Britain's National Security Adviser Sir Mark Sedwill had asked him to put together some thoughts on the President's personality and leadership style, and he was compiling a briefing note.

Copied to a 'strictly limited' number of senior figures in Downing Street and the Foreign Office, it ran to six pages of highly unflattering observations about the President's character and political record.

In the confidential memo – marked 'Official Sensitive' – the UK's most important diplomat accused Trump of 'radiating insecurity', filling his speeches with 'false claims and invented statistics' and achieving 'almost nothing' in terms of domestic policy.

Earlier, Sedwill had sent Sir Kim an outline presentation for the meeting. Sir Kim thought the slides 'looked good'. There was just one point he felt he needed to correct: 'My only disagreement with the slides: I don't think this Administration will ever look competent,' he declared.

It was an extraordinarily damning assessment. The problem was that Ministers and diplomats had to find a way to deal with the President.

Sir Kim highlighted how America was still the UK's No 1 security partner and the 'cultural and historical ties' between the two countries were 'profound'. The UK needed America: as an export market; for defence and intelligence cooperation; and for a post-Brexit trade deal.

'The starting point is that this is our single most important bilateral relationship,' Sir Kim wrote.

But he added: 'As seen from here, we really don't believe that this Administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional, less unpredictable, less faction-riven, less diplomatically clumsy and inept.'

He therefore compiled a three-point guide for how Britain's politicians and officials should handle this most unpredictable of Presidents. His first suggestion was to 'flood the zone', which meant influencing as many of the President's key advisers as possible.

Sir Kim said Trump spends his days in the Oval Office asking his White House team, Cabinet members and senior Republicans for their opinions 'on the business of the moment'.

But, crucially, the diplomat also highlighted how the President spends his evenings phoning his friends outside the administration 'seeking reinforcement or a different take'. Many of these friends have been 'cultivated' by the British, Sir Kim boasted.

'It's important to 'flood the zone': you want as many as possible of those who Trump consults to give him the same answer,' he wrote. 'So we need to be creative in using all the channels available to us through our relationships with his Cabinet, the White House staff, and our contacts among his outside friends.'

Sir Kim's second recommendation was for Theresa May to call Trump more often, stressing 'there is no consistently reliable substitute for the personal phone call from the Prime Minister'.

'The President respects and likes her,' he added. 'I know they have already talked several times. But in a perfect world, they would be speaking two or three times a month, if not more.'

The diplomat's third pointer was to urge Britain's politicians and officials to use flattery and to pander to the President's ego when they come into contact with him.

'You need to start praising him for something that he's done recently,' he advised. 'You need whenever possible to present them as wins for him.' In comments which could be viewed as highly patronising, Sir Kim also advised his bosses to make their points 'simple' and 'even blunt', adding: 'as a senior White House adviser told me, there is no upside with this President in being subtle, let alone ambiguous.'

His stark assessment reveals the scale of concern at the highest level in the British Government about Trump. By summer 2017, the President had torn up the Paris climate change accord; junked key international trade agreements and launched military strikes against Syria. Western allies were reeling: he didn't seem to care who he upset.

But while Trump was making waves on the world stage, his domestic programme was getting nowhere, Sir Kim said.

The President's big election pledges – building a wall between the US and Mexico; stopping Muslims from certain countries coming to America and reforming tax and healthcare – had all hit the buffers.

'Of the main campaign promises, not an inch of the Wall has been built; the executive orders on travel bans from Muslim countries have been blocked by the state courts; tax reform and the infrastructure package have been pushed into the middle distance; and the repeal and replacement of Obamacare is on a knife edge,' Sir Kim wrote. The Ambassador 'wouldn't bet a tenner' on Trump's health proposals passing through the Senate.

Sir Kim's confidential letter, sent to Sedwill, who is now also the Cabinet Secretary, on June 22, 2017, is unsparing in its assessment of the President's personality flaws and the chaos of his administration.

In language that is likely to prove highly embarrassing for Sir Kim, the Ambassador declared: 'For a man who has risen to the highest office on the planet, President Trump radiates insecurity.'

He highlighted how the Administration had been 'dogged from day one by stories of vicious infighting and chaos inside the White House, and swamped by scandals – all, one way or another, linked to Russia.'

And while the President would deride media stories about such chaos as 'fake news', Sir Kim privately advised his bosses in London to believe what they were reading in the newspapers. 'The stories about White House knife fights are, we judge, mostly true: multiple sources and confirmed by our own White House contacts. This is a uniquely dysfunctional environment.' He warned Whitehall to be braced for more presidential outbursts including the use of 'immoderate, sometimes offensive, language', like his attacks on London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

'There is no filter,' Darroch advised. 'And we could also be at the beginning of a downward spiral, rather than just a rollercoaster: something could emerge that leads to disgrace and downfall.'

But while warning Whitehall that Trump's White House could collapse under the weight of scandal, he also urged the British Government not to write Trump off.

The President, he noted, has been mired in scandal most of his life but has always survived.

Sir Kim drew a parallel with The Terminator, a 1984 science fiction film featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg that is almost impossible to destroy.

'Trump may emerge from the flames, battered but intact, like Schwarzenegger in the final scenes of The Terminator.'

Looking to the future, Sir Kim warned 'there are real risks on the horizon' and that Trump 'will do or say things we oppose'.

'This 'America First' Administration could do some profoundly damaging things to the world trade system: such as denounce the WTO, tear up existing trade details, launch protectionist action, even against allies. It could further undermine international action on climate change, or further cut UN funding.' He said that Trump's 'spontaneous' missile strike on a Syrian airbase in April 2017 had won him 'the best headlines of his brief time in the Oval Office' but warned that 'a less well judged military intervention is not inconceivable.'

In the face of the chaos, Sir Kim highlighted how German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Emmanuel Macron, were busy distancing themselves from Trump. But Sir Kim warned London: 'I don't think we should follow them.'

He admitted it could be rocky, but suggested that sometimes it might make sense to criticise the President, 'provided we are careful'. Sir Kim added: 'Arguably, you get more respect from this President if you stand up to him occasionally – provided the public comments do not come as a surprise and are judicious, calm and avoid personalising.'

Today he may regret that his confidential memo does not meet that test.

Indeed, last night, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, a friend of the President, called for Sir Kim to leave his post, saying: 'The sooner he is gone the better.'   

 

The council house kid who ended up with a plum job: How Sir Kim Darroch secured a prestige position by winning scholarship to £20,000 private school before taking Foreign Office role because 'they were the first to offer him work'

Sir Kim Darroch's gilded lifestyle, meeting the great and the good at Britain's lavish Ambassador's residence in Washington DC, is a world away from the council flat he grew up in.

His parents split up when he was just six years old, forcing his family to leave behind their hitherto comfortable life in Nairobi, Kenya, where his father taught in a private school.

His mother Edna moved Kim and his younger brother back to Britain and into a flat on a council estate in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

From there, many boys would have gone on to work in manual employment. But Kim, a bright student, had other ideas.

After soaring through the entrance exams, he won a free scholarship to attend Abingdon School, a leading public school that charges £20,000 a year for day pupils.

'I think I was the only person in the school uniform walking out of this council estate every morning to go to school,' he recalled in a recent interview.

'I think what it teaches you is that all things are possible no matter where you come from, if you put the work in.'

After finishing his A-levels, he studied zoology at Durham University because – in his own words – he was 'naturally lazy' and it was an 'easier option'.

He joined the Foreign Office in 1977 after graduating because 'they were the first people to offer me a job' and started his ascent through the ranks at Embassies around the world, including top roles dealing with EU bureaucrats in Brussels.

When he landed the most prestigious diplomatic post in the Foreign Office – British Ambassador to the United States – in 2016, Barack Obama was winding down his presidency. Sir Kim and his wife Vanessa, who he married in 1978, soon settled into the comfortable private apartment in the Embassy, widely regarded as the finest in Washington DC.

It has a ballroom, boutique hotel-style guest rooms, a library and beautiful gardens. It was his reward for 40 years in the Civil Service, and he threw himself into the social whirl. The residence hosts almost 800 breakfasts, lunches, dinners and cocktail parties a year, and Sir Kim reportedly shows up at 90 per cent of them.

His job was relatively straightforward – until Donald Trump arrived.

Days after winning the Presidential election in November 2016, Trump was tweeting that he'd prefer his friend Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, to be Britain's Ambassador to the US.

No 10 insisted it was for Britain to decide who serves as its Ambassador, while Sir Kim bit his tongue. But it's clear Trump created unprecedented challenges even for this most experienced of diplomats.

There is no doubting Sir Kim's deep patriotism (his mobile phone cover is a Union Jack) and colleagues in the Foreign Office consider him to be a first rate diplomat. However, it is his long postings in Brussels that have earned him a reputation as a europhile, and he is mistrusted by Brexiteers.

He was Tony Blair's top Europe adviser from 2004 to 2007 and then became Britain's Permanent Representative to the EU from 2007 and 2011.

Knighted in 2008, he became David Cameron's National Security Advisor, from January 2012 to September 2015, before his Washington posting.

Now aged 65, Darroch is nearing the end of his diplomatic career.

Even before today's revelations in The Mail on Sunday, few expected him to survive in Washington DC after the next UK Prime Minister takes office.

Now these unfortunate leaks may just hasten his departure.

 
But Ambassador STILL says The Donald can win again!

Donald Trump could win a second term in the White House, Sir Kim Darroch told Downing Street, saying there is a 'credible path' for him to sweep to victory in next year's Presidential election.

In a leaked diplomatic cable sent on June 20, the Ambassador reported how two days earlier the President had 'electrified' an audience of 20,000 supporters in Orlando, Florida, at a huge rally to launch his re-election campaign.

A senior British diplomat was in the Amway Center, an indoor sports stadium, to witness the event and report back to Sir Kim.

The Ambassador told London that while the President had not offered any new policies, 'the crowd could not have been happier'.

'The atmosphere was unique – somewhere between a major sporting event (where only the home team fans are in the crowd) and a mega-church. Indeed the event kicked off with prayers from a pastor who asked God to 'tear down' opposition to the President.'

Sir Kim said the audience was a 'sea of the now iconic red MAGA [Make American Great Again] caps. The crowd looked almost exclusively white, with a pretty even mix of men and women, young and old: there were families in every stand. For some, attending had meant a long wait in 30C heat and humidity.'

Sir Kim predicted that the President's campaign strategy will be to 'go with what he knows best' and appeal to his core supporters.

He noted how the enthusiasm of his 'die-hard fans' is undiminished after two-and-a-half years in the Oval Office. In comments that could anger the White House, Sir Kim reported that: 'As is standard at these rallies, the language was incendiary, and a mix of fact and fiction – hard to reconcile with [Vice President Mike] Pence's remarks about governing for all Americans.'

A key difference between when Trump last ran for President in 2016 is that the machinery of the Republican Party is 'four-square behind him', Sir Kim said.

Sir Kim said the President still faces hurdles – including the prospect of the Democrats picking a candidate more popular than the widely disliked Hillary Clinton, who fought the last election.

He also said Trump cannot afford to lose much support and stressed that the President has made no meaningful efforts to 'diversify his base'.

'All that said, there is still a credible path for Trump – but so much rides on who the Democrats choose in July 2020.'   

 
How Trump told British Ambassador the special relationship felt 'closer and stronger' after state visit but warned 'don't expect any special favours'

As the President and First Lady boarded Air Force One at Southampton, Sir Kim Darroch breathed a sigh of relief. Their State visit to the UK was finally over and, despite minor hiccups, it had been a resounding success.

Moments earlier, on the Tarmac, Donald Trump had taken his leave of the various UK Government officials and dignitaries who had gathered to see him off.

The formalities – six months in the planning – were now over. All that remained was for Sir Kim, who had accompanied the President throughout the three-day trip, to bid him farewell. 'This was a wonderful visit, and UK-US relations are now in the best state ever,' Trump told him, shaking his hand.

The British Ambassador to Washington could hardly hide his delight.

Somehow he had managed to pull off what had, at times, looked an almost impossible feat: showing America's First Family the very best of British pomp and circumstance and steering him through multiple potentially tricky meetings and engagements, without any unwelcome drama. It was the pinnacle of his 40-year career in the Civil Service.

Back at his desk in Washington, almost two weeks later, Sir Kim was still buzzing. He settled down to write a long memo to Prime Minister Theresa May and other senior Government figures reflecting on what had been achieved.

'We are basking in a big success, with doors open everywhere in Washington,' he gushed in a diplomatic cable sent last month and marked 'Official Sensitive'. 'As a result, our relationship with this Administration, at this critical juncture for the UK, feels closer and stronger.'

But he warned London not to get too carried away, stressing that this was 'still an Administration of 'no special favours'.'

'We might be flavour of the month, but this is still the land of 'America First',' he concluded.

Sir Kim could be forgiven for feeling pleased with himself. The smooth running of what was only the third State visit of a US President to the UK (the others were George W Bush and Barack Obama) had been by no means assured.

Indeed, the President had barely entered UK airspace before there were signs of trouble.

Moments before touching down in London, he had fired off a characteristically aggressive tweet about the city's mayor Sadiq Khan, labelling the Labour politician a 'stone cold loser' and making a disparaging comment about his height.

It was hardly the diplomatic start Sir Kim had hoped for. If the President continued to behave like this, the visit would be a disaster.

For all the President's bombast, Sir Kim knew he was nervous. He was excited about seeing the Queen again – they had met for the first time almost exactly a year earlier – but had been fretting about messing up.

Last time, he had been accused of various gaffes, and he was 'worried about getting the protocol right', Sir Kim later reported.

The Ambassador knew that Her Majesty would take any minor slips in her stride. He was much more concerned about the President meeting Prince Charles.

The President and the heir to the throne did not see eye-to-eye over the environment. What if they had some embarrassing row?

Then there was the diplomatic minefield posed by the looming Tory Party leadership contest. Mrs May was on her way out, and the President would have to decide which of the dozen or so MPs vying for her job he should take time to meet. What if he backed the wrong horse?

Furthermore, there were difficult discussions looming over Chinese telecoms giant Huawei. The President was annoyed by the UK's refusal to cut ties with the company. It could be awkward.

Greatly to Sir Kim's relief, however, everything went to plan.

From his splendid official residence on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington DC – once described as 'Downton Abbey on the Potomac' – Sir Kim reflected on what had been achieved.

He penned a long diplomatic telegram on June 17 on the 'impressions and implications' of the State visit. The memo was sent at 2.15am, UK time, guaranteeing that it would be read at the beginning of the working day in London.

'With this unorthodox President, there were genuine risks… In the event, the gamble paid [off] handsomely,' he wrote in the cable that was sent to No 10 and senior officials across Whitehall.

Though Trump was now 'used to being feted by foreign governments,' the State visit was 'an honour that no other country can match' and Trump had 'revelled in every element of it'.

'The President knew from the outset that it amounted to genuinely special treatment…. Although initially worried about getting the protocol right, he became more relaxed as it progressed; and by the end, he could not have been happier or more fulsome in his assessment,' Sir Kim wrote in the telegram.

According to the Ambassador, the highlight for the President had been the 'extensive personal engagement' with the Queen: at a private lunch, at a glittering State banquet, and at the D-Day commemorations in Portsmouth.

However, he had also got on surprisingly well with Charles and Camilla. Trump 'seemed to deeply appreciate' the effort the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall made. 'I think the Prince of Wales, despite differing views on climate change, established an open and easy relationship with the President,' he wrote.

Throughout the visit, Sir Kim had also been conscious of the need to keep Trump's aides happy. The President had travelled with a huge entourage, all of whom needed to be looked after. That had gone equally well.

'His team were also dazzled, telling us that this had been a visit like no other – the hottest ticket of their careers,' he reported.

Impressing Trump's advisers was far more than a matter of manners.

Cultivating contacts in the White House and Trump administration was a key part of Sir Kim's job. He liked to call those with the President's ear the 'Trump Whisperers.' Now he was on even better terms with them.

'These are close contacts, with whom we have spent years building relationships: they are the gatekeepers... the individuals we rely upon to ensure the UK voice is heard in the West Wing.

'The visit will make a substantial difference to those relationships too,' he enthused.

On their return to the US, Sir Kim and his team had 'done the rounds with journalists, pundits and commentators'. Media coverage had been great.

'With some nuances, their view was that we had pulled off a difficult task: a largely gaffe-free visit which had made a President who often stumbled on foreign trips look good, and which had shown the UK, at a difficult juncture, at its best,' Sir Kim declared.

Mercifully little had been made of 'potentially controversial moments' like public protests, the spat with Khan, and 'private meetings with some prominent UK politicians', including Nigel Farage.

Instead, American journalists had focused on 'how much the President appeared to be enjoying himself; how relaxed a relationship he appeared to have developed with the Queen; and how well the talks and lunch with the Prime Minister appear to have gone', Sir Kim wrote.

Now it was a question of capitalising on these gains. The Ambassador told his bosses back home that he would be building on the 'enhanced personal relationship with the Trump inner circle to deliver UK objectives'. Thinking ahead, he felt that the State visit could be used to lay the ground for Theresa May's successor – Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt – to secure an early meeting with the President.

The new Prime Minister would be 'starting in the best possible place with this President', he said.

He suggested a possible early meeting at the UN General Assembly in New York in mid-September ('though Brexit considerations may intrude here') or 'in the margins of the Nato summit in December'.

But the new Prime Minister could also make a formal visit to the White House.

'I am sure that there would be a warm welcome here in Washington if that's what we want to happen,' Sir Kim said.

But perhaps conscious that his report might sound too self-congratulatory, Sir Kim signed off with a warning that despite the successful visit, America would not cut the UK any slack in trade negotiations and would continue to press the UK to 'choose between them and China'.

They would measure the UK by 'what resources we bring to the table', he cautioned.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Fact-checking Trump's claims on the census, Obama-Biden record and more

TRUMP: "Think of it: 15 to 20 billion dollars, and you're not allowed to ask them, 'Are you a citizen?' And, by the way, if you look at the history of our country, it's almost always been asked. ... Citizenship has been on that thing most of the time for many, many years. So it's very shocking that, after spending $15 billion, it's not on." — remarks to reporters Friday at the White House.

KEN CUCCINELLI, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: "I think that if you look at what we've asked over the years, including, of course, the citizenship question, famously — asked many, many times through our history — we ask a lot of other information as well." — interview on "Fox News Sunday."

THE FACTS: Trump and his administration are incorrect in suggesting that citizenship status has been a default question in the census, having been "almost always" asked on the form.

The Census Bureau hasn't included a citizenship question in its once-a-decade survey sent to all U.S. households since 1950, before the Civil Rights era and passage of a 1965 law designed to help ensure minority groups in the count are fully represented. The nation's count is based on the total resident population — both citizens and noncitizens — and used to determine how many U.S. representatives each state gets in the U.S. House.

According to January 2018 calculations by the Census Bureau, adding a citizenship question to the decennial census would cause lower response rates among noncitizens, leading to an increased cost to the government of at least $27.5 million for additional phone calls, visits and other follow-up efforts to reach an estimated 630,000 missed households — or more than 1 million people. The Constitution requires a count every 10 years of "the whole number of persons in each state," long understood to include all residents of the U.S.

The Trump administration had argued that the question was being added to aid in enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters' access to the ballot box. But a majority of the Supreme Court said last week that reasoning was "contrived." The Justice Department had never previously sought a citizenship question in the 54-year history of the landmark voting rights law.

The high court left open the possibility that the administration could try again in adding the question if it can provide a better explanation, but little time remains due to deadlines in printing the census forms.

From 1970 to 2000, the question was included only in the long-form section of the census survey, which is sent to a portion of U.S. households, not as part of the official count of all U.S. residents. After 2000, the question has been asked on the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, a separate poll sent only to a sample of U.S. households.

The first U.S. census was conducted in 1790, and a citizenship question was added in 1820. Still, between 1820 and 1950, the question wasn't asked in four censuses — 1840, 1850, 1860 or 1880.

That means out of the 23 censuses conducted in the U.S. since 1790, a citizenship question has only been asked 10 times — or 43% of the time.

That hardly amounts to "almost always."

MIGRANTS
TRUMP: "Under President Obama, we had separation. ... They had a separation policy. Right? I ended it." — remarks June 29 in Japan.

TRUMP: "Well, as you know, President Obama had separation." — remarks Friday to reporters.

THE FACTS: He's wrong. The separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents resulted from Trump's "zero tolerance" policy. Obama had no such policy. After a public outcry and a court order, Trump generally ceased the practice.

Zero tolerance meant that U.S. authorities would criminally prosecute all adults caught crossing into the U.S. illegally. Doing so meant detention for adults and the removal of their children while their parents were in custody. During the Obama administration, such family separations were the exception. They became the practice under Trump's policy.

Before Trump's zero-tolerance policy, migrant families caught illegally entering the U.S. were usually referred for civil deportation proceedings, not requiring separation, unless they were known to have a criminal record. Then and now, immigration officials may take a child from a parent in certain cases, such as serious criminal charges against a parent, concerns over the health and welfare of a child or medical concerns.

NATO
TRUMP: "Tell Biden that NATO has taken total advantage of him and President Obama. They took it — we were paying for almost all of NATO. We're protecting countries. Those countries have to protect themselves with us. They have to make a contribution. ... Europe kills us on trade, which we're changing, and Europe then kills us because we defend Europe. And we lose a tremendous amount of money." — remarks Friday to reporters.

THE FACTS: It's not true that the U.S. was paying "almost all" the price of protecting Europe.

NATO has a shared budget to which each member makes contributions based on the size of its economy. The United States, with the biggest economy, pays the biggest share, about 22%.

Four European members — Germany, France, Britain and Italy — combined pay nearly 44% of the total. The money, about $3 billion, runs NATO's headquarters and covers certain other civilian and military costs.

Defending Europe involves far more than that fund. The primary cost of doing so would come from each member country's military budget, as the alliance operates under a mutual defense treaty.

The U.S. is the largest military spender but others in the alliance obviously have armed forces, too. The notion that almost all costs would fall to the U.S. is false. In fact, NATO's Article 5, calling for allies to act if one is attacked, has only been invoked once, and it was on behalf of the U.S., after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

ECONOMY and TRADE
TRUMP: "You look at what Joe Biden has done with China. We've lost our shirts with China and now China is dying to make a deal. So — and we're taking, by the way, billions and billions of dollars in tariffs are coming in — and China is paying for it, not our people." — remarks Friday to reporters.

THE FACTS: Actually, Americans are paying for it.

Trump refuses to recognize a reality that his own chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, has acknowledged. Tariffs are mainly if not entirely paid by companies and consumers in the country that imposes them. China is not sending billions of dollars to the U.S. treasury.

In a study in May , the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, with Princeton and Columbia universities, estimated that tariffs from Trump's trade dispute with China were costing $831 per U.S. household on an annual basis. And that was based on the situation in 2018, before tariffs escalated. Analysts also found that the burden of Trump's tariffs falls entirely on U.S. consumers and businesses that buy imported products.

TRUMP: "The Economy is the BEST IT HAS EVER BEEN!" — tweet Tuesday.

THE FACTS: The economy is not one of the best in the country's history. It expanded at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. That growth was the highest in just four years for the first quarter.

In the late 1990s, growth topped 4 percent for four straight years, a level it has not yet reached on an annual basis under Trump. Growth even reached 7.2 percent in 1984.

In fact, there are many signs that growth is slowing, partly because of Trump's trade fights with China and Europe. Factory activity has decelerated for three straight months as global growth has slowed and companies are reining in their spending on large equipment.

Most economists forecast the economy will expand at just a 2% annual rate in the April-June period.

Trump is pushing the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, to cut short-term interest rates to shore up the economy. That isn't something a president would do amid the strongest economy in history.

Economists mostly expect the Fed will cut rates, either at its next meeting in July or in September . Lower rates make it easier for people to borrow and buy new homes and cars.

Powell said last week the economy is facing growing uncertainties and he indicated the Fed would take the necessary steps to sustain the expansion, a sign that the Fed could cut rates soon.

The economy is now in its 121st month of growth, making it the longest expansion in history. But most of that took place under Obama.

The economy grew 2.9% in 2018 — the same pace it reached in 2015 under Obama — and simply hasn't hit historically high growth rates.

MARS
TRUMP: "Someday soon, we will plant the American flag on Mars." — July 4 speech.

THE FACTS: This is not happening soon; almost certainly not while he is president even if he wins a second term.

The Trump administration has a placed a priority on the moon over Mars for human exploration (Obama favored Mars) and hopes to accelerate NASA's plan for returning people to the lunar surface. It has asked Congress to approve enough money to make a moon mission possible by 2024, instead of 2028. But even if that happens, Mars would come years after that.

International space agencies have made aspirational statements about possibly landing humans on Mars during the 2030s.

Trump's speech was almost entirely free of exaggerations about his agenda; this was an exception.

HISTORY
TRUMP: "The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our army manned the air (unintelligible), it rammed the ramparts. It took over the airports. It did everything it had to do. And at Fort McHenry, under the rockets' red glare, it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their star-spangled banner waved defiant." — July 4 speech.

THE FACTS: Trump said the teleprompter stopped working during this passage: "I knew the speech very well so I was able to do it without a teleprompter."

There were, of course, no airplanes during the War of Independence, and the Battle of Fort McHenry took place during the War of 1812, not the revolution. Trump segued from colonial times to modern times and back to the War of 1812 so fast that it seemed he was conflating wars and misstating aviation history. But the confusion apparently came from his need to wing it when the script went down.



NORTH KOREA
TRUMP, on North Korea's help in returning the remains of U.S. troops from the Korean War: "The remains are coming back as they get them, as they find them. The remains of our great heroes from the war. And we really appreciate that." — remarks June 30 to Korean business leaders in Seoul.

TRUMP: "We're very happy about the remains having come back. And they're bringing back — in fact, we were notified they have additional remains of our great heroes from many years ago." — remarks June 28 in Japan.

THE FACTS: His account is at odds with developments.

No remains of U.S. service members have been returned since last summer and the U.S. suspended efforts in May to get negotiations on the remains back on track in time to have more repatriated this year. It hopes more remains may be brought home next year.

The Pentagon's Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency, which is the outfit responsible for recovering U.S. war remains and returning them to families, "has not received any new information from (North Korean) officials regarding the turn over or recovery of remains," spokesman Charles Prichard said Wednesday.

He said his agency is "still working to communicate" with the North Korean army "as it is our intent to find common ground on resuming recovery missions" in 2020.

Last summer, in line with the first summit between Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un that June, the North turned over 55 boxes of what it said were the remains of an undetermined number of U.S service members killed in the North during the 1950-53 war. So far, six Americans have been identified from the 55 boxes.

U.S. officials have said the North has suggested in recent years that it holds perhaps 200 sets of American war remains. Thousands more are unrecovered from battlefields and former POW camps.

The Pentagon estimates that 5,300 Americans were lost in North Korea.

MILITARY PAY
TRUMP: "You also got very nice pay raises for the last couple of years. Congratulations. Oh, you care about that. They care about that. I didn't think you noticed. Yeah, you were entitled. You know, it was close to 10 years before you had an increase. Ten years. And we said, 'It's time.' And you got a couple of good ones, big ones, nice ones." — remarks June 30 to service members at Osan Air Base, South Korea.

THE FACTS: He's been spreading this falsehood for more than a year, soaking up cheers from crowds for something he didn't do. In May 2018, for example, he declared to graduates of the United States Naval Academy: "We just got you a big pay raise. First time in 10 years."

U.S. military members have received a pay raise every year for decades .

Trump also boasts about the size of the military pay raises under his administration, but there's nothing extraordinary about them.

Several raises in the past decade have been larger than service members are getting under Trump — 2.6% this year, 2.4% last year, 2.1% in 2017.

Raises in 2008, 2009 and 2010, for example, were all 3.4% or more.

Pay increases shrank after that because of congressionally mandated budget caps. Trump and Congress did break a trend that began in 2011 of pay raises that hovered between 1% and 2%.

AUTOS
TRUMP: "We have many, many companies that left our country and they're now coming back. Especially the automobile business. We have auto plants being built all over the country. We went decades and no plant was built. No plant was even expanded." — remarks July 1 in Oval Office.

THE FACTS: There's no evidence that car companies are flooding back to the U.S. He's also incorrect in saying that auto plants haven't been built in decades. A number of automakers — Toyota, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen among them — opened plants in recent decades, mostly in the South.

Government statistics show that jobs in auto and parts manufacturing grew at a slower rate in the two-plus years since Trump took office than in the two prior years.

Between January of 2017, when Trump was inaugurated, and May of this year, the latest figures available, U.S. auto and parts makers added 44,000 jobs, or a 4.6 percent increase, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But in the two years before Trump took office, the industry added 63,600 manufacturing jobs, a 7.1 percent increase.

The only automaker announcing plans to reopen a plant in Michigan is Fiat Chrysler, which is restarting an old engine plant to build three-row SUVs. It's been planning to do so since before Trump was elected. GM is even closing two Detroit-area factories: One builds cars and the other builds transmissions. Toyota is building a new factory in Alabama with Mazda, and Volvo opened a plant in South Carolina last year, but in each case, that was in the works before Trump took office.

Automakers have made announcements about new models being built in Michigan, but no other factories have been reopened. Ford stopped building the Focus compact car in the Detroit suburb of Wayne last year, but it's being replaced by the manufacture of a small pickup and a new SUV. That announcement was made in December 2016, before Trump took office.

GM, meantime, is closing factories in Ohio and Maryland.

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
TRUMP: "Robert Mueller is being asked to testify yet again. He said he could only stick to the Report, & that is what he would and must do. After so much testimony & total transparency, this Witch Hunt must now end. No more Do Overs." — tweet Tuesday.

THE FACTS: It's highly questionable to say Trump was fully cooperative in the Russia investigation.

Trump declined to sit for an interview with the special counsel's team, gave written answers that investigators described as "inadequate" and "incomplete," said more than 30 times that he could not remember something he was asked about in writing, and — according to the report — tried to get aides to fire Mueller or otherwise shut or limit the inquiry.

In the end, the Mueller report found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but left open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice.

According to the report, Mueller's team declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on whether to charge partly because of a Justice Department legal opinion that said sitting presidents shouldn't be indicted. The report instead factually laid out instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, specifically leaving it open for Congress to take up the matter.

#Resist

[Littlebit]

[Lois]

From SCOTUS BLOG:

(still a pretext)  The census is supposed to count people, not just citizens.  And yes the Constitution is very explicit about this. Only citizens may vote, but all people have rights.  The words citizen and people are not used interchangeably. If a citizenship question MIGHT cause a miscount of people, it is counter-productive to the purpose of the census.


Government says it is looking at “all available options” to include citizenship question on 2020 census (UPDATED)
By Amy Howe   on Jul 5, 2019 at 3:51 pm

[Note: This post has been updated to include the district judge’s order in the case.]

Eight days after the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration’s stated reason for including a question about citizenship on the 2020 census was a pretext, lawyers for the federal government told a federal district judge in Maryland that the government continues to look for a “path forward” that would allow it to use the citizenship question on the census with a “new rationale.” But they did not offer any insight into either the government’s timetable for making such a decision or what that “new rationale” might be.

The news came in a filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, where Asian-American and Latino groups (among others) had challenged the decision to include the citizenship question on the upcoming census. On Tuesday, the government had announced that printers had started to produce the 2020 census questionnaire without the citizenship questionnaire – which was generally interpreted as a sign that the government had thrown in the towel and the legal battle was over. But in the wake of tweets from President Donald J. Trump suggesting otherwise, U.S. District Judge George Hazel on Wednesday ordered the parties in the Maryland case to submit, by 2 p.m. on Friday, either a stipulation that the government would not try to include the question on the census or a plan for fact-finding on the plaintiffs’ claim that the government’s decision to include the question was prompted by an intent to discriminate against minorities.

In its filing today, the government told the district court that the “Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Commerce have been asked to reevaluate all available options following the Supreme Court’s decision and whether the Supreme Court’s decision would allow for a new decision to include the citizenship question” on the 2020 census. If Commerce does rely on a new rationale for the decision, the government continued, it will let the district court know as soon as possible. And that decision, the government noted, would be a “new final agency action” that the plaintiffs could then challenge. But it would be “premature” to go ahead with fact-finding now “in connection with a new decision that has not yet been made.”

On Friday afternoon, Hazel nonetheless ordered the parties to proceed with fact-finding. He acknowledged that there is “some degree of logic” to the government’s argument that fact-finding should be put on hold until Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross reaches a “new” decision about the citizenship question, but he ultimately rejected the government’s plea based on what he described as the “unique circumstances of this case.” In particular, he noted, newly discovered evidence from the files of Thomas Hofeller, a Republican redistricting strategist who passed away last year, “goes directly” to the issue of whether Ross acted with discriminatory intent when he decided to add the citizenship question, and discovery relating to “the origins of the question will remain relevant” even if the government finds a new justification for it. “Given that time is of the essence, therefore,” Hazel concluded, “the prudent course is to proceed with discovery.”

[Athos_131]

Alexander Acosta must go

Jeffrey Epstein, the hedge fund manager and self-proclaimed billionaire, was charged with sex trafficking on Monday in federal court, a crime similar if not identical to one for which he was allowed to enter a plea deal in Florida in 2008 and avoid serious jail time. In violation of the requirement to inform victims of such a settlement, prosecutors in the 2008 case — including Alexander Acosta, the current secretary of labor — hatched the deal in secrecy, tossing aside a 53-page indictment alleging that Epstein recruited underage girls and induced them to recruit others to engage in sex at his home in Florida.

The New York Times suggests, “The indictment in Manhattan could prompt a moment of reckoning for the Justice Department, which for years has wrestled with accusations that it mishandled the earlier case and has faced a barrage of litigation from Mr. Epstein’s accusers. In February, the Justice Department opened its own internal review into the matter.” Don’t get your hopes up for any reckoning from a president recently accused of rape and previously alleged by more than a dozen women to have engaged in unwanted sexual behavior. Don’t expect Trump, who endorsed accused child molester Roy Moore for a Senate seat, to toss Acosta out.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) — lionized by the right as some kind of grand intellect — inquired about the sweetheart settlement during Acosta’s confirmation hearing, but voted to confirm his nomination anyway. Now, Sasse is horrified, simply horrified, that Epstein got such lenient treatment. “Jeffrey Epstein has evaded justice for too long — this child rapist belongs in prison and should not be allowed to post bail and hurt more girls,” he said in a written statement. He added, “This monster received a pathetically soft sentence last time and his victims deserve nothing less than justice. Justice doesn’t depend on the size of your bank account, this billionaire can’t be let out just because he can cut a bail check. The Justice Department needs to see this through.” So why did he vote for Acosta, and why isn’t he demanding he be fired immediately?

As of this writing, no Republican has called for Acosta to go. The excuses run the gamut: “This was up about three months ago, and then all of the sudden it died down, so I don’t know how big of a deal it is” (Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa); to “I’m satisfied [with Acosta]" (Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia); to “I don’t know. Why do you people ask this stuff? Don’t you realize that we’re working on tough legislation?" (I did not make that up; Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska said it.)

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) provided the voice of moral sanity. He put it exactly right:

https://twitter.com/allinwithchris/status/1148388237788012544

Monday evening, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tweeted:

https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1148428641849806849

I’m tempted to say that the Republican Party should join Pelosi because it wouldn’t want to be associated with an alleged child molester, but Trump already has (Alabama’s Moore). I’m tempted to say that the GOP should care about victimized minors; but its indifference to the plight of mistreated children detained at the border should disabuse you of that notion. I’m tempted to say that the GOP doesn’t want to be on the side of men who abuse women, but ... well, you get the point. If Acosta doesn’t quit as Pelosi suggests, Democrats should pass a resolution in the House demanding Acosta’s resignation. If that doesn’t do it, commence impeachment hearings. It’ll be good practice. And let the Republicans defend the guy who cut a deal with a “monster.”

UPDATE: Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for Acosta to quit, for the results of the professional ethics inquiry into the handling of the Epstein plea deal to be released, and for Trump to explain his comment from 2002, “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump called Epstein a ‘terrific guy’ who enjoyed ‘younger’ women before denying relationship with him

Back in 2002, when Jeffrey Epstein was known only as a mysterious financial whiz with a private island and a roster of A-list friends, being friendly with him was something to boast about. And Donald Trump did.

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York Magazine that year for a story headlined “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.” “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Now, Epstein is in jail, charged with sex trafficking by federal prosecutors who allege he abused dozens of underage women in New York and Palm Beach, Fla. He is no longer a friend anyone would want to claim.

And now, Trump doesn’t.

Alan Garten, an attorney for the Trump Organization, has said Trump had “no relationship” with Epstein.

Outside of Trump’s own words, there is clear evidence that the two men — both members of the same highflying societies in Manhattan and Palm Beach — socialized together in the past.

Epstein visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach and posed for photos there with Trump in 1997 and 2000.

Epstein’s voluminous personal address book — leaked by an Epstein employee in 2009 — contained 14 phone numbers for Trump, his wife, Melania, and members of his staff, according to media reports.

The relationship, whatever it was, appears to have cooled by 2007. Garten said in an interview Monday that although Epstein was never a member of Mar-a-Lago, Trump prohibited him from visiting the club around that time, as a reaction to criminal charges that had been filed against Epstein.

“He banned him from stepping foot on the property,” Garten said. He said Trump’s private attorneys were not contacted during the more recent investigation of Epstein, which resulted in a 14-page federal indictment unsealed Monday.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

In the earlier case, Epstein pleaded guilty to Florida charges of soliciting prostitution to resolve allegations that he molested dozens of girls. That arrangement — overseen by then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, who is now Trump’s secretary of labor — has been widely criticized as too lenient. As part of the deal, Epstein had to spend just more than a year in jail.

Epstein, 66, has owned a home since 1990 in Palm Beach, about two miles north of Mar-a-Lago. Even if he wasn’t formally a member of Trump’s club, he appears to have visited it for social events — not an unusual arrangement for some of Palm Beach’s elite, according to Laurence Leamer, who recently wrote a history of Mar-a-Lago.

“Lots of people were let in who weren’t really members,” Leamer said. Trump made money when these nonmembers paid for things, and he also reaped the social benefits if they were spotted at his club.

Other evidence of Trump’s acquaintance with Epstein has surfaced in court filings: One filing said Epstein’s brother, Mark, recalled in 2009 that Trump had flown on Epstein’s plane at least once. In addition, Vice News reported that a message pad, obtained by investigators from Epstein’s home, showed Trump had left two phone messages for him in November 2004.

The reason for Trump’s calls was not given, according to the messages reproduced online by Vice.

Epstein’s address book, published by the website Gawker in 2015, listed Trump’s contact information alongside that of hundreds of other people, including former president Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew.

Brad Edwards, an attorney who has represented some of Epstein’s alleged victims, said he sought out Trump in 2009, seeking to interview Epstein’s acquaintances.

Trump was “the only person who picked up the phone and said, ‘Let’s just talk. I’ll give you as much time as you want. I’ll tell you what you need to know,’ ” Edwards said in a 2018 interview on YouTube.

In that interview, Edwards said Trump “was very helpful in the information that he gave and gave no indication whatsoever that he was involved in anything untoward whatsoever.” Edwards said he never took Trump’s deposition.

Edwards on Monday declined to elaborate on the assistance Trump gave.

One of Epstein’s alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre, was a towel girl in the Mar-a-Lago locker room when she was “recruited” at the club by Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, according to Giuffre’s attorney, David Boies.

He said Maxwell asked Giuffre whether she would like to earn money and learn how to give massages, which led to Epstein sexually abusing her at his homes in Palm Beach and New York, according to Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell. That defamation suit was settled in 2017, but the case has been sealed. Last week, a New York federal appeals court ordered part of the case to be made public. Epstein and Maxwell have each denied taking part in an alleged sex trafficking ring.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Report: President Salty Over Soccer Fans

The President of the United States went off on a Twitter rant about the media on Sunday evening. This isn’t news, because the President loves to yell into his computer box about things he saw on his TV box. What made this different, though, was that his target was Fox News.

Trouble in paradise? Or just the fact that if you spend 16 hours a day watching a single channel, you’re occasionally going to get irritated at it? It was not immediately clear what, exactly, aired on Fox News that Donald Trump was cranky about. Because the President uses “TiVo” it can be difficult to match up his anger with the broadcast that inspired it, since he’s often watching on a delay of hours.

Here’s the answer. The Associated Press cited White House insiders in an article it wrote about the President’s colicky tweets about a TV channel, because that’s just the hellworld we live in.

Trump was particularly annoyed by Fox correspondent Greg Palkot’s live report from a sports bar in France, where patrons erupted in a “F*** Trump” chant, according to two advisers not authorized to speak publicly about private discussions.


Incredible! Incredible. The Women’s World Cup was not a good one for Trump, as far as international soccer tournaments go, as it featured a feud between him and new American President Megan Rapinoe, which she won on all scorecards by being correct and forceful and eloquent and winning the Golden Ball for best player and the Golden Boot for top scorer and the whole dang World Cup. Trump perhaps thought he could avoid having to acknowledge Rapinoe’s and the USWNT’s triumph by watching Fox News that afternoon, but he could not, as a bunch of Americans in a bar in Lyon took over the Fox report by chanting “Fuck Trump” in the background.

It remains unclear at press time whether the President was mad because he thinks Fox should not have covered the tournament at all, or if he thinks they should have immediately cut back to the studio upon the start of the chant, or if he thinks the reporter intentionally rather than accidentally interviewed the man who started the chant, and who then took advantage of his president-visible platform by declaring the need to “get that racist out of the White House.”

It’s up in the air whether Trump will follow through on his promise to invite the USWNT to the White House, or if he’ll rescind it like he has in the past when a championship-winning team makes clear they have no intentions of going. He’s probably going to stew over this one for a while. But his pique at Fox News? He’ll get over that. He could never stay mad at his true love.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump Saw Opportunity in Speech on Environment. Critics Saw a ‘“1984” Moment.’

Reviewing new polling data, consultants working for President Trump’s 2020 campaign discovered an unsurprising obstacle to winning support from two key demographic groups, millennials and suburban women. And that was his record on the environment.

But they also saw an opportunity. While the numbers showed that Mr. Trump was “never going to get” the type of voter who feels passionately about tackling climate change, a senior administration official who reviewed the polling said, there were moderate voters who liked the president’s economic policies and “just want to know that he’s being responsible” on environmental issues.

So for nearly an hour in the East Room on Monday afternoon, Mr. Trump sought to recast his administration’s record by describing what he called “America’s environmental leadership” under his command.

Flanked by several cabinet members and senior environmental officials — one a former lobbyist for the coal industry and the other a former oil lobbyist — Mr. Trump rattled off a grab bag of his administration’s accomplishments, which he said included “being good stewards of our public land,” reducing carbon emissions and promoting the “cleanest air” and “crystal clean” water.

“These are incredible goals that everyone in this country should be able to rally behind,” Mr. Trump said. “I really think that’s something that is bipartisan,” he said, adding that he had disproved critics who said his pro-business policies would harm the environment.

Experts watching the speech said many of the president’s claims were not based in fact. Those achievements that were real, they said, were the result of actions taken by his predecessors. And they noted the one conspicuous omission from the whole discussion: any mention of climate change, the overarching environmental threat that Mr. Trump has mocked in the past.

David G. Victor, the director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California, San Diego, said the speech was the starkest example to date of the disconnect between Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and reality. “This speech is a true ‘1984’ moment,” he said.

Mr. Trump called himself a protector of public land, but he has taken unprecedented steps to open up public lands to drilling, including signing off on the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history, and lifting an Obama-era moratorium on new coal mining leases on public lands.

He repeatedly cited his desire for clear water, but the Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of rolling back an Obama-era clean-water regulation of pollution in streams and wetlands.

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He described himself as a champion of the oceans, while he and Mary Neumayr, the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, have promoted policies that the United States has advanced to reduce marine debris, particularly plastic drinking straws. But Mr. Trump did not mention that his administration has proposed opening up the entire United States coastline to offshore oil and gas drilling.

And he boasted that carbon dioxide emissions in the United States have gone down over the past decade, “more than any other country on earth.” But while it is true that carbon emissions have declined by over 10 percent in that time, over a dozen other countries — including most of the European Union — have seen declines of more than twice that.

In a phone call with reporters earlier Monday, Andrew Wheeler, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, cited data going back to the Nixon administration in describing the Trump administration’s accomplishments.

“There’s this factoid out there that the U.S. is a leader in reducing emissions,” said Richard Newell, the president of Resources for the Future, a nonprofit, nonpartisan environmental research organization in Washington. “That is just not true. It is disingenuous to both celebrate the decline in U.S. CO2 emissions at the same time that one promotes the use of coal power. You can’t have both.”

Last month, in a move that represented the Trump administration’s most direct effort to date to protect the coal industry, the E.P.A. finalized a plan to replace former President Barack Obama’s stringent rule on coal pollution with a new rule that would keep plants that use it to generate electricity open longer and significantly increase the nation’s emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide.

The E.P.A. is also expected to finalize another plan this summer that would abandon Mr. Obama’s strict regulations on planet-warming tailpipe pollution in automobiles, replacing them with a new rule that experts say is likely to function as a total repeal of the original regulation.

Mr. Trump seemed to place a particular emphasis on environmental problems afflicting Florida, a state vital to his re-election, emphasizing that he backs restoring the Everglades, and that his administration has directed over half a billion dollars to mitigate a toxic tide of red algal blooms that originate in Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. He invited Bruce Hrobak, a bait and tackle shop owner in Port St. Lucie, Fla., who said his shop was devastated by the red tide, to the podium.

“You jumping into this environment brings my heart to warmth,” Mr. Hrobak told Mr. Trump, adding that his own father looked like Mr. Trump “but you’re much handsomer.”

Polls show that Florida is one state where Republican voters rank environmental issues as a top concern. The reason, the polls have found, is that Florida is now on the front lines of climate change, as Miami and other cities experience consistent, damaging flooding as a result of sea level rise and a warming planet.

But Mr. Trump made no mention of climate change, nor did he revisit a tendency to proudly sell himself as a champion of the coal industry and fossil fuels in general — even as they remain one of the chief causes of global warming.

This incongruous message of environmental action was so starkly at odds with Mr. Trump’s own record that some critics found the moment almost surreal.

“It is an utter farce for the president to talk about America’s environmental leadership, when he has been a champion of the polluters,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian who has written about environmental policy.

Mr. Trump was joined by Mr. Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who has played a lead role in crafting rollbacks of rules on climate change and clean air, and David Bernhardt, the interior secretary and a former oil lobbyist who has led the way in opening up the nation’s public lands and waters to more drilling.

When asked whether Mr. Trump still believed that global warming was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese and whether windmills caused cancer, as the president has said, Mr. Wheeler said in a phone call that there were “positives and negatives” to all energy sources, and that administration officials were paying attention to this.

Frank Luntz, a Republican consultant and pollster, said he had presented Republican lawmakers with data in recent weeks that showed that the public — and particularly younger people — wanted to see action to safeguard the environment, but that the issue was seen as owned by Democrats.

“It is still not a top-five priority” among Republicans, Mr. Luntz said. “These guys, they really do care, but they don’t know how to get it done in this polarized environment.”

Among the Democrats who criticized the president’s speech on Monday was Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader.

“Try as he might say otherwise,” Mr. Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor, “President Trump has proved himself probably the staunchest ally of the worst polluters, of any president we have ever had.”

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Trump’s Misleading Claims About His Environmental Record

President Trump made the case Monday that he has protected the nation’s air and water in a speech filled with cherry-picked statistics and misleading claims. And he failed to mention that his decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord was undercutting efforts to address a fundamental threat to the planet.

Mr. Trump listed what he cast as accomplishments in addressing air pollution, carbon emissions, hazardous sites and lead exposure — taking credit for trends that preceded his administration or actions mandated by courts. Left unaddressed were his effort to weaken environmental standards by rolling back regulations and his record of putting former industry executives and lobbyists in key policymaking positions.

Here’s a fact check of his remarks.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID

“One of the main messages of air pollution, particulate matter is six times lower here than the global average.”

This is misleading.

It’s true that America’s air is much cleaner than it was five decades ago. But Mr. Trump is including years of progress that took place under his predecessors.

Of the six “criteria” air pollutants tracked by the Environmental Protection Agency, four actually increased in 2017, Mr. Trump’s first year in office: carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and two measures of particulate matter pollution. (It should be noted that data for 2018 is not yet publicly available, while single-year increases for the six metrics have occurred under previous administrations as well.)

Independent analyses have also found that air quality has declined under Mr. Trump’s watch. The Associated Press reported that there were 15 percent more days with unhealthy air in the United States both in 2017 and 2018 than on average from 2013 to 2016. The American Lung Association found that “ozone and short-term particle pollution worsened in many cities” from 2015 to 2017 compared with 2014 to 2016.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID

“Every single one of the signatories to the Paris climate accord lags behind America in overall emissions reductions.”

This is misleading.
The United States cut its annual emissions of carbon dioxide by about 800 million to 900 million metric tons from 2000 to 2016, according to estimates from the Paris-based International Energy Agency and the United States Energy Information Administration. That is indeed that a larger overall emissions reduction than any of the signatories to the Paris climate agreement.

But the United States is also the second-largest emitter in the world and one of the largest per capita emitters. By more meaningful metrics, the United States lags behind many other countries.

In that time period — before Mr. Trump took office — the United States reduced total emissions 15.7 percent, according to the International Energy Agency. That rate was below that of more than 20 signatories to the Paris agreement, including advanced economies like the United Kingdom (28.7 percent), Sweden (26.9 percent) and Italy (22.5 percent).

In emissions per capita, the United States reduced emissions by about 26.3 percent, behind more than a dozen signatories including Denmark (38.7 percent), Britain (36.1 percent) and Sweden (34.6 percent).

It’s also worth noting that the United States’ emissions increased in 2018, according to the Energy Information Administration and an independent research firm.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID

“Last year, the agency completed more Superfund hazardous waste cleanups than any year of the previous administrations and set records at almost every year. ... We have made great strides cleaning up damage near a paper plant in Kalamazoo, Mich., something that was beyond fix-up. They thought it was never going to happen.”

This is misleading.
There are more than 1,100 toxic Superfund sites on the government’s National Priorities List of the most hazardous sites in the country. It takes years, sometimes decades, to clean up a site before it is “deleted,” or removed from the list.

In the 2018 fiscal year, the E.P.A. reported deleting 22 sites from the list, the most since 2005. But construction work was completed on all 22 sites before Mr. Trump took office. For example, soil cleanup and contamination monitoring wrapped up at a recycling site in Pennsylvania in 2016, nearly three decades after it was added to the list and two years before its removal.

Mr. Trump has also sought to decrease funding for cleaning up the sites in every budget he has proposed.

The paper plant in Kalamazoo has been on the National Priorities List since 1990, and cleanup work on the site began long before Mr. Trump took office.

In 2017, the Trump administration did name the site as one of 21 that needed “immediate and intense attention” for a task force created by Scott Pruitt, the former E.P.A. administrator. That designation does not result in additional funding, but pinpoints sites that could benefit from the administrator’s “direct engagement” in expediting cleanup.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID

“For the first time in nearly 30 years, we are in the process of strengthening national drinking water standards to protect vulnerable children from lead and copper exposure.”

This is misleading.
Mr. Trump is referring to the E.P.A.’s plan to reduce childhood lead exposure, released in December 2018. The plan includes four goals with few concrete deadlines. The Environmental Defense Fund called it a “a repackaged and updated version” of programs that began during the Obama administration.

The E.P.A. is expected to release an update to a rule on lead and copper in drinking water in July, after delaying the revision several times. The agency also announced stricter standards for lead in paint dust in late June — after a federal court ordered it to do so in 2017. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit gave the E.P.A. 90 days to update the rule and a year to finalize it, rejecting the agency’s argument that it had met its obligations.

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