The EPA is rescinding rules on methane leaks: companies will only have to inspect for leaks once every one or two years instead of 6 months; they will have 60 days to fix the leaks instead of 30; and they can follow state regulations instead of federal regulations if they chose.
Although some commentary on who wrote the anonymous op-ed spilled into this week, at least before the hurricane hit, Salam offers the best way to look at the problem: Trump is the main culprit because he does not have control of his White House. “By sending a clear, forceful, and consistent message on domestic policy, Trump can either compel the swamp creatures to swallow their misgivings and follow his lead or, if the messages prove too ideologically uncongenial, drive them out of his administration and into forthright opposition.” He is not optimistic this will happen.
The day before Florence made landfall Trump tweeted: “3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000. This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!”
In Russia News:
On Tuesday there began to be leaks about Manafort being open to a plea deal. Jury selection for his second trial is about to begin and opening arguments are on September 24.
On Friday Manafort plead guilty to the government’s charges against him, and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation: “Mr. Manafort agreed to an open-ended arrangement that requires him to answer “fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly” questions about “any and all matters” the government wants to ask about.”
Lawfare points out that some of the guilty pleas cover the 10 counts that the jury hung on, which include bank fraud committed while Manafort was running the Trump campaign. He also is now the third Trump campaign official “to plead guilty to having undisclosed relationships with foreign actors that he was obliged by law to make public.” Also: “the only way for Manafort to get less than 17 1/2 years in prison is for the government to file such a motion based on his cooperation. If Manafort wants to not spend the rest of his life in prison, in other words, he had better have something to say. In short, Manafort has had every incentive to be forthcoming so far and has every incentive going forward to cooperate fully.” The authors are quick to point out that there is no way to know if Manafort is able to provide anything useful to Mueller, and certainly no way to know whether Manafort has “the goods” on Trump.
Child-Separation Policy:
A tent camp for migrant children is being tripled in size to hold nearly 4,000 children. HHS officials were clear that this is not due to child separations but an increase in the number of children crossing the boarder alone.
The New York Times reports: “Population levels at federally contracted shelters for migrant children have quietly shot up more than fivefold since last summer, according to data obtained by The New York Times, reaching a total of 12,800 this month. There were 2,400 such children in custody in May 2017.” The data suggests this is not due to an increase in border crossings, but a decrease in the number of children being released. Potential sponsors have to submit fingerprints which will be shared with immigration authorities.
Senator Jeff Merkly released some other immigration policy documents to Maddow that shows ten million dollars was transferred from FEMA to pay for detentions. Some are making hay of this since hurricane Florence is about to hit North Carolina, but it is not entirely accurate. Dara Lind of Vox explains that ICE outspends its budget on detentions and so “DHS moved around more than $200 million to make ends meet through the end of the fiscal year.”
In an attempt to resolve three law suits over child separation, the DOJ told the judges in those cases that it would grant a second asylum interview to the families, giving them the opportunity to remain together in the US. The offer may even apply to parents already deported. The fact that the families were separated before they entered our legal system caused many problems, including parents being deported alone, parents signing papers that gave up their rights, many parents failing their credible fear interview. Dara Lind, who broke this story, writes: “None of this would have happened if families hadn’t been separated to begin with. Under normal circumstances, if either a parent or a child passed an asylum interview, the government would allow them both to file asylum claims. And obviously, parents who weren’t traumatized by family separation might have had a better chance with their interviews. But simply reuniting the family didn’t solve the problem.”
Here is the story from August that details how the lawsuit began. It covers 1,000 parents who have already been given deportation orders even though their children have not: “Lawyers representing the parents argue that it’s illegal for the government to reject an asylum claim based on an interview conducted while the claimant was so debilitatingly traumatized. They claim it violates procedural safeguards set out for people fighting deportation (even though those safeguards aren’t explicitly provided for asylum screening interviews) and violates their due process.”
The New York Times reported the case of a father who has been kept from his three year old daughter due to minor traffic offenses from over 12 years ago, for which he has been classified “ineligible” for reunification. His daughter has been separated for over 6 months. Many of the families that have not yet been reunified are due to the government’s ineligible rating, and the courts are likely going to have to force a final settlement. One detail in the reporting is that this father and daughter were separated at an official asylum check point, not after crossing the boarder illegally.
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Trump’s job Approval: 39.9%