Category: Politics

• Policy: Reporting on child separation reaches critical mass; Laura Bush publishes op-ed opposing the policy; Trump issues Executive Order that reverses course; Travel ban upheld by Supreme Court; Kennedy retirement; Judge Sabraw issues injunction on separation policy and CBP ends zero-tolerance policy; Chinese trade war escalates; Pompeo has failed meeting with North Korea; Kavanaugh announcement; NATO summit and trump attacking allies; announced that 103 children under 5 have been separated; 12 Billion to farmers hurt by tariffs; Trump declares a truce in EU trade war; continued effort to reunite boarder families
• White House Chaos: Scott Pruitt resigned in scandal
• Taboos: Trump-Putin Summit and press conference in Helsinki; pushback from Republicans, and Trump tries to walk back his statements; Cohen recording of Trump agreeing to McDougal payment is released
• Russia Investigation: Mueller issues indictments of 12 GRU members

Sunday was the one year anniversary of the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. A few dozen white nationalists rallied outside the White House, dwarfed by thousands of protestors. Trump was silent about the anniversary at his Bedminster golf club, only tweeting that he condemns “all forms of racism and violence.”

Omarosa is selling her tell-all book, and released a video recording of John Kelly firing her in the situation room. Apparently she secretly recoded many conversations in the White House. She proceeded to release others throughout the week. 

On Wednesday Trump revoked John Brennan’s security clearance because of his role in the Russia investigation, and the fact that he has been an outspoken critic of Trump.

Brennan responded with an op-ed in the New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash. The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of “Trump Incorporated” attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets.”

Dozens of former CIA chiefs appointed by Republicans and Democrats signed a letter protesting Trump’s move against Brennan. There is concern that the granting or revocation of security clearances will continue to be used for partisan politics. 

Retired admiral William McRaven, who oversaw the bin Laden raid, published an op-ed in the Washington Post that said: “I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.”

On Wednesday, the Manafort trial had its closing arguments. The jury was in deliberation through the weekend.

Nate Silver released his model for predicting the House midterm elections. As of now, the Democrats have a 3 in 4 chance of winning the House.

Child Separation Policy

• 565 still separated; 24 are 5 years or younger
• Parents of 366 are already deported; 6 are 5 or younger
• 154 parents waived the right to reunite, and the ACLU is challenging that by arguing they were coerced. 

Trump’s Job Approval: 42.0%

California made it state policy that no cars can be sold in California that do not comply to the Obama-era emissions standards, setting up a court fight with the Trump administration, which froze the Obama standards last week.

The last special election of the season was in Ohio. A district that Trump won by 11 points is too close to call over a day after polls closed. Republican strategist are worrying about how to use Trump on the campaign trail.

Nate Cohn analyzed some new Pew data on Trump voters showing that Trump’s support has softened among men with college degree and women with and without a degree. Neutral to disapprove for women without a college degree increased from 8% to 24% since the election. For women with a college degree, it was 16% to 26%.

In a wild story by the New York Times, we learn that the recent NATO Summit communique was ”the most substantive’ agreement that the alliance had put out in years” but Trump’s top advisors–Bolton, Pompeo, and Mattis–pushed NATO to approve it before Trump arrived at the summit so that he would not scuttle it out of pique.

Devos rescinded Obama era rules that shut down many for-profit colleges for running up student debt without them being able to fine gainful employment with their degrees.

Propublica reported that three wealthy Mar-A-Lago members have been steering the leadership of the VA, including getting the previous secretary selected and then fired, and pushing privatization policies.

North Korea told the US that they will not release a list of nuclear programs or test sites until the Korean War is officially ended.

Child-Separation Policy

This week’s update:

• 559 children are still separated from their parents
• 386 parents have been deported
• 299 of those have been contacted
• the government has no information at all about 29 parents

In Russia News

On Sunday Trump tweeted from his summer vacation in Bedminster attacking a Washington Post story suggesting Trump is worried Don Jr. may be in legal jeopardy. In the tweets he admitted for the first time that the Trump Tower meeting was to get opposition information on Hillary from the Russians.

Bob Baur on Lawfare argues that this tweet increases Trump’s legal jeopardy with Mueller, in part because by waging his defense publicly, it weakens the argument that he should not have to submit to an interview.

On Wednesday Trump’s lawyers notified Mueller that trump will not sit for an interview to answer questions about obstruction of justice. They told reporters that they did make a counter offer, but it is not known what that is.

Buzzfeed reported on the man who was trying to obtain Clinton’s emails who committed suicide, Peter W. Smith. They have learned that “After scouring nine accounts that Smith controlled, Northern Trust turned over documents showing 88 suspicious cash withdrawals totaling about $140,000 between January 2016 and April 2017, including a $3,000 withdrawal six days after the election.”

One Roger Stone associate has been interviewed by the Mueller grand jury, while another refused and was held in contempt.

Trump’s Job Approval:  41.9%

Some reporting this week about the mid-terms. Reporters are noticing that GOP candidates are not talking too much about the booming economy and their tax bill, but are instead using Trump-like cultural attacks on their Democrat opponents. The prevalent theory is that the tax bill is not that popular, it doesn’t benefit the down scale voters that will decide the House races.

One theory is that because most House races are occurring in Trump districts, and many are trending toward the democrats, the GOP candidates have to pump up Trump’s core supporters.

Facebook told lawmakers this week that they shut down 32 fake accounts designed to gin up social divisions for the 2018 elections.

Trump’s top national security team–Wray, Coates, Bolton and Nelson–held a press conference in the briefing room of the White House where they said Russia is actively trying to interfere in the 2018 election and the government is doing everything they can to counter it. Trump was not present, and made no mention of it in his rally that evening.

Another group who want to be caught doing something about Russia (after Trump’s Helsinki summit) is in the Senate. A bipartisan group of senators including McCain and Grahm, began pushing a bill to increase sanctions on Russia and block the president from leaving NATO without Senate approval.

Child-Separation Policy

Here is a Washington Post recap of the history of the child separation policy.

Vox reported that a lawyer representing four fathers says they have been separated form their children a second time: “The fathers claim that ICE agents presented them with forms that were written mostly in English, with three options at the bottom in Spanish: being deported with their children, being deported without their children, and waiting to speak to a lawyer. All four claim that the first option — parent and child alike getting deported — had already been selected for them.”

Judge Sabraw told the government it is responsible for reuniting the 572 children sill separated from parents the government claims to not know the location of. 410 have already been deported. Sabraw said: “for every parent who is not located there will be a permanently orphaned child. And that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration.”

• 559 children still separated
• 386 parents have been deported
• the government had been in touch with 299 of them
• they have no information at all about 26.

In Russia News

The Washington Post reported that Mueller’s team has offered to cut the number of questions for a Trump interview in half.

Trump tweeted on Wednesday that Sessions should end the Russia investigation “right now.” In my twitter feed I started reading a Jack Goldsmith piece titled “The Cycles of Panicked Reactions to Trump.” It took me a paragraph to realize he had written it in April 2018, the last time Trump was threatening the Mueller investigation. Goldsmith’s reposting of it was an attempt to prove his point: that Trump is making these threats cyclically, not because he is likely to follow through, but to discredit Mueller and muddy the waters for when the final conclusions come down. What struck me as I read it–where he set out seven possibilities for why Trump makes these threats–is that it encapsulates the mood of the times: none of us know what is actually happening (or has actually happened), and all we can do is speculate, and rank our speculation in long lists that contain their own lists of justifications and caveats. This week FiveThrityEight’s podcast was a debate over the merits of “Four theories of the Trump Russia Connection” which was modeled on a Lawfare piece from May 2017 titled “Seven Theories of the Case: What Do We Really Know About L’Affaire Russe and What Could it All Mean?” This inspired Wittes et.al. to revise their seven theories: “The bottom line is that the spectrum of possibility has narrowed but remains broad.” The headline is that “there is still no evidence that any Russian infiltration efforts saw success—at least not if success is defined by what we have colloquially come to call “collusion.” It’s a year and a half later (and two years after the campaign) and we still don’t know what it all means.

Manafort’s trial began on Tuesday. The judge has banned references to Russia and collusion.

Trump’s Job Approval: 41.4%

In today’s orchestral dramatization of the Mueller investigation, Bolero picks up where we left off with drums booming and brass blazing: April 9, 2018, the Michael Cohen raid. Mueller’s team had found still-unknown illegal activity and kicked the case to the Southern District of New York. The music stops on July 13, when Mueller dropped his indictments of 12 Russian intelligence agents for election email hacking.

Next time: the music will cover the dueling duet between Trump’s legal team and Mueller over Trump’s interview, and preperations for the next round of (perhaps American) indictments. Will the music stop before the midterm election or after? Only time will tell.

Today in Mueller Music Hour, Maurice Ravel’s Bolero interprets the period from February 16, 2018, when 16 Russian nationals were indicted for running troll farms and using social media to spread divisions in the United States during the 2016 election, and April 9, when NYC prosecutors marched into Michael Cohens office drums and horns blaring.

On Tuesday the Trump Administration announced they will divert $12 billion in emergency aid to farmers hurt by retaliatory tariffs.

The Trump Administration made a truce on their trade war with allies by meeting with the president of the EU at the White House. They are going to stop tariffs and resume the same talks of a trade pact that were underway during the Obama Administration.

Here is a list of prominent Republicans who slammed the plan on the same day.

Tuesday night Cohen released an audio recording of a phone call with Trump about paying off McDougal. Cohen’s lawyer said Cohen is “on a new path — it’s a reset button to tell the truth and to let the chips fall where they may.”

After threatening to impeach Rosenstein, conservative House members pulled back on their threat to force the entire House to vote. Only 11 GOP congressmen supported the measure.

Despite the fact that Trump tweeted this week that Russia would interfere in the 2018 elections to help democrats, the first evidence of actual Russian interference surfaced: they were trying to hack Claire McCaskill’s emails.

There was some bad polling for Tump, especially in swing states he won or nearly won. Jamelle Bouy attempts to state the obvious: that Trump is unpopular and the GOP is in real political danger. He captures the essence of the times: the fact that few believed he would win in 2016 is keeping many from accepting the reality of his unpopularity in 2018.

Here is a good 538 analysis of the polls through the lens of the child separation policy: Trump’s poll numbers remained relatively steady during the weeks when the policy was heavy in the news.

Child Separation Policy

Of the 2,551 separated children: 879 have been reunited; 917 not eligible for reunification; 130 parents waived reunification; 463 parents have already been deported. 

Thursday was the court imposed deadline for the government to reunite all children ages 5-17 who were separated form their parents at the border. The government numbers were: 1442 children have been reunited; 771 have not; 378 have been released but not all with their parents; 431 children have parents who have already left the US; 900 parents who will be reunited have already received deportation orders.

By Friday 1820 children were either reunited or placed with relatives; 650 were still ineligible, 431 because the parents have already been deported. Judge Sabraw said the next step is to reunite those families.

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Trump’s Job Approval: 41.3%

On Sunday before the Putin summit, Trump made some statements to the media: that Obama was to blame for the Crimea invasion; that he had not thought about extraditing the 12 Russian GRU agents responsible for election hacking; that Europe was one of our “foes.”

On Monday in Helsinki Trump and Putin met without advisors present for 130 minutes. This was followed by a lunch meeting with advisors then a press conference. Nothing concrete was announced on any particular issue or joint project. But Trump did say he saw no reason to disbelieve Putin’s denials over 2016 election interference over the word of Dan Coates and other members of his intelligence community. Trump reiterated his message from earlier tweets that the US-Russia relation was so poor because American has been foolish, and because of the Mueller probe. He described Putin’s offers to have Russian’s partner with Mueller’s investigators as “incredible” and “generous.” For his part, Putin admitted that he had wanted Trump to win the 2016 election; he also pointedly declined to say that he did not have compromising material on Trump.

There was immediate fallout. More than one commentator describe trump’s pro-Putin and moral equivalent comments as “the foreign policy equivalent of Charlottesville.”

By Monday afternoon, many Republican officials including Ryan and McConnel and Burr made blanket statements that said the opposite of Trump’s message: that our intelligence community assessment is correct; that Russian is not and cannot be our friend. Only a few like McCain and Sasse criticized Trump directly.

I am going to list some quotes from people who express shock about Trump’s press conference statements. Each seem to be striving to express simply and plainly what they feel are extraordinary and disturbing statements.

Gingrich tweeted: “It is the most serious mistake of his presidency and must be corrected — immediately.”

McCain: “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”

Jeff Flake: “I never thought I would see the day when our American President would stand on the stage with the Russian President and place blame on the United States for Russian aggression. This is shameful.”

David Ignatious quotes former national security adviser Tom Donilon: “The president of the United States was standing next to a foreign adversary rejecting the judgment of his own intelligence and law enforcement services. We’ve never had anything like this in American history.”

The pundits gave their takes.

David Frum: “The reasons for Trump’s striking behavior—whether he was bribed or blackmailed or something else—remain to be ascertained. That he has publicly refused to defend his country’s independent electoral process—and did so jointly with the foreign dictator who perverted that process—is video-recorded fact.”

David Ignatious points out connections between three key events: the Trump-Putin Summit; the Mueller indictment of 12 GRU officers and the Storzk hearing. 1) the indictment is a warning to Putin that US intelligence has infiltrated the GRU operations and may know much more about its operations and agents; 2) Same message to Trump about what Mueller may have on the collusion question; 3) As Strzok put it in his statement to a House committee Thursday: “In the summer of 2016, I was one of a handful of people who knew the details of Russian election interference and its possible connections with members of the Trump campaign.”

Yglesias: “Having offered earlier in the week scathing, specific indictments of the European Union’s immigration policy, of the FBI’s investigation of the 2016 election, of the United Kingdom’s efforts to negotiate a “soft” version of Brexit, and of Germany’s energy infrastructure policies, Trump had no specific criticisms of Vladimir Putin’s domestic or international policies.”

Rich Lowery: “Trump has a strange ability to abstract himself from his own administration that he often comments on as if he’s a pundit with no responsibility for it. In Helsinki, he talked about the United States the same way, as an entity he stands apart from and critiques accordingly.”

Putin gave an interview with Chris Wallace, perhaps because he assumed FOX News would treat Trump the way his state media treats him. It did not go well. Here is a summary of Chris Wallace’s grilling of Putin, in which Putin did not ingratiate himself with his interviewer or the FOX News audience.

On Tuesday, back in the White House, Trump tried to walk back his Helsinki statements. He said that he believed his intelligence community reports and that he misspoke–saying would instead of wouldn’t–when he said at the press conference that he could not think of any reason Russia would have interfered in the 2016 election.

On Wednesday, when asked if Russia was trying to interfere in the 2018 election Trump said “no.” Sara Sanders later said he was responding to a different question. Then he gave an interview to CBS where he claimed he was more forceful with Putin over the election interference and that he accepts the conclusions of the intelligence community.

The New York Times summarizes the times Trump has been briefed on intelligence about Russia election interference going back before his inauguration, including proof that Putin personally ordered the interference. Despite having been shown this proof, Trump has consistently denied or downplayed the conclusions.

Frum thinks the events of this week inspired someone in the intelligence community to leak some of these new revelations to the Time: “The reporters on that story—David Sanger and Matthew Rosenberg—are two of the most seasoned and reputable national-security journalists in the United States. They would not have taken the decision to reveal such sensitive sources-and-methods information lightly; perhaps not unless a responsible person assured them the revelation would no longer put lives at risk. And that, in turn, raises the possibility that the sources that produced the January 2017 certainty have already been compromised, closed, or worse.”

By the end of the week it remained a mystery what Trump and Putin talked about or agreed to. While the Russian officials were saying that they had reached certain agreements, “officials at the most senior levels across the U.S. military, scrambling since Monday to determine what Trump may have agreed to on national security issues in Helsinki, had little to no information Wednesday.”

Late on Friday, two developments. It was revealed that one of the pieces of evidence seized in the Cohen raid was a short recording between Trump and Cohen about the McDougal payment and the National Enquirer “catch and kill” strategy. This could suggest legal trouble not just for Trump but for the publisher AMI.

And a FOIA application resulted in the publication of heavily redacted FISA warrant for Cater Page. What little we can read seriously undercut Nunes’s justification for attacking the FBI.

Child Separation Policy

This week the government notified the courts that 365 children have been reunited with their parents. 908 are deemed ineligible to be reunited. The other 716 who are eligible have been given final deportation orders, which means they could be deported immediately after being reunited.

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Trump’s Job Approval: 41.70%

Trump’s political power is still a mysterious force to many, and so it gets inflated in the partisan imagination. Liberals think it’s horrifying that half the country loves Trump and will follow him wherever he leads (only 26% strongly approve of the job Trump is doing). Trump supporters think it’s too bad that half the country hates him (only 41% strongly disapprove of Trump),  but they probably do not think too much about his unpopularity and the reasons for it.

Because the laws of political gravity did not seem to apply to Trump in 2016, there is a tendency to reject the voices that say they will apply to him in 2018. The presidential job approval number is a measure of political gravity, and by now we can draw some conclusions. I wanted to understand and quantify why Trump’s approval declines when it does. If you are a Trump critic, consuming a news and internet diet where everything Trump does gets dialed to 100 on the Rage’o’Meter, it’s useful to know what presidential actions and issues actually register disapproval among the broader public. If you are a Trump supporter, it’s good to know what doesn’t work politically so your preferred candidates can shape a strategy that will continue to win arguments and elections.

What follows is how I measured and quantified the periods of Trump’s presidency where he lost public support for the job he is doing.

• Policy actions or discussion (Obamacare Repeal, tax bill, travel ban, etc)
• White House chaos stories (staff infighting, spats, flubbed events, staff firings, etc)
• Trump Taboos (Charlottesville, Stormy Daniels, Roy Moore, etc)
• Russia investigation (Comey firing; Mueller indictments and guilty pleas, etc)

• Policy: House approves Obamacare repeal; Travel Ban blocked by courts; Trump withdraws form Paris Climate Accord
• Russia Investigation: Trump fires Comey; meets with Russians in Oval Office; Continuing fallout over Comey and Russia meeting; Mueller appointed; News about Kushner’s request for back channel with Russia; Comey testifies before Congress about his firing.

• Policy: SCOTUS reinstates travel ban; Trump announces transgender military ban; McCain sinks Obamacare repeal.
• White House Chaos: Scaramucci hired; Spicer resigns; Prebius replaced by Kelly; Scaramucci fired.
• Russia Investigation: First Trump-Putin meeting; a follow up dinner meeting without Americans present; News breaks about Manafort/Kushner Trump Tower meeting; Kushner testifies before Congress, denies collusion

On Monday night, Trump nominated Bret Kavanaugh to replace Kennedy on the Supreme Court.

This despite the fact that McConnell had quietly urged the White House against picking him because his extensive paper trail may make confirmation more difficult.

At the NATO summit Trump attacked NATO and Germany in particular; he also suggested that NATO countries should increase their contribution from 2% to 4%.

Trump went from the NATO summit to visit England. He gave an interview in the Sun tabloid where he criticized May for her handling of Brexit, that he told her how to handle it but that she did not follow his advice. This after Boris Johnson resigned on Monday over disagreements about a “soft” Brexit policy May is perusing.

Kushner’s security clearance: “when White House security officials granted him a permanent clearance in late May, he was granted only “top secret” status — a level that does not allow him to see some of the country’s most closely guarded intelligence.”

Child Separation 

As of July 12, Department of Homeland Security says they have 103 children under five who have been separated; 57 have been reunited; 46 have not been reunited; 12 cannot be reunited because the adults have already been deported; 1 cannot be reunited because the parent cannot be found.

Russia Investigation

The White House ordered the FBI to release classified information about the informant the FBI used to contact members of the Trump campaign, Stefan Halper, to all members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Many intelligence officials including Wray and Coates opposed the expansion of access.

On Thursday Peter Strozk testified before the House Intelligence Committee. He gave a robust defense of FBI protocols and integrity, and explained in detail how and why it would have been impossible for his or anyone’s personal political views to shape the Clinton or Trump-Russia investigations: “At every step, at every investigative decision, there were multiple layers of people above me, assistant director, deputy director, director of the F.B.I., and multiple layers of people below me, section chiefs, unit chiefs and analysts, all of whom were involved in all of these decisions. They would not tolerate any improper behavior in me any more than I would tolerate it in them.” The hearing devolved into a circus when several members of the conservative caucus over-reached in their attacks.

On Friday morning Rosenstein announced the next set of indictments in the Mueller investigation. It names 12 Russian GRU officers responsible for stealing Democratic documents through hacking. Read the indictment here. In contains vast amounts of forensic detail, which Mark Warner said was mostly new information to him and the Senate intelligence committee. This suggests that the Mueller investigation is the only one with the capabilities to provide a complete summary of what happened in 2016.    

This was seen as a major step forward in the investigation, one that brings the walls in closer around Trump. By making the legal case that a major theft happened, it sets up the potential next round of incidents of Americans citizens (and Trump campaign officials) who used those stollen goods.

Jonathan Chait writes another one of these Trump-Russia recaps wherein he connects certain dots to remind us that there may be a much wider conspiracy here, dating back to the late 1980s. The most vivid detail is the reminder of the pinging off a server between Trump Tower and Russian Alpha bank, which was reported on during the summer of 2016. Will it turn out to be verifiable collusion? Only time–and Mueller–will tell.

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Trump’s Job Approval: 42%