Organizing Principles

One consistent feature of Trump’s job approval rating is that it ping pongs up and down over the course of several weeks. When the approval rating increases, as a result of positive news or simply reversion to the norm, a series of events invariably occur to bring about a dip. When the rating drops, the negative news cycle inevitably burns out and the rating begins to tick back up, usually regaining whatever approval was lost during the dip.

The chart below measures the approval rating at the bottom of each dip to the highest point of the recovery. For most of 2018, Trump’s approval has ping ponged between 40% and 42%.

Now that we are less than one month from the election, the question is whether Trump will be in a dip or a recovery on election day. The difference of even a couple points may make a difference in how many seats Democrats can pick up in the House (An approval rating of 36% vs. 41% is worth ~20 seats). Even though 42% is low, it is Trump’s happy place, where half the country is not actively angry or concerned about his performance and the people in the middle (whoever is represented in that 2-4% of the country whose opinions keep ping ponging) are inclined to tell pollsters they approve of him. But when the rating is closer to 40% (and it dipped to 39% for a hand full of days last month) something has happened to put the country in a bad mood about Trump, and that mood could make the difference in close Mid-Term races.

Let’s look at the data.

The average duration of a Trump approval increase is 2.6 weeks after a dip has ended. The longest sustained increase was 8 weeks, from March to June, 2018, but most all of the others have only lasted 1-4 weeks. Trump’s previous dip (his 12th) ended on September 15. For the current rebound to last through the election it would have to last 8 weeks.

It’s not unreasonable to expect the quiet spell to last that long. Republicans and Trump have powerful motivation to keep things calm until Election Day. On September 2 Chuck Grassley tweeted: “My prayer is that our President can be as disciplined in his discourse and speeches like last two wks b4 his election/Then we will be successful in next two months like he was successful.”

But what might cause an approval dip to begin, and can Trump control those events? Here are the four categories of political events that correspond to these dips, with the percent of the 12 dips that each helped to drive. Note that 10 of the 12 dips were driven by 2-4 factors occurring simultaneously.

• Policy actions (either from the White House or the GOP congress)–67%
• Big events in the Russia investigation–67%
• Broken cultural or political taboos–50%
• White House chaos stories–33%

Let’s look at the likelihood of each of these factors flaring up in the next month.

White House Chaos

These stories usually stem from high profile firings, staff misbehavior, or very visible SNAFUs due to Trump’s unorthodox management style–all things that the White House can try to keep a lid on for at least a few weeks. Olivia Nuzzis’ wild story in New York Magazine published Monday is evidence the White House is sensitive to this. Staff believed she was going to write an article about how Trump was going to soon fire John Kelly, and Trump invited her into the Oval Office, and lined up Sara Sanders, Kelly, Pence, Pence’s chief of staff, and the Secretary of State, all to convince her: “We have a very smooth-running organization even though it’s never reported that way. So the real story is that. It’s really the real story. When you walk in here, you don’t see chaos. There is no chaos. The media likes to portray chaos. There’s no chaos.”

Taboos

For these to affect approval rating, there has to be an large national event–a White Power protest, a press conference with Putin, the death of a war hero–upon which Trump then immolates himself with a response that is completely at odds with the public sentiment. These are infrequent enough that we can assume it won’t happen before the election, especially since Congressional Republicans are begging Trump to behave.

Policy

This is not the season for Congress or the White House to push a policy agenda. Barring any unexpected situation that requires a policy response, and there is no guarantee that response would be perceived negatively, it is unlikely there will be many news cycles driven by policy details. One exception may be the Texas judge who is set to rule on Obamacare, invalidating all or parts of the law that protect people with preexisting conditions. One of Trump’s largest dips was in 2017 and resulted in part from Paul Ryan’s attempt to repeal Obamacare. If the judge rules before Election Day, it will cause a decline that will hurt many GOP candidates.

Russia Investigation

Trump has good reason to complain about the Russia Investigation because big breaks in the case have been major factors in 8 of his 12 approval dips. Mueller’s operation will run silent until after the midterms, but news could come from other sources. For example, someone in the intelligence community with a juicy piece of evidence could leak it to the press this month. On Twitter there are rumors (but aren’t there always?) that evidence may soon come out that proves Michael Cohen actually did go to Prague in 2016 to meet with Russian spies. Something like that, which would blow massive hole in the No Collusion narrative, would definitely start an approval dip. I find this the most likely scenario of the ones listed above.

But more likely than not, restrain and political survival instincts will make this a pretty quiet month in Trump world.

Episode 12

Rank: 6

Decline: -2.10%

Lowest Approval: 39.9%

Date Range: August 18-September 15, 2018

Key Events:

• Policy: Kavanaugh completes his confirmation hearing
• White House Chaos: Omarosa promoting her tell all book, releasing tapes of her firing; Trump attacks Sessions again and announces McGahn’s removal; quotes from Woodward book are released; anonymous op-ed by White House insider is published
• Taboos: Trump revokes Brennan’s security clearance, with bipartisan blowback from intelligence community; McCain memorial services; White House response with raising the flag early and a weak statement; Trump absent (and attacked) at the funeral; Trump attacks Sessions for not protecting two GOP congressman charged with crimes
• Russia Investigation: News of McGahn’s 30 hours of interviews to Mueller; Cohen takes plea deal and says Trump ordered him to commit crimes; Manafort guilty verdict; Pecker and Weisselberg granted immunity; Manafort agrees to plea deal with Mueller

This episode has a rank of 6 out of 10 on the severity scale; 6 of the 12 episodes have been more severe, so this one is in the middle of the pack. There has not been a dip this severe since December 2017. The dip is a result of a convergence of three negative news cycles: 1) the White House chaos exposed by Omarosa’s secret tapes, Woodward’s book, and the anonymous Trump official who claimed to be part of the Trump resistance; 2) new turns in the Russia Investigation with Cohen and Manafort’s plea deals; 3) McCain’s death and week long memorial, in which Trump was repeatedly unfavorably compared to McCain. The dip ended in mid September, since then his approval rating has regained the two points lost.

 

 

 

 

Canada, the US and Mexico reached agreement on a revised version of NAFTA.

When asked by a reporter if he has a message for young men in America, Trump said “it’s a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of. This is a very difficult time.” When asked if he has a message for young women, he said “Women are doing great.” On Tuesday night Trump mocked Ford at a rally: “Thirty-six years ago this happened. I had one beer, right? I had one beer,” Mr. Trump said, imitating Dr. Blasey. “How did you get home? I don’t remember,” he said. “How’d you get there? I don’t remember. Where is the place? I don’t remember. How many years ago was it? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Ben Wittes, who admires Kavanaugh and supported his nomination, makes the case this week that senators should not confirm him, in part because of his partisan attacks undercut his judicial temperament, and also because he thinks the weight of evidence more corroborates Ford’s testimony: namely that she told people Kavanaugh was the attacker before Trump was president, and she has intimate knowledge of Kavanaugh’s high school social circle.

David French makes the opposite argument, that Ford’s case is collapsing, in part because she cannot corroborate who was at the party or get anyone else to back her up.

The FBI concluded its investigation on Wednesday after interviewing nine people. The White House sent the report to the Senate in the middle of the night, and senators began reviewing it Thursday morning. On Friday the Senate voted to approve Kavanaugh for a final floor vote. Manchin, Collins and Flake voted for Kavanaugh. Murkowski voted against. Collins make a 43 minute floor speech laying out her case for her vote: her belief that Kavanaugh is a mainstream jurist who will not overturn Roe (implied here is that Kavanaugh’s replacement may be more conservative); that she believed Ford was attacked but to deny Kavanaugh the nomination there had to be at least some corroborating evidence to make it “more likely than not” he did it.

The final vote was 48 to 50. One GOP senator was not present because he was at his daughter’s wedding, and Murkowski voted present instead of nay to spare Kavanaugh from being confirmed with a one vote margin, which has not happened since 1881.

Here is a history of the nomination strategy that McGahn helped to steer, including how Kavanaugh was coached to come across as angry and go on the attack to goose wavering Republicans and the GOP base to see his confirmation through an exclusively partisan lens. 538 has the data to back this up: “Graham and Trump, even if they have not studied the data, have figured this out. And while those two were perhaps the most vocal in suggesting there is an ongoing war on men, there was little resistance to that idea from other prominent figures in the Republican Party, male or female.”

Immigration Policy

1,600 migrant children are being shipped to a tent city in Tornillo, Texas. The permanent shelters are over crowded due to an influx from Central America, especially Guatemala, combined with the fact that the Trump administration is making it harder to unite the children with families already in the US. The average stay in custody has increased from 34 days to 59 days. The children are being taken from their current shelters at night: they “are being woken up and moved in the middle of the night because they will be less likely to try to run away in the dark.” Here is a good explainer of some key questions. 

The Department of Homeland Security inspector general released its report on child separation, saying that the government was unprepared for the consequences of the policy; unable to keep track of the families once separated; held children for longer that the law allows; and made decisions that caused huge lines at official ports of entry that lead to more asylum seekers crossing illegally.

Lawfare speculates that agents who carried out the separation policy may find themselves in court for their actions. The list some egregious behavior that has come into the news recently: “A lawsuit recently filed by parents separated from their children accuses officials of “sadistically teas[ing] and taunt[ing] parents and children with the prospect of separation,” while another plaintiff reports that an officer told her “Happy Mother’s Day” before separating her from her child. An emergency physician who deals with migrant children described in the New Yorker a child’s guardians as threatening that an eight-year-old boy “won’t be reunited with his parents unless he behaves” and that giving the boy a hug constituted “rewarding his bad behavior.” Then the author concludes: “Agents who act in this manner could one day find themselves under scrutiny for violating the civil rights of children in implementing the separation policy. In this case, incompetence will not serve as an excuse; it may also mean culpability.”

A federal judge stopped the Trump administration from suspending the Temporary Protected Status for people from Sudan, El Salvador, Haiti and Nicaragua. Many of these people have been in the US for decades and have children who are citizens. Here is an in-depth story of one 14-year-old girl who is preparing for life without her parents, who may be sent back to El Salvador if the suspension of TPS is upheld by the courts.

In 2018 only 51 Iraqi refugees with US affiliates were allowed into the US, compared to three thousand, five thousand and seven thousand in the three year’s prior. About 100,000 had applied for special refugee status and were in the pipeline. The Trump administration is lowering the cap of all refugees allowed into the country, and the Pentagon requested that the Iraqis be allowed in without being counted against the cap. This was not approved by the White House.

The State Department will no longer grant visas to gay domestic partners of United Nations diplomats. The new rule requires that they be legally married even though only 12% of UN member states allow gay marriage.

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Trump’s Job Approval Rating: 42.4%

Trump addressed the UN on Tuesday and reprised his anti-globalism theme: “America will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control, and domination,” he said. “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live, work, or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.”

A Vox analysis put it this way: “But this apparent attempt to inspire rang hollow, considering what had proceeded it. Trump seemed to be arguing that the more each nation focused on themselves and their own interests, the more each could end up cooperating — but failed to explain how. Instead, he just threw out a bunch of florid phrases.”

On Thursday’s Judiciary Committee hearing Christine Blasey Ford testified first. She responded to questions from Democrat senators and, speaking for the Republicans, a sexual assault prosecutor named Rachel Mitchell. Ford answered the questions about her assault, sometimes with her voice cracking, and sometimes apologetically for not being able to provide more specifics. Her testimony was widely viewed as credible. Kavanaugh testified after and gave a forceful, angry defense. He said his confirmation was a “search and destroy mission” on the part of Democrats who are holding grudges against him going back to the Clinton era. He denied that he assaulted Ford but was evasive on all of the Democrat’s questions that tried to establish the culture of partying and drinking that is the context of the night in question. The Republicans stopped using Mitchell to question Kavanaugh when her questions were perceived as being too prosecutorial and stripped of the partisan slant that the Republican senators could provide.

When questioned about his drinking habits and his year book entries, Kavanaugh is believed to have been evasive to the point of dissembling. Some are calling them outright lies.

Conservatives cheered Kavanaugh’s defense. David French wrote that while Ford could offer no evidence, Kavanaugh did: “He constantly reminded the committee that Dr. Ford’s named witnesses could not place him at the party. He went through calendars showing that it was improbable that he would have been at the party that Dr. Ford described. He showed time and again that there was no corroborating evidence supporting Dr. Ford’s allegations.”

Bret Stephens of the New York Times editorial page explains the conservative view that not confirming Kavanaugh would set a bad precedent because it would make false allegations a political tactic from now on: “And if suspicion based on allegation — even or especially ‘believable’ allegations — becomes a sufficient basis for disqualification, it will create overpowering political incentives to discover, produce or manufacture allegations in the hopes that something sticks.”

Douthat disagrees that Ford’s allegations are clearly false and that no evidence can be found one way or the other. He argues that Mark Judge should have been asked to testify: “Doesn’t it seem, since he’s the link between all these characters (including perhaps the unnamed other guy), that there might be useful questions to ask him under oath?… Not least because I think any convincing defense of Kavanaugh has to establish more about the social context of this incident.”

Douthat followed up with a column that argued the only way out of this mess is for there to be an investigation that brings more evidence to light: “If nothing else shakes loose from that, then they could proceed to confirmation — and maybe nothing will. But speaking as the last person in the American political-journalistic apparatus (or so it feels) who’s still agnostic about Kavanaugh’s guilt or innocence, I am more convinced than ever that somebody knows something that could prevent this from metastasizing into our era’s Dreyfus Affair — a source of unresolved hatreds for years and decades yet to come.”

But French makes a argument that goes beyond the evidence, that this is a false smear against a conservative judge, and to allow it to pass will bring more such tactics in the future: “it is a simple fact that time and again good conservative men and women have been subjected to horrific smears for the sin of disagreement, for in good faith believing in different policies, or in good faith holding different religious beliefs. They (we) have been called bigots, racists, and — yes — evil. Even our noblest politicians have been subject to the most hateful of smears…. Today, there were conservatives across the nation who choked up — some openly wept — during his testimony. Not because they disrespect women. Not because they excuse sexual assault. But because they also love their sons. Because they are tired of being painted as evil when they are seeking to do what’s right. Because they want to see a man fight with honor.”

Kavanaugh’s approach was to make an emotional appeal by playing into fears of men by saying Ford’s single accusation “permanently destroyed” his and his family’s reputation. At least based on French’s column, this was effective: “When Brett Kavanaugh spoke with great emotion not just about the sexual-assault allegations against him but also the broader character attacks made against him by Democrats, he voiced the emotion of honorable conservatives across the nation.”

This is where the battle line lies: between those who believe Ford is telling the truth and represent all women who have been assaulted, and men who are afraid of having their careers and reputations ruined based on mistakes in their past.

Friday afternoon the Judiciary Committee voted to send Kavanaugh for a floor vote. Flake voted for, but before the vote he called for a one week FBI investigation of the allegations. This was then approved by McConnell and ordered by Trump.

Here is an interview Flake gave to McCoppins around midnight on the day of the vote. He explained his thinking. He’s motivated by the view that the “country’s coming apart on this” and an FBI investigation might at least lower the partisan blowback to however the final vote ends up. He also said that he is “getting calls and emails for days from friends and acquaintances saying, ‘Here’s my story, here’s why I was emboldened to come out.’ Dr. Ford’s testimony struck a chord, it really did, with a lot of women.”

In Russia News:

On Monday Rosenstein and the DOJ was preparing for his resignation, hoping to head off being fired via tweet by Trump for last week’s report about him wanting to wear a wire in front of Trump, and discussing the 25th Amendment. The White House talked him out of resigning (amid concern by Republicans in Congress about it happening before the election) and set up a meeting between Rosenstein and Trump for Thursday.

This Washington Post story quotes sources who say that Trump is unlikely to remove Rosenstein until after the midterms, but at that point both he and and Sessions will be out of DOJ.

Trump postponed his meeting with Rosenstein because he did not want it to distract from the Kavanaugh hearings.

Child Separation:

A FOIA request has surfaced a Homeland Security memo to Secretary Nielson from April 23 that contains the rational for the child separation policy: “Option 3 as the most effective method to achieve operational objectives and the Administration’s goal to end ‘catch and release.’” That third option involved prosecuting and separating those “presenting with a family unit, between ports of entry in coordination with DOJ.” The memo also describes a pilot program where families were separated in El Paso from July to November 2017. The memo said this pilot reduced illegal family crossings by 64%.

There were new government numbers released this week:

• 136 *still* in custody, not eligible for reunification or discharge.
• 3 of those kids are under 5 years old.
• Parents of 96 of those kids already deported.

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Trump’s Job Approval: 41.5%

The GOP is worried about losing the House in the midterms. They find they cannot run on the economy because Trump is too central to the election, and many GOP candidates are applying Trump-style tactics of division and personal attacks to gin up their base voters. One study suggests that those base voters think it is “fake news” that Democrats could take the House, which could lower their turnout.

Mattis is on the outs with Trump. Part of the problem is Mattis slow-walking or even walking back certain Trump policies like the transgender ban or joint exercises with South Korea. Trump is also resentful of Mattis being perceived as an adult in the room. Many of the sources for this New York Times article spoke out anonymously because they see it increasingly likely that Trump will ask Mattis to step down after the midterms.

Kavanaugh’s accuser came forward on Sunday in an exclusive by the Washington Post. Feinstein released a report of the accusation last week without the woman’s name revealed.

Trump levied another $200 billion in tariffs on China, escalating the trade war. Every time this happened before, the Chinese reciprocated with tariffs of the same amount but they do no export enough goods to America to cover $200 billion. China “has said it would add tariffs on $60 billion in American goods, which would account for nearly everything it buys from the United States. It is still considering its options after that.”

In Russia News:

Monday night Trump ordered the Justice Department to release redacted, classified documents:
–“portions of the secret court order to monitor former campaign adviser Carter Page, along with all interviews conducted as officials applied for that authority”
–“unredacted text messages of several former high-level Justice Department and FBI officials, including former FBI director James B. Comey and deputy director Andrew McCabe.”
–“text messages written by FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page”
–“interviews with Justice Department official Bruce G. Ohr, who worked in the deputy attorney general’s office and had conversations with the author of a dossier alleging ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.”

“I believe it raises the resignation issue more forcefully than anything the president has done so far,” said John McLaughlin, a former acting director of the CIA.

The DOJ and FBI are reviewing the requested documents to prepare redactions. They will submit them to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who will then hand it over to the White House.

Trump vaguely walked back his order by the end of the week. Apparently, among other things, allies like Great Britain objected to their sources and methods being reveled.

Multiple news outlets are reporting that Michael Cohen “has been interviewed repeatedly in the past month by prosecutors in the special counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russian operatives.”

The New York Times reports that in the weeks after Comey’s firing, Rosenstein talked seriously about him or others wearing a wire when meeting with Trump, and recruiting Sessions and Kelly to pursue the 25th Amendment.

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Trump’s Job Approval: 40.6%

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%

 

This Trump tweet on Labor Day turned some heads: “Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff……”

New York Times Analysis: “His tweet over the holiday weekend chastising Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, for the Justice Department’s recent indictments of two Republican congressmen because it could cost the party seats in November crossed lines that even he had not yet breached, asserting that specific continuing criminal prosecutions should be decided on the basis of partisan advantage.”

Excerpts from Bob Woodward’s book were released on Tuesday. Many former and current staff were quoted as disparaging Trump, from Cohen to Kelly to Mattis. Here are some of those excerpts.

David Graham on the revelations: “Whatever moral qualms some Trump aides have about serving him, they believe, or tell themselves, that they are better able to prevent disaster by being inside the administration than they are by leaving. Assessing such claims, as a matter of fact or of morality, is difficult, though the anecdotes sources told Woodward seem designed to bolster them.”

The New York Times editorial board published an anonymous essay from a current “senior official in the Trump administration” which claims:

• “The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations…. The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.”
• The official described what has been widely reported: a two-track presidency where most policy is carried out independent of Trump’s rhetoric, and he cited the example of Russian sanctions: “On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.”
• He describes early “whispers” about the 25th Amendment.
• He closes by calling on all Americans to follow John McCain’s example, whose funeral four days earlier, may have been a motivating factor for speaking out.

Trump immediately responded, calling the writer “gutless.” Sara Sanders called for the official to resign.

There is a slurry of takes Wednesday night, with some arguing that there is little ethical distinction between giving anonymous quotes about Trump to reporters and writing out a full anonymous essay. Others say it is self-serving to do this, a way to keep his job but be able to claim later that they were really against Trump. Frum writes “those who do not quit or are not fired in the next few days will have to work even more assiduously to prove themselves loyal, obedient, and on the team. Things will be worse after this piece. They will be worse because of this piece.”

Douthat revisits a recurring theme of his Trump commentary about whether Trump is truly dangerous or too ineffectually weak to be dangerous. He still asserts that Trump is weak, and uses as evidence some of the anecdotes from Woodward’s book: the man is being thwarted by his own staff. But he warns that “this assumes that Trumpian weakness will never breed Trumpian desperation, and that this president will be content with his impotence even in the face of a Mueller indictment of someone in his inner circle or a Democratic House’s investigation that threatens disgrace and ruin for his family. It assumes that Trump will never, even in a desperate hour, put his party’s attempts to contain him gently to a firmer sort of test… we still have two years and four months left of this administration. And before it ends, I suspect the harder test will come.”

By the weekend dozens of senior Trump Administration officials released public statements they are not the anonymous author.

While this was going on Bret Kavanaugh completed his Senate confirmation heading for the Supreme Court.

The CPFB top regulator of the student loan industry resigned in protest. Last year DeVos stopped sharing data on student loans with the CPFB, and she has made it harder for students to default on their loans, and made it easier for low-performing for-profit colleges to resume getting federal subsides that Obama-era rules ended. A recent study found that the government only requires schools to report student loan default rates for three years, and that colleges are giving deferments for three years so that the default rates increase after the government stops keeping taps. Read about it here.

DeVos is also trying to stop states from acting in the students’ interest to lower their debt burden by arguing states cannot interfere in federal loan programs. The “case that could determine the future role of states in consumer protection.”

In Russia News

The New York Times reported on some leaked Justice Department documents that reveal how the FBI and DOJ were trying to enlist Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska even before the election, and that two of the people who were trying to flip him were Christopher Steele and Bruce Ohr. The documents reveal they were working together since 2014, seven months before Trump declared his run. We learn that Steele worked more closely with the FBI than previously understood, “as an intermediary between the Americans and the Russian oligarchs they were seeking to cultivate.” In September the FBI “pressed Mr. Deripaska about whether his former business partner, Mr. Manafort, had served as a link to the Kremlin during his time as Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman.” And in 2017 Ohr asked Deripaska to “give up Manafort.” The leakers of the documents were trying to support Ohr who has come under attack from Trump. They did not want Trump and his allies to get away with using “the program’s secrecy as a screen with which they could cherry-pick facts and present them, sheared of context, to undermine the special counsel’s investigation.”

Mueller’s team told Trump’s lawyers that they will accept written answers to questions about Russian collusion. There is still the possibility they may ask for an interview on other matters, such as obstruction of justice.

Trump’s lawyers sent a response, but it is not at all clear what was in it. The door for an interview may still be open.

Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison and a year long surveillance for lying to the FBI about the Russia investigation.

Last month, Lawfare concluded “that Papadopoulos’s cooperation was always grudging and limited, and… it never amounted to all that much. ‘The defendant did not provide ‘substantial assistance,” Mueller’s team writes, ‘and much of the information provided by the defendant came only after the government confronted him with his own emails, text messages, internet search history, and other information it had obtained via search warrants and subpoenas well after the defendant’s FBI interview as the government continued its investigation.’… It appears to have been the trigger for the Russia investigation. It does not appear to hold the key to what we don’t yet know about L’Affaire Russe.”

Child-Separation Policy

• 416 separated kids are still in custody
• 304 parents were deported
• 14 still-separated kids are under 5

A woman in Arizona whose children were born in 2012 and 12014 by a midwife says they were recently denied a passport because the government doubts they are US citizens. She writes: “The denial of passports to those delivered by midwives in border states is the latest erosion of American citizens’ rights in the misguided obsession to militarize and seal the United States-Mexico border.”

The New York Times ran a story about an 8 year old boy from Guatemala who is still separated from his deported father. They speak on video conference three times a week, and the boy describes the shelter as “dangerous.” The father says he was asked to sign some papers in English that would return his son to him, but he was actually signing his deportation papers. Advocacy groups and NGOs have taken on the responsibility of finding the missing parents, 56 of whom have no contact information.

The Trump Administration is proposing a rules chance that will invalidate the Florres consent decree that prohibits holding children for longer than 20 days.

Here is reporting on one case of child separation. The mother, Anita, passed her credible-fear interview but ICE refused to release her on bond to be reunited with her 5 year old son, Jenri. Thanks to a lawyer’s intervention, an ICE supervisor reversed the decision. The quotes of the child to his mother once they were reunited are too gut-wrenching for me to copy and paste here, but I recommend reading the entire article.  

Trump’s Job Approval: 40.6% (Trump did dip below 40% this week, but only for one day, September 5th.)