The Barrett confirmation hearings began on Monday. It was over in the judiciary committee by Thursday. All Democrat boycotted the final vote.
The FBI announced that Iran was behind a series of election interference emails sent to Democrats.
Election 2020
Early voting started in many states this this week and there were a lot of stories about long lines at least during the first days.
Zoe Tillman of Buzfeed news covered a judge dissent in a voting access case this week: Judge Karen Nelson Moore of the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit wrote a scathing dissent in a case about how Tennessee handles absentee voting — she disagreed with her two colleagues in the majority who rejected a challenge to the state’s signature match rules for mail-in ballots. But Moore’s dissent went further, criticizing judges across the US who have sided with states seeking to limit mail-in voting this year. “Hiding behind closed courthouse doors does not change the fact that ruling by ruling, many courts are chipping away at votes that ought to be counted. It is a disgrace to the federal courts’ foundational role in ensuring democracy’s function, and a betrayal to the persons that wish to participate in it fully,” Moore wrote.
New York Times on the same issue: The Texas case is one of at least eight major election disputes around the country in which Federal District Court judges sided with civil rights groups and Democrats in voting cases only to be stayed by the federal appeals courts, whose ranks Mr. Trump has done more to populate than any president in more than 40 years.
Rudy Giuliani perpetrated a bizarre hack-and-leak scheme this week about supposedly stolen emails of Hunter Biden. The most interesting thing is that Twitter and Facebook took strong moves to keep the Russia-backed story from spreading on their sites.
At a Biden Town Hall on ABC, the moderator asked: Mr. Vice President, if you lose, what will that say to you about where America is today?
BIDEN: Well, it could say that I’m a lousy candidate, and I didn’t do a good job. But I think — I hope that it doesn’t say that we are as racially, ethnically, and religiously at odds with one another as it appears the President wants us to be. Usually, you know, the President, in my view, with all due respect, it’s been divide and conquer, the way he does better if he splits us and where there’s division.
And I think people need hope. I think — look, George, I’ve never been more optimistic of the prospects for this country than I am today. And I really mean that. I think the people are ready. They understand what’s at stake. And it’s not about Democrat or Republican.
Monday evening Trump left the hospital and returned to the White House. He staged dramatic video where he ripped his mask off when he stood on the portico.
This by Tim Miller for The Bulwark sums up the moment: That heave gave him the stamina to move into a dramatic extended salute lasting 23 interminable seconds. He salutes with D-list caudillo energy, channeling an aging Pinochet or Trujillo in their last gasps of power. Throughout the salute he holds an aggressive glare. Then he steps back and looks deep into the distance. Fully embracing his posture as the leader of a death cult, Trump turns and enters the White House. Without a mask.
The New York Times webpage on Tuesday night shows why there is simply too much news to be covered here. Future historians reading this blog will need to do some digging in the actual newspapers and official records for this week.
Suffice to say, 14 people now have COVID in Trump’s orbit: The disarray was at the same time spreading across Washington. Almost the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, including its chairman, Gen. Mark A. Milley, went into quarantine on Tuesday after coming in contact with Adm. Charles W. Ray, the vice commandant of the Coast Guard, who tested positive for the coronavirus. Late in the day, the stock market took a dive when Mr. Trump abruptly called off talks for a congressional coronavirus relief bill after the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, said such a stimulus was badly needed.
Election 2020
President Trump berated his own cabinet officers on Thursday for not prosecuting or implicating his political enemies, lashing out even as he announced that he hoped to return to the campaign trail on Saturday just nine days after he tested positive for the coronavirus.
Barr and Pompeo are using their offices to support Trump’s reelection. Pompeo promised this week to release Clinton state department emails: “We’ve got the emails,” Mr. Pompeo said. “We’re getting them out. We’re going to get all this information out so the American people can see it.”
He made no effort to suggest that releasing them was unconnected to the political campaign. “We’re doing it as fast as we can,” he added. “I certainly think there’ll be more to see before the election.”
Polls show Biden’s lead increasing, including in the sun belt states: f Mr. Biden wins by simply flipping back the Democratic-leaning Great Lakes states, Mr. Trump and his allies can pin the blame on the virus. But if Mr. Trump loses across the South and West, it would force a much deeper introspection on the right about Trump and Trumpism — and their electoral future in the fastest-growing and most diverse part of the country.
The Trump campaign is also pushing hardball tactics: The campaign is trying to shape the voting process in many ways. Following the president’s lead, it has undertaken a legal and rhetorical assault on mail-in balloting, claiming with no evidence that it is rife with fraud. It is also pushing the boundaries of traditional poll monitoring in ways that many Democrats believe amount to voter intimidation. And it has put legal pressure on states to aggressively purge their voter rolls. …campaign officials have said they will put 50,000 poll watchers and electoral observers on the ground, including at least 1,600 in Philadelphia alone.
Claire Malone of 530 explains how the 36 point partisan divide in American politics make the reality bubbles of post-election inevitable: During the first debate, the president waffled on whether he would concede defeat, falling back on his go-to line about the fraudulent — and unfounded — dangers of mail voting. If he actually does this post-Election Day, media organizations will be forced to grapple with reporting on the news of the day — the president’s words — and battling misinformation and mistrust. It’s more than the press had to contend with in 2000, and it’s an unwinnable scenario. But it’s the reality of our 36-point world.
Another New York Times tax expose was released Friday night: the president’s long-hidden tax records, obtained by The New York Times, also reveal this: how he engineered a sudden financial windfall — more than $21 million in what experts describe as highly unusual one-off payments from the Las Vegas hotel he owns with his friend the casino mogul Phil Ruffin…. Unless the payments were for actual business expenses, he said, claiming a tax deduction for them would be illegal. If they were not legitimate and were also used to fund Mr. Trump’s presidential run, they could be considered illegal campaign contributions.
Sunday evening the investigative reporters for the New York Times who have been studying Trump’s taxes released a major story after receiving access to Trump’s tax returns: “The New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office.” There are many key findings, starting with the fact he paid no income tax for 10 years, and only $750 in 2016 and 2017. He is also financially insecure with a lot of debt: Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.
Some caveats: They comprise information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.
-his financial condition when he announced his run for president in 2015 lends some credence to the notion that his long-shot campaign was at least in part a gambit to reanimate the marketability of his name. -within the next four years, more than $300 million in loans — obligations for which he is personally responsible — will come due.
His properties have become bazaars for collecting money directly from lobbyists, foreign officials and others seeking face time, access or favor; the records for the first time put precise dollar figures on those transactions. When he took office, Mr. Trump said he would pursue no new foreign deals as president. Even so, in his first two years in the White House, his revenue from abroad totaled $73 million.
There are new details about his audit, which stem from a tax windfall he orchestrated when he declared a loss from the Atlantic City casino: If the auditors ultimately disallow Mr. Trump’s $72.9 million federal refund, he will be forced to return that money with interest, and possibly penalties, a total that could exceed $100 million.
Election 2020
In the first Biden-Trump debate Tuesday night, Trump was asked to condemn white supremacists and right wing militias. First he asked the moderator to be specific, and when the Proud Boys were named he said “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by!”
Frum on the debate: Trump yelled, threatened, interrupted—and changed nothing. All he did was confirm the horror and the revulsion of the large American majority that has already begun to cast its ballots against him.
Correction: Trump did one thing. On the Cleveland stage, Trump communicated that he will seize any opportunity to disrupt the vote, and resist the outcome. He communicated more forcefully than ever that the only security the country has for a constitutional future is that Biden wins by the largest possible margin.
GOP leaders distanced themselves from Trump’s remarks: Tim Scott: “White supremacy should be denounced at every turn. I think he misspoke, I think he should correct it. If he doesn’t correct it I guess he didn’t misspeak.” McConnell: “With regard to the white supremacy issue, I want to associate myself with the remarks of Tim Scott,” Mr. McConnell said. “He said it was unacceptable not to condemn white supremacists and so I do so in the strongest possible way.”
COVID-19
New York Times reports: Top White House officials pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this summer to play down the risk of sending children back to school… also tried to circumvent the C.D.C. in a search for alternate data showing that the pandemic was weakening and posed little danger to children.
Thursday night news broke that Hope Hicks tested positive for COVID-19. Early Friday morning, at 12:54am, Trump tweeted: Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!
Jonathan Swan in Politico Saturday late afternoon: What is the actual state of President Trump’s health — now and over the past 24 hours?
Why it matters: It’s one of the most high-stakes questions in the world, and I cannot answer it, despite having spent since 5 a.m. on Friday on my phone with sources inside and close to the White House.
On Friday night, we chose not to publish information we’d learned from well-placed sources who told us the president had experienced a fever and was worse than the White House was letting on. minutes after the doctors’ press conference, something extraordinary happened that crystallized this White House’s credibility gap, and made a mockery of any reporter trying to responsibly cover this president’s condition.
The White House reporter on pool duty — traveling with the president and delivering official dispatches to reporters at numerous outlets — sent this dispatch, quoting “a source familiar with the president’s health”: The president’s vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care. We’re still not on a clear path to a full recovery. That was a much more worrisome portrait. The source, identified by AP, was White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was shown on camera asking the pool to “go off the record with some of y’all.”
I have tried to get a straight answer from the White House since then about what is going on, and why we are being fed official contradictions.
Here is how the Washington Post described it: The statement from Meadows was originally distributed to the media through a White House pool report and was attributed to “a source familiar with the president’s health.” Two White House officials familiar with the statement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue, later said it was Meadows who spoke with reporters. Meadows was also seen on camera pulling reporters aside to talk after the news conference ended. The Associated Press, which had a reporter at the event, also later identified Meadows as the source of the comment. … Several White House aides also said they also did not have confidence in what they were being told by other officials.
“I can tell you what I am hearing, but I honestly have no idea if it’s right,” said one senior administration official close to the president. “A lot of people aren’t even telling other people in the building the truth.”
Saturday night the White House released staged photos of Trump working — signing blank sheets of paper in two different rooms taken 10 minutes apart. There was also a video of Trump speaking to the camera that was edited to remove his coughs.
By Tuesday, when Romney said he would not block the Supreme Court nomination, Republicans were lined up behind Trump on the effort to replace Ginsburg this year.
Brownstein on how the conservative bloc on the Supreme Court represents an electoral minority and will continue to into 2030s: That could be a recipe for explosive conflict through the coming decade between the priorities of rising generations that compose a growing majority of the population and a court chosen and confirmed by a Republican political coalition that no longer can regularly command majority support from voters. Those confrontations could unfold across a wide array of issues, with a conservative court rejecting or constraining legislation or executive branch actions popular with the emerging generations on questions ranging from climate change and racial equity to women’s rights, gay rights, access to voting — and perhaps most immediately, access to legal abortion.
Wednesday morning the Atlantic published this piece by Bart Gellman:
The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that uncertainty to hold on to power.
We have no precedent or procedure to end this election if Biden seems to carry the Electoral College but Trump refuses to concede. We will have to invent one.
On the idea that the vote tally will shift after election day, he quotes an unnamed Trump campaign official: “There will be a count on Election Night, that count will shift over time, and the results when the final count is given will be challenged as being inaccurate, fraudulent—pick your word.”
The worst case for an orderly count is also considered by some election modelers the likeliest: that Trump will jump ahead on Election Night, based on in-person returns, but his lead will slowly give way to a Biden victory as mail-in votes are tabulated. Josh Mendelsohn, the CEO of the Democratic data-modeling firm Hawkfish, calls this scenario “the red mirage.” The turbulence of that interval, fed by street protests, social media, and Trump’s desperate struggles to lock in his lead, can only be imagined. “Any scenario that you come up with will not be as weird as the reality of it,” the Trump legal adviser said.
Another Trump advisor: “The state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power. We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state,’ ” Lawrence Tabas, the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s chairman went on the record to say: “I’ve mentioned it to [the national Trump campaign], and I hope they’re thinking about it too,” I just don’t think this is the right time for me to be discussing those strategies and approaches, but [direct appointment of electors] is one of the options. It is one of the available legal options set forth in the Constitution. If the process, though, is flawed, and has significant flaws, our public may lose faith and confidence” in the election’s integrity.
Richard Hasen writing in Slate puts the concern this way: The idea is to throw so much muck into the process and cast so much doubt on who is the actual winner in one of those swing states because of supposed massive voter fraud and uncertainty about the rules for absentee ballots that some other actor besides the voter will decide the winner of the election. … The president has been laying the groundwork for these claims for months, and just Tuesday his son, Donald Trump Jr., baselessly suggested that Democrats will “add millions of fraudulent ballots that can cancel your vote and overturn the election.”
As if on cue, Trump said at a Wednesday afternoon press conference, when asked if he would concede the election: “We’re going to have to see what happens. You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster. Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”
Trumps refrain about voter fraud is motivating his supporters: The head of the party in Philadelphia said Wednesday that there would be multiple poll watchers at every site in the city, which would mean at least 1,600 Republican watchers in Philadelphia alone. poll watchers are being instructed in specific detail. In Michigan, for instance, they are being told to record when any paper jams occur, while those in Arizona are being given a detailed breakdown of the state’s voter identification requirements.
The New York Times ran a story about the Pentagon’s uneasiness about being thrust into the election: “senior leaders at the Pentagon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that they were talking among themselves about what to do if Mr. Trump, who will still be president from Election Day to Inauguration Day, invokes the Insurrection Act and tries to send troops into the streets, as he threatened to do during the protests against police brutality and systemic racism.”
Personal Log: our mail in ballots were delivered by the mail man Saturday afternoon, September 26. New Jersey is one of a few states that are mailing ballots to all voters.
McConnell vowed to hold a vote on Trump’s replacement of Ginsburg but would not say if that would happen before or after the election, six weeks away.
By Saturday, Trump called for the Senate to confirm his nomination, and Lindsay Graham reversed his earlier promise to not support a new nominee during an election. Only two GOP senators–Collins and Murkowski–said they will not support a nominee until after the next president takes office: Collins: “In fairness to the American people, who will either be re-electing the president or selecting a new one, the decision on a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court should be made by the president who is elected on Nov. 3.”
Trump held his first indoor rally since Tulsa in June on Sunday night. The city threatened to fine the venue for breaking COIVD restrictions.
Trump said this week of US COVID numbers: “If you take the blue states out,” he said, “we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at. We’re really at a very low level.”
Election 2020
In North Carolina, about 3-4% of mail in ballots are being rejected every day due to inconsistencies. In North Carolina: As of September 17, Black voters’ ballots are being rejected at more than four times the rate of white voters
On Monday the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided to block the Green Party from being on the November ballot. It was a 4-3 decision, with the chief justice siding with the liberals.
Many Florida ex-felons cannot vote in this election thanks for a judges panel were five of the six who voted to block them are Trump appointees.
Courts on both sides of the United States issued rulings on Thursday that could expand mail-in voting in the election in November, as the postmaster general privately apologized to state officials for missteps in his agency’s efforts to educate voters on mail-in ballots.
Michael R. Caputo, the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, posted a video live on his personal Facebook page in which he said: government scientists were engaging in “sedition” in their handling of the pandemic and that left-wing hit squads were preparing for armed insurrection after the election. “And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he said. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing.” “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get,” “There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.”
Even Barr got in on the doomsaying this week: Attorney General William P. Barr said in a recent interview that the United States would be “irrevocably committed to the socialist path” if President Trump was not re-elected… “I think we were getting into position where we were going to find ourselves irrevocably committed to the socialist path,” Mr. Barr said. “I think if Trump loses this election that that will be the case.”“There’s now a clear fork in the road for our country,”
Bouie: Instead of making a conventional appeal to voters to give him another term in office, Trump is issuing a threat, of sorts: I cannot lose. If I do lose, the election was stolen. Anyone protesting my effort to hold onto power is an insurrectionist. And sometimes, “there has to be retribution.”
Here is a list of recent ways Trump has and is using the federal government to either distort or suppress information in ways that will aid his reelection.
Ignatius writes this week that U.S. Cyber Command is blocking Russian election interference free from political interference from the White House: Thanks to these efforts, it will be “virtually impossible” for the Russians or anyone else to penetrate voting systems in the roughly 8,000 jurisdictions around the country, the defense official said.
Dan Coates, Trump’s former DNI, called for a high level commission to assure Americans of the security of their vote this November: We must firmly, unambiguously reassure all Americans that their vote will be counted, that it will matter, that the people’s will expressed through their votes will not be questioned and will be respected and accepted. The op-ed does not attack Trump specifically, but seems to motivated by concern about Trump’s behavior: Total destruction and sowing salt in the earth of American democracy is a catastrophe well beyond simple defeat and a poison for generations. An electoral victory on these terms would be no victory at all. The judgment of history, reflecting on the death of enlightened democracy, would be harsh.
Below is a monthly update, marking key metrics and commentary in from mid-August to mid-September, the sixth month since lockdowns began.
Polling Round Up
The gap in Trump approval-disapproval on COVID response shortened for the first time since April, from being -17.9 points underwater to 16.2 points. The same 39% approve, but his disapproval dropped to 56%.
According to a CBS News poll, 57% of Republicans and 10% of Democrats view the number of COVID deaths as acceptable.
There were no Pew or Gallup polls for Mid-September.
Political Weirding
In mid August, according to multiple news orgs this week: ‘The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was instructed by higher-ups in the Trump administration to modify its coronavirus testing guidelines this week to exclude people who do not have symptoms of Covid-19 — even if they have been recently exposed to the virus, according to two federal health officials.
We would learn in mid-September via the New York Times that the new testing recommendations placed on the CDC website in August were not written by CDC scientists and in fact were opposed internally.
Two American drug companies have a vaccine in third stage trials. The CDC released a memo that suggested it could be ready for use in humans by October, prompting some to worry it is being rushed to aid Trump’s reelection chances.
In early September, The New York Times published a story about how college campuses are becoming hotspots.
Then in the Week of September 12, CDC Director Redfield told the Senate: “If you are asking me when is it going to be generally available to the American public so we can begin to take advantage of vaccine to get back to our regular life, I think we are probably looking at third — late second quarter, third quarter 2021.”
He also called masks “the most important, powerful public health tool we have” in fighting the pandemic, adding that universal use of face coverings could bring the pandemic under control in months. “I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take a Covid vaccine.”
In a press conference later that same day, Trump said Redfield’s information was incorrect.
Ed Yong published a clarifying piece in the Atlantic describing why Americans are stuck and unable to fight COVID effectively. He lists nine psychological factors:
the public to view solutions in isolation, which means imperfections become conflated with uselessness.
Stay at home orders “were also meant to buy time for the nation to ramp up its public-health defenses. Instead, the White House treated months of physical distancing as a pandemic-ending strategy in itself….Showiness is often mistaken for effectiveness. “
Fixing systemic problems is more difficult than spewing moralism, and Americans gravitated toward the latter. … attributes this tendency to America’s puritanical roots, which conflate pleasure with irresponsibility, and which prize shame over support. “
magical thinking, in which some factor naturally defuses the pandemic, has become a convenient excuse for inaction.
Even when the virus began spreading within the U.S., places that weren’t initially pummeled seemed to forget that viruses spread.
exponential growth is counterintuitive, so “we don’t understand that things look fine until right before they’re very not fine,”… the coronavirus spreads quickly but is slow to reveal itself: It can take a month for infections to lead to symptoms, for symptoms to warrant tests and hospitalizations, and for enough sick people to produce a noticeable spike.
Trump embodied and amplified America’s intuition death spiral. Instead of rolling out a detailed, coordinated plan to control the pandemic, he ricocheted from one overhyped cure-all to another, while relying on theatrics such as travel bans. He ignored inequities and systemic failures in favor of blaming China, the WHO, governors, Anthony Fauci, and Barack Obama. He widened the false dichotomy between lockdowns and reopening by regularly tweeting in favor of the latter. He and his allies appealed to magical thinking and steered the U.S. straight into the normality trap by frequently lying that the virus would go away, that the pandemic was ending, that new waves weren’t happening, and that rising case numbers were solely due to increased testing. They have started talking about COVID-19 in the past tense as cases surge in the Midwest.
Bod Woodward released audio from key moments in his 18 interviews with trump over the winter and spring.
New York Times: The audio recordings show that as Mr. Trump was absorbing in real time the information he was given by health and national security experts, he made a conscious choice not only to mislead the public but also to actively pressure governors to reopen states before his own government guidelines said they were ready.
Trump’s response: Bob Woodward had my quotes for many months. If he thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn’t he immediately report them in an effort to save lives? Didn’t he have an obligation to do so? No, because he knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic!
Top officials with the Department of Homeland Security directed agency analysts to downplay threats from violent white supremacy and Russian election interference, a Homeland Security official said in a whistle-blower complaint released on Wednesday… the department’s second-highest ranked official, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, ordered Mr. Murphy to modify intelligence assessments to make the threat of white supremacy “appear less severe” and include information on violent “left-wing” groups and antifa.
The whistleblower was fired in August is Brian Murphy: Murphy charged that in mid-May this year, DHS acting secretary Chad Wolf instructed him “to cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran.” When Murphy protested to his superiors, Wolf reiterated on July 8 that the intelligence about Russia should be “held” because it “made the President look bad,” according to the complaint.
News of a call last week between Barr and US prosecutors leaked this week: Attorney General William P. Barr told federal prosecutors in a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who had committed violent crimes at protests in recent months with sedition, according to two people familiar with the call….Mr. Barr mentioned sedition as part of a list of possible federal statutes that prosecutors could use to bring charges, including assaulting a federal officer, rioting, use of explosives and racketeering, according to the people familiar with the call. Justice Department officials included sedition on a list of such charges in a follow-up email.
The attorney general has also asked prosecutors in the Justice Department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone.
Barr also said this week: “You know, putting a national lockdown, stay at home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history,” Barr said as a round of applause came from the crowd.
It was reported this week that just prior to the June crackdown of protestors in Washington DC, the National Guard requested the use of heat rays: “A.D.S. can provide our troops a capability they currently do not have,” the officer wrote, according to Major DeMarco’s testimony, first reported by The Washington Post. “The A.D.S. can immediately compel an individual to cease threatening behavior or depart through application of a directed energy beam that provides a sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin. The effect is overwhelming.” They also stockpiled “approximately 7,000 rounds” of live ammunition in the hours before the clash, transferring the munitions from as far as Missouri and Tennessee to the nation’s capital.
The Justice Department moved on Tuesday to replace President Trump’s private legal team with government lawyers to defend him against a defamation lawsuit by the author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.
Election 2020
In making the point that unlike 2000, Democrats are likely to flood the streets with protest if Trump contests his loss, he describes this scenario: the president could try to enlist Republican-controlled legislatures in key swing states to help him. They could send a slate of pro-Trump electors to vote in the Electoral College when it convenes on December 14; the rationale would be that even if the state’s official count had Biden ahead, the result was too riddled with fraud to trust. (The GOP-controlled legislature in Florida explored the option of designating its own pro-Bush electors during the recount there in 2000.) A worst-case scenario: A state with a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature could submit competing slates of electors for the final vote. That’s hypothetically possible in the three key Rust Belt battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, as well as North Carolina. (Republicans control both the governorship and the state legislature in the other states considered most competitive, Arizona and Florida.)
The war game paper he cites was published August 3, 2020.
Conservatives on the Wisconsin Supreme Court tossed a wrench in the presidential election in that state on Thursday: absentee ballots should not be mailed for now so the justices can determine whether they should include the Green Party’s presidential ticket. Adding candidates to the ballots after some have been sent would be complicated. Voters who have already been sent a ballot would need to get a second one and clerks would have to make sure no one voted twice. “If Milwaukee County is forced to stop printing, and begin designing, testing, and printing a new ballot, we will not be able to meet the state and federal deadlines,” Milwaukee County reported.
Trump at a rally in North Carolina: “Gotta be careful with those ballots. Watch those ballots. I don’t like it. You know, you have a Democrat governor, you have all these Democrats watching that stuff. I don’t like it,” Trump said at a rally in Winston-Salem Tuesday evening. “Watch it,” he continued. “Be poll watchers when you go there. Watch all the thieving and stealing and robbing they do. Because this is important. We win North Carolina, we win.”
Personal Log: New Jersey opened indoor dining and bars at 25% capacity this week. After work on Friday I went to the bar in our neighborhood that I often went to after work and sat inside. Only a few people were spaces out at the bar and the indoor tables had dinners spread out. It was eerie, after nearly 6 months of not being able to be inside side a place, to be back here.
Trump spoke about Rittenhouse at a Monday press conference: “He was trying to get rid of — away from them and he fell and then they very violently attacked him. It is something that we’re looking at right now, it is under investigation. I guess he was in very big trouble. He probably would have been killed.
DHS has blocked from publishing its own report on Russian election interference operations, specifically around disinformation about Biden’s health. Wold said the report was “poorly written”: The department appears to have inconsistent standards of caution for its intelligence briefings. Intelligence officers wrote that they had “high confidence” in their assessment of Russian election interference, yet its publication was blocked. But on July 16, the department’s intelligence office broadly disseminated a bulletin on “anarchist extremists” committing violence in the Pacific Northwest, although in that case, officials admitted they had “low confidence” in their historical assessment.
In an attempt to continue sowing confusion about mail-in voting, Trump repeatedly encouraged his supporters to vote twice in the 2020 election, first by mail and then in person.
The Atlantic reported on Thursday that Trump denigrated troops of prior wars, particularly in the WWI Centennial where he refused to visit the cemeteries. This was based on 4 anonymous sources, but confirmed by every major cable news network and the New York Times.
The Republican National Convention was held this week from Monday to Thursday. For the first time in the party’s history the GOP adopted no policy platform whatsoever.
Bouie: If there’s no platform for the Republican National Convention, if the party has agreed to simply support the president’s second-term agenda, it is because the basic arrangement between Trump and the Republican Party is still intact. Should he win a second term, we’ll see more of the same: an administration that pursues as much of the party’s agenda — redistribution to the wealthy, deep reductions in the state’s ability to solve problems for the general welfare — as possible, and a Republican Party that looks the other way as Trump turns the federal government into a patronage machine for himself, his family and his allies.
Frum: The question is not why Republicans lack a coherent platform; it’s why they’re so reluctant to publish the one on which they’re running.
Edsel, writing about the GOP’s apocalyptic vision on display this week, write’s about a tactic Trump has always employed called Costly Signals: How does it work? Joshua Greene writes: Making oneself irredeemably unacceptable to the other tribe is equivalent to permanently binding oneself to one’s own. These comments are like gang tattoos. And in Trump’s case, it’s tattoos all over his neck and face. At the same time, Trump’s “costly signals” make his reliability as a protector of white privilege clear.
There was a police shooting of an unarmed black man in Wisconsin that sparked another round of protests. A white, vigilante shooter murdered two protestors Tuesday night. He was arrested Wednesday.
The New York Times used online videos to track his killing spree.
Saturday evening a Trump supporting caravan drove into downtown Portland, shooting paintballs into crowds. One of the right wing protestors was shot and killed.
A new book reveals that Trump offered John Kelly the FBI Director position after he fired Comey, but only if Kelly swore loyalty to Trump. He declined.
A rank of 8 is the second most severe category of approval decline that Trump has achieved, and it has only happened two other times. Only one other approval drop has been larger than this one (Episode 4 from early 2017). Other dips have gone lower, but going from 44% to 40.1% reflects a significant swing. For Trump, this does not happen very often.
The reason is not as simple as Trump’s poor COVID response. Many of the greatest hits news cycles of past approval dips all returned in the first half of summer 2020, from the Russia investigation to White House chaos to prominent defections. While COVID is mostly likely the key factor, since these weeks saw massive outbreaks across the sunbelt states, another major factor was his response to nationwide protests after the police killing of George Floyd on May 25, in particular his crackdown and the June 2 church photo op. There were also smaller events that may have made an impact, like the week long focus on Russian bounties paid to the Talbian for dead American soldiers. See a summary of key events from these weeks below.
In the 10 weeks since the dip ended (and with only 6 to go before the elections) Trump has made up three-quarters of the points he lost in this dip. There has been no obvious bounce, just a gradual reversion to this 42% homeostasis.
Key Events:
COVID-19
A mini outbreak of Coronavirus is happening in the Trump Administration; masks now required in the WH; Dr. Fauci’s remarks, along with those of Dr. Redfield, contradicted Mr. Trump’s growing insistence that the nation has put the coronavirus behind it; Senator Burr stepped down from the Senate Intelligence Committee under suspicion of COVID-related insider trading; 2020 virtual Graduation with Obama keynote address; America hit 100,000 deaths on Wednesday May 27; Trump’s June 20th rally in Tulsa was his first since early March. It was widely under-attended, with only about 6,000 supporters showing up; By midweek the crisis in southern and western states was clear: The United States’ coronavirus testing capacity has begun to strain as the pandemic continues to spread; Texas and Florida halted and then reversed its reopening plan; Trump wore a mask in public for the first time on Saturday, arranges a dramatic video at Walter Reed Hospital
Policy
Trump and allies pushing Obamagate; Trump fired the State Department Inspector General on Friday night; The state IG had also “begun an inquiry into Mr. Pompeo’s possible misuse of a political appointee to perform personal tasks for him and his wife, according to Democratic aides; The Trump Administration withdrew from a key arms control accord; More family separation of immigrants are happening; Trump responded to the Floyd killing with an Executive Order; There was serious unrest and protests outside of the White House Sunday night, and Trump went into the bunker Friday night; Trump Church Photo Op Monday June 2; Trump told the Army on Monday to deploy active-duty military police to Washington; Attorney General William P. Barr personally ordered law enforcement officials to clear the streets around Lafayette Square just before President Trump spoke Monday; Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper initially tried to send home a small portion of the 1,600 active-duty troops on Wednesday, only to have Mr. Trump order him to reverse course during an angry meeting. The president finally acquiesced on Thursday; The New York Times got a hold of interviews and other documents about the use of the National Guard to suppress protests in D.C.; Trump issued an executive order on policing, seen by most as weak; The Supreme Court overturned Trump’s attempt to end DACA, meaning that the Dreamers are protected for now; All three major papers–New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post–reported this weekend that US intelligence believes that Russia’s GRU paid Taliban to kill American soldiers–As for the administration’s response: One senior administration official offered a new explanation on Sunday, saying that Mr. Trump was not briefed because the intelligence agencies had come to no consensus on the findings.
Defections
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen spoke out against the protest crackdown in a piece in the Atlantic; Mattis released a statement on Wednesday; Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff apologized for joining Trump in the Lafayette Square photo op; Experts of Bolton’s book were published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday:
Taboos
Trump got pushback from some allies for continuing to tweet accusations that Joe Scarborough killed an aide in the 90s; Tistter started fact checking Trump tweets; Trump tweets “the looting starts, the shooting starts” which is censured by Twitter; Also on Sunday Trump tweeted a video of people chanting White Power. It was later deleted and a spokesperson calimed Trump had not heard the audio.
Russia Investigation
The judge in the Flynn Case, Emmet Sullivan, appointed a former judge to asses whether Flynn lied and committed perjury; Friday night a record of Flynn’s 2016 calls with Kislyak were leaked; judge urged a court to reject its attempt to drop the criminal case against Michael T. Flynn; Trump commuted Roger Stone’s 40 month sentence on Friday night–Mueller write op-ed in response, defending his team’s investigation
Non-Russia Related Legal Troubles
Trump fired Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney for SDNY–this is several categories: a taboo for firing based on political motivations; White House chaos for the bungled nature of firing; and a defection, since the Trump appointed attorney publicly rebutted the administrations rational for removing him. Still, the undercurrent is that this office was investigating sensitive Trump legal matters; The Supreme Court ruled that the Manhattan DA can get access to Trump tax record; Berman stepped down three weeks later
