June 18, 2019

Please Stop Thinking This Will Be a Fair Election

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-abc-interview-foreign-interference-849062/

June 17, 2019
2:21PM ET
Please Stop Thinking This Will Be a Fair Election
President Trump declared his willingness to betray the country, and Republicans are ready to help
By Jamil Smith

snip//

Consider some of the rhetoric calling Trump “traitorous” too much? Too bad. I mean, we live in a time when the Pentagon deliberately keeps the president out of the loop with regard to U.S. countermeasures against Russian power grids, for fear that he will let sensitive details slip to top Russian officials as he already has in the past. But Trump’s willingness to undermine American democracy is not merely disloyal because of his literal encouragement of foreign interference in our elections.

The untold number of lives lost and the scars borne by people like Rep. John Lewis can’t allow us to say that voter suppression is “un-American.” Unfortunately, it is anything but. Americans still do not have the full protections of the Voting Rights Act, thanks to the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court decision. We should take Trump’s eagerness to accept foreign help and the Republican will to assist him within this context, because like the act of blocking the ballot, their acts vandalize the very purpose of democracy. For all their carrying on about migrants, they sure are in a hurry to give away a say in America’s future to foreign actors, some of whom may even be adversaries.

That is why it is difficult to get caught up in Trump’s gaudy redesign of Air Force One , or even his possibly imaginary Obamacare replacement that he teased during the ABC special. It was going to be tough to make that newsworthy in an age when his administration is building concentration camps for immigrant children. But perhaps news is where you make it.

snip//

One of our holes in the boat, as it were, is that the sitting United States president can remain in office, signing bills and even riding on Air Force One, after he has said the kinds of things that he has. Trump told the nation, on television, that he plans to become a criminal. That he steadfastly denies being a crook in the past, whether financial or political, matters not. Every single claim of “no collusion!” was zeroed out by this interview. We now lay in wait for he and his campaign to collude, whether with Russia or the Saudis or the UAE, or whichever foreign power may seek to sway Trump toward their preferred policy outcome.

This president has no definable moral code to speak of beyond his own personal profit and glorification. In that respect, he is a natural Republican for this day and age. That we know them to be this way, however, does not mean that we should merely shrug our shoulders at their depravity.

The president’s behavior is indeed “disgraceful,” if no longer “shocking.” He and his party do know “right from wrong,” of that I’m sure. They’re grown. So treat them as such.

June 17, 2019

President Trump Aims to Slash Number of Federal Advisory Committees

...good stewards of the taxpayers’ money?



President Trump Aims to Slash Number of Federal Advisory Committees
By JILL COLVIN / AP June 15, 2019


WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is trying to take an ax to federal advisory committees, ordering that their numbers be slashed.

Trump signed an executive order Friday that directs every federal agency to evaluate the need for all of its advisory committees created under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. And it gives agency heads until September to terminate at least one-third of current committees created by agency heads.

Federal advisory committees are typically made up of private citizens who offer advice and assistance to the executive branch.

The White House did not immediately provide any justification for the order. But it appears to assume that many of the committees are redundant or have been convened to address issues that are now obsolete. It says that committees will be eliminated if their “stated objectives” have been accomplished, if the “subject matter or work of the committee has become obsolete,” if their “primary functions have been assumed by another entity” and if the agency determines “the cost of operation is excessive in relation to the benefits to the Federal Government.”

A government-wide review of FACA committees has not been done since the early 1990s, according to the White House.

more...

https://time.com/5607750/trump-slash-federal-advisory-committees/

June 16, 2019

Pete Buttigieg: 'Why Not' Start a First Family in the White House?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pete-buttigieg-why-not-start-a-first-family-in-the-white-house?ref=home

Pete Buttigieg: ‘Why Not’ Start a First Family in the White House?
Audrey McNamara
Reporter
Published 06.16.19 5:00PM ET




https://twitter.com/CNNSotu/status/1140286363826368513

June 16, 2019

Benjamin Netanyahu just unveiled Israel's newest town: "Trump Heights"

Benjamin Netanyahu just unveiled Israel’s newest town: “Trump Heights”
The town will be built in the contested Golan Heights.
By Zeeshan Aleem@ZeeshanAleemzeeshan.aleem@vox.com Jun 16, 2019, 3:45pm EDT


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a plaque marking the location of the newest settlement in the Golan Heights on Sunday.

The marker proclaims the settlement will be known as “Trump Heights.” Netanyahu said the name was chosen to thank President Donald Trump for breaking decades of US tradition and recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel in March. Prior to that point, the US observed the international custom of considering it occupied territory.

Trump Heights, called “Ramat Trump” in Hebrew, is a symbol of the airtight alliance that’s developed between the US and Israel. Trump has repeatedly aligned himself with Netanyahu’s right-wing policy vision for his country and the Middle East.

The new town has yet to be built, but the ceremony marking the name and location of the settlement was conducted with much fanfare by the Israeli government. Netanyahu called it “a historic day” and praised Trump as a “friend of Israel.”

more...

https://www.vox.com/world/2019/6/16/18681116/benjamin-netanyahu-israel-town-golan-heights-trump-heights

June 16, 2019

Sen. Elizabeth Warren set to roll out student debt plan with Rep. James Clyburn

https://thinkprogress.org/sen-elizabeth-warren-set-to-roll-out-student-debt-plan-with-rep-james-clyburn-028b2185dd7b/

Sen. Elizabeth Warren set to roll out student debt plan with Rep. James Clyburn
The two plan to put forward legislation in the coming weeks that dovetails with a proposal to cancel student loan debt made by Warren on the campaign trail.
Jason Linkins
Jun 16, 2019, 1:23 pm


Among the myriad proposals that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has offered up while on the 2020 campaign trail is a plan to confront the nation’s growing student loan crisis by cancelling a significant amount debt currently held by tens of millions of Americans. Now, with an assist from House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), Warren will move the timetable on this proposal up, with an eye toward introducing legislation in a few weeks’ time.

As Roll Call’s Niels Lesniewski reports, this Warren-Clyburn team up is set to happen ahead of the South Carolina representative’s “World Famous Fish Fry,” which is one of those primary season confabs that traditionally draws Democratic presidential candidates to South Carolina to parlay with state Democratic officials and voters eager to hear from the contenders. Per Lesniewski:



These details broadly track with the proposal Warren pitched on her campaign’s blog at Medium. There, Warren provided the brass tacks:



Warren plans to pair her debt relief proposal with a plan to prevent the next student loan crisis by opening the door to a free college education that would give “every American the opportunity to attend a two-year or four-year public college without paying a dime in tuition or fees.” Warren has proposed that the proceeds for her universal free college plan to be paid for via what she calls an “Ultra-Millionaire Tax ,” which would levy a 2% tax on the 75,000 families with $50 million or more in wealth annually.

more...

https://thinkprogress.org/sen-elizabeth-warren-set-to-roll-out-student-debt-plan-with-rep-james-clyburn-028b2185dd7b/

June 16, 2019

Pete Buttigieg Rocks Trump By Promising No Pardon If He Is Indicted

Music to my ears!

https://www.politicususa.com/2019/06/16/pete-buttigieg-trump-pardon.html

Posted on Sun, Jun 16th, 2019 by Jason Easley
Pete Buttigieg Rocks Trump By Promising No Pardon If He Is Indicted
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said that he would not pardon Trump or any other ex-president if they were indicted.


Transcript via CBS’s Face The Nation:

https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1140275542417117184
Trump isn’t going to get a Nixon pardon

The best chance for Trump to avoid a federal indictment by getting a pardon would be to resign. Democrats aren’t going to pardon Trump if he loses the election for the exact reason that Buttigieg stated. Public corruption can’t go unpunished. It has been argued with hindsight that Ford’s presidency was finished as soon as he pardoned Nixon. Corruption can’t be swept under the rug so that the nation can “move on.” If Democrats take back the White House, Trump is going to be indicted at the federal or state level. Presidential pardons don’t apply to state charges, but Trump must be punished so that a presidency like his never happens again.

Trump best chance of avoiding a potential prison sentence is winning reelection because a pardon isn’t going to happen.

June 16, 2019

Pete Buttigieg Promises To Immediately Scrub Any Trace Of Trumpism From The DOJ

Posted on Sat, Jun 15th, 2019 by Sean Colarossi
Pete Buttigieg Promises To Immediately Scrub Any Trace Of Trumpism From The DOJ


South Bend mayor and 2020 Democratic hopeful Pete Buttigieg said on Saturday that if he’s elected president, he will restore the Department of Justice to its pre-Trump state as an entity that defends the rule of law, not acts as an extension of the Oval Office.

In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Buttigieg said that if he’s president, he will ensure that the Justice Department is completely separate from the president, particularly decisions related to criminal prosecution.



https://twitter.com/CNNSotu/status/1139931902520041472

Buttigieg said:



more...

https://www.politicususa.com/2019/06/15/pete-buttigieg-promises-to-immediately-scrub-any-trace-of-trumpism-from-the-doj.html

June 15, 2019

David Corn: Elizabeth Warren Has a Plan for Winning the White House, and Right Now It's Working

June 14, 2019
Elizabeth Warren Has a Plan for Winning the White House, and Right Now It’s Working
How the Massachusetts senator engineered her surge in the polls.
David Corn
Washington, DC, Bureau Chief


Elizabeth Warren is having what political reporters like to call “a moment.” This policy maven seeking the White House has risen to third place in the Real Clear Politics national polling average of Democratic voters, trailing frontrunner Joe Biden and second-placer Bernie Sanders but surpassing Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg. Better yet for Warren, she placed an eye-popping second in a YouGov/Economist poll released Wednesday, 4 points ahead of Sanders. And she has been scoring well in key primary states, running second in a recent Nevada survey and essentially tying for second in Iowa and California polls. These numbers have reasonably prompted headlines suggesting a Warren surge. But this uptick is more than a serendipitous development, for Warren has become the slow-and-steady candidate, slogging along and gaining ground inch by inch. That’s how the law-professor-turned-senator and her team have always seen her—and that’s all part of her plan.

When Warren announced her presidential bid on the last day of 2018—an early entry into the fray—the commentariat consensus was that she was coming into the game with a self-inflicted injury: the DNA test she took in response to Donald Trump’s “Pocahontas” taunts that she said showed she did have (a smidgen of) Native American ancestry. A kitchen-table populist who used to sparkle with wit, smarts, and conviction on late-night comedy talk shows and who once was a Democratic idol, Warren was now portrayed as damaged goods—practically a non-starter, a once-upon-a-time golden prospect who had lost her shine. It was not uncommon to hear pundits muse that she should have run in 2016 when Warren stock was selling high. Surely, some political observers noted, she now lacked the quality most prized by Democrats: electability. Yeah, she was intelligent, sharp on the issues, and effective. (Has any other Democratic contender given birth to an agency that takes on the big banks and credit card companies?) But how could a wounded candidate do battle with Trump the Slasher?

But she persisted. (Sorry about that.) That is, Warren did have a plan. Not just a plan for this or that policy problem. She had a strategy for winning the Democratic primary and, possibly even better, a raison d’etre for her candidacy. And she and her crew knew that it was a plan that would be implemented with patience over a long haul in a super-saturated field and that it was based on a natural advantage: Democratic voters would understand why Warren was running. Unlike many of the other White House wannabes, she would not have to explain or brand (or rebrand) herself. She was, as the slogan now goes, the candidate with plans. She was an ardent champion of consumers, a foe of Big Finance rip-off artists, and a policy nerd who did sweat and understand the details—and who relished presenting polished proposals on practically anything. She would not have to devote time to introducing herself to the Democratic electorate or justifying her run for the White House—a task that burdens much of the Democratic field, including many of her Senate colleagues who have dived into the pool.

And this liberated Warren and her operation. The campaign’s strategists did not have spend time each day figuring out the rationale for her candidacy and how to sell whatever it was to potential voters. On a daily basis, she would do what she always has done and what she enjoys: talk about problems and potential solutions. This had an obvious benefit: Warren was being authentic. And her staff was freed from the burden of messaging—meaning, developing pitches until one works. (Remember the painful process Hillary Clinton’s campaign went through in this regard?)

more...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/elizabeth-warren-plan/

June 15, 2019

Dahlia Lithwick: America Can't Just Live for 2020

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/trump-2020-can-still-do-a-lot-of-damage-in-2019.html

America Can’t Just Live for 2020
Sure, try to vote Trump out of office, but what happens in 2019 matters too.
By Dahlia Lithwick
June 14, 2019
6:17 PM


America finds itself in the grip of an endless and inscrutable daily mystery: How is it possible that the president—whose chief occupations seem to be tweeting, lying, lying about what he tweeted, watching television, and committing crimes—is not on the hook for anything? Not for the lying, and not for the criming, and not even for the endless truculence and meanness. More broadly, one wonders, how is it possible that nobody within his orbit—including those who refuse to comply with subpoenas, and those who openly commit flagrant acts of greed and corruption, and those who have broken federal laws—is on the hook for anything either? This vast epistemological question can consume every ounce of energy that remains after an average day spent watching atrocities directed at small children and humanitarian volunteers being put on trial. The atonal incantation of “imagine if Obama had…” has by now lost all meaning; it’s more or less just a drinking game.

Once upon a time in America, the things we witnessed this past week—the president’s defense of a murderous dictator, the president’s claim that he would welcome foreign dirt on his opponents, the president’s claim that he cannot be investigated criminally by Congress—would be the end of a presidency. But it’s just more of the same song, perhaps with a slightly different chorus. The operative question is no longer “what did he do now?” It’s the exhausted afterthought of “what could he possibly do that would bring about any consequences?”

The answer, of course, is that we’ve let him get away with it. As Michelle Goldberg argued Thursday, we let him because we are numb and tired and losing our capacity to react. This is partially because while Donald Trump remains a first-order attention grabber, he no longer feels like a first-order problem—perhaps because we have learned that there isn’t much to do about him, or because we think that voting him out in 2020 is the best answer. Instead of trying to stop this administration that is simply and stubbornly still there (and surely getting worse), we seem to have decided to spend most of our energy on our other priorities, on our lives, and on following the 2020 Democratic primary. Who can blame us, really, with Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats focused on infrastructure, hearings, reelection bids, and their own races? They are the people who can do something tangible to end this presidency, and from the looks of it, many are not very focused on that task (opting instead to spend time fighting over what to focus on). That means that every day House Democrats send out the message that “this is a crisis” and also that “I’m working on other projects” becomes a day in which they look like they are either overstating the crisis or declining to take appropriate action. Democracy is on fire. Nobody knows what to do. Therefore, democracy can’t really be on fire? Repeat.

Perhaps it isn’t so much that Americans are numb. More accurately, it feels like everyone is waiting around for their instructions. This makes sense, as we do find ourselves in a rather unprecedented moment in American politics. But with so much of progressive leadership writing books or sitting on panels or running for president, the folks who might be able to give instructions seem to still be workshopping their plan. I admit that it is strange to me that, in the face of mass uncertainty about what the president did and didn’t do with respect to foreign election interference and obstruction of justice, Democrats wouldn’t take advantage of a process that is designed to showcase for the American public exactly these things. But they don’t seem to be biting.

We kept hoping that someone trusted and unifying would come along and “bring us all together.” Perhaps if not around a plan, around an idea or a value. But we are not coming together; we are cracking apart. And that feeling—of a country cracking apart—is in no small way responsible for the feeling of creeping numbness that Goldberg describes. Among the stories that barely broke through the mayhem of the week, we have Kellyanne Conway laughing off Hatch Act violations that should have ended her White House career, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders slinking away from the White House, such that 25 percent of the surviving senior staffers are now evidently related to the president. Maybe all this misery is resolved by way of free and fair elections in 2020. The problem is that maybe there won’t be free and fair elections in 2020: The president has invited the same foreign election interference he once declared never happened to repeat itself, and efforts to suppress the vote continue apace. Republicans in the Senate made clear that they intend to do nothing to secure those elections. That is not a good trend for electoral victory.

A year and a half is a long time. It represents a lot of new federal judges who will bless Trumpian claims that he is above the law. It represents a lot of time for foreign interests to pay to play in the elections and to hack and misinform as they go. We can be numb without being naïve about how risky it is to put complete faith in voting. That was the original sin of 2016. Nobody can tell you what to do (and certainly, no one official is), but Goldberg’s suggestions—protests and gumming up the Senate—are a start. Calling your elected officials like its 2017 is also good. Donating time and money and airspace to entities trying to ameliorate suffering is good. Nobody should presume to tell others what the work should be. But nobody should presume that engraved invitations to do the work will show up in the mail. Numb is not necessarily contagious, but it is very possibly terminal.

June 14, 2019

Pete Buttigieg's Comprehensive Foreign-Policy Vision

https://www.thenation.com/article/pete-buttigieg-foreign-policy-speech-iran-venezuela/

Pete Buttigieg’s Comprehensive Foreign-Policy Vision
In a speech at Indiana University, Mayor Pete promised to end America’s endless wars, support nuclear nonproliferation, and rejoin the Iran nuclear deal.
By James Carden
Yesterday 7:00 am

snip//

The topic of his speech at Indiana was serious: America and the World: National Security for a New Era. His choice to introduce him, very serious: former Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, a 34-year veteran of the House and co-chair of both the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group.

The choice of Hamilton was also exceedingly savvy. The hometown crowd greeted the 88-year-old with a standing ovation, and Hamilton, who fell short of giving an outright endorsement, lent the proceedings an imprimatur of gravitas. For his part, Buttigieg was quick to try to place himself as heir to the legacy of Indiana’s own foreign-policy heavyweights, Hamilton and the late Senator Richard Lugar. This would be, one has to admit, presumptuous for your average sitting member of congress to do, but Mayor Pete has his sights set on bigger things. Yet one can’t help but get the sense that there is something of an inverse relationship between the mayor’s credentials and his vast (and obvious) ambition.

“This,” said a middle-aged man seated in front of me, “is the opposite of of a Trump rally.”

And so it was. In terms of comportment, intellect, and substance, Mayor Pete and President Trump are about as far apart as you can get. America’s purposes abroad, said Buttigieg, must be “rooted in our aspirations at home.” Buttigieg told the crowd that he would “only use force when left with no alternative” and promised that “an exceedingly high bar” would be set for the use of military force. He would “put an end to endless war and focus on future threats” which, according to Buttigieg, include a rising tide of authoritarian governments (Russia, China) and climate change.

His critique of the Trump administration’s reckless posture toward Iran and Venezuela is hard to argue against, though, significantly, he mocked the current president’s clumsy diplomatic efforts to engage North Korea. Nevertheless, Buttigieg promised to make nuclear non-proliferation a centerpiece of his foreign policy and pledged to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the Iranian nuclear deal.

Still more promising, Buttigieg took aim at Congress for abdicating its responsibility for matters of war and peace, promising to “repeal and replace” the now 18-year-old post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force that has been used by successive administrations as a legal fig leaf for endless (and, it hardly needs saying, reckless and counterproductive) military interventions in the Greater Middle East. Buttigieg also accused Congress of being “asleep at the switch” and demanded that it exercise its oversight authority on national security matters. Yet, worryingly, the mayor did not mention efforts by leading progressives in the House and Senate (among them, his rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders) to invoke the War Powers Act and end American support for Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen.

Buttigieg also seems committed to not rethinking the sometimes negative role that NATO has played in eastern Europe, while clearly signaling his intent to fight the new cold war by increasing funding for the intelligence community and supporting what he described as a public-private information-warfare campaign presumably designed to counter Russian disinformation. Yet, all in all, the mayor laid out a comprehensive foreign-policy vision that makes clear where he stands on many of the most contentious and, yes, serious, foreign-policy issues facing the country today.