2nd weekend of Trump making comments about Rep. Omar since a man was arrested for death threats against the House member. I would like to point out that this would have been career ending for any normal politician in any previous modern context. Her remarks were from a speech she gave last month, why attack her now?
At issue were remarks that Ms. Omar made last month at an event hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. There, she gave a speech in which she addressed lingering fear directed at Muslims, and the rights Muslims have to speak out about being viewed with suspicion.
In a Tuesday afternoon “deputies” conference call last year with about 50 or 60 officials from across government, Mr. Miller demanded to know why nearly all of the families seeking asylum were passing the first hurdle — a screening interview to determine whether they have a “credible fear” of persecution if they were returned to their home countries.
Mr. Miller and others in the White House were outraged that 90 percent or more of the applicants passed the first screening, a concern during the Bush administration, as well. Immigration judges ultimately deny all but about 20 percent of the asylum requests, but because of a backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases, many asylum seekers wait years for their case to be heard for the second time, giving them the chance to gain work permits, build roots and disappear in the United States.
To Mr. Miller, the asylum process was a giant loophole that needed to be plugged. And he faulted the asylum officers at Citizenship and Immigration Services who were conducting the screenings for having a cultural bias that made them overly sympathetic to the asylum seekers. “You need to tighten up,” Miller insisted.
Listening to Mr. Miller continue to hammer the issue, two people on the call recalled, it was almost as if Mr. Miller wanted asylum officers to ignore the law. At one point during the call, Mr. Cissna erupted in frustration.
“Enough. Enough. Stand down!” he said.
But such pressure from the White House was hardly unique, according to officials from multiple agencies.
[…]
When Ms. Nielsen did not give the president the answer he sought, he turned to Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, and asked him to stop migrants from entering the country. Mr. Trump told Mr. McAleenan that he would pardon him if he ran into any legal problems, according to officials familiar with the conversation — though he denied it in a tweet Saturday night.
Ms. Nielsen’s refusal to shut down the southern border appeared to be the final straw for Mr. Trump. After forcing her resignation, he named Mr. McAleenan the acting secretary of the department.
Not a good look…but Mnuchin’s background is very much aggressive Wall Street plunderers, so it fits.
Sears on Thursday named Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a lawsuit against the company’s former CEO, Edward Lampert, alleging that Mnuchin was part of a group of board members who assisted Lampert and his hedge fund in stripping the bankrupted retailer of more than $2 billion in assets.
Lampert and his hedge fund, ESL Investments, were the largest shareholders in Sears, holding between 47.8 percent and 62 percent of its stock during the time of the alleged violations, from 2011 to 2015, according to the lawsuit. They, along with two other major shareholders named in the suit, received the vast majority of the benefit of spinning off five different company assets, according to the complaint.
Prior to becoming Treasury secretary, Mnuchin was an investor in ESL and “a member of ESL’s board of directors at all relevant times,” the filing says.
How could this be a typo? Typing the word “million” when it should not be there does not qualify as a typo. Did Trump really believe 138 million were killed and then take a nap? 32 minutes later this astounding false claim from the President of the United States was finally corrected. Errors like this should not be taken lightly – they could start a global conflict. At the very least, they have made our nation a laughing stock on the world stage.
Trump is allegedly in control of our country and he’s definitely in control of the nuclear codes, but is he in control of his own mental faculties?
To me, this is perhaps Trump’s most disturbing tweet yet because I believe it demonstrates he truly is unhinged.
68 percent of OneWest 36,000 plus foreclosures in California were in non-white areas. In addition, “OneWest was a market leader in foreclosing on the elderly: its subsidiary Financial Freedom carried out a disproportionate number of reverse mortgage foreclosures, which target seniors to suck out their home equity.”
… Slipped into the long-anticipated special counsel report on Russian interference in the 2016 election last week was a single sentence that caused a stir throughout the state and raised new questions about the vulnerability of the nation’s electoral systems.
Although the spearphishing attempt in Florida had first been brought to light nearly two years ago when The Intercept cited a secret National Security Agency report, state officials said they were certain no elections computers had been compromised. The Mueller report turned that assertion on its head. “The F.B.I.,” it said, “believes that this operation enabled the G.R.U. to gain access to the network of at least one Florida county government.”
In an interview on Friday, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida took it one step further, saying that Russian hackers not only accessed a Florida voting system, but were “in a position” to change voter roll data.
The report has sent Florida officials scurrying once again for specifics. Which county? Could there have been more than one?
“They won’t tell us which county it was. Are you kidding me?” an exasperated Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, said at a news conference in Miami on Thursday. “Why would you have not said something immediately?”
The Florida Secretary of State’s office in Tallahassee said it had been unable to learn which county it was. “The department reached out to the F.B.I. and they declined to share that information with us,” said Sarah Revell, a department spokeswoman. “No county has come forward.” The secretary of state who was running the department at the time, Ken Detzner, did not respond to requests for comment.
At least Rubio is admitting something went down in Florida in 2016, but this still stinks of a cover up. If we had a President who cared about his country, he would be all over this like a SWAT team. Instead, he says nothing, nada, zip about the Russian threat against our democracy – preferring to spend his time fanning the flames of hatred within his base.
The New York attorney general’s office has launched an investigation into the National Rifle Association.
“As part of this investigation, the Attorney General has issued subpoenas,” a spokesperson for New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement to CNN. “We will not have further comment at this time.”
The spokesperson would not confirm what the investigation was regarding.
However, the gun-safety group, Everytown for Gun Safety, said it filed a complaint about the NRA’s tax-exempt status with the IRS.
The group said it was prompted by a recent report by The Trace, in conjunction with the New Yorker, alleging that a small group of executives, contractors and vendors affiliated with the NRA "have extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from non-profit’s budget."
“In light of the recent, credible allegations of excessive invoicing and personal enrichment by insiders, it’s encouraging that the New York Attorney General is looking into the NRA, and we renew our call for other state and federal authorities to do the same,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.
The investigation comes after a dispute between the group’s president, Oliver North, and chief executive officer, Wayne LaPierre, in which North accused LaPierre of financial misconduct, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates said on “Meet the Press” Sunday that if Trump were not president, he would likely be indicted for obstructing justice in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
"I have been a prosecutor for nearly 30 years. And I can tell you personally I have prosecuted obstruction cases on far, far less evidence than this. And yes, I believe if he were not the president of the United States, he would likely be indicted on obstruction. …
I think special counsel Mueller did a very fair job in going through all 10 instances and laying out both the facts that established he had committed the crime of obstruction, but also pointing out the defenses, both legal and factual. But there are several incidents that he described to which special counsel Mueller really couldn’t point to any significant factual or legal defenses."
Another terrorist attack in a Synagogue, this time in California. It is shameful our government only offers thoughts and prayers, when we know how to stop these attacks from happening.
So I finish this article and it left me wondering are Democrats in Congress looking for approval on Impeaching the President from the electorate? I wonder because I think their constituents are looking to their leaders in Congress for guidance.
If leadership is deferring to the people and the people are looking to authority, we’ve created a negative feedback loop. Someone needs to take control of the story or it’s going to be told by someone else. Just a thought…
What are you guys feeling?
More thoughts:
The public can launch their own campaign here for more action from Dems. Who are we going to let dominate the media narrative? This is important, we should be “flooding the field” with media messaging not deferring to committees. As a majority, Democratic voters and activists are in an excellent position to do so right now, why aren’t we hammering Trump on this?
Senator Lindsay Graham gives the mildest rebuke on what the Russians have been doing to our elections, and says Kushner’s comments were downplaying the significance of the interference.
Sen Graham speaks out of both sides of his mouth…and he still stands with the T.
Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, a close ally of Donald Trump, called for more sanctions on Russia and criticized presidential adviser Jared Kushner’s statements downplaying the significance of that country’s interference in the 2016 election.
“I like Jared a lot, but he’s leaving out a big detail,” Graham said on CBS’s Face the Nation, noting that Russia hacked into the emails of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “Can you imagine what we would be saying if the Russians or the Iranians hacked into the presidential team of the Republican Party?”
Kushner, who is Trump’s son-in-law, characterized the Russians’ actions at an April 23 event as trying to “buy some Facebook ads to sow discontent.” He said that the investigations that followed had “had a much harsher impact” on U.S democracy.
“No, this is a big deal. It’s not just a few Facebook ads,” Graham said on CBS. “An attack on one party should be an attack on all.”
Trump previously has questioned the extent of Russia’s role in election interference, and Graham said he has told Trump that “everything we’ve done with the Russians is not working” because “the Russians are up to it again.”
‘More Sanctions’
“We need more sanctions, not less,” Graham said. “Because clearly they don’t have the message.”
Graham defended Trump’s actions in the Russia investigation.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, released in redacted form this month, described 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by the president but didn’t provide a conclusion.
“What President Trump did here was completely cooperate in an investigation,” Graham said. “I believe the president did nothing wrong. Whether you like him or not, I’ll leave up to you.”
Graham also disagreed with Trump’s suggestion in comments to reporters on April 26 that former Vice President Joe Biden, who announced his candidacy for president a day earlier, might be too old at 76 to win.
“If you travel with Joe Biden, you won’t think he’s too old,” Graham said, adding that he doesn’t know whether Biden fits the preferences of the current Democratic Party.
Still, Graham said of his former Senate colleague, “He’s a good man and he would be a strong candidate.”
I’ve read pieces both pro & con on impeachment. I started out not for impeachment because I think it’s going to get hung up in the Senate.
Then this administration started telling people to not obey the subpoenas. I now think we need to start impeachment of both Barr & Trump. There are probably others.
I’m open for suggestions on the best way to get leadership attention. I expect my Congress people to listen to their constituents but I assume they have access to experts and thus should be able to make an informed decision.
Thanks for bringing up the crux of the matter which is ‘now what?’
Now that we have read enough of the Mueller Report to know that the R’s/Barr stole it’s thunder and maneuvered the public opinion to emphasize - ‘nothing to see here…no collusion, and no obstructionism.’
The most viable plan Pelosi is promoting is not to impeach, get those investigations going, get some legislation done…infrastructure perhaps but get the Dems ready to take more seats back come 2020.
The big BUT is that impeachment proceedings will get STOPPED by the R’s clearly wanting to stay in power. And the polling shows that less than 1/3 of the people now want him impeached. That is a very steep climb.
There is a thought that if Dems proceed with more subpoenas and investigation via Congressional powers we could expose more of T’s wrong doing, and get more public sentiment against him, and thereby getting the public to be disgusted by him and want him out…but use impeachment as a cudgel should he get re-elected…(which is beyond abhorrent to believe.)
The messaging from the R’s now is to set up smoke screens and delay, stall, deny the subpoenas…even if it is unlawful to do so. It might take a Supreme Court decision to get the subpoena enacted but there’s the conservative bias and it might not get through to approval in time for the next election.
I do think Dems need to mobilize, and get an actionable plan. Can the 20 candidates be too big a field and too debilitating to get a solid backing…? Anyone but T?
The two things that might break this stalemate is to
get some R’s to be more vocal against T…which they are behind the scenes, but not publicly.
Get some extremely damning evidence, like tax returns…more Russian meddling etc and get the public outraged.
The R’s are quick to shoot down and make up their own narrative which the press and resisters have been battling now for 2 + years.
It will be a multi-pronged approach…but I tend to believe in Pelosi…she is pretty artful in getting things done, seeing the through line (T not worth it, we will take power in 2020, get our legislative needs/messaging out there.) The Maxine Waters and perhaps maybe Nadler, although I do like what they say, may and are getting pegged as zealots, and it is too easy for T to trounce them. I believe in Nadler though…he has a thoughtful manner and is aggressive.
I do believe that most of the public…more than half do not want him any more as president, and he will be voted out. That may be my final answer. and I know we need more firepower than a hope that that will happen.
I’m with you on this. I wasn’t for an impeachment investigation just yet either but I expected the Democrats to move faster and with more gravitas. They cancelled Felix Sater’s testimony the week Barr finally released the redacted Mueller Report. Huge mistake. They could have asked him about his work for Trump in Moscow. That would have sucked the air right out of the room.
“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Mr. Sater wrote in an email. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.” - New York Times
Trump responds. As per usual, he is lying and at the same time has no idea what he’s talking about.
President Donald Trump on Monday accused the New York attorney general’s office of illegally investigating the National Rifle Association and called on the group, which has been roiled by a leadership fight, to “get its act together quickly.”
On Saturday, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office announced in a statement it had launched an investigation into the NRA and had issued subpoenas to the organization, but did not confirm what the probe was in regard to. …
[The subpoenas come] nearly a year after James, during her campaign last summer, said she would investigate the NRA if elected to make sure it is complying with non-profit rules. Her campaign threat helped prompt the group to begin an internal review of its finances, which is part of what triggered the tensions between North and LaPierre.
If James has not announced what the probe is in regard to, how can Trump possibly claim it’s illegal? And since the NRA’s own internal review has triggered such a fracas, it sounds like James is on to something.
President Trump: Stop obstructing the judicial branch of our government – let them do their job protecting us against corruption!
How many of that number read the report and know the talking points for impeachment? Because of the botched Barr/media rollout, America hasn’t seen much of the report. I think most folks don’t understand that crimes were found they just can’t charge the President with a crime. Most also don’t understand that Congress has a constitutional duty to impeach the President if evidence of such crimes is exposed.
Folks see this as a PR fight and it is, however the circumstances are so extreme that we need to start rolling out a heavier message to the public so why not start an impeachment investigation even if it doesn’t ultimately lead to impeachment up or down vote?
Letitia James!
and I know we need more firepower than a hope that that will happen. 