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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
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This WSJ piece loaded for me free of paywall, via Griffin's tweeted link:
An increasingly bold nationalist movement is now training its sights on the arts — and playwrights and politicians are locked in combat (including examples with real threats of violence)
By Guy Chazan @ FT.com, July 26
starts with one example described at length, followed by
[....] Ostermeier and von Storch are on opposite sides of Germany’s new culture war. It is a conflict that pits some of the leading lights of German literature, theatre and TV against a rightwing movement that grows daily in size and confidence. Leading the conservative charge is the AfD, a populist party that rose to prominence in the wake of Angela Merkel’s fateful decision, at the height of the 2015 refugee crisis, to keep Germany’s borders open [....]
Defense Secretary James Mattis has not briefed reporters on-camera in the Pentagon since April, while his chief spokeswoman has not done so since May.
By Jason Schwartz @ Politico.com, July 26
[...] Chief among the complaints, according to defense reporters who spoke to POLITICO, are declining access to Mattis and other military officials, as well as a sense that reporters are not receiving the information they need to keep the public informed about America’s military activities.
Mattis has not briefed reporters on-camera in the Pentagon since April, while his chief spokesperson, Dana White, has not done so since May. Mattis used to regularly pass through the Pentagon press area to conduct gaggles with reporters, but reporters say those have all but dried up in recent weeks. Some briefings with other officials still happen, but people who used to chat or provide background information more informally are no longer engaging, reporters say. Some reporters told POLITICO that fewer of their colleagues are going to the Pentagon these days, finding it increasingly pointless.
“It’s just a waste of time,” one reporter said. “People won’t talk to you.”
Kevin Baron, the executive editor of Defense One, said Trump’s simultaneous war on the press and hyperfocus on media have combined to fundamentally change interactions inside the Pentagon [....]
From Russia to Bistro Bis: The Calif. congressman who dined with alleged Russian agent
By Ali Dukakis @ ABCNews.com, July 26
When FBI counterintelligence agents plowed through the emails of alleged Russian agent Maria Butina’s networking around Washington, they discovered her plan to arrange “friendship and dialogue dinners" with influential Americans. At one dinner, ABC News has learned, in February 2017 at the tony French eaterie, Bistro Bis, one guest who dined with the then-28-year-old Russian was a California Republican congressman on the House Foreign Relations committee, Dana Rohrabacher. Rohrabacher’s office confirmed he attended.
It wasn’t their first meeting.
Two years earlier, Butina had helped arrange a meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia that included Rohrabacher and her mentor, Kremlin-connected banker Alexander Torshin, federal officials have confirmed.
To Rohrabacher’s critics, these repeated interactions with a woman now jailed on suspicion of mounting an influence campaign at the behest of the Russian government, have added more fuel to longstanding questions about his Kremlin connections. This past weekend, anti-Putin crusader and businessman Bill Browder told a room of national security experts gathered in Aspen that he believes Rohrabacher is "on the payroll of Russia." [....]
Just got off phone with a former Trump Org employee who echoed @KatyTurNBC reporting on Weisselberg subpoena: “Alan knows everything and anything about all the financials...He knows every dollar that goes in and every dollar that leaves. He knows where all the bodies are buried.”
Meanwhile, House Republicans introduce articles of impeachment against Rod Rosenstein. But aren't Republicans pro-life? No. They don't care. Republicans play divide the nation exploitative culture war political theater, the only skill they possess, and mission they have in government, besides job one: bankrupting the country and it's citizens to enrich their donors.
Chelsea G. Summers considers the ways in which outwardly ‘progressive’ men like former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman use kink as a cover for abuse.
@ Longreads.com, July 2018, 15 minutes (3,801 words)
This is a piece about abuse. This is a piece about kink and a piece about consent. This is a piece about the law. This is a piece about some powerful men whom I’ve never met, and it’s a piece about some nobody men whom I’ve loved. This is a piece about rough sex, about “rough sex,” and about how these two categories overlap and rub each other raw. This is a piece that was hard for me to write and may be hard for you to read. Most of all, this is a piece about why masculinity is fractured, and how women get caught in its cracks [....]
A federal judge rejected the president’s effort to stop a lawsuit that alleges he is violating the Constitution by continuing to do business with foreign governments.
By Ann E. Marimow, Jonathan O'Connell & David A. Farenthold @ WashingtonPost.com, July 25
[....] The ruling, from U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte in Greenbelt, Md., will allow the plaintiffs — the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia — to proceed with their case, which says Trump has violated little-used anti-corruption clauses in the Constitution known as the emoluments clauses.
This ruling appeared to mark the first time a federal judge had interpreted those Constitutional provisions and applied their restrictions to a sitting president.
If the ruling stands, it could bring unprecedented scrutiny onto Trump’s businesses — which have sought to keep their transactions with foreign states private, even as their owner sits in the Oval Office. Messitte’s 52-page opinion said that, in the modern context, the Constitution’s ban on “emoluments” could apply to Trump — that it could cover any business transactions with foreign governments where Trump derived a “profit, gain or advantage.” “This includes profits from private transactions, even those involving services given at fair market value,” Messitte wrote [....]
By Robert Pear @ NYTimes.com, July 24
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration, in an abrupt reversal, said Tuesday that it would restart a program that pays billions of dollars to insurers to stabilize health insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act.
The administration suspended the program less than three weeks ago, saying it was compelled to do so by a federal court decision in New Mexico.
But the administration said Tuesday that it would restore the program because otherwise health plans could become insolvent or withdraw from the market, causing chaos for consumers [....]
By Gabriel Debenedetti @ NYMag.com, July 23
[....] These days it’s almost impossible to avoid resigned jokes among friends of the group about just how out of favor their Clintonphile politics supposedly are with the Democrats’ base. Late last week, as I walked into a hotel basement ballroom where Third Way was convening some of the country’s leading center-left officials in Columbus, Ohio, a strategist in attendance peered up from the Hilton pastries and texted me, wryly: “Welcome to the Wall St Wing of the Democratic Party.” [....]
Back in Washington, Bernie Sanders and his newfound allies had laid claim to the party [....]
But in Ohio, more than 200 centrist lawmakers, operatives, and donors — including some former Hillary Clinton aides and backers — flew in from 20 of the country’s most politically relevant states to listen to a lot of speeches and panels and try to figure out how, exactly, their embattled faction could escape electoral isolation and spearhead a blue triumph in 2020. Third Way had spent the last two years conducting research and testing messages, and now — emerging from hours of strategy and policy sessions, polling-data slideshows, and Silicon Valley–style discussion about how best to influence the party’s disruptors — they were here to make clear to the insurgent progressive left that the center now intends to stand up and fight back, and that it has Sanders in its sights just as squarely as Donald Trump [....]
@ Associated Press from Caracas, July 24
By Ashifa Kassam in Toronto for TheGuardian.com, July 24
Detectives in Canada are still seeking a motive for a mass shooting which left three dead – including the gunman – and injured more than a dozen others, as residents of Toronto grapple with the latest in a string of violent incidents to hit Canada’s biggest city in recent months. Federal officials said on Tuesday that there was no terror link to Sunday’s attack in which the lone gunman opened fire along a bustling avenue in the city, seemingly shooting at random at pedestrians and into shops and restaurants [....]
Toronto has been rattled by a string of violent incidents this year.
In April, 10 people were killed and more than a dozen injured when a driver in a van ploughed into pedestrians on a city sidewalk. The following month, more than a dozen people were injured after a homemade bomb ripped through an Indian restaurant in May in nearby Mississauga.
The year started with the arrest of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur, now charged with the deaths of eight men, and the high-profile homicides of billionaires Barry and Honey Sherman.
Gun violence has also tightened its grip on the city. Last month two sisters, ages five and nine, were shot while playing in a park. The two young girls survived, partly thanks to neighbours who used napkins to stem the bleeding. At the start of this month, two men were fatally gunned down in a brazen daytime shooting in the city’s downtown core. So far this year 26 people have died from gun violence, a 59% increase from the same period last year. The number of shootings has risen 13%, according to police data [....]
By Natasha Bertrand @ TheAtlantic.com, July 24
Brian Benczkowski, Trump’s appointee to run the Justice Department’s criminal division, represented Russia’s Alfa Bank. Senate Democrats have questions about recusal.
By Christina Davis @ SanDiegoUnionTribune.com, July 24
About 900 parents eligible for reunification have final orders to be deported, and the American Civil Liberties Union wants to make sure they don’t leave the country until they fully understand their rights.
By Neil Irwin @ The Upshot @ NYTimes.com, July 24
Early indicators include executive surveys and futures markets. If you want a dashboard for evidence of economic damage from the trade war, here’s what should be on it.
Opinion by Greg Sargent @ The Plum Line @ WashingtonPost.com, July 24
Rudy Giuliani, who is rumored to be President Trump’s lawyer, has rolled out a new set of demands that must be met in exchange for Trump agreeing to an interview with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. But in so doing, Giuliani has inadvertently shed light on the weakness of Trump’s political position, in the face of a coming confrontation with Mueller and, looming behind that, the midterm elections.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Giuliani said Trump’s team has submitted a new offer to Mueller: Trump will agree to a sit-down with the special counsel, but it wants questions about obstruction of justice, and Trump’s firing of former FBI director James B. Comey, to be off the table: [....]
By invoking Article II of the Constitution as the reason Trump should not be questioned by Mueller, Giuliani appears to be saying Trump cannot be legally liable for obstruction of justice by definition. He can fire members of his administration at will, and as the head of the executive branch, he has control over all Justice Department investigations, including into himself. Therefore, there is no reason for Mueller to question him about such actions.
This roughly matches the theory laid out in that recent memo by Trump’s lawyers, which asserted that as “chief law enforcement officer,” Trump’s actions can “neither constitutionally nor legally constitute obstruction,” and that “he could, if he wished, terminate the inquiry” into himself. There is a separate question over whether a sitting president can be indicted for obstruction while in office [....]
This was produced by The WorldPost, a partnership of the Berggruen Institute and The Washington Post.
One can understand, if not excuse, the complacence: the postwar order, if not directly responsible for the absence of great-power war in recent decades, is at least associated with that outcome. In addition, even the most forceful advocates of its revitalization must bear in mind a distressing precedent: the principal efforts to introduce order, whether regional or global in scope, have resulted less from foresighted statecraft than from cataclysmic upheavals, as demonstrated by these major examples: [...]
By Ed Kilgore @ NYMag.com, July 24
[....] The official Trump-administration line right now is that the trade war he’s launched against China, the European community, and others is a total no-brainer, and simply a matter of Uncle Sam deciding to stop being Uncle Sucker [.....] he’s still claiming trade wars are fun and easy, as recently as this morning: [....]
But this is undoubtedly not what the White House is hearing from Republicans in the places — especially though not exclusively agricultural states — where Trump’s “easy” and “simple” trade polices are wreaking havoc and breeding political panic. The good thing for Trump is that having all but abandoned free-market economics, he has no inhibitions about just throwing money at the problem, as the Washington Post reports: [....]
Interestingly enough, direct assistance will apparently come principally via the New Deal’s Commodity Credit Corporation, a federal entity that needs no new congressional authorization in order to borrow billions from the Treasury and pay it out to farmers to “stabilize, support, and protect farm income and prices.” It’s intended to keep farmers from feeling the brunt of circumstances beyond their control, and since Trump’s trade war is most definitely beyond their control, it fits, albeit in a way that will make small-government conservatives who already hate protectionism even crazier. But it is a bit novel to hit farmers with one hand and then offer them compensation with the other, and it could even expose the U.S. to sanctions by the World Trade Organization for supplying the same sorts of illegal subsidies of which Trump likes to complain [.....]