Huge 'BREAKING' HEADLINE @ WashingtonPost.com right now, published "42 mins. ago"

The accounts from Sergey Kislyak to his superiors, intercepted by U.S. spy agencies, show that discussions in April and July of 2016 with Jeff Sessions included policy issues important to Moscow, contradicting public assertions by the attorney general. One U.S. official said that Sessions has provided “misleading” statements that are “contradicted by other evidence.” A former official said that the intelligence indicates that Sessions and Kislyak had “substantive” discussions on matters including Trump’s positions on Russia-related issues and prospects for U.S.-Russia relations in a Trump administration.

Update:

BREAKING: White House press secretary Sean Spicer resigned on Friday following the appointment of wealthy financier Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director, according to a White House official. Scaramucci has previously had a tense relationship with both Spicer and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. This story will be updated.

 

By Greg Jaffe & Adam Entous @ WashingtonPost.com, July 19

President Trump has decided to end the CIA’s covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia, according to U.S. officials.

The program was a central plank of a policy begun by the Obama administration in 2013 to put pressure on Assad to step aside, but even its backers have questioned its efficacy since Russia deployed forces in Syria two years later.

Officials said the phasing out of the secret program reflects Trump’s interest in finding ways to work with Russia, which saw the anti-Assad program as an assault on its interests [....]

I can't believe I can still be surprised by what that man says ...

You just got tapped for the toughest job in the world—Donald Trump’s ambassador to Moscow.

By David Wade @ Politico Magazine, July 19

oy vey (nothing else fits here.)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is not usually one for doomed gestures or abstract ideals.

So why on earth is he scheduling a sure-loser vote on Obamacare "repeal today; replacement later?” Yes, President Trump has requested it—but McConnell has long since learned how to manage Trump’s fleeting mental vagaries. If this vote is held, it’s because McConnell wants it, fully aware that it will lose.

Again: why?

After his much-publicized, two-and-a-quarter-hour meeting early this month with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Germany, President Trump chatted informally with the Russian leader for up to an additional hour later the same day.

The second meeting, undisclosed at the time, took place at a dinner for G-20 leaders, a senior administration official said. At some point during the meal, Trump left his own seat to occupy a chair next to Putin. Trump approached alone, and Putin was attended only by his official interpreter.

By Reid Wilson @ TheHill.com, July 16

Inaccurate headline but a very interesting piece with several sophisticated points of analyis as regards "urbanization" in Neveda and 7 other western states; excerpts:

[....] Where the Hispanic immigrant community once segmented itself by country of origin, creating distinctly Mexican or Honduran or Guatemalan populations, the younger generation sees itself as more generally Hispanic and less specifically tied to ancestral homelands.

Those younger Hispanic voters grew up during, and were deeply influenced by, years of debate over reforming the nation’s immigration system. While advisers to Bush understood the importance of reaching out to Hispanic voters — Bush won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004 — conservatives in Congress blocked his second-term push for immigration reform.

The “immigration [reform debate] has created a pan-Latino identity. You started to see that during the Bush years,” Damore said.

[.....]But ousting an incumbent is no mean feat, and while Heller faces a daunting demographic challenge, Democrats have their own political hurdles to climb: The voters Democrats most need to turn out, those Hispanics in Las Vegas, are disproportionately unlikely to vote. “It has been a challenge to get these folks not only to assimilate, but getting them to the polls,” Kihuen said of Hispanic voters moving into the state. “We’ve come a long way, but it has not been something that happened from one day to the next.” [....]

By Gabrielle Coppola @ Bloomberg News, July 17 (with video)

• Santander-Chrysler venture opens window into race to bottom
• Wall Street’s insatiable debt machine fuels lax underwriting

By Christopher Ingraham @ Wonkblog @ WashingtonPost.com, July 17

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday said he'd be issuing a new directive this week aimed at increasing police seizures of cash and property.

“We hope to issue this week a new directive on asset forfeiture — especially for drug traffickers,” Sessions said in his prepared remarks for a speech to the National District Attorney's Association in Minneapolis. "With care and professionalism, we plan to develop policies to increase forfeitures. No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime. Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate as is sharing with our partners."

Asset forfeiture is a disputed practice that allows law enforcement officials to permanently take money and goods from individuals suspected of crime. There is little disagreement among lawmakers, authorities and criminal justice reformers that “no criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime.” But in many cases, neither a criminal conviction nor even a criminal charge is necessary — under forfeiture laws in most states and at the federal level, mere suspicion of wrongdoing is enough to allow police to seize items [....]

Is that the exit Reince Priebus used? How complicit is the RNC?

(And is this what Carter Page does in his free time?