Hope Hicks to resign from White House
The White House said she would leave 'in the next few weeks.'
By POLITICO STAFF
White House communications director Hope Hicks, one of President Donald Trump's longest-serving aides, said Wednesday she plans to resign.
"There are no words to adequately express my gratitude to President Trump," Hicks said in a statement provided by the White House, in which she did not say what she planned to do next. "I wish the President and his administration the very best as he continues to lead our country."
Her announcement came a day after she declined to answer many questions during an appearance before House Russia investigators. Earlier this month, she also was drawn into the controversy surrounding former staff secretary Rob Porter, who she had been dating and who resigned amid claims of physical and verbal abuse from two ex-wives.
Her date of departure was not immediately clear, but the White House said she would leave "in the next few weeks."
"Hope is outstanding and has done great work for the last three years," Trump said in a statement. "I will miss having her by my side, but when she approached me about pursuing other opportunities, I totally understood."
(Hicks, who knows "Absolutely nothing" about politics and PR, jumped into the swamp head first and happily lied to the American public..)
February 28, 2018
Extreme Pro-Gun Positions
Republicans in Primary Battles Stake Out Extreme Pro-Gun Positions After Parkland Shooting
Forget gun control. How about tax breaks for guns and ammo?
KARA VOGHT
Companies are dumping their affiliations with the National Rifle Association. Celebrities are throwing millions of dollars at gun control efforts. But the February 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, is prompting an equal and opposite reaction in the Republican Party. In the aftermath of the bloodshed that claimed 17 lives, candidates in GOP primaries across the country have scrambled to declare their loyalty to their gun-owning base—sometimes adopting extreme positions to outflank their opponents.
After Delta Air Lines, Georgia’s largest private employer, declared it would cease to offer special flight deals to NRA members, state Republican lawmakers pulled their support for tax breaks for Delta that were speeding through the legislature. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, a Republican running for governor, lambasted corporations that cut ties with the NRA and said, “Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back.”
His Republican primary opponent, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, upped the ante with a counterproposal: Instead of exempting Delta from taxes for jet fuel, the state should enact a sales tax holiday for guns and ammunition over the Fourth of July holiday. “Instead of giving millions of our hard-earned tax dollars to billion-dollar businesses that want to disarm law-abiding citizens,” Kemp said in a statement, “we should give a tax break to hardworking Georgians who want to protect their families and loved ones from criminal aliens, terrorists and gang members.”
In Ohio, the GOP gubernatorial primary has turned into an arms race for who can take hardest line in support of gun owners. Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, a Republican who has consistently received an “A” rating from the NRA, used the Parkland shooting to distance herself from Gov. John Kasich, who angered gun groups in the tragedy’s aftermath when he implored President Donald Trump to enact “commonsense gun laws,” including a ban on bump stocks that make semi-automatic weapons work like automatic ones. “All too often in the aftermath of these tragic events, there is knee-jerk reaction to attack the Second Amendment rights of our citizens rather than to address the root causes, which often center around mental illness,” she said. Taylor attacked her Republican primary opponent, Attorney General Mike DeWine, reminding voters of his low NRA ratings and past support for gun control measures.
In response, a DeWine spokesman reminded voters that the candidate has supported arming school employees ever since the December 2012 shooting at a school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Both candidates have also boasted about their endorsements from major Ohio pro-gun groups.
In Indiana, the state with the highest rate of concealed weapon permits, two congressmen locked in one of the country’s nastiest Republican Senate primaries are doing all they can to remind voters of their support for gun rights. On Monday, Rep. Luke Messer reiterated his support of Second Amendment rights and tweeted that “gun bans are not the answer.” Not to be outdone, Rep. Todd Rokita released a TV ad showing him shooting a gun and boasting that he’s “pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-Trump,” with an “A” rating from the NRA.
Not all Republicans are staking out extreme positions in support of gun rights. Gov. Bill Haslam (R-Tenn.) warned his party members that in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, a desire for greater gun control could cause some moderate voters to support Democrats in the November midterm elections, especially suburban women. But that warning has really only resonated with GOP lawmakers who aren’t facing tough primaries and are looking ahead to tight general elections, like Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), who distanced himself from the NRA, and Brian Mast (R-Fla.), who called for a federal assault rifle ban.
Gun owners are likelier to vote than people who don’t have guns, and those who oppose gun control are likelier to be single-issue voters than gun control proponents. These tendencies, coupled with the NRA’s voter mobilization machine, have long spurred Republican office seekers to make guns a centerpiece of their campaign platforms. The latest school shooting doesn’t seem to have changed that dynamic.
Forget gun control. How about tax breaks for guns and ammo?
KARA VOGHT
Companies are dumping their affiliations with the National Rifle Association. Celebrities are throwing millions of dollars at gun control efforts. But the February 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, is prompting an equal and opposite reaction in the Republican Party. In the aftermath of the bloodshed that claimed 17 lives, candidates in GOP primaries across the country have scrambled to declare their loyalty to their gun-owning base—sometimes adopting extreme positions to outflank their opponents.
After Delta Air Lines, Georgia’s largest private employer, declared it would cease to offer special flight deals to NRA members, state Republican lawmakers pulled their support for tax breaks for Delta that were speeding through the legislature. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, a Republican running for governor, lambasted corporations that cut ties with the NRA and said, “Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back.”
His Republican primary opponent, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, upped the ante with a counterproposal: Instead of exempting Delta from taxes for jet fuel, the state should enact a sales tax holiday for guns and ammunition over the Fourth of July holiday. “Instead of giving millions of our hard-earned tax dollars to billion-dollar businesses that want to disarm law-abiding citizens,” Kemp said in a statement, “we should give a tax break to hardworking Georgians who want to protect their families and loved ones from criminal aliens, terrorists and gang members.”
In Ohio, the GOP gubernatorial primary has turned into an arms race for who can take hardest line in support of gun owners. Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, a Republican who has consistently received an “A” rating from the NRA, used the Parkland shooting to distance herself from Gov. John Kasich, who angered gun groups in the tragedy’s aftermath when he implored President Donald Trump to enact “commonsense gun laws,” including a ban on bump stocks that make semi-automatic weapons work like automatic ones. “All too often in the aftermath of these tragic events, there is knee-jerk reaction to attack the Second Amendment rights of our citizens rather than to address the root causes, which often center around mental illness,” she said. Taylor attacked her Republican primary opponent, Attorney General Mike DeWine, reminding voters of his low NRA ratings and past support for gun control measures.
In response, a DeWine spokesman reminded voters that the candidate has supported arming school employees ever since the December 2012 shooting at a school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Both candidates have also boasted about their endorsements from major Ohio pro-gun groups.
In Indiana, the state with the highest rate of concealed weapon permits, two congressmen locked in one of the country’s nastiest Republican Senate primaries are doing all they can to remind voters of their support for gun rights. On Monday, Rep. Luke Messer reiterated his support of Second Amendment rights and tweeted that “gun bans are not the answer.” Not to be outdone, Rep. Todd Rokita released a TV ad showing him shooting a gun and boasting that he’s “pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-Trump,” with an “A” rating from the NRA.
Not all Republicans are staking out extreme positions in support of gun rights. Gov. Bill Haslam (R-Tenn.) warned his party members that in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, a desire for greater gun control could cause some moderate voters to support Democrats in the November midterm elections, especially suburban women. But that warning has really only resonated with GOP lawmakers who aren’t facing tough primaries and are looking ahead to tight general elections, like Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), who distanced himself from the NRA, and Brian Mast (R-Fla.), who called for a federal assault rifle ban.
Gun owners are likelier to vote than people who don’t have guns, and those who oppose gun control are likelier to be single-issue voters than gun control proponents. These tendencies, coupled with the NRA’s voter mobilization machine, have long spurred Republican office seekers to make guns a centerpiece of their campaign platforms. The latest school shooting doesn’t seem to have changed that dynamic.
Why is it not strange anymore...???
Kushner bombshell: Fox buries unflattering story for Trump White House...again
by Tom Kludt
Jared Kushner's downgraded security clearance is the top story for nearly every major news organization in America, but on Fox News, the stunning development has itself been downgraded.
On Wednesday morning, as other outlets continued to go big on the story, which broke Tuesday afternoon, "Fox & Friends" discussed it only once during a 20-second report that came in the final hour of the show.
It was a similar situation on online, where Fox's homepage contained zero mentions of Kushner as of Wednesday morning when this story was published. And the Kushner story was ignored entirely by the network's triumvirate of conservative hosts in prime time: Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
Those three are the major ratings-drivers for Fox, reaching a larger audience than its daytime counterparts. They are also among Trump's biggest boosters and defenders in the news media.
Fox's rivals, CNN and MSNBC, covered the matter multiple times every hour on Tuesday evening. But when Fox's prime time lineup began, the Kushner story vanished until the following morning. The brief report that aired on "Fox & Friends" was the first mention of Kushner on Fox since around 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, according to transcript searches.
A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
At this point, it's a predictable routine: a controversy befalls the Trump White House, and Fox buries the news. After domestic violence allegations surfaced earlier this month against White House aide Rob Porter, Fox lightly covered the matter. It was ignored completely by Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham, and when top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway appeared on "Fox & Friends" the morning after the Porter story broke, the hosts didn't ask a single question about the allegations.
As the top-rated cable channel, Fox reaches millions with its coverage. The president himself is known to watch (and promote) the network like a true fan. The network claims a uniquely powerful role in the pro-Trump echo chamber, setting the agenda for both the president and his millions of supporters.
In this vein, Trump is rarely cast in an unfavorable light and the so called "mainstream media" draws little praise. Bad news, like the one surrounding Kushner, routinely gets glossed over. Tuesday's other major story -- White House communications director Hope Hicks' closed door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee -- was likewise ignored by Fox's prime time hosts.
But Fox did not ignore the Kushner bombshell entirely.
After news broke Tuesday that Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, had lost his top secret security clearance, Fox's afternoon lineup covered the story.
Shep Smith, Fox's most consistent Trump critic, led his program with it; Neil Cavuto also discussed it in the following hour. On the network's 6:00 newscast, Bret Baier grilled White House adviser Kellyanne Conway about Kushner. And in the 7:00 hour, Martha MacCallum posed a softball question about Kushner at the tail-end of her interview with conservative activist David Bossie.
But when the clock struck 8, the network's already scant coverage of Kushner vanished entirely, giving way to stories about purported scandals in the previous administration.
by Tom Kludt
Jared Kushner's downgraded security clearance is the top story for nearly every major news organization in America, but on Fox News, the stunning development has itself been downgraded.
On Wednesday morning, as other outlets continued to go big on the story, which broke Tuesday afternoon, "Fox & Friends" discussed it only once during a 20-second report that came in the final hour of the show.
It was a similar situation on online, where Fox's homepage contained zero mentions of Kushner as of Wednesday morning when this story was published. And the Kushner story was ignored entirely by the network's triumvirate of conservative hosts in prime time: Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
Those three are the major ratings-drivers for Fox, reaching a larger audience than its daytime counterparts. They are also among Trump's biggest boosters and defenders in the news media.
Fox's rivals, CNN and MSNBC, covered the matter multiple times every hour on Tuesday evening. But when Fox's prime time lineup began, the Kushner story vanished until the following morning. The brief report that aired on "Fox & Friends" was the first mention of Kushner on Fox since around 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, according to transcript searches.
A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
At this point, it's a predictable routine: a controversy befalls the Trump White House, and Fox buries the news. After domestic violence allegations surfaced earlier this month against White House aide Rob Porter, Fox lightly covered the matter. It was ignored completely by Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham, and when top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway appeared on "Fox & Friends" the morning after the Porter story broke, the hosts didn't ask a single question about the allegations.
As the top-rated cable channel, Fox reaches millions with its coverage. The president himself is known to watch (and promote) the network like a true fan. The network claims a uniquely powerful role in the pro-Trump echo chamber, setting the agenda for both the president and his millions of supporters.
In this vein, Trump is rarely cast in an unfavorable light and the so called "mainstream media" draws little praise. Bad news, like the one surrounding Kushner, routinely gets glossed over. Tuesday's other major story -- White House communications director Hope Hicks' closed door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee -- was likewise ignored by Fox's prime time hosts.
But Fox did not ignore the Kushner bombshell entirely.
After news broke Tuesday that Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, had lost his top secret security clearance, Fox's afternoon lineup covered the story.
Shep Smith, Fox's most consistent Trump critic, led his program with it; Neil Cavuto also discussed it in the following hour. On the network's 6:00 newscast, Bret Baier grilled White House adviser Kellyanne Conway about Kushner. And in the 7:00 hour, Martha MacCallum posed a softball question about Kushner at the tail-end of her interview with conservative activist David Bossie.
But when the clock struck 8, the network's already scant coverage of Kushner vanished entirely, giving way to stories about purported scandals in the previous administration.
Syria's rebel-held Eastern Ghouta
Ghouta residents now face being burned out of their destroyed homes
By Kareem Khadder and Laura Smith-Spark
Beleaguered civilians in Syria's rebel-held Eastern Ghouta say they are being assailed by a new kind of rocket that spreads potentially deadly fires, as human rights groups condemned international inaction over the crisis.
The Syrian American Medical Society told CNN that 100 of the rockets had rained down in recent days, and that civil defense forces were struggling to put out the fires they caused.
Close to 400,000 people are living in deteriorating conditions in the Damascus suburb, which has been pounded with shells, mortars and bombs by Russian-backed Syrian regime forces since Sunday night.
More than 400 civilians, including women, children and the elderly, have been killed since Sunday, the head of Eastern Ghouta's health department, Dr Fayez Orabi, told CNN on Friday. More than 2,000 others are injured, a quarter of them severely, he said.
"It's difficult to have a precise count because of the internet and communications are weak and the shelling and bombing are 24 hours," Orabi said via WhatsApp, adding that rockets were continuing to fall as he wrote.
The UN Security Council failed to vote Thursday on a draft resolution which called for a 30-day halt in the fighting to allow for critical aid deliveries and medical evacuations. The United States accused Russia -- the Syrian regime's main ally -- of blocking the measure. The Security Council met again on Friday to consider the temporary ceasefire, but ultimately postponed the vote until Saturday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that Russia is ready to vote for a ceasefire resolution but that the United States and its allies won't provide guarantees that militants in Syria will observe it, according to Russia's state-run RT outlet.
"For now, they refuse to accept an amendment which will place responsibility on them to ensure that the militants give clear guarantees to stop the shelling," Lavrov was quoted as saying.
Human Rights Watch called for immediate action. "Other countries should send a clear message to Syria's chief enabler, Russia, that it needs to end its efforts to block the Security Council from taking action to stop these atrocities," said Lama Fakih, the campaign group's deputy Middle East director.
'Widespread fires'
Basel Termanini, vice president of the Syrian American Medical Society, told CNN that civilians in Eastern Ghouta, many of whom are sheltering from the bombardment in makeshift underground shelters, were now under threat from fires.
"People from inside Ghouta are reporting new rockets that are causing widespread fires which is a new development," Termanini said. "More than 100 of those were launched today and the civil defense is unable to cope with the widespread fires. Fire is now the number one danger threatening civilians."
Dr. Hamza Hassan, a surgeon working in Eastern Ghouta, told CNN via WhatsApp voice messages that there had been an extremely heavy bombardment Thursday afternoon and evening.
He described seeing "Syrian regime planes, Russian planes and helicopters" overhead, with so many at a time that it was like watching a military parade.
"They were bombing us from the sky, land and everywhere. They are using new planes, new sounds to us, we never heard before," he said. "The offensive was so intense and artillery shelling hitting the areas with intense bombing and rockets and missiles from all over and burning everything."
Some of the weapons used "burned like we have never seen before," Hassan said.
After a yearslong siege, food, water and drugs are in desperately short supply in Eastern Ghouta and injured civilians have little recourse to help. The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations said 26 medical facilities had been targeted by strikes between Monday and Thursday.
Syria says it is targeting terrorists in Eastern Ghouta. Rebel groups in the area have fired mortars into Damascus this week, causing dozens of deaths and injuries, state media report.
Russia has sought to lay the blame for the crisis at the door of the rebel groups, saying they have derailed talks to resolve the conflict and are preventing civilians from leaving the enclave.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel sent a letter Friday to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking for a ceasefire in Eastern Ghouta, the Elysee Palace said.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini issued a statement insisting it was the "responsibility of all" to end the violence. "The Syrian regime must immediately stop targeting its own people and fulfill its primary responsibility to protect them," she said.
The European Union backs the UN call for a ceasefire and expects the rest of the international community to do likewise, Mogherini added.
Pressed Thursday to describe what the US was doing to end the violence, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert expressed frustration with the media. "I don't know what some of you expect us to do," she exclaimed. Nauert insisted that the administration was "fully engaged" with the crisis.
Russia's Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia, who argued against the UN draft resolution, claimed that there was a "mass psychosis by global media" over the situation in Eastern Ghouta.
Regime drops leaflets
The Syrian military said Syrian army helicopters dropped leaflets on Eastern Ghouta, calling for residents to leave the area for their safety. A photograph of the leaflets was published on the Syrian military's social media accounts.
The leaflets provide instructions on how to get safely out of Eastern Ghouta and warn that the area is surrounded by the Syrian army. The text calls for civilians "not to deal with the militants."
Hassan told CNN on Friday that he had seen images of the leaflets that were released by the Syrian military online, but that no one he knew had seen the actual fliers.
A medical aid worker who spoke to CNN on Thursday evening described how people were staying in packed basements day and night for fear of the bombing.
"I just surfaced from the shelter basement of a building, I haven't been outside the shelter all day because the intensity of the bombardment and airstrikes," he said. "I just surfaced to use the internet and check the news. People are crammed all over each other in the basements. No one is in the street, it's dark now and still we hear the jets above." He then retreated back below ground.
The Syrian military leaflets, which blame insurgents for the deaths of thousands of women and children, promise that residents who leave will receive food, shelter and medical assistance in addition to a safe return home "once terrorism is eliminated."
The leaflets are similar to those dropped over rebel-held eastern neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo, before the besieged area was taken by government forces in December 2016.
This week's intense bombardment has prompted fears that a ground offensive could soon be launched against Eastern Ghouta.
By Kareem Khadder and Laura Smith-Spark
Beleaguered civilians in Syria's rebel-held Eastern Ghouta say they are being assailed by a new kind of rocket that spreads potentially deadly fires, as human rights groups condemned international inaction over the crisis.
The Syrian American Medical Society told CNN that 100 of the rockets had rained down in recent days, and that civil defense forces were struggling to put out the fires they caused.
Close to 400,000 people are living in deteriorating conditions in the Damascus suburb, which has been pounded with shells, mortars and bombs by Russian-backed Syrian regime forces since Sunday night.
More than 400 civilians, including women, children and the elderly, have been killed since Sunday, the head of Eastern Ghouta's health department, Dr Fayez Orabi, told CNN on Friday. More than 2,000 others are injured, a quarter of them severely, he said.
"It's difficult to have a precise count because of the internet and communications are weak and the shelling and bombing are 24 hours," Orabi said via WhatsApp, adding that rockets were continuing to fall as he wrote.
The UN Security Council failed to vote Thursday on a draft resolution which called for a 30-day halt in the fighting to allow for critical aid deliveries and medical evacuations. The United States accused Russia -- the Syrian regime's main ally -- of blocking the measure. The Security Council met again on Friday to consider the temporary ceasefire, but ultimately postponed the vote until Saturday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that Russia is ready to vote for a ceasefire resolution but that the United States and its allies won't provide guarantees that militants in Syria will observe it, according to Russia's state-run RT outlet.
"For now, they refuse to accept an amendment which will place responsibility on them to ensure that the militants give clear guarantees to stop the shelling," Lavrov was quoted as saying.
Human Rights Watch called for immediate action. "Other countries should send a clear message to Syria's chief enabler, Russia, that it needs to end its efforts to block the Security Council from taking action to stop these atrocities," said Lama Fakih, the campaign group's deputy Middle East director.
'Widespread fires'
Basel Termanini, vice president of the Syrian American Medical Society, told CNN that civilians in Eastern Ghouta, many of whom are sheltering from the bombardment in makeshift underground shelters, were now under threat from fires.
"People from inside Ghouta are reporting new rockets that are causing widespread fires which is a new development," Termanini said. "More than 100 of those were launched today and the civil defense is unable to cope with the widespread fires. Fire is now the number one danger threatening civilians."
Dr. Hamza Hassan, a surgeon working in Eastern Ghouta, told CNN via WhatsApp voice messages that there had been an extremely heavy bombardment Thursday afternoon and evening.
He described seeing "Syrian regime planes, Russian planes and helicopters" overhead, with so many at a time that it was like watching a military parade.
"They were bombing us from the sky, land and everywhere. They are using new planes, new sounds to us, we never heard before," he said. "The offensive was so intense and artillery shelling hitting the areas with intense bombing and rockets and missiles from all over and burning everything."
Some of the weapons used "burned like we have never seen before," Hassan said.
After a yearslong siege, food, water and drugs are in desperately short supply in Eastern Ghouta and injured civilians have little recourse to help. The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations said 26 medical facilities had been targeted by strikes between Monday and Thursday.
Syria says it is targeting terrorists in Eastern Ghouta. Rebel groups in the area have fired mortars into Damascus this week, causing dozens of deaths and injuries, state media report.
Russia has sought to lay the blame for the crisis at the door of the rebel groups, saying they have derailed talks to resolve the conflict and are preventing civilians from leaving the enclave.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel sent a letter Friday to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking for a ceasefire in Eastern Ghouta, the Elysee Palace said.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini issued a statement insisting it was the "responsibility of all" to end the violence. "The Syrian regime must immediately stop targeting its own people and fulfill its primary responsibility to protect them," she said.
The European Union backs the UN call for a ceasefire and expects the rest of the international community to do likewise, Mogherini added.
Pressed Thursday to describe what the US was doing to end the violence, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert expressed frustration with the media. "I don't know what some of you expect us to do," she exclaimed. Nauert insisted that the administration was "fully engaged" with the crisis.
Russia's Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia, who argued against the UN draft resolution, claimed that there was a "mass psychosis by global media" over the situation in Eastern Ghouta.
Regime drops leaflets
The Syrian military said Syrian army helicopters dropped leaflets on Eastern Ghouta, calling for residents to leave the area for their safety. A photograph of the leaflets was published on the Syrian military's social media accounts.
The leaflets provide instructions on how to get safely out of Eastern Ghouta and warn that the area is surrounded by the Syrian army. The text calls for civilians "not to deal with the militants."
Hassan told CNN on Friday that he had seen images of the leaflets that were released by the Syrian military online, but that no one he knew had seen the actual fliers.
A medical aid worker who spoke to CNN on Thursday evening described how people were staying in packed basements day and night for fear of the bombing.
"I just surfaced from the shelter basement of a building, I haven't been outside the shelter all day because the intensity of the bombardment and airstrikes," he said. "I just surfaced to use the internet and check the news. People are crammed all over each other in the basements. No one is in the street, it's dark now and still we hear the jets above." He then retreated back below ground.
The Syrian military leaflets, which blame insurgents for the deaths of thousands of women and children, promise that residents who leave will receive food, shelter and medical assistance in addition to a safe return home "once terrorism is eliminated."
The leaflets are similar to those dropped over rebel-held eastern neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo, before the besieged area was taken by government forces in December 2016.
This week's intense bombardment has prompted fears that a ground offensive could soon be launched against Eastern Ghouta.
Disgraceful insult....
Sessions pushes back on Trump after 'disgraceful' insult
By Dan Merica, Laura Jarrett and Maegan Vazquez
Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed back against President Donald Trump's latest insult on Wednesday, prolonging an increasingly awkward public spat between the President and his top law enforcement official.
Trump chastised Sessions over an investigation into alleged surveillance abuses, calling his approach "disgraceful."
"Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc," Trump wrote. "Isn't the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!"
Twit:
Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!
Responding to Trump's tweet, the attorney general said in a statement that the Justice Department "initiated the appropriate process that will ensure complaints against this department will be fully and fairly acted upon if necessary."
"As long as I am the attorney general, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution," Sessions said.
Sessions had said Tuesday that the Justice Department is looking at whether the FBI has properly handled applications for surveillance orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Sessions, appearing at a news conference announcing a new opioid task force, was asked about House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes' controversial memo outlining purported surveillance abuses and told reporters that "the inspector general will take that as one of the matters he'll deal with."
The Justice Department's inspector general is Michael E. Horowitz, a longtime department official who has worked under Republican and Democrat administrations. He was confirmed for the inspector general job in 2012 under then-President Barack Obama.
While Trump is correct that Horowitz does not have prosecutorial powers, he can -- and often does -- make criminal referrals to the Justice Department based on his investigations. An investigation into improper FISA use would fall squarely onto Horowitz, too, given his charge instructs him to "investigate alleged violations of criminal and civil laws by DOJ employee."
Sessions chose to respond to the President because his latest jab was more "in the weeds" and about process, said a source familiar with Sessions' thinking.
Previous times, Trump has insulted Sessions when calling for the investigation of Hillary Clinton, but this time he called for Sessions to go after Justice Department attorneys, which was a bridge too far, said the source.
"There is a process, we are following that process," the source added.
As Sessions left the Billy Graham event in the Capitol on Wednesday, CNN asked for his response to Trump's tweet and criticism of him.
"I'm not commenting on that this morning. Thank you," he responded.
Asked if he has discussed the criticism directly with the President, Sessions just said, "Thanks."
Latest attack on Sessions
Trump's scathing tweet is the latest in a long line of public rebukes the President has leveled against his attorney general, a man who broke with much of his party to endorse Trump early in his presidential run.
Trump's anger toward Sessions stems from his decision to recuse himself from all investigations into the 2016 campaign, including special counsel Robert Mueller's expanding investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives bent on meddling in the election. Sessions made that decision after he did not fully answer questions during his confirmation hearing about his conversations with Russian diplomats during the 2016 campaign. Trump, in turn, has said he wouldn't have named Sessions to lead the Justice Department had he known he would have recused himself.
That animosity has played out publicly ever since.
Trump pestered Sessions for not looking into Hillary Clinton's deleted emails, slammed him for being "very weak" on Clinton's "crimes" and labeled him "beleaguered" in July.
As pressure mounted on Sessions last year, his standing in the administration appeared untenable to people inside the West Wing. During the first six months of Trump's presidency, Trump asked for Sessions' resignation, called the attorney general an "idiot" but then later declined to accept his attorney general's resignation letter.
Sessions has so far weathered the incessant incoming from the White House and sources close to the attorney general have told CNN that he is unlikely to go anywhere soon. But the saga between the two top Republicans has played out in public for much of Trump's first year in office and the President's chronic antipathy towards the top law enforcement official has defined Trump's view of the Justice Department.
Trump's anger boiled over in June, too, when the President pushed then-chief of staff Reince Priebus to obtain Sessions' resignation, according sources familiar with the exchange. Priebus later said that he talked Trump out of the firing.
The latest chapter in the saga between Trump and Sessions came just one week ago, when Trump challenged Sessions to launch an investigation into the Obama administration for failing to do enough to stop the 2016 election foreign interference.
"Question: If all of the Russian meddling took place during the Obama Administration, right up to January 20th, why aren't they the subject of the investigation?" Trump asked. "Why didn't Obama do something about the meddling? Why aren't Dem crimes under investigation? Ask Jeff Sessions!"
By Dan Merica, Laura Jarrett and Maegan Vazquez
Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed back against President Donald Trump's latest insult on Wednesday, prolonging an increasingly awkward public spat between the President and his top law enforcement official.
Trump chastised Sessions over an investigation into alleged surveillance abuses, calling his approach "disgraceful."
"Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc," Trump wrote. "Isn't the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!"
Twit:
Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!
Responding to Trump's tweet, the attorney general said in a statement that the Justice Department "initiated the appropriate process that will ensure complaints against this department will be fully and fairly acted upon if necessary."
"As long as I am the attorney general, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution," Sessions said.
Sessions had said Tuesday that the Justice Department is looking at whether the FBI has properly handled applications for surveillance orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Sessions, appearing at a news conference announcing a new opioid task force, was asked about House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes' controversial memo outlining purported surveillance abuses and told reporters that "the inspector general will take that as one of the matters he'll deal with."
The Justice Department's inspector general is Michael E. Horowitz, a longtime department official who has worked under Republican and Democrat administrations. He was confirmed for the inspector general job in 2012 under then-President Barack Obama.
While Trump is correct that Horowitz does not have prosecutorial powers, he can -- and often does -- make criminal referrals to the Justice Department based on his investigations. An investigation into improper FISA use would fall squarely onto Horowitz, too, given his charge instructs him to "investigate alleged violations of criminal and civil laws by DOJ employee."
Sessions chose to respond to the President because his latest jab was more "in the weeds" and about process, said a source familiar with Sessions' thinking.
Previous times, Trump has insulted Sessions when calling for the investigation of Hillary Clinton, but this time he called for Sessions to go after Justice Department attorneys, which was a bridge too far, said the source.
"There is a process, we are following that process," the source added.
As Sessions left the Billy Graham event in the Capitol on Wednesday, CNN asked for his response to Trump's tweet and criticism of him.
"I'm not commenting on that this morning. Thank you," he responded.
Asked if he has discussed the criticism directly with the President, Sessions just said, "Thanks."
Latest attack on Sessions
Trump's scathing tweet is the latest in a long line of public rebukes the President has leveled against his attorney general, a man who broke with much of his party to endorse Trump early in his presidential run.
Trump's anger toward Sessions stems from his decision to recuse himself from all investigations into the 2016 campaign, including special counsel Robert Mueller's expanding investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives bent on meddling in the election. Sessions made that decision after he did not fully answer questions during his confirmation hearing about his conversations with Russian diplomats during the 2016 campaign. Trump, in turn, has said he wouldn't have named Sessions to lead the Justice Department had he known he would have recused himself.
That animosity has played out publicly ever since.
Trump pestered Sessions for not looking into Hillary Clinton's deleted emails, slammed him for being "very weak" on Clinton's "crimes" and labeled him "beleaguered" in July.
As pressure mounted on Sessions last year, his standing in the administration appeared untenable to people inside the West Wing. During the first six months of Trump's presidency, Trump asked for Sessions' resignation, called the attorney general an "idiot" but then later declined to accept his attorney general's resignation letter.
Sessions has so far weathered the incessant incoming from the White House and sources close to the attorney general have told CNN that he is unlikely to go anywhere soon. But the saga between the two top Republicans has played out in public for much of Trump's first year in office and the President's chronic antipathy towards the top law enforcement official has defined Trump's view of the Justice Department.
Trump's anger boiled over in June, too, when the President pushed then-chief of staff Reince Priebus to obtain Sessions' resignation, according sources familiar with the exchange. Priebus later said that he talked Trump out of the firing.
The latest chapter in the saga between Trump and Sessions came just one week ago, when Trump challenged Sessions to launch an investigation into the Obama administration for failing to do enough to stop the 2016 election foreign interference.
"Question: If all of the Russian meddling took place during the Obama Administration, right up to January 20th, why aren't they the subject of the investigation?" Trump asked. "Why didn't Obama do something about the meddling? Why aren't Dem crimes under investigation? Ask Jeff Sessions!"
Needs to walk away now...
Jared Kushner just joined a really big club
By Peter Bergen
Jared Kushner just joined a really big club: the more than 3.6 million Americans with "secret" security clearances. That's nearly the population of the city of Los Angeles.
When the news broke Tuesday that Kushner's interim security clearance had been downgraded from "top secret" to "secret," his lawyer Abbe Lowell claimed that it would "...not affect Mr. Kushner's ability to continue to do the very important work he has been assigned by the President."
This is baloney, served with generous helpings of bunkum and balderdash.
To operate effectively with adversaries such as the Chinese and even nominal allies such as the Saudis, Kushner requires, at a minimum, a top secret clearance, often referred to as a TS clearance, according to nine former senior national security officials and former military officers, all of whom had access to highly classified intelligence and whom I consulted for this story.
Let's start with how the White House National Security Council (NSC) operates, where US policy on national security and foreign policy is formulated. A former government official who worked at the NSC for six years explains, "The NSC operates at the TS level as a baseline."
A former senior NSC official confirms that meetings at the NSC "are by default TS."
Then let's add the fact that those with top secret clearances -- pretty much anybody doing any work of any significance in national security -- will not discuss what he or she knows with those holding clearances only at the secret level.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, who served in US Special Forces and worked at the Pentagon on highly classified programs, told me that those "with only a secret clearance are regarded much the same as someone without a clearance at all. Those who routinely access top secret information in policy discussions have the discipline to carry out the best practice of simply not discussing anything with those who only have a secret-level clearance." (Disclosure: I know Amerine from the CNN film, "Legion of Brothers," which I produced and in which he appeared.)
For any serious discussion of US national security, a secret clearance isn't much more than a useless piece of paper. A former senior Department of Defense official says that at the Pentagon, "when we had people being on-boarded and they only had secret clearances, they had to sit in separate spaces until they had the requisite clearances, and it severely limited their ability to function."
At the White House, even jobs that at first blush wouldn't appear to need a top secret clearance require one, according to Heather Hurlburt, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton: "I had to have a top secret clearance to be a presidential speechwriter... Why? To read the information behind the rationales for events and messages and participate intelligently in meetings where they were developed. Without access to that analysis I'd have been as useful as a typing monkey." (Hurlburt is a colleague of mine at the non-partisan think tank, New America.)
President Trump could, of course, give his son-in-law access to the top secret material he is now being denied -- given that the President has the ability to declassify whatever he wants to whomever he wants -- but, for the moment, Trump has said he would let his chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, make the call about Kushner's clearance. And last week, Kelly made the call to downgrade it.
Without a top secret clearance, Kushner won't be able to attend most NSC meetings, colleagues will be leery about discussing much of substance with him, and the former avid consumer of intelligence will only have access to the kind of relatively low-level intelligence that some three and half million other Americans with secret clearances also have.
With only a secret clearance, Kushner might as well leave the White House tomorrow -- at least when it comes to national security matters -- because he will be receiving scant relevant intelligence for his work, he won't be able to attend key meetings, nor will he receive the crown jewel of the intelligence community, the President's Daily Briefs.
Without a top secret clearance, Kushner will be no more well informed than a careful newspaper reader since materials at the secret level are often smart diplomatic analyses, not real intelligence of the kind that top national security officials need for decision-making.
This may be OK for, say, dealing with a domestic issue such as the opioid crisis, one of the many jobs in Kushner's immense portfolio, but it's not going to cut it for the national security and foreign policy portfolios that his father-in-law has handed him, including dealing with the Middle East and China.
That said, Kushner still has unique access to the President that no other person in his position would normally have, and that remains true whatever the level of his clearance.
As long as that access is there, Kushner will still be a player when he deals with foreign leaders. One of the leaders Kushner is close to is the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is scheduled to visit Washington next month.
It will be interesting to see if Kushner is front and center during Crown Prince Mohammed's visit, given the loss of his top secret clearance.
By Peter Bergen
Jared Kushner just joined a really big club: the more than 3.6 million Americans with "secret" security clearances. That's nearly the population of the city of Los Angeles.
When the news broke Tuesday that Kushner's interim security clearance had been downgraded from "top secret" to "secret," his lawyer Abbe Lowell claimed that it would "...not affect Mr. Kushner's ability to continue to do the very important work he has been assigned by the President."
This is baloney, served with generous helpings of bunkum and balderdash.
To operate effectively with adversaries such as the Chinese and even nominal allies such as the Saudis, Kushner requires, at a minimum, a top secret clearance, often referred to as a TS clearance, according to nine former senior national security officials and former military officers, all of whom had access to highly classified intelligence and whom I consulted for this story.
Let's start with how the White House National Security Council (NSC) operates, where US policy on national security and foreign policy is formulated. A former government official who worked at the NSC for six years explains, "The NSC operates at the TS level as a baseline."
A former senior NSC official confirms that meetings at the NSC "are by default TS."
Then let's add the fact that those with top secret clearances -- pretty much anybody doing any work of any significance in national security -- will not discuss what he or she knows with those holding clearances only at the secret level.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, who served in US Special Forces and worked at the Pentagon on highly classified programs, told me that those "with only a secret clearance are regarded much the same as someone without a clearance at all. Those who routinely access top secret information in policy discussions have the discipline to carry out the best practice of simply not discussing anything with those who only have a secret-level clearance." (Disclosure: I know Amerine from the CNN film, "Legion of Brothers," which I produced and in which he appeared.)
For any serious discussion of US national security, a secret clearance isn't much more than a useless piece of paper. A former senior Department of Defense official says that at the Pentagon, "when we had people being on-boarded and they only had secret clearances, they had to sit in separate spaces until they had the requisite clearances, and it severely limited their ability to function."
At the White House, even jobs that at first blush wouldn't appear to need a top secret clearance require one, according to Heather Hurlburt, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton: "I had to have a top secret clearance to be a presidential speechwriter... Why? To read the information behind the rationales for events and messages and participate intelligently in meetings where they were developed. Without access to that analysis I'd have been as useful as a typing monkey." (Hurlburt is a colleague of mine at the non-partisan think tank, New America.)
President Trump could, of course, give his son-in-law access to the top secret material he is now being denied -- given that the President has the ability to declassify whatever he wants to whomever he wants -- but, for the moment, Trump has said he would let his chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, make the call about Kushner's clearance. And last week, Kelly made the call to downgrade it.
Without a top secret clearance, Kushner won't be able to attend most NSC meetings, colleagues will be leery about discussing much of substance with him, and the former avid consumer of intelligence will only have access to the kind of relatively low-level intelligence that some three and half million other Americans with secret clearances also have.
With only a secret clearance, Kushner might as well leave the White House tomorrow -- at least when it comes to national security matters -- because he will be receiving scant relevant intelligence for his work, he won't be able to attend key meetings, nor will he receive the crown jewel of the intelligence community, the President's Daily Briefs.
Without a top secret clearance, Kushner will be no more well informed than a careful newspaper reader since materials at the secret level are often smart diplomatic analyses, not real intelligence of the kind that top national security officials need for decision-making.
This may be OK for, say, dealing with a domestic issue such as the opioid crisis, one of the many jobs in Kushner's immense portfolio, but it's not going to cut it for the national security and foreign policy portfolios that his father-in-law has handed him, including dealing with the Middle East and China.
That said, Kushner still has unique access to the President that no other person in his position would normally have, and that remains true whatever the level of his clearance.
As long as that access is there, Kushner will still be a player when he deals with foreign leaders. One of the leaders Kushner is close to is the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is scheduled to visit Washington next month.
It will be interesting to see if Kushner is front and center during Crown Prince Mohammed's visit, given the loss of his top secret clearance.
Campaign against truth.....
Hope Hicks' white lies are part of Trump's broader campaign against truth
Analysis by Chris Cillizza
In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, White House communications director Hope Hicks acknowledged that she sometimes was required to tell white lies in service of President Donald Trump.
Hicks insisted that she had never lied about substantive matters to or for Trump.
This might seem like a minor matter. After all, everyone tells a few white lies here and there, right? You don't feel like going to drinks at work so, suddenly, a personal commitment you forgot about pops up. (The personal commitment is sitting on your couch watching "The Bachelor.")
But, as always, context matters. And the context here doesn't work in Hicks' favor.
First of all, how are we defining "white lies" -- that's the way a source characterized them to CNN after her appearance before the committee? According to Merriam-Webster, it's "a lie about a small or unimportant matter that someone tells to avoid hurting another person."
Is that what Hicks did? Or did she expand the definition of a white lie in some way shape or form? If so, how?
Second, how would Hicks define "substantive" matters? Does that mean she never told any white lie to or for the President about any White House personnel or about any policy issue the administration was dealing with?
The chances of us getting forthright answers to any of those questions are remote. But Hicks' admission that, sure, she had told some white lies while in the service of Trump is yet another example of how the only way to survive and prosper under this President is to be willing to bend the truth.
The simple fact is that Trump misleads and flat-out lies at a rate astronomically higher than past presidents (or any prominent politician.) That, whether you love Trump or hate him, can't be disputed.
In his first year in office, Trump said more than 2,000 things that were either totally or largely false, according to the Washington Post's Fact Checker. That's more than five falsehoods a day. Every day.
This President lies about big things (his alleged opposition to the war in Iraq, 3 to 5 million people voting illegally in the 2016 election, President Barack Obama ordering a wiretap on Trump during the 2016 campaign) and small things (winning 84% of the Cuban vote, Florida being hit with the highest winds ever recorded).
And, that culture of untruth seeps into those who work for Trump -- if they want to work for Trump for long.
Press secretary Sean Spicer found himself lying to media about Trump having the largest inaugural crowd ever just 24 hours after Trump was sworn in a president. Sarah Sanders has lied about Trump never advocating violence. And now, Hicks' supposed white lies.
The point is this: Donald Trump's extremely casual relationship with the truth infects his entire administration. Everyone who works for Trump knows this. And they also know that the best way to keep in his good graces -- and keep your job -- is to facilitate and defend his version of the truth (even if they know it isn't actually the truth.)
Creating an alternate reality -- or using "alternative facts," to borrow a phrase from senior counselor Kellyanne Conway -- is simply an accepted way of doing business in the Trump White House.
That disinterest in accepted facts -- or the belief that everyone is entitled to their own facts -- is both insidious and toxic to the broader culture. Trump's flouting of facts -- and his staff's willingness to enable that tendency -- provides not just cover but growth potential for those who would undermined accepted truths for personal or partisan gain.
Whether Trump is in office for four years or eight years, that assault on truth will be his lasting legacy. And it will be one from which the country won't quickly recover.
Analysis by Chris Cillizza
In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, White House communications director Hope Hicks acknowledged that she sometimes was required to tell white lies in service of President Donald Trump.
Hicks insisted that she had never lied about substantive matters to or for Trump.
This might seem like a minor matter. After all, everyone tells a few white lies here and there, right? You don't feel like going to drinks at work so, suddenly, a personal commitment you forgot about pops up. (The personal commitment is sitting on your couch watching "The Bachelor.")
But, as always, context matters. And the context here doesn't work in Hicks' favor.
First of all, how are we defining "white lies" -- that's the way a source characterized them to CNN after her appearance before the committee? According to Merriam-Webster, it's "a lie about a small or unimportant matter that someone tells to avoid hurting another person."
Is that what Hicks did? Or did she expand the definition of a white lie in some way shape or form? If so, how?
Second, how would Hicks define "substantive" matters? Does that mean she never told any white lie to or for the President about any White House personnel or about any policy issue the administration was dealing with?
The chances of us getting forthright answers to any of those questions are remote. But Hicks' admission that, sure, she had told some white lies while in the service of Trump is yet another example of how the only way to survive and prosper under this President is to be willing to bend the truth.
The simple fact is that Trump misleads and flat-out lies at a rate astronomically higher than past presidents (or any prominent politician.) That, whether you love Trump or hate him, can't be disputed.
In his first year in office, Trump said more than 2,000 things that were either totally or largely false, according to the Washington Post's Fact Checker. That's more than five falsehoods a day. Every day.
This President lies about big things (his alleged opposition to the war in Iraq, 3 to 5 million people voting illegally in the 2016 election, President Barack Obama ordering a wiretap on Trump during the 2016 campaign) and small things (winning 84% of the Cuban vote, Florida being hit with the highest winds ever recorded).
And, that culture of untruth seeps into those who work for Trump -- if they want to work for Trump for long.
Press secretary Sean Spicer found himself lying to media about Trump having the largest inaugural crowd ever just 24 hours after Trump was sworn in a president. Sarah Sanders has lied about Trump never advocating violence. And now, Hicks' supposed white lies.
The point is this: Donald Trump's extremely casual relationship with the truth infects his entire administration. Everyone who works for Trump knows this. And they also know that the best way to keep in his good graces -- and keep your job -- is to facilitate and defend his version of the truth (even if they know it isn't actually the truth.)
Creating an alternate reality -- or using "alternative facts," to borrow a phrase from senior counselor Kellyanne Conway -- is simply an accepted way of doing business in the Trump White House.
That disinterest in accepted facts -- or the belief that everyone is entitled to their own facts -- is both insidious and toxic to the broader culture. Trump's flouting of facts -- and his staff's willingness to enable that tendency -- provides not just cover but growth potential for those who would undermined accepted truths for personal or partisan gain.
Whether Trump is in office for four years or eight years, that assault on truth will be his lasting legacy. And it will be one from which the country won't quickly recover.
As unqualified today as on the first day....
Jared Kushner's fall from Secretary of Everything to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Analysis by Chris Cillizza
In the earliest days of the Trump White House, it seemed there wasn't a job Jared Kushner didn't do.
Heading up the US's involvement in the Middle East peace process, leading American relations with China, reinventing the way government runs to make it more efficient -- those are just three of the seven(ish) jobs Kushner had at one point in the White House.
The depth and breadth of Kushner's responsibilities makes the news of the last 24 hours all the more humbling for the once high-flying son-in-law of the President of the United States.
Due to concerns about his financial dealings during the presidential transition process, Kushner is still yet to secure a permanent security clearance and saw his temporary security clearance downgraded by chief of staff John Kelly last week. That means that Kushner might no longer be able to see many of the documents he had eyes on prior to Kelly's decision -- including the presidential daily briefing.
Just as that bombshell was sinking in, came another: The Washington Post reported that four countries -- the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico -- had engaged in private discussions about Kushner as a potential target for manipulation due to his complex personal financial issues and his relative inexperience in foreign affairs. That same story reported that Kushner had contacts with officials of foreign governments without informing national security adviser H.R. McMaster, a break in protocol considered a no-no in diplomatic circles.
This paragraph from the Post story is particularly striking:
"Within the White House, Kushner's lack of government experience and his business debt were seen from the beginning of his tenure as potential points of leverage that foreign governments could use to influence him, the current and former officials said."
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders insisted that the change in Kushner's security clearance would not impact his standing in the White House. "He is a valued member of the team and will continue to do the important work he has been doing since he started in the administration," she said.
Which, of course. Donald Trump may not be a terribly loyal person, but the one group he always protects and leans on is his family. And Kushner is family -- married to Trump's oldest daughter, Ivanka. (Ivanka Trump has had a bad week of her own.)
The strength of Trump's commitment notwithstanding, the recent revelations about Kushner's security clearance and his targeting by foreign governments would seem to raise questions about not just whether he can carry out the day-to-day responsibilities of his job but whether he should be allowed to at all.
Let's take the first question first.
Despite Sanders' assertion that Kushner "will continue to the important work he has been doing since he started in the administration," it's hard to see how. Without top secret security clearance, Kushner will not be allowed to see any number of documents relating to foreign affairs.
"This would seem to be crippling," CNN national security analyst John Kirby, a former spokesman for the Pentagon and State Department in the Obama administration, told CNN's Eli Watkins.
Of course, Trump, as President, has the ability to declassify information -- and could do so in order to allow Kushner to see certain (or all) documents.
The idea of Trump declassifying documents solely to allow someone without a top secret -- or permanent -- security clearance to see them, however, might not fly well with the national security and intelligence communities.
Which brings me to the second -- and more important -- point. Whether or not Trump can keep Kushner on in his current role, should he?
After all, we know -- thanks to The Washington Post -- that Kushner's financial issues and his inexperience have made him someone that foreign governments believe is vulnerable to manipulation. And we also know that Kushner has in the past met with foreign officials without the knowledge of the national security adviser.
That would be a concern for any administration about any employee. It should be a massive concern when it comes to Kushner who, until last week's decision by Kelly, had access to the most top secret information in the government and who also happens to be one of a handful of people closest to President Trump.
Imagine, for a minute, if, say, Chelsea Clinton's husband Marc Mezvinsky had the same job in a Clinton White House that Kushner has in this one. And that there were similar concerns about his security clearance and reports about foreign powers viewing him as ripe for manipulation.
Republicans would -- rightly! -- be going nuts.
No matter how close an adviser is to a president, issues like the ones raised over the last 24 hours about Kushner have to be grounds to reconsider his role or dismiss him from the White House entirely. In fact, the closeness and influence Kushner has with Trump makes it even more dangerous for him to remain in his current role.
Will Trump see any of that danger? Or acknowledge that for the good of his administration -- and, um, the country -- it might be best for Kushner to find another job to do either in or out of the White House?
Almost certainly not. Family comes first for Trump -- always. And Jared is very much family.
Analysis by Chris Cillizza
In the earliest days of the Trump White House, it seemed there wasn't a job Jared Kushner didn't do.
Heading up the US's involvement in the Middle East peace process, leading American relations with China, reinventing the way government runs to make it more efficient -- those are just three of the seven(ish) jobs Kushner had at one point in the White House.
The depth and breadth of Kushner's responsibilities makes the news of the last 24 hours all the more humbling for the once high-flying son-in-law of the President of the United States.
Due to concerns about his financial dealings during the presidential transition process, Kushner is still yet to secure a permanent security clearance and saw his temporary security clearance downgraded by chief of staff John Kelly last week. That means that Kushner might no longer be able to see many of the documents he had eyes on prior to Kelly's decision -- including the presidential daily briefing.
Just as that bombshell was sinking in, came another: The Washington Post reported that four countries -- the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico -- had engaged in private discussions about Kushner as a potential target for manipulation due to his complex personal financial issues and his relative inexperience in foreign affairs. That same story reported that Kushner had contacts with officials of foreign governments without informing national security adviser H.R. McMaster, a break in protocol considered a no-no in diplomatic circles.
This paragraph from the Post story is particularly striking:
"Within the White House, Kushner's lack of government experience and his business debt were seen from the beginning of his tenure as potential points of leverage that foreign governments could use to influence him, the current and former officials said."
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders insisted that the change in Kushner's security clearance would not impact his standing in the White House. "He is a valued member of the team and will continue to do the important work he has been doing since he started in the administration," she said.
Which, of course. Donald Trump may not be a terribly loyal person, but the one group he always protects and leans on is his family. And Kushner is family -- married to Trump's oldest daughter, Ivanka. (Ivanka Trump has had a bad week of her own.)
The strength of Trump's commitment notwithstanding, the recent revelations about Kushner's security clearance and his targeting by foreign governments would seem to raise questions about not just whether he can carry out the day-to-day responsibilities of his job but whether he should be allowed to at all.
Let's take the first question first.
Despite Sanders' assertion that Kushner "will continue to the important work he has been doing since he started in the administration," it's hard to see how. Without top secret security clearance, Kushner will not be allowed to see any number of documents relating to foreign affairs.
"This would seem to be crippling," CNN national security analyst John Kirby, a former spokesman for the Pentagon and State Department in the Obama administration, told CNN's Eli Watkins.
Of course, Trump, as President, has the ability to declassify information -- and could do so in order to allow Kushner to see certain (or all) documents.
The idea of Trump declassifying documents solely to allow someone without a top secret -- or permanent -- security clearance to see them, however, might not fly well with the national security and intelligence communities.
Which brings me to the second -- and more important -- point. Whether or not Trump can keep Kushner on in his current role, should he?
After all, we know -- thanks to The Washington Post -- that Kushner's financial issues and his inexperience have made him someone that foreign governments believe is vulnerable to manipulation. And we also know that Kushner has in the past met with foreign officials without the knowledge of the national security adviser.
That would be a concern for any administration about any employee. It should be a massive concern when it comes to Kushner who, until last week's decision by Kelly, had access to the most top secret information in the government and who also happens to be one of a handful of people closest to President Trump.
Imagine, for a minute, if, say, Chelsea Clinton's husband Marc Mezvinsky had the same job in a Clinton White House that Kushner has in this one. And that there were similar concerns about his security clearance and reports about foreign powers viewing him as ripe for manipulation.
Republicans would -- rightly! -- be going nuts.
No matter how close an adviser is to a president, issues like the ones raised over the last 24 hours about Kushner have to be grounds to reconsider his role or dismiss him from the White House entirely. In fact, the closeness and influence Kushner has with Trump makes it even more dangerous for him to remain in his current role.
Will Trump see any of that danger? Or acknowledge that for the good of his administration -- and, um, the country -- it might be best for Kushner to find another job to do either in or out of the White House?
Almost certainly not. Family comes first for Trump -- always. And Jared is very much family.
Acknowledges white lies
Hicks acknowledges white lies, but won't talk White House in testimony
By Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb
During closed-door testimony that stretched roughly nine hours Tuesday, White House communications director Hope Hicks was pressed about whether she had ever lied for President Donald Trump -- and acknowledged she has had to tell what amounted to white lies, according to a source with direct knowledge of her testimony.
But Hicks argued that she hasn't had to lie about substantive issues for Trump, the source said.
Hicks, however, would not answer questions about her time in the White House during her House Intelligence Committee testimony as part of the panel's Russia investigation, though she did answer some questions about the presidential transition, according to lawmakers on the committee.
The New York Times first reported that Hicks admitted to white lies on the President's behalf.
Hicks is the latest senior official in the Trump orbit to decline to address questions about events that occurred after the 2016 election, as former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski have made similar claims during testimony before the House panel.
Hicks' testimony was more forthcoming than that of Bannon -- who would answer questions only about the campaign -- but Democrats said she failed to answer key questions by walling off her time at the White House, arguing that other administration officials did not take a broad view about what they could not discuss.
House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff said Hicks would not discuss, for instance, her role in drafting the misleading statement from Donald Trump Jr. about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer.
"All of our questions about what went into that statement went unanswered," the California Democrat said.
Hicks did tell the committee that the first time she learned about the Trump Tower meeting was in June 2017, three sources familiar with the matter told CNN. While she was in Trump Tower that day in June 2016, Hicks said, she did not have any awareness that the meeting took place, the sources said.
Initially Hicks told the committee she would not discuss the transition at all, citing a White House request, according to lawmakers. But she then agreed to answer some questions about the transition after conferring with the White House, because she had answered them previously before the Senate Intelligence Committee -- although Schiff said there were transition questions not asked by the Senate that she still would not address.
Schiff said Democrats pushed for the committee to subpoena Hicks "on the spot" to compel her testimony, but Republicans did not agree to do so.
Hicks did not invoke executive privilege, but she said she had been instructed by the White House not to answer the questions, Schiff said.
When Bannon appeared before the committee last month and didn't answer questions beyond the 2016 campaign, he was hit with a subpoena during the interview. Republicans said Bannon's claim that he could invoke executive privilege during the presidential transition did not have merit.
"There's apparently one rule for Steve Bannon and another rule for everyone else," Schiff said.
But Republicans said Hicks was a different case because she was willing to answer some questions about the transition.
"Mr. Bannon was claiming a privilege based on the transition that we were asking what the privilege was and we weren't comfortable that there was such a privilege," said Rep. Tom Rooney, a Florida Republican. "Since she has decided to answer questions based on that transition, she cannot be compared to Mr. Bannon, so it's not the same."
Rep. Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, said his issue was more with the White House's stance on the transition period, rather than with Hicks.
Earlier on Tuesday, other Democrats on the committee were also pushing for the panel to subpoena Hicks for not responding to its questions.
"We got Bannon-ed," said Rep. Denny Heck, a Washington state Democrat.
"I have less hope we'll get to all the answers," said Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat. "As with anyone who doesn't answer questions, they ought to be subpoenaed."
Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican leading the House Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation, told CNN ahead of the meeting that he expected Hicks to answer all of the committee's questions. He declined to comment Tuesday afternoon on Hicks' testimony or a possible subpoena, saying he would wait until the interview had concluded.
Bannon returned to the committee under subpoena earlier this month to continue his testimony, and he told the panel he had been instructed by the White House to invoke executive privilege on behalf of Trump.
Schiff has called for Bannon to be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions, as well as Lewandowski, who also limited the scope of questions he would answer. Conaway said Tuesday that he has to discuss the matter with House Speaker Paul Ryan before deciding how to proceed.
Quigley said Hicks had not asserted privilege Tuesday, but she was "following the orders of the White House not to answer certain questions."
Hicks did not answer reporters' questions on her way into the interview Tuesday morning. She was initially scheduled to appear before the committee last month as part of the panel's investigation into Russian meddling in the US election, but her interview was delayed over questions about the scope of her testimony.
Hicks also met last year with special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation.
Hicks, a trusted Trump aide for years, was one of then-candidate Trump's first hires as he put together an improbable run for the White House. During the campaign, she was often by Trump's side and attended nearly every rally, while she was in frequent communication with other senior officials as they coordinated their tactics to win the White House.
The House panel planned to interview her about any knowledge she has of contacts that occurred between other Trump associates and Russians.
Hicks appears to have firsthand knowledge of a number of key events that have shaped the first year of the Trump White House, including being on Air Force One when the initial misleading statement about Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russians was crafted.
By Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb
During closed-door testimony that stretched roughly nine hours Tuesday, White House communications director Hope Hicks was pressed about whether she had ever lied for President Donald Trump -- and acknowledged she has had to tell what amounted to white lies, according to a source with direct knowledge of her testimony.
But Hicks argued that she hasn't had to lie about substantive issues for Trump, the source said.
Hicks, however, would not answer questions about her time in the White House during her House Intelligence Committee testimony as part of the panel's Russia investigation, though she did answer some questions about the presidential transition, according to lawmakers on the committee.
The New York Times first reported that Hicks admitted to white lies on the President's behalf.
Hicks is the latest senior official in the Trump orbit to decline to address questions about events that occurred after the 2016 election, as former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski have made similar claims during testimony before the House panel.
Hicks' testimony was more forthcoming than that of Bannon -- who would answer questions only about the campaign -- but Democrats said she failed to answer key questions by walling off her time at the White House, arguing that other administration officials did not take a broad view about what they could not discuss.
House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff said Hicks would not discuss, for instance, her role in drafting the misleading statement from Donald Trump Jr. about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer.
"All of our questions about what went into that statement went unanswered," the California Democrat said.
Hicks did tell the committee that the first time she learned about the Trump Tower meeting was in June 2017, three sources familiar with the matter told CNN. While she was in Trump Tower that day in June 2016, Hicks said, she did not have any awareness that the meeting took place, the sources said.
Initially Hicks told the committee she would not discuss the transition at all, citing a White House request, according to lawmakers. But she then agreed to answer some questions about the transition after conferring with the White House, because she had answered them previously before the Senate Intelligence Committee -- although Schiff said there were transition questions not asked by the Senate that she still would not address.
Schiff said Democrats pushed for the committee to subpoena Hicks "on the spot" to compel her testimony, but Republicans did not agree to do so.
Hicks did not invoke executive privilege, but she said she had been instructed by the White House not to answer the questions, Schiff said.
When Bannon appeared before the committee last month and didn't answer questions beyond the 2016 campaign, he was hit with a subpoena during the interview. Republicans said Bannon's claim that he could invoke executive privilege during the presidential transition did not have merit.
"There's apparently one rule for Steve Bannon and another rule for everyone else," Schiff said.
But Republicans said Hicks was a different case because she was willing to answer some questions about the transition.
"Mr. Bannon was claiming a privilege based on the transition that we were asking what the privilege was and we weren't comfortable that there was such a privilege," said Rep. Tom Rooney, a Florida Republican. "Since she has decided to answer questions based on that transition, she cannot be compared to Mr. Bannon, so it's not the same."
Rep. Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, said his issue was more with the White House's stance on the transition period, rather than with Hicks.
Earlier on Tuesday, other Democrats on the committee were also pushing for the panel to subpoena Hicks for not responding to its questions.
"We got Bannon-ed," said Rep. Denny Heck, a Washington state Democrat.
"I have less hope we'll get to all the answers," said Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat. "As with anyone who doesn't answer questions, they ought to be subpoenaed."
Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican leading the House Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation, told CNN ahead of the meeting that he expected Hicks to answer all of the committee's questions. He declined to comment Tuesday afternoon on Hicks' testimony or a possible subpoena, saying he would wait until the interview had concluded.
Bannon returned to the committee under subpoena earlier this month to continue his testimony, and he told the panel he had been instructed by the White House to invoke executive privilege on behalf of Trump.
Schiff has called for Bannon to be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions, as well as Lewandowski, who also limited the scope of questions he would answer. Conaway said Tuesday that he has to discuss the matter with House Speaker Paul Ryan before deciding how to proceed.
Quigley said Hicks had not asserted privilege Tuesday, but she was "following the orders of the White House not to answer certain questions."
Hicks did not answer reporters' questions on her way into the interview Tuesday morning. She was initially scheduled to appear before the committee last month as part of the panel's investigation into Russian meddling in the US election, but her interview was delayed over questions about the scope of her testimony.
Hicks also met last year with special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation.
Hicks, a trusted Trump aide for years, was one of then-candidate Trump's first hires as he put together an improbable run for the White House. During the campaign, she was often by Trump's side and attended nearly every rally, while she was in frequent communication with other senior officials as they coordinated their tactics to win the White House.
The House panel planned to interview her about any knowledge she has of contacts that occurred between other Trump associates and Russians.
Hicks appears to have firsthand knowledge of a number of key events that have shaped the first year of the Trump White House, including being on Air Force One when the initial misleading statement about Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russians was crafted.
Russia bombshells...
Kushner, Russia bombshells rock the White House
Analysis by Stephen Collinson
A volley of stunning revelations over Jared Kushner and the Russia probe are rocking Donald Trump's inner circle and suggest a pivotal moment is at hand in the West Wing personnel wars that have raged throughout his presidency.
First, it emerged Tuesday that chief of staff John Kelly downgraded the top secret security clearance for the President's son-in-law in a bid to clear up a scandal over whether top administration players are qualified to access the most sensitive intelligence.
Then, The Washington Post published a bombshell report that at least four countries had discussed how to use Kushner's sparse experience, financial troubles and intricate business arrangements to manipulate him.
Hours later, CNN reported that special counsel Robert Mueller is asking questions about Trump's business dealings with Russia before the President's campaign, a potentially significant development in the investigation.
Triple blows
The triple blows at Trump's inner circle added to the already incredible personal, political and legal pressure heaped on the President and the strain on those staffing his turbulent presidency.
They come at a moment when Mueller's probe is gathering pace, cranking out indictments of Trump associates, and appears to be posing a more severe threat to the President, Kushner and other important associates.
The developments were more than a personal and public humiliation to Kushner, who has played an influential, if mysterious, role in the administration.
They put the sustainability of his role as a top foreign policy adviser to Trump in doubt because he will have access to far fewer government secrets and cannot see the Presidential Daily Brief, the collection of the spy community's treasures prepared for the commander in chief.
The downgrade appears to make it all but impossible for Kushner to do his job even though the White House and his lawyer say that is not the case.
But how for example can he carry out his duties running the Middle East peace process or liaising with top Gulf powers if he is not privy to the latest intelligence about his interlocutors or other key regional players like Iran?
Similarly, Kushner could find himself asked to leave sensitive meetings in the White House or force top intelligence or foreign policy officials to avoid the most sensitive subjects in meetings that he is in with the President.
"He can't see intercepted communications -- that's top secret, he's now downgraded to secret ... he can't see the most secret CIA information about their informants," said Phil Mudd, a former CIA and FBI official who is now a CNN national security analyst.
"He can't see some of the stuff our Western allies see," he added.
Ultimately, unless Kushner is cleared by the FBI to receive a permanent security clearance or gets a waiver from the President his diminished role will spur fresh speculation about his longevity as a White House staffer.
His departure and potentially that of his wife Ivanka Trump, who just controversially led a US mission to South Korea's Winter Olympics at a time of flaring nuclear tensions with North Korea, would mark a huge earthquake in Trump world.
As it is, the couple will see their "influence diminished," a GOP source close to the White House told CNN's Jim Acosta.
Fresh doubts over Kushner's position also risked reflecting poorly on Trump, given that the President made a close family member who was apparently unqualified or at risk of being compromised by foreign powers such a pivotal adviser.
After all, Trump pledged to hire the most qualified people in the world to serve in his administration, and made the alleged mishandling of classified material by his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton a key argument of his campaign.
Trump was already under ethical fire for breaking anti-nepotism conventions by hiring family members. Kushner's new troubles will make those questions even more acute.
"This is a stunning blow to President Trump," said CNN presidential historian Timothy Naftali, noting that Kushner was one of the few senior advisers with whom Trump felt comfortable.
"This is a big deal ... he must be fuming," Naftali told CNN's Erin Burnett.
Foreign manipulations
The idea that key foreign countries, including Mexico, Israel, China and the United Arab Emirates had acted on conversations about how to manipulate Kushner, according to current and former US officials familiar with intelligence reports cited by the Post, is also a problem.
After all, the optics of a senior presidential adviser sitting down with leaders who have been publicly reported to have tried to compromise him would weaken his leverage.
The political implications of the Kushner news are less profound than the national security questions but no less intriguing.
The strike against Kushner is a bold move by Kelly who has worked to remove what he sees a distracting elements around the President -- such as former top political adviser Steve Bannon and former foreign policy aide Sebastian Gorka. But his decision to take on the President's son-in-law is the most significant and potentially risky coup yet.
Last week, Trump told reporters he would let Kelly decide what to do about his son-in-law's clearance but stressed that Kushner had done an "outstanding job." The comment was seen by many in Washington as a broad hint to Kelly that the President wanted Kushner kept in the loop.
Now any attempt by Trump to contradict Kelly's move would shatter the chief of staff's authority and make his position all but impossible. But if Kelly prevails, his decision on Kushner will be regarded as a gutsy political victory and would undercut speculation he cannot last much longer in the White House.
Signs that Mueller is looking into Trump's finances meanwhile add a layer of intensity to the drama surrounding his investigation.
The President has previously warned that he would not tolerate the special counsel seeking such information, so speculation about whether Trump will try to fire Mueller will be revived.
While there is no indication so far of any wrongdoing by Trump or collusion with a Russian election meddling effort, the report again poses the question of whether his past business dealings could have been a target for any Russian attempt to compromise him.
Any sense on the part of the President that the walls are closing in will not have been helped by Tuesday's testimony to a House committee by Hope Hicks, his communications director and close campaign aide.
CNN's Manu Raju reported that Hicks testified that she has sometimes had to tell white lies for the President, but had not lied about anything substantive.
Analysis by Stephen Collinson
A volley of stunning revelations over Jared Kushner and the Russia probe are rocking Donald Trump's inner circle and suggest a pivotal moment is at hand in the West Wing personnel wars that have raged throughout his presidency.
First, it emerged Tuesday that chief of staff John Kelly downgraded the top secret security clearance for the President's son-in-law in a bid to clear up a scandal over whether top administration players are qualified to access the most sensitive intelligence.
Then, The Washington Post published a bombshell report that at least four countries had discussed how to use Kushner's sparse experience, financial troubles and intricate business arrangements to manipulate him.
Hours later, CNN reported that special counsel Robert Mueller is asking questions about Trump's business dealings with Russia before the President's campaign, a potentially significant development in the investigation.
Triple blows
The triple blows at Trump's inner circle added to the already incredible personal, political and legal pressure heaped on the President and the strain on those staffing his turbulent presidency.
They come at a moment when Mueller's probe is gathering pace, cranking out indictments of Trump associates, and appears to be posing a more severe threat to the President, Kushner and other important associates.
The developments were more than a personal and public humiliation to Kushner, who has played an influential, if mysterious, role in the administration.
They put the sustainability of his role as a top foreign policy adviser to Trump in doubt because he will have access to far fewer government secrets and cannot see the Presidential Daily Brief, the collection of the spy community's treasures prepared for the commander in chief.
The downgrade appears to make it all but impossible for Kushner to do his job even though the White House and his lawyer say that is not the case.
But how for example can he carry out his duties running the Middle East peace process or liaising with top Gulf powers if he is not privy to the latest intelligence about his interlocutors or other key regional players like Iran?
Similarly, Kushner could find himself asked to leave sensitive meetings in the White House or force top intelligence or foreign policy officials to avoid the most sensitive subjects in meetings that he is in with the President.
"He can't see intercepted communications -- that's top secret, he's now downgraded to secret ... he can't see the most secret CIA information about their informants," said Phil Mudd, a former CIA and FBI official who is now a CNN national security analyst.
"He can't see some of the stuff our Western allies see," he added.
Ultimately, unless Kushner is cleared by the FBI to receive a permanent security clearance or gets a waiver from the President his diminished role will spur fresh speculation about his longevity as a White House staffer.
His departure and potentially that of his wife Ivanka Trump, who just controversially led a US mission to South Korea's Winter Olympics at a time of flaring nuclear tensions with North Korea, would mark a huge earthquake in Trump world.
As it is, the couple will see their "influence diminished," a GOP source close to the White House told CNN's Jim Acosta.
Fresh doubts over Kushner's position also risked reflecting poorly on Trump, given that the President made a close family member who was apparently unqualified or at risk of being compromised by foreign powers such a pivotal adviser.
After all, Trump pledged to hire the most qualified people in the world to serve in his administration, and made the alleged mishandling of classified material by his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton a key argument of his campaign.
Trump was already under ethical fire for breaking anti-nepotism conventions by hiring family members. Kushner's new troubles will make those questions even more acute.
"This is a stunning blow to President Trump," said CNN presidential historian Timothy Naftali, noting that Kushner was one of the few senior advisers with whom Trump felt comfortable.
"This is a big deal ... he must be fuming," Naftali told CNN's Erin Burnett.
Foreign manipulations
The idea that key foreign countries, including Mexico, Israel, China and the United Arab Emirates had acted on conversations about how to manipulate Kushner, according to current and former US officials familiar with intelligence reports cited by the Post, is also a problem.
After all, the optics of a senior presidential adviser sitting down with leaders who have been publicly reported to have tried to compromise him would weaken his leverage.
The political implications of the Kushner news are less profound than the national security questions but no less intriguing.
The strike against Kushner is a bold move by Kelly who has worked to remove what he sees a distracting elements around the President -- such as former top political adviser Steve Bannon and former foreign policy aide Sebastian Gorka. But his decision to take on the President's son-in-law is the most significant and potentially risky coup yet.
Last week, Trump told reporters he would let Kelly decide what to do about his son-in-law's clearance but stressed that Kushner had done an "outstanding job." The comment was seen by many in Washington as a broad hint to Kelly that the President wanted Kushner kept in the loop.
Now any attempt by Trump to contradict Kelly's move would shatter the chief of staff's authority and make his position all but impossible. But if Kelly prevails, his decision on Kushner will be regarded as a gutsy political victory and would undercut speculation he cannot last much longer in the White House.
Signs that Mueller is looking into Trump's finances meanwhile add a layer of intensity to the drama surrounding his investigation.
The President has previously warned that he would not tolerate the special counsel seeking such information, so speculation about whether Trump will try to fire Mueller will be revived.
While there is no indication so far of any wrongdoing by Trump or collusion with a Russian election meddling effort, the report again poses the question of whether his past business dealings could have been a target for any Russian attempt to compromise him.
Any sense on the part of the President that the walls are closing in will not have been helped by Tuesday's testimony to a House committee by Hope Hicks, his communications director and close campaign aide.
CNN's Manu Raju reported that Hicks testified that she has sometimes had to tell white lies for the President, but had not lied about anything substantive.
Soyuz With Expedition 54 Trio Aboard Returns to Earth
The Soyuz MS-06 spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 54 crew members Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei of NASA and cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2018 (Feb. 27 Eastern time). Acaba, Vande Hei, and Misurkin are returning after 168 days in space where they served as members of the Expedition 53 and 54 crews onboard the International Space Station.
Lunacy Doesn’t Work...
Lunacy Doesn’t Work As Well for Liberals As For Conservatives
KEVIN DRUM
Conventional wisdom says that gun rights are a big political issue not because lots of people are extremists on the issue. There’s actually not all that many of them. Rather, the issue is intensity: the zealots tend to be very, very loud and they make it clear that they’ll punish politicians who step out of line even slightly. Atrios riffs on why Democrats don’t seem to get the same kind of mileage from their issues:
The thing is that D politicians rarely try to inspire their own intense single issue voters who could be turned out on issues, including, yes, the gun issue. But you can’t turn out single issue reproductive health voters (I mean those who don’t necessarily vote all the time) on “safe, legal, and rare.” You can’t turn out anti-war voters on “kindler, gentler wars, mostly with your pal Droney.” You can’t turn out gun control voters on “um…more background checks and… [thinks hard] raise the age of legally buying a gun that shoots a round 45 times per minute to the Bud Light buying age?” And Dems tend to speak in pundit approved gibberish speak. “Let’s close the gun show loophole.” Um, sure, what the hell is that again?
….Maybe these political calculations are correct. Maybe “an abortion cart on every corner” will turn off the totebagging moderates more than it will inspire intense single issue votes. But don’t be surprised when common sense rhetoric about “common sense proposals” doesn’t inspire your base to turn out at midterms….Nobody’s going to vote to bend the cost curve. They’ll vote if you promise them they can go to the damn doctor. Intensity can be there, but it’s gonna require leadership to maintain it.
I’m just going to toss out a few miscellaneous comments on this:
KEVIN DRUM
Conventional wisdom says that gun rights are a big political issue not because lots of people are extremists on the issue. There’s actually not all that many of them. Rather, the issue is intensity: the zealots tend to be very, very loud and they make it clear that they’ll punish politicians who step out of line even slightly. Atrios riffs on why Democrats don’t seem to get the same kind of mileage from their issues:
The thing is that D politicians rarely try to inspire their own intense single issue voters who could be turned out on issues, including, yes, the gun issue. But you can’t turn out single issue reproductive health voters (I mean those who don’t necessarily vote all the time) on “safe, legal, and rare.” You can’t turn out anti-war voters on “kindler, gentler wars, mostly with your pal Droney.” You can’t turn out gun control voters on “um…more background checks and… [thinks hard] raise the age of legally buying a gun that shoots a round 45 times per minute to the Bud Light buying age?” And Dems tend to speak in pundit approved gibberish speak. “Let’s close the gun show loophole.” Um, sure, what the hell is that again?
….Maybe these political calculations are correct. Maybe “an abortion cart on every corner” will turn off the totebagging moderates more than it will inspire intense single issue votes. But don’t be surprised when common sense rhetoric about “common sense proposals” doesn’t inspire your base to turn out at midterms….Nobody’s going to vote to bend the cost curve. They’ll vote if you promise them they can go to the damn doctor. Intensity can be there, but it’s gonna require leadership to maintain it.
I’m just going to toss out a few miscellaneous comments on this:
- There are issues where Democrats get a lot of mileage from single-issue voters. Reproductive health is one of them. Ancient Clintonian rhetoric aside, virtually every Democrat these days supports more-or-less unlimited abortion on demand—and they’re punished if they don’t.¹ Ditto for gay rights. And increasingly immigration is in this bucket too, because activist groups have made it clear that Democrats will be punished if they compromise more than slightly on immigration legislation.
- More people self-ID as conservatives than as liberals. They just do. This means Republicans can usually win by attracting maybe a third of centrist voters. By contrast, Democrats usually need about two-thirds of the centrists. Democrats simply have less elbow room to pander to their extremists and still win.
- For good or ill, Republicans are given more leeway by the media to be lunatics.
- This problem of intensity often comes up in the context of young voters. How can Dems get them to turn out in bigger numbers? Finding hot button issues might be one of the answers. But another is to stop focusing so much on the college educated. Bloggers are especially bad at this because we and all our friends tend to be verbal, college-educated folks with a lot of interest in politics. Instead, think about a 20-year-old C+ high school grad who spends a lot of time playing videogames or chatting on Facebook—and is, at the very least, nonconservative. What might motivate them to turn out to vote? Free college? Nah. Free health care? Nah. Most of them are pretty healthy. Abortion? For the women maybe, but not the men. Overseas wars? They probably don’t really care that much. These are all issues that appeal to folks who are already politically engaged, but not so much to the Beavis and Butthead vote. So what will? Has anyone asked them?
- Bottom line: sure, Democrats should have a crisper message. But there are some genuine structural reasons that they don’t. Demographics are tough to get around, and the demographics of America today are a lot tougher on lunatic liberals than on lunatic conservatives. Like it or not, we have to do things differently.
Power...
Electricity Demand Is Down, But We Keep Building Power Plants Anyway
KEVIN DRUM
Dave Roberts has an interesting piece today about the US demand for electricity. Thanks largely to rising energy efficiency and the emergence of rooftop solar, demand is flat, prices are down, and utilities are panicked. Here are three charts that tell the story. First, total end-use electricity demand since 1999:
Demand flattened starting in 2007 and is now showing signs of actually declining. Here’s the price of electricity:
The price of a kilowatt-hour of electricity has been dropping since about 2008. With demand flat and prices dropping, this means electric utilities are being squeezed. They make money by getting a regulated rate of return on new investment, but obviously they don’t need much new investment. They’ve squared this circle by simply building new capacity anyway. If they need to build more power plants in order to make money, then they’ll figure out some way to wheedle regulators into allowing them to build new power plants. Here’s the result:
Roberts explains what this means:
Utilities have been frantically adjusting to this new normal. The generation utilities that sell into wholesale electricity markets…have reacted by cutting costs and merging. The regulated utilities that administer local distribution grids have responded by increasing investments in those grids. But these are temporary, limited responses, not enough to stay in business in the face of long-term decline in demand. Ultimately, deeper reforms will be necessary.
….That’s simply a different model than current utilities are designed for. To adapt, the utility business model must change. Utilities need newly defined responsibilities and new ways to make money, through services rather than new hardware. That kind of reform will require regulators, politicians, and risky experiments.Very few states — New York, California, Massachusetts, a few others — have consciously set off down that path.
Paying utilities to build generating plants made a rough kind of sense when demand was steadily increasing and new plants were always on the horizon. Today it makes no sense at all. It’s time for regulators and state legislatures to change the way utilities are allowed to make money.
If charts are too bloodless for you, you should read a recent Los Angeles Times report about utilities in California. It explains in detail how utilities here continue to make billions of dollars building new power plants even though California has a glut of electricity. In fact, the glut is so massive that we’re even selling solar power to other states. And yet, the new plants just keep on coming.
KEVIN DRUM
Dave Roberts has an interesting piece today about the US demand for electricity. Thanks largely to rising energy efficiency and the emergence of rooftop solar, demand is flat, prices are down, and utilities are panicked. Here are three charts that tell the story. First, total end-use electricity demand since 1999:
Demand flattened starting in 2007 and is now showing signs of actually declining. Here’s the price of electricity:
The price of a kilowatt-hour of electricity has been dropping since about 2008. With demand flat and prices dropping, this means electric utilities are being squeezed. They make money by getting a regulated rate of return on new investment, but obviously they don’t need much new investment. They’ve squared this circle by simply building new capacity anyway. If they need to build more power plants in order to make money, then they’ll figure out some way to wheedle regulators into allowing them to build new power plants. Here’s the result:
Roberts explains what this means:
Utilities have been frantically adjusting to this new normal. The generation utilities that sell into wholesale electricity markets…have reacted by cutting costs and merging. The regulated utilities that administer local distribution grids have responded by increasing investments in those grids. But these are temporary, limited responses, not enough to stay in business in the face of long-term decline in demand. Ultimately, deeper reforms will be necessary.
….That’s simply a different model than current utilities are designed for. To adapt, the utility business model must change. Utilities need newly defined responsibilities and new ways to make money, through services rather than new hardware. That kind of reform will require regulators, politicians, and risky experiments.Very few states — New York, California, Massachusetts, a few others — have consciously set off down that path.
Paying utilities to build generating plants made a rough kind of sense when demand was steadily increasing and new plants were always on the horizon. Today it makes no sense at all. It’s time for regulators and state legislatures to change the way utilities are allowed to make money.
If charts are too bloodless for you, you should read a recent Los Angeles Times report about utilities in California. It explains in detail how utilities here continue to make billions of dollars building new power plants even though California has a glut of electricity. In fact, the glut is so massive that we’re even selling solar power to other states. And yet, the new plants just keep on coming.
Kiddie Table
Jared Kushner Gets Demoted to the Kiddie Table
KEVIN DRUM
From the Washington Post:
Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter. Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.
Of course they have. Why wouldn’t they? Kushner is inexperienced, avaricious, and in tough financial straits. He’s an easy mark. That explains this, also from the Post:
Jared Kushner, senior adviser and son-in-law to President Trump, had his security clearance downgraded Friday, sharply limiting his access to some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets amid concerns raised by the ongoing investigation of his background, two White House officials said Tuesday. Kushner was one of several White House officials who received a memo Friday announcing that because of their interim security clearances, their status was being downgraded from the “Top Secret/SCI” level to the “Secret” level, a far lower level of access to classified information.
“Secret”? Not even “Top Secret?” Seriously? Nothing of any real consequence is classified Secret. Kushner has been put in about the same category as a sixth grader, and for good reason: because the intelligence community is afraid that foreign countries might try to take advantage of his complex business arrangements and financial diff—
Oh.
KEVIN DRUM
From the Washington Post:
Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter. Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.
Of course they have. Why wouldn’t they? Kushner is inexperienced, avaricious, and in tough financial straits. He’s an easy mark. That explains this, also from the Post:
Jared Kushner, senior adviser and son-in-law to President Trump, had his security clearance downgraded Friday, sharply limiting his access to some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets amid concerns raised by the ongoing investigation of his background, two White House officials said Tuesday. Kushner was one of several White House officials who received a memo Friday announcing that because of their interim security clearances, their status was being downgraded from the “Top Secret/SCI” level to the “Secret” level, a far lower level of access to classified information.
“Secret”? Not even “Top Secret?” Seriously? Nothing of any real consequence is classified Secret. Kushner has been put in about the same category as a sixth grader, and for good reason: because the intelligence community is afraid that foreign countries might try to take advantage of his complex business arrangements and financial diff—
Oh.
Believes God Helps...
Ben Carson Believes God Helps Those Who Help Themselves
KEVIN DRUM
I had a Ben Carson story in my open tabs yesterday but never got around to posting about it. So here it is:
A senior career official in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has alleged that she was demoted and replaced with a Donald Trump appointee after refusing to break the law by funding an expensive redecoration of Ben Carson’s office. Helen Foster said she was told “$5,000 will not even buy a decent chair” after informing her bosses this was the legal price limit for improvements to the HUD secretary’s suite at the department’s Washington headquarters.
But it’s hard to keep up these days. By the time I woke up this morning, there was already more:
Department of Housing and Urban Development officials spent $31,000 on a new dining room set for Secretary Ben Carson’s office in late 2017 — just as the White House circulated its plans to slash HUD’s programs for the homeless, elderly and poor, according to federal procurement records.
….Mr. Carson “didn’t know the table had been purchased,” but does not believe the cost was too steep and does not intend to return it, said Raffi Williams, a HUD spokesman.
….Neither Mr. Carson nor his wife — who expressed a strong interest in sprucing up the drab, wood-paneled, 1960s-era secretary’s suite, according to several current and former department staff members — requested that the 50-year-old table be replaced, Mr. Williams said. But he had remarked how the previous table was covered in scratches, scuff marks and cracks. Mr. Williams emailed several pictures of the old table, which looks polished and not visibly scarred, during events held by Mr. Carson’s predecessor, Julián Castro.
Hahaha. Carson “didn’t know” the table had been purchased even though his wife had “expressed a strong interest” in buying it and he had demoted the person who stood in the way. Sure. Once a grifter, always a grifter.
KEVIN DRUM
I had a Ben Carson story in my open tabs yesterday but never got around to posting about it. So here it is:
A senior career official in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has alleged that she was demoted and replaced with a Donald Trump appointee after refusing to break the law by funding an expensive redecoration of Ben Carson’s office. Helen Foster said she was told “$5,000 will not even buy a decent chair” after informing her bosses this was the legal price limit for improvements to the HUD secretary’s suite at the department’s Washington headquarters.
But it’s hard to keep up these days. By the time I woke up this morning, there was already more:
Department of Housing and Urban Development officials spent $31,000 on a new dining room set for Secretary Ben Carson’s office in late 2017 — just as the White House circulated its plans to slash HUD’s programs for the homeless, elderly and poor, according to federal procurement records.
….Mr. Carson “didn’t know the table had been purchased,” but does not believe the cost was too steep and does not intend to return it, said Raffi Williams, a HUD spokesman.
….Neither Mr. Carson nor his wife — who expressed a strong interest in sprucing up the drab, wood-paneled, 1960s-era secretary’s suite, according to several current and former department staff members — requested that the 50-year-old table be replaced, Mr. Williams said. But he had remarked how the previous table was covered in scratches, scuff marks and cracks. Mr. Williams emailed several pictures of the old table, which looks polished and not visibly scarred, during events held by Mr. Carson’s predecessor, Julián Castro.
Hahaha. Carson “didn’t know” the table had been purchased even though his wife had “expressed a strong interest” in buying it and he had demoted the person who stood in the way. Sure. Once a grifter, always a grifter.
Whole Lot of F’s
Congress Just Got a Whole Lot of F’s on Their Environmental Report Card
“We’ve seen the parties have gotten further and further apart.”
REBECCA LEBER
Congressional Republicans and Democrats have never been further apart on environmental issues. The top leadership in the GOP is comprised entirely of climate change deniers, while Democrats have aligned in opposition to President Trump’s agenda. But a report released today by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) calibrates the distance between the two parties with some hard numbers.
The group has been calculating the performance by members of Congress for nearly 50 years by evaluating how each member votes on environmental legislation. This year, the Republican-controlled Congress had plenty of opportunities to show where they stand. LCV counted a total of 35 House votes and 19 Senate votes to overturn climate regulations, open up drilling on public lands, undermine the Endangered Species Act, and confirm a slew of Trump-appointed judicial and cabinet nominations.
“We’ve seen the parties have gotten further and further apart,” says Tiernan Sittenfeld, LCV’s senior vice president for government affairs, “and more Democrats have recognized that good climate politics is good politics.”
All those votes resulted in single-digit failing scores for most Republicans. The Senate average of 1 percent is a historic low, while House Republicans pulled an average of 5 percent. Meanwhile Democrats in the House and Senate earned 94 percent and 93 percent, respectively.
Those are just party averages, and it’s worth noting just how many legislators are at the extremes, which tilts the scores: More than 100 Democrats, now leading the opposition to Trump’s deregulatory agenda, earned perfect scores, while the Republican average was dragged down by the 170 lawmakers across the two chambers who earned a zero.
But what about the Climate Solutions Caucus in the House, the growing bipartisan caucus whose 70 members (with 68 voting members) are equally divided between Republicans and Democrats? For some moderate conservatives and climate activists, the caucus represents the best hope in Congress for ever advancing climate legislation as long as Republicans hold power. One might expect the caucus Republicans to earn higher scores than their party overall, and technically they did score a bit better than their House peers. But their average 16 percent score is still a failing grade.
In fact, more than half of the Republicans on the caucus earned less than 10 percent (Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who once proposed a bill to abolish the EPA, is among them with 6 percent). Rep. Carlos Curbelo is co-chair of the caucus and represents the Miami area. He is generally considered a leader on climate change, but his score was 23 percent. One caveat is that many representatives from Florida missed a number of votes, due to the time they spent in their districts after Hurricane Irma—those missed votes may have affected their scores.
As Megan Jula and I reported:
[The Climate Solutions Caucus’s] critics charge the caucus has expanded its size at the expense of its credibility, providing Republicans who have been actively hostile to government programs a low-stakes opportunity to “greenwash” their climate credentials without backing meaningful action—just in time for midterm elections. In fact, many members may be vulnerable in the 2018 cycle; 24 of the 35 Republican members’ districts will be competitive races, according to an analysis of The Cook Political Report. Republicans in these races could benefit from distancing themselves from Trump’s climate change denial.
The exception is Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), who earned the highest of any Republican with 71 percent—a solid C-minus.
“It’s unfortunately that 71 percent is now such an outlier,” Sittenfeld notes, “because it used to be that a number of Republicans voted pro environment.”
Here’s LCV’s full report with a breakdown for individual members of Congress.
“We’ve seen the parties have gotten further and further apart.”
REBECCA LEBER
Congressional Republicans and Democrats have never been further apart on environmental issues. The top leadership in the GOP is comprised entirely of climate change deniers, while Democrats have aligned in opposition to President Trump’s agenda. But a report released today by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) calibrates the distance between the two parties with some hard numbers.
The group has been calculating the performance by members of Congress for nearly 50 years by evaluating how each member votes on environmental legislation. This year, the Republican-controlled Congress had plenty of opportunities to show where they stand. LCV counted a total of 35 House votes and 19 Senate votes to overturn climate regulations, open up drilling on public lands, undermine the Endangered Species Act, and confirm a slew of Trump-appointed judicial and cabinet nominations.
“We’ve seen the parties have gotten further and further apart,” says Tiernan Sittenfeld, LCV’s senior vice president for government affairs, “and more Democrats have recognized that good climate politics is good politics.”
All those votes resulted in single-digit failing scores for most Republicans. The Senate average of 1 percent is a historic low, while House Republicans pulled an average of 5 percent. Meanwhile Democrats in the House and Senate earned 94 percent and 93 percent, respectively.
Those are just party averages, and it’s worth noting just how many legislators are at the extremes, which tilts the scores: More than 100 Democrats, now leading the opposition to Trump’s deregulatory agenda, earned perfect scores, while the Republican average was dragged down by the 170 lawmakers across the two chambers who earned a zero.
But what about the Climate Solutions Caucus in the House, the growing bipartisan caucus whose 70 members (with 68 voting members) are equally divided between Republicans and Democrats? For some moderate conservatives and climate activists, the caucus represents the best hope in Congress for ever advancing climate legislation as long as Republicans hold power. One might expect the caucus Republicans to earn higher scores than their party overall, and technically they did score a bit better than their House peers. But their average 16 percent score is still a failing grade.
In fact, more than half of the Republicans on the caucus earned less than 10 percent (Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who once proposed a bill to abolish the EPA, is among them with 6 percent). Rep. Carlos Curbelo is co-chair of the caucus and represents the Miami area. He is generally considered a leader on climate change, but his score was 23 percent. One caveat is that many representatives from Florida missed a number of votes, due to the time they spent in their districts after Hurricane Irma—those missed votes may have affected their scores.
As Megan Jula and I reported:
[The Climate Solutions Caucus’s] critics charge the caucus has expanded its size at the expense of its credibility, providing Republicans who have been actively hostile to government programs a low-stakes opportunity to “greenwash” their climate credentials without backing meaningful action—just in time for midterm elections. In fact, many members may be vulnerable in the 2018 cycle; 24 of the 35 Republican members’ districts will be competitive races, according to an analysis of The Cook Political Report. Republicans in these races could benefit from distancing themselves from Trump’s climate change denial.
The exception is Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), who earned the highest of any Republican with 71 percent—a solid C-minus.
“It’s unfortunately that 71 percent is now such an outlier,” Sittenfeld notes, “because it used to be that a number of Republicans voted pro environment.”
Here’s LCV’s full report with a breakdown for individual members of Congress.
That’s a Terrible Idea....
Donald Trump Wants to Execute Drug Dealers. Let’s Talk About All the Reasons Why That’s a Terrible Idea.
Start with the Constitution.
NATHALIE BAPTISTE
Donald Trump thinks drug dealers are just as “bad” as serial killers and should receive the death penalty for their crimes. According to Axios, the president has reportedly been telling those close to him that the only way to teach children to stay off drugs and to put an end to the opioid epidemic is to take the deterrence approach and execute high-level drug traffickers.
The president has always been a proponent of the death penalty. He once took out full-page advertisements in New York papers calling for the execution of five black and Latino teenagers who were accused of raping a woman in New York’s Central Park. Even though the teenagers were exonerated by DNA evidence in 2002, as late as 2016, Trump still insisted that they were guilty. But no matter how much he supports the death penalty, federal law experts explain that Trump’s desire to execute drug traffickers would face some very serious challenges.
His plan seems to have been inspired by Singapore’s “Misuse of Drugs Act,” which calls for the death penalty for drug traffickers. In the past, he’s also praised Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte for his handling of drug dealers, despite the fact that the international community has accused the Filipino strongman of extrajudicial killings of those suspected of trafficking drugs. But such draconian approaches would not quite work in the US.
Today, the federal government and the states only dole out the harshest punishment for murder if certain criteria are met. The first big obstacle Trump would run into while trying to implement the death penalty for drug traffickers is contained in a document cherished by conservatives: The Constitution. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishments. “The constitutional problems are insurmountable,” Monica Foster, the chief federal defender at the Indiana Federal Community Defender, says about Trump’s idea.
Most capital punishments are carried out on the state level, and federal executions have become exceedingly rare. Today, 63 people are awaiting death in federal prisons, compared with thousands who are on death row in the states. Between 1988, when the federal death penalty was reinstated, and 2016, only three federal inmates were put to death. The last to die was Louis Jones Jr. who was executed in 2003 for the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and murder of Tracie McBride. The case was considered a federal crime because it was committed on a US Air Force base.
Constitutional issues aside, the havoc such a law would wreak on the federal court system “would be monumental,” Foster says. She estimates that a quarter of the cases that she takes on in Indiana are drug cases, which require less work than death penalty cases. But should drug dealers face the death penalty, she says, “the court systems would be absolutely clogged.” Capital punishment appeals, which lawyers sometimes spend decades on, would also have a ripple effect on the rest of the court system. “If you have just one capital case, everything slows down,” Foster explains. Depending on what constitutes high-level drug trafficking, this proposed law “would have the possibility of bringing the federal courts to a halt.”
Add to these problems the fact that sentencing an inmate to death and carrying out the execution is expensive. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the average trial in a federal death penalty case costs more than $600,000. Then the decades-long appeals process would also add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the final bill.
But even if the Trump administration altered the Constitution and found the money and resources to put drug dealers to death, it would have a hard time finding lethal injection drugs to complete the process. In 2011, Hospira, the only American manufacturer of lethal injection drugs announced it would no longer produce sodium thiopental, a key ingredient in lethal cocktail drugs. Other companies began announcing that they would no longer sell their products to prisons that intended to use them for executions, leading to a massive shortages and forcing some states to pass laws that allow them to shroud the whole execution process in secrecy.
Most Americans do not share Trump’s enthusiasm for the death penalty. The high point for its popularity was in the 1990s and early 2000s. In May 2001, when the federal government executed Timothy McVeigh for the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing of a federal building that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more, 81 percent of Americans agreed with the punishment. But support for the death penalty has been on the decline over the last decade. A 2015 poll found that only 53 percent of Americans believed Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man convicted of planting bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured nearly 300 more, should be executed by the federal government.
No matter how odious drug traffickers may be, they are not comparable to individuals like McVeigh, Tsarnaev, and Dylann Roof—the last person sentenced to death by the federal government for the racially-motivated murders of nine black people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. “When Trump thinks of drug dealers, he thinks of Pablo Escobar,” Foster says. “But, your run-of-the-mill respectable drug dealer is usually a guy who deals to support his family—or his habit.”
Start with the Constitution.
NATHALIE BAPTISTE
Donald Trump thinks drug dealers are just as “bad” as serial killers and should receive the death penalty for their crimes. According to Axios, the president has reportedly been telling those close to him that the only way to teach children to stay off drugs and to put an end to the opioid epidemic is to take the deterrence approach and execute high-level drug traffickers.
The president has always been a proponent of the death penalty. He once took out full-page advertisements in New York papers calling for the execution of five black and Latino teenagers who were accused of raping a woman in New York’s Central Park. Even though the teenagers were exonerated by DNA evidence in 2002, as late as 2016, Trump still insisted that they were guilty. But no matter how much he supports the death penalty, federal law experts explain that Trump’s desire to execute drug traffickers would face some very serious challenges.
His plan seems to have been inspired by Singapore’s “Misuse of Drugs Act,” which calls for the death penalty for drug traffickers. In the past, he’s also praised Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte for his handling of drug dealers, despite the fact that the international community has accused the Filipino strongman of extrajudicial killings of those suspected of trafficking drugs. But such draconian approaches would not quite work in the US.
Today, the federal government and the states only dole out the harshest punishment for murder if certain criteria are met. The first big obstacle Trump would run into while trying to implement the death penalty for drug traffickers is contained in a document cherished by conservatives: The Constitution. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishments. “The constitutional problems are insurmountable,” Monica Foster, the chief federal defender at the Indiana Federal Community Defender, says about Trump’s idea.
Most capital punishments are carried out on the state level, and federal executions have become exceedingly rare. Today, 63 people are awaiting death in federal prisons, compared with thousands who are on death row in the states. Between 1988, when the federal death penalty was reinstated, and 2016, only three federal inmates were put to death. The last to die was Louis Jones Jr. who was executed in 2003 for the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and murder of Tracie McBride. The case was considered a federal crime because it was committed on a US Air Force base.
Constitutional issues aside, the havoc such a law would wreak on the federal court system “would be monumental,” Foster says. She estimates that a quarter of the cases that she takes on in Indiana are drug cases, which require less work than death penalty cases. But should drug dealers face the death penalty, she says, “the court systems would be absolutely clogged.” Capital punishment appeals, which lawyers sometimes spend decades on, would also have a ripple effect on the rest of the court system. “If you have just one capital case, everything slows down,” Foster explains. Depending on what constitutes high-level drug trafficking, this proposed law “would have the possibility of bringing the federal courts to a halt.”
Add to these problems the fact that sentencing an inmate to death and carrying out the execution is expensive. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the average trial in a federal death penalty case costs more than $600,000. Then the decades-long appeals process would also add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the final bill.
But even if the Trump administration altered the Constitution and found the money and resources to put drug dealers to death, it would have a hard time finding lethal injection drugs to complete the process. In 2011, Hospira, the only American manufacturer of lethal injection drugs announced it would no longer produce sodium thiopental, a key ingredient in lethal cocktail drugs. Other companies began announcing that they would no longer sell their products to prisons that intended to use them for executions, leading to a massive shortages and forcing some states to pass laws that allow them to shroud the whole execution process in secrecy.
Most Americans do not share Trump’s enthusiasm for the death penalty. The high point for its popularity was in the 1990s and early 2000s. In May 2001, when the federal government executed Timothy McVeigh for the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing of a federal building that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more, 81 percent of Americans agreed with the punishment. But support for the death penalty has been on the decline over the last decade. A 2015 poll found that only 53 percent of Americans believed Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man convicted of planting bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured nearly 300 more, should be executed by the federal government.
No matter how odious drug traffickers may be, they are not comparable to individuals like McVeigh, Tsarnaev, and Dylann Roof—the last person sentenced to death by the federal government for the racially-motivated murders of nine black people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. “When Trump thinks of drug dealers, he thinks of Pablo Escobar,” Foster says. “But, your run-of-the-mill respectable drug dealer is usually a guy who deals to support his family—or his habit.”
Hasn’t Done Enough to Deter Russian Hacking
Trump’s NSA Director Admits US Hasn’t Done Enough to Deter Russian Hacking
“President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that there’s little price to pay.”
AJ VICENS
Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of the National Security Administration and the US Cyber Command, warned the Senate Armed Service Committee on Tuesday that the muted US government response to Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections would fail to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from launching a simliar, future campaign.
In a response to questioning by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rogers said “I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that there’s little price to pay here…and that therefore I can continue this activity.”
The hearing also focused on the NSA and Cyber Command’s operating authorities. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) asked Rogers whether he had received orders to go after the Russian meddling operation where it originated: “Have you been directed to do so given the strategic threat that faces the United States and the significant consequences you recognize already?”
“No I have not,” Rogers responded, adding that based on authority he already has, he has “directed … to begin some specific work,” but wouldn’t elaborate in a public setting. Certain overt actions by Cyber Command, a branch of the US military, could be considered an a act of cyber warfare.
“But essentially, we have not taken on the Russians yet,” Reed pressed. “We’re watching them intrude in our elections, spread misinformation, become more sophisticated, try to achieve strategic objectives that you have recognized, and we’re just, essentially, sitting back and waiting.”
Rogers didn’t totally agree with Reed’s characterization, but, he said, “It’s probably fair to say that we have not opted to engage in some of the same behaviors that we are seeing.”
Under further pointed questioning—Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) asked “What’s the hold up?”—Rogers defended the agency’s inaction pending further instruction. “The challenge for us is that we have this thing called ‘the law’ and legal framework that right now shapes what [the Department of Defense] can and cannot do,” Rogers explained, adding that he’d need a specific policy directive with specific authority to “punish” the Russians, as Nelson put it.
According to Ryan Duff, a cybersecurity expert who used to work at Cyber Command, the agency may not be properly situated to do the work Nelson and Reed seemed to be asking about:
Twit:
It is important to note that such an action from CYBERCOM would be legally considered a military attack against Russia which has massive implications. I would expect any response ordered would come from the CIA under covert action instead of military action by CYBERCOM.
Rogers’ answers to the questions follow similar statements the he and the leaders of other US intelligence agencies made during another Senate inquiry earlier this month. From Mother Jones‘ previous reporting:
“I can’t say I’ve been specifically directed to blunt or actually stop” Russian influence efforts, NSA Director Mike Rogers replied. Rogers added that he considers it his agency’s job to gather intelligence for policymakers rather than act on it.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo, appearing eager to defend Trump, said the president has generally asked the intelligence community to address threats, adding that the CIA takes “all kinds of steps to disrupt what the Russians are trying to do.” But he did not say that Trump has specifically directed the agency to prevent Russian interference.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said he has not been “specifically directed by the president” to combat Russian meddling. Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, similarly said Trump has not urged him to address Russian meddling. Nor has Trump pressed for any interagency effort to combat Russian interference, Coats conceded. “We essentially are relying on the investigations that are underway,” he said.
“President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that there’s little price to pay.”
AJ VICENS
Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of the National Security Administration and the US Cyber Command, warned the Senate Armed Service Committee on Tuesday that the muted US government response to Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections would fail to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from launching a simliar, future campaign.
In a response to questioning by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rogers said “I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that there’s little price to pay here…and that therefore I can continue this activity.”
The hearing also focused on the NSA and Cyber Command’s operating authorities. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) asked Rogers whether he had received orders to go after the Russian meddling operation where it originated: “Have you been directed to do so given the strategic threat that faces the United States and the significant consequences you recognize already?”
“No I have not,” Rogers responded, adding that based on authority he already has, he has “directed … to begin some specific work,” but wouldn’t elaborate in a public setting. Certain overt actions by Cyber Command, a branch of the US military, could be considered an a act of cyber warfare.
“But essentially, we have not taken on the Russians yet,” Reed pressed. “We’re watching them intrude in our elections, spread misinformation, become more sophisticated, try to achieve strategic objectives that you have recognized, and we’re just, essentially, sitting back and waiting.”
Rogers didn’t totally agree with Reed’s characterization, but, he said, “It’s probably fair to say that we have not opted to engage in some of the same behaviors that we are seeing.”
Under further pointed questioning—Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) asked “What’s the hold up?”—Rogers defended the agency’s inaction pending further instruction. “The challenge for us is that we have this thing called ‘the law’ and legal framework that right now shapes what [the Department of Defense] can and cannot do,” Rogers explained, adding that he’d need a specific policy directive with specific authority to “punish” the Russians, as Nelson put it.
According to Ryan Duff, a cybersecurity expert who used to work at Cyber Command, the agency may not be properly situated to do the work Nelson and Reed seemed to be asking about:
Twit:
It is important to note that such an action from CYBERCOM would be legally considered a military attack against Russia which has massive implications. I would expect any response ordered would come from the CIA under covert action instead of military action by CYBERCOM.
Rogers’ answers to the questions follow similar statements the he and the leaders of other US intelligence agencies made during another Senate inquiry earlier this month. From Mother Jones‘ previous reporting:
“I can’t say I’ve been specifically directed to blunt or actually stop” Russian influence efforts, NSA Director Mike Rogers replied. Rogers added that he considers it his agency’s job to gather intelligence for policymakers rather than act on it.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo, appearing eager to defend Trump, said the president has generally asked the intelligence community to address threats, adding that the CIA takes “all kinds of steps to disrupt what the Russians are trying to do.” But he did not say that Trump has specifically directed the agency to prevent Russian interference.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said he has not been “specifically directed by the president” to combat Russian meddling. Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, similarly said Trump has not urged him to address Russian meddling. Nor has Trump pressed for any interagency effort to combat Russian interference, Coats conceded. “We essentially are relying on the investigations that are underway,” he said.
Simply shocking....
Scientists Are Freaking Out About “Crazy” Temperatures in the Arctic
The polar vortex is not what it used to be—and that’s really bad.
JONATHAN WATTS
An alarming heatwave in the sunless winter Arctic is causing blizzards in Europe and forcing scientists to reconsider even their most pessimistic forecasts of climate change.
Although it could yet prove to be a freak event, the primary concern is that global warming is eroding the polar vortex, the powerful winds that once insulated the frozen north.
The north pole gets no sunlight until March, but an influx of warm air has pushed temperatures in Siberia up by as much as 35C above historical averages this month. Greenland has already experienced 61 hours above freezing in 2018—more than three times as any previous year.
Seasoned observers have described what is happening as “crazy,” “weird,” and “simply shocking”.
“This is an anomaly among anomalies. It is far enough outside the historical range that it is worrying—it is a suggestion that there are further surprises in store as we continue to poke the angry beast that is our climate,” said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “The Arctic has always been regarded as a bellwether because of the vicious circle that amplify human-caused warming in that particular region. And it is sending out a clear warning.”
Although most of the media headlines in recent days have focused on Europe’s unusually cold weather in a jolly tone, the concern is that this is not so much a reassuring return to winters as normal, but rather a displacement of what ought to be happening farther north.
At the world’s most northerly land weather station—Cape Morris Jesup at the northern tip of Greenland—recent temperatures have been, at times, warmer than London and Zurich, which are thousands of miles to the south. Although the recent peak of 6.1C on Sunday was not quite a record, but on the previous two occasions (2011 and 2017) the highs lasted just a few hours before returning closer to the historical average. Last week there were 10 days above freezing for at least part of the day at this weather station, just 440 miles from the north pole.
“Spikes in temperature are part of the normal weather patterns—what has been unusual about this event is that it has persisted for so long and that it has been so warm,” said Ruth Mottram of the Danish Meteorological Institute. “Going back to the late 1950s at least we have never seen such high temperatures in the high Arctic.”
The cause and significance of this sharp uptick are now under scrutiny. Temperatures often fluctuate in the Arctic due to the strength or weakness of the polar vortex, the circle of winds—including the jetstream—that help to deflect warmer air masses and keep the region cool. As this natural force field fluctuates, there have been many previous temperature spikes, which make historical charts of Arctic winter weather resemble an electrocardiogram.
But the heat peaks are becoming more frequent and lasting longer—never more so than this year. “In 50 years of Arctic reconstructions, the current warming event is both the most intense and one of the longest-lived warming events ever observed during winter,” said Robert Rohde, lead scientist of Berkeley Earth, a non-profit organization dedicated to climate science.
The question now is whether this signals a weakening or collapse of the polar vortex, the circle of strong winds that keep the Arctic cold by deflecting other air masses. The vortex depends on the temperature difference between the Arctic and mid-latitudes, but that gap is shrinking because the pole is warming faster than anywhere on Earth. While average temperatures have increased by about 1C, the warming at the pole—closer to 3C—is melting the ice mass. According to NASA, Arctic sea ice is now declining at a rate of 13.2% per decade, leaving more open water and higher temperatures.
Some scientists speak of a hypothesis known as “warm Arctic, cold continents” as the polar vortex becomes less stable—sucking in more warm air and expelling more cold fronts, such as those currently being experienced in the UK and northern Europe. Rohde notes that this theory remains controversial and is not evident in all climate models, but this year’s temperature patterns have been consistent with that forecast.
Longer term, Rohde expects more variation. “As we rapidly warm the Arctic, we can expect that future years will bring us even more examples of unprecedented weather.”
Jesper Theilgaard, a meteorologist with 40 years’ experience and founder of website Climate Dissemination, said the recent trends are outside previous warming events. “No doubt these warming events bring trouble to the people and the nature. Shifting rain and snow—melt and frost make the surface icy and therefore difficult for animals to find anything to eat. Living conditions in such shifting weather types are very difficult.”
Others caution that it is premature to see this as a major shift away from forecasts. “The current excursions of 20C or more above average experienced in the Arctic are almost certainly mostly due to natural variability,” said Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth. “While they have been boosted by the underlying warming trend, we don’t have any strong evidence that the factors driving short-term Arctic variability will increase in a warming world. If anything, climate models suggest the opposite is true, that high-latitude winters will be slightly less variable as the world warms.”
Although it is too soon to know whether overall projections for Arctic warming should be changed, the recent temperatures add to uncertainty and raises the possibility of knock-on effects accelerating climate change.
“This is too short-term an excursion to say whether or not it changes the overall projections for Arctic warming,” says Mann. “But it suggests that we may be underestimating the tendency for short-term extreme warming events in the Arctic. And those initial warming events can trigger even greater warming because of the ‘feedback loops’ associated with the melting of ice and the potential release of methane (a very strong greenhouse gas).”
The polar vortex is not what it used to be—and that’s really bad.
JONATHAN WATTS
An alarming heatwave in the sunless winter Arctic is causing blizzards in Europe and forcing scientists to reconsider even their most pessimistic forecasts of climate change.
Although it could yet prove to be a freak event, the primary concern is that global warming is eroding the polar vortex, the powerful winds that once insulated the frozen north.
The north pole gets no sunlight until March, but an influx of warm air has pushed temperatures in Siberia up by as much as 35C above historical averages this month. Greenland has already experienced 61 hours above freezing in 2018—more than three times as any previous year.
Seasoned observers have described what is happening as “crazy,” “weird,” and “simply shocking”.
“This is an anomaly among anomalies. It is far enough outside the historical range that it is worrying—it is a suggestion that there are further surprises in store as we continue to poke the angry beast that is our climate,” said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “The Arctic has always been regarded as a bellwether because of the vicious circle that amplify human-caused warming in that particular region. And it is sending out a clear warning.”
Although most of the media headlines in recent days have focused on Europe’s unusually cold weather in a jolly tone, the concern is that this is not so much a reassuring return to winters as normal, but rather a displacement of what ought to be happening farther north.
At the world’s most northerly land weather station—Cape Morris Jesup at the northern tip of Greenland—recent temperatures have been, at times, warmer than London and Zurich, which are thousands of miles to the south. Although the recent peak of 6.1C on Sunday was not quite a record, but on the previous two occasions (2011 and 2017) the highs lasted just a few hours before returning closer to the historical average. Last week there were 10 days above freezing for at least part of the day at this weather station, just 440 miles from the north pole.
“Spikes in temperature are part of the normal weather patterns—what has been unusual about this event is that it has persisted for so long and that it has been so warm,” said Ruth Mottram of the Danish Meteorological Institute. “Going back to the late 1950s at least we have never seen such high temperatures in the high Arctic.”
The cause and significance of this sharp uptick are now under scrutiny. Temperatures often fluctuate in the Arctic due to the strength or weakness of the polar vortex, the circle of winds—including the jetstream—that help to deflect warmer air masses and keep the region cool. As this natural force field fluctuates, there have been many previous temperature spikes, which make historical charts of Arctic winter weather resemble an electrocardiogram.
But the heat peaks are becoming more frequent and lasting longer—never more so than this year. “In 50 years of Arctic reconstructions, the current warming event is both the most intense and one of the longest-lived warming events ever observed during winter,” said Robert Rohde, lead scientist of Berkeley Earth, a non-profit organization dedicated to climate science.
The question now is whether this signals a weakening or collapse of the polar vortex, the circle of strong winds that keep the Arctic cold by deflecting other air masses. The vortex depends on the temperature difference between the Arctic and mid-latitudes, but that gap is shrinking because the pole is warming faster than anywhere on Earth. While average temperatures have increased by about 1C, the warming at the pole—closer to 3C—is melting the ice mass. According to NASA, Arctic sea ice is now declining at a rate of 13.2% per decade, leaving more open water and higher temperatures.
Some scientists speak of a hypothesis known as “warm Arctic, cold continents” as the polar vortex becomes less stable—sucking in more warm air and expelling more cold fronts, such as those currently being experienced in the UK and northern Europe. Rohde notes that this theory remains controversial and is not evident in all climate models, but this year’s temperature patterns have been consistent with that forecast.
Longer term, Rohde expects more variation. “As we rapidly warm the Arctic, we can expect that future years will bring us even more examples of unprecedented weather.”
Jesper Theilgaard, a meteorologist with 40 years’ experience and founder of website Climate Dissemination, said the recent trends are outside previous warming events. “No doubt these warming events bring trouble to the people and the nature. Shifting rain and snow—melt and frost make the surface icy and therefore difficult for animals to find anything to eat. Living conditions in such shifting weather types are very difficult.”
Others caution that it is premature to see this as a major shift away from forecasts. “The current excursions of 20C or more above average experienced in the Arctic are almost certainly mostly due to natural variability,” said Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth. “While they have been boosted by the underlying warming trend, we don’t have any strong evidence that the factors driving short-term Arctic variability will increase in a warming world. If anything, climate models suggest the opposite is true, that high-latitude winters will be slightly less variable as the world warms.”
Although it is too soon to know whether overall projections for Arctic warming should be changed, the recent temperatures add to uncertainty and raises the possibility of knock-on effects accelerating climate change.
“This is too short-term an excursion to say whether or not it changes the overall projections for Arctic warming,” says Mann. “But it suggests that we may be underestimating the tendency for short-term extreme warming events in the Arctic. And those initial warming events can trigger even greater warming because of the ‘feedback loops’ associated with the melting of ice and the potential release of methane (a very strong greenhouse gas).”
Worldwide Workers’ Movement
Millions of People Are Tired of Getting Screwed. This Is What a Worldwide Workers’ Movement Looks Like.
A conversation about how poverty wages and unsafe conditions have led many to unite.
MEGAN JULA
The problems workers face in the twenty-first century are global. Secure jobs are vanishing, income inequality is pervasive, and wage theft goes unchecked. The reaction? “A new global labor movement is awakening,” writes Annelise Orleck, a Dartmouth College history professor, the author of five books on U.S. women’s history, politics, immigration, activism, and most recently of “We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now”: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages.
Orleck interviewed more than 140 small farmers, fast-food servers, retail workers, hotel housekeepers, home-healthcare aides, airport workers, adjunct professors, and other laborers from around the world organizing for respect and a living wage. Often, the injustices they faced in Bangladesh, or South Africa, or the Philippines, or the United States, or Mexico were strikingly similar. Orleck believes their stories of struggle and triumph help catalyze a growing movement among low-wage workers to unionize. “The global uprisings chronicled in this book, and the broad coalitions they have generated,” she writes, “have chipped and cracked the gospel of free trade.”
Mother Jones spoke with Orleck about the evolution of poverty wages, the growing global movement of workers fighting for fair wages, and why we are all fast-food workers now.
Mother Jones: One overarching theme of your book is how similar the experiences of low-wage workers are all over over the world. Did the extent of this global solidarity surprise you?
Annelise Orleck: One of my first interviews was with Bleu Rainer, a fast-food worker from Tampa. He’s now on the national board of Fight for $15. Bleu talked about one of the first times that he met workers from abroad. In the summer of 2015, after doing interviews with workers for Arcos Durados (Golden Arches)—Brazil’s McDonald’s affiliate and the second largest employer in the country—the Brazil Senate’s Human Right Commission decided that they wanted to see if the kinds of conditions and abuses that were being described to them by the workers were the same elsewhere in the world.
So they brought in workers from more than 20 countries and asked about working conditions and how they had deteriorated. They asked legislators from other countries to come in and talk about whether wages had been driven down in other industries. They asked low-wage workers in other industries to comment on the rising routinization and mechanization of work, and how these companies are turning workers into the new assembly line.
The book opens with a story that Bleu told me of being there and putting out his arm next to a worker from Japan. They saw that they had burns in exactly the same places—I call them the brands of wage slavery. Because this work is so routinized, they have to turn around the orders in 90 seconds. They have work stations where they’re constantly reaching over these vats of boiling oil. They each had situations where they weren’t paid what they were owed and had to drop out of school. And so, I think what’s happened is they realized that global corporations had to create global solidarity.
MJ: The book’s title is a quote from Keegan Shepard, a graduate student and activist with the Fight for $15 movement in Tampa Bay, Florida. Why are we all fast-food workers now?
AO: Keegan Shepard talked about the fact that, I think, 75 percent of college professors are adjuncts—not on full-time tenure track jobs. And many do not even have any kind of long term contract. They teach course to course and year to year. And he said, “They try to tell us that because of our advanced degrees we’re something special. And if we just wait, we’ll get the full-time job, and we’ll get job security, and we’ll get paid for all the work we do outside the classroom for advising and grading and preparing.” He said that’s a lie meant to keep us quiet because the truth is, “We’re all fast-food workers now.”
A quarter of these adjuncts are actually on some kind of public assistance to make ends meet. Whether it’s Medicaid, or food stamps, or children’s health insurance programs. And so, they figured out when they paid themselves by the hour for all the work they did, they made about $8.05 an hour, which was the same as the fast-food workers were making. They said they have a lot to learn from the fast-food workers.
I realized this is the new working class solidarity, and it embraces everyone. So it’s not an accident that the Fight for $15 movement, which started with fast-food workers, has come to embrace airport workers, school crossing guards, retail workers like the Walmart workers, and adjunct professors, right? Because as Keegan Shepard says, we’re all fast-food workers now.
MJ: Many of the workers you spoke with say this is not just a fight for fair wages, but a fight for respect. Could you talk about what that means?
AO: It’s not accidental that the fast-food workers movement in Manila calls itself RESPECT. The Walmart organization calls themselves OUR Walmart, Organization United for Respect at Walmart. The slogan for the berry pickers in Baja, California and up the west coast who went on strike in 2013, ’14, and ’15, was Somos trabajadores no esclavos. “We’re workers not slaves.” For all of them there’s a desire to have recognition of their work and also protection from abuse.
I interviewed Evelin Cruz at Walmart, and she said that she was moved to action by just witnessing again and again the cruelty of managers to workers on the floor. The way they would break them, abuse them, and try to embarrass them in front of customers. They engaged in something called “predatory hiring,” where they would hire people who couldn’t afford to fight back. Sister Nice, a fast-food worker organizer in Manila, talked about how in that kind of environment customers absorbed the message that you should be abusive towards these workers. When customers would hear the way managers spoke to workers, they would start addressing them in the same way. Denise Barlage at Walmart said, “We don’t need to be rich, the first step is we need to be treated like human beings.”
MJ: The fight for fair wages overlaps with many other social justice issues, including women’s rights. In what ways are these two struggles intertwined?
AO: The majority of low-wage workers worldwide are women. The average fast-food worker in the US is a 29-year-old mom with two kids. Women’s and children’s issues have really motivated this fight around the world. Part of it is an uprising against sexual assault and violence. Hotel workers and women workers in the fields have been particularly subject to sexual assault and sexual violence. The Chicago hotel workers’ union has had hands-off, pants-on campaigns where they’re calling for zero tolerance from hotel management for hotel guests, or for hotel supervisors who sexually harass the hotel workers. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is coming to New York right now for a hunger strike and a boycott of Wendy’s to get Wendy’s to sign on to only buying tomatoes from growers who have zero tolerance for sexual assault and sexual violence.
Everywhere I went people talked about parity in wages because women workers are still paid less. They talked about an end to pregnancy discrimination and accommodations for pregnant workers in the workplace. This is from Walmart, where there’s a group called Respect the Bump. Girshriela Green is an African-American mother of seven from LA, and one of the founders of Respect the Bump. They did win workplace accommodations for pregnant workers in Walmart.
Remember, Walmart and McDonald’s are the first and second largest private employers in the world. The only ones larger are the U.S. and Chinese militaries. Any victory from Walmart or McDonald’s ripples throughout the entire world in terms of workplace safety and accommodation. So pregnancy discrimination and accommodation for pregnant workers has been huge.
MJ: Why is this global uprising “not your grandmother’s revolution”?
AO: That was a line from Lei Catamin, a young musical theater student turned labor organizer who I interviewed in Quezon City, a suburb of Manila. He had just graduated from college where he studied musical theater and wanted to try to put his choreography to something better. The emerging movement of fast-food workers was being organized by this amazing young woman, Joanna Bernice Coronacion, who goes by Sister Nice. The Philippines love American music—American 70s R&B is blasting everywhere in Manila. And so they created the RESPECT Fast Food Workers Alliance. Their theme was the 1969 Aretha Franklin mega hit, “Respect.” Lei choreographed movements for flash mobs singing these songs, blocking traffic in Manila, to demand a living wage, and decent working conditions.
Flash mobs have become a major form of protest in many parts of the world, where there is singing and dancing and use of popular culture. Obviously, cell phones are huge. As Kalpona Akter, the leader of Bangladesh garment workers told me, even very poor workers have cellphones. Smartphones have also enabled workers to communicate with others around the world.
The final piece that’s new is this recognition that the boss isn’t necessarily the dairy farmer on the farm you work, or even the guy who owns the garment shop. The boss is the big global corporation that buys the product. And these movements are beginning to target those global corporations.
MJ: Do you believe low-wage workers around the globe are making strides in the fight for fair wages?
AO: I think they’re making remarkable strides, and I don’t want to sound like a Pollyanna. It’s one of the reasons early in the book, I write about the many who’ve been martyred in the struggle. Not to mention the thousands who’ve been killed in workplace accidents. I think the murder of Berta Caceres in Honduras made visible something that’s been happening all over the “developing world,” which is that as these international corporations have come in to do dam projects, palm oil plantations, or are eating up rainforests, indigenous activists have paid with their lives. So this a battle that people know that they might have to die for.
One of the things that sparked the book was something Kalpona Akter said when she came to New York for a commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. She said in Bangladesh, it’s not 2011 it’s 1911. I realized that’s true all over the world. Workers have slipped back a hundred years.
Could we end poverty in our time? To paraphrase President Lyndon Johnson, no. Are these dark times? Absolutely. Have there been real successes? Yes. They have been won by these workers, most of them women, many of them young people. And they inspire me. And they give me hope in dark times, they do.
A conversation about how poverty wages and unsafe conditions have led many to unite.
MEGAN JULA
The problems workers face in the twenty-first century are global. Secure jobs are vanishing, income inequality is pervasive, and wage theft goes unchecked. The reaction? “A new global labor movement is awakening,” writes Annelise Orleck, a Dartmouth College history professor, the author of five books on U.S. women’s history, politics, immigration, activism, and most recently of “We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now”: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages.
Orleck interviewed more than 140 small farmers, fast-food servers, retail workers, hotel housekeepers, home-healthcare aides, airport workers, adjunct professors, and other laborers from around the world organizing for respect and a living wage. Often, the injustices they faced in Bangladesh, or South Africa, or the Philippines, or the United States, or Mexico were strikingly similar. Orleck believes their stories of struggle and triumph help catalyze a growing movement among low-wage workers to unionize. “The global uprisings chronicled in this book, and the broad coalitions they have generated,” she writes, “have chipped and cracked the gospel of free trade.”
Mother Jones spoke with Orleck about the evolution of poverty wages, the growing global movement of workers fighting for fair wages, and why we are all fast-food workers now.
Mother Jones: One overarching theme of your book is how similar the experiences of low-wage workers are all over over the world. Did the extent of this global solidarity surprise you?
Annelise Orleck: One of my first interviews was with Bleu Rainer, a fast-food worker from Tampa. He’s now on the national board of Fight for $15. Bleu talked about one of the first times that he met workers from abroad. In the summer of 2015, after doing interviews with workers for Arcos Durados (Golden Arches)—Brazil’s McDonald’s affiliate and the second largest employer in the country—the Brazil Senate’s Human Right Commission decided that they wanted to see if the kinds of conditions and abuses that were being described to them by the workers were the same elsewhere in the world.
So they brought in workers from more than 20 countries and asked about working conditions and how they had deteriorated. They asked legislators from other countries to come in and talk about whether wages had been driven down in other industries. They asked low-wage workers in other industries to comment on the rising routinization and mechanization of work, and how these companies are turning workers into the new assembly line.
The book opens with a story that Bleu told me of being there and putting out his arm next to a worker from Japan. They saw that they had burns in exactly the same places—I call them the brands of wage slavery. Because this work is so routinized, they have to turn around the orders in 90 seconds. They have work stations where they’re constantly reaching over these vats of boiling oil. They each had situations where they weren’t paid what they were owed and had to drop out of school. And so, I think what’s happened is they realized that global corporations had to create global solidarity.
MJ: The book’s title is a quote from Keegan Shepard, a graduate student and activist with the Fight for $15 movement in Tampa Bay, Florida. Why are we all fast-food workers now?
AO: Keegan Shepard talked about the fact that, I think, 75 percent of college professors are adjuncts—not on full-time tenure track jobs. And many do not even have any kind of long term contract. They teach course to course and year to year. And he said, “They try to tell us that because of our advanced degrees we’re something special. And if we just wait, we’ll get the full-time job, and we’ll get job security, and we’ll get paid for all the work we do outside the classroom for advising and grading and preparing.” He said that’s a lie meant to keep us quiet because the truth is, “We’re all fast-food workers now.”
A quarter of these adjuncts are actually on some kind of public assistance to make ends meet. Whether it’s Medicaid, or food stamps, or children’s health insurance programs. And so, they figured out when they paid themselves by the hour for all the work they did, they made about $8.05 an hour, which was the same as the fast-food workers were making. They said they have a lot to learn from the fast-food workers.
I realized this is the new working class solidarity, and it embraces everyone. So it’s not an accident that the Fight for $15 movement, which started with fast-food workers, has come to embrace airport workers, school crossing guards, retail workers like the Walmart workers, and adjunct professors, right? Because as Keegan Shepard says, we’re all fast-food workers now.
MJ: Many of the workers you spoke with say this is not just a fight for fair wages, but a fight for respect. Could you talk about what that means?
AO: It’s not accidental that the fast-food workers movement in Manila calls itself RESPECT. The Walmart organization calls themselves OUR Walmart, Organization United for Respect at Walmart. The slogan for the berry pickers in Baja, California and up the west coast who went on strike in 2013, ’14, and ’15, was Somos trabajadores no esclavos. “We’re workers not slaves.” For all of them there’s a desire to have recognition of their work and also protection from abuse.
I interviewed Evelin Cruz at Walmart, and she said that she was moved to action by just witnessing again and again the cruelty of managers to workers on the floor. The way they would break them, abuse them, and try to embarrass them in front of customers. They engaged in something called “predatory hiring,” where they would hire people who couldn’t afford to fight back. Sister Nice, a fast-food worker organizer in Manila, talked about how in that kind of environment customers absorbed the message that you should be abusive towards these workers. When customers would hear the way managers spoke to workers, they would start addressing them in the same way. Denise Barlage at Walmart said, “We don’t need to be rich, the first step is we need to be treated like human beings.”
MJ: The fight for fair wages overlaps with many other social justice issues, including women’s rights. In what ways are these two struggles intertwined?
AO: The majority of low-wage workers worldwide are women. The average fast-food worker in the US is a 29-year-old mom with two kids. Women’s and children’s issues have really motivated this fight around the world. Part of it is an uprising against sexual assault and violence. Hotel workers and women workers in the fields have been particularly subject to sexual assault and sexual violence. The Chicago hotel workers’ union has had hands-off, pants-on campaigns where they’re calling for zero tolerance from hotel management for hotel guests, or for hotel supervisors who sexually harass the hotel workers. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is coming to New York right now for a hunger strike and a boycott of Wendy’s to get Wendy’s to sign on to only buying tomatoes from growers who have zero tolerance for sexual assault and sexual violence.
Everywhere I went people talked about parity in wages because women workers are still paid less. They talked about an end to pregnancy discrimination and accommodations for pregnant workers in the workplace. This is from Walmart, where there’s a group called Respect the Bump. Girshriela Green is an African-American mother of seven from LA, and one of the founders of Respect the Bump. They did win workplace accommodations for pregnant workers in Walmart.
Remember, Walmart and McDonald’s are the first and second largest private employers in the world. The only ones larger are the U.S. and Chinese militaries. Any victory from Walmart or McDonald’s ripples throughout the entire world in terms of workplace safety and accommodation. So pregnancy discrimination and accommodation for pregnant workers has been huge.
MJ: Why is this global uprising “not your grandmother’s revolution”?
AO: That was a line from Lei Catamin, a young musical theater student turned labor organizer who I interviewed in Quezon City, a suburb of Manila. He had just graduated from college where he studied musical theater and wanted to try to put his choreography to something better. The emerging movement of fast-food workers was being organized by this amazing young woman, Joanna Bernice Coronacion, who goes by Sister Nice. The Philippines love American music—American 70s R&B is blasting everywhere in Manila. And so they created the RESPECT Fast Food Workers Alliance. Their theme was the 1969 Aretha Franklin mega hit, “Respect.” Lei choreographed movements for flash mobs singing these songs, blocking traffic in Manila, to demand a living wage, and decent working conditions.
Flash mobs have become a major form of protest in many parts of the world, where there is singing and dancing and use of popular culture. Obviously, cell phones are huge. As Kalpona Akter, the leader of Bangladesh garment workers told me, even very poor workers have cellphones. Smartphones have also enabled workers to communicate with others around the world.
The final piece that’s new is this recognition that the boss isn’t necessarily the dairy farmer on the farm you work, or even the guy who owns the garment shop. The boss is the big global corporation that buys the product. And these movements are beginning to target those global corporations.
MJ: Do you believe low-wage workers around the globe are making strides in the fight for fair wages?
AO: I think they’re making remarkable strides, and I don’t want to sound like a Pollyanna. It’s one of the reasons early in the book, I write about the many who’ve been martyred in the struggle. Not to mention the thousands who’ve been killed in workplace accidents. I think the murder of Berta Caceres in Honduras made visible something that’s been happening all over the “developing world,” which is that as these international corporations have come in to do dam projects, palm oil plantations, or are eating up rainforests, indigenous activists have paid with their lives. So this a battle that people know that they might have to die for.
One of the things that sparked the book was something Kalpona Akter said when she came to New York for a commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. She said in Bangladesh, it’s not 2011 it’s 1911. I realized that’s true all over the world. Workers have slipped back a hundred years.
Could we end poverty in our time? To paraphrase President Lyndon Johnson, no. Are these dark times? Absolutely. Have there been real successes? Yes. They have been won by these workers, most of them women, many of them young people. And they inspire me. And they give me hope in dark times, they do.
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