Motto

The best distillation of the Trump Doctrine I heard, though, came from a senior White House official with direct access to the president and his thinking.  ... “The Trump Doctrine is ‘We’re America, Bitch.’ That’s the Trump Doctrine.”

-- Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic

"Fuck you, bitch, make me a sandwich" is the unofficial motto that rides sidecar to "Make America Great Again."

- Amanda Marcotte, Troll Nation

This week's featured posts are "The corporate tax cut will never trickle down." and "Is Trumpism a new religion?"

This week everybody was talking about separating immigrant families

Any discussion of this issue has to fight through the Trump administration's disinformation campaign, which simultaneously brags about what it's doing, denies that it's doing it, justifies it by quoting the Bible, and blames Democrats for it.

Vox and The New York Times do a good job summarizing what's going on.

Between October 1, 2017 and May 31, 2018, at least 2,700 children have been split from their parents. 1,995 of them were separated over the last six weeks of that window — April 18 to May 31 — indicating that at present, an average of 45 children are being taken from their parents each day.

The facts are just complex enough to allow Trump's fans to fool themselves about the level of villainy being perpetrated.

• When people are caught crossing the border without authorization, they have the right to claim that they are seeking asylum to avoid persecution in their home country. If they do, they can't just be sent back without a hearing.
• The courts that hear these cases are overwhelmed, so it takes months for an asylum case to be heard.
• If border-crossers are not charged with a crime, they are held in immigration detention, where families are kept together. If they are charged with a crime, parents go to jail and the government takes custody of their children.
• Court rulings limit how long people can be detained without a hearing, so many asylum-seekers have been released until their hearings, sometimes with an ankle bracelet. Not all show up for their hearings, and become undocumented immigrants.
• Previous administrations did not charge asylum-seekers with a crime (unless some other crime was involved, like smuggling). They also typically held families (even those not claiming asylum) in immigration detention rather than send parents to jail, precisely to avoid the situation we're seeing now.
• The Trump administration has instituted a policy of pursuing criminal charges against anyone who crosses the border without going through an official entry point. The crime (improper entry) is a misdemeanor with a maximum jail time of six months for a first offense. NYT: "Unlike Mr. Obama’s administration, Mr. Trump’s is treating all people who have crossed the border without authorization as subject to criminal prosecution, even if they tell the officer apprehending them that they are seeking asylum based on fear of returning to their home country, and whether or not they have their children in tow."
• The government already had responsibility for children who show up at the border unaccompanied. (A wave of such children created an issue during the Obama administration.) The new children are entering a system already over-burdened. The Washington Post reports: "As of Thursday, 11,432 migrant children are in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, up from 9,000 at the beginning of May."

Numerous reports are coming out about the facilities where the children are being held. It's pretty horrifying, but I can't blame HHS too much for that: If somebody dropped a couple thousand extra children on me, I'd have trouble arranging for their care too. The blame should rest higher up the chain.

Like many Trump administration policies -- particularly those involving presidential advisor Stephen Miller, who has no qualifications for government office beyond his white supremacist views ("America was, until this past generation, a white country, designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.") and would not have been hired by any previous administration -- the family separation policy was poorly planned. There appears to be no system for reuniting the families, either in this country (after asylum is granted) or in their country of origin (after deportation). In many cases, the parent is deported while the child remains in government custody.

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Trump has said pretty clearly what the breaking-up-families policy is about: It's hostage-taking. He claims to hate the policy. But Democrats hate it more, because they have more empathy. So they should give in to his demands. It's basically the same argument he's made about DACA: He doesn't want to deport the Dreamers, but he will if Democrats won't pay his price.

You have to wonder how far he can push this kind of thuggery before even his supporters recognize what he's doing. Suppose he starts taking immigrants out and having them shot until he gets his wall. It won't be his fault, it will be the Democrats' fault, because they won't give him what he wants.

and about North Korea

Here's how the Trump/Kim summit shakes out: Kim agreed to somewhat less than North Korea has agreed to in past documents. In exchange he got a huge propaganda victory: His flag was displayed as an equal of the American flag, and the President of the United States stood next to him and flattered him. Kim also got the very real concession of Trump canceling our military exercises with the South Koreans.

Imagine being a dissatisfied North Korean and hearing Trump say this:

His country does love him. His people, you see the fervor. They have a great fervor. ... I think that he really wants to do a great job for North Korea. ... And, he wants to do the right thing.

And human rights? It's all relative.

“He’s a tough guy, it’s a tough country,” he told Fox News host Bret Baier Wednesday. Trump went on to praise Kim for taking over the country at such a young age calling him a “very smart guy” and a “great negotiator.” “I think we understand each other,” Trump added.

When Baier pressed Trump, protesting that Kim has done many “bad things,” the President was unmoved. “So have a lot of other people,” he said, before moving on to praise himself for his performance at the United States-North Korea summit this week.

In fact, Trump envies Kim:

He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.

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In this hyper-partisan era, I find it useful to run a what-if-the-parties-were-reversed thought experiment: What if the exact same things were happening, but all the Republicans were Democrats and vice versa? Sometimes the experiment makes no sense, because you can't really imagine the opposite party playing its role: I can't picture President Hillary Clinton defending the Charlottesville Nazis, for example.

But the North Korea negotiation is a good place to run that experiment: What if President Hillary Clinton met Kim Jong Un without preconditions, signed a vacuous joint statement, flattered him effusively, gave a concession by cancelling military exercises with South Korea, and then came home claiming "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea."?

I think I'd be saying about what I'm saying now: Talking is better than not talking, so I'd give Clinton credit for that. But I'd be skeptical that anything real had been accomplished, and disturbed that the President of the United States had given Kim the propaganda victory of appearing together as a equal and being praised. The one-sided concession would bother me, and the no-longer-a-threat claim would seem unfounded. I think I'd be more inclined to imagine that something was going on behind the scenes, because I would trust Clinton's intelligence and experience more than I trust Trump. But I'd still find the whole event worrisome and disturbing.

For Democrats in Congress, I think the difference would be between speaking up and keeping silent. But those who commented would say something close to what they're saying now.

Republican statements, however, would bear no resemblance to what they're saying now. They'd be talking about treason.

and voter suppression

I only skimmed the Supreme Court decision on Ohio's method for purging its voter-registration rolls. But that was enough to convince me that I would have a hard time figuring out which side of the 5-4 decision was legally right. States are allowed to purge their voter rolls under the National Voter Registration Act, but the NVRA also restricts how they can do it.

Here's what Ohio did: If someone didn't vote for two years, the state sent them a mailing to find out if they'd moved. If the pre-addressed postage-paid response card didn't come back, and if the person didn't vote for another four years, they'd be removed from the rolls.

The NVRA says voters can't be removed from the rolls just for failing to vote. Writing for the conservative majority, Justice Alito says the non-voting together with the card is a sufficient justification. Writing for the four liberal justices, Justice Breyer says it isn't.

In general, I trust Breyer more than Alito. (Alito's Hobby Lobby decision was horrible and seemed disingenuous at every turn.) And I know what I wish the law said. But without a lot more study, I can't tell you how this should have come out.

Given that the Court has decided, I hope Ohio fixes this by referendum. Undoubtedly, lots of names are on the voter-registration rolls that shouldn't be, but every study shows that this leads to very few illegal votes. (I'm planning to move this summer; I'll bet my names stays on the rolls for years. But that doesn't mean I plan to come back here and vote.) On the other hand, voter-registration purges invariably result in thousands of legal voters being turned away.

Even if the process Ohio used does satisfy the NVRA, it makes a lot less sense now than it did when the NVRA was passed. All of us get far more junk mail than legitimate mail, and we invariably throw out some mail we ought to open. It's predictable that lots of legitimate voters won't return the card.

and the Trump Foundation

It's weird that the Clinton Foundation got so much critical attention during the campaign, when the Trump Foundation was clearly the sleazier enterprise.

Thursday, the New York Attorney General's office filed a lawsuit against the Trump family and the Trump Foundation (which is incorporated in New York). According to the NYT, the suit "seeks to dissolve the foundation and bar President Trump and three of his children from serving on nonprofit organizations", or at least "nonprofits based in New York or that operate in New York for one year, which would have the effect of barring them from a wide range of groups based in other states."

The lawsuit claims that the Foundation has no employees and its board has not met since 1999. (New York state law requires at least annual meetings.) President Trump alone decides all grants and signs all checks. The Foundation's accounts are managed by the same office that oversees all the other Trump Organization entities.

The sole criteria that the accounting staff used to determine whether to issue a check from the Foundation, rather than another entity in the Trump Organization or Mr. Trump personally, was the tax-exempt status of the intended recipient; no one made any inquiry into the purpose of the payment.

On several occasions listed in the lawsuit, the Foundation made payments that were clearly Trump's personal responsibility. For example, in 2007 when his Mar-a-Lago club had a legal dispute with the Town of Palm Beach about the height and location of its flagpoles, the negotiated settlement included Trump contributing $100,000 to the Fisher House Foundation, a charity that benefits veterans. But Trump did not make this payment; the Foundation did. The lawsuit includes a photocopy of Trump's handwritten note to the accounting staff: "DJT Foundation $100,000 to Fisher House (settlement of flag issue in Palm Beach)". Trump reimbursed the Foundation in 2017, after he knew the issue was under investigation.

A longer-term and more complex abuse happened during the presidential campaign. Trump boycotted an Iowa debate (because Megyn Kelly would be a moderator) and held a parallel event to raise money for veterans' charities. The money raised was channeled through the Trump Foundation, but the Trump campaign was in charge from beginning to end: It "planned, organized, financed, and directed" the event; the campaign slogan "Make America Great Again" was displayed on the podium; the charities receiving the money were chosen by the campaign and were often located in states that had upcoming primaries; much of the money raised was distributed during campaign events (with Trump presenting a giant check).

Mr. Trump's wrongful use of the Foundation to benefit his Campaign was willful and knowing. Mr. Trump was aware of the prohibition on political activities and the requirement of restrictions on related-party transactions. Among other things, he repeatedly signed, under penalties of perjury, IRS Forms 990 in which he attested that the Foundation did not engage in transactions with interested parties, and that the Foundation did not carry out political activity. Mr. Trump also signed, again under penalty of perjury, the Foundation's Certificate of Incorporation, in which he certified that the Foundation would not use its assets for the benefit of its directors or officers, and that it would not intervene in "any political campaign on behalf of any candidate."

The New York attorney general's office has made referrals to the IRS and the Federal Election Commission, which could take further action. Another NYT article quoted Jenny Johnson Ware, a criminal tax attorney in Chicago: “People have gone to prison for stuff like this, and if I were representing someone with facts like this, assuming the facts described in this petition are true, I would be very worried about an indictment."

and the inspector general's report on the FBI

I didn't even skim the Justice Department's 500-page report on the FBI's Clinton email investigation. Here are Vox' four takeaways:

• The investigative decisions in the Clinton email case seemed to be made on the merits.

• Some FBI officials expressed anti-Trump opinions in private messages.

• The IG wonders whether Strzok may have pursued the Trump-Russia probe more vigorously than new Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop due to political bias. (But in the end that worked to Trump's advantage. Since the Weiner emails were all duplicates, the sooner the public knew that the better for Clinton.)

• The IG sharply criticizes Comey for deviating from policy and procedure in his statements about the Clinton case.

The idea that this report somehow de-legitimizes the Mueller investigation seems to be more Trumpian bullshit.

and you also might be interested in ...

The $81 billion merger between ATT and Time Warner was completed shortly after a federal court rejected the Justice Department's attempt to block it on Tuesday.

As best I can tell, this is one of those bad-guys-against-worse-guys stories, so it's hard to know how to feel about it. In general, I dislike media mergers, because the media is concentrated enough already. But the Justice Department's effort to block the merger appears to be Trump's attempt to punish CNN, which is part of Time Warner. (The government was fine with Sinclair Broadcasting buying Tribune Media -- requiring only that Sinclair not wind up owning two TV stations in the same city -- because Sinclair slants even more towards Trump than Fox News does.)

So if the Justice Department had been trying to block the merger as part of some larger effort to step up antitrust enforcement, I'd be with them. But the message seems to be "You can get bigger, but only if we like your news coverage." That strikes me as seriously dangerous to American democracy, so I'm glad they didn't get away with it.

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Some very bogus arguments have been made claiming that the Mueller investigation is unconstitutional. Here, they're taken apart by George Conway -- Kellyanne's husband.

and let's close with something funny

It's been a while since I've linked to Bad Lip Reading. Here's their NBA clip.