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Category: Politics

Wave of violence against Brazil’s indigenous communities follows Bolsonaro’s election

Wave of violence against Brazil’s indigenous communities follows Bolsonaro’s election

Grist reports: Even before Jair Bolsonaro won Brazil’s Presidential race last week, many environmentalists were on high alert. The far-right politician’s positions on agriculture and economic development (he’s gone back and forth on whether he’ll keep environment ministries and agriculture ministries separate) could open up Brazil’s precious rainforests to deforestation and economic exploitation. But it’s not just the Amazon that’s threatened — the lives of many of Brazil’s indigenous peoples are under siege as well. A little over a week…

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Matthew Whitaker: An attack dog with ambition beyond protecting Trump

Matthew Whitaker: An attack dog with ambition beyond protecting Trump

The New York Times reports: President Trump first noticed Matthew G. Whitaker on CNN in the summer of 2017 and liked what he saw — a partisan defender who insisted there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. So that July, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, interviewed Mr. Whitaker about joining the president’s team as a legal attack dog against the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. At that point, the White House passed, leaving…

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FBI is investigating Florida company where Whitaker was advisory-board member

FBI is investigating Florida company where Whitaker was advisory-board member

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting a criminal investigation of a Florida company accused of scamming millions from customers during the period that Matthew Whitaker, the acting U.S. attorney general, served as a paid advisory-board member, according to an alleged victim who was contacted by the FBI and other people familiar with the matter. The investigation is being handled by the Miami office of the FBI and by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, according…

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Tape of Khashoggi’s killing has been given to U.S., Saudi, Europeans, Erdogan says

Tape of Khashoggi’s killing has been given to U.S., Saudi, Europeans, Erdogan says

The Washington Post reports: An audio recording tracking the dying moments of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has been shared with Saudi Arabia, Britain, France and Germany in addition to the United States, the leader of Turkey said Saturday. “We gave it to Saudi Arabia,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at the Ankara airport before departing for Paris for commemorations to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. “We gave it to…

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Trump played central role in cover-up of his affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal

Trump played central role in cover-up of his affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal

The Wall Street Journal reports: As a presidential candidate in August 2015, Donald Trump huddled with a longtime friend, media executive David Pecker, in his cluttered 26th floor Trump Tower office and made a request. What can you do to help my campaign? he asked, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Pecker, chief executive of American Media Inc., offered to use his National Enquirer tabloid to buy the silence of women if they tried to publicize alleged sexual…

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After calling acting AG a ‘great guy,’ Trump now says ‘I don’t know him’

After calling acting AG a ‘great guy,’ Trump now says ‘I don’t know him’

The Associated Press reports: Matthew Whitaker’s future at the helm of the Justice Department appeared uncertain at best Friday as President Donald Trump denied even knowing the man he had named acting attorney general just two days earlier. The Senate’s top Republican predicted a permanent replacement could be named soon for Whitaker, who is now overseeing the Trump-Russia probe. In addition to the negative comments from Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Whitaker’s past business ties and comments on…

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It’s probably too late to stop Mueller

It’s probably too late to stop Mueller

Benjamin Wittes writes: Here are 10 reasons to think that [acting attorney general, Matthew] Whitaker may have less capacity to foil Mueller than the current moment—and his formal powers—may suggest. First, Mueller has spread the wealth around. The normal critique of special-counsel investigations is that they hoard jurisdiction, endlessly expand, and become personal roving inquests into their political subjects’ lives. The opposite is the case with Mueller. He has not merely referred to other Justice Department components matters at the…

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Jeff Sessions is out, but his dark vision for immigration policy lives on

Jeff Sessions is out, but his dark vision for immigration policy lives on

Jonathan Blitzer writes: For more than two decades, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s hostility to immigrants put him on the outer fringes of the Republican Party. When Congress seemed likely to pass comprehensive immigration reform—first in 2007, then in 2013—Sessions worked assiduously to scuttle it. In 2015, after the Republicans took control of the Senate, he circulated a memo titled “Immigration Handbook for a New Republican Majority,” in which he argued that the G.O.P. had lost the Presidency in 2012 partly…

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Trump put Obama family at risk, says Michelle

Trump put Obama family at risk, says Michelle

Krissah Thompson writes: [Michelle Obama’s] memoir is not a Washington read full of gossip and political score-settling — though she does lay bare her deep, quaking disdain for Trump, who she believes put her family’s safety at risk with his vehement promotion of the false birther conspiracy theory. “The whole [birther] thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed. But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks,” she…

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Trump administration to end refueling for Saudi coalition aircraft in Yemen

Trump administration to end refueling for Saudi coalition aircraft in Yemen

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration is ending the practice of refueling Saudi coalition aircraft, halting the most tangible and controversial aspect of U.S. support for the kingdom’s three-year war in Yemen, people familiar with the situation said. The move comes amid escalating criticism of Saudi Arabia’s conduct in the war. Lawmakers from both parties have demanded that the United States suspend weapons sales to Riyadh and cut off aerial refueling of aircraft flown by the Saudi coalition, which…

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Trump’s appointment of the acting attorney general is unconstitutional

Trump’s appointment of the acting attorney general is unconstitutional

Neal K. Katyal and George T. Conway III write: What now seems an eternity ago, the conservative law professor Steven Calabresi published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in May arguing that Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional. His article got a lot of attention, and it wasn’t long before President Trump picked up the argument, tweeting that “the Appointment of the Special Counsel is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!” Professor Calabresi’s article was based on the Appointments Clause of…

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Matthew Whitaker, Mueller’s new boss, concluded last year there was ‘no collusion’ with Russia

Matthew Whitaker, Mueller’s new boss, concluded last year there was ‘no collusion’ with Russia

The Daily Beast reports: A year-and-a-half before he took responsibility for overseeing the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, Matthew Whitaker, now the acting attorney general, had already reached a conclusion. “The truth is there was no collusion with the Russians and the Trump campaign,” he said in an interview on the Wilkow Majority show. “There was interference by the Russians into the election, but that was not collusion with the campaign. That’s where the left seems to…

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Acting attorney general opposes principal of constitutional checks and balances

Acting attorney general opposes principal of constitutional checks and balances

The New York Times reports: The acting attorney general, Matthew G. Whitaker, once espoused the view that the courts “are supposed to be the inferior branch” and criticized the Supreme Court’s power to review legislative and executive acts and declare them unconstitutional, the lifeblood of its existence as a coequal branch of government. In a candidate Q. and A. when he sought the Republican nomination for senator in Iowa in 2014, Mr. Whitaker indicated that he shared the view among…

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Here’s the road map to the next decade of American politics

Here’s the road map to the next decade of American politics

Doug Sosnik and Sara Fagen write: We are two former White House political directors—one of us, Doug Sosnik, worked for Bill Clinton; one of us, Sara Fagen, worked for George W. Bush. We’ve come together to give our assessment of the 2018 midterms—no partisan spin, just the facts. The following PowerPoint slides outline what we think about the results and what to expect in President Donald Trump’s Washington for the next two years. Here’s what we’ve learned so far: A…

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Words and walkouts aren’t enough. CNN should sue Trump over revoking Acosta’s press pass

Words and walkouts aren’t enough. CNN should sue Trump over revoking Acosta’s press pass

Margaret Sullivan writes: CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta is a smart, tough reporter. He can also be a grandstander who seems to thrive on conflict with President Trump and doesn’t always know when to stop his aggressive questioning. But whether you like Acosta’s style, it’s clear the White House crossed a bright line Wednesday when it took away Acosta’s “hard pass,” which allows him the access he needs to cover the White House. That action amounts to punishing a…

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Now it’s up to the public

Now it’s up to the public

Andrew Coan writes: The most surprising thing about Wednesday’s resignation of Jeff Sessions is that it did not happen sooner. President Trump has long been furious with his attorney general for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, and has had the power to fire him at any time. Trump’s decision to oust Sessions also removes Rod Rosenstein as acting attorney general for the purposes of the Russia investigation, leaving the fate of Special Counsel Robert Mueller uncertain. This drives home…

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