March 28, 2018

Trumps legal team is in shambles. The timing is terrible.

Mueller’s Russia investigators want to talk to the president right as his legal team is falling apart.
By Zachary Fryer-Biggs Updated Mar 27, 2018

President Trump’s legal team is in shambles at one of the worst possible moments in the Russia investigation.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is heating up, and Trump is facing a big decision about whether to sit down for an interview with Mueller. But because of the staffing chaos that seems to have plagued the rest of his administration, the president now finds himself with virtually no qualified attorneys left to defend him in the Russia probe.

Trump’s top personal lawyer, John Dowd, resigned on Thursday. Reports say he’d grown frustrated with Trump’s unwillingness to heed his legal advice, including his view that an interview with Mueller would be too risky.

And less than a week after announcing that Trump was adding two new lawyers to his legal team, personal Trump attorney Jay Sekulow had to walk back the announcement, saying the two wouldn’t be working on the special counsel investigation after all because of “conflicts” with their other clients.

White House lawyers Ty Cobb and Don McGahn work for Trump on issues tied to the Russia investigation, but both are on the taxpayer payroll, meaning they are responsible for protecting the office of the presidency, not Trump personally. McGahn and Cobb are both reportedly considering leaving as well.

[...]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/26/17164766/trump-russia-sekulow-legal-team

March 27, 2018

Democracy Now: One Life Is Worth All the Guns in America

[Full headline:]
“One Life Is Worth All the Guns in America”: Students Demand End to Violence at March for Our Lives

In a historic day of action, more than 800 protests were held Saturday urging lawmakers to pass gun control. In Washington, organizers say 800,000 took part in the March for Our Lives, which was organized by students who survived the February 14 shooting massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In New York, another 150,000 took to the streets; 85,000 rallied in Chicago; 55,000 marched in Los Angeles. Tens of thousands also rallied in Atlanta and Pittsburgh. In Washington, D.C., survivors of gun violence—from Parkland to Chicago—shared the stage to decry the power of the National Rifle Association and to demand an end to the violence. We air highlights of the speeches.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/26/one_life_is_worth_all_the

[Transcript and video at link]

[There's over 4 hours of coverage in their special report at Democracy Now, plus individual speeches and interviews.
I finally managed to watch and listen to some of the students instead of just reading transcripts of their speeches. Didn't make it through even the first one dry-eyed, though. So I'm soft. Sue me.]

March 27, 2018

Guardian: Six victories for the gun control movement since the Parkland massacre

Days after the March for Our Lives, the movement continues to see successful efforts – here are six victories since the Florida shooting

Amanda Holpuch in New York
26 Mar 2018

Two days after the largest demonstration against gun violence in the US, the movement to prevent gun violence continues to build momentum – this time in New Jersey, where lawmakers are voting on a stack of stricter gun control laws on Monday.

Teenagers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school have reinvigorated the movement after 17 people were killed at their school last month.

On Monday, New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, vowed to sign into law six pieces of gun control legislation, including a ban on armour-piercing bullets and a bill to make it tougher to obtain a handgun permit, if they are passed by the state legislature.

“Today we marched in memory of Parkland,” Murphy said on Saturday. “But we will act in the name of every family and every community in our state that has been touched by gun violence, and the many more who wish to remain safe.”

Here is a look at other successful efforts to curb gun violence since the shooting in Parkland, Florida, on 14 February.

[...]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/26/gun-control-movement-march-for-our-lives-stoneman-douglas-parkland-builds-momentum

March 26, 2018

TheAtlantic: A Grandpa's-Eye View of the March for Our Lives

He hadn't been to a demonstration since the early '60s, but the energy of the post-Parkland movement drove him to go.

Rachel Gutman 4:39 PM ET

When I asked my mother and my grandfather how the Parkland shooting made them feel, they both said nearly the same thing: “It felt like an attack on the integrity of [my] memories,” said my mom. “It interfered with those pleasant thoughts of living there,” my grandpa said.

When my mom was a teenager, she lived with her parents in Coral Springs, Florida. Their house was one mile away from what’s now Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. They had moved around a bit as a family—first from New York to Florida, and then in the Fort Lauderdale area. But, as my mom put it, “When I think of home, I think of Coral Springs.” My grandpa told me that their Coral Springs house “was the growing-up house where we as a family ... established who we are.”

Maybe that connection is what made my grandpa book a flight to Washington as soon as he heard about the March for Our Lives, even though he hadn’t been to a demonstration since college in the early 1960s. (He knows he joined a group of students who shut down a bridge, but he can’t remember why.) The last time he participated in an event of national importance was when he and my grandmother drove to Washington in 1963 to pay their respects to President Kennedy. (The line was too long for them to make it inside the Capitol, so they turned around and went home.) My grandpa didn’t go to the 1963 March on Washington because he “didn’t think it was that important at the time.”

But after the Parkland shooting, my grandpa told me, “I said to myself, you know what, you have missed so many moments in history because you hesitated and didn’t pay attention. Don’t miss this one.”

[...]

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/03/grandpa-march-for-childrens-lives/556532/

March 26, 2018

TheCut: Stormy Daniels's Boring Interview Was Actually Brilliant

[Full headline:]

Stormy Daniels’s Boring Interview Was Actually Brilliant

Once again, she proves she’s a worthy adversary for Trump.

By Rhonda Garelick March 26, 2018

Last night’s 60 Minutes interview with Stormy Daniels set off so few fireworks, with so little new information, that it would be tempting to dismiss its importance. As Slate put it, “If you were hoping for a TV event that would do serious damage to the Trump presidency … [it] was a let down.” Let’s not be hasty here, though. Buried within the interview’s vanilla blandness lay some lessons worth pondering — if we want to save our republic. But the important parts were easy to miss.

[...]

But in her conversation with Anderson Cooper, Stormy mainly rehashed details she’d offered before: How she met Trump; how he compared her to Ivanka (still not that shocking, folks); and how he’d strung her along by “dangling” (the very word she’s used before — evoking atrophied flesh) the hope of an appearance on The Apprentice.

She did elaborate, though, on the most profoundly disturbing element in all this: the alleged personal threat made to her (to keep silent and “leave Trump alone”) in 2011. The story she told of being menaced by a thug in a parking lot while with her infant daughter was chilling but also, sadly — given what we already know about the world of Trump — not that shocking, and entirely credible.

[...]

Everything about this interview screamed legitimacy. 60 Minutes is the 50-year-old doyenne of broadcast journalism, a network show watched by grandparents and Trump supporters (and apparently even Trump himself). This was Stormy’s chance to take her case to the widest American public, to clear her name and tell her truth, even at the risk of being penalized for breaching her non-disclosure agreement (and possibly even at risk to her personal safety).

[...]

https://www.thecut.com/2018/03/stormy-danielss-60-minutes-interview-was-actually-brilliant.html

March 26, 2018

USAToday: Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump, brought to you by Mike Pence and the religious right

Thank Mike Pence and evangelicals for Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels. As they force their religion on everyone but their allies, the hypocrisy has never been more naked.

Jason Sattler, Opinion columnist
March 26, 2018

Congratulations, Mike Pence!

Since Donald Trump gave America’s kids the chance to learn about “Stormy Daniels,” his approval with self-identified white evangelical Protestants has risen 6%. Yes, amid a controversy about hush money to hide an affair involving a woman best known for performing in adult films, an alleged affair that took place just months after Trump’s third wife gave birth to their son, the president’s standing has actually improved with a group of voters who spent most of this century fretting about the sanctity of marriage.

The hypocrisy here is as obvious as Trump’s hundreds of conflicts of interests. American evangelicals, by and large, have decided that they can ignore Trump’s personal morality because they are getting something far more important in return — the chance to impose their personal morality on others.

And their role model for this devil’s deal is the evangelical who made the Trump presidency possible: Mike Pence.

“Trump’s got the populist nationalists,” said Steve Bannon, CEO of the Trump-Pence campaign in 2016. “But Pence is the base. Without Pence, you don’t win.”

[...]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/03/26/stormy-daniels-donald-trump-thanks-mike-pence-evangelicals-column/457212002/

March 26, 2018

Texas lawmaker shares Facebook meme connecting gun control protesters to Holocaust victims

[Even worse, it came from Ted Cruz's page]

By Jackie Wang

A Houston-area state representative linked gun control advocates to Holocaust victims on Monday, with a meme that appeared to blame gun control for the genocide of six million Jews during World War II.

Spring Republican Valoree Swanson shared a Facebook post Monday from the “Ted Cruz Meme Page.” She did not add a comment to the post, which showed two photos. The first was from March 13, when 7,000 pairs of shoes were left at the U.S. Capitol to represent the children who have died from gunshot wounds since the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. It was captioned: “Shoes left by gun control supporters, 2018.”

The second photo, of a pile of shoes in a concentration camp, was captioned: “Shoes left by victims of gun control, 1945.”

[...]

Swanson's page has since deleted the post. It still exists on the Ted Cruz Meme Page.

The original post had over 100,000 shares and 300,000 "reactions." Most of the comments on Swanson's post decried the picture.

[...]

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/guns/2018/03/26/texas-lawmaker-shares-facebook-meme-connecting-gun-control-protesters-holocaust-victims

[I don't do facebook; maybe someone who does can confirm whether or not Cruz is still pushing this shameful meme.]

March 26, 2018

State A.G.s demand answers from Facebook as regulators swoop in on scandal-tarnished company

[Full headline:]
State attorneys general demand answers from Facebook as regulators swoop in on scandal-tarnished company

BY Terence Cullen Monday, March 26, 2018

Facebook got more thumbs down from law enforcement and investors Monday as scandals continue to embroil the social media giant.

Attorneys general from nearly 40 states and U.S. territories on Monday fired off a full-throated letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg — asking how Cambridge Analytica got its hands on data for 50 million accounts.

“Users of Facebook deserve to know the answers to these questions and more,” reads the letter.

“We are committed to protecting our residents’ personal information. More specifically, we need to understand Facebook’s policies and procedures in light of the reported misuse of data by developers.”

The missive — whose signators include New York AG Eric Schneiderman — comes as Facebook falls under regulatory scrutiny.

[...]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/group-ags-answers-facebook-regulators-swoop-article-1.3896822

March 26, 2018

Vox: The Summer Zervos sexual assault allegations and lawsuit against Donald Trump, explained

Zervos’s defamation suit could put Trump’s whole presidency at risk.
By Anna North Mar 26, 2018

“Summer Zervos is one of many women who has been subjected to unwanted sexual touching by Donald J. Trump.”

So begins the defamation lawsuit filed by Zervos, a restaurant owner and former contestant on The Apprentice, who says Trump sexually assaulted her in 2007 and then called her a liar when she spoke out about it in 2016.

Zervos’s case centers on a disturbing account of sexual assault, an important distinction from two other high-profile legal cases involving women and Trump. Adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal (who is suing the company that publishes the National Enquirer) say they had consensual affairs with Trump.

Zervos scored a victory recently when a New York Supreme Court judge ruled that her suit could go forward, rejecting the Trump team’s argument that a sitting president can’t be sued in state court. “No one is above the law,” the judge responded. Trump’s lawyers have announced they will appeal the decision.

The potential implications of the Zervos case are huge. When Paula Jones sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment 20 years ago, the Supreme Court set the precedent that a sitting president can’t push off a federal case until after he leaves office. Clinton’s perjury in a deposition in that case ultimately led to his impeachment.

[...]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/26/17151766/summer-zervos-case-trump-lawsuit-sexual-assault-allegations

March 26, 2018

Parkland students guest edit Guardian US

[A Guardian series of stories under one link]

Students from the Eagle Eye, Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school's news magazine, guest edit our US edition.

The Guardian has invited student journalists from Parkland, Florida's high school newspaper, The Eagle Eye, to direct our coverage of the March for Our Lives gun violence protest. Throughout the weekend you’ll find exclusive features, interviews and live reports from the ground.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/parkland-student-takeover