Thursday, May 31st.
SAY GOODBYE TO THE ECONOMY: THE TARIFF EDITION
- Trump reportedly poised to ban German luxury carmakers in the US
- Abe: Japan ‘Cannot Accept’ New Tariffs On U.S. Auto Imports
- US plan to impose steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and the EU is ‘99.9%’ done and coming very soon
- Trump imposes steel and aluminum tariffs on the European Union, Canada and Mexico
- German carmakers hit by report Trump threatens to drive them off U.S. streets
- EU to open WTO case against U.S. tariffs: Malmstrom
- Conservative billionaire Koch brothers’ network denounces Trump’s tariffs on EU, Canada and Mexico
- Dow falls 150 points after US slaps tariffs on EU and Mexico
- Mexico hits back at U.S. steel, aluminum tariffs with ‘equivalent’ measures
- Trump imposes tariffs on closest allies, Mexico and Europe announce retaliation
- House Speaker Paul Ryan opposes Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on US allies
- France’s Macron says U.S. tariffs are illegal and a mistake
- A previously unthinkable US and EU trade war has begun
- Canada announces retaliatory tariffs
- Over 146,000 Americans will lose their jobs because of Trump’s trade tariffs
- Trudeau: Trump tariffs are an affront to Canadian soldiers who fought and died alongside Americans
- Trudeau says NAFTA talks broke down after Pence made ultimatum
- Trudeau Declines to Meet Trump After Pence Sets Precondition
TORONTO (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday he offered to go to Washington this week to complete talks on renegotiating the North American Free Trade agreement but that Vice President Mike Pence called and told him a meeting with the U.S. president would only happen if Trudeau agreed to put a five-year sunset clause into the deal.
Trudeau said he refused to go because of the “totally unacceptable” precondition. He made the comment while outlining Canada’s response to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
In a call to President Donald Trump last Friday, Trudeau offered to meet Trump because he felt they were close to an agreement that only required a “final deal-making moment.”
Trudeau said Trump seemed agreeable before Pence called him on Tuesday.
PARDONTOWN
- Trump will pardon conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza who was convicted for campaign finance violation
- Trump To Pardon Dinesh D’Souza
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he will pardon Dinesh D’Souza, a right-wing commentator, author and filmmaker was was convicted in 2014 of using a “straw donor” to make an illegal campaign contribution.
- Trump says he is considering a pardon for Martha Stewart, commutation for former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich
- President Trump keeps pardoning his political friends
TRUMP HATES IMMIGRANTS
- Trump’s ‘Forced Separation’ of Migrant Families Is Both Illegal and Immoral
- ICE detains mom with valid work visa
- Families Belong Together | Stop Separating Immigrant Families
THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION
But in the meeting at the Justice Department, Mr. Rosenstein added a new detail: He said the president had originally asked him to reference Russia in his memo, the people familiar with the conversation said. Mr. Rosenstein did not elaborate on what Mr. Trump had wanted him to say.
Mr. McCabe’s memo reflects the F.B.I.’s early efforts to discern Mr. Trump’s intentions in firing Mr. Comey, an effort that continues today.
- Andrew McCabe turned over his memo on Comey’s firing to Robert Mueller
- President Trump contradicts himself by claiming he didn’t fire James Comey over the Russia probe
- Trump’s lies about the Russia probe devolve into absurdity
- Trump: Why Didn’t FBI Warn Me About Russia? (It Did.)
- Prosecutors interview Comey as they investigate whether McCabe should be charged
COHEN
- Avenatti: I know for a fact that Cohen tapes have Trump’s voice on them
- Avenatti’s response to Cohen’s lawyers having a letter to Stormy
- Listen: How Michael Cohen Protects Trump By Making Legal Threats
- NPR publishes audio of Cohen threatening reporter
THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE
Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a feckless cunt. Feckless means lacking strength of character or irresponsible. I take issue with Samantha calling Ivanka a cunt. Ivanka Trump has neither the depth nor warmth of a cunt.
- Hayes: Roseanne reflects a chunk of the Trump base
- ‘Roseanne’ shows what the media got wrong about Trump voters
The second group, roughly speaking, is the culturally affronted crowd you see reflected on social media all the time.
These voters don’t think much about an economic future; they want a time machine that will take them back to an orderly America ruled by white dudes, where you could say whatever you wanted without being labeled a bigot or a sexist, where you didn’t have to worry about gay rights and women’s rights, and where black guys getting dragged out of a coffee shop for no reason was called Wednesday.
I’m a skeptic of reflexive political correctness, as I think a lot of mainstream voters are. The pseudo-intellectual bullying on college campuses today is enough to make any thinking person recoil.
But the cultural right isn’t really opposed to the silly lexicon of liberalism as much as to liberalism itself. What they call PC is really just the modern concept of tolerance.
These voters represent a shrinking slice of the electorate, if you take any kind of long view, and they’re hardly misunderstood. They have the loudest voice in America, in fact — a president who stars in his own round-the-clock reality show, a miner of nostalgia who lives only for their applause.
The problem for coastal liberals who run news and entertainment media is that in trying to speak to the economically disenchanted first group, they inevitably get dragged down into the netherworld of the culturally outraged second.
WHITE HOUSE CHAOS
- Ivanka Trump Fills First Lady’s Role at White House Event While Melania Trump Remains Out of Sight
- Breitbart, Steve Bannon, and a pro-Trump plan to suppress black voters in 3 swing states
COLD WAR 2.0
- Canada imposes further sanctions on Venezuela
- Source: Trump administration has cut deal with China’s ZTE
- Sen. Warner warns against ZTE deal
GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD
- Matthews on Roseanne: ABC has higher principles than GOP
- Trump’s hard-right judges will do lasting damage to America
- Call out his lies. He depends on them.
- Poor people die younger in the U.S. That skews American politics.
- Boehner: ‘There is no Republican party. There’s a Trump party’
- Yes, liberals can be condescending. Trump is still conservatives’ fault.
- Mitch McConnell Committed a Judicial Heist and Blames Obama for His Crime
- Planned Parenthood cancels abortions in Arkansas after restrictive law is reinstated
- Republicans Are Trying to Pull America Out of Another Global Treaty – Motherboard
- Seniors Are More Conservative Because the Poor Don’t Survive to Become Seniors
- White America’s racial resentment is the real impetus for welfare cuts, study says – The Washington Post
#NEVERAGAIN
- How politics divides the landscape of gun violence
- GOP congressional candidate in California has compared Parkland teens to Hitler
- Enlisting veterans to fight the NRA – NY Daily News
- Dick’s Sporting Goods took a public stand against assault weapons and sales went up
PUERTO RICO
- Study Finds 5,000 May Have Died From Hurricane Maria, Yet Cable News Covered Roseanne Instead
- Puerto Rico will be an enduring stain on Trump’s presidency
- “We Have Done a Great Job”: What Trump Tweeted as Thousands of Puerto Ricans Died
PROGRESS IS PROGRESS
- ‘This Is a Democracy, Not a Dictatorship’: Federal Workers Union Sues Donald Trump
- California Senate passes bill to reinstate net neutrality rules
- Senators Challenge FCC Rural Broadband Map
- Illinois Ratifies Equal Rights Amendment 36 Years After The Congressional Deadline
The constitutional amendment, which declares that equality of rights “shall not be denied by the U.S. or any state on account of sex,” was first introduced in Congress in the 1920s. It was sent to the states for ratification in 1972, but only 35 states ratified the amendment by the congressionally set 1982 deadline — three states short of the 38 required to append it to the Constitution.
The issue languished in the intervening decades and was generally assumed to be a lost cause. But last year, debate around the amendment was revived when Nevada, in part spurred by the anti-sexual harassment #MeToo movement, chose to ratify it.
With Illinois now on board, just one more state is required in order to ratify the amendment. According to the State-Journal Register, Congress will then need to remove the deadline for it to be included in the Constitution.
The other states that have yet to ratify the amendment are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Federal prosecutors on Wednesday dropped seven cases against people charged with rioting in Washington, DC, during President Donald Trump’s inauguration, after getting in trouble in court for how they handled evidence provided by the right-wing activist group Project Veritas.
The announcement came after a judge concluded last week that the government wrongly withheld the full version of a video of a pre-protest planning meeting secretly recorded by a Project Veritas operative. The revelation of that video led to the discovery of other undisclosed Project Veritas videos, prompting defense lawyers to protest and a judge to find that prosecutors committed a “serious violation.”
RUMOR MILL
- An Open Letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation – Lawfare
- Spicy Mic thread on the pardons
- An uplifting thread from Eric Garland
That’s it for today. Thankfully.
Today was exhausting, and not the good kind of exhausting from after a workout. Watching things unfold today was stressful. Enacting sanctions against most of America’s allies, while Dotard threatens to pardon every celebrity criminal he can think of.
This is bad, but these moves reek of one main characteristic: Desperation.
The tariffs are desperate attempts to either cash in and force bribes, or a desperate attempt to distract from all of the shit coming his way. This is by far the stupidest thing he could have done. If by some unholy miracle he doesn’t get removed from office by 2020, costing 150,000 Americans their jobs from areas that “voted” for him in 2016 and leading the country into a recession or worse is political suicide.
Pardoning Dinesh D’Souza and talking about pardoning others screams of desperation. I’ve mentioned before in GTKYG-Pardon Limitations why Trump can’t pardon his way out of this, but here’s a quick recap; pardons can’t be used to cover up one’s own crimes, can’t be used for obstructing an investigation, and don’t work on state crimes.
It’s hard to stay positive in the moment as all of the craziness happens. It’s harder when the craziness comes flying out at such an obnoxious pace.
I’m confident that we will get through this. But we have to go through it first.
Thank you, and have a good one.
“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”
– Katy Tur
None of this is Normal 