Dispatches

TRUMP WOULD HAVE BEEN CHARGED WITH MULTIPLE FELONIES IF HE WEREN’T PRESIDENT, FORMER PROSECUTORS SAY.

Donald Trump’s conduct as outlined in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report would have led to obstruction of justice charges if he were not a sitting president, hundreds of former federal prosecutors said in a statement (5/6).

“Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice,” said the statement, which was posted online.

The document garnered more than 560 signatures by Monday evening, many of whom served for decades under both Republican and Democratic presidents, Hayley Miller reported at HuffPost (5/6).

“To look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice — the standard set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution — runs counter to logic and our experience,” the statement continued.

The statement contradicts Attorney General William Barr’s assertion that Mueller’s report found insufficient evidence showing Trump obstructed justice.

“[T]he report identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constitute obstructive conduct,” Barr wrote in his summary of so-called key findings from the Mueller report in March. He admitted during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week that he reached that decision without reviewing the underlying evidence Mueller uncovered.

Mueller did not find evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Though his report outlined 10 instances of potential obstruction of justice by Trump, Mueller did not charge the president with a crime. Legal experts say Mueller did not do so because of the Justice Department’s opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

Still, Trump has falsely claimed repeatedly that Mueller’s report totally exonerated him of any possible wrongdoing.

Dozens of career government employees and political appointees, including 20 former US attorneys, who have served in both Democratic and Republican administrations signed the letter, reported the Washington Post.

In their statement, the former prosecutors identify three acts described in the Mueller report that they believe satisfy all the elements of an obstruction charge: Trump’s efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about them, his efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct, and his efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators.

“As former federal prosecutors, we recognize that prosecuting obstruction of justice cases is critical because unchecked obstruction —  which allows intentional interference with criminal investigations to go unpunished — puts our whole system of justice at risk,” the former prosecutors wrote.

They did not say what, if anything, they hoped to accomplish by publishing the letter. It comes as Democratic leadership considers whether to move forward with impeachment in the wake of the Mueller report.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been reluctant to heed calls for impeachment from several high-profile Democrats, including 2020 presidential hopefuls Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California.

“While our views range from proceeding to investigate the findings of the Mueller report or proceeding directly to impeachment, we all firmly agree that we should proceed down a path of finding the truth,” she wrote in a letter to colleagues in April. “We must show the American people we are proceeding free from passion or prejudice, strictly on the presentation of fact.”

Among the high-profile signers are Bill Weld, a former US attorney and Justice Department official in the Reagan administration who is running against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination; Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration; John S. Martin, a former US attorney and federal judge appointed to his posts by Republican presidents; Paul Rosenzweig, who served as senior counsel to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr; and Jeffrey Harris, who worked as the principal assistant to Rudolph W. Giuliani when he was at the Justice Department in the Reagan administration.

The list also includes more than 20 former U.S. attorneys and more than 100 people with at least 20 years of service at the Justice Department — most of them former career officials. The signers worked in every presidential administration since that of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a former federal prosecutor, joined the letter after news of it broke, and Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted his support for its premise .

The signatures were collected by the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, which counts Justice Department alumni among its staff and was contacted about the statement last week by a group of former federal prosecutors, said Justin Vail, an attorney at Protect Democracy.

SENATE UP FOR GRABS IN 2020. While the race for the White House gets most of the attention, it won’t be much fun for a Democrat to be in the Oval Office if Mitch McConnell remains in control of the Senate. In 2020, 34 Senate seats are up for election, including a special election in Arizona. The US Senate is currently includes 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents who caucus with Democrats. So Dems must win four seats to take control of the Senate — or three, if they also win the vice presidency.

Some of the fiercest races (with state tracking polls by Morning Consult from January through March) are expected to be in Virginia, where incumbent Sen. Mark Warner (D) has a 48% approval rating), North Carolina, where Sen. Thom Tillis (R) has a 34% approval rating, Colorado , where Sen. Cory Gardner (R) has a 35% approval rating, and Maine, where Sen. Susan Collins (R) has a 52% approval rating but a motivated Democratic opposition. Endangered Democrats from states Trump won include Sen. Gary Peters, who has a 33% approval rating in Michigan, and Doug Jones, who has a 40% approval rating in Alabama. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) has only a 36% approval rating in Kentucky, while Sen. Lindsey Graham’s slavish devotion to Donald Trump has raised him to 52% approval in South Carolina.

Open seats being given up by Republicans include Tennessee, where Lamar Alexander is retiring, Wyoming, where Mike Enzi is retiring, and Kansas, where Pat Roberts is retiring. Open seats given up by Dems include New Jersey, where Cory Booker is running for president, and New Mexico, where Tom Udall is retiring.

Other states where races could develop include Iowa, where Joni Ernst (R) is seeking election to a second term with 40% approval; Arizona, where Martha McSally (R), with a 35% approval rating, is seeking election after appointment to a vacant seat; and Georgia, where David Perdue (R) has a 47% approval rating.

In the presidential race, Trump remains very vulnerable, with 42.7% approval and 52.4% disapproval in FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls (5/6).

Trump’s approval rating hit an all-time high in the Gallup Poll of 46% in the second half of April, up from 45% in the first half of April, coming on the heels of strong economic numbers and largely favorable coverage of the conclusion of the Russia investigation.

But Trump’s approval among independents dipped slightly, from 39% in the first half of April to 37% in the latest poll. The Gallup poll surveyed 1,024 adults nationwide from April 17 to April 30. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

That polling concluded prior to revelations that Robert Mueller wrote to William Barr in March to criticize the attorney general’s four-page summary of the full report. Mueller wrote that Barr’s memo “did not fully capture the context, nature and substance” of the special counsel’s report and that it caused “public confusion about critical aspects” of the results of the investigation, Brett Samuels wrote for The Hill (5/6).

Barr endured a grilling from Senate Democrats (5/1) in which they accused him of mishandling Mueller’s report and allowing the president to declare victory. A number of Democrats have called on Barr to resign.

TRUMP BREEZES PAST 10,000 LIES. Donald Trump has exceeded 10,000 false or misleading claims since his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. To be precise, that’s 10,111 lies in 828 days, as of April 27, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker database, which tracks and analyzes all of Trump’s suspect statements.

What started as a snowball is now a full-on avalanche. The minority president averaged fewer than five false claims a day in his first 100 days. But his pace has quickened. His average is up to 12 false claims a day, counting from Inauguration Day through April 27. Looking only at the last seven months, it’s nearly 23 a day.

False and misleading claims are a staple of the president’s speeches, interviews and tweets; Cabinet meetings, bilateral summits and news conferences; bill signings, video messages and campaign rallies. Some of Trump’s most recurrent talking points (“biggest tax cut,” “the economy was going down when I took office,” “Democratic laws forced family separations”) are demonstrably false. Yet the president repeats them like a broken record to anyone listening.

This pattern of constant repetition is the key to Trump’s 10,000 milestone. Fact Checker has recorded nearly 300 instances in which the president has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times. Trump also has racked up 21 “Bottomless Pinocchios,” claims that have earned Three or Four Pinocchios and that have been repeated at least 20 times.

Some fast facts:

• Out of all 828 days, Trump made the most fishy claims on Nov. 5, 2018, the day before the midterm elections. He held three campaign rallies and made 139 false or misleading claims.

• October 2018 is the top month, with 1,204 false claims.

• About one-fifth of the president’s false claims are about immigration, a percentage that has grown since the government shutdown over funding for his promised border wall. In fact, his most repeated false claim — 160 times — is that his border wall is being built.

The Washington Post usually does not tag Trump’s false claims as “lies,” but Merriam-Webster defines a lie as “an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker or writer.” And Trump should know better.

AS EPA STALLS, 43 STATES HAVE WATER SITES CONTAMINATED WITH TOXIC CHEMICALS. Toxic chemicals found in nonstick cooking pans and other household items have contaminated more than 600 water sources across at least 43 states, with Michigan by far the most impacted, according to a new report.

The findings underscore the wider water crisis facing the US and are likely to increase pressure on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to enact stricter limits on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), toxic chemicals that can increase the risk of cancer and other severe health problems, E.A. Crunden reported at ThinkProgress (5/6).

The analysis published by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Northeastern University finds that 610 water sources across the country contain PFAS. The water systems include drinking water sources that serve upwards of 19 million people, along with military and industrial sites, dumps, and airports. PFAS itself is found in everything from firefighting foam to rain jackets.

Using data from sources including the federal Safe Drinking Water Information System and the Pentagon, the authors mapped the nationwide prevalence of PFAS. The version released (5/6) reflects an updated map — the last version was released in July 2018 and found 172 contaminated sites in 40 states. And it is likely that the new report still doesn’t account for many contaminated sites around the country.

“We believe the locations shown on our map may be only the tip of a toxic iceberg,” said Bill Walker, EWG vice president and editor in chief, in an email to ThinkProgress.

Michigan, a state grappling with ongoing water crises, stands out as the most severely impacted state. The updated map identifies 192 contaminated sites in Michigan alone, the vast majority of which are drinking water sources.

An ongoing lead contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan, is the state’s most well-known water problem. The city’s residents say that five years after their water first became contaminated, they are still experiencing health impacts associated with Flint’s water, like rashes and headaches. But PFAS has also become a problem in the state — last July, two communities in Kalamazoo County were given bottled water after their drinking source was found to contain dangerously high levels of the chemicals.

Under scrutiny over water issues in the aftermath of Flint, state officials have been hard at work testing the water for chemicals in an effort to identify the scope of the PFAS problem. That work has been critical; EWG credited a multi-agency effort overseen by the state as helping to identify impacted areas. Michigan environmental officials have said there may be as many as 11,000 PFAS-contaminated sites in the state.

According to the new report, California comes in second after Michigan with 47 known sites, while New Jersey is third with 43 sites. But Walker of EWG told ThinkProgress that without efforts like those in Michigan, gauging the full scale of the problem is a challenge.

“Most other states have not conducted the kind of comprehensive multi-agency detection effort that Michigan has,” he said.

DID WORKERS GET 80% OF CORPORATE TAX CUT BENEFITS? TRY 6%. Another tax season has come and gone, and Americans can render their verdict on the first year of the signature legislative achievement of Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Thus far, Jon Perr noted at DailyKos (5/5) the reviews are not kind. Despite an analysis by the Tax Policy Center showing 64% of Americans have received a tax cut, polling continues to show that voters solidly disapprove of a GOP tax plan they perceive as not having provided them financial relief at all.

To be sure, that perception is fueled by the fact that most taxpayers realized relatively small benefits, which were further masked by changes in withholding rules that left many with unexpected checks to write to Uncle Sam. But the bigger problem for Republicans heading into the 2020 elections is one not of perception, but of reality. Simply put, the GOP’s best and brightest lied — early, often, and spectacularly — in their effort to sell Americans on what became the TCJA.

Among the frauds committed by Team Trump to sell his bogus claim that “our focus is on helping the folks who work in the mailrooms and the machine shops of America” was a particularly foul talking point lovingly polished by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. This tale concerned the massive reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a single cut responsible for $1.38 trillion in new red ink over its first decade. Trump’s “plumbers, the carpenters, the cops, the teachers, the truck drivers, the pipe fitters … the people that like me best” would win big, Mnuchin guaranteed in September 2017, because most of the benefits from a corporate tax cut flow to workers:

On Fox News, Mnuchin claimed that “most economists believe that over 70% of corporate taxes are paid for by the workers.” At an event in Kentucky, he declared that “over 80% of business taxes is borne by the worker.”

As it has turned out, the best estimate we have for how corporate America spent its $150 billion year 1 windfall from the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act shows that it didn’t plow 70-80% of the proceeds into higher wages and bonuses for its workers. According to Peter Cary and Allan Holmes of the Center for Public Integrity, the actual answer is 6%.

The bulk of the $150 billion the tax cut put into the hands of corporations in 2018 went into shareholder dividends and stock buy-backs, both of which line the pockets of the 10% of Americans who own 84% of the stocks, they wrote in a column for the Guardian (4/30).

Just 6% of the tax savings was spent on workers, according to Just Capital, a not-for-profit that tracks the Russell 1000 index.

GOP TAX LAW SCREWED SURVIVORS’ BENEFITS FOR MILITARY FAMILIES. One of the groups that were hit by the Republican tax bill are families of fallen service members, since survivor benefits paid out to children are now treated like stocks or other inheritances — driving up taxes by thousands of dollars, CNN reported (4/26).

“People are absolutely shocked that this happened, and they weren’t planning for it,” Ashlynne Haycock, deputy director of policy for the military families nonprofit Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), told CNN in an interview. “It has been a severe hardship for surviving families.”

TAPS and several other large veterans’ service organizations are planning to “storm the Hill” right before Memorial Day to lobby members of Congress to change the way benefits are granted to Gold Star families, Haycock said.

It adds another issue to a pile of glitches and mistakes included in the hastily-passed tax bill that lawmakers have had to address after the legislation’s passage. Republicans are already mulling over how to rectify the survivor benefits situation, which drew attention after Task & Purpose, a military-focused publication, first reported the increased tax bills.

Rob Damschen, the Republican communications director for the House Ways and Means Committee, told CNN hiking taxes for survivors benefits was an “unintended consequence” of the tax bill, and that analysts and lawmakers failed to recognize it would negatively affect children of fallen service members beforehand.

Military widow Theresa Jones told Task & Purpose that in past years, she’s paid around $1,150 per year in taxes on her sons’ benefits; this year, it more than quadrupled to $5,400.

But even before the bump, the fact that families had to pay taxes on money the government was giving them in recompense for sending one of their loved ones to their death was pretty galling. Per Task & Purpose:

Military widows and widowers who put their benefits in their child’s name saw a significant spike in their taxes this year. To make matters worse, Jones, along with three other military widows who spoke with Task & Purpose, said they were not aware how much their taxes would increase and were unable to budget or otherwise prepare for the hike in cost.

“It was a very hard pill to swallow, that they’re even taxed; that they have to give money back in general, as kids,” said Jones, who provided Task & Purpose with copies of her tax documents for 2018 and 2017. “I’ve been sitting here for four days trying to figure out why it’s so much more.” (Jack Crosbie of SplinterNews contributed to this report.)

INSLEE ROLLS OUT SWEEPING CLIMATE PLAN, SETTING NEW STANDARD FOR 2020 DEMS. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democratic presidential candidate who has dedicated his entire campaign to addressing the climate crisis, unveiled his first major policy proposal (5/3). The ambitious plan charts a course other presidential contenders may follow as climate change becomes a top issue for the crowded primary field, E.A. Crunden reported at ThinkProgress (5/3).

Calling climate change “the defining challenge of our time” in a statement, Inslee described his proposal as “a bold and aggressive national policy” to slash greenhouse gas emissions and dramatically shift the electrical grid. The 100% Clean Energy for America Plan aims to achieve 100% carbon-neutral electricity, 100% zero-emission new vehicles, and 100% zero-carbon new buildings — all within the next 11 years. The transportation, buildings, and electricity sectors contribute nearly 70% of the nation’s climate pollution.

With more components slated to be released in the coming weeks, Inslee is proposing a “bold 10-year mobilization” to achieve net-zero emissions while creating jobs and bolstering the economy. An alarming report released last fall by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the world has only a little over a decade before crossing a dangerous threshold of global warming likely to spark unprecedented impacts. That report has been a rallying cry for climate activists and serves as the backbone of Inslee’s new plan.

“To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the global community must cut climate pollution in half by 2030, and achieve global net-zero pollution by midcentury,” the plan states, citing the IPCC findings.

The IPCC emphasizes the need for zeroing out emissions by mid-century, but climate advocates have debated the timeline for that undertaking, with some pushing for 2030 as the deadline. The Green New Deal resolution introduced in February by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) does not establish a specific timeframe for reaching net-zero emissions but cites the IPCC report and calls for a “10-year national mobilization” to address climate change.

Inslee’s plan sets a goal of zero emissions from all light-and-medium duty vehicles and buses by 2030, with the same standard for new commercial and residential buildings. It would also establish a 100% Clean Electricity Standard during that timeframe, with a target of completely clean and renewable electricity generation nationwide by 2035. The US more broadly would then be on track to hit a net-zero emissions target by 2045 at the latest.

As a lawmaker in Washington state, Inslee has long advocated for climate action, with mixed success. An intensive carbon pricing ballot initiative backed by the governor failed in 2018, for instance — proponents of the effort say broad grassroots support failed to counter the millions of dollars fossil fuel companies devoted to opposing the measure.

In April, however, the state successfully passed an ambitious bill to achieve 100% clean electricity. Inslee’s new climate plan leans into these transformations underway at the city and state level across the country, where lawmakers are forging ahead with climate action as the Trump administration has stalled.

“We know we can achieve this plan because it’s already happening in states, and in cities, tribal nations, and local communities,” the proposal argues, pointing to policies in California, New Mexico, and Washington, D.C., among others.

Other components of the plan include a pledge to support workers and communities impacted by the shift away from fossil fuels, introducing tax incentives for renewable electricity and other energy components, and retiring the US coal fleet in the next 11 years. Federal lands, waters, and facilities would also be used to propel renewable energy growth; consumers would meanwhile be encouraged to trade in fuel-inefficient vehicles for new, zero-emission models.

According to Inslee’s plan, some components could be implemented using executive authorities and programs already in place, while others would require new legislation. The proposal notes that the various initiatives would receive federal financial backing but does not give an estimated cost.

The Inslee campaign provided ThinkProgress with a list of backers supporting the proposal, including former government officials like Jon Wellinghoff, who served as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) until 2013, along with climate activists and private sector clean energy advocates.

While Inslee is the only candidate dedicating his campaign to climate action, he isn’t the first Democratic contender to release a policy proposal to address the crisis. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Cory Booker (NJ) have released their own, smaller proposals already — Warren’s emphasizes rebutting fossil fuels and protecting public lands, while Booker’s centers on environmental justice. And former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (TX) unveiled his own sweeping plan earlier this week, which would invest trillions of dollars in an intensive effort to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century.

TRUMP MASSIVELY RAISES TARIFFS AGAINST CHINA AT EXPENSE OF US CONSUMERS. President Donald Trump announced (5/6) that he was dramatically increasing tariffs on Chinese goods (5/10), increasing them from 10 to 25% in an effort to hustle along a long-sought trade deal between the two countries. In announcing the change, Luke Barnes noted at ThinkProgress (5/5) the president seemed to misunderstand how tariffs actually work.

“The Tariffs paid to the USA have had little impact on product cost, mostly borne by China,” Trump tweeted. “The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No!” The President added that an extra $325 billion worth of untouched Chinese goods would also soon face tariffs of 25%.

In fact, US consumers pay the costs of these tariffs, as sticker prices go up on consumer goods. Research finds that Chinese exporters rarely lower their prices to absorb the cost of tariffs, and US distributors instead raise their prices to cover the costs, passing those costs on to US consumers.

According to a paper published March by economists Mary Amiti of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Stephen J. Redding of Princeton University and David Weinstein of Columbia University, practically all of the effect of the tariffs “fell on domestic consumers and importers up to now, with no impact so far on the prices received by foreign exporters.” According to their estimates, the total cost of tariffs on importers and consumers was nearly $1.4 billion a month.

In another survey, researchers at the Federal Bank of Atlanta, the University of Chicago and Stanford concluded that tariffs had led to nearly $33 billion worth of reduced investment in the US in 2018 alone.

Trump administration has been in engaged in protracted talks with China over a new trade deal. The main selling point of the deal is that it would supposedly see China purchase $1.2 trillion of US goods over the next six years, including an extra $30 billion a year worth of agricultural exports. But the long-winding negotiations have clearly irritated Trump, and the tariffs were intended to pressure China to speed up the talks ahead of a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (5/8).

In response to Trump’s tariffs, the Chinese have slapped their own tariffs on a number of American goods including dairy, pork and soybeans, the US’s top agricultural export to China.

This, in turn, has devastated US farmers, whose sales of soybeans to China have plummeted 94% since the counter-tariffs. As the Wall Street Journal noted in February, farmers in the Midwest are filing for Chapter 12 bankruptcy at a rate not seen in the last decade.

In response to the crisis farmers are now facing over tariffs, the Trump administration announced a subsidy program for farmers, but it has distributed less than a billion of the $12 billion promised. It was also inactive during the Government shutdown in January and December, further limiting its ability to help struggling farmers.

It’s still unclear whether any new trade deal between China and the US would be able to mitigate the damage that Trump’s tariffs have already wrought.

US OFFICIALS ASSERT ‘NEAR-UNFETTERED AUTHORITY’ TO SEARCH PHONES, MOBILE DEVICES AT BORDER, ACLU SAYS. Government documents and sworn testimony from an American Civil Liberties Union-led lawsuit have revealed that federal immigration officials “are asserting near-unfettered authority to search and seize travelers’ devices at the border, for purposes far afield from the enforcement of immigration and customs laws,” the group says. 

The ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation sued in 2017, saying that “‘warrantless and suspicionless searches’ of electronic devices at US ports of entry violated the First and Fourth amendments,” NPR reported. The groups say that documents and sworn testimony from this lawsuit indicate immigration officials are using the “pretext of the ‘border’ to make an end run around the Constitution” and claim they can search whatever the hell they want to, Gabe Ortiz noted at DailyKos (5/6).

Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement “say they can search a traveler’s electronic devices to find information about someone else,” including family members who may be in the US without authorization. “Both agencies allow officers to retain information from travelers’ electronic devices and share it with other government entities, including state, local, and foreign law enforcement agencies.”

“Crossing the US border shouldn’t mean facing the prospect of turning over years of emails, photos, location data, medical and financial information, browsing history, or other personal information on our mobile devices,” the ACLU continued. “That’s why we’re asking a federal court to rule that border agencies must do what any other law enforcement agency would have to do in order to search electronic devices: get a warrant.”

Meanwhile, it was just in April that the president of the US reportedly told border agents to violate the law and illegally block asylum-seekers at the border, “telling the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection that if he went to jail for blocking those legally seeking asylum, Trump would grant him a pardon.”

TRUMP OFFICIALS HAD ‘NO WAY TO LINK’ MIGRANT KIDS THEY STOLE FROM PARENTS, INTERNAL EMAILS CONFIRM. During the height of media attention on the family separation crisis last June, Trump officials claimed that, sure, they could reunite thousands of parents and children cruelly ripped apart at the southern border, using a “central database.” That was a lie, emails obtained by NBC News show. There was no such database, and the information they did have could reunite only 60 families out of the thousands, Gabe Ortiz noted at DailyKos (5/2).

Publicly, NBC News reports, a Homeland Security fact sheet from June 2018 claimed the administration had “a process established to ensure that family members know the location of their children,” including “a central database which HHS and DHS can access and update.” But the internal emails confirm the findings of an October 2018 report from the Homeland Security watchdog that “found no evidence of such a database.”

As was evident when the administration began scrambling to reunite the families it had ripped apart. “’[I]n short, no, we do not have any linkages from parents to [children], save for a handful,’ a Health and Human Services official told a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement on June 23, 2018,” NBC News reports. “We have a list of parent alien numbers but no way to link them to children.” That top ICE official, Matthew Albence, is now acting director of ICE. Because what better way to punish an official for cruel incompetence than to promote him?

”You know when we put this out tonight, a couple people said to me, ‘did we already know this?’” MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff told Chris Hayes (5/1). “Yes, we did know that there was never a system, the HHS and the DHS inspector general made that very clear, as have subsequent testimonies, but we’ve never seen the behind-the-scenes, basically scrambling to figure out how to literally fill a spreadsheet.”

“And why this is particularly troubling today,” Soboroff continued, “Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, has said in multiple interviews … that the intent was always to reunify all of these thousands of kids that were taken away from their parents. Well, if the intent was always to reunify, why do you have people that are supposed to be responsible for tracking and putting these children back together having absolutely no idea what’s going on?”

The administration wasn’t bothering to track babies and children, but they did track the Americans who last year protested family separation, more internal documents obtained by the American Immigration Council have revealed. LookingGlass, a private cybersecurity company, gathered information on the June rallies, including Facebook Event IDs and logistics such as time and location, to share with Homeland Security officials. Too bad none of that happened for these kidnapped children.

As many as 55 of these kids torn from families in this humanitarian disaster remain in US custody, NBC News said, and when officials such as Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar testified to Congress that he “could at the stroke of keystrokes … within seconds could find any child within our care for any parent,” the fact that not even one top administration official could be shamed into resigning over this crime against humanity is a disgrace. People belong in jail over this. Family separation remains a crisis.

SUPER-MAJORITY OF ARAB YOUTH IN POLL SAY RELIGION TOO IMPORTANT IN PUBLIC LIFE. A just-released survey of youth (aged 18-24) in 16 Arab countries has found that 66% of them say there is too much religion in public life, Juan Cole noted (5/2).

Further, 79%, almost 4 in 5, say that the Arab world desperately needs to reform its religious institutions. Fully half said that religion is a brake on development in the Arab world.

Assuming that they don’t change their minds as they age, members of the Gen-Z appear likely to craft societies that are significantly less religious than current ones.

“The figure came as a surprise to me,” Cole wrote. “When I was researching ‘The New Arabs,’ I noticed that Lebanese and Tunisian youth were significantly less observant than their elders. My colleague, Mark Tessler, and his partners found that in Sunni Iraq in 2012, three-quarters of the respondents wanted less religious influence on politics (which makes it extremely ironic that they were two years later taken over by ISIL). But Egyptians, for instance, reported themselves very religious.

“It is possible that the events of the Arab Spring and especially episodes such as the unpopular Muslim Brotherhood administration in Egypt 2012-2013, the turn of Syrian rebels to extremism, and the rise and dramatic fall of ISIL have pushed this cohort of youth more toward a secular vision of society and encouraged skepticism of religious institutions.

“It is also possible that the Youth Revolts of 2011-2013, and now again in 2019 in Algeria and the Sudan (the latter was not surveyed) made the youth more skeptical of religious institutions, many of which sided with the dictators.

“Another possible contributor to this change is the influence of Muhammad Bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates and Muhammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. They have spent a lot of money and political capital trying to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood, and perhaps they have succeeded beyond their widest imaginings. The entire Egyptian government is ranged against that kind of populist political Islam, and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been demanding reforms of Sunni religious institutions in Egypt.”

Another finding: in 2015-2019, the youth who said social media is a significant source of news went from a quarter to 80%.

As for the problems facing youth in Arab societies, they ranked rising cost of living at 56%, then unemployment at 45%. Only about a quarter worried about lack of democracy.

The web site says the survey “covers five of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia), the Levant (Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories) and Yemen. The survey did not include Syria due to the civil unrest in the country.”

YEMEN WAR IS ONE OF THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE SINCE THE COLD WAR: UN. A recent UN report sheds light on the devastating humanitarian and economic impact of the war in Yemen and how it sets back human development there more than 20 years, Anadolu reports, via Middle East Monitor (5/2).

The report by the organization’s development program (UNDP) highlights the humanitarian situation there, which was one of the worst in the world even prior to the war, but has gotten worse since tensions escalated.

With its 30 million people, Yemen ranked 153 on the Human Development Index, 138 in extreme poverty, 147 in life expectancy, 172 in educational attainment and was already on the World Bank’s low-middle income category, according to the report.

Experts suggest “Yemen would not have achieved any of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” set out by the UN to reach by 2030 even in the absence of conflict.

The UNDP’s Yemen representative, Auke Lootsma, said “even if there were to be peace tomorrow, it could take decades for Yemen to return to pre-conflict levels of developments.”

The report paints a gloomy picture for the foreseeable future. If the war were to end in 2019, the UNDP projects it would account for 233,000 deaths (0.8% of the 2019 population), including 140,000 deaths of children under the age of 5; with 102,000 combat deaths and 131,000 indirect deaths due to lack of food, health services and infrastructure.

It estimates infant mortality will further exacerbate — 331,000 deaths of children under 5 — with one child death every 7 minutes and 482,000 deaths in total if the conflict continues until 2022.

TRUMP ORGANIZATIONS SQUEEZE TAXPAYERS FOR EVERY LAST TRUMP-DEMANDED DIME. The news that Trump’s team commandeered the Mar-a-Lago bar, kicked out the bartender over “confidentiality” concerns, drank $1,000 worth of hard liquor, and left it to taxpayers to pay the bill is ... is ... you know, what the hell do you even say about that? “Hunter” wondered at DailyKos (5/2).

ProPublica reviewed correspondence between the Trump Organization and the State Department and it’s all a ridiculous wreck of taxpayer-funded self-dealing in which “business owner” Donald Trump and associates raids the federal purse on a now-regular, barely-raises-eyebrows basis. And you’d better believe “business owner” Donald Trump is sticking it to taxpayers good and hard as his company tries to squeeze the Secret Service, the State Department, and the rest of government for every last dime and then some.

The emails show that the president’s company refused to agree to what was essentially a bulk-purchase agreement with the federal government, and that it charged the maximum allowable federal rate for hotel rooms. The Trump Organization could be obstinate when it came to rates for, say, function rooms at Mar-a-Lago, a problem that was eased when the president signed a law lifting the maximum “micro-purchase” the government can make.

Oh, sure. Federal agencies were previously barred from paying such obviously crooked prices for services—so the obvious answer is to make those higher rates legal. Dodged a bullet on that one, Mar-a-Lago.

Why the hell are we even debating this? Why the hell are we not even debating this? A sitting (Republican, of course) president is making cash money off his office and the self-described (Republican, of course) policers of “waste, fraud and abuse” are rhetorically disemboweling themselves in their efforts to declare all of it Good Now, Actually. It is kleptocracy as governing principle.

To be sure, it’s difficult to focus on this sort of petty max-rate charging of the taxpayers by a sitting president’s own company when it is forever overshadowed by the same “president” obstructing an investigation into Russian espionage, regularly siding with dictatorships over his own intelligence community and being so devoted to regular lying that nobody is quite sure whether the man is obsessively dishonest on purpose or is in the throes of dementia. But if we ever come out of this madness, everyone who willingly spent so much as a single meal at Trump’s own properties during his tenure in the Oval Office should be barred from government service permanently, full stop.

If you can’t figure out why it’s crooked to pay into a sitting president’s ongoing “business” ventures, after all, you are quite obviously one of the crooks. It’s not a bloody close call.

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2019

Populist.com