Category Archives: News

Trump’s long history of seeking a politically inconvenient business deal in Russia

Philip Bump writes: On Sunday night, The Washington Post reported that President Trump’s private business was actively pursuing a real estate deal in Russia in late 2015, only to abandon it shortly before the 2016 presidential primaries. The revelation adds a new layer of context to Trump’s repeated insistence over the past year that he has no business ties to the country, suggesting that his avowed indifference toward making money in Russia was a function less of resolve than of circumstance.

Broadly, Trump’s attitude toward business in Russia mirrors his behavior when it comes to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Before he was a political candidate, Trump repeatedly said that he had a relationship with the Russian president. (Among the examples he cited as evidence he knew Putin? They were both on the same episode of “60 Minutes” — though Trump was filmed in the United States and Putin in Russia.) After that relationship became politically inconvenient, his tune changed sharply. In the third presidential debate, he preemptively responded to a question about Russian interference in the election by saying, “I don’t know Putin.”

As we did with Trump’s claims about knowing Putin, in light of the most recent Post reporting, it’s worth reviewing Trump’s long history of seeking a business deal in Russia — and his change in tune once such a deal would no longer be personally helpful. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Iran, Turkey move to re-establish role as regional backbone

Ali Hashem writes: Iran and Turkey are among the oldest rivals in the Middle East. This rivalry between the former Ottoman and Persian empires has calmed in recent decades, yet, with the spark of the Arab Spring, the two nations with opposing alliances revived their bitter race for influence and power in the region.

It was clear that the 1823 and 1847 Treaties of Erzurum still have an effect on today’s Turkey and Iran. Therefore, despite all the tension, blood and proxy collision, Ankara and Tehran remained resilient and have always looked for ways to reach compromises. Political relations between the two preserved a level of warmth. Now that the wars in Iraq and Syria, from an Iranian point of view, are coming closer to an end, a common threat in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region is prompting both sides to put aside differences and unify efforts to prevent a domino effect that might harm their national security — namely the Kurdish dream of an independent state.

On Aug. 15, Iran’s Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri made a rare official visit to Turkey to meet his counterpart, Gen. Hulusi Akar, and senior Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to Bagheri, the visit was “necessary to exchange views and more cooperation on the military subjects and different regional issues, issues related to the two countries’ security, security of borders and fighting against terrorism.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Climate change magnified the effects of Harvey

Michael E Mann writes: What can we say about the role of climate change in the unprecedented disaster that is unfolding in Houston with Hurricane #Harvey?

There are certain climate change-related factors that we can, with great confidence, say worsened the flooding.

Sea level rise attributable to climate change (some is due to coastal subsidence due to human disturbance e.g. oil drilling) is more than half a foot over the past few decades (see http://www.insurancejournal.com/…/sou…/2017/05/31/452704.htm for a decent discussion).

That means that the storm surge was a half foot higher than it would have been just decades ago, meaning far more flooding and destruction. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: The worst fears of flooding have been realized with Harvey. Close to three feet of rain has already fallen in Southeast Texas, and there’s still more to come. It’s the most extreme rainfall the region has ever witnessed.

On Sunday evening, brand new bands of torrential rain were forming southwest of Houston and appeared on track to strike the city overnight. Rainfall rates will almost certainly exceed three inches per hour over the already-submerged city. That threat prompted the National Weather Service to reissue the flash flood emergency — the strongest flood warning it can issue — in effect through around 1 a.m. Central Time.

Two-day rainfall totals have reached or exceeded 20 inches across the entire Houston metro area. Some locations are approaching 30 inches. The swift inundation of water has turned rivers, bayous and streams into lakes — including those that run through the city of Houston itself.

“Catastrophic flooding in the Houston metropolitan area is expected to worsen,” the National Weather Service said Sunday. It added: “This event is unprecedented and all impacts are unknown and beyond anything experienced.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump’s business sought deal on a Trump Tower in Moscow while he ran for president

The Washington Post reports: While Donald Trump was running for president in late 2015 and early 2016, his company was pursuing a plan to develop a massive Trump Tower in Moscow, according to several people familiar with the proposal and new records reviewed by Trump Organization lawyers.

As part of the discussions, a Russian-born real estate developer urged Trump to come to Moscow to tout the proposal and suggested that he could get President Vladimir Putin to say “great things” about Trump, according to several people who have been briefed on his correspondence.

The developer, Felix Sater, predicted in a November 2015 email that he and Trump Organization leaders would soon be celebrating — both one of the biggest residential projects in real estate history and Donald Trump’s election as president, according to two of the people with knowledge of the exchange.

Sater wrote to Trump Organization Executive Vice President Michael Cohen “something to the effect of, ‘Can you believe two guys from Brooklyn are going to elect a president?’ ” said one person briefed on the email exchange. Sater emigrated from what was then the Soviet Union when he was 6 and grew up in Brooklyn. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Exxon misled the public on climate change, study says

The New York Times reports: As Exxon Mobil responded to news reports in 2015 that said that the company had spread doubt about the risks of climate change despite its own extensive research in the field, it urged the public to “read the documents” for themselves.

Now two Harvard researchers have done just that, reviewing nearly 200 documents representing Exxon’s research and its public statements and concluding that the company “misled the public” about climate change even as its own scientists were recognizing greenhouse gas emissions as a risk to the planet.

The Harvard researchers — Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science whose work has focused on the energy and tobacco industries, and Geoffrey Supran, a postdoctoral fellow — published their peer-reviewed paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters on Wednesday. They also published their findings in an Opinion article in Wednesday’s New York Times.

They found that Exxon’s climate change studies, published from 1977 to 2014, were in line with the scientific thinking of the time. Some 80 percent of the company’s research and internal communications acknowledged that climate change was real and was caused by humans.

But 80 percent of Exxon’s statements to the broader public, which reached a much larger audience, expressed doubt about climate change. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Texas flood disaster: Harvey has unloaded 9 trillion gallons of water

The Washington Post reports: Words cannot describe the catastrophic situation unfolding in Houston and Southeast Texas. As daylight dawned this morning, the scope of the devastation began to come into clearer focus, and it will probably take months, if not years, to fully recover from damage of this magnitude.

The total rainfall from the storm is likely to tally up to a widespread 15 to 30 inches, with a few localized spots picking up 50 inches or more. Many textbooks have the 60-inch mark as a once-in-a-million-year recurrence interval, meaning that if any spots had that amount of rainfall, they would essentially be dealing with a once-in-a-million-year event.

Regardless of whether we reach that 60-inch benchmark, “it’s fair to say it will produce more rain than we have ever seen before in the U.S. from a tropical system and over the fourth-largest city in the country,” said Eric Fisher, chief meteorologist at WBZ-TV in Boston. “Looking at those two factors, it will likely be an unprecedented flooding disaster affecting a massive number of people. It’s hard, if not impossible, to compare this to any other storm. It may stand alone when all is said and done in terms of rainfall.”

Putting this much rainfall into perspective is challenging; after all, the sheer volume of water is incredibly tough to visualize. Fortunately, we crunched the numbers — here’s how they stack up.

So far, just the rain that has already fallen across the greater Houston area and Southeast Texas tallies to 9 trillion gallons. That’s only what has already come down, and keep in mind that 5 trillion to 10 trillion additional gallons could fall before things wrap up midweek.

The 9 trillion gallons of water dispensed so far is enough to fill the entire Great Salt Lake in Salt Lake City — twice! It would take nine days straight for the Mississippi River to drain into Houston and equal the amount of water already there. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

ICE left 50 immigrant women and kids stranded at a bus station before hurricane Harvey struck

BuzzFeed reports: Federal immigration authorities left about 50 immigrant women and children, most of them asylum-seekers from Central America, stranded at a downtown San Antonio bus station after service was canceled Friday due to Hurricane Harvey.

Barbie Hurtado, a community organizer with RAICES, a nonprofit that provides legal aid to immigrant families, said Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who represents San Antonio, had called immigration enforcement officials the day before to tell them not to drop families off.

“Knowing that, they just dropped them off,” Hurtado said. “These are women and children who have been released from family detention with no money, cell phones, and don’t speak English.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Mexican troops saved American lives after Katrina. Would Trump let them do it after Harvey?

Max Bearak writes: The devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey is already apparent, even though forecasters say the storm may be only half done dumping rainfall totals measured in feet over the Texas and Louisiana coasts. In possibly the most starkly worded National Weather Service announcement imaginable, the agency said Sunday that “this event is unprecedented” and “beyond anything experienced.”

For many Americans, Harvey is bringing back memories of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Nearly 2,000 people died in the aftermath of that storm. The U.S. government and Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Katrina was widely criticized, but Americans came together to offer housing, clothing, meals and monetary help to the affected. President George W. Bush even accepted a huge offer of aid from Mexico.

The aid Mexico sent was no small thing — it was an extraordinary gesture, and it may have saved many lives. Marking the first time that Mexican troops had set foot on U.S. soil since the Mexican-American War in 1846, President Vicente Fox sent an army convoy and a naval vessel laden with food, water and medicine. By the end of their three-week operation in Louisiana and Mississippi, the Mexicans had served 170,000 meals, helped distribute more than 184,000 tons of supplies and conducted more than 500 medical consultations. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

UK: As Labour becomes party of soft Brexit, hard battles lie ahead

The Guardian reports: After a summer during which arguments over Brexit have raged inside both the Tory and Labour parties, and Brussels and London have conspicuously failed to find any substantial common ground, formal talks on Britain’s departure from the EU in March 2019 resume in the Belgian capital on Monday.

The Brexit secretary, David Davis, will no doubt bounce into the meeting with his characteristic grin and the body language of a pent-up boxer itching to land the first blow. But the context for the latest round of discussions with his EU counterpart, Michel Barnier, could hardly be less propitious.

In an attempt to convey an impression of clarity where little exists, Davis’s Whitehall department has spent the past fortnight issuing a series of position papers spelling out Britain’s latest negotiating stances on key issues – including this country’s future relationship with the customs union and the European court of justice (ECJ), and its plans for the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, after the UK strikes out on its own.

With some justification Labour’s Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer describes the papers as “bland and non-committal”. Many politicians, independent experts and lawyers in London, Brussels and other EU capitals have dismissed them as a “wish list” that says more about irreconcilable divisions in the Tory party over Brexit than it does about realistic options for progress.

The message that rings out from the papers is that the government wants to leave the customs union and single market from March 2019, end pretty much all jurisdiction of the ECJ from that time on, no longer have to accept free movement of people and workers, and pay no further annual financial contribution to Brussels. That is the part the hardline Tory Brexiters want to hear. The part about a clean break.

But to appease “soft-Brexit” Tories and much of the business community, who traditionally support the Conservatives, the documents also spell out how Britain wants a transition period of around two years after Brexit, with maximum access to the single market – and arrangements that in effect mirror those of the customs union. In essence Davis will go into the critical next phase of talks in Brussels seeking to retain all the benefits of European economic union while insisting the UK cannot accept any of the rules that underpin it, or pay a single euro for doing so. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Trump asked Sessions about closing case against Arpaio, an ally since ‘birtherism’

The Washington Post reports: As Joseph Arpaio’s federal case headed toward trial this past spring, President Trump wanted to act to help the former Arizona county sheriff who had become a campaign-trail companion and a partner in their crusade against illegal immigration.

The president asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions whether it would be possible for the government to drop the criminal case against Arpaio, but was advised that would be inappropriate, according to three people with knowledge of the conversation.

After talking with Sessions, Trump decided to let the case go to trial, and if Arpaio was convicted, he could grant clemency.

So the president waited, all the while planning to issue a pardon if Arpaio was found in contempt of court for defying a federal judge’s order to stop detaining people merely because he suspected them of being undocumented immigrants. Trump was, in the words of one associate, “gung-ho about it.”

“We knew the president wanted to do this for some time now and had worked to prepare for whenever the moment may come,” said one White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the action. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

House Speaker Paul Ryan criticizes Donald Trump’s pardon for Joe Arpaio

The Wall Street Journal reports: House Speaker Paul Ryan on Saturday criticized President Donald Trump for pardoning a former Arizona sheriff, Joe Arpaio, becoming the highest-ranking Republican to object to the move.

“The speaker does not agree with the decision,” said Ryan spokesman Doug Andres. “Law-enforcement officials have a special responsibility to respect the rights of everyone in the United States. We should not allow anyone to believe that responsibility is diminished by this pardon.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Mr. Ryan’s statement. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Why Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio isn’t like most presidential pardons

Andrew Rudalevige writes: Last month, as President Trump made broad claims about his power to pardon, I noted that he “may find out that something can be both legal and, simultaneously, an impeachable offense.” Last night, as the president issued a pardon to former Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt of court, some commentators argued that this was exactly the case.

Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman, for example, wrote after Trump’s belligerent Phoenix rally speech that such a pardon would represent an “assault on the federal judiciary, the Constitution and the rule of law itself” for which the “remedy is impeachment.”

It is hard to gauge the political fallout of the president’s decision — announced as it was late on a Friday night during an impending hurricane. Normally, though, as political scientist Jeffrey Crouch’s book on the pardon power makes clear, pardons are granted for two reasons: either to provide mercy or correct a miscarriage of justice, in an individual case; or on more general grounds based on public policy.

Trump’s pardon of Arpaio does not fit either category very well.

As regards mercy: Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist that pardons were needed; otherwise, “justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.” Presidents have sometimes pardoned elderly convicts, for instance, rather than see them die in prison.

Arpaio is 85, but he had not even yet been sentenced; that hearing was set for October. As a procedural matter, the guidelines of the Justice Department’s office of the pardon attorney — not binding on the president, of course, and not consulted in this instance — state that petitions for clemency are normally considered only after five years have passed after a conviction. (Further, in considering such petitions, “The extent to which a petitioner has accepted responsibility for his or her criminal conduct and made restitution to its victims are important considerations.”)

Pardons also serve as a check against the judicial branch, when the president feels a grave miscarriage of justice has occurred. At his Phoenix rally, Trump seemed to make this claim, saying that “Sheriff Joe was convicted for doing his job.”

The problem with that, though, is that Arpaio was convicted for doing the opposite of his job. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The year I spent in Joe Arpaio’s tent jail was hell. He should never walk free

Francisco Chairez writes: During the sweltering summer, the temperature could reach 115 or 120 degrees. I was in the tents when we hit 120. It was impossible to stay cool in the oppressive heat. Everyone would strip down to their underwear. There was no cold water, only water from vending machines; and eventually, the machines would run out. People would faint; some had heatstroke. That summer, ambulances came about three times. One man died in his bed.

But the winter was even worse. During the winter, there were no heaters. Most jackets and heavily insulated pants weren’t allowed; they don’t want you to be comfortable.

When the temperatures dropped, we were forced to come up with makeshift ways to keep ourselves warm. The showers were kept scalding hot during both summer and winter. We hated to shower, but we would fill our empty water bottles up with the nearly boiling water and put the bottles between our blankets when it was freezing outside. We also would save the plastic bags we found when we cleaned up the jail yard and wrap our feet with them, tucking hot water bottles inside to keep our feet warm while we slept.

Still, it was freezing, achingly cold. I was in so much pain that winter that now, when I’m cold, it reminds me of being there.

Arpaio saved worse abuse for others. Those who were in full detention had to wear pink socks, underwear and flip-flops. They ate peanut butter and bread, and the only other meal they received was baloney and bread. They also had the option of “slob,” which was an unknown, disgusting substance that looked like some kind of thick stew and tasted like cardboard. (The poor people in the work furlough program who couldn’t pay for vending-machine food had no choice but to eat it.)

It’s hard to recall memories of that year. When I heard Friday that President Trump had decided to pardon Arpaio, I was disgusted, dispirited and disappointed in the American political system.

I am not ashamed of what I did: I committed a crime and I paid my dues. How ironic it is, that the immigrant who committed a minor criminal act has to live with a conviction on his record for the rest of his life, while a criminal like Arpaio gets to walk away unscathed for his crimes, which are greater in scale and severity. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Washington lobbying firms receive subpoenas as part of Russia probe

The Washington Post reports: Lawyers for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election, have issued subpoenas to several prominent Washington lobbying firms as the probe examines the finances of two former Trump campaign advisers, according to people with knowledge of the requests.

The subpoenas asked the firms to answer questions and provide records regarding their interactions with the consulting firms led by Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to President Trump, and Paul Manafort, former chairman of the Trump presidential campaign, these people said.

The requests suggest that Mueller’s investigators are looking closely at Manafort and Flynn, both of whom face possible legal jeopardy for allegedly failing to disclose that foreign governments or parties may have been the beneficiaries of their consulting and lobbying work, as they seek potential links between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The disturbing lessons of Trump’s shameful Arpaio pardon

Scott Lemieux writes: During his very loosely hinged extemporaneous remarks in Phoenix on Tuesday, President Trump strongly hinted that he would pardon the infamous former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. On Friday evening, with a frightening hurricane descending on Texas, Trump made it official. The decision to issue his first pardon to a public official who made his reputation, such as it is, through race-baiting and a contempt for both legal restraints and basic human decency tells us a lot about Trump — and none of it is good.

It is highly relevant that Trump and Arpaio first became allies while Trump was rising to prominence within the Republican Party by pushing the racist conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. The Arizona sheriff actually launched a farcical investigation into Obama’s birth certificate, wasting taxpayer money to build his cred with his resentful white supporters. That Arpaio and Trump would become mutual admirers was inevitable.

It should go without saying that Arpaio is a terrible candidate for a pardon. If you have any doubts, read this chilling 2009 profile of Arpaio by William Finnegan in The New Yorker. Arpaio’s first claim to local fame was to make the conditions of imprisonment for inmates under his jurisdiction as inhumane as possible — housing thousands of people in tents next to cites like dumps and waste disposal plants in the brutal Arizona heat. He fed inmates for 30 cents a meal, two meals a day, and then made the Food Network one of three channels available to prisoners. He put many people who were being held for trial and had not been convicted of any crime to work on chain gangs. Under his watch, guards were so consistently cruel to inmates that the county had amassed more than $40 million in civil damages from lawsuits. And he also engaged in egregious racial profiling when detaining people suspected of being illegal immigrants.

Arpaio’s focus on abusing prisoners and arbitrarily detaining people of Latin American descent also made his “tough on crime” reputation grossly misleading. The resources wasted on his cruel publicity stunts took money away from law enforcement, slowing response times and leading to (among other problems) hundreds of botched or perfunctory sex crimes investigations. He did, however, find the time to file frivolous charges against two journalists who were looking into his suspicious property dealings, leading to another huge legal settlement for Maricopa County’s taxpayers to pay off. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Sebastian Gorka is forced out as White House adviser, officials say

The New York Times reports: Sebastian Gorka, an outspoken adviser to President Trump and lightning rod for controversy, has been forced out of his position at the White House, two administration officials said on Friday.

One of the officials said that the president’s chief of staff, John F. Kelly, had telegraphed his lack of interest in keeping Mr. Gorka during internal discussions over the last week.

Mr. Gorka, a deputy assistant to the president, had been on vacation for at least the last two weeks, that official said.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about personnel issues.

The Federalist, a conservative website, published portions of what it called a resignation letter written by Mr. Gorka. It quoted him as saying that given which “forces” were on the rise in the White House, the best way for him to support the president was from outside it.

The White House, seeking to blunt Mr. Gorka’s claim that he had resigned, put out an unattributed statement saying that he no longer works in the administration, but that he did not resign. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

North Korea fires short-range missiles from its east coast

The New York Times reports: North Korea launched several short-range missiles off its coast on Saturday, damping hopes in Washington and South Korea that the country would restrain from provocations to help pave the way for dialogue.

The missiles blasted off from a coastal launching site and flew about 155 miles to the northeast before falling into the sea, the South Korean military said in a statement. Military officials were analyzing data to determine what type of missiles were used, it said.

The launchings occurred in a period of escalating tensions between the government of Kim Jong-un and the Trump administration. American and South Korean forces began twice-yearly war games on Monday aimed at preparing for a possible attack by the North. The games continue until the end of August.

The United States Pacific Command detected and tracked three short-range ballistic missile launchings, according to a spokesman, Cmdr. Dave Benham.

Commander Benham initially said the first and third missiles failed in flight, but he later retracted his statement and instead agreed with the South Korean military that the missiles flew about 155 miles. The second missile appears to have blown up almost immediately, he added. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail