Obama's attorney general Eric Holder, asked about Jeff Sessions, rebukes Trump - The Washington Post

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obama's attorney general Eric Holder, asked about Jeff Sessions, rebukes Trump - The Washington Post:

The Right Can't Fight the Future

"It seems axiomatic that the past and the future cannot exist at the same time. Thanks to the space-time continuum, people from different centuries cannot live simultaneously. The same goes for a nation, which cannot survive pulling toward the future and toward the past at once.



The United States is at a fulcrum. We are two countries—one lurching for the future, one yearning for the past—that cannot live together, because we can’t be both things. Donald Trump may have brought on the breaking point, but he didn’t create the schism. It was already there for him to exploit. It was there during enslavement, when President Lincoln declared that the country could not survive half slave, half free, and it took a civil war to force these two nations: one brutal but pastoral, the other urban and focused on finance and technological innovation, often with its own kind of cruelty, to remain under one roof.



Today, Trump is speeding us toward decline—the very decline his supporters so feared. His imperious leadership; his family’s grubby pretense at royalty and the apparent mad dash among members of his cabinet and White House team to hawk their positions for cash and luxuries have the feel of a decrepit regime looting the palace in its final days; stuffing the silver in their coats as they flee into exile.



Trump’s announcement of anachronistic trade tariffs this week was portrayed as out of the blue, but it was no such thing. Trump ran on ending multilateral trade agreements and recreating an America of the distant past that culls every human and material resource from within. Republicans who are now in full blown freakout over a potential trade war voted for exactly what they’re getting.



In every way, Donald Trump is a president built for the past; a benighted, late 19th Century figure who spun his supporters a tale that he could restore a bygone era when coal fires burned, factories hummed, steel mills belched out soot and opportunity and a (white) man with a sturdy back, a high school diploma and a song in his heart could buy a little house, marry a little wife and have 3 cherry-cheeked kids he didn’t ever have to cook or clean for, plus if he can afford it, a hot mistress on the side. Trump is the slovenly but brash, gold-plated emblem of a time when in the imagination of his followers, black women hummed a tune while they cleaned your house or did the washing, black men tipped their hat on the street but didn’t dare look you in the eye, and neither would dream of moving in next door. A time when women asked their husbands for an allowance, not their boss for a promotion, men were “allowed to be men” complete with ribald jokes and a slap on the fanny for the pretty secretary at work, and there were no gays, no trans people, no birth control … they somehow just didn’t exist! The rural folks were the salt of the earth and we only let in “a certain kind of immigrant” whose only goal was to shake off his ethnicity and “assimilate.” Everyone went to (separate) church on Sundays and everyone “got along.” It’s a plasticine world that for many must feel like it truly existed, though of course it never did.



Going backward, to a world without ambiguity on race, gender and work is a powerfully attractive idea, particularly for those who fear losing their cultural and social hegemony as the nation browns, and their economic ascendancy as technology creates new industries they scarcely understand.



But here’s the thing: the past really is past. Coal is still a dying industry and America will never again have an industrial revolution. It’s other countries’ turn to do that now. Black and brown people aren’t giving up our dignity, including the right to protest and to survive mundane encounters with police. Immigrants aren’t going away (and in fact we need them to keep the economy and the safety net flush). LGBT people aren’t going back into the closet. And women are staying in the workforce, with many aiming to become the CEO, while insisting on hanging onto our reproductive liberty. There is indeed a sizable minority of Americans who want to go back to the old times. But we aren’t going back..."



The Right Can't Fight the Future

Canada, top exporter of steel and aluminum to U.S., ‘flabbergasted’ by Trump’s tariff proposals - The Washington Post

"OTTAWA — Canadians reacted with a mixture of anger, confusion and resignation this week to President Trump’s promise to hit U.S. imports of steel and aluminum with hefty tariffs, upending decades of economic cooperation and integration.



“We’re pretty consistently flabbergasted that Canada is at the top of the hit parade of trade villains” in Trump’s eyes, said Douglas Porter, chief economist at the Bank of Montreal.



Under the Trump policies announced Thursday, steel imported into the United States would be slapped with a 25 percent tariff and aluminum with a 10 percent tariff. The announcement sent shudders through world markets and prompted a global outcry, with European allies and others threatening retaliation.



Trump has often accused China of forcing U.S. steel and aluminum companies to fold by inundating the market with cheaper materials. But Canada is the largest exporter of steel and aluminum to the United States, supplying $7.2 billion of aluminum and $4.3 billion of steel to the United States last year..."



Canada, top exporter of steel and aluminum to U.S., ‘flabbergasted’ by Trump’s tariff proposals - The Washington Post

Trade Wars Are Destructive. Of Course Trump Wants One. - The New York Times

"President Trump has been spoiling for a trade war since before his election. Now, he has taken the first meaningful step with his decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. And, as with so many other policies he has supported, he appears to have little understanding of this one.



Invoking a rarely used law that allows the president to restrict trade on national security grounds, Mr. Trump said he would impose a 25 percent tariff on steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum. He made the announcement on Thursday at a hastily convened meeting with executives of those two industries. Many White House aides, including Mr. Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, appeared to be caught off guard by the decision; on Wednesday, Mr. Cohn had warned that he might resign if Mr. Trump went through with the tariff plan...."



Trade Wars Are Destructive. Of Course Trump Wants One. - The New York Times

Jared Kushner Flames Out - The New York Times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 "TIES THAT BIND: PART 2

Jared Kushner Flames Out

By The Editorial Board

March 1, 2018

This is the second part of an editorial series on nepotism in the White House. Read more on the history of nepotism and politics here, and on Ivanka Trump’s role here.

For a Middle East negotiator, President Trump could have chosen a seasoned envoy trusted by all stakeholders and fluent in the region’s nuance. Instead he appointed the heir to an opaque Manhattan real estate empire with deep ties to Israel who boasts that, as a businessman, “I don’t care about the past.”

To lead his initiative on government innovation, Mr. Trump could have named a dynamic authority on technology and entrepreneurship. Instead he chose someone who failed in an expensive effort to bring a New York newspaper into the digital age.

When selecting his closest adviser, Mr. Trump could have chosen from among seasoned and wise strategists. Instead, he picked a political novice with no experience in government.

For all of these crucial roles, Mr. Trump turned to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Though Mr. Trump voices high praise for Mr. Kushner’s talent, the fact that he’s family is qualification enough for a president obsessed with close-lipped loyalty and uninterested in policy unless it benefits himself.

So one year in, what has Mr. Kushner accomplished? The answers point to why, from the nation’s founding to the present day, the architects of American democracy have tried so mightily to restrict the hiring of presidential relatives. Mr. Kushner’s achievements have not only been paltry, but he is directly implicated in some of the president’s most destructive — and self-destructive — decisions, as well as in some of the most serious accusations of self-dealing that have been made against the administration.

For more than two centuries, the principle that federal officials would be selected on the basis of merit, not heredity, has been protected as much by tradition, cultural norms and a desire to avoid the appearance of impropriety as it has been by law. That has proved an insufficient bulwark against an insecure, ignorant president, and his administration, and the American people are now paying the price.

What a liability Mr. Kushner has proved to be. American officials have intercepted conversations in which at least four countries, including China and the United Arab Emirates, discussed ways to take advantage of Mr. Kushner’s indebtedness, naïveté and ignorance of foreign policy to further their interests, according to The Washington Post. This week, The Times reported that Kushner Companies received hundreds of millions of dollars in loans through American companies, including Citigroup and the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, after their top executives met with Mr. Kushner in the White House. The Qatari government’s investment fund was a major investor in Apollo’s real estate trust.

This was all occurring while Mr. Kushner had access to top-secret intelligence, despite having failed to secure a permanent security clearance. His faulty disclosures of his financial interests and foreign contacts and his indebtedness have most likely held up his clearance for more than a year. His access was downgraded this week from top secret to secret, hardly reassuring.

Mr. Kushner leads the Office of American Innovation. This was once a forum for seeking ideas from the nation’s top corporate executives, who served in advisory roles. But most of them resigned after Mr. Trump defended neo-Nazi protesters in the aftermath of a deadly riot in Charlottesville, Va. The office’s effort to continue the overhaul of outmoded government computer networks, begun under President Obama, has been slowed, according to people working on the project, partly because many government agencies lack chief information officers and other experts to implement the change. Mr. Kushner is partly responsible for the vacancies. Even though Chris Christie, then governor of New Jersey, was running a credible presidential transition, Mr. Kushner helped oust him. (When Mr. Christie was a United States attorney he sent Mr. Kushner’s father, Charles, to federal prison for tax evasion, illegal campaign donation and witness tampering.) Of the nearly 640 key Senate-confirmed positions that President Trump can appoint, fewer than half have been confirmed — the most laggard staffing record in decades.

The innovation office was also supposed to focus on the opioid crisis, but a comprehensive list of recommendations written by a presidential commission last year are mostly gathering dust.

Mr. Kushner holds a broad foreign policy portfolio, with responsibility for Mexico, Canada, China, and Middle East peace efforts. The Kushner family’s friendship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the Kushner Companies’ extensive business ties to Israel fueled skepticism among Palestinian leaders. Any hopes of progress were effectively dashed when the president recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a coup for Israel for which the United States got nothing in return.

Finally, there’s Mr. Kushner’s role as senior presidential adviser. Mr. Kushner’s multiple contacts with Kremlin-connected Russians while helping to run Mr. Trump’s campaign and transition are now part of the special counsel’s inquiry into whether Trump operatives colluded with Russia’s effort to swing the campaign in Mr. Trump’s favor. Fortified by Mr. Kushner’s advice, Mr. Trump fired F.B.I. Director James Comey, hoping to derail the investigation. This colossally foolish decision led to Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel, and the beginning of a criminal investigation that could range widely through Team Trump’s finances and connections.

Mr. Kushner pushed for the hiring of Paul Manafort as Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, despite Mr. Manafort’s history of shadowy lobbying contracts with Kremlin allies. He also backed Michael Flynn’s appointment as national security adviser, a job he lost after he lied about discussing American sanctions against Moscow with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Mr. Manafort is now under indictment, charged by Mr. Mueller with a range of financial crimes, including that he concealed years of lobbying for the pro-Russia government in Ukraine, and laundered millions of dollars in proceeds from that work. Mr. Flynn has pleaded guilty to making false statements to the F.B.I. about his conversations with the Russian ambassador and is cooperating with the special counsel. Some of those conversations, portrayed in the indictment as part of a coordinated effort by Trump aides to create foreign policy before they were in power, were apparently at the direction of Mr. Kushner.

Mr. Kushner attended the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Kremlin-linked Russians who promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. When news of that meeting leaked last year, Mr. Trump initially said the topic was adoptions. The truth later came out, and the meeting is part of the F.B.I. inquiry.

In December of 2016, Mr. Kushner held a private meeting with Sergey Gorkov, who runs a Kremlin-connected Moscow bank under sanctions by the United States. A White House official said the meeting was under the auspices of the presidential transition, while the Russians said Mr. Kushner was acting in his capacity as head of Kushner Companies. Federal and congressional investigators say the meeting may have been part of an effort by Mr. Kushner to establish a direct line to President Vladimir Putin of Russia outside established diplomatic channels.

Mr. Kushner said his failure to disclose the Trump Tower meeting, the Gorkov meeting and scores of other foreign contacts as part of his application for security clearance was an error.

At this point, the right question to ask is why Mr. Kushner still has any diplomatic role at all.

The Kushner family is scouring the globe for investorsto shoulder billions in debt and redevelopment costs that Jared Kushner encumbered the company with when he bought a skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue, at a record price for the time. How handy, then, that Mr. Kushner, who still owns a hefty stake in the Kushner Companies, is Mr. Trump’s chief liaison with some two dozen nations, often operating outside formal guidance by the State Department or the National Security Council.

After the election, Mr. Kushner met with Anbang Insurance Group, a conglomerate closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party, about a joint venture in the 666 Fifth Avenue project, potentially worth billions, even though Anbang’s shadowy ownership had drawn national security concerns. The talks ended after a storm of Democratic outrage, but that didn’t stop the Kushners from continuing to trawl for Chinese investments, using Mr. Kushner’s big White House job as a lure.

Last May, Mr. Kushner’s sister Nicole Meyer mentioned her brother and Mr. Trump in a pitch to Chinese investors in Beijing. This time the Kushners were seeking $150 million in financing for a Jersey City housing development, through the EB-5 visa program, derided as “U.S. citizenship for sale” because it awards foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in American enterprises with a path to citizenship. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Kushner Companies’ past use of the EB-5 visa program. Federal prosecutors have sought records on Kushner Companies from Deutsche Bank, which over the years has lent hundreds of millions to the Kushner and Trump family businesses. Last week, the New York State Department of Financial Services, which regulates New York and some international banks, asked Deutsche Bank, Signature Bank and several others for information about their relationships with Mr. Kushner and his finances, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Mr. Kushner has spent his career until now inside a cocoon of family wealth and connections. Former associates say that as chief executive of Kushner Companies and as owner of the struggling New York Observer, which the Kushners bought in 2006, Mr. Kushner disregarded relevant experience and rules, leaving it to lawyers and advisers to clean up after his mistakes.

It’s beginning to dawn on Mr. Kushner that Washington doesn’t work like that. And the walls seem to be closing in on him. Mr. Kelly, the chief of staff, has been working to narrow Mr. Kushner’s lane, and limit his access to classified material and briefings. But as F.B.I. investigators circle the West Wing and extend their scrutiny to the Kushner businesses, Mr. Kushner might still want the protective umbrella of the White House.

Clearly, Americans deserve better from their public servants, but the law doesn’t provide sufficient protection from a president who doesn’t get that. Firming up the anti-nepotism law to cover White House advisers has been criticized as an infringement on a president’s right to seek private personal counsel. But Congress could require that presidential appointees across the federal government possess relevant credentials and experience, that they meet enforceable performance metrics, and — do we really need to say this? — that they can pass a background check. If Mr. Kushner’s performance inspires such reforms, it could prove his only real achievement."

Jared Kushner Flames Out - The New York Times: ""

The Cruel Ploy of Taking Immigrant Kids From Their Parents - The New York Times

 

 

 

By Dora Galacatos, Alan Shapiro and Brett Stark

"The Department of Homeland Security may soon formalize the abhorrent practice of detaining the children of asylum-seekers separately from their parents. Immigrant families apprehended at the southwest border already endure a deeply flawed system in which they can be detained indefinitely. In this immigration system, detainees too often lack adequate access to counsel. But to unnecessarily tear apart families who cross the border to start a better life is immoral.

Sadly, such separations are already happening. The Florence Project in Arizona documented 155 such cases by October and other immigrant advocacy organizations report that children are being taken away from their parents. If the secretary orders this practice to be made standard procedure, thousands of families could face unnecessary separation.

The Trump administration’s goal is to strong-arm families into accepting deportation to get their children back. Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, admitted this when she told the Senate on Jan. 16 that separating families may “discourage parents” from seeking refuge in America.

But the increasing informal use of family separation has not proved to be a deterrent. Last year, the number of family apprehensions at the southwestern border skyrocketed from 1,118 families in April to 8,120 in December.

Parents will continue to flee violence to protect their children and themselves. It is reprehensible to punish them for that basic human impulse. It is also despicable that the government would use children as bargaining chips. This policy is tantamount to state-sponsored traumatization.

Those of us who have seen the sites where families are detained and work directly with children and families who have gone through the system know what’s at stake.

The children we work with call the Border Patrol processing stations for migrants stopped at the border “iceboxes” (hieleras) and “dog kennels” (perreras). “I was wet from crossing the river and it was so cold I thought I would die,” one child said.

Another told us: “The lights were kept on day and night. I became disoriented and didn’t know how long I had been there.” A third said: “I was separated from my older sister. She is the closest person in my life. I couldn’t stop crying until I saw her again a few days later.”

In our work we have heard countless stories about detention. But the shock of bearing witness to them is hard to put into words. In McAllen, Tex., you enter a nondescript warehouse, the color of the dry barren landscape that surrounds it. It could be storage for just about anything, but is in actuality a cavernous, cold space holding hundreds upon hundreds of mostly women and children.

Chain-link fencing divides the harshly illuminated space into pens, one for boys, a second for girls and a third for their mothers and infant siblings. The pens are unusually quiet except for the crinkling of silver Mylar blankets. This is where family separation begins, as does the nightmare for parents and children.

The parents whose sons and daughters have been taken from them are given two options: either agree to return home with their children — or endure having those children sent on to shelters run by the Health and Human Services Department while they themselves languish in detention centers scattered around the country.

This country’s medical and mental health organizations have rightly recognized the trauma of this practice. The American Academy of Pediatrics has condemned immigrant family separation, and family detention overall, as “harsh and counterproductive.” The American Medical Association has denounced family separation as causing “unnecessary distress, depression and anxiety.”

Studies overwhelmingly demonstrate the irreparable harm to children caused by separation from their parents. A parent or caregiver’s role is to mitigate stress. Family separation robs children of that buffer and can create toxic stress, which can damage brain development and lead to chronic conditions like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and heart disease. For that reason, more than 200 child welfare, juvenile justice and child development organizations signed a letter demanding that the Trump administration abandon this ill-conceived policy.

Family separation is also unjustifiable legally, as “family unity” is central to our immigration laws and our longstanding policy of reuniting citizens and permanent residents with their relatives.

More fundamentally, family separation is anathema to basic decency and human rights. For our government to essentially hold immigrant children as hostages in exchange for the “ransom” of their parents’ deportation is simply despicable.

It is every parent’s nightmare to have a child snatched away. To adopt this as standard procedure to facilitate deportations is inhumane and does nothing to make Americans safer. This country, and Secretary Nielsen, must reject family separation.

Dora Galacatos is the executive director of the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School. Alan Shapiro is a co-founder and the medical director and Brett Stark is a co-founder and the legal director of Terra Firma, which aids unaccompanied immigrant children."

The Cruel Ploy of Taking Immigrant Kids From Their Parents - The New York Times: ""

Never have we seen such chaos and corruption - The Washington Post

By Eugene Robinson, www.washingtonpost.com   March 1st, 2018



"The ceaseless barrage of news — both real and fake — from the Trump administration can be numbing, so it’s important to step back every once in a while and look at the big picture: Never have we seen such utter chaos and blatant corruption.



None of what’s happening is normal, and none of it should be acceptable. Life is imitating art: What we have is less a presidency than a cheesy reality show, set in a great stately house, with made-for-television histrionics, constant back­stabbing and major characters periodic­ally getting booted out.



Hope Hicks, the White House communications director, decided Wednesday to self-eject. Was it because she had spent the previous day testifying on Capitol Hill and was forced to admit having told “white lies” for President Trump? Was it because the man she had been dating, Rob Porter, lost his important White House position when the Daily Mail revealed he faced multiple allegations of wife-beating? Or was Hicks simply exhausted?



Porter’s job involved controlling the flow of paperwork, some of it classified and extremely sensitive, to the president. Because of those abuse allegations, however, he couldn’t get a permanent top-secret security clearance. That was bad enough, but later we learned that dozens of White House officials, perhaps 100 or more, were working with only interim clearances, not permanent ones. Their access to secret information was cut off by Chief of Staff John F. Kelly — but only after all of this had become public.



Among those now with limited access is Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whose heavily indebted real estate empire and grudging disclosure of his many foreign contacts worried FBI investigators. Kushner is a senior adviser to the president whose many assignments include forging peace in the Middle East — but who now is not cleared for documents or meetings that discuss what’s really happening in the Middle East or anywhere else. So why is he still there?



Why was he there in the first place? Because of Trump’s appalling nepotism.



Trump also brought his daughter Ivanka into the White House as an adviser. What does she do? What qualifies her to do it? In a real administration, conservative or liberal, Kushner’s office and Ivanka Trump’s office would be occupied by experienced professionals who actually know something about diplomacy or administration or some government function.



According to the New York Times, Kushner set up White House meetings for two business executives whose private equity firm and bank later made loans to the Kushner Companies real estate firm totaling more than $500 million. Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” was a cruel joke. He has expanded it into a vast protected wetland, to be enjoyed by friends and family.



Never before have we had a president openly at war with his own attorney general. The Post reported Wednesday that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is investigating whether Trump’s attempts to force Attorney General Jeff Sessions out of his job last summer were part of a pattern of attempted obstruction of justice. According to The Post, Trump’s private name for Sessions is “Mr. Magoo,” a baby-boomer reference that younger readers will have to Google.



Trump began his day Wednesday by tweeting that a decision Sessions recently made was “DISGRACEFUL!” Sessions responded by issuing a statement strongly rebutting Trump’s criticism. And that evening, Sessions was photographed at a posh Washington restaurant dining with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein — who oversees the Mueller investigation — and Solicitor General Noel Francisco. If it wasn’t a deliberate display of unity at the Justice Department, it sure looked like one.



Also on Wednesday, Trump convened a televised negotiating session with members of Congress on the subject of gun violence. To the escalating horror of Republicans present, he heartily endorsed several Democratic gun control proposals — and then went much further, saying that in the case of individuals who are mentally unstable, authorities should “take the guns first, go through due process second.”



If President Barack Obama had ever said such a thing, we’d be in the middle of Civil War II.



Any other president who displayed such cavalier disregard for previous policy positions and total ignorance of basic facts would have provoked an uproar. Trump barely gets a shrug. Nobody expects him to be consistent. Nobody expects him to know anything about anything. He is defining the presidency down in a way that we must not tolerate.



I spent years as a foreign correspondent in Latin America. To say we are being governed like a banana republic is an insult to banana republics. It’s that bad, and no one should pretend otherwise."



Never have we seen such chaos and corruption - The Washington Post

Dem Rep: Trump Russia probe "all the markings of Watergate"

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(Via.). Dem Rep: Trump Russia probe "all the markings of Watergate": 

New report shows why Mueller has not charged collusion yet

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(Via.). New report shows why Mueller has not charged collusion yet