Political Animal

Quick Takes: Russians Tried to Hack Our Voting Systems

by Nancy LeTourneau

* The Intercept got the big scoop today.

Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.

The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light…

The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into U.S. voting systems than was previously understood. It states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the document.

* The document has also been authenticated by CBS News.

* Good news from the Supreme Court today.

The Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that struck down 28 state House and Senate districts in North Carolina because they violated the rights of black voters. But the justices rejected the court’s order to redraw the districts and hold a special election.The action by the justices Monday sends the matter back to the lower court, which could order new districts in time for the regular cycle of elections in 2018.Democrats hope new district maps will help them break the Republican stranglehold on the state legislature…

A panel of three federal judges in North Carolina that struck down the districts as illegal racial gerrymanders had ordered the drawing of new districts in time for special elections this year. But the Supreme Court blocked the order for the new districts. The matter is back in the hands of the lower court.

* Lisa Solod writes about “the silencing of the Hillary Clinton supporter.”

Over the past many months, I have spoken with many middle and lower-middle class women, who shared stories with me about why they voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, including a 34-year veteran school teacher who is so news-obsessed, she has her friends text her news alerts while she’s on vacation, and a 24-year-old college student who “kind of liked” Bernie until she realized that the U.S. was one of the few civilized countries that had never had a woman leader. We’ve seen the millions of women who took to the streets the day after the inauguration. We’ve learned that it’s older women who make most of the calls to Congress, and we have heard that nearly 13,000 women want to run for office since Hillary lost the election. All this while the media has mostly ignored the 90 percent of Black women—many of them lower, working, and middle class—who voted for Hillary. And yet, six months later, the media continues to fixate on the white working-class voters who didn’t cast theirs for her in the autopsy of the 2016 election.

* I agree with James.

* I actually first read about this next story on Facebook because the young man involved is my cousin’s step-son. His mother was with him and wrote what had happened on their way home from the evening’s performance. Later, the NYT published an account. I’m only partially sharing it here as a point of personal privilege. It’s also an amazingly uplifting story of courage and I love the fact that it shatters so many of the stereotypes that circulate about millennials—especially those New Yorkers.

After a 58-year-old man fell onto subway tracks Saturday night in Manhattan, a ballet dancer, who had just watched his wife perform with American Ballet Theater at the Metropolitan Opera House, leapt down after him. With a lift that they do not teach in dance school, he moved him to safety.

“At first I waited for somebody else to jump down there,” said Gray Davis, 31, a dancer with American Ballet Theater, said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “People were screaming to get help. But nobody jumped down. So I jumped down.”

Once on the tracks, at the 72nd Street Broadway-Seventh Avenue station, Mr. Davis said, he picked up the man, who was unconscious, and lifted him to the platform, where others pulled him up. Then, hearing a train in the distance and unsure which track it was on, he faced the next problem: getting back up on the platform himself.

“I never realized how high it was,” he said. “Luckily, I’m a ballet dancer, so I swung my leg up.”

* Finally, here is Ariana Grande at her “One Love Manchester” concert showing an awful lot of compassion and courage for someone so young.

The Democrats Should Not Concede on the Debt Ceiling

by Martin Longman

I can understand this sentiment and I might have agreed with it ten years ago. I can’t agree with it today.

It’s the job of the majority party in Congress to pass appropriations and it’s their job to pass any hike in the debt ceiling. Period. End of story. If the government shuts down, it’s 100 percent the majority’s fault. If we default on our loans and damage our credit rating and cause a global recession, that’s 100 percent the majority’s fault, too.

This is always true, but it’s especially true when the majority in Congress is controlled by the same party that is sitting in the Oval Office. Strictly speaking, the minority party is not responsible for anything and should never be asked to provide votes for anything unless they are going to get something out of it.

During the Obama years, the minority Democrats provided most of the votes for lifting the debt ceiling and they did it despite asking in vain for clean votes that didn’t advance Republican priorities. They did this because they wanted to protect the president who they knew would take most of the blame if the global economy blew up. But they don’t have a president to protect anymore and it’s up to the Republicans to do the responsible thing.

If they can ram home a debt ceiling hike with 100 percent their own votes, then they can cram whatever they want into the bill. If they need Democratic votes, then this time it’s the Democrats who need to see their priorities addressed.

This idea that the Democrats have to step in to prevent Republican dysfunction from blowing up the world is simple enabling. If the Republicans come to the Democrats with a completely clean bill to raise the debt ceiling, the Democrats will have to consider it. But they shouldn’t leap at the offer. They should at least initially refuse to give the Republicans what they refused to grant them.

The number one reason for this is because a failure to meet tit for tat here creates a disparity in outcomes that favors hostage taking and irresponsible governance.  The number two reason is that you shouldn’t start out with your bottom line. As a negotiating tactic, you want to ask for more than you’re willing to settle for, and you also want to provide a way for the Republicans to save some face so they can make a concession without seeming to get nothing.

The Democrats should offer no votes to hike the debt ceiling unless certain of their desires are met. This will help the Republican leadership convince their most recalcitrant debt hawks that they’ll default if they don’t offer at least a clean bill.  If the Republican leadership can’t come close to accomplishing this, they’ll need to make concessions. If they can come close, maybe the Dems can relent and offer the few votes they need for a clean bill.

The Democrats do need to be responsible in the end, but it’s not responsible to keep negotiating from an artificial position of weakness that just encourages bad behavior and a lack of reality-based thinking in their political opponents. If the Republican leadership proves itself truly helpless, then the Democrats should take their bounty in concessions. If they try hard and come up just short, they should get bailed out to avoid an international calamity, but no concessions should be made on the Democrats’ part.

A Potential Nightmare Scenario This Summer

by Nancy LeTourneau

The Associated Press opened their fact-check on recent statements from Donald Trump with a dire statement that just so happens to be true.

President Donald Trump can’t be counted on to give accurate information to Americans when violent acts are unfolding abroad.

But as many have been asking for months now, what happens when the topic du jour turns from “violent acts abroad” to crises here at home?

Beyond terrorism, the weather outside (even up here in what I call the “tundra”) is also reminding us that, while summer doesn’t officially start for a couple of weeks, most of us are already there temperature-wise. That means that it is time to be aware of some things, including this prediction:

What happens when we have to start relying on this administration for information about hurricanes and/or other dangerous weather-related events? Here are some numbers to keep in mind from the Obama years:

Over the past eight years, Fugate [FEMA Director from 2009-2017] has dealt with 910 disaster declarations, far more than any FEMA director in history. In 2011 alone, FEMA responded to a record-shattering 242 disasters (the previous record had been 158 in 1996). He battled big storms made bigger by climate change, managed to earn praise from both parties in Congress, and restored public faith in the federal government’s ability to respond to natural disasters, taking it from 33 percent after Katrina to 75 percent after Sandy, according to Gallup.

That last number is a reminder that, when things are handled competently, most of us don’t notice. But nothing shatters the trust of the American public more profoundly than a poorly handled natural disaster.

Summer also brings on potential challenges like this:

Zika, the mosquito-borne virus that triggered public health alarm bells last summer, has receded from the spotlight. But, experts say, expect the virus to pose a renewed threat this year.

How great of a threat? That’s where it gets tricky.

No locally acquired cases of the virus have been reported in the United States this year. But as public health agencies gear up for mosquito season, uncertainty remains around what resources states may need and whether they will receive adequate federal support. In addition, researchers still have questions about how the virus works and its long-term effects. These forces could complicate efforts to track outbreaks and provide accurate information about prevention and disease management.

The conservative agenda is bound up in trying to convince Americans that we don’t need a strong federal government. But it is during times of natural disasters and public health crises that the lives of everyday Americans can be put directly at risk, shaping their view of what is or isn’t the appropriate role of the federal government.

The public now faces three challenges from the Trump administration related to these concerns: (1) the lack of leaders in place in critical agencies, (2) the fact that public service experience is not a priority for this administration, and (3) the lack of trust the president has garnered from the public. Any one of those three alone could lead to a real disaster for Americans. But all three together signal a potential nightmare-in-the-making this summer.

Why the Republicans Can’t Legislate

by Martin Longman

What I like about the following is how it lacks any moral judgment. It simply puts the facts out there and let’s you decide what you think about it. The context is the shocking lack of legislative achievement we’ve seen so far from the Trump administration. The idea is that after a legislative burst in its first two years, the Obama administration accomplished much of its agenda through executive orders and regulations, so we should expect much of Trump’s initial efforts to be non-legislative as well as he makes efforts to undo Obama’s legacy. We’re told that Trump has been more active and successful than we might imagine.

Republicans have used the Congressional Review Act to nullify 14 rules enacted by the Obama administration. Before this year, it had only been used successfully once in 20 years. If Trump and Republicans had not reversed these rules, then companies applying for federal contracts would have had to disclose their labor violations; coal mines would have had to reduce the amount of debris dumped into streams; telecommunications companies would have had to take “reasonable measures” to protect their customers’ personal information; individuals receiving Social Security payments for disabling mental illnesses would have been added to a list of those not allowed to buy guns; states would have been limited in the drug-testing they could perform on those receiving unemployment insurance benefits; certain hunting practices would not have been allowed on national wildlife refuges in Alaska; and states could have set up retirement savings plans for those who don’t have the option at work.

[Mark] Short [Trump’s director of legislative affairs] said the fact that Trump was able to use the Congressional Review Act more than a dozen times when it had only been used once before is “a pretty significant accomplishment” and one that he says will benefit the economy by billions of dollars each year.

“We look at that as one of the biggest accomplishments,” he said.

That’s quite a list. Maybe there are a lot of people who are excited that people who have paid into the unemployment insurance fund can be denied their earned benefits if they fail a drug test. To me, that seems more like robbery than solid policy. But it also looks like by far the least objectionable change on that list.

What’s the constituency for companies concealing their labor violations? Who wants toxic debris dumped in their streams? Is there anyone who wants their personal information to be less secure? How many people actually want someone who is so mentally challenged that they need help to managing their Social Security check to have an AR-15? Are there a lot of people whose idea of a wildlife refuge includes killing wildlife? And whose idea is it to say that states shouldn’t be able to create retirement savings options for folks who don’t have the option to work?

These are not popular accomplishments. There are narrow special interests who want these things, but you can’t take them on the campaign trail to the broader public and make a case that you’re getting things done to improve their lives. And that shouldn’t be surprising given the nature of what’s going on here. President Obama saw his legislative agenda blocked after the 2010 midterm elections, so he used his unilateral power to try to do things to help people. As a result, most of what he accomplished in this manner can’t be undone without hurting people. Corporations violate labor laws. Telecoms lose control of your personal information or sell it. Coal companies throw toxic sludge in your streams. Crazy people get military style weapons and use them to shoot up malls and first grade classrooms.

This is how Trump changes things. This is what his spokespeople tout as progress.

On the legislative front, though, he finds that policies this deeply offensive aren’t easy to move. Ronald Reagan understood that if he wanted tax reform he needed a Democrat to champion it. That’s why New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, who wasn’t even the ranking member of the Finance Committee, was tapped to author the reforms and push them through the Senate. And Reagan accepted that the tax reform was going to have to be based on ideas that were popular in Democratic circles. Bill Bradley wasn’t going to write the conservatives’ dream bill.

If Trump wants tax reforms or a big infrastructure bill, he’s going to have to make the same kind of concessions. He should be talking to the big Democratic hitters on finance and transportation in the Senate. That means we should be reading about negotiations with folks like Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Florida Sen. Bill Nelson. But that’s not what we’re seeing, at all. This week, the president is pushing infrastructure in a way that is assured to get absolutely no support from Sen. Nelson.

President Trump will seek to put a spotlight on his vows to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system and spur $1 trillion in new investment in roads, waterways and other infrastructure with a week-long series of events starting Monday at the White House…

…The president has invited executives from major airlines to join him as he kicks off the week with one of his more controversial plans: spinning off the air traffic control functions of the Federal Aviation Administration to a nonprofit corporation.

Most people, when they think about infrastructure have in mind new bridges and roads, modern airports and rail lines. Privatizing air traffic control is no substitute.

Likewise with the effort to reform the tax code, there’s no evidence that any Democrat is going to be a player or get behind the effort, let alone author it. Sen. Ron Wyden is hardly involved at all.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met with the Senate Finance Committee this week to discuss President Trump’s budget and, in particular, the administration’s stand on tax reform.

But Mnuchin wasn’t providing many new details, more often reiterating the same general concepts and vague assurances that he’s stated repeatedly.

The administration continues to promise tax reform this year. Yet the year is nearly half over and all the White House has produced is a one-page, double-spaced outline that’s shorter than the “typical drug store receipt,” said Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the tax-writing committee.

As you can see, there’s a lot of truth to the following observation:

“We are in an ugly era of people who do not understand what the legislative branch is even for,” said Andy Karsner, who served as assistant secretary of energy for efficiency and renewable energy in the George W. Bush administration and is now based in California, working with entrepreneurs as managing partner of the Emerson Collective.

The Trump administration and Republican leadership in Congress, Karsner said, “have no skill set, they have no craftsmanship. They have no connection to the time when people passed legislation.”

When Andy Karsner says that the Trump administration and the Republican congressional leadership have “no skill set,” that’s just another way of making my point. A president can’t magically make things happen. They have to look at Congress as it exists and figure out a way to work with them. President Obama couldn’t get very much through a Republican Congress that he wanted to sign, so Trump could be forgiven for finding himself in a similar position. But he has Republican majorities. When President Obama had Democratic majorities in his first two years, he moved the legislative process at a breakneck speed. That Trump can’t move anything is a result of his decision to govern as a hard right nativist dependent entirely on conservatives for support. Obama took criticism when he passed his stimulus plan and his health care plan, but he passed them because he took account of the requirements of his more right-leaning members (in both cases) and the few moderate Republicans he needed (in the former case). A take it or leave it approach would have resulted in failures.

So far, Trump has managed to convince himself that his legislative problems can be solved if the filibuster is removed from the Senate entirely, but he can’t even get 50 votes for most of his agenda including his efforts to uproot the Affordable Care Act. The Republican senators have been trying to explain this to him, but he doesn’t seem to understand.

But, despite their laudable efforts to reason with the president, I can’t absolve the Republican senators here. They have not been willing to level with either the president or the Republican base about the need to find Democratic sponsors for the signature legislation that Trump wants to sign. When the Republicans controlled the Senate in 1986, they were willing to create space for Bill Bradley to lead on tax reform. Today’s Republican senators won’t do the same for Ron Wyden.

And that’s a lack of skill, basically, when you come right down to it. We can argue about how polarization and perverse incentives interfere with bipartisan cooperation, but either you know how to legislate or you don’t.

And they don’t.