Stuff to Read Over the Fourth

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Trump Maladministration

Some articles I want to comment on before they scroll out of memory —

Lindy West, “Save Free Speech From Trolls

West calls out the Right for “weaponizing” the concept of freedom of speech to shout down dissent or criticism, especially when it comes from women.

Nothing is more important than the First Amendment, the internet men say, provided you interpret the First Amendment exactly the same way they do: as a magic spell that means no one you don’t like is allowed to criticize you.

In other words, they react to people expressing disagreement with them as an infringement on their free speech rights. This is something I’ve written about before; see “First Amendment Primer (for Righties)” from February 2013:

Righties do love their First Amendment rights, but they don’t understand them very well. For example, on the Right it is commonly believed the right to freedom of speech includes a right to not be disagreed with. (This is something I’ve written about before, so for examples, see “This Is Rich,” and “America Has Lost Its Mind.”)

People, read the First Amendment. It says Congress cannot infringe in freedom of speech or the press, and this prohibition has been extended to state government by the 14th Amendment. In a legal sense, this refers to censorship, and censorship is something that only government can do.  A privately owned newspaper or magazine has an absolute right to not publish everything submitted to it, and that is not censorship, either. I have a right to delete comments that irritate me, and that is not censorship, either.  And if somebody expresses disagreement with you, that is so not censorship.

By the same token, if a mob of people somehow prevent you from speaking, or thugs who don’t like your editorials come and smash up your printing press, that’s not censorship, although it would certainly be breaking other laws.

I’m sorry to say that some of this hairbrained thinking has crept into the Left. After Kathy Griffin’s recent, stupid “trump beheading” stunt, I saw a lot of “don’t censor Kathy!” and “stand with Kathy’s First Amendment rights” on social media. But I didn’t see anybody attempting to censor Kathy, nor did I see anybody saying she had no right to publish the dumb photo. All I saw was criticism. Criticism is not censorship. And just because you have a right to smear yourself with honey and sit on an anthill, that doesn’t mean you should.

McKay Coppins, “How the Left Lost Its Mind” 

The Trump era has given rise to a vast alternative left-wing media infrastructure that operates largely out of the view of casual news consumers, but commands a massive audience and growing influence in liberal America. There are polemical podcasters and partisan click farms; wild-eyed conspiracists and cynical fabulists. Some traffic heavily in rumor and wage campaigns of misinformation; others are merely aggregators and commentators who have carved out a corner of the web for themselves. But taken together, they form a media universe where partisan hysteria is too easily stoked, and fake news can travel at the speed of light.

Before we go on, let me try to quiet the cries of “False equivalence!” before they begin: No, these personalities and publications do not yet wield the same influence in the Democratic Party that their counterparts do in the GOP. But ignoring them would be a mistake. In recent months, some of the most irresponsible actors in this world have proven alarmingly adept at influencing venerated figures of the left—from public intellectuals, to world-famous celebrities, to elected officials.

See also “The Rise of Progressive Fake News.”

I think trolls and fake news did a lot of damage to the Democrats last year, and people across the liberal-progressive spectrum were falling for it. Clinton supporters were being told Bernie Sanders was a friend to the NRA known to hate women; Sanders supporters were being told Hillary Clinton would be indicted any minute now. None of that helped. And it seems to be getting worse.

Aaron Blake: “The biggest winner in the current health-care debate: Single-payer

 … after weeks of debate, there is one clear winner so far: single-payer health care.

No, single-payer isn’t going to happen at the end of this debate — or even the end of this year or this decade, necessarily. But the logical foundations for it are being laid in our political debate just about every single day. And when you pair that with the rising public support for government-run health care, it’s clear in which direction this whole debate is trending.

This article cheered me up, needless to say.

The most surprising aspect of the current health-care debate, for me, has been how Republicans have essentially given up on making the conservative case for their bills. They aren’t even arguing that the free market would lead to higher-quality care, efficiency and medical advancements, as the GOP of old might have. Instead, they are trying to obscure the reality that their bills would cut Medicaid by hundreds of millions of dollars (versus where funding is currently set) and would increase the number of uninsured Americans by potential 20 million or more. …

…That political reality has also basically forced Republicans to concede this point: that people being uninsured is a very bad thing, and that cutting funding to Medicaid is a bad thing. They have basically conceded that government involvement in health care is a good thing — or, at least, a necessary thing. That wasn’t the argument they were making against Obamacare eight years ago.

Democrats, meanwhile, are gradually talking themselves into supporting single-payer, it would seem. Their laser-like focus on the number who are uninsured and the Medicaid cuts has a logical conclusion. There is only one way to make sure nobody is uninsured, after all.

We’re a long way from overwhelming public support for a taxpayer-funded national health care system, which is what the phrase “single payer” is shorthand for. There are very few, if any, “pure” single-payer systems on the planet, in which all health care is paid out of government funds. The majority of industrialized nations have some variation of a mixed public-private system, although in every case I know of people can get nearly any medical treatment they really need through the public system.

Andrew Mills, “The plane truth: How we caught Chris Christie sunbathing on a closed beach

Anatomy of a scoop.

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Freedom’s Just Another Word for State Authority

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Trump Maladministration

After a fight of several years, St. Louis passed a law that would gradually raise the minimum wage to $11 per hour, and after that it would increase with inflation. The first stage, a raise from $7.70 an hour to $10 an hour, went into effect March 5. The $11 per hour was to kick in on January 1, 2018.

A couple of days ago, the governor announced that the state is stepping in and overriding St. Louis. The city’s minimum wage cannot exceed the statewide minimum wage, Gov. Eric Greitens announced. The minimum wage in St. Louis will revert to $7.70 an hour on August 28.

“It will kill jobs,” Greitens said of the increase. “And despite what you hear from liberals, it will take money out of people’s pockets.”

So the state is now going to take money out of people’s pockets. Some employers may choose to not take away the raises, but I’m betting that many will happily cut their employees back to $7.70.

Exactly why it’s skin off anyone’s nose that there might be a higher minimum wage in St. Louis than in the many small towns across the state eludes me. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, Gov. Greitens.

Today I read of something similar going on in Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R), citing grave worries about “socialistic” behavior in the state’s liberal cities, has called on Texas lawmakers to gather this month for a special session that will consider a host of bills aimed at curtailing local power on issues ranging from taxation to collecting union dues.

Texas presents perhaps the most dramatic example of the increasingly acrimonious relationship between red-state leaders and their blue city centers, which have moved aggressively to expand environmental regulations and social programs often against the grain of their states.

Republican state leaders across the country have responded to the widening cultural gulf by passing legislation preempting local laws. The best-known example is North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” which was partially reversed this year. It was originally aimed at undercutting Charlotte’s efforts to expand civil rights laws to include LGBT people and to prevent cities from setting their own minimum wage.

But states also have gone after cities in more subtle ways. Ohio’s legislature last year attempted to block a Cleveland regulation that requires certain city contractors to hire local residents. A new Arizona law threatens to cut off funding to cities that take actions state officials deem to be in violation of state law.

Gov. Abbott is especially peeved at Austin.

“Once you cross the Travis County line, it starts smelling different,” Abbott joked at a recent gathering of Republicans, referring to the county that includes Austin. “And you know what that fragrance is? Freedom. It’s the smell of freedom that does not exist in Austin, Texas.”

Freedom? I don’t think that word means what you think it means, governor.

Austin is suing the state over its draconian “sanctuary cities” law, among other things. Austin is also fighting a developer who plans to destroy hundreds of trees, including some very old and beloved “heritage” oaks that are protected by city ordinance. The governor, naturally, takes the side of the developer, who appears to have won.

A heritage oak in Austin.

I personally think that if Texas doesn’t want to turn into a desert someday as the planet heats up, it had better hang on to every tree it’s got. But they don’t listen to me.

The people of Austin wonder about their rights to shape the quality of their own community. But when money talks, democracy walks.

Happy 4th of July, Republicans. What is it you’re celebrating, again?

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What Really Happened With the California Single-Payer Bill?

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Trump Maladministration

Let me begin by saying I have never lived in California. I don’t know exactly how the state government works, and I don’t generally pay close attention to California news.  If that’s true for you, too, then let’s explore this together.

A few days ago there were news stories about California possibly moving to a single-payer health care system within the state. There was a bill moving toward passage, the news stories said. Then there were stories about the bill being killed by California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. In progressive circles the death of the bill was attributed to Rendon’s being a corporate stooge who took money from the medical industry. David Sirota wrote in International Business Times,

As Republican lawmakers grapple with their unpopular bill to repeal Obamacare, Democrats have tried to present a united front on health care. But for all their populist rhetoric against insurance and drug companies, Democratic powerbrokers and their allies remain deeply divided on the issue — to the point where a political civil war has spilled into the open in America’s largest state.

In California last week, Democratic state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon helped his and his party’s corporate donors block a Democrat-sponsored bill to create a universal health care program in which the government would be the single payer.

Rendon’s decision shows how progressives’ ideal of universal health care remains elusive — even in a liberal state where government already foots 70 percent of the total health care bill.

Now, you all know David Sirota’s work, I suspect. I’ve been reading his stuff for years. He’s one of “our” writers. Sirota goes on to say that although the bill had passed in the state senate, Rendon had quashed it before it could go on to the state assembly. Sirota continues,

Since 2012, Rendon has taken in more than $82,000 from business groups and healthcare corporations that are listed in state documents opposed the measure, according to an International Business Times review of data amassed by the National Institute on Money In State Politics. In all, he has received more than $101,000 from pharmaceutical companies and another $50,000 from major health insurers.

In the same time, the California Democratic Party has received more than $1.2 million from the specific groups opposing the bill, and more than $2.2 million from pharmaceutical and health insurance industry donors. That includes a $100,000 infusion of cash from Blue Shield of California in the waning days of the 2016 election — just before state records show the insurer began lobbying against the single-payer bill.

Well, that’s pretty damning, isn’t it? Another reason Dems always lose.

I didn’t think anything more of it until I read this article by David Dayen at The Intercept that gave a different view.

IN THE DAYS SINCE California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon shelved for the year SB562, which intends to establish a state single-payer health care system, he’s been subject to mass protests and even death threats. The bill’s chief backers, including the California Nurses Association and the Bernie Sanders-affiliated Our Revolution, angrily point to Rendon as the main roadblock to truly universal health care.

They’re completely wrong. What’s more, they know they’re wrong. They’re perfectly aware that SB562 is a shell bill that cannot become law without a ballot measure approved by voters. Rather than committing to raising the millions of dollars that would be needed to overcome special interests and pass that initiative, they would, apparently, rather deceive their supporters, hiding the realities of California’s woeful political structure in favor of a morality play designed to advance careers and aggrandize power.

And I’m thinking, holy bleep, what the bleep is going on here?

Did I mention this is David Dayen? I’ve been reading his stuff for years, too. He’s good. And he is known to be a wholehearted supporter of single payer healthcare.

Having done some digging, I’ve come to think the bill, SB562, was never a serious bill. It was more about grandstanding and legislative theater than actually initiating single payer in California. I could be wrong, but that’s what it looks like.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones provides some background.

Funding. Single-payer would cost something like $200 billion, give or take a few billions. This is nearly double the entire state budget, but SB562 blithely ignored it. It included no funding mechanism at all, and simply passed that responsibility to the state Assembly. It’s not surprising that Rendon was reluctant to shoulder this on his own over the course of the next few months.

Prop 98. Like it or not, California has a school funding law put in place years ago by Proposition 98. It’s insanely complicated, but basically requires that 40 percent of the state budget go to K-12 schools. Using round numbers, if the state budget is $100 billion, school spending has to be at least $40 billion. If state spending goes up to $300 billion, school spending has to be at least $120 billion. Aside from being ridiculous, it also leaves only $120 billion for the health care bill. Oops.

As far as I know, there is no tricky way to get around this. It would have to be dealt with by a ballot initiative. That’s obviously not going to happen in this legislative session.

Waivers. This is the issue nobody pays attention to, but is probably the most important of all. To implement single-payer, California would need $200 billion in new funding plus $200 billion in federal money that currently goes to Medicare, Medicaid, veterans health care, and so forth. Without federal waivers to give California access to that money, the plan can’t go anywhere. As Duke University researcher David Anderson puts it, “If there aren’t waivers, this plan is vaporware.” What do you think are the odds that the Trump administration will grant all those waivers? Zero is a pretty good guess.

Along the same lines, Michael Hiltzik points out that self-funded health care plans are governed exclusively by federal law. That means California would need an exemption from the law. What do you think are the odds that a Republican Congress will grant that exemption? Zero again?

Kevin Drum and David Dayen are both Californians, I understand, so they know the ins and outs of how California works a lot better than I do. And if Kevin Drum is right, then even if the bill passed the assembly and were signed into law, it still wouldn’t be implemented. There is language in the bill that would stop it from going into effect if funding isn’t available, and because of all the reasons stated above, it currently wouldn’t be possible for the funding to be available.

So what, exactly, is the point?

If any state could make single-payer work it ought to be California, which claims to have the sixth largest economy in the world. But it appears to be true that SB562 contains no mechanism for funding, and this is one of the reasons Anthony Rendon delayed the bill. This doesn’t strike me as being unreasonable.

Let’s go back to David Dayen:

There’s a reason that every California single-payer bill in the last 25 years — and there have been at least seven, two of which passed the legislature and were vetoed, so we in the Golden State have seen this movie before — never includes a funding mechanism. It’s not necessarily because of fear of voting for higher taxes, or even the two-thirds threshold to increase a tax in the legislature.

It’s because you can’t do the funding without help from the voters, because of California’s fatal addiction to its perverse form of direct democracy. The blame, in other words, lies with ourselves.

To figure this out, you need only turn to the actual legislative analysis of the Senate bill, which passed in early June. It states very clearly what Rendon alluded to in his announcement shelving SB562: “There are several provisions of the state constitution that would prevent the Legislature from creating the single-payer system envisioned in the bill without voter approval.”

Those provisions include California’s byzantine, previously mentioned Proposition 98, which Dayen explains in more detail. To make single-payer funding possible Prop 98 would have to be suspended.

Self-appointed experts have countered that the state can suspend Prop 98 with a two-thirds vote of the legislature. This has been done twice in the past, during downturns in the economy. But the suspension can last for only a single year; it would have to be renewed annually to keep single payer going. More important, as the California Budget and Policy Center explains, after any suspension, “the state must increase Prop 98 funding over time to the level that it would have reached absent the suspension.”

So legislators would have to vote year after year to suspend Prop 98, but add more money back to cover it in subsequent years. That backfill would grow with every budget, and over time lawmakers would need to vote for ever-increasing giant tax hikes. If this didn’t return Republicans to power in Sacramento within a few years, some enterprising lawyer would sue the legislature for violating the spirit of Prop 98. Suspension is not politically, legally, or financially sustainable.

So, again, it sounds as if SB562 couldn’t be put into effect even if it became law, a point its supporters stubbornly refuse to concede. And the many unacknowledged roadblocks are also being overlooked by progressive organizations eager to make points about corporate sellouts in the Democratic Party. Certainly the Dems have more than their share of corporate sellouts, but IMO in this case making a scapegoat out of Anthony Rendon is just wrong. Dayen continues,

The California Courage Campaign pleaded with Democrats in an email blast to “fight for single payer today, not next year.” But Democrats can’t pass single payer today or this year; under state law, ballot measures only occur during statewide elections in even-numbered years. Even the chair of the state Democratic Party, Eric Bauman, insisted that “SB562 must be given the chance to succeed,” even though it, um, can’t succeed.

The California Nurses Association, when not posting “stabbed in the back” imagery in reference to Rendon, called his decision “heartless,” “unconscionable,” and “disingenuous.” But there’s nothing more disingenuous in this debate than failing to level with people that SB562 cannot become law on its own.

Did I mention that Anthony Rendon has actually received death threats? And I’ve been an admirer of the California Nurses Association since they took on Arnold Schwarzenegger awhile back. But this is wrong. Everybody needs to chill about Anthony Rendon.

I know everybody’s tired of being told that we can’t have nice things now because pragmatic incremental whatever. But it’s also the case that sometimes things aren’t possible until paths are cleared for them. While, in theory, California’s economy ought to be able to support single payer, it’s not going to be possible until other laws — like Prop 98 — are changed first.  And if you aren’t working on that, you aren’t serious about passing single payer.

I run into this a lot with lefties. Yesterday I ran into a rant that Bernie Sanders has his priorities wrong because he didn’t introduce a Medicare for All bill into the Senate this week.  Would somebody explain to these puppies that a snowball has a better chance in hell than Medicare for All has in the current Congress? Because I don’t have the strength. And there’s been this little matter of stopping the passage of Trumpcare, which must have escaped their notice. That’s the priority.

I’m really tired of explaining why there can be no viable, national third party for progressives until we have significant voting and election reform that allows for proportional representation. I’ve tried and tried. They don’t listen to me. And like it or not, it’s way too soon to introduce a serious proposal to impeach Donald Trump into the House. This is not about whether or not he deserves it; it’s about the plain fact that such a proposal would go nowhere. The time may be ripe one of these days, but it isn’t now. And introducing unserious proposals now might make it harder to introduce a serious one later.

Bottom line, I fear that David Dayen is right on this, that SB562 was not a serious attempt to establish single payer in California, but instead was just legislative theater designed to aggrandize power within the progressive movement. Let’s stop doing this, people.

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A Tweet Too Far?

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Trump Maladministration

By now you’ve heard about the infamous Bleeding Mika tweets —

The so-called president has tweeted a lot of outrageous stuff, but this seems to have set a lot of the Beltway types over the edge. Maybe it’s because Joe and Mika are people they know.

If you watch Ana Navarro’s epic rant, be sure to not miss Wolf Blitzer’s face as he tries to maintain composure.

I’ve read one commentary after another today quoting people on Capitol Hill — including some Republicans — saying these tweets were out of bounds. I honestly think we’re seeing a turning point here. Trump is proving even to Republicans that he is utterly worthless as a president. If he were just incompetent but could put on a good act of being presidential that’s one thing, but he can’t even manage that.

Paul Waldman wrote today,

Republicans knew exactly who he was when they all lined up behind him in 2016, even if many harbored the naive hope that he would be changed by the office. But they also assumed that with total control of the government, they would pass a boatload of bills, he’d sign them, and his personal weaknesses wouldn’t much matter. It turns out, however, that it isn’t so simple. As we’re seeing in the health-care debacle currently underway, when you’re trying to accomplish something complex and politically perilous, you need the president. You need him to be a persuasive public advocate for your policy, and you need him to help resolve internal differences and forge consensus.

But Trump fails on both both counts. He can’t be a persuasive advocate because he doesn’t understand the policies he advocates for, and he has focused so relentlessly on telling his base what they want to hear that people outside that base just don’t believe him. When he gives an interview or makes a speech about what Republicans are trying to do, he’s likely to say something that contradicts or undermines their case. And internally, he’s rapidly losing whatever respect he had from Republicans.

I’m going to be really surprised if he finishes his term …

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Trump’s Got No Mojo on Health Care

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Health Care, Trump Maladministration

I’ve had some kind of stomach bug for the last few hours, but have decided I will survive. So, back to work.

So today the so-called President said this:

President Trump promised a surprise on the matter, though he did not specify what.

“Health care is working along very well. . . . We’re going to have a big surprise,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “We have a great health-care package.”

Trump offered no details, only reiterating, “We’re going to have a great, great surprise.”

I’m going with “delusional,” myself. The New York Times reported this:

If Republicans do manage to broker a deal — as Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, pledged to do during a lively East Room back-and-forth with the president — it is not likely to be because of Mr. Trump’s involvement. Until Tuesday afternoon, the president was largely on the sidelines as the fate of one of his most important campaign pledges played out.

Mr. McConnell, who kept the president at a polite arm’s length while he oversaw negotiations over the bill, asked Mr. Trump to arrange the meeting with all 52 Republican senators during a morning phone call, in part to show senators the White House was in fact fully engaged, according to two people with knowledge of the call.

When asked by reporters clustered on the blacktop outside the West Wing if Mr. Trump had command of the details of the negotiations, Mr. McConnell ignored the question and smiled blandly.

WaPo is more scathing:

The president is the leader of his party, yet Trump has struggled to get Republican lawmakers moving in lockstep on health care and other major issues, leaving no signature legislation in his first five months in office. The confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch is his most-cited achievement to date.History suggests that presidents who have governed successfully have been both revered and feared. But Republican fixtures in Washington are beginning to conclude that Trump may be neither, despite his mix of bravado, threats and efforts to schmooze with GOP lawmakers. …

… The Senate could pass a revised version of the bill once lawmakers return from their July 4 recess and pick up deliberations. Still, some Republicans are willing to defy their president’s wishes — a dynamic that can be attributed in part to Trump’s singular status as a disrupter within his party.

“The president remains an entity in and of itself, not a part of the traditional Republican Party,” said Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), a moderate who represents a district Trump lost by 16 percentage points. “I handle the Trump administration the same way I handled the Obama administration. When I agree, I work with them. When I oppose, I don’t.”

The man’s got no political capital at all.

One senior Republican close to both the White House and many senators called Trump and his political operation “a paper tiger,” noting how many GOP lawmakers feel free “to go their own way.”

And, I suspect, they will.

In private conversations on Capitol Hill, Trump is often not taken seriously. Some Republican lawmakers consider some of his promises — such as making Mexico pay for a new border wall — fantastical. They are exhausted and at times exasperated by his hopscotching from one subject to the next, chronicled in his pithy and provocative tweets. They are quick to point out how little command he demonstrates of policy. And they have come to regard some of his threats as empty, concluding that crossing the president poses little danger.

“The House health-care vote shows he does have juice, particularly with people on the right,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said. “The Senate health-care vote shows that people feel that health care is a defining issue and that it’d be pretty hard for any politician to push a senator into taking a vote that’s going to have consequences for the rest of their life.”

Asked if he personally fears Trump, Graham chuckled before saying, “No.”

And so on. Do read the whole thing. See also The GOP’s health-care bill is political kryptonite and The dirty little secret of the GOP’s health care push: Not even Republicans are demanding this.

Mitch McConnell is pushing for a revised bill to be voted on this Friday, before the Senate goes into recess. I’m predicting he will fail. Surprise!

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SCOTUS Drops Two Mini-Bombs

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Trump Maladministration

I’m calling them mini-bombs, because I suspect they will turn out to be less significant than they seem right now. First, SCOTUS agreed to review Trump’s “travel ban,” and in so doing they allowed a watered-down version of the ban to go into effect. This is from SCOTUSblog:

The lower courts had considered the hardships that the ban would create for the named plaintiffs in the case: two men with family members who want to come to the United States from the affected countries; and the state of Hawaii, whose state university had admitted students from those countries. But, the court explained today, the lower courts’ orders barring enforcement of the ban “reach much further than that,” because they also apply to people living overseas “who have no connection to the United States at all.” When those people are unable to come to the United States, the court reasoned, their constitutional rights are not violated – because they have no right to come to the United States – and their exclusion from the country does not harm anyone in the United States.

The justices therefore upheld the lower courts’ orders blocking enforcement of the ban with regard to the named plaintiffs and others like them – people who “have a credible claim” of a genuine relationship with someone or an institution in the United States. When that relationship is with an individual, the court made clear, it must be a close family member. And when the relationship is with an institution, the relationship must also be a genuine one, rather than one created just to get around the travel ban.

So, if someone has close family already here, or a job, or some kind of documented reason to be here like an invitation to lecture someplace, he or she cannot be blocked from entering the country. People from the Muslim-majority countries named in the original ban who have no prior relationship to anything or anybody in the U.S. will be unable to get visas, however, at least for the time being. Here’s the actual decision.

Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch dissented, stating that they would have just reinstated the ban, period, without regard to a prior relationship in the U.S.

Whether this action today has any bearing on how the Court eventually will rule, nobody can say.

The other mini-bomb is Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, in which the Court ruled that tax funds to fix up a playground could not be denied just because the playground is on church property. I’m going to have to look at this more carefully when I have time, but all along I haven’t been able to see why this case represents any departure from established case law. There is long precedent for tax money going to church organizations who are using the money in a not-religious way.

The three-part test established in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1970), as to whether something violates the establishment clause, basically calls for the law or policy to have a secular purpose, that it neither promotes nor inhibits religion, and that it does not foster “excessive government entanglement with religion.” Seems to me that a state grant to pay for improvements to a playground used by children in a neighborhood kind of fills that bill. I have yet to see what the big deal is about this case.

However, Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ginsburg, wrote a long dissent that I haven’t had time to read. So I think I may be missing something. I’ll get back to you later when I figure out what it is. Here’s the decision.

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Saving Nancy Pelosi?

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Democratic Party

Part of the fallout of the John Ossoff loss is that a number of people are now calling for Nancy Pelosi to step down as Minority Leader in the House. I understand Handel used the terrifying specter of Pelosi in her ads against Ossoff, and it worked. Last year I saw a lot of Republican ads here in Missouri that used Nancy Pelosi against a Democrat, and they appeared to be effective.

I’m ambivalent about Pelosi, frankly. On the one hand, I agree with what Charles Pierce wrote here

In my time on this earth, I’ve seen Republican propaganda turn a decent centrist like Michael Dukakis into a signatory of the Port Huron statement. I’ve seen it turn a decorated war hero like John Kerry into a Francophone poltroon. I’ve seen it turn a radical centrist/Rockefeller Republican like Bill Clinton into a dope-smoking refugee from the Monterey Pop Festival. I’ve seen kindly old Tip O’Neill turned into a Thomas Nast cartoon, and I’ve seen Barack Obama turned into an Islamic Kenyan holy man. I’ve seen an audience created for every one of these manufactured creations, and I’ve seen that audience respond to them as if they had the firmest basis in reality.

So you will pardon me if I’m dubious of the notion that congressional Democrats have to rid themselves of Nancy Pelosi because she was so easily demonized in that Georgia special election. If it wasn’t her, it would have been somebody else. To paraphrase the editor in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, if there’s a conflict between the person and the legend, slander the legend.

On the other hand, I think that the debacle that was last year’s election revealed the Dems desperately need to rebuild the brand. And they’re not going to do that with the same old faces in the top leadership positions. Tessa Stuart wrote in Rolling Stone,

Mailer after mailer, TV ad after TV ad reinforced the link between Ossoff and Pelosi, who internal GOP polling showed had strong negatives for Republican voters in the district. According to the Washington Post, Pelosi had 98 percent name recognition in the district but her approval rating was “35 points underwater.”

In South Carolina, the GOP similarly took pains to link Parnell and Pelosi – even as Parnell campaigned with Tim Ryan, the Ohio congressman who challenged Pelosi for minority leadership in November.

I confess, I don’t entirely get why Pelosi in particular is so hated in red America, but she is. Sexism plays a role in that, I’m sure, which makes it unfair to Pelosi. But last year, as I watched from a red state, it seemed all the Republicans had to do is somehow tie any Democratic candidate to Nancy Pelosi, and that Dem was toast.

Matt Stoller wrote,

Popularity isn’t everything, but in this case, the American people are right. It is time for Pelosi to go. Passing the torch would be the right thing to do, and not just because of horserace politics. Pelosi is an excellent vote-wrangler and fundraiser, and she has a long and honorable record of defending a certain type of Democratic politics. But at this moment in history, her political frame is a barrier to the much-needed renewal of the Democratic Party.

Stoller calls this the “pity problem”:

When Pelosi sees poverty or discrimination, she sees the people being affected as unfortunate victims who need and deserve a helping hand. Poverty and discrimination are unfortunate. But more fundamentally, they represent a lack of freedom ― freedom that someone, or some system, has taken from you. You are not free if you can’t afford to see a doctor. You are not free if you cannot access a good education because of your race or income. You are not free if your landlord can cheat you because you’re poor. You are not free if you are a family farmer being driven under by meatpacking monopolists. 

Poverty as a lack of freedom connects with a larger problem: More and more of us are having our liberties stolen. Entrepreneurs are savaged by private equity firms and monopolies, young lawyers are burdened by student debt, and we are all being subjected to a health care system full of egregiously large and mismanaged hospital systems, pharmaceutical companies and drug stores. Poverty is a concentrated form of the problems all Americans are increasingly facing.

Too many Democrats have never thought about their politics in this way, or considered the notion that there might be an alternative frame through which to pursue a progressive agenda.

This issue, as venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, put it, is deep. “Pelosi, and the rest of the party learned everything they know about economics from Trickledown’ers,” he said on Twitter. “Thus, they think there is a trade-off between growth and fairness and cannot articulate an economic story distinct from Republicans, except with pity.” 

Put another way — the Dem leadership suffers from a big lack of imagination and a narrow perspective on what’s needed and what’s possible. This in turn has left a lot of people frustrated with the Dems.

Alejandro Chavez, Democracy for America’s campaign manager, told The Fix:

Nancy Pelosi is not where we need to go. She’s failed leadership. While she might be doing some great things in her district, the truth is she’s the person who’s been leading this front that we’ve been running on for years, so she has to go as leadership.

What she’s doing isn’t working. She’s the leadership, it’s failed and, ultimately, it’s her responsibility.

But then there’s the question of who should replace her.  And this brings up another issue that is not just true of Pelosi, but of the Democratic Party national leadership generally. It seems to be more difficult for younger talent to break into the Dem Party power structure than is true of Republicans. Dem leadership is just plain old. Dana Milbank wrote last year,

Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, will be 77 next year.

Steny Hoyer, her deputy, will be 78.

Jim Clyburn, the No. 3 Democratic leader, will be 77.

Their current ages, if combined, would date back to 1787, the year George Washington presided over the signing of the Constitution.

It is time for them to go.   …

… Democrats would benefit from some fresh blood to take on Donald Trump, the oldest president ever elected for the first time, and to revive enthusiasm among millennials, who didn’t turn out in the numbers Democrats needed.

After the debacle that was last year, the Democratic Party needs to be able to hang out a shingle that says “under new management.” Seriously.

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Give ’em Hell, Dems!

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Trump Maladministration

Let’s start on a positive note, which is a campaign advertisement for Randy Bryce, who is running as a Democrat for Paul Ryan’s House seat:

I like this ad, and I like this guy. He seems authentic. He makes me think of my dad, a machinist, and a lot of his friends who were blue-collar guys. I hope he intends to wrap Donald Trump around Paul Ryan’s neck.

Compare/contrast to the recently defeated John Ossoff, who ran a hyper-cautious, centrist campaign for a House seat in Georgia against far-right wackjob Karen Handel. This is from Paste:

I mean, when the New Yorker wrote about him, the piece was titled, “Jon Ossoff, With Election Day Looming, Explains His Cautious Politics.” The entire piece is cringe-inducing—this is a man who refuses to say anything with any passion or real belief, a bloodless suit mindlessly mimicking Barack Obama‘s gestures—but my favorite part came when he refused to attack after his opponent ACTUALLY UTTERED the following sentence at a debate: “I do not support a livable wage.” …

… The strategy here was clear—Georgia’s sixth is a moderate Republican district, Mitt Romney country, and Ossoff tried to win by running as a moderate Republican. Which, again, is right in line with what the ruling corporate wing of the Democratic party has been doing since the ’90s. But it’s stupid, and you know why?

There’s already a Republican party.

You cannot out-flank these people from the right. If there’s a mantra the left should internalize, it’s this: Republicans beat centrist Democrats. Always. And the crazy thing is, moderation never saves the Democratic candidate from being portrayed as America’s answer to Che Guevara. Ossoff is basically a Republican, but look at the ads they ran against him! They either paint him as Nancy Pelosi’s no. 1 San Francisco latte butler or imply that he’s Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command. There’s a wonderful irony here—the further you drift from any appearance of socialism, the more viciously Republicans will smear you as the reincarnation of V.I. Lenin.

I’ve made this speech before, but here it is again: The Republicans are now an ideologically right-wing party. The Democrats, however, are not an ideologically left-wing party. Instead, they seem to be trying to broker interests among a lot of constituencies, including urban minorities and the business community.  They are perpetually threading fine policy needles so as to not anger any particular group, but in doing so they becomes champions of nobody. 

Yes, Democratic policies, on the whole, are at least sane and generally beneficial to most Americans, which is not something you can say about Republican policies. But too often when a Democratic politician tells voters “I’ll fight for you,” what that means is something like “I’ll save you some leftovers.”

Paul Kane’s article in WaPo is headlined “Ossoff chose civility and it didn’t work. How do Democrats beat Trump?

In Ossoff, Democrats hoped they had found a potential new path to defeating Republicans with a message of peace and civility. They calculated that the fiery rage, often associated with supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), would not win over moderate Republicans and centrists, whose support Ossoff needed to have any chance to win a district that Tom Price, the six-term congressman who is Trump’s health secretary, won by more than 20 percentage points in November. …

… This was the beta test for the DCCC’s theory of the 2018 case that well-educated, suburban voters who swung away from Trump last year would reject GOP candidates for Congress.

What they don’t get is that there’s a big difference between inchoate rage and fire in the belly. The latter is what’s missing from too many Dems. It’s not enough to put up pleasant candidates who at least don’t scare the chickens. The electorate isn’t in the mood for “safe.” Bleeping stand for something, Democrats!

Maybe, once in a while, ask “What would Harry Truman do?” Would Truman have let a line like “I do not support a livable wage” pass without remark? I don’t think so. They didn’t call him “Give ’em hell, Harry” for nothing.

What would Truman say about the current state of the Dem party? Nothing good, I don’t think.

Will Bunch wrote,

Jon Ossoff was a very sincere candidate, and he seems like a nice young man. Running for office in today’s climate is a brave thing. But I listened to an interview that he did with NPR on Tuesday morning, and by the end I practically wanted to gouge my eyes out. It was the some of the most insipid, focus-group-tested-and-consultant-approved meaningless happy talk I’ve ever heard from a Democrat, which is saying a lot. He wanted to bring tech jobs to Atlanta, and cut wasteful spending. Health care needs to be — somehow — “affordable.” Ossoff and the Democrats couldn’t have run a more effective “show about nothing” if Seinfeld’s Larry David had been their show-runner. No wonder voters curbed their enthusiasm.

Why can’t Dems grow a spine? Paul Waldman wrote this about the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (emphasis added) —

When I asked Jeff Hauser, the director of the Revolving Door Project and a former Democratic operative who has been critical of the DCCC, to lay out this case for me, he argued that the organization shapes how individual races play out, especially in their early stages. Here’s part of the email he sent in reply:

  • The DCCC recruits candidates and influences primaries by signaling who is viable or not to donors and state and local party actors.
  • Mega-donors and independent expenditure groups take cues about which races matter and which messages work from the DCCC.
  • Young but experienced political staff are often directed to campaigns by the DCCC — there are a lot of arranged staffing marriages where candidates and staff, even campaign managers, barely know each other.
  • And candidates pick and choose messages with an eye toward being in line with the DCCC’s thinking, as they know direct contributions and independent expenditures go to campaigns in line with the DCCC.
  • When Ossoff went wholly bland and didn’t run on Trump, Russia, or almost anything else readily identifiable as an issue, that represented a campaign following DCCC directions.
  • If you are a Democrat and think Ossoff blew an opportunity and fear more of the same in 2018, you need the DCCC’s theory of the electorate to improve.

Hauser said that as important as those broad national factors are, “the difference between a great and poor DCCC could easily be 20 seats won or lost.” If that’s true, it’s the difference between not taking the House and taking the House.

In short, the donors, “expenditure groups” and lobbyists pick the candidates. But the problem with that is that the donors and lobbyists have their own agendas that don’t exactly match what’s going on in real-world America. Lee Fang writes at The Intercept that several people who were behind Hillary Clinton’s campaign last year are now trying to cash in on the Trump agenda:

Lobbying records show that some Democratic fundraisers, who raised record amounts of campaign cash for Clinton, are now retained by top telecom interests to help repeal the strong net neutrality protections established during the Obama administration.

Others are working on behalf of for-profit prisons on detention issues, while others still are paid to help corporate interests pushing alongside Trump to weaken financial regulations. At least one prominent Clinton backer is working for a health insurance company on a provision that was included in the House Republican bill to gut the Affordable Care Act.

While Republican lobbyists are more in demand, liberal lobbyists are doing brisk business that has them reaching out to fellow Democrats to endorse — or at least tamp down vocal opposition to — Trump agenda items.

Again, these are the people who help pick the congressional Democratic candidates.

I can just about guarantee that the DCCC will fail to support Randy Bryce in Wisconsin next year, while Ryan will have all the cash he wants from the GOP and Wall Street. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the DCCC tries to kneecap Bryce in the primaries to run a nice, pleasant, centrist candidate who looks better in a suit in the general election against Ryan. I hope I’m wrong.

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America: Less Exceptional Than It Used to Be

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Trump Maladministration

The Social Progress Imperative is a U.S.-based nonprofit that produces an annual index of countries, ranked by their social and environmental standing. Well, according to this index, WaPo says, the U.S. is a second-tier nation.

With an overall score of 86.4/100, the United States ranks 18th out of the 180 countries measured, a slot that makes the United States a “second-tier” country, according to the index. “The U.S. has been pretty consistently underperforming given its GDP relative to other developed nations,” Michael Green, CEO of the Social Progress Imperative, told The Washington Post. “The U.S. has been underperforming for some time now, but what we see now is that the U.S. has basically flatlined on social progress since 2014. “The fact that the U.S. is in the second tier is not the product of one or two administrations, but decades of underinvestment and failure to address the problems people face,” he added.

Well, drat.

The index ranks nations on the basis of 50 major measures as varied as “freedom of expression” and “wastewater treatment.” While second-tier countries generally offer their citizens access to nutrition, sanitation and electricity, they lag behind in measurements for civic engagement, communal cohesion and safety nets.

We’re still exceptional at providing people with education and with basic sanitation needs, liked piped water, the report says. But, seems to me, given Betsy deVos and Flint, we must be heading for third-tier status fast.

The index measures the quality of life for 98 percent of the world’s population. The top of this year’s index — a section labeled “Very High Social Progress” — is dominated by northern European nations, such as Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, all of which score at least 90. In the second tier, which begins with Belgium at 15, the United States is sandwiched between Japan at 17 and France at 19. Argentina rounds out the section — labeled “High Social Progress” — at 38.

I suppose we can take comfort that we still have it way better than the Argentinians do.  Note that Canada and Australia seem to be doing pretty well, too, according to this map.

 

The two areas in which the U.S. is under-performing most bigly are “health and wellness” and “tolerance and inclusion.” Here’s what the report says about “health and wellness”:

Italy (84.81) ranks second in the world on Health and Wellness with long life expectancy and a low level of premature deaths from non-communicable diseases and suicides. Japan (79.89, 20th) and France (79.06, 22nd) have the highest and second highest life expectancy (at 60), but Japan ranks 114th on suicide rate and France ranks 106th. The US performs far below countries at the same level of GDP per capita, registering relative weaknesses on all indicators in the component.

And, of course, we’re going to be even less great again if that monstrosity of a Republican health care bill gets passed.

The Social Progress Imperative index creating people were broadly disappointed with the whole world in the area of “tolerance and inclusion,” but said this:

The United States and Canada have both experienced declines in Tolerance and Inclusion due to decreasing religious tolerance and increasing discrimination against minorities. But whereas tolerance for immigrants has also declined in the United States, it has slightly improved in Canada. In the US, Tolerance and Inclusion scores declined significantly due to an increase in anti-Semitic activities and an increase in discrimination against minorities. The US ranks just 23 in the world across this component, placing it behind less prosperous countries including Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica.

Ooops — Argentina pulls ahead in this category. Double drat.

Overall, the index considers the U.S. to be “under-performing.” Based on the GDP per capita, there should be a much better qualify of life here than there is.

Okay, try to look surprised. Just try.

Update: Timothy Egan, “Our Fake Democracy

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What Makes Fake News Fake: Another Example From Palmer Report

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Trump Maladministration

There continues to be confusion about what makes fake news fake. So I’d like to demonstrate with a new story from Palmer Report.

I’ve been using Palmer Report as an example of a fake news site, even though it isn’t the only one by a long shot. But Palmer has a loyal following on the left who refuse to see why his reports are not trustworthy. So let me explain.

Today’s example is a story headlined “Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit is giving up Donald Trump’s money laundering records.” Now, I personally have long believed Trump’s real estate business could very well be involved in money laundering. It’s also the case that the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit has investigated Trump properties for money laundering. It’s also the case that this financial crimes unit has agreed to share some documents regarding Trump’s finances with the Senate Intelligence Committee. That much of Palmer’s report is true.

So what’s the problem? First — a careful reading of the CNN story Palmer himself uses as a source doesn’t say squat about those Treasury documents containing evidence of money laundering. We don’t know what’s in those documents. It’s not even clear that the crime unit, FinCEN, is sharing everything it has on Trump with the Senate. The story just says they’re handing over some documents with information relating to connections between the Trump campaign and Russian financiers.

Second, while it’s true that FinCEN has investigated Trump properties for money laundering activities, they haven’t publicly accused anyone in the Trump organization of actually doing any money laundering. Palmer, of course, says otherwise. Palmer claims:

As Palmer Report was the first to report back on April 15th (link), the Treasury FinCEN division busted the Trump Taj Mahal casino for money laundering back in the spring of 2015.

Here’s a more reliable source, NPR:

The Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which opened in 1990 and closed in 2016, was repeatedly cited for having inadequate money-laundering controls, not an unusual charge in the gaming business.

FinCEN fined the casino $10 million in 2015, although Trump had long before declared bankruptcy and had little real involvement in the property.

If NPR is right, Palmer lies when he said the Trump Taj Mahal was “busted for money laundering.” It was cited for having inadequate money laundering controls. That’s quite a bit different. And as NPR said, by 2015 Trump was no longer involved in the Taj Mahal, and even if actual money laundering had been found there, it wouldn’t necessarily have been tied to him.

Back to Palmer:

This was announced in a press release on the FinCEN website (link), but it only became a part of the Senate’s Trump-Russia investigation after our research team dug it up and publicized it.

If you follow the link to the FinCEN website, and actually read the press release, you find that NPR is right and Palmer is wrong. FinCEN fined the Trump Taj Mahal for inadequate money-laundering controls, not for actual money laundering.

Trump Taj Mahal, a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, admitted to several willful BSA violations, including violations of AML program requirements, reporting obligations, and recordkeeping requirements. Trump Taj Mahal has a long history of prior, repeated BSA violations cited by examiners dating back to 2003. Additionally, in 1998, FinCEN assessed a $477,700 civil money penalty against Trump Taj Mahal for currency transaction reporting violations.

FinCEN may have suspected actual money laundering was going on, but apparently they couldn’t prove it. But, again, in 2015 Trump was mostly out of the casino business already. In fact, according to this in-depth report in the New York Times, Trump walked away from his own casino business in 2009, dumping the debt-ridden mess on the shareholders. After that he was no longer even on the board of the company, even though his name was on the buildings.

So what FinCEN found going on in the Trump Taj Mahal in 2015 probably is irrelevant to Donald Trump, no matter how breathlessly Bill Palmer tries to pump it up into a big exclusive scoop. If other news outlets weren’t making a big deal out of the 2015 press release — and Palmer isn’t the only one who found it — it’s probably because the professionals realized it wasn’t that significant.

I’m not bringing this up to make excuses for Trump. I’m bringing this up because I think facts are important. We do not need alternate facts; the standard facts ought to suffice.  Palmer is not reporting facts. He’s reporting speculation, and in some case he’s reporting lies.

If you have done real news reporting for an actual newspaper or other professional news medium — and I have — you learn to be very careful that your facts are, well, factual. People who are sloppy with the factual details get caught, eventually, and that’s the end of their careers. So it doesn’t matter how fervently you believe X to be true; if you cannot corroborate X with a reasonable source, you can’t put it in the story. But owners of clickbait sites answer to no professional standards, and as long as they don’t write anything slanderous or libelous, they can bamboozle away.

More from the Palmer Report:

The Senate Intel Committee is now looking to get to the bottom of the money laundering bust, which came at a time when Donald Trump was still part owner of the Taj Mahal. The punishment came in the form of a $10 million civil fine, and the press release did not state the nationality of the individuals who were laundering money through the casino. There is widespread suspicion, but not yet publicly available proof, that the Russians were the culprits, and that Trump knew about it. In sufficiently large dollar amounts, it would be impossible for a casino not to be aware of money laundering taking place on its floor.

So let’s unpack this. Was Trump still a part owner of the Taj Mahal in 2015? Sort of. According to the Associated Press, Trump “cut most of his ties with Atlantic City in 2009, though he retained a small stake in its parent company, Trump Entertainment Resorts, in return for the right to use his name.” As the New York Times story already cited said, he walked away from his casinos in 2009, giving up his position on the board of directors. It’s well known that after 2009 he no longer had anything to do with the casinos, operationally. But he did retain some shares in the parent company, so technically he was a “part owner.”

But the rest of Palmer’s paragraph is just fiction. FinCEN didn’t claim to have found anyone laundering money through the casinos, so they couldn’t very well state the nationality of the individuals they didn’t catch.

So now that the Senate has managed to twist the Treasury Department’s arm into turning over the money laundering records in question, it should allow the Senate Intel Committee to follow the money and determine the identities and motives of those who were laundering the money at Trump’s casino, as well as Donald Trump’s connection to those individuals.

And that’s it. That’s the whole money laundering scoop. This is not a serious news story.

Again, I’m not saying money laundering wasn’t going on in those casinos, I’m saying that the Treasury Department never cited those casinos for money laundering, just for bad record keeping and reporting compliance. FinCEN may have more evidence it hasn’t made public, but apparently not enough to seek an indictment.

I do think there’s a large possibility that the Trump real estate business has been used for money laundering purposes. I’m not the only one who thinks so; you can find lots of people connecting those dots. For example, Jeremy Venook wrote in the Atlantic,

According to The New York Times, Trump attempted to rekindle his Russian connections during one of his brushes with bankruptcy in 1996, saying he had never been “as impressed with the potential of a city as I have been with Moscow.” Once again, the proposed development, this time an underground shopping mall near the Kremlin, fell through. In the process, though,Trump developed a partnership with a development company called the Bayrock Group, which was founded by a former Soviet official and a Russian-American businessman who has since been implicated in a stock-manipulation and money-laundering scheme involving members of the Russian mob.

See also “Trump and Money Laundering: The Key Questions to Ask” by Cerelia Athanassiou at Newsweek and “Do Trump’s Murky Financial Ties to Russia Connect to Money Laundering?” by Bill Buzenberg at Mother Jones. Lots of dots that might connect; lots of circumstantial evidence. Some of Trump’s business associates appear to be in it up to their necks. I think it’s very likely that Trump was in on it, too.

But we don’t know for sure yet.  My believing this is true doesn’t make it true. We don’t know what FinCEN knows. We don’t know what are in the documents that FinCEN will share with the Senate. Bill Palmer doesn’t know, either. And that’s why this story is fake news.

Even if we find out some day that Trump really was directly involved in laundering money through his casinos for Russian mobsters, which is entirely possible, this story will still have been fake news, because it was making assertions without having the facts to back them up at the time.

So please, people, let’s try to keep it real.
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