Chris Hedges's Blog, page 145

Whistleblower Complaint Alleges Trump Abused Power

WASHINGTON — A secret whistleblower complaint at the center of an impeachment inquiry alleges that President Donald Trump abused the power of his office to “solicit interference from a foreign country” in next year’s U.S. election. The White House then tried to “lock down” the information to cover it up, the complaint says.

The 9-page document was released Thursday ahead of testimony to House investigators from Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence.

The whistleblower complaint is at least in part related to the July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump prodded Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden. The White House released a rough transcript of that call on Wednesday.

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“In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all the records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced as is customary by the White House situation room,” the complaint says.

The anonymous whistleblower says that despite his or her not being present for the call, multiple White House officials shared consistent details about it.

Those officials told the whistleblower that “this was ‘not the first time’ under this administration that a presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive — rather than national security sensitive — information,” the complaint said.

The document, with its precise detail and clear narrative, will likely accelerate the impeachment process and put more pressure on Trump to rebut its core contentions and on his fellow Republicans to defend him. The complaint also provides a road map for corroborating witnesses, which will complicate the president’s effort to characterize the findings as those of a lone partisan out to undermine him.

Still, Trump immediately tweeted, “The Democrats are trying to destroy the Republican Party and all that it stands for. Stick together, play their game and fight hard Republicans. Our country is at stake.” The tweet was in all capital letters.

House Democrats who are now mulling Trump’s impeachment are hoping Maguire will explain why he withheld the intelligence community whistleblower’s complaint from Congress for weeks. Maguire will then go behind closed doors to speak to the Senate intelligence panel.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday endorsed an impeachment investigation in light of the Ukraine revelations.

In a statement Thursday, the White House said “nothing has changed with the release of this complaint, which is nothing more than a collection of third-hand accounts of events and cobbled-together press clippings_all of which shows nothing improper.”

Late Wednesday, most Republicans who got an advance look at the complaint were quiet or defended the president as they left a secure rooms. But at least one Republican said he was concerned by what he had read.

“Republicans ought not to be rushing to circle the wagons and say there’s no ‘there there’ when there’s obviously a lot that’s very troubling there,” said Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, a GOP member of the Senate intelligence panel who has been an occasional critic of Trump. He added that “Democrats ought not be using words like ‘impeach’ before they knew anything about the actual substance.”

Trump, whose administration had earlier balked at turning over the complaint, said Wednesday afternoon that “I fully support transparency on the so-called whistleblower information” and that he had communicated that position to House Republican leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California.

The House and Senate intelligence committees have also invited the whistleblower to testify, but it is uncertain whether the person will appear and whether his or her identity could be adequately protected without Maguire’s blessing.

The unidentified whistleblower submitted a complaint to Michael Atkinson, the U.S. government’s intelligence inspector general, in August. Maguire then blocked release of the complaint to Congress, citing issues of presidential privilege and saying the complaint did not deal with an “urgent concern.” Atkinson disagreed, but said his hands were tied.

Read the whistleblower complaint in its entirety here.

The Case for Impeachment Goes Way Beyond Ukraine

“Has Trump finally gone too far?” There’s a headline you’ve seen a thousand times.

At last, Speaker Nancy Pelosi says he has. A whistleblower says Donald Trump withheld foreign aid to Ukraine to pressure the country’s new president into investigating Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s past business there. Trump doesn’t even really deny it.

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Impeachment Isn’t the High-Stakes Gamble Pelosi Thought



by Juan Cole

Pelosi has long resisted calls for impeachment, to the chagrin of more progressive lawmakers and activists. But the latest revelations finally brought a cavalcade of more centrist party figures around on the issue.

If true, of course, Trump’s conduct was patently corrupt. “If the president used his office to get a foreign government to investigate a political rival, with an eye toward undermining that rival, that’s a clear abuse of power that assaults the basic premises of American democracy,” explains The Nation’s John Nichols.

But I admit I’m puzzled — not about why Trump’s behavior here was bad, but why this was the offense that got so many reluctant Democrats to stick their neck out.

There’s been any number of earlier abuses — from the merely venal (like altering a hurricane forecast with a sharpie) to the unapologetically corrupt (like putting military officers in Trump hotels and charging taxpayers for vacations at his own properties).

I also recall there was something about Russia, a fired FBI director, and — oh right — that time he called Nazis who’d just beaten people and killed someone in Charlottesville “very fine people.”

At every juncture, and countless others, pundits wondered whether this was the last straw, only to have a fresh truckload delivered the next day. (In fact, the Trump campaign now makes a killing selling Trump-branded plastic straws, to trigger the sea turtles I guess.)

To me the Ukraine-Biden gambit looks like a lot of other things Trump has accustomed us to expect from him. Is there some deep reservoir of public affection for Biden or Ukraine that Democrats feel they can draw on to get their case across this time? It seems unlikely.

The fact that we’ve grown desensitized to such abuses could itself be the best reason to finally prosecute one. But truthfully, there are about a thousand other things I’d rather see lawmakers build a case around.

For instance, after taking buckets of fossil fuel money, the president rolled back power plant emissions limits, launched legal action against automakers who agreed to increase their fuel efficiency, and wants us out of the Paris climate agreement. He’s repeatedly censored government climate scientists to cover his tracks.

Is destroying the planet impeachable?

What about caging thousands of children, or continuing to separate them from their parents after a court ordered him to stop? Or openly violating U.S. and international law on the treatment of refugees? Or allegedly encouraging border officials to break the law, with the promise of pardons?

Speaking of attacking rivals, what about tweeting incendiary racist slanders against Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and other progressive women of color, all but openly encouraging extremist violence against them?

What about encouraging a foreign leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to block those members of Congress from an official visit to the top U.S. aid recipient?

Impeachment is as much a political tool as a legal one. If Democrats feel they need the Ukraine story as a legal hook to start the process, that’s one thing — but I hope they won’t forget to make a political case against these much more egregious abuses along the way.

Otherwise they risk sending the message that the worst thing a president can do isn’t to attack the people or the planet, but a fellow elite.

Democrats Are Blowing A Huge Opportunity on Venezuela

Days after the Democratic presidential candidates missed yet another opportunity to challenge President Donald Trump’s failed Venezuela policy on the debate stage on September 12, President Nicolás Maduro signed an important agreement with four opposition parties. These events offer insight into the differing perspectives on the economic, social and political crises in Venezuela—one perspective from the Washington political establishment, the other from Venezuelans.

The Trump administration has applied brutal economic sanctions on Venezuela that functionally create a blockade. It has also threatened military force, has been credibly accused of sabotaging attempts at dialogue on two occasions (in the Dominican Republic in 2018 and in Barbados in 2019), attempted to impose a puppet president and activated a regional defense treaty that could serve as the first step to a military intervention. With a few exceptions, these efforts at regime change have been welcomed by Democrats.

One of those exceptions, Senator Bernie Sanders, supports “negotiations between the Maduro government and the opposition,” recognizes that the Trump sanctions harm Venezuelans, and is a co-sponsor of Senate resolution S.J.Res.11 prohibiting unauthorized military action in Venezuela. Yet when pressed about Venezuela during the September 12 Democratic debate, Sanders—using rhetoric that could have come from the mouths of John Bolton or Senator Marco Rubio—called President Maduro a “vicious tyrant.” It was the perfect opportunity to push back on President Trump’s sanctions and policies; the senator missed it.

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When progressive politicians forgo vocal commitment to non-intervention, it raises questions. If candidate Sanders isn’t willing to publicly challenge Trump on Venezuela, if elected, would he really break with the Trump, Obama and Bush administrations and have a policy of non-intervention or might he cede Venezuela to Democrat and Republican hawks in exchange for votes on signature issues like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal?

This question is particularly troubling because Senator Sanders is often the only voice against establishment regime change efforts. With the exceptions of Representative Tulsi Gabbard and Marianne Williamson, who had clear anti-interventionist and anti-sanction stances but are no longer on the debate stage, the other Democratic candidates are significantly worse than Sanders on Venezuela. Former Vice President Biden, in lockstep with the Trump administration, recognizes Juan Guaidó as interim president, supports sanctions, and boasts of confronting President Maduro. He went so far as to characterize the small group of rebel soldiers who tried to put Juan Guaidó into power by force on the April 30 coup attempt as “peaceful protesters.”

As for Senator Elizabeth Warren, she was against the sanctions yet later endorsed them, despite recognizing that they “hurt those in need.” While criticizing Trump for threatening a military intervention (Warren is a co-sponsor of S.J.Res.11), she is “all for the diplomatic part” of Trump’s plan, including “diplomatic recognition,” which sounds like an allusion to recognizing Juan Guaidó as interim president and therefore a coded signal for supporting regime change efforts.

And it only gets worse from there. Joining Trump and Biden in explicitly recognizing Guaidó and pushing for sanctions are Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Representative Beto O’Rourke. Andrew Yang also recognizes Guaidó and wants regime change, but has no public position on sanctions. Senator Cory Booker supports sanctions and has yet to sign on to S.J.Res.11, though he does not appear to recognize Guaidó. Senator Kamala Harris has ruled out military intervention, while Senator Amy Klobuchar appears to back regime change; neither has a public position on the sanctions nor have they signed on to the Senate resolution. Julián Castro called President Maduro a “dictator” in the latest debate, but appears to not have a public position on Trump’s regime change efforts or the sanctions.

Missing from the Democratic candidates’ stage is the effect these policies have on Venezuelans. These sanctions have killed more than 40,000 people—a figure that comes from economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs. Venezuelan opposition economist Francisco Rodríguez estimates that “financial sanctions were associated with a decline in [oil] production… [representing] USD 16.9 billion a year in foregone oil revenues.” From the Washington establishment point of view, the sanctions are merely a tool to oust President Maduro, no matter the cost to ordinary Venezuelans. But while American politicians support sanctions as if they were a nonviolent alternative to boots on the ground, those under their influence know they are a weapon of war normalized by U.S. corporate media.

In Venezuela, the sanctions affect daily life. They are widely recognized as illegal, rightly called unilateral coercive measures (in international law, sanctions must be approved by the United Nations—these are not) and are considered a financial and commercial blockade. They are held in widespread contempt: 68 percent of Venezuelans blame the U.S. sanctions for the drop in their quality of life.

Counter to the Trump administration’s objectives, the sanctions are also splitting the Venezuelan opposition. On September 16, the Venezuelan government reached an agreement with four opposition political parties: Cambiemos, Soluciones, Avanzada Progresista and MAS. Although they only have 8 seats in the 167-person National Assembly, the agreement is an important signal of deep divisions within the opposition. For years, most of the Venezuelan opposition has been dominated by right-wing extremists who enjoy financial and political support from Washington. More moderate or pragmatic elements of the opposition have toed the extremist line because they know that is what the U.S. government favors, as evidenced by the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez when extremists who launched the coup and took power exclusively for themselves were welcomed by the Bush administration.

However, this dynamic began changing when opposition leader Henri Falcón of Avanzada Progresista ran for president in May 2018, disregarding an opposition boycott and not bowing to U.S. pressure to drop out. They returned to toeing the line when Juan Guaidó was recognized (or appointed, depending on whom you ask) president by the Trump administration in January 2019. Yet the failure of the coup, the backlash against the sanctions, and the realistic possibility of a war have created room for moderate elements to try to outmaneuver the extremists.

For its part, the Venezuelan government’s policy has almost without exception been to push for dialogue. The Trump administration and un-critical Democrats interpret this as being an attempt to “buy time.” This analysis makes for a good soundbite, but it’s nonsensical. Why would a government under siege seek to buy time to extend the siege? Buying time would mean extending the misery caused by the sanctions, the exact tactic sought by the Trump administration to attempt to increase opposition to President Maduro. The lone exception to the Venezuelan government’s policy of dialogue occurred in August, when they walked out of the dialogue in Barbados after Juan Guaidó encouraged the Trump administration to impose further sanctions, sanctions that function as a de facto economic blockade of the country.

The new pact with opposition groups includes five points: 1) the ruling socialist party (PSUV) and allied parties will return to the National Assembly (which they had abandoned when the Supreme Court declared it in contempt in 2017); 2) a new board of the National Electoral Council will be selected; 3) prisoners will be released per the recommendations of the Truth Commission; 4) an oil-for-food program will be established; and 5) parties reject unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) and call for their lifting. The accord has already resulted in the liberation of Edgar Zambrano, a leader in the opposition Democratic Action party who had been imprisoned for allegedly participating in the April 30 coup attempt. On September 18, news broke that Javier Bertucci, an opposition evangelical leader who surprised analysts by winning over 1 million votes in the 2018 presidential elections, had signed on to the agreement and joined the newly established National Roundtable Dialogue.

Between those who voted for President Maduro (6.2 million votes) and Javier Bertucci (over 1 million votes), and those who are sympathetic to the four opposition parties, millions of people are represented in this dialogue. A significant bloc of Venezuelans, one that includes people who dislike or even detest President Maduro, see negotiations as the only way forward, recognize the threat of war, know that the sanctions are destroying Venezuela’s economy and threatening its social fabric (as Venezuelan victims of an economic war become migrants). The Democratic Party and most of its presidential candidates do a great disservice to these people by supporting sanctions and regime change efforts.

Instead of aiding and abetting President Trump’s disastrous policy, the Democrats need to challenge it, and the most obvious candidate to do so is Bernie Sanders. From his work with Central American solidarity in the ’80s, Senator Sanders knows of the human costs of intervention and of the need to avoid parroting the rhetoric of warmongers. He is one of the few people who can change the conversation about Venezuela in the United States. He could take the same approach as the Venezuelan opposition coming to the negotiation table: expressing his dislike of President Maduro while denouncing the sanctions, advocating for dialogue, and pointing out the hypocrisy of targeting Venezuela while the U.S. is allied with a drug-trafficking dictator in Honduras and a regime in Colombia that has a human rights crisis with social and environmental activists murdered nearly every day. This is an opportunity for Senator Sanders to amplify the Venezuelans resisting the sanctions, and that cannot occur at the same time as an appeal to warmongers on either side of the aisle.

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Leonardo Flores is a Latin American policy expert and campaigner with CODEPINK.

Fighting in the Heart of Texas for a Green New Deal

My friend, Harvey Hayek, is a vintage Texan. A third-generation pecan farmer in Fayette County, he owns a gun club, hundreds of prime agricultural acres on the Colorado River and a bottomless store of homespun stories. Unfortunately, the most compelling of these relates to a coal plant that opened next door, 40 years ago, and destroyed Harvey’s livelihood—and nearly his life.

Harvey’s farm is a stone’s throw from the Fayette Power Project, a publicly owned coal-fired plant built in the late 1970s. When it opened, the city of Austin and the Lower Colorado River Authority—joint operators of the plant—promised it would be “clean” and would not hurt local life. Within years, however, the lie was proved, many times over.

Harvey’s pecan trees, which had sustained his family since the late 19th century and should have provided work and income for generations to come, slowly began to die. The plant’s emissions came back to earth as acid rain. Tree trunk samples tell the story: The rings turn black the year after the coal plant opened. What was once the most profitable pecan orchard in Texas became a place of desolation, producing no edible products.

Harvey himself developed health problems. Soon, he had difficulty walking and experienced bouts of temporary blindness. One day, after collapsing, he was taken to the hospital. An MRI revealed a massive tumor in his skull, what his doctor called the “third largest tumor in the United States.” The doctor surmised that toxic pollution was the likely cause.

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Climate change is real, and it is happening now.

My friend Harvey is a pecan farmer who lost his farm and his livelihood—and nearly lost his life—when a coal plant opened next door.

The fight against climate change begins with stories like Harvey’s. pic.twitter.com/CJDo44X7FA

— Mike Siegel (@SiegelForTexas) September 24, 2019

I’m running for Congress in a district that stretches east from north Austin, through seven rural counties, and concludes in the west Houston suburbs. When I speak to political “experts,” they tell me to stay away from environmental issues, because the district is an “oil patch” area, and too many people rely on fossil-fuel jobs.

And there is some truth to that: In Harris County suburbs like Katy, Cypress and Tomball, plenty of Democratic voters—and donors—work in fossil fuel-related industries. They are engineers and geologists, lawyers and human resource professionals. They make $100,000 a year or more working for Exxon, Schlumberger, BP and Halliburton. And certainly, when I address larger groups, they squirm a bit when I say the words “a Green New Deal.”

The science, of course, is indisputable. We must take dramatic action to reduce carbon emissions within the next few years. We must phase out extraction of fossil fuels; we must become a “net-zero” carbon producer by 2050. We must build an international coalition to combat climate change, to take immediate and substantial action. The price, if we do not, will be hundreds of millions of lives, and untold trillions of dollars in economic harm.

Still, the Green New Deal is inconvenient in a state that serves as the heartbeat of the national energy economy. The Texas 10th, the district I am running in, includes laborers who build pipelines, electrical workers who run coal plants, and thousands of individuals whose family incomes are tied, directly or indirectly, to the fossil-fuel economy.

But leadership requires holding uncomfortable conversations. And while the Texas 10th District incumbent, Republican Michael McCaul, may be comfortable taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fossil-fuel industry and soft-pedaling any government intervention, I don’t have that luxury. I’m running for Congress in a gerrymandered district against an incumbent worth $300 million. I only win if I galvanize a social movement, by speaking truth to power.

The Green New Deal provides a fantastic framework to provide a real alternative to the status quo.

First, we acknowledge the gravity of the climate crisis and demand immediate, massive governmental action to address it. We restructure the American economy and use the power of the Treasury to generate hundreds of thousands of jobs building a renewable economy.

Second, we guarantee a true “just transition” for fossil-fuel workers, who should not suffer when we adjust national policy to respond to the environmental crisis. This means much more than job training; we must guarantee income and health care, housing and retirement benefits, and we must provide as many comparable high-quality jobs as possible.

And third, we must remedy the legacy of environmental justice. That means clean-ups and reparations for the communities that have been on the front lines of environmental pollution.

And that means justice for Harvey, for his family and neighbors, for everyone who has suffered because of the Fayette Power Project.

Many people, even those of us who live an hour’s drive from the coal-fired plant, haven’t heard about the true costs of its operation. Through my campaign, I’ve met the neighbors. I’ve heard about a corridor of cancer cases near the “pond” in front of the plant. I’ve heard about early-onset Alzheimer’s, widespread asthma among youths and elevated lead levels in children. I’ve heard about dead livestock and wildlife. And dead pecan orchards.

An array of structural impediments have delayed justice for Fayette County. There is the state environmental commission—responsible for issuing air and water permits—appointed by a Republican governor who can receive unlimited fossil-fuel contributions. The river authority that owns two-thirds of the coal-fired plant is largely controlled by the same Republican governor. We have a municipal energy company in liberal Austin that for many years did not bother to inquire about the conditions of rural neighbors to the east. And we’ve had a delayed national conversation about the real consequences of coal power and the fossil-fuel economy.

But now, in 2019, we have an opportunity. A new wave of progressivism has inspired such visionary policies as the Green New Deal, and has created a pathway for candidates like me to walk. We have an invigorated labor movement, including unions in Austin and across Texas that want a seat at the table as we confront climate change and develop a national jobs and infrastructure program. And we have a Republican administration, at both the state and federal levels, that is so callous, so corrupt and so indiscriminate in its advocacy for fossil-fuel interests that even local independent and libertarian voters are looking for alternatives, in order to protect their lives and livelihoods.

Which brings me back to the Fayette Power Project. The original New Deal had a project in every congressional district. In 2021, when we enact the Green New Deal, let’s make transitioning this coal-fired plant the project for the Texas 10th  District. We can create reduce carbon emissions, create new jobs and remedy the legacy of pollution for this region.

And in the process, Texas can show the nation what a sustainable future looks like.

U.N. Report Paints a Harrowing Portrait of the Planet’s Future

A landmark United Nations climate report published Wednesday details the observed and anticipated future impacts of planet-heating emissions from human activity on the world’s oceans and frozen zones—and warns of the emerging consequences for humanity, marine ecosystems, and the global environment.

The Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) is a product of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a U.N. body that assesses the latest science related to the human-caused climate crisis. It follows recent IPCC reports on the consequences of 1.5° C [2.7 F] of global warming above pre-industrial levels and the necessity of reforming land use practices worldwide.

Although a draft of the SROCC leaked to the press last month, the final version was released Wednesday after the world governments approved its Summary for Policymakers at a meeting in Monaco Tuesday. For the new report, more than 100 experts from 36 countries examined research on the ocean and cryosphere, which includes Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, and areas of snow and permafrost as well as frozen lakes, rivers, and parts of the ocean.

Daniel Ellsberg: Whistleblowers Preserve American Democracy

What follows is a conversation between famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and Marc Steiner of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

“It’s not enough to believe in something. You have to be ready to stand for something if you want it to change. And so that is what I hope this book will help people come to decide for themselves. Are you ready for this to change?” —Edward Snowden

MARC STEINER: Welcome to the Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner. Good to have you all with us.

Edward Snowden defines whistleblowing for this generation. Whistleblowing is back in the news, obviously, if it ever left. An unnamed whistleblower, blowers, have accused Trump of divulging secrets to a foreign leader. Another that he tried to get dirt on Biden from the leader of the Ukraine. Edward Snowden is back in the news with a new book and the reality he faces that the US government may seize the proceeds he may get from that book.

We don’t know the names of the whistleblowers in Trump’s administration and his world, but we do know that whistleblowing has been ongoing in this country since its founding. In her new book Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington and Trump, political scientist Allison Stanger in an article by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker argues that Americans support whistleblowing in theory, but in practice they treat whistleblowers badly. They also tend not to like them. Her quote was, “Whistleblowers are by definition troublemakers. For that reason, they can be difficult people.” Is that really true? What does that mean? And so what do we make of Snowden’s book and the latest revelations about Trump, and why the power of the whistleblower can transform how we see ourselves and how we see power.

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We talk with one of our most famous whistleblowers, Daniel Ellsberg, who brought truth to light when he released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, revealing secrets about the Vietnam War that changed the nature of that war and our time. Daniel Ellsberg, welcome. Good to have you with us.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Good to be here. Thank you.

MARC STEINER: Let’s start with Snowden and what he had to say and the role he played. I know you two are close. He’s part of your foundation— chairman of the board I think, if I’m correct, as you said before we went on air. So talk a bit about where Snowden is now, this book and this period we seem to find ourselves in.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Snowden is a hero of mine as well as a friend, as is Chelsea Manning is a hero. The person who is in the news right now is being a little cautious and playing by the rules in a way that neither Manning or Snowden nor I did. And the difference that makes so far is that his information hasn’t actually gotten out to the Congress or to the public. He or she went to the Inspector General, as the rules inside call on them to do with a complaint. And we notice that as of now, it’s really not out.

Now, if the information is as urgent and timely and compelling as the Inspector General apparently found it to be and as the leaker – or not yet a leaker, we’ll call a whistleblower feels, the time may come if there’s no other way to get the information out for them to give it directly to Congress or the press or the public. They haven’t done that yet, unlike Snowden, and Snowden’s information got out. We don’t yet know what this a whistleblower has to tell us. So the time will come, as I say, when they faced the exact challenge that Ed Snowden made very soberly at the beginning of your program. Is she or he willing to take a risk in their personal lives and their career, even possibly a risk of prison to get this information to the American people? And if it is as important as they seem to feel, then they should definitely face the possibility, I would say, of paying a very high personal cost to get it to the public.

MARC STEINER: And that’s the part we don’t always kind of understand completely, the personal costs of why people will step over that line. I’ve interviewed Chelsea Manning a number of times, and I’m clearly absolutely familiar with your work and Snowden’s work. But your work moved my generation in a very deep way back in the early ’70s. And so talk about crossing that line and what that means politically, and what that means for transforming how we view our own society.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Nearly every whistleblower who’s by definition revealing some wrongdoing or dangerous practice by their own team, their agency, their department, their government, the executive branch to the public is doing something that their bosses don’t want to happen. That’s virtually by definition. Otherwise, they would have put it out themselves. And so they’ll take extreme steps to keep that information from getting out there and keep the whistleblower from succeeding in getting out, if that’s what they’re trying, and to punish them as an example to others. It’s not sheer revenge. It’s a question of deterring others from doing the same. So they can expect very strong efforts at retaliation, and laws passed by Congress supposedly to protect whistleblowers have not done so in the effect in the past. In fact, giving your information to a boss, your agency, or up through the channels, or to an inspector general has generally had the effect simply revealing your complaint to your bosses and allowing them to isolate you from further information, fire you, punish you, do various things. So it has not actually – very rarely has it actually protected the whistleblower from retaliation.

Now, probably the least dangerously of actually getting the information out is to go directly to the press, now the internet, perhaps Wikileaks, or just put it on the net as various people could have done, or go to the press. My outfit, the Freedom of Press Board, in which Ed Snowden is now the chairman, as he has promulgated enciphering cyber ability for people to get this in a coded form into newspapers. And a lot of newspapers use that now. But if you just go to the Inspector General, the situation in this current prospective whistleblower, an attempting whistleblower, has not yet succeeded in getting the information out.

They’re in somewhat of a bind now because having gone to the Inspector General with this complaint, there’s no chance for them to be anonymous. And if they then proceed to go to the press in frustration and getting ripped up because Inspector General knows who is trying to put this out. It could even be a, in some cases it has been, a mistake in this sense. A number of people in the National Security Agency, like Snowden was at one point, a number of them, Tom Drake, Bill Binney. Kurt Wevey, Ed Lewis made complaints to the Inspector General and also the Congress. Then, when somebody revealed the widespread surveillance of which they were aware but with which they had not leaked to the press, when someone did it, actually Thomas Tamm was one.

And then years later when Ed Snowden gave the actual – identifying himself, they immediately suspected Tom Drake and the others of having given this since they had made the complaint, and they actually hadn’t. So their careers were totally disrupted by the way they moved, which was within channels. They would have done better I could say practically speaking to have gone anonymously in the first instance to the press, and then we would have had their information years before Ed Snowden revealed it.

MARC STEINER: So you know, in many ways when you look at—A couple of quick questions here, when I was thinking about this. When you released the Pentagon Papers and then of course that led to Watergate and trying to get information on you to come after you. If these allegations are true, what Trump allegedly did, this was—

DANIEL ELLSBERG: We don’t have the content in detail yet at all. We only have speculation.

MARC STEINER: Exactly right. Well, suppose that speculation was real, what would that mean?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Well, what has leaked out so far, and I’m not clear just what the basis for it is so far. Somebody must’ve been talking more than they were officially allowed to do, but it implies that the president was using the power of his office to hold a $250 million aid deal in bands and pressuring Zelensky of Ukraine to help investigate and smear Joe Biden and his son in preparation for the election. And clearly then, using his office and the powers of his office for his personal benefit of getting reelected.

Now, truthfully, that’s pretty much what presidents do all the time. In this particular case, there’s the unusual aspect to asking a foreign government to help in that. I would say the people who are treating this as if this is slightly unprecedented and unimaginable kind of thing are either ignorant of our history, which is quite possible, or being disingenuous because there’s no question Nixon, for example, did exactly the same as a candidate in 1968. Many others have done this in various ways.

That doesn’t make it legal or constitutional. It does mean in this case that he may have gotten caught thanks to somebody ringing the bell here or blowing the whistle. And they say whether we really learn enough to constitute this, to know enough to see this as an impeachable offense, it does look it’s going to depend on that whistleblower taking thee further risk, a real risk, of going directly to Congress or to the press. Well, there would be a real risk in doing that and it could be very much a risk worth taking.

MARC STEINER: So I’m curious as we kind of wind down here a little bit in our conversation that when you released the Pentagon Papers and were exonerated legally—

DANIEL ELLSBERG: No, I couldn’t be exonerated. My trial lead to a mistrial. It was then acquitted.

MARC STEINER: [crosstalk] That’s right. Right.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Because of government criminality in trying to blackmail me from keeping other information. By the way, if whoever does know in the administration who the person is, the whistleblower—And I use that term a little cautiously here because so far, they haven’t really gone outside channels. They haven’t gone outside of their agency so far to bring that information public, and it hasn’t become public. So let’s just say it’s an attempted whistleblower here so far.

MARC STEINER: Right.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Well, we can be sure that whoever knows that identity and connected with Trump White House, will be bringing extreme pressure to appear to keep them from further going further in revelations. I think, for example, Ed Snowden, if they could have found him, and he was in Hong Kong, well advisedly out of the country when the revelations came up. But If they could have identified him, found him before he actually identified himself and before it had all become public, he would have been in considerable danger of his life, I believe.

In fact, I can say that personally because Richard Nixon sent a dozen CIA assets, so-called, former Bay of Pigs veterans, Cuban Americans, to come up and incapacitate me totally on the steps of the Capitol. And the prosecutor, their prosecutor, was sure that meant to kill me. I’m not so sure he did mean to kill me. I think they wanted to shut me up and make sure I didn’t tell any further secrets on Nixon himself. So when I said at the time that they were looking for Snowden, that he was endanger of his life, some people thought I was off the wall on that. I had to say you’re looking at somebody who actually was in danger more than I knew at the time from the White House.

MARC STEINER: Yeah. This whole way we look at this thing in this society at large, it’s patriot-trader. Which one is it and who are you? And I think that it seems that it’s gotten, in the last 40 years, even more dangerous in some ways for people to become whistleblowers. People are really being prosecuted, put in prison for these things.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: [inaudible] the only person who was prosecuted for doing that under the Espionage Act. No one had ever been prosecuted under any law before for leaking to the American public. Now, I got used to headlines about me, interviews with me or profiles for whatever with the heading, “Patriot or Traitor.”

MARC STEINER: Right.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: “Trader or hero,” or whatever. And it was very dismaying to me to realize that there really were so many people in the country who imagined telling the truth to your fellow citizens can be treason. That’s not true under our Constitution. In fact, we fought a revolution in part to change the system in which criticizing a king was seditious libel or treason, and you could be drawn and quartered for it. Actually, remember, this country was founded by traders. Every single one of them liable to be hanged if they’d been caught after 1776 for signing the Declaration of Independence, and they discovered a different loyalty to a country where telling the truth is not treason.

MARC STEINER: And telling the truth and exposing the lies that may happen around us, I mean, if we look at the right way, it strengthens our democracy, and who we are and what our future might be.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: If you’re not able to do that, you don’t have a democracy. So it is democracy in action, the ability to criticize and to inform your fellow citizens what they need to know to be the sovereign public, to hold officials accountable. People say voting is the only remedy in this case, but what does voting mean if you don’t have the information on which to evaluate a candidate or compare them to someone else? It means it’s a disguised monarchy actually. We’re back to George III, and that the revolution was rescinded in effect. We have a president right now, I think, who doesn’t believe at all in the Constitution or what it meant to have a government different from that of Imperial Britain.

MARC STEINER: Well, I want to thank you for being you, Daniel Ellsberg and for Mr. Snowden and Chelsea Manning and the rest. I thank you for taking your time once again with The Real News. It’s always a pleasure to have you with us. I look forward to doing it again, I hope.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Mm-hmm. Good.

MARC STEINER: And I’m Marc Steiner here with The Real News Network. We’ll stay on top of this and keep whistleblowing out in front. Take care.

Robert Reich: The Trump Economy Is a Sham

Donald Trump and his enablers are hoping that a strong economy will help the American people look past the damage they are doing to the country. That’s why Trump is constantly crowing about job numbers and the stock market in order to paint a rosy picture of the economy.

But when you look closer, the numbers reveal a very different story about Trump’s economy:

1. Wages are still stuck. The median annual earnings of full-time wage and salaried workers in 1979, in today’s dollars, was $43,680. The median earnings in 2018 was $45,708. So much for the $4,000 pay raise Trump and Republicans in Congress promised when they cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations.

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2. Percent of people with jobs is low. While the unemployment rate is low, employment is not nearly as good as it may look when you consider how many people have given up looking for jobs. The labor-force participation rate – the percent of working-age Americans with jobs – is the lowest it’s been since the late 1970s, when wives and mothers first began streaming into paid work to prop up family incomes.

3. Many people are working part-time jobs. Nearly 4 million Americans are stuck in part-time jobs, unable to find full-time jobs. Many of these part-time gigs are either freelance or contract, offering fewer rights and benefits. In turn, this has increased economic insecurity for millions of families.

4. A growing number of college graduates are overqualified for their current jobs. One in 10 college grads are underemployed, which is much higher than 20 years ago. At the same time, the cost of college has skyrocketed, with students going deeper into debt to pay for their education: 45 million Americans now owe 1.6 trillion in student debt.

5. The cost of health care continues to increase. Since 2008, average family premiums have soared 55 percent, which is twice as fast as workers’ earnings and three times as fast as inflation. Prescription drug prices also continue to rise – jumping almost 11 percent in the first half of 2019 alone.

6. Housing costs have skyrocketed. Nearly 39 million American households are now paying more than they can afford on housing. And more than one in four renters are spending over half their income on housing.

7. Americans are going deeper into debt to stay in the middle class. Consumer debt, excluding mortgages, has climbed to $4 trillion, which is the highest it’s ever been, even after adjusting for inflation.

So is anyone benefiting in Trump’s economy? The wealthy and corporations have never had it this good. In fact, under the Trump-Republican tax cut, 83 percent of the gains will go to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.

But most Americans are being left behind.

The next time Trump and his enablers boast about the economy to distract from the damage they’re really doing to America, know the truth. Their failed economic agenda has made Americans poorer and less secure.

The Disaster of Negative Interest Rates

The dollar strengthened against the euro in August, merely in anticipation of the European Central Bank slashing its key interest rate further into negative territory. Investors were fleeing into the dollar, prompting President Trump to tweet on Aug. 30:

The Euro is dropping against the Dollar “like crazy,” giving them a big export and manufacturing advantage…and the Fed does NOTHING! Our Dollar is now the strongest in history. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Except to those (manufacturers) that make product for sale outside the U.S.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2019

When the ECB cut its key rate as anticipated, from a negative 0.4% to a negative 0.5%, the president tweeted on Sept. 11:

The Federal Reserve should get our interest rates down to ZERO, or less, and we should then start to refinance our debt. INTEREST COST COULD BE BROUGHT WAY DOWN, while at the same time substantially lengthening the term. We have the great currency, power, and balance sheet…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 11, 2019

And on Sept. 12 he tweeted:

European Central Bank, acting quickly, Cuts Rates 10 Basis Points. They are trying, and succeeding, in depreciating the Euro against the VERY strong Dollar, hurting U.S. exports…. And the Fed sits, and sits, and sits. They get paid to borrow money, while we are paying interest!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 12, 2019

However, negative interest rates have not been shown to stimulate the economies that have tried them, and they would wreak havoc on the U.S. economy, for reasons unique to the U.S. dollar. The ECB has not gone to negative interest rates to gain an export advantage. It is to keep the European Union from falling apart, something that could happen if the United Kingdom does indeed pull out and Italy follows suit, as it has threatened to do. If what Trump wants is cheap borrowing rates for the U.S. federal government, there is a safer and easier way to get them.

The Real Reason the ECB Has Gone to Negative Interest Rates

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Why the ECB has gone negative was nailed by Wolf Richter in a Sept. 18 article on WolfStreet.com. After noting that negative interest rates have not proved to be beneficial for any economy in which they are currently in operation and have had seriously destructive side effects for the people and the banks, he said:

However, negative interest rates as follow-up and addition to massive QE were effective in keeping the Eurozone glued together because they allowed countries to stay afloat that cannot, but would need to, print their own money to stay afloat. They did so by making funding plentiful and nearly free, or free, or more than free.

This includes Italian government debt, which has a negative yield through three-year maturities. … The ECB’s latest rate cut, minuscule and controversial as it was, was designed to help out Italy further so it wouldn’t have to abandon the euro and break out of the Eurozone.

The U.S. doesn’t need negative interest rates to stay glued together. It can print its own money.

EU member governments have lost the sovereign power to issue their own money or borrow money issued by their own central banks. The EU experiment was a failed monetarist attempt to maintain a fixed money supply, as if the euro were a commodity in limited supply like gold. The central banks of member countries do not have the power to bail out their governments or their failing local banks as the Fed did for U.S. banks with massive quantitative easing after the 2008 financial crisis. Before the Eurozone debt crisis of 2011-12, even the European Central Bank was forbidden to buy sovereign debt.

The rules changed after Greece and other southern European countries got into serious trouble, sending bond yields (nominal interest rates) through the roof.  But default or debt restructuring was not considered an option; and in 2016, new EU rules required a “bail in” before a government could bail out its failing banks. When a bank ran into trouble, existing stakeholders–including shareholders, junior creditors and sometimes even senior creditors and depositors with deposits in excess of the guaranteed amount of €100,000–were required to take a loss before public funds could be used. Also included in Italy were subordinated bonds that were owned not just by well-off families and other banks but by small savers who in many cases were fraudulently mis-sold the bonds as being risk-free (basically as good as deposits). The Italian government got a taste of the potential backlash when it forced losses onto the bondholders of four small banks. One victim made headlines when he hung himself and left a note blaming his bank, which had taken his entire €100,000 savings.

Meanwhile, the bail-in scheme that was supposed to shift bank losses from governments to bank creditors and depositors served instead to scare off depositors and investors, making shaky banks even shakier. Worse, heightened capital requirements made it practically impossible for Italian banks to raise capital. Rather than flirt with another bail-in disaster, Italy was ready either to flaunt EU rules or leave the Union.

The ECB finally got on the quantitative easing bandwagon and started buying government debt along with other financial assets. By buying debt at negative interest, it is not only relieving EU governments of their interest burden, but it is also slowly extinguishing the debt itself.

That explains the ECB, but why are investors buying these bonds? According to John Ainger in Bloomberg:

Investors are willing to pay a premium–and ultimately take a loss–because they need the reliability and liquidity that the government and high-quality corporate bonds provide. Large investors such as pension funds, insurers, and financial institutions may have few other safe places to store their wealth.

In short, they are captive buyers. Banks are required to hold government securities or other “high-quality liquid assets” under capital rules imposed by the Financial Stability Board in Switzerland. Since EU banks now must pay the ECB to hold their bank reserves, they may as well hold negative-yielding sovereign debt, which they may be able to sell at a profit if rates drop even further.

Wolf Richter comments:

Investors who buy these bonds hope that central banks will take them off their hands at even lower yields (and higher prices). No one is buying a negative yielding long-term bond to hold it to maturity.

Well, I say that, but these are professional money managers who buy such instruments, or who have to buy them due to their asset allocation and fiduciary requirements, and they don’t really care. It’s other people’s money, and they’re going to change jobs or get promoted or start a restaurant or something, and they’re out of there in a couple of years. Après moi le déluge.

Why the U.S. Can’t Go Negative, and What It Can Do Instead

The U.S. doesn’t need negative interest rates, because it doesn’t have the EU’s problems but it does have other problems unique to the U.S. dollar that could spell disaster if negative rates were enforced.

First is the massive market for money market funds, which are more important to daily market functioning in the U.S. than in Europe and Japan. If interest rates go negative, the funds could see large-scale outflows, which could disrupt short-term funding for businesses, banks and perhaps even the Treasury. Consumers could also face new charges to make up for bank losses.

Second, the U.S. dollar is inextricably tied up with the market for interest rate derivatives, which is currently valued at over $500 trillion. As proprietary analyst Rob Kirby explains, the economy would crash if interest rates went negative, because the banks holding the fixed-rate side of the swaps would have to pay the floating-rate side as well. The derivatives market would go down like a stack of dominoes and take the U.S. economy with it.

Perhaps in tacit acknowledgment of those problems, Fed Chairman Jay Powell responded to a question about negative interest rates on Sept. 18:

Negative interest rates [are] something that we looked at during the financial crisis and chose not to do. After we got to the effective lower bound [near-zero effective federal funds rate], we chose to do a lot of aggressive forward guidance and also large-scale asset purchases. …

And if we were to find ourselves at some future date again at the effective lower bound–not something we are expecting–then I think we would look at using large-scale asset purchases and forward guidance.

I do not think we’d be looking at using negative rates.

Assuming the large-scale asset purchases made at some future date were of federal securities, the federal government would be financing its debt virtually interest-free, since the Fed returns its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs. And if the bonds were rolled over when due and held by the Fed indefinitely, the money could be had not only interest-free but debt-free. That is not radical theory but is what is actually happening with the Fed’s bond purchases in its earlier QE. When it tried to unwind those purchases last fall, the result was a stock market crisis. The Fed is learning that QE is a one-way street.

The problem under existing law is that neither the president nor Congress has control over whether the “independent” Fed buys federal securities. But if Trump can’t get Powell to agree over lunch to these arrangements, Congress could amend the Federal Reserve Act to require the Fed to work with Congress to coordinate fiscal and monetary policy. This is what Japan’s banking law requires, and it has been very successful under Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and “Abenomics.” It is also what a team of former central bankers led by Philipp Hildebrand proposed in conjunction with last month’s Jackson Hole meeting of central bankers, after acknowledging the central bankers’ usual tools weren’t working. Under their proposal, central bank technocrats would be in charge of allocating the funds, but better would be the Japanese model, which leaves the federal government in control of allocating fiscal policy funds.

The Bank of Japan now holds nearly half of Japan’s federal debt, a radical move that has not triggered hyperinflation as monetarist economists direly predicted. In fact, the Bank of Japan can’t get the country’s inflation rate even to its modest 2 percent target. As of August, the rate was an extremely low 0.3%. If the Fed were to follow suit and buy 50% of the U.S. government’s debt, the Treasury could swell its coffers by $11 trillion in interest-free money. And if the Fed kept rolling over the debt, Congress and the president could get this $11 trillion not only interest-free but debt-free. President Trump can’t get a better deal than that.

Trump Pushed Ukraine Leader on Biden Probe, Memo Shows

WASHINGTON — The Latest on President Donald Trump and the House impeachment inquiry (all times local):

10:10 a.m.

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Trump flippantly refers to the ex-FBI director as a “man named Robert Mueller” and says he turned in “a very poor performance.”

The memo also shows that the president made reference to the private cybersecurity firm that investigated Russia’s hack of the Democratic National Committee servers during the 2016 election.

Trump suggests that Ukraine may be in the possession of the email server, though it’s unclear what he’s referring to.

Trump also says he’d like to have his attorney general “call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.”

The White House released the memo Wednesday.

__

10:05 a.m.

The intelligence community’s inspector general told the acting director of national intelligence that a call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s leader could have been a federal campaign finance violation.

But the Justice Department determined the president did not commit a crime after prosecutors reviewed a rough transcript of the July 25 call.

A Justice Department official says the inspector general suspected that the call could have been a violation of federal law if the president was soliciting a campaign contribution from a foreign government by asking the Ukraine leader to investigate a political opponent.

The official says that was based on the whistleblower’s complaint and the inspector general didn’t have access to a rough transcript of the call.

Prosecutors from the Justice Department reviewed a rough transcript of the call and determined the president did not violate campaign finance law.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal investigative deliberations.

—By Michael Balsamo

__

10 a.m.

President Donald Trump repeatedly prodded Ukraine’s new leader to work with Rudy Giuliani and the U.S. attorney general to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden. That’s according to a five-page memo summarizing the July 25 call.

The White House released the memo Wednesday.

The conversation between Trump and Ukraine’s president is just one piece of a whistleblower’s complaint made in mid-August.

The complaint is central to the impeachment inquiry announced Tuesday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Trump told the Ukrainian president “If you can look into it … it sounds horrible to me.” Trump was talking about unsubstantiated allegations that Biden sought to interfere with a Ukrainian prosecutor’s investigation of his son, Hunter.

Trump also confirmed that he ordered his staff to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine a few days before the call.

The president says he did nothing wrong.

__

9:45 a.m.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is demanding that Attorney General William Barr produce the legal basis for withholding a whistleblower’s complaint against President Donald Trump.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California said Wednesday in a letter to Barr that the refusal to turn over the complaint risks raising “the specter that the department has participated in a dangerous cover-up to protect the president.”

Schiff says the statute “makes no provision” for withholding the information from Congress. He wants the Office of Legal Counsel’s reasoning.

The administration is considering whether to release the complaint, which is based in part on Trump’s conversation to the Ukraine president that reportedly involved digging up dirt on rival Joe Biden.

But Schiff told reporters the administration has communicated “nothing” about its intentions.

Trump has denied doing anything wrong.

___

8:10 a.m.

The House intelligence committee chairman says regardless of what a transcript of President Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s leader says, Trump himself has said plenty to warrant an impeachment inquiry.

Trump plans to release the transcript Wednesday. On Tuesday, Trump criticized House Democrats for opening an impeachment probe without seeing the transcript of the call.

Chairman Adam Schiff told “CBS This Morning” Wednesday that “what the president has said publicly is damning enough.”

The impeachment probe focuses partly on whether Trump abused his presidential powers and sought help from Ukraine to undermine Democratic foe Joe Biden and investigate his son, Hunter Biden.

Trump has acknowledged temporarily freezing $400 million in military aid for Ukraine but denied it was leverage for information on the Bidens.

Schiff said national security is at risk “when the president would use military assistance to an ally as a cudgel.”

Schiff says there’s “no reason to wait” to see a whistleblower’s complaint or a transcript of the call between Trump and Ukraine’s president before starting the impeachment inquiry.

__

12:15 a.m.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has launched a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, yielding to mounting pressure from fellow Democrats and plunging a deeply divided nation into an election-year clash between Congress and the commander in chief.

The probe focuses partly on whether Trump abused his presidential powers and sought help from a foreign government to undermine Democratic foe Joe Biden and help his own reelection. Pelosi said Tuesday such actions would mark a “betrayal of his oath of office” and declared, “No one is above the law.”

The impeachment inquiry, after months of investigations by House Democrats of the Trump administration, sets up the party’s most direct and consequential confrontation with the president, injects deep uncertainty into the 2020 election campaign and tests anew the nation’s constitutional system of checks and balances.

Impeachment Isn’t the High-Stakes Gamble Pelosi Thought

This piece originally appeared on Informed Comment. 

Nancy Pelosi finally caved to pressure to open an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, after he admitted to having pressured the Ukraine government to investigate his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.

Biden is clearly furious over the whole thing, and as a pillar of the Democratic establishment and former president of the Senate (as vice president), he was in a position to pressure Pelosi to do something. I don’t have any proof that he did; it is just obvious that Pelosi changed her mind abruptly on the i-word, and it seems to me likely it was because she got severe pressure from her own peers. She is not a democrat with a small ‘d’ and doesn’t care what most of us think. Her explanation that this Ukraine scandal is something that ordinary Americans can understand, and so is finally an electoral platform of which she is confident, does not make sense to me. Bribing Stormy Daniels was a perfectly understandable interference in the 2016 election and Bill Clinton was impeached for much, much, much less.

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The other thing that may have changed Pelosi’s mind is that the Ukraine scandal hits Trump in his faux patriotism, and it will be hard for Republicans to defend him from a charge of actively seeking foreign interference in a U.S. election, a charge that Trump has already more or less admitted to. Since Republicans beat the patriotism drum so loud (despite most of them being globalists), hitting Trump in that meme is genius.

Finally, a formal impeachment inquiry will reinforce congressional subpoena powers and likely will sway the courts to make quicker rulings and to give the House some latitude. It will much strengthen Congress against Trump’s stonewalling and that of his officials.

Pelosi is said to want to ensure that the Democrats keep their House majority, gained in 2018, and retain a shot at the Senate, and she is protective of Dems elected from conservative districts that until recently were Republican strongholds. She also has to be worried about Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota. If the Democrats win them, they win the presidency. If Trump wins them, he gets another four calamitous years. She hadn’t wanted to do anything to fire up Trump’s base (which includes a lot of people who didn’t vote much before 2016 and who might have lost some of their enthusiasm for the Great Orange Hope).

If this was the analysis, I think it was remarkably timid. First of all, there is not evidence that Trump is widely popular or that trying to impeach him would backfire.

In fact, a recent poll found that almost 70 % of Americans personally dislike Trump. Fifty-one percent dislike both him and his policies, and 19% dislike him even though they agree with his policies.

In fall of 2008, John McCain was consulting George W. Bush about his disastrous presidential campaign, and Bush shook his head. “That looks to me like a seven-spiral crash,” he is said to have replied.

Trump looks like a nine-spiral crash.

Take Michigan. In January 2017, when he was inaugurated, Trump had 48% approval, versus 40 percent disapproval.

By this summer, 52% of Michiganders disapproved of him, and only 40% approved. The Trump camp is beginning to write off another victory in Michigan as impossible. Trump barely won Michigan, largely because Hillary Clinton took it for granted, but also because of a fall-off in the African American vote, compared to the Obama years, and because 14% of white blue-collar workers who had voted Obama switched to Trump. His appeal to the workers was a pledge to bring back the good-paying factory jobs, which he has not done. As for African Americans, his approval among black women is at 3%.

Throughout the summer, according to FiveThirtyEight.com, Trump lost badly to the leading Democratic contenders, though his numbers firmed up in September; my suspicion is that September is an outlier having to do with foreign affairs crises, and his bump will be deflated. In Wisconsin, we don’t see the same effect, and Trump is still down.

Look at the map at Tracking Trump. It isn’t a winning map for him.

Likewise, in January 2017, Trump was up 47% to 41% in Wisconsin. Today, his disapproval is 55%, and only 41% still approve.

Minnesota has gone from 43% approving versus 41% disapproving in January 2017 to 55% disapproving versus only 41% approving today.

He is at 53%-44% disapproval in Pennsylvania after having been positive in the beginning of his regime.

Even in split-down-the-middle Ohio, Trump is down 51% to 45%.

And the 51%-55% disapproval rates in those states would not be so high unless substantial numbers of independents and Republicans joined in the disgust.

Joe Scarborough made the correct observation that because so many of us were blindsided by the fluke in November 2016, we all became timid about making judgments on the basis of the evidence before our eyes. But that is silly. Presidential candidates don’t get re-elected with these sorts of polling numbers a year out.

Maybe this sort of thing had infected Pelosi’s thinking. But the idea that a Trump impeached would be stronger, given his fall in the ratings in key states, just strikes me as daft.

In politics, a year is forever, and as unlikely as it seems, there are developments that could give Trump a bump in the polls between now and then. Bush was widely thought a buffoon before 9/11, and then by fall of 2008 was again thought a buffoon. But barring a major such game-changer (God forbid), Trump seems doomed.

Impeaching him isn’t the game-changer.

As for the impact on the House and Senate, I very much doubt that impeaching Trump will affect races in conservative districts one way or another. But if the House does impeach and the Republican Senate goes to bat for Trump, it is entirely possible that the Democratic base will be outraged and energized.