Chris Hedges's Blog, page 340

The Senate GOP Is Confirming Judges at a Breakneck Pace

With the nation’s eyes largely elsewhere in a sea of distraction on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee quietly advanced 44 of President Donald Trump’s federal judicial nominees in what civil rights defenders denounced as a “monster markup” that threatens to leave the president’s dangerous ideological footprint on the nation’s courts for generations to come.

Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the move “disturbingly exemplifies the joint Senate Republican-Trump administration effort to distort our federal judiciary and roll back our civil and human rights.”

Gupta also accused Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee’s chairman, of defying “the committee rules and basic fairness in jamming through more than 40 nominees for lifetime appointments, many of whom have a demonstrated hostility to our rights.”

44.

That’s the number of Trump’s judicial nominees who advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee today. There’s a lot going on, but we can’t forget about our courts – and the people being chosen to serve on them for life. Our rights are at stake: https://t.co/t2rVzWQtdr

— The Leadership Conference (@civilrightsorg) February 8, 2019

Warning that the flurry of judges was a “clear look into the future,” Esquire‘s Charles Pierce explained that the federal judiciary Trump and his Republican allies in the Senate are creating “will play an outsized role in judging any policies put in place by any Democratic president to repair the vandalism and neglect brought onto the institutions of government by this administration*. In this case, Donald Trump is forever.”

During the committee hearing on Thursday, Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) declared that “too many of these nominees have spent their careers opposing the rights of women, minorities, the LGBTQ community, and Americans who need affordable healthcare.” Highlighting a few nominees’ records, she read some of their public comments and rulings to demonstrate their strongly held far-right views.

The senator also drew attention to the right-wing groups tied to many of the current nominees, adding: “Who gets on the federal court for life is high stakes. Just ask the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation who have spent decades and lots of money placing people who are on their ideological page on our federal courts.”

“Month after month, we have seen a parade of these so-called conservative activists nominated to the federal courts,” she said. “They have been groomed by conservative political ideologues. They want to see Roe v. Wade overturned or narrowed into oblivion, LGBT people permanently consigned to the margins of American life, and constitutional and civil right encroached on by the religious preference of a vocal few.”

Poverty is not just a mindset. Birth control does not cause cancer. Transgender children are not delusions. These nominees in the #MonsterMarkup are not the kind of judges that will protect the rights of all Americans and promote the independence and integrity of our courts. pic.twitter.com/LxmzB5in2v

— Senator Mazie Hirono (@maziehirono) February 7, 2019

Reporting for HuffPost, Jennifer Bendery said her story would be “pages long if we spelled out the records of all of the controversial nominees who just advanced,” but offered “a sampling of the people drawing some of the fiercest criticism from civil and women’s rights groups.”

The advancement of the 44 nominees, who are expected to be confirmed in floor votes by the Republican-controlled Senate, follows the release of a study that, as Common Dreams reported last month, outlined Trump’s ongoing effort to stack the federal courts with far-right judges.

“This analysis reveals how dangerously far to the right Trump has moved the federal courts in almost no time at all,” said Brian Fallon, executive director of the advocacy group Demand Justice, which commissioned the report from Data for Progress. “These are not normal nominees, and Democrats can’t continue to treat this situation as business as usual.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee displays contempt for our courts and for our democratic institutions by rubber-stamping more than 40 of Trump’s judicial nominees. These noms are radical, and overwhelmingly white and male.

The Senate MUST not move forward. #MonsterMarkup https://t.co/AcZcAX7NKu

— Kristen Clarke (@KristenClarkeJD) February 7, 2019

Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.), another judiciary committee member as well as a 2020 presidential hopeful, called out the Trump administration during the hearing for its “commitment to reshaping our courts for generations to come with nominees that are extreme and outside the mainstream.”

“In just the first two years of this administration, the Senate has already confirmed 85 federal judges, including two Supreme Court justices,” Harris said.

While pointing out that if the 44 under consideration are confirmed, “they will represent one out of 20 lifetime-appointed federal judges in the United States,” she emphasized that “it’s not the number of judges that are being confirmed that concerns me as much as the number of extreme judges who are being confirmed.”

“Today what we are seeing is this administration’s commitment to reshaping our courts for generations to come with nominees that are extreme and outside the mainstream.” @SenKamalaHarris #MonsterMarkup pic.twitter.com/1BBr2zuFlz

— Alliance for Justice (@AFJustice) February 7, 2019

And, as Gupta noted in a statement Thursday, “As if court packing was not enough, this rushed markup also included Attorney General nominee William Barr.”

“The nomination of Attorney General, our nation’s top law enforcement officer that oversees the enforcement of crucial federal civil rights, deserves careful and comprehensive consideration,” Gupta charged. “This is especially true given the position’s importance, the divisive and harmful policies of the Sessions Department of Justice, and Barr’s own anti-civil rights record.”

ATTORNEY

Pod Save Us From These Liberal Wonks

I remember once being asked to explain the U.S. election system to a foreign classmate and the shame I felt at describing the Electoral College—a dusty old relic that somehow can’t be shoved into an attic somewhere. America frequently invites this kind of embarrassment, whether because its institutions are unjust, make no sense or simply beggar belief. Even worse, not only do the men and women who prop up those institutions sleep well at night, but it never seems to occur to them that they should do anything else.

Which brings me to “Pod Save America.” Produced and distributed by the pseudo-ironically named Crooked Media, the podcast offers the kind of digestible, wonkish insights peddled by websites like Vox or Axios, but with the imprimatur of D.C. “insiders.” The flagship podcast’s hosts Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor and Daniel Pfeiffer are all former Obama staffers with the inoffensive clean dress and good looks of a Bonobos ad. Where presidential gatekeepers once merely fell ass-backwards into private-sector riches, they now have their own programming, this gang does the usual double-dipping but still wants more: to be prominent cultural voices cashing their checks in perpetuity, or at least as long as there’s a political class in America willing to pay them.

Still, the podcasters’ greatest foible appears to be the lack of self-awareness that only the truly successful possess. (As of November 2017, the podcast drew 1.5 million listeners per episode.) Take the recent musings of Jon Lovett, snipped from a “Pod Save America” broadcast and promoted by the group’s social media account. In the clip, Lovett, the “funny one” in the boy band, attempts to explain the greater objective of health care reform, although it’s not entirely clear what that is; his digression recurs and bends, going wobbly for whole clauses at a time before finally settling on the construction “Medicare-access approach.”

Such a phrase is almost designed to make its speaker sound like he knows something you don’t. But even someone as dense as I am could sense that the only coherent theme in Lovett’s rant was a peevish sensitivity to the accusation that supporting anything less than “Medicare for all’—the popular proposal to expand one of the welfare state’s greatest successes to a sorely needed underclass—is not progressive. It also hints at a greater gripe: the suggestion, implicit or explicit, that Lovett and his ilk aren’t themselves left-wing. Which, of course, they aren’t.

Left unmentioned in this diatribe is the Obama administration’s construction of the Affordable Care Act, which proceeded on the false notion that there is a market solution to our health care crisis, even as it foreclosed on any more expansive alternatives. That’s prologue. Lovett wants to know what’s so bad about a generous and affordable private insurance plan that keeps you and your family healthy, besides the fact that it doesn’t exist and probably never will?

Herein lies the podcast’s whole shtick; as Truthdig contributor Jacob Bacharach put it, the incident revealed how Lovett and his co-hosts “don’t really know what health insurance is.” As a class, Bacharach elaborates, such self-anointed experts would be surprised to learn “their wonkish devotion to ‘policy’ and ‘nuance’ never quite breaks upon the shor of learning how anything actually works.” The politics of “Pod Save America” resemble very closely those plastic geometric toys given to children learning their shapes—all rounded edges to avoid any nasty gouges or cuts. Yet these same guys controlled their country’s levers of powers just a few years ago. Could they really be this clueless?

One thing the American right understands implicitly—indeed, glories in, like those terrifying Germanic tribesmen at the beginning of “Gladiator”—is that politics is about power: who wields the truncheon, and who gets their skulls crushed. Insurers make millions more per year if they institute a rule that prevents you from getting a new gallbladder, an asthma nebulizer for your kid or even some measly insulin; they have the power, and you’re shit out of luck. If the U.S. military decides it’s invading, it’s invading; there’s no referendum to be held on the matter. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement rampages through courthouses, corporate money dirties and binds public servants, street cops become judge, jury and executioner. Power is pooled, amassed and exercised with a machine-like precision.

It has been this way since the days of Shakespeare, and it will remain so until the last blades of grass and puddles of rainwater are fought over in the coming decades. America’s fascists—who, it must be said, seized control of the country in the wake of Obama’s over-promised and under-delivered failures—cannot help but view politics as war. The problem is the people closer to our side of things, the Beltway courtiers like Lovett who would choke off any reaction in kind.

One might accurately use the adjective “conservative” in describing such figures, standing athwart history and yelling, “Stop!” Not that the “Pod Save America” boys consider “conservatism” in and of itself a dirty word. These are the same people, after all, who hired Tim Miller, a former Jeb Bush hatchet man, as a contributor and pet Republican for their show. The revelation that Miller had trafficked in the basest gutter sleaze—circulating far-right, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on behalf of Facebook’s corporate leadership—was enough to get him fired, but not enough to answer the question “why invite the wolf in through the front door to begin with?”

I am a recovering political junkie. Competitive house districts, crowded senatorial fields, two or so years out, even statehouse races in the odd battleground state—I used to inhale this stuff. Now, I couldn’t do it with one of those N95 masks you have to wear during a forest fire. The great conversation will continue, like a football season that never ends or a Terror Tuesday meeting with an infinite list of humans to pulverize—one grand bargain with every corporate sleaze in the iron triangle. And there will be its liberal technocrats, yammering away on their nonsensically titled podcast. Pod Bless America, every one!

Was Jeff Bezos Blackmailed to Help the Saudi Crown Prince?

David Pecker’s alleged attempt to blackmail Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos would not ordinarily attract my eye, except for this paragraph:

“And sometimes Mr. Pecker mixes it all together:

“After Mr. Trump became president, he rewarded Mr. Pecker’s loyalty with a White House dinner to which the media executive brought a guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia. At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions. …”

We knew that Pecker had brought the French investment banker and Saudi publicist Kacy Grine to the White House.

And Spencer Ackerman had reported on Pecker’s strange move to put a pro-Saudi glossy magazine in grocery store checkout lanes in spring of 2018. It is as though he thought American housewives would thrill to the soap opera in Riyadh, where the Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman had, in summer of 2017, sidelined his rival, Mohammed bin Nayef, dethroning him as crown prince and greedily taking his place, before he kidnapped many in the Saudi elite to shake them down for $100 billion while imprisoning them in the Ritz-Carlton. “Days of Our Lives” had nothing on the Saudis.

In short, there is every reason to believe that Pecker is entangled with the Saudi royal court of bin Salman, perhaps, as Bezos alleges, in search of investment opportunities.

One question I have long had is whether investigators looking at the Russian element in the election of Trump are not unduly downplaying a United Arab Emirates and Saudi angle. That is, did those two oil monarchies help put Trump in power in the first place, and is there a prehistory to their entanglements with his circle?

But what Bezos goes on to say is that he hired a private investigator to find out how Pecker got hold of his texts and exchanges of smartphone photographs with his lover, Lauren Sanchez.

And the investigator, Gavin de Becker, looked into whether Pecker’s National Enquirer is influence-peddling for Saudi Arabia for some sort of quid pro quo.

Bezos also hints that Pecker was upset about The Washington Post’s quest to get to the bottom of the Saudi government’s murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Oct. 2, 2018. Bezos owns the Post, though he maintains he is a hands-off owner.

Bezos alleges that the investigation of the Saudi connection alarmed Pecker and precipitated the alleged attempt to blackmail the Amazon CEO into falling silent and backing off, with the threat of releasing further compromising photographs and text messages of a private nature.

Ronan Farrow said on Twitter that Pecker’s hired gun, Australian Dylan Howard, also attempted to intimidate him when he was investigating Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment of  women in Hollywood.

This charge makes me wonder if Pecker isn’t America’s answer to Rupert Murdoch, whose British tabloids were famous for hacking Britons’ telephone messages and then blackmailing or smearing them with the stolen material. Former Prime Minister John Major alleged that Murdoch threatened him with bad press unless he bent to Murdoch’s will.

I have to say that I never took Pecker or the National Enquirer seriously, but maybe he is secretly one of the more powerful men in the world, holding files on politicians and celebrities and coercing them behind the scenes.

One piece of jeopardy for Pecker is that he was granted immunity, for cooperating with the Mueller probe, from charges of election fraud for paying off nude model Karen McDougall, Trump’s lover, to gain her silence during the 2016 election campaign. That immunity depends on his avoiding further acts of illegality. It is not clear that the courts would accept Bezos’ claim of extortion. But Pecker wouldn’t be so nervous about Bezos investigating his Saudi ties unless there was something to hide in that regard.

Finally, the Bezos investigator has been telling The Washington Post’s Manuel Roig-Franzia that he does not believe Bezos’ phone was hacked. He thinks that a “government entity” captured the signals from the phone somehow.

Speculation went immediately to Saudi Arabia, which used Israeli spyware to hack Khashoggi’s WhatsApp account.

Of course, Saudi Arabia and its partner in crime, the United Arab Emirates, are also good at hacking, and actually got into the cellphone of the emir of Qatar and then put out fake video of him.

And, since the far-right-wing government of Binyamin Netanyahu is hoping to be rescued politically by a normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia, the Israeli Mossad has a motive to protect Saudi allies like Trump and Pecker as well.

I’m confused, however, as to how a foreign government could capture text and photos from an AT&T or Verizon server (Bezos uses an iPhone). That is to say, the allegation is that the iPhone was not hacked and that the signals were scooped up in some other way. Moreover, the diction is “a government entity,” not a foreign government.

It appears to me that de Becker may be alleging that the U.S. National Security Agency captured that material, a capability that has been well documented. The NSA, of course, reports directly to Trump, Pecker’s dear friend and co-conspirator in election fraud through the suppression of the McDougall affair.

I pointed out in 2016, in a piece at The Nation, that the Bush and Obama administrations had made a huge error in not reining in the NSA on Fourth Amendment grounds, thus bequeathing to a maniac like Trump the ability to spy on all Americans. Are those chickens now coming home to roost? Did the NSA spy on Bezos at Trump’s request and then turn the material over to Pecker?

John Dingell, Longest-Serving Member of Congress, Dies at 92

DETROIT—Former U.S. Rep. John Dingell, the longest-serving member of Congress in American history and a master of legislative deal-making who was fiercely protective of Detroit’s auto industry, has died. The Michigan Democrat was 92.

Dingell, who served in the U.S. House for 59 years before retiring in 2014, died Thursday at his home in Dearborn, said his wife, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell.

“He was a lion of the United States Congress and a loving son, father, husband, grandfather and friend,” her office said in a statement. “He will be remembered for his decades of public service to the people of Southeast Michigan, his razor sharp wit and a lifetime of dedication to improving the lives of all who walk this earth.”

Dubbed “Big John” for his imposing 6-foot-3 frame and sometimes intimidating manner, a reputation bolstered by the wild game heads decorating his Washington office, Dingell served with every president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama.

He was a longtime supporter of universal health care, a cause he adopted from his late father, whom he replaced in Congress in 1955. He also was known as a dogged pursuer of government waste and fraud, and even helped take down two top presidential aides while leading the investigative arm of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, which he chaired for 14 years.

“I’ve gotten more death threats around here than I can remember,” Dingell told The Associated Press in a 1995 interview. “It used to bother my wife, but oversight was something we did uniquely well.”

Dingell had a front-row seat for the passage of landmark legislation he supported, including Medicare, the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act, but also for the Clean Air Act, which he was accused of stalling to help auto interests. His hometown, the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, was home to a Ford Motor Co. factory that was once the largest in the world.

Yet one of his proudest moments came in 2010, when he sat next to Obama as the $938 billion health care overhaul was signed into law. Dingell had introduced a universal health care coverage bill in each of his terms.

“Presidents come and presidents go,” former President Bill Clinton said in 2005, when Dingell celebrated 50 years in Congress. “John Dingell goes on forever.”

Tributes poured in from current and former politicians in both parties.

“Today, we have lost a beloved pillar of the Congress and one of the greatest legislators in American history,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “John Dingell leaves a towering legacy of unshakable strength, boundless energy and transformative leadership.”

Former President George W. Bush said he was fortunate to speak to Dingell Thursday afternoon.

“I thanked him for his service to our country and for being an example to those who have followed him into the public arena,” Bush said in statement. “He was a fine gentleman who showed great respect for our country and her people.”

Former President Barack Obama issued a statement saying Dingell’s life “reminds us that change does not always come with a flash, but instead with steady, determined effort. Over the course of the longest congressional career in history, John led the charge on so much of the progress we take for granted today.”

Dingell’s investigations helped lead to the criminal conviction of one of President Ronald Reagan’s top advisers, Michael Deaver, for lying under oath, and to the resignation of Reagan’s first environmental protection chief and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s mother, Anne Gorsuch Burford. She stepped down after refusing to share subpoenaed documents with a House subcommittee investigating a Superfund toxic waste program.

Another probe led to the resignation of former Stanford University President Donald Kennedy after the school misused hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funds.

Dingell often used his dry wit to amuse his friends and sting opponents. Even when hospitalized in 2003, following an operation to open a blocked artery, he maintained his humor: “I’m happy to inform the Republican leadership that I fully intend to be present to vote against their harmful and shameless tax giveaway package,” he said from the hospital.

Critics called him overpowering and intimidating, a reputation boosted by the head of a 500-pound wild boar that looked at visitors to his Washington office. The story behind it? Dingell is said to have felled the animal with a pistol as it charged him during a hunting trip in Soviet Georgia.

The avid hunter and sportsman also loved classical music and ballet. His first date with his wife, Debbie, a former prominent Democratic activist whom he affectionately introduced as “the lovely Deborah,” was a performance of the American Ballet Theater.

“He taught me how to shoot a rifle,” former Ohio Rep. Dennis Eckhart told the AP in 2009. “I remember he said shooting a rifle is a lot like legislating. … You have to be very, very sure of your target, and then when you get your chance, don’t miss.”

Born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on July 8, 1926, John David Dingell Jr. grew up in Michigan, where his father was elected to Congress as a “New Deal” Democrat in 1932. After a brief stint in the Army near the end of World War II, the younger Dingell earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from Georgetown University.

Following the sudden death of his father in September 1955, Dingell — then a 29-year-old attorney — won a special election to succeed him.

The newly elected politician was no stranger to the Capitol. Dingell was serving as a page on the House floor when President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan on Dec. 8, 1941. In college, he supervised the building’s elevator operators.

And when he became the longest-serving U.S. House member in history in 2009, Dingell recalled entering the chamber for the first time as a 6-year-old and being in awe of the East door.

“I had never been in a place like this. I was a working-class kid from a Polish neighborhood in Detroit, and this was quite an event for me,” Dingell told Time magazine at the time. “I’ve only begun in later years to appreciate what it all meant.”

Dingell won more than two dozen elections during his career, at first representing a Detroit district but eventually shifting because of redistricting to various southeastern Michigan communities. He became the longest-serving member of Congress on June 7, 2013, when he surpassed the former record holder, the late West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd.

“The length of time is really quite unimportant,” Dingell told the AP in an interview in 2009. “It’s what I have done with that time.”

Dingell, at age 87, announced in early 2014 that he would not run for a 30th full term because he could not have lived up to his own standards. Continuing the family tradition, his wife, Debbie, successfully ran for her husband’s seat in 2014.

“I don’t want people to be sorry for me. … I don’t want to be going out feet-first, and I don’t want to do less than an adequate job,” said Dingell, who by that time was using a cane or motorized cart to get around the Capitol.

Dingell suffered a heart attack four years later, in September 2018 at age 92. He was hospitalized but was soon “cracking jokes as usual,” his wife said at the time.

An autobiography, “The Dean: The Best Seat in the House,” was written with David Bender and published in December. Forewords were written by former President George H.W. Bush, who died only a few days before its publication, and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Dingell had more than 250,000 followers on Twitter, which was an outlet for the outspoken Democrat’s wry takes and quick wit. In January, he noted the negative 7-degree temperature in Hell, Michigan, and retweeted a tweet from the Detroit Free Press that said the “Detroit Lions are going to win the Super Bowl” now that Hell had frozen over.

Along with his wife, Dingell is survived by two daughters, two sons, one of whom served 15 years in the Michigan Legislature, and several grandchildren.

Supreme Court Blocks Louisiana Abortion Clinic Law

WASHINGTON—A divided Supreme Court stopped Louisiana from enforcing new regulations on abortion clinics in a test of the conservative court’s views on abortion rights.

The justices said by a 5-4 vote late Thursday that they will not allow the state to put into effect a law that requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four liberals in putting a hold on the law, pending a full review of the case.

President Donald Trump’s two Supreme Court appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, were among the four conservative members of the court who would have allowed the law to take effect.

Kavanaugh wrote a dissenting opinion in which he said the court’s action was premature because the state had made clear it would allow abortion providers an additional 45 days to obtain admitting privileges before it started enforcing the law.

If the doctors succeed, they can continue performing abortions, he said. If they fail, they could return to court, Kavanaugh said.

The law is very similar to a Texas measure the justices struck down three years ago. Roberts dissented in that case.

But the composition of the court has changed since then, with Kavanaugh replacing Justice Anthony Kennedy, who voted to strike down the Texas law. Trump had pledged during the campaign to appoint “pro-life” justices, and abortion opponents are hoping the more conservative bench will be more open to upholding abortion restrictions.

Louisiana abortion providers and a district judge who initially heard the case said one or maybe two of the state’s three abortion clinics would have to close under the new law. There would be at most two doctors who could meet its requirements, they said.

But the federal appeals court in New Orleans rejected those claims, doubting that any clinics would have to close and saying the doctors had not tried hard enough to establish relationships with local hospitals.

In January, the full appeals court voted 9-6 not to get involved in the case, setting up the Supreme Court appeal.

The law had been scheduled to take effect Monday, but Justice Samuel Alito delayed the effective date at least through Thursday to give the justices more time. He and Justice Clarence Thomas were the other dissenters Thursday.

The justices could decide this spring whether to add the case to their calendar for the term that begins in October.

The case is June Medical Services v. Gee.

Whitaker Committee Testimony Uncertain Amid Subpoena Threat

WASHINGTON — An expected congressional appearance by Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker was thrown into uncertainty Thursday after House Democrats threatened to subpoena his testimony about the special counsel’s Russia investigation.

The back-and-forth between the Justice Department and the House Judiciary Committee raised questions about whether and under what conditions Whitaker, likely in his final days as the country’s chief law enforcement officer, would appear Friday before the House Judiciary Committee.

Whitaker’s testimony has been highly anticipated by Democrats eager to press him on his interactions with President Donald Trump and his oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

The panel, led by Democrat Jerrold Nadler of New York, approved a tentative subpoena to ensure that Whitaker appears Friday and answers questions. Whitaker responded by saying he won’t appear unless the committee dropped its subpoena threat, which he derided as an act of “political theater.”

On Thursday evening, Nadler said no subpoena would be issued if Whitaker appeared before the committee Friday prepared to answer questions.

It was not clear how the Justice Department would respond to Nadler’s statement or whether Whitaker would appear. An aide to the Judiciary panel said the committee had been assured that Whitaker would show up, but the Justice Department hadn’t confirmed his attendance.

The aide wasn’t authorized to discuss private conversations between the committee and the department and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The vote by the committee didn’t issue a subpoena but allowed Nadler to do so if Whitaker was uncooperative. Nadler said he hoped not to have to use the subpoena, but “a series of troubling events over the past few months suggest that we should be prepared.” The New York Democrat said that as late as last week the committee had received reports that some at the department were counseling Whitaker not to appear.

Whitaker insisted Thursday that that was not the case, saying he had “devoted considerable resources and numerous hours to my preparation” and was looking forward to the hearing. He criticized the committee for prematurely and unnecessarily authorizing a subpoena for him even though he had agreed to appear.

“Such unprecedented action breaches our prior agreement and circumvents the constitutionally required accommodation process,” Whitaker said in a statement.

“Based upon today’s action, it is apparent that the Committee’s true intention is not to discuss the great work of the Department of Justice, but to create a public spectacle. Political theater is not the purpose of an oversight hearing, and I will not allow that to be the case,” he added.

Democrats have said they want to talk to Whitaker because he is a close ally of Trump who has criticized Mueller’s Russia investigation, which he oversees.

They are calling him to testify even though his time leading the Justice Department is ending, with the Senate expected this month to confirm Trump’s nominee for attorney general, William Barr. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines Thursday to approve Barr’s nomination, sending the pick to the full Senate.

Republicans strongly opposed Nadler’s resolution to approve a subpoena if necessary. They said it was unnecessary because Whitaker was already appearing voluntarily.

Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the panel, called the subpoena authorization “political theater” before the vote. Collins said it was “choreographed by the chairman and starring the acting attorney general as some mythological protector of secrets.”

After Whitaker’s statement, Collins said Nadler had overplayed his hand.

“In a quest to score political points against the president, they authorized a pre-emptive subpoena, treating a voluntary witness as hostile,” Collins said.

In a separate letter sent to Nadler, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd demanded a response on the subpoena question. Boyd also responded to Nadler’s request for notification if Whitaker planned to assert executive privilege on certain topics.

Boyd laid out an argument for asserting such executive privilege in the letter, saying that administration officials from both parties have declined to answer questions about conversations they have had with the president.

“Rather than conducting appropriate oversight into the department’s programs and activities, the committee evidently seeks to ask questions about confidential presidential communications that no attorney general could ever be expected to disclose under the circumstances,” Boyd wrote.

Nadler had noted that previous Trump administration officials, including former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, declined to answer questions about conversations with the White House during testimony, saying that the president might want to claim executive privilege on those conversations in the future. Nadler said that is “ridiculous” and administration officials must provide the committee with answers or a better excuse to withhold them.

“Without the threat of a subpoena, I believe it may be difficult to hold Mr. Whitaker to this standard,” Nadler said.

Trump-GOP Meeting Boosts Optimism About Reaching Border Deal

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump appears to be taking a more positive view of Capitol Hill talks on border security, according to negotiators who struck a distinctly optimistic tone after a White House meeting with a top Republican on the broad parameters of a potential bipartisan agreement.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama said Thursday’s session in the Oval Office was “the most positive meeting I’ve had in a long time” and that the president was “very reasonable.”

Down Pennsylvania Avenue at the Capitol, the mood among negotiators was distinctly upbeat, with participants in the talks between the Democratic-controlled House and GOP-held Senate predicting a deal could come as early as this weekend.

There’s a Feb. 15 deadline to enact the measure or a stopgap spending bill to avert another partial government shutdown that neither side wants to reprise. Trump and Republicans are especially eager to avoid another shutdown after they got scalded by the last one.

Trump had previously called the talks a “waste of time” and he’s threatened to declare a national emergency to bypass Congress and build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. But Shelby said Trump during their meeting “urged me to get to yes” on an agreement.

Publicly on Thursday Trump took a wait-and-see approach.

“I certainly hear that they are working on something and both sides are moving along,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens. We need border security. We have to have it, it’s not an option. Let’s see what happens.”

The White House is committed to letting the negotiations play out, with some saying they are “cautiously optimistic” about getting a deal they could live with, said a senior administration official who lacked authorization to publicly discuss internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Beyond the border security negotiations, the measure is likely to contain seven appropriations bills funding domestic agencies and the foreign aid budget, as well as disaster aid for victims of last year’s hurricanes and western wildfires.

“I’m hopeful,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “I do like the idea of getting all of last year’s work finished and I hope that’s where it ends up.”

Any move by Trump to fund a border barrier by executive fiat, however, would roil many Republicans on Capitol Hill, raising the likelihood that both House and Senate could pass legislation to reverse him. Trump could veto any such measure, but he’s also certain to face a challenge in the courts.

“If Congress won’t participate or won’t go along, we’ll figure out a way to do it with executive authority,” Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” on Wednesday.

Mulvaney said that the administration has identified well more than $5.7 billion to transfer to wall construction, saying they would try to avoid legal obstacles.

“Find the money that we can spend with the lowest threat of litigation, and then move from that pot of money to the next pot that maybe brings a little bit more threat of litigation,” Mulvaney said.

It’s clear that Trump won’t get anything close to the $5.7 billion he’s demanded for wall construction, just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will have to depart from her view that there shouldn’t be any wall funding at all.

Last year, a bipartisan Senate panel approved $1.6 billion for 65 miles of pedestrian fencing in Texas — in line with Trump’s official request. The negotiations aren’t likely to veer very far from that figure, aides involved in the talks said, and newly empowered House Democrats were looking to restrict use of the money.

A key negotiator, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said details on nettlesome border wall issues haven’t been worked out. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., another participant, said both sides are showing flexibility, including Democrats who insisted during the recently-ended 35-day shutdown on no wall funding at all.

“They are not opposed to barriers,” Blunt said about Democrats. “And the president, I think, has embraced the idea that there may actually be something better than a concrete wall would have been anyway.”

Pelosi told reporters Thursday that she was hopeful of an agreement that would “protect our borders as we protect our values.”

Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., another negotiator, acknowledged that Democrats could possibly lose votes on any final deal and that it’s “unrealistic” to think there would be no funding at all for any physical barriers.

“Like in any negotiation — if the Republicans and the White House are saying they need barriers, wall, whatever you want to call it, and that is an absolute objective, and we’re saying we want some other things — like in anything else, it’s a trade off,” she said.

Among the things Democrats are battling against are higher levels of funding for detention beds to hold migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.

Frank Robinson, Baseball’s Fearsome Trailblazer, Dies at 83

Crowding the plate, fearsome and fearless, Frank Robinson hammered his way into the Hall of Fame.

His legacy, however, was cemented that day in 1975 when he simply stood in the dugout at old Cleveland Stadium — the first black manager in Major League Baseball.

Robinson, the only player to earn the MVP award in both leagues and a Triple Crown winner, died Thursday at 83. He had been in failing health and in hospice care at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. MLB said he was with family and friends at the time.

“Frank Robinson’s resume in our game is without parallel, a trailblazer in every sense, whose impact spanned generations,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.

Robinson hit 586 home runs — he was fourth on the career list behind only Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays when he retired and now ranks 10th. An MVP with Cincinnati and Baltimore, he led the Orioles to their first World Series championship in 1966.

An All-Star outfielder in 12 seasons and a first-ballot selection to Cooperstown, Robinson also was a Rookie of the Year and picked up a Gold Glove.

“Frank Robinson and I were more than baseball buddies. We were friends. Frank was a hard-nosed baseball player who did things on the field that people said could never be done,” Aaron posted on Twitter.

“Baseball will miss a tremendous human being,” he said.

Robinson’s place in the sport’s history extended far beyond the batter’s box and basepaths.

Robinson fulfilled his quest to become the first African-American manager in the big leagues when he was hired by the Cleveland Indians. His impact was immediate and memorable.

The Indians opened at home that year and Robinson, still active, batted himself second as the designated hitter. In the first inning, he homered off Doc Medich and the crowd went crazy, cheering the whole April afternoon as Cleveland beat the Yankees.

The Reds, Orioles and Indians have retired his No. 20 and honored him with statues at their stadiums.

Robinson later managed San Francisco, Baltimore and Montreal. He became the first manager of the Washington Nationals after the franchise moved from Montreal for the 2005 season — the Nationals put him in their Ring of Honor, too.

More than half the major league teams have had black managers since his debut with Cleveland.

Robinson later spent several years working as an executive for MLB and for a time oversaw the annual Civil Rights Game. He advocated for more minorities throughout baseball and worked with former Commissioner Bud Selig to develop the Selig Rule, directing teams to interview at least one minority candidate before hiring a new manager.

For all he did on and off the field, Robinson was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush in 2005.

Hall of Fame manager Joe Torre played against and worked with Robinson for years.

“He was a tough nut,” Torre recalled at the owners’ meetings in Orlando, Florida. “He never lost that feistiness, which puts a smile on your face … He was always that guy that commanded a lot of respect and he had a presence about him.”

Born Aug. 21, 1935, in Beaumont, Texas, Robinson attended McClymonds High School in Oakland, California, and was a basketball teammate of future NBA great Bill Russell. But it was on the diamond, rather than court, where fame awaited Robinson.

Former Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer, who also gained first-ballot entry into the Hall, once called Robinson, “the best player I ever saw.”

Starting out in an era when Mays, Aaron, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams were the big hitters, Robinson more than held his own over 21 seasons. He finished with 1,812 RBIs and hit .294 — he played in the World Series five times, and homered in each of them.

Robinson was the only player to hit a ball completely out of old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore and once connected for grand slams in consecutive innings of a game. But he didn’t just slug away, as evidenced by a .389 on-base average boosted by 1,420 walks against 1,532 strikeouts. Extremely alert on the bases, he had 204 steals.

Robinson played the game with grace, yet was known as fierce competitor who combined hard work with natural talent. He crowded the plate, yielding to no pitcher, and didn’t seem to care about being brushed back or getting hit by a pitch 198 times.

“Pitchers did me a favor when they knocked me down,” Robinson said. “It made me more determined. I wouldn’t let that pitcher get me out.”

And opposing pitchers noticed.

“Frank Robinson might have been the best I ever saw at turning his anger into runs. He challenged you physically as soon as he stepped into the batter’s box, with half his body hanging over the plate,” Hall ace Bob Gibson once wrote.

“As a rule, I’m reluctant to express admiration for hitters, but I make an exception for Frank Robinson,” Gibson wrote.

Robinson carried a similar philosophy as a baserunner, unapologetically sliding spikes high whenever necessary.

“The baselines belong to the runner, and whenever I was running the bases, I always slid hard,” Robinson declared.

Robinson broke in with a bang as a 20-year-old big leaguer. He tied the first-year record with 38 home runs for Cincinnati in 1956, scored a league-high 122 times and was voted NL Rookie of the Year.

Robinson was the 1961 NL MVP after batting .323 with 37 homers and 124 RBIs for the pennant-winning Reds, and reached career highs in runs (134) and RBIs (136) in 1962. He was an All-Star, too, in 1965, but Reds owner Bill DeWitt decided Robinson was an old-ish 30 and time to make a move.

That December, Robinson was the centerpiece in what would ultimately be one of the most lopsided trades in baseball history, going to Baltimore for pitchers Milt Pappas and Jack Baldschun and outfielder Dick Simpson.

Robinson became an instant hit with the Orioles in 1966 as the unanimous AL MVP and a Triple Crown winner.

On May 8, he became the only player ever to hit a home run completely out of Baltimore’s home park, Memorial Stadium. The drive came against Cleveland ace Luis Tiant and the spot where the ball sailed over the left-field wall was marked by a flag that read “HERE” that remained in place until the Orioles left for Camden Yards in 1991.

Robinson batted .316 with 49 home runs and 122 RBIs during his first season in Birdland. He then homered in the first inning of the 1966 World Series opener at Dodger Stadium and capped off the four-game sweep of Los Angeles with another homer off Don Drysdale in a 1-0 win in Game 4.

Robinson hit two home runs against the Reds — of all clubs — in teaming with future Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson to win another crown for the Orioles in 1970.

All told, Robinson was an All-Star in five of his six seasons with Baltimore, reaching the World Series four times and batting .300 with 179 home runs. The cap on his Cooperstown plaque carries on O’s logo.

Pappas went 30-29 over two-plus seasons with the Reds, Baldschun won one game in 51 appearances over two years with Cincinnati and Simpson hit five home runs as a part-time outfielder for the Reds during two mediocre seasons.

Robinson was traded to the Dodgers before the 1972 season. He played for the California Angels in 1973 and was dealt to Cleveland late in the 1974 season.

His managerial debut came 28 years after Jackie Robinson broke the MLB color barrier as a player.

“Every time I put on this uniform, I think of Jackie Robinson,” Frank Robinson said as he began his new role.

Robinson had coached for the Orioles and worked in their front office when he became their manager in 1988 after the team opened at 0-6. Things didn’t get much better right away as Baltimore went on to lose its first 21 games and finished 54-107. The next season, the O’s went 87-75 and Robinson was voted AL Manager of the Year.

Tough and demanding, he went 1,065-1,176 overall as a big league manager.

A no-nonsense guy, Robinson also had a sharp wit. That served him well in Baltimore where, in addition to being a star right fielder, he was the judge for the team’s Kangaroo Court, assessing playful fines for missing signs, uniform mishaps and other things he deemed as infractions.

At the time, the Orioles had a batboy named Jay Mazzone, whose hands were amputated when he was 2 after a burning accident. Mazzone capably did his job for years with metal hooks and became good friends with Robinson.

Some players, though, initially weren’t sure how to treat the teen.

“Frank Robinson broke the ice,” Mazzone said. “He was running his Kangaroo Court and calling a vote among the players, whether to fine somebody or not.”

“It was either thumbs up or thumbs down,” he recalled. “After the vote, he said, ‘Jay, you’re fined for not voting.’ Everybody laughed. After that, I was treated just like everybody else.”

Survivors include his wife, Barbara, and daughter Nichelle.

There was no immediate word on funeral arrangements.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward Markey Release ‘Green New Deal’ Bill

The earth is at risk for a climate crisis as early as 2040 according to a 2018 report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That includes, as Coral Davenport explained in The New York Times, “worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs.” Amid this barrage of frightening news, advocates and lawmakers demanded solutions. They floated an ambitious “Green New Deal”; a set of policies designed to lower carbon emissions, reduce the use of fossil fuels, incentivize renewable energy and create jobs in the process.

Now, as NPR reports Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., have introduced a bill they hope will be the first legislative step in taking the Green New Deal from a slogan into reality.

The bill doesn’t set a specific date for eliminating fossil fuels, but does, as  Lisa Friedman and Glenn Thrush write in The New York Times, “call for generating 100 percent of electricity through renewable sources like wind and solar in the next 10 years, eliminating greenhouse emissions in manufacturing and forestry ‘as much as is technologically feasible,’ and re-engineering cars and trucks to end climate pollution.”

The legislative prospects for the measure “are bleak in the foreseeable future,” Friedman and Thrush write, adding that “Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has no intention of bringing it to the floor for a vote, according to a Democratic leadership aide with direct knowledge of her plans.”

On the same day that Ocasio-Cortez and Markey released their resolution, Pelosi announced the members of a new House Select Committee on climate change. one of them. In an interview with Politico, Pelosi also dismissed the plan as “the green dream,” adding, “Nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”

At least one scientist who spoke to NPR was skeptical over whether the United States could meet the bill’s goal of transitioning to renewable energy within ten years. “Where we need to be targeting really is a net-zero carbon economy by about 2050, which itself is an enormous challenge and will require reductions in carbon emissions much faster than have been achieved historically,” said Jesse Jenkins, a postdoctoral environmental fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Ocasio-Cortez however, in an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, emphasized the need for a starting point, a framework from which to develop future, more detailed plans.

“Even the solutions that we have considered big and bold are nowhere near the scale of the actual problem that climate change presents to us,” she told Inskeep, adding, “It could be part of a larger solution, but no one has actually scoped out what that larger solution would entail.”

Meanwhile, Democratic candidates for president are already announcing their support for a Green New Deal, and, as Danielle Kurtzleben writes on NPR online, “It’s easy to see the issue becoming a litmus test for some voters in both the 2020 congressional elections and the presidential election.” So far, Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., all of whom are either running in 2020, or considering a run, have signed on as co-sponsors.

Read the latest version of the bill here.

Brexit Is Hell, but It’s Not Politicians Who’ll Suffer Most

“I’ve been wondering what the special place in hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan of how to carry it out safely,” said European Council President  Donald Tusk on Wednesday, causing an uproar in the U.K. that was likely heard all the way across the North Sea in Brussels. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker piled on the drama with a restating of the religiously-charged word, saying his job at the E.U. currently is “hell.”

While Tusk and Juncker suffering through the seemingly never-ending negotiations with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May and her government can hardly be described as hell, I’ll tell you about a few people this ill-fated political game is actually hell for: the E.U. nationals living in the U.K. and the Brits living in E.U. member states whose futures are hanging in the hands of these incompetent politicians; the Brits with diabetes who fear they may not be able to get the insulin they need if negotiations fail; and let’s not forget the 1.7 million people that will likely be plunged into extreme poverty in nations like Cambodia thanks to Brexit.

The list goes on and on. As the looming March 29 deadline for the U.K. to officially leave the E.U. gets closer, a deep panic is setting in throughout Europe. At this point, it’s almost impossible to keep track of all the times May has rushed to Brussels to renegotiate with E.U. officials—in fact, she’s there as I write this—only to return home with a plan that is almost identical to her vastly unpopular deal. It’s the very same deal that was voted down in U.K. parliament just last month, earning May the ignominious milestone of having suffered the biggest loss a PM has experienced in modern British history. You know, the deal that nearly lost the prime minister her job twice now.

Here’s a recap of what the toxic 585-page agreement the British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn calls “the worst of all worlds” contains. The three main points it covers are a the £39bn ($51bn) “divorce settlement” the U.K. owes, the rights of E.U. citizens residing in the U.K. and those of U.K. citizens living in the E.U. after Brexit, and last, but in no way least given the trouble it’s caused, the so-called Irish “backstop.”

The backstop would keep Northern Ireland in a sort of regulatory limbo if the U.K. and E.U. fail to negotiate a trade deal within the allotted time frame set forth in the exit plan. As The Guardian explains,

The UK had initially proposed a technological solution but this was rebuffed by Ireland and EU officials as “magical thinking”. The EU initially proposed that Northern Ireland should in effect stay in the single market and customs union, prompting a furious response from the British prime minister. The EU moved its position. The core of the solution is the so-called backstop, an insurance plan that kicks in if future trade talks fail to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. The backstop means the whole of the UK will remain in the EU customs union, while Northern Ireland will have to follow single market rules. Brexit supporters loathe the backstop, fearing it will leave the UK “shackled” to EU rules. Wary EU countries think the plan benefits the UK, so insisted the UK respect EU social and environmental rules to avoid undercutting their companies.

While both U.K. and E.U. officials insist it is an unlikely scenario that a trade deal won’t be agreed upon, the current last-minute negotiations they find themselves in don’t inspire confidence that they’re capable of delivering on that promise. Given the fragile peace accomplished only a few years ago between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, this is a crucial, complicated point that’s making pretty much everyone unhappy. To top it off, May made staying in the single market or in a customs union one of her “red lines” since before negotiations began, and to this day, refuses to back down from what she set out to do.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, as well as his “shadow” Brexit minister, Keir Starmer, have both made staying in a customs union an essential part of their alternative proposal. Both have also reiterated several times the Party’s intention to stay close to the single market, with Corbyn laying out both points as requirements for Labour backing any deal May makes Wednesday.

The BBC explains the difference between a customs union and a single market:

The customs union ensures EU member states all charge the same import duties to countries outside the EU. It allows member states to trade freely with each other, without burdensome customs checks at borders, but it limits their freedom to strike their own trade deals.

It is different from a free trade area. In a free trade area no tariffs, taxes or quotas are charged on goods and services moving within the area but members are free to strike their own external trade deals.

The government says the UK is leaving the customs union after the transition period but ministers have yet to decide on what will replace it.

Another sore point in the negotiations has been the rights of citizens. May, who was Home Secretary when the U.K. ushered in draconic immigration policies for most non-E.U. citizens, seems to want to impose similar suffering on E.U. citizens who don’t move to the U.K. before the end of the transition period. (She’d pushed for March 29 to be the end date of free movement, but lost on this front, too.) Brits living abroad are miffed at the deal, because it would limit their residency to whatever nation they find themselves in at the time the Brexit transition ends, as opposed to the freedom they had previously to live, work, study and receive health care in any of the other 27 member states.

Even though Tusk has recently told May—probably to her dismay—that he thinks Corbyn’s alternative plan represents a “promising way out” of the apparent Brexit mess, Labour is caught in a tricky place between its “remain” and “leave” constituents as well as its membership and members of Parliament. On Thursday, Starmer reassured the membership, a big chunk of which has been pushing for a second referendum, that Labour hadn’t yet ruled it out, despite trying to negotiate with May.

In the midst of all the complicated negotiations, constant back-and-forths in London and Brussels, the threat of a catastrophic no-deal dangling, the anger frothing across Europe over the exhausting, drawn-out exit, rebel Labour MPs who consider themselves “center” and have presumably forgotten that the Labour Party came out of 19th century trade union movement and socialist parties, have been secretly plotting to leave Labour and start their own “center” party, which they hope centrist Tories and Liberal Democrats will also join.

It’s hard to see the point of going through the trouble of starting a new party when these so-called centrists could be honest with themselves and their constituents and join the Tory Party, which they seem to have more in common with than their own. In the words of journalist Matt Taibbi, “Goodbye, and good riddance to centrism,” the position he calls the “myth of our time.” The Labour rebels’ fiendish ways may yet earn them a spot in the same “hell” Tusk is imagining. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable people in Europe and around the world continue to face infernal uncertainty and possible disaster thanks to a cross-border smattering of European politicians who have decided to continually shoot everyone, including themselves, in the foot.