Republicans Being Awful

From the Toronto Star:

In the morning, Donald Trump echoed the vocabulary of white supremacists. In the afternoon, he endorsed a fictional war crime against Muslims.

[...]

On Thursday afternoon, Trump issued a relatively conventional condolence tweet in response to the Barcelona terrorist attack that has been claimed by Daesh (also known as the Islamic State). But 45 minutes later, he returned to anti-Muslim bigotry — asking people to research an invented U.S. massacre of Muslim terrorists with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood.

“Study what Gen. Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!”

It would be remarkable even if the story were true: the president advocating extrajudicial killing, involving religious prejudice, as a method of deterring terrorism.

But the story is fake, historians say. Trump was citing an internet hoax that has circulated in email forwards since at least 2001.

[...]

Trump did not elaborate, this time, on what the late Pershing supposedly did. But he told a detailed fable at a campaign rally in February 2016.

From Slate Magazine blog:

White House senior adviser for policy Stephen Miller spoke at the daily press briefing on Wednesday to tout Donald Trump’s newly announced plan to cut legal immigration in half and make it harder for non-native English speakers or low-skill workers to enter the country.

When he was challenged on this part of the proposal by CNN reporter Jim Acosta, Miller decided to explain who America’s real enemy was: The poem on the Statue of Liberty.

Acosta asked:

The Statue of Liberty says “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” It doesn’t say anything about speaking English or being able to be a computer programmer. Aren’t you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country if you’re telling them you have to speak English? Can’t people learn how to speak English when they get here?

And Miller’s response:

I don’t want to get off into a whole thing about history here, but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty enlightening the world; it’s a symbol of American liberty lighting the world. The poem that you’re referring to that was added later and is not part of the original Statue of Liberty.

From the Daily Beast:

As chaos unfolded at the nation’s airports, Trump administration officials issued clear directives: treat lawyers’ calls like “protests” and keep duly elected representatives out.  

On the chaotic day the Trump administration’s travel ban went into effect, high-level Homeland Security officials directed their staff at airports around the country to stiff-arm members of Congress and treat lawyers with deep suspicion.

Members of Congress say they’re shocked by the orders, uncovered in documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from The Daily Beast and The James Madison Project, both of which were represented by the law office of Mark S. Zaid.

From Forbes:

Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, appointed Friday as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist who saw patients for 30 years in private practice.

Unlike any OB/GYN I know, Fitzgerald treated men as well as women. That's because besides being board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology, she is a fellow in "anti-aging medicine."

It says so right in her bio on the website for the Georgia Department of Public Health, where she served as commissioner for seven years before moving to the CDC. (The Health and Human Services press release in which HHS Secretary Tom Price, a fellow Georgia physician, announced her CDC appointment doesn't include that tidbit).

The article has more information on the type of anti-aging medicine Fitzgerald is referencing:

“I’m shocked,” Dr. Steven Goldstein, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the New York University School of Medicine and treasurer of the International Menopause Society, said after I told him that Fitzgerald’s biography identifies her as an anti-aging medicine fellow.

From Talking Points Memo:

But piecing together this timeline and based on President Trump’s own account, we can say that he knew his advisers were discussing how to respond to a press story about the June 2016 meeting. He had a secret conversation with President Putin at which they discussed the issue of Russian adoptions. Then hours later he dictated a false statement to be released in the name of his son in which he claimed that Russian adoptions were the topic of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. That is a highly troubling chain of events to put it mildly.

From Politico:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is resisting the pleas of State Department officials to spend nearly $80 million allocated by Congress for fighting terrorist propaganda and Russian disinformation.

It is highly unusual for a Cabinet secretary to turn down money for his department. But more than five months into his tenure, Tillerson has not issued a simple request for the money earmarked for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, $60 million of which is now parked at the Pentagon. Another $19.8 million sits untouched at the State Department as Tillerson’s aides reject calls from career diplomats and members of Congress to put the money to work against America’s adversaries.

[...]

Sources cited another sensitive factor at play: Russia. At one point during the discussions, Tillerson aide R.C. Hammond suggested the money is unwelcome because any extra funding for programs to counter Russian media influence would anger Moscow, according to a former senior State Department official.

[...]

From Wired:

This past Wednesday, a group of Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee presented an amendment calling for an investigation into alleged misconduct on the parts of Hillary Clinton and James Comey. It was a way to frustrate Democrats, but, more than that, it provided an opportunity to publicly discuss their very favorite thing: the many bygone misdeeds of Crooked Hillary. The amendment may sound to some readers like it's been ripped out of a conspiracy forum, because that's exactly what happened.

Sponsored by first-term Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), the amendment itself sought to hijack what began as a resolution from Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) asking for information about Comey's firing. In response to Jayapal's proposal, Gaetz and a few fellow Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee effectively replaced the Democrats' resolution with one of their own. The new amendment (which you can read in its entirety here) asks for an investigation into things like "the propriety and consequence of immunity deals given to possible Hillary Clinton co-conspirators" and "James B. Comey’s refusal to investigate then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding" a number of matters, including many of which may have come directly from r/The_Donald.

[...]

That Murphy sought out legislative advice from r/The_Donald, specifically, is all the more troubling given its history. Even though the forum officially condemns anti-Semitism and racism, racist, neo-Nazi, and anti-Islam tendencies have permeated the community since its inception.

From ThinkProgress:

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has been a constant thorn in the side of congressional Republicans, repeatedly pointing out that Trumpcare would have a disastrous impact on the American health care system. The most recent version of Trumpcare, according to the CBO, would strip 22 million people of coverage by 2026.

In an apparent response to this political black eye, four Republican congressmen introduced legislation on Monday that would eliminate the CBO’s Budget Analysis Division and reduce the office’s staff by 89 employees.

It’s worth noting that the director of the CBO was hand-picked by Republican leadership two years ago.  There is absolutely no reason to believe the CBO is biased or ineffective.

To their credit, more than half of House Republicans stood with Democrats against this attack on a nonpartisan government agency (via Twitter):

From the New York Times:

By the time Chris Christie became governor of New Jersey, the state’s auditors and lawyers had been battling for several years to collect long-overdue taxes owed by the casinos founded by his friend Donald J. Trump.

The total, with interest, had grown to almost $30 million. The state had doggedly pursued the matter through two of the casinos’ bankruptcy cases and even accused the company led by Mr. Trump of filing false reports with state casino regulators about the amount of taxes it had paid.

From Talking Points Memo:

A Republican House member thinks the GOP women of the Senate are to blame for Congress’ inability to address Obamacare.

Appearing on a Corpus Christi radio station Friday, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) not only suggested that it was Republican women’s fault that the party is fractured on how to get rid of Obamacare, but also said if it was “a guy from south Texas” at the center of the disagreement, he might ask them to resolve their issues with a gun fight.

“The fact that the Senate does not have the courage to do some things that every Republican in the Senate promised to do is just absolutely repugnant to me. … Some of the people that are opposed to this, they’re some female senators from the Northeast,” he said, likely referring to Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, who has been vocal about her opposition to each of the Senate’s health plans from the start. She said over the weekend that she’s opposed to the delayed repeal bill.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Shelly Moore-Capito (R-WV) have also been clear about their opposition to various versions of the Republican health care plan.

From CNN:

Jared Kushner's status as a top aide to President Donald Trump was used to lure Chinese investors to his family's New Jersey development, even after his family's company apologized for mentioning his name during a sales pitch in May, CNN has found.

References to Kushner are part of online promotions by two businesses that are working with Kushner Companies to find Chinese investors willing to invest in the 1 Journal Square development in exchange for a US visa.

The promotions are posted in Chinese and refer to Kushner Companies as "real estate heavyweights," going on to mention "the celebrity of the family is 30-something 'Mr. Perfect' Jared Kushner, who once served as CEO of Kushner Companies."One posted online in May by the company US Immigration Fund, a private business based in Florida, also contains a reference to Kushner's appearance on the cover of December's Forbes Magazine, under the headline "This guy got Trump elected." The post was removed shortly after CNN contacted the company for comment.

[...]

From ABC News:

The Treasury Department hit Exxon Mobil Corp. with a $2 million fine Thursday for violating Russia sanctions while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was the oil company's CEO.

Kris Kobach, a leader of the “birther” movement and the Vice Chairman and "driving force" behind the President Trump's Commission on Election Integrity, said today in an interview:

From CBS News:

A House Democrat whose amendment to repeal the 2001 authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) that was wrapped into a spending bill is accusing Speaker Paul Ryan of stripping it from the measure "in the dead of night."

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-California, tweeted about the development late Tuesday after Republicans on the House Rules Committee removed it from the 2018 defense spending bill and replaced it with another amendment.

[...]

From the Daily Beast:

Members of the team of Russians who secured a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner also attempted to stage a show trial of anti-Putin campaigner Bill Browder on Capitol Hill.

The trial, which would have come in the form of a congressional hearing, was scheduled for mid-June 2016 by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a long-standing Russia ally who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe. During the hearing, Rohrabacher had planned to confront Browder with a feature-length pro-Kremlin propaganda movie that viciously attacks him—as well as at least two witnesses linked to the Russian authorities, including lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

[...]

Rohrabacher’s office was given the film by the Prosecutor General’s office in Moscow, which is run by Yuri Chaika, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin who is accused of widespread corruption, and Viktor Grin, the deputy general prosecutor who has been sanctioned by the United States as part of the Magnitsky Act.

That same Prosecutor General’s office also was listed as being behind the “very high level and sensitive information” that was offered to Donald Trump Jr. in an email prior to his now infamous meeting with Russian officials at Trump Tower on June 9—just days before the congressional hearing. Veselnitskaya attended that meeting with Trump Jr. She also happens to have worked as a prosecutor in the Moscow region and is a close personal friend of Chaika.

[...]

During Royce’s hearing, Rohrabacher approvingly compared Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin. The congressman also submitted, for the congressional record, testimony that claimed Russia had not been behind the radioactive poisoning of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London.

Rohrabacher, Behrends, Akhmetshin, Veselnitskaya, and Matlock had dinner together later that night at the Capitol Hill Club, a private members’ establishment for Republicans. The evening was organized by Lanny Wiles, a veteran GOP operative.

From CNN:

Diana Orrock, the Republican national committeewoman for Nevada, shared an article on Monday calling for the death of Sen. John McCain for his hawkish foreign policy views.

From the Washington Post:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday said he'd be issuing a new directive this week aimed at increasing police seizures of cash and property.

“We hope to issue this week a new directive on asset forfeiture — especially for drug traffickers,” Sessions said in his prepared remarks for a speech to the National District Attorney's Association in Minneapolis. "With care and professionalism, we plan to develop policies to increase forfeitures. No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime. Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate as is sharing with our partners."

Asset forfeiture is a disputed practice that allows law enforcement officials to permanently take money and goods from individuals suspected of crime. There is little disagreement among lawmakers, authorities and criminal justice reformers that “no criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime.” But in many cases, neither a criminal conviction nor even a criminal charge is necessary — under forfeiture laws in most states and at the federal level, mere suspicion of wrongdoing is enough to allow police to seize items permanently.

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Additionally, many states allow law enforcement agencies to keep cash that they seize, creating what critics characterize as a profit motive. The practice is widespread: In 2014, federal law enforcement officers took more property from citizens than burglars did. State and local authorities seized untold millions more.