More barriers crumble
Press secretary Sarah Sanders said that the White House had brokered a meeting at which two key Republican chairmen would hear from the leaders of the Justice Department, FBI and the intelligence community following weeks’ worth of requests for the classified material.
No one from the White House is scheduled to be present, Sanders said — nor, at this point, are any senators or any Democrats, in defiance of a request from the Senate minority leader.
So it’s a Republican meeting to see secret documents from an ongoing investigation. Not a Congressional meeting but a Republican one.
“A lot of people are saying they had spies in my campaign,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “If so, that would be a disgrace to this country. I hope there weren’t, frankly … but some man got paid based on what I read in the newspapers.”
The White House and its supporters have been sandblasting the Justice Department and the FBI for months; the leaders of both law enforcement agencies have steadily been giving ground. Thursday’s meeting is the latest example, although it wasn’t clear precisely what documents Nunes and Gowdy are expecting and whether they will receive them then.
I think we’re doomed. I think they’re going to complete the coup before November.
“It’s really important that we conduct the proper oversight of the executive branch to make sure that power is not or has not or will not be abused,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters on Tuesday.
The House intelligence committee, Nunes, and other lawmakers threatened Rosenstein with contempt of Congress or, potentially, impeachment.
For a while, Rosenstein took a tough line, vowing that DOJ wouldn’t be “extorted,” but the battlefield shifted after the reports about the confidential informant.
Then Trump weighed in more strongly than ever with a “demand” for more information from the Justice Department, and Rosenstein acceded to it Monday. He traveled to the White House for a meeting with Trump, White House chief of staff John Kelly and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
One outcome was an acknowledgment by the Justice Department that its IG, Horowitz, will expand an inquiry he was already conducting into the ongoing Russia investigation to include its use of sources and surveillance.
For Trump’s supporters in the House, that is not good enough. They want the Justice Department to appoint a second special counsel to look into the work of the first, Mueller. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has brought in additional investigators to look into the Russia case but so far has stopped short of agreeing that another special counsel is necessary.The second outcome was the meeting on Thursday that Kelly has brokered between Hill leaders, the Justice Department and the FBI. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had urged the Trump administration to include Democrats but none were included in the White House’s announcement.
“The only thing more outrageous than this meeting occurring at all is the fact that it’s now partisan,” Schumer said. “It is crystal clear that Chairman Nunes’ intent is to interfere with the investigation, and Speaker Ryan is allowing it to happen.”
They’re winning. Apparently nothing can stop them.
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944.71555.144310995587370/1922449147773537/?type=3&theater
Congress can, but they are dominated by the party of
personal responsibilityvenal hypocrisy and tribalism. And the Dems will carry on their usual ineffective way, trying to avoid fighting for anything lest they be branded divisive.I think we’ll muddle through.
I don’t think Trump actually wants a coup or is trying for one. He’s an ignoramus that wants to do what he wants to do, and he’s corrupt, and he’s doing a lot of damaging things, but I don’t think he’s planning to cancel upcoming elections or ban Democrats from government or abolish Congress.
If you’re talking about the Republicans, much of the same goes for them. They want to protect their Useful Idiot as much as possible, but they know there are limits before it backfires.
They’re winning some rounds here, but they’ve lost a lot as well. A lot of this so-called winning is just trying to squirm out from multiple swords of Damocles hanging over their heads.
Stay strong, keep the information about real abuses flowing, don’t get caught up in the questionable stuff, vote, and encourage others to vote. We’ll get through it.
We’re already not muddling through. We have racist and approaching-genocidal rhetoric coming out of our government. People are losing health insurance. Banks are being deregulated (hello new global financial crisis!). The government is wildly corrupt and getting more so every day. We’re a disgrace and shame in the sight of other countries. This isn’t muddling through. This is disaster.
He won’t need to.
A toothless, enabling Congress is far more useful.
If the Democrats don’t take the House this November, then it’s all over.
Ophelia and my new arch-enemy Screechy Monkey (if that even is your real name),
OK, trigger warning. Nobody should read past here.
You are far too pessimistic.
We (most of us) are muddling through. Muddling is not good. But it is not a disaster (for most people).
There are countries where massive percentages of people are dying of starvation and disease and war.
You think ICE is horrible? You’re right. But I just saw a PBS documentary on Myanmar where a minority ethnic group is opposed by the majority. So they’re trying to push them out of the country by killing many of them and burning down their villages. The army also gathered up a bunch of mothers and children, then took the children, and, as the mothers watched, threw them into the burning buildings. When the children tried to escape, they pushed them back into the fire with sharpened bamboo sticks. Until they burned to death. While their mothers watched.
That is a disaster.
Trump, at his absolute very worst, absolute worst, is rouding up people who didn’t get the proper authorization to come here, and…
…authorizing their murder? No.
…tacitly allowing them to be raped? No.
…burning down their houses? No.
…burning their children in front of them? No.
No, he’s shipping them back to the country they came from. Which should be super awesome, since apparently the USA is now the worst country on earth, so any other country should be an improvement, amirite?
No, I am not “rite”.
Look, this is horribly unfair to many of these people, and very disruptive to their lives. But it’s not genocide.
People are losing health insurance? That sure sucks. More people still have health insurance than before the ACA took effect. It sucks for those losing it, but let’s fight to keep what we have and make it better.
Banks are being deregulated? Yikes. Probably a bad move. But, you know what, the economy probably won’t collapse immediately. You probably have time to elect people that will re-regulate it before that happens.
Corruption? International embarrassment? Bad stuff. Vote for people who won’t be corrupt embarrassments. There’s still time.
I just went with my daughter’s class to visit our state capital. You can see the state Senate from the gallery as a member of the public. That’s your right. If your Senator agrees to join you, you can get a tour of the Senate floor.
OK, our state Senator is a Republican, and he’s pretty conservative. I am not thrilled with his votes. But he made the time to escort the class to the Senate floor. He talked about the chair he sits in, and how he’s not just sitting in it, but in a way every constituent in his district sits there. He said you’ll never get those hundreds of thousands of people to agree, but he represents them as best he can.
Maybe you think that’s a corny boilerplate speech. But, you know what? I looked him in the eye, and I believe him. He may not vote the way I’d always like, but he’s not going to let his constituents get destroyed.
Conservatives are big on states’ rights, and liberals are more wary of the concept. But, hey, guess what, if you elect a a docket of Democratic Congresspersons in November, and the Trump administration tries not to seat them, those states’ rights people will not put up with that.
Vote in your primaries. Vote however you want.
Then vote in the election. Yes, look at the viable candidates, and there are almost always two of them, and vote for the one you prefer.
If you do that, we will have a radical change in November. We can elect a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. We can slam the brakes on Trump and start turning things around.
Or, even better. Trump has no ideals. He just likes big wins. Send hm a single payer health care plan and convince him he’ll be a hero for signing it! Who knows what we can do?
Or you can claim we’re all doomed and sit at home in November or “protest vote” for your local Jill Stein and pat yourself on your back for your purity and we can have two more years of this bullshit.
Your compassion is breathtaking, Skeletor. Perhaps ICE aren’t throwing children into burning buildings, but they are imprisoning them in internment camps.
Perhaps Trump isn’t pointing at people and saying, “kill that guy” but if you deport someone back to a country they had fled because of the threat of violence and they are subsequently murdered, is that not murder by proxy?
Perhaps Trump isn’t singling out an undocumented immigrant and demanding they be raped in front of him, but many have come to the US fleeing appalling levels of sexual violence aimed at women, homosexuals and any other group considered to be deviant. Are we to shrug our shoulders about the inevitable abuse they will face when they return?
And maybe to you it sounds trite to worry about it. After all, you’re not one of those people. Well, I’m a legal immigrant, white, blonde and blue eyed and I’m scared. There are people here who think people who look like me should be the only ones legally admitted and they are empowered to say so like never before. And there are those who hate even my existence, who think America should slam shut the gates after kicking out anyone who is not a citizen or even is a citizen but looks “a bit foreign”. And they are empowered to not only say so, but actively make other people’s lives a misery.
Just yesterday I read about two women in Montana who when overhead speaking Spanish to each other, were interrogated and their papers demanded. They were both US born citizens. Don’t think this stops with undocumented immigrants. We’re staring into the abyss and you’re telling us that we’re overreacting because some people in another country are being treated even more horrifically? Is that really the bar you want to set?
Democracies are fragile and they can die. And one of the murder weapons is always complacency. Americans think it can’t happen here. It is happening here, right now but you are turning your head away.
There’s no reason one can’t proclaim the coming doom *and* fulfill one’s civic duties. It’s the people that say the sky is falling that do show up to vote; people who are unconcerned are the ones who don’t even bother more often than not.
Skeletor, I wish I could have your optimism. Yes, those things still exist. Yes, we are glad they still exist. But the noise I am hearing from the rank and file of the voters (even some of the “liberal elite”) make me worried about the November vote. We did just oust the tea party candidate who was running for our City Council in the primary, but that is nothing new. This particular candidate has never made it past the primary for anything in the 12 years I’ve lived in this city, and he has run consistently every two years, so I don’t see that as a trend. The actually liberal-ish candidates (which is all we can get in this state) made it through their primaries, but got only about 35% of the vote (at best). They will not likely win in November.
My more liberal friends mostly think the Democrats are as corrupt and venal as the Republicans and will likely not vote. They are wrong (yes, there is too much corruption in the Dems, but it falls far short of the corruption in the GOP – Graft’s Own Party), but they are smug and condescending, unable to listen to any information that suggests a vote for the Dems would be a good idea at this point. They hate Trump, but believe that electing Republicans will force the Dems to differentiate still more. This has not been the case; every election cycle has driven the Dems further to the right, convinced that people are electing Republicans because they like the Republicans (which may be the case). They are told by every pundit that they should throw women under the bus, throw minorities under the bus, throw LGBTQ under the bus, and they listen. One of these days, we may elect a Democratic majority that looks no different from the Republican majority, being pro-gun, anti-choice, anti-social safety net, anti-LGBTQ, racist, misogynistic, assholes.
Yes, we muddle…but I don’t think I can be as optimistic as you are, because that muddle is truly muddleheaded.
Dear Muslima.
Oh, fuck off. Nobody said that, you disingenuous asshole.