I didn’t know this: there’s an actual law against presidents hiring family members.

Mr. Kushner has consulted with at least one lawyer and believes that by forgoing a salary and putting his investment fund, his real estate holdings and The New York Observer into a blind trust, he would not be bound by federal nepotism rules, according to one of the people briefed.

Ethics lawyers in both parties said that such an arrangement would violate a federal statute designed to prevent family ties from influencing the functioning of the United States government. Under a 1967 law enacted after John F. Kennedy installed his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, no public official can hire a family member —

Have nausea medications handy. Welcome to the Trump kleptocracy.

Anti-nepotism laws prevent Trump from giving his family members jobs in the administration. But don’t think that’s going to stop them from being active participants in U.S. government decision-making, or using the fact that Trump is president to keep money flowing in. In fact, we could see the president enriching himself and his family on a scale that we normally associate with post-Soviet kleptocrats and Third World dictators.

For starters, Ivanka, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. are on the executive committee of Trump’s transition team, helping decide who gets hired for key positions and what the administration’s initial focus will be. We learned that someone on the transition team inquired

Joshua Foust’s list.

Item six is the only one without a link.

• Putting one’s children into senior positions of a government is the behavior of a banana republic, not a constitutional democracy with strong institutions. This is not normal.

There was Kennedy making his brother Attorney General. There was plenty of controversy about that at the time. Sticking in three children and the spouse of one of them, all at once – when they are all entangled in the president’s many businesses – that’s a whole new level.

Item seven is his refusal to disclose his taxes.

Item eight:

• Asking if he can decline the President’s salary, so as to avoid paying taxes, is not normal.

The link … Read the rest

Joshua Foust’s list part 2.

The third item on the list:

• Blasting journalists with product placements for the labels your child, who is on your transition team, is wearing is not normal.

The link is to a tweet:

Email sent to journalists by an @IvankaTrump employee, hawking the goods she wore on @60Minutes. pic.twitter.com/aCpNbBBArg

— katie rosman (@katierosman) November 15, 2016

Jason Pinter responded a few days ago that she did the same thing after the convention:

She did the same thing after her speech at the RNC convention. pic.twitter.com/IfHEZwojGk

— Jason Pinter (@jasonpinter) November 15, 2016

“Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech” – that’s not normal.

I followed the link: it goes to a Macy’s … Read the rest

Oh god. We’re just not even going to be able to keep up. Teams of reporters and activists will be on each item and still they won’t be able to keep up. There’s just so much…

Joshua Foust points out the obvious truth that This is not normal. He explains that for a few paragraphs and I nod along with him.

“Normal,” as a concept, matters. The old adage that it is just the setting on a dryer is not just wrong but misleading. When something is abnormal it is important to understand why. If a person is not normal they could be brilliant or they could be sick, and knowing the difference is the distance between life and