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Trump’s Plans For The DOJ

Published by digby on May 19, 2024

Marjorie Taylor Greene and other MAGA leaders are demanding that Mike Johnson defind Jack Smith’s office. That’s ridiculous, of course but it’s good for fundraising, I guess. But Trump and his henchmen do have big plans for the DOJ and the FBI if they win in November:

Trump, who has been indicted on dozens of criminal charges by the Justice Department, has vowed on the campaign trail to overhaul the agency if he wins the presidential election on Nov. 5 and pledged to use it to pursue his own opponents, including Democratic President Joe Biden.

The plan is essentially twofold, according to the nine people interviewed by Reuters, some of whom requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

First: flood the Justice Department with stalwart conservatives unlikely to say “no” to controversial orders from the White House. Second: restructure the department so key decisions are concentrated in the hands of administration loyalists rather than career bureaucrats.00:11European utilities enjoy a Spring bounce

The FBI – which many Republicans see as biased against them – would have new constraints on its authority, with many of its responsibilities shifted to other law enforcement agencies, those people said.

“Trump feels that the DoJ has institutional problems,” said Steve Bannon, a prominent Trump ally who was prosecuted by the Justice Department and convicted for contempt of Congress. “It’s not just personnel: you do need to purge the DoJ, but you also need to reform it.”

Bannon has been convicted for criminal contempt of congress and is facing a jail term so he’s got a personal dog in this fight. (He’s also facing a criminal trial for fraud in New York for his “We Build The Wall” scam. It’s set for September now.)

Overhauling the Justice Department would allow the Trump administration to pursue conservative policy initiatives such as dismantling hiring programs meant to boost diversity in the workplace and ending federal oversight of police departments accused of racist practices.

[…]

Two prominent Trump allies told Reuters they support eliminating the FBI’s general counsel, an office that enraged Republicans during Trump’s 2017-2021 term for its role in approving an inquiry into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russian officials.

The general counsel provides legal advice to FBI employees regarding ongoing probes and other matters. Closing it would force the bureau to receive legal guidance from people closer to Trump’s attorney general in the chain-of-command and limit the FBI’s ability to conduct investigations without close political oversight, according to several Trump supporters and legal professionals with knowledge of the department’s workings.

[…]

Both Bradbury and Hamilton also endorsed changing the Justice Department’s chain of command so the FBI director reports to a pair of politically appointed assistant attorneys general.The director currently reports to the deputy attorney general, a more senior official who in practice is too busy and has too large a portfolio to oversee and guide FBI probes, Bradbury said.

Bradbury and other legal experts said that change could be done without congressional authorization. He said these steps are necessary to ensure that the bureau’s enforcement priorities align with the White House’s policy preferences. Detractors say these measures will undermine the independence of the Justice Department and the FBI.

Some Trump allies and advisers also want to narrow dramatically the types of crimes the FBI can investigate, arguing the bureau’s focus is too sprawling for political appointees to oversee effectively. In a publicly available policy memo, which was published last July but received little attention, Bradbury said other law enforcement agencies, like the Drug Enforcement Administration, could take the lead where their jurisdiction overlaps with the bureau.

The remnants of the bureau, Bradbury wrote, could focus exclusively on “large-scale crimes and threats to national security” that require a federal response.

And then there’s the new Tammany Hall plan called Schedule F which will allow him to replace all experts and civil servants throughout the executive branch with MAGA morons who “do their own research.”

The most important aspect of all these plans for the DOJ is the overarching right wing view (which isn’t new) that it is not an independent agency but rather a political department that serves as the president’s personal police agency. In the hands of Donald Trump and his followers that’s just terrifying. It will be the new SS.

Remember This?

Published by digby on May 19, 2024

October of 2020:

Granted, it was Rasmussen but still.

By the way, the 2020 Black vote came in at 8% for Trump.

Today Biden spoke at the Morehouse graduation. Everyone was worried there would be a massive protest or walkout. The Morehouse president had said that they were prepared to shut down the ceremony if such a thing happened (rather than call security or police) so everyone was on high alert.

There were a couple of awkward moments but no huge protest. The valedictorian ended his address by calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and Biden applauded and then later endorsed in his speech.There was no mass protest but a handful of graduates turned their backs on him. His speech seemed to be well received.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem for Biden among young Black men. A lot of young working class men of all races and ethnicity are attracted to Trump. That’s a sad comment on our culture but it is what it is. And Gaza has animated the young beyond any other issue and many of them blame Biden for the war. But when it comes down to voting, there’s a good chance that this massive racial realignment some of the polls are suggesting is overblown.

Biden has work to do with the Black community, for sure. Today was a good move and by all accounts he did well. I have every expectation that this is just the first of many examples of outreach.

At Long Last, Sir …

Published by digby on May 19, 2024

Oh never mind

I shouldn’t be shocked by this but I am:

Republican officials have completely lost any sense of decency. So much so that even Fox News MAGA adherents like Bartiromo are pushing back.

By the way, Murphy is a surgeon. Honestly, this sort of thing greatly worries me. MAGA seems to infect a lot of doctors and it makes me think it’s probably wise to determine whether yours has Fox News Brain Rot before you go under the knife.

His Dream

Published by digby on May 19, 2024

Q: Viktor Orbán seized control of universities and put them in foundations that were run by his allies. He rewrote the Constitution, he neutered the courts, and he has tried to control the media. Is that what you’re advocating for in the US?

Trump VP contender Vance: I think he’s made smart decisions that we could learn from in the United States

There you have it.

As Michael Tomasky writes in the intro to The New Republic’s issue on American fascism:

[A]nyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face.

Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, “He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.”

We unreservedly choose the latter course. 

Hastening The Apocalypse

Published by Tom Sullivan on May 19, 2024

Does the Israeli government know or care what it’s doing?

And what if it does? (via The Guardian):

07.55 EDT

Summary of the day so far…

  • Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Sunday that an Israeli airstrike targeting a house at Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed at least 31 people, updating an earlier toll. “The civil defence crew were able to recover 31 martyrs and 20 wounded from a house belonging to the Hassan family, which was targeted by the Israeli occupation forces in the Nuseirat camp,” Gaza civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told journalists. He said rescue workers were continuing to search for missing people under the rubble.
  • The stranglehold on aid reaching Gaza threatens an “apocalyptic” outcome, the UN’s humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Speaking on the sidelines of meetings with Qatari officials in Doha, he said: “If fuel runs out, aid doesn’t get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming any more. It will be present.” “And I think our worry, as citizens of the international community, is that the consequence is going to be really, really hard. Hard, difficult, and apocalyptic,” he added.
  • Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said the kingdom demanded an international investigation into what it said were many war crimes committed during Israel’s war in Gaza. In remarks made during a press conference with the head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa), Safadi said those responsible for documented crimes should be brought to justice.
  • The Gaza Civil Emergency Service said rescue teams have recovered the bodies of 150 Palestinians killed by the Israeli army in recent days.
  • In the early hours of Sunday morning, Al Jazeera Arabic’s journalists on the ground reported Israeli raids in Rafah in the south of enclave and in the vicinity of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, where raids were also reported in the sheikh Zayed and Zeitoun neighbourhoods.

Virtually all we know we get from reports like these.

U.S. medics trapped in Gaza share emotional testimonies

Perhaps one of the American doctors from the group tells NPR:

Dr. Adam Hamawy, a U.S. doctor and former U.S. Army combat surgeon who is currently in Gaza, says he has “never in my career witnessed the level of atrocities and targeting of my medical colleagues as I have in Gaza.”

Hospitals in Gaza are reported on the verge of collapse.

“The weight of it all”

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan shares with Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo her experience working two weeks in Gaza. It’s not pretty (40 min video):

“What I saw [in Gaza]… was utter and complete carnage,” Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan tells author and Zeteo contributor Fatima Bhutto in the latest episode of ‘The Exchange.’ Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor, recently spent two weeks in Gaza working at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central part of the enclave.

“You would smell the burning flesh of children sometimes when these mass casualties came in, and then you would hear the screaming,” Haj-Hassan says.

But it’s not just these horrific scenes and the limited resources that health workers in Gaza are contending with; they’re also being targeted, detained, and in some cases, abused or tortured, by Israeli forces, according to Haj-Hassan and Dr. Rebecca Inglis, a UK-based intensive care physician who also joins Zeteo on this episode of ‘The Exchange.’

The UN has documented more than 400 attacks on Gaza’s healthcare since the war began. Hundreds of health workers have been reportedly killed, and more than 200 have been detained by Israel. Of those detained, at least two-thirds were taken from hospitals or ambulances – while “doing their lifesaving work,” says Inglis. Haj-Hassan and Inglis have helped Palestinian health workers share their experiences through the @GazaMedicVoices Twitter account the two doctors started early in the war. 

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan describes the systematic destruction of any infrastructure that helps keep people in Gaza alive.

On the diplomatic front (New York Times):

The U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday as the United States and other countries push Israel to limit its incursion into Rafah, where Israel had initially encouraged Palestinians to seek safety.

The United States has repeatedly called on Israel not to launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza. Although Israel has labeled its current operation “limited,” about 800,000 people have fled after evacuation orders, while satellite imagery shows widening destruction.

A White House spokesman, John Kirby, said on Friday that Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Netanyahu were slated to discuss talks to release hostages being held in Gaza, the humanitarian crisis and the “enduring defeat of Hamas through both military pressure and a political plan.”

Plan? What kind of plan? I’m afraid to ask.

The Economist (subscription): The Israeli army is caught in a doom loop in Gaza

“They [the Israeli government] will be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency,” Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, told cbs, a broadcast network, warning of the risks of leaving Hamas a vacuum to fill.

There is blame to go around. The idf pushed for a big ground offensive in October knowing full well that Mr Netanyahu would be loth to talk about post-war diplomacy. America supported that offensive. They are belatedly realising what should have been clear months ago: that without a plan to secure and govern Gaza, Israel will be fighting a war without end. 

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One More Time For The People In The Back

Published by Tom Sullivan on May 19, 2024

The INTERNET is UNdefeated

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D) of Texas inspired beats and tunes last week. I may add the Motown-inspired song below to one of my playlists.

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SIFF 2024: Wrap party!

Published by Dennis Hartley on May 18, 2024

The Seattle International Film Festival (the brick-and-mortar portion) wraps up this Sunday, May 19th. This year’s SIFF featured a total of 207 shorts, documentaries, and narrative films from 84 countries. The Festival will be immediately followed by a week of select virtual screenings from this year’s catalog (April 20-27) on the SIFF Channel. Hopefully, some of these festival selections will be coming soon to a theater (or a streaming service) near you! 

Luther: Never Too Much (USA) *** – I confess entering Dawn Porter’s Luther Vandross profile knowing little about the late singer beyond his association with David Bowie and a string of smooth groove hits I recall spinning on the AC radio station I worked at from 1983-1991.I emerged from this documentary with a new-found respect for the artist, learning that he also wrote and/or co-wrote a number of them (including hits for artists like Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, and Cheryl Lynn). Porter weaves a generous portion of archival performance clips and interviews with present-day recollections by creative collaborators and music mavens. An engaging, inspiring and ultimately moving portrait of an immensely talented artist who was not without his personal demons. 

The New Boy (Australia) ** – Writer-director Warwick Thornton’s drama stars Cate Blanchett as a nun in the Outback charged with schooling a young, taciturn Aboriginal orphan who may harbor supernatural powers. The story is set in the early 1940s, at a monastery where Aboriginal children are cared for until deemed old enough (16?) to get packed off to earn their own keep. The students are largely portrayed by non-professional actors, lending the film a naturalistic feel. Despite an interesting premise (Western religious dogma vs. Indigenous mysticism) the film gets bogged down by its draggy pacing and an uneven narrative that vacillates somewhere between Peter Weir’s The Last Wave and (thanks to Blanchett’s over-the-top antics) Ken Russell’s The Devils.

Resynator (USA) *** – [shakes fist] “Curse you, Robert Moog!” They say history is written by the winners. Director Alison Tavel’s documentary may reinforce that adage. For as long as she can remember, Alison has been told that it was, in fact, her dad (who passed away when she was 2 months old) who was the “true” inventor of the synthesizer; namely, a prototype he dubbed as “the Resynator”. While not a musician herself, Tavel has pursued a career in the business as a roadie (currently for Grace Potter), which put her in a position to pull a few strings and do some detective work. Her subsequent journey to discover (and document) the truth of the matter is at once a fascinating glimpse into the fickle nature of the music biz and a genuinely touching story of a young woman finally “meeting” the father she never got to know.  

Scala!!! Or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World’s Wildest Cinema and How it Influenced a Mixed-Up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits (UK) *** – Lester Bangs defined ‘punk’ as “…a fundamental and age-old Utopian dream: that if you give people the license to be as outrageous as they want in absolutely any fashion they can dream up, they’ll be creative about it…and do something good besides.” That philosophy informed the programming for Scala cinema, where the audience was as outrageously transgressive as the film fare. Ditto Jane Giles and Ali Catterall’s documentary, which earns a 3 “Fuck off” rating! 

Solitude (Iceland) ***½ – Ah, look at all the lonely people. Ninna Pálmadóttir’s quiet drama concerns an unassuming farmer named Gunnar (Thröstur Leó Gunnarsson) who reluctantly sells his beloved horses and relocates to Reykjavik after getting pushed off his land by a hydroelectric project. He has received a generous settlement, which enables him to offer cash for a condo. For Gunnar, moving to the city is tantamount to getting drop-kicked into the 21st Century; he is overwhelmed by the stimuli. He strikes up a sweet friendship with a bubbly 10-year-old paperboy named Ari. The boy’s parents are separated. While they try to share equal time with their son, squabbles arise over scheduling conflicts, frequently leaving Ari in the lurch. As a result, Gunnar becomes his de facto babysitter. Gunnar’s naivety eventually leads to a misunderstanding that could have serious consequences for him. A beautifully acted treatise on the singularly destructive power of “assumption”. 

Previous posts with related themes: 

SIFF 2024: Week 1 

The 2024 SIFF Preview 

More reviews at Den of Cinema 

–Dennis Hartley 

Was The Eyelash Comment A Set-up?

Published by digby on May 18, 2024

I’m still not sure I understand how this works but it does sound like the whole Marjorie Taylor Greene outburst may have been a set-up:

The following day, Ocasio-Cortez took to X (formerly Twitter) to break down how Greene’s outburst overshadowed—and aided—what Ocasio-Cortez describes as a “microcosm of what authoritarians do on a larger scale.”

“AFTER the Republican Chair and GOP members broke official House protocol to allow MTG’s horrific opening silo of rhetoric, they THEN made another change to dispense with the legislative process,” Ocasio-Cortez said on X (formerly Twitter). “THAT part is not getting enough attention.”

In a move Ocasio-Cortez described as “highly unusual and still unclear to me how legitimate it was,” the GOP-led committee vacated both the typical amendment process and legislative debate that follows, moving directly to vote on their own text without allowing for amendments or objections to be heard.

“That’s why this stuff isn’t just all-sides chaos, or mere distraction, or a pox on everyone’s house,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “They WANT you to think this was some random devolution of conduct instead of a structured GOP outcome. We must understand who and what actions created the situation. It matters.”

Thanks to MTG’s meltdown, the vote to initiate contempt proceedings against Garland was successful.

If it wasn’t a set-up, they sure seem to have taken advantage of Greene’s non-sequitor to ram through the contempt vote.

I also heard that there was quite a bit of drinking going on. Marbge is rumored to be in her cups frequently and apparently the clown show that made the pilgrimage to Dear Leader’s trial on Thursday did quite a bit of tippling on the plane back home. So who knows?

But we do know that a number of the people on the committee who refused to comply with subpoenas in the last congress voted to hold the Attorney General in contempt for only agreeing to release a transcript of the president’s testimony instead of the recording.

No Credit For Old Men

Published by digby on May 18, 2024

Biden is a climate hero by presidential standards, the best we’ve ever seen. What, you haven’t heard?

Here’s an article by Michael Thomas who writes about climate change:

In the last few months, the Biden administration has quietly passed multiple federal policies that will transform the United States economy and wipe out billions of tons of future greenhouse gas emissions. 

The new policies have received little attention outside of wonky climate circles. And that is a problem.

Earlier this year, I wrote that Biden has done more to mitigate climate change than any President before him. For decades, environmentalists tried and failed to convince lawmakers to pass even the most marginal climate policies. It wasn’t until Biden took office that the logjam broke and the climate policies flowed. And yet few American voters are hearing this story in an election year of huge consequence.

It’s been two and a half months since I wrote that article. In that short time, the Biden administration has passed a handful of climate policies that will collectively cut more than 10 billion tons of planet-warming pollution over the next three decades, more than the annual emissions of India, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and the entire continent of Europe—combined.

In today’s story, I’ll share a summary of three of these policies and the impact they will have over the coming decades.

I generally write stories like this for Distilled’s paid subscribers. But in an election year as important as this one, I want to keep stories like this free to read and share. If you want to support this work please consider becoming a paid subscriber or sharing this article with a friend.

Do click over to read it if you have time. I didn’t know this and I follow the news, particularly the accomplishments of the Biden administration in this election year. It’s important, especially if you have young voters in your family. There’s nothing more important and Trump has openly vowed to the oil industry that he will reverse every single regulation and every bit of climate legislation if he wins.

He Calls Him “My Peter”

Published by digby on May 18, 2024

Seriously?

I don’t know what to say:

Over the past several months, Donald Trump has told some of his advisers and friends that federal clemency for [Peter] Navarro, if Trump is back in office, is a “very good idea,” according to a person familiar with the matter and another source briefed on it. The former president, as some of his former staff say, often speaks in vague and thinly-coded terms that they refer to as “mob speak.” 

Like a number of former Trump advisers, Navarro received a subpoena to testify before the House Jan 6. Committee about his work attempting to delay Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results, and his role in producing a series of reports with bogus allegations of mass voter fraud during the election. Unlike most of his former colleagues, however, Navarro openly defied the subpoena, leading to a criminal referral by the committee, an indictment from a federal grand jury in June 2022, and his conviction in September last year. He received a four-month prison sentence, which began in March.

In the years since Biden’s inauguration, Navarro has surfaced on Trump and the MAGA elite’s informal shortlist of who should expect job offers for senior roles in a second Trump administration, according to numerous people familiar with the vast government-in-waiting preparations. 

As Navarro’s legal odyssey has unfolded, Trump has privately marveled at the extreme loyalty of the former White House trade adviser whom Trump has affectionately referred to as “my Peter.” The former president has said that once Navarro is out of prison, “we’re going to take care of him,” a source with direct knowledge of this comment says. The ex-president has also repeatedly asked confidants how Navarro is doing behind bars, this source, and another person briefed on the situation, add.

Trump has dangled pardons from the beginning and he followed through. He pardoned Bannon, Manafort, Stone etc., all stand-up guys who never flipped. He’s promising to pardon all the January 6th insurrectionists. He’ll not only pardon Navarro, he’ll give him a powerful job in the administration if he wins.

And all I can say about “my Peter” is that I’m not sure it’s quite the compliment he probably thinks it is…