Mueller prosecutor says special counsel ‘could have done more’ to hold Trump accountable

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A former prosecutor on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team writes in a new book that the group failed to fully investigate President Trump’s financial ties and should have stated explicitly that they believed he obstructed justice, claiming that their efforts were limited by the ever-present threat of Trump disbanding their office and by their own reluctance to be aggressive.

In an explosive tell-all that offers the most detailed account yet of what happened behind the scenes during Mueller’s two-year investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Andrew Weissmann writes of his frustration that the special counsel failed to subpoena the president and otherwise pulled punches for fear of incurring Trump’s wrath.

He lays particular blame on Mueller’s top deputy, Aaron Zebley, for stopping investigators from taking a broad look at Trump’s finances and writes that he now wonders whether investigators had “given it our all,” knowing they left many important questions unanswered. Continue reading.

In the Know: September 23, 2020

Days Until the Election: 41

41 Days OUT – Let’s get to work!
If you’d like to help the DFL Party fight for criminal justice reform, better schools, wages, our environment, and health care, click here to get more involved there are events happening in your area!

Early voting!
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Democratic Presidential and Vice Presidential CandidatesJoe Biden and Kamala Harris
Citing family friendship, character, Cindy McCain endorses Joe Biden, USA Today
13 Nobel Prize-winning economists back Biden, Axios

Economy
The second wave’s economic challenge,The Hill
Fed’s Evans sees ‘recessionary dynamics’ without fiscal aid, Reuters
US economy showing improvement but path ahead ‘uncertain’, says Fed chair, The Guardian

Continue reading “In the Know: September 23, 2020”

Former GOP insider details why conservative economics is severely flawed

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Economist Milton Friedman, who was 94 when he died in 2006, was a major influence on Reaganomics, neoliberalism and trickle-down economics — and everyone from the Libertarian Party to Ronald Reagan’s administration has embraced his views on business and the economy. Friedman, however, has been widely criticized by liberals, progressives and proponents of New Deal and Great Society economics, and former GOP insider Bruce Bartlett lays out some reasons why Friedman’s influence on U.S. economic policy has been harmful in an article published in The New Republican this week.

Bartlett himself was a longtime Republican who worked under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush — but he broke with the part under the second Bush’s presidency. The GOP has long revered Friedman as a paragon of economic thought, but Bartlett argues this view is a mistake.

Friedman was known for what has been called “shareholder economics” or “the shareholder theory.” In essence, Friedman disagreed that corporations had an obligation to society on the whole — their only obligation, he argued, was to their shareholders. Continue reading.

How the Trump Administration Has Harmed Faith Communities

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OVERVIEW

People of faith have suffered under the Trump administration’s attacks on civil rights, religious freedom, and health and economic well-being.

Introduction and summary

There is a commonly held but misleading perception in U.S. public discourse that the Trump administration’s policies have been largely favorable to faith communities. This is based on the administration’s narrow understanding of religion and public policy—one that privileges the concerns of a select group of conservative white Christians, mostly evangelical, who by no means represent all of America’s faithful. Rather, this subset has a narrow focus on policies that discriminate against LGBTQ people and stigmatize reproductive health services, including abortion, presenting a very skewed representation of religious Americans’ public policy concerns. While the Trump administration purports to help this narrow band of religious Americans, the reality is that many of its policies have harmed all religious communities—particularly religious minorities.

To understand the needs and concerns of all American faith communities, it is important to first understand the religious diversity of the nation. While 3 in 4 Americans identify with a religious tradition, only 15 percent identify as white evangelicals, according to the 2019 American Values Atlas Survey.1 Yet this small proportion of the population tends to garner a disproportionate share of attention concerning religion in the public discourse on national politics. Their concerns certainly dominate how the Trump administration’s impact on faith communities is perceived at large. Continue reading.

Shutdown clash looms after Democrats unveil spending bill

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Legislation introduced Monday by House Democrats to keep the federal government funded through Dec. 11 quickly ran into opposition from Senate Republicans, raising the odds of a shutdown at the end of the month, just weeks before the election.

Government funding is slated to run out on Sept. 30, leaving just nine days for both parties to avoid a damaging shutdown at a time when tensions are already spiking over Senate GOP plans to quickly fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and stalled negotiations over a coronavirus relief bill.

Democrats on Monday unveiled a stopgap measure, known as a continuing resolution (CR), that does not contain a provision requested by the White House to provide aid for farmers impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading.

Women in Suburbia Don’t Seem Too Worried About Its Destruction

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President Trump has sought to fan fears about lower property values and crime, but polls suggest his general statements are not resonating locally.

President Trump’s effort to court suburban women by promising to protect their neighborhoods is encountering one sizable hitch: Most suburban women say their neighborhoods aren’t particularly under threat.

At least, not in the ways the president has described.

Their communities feel safe to them, and they’re not too concerned about poorer neighbors moving in, according to polls in some key battleground states by The New York Times and Siena College. They say in a national Monmouth University poll that racial integration is important to them, and unlikely to harm property values or safety. In interviews, many have never heard of the federal fair-housing rule encouraging integration that the president has often cited by name in arguing that Joe Biden would abolish the suburbs.

They’re not even all that worked up about the idea of new apartments nearby, sullying suburbs dominated by single-family homes. Continue reading.

CDC pulls revised guidance on coronavirus from website

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Monday pulled revised guidance from its website that had said airborne transmission was thought to be the main way the coronavirus spreads, saying it was “posted in error.”

The sudden change came after the new guidance had been quietly posted on the CDC website Friday.

“CDC is currently updating its recommendations regarding airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19),” the CDC wrote. “Once this process has been completed, the update language will be posted.” Continue reading.

Polls Have Shown Voters Prefer Biden to Pick Next Justice

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In surveys before Justice Ginsburg’s death, he led by a slightly wider margin on choosing the next justice than he did over all against President Trump.

In 2016 and 2018, many analysts concluded that Supreme Court politics helped Republicans by helping to energize or consolidate conservative voters.

True or not, it certainly wasn’t obvious ahead of time which side would benefit from a court vacancy, and the same can be said today, in the aftermath of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. There’s no way to know exactly what will unfold, but a closer look at recent polls, including new New York Times/Siena College surveys, does provide reason to think that Joseph R. Biden Jr. might have as much — or more — upside on the issue than President Trump.

In Times/Siena polls of Maine, North Carolina and Arizona released Friday, voters preferred Mr. Biden to select the next Supreme Court justice by 12 percentage points, 53 percent to 41 percent. In each of the three states, Mr. Biden led by just a slightly wider margin on choosing the next justice than he did over all. Continue reading.

On The Trail: Battle over Ginsburg replacement threatens to break Senate

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The coming battle to fill a seat on the Supreme Court left vacant by the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg threatens to set the Senate on the path that would radically and acrimoniously change what was once the world’s most deliberative body.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) waited less than two hours after the court’s announcement of Ginsburg’s death before declaring he would hold a vote on President Trump’s eventual nominee, a pronouncement as predictable as the Democratic howls of hypocrisy that followed.

The decision is especially politically charged after McConnell’s equally immediate declaration that the Senate would not approve President Obama’s nominee to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat after the conservative icon died just less than 10 months before Election Day. Continue reading.

Can Trump and McConnell get through the 4 steps to seat a Supreme Court justice in just 6 weeks?

United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Sept. 18, thrusting the acrimonious struggle for control of the Supreme Court into public view.

President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have already vowed to nominate and confirm a replacement for the 87-year-old justice and women’s rights icon.

This contradicts the justification the Republican-controlled Senate used when they refused to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s pick for the Court after the death of Antonin Scalia in February 2016. Continue reading.