Charlie Cook/National Journal:
Approval numbers now untethered from economy
According to the old adage, “Americans vote their pocketbooks.” But perhaps the relationship between a strong economy and presidential approval isn’t what it used to be. In their terrific book, Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America, John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck point out that for presidents John F. Kennedy through George W. Bush, there was a relationship between consumer confidence and presidential approval ratings. But that correlation ended with the beginning of the Obama presidency. It does not appear to have returned under Trump. Even news like very strong growth in real gross domestic product—like the 4.2 percent in the second quarter of 2018—or unemployment hitting a 49-year low—as it did this spring—have had little effect.
In fact, it isn’t just the economy. Trump’s numbers don’t seem to move up very much with good news, nor do they move down much with bad news of any sort. His numbers just show little elasticity, as if they’re impervious to news.
Some have argued that if the economy does slow down (and there are certainly signs that the world economy is cooling), or the trade war zaps economic growth, that could have a downward effect on Trump’s approval and his reelection prospects.
NY Times:
Labor Secretary Acosta Faces Calls to Resign Over Epstein Case
Labor Secretary R. Alexander Acosta on Tuesday faced fresh calls to resign, and rising pressure from inside the Trump administration, over his role in brokering a lenient plea deal over sex crimes for the New York financier Jeffrey E. Epstein as a federal prosecutor in Miami more than a decade ago.
Mr. Acosta, 50, said this week that the plea agreement, in which Mr. Epstein served 13 months in jail after being accused of sexually abusing dozens of young women and girls, was the toughest deal available in a complex and difficult case. The prosecution, he said, would have stood a far better chance of succeeding in the state courts — the same argument he has been making for years.
“The crimes committed by Epstein are horrific, and I am pleased that NY prosecutors are moving forward with a case based on new evidence,” Mr. Acosta wrote Tuesday on Twitter.
Julie K Brown/Miami Herald:
From the penthouse to the jailhouse: Jeffrey Epstein pleads not guilty to sex trafficking
At a news conference, Geoffrey S. Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, issued a public appeal to other victims, asking them to call a special hotline (1-800-CALLFBI) set up as part of what authorities called the office’s “Number one case.’’
“While the charged conduct is from a number of years ago, the victims — then children and now young women — are no less entitled to their day in court. My office is proud to stand up for these victims by bringing this indictment,’’ Berman said, adding that Epstein’s conduct “shocked the conscience’’ of America.
Berman’s statement was widely seen as a harsh rebuke to Florida prosecutors who cut an extraordinary non-prosecution agreement with Epstein in 2008. As part of the deal, federal prosecutors — led by then Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta — disposed of the case without his victims’ knowledge, depriving them of the ability to appear in court and possibly derail the agreement.
Acosta’s handling of the case, detailed in “Perversion of Justice,” a Miami Herald investigation that was published last November, has come under harsh criticism.
The fact that the charges were brought by the Southern District’s public corruption unit raised the spectre that the investigation could veer into whether state and federal prosecutors who helped negotiate the deal committed any wrongdoing, beyond failing to notify the victims that they had secretly given Epstein a plea bargain.
“In order for the public corruption unit to be involved in this, there is more here than just a millionaire sex predator. I anticipate other superseding indictments,’’ said James A. Gagliano, a retired supervisory special agent with the FBI.
The Miami Herald has been extraordinary on this case. I want to make sure to credit them.
Politico:
Mulvaney presses Trump to dump Acosta amid mounting outrage
The acting White House chief of staff has clashed with the Labor secretary, who is under fire for cutting a deal with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in 2008.
Mulvaney told Trump on Monday that the continuing drip of damaging information surrounding the 2008 agreement Acosta struck to keep billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein from a heavy jail sentence would hurt the administration, according to two people familiar with the conversation.
Mulvaney also may be seizing on an opportunity to try to depose a frequent antagonist who has frustrated some conservatives in the White House and business leaders on the outside.
Acosta critics, including Mulvaney, have argued that he has not been aggressive enough in stamping out Obama-era workplace regulations and employment discrimination lawsuits, and they are using the Epstein lawsuit to push him out the door.
As is always the case with Trump, the next guy will be worse.
Republicans never do the right thing. For example:
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Want to beat Trump in 2020? Register people to vote.
To be sure, polling right now isn’t at all predictive. But this does offer an opportunity to ask whether Democrats are reckoning with the possibility that a voter turnout failure could allow Trump to squeak through to a second term. Making this more likely, Trump could again prevail in the electoral college while losing the national popular vote.
Obviously, the matchups among registered voters don’t by themselves tell us much about what turnout might look like, since registering people is half the battle, while getting them to actually vote is a separate matter.
But still, the disparity in the matchups among all adults on one hand and among registered voters on the other is a reminder that as a general matter, Democrats will reduce the chances of another fiasco if they do a good job at tapping into the pool of eligible voters. That will, of course, entail registering them and turning them out.
Yep.
NY Times:
‘It Can’t Be Worse’: How Republican Women Are Trying to Rebuild
At the Yale campaign school last month, they were remarkably open about the source of their inspiration. One after another, the Republican students and speakers praised Democrats for successfully recruiting and training women, and said the Republican Party should follow their lead.
Among the 80 women who gathered in New Haven for the weeklong campaign school — known for alumni like Kirsten Gillibrand and Gabrielle Giffords, and also for being almost sadistically intensive — 12 were Republican. That might not sound like a lot. But never before in the program’s 25-year history had Republicans reached double digits.
Jill Lawrence/USA Today:
Republicans are eating our lunch. I want a 2020 Democrat tough enough to eat theirs.
Democrats can talk about political deals after they’re running the table. That won’t happen unless they use the tactics that got Republicans this far.
But I’m no longer interested in conciliation as a campaign plank, because to me it signifies caving in advance. It’s not the right time to call for peace, love and understanding.
It is time for a Democratic presidential nominee like Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who in her book explained her failure as a tennis student this way: “Once I had a weapon in my hand, I gave it everything I had.” Or Harris, who showed on the debate stage that she would and could take on anyone, from Joe Biden to Barack Obama to Donald Trump.
Politico:
Trump dossier author Steele gets 16-hour DOJ grilling
The interview was contentious at first, according to two people familiar with the matter, but investigators ultimately found his testimony credible and even surprising.
The extensive, two-day interview took place in London while Trump was in Britain for a state visit, the sources said, and delved into Steele’s extensive work on Russian interference efforts globally, his intelligence-collection methods and his findings about Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who the FBI ultimately surveilled. The FBI’s decision to seek a surveillance warrant against Page — a warrant they applied for and obtained after Page had already left the campaign — is the chief focus of the probe by Horowitz.
The interview was contentious at first, the sources added, but investigators ultimately found Steele’s testimony credible and even surprising. The takeaway has irked some U.S. officials interviewed as part of the probe — they argue that it shouldn’t have taken a foreign national to convince the inspector general that the FBI acted properly in 2016. Steele’s American lawyer was present for the conversation.
Susan J. Demas/Michigan Advance:
Rick Snyder shows that civility is the last refuge of a scoundrel
Hell hath no fury like a rich white man scorned, even in the face of a major American city being poisoned.
Former Gov. Rick Snyder’s place in history is presiding over the Flint water crisis, something for which even a panel he appointed blamed his administration. Progressives long warned that there were severe risks with the CPA’s approach of putting balance sheets before people, but Very Serious People waved us off because he cut corporate taxes, the greatest social good imaginable.
When he finally apologized in the face of intense national and international scrutiny, the Republican seemed utterly annoyed at those ungrateful for the economic “comeback” he constantly congratulated himself for orchestrating.
Five years after the crisis started, his role isn’t over. This spring, Snyder was added back as a defendant in a class-action suit and the Michigan attorney general’s office recently seized his electronic devices.