Dana Milbank at The Washington Post writes—Trump seems to be transparently mad:
This is not the work of an orderly mind.
President Trump stormed into the Cabinet Room 15 minutes late Wednesday morning and immediately proceeded to blow up a long-planned meeting with Democratic leaders about an infrastructure bill. He raged against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for the terrible, horrible things she has said about him, and he vowed not to work on any legislation until Democrats stop investigating his administration. He stomped out of the room before Democrats had a chance to reply, then marched into the Rose Garden for an unscheduled news conference — or, more accurately, a 12-minute parade of paranoia. [...]
“I don’t do coverups,” announced the man who paid hush money to an adult-film star and who is now fighting legal battles to conceal his tax returns and business records. “I’m the most transparent president, probably, in the history of this country,” he also said.
In one sense, that’s true: Trump’s state of mind is utterly transparent, revealed in real time. At the moment, he seems to be transparently mad.
Alex Shepard at The New Republic writes—Impeachment Is Coming. Speaker Pelosi's plan to keep Trump's crimes and misdemeanors on the back burner has been overtaken by events—and a Michigan Republican:
Democratic leadership’s oversight slow-walk has stumbled. That strategy was based on the idea that a case about the Trump administration’s criminality could be built slowly, and that public opinion against the president could be further cemented without risking impeachment’s alleged blowback. But that subtle approach has not worked, particularly against the Trump administration’s intransigence. While Pelosi and her allies have been figuring out the best way to turn up the temperature, the president and his allies—flouting laws and resisting subpoenas at every turn—have been burning down the house.
Amash’s comments were a gift for Pelosi and Democratic leaders. Here was a Republican making a difficult decision based on his conscience, based on his principles, and based on the evidence. He looked at a public report and concluded that the president had committed impeachable offenses. Democrats could have pushed Republicans to explain why they thought Amash was mistaken in his reading of the Mueller report, or how they can continue to back such a corrupt president. Instead Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer waved off the Michigan Republican and stiff-armed the Democratic base.
If Pelosi had been waiting for a sign that Trump had gone too far, she just drove past it. Impeachment might not turn out to be the perfect path forward, but it’s increasingly clear other avenues the speaker thought were better have now closed. Throughout her career, Pelosi has been legendary in her ability to amass power and control her caucus. But (as the good comic book says) with great power comes great responsibility. Instead of shutting up her members, maybe she should start listening to them. And, what could look more powerful than maybe listening to a renegade Republican, too?
Martin Longman at The Washington Monthly writes—The Democrats Don’t Need the White House as a Partner to Push Infrastructure:
After congressional Democrats visited the White House in late April to discuss to doing a very large infrastructure bill, I expressed skepticism that anything would come of it and recommended that the House Democrats just go ahead and write a good bill without wasting too much time on fruitless negotiations.
The idea wouldn’t be to pass something that the Senate Republicans would take up themselves. The bill would almost certainly be a dead end. But the effort would be useful anyway. It would prepare the next Congress (and hopefully the next president) to hit the ground running. It would help the Democrats iron out how they want to pay for the bill. And it would…show the voters that the reason they can’t have the best infrastructure in the world is not due to generalized congressional dysfunction but is instead entirely the fault of the Republican Party.
[...] According to Politico’s Wednesday Playbook, the White House has reneged on their promise. [...]
I think the House should hold extensive hearings on the country’s infrastructure needs and how they can use a major bill to address climate change. They should pass the bill at the end of the year and then campaign on the issue when the Republican-controlled Senate inevitably lets the infrastructure issue die in Congress.
Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News writes—Abortion fight is about white patriarchy clinging to power. It’s time for decent men to speak up:
The sudden, stunning boiling-over of an abortion-rights battle that’s been mostly on “simmer” for the past 45 years has brought into focus two things that, frankly, should have been clear for a long, long time. The first is that while the abortion issue is, and always has been, a moral or religious choice for every individual, the politics of that dilemma have devolved into something else entirely: A bullwhip that’s become both a real-world tool of, and a symbol of an even bigger fight for, social control — to keep American society under the thumb of a white patriarchy with no qualms about crushing the rights of others and punishing those who step out of line.
The second thing is that that these strict laws — a proxy war for keeping women in their place — will only get worse until decent men start to speak out.
A good starting place for men is to learn the secret history of the anti-abortion movement in modern America. A push to repeal the first-wave anti-abortion laws of the 19th Century coincided with the rise of a women’s rights movement in the 1960s. The issue was certainly controversial — the Catholic Church, then as now, opposed abortion as well as other forms of birth control — but the original battle lines didn’t always match our 21st Century ideas about the red-blue divide.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The New York Times writes—Don’t get it twisted. Trump is the one with the picket sign:
It’s often said that when our founders wrote the Constitution, they had a leader like Donald Trump in mind when they included various safeguards for our liberties and against abuses of presidential power.
I think that gets it wrong. The framers could not have imagined a president like Trump.
They certainly never expected that a president would go on strike.
But that is what Trump did on Wednesday, throwing a tantrum at what was supposed to be a serious meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer about a big infrastructure plan. Trump then barged out and told waiting reporters that unless the House stopped investigating him — i.e., gave up on its responsibilities to hold him accountable — Americans would just have to keep driving on crumbling roads, crossing shaky bridges and riding on inadequate public transit systems.
The Editorial Board of The New York Times writes—There’s Only One Way to Stop Predatory Lending:
Perhaps the most obvious lesson from the 2008 financial crisis was the need for stricter supervision of mortgage lending. But it seems that it was not clear enough, because the Trump administration is now proposing to reduce federal oversight of mortgage lending. [...]
The see-no-evil approach to mortgage lending is part of the administration’s broader effort to prevent the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from protecting consumers of financial products. Under the leadership of Mick Mulvaney, who has since become President Trump’s acting chief of staff, the bureau suspended a crackdown on payday lending, walking away from a plan to hold the industry responsible for making affordable loans. One of Mr. Mulvaney’s first decisions at the agency was to drop a lawsuit against an online payday lender that charged annualized interest rates of up to 950 percent on some loans.
Rachel E. VanLandingham is a professor of criminal and national security law at Southwestern Law School and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who served as a military legal adviser on criminal and law of war issues. At USA Today, she writes—Betrayer in chief? Pardoning troops accused or convicted of murder would wound military:
The commander in chief is betraying our troops. By strongly signaling that it’s acceptable, even laudable, for our service members to commit murders during war, President Donald Trump tears the essential fabric of what holds our fighting forces together. He has already pardoned a convicted military murderer. By considering pardons of U.S. troops accused or convicted of similar crimes, threatening to abort ongoing prosecutions, the president is endangering our military’s efficacy and safety.
Some killings remain murder even during war — such as our troops intentionally killing civilians and detainees, in general. Sure, the law of armed conflict allows for great violence during war, but some killings (like of subdued detainees) are so far outside the necessities of war that they are unlawful before war, remain unlawful during war, and are still unlawful after a war. Let’s not get confused by accurately labeling them “war crimes.” They are crimes, period, and must be punished whether they occur in downtown Los Angeles or in a dusty Afghan village during military combat operations.
Adam Weinstein at The New Republic writes—Who Actually Wants War Criminals Pardoned?
The vetting process for prospective pardonees normally takes months, not a week; it normally originates in the Justice Department, not the White House; it normally pardons convicts, not accused criminals awaiting trial. It does not normally fast-track military operators who are accused of murder by seven of their shipmates and who also keep photographs of murdered prisoners in their phones.
What is the constituency in the United States that celebrates war crimes? How big is it, and who speaks for it? Is there some faction of active-duty military brass pushing for this? Is there an adviser telling Trump that the people demand it? [...]
There is no natural constituency demanding the exoneration of a motley series of heavily armed white men who killed or desecrated the bodies of foreigners overseas in the name of the United States. What these cases have in common is that they have become hobby-horses for a sclerotic part of the conservative media-industrial complex. [...]
This, in a nutshell, is the war crimes lobby as it now exists, a metastasizing network of amateurish, enraged gawkers, gorging themselves on Fox News emissions, and who feel empowered to speak for the troops, the war, and the whole darn population of “real” United States citizens. “To the people in middle America, who respect the troops and the tough calls they make, they’re going to love this. These are the good guys,” said Fox and Friends cohost, professional Republican veteran, and onetime Trump cabinet hopeful Pete Hegseth on Sunday. “These are the war fighters. And making a move like this by Memorial Day would be—I would be—wow, amazing.”
Anne Harrington and Cheryl Rofer at Foreign Policy write—There Is No Check on Trump’s Rage Going Nuclear:
Donald Trump is taking the United States back to an earlier time—one most people thought had been left behind. His aggressive boorishness, entitlement, and belief that he can do whatever he wants are qualities from an age when men’s control was assumed, and others stayed silent. And nowhere is his retrograde masculinity more dangerous than in his control of the nuclear button. [...]
Reserving launch authority for the president not only underscored the special status of nuclear weapons as a political asset, but it also took them out of the hands of the generals—men like Gen. Curtis LeMay. LeMay was a laconic man’s man, known for his ruthlessness and impolitic statements. During World War II, he directed the firebombing of 63 Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of people. It was LeMay who relayed the orders for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and later, as the head of Strategic Air Command (SAC), oversaw the war plans for an all-out nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. LeMay had no patience for subordinating operational effectiveness to moral concerns, or what he referred to as an American “phobia” against the use of nuclear weapons. [...]
The debate about civilian control of nuclear weapons, including presidential launch authority, was not only a struggle over whether nukes are primarily political tools or military weapons but also what type of person could be trusted with the ability to forever alter life on Earth. The move to take nuclear weapons out of the hands of the military was also a way of taking them away from trigger-happy generals like LeMay who were not only willing but eager to do the unthinkable. In the nuclear era, a more refined masculine ideal was ascendant. As epitomized by McNamara, this rational man took no pleasure in violence but rather, after careful study and consultation, accommodated himself to its necessity.
Would Trump be willing to use nuclear weapons? That’s unknowable—but he certainly doesn’t need your, or anyone else’s, consent to do it.
Alex Kane at In These Times writes—Here’s Exactly Who’s Profiting from the War on Yemen. And how the U.S. could stop weapon sales if it wanted to.
Under President Barack Obama’s administration and, now, President Donald Trump’s, the United States has put its military might behind the Saudi-led coalition, waging a war without congressional authorization. That war has devastated Yemen’s infrastructure, destroyed or damaged more than half of Yemen’s health facilities, killed more than 8,350 civilians, injured another 9,500 civilians, displaced 3.3 million people, and created a humanitarian disaster that threatens the lives of millions as cholera and famine spread through the country.
U.S. arms merchants, however, have grown rich. Fragments of the bombs were documented by journalists and HRW with help from Mastaba villagers. An HRW munitions expert determined the bombs were 2,000-pound MK-84s, manufactured by General Dynamics. Based in Falls Church, Va., General Dynamics is the world’s sixth most profitable arms manufacturer. One of the bombs used a satellite guidance kit from Chicago-based Boeing, the world’s second-most profitable weapons company. The other bomb had a Paveway guidance system, made by either Raytheon of Waltham, Mass., the third-largest arms company in the world, or Lockheed Martin of Bethesda, Md., the world’s top weapons contractor. An In These Times analysis found that in the past decade, the State Department has approved at least $30.1 billion in Saudi military contracts for these four companies.
Joshua Cho at FAIR writes—For Corporate Media, Space Belongs to Washington:
The Wall Street Journal (5/10/19) published an excerpt from an upcoming book by CNN’s chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto, which claims that despite a “Star Wars–like space service” being an “easy comic target,” “US commanders” are “deadly serious” about confronting “new threats in space.” These “commanders” were mostly anonymous—but such sources are often involved in a profitable revolving door relationship with military contractors.
CNN (2/11/19) warned us of Russia and China’s “new” anti-satellite laser capacities, with breathless statements by government officials claiming that the two countries are “surpassing us” in space capabilities. NBC (2/11/19) claimed that both countries were “preparing to use space as a battlefield.” The Daily Beast (4/10/19) cautioned that although the US currently operates around 850 public and private satellites, compared with China’s 280 and Russia’s 150, Washington’s plans to launch 1,300 additional satellites to help the US “survive a sneak attack by China and Russia” might still be insufficient.
While these alarmist reports about an endangered and inadequate military lagging behind its ambitious and innovative “adversaries” are nothing new (FAIR.org, 12/20/18), Sciutto’s excerpt is exceptional in its credulity towards official sources, and in how badly it misleads readers regarding the militarization of space and the “threats” posed by Russia and China.
Going over several apocalyptic scenarios—“the internet would stop altogether,” financial markets would be “paralyzed” and the US might lose its indispensable capacity to “target anyplace on the planet, anytime, anywhere, any weather”—Sciutto warned that one thing is clear: “War is coming to space, and the US must prepare for it.”
Robert Reich at The Guardian writes—The Trump economy is hurting most Americans. Statistics won't fool voters:
In a survey by the Washington Post and ABC News published on 7 May, more than 80% of Democrats and 66% of independents said “the economic system in this country” mainly works “to benefit those in power”, rather than all Americans. Nearly a third of Republicans agreed.
More Americans are employed but most jobs still pay squat. Adjusted for inflation, recent wage gains are smaller than the wage gains of 2015. Workers have lost so much bargaining power that not even the lowest unemployment rate in half a century is doing much to boost pay.
Employers continue to sack workers willy-nilly. One example: AT&T executives promised that the corporate tax cut would allow them to create more jobs. Instead, they’ve laid off 23,000.
Add to this that almost 80% of American workers are living paycheck to paycheck, and you get a feel for the havoc so many families are living in.
Emily Atkin at The New Republic writes—Corporate America Is Terrified of the Green New Deal. There's a reason more big businesses are pushing for a carbon tax—and it's not because they want to fight climate change:
So why are corporations so passionate about a carbon tax? “It’s not really about saving the planet,” Harder noted. Indeed, in the face of growing public support for climate action, these companies increasingly realize they need to throw their weight behind some kind of climate policy. They want a carbon tax because it doesn’t threaten the industry’s very existence and allows them to keep polluting—so long as they pay for it.
But a carbon tax isn’t just corporate America’s favorite option; it’s the only option. The only serious mainstream alternative to a carbon tax is terrifying to corporations: an aggressive climate plan that doesn’t cooperate with polluters, but seeks to put them out of business.
A carbon tax does not appear in the Green New Deal—at least, not the version popularized by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey. It doesn’t appear in Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke’s $5 trillion plan to fight global warming. Even Washington Governor Jay Inslee—who is running for president explicitly on climate change and who spent his career trying to enact a fee on carbon—doesn’t include a carbon tax in his $9 trillion climate jobs plan.
There are many reasons for the absence of a tax in these plans, but the main one appears to be that it doesn’t guarantee emissions reductions. Democrats are starting to realize that drastic action is necessary to prevent catastrophe, and a carbon tax simply isn’t drastic enough.
Nicole Sussner Rodgers and Julie Kohler at The Nation write—Conservatives’ Real Fight Is for the Future of the Family:
The culmination of decades of effort to erode women’s reproductive rights reached a boiling point this week as conservative states raced to enact the most draconian abortion bans, setting their sights on overturning Roe v. Wade. The ability to access safe and legal abortion is nothing less than the structural foundation of women’s self-determination: Without it, the walls cave in. But for conservatives, the battleground may be the uterus, but the war is for the future of family. And their governing worldview requires the resurrection of the married, two-parent variety, with roles clearly demarcated by gender.
For years, conservatives have been fixated on declining marriage and fertility rates and rising nonmarital-birth rates. The refrain of “family breakdown” has become their convenient explanation for all social problems, from crime to drug addiction to poverty, and platitudes about “strengthening the nuclear family” their catchall solution. But just as the anti-abortion crusade isn’t really about “saving babies,” the restoration of a “marriage culture” isn’t really about saving marriage. Feminists understand that both are punishment for the transgression of autonomy, whether it takes the form of having non-procreative sex or even sex outside of marriage, being child-free or not marrying, or having a child without first having a husband.
