The Harvey disaster continues.
I and many others were infuriated when first thing Sunday a.m. POTUS tweeted this:
Then about the storm. Priorities.
It is nearly always a mistake to brag about how well things are going in the midst of a disaster. Read the responses to this tweet:
Nearly 300K are without power, and only half the rain has fallen. The flooding is record. The damage remains to be seen.
The rest of America will be there for Texas. We remember Sandy, and hesitation to pass relief, but we are all Americans.
Politico:
Why America Still Hasn’t Learned the Lessons of Katrina
“It’s pretty freaking amazing. All of this stuff was the first line of defense that was just gone,” said Garret Graves, a U.S. congressman who served for six years as the head of Louisiana's coastal protection and restoration effortsin the wake of Katrina.
Today, Caminada Headland is a robust new island backed by thick, healthy marshes, thanks to a $216 million project launched by Graves and the state of Louisiana. But what looks like a success story from the window of a seaplane was, to Graves and nearly everyone else involved, an expensive and exhausting struggle—one that raises serious questions about America's ability to grapple with the increasing problems caused by rising coastal waters and more destructive storms as the climate changes.
Oh and trump also tweeted this:
That helps Texas flooding how?
Turning to other news, this Joe Arpaio pardon is a BFD. So why a tweet about Sheriff Clarke? Let’s be clear it’s no accident by reading these two JJ MacNab tweet storms. The first is on the larger picture with Clarke and Arpaio:
The second is the important difference that Trump is blurring between white supremacists and anti-government extremists. They are not the same and the latter group is larger and more dangerous.
Plenty of other people think it’s a BFD, too. Not just that Arpaio is a white supremacist himself, though that’s a huge part in the signal it sends. More below.
Josh Chafetz/WaPo:
Focus on why President Trump pardoned the controversial former sheriff, not how.
But as the hypothetical pardon makes clear, we don’t think normal procedures should always be followed, and we don’t think judges should always be obeyed. Especially for something like the pardon power, which by its very nature exists at the edges of the law, trying to find formal, neutral limiting factors that really ought to apply across the board will prove difficult, if not impossible.
So how should we talk about the Arpaio pardon? Substantively. More specifically, we should talk about why, of all the people with criminal records in this country, Trump chose to make Arpaio his first pardonee…
In other words, Trump pardoned Arpaio because of his actions as sheriff, actions that are consistent with the platform on which Trump campaigned and has attempted to govern. Those actions were appalling — and not only is Arpaio unremorseful, but Trump has actually held him up as a model to be emulated.
Let’s focus on that.
It all seems to come down to that: Trump disrupted the operation of the criminal justice process to score a political point, and he believes that the “complete power to pardon” gives him all the space he needs for this maneuver and requires of him only the most pro forma, meaningless explanation of his action. He has managed, however, to make a very clear statement about the “rule of law” in his government, and he has miscalculated if he somewhat imagines that it will not come back to haunt him.
David Frum/Atlantic
Trump Won't Back Down
What the president is saying by pardoning America’s second-most famous birther
Who and what Arpaio is—and why he was convicted of a misdemeanor count of contempt of court—is a story you probably already know. (If not, a good place to begin is with this Twitter thread posted by the Phoenix New Times, an alt-weekly newspaper that has long covered the controversial former sheriff.) Along with ferocious abuses of his law-enforcement powers in Maricopa County, Arpaio also made a name for himself as America’s second-most famous Obama Birther, next only to the current president of the United States. You’ll hear a lot more about all this in the next 48 hours…
At the beginning of the Trump presidency, I quoted a wise observer from Hungary: “The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.” Trump has exhibited what that power of protection can do.
Philip Bump/WaPo:
If he’ll pardon Arpaio, why wouldn’t Trump pardon those who ignore Robert Mueller?
In other words, if any of Trump’s allies decides to tell special counsel Robert Mueller to stick his subpoena in the south side of the National Mall, Mueller can press a court for contempt charges. The person could be convicted of those charges — and then get a pardon identical to Arpaio’s.
Does anyone think that Trump wouldn’t actually do this? His former FBI director testified under oath that Trump tried to get him to drop the criminal investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. If you’re willing to ask the FBI to stop investigating a crime, why wouldn’t you simply pardon the guy who they think committed it?
There’s one catch, that was explored by Eugene Volokh in June. If you are pardoned, you can’t then assert your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, since you don’t face any risk of prosecution. If, for example, I were pardoned for conspiracy to commit murder in Washington, D.C., I can’t then refuse to testify against my partner in that crime, since I can’t be tried for the crime.
That said, though, the protection against self-incrimination also applies to state crimes. So Trump could pardon someone — let’s say Flynn, for the sake of this example — and Flynn could then still assert his Fifth Amendment rights if he thought his testimony might result in criminal charges in the state of Virginia (or wherever).
Marcy Wheeler/emptywheel:
THE ARPAIO PARDON: YOU’RE NOT THE AUDIENCE
So while feeding his explicitly racist base with hateful rhetoric is important, it’s even more important to ensure that the cops remain with him, even as he fosters violence.
There is no better way to do that than to convey to police that they can target brown people, that they can ignore all federal checks on their power, with impunity (this is probably one key reason why Trump has given up his efforts to oust Sessions, because on policing they remain in perfect accord).
There is no better way to keep the support of cops who support Trump because he encourages their abuses then by pardoning Arpaio for the most spectacular case of such abuses.
You’re not the audience for this pardon. The cops are.
Lawrence Douglas/Guardian:
It is not hard to understand why Trump would pardon Arpaio. The two share dreary similarities: a willingness to scapegoat undocumented immigrants for the ills of the nation, a cavalier disregard for the inconveniences of legal constraints, an affection for strongman braggadocio. But more than that, the pardon is an expression of Trump’s governing style in distilled form.
Lacking the vision, tenacity, commitment and acumen to govern and shape policy, Trump contents himself with acts of spiteful erasure, gestures of teardown that require no more effort than a tweet or a signature.
Having lied that he had a “beautiful,” “terrific” and “unbelievable” health insurance plan to replace Obamacare; having lied that he had a detailed tax reform plan; having lied that he had a detailed plan to replace our crumbling infrastructure; having lied that Mexico would foot the bill for his “beautiful” wall, Trump works to keep his base in check with cheap yet profoundly damaging acts of undoing.
Martin H. Redish/NY Times:
A Pardon for Arpaio Would Put Trump in Uncharted Territory
Anyone who has read the Federalist Papers knows how obsessed the framers were with the need to prevent tyranny. They were all too aware of the sad fate of all the republics that had preceded ours — rapid degeneration into tyranny. One of the most effective means of preventing tyranny was the vesting of the power of judicial review in a court system insulated from direct political pressures. Subsequent enactment of the Bill of Rights, which included the Fifth Amendment and its due process clause, only strengthened the nation’s resolve to prevent tyranny.
It has long been recognized that the greatest threat of tyranny derives from the executive branch, where the commander in chief sits, overseeing not just the military but a vast and growing network of law enforcement and regulatory agencies. Indeed, the Articles of Confederation didn’t even provide for an executive, for fear of what dangerous power he might exercise.
While the Constitution, in contrast, recognizes the very practical need for an executive, that doesn’t mean its framers feared the growth of tyranny any less. The Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of neutral judicial process before deprivation of liberty cannot function with a weaponized pardon power that enables President Trump, or any president, to circumvent judicial protections of constitutional rights.
See also:
What authoritarianism experts think of Trump’s decision to pardon Joe Arpaio (WaPo)
Trump’s pardon of Arpaio fits a pattern: A divider, not a uniter (WaPo)
To end on a historical note, this piece by Michael Bitzer (a great twitter follow for political junkies) puts a lot of this in perspective:
Civil rights and wrongs: Reflections on issues of race, politics and history
Over my nearly two decades of instruction, I have had the privilege of teaching a multitude of subject areas.
My master’s is in American history, with a minor field in the study of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
My doctorate is in American politics, American law and public administration.
Over my tenure, I have taught 30 different courses. In every one of these courses, I try to learn just as much as I impart to my students. I am, to use a cliché, a life-long learner.
And in these various courses, I try to always relate them, whether it’s a history course or a politics course, to the issues of the day, if applicable.
And in the past week and a half, the issues of the day have become monumental in confronting our nation and society.
ICYMI:
