WaPo:
Americans give Trump negative marks for Helsinki performance, poll finds
By wide margins, Americans give President Trump negative marks for his conduct during a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week and for his casting doubt on U.S. intelligence conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.
But public reaction nationally appears more muted than in Washington where Trump faced withering bipartisan criticism for appearing to side with Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies at a Monday news conference in Helsinki. Most Americans do not feel Trump went “too far” in supporting Putin, and while more Americans say U.S. leadership has gotten weaker than stronger under Trump, his ratings on this question are slightly improved from last fall.
Josh Kraushaar/National Journal:
Republicans in Gerrymandered Districts Facing Tough Races
It’s a lesson that even the most partisan line-drawing can’t stop a political wave.
One of the paradoxes of gerrymandering is that even the most partisan, technologically sophisticated efforts at redistricting a statewide map often fall flat in the face of a political wave. In these elections where one party dominates—which includes each of the past three midterms—gerrymandering simply isn’t as foolproof as it’s cracked up to be.
In fact, because more ideologically extreme representatives tend to get elected from politically safer seats, many of these members end up being wholly unprepared to run a capable campaign when the political tide turns against them. That dynamic is emerging again in this midterm election, where many of the Republican Congress members who were protected by generous mapmakers are now in precarious position for their reelection.
James Risen/The Intercept:
The Butina Indictment Isn’t About The Sex Life Of An Accused Spy. It’s About Following Russian Money In U.S. Politics.
Butina has attracted the attention of federal investigators mainly because of her connections to this shadowy intersection of powerful Russians and right-wing Americans. In fact, it was Butina’s work for Alexander Torshin, a close political ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, that made her a target of federal investigators. Torshin — not Butina — is the Russian figure whose involvement with the NRA and American conservatives brings the Trump-Russia case closer to Russian organized crime and Putin.
AP:
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh suggested several years ago that the unanimous high court ruling in 1974 that forced President Richard Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes, leading to the end of his presidency, may have been wrongly decided.
Kavanaugh was taking part in a roundtable discussion with other lawyers when he said at three different points that the decision in U.S. v. Nixon, which marked limits on a president's ability to withhold information needed for a criminal prosecution, may have come out the wrong way.
NBC:
After years of 'crisis actor' smears, Sandy Hook conspiracy targets ask Facebook for 'seat at the table'
“It feels like Facebook is waiting for someone to die before something gets done,” said Nelba Márquez-Greene, mother of a child killed in Sandy Hook
For the past six years, Márquez-Greene has fended off vitriolic trolls on the social network who claimed that her daughter never existed or was a part of a government conspiracy.
“It feels like Facebook is waiting for someone to die before something gets done,” she said.
Amid Facebook’s recent efforts to clean up misinformation, propaganda and harassments on its social network, Infowars has become the go-to example for Facebook critics who say the site has been too lenient on far-right news organizations.
NY Times:
How a Trump Decision Revealed a G.O.P. Memo’s Shaky Foundation
When President Trump declassified a memo by House Republicans in February that portrayed the surveillance of a former campaign adviser as scandalous, his motivation was clear: to give congressional allies and conservative commentators another avenue to paint the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian election interference as tainted from the start.
But this past weekend, Mr. Trump’s unprecedented decision, which he made over the objections of law enforcement and intelligence officials, had a consequence that revealed his gambit’s shaky foundation. The government released the court documents in which the F.B.I. made its case for conducting the surveillance — records that plainly demonstrated that key elements of Republicans’ claims about the bureau’s actions were misleading or false.
Lawfare:
What to Make of the Carter Page FISA Applications
Based on this back and forth between the HPSCI partisans, I wrote on Lawfare at the time that the FBI’s disclosures on Steele “amply satisfie[d] the requirements” for FISA applications, and that the central irony of the Nunes memo was that it “tried to deceive the American people in precisely the same way that it falsely accused the FBI of deceiving the FISA Court.” The Nunes memo accused the FBI of dishonesty in failing to disclose information about Steele, but in fact the Nunes memo itself was dishonest in failing to disclose what the FBI disclosed. I said then, and I still believe, that the “Nunes memo was dishonest. And if it is allowed to stand, we risk significant collateral damage to essential elements of our democracy.”
Now we have some additional information in the form of the redacted FISA applications themselves, and the Nunes memo looks even worse. In my earlier post, I observed that the FBI’s disclosures about Steele were contained in a footnote, but argued that this did not detract from their sufficiency: “As someone who has read and approved many FISA applications and dealt extensively with the FISA Court, I will anticipate and reject a claim that the disclosure was somehow insufficient because it appeared in a footnote; in my experience, the court reads the footnotes.” Now we can see that the footnote disclosing Steele’s possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications, so there is literally no way the FISA Court could have missed it. The FBI gave the court enough information to evaluate Steele’s credibility.
WaPo:
In private, Trump vents frustration over lack of progress on North Korea
But in the days and weeks since then, U.S. negotiators have faced stiff resistance from a North Korean team practiced in the art of delay and obfuscation.
Diplomats say the North Koreans have canceled follow-up meetings, demanded more money and failed to maintain basic communications, even as the once-isolated regime’s engagements with China and South Korea flourish.
Meanwhile, a missile-engine testing facility that Trump said would be destroyed remains intact, and U.S. intelligence officials say Pyongyang is working to conceal key aspects of its nuclear program.
Never forget, the media played into this bullshit circus, raising the stakes and pretending this was a significant US summit (it was significant but only for North Korea, which the experts and non-experts outside the DC press noted at the time). But because of that, the failure is magnified.
What can you do to help? Remember that stenography is a different job than reporting.
Will Bunch/The Inquirer:
Not a president but he plays one on TV - why The 41 Percent stick with Trump
Of course, if you’re one of The 54 Percent — the Americans who actively oppose Trump — there is a good chance of electing a radically new House of Representatives for 2019 that will act decisively if special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe provides enough evidence for impeachment. But Republican senators and The 41 Percent won’t stand for Trump’s ultimate removal, and I’m not sure anyone is ready for the new brand of civil war that would be created by all of this.
The other possibility that could actually bring Trump’s support below 41 percent is also unspeakably grim and undesirable: A recession might demolish the argument that Trump is doing an “amazing” job (and which might come sooner than normal because of the recklessness of his trade wars), but it would also demolish a lot of undeserving hard-working American families. The other great uncertainty is war, which often boosts tyrants at first only to bring them low in the long run.
These fears are what keep most of us awake at night — but they don’t seem to resonate with The 41 Percent. Not when you can still sit around a sun-soaked picnic table in Michigan and cling to your image of the tall man at the podium. Especially if you put the sound on mute.