30 May 21
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30 May 21
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Bess Levin | Trump's Inner Circle Is Reportedly Soiling Itself at the Likelihood of Criminal Charges, as It Should Be
Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Levin writes: "'There's definitely a cloud of nerves in the air.' One adviser told the outlet that while Trump is no stranger to legal issues, this situation feels different, in part because prosecutors are pressuring Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who's described himself as Trump's 'eyes and ears' at the company, to flip."
Trumpworld is said to be panicked about a grand jury hearing evidence against the ex-president, the Trump Organization and its executives.
s you‘ve no doubt heard by now, on Tuesday, The Washington Post broke the news that the Manhattan district attorney has convened a grand jury to hear evidence against Donald Trump. According to legal experts, this is a major development in Cyrus Vance Jr.’s criminal investigation; as former assistant district attorney Rebecca Roiphe told the Post, it’s unlikely that Vance’s office would have taken such a step without believing it can prove Trump, the Trump Organization, or a Trump Organization executive committed a crime. “The prosecutors are convinced they have a case,” Roiphe said. “That’s at least how I read it.” As former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara told CNN, “It’s significant…they must have come across some evidence as to somebody’s state of mind. That the misconduct they were investigating does not seem to be the product of negligence or recklessness or mistake but intentional criminality.” And as a result, people surrounding the ex-president are said to be more than a little freaked out, as they probably should be!
According to Politico Playbook, which spoke to members of “Trump world” after the news came out, “There’s definitely a cloud of nerves in the air.” One adviser told the outlet that while Trump is no stranger to legal issues, this situation feels different, in part because prosecutors are pressuring Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who’s described himself as Trump’s “eyes and ears” at the company, to flip. “I think the Weisselberg involvement and the wild card of that makes the particular situation more real, because there’s no sort of fluff and made-up fictional circumstances around the guy,” an adviser told Politico. “The fact that they’re dealing with a numbers guy who just has plain details makes people more nervous. This is not a Michael Cohen situation.”
According to Politico legal affairs contributor Josh Gerstein, the grand jury “is expected to go beyond assembling records by hearing live testimony from various witnesses—which will give prosecutors an opportunity to present a narrative that could persuade jurors to return an indictment in the coming months. Coupled with [New York] Attorney General Letitia James’s recent decision to team up with Vance and Vance’s hiring of veteran mafia prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, the move to a new grand jury suggests a steady progression towards criminal charges against some person or company in the Trump orbit.”
Of course, despite the fact that Trump may very well be privately shitting himself over the news, his public response was a typical meltdown and rehashing of things he’s said in the past—namely, that all of this is a “witch hunt” and that he’s a saint beloved the world over. In a statement, he wrote, or more likely dictated to some poor scribe: “This is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history. It began the day I came down the escalator in Trump Tower, and it’s never stopped…. This is purely political, and an affront to the almost 75 million voters who supported me in the Presidential Election, and it’s being driven by highly partisan Democrat prosecutors. New York City and State are suffering the highest crime rates in their history, and instead of going after murderers, drug dealers, human traffickers, and others, they come after Donald Trump. Interesting that today a poll came out indicating I’m far in the lead for the Republican Presidential Primary and the General Election in 2024.”
As for Trump’s actual political aspirations, he will undoubtedly tease another White House run until the very last second before making an actual announcement, though aides have claimed to Politico that “he’s missing being president terribly,” and supposedly gets angry when people question if he’s serious about running again. He’s also inserted himself in the 2022 midterm elections, despite the fact that his endorsements are actually the kiss of death. Per Politico:
With an eye toward winning back the House and Senate in the 2022 midterm elections, former President Donald Trump has begun crafting a policy agenda outlining a MAGA doctrine for the party. His template is the 1994 “Contract with America,” a legislative agenda released ahead of the midterm elections in the middle of President Bill Clinton’s first term. And, as a cherry on top, he’s teaming up with its main architect—[Newt] Gingrich—to do it.
In recent weeks, Trump sat down with the former House speaker as well as his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) at his private Mar-a-Lago club to begin crafting the document, according to a source familiar with the meeting. The group is still just beginning to hammer out the details of what a Trumpified Contract might look like. But it is likely to take an “America-First” policy approach on everything from trade to immigration. The source described it as “a policy priority for 2022 and beyond.”
Presumably, anyone looking for Trump’s endorsement would have to sign the Trump Contract in blood, though according to analysis by Bloomberg, candidates hoping to actually win a seat might want to avoid the ex-president’s stamp of approval. While his endorsement helped Republicans win primaries in 2020, 40 of his 183 endorsed candidates lost, and in 2018, the GOP could have picked up at least 11 more House seats and four in the Senate had Trump stayed on the sidelines.
A portrait of US President Donald Trump burns during a demonstration. (Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images)
Garland DOJ Asks Judge to Toss ACLU Suit Against Trump Over Lafayette Square Violence
Mary Papenfuss, Huffington Post
Papenfuss writes: "The Justice Department asked a federal judge on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against former President Donald Trump for the violence against protesters a year ago at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C."
The civil liberties organization argued that allowing Trump to get away with it would “authorize brutality with impunity.”
he Justice Department asked a federal judge on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against former President Donald Trump for the violence against protesters a year ago at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C.
Demonstrators protesting the police killing of George Floyd were brutally cleared from the space by law enforcement officers using stun grenades, pepper balls, tear gas and batons so that Trump could walk from the White House, across the square to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he posed with a Bible for a photo op. The leader of the church was “outraged” it was used for the cynical stunt.
A National Guard major on the scene complained that officers used “excessive force” against protesters, and the Australian government called for an investigation after journalists from the nation were brutally beaten by police.
The ACLU quickly filed suit against Trump — as well as former Attorney General William Barr and other officials — on behalf of Black Lives Matter and individual protesters for the “unconstitutional” and “frankly criminal attack.” The suit argued that Trump and Barr unlawfully “conspired to deprive” the demonstrators of their civil rights.
But DOJ attorneys argued Friday that Trump and other officials are immune from lawsuits over police actions taken to protect a president. They also said further attacks on protesters are unlikely now that Trump is no longer president, The Washington Post reported. President Joe Biden and his administration do not share Trump’s hostility toward the racial justice movement, the DOJ noted.
ACLU lawyers shot back saying that the government’s defense would “authorize brutality with impunity” in the heart of the nation’s capital, where rights violations are particularly troubling.
If the government’s defense is upheld, it would excuse accountability for any offense, lawyers argued. In such a case, U.S. authorities “could have used live ammunition to clear the park, and nobody would have a claim against that as an assault on their constitutional rights,” said Scott Michelman, legal director for the ACLU in the District of Columbia, according to the Post.
ACLU attorney Randy Mastro argued that protesters were targeted by the Trump administration because of “their viewpoint, their message, their speech.” Trump, who shared a reference on Twitter calling the peaceful demonstrators “terrorists,” tweeted the day after the square was cleared: “Great job done by all. Overwhelming force. Domination.”
The “conduct here was so flagrantly unlawful and so obviously unconstitutional that it requires a remedy,” Mastro said. “We are here today, your honor, to do everything we can to see that nothing like this ever happens again in our country.”
A monument to the survivors of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School is pictured in front of the school administration building, after the remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found at the site in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada May 29, 2021. (photo: Dennis Owen/Reuters)
Remains of 215 Children Found at Former Indigenous School Site in Canada
Anna Mehler Paperny, Reuters
Paperny writes: "The remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found at the site of a former residential school for indigenous children, a discovery Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described as heartbreaking on Friday."
The children were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia that closed in 1978, according to the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc Nation, which said the remains were found with the help of a ground penetrating radar specialist.
"We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify," Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir said in a statement. "At this time, we have more questions than answers."
Canada's residential school system, which forcibly separated indigenous children from their families, constituted "cultural genocide," a six-year investigation into the now-defunct system found in 2015.
The report documented horrific physical abuse, rape, malnutrition and other atrocities suffered by many of the 150,000 children who attended the schools, typically run by Christian churches on behalf of Ottawa from the 1840s to the 1990s.
It found more than 4,100 children died while attending residential school. The deaths of the 215 children buried in the grounds of what was once Canada's largest residential school are believed to not have been included in that figure and appear to have been undocumented until the discovery.
Trudeau wrote in a tweet that the news "breaks my heart - it is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country's history."
In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologized for the system.
The Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc Nation said it was engaging with the coroner and reaching out to the home communities whose children attended the school. They expect to have preliminary findings by mid-June.
In a statement, British Columbia Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee called finding such grave sites “urgent work” that “refreshes the grief and loss for all First Nations in British Columbia.”
Demonstrators march past the U.S. Capitol while protesting immigration reform, in Washington on May 12, 2021. (photo: Stefani Reynolds/NYT)
Democrats, Once Outraged, Are Taking a Quieter Approach on the Treatment of Migrant Children.
Eileen Sullivan, The New York Times
Sullivan writes: "House Democrats, who led an angry charge against the Trump administration's treatment of migrant children, have taken a much quieter tack since concerns began emerging about conditions at some of the emergency shelters set up by the Biden administration to deal with minors at the southern border."
Democrats say the contrast is for good reason: former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies were deliberately cruel, devised as a deterrent to would-be migrants, while the Biden administration is trying hard to deal with a bad hand.
Where once only Twitter assaults and dressing-downs at House hearings would suffice, Democratic lawmakers are voicing worries privately to administration officials and the small staff at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the care. If problems persist, the lawmakers say they call again.
Democrats say the contrast is for good reason: former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies were deliberately cruel, devised as a deterrent to would-be migrants, while the Biden administration is trying hard to deal with a bad hand.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has signed a bill into law that bans the teaching of critical race theory in Oklahoma schools. (photo: Sue Ogrocki/AP)
Teachers Say Laws Banning Critical Race Theory Are Putting a Chill on Their Lessons
Adrian Florido, NPR
Florido writes: "As Republican lawmakers across the country advance state bills that would limit how public school teachers can discuss race in their classrooms, educators say the efforts are already having a chilling effect on their lessons."
In recent weeks, Republican legislatures in roughly half a dozen states have either adopted or advanced bills purporting to take aim at the teaching of critical race theory, an academic approach that examines how race and racism function in law and society. Conservatives have made the teaching of critical race theory a rallying cry in the culture wars, calling it divisive and unpatriotic for forcing students to consider the influence of racism in situations where they might not see it otherwise.
In reality, the bills many Republicans have proposed do not directly address critical race theory. Instead, many ban the teaching of concepts that educators say they don't teach anyway.
A bill signed into law by Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt bans lessons that include the concept that "one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex," that a person's "moral character is inherently determined by his or her race or sex," or that someone should feel discomfort, guilt or distress on account of their race or sex.
Nonetheless, educators say the newly adopted and proposed laws are already forcing teachers to second-guess whether they can lead students in conversations about race and structural racism that many feel are critical at a time the nation is navigating an important reckoning on those issues.
In Oklahoma City, teacher Telannia Norfar said she and her colleagues at Northwest Classen High School had planned to discuss a schoolwide approach to help students understand current events – including the murder of George Floyd, family separation at the Mexico border and the use of racist terms such as the "China virus."
"We need to do it, because our students desire it," she said. "But how do we do that without opening Oklahoma City public schools up to a lawsuit?"
She said how and whether they'll do that is now unclear. Paula Lewis, chair of the Oklahoma City School Board, said though the state's new law bans teachers from discussing concepts they weren't discussing anyway, and though its penalties are not yet clear, the danger is the fear it instills.
"What if they say the wrong thing?" Lewis said. "What if somebody in their class during the critical thinking brings up the word oppression or systemic racism? Are they in danger? Is their job in danger?"
Confronting the bloody past
This year, many teachers in Oklahoma are planning lessons on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, when hundreds of the city's Black residents were killed by white mobs. It's taken years for education officials to integrate the episode into state teaching standards. While the new law does not ban its teaching, Lewis said it is likely to limit how much teachers feel they can dive into conversations about topics such as structural racism and white supremacy before and since the massacre.
Lewis acknowledged that in a conservative state such as Oklahoma, there are many parents – especially white ones – who support the idea of shielding their children from uncomfortable conversations about race. But she said that's why they're so important.
Similar bills have been adopted or advanced in states including Idaho, North Carolina and Tennessee.
In Texas, a bill that has passed both chambers of the Republican-controlled Legislature would impose restrictions similar to Oklahoma's, including banning public universities from requiring students to take diversity training. It would also require teachers who discuss ugly episodes in history, or controversial current events, to explore "contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective."
That bill, H.B. 3979, was written by Republican Steve Toth, who often rails against critical race theory as anti-white, anti-Christian and anti-American. His office did not respond to an interview request.
Vida Robertson directs the Center for Critical Race Studies at the University of Houston-Downtown. He called Toth's bill "a concerted attempt by Republicans to stifle a widespread and overwhelming demand for racial equality and social justice in the United States by mischaracterizing critical race theory as some abhorrent plot to undermine America."
He said it will give parents who are uncomfortable with the nation's ongoing racial reckoning a tool to go after teachers.
Teachers' fears of the thought police
Meghan Dougherty, who helps public school teachers in Round Rock, Texas, develop social studies lessons plans, said Texas teachers already feel that pressure, including one of her colleagues who during the pandemic gave students a virtual lesson on race and prejudice in U.S. society. She said a father at home overheard a portion of it.
"Then he wrote an email to the administration complaining that the teacher was accusing his child of being a racist when they were having a conversation about implicit bias and what implicit bias is and how it affects us," Dougherty said.
She said the proposed bill makes it feel like the thought police are descending on Texas. She said she knows teachers who are already self-censoring. They're "afraid to speak out on issues because they feel there are going to be repercussions from their districts," she said.
Paul Kleiman, a high school history teacher in Round Rock, said he's concerned about the provision in Texas' bill that would require him to teach all sides of current events and ugly chapters in history without giving any side deference. He asked how he would do that when teaching subjects such as the Holocaust, or the civil rights movement.
"Does the state of Texas want me to stand up and spend class time saying, well, let's look at all sides of this topic?" Kleiman said. "I don't think that's what the state of Texas wants. But that's what this bill does."
Sunday Song: Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young | Ohio
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, YouTube
Excerpt: "Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'. We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drummin'. Four dead in Ohio."
This image of protester Mary Ann Vecchio wailing over the dead body of Kent State University student, Jeffrey Miller, shot by US National Guardsmen won a Pulitizer Prize and became an icon of the Vietnam protest movement. (photo: John Filo)
Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drummin'
Four dead in Ohio
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?
La la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la la
Na na na na na na
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?
Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drummin'
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio
Periodical cicadas sit on leaves in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. (photo: Astrid Riecken/WP)
Cicadas Are Terrible at Living in the World They're Emerging Into. Just Like Us.
Joshua Keating, The Washington Post
Keating writes: "There's always a surprising wildness to the all-too-brief spring in the D.C. area, that weeks-long lull when the heat is turned off but the air conditioning is not yet on."
here’s always a surprising wildness to the all-too-brief spring in the D.C. area, that weeks-long lull when the heat is turned off but the air conditioning is not yet on. For a spell, the boundary between the human world and nature feels more porous. The air, thick with moisture and pollen, wafts into our homes through screen windows, clinging to skin and inflaming sinuses. Ducklings putter about in pools on the Mall, and the overgrown trails of Rock Creek Park beckon.
This year, the spring feels wilder than normal thanks to Brood X, its emergence offering a pervasive spectacle of cicada sex and death that has overtaken our environment. The sidewalks themselves seem to be wriggling with tiny bodies and crunchy brown exoskeletons. An eerie high-pitched drone plays counterpoint to the more familiar sounds of crickets and birds. After dark each night, the latest waves scuttle up tree trunks, pulling their pale white abdomens out of their old carapaces.
But as remarkable as it is to watch them crawl out of the ground, the most striking thing about the insects is how bad they are at being alive. After 17 years underground, the cicadas of Brood X really don’t seem ready for the surface at all. They tend to cluster in exposed areas where they’re easy marks for birds and small mammals, or likely to be crunched underfoot by human pedestrians. Haplessly schlepping their half-shed shells across the blazing-hot concrete in the path of an oncoming schnauzer, they seem, as a species, to be somehow unfinished, as if evolution cut a few corners and clocked off early.
When they inevitably end up on their backs — perhaps having fallen from the tree branches to which they haplessly cling — they are unable to right themselves, like turtles, except that turtle shells actually have some value as protection. They’re capable of flight but don’t seem to have learned how to do it properly. Instead, they careen slowly and drunkenly off surfaces, held aloft by fragile, translucent wings that seem too small for their bodies. Birds perch atop lampposts, their beaks hanging wide, as if they were, quite reasonably, expecting their befuddled prey to pilot straight into their open maws.
So the cicadas are all too easy to mock, but every time the impulse strikes me, I realize that their travails aren’t so different from our own. Like the cicadas, we humans are also emerging into the light this spring for the first time after a period nestled in the dark; not 17 years, admittedly, but still much longer than we’re used to. And like the cicadas, we seem remarkably ill-prepared for the world we’ve emerged into.
The excited talk of a “hot vax summer” or a “new Roaring Twenties” is all well and good, but first we’re going to have to relearn how to interact with one another. I know, from talking to friends, that I’m not the only one who seems to have entirely forgotten how to make small talk. When your neighbor greets you with a cordial “Hello,” are you supposed to respond, “Good morning!” or “Fine, thanks, and you?” At least we’ve progressed from the “Hanging in there, I guess” to the “Things are starting to open up a bit!” phase of recovery repartee. But when we do talk, we’ve mostly struggled to talk about anything other than the pandemic, our single topic drowning out all else, not unlike the cicadas’ nightly hum.
Once-routine activities like ordering at a restaurant or taking public transportation seem novel and strange. Ongoing covid concerns and safety protocols don’t help: How wide a berth are we still keeping on the sidewalk? Are handshakes and hugs back? Can we hang out inside yet? If anything, the increasingly bitter debate over masking policy is evidence that we really don’t trust one another, if only because we still fear the lurking pathogens. Here, too, the cicadas — imperiled by a contagious psychedelic fungus that can cause their butts to fall off — may be more like us than we want to believe.
But maybe that’s where the cicadas also have a lesson for us. As a cohort, they’re pulling off an incredible feat of natural choreography, one worthy of awe. They don’t get much time under the sun, and they may not seem particularly well-suited to it, but they make the most of it. Their incompetence isn’t their strength, exactly, but their persistence is evidence that they are, collectively, stronger than they seem. Yes, they are bad at being themselves, but that doesn’t stop them from going for it anyway. As the Tao Te Ching puts it, “Great skill seems awkward; great eloquence seems tongue-tied.”
Emerging into the post-quarantine sunlight, we hopefully have more to look forward to than two weeks to molt, mate and die. (A hot vax summer, indeed.) Seeing old friends, making small talk with acquaintances, eating in public, even working in an office are all going to be more intense and novel than they used to be, and a little tentative ungainliness at first isn’t the worst reaction. But however much the cicadas may remind us of ourselves now, they also show us the truth about our awkward predicament: Ultimately, the only way out is through.
If nothing else, at least they’ve given us something other than the pandemic to talk about.
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