BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER

& CROOKED MEDIA

Thursday, September 13, 2018

—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an email to his team

SUPERSTORMS AND BULLSHITSTORMS

Hurricane Florence’s 110 mph winds and heavy rains will batter the coast for days, and if you’re in its path and tragedy strikes, President Trump will deny your suffering and portray efforts to account for it as a Democratic conspiracy to undermine his presidency.

That’s the message he sent this morning, when he denied that 3,000 Americans died in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria last year, and falsely asserted that the official death toll “was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible.”

Republican elected officials either ignored Trump’s attempt to blot out the memory of the dead, or claimed to disagree with Trump, without condemning him:

• Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) declined to comment, claiming he hadn’t read the tweet.
• House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled the same trick.
• House Speaker Paul Ryan said, “there is no reason to dispute these numbers,” but cleared Trump of any responsibility because, essentially, shit happens: “This is a devastating storm that hit an isolated island. And that’s really no one’s fault. It’s just what happened.”
• Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) took the slightly different tack of spreading blame widely to absolve Trump for as much of it as possible. “Both Fed & local gov made mistakes. We all need to stop the blame game.”
• Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who chairs the powerful Judiciary Committee, had the gall to prod Trump to do oversight of himself, and investigate whether there might be something to his awful conspiracy theory.

From Brian: To the extent that there’s a “blame game” at all, it is because 3,000 citizens who could have been rescued died, and Republicans in Congress refused to hold a single oversight hearing about it, suggesting they believe a full accounting will reflect poorly on their government. We don’t know how avoidable this horrific death toll was, and unless Democrats win control of at least one chamber of Congress, we never will.

THE LETTER OF THE LAW

The arguments for delaying a vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination—or for rejecting it outright—continue to mount, but Republicans, and even some Democrats, are doing whatever they can to ignore them.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued a statement Thursday saying she “received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities.”

The referral reportedly concerns a letter that Feinstein received which contains an allegation that Kavanaugh engaged in sexual misconduct with a woman when they were both in high school.

Separately, on Wednesday night, Kavanaugh submitted over two hundred pages worth of responses to questions for the record from senators on the Judiciary Committee. His answers were in many cases partial or evasive. He was unresponsive to inquiries about significant debts he carried on credit cards, which abruptly disappeared before his nomination. The White House claimed the debts stemmed from baseball season tickets he purchased for himself and several friends, and for which he was belatedly reimbursed, but Kavanaugh actually contradicted this explanation without providing a new one.

Kavanaugh’s evasions, and several other incidents which suggest Kavanaugh has been systematically misleading the Senate for years, prompted Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who used to chair the Judiciary Committee, to announce his opposition to Kavanaugh in a Thursday Washington Post op-ed.  

Perhaps these developments will change minds, but as of yesterday, zero Republicans had come out against Kavanaugh’s confirmation, and many Democrats remained undecided. On Wednesday, despite all of the above, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) claimed she had seen no red flags in Kavanaugh’s record “so far.”

From Brian: After holding scores of federal judicial vacancies open for two years and stealing a Supreme Court seat, Republicans have spent the Trump presidency stacking the courts with right-wing judges. The story is similar at the state level. Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) says he plans to install three right-wing justices to the Florida Supreme Court as his last official act, whether voters elect a Democrat to replace him or not. In response to extraordinary abuses of power like these, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told conservative radio host/propagandist/payola dude Hugh Hewitt that Democrats should consider bringing back the judicial filibuster, which would leave the next Democratic president unable to undo any of this damage. Too many Democrats do not understand what they and the country are up against.

Paul Manafort’s lawyers have reportedly reached a plea agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to avoid a trial in DC federal court that was scheduled to begin this week. The precise terms of the agreement remain unclear, but Manafort’s lawyers have also been in regular touch with President Trump’s criminal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, sharing information about Mueller’s investigation, as part of a joint defense agreement. The odds that Giuliani has discussed pardoning Manafort if he refuses to cooperate with Mueller are approximately 100 percent.

Pope Francis has called on more than 100 Roman Catholic bishops around the world to meet in Rome to discuss the protection of minors in response to global allegations of clerical sexual abuse. This would be the first-ever meeting of its kind for church leaders. Yesterday, Germany’s Catholic Church released a report admitting to “at least” 3,766 cases of clerical sex abuse of children between 1946-2014.

It’s an election day in New York, where many voters are having issues casting their ballots in the Democratic primary, and Nicki Minaj and Cardi B have extended their feud to the Nixon/Cuomo race.

Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday that will allow him to impose new sanctions to will punish foreign entities for interfering in American elections. He hopes this will make it look like he gives a shit about other countries undermining the democratic process. And no, Russia was not specifically named. Neither Democrats or Republicans believe it goes far enough, and at least one expert argues that it “gives a country like Russia the chance to both achieve its goals during the election and prepare for any penalty.”

A federal court has ruled against Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, calling her effort to delay an Obama-era rule that protects students defrauded by for-profit colleges “arbitrary and capricious.”

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is starting organizations to help homeless people and open preschools for low-income communities, with a $2 billion initial commitment. Bezos, the world’s richest person, has long been criticized for not using his fortune to give back, as other billionaires in the tech industry have.

On Hysteria: Erin Ryan, Grace Parra, and Kiran Deol break down the news, starting with a study that finds that the number of women working in TV dropped last year. Then, Alyssa Mastromonaco updates us about the Kavanaugh hearings. Plus, a discussion about why getting birth control is still so hard and if there is a word that means feeling both dreary and fired up.

Listen →

On Crooked.com: Former Obama adviser Jeff Prescott on new polling that shows Trump’s erratic behavior is giving Democratic candidates an advantage with voters on national security issues.

Read →

There are 12,800 children in federally contracted shelters this month, setting a record for detentions of migrant children in the United States. In May 2017, that figure was 2,400. The increase is not due to a spike in the number of children coming to the U.S., but instead a sharp reduction in the number of children who are released into the custody of family or other sponsors.  

On the brighter side, many families who were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border may have a second chance to claim asylum in the U.S. after the Trump administration and the parents’ lawyers reached a settlement Wednesday night. It also leaves open the possibility that some parents who were deported without their children will be allowed to return to the United States.

This Is What It’s Like to Be a Teacher in America

Over the last year, public school teachers in six states have staged walkouts and marched on their respective capitals over stagnant wages and funding for public education, and this deep dive from Time captures the realities of the plights educators face.

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For the first time, Congress has appropriated funds to pay congressional interns, which will inevitably diversify the demographic makeup of those who apply and are selected for these roles. From Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI): “It seems like a small thing to pay interns, but it opens up a whole world of opportunity and increases the diversity of the intern classes, and eventually Hill staff. Capitol Hill should truly rep America.”

A novelist who once wrote an essay titled “How to Murder Your Husband” has been arrested on charges of murdering her husband.

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