Citizen Cartwright

It was moderates vs. progressives at the Democrats’ Detroit debate

That’s pretty much the consensus I’m seeing across media.

 

The New York Times refers to "moderates along the edge throwing firebombs on the electability of progressives with the boldest policy plans.”

 

And Fox News refers to "the center-left (and lower-polling) contenders fiercely arguing that policies like 'Medicare-for-all' and the Green New Deal will 'FedEx the election' to President Trump, and the higher-profile candidates on the left flank just as fiercely arguing that their policies are the kind of bold solutions America needs.”

 

Bernie Sanders called for a "political revolution" and Elizabeth Warren decried "small ideas and spinelessness.” Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, both from states Trump carried in 2016, warned that revolutionary message of big ideas was destined to scare away the voters Democrats would need to deny the president a second term, notes Susan Page of USA Today.

It wasn't the debate many had expected, says Page. Pundits had predicted that Sanders and Warren would battle for the loyalty of the party's most progressive voters. But they sided with each another against their more moderate critics. 

The Sanders-Warren alliance may have reflected in part the fact that they knew they would be on the debate stage next time, in Houston in September, when the polling and fund-raising standards for participation get higher, says Page. 

 

And the pointed attacks by some of their critics — Ryan, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, author and activist Marianne Williamson, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar — may have reflected in part the fact that they hadn't yet qualified for the next debate, and may not.

 
An impassioned exchange that went viral could be their best chance of breaking through, raising money and hanging on, says Page.

 

So those seem to be the primary politics at work.

 

As far as the policies, here is what Ezra Klein of Vox has to say:

 

"The reality is Democrats are debating ever more ambitious policy in a political system ever less capable of passing ambitious policy — and ever more stacked against their policies, in particular. Their geographic disadvantage in Congress is only getting worse, Republicans control the White House and the Senate despite receiving fewer votes for either, and an activist conservative Supreme Court just gutted public sector unions and greenlit partisan gerrymandering.

"Policy isn’t Democrats’ problem, Klein says. "They’ve got plenty of plans. Some of them are even popular. What they don’t have is a political system in which they can pass and implement those plans."

 

Here is a fact check of the debate, from The Associated Press.

 

And here is a transcript, from The Washington Post.

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Note to readers

Nothing is calling to me for a summary this morning, so I think I’ll get some additional shuteye so I can keep my eyes open during tonight’s Democratic debate. Have a good day!

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Intelligence officials worry Trump's pick for top spy John Ratcliffe will politicize the job

 

Trump adviser Thomas Barrack said to have pursued Saudi nuclear deal as he sought administration role

 

The Hill: House Republicans fear retirement wave will lead to tsunami

Details for watching round 2 of the Democratic debates Tuesday and Wednesday nights

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Trump administration signs asylum agreement with Guatemala

President Trump said on Friday he’d agreed to drop the threat of economic sanctions against Guatemala after that country said it would implement new measures to reduce U.S. asylum claims from migrants fleeing Honduras and El Salvador.

 

Trump watched as acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan signed the agreement with Guatemala’s minister of government, Enrique Antonio Degenhart, in the Oval Office.

 

The agreement would require migrants who cross into Guatemala on their way to the United States to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the U.S. border.

 

Nearly 200,000 people traveling in families from El Salvador and Honduras have been apprehended at the U.S. border since October, with most of them passing through Guatemala and Mexico along the way, says Reuters.

 

Mexico agreed last month to deploy troops to try to stop the flow after Trump threatened to impose tariffs on exports.

 

McAleenan told reporters the agreement would protect migrants “at the earliest possible point in their journey,” noting that U.S. immigration judges reject asylum claims from most Central American migrants.

“If you have a Honduran family or an El Salvadoran national, instead of them having to pay a smuggler, come all the way to our border to seek asylum, when they arrive in Guatemala they’re in a country that has a fair proceeding for assessing asylum claims and that’s where they should make that claim,” McAleenan said.

Migrants who arrive in the United States who haven't first sought asylum in Guatemala will be returned to Guatemala, he said.

 

It’s unclear how the agreement will take effect. Guatemala’s Constitutional Court has granted three injunctions preventing its government from entering into such a deal without approval of the country’s congress.

 

Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in the Americas and has little experience receiving large numbers of asylum seekers, says Reuters.

 

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR says 262 people applied for refugee status in Guatemala between January and November 2018. Last year, migrants from El Salvador and Honduras filed nearly 58,000 applications for asylum in the United States, says The Washington Post.

 

“Guatemala is not safe for Guatemalans, and it is not safe for those who have fled seeking asylum from elsewhere in the Northern Triangle, nor for those who could now be returned to a country not their own,” Meghan López of the International Rescue Committee in El Salvador said in a statement, referring to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, which have some of the highest murder rates in the world.

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Dan Coats is out as director of national intelligence, to be replaced by Texas GOP Rep. John Ratcliffe

Supreme Court says Trump can go ahead with plan to spend military funds for border wall construction

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Report details Russian election interference in 2016, ongoing vulnerability

Election systems in all 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016, an effort more far-reaching than previously acknowledged and one largely undetected by the states and federal officials at the time, according to a bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

 

There’s no evidence that any votes were changed in actual voting machines, the report says.

 

The report is the first volume of several to be released in the wake of the panel’s investigation of Russia’s 2016 election interference. It’s heavily redacted at the insistence of U.S. intelligence agencies.

 

The report includes extensive recommendations for building a stronger defense to safeguard the integrity of future elections.

 

In a minority view in the report, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., says he can’t support the report’s recommendation to “reinforce states' primacy in running elections.”

 

"If there was ever a moment when Congress needed to exercise its clear constitutional authorities to regulate elections, this is it,” he writes. “America is facing a direct assault on the heart of our democracy by a determined adversary. We would not ask a local sheriff to go to war against the missiles, tanks and planes of the Russian Army. We shouldn’t ask a county election IT employee to fight a war against the full capabilities and vast resources of Russia’s cyber army. That approach failed in 2016 and it will fail again.”

 

The report comes a day after former special counsel Robert Mueller highlighted the continued threat that Russia or other adversaries seek to interfere in the 2020 elections. Many more “countries are developing capability to replicate what the Russians have done,” he said.

 

Among the countries that host online influence operations with a history of interfering across borders are Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, China, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, The Washington Post says.

 

The report was released the same day that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a House-passed bill to authorize $775 million to beef up the state election systems. He says Congress already has done enough — passing $380 million worth of grants for states to update their election systems and supporting executive branch agencies as they make their own changes.

The Senate has approved one bipartisan measure to make interference in elections a violation of immigration law and another to make it a federal crime to hack elections systems.

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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fines New York debt collectors more than $60 million

 

California reaches climate deal with automakers, rejecting Trump administration efforts to ease tailpipe pollution rules

 

FDA approves first needle-free 'rescue' drug for episodes of low blood sugar

Mueller’s testimony: What he said and how he said it

The former special counsel’s testimony Wednesday mostly reiterated what his report said — as he’d said it would. So, nothing really new there. What was new and got a lot of media attention was Mueller’s delivery of his testimony. 

 

Mueller has appeared before Congress 88 times before, dating back to 1990, among the most of any official ever, according to the Senate Historical Office.

 

But this time, Mueller’s performance was “halting” and “faltering,” according to The Washington Post and pretty much everyone else.

 

The news business is about what’s new — and, ever more, what's entertaining and click worthy. More about that in a minute.

 

First, what Mueller said:

 

He warned lawmakers that Russia is trying to sabotage American democracy before next year’s presidential election, defended his investigation’s conclusions about Moscow’s interference in 2016 and publicly rejected President Trump’s criticism that he'd conducted a “witch hunt.”

 

When asked whether Trump “wasn’t always being truthful” in his written answers to the special counsel’s questions, Mueller responded, “I would say generally.” He called Trump’s praise of WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign “problematic” and said it “gave a boost to what is and should be illegal activity.”

 

He said he and his team chose not to subpoena Trump out of concern that a battle over a presidential interview might needlessly prolong the investigation, and said that Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice after he leaves office.

Mueller also acknowledged that his investigators had explicitly declined to exonerate Trump's efforts to impede the inquiry. “The finding indicates that the president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed,” Mueller said.

 

While Trump has spent months characterizing the special counsel’s report as a “total exoneration,” Mueller stated that he and his team had drawn no such conclusion.

 

Media’s performance in focusing on Mueller’s performance:

 

My thanks to the reader has who sent me an item on this from the Columbia Journalism Review. 

 

It turns out that last month, CJR, which analyzes media trends and journalistic ethics, appointed four new public editors: for The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC. 

 

"As watchdogs for the biggest news organizations in the country, they’ll be ready to call out mistakes, observe bad habits, and give praise where it’s due,” CJR said at the time. "Most importantly, these public editors will engage with readers and viewers, bridging a critical gap."

 

On Wednesday, the public editor for MSNBC called out Chuck Todd for "his basic misunderstanding of the requirements of his job.”

 

Todd had tweeted: "On substance, Democrats got what they wanted: that Mueller didn't charge Pres. Trump because of the OLC guidance, that he could be indicted after he leaves office, among other things. But on optics, this was a disaster.”

 

"Politics isn’t entertainment, it is not a performance to be critiqued,” wrote CRJ public editor Maria Bustillos. "Reporting on national politics is a public trust of solemn importance that affects hundreds of millions of people."  

 

What’s next:

 

The House is to leave for its five-week August recess on Friday. Lawmakers will be at home listening to their constituents and judging how urgently voters want them to act. 

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Judge temporarily blocks 3 new Arkansas anti-abortion laws

 

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