[Special] Former FBI Director James Comey to Testify Before Congress

As the country awaits James Comey's testimony today, June 8, let's take the time to go back about a month ago to when Comey was fired by Trump. After that, feel free to read Comey's prepared opening statement, with annotated notes by Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall.

NBC News: What You Need to Know About Trump, Comey and the Russia Probe by Benjy Sarlin

The Washington Post: Inside Trump’s Anger and Impatience — and His Sudden Decision to Fire Comey by Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker, Sari Horwitz and Robert Costa

Politico: Behind Comey’s Firing [Was] An enraged Trump, Fuming About Russia (the president deliberated for more than a week before ousting the FBI chief who was investigating Trump associates) by Josh Dawsey

The Washington Post: Why Trump Expected Only Applause When He Told Comey, ‘You’re fired.’ by Marc Fisher

The Atlantic: 'There Is a Real Risk Here Things Will Spin Out of Control' by Rosie Gray and McKay Coppins

The New Yorker: Donald Trump's Firing of James Comey is an Attack on American Democracy by John Cassidy   

The Atlantic: This is Not a Drill by David Frum 

The Washington Post: Did Trump Already Blow His Own Cover Story About Comey’s Firing? by Jennifer Rubin

Politico: Russia's Oval Office Victory Dance (the cozy meeting between President Trump and Russia’s foreign minister came at Vladimir Putin’s insistence) by Susan B. Glasser

CNN: Source Close to Comey Says There Were 2 Reasons the FBI Director Was Fired by Jake Tapper [1) Comey never provided Trump with any assurance of loyalty and 2) the FBI's investigation into possible collusion with Russia in the 2016 election was accelerating]

New York Times: Days Before Firing, Comey Asked for More Resources for Russia Inquiry by Matthew Rosenberg and Matt Apuzzo

Bloomberg: Why Trump Really Fired Comey (two things have always driven the president: self-aggrandizement and self-preservation) by Timothy L. O'Brien

Talking Points Memo: Some Key Fact Points to Get Our Bearing by Josh Marshall 

The Atlantic: Donald Trump and the Art of the Apology

By Michelle Cottle:

For a guy who largely treats words as meaningless, Trump is notably fixated on the ritual value of apologies––from other people, that is. He and his team are constantly calling on this person or that group to express contrition for some perceived offense. Trump isn’t much concerned about the sincerity of a mea culpa or the spirit in which it is offered. If anything, a grudging, coerced apology seems to delight him even more than a wholly voluntary one.

For Trump, apologies aren’t about resolving conflict or fostering relationships or even setting the record straight. Like so much of what he does, they are about besting someone. Trump expresses his displeasure at how he has been treated; the offending party feels compelled to make amends. An apology that requires threats or twitter trolls to extract only highlights Trump’s superior strength all the more. Your criticisms of Trump may not have been wrong. You may not feel one bit bad about them. You may loathe and disdain him even more after apologizing. What matters to him is that you have had to publicly ask for his forgiveness. Which proves you are a total loser.

Just last week, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was all over Senator John McCain to apologize for saying that the January 28 raid in Yemen that Trump ordered––which resulted in the death of one Navy SEAL, the wounding of three others, the loss of a $70 million helicopter, and multiple civilian casualties—was not a success. For some reason, McCain irritably declined.

Not infrequently, Trump, in one of his signature Twitter fits, will call for an apology on behalf of a third party. He memorably demanded that the cast of Hamilton apologize for booing Mike Pence, that MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski apologize to a Trump supporter with whom she clashed on air, and that Pakistan apologize to the U.S. for harboring Osama bin Laden all those years.

Far more often, though, Trump is seeking an apology for Trump. The legions he has called on for apologies include, but are by no means limited to, CNN’s Jim Acosta, the New York Times, the intelligence community, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Wall Street Journal, Megyn Kelly, Fox News, National Review’s Rich Lowry, former Mexican president Vicente Fox, Carly Fiorina, Univision, ABC’s Tom Llamas, and Hillary Clinton. At this point, pretty much all of the mainstream media has a standing order from the White House to apologize for everything it does.

The Full Story (February 13, 2017)

The Atlantic: Trump Begins to Chip Away at Banking Regulations

By Gillian B. White:

Hours later, as promised, the president issued a memorandum that sets in motion his plan to scale back the provisions of Dodd-Frank and repeal the upcoming fiduciary rule—the latest in his slate of executive orders aimed at decreasing regulations. Named for Senators Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, the bipartisan act—formally, it’s the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act—was responsible for creating more stringent rules regarding bank capitalization (that is, the amount of money that banks must have on hand), increasing compliance and reporting standards for banks, introducing stricter mortgage requirements, creating the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and curbing excessive risk-taking and the existence of too-big-to-fail institutions on Wall Street.

Despite Trump’s calls for “cutting a lot,” Friday’s executive order is actually more of a command to review Dodd-Frank than to dismantle it. According to the order, the Treasury Secretary—Trump’s pick, the former Goldman Sachs banker Steve Mnuchin, has yet to be confirmed—will be tasked with meeting with various agencies that oversee and implement Dodd-Frank’s regulations, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, in order to find areas to be amended. That review is slated to be completed in 120 days, though there is little guidance on the what regulations or portions of the law will be most likely to change.

But while the executive order might seem less severe than others issued by Trump, that certainly doesn’t mean that the impact won’t be as important. “I think this is the opening salvo in their attack on consumer and investor protection,” says Michael S. Barr, a law professor at the University of Michigan and one of the architects of the Dodd-Frank Act. Barr says that despite the fact that the executive order on financial regulations seems gradual, the administration has already been quite aggressive when it comes to chipping away at financial-sector regulations. “They’ve already started,” he told me, citing recently-passed legislation that would get rid of one provision of Dodd Frank requiring oil companies to disclose payments to foreign governments.

The Full Story (February 3, 2017)

The Atlantic: Kellyanne Conway and the Bowling Green Massacre That Wasn't

By Clare Foran:

On Thursday, Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, attempted to justify the administration’s restrictions on refugee admissions and travel from several predominately Muslim countries by citing a massacre that never happened.

“I bet it’s brand-new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized, and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green Massacre. Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered,” Conway said during an interview on MSNBC.

Indeed, the statement was brand-new information since, as fact checkers and media outlets quickly pointed out, there is no such thing as “the Bowling Green Massacre.”

Conway herself more or less admitted that on Friday morning when she tweeted that she “meant to say ‘Bowling Green terrorists’” instead. In 2013, the Justice Department announced the sentencing of two Iraqi citizens living in Bowling Green, Kentucky, to federal prison after they confessed to attacking U.S. soldiers in Iraq and tried to assist al-Qaeda in Iraq by sending money and weapons. But that is quite different, of course, from a massacre.

Beyond what Conway said about the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre, the rest of her statement was misleading as well. As The Washington Post’s fact checker has documented, President Obama did not impose a formal six-month ban on Iraqi refugees, though there was a decline in the admission of Iraqi refugees in 2011 and the Obama administration did revamp its vetting procedures in response to the arrest of the two Iraqis, who later pled guilty to federal terrorism charges.

Conway’s false statement stands out because it is simultaneously inaccurate and has the potential to be extremely inflammatory. But it fits a broader pattern of high-profile Trump administration aides marshaling inaccurate information in an attempt to defend the president, his policies, or the extent of his support, and then remaining defiant when challenged on their claims.

In this, Conway has led the charge. Most notably, she famously defended White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer after he made a series of false or misleading statements about the inauguration crowds by insisting that he had merely been providing “alternative facts.”

The Full Story (February 3, 2017)

The Atlantic: Are Republicans Taking a Gamble Supporting Trump on Immigration?

By Ronald Brownstein:

The divide over Trump’s protectionist trade agenda provides one measure of that split. But no issue presses at this fault line more powerfully than immigration. Today, his executive order is generating the shockwaves. But Trump’s determination to build a border wall with Mexico, his exploration of new limits on legal immigration, and his (underreported) push to intensify the deportation of undocumented immigrants are likely to spark increasing resistance over time—as would any move against the so-called “dreamers,” who were illegally brought to the United States as children.

Immigration remains an important boundary line between the “two Americas” the parties now represent. Nationwide, people born abroad now constitute over 13 percent of the total population—the most since 1910. But in both congressional and presidential elections, Republicans still rely mostly on the parts of the United States least touched by these changes. That’s one reason why, despite some defection primarily from legislators in swing states, Trump has avoided a full-scale revolt against his executive order from congressional Republicans, especially in the House.

In the House, nearly 85 percent of Republicans represent districts where the foreign-born share of the population lags below the national average, according to calculations from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey by my colleague Leah Askarinam. By contrast, over 60 percent of House Democrats represent districts where the foreign-born population exceeds the national average. In the Senate, Democrats hold most of the seats in the 20 states with the highest share of foreign-born residents—32 out of 40. Republicans hold 44 of the 60 seats in the 30 states with the fewest.

The Full Story (February 2, 2017)

The Atlantic: Cracks Appear in the Trump-Republican Alliance

By Russell Berman:

Top lawmakers and party aides accused the White House of blindsiding them with an executive order on immigration that sowed chaos at major U.S. airports, contradicting administration officials who claimed that Capitol Hill had taken a leading role in writing the policy. Senior aides to the chairmen of the House Homeland Security, Judiciary, and Foreign Affairs committees all said the White House failed to consult them on the immigration directive, which led to lawsuits and widespread protests across the country over the weekend. More Republican lawmakers issued statements critical of Trump’s action on Sunday evening and Monday, even as many said they supported a temporary halt to the refugee program and restrictions on travel from Muslim countries.

“It would have been smarter to coordinate with us,” Representative Dave Brat of Virginia, a Trump ally, said in a phone interview on Monday. “They could have done a better job announcing how the complexities were going to work in advance.”

Republicans were particularly angry that the Trump administration did not initially exempt green-card holders, or those who had served as military or diplomatic interpreters from the ban. “In the future, such policy changes should be better coordinated with the agencies implementing them and with Congress to ensure we get it right—and don’t undermine our nation’s credibility while trying to restore it,” Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement.

A senior administration official told reporters in a background briefing on Sunday night that “Republicans on Capitol Hill wrote” the policy—a statement that Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, defended on Monday. But multiple top Republican aides said the assertion was false.

“Ha! That’s my formal response,” said one senior GOP aide. “There was precisely zero coordination with us on the drafting of this executive order.” The aide said that one or two “rogue staffers” with the House Judiciary Committee had worked informally with the White House on the order, but that the administration never formally involved the relevant congressional leaders. Separately, an aide with the Judiciary Committee said that the panel’s chairman, Representative Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, was “not consulted by the administration”—a sign that the staffers working under him had helped the White House without Goodlatte’s knowledge. Politico reported Monday night that the Judiciary Committee staffers signed nondisclosure agreements.

The aides insisted on anonymity to avoid provoking a further fight with the new president, but they spoke with more candor than the more diplomatic statements that GOP members of Congress have released in recent days. Officials said John Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, will meet with a bipartisan group of lawmakers Tuesday in the Capitol to discuss the the executive order.

The Full Story (January 31, 2017)

The Atlantic: Why the President Is Feuding With the Media and the Intelligence Community

By Jon Finer: 

But Trump has not been content to merely distort the public debate over his policy proposals, an approach that may differ in degree, but not in kind, from that of his predecessors. Rather, and without recent precedent, he is also laying the groundwork to influence highly sensitive policy discussions by taking on the intelligence community, whose job is to frame those debates for national security decision-makers.

At the beginning of virtually every interagency meeting chaired by the president's National Security Council, representatives of the Central Intelligence Agency or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are traditionally asked to brief on the current state of play for the issue at hand. For example, a meeting about the conflict in Iraq and Syria will often begin with an assessment of the current strength and disposition of Syrian regime and opposition forces, as well as the campaign against the Islamic State.

These updates can be highly influential––consider, for example, the different policy options that would ensue from an assessment that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is on his last legs, compared with one that indicates he will endure for the foreseeable future.

The Full Story (January 26, 2017)

The Atlantic: Cheapening a Sacred Space

By Andrew Exum:

The Memorial Wall is one of the most haunting memorials I have ever seen in the U.S. federal government—more unsettling than any military cemetery I have visited, from Gettysburg to Normandy. Below the famous anonymous stars themselves sits a book that explains the year each star was added and, sometimes, offers the name of the Agency case officer or analyst killed. Some stars—even some stars going back decades, to the height of the Cold War—do not have a name that accompanies them.

It is sobering to realize that each of those stars on that wall represent hundreds of men and women who had the courage to do what I could not bring myself to do: leave their friends and family and sign up for one of the most lonely, demanding jobs in the U.S. government—all with the knowledge that if they were caught, they faced not only torture and a gruesome death but the prospect that their families might never learn how or why they died.

That’s why the Agency employees with whom I spoke over the weekend were appalled by the president’s speech—that he would cheapen the most sacred space at the Agency, that their leadership would allow it to happen, and that some of their co-workers would disgrace themselves and the Agency by raucously applauding lines from a stump speech.

It’s tough to place too much blame on the Agency’s leadership: Their position with the new president is tenuous, at best. The Agency needs some very important things from the president. It needs him to take his daily briefing, and to take seriously—and keep quiet about—the clandestine operations for which the Agency puts the lives of Americans at grave danger. There is little reason for optimism thus far that the president will deliver on either requirement.

But while it’s tough for anyone to say no to the boss—especially when placed at such a disadvantage up front—the Agency’s leadership is going to encounter a staff today that is livid with the way in which the speech was delivered. The fact the speech was given on a Saturday, when only those Agency employees most enthusiastic about the new president would come in off their weekends, will also be a point of dissatisfaction. For those who weren’t there or for the leaders sitting in the front row, some may feel they were made to look a fool, seeing their Agency turned into another campaign rally and hearing their professionalism questioned—yet again—by the media.

Quite apart from the Agency, though, all Americans should have been worried by the substance of what the president said. I have spent much of my adult life in the national-security institutions of this country and am inclined to consider them largely benign. But even I was unnerved by the president going before the world’s most powerful intelligence service and declaring war on the media.

Think about this, for one moment: The president stood before an organization that runs innumerable clandestine, deniable operations and called out, by name, a journalist who had displeased him before a laughing, clapping crowd. You do not have to be a member of the American Civil Liberties Union to be scared by that.

You also don’t have to be one of the several thousand Americans deployed to Iraq to understand how the line about taking Iraq’s oil will go down there. Trump’s rhetoric along these lines was a problem when he was a candidate. Now that he is the president, Iran’s militias and their media will have a field day, putting the lives of U.S. soldiers at risk.

The Full Story (January 23, 2017)

[Special] Revisiting Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017

All articles from January 20, 2017.

The Atlantic: 'America First' - Donald Trump's Populist Inaugural Address by David A. Graham

Reciting a litany of horribles including gangs, drugs, crime, poverty, and unemployment, Trump told the nation, “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

The inaugural address was unusually dark and political, delivered in a forum where new presidents have tended to reach for a language of unity, positivity, and non-partisanship. In many ways, the speech drew directly from the tone and approach of Trump’s often very-negative campaign rally speeches, once again showing that the “pivot” many observers have long expected Trump to make toward a more unifying and detached tone, is not coming. President Trump so far looks much the same as candidate Trump, and his speech was a strange milestone in a strange rise to power, one that was viewed as impossible just months ago.

The Atlantic: Can School Choice Work in Rural Areas?

By Hayley Glatter:

Education Secretary-nominee Betsy DeVos offered little clarification of her policy goals at Tuesday’s Senate confirmation hearing, but one thing is certain: The Michigan billionaire is in favor of school choice. She has backed charter schools and voucher programs in the past, though she is adamant that this position does not equate to being anti-public school. At the hearing, both Republican Senator Mike Enzi, who represents Wyoming, and Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, brought up the unique challenges rural states face in education structure and financing. Both spoke of the distance issues students in frontier areas combat to physically get to non-public schools, and Murkowski referenced her constituents who are concerned about what happens when “there is no way to get to an alternative option for your child.” This structural problem—further entrenched by the reality that there are simply fewer students to populate new schools that might open—presents a tangled web of unequal supply and demand for charter schools. The “choice” aspect of school choice is not always realistic.

I spoke to Karen Eppley, an associate professor in the Pennsylvania State University College of Education and the editor of the Journal in Rural Research and Education, about what DeVos’s goals for education mean for sparsely populated states. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Hayley Glatter: What aspects of education in rural areas affect how a model favoring school choice would be implemented there?

Karen Eppley: School choice is really complicated in rural areas not only because of the distance and financial constraints that many rural families have, but also because rural schools tend to function as anchors in their communities. Rural citizens tend to be highly involved with their schools; the schools are often the social anchor of the community, and they provide services not available elsewhere, like sports, summer lunch programs, night classes, and food pantries. They also tend to be major employers. Because so many families are so heavily involved in their community schools and have these social ties, the decision to withdraw their children and take them elsewhere—whether to a charter or a private school—has effects beyond just the daily school attendance.

The Full Story (January 19, 2017)

The Atlantic: Mnuchin Wavers on Questions Involving Trump's Foreign Debt

By Alexia Fernández Campbell:

Several hours into his confirmation hearing, treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin appeared willing to work with Republicans and Democrats in Congress on nearly every one of their concerns. Lowering the corporate tax rate: absolutely. Tax breaks for middle-income Americans: definitely. Punishing countries that manipulate their currencies: yes. Making sure the IRS is well funded: of course.

His eagerness to please wavered only a few times, such as the moment Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, began to question him about President-elect Donald Trump’s business interests abroad, and more particularly, the unknown amount of debt he has with foreign lenders.

* * *

“What I want is to get a commitment from you today that you will report to this committee what percentage of the debt against the Trump enterprise is held by foreign interests. That is your job as the secretary of treasury. I want your commitment that you will report to this committee as soon as you are able to get that information from the new president.”

Mnuchin wouldn’t give her that.

“I am not making the commitment today to report to the committee on anything. What I am willing to do is—to the extent I am confirmed—I am willing to speak to the [committee] chairman and make sure that whatever the committee thinks it needs, I will discuss with the president.”

“In your job as treasury secretary, when determining national security interests based on foreign investment, the American people need to know how much debt is owed by the Trump business to foreign entities, and if that could have a direct impact on our national security,” McCaskill said.

“I think you have asked some interesting questions on which I will follow-up,” Mnuchin replied, before moving to the next line of questioning.

The Full Story (January 19, 2017)

[Special] Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Next Matryoshka in the Russian Scandal

Washington Post: Sessions Met With Russian Envoy Twice Last Year, Encounters He Later Did Not Disclose by Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller (March 1, 2017):

Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.

One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.

The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself.

* * *

Steven Hall, former head of Russia operations at the CIA, said that Russia would have been keenly interested in cultivating a relationship with Sessions because of his role on key congressional committees and as an early adviser to Trump.

Sessions’s membership on the Armed Services Committee would have made him a priority for the Russian ambassador. “The fact that he had already placed himself at least ideologically behind Trump would have been an added bonus for Kislyak,” Hall said.

Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor who until 2014 served as U.S. ambassador to Russia, said he was not surprised that Kislyak would seek a meeting with Sessions. “The weird part is to conceal it,” he said. “That was at the height of all the discussions of what Russia was doing during the election.”

Washington Post: Top Republicans Call on Sessions to Recuse Himself From Russia Investigation by Karoun Demirjian and Ed O'Keefe (March 2, 2017):

Top Republicans said Thursday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should recuse himself from federal investigations of whether Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said during an appearance on MSNBC that Sessions should bow out to maintain “the trust of the American people.”

Minutes later, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) joined McCarthy’s call, tweeting that “AG Sessions should clarify his testimony and recuse himself.”

The calls from two of the House’s most prominent Republicans follow revelations that Sessions met with the Russian ambassador during election season. Under oath in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing in January, Sessions had said that he had not met with any Russian officials.

The Atlantic: Republican Lawmakers Call for Sessions to Recuse Himself From Russia Investigation by Priscilla Alvarez (March 2, 2017):

Republican lawmakers have called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to step aside from oversight of the investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Their calls came after recent news reports revealed that the former Alabama senator met with Russia’s ambassador to the United States during the election.

Representative Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee; Darrell Issa, the California representative and former Oversight chair; and Michigan Representative Justin Amash have all said Sessions should recuse himself. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made a similar suggestion in an interview on MSNBC, though within hours seemed to change his mind.

“I think, the trust of the American people, you recuse yourself in these situations,” McCarthy said. “I just think for any investigation going forward, you want to make sure everybody trusts the investigation … and that there’s not doubt within the investigation.” Reporter Mark Halperin followed up, asking whether the situation required Sessions’s recusal. “I think it would be easier from that standpoint, yes,” McCarthy answered. Later, in an interview with Fox & Friends, McCarthy said that he’s “not calling on him to recuse himself.”

The FBI, which the attorney general oversees, is reportedly investigating possible contact between Trump associates and Russian officials during the 2016 campaign, as well as the cyberattacks that targeted Democrats last year. On Wednesday night, The Washington Post reported that Sessions, then a senator and Trump campaign adviser, had spoken twice last year with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. Yet at his January 10 confirmation hearing, when Senator Al Franken asked Sessions about possible contact between Trump associates and the Russian government, Sessions said: “I’m not aware of any of those activities.” He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

Talking Points Memo: The Gravity Is Strong by Josh Marshall (March 2, 2017):

Why are there so many unforced errors? Why conceal this meeting? Frankly, why lie about it? As I said, big, big scandals work like this. People who don't even appear to be that close to the action keep getting pulled under for what seem like needless deceptions. The answer is usually that the stuff at the center of the scandal is so big that it requires concealment, even about things distant from the main action, things that it would seem much better and less damaging simply to admit.

* * *

Astronomers can't see black holes directly. They map them by their event horizon and their effect on nearby stars and stellar matter. We can't see yet what's at the center of the Trump/Russia black hole. But we can tell a lot about its magnitude by the scope of the event horizon and the degree of its gravitational pull, which is immense.

[Special] Editorial: Trump's Refugee Ban Explodes Upon Impact

President Trump signed an executive order which created a, to use the vernacular, shitstorm. Per CNN (1):

President Donald Trump's seismic move to ban more than 218 million people from the United States and to deny entry to all refugees reverberated worldwide Saturday, as chaos and confusion rippled through US airports, American law enforcement agencies and foreign countries trying to grasp Washington's new policy.

Trump's executive order bars citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for the next 90 days and suspends the admission of all refugees for 120 days.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed an appeal on behalf of two individuals held in limbo at JFK International Airport, and a federal Judge issued a stay against some portions of the ban.  As Mother Jones explains (2), the stay is temporary but it has stopped people from being deported for the time being.

Although the executive order only targets certain countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen), the executive order included a religious test which specifically favored Christians (3), and as the Washington Post revealed, Rudolph Giuliani said, "So when [Trump] first announced it, he said, 'Muslim ban.' He called me up. He said, 'Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.'"(4)

National Security experts thought the move was harmful to the U.S. Via Mother Jones:(5)

"Not only is it immoral and stupid, it's also counterproductive," says Patrick Skinner, a former CIA counterterrorism case officer who now works at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm. "We've got military, intelligence, and diplomatic personnel on the ground right now in Syria, Libya, and Iraq who are working side by side with the people, embedded in combat, and training and advising. At no time in the US's history have we depended more on local—and I mean local—partnerships for counterterrorism. We need people in Al Bab, Syria; we depend on people in a certain part of eastern Mosul, Iraq; in Cert, Libya. At the exact moment we need them most, we're telling these people, 'Get screwed.'"

Kirk W. Johnson, who spent a year on the reconstruction in Fallujah in Iraq with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), echoes Skinner's fears: "This will have immediate national security implications, in that we are not going to be able to recruit people to help us right now, and people are not going to step forward to help us in any future wars if this is our stance."

The move also led to a series of protests in cities and at airports across the country.(6) This is the second weekend of protests against Trump, and as a reminder, he has only been president for nine days. Despite these unprecedented level of mass protests against the President, GOP leaders are still supporting him.(7) As documented in The Atlantic:

Atlantic: After Trump, a Call for Political Correctness From the Right

By Peter Beinart:

Erickson’s line about labeling Trump’s supporters “all bigots and racists and deplorables” is dishonest. I can’t remember a single piece of commentary in the last year that made that claim about “all” of Trump’s backers. Generally, in fact, Trump’s critics don’t call his supporters bigoted at all. They call their views bigoted. Knowing who a a person is in their essenceis almost impossible. People contain multitudes. Knowing whether someone holds bigoted views, however, is fairly easy. And when it comes to Trump’s supporters, the evidence is overwhelming.

Start with their views about blacks. According to a June poll by Reuters, almost half of Trump supporters said African Americans were more “violent” than whites. Forty percent said they were more “lazy.” In February, a Public Policy Polling survey found that 70 percent of Trump supporters in South Carolina opposed removing the Confederate battle flag from statehouse grounds. Trump supporters in South Carolina were also far more likely than the supporters of other GOP candidates to wish the South had won the Civil War and to consider whites a superior race.

Then there’s the way Trump backers feel about Muslims. According to Reuters, almost 60 percent of them view Islam unfavorably. (Among Clinton supporters, it’s less than half that). Eighty-four percent, according to a Morning Consult survey in March, support Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US. Sixty-five percent, according to PPP, think Obama is a Muslim. These views aren’t incidental to Trump supporters’ affection for their candidate. They’re central.

The Full Story (November 9, 2016)

Atlantic: Donald Trump's Bitter Barrage Against Republicans

By David A. Graham:

According to the well-sourced Washington Post reporter Robert Costa, Trump is holed up at Trump Tower, watching cable news. One can imagine him getting ever more agitated at the flood of condemnations from Republicans. It has become an article of faith that Trump tends to tweet the most aggressive statements, from his Android phone, while tweets from other platforms represent staffers tweeting for him. As some reporters noticed, however, one of the two Ryan tweets came from an Android and the other from an iPhone. Are Trump’s aides ready to battle the GOP, too?

The Twitter outburst drew new expressions of shock from even the most hardbitten political observers. Needless to say, a situation where a presidential nominee views his own party as a “shackle” and is praising his opponent does not bode well. (As an aside, that “shackle” word choice is peculiar. In 2012, Joe Biden was pilloried for telling a mostly black audience, “They're gonna put y'all back in chains.”)

At no time within recent memory has a candidate chosen to go to war with his own party, just four weeks ahead of Election Day. With Senator Bob Dole trailing badly ahead of the 1996 election against President Bill Clinton, the Republican Party effectively abandoned Dole to his fate, focusing on Congress, but Dole, a good soldier for the party, largely took the swipe stoically. Trump, with no longstanding links to the party and none of Dole’s stoicism, clearly has no intention of doing the same.

The Full Story (October 11, 2016)

Atlantic: The Strange Tale of Trump's Taxes

By David A. Graham 

During Monday’s first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton offered her own theory: Trump is paying no taxes. And the Republican nominee seemed in the moment to confirm it, interjecting to say it would prove he was “smart.”

* * *

As Clinton pointed out during the debate, the last time Trump’s tax returns were made public, during the process of applying for a casino license in the 1980s, they showed he had paid no income tax. The veteran business journalist James B. Stewart recently explained why real-estate law made it possible, and perhaps even likely, that he continued to pay no income tax.

Perhaps Trump misspoke during the debate, or perhaps he committed a Kinsley gaffe—accidentally telling the truth—but his conflicting answers make it hard to know what the truth about his taxes is. There’s one very easy way he could clear up the confusion.

The Full Story (September 27, 2016)

(Editor's Note: To the surprise of no one, Trump admitted, during the second debate, to not paying any federal income taxes)

The Atlantic: Trump Is His Own Worst Enemy in a Crisis Situation—Once Again

By David A. Graham:

Some of them are arguing that Trump ought to bring up Bill Clinton’s affairs in the 1980s and 1990s. Trump flirted with the idea, saying he would bring Gennifer Flowers to the debate and then backing off. In the spin room after the debate, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Trump was going to get into it but didn’t do so out of respect for Chelsea Clinton.

It seems like that detente won’t last. Trump hinted that he had been “holding back,” which itself would raise doubts about his debate strategy. Not all of his surrogates were so reserved. In the post-debate “spin room” Monday evening, Giuliani used the affair to attack Clinton.

“If you didn’t know the moment Monica Lewinsky said that Bill Clinton violated her, that she was telling the truth, then you’re too stupid to be President,” Giuliani said. “I sure would have talked about what she did to Monica Lewinsky.” (As many people pointed out, Giuliani—who, while having an adulterous affair, informed his second wife that he wanted a divorce via a public press conference—was a curious envoy for this message.)

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, meanwhile, told CNN that Trump deserved credit for being “polite and a gentleman” by not bringing it up. Eric Trump says it took “courage” for his father not to bring it up. A whole range of Trump surrogates are echoing the point.

Making Bill Clinton’s affairs a centerpiece is a bit of a headscratcher. Hillary Clinton’s favorability ratings hit their all-time high in 1998, when her husband’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was in the news. There’s a reason most Republicans have avoided attacking Hillary Clinton with the affairs: It has become entrenched conventional wisdom that doing so is actually good for her, as it allows her to seem sympathetic, humanizing a candidate who voters often find cool and robotic.

Perhaps this view is wrong, like the many other pieces of outdated political received wisdom that Trump has knocked down. But if the Trump campaign had come to that conclusion through careful thought, one would expect a rather different rollout. They would also likely have gone with the attack on Monday. The disorganized approach now—with Giuliani going for the attack head-on, while Conway argues Trump ought to be congratulated for not using it—suggests a campaign grasping for the nearest weapon it can find, without thinking very hard about how the fight might go.

The Full Story (September 28, 2016)

(Editor's Note: Before the second debate, Trump held a press conference in which he brought forth three of Bill Clinton's accusers, plus a woman who was raped by an individual Hillary Clinton represented as a pro bono attorney appointed by the Court. Monica Lewinsky was not present at the conference.)

[Special] Editorial: Inside Donald Trump's Machado Disaster

As Graydon Carter noted over a year ago, "Like so many bullies, Trump has skin of gossamer. He thinks nothing of saying the most hurtful thing about someone else, but when he hears a whisper that runs counter to his own vainglorious self-image, he coils like a caged ferret." The Hillary Clinton campaign obviously knows this, because they set Donald Trump up for an epic meltdown, and he did not fail to deliver. As Josh Marshall of TPM explained:

As many have already noted, Clinton's mention of Alicia Machado's treatment at Trump's hands was no random, momentary decision. They'd seen Curiel; they'd seen Khan. She and her team know how Trump's lack of empathy, self-awareness and narcissism makes him ripe for these days' or weeks' long self-destructive tirades.

They laid the trap and he walked right into it.

Anyone with the most basic communications experience or simply a conscience knows there's a simple and solitary way to deal with something like this: "We quarreled years ago. I'm sorry we did. That's a long time ago. I wish her the best." Done and done.

But Trump can't do that because Trump can never admit he was wrong. In fact, it's more than an inability to admit error he has an affirmative need to be right and for everyone to know it. That's why, to the joy of Democrats, he's now on his third day of trashing Machado and defending his own actions, even though the story almost certainly would have died out without him doing so.

By Wednesday night, in his appearance on O'Reilly, he started the show off with a lengthy monologue attacking Machado. Far from mistreating her, he said, he'd saved her job; he'd given her the opportunity to lose weight (yes, this is a fair characterization of his words). And this was the thanks he got!

The Atlantic: Was Trump Fibbing About Buying Politicians Then or Now?

By David A. Graham:

What Trump needed was for Bondi to quash an investigation into Trump University. On September 17, 2013, the pro-Bondi group, And Justice for All, received a $25,000 donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Four days later, Bondi announced that the state of Florida wouldn’t pursue a legal case about Trump University or the Trump Institute, a similar but separate scheme. The donation was revealed by the Associated Press in June, but it’s under fresh scrutiny because the Trump Foundation’s gift was illegal, leading to a $2,500 fine paid to the IRS earlier this year, as The Washington Post reported last week.

Bondi and Trump both insist that the donation had no connection with the decision not to pursue the case against Trump, and there’s no definitive proof otherwise. There is, however, the strange timing, and Trump’s past statements, in which he assured audiences that, yes, the game was rigged; yes, politicians could be bought; yes, he had done the buying; and yes, he was the only one who could fix it, since he was honest about how the game worked.

Asked about his Journal comments during the August 6, 2015, Republican primary debate in Cleveland, for example, Trump said, “You’d better believe it. If I ask them, if I need them, you know, most of the people on this stage I've given to, just so you understand, a lot of money.”

The Full Story (September 6, 2016)

The Atlantic: Trump's Immigration Policy Trap

By Peter Beinart:

It’s not that Trump never discussed deportation during the primaries. Over the course of hundreds of interviews, he was occasionally forced to admit that, yes, he would send all the undocumented home. But he discussed the topic as little as possible, for the same reason he avoided discussions of how to end the civil war in Syria and how to design a conservative replacement for Obamacare: He couldn’t condense his answer into an appealing bumper sticker. For months and months, Trump watched his GOP opponents discuss such topics as he soared above them in the polls. If they, who actually knew something about government, couldn’t spin policy flax into electoral gold, why on earth would he, a policy ignoramus, try?

Why is Trump now ensnared in the very net he avoided for so long? Because Kellyanne Conway, who specializes in making conservative politicians appealing to moderate female voters, decided that in order to soften Trump’s image, she needed to soften his immigration policy. What she appears not to have realized is that softening Trump’s immigration policy requires actually formulating one, something The Donald had wisely avoided for more than a year.

The Full Story (August 29, 2016)