All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Tendrin]

I think we need to impeach irrespective of the senate.

[aja_christopher]

Sadly, it’s become pretty obvious that at least 45% of the American public don’t care about facts. There could be steal clad proof of collusion and obstruction and it would be brushed off as a conspiracy by the dems. I’ve given up on anyone’s testimony having any impact on public opinion. The Republican Party is too far gone at this point. Trump is only leaving office if he loses the election and maybe not even then.

As I pointed out before, I don't think it's fair to paint Americans with that broad a brush: in the last election, Trump was an unknown to many people who saw him as an alternative to the usual status quo with regards to politics, but now that they've seen him in action, it's questionable whether many of the "independent" voters who supported him in the prior election will do so again.

It's important to keep in mind the cyclical nature of politics in general when forecasting predictions in that respect -- we went from Carter to Reagan to Clinton to Bush to Obama and then to Trump so if anything the momentum may be in the Democrats favor now, especially given the historic nature of the last midterm turnout for Democrats.

It's altogether possible that Trump has woken a lot of Americans up to the importance of vetting candidates properly and voting accordingly -- as they did in the midterms -- and the impeachment hearings could cement that awakening if handled correctly.

That's why one of my main concerns at this point is regarding election security and (minority) voter disenfranchisement -- while we'll never really know how much the Russians swayed last election, there's nothing to stop them from doing even worse in the future if the Republicans aren't at least held accountable by Democrats in Congress, at which point votes won't matter regardless.

Ultimately, the next election will probably hinge on many other factors (like the economy) so in many ways, the public hearings should be viewed via a different lens than solely from the perspective of defeating Trump in 2020.

[InformationGeek]

Trump really never misses an opportunity to make himself look awful, doesn't he?

#BREAKING: Trump vetoes resolutions to block Saudi arms sales

[Theleviathan]

And failure to impeach also doesn't mean it won't affect Trump and the Republicans negatively heading into the next election -- especially if the evidence unearthed during the impeachment investigation builds a solid case against them in the process, regardless of the Senate vote.

If the Republican Senate still refuses to impeach with numerous documented crimes (tax fraud, obstruction of justice, soliciting foreign interference, etc) on the record then at least the American public will have a full accounting of their crimes -- Congress still has a job to do with regards to oversight but admittedly they should be smart in how they go about doing it.

Being impeached certainly didn't help Nixon and it can be argued that Clinton's impeachment, regardless of the comparative flimsiness of the charges, still damaged the credibility of the Democratic party during the Bush vs. Gore election -- if said impeachment never happened, it's possible the Republicans wouldn't have won said election.

Not taking either side on the issue -- just pointing out the pros and cons of moving forward with impeachment.

I think we all know it's going to come down to the ballot box in 2020 -- it's just a question of how much information people will have before casting their vote.

Genuine question, maybe I'm wrong, but can't they do all of that investigating without calling it impeachment?

[aja_christopher]

Genuine question, maybe I'm wrong, but can't they do all of that investigating without calling it impeachment?

They could, but that might lack some of the investigative powers afforded to an official impeachment process.

As it stands, Republicans refuse to even allow them to see the unredacted Mueller report, which would be key to their investigation.

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"What Powers Does a Formal Impeachment Inquiry Give the House?"

"As the confrontation escalates between the House of Representatives and the White House over the production of documents, the appearance of witnesses and compliance with congressional subpoenas, so too have calls for Democrats to initiate impeachment proceedings. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi continues to push for further investigation of the president rather than an impeachment inquiry, while some members of her caucus and its leadership team and several candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination appear more willing to begin impeachment proceedings.

There are a number of different ways to frame the decision that House Democrats must make as they move forward. First, impeachment is a fundamentally political phenomenon: A wide range of political goals and motivations bear on whether individual, elected members of Congress see it as an appropriate path. The aggregation of those preferences, as filtered through party leaders with agenda-setting power, may or may not lead to the opening of an impeachment inquiry. Another framing focuses on the question of whether Congress has a responsibility to pursue impeachment, conveyed by the portion of the oath members take that requires them to “faithfully discharge the duties of the office.”

A third framing, which we address here, is a more practical one: whether, for the purposes of carrying out further investigation, the House’s hand would be strengthened significantly if it initiated impeachment proceedings. A May 15 letter from White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, brings this question into stark relief. The 12-page letter states, in essence, that the White House will not be providing any documents or information requested by the committee as part of an investigation announced on March 4 “into the alleged obstruction of justice, public corruption, and other abuses of power by President Trump, his associates, and members of his Administration.” In its response, the White House outlines a host of political and legal arguments, relying heavily on the premise that Congress has no “legitimate legislative purpose” for requesting the materials. This sweeping repudiation of Congress’s oversight powers brings into stark relief the question of whether there are procedural advantages in pursuing the same information and lines of inquiry under the banner of impeachment proceedings....

The White House’s principal justification for its current stonewalling strategy for ongoing House investigations would not be relevant in the context of impeachment. On April 24, the president told reporters, “We’re fighting all of the subpoenas,” and Cipollone’s May 15 letter supplies various legal arguments in support of this approach. First, the letter relies heavily on the argument that there is no legitimate “legislative purpose” for the request. (Congress’s general investigative powers are derived from its power to legislate.) Whatever the merits of this argument, it would simply not be relevant in the context of impeachment proceedings, because the power to impeach is contained in an entirely separate and discrete section of the U.S. Constitution.

Second, the letter argues that even if a legitimate legislative purpose can be articulated, committees have limited authority to explore in detail any particular case of alleged wrongdoing, because Congress does not need such details in order to craft legislative fixes. Again, this would likewise not be relevant in the context of impeachment proceedings. The decision of whether to impeach requires the development of a detailed, backward-looking factual record of specific conduct by the president. While it is of course possible the White House could come up with different theories for stonewalling in the context of impeachment proceedings, these two arguments would fall away, leaving only arguments related to executive privilege to be made before the courts.

Beyond the substance, it’s unclear whether courts would consider and decide such cases more quickly in the context of impeachment proceedings than similar cases pursued under the Congress’s investigative authority. One district court judge expedited consideration of one of the current investigative impasses—the House oversight and reform committee’s quest for Trump’s financial and accounting records from Mazars—and ruled in favor of the committee. Trump has already appealed the case, and it is unclear how long this appeal and similar appeals will take. Moreover, the case does not involve any claims of executive privilege. Sorting out the scope of executive privilege is the most thorny and time-consuming issue in cases involving congressional requests for information from the executive branch.

We think it is entirely possible—probable even—that judges would recognize the primacy of impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States and expedite consideration of such cases. The case of U.S. v. Nixon—in which the Supreme Court ruled that the president had to turn over the infamous Oval Office recordings to the special prosecutor—was decided just over three months after the relevant grand jury subpoena had been issued. That was a criminal investigation, so the analogy is not entirely apt, but we think it reasonable to assume courts would take a similarly expeditious view in the context of a subpoena issued pursuant to impeachment proceedings. Of course, it is worth remembering that the Supreme Court has never decided a case concerning a congressional subpoena for information issued to an executive branch official where the president has asserted executive privilege. In theory, the Supreme Court could decide the issue is a political question and leave it to the other two branches to sort out in some other way."

https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-pow...iry-give-house

[numberthirty]

Well... This is a curve ball...

- https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/co...VSOTaMnVLmHEP/

A witness to a heated grocery store encounter between state Rep. Erica Thomas and a man she accused of uttering racist comments told authorities she didn’t hear him make those remarks, according to a Cobb County police report.

A Publix employee told a Cobb County officer that she witnessed part of the conversation and heard Thomas “continuously tell Eric Sparkes to ‘Go back where you came from!’” but did not hear Sparkes utter those words to Thomas.

[aja_christopher]

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I disagree on that. It's one of the things they may need to prove that Trump's money has suspicious sources. Trump was deep in debt at one point and he had to look elsewhere for loans. Deuteschebank bailed him out big time. They've been know to be involved with money laundering for Russian oligarchs. The Bank of Cypress may be a thing too but that's more Wibur Ross. I'm betting the Feds are still working the case and following the money. Sometimes you need a sort of forensic accountant to do it (one of my nephews does this kind of work)

**** I meant tax cuts. Sorry this President has a lot of tax issues.

Anyways, don't underestimate how pissed people were getting a lower tax return this year.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

And failure to impeach also doesn't mean it won't affect Trump and the Republicans negatively heading into the next election -- especially if the evidence unearthed during the impeachment investigation builds a solid case against them in the process, regardless of the Senate vote.

If the Republican Senate still refuses to impeach with numerous documented crimes (tax fraud, obstruction of justice, soliciting foreign interference, etc) on the record then at least the American public will have a full accounting of their crimes -- Congress still has a job to do with regards to oversight but admittedly they should be smart in how they go about doing it.

Being impeached certainly didn't help Nixon and it can be argued that Clinton's impeachment, regardless of the comparative flimsiness of the charges, still damaged the credibility of the Democratic party during the Bush vs. Gore election -- if said impeachment never happened, it's possible the Republicans wouldn't have won said election.

Not taking either side on the issue -- just pointing out the pros and cons of moving forward with impeachment.

I think we all know it's going to come down to the ballot box in 2020 -- it's just a question of how much information people will have before casting their vote.

Tbf Clinton was very popular towards the end of his ordeal. Nixon also wasn't impeached, he left before he could be, but the whole country turned on him by that point and the Republicans weren't going to back him anymore (strange times, I know)

The real fear is that if you move to impeach, you run the risk that Trump and the Republicans get to the end of this thing saying they won the final word on the matter. After everything, that can really deflate Democrats who were following this saga for a few years to watch it seem like it was all for nothing. There's already a lot of defeatist Democrats that think he's guaranteed to win reelection. You don't want to give them something they can use and market, I don't trust the Democrats to effectively push this.

I agree that it basically all comes down to 2020 and I think any action should be in service of whatever anybody thinks is best for that battle.

[Kirby101]

If Trump is not impeached over what we already know, let alone what is still to come out. Given the flimsy justification for the Clinton impeachment. Then impeachment no longer has any validity.

[Tendrin]

I think people overestimate the bounce Trump will get from being impeached by comparing it to Clinton.

[aja_christopher]

"No shower for 23 days: U.S. citizen says conditions were so bad that he almost self-deported"

"Francisco Erwin Galicia, a Dallas-born U.S. citizen, spent 23 days in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in conditions that made him so desperate he almost opted to self-deport.

Galicia says he lost 26 pounds during that time in a South Texas immigrant detention center because officers didn’t provide him with enough food.

He said he wasn’t allowed to shower and his skin was dry and dirty.

He and 60 other men were crammed into an overcrowded holding area where they slept on the floor and were given only aluminum-foil blankets, he said. Some men had to sleep on the restroom area floor.

Ticks bit some of the men and some were very sick, Galicia said. But many were afraid to ask to go to the doctor because CBP officers told them their stay would start over if they did, he said.

“It was inhumane how they treated us. It got to the point where I was ready to sign a deportation paper just to not be suffering there anymore. I just needed to get out of there,” he said.

Galicia spoke to The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday, one day after he was released by federal officials who had earlier refused to acknowledge his citizenship when presented with his birth certificate...

“It’s one thing to see these conditions on TV and in the news. It’s another to go through them,” he said.

Galicia was released Tuesday afternoon from the ICE detention center in Pearsall where he’d been since Saturday. His release came less than 24 hours after The News first reported on his detention. Before Saturday, he’d been held for about three weeks at a CBP facility in Falfurrias, where he reported the squalid conditions.

“I told them we had rights and asked to make a phone call. But they told us, ‘You don’t have rights to anything’,” Francisco Galicia said."

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immi...like-immigrant

[aja_christopher]

"Opinion: An Impeachment Trial Would Take Away Trump's Control Of The News Cycle"

If Donald Trump has to be acquitted, much better for it to come at the hands of a group of people as corrupted and partisan as the Senate Republicans.

"House Democrats have steadfastly refused to begin impeachment inquiry hearings, favoring a strategy focused on courts and prosecutors. They have made crystal clear that they believe there will never be polling favorable enough to pressure Republicans to convict Trump in a congressional impeachment trial, and that the Senate will ultimately acquit him. They also maintain that working through the courts to expose Trump’s misdeeds will lead to a stronger case in 2020, when Democrats can win at the ballot box.

The 4th Circuit decision shows just how risky that strategy is.

Let’s assume Democrats are right and that impeachment hearings would lead to impeachment by the House and acquittal in the Senate. That is still a far better option than losing in the courts.

That’s because Americans generally look favorably upon the Supreme Court. In a Gallup Poll last year, the Supreme Court had a 51–40 approval rating. Any decision in Trump’s favor from the court would carry a great deal of weight with undecided voters heading into 2020.

Meanwhile, approval levels for Congress are deeply underwater — 19–78 in the latest Gallup Poll. The latest Economist poll finds Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell at 29–54 approval nationally.

If Trump has to be acquitted, it would much better come at the hands of a group of people as corrupted and partisan as the Senate Republicans. It would also rob Trump of the halo of Supreme Court victories against Democrats, on which he could legitimately run.

But there are more and better reasons than this to commence an impeachment inquiry. Foremost among them is the potential to focus the public on Trump’s unconstitutional and illegal actions.

The best way to convince the public of Trump’s crimes is to lay them out in a compelling presentation that captivates the country. Impeachment hearings will get wall-to-wall news coverage, giving Democrats the ability to lay out the incredibly compelling case that Mueller put together, narrated by the people he interviewed, over an extended period of time.

Mueller, perhaps sensing the effectiveness of impeachment hearings, alluded to them in his May press conference. In what many considered an urging for impeachment, Mueller noted that DOJ policy “says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”

Even assuming the Senate ultimately votes to acquit him, the end result will be a public that is more certain that Trump violated the law, and more aware that the Republican-controlled Senate is too partisan and corrupted to stop him. That is an incredibly powerful position going into 2020.

While we do not doubt that Democrats in Washington still hold an idealistic view of our governmental and judicial processes, the decision on the emoluments case demonstrates the perils of such a strategy, especially right now. Their adherence to norms is unlikely to be rewarded, any more than Trump's destruction of norms prevented his victory in 2016.

Donald Trump’s daily whirlwind of contempt for laws and norms has muted our ability to be shocked by much anymore. Democrats must use every tool at their disposal to counter this whirlwind by immediately commanding the media's and public’s attention and laying out the strongest case possible. That means avoiding court victories for Trump and using the ultimate tool given to them by the Founders — impeachment — before it is too late."

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...th-impeachment

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I think people overestimate the bounce Trump will get from being impeached by comparing it to Clinton.

I think it’s contingent whether you win or not. How do you think Democrats feel after they heard all this for years and the Senate exonerates him and he gets to sell that he won and it was all BS anyways to his base? It’s not true, but it’s like watching the bad guy win

[Tendrin]

I think it’s contingent whether you win or not. How do you think Democrats feel after they heard all this for years and the Senate exonerates him and he gets to sell that he won and it was all BS anyways to his base? It’s not true, but it’s like watching the bad guy win

Failure to convict in the Senate is not exoneration, especially along partisan lines.