News Dump

House panel subpoenas Homeland Security over Trump’s pardon promises
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-panel-subpoenas-homeland-security-over-trumps-pardon-promises/2019/09/04/553fcf58-cf5b-11e9-9031-519885a08a86_story.html?tid=sm_fb

Yang: You know what's expensive? Poisoning our kids
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/09/04/yang-cnn-climate-crisis-town-hall-2020-democratic-candidates-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/climate-change/

Jo Johnson quits as MP and minister | Party insiders have urged Jo Johnson to reconsider, insisting that if he is willing to sleep on it for a few nights Boris might not even be the prime minister any more.” (Apparently he wanted to spend less time with his family.)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49594793

Trump may have broken federal law by altering Hurricane Dorian's path on a map to validate his false claim that it could hit Alabama
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-may-have-broken-law-by-altering-hurricane-dorian-map-2019-9

$400M in Puerto Rico recovery projects deferred over Trump border wall
https://www.axios.com/trump-border-wall-puerto-rico-projects-deferred-646d7987-5832-4989-a1fb-7552369d6dfc.html

Devin Nunes’ campaign drops lawsuit against constituents who claimed he was a fake farmer
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article234719422.html

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) said Wednesday he will not seek re-election after a 40-year tenure representing his heavily Republican district, according to the the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
https://www.axios.com/jim-sensenbrenner-wisconsin-house-republican-c0c4257d-7b00-42cf-baa3-de60b2c1a1a6.html

Pentagon pulls funds for military schools, daycare to pay for Trump's border wall | "Among the notable items now on the backburner include $62 million for a middle school at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky, $13 million for a “child development center” at Joint Base Andrews near Washington, more than $40 million to replace a hazardous materials warehouse in Virginia, nearly $11 million for a fire station replacement in Beaufort, South Carolina; nearly $95 million for an elementary school at Camp Mctureous in Japan; and nearly $80 million for an elementary school replacement project in Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany. "
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/pentagon-pulls-funds-for-military-schools-to-pay-for-trumps-border-wall.html
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/09/04/heres-everything-the-pentagon-is-putting-on-hold-to-concentrate-on-building-the-border-wall/

Trump Is Like A Kid 'Who Doctors Their Report Card,' NBC Analyst Says After President Displays Altered Dorian Map
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-like-kid-who-doctors-their-report-card-nbc-analyst-says-after-president-displays-altered-1457751

Trump is trying to unload America’s public lands to oil companies before the election | In a blatantly cynical ploy to undo 35 years of preservation, the Republican controlled Congress in 2017 buried a provision in the GOP’s tax-cut bill to open portions of the 19 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. Never mind that the only people in the country backing the idea were energy companies, the politicians who do their bidding and the people who profit from them. In fact, a poll taken shortly after the vote found that only 35% of Americans supported opening ANWR to drilling. | Further, humankind must move away from relying on oil and other fossil fuels for energy. Expanding the amount of public lands that can be leased for oil production is against the nation’s long-term interests. The U.S. already is the world’s largest producer of oil; adding new oil from Alaska is not necessary for the economy and will just make it harder to achieve the reductions of carbon emissions that are required to keep from cooking the planet.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-08-27/trump-arctic-grand-escalante-oil-drilling
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/december_2017/most_oppose_anwr_drilling

Union: ‘Strong Evidence’ Trump Appointee May Have Excluded Peer Reviewers with Views Contrary to Trump Agenda
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/union-strong-evidence-trump-appointee-may-have-excluded-peer-reviewers-with-views-contrary-to-trump-agenda/

White House photo shows Trump being briefed with accurate Hurricane Dorian map before it was altered to include Alabama
https://www.businessinsider.com/white-house-picture-trump-told-alabama-not-in-dorian-path-2019-9

A new report from a government watchdog, first obtained obtained by NPR, says an expanded effort by Congress to forgive the student loans of public servants is remarkably unforgiving. Congress created the expansion program last year in response to a growing outcry. Thousands of borrowers — nurses, teachers and other public servants — complained that the requirements for the original program were so rigid and poorly communicated that lawmakers needed to step in. But, documents show, even this expansion of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program isn't working. Ninety-nine percent of loan-forgiveness requests under that new Temporary Expanded Public Service Loan Forgiveness (TEPSLF) were rejected during the program's first year, from May 2018 to May 2019. According to the review out Thursday, conducted by the Government Accountability Office, the U.S. Department of Education processed roughly 54,000 requests and approved just 661. It spent only $27 million of the $700 million Congress set aside for the expansion.
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/05/754656294/congress-promised-student-borrowers-a-break-then-ed-dept-rejected-99-of-them

Republicans fear drubbing in next round of redistricting: It's shaping up as a 180-degree reversal from the political landscape heading into 2010. | The trepidation comes as an array of well-funded Democratic groups — including one with the backing of former President Barack Obama and ex-Attorney General Eric Holder — are flooding cash into Virginia, a key redistricting battleground that's holding state legislative elections this fall. Democrats are expected to plow tens of millions into races next year. This time around, it’s Democrats who are playing big. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee outraised the RSLC during the first half of 2019. And unlike a decade ago, Democrats are getting help from a galaxy of outside groups and allies, especially Obama. The former president has lent his fundraising heft to the Holder-led National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which expects to pour more than $13.5 million into statehouse races this election cycle. Obama, who took the unusual step in 2018 of endorsing state legislative candidates, has also folded his Organizing for America political organization into the Holder effort. Republicans who were involved in the 2010 redistricting fight say they’ve been taken aback by the Democrats’ newfound focus on state legislative contests. Chris Jankowski, a former RSLC president who oversaw a pre-2010 initiative to compete in key legislative contests, called the Obama-endorsed group “well-funded and effective.” “I know the RSLC is aware and fighting back, but it’s going to take a real commitment from national donors to focus beyond the White House,” said Jankowski, who is not involved in the current Republican fundraising effort.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/05/republicans-redistricting-democrats-1481833

What sort of Kafkaesque thing are we in here?" asks Matthew Austin, exasperated by his recent experience with the PSLF expansion. "It's like we're just stumbling in the darkness." Every Monday night, Matthew sits down at his desk in the Connecticut home he shares with his wife, Heather, to pay the family's bills. He clearly remembers opening a letter in the summer of 2018 from the company that manages Heather's federal student loans. She had spent more than a decade in public service as a teacher. The couple was looking forward to the day when, under the original PSLF program, the Education Department would forgive her student loans. But the letter did not say "congratulations." "My jaw just kind of dropped," Matthew says. (Heather did not want to talk about what has been a long, painful odyssey for them both.) The letter instead informed the Austins that, much to their surprise, none of the loan payments they had made over the previous decade had counted toward the 120 monthly payments required to receive loan forgiveness. Not one. "I saw zero," Matthew says. "And I started seeing red." Many borrowers have had similar experiences with PSLF, believing for years that they were working toward loan forgiveness only to realize later that they had been in the wrong repayment plan or held the wrong type of loan. The Austins have spent more than a decade planning for the day when Heather would be free from those loans. The promise of PSLF has been in their family longer than their three children. "It just infuriates me," Matthew says. "I remember sitting there when we found out that Heather was pregnant with our first child. And looking at the spreadsheet that we had made up for our long-term plan of the budget. And saying, 'OK, well, when he's 10, we can take a vacation." Then came good news: A few months before Matthew Austin opened that letter, Congress created the emergency expansion of the PSLF program in response to an outcry from borrowers like the Austins. Lawmakers set aside $700 million to help people who, like Heather, had fulfilled their public service but were, unbeknownst to them, in the wrong repayment plan. Naturally, the Austins applied. But the nightmare continued. Matthew says their request for TEPSLF was denied, this time on a technicality — "because we had not been denied for PSLF." According to the GAO report, this is a common complaint. In its rush to implement this expansion of Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the Education Department decided to require borrowers who believe they qualify for TEPSLF to first apply for, and be denied, PSLF. It's a hurdle Congress did not ask for. In fact, knowing that borrowers were already feeling frustrated and disillusioned with PSLF, lawmakers directed the Department of Education to do the opposite, to make this expansion easy to access: "The Secretary shall develop and make available a simple method for borrowers to apply for loan cancellation." According to the GAO's yearlong review of the program, 71% of all TEPSLF denials were rejected because of this one hurdle — asking borrowers to first apply for a program they know they do not qualify for. That's 38,068 requests denied. It is unclear how many of those borrowers, once they are denied PSLF, would technically qualify for TEPSLF. "This can be confusing to borrowers," the GAO's Emrey-Arras tells NPR. "It doesn't make a lot of sense, from a borrower perspective, as to why you would need to apply for a program that you know you're ineligible for. Yet that's the way the process works." The Education Department "has not created a borrower-friendly TEPSLF process," the GAO says. "This does not align with Education's strategic plan objective to improve the quality of service to customers across the student aid life cycle." The Austins found the process so confusing that after being rejected for TEPSLF, instead of further pleading their case with their loan servicer or the Education Department, they contacted one of their U.S. senators. And members of Congress are listening.
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/18/658447443/i-am-heartbroken-your-letters-about-public-service-loan-forgiveness

Trump sues California over tax return law
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49257844

Judge rules 11 immigrant parents who were separated from their children can return to U.S. A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to allow a small group of migrant parents it separated from their children and then deported to return to the U.S. The judge found that some of the migrants were probably coerced into authorizing their deportation and were given inaccurate or misleading information by immigration authorities. In a ruling Wednesday, Judge Dan Sabraw of the U.S. District Court in San Diego declared the deportations of 11 migrant parents unlawful and instructed the government to grant them entry into the country and the opportunity to reunify with their children and pursue asylum claims. The parents were separated from their children under the administration's controversial "zero tolerance" policy. The decision is the latest defeat for the administration in litigation surrounding its now discontinued practice of forcibly separating migrant children from their parents near the U.S.-Mexico border. President Trump was forced to rescind the policy through executive order last summer days before Sabraw issued a ruling blocking the government from carrying it out. The policy led to the separation of nearly 3,000 migrant children from their parents or legal guardians.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-separation-policy-some-migrant-parents-who-were-separated-from-their-children-can-return-to-u-s-judge-rules/

On Thursday, Washington, DC, district court judge James Boasberg ordered the agency to provide asylum seekers detained in the Deep South with a fair chance of being released. ICE policy requires it to provide asylum seekers with individualized parole decisions and to release them if they don’t pose a threat to public safety or a flight risk. ICE’s New Orleans field office—which covers Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee—must go back to following the agency’s parole policy, Boasberg ordered in a preliminary injunction.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/ice-office-must-stop-keeping-all-asylum-seekers-locked-up-federal-judge-orders/

Europe's aviation safety watchdog will not accept a US verdict on whether Boeing's troubled 737 Max is safe. Instead, the European Aviation Safety Agency (Easa) will run its own tests on the plane before approving a return to commercial flights.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49591363

Special Envoy Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump’s main adviser on the conflict between Israel and Palestine, resigned on Thursday. | Greenblatt, who didn’t have a formal background in diplomacy or foreign policy, was the Trump Organization’s executive vice president and the company’s chief legal officer before he joined the Trump administration.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-top-adviser-israel-palestine-conflict-resigns

A “prominent” member of a Republican committee on Long Island was indicted on Thursday for alleged offenses that could put him behind bars for up to 15 years upon conviction. John Novello, 51, is the leader of the Cedarhurst Republican Committee, the Nassau County Republican Committee website shows. Novello was indicted for 11 charges related to the alleged theft of $60,000 from bank accounts belonging to the Cedarhurst Republican Committee. These charges include grand larceny, petit larceny, and election law violations, NBC New York reported.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/funding-his-own-lifestyle-gop-committee-leader-accused-of-stealing-60000-in-donations/?fbclid=IwAR23O0v9a1E0xJuwVyVTdiv_O9ekofOq-nmcUxIF0YW-r_DCyUXusqp3KOk

The Beto effect! Another Texas Republican Congressman Will Not Seek Re-election: Representative Bill Flores announced his current term would be his last, joining a long list of Republicans who have said they will retire or seek other offices.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/us/politics/bill-flores-texas.html

Anonymous man spends thousands on 100 generators to send to hurricane victims in Bahamas
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/hurricane-dorian-anonymous-man-spends-thousands-on-100-generators-to-send-to-hurricane-victims-in-a4229526.html

The Northern Amazon along the Brazil/Guiana border is now being protected by a French volunteer military force in order to stop deforestation and widespread mercury dumping in waterways by illegal gold mining operations
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48187766

The Islamic State left behind in Iraq IEDs meant to cause random death and violence. On Tuesday, an American Army veteran who was helping defuse these leftover bombs was killed in Iraq.
https://twitter.com/starsandstripes/status/1169702238236753920

Brandon Pinson was killed Tuesday morning in Iraq, where he was leading a team working to clear improvised explosive devices left behind from battles with the Islamic State. He was defusing an explosive device when the accident happened in the village of Tel al-Shear near Mosul, according to a news release from the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD). Pinson, a native of Benton, was a civilian employee of FSD, a Geneva, Switzerland-based humanitarian nongovernmental organization that aims to clear explosives that threaten civilian populations in many countries affected by war. Pinson, 31, was an Army veteran and married father of two. His mom, Karen Pinson of Benton, said he was just a month shy of completing his work in Iraq and returning to his  his wife, Samantha, their 4- and 2-year-old boys and their home in Cherry Point, North Carolina. He had recently accepted a job as a police officer, she said. Karen said she believes her son accepted the contract work in the meantime to support his family, and because he also believed in the mission of the humanitarian aid organization for which he worked.
https://www.stripes.com/us-contractor-an-army-veteran-who-was-killed-in-iraq-loved-helping-people-1.597387

One of the biggest losers from Trump's diversion of military funds for his wall: "$770 million is being diverted from projects that have been approved to help American allies deter attacks from a revanchist Russia."
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1169720622311727105
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2019/09/05/daily-202-the-biggest-losers-from-trump-s-diversion-of-military-funds-for-his-wall/5d707eb2602ff171a5d73421/

Trump Administration Aims to Privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac | After years of bipartisan talk of abolishing the firms, Treasury launches process to diminish government control over time | The principles announced Thursday represent a major reversal from what leaders of both parties over the past decade promised—to abolish the companies, which guarantee roughly half the U.S. mortgage market. The approach, which doesn’t require approval by Congress, would mark an important win for investors who have been betting politicians wouldn’t follow through on those promises.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-aims-to-privatize-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-11567717213

Ex-@FEC vice chair Matthew Petersen—whose departure effectively thwarts any FEC enforcement action going into 2020 elections—is joining Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky, a political law firm known for creative legal maneuvers hiding "dark money" donors https://politi.co/2ZMAQM4
https://twitter.com/annalecta/status/1169631649296003072

A Million Refugees May Soon Lose Their Line to the Outside World
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/world/asia/rohingya-phone-ban.html

Spared by Dorian, Florida’s Bahamians Give Back to Islands | Bahamians helped build South Florida in the 1800s. Now the descendants of those early settlers are engaged in a frantic effort to help storm victims in the country many still cherish as home. | The ties could not be stronger between Miami and the archipelago less than 200 miles east. Bahamians settled in South Florida decades before Miami was born, building bridges and railroads and raising children who would become some of the region’s most prominent leaders. This week, their descendants, many veterans of devastating hurricanes, gathered across South Florida to lend a hand. | In the case of the Bahamas, Miami owes its very beginnings to residents from there. Bahamian laborers worked in construction and agriculture, creating the city’s infrastructure and teaching white settlers unfamiliar with the tropics how to build with coral rock, till the soil and plant tropical fruit, said Marvin Dunn, a retired college professor who chronicled local history in his book “Black Miami in the Twentieth Century.” “It’s probably safe to say that Florida would not have evolved as it did without Bahamians in this community,” he said. Some of the early settlers’ employers paid them with land, allowing black homeownership to flourish. In the 20th century, Bahamian-Americans became among South Florida’s most influential civic leaders and civil rights activists. | Local officials were frustrated that the federal government had not dispatched search-and-rescue teams from Miami-Dade County and the city of Miami to the Bahamas, apparently because they might be needed in Georgia or the Carolinas. The Coast Guard has sent helicopters and boats to perform evacuations on the islands.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/us/hurricane-dorian-miami-bahamas.html

Trump has made a hurricane, which could have shifted news coverage away from him for days, all about him.
https://twitter.com/spettypi/status/1169714713787293696

In a new interview, Joe Kennedy III endorses abolishing 1) the electoral college, 2) life tenure for Supreme Court judges, and 3) the Senate filibuster.
https://twitter.com/brianefallon/status/1169714728274485248
https://boston.cbslocal.com/2019/09/05/joe-kennedy-massachusetts-congress-senate-race-ed-markey-wbz-tv-jon-keller/

Two coal miners ask Kentucky Senate candidate Amy McGrath to stop using their images in TV ad | “All of the miners were fully informed that they were being filmed for an ad and even signed up for McGrath hats and T-shirts,” McGrath’s campaign manager, Mark Nickolas, said in a statement. Nickolas also suggested that partisan motivations were behind the letter, noting that the lawyer, Thacker, has ties to the administration of Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/two-coal-miners-ask-kentucky-senate-candidate-amy-mcgrath-to-stop-using-their-images-in-tv-ad/2019/09/05/c6adc5a2-d003-11e9-b29b-a528dc82154a_story.html

In about six months, someone should poll, "Did Hurricane Dorian hit Alabama"? and publish the crosstabs by party affiliation.
https://twitter.com/MikeMadden/status/1169718310805671938

I don’t think it’s fine for people to be like “this is a distraction!” when it’s in fact the most powerful man on earth doing objectively bizarre things.
https://twitter.com/JessicaHuseman/status/1169718553114796032

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said at a recent town hall that lawmakers should discuss fixing Social Security “behind closed doors,” prompting a wave of criticism from liberal and advocacy groups.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-ernst-says-lawmakers-should-discuss-fixing-social-security-behind-closed-doors/2019/09/05/b678c428-cfec-11e9-b29b-a528dc82154a_story.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8bUe9y34Ic
https://iowastartingline.com/2019/09/04/ernst-need-to-sit-down-behind-closed-doors-for-social-security-fix/

Ten states and nearly two dozen members of Congress are joining the National Rifle Association in supporting gun-maker Remington Arms as it fights a Connecticut court ruling involving liability for the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Officials in the 10 conservative states, 22 House Republicans and the NRA are among groups that filed briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday and Wednesday. They urged justices to overturn the Connecticut decision, citing a much-debated 2005 federal law that shields gun makers from liability, in most cases, when their products are used in crimes. Remington, based in Madison, North Carolina, made the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle used to kill 20 first graders and six educators at the Newtown, Connecticut, school on Dec. 14, 2012. A survivor and relatives of nine victims of the massacre filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Remington in 2015, saying the company should have never sold such a dangerous weapon to the public and alleging it targeted younger, at-risk males in its marketing and through product placement in violent video games. Citing one of the few exemptions in the 2005 federal law, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in March that Remington could be sued under state law over how it marketed the rifle. The decision overturned a ruling by a state trial court judge who dismissed the lawsuit based on the federal law, named the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/republican-politicians-states-join-nra-backing-gun-maker-sandy-hook-n1050336

Texas Attorney General stayed quiet for months as a gun owner sent threats to kill immigrants: report
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-shootings-gun-policy-1457936

A top government watchdog says the Trump administration violated the law when it used funds taken from park entrance fees to keep national parks open during this year's partial government shutdown. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in its investigation released Thursday that the Interior Department and National Park Service (NPS) violated the AntiDeficiency Act and the purpose statute by using congressional funds to pay government workers to clean park bathrooms and maintain sites when part of the federal government was shuttered during the record-long shutdown. “Interior disregarded not only the laws themselves but also the congressional prerogatives that underlie them. Instead of carrying out the law, Interior improperly imposed its own will,” Thomas Armstrong, GAO general counsel, wrote in his 16-page legal opinion. The opinion followed requests by various House and Senate lawmakers to look into the Trump administration’s January decision to use the park recreational fees, also known as FLREA funds, to keep highly trafficked national parks open despite the shutdown. The unprecedented decision authorized the use of up to $250 million in funds to keep parks running, according to internal documents obtained by The Hill.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/460151-federal-watchdog-trump-admin-broke-law-by-pulling-from-park
https://mccollum.house.gov/sites/mccollum.house.gov/files/documents/B-330776%20Parks%20in%20Shutdown%20-%20Final%20Signed%20Opinion%20-%20PDF.PDF
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/432260-interior-green-light-more-than-250-million-in-park-admissions

A Trump-appointed Justice Department official is accused of using social media to weed out Trump critics from the process for awarding grants to organizations that assist victims of crime, Reuters reports. A public employees union filed a complaint to the DOJ’s Inspector General against Office for Victims of Crime director Darlene Hutchinson Biehl—who leads the division that compensates crime victims and gives grants to local governments, nonprofits, and other crime organizations.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/doj-staffer-accused-of-using-social-media-to-find-those-who-agree-with-trump-agenda-in-grants-process

Pentagon takes back money for Fort Campbell middle school project to fund border wall
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/pentagon-takes-back-money-for-fort-campbell-middle-school-project-to-fund-border-wall

Italy’s new government was sworn in on Thursday after the pro-European Democratic Party (PD) joined the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) in an unlikely alliance that has forced the far-right out of power.  Giuseppe Conte, the independent prime minister, led his new team of seven women and 14 men in a swearing-in ceremony in the presidential palace.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/itay-government-coalition-oust-far-right-matteo-salvini-five-star-movement-pd-league-a9092876.html

Candidates usually use only a “campaign bus, decked out with their name or imagery. Not for Beto... he's taking a Bolt bus [to Boston]...because it pollutes less than a plane and takes about the same amount of time, given [airport] travel...and security.”
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/Beto-ORourke-Takes-Bus-Boston-559489111.html

Texas court strikes down Alex Jones appeal in Sandy Hook case, orders him to pay
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/460159-texas-court-strikes-down-alex-jones-appeal-in-sandy-hook-case-orders

Miners union president: 'Coal's not back. Nobody saved the coal industry.'
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/05/politics/coal-miners-union-president-coals-not-back/index.html