BY BRIAN BEUTLER

& CROOKED MEDIA

Thursday, March 14, 2019

—Peter Strzok, taking Trey Gowdy to texting school

DECLARATION ALTERCATION

Congress has officially rejected President Trump’s declaration of a state of emergency along the southern border. And in doing so, it has provided ammunition to those who are certain to sue Trump when he raids public funds to build an unauthorized border wall on seized private lands.

By a vote of 59-41, the Senate passed a resolution Thursday that terminates the emergency declaration. A dozen Republicans joined the entire Democratic caucus in drawing the line against this abuse—an unconstitutional assault on Congress’s spending power.

All of the Republicans who voted with Trump are cowards or hacks or both, but the winner of the cowardly hackdom prize is Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who wrote an emotional Washington Post op-ed touting his opposition to the order, and attacking pro-Trump colleagues, all of whom attacked President Obama’s unilateral immigration policies, for their hypocrisy. “There is no intellectual honesty in now turning around and arguing that there’s an imaginary asterisk attached to executive overreach—that it’s acceptable for my party but not thy party,” he wrote. Then he voted against the resolution. Not all heroes wear capes.

The House already acted, which means the resolution will now go to the White House, where Trump has promised to veto it.  

He has sounded a triumphalist note about the coming veto—the first of his presidency—but he leaned very hard on Republicans to block the resolution altogether. He completely failed. And that caps off a week of warning shots from the Hill, including the Senate's passage of legislation to end U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen, and a bipartisan invitation for the secretary general of NATO to address a joint session of Congress—a move widely interpreted as a rebuke of the president, who has consistently trashed the alliance. Taken together, it suggests Congress is reaching its breaking point with Trump’s reckless foreign policies and other unilateral actions.

“I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.” -President Trump, threatening fascist violence if he doesn’t get his way, to Breitbart. [Link intentionally omitted]

This isn’t the first time Trump has issued the same basic warning, but the political establishment has generally treated it like the eccentric ravings of an idiot blowhard, instead of with the seriousness it deserves. Say what you will about Michael Cohen, but he knows Trump well. Just two weeks ago he warned Congress, “given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.” And even if most of Trump’s authoritarian ravings are bluffs, they have already unleashed forces he can’t control. We know that, because there’s a body count. Unfortunately, the Democratic takeover of the House hasn’t shaken the establishment of its numbness. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she doesn’t want to do initiate a partisan impeachment process because it’ll divide the country, and “he’s not worth it.” But he is already dividing the country in exceptionally dangerous ways, and forcing Republicans to cast judgment on his threats is important because the country is worth it.

Beto O’Rourke is officially running for president—which will come as a big surprise if you happen to be a very dense person.

By an overwhelming margin, the House passed a non-binding resolution Thursday that calls upon the Justice Department to release Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report to the public. The margin was 420-0. Four members voted “present,” including the witness-tampering Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who (we irresponsibly speculate) might be worried that his name appears in the report.

British lawmakers have voted to seek a delay of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Now E.U. nations will decide whether to grant the request, and, if they agree to it, how long to extend the deadline. The current deadline is March 29.  

Remember, remember, the fifth of November. That’s when Roger Stone will stand trial in Washington, DC, for trying to cover-up his role as the Trump campaign’s intermediary with Wikileaks. All he has to do to avoid incarceration is not violate his gag order or commit any new crimes between now and then, and then beat the slam-dunk case against him.

At least some of the 16 state crimes New York district attorney Cy Vance accuses Paul Manafort of committing will be hard for him to try because they overlap with the federal crimes he’s already stood trial for or pled guilty to, and may thus violate the state’s double-jeopardy protections. Cy Vance, you had ONE FUCKING JOB.

Speaking of Manafort, now that he’s been sentenced, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s top financial crimes prosecutor Andrew Weissman is reportedly set to leave the government and begin a new job teaching law at NYU—another indication that Mueller’s investigation is close to completion.

The Connecticut Supreme Court has cleared the way for victims of the Sandy Hook massacre and their families to sue the companies that manufactured the guns used in the attack, and seek to hold those companies liable for it, on the basis of how they marketed the weapons. Good.

Rosario Dawson and Cory Booker are in love. Bernie bros gonna be so mad.

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Federal prosecutors in New York are overseeing an investigation of the data-sharing agreements Facebook has struck with mobile-device makers and other tech companies. It’s not entirely clear what laws prosecutors believe Facebook broke, but the investigation may have something to do with the fact that Facebook routinely tells users one thing about what the company will do with their data, and then does the exact fucking opposite.

House Democrats grilled Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross at an oversight committee hearing about why he repeatedly told Congress he only added a citizenship question to the Census at the request of the Justice Department, when he once emailed aides, “I am mystified why nothing have been done in response to my months old request that we include the citizenship question. We need to work with Justice to get them to request that citizenship be added back as a census question." Seems like a problem! But for absolutely mystifying reasons, Democrats also allowed Ross to duck questions about his unrelated, comically extensive corruption spree. The dude is like a one-man Teapot Dome scandal. Make him answer questions about it!

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