BY BRIAN BEUTLER, PRIYANKA ARIBINDI

& CROOKED MEDIA

Friday, September 27, 2019

—Joaquin “Not Julian” Castro

THE SKY'S THE LIMIT

As House Democrats embark on the most important investigation Congress has ever conducted, there are troubling signs that they might artificially limit the scope and duration of their impeachment inquiry. Here’s where things stand as of Friday evening.

First, the less-than-encouraging news: 

• House Democratic leaders appear inclined to avoid a wide-ranging impeachment inquiry at the urging of the same swing-district Democrats who opposed impeachment before last week.

• Multiple reports suggest the plan is to make the mushrooming Ukraine scandal the main focus of the impeachment process, which means all the other impeachable offenses we’ve been screaming about for months—emoluments, obstruction of justice, collusion with Russia—may get short shrift. “Very few hearings, if any,” one senior Democratic aide told the Washington Post.

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the whistleblower’s allegation that the White House may be improperly concealing multiple transcripts of calls between Trump and other world leaders on a classified system to hide evidence of crimes and corruption, “ancillary.”

Now the better news: 

• Though vulnerable Democrats reportedly want to place an arbitrary deadline on the House’s work, so they can vote on articles of impeachment by Thanksgiving, Pelosi told NBC, “we won’t have the calendar be the arbiter.” 

• Impeachment polling has completely inverted, and is now above water, which means that the members anxious to end the inquiry quickly might return to their districts for the coming two week recess and find that their constituents suddenly want them to go where the facts lead. (REMINDER: Call your members, go to their town halls, tell them you want Trump thoroughly investigated: 202-224-3121)

• The intelligence committee, which is leading the Ukraine investigation, will remain in Washington during recess. It’s chairman, Adam Schiff, along with the chairs of the oversight and foreign affairs committees, have subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents pertaining to the State Department’s role in Trump’s shakedown of Ukraine, and intend to depose several key witnesses next week. 

Bottom line: It’s important for Democrats to be aggressive, but also to be thorough, even if that means the inquiry continues longer than they’d like ideally. Just today we learned Vice President Mike Pence advised Trump not to release the summary of his incriminating call with the Ukrainian president, and the Russian government has warned Trump not to release transcripts of his calls with Vladimir Putin. There are a lot of dots to connect, and Democrats shouldn’t call pencils down before they’re all connected. 

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s latest attempt to change the rules for detaining immigrant children, because the proposed change would allow the government to detain immigrant children indefinitely AND allow the government to detain them in facilities that aren’t properly licensed. According to the judge, the 1997 Flores settlement limiting the detention of migrant children to a maximum of 20 days remains in place.

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President Trump met with NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre to discuss how the NRA could bankroll his legal defense against impeachment, and in return, LaPierre asked that the White House “stop the games” over gun control. It’s infrastructure quid pro quo week at the White House. 

Oh, hey, speaking of! The NRA acted as a “foreign asset” to Russia ahead of the 2016 election, according to a new Senate report, and knowingly facilitated political access for Russian nationals to a greater degree than was previously known. The NRA is a tax exempt organization, which means it’s prohibited from using funds to benefit its officials or financing activities significantly detached from its stated mission. The group could thus lose its tax-exempt status, or face civil penalties. We are not sad about this.

The Trump administration has cut the refugee cap for next year by nearly half from the current annual limit of 30,000 refugees to 18,000. Under President Obama, the cap was 110,000. Naturally, Sunday is World Day of Migrants and Refugees.    

All 12 candidates who have qualified will debate on a single night during October’s Democratic primary debate.

A 12-year-old black girl was pinned down by three white male classmates who cut off her locs and called them “nappy” and “ugly.” The horrifying episode took place at the Christian school in Virginia where Karen “leave me alone” Pence teaches. 

Former diplomat Joseph Wilson has died of organ failure at the age of 69. Wilson became a household name in the run-up to the Iraq war, when he wrote a famous op-ed to blow the whistle on the fact that the Bush administration knew the public case for war it was building was false. The administration retaliated by disclosing that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA officer. Plame is now running for Congress in New Mexico. 

The suicide rate in the military climbed to its highest level in five years, claiming the lives 24.8 of every 100,000 people in 2018. The suicide rate for all Americans aged 17 to 59 is 18.2 people per 100,000.

The Anti-Defamation League has added the  “Ok” hand gesture and the bowl cut Dylann Roof sported as he shot up a church in Charleston to its hate symbol database. 

This clip of former ICE Director Tom Homan refusing to comply with Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who was presiding over a House hearing, after his time had expired is so fucking infuriating, and a really potent symbol of the Trump-era right-wing contempt for immigrants like Jayapal. 

Seattle police-reform advocate and executive director of the city’s Public Defender Association Lisa Daugaard thought she may have to shutter the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program she developed before she was named a 2019 MacArthur fellow. As a MacArthur “genius,” Daugaard received a $625,000 “genius grant” for her work transforming the ways police interact with people suffering from substance abuse and mental illness. A 2015 report found the LEAD program reduced recidivism rates by nearly 60 percent, and cost less than incarceration and other typical law-enforcement approaches. Since then, the program has expanded to other parts of the country, but struggled to keep up with the demand as police referrals increased.

THREAD

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