Category: Today’s News?

I’m Haunted by What I Did as a Lawyer in the Trump Justice Department

New York Times

No matter our intentions, lawyers like me were complicit. We owe the country our honesty about what we saw — and should do in the future.

By Erica Newland December 20, 2020

Ms. Newland worked in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department from 2016-18.

 
Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

 

was an attorney at the Justice Department when Donald Trump was elected president. I worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, which is where presidents turn for permission slips that say their executive orders and other contemplated actions are lawful. I joined the department during the Obama administration, as a career attorney whose work was supposed to be independent of politics.

I never harbored delusions about a Trump presidency. Mr. Trump readily volunteered that his agenda was to disassemble our democracy, but I made a choice to stay at the Justice Department — home to some of the country’s finest lawyers — for as long as I could bear it. I believed that I could better serve our country by pushing back from within than by keeping my hands clean. But I have come to reconsider that decision.

My job was to tailor the administration’s executive actions to make them lawful — in narrowing them, I could also make them less destructive. I remained committed to trying to uphold my oath even as the president refused to uphold his.

But there was a trade-off: We attorneys diminished the immediate harmful impacts of President Trump’s executive orders — but we also made them more palatable to the courts.

This burst into public view early in the Trump administration in the litigation over the executive order banning travel from several predominantly Muslim countries, which my office approved. The first Muslim ban was rushed out the door. It was sweeping and sloppy; the courts quickly put a halt to it. The successive discriminatory bans benefited from more time and attention from the department’s lawyers, who narrowed them but also made them more technocratic and therefore harder for the courts to block.

After the Supreme Court’s June 2018 decision upholding the third Muslim ban, I reviewed my own portfolio — which included matters targeting noncitizens, dismantling the Civil Service and camouflaging the president’s corruption — overcome with fear that I was doing more harm than good. By Thanksgiving of that year, I had left my job.

Still, I felt I was abandoning the ship. I continued to believe that a critical mass of responsible attorneys staying in government might provide a last line of defense against the administration’s worst instincts. Even after I left, I advised others that they could do good by staying. News reports about meaningful pushback by Justice Department attorneys seemed to confirm this thinking.

I was wrong.

Watching the Trump campaign’s attacks on the election results, I now see what might have happened if, rather than nip and tuck the Trump agenda, responsible Justice Department attorneys had collectively — ethically, lawfully — refused to participate in President Trump’s systematic attacks on our democracy from the beginning. The attacks would have failed.

Unlike the Trump Justice Department, the Trump campaign has relied on second-rate lawyers who lack the skills to maintain the president’s charade. After a recent oral argument from Rudy Giuliani, Judge Matthew Brann (a Republican) wrote that the campaign had offered “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence.” Even judges appointed by Mr. Trump have refused to throw their lots in with lawyers who can’t master the basic mechanics of lawyering.

After four years of bulldozing through one institution after another on the backs of skilled lawyers, the Trump agenda hit a brick wall.

The story of the Trump campaign’s attack on our elections could have been the story of the Trump administration’s four-year-long attack on our institutions. If, early on, the Justice Department lawyers charged with selling the administration’s lies had emptied the ranks — withholding our talents and reputations and demanding the same of our professional peers — the work of defending President Trump’s policies would have been left to the types of attorneys now representing his campaign. Lawyers like Mr. Giuliani would have had to defend the Muslim ban in court.

Had that happened, judges would have likely dismantled the Trump facade from the beginning, stopping the momentum of his ugliest and most destructive efforts and bringing much-needed accountability early in his presidency.

Before the 2020 election, I was haunted by what I didn’t do. By all the ways I failed to push back enough. Now, after the 2020 election, I’m haunted by what I did. The trade-off wasn’t worth it.

In giving voice to those trying to destroy the rule of law and dignifying their efforts with our talents and even our basic competence, we enabled that destruction. Were we doing enough good elsewhere to counterbalance the harm we facilitated, the way a public health official might accommodate the president on the margins to push forward on vaccine development? No.

No matter our intentions, we were complicit. We collectively perpetuated an anti-democratic leader by conforming to his assault on reality. We may have been victims of the system, but we were also its instruments. No matter how much any one of us pushed back from within, we did so as members of a professional class of government lawyers who enabled an assault on our democracy — an assault that nearly ended it.

We owe the country our honesty about that and about what we saw. We owe apologies. I offer mine here.

And we owe our best efforts to restore our democracy and to share what we learned to help mobilize and enact reforms — to remind future government lawyers that when asked to undermine our democracy, the right course is to refuse and hold your peers to the same standard.

To lead by example, and do everything in our power to ensure this never happens again. If we don’t, it will.

Erica Newland, counsel at Protect Democracy, worked in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department from 2016-18.

Who are you calling a socialist? Republicans are the real party of socialism in America

Who are you calling a socialist? Republicans are the real party of socialism in America

Steven Strauss, Opinion columnist               December 19, 2020

 

With Senate control on the line in two Georgia runoff elections next month, Republicans are claiming that President-elect Joe Biden and the Democrats are “socialists.” That’s their shorthand for government interference in the economy, corruption, failure to enforce the law, incompetence, and subsidizing people who should support themselves.

Let me suggest four areas where the incoming Biden administration, allied with serious conservatives, can fight “socialism” while upholding progressive values.

► Eliminate farm subsidies and farm support programs (which will cost $46 billion this year — up from $22 billion last year — and will account for about 40% of this year’s farm income) that interfere with agricultural markets. As Chris Edwards at the Cato Institute noted: “Agriculture is no riskier than other industries and does not need an array of federal subsidies.” Also from the Cato Institute: “About 97% of all farm households are wealthier than the median U.S. household. Farm income was 52% higher than median U.S. household income.”

I know of no progressive organization that supports these farm subsidy programs. However, America’s farmers are different from other Americans. They are 95% white and do one thing the majority of Americans refuse to do: Farmers overwhelmingly vote Republican (President Donald Trump may have gotten as much as 85% of the farm vote this year).

Tax subsidies that make no sense

► Eliminate the money-losing “socialist” National Flood Insurance Program. From the point of view of progressives (who believe climate change is a real and pressing concern), NFIP makes no sense. It encourages living in flood-prone areas (where progressives believe flooding will get worse due to climate change) by offering subsidized federal flood insurance. As the General Accounting Office noted: “NFIP premiums do not reflect the full risk of loss, which increases the Federal fiscal exposure created by the program, obscures that exposure from Congress and taxpayers …”

In 2017, Congress wrote off $16 billion in losses from this program. But by March 2020, it had already accumulated another $20 billion in losses. About 60% of NFIP policies were issued in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, which all voted for Trump this year.

U.S. Capitol building on March 25, 2020, in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Capitol building on March 25, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

 

► Invest $10 billion per year to fund IRS tax enforcement, targeted at the very wealthy — those making over $1 million a year. According to a recent estimate by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, University of Pennsylvania law professor Natasha Sarin and former IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti, this investment would yield about $100 billion a year in extra Federal tax revenues.

If you’re a conservative who thinks defunding police enforcement is a bad idea, you should think the same about the recent defunding of IRS tax enforcement (by cutting the IRS budget). The IRS budget shrank 20% in real terms from 2010 to 2019, while in the same period the U.S. economy grew about 25%. The result is that the number of audits of Americans making over $1 million per year declined by about 75%. At the same time, the IRS was pressured to focus its scarce resources on auditing low income Americans. Notably, the main driver of this IRS defunding is the GOP.

► Make states routinely subsidized by the rest of the country get their act together. Most American states are roughly in balance between what their residents pay into the federal government and what they receive back. A few states (mainly Democratic) are “maker” states (among them Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York) that pay vastly more to the federal government than they receive.

‘Taker’ states do bad job for citizens

Then there are states that get back a lot more than their residents pay in taxes. These “taker” states are mainly low-income states in the southeast, most of them dominated by Republicans. Given our progressive tax system and safety net, federal money tends to automatically flow to these states.

If you’re a conservative, transferring money from “makers” to “takers” is generally frowned on. If you’re a progressive, it makes sense to ask some hard questions about what’s going on with these “taker” states. Because, despite all the money these states receive, they don’t do a good job for their citizens.

Mississippi illustrates just how bad this situation is. Annually, Mississippi receives $19 billion more from the federal government than it pays into the system. Despite this support, Mississippi has the highest homicide rate, highest infant mortality rates and lowest median household income of any American state.

No socialist nightmare: Georgia, if you’re listening, ignore conservatives peddling socialist Senate hallucinations

It’s time the leaders in these poorly run states make changes to improve the lives of their citizens — hopefully while reducing their hefty dole from the rest of the country. If they are unwilling to reform, maybe federal money and programs should be cut off.

Some of what I’m proposing will require legislation, and the devil’s in the details. But if you’re an ideological conservative, you should be willing to work with the Biden administration to implement some or all of these proposals.

If you’re a hypocritical member of the GOP (that is, you want to keep using federal tax dollars to buy the farm vote for Republican candidates), and-or a Trumpist, you probably loathe everything I’ve proposed. But it’s time for the incoming Biden administration to pull back the curtain on which is the true party of socialism in America.

Steven Strauss is a lecturer and visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.

Trump’s Future: Tons of Cash and Plenty of Options for Spending It

Trump’s Future: Tons of Cash and Plenty of Options for Spending It

Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman  December 18, 2020
Election workers during the Fulton County ballot recount in Atlanta on Nov. 14, 2020. (Nicole Craine/The New York Times)
Election workers during the Fulton County ballot recount in Atlanta on Nov. 14, 2020. (Nicole Craine/The New York Times)

 

Donald J. Trump will exit the White House as a private citizen next month perched atop a pile of campaign cash unheard-of for an outgoing president, and with few legal limits on how he can spend it.

Deflated by a loss he has yet to acknowledge, Trump has cushioned the blow by coaxing huge sums of money from his loyal supporters — often under dubious pretenses — raising roughly $250 million since Election Day along with the national party.

More than $60 million of that sum has gone to a new political action committee, according to people familiar with the matter, which Trump will control after he leaves office. Those funds, which far exceed what previous outgoing presidents had at their disposal, provide him with tremendous flexibility for his post-presidential ambitions: He could use the money to quell rebel factions within the party, reward loyalists, fund his travels and rallies, hire staff, pay legal bills and even lay the groundwork for a far-from-certain 2024 run.

The postelection blitz of fundraising has cemented Trump’s position as an unrivaled force and the preeminent fundraiser of the Republican Party, even in defeat. His largest single day for online donations actually came after Election Day — raising almost $750,000 per hour Nov. 6. So did his second-biggest day. And his third.

“Right now, he is the Republican Party,” said John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster who worked on Trump’s reelection campaign. “The party knows that virtually every dollar they’ve raised in the last four years, it’s because of Donald Trump.”

Trump has long acted with few inhibitions when it comes to spending other people’s money, and he has spent millions of campaign dollars on his own family businesses in the last five years. But new records show an even more intricate intermingling of Trump’s political and familial interests than was previously known.

Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law and a senior campaign adviser, served on the board — and was named on drafts of the incorporation papers — of a limited liability company through which the Trump political operation spent more than $700 million since 2019, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The arrangement has never been disclosed. One of the other board members and signatories in the draft papers of the LLC, American Made Media Consultants, was John Pence, the nephew of Vice President Mike Pence and a senior Trump adviser. The LLC has been criticized for purposefully obscuring the ultimate destination of hundreds of millions of dollars of spending.

Lara Trump and John Pence were originally listed as president and vice president on the incorporation papers, documents reviewed by the Times showed. Sean Dollman, the campaign chief financial officer, was the AMMC treasurer.

“Lara Trump and John Pence resigned from the AMMC board in October 2019 to focus solely on their campaign activities; however, there was never any ethical or legal reason why they could not serve on the board in the first place,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesperson for Trump. “John and Lara were not compensated by AMMC for their service as board members.” Murtaugh also said the two were not compensated for other positions they were listed as holding.

For Trump, the quarter-billion dollars he and the party raised over six weeks is enough to pay off all of his remaining campaign bills and to fund his fruitless legal challenges and still leave tens of millions of dollars.

Trump’s plans, however, remain extremely fluid. His refusal to accept Joe Biden’s victory has stunted internal political planning, aides say, with some advisers in his shrinking circle of confidants hesitant to even approach him about setting a course of action for 2021 and beyond.

Those who have spoken with Trump say he appears shrunken, and over his job; this detachment is reflected in a Twitter feed that remains stubbornly more focused on unfounded allegations of fraud than on the death toll from the raging pandemic.

Trump has talked about running again in 2024 — but he also may not. He has created this new PAC, but a different political entity could still be in the works, people involved in the discussions said. Talk of counterprogramming Biden’s inauguration with a splashy event or an announcement of his own is currently on hold.

Trump had been tentatively planning to go to Georgia on Saturday, according to a senior Republican official, to support the two Republicans in Senate runoff races there. But he is still angry at the state’s Republican governor and secretary of state for accepting the election result and simply doesn’t want to make the trip. There is some discussion about him going after the Christmas holiday, but it’s not clear he will be in a more magnanimous mood by then.

But even as he displays indifference toward the Georgia races, the Trump political apparatus has taken advantage of the grassroots energy and excitement over the two runoffs to juice its own fundraising. Email and text solicitations have pitched Trump supporters to give to a “Georgia Election Fund,” even though no funds go directly to either Republican senator on the ballot, irritating some Senate GOP strategists.

Instead, the fine print shows 75% of the donations to the Georgia fund go to Trump’s new PAC, called Save America, with 25% to the Republican National Committee.

After weeks of shouting “FRAUD” to supporters in emails and asking them to back an “Election Defense Fund” (which also sent 75% of donations to his new PAC), the Trump operation has subtly shifted its tone and focus, returning to more sustainable pre-election themes, like hawking signed hats and opposing socialism.

Trump and the RNC did spend about $15 million combined in legal costs and other spending related to disputing the election between Oct. 15 and Nov. 23, according to federal records.

Besides a $3 million payment to Wisconsin to fund a partial recount in the state, Trump’s largest recount-related payment did not go to attorney fees but to American Made Media Consultants, the Trump-linked LLC on which Lara Trump was listed an original signatory. The firm received $2.2 million Nov. 12 in two payments labeled “SMS advertising,” better known as text messaging.

American Made Media Consultants was the subject of a complaint to the Federal Election Commission earlier this year that accused it of “laundering” funds to obscure the ultimate beneficiary of Trump campaign spending. Federal records show the firm had more than $700 million in funds flow through it since 2019. The vast majority of funds were spent before Lara Trump resigned from the board.

For a sense of scale of just how much money Donald Trump will have at his disposal, the new Trump PAC’s $60 million-plus haul — and counting — is about as much money as he spent to win his party’s presidential nomination in 2016.

Some campaign finance experts have speculated that Trump might try to use the excess of cash in his new PAC, formally known as a leadership PAC, to pay for his own personal future legal quagmires as he faces investigations once he leaves office. (A senior Trump adviser said they don’t expect the money to be used for personal legal needs.)

“A leadership PAC is a slush fund,” said Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a group that supports increased political transparency. “There are very, very, very few limits on what he can’t spend money on.”

In the last five years, Trump has never shied from spending hundreds of thousands of dollars from his contributors on his private businesses, a practice he could continue or expand while out of office.

Just since mid-October, the Trump Victory Committee, a joint account operated with the RNC, has paid more than $710,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection, while his reelection account has continued to pay more than $37,000 per month to rent space in Trump Tower.

It is not clear where his post-presidential operation will be based or who will run it, although several advisers expect it will be in Florida, where he is planning to move.

But as a former president, Trump will be allocated a certain amount of taxpayer money for staff and office space for life after leaving the White House, and he is beginning to have discussions about which aides from the West Wing will accompany him.

His senior political advisers — Bill Stepien, Justin Clark and Jason Miller, among others — are among those who may stay involved with him politically.

While Trump’s post-presidency remains largely shapeless, he has demonstrated his desire to exert his control on national politics, especially among Republicans.

He has already endorsed Ronna McDaniel, a close ally, to serve another term as chair of the RNC. He has floated primary challenges to Republicans, such as Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, who have crossed him by rejecting his baseless theories of election fraud. He has even asked aides how he can retain control of the party if he isn’t a candidate.

One person close to Trump said that he has sounded less certain about declaring he’s running in 2024 than he had just two weeks ago. That uncertainty is causing anxiety for a number of advisers and aides to the president, some of whom might join other campaigns but are stuck in limbo until Trump makes up his mind. Announcing for president would trigger tighter rules on Trump’s political spending and added financial disclosures, including of Trump’s personal finances, that simply operating a PAC would not.

Trump’s future ambitions have also created a cloud over who exactly will control some of the most valuable assets from the 2020 campaign, including Trump’s lengthy list of supporters from whom he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars. Both the RNC and Trump are entitled to some of this valuable voter data, and efforts at “decoupling” the data are underway but expected to last months.

The RNC has typically stayed out of presidential primaries, but no former president in the modern era has seriously considered running again after losing reelection, putting the party apparatus in uncharted territory. His embrace of McDaniel as an ally in running the party could further complicate matters.

“There’s no bully pulpit as large as the presidency, but nevertheless, President Trump is likely to play a significant role in the future of the Republican Party,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “It’s very difficult to imagine him following the same pattern as George W. Bush, Barack Obama and other presidents have followed in keeping their mouths shut and letting the new president try to govern.”

White House counsel’s office warned Trump not to fire Chris Wray

White House counsel’s office warned Trump not to fire Chris Wray

December 16, 2020

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has come so close to firing FBI Director Christopher Wray in recent months that the White House counsel’s office has warned him not to do so because it could put him in potential legal jeopardy, according to a senior administration official with direct knowledge of the discussion and a U.S. official familiar with the discussion.

White House lawyers “strongly” advised Trump against firing another FBI director out of concern that doing so would risk creating the perception that a “loyalty test” was being imposed on a position that traditionally has maintained independence from the White House, according to the senior administration official.

The lawyers, led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone, specifically said that firing Wray could spark legal issues similar to those raised after Trump ousted James Comey as FBI director in 2017 in the midst of the Russia investigation, the officials said.

Their concern was that firing Wray could be seen as retaliation because the president has publicly pressured him to take specific actions on certain investigations — such as announcing a probe into President-elect Joe Biden’s son — and then expressed frustration that Wray has not followed his suggestions.

Trump’s firing of Comey, whom he’d asked to drop an investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, became a key part of the special counsel’s probe into whether he had obstructed justice.

As a result, the president’s legal team advised him against firing Wray, the officials said.

While Trump’s frustrations with Attorney General Bill Barr boiled over in recent days, and Barr resigned on Monday, the president’s advisers hope he’s been persuaded against ousting Wray. Multiple current and former senior administration officials said firing Wray does not appear imminent, but they also point out that the president could make such a decision on a whim at any time. Indeed officials said they are prepared for Trump to go on a firing spree before leaving office next month.

“I wouldn’t take anything off the table in coming weeks,” the senior administration official said of personnel changes, as well as presidential pardons. The official said to expect “some more fairly significant terminations in the national security or intelligence community.”

It’s unclear how Trump’s complaints that Wray hasn’t done anything to investigate Biden’s son Hunter might affect his job given the announcement last week that the FBI has already been conducting such an investigation since 2018. Trump had criticized Barr for not publicly disclosing the investigation before the election.

Trump also recently threatened to fire acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, according to two senior administration officials. The president blamed Wolf for the public statements from Christopher Krebs, the former head of the agency in charge of election security at the Homeland Security Department. Krebs has called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”

But some of the president’s advisers convinced him to leave Wolf in his job, and they believe — or at least hope — he won’t be fired.

The White House declined to comment on the president’s current thinking about firing members of his administration. “If the president doesn’t have confidence in someone he will let you know,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. “We have no personnel announcements at this time.”

The likelihood of Trump firing top officials he’s been frustrated with or feels betrayed by is expected to increase over the holidays, the current and former officials said.

CIA Director Gina Haspel was so convinced she might be fired that she was seen cleaning personal items out of her office at CIA headquarters last month after Trump ousted Defense Secretary Mark Esper, according to three former and current administration officials familiar with the matter.

Haspel’s job has been rumored to be in doubt in the weeks after the election, in part because of her reluctance to release classified documents related to Russian interference in the 2016 election, even when other intelligence community leaders like John Ratcliffe have pushed to release the information. But her position may now be more secure than it was even a few weeks ago, officials said, given that several Senate Republicans conveyed their support for her to the White House.

Still, officials said Trump could decide to fire Haspel anyway. “That hasn’t been put to rest,” one former senior administration official said.

When asked about Haspel packing up her personal items in her office, a CIA spokesperson said, “I stopped by Director Haspel’s office, and right there on her conference room table was one of her favorite mementos, a bowl with the London skyline.”

Florida shuts down bay known nationally for its oysters

Florida shuts down bay known nationally for its oysters

Brendan Farrington                            

 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Because of a dwindling oyster population, a Florida agency voted unanimously Wednesday to shut down oyster harvesting in Apalachicola Bay through the end of 2025, dealing a blow to an area that historically produced 90% of the state’s oysters and 10% of the nation’s.

People in the area are divided between coming up with a long-term plan to save the industry, and allowing it to continue on a limited basis. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation commission did express the hope of reopening the bay before the ban on commercial and recreational harvesting ends if oysters recover sooner.

“If we can get there faster, that’s everyone’s desire,” Commissioner Michael Sole said. “Look, time is money for these people. I understand why we’re saying a five-year time horizon, I just think that should be the outside edge of our closure and we should be driven to doing what we can to make this as fast as possible.”

The state is using a $20 million grant to help restore the bay, which used to support more than 100 families with its abundance of oysters.

“It breaks my heart, man. I’ve watched boats out there my whole life,” said Brandon Martina, who works at Lynn’s Quality Oysters, a bay-front business his family has run since 1971. The business started out as a wholesale oyster-shucking house, but as supplies dwindled, they converted it into a retail seafood shop and restaurant.

But instead of serving Apalachicola oysters, they’re buying them from Texas.

“We went from running tractor-trailer loads to getting maybe eight to 10 bags a day, so we just started doing a hatch shell bar,” he said.

The commission issued an emergency order in July shutting down oyster harvesting on Aug. 1 until it could consider the five-year shutdown. The industry has struggled for years, in large part because of a drain on freshwater flowing into the bay. Atlanta uses the water upstream as a water supply, and as it has drawn more water, it’s affected the salinity level in the bay that helps oysters thrive.

David Barber owns a wholesale and retail oyster and seafood business in nearby Eastpoint. He’s one of less than a handful of wholesalers in a region that used to have dozens, but now he’s selling Texas oysters.

Still, he thinks a five-year closure is going too far, saying the right conditions could help oyster populations spring back quickly.

“They should listen to the people who work the bay, especially some older guys,” Barber said. “I don’t think nobody in the county is against them closing it for a little while to let them repopulate. … If it takes five years, that’s another thing, but they can do it year by year.”

The sweet, salty, plump mollusks are prized well beyond the region, and tourists have flocked to tiny, lost-in-time Apalachicola — population 2,354 and known to locals as Apalach — to enjoy water views at restaurants that served raw, shucked oysters pulled out of the bay that morning.

The once-booming oyster industry is part of the lifeblood of Apalachicola, a town that has had to reinvent itself over the past two centuries. In the 1830s as the cotton industry grew, the town became the third-largest port on the Gulf of Mexico, trailing only New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama.

Cotton made Apalachicola wealthy, but after the Civil War it turned to a new source of wealth: lumber. When lumber faded, it reinvented itself again and prospered on shrimping and oyster harvesting.

As the seafood industry took a hit, Apalachicola turned to tourism and is now known for it’s 19th- and early 20th-century buildings, quaint independent shops, restaurants, bars and easy-going pace.

Still, the oyster industry provides jobs, leaving many to have to look elsewhere for work. For decades, Apalachicola by far led the state in oyster production, but the decline began about three decades ago and the industry nearly collapsed in 2012.

Shannon Hartsfield used to work the waters, but gave it up eight years ago because of shrinking oyster supplies. He now works with university researchers studying the bay and efforts to help it recover.

“It doesn’t need to reopen until it can sustain 100, 150 families instead of just three or four,” Hartsfield said, recalling the days when the industry was booming. “Shoot, all the way down the beach there were oyster houses, and right now there’s only one. David Barber is the only one that’s even got a shucking house in Eastpoint, and there’s only two in Apalach. That’s crazy. Between Apalach and Eastpoint there were probably over 60 processing plants.”

City to auction spot to push demolish button on Trump casino

City to auction spot to push demolish button on Trump casino

Wayne Perry                      

 

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — One of President Donald Trump’s former Atlantic City casinos will be blown up next month, and for the right amount of money, you could be the one to press the button that brings it down.

The demolition of the former Trump Plaza casino will become a fundraiser to benefit the Boys & Girls Club of Atlantic City that the mayor hopes will raise in excess of $1 million

Opened in 1984, Trump’s former casino was closed in 2014 and has fallen into such a state of disrepair that demolition work began earlier this year. The remainder of the structure will be dynamited on Jan. 29.

“Some of Atlantic City’s iconic moments happened there, but on his way out, Donald Trump openly mocked Atlantic City, saying he made a lot of money and then got out,” said Mayor Marty Small. “I wanted to use the demolition of this place to raise money for charity.”

The Boys & Girls Club has hired a professional auction company to solicit bids from Thursday through Jan. 19, when the top bids will be revealed and a live auction will determine a winner. The organization provides after-school and summer recreation, education and career-training programs for Atlantic City children and teens.

Trump, then a real-estate developer, opened the casino in a prime spot at the center of Atlantic City’s Boardwalk where the Atlantic City Expressway deposited cars entering the resort. It was the site of many high-profile boxing matches, which Trump would regularly attend.

It closed in 2014, one of four Atlantic City casinos to shut down that year, followed by another former Trump casino, the Taj Mahal, in 2016. That property has since reopened as the Hard Rock casino.

The third casino Trump used to own here, Trump Marina, was sold to Texas billionaire Tilman Fertitta in 2011 and is now the Golden Nugget.

Trump cut most ties with Atlantic City in 2009 aside from a 10% fee for the use of his name on what were then three casinos in the city. That stake was extinguished when billionaire Carl Icahn took ownership of the company out of bankruptcy court in February 2016.

Trump Plaza has sat empty for six years, and has been deteriorating. Earlier this year, large pieces of the facade broke loose from one of the hotel towers and came crashing to the ground. In one storm, additional debris fell from the structure onto the Boardwalk.

Icahn owns the former Trump Plaza building, and has agreed to the demolition. Small said he is eager to discuss potential uses for the land with Icahn once the casino is gone, including some sort of family attraction.

“Not often does inner-city oceanfront land open up,” the mayor said. “We have one chance to get this right.”

The last casino implosion in Atlantic City was in Oct. 2007 when the former Sands casino was dynamited to make way for a new casino-hotel project that ultimately was never built.

Franklin Graham Says Trump ‘Will Go Down in History As One of the Great Presidents’

Newsweek

Franklin Graham Says Trump ‘Will Go Down in History As One of the Great Presidents’

By Rebecca Speare-Cole          December 16, 2020

Evangelical leader Pastor Franklin Graham has thanked God for Donald Trump’s four years in the White House, saying he will “go down in history as one of the great presidents.”

Graham posted a lengthy statement on Facebook on Monday, writing that he had been asked if he was disappointed about the election but was instead “grateful to God” for the past four years.

The pastor, a Trump supporter since 2016, said the president had “protected our religious liberties,” “stood up for the lives of the unborn” and “nominated conservative judges to the Supreme Court.”

His statement came after the 538 members of the Electoral College met to cast their ballots for president and vice president, formalizing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ victory.

Rev. Franklin Graham
Franklin Graham records an invocation to the Republican National Convention on August 27, 2020.DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

 

Trump has refused to concede and continues to make unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud. Over the past few weeks his campaign and Republican allies have launched dozens of lawsuits in key battleground states, but nearly all of them have failed.

Graham, one of the nation’s most prominent evangelical Christian leaders, was seen as a key voice to maintain the president’s support among white evangelicals ahead of the election last month.

After the electoral college vote on Monday, he wrote on Facebook: “People have asked if I am disappointed about the election. When I think about my answer, I have to say honestly, that I am grateful—grateful to God that for the last four years.

“He gave us a president who protected our religious liberties; grateful for a president who defended the lives of the unborn, standing publicly against abortion and the bloody smear it has made on our nation; grateful for a president who nominated conservative judges to the Supreme Court and to our federal courts; grateful for a president who built the strongest economy in 70 years with the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years before the pandemic; grateful for a president who strengthened and supported our military; grateful for a president who stood against “the swamp” and the corruption in Washington; grateful for a president who supported law and order and defended our police.

Graham also wrote that Trump and Vice President Mike Pence had recognized the importance of prayer and were not ashamed of the name Jesus Christ.

He said: “I’m thankful that the president stood against the secularists who wanted to take Christ out of Christmas and that he brought back the greeting ‘Merry Christmas!’ So as we come to the end of this election season, I look back with a grateful heart and thank God for all of these things.”

Trump has repeatedly railed against the phrase “Happy Holidays” for being politically correct, while seeking to perpetuate the idea that US citizens have been barred from using the more traditional greeting “Merry Christmas.”

The president insisted that he “led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase,” although his predecessor, Barack Obama often wished Americans a Merry Christmas during his presidency.

Graham finished his statement saying: “It is unfortunate that many people got confused and made the election about personalities rather than the policies of the candidates. President Trump will go down in history as one of the great presidents of our nation, bringing peace and prosperity to millions here in the U.S. and around the world. May God bless him, Melania, and their family, as God leads him to the next chapter in his life.”

trump graham franklin
Franklin Graham talks with President Donald Trump during a ceremony to honour his late father Billy Graham on February 28, 2018, in Washington, D.C.RON SACHS-POOL/GETTY IMAGES

 

White evangelical Christians have been one of Trump’s strongest bases of support since 2016. Exit polling by Pew Research Center showed about 8 in 10 evangelical Christians had voted for Trump four years ago. But a survey by the non-partisan think tank in June found that somewhat less—72 percent—of white evangelicals approved of the job Trump was doing as president.

Graham recently claimed in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network that Democrats were “opposed to faith,” although President-elect Biden is a devout Catholic.

In September, more than 10,000 Christians signed a petition calling for Graham to be removed as the head of the humanitarian aid organization Samaritan’s Purse following his prayer in support of President Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention.

Graham is not the only high-profile evangelical leader who supports Trump. Paula White, the president’s spiritual leader, held an impassioned live-streamed prayer the day after the election that sparked hundreds of internet memes.

U.S. sees biggest yearly jump in poverty rate in 60 years

U.S. sees biggest yearly jump in poverty rate in 60 years

Tim O’Donnell                         December 16, 2020

 

By historical standards, poverty levels in the United States remain low, but the country has seen the biggest jump in poverty in a single year since the government began tracking such information 60 years ago, The Washington Post reports.

New data released Wednesday by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame shows the poverty rate increased to 11.7 percent in November, up 2.4 percentage points since June, marking the fifth straight month of incline. In that time span, around 7.8 million Americans have fallen below the poverty line, or an income of $26,200 for a family of four.

Not only is the rise the largest in several decades, it is also nearly double the second-biggest increase, which occurred between 1979 and 1980 during the oil crisis, the Post reports.

Notre Dame and University of Chicago economists say the situation, unsurprisingly, stems from the coronavirus pandemic and the tough labor market it has created, as well as the fact that government aid is dwindling. A solution to either would help — when Congress passed the CARES Act in the spring and sent stimulus checks to Americans, poverty actually decreased — and it looks like a new relief bill is the more realistic goal. “Given the state of the virus, I wouldn’t bet on significant improvement in the labor market in the short run,” James Sullivan, a professor at Notre Dame, told the Post.

Mar-a-Lago neighbors to Trump: Spend your post-presidency elsewhere

Washington Post – Style

Mar-a-Lago neighbors to Trump: Spend your post-presidency elsewhere

By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Carol D. Loennig        December 15, 2020

 

President Trump, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago in April 2017.

Next-door neighbors of Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Fla., that he has called his Winter White House, have a message for the outgoing commander in chief: We don’t want you to be our neighbor.

That message was formally delivered Tuesday morning in a demand letter delivered to the town of Palm Beach and also addressed to the U.S. Secret Service asserting that Trump lost his legal right to live at Mar-a-Lago because of an agreement he signed in the early 1990s when he converted the storied estate from his private residence to a private club. The legal maneuver could, at long last, force Palm Beach to publicly address whether Trump can make Mar-a-Lago his legal residence and home, as he has been expected to do, when he becomes an ex-president after the swearing-in of Joe Biden on Jan. 20.

The contretemps sets up a potentially awkward scenario, unique in recent history, in which a former Oval Office occupant would find himself having to officially defend his choice of a place to live during his post-presidency. It also could create a legal headache for Trump because he changed his official domicile to Mar-a-Lago, leaving behind Manhattan, where he lived before being elected president and came to fame as a brash, self-promoting developer. (Trump originally tried to register to vote in Florida using the White House in Washington as his address, which is not allowed under Florida law. He later changed the registration to the Mar-a-Lago address.)

In the demand letter, obtained by The Washington Post, an attorney for the Mar-a-Lago neighbors says the town should notify Trump that he cannot use Mar-a-Lago as his residence. Making that move would “avoid an embarrassing situation” if the outgoing president moves to the club and later has to be ordered to leave, according to the letter sent on behalf of the neighbors, the DeMoss family, which runs an international missionary foundation.

For years, various neighbors have raised concerns about disruptions, such as clogged traffic and blocked streets, caused by the president’s frequent trips to the club. Even before he was president, Trump created ill will in the town by refusing to comply with even basic local requirements, such as adhering to height limits for a massive flagpole he installed, and frequently attempting to get out of the promises he had made when he converted Mar-a-Lago into a private club.

“There’s absolutely no legal theory under which he can use that property as both a residence and a club,” said Glenn Zeitz, another nearby Palm Beach homeowner who has joined the fight against Trump and had previously tangled with him over Trump’s attempt to seize a private home to expand his Atlantic City casino. “Basically he’s playing a dead hand. He’s not going to intimidate or bluff people because we’re going to be there.”

A White House spokesperson and Palm Beach’s mayor did not respond to requests for comment. To date, Palm Beach has made no public attempt to prevent Trump from living at Mar-a-Lago or from using it as his legal residence.

“There is no document or agreement in place that prohibits President Trump from using Mar-a-Lago as his residence,” said a Trump business organization spokesman who was not authorized to speak publicly about a legal issue.

The Mar-a-Lago residence that Trump plans to call home after departing the White House.

The current residency controversy tracks back to a deal Trump cut in 1993 when his finances were foundering, and the cost of maintaining Mar-a-Lago was soaring into the multimillions each year. Under the agreement, club members are banned from spending more than 21 days a year in the club’s guest suites and cannot stay there for any longer than seven consecutive days. Before the arrangement was sealed, an attorney for Trump assured the town council in a public meeting that he would not live at Mar-a-Lago.

At the time, the town’s leaders were wary of Trump because he had sued them after they blocked his attempt to subdivide the historic Mar-a-Lago property into multiple housing lots. Placing the limitations on lengths of stays assured that Trump’s property would remain a private club, as he had promised, rather than a residential hotel.

Documents obtained by The Post via a public records request suggest there may be gaps in Palm Beach’s enforcement of key provisions of the agreement that could affect Trump’s ability to live at the club. Each year, the club is required to report whether at least 50 percent of Mar-a-Lago’s members live or work in Palm Beach; that the club has fewer than 500 members; and that no one is using the guest suites more than 21 days a year. However, the town says it has no records of the reports for four of the past 20 years.

Trump has repeatedly attempted to change parts of his agreement. In 2018 he asked the town to waive a provision banning him from building a dock at the club, initially saying the Secret Service and local law enforcement officials needed the structure for his protection. The reasoning was later changed to say the dock was for the private use of the president and first lady Melania Trump. Neighbors feared that the dock would be used for rowdy booze cruises. Trump withdrew the dock request early this year — three days after a Washington Post report that unearthed the details of his 1993 agreement with the town.

Trump has traveled to Mar-a-Lago at least 30 times during his presidency, and spent at least 130 days there, according to a Post tally. There has been no public indication that the town has raised objections about that practice. Trump also has appeared to openly flout the agreement, stating on Mar-a-Lago’s website that he maintains private quarters there.

During his presidency, Palm Beach has shown deference on security issues, allowing a helipad that was expressly prohibited in his 1993 agreement. Once Trump leaves office, he will no longer have use of the helipad.

The 1993 Palm Beach agreement isn’t the only document that raises questions about whether Trump can legally live at Mar-a-Lago. He also signed a document deeding development rights for Mar-a-Lago to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a Washington-based, privately funded nonprofit organization that works to save historic sites around the country. As part of the National Trust deal, Trump agreed to “forever” relinquish his rights to develop Mar-a-Lago or to use it for “any purpose other than club use.”

The National Trust did not respond to requests for comment.

The controversy over Trump’s expected move to Mar-a-Lago could muddy matters for the Secret Service, which will continue to protect him after he leaves office. Government agencies take pains to comply with all federal and local laws in their activities, and a legal dispute over Trump’s right to set up residence at Mar-a-Lago could complicate the Secret Service’s ongoing work to prepare for staff to secure his home and safety there.

A Secret Service spokesperson declined to comment.

Since this year’s election, the Secret Service has been preparing for Trump’s life after the White House and the protections he is legally due as a former president. A much-reduced set of Secret Service agents will shadow him in his private life, and the agency will man and occupy a separate room at his property as a base of security operations.

The protective service would need to make living arrangements for its agents in advance of Trump leaving the White House — wherever he ends up living. If he is suddenly blocked from living at Mar-a-Lago, the Secret Service would most likely have to scramble to develop a new plan to protect him at a different location.

The Mar-a-Lago neighbors would be okay with Trump finding a new place to bunk. Their letter, written by West Palm Beach attorney Reginald Stambaugh, includes a zinger that harks to the vibe of the old money enclave on Florida’s east coast: “Palm Beach has many lovely estates for sale, and we are confident President Trump will find one which meets his needs.”

Philip Bump contributed to this report.

Manuel Roig-Franzia is a feature writer in The Washington Post’s Style section, where he profiles national figures in the worlds of politics, the law and the arts. He previously served as bureau chief in Miami for The Post’s National staff and in Mexico City for the Post’s Foreign staff. He is the author of a biography of Sen. Marco Rubio.
Carol Leonnig is an investigative reporter at The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2000. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her work on security failures and misconduct inside the Secret Service.