Trump’s (Press)‘credentials’ threat is an empty one — and it won’t solve his problems

ThinkProgress

Trump’s (Press)‘credentials’ threat is an empty one — and it won’t solve his problems

Simply put, Donald Trump doesn’t understand how the political press works.

Jason Linkins May 10, 2018

Washington, D.C. May 8th: Donald Trump announces his decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in the diplomatic room at the White House. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

President Donald Trump brought some fresh complaints about the press to Twitter Wednesday morning, seemingly in response to news that broke overnight about the shell company his lawyer and self-styled fixer, Michael Cohen, may have used to facilitate hush-money payoffs to adult film actress Stormy Daniels — as well as some decidedly off-book lobbying fees collected from a handful of companies.

As is his wont, Trump offered another blistering attack on the media, loosed from all capitalization conventions, for continuing to report on him. “91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake),” he wrote, adding, “Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?”

trump tweet: The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?

Trump, who’s never given any indication that he distinguishes between negative commentary about him and objectively true facts that cast him in a bad light, essentially told on himself in this instance.

As ThinkProgress’ Aaron Rupar noted, Trump’s outburst was “a major tell,” in that he made it “explicitly” clear “that he considers all negative coverage of him to be fake.”

But attention soon turned to the unsettling aspect of Trump’s interjection, the part where he threatened to take away some unspecified group of reporters’ credentials.

As you might expect, the focus fell on the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), whose members do depend on credentials to work within the White House’s confines. Bloomberg’s senior White House correspondent Margaret Talev, who currently serves as the WHCA’s president, addressed the matter in a statement:

“Some may excuse the president’s inflammatory rhetoric about the media, but just because the president does not like news coverage does not make it fake. A free press must be able to report on the good, the bad, and the momentous and the mundane, without fear or favor. And a president preventing a free and independent press from covering the workings of our republic would be an unconscionable assault on the First Amendment.”

Of course, while an appeal to higher principles provides the obligatory covering of the bases, it doesn’t really resolve the matter, because Trump is immune to such appeals. Nevertheless, all this talk of revoking credentials is something of an empty threat; even if the president does revoke everyone’s credentials, it won’t stem the tide of the coverage he dislikes, and it could even exacerbate the problems he perceives himself to have.

Trump is not like previous presidents, and his relationship with the White House press corps bears the imprint of this abnormality. Trump doesn’t understand that a typical presidential administration has a sort of partnership with the press corps. This doesn’t mean the relationship isn’t somewhat adversarial, and it doesn’t mean that any other press secretary might not try to spin the reporters in the room. But the press corps functionally exists to take down copy: What are the big ideas the administration wants to drive today? What policy initiatives is the president focused on? What responses can the White House offer to the news of the day?

More than anything else, the White House is supposed to give the press corps ideas with which to contend, report out, and follow up on. Every day, there is an opportunity for the president to make an argument, and for a room full of reporters to communicate that argument to their audiences.

But Trump’s frame of reference, as far as the media goes, is rooted in the New York City tabloid wars in which he sparred as a big shot real-estate developer. To Trump, it’s all about primate dominance, and getting in your licks — not about presenting a set of core beliefs, or building a case for a policy idea.

As NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen told ThinkProgress’ Sam Fulwood in an interview this week, “He’s not attempting to persuade a majority of the country to his side.”

“He’s not engaging in normal persuasion tactics for which approval ratings and polling are the measure of that,” Rosen continued. “He’s trying to cement a psychological bond with his core supporters that can’t be broken.”

The only role the White House press corps can possibly play in the Trump White House, as he has conceived it, is that of a defeated antagonist, plucked as spoils for his base. That’s the entire basis for the threat to their credentials.

But an exiled press corps isn’t going to simply go home and sulk. They are reporters, and they’ll just keep on reporting — now with renewed resolve and a lot more time on their hands. And loosed into the wide world, they’ll just join up with a coterie of other reporters who are already busy applying themselves to the task of keeping the Trump administration honest.

What Trump doesn’t seem to understand is it’s these journalists, outside the briefing room, who have been primarily responsible for serving up the stories that so anger him. Over these reporters, Trump has no leverage. He can’t stop ProPublica from investigating where the funds provided for his inauguration festivities have gone. He has no credential to revoke from the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold, who’s currently commanding a deep dive into Trump’s debt.

Of all the stories that have been broken in the wake of Michael Avenatti’s extraordinary reveal of Michael Cohen’s shell corporation, none were written by a reporter who needed to cross the threshold of the briefing room to get it. Pull the press corps’ laminates or don’t, but if there are hits to be had, the hits will keep on coming. The only thing a banished press corps gets you is a diminished capacity to further your own message.

The simple fact of the matter is that if Trump wanted to take a decisive step to end the terrible press he’s gotten of late, he shouldn’t be pulling any reporters’ credentials; he should just keep his own advisers and allies from going on television on a daily basis to talk about his ongoing legal entanglements.

But here, too, we find a concept to which Trump has a deep aversion. He can’t not hit back. And he seems to have a deep and abiding need to see his guys out there, on television, sparring. Never mind that it only compounds his problems. And so you have Rudy Giuliani, late of a string of disaster-laced media hits, confidently telling the Washington Post’s Robert Costa, “Everybody’s reacting to us now, and I feel good about that because that’s what I came in to do.”

You can, perhaps, understand Trump’s exasperation. This is his plan, it’s playing out exactly the way he drew it up — but his life nevertheless refuses to get better. So it must be yet another system rigged against him. Whatever is happening, it has to be “fake” in some way.

Olivia Nuzzi tweet: Donald Trump suggests taking away press credentials as punishment for “negative (fake)” coverage. His campaign did this to many reporters, including me. It made it more logistically challenging to cover him, but the banned press still covered him.

At any rate, at some point in the future, Trump may actually revoke the White House press corps credentials. Yes, this is a threat to the freedom of the press, and you can expect the WHCA to fight back. But it’s really not that new: Trump has denied reporters their access in the past, and they’ve all managed to surmount the obstacle. As it turns out, life on Donald Trump’s blacklist is really not that bad, unless you’re Donald Trump.

Utah High Schoolers Convinced State Lawmakers to Admit Climate Change Is Real

EcoWatch

Utah High Schoolers Convinced State Lawmakers to Admit Climate Change Is Real

Lorraine Chow May 10, 2018

Panoramic view of Logan, Utah. Michael Gordon / CC BY 3.0

Utah’s state lawmakers aren’t exactly friendly to climate change legislation. Their Republican governor said in 2015 that man-made climate change is “a little debatable.” In 2010, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a resolution that implied global warming is a conspiracy and urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to stop all carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs.

But thanks to a group of fearless high schoolers, Gov. Gary Herbert reversed the 2010 measure this past March, with the support of 75 percent of Republican legislators.

The resolution, which Herbert signed on March 20, “encourages the responsible stewardship of natural resources and reduction of emissions through incentives and support of the growth in technologies and services that will enlarge the economy.”

This valiant, two-year effort was detailed in a High Country News op-ed this week by Jack Greene, a retired high school teacher who works with Utah students on environmental issues.

According to Greene, a group of students at Logan High School were shocked after learning about the 2010 resolution and sprung to action. He described how the students have already witnessed Utah’s longer and more intense fire seasons, a dwindling snowpack and increasing water scarcity.

“My generation and generations to come will inherit the many threats that climate change poses,” student Piper Chirstian told Greene.

They eventually drafted their own bill and gathered support from grassroots groups, business coalitions and key lawmakers.

In 2017, they enlisted Republican legislator Rep. Becky Edwards to sponsor the resolution, “Economic and Environmental Stewardship.”

Although this attempt failed, the students did not give up, and “partnered with a coalition of advocacy organizations, whose volunteers met with representatives from nearly every Utah political district,” Greene reported.

The bill’s supporters pled to legislators to consider the effects of climate change on the state’s future.

“We, as youth leaders of Utah, have assembled with you, our state leaders, to address what we consider to be the paramount issue of our generation—that of a changing climate,” one student said.

During the 2018 legislative general session, after impassioned testimony from the students, the bill gained traction. It made it out of committee by an 8-2 vote, Green wrote, “then, at last, came success as the House passed the resolution 51-21 and the Senate 23-3.”

Those opposed to the bill included Rep. Mike Noel. As quoted by The Salt Lake Tribute, Noel told the students: “This whole issue of climate change has been used by organizations to fool people.”

The Utah Legislature, however, was no fool.

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Study Uncovers Surprising New Reason to Go Local

EcoWatch

Study Uncovers Surprising New Reason to Go Local

Olivia Rosane May 9, 2018

Pexels

There are lots of ecological reasons to buy local food, from reducing the carbon footprint of the meals you eat to preventing agribusiness‘ destruction of unique ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest.

But research published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday uncovered another surprising benefit to local agriculture: it is also better for the environment of countries that currently import lots of food.

This is because, when local crops are displaced by cheaper imports, farmland is then drafted into service growing less sustainable crops, with environmental consequences for the importing country.

The study pointed out that its findings go against conventional wisdom, which held that importing countries benefited from global food trade at the ecological expense of exporting countries.

“What is obvious is not always the whole truth,” study author and Michigan State University (MSU) Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability Director Jianguo “Jack” Liu said in an MSU press release. “Unless a world is examined in a systemic, holistic way, environmental costs will be overlooked,” she said.

To undertake that systemic examination, the study’s authors looked at the international soybean trade.

As the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies explained, Brazil is the world’s second-largest producer of soybeans, and its efforts to clear land for that production is a “major driver of deforestation in the Amazon basin.”

But the study found that the trade also hurt countries like China, which is the world’s largest soybean importer.

As China imported more and more soybeans, local farmers could no longer compete and converted their fields to crops like corn and rice, which require more nutrients to grow and therefore result in an increase in Nitrogen pollution.

The study looked specifically at the highest-producing agricultural land in China, in the country’s northeast, and found that the greatest increases in Nitrogen pollution there came from fields that had flipped from soy to rice, followed by fields that had flipped from soy to corn.

Researchers further examined 160 cases on six continents and found Nitrogen levels went up when fields in importing countries switched from soy to other, more demanding crops like wheat, vegetables, corn or rice.

The study’s abstract concluded with a call for more research into the environmental consequences of international trade agreements for importing countries,

According to the MSU press release, another potential area of study would be fields in Mexico and South America that have switched from corn to more nutrient-demanding vegetables due to an influx in cheap corn from the U.S. The release noted that changes in crops can also put increased pressure on local water supplies.

“This study underscores the need to pay attention to both sides of international trade not rely on conventional wisdom,” Liu said in the MSU press release.

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Costa Rica President Announces ‘Titanic and Beautiful Task’ of Abolishing Fossil Fuels

EcoWatch

Costa Rica President Announces ‘Titanic and Beautiful Task’ of Abolishing Fossil Fuels

Lorraine Chow May 10, 2018

Puntarenas, Costa Rica. kansasphoto/ Flickr / CC BY 2.0

Carlos Alvarado, the new president of Costa Rica, announced the country’s “titanic and beautiful task of abolishing the use of fossil fuels in our economy to make way for the use of clean and renewable energies.”

He made the remarks at his inauguration speech Wednesday in front of a crowd of thousands, the Independent reported.

The 38-year-old former journalist also wants the country to be a global example in decarbonization.

“Decarbonization is the great task of our generation, and Costa Rica must be among the first countries in the world to achieve it, if not the first,” he said.

His goal is for Costa Rica to lead the Paris agreement on climate change and be a “world decarbonization laboratory” before the United Nations’ climate talks in 2020 (COP 26).

The Central American nation already derives most of its electricity without using fossil fuels. Last year, the country of 4.8 million people ran for 300 consecutive days on its renewable energy mix of hydropower, wind and geothermal. That impressive feat bested its 2015 record of 299 days of 100 percent renewable production. It also went 271 days using only renewable energy production in 2016.

Despite a 98 percent renewable power grid, Costa Rica has a gasoline-dependent transportation sector, with roughly half of its emissions coming from transport.

Still, the government has been working hard to green its fleet. Former president Luis Guillermo Solís signed a law that eliminates sales, customs and circulation taxes for electric vehicles and allows them to use municipal parking facilities free of charge.

Alvarado, who arrived to his inauguration ceremony at the Plaza de la Democracy on a hydrogen bus, campaigned on modernizing and electrifying older modes of transport, promoting research and development in hydrogen and biofuels, and banning oil and gas exploration in the country.

In a speech last month, he announced intentions to ban fossil fuels for transportation by 2021, the year Costa Rica reaches 200 years of independence.

Energy experts, however, cast doubt on the plan, as Reuters reported. They warn that the plan to eliminate fossil fuels in a handful of years is unrealistic.

Oscar Echeverría, president of the Vehicle and Machinery Importers Association, said the switch to clean transport cannot be rushed because the market is so far undeveloped.

“If there’s no previous infrastructure, competence, affordable prices and waste management we’d be leading this process to failure. We need to be careful,” Echeverría explained to the news service.

But economist Mónica Araya, a Costa Rican sustainability expert and director of Costa Rica Limpia, praised the government’s focus on weaning off polluting energy sources.

“Getting rid of fossil fuels is a big idea coming from a small country. This is an idea that’s starting to gain international support with the rise of new technologies,” she told Reuters. “Tackling resistance to change is one of the most important tasks we have right now.”

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Costa Rica Runs Entirely on Renewable Energy for 300 Days

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The Best Renewable Energy Stock You’ve Never Heard Of (And It Pays a 3.3% Dividend)

The Motley Fool

The Best Renewable Energy Stock You’ve Never Heard Of (And It Pays a 3.3% Dividend)

This utility is retiring coal plants ahead of schedule and investing billions in renewables, which could supply 45% of its power by 2027.

Maxx Chatsko May 10, 2018

Things are moving fast in renewable energy. Really fast. Consider that in 2008 wind farms supplied just 1.5% of all electricity in the United States. But by 2019 wind power is expected to contribute 6.9% of American electricity and overtake hydropower as the top renewable energy source.

The rise of wind power wouldn’t have been possible without two companies in particular, which combine to own 20.7 gigawatts of wind capacity, or about 24% of the country’s total. Investors wouldn’t be surprised to learn that clean energy provider NextEra Energy is one of the renewable energy stocks most important to American wind power. However, the relatively unheard of natural gas and electric utility Xcel Energy (NASDAQ:XEL) doesn’t seem to garner nearly the same level of attention. Overlooking it could be a mistake.

With 10-year total returns of 226% and plans to grow its dividend and EPS at annual clips of 5% to 7% — all while investing billions in new wind and solar capacity — it could be the best renewable energy stock you’ve never heard of.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

By the numbers

One look at Xcel Energy’s geographic footprint shows why it’s a leading player in wind power. All of its operations are located in the American wind corridor from the Dakotas to West Texas. The region is home to the majority of the nation’s wind capacity, including all of the company’s 6.7 GW.

That will make it a lot easier to reach the long-term goals to shift its generation mix away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. Consider how the company’s generation mix has changed and is expected to change over time:

Generation Source	2005	2017	2027 (estimate)
Coal	56%	37%	22%
Natural gas	23%	23%	17%
Nuclear	12%	13%	13%
Renewables	3%	23%	45%

SOURCE: COMPANY PRESENTATION.

Early retirements of coal-fired power plants and pouring billions into renewable energy have reduced Xcel’s carbon emissions 35% from 2005 to 2017. Using 2005 as a baseline, Xcel Energy is targeting 50% reductions in carbon emissions by 2022 and greater than 60% by 2027. The next phase will be driven by $4.25 billion of investment into renewables between this year and 2022. Most of it will fund over 3 GW of new wholly owned wind capacity, boosting the company’s total installed capacity 46%.

It’s all part of the “steel for fuel” strategy. The idea is simple: Xcel Energy will replace perpetual fuel expenses from traditional power sources, such as coal, with “steel in the ground” for wind turbines, which don’t require fuel inputs once installed. The company’s advantageous position in the American wind corridor and the installation of highly efficient turbines have already proven the strategy. Fuel expense fell from 44% of electric revenue in 2013 to less than 39% in 2017. It was a win-win for shareholders and the company’s electric utility customers: average monthly bills dropped from $83.52 to $81 in that span.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

When combined with rate increases from state regulators, lower fuel expenses helped to boost Xcel Energy’s net income 17% from 2013 to 2017. That’s despite revenue growth of just 4.5% in the period. In fact, renewable energy investments have allowed the company to grow EPS at a compound annual growth rate of 5.9% from 2005 to 2017. The dividend has grown 6.3% annually from 2013 to 2018.

That track record should give investors confidence that the company can deliver on its goals of growing EPS 5% to 6% per year and the dividend 5% to 7% per year. And in case investors aren’t convinced, fuel expenses are projected to fall to just 28% of electric revenue by 2027, freeing even more cash flow for reinvestment into the business or redistribution to shareholders.

Similarly, Xcel Energy’s renewable energy leadership should provide confidence in its ability to deliver on the next phase of the growth plan, from 2022 onward, which includes a stronger focus on solar power and energy storage. Right now, however, the focus is on the nearer term.

The main focus is on an upcoming decision from state regulators in Colorado on the company’s proposal to shutter 660 MW of coal and replace it with 1 GW of new wind, 700 MW of solar, and another 700 MW of natural gas or energy storage. If given the green light in summer 2018, then Xcel Energy will have no remaining question marks surrounding its current investment plan that runs through 2022. The stock could respond well to the added certainty.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

Is this renewable energy stock a buy?

Xcel Energy has largely flown under the radar in discussions of renewable energy stocks, but that’s no fault of the company. The predominantly electric utility is a shining example of how companies can lead the United States to a clean energy future — and proving that it can be a profitable endeavor. A healthy 3.3% dividend (and growing), falling operating expenses, and a long-term history of beating the total returns of the S&P 500 show that this renewable energy stock is worth a closer look at the very least — and maybe even a spot in your portfolio.

Maxx Chatsko has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Pruitt Resumes Courting Industry as Ethics Controversies Swirl

Bloomberg – Politics

Pruitt Resumes Courting Industry as Ethics Controversies Swirl

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Ari Natter May 9, 2018

EPA chief holds summit with mining, railroad, and other groups…No need to choose between environment and business, he says

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

Embattled EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is seeking to shift the limelight away from questions about his ethics and instead focus attention on his efforts to eliminate regulations on oil drillers, farmers, home builders and automakers.

Pruitt convened a meeting Wednesday of industry representatives, ranging from the National Mining Association to the Association of American Railroads, with a pledge to collaborate.

The session marked the second meeting of the Environmental Protection Agency’s newly revived “Smart Sectors” program, designed to formally solicit the input of the industries the agency regulates. Although 13 specific sectors, including mining, agriculture and chemical manufacturing are part of the program, it doesn’t include environmentalists and public health experts.

Pruitt told the group they no longer had to choose between protecting the environment and industry, as he outlined plans to accelerate permitting of new factories and refineries. Other industry groups that participated in the session included the National Association of Home Builders, the American Chemistry Council, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Portland Cement Association.

Oil and Coal Executives Clamored for Meetings With Pruitt

“Permitting should not be used as obstruction,” Pruitt told the industry leaders who assembled in a wood-paneled room at the EPA headquarters Wednesday. Signs bearing slogans such as “True Environmentalism” stood in the background. “It should not be used to delay and obstruct so people don’t invest capital,” he said.

Quick-Take: Here’s a Scorecard of the Scott Pruitt Investigations

The session took place amid criticism the EPA has taken a pro-business tilt at the expense of environmental issues.

’We Like Him’

It also came amid a swirl of controversies around Pruitt, who has been dogged for weeks by disclosures about his unorthodox condo rental from a lobbyist, questionable spending decisions and frequent taxpayer-funded travel.

There was no mention of that at the meeting on Wednesday. When asked by a reporter if he still had the confidence of the White House, Pruitt said: “I think they’ve spoken very clearly.”

Earlier in the day, Marc Short, the White House’s legislative director, said the administrator would remain in his position “for the foreseeable future.”

“We like him,” Short told reporters at the Capitol. “He’s doing a good job.”

The meeting was in keeping with Pruitt’s business-focused schedule recently. He has tried to maintain a low profile with continued public appearance in front of generally friendly audiences. For instance, he said on Twitter that he also met Wednesday with the Industrial Minerals Association to highlight how the EPA is “striving to provide greater regulatory certainty for miners.”

Pruitt also has met with the National Association of Farm Broadcasting to highlight policy changes that could benefit farmers and ranchers, and last month visited Georgia to talk about forest management.

Trump and His Administration Are a Parasite on American Government

Esquire

Trump and His Administration Are a Parasite on American Government

The blight of corruption is festering beneath the surface.

By Charles P. Pierce May 9, 2018

Getty Images

A few years back, in a national forest in Oregon, researchers found the largest single living organism ever discovered on earth. It was a fungus of the genus Armillaria. It covered 1000 hectares of land and it was nearly 9,000 years old. Through a vast system of thick tendrils called rhizomorphs, Armillaria can spread over a huge area and survive by latching onto the root systems of trees, from which it slowly and parasitically dines on the nutrients of the trees until the trees finally fall over, dead. Most of the damage is done underground, and one Armillariacan kill an entire conifer forest.

I’m beginning to think that the corruption of this administration* is the political equivalent of one of these super-fungi. It is so vast, and so much of it is hidden from view, that we may never see it entirely until it’s too late, and a whole lot of important things about this country go dead and topple down.

RELATED STORY: The Word You Are Looking for Is ‘Lie’

The revelations on Tuesday that Michael Cohen, the president*’s personal lawyer, was one of the most ambitious bagmen in American political history all emerged from an improbable source: a lawsuit lodged against the president* by an adult-film actress with whom he allegedly had an affair. We discovered that Cohen reportedly got a half-million dollars from a Russian oligarch with “links” to Vladimir Putin, as though you could even be a Russian oligarch and stay alive without some kind of “links” to the newly re-elected goon-in-chief.

We also learned that a shell company set up by Cohen took in $200,000 in “consulting payments” from AT&T for, as the leaked documents put it, “insights into understanding the new administration.” They could’ve paid me half that and I would have told them all they needed to know: that these people are all a bunch of crooks and that the companies should adjust their payment schedules accordingly.

Getty Images

I mean, really. Trump. Nixon. AT&T. ITT. Where have you gone, Dita Beard? A president* turns his greedy eyes to you.

Robert Mueller’s team already has interviewed Victor Vekselberg, Cohen’s buddy from Moscow, so we can probably assume there’s more there than we already know. (More women who were paid off? Checks with “kompromat” written in Cyrillic on the memo line? Who knows at this point?) The criminal rhizomorphs of this parasitic blight on government extend god knows where. That members of the administration—hi there, Scott Pruitt—see public service as an All-U-Can-Eat buffet on our dime is no secret any more. We’ve had Pruitt’s $43,000 phone booth, Ben Carson’s dinette set, and a great love for taxpayer-funded air travel by almost everyone.

Getty Images

Nor is the fact that the president* has brought the principles he employed in private business into his public duties—to wit, keeping all the really rotten stuff underground by any means necessary, and reneging on debts you don’t have the money to pay anyway. And still, dammit, they can surprise you. As one of the scientists studying the massive Armillaria lamented to The Atlantic:

“I wish all of the substrate would be transparent for five minutes, so I could see where it is and what it’s doing. We would learn so much from a five-minute glimpse.”

Whether we’d all have the guts to look at what this spreading parasitic growth is doing to our country, however, is a whole different matter. If we saw it whole, we might have to do something about it, and then where would we be?

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None of Us Really Know These Guys

Esquire

None of Us Really Know These Guys

Eric Schneiderman completes the unholy trinity of New York’s prominent liberal politicians.

By Charles P. Pierce May 8, 2018

Getty Images

The downfall of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman completes the unholy trinity of prominent liberal New York politicians whose careers went into the acid bath because, at one level or another, they failed to see women as actual human beings. Eliot Spitzer got involved with a prostitution ring. Anthony Weiner used women as sounding boards for his own pleasure. And Schneiderman, allegedly, physically assaulted his romantic partners. And, in this, again, political pundits learn the lesson that gets drummed into every sportswriter over and over: none of us really know these guys.

Hero worship among sportswriters is annoying, but largely harmless and, besides, there’s always someone who doesn’t buy into it. Hero worship in our politics, however, is a dangerous business. The search for the person on a white horse is an open invitation to counterfeit engagement and artificial activism. The impact of celebrity on our politics has been devastating enough; see the current tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for details. It’s a by-product of the constant calls for “leadership” among our political class, many of which are simple appeals for someone—anyone!—to remove the burdens of citizenship and self-government from our shoulders. And that has worked far too well.

Getty Images

Let us dispense easily with any attacks on the journalism in the New Yorker piece. Ronan Farrow just won a Pulitzer for this kind of thing and Jane Mayer is a damn national treasure. Seeing your name as the subject of a story carrying both their bylines is like seeing your career’s death warrant. And Schneiderman’s original statement—that he was engaged in consensual rough sex—was, shall we say, inadequate. (He also allegedly used the considerable power of his office to threaten his victims into silence. Jesus, what a goon.) His swift resignation was more than justified and his disappearance from the ongoing drama of this presidency, while unfortunate, is wholly appropriate. He should’ve been in jail years ago.

Instead, for the purposes of this story, we should focus on one small slice of the account:

After the former girlfriend ended the relationship, she told several friends about the abuse. A number of them advised her to keep the story to herself, arguing that Schneiderman was too valuable a politician for the Democrats to lose. She described this response as heartbreaking. And when Schneiderman heard that she had turned against him, she said, he warned her that politics was a tough and personal business, and that she’d better be careful. She told Selvaratnam that she had taken this as a threat.

Who in the hell counsels a friend to hush up a violent assault on these grounds? My politics are as important to me as anyone’s are but if, say, Sherrod Brown came and burglarized your house, I wouldn’t tell you to let him keep your jewelry because we need him to save Social Security. (Note to Senator Brown: I do not believe you are a cat burglar.) This is turning your politics into a graven image, a golden calf of the soul. Believe it or not, there are some things that politics ought not to touch. Physical abuse of any kind is high on that list.

Getty Images

(Not for nothing, and it’s a trivial matter compared to the horrors these women say they went through, but the great Dave Dayen has been making the case on the electric Twitter machine that, as a political actor and prosecutor, Schneiderman was pretty much a show-pony anyway.)

These instincts, alas, kicked in almost immediately after Schneiderman’s swift exit from the scene. There were instant calls for Preet Bhahara to replace Schneiderman. (Dayen’s not high on this idea, either.) These were based largely on the fact that Bhahara was 86’d by the president* after having been a thorn in his side as a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. And, just for fun, and for the possibility that the mere rumor would cause the president* to paint his body blue and dance a naked tarantella on the Truman Balcony, I suggested that we get the hashtag, #HRCforNYAG trending.

Preet Bharara. Getty Images

In truth, however, the search for a replacement should not be the search for A Name. For example, there are a lot of people saying good things about Ben Lawsky, a former U.S. Attorney and New York’s first Superintendent of Financial Services, an office created in response to the economic meltdown of 2008-2009. Just a cursory search of the Intertoobz reveals Lawsky to have exactly the kind of attitude that this job needs going forward. In 2014, he said this to The Financial Times:

“Corporations are a legal fiction. You have to deter bad individual conduct within corporations. People who did the conduct are going to be held accountable.”

Hire this man immediately.

Because, even though there is great crowing within the pixels this morning about liberal hypocrisy and how no investigation of the current president* can be trusted, the work goes on. Lawyers and investigators you never heard of are beavering away—in Robert Mueller’s offices, and in the chambers of the New York Attorney General, whoever he may turn out to be. You’re still on the hook, Knocko. There’s just going to be someone new on the other end of the line. And, once the evidence is in, one way or the other, we shouldn’t look to some famous politician to tell us what to do with it. Once we know the truth, it’s on us to provide the consequences.

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RELATED STORY: Oliver North Named President of the NRA

Russian Leverage Over Trump Is Not Just a Theory. It’s Now Fact.

New York Magazine

Daily Intellegencer / The National Interest

Russian Leverage Over Trump Is Not Just a Theory. It’s Now Fact.

By Jonathan Chait May 8, 2018

No pee tape needed. Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP/Getty Images

In the waning weeks of 2016, when the intelligence community and many politicians were passing around terrifying reports about Donald Trump’s links to Russia like samizdat, the frightening possibility arose that the sanctity of the United States government might be compromised in a way no living American had experienced. This was just one of the unnerving things about the rise of Trump, and it was one that many well-informed observers doubted. Russia, after all, was poor and weak. To imagine that a country with an economy smaller than Canada’s or Italy’s could leverage a superpower ten times wealthier beggared the imagination. And yet that paranoid, absurd belief seems to be creeping closer to reality than seemed possible even in those dark postelection days.

The New York Times has confirmed the explosive claims made by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, that Columbus Nova — a New York investment firm whose biggest client is a company controlled by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg — deposited half a million dollars into a secret account set up by attorney Michael Cohen to pay off Trump’s sexual partners. The possible reasons for this arrangement run from brazenly corrupt to far worse. Columbus Nova said the hefty sum was a “consulting fee” paid to Cohen, hardly a benign explanation.

5 of the Most Blatantly Unethical Moves by the Trump Administration

Columbus Nova reportedly retained Cohen’s services after Andrew Intrater, the company’s American chief executive, met him while attending Trump’s inauguration with Vekselberg, who is his cousin. Like all Russian oligarchs, Vekselberg operates in cooperation with the Putin government. The payments gave Russia several sources of possible leverage over Cohen and Trump. First, the money itself could amount to some kind of bribe, in return for which a favor would be expected. Second, Russia had knowledge of the secret payoff, which it could always expose. Third, the possibility (at minimum) exists that Russia knew the account was being used to silence Trump’s mistresses, yet another source of kompromat.

For all the speculation about the existence of the pee tape, the latest revelations prove what is tantamount to the same thing. Russia could leverage the president and his fixer — who, recall, hand-delivered a pro-Russian “peace plan” with Ukraine to Trump’s national-security adviser in January 2017 — by threatening to expose secrets they were desperate to keep hidden. Whether those secrets were limited to legally questionable payments, or included knowledge of sexual affairs, is a question of degree but not of kind.

Perhaps even more alarming has been the response of the political system to this crisis. The House of Representatives has assigned Devin Nunes, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, as its point man to defend Trump against the Mueller investigation. The Department of Justice has a long-standing policy of keeping Congress out of active investigations, for the obvious reason that elected officials have a powerful incentive to interfere. Nunes has demanded the virtually unlimited right to get inside the Mueller probe. Officials in the Department of Justice have come to suspect his goal is to compromise the investigation by handing information from the prosecutors over to Trump.

The Washington Post tonight reports another, and even more fanatical, step in Nunes’s crusade. Last week, Nunes demanded a piece of information that the FBI and other intelligence officials believed would “endanger a top-secret intelligence source.” They prevailed on Trump to support their request to withhold the information which, they argued, would “risk severe consequences including potential loss of human lives.”

Nunes is not only demanding the secret be revealed to him, but threatening to vote to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt. And officials who secured Trump’s support may have left out the fact that the source provided information to the Mueller investigation. As a result, “several administration officials said they fear Trump may reverse course and support Nunes’s argument.”

Think for a moment what this report tells us. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who enjoys the full backing of his party’s leadership, is willing to risk what his own government describes as the betrayal and potential loss of life of an intelligence source. And officials within this government believe the president would do the same, all in order to obstruct an investigation into the president’s secretive ties to a foreign power. They are acting as though Trump is compromised by Russia, or at the very least, that he cannot be trusted to defend his own country’s security against it. The sordid Russia scandal has already brought some version of a very dark nightmare scenario to life.

This post has been updated with additional information about Columbus Nova’s relationship with Michael Cohen.

Trump Destroys the Iran Deal—and a Lot More

The New Yorker – News Desk

Trump Destroys the Iran Deal—and a Lot More

By Robin Wright May 8, 2028

President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal unravels Obama’s signature foreign-policy achievement and puts the U.S. on a collision course with Tehran. Photograph by Evan Vucci / AP

After months of threatening, President Trump withdrew from the historic Iran nuclear deal on Tuesday, unraveling the Obama Administration’s signature foreign-policy achievement and putting the United States on a collision course with allies, as well as with Tehran. “This was a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” the President said. “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.” Trump also announced that the United States is re-imposing economic sanctions on Iran and, over time, on companies in other countries that do business with the Islamic Republic.

Trump said that he was prepared to negotiate a new deal, but it would have to cover several issues beyond Iran’s controversial nuclear program—including Tehran’s ballistic-missile program, its support for extremist groups, and other “malign” activities in the wider Middle East. In a rebuke to Trump, however, the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany expressed “regret” over Trump’s decision and vowed to remain in the pact, which also includes Russia and China. “We urge all sides to remain committed to its full implementation and to act in a spirit of responsibility,” they said. China also indicated that it would adhere to the accord.

In an initial reaction, Iran also appeared to reject new negotiations—and indicated that it might even stick to the original agreement, which curtails significant aspects of its nuclear program. President Hassan Rouhani said that his government would review the prospects of continuing to collaborate with the other five signatories of the pact, formally the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A.

“If, at end of this short period of time, if we come to the conclusion that with the collaboration of five countries it is feasible to attain what the Iranian people wish, despite the views of the U.S. and Zionist regime and also the impolite remarks by Trump, we should see whether it is possible to just keep up with J.C.P.O.A. and also take steps in line with regional peace and tranquility,” he said. (Iran refers to Israel as “the Zionist regime.”) But Rouhani—who won office in 2013, on a platform of negotiating a nuclear deal with the United States and getting a reprieve from economic sanctions in return—also suggested that Tehran was prepared for “subsequent measures, if needed,” including “starting industrial enrichment without limitations.”

Trump’s decision means that, technically, the United States is the first nation to violate the accord. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N. nuclear watchdog, has issued ten reports that Tehran is in full compliance with its obligations. Iran is under the toughest inspections and verification-inspections regime ever imposed in an arms-control deal. In a rare public comment on Trump’s foreign policy, former President Barack Obama noted that the right to inspections disappears if the agreement ends.

“Every aspect of Iranian behavior that is troubling is far more dangerous if their nuclear program is unconstrained,” Obama said. “Our ability to confront Iran’s destabilizing behavior—and to sustain a unity of purpose with our allies—is strengthened with the J.C.P.O.A., and weakened without it.”

Critics were scathing about the U.S. withdrawal. James Dobbins, a former U.S. Ambassador to the E.U., who negotiated with Iran after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and now works at the rand Corporation, said that the decision “isolates the United States, frees Iran, reneges on an American commitment, adds to the risk of a trade war with America’s allies and to a hot war with Iran and diminishes the prospects of a durable and truly verifiable agreement to eliminate the North Korean nuclear and missile threat.”

Trump’s decision is likely to have far-reaching impact. The premise of diplomatic outreach was to create conditions for eventual coöperation with Iran on other flashpoints in the world’s most volatile region. Instead, danger looms for deepening tensions in hot spots such as Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen—countries where the United States and Iran have rival interests. “By forfeiting American leadership in the one successful multilateral deal in the volatile Middle East, Trump could possibly make a bad situation worse,” Wendy Chamberlin, a former career diplomat who is now the president of the Middle East Institute, in Washington, told me.

Tensions between Israel and Iran have increased recently over Syria, where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have established footholds in three dozen military facilities during its seven-year civil war. Israel has launched more than a hundred air strikes on Syria, the majority on Iranian and Hezbollah targets. “Israel and Iran are headed toward a dangerous confrontation,” Chamberlin said.

The withdrawal from the agreement comes days before the U.S. moves its Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, another controversial decision that has inflamed anti-American passions. “Trump is pouring gasoline on a Middle East in flames already, with his Iran and Jerusalem decisions,” Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A., White House, and Pentagon staffer who is now at the Brookings Institution, told me.

Trump’s decision also undermines the transatlantic alliance, crafted after the Second World War, between the United States and Europe. The President defied a determined last-ditch pitch by America’s three most important European allies, made during visits by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson.

Trump’s decision to nix rather than fix the deal fits his “America First” agenda. “Withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal—alongside withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris Accord [on climate]—completes Trump’s reneging on U.S. commitments and undermining of U.S. credibility,” Daniel Kurtzer, a former Ambassador to Israel and Egypt now at Princeton University, told me. “The United States used to be the leader, the convener, and the engine of international diplomacy. Trump’s actions have turned us into an untrustworthy and erratic diplomatic outlier.”

The Europeans are clearly hoping that the deal—the crowning achievement of the E.U.’s diplomacy as a continental body—will survive without the United States.

Re-imposing sanctions on Iran will create the greatest division between Europe and the U.S. since the Iraq War, Mark Fitzpatrick, the executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies office in Washington, told me. “Only this time it will be worse, since not a single European state sides with the U.S. on this matter.” Beyond Europe, American credibility worldwide “will go down the tubes,” he said. “Who will ever want to strike a deal with a country that, without cause, pulls out of a deal that everyone else knows has been working well? America will be seen as stupid, arrogant, and bullying. Pity the poor U.S. diplomats who have to explain this illogical decision to their host countries.”

Trump’s decision even benefits America’s adversaries, including Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin. “We’re playing into Putin’s hand,” Michael McFaul, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, now at Stanford University, said on CNN. “For Putin, it means that the U.S. is on the outside—and Putin is still on the inside. Why are we isolating ourselves when we need other countries to coöperate with on issues like North Korea?”

The U.S. decision will have fallout both economically and politically inside Iran, where foreboding about Trump’s long-threatened decision has already had a psychological impact. The value of Iran’s currency has plummeted by a third since December. The timing intersects with systemic change—and uncertainty—in Iran over dramatic demographic changes, aging leadership, and long-standing structural deficiencies. “The post-revolutionary baby boom is inching toward middle age, with nearly universal access to information and communications technology and after decades of thwarted hopes for economic improvements,” Suzanne Maloney, a former State Department policy-planning staffer now at the Brookings Institution, told me.

“I don’t see a revolution on the horizon, but I think we are witnessing the slow-motion metastasis of the revolutionary system that is echoing through the economy and the establishment,” she said. “I don’t think this is solely or even primarily provoked by the collapse of the deal but, rather, the culmination of a range of internal forces: long-simmering frustrations, the stalemate of two decades of gradualism, demographic pressures, communications technology, and the anticipated imminence of leadership succession.”

As dramatic as Trump’s curt announcement was, the repercussions of his decision—one of the most important of his sixteen months in office—may take months to play out in Iran, among allies, and even among adversaries. At a White House briefing, the new national-security adviser, John Bolton, said that the Administration will continue to talk with allies, starting on Wednesday, about ways forward. But the prospect of healing the policy divide with the world’s other five major powers—much less getting Iran to agree to a new deal—seems remote, at best.

Robin Wright has been a contributing writer to The New Yorker since 1988. She is the author of “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World.”