Visa, Mastercard, AmEx to start categorizing gun shop sales
Ken Sweet- September 10, 2022
FILE – Visa credit cards are seen on Aug. 11, 2019, in New Orleans. Payment processor Visa Inc. said late Saturday, Sept. 10, 2022, that it plans to start separately categorizing sales at gun shops. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
NEW YORK (AP) — Payment processor Visa Inc. said Saturday that it plans to start separately categorizing sales at gun shops, a major win for gun control advocates who say it will help better track suspicious surges of gun sales that could be a prelude to a mass shooting.
But the decision by Visa, the world’s largest payment processor, will likely provoke the ire of gun rights advocates and gun lobbyists, who have argued that categorizing gun sales would unfairly flag an industry when most sales do not lead to mass shootings. It joins Mastercard and American Express, which also said they plan to move forward with categorizing gun shop sales.
Visa said it would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for gun sales, which was announced on Friday. Until Friday, gun store sales were considered “general merchandise.”
“Following ISO’s decision to establish a new merchant category code, Visa will proceed with next steps, while ensuring we protect all legal commerce on the Visa network in accordance with our long-standing rules,” the payment processor said in a statement.
Visa’s adoption is significant as the largest payment network, and with Mastercard and AmeEx, will likely put pressure on the banks as the card issuers to adopt the standard as well. Visa acts as a middleman between merchants and banks, and it will be up to banks to decide whether they will allow sales at gun stores to happen on their issued cards.
Gun control advocates had gained significant wins on this front in recent weeks. New York City officials and pension funds had pressured the ISO and banks to adopt this code.
Two of the country’s largest public pension funds, in California and New York, have been pressing the country’s largest credit card firms to establish sales codes specifically for firearm-related sales that could flag suspicious purchases or more easily trace how guns and ammunition are sold.
Merchant category codes now exist for almost every kind of purchase, including those made at supermarkets, clothing stores, coffee shops and many other retailers.
“When you buy an airline ticket or pay for your groceries, your credit card company has a special code for those retailers. It’s just common sense that we have the same policies in place for gun and ammunition stores,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain who blames the proliferation of guns for his city’s deadly violence.
The city’s comptroller, Brad Lander, said it made moral and financial sense as a tool to push back against gun violence.
“Unfortunately, the credit card companies have failed to support this simple, practical, potentially lifesaving tool. The time has come for them to do so,” Lander said recently, before Visa and others had adopted the move.
Lander is a trustee of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers’ Retirement System and Board of Education Retirement System — which together own 667,200 shares in American Express valued at approximately $92.49 million; 1.1 million shares in MasterCard valued at approximately $347.59 million; and 1.85 million shares in Visa valued at approximately $363.86 million.
The pension funds and gun control advocates argue that creating a merchant category code for standalone firearm and ammunition stores could aid in the battle against gun violence. A week before the mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people died after a shooter opened fire in 2016, the assailant used credit cards to buy more than $26,000 worth of guns and ammunition, including purchases at a stand-alone gun retailer.
Gun rights advocates argue that tracking sales at gun stores would unfairly target legal gun purchases, since merchant codes just track the type of merchant where the credit or debit card is used, not the actual items purchased. A sale of a gun safe, worth thousands of dollars and an item considered part of responsible gun ownership, could be seen as a just a large purchase at a gun shop.
“The (industry’s) decision to create a firearm specific code is nothing more than a capitulation to anti-gun politicians and activists bent on eroding the rights of law-abiding Americans one transaction at a time,” said Lars Dalseide, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association.
Over the years, public pension funds have used their extensive investment portfolios to influence public policy and the market place.
The California teacher’s fund, the second largest pension fund in the country, has long taken aim on the gun industry. It has divested its holdings from gun manufacturers and has sought to persuade some retailers from selling guns.
Four years ago, the teacher’s fund made guns a key initiative. It called for background checks and called on retailers “monitor irregularities at the point of sale, to record all firearm sales, to audit firearms inventory on a regular basis, and to proactively assist law enforcement.”
Democrats Didn’t Conjure Up the Demand for MAGA Candidates
By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist – September 10, 2022
Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
In my column this week, I tackled some of the major objections to President Biden’s Philadelphia speech on MAGA Republicans and the threat they pose to democracy, including the view that it was too divisive.
Even if it was, most Americans land on Biden’s side of the argument — in a Reuters poll conducted just a few days after the speech, 58 percent of respondents, including a quarter of Republicans, said that Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement is “threatening America’s democratic foundations.”
What I didn’t address was the charge that Biden, and Democrats in general, are acting in bad faith when they condemn Trump and his allies. If Democrats truly believe that MAGA Republicans are a threat to democracy, goes the argument, why are they spending tens of millions of dollars to elevate them in Republican primaries? My colleagues Ross Douthat and Bret Stephens both made a version of this point in their respectivecolumns this week.
They are keyed into something real: that it is a bit unsavory, if not outright hypocritical, for Democrats to spend huge sums to help nominate MAGA Republicans at the expense of their more moderate, pro-democracy colleagues while condemning those same candidates, and the movement they represent, as a threat to the constitutional order.
Where I part ways with my colleagues is in their conclusion that Democrats are therefore crying alligator tears when they condemn MAGA extremists. If the top priority is depriving the Republican Party of power and influence, then the most important thing for Democrats to do, right now, is win elections. And if the most Trump-aligned candidates tend to be the weakest challengers in a general election, then it is entirely consistent with the argument in Biden’s speech to want to elevate those candidates over more moderate alternatives.
At the end of the day, a more moderate Republican in Congress is still a vote for Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House or Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader. It is still a vote, in other words, for a coalition that includes MAGA Republicans.
I could leave it there, except that I think that this answer concedes too much to the premise. Implicit in the question is the factual claim that Democratic spending in Republican primaries is either responsible for — or a significant factor in — the success of MAGA candidates with Republican voters. Otherwise, why would Democrats spend the money and why would conservatives complain about the outcome?
I think it is true that Democratic spending has had an effect. But I think the more significant reason that Republican voters keep nominating MAGA candidates is that Republican voters like MAGA candidates. All you have to do is look at the results of the Republican primaries in question and ask if Democratic money really mattered that much.
Did Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, spend millions to give a boost to Darren Bailey, the Trumpiest candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary? Yes. But Bailey led the Republican field before Pritzker’s intervention, swamping his opponents in an October 2021 poll. Democrats may have nudged some undecided voters into Bailey’s camp, but that alone does not explain how the hard-right Republican won more than 57 percent of the vote in a six-way primary. The more likely answer, given his early lead, is that Republican voters liked what Bailey was selling.
The same goes for Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, the pro-insurrection Republican candidate for governor. Democrats gave him a boost as well. But he led the Republican pack for much of the race and his final tally — nearly 44 percent of the vote in an eight-way contest — reflects his very real popularity with Republican voters in the state.
The other thing to consider is the actual content of Democratic ads on behalf of MAGA Republican candidates. The ad meant to support Mastriano, for example, simply stated his conservative views and emphasized his support for Trump. The ad said that Mastriano wanted to “outlaw abortion” and is “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters.” It also points out that Mastriano “wants to end vote by mail, and he led the fight to audit the 2020 election. If Mastriano wins, it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for.”
It is not the Democratic Party’s fault that Republicans are attracted to this message, and nothing forced Republicans in Pennsylvania or Illinois (or Michigan or Arizona) to nominate the most MAGA candidates in the field. Republicans voters like Trump and they want Trumpist candidates, and where there’s demand, supply usually follows.
Which is to say that even with Democratic intervention in Republican primaries, the thrust of Biden’s story about the Republican Party still holds up. The party has been captured by extremists, and it’s up to the rest of us to ensure that it doesn’t win more power than it already has.
What I Wrote
My Friday column was on President Biden’s Philadelphia speech, why I think the objections to it are misguided, and what, if anything, was missing from his argument that the MAGA movement is a threat to American democracy.
To divide against a radical minority that would attack and undermine democratic self-government is to divide along the most inclusive lines possible. It is to do a version of what Franklin Roosevelt did when he condemned“organized money,” “economic royalists” and the “forces of selfishness and lust for power.”
‘Deeply Problematic’: Experts Question Judge’s Intervention in Trump Inquiry
Charlie Savage –September 6, 2022
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WASHINGTON — A federal judge’s extraordinary decision Monday to interject in the criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s hoarding of sensitive government documents at his Florida residence showed unusual solicitude to him, legal specialists said.
This was “an unprecedented intervention by a federal district judge into the middle of an ongoing federal criminal and national security investigation,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas.
Siding with Trump, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, ordered the appointment of an independent arbiter to review the more than 11,000 government records the FBI seized in its search of Mar-a-Lago last month. She granted the arbiter, known as a special master, broad powers that extended beyond filtering materials that were potentially subject to attorney-client privilege to also include executive privilege.
Cannon, a Trump appointee who sits on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, also blocked federal prosecutors from further examining the seized materials for the investigation until the special master had completed a review.
In reaching that result, Cannon took several steps that specialists said were vulnerable to being overturned if the government files an appeal, as most agreed was likely. Any appeal would be heard by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, where Trump appointed six of its 11 active judges.
Paul Rosenzweig, a former homeland security official in the George W. Bush administration and prosecutor in the independent counsel investigation of Bill Clinton, said it was egregious to block the Justice Department from steps like asking witnesses about government files, many marked as classified, that agents had already reviewed.
“This would seem to me to be a genuinely unprecedented decision by a judge,” Rosenzweig said. “Enjoining the ongoing criminal investigation is simply untenable.”
Born in Colombia in 1981, Cannon graduated from Duke University in 2003 and the University of Michigan Law School in 2007. After clerking for a Republican-appointed appeals court judge in Iowa, she worked as an associate for a corporate law firm for three years before becoming an assistant federal prosecutor in Florida.
In her Senate questionnaire, she described herself as having been a member of the conservative Federalist Society since 2005. Trump nominated her in May 2020, and the Senate confirmed her on Nov. 12, nine days after he lost reelection.
After Cannon was assigned to Trump’s special master lawsuit, she made the unusual move of publicly declaring that she was inclined to instate one even before hearing arguments from the Justice Department. But she could have done so in a far more modest fashion.
“Judge Cannon had a reasonable path she could have taken — to appoint a special master to review documents for attorney-client privilege and allow the criminal investigation to continue otherwise,” said Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor. “Instead, she chose a radical path.”
A specialist in separation of powers, Peter M. Shane, who is a legal scholar in residence at NYU, said there was no basis for Cannon to expand a special master’s authority to screen materials that were also potentially subject to executive privilege. That tool is normally thought of as protecting internal executive branch deliberations from disclosure to outsiders like Congress.
“The opinion seems oblivious to the nature of executive privilege,” he said.
The Justice Department is itself part of the executive branch, and a court has never held that a former president can invoke the privilege to keep records from his time in office away from the executive branch itself.
The department had argued that even if a special master were appointed, there would be no legal basis for that person to examine issues of executive privilege. It cited a 1977 Supreme Court case involving the papers of former President Richard Nixon, who had tried to use executive privilege to shield them even though the sitting president disagreed.
But Cannon wrote that she was not convinced and believed the Justice Department’s stance “arguably overstates the law.” In that case, she said, the Supreme Court also stated that former presidents retained some residual power to invoke executive privilege.
The Supreme Court also said the incumbent officeholder is in the best position to assess such issues. But Cannon wrote that the justices had not “ruled out the possibility” that a former president could ever prevail over the current one.
“Even if any assertion of executive privilege by plaintiff ultimately fails in this context,” she wrote, “that possibility, even if likely, does not negate a former president’s ability to raise the privilege as an initial matter.”
She did not address a 1974 Supreme Court case that upheld the Watergate prosecutor’s demand for White House tapes as part of a criminal investigation despite the attempt by Nixon, then the sitting president, to block it by asserting executive privilege.
“Even if there is some hypothetical situation in which a former president could shield his or her communications from the current executive branch,” Shane said, “they would not be able to do so in the context of a criminal investigation — and certainly not after the material has been seized pursuant to a lawful search warrant.”
Cannon allowed a separate review of the documents, by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to continue. It is assessing the risk to national security that the insecure holding of sensitive documents at Mar-Lago may have caused.
David Alan Sklansky, a Stanford University law professor, said he was glad that work had been allowed to continue given its importance. But he said there was an inherent contradiction in allowing the executive branch to use the files for that purpose while blocking it from using them for an active criminal investigation.
“There is this odd situation where one part of the executive branch can use the materials and another not,” he said.
In reasoning that she had a basis to install a special master, Cannon relied heavily on a 1975 appeals court ruling. It held that courts had jurisdiction to decide whether to order the IRS to return a businessman’s records that he claimed had been taken unlawfully, and laid out a multipronged test for such situations.
One part of the test is whether the government had displayed a “callous disregard” for the constitutional rights of the person subjected to the search. On that issue, she sided with the Justice Department, which had obtained a warrant from a magistrate judge.
But she said the other parts of the test favored Trump. They included whether he had an individual interest in and need for the seized property, would be “irreparably harmed” by a denial of that request and lacked any other remedy.
While Trump does not own the government documents he repeatedly failed to return, the warrant permitted the FBI to take anything else of his that he had left in the same containers as evidence of how he stored sensitive information.
Cannon noted that a department report said this had included “medical documents, correspondence related to taxes and accounting information.”
“In addition to being deprived of potentially significant personal documents, which alone creates a real harm,” she wrote, Trump faced “an unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public.” A footnote insinuated that the Justice Department might leak those files to reporters.
In weighing such factors, she emphasized Trump’s status as a former president.
“As a function of plaintiff’s former position as president of the United States, the stigma associated with the subject seizure is in a league of its own,” she wrote. “A future indictment, based to any degree on property that ought to be returned, would result in reputational harm of a decidedly different order of magnitude.”
Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., a Harvard Law School professor, said anyone targeted by a search warrant fears reputational harm, but that does not mean they can get special masters appointed. He called Cannon’s reasoning “thin at best” and giving “undue weight” to the fact that Trump is a former president.
“I find that deeply problematic,” he said, emphasizing that the criminal justice system was supposed to treat everyone equally. “This court is giving special considerations to the former president that ordinary, everyday citizens do not receive.”
Samuel W. Buell, a Duke University law professor, agreed.
“To any lawyer with serious federal criminal court experience who is being honest, this ruling is laughably bad, and the written justification is even flimsier,” he wrote in an email. “Donald Trump is getting something no one else ever gets in federal court, he’s getting it for no good reason, and it will not in the slightest reduce the ongoing howls that he is being persecuted, when he is being privileged.”
9 signs you’re having a heart attack that you probably don’t know, including those more likely to affect women
Rachel Hosie – September 2, 2022
Fatigue, lightheadedness, and nausea can be symptoms of a heart attack.Getty
The most common symptom of a heart attack for both men and women is chest pain.
However, women are more likely to experience additional symptoms, a new report states.
These include nausea, indigestion, shortness of breath, and palpitations, a cardiologist said.
Common and lesser-known heart attack symptoms, including those more likely to affect women, have been highlighted in a report by the American Heart Association (AHA).
A heart attack is when the supply of blood to the heart is suddenly blocked, usually by a blood clot, and can be life-threatening.
In the US, about 805,000 people have a heart attack every year, with one happening every 40 seconds, according to the CDC. One in five people are unaware they’re having a heart attack, the organization states. However, knowing the signs can help people get treatment faster.
Chest pain is the most common symptom of a heart attack
Chest pain is the most common and recognizable symptom of a heart attack, according to the review, and is often felt as pressure or discomfort behind or below the sternum (breastbone), and may radiate to the jaw, shoulder, arm, or upper back.
Other co-occuring symptoms include shortness of breath, fatigue, unusual sweating, nausea, and lightheadedness.
Some people have muscle aches during a heart attack
Although chest pain is “the most common presenting sign,” some people experience other pain, Dr. Stacey Rosen, cardiologist and senior vice president for the Katz Institute for Women’s Health at Northwell Health, told Insider.
Less common symptoms of a heart attack include muscle aches around the back and shoulders, indigestion or heartburn, fainting spells, and confusion, Rosen said.
According to a review of seven studies cited in the report on the early stages of acute coronary syndrome — which is a group of conditions that heart attacks fall under — early symptoms also include disturbed sleep, headaches, anxiety, and gastrointestinal problems.
Women are more likely to experience symptoms other than chest pain, such as nausea
There are differences in how men and women experience heart attacks.
“Historically, it was believed that women do not experience chest pain in the setting of a heart attack but we now know that this is the most common symptom for men and women, but that women are more likely to have additional symptoms,” Rosen said.
Symptoms more common to women include nausea, back and shoulder pain, indigestion, shortness of breath, fatigue, and palpitations, she said.
One study cited in the review found that younger women who had heart attacks were more likely to have three or more symptoms including pain below the ribs, palpitations, and pain or discomfort in the jaw, neck, arms or shoulders when compared with men.
Corporate landlords are gobbling up mobile home parks and rapidly driving up rents — here’s why the space is so attractive to them
Vishesh Raisinghani – August 30, 2022
Corporate landlords are gobbling up mobile home parks and rapidly driving up rents — here’s why the space is so attractive to them
The hunt for yield has pushed private equity firms and professional investors into new segments of the real estate market.
In recent years, sophisticated investors have snapped up multi-family units and single-family homes. Now, corporate landlords are targeting the most cost-effective segment of the real estate market: mobile home parks.
The most affordable housing available
Manufactured homes or mobile homes are considered the most affordable non-subsidized housing option in America. That’s because the owners own only the prefabricated unit and not the land under the home. The land is usually leased from the landlord of a trailer park.
The average monthly rent for a mobile home in 2021 was $593. That’s significantly lower than the average one-bedroom condo rental rate of $1,450. The mobile park rental also often includes utilities and insurance.
Rents typically rise 4% to 6% annually and renters have the flexibility to move their housing unit to another park. These factors make the manufactured home highly attractive to low-income households.
As of 2020, nearly 22 million Americans lived in mobile homes. That’s 6.7% of the total population or about one in 15 people across the country. However, the economic inefficiencies that make these manufactured homes affordable also make them attractive to professional investors.
Investing in mobile home parks
Factors such as below-market rents and disrepair make mobile home parks attractive for investors seeking to add value. The typical mobile home park lot costs $10,000, which means 80 lots would be worth $800,000 on average.
Put simply, the entry price for these parks is much lower than multi-family apartments and condo buildings across the country.
Professional investors can also raise rents significantly to improve the valuation of the property. Attracting tenants with higher incomes or improving the park’s amenities and infrastructure are other value-add strategies that make this asset class appealing.
The fact that moving a typical mobile home costs between $3,000 to $10,000 also means that most tenants are unable to afford the move. This gives landlords immense pricing power.
Meanwhile, the yield is much higher. The capitalization rate (the ratio of net operating income to market price) could be as high as 9%, according to real estate partners Dave Reynolds and Frank Rolfe, who together are the fifth-largest owner of mobile home parks in the U.S.
The largest mobile park landlord is real estate veteran Sam Zell. Zell’s Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS) owns 165,000 units across the country and the asset is a key element of his $5.4 billion fortune.
In recent years, larger investors such as Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and private equity firms such as The Carlyle Group, Brookfield, Blackstone, and Apollo have also added exposure to this asset class.
Even Warren Buffett is involved. His firm’s subsidiary, Clayton Homes, is the largest manufacturer of mobile homes in the U.S., and also operates two of the biggest mobile home lenders, 21st Mortgage Corp. and Vanderbilt Mortgage.
You can invest too
Retail investors looking for exposure to mobile home parks have plenty of options. Acquiring a park is, perhaps, the most straightforward way to access this asset class. However, publicly-listed stocks and real estate investment trusts offer exposure too.
Sam Zell’s Equity LifeStyle Properties is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ELS. Sun Communities Inc. (SUI) owns 146,000 units across the U.S. and some in Canada, while Legacy Housing Corp. (LEGH) builds, sells, and finances manufactured homes.
Retail and institutional investors could see more upside from this segment as the economic inefficiencies are ironed out.
Ted Cruz says there’s a ‘real risk’ that Biden’s student-loan forgiveness will help Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections
Yelena Dzhanova – August 27, 2022
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas at the Senate.Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
Sen. Ted Cruz said Biden’s student-loan forgiveness plan will “drive up turnout” for Democrats in November.
“Maybe you weren’t gonna vote in November, and suddenly you just got 20 grand,” Cruz said of the plan.
“If you can get off the bong for a minute … it could drive up turnout,” he said.
Sen. Ted Cruz on Friday railed against President Joe Biden’s student-loan forgiveness plan, predicting it’ll give Democrats an edge in the upcoming midterm elections.
“If you are that slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things, now has loans and can’t get a job, Joe Biden just gave you 20 grand,” Cruz said during an appearance on his “Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast. “Like, holy cow! 20 grand. You know, maybe you weren’t gonna vote in November, and suddenly you just got 20 grand.”
“And you know, if you can get off the bong for a minute and head down to the voting station,” he continued. “Or just send in your mail-in ballot that the Democrats have helpfully sent you, it could drive up turnout, particularly among young people.”
Cruz said “there is a real risk” that the Democrats will net more support in November.
The Biden administration earlier this week announced a plan to cancel $10,000 in student-loan debt for borrowers whose annual income does not exceed $125,000.
“For too many people, student loan debt has hindered their ability to achieve their dreams—including buying a home, starting a business, or providing for their family,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “Getting an education should set us free; not strap us down! That’s why, since Day One, the Biden-Harris administration has worked to fix broken federal student aid programs and deliver unprecedented relief to borrowers.”
Prominent Democrats like Sen. Bernie Sanders have slammed Cruz’s remarks.
“This is what a leading Republican thinks of young ‘slacker’ Americans who took out loans to go to college,” Sanders tweeted in response to a clip of his remarks.
A former official working in the Obama administration also criticized Cruz.
“Since Ted Cruz knows baristas have been spitting in his coffee for years, it’s technically not punching down,” said Brandon Friedman, former deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the United States Department of Housing and Urban
I have finally seen enough. Donald Trump will be indicted by a federal grand jury.
You heard me right: I believe Trump will actually be indicted for a criminal offense. Even with all its redactions, the probable cause affidavit published today by the magistrate judge in Florida makes clear to me three essential points:
(1) Trump was in unauthorized possession of national defense information, namely properly marked classified documents.
(2) He was put on notice by the U.S. Government that he was not permitted to retain those documents at Mar-a-Lago.
(3) He continued to maintain possession of the documents (and allegedly undertook efforts to conceal them in different places throughout the property) up until the FBI finally executed a search warrant earlier this month.
That is the ball game, folks. Absent some unforeseen change in factual or legal circumstances, I believe there is little left for the Justice Department to do but decide whether to wait until after the midterms to formally seek the indictment from the grand jury.
The cruelest irony for Trump is that it never needed to be this way.
Put aside that in the chaos following his election loss Trump’s team never undertook the normal procedure for properly sorting through and archiving his presidential records in coordination with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Put aside that properly marked classified records were shipped to Mar-a-Lago and sat there for months until he began turning stuff over to NARA in late 2021.
If he had fully cooperated at that point, and returned all of the records to NARA last year, this likely never would have become a criminal matter. DOJ would have declined to take any action, notwithstanding the existence of the classified records, and it would have been a “no harm, no foul” situation. Just another minor story in the Trump saga of incompetence.
But Trump just could not bring himself to play by the rules. He turned over 15 boxes last January but did not turn over all the records. Political operatives from conservative organizations started whispering into his ear that he had legal precedent on his side to refuse to turn over the classified records to NARA (he did not). His lawyers surprisingly wrote a rather condescending letter to DOJ in May 2022, effectively arguing that even if there were still classified records at Mar-a-Lago the FBI lacked the authority to take any criminal action against Trump given his former status as president. Then, in June 2022 after the FBI executed a subpoena to recover more records at Mar-a-Lago, two Trump lawyers wrote (and one signed) a sworn affidavit reassuring the government there were no more classified records at the property.
We now know that statement was not true. The FBI found multiple more classified records, including some with markings for Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) during the search this month, and not just located in the storage room with the other boxes of records. They found records located in different parts of Mar-a-Lago.
Of course, there are various arguments for why a prosecution might not succeed in this situation.
There is the contention by Trump and his allies that he declassified the documents, whether through a “standing order” or more specific verbal action. No evidence has been produced corroborating that assertion, and there certainly is no indication that the classification markings themselves were ever revised to reflect the declassification. The Trump lawyers in May certainly did not provide any such evidence in their letter to DOJ, and they similarly provided no evidence of it in their “motion” filed earlier this week in district court in Florida seeking a Special Master.
And that is before we even consider if the classification status would matter for an Espionage Act prosecution, which only requires that the information relate to the national defense.
There is also the issue of selective political prosecution and supposed bad faith by the government in its decision to pursue the case. This is something that has been mentioned ad nauseum by Trump allies on cable news, and was briefly mentioned in the “motion” filed earlier this week in court. Lacking from those arguments is anything beyond rank speculation. That will not fly in court. Just ask Sidney Powell how well it works to try to litigate in court the way you argue on cable news. Hint: it does not go well.
All in all, this case should and in my opinion will result in an indictment. Sure, an indictment does not equal a conviction. Trump is still assumed innocent until proven guilty. There are unknown variables like whether the prosecution would occur in Florida or in D.C. We do not know what evidence Trump might have to substantiate his declassification claim. And we do not know what the courts would say about his various arguments.
Get the popcorn ready either way.
Bradley P. Moss is a Partner and national security attorney at the Washington, D.C. Law Office of Mark S. Zaid, P.C.
Trump envoy releases letter from National Archives deemed ‘extraordinarily damning’ for Trump
Peter Weber, Senior editor – August 23, 2022
U.S. National Archives
The National Archives and Records Administration waited until May 12 to give the FBI access to the highly classified documents retrieved from former President Donald Trump in January, despite the Justice Department’s “urgent” requests for the materials, according to a letter from National Archivist Debra Wall released late Monday by conservative journalist John Solomon, one of Trump’s two authorized NARA liaisons.
The May 10 letter to Trump’s lawyers also affirms that the National Archives found more than 700 pages of classified documents, including “special access program materials” — among the most highly classified secrets in government — in the 15 boxes recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago complex. More classified material was taken from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI in June and August.
Much of the letter covers Wall’s rejection of a request by Trump’s lawyers to shield the documents from the FBI on executive privilege grounds. The White House counsel said President Biden “defers to my determination,” Wall wrote, and after discussions with the Office of Legal Counsel, “the question in this case is not a close one.”
“The executive branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the federal government itself,” Wall wrote, “not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to ‘conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.'”
The letter released by Trump’s team is “extraordinarily damning for Trump” and his team, Politico‘s Kyle Cheney marveled on Twitter. “Trump allies pointed to this letter as some kind of evidence of Biden White House meddling,” but “what it shows is officials expressing extreme alarm about national security damage based on records being held by Trump.”
The NARA letter is “damning” to Trump “on any number of levels,” including its “lack of any reference to a claim by Trump’s representatives that he had declassified any of the classified materials,” adds University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck. “It’s also telling that, even though this letter really hurts the Trump version of events, it wasn’t released by the Biden Administration or NARA. It was released by Trump’s own team — both a self-inflicted wound and further proof of how the government has been playing by the rules.”
Economic Aid, Once Plentiful, Falls Off at a Painful Moment
Jim Tankersley – August 23, 2022
With the cost of living outpacing her pay, Tamela Clover has begun relying on a food pantry in Portland, Oregon. (Ivan McClellan/The New York Times)
PORTLAND, Ore. — For the better part of last year, the pandemic eased its grip on Oregon’s economy. Awash in federal assistance, including direct checks to individuals and parents, many of the state’s most vulnerable found it easier to afford food, housing and other daily staples.
Most of that aid, which was designed to be a temporary bridge, has run out at a particularly bad moment. Oregon, like states across the nation, has seen its economy improve, but prices for everything from eggs to gas to rent have spiked. Demand is growing at food banks such as William Temple House in Northwest Portland, where the line for necessities like bread, vegetables and toilet paper stretched two dozen people deep on a recent day.
“I’m very worried, like I was in the first month of the pandemic, that we will run out of food,” said Susannah Morgan, who runs the Oregon Food Bank, which helps supply William Temple House and 1,400 other meal assistance sites.
In March 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law a $1.9 trillion aid package aimed at helping people stay afloat when the economy was still reeling from the coronavirus. In addition to direct checks, the package included rental assistance and other measures meant to prevent evictions. It ensured free school lunches and offered expanded food assistance through several programs.
Those programs helped the U.S. economy recover far more quickly than many economists had expected, but they have run their course as prices soar at the fastest pace in 40 years. The Federal Reserve, in an attempt to tame inflation, is rapidly raising borrowing costs, slowing the economy’s growth and stoking fears of a recession. While the labor market remains remarkably strong, the Fed’s interest rate increases risk slamming the brakes on the economy and pushing millions of people out of work, which would hurt lower-wage workers and risk adding to evictions and food insecurity.
Several factors have driven prices higher in the last year, including a shift in spending toward goods such as couches and cars and away from services. Supply chain snarls, a buying frenzy in the housing market and an oil price spike surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine have also contributed. While gas prices have fallen in recent months, rent continues to rise, and food and other staples remain elevated.
Another factor fueling inflation, at least in small part, is the stimulus spending that helped speed the economy’s recovery and keep people out of poverty. More money in people’s bank accounts translated into more consumer spending.
While the extent to which the rescue package fed inflation remains a matter of disagreement, almost no one, in Washington or on the front lines of helping vulnerable people across the country, expects another round of federal aid even if the economy tips into a recession. Lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned that more stimulus could exacerbate rising prices.
In the meantime, the progress that the Biden administration hailed in fighting poverty last year has faded. The national child poverty rate and the food hardship rate for families with children, which dipped in 2021, have both rebounded to their highest levels since December 2020, according to researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. Two in five Americans surveyed by the Census Bureau at the end of July said they had difficulty paying a usual household expense in the previous week, the highest rate in two years of the survey.
What is happening at the William Temple House is emblematic of the economic situation. Demand for food is swelling again, and officials here blame rising prices and lost federal aid. The people seeking help come from a wide variety of backgrounds: parents, retirees struggling to stretch Social Security benefits, immigrants who speak Mandarin, college graduates with jobs.
Waiting in line on a recent Wednesday, Susan B. Smith said federal aid had helped her family endure the pandemic over the last year. Direct payments, along with three months’ worth of rental assistance, “got us through a lot last winter,” she said. “Every little bit of help, we appreciate it. We just want to make it through, not starve.”
Now, most of that assistance is gone, and food and housing cost more, a reality that has forced Smith and one of her daughters, Tamela Clover, to seek help at the food pantry. Clover, a college graduate who works part time for a social services agency, said her salary had not kept pace with her cost of living: “Everything’s so expensive.”
Biden frequently acknowledges the high inflation is hurting people and has taken several steps to try to mitigate rising costs. He and his aides insist that while the pain is real, last year’s stimulus package has made the country and its most vulnerable people better positioned for any economic troubles ahead.
Administration officials point to a stronger job market, a lower eviction rate and healthier household finances than the nation has typically experienced at this point in a recovery from a recession, which the economy briefly entered early in the pandemic. They say the $350 billion that Congress gave to state, local and tribal governments should help fuel some assistance programs even after federal aid runs out.
The law “reduced significantly the degree of hardship, both over the last year and a half and going forward,” said Gene Sperling, a senior adviser to Biden who has overseen fulfillment of the law.
Last week, Biden signed into law a vast economic package that his administration says will help reduce inflation. It includes tax credits to stoke low-carbon energy, expanded premium supports for Americans who buy health insurance through the federal government and curbs on prescription drug prices for seniors.
But the president was forced to drop his push to extend many of the temporary programs that Democrats approved last year to directly fight hunger and poverty. That included additional food from the Agriculture Department, rental assistance from the Treasury, and supplemental income in the form of direct payments and an expanded child tax credit. An extension of the child credit was included in a bill carrying a much larger portion of Biden’s agenda that the House passed in November, but it did not survive in the Senate. An earlier Biden proposal had also contained $150 billion in affordable-housing programs, which were also jettisoned.
The swift decline into pandemic recession plunged millions of Americans into dire financial straits. In 2020, the Oregon Food Bank served 1.7 million people, Morgan said. That number dipped in 2021 to about 1.2 million.
Now it is rising again, toward what Morgan estimates could be 1.5 million. That would be the food bank’s second-largest caseload for a single year, behind only 2020.
“There’s a very direct correlation between federal assistance, state assistance and a decrease in numbers,” said Kevin Ryan, director of social services at William Temple House, who welcomed Smith, Clover and others to a shaded sitting area where they waited for their trip into the food pantry to begin.
“When that goes away, the numbers go back up.”
When Biden’s team drafted the rescue plan in the early days of his administration, it was trying to give vulnerable Americans, particularly those thrown out of work or at risk of losing their homes, enough assistance to carry them through until the economy returned to some version of normal.
The economic recovery has been faster than was forecast before Democrats approved the $1.9 trillion package, with unemployment hovering near a 50-year low and growth surging last year. “It gave millions of working families a shot they otherwise might not have,” said Brian Deese, director of Biden’s National Economic Council.
But the normalcy has yet to arrive. Inflation has climbed higher, and endured longer, than administration officials thought possible.
Higher prices are making it harder for many Americans to afford food and housing. Adjusted for inflation, average wages have declined since Biden took office. Economic data suggest that many households, including a wide swath of vulnerable Americans, have lost buying power as prices have soared.
Rising mortgage rates, the result of Fed interest rates meant to combat price spikes, have pushed home buying even further out of reach for millions of Americans. The Oregon Office of Economic Analysis estimates that only 23% of Portland residents can now afford to buy a median-priced home in the city, down from 35% in December.
Poverty researchers say the coming months could be worse.
“There’s strong reason to believe that food insufficiency will continue to remain at high levels and perhaps worsen,” said Zachary Parolin, a poverty researcher at Bocconi University in Milan and a senior fellow at Columbia’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy.
Administration officials say the best policies they can pursue for people like Smith are ones that fight inflation, such as actions to untangle supply chains that have pushed up the prices of goods like furniture. The bill Biden signed this month will eventually reduce prescription and electricity costs for many Americans, and it could help lower overall inflation by a small amount in the long term, independent studies suggest.
Smith, 55, is not expecting another round of assistance checks from the federal government and is instead relying on Social Security benefits, along with government and charitable assistance. She cares for three grandchildren, including one with a severe medical condition, and cannot work outside the home because child care would be too costly.
When her turn arrived at William Temple House, Smith carefully pulled her shopping baskets down a small flight of stairs to what resembled a miniature grocery store. “My kids are hungry,” she told Ryan, and she proceeded to stock three red crates with items she knew they would like: potatoes, celery, bacon, Froot Loops, Ritz crackers, bags of potato chips.
“I always try to get my kids snack foods here,” Smith said. “I can’t afford snacks.”
Cheney predicts a lengthy fight for American democracy in her campaign’s closing message
Jon Ward, Chief National Correspondent – August 11, 2022
Rep. Liz Cheney released a closing message video ahead of a Republican primary she is expected to lose next week, framing the congressional race as part of a bigger fight for the soul of the nation.
Regardless of the race’s outcome, Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, has publicly hinted recently that she will run for president in 2024. Privately, those close to her have done nothing to discourage others from assuming she will. And while her video message spoke of a long fight required to reject the “poisonous lies” of former President Donald Trump about the 2020 election, she did not give any specific hints about her future plans.
Cheney did, however, talk of a cause that she said would unite Republicans, Democrats and independents. That is a nod to a national effort she seems intent on leading that transcends party and ideology.
“America cannot remain free if we abandon the truth. The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious. It preys on those who love their country. It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law,” Cheney said.
“This is Donald Trump’s legacy, but it cannot be the future of our nation,” she said.
Rep. Liz Cheney. (Via YouTube)
“If we do not condemn these lies, if we do not hold those responsible to account, we will be excusing this conduct and it will become a feature of all elections. America will never be the same.”
Polls show Cheney is likely to lose her seat in Congress next Tuesday by double-digit margins, to a Republican primary challenger who has shown fealty to Trump and his baseless claims of a rigged election in 2020.
That challenger, Harriet Hageman, is expected not only to win the primary contest for Wyoming’s only congressional seat but, in a state that is largely Republican, to easily win the fall election.
Cheney has said for over a year that she is intent on keeping Trump out of the presidency for a second time, following his central role in fomenting an assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Since then she has been the top Republican on the select committee investigating Jan 6. The panel’s work has revealed how much of what happened on Jan. 6 was premeditated by Trump and his allies.
The questions facing Cheney now — if she does lose to Hageman — will revolve around how much she says about her future plans, including a possible White House run.
