We begin today’s roundup with a very important piece by Nelson W. Cunningham, former federal prosecutor and general counsel of the White House Office of Administration, on the transparent ploy by Donald Trump to hinder Robert Mueller’s investigation and the ability of acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to curtail the investigation even without firing Mueller:
[T]here is another, more insidious threat to the investigation: that Whitaker will curtail it without firing Mueller and that, because of a loophole in the special-counsel regulations, the public would not find out until far too late. On “Fox News Sunday” this past weekend, Trump said he wouldn’t stop Whitaker if he wanted to limit the investigation. “It’s going to be up to him,” Trump said. “I would not get involved.”
The regulations establish the special counsel’s independence and give him a wide ambit, but they also require him to report — in advance — to the attorney general all significant actions that might be taken. The attorney general, in turn, may request that the special counsel explain a contemplated action, and “may, after review, conclude that the action is so inappropriate or unwarranted under established Departmental practices that it should not be pursued.”
The attorney general is directed to give “great weight” to the special counsel’s views but, otherwise, his discretion to overrule is broad and cannot be appealed.
Here’s the loophole in regulations that would keep Congress from learning about such an overruling in a timely way: The attorney general is required to notify Congress that he had taken the action only “upon conclusion of the Special Counsel’s investigation.”
Harry Litman, a former deputy assistant attorney general, provides an overview of the status of the investigation at The Los Angeles Times:
If any of the as-yet uncharged cooperating defendants opts to go to trial, that process will take at least many months. And we likely have not seen the end of Mueller’s efforts to secure information — or, preferably, testimony — from the president. Trump’s answers to Mueller’s initial written questions are supposed to be submitted to the investigators this week, but they won’t begin to provide a satisfactory account of the president’s conduct and mental state.
Even if Mueller is not about to close up shop, it is increasingly likely that the full contours of his inquiry will be sketched out and known to the public by year’s end. For the president and his circle, it is not shaping up to be a pretty picture.
Meanwhile, at The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson warns Republicans of continuing to enable Trump’s increasingly erratic and offensive behavior:
Republicans who might be inclined to sign up for another season of Trump’s fading reality show should pause and take stock. There should be no doubt, at this point, that the man is a giant loser who will drag the GOP down with him.
“I wasn’t on the ballot,” he whined to Wallace. But he spent weeks on the campaign trail, begging supporters to vote as if he were. At almost every stop, he said that a vote for the GOP candidate would be “a vote for me.” The result? Millions more voted against Trump than for him. And this was just a warm-up for 2020.
Catherine Rampell explains how Republican gutting of Medicaid in Arkansas has proved disastrous:
Thirteen other states are pursuing similar policies. They’d do well to pause their plans. For many low-income families, the Arkansas experiment has already proved disastrous. More than 12,000 have been purged from the state Medicaid rolls since September — and not necessarily because they’re actually failing to work 80 hours a month, as the state requires. [...]
A Hamilton Project report found that the preponderance of evidence suggests Medicaid has little or positive effects on labor-force supply. For many families, safety-net services support work, rather than discourage it
Over at USA Today, the editors call on the administation to hold Saudi Arabia accountable:
The CIA finding not only puts a lie to the Saudi government's determination to distance the hot-headed and impetuous Salman from a killing carried out by his closest aides, but it also places President Donald Trump in a tough moral dilemma.
The president has vowed "very severe" repercussions if Riyadh is responsible for the killing of Khashoggi. But he has shrank from blaming the 33-year-old Saudi leader, whom Trump sees as a vital ally in countering Iranian influence and in brokering a Middle East peace deal. [...] According to the CIA, a crown prince with a history of repressing dissent acted ruthlessly and recklessly to silence a critic, in rank violation of American values. Anything less than severe sanctions — diplomatic, economic and military — is tantamount to letting him get away with murder.
On the topic of the wildfires, the editors at Tampa Bay Times call for action on climate change:
Historic wildfires in California. Historic hurricanes in Florida. Climate change is here, it's supercharging already dangerous natural disasters and Congress needs to act with urgency to mitigate the damage and curb the causes. Lawmakers should establish a national catastrophe fund to spread the risk of covering hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires and other major disasters across state lines. Second, they should enact a carbon tax that would make polluters pay and let the free market cut the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Both measures are fair and based on common sense.
Writer Karl Taro Greenfeld gives his take on the fires in his home state:
Those of us lucky enough to survive the latest blaze unscathed forget the quickening and fear that we felt when it seemed that this time, it was headed toward us. Perhaps living in California—where fires are so frequent that I have heard people describe the ashy embers that accompany fire season as our version of snowflakes—conditions one to persistent denial. Coming right up to the edge of disaster, then moving on; that’s the California way.
The morning after my mother’s phone call, I drove to work with funnels of smoke in my rearview mirror, rising up in the Santa Monica Mountains behind me. The commute felt apocalyptic. Then I spent my day dreaming up post-apocalyptic story lines. My daily life and my work life had come together in calamity as they sometimes do in California. But not just in California. The state is often on the cutting edge—of tax reform, new technology, culinary innovations. Perhaps in fear and denial, too, we are leading the way. Wherever you are, the many dangers of climate change have heightened some already present danger: The floods are worse, the droughts more severe, the hurricanes gustier. Then you go home and escape into an imaginary future that’s even worse. We are all Californians now, dude.
On a final note, don’t miss Ed Kilgore’s latest at New York Magazine on how the election narrative was wrong and how the midterms were a big win for the Democratic Party:
[N]early two weeks after the fact, we can now make a more balanced assessment of the midterms. The fact that late-counted ballots tended to trend Democratic almost everywhere (even if it wasn’t enough to change the outcome in several key races) made the final map bluer than it looked on election night. [...]
All in all, it’s impossible to call this midterm anything other than a solid Democratic win, once you contextualize what happened in the Senate and don’t get too hung up on expectations or should-woulda-coulda contests. Facing a highly polarized electorate and structural GOP advantages in both the House (gerrymandering and more efficient GOP voter distribution) and the Senate (the aforementioned crazy landscape), Democrats did well across the board, and without the usual midterm qualifier of low turnout (2018 produced the highest midterm turnout since 1914). There is a decidedly less one-sided atmosphere in Washington and in many states, and Democrats are well positioned for an even more fateful election two years from now.