RUSSIAN-AMERICAN SUMMIT: PRESIDENT PUTIN PRESENTS HIS PET POODLE DONALD TO AMERICA.

Ex-CIA chief John Brennan calls Trump 'nothing short of treasonous' after fawning press conference with Putin and says performance goes beyond 'high crimes and misdemeanors'

John McCain calls Trump's press conference with Putin 'one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory' and says he 'abased himself before a tyrant'

Putin pressed in interview2:04

(Video: Melissa Macaya/The Post; photo: AP)

The Fix

Analysis

Fox News’s Chris Wallace gives Putin the grilling Trump won’t

The interview turned heated at points, with Wallace clearly frustrated by Putin’s trademark filibustering and Putin clearly frustrated by a journalist actually challenging him.

• By Aaron Blake

Putin’s view triumphs in Helsinki as Trump questions U.S. intelligence

The meeting highlighted the global ascendance of the Russian president’s ruthless approach to politics and to facts — the posture that any truth can be an illusion, that any journalist or public servant is likely pursuing an ulterior motive.

The Take

Analysis

The moment called for Trump to stand up for America. He chose to bow.

Time and again, in the face of strong and direct questions by two American reporters, the president refused to stand up for the country he was elected to represent and protect.

Trump Trusts Putin’s Denial, but Seven U.S Intelligence Groups Blame Russia for Election Meddling

On Monday, President Trump continued to cast doubt on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, the consensus position of American intelligence agencies and both parties on Capitol Hill.

July 16, 2018

Trump’s E.P.A. Chief Forced Out Under Cloud of Ethics Scandals

By CORAL DAVENPORT, LISA FRIEDMAN and MAGGIE HABERMAN 9:51 PM ET 

• Embattled EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt was finally forced out on Thursday after an onslaught of scandals that led to more than a dozen investigations of his use of staff, VIP travel, and efforts to gain perks and boost his household income. The top official had caused a flood of humiliating headlines. In just one of a litany of scandals that swirled around Pruitt, aides say Pruitt asked them to help his wife find a job that would net her a salary that topped $200,000. There were reports of efforts to score tickets to top tier events, enjoy cut-rate lodging, fly first-class, meet lobbyists without a public record, blow through Washington D.C. traffic – and maybe even become the next attorney general with authority over the Russia probe. In a lengthy resignation letter he hit out at the 'unrelenting attacks on himself and his family'. An aide to Mr. Pruitt lost her job last year after objecting that the changes to official calendars could be illegal, a former senior staffer said. Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general, had been hailed by conservatives for his zealous deregulation, but could not overcome the stain of those ethics questions. Reportedly, Trump fired Pruitt without talking to him, leaving the work to Chief of Staff John Kelly.
• The E.P.A.’s deputy administrator, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, will act as the agency’s leader until President Trump nominates a new administrator.

What Will It Cost to Fix New York’s Public Housing?

NY TIMES

NY TIMES

820 Children Under 6 in Public Housing Tested High for Lead

   

Abortion 2018.  Medical Advances in Contraception & Surgery. The New Stats on Abortions.

NY TIMES

Court Deals a Blow to Labor Unions

By ADAM LIPTAK 1:20 PM ET

In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that government workers cannot be required to pay for collective bargaining, which could cost public unions tens of millions of dollars.

Mitch McConnell Just Weakened Unions ― And The Democratic Party

Federal Judge in California Halts Splitting of Migrant Families at Border.

NY TIMES

A federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction late Tuesday temporarily stopping the Trump administration from separating children from their parents at the border and ordered that all families already separated be reunited within 30 days.

Judge Dana M. Sabraw of the Federal District Court in San Diego said children under 5 must be reunited with their parents within 14 days, and he ordered that all children must be allowed to talk to their parents within 10 days.

“The unfortunate reality is that under the present system, migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property,” the judge wrote.

Judge Sabraw’s order is likely to prompt a high-profile legal battle with the Justice Department.

A Top House Democrat loses in upset.

Ocasio-Cortez Upsets Joseph Crowley in NYC  

Defeat May Have Wide Impact

By SHANE GOLDMACHER and JONATHAN MARTIN 12:38 AM ET

• Joseph Crowley of New York, who was seen as a possible Democratic House speaker, was defeated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a former campaign organizer for Bernie Sanders.
• It was the most significant loss for a Democratic incumbent in years and one that will reverberate across the party and the country. 

• Who Is Ocasio-Cortez? A Democratic Giant Slayer

  By VIVIAN WANG 2:23 AM ET
  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, is still paying off student loans. She just beat the No. 4 House Democrat in her first run for office.

Progressives in the Democratic Party are fired up. As Joe Crowley learned Tuesday night, they can’t be ignored. Ocasio-Cortez beat Crowley campaigning on Medicare for all, guaranteed jobs and abolishing ICE.

Trump’s Travel Ban Is Upheld by Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s ban on travel from five predominantly Muslim countries, delivering to the president on Tuesday a political victory and an endorsement of his power to control immigration at a time of political upheaval about the treatment of migrants at the Mexican border.

In a 5-to-4 vote, the court’s conservatives said that the president’s power to secure the country’s borders, delegated by Congress over decades of immigration lawmaking, was not undermined by Mr. Trump’s history of incendiary statements about the dangers he said Muslims pose to the United States.

NY TIMES

Justice Kennedy Announces Retirement

Court Loses Swing Vote and Trump Can Move It Rightward

By ADAM LIPTAK 2:02 PM ET

• Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced that he would retire, setting the stage for a furious fight over the future direction of the Supreme Court.
• His retirement gives President Trump the opportunity to help create a solid five-member conservative majority.
• Kennedy, 81, has been the court’s most important member for more than a decade, casting the deciding vote on the court’s controversial Citizens United campaign finance decision, the constitutional right to same-sex marriage and the continued viability of affirmative action.

The GOP reaps its reward for selling its soul to Trump


MICHAEL TOMASKY, DAILY BEAST;

Anthony Kennedy, You Are a Total Disgrace to America

No one expected Kennedy to allow Donald Trump to pick his successor. But he has. And it should forever taint his legacy as a jurist.

Border Officials Suspend Handing Over Migrant Families to Prosecutors.

• The announcement by the nation’s top border security official effectively revives the Obama administration’s “catch and release” policy that has so angered President Trump.
• Still, prosecutions of adults crossing the border illegally without children continued unabated.

NY TIMES

What Border Crisis? Federal data show that the crisis is not a crisis.

By MANNY FERNANDEZ and LINDA QIU 12:26 PM ET

NY TIMES

The real hoax about the border crisis.

WASHINGTON POST

Charter schools damage public education.



DIANE RAVITCH, WASHINGTON POST

The dark history behind Trump’s inflammatory language





WASHINGTON POST

The Trump Administration Says It Has a Plan to Reunite Separated Migrant Families

NEW YORK

Trump Calls for Depriving Immigrants Who Illegally Cross Border of Due Process Rights By Deporting Them Without Trial.

In a pair of tweets, President Trump described immigrants as invaders and wrote that U.S. immigration laws are “a mockery” and must be changed. His latest exhortations sowed more confusion among Republicans.

NY TIMES

Republicans Dislike Separating Families. But They Like ‘Zero Tolerance’ More

NY TIMES

How Trump’s Policy Change Led Migrant
Children to Be Separated From Their Parents

NY TIMES

The latest on the family separation crisis and Trump’s response.


VOX

the Trump-Kim summit
WASHINGTON POST, Fareed Zakaria

After becoming the country’s first prime minister in 1959, he oversaw independence from Britain and Malaysia.

Trump’s America does not care.

To ensure global peace that Americans sought after being pulled into two world wars, the United States became the main provider of security in Europe and East Asia. In Europe, the U.S. security guarantee made European integration possible and provided political, economic and psychological safeguards against a return to the continent’s destructive past. In East Asia, the American guarantee ended the cycle of conflict that had embroiled Japan and China and their neighbors in almost constant warfare since the late 19th century. The security bargain had an economic dimension. The allies could spend less on defense and more on strengthening their economies and social welfare systems. The United States wanted allied economies to be strong, to counter extremism on both the left and right, and to prevent the arms races and geopolitical competitions that had led to past wars. The United States would not insist on winning every economic contest or every trade deal. The perception by the other powers that they had a reasonably fair chance to succeed economically and sometimes even to surpass the United States — as Japan, Germany and other nations did at various times — was part of the glue that held the order together.

The United States’ allies count on the American security guarantee and on access to the United States’ vast market — its prosperous consumers, financial institutions and innovative entrepreneurs. In the past, U.S. presidents were unwilling to exploit this leverage. They believed that the United States had a stake in upholding the liberal world order, even if it meant abiding by or paying lip service to international rules and institutions to provide reassurance. The alternative was a return to the great-power clashes of the past from which the United States could never hope to remain uninvolved. To avoid a world of war and chaos, the United States was, up to a point, willing to play Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians’ ropes, in the interest of reassuring and binding the democratic community together. Europeans and others may have found the United States selfish and overbearing, too eager to use force and too willing to pursue its goals unilaterally,

The United States’ allies are about to find out what real unilateralism looks like and what the real exercise of U.S. hegemony feels like, because Trump’s America does not care. It feels free to pursue objectives without regard to the effect on allies or, for that matter, the world. It has no sense of responsibility to anything beyond itself. Trump’s policies are pure realism, devoid of ideals and sentiment, pursuing a narrow “national interest” defined strictly in terms of dollars and cents and defense against foreign attack. Trump’s world is a struggle of all-against-all. There are no relationships based on common values. There are merely transactions determined by power. It is the world that a century ago brought us two world wars. The United States’ adversaries will do well in this world, for Trump’s America does not want war. It will accommodate powers that can harm it. It will pay them the respect they crave and grant them their spheres of interest. Those that depend on the United States, meanwhile, will be treated with disdain, pushed around and used as pawns. At times they will be hostages to be traded for U.S. gain. The United States [is] willing to offer them up as sacrifices to appease aggressors. 

The United States rejected this approach to the world after 1945, choosing instead to take a broad, “enlightened” view of its interests. It built and defended a world order premised on the idea that Americans would be safe only if democratic and liberal values were safe. It regarded its interests and ideals as intimately bound together, its democratic alliances as permanent. But that was a choice. The United States, with all its great power, could have gone in a different direction. Now it appears to have done so.

ROBERT KAGAN, WASHINGTON POST

At NYCHA, failure most foul.

ERROL LOUIS, NY DAILY NEWS

Let history record: The collapse of the crown jewel of New York City’s progressive infrastructure proceeded without pause on the watch of its most ostentatiously progressive mayor. And as the conditions at the New York City Housing Authority deteriorated, Mayor de Blasio and the boss he tapped to run the bureaucracy kicked up a massive dust cloud of lies.

Let the record show that the newest and best hope for assistance to the long-suffering tenants of the New York City Housing Authority comes courtesy of the much-detested Trump administration. Mayor de Blasio and other New York progressives have been dealt a bracing blow from Washington. “Today marks the beginning of the end of this nightmare for NYCHA residents,” said U.S. Attorney Geoff Berman, whose federal complaint lists deception, coverups and ineptitude that ran amok at the housing authority.Money was short at the authority, Berman took pains to explain at his press conference, but money alone doesn’t explain or excuse the disaster. “The culture at NYCHA is to blame,” he said. “The management at NYCHA is to blame.”NYCHA staffers would replace the doors and walls with plywood and paint over the false fronts to conceal the deterioration from visiting inspectors from HUD.“Development staff would shut off a building’s water supply just before the [federal] inspector arrived to inspect common areas in order to temporarily stop ongoing leaks that would otherwise be visible,” according to the federal complaint. “Once the inspector left the building, the water supply would be restored. Deputy directors at NYCHA knew of this practice.”There were tens of thousands of complaints about mold growing in apartments.  1,900 instances of elevators getting stuck with a person inside — and it took two hours, on average, to fix broken elevators.The miseries suffered among the more than 400,000 NYCHA residents play out as a real-time tragedy, measured in children poisoned by lead paint, seniors trapped by broken elevators, frigid temperatures in the deep of winter, epidemic vermin-spurred asthma attacks. Gaping holes in walls and doors that left roaches and rodents rampant, with routine extermination all but ended.These failures did not start with de Blasio, but the "progressive" mayor’s four years of denial, his sudden professions of shock at decay, render any responsibility laid at his feet by predecessors squarely his burden.
With the new consent decree, the de Blasio administration apparently has agreed to accept federal oversight — and spend billions of city dollars on repairs — in exchange for the Justice Department not pursuing criminal prosecutions. This is first and foremost a case of right and wrong, and of cash-strapped bureaucrats choosing to treat rent- and taxpaying New Yorkers with deep, callous contempt. The law has been violated here, and it might be best to treat those responsible like the criminals they are. For shame, Mayor de Blasio. For shame.

America’s segregated shores: beaches' long history as a racial battleground

GUARDIAN

In a day of personal diplomacy that began with a choreographed handshake and ended with a freewheeling news conference, President Trump deepened his wager on North Korea’s leader on Tuesday, arguing that their rapport would bring the swift demise of that country’s nuclear program.

Mr. Trump, acting more salesman than statesman, used flattery, cajolery and even a slickly produced promotional video to try to make the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, a partner in peace. He also gave Mr. Kim a significant concession: no more military drills between the United States and South Korea, a change that surprised South Korea and the Pentagon.

The Summit Was Unprecedented, the Statement Vague and the Day Historic

Trump said he believed that Mr. Kim’s desire to end North Korea’s seven-decade-old confrontation with the United States was sincere.Still, a joint statement signed by the two after their meeting — the first ever between a sitting American president and a North Korean leader — was as skimpy as the summit meeting was extravagant. It called for the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula but provided neither a timeline nor any details about how the North would go about giving up its weapons.The statement, which American officials negotiated intensely with the North Koreans and had hoped would be a road map to a nuclear deal, was a page and a half of diplomatic language recycled from statements negotiated by the North over the last two decades.It made no mention of Mr. Trump’s longstanding — supposedly nonnegotiable — demand that North Korea submit to complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization. It made no mention of North Korea’s missiles. It did not even set a firm date for a follow-up meeting, though the president said he would invite Mr. Kim to the White House when the time was right.“This is what North Korea has wanted from the beginning, and I cannot believe that our side allowed it,” said Joseph Y. Yun, a former State Department official who has negotiated with the North.

VOX

“Kim Jong Un is desperately looking for international recognition of North Korea as a country in good standing, of his right to rule it, and of the legitimacy of his possession of nuclear weapons,” Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on North Korea’s nuclear program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, writes at Foreign Policy.

Many pundits thought there was a very good chance the summit would never happen: that the sides were too far apart to even get to the table. The fact that Trump showed up the most pessimistic expectations is a clear win. [And the fact that the two leaders of the Unites  States and North Korea actually met and concluded talks on friendly terms has undeniably made the world a little safer--Esco]

Here are some things that weren’t mentioned at any point in the statement issued after the summit: North Korean political prisoners, brutal labor camps, and the starvation crisis.There’s a reason North Korea is widely considered the most repressive country on earth. Somewhere between 80,000 and 130,000 North Koreans are currently held as political prisoners by their own government, detained in brutal and vicious gulags. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans have died in these gulags over the past several decades; summary executions and systematic rape are relatively common occurrences.Thomas Buergenthal, an eminent international lawyer and Auschwitz survivor, helped prepare a chilling report on these camps last year. He told the Washington Post that “the conditions in the Korean prison camps are as terrible, or even worse, than those I saw and experienced in my youth in these Nazi camps.”Meanwhile, North Korea has devoted tremendous resources to its nuclear program and military, at the expense of the basic needs of its citizens. UNICEF estimated in January that 60,000 North Korean children were on the brink of starvation.

Trump canceling US military exercises with South Korea is a big, big deal.

The exercises are fairly regular — the next one is scheduled for August — and an important tool for reassuring South Korea that the US is committed to its defense. They also show North Korea that the alliance is durable and serious, thus deterring it from any kind of military probe to test American and South Korean resolve. It’s even more significant because the South Koreans didn’t know about it in advance, and still aren’t sure what it means....The irony here is that South Korean President Moon Jae-in was the driving force behind the peace talks. His diplomatic outreach to both sides — he met with both Trump and Kim multiple times before the talks to lay the groundwork — was vital to the meeting actually happening. Moon assured both sides that a deal could be struck. North Korea’s longtime strategic goal is something political scientists call “decoupling,” which means using its nuclear arsenal as a wedge to break the alliance between the United States and South Korea. Classically, decoupling is supposed to work as a kind of threat: If the North has nuclear missiles that can reach US cities, then the US breaks off the alliance because it’s not willing to put San Francisco at risk to save Seoul. What’s happening now is a bit different. Kim is dangling the carrot of denuclearization to convince Trump to make concessions against the South’s interest, pitting the allies against each other and making an alliance fracture more likely in the long term. It’s a canny maneuver by Kim, and it’s not [likely] Trump knows he’s being played.

It Can Happen Here

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45

CASS SUNSTEIN, NY REVIEW OF BOOKS

Witnessing the Obama Presidency, from Start to Finish

GEORGE PACKER, NEW YORKER


GUARDIAN

Trump is helping Putin with a key goal when he spurns US allies

• President Trump called for Russia to be re-admitted to the G-7 group as he picked fights with U.S. allies.
• Experts across the political spectrum said that the rift Trump created between the U.S. and its historical allies advances a Russian objective.

John Harwood | @johnjharwood

Published 5:51 PM ET Fri, 8 June 2018  Updated 6:55 PM ET Fri, 8 June 2018CNBC.com

Vladimir Putin tried to help Donald Trump win the presidency. As president, Trump is helping Putin achieve a top strategic goal.

And the question is: Why?

That mystery deepened Friday when Trump, as he openly attacked U.S. allies while heading for meetings with them, called for Russia to be readmitted to the G-7 club of advanced industrial democracies. The U.S. and its allies ejected Russia after its 2014 seizure of Crimea.

With that concession, Trump capped a whirl of activity advancing Russia's objective of splintering the alliances undergirding the Western world's security and prosperity for the past 70 years. French President Emmanuel Macron, incensed by the trade conflicts Trump instigated, declared that G-7 partners gathered in Canada this weekend might cut out the U.S. for purposes of the summit communique.

This followed the president's earlier reluctance to embrace North Atlantic Treaty Organization commitments safeguarding Europe against Russia, his delay in implementing new congressional sanctions against Russia and his praise of Putin himself. Those actions, according to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials, followed criminal interference by Russian operatives to help Trump defeat Hillary Clintonin the 2016 election.

The starkness of Trump's words — he stated no conditions for returning Russia to international favor on the same morning he impugned Canada's honesty — unsettled observers across the political spectrum.

Trump’s Family Separation Policy Aims To Deter Immigration. That May Make It Illegal.

You won’t hear Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen call this “deterrence.”

By Roque Planas

The aim of President Donald Trump’s new policy of splitting kids from their mothers at the border is, in a word, deterrence: The White House wants to discourage more immigrants from trying to enter the United States.

Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump’s secretary of homeland security, is careful not to say this outright — she dodged a direct question on the subject from Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) at a hearing last month.

There’s a reason Nielsen and other administration officials shy away from attaching the word “deterrence” to the new policy: Changing immigrant detention policy as a way to deter undocumented people from coming to the U.S. is illegal, federal courts have repeatedly ruled. So now she and other Trump administration officials find themselves struggling to defend a family separation policy whose clear ambition is deterrence.

---

The Department of Homeland Security was considering separating children from their parents “in order to deter” undocumented immigration, White House chief of staff John Kelly told CNN while serving as Nielsen’s predecessor last year. And Gene Hamilton, a former aide to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, asked participants at a meeting last August on the policy to “generate paperwork laying out everything we could do to deter immigrants from coming to the U.S. illegally,” according to The New Yorker.

Five myths about presidential pardons



WASHINGTON POST

Decades Ago, New York Dug a Moat Around Its Specialized Schools

NY TIMES, Jim Dwyer

The Democrats are still in 2018 trouble



WASHINGTON POST, Fareed Zakaria

Steve Bannon’s clever idea to save the GOP from brutal midterms



WASHINGTON POST, Fareed Zakaria



JOHN CASSIDY, NEW YORKER

A Strong Economy Presents Democrats with a Challenge in the Midterms

JEFFREY TOOBIN, NEW YORKER

Will the Fervor to Impeach Donald Trump Start a Democratic Civil War?

Hands off my data! 15 default privacy settings you should change right now


WASHINGTON POST

Where ‘America First’ Once Led

A new exhibit reveals America’s isolationist attitudes and policies during the Holocaust—and speaks to where the country still stands today.

People line up to enter the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.Alex Brandon / AP

• ELIOT A. COHEN
 

THE ATLANTIC

We should take the pro-Trump media machine very seriously




GREG SARGENT, WASHINGTON POST

In Texas School Shooting, 10 Dead, 10 Hurt and Many Unsurprised

NY TIMES


NY TIMES

Who Is Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the Texas Shooting Suspect?

G.O.P. Insists Making Poor People Work Lifts Them Up. Where’s the Proof?

EDUARDO PORTER, NY TIMES

Israel, U.S. criticized for Palestinian deaths in Gaza clashes as death toll rises

WASHINGTON POST

5/13 The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

 The class divide is already toxic, and is fast becoming unbridgeable. You’re probably part of the problem.

ATLANTIC

NY TIMES

Michael Cohen Got $500,000 From Firm Tied to Russia Mogul. 

Unemployment Rate Hits 3.9%, a Rare Low, as Job Market Becomes More Competitive



NY TIMES




WASHINGTON POST

The U.S. now has a record 6.6 million job openings.

It's likely that the United States will soon be in a situation where there are more job openings than job seekers. But wage growth is stuck at a lackluster level.

• By Heather Long