Kelly on Immigration

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's positions on immigration.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on border crossers:

But they're also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society. They're overwhelmingly rural people. In the countries they come from, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm. They don't speak English; obviously that's a big thing. ... They don't integrate well; they don't have skills. 

Deep dive tk, but here is the 1910 census showing Kelly's great-grandfather Giuseppe Pedalino and his second wife Concetta. (Kelly's great-grandma died in 1898.)

He was a wagon driver.
She was illiterate and could not speak English 10 years after arrival.#resistancegenealogy pic.twitter.com/N9AfuLNvb1

— Jennifer Mendelsohn (@CleverTitleTK) May 11, 2018

Ronald Reagan, October 28, 1985

Between 1892 and 1954, nearly 17 million immigrants to the New World passed through the Ellis Island checkpoint. Most immigrants moved through the checkpoint in a few hours to begin their new lives in America and freedom. And I like to picture the scene as a boatload of immigrants leaving Ellis Island for New York, they pass Miss Liberty and crowd the rails to gaze. Someone on board knows English, he reads and translates the inscription that the statue bears, words that have proclaimed the meaning of America for millions of immigrants, for shiploads of returning soldiers in two great wars, for every family that has ever visited that glorious statue. And those words: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me. I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door." Well, many of those immigrants remain at the rails until Miss Liberty is lost in the fog. It would be no surprise if some shed tears of joy.

Facebook, Russia, Crime, and Race

In  Defying the Odds, we discuss Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign.

Nick Penzenstadler, Brad Heath, Jessica Guynn,at USA Today:

The Russian company charged with orchestrating a wide-ranging effort to meddle in the 2016 presidential election overwhelmingly focused its barrage of social media advertising on what is arguably America’s rawest political division: race.

The roughly 3,500 Facebook ads were created by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency, which is at the center of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s February indictment of 13 Russians and three companies seeking to influence the election.

While some ads focused on topics as banal as business promotion or Pokémon, the company consistently promoted ads designed to inflame race-related tensions. Some dealt with race directly; others dealt with issues fraught with racial and religious baggage such as ads focused on protests over policing, the debate over a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and relationships with the Muslim community.

The company continued to hammer racial themes even after the election.

USA TODAY Network reporters reviewed each of the 3,517 ads, which were released to the public this week for the first time by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The analysis included not just the content of the ads, but also information that revealed the specific audience targeted, when the ad was posted, roughly how many views it received and how much the ad cost to post.

...
Only about 100 of the ads overtly mentioned support for Donald Trump or opposition to Hillary Clinton. A few dozen referenced questions about the U.S. election process and voting integrity, while a handful mentioned other candidates like Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush

Alfred Ng at CNET:

 The most successful Facebook ad bought by Russian trolls managed to fool more than 1,334,000 people. 

The post was a promotion for the Facebook group "Back the Badge," which claimed to be a "community of people who support our brave Police Officers." It was actually run by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian-linked troll farm that pushed out more than 80,000 posts focused on divisive issues in the US. 

The same group also made posts pretending to be Black Lives Matter activists and Trump supporters, but it was the fake police support that gave it the most traffic.

McCarthy Signed 19 Discharge Petitions

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional politics as well as the presidential race. 

House GOP leaders oppose a discharge petition to consider immigration bills.

"I don't believe in discharge petitions," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy,  (R-CA) said on Wednesday. "You're turning the floor over. I think it's better to use the legislative process."

In the minority, however, McCarthy signed 19 discharge petitions.

1. H.Res. 554, 111th Congress, require bills & reports on Internet, signature #54.
2. H.Res. 847, 111th Congress, health legislation transparency, signature #82
3. HR 391, 111th Congress, greenhouse gases, signature #113
4. HR2294, 11th Congress, Gitmo, signature #158
5. HR3105,111th Congrees, Central Valley Project, signature #2
6. HR4972,111th Congress, Obamacare repeal, signature #144
7. HR5141, 111th Congress, corporate reporting, signature #134
8. H.Res. 220 to consider HR 511, 110th Congress, support for military, signature #157
9. H.Res. 559 to consider H.Res. 479, 110th Congress, House rules, signature #15
10. H.Res.694 to consider HR2905, 110th Congress, Fairness Doctrine, signature #25
11. H.Res. 1331 to consider HR1399, 110th Congress, DC gun rights, signature #7
12. HR5424, 111th Congress, Obamacare repeal, signature #4
13. HR3089, 110th Congress, energy, signature #147
14. HR2208, 110th Congress, coal-to-liquid projects, signature #112
15. HR2279, 110th Congress, refining on military facilities, signature #133
16. HR3089, 110th Congress, energy, signature #147
17. HR4088, 110th Congress, immigration, signature #140
18. HR5440, 110th Congress, FISA, signature #16
19. HR 5656, 110th Congress, alternative fuels, signature #108

On January 15, 2010, McCarthy wrote of the H.Res. 847 petition:

In the health care reform debate, there continues to be a divide among Democrats. Both House and Senate Democrats continue to meet in secret to negotiate the final version of the bill. When then Senator Obama was campaigning, he promised Americans transparency. Instead, all Americans have seen are closed door deals.  My colleagues and I are fighting back.  We want the transparency America was promised.  We are asking all members of Congress to sign a discharge petition (needing 218 signatures) forcing a vote on a bipartisan resolution requiring the health care reform negotiations be open to the public and media.

Gerrymanders Can Decay

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. 

Elena Schneider in Politico:

In many states, Republicans maximized gains in the House by spreading GOP voters across as many districts as possible. Typically, that left Democrats with around 40 to 45 percent of the vote in those districts, making them difficult under normal circumstances for the minority party to contest.

But this election year is anything but normal. Many of the once-secure 55-45 Republican districts are very much in play, even in states that have not had competitive congressional races since 2012, the year new maps were installed. And North Carolina and Ohio — where Democrats chose nominees in primaries on Tuesday — are turning into the prime examples.

Neither national party has spent money in North Carolina or Ohio in the past two elections. But operatives in both states now rattle off a half-dozen Republican districts that could become fierce battlegrounds this fall, including the fast-changing suburbs of Cincinnati, Charlotte, Columbus and Raleigh. President Donald Trump won less than 55 percent of the vote in each of the seats in 2016 — and some of the Republican incumbents have been caught by surprise by the ferocity of their competition.

“The math that was used to create these districts was the same math that was calculated in the anti-Obama era,” said Paul Shumaker, a Republican consultant based in North Carolina. But now, he continued, “because of the way the maps have been drawn and the environment that Republicans are facing, you have a whole bunch of Republicans who have never been in a competitive race in their life, who are running [in one] right now.”

In Epic Journey: the 2008 Elections and American Politics, we wrote:

House elections are different from Senate elections because members represent districts whose shapes change over time. Before 2006, many Democrats worried that unfair district lines would block a Democratic takeover. The redistricting after the 2000 census did protect House incumbents, making it harder for the minority party to score gains. Nevertheless, some commentators overstated the effect of computer-crafted districts. No matter how clever a redistricting scheme may be, demographic and political changes may blunt its impact over time. Young people and new citizens enter the electorate. Old voters die. Other voters move around or change their party preference. Such shifts were on display in New York State, where a bipartisan gerrymander had once seemed to guarantee the GOP a certain minimum of House seats. But by 2006, shrinking Republican numbers helped nudge three GOP seats into the Democratic column. Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania had notorious Republican gerrymanders that backfired. The Wall Street Journal reported shortly after the election: “Republican leaders may have overreached and created so many Republican-leaning districts that they spread their core supporters too thinly. That left their incumbents vulnerable to the type of backlash from traditionally Republican-leaning independent voters that unfolded this week”[i]

---

[i] Jeane Cummings, “Redistricting: Home to Roost.  How Republicans’ Gerrymandering Efforts May Have Backfired,” Wall Street Journal, November 10, 2006,  A6

Cohen Cash

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's record of scandal. 

Dan Mangan at CNBC:

Drug giant Novartis paid President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen more than $1 million for work that he actually ended up being "unable" to do, the company said Wednesday.

Novartis said that a month after Trump was inaugurated as president in January 2017, it signed a one-year contract with Cohen's shell company, Essential Consultants that paid it $100,000 per month.

Novartis said it believed Cohen "could advise the company as to how the Trump administration might approach certain U.S. health-care policy matters, including the Affordable Care Act."

But just a month after signing the deal, Novartis executives had their first meeting with Cohen, and afterward "determined that Michael Cohen and Essentials Consultants would be unable to provide the services that Novartis had anticipated."

But Novartis kept paying Cohen, despite that.

"As the contract, unfortunately, could only be terminated for cause, payments continued to be made until the contract expired by its own terms in February 2018," Novartis said.

And now Novartis claims they hired Mr. Cohen for “healthcare” matters (they paid him approx $1 Million). Wow - he’s a doctor as well!! Very talented guy this Mr. Cohen. #basta

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) May 9, 2018

Did Russians Reimburse Payments to Stormy?

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign.

After significant investigation, we have discovered that Mr. Trump’s atty Mr. Cohen received approximately $500,000 in the mos. after the election from a company controlled by a Russian Oligarc with close ties to Mr. Putin. These monies may have reimbursed the $130k payment.

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) May 8, 2018

The Executive Summary from our first Preliminary Report on Findings may be accessed via the link below. Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen have a lot of explaining to do.https://t.co/179WvIkRlD

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) May 8, 2018

Bloomberg:

A company tied to a Russian oligarch sent $500,000 last year to an entity that lawyer Michael Cohen used to pay hush money to a porn actress who said she had a sexual encounter with President Donald Trump, according to attorney Michael Avenatti.

The bombshell revelations, which couldn’t immediately be verified, caught companies and the president’s team off guard when Avenatti unveiled them on Twitter and linked to a publicly available dropbox account. It’s the latest twist in litigation brought by Stephanie Clifford, the porn actress known as Stormy Daniels, who was paid $130,000 for her silence just before the 2016 presidential election.

Avenatti, who represents Clifford, said Cohen submitted false information to First Republic Bank when opening a new account in October 2016. Soon after, Viktor Vekselberg -- a Russian oligarch with links to Russian President Vladimir Putin -- “caused substantial funds to be deposited into the bank account, from which Cohen made the payment” to Daniels, Avenatti said.

It wasn’t the only surprise. AT&T Inc. and Novartis AG also appeared in Avenatti’s report, and AT&T confirmed that it had made payments to Cohen’s company.

Trump and Blankenship

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. 

John McCormack at The Weekly Standard:

Republicans are panicking as internal polls show Don Blankenship, a coal baron who spent time in jail for a mining disaster that killed 29 workers, surging into the lead in the West Virginia Senate GOP primary over Attorney General Patrick Morrissey and Congressman Evan Jenkins.

The results of an internal campaign poll conducted for one rival Senate campaign on Saturday and Sunday were: Blankenship 31 percent, Jenkins 28 percent, Morrissey 27 percent.

The results of another internal poll conducted Friday and Saturday were: Blankenship 28 percent, Morrissey 27 percent, Jenkins 14 percent. Two weeks earlier, the same rival campaign found Blankenship at 14 percent, Morrissey at 29 percent, and Jenkins at 26 percent.

Politico reported Saturday night that internal polling showed Blankenship surging, but the specific numbers are being reported for the first time by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

At the urging of Mitch McConnell -- whom Blankenship called "Cocaine Mitch" -- Trump issued a Tweet:

To the great people of West Virginia we have, together, a really great chance to keep making a big difference. Problem is, Don Blankenship, currently running for Senate, can’t win the General Election in your State...No way! Remember Alabama. Vote Rep. Jenkins or A.G. Morrisey!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2018

A few things stand out about the tweet. 

• Instead of denouncing Blankenship's racist remarks and his responsibility for 29 deaths, Trump merely referred to his electability.  
• The "Remember Alabama" line makes sense only to political junkies who remember the Roy Moore fiasco -- probably a tiny share of the electorate. 
• A lone tweet is probably not the best way to reach a state with a relatively low rate of Internet usage.

The tweet will probably not affect the outcome.  Trump was just throwing a cyber-bone to the GOP establishment.