One can certainly understand if the media is a tad confused. This week, Presidential Counselor Kellyanne Conway chided media for taking President Donald Trump’s tweets so seriously and denied that tweets are one of his preferred methods of communication. Shortly thereafter White House press secretary Sean Spicer reminded media that Trump’s tweets are “official statements” and thus serious articulations of policy.
Category: Politics
Below is my column in The Hill Newspaper on the impact of President Donald Trump’s latest tweets on the pending motion and appeal before the United States Supreme Court. My view expressed in the column is apparently shared by George Conway, the husband of Trump Adviser Kellyanne Conway. He tweeted “These tweets may make some people feel better, but they certainly won’t help (the Office of the Solicitor General) get 5 votes in SCOTUS, which is what actually matters. Sad.” Conway was once believed in line for a position as Assistant Attorney General. He has now decided to stay in private practice. Continue reading “Supreme Court Deliberates As Trump Becomes Witness Against Himself”
Reality Leigh Winner, of Augusta, Georgia has the unfortunate distinction of being the first leaker caught by the Trump Administration. With members like Jason Chaffetz saying “I want to see people in handcuffs,” the 25-year-old federal contract worker could be facing some serious jail time. In addition, she seems to fulfill the image advanced President Trump as a liberal, anti-Trump advocate within the system. What will be interesting is the sentence sought by the Administration after high-ranking officials have been given no criminal charges or misdemeanors for removing classified information and other related charges.
Continue reading “NSA Contractor Had History Of Anti-Trump Comments”
Albany Law Professor Stephen Clark has taken on case with truly heroic dimensions. Clark has challenged the decision of Alamo Drafthouse to hold showings of the movie Wonder Woman in a female-only event. Clark, 48, has said that as a gay man he is sympathetic with efforts to help disadvantaged groups, but he viewed the event as per se unlawful.
Continue reading “Albany Law Professor Challenges Women-Only Screenings of Wonder Woman”
This weekend I discussed how President Donald Trump’s own words had been the primary problem for lawyers seeking to advance his agenda. Trump’s comment and tweets have routinely undermined defenses and alienated allies. The column was prompted by Trump’s London tweets. While discussed for their triggering outrage across the political spectrum in Great Britain, one of the most controversial tweets also contained references to the immigration order as a “travel ban.” It was a remarkably ill-considered tweet. However, on Monday morning, President Trump doubled down and actually attacked his own lawyers at the Justice Department and directly contradicted their position in court. As I mentioned earlier, government counsel must feel like they have a daily Perry Mason moment with their client jumping up in court screaming incriminating things. The only logical conclusion that can be reached is that Trump really does not care if he wins the case. The problem is that there is a large and talented team at the Justice Department that is still laboring under the assumption that the President does want to prevail before the Supreme Court.
We have previously discussed how politicians often attack free speech and other rights to show that they are “tough” on terror after attacks. Prime Minister Theresa May however may have set a record. May did not hesitate in immediately blaming the Internet and calling for government regulation of free speech to combat attacks like the one in London. Of course, if these terrorists were connected to ISIS (or inspired by ISIS), their extremism was not caused by free speech on the Internet. Indeed, the Internet often allows security to track extremists on the web.
Continue reading “May Calls For Free Speech Controls on the Internet In Response To London Attacks”
We previously discussed the crushing abuse and discrimination faced by Muslims in Myanmar. The Rohingya are denied basic rights and face continued violence in the country. The most recent outrage was the arrest of three Muslims for holding Ramadan prayers in the street. Recently, their local school was closed by a nationalist mob.
Continue reading “Muslims Arrested For Praying In Myanmar After Closing Of Muslim Schools”
One of the strangest aspects of the troubled start to the Trump Administration has been the role played by Trump’s own words in tweets and interviews. In both litigation and political settings, Trump’s own words have become the greatest liability for the Administration — undercutting allies and unraveling defenses. In the immigration order litigation, his controversial campaign statements have been repeatedly used as the determinative factor against his Administration in both the first and second rounds of litigation. His statements to the Russians and then his rather odd denial in Israel threw his Administration into downward spirals. Now we may see the creation of new precedent entirely due to Trump’s continued unguarded and unwise statements. Trump’s statements in interviews are the primary reason for the appointment of the Special Counsel after he directly contradicted his own staff on the reasons for the Comey termination. Recently, after the London attack, his Twitter statements caused an understandable outcry in Britain after he first tried to use the attack to argue for his immigration order and then attacked London’s mayor by misconstruing the mayor’s statement to the public. It is an incredible record. Absent these unguarded and ill-considered statements, Trump’s Administration would be in a far better legal and political position.
While the London tweets have been discussed primarily for their highly negative impact on people in Great Britain (of all parties), one tweet is equally problematic from a legal perspective. In his controversial tweet, Trump referred to his immigration order as a “Travel ban” — precisely what his lawyers have worked so hard to avoid before the Ninth and Fourth Circuits. As with his Comey comments, he is using the very language that his critics most wanted him to use. It is another example of sending months and hundreds of pages of argument only to be stymied by a mere 140 words.
I have been writing about how President Donald Trump has brought out the worst in his critics in the media as well as the courts. Ironically, some in these institutions appear to be rushing to confirm the stereotypes that he has painted of them. The latest example is CNN host Reza Aslan. CNN has been criticized by many for its coverage of Trump and alleged bias against his Administration. The loudest critic is of course Trump himself. Recently, CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria declared that Trump attained the White House through “bulls–t.” Now Aslan, who hosts CNN’s program “Believer” has called President Trump “a piece of sh–” and “an embarrassment to humankind” after Trump used the latest massacre to his call for U.S. courts to approve his executive order banning travel from six Muslim-majority countries. Aslan seemed intent to establish that he is a “true believer” in the anti-Trump cause but he also represents a media organization. His attack is the latest evidence of media personalities losing any sense of professionalism and dispassion. As I said yesterday, media must decide if they still want to report or merely rave at the new and newsmakers. Aslan may be as “spiritually curious” as advertised but he is now professionally dubious as a journalist. At the same time, as discussed below, President Trump is again causing an international outcry with his tweets after the attack.
Continue reading “True Believer: CNN Host Calls President Trump A “Piece of S–T””
We have previously discussed studies that show the number of people killed by pollution each year — a concrete cost rarely discussed in debates like the current outcry over the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Accord. In a new study published in Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews (DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2017.05.119), researchers from Michigan Technological University found that switching over to photovotaics from coal would prevent 51,999 premature deaths a year and potentially making as much as $2.5 million for each life saved. What is interesting is that those people opposing environmental controls clearly do not view themselves in one of these groups of fatalities even though pollution tends to impact everyone fairly evenly.
Continue reading “Study: Switching From Coal Would Save 52,000 Lives Annually In The United States”
We recently discussed the controversy surrounding Kathy Griffin and her disgusting image of a bloody severed head of President Donald Trump. Griffin held an equally bizarre press conference on Friday that first took responsibility for the scandal and then insisted that she is being set up by white men and blatant sexism. If this was an effort by attorney Lisa Bloom to repackage the scandal, it was a miserable failure. Indeed, the press conference could be a lesson for all lawyers in high-profile controversies of how not to respond to a scandal. There seemed to be not preparation of Griffin and no development of a single coherent narrative (rather surprising for an entertainer). The set up for the press conference at the law firm was awkward and made the client look like a caged animal. Bloom’s lead in remarks seemed more like a stump speech than a legal defense. Griffin was the object of the exercise rather than a human being in distress. Bloom’s effort to blame Trump for her client’s conduct contradicted one of a number of different narratives being advanced at the same time. The result was a Jackson Pollock press conference of paint splatters. The problem is that they did not make for a pleasing final image. I am not sure what Bloom sought to achieve, but it could not have been what actually occurred. In a rambling press conference, she insisted “Cut the crap, this wouldn’t be happening to a guy.” Indeed, it would. If Anderson Cooper held up the bloody severed head of Donald Trump on CNN, he would also be looking at the end of his journalistic career as would other comedians like Jerry Seinfeld.
Continue reading “Griffin: “This Wouldn’t Be Happening To A Guy.””
In an interview on Good Morning America, White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway said that the decision had not been made whether the President would invoke executive privilege to bar former FBI Director James Comey from discussing his conversations with Trump regarding the Russian investigation. The invocation of executive privilege could raise some provocative and problematic issues for the White House. (For full disclosure, I taught Conway at GW law school).
We have been discussing how Howard Dean and other Democratic leaders have been declaring that there is an exception for speech that they claim to be hate speech. Now they appear to have been joined by the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) which have declared that Kathy Griffin’s photo of Trump’s severed head is unprotected under the First Amendment.
Continue reading “VFW Declares Kathy Griffin Unprotected By First Amendment”
In fulfillment of his campaign promise, President Donald Trump has defied the world and pulled our country out of the Paris Accord. The United States will now join Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries outside of the agreement. You really cannot include Nicaragua because it did not sign in protest of the agreement not going far enough (a valid objection). That leaves us and our environmental fellow traveler, Syria.
In terms of delivery, I thought this was one of Trump’s stronger speeches though MIT scientists say that he got their data wrong. Other experts noted that Trump was wrong on the details of the agreement regarding China’s commitments as well as its costs to the United States.
We have been discussing the rapid erosion of free speech on our campuses and the increasing confrontations with students who bar speech with which they disagree. The result is that schools are caving into academic demands made by students, including incidents like the recent one at Northwestern where academic freedom is being lost to effective mob rule. It is a very serious problem that has now led to the first legislative intervention. Wisconsin legislators are pushing a bill that would suspend or expel students who disrupt speakers. I agree that schools need to suspend or expel students who are engaging in violent or extremely disruptive conduct like shutting down classes like the one at Northwestern. Notably, while a few suspensions were handed out after the assault on a faculty member at Middlebury, no one was expelled. However, the Wisconsin law is concerning in its language and scope. We need faculty to stand up for free speech and stand up to these disruptive students, including serious disciplinary action.