Describe US sanctions on Oleg Deripaska

The Daily 202: The Koch network donor retreat turns touchy-feely

With Joanie Greve:
THE BIG IDEA:
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Liberal activist Van Jones protested the Koch brothers outside their donor meeting in 2011.
At the 2019 Koch seminar, however, there is a giant banner with Jones’s smiling face hanging inside the lobby of the posh hotel that’s hosting the meeting.
“The problem is there’s a lot of stuff we do agree on that we aren’t working on together,” Jones says in the video, which organizers played on Sunday for 634 donors who have each agreed to contribute at least $100,000 per year to Koch-sponsored groups. “You’ve got awesome people and beautiful people on both sides.”
You could be forgiven for thinking you accidentally showed up for a No Labels conference. That’s been the vibe here in the Coachella Valley all weekend as the network aggressively seeks to rebrand itself as kinder, gentler and less political.
Wearing purple, the color of bipartisanship, industrialist Charles Koch — who remains a boogeyman on the left — declared that his top goal is “uniting with people across the whole spectrum, including those who have been adversaries in the past,” to pursue shared priorities. “This attitude of holding things against others who have different beliefs is tearing our country apart,” the 83-year-old said during a cocktail reception on Saturday night. “What we need to do, and what we’re doing, is bringing people together.”
His brother David stepped away from the network last year, citing poor health. Charles has concluded that reaching across the aisle to build coalitions is the best way to maximize his network’s impact with a president in the White House he personally doesn’t like but whom many members of his network do. The network plans to stay out of the presidential race again in 2020, as it did in 2016.
-- Koch World believes the sentencing bill is its new recipe for success.
Americans for Prosperity chief executive Emily Seidel said many Republican lawmakers had the same mentality when they were in the wilderness. “Just a few years ago, Republican after Republican told us they didn’t want to give Obama a win on this issue,” she told donors.
Even though the president has attacked Koch personally, network officials were still able to work constructively with White House senior adviser Jared Kushner on criminal justice. “It shows how you can break though the partisan gridlock, and it’s the model for everything else we’ll do going forward,” Seidel said.
Indeed, the president’s son-in-law appeared in the same video as Jones. “One of the things that really surprised people, including myself, was how broad the coalition we were able to build was,” Kushner said.
Koch officials were back at the White House last week for a meeting on a potential immigration deal that could protect “dreamers” in exchange for wall money, and they’re scheduled to return later this week.
-- In past years, network leaders announced how much money they planned to spend on politics and policy in the upcoming election cycle. This year, they’re not providing a target.
The network continues to increase financial support for nonprofits focused on civil society. That’s how Koch wound up hugging Deion Sanders on Saturday night.
The discussion that followed over dinner was about the Charles Koch Foundation’s Courageous Collaborations initiative, which was launched to support research on overcoming intolerance.
Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps, said his wife recently made him watch a documentary on Netflix about Roger Stone called “Get Me Roger Stone.” In the film, Stone says one of his “rules” is that hate is a more powerful motivator than love.
“We’re in an existential crisis here,” Isay continued. “Democracy cannot survive in a swamp of mutual contempt. … I don’t know that this country can survive if we all despise each other. You don’t have to change your mind about something. You just have to realize the person you’re talking to is a human being. And we’re not doing that.”
-- To be sure, the Koch network remains a potent political force on the right.
Network officials identified 10 “barriers” preventing people from realizing their full potential
-- One big change from past Koch donor seminars is the relative absence of politicians.
Only three elected officials are at this seminar, which continues through Monday night, and none are members of the House.
-- Instead of giving politicians a platform, organizers showcased several regular people with sympathetic personal stories in an effort to humanize the issues they’re focused on.
The Koch network also flew in Melony Armstrong, an African American woman from Mississippi who wanted to braid hair but didn’t have a cosmetology license. The Koch network has made her the face of its effort to relax occupational licensing laws across the country. Armstrong received training from the network, and it deployed significant resources to successfully change the laws in her home state in 2017. Nebraska last year and Ohio this month passed similar bills after Koch lobbying.
-- “We’re getting much better at storytelling,” Holden said in an interview.
“It’s important to put human faces on problems,” added James Davis, who oversees communications for the Koch network. “Stats don’t convey empathy.”
-- One major focus of this meeting has been encouraging attendees to hire more ex-cons to ease their reentry into society.
Koch, worth somewhere around $50 billion, is one of the 10 richest men in the world. His company “banned the box,” which means that job applicants aren’t asked about prior criminal convictions anymore. “Whatever we’re doing in business, we haven’t scratched the surface,” Koch said in a speech Sunday. “If all of us join together, just think about the difference we can make.”
The head of the Society for Human Resource Management unveiled a new website at the meeting on Sunday, GettingTalentBacktoWork.com, for corporate leaders to sign a pledge that they will hire more formerly incarcerated people. Richard Branson recorded a video greeting touting his company Virgin’s efforts to hire former convicts. “Hello, Charles,” the billionaire said in the taped message. “Cheers.”
After lobbying by the Koch network, Weldon Angelos of Utah was released in 2015 after serving 11 years of a 55-year prison term in connection with selling marijuana. His case had become a symbol of excessive mandatory minimums. Once he got out, a Koch donor from Colorado hired him at his company. The two came onstage Sunday afternoon with their arms draped over each other’s shoulders. They departed to “Here Comes the Sun.” There have been many moments like this in the heavily choreographed program.
“It’s funny,” said Kevin Gentry, a top Koch aide who works on special projects and fundraising for the network. “A few minutes ago, one of our first-timers grabbed me and said, ‘I’ve got to tell you. This meeting is nothing like I thought it was going to be. When did you start this new thing?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve got to tell you, whenever it was we started it, we should have done it a long time ago.’”
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
-- The chief U.S. negotiator in Afghanistan said American and Taliban forces have agreed in principle to a peace framework that could lead to the full removal of U.S. troops.
-- A new Post-ABC poll found Trump is falling short of the modest expectations voters had when he assumed office two years ago.
“Another issue where Trump has performed below initial expectations is on health care, where his positive ratings have fallen from 44 percent to 33 percent. The sharpest falloff came among independents, from 48 percent saying they expected him to do a good job with the issue to the current 22 percent. … Along with the deficit and healthcare, Americans grade Trump the worst on issues dealing with women and race relations, both areas in which Trump started with low expectations. Roughly one-third say Trump has done an excellent or good job on each in his first two years, with more than 6 in 10 adults calling his performance poor or not so good.”
GET SMART FAST:
THE GOVERNMENT REOPENS — FOR NOW:
-- Federal employees will return to work today, but it could take months to sort through the backlog created by the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
-- With the government reopened, House Democrats and Senate Republicans plan to pivot toward other parts of their agenda.
-- Federal contractors’ lost wages may never be reimbursed.
-- Many government workers are still relying on donations to cover basic necessities until they can collect their paychecks later this week.
-- The bill that reopened the government also extended the Violence Against Women Act through Feb. 15.
-- Democratic legislators in Maryland are moving forward with a proposal to allow furloughed federal workers to collect state unemployment insurance.
-- Craft breweries are acutely feeling the reverberations of the shutdown.
THE IMMIGRATION WARS CONTINUE:
-- Trump is again considering declaring a national emergency to get wall funding by Feb. 15, the next deadline by which the government must be funded.
“A bipartisan, bicameral congressional committee has been charged with brokering an agreement on border security ... In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Trump said he thinks the committee’s chances of success are ‘less than 50-50,’ although there are ‘a lot of very good people’ on it. He also said that another shutdown is ‘certainly an option’and voiced doubt that he would back any deal with less than $5.7 billion in border wall funding. … Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) called the prospect of a national-emergency declaration a ‘terrible idea,’ reflecting widespread conservative unease about using executive powers in sweeping ways to achieve political ends, a tactic they have long criticized Democratic presidents of employing. … Still, other Republicans said the GOP appetite for using emergency powers was stronger than the remarks of lawmakers on television suggested because of the expectation that the party’s base would applaud Trump for being bold. …
“Several White House officials said privately Sunday that Trump has argued that a national-emergency declaration in the coming weeks could pressure Congress to include wall funding as part of a broader legislative package next month and could signal to the GOP’s core voters that the president is going to extremes to secure funding for his campaign’s biggest pledge. Mulvaney said that if the legislation Congress sends to the president’s desk is unsatisfactory, Trump could veto it. ‘Yeah. I think he actually is,’ Mulvaney said on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ when asked whether Trump is prepared to bring about a shutdown next month.”
Behind the scenes:
-- A senior Border Patrol official emailed agents asking for any information that might be used to back up Trump’s specious claims that human traffickers are gagging women with duct tape after a Post article raised questions about a story the president keeps telling.
-- The administration is falling well short of Trump’s order to hire 15,000 new border and immigration officers.
2020 WATCH:
-- Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) formally launched her presidential campaign on Sunday afternoon with a massive rally in her hometown.
“Harris, 54, framed her campaign as a response to President Trump, highlighting how he has divided the country and attempting to make the case that she would unite it. ‘People in power are trying to convince us that the villain in our American story is each other,’ she said. ‘But that is not our story. That is not who we are. That’s not our America. You see, our United States of America is not about us versus them. It’s about ‘we, the people.’’ She mocked Trump’s foreign policy: ‘We have foreign powers infecting the White House like malware.’ She ridiculed his immigration stance: ‘When we have children in cages, crying for their mothers and fathers, don’t you dare call that border security — that’s a human rights abuse. And that’s not our America.’ In implicit rebukes to a president known for falsehoods, she repeatedly said she would be an honest broker. ‘Seek truth, speak truth and fight for the truth,’ she said. …
“Harris infused her speech with her biography — the daughter of a mother who emigrated from India and a father who emigrated from Jamaica, the first to research breast cancer and the second an economics professor … Polls have found that many Democratic voters have no clear view of who Harris is or what she stands for. So in addition to delivering a serving of her biography, she also sought to outline some of her agenda. She advocated a Medicare-for-all plan, a tax proposal that would reverse the Republican-passed tax cuts and instead provide middle-class families with tax breaks of up to $500 a month, making pre-K access universal and making college debt-free.”
-- “Harris has stoked a perception that she is not just an elite candidate, but among the Democratic front-runners — a designation that is loaded with both upside and danger in this very early stage of presidential jockeying,”
-- Howard Schultz told “60 Minutes” he is “seriously thinking of running for president” as an independent, stoking Democratic fears the former Starbucks chief executive could inadvertently help reelect Trump.
-- CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reports that Hillary Clinton has been telling friends she has not totally closed the door on a 2020 campaign.
-- Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper (D) returned to Iowa as he nears a final decision on launching a presidential bid.
-- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is relying on her policy expertise to set herself apart from other presidential candidates.
-- Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has bragged about his collaboration with Democratic legislators as he eyes a primary challenge against Trump, but his tenure has included moments of divisive partisanship.
THERE’S A BEAR IN THE WOODS:
-- Roger Stone dodged a question about whether he would consider cooperating with special counsel Bob Mueller after his indictment.
“Trump on Saturday night seemed to distance himself from Stone, tweeting: ‘Roger Stone didn’t even work for me anywhere near the Election!’ ‘What about the Fake and Unverified “Dossier,” a total phony conjob, that was paid for by Crooked Hillary to damage me and the Trump Campaign?’ he tweeted.”
-- It remains unclear why several of Trump’s former advisers felt compelled to lie to investigators about their activities during the 2016 campaign,
-- Chris Christie claims in his new book the president and Jared Kushner thought firing Michael Flynn would end the “Russia thing.”
-- The Treasury Department officially lifted sanctions on three companies owned by Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch and ally of Vladimir Putin.
-- “After the sanctions were officially lifted, EN+ announced the appointment of seven new directors under the deal, including Christopher Bancroft Burnham, a banker who served on Mr. Trump’s State Department transition team and worked in George W. Bush’s State Department,”
THE NEW WORLD ORDER:
-- Juan Guaidó, Venezuela's self-declared interim president, said the opposition is in talks with military and civilian officials to force out President Nicolás Maduro.
-- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he has recently heard Trump weigh military intervention in Venezuela,
-- The British Parliament’s maneuvers in reaction to Brexit have been shaped by the unconventional speakership of John Bercow.
-- Thousands wearing red scarves took to the streets of Paris to protest the “yellow vest” demonstrators.
SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ:
Trump insisted he would build the wall:
Meanwhile, the Texas Tribune corrected one of Trump's tweets on immigration:
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee hammered Trump for his Russia connections:
Kamala Harris’s communications director loaned her boss something that once belonged to her grandmother Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas:
Harris’s husband tweeted photos from the launch:
An LA Times writer noted this of Harris’s launch:
Another 2020 candidate emphasized her consistent voting record against Trump:
Howard Schultz looked ahead to 2020:
And many people asked him to reconsider. From a Democratic congressman:
From an Obama-era NSC spokesman:
From a columnist for Canada’s Globe and Mail:
Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw apologized after saying that Hispanics need to “work harder at assimilation” in the United States:
He later expanded upon the apology:
But the National Association of Hispanic Journalists found Brokaw’s remorse to be lacking and applauded his colleague who challenged the remarks:
From the founder of the website Latino Rebels:
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) added this:
Hillary Clinton appeared in Puerto Rico for a meeting on hurricane recovery efforts:
A presidential historian looked back on a White House birthday party:
And the pope reflected on social media influencers:
GOOD READS:
-- “‘Want to see the Lincoln bedroom?’: Trump relishes role as White House tour guide,” by Josh Dawsey:
-- Vanity Fair, “‘Like an Alien Landed in the Middle of Los Angeles’: Hope Hicks, West Wing Alum, Begins her Second Act on the West Coast,” by Emily Jane Fox:
-- New York Times, “Elite Law Firm’s All-White Partner Class Stirs Debate on Diversity,” by Noam Scheiber and John Eligon:
DAYBOOK:
Trump
NEWS YOU CAN USE IF YOU LIVE IN D.C.:
-- It will be cold today, but temperatures will drop further starting tomorrow with the arrival of an arctic front.
-- The Wizards lost to the Spurs 132-119.
-- Virginia teachers plan to march to the Capitol in Richmond today.
-- A D.C. man was charged with felony dog fighting after authorities discovered 12 dogs and an alligator in his Congress Heights home.
VIDEOS OF THE DAY:
Steve Martin appeared on SNL to impersonate Roger Stone:
“Weekend Update” mocked Trump’s handling of the shutdown:
Kamala Harris released this video about her mother’s influence as she launched her presidential campaign:
Elizabeth Warren shared a clip from a town hall appearance in New Hampshire:
And one freshman congressman asked for dancing tips from one of his freshman classmates:


Describe US sanctions on Oleg Deripaska

US sanctions against companies owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska have been lifted.  What prompted imposition of the sanctions?  Why were sanctions lifted?  What Deripaska-owned companies were involved?  What impact did the sanctions have on Deripaska?  European sanctions on Deripaska are not relevant nor are European reactions to US sanctions.  Deripaska's relationship with Paul Manfort and Konstantin Kilimnik are not pertinent.

US sanctions against companies owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska have been lifted.  What prompted imposition of the sanctions?  Why were sanctions lifted?  What Deripaska-owned companies were involved?  What impact did the sanctions have on Deripaska?  European sanctions on Deripaska are not relevant nor are European reactions to US sanctions.  Deripaska's relationship with Paul Manfort and Konstantin Kilimnik are not pertinent and should not be mentioned in any relevant document.

Find information online that answers this multifaceted question.

The Daily 202: Trump voters stay loyal because they feel disrespected

With Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve.
THE BIG IDEA: Three new deep dives into Donald Trump’s strength in Midwestern counties that were previously Democratic strongholds — written by conservatives, liberals and a nonpartisan journalist — each highlight a deep craving for respect among supporters of the president and an enduring resentment toward coastal elites that buoys his popularity.
Republicans and Democrats who have traveled to Macomb County in the Detroit suburbs, which Trump won by 12 points after Barack Obama carried it twice, including by 16 points in 2008, came away struck by these dynamics.
-- Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who helped orchestrate Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory, has obsessively studied the “Reagan Democrats” in Macomb for more than three decades.
One older white working-class woman recalled that, when she first started voting, “There was so much respect for the president. And I don't care what he did, or what he said, there was always respect. It was always ‘Mr. President.’” She said she is disgusted by the way people talk about Trump
“A healthy diet of Fox News is feeding the white working-class men fending off the challenges of Trump’s opponents, including those within their own families,” Greenberg and Zdunkewicz write. “They … feel vindicated that a businessman like Trump has produced a strong macro-economy and kept his promises on immigration. They continue to appreciate how he speaks his mind, unlike a typical politician. … One white working class man shared that he ‘lost contact with [his] own daughter because of the election.’ Others complain that their children and millennial friends challenge their views and suggest the media manipulates them. … Families dividing over the 2016 election reflects just how central feelings about Trump have become to people’s identities.”
-- Respect is also a central undercurrent in “The Great Revolt,” a new book by Republican operative Brad Todd and conservative columnist Salena Zito.
“We voted for President Obama and still we are ridiculed. Still we are considered racists,” said Cindy Hutchins, a store owner and nurse in Baldwin, Mich. “There is no respect for anyone who is just average and trying to do the right things.”
“Our culture in Hollywood or in the media gives off the distinct air of disregard to people who live in the middle of the country, as if we have no value or do not contribute to the betterment of society,” said Amy Giles-Maurer of Kenosha, Wis.
“Live in a small or medium-sized town, and you would think we were dragging the country down,” said Michael Martin of Erie, Pa.
Todd is a partner at OnMessage, a powerhouse GOP consulting firm, who has helped elect seven senators, five governors and more than two dozen congressmen. Zito is a syndicated columnist from Pittsburgh. Together, they identify seven archetypes of voters who fueled Trump’s victory. The chapters include vignettes about three individual voters who fit each mold.
Some categories are obvious
“King Cyrus Republicans” is what the authors call evangelicals who stuck with Trump after the “Access Hollywood” tape came out because they wanted a conservative to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. That’s a reference to the sixth-century pagan Persian king who released Jews from bondage in Babylon.
Trump’s margin was weaker than Mitt Romney’s in 86 of the 100 most educated counties in the country. Trump’s level of support was higher than Romney’s in 1,449 of the 1,500 American counties with the lowest concentration of bachelor’s degrees.
Notably, people in all seven of their categories expressed frustration, even a year after the election, that they are not understood, respected or valued by the powers that be on the East and West coasts.
-- Trump appealed to the “forgotten man,” a term his campaign often used, with a message that was infused less with ideology than grievance. He repeatedly benefited from his opponent giving him fodder.
The Democratic nominee added that “the other half” of Trump’s supporters were “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change.” But this nuance was lost. Many heard Clinton saying they were deplorable, and the gaffe helped galvanized wobbly Republicans. It still stings in some quarters.
-- Dan Balz, The Washington Post’s chief correspondent, spent the past 16 months interviewing voters in rural areas of the upper Mississippi River valley where Obama won but then broke decisively for Trump
“One of the places I would agree with the hardcore Trump people, they’re tired of being treated as the enemy by Barack Obama,” said Dennis Schminke, 65, a retired manager at Hormel
Trump was the first Republican to carry Mower County, which includes the meatpacking town, since Richard Nixon beat John F. Kennedy there in 1960. Schminke said Trump’s appeal there was born in part of resentment toward the Obama presidency. “His comment, the whole thing, it’s been worn out to death, that clinging to God and guns, God and guns and afraid of people who don’t look like them, blah, blah, blah. Just quit talking down to me,” he explained. “I despise Barack Obama. I think primarily because I don’t think he thinks very much of people like me. That’s just the long and short of it.”
Andrew Chesney, 36, a conservative businessman in Freeport, Ill. — the site of the second Lincoln-Douglas debate in 1858 and a county that Obama carried in 2008 — said Midwesterners feel let down by political leaders from both parties.
-- Other reporters on our staff routinely hear similar sentiments when interviewing voters.
-- One reason Balz’s piece is great is that it’s longitudinal:
The best illustration is Kurt Glazier, 50, from Sterling, Ill. He’s a state worker, a union member and chairman of the Republican Party in Whiteside County, where Ronald Reagan was born.
Eight days before the inauguration, Glazier lamented the political divisions that had been building for years.
By midsummer of 2017, Glazier had growing concerns about Trump
Near the first anniversary of the president taking office, Glazier worried especially that those who voted for Trump are now viewed by others as therefore being like Trump.
A few weeks ago, Glazier watched Stormy Daniels’s interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” and felt “a little saddened” by the steady stream of Trump’s self-inflicted mistakes.
But Glazier drew a distinction between the staunchest Trump supporters and other Republicans — like him.
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
-- Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi suffered a major setback as influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr took a surprise lead in the country’s parliamentary elections.
GET SMART FAST:
WATCH WHAT THEY DO, NOT WHAT THEY SAY:
-- The Education Department is neutering a special team tasked with investigating widespread abuses by for-profit colleges.
THE NEW WORLD ORDER:
-- The Trump administration will formally move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem today, which is expected to trigger another set of violent demonstrations across Palestinian territories
“But Israel is not letting the threat of violence dull its party. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs gathered 1,000 guests for a celebratory event on the ministry grounds on Sunday. Among them were [Steven Mnuchin, Sheldon Adelson and Ivanka Trump]. …As guests sipped wine in front of a stage with a backdrop of American and Israeli flags, the mosques in Gaza were urging people to attend protests.”
-- Gaza officials said that the number of Palestinians killed in border clashes today has reached at least 18, with another 918 wounded.
-- The Trump administration has reversed its position on the boycott of Qatar, but it has been unable to convince Persian Gulf leaders to relent.
-- Relaxing penalties on Chinese telecom company ZTE has become a flash point in trade negotiations between the United States and China.
“The comment marked a sharp shift in tone for a president who has long accused China of stealing U.S. jobs. The Treasury and Commerce departments had been strongly aligned against ZTE as recently as several days ago in one of the toughest actions to date against a Chinese company. With Trump’s tweet, some officials familiar with the ZTE issue believe a compromise is possible. ‘A mini-deal is in sight,’ said a person familiar with the matter. ‘China gets relief for ZTE, and in exchange agrees to return to the status quo for U.S. agriculture,’ easing tariffs and implementing other non-tariff remedies. But the talks have not been amicable. Chinese President Xi Jinping has been irate about the sanctions on ZTE, and his top economic adviser, Liu He, has told U.S. negotiators that there is no chance of a deal without the United States removing the seven-year ban on ZTE ...”
-- Mike Pompeo said the United States is assuring Kim Jong Un that it will not invade North Korea or otherwise seek his ouster during next month’s summit with Trump — seeking to further incentivize Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program.
-- John Bolton described the types of steps Pyongyang would need to take to comply with a denuclearization process.
THERE'S A BEAR IN THE WOODS:
-- As Bob Mueller’s probe enters its second year, an increasingly agitated Trump is lashing out against his own team with bluster and defiance — heightening the risk of a more direct confrontation with federal investigators.
-- The Wall Street Journal has more details on how Cohen sought to capitalize on his relationship with Trump to build a consulting business.
-- A former Trump campaign aide is helping a firm controlled by Russian oligarch and Vladimir Putin ally Oleg Deripaska try to shed newly imposed U.S. sanctions
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN:
-- Fox News host Sean Hannity is on Trump’s list of cleared callers to reach him at the White House, and the pair sometimes speak multiple times a day,
-- Former NSC staffer Ezra Cohen-Watnick searched for ways to surveil White House staffers’ communications as a means of preventing leaks.
-- Trump’s White House leaks “like there’s no tomorrow.” But why?
-- Bolton declined to apologize on the Sunday shows for White House aide Kelly Sadler mocking John McCain's battle with brain cancer.
-- White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow has developed a reputation as “the nicest guy in the West Wing,”
TRUMP’S AMERICA:
-- Missouri Republican Gov. Eric Greitens’s fight to keep his job points to “a powerful new lesson: The shape of the American sex scandal has shifted,”
-- Trump’s presidency may be “the best thing that ever happened” to George W. Bush, who traveled to D.C. to accept the Atlantic Council’s international leadership award last week.
-- California’s new sanctuary state law is dividing residents and lawmakers.
THE MIDTERMS:
-- Lawmakers who sponsored a bill that critics say hampered the DEA’s enforcement of the opioid industry appear vulnerable politically.
-- Democratic leaders fear they are losing their advantage in the midterms.
-- Liberals are frustrated with the establishment’s support of more centrist candidates in the Democratic primaries.
-- Organizational upheaval at the progressive group Wellstone Action underscores the emerging Democratic schism.
-- Starting early: Mitch McConnell is already hiring staff for his 2020 reelection campaign, and he’s not even in cycle yet.
SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ:
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner arrived in Israel to commemorate the new embassy:
Mitt Romney questioned the choice of pastor to lead the opening prayer at the embassy’s dedication:
Jeffress responded to the criticism:
Trump defended his decision on the Iran deal:
And he called for “[c]hanges to our thought process on terror”:
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee criticized Trump’s announcement on ZTE:
From a former CIA analyst:
From a Weekly Standard editor:
From a former British professor:
Stormy Daniels’s lawyer posted an image appearing to show Michael Cohen getting into an elevator at Trump Tower with a Qatari banker accused of bribing Washington officials:
A Republican senator went after the White House official who made a controversial remark about John McCain:
A former Democratic presidential candidate had harsh words for Fox News:
And Twitter celebrated Mother’s Day:
The president’s son recognized his ex-wife Vanessa, whom he recently divorced:
GOOD READS FROM ELSEWHERE:
-- BuzzFeed News, “How The Congressional Baseball Shooting Didn't Become The Deadliest Political Assassination In American History,” by Kate Nocera and Lissandra Villa:
-- The New Yorker, “Trump vs. the ‘Deep State,’” by Evan Osnos:
-- New York Times, “Surest Way to Face Marijuana Charges in New York: Be Black or Hispanic,” by Benjamin Mueller, Robert Gebeloff and Sahil Chinoy:
-- Politico Magazine, “The College That Wants to Take Over Washington,” by Alice Lloyd:
-- After spending years as a tireless critic of the Iran deal, Washington think tank CEO Mark Dubowitz is insisting he wanted to save it — earning him scathing criticism from high-minded experts across the country.
DAYBOOK:
Trump
NEWS YOU CAN USE IF YOU LIVE IN D.C.:
-- It will be muggy in D.C. today, with more storms possible later.
-- The Capitals defeated the Lightning 6-2.
-- The Nationals beat the Diamondbacks 6-4,
-- D.C. Circulator drivers are trying to convince the District to municipalize the bus system.
-- Percy Ronald Chess, a veteran who was found dead in the Tidal Basin in March, spent 20 years wandering the country,
VIDEOS OF THE DAY:
SNL cast members welcomed their moms to the set for Mother’s Day:
John Oliver described the “epic mismanagement” of Venezuela for his viewers:
The National Retail Federation recreated a scene from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” to explain the downsides of tariffs:
North Korea detailed plans to destroy its nuclear test site:
And two expecting parents arranged for their baby’s sex to be revealed by the Ferris wheel at the National Harbor:


Describe US sanctions on Oleg Deripaska

The Daily 202: Kanye West coming to White House, after Trump disses Taylor Swift, underscores celebrification of politics

With Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve
THE BIG IDEA: President Trump, who lovesfeudingwithfellowcelebrities, appears to be getting right in the middle of maybe the biggest feud in music.
Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are scheduled to eat lunch at the White House on Thursday with the rapper Kanye West
Yesterday, Trump dissed pop star Taylor Swift for endorsing Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen over GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who he’s traveled to Tennessee to campaign for several times.
Just last week, Trump touted West’s positive comments about him during a rally in Johnson City, Tenn. “How great was Kanye West?” the president said, to cheers from the crowd.
Anyone who has engaged with pop culture even a little over the past decade knows about the bad blood between West and Swift, who has stayed famously apolitical — until this week.
While celebrity endorsements in political campaigns are certainly not new, a president gleefully punching back at one this way is.
The previous two occupants of the White House never welcomed West. In what he thought was an off-the-record comment, Barack Obama called the rapper a “jackass” in 2009 after he interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards. West had jumped on stage and grabbed the microphone from the then 19-year-old to say Beyoncé deserved to win for her “Single Ladies” music video, which he insisted was superior to Swift’s “You Belong to Me.”
George W. Bush wrote in his 2010 memoir, “Decision Points,” that West’s comment after Hurricane Katrina that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” was an “all-time low” of his presidency that he still resented years later. “It was a disgusting moment,” Bush said.
But Trump has developed a somewhat symbiotic relationship with Yeezy, as West prefers to be known.
-- I’ve written extensively about the celebrification of politics as one of the defining story lines of our time,
-- Live Nation, a company that typically promotes musical acts like Justin Timberlake or Maroon 5, announced that it is putting on a 13-city tour for Bill and Hillary Clinton.
It’s not clear whether any of the money will go to charity — or if it will just line the pockets of the Clintons. Trump’s raucous campaign-style rallies are free.
Last week, Billary – joined by aide-turned-friend Huma Abedin – went to see Christina Aguilera in concert at Radio City Music Hall.
News also broke that a play about the Clinton’s marriage called “Hillary and Clinton” will be staged on Broadway next year, starring Tony winners Laurie Metcalf as Hillary and John Lithgow as Bill.
-- Is life imitating art or is art imitating life? Sometimes it’s hard to answer.
-- Hope Hicks, who was Trump’s campaign press secretary and later his White House communications director, was named yesterday as the head of corporate communications for New Fox, the successor to Fox News’s parent company, 21st Century Fox.
In July, Trump hired former Fox News executive Bill Shine to replace Hicks. The two are part of a growing list of people who have transited through the revolving door between Fox and the Trump administration:
-- Meanwhile, Jenna Bush Hager broke the news on NBC’s “Today” show that her sister, Barbara, got married on Sunday to screenwriter Craig Louis Coyne at the family’s Maine compound.
-- And Meghan McCain returned to ABC’s “The View” for the first time on Monday since her father passed away.
-- Launching next Tuesday:
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
-- Hurricane Michael continues to strengthen and is expected to become a Category 3 storm by the time it reaches Florida tomorrow.
-- Since March, Google has kept secret its discovery of a bug that imperiled the personal data of hundreds of thousands of Google+ users.
GET SMART FAST:
FRESH KAVANAUGH FALLOUT:
-- Trump continued to politicize Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court selection during a symbolic swearing-in ceremony at the White House last night, apologizing to Kavanaugh and his family “for the terrible pain and suffering” he said they were “forced to endure.”
“The White House ceremony, which included cocktails and a band, in some ways felt like a cross between a campaign rally and a wedding reception. In addition to all of the high court justices, attendees included conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.
“Since Kavanaugh was confirmed on Saturday, Trump has seemed more interested in inflaming rather than reducing the tensions over his Supreme Court pick . . . Trump’s comments came just hours after he said calls to impeach Kavanaugh were an ‘insult to the American public’ — and predicted that they would also provide a boost to Republican candidates in the midterms . . . ‘I think a lot of Democrats are going to vote Republican,’ Trump added. ‘The main base of the Democrats have shifted so far left that we’ll end up being Venezuela. This country would end up being Venezuela.’”
-- Flashback:
-- Mitch McConnell signaled he would push to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in 2020 — despite his refusal to consider Barack Obama’s 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland.
-- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Kavanaugh was treated like a “slut whore drunk” during his confirmation process.
-- A majority of respondents in a new CNN-SSRS poll oppose Kavanaugh’s confirmation, but his support has grown among Republicans since last month.
-- With 28 days until the midterms, Republicans are working hard to recast Democratic protests against Kavanaugh as representing “out-of-control anarchy.”
“The characterization evokes fear of an unknown and out-of-control mass of people
-- A number of Maine Democrats are considering running against Susan Collins in 2020 after her “yes” vote for Kavanaugh.
-- The Alaska Republican Party's central committee is considering reprimanding Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) for opposing Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
-- Proposals to change practices for reporting sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill have stalled.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH WILL QUICKLY MAKE HIS MARK:
-- "[His] first vote as a member of the Supreme Court could come as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday on a Trump administration request testing how much power courts should wield over top executive branch officials,”
-- Kavanaugh’s confirmation could also shift the Supreme Court’s rulings on wartime detainees and presidential powers.
-- Kavanaugh, whose grandfather went to the new justice's alma mater at Yale, could help strike down affirmative action at universities across the country.
-- Kavanaugh’s confirmation also gives Trump the chance to fill another seat on a highly influential federal appeals court.
WHERE IS JAMAL?
-- “Missing journalist’s fiancee demands to know: ‘Where is Jamal?’” by Souad Mekhennet and Loveday Morris in Istanbul:
“Khashoggi, 59, has not been heard from since. Turkish officials have said they believe he was killed inside in a planned murder. A team of 15 Saudis arrived on two planes to carry out the killing, officials have said. Cengiz has not been told whether Khashoggi is alive or dead. On Monday, she was interviewed for the second time by police. They took some of his clothes and other personal items for DNA samples, she said. Saudi officials insist that Khashoggi left the consulate alive, through a back entrance.
“If his death is confirmed, it would represent a new level of audacity in Saudi Arabia’s clampdown on dissent under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. While painting himself as a reformer, Mohammed has shown himself to be ruthless in confronting any challenge to his power, jailing activists and dissenters. Once close to the Saudi establishment, Khashoggi had in the past year become one of its most high-profile critics, living in Virginia in self-imposed exile and contributing to The Washington Post’s Global Opinions section.”
-- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded that Saudi Arabia prove their assertion that Khashoggi left the building of his own accord
-- Trump told reporters he was “concerned” about Khashoggi’s disappearance, while the State Department demanded answers from the Saudi government.
-- The Post’s Editorial Board demands the immediate release of any relevant information on Khashoggi’s disappearance:
-- According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 43 journalists have been killed for their work so far this year.
THE TRADE WAR:
-- The International Monetary Fund warned last night that Trump’s trade policies could undercut economic growth not just in the United States but around the world.
-- China is trying to boost its slowing economy amid the escalating tariffs, which the Trump administration is citing as proof of its successful negotiation strategy.
-- A professor facing child pornography charges is also being investigated for possible economic espionage on behalf of China.
THERE'S A BEAR IN THE WOODS:
-- As deputy chairman of the Trump campaign, Rick Gates sought online manipulation proposals from an Israeli intelligence firm during the 2016 election, which, among other things, suggested creating fake online profiles to help defeat GOP primary rivals and Hillary Clinton. Robert Mueller's team has reviewed the group’s proposals and questioned its employees as part of the special counsel's ongoing probe.
-- The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins explores whether there was communications between Russia's Alfa Bank and the Trump campaign in 2016.
-- The Guardian reports that former Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix, who earned millions from his work for the Trump campaign in 2016, used the n-word to describe the prime minister of Barbados.
-- “After selling off his father’s properties, Trump embraced unorthodox strategies to expand his empire,” by David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O'Connell:
-- Trump told reporters he has no plans to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, saying the two had a “good talk” while traveling together on Air Force One to an event in Orlando yesterday.
-- Legal experts warn the Trump team’s use of joint defense agreements, known as JDAs, with others caught up in the Mueller probe may push legal boundaries.
-- The federal government has frozen the U.S. assets and sprawling Upper East Side mansion of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and close ally of Vladimir Putin
THE MIDTERMS:
-- Trump will announce a pro-ethanol EPA directive at a rally in Iowa tonight as part of a bid to woo rural voters in the Midwest for the midterms.
-- A new Post-Schar School poll found GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock has fallen 12 points behind Democrat Jennifer Wexton in their Virginia race.
-- During a debate for Indiana’s closely watched Senate race, Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly and Republican Mike Braun attacked each other over their stances on abortion.
-- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is planning a nine-day blitz next week for Democratic midterm candidates.
-- Sen. Tim Kaine (D) launched his first attack ad against Republican Corey Stewart in Virginia’s Senate race.
THE REST OF THE AGENDA:
-- House Speaker Paul Ryan predicted a “big fight” over border wall funding after the midterms.
-- Lawyers who work with immigrants say courts are increasingly dealing with the cases of young children.
-- Trump encouraged Chicago police to use the controversial “stop and frisk” policy to address the city’s gun violence.
SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ:
Trump reiterated his baseless claim that the anti-Kavanaugh protesters were paid actors:
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), the No. 2 in GOP leadership, posted this picture from last night’s cocktail reception to celebrate Kavanaugh at the White House:
More color from our man in the room:
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a potential 2020 presidential candidate, had this message for his followers after Kavanaugh’s swearing-in:
Sarah Huckabee Sanders celebrated Hope Hicks’s new job at Fox:
So did on-air talent at Fox:
From a New York Post reporter:
A New York Magazine reporter added another observation:
A Vanity Fair reporter shared this:
A writer for The Fix addressed arguments about Senate representation following Kavanaugh’s confirmation:
Senators from both sides of the aisle expressed concern about Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance:
The vice president mourned the journalist’s possible death and emphasized the importance of freedom of the press:
A CNN host made this point about Trump’s meeting with Rosenstein:
A Post reporter questioned the House speaker’s thoughts on Democratic health-care proposals:
A New York Times writer challenged a Republican attack line on Taylor Swift’s political endorsement of two Tennessee Democrats:
Mike Huckabee dismissed any potential impact of Swift’s endorsement:
A Democratic congressional candidate fired back:
The Post’s book critic altered his syllabus to devote time to the New York Times’s tax investigation:
A co-host of “The View” welcomed Meghan McCain back to the show:
And a Democratic senator delivered the best pun of the day:
GOOD READS:
-- BuzzFeed, “Can Mike Bloomberg Make America Boring Again?” by Ben Smith:
-- New Yorker, “Daniel Radcliffe and the Art of the Fact-Check,” by Michael Schulman:
DAYBOOK:
Trump
NEWS YOU CAN USE IF YOU LIVE IN D.C.:
-- Washingtonians should prepare for some morning rain and more summerlike mugginess.
-- The Redskins lost to the Saints 43-19.
-- Former D.C. deputy mayor Courtney Snowden has agreed to pay a $3,000 fine to settle an ethics probe into her use of government staffers and interns for babysitting
-- “Montgomery County executive candidate Nancy Floreen has returned $18,000 in campaign contributions after a county resident filed a complaint alleging that the donations were improper,”
VIDEOS OF THE DAY:
Late-night hosts reacted to Kavanaugh’s confirmation:
Jimmy Kimmel compared Melania Trump’s public appearances in the United States to her Africa trip:
The first lady expressed dismay over the focus on her wardrobe after she was criticized for wearing a colonial-era pith helmet in Kenya:
An anti-Ted Cruz group is running an ad with an actor mocking the Republican senator’s slogan, “Tough as Texas”:
And The Post asked children to explain tariffs — using Halloween candy:


Describe US sanctions on Oleg Deripaska

Get the facts straight on Syria

The April 15 front-page article “Trump declares victory after strikes in Syria” deserved four Pinocchios. President Trump never claimed victory in Syria. There were no facts presented in the article to support this claim. The mission was to inflict damage on Syria’s means of producing and delivering chemical weapons. When the president claimed “Mission Accomplished,” he was obviously referring to this mission, not a successful victory to end the conflict in Syria. Such a claim may easily be made on the editorial pages. But front-page news should mandate a moral commitment to facts, not vague word manipulation. One of Mr. Trump’s many skills is his uncanny ability to provoke his critics to say and sometimes do things that are more ridiculous and absurd than his own actions. The Post is playing into his hands. Ken Sprinkle At face value, President Trump’s To add insult to injury, the Trump administration has approved only a handful of the innocent Syrian refugees who seek safety and shelter in the United States. This policy sends a horrible mixed message and makes the Trump administration a lightweight in terms of advancing human rights for oppressed Syrian refugees. Arthur L. Mackey Jr. Airstrikes in Syria are Treasury has yet to levy any such sanctions, but mere warnings to British banks (to stop helping oligarchs convert rubles into London real estate) have reportedly led to speculation that risk-averse banks there may simply cancel all of their Russian accounts. And the unspoken threat that Treasury might exercise its discretion with respect to one of them — Oleg Deripaska — caused the share price for his giant company Rusal to fall by 50 percent overnight. So the sanctions are already biting. But for secondary sanctions to work, Treasury needs to keep the pressure on, expanding the sanctions’ scope by naming other pals of Russian President Vladimir Putin and more companies, and sanctioning foreign facilitators, if necessary. Any relapse into Trumpian foot-dragging would be unconscionable. Vincent J. Canzoneri President Trump unleashed Robert Edgar

Get the facts straight on Syria

Ken Sprinkle At face value, President Trump’s Arthur L. Mackey Jr. Airstrikes in Syria are Vincent J. Canzoneri President Trump unleashed Robert Edgar


Describe US sanctions on Oleg Deripaska

Treasury lifts sanctions on companies tied to Putin ally

The Treasury Department said Sunday that it has lifted sanctions on three Russian companies tied to an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite sharp objection from both parties in Congress.
Treasury said it has lifted sanctions it imposed last year on one of the world’s largest aluminum companies, Rusal, and two other firms in which Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska owns large stakes. Sanctions imposed last year against Deripaska himself will remain in force, as punishment for what Treasury has called his support for “the Kremlin’s global malign activities, including its attempts to subvert Western democracy.”
Treasury said it agreed to lift the company sanctions because Deripaska has reduced his “direct and indirect shareholding stake in these companies and severed his control.” Deripaska’s stake in the holding company that controls Rusal — En+ Group — has been cut from 70 percent to 44.95 percent, En+ Group said Sunday.
Shares in both companies shot up in early trading in Moscow on Monday. En+ shares rose more than 9 percent, while Rusal was up nearly 7 percent.
But congressional Democrats and some Republicans have loudly objected to Treasury’s deal, saying it doesn’t go far enough to sever Deripaska’s control because the businessman’s stake in En+ Group, together with that of his ex-wife, ex-father-in-law and a foundation Deripaska launched years ago will still amount to over 50 percent of the shares.
A Russian state-owned bank included on a U.S. sanctions list during the Obama administration will also gain a 14 percent stake in En+ as part of Treasury’s plan to reduce Deripaska’s holdings, a move some members of Congress decried. VTB Bank had previously held the shares as collateral against a loan it made to Deripaska’s empire.
Congressional Democrats narrowly failed to pass a measure that would have stopped Treasury from lifting the sanctions, despite attracting the support of many Republicans, in a rare GOP split with the White House. The measure passed in the House, drawing support from 136 Republicans in a significant rebuke to the Trump administration. But the measure fell a few votes shy in the Senate.
“The Trump Administration is working seven days a week with favoritism for Russia. This represents just one more step in undermining the sanctions law, which President Trump has obstructed at every opportunity, while Russian aggression remains unabated.” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.) said in a statement Sunday, referring to the agreement as a “sordid deal.”
Some Democrats said they were wary about relaxing sanctions on Deripaska’s companies, in part because of his ties to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to defraud the United States and obstruct justice in the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Deripaska helped fund consulting work Manafort did for a Ukrainian political party, invested in a Manafort investment fund and lent Manafort millions of dollars, according to court records.
When they were imposed last year, the company sanctions caused gyrations in global aluminum prices, sparking criticism from European allies, who have pushed Treasury to lift them.
En+ Group’s British chairman has argued that Deripaska’s control is severed by the deal because the agreement limits his voting rights in En+ to 35 percent. The deal also transfers the voting rights of the shares held by Deripaska’s ex-wife, ex-father-in-law and foundation, and the 14 percent stake held by VTB Bank, to third-party trustees with “no personal or professional ties to Deripaska,” according to Treasury and En+ Group.
The agreement also mandated a new slate of Treasury-approved board members for En+ Group, whose names the company released Sunday. Several are American or British. They include Christopher Bancroft Burnham, chairman and chief executive of Cambridge Global Capital LLC and former vice chairman of Deutsche Bank Asset Management; Carl Hughes, former vice chairman of Deloitte’s global energy and resources business; Joan MacNaughton, a former U.K. government official and current chair of the Climate Group; and Nicholas Jordan, former co-CEO of Goldman Sachs’s business in Russia, En+ Group said Sunday.
Other board members will include Igor Lojevsky, former chairman of two Deutsche Bank divisions in Eastern Europe; Alexander Chmel, a senior adviser to executive search firm Spencer Stuart in Russia, and Andrey Sharonov, president of the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo and a Russian economics ministry official from 1996 to 2007, during the Boris Yeltsin and Putin governments.


Describe US sanctions on Oleg Deripaska

The Daily 202: Wall fight underscores Trump’s weaknesses

With Joanie Greve
THE BIG IDEA: Political fundamentals are shaping the wall fight in ways that aren’t being sufficiently reflected in coverage of the 20-day-old shutdown.
President Trump ran on a wall in 2016, and he lost the popular vote.
He tried to make the 2018 midterms a referendum on the wall, seizing on a caravan of migrants as the centerpiece of his closing argument and deploying troops to the southern border. Yet Republicans suffered their biggest losses in the House since Watergate, despite a booming economy with historically low unemployment.
The wall has never been a popular idea, a fact known to most Republicans in Congress.
Trump himself has never been a strong president in conventional terms.
That’s as much why Democrats aren’t defecting, or more so, than the left’s growing moral opposition to the very concept of walls.
Trump has also been checked by the courts on immigration as much as any other issue
Come Saturday, this partial government shutdown is poised to become the longest in U.S. history.
-- Trump appears more concerned about losing his base than most people understand.
He rejected a deal that his own aides and GOP leaders had negotiated after conservative media personalities got to him — and Ann Coulter threatened not to vote for him again in 2020. He’s bending over backward to show his base that he’s going to the mat for a wall. That’s why Trump is sitting down with Fox News host Sean Hannity later today when he goes to the border in McAllen, Tex.
“I think you can’t cave. That’s what the Democrats don’t understand — it’s all or nothing,” said Trump ally Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a leader of the House Freedom Caucus. “The Democrats think that we’re about ready to fold. I think Republicans think that Democrats are ready to fold, and neither of those two things are accurate by any stretch of the imagination.”
-- Trump has not been the great dealmaker as president that he promised he would be as a candidate.
The president walked out of a White House meeting with Democratic leaders yesterday, calling it “a total waste of time,” after Nancy Pelosi said she’s not going to cave on the wall. “I said bye-bye,” the president tweeted, “nothing else works!” Democrats said Trump slammed his hand on the table in anger as he exited the Situation Room. Vice President Pence denied this and said he passed out candy bars to the Democrats.
-- Trump has said it’s better to be feared than loved, but Democratic leaders simply aren’t scared of him.
“The president threw another temper tantrum,” added Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s now undeniable that Trump blundered last January and February by turning down Democratic offers that would have given him his wall in exchange for protecting the “dreamers.” Trump caved to the hard-liners in his orbit, specifically Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and nativist policy adviser Stephen Miller, and demanded massive reductions in the number of legal immigrants. It was a poison pill. But elections have consequences, and Democrats now control the House. Of course, they won’t offer the terms they were willing to when they were in the minority. Why would they?
“Trump’s approach is a hallmark of a president who eschews strategic planning and preparation in favor of day-to-day tactical maneuvering and trusting his gut. But as he digs in against an emboldened Democratic opposition, Trump has found that his go-to arsenal of bluster, falsehoods, threats and theatrics has laid bare his shortcomings as a negotiator — preventing him from finding a way out of what may be the biggest political crisis of his presidency,” David Nakamura and Seung Min Kim explain in today’s paper.
“White House allies professed confusion over the president’s tactics,” they report. “For Republicans who have tried to stick with the mercurial president, the shifting goal posts have been frustrating. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he will not allow a vote on any bill to reopen the government unless he receives assurances from the White House that Trump supports it. ‘It’s always difficult,’ said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), when the person you’re negotiating with is someone who changes their mind.’”
-- As the difficulty of divided government sinks in, the first president in U.S. history with no prior governing or military experience has changed his tune.
Yesterday, speaking again in the Oval Office, he insisted: “This is not a fight I wanted.”
-- Back in 2013, right after the GOP forced a shutdown in a failed effort to defund Obamacare, Trump criticized Barack Obama for allowing it to happen.
-- A general rule of thumb: Whether in sports or marriages, companies or campaigns, the more often you feel compelled to say publicly that your team is unified, the less likely it’s true.
“There was no discussion of anything other than solidarity,” Trump told reporters after privately meeting with GOP senators over lunch at the Capitol.
“But inside the meeting with senators Wednesday, there was not unanimity on Trump’s approach,” Erica Werner, Sean Sullivan, Mike DeBonis and Seung Min Kim report. “Moderate Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) pleaded with Trump to reopen the government, according to lawmakers present.”
On the other side of the Capitol, eight House Republicans broke ranks and voted with every Democrat to advance a bill that would reopen the Treasury Department and ensure that the Internal Revenue Service remains funded through tax season.
-- Trump also maintained that he has the “absolute right” to declare an emergency and construct the wall without congressional authorization.
Several conservatives have bristled publicly at this posture. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) warned yesterday, for example, that Trump declaring a national emergency would create a dangerous precedent.
-- To be sure, many House Democrats who just got elected in districts Trump carried in 2016 are feeling some heat as the shutdown drags on.
Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), who represents a district Trump won in 2016, said at a closed-door caucus meeting yesterday that Democrats are losing the messaging war in her district and need to be clearer about the border security measures they support.
GET SMART FAST:
2020 WATCH:
-- Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is reportedly tentatively planning to announce her 2020 campaign over MLK weekend in Oakland, the city where she was born and began her legal career.
-- Billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer announced he would not run for president.
-- Jeff Weaver, who ran Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, will take on a diminished role if the Vermont senator runs again.
-- Robert Becker, who oversaw Sanders’s Iowa campaign in 2016, was accused of forcibly kissing a female subordinate during the Democratic National Convention.
-- Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), another potential 2020 candidate, accused fellow Democrats of “religious bigotry” in their questioning of a Trump judicial nominee.
-- Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), known for controversial comments on immigration that have been widely criticized as racist, has attracted a 2020 primary challenge.
-- “Rick Scott blindsides DeSantis on his way out,”
-- Future campaign ad material: Nancy Pelosi held a vote to force House Republicans to go on the record about the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare.
THE HUMAN TOLL OF THE SHUTDOWN:
-- The shutdown has sharply reduced the FDA’s food inspections.
-- Customs and Border Protection officers sued the Trump administration over unpaid wages.
-- Estimates indicate each week of the shutdown is costing the U.S. economy $1.2 billion.
-- Farmers who have come to rely on government assistance amid Trump’s trade war are struggling to cope without checks.
-- The shutdown is also holding up government loans to small businesses.
-- A Coast Guard program offered service employees recommendations for how to get through the shutdown, such as holding a garage sale or babysitting.
DEBATING THE WALL:
-- A DHS test of a steel slat prototype of the wall showed it could be sawed through.
-- Contrary to Trump’s rhetoric in his immigration address, apprehensions at the border are relatively low compared with past points in recent U.S. history.
-- Many lawmakers who represent districts along the border, including some Republicans, are either opposed to a wall or to using emergency powers to build it.
-- Building the wall could take at least 10 years, even with 10,000 workers.
-- “They say it's a medieval solution, a wall. It's true,” Trump said.
-- In an richly reported meditation on the history of walls, Marc Fisher notes that border walls “have a checkered history of maintaining separation between people”:
-- “Throughout history, autocratic leaders have relied on walls to control their people,” Nina Khrushcheva, professor of international affairs at the New School, writes in an op-ed for NBC.
-- Additional commentary in today’s newspaper:
-- Mark Morgan, a career FBI official who served as Border Patrol chief for the last six months of the Obama administration before being removed once Trump took office, has come out this week in support of a wall.
-- Some landowners along the border are gearing up to fight the government’s planned construction of the wall.
-- Trump’s handling of the shutdown has demonstrated how White House Communications Director Bill Shine is not directing the messaging coming out of the West Wing.
THERE’S A BEAR IN THE WOODS:
-- The White House has beefed up its legal team and plans to aggressively invoke executive privilege in a bid to contain the potential fallout of the Mueller report and curtail oversight by House Democrats.
“There is a growing sense that the special counsel’s closely held investigation could come to culmination soon. Some Trump advisers think Mueller could deliver the confidential report explaining his findings to senior Justice Department officials next month. Under the rules authorizing the special counsel, the attorney general can then decide whether to share the report or parts of it with Congress and the public. Some House leaders have vowed to immediately seek to obtain a copy of Mueller’s findings. But the White House would resist the release of details describing confidential and sensitive communications between the president and his senior aides, Trump advisers say. It is unclear whether the special counsel’s report will refer to material that the White House views as privileged communications obtained from interviews with senior White House officials. Some Trump advisers anticipate that Mueller may simply write a concise memo laying out his conclusions about the president’s actions.
“However, Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of Trump’s personal attorneys, said the president’s lawyers have made clear to Justice Department officials that they want to see Mueller’s completed report before the department decides what to share with Congress.”
The White House Counsel’s Office was down to fewer than 20 lawyers late last year, compared with 40 to 50 in past administrations
-- Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who will deliver a briefing today to House members on his decision to lift sanctions on companies linked to a Russian oligarch, is attracting more scrutiny from House Democrats.
-- Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he’s looking into whether he could obtain Trump’s tax returns.
-- Republican senators promised William Barr would not interfere with Mueller’s investigation if he is confirmed as attorney general.
-- But Chuck
-- The Center for American Progress has tracked more than 100 contacts between members of Trump’s campaign and transition team and Russian-linked officials.
-- The New York Times corrected a story we included in yesterday’s 202:
-- Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) asked the FEC to investigate an alleged disinformation campaign by Democratic strategists to help him win his 2017 special election.
-- A Russian
SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ:
Trump this morning denied that he slammed the table when he left his meeting with Democrats:
And he reiterated his claim that the GOP is unified:
He also pledged that he won’t cave:
Trump complained about his comments in a closed-door meeting being leaked and lashed out against the news media as “totally bonkers”:
The secretary of state arrived in Cairo:
A Republican senator expressed her view on the pointlessness of the shutdown:
Maryland’s Republican governor accused Washington of playing political games at the expense of average Americans:
A Republican congressman explained the reason for the gridlock to a Post reporter:
The host of “Morning Joe,” a former Republican congressman, reflected on the future of the GOP:
A presidential historian tweeted a famous Trump quote after he walked out of his meeting with Democratic leadership:
The libertarian Cato Institute fact-checked Trump’s dire warnings about undocumented immigrants:
An energy reporter for the LA Times imagined this scenario:
A cab driver told a Post reporter about the personal impact of the shutdown:
National Park employees lent a helping hand:
A Post reporter obtained this behind-the-scenes detail about Trump’s meeting with Schumer and Pelosi:
A House Republican explained his awkward reaction to his Democratic colleagues’ applause for their funding bills:
A Senate Republican and House Republican shared this uniquely divisive exchange about Trump’s attorney general nominee:
But Barr is refusing to meet with several Democrats on the committee he will appear before next week, with the administration citing the shutdown as the reason. A Daily Beast reporter wondered:
An Obama-era DOJ spokesman replied:
A Democratic senator added this:
The House speaker reacted to Trump's threat to withhold federal money to fight wildfires in California:
John Delaney, a Democratic presidential candidate, is on his way to Iowa:
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) continued her book tour as she weighs a 2020 bid. From a CNN reporter:
New polling indicates Iowa Democrats are cool on the idea of nominating a business leader:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) expressed frustration with critics seeking negative information about her:
Mike Flynn has been allowed some freedom of movement as he awaits his sentencing:
And Mitch McConnell met his colleague’s new puppy:
GOOD READS FROM ELSEWHERE:
-- Gizmodo, “How Cartographers for the U.S. Military Inadvertently Created a House of Horrors in South Africa,” by Kashmir Hill:
DAYBOOK:
Trump
Lawmakers and friends will gather at the Capitol to honor the legacy of Jamal Khashoggi. Today marks 100 days since the Post contributing columnist’s death. (New Yorker)
NEWS YOU CAN USE IF YOU LIVE IN D.C.:
-- It will be cold and windy in D.C. today, foreshadowing possible weekend snow.
-- The Wizards beat the 76ers 123-106.
-- Maryland Senate President Mike Miller is receiving treatment for prostate cancer.
-- Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) delivered a State of the Commonwealth speech in which he urged Republican legislators to consider his proposed budget.
VIDEOS OF THE DAY:
Jimmy Fallon scrutinized the opening line of Trump’s immigration address:
Trevor Noah mocked the Democratic response to Trump’s address:
The Daily Show trolled Trump with this 2004 video of him delivering a commencement address at New York’s Wagner College:
One federal employee explained how the shutdown is forcing her to continue paying for day care she can’t access:
The Fact Checker awarded Trump one Pinocchio for his claim that good jobs numbers were fueled by factories returning to the United States from overseas:
And Trump tried to turn an ABC News reporter’s question back on him (with little success):


Describe US sanctions on Oleg Deripaska

The Daily 202: VA nominee’s struggles are a consequence of Trump’s vetting failures

With Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve.
THE BIG IDEA:
President Trump promises “extreme vetting” of all immigrants, but he has repeatedly failed to hold his own Cabinet picks, senior White House staff and judicial nominees to the same standard. Ronny L. Jackson’s imperiled nomination to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs is just the latest example.
Senate lawmakers postponed the White House doctor’s confirmation hearing last night after top Republicans and Democrats raised concerns about his qualifications and oversight of the White House medical staff.
Jackson’s Wednesday hearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs was set to be brutal because several lawmakers fear he lacks the experience to lead an agency with 360,000 employees and an annual budget of $186 billion. They’re also frustrated that Trump sprung the pick on them without advance consultation, and that Jackson did not go through a formal vetting process. It’s unclear whether it will be rescheduled.
A lack of due diligence is a feature, not a bug, of Trumpism.
-- CBS News reports that Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), the top Democrat on the Veterans' Affairs committee, is reviewing multiple allegations he's heard from current and former White House medical staff that Jackson created a “hostile work environment.”
-- “The White House also is assessing whether questions that have been raised about Jackson have validity,” our Seung Min Kim, Lisa Rein and Josh Dawsey report. “Three White House officials said Monday that they worried the nomination was in peril.”
In recent days, they scoop, committee Chairman Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) called the White House to express his concern that Jackson was unqualified
-- The aforementioned allegations, which are apparently coming at least partly from people who literally work at the White House, would normally come out as part of routine vetting for any Cabinet secretary.
In his rush to remake the courts, Trump has put up many people for judgeships who would have been very unlikely to get nominated if they went through a more rigorous vetting process.
-- The Presidential Personnel Office, the White House office responsible for vetting political appointees, has suffered from chaos, dysfunction and nepotism under the leadership of young and inexperienced Trump loyalists who seem to enjoy partying more than working.
“From the start, the office struggled to keep pace with its enormous responsibilities, with only about 30 employees on hand, less than a third of the staffing in prior administrations … Since the inauguration, most of the staffers in the PPO have been in their 20s, some with little professional experience apart from their work on Trump’s campaign … Even as the demands to fill government mounted, the PPO offices on the first floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building became something of a social hub, where young staffers from throughout the administration stopped by to hang out on couches and smoke electronic cigarettes, known as vaping, current and former White House officials said.
“PPO leaders hosted happy hours last year in their offices that included beer, wine and snacks … In January, they played a drinking game in the office called ‘Icing’ to celebrate the deputy director’s 30th birthday. Icing involves hiding a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, a flavored malt liquor, and demanding that the person who discovers it, in this case the deputy director, guzzle it.”
-- The disregard for serious vetting can be traced back to the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election.
Christie lamented earlier this month that people like Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator now embroiled in controversies over his spending and management practices, would never have gotten tapped if he had stuck around.
“This was a brutally unprofessional transition,” Christie said. “This was a transition that didn’t vet people for this type of judgment issues. … If Mr. Pruitt’s going to go, it’s because he never should’ve been there in the first place.”
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
-- A white rental van plowed through a group of pedestrians on a Toronto sidewalk, killing 10 people and injuring 15. The vehicle sent people and baby strollers flying in what eyewitnesses described as a deliberate act
GET SMART FAST:
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN:
-- Secretary of state nominee Mike Pompeo eked out an endorsement from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last night after Trump personally intervened to convince Rand Paul to change his vote
If you read between the lines, the senator didn't really get much for caving.
Pompeo’s confirmation before the full Senate was basically assured when Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) broke with her caucus and endorsed him last Friday
A bipartisan moment during last night’s markup offered a reminder of what the Senate used to be like in the old days:
-- White House officials are discouraging Republican lawmakers from vigorously defending EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
-- Trump is increasingly relying on his personal cellphone to contact outside advisers, a sign of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s waning influence.
-- Mike Pence named retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, a Trump ally, to serve as his personal national security adviser.
-- Charles Kushner took responsibility for the decision to purchase a New York skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue, which he called “bad timing and bad judgment.”
THERE’S A BEAR IN THE WOODS:
-- Trump twice told James Comey that he did not spend the night in Moscow during a 2013 trip to the Miss Universe pageant. But flight records now place him in Russia for Friday and most of Saturday night in a combined total of 45 hours and 43 minutes.
-- “A conscious effort by Trump to mislead [Comey] could lend weight to the allegation … that Trump engaged in compromising activity during the trip that exposed him to Russian government blackmail,”
-- The Treasury Department softened its position on Russian metals giant Rusal. The department said it would provide relief from planned sanctions if Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska relinquished control of the company.
-- The White House struggled to answer questions about Trump’s weekend Twitter thread denying Michael Cohen would “flip” against him.
-- Even if Cohen wanted to flip on Trump, legal obstacles could make doing so difficult.
MEN BEHAVING BADLY:
-- Rep. Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican running to replace outgoing Sen. Jeff Flake, said she was sexually abused by her track coach in high school.
-- “Inside A Divisive Fight Over How A Top Progressive Think Tank Handled Sexual Harassment,”
-- Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney says she tried to tell a USA Gymnastics coach about Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse
THE MIDTERMS:
-- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will announce a plan for the federal government to guarantee a job for every American that would pay $15 an hour and provide health-care benefits for every American “who wants or needs one.”
-- Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said in a radio interview she will no longer accept donations from corporate PACs, in a shift from her public position several weeks ago.
-- Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) was kicked off the state’s primary ballot after Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled that hundreds of signatures on his candidate petitions were collected by people outside his district
-- Arizona’s 8th District will hold its special election today to choose a replacement for Rep. Trent Franks (R).
-- A new poll found recently imprisoned coal baron Don Blankenship slipping in West Virginia’s GOP Senate primary.
-- Outside money from both parties is pouring into Wisconsin’s Senate race.
-- “The Bros Of The Ultimate Fighting Championship Are All In On Trump,”
-- The RNC spent more than $224,000 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last month, according to a newly filed FEC report.
TRUMP’S AGENDA:
-- Sanders sought to dismiss criticism of Trump’s use of the term “breeding concept” in a tweet last week in regard to California's “sanctuary areas.”
-- Scott Pruitt plans to introduce a rule limiting what science can be used to write EPA regulations.
-- A congressional report found the GOP tax bill will return $17 billion to millionaire owners of “pass-through” businesses.
SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ:
Trump returned to the subject of the caravans:
He also renewed his threat to tie his immigration demands to the renegotiation of NAFTA:
And he boasted about food-stamp figures:
From The Post’s fact-checking columnist:
The son of former national security adviser Michael Flynn defended his father:
An NBC News reporter replied:
A New York Times writer summed up Rand Paul’s progression on Pompeo’s nomination:
A spokesman for Obama’s Justice Department responded to Paul’s shift:
From a Cook Political Report editor:
A Senate Republican attacked his Democratic colleagues for their opposition to the nomination:
From Obama’s former NSC spokesman and a Crooked Media founder:
Another House Republican called for the EPA administrator’s resignation:
A Post reporter added this detail:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) returned home after his recent surgery:
The first lady sent her best wishes to George H.W. Bush:
A presidential historian shared this photo from 1948:
The French president took to the streets of D.C.:
The two presidents discussed Trump’s poll numbers:
A Talking Points Memo reporter provided this handy guide for the French president’s D.C. visit:
And a royal family welcomed its newest member:
A former first lady offered her best wishes to the royal family:
GOOD READS FROM ELSEWHERE:
-- ProPublica and Mother Jones, “Shutdown of Texas Schools Probe Shows Trump Administration Pullback on Civil Rights,” by Annie Waldman:
-- Bloomberg News, “Amazon Has a Top-Secr
-- New York Times, “When — if Ever — Will the Super Bowl Champion Eagles Visit the White House?” by Ken Belson and Michael D. Shear:
DAYBOOK:
Trump
NEWS YOU CAN USE IF YOU LIVE IN D.C.:
-- Rain will begin today and last through tomorrow in Washington.
-- The Capitals won their first-round playoff series against the Blue Jackets,
-- The Nationals lost to the Giants 4-2.
-- Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) is enjoying an approval rating of 69 percent, an eight-point boost since February and his highest mark since fall 2016.
-- The D.C. Council decided against reprimanding member Trayon White Sr. (D) for donating $500 to an event where Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan denounced Jews.
-- “D.C.’s ride-hailing market has exploded over the past three years, more than quadrupling since late 2015 as Metro and taxi ridership have steadily fallen, statistics show, a sign that Uber and Lyft are probably creating thousands of new vehicle trips in the city,”
VIDEOS OF THE DAY:
Stephen Colbert reveled in Trump’s weekend tweeting spree:
The Trumps and the Macrons planted a tree on the White House’s South Lawn:
White police officers wrestled a black woman to the ground at an Alabama Waffle House, sparking a sit-in and a response from the NAACP:
Cellphone footage captured a tornado ripping through a Florida town:
A “town crier” announced the birth of the new royal baby:
And The Post’s video department decided to bring the town crier’s pomp and circumstance to Washington:


Describe US sanctions on Oleg Deripaska

The Kremlin scores a big victory as Davos lets in sanctioned oligarchs

Read more:

Last week brought the Kremlin a major victory against Western sanctions. After an intense lobbying campaign by Vladimir Putin’s regime, aided by the government of Switzerland, the Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF) reversed its decision to ban three Kremlin-connected oligarchs from its upcoming meeting in Davos.
“I am pleased that after discussions with all relevant parties, careful consideration of international legal frameworks and strong support from the Swiss government, we are able to host business and political leaders from all G20 countries,” said Alois Zwinggi, the WEF’s managing director. Translated from the euphemistic language of corporate press releases, this means that Russian oligarchs Oleg Deripaska, Viktor Vekselberg and Andrei Kostin will be invited to attend the Davos forum, the world’s premier gathering of political and business leaders, held every winter in a small ski resort in the Swiss Alps.
Deripaska, Russia’s principal aluminum magnate; Vekselberg, owner of the Renova industrial conglomerate; and Kostin, head of the state-owned VTB bank, were disinvited from Davos this year after being sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department over their ties to the Kremlin’s “malign activity around the globe.” “Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilizing activities,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said at the time. Deripaska was also singled out for reportedly “threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering.” A regular at Davos meetings, Deripaska was known as the host of the forum’s most lavish parties, which featured buckets of caviar, free-flowing Dom Perignon champagne, and live performances by the likes of Enrique Iglesias. The list of attendees reads like the who’s-who of world politics and business.
It seemed that Davos might have to forgo Deripaska’s hospitality this coming January. The initial decision by the forum’s organizers was caused less by their moral qualms than by the U.S. Treasury Department’s provision that “non-U.S. persons could face sanctions for knowingly facilitating significant transactions for or on behalf of the [sanctioned] individuals” – that is, by a fear of facing sanctions themselves. In the end, the Kremlin’s lobbying efforts (which included a personal conversation between Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Swiss President Alain Berset) overcame the reservations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov welcomed the fact that the WEF management “embraced our position” by reversing the ban. The size and composition of the official Russian delegation to Davos will be determined in the coming days, but the Russian government has already announced that all three U.S.-sanctioned oligarchs will be attending.
The Davos forum has long had an outsize resonance in Russian politics, serving as an important platform of international legitimacy for Russian elites. The first official from Moscow to take part in the forum was Alexander Shokhin, then deputy prime minister in the reformist cabinet of Yegor Gaidar, who attended in 1992, signaling Russia’s shift to liberal market reforms after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
At the February 1996 forum, the star of the show was Gennady Zyuganov, the head of Russia’s Communist Party, who was leading in the polls for the upcoming election and was widely seen as Russia’s next president. The world’s political and business elites queued up to shake his hand. In his public appearances at Davos, Zyuganov tried to assuage fears of a Soviet restoration, promising to “safeguard private property,” “create a climate of confidence” and “recognize political pluralism” in the event of his victory (all while addressing his domestic audience with a mix of Stalinist and nationalist rhetoric). It was at the same meeting in Davos that Russia’s leading businessmen — the oligarchs of that time — agreed to put aside their differences and finance the reelection campaign of incumbent president Boris Yeltsin to stave off a Communist comeback. In the end, Yeltsin edged Zyuganov by 35 percent to 32 percent in the first round, defeating him by a convincing 54 percent to 40 percent in the runoff.
The famous question about Yeltsin’s successor — “Who is Mr. Putin?” — was also asked at Davos. Trudy Rubin, a journalist with the Philadelphia Inquirer, posed it to a panel of top Russian politicians, including First Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, in February 2000. To laughter from the audience, not one of the panelists volunteered to respond — even though the answer, after Putin’s military brutality in Chechnya, his initial attacks on independent media, and his decision to publicly honor the notorious Soviet KGB chief Yuri Andropov, was already clear.
The agenda for the upcoming Davos forum is yet to be announced. What matters for the Kremlin, though, are not specific meetings or agreements but the fact that some of its most notorious envoys have once again been accepted by the Western elite; the clearest signal of “business as usual.” This is not the first time in history that the democratic community chose appeasement over principle in dealing with an authoritarian regime — and it has never ended happily.
Read more:
Jennifer Rubin: Russia, Russia, Russia
The Post’s View: Russia’s support for Trump’s election is no longer disputable
Michael McFaul: Why Vladimir Putin is a terrible strategist
Christine Emba: Davos Man is nervous. He should be.
Vladimir Kara-Murza: Putin’s dark cult of the secret police


Describe US sanctions on Oleg Deripaska

Russian oligarch and Putin ally sues Treasury, demands lifting of U.S. sanctions

Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska sued the Treasury Department and Secretary Steven Mnuchin in U.S. federal court to demand the lifting of remaining U.S. sanctions against him, alleging the measures were illegal and harmed his finances and reputation. Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed that Washington’s 2018 sanctions were “completely untethered” from “legal criteria.” The lawsuit, filed in district court in Washington, D.C., said the oligarch’s net worth has fallen by more than $7.5 billion, or 81 percent, since he and some of his companies were sanctioned for what Treasury called his support of “the Kremlin’s global malign activities.” In January, the Treasury Department lifted sanctions on three Deripaska-connected companies, but left in place the sanctions on Deripaska himself. “Treasury does not generally comment on pending litigation,” an agency spokesman said Friday. Sanctions experts said it is not unusual for sanctioned individuals to sue Treasury. The government usually wins the cases, “since the judiciary is pretty deferential to [Treasury] and the government on issues of national security,” said Peter Harrell, a former State Department official who worked on sanctions policy during the Obama administration. The D.C.-based lawyer representing Deripaska in the case, Erich Ferrari of Ferrari & Associates, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Ferrari’s online profile says he has previously “worked to have names removed” from Treasury sanctions lists. jeanne.whalen@washpost.com

jeanne.whalen@washpost.com


Describe US sanctions on Oleg Deripaska

In rebuke to Trump administration, more than 130 Republicans join House Democrats to oppose lifting sanctions against Putin ally

The 362-53 vote registers formal House disapproval of plans to relax sanctions against companies controlled by Russian President Vladimir Putin ally, Oleg Deripaska, and comes despite last-minute appeals by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. A similar measure narrowly failed in the Senate this week, despite 11 Republicans breaking ranks to vote with Democrats.This is a developing story. It will be updated.


Describe US sanctions on Oleg Deripaska

Kremlin backers warn of threat of war with U.S. as Syria tensions rise

MOSCOW —
In the Kremlin’s telling, this is a country under siege.
The United States is considering strikes on Russian ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria, prompting ominous speculation among people close to the Kremlin that such a move could touch off a wider conflict. One scholar who advises the Russian Defense Ministry even raised the specter of “World War III.”
At the same time, U.S. sanctions against top Russian business executives wiped billions of dollars off Russian stock market values this week, prompting fears that the country’s already stagnant economy could be thrown back into recession.
As if to drive the point home, a new article from a top Kremlin aide declared that Russia must prepare for a century of “geopolitical solitude” and that its “epic journey toward the West” was over.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his supporters have for years been casting their country as one that has to rally around its leader and fight back in the face of an increasingly aggressive West.
That “besieged fortress” narrative has now roared back to the forefront in ways not seen since the height of the Ukraine crisis in 2014 and Russia’s internationally denounced annexation of Crimea.
The question now is how Russia responds — both to the sanctions and to any U.S. strike in Syria, where Moscow has military forces aiding Assad’s regime.
Putin has said little on both topics in recent days. He visited Russian scientists  Tuesday and thanked them for their role in helping develop new Russian nuclear weapons.
“This all strengthens the isolationist, consolidating logic of a besieged fortress,” Andrei Kolesnikov, a domestic policy specialist at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said of the sanctions and Syria developments. “The regime won’t fall. It will only become more isolationist and aggressive toward the West.”
Slides in the Russian stock market this week showed that Friday’s U.S. sanctions were the Trump administration’s most damaging move against Moscow so far.
The ruble fell to 63 against the dollar, the Russian currency’s weakest level since December 2016, and government officials said they were preparing to take steps to stabilize the Russian businesses affected.
“A blow to any of the groups of companies” affected by the sanctions “is a blow to the economy as a whole,” Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said Tuesday.
Sanctioned businessman Oleg Deripaska’s company Rusal, an aluminum giant that employs 62,000 people worldwide, has lost more than half its stock market value since the sanctions were announced. Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank, has lost some 15 percent on the stock market this week even though it was not sanctioned. Monday’s plunge of more than 8 percent in the benchmark MOEX Russia Index was the worst since March 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, though the index recovered some of those losses Tuesday.
“If a very strong sanctions regime spreads to other sectors, this can lead to a financial crisis and certainly a renewed recession,” said economist Alexandre Abramov, a financial-markets expert at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. The risk, he said, is that investors will shun all Russian company stocks, fearing further sanctions.
Even as Russia reeled from the blow to its economy, another crisis was deepening in Syria.
The suspected chemical attack in rebel-held Douma brought dire predictions in Moscow that disaster could follow if Washington launched airstrikes in response. Russia denies that its Syrian allies used chlorine or other agents in the Saturday attack, which claimed dozens of lives.
The West says overwhelming evidence points to Assad’s forces, with their backers Russia and Iran sharing responsibility.
Igor Korotchenko, a Russian military scholar and a member of the Defense Ministry’s public advisory council, said a U.S. attack that killed Russians in Syria would compel a military response, potentially against a U.S. plane or ship. That could bring about a chain of events as dangerous as the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, Korotchenko said, and potentially “provoke World War III.”
“Trump has to understand that we’re going to be talking about the possibility of nuclear escalation if we have a collision of the U.S. and Russian militaries,” Korotchenko said. “Everything can happen very quickly, and the situation can spin out of the control of the politicians.”
Russian General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov said last month that Russia had information that the United States was planning to fake a chemical attack in Syria and use it as a pretext for a strike on Assad. If such a strike endangered Russian lives, he warned at the time, Russia would respond by hitting the missiles and their launchers.
Russia has said the suspected chemical attack in Douma was, indeed, fake — staged in part to distract from another episode that Moscow has also described as falsely blaming Russia: the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England last month.
“The U.S. declared economic war on us, they also declared diplomatic war, and everything now indicates that they want to test our armed forces in a local conflict,” lawmaker Igor Morozov said on a state TV talk show Monday.
On another such show, war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny warned, “Russia has the forces and the means to stop the American groups — the question is, how far does this conflict, this confrontation, go.”
Representatives of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, as well as Russian specialists, have visited the site of the Douma incident “and found no trace of any use of chemical weapons,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday.
He said Russia would propose a U.N. Security Council resolution later Tuesday that would call on international experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to visit the site, at the invitation of the Syrian government.
Syria and Russia, he said, would be prepared to guarantee the inspectors’ security.
If the West rejected the Russian proposal, Lavrov said, this would be further evidence of its “anti-Syrian and Russophobic line.”
Amid the fast-moving developments, a longtime architect of Putin’s rule, Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov, this week published an article in the journal Russia in Global Affairs that presented a theoretical foundation for the estrangement between Russia and the West.
Only now is it becoming clear, he wrote, that the year 2014 — the year of the Ukraine crisis — for Russia marked “the end of multiple and fruitless efforts to become part of Western civilization.”
“A new period of unknown length now spreads before us, the ‘14+’ era, in which we face one hundred (two hundred? three hundred?) years of geopolitical solitude,” Surkov wrote.
anton.troianovski@washpost.com