Subject: POLITICO Playbook: Happy Thanksgiving
From: "Anna Palmer Jake Sherman Daniel Lippman" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2018 09:02:51 -0600
List-Id: <1376319.xt.local>

Presented by H&R Block: Playbook is POLITICO's must-read briefing on what's driving the day                Nov 22, 2018 View in browser                   
 By Anna Palmer, Jake Sherman and Daniel Lippman 
             
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                     DRIVING THE DAY      
THE TRUMP SLUMP? ... 

-- AP's ANNABELLE LIANG in Singapore: "Global stock markets mostly fell Thursday as concerns about economic growth continued to weigh on sentiment and trading was thinned by the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. ... 

"Economic figures have raised further concerns about the impact of the ongoing trade disputes. Durable goods orders in the U.S. fell 4.4 percent last month from September, the largest amount in 15 months, with commercial and military aircraft leading the decline. This could point at adverse effects of a trade dispute between the U.S. and China, who have imposed additional tariffs on billions of dollars of each other's goods." AP

-- BLOOMBERG'S DEBBY WU: "Apple iPhone Supplier Foxconn Planning Deep Cost Cuts": "Foxconn Technology Group, the biggest assembler of iPhones, became the latest Apple Inc. supplier to warn of anemic demand, with an internal memo suggesting that expenses will be cut by almost a half next year.

"The contract manufacturer aims to cut 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) from expenses in 2019 as it faces 'a very difficult and competitive year,' according to an internal document obtained by Bloomberg. ... Foxconn has been hit by a slowing smartphone market, while trade tensions with the U.S. add to global uncertainty. Earlier this month its flagship Hon Hai posted earnings that were about 12 percent below expectations." Bloomberg

-- WSJ: "Global Selloff Tests Changed Credit Market: The selloff has descended on a market that has both grown enormously and decreased in quality," by Mike Bird and Steven Russolillo 

-- FT: "Tesla cuts prices in China as trade war bites," by Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong and Emily Feng in Beijing 

ON THE BORDER -- L.A. TIMES' DAVID CLOUD: "White House approves broad new powers - including use of deadly force - for U.S. troops on the border": "In a broad expansion of the controversial military mission along the southwest border, the White House has authorized extensive new powers for U.S. troops to potentially use against migrants, including searches, detentions, crowd control and, if necessary, deadly force." LA Times 

Happy Thanksgiving! Thanks for spending your mornings and afternoons with us, and for helping make our live events so much fun. 

SPOTTED: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at the Nassau, Bahamas airport - pic ... Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) poolside yesterday at Lago Mar Resort in Fort Lauderdale ... Rudy Giuliani flying yesterday from LGA to BOS - pic

THANKSGIVING MUST READ ... NYT'S MAUREEN DOWD: "Of Monuments, Arguments, Vampires and Thanksgiving: John Wayne, Brett Kavanaugh, my brothers Michael and Kevin, and me." 

NYT'S EMILY COCHRANE is today's print pooler. She sent this dispatch at 7:41 a.m.: "Good morning, and happy Thanksgiving from cloudy West Palm Beach. 

"Your pool assembled at 7:15 a.m. and just arrived near Mar-a-Lago. The president is scheduled to have a teleconference with members of the military at 9 a.m. He has also been tweeting. Your pooler has also requested more details about the president's day and a copy of his Thanksgiving menu."
       
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THANKSGIVING EVE FEUD ... AP'S MARK SHERMAN: "Trump spars with chief justice over their views of judges": "President Donald Trump and Chief Justice John Roberts clashed in an extraordinary public dispute over the independence of America's judiciary, with Roberts bluntly rebuking the president for denouncing a judge who rejected his migrant asylum policy as an 'Obama judge.' There's no such thing, Roberts declared Wednesday in a strongly worded statement contradicting Trump and defending judicial independence. ...

"The pre-Thanksgiving dustup was the first time that Roberts, the Republican-appointed leader of the federal judiciary, has offered even a hint of criticism of Trump, who has several times blasted federal judges who have ruled against him. 

"Before now, it has been highly unusual for a president to single out judges for personal criticism. And a chief justice's challenge to a president's comments is downright unprecedented in modern times. ... Roberts had refused to comment on Trump's earlier attacks on judges, including the chief justice himself.

"But on Wednesday, after a query by The Associated Press, he spoke up for the independence of the federal judiciary and rejected the notion that judges are loyal to the presidents who appoint them. 'We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them,' Roberts said. On the day before Thanksgiving, he concluded, 'The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.'" AP

THE PRESIDENT RESPONDS ... (@realDonaldTrump) at 3:51 p.m.: "Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have 'Obama judges,' and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country. It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an 'independent judiciary,' but if it is why......" 

... at 4:09 p.m.: ".....are so many opposing view (on Border and Safety) cases filed there, and why are a vast number of those cases overturned. Please study the numbers, they are shocking. We need protection and security -- these rulings are making our country unsafe! Very dangerous and unwise!"

-- AND HE CONTINUED THIS MORNING ... at 7:21 a.m.: "Justice Roberts can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster. It is out of control, has a horrible reputation, is overturned more than any Circuit in the Country, 79%, & is used to get an almost guaranteed result. Judges must not Legislate Security..." ... 

... at 7:30 a.m.: "....and Safety at the Border, or anywhere else. They know nothing about it and are making our Country unsafe. Our great Law Enforcement professionals MUST BE ALLOWED TO DO THEIR JOB! If not there will be only bedlam, chaos, injury and death. We want the Constitution as written!"

MORE BORDER TALES ... 

-- WAPO'S NICK MIROFF, JOSHUA PARTLOW and JOSH DAWSEY: "Trump plan would force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico as cases are processed, a major break with current policy": "Central Americans who arrive at U.S. border crossings seeking asylum in the United States will have to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed under sweeping new measures the Trump administration is preparing to implement, according to internal planning documents and three Department of Homeland Security officials familiar with the initiative. ...

         
"The plan, called 'Remain in Mexico,' amounts to a major break with current screening procedures, which generally allow those who establish a fear of return to their home countries to avoid immediate deportation and remain in the United States until they can get a hearing with an immigration judge. ... Senior adviser Stephen Miller has pushed to implement the Remain in Mexico plan immediately, though other senior officials have expressed concern about implementing it amid sensitive negotiations with the Mexican government." WaPo

NBC NEWS: "Democrats won House popular vote by largest midterm margin since Watergate: Nationally, Democrats have 53.1 percent of all votes counted while Republicans took 45.2 percent."

NEWT GINGRICH praises NANCY PELOSI in a Mike DeBonis/Bob Costa piece in the Post: "Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said Pelosi has a savvy understanding of what it takes to win high-stakes leadership elections, especially in an era in which institutional power is diminished.

"'This isn't Sam Rayburn's Congress, where speakers could personally and institutionally intimidate people,' he said, referring to the Texas Democrat who was the longest-serving House speaker. 'She is doing exactly what she needs to do, whether it's inventing 16 meaningless titles so everybody can get something, or when people ask for a seat at the table, just building a bigger table.'" WaPo

-- FLASHBACK: The Pelosi/Newt global warming ad! 

FALLOUT ON KHASHOGGI -- TOP-ED - FRED RYAN in WaPo, "Trump's dangerous message to tyrants: Flash money and get away with murder": "We do not make the world safer by abandoning our commitment to basic freedoms and human rights. Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has committed atrocities that, if perpetrated by other countries, would draw a strong rebuke from the United States. ... The crown prince, in the role for barely 17 months, has led a reign of terror and has already established a dark legacy of opposing press freedom. ... The CIA has thoroughly investigated Khashoggi's murder and concluded with high confidence that it was directed by the crown prince.

"If there is reason to ignore the CIA's findings, the president should immediately make that evidence public. In the absence of such evidence, and given this failure of leadership from Trump, it now falls to Congress to truly put America first by standing up for America's sacred values and lasting interests. ... Congress ... should use its investigative and subpoena powers to press for an independent, thorough inquiry - no matter where it leads. It should use its power of the purse and authority to regulate foreign commerce to impose effective penalties on Khashoggi's murderers and suspend the sale of U.S.-made weapons to the Saudis." WaPo

-- NYT'S DAVID KIRKPATRICK in London and BEN HUBBARD in Beirut: "The Invisible American in a Saudi Prison Cell": "President Trump once offered a simple rationale for his hands-off approach to the case of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul: 'It's in Turkey, and it's not a citizen.' But this week, as Mr. Trump declared that he was sticking by the Saudi crown prince despite accusations that he was behind the killing, an American citizen was languishing in the bowels of the Saudi prison system. The citizen, Walid Fitaihi, a Harvard-trained doctor, hospital owner, television host and motivational speaker, has been detained without trial for
 more than a year." NYT

THE INVESTIGATIONS ... 

-- AFTERNOON READ: AP'S ERIC TUCKER, CHAD DAY and JONATHAN LEMIRE: "Long, tortured road to Trump's answers for special counsel"

SUNDAY SO FAR ... FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Sandra Smith guest hosts): Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie. Panel: Jonah Goldberg, Adrienne Elrod, Matthew Continetti and Mo Elleithee
                 PLAYBOOK READS         

PHOTO DU JOUR: Search and rescue crews dig through the burnt remains of a business on Wednesday in Paradise, California. The Camp Fire is currently at 80 percent containment and hundreds of people remain missing. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
   
NYT'S JACK NICAS in SAN FRANCISCO -- "How Facebook's P.R. Firm Brought Political Trickery to Tech": "When Tim Miller, a longtime Republican political operative, moved to the Bay Area last year to set up a public relations shop, he brought with him tradecraft more typical of Washington than Silicon Valley. ... Definers quickly found plenty of business, from start-ups like Lyft, Lime and Juul to giants like Facebook and Qualcomm, the influential chip company that was in a nasty legal fight with Apple over royalties, according to five people with direct knowledge of Mr. Miller's work who declined to be named because of confidentiality agreements.

"While working for Qualcomm, Definers pushed the idea that Apple's chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, was a viable presidential candidate in 2020, according to a former Definers employee and digital records. Presumably, it was an attempt to chill the cordial relations that Mr. Cook had cultivated with the Trump administration." NYT ... Facebook blog post by head of comms and policy Elliot Schrage taking responsibility for the Definers controversy

-- CROOKED MEDIA has officially severed its relationship with TIM MILLER over his Definers work for Facebook. Their statement

         
AOC WATCH -- "Ocasio-Cortez takes on the Amazon fight in New York," by Dana Rubinstein in New York: "Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is assuming a leadership role in efforts to combat Amazon's plan to build a new headquarters in Queens, an initial test of the incoming House freshman's clout in her home city.

"The 29-year-old progressive darling headlined a closed-press, standing-room-only meeting of activists in lower Manhattan on Monday, near the site of the Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park. 

"The meeting's purpose, according to those who attended, was to strategize about how to kill Amazon's deal to build a headquarters in Long Island City - a deal that proponents say would bring at least 25,000 well-paying jobs in exchange for roughly $3 billion in subsidies. Ocasio-Cortez did not explicitly say she wanted the deal to die, according to two attendees. But she implied as much.

"'Her message was mostly about, how is it possible we're giving that much money to the wealthiest corporation in the world, and how is it that our elected officials are expecting us to be quiet, and [how] that's not going to be the case,' said Maritza Silva-Farrell, executive director of ALIGN, an alliance of labor and community groups in New York." POLITICO

MORE PRESSURE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM -- "Religious right to start pressure campaign around criminal justice reform," by Lorraine Woellert

AVENATTI UPDATE ... "Michael Avenatti will not face felony charges in domestic violence probe," by LA Times' James Queally and Hannah Fry: "Attorney Michael Avenatti will not face felony charges based on allegations of domestic violence lodged against him by a 24-year-old actress. Los Angeles County prosecutors announced Wednesday they sent the case to the L.A. city attorney for possible misdemeanor charges. ... Avenatti has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, lashed out at media outlets and insinuated in a series of tweets that his arrest was a setup by a conservative activist." LAT
                 PLAYBOOKERS      

SPOTTED at Sen. Mark Warner's (D-Va.) 32nd annual Pilgrim's Lunch at the Palm, which benefits Share our Strength: Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, Virginia AG Mark Herring, Terry McAuliffe, Russ Ramsey, Mark Ein, Raul Fernandez, Jack Davies, Jan Brandt, Mike Harney, Mike Henry, Ambassador William Eacho, Ambassador Howard Gutman, Ambassador Tod Sedgwick, Ambassador Tim Broas, Michael Powell, Ken Baer and Dan Feldman. 

BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Ned Price, director of policy and communications at National Security Action, Georgetown professor and NBC contributor. What he's been reading recently: "One of the joys of teaching is re-reading-or reading for the first time-material I've assigned. I recently found myself in a rabbit hole of investigative documents from the Watergate era for a class on intelligence oversight. It got me thinking that the post-Trump era-regardless of when it begins-similarly will require some national soul-searching and, in all likelihood, not insignificant reforms. The difference will be that, while the post-Watergate era was about curbing intelligence excesses, in this case, we'll need
 to protect our intelligence and law enforcement communities from future presidents with corrupt intent." Playbook Plus Q&A

BIRTHDAYS: Josh Alcorn is 38 ... ABC News' Matthew Mosk (hat tip: Ali Dukakis) ... Jacob Wood, OMB deputy communications director (h/t Ninio Fetalvo) ... Bettina Incl&aacute;n Agen ... Shefali Razdan Duggal ... Matt Strawn ... Cassie Spodak, producer for CNN digital politics (h/t fiance Matt Mowers) ... Scott Wong, senior staff writer for The Hill ... Pat Cunnane, writer for ABC's "Designated Survivor" and an Obama WH alum ... Hannah August ... Jeff Tiller ... Barney Keller, partner at Jamestown Associates, is 34 ... Michael J. Szanto ... Martin Burns ... Robert Christie, VP of international media at Alibaba Group ... Roger Fransecky ... Marshall Schoenthal is 45 ... Anne Shoup ... Jonathan
 Kubakundimana ... Politico's Sarah O'Neill ... TJ Cholnoky ... Zoe Schlag ... BBC's George Alagiah ... Rep.-elect Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.) is 4-0 ...

... Andy Stern is 68 ... Josh Goldstein ... IBM's Sammy Jordan ... Tim R. Cohen ... Yarden Golan, COS of Israel's Embassy in Washington ... theSkimm's Jessica Turtletaub, who earlier this year married Lee Pepper -- wedding pic ... Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (h/t the ITIF team) ... Welles Orr ... Natasha Lennard ... Meena Ganesan ... James Williams, president of Engage Cuba, is 35 ... Alexa Lucas ... Lauren Pastarnack ... Brian Francis Kelley ... Harry Siegel, senior editor at The Daily Beast ... Ryan Fitzgerald ... Barbara Cameron ... Craig Gilbert (h/ts Teresa Vilmain)
       
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