Good morning. It is February 14th. Happy Valentine's Day to those who celebrate. It is a clear, cold, normal, wintry morning in New York City. Normal weather-wise anyway. And this is your Indignity Morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead news story, two columns wide with a big stacked headline is, “JUSTICE OFFICIALS RESIGN IN PROTEST OVER ADAMS CASE / U.S. Attorney’s Letter Claims Mayor Had ‘Quid Pro Quo’ With White House.” It's not the full span triple stack they used on October 21st, 1973. “NIXON DISCHARGES COX FOR DEFIANCE; ABOLISHES WATERGATE TASK FORCE; RICHARDSON AND RUCKELSHAUS OUT,” which is the previous benchmark for presidential abuse of the justice system, and would have been a little more commensurate with the scale of what happened yesterday and what is still going on But it's excellent packaging from the Times with clear and accurate use of concrete pertinent nouns and verbs and a skillful extraction of the quid pro quo quote from a resignation letter that was relentlessly damning of the Trump administration's abuse of the justice system, but generally did so through sternly measured, lawyerly phrasing that didn't offer a lot of headline-sized zingers. The story, under four bylines, begins, “Manhattan's U.S. attorney on Thursday resigned rather than obey an order from a top Justice Department official to drop the corruption case against New York City's Mayor, Eric Adams. Then, when Justice Department officials transferred the case to the Public Integrity Section in Washington, which oversees corruption prosecutions, the two men who led that unit also resigned, according to five people with knowledge of the matter. Several hours later, three other lawyers in the unit also resigned, according to people familiar with the developments. The serial resignations,” the Times writes, “represent the most high-profile public resistance so far to President Trump's tightening control over the Justice Department. They were a stunning repudiation of the administration's attempt to force the dismissal of the charges against Mr. Adams.” What made this breakthrough in news writing possible is probably the fact that the first of those prosecutors to defy the orders of Donald Trump's personal attorney turned acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, was Danielle Sassoon, a fully credentialed Federalist Society member, former clerk for Antonin Scalia at the Supreme Court, and Donald Trump's own pick to be the acting head of the Southern District of New York. That means that the president's effort to make federal law enforcement entirely subject to the demands of his own personal interests so that prosecuting crimes is something that happens or doesn't happen according to his own whims has finally belatedly been removed from the playing field where law and politics are a spectator sport contested between the political parties. That's where the Times feel safest, where the job of describing how bad the things Republicans do are, is strictly the responsibility of the Democrats, and the only duty of a major news organization is to judge how well that message plays with the public and decide how many points to award it on some imaginary scoreboard of national sentiment. But the constitutional and material damage being done by the Trump administration has far outrun the ability of the passive and confused Democratic Party leadership to make a fuss about it. While Trump's hatchet man was decapitating law enforcement in the Southern District, to remove the city's mayor from the grasp of the law, and put him in the grasp of the president instead, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York was busy posting about grocery prices. Meanwhile, the former Scalia clerk was writing, as the Times reports, “that the mayor's lawyers had repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.” The Times adds, “Ms. Sassoon also wrote that her office had proposed a superseding indictment against the mayor that would have added a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice. The charge, she wrote, would have been ‘based on evidence that Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the F.B.I.’ It would also have included additional accusations about his “participation in a straw donor scheme.” 

Below the jump on that story on page A21, is a look at exactly what the deal the administration is trying to put across is about. “New York mayor vows to permit ICE agents access to Rikers Island.” The mayor, the Times writes, “announced on Thursday that he would issue an executive order to allow federal immigration authorities into the Rikers Island jail complex, a significant shift in city sanctuary policies. The move,” the Times writes “followed a meeting earlier Thursday between Mr. Adams, a Democrat, and President Trump's border czar, Thomas Homan, in lower Manhattan. The meeting was seen as an early test of the mayor's relationship with the Trump administration, and of the degree to which Mr. Adams might owe some fealty after the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors to drop the corruption charges against the mayor.” There's still a disembodied “was seen as” there, but it's almost evanescent. Basically, the story grounds the mayor's dealmaking with the administration in the actual reportable events of the past week or so, rather than asking critics to handle the job. 

Back on the front of the paper, the rest of the top of the page is taken up by a wide-columned showcase layout under a photo of the ruddily-lit air traffic control tower at Washington National Airport. “Warnings Circulated for Years
Before a Fatal Crash in D.C.,” is the headline in white text against the subtle colors of either dawn or dusk in the district. Wait, I'm going to solve this. Off to the right of the tower in the distance is the Washington Monument. So with Arlington in the foreground and DC in the background, the camera is pointing north. The ready light is on the right hand side of the tower. So that's a sunrise. Not that it matters, but what does? The story begins “On a bright, clear morning in July 2018—” And sorry, who cares?

It's a worthy project to look into the troubled aviation backstory that led to the horrible midair collision between an army helicopter and a passenger jet last month. Lives may ultimately be saved by whatever this story has unearthed, but I don't care. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are right now tearing apart the entire regulatory apparatus that would save those lives if the civil service were reading the newspaper and implementing important changes rather than being forced out of their jobs. At the moment, this is just a prestige paper story where you could be running newspaper stories. 

Below it, not quite below the fold is, course, “‘Of Course’ Ukraine Will Have Role in Peace Talks, Trump Says.” 

Next to that, “Kennedy Wins Slim Approval In Health Post.” 

“Slim approval” seems an awfully wishful way of describing one more lockstep party-line Republican vote for maybe the most bizarrely unfit cabinet nominee of them all, with only Mitch McConnell defecting, to cast a protest vote as a polio victim against the guy who wants to bring back polio. 

Next to that, “President Aims His Tariff Policy At Rest of Globe.” 

“President Trump on Thursday set in motion a plan for new tariffs on other countries globally, an ambitious move that could shatter the rules of international trading and is likely to set off various negotiations.” Again, it's dreadful that National Airport is a deathtrap, but the cumulative bodycount of those next three stories is probably going to be a lot higher.

There's no reason you couldn't have popped the leisurely retrospective investigation of the airport into the Saturday or Sunday paper when no one wants to do breaking news deadlines anyway. There's certainly no reason to have that investigation on page one. 

While down at the bottom of page A14 is the breaking news investigation “For migrants at Guantanamo rations and disrepair under the military's watch.” A dispatch from Carol Rosenberg and Charlie Savage about the startup conditions at our migrant concentration camp in Cuba.

“Dozens of Venezuelan migrants sent by the Trump administration to the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are being guarded by troops rather than civilian immigration officers, according to people familiar with the operation.”

“While the Trump administration has portrayed the detainees as legally in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, military guards and medics are handling them in practice, the people said.”

“In doing so, the civilian law enforcement role of immigration detention is being essentially militarized as the government embarks on a new, legally uncertain  course of moving people it intends to deport from US soil into incommunicado detention at an offshore prison.” In an inset box with the story, the reporters list the names of the 53 people who the government tried to make vanish into the camps. “By not disclosing the migrants identities,” they write in the main story, “the government has prevented their relatives from learning where they're being held and complicated lawyers efforts to challenge their detention.” 

A midair crash and a bunch of near misses at a major airport surely do amount to a long-running systemic problem that needs addressing, but it's not more urgent this morning than the rapid ongoing dismantling of the rule of law at our overseas concentration camp. Put the news on the front of the newspaper. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Socca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Please continue to send those along if you can. On Monday, we will be observing the Federal President's Day holiday. Please celebrate our tradition of limited executive power in whatever way seems appropriate. And if nothing unexpected interferes with the recording, we will talk again on Tuesday.