The Commentariat -- June 6, 2019

Afternoon Update:

What's Wrong with This Picture? ...

... Dylan Stableford of Yahoo! News: "Just before his speech honoring military veterans at a ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France, President Trump gave an interview marked by insults directed toward the speaker of the House and former special counsel Robert Mueller. Speaking to Fox News' Laura Ingraham, Trump called the former special counsel a 'fool' and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a 'disaster.' 'Let me tell you, he made such a fool out of himself,' Trump said of Mueller, speaking at a cemetery where more than 9,300 American soldiers who died in World War II are buried. Mueller is a decorated Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, in which President Trump did not serve, and which he described in an interview on British television as a 'terrible war' and 'very far away.'... 'Nancy Pelosi, I call her "Nervous Nancy," Nancy Pelosi doesn't talk about it,' the president said. 'Nancy Pelosi is a disaster, OK? She's a disaster....' Pelosi, who was also in Normandy for the D-Day commemoration, declined to respond. 'I don't talk about the president while I'm out of the country,' she told CNN's Jim Acosta." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: In the video that accompanies the Yahoo! News story, Trump says, "He [Mueller] made such a fool out of himself because what people don't report is the letter he had to do to straighten out his testimony because his testimony was wrong." What testimony? Trump seems to have made up testimony that never happened. (Why isn't "people don't report" that?) It's well-known that Mueller has resisted testifying. I couldn't figure out what "letter" Trump was talking about, but Jordan Fabian of the Hill took a stab at & guessed, "The president was referring to a joint statement later issued by the Justice Department and the special counsel's office saying that Mueller's account did not conflict with Attorney General William Barr's previous comments, in which Barr said the decision not to charge Trump with obstruction did not hinge solely on the DOJ policy." But good idea to use the graves of dead American soldiers as a backdrop for an attack on a wounded war veteran. ...

     ... BTW, Stableford's report is a good example of the kind of journalism I complained about below. Instead of pointing out that Trump made a statement at odds with the facts, Stableford writes, "The president took issue with Mueller's public statement on his investigation into Russian election interference." But Trump "took issue with" "testimony" Mueller never gave, not with a public statement. That is, Stableford radically "corrected" Trump's nonsensical remarks without indicating he had done so.

Kyle Cheney & Andrew Desiderio of Politico: "House Democratic leaders are preparing to grant sweeping authority to committee chairs to sue the Trump administration over its refusal to comply with congressional demands for information -- from ... Donald Trump's tax returns to former special counsel Robert Mueller' underlying files. The draft resolution, which the House will consider on Tuesday, formally holds Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Don McGahn in contempt of Congress for defying House Judiciary Committee subpoenas seeking Mueller's unredacted report, its underlying evidence, and additional witness testimony. But the most dramatic proposal will empower the chairs of all House committees to initiate legal action each time a witness or administration official defies a committee subpoena, a move to streamline and speed up the House's ability to respond to a mounting list of confrontations with the White House."

David Enrich of the New York Times: "A group of Democratic senators wants top officials at the Federal Reserve to examine whether Deutsche Bank complied with anti-money-laundering and other laws after bank employee flagged transactions tied to President Trump as potentially suspicious. The request, in a letter sent Thursday, was in response to a New York Times report that specialists at Deutsche Bank recommend that transactions by legal entities controlled by Mr. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crime regulator. Managers at the bank rejected their employees' advice and did not alert the government."

Darren Samuelsohn & Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn has fired his legal team as he awaits sentencing for lying to the FBI about his conversations with a top Russian official, according to a new filing Thursday from his long-time attorneys. The lawyers, Robert Kelner and Stephen Anthony, offered no explanation for their abrupt dismissal in a two-page motion delivered to the federal judge who will mete out Flynn's punishment stemming from his 2017 guilty plea to Robert Mueller’s prosecutors.... Flynn's decision to change attorneys at this late stage is unusual and has triggered speculation in legal and political circles he's considering backing out of his plea deal with the government in a play for a presidential pardon.... But the move also comes amid a yawning disconnect between the approach adopted by the well-respected legal team Flynn has used since the start of the Russia probe and the combative rhetoric from many of his friends and family members...."

Ron Brownstein of the Atlantic: "Democrats debating whether to impeach Donald Trump may be misreading the evidence from the last time the House tried to remove a president.... While Republicans did lose House seats in both 1998 and 2000, Democrats did not gain enough to capture control of the chamber either time. And in 2000, lingering unease about [President Bill] Clinton's behavior provided a crucial backdrop for George W. Bush's winning presidential campaign -- particularly his defining promise 'to restore honor and dignity' to the Oval Office.... Even if the Senate doesn't convict Trump..., impeachment in the House could offer Democrats a similar chance to highlight the aspects of Trump's volatile behavior that most alienate swing voters."

Samantha Grasso of Splinter: "Former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits federal employees from using their positions to promote partisan politics when he tweeted a photo of himself in MAGA socks last June, according to a December letter from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel which was leaked to the Washington Post and published on Thursday. The letter said that the Special Counsel, which investigates people for Hatch Act violations found that Zinke, in wearing these dumbass socks, had indeed broken the rules. Zinke, who resigned in December five days before the Special Counsel notified him of his violation, only received a warning. Specifically, he avoided punishment because he eleted the tweet and apologized."

Uh, Is This What You Mean by "Moderate," Joe? Jonathan Kozol in the Nation: Joe Biden has "said nothing to disown his long history as a fierce opponent of school busing and a scathing critic of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. 'We've lost our bearings since the 1954 Brown v. School Board desegregation case,' Biden said in 1975, in an interview that he gave to a newspaper in Delaware that was recently unearthed by The Washington Post. 'To "desegregate" is different than to "integrate."'... 'The real problem with busing,' he said [in the 1975 interview], 'is that you take [white] people who aren't racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children's growth by busing them to an inferior [black] school.'... As The Washington Post candidly surmised, his 'decision to stand by his views on the issue illustrates what some of his supporters think would be his advantage in the 2020 field: his ability to appeal beyond his Democratic base to some white working-class voters who voted for Donald Trump in 2016.'"

Ivana Hrynkiw of AL.com: "Former Senate candidate Roy Moore's attorney was arrested Wednesday night for charges of driving under the influence and for possessing drugs. Trenton Roger Garmon, 39, was booked into the Etowah County Jail around 8 p.m., according to jail records. He was arrested by Gadsden police and charged with driving under the influence of controlled substances, second-degree possession of marijuana, and drug paraphernalia." Read on. This isn't Garmon's first arrest for impaired driving. It isn't clear from the story, but he may have been driving on a suspended license when stopped Wednesday. Anyhow, he's in the jailhouse now.

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Raf Casert & John Leicester of the AP: "With the silence of remembrance and respect, nations honored the memory of the fallen and the singular bravery of all Allied troops who sloshed through bloodied water to the landing beaches of Normandy, a tribute of thanks 75 years after the D-Day assault that doomed the Nazi occupation of France and portended the fall of Hitler's Third Reich.... Nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy on D-Day. Of those 73,000 were from the United States, 83,000 from Britain and Canada. The second day of ceremonies moved to France after spirited commemorations in Portsmouth, England, the main embarkation point for the transport boats." ...

... New York Times: "President Trump spoke at a ceremony in Normandy, reflecting on the lives lost 75 years ago and honoring the dozens of World War II veterans who were present." This is a liveblog. ...

... Roger Cohen of the New York Times: "To have Donald Trump -- the bone-spur evader of the Vietnam draft, the coddler of autocrats, the would-be destroyer of the European Union, the pay-up-now denigrator of NATO, the apologist for the white supremacists of Charlottesville -- commemorate the boys from Kansas City and St. Paul who gave their lives for freedom is to understand the word impostor. You can't make a sculpture from rotten wood.... If Europe is whole and free and at peace, it's because of NATO and the European Union; it's because the United States became a European power after World War II; it's because America's word was a solemn pledge; it's because that word cemented alliances that were not zero-sum games but the foundation for stability and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic. Of this, Trump understands nothing." Thanks to MAG for the link.

... this trip is really about great relationships we have with the U.K., and I really wanted to do this stop in Ireland. It was very important to me because of the relationship I have with the people and with your prime minister. -- Donald Trump, at Shannon Airport Wednesday

... apparently ... Mike Pompeo forgot to inform Trump that Ireland isn't part of the United Kingdom. -- Cristina Cabrera of TPM, Wednesday ...

... Idiotic U.S. President* Tries to Exacerbate Ireland-Northern Ireland "Troubles," Insults Taoiseach. Rory Carroll of the Guardian: "Donald Trump has started his visit to Ireland by comparing its post-Brexit border with Northern Ireland to the US border with Mexico, along which he wants to build a permanent wall. Trump, sitting next to a visibly uncomfortable taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, waded into the Brexit debate minutes after Air Force One touched down at Shannon airport on Wednesday afternoon. 'I think it will all work out very well, and also for you with your wall, your border,' he said at a joint press conference. 'I mean, we have a border situation in the United States, and you have one over here. But I hear it's going to work out very well here.' Varadkar interjected that Ireland wished to avoid a border or a wall, a keystone of Irish government policy.... In London on Tuesday Trump met the Brexiter politicians Nigel Farage, Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, all of whom have played down the idea that the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland will be a problem after the UK leaves the EU.... The Irish government has mounted an intense, three-year diplomatic effort arguing the opposite, that Brexit threatens peace and prosperity on the island of Ireland. The US president's comments were an awkward start to what is expected to be a low-key end to his visit to Europe, with much of his time spent at his golf and hotel resort in Doonbeg, County Clare." ...

... Jonathan Lemire of the AP: "For the backdrop to his first official visit to Ireland..., Donald Trump wanted to promote his golf course on the nation's rocky west coast. The Irish government countered with the grand staging of an ancient castle. In the end, neither side got what they wanted.... The White House initially proposed that Trump meet Varadkar at the course, as part of the president's unprecedented blending of government affairs and business advertising. But the Taoiseach's office balked and proposed a more historic site before settling on Shannon.... The compromise location for Trump's meeting Wednesday with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar was the VIP lounge at Shannon Airport, just down the hallway from the food court and duty-free shop. And the meeting itself was more than just a warm handshake for the cameras, as the two broke sharply on what would be best for Ireland if the United Kingdom were to leave the European Union. Varadkar has become a vociferous opponent of Brexit, a move Trump supports. Many in Ireland express worry that if the U.K. does leave, a 'hard border' will return between Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K, potentially reigniting sectarian tension that lasted for decades and sometimes exploded into violence.... Trump’s two adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, poured pints of Guinness for locals in a Doonbeg pub Wednesday night. The Trump Organization has poured tons of millions into Doonbeg since it bought the resort in 2014 but it has yet to make a profit." ...

... Charles Pierce: "As part of his international exploration to find new problems that he invariably can make worse, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago stopped in the Motherland on Wednesday and proceeded to bungle his way into one of Ireland's most delicate and volatile issues.... The president* is bunking in at Doonbeg, his property in Clare on the west coast of the island. This is something of an irony since the resort has been lobbying the Irish government for a huge seawall to be built to protect the president*'s golf course against the erosion caused by the climate crisis in which the president* doesn't believe."

Your Taxpayer Dollars Going up in Exhaust Fumes. Sophie Weiner of Splinter: "President Trump has spent $1 million of taxpayer money on four limousines he may or may not use on his trip to Ireland this week, according to The Guardian.... The pricey limos were rented from JP Ward & Sons, a funeral home in south Dublin that seems to moonlight as a rental agency for the rich and famous. In addition to doing funerals, the company rents out Mercedes E-Class limousines.... When in [his] packed schedule will Trump and his entourage have time to drive around Ireland in limos? We don't know!" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: It could be the pricey limos are indeed just idling near the front door of the Doonbeg golf club, but whaddaya bet we get to spend $1MM for limos to drive around Trump's adult children, whose travel expenses we taxpayers also generously paid. Last night, Eric & bro went out to lift Guinnesses at local pubs, and you know they won't want to drink-drive. So a quarter-million-dollar limo probably came in right handy.

CBS News: "President Trump was spending Wednesday and Thursday with other world leaders commemorating the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied northern France by Allied forces.... The president and first lady participated commemorative events in Portsmouth, England on Wednesday, the first of two days of ceremonies. Portsmouth, on the southern English coast, was one of the primary points of departure for the Allied forces as they struck out across the English Channel to invade Normandy. Mr. Trump joined British Prime Minister Theresa May, Queen Elizabeth II and leaders from the other nations which took part in the Allied D-Day invasion for the events on Wednesday."

Trump Still Doesn't Understand Difference between Climate & Weather. Morgan Gstalter of the Hill: "President Trump during an interview broadcast early Wednesday said that he appreciates Prince Charles's passion on climate change but dismissed the British royal's concerns on the topic, adding that the weather 'changes both ways.' Trump told Piers Morgan of ITV's 'Good Morning Britain' that the prince spent more than an hour trying to warn him the dangers of climate change. Prince Charles did 'most of the talking" during their interaction, Trump said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... ** Adam Raymond of the New York Times lists the nine "most bonkers" moments from Trump's interview with Morgan. Kind of a must-read. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Aaron Rupar of Vox: "... Donald Trump's state visit to the United Kingdom began with him firing off tweets from Air Force One calling London Mayor Sadiq Khan 'a stone cold loser' and culminated with him posting tweets at 1:30 am London time on Wednesday denigrating actress Bette Midler as a 'Washed up psycho.' In between, the president called Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer 'a creep' and urged his supporters to boycott AT&T because of his displeasure with how CNN covers him. He also did a television interview with Piers Morgan in which he demonstrated appalling ignorance about climate science and attempted to walk back a comment he'd recently made about Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle being 'nasty' -- by calling her 'nasty' again. Trump was accompanied to the UK by his adult children and their spouses, despite the fact that only two of them (Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner) actually have official government roles.... The trip is a perfect illustration of what people feared from a Trump presidency: an immature, impulsive bully leveraging his office to demean his enemies and promote his business interests.... Meanwhile, back at home, the New York Times and Washington Post covered the trip as though Trump is a normal president...." Read the 4 grafs about Trump's remarks on the Brits' National Health Service (and watch the clip where Theresa May tells Trump what NHS is). ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Rupar's observation about the NYT & WashPo is well-taken. All too frequently, I have heard a snippet of Trump's saying something that was incomprehensible; I really could not figure out what he was trying to say, though I could tell there was some superficial thought in there somewhere that just couldn't traverse the journey from brain to mouth. Then mainstream reporters "interpret" what Trump seemed to be saying & report it out in normal, readable sentences. This leaves the unsuspecting reader with the false impression that Trump had a coherent opinion which he shared with reporters. ...

... Amy Sorkin of the New Yorker has some thoughts on Trump & the NHS (more thoughts than Trump had, that's for sure) -- and on Trump & Brexit.

** Erik Sherman of Fortune: "When it comes to talking himself up, Trump in particular has compared himself to Barack Obama. So, how do the two presidents measure up in terms of growth in major indexes, measured between their inauguration and May 31 of their third year in office? The short answer is that Trump has quite a way to go. Under Obama, the S&P 500 grew by 56.4%. The Dow Jones Industrials Average was up 50.6% and the Nasdaq, 92.9%. The numbers under Trump were 21.4% for the S&P 500, 25.2% for the Dow, and 34.2% for Nasdaq." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

** Heather Caygle of Politico: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi told senior Democrats that she'd like to see ... Donald Trump 'in prison' as she clashed with House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler in a meeting on Tuesday night over whether to launch impeachment proceedings. Pelosi met with Nadler (D-N.Y.) and several other top Democrats who are aggressively pursuing investigations against the president, according to multiple sources. Nadler and other committee leaders have been embroiled in a behind-the-scenes turf battle for weeks over ownership of the Democrats' sprawling investigation into Trump. Nadler pressed Pelosi to allow his committee to launch an impeachment inquiry against Trump -- the second such request he's made in recent weeks only to be rebuffed by the California Democrat and other senior leaders. Pelosi stood firm, reiterating that she isn't open to the idea of impeaching Trump at this time." ...

... MEANWHILE, Ian Philbrick of the New York Times helpfully has read through actual Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon & Bill Clinton, and revised them to apply to Donald Trump. "These rewritten articles against Mr. Trump don't include other potentially impeachable offenses that lack a clear precedent in the Nixon and Clinton cases, such as hush-money payments to women or possible violations of the Constitution's emoluments clause." And it's all interactive! Fun!

Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "The only committee of the U.S. Congress running a genuinely bipartisan probe of Russian meddling in U.S. politics [the Senate Intelligence Committee] has still had no word from the Trump administration on briefing the panel about the Mueller report's counterintelligence findings, congressional sources said on Wednesday.... The committee is 'not satisfied' with the Justice Department's stonewalling and 'will press ahead with its effort to obtain' the Mueller material, one of the two sources said." --s

Laura Davison of Bloomberg News: "House Democrats clamoring for Donald Trump's tax information have eagerly awaited a newly passed New York law allowing limited access to the president's state returns. They're about to be sorely disappointed. House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal would be the only Democrat allowed by the new law to ask for the documents, but so far he has said he won't do it. Neal has said he fears that getting the state returns would bolster Trump administration arguments that Congress is on a political fishing expedition -- and not, as Neal has claimed, overseeing the Internal Revenue Service's annual audits of the president." Mrs. McC: Long on principle, short on common sense?

Andrew Kaczynski & Em Steck of CNN: "[T]he royal family has for years batted back stories that its members were looking into or joining Trump's properties -- stories that, according to multiple biographies of Trump, were spread by the real-estate developer himself. Between 1981 and 1995, multiple claims that members of the British Royal family were joining Trump properties filled New York tabloids and national papers according to a CNN KFile review of archival papers, audio, and books about the then-real estate developer. All of them were unequivocally shot down by Buckingham Palace." --safari: A damning review of how Trump has cynically manipulated journalists for decades for free publicity. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Anjali Tsui of ProPublica and Alice Wilder of WNYC: "In mid-March, the payday lending industry held its annual convention at the Trump National Doral hotel outside Miami. Payday lenders offer loans on the order of a few hundred dollars, typically to low-income borrowers, who have to pay them back in a matter of weeks. The industry has long been reviled by critics for charging stratospheric interest rates -- typically 400% on an annual basis -- that leave customers trapped in cycles of debt.... The mood was celebratory.... A month earlier, Kathleen Kraninger, who had just finished her second month as director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, had delivered what the lenders consider an epochal victory: Kraninger announced a proposal to gut a crucial rule that had been passed under her Obama-era predecessor.... Now, the industry was taking credit for the CFPB's retreat.... The CFSA and its members have poured a total of about $1 million into the Trump Organization's coffers through ... two annual conferences.... They [also] contributed to the president's inauguration and earned face time with the president after donating to a Trump ally. But it's the payment to the president's business that is a stark reminder that the Trump administration is like none before it." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

David Cay Johnson of DC Report in RawStory: "Only one of the billionaire Koch brothers supported Donald Trump's 2016 campaign: William Ingraham Koch. Bill Koch even raised money for Trump, his nearby neighbor in Palm Beach, Fla. That same year, IRS criminal agents began an investigation after receiving nearly 1,000 pages of documents detailing what were described as multiple tax frauds at Bill Koch's companies. The documents, which we call the Koch Papers, came from a deeply knowledgeable source: Charles Middleton, who had been one of the companies' top tax executives. The IRS investigation went cold after Trump assumed office, documents obtained by DCReport show.... Middleton's lawyers ... both say the IRS and Justice Department stopped acknowledging their calls, emails and letters after Trump became president." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Presidential Election 2016. Tim Starks of Politico: "Russia's infamous troll farm conducted a campaign on Twitter before the 2016 elections that was larger, more coordinated and more effective than previously known, research from cybersecurity firm Symantec out Wednesday concluded. The Internet Research Agency campaign may not only have had more sway -- reaching large numbers of real users -- than previously thought, it also demonstrated ample patience and might have generated income for some of the phony accounts, Symantec found. The company analyzed a massive data set Twitter released in October 2018 on nearly 3,900 accounts and 10 million tweets.... The research also found that the accounts played to both sides of the aisle more than previously believed, and that most of them were fakes pretending to be regional news outlets, while a smaller subset amplified those messages." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times: "Central American migrants surged across the United States border with Mexico in May, officials announced on Wednesday, as American and Mexican diplomats began discussions aimed at averting the damaging economic consequences from President Trump's threat to impose tariffs on all Mexican imports. More than 144,200 migrants were arrested and taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection along the southwestern border in May, a 32 percent increase from April and the highest monthly total in seven years. Most crossed the border illegally, while about 10 percent arrived without the proper documentation at ports of entry along the border. The announcement of the surge in border crossings was meant to put pressure on the Mexican government to meet Mr. Trump's demands that it take quick action to stop the flow of migrants." ...

     ... New Lede: "The United States on Wednesday barreled closer to imposing tariffs on all Mexican imports as high-stakes negotiations at the White House and the State Department failed to immediately resolve President Trump'sdemand that Mexico prevent a surge of Central American migrants from flowing across the southwestern border. Mr. Trump declared Wednesday evening on Twitter that 'not nearly enough' progress had been made and warned that 'if no agreement is reached, Tariffs at the 5% level will begin on Monday, with monthly increases as per schedule.'"

Cruel & Unusual. Priscilla Alvarez of CNN: "The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is charged with caring for unaccompanied migrant children, is 'scaling back' or canceling activities at shelters, citing the need for more resources.... 'This week, ORR instructed grantees to begin scaling back or discontinuing awards for (unaccompanied minors) activities that are not directly necessary for the protection of life and safety, including education services, legal services, and recreation,' Evelyn Stauffer, spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, said in a statement." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Cruel & Unusual, Ctd. "Egregious" Conditions." Priscilla Alvarez: "The Department of Homeland Security inspector general found expired food and dilapidated bathrooms during unannounced visits to four immigrant detention facilities in 2018, according to a not-yet-released report obtained by CNN. The kitchen at one facility was in such poor shape -- with open packages of raw chicken leaking blood over refrigeration units -- that the kitchen manager was replaced while the IG inspection was ongoing. The report describes conditions at facilities last year, but it comes amid a worsening situation along the US-Mexico border, where the number of migrants crossing the border illegally has surpassed previous years. The dramatic increase in arrivals -- the majority of whom are families and children -- has overwhelmed the Department of Homeland Security, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency reviewed in the latest report.... The latest report obtained by CNN comes on the heels of a DHS IG report released Friday that found 'dangerous overcrowding' and unsanitary conditions at an El Paso, Texas, Border Patrol processing facility following an unannounced inspection last month."

Another Triumph for Stupid. Abby Goodnough of the New York Times: "The Trump administration announced Wednesday that the federal government would sharply curtail federal spending on medical research that uses tissue from aborted fetuses, mainly by ending fetal-tissue research within the National Institutes of Health. The move goes a long way toward fulfilling a top goal of anti-abortion groups that have lobbied hard for it; it is just the latest in a string of decisions that have pleased such groups. But scientists say the tissue is crucial for studies that benefit millions of patients. Besides ending N.I.H. research, the Department of Health and Human Services said it would immediately cancel a $2 million-a-year contract with the University of California, San Francisco, for research involving fetal tissue from abortions; the contract started in 2013. Other university research projects would be subject to case-by-case review."

AP: "The US government plans to reclassify some of the nation's most dangerous radioactive waste to lower its threat level [sav[ing] $40bn in cleanup costs across the nation's entire nuclear weapons complex], outraging critics who say the move would make it cheaper and easier to walk away from cleaning up nuclear weapons production sites in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina.... The new rules would allow the energy department to eventually abandon storage tanks containing more than 100m gallons (378m liters) of radioactive waste in the three states, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is brilliant. How to eliminate hazardous waste at almost no cost: say it's not hazardous, after all.

E. A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "The Trump administration is seeking to dramatically escalate federal penalties for pipeline protesters. Under newly proposed changes, pipeline protesters could face up to 20 years in prison for disrupting the construction of oil and gas infrastructure.... The administration argues that the changes are key to ensuring safety.... But environmental groups and activists will likely oppose the proposed measures and are expected to seek legal action against the Trump administration." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Ellie Kaufman of CNN: "The Interior Department has released five different versions of Secretary David Bernhardt's schedule for the first five months of 2019.... But many of these ... give conflicting information when compared side by side on any given day. With none of the five sources apparently being the definitive record, it raises questions about what the secretary is actually using to schedule his days and why the public doesn't have access to it." --s

Susannah George of the AP: "Directly challenging ... Donald Trump's use of executive power, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are banding together to introduce more than a dozen resolutions aimed at blocking the Trump administration's sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. The maneuver amounts to a remarkable display of bipartisan pushback to Trump's foreign policy and threatens to tangle the Senate in a series of floor votes this summer. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is leading the effort, but he has support from two of Trump's allies in Congress: Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Anger has been mounting in Congress over the Trump administration's close ties to the Saudis, fueled by the high civilian casualties in the Saudi-led war in Yemen -- a military campaign the U.S. is assisting -- and the killing of U.S.-based columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. Trump's decision in May to sell the weapons, in a manner intended to bypass congressional review, further inflamed the tensions." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "The Democrat-led House passed legislation on Tuesday to grant a path to citizenship to about 2.5 million immigrants whose legal protections President Trump has moved to end, advancing a measure that highlights the bitter partisan differences over immigration. The bill, which passed 237 to 187, with seven Republicans voting yes, would create a new legal pathway for young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children, known as Dreamers, and for those with Temporary Protected Status, granted to immigrants whose countries are ravaged by natural disaster or violence. It is almost certain to die in the Republican-led Senate, where there is no appetite to challenge Mr. Trump on his signature issue and the majority regards it as amnesty for people who have broken the law. The White House said on Monday that Mr. Trump would veto the measure." Mrs. McC: Sorry, thought I linked a story on this earlier Wednesday. Obviously not. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "At least 43 of the 58 Republican House members who voted against a $19 billion bipartisan disaster relief bill Monday night have previously demanded or endorsed emergency aid funding for their own states, a ThinkProgress analysis has found." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Presidential Race 2020

Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times: "Elizabeth Warren is running the most impressive presidential campaign in ages, certainly the most impressive campaign within my lifetime.... Warren actually has ideas. She has grand, detailed and daring ideas, and through these ideas she is single-handedly elevating the already endless slog of the 2020 presidential campaign into something weightier and more interesting than what it might otherwise have been: a frivolous contest about who hates Donald Trump most.... The only way to liberate ourselves from Trumpism is through politics that rise above Trumpian silliness. For that, for now, we have Elizabeth Warren to thank."

Ryan Grim of the Intercept: "As vice president, Joe Biden repeatedly sought to undermine the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, working in alliance with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to push for a broad exemption that would have left millions of women without coverage. Biden's battle over contraception is a window into his approach to the politics of reproductive freedom, a function of an electoral worldview that centers working-class Catholic men over the interests of women.... According to contemporaneous reporting and to sources involved with the internal debate, Biden had argued that if the regulations implementing the Affordable Care Act were going to mandate coverage, it would anger white, male Catholic voters, and threaten President Obama's reelection in 2012. Biden's main ally in the internal fight over contraception was Chief of Staff William Daly; both men are Catholic." ...

... Katie Glueck of the New York Times: "Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has shunned today's Democratic Party orthodoxy on issues from crime to compromising with Republicans, again broke with his party's base and many of his campaign rivals on Wednesday when his campaign confirmed that he still backs the Hyde Amendment, a measure that prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion with exceptions for cases involving rape, incest and when the life of the mother is in danger. The backlash to Mr. Biden, who despite leading early presidential polls faces skepticism from his party's progressive wing, came swiftly from lawmakers and activists who support abortion rights, with many noting that the Hyde Amendment disproportionately affects economically disadvantaged women and women of color." ...

... Benjamin Fearnow of Newsweek: "Bernie Sanders backed abortion rights and ridiculed male-dominated legislatures governing women's bodies in a 1972 article [which!] surfaced Wednesday. The commentary reveals another stark, decades-long contrast between he [him!] and former Vice President Joe Biden's progressive stances. Sanders told Vermont's Bennington Banner newspaper in September 1972 -- months before the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on Roe v. Wade -- that abortion procedures should only be a concern between a woman and her physician. The article sits aside several letters the then-Liberty Union candidate for governor wrote to local newspapers calling for the abolition of 'all laws dealing with abortion, drugs, sexual behavior.'" Mrs. McC: Newsweek must have fired all its copy editors.

Kevin Roose & Kate Conger of the New York Times: "YouTube announced plans on Wednesday to remove thousands of videos and channels that advocate for neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies in an attempt to clean up extremism and hate speech on its popular service. The new policy will ban 'videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion,' the company said in a blog post. The prohibition will also cover videos denying that violent incidents, like the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School..., took place." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... BUT. Homophobic Slurs A-Okay. Tom McKay of Gizmodo: "YouTube has chosen not to take action against right-wing video personality Steven Crowder after Vox host Carlos Maza posted clips of Crowder repeatedly harassing him with derogatory, anti-gay, and racist statements, which Maza says resulted in hordes of Crowder's fans doxxing him and subjecting him to abuse on social media.... YouTube's hate speech policy page specifically bars 'content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups' based on a number of attributes including ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation.... After claiming YouTube takes 'allegations of harassment very seriously' and that they had spent days 'conducting an in-depth review of the videos flagged to us,' the Team YouTube Twitter wrote that while Crowder's language was 'clearly hurtful,' 'the videos as posted don't violate our policies' and will 'remain on our site.'... YouTube's stance is apparently that it is okay for a host with millions of subscribers (3,846,360 as of early Wednesday a.m.) to repeatedly engage in racist, homophobic bullying so long as it's couched as part of some kind of ambiguously defined 'debate.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Madison Kircher of New York: "June is usually the time when tech companies deck themselves out in rainbow colors and bend over backward to demonstrate just how much they support the LGBTQ+ community. YouTube, refreshingly, has taken a different tack this year. The company has ruled that right-wing commentator Steven Crowder hasn't violated YouTube policy by continuously slinging anti-gay and anti-immigrant slurs -- including a 'gay Mexican,' a 'lispy queer,' an 'anchor baby,' and a 'token Vox gay atheist sprite' -- at Vox host Carlos Maza, leading to harassment and abuse against Maza from Crowder's fans and followers." Mrs. McC: No, no Madison. It turns out labeling someone a "lispy queer" is an essential element of "debate." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Fiona Harvey of the Guardian: "The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by the second highest annual rise in the past six decades, according to new data. Atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas were 414.8 parts per million in May.... Scientists have warned for more than a decade that concentrations of more than 450ppm risk triggering extreme weather events and temperature rises as high as 2C, beyond which the effects of global heating are likely to become catastrophic and irreversible.... As recently as the 1990s, the average annual growth rate was about 1.5ppm, but in the past decade that has accelerated to 2.2ppm, and is now even higher. Thi brings the threshold of 450ppm closer sooner than had been anticipated." --safari: No one can honestly claim today that we're leaving a better life for future generations. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Way Beyond the Beltway

Brazil. Jonathan Watts of the Guardian: "Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon surged last month to the highest May level since the current monitoring method began, prompting concerns that president Jair Bolsonaro is giving a free pass to illegal logging, farming and mining. The world's greatest rainforest -- which is a vital provider of oxygen and carbon sequestration -- lost 739sq km during the 31 days, equivalent to two football pitches every minute, according to data from the government's satellite monitoring agency." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Hannah Ellis-Peterson of the Guardian: "African swine fever, which is harmless to humans but fatal to pigs, was discovered in China in August, where it has caused havoc, leading to more than 1.2m pigs being culled. China is home to almost half of the world's pigs and the news sent the global price of pork soaring [by almost 40%]. There is no vaccination for African swine fever, which causes pigs to internally haemorrhage until they die, so the only option to contain the disease is to kill any contaminated animals. Some estimates say that in China up to 200m animals may eventually be slaughtered...It has spread like wildfire across Asia.... Currently the battle to contain the disease is being lost." --s

News Ledes

New York Times: "Mac Rebennack, the pianist, singer, songwriter, and producer better known as Dr. John, who embodied the New Orleans sound for generations of music fans, died on Thursday. He was 77."

New York Times: "One West Point cadet was killed, and 20 cadets and two soldier trainers were injured, on Thursday after a military vehicle overturned en route to a training exercise near the academy, a West Point spokesman said."

The Commentariat -- June 5, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Trump Still Doesn't Understand Difference between Climate & Weather. Morgan Gstalter of the Hill: "President Trump during an interview broadcast early Wednesday said that he appreciates Prince Charles's passion on climate change but dismissed the British royal's concerns on the topic, adding that the weather 'changes both ways.' Trump told Piers Morgan of ITV's 'Good Morning Britain' that the prince spent more than an hour trying to warn him the dangers of climate change. Prince Charles did 'most of the talking" during their interaction, Trump said." ...

... ** Adam Raymond of the New York Times lists the nine "most bonkers" moments from Trump's interview with Morgan. Kind of a must-read.

** Erik Sherman of Fortune: "When it comes to talking himself up, Trump in particular has compared himself to Barack Obama. So, how do the two presidents measure up in terms of growth in major indexes, measured between their inauguration and May 31 of their third year in office? The short answer is that Trump has quite a way to go. Under Obama, the S&P 500 grew by 56.4%. The Dow Jones Industrials Average was up 50.6% and the Nasdaq, 92.9%. The numbers under Trump were 21.4% for the S&P 500, 25.2% for the Dow, and 34.2% for Nasdaq."

Andrew Kaczynski & Em Steck of CNN: "[T]he royal family has for years batted back stories that its members were looking into or joining Trump's properties -- stories that, according to multiple biographies of Trump, were spread by the real-estate developer himself. Between 1981 and 1995, multiple claims that members of the British Royal family were joining Trump properties filled New York tabloids and national papers according to a CNN KFile review of archival papers, audio, and books about the then-real estate developer. All of them were unequivocally shot down by Buckingham Palace." --safari: A damning review of how Trump has cynically manipulated journalists for decades for free publicity.

Anjali Tsui of ProPublica and Alice Wilder of WNYC: "In mid-March, the payday lending industry held its annual convention at the Trump National Doral hotel outside Miami. Payday lenders offer loans on the order of a few hundred dollars, typically to low-income borrowers, who have to pay them back in a matter of weeks. The industry has long been reviled by critics for charging stratospheric interest rates -- typically 400% on an annual basis -- that leave customers trapped in cycles of debt.... The mood was celebratory.... A month earlier, Kathleen Kraninger, who had just finished her second month as director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, had delivered what the lenders consider an epochal victory: Kraninger announced a proposal to gut a crucial rule that had been passed under her Obama-era predecessor.... Now, the industry was taking credit for the CFPB's retreat.... The CFSA and its members have poured a total of about $1 million into the Trump Organization's coffers through ... two annual conferences.... They [also] contributed to the president's inauguration and earned face time with the president after donating to a Trump ally. But it's the payment to the president's business that is a stark reminder that the Trump administration is like none before it."

David Cay Johnson of DC Report in RawStory: "Only one of the billionaire Koch brothers supported Donald Trump's 2016 campaign: William Ingraham Koch. Bill Koch even raised money for Trump, his nearby neighbor in Palm Beach, Fla. That same year, IRS criminal agents began an investigation after receiving nearly 1,000 pages of documents detailing what were described as multiple tax frauds at Bill Koch's companies. The documents, which we call the Koch Papers, came from a deeply knowledgeable source: Charles Middleton, who had been one of the companies' top tax executives. The IRS investigation went cold after Trump assumed office, documents obtained by DCReport show.... [O]ne of Middleton's lawyers, William ... Cohan, and Middleton's Seattle lawyer, John Colvin, both say the IRS and Justice Department stopped acknowledging their calls, emails and letters after Trump became president." --s

Tim Starks of Politico: "Russia's infamous troll farm conducted a campaign on Twitter before the 2016 elections that was larger, more coordinated and more effective than previously known, research from cybersecurity firm Symantec out Wednesday concluded. The Internet Research Agency campaign may not only have had more sway -- reaching large numbers of real users -- than previously thought, it also demonstrated ample patience and might have generated income for some of the phony accounts, Symantec found. The company analyzed a massive data set Twitter released in October 2018 on nearly 3,900 accounts and 10 million tweets.... The research also found that the accounts played to both sides of the aisle more than previously believed, and that most of them were fakes pretending to be regional news outlets, while a smaller subset amplified those messages."

Cruel & Unusual. Priscilla Alvarez of CNN: "The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is charged with caring for unaccompanied migrant children, is 'scaling back' or canceling activities at shelters, citing the need for more resources.... 'This week, ORR instructed grantees to begin scaling back or discontinuing awards for (unaccompanied minors) activities that are not directly necessary for the protection of life and safety, including education services, legal services, and recreation,' [a] ... spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services... said in a statement."

E. A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "The Trump administration is seeking to dramatically escalate federal penalties for pipeline protesters. Under newly proposed changes, pipeline protesters could face up to 20 years in prison for disrupting the construction of oil and gas infrastructure.... The administration argues that the changes are key to ensuring safety.... But environmental groups and activists will likely oppose the proposed measures and are expected to seek legal action against the Trump administration." --s

Susannah George of the AP: "Directly challenging ... Donald Trump's use of executive power, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are banding together to introduce more than a dozen resolutions aimed at blocking the Trump administration's sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. The maneuver amounts to a remarkable display of bipartisan pushback to Trump's foreign policy and threatens to tangle the Senate in a series of floor votes this summer. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is leading the effort, but he has support from two of Trump's allies in Congress: Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Anger has been mounting in Congress over the Trump administration's close ties to the Saudis, fueled by the high civilian casualties in the Saudi-led war in Yemen -- a military campaign the U.S. is assisting -- and the killing of U.S.-based columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. Trump's decision in May to sell the weapons, in a manner intended to bypass congressional review, further inflamed the tensions."

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "The Democrat-led House passed legislation on Tuesday to grant a path to citizenship to about 2.5 million immigrants whose legal protections President Trump has moved to end, advancing a measure that highlights the bitter partisan differences over immigration. The bill, which passed 237 to 187, with seven Republicans voting yes, would create a new legal pathway for young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children, known as Dreamers, and for those with Temporary Protected Status, granted to immigrants whose countries are ravaged by natural disaster or violence. It is almost certain to die in the Republican-led Senate, where there is no appetite to challenge Mr. Trump on his signature issue and the majority regards it as amnesty for people who have broken the law. The White House said on Monday that Mr. Trump would veto the measure." Mrs. McC: Thought I linked a story on this earlier today. Obviously not.

Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "At least 43 of the 58 Republican House members who voted against a $19 billion bipartisan disaster relief bill Monday night have previously demanded or endorsed emergency aid funding for their own states, a ThinkProgress analysis has found." --s>

Kevin Roose & Kate Conger of the New York Times: "YouTube announced plans on Wednesday to remove thousands of videos and channels that advocate for neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies in an attempt to clean up extremism and hate speech on its popular service. The new policy will ban 'videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion,' the company said in a blog post. The prohibition will also cover videos denying that violent incidents, like the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, took place." ...

... BUT. Homophobic Slurs A-Okay. Tom McKay of Gizmodo: "YouTube has chosen not to take action against right-wing video personality Steven Crowder after Vox host Carlos Maza posted clips of Crowder repeatedly harassing him with derogatory, anti-gay, and racist statements, which Maza says resulted in hordes of Crowder's fans doxxing him and subjecting him to abuse on social media.... YouTube's hate speech policy page specifically bars 'content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups' based on a number of attributes including ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation.... After claiming YouTube takes 'allegations of harassment very seriously' and that they had spent days 'conducting an in-depth review of the videos flagged to us,' the Team YouTube Twitter wrote that while Crowder's language was 'clearly hurtful,' 'the videos as posted don't violate our policies' and will 'remain on our site.'... YouTube's stance is apparently that it is okay for a host with millions of subscribers (3,846,360 as of early Wednesday a.m.) to repeatedly engage in racist, homophobic bullying so long as it's couched as part of some kind of ambiguously defined 'debate.'" ...

... Madison Kircher of New York: "June is usually the time when tech companies deck themselves out in rainbow colors and bend over backward to demonstrate just how much they support the LGBTQ+ community. YouTube, refreshingly, has taken a different tack this year. The company has ruled that right-wing commentator Steven Crowder hasn't violated YouTube policy by continuously slinging anti-gay and anti-immigrant slurs -- including a 'gay Mexican,' a 'lispy queer,' an 'anchor baby,' and a 'token Vox gay atheist sprite' -- at Vox host Carlos Maza, leading to harassment and abuse against Maza from Crowder's fans and followers." Mrs. McC: No, no Madison. It turns out labeling someone a "lispy queer" is an essential element of "debate."

Fiona Harvey of the Guardian: "The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by the second highest annual rise in the past six decades, according to new data. Atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas were 414.8 parts per million in May.... Scientists have warned for more than a decade that concentrations of more than 450ppm risk triggering extreme weather events and temperature rises as high as 2C, beyond which the effects of global heating are likely to become catastrophic and irreversible.... As recently as the 1990s, the average annual growth rate was about 1.5ppm, but in the past decade that has accelerated to 2.2ppm, and is now even higher. This brings the threshold of 450ppm closer sooner than had been anticipated." --safari: No one can honestly claim today that we're leaving a better life for future generations.

Jonathan Watts of the Guardian: "Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon surged last month to the highest May level since the current monitoring method began, prompting concerns that president Jair Bolsonaro is giving a free pass to illegal logging, farming and mining. The world's greatest rainforest -- which is a vital provider of oxygen and carbon sequestration -- lost 739sq km during the 31 days, equivalent to two football pitches every minute, according to data from the government's satellite monitoring agency." --s

~~~~~~~~~~

New York Times: "After meeting with Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Theresa May, President Trump traveled to southern England to commemorate the D-Day operation." Here is the Times' liveblog of events.

When Royals Meet. Many thanks to forrest m. for making my day. Every time I look at King Donaldo I LOL.

Rebecca Falconer of Axios: "Demonstrators inflated a 20-foot blimp depicting President Trump as a baby in a diaper outside the U.K. parliament in London Tuesday, as mass protests got underway across the U.K. while Trump met with Prime Minister Theresa May on the second day of his state visit." Lots of photos. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Jamie Ross of the Daily Beast: "Thousands of Brits took to the streets [of London] Tuesday, where they marched alongside a 16-foot farting robot of Donald Trump and held aloft huge photos of John McCain in an attempt to trigger the president. The protests — which saw thousands brave the typical British weather shielded by umbrellas emblazoned with anti-Trump slogans, EU flags, and the LGBTQ rainbow symbol -- went within meters of Downing Street, where the president must have heard creatively foul-mouthed chants, although he still insists there have been no protests against him at all. Protesters were kept away from the gates of Downing Street for Trump' arrival and departure for talks with Theresa May. However, the thousands occupied a large stretch of central London, marching from Trafalgar Square past the government buildings of Whitehall and eventually arriving outside parliament to hear a speech by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

I kept hearing that there would be 'massive' rallies against me in the UK, but it was quite the opposite. The big crowds, which the Corrupt Media hates to show, were those that gathered in support of the USA and me. -- Donald Trump, in a tweet today

There were thousands of people (Monday) on the streets cheering. And even coming over today, there were thousands of people cheering and then I heard that there were protests. I said: 'Where are the protests? I don't see any protests.' I did see a small protest today when I came, very small, so a lot of it is fake news, I hate to say. ... There was great love. ... And I didn't see the protesters until just a little while ago and it was a very, very small group of people. -- Donald Trump, news conference Tuesday ...

... Thousand of People Cheering:

... As Akhilleus pointed out in yesterday's Comments, Camilla's stock went up in the U.K. after her, "Yes, we all know this is a farce" wink yesterday:

The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Susan Page of USA Today: "Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who as recently as last month cautioned Democrats about the perils of pursuing President Trump's impeachment, now says the House should open an impeachment inquiry that might or might not lead to a formal effort to remove him from office. 'It's not the right thing to do nothing,' Reid said in an interview Monday with USA Today. It's not the right thing to jump into impeachment without doing an inquiry.' The most important goal, he said, would be to 'give the American people a view of what's going on.'"

Pamela Brown, et al., of CNN: "The White House has directed former officials Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson not to turn over any documents to the House Judiciary Committee relating to their time at the White House, according to two sources familiar with the matter. But Hicks, the former White House communications director, still could turn over documents the committee has requested related to the 2016 Trump campaign, a period that's not covered by executive privilege, according to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler. The White House sent letters to the committee stating that White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney had directed Hicks and Donaldson, the former deputy White House counsel, not to turn over the documents. The committee had issued subpoenas to both Hicks and Donaldson for documents, setting a Tuesday deadline. The subpoenas also include requests for testimony from the former White House officials for later this month. In a statement, Nadler argued that the White House could not prevent the officials from complying with the committee's request, though he added that Hicks' agreement to provide documents related to the Trump campaign was a 'show of good faith.'" (Also linked yesterday.)

All the President*'s Men (in Jail)

Brutal. William Rashbaum of the New York Times: "Paul J. Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman who is serving a federal prison sentence, is expected to be transferred within the next few weeks to the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City, where he will most likely be held in isolation while facing state fraud charges, people with knowledge of the matter said.... Rikers Island has been plagued by violence and mismanagement over the years...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Pilar Melendez & Erin Banco of the Daily Beast: "George Nader, an emissary to the United Arab Emirates who cooperated extensively with Special Counsel Robert Mueller probe, was denied release on Tuesday after being arrested for possessing child pornography. Nader, 60, a Lebanese-American businessman will be handed over to federal agents for extradition to Virginia for his prosecution. He was arrested Monday at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport for allegedly possessing child pornography on a cellphone more than a year ago."

MEANWHILE. Lachlan Cartwright of the Daily Beast: "Michael Cohen is being celebrated as a celebrity inside the federal prison where he's serving time after flipping on ... Donald Trump. Prisoners have approached Inmate No. 86067-054 for advice on their legal problems, quizzed him about Trump's alleged dalliance with porn star Stormy Daniels, and tried to take photos of him on cellphones smuggled into the facility, according to people who've spoken to inmates."

Darren Samuelsohn of Politico: "A federal judge reversed course on Tuesday and absolved the Justice Department of a demand to make public transcripts of recorded phone calls between former national security adviser Michael Flynn and a Russian official. In a one-paragraph order, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan said he accepted the argument recently made from federal prosecutors who defied his earlier request to release any recordings from December 2016 between Flynn and Sergey Kislyak, who at the time was the Russian ambassador to the U.S."

S. V. Date of the Huffington Post: “With commercial tenants fleeing his Trump Tower..., Donald Trump continues to spend $37,500 a month of campaign money for office space there -- with some of that cash destined for his own wallet ― even as thousands of square feet go unused at a newly opened office in northern Virginia. No more than 'four or five' campaign staffers work at Trump's Manhattan base, according to an informal adviser close to the White House, where the campaign rents a few thousand square feet as its 'headquarters.' The per-square-foot cost is likely at least triple what the Republican National Committee pays for the much larger space it shares with the campaign in Arlington, according to a HuffPost analysis." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... ** Jonathan Chait explains why right-wing grifters -- including the Biggest Grifter of Them All -- are so good at their cons. Thanks to Schlub for the lead. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair reports on Trump's cheesy prenuptial agreement with Marla Maples: "Maples reportedly wanted $25 million, but Trump agreed to pay her only $1 million if they separated within five years, plus another $1 million to buy a house. Trump also would stop making $100,000 child support payments for Tiffany when she turned 21. The agreement states that Trump's payments would cease earlier if Tiffany got a full-time job, enlisted in the military, or joined the Peace Corps.... According to the prenup, Maples surrendered any claim to Trump's future income and inheritances. The $1 million award Trump would pay her was it. (There would be no alimony.)" Also, the agreement contained rigid confidentiality terms that prevented Maples from mentioning from revealing any details of the marriage. Trump married Maples, according to Gabriel, mostly because marriage would encourage lenders to believe he was a more stable risk, & Trump was in desperate straits.

Radio Free Europe: "Russia has denied it informed ... Donald Trump that it is pulling defense personnel out of Venezuela, contradicting a comment by the U.S. leader. 'I was surprised when I read this. We did not notify anyone. He apparently read an article in The Wall Street Journal,' Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on June 4 referring to a June 3 tweet by Trump. Trump in March said Russia 'has to get out' of the South American nation after it landed planes carrying supplies and technical advisers to help President Nicolas Maduro amid an uprising. The United States is seeking the ouster of Maduro, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as thousands of Venezuelan citizens take to the streets to protest his regime. Trump on June 3 tweeted that Russia had informed the United States 'that they have removed most of their people from Venezuela.'... His tweet came a day after The Wall Street Journal, citing an unnamed source close to the Russian Defense Ministry, reported that Moscow had pulled out many defense advisers from the country. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said that Russia had not informed the United States of any such withdrawal, adding that Russian specialists continue to work in the South American country." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Since both sides lie, it's impossible to know what's going on.

Nahal Toosi of Politico: "Jared Kushner's Middle East peace plan isn't even out yet, but there are already intensifying calls to scrap the rollout -- including from some Trump allies. Prominent conservative and pro-Israel voices close to the White House are increasingly sharing their fears, which range from the possibility that the peace proposal could trigger violence to worries that its offerings could forever kill efforts to craft a two-state solution.... For their part, Kushner and other aides to Trump appear intent on going full speed ahead." --s ...

... Muhammad Shehada of Haaretz: "The most disturbing aspect of ... [U.S. President Trump's 'Deal of the Century,' developed by ... Jared Kushner] is its disastrous effect on the overall peace process paradigm. In simple terms: Palestinians are losing faith fast with the foundational idea of peace through negotiations.... Forcing what U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo himself calls an 'inexecutable' deal on Palestinians - through bribery, coercion and punitive measures - and framing it as Palestinians' last chance to get anything, undermines moderate Palestinian voices and amplifies immensely violent rejectionism.... Most prominent among these is the new Islamic Jihad leader and Iran's loyal man, Ziad Nakhalah.... As the biases of Kushner's peace plan will continue to sow feelings of defeat, humiliation and isolation amongst Palestinians, Nakhalah's ascendance to a gruesome kind of stardom is inevitable." --s

"Bone Saw Bonus." Matt Shuham of TPM: "The Trump administration approved the transfer of nuclear expertise to Saudi Arabia just two weeks after Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) revealed Tuesday.... [T]he administration ... [made] ... seven such approvals. Notably, two occurred after Khashoggi's death: One on October 18, 2018, '16 days after Khashoggi's murder,' Kaine noted, and another on Feb. 18, 2019." --s

Speaking Truth to Trumpy Is Creepy. Jordain Carney of the Hill: "President Trump called Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) "a creep" on Tuesday after the Democratic leader predicted the president would back down from slapping new tariffs on Mexico. 'Can you imagine Cryin' Chuck Schumer saying out loud, for all to hear, that I am bluffing with respect to putting Tariffs on Mexico. What a Creep,' Trump wrote in a tweet. He asserted that Schumer 'would rather have our Country fail with drugs & Immigration than give Republicans a win. But he gave Mexico bad advice, no bluff!'... Schumer, speaking from the Senate floor, characterized the new tariffs as another example of Trump's 'whimsical and erratic proposals.' 'President Trump has a habit of proposing asinine and dangerous policies before backing off. And President Trump has a habit of pretending that the very act of not following through on a misguided policy is somehow a victory. So, I wouldn't be surprised at all if President Trump doesn't follow through on these tariffs either,' Schumer said." ...

... Catie Edmondson & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: “Republican senators sent the White House a sharp message on Tuesday, warning that they were opposed to President Trump's plans to impose tariffs on Mexican imports, just hours after the president said lawmakers would be 'foolish' to try to stop him. Mr. Trump's latest threat -- 5 percent tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico, rising to as high as 25 percent until the Mexican government stems the flow of migrants -- has riled Republican senators who fear its impact on the economy and their home states. They emerged from a closed-door lunch in the Capitol angered by the briefing they received from a deputy White House counsel, Patrick F. Philbin, and Assistant Attorney General Steven A. Engel on the legal basis for imposing new tariffs by declaring a nationa emergency. 'I want you to take a message back' to the White House, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, told the attorneys, according to people familiar with the meeting. 'You didn't hear a single yes' from the Republican conference. He called the proposed tariffs a $30 billion tax hike on Texans."

Burgess Everett & Eliana Johnson of Politico: "strong>Ken Cuccinelli has spent years attacking Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans. Now, [there is little chance those Senate Republicans will confirm Cuccinelli] ... to be director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. But there may be nobody in Washington whom McConnell and his allies would take more pleasure in defeating, and the bottom line is Cuccinelli has little chance of getting approved for the job, Republican senators said.... 'It's unlikely he's going to be confirmed if he is nominated,' [Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) said].... Some senators are still hoping to persuade Trump not to formally nominate or appoint Cuccinelli, but if the president goes through with it, the former Virginia attorney general likely will be either rejected or blocked from a floor vote entirely."

Presidential Race 2020

Here We Go Again. Zack Colman & Natasha Korecki of Politico: "Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign came under fire on Tuesday for putting out a $1.7 trillion climate change plan that appeared to copy a handful of passages from previously published documents. The incident recalled the plagiarism incident that helped drive Biden from the 1988 presidential race, though Biden's campaign team called the latest episode an error that was corrected.... Biden rolled out his climate policy on Tuesday after facing weeks of criticism from the Democratic Party's left flank for reportedly considering a plan to strike a 'middle ground' on the issue. It won praise from environmental groups who welcomed its call to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and ban oil and gas drilling on public lands. Biden also said he would reject campaign contributions from fossil fuel executives and corporations."

Ari Berman of Mother Jones: "Documents unearthed last week showed that the Republican Party's top gerrymandering expert, Tom Hofeller, was behind the decision to add a controversial question about US citizenship to the 2020 census.... But the [Supreme Court] justices are unlikely to be swayed by the bombshell new evidence. In fact, they may not even be able to consider it.... First, there's little time for the court to consider the new evidence. The justices typically make up their minds following oral arguments, and they have already started writing their opinions.... Second, the Supreme Court is only supposed to examine evidence that is part of the record in the case.... Though the justices sometimes do their own research or cite outside sources, deviation from the legal record is frowned upon.... Any consideration of Hofeller's memos, which have not been vetted by a federal court, would be an exception to the rule[.]" --s

Helen Lock of the Guardian: "When it comes to trying to stop fake medicines getting into the hands of sick patients, experts describe a difficult task where they are constantly trying to stay one step ahead of counterfeiters.... Th need for any solution being developed to have a global reach is clear. In 2011, Interpol seized 2.4m fake and illicit pills, and that number jumped to 20.7m seized in 2015. A large quantity is produced in China, but India, Pakistan, Paraguay and the UK are also among the top sources for fakes.... Counterfeited medicine, thought to be the most lucrative of illegally copied goods trades, ends up all over the world. But developing countries, where spending on medicine means being out of pocket for the majority of people, are the most vulnerable to conterfeits. Most of the cases (42%) reported by the WHO between 2013 and 2017 were found in subSaharan Africa." --s

Beyond the Beltway

Florida. David Ovalle, et al., of the Miami Herald: "Scot Peterson, the former Broward Sheriff's deputy responsible for protecting Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, has been criminally charged for failing to confront a gunman who methodically shot and killed 17 students and staffers, state authorities said Tuesday. In a highly unusual case, the retired 56-year-old deputy was arrested Tuesday on 11 charges -- including child neglect, culpable negligence and perjury -- for his role in the massacre that shocked the United States, galvanized gun-control activism and led to changes in Florida's law. Peterson, who has long insisted he acted properly and was not sure Nikolas Cruz was inside the 1200 building, faces nearly 100 years in prison if convicted. As a school resource officer trained to engage an active shooter immediately, Peterson 'was responsible for the welfare and safety' of the students and 'failed to make a reasonable effort' to protect them, according to an arrest warrant. The criminal charges against Peterson stemmed from an investigation by the Florida Department of Law of Enforcement, tasked by former Gov. Rick Scott to examine the response of law enforcement to the worst school shooting in state history." ...

... Meet your local GOP, Ctd. Cristina Cabrera of TPM: "Florida state Rep. Mike Hill (R) refuses to apologize for his reaction [of laughing] to a suggestion that he pass legislation to allow the execution of gay men. On Friday, the Pensacola News Journal published an audio recording of Hill holding a meeting at Pensacola City Hall, during which a man asked the GOP lawmaker about imposing the death penalty onto gay men." --s

Texas. Sam Levine of the Huffington Post: "Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) pushed officials at the state's Department of Public Safety to scour driver's license records for noncitizens and forward that information to the Texas secretary of state, a fellow Republican, in advance of the state's botched voter purge, according to emails made public Tuesday. Texas officials would go on to falsely claim that they had found nearly 100,000 noncitizens registered to vote. They later admitted that number was based on deeply flawed data. But some Texas officials knew all along that they could access more information in order to determine whether the people whose driver's licenses said they were noncitizens were actually noncitizens, the emails suggest -- and pushed ahead regardless.... A spokesman for the governor denied Abbott had any role in the botched January effort.... The state has refused to comply with a congressional request to turn over communications and documents related to the January incident."

Virginia. Campbell Robertson of the New York Times: "Citing the shooting in Virginia Beach in which 12 people were killed, 'as well as the tragedies that happen every day across Virginia,' Gov. Ralph Northam on Tuesday called for a special session of the General Assembly to vote on gun control bills. He listed a number of measures he intended to propose, including universal background checks and a requirement that people report lost or stolen firearms. Those ideas were floated in the past but died in committee before reaching the floor of the Legislature. This time, the governor said, he was demanding that the measures be 'put to a vote by the entire General Assembly.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Way Beyond

Brazil. Jonathan Watts of the Guardian: "Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon surged last month to the highest May level since the current monitoring method began, prompting concerns that president Jair Bolsonaro is giving a free pass to illegal logging, farming and mining. The world's greatest rainforest -- which is a vital provider of oxygen and carbon sequestration -- lost 739sq km during the 31 days, equivalent to two football pitches every minute, according to data from the government's satellite monitoring agency." --s

Israel. Ha Ha! Donald's Best People didn't think up this one: Bibi Netanyahu, who is about to be indicted for fraud, bribery & breach of trust appointed himself justice minister. Not that Bill Barr isn't doing a great job at Justice, but think how much better Trump would be: in his first week, he would indict Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden & John Brennan for something or other; in his second week, he'd lock up Jim Comey, Jeff Sessions & Andy McCabe on charges of treason & being "horrible people." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

The Commentariat -- June 4, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Ha Ha! Donald's Best People didn't think up this one: Bibi Netanyahu, who is about to be indicted for fraud, bribery & breach of trust appointed himself justice minister. Not that Bill Barr isn't doing a great job at Justice, but think how much better Trump would be: in his first week, he would indict Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden & John Brennan for something or other; in his second week, he'd lock up Jim Comey, Jeff Sessions & Andy McCabe on charges of treason & being "horrible people."

As Akhilleus points out in today's Comments, Camilla's stock went up in the U.K. after her, "Yes, we all know this is a farce" wink yesterday:

When Royals Meet. Many thanks to forrest m. for making my day. Every time I look at King Donaldo I LOL.

Rebecca Falconer of Axios: "Demonstrators inflated a 20-foot blimp depicting President Trump as a baby in a diaper outside the U.K. parliament in London Tuesday, as mass protests got underway across the U.K. while Trump met with Prime Minister Theresa May on the second day of his state visit." Lots of photos. ...

... Jamie Ross of the Daily Beast: "Thousands of Brits took to the streets [of London] Tuesday, where they marched alongside a 16-foot farting robot of Donald Trump and held aloft huge photos of John McCain in an attempt to trigger the president. The protests -- which saw thousands brave the typical British weather shielded by umbrellas emblazoned with anti-Trump slogans, EU flags, and the LGBTQ rainbow symbol -- went within meters of Downing Street, where the president must have heard creatively foul-mouthed chants, although h still insists there have been no protests against him at all. Protesters were kept away from the gates of Downing Street for Trump's arrival and departure for talks with Theresa May. However, the thousands occupied a large stretch of central London, marching from Trafalgar Square past the government buildings of Whitehall and eventually arriving outside parliament to hear a speech by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn."

Radio Free Europe: "Russia has denied it informed ... Donald Trump that it is pulling defense personnel out of Venezuela, contradicting a comment by the U.S. leader. 'I was surprised when I read this. We did not notify anyone. He apparently read an article in The Wall Street Journal,' Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on June 4 referring to a June 3 tweet by Trump. Trump in March said Russia 'has to get out' of the South American nation after it landed planes carrying supplies and technical advisers to help President Nicolas Maduro amid an uprising. The United States is seeking the ouster of Maduro, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as thousands of Venezuelan citizens take to the streets to protest his regime. Trump on June 3 tweeted that Russia had informed the United States 'that they have removed most of their people from Venezuela.'... His tweet came a day after The Wall Street Journal, citing an unnamed source close to the Russian Defense Ministry, reported that Moscow had pulled out many defense advisers from the country. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said that Russia had not informed the United States of any such withdrawal, adding that Russian specialists continue to work in the South American country." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Since both sides lie, it's impossible to know what's going on.

S. V. Date of the Huffington Post: "With commercial tenants fleeing his Trump Tower..., Donald Trump continues to spend $37,500 a month of campaign money for office space there — with some of that cash destined for his own wallet ― even as thousands of square feet go unused at a newly opened office in northern Virginia. No more than 'four or five' campaign staffers work at Trump's Manhattan base, according to an informal adviser close to the White House, where the campaign rents a few thousand square feet as its 'headquarters.' The per-square-foot cost is likely at least triple what the Republican National Committee pays for the much larger space it shares with the campaign in Arlington, according to a HuffPost analysis." ...

... ** Jonathan Chait explains why right-wing grifters -- including the Biggest Grifter of Them All -- are so good at their cons. Thanks to Schlub for the lead.

Pamela Brown, et al., of CNN: "The White House has directed former officials Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson not to turn over any documents to the House Judiciary Committee relating to their time at the White House, according to two sources familiar with the matter. But Hicks, the former White House communications director, still could turn over documents the committee has requested related to the 2016 Trump campaign, a period that's not covered by executive privilege, according to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler. The White House sent letters to the committee stating that White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney had directed Hicks and Donaldson, the former deputy White House counsel, not to turn over the documents. The committee had issued subpoenas to both Hicks and Donaldson for documents, setting a Tuesday deadline. The subpoenas also include requests for testimony from the former White House officials for later this month. In a statement, Nadler argued that the White House could not prevent the officials from complying with the committee's request, though he added that Hicks' agreement to provide documents related to the Trump campaign was a 'show of good faith.'"

Brutal. William Rashbaum of the New York Times: "Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman who is serving a federal prison sentence, is expected to be transferred within the next few weeks to the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City, where he will most likely be held in isolation while facing state fraud charges, people with knowledge of the matter said.... Rikers Island has been plagued by violence and mismanagement over the years...."

Campbell Robertson of the New York Times: "Citing the shooting in Virginia Beach in which 12 people were killed, 'as well as the tragedies that happen every day across Virginia,' Gov. Ralph Northam on Tuesday called for a special session of the General Assembly to vote on gun control bills. He listed a number of measures he intended to propose, including universal background checks and a requirement that people report lost or stolen firearms. Those ideas were floated in the past but died in committee before reaching the floor of the Legislature. This time, the governor said, he was demanding that the measures be 'put to a vote by the entire General Assembly.'"

~~~~~~~~~~

Here's today's NYT liveblog of Trump's second fun day in London. Massive protest expected. The Guardian's liveblog is here.

MAG suggests Trump reads like a second-grader. Watching only a half-minute of his performance has convinced me:

... The type size on his printed notes must be quite large, & Trump can read only to the end of a line, so we hear bursts of fragments like "this week we commemorate a" (pause). ...

... Mark Landler & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Queen Elizabeth II welcomed President Trump to Buckingham Palace on Monday with an honor guard and royal artillery salute, while Mr. Trump carried on an ugly dispute with the mayor of London, whom he called a 'stone cold loser' and said was doing a terrible job of running Britain's capital city. The juxtaposition of high pageantry and low name-calling, on the first day of Mr. Trump's state visit to Britain, captured yet again the odd swath that this president cuts on the world stage: impulsive and erratic, delighted by a lavish welcome but preoccupied by petty feuds or events back home. It also showcased the deep ambivalence Mr. Trump's visit has elicited. The British public mostly rejects Mr. Trump and his policies, but the governing elite recognizes the need to reinforce the alliance with the United States as it negotiates Britain's exit from the European Union." ...

... Robert Mackey of the Intercept: “Before his trip [to the UK], Trump had warm words for [Boris] Johnson in an interview with The Sun, Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid. Asked if he would look forward to working with a Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Trump suggested that he would, in part because 'he has been very positive about me.' Those comments suggest that Trump has forgotten or just never heard that Johnson had, in fact, denounced him as 'clearly out of his mind' in late 2015, when the then-candidate for the American presidency first called for 'a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.'... Johnson went on to say that Trump was 'betraying a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him frankly unfit to hold the office of president of the United States.' Hoping to draw Trump's attention to those comments, a group of anti-Brexit activists projected the video of Johnson mocking him onto the base of Big Ben on Sunday night and invited the American president to watch." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... MEANWHILE. Zamira Rahim of the (UK) Independent: "A teenager has mowed an anti-Trump message, complete with a giant penis, into the grass of his family home ahead of the US president's UK state visit. Ollie Nancarro spent his weekend mowing the words 'Oi Trump' into his lawn, near Hatfield Heath, in Essex.... The A-level student hope[d] that the US president [would] spot his creation as Air Force One approache[d] Stansted Airport, which is near Hatfield Heath, on Monday morning." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Bizarre News. Ruth Graham of Slate: "McLean Bible Church's main campus in Vienna, Virginia, is a 17-minute drive from the Trump National Golf Club, where ... Donald Trump spent Sunday morning. Deep into the church's 1 p.m. service, after pastor David Platt had delivered his sermon, Platt was summoned backstage and told that Trump was on his way and wanted the church to pray for him. In a letter to his congregation published later in the day, Platt explained that he went back out to lead the church's Communion service, then returned to wait for the president. When Platt walked back onstage, the president was behind him, dressed as if he'd strolled straight off the golf course. In contrast with other pastors who have prayed for Trump, Platt was scrupulously nonpartisan.... Trump had pulled off his white golf hat as he walked onstage and held it in his hands as Platt placed his hand on Trump's back and prayed for almost three full minutes.... The White House told reporters that Trump made the appearance at the church to 'pray for the victims and community of Virginia Beach.' But that topic did not come up during his brief time at the church, which is more than three hours north of the site of Friday's mass shooting. The real lure for him, it seems likely, was that evangelist Franklin Graham, a strong Trump supporter, had designated Sunday a 'Day of Prayer' for Trump...." ...

... Krystal Campos of Politico: "The pastor of a Northern Virginia church where ... Donald Trump made an unscheduled visit over the weekend has explained why he publicly prayed for the president, acknowledging to his congregation that 'some within our church ... are hurt that I made this decision.' 'Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that we didn't see coming, and we're faced with a decision in a moment when we don't have the liberty of deliberation, so we do our best to glorify God,' Pastor David Platt of McLean Bible Church said Sunday evening in a statement to church members.... 'Today, I found myself in one of those situations.'... Platt went on to explain that he had no intention of endorsing the president, his policies or the Republican Party...."

Ben Protess & Steve Eder of the New York Times: "The owners of a luxury hotel in Panama City that ousted the Trump Organization as property managers last year accused it on Monday of evading taxes in Panama and creating a 'false light around the hotel's finances. The accusations, made in a legal filing in Manhattan federal court, are fraught with potential diplomatic and legal complexities for President Trump. They essentially assert that his family business cheated a foreign government.... The president's company, the filing alleges, 'also made fraudulent and false claims to the Panamanian tax authorities' to 'cover up its unlawful activities.' This was originally detected during an audit last year by that country's tax agency, according to the filing. It was not possible to immediately verify accusations in the filing...."

Emily Tillett of CBS News: "The House Judiciary Committee will hold ... a series of hearings on the findings laid out in former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report ... beginning next week, Chairman Jerry Nadler announced Monday. The first hearing will feature testimony by John Dean, the former White House counsel whose bombshell testimony during Watergate paved the way for President Nixon's resignation.... 'Given the threat posed by the President's alleged misconduct, our first hearing will focus on President Trump's most overt acts of obstruction. In the coming weeks, other hearings will focus on other important aspects of the Mueller report,' [Nadler said.]" The hearing feature Dean will be held June 10.

Heather Caygle & Sarah Ferris of Politico: "House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn on Monday walked back remarks suggesting that Democrats will impeach ... Donald Trump, reversing course to say he's 'farther' from backing impeachment than most of his caucus. Clyburn's comments came after a private leadership meeting Monday evening in which Speaker Nancy Pelosi reiterated that she didn't support launching impeachment proceedings right now despite a growing pus within the caucus."

Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times: "After the Memorial Day recess, that argument is no longer tenable. Across the country, Democratic voters have begun demanding that their representatives take a position on impeachment. Yet Democrats have largely failed to even begin presenting a cohesive case to the public about Trump's corruption and criminality. That could start to change next week, when the Judiciary Committee launches hearings into the Mueller report, but no blockbuster witnesses are yet lined up.... The moment demands [an impeachment inquiry], and so do the people who put Democrats in charge."

Adam Jettleson, formerly a top aide to Senate Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) in a GQ opinion piece: "Only Democrats, bless our hearts, could convince ourselves that it is good for a president to be impeached.... The decision not to impeach is not a decision to focus on other things, it is a decision to cede power, control, and legitimacy to Trump. Trump is not a master chess player, he just bluffs his opponents into forfeiting their moves -- and that is exactly what he is doing to House Democrats.... Impeachment is a long process that will highlight Trump's crimes, which according to (literally) one thousand former federal prosecutors, include 'multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.'... The odds of making a convincing public case against Trump are stacked strongly in Democrats' favor. Trump's crimes are serious and laid out in meticulous detail by an unimpeachable source. The public already believes he committed serious crimes by a margin of two to one.... If the public believes Trump is guilty but the Senate lets him off anyway, he won't ever be truly exonerated.... By contrast, declining to impeach Trump validates his claim that Mueller exonerated him."

Mrs. McCrabbie: As you know, Bill Barr said in his CBS interview last week that Bob Mueller could have said whether or not Trump committed crimes despite Mueller's claim that it was unfair to accuse someone who did not have a timely remedy in court. Neal Katyal pointed out on MSNBC Monday that Barr said exactly the opposite in his Senate confirmation hearings; that is, Barr testified that a sitting president should not be accused of or charged with a crime since he doesn't have the opportunity to attempt to vindicate himself in court. Mueller, then, was following Barr's own stated principle when he refused to accuse Trump of obstructing justice.

Andrew Desiderio of Politico: "House Democrats are moving to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena for information about efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. 'Unfortunately, your actions are part of a pattern,' House Oversight and Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) wrote to Barr and Ross in separate letters Monday. 'The Trump administration has been engaged in one of the most unprecedented cover-ups since Watergate, extending from the White House to multiple federal agencies and departments of the government and across numerous investigations.' Cummings said he would consider postponing the contempt votes, which have not yet been scheduled, if Barr and Ross turn over the requested documents by Thursday."

Jonathan Swan of Axios: "On 'Axios on HBO,' Jared Kushner said he doesn't know whether he'd call the FBI if he were to receive an email today like the one before the campaign's Trump Tower meeting, which had the subject line: 'Re: Russia - Clinton - private and confidential.'... Kushner said: 'I don't know. It's hard to do hypotheticals, but the reality is is that we were not given anything that was salacious.'... This bolsters the perception that President Trump's inner circle still doesn't fully recognize the ongoing threat of Russian interference in American elections. Kushner's response comes after FBI Director Christopher Wray said in congressional testimony that he would recommend that in the future, people contact the FBI if a foreign government offers campaign support." ...

... Conservative Paul Rosenzweig in Lawfare: "Let's be clear -- that's the wrong answer. I will limit this discussion to legal obligations; the moral failings are self-evident. Even if Kushner had no legal obligation to report the Russian contacts in 2016 when he was a private citizen, he no longer is. At the direction of the president, he now holds a top-secret (TS) clearance. And with that clearance comes a legal obligation to notify relevant authorities in the FBI and White House regarding suspicious foreign contacts.... The language of Security Executive Agent Directive 3, which sets up a uniform reporting system across government for all cleared employees provides a bit more detail. It requires reporting any contact: With a known or suspected foreign intelligence entity.... Either he doesn't know that, in which case he needs a refresher briefing on security procedures, or he does, but doesn't care." Mrs. McC: How about "doesn't know AND doesn't care." ...

... Matthew Dessem of Slate: Jared Kushner's HBO interview was, "to borrow a phrase from a senior adviser to the president of the United States, 'a clown show.' Axios reporter Jonathan Swan pushed back at some of Kushner's more ridiculous statements, and in response, Kushner fell flat on his face so quickly he appeared to be suffering from some sort of localized anomaly in Earth's gravitational field. It turns out that the president's son-in-law has been reticent with the press for reasons that become painfully clear as the interview progresses: H doesn't know anything, and he believes even less. Here are three of his most spectacular face-plants."

Your Typical Trump Associate. Ken Meyer of Mediaite: "A former liaison between ... Donald Trump's transition team and foreign officials has been indicted by federal officials over child pornography charges. George Nader, a Lebanese-American business executive, has been under scrutiny for some time because of his reported connections with the Middle East and Russians who wanted to make early contact with 2017 transition officials. Nader served as a key witness to the special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, and according to court documents obtained on Monday by the Washington Post, he is now facing indictment in federal court in Virginia." ...

     ... Update. Here's the Daily Beast story, by Erin Banco & Betsy Woodruff. ...

He Can Be So Presidential. Taylor Telford & Craig Timberg of the Washington Post (via the Mercury News):"... Donald Trump raised a familiar complaint -- 'unfair' coverage by CNN -- in a pair of Monday morning tweets. But this time he took the unusual step of calling on supporters to boycott the cable news network's corporate parent, AT&T, to drive his point home. 'I believe that if people stoped [sic] using or subscribing to AT&T, they would be forced to make big changes at CNN, which is dying in the ratings anyway,' Trump tweeted. 'It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News!'... Many presidents have expressed frustration and even anger over news coverage of their administrations, but Trump has taken the issue to an unusual extent in calling on supporters to wield their collective economic power against CNN's parent company, historians say." Mrs. McC: Sounds like an unconstitutional "misdemeanor" to me.

Victoria Guida of Politico: "... Donald Trump announced Sunday night that Kevin Hassett, his chief economist and a prominent promoter of the president's tax cuts, will be stepping down from his position with a replacement to be named soon. 'Kevin Hassett, who has done such a great job for me and the Administration, will be leaving shortly,' Trump, who is visiting the U.K., said in a tweet. 'His very talented replacement will be named as soon as I get back to the U.S. I want to thank Kevin for all he has done - he is a true friend!'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Trump Administration's Massive Child Abuse

Jacob Soboroff & Julia Ainsley of NBC News: "Under the blistering Texas sun last July, 37 migrant children boarded vans for what was supposed to be a 30-minute ride.... But when the children, all between 5 and 12 years old, arrived at Immigration and Customs Enforcement's adults-only Port Isabel Detention Center, rather than seeing their parents, they saw a parking lot full of vans just like theirs, with children from other facilities who, just like them, were waiting to be processed and reunified with their parents. It was 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 15, 2018. Not until 39 hours later -- after two nights in a van -- did the last child step out of a van to be reunited. Most spent at least 23 hours in the vehicles."

Monique Maden of the Miami Herald: "A 705-page court document filed by lawyers who spent substantial time inside Homestead's detention center for unaccompanied minors says the migrant children held there are subjected to 'prison-like' regimens, potentially sustaining permanent psychological damage due to isolation from loved ones. Based on interviews with detainees, the filing describes dumbfounded and despairing children, cut off from their relatives except for phone calls, enduring 'military-camp' style conditions and stays that often stretch into months. It is by far the most detailed description of life inside the secretive detention center, although the stories are relayed through the prism of adults advocates who want to see the children moved to smaller settings-- the number of children in the facility is 2,350 and growing -- or released to the care of family or other guardians." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Mrs. McCrabbie: What do you expect from an administration whose Dear Leader hangs out with a child pornography enthusiast?

Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration's request to fast track a decision on whether it will hear a case over the president's rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The justices, in an unsigned order, denied the request, which was filed on behalf of the administration last month to expedite a decision on whether to review the case.... A pair of appeals courts have ruled against Trump officials who sought to end the Obama-era program."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "President Trump ended a losing streak in court clashes with the House on Monday, as a federal judge rejected the Democrat-controlled chamber's lawsuit seeking to stop him from using emergency powers to build a wall along the southwestern border. Judge Trevor N. McFadden of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, ruled that the House could not show that it had suffered the sort of injury that gave it standing to sue. The ruling will not have any immediate practical consequences because other groups have already secured an order blocking Mr. Trump from proceeding. But if other courts accept Judge McFadden's reasoning, the House's litigation options will narrow as it battles the president on several fronts."

The Big GOP Grift, Ctd. As I was saying yesterday ... Winger Jim Geraghty of the confederate National Review laments all the GOP super-PACs that are nothing but super-grifts, giving only fractions of their collected donations to their supposed intended beneficiaries. These grifters include, not surprisingly, people who bill themselves as Friends of Trump, like Roger Stone & David Bossie. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Ideas are largely lost in the Republican party today, but Rand Paul still has a few of them, albeit very bad ones. -- Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), on "All in with Chris Hayes" last night ...

... Caitlin Emma of Politico: "Sen. Rand Paul's plan to slash federal spending by $183.1 billion in fiscal 2020 didn't survive a procedural hurdle [Monday] night, with the Senate failing to advance the measure in a 22-69 vote. The Kentucky Republican's bill aims to balance the federal budget in five years. Paul's office said the proposal would yield a $913 billion surplus five years after the budget is balanced. Sixty votes were needed for the measure to advance. After the vote, Paul noted he gained more votes than in previous efforts...."

Will Sommer of the Daily Beast: "The House Judiciary Committee is launching an antitrust investigation into major tech companies like Google and Amazon, moving Congress closer to legislative action against the tech giants. 'This is really about "how do we get competition back in this space?"' Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who will lead the investigation as head of the antitrust subcommittee, told reporters on Monday.... The Judiciary announcement comes as the Justice Department reportedly prepares an antitrust investigation into Google and the Federal Trade Commission receives jurisdiction over Facebook for its own potential antitrust case. But Cicilline said he didn't trust the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission to adequately handle antitrust issues during the Trump administration."

Konfederate Krackpots Klub (KKK) Meeting Minutes. Melanie Zanona & John Bresnahan of Politico: "A small group of House Republicans is leading a long-shot bid to get embattled Rep. Steve King back on his committee assignments after the Iowa Republican was booted for making racist remarks earlier this year. The cadre of hard-line conservatives, led by Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and others, plans to ask the GOP conference on Tuesday morning to immediately consider a resolution reinstating King."

NBC 4 New York: "Quest Diagnostics, one of the biggest blood testing providers in the country, warned Monday that nearly 12 million of its customers may have had personal, financial and medical information breached due to an issue with one of its vendors. In a filing with securities regulators, Quest said it was notified that between Aug. 1, 2018, and March 30, 2019, that someone had unauthorized access to the systems of AMCA, a billing collections vendor. '(The) information on AMCA's affected system included financial information (e.g., credit card numbers and bank account information), medical information and other personal information (e.g., Social Security Numbers),' Quest said in the filing."

Beyond the Beltway

Michigan. David Eggert of the AP: "Authorities investigating Flint's water crisis have used search warrants to seize from storage the state-owned mobile devices of former Gov. Rick Snyder [R] and 65 other current or former officials.... The water crisis in Flint was one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in U.S. history. Untreated water leached lead from pipes and into Flint's homes and businesses while cost-cutting financial managers -- appointed by Snyder -- were running the city. The investigation has led to charges against 15 current or former government officials, including two who served in the Cabinet of Snyder..., who left office in December. But no one is behind bars, and some Flint residents believe key players who could have prevented the lead debacle are getting off easy."

Way Beyond

Kim Tong-Hyung of the AP: "A senior North Korean official who had been reported to be sentenced to hard labor over the failed nuclear summit with Washington was shown in state media on Monday enjoying a concert near leader Kim Jong Un. North Korean publications on Monday showed Kim Yong Chol sitting five seats away from a clapping Kim Jong Un in the same row along with other top officials during a musical performance by the wives of Korean People's Army officers.... Last week, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo cited an unidentified source in reporting that Kim Yong Chol had been sentenced to hard labor and ideological re-education over the failed summit in Hanoi, Vietnam's capital. The newspaper also reported that senior envoy Kim Hyok Chol, who was involved in pre-summit working-level talks with American officials, was executed with four other officials from the North's Foreign Ministry for betraying Kim Jong Un after being won over by the United States. None of the allegedly executed officials have appeared in state media since the report." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)