How Your Voices are Making a Difference: Texas Turns Out to Vote

In the last week’s primaries in Texas, Democrats turned out at the highest levels in 16 years. Beto O’Rourke is going head-to-head with Ted Cruz, and poses one of the most credible challenges from a Democrat in Texas in years.

Florida legislators defied the NRA and responded to public demands for sensible gun control by voting in a three-day waiting period for most purchases of long guns and raising the minimum age to buy one to 21. (The legislation also creates a program to arm teachers; but the Hillsborough County School Board in Florida on Tuesday unanimously opposed a motion to arm school employees.) Governor Rick Scott, who has an A-plus NRA rating, defied the organization to sign it into law on Friday.

A gun show in Illinois banned sales of AR-15 assault weapons.

Senator John Cornyn, of all people, says he has the votes to pass a bipartisan bill he sponsored beefing up background checks.

Meanwhile the kids are more than all right—in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, they continue to organize and mobilize to bring change to Washington, and refused to let Betsy DeVos whitewash or evade the issue of gun control on her visit to the school. Don’t forget the March for Our Lives on March 24 to rally for sensible gun reform—find the Austin arm here.

Former Donald aide Sam Nunberg was subpoenaed by Mueller to appear before a grand jury…and said he would refuse to go, Nunberg, who clearly learned reality-TV showmanship from his former boss, said he planned to go on Bloomberg TV and tear up the subpoena, and going on quite the cable tear, making ever more incendiary statements on several networks and finally prompting a CNN host to ask—on air—whether he’d been drinking. Twenty-four hours later, Nunberg stated on CNN that he planned to cooperate and was assembling the subpoenaed materials, after which he will apparently seek treatment.

Mueller is said to have uncovered evidence that a secret meeting in Seychelles in January of last year was an attempt to establish a back channel of communication between the White House and the Kremlin, when a Lebanese American businessman (George Nader, a former Trump aide and adviser to the United Arab Emirates) who helped organize the meeting—and initially denied its purpose—began cooperating with Mueller’s investigation and testified last week before a grand jury.

A Panama hotel finally succeeded in wresting control of the Trump-branded hotel property from Donald—and its first act was tochisel off Donald’s name from the sign.

A U.S. appeals court ruled that Title VII, covering sex bias in the workplace, covers transgender workers.

Stormy Daniels is suing Donald—since he failed to sign the nondisclosure agreement with his payout to the porn-film actress, the suit says, she’s at liberty to spill the beans. These should be very interesting beans. Remarks from Donald’s lawyer Gary Cohn reveal that Donald may be directly implicated in the payout to Daniels for his extramarital affair with her just after Melania had given birth—and it may also violate federal election laws.

The Office of the Special Counsel (unrelated to Robert Mueller’s investigation) has found that Donald’s adviser Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act twice by advocating for/against political candidates in her official role. The office has referred the matter to Donald for discipline, as is protocol, so don’t expect action on it, but the violations add up.

Martin Shkreli—the “Pharma Bro” who infamously raised the price for an AIDS drug 5000 percent as head of Turing Pharmaceuticals, has been sentenced to seven years in prison (and not for that morally bankrupt action, but for defrauding investors as a hedge-fund manager).

Donald’s legal counsel Gary Cohn resigned, citing differences over trade policy, ostensibly. But this reality-TV revolving door of staff isn’t indicative of chaos in the White House, the Very Stable Genius assured the country, simply a trial period in Donald’s quest for perfection. (I know…I’m laughing too.) Meanwhile Republican senator Jeff Flake has vowed to introduce a bill in the Senate to block Donald from raising tariffs on steel and aluminum.

Finally, Texas makes us proud yet again: Donald’s lowest ratings in a Republican state are right here in the Lone Star State.