10/22/18 “I guarantee you, if the GOP thinks that black people are voting for them, they will be making sure that your vote counts.”
Let’s start with this stunning news: Democratic candidates for Congress have raised a record $1 billion.
Although our own GOP-led Congress doesn’t seem to have the moral fiber to speak out against Donald’s recent lauding—in the wake of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—of Montana congressman Greg Gianforte for body-slamming a reporter, the UK government did, joining a chorus of outrage that throws the GOP’s silence into appalling bas-relief.
Full-throated defense of Robert Mueller’s investigation has come from none other than the Donald-appointed DoJ official charged with overseeing it—Rod Rosenstein calls it “appropriate and independent,” in stark contrast to Donald’s frequent denigration of it as a rigged witch-hunt. “At the end of the day, the public will have confidence that the cases we brought were warranted by the evidence, and that it was an appropriate use of resources.” Take a look at this recap of the last week of the Russia investigation and what it’s unearthing—Mueller is quietly uncovering an enormous web of deceit, illegality, and collusion.
Republicans Reconsidering
Even Donny’s staunch ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, flatly stated that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, had journalist Jamal Khashoggi murdered.
Even white nationalist treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin backed out of the Davos in the Desert investment conference as a result.
Former Republican congressman Richard Hanna is endorsing Democrat Anthony Brindisi in New York.
Republicans Against the Law
A federal judge ordered the immediate enforcement of an Obama-era law designed to protect students cheated by for-profit colleges that had been delayed by Betsy DeVos.
An organization of writers (along with nonprofit organization Protect Democracy and the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Clinic) are filing federal suit against Don John for his attacks on the press, alleging that his attempts to stifle the press and his urging of retribution against the media is against the First Amendment and illegal.
ProPublica conducted an extensive investigation into Donald and his family’s business practices and found a pattern of misleading investors and buyers in order to profit from it.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is suing Donald’s White House for its unlawful use of federal funds for arming teachers.
A Georgia journalist and the NAACP are bringing a federal lawsuit against Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp—also running for governor, perhaps not coincidentally against an African American woman with whom he’s in a dead heat—who recently purged more than a half million (disproportionately African American) voters from the state’s registered rolls, forcing Kemp to release the names of the voters he purged. If the lawsuit is successful, Kemp will have to show detailed information for why he flushed each and every voter.
The ACLU is suing Georgia as well for tossing out absentee ballots after amateur handwriting analysis claimed the signatures looked different from those on the voter registration.
“Draining the Swamp”
In another example of the fine-tuned machine Donald’s cabinet isn’t, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson put out an announcement that one of his top aides would take on the role of acting watchdog at the inspector general’s office in the office of the Interior—only to be embarrassingly repudiated that same day by a spokesperson for the Interior department, stating ““HUD sent out an email that had 100 percent false information in it.” The aide in question, Suzanne Tufts, subsequently resigned.
Interestingly, Tufts would have been overseeing the investigation of Interior Department head Ryan Zinke, who violated the department’s policy on travel in arranging government travel for his wife and an associate.
Meanwhile, apparently chief of staff John Kelly and national security adviser John Bolton got into a screaming match about immigration outside the Oval Office. THE BEST PEOPLE, Donald!
Your Feel-Good Stories of the Week
Yet another Trump property is removing Donald’s name—this one in New York after residents voted to dump the Trump name.
Apparently Piers Morgan didn’t realize how much this revealed about his own fragile masculinity, rather than Daniel Craig’s. Twitter swiftly let him know.
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