Russia
The Russia investigation is clearly heating way up—the latest subpoena from Mueller’s team was for the Trump Organization finance chief, summoned to testify before a grand jury in the criminal probe of Michael Cohen, Donny’s longtime personal lawyer, after his name was mentioned in several of the Cohen recordings. Of which federal investigators seized more than 100…so stay tuned for more.
Recently revealed documents show that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer present at the infamous Trump Tower meeting, has much closer ties to Russian senior government officials than previously admitted.
And former attorney Michael Cohen says he’s willing to testify that Donald knew about and approved in advance the Trump Tower meeting with Veselnitskaya—and what it was for.
Carter Page acknowledged working as “an informal adviser to the staff of the Kremlin” in a 2013 letter—the reason the FBI was surveilling him during the 2016 campaign. Even Richard Burr (Rep, NC) says there were “sound reasons” for the surveillance, despite Donny and his GOP toadies attempting without any factual backup to imply that the surveillance was spurious and politically motivated.
Recent records reveal that Rep Dana Roherbacker (R, CA), he who bleats loudly against the Russian investigation, dined with Maria Buttina, the Russian woman currently being held for spying in the U.S. on behalf of Russia.
Republicans Reconsidering
Republican senators Lindsay Graham and Marco Rubio want to introduce sanctions to warn Putin (and his puppet Donald) about meddling in our upcoming elections. Even mouth-hemorrhaging Trey Gowdy added his voice to those opposing Donald’s invitation of the former-KGB head of our greatest geopolitical foe into the White House (an invitation Donald walked back after Vlad didn’t take him up on it).
Senator Ben Sasse (R, NV) denounced Donald’s government subsidy for farmers due to hardships from the tariffs Donald himself imposed, calling the subsidy “gold crutches.” A surprising number of other GOP lawmakers also added their objections to the subsidy Donald announced to counter the hit farmers are taking due to his trade wars. Senator Ron Johnson (R. WI) called it a “Soviet type of economy”; Sen John Thune of SD—the #3 GOP leader, said, “Taxpayers are going to be asked to initial checks to farmers in lieu of having a trade policy that actually opens and expands more markets.” Sen Pat Toomey (R, PA) calls it a “bailout” that “compounds bad policy with more bad policy. Jeff Flake called it “handouts” and Bob Corker calls the subsidies “welfare.”
Sen Bob Corker laid into Mike Pompeo for his disingenuous defense of Donald’s cozying up to Putin, the former-KGB head of our greatest geopolitical foe, and attacking our own country’s intelligence community findings.
A bipartisan bill has been introduced in the Senate that would curb Donny’s ability to unilaterally withdraw the U.S. from NATO.
The House Appropriations Committee backed a bipartisan measure that would essentially nullify Donald and Jeff Sessions’s attempt to disallow asylum for those immigrants seeking to flee gang or domestic violence.
A representative in the House has introduced a carbon-tax bill hoping to reignite discussion about climate change, protecting the environment, and investing in alternative energy in the U.S.—and it’s a Republican!
After spending her entire adult life as a conservative, an Oregon Republican commissioner has changed party to become a Democrat. “I have not changed but the Republican party clearly has,” she says. “I cannot condone the misogyny, the racism, and the unethical and immoral behavior of the current administration.”
Republicans Against the Law
A federal judge ruled against Don John, who had hoped to stop a lawsuit alleging he violates the Constitution’s emoluments clause by taking money from foreign governments through his businesses. The lawsuit will proceed.
A federal judge freed the pizza deliveryman detained by ICE while doing his job.
A federal judge will allow a lawsuit brought by more than two dozen states, cities, and other groups against the federal government for its inclusion of a discriminatory citizenship questions proposed for the 2020 census—one of six similar lawsuits—to proceed.
The city of Birmingham, AL, won a victory over the state when a federal judge in an appeal over whether the city had the right to raise minimum wages when the state tried to bar the increase overturned the previous court’s ruling that allowed the state to overrule the wage hike.
New York financial regulators have opened an investigation into Signature Bank, a small institution that financed projects for the Trump and Kushner families, to determine whether the loans violated laws intended to prevent predatory behavior.
Republican Corruption
“What you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening.” This jaw-droppingly Orwellian quote was actuallyuttered by the mentally deranged dotard in a speech Tuesday. Well, here’s what’s actually happening:
Don’s inept administration released documents by mistake that they had hoped to suppress and keep out of the public eye: Evidence that protected public lands boost tourism and spur archaeological discoveries was hidden from the public so the administration could shrink national monuments, tailoring the surveys instead to emphasize the value of logging, ranching, and energy development from exploiting these lands if they were released from federal protection. Comments the department’s Freedom of Information Act officers made in the documents show they sought to keep some of the references out of public view because they were “revealing [the] strategy” behind the review.
Donald used a taxpayer-funded trip to openly campaign for Republican candidates.
A federal lawsuit against Michigan for partisan gerrymandering has unearthed emails of state Republicans gleefully plotting how to divide the state’s districts to concentrate “Dem garbage” and packing African-American voters into a metropolitan Detroit district. The recently discovered emails will no doubt lend momentum to a proposed constitutional amendment to end gerrymandering, set to be on the ballot in Michigan in November.
Just like Avenatti said, there are more tapes Donny’s former attorney Cohen made of conversations with his erstwhile client—at least 100 more. The most recently released features Don discussing proposed payments toPlayboy model Karen McDougal to silence her about their affair…the one he denied any knowledge of.
GA state representative Jason Spencer—he of the screamed N-word and bared buttocks in service of stopping terrorists, courtesy of Sacha Barron Cohen—has resigned.
The GOP Kansas senator who accompanied Don John to Russia on little Don’s pilgrimage to his Soviet dark lord faced an angry crowd of constituents in a Kansas town when he got back, demanding to know why he and the GOP aren’t standing up to the mentally deranged dotard. “Why do you even believe you had any moral compass speaking to (Russian Foreign Affairs Minister) Sergey Lavrov,” one man asked, “because you do not speak against this authoritarian president?”
A whistleblower inside the Columbus police department has released emails from the department showing thatStormy Daniels’s recent arrest in D.C. was carefully preplanned days in advance.
Social and Civil Rights Advances
Support for Roe v. Wade has reached a new high among Americans—including 52 percent of Republicans. Seventy-one percent of Americans overall believe the ruling should be upheld; only 23 percent believe it should be overturned.
Supergirl cast the first transgender superhero on television—the same transgender activist behind a landmark case that set a precedent for allowing trans people to use the restroom of their choice.
Children led a sit-in at the Senate building to protest the GOP administration’s separation of immigrant familiesand their treatment of the children.
The co-owner of the New York Giants stated he won’t punish players for kneeling during the national anthem, and chastised Donald: “He has no understanding why they take a knee or why they’re protesting.”
Nike will raise salaries for 7,000 employees after an internal review of claims of workplace misconduct and discrimination against women led to the ouster of several of the top brass.
Environmental groups brought a “citizen suit” against a Houston-area refinery under the Clean Air Act, alleging years of excessive air pollution—the refinery has agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement as penalties and remediation in their factories of the issues.
The new acting EPA chief reversed the final policy act by Scott Pruitt that would have allowed “super-polluting” trucks on the nation’s roads.
Karma
Someone untied one of Betsy De Vos’s yachts and set it adrift on Lake Erie.
Someone else took a pickax to Donald’s star on Hollywood Boulevard. The perpetrator was bailed out by—and this is actually for real—the guy who did the same thing to the same star last year.
Ivanka shut down her clothing line—ostensibly to devote time to her White House duties (of which she should have none, officially, since SHE IS NOT AN OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE OR APPOINTEE), but more likely because of recent struggles with marketing as her products are increasingly boycotted and dropped from stores. That or Donald is preparing her to take over from him eventually in the banana republic he mistakenly believes America to be.
Here’s a fun article about what may be coming down the pike for the very stable genius.
Your Feel-good Stories of the Week
A Swedish student stopped the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker by refusing to sit down on the flight on which the man was being deported.
Donny’s support among women continues to decline. (Who could have imagined…?)
Youth voter registration is up 41 percent in Florida since Parkland.
Melania Trump informed the world, as well as presumably her husband, that she will watch any TV channel she damned well wishes—after Donny had a big baby meltdown tantrum at seeing a picture of Melania on Air Force One with a TV tuned to CNN.
Trump’s job approval rating is below 40 percent in three politically important Midwest states: Michigan (36%), Wisconsin (36%), and Minnesota (38%). (And probably abysmally low with his wife, as well.)