A whistleblower in the White House security office has exposed that White House staff overturned more than 25 denials for security clearances of Donny’s staff despite “serious disqualifying issues,” like ties to foreign influence, conflicts of interests, questionable or criminal conduct, financial problems, or drug abuse, among them Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn. This corroborates the memos uncovered recently by former chief of staff John Kelly and former White House counsel Don McGahn regarding their concerns about the same subject. Read the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake’s excellent breakdown of what this might mean, and a list of other major security breaches by the president who built a campaign on deriding Hillary Clinton’s emails.
The U.S. Ethics Office declined to certify the financial disclosures for Steven Mnuchin—y’all, the main ethics watchdog for our nation has ethical issues with the financial accuracy and truth of the financial disclosures of the SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.
But wait, there’s more! Donny’s nominee to head the Federal Reserve Board—you know, the organization in charge of monitoring and guiding our country’s economical well-being—was just found in contempt of court for failing to pay his ex-wife $330,000 in alimony and CHILD SUPPORT.
A third federal judge, this one in Maryland, has blocked Donny’s administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
The House is in the HOUSE!
In related news, the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena information and testimony related to Wilbur Ross’s 2020 census citizenship question that three courts have now ruled illegal.
And regarding the newly exposed overturned security-clearance denials of Donald’s White House cronies, the House Oversight and Reform Committee voted Tuesday to subpoena Carl Kline, who served as personnel security director at the White House during the first two years of the administration.
The House Judiciary Committee voted to subpoena the Mueller report in its nearly 400-page footnoted unredacted entirety from the Justice Department, after AG William Barr’s suspiciously reductive 4-page summary—and curiously along party lines, despite the recent unanimous House vote to release the report.
The House Ways and Means Committee asked the IRS for six years of the commander of cheese’s tax returns, citing Congress’s duty as a coequal branch of government to “determine how Americans—including those elected to our highest office—are complying with [tax] laws.”
The House Intelligence Committee requested documents from Donny’s inaugural committee regarding how it raised and spent $107 million, on the heels of a federal subpoena in February for the same information.
The House passed bipartisan legislation approved by the Senate that will end military involvement in Yemen, a direct rebuke of Donald’s Saudi-friendly support of the conflict, and setting up Donald for a likely (and likely unpopular) veto putting him firmly on record as protecting and furthering the interests of the Saudi crown prince (the one who ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi).
Overcoming opposition from the National Rifle Association, the House voted on Thursday 263-158 for a revised version of the Violence Against Women Act that expands gun control, barring gun sales to convicted abusers of current or former dating partners. The measure also would prohibit gun sales to people found guilty of stalking misdemeanors and those under one-party restraining orders.
Social and Civil Rights Advances
Reversing a 2015 decision, the Mormon Church will now allow baptisms and blessings for children of LGBTQ parents.
Chicago became the largest city in history (thus far!) to elect a black female mayor, and first openly gay person to hold the office, Lori Lightfoot.
Nearly 70 percent of Americans would be okay with a gay president; 85 percent said they were comfortable with a female candidate. (Apparently everyone’s cool with old white guys, and we know how at least a third of the country feels about a black president.)
After a conservative freelance journalist went on a homophobic Twitter rant against a gay journalist, a major publication she wrote for–the Federalist–dropped her from their freelance roster.
The pro-gun party in the pocket of the NRA (Republicans, in case that’s vague) apparently doesn’t like it when guns are a threat in their vicinity—when an “activist” pushing a proposed bill allowing Texans to openly carry a firearm without a permit showed up at the hones of several Texas legislators. Republican state rep Jonathan Stickland, the author of the bill, stated he was “officially canceling” the bill.
New Mexico became the 14th state to pledge its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact does not take effect until they have amassed 270 electoral votes; the tally now is at 189. Republicans—the party whose victories rely on suppressing voting—are fighting the change, probably since of the five instances in our country’s history when the candidate who won the popular vote actually lost in the electoral college, four were Republicans (the other was John Quincy Adams, one of all candidates running as a Democratic-Republican).
In a barely masked rebuke to the nationalist-in-chief, Pope Francis said that those who close borders “will become prisoners of the walls that they build.”
Donald’s Foot in Donald’s Mouth
Donald backpedaled from threats to close to border “immediately” to offering a “one-year warning.”
Another of Donny’s birther conspiracy theories was debunked by a birth certificate—this one his father’s, after the Mentally Deranged Dotard asserted—multiple times and erroneously—that his Bronx-born father was born in Germany. LOL!
Donny claimed the noise from windmills causes cancer—LOLOLOL! Two days later a bipartisan group of 19 senators urged more federal support for wind turbines, led by Democrat Jeff Merkley and Republican Chuck Grassley, the latter of whom called Donny’s remark “idiotic.”
Your Feel-good Stories of the Week
See all the above. 🙂
Finally, young anti-populists in Switzerland have found delightful, creative ways to combat the spread of right-wing nationalist populism.