The Commentariat -- March 29, 2018

Late Morning Update:

Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: We were all joking here yesterday when we suggested a Go Fund Me-type campaign to pay for Trump's useless border WALL. Well, President* Dimwit's friends didn't get the joke:

... AP: "Some people close to the president have also suggested creating a GoFundMe campaign that Trump could use to raise money from the public to fund construction [of the Wall]. The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the idea, and it's unclear whether it has gained any serious traction."

Jenna McLaughlin of CNN: There are long-established procedures for shepherding proposed presidential pardons through the Justice Department, but a series of intradepartmental e-mails reveals that "if Trump decided one day to tweet out a presidential pardon, the Department of Justice would probably 'have very little if any involvement.'..." Mrs. McC: This is DOJ officials throwing up their own hands & leaving all the pardoning stuff to Twitterfingers.

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "The White House and Michael Cohen have spent weeks declining to answer a basic question: Was President Trump involved in the $130,000 hush-money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels? Well, we& finally have a denial. But while it might insulate Trump from the scandal, experts say it could also undermine the nondisclosure agreement that Daniels signed preventing her from disclosing the alleged affair.... On CNN Wednesday night, [David] Schwartz [-- Cohen's attorney --] seemed to categorically deny that Trump was involved -- or at least that he had knowledge of the payment on the front end.... Schwartz extended the denial further Thursday morning on NBC News, adding that Trump '100 percent' did not reimburse Cohen."

Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti takes his cues from his client's adversary:

** The FBI Has Been onto Trump-Russia Since at Least 2010. Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "In 2010, a small group of businessmen including a wealthy Russian supporter of Vladimir Putin began working on plans to build a glitzy hotel and entertainment complex with Donald Trump in Riga, the capital of Latvia. A senior Trump executive visited the city to scout for locations. Trump and his daughter Ivanka spent hours at Trump Tower with the Russian, Igor Krutoy.... Then the Latvian government's anti-corruption bureau began asking questions.... Talks with Trump's company were abandoned after Krutoy and another of the businessmen were questioned by Latvian authorities as part of a major criminal inquiry there -- and that the FBI later looked into Trump's interactions with them at Latvia's request.... This means the FBI looked into Trump's efforts to do business deals in the former Soviet Union earlier than was widely known.... Krutoy, a well-known composer in Russia, has written music for Emin Agalarov, the Russian singer whose father hosted Trump's 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow. Krutoy attended the contest, where he was photographed with Trump.... He was born in Ukraine and is also a close friend of Rinat Akhmetov -- a Ukrainian steel tycoon who in 2005 hired Paul Manafort ... as a adviser." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Dozens of uncanny coincidences or COLLUSION? You pick.

Adam Raymond of New York: David "Shulkin's ouster [as VA Secretary] ... appeared inevitable a few weeks back when an inspector general's report dinged him for blowing taxpayer money on a European vacation with his wife. Shulkin told NPR Thursday that the incident, which also includes an allegation of doctored emails and a lie about a nonexistent award, was 'completely mischaracterized.' He said he wanted to respond to the IG's report, but the White House muzzled him...."

Dan Merica of CNN: "Six House Democrats are calling on FBI Director Christopher Wray to investigate whether ... Jared Kushner leaked classified information to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, according to a letter obtained by CNN. The call comes after The Intercept, citing three sources, reported that the Saudi prince -- known casually by his initials, MBS -- told confidantes after their meeting last year that Kushner had discussed Saudi leaders who are disloyal to the crown prince."

*****

Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "After weeks of uncertainty atop the Department of Veterans Affairs, President Trump said on Wednesday he plans to replace its secretary, David J. Shulkin, with Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, the White House physician and a rear admiral in the Navy. The announcement punctuated what has been a sharp fall from favor for Dr. Shulkin, a politically moderate former hospital executive, who delivered Mr. Trump a string of bipartisan legislative victories at a time when he was struggling to find them. And it adds to a significant shake-up of Mr. Trump's senior staff, which has already included the secretary of state, director of the C.I.A. and the president’s national security adviser. Mr. Trump called Dr. Jackson 'highly respected' and thanked Dr. Shulkin for 'service to our country and to our great veterans.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Jackson's main qualification is that he can look at a fair-to-poor battery of test results & tell you you're in fabulous health. Running a huge federal agency? Not so much. ...

... Begins about 1:05 min. in:

... Rebecca Kheel of the Hill: "President Trump is removing Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin from his post after a rocky couple of months that started with a scathing report accusing him of misusing taxpayer dollars.... 'I am pleased to announce that I intend to nominate highly respected Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, MD, as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs....'... '....In the interim, Hon. Robert Wilkie of DOD will serve as Acting Secretary. I am thankful for Dr. David Shulkin’s service to our country and to our GREAT VETERANS!' [Trump tweeted]." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... MEANWHILE, David Shulkin was ready with a response, which magically got posted right after Trump's You're Fired tweet on the New York Times' op-ed page. After touting the VA's successes under his administration, Shulkin writes, "It seems that these successes within the department have intensified the ambitions of people who want to put V.A. health care in the hands of the private sector.... The advocates within the administration for privatizing V.A. health services ... saw me as an obstacle to privatization who had to be removed. That is because I am convinced that privatization is a political issue aimed at rewarding select people and companies with profits, even if it undermines care for veterans.... Unfortunately, the department has become entangled in a brutal power struggle, with some political appointees choosing to promote their agendas instead of what's best for veterans."

... Anyhow, bad news for Fox "News" host Pete Hegseth.

This Russia Thing, Ctd.

Michael Schmidt, et al., of the New York Times: "A lawyer for President Trump broached the idea of Mr. Trump pardoning two of his former top advisers, Michael T. Flynn and Paul Manafort, with their lawyers last year, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions. The discussions came as the special counsel was building cases against both men, and they raise questions about whether the lawyer, John Dowd, was offering pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation.... [Robert] Mueller' team could investigate the prospect that Mr. Dowd made pardon offers to thwart the inquiry, although legal experts are divided about whether such offers might constitute obstruction of justice.... It is unclear whether Mr. Dowd, who resigned last week as the head of the president's legal team, discussed the pardons with Mr. Trump before bringing them up with the other lawyers." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Perhaps you were thinking, as I was, that Dowd quit his day job either because he could not take another minute of Trump and/or because he was flabbergasted Trump had hired more nutty teevee lawyers. Well, it looks more as if Dowd quit -- or got pushed out -- because he himself could be indicted on obstruction-of-justice charges. The Trump White House is where a person goes to ruin his reputation, career and/or life, & that's even if s/he's a successful lawyer or a flag officer or a young woman who runs errands for Ivanka.

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post wonders how these little chats came about: "Here are a few options: 1. Trump knew of the pardon discussions and was trying to prevent Flynn's and Manafort's cooperation. This is perhaps the most troubling scenario for Trump, in terms of appearance, but it's also the most logical one. After all, would Dowd really float pardons for Flynn and Manafort if he didn't think Trump would follow through?... 2. Trump knew about the discussions, but truly just thinks Manafort and Flynn are innocent and/or good people.... 3. Dowd was freelancing[.]" ...

... Sean Illing of Vox: "I reached out to 10 legal experts and asked ... what it would mean for the investigation if Trump pardoned key players in the scandal like Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, or Jared Kushner before any of them could be convicted.... Nearly all the experts I spoke to agree on one thing: If Trump does use his pardoning powers to thwart the Russia investigation, it's very likely to backfire.... If someone has been pardoned, they no longer face the threat of prosecution, and so they can't use [the Fifth Amendment] as an excuse not to answer a question.... [The attorneys'] full responses, edited for clarity and style, are below." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Would you do anything based on a promise -- delivered second-hand, no less -- that if you did it, Trump at some time in the future would help you out? I didn't think so. The only reason Manafort hasn't flipped, IMO, is that Mueller has such a wide-ranging, air-tight case against him that a full pardon is his only hope of avoiding serious jail time.

Aaron Blake: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation just drew what appears to be its most direct line to date between President Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia. That line is drawn in a new court filing related to the upcoming sentencing of London attorney Alex van der Zwaan. Van der Zwaan has pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with deputy Trump campaign manager Rick Gates and a person identified in the document only as 'Person A.' Person A appears to be a former Ukraine-based aide to Gates and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort named Konstantin Kilimnik.... [From the filing:] '... Gates and Person A were directly communicating in September and October 2016.... Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agents assisting the Special Counsel's Office assess that Person A has ties to Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016.... Van der Zwaan admitted that he knew of that connection, stating that Gates told him Person A was a former Russian Intelligence Officer with GRU....'"

Karen Freifeld of Reuters: "A little-known former prosecutor with a doctorate in medieval history will play a central role on ... Donald Trump's legal team, as many top-tier lawyers shy away from representing him in a probe into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election. Andrew Ekonomou, 69, is one of a handful of lawyers assisting Jay Sekulow, the main attorney representing Trump in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Sekulow told Reuters on Tuesday that after the departure of Washington attorney John Dowd from Trump's personal legal team last week, Ekonomou will assume a more prominent role. Ekonomou said he has been working with Sekulow on the Mueller probe since June." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This will go very well for Trump when Mueller brings up all those questions about Byzantine Greek popes, because that Ekonomou's area of expertise.

... AND Karen Pence spends afternoons in the attic at Number One Observatory Circle hooking a large oval rug to be rimmed with the text of the Ten Commandments. ...

... MEANWHILE, Before Karen Gets to the First "Thou Shalt"... Darren Samuelsohn of Politico: "When ... Donald Trump lashed out against Robert Mueller by name earlier this month, the president's supporters sprang into action -- treating the chief Russia investigator to political campaign-style opposition research. Within hours, the Drudge Report featured a story blaming Mueller, the special counsel leading the Justice Department's Russia probe, for the FBI's clumsy investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks when Mueller ran the bureau. The independent pro-Trump journalist Sara Carter posted a story charging that Mueller, as a federal prosecutor in Boston in the mid-1980s, had covered up the FBI's dealings with the Mafia informant Whitey Bulger. Carter was soon discussing her findings in prime time with Fox News host Sean Hannity.... 'It looks like the beginnings of a campaign,' a source familiar with Trump's legal strategy said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Nicholas Fandos & Katie Benner of the New York Times: "The Justice Department's inspector general, facing increasing political pressure from Republicans in Congress and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, said on Wednesday that his office would investigate the surveillance of a former Trump campaign official. The announcement came amid a stream of attacks in recent months from the White House and Republican lawmakers seeking to undermine the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election. The inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, said he would examine whether law enforcement officials complied with the law and departmental policies in seeking permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap the former campaign adviser, Carter Page. Law enforcement officials had long had concerns that Mr. Page, a former investment banker based in Moscow, was acting as a Russian agent." But Congressional Republicans aren't satisfied; they say Horowitz's investigation is no substitute for a special counsel.

Sharon LaFraniere of the New York Times: "A lawsuit accusing President Trump of violating the Constitution by refusing to divorce himself from his businesses cleared a critical hurdle Wednesday when a federal judge in Maryland refused the Justice Department's plea to dismiss it. In a 47-page opinion, Judge Peter J. Messitte rejected the federal government's claims that the plaintiffs had not shown that they had suffered injuries that a court could address. The suit, filed by Washington, D.C., and the State of Maryland, accuses Mr. Trump of violating constitutional anticorruption clauses intended to limit his receipt of government-bestowed benefits, or emoluments."

Aubree Weaver of Politico: "After more than a year in limbo, the Eliminating Government-funded Oil-painting Act was signed into law by ... Donald Trump on Tuesday. The law bars the use of federal funds to pay for federal officers and employees' official oil portraits.... The legislation specifically targets those heading up executive agencies and legislative offices, as well as the president, vice president and members of Congress. The official portraits of the president and first lady, along with key lawmakers, are typically commissioned with private funding -- but the House has, in the past, allowed federal funds to be used for portraits of House speakers." Mrs. McC: BUT the feds are sure to pay for Trump's mug shot. He's such a winner. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

... The Fake Wall of Trump, Ctd. Salvador Hernandez of BuzzFeed: "President Trump on Wednesday tweeted that he had been briefed about 'the start of our Southern Border WALL' and included pictures depicting construction for the project.... The images tweeted by the president were not of his long-promised wall, but a months-long project to replace existing portions of a wall along Calexico, California.... The project, which started in 2009, will replace a 2.25-mile section in the California-Mexico border wall, according to a statement last month from US Customs and Border Protection. The original wall in that section, built in the 1990s, had been built from recycled metal scraps and old landing mat materials, the agency said." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump didn't just pull this photo array off a Fox "News" screenshot. No, he tweeted these photos of a nearly-decade-old project after a briefing, or so he claims. Are his handlers trying to mitigate a Trumpertantrum by distracting him with pretty pictures, or is he making up this stuff on his own? Either way, thanks, Roseanne & all you other Trumpbots!

Jonathan Swan of Axios: "... the tech behemoth Trump wants to go after is Amazon, according to five sources who've discussed it with him. 'He's obsessed with Amazon,' a source said. 'Obsessed.'... Trump's wealthy friends tell him Amazon is destroying their businesses. His real estate buddies tell him -- and he agrees -- that Amazon is killing shopping malls and brick-and-mortar retailers. Trump tells people Amazon has gotten a free ride from taxpayers and cushy treatment from the U.S. Postal Service. 'The whole post office thing, that's very much a perception he has,' another source said. 'It's been explained to him in multiple meetings that his perception is inaccurate and that the post office actually makes a ton of money from Amazon.'... Trump also pays close attention to the Amazon founder's ownership of The Washington Post, which the president views as [Jeff] Bezos' political weapon. ... Trump never talks about Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook: He isn't tuned in to the debate over how they handle people's data, and thinks the Russia story is a hoax...." ...

... SO THEN, the day after Swan's report... Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump spoke out against Amazon on Thursday, saying that the online behemoth does not pay enough taxes and uses the United States postal system 'as their Delivery Boy.' The president's commentary, made in a Twitter post, comes amid reports that Mr. Trump has expressed an interest in reining in the e-commerce business."

Trump Gets Another Day in Court. And Loses. David Adams of Univision: "An international arbitration court ruled late Tuesday against the Trump Organization's effort to win back control of a landmark luxury hotel in Panama after it was evicted by the owners earlier this month over allegations of 'horrific' mismanagement. The arbitrator's decision effectively upheld the firing of Trump's hotel staff, the takeover of its bank accounts and physical removal of the Trump name from the hotel, which made headlines on March 5. It appears to leave the Trump Organization with no other legal recourse except to seek damages for loss of income over the 12 years left on its management contract in Panama, according to the 32-page ruling, details of which were viewed by Univision. Trump's hotel management company was seeking an emergency court order to restore the status quo at the former Trump International Tower & Hotel in Panama, allowing it to return to running the 70-story mixed use condo hotel...."

Gail Collins figures "the best explanation" for Trump's erratic behavior "is that our president is occasionally taken over by a benevolent alien entity who changes his entire personality." Collins, begin so fact-obsessive, backs up her theory.

Margaret Hartmann: "Michael Cohen's Attorney [David Schwartz] May Be an Even Worse Lawyer Than He Is." Hartmann, with the help of multiple lawyers, explains. One attorney, Susan Simpson, explains one of Schwartz's arguments like so: "There are just so many problems with this that it feels a bit silly to single any one of them out. Like arguing that someone's imaginary friend can't be elected president because he's not 35 years old yet, and also a Canadian." Mrs. McC: But, hey, if he's sinking Cohen, at least Schwartz is helping out Trump & Stormy Daniels.

Future Inmates Square off on Prison Reform. Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "In the final months of the Obama administration, the Justice Department ... created a prison school system, pledged money for technology training and promised to help prevent former inmates from returning to prison. Almost immediately after taking office, Trump administration officials began undoing their work. Budgets were slashed, the school system was scrapped and studies were shelved as Attorney General Jeff Sessions brought to bear his tough-on-crime philosophy and deep skepticism of Obama-era crime-fighting policies. Now, nearly a year and a half later, the White House has declared that reducing recidivism and improving prisoner education is a top priority -- echoing some of the very policies it helped dismantle. This whiplash approach to federal prison policy reflects the tension between Jared Kushner ... and Mr. Sessions, a hard-liner whose views on criminal justice were forged at the height of the drug war. It has left both Democratic and Republican lawmakers confused and has contributed to skepticism that the Trump administration is serious about its own proposals." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie BTW: Let's see if the prison system can come up with a way to retrain Kushner & Sessions.

MEANWHILE, Some Departments Keep on Truckin'

Brady Dennis & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Environmental Protection Agency staffers received a list of 'talking points' this week instructing them to underscore the uncertainties about how human activity contributes to climate change.... Employees crafted the email, first disclosed Wednesday by HuffPost, based on controversial -- and scientifically unsound -- statements that ... Scott Pruitt has made about the current state of climate research.... The list echoes pronouncements by [EPA Administrator Scott] Pruitt..., along with other Trump administration officials...."

Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "The Trump administration is attempting to scale back federal efforts to enforce fair housing laws, freezing enforcement actions against local governments and businesses, including Facebook, while sidelining officials who have aggressively pursued civil rights cases. The policy shift, detailed in interviews with 20 current and former Department of Housing and Urban Development officials and in internal agency emails, is meant to roll back the Obama administration's attempts to reverse decades of racial, ethnic and income segregation in federally subsidized housing and development projects. The move coincides with the decision this month by Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, to strike the words 'inclusive' and 'free from discrimination' from HUD's mission statement. But Mr. Carson dismissed the idea he was abandoning the agency's fair housing mission as 'nonsense' in a memo to the department's staff earlier this year...."

Steve Benen: "The Trump administration touched off another ugly and avoidable fight this week, announcing that for the first time in 70 years, the decennial census will include a question about citizenship status. It didn't take long before opponents of the policy filed lawsuits. But it also didn't take long for the White House to start lying about the move.... Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters [Tuesday], for example, 'This is a question that's been included in every census since 1965.' An NPR fact-check soon followed, and not surprisingly, Sanders' claim isn't even close to being true. (The first hint something was amiss: there was no decennial census in 1965.) Perhaps the press secretary would've been better able to answer questions about the administration's approach to the census if she'd consulted with experts -- though in this case, Team Trump clearly doesn't have any use for expertise. [Commerce Secretary] Wilbur Ross could've listened to the career officials and former directors from both parties [who explained to him why they oppose addition of the question], but knowledge and institutional history stood in the way of Donald Trump's political plans -- and so the experts' guidance was ignored." ...

... A Disaster Waiting to Happen. Ari Berman of Mother Jones: "Of all the ways democracy is threatened under ... Donald Trump -- a blind eye to Russian meddling in elections, a rollback of voting rights, a disregard for checks and balances -- an unfair and inaccurate census could have the most dramatic long-term impact.... A 'perfect storm' is threatening the 2020 census, says Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former staff director for the House Subcommittee on Census and Population. Budget cuts enacted by the Trump administration and the Republican Congress forced the bureau to cancel crucial field tests in 2017 and 2018. The bureau's director resigned last June, and the administration has yet to name a full-time director or deputy director. The next census will also be the first to rely on the internet.... The Census Bureau has half as many regional centers and field offices today as it did in 2010."

Jeffrey Lewis, in a Daily Beast opinion piece, provides a fine example of John Bolton's SOP for international "diplomacy."

MEANWHILE, House Republicans Thought They too Should Make Some Risible News. Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "House Republicans are considering a vote on a 'balanced-budget amendment,' a move that would proclaim their desire to eliminate the federal deficit even as they control a Congress that has added more than $1 trillion to it. The plan is expected to have virtually no chance of passing, as it would require votes from Democrats in the Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the states. Republican lawmakers have pushed for the vote as a way to signal to constituents ahead of the midterm elections that they have tried to reduce the nation's deficit."

** Mark Sherman of the AP: "Dealing with an issue that could affect elections across the country, Supreme Court justices wrestled Wednesday with how far states may go to craft electoral districts that give the majority party a huge political advantage. But even as they heard their second case on partisan redistricting in six months, the justices expressed uncertainty about the best way to deal with a problem that several said would get worse without the court's intervention. The arguments the court heard Wednesday were over an appeal by Republican voters in Maryland who object to a congressional district that Democrats drew to elect a candidate of their own. The Maryland case is a companion to one from Wisconsin in which Democrats complain about a Republican-drawn map of legislative districts. That case was argued in October and remains undecided." ...

... Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: "At the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning, in a strangely desultory argument, the Justices, for the second time in a year, took up the subject [of gerrymandering] -- this time, in Maryland -- but they appeared further from a consensus, or even a majority, than they did during the argument of the Wisconsin case. It's always dangerous to infer too much from Justices' statements and questions during oral arguments, but the hints in today's proceedings suggested that the Court, as a whole, may not be ready to put an end to gerrymandering.... And, as the Justices dawdle, the problem is growing worse. With the advent of ever more powerful computer technology, politicians can draw legislative districts with chilling precision; they can guarantee victory or defeat before a single vote is cast. The 2020 census is drawing near, and the district lines for every legislative seat in the country will soon be redrawn. The time for the Supreme Court to address the problem is now."

Laurence Tribe in a Washington Post op-ed: "... retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens handed the gun lobby a rhetorical howitzer.... The kids have been savvy enough to know better.... Repealing the Second Amendment would eliminate that source of reassurance -- without even achieving the Parkland, Fla., students' aims. It would not take the most lethal, military-grade weapons out of dangerous hands. Indeed, it wouldn't eliminate a single gun or enact a single gun regulation."

Mukhtar M. Ibrahim of Minnesota Public Radio: "A Minneapolis FBI agent [-- Terry James Albury --] who started his career with the agency as an intern in 2000 has been charged with leaking classified information to the news website The Intercept.... [Albury is] the only African-American FBI field agent in Minnesota.... In January 2017, The Intercept published a series titled 'The FBI's Secret Rules,' based on Albury's leaked documents, which show the depth and broad powers of the FBI expansion since 9/11 and its recruitment efforts.... Albury is the second person charged with leaking secret documents to The Intercept. In June 2017, an intelligence contractor was charged with leaking a classified report about Russia's interference in the 2016 election to The Intercept, the first criminal leak under President Trump." ...

     ... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Maybe the Intercept should quit outting sources with their FOIA requests & clue-riddled reports. Leading the feds to your sources is a pretty good way to shut up anyone thinking of blowing some whistles. Just saying.

Alex Hern of the Guardian: "Facebook is shutting down a feature that allowed 'data brokers' such as Experian and Oracle to use their own reams of consumer information to target social network users, the company has announced. The feature, known as 'Partner Categories', will be 'winding down over the next six months', Facebook announced in a terse blogpost. The company says the move 'will help improve people's privacy on Facebook.'... Facebook is also closing down a data flow in the opposite direction, preventing the same data brokers from receiving anonymised information about how their ad campaigns have been received.... Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group, described the move as 'an attempt to generate positive press on the privacy front without directly causing a meaningful negative revenue impact.'" ...

... Alex Hern: "Facebook is launching a range of new tools in an effort to 'put people in more control over their privacy' in the buildup to new EU regulations that tighten up data protection.... On mobile devices, Facebook users will now be able to find all their settings in a single place, rather than spread across 'nearly 20 different screens' as they were before. They will also be able to find separate item, the 'privacy shortcuts' menu, which provides a clearing house for options about data protection, ad personalisation and on-platform privacy. The site is also complying with [EU] rules about access to stored personal data with a new 'access your information' tool, that allows people to find, download and delete Facebook data. But Facebook is not committing to making it any easier for users to delete their accounts wholesale. The option to permanently delete an account is currently buried in a help menu...." ...

... Matt Novak of Gizmodo: "Playboy has become the latest brand to delete its Facebook pages, claiming that Facebook is both 'sexually repressive' and contradicts Playboy's values. Playboy's decision follows other companies that have recently left the social media platform like Tesla and SpaceX, and even mentioned Facebook's 'recent meddling' in the American electoral process. 'There are more than 25 million fans who engage with Playboy via our various Facebook pages, and we do not want to be complicit in exposing them to the reported practices,' Playboy said in a statement issued overnight." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Way Beyond the Beltway

Ben Westcott & Yoonjung Seo of CNN: "The leaders of North and South Korea will meet on April 27 for the first time since 2007, the two countries announced Thursday after high-level talks. The landmark meeting between President Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un will be held a Freedom House on the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), according to the joint statement issued after the talks." ...

... Jane Perlez of the New York Times: "With a dose of mystery and the flair of a showman, North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong-un, used his debut as an international statesman on Wednesday to present himself as confident, reasonable -- and willing to bargain. Mr. Kim's surprise two-day visit to Beijing, his first known trip abroad since taking power, was effectively a reminder of how much he has set the agenda in the crisis over his nation's nuclear arsenal -- and of what a strong hand he has going into talks, first with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea next month and later with President Trump. Mr. Kim has yet to say what concessions he is willing to make, or what he may demand from the United States in return. But he continued to dominate the diplomatic process, reaffirming his willingness to meet with Mr. Trump and repeating his vague commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in talks with President Xi Jinping of China, according to Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency." ...

... Evan Osnos of the New Yorker: "Whatever the precise parameters of Kim’s motivation, his China play has made it more difficult for Trump, who would have preferred that Beijing remain at odds with Pyongyang. Kim and Xi have re-scrambled the perceived loyalties and suspicions that will shape any potential encounter between North Korea and the United States -- at the negotiating table or on the battlefield."

The Houseguest from Hell. William Booth & Karla Adam of the Washington Post: "Julian Assange, the controversial founder of WikiLeaks, has been barred from using the Internet at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, where he has been holed up for nearly six years, the Ecuadoran government announced Wednesday. In a statement, Ecuador said it has suspended Assange's ability to communicate with the outside world because he violated an agreement he signed with his hosts at the end of 2017 not to use his communiques to interfere in the affairs of other states. It was not immediately clear whether visitors would also be stopped."

The Commentariat -- March 28, 2018

Afternoon Update:

NEW. Rebecca Kheel of the Hill: "President Trump is removing Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin> from his post after a rocky couple of months that started with a scathing report accusing him of misusing taxpayer dollars.... 'I am pleased to announce that I intend to nominate highly respected Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, MD, as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs....'... '....In the interim, Hon. Robert Wilkie of DOD will serve as Acting Secretary. I am thankful for Dr. David Shulkin's service to our country and to our GREAT VETERANS!' [Trump tweeted]."

Michael Schmidt, et al., of the New York Times: "A lawyer for President Trump broached the idea of Mr. Trump pardoning two of his former top advisers, Michael T. Flynn and Paul Manafort, with their lawyers last year, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions. The discussions came as the special counsel was building cases against both men, and they raise questions about whether the lawyer, John Dowd, was offering pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation.... [Robert] Mueller's team could investigate the prospect that Mr. Dowd made pardon offers to thwart the inquiry, although legal experts are divided about whether such offers might constitute obstruction of justice.... It is unclear whether Mr. Dowd, who resigned last week as the head of the president's legal team, discussed the pardons with Mr. Trump before bringing them up with the other lawyers."

Karen Freifeld of Reuters: "A little-known former prosecutor with a doctorate in medieval history will play a central role on ... Donald Trump's legal team, as many top-tier lawyers shy away from representing him in a probe into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election. Andrew Ekonomou, 69, is one of a handful of lawyers assisting Jay Sekulow, the main attorney representing Trump in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Sekulow told Reuters on Tuesday that after the departure of Washington attorney John Dowd from Trump's personal legal team last week, Ekonomou will assume a more prominen role. Ekonomou said he has been working with Sekulow on the Mueller probe since June."

Darren Samuelsohn of Politico: "When ... Donald Trump lashed out against Robert Mueller by name earlier this month, the president's supporters sprang into action -- treating the chief Russia investigator to political campaign-style opposition research. Within hours, the Drudge Report featured a story blaming Mueller, the special counsel leading the Justice Department's Russia probe, for the FBI's clumsy investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks when Mueller ran the bureau. The independent pro-Trump journalist Sara Carter posted a story charging that Mueller, as a federal prosecutor in Boston in the mid-1980s, had covered up the FBI's dealings with the Mafia informant Whitey Bulger. Carter was soon discussing her findings in prime time with Fox News host Sean Hannity.... 'It looks like the beginnings of a campaign,' a source familiar with Trump's legal strategy said."

Aubree Weaver of Politico: "After more than a year in limbo, the Eliminating Government-funded Oil-painting Act was signed into law by ... Donald Trump on Tuesday. The law bars the use of federal funds to pay for federal officers and employees' official oil portraits.... The legislation specifically targets those heading up executive agencies and legislative offices, as well as the president, vice president and members of Congress. The official portraits of the president and first lady, along with key lawmakers, are typically commissioned with private funding -- but the House has, in the past, allowed federal funds to be used for portraits of House speakers."

Future Inmates Square off on Prison Reform. Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "In the final months of the Obama administration, the Justice Department ... created a prison school system, pledged money for technology training and promised to help prevent former inmates from returning to prison. Almost immediately after taking office, Trump administration officials began undoing their work. Budgets were slashed, the school system was scrapped and studies were shelved as Attorney General Jeff Sessions brought to bear his tough-on-crime philosophy and deep skepticism of Obama-era crime-fighting policies. Now, nearly a year and a half later, the White House has declared that reducing recidivism and improving prisoner education is a top priority -- echoing some of the very policies it helped dismantle. This whiplash approach to federal prison policy reflects the tension between Jared Kushner ... and Mr. Sessions, a hard-liner whose views on criminal justice were forged at the height of the drug war. It has left both Democratic and Republican lawmakers confused and has contributed to skepticism that the Trump administration is serious about its own proposals." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie BTW: Let's see if the prison system can come up with a way to retrain Kushner & Sessions.

Matt Novak of Gizmodo: "Playboy has become the latest brand to delete its Facebook pages, claiming that Facebook is both 'sexually repressive' and contradicts Playboy's values. Playboy's decision follows other companies that have recently left the social media platform like Tesla and SpaceX, and even mentioned Facebook's 'recent meddling' in the American electoral process. 'There are more than 25 million fans who engage with Playboy via our various Facebook pages, and we do not want to be complicit in exposing them to the reported practices,' Playboy said in a statement issued overnight."

*****

Josh Dawsey & Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "President Trump, who repeatedly insisted in the 2016 campaign that Mexico would pay for a wall along the southern border, is privately pushing the U.S. military to fund construction of his signature project. Trump told advisers he was spurned in a large spending bill last week when lawmakers appropriated only $1.6 billion for the border wall. He has suggested to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and congressional leaders that the Pentagon could fund the sprawling construction, citing a 'national security' risk. After floating the notion to several advisers last week, Trump told House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) that the military should pay for the wall, according to three people familiar with the meeting Wednesday in the White House residence. Ryan offered little reaction to the notion, these people said, but senior Capitol Hill officials later said it was an unlikely prospect." ...

     ... Go Fund My Wall. Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Trump should set up a fund to get his millions of supporters to kick in for the wall & promise them Mexico will pay them back. This could be the biggest scam of all time.

Ah, Watergate. Katie Rogers & Ken Vogel of the New York Times: "President Trump kept a relatively low profile and did not make any public appearances on Tuesday, but emerged for a rare evening trip outside the White House to meet with deep-pocketed donors at a real estate developer's home in Virginia. Mr. Trump ... traveled to the McLean, Va., home of Giuseppe Cecchi, according to a person with knowledge of the president's plans. Mr. Cecchi is a loyalist who previously hosted Mr. Trump for a $10,000-a-couple fund-raising dinner in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.... Mr. Cecchi who at one point was known as the 'condo king' of Washington, is known for developing the Watergate complex."

Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "The White House on Tuesday downplayed reports it is investigating more than $500 million in loans made last year to ... Jared Kushner's family real estate firm.... Sarah Huckabee Sanders said White House attorneys are 'not probing whether Jared Kushner violated the law' by taking meetings with executives whose companies later loaned large sums to his family's business.... 'I have discussed this matter with the White House counsel's office in order to ensure that they have begun the process of ascertaining the facts necessary to determine whether any law or regulation has been violated,' acting OGE Director David Apol wrote last week to Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) Kushner's private attorney, Abbe Lowell, told the Journal that after looking into reports about the loans, 'the White House counsel concluded there were no issues involving Jared.' That explanation did not satisfy the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), who along with Krishnamoorthi requested documents related to the White Houses internal investigation. Asked if the White House would comply with the request, Sanders said 'we don't have anything further' beyond the statement she delivered." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As usual, Sanders' response is, "They gave me only one anodyne line to memorize on this, & that's all you get." Reporting suggests Sanders is being deceptive here rather than simply "downplaying" a White House "investigation"/whitewash. She does that a lot. See Kira Lerner's report below.

Guardian & Reuters: "Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to special legal status for certain immigrants from Liberia, thousands of whom escaped the violence of war and have lived in the United States for decades. They will now face the prospect of deportation, with the law that will end their protection coming into effect next year. The president cited improved conditions in the west African country." --safari

Michael Wines & Emily Baumgaertner of the New York Times: "At least 12 states signaled Tuesday that they would sue to block the Trump administration from adding a question about citizenship to the 2020 census, arguing that the change would cause fewer Americans to be counted and violate the Constitution." ...

... Liarbee Sanders. Kira Lerner of ThinkProgress: "White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders falsely claimed on Tuesday that the citizenship question the Trump administration decided to add to the 2020 Census has been part of the national survey for decades. 'This is a question that's been included in every census since 1965, with the exception of 2010 when it was removed,' Sanders said, later repeating the same claim. The citizenship question has not been part of the census since 1950." --safari ...

... Miriam Jordan of the New York Times: "A coalition of state attorneys general advised the Commerce Department last month against including the citizenship question, saying that in addition to undermining participation among immigrants, it would result in an undercount of the overall population in many areas. The state of California has already filed suit, arguing that including the question is a violation of the United States Constitution, and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman of New York announced he would lead a separate multistate legal challenge." Many undocumented workers say they will not respond to the census at all. Mrs. McC: Neither will I answer the question regarding citizenship. I stand with the people who mowed my lawn, trimmed my trees, built my swimming pool, harvest the vegies I eat & so forth. ...

... Tara Bahrampour of the Washington Post: "The NAACP said it is planning to file a lawsuit against the Census Bureau the secretary of commerce and President Trump to force a more accurate count of minority populations such as those residing in Prince George's County, Md., which had one of the highest undercounts nationwide in the last census." ...

... Reid Wilson of the Hill: "Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who heads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said his group would sue the administration to block the question. 'Make no mistake -- this decision is motivated purely by politics,' Holder said. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez called the addition 'a craven attack on our democracy and a transparent attempt to intimidate immigrant communities.'"

This Russia Thing, Ctd.

Spencer Hsu & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "The FBI has found that a business associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, including during the 2016 campaign when Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, were in touch with the associate, according to new court filings. The documents, filed late Tuesday by prosecutors for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, also allege that Gates had said he knew the associate was a former officer with the Russian military intelligence service. The allegations underscore Mueller's interest in Manafort and Gates, who continued to interact with business associates in Ukraine even as they helped lead Donald Trump's presidential campaign.... Prosecutors made the allegation without naming the Manafort associate but described his role with Manafort in detail. The description matches the Russian manager of Manafort's lobbying office in Kiev, Konstantin Kilimnik."

Murder Mystery -- Solved. Jason Leopold, et al., of BuzzFeed & other correspondents: "The FBI possesses a secret report asserting that Vladimir Putin's former media czar was beaten to death by hired thugs in Washington, DC -- directly contradicting the US government's official finding that Mikhail Lesin died by accident. The report, according to four sources who have read all or parts of it, was written by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele.... The bureau received his report while it was helping the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department investigate the Russian media baron's death, the sources said.... The BuzzFeed News series also revealed new details about Lesin -- including that he died on the eve of a scheduled meeting with US Justice Department officials.... Steele's report says that Lesin was bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for an oligarch close to Putin, the four sources said. The thugs had been instructed to beat Lesin, not kill him, but they went too far, the sources said Steele wrote. Three of the sources said that the report described the killers as Russian state security agents moonlighting for the oligarch. The Steele report is not the FBI's only source for this account of Lesin's death: Three other people, acting independently from Steele, said they also told the FBI that Lesin had been bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for the same oligarch named by Steele." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: If true, I don't see how this murder differs in intent from the attempted murders in England of Sergei & Yulia Skripal. If the allegations are true, this is Russia coming into the U.S. to kill a Russian. It appears the FBI is covering up Lesin's murder. Why? ...

... Patrick Wintour & Julian Borger of the Guardian: "The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said the permanent size of the Russian mission would be cut from 30 to 20 people, adding the announcement was 'a clear and very strong message that there was a cost to Russia's reckless actions' in poisoning the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury earlier this month. He claimed Russia had underestimated Nato's resolve and said the announcements would reduce Russia's capability to do intelligence work across Nato." --safari

Allegra Kirkland of TPM: "The National Rifle Association is acknowledging that it accepts donations from foreign entities, and that it moves money between its various accounts 'as permitted by law.' The gun group insists it has never received foreign money in connection with an election. But campaign finance experts say that, since money is fungible, that assurance doesn't mean much. Though it's a long way from being confirmed and may never be, the NRA's new admissions offer perhaps the most compelling evidence yet that foreign money could have allowed the group to conduct political activities boosting Trump. The admissions came in a recent letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who has sought answers about the group's foreign funding...."

On Another Murder in the District. Oliver Darcy of CNN: "The brother of Seth Rich, the slain Democratic National Committee staffer whose unsolved murder became the basis for conspiracy theories on the far-right, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against individuals and media organizations that he alleges peddled false and unfounded claims about him. The lawsuit, filed by Aaron Rich in US District Court in the District of Columbia, accuses Ed Butowsky, a wealthy Texas businessman; Matt Couch, a fringe internet activist; America First Media, Couch's media company; and The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, of acting 'with reckless disregard for the truth.'" ...

     ... This video, which accompanies Darcy's story, is very good. Tom Kludt explains how the Seth Rich conspiracy theory conveniently washes away This Russia Thing:

Derek Hawkins of the Washington Post: "Stormy Daniels's attorney [Michael Avenatti] is asking a federal judge in California for permission to depose President Trump and his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen about the nondisclosure agreement the porn actress says she signed to keep quiet about her alleged affair with the president.... The court is scheduled to hold a hearing on the matter on April 30."

** Danny Vinik of Politico: "A Politico review of public documents, newly obtained FEMA records and interviews with more than 50 people involved with disaster response indicates that the Trump administration -- and the president himself -- responded far more aggressively to Texas than to Puerto Rico.... A comparison of government statistics relating to the two recovery efforts strongly supports the views of disaster-recovery experts that FEMA and the Trump administration exerted a faster, and initially greater, effort in Texas, even though the damage in Puerto Rico exceeded that in Houston.... Nine days after the respective hurricanes, FEMA had approved $141.8 million in individual assistance to Harvey victims, versus just $6.2 million for Maria victims.... Nine days after Harvey, the federal government had 30,000 personnel in the Houston region, compared with 10,000 at the same point after Maria. It took just 10 days for FEMA to approve permanent disaster work for Texas, compared with 43 days for Puerto Rico." The authors report more comparative stats. Read on for their devastating comparisons of Trump's responses to the two hurricanes. Even if you buy some of the excuses for the difference in relief efforts, this is a damning report. FEMA is supposed to help all Americans, not just those who might vote for Trump.

All the Best People, Ctd. Tom Scheck of American Public Media: "The lure of another television personality has President Trump reportedly considering Fox News' Pete Hegseth to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. But while Hegseth's experience as a combat veteran and commentator on Fox would seem to appeal politically to the president, his appointment could extend two disruptive narratives playing out in the White House: marital infidelity and nepotism. An APM Reports investigation has found Hegseth engaged in two extramarital affairs with co-workers during two marriages and paid his brother -- who had no professional experience -- $108,000 to work for him while chief executive of a non-profit. And while running a political action committee in his native Minnesota, Hegseth spent a third of the PAC's money on Christmas parties for families and friends."

Burgess Everett & Rachel Bade of Politico: "Republicans are dreaming of passing another round of tax cuts this year -- or at least making vulnerable Democrats squirm by voting against them. GOP leaders are weighing a series of votes to make last year's temporary tax cuts for individuals permanent, according to Republicans in both chambers. The strategy would portray the party as the guardian of Americans' paychecks, Republicans say, and buoy the GOP during a brutal election year.... Either Democrats support the legislation, giving the GOP a major legislative accomplishment in its scramble to save its majorities. Or, more likely, Democrats block the bill -- allowing Republicans to paint them as opponents of the middle class.... Much, if not all, of the maneuvering over tax cuts is pure politics. If Republicans were serious about passing a second batch of tax cuts, they'd use the powerful tool that allows for passage by a simple majority, as they did last December."

Senate Race. Addy Baird of ThinkProgress: "Mitt Romney is more conservative than President Trump on immigration, the 2012 Republican nominee for president and current candidate for Senate in Utah said at a forum Monday ... when he was asked about his conservative credentials at the event at the Provo Library. 'My view was these DACA kids shouldn't all be allowed to stay in the country legally.'... Romney's comments about the DACA program Monday are consistent with his hardline views during previous runs for office." --safari

Former Justice John Paul Stevens, in a New York Times op-ed: "Overturning [the 2008 5-4 District of Columbia v. Heller] decision via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.'s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option." Mrs. McC: Yeah, getting 2/3rds of the Congress to pass an amendment & 3/4s of the states to ratify a repeal of the Second Amendment would be "simple." However, if you're not sure how the Second Amendment became an individual right, Justice Stevens provides a short primer. ...

... digby wrote a while back, "Indeed, such right-wing luminaries as Joe the plumber, who not long ago shared the stage with the Republican nominees for president and vice president, said explicitly: 'Your dead kids don't trump my constitutional rights.'" Mrs. McC: Actually, yeah, I'd say they do. An individual's "rights" are not privileged over the rights of others. ...

... Steve M.: "Matt Yglesias makes a good point:... 'Doesn't take a constitutional amendment to get a Supreme Court ruling that the right to bear arms pertains specifically to membership in a state-organized militia.'... We could have been on our way to a Supreme Court that might issue a ruling like that, but then there was that 2016 election." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Yeah but, stare decisis. Even more liberal members of the Court are loathe to overturn recent decisions.

** The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Is So Digital. Nicholas Confessore & Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times: "As ... Cambridge Analytica sought to harvest the Facebook data of tens of millions of Americans in summer 2014, the company received help from at least one employee at Palantir Technologies, a top Silicon Valley contractor to American spy agencies and the Pentagon. It was a Palantir employee in London, working closely with the data scientists building Cambridge's psychological profiling technology, who suggested the scientists create their own app -- a mobile-phone-based personality quiz -- to gain access to Facebook users' friend networks, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.... The revelations pulled Palantir -- co-founded by the wealthy libertarian Peter Thiel -- into the furor surrounding Cambridge, which improperly obtained Facebook data to build analytical tools it deployed on behalf of Donald J. Trump and other Republican candidates in 2016. Mr. Thiel, a supporter of President Trump, serves on the board at Facebook.... The connections between Palantir and Cambridge Analytica were thrust into the spotlight by [whistleblower Christopher] Wylie's testimony [before British lawmakers] on Tuesday. Both companies are linked to tech-driven billionaires who backed Mr. Trump's campaign" ...

... Julia Wong & Sabrina Siddiqui of the Guardian: "Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has agreed to testify before the United States Congress in the wake of a data harvesting scandal that has sent the company's share price tumbling and prompted numerous investigations and lawsuits. Zuckerberg has accepted an invitation to testify before the House energy and commerce committee, according to an aide familiar with the discussions.... His decision to testify before the US Congress was first reported by CNN, and contrasts with his refusal to appear before members of parliament in the UK."

... Charles Bagli of the New York Times: "Fair housing groups filed a lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday saying that Facebook continues to discriminate against certain groups, including women, disabled veterans and single mothers, in the way that it allows advertisers to target the audience for their ads. The suit comes as the social network is scrambling to deal with an international crisis over the misuse of data belonging to 50 million of its users. Facebook ... provides advertisers with the ability to customize their messages and target who sees them by selecting from preset lists of demographics, likes, behaviors and interests, while excluding others." Facebook has repeatedly promised to fix the problem; the suit alleges the company has not.

"Capitalism Is Awesome," Ctd. Arthur Nelsen of the Guardian: "Bank holdings in 'extreme' fossil fuels skyrocketed globally to $115bn during Donald Trump's first year as US president, with holdings in tar sands oil more than doubling, a new report has found. A sharp flight from fossil fuels investments after the Paris agreement was reversed last year with a return to energy sources dubbed 'extreme' because of their contribution to global emissions.... The bulk of new 'extreme' investments came in a doubling of loans and bonds to Canada's government-backed tar sands industry, even though its success would be disastrous for climate mitigation efforts...Support for coal among the 36 banks surveyed was also up by 6% in 2017 after a 38% plunge in 2016." --safari

Faiz Siddiqui of the Washington Post: "More than a week after one of Uber's self-driving cars struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona, government officials and technology firms have begun reconsidering their rapid deployment of some autonomous technology amid fears it's not ready for public testing. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) banned Uber's self-driving cars from the state's roads Monday, saying he was 'very disturbed' by police video showing one of the company's self-driving cars striking and killing a pedestrian in Tempe last week. The ban was limited to Uber, but it held special significance because Ducey had previously welcomed Uber's testing in the state by pitting Arizona's comparatively relaxed regulatory framework against neighboring California's. Separately, Uber agreed to discontinue testing its autonomous vehicles in California.... Meanwhile, computer-chip-maker Nvidia suspended its autonomous-vehicle tests Tuesday...." ...

... Mark Harris of the Guardian: "Arizona's Republican governor repeatedly encouraged Uber's controversial experiment with autonomous cars in the state, enabling a secret testing program for self-driving vehicles with limited oversight from experts, according to hundreds of emails.... The previously unseen emails between Uber and the office of governor Doug Ducey reveal how Uber began quietly testing self-driving cars in Phoenix in August 2016 without informing the public. On Monday, 10 days after one of Uber's self-driving vehicles killed a pedestrian in a Phoenix suburb, Ducey suspended the company's right to operate autonomous cars on public roads in Arizona. It was a major about-face for the governor, who has spent years embracing the Silicon Valley startup."

"Capitalism Is Awesome", Booze Edition. Alternet, via RawStory: "The past few years have revealed some disturbing news for the alcohol industry.... What do [the] events all have in common? Monsanto's Roundup.... French molecular biologist Gilles-Éric Séralini released shocking findings in January of 2018 that of all the brands of Roundup they tested, over a dozen had high levels of arsenic -- over five times the allowable limit along with dangerous levels of heavy metals." --safari: Not even organic booze is safe.

Sara Moniuszko of USA Today: WalMart "will remove the women's fashion magazine [Cosmopolitan] from checkout lines at 5,000 stores across the country. In a statement..., Walmart spokesperson Meggan Kring said: '... Walmart will continue to offer Cosmopolitan to customers that wish to purchase the magazine, but it will no longer be located in the checkout aisles. While this was primarily a business decision, the concerns raised were heard.' The news was shared Tuesday via a press release from National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), an organization that says it helped instigate the policy change. The [NCOSE, which changed its name from Morality in Media in 2015, has been working to cover or remove Cosmo from store shelves for years, deeming it porn.... The Me Too movement ... has focused on sexual harassment and assault rather than pornography."

Beyond the Beltway

Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "The brother of an unarmed black man who was shot and killed by police temporarily shut down a city council meeting about the shooting. Stevante Clark, whose brother Stephon was shot last week, walked into the Sacramento City Council meeting Tuesday night chanting his late brother's name. He led a group of protestors into the meeting chambers in city hall, all chanting Stephon Clark's name. Stephon Clark, 22, was shot and killed by police in his grandmother's backyard in Sacramento. Officers were responding to a report of a suspect breaking car windows and shot Clark 20 times, believing he had a weapon. They only found a cell phone on him." ...

... Luis Sanchez of the Hill: "Protesters in Sacramento blocked the entrance to Golden 1 Center, the arena where the Sacramento Kings play, because of the police shooting of Stephon Clark last week. The protesters led the venue to temporarily close the arena’s entrances and -- despite a delay being initially announced -- the game between the Kings and the Dallas Mavericks began as scheduled." ...

... Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "Responding to public outcry over a police shooting in which an unarmed black man was killed in his own backyard in Sacramento, Attorney General Xavier Becerra of California said Tuesday his office would step in to oversee the investigation. The shooting of Stephon Clark, 22, widely viewed in publicly released police videos, has triggered demonstrations and community anguish, the latest example of an African-American man killed by the police under ambiguous circumstances. Mr. Becerra, speaking with city officials, including the mayor and police chief, announced that the California Department of Justice would also review the Sacramento police's training and policies regarding the use of force." ...

... Alan Blinder & Richard Fausset of the New York Times: "A pair of white police officers in Baton Rouge, La., will not be prosecuted by the state authorities in a fatal shooting of a black man there almost two years ago. The decision brings another closely watched and widely scrutinized investigation of potential police misconduct to an end without charges. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced his conclusion at a news conference on Tuesday, almost 11 months after the United States Department of Justice declined to bring charges in the death of the man, Alton B. Sterling. The attorney general's decision was widely expected, in part because officers are rarely charged in connection with on-duty shootings."

Matt Shuham of TPM: "Yet another Wisconsin judge said Tuesday that Gov. Scott Walker (R) must call special elections by Thursday to fill the vacant seats of two state legislators. Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess denied the state's Justice Department's request that Dane County Circuit Judge Josann Reynolds's order from last week be delayed until April 6.... After Reynolds' ruling last week, the Republican-controlled legislature called an extraordinary session for April 4 to change the very special election law in question. The proposed change to the law would prohibit the governor from calling for special elections after primaries in years when the seats would otherwise be filled. The primaries, it so happens, fall on April 3." --safari

** Political Theatrics. Matt Dixon of Politico: "When Gov. Rick Scott and U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced on Jan. 9 that Florida was 'off the table' for offshore oil drilling, the governor cast the hastily arranged news conference at the Tallahassee airport as unplanned and the Trump administration's decision as something Scott had influenced at the eleventh hour. In fact, Zinke's top advance staffer, whose job it is to plan ahead for such events, was in Tallahassee the previous day. And top officials from the offices of both Scott and the secretary were in regular contact for several days leading up to the announcement, according to more than 1,200 documents reviewed by Politico Florida as part of a public records request." --safari

Way Beyond

Emily Rauhala of the Washington Post: "North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited China for an unofficial visit this week, Chinese state media confirmed Wednesday. This is believed to be Kim's first trip abroad as leader since he came to power in 2011. It came in the run-up to summits with leaders from South Korea and the United States." ...

     ... New Lede: "North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a surprise trip to China this week, meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of planned summits with South Korean and U.S. leaders, Chinese and North Korean state media confirmed Wednesday."

News Lede

Washington Post: "Dr. [Johan] van Hulst, who was credited with saving more than 600 Jewish babies and children during World War II and, in 1972, was named Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem, died March 22 in Amsterdam. He was 107."

The Commentariat -- March 27, 2018

** Springtime for Hitler. Peter Goodman of the New York Times: "In the aftermath of World War II, the victorious Western countries forged institutions -- NATO, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization -- that aimed to keep the peace through collective military might and shared prosperity. They promoted democratic ideals and international trade while investing in the notion that coalitions were the antidote to destructive nationalism. But now [that] model [is] being challenged by a surge of nationalism and its institutions under assault from some of the very powers that constructed them -- not least, the United States under President Trump.... But the United States is far from the only power tearing at the foundations of the postwar order. Britain is abandoning the European Union.... Italy just elevated two populist political parties that nurse historical animosities against the bloc. Polan and Hungary, once viewed as triumphs of democracy flowering in post-Soviet soil, have shackled the media, cracked down on public gatherings, and attacked the independence of their court systems. This re-emergence of authoritarian impulses has undercut a central thrust of European policy since the end of the Cold War."

Katie Rogers & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump ordered the expulsion of 60 Russians from the United States on Monday, adding to a growing cascade of similar actions taken by western allies in response to Russia's alleged poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. Poland, Italy, Denmark, France and Germany were among 14 European Union member nations announcing plans to expel Russians from their countries in solidarity with Britain, which previously expelled 23 Russian diplomats after the poisoning. Canada also said it would expel four." (Linked yesterday; new lede.)

Alan Rappeport & Prashant Rao of the New York Times: "President Trump secured his first major trade deal on Monday as the United States and South Korea reached an agreement to renegotiate their trade pact, with Seoul agreeing to reduce its steel exports and open its market to American cars in exchange for an exemption from Mr. Trump's global tariffs on steel and aluminum. The deal ... appears to end a dispute that had strained ties between Washington and a reliable Asian ally. It also seemed to confirm Mr. Trump's 'America First' approach to trade, in which he has sought to extract concessions in return for exemptions and revisions to the blanket steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the White House this month." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... David Dayen argues in the New Republic that Trump's "trade wars" are little more than shams -- melodramatic announcements & press releases hyped by the media.

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast: "Amidst the numbing chaos that is the Trump administration, these past few days are worth reflecting on because three events have moved the needle in a bad direction. 1. The hiring of John Bolton highlights Donald Trump's instability, his total lack of any coherent worldview, and most of all -- and most dangerously of all -- his need to feel that no limits are being imposed on him.... 2. Trump&'s slapstick handling of the budget shows us -- again, but probably more than anything before it -- just how massively in over his head he is in the job.... 3. The Stormy Daniels story.... The threats made against her are the real story here.... Depending on how it plays out it stands the chance of reminding the country of something that many have forgotten, or never knew: The president of the United States has mob ties."

Michael Shear & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "After 61 weeks in the White House, President Trump has found two people he won't attack on Twitter: Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. The verbose commander in chief has posted more than 2,900 times on Twitter since taking office, using the term 'FAKE NEWS' to describe everything from the Russia inquiry and allegations of chaos in the White House to harassment accusations, the size of his inaugural crowds and heated arguments with world leaders. But he has been uncharacteristically silent in recent days -- to the relief of his advisers -- as a pornographic film star and a Playboy model described intimate details of sexual encounters with Mr. Trump.... Inside the White House, Mr. Trump is eager to defend himself against allegations that he insists are false, those close to him say. And he is growing increasingly frustrated with breathless, wall-to-wall news media coverage of the salacious details from the two women. On Monday, Ms. Clifford's [a/k/a Daniels] lawyer added new charges to the suit she filed: that [Trump lawyer Michael Cohen defamed Ms. Clifford in denying her claims; that he and Mr. Trump pursued the deal to specifically help Mr. Trump's election prospects; and that he then structured the agreement to shield from public view what was, effectively, an illegal $130,000 campaign gift." ...

... Jill Colvin of the AP: "The White House is disputing adult film star Stormy Daniels' claim that she was threatened to keep quiet over her alleged affair with Donald Trump and said the president continues to deny the relationship.... Trump, who frequently takes on his foes in person and on social media, remained uncharacteristically quiet about the matter Monday.... Instead, he left the denials to his White House staff. Spokesman Raj Shah declined to say whether the president had watched Daniels' interview, but said Trump did not believe any of the claims she made. 'The president strongly, clearly and has consistently denied these underlying claims, and the only person who’s been inconsistent is the one making the claims,' Shah said." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: This is the second time that Sarah Sanders took a mysterious mid-week "vacation" when the White House press corps would inevitably raise a matter involving abuse of women; the first time was when the Rob Porter story hit the fan. Either Sanders thinks straight-out lying about abuse is a bridge too far or Trump thinks only men are equipped to handle such allegations. ...

... Justin Baragona of Mediaite: "A day after 60 Minutes aired the much-hyped interview with his client, Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti took to Twitter to brag about the huge ratings, taking a page out of the Trumpian playbook. Linking to a New York Times piece on the program's ratings, Avenatti posted that since 'this is what really matters (LOL),' the ratings for Daniels' interview 'CRUSHED (BY MILLIONS) any Apprentice show in the last ten years as well as Mr. Trump's Nov 2016 appearance.'... 60 Minutes noted earlier [Monday] that last night's program was its most-watched since a 2008 interview with Barack and Michelle Obama." ...

... CBS News: "A night before CBS News' '60 Minutes' aired its interview with Stephanie Clifford, better known as the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, President Trump had dinner with Michael Cohen, his longtime personal attorney." Mrs. McC: Just wanted to chat about his golf game, I guess. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Jill Filipovic in the Guardian: "The threats [to Daniels] sound ham-fisted and cartoonish, almost like something out of a mafia movie. But then, 'ham-fisted and cartoonish' also describes Michael Cohen, many of Trump's long-serving employees and contacts, and the president himself.... This is a president who hired 'the Mooch' to run communications in the White House, and whose original team of mostly male toadies seemed more like Goodfellas extras than professional politicos. Trump has well-known and longstanding ties to organized crime. And he has made a career of publicly threatening journalists or anyone who crosses him with physical violence. Given Trump's history..., Daniels' threat story doesn't seem all that far-fetched.... The bribery and the silencing should be a political scandal. But there's another story worth discussing here, too: how unfettered male power begets sad, bad sex.... At the very least, our president embodies the worst of male sexual entitlement and rank misogyny. We knew that before the election, and put him in the highest office in the land anyway. What does that say about us?" ...

... Amy Zimmerman of the Daily Beast argues convincingly that Stormy Daniels has internalized slut-shaming. AND media pundits are damned good at it, too. Mrs. McC: At the same time, I see this as the major difference between Daniels' character & Trump's. Daniels is introspective & contends with mistakes she's made; Trump can't face his own, much worse behavior & sends out goons to clean up for him.

... Jay Michaelson of the Daily Beast has a theory: "Pretty much all [non-disclosure agreements] become voided once the confidential information becomes widely known.... In this case, when the Wall Street Journal revealed the details of the contract on January 12, 2018, that information stopped being confidential. So why not just say that?... [Because t]his dispute isn't about the affair: it’s about ... pictures or texts.... The only question Daniels refused to answer [in her interview with Anderson Cooper] was about whether she's got more evidence of the affair. [Daniels' attorney Michael] Avenatti suggested the answer is yes: he tweeted a photo of a DVD inside a safe.... If Daniels has retained copies of pictures or texts, then she is in clear violation of the central parts of the confidentiality agreement.... If that DVD has pictures of Trump, it is literally Trump's copyrighted property. Unless, of course, the agreement is null and void.... Now you can see why Avenatti is pursuing this weird and unlikely strategy to say that the agreement was never valid in the first place: that's the only way for that DVD to matter." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Maggie Haberman: "President Trump has stayed in touch with Rob Porter, the former White House staff secretary who stepped down after allegations that he had abused his two former wives came to light, according to three people familiar with the conversations, and has told some advisers he hopes Mr. Porter returns to work in the West Wing. The president's calls with Mr. Porter have increased in the last few weeks.... Mr. Trump's personal assistant, John McEntee..., was hustled out of the White House so quickly two weeks ago that he did not have time to collect his jacket. Mr. McEntee had a gambling habit that could have led to financial issues, White House officials have said, but early news accounts painted him as under criminal investigation, reports that were later contradicted. Mr. Trump has told advisers that Mr. McEntee is a 'good kid' who was dealt with unfairly and that he would like to bring him back." ...

     ... Mrs. McC: All Porter did was beat up his wives & lie about it. What's the big deal? As for McEntee, Trump himself is under criminal investigation & he has spent his life hanging with criminals, so why should McEntee get the boot?

Sam Stein & Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "Two more high-power attorneys have had to turn down ... Donald Trump. Tom Buchanan and Dan Webb confirmed to The Daily Beast that Trump reached out to them about representing him, and that they couldn't do it. [They claimed "business conflicts."]... Over the weekend, Trump tweeted that numerous lawyers were eager to work for him. But so far, his team has been shrinking rather than expanding." Mrs. McC: Yeah, their "business conflicts" were probably that they figured they & their firms would lose business if their names were associated with Trump. Besides, would you hire a lawyer who was likely to neglect your case because s/he was always having to drop everything to babysit the Brat-in-Chief? ...

... Abigail Tracy of Vanity Fair: "At the very moment when Robert Mueller's Russia investigation is spinning into higher gear, Donald Trump's legal team is falling apart in extraordinary fashion.... 'I don't think you have seen anything like this,' said former Obama general counsel Bob Bauer, struggling to identify a historical antecedent. 'Like so much else around Trump, [the shake-up] is marked by confusion, a lack of consistency, and an apparent reflection of the president's uncontrolled impulses.... 'As far as I can tell, Ty Cobb is the only attorney left on the Trump team with experience handling federal criminal investigations,' said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor...." ...

... David Corn of Mother Jones: "I asked [top GOP lawyer Ted] Olson about being recruited for Trump's squad. He rolled his eyes, suggesting that this was never going to happen and that it was not just a matter of conflicts.... Washington, I noted, is full of Republican lawyers who generally do not mind being in the middle of headline-generating scandals and earning a bit of notice. Olson laughed: 'That's right.' And not one of them had contacted him to say he or she was willing to sign up? 'No,' he [said]. Trump seems to believe he's a hot ticket for DC's top legal talent. The word on the street is different."

The Week: "White House attorneys are looking into whether two loans worth more than $500 million given to ... Jared Kushner's family real estate business violated any criminal laws or federal ethics regulations, The Wall Street Journal reports. The Journal obtained a letter from David Apol, the acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, to Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who had raised concerns over meetings Kushner had in the White House with executives from Apollo Global Management and Citigroup right before each company loaned Kushner Cos. millions. Responding to Krishnamoorthi, Apol wrote that he discussed the matter with the White House Counsel's Office, and he was notified that they were already investigating the loans and whether 'any law or regulation has been violated and whether any additional procedures are necessary to avoid violations in the future.'"

Swamp. Ben Wieder & Peter Stone of McClatchy D.C.: "Top Donald Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy sought help last summer from the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee [Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif.] and lobbyist Rick Gates ... to help his defense firm Circinus and win points with some controversial political allies in Bucharest [, Romania] ... Broidy ... sought the assistance of Gates, with whom he had worked on President Donald Trump's inaugural committee, to win a U.S. Commerce Department endorsement for his company as it tried to win work in Romania.... McClatchy previously reported that Broidy invited two prominent Romanian politicians to several events connected with Trump's 2017 inauguration, months before Broidy's defense company, Circinus, opened up shop in Romania seeking a share of contracts valued at more than $200 million.... During the inaugural visit, the two Romanian politicians -- then-Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu and Liviu Dragnea ... met briefly with Trump..., Royce... Devin Nunes, R-Calif..., [and] Michael Flynn.... McClatchy received the messages and documents from an anonymous e-mail account. Broidy's lawyer, Lee Wolosky, said in a statement that Broidy believes Qatar hacked Broidy's computer and disseminated the information." --safari

Charles Pierce comments on the Trump/Mnuchin request that Congress send the Presidunce* a line-item-veto bill. "[Mnuchin] doesn't know. Worse, he doesn't care. Worst of all, he's sitting in the position he's in right now because he doesn't know and he doesn't care. About the country. About its Constitution. About anything that is outside the safety-deposit box he has for a soul." Read the whole post because it's a hoot. (Also linked yesterday.)

Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "Three more people lost their jobs at Ben Carson's Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud) on Monday, amid a widening ethics controversy. The three people, one of them a former White House staffer, worked as aides in the office of Hud's chief information officer, Johnson Joy, who was removed from his job last week over reports published by the Guardian. Two sources at Hud said the aides had their contracts terminated unexpectedly by Accel Corporation, a Maryland-based private employment agency that supplied Joy's office with multiple staff.... Accel's arrangement with Hud is being examined by the department's inspector general and the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which oversees federal workers' employment rights.... Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator from Ohio, last week accused Carson of filling positions at Hud 'based on patronage rather than competence', following the Guardian's reports."

Sara Ganim of CNN: "Several employees at the Interior Department have told CNN that Secretary Ryan Zinke repeatedly says that he won't focus on diversity, an apparent talking point that has upset many people within the agency. Three high-ranking Interior officials from three different divisions said that Zinke has made several comments with a similar theme, saying 'diversity isn't important,' or 'I don't care about diversity,' or 'I don't really think that's important anymore.'"

Emily Baumgaertner of the New York Times: "The 2020 census will ask respondents whether they are United States citizens, the Commerce Department announced Monday night, agreeing to a Trump administration request with highly charged political and social implications that many officials feared would result in a substantial undercount.... Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross 'has determined that reinstatement of a citizenship question on the 2020 decennial census questionnaire is necessary to provide complete and accurate census block level data,' [a Commerce Department] statement said.... But critics of the change and experts in the Census Bureau itself have said that, amid a fiery immigration debate, the inclusion of a citizenship question could prompt immigrants who are in the country illegally not to respond. That would result in a severe undercount of the population -- and, in turn, faulty data for government agencies and outside groups that rely on the census. The effects would also bleed into the redistricting of the House and state legislatures in the next decade." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Well, that's the idea, isn't it, Wilbur? As for me, I will not answer the question. ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "... this could significantly increase [Republicans'] advantages for two reasons: 1. It might dissuade noncitizens from participating in the census, thereby diluting the political power of the (mostly urban and Democratic) areas they come from. 2. Even without that, it would hand Republicans a new tool in redrawing districts even more in their favor."...

Lee Fang of the Intercept: "ICE, the federal agency tasked with Trump's program of mass deportation, uses backend Facebook data to locate and track suspects, according to a string of emails and documents obtained by The Intercept through a public records request.... Law enforcement agents routinely use bank, telephone, and internet records for investigations, but the extent to which ICE uses social media is not well known. A Facebook spokesperson, in a statement, said that ICE does not have any unique access to data.... Last month, ICE released a request for proposal for a private contractor to provide tools to track target employment data, credit checks, vehicle accident reports, pay day loans, and other data sources. The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has made aggressive new efforts to obtain social media data from those entering and exiting the country."

Reuters: "... Donald Trump on Monday nominated Rebecca Slaughter, chief counsel to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to the Federal Trade Commission, the White House said in a statement. Slaughter, if confirmed by the Senate, would hold the position for the rest of a seven-year term ending in 2022. She would become the second Democratic commissioner along with Rohit Chopra, a former official at the Consumer Financial Protection Board.... The agency has five commissioners but only three can be from one political party."

Congressional Races

Jonathan Martin & Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "When Representative Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania announced on Sunday that he would join more than 40 other congressional Republicans not seeking re-election in November, he left no doubt about the reason: President Trump's conduct made it impossible to talk about anything else.... While Republicans have been bracing for months for a punishing election in November, they are increasingly alarmed that their losses may be even worse than feared because the midterm campaign appears destined to turn more on the behavior of the man in the White House than any other in decades.... Mr. Trump's erratic style could end up alienating crucial blocs of suburban voters and politically moderate women.... And perhaps most ominous for Republicans, there does not appear to be an obvious middle ground.... Last November, Ed Gillespie [-- Virginia's GOP candidate for governor --] sought to avoid either inflaming or embracing Mr. Trump, and he was still soundly defeated." ...

... **Ian Milhiser of ThinkProgress: "A new report by the Brennan Center for Justice suggests that congressional races are so heavily rigged in favor of Republicans that the United States can barely be described as a democratic republic. The upshot of their analysis is that, to win a bare majority of the seats in the U.S. House, Democrats 'would likely have to win the national popular vote by nearly 11 points.' To put that number in perspective, neither party achieved an 11-point popular vote win in the last several decades. The last time this happened, according to the Brennan Center, was 1982, when a deep recession led the opposition Democrats to a 269 seat majority against President Reagan's Republicans." --safari: Read the whole post. So much of our democracy depends on political "fair play", but today's GOP has chosen crow bars and baseball bats. ...

... The Big Con. Paul Krugman: "In 2010 an explosion at a coal mine operated by Massey Energy killed 29 men. In 2015 Don Blankenship, the company's former C.E.O., was sent to prison for conspiring to violate mine safety standards. In 2018, Blankenship appears to have a real chance at becoming the Republican candidate for senator from West Virginia. Blankenship is one of four Republicans with criminal convictions running for office this year, several of whom may well win their party's nominations. And there is a much broader list of Republican politicians facing credible accusations of huge ethical lapses who nonetheless emerged victorious in G.O.P. primaries, ranging from Roy Moore to, well, Donald Trump.... What's striking about today's Republican landscape is that people who are obvious crooks, con men or worse continue to attract strong support from the party's base.... Republicans have won elections partly by denying the reality of their policy agenda, but mainly by posing as defenders of traditional social values -- above all, that greatest of American traditions, racism.... G.O.P. politicians tend disproportionately to be con men (and in some cases, con women), because playing the party's political game requires both a willingness to and a talent for saying one thing while doing another. And the party's base consists disproportionately of the easily conned...." ...

... "Laboratories of Democracy". William Douglas of McClatchy D.C.: "Patrick Register, a candidate for Congress in North Carolina, wants to make magic with voters via Tinder.... With almost no money and the May 8 North Carolina Democratic primary rapidly approaching, Register thought that posting on a dating app that bills itself as 'your most dependable wingman' ... was a great idea.... Register, who is divorced and currently not dating, says he isn't looking for a personal relationship. He's just looking to match with voters to find out what's on their minds." --safari

Sarah Jaffe in the New Republic: "... student activists, who led March For Our Lives rallies this weekend in Washington, D.C., and across the nation, are protesting a lack of gun control and a dysfunctional democracy where the so-called adults in the room are doing nothing to stop mass gun violence. They are either defending the way things are, or are actively making the status quo worse on a range of issues that go beyond a strict definition of gun violence but tie back to that issue -- health care, racism, income inequality, and wars of adventure.... The March For Our Lives was a declaration that the status quo is intolerable. Like the Women’s March that greeted Donald Trump's inauguration, it was representative of what political theorist Jodi Dean called a 'mobilized middle.'"

Andy Kroll of Mother Jones: "The acting director of the Federal Trade Commission confirmed Monday that the agency has an open investigation into Facebook's data privacy practices.... In 2011, the company settled charges brought by the agency alleging that the social network misleadingly told its users they could keep their information private. As part of the settlement, Facebook agreed to no longer make 'further deceptive privacy claims' and to better inform its users going forward about how it shares their information. The question now is whether Facebook violated the terms of that FTC agreement when it allowed Alex Kogan, the Russian-American academic, to extract huge amounts of personal data from Facebook and then pass it to Cambridge Analytica. Facebook's stock price had lost as much as6 percent of its value on Monday after the FTC confirmed its investigation." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Lauren Pearle of ABC News: "Government watchdog group Common Cause Monday filed a pair of legal complaints with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Department of Justice accusing Cambridge Analytica LTD, its parent company SCL Group Limited, CEO Alexander Nix, SCL co-founder Nigel Oakes, data scientist Alexander Tayler, and former employee-turned-whistleblower Christopher Wylie of violating federal election laws that prohibit foreigners from participating directly or indirectly in the decision-making process of U.S. political campaigns. The defendants are all non-U.S. citizens, according to the complaints.... The legal filings allege that Cambridge Analytica and its executives ignored [their attorney's] advice and allowed foreigners to be involved in 'management decisions of U.S. political committee clients concerning expenditures and disbursements during the 2014 and 2016 elections.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Charlie Warzel of BuzzFeed: "Facebook Has Had Countless Privacy Scandals. But This One Is Different.... Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal has everything: peculiar billionaires, a once-adored startup turned monolith, a political mercenary who resembles a Bond villain and his shadowy psychographic profiling firm, an eccentric whistleblower, millions of profiles worth of leaked Facebook data, Steve Bannon, the Mercers, and -- crucially -- Donald Trump, and the results of the 2016 presidential election. On its face, the incident read as confirmation of many people's worst fears -- that the online platforms we live on are manipulating us, using the personal information we provided in good faith without our knowledge. Add to it that one of those many unintended outcomes could have been Donald Trump's election and you've got the makings of a lasting outrage.... This is a scandal triggered by a specific incident, but that is broadly about the ways massive companies track us, harvest information from us, and then sell us as coercion targets in sophisticated information campaigns...."

** Neil Genzlinger of the New York Times: "Linda Brown, whose father objected when she was not allowed to attend an all-white school in her neighborhood and who thus came to symbolize one of the most transformative court proceedings in American history, the school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education, died on Sunday in Topeka, Kan. She was 75.... In 1954, in a unanimous decision, the court ruled that segregated schools were inherently unequal. The decision upended decades' worth of educational practice, in the South and elsewhere.... By the time of the ruling, Ms. Brown was in an integrated junior high school. She later became an educational consultant and public speaker." ...

... Here's Brown's obituary in the Topeka Capital-Journal, by Katie Moore & Tim Hrenchir.

"Capitalism is Awesome," Ctd. Peter Gosselin & Ariana Tobin of Mother Jones: "For nearly a half century, IBM came as close as any company to bearing the torch for the American Dream.... Its profits helped underwrite a broad agenda of racial equality, equal pay for women and an unbeatable offer of great wages and something close to lifetime employment.... But when high tech suddenly started shifting and companies went global, IBM faced the changing landscape with a distinction most of its fiercest competitors didn't have: a large number of experienced and aging US employees.... The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would 'correct seniority mix.' It slashed IBM's US workforce ... replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas.... In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked US laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age discrimination." --safari

Beyond the Beltway

Pamela Wood, et al., of the Baltimore Sun: "Austin Wyatt Rollins, the 17-year-old who opened fire on classmates at Great Mills High School in Southern Maryland last week, injuring one and killing another, died from shooting himself in the head, officials investigating the case said Monday."

Gal Lotan & Krista Torralva of the Orlando Sentinel: "Pulse nightclub gunman Omar Mateen was considered by the FBI for development as a possible informant prior to carrying out the 2016 mass shooting, an agent testified today during the trial of Mateen’s widow, Noor Salman. That revelation came hours after Salman's defense filed a motion seeking to have the cas dismissed or declared a mistrial due to information that Mateen's father was an informant for the FBI for more than a decade and sent money out of the country in the months before the attack." (Also linked yesterday.)

Reuters: "Atlanta is still struggling with its ability to collect online payments of bills and fees, officials said on Monday, four days after a ransomware attack snarled the computer system of Georgia's capital city. Hackers caused outages of services offered through the city’s website and broader computer system while demanding a ransom of $51,000 paid in bitcoin to unlock the system. 'This is much bigger than a ransomware attack, this really is an attack on our government,' Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told a news conference. 'We are dealing with a (cyber) hostage situation.'" --safari

What Would Matthew Do? Adam Tamburin of The Tennessean: "The leader [former Executive Director James Finchum] of a Nashville nonprofit [Matthew 25, which houses, feeds and treats homeless men] resigned in January amid allegations that he repeatedly sexually harassed an employee -- including one instance when the woman said he exposed his penis and masturbated in front of her in his office.... The lawsuit stated the woman made attempts to handle the issue internally as early as June 2016, and those were 'either ignored or rebuffed.'" --safari

Way Beyond

James McAuley of the Washington Post: "The Paris prosecutor's office is investigating whether anti-Semitism was a motivation for killing of an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor that has outraged France's Jewish community. Mireille Knoll was stabbed multiple times and left in her burning Paris apartment on Friday. French authorities have taken two suspects into custody, according to a judicial official...."