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...."

The Commentariat -- March 26, 2018

Afternoon Update:

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 earlier, 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."

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...."

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. ...

... 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."

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.

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 as 6 percent of its value on Monday after the FTC confirmed its investigation." ...

... 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.'"

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 case 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."

*****

Josh Lederman of the AP: "The Trump administration expelled 60 Russian diplomats on Monday and ordered Russia's consulate in Seattle to close, as the United States and European nations sought to jointly punish Moscow for its alleged role in poisoning an ex-spy in Britain. Senior Trump administration officials said all 60 Russians were spies working in the U.S. under diplomatic cover, including a dozen at Russia's mission to the United Nations. The officials said the administration was taking the action to send a message to Russia's leaders about the 'unacceptably high' number of Russian intelligence operatives in the U.S The expelled Russians will have seven days to leave the U.S." --safari ...

... NEW. Katie Rogers & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump ordered the expulsion of 60 Russians from the United States on Monday, including 12 people identified as Russian intelligence officers who have been stationed at the United Nations in New York, in response to Russia's alleged poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. The expulsion order, announced by administration officials, also closes the Russian consulate in Seattle. The Russians and their families have seven days to leave the United States, according to officials. The expulsions are the toughest action taken against the Kremlin by President Trump...."

Emma Brown & Frances Sellers of the Washington Post: "Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who alleges that she had an affair with Donald Trump in 2006, says that she was threatened for attempting to tell her story publicly and accepted money through a Trump attorney to remain silent because she was scared for her family.... Trump and his wife were 1,000 miles apart as Daniels told her story: Shortly before the interview aired on Sunday, Trump flew back to Washington from a weekend trip to Mar a Lago. First lady Melania Trump remained in Florida, where she usually spends spring break...." ...

... Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "Ms. Clifford said during the interview that while she had seen Mr. Trump more than once, she had had sex with him a single time, unprotected. That happened shortly after they met at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006.... Mr. Trump was 60 at the time; Ms. Clifford was 27." ...

... Here's the transcript, via "60 Minutes," of Anderson Cooper's interview of Stephanie Cohen/Stormy Daniels. AND a clip from the WashPo ...

... Brandon Patterson of Mother Jones: "Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the FEC, told Cooper he thinks [Trump attorney Michael] Cohen's payment to Daniels could amount to an illegal campaign contribution. 'It's a $130,000 in-kind contribution by Cohen to the Trump campaign, which is about $126,500 above what he's allowed to give. And if he does this on behalf of his client, the candidate, that is a coordinated, illegal, in-kind contribution by Cohen for the purpose of influencing the election, of benefiting the candidate by keeping this secret.' The payment could also have implications for the Russia investigation, Potter said. If [Robert] Mueller believes Cohen's payment was improper, he could charge Cohen with a crime in an effort to get him to dish on Trump." ...

This is about the cover-up. This is about the extent that Mr. Cohen and the president have gone to intimidate this woman, to silence her, to threaten her, and to put her under their thumb. It is thuggish behavior from people in power. And it has no place in American democracy. -- Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels' attorney, to Anderson Cooper, aired Sunday ...

... Dylan Matthews of Vox: "A decent person who had an affair would, when faced with the prospect of that affair going public, tell their spouse what happened, apologize, and accept the consequences. That is not what Trump did. And it's not what Trump is still doing. Even now that the affair is public knowledge, Trump and his legal team are seeking $20 million or more in damages from Daniels, out of retribution more than anything else. A billionaire (or near-billionaire, depending on who you ask) using expensive lawyers to try to extract tens of millions of dollars from a working mother, out of anger that she refused to keep silent -- that is bullying. It's disgraceful behavior. And it's illustrative of the way that Trump has treated other people throughout his entire career in business and politics." ...

... Fox "News": "The lawyer for Michael Cohen, President Trump's personal attorney, sent adult film star Stormy Daniels a cease and desist letter late Sunday following her interview with '60 Minutes' where she spoke about her alleged affair with Trump and claimed she faced threats to her safety. Brent Blakely, Cohen's attorney, demanded that Daniels apologize for insinuating that his client was behind the threat she described that allegedly took place in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Intimidating and threatening people who get in Trump's way seems to be a recurring theme in his business interactions.... There is a lot of reason to suspect [Michael] Cohen had something to do with the threat [to Daniels].... [Cohen's] true value is as a goon. 'If somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn't like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump's benefit,' Cohen said in 2011. 'If you do something wrong, I'm going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I'm not going to let you go until I'm finished.' In 2015, he told a reporter, 'I'm warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I'm going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?'... It may be difficult to imagine Cohen, the ultimate Trump loyalist, turning on his patron and idol. But mafiosos turn on their friends and mentors all the time. And Trump's organization was run in many respects like a crime family, with a sprawling web of shady and probably illegal activity.... If Stormy Daniels' account holds up, then it opens a vast new avenue for potential risk to Cohen, and ultimately Trump." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: It turns out the Daniels interview was not the biggest media event of the night. According to POTUS* (at 8:26 pm ET Sunday), what "everyone is talking about" is Howie Carr's book on "the most amazing political campaign of modern times." I am so out of it, I didn't even know.

Swamp Creature. Ken Vogel & David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: "For Elliott Broidy, Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign represented an unparalleled political and business opportunity. An investor and defense contractor, Mr. Broidy became a top fund-raiser for Mr. Trump's campaign when most elite Republican donors were keeping their distance, and Mr. Trump in turn overlooked the lingering whiff of scandal from Mr. Broidy's 2009 guilty plea in a pension fund bribery case. After Mr. Trump's election, Mr. Broidy quickly capitalized, marketing his Trump connections to politicians and governments around the world, including some with unsavory records, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Broidy suggested to clients and prospective customers of his Virginia-based defense contracting company, Circinus, that he could broker meetings with Mr. Trump, his administration and congressional allies. Mr. Broidy's ability to leverage his political connections to boost his business illuminates how Mr. Trump's unorthodox approach to governing has spawned a new breed of access peddling in the swamp he vowed to drain." ...

Desmond Butler, et al., of the AP: "A top fundraiser for President Donald Trump received millions of dollars from a political adviser to the United Arab Emirates last April, just weeks before he began handing out a series of large political donations to U.S. lawmakers considering legislation targeting Qatar, the UAE's chief rival in the Persian Gulf.... George Nader ... wired $2.5 million to the Trump fundraiser, Elliott Broidy, through a company in Canada.... [Two informants claim] Nader paid the money to Broidy to bankroll an effort to persuade the U.S. to take a hard line against Qatar, a long-time American ally but now a bitter adversary of the UAE.... In October, Broidy also raised the issue of Qatar at the White House in meetings with Trump and senior aides. The details of Broidy's advocacy on U.S. legislation have not been previously reported." --safari

Hilarious News. Everything Is Going So Smoothly. Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump has decided not to hire two lawyers ... Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing ... who were announced last week as new additions to his legal team, leaving him with a shrinking stable of lawyers as the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, enters an intense phase.... The president met with Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing, who are married, in recent days to discuss the possibility that they would join his legal team.... According to two people told of details about the meeting, the president did not believe he had personal chemistry with Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing. But beyond that, Ms. Toensing is representing Mark Corallo, who was the spokesman for Mr. Trump's legal team in 2017 before they parted ways. Mr. Corallo has told investigators he was concerned that a close aide to Mr. Trump, Hope Hicks, may have been planning to obstruct justice during the drafting of a statement about a meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr. during the campaign." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Josh Dawsey & Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "Trump's legal team has now shrunk to two: Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer who does not personally represent the president and occasionally draws grumbles from him, and [Jay] Sekulow, an outside conservative attorney and radio host. Trump had not closely researched di Genova or even consulted with top aides, including Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and White House counsel Donald McGahn, before hiring him." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "... Donald Trump's legal team is bigger than it looks. Two sources familiar with the president's team have told The Daily Beast that about half a dozen attorneys affiliated with a conservative non-profit have been helping Jay Sekulow represent the president.... Andrew Ekonomou, Mark Goldfeder, and Ben Sisney are among the attorneys who have helped him handle legal matters related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.... The fact that these men have worked on Trump's legal team has not been previously reported." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As noted in yesterday's Commentariat, Trump tweeted Sunday morning that "Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case...." So no problem. On the other hand, if Trump fires Mueller, destroys the documentation the Mueller team has assembled & pardons himself, he doesn't need any Russia-related lawyers. ...

NEW. Darren Samuelsohn of Politico: "Though it is a virtual given that [Rick] Gates will sell out his business partner and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, less understood is the direct threat Gates could pose to President Donald Trump.... 'He saw everything,' said a Republican consultant who worked with Gates during the campaign. The consultant called Gates one of the 'top five' insiders whom Mueller could have tapped as a cooperative government witness. One defense attorney in the case said that Gates';s plea has triggered palpable alarm in Trump world.... Worst of all for the White House, Gates lacks hard-wired loyalty." --safari

Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "Treasury SecretarySteven Mnuchin has urged lawmakers to give President Trump a line-item veto, saying on 'Fox News Sunday' that it might prevent Democrats from stacking more nondefense discretionary spending into the next must-past budget bill. But Mnuchin's short exchange with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace also underlined the problem with the idea -- a 20-year-old Supreme Court ruling that struck down the line-item veto, finding 'no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the president to enact, to amend or to repeal statutes,' after President Bill Clinton used it 82 times.... Mnuchin did not discuss an idea that has circulated on the right -- simply not spending money appropriated by Congress. The 'impoundment' process also has been struck down by the Supreme Court.... But the Trump administration already has played around the edges of impoundment." Trump called for the line-item veto in his announcement Friday afternoon that he would sign the "ridiculous" bill. ...

     ... NEW. James Downie of the Washington Post: "For Mnuchin to make this mistake days [after Trump made it] means two things: 1.) The treasury secretary, more than a year into his tenure, is not aware of basic budget-making procedure; 2.) Either no one else senior enough at the White House to prepare Mnuchin knew those basics, or no one was organized enough to prep the one Cabinet member to appear on any of the Sunday shows this weekend. In the president's first 400 days, we've seen plenty of government by amateurs. But as 'record-setting turnover' in Trump's White House continues apace, his administration seems determined to mine new levels of incompetence. Mnuchin would play a critical role in the next economic crisis. If he can't get something so basic right, what chance does the country have when things get tough?"

Hope Yen & Ken Thomas of the AP: "... Donald Trump is planning to oust embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin amid an extraordinary rebellion at the agency and damaging government investigations into his alleged spending abuses, three administration officials told The Associated Press on Sunday."

Thanks for Your Service. Love, ICE. Theresa Waldrop of CNN: "A US Army veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan has been deported to Mexico, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. The deportation follows an earlier decision by US authorities to deny Miguel Perez's citizenship application because of a felony drug conviction, despite his service and the PTSD he says it caused.Perez, 39, was escorted across the US-Mexico border from Texas and handed over to Mexican authorities Friday, ICE said in a statement. Perez, his family and supporters, who include Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, had argued that his wartime service to the country had earned him the right to stay in the United States and to receive mental health treatment for the PTSD and substance abuse."

Question: Who actually said this on national TV about the March for Our Lives?: "How about kids instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that."

Answer: Close yo' mouth. It was this guy. (Sorry, his most famous page is down.) Now you're not so surprised, are you?

Benjamin Hart of New York: "As morbidly risible as [this] opinion is, it doesn't really diverge from the mainstream Republican position on guns. On the right, it is an article of faith that gun violence in America is inevitable, regulations be damned. (The mountain of evidence showing that America is an extreme outlier in this arena precisely because of its lax gun laws is ignored.)"

Martin Longman of Booman Tribune contrasts the remarks this weekend of "the man who likes to think of himself as the world's biggest Catholic" (above) and those of "the man who actually is the world's biggest Catholic."

Benjamin Hart of New York: "As morbidly risible as [this] opinion is, it doesn't really diverge from the mainstream Republican position on guns. On the right, it is an article of faith that gun violence in America is inevitable, regulations be damned. (The mountain of evidence showing that America is an extreme outlier in this arena precisely because of its lax gun laws is ignored.) ...

... Martin Cizmar of the Raw Story: "Gun-lovers in red Trump hats showed up at many of the rallies carrying AR-15s and sidearms, an effort they dubbed 'March For Our Guns.'... A search of social media finds images of heavily armed people -- including Utahans in a military-style vehicle with a mounted machine gun -- showing up to rallies." ...

... Talel Ansari of BuzzFeed: "... as Parkland massacre survivor Emma González and hundreds of thousands rallied at events across the US, on the internet, a fake photo claiming to show González tearing apart the Constitution was beginning to make the rounds.... The real photo is from a Teen Vogue photo shoot, and shows Emma González ripping up a shooting target poster, not the Constitution." Mrs. McC: Let's not just bully & threaten student activists; let's spread lies about them, too. ...

... Here's One Way Trump Really Is Making Us Safer. Matthew Haag of the New York Times: "Remington Outdoor, one of the oldest firearm manufacturers in the United States, filed for bankruptcy protection on Sunday amid mounting debt and declining sales. The gun maker had said last month it was nearing a bankruptcy filing, which it made on Sunday in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. In its Chapter 11 filing, Remington said it had between $100 million and $500 million in debt and would continue to operate while under bankruptcy protection.... After 20 children and six adults were killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., public outrage zeroed in on Remington after the authorities reported that the gunman had used an AR-15-style rifle made by the company.... The company expected a ... bump in sales if Hillary Clinton had won the presidential election in 2016 because of her possible pursuit of gun control legislation. But in the first nine months of Donald J. Trump's presidency, Remington's sales were down 27.5 percent."

NEW. Mark Stern of Slate: "On Friday night, the Trump administration released its plan to exclude transgender troops from the armed forces ... federal courts have found that discrimination against trans service members violates the Constitution, and the new proposal does nothing to ameliorate the ban's grave constitutional flaws.... Yet behind the scenes, a 'panel of experts' has been crafting a report, also released on Friday, designed to provide pretextual justification for Trump's ban. According to multiple sources, Vice President Mike Pence played a leading role in the creation of this report, along with Ryan Anderson, an anti-trans activist, and Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBTQ lobbying group. Mattis actually supports open transgender service, but he was effectively overruled by Pence, and chose not to spend his limited political capital further defending trans troops." --safari

Care for a Glass of Coal Ash Water? Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker reviews Scott Pruitt's illustrious career & his "administration" of the EPA.

Russell Berman of the Atlantic: "President Obama finally got a Republican-controlled Congress to fund his domestic budget. All it took was Donald Trump in the White House to get it done. In the $1.3 trillion spending bill that President Trump reluctantly signed on Friday, lawmakers did more than reject the steep cuts in dollars and programs that Trump proposed for domestic agencies a year ago. Across much of the government, Republican leaders agreed to spending levels that matched or even exceeded what Obama asked Congress to appropriate in his final budget request in 2016 -- and many of which lawmakers ignored while he was in office." Thanks to P.D. Pepe for the link. Mrs. McC: As Berman points out, you can thank the filibuster for this. Also, too, IMO, the Freedom Caucus, who made it necessary for Paul Ryan to get votes from Democrats.

Congressional Races. Alexander Burns & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "The passionate gun control rallies Saturday that brought out large crowds around the country sent a vivid signal that the issue is likely to play a major role in the 2018 midterm elections, and that Republicans could find themselves largely on the defensive on gun issues for the first time in decades.... State and local Democrati parties across the country also used the marches to register voters and sign up volunteers."

Craig Timberg & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "Cambridge Analytica assigned dozens of non-U.S. citizens to provide campaign strategy and messaging advice to Republican candidates in 2014, according to three former workers for the data firm, even as an attorney warned executives to abide by U.S. laws limiting foreign involvement in elections.... That year, Cambridge Analytica documents show it advised a congressional candidate in Oregon, state legislative candidates in Colorado and, on behalf of the North Carolina Republican Party, the winning campaign for Sen. Thom Tillis.... 'Its dirty little secret was that there was no one American involved in it, that it was a de facto foreign agent, working on an American election,' [whistleblower Christopher] Wylie said.... U.S. election regulations say foreign nationals must not 'directly or indirectly participate in the decision-making process' of a political campaign, although they can play lesser roles. Those restrictions were explained in a 10-page memo prepared in July 2014 by a New York attorney, Laurence Levy, for Cambridge Analytica's leadership at the time, including President Rebekah Mercer, Vice President Stephen K. Bannon and chief executive Alexander Nix."

Alex Hern of the Guardian: "As users continue to delete their Facebook accounts in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a number are discovering that the social network holds far more data about them than they expected, including complete logs of incoming and outgoing calls and SMS messages. The #deletefacebook movement took off after the revelations that Facebook had shared with a Cambridge psychologist the personal information of 50 million users, without their explicit consent, which later ended up in the hands of the election consultancy Cambridge Analytica." ...

... Zuckerberg Is Very, Very Sorry He Lost Billions for Using Your Personal Data. Sheena McKenzie of CNN: "Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took out full-page ads in several British and American newspapers Sunday to apologize for a 'breach of trust' in the Cambridge Analytica scandal." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Speaking of invasions of privacy, I just clicked on a page of the Hill & up popped an ad for a medication I'm taking. It is not a particularly common medication (I haven't seen ads for it on TV), so I have to assume the ad targeted me. I have never ordered the medication online & I have never looked up information online about my medication or underlying condition, so that means in all likelihood that the vendor -- a major commerical pharmacy -- or my health insurer -- also a major provider -- is selling information about my medical history to pharmaceutical companies. That's pretty disturbing.

NEW. "Capitalism is Awesome", Ctd. Joe Romm of ThinkProgress: "Car companies like GM, Ford, and Toyota are getting great publicity for touting a future of green cars. But at the same time, new reports show their lobbying group is pushing science denial to weaken U.S. clean car standards.... One of the report's authors is actually long-time climate science denier Joseph D'Aleo -- who has remained a policy adviser to the notorious anti-science Heartland Institute even after they put up a billboard comparing climate science believers and reporters to mass 'murderers and madmen.' The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has thoroughly debunked the car companies' report, which is straight out of the science denier playbook." --safari

Way Beyond the Beltway

Juan Cole: "The numbers on the Saudi-led Yemen War are apocalyptic, worse even than Syria. The total number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in Yemen is 22.2 million -- or 76% of the population -- including 11.3 million children. The Saudis and allies have hit Yemen with 15,000 airstrikes. 5,000 children have been killed. 8,700 civilians have been killed 50,000 civilians have been wounded 1.9 million children are not in school, and both sides have recruited children, some as young as ten, as fighters 11.3 million children need humanitarian assistance, with many on the verge of going hungry. All in all, 22.2 million Yemenis of all ages need humanitarian assistance, 3/4s of the population." --safari

Reuters: "The Saudi air force intercepted a missile over the northeastern part of the capital Riyadh late on Sunday night, Saudi state television said.... Yemen's Houthi-run SABA news agency reported that the group's missile force had targeted King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh with a Burkan H2 missile. The group also fired other types of missiles at airports in the southern Saudi cities of Abha, Jizan and Najran, according to the SABA report.... More than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen since March 2015 when Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim Arab states launched a military campaign against the Houthis, a group of Shi’ite fighters who had seized the capital and forced President Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi to flee."