Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen used his Trump Organization email address to communicate with Stormy Daniels before paying her $130,000 in hush money. The Washington Post reports “federal election law was almost certainly violated” because the address belongs to the Trump Organization and the payment to Daniels was made to silence her in order to facilitate Trump’s victory in the election. Cohen responded that he used his business account for personal matters and that the funds came from a home equity line of credit. May you have in your life a stooge so dumb and loyal that he uses the money from his home loan to hide your secrets.
The U.S. added 313,000 new jobs last month, but strong growth still isn’t translating to higher wages. Average hourly pay is only up 2.6% from last year. According to the Economic Policy Institute, wage increases need to be greater than 3.5% “for workers to claw back losses... they’ve felt during and since the Great Recession.”
Florida governor Rick Scott broke from the NRA to sign a gun control and school safety bill that raises the minimum purchase age to 21, creates a three-day waiting period before most purchases of long guns, and bans bump stocks, among other things. It also creates a program to arm some teachers. Following the announcement, the NRA filed a federal lawsuit challenging the legislation raising the purchase age. (P.S. The bill certainly wasn’t everything Parkland students asked for, but does anyone think it would’ve happened without their activism?)
The DNC is considering eliminating superdelegates in the presidential nomination process. In 2016, superdelegates were the 714 delegates (often party elites) who could support any presidential candidate they wanted at the national party convention, regardless of who the Democratic voters in their respective states supported. The rest of the party’s 4,000-plus delegates were “pledged delegates,” or those who had to vote in accordance with the state’s results.
Trump tweeted that Australia would join Mexico and Canada in receiving an exemption from his steel and aluminum import tariffs.
“Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud. Shkreli is notorious for raising the price of a lifesaving HIV drug by more than 5000%. Just one of the many reasons why his lawyer wanted to punch him in the face.