As I walked home from the gallery opening, I couldn’t help but wonder, was New York falling apart, or falling in love?
BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER
& CROOKED MEDIA
Monday, March 19, 2018 | | |
An undercover investigation shows executives from Cambridge Analytica, the data firm that led Trump’s 2016 digital effort, discussing how they would take down a potential client’s political opponents in an election. They offered to set up rival candidates with Ukrainian sex workers and tape the encounters, or to catch rivals taking bribes. On the tape, the executives can be heard bragging that their parent company had worked in 200+ elections worldwide. The firm was founded by Steve Bannon and shady GOP mega-donor Robert Mercer. In addition to these tactics, the firm used the private information of more than 50 million Facebook users without permission from those users or Facebook itself to create personality profiles for voters and target them with specific information. This data breach is one of the largest in Facebook’s history, but Facebook denies it was a hack because it claims it had banned Cambridge Analytica from the platform for a violation of its rules. By Monday afternoon, after (because?) its stock got hammered, Facebook announced it has hired a digital forensics team to audit Cambridge Analytica. More on this in today’s Pod Save America → | NOTHING RHYMES WITH MCCABE | Jeff Sessions kicked off the weekend by firing FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe 26 hours ahead of his scheduled retirement (and his birthday!), renewing concerns that Trump is attempting to shut down Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. McCabe maintains that he was singled out, possibly illegally, because of what he witnessed in the aftermath of James Comey’s firing, and revealed that he wrote contemporaneous memos about his interactions with Trump and shared them with Mueller. Meanwhile, President Trump’s lawyer John Dowd said that McCabe’s firing was evidence the Mueller probe was tainted and pushed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to end the investigation. This all led to Sunday, when Trump tweeted about Mueller directly, saying the investigation into his campaign’s potential collusion was a “WITCH HUNT” based on “fraudulent activities and a fake dossier.” Fact check: 🙄. He also hired a lawyer/conspiracy-theorist who has pushed the idea that Trump is being framed by the FBI and DOJ. This elicited rebukes from Republicans and Democrats alike, urging Trump to let the Mueller investigation continue. And yet, Republicans refuse to pass a bill to protect the special counsel, because…he hasn’t been fired yet? But then, wouldn’t you only know it was needed after…it was needed? Anyway, they’re cowards! By Sunday, Dowd claimed he wasn’t speaking for the president when he called for the end of the investigation, though sources now say that he was. He also said Trump was not discussing or considering firing Mueller, even though that’s EXACTLY WHAT HE SAID ON TWITTER. Speaking of Mueller, Trump’s lawyers have turned over documents detailing key moments in the investigation to Mueller’s team in the hope of limiting the scope of the special counsel’s interview with the president, because they’re worried Trump would either admit to doing crimes, or lie about his involvement in crimes (also a crime). Trump sounds like a fun client.
Read Brian Beutler’s latest on the message Republicans are actually sending Trump →
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Today Trump visited New Hampshire—one of the states hit hardest by the opioid epidemic—to announce new policies to combat opioid addiction. He focused specifically on increasing penalties and punishments for drug dealing and trafficking, reducing the number of opioids prescribed by doctors, and increasing access to treatment. He blamed immigrants and sanctuary cities as the sources of the drugs, emphasizing his border wall, and officially announced that he was advocating for the death penalty for some drug dealers. He also praised the work of Adapt Pharma, a company that makes a drug that can reverse opioid overdoses, for providing the drug for free to all high schools, colleges, and universities. FYI, that’s a program that was made possible through a partnership with the Clinton Foundation in 2017. | The Supreme Court ruled against Republicans who challenged Pennsylvania’s redrawn Congressional district map, meaning the new map, which undoes GOP partisan gerrymandering, will be used in the 2018 elections. According to The Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman, “under new lines, Dems have excellent chance to pick up 3-5 seats in addition to Lamb (under old lines, 1-3).” Good news! Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant just signed the nation’s strictest abortion ban into law, banning abortions after 15 weeks, in his mission to make the state “the safest place in America for an unborn child.” No word on what he’s doing for children who have been born—his state has the nation’s worst-performing health care system, the highest poverty rate, and had the fourth most gun deaths of any state per capita in 2016. Police are searching for a “serial bomber” in Austin, Texas. An explosion on Sunday appeared to be connected to three earlier ones. Actress Cynthia Nixon is running for governor in New York, challenging incumbent governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary. As I walked home from the gallery opening, I couldn’t help but wonder, was New York falling apart, or falling in love? A growing number of Democratic House candidates don’t want Nancy Pelosi to be their leader. Oh yeah, Trump wanted his White House employees to sign nondisclosure agreements, with drafts containing penalties of $10 million. It’s almost as if he forgot that public servants work for the public. A self-driving Uber car hit and killed a pedestrian in Arizona. Uber has now suspended autonomous vehicle operations in the four cities where they run. | | |
On Pod Save America: David Hogg and Jaclyn Corin, two students from Parkland, talk about their work to prevent gun violence and organize the March For Our Lives. | | |
Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys According to The New York Times, while most white males who grow up wealthy “stay rich or upper middle class as adults... Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds.” The same does not hold true for girls, and according to the Times, “the research makes clear that there is something unique about the obstacles black males face.” Read → | New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi chronicles the departure of Hope Hicks, the “only person [Trump] trusts.” Though Hicks doesn’t speak on the record, Nuzzi was able to speak with over 30 current and former White House officials and staffers close to Trump to paint a portrait of the world inside the West Wing: “The people who were problems on the campaign or on the inside continued to be problems. The president’s taste for the other and the new was so established that the most driven among them knew that all they had to do was wait for an opening, or shrewdly create one — a weakened staffer, a particularly demoralizing news cycle — and they could worm their way back in. The madness engulfing the White House, in other words, was not just a matter of staff infighting or factional ideological rivalries, as it was often portrayed in the press, but also, in part, the result of manipulation from the fringes of Trumpworld.” Read → | | |
We received 1,000 submissions for Donald Trump’s official portrait—none of them from Jim Carrey. A panel of art critics and interns picked the finalists, and now you choose the winner. This contest will help support arts programs in California’s public schools. VOTE HERE! | | |
