BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER
& CROOKED MEDIA

Friday, June 1st, 2018

—Donald Trump, obviously

CHECKS? BALANCES? ANYONE?

Yesterday, President Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum imported from Europe, Mexico, and Canada—key U.S. allies and trading partners—after delaying them for one month. In response, each has promised or implemented retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports.

On Thursday night, Trump's longtime political adviser Roger Stone gave away the game about Trump's use of the pardon power. “It has to be a signal to Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort and even Robert S. Mueller III: Indict people for crimes that don’t pertain to Russian collusion and this is what could happen,” Stone said, acknowledging Trump is witness tampering. “The special counsel has awesome powers, as you know, but the president has even more awesome powers.” Real constitutionalist, this guy!

Then, on Friday morning, Trump teased highly sensitive, market-moving labor market data before its official release, breaking protocol that prevents the sharing of this information for the purposes of market manipulation and insider trading. This also raises concerns that Trump himself, or his family and political allies, might be trading on that information month by month. (But they would never! JK.)

This is a reminder that the Republican Congress is just not doing the job of, you know, Congress. Congressional Republicans say they hate Trump’s tariffs, but they aren’t using their power to reverse them. A few of them might say it’s inappropriate of Trump to prematurely tweet out sensitive economic information, but none have called for investigations even though this breach would have been a big scandal in any other administration. They can’t stop him from pardoning whoever he wants directly, short of impeachment, but they could speak out and use their oversight powers to discourage these abuses.

Anyway, if you want a Congress that will hold Trump accountable, we need a new Congress. Don’t hate the game. Hate the players. →

THOSE COINS ARE WORTHLESS AGAIN

President Trump announced that his North Korea summit is back on, after he called it off last week due to “hostility” from the North Korean government. Today he told the press that a North Korean envoy delivered him a “very nice letter”, but when pressed on his response he said that he hasn’t read it yet. (He was busy looking for Melania.)

Don’t be surprised if the summit ends up canceled and then uncanceled one or two more times. Previously on THEY BOTH HAVE NUKES OH PLEASE GOD SAVE US, North Korea threatened to back out after Vice President Mike Pence and national security adviser John Bolton cited Libya’s denuclearization as a model for North Korea. Now we’re learning that one of North Korea’s shows of good faith—the apparent demolition of a test site—was likely meaningless propaganda. We’re exhausted. The Bachelorette has less manufactured drama.

Anyway, bring back the coins!

President Trump has yet to mention a new study’s conclusion that nearly 5,000 people died as a result of Hurricane Maria—a figure that is 70-times greater than the official government death toll. Instead, speaking about hurricanes in Texas and Puerto Rico this morning, Trump said: “I don't think any brand has gained more momentum or has gained more of anything than the brand of the United States Coast Guard."

Trump plans to intervene in energy markets to bail out coal and nuclear power plants because the environment isn’t dirty enough, and his campaign contributors haven’t been adequately paid off.

A top aide to Scott Pruitt signed off on spending $1,560 in taxpayer money on 12 customized fountain pens from a D.C. jewelry store. Spoiler alert: Pruitt will keep his job as EPA Administrator, even after 15 more stories like this come out over the course of the next week.

Trump’s ambassador to Israel David Friedman told the Times of Israel, “There’s no question Republicans support Israel more than Democrats”  From Tommy: Friedman’s comment is stupid and offensive but also harmful to Israel in the long term. Support for Israel has long been a bipartisan issue. Comments like Friedman’s could change that.

The Koch brothers have decided to back Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) in her bid for re-election. In a new ad campaign backed by their political advocacy group, they thank Heitkamp for her vote to repeal Obama-era Dodd-Frank regulations on banks.

MSNBC host Joy Reid has apologized for another newly surfaced post from her old blog showing John McCain’s head Photoshopped onto the body of the Virginia Tech shooter. Notably, Reid did not make mention of the hackers she baselessly blamed for earlier unsavory posts about LGBT people.

Music streaming service Spotify will no longer remove songs by artists accused of “hateful conduct” from its promoted playlists and recommendations—a policy the company implemented in response to the #MuteRKelly campaign. The reversal comes in response to intense pushback from the music industry, and threats from artists like Kendrick Lamar to pull their music from the service. Guess this is their remix to contrition?

Today, an Iowa judge issued a temporary injunction to prevent the enforcement of a law that seeks to prohibit women from receiving abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected—before many women are even aware that they’re pregnant.

Pope Francis is gathering the heads of oil companies and investment firms in Vatican City next week to talk about how they can address climate change. Sounds lit, Pope Francis, keep doing you.

Fourteen-year-old Karthik Nemmani of McKinney, Texas won the Scripps National Spelling Bee yesterday, spelling the word "koinonia" correctly to take home more than $42,000 in prize money. Nobody here even knows how to pronounce that word. It’s probably not a word.

On Crooked Conversations: Jon Lovett and Adam Grant, a behavioral psychologist and host of the podcast WorkLife from TED, have a fascinating discussion about how psychology can help us fight groupthink, reach voters, and get politicians to actually agree on policy.

Listen →

Myanmar announced that it has reached a deal with the United Nations that could help over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims return to the country. The Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar fled en masse into the neighboring county of Bangladesh in order to escape violence, mass slaughter, rape, the burning of their villages, and other atrocities at the hands of Myanmar’s military. The humanitarian crisis they have faced has made them arguably the most persecuted minority on the planet. As a part of the deal, two U.N. groups will be given access to the Rakhine State (the home of the Rohingya) for the first time since violence emerged last August, and will attempt to facilitate the return of refugees.

In his Thursday column, the anti-Trump conservative columnist George Will defended Mitch McConnell’s unprecedented refusal to consider President Obama’s judicial nominees. “To prevent Republicans from reciprocating with filibusters against Obama’s packing-by-enlargement of the nation’s second-most-important court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Democrats changed Senate rules to bar filibusters of judicial nominees other than those for the Supreme Court.”

One problem: this isn’t true. Obama did not “enlarge” the D.C. circuit court, or try to pack it in any way. Oh no! A lie! Obama nominated judges to fill existing vacancies, per the job posting as described in Article II of the constitution. And it’s worth noting: Democrats did not change the filibuster rule in a vacuum; they did so after Republicans had imposed a blanket filibuster on all of those nominees, making clear that they would hold seats open for a Republican president to fill. There should probably be a correction, but the whole damn system needs a correction, you know?

There’s a new LeBron meme.

Did someone forward you this email? Sign up to get What A Day in your inbox!