BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER
& CROOKED MEDIA

Wednesday, June 6th, 2018

—Trump incorrectly referencing the War of 1812 in a phone call

with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau

SHUT OUTS SHUT OUT

The final results of the California primary won’t be official until all the mail-in ballots are counted about a week from now. But the news (from California and nationally) is mostly good for Democrats, with important caveats.

From California:

• It was very close in the 48th and the 10th districts, but Democrats avoided being locked out of any congressional races due to California’s top-two primary system. That means a Democrat will advance to the general election in every single California race.
• In most of the eight GOP-held California House districts we call the Crooked 8, Democrats narrowed their margins with Republicans relative to 2016.
• Democrats start the general election as favorites to take Darrell Issa’s 49th district seat from Republicans, while most of the Crooked 8 districts will be true tossups. CA-21 (represented by David Valadao) and CA-22 (represented by Devin Nunes) will be reaches.
• Also worth noting: Turnout tends to be higher in general elections, but it was relatively low on Tuesday.

Extrapolating California results to the nation at large is tricky, but still promising. The cumulative Democratic vote total relative to the 2016 California primary is up, and up enough to be consistent with a narrow Democratic victory in November.

That finding matches some anecdotal evidence from around the country:

• In Johnson County, IA, a bellwether for Democratic base enthusiasm, turnout in the primary eclipsed 20 percent, breaking the previous record.
• Democratic turnout was up 71 percent over the 2014 midterms outside of California, while GOP turnout was only up five percent.
• Democrat Lauren Arthur won a special election for a state legislative seat by 19 points in a Missouri district that went for both Donald Trump and Mitt Romney by four points.

From Jon Favreau: The lockout threat in California was real, and Democrats only avoided it thanks to a surge in grassroots organizing and activism, and cooperation between the party, groups like Swing Left and Indivisible, and some of the candidates. Democrats will need to sustain this level of cooperation, energy, and enthusiasm through November to win these California seats and take back the House. It will not be a cakewalk. Because of gerrymandering, Democrats will need a level of turnout that’s not just better than the last midterm election, but historic for any midterm election—particularly among young voters, whose low turnout rates in 2010 and 2014 cost the Democrats dearly. They need to show up in a big way this November.

President Trump is touting the fact that he signed the V.A. Mission Act—a law that will extend a program allowing veterans facing long wait lists to access private health care, outside of the publicly funded Veterans Health Administration. Behind the scenes, though, his administration is conspiring to quash a bipartisan effort to fund that law. Republicans only want to pay for it if the cost is offset by cuts to other domestic spending programs. Republicans: pitting veterans against other vulnerable populations since forever.

Trump commuted the prison sentence of Alice Johnson, a first-time nonviolent drug offender who has served 21 years of a life sentence for conspiracy to possess cocaine, after Kim Kardashian met with him in the White House to press Johnson’s case. Say what you will about Kim, and Trump’s arbitrary and corrupted clemency process, but this decision was the right one, and her account of sharing the news with Johnson was heartwarming.

House Speaker Paul Ryan told a reporter that he agrees with Trey Gowdy and rejects Trump’s bullshit claims that Obama spies infiltrated his campaign. From Dan Pfeiffer: Now imagine how different things would be if Paul Ryan had been willing to visit his spine last year before everything went off the rails.

The 2,300 families in Puerto Rico who were displaced by Hurricane Maria will stop receiving FEMA housing assistance at the end of this month. Tomorrow, 100 of these displaced people will meet with lawmakers in D.C. and push for FEMA to use its Disaster Housing Assistance Plan to provide long-term assistance for these families.

Two top aides to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt implicated in his many corruption scandals are leaving the agency. Senior counsel Sarah Greenwalt, to whom Pruitt gave a 52 percent raise against White House wishes, and Pruitt’s top scheduling aide Millan Hupp, who (among other things) requested a used Trump Hotel mattress (still super weird!), will depart late this week and early next. Pruitt can apparently fuck up continuously with no repercussions, but his staff doesn’t enjoy the same impunity. Meanwhile, an EPA spokesperson asked for comment on all of this responded by telling a reporter, “You have a great day, you’re a piece of trash.” And this EPA knows what to do with trash: let big corporations put it wherever.

Under Acting Director Mick Mulvaney, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is removing until further notice the members of the Consumer Advisory Board, which is required by law to meet and advise Mulvaney on civil rights and fair lending. Mulvaney also plans to replace all lending laws with the rules from The Merchant of Venice.

The top court in the European Union ruled that all E.U. nations will now recognize the residency rights of same-sex spouses—even in the six E.U. nations where same-sex marriage is not legally recognized.

Tonight Trump is hosting his first iftar at the White House in observance of Ramadan. Trump has had plenty to say about Muslims in the past—basically all of it pretty bigoted!—so the invitation list is short.

Kellyanne Conway accidentally called Trump the “Commander of Cheese.” Insert whatever punchline you’d like here.

“You can’t cancel something that’s not happening. He does that all the time. Like when he cancelled the [Golden State] Warriors trip. None of the Warriors were coming to see you, bitch!"

—Ira Madison III on Trump cancelling the Eagles’ White House visit

This week on Keep It, Ira, Kara, and Louis riff on Samantha Bee, the NFL, Kim Kardashian, and more. Plus, Kathy Griffin stops by the studio! It’s a good episode.

Listen →

Also, our sale is still happening! Shirts for $15 and $18, free shipping on orders over $100, and a free Friend of the Pod sticker with every order. Don't miss it!

Voters in Santa Clara, CA recalled the judge in the Brock Turner rape case from the bench on Tuesday night. Judge Aaron Persky incurred national outrage for only sentencing Turner to six months in jail for three counts of felony sexual assault after he raped an unconscious woman at Stanford University. Prosecutors had asked for six years. Turner’s sentence became a symbol of unequal justice for privileged people, but legal scholars worry that the decision to recall Persky will influence elected judges to hand down harsher sentences to all defendants to avoid similar backlash.

Journalist Julia Ioffe wrote a comprehensive piece about the conflicts within the effort to recall Persky.

Read →

After yesterday’s primaries, Deb Haaland is expected to become the nation’s first ever Native American congresswoman. The Democratic nominee from Arizona has endorsed the elimination of ICE, universal health care, and abortion rights, and worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign before becoming a state party leader. We expect Trump to say something terribly racist about her any moment now.

Hey, guess what? We’re switching to the Cash App, the best way to send and receive money. Download it now, use the code PODSAVE, and you get five dollars, plus five dollars goes to Moms Demand Action. That’s money for you and money for gun control. GOOD. We’re not using the other apps anymore →

A Republican state lawmaker from South Dakota tried to argue that businesses should be able to “turn away people of color,” following this week’s Supreme Court ruling on behalf of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Refresher: That is not only illegal, it is disgusting.

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