BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER
& CROOKED MEDIA

Thursday, June 7th, 2018

—Scott Pruitt using God as a cover for his corruption 🙃

BREAKING

President Trump’s Justice Department has joined a frivolous anti-Obamacare lawsuit, arguing that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional and it’s core provisions must therefore be thrown out. The development does not pose an immediate threat to the law, but represents one of the GOP’s most brazen acts of ACA sabotage since Trump’s inauguration, and breaks with DOJ’s longstanding commitment to defending laws when they can be credibly defended. It marks an effort by the Trump administration to assert that any laws it doesn’t like might come under legal threat by the branch of government tasked with executing them, and is such a blow to the integrity of the DOJ that the career attorneys assigned the case removed themselves from it. As University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley, who is one of the country's foremost experts on ACA litigation, put it, “I am at a loss for words to explain how big of a deal this is.”

In a statement to Crooked Media, former Solicitor General Don Verrilli, who successfully defended the ACA from two significant challenges before the Supreme Court, called it “a sad moment.”  

“The DOJ has a duty to defend federal laws when reasonable arguments can be made in defense of the law,” he said. “I find it impossible to believe that the many talented lawyers at the Department could not come up with any arguments to defend the ACA’s insurance market reforms, which have made such a difference to millions of Americans. Just read the brief of the States that intervened to defend the law. A compelling defense of the law is right there in black and white.”

AMERICA ON ICE

This week we learned that Pablo Villavicencio, a 35-year-old Ecuadorian man with an American wife and two daughters, faces deportation because he delivered pizza to an Army base in Brooklyn, NY. To complete the delivery last week, he needed a visitor’s pass; to get a visitor’s pass, he had to sign a background check waiver. The background check showed an active deportation warrant, so the military police turned him over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Villavicencio’s story is horrifying and tragic. Unfortunately it isn’t rare. President Trump has unleashed ICE, freeing federal agents to target unauthorized immigrants like Villavicencio, who have lived in the U.S. for years, and have American families.

In just the past week, ICE:

• Deported Celestino Hilario Garcia, a father of four from California’s central valley, and the caretaker of his six nieces and nephews, whose parents were killed in a car crash while fleeing (who else?) ICE.
• Raided a landscaping company in Ohio and arrested over 100 of its workers, by infiltrating an employee break room under cover and pretending to give out Dunkin’ Donuts.
• Prohibited detainees at a detention center outside Miami from celebrating Ramadan.
• Allowed a 33-year old transgender asylum seeker to die in custody—the fourth in-custody death for ICE since last October.

This pattern of abuse has rallied progressive and immigrant-rights advocates to the cause of abolishing or defunding ICE. This week, Democrats in New Mexico’s first congressional district nominated Democrat Deb Haaland, who is expected to become the first Native American woman to serve in the House, and who proposes abolishing ICE.

In the meantime, the American Civil Liberties Union has compiled this tip sheet to help educate immigrants and the public at large on exercising their rights when ICE agents come knocking.

The Trump administration has made clear that it thinks these stories about terrorized immigrants are both politically valuable, and a useful deterrent against further immigration. But if Democrats take back Congress, they will have the power to more effectively expose ICE’s abuses. And the next president can set enforcement priorities that make stories like these exceedingly rare.

DEEP FRIED CABINET SECRETARY

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt directed members of his security detail to pick up his dry cleaning and help find bottles of his “favorite moisturizing lotion” from the Ritz-Carlton hotel. WEIRD.

He was also admonished for frequenting the White House mess and inviting his friends, even though he isn’t technically supposed to eat there. EMBARRASSING.

This caps off a week that began with an extremely normal story about Pruitt dispatching an aide to find a “used Trump hotel mattress” for his personal use, and the revelation that he tried to leverage his office to secure a Chick-fil-A franchise for his wife. WEIRD AND EMBARRASSING.

Pruitt has yet to suffer consequences for his unending string of abuses, but big players in the Republican Party appear to have reached a breaking point with him. This week’s leaks appear to have come from Republicans in Congress and at the White House. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who said Pruitt’s actions were “about as swampy as you get,” along with other members from ethanol-producing states, have also turned on him. Even Fox News calculated the tab he’s run up with taxpayer dollars while in office. We have found the limit! Maybe!

But President Trump supports Pruitt, and continues to praise him publicly. And by refusing to take any action against Pruitt, he continues to test the GOP Congress’s appetite for corruption, which is voracious.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers found that President Trump’s tariffs will hurt the U.S. even as he and officials from the administration have repeatedly insisted that his approach will be “great” for the economy. Who to trust? Who. to. trust.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says the U.S. has reached an agreement to fine Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE $1 billion and embed a U.S. compliance team within the company in exchange for lifting sanctions on it. ZTE defied American sanctions on Iran and North Korea, and presents an espionage risk to the U.S., according to intelligence officials. But Trump announced that he would bail the company out shortly after the Chinese government loaned a Trump-affiliated development in Indonesia half a billion dollars, which is just such a coincidence!

The DOJ has offered congressional leaders a chance to look at more sensitive materials related to the FBI’s use of a confidential informant to contact the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. In a possibly related move, the Senate unanimously approved a resolution to assist an undisclosed DOJ investigation by handing over Senate Intelligence Committee documents "in connection with a pending investigation arising out of the unauthorized disclosure of information." Interesting!

Sean Hannity (who has a direct line to Donald Trump, and often speaks for him) encouraged witnesses in the Russia investigation with encrypted communications apps to destroy their phones, and present the remnants to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which would probably land those witnesses in jail. Don’t trust legal advice from Sean Hannity! The rest of his advice is great though.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson’s new proposal to increase rent on people receiving federal housing assistance by 20 percent will allow rent to grow six times faster than hourly wages, which will make it incredibly difficult for most if not all people affected by this change to keep their homes. This fucking guy.

According to Trump, Kim Jong Un could score an invite to the White House if all goes well during their meeting next week—a visit that he says would be “well-received.”

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is expected to introduce a bill to set up an independent commission to investigate the government’s underestimated death toll in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

Reese Witherspoon announced that Legally Blonde 3 is happening, and we can’t wait to see Special Counsel Elle Woods in action.

Barack Obama likes Macklemore. Help.

On Pod Save the World: Tommy talks to Ben Rhodes about his new book The World As It Is, a memoir of his time in the White House, his secret Cuba talks, the Iran deal, #BENGHAZI, and more.

Listen →

Also, don't miss our sale! Shirts are $15 and $18, there's free shipping on orders over $100, and you get a free Friend of the Pod sticker with every order. Now that is a deal, my friends.

“A day has not gone by when the boy has failed to ask in Spanish, ‘When will I see my papa?’ They tell him the truth. They do not know. No one knows.”

José, a five-year-old boy from Honduras, was separated from his father at the U.S. border as part of the Trump administration’s new policy of separating parents from children. Now he clings to two drawings of his family, unsure if and when he will be able to see them again.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has urged the Trump administration to end the practice, saying it can result in lifelong trauma for children. In the past two weeks alone, this has happened to 638 parents who have arrived at our borders with 658 children.

Read →

A misplaced word in the Republican tax law may mean that victims of sexual harassment and other misconduct won’t be able to deduct their legal expenses. Under this reading of the law, those who receive settlements would be forced to pay taxes on the gross value of those settlements, rather than the amounts they receive after costs and fees have been subtracted out. In some cases, their tax bills would exceed their net settlements.

Rudy Giuliani doesn’t think Stormy Daniels is worthy of respect because she works in porn: "I even have to respect criminals. But I'm sorry, I don't respect a porn star the way I respect a career woman or a woman of substance or a woman who has great respect for herself as a woman and a person and isn't going to sell her body for sexual exploitation.”

Rudy Giuliani is a shitty lawyer, but in case it wasn’t already clear, he is also a shitty person.

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Oopsie doopsie: Yesterday we accidentally said Deb Haaland, a Democrat who is on track to become the first Native American congresswoman, was from Arizona. She's from New Mexico, which is next to Arizona—therefore that error was NEXT to right. Our apologies.