BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER,
& CROOKED MEDIA

Friday, June 22nd, 2018

—POTUS sharing his Starburst candies (but probably only yellow because he’s still the worst)

WALL FLOWERS

After days of telling us that only Democrats in Congress can prevent family separation at the border, President Trump is now telling fellow Republicans to use this crisis for political gain, and only legislate if and when Republicans win in November.

“Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November,” he tweeted Friday morning, “Dems are just playing games, have no intention of doing anything to solves [sic] this decades old problem [ed note: this is a lie]. We can pass great legislation after the Red Wave!” (Ew, obviously.)

There’s a simple reason for this reversal: Trump knows he wants a wall. He knows he wants it to be harder for people who don’t look like him to come to America. But he also knows he can’t get those things from Congress, even with thousands of child hostages in captivity. Any immigration bill that cleared the House with only Republican votes would fail in the Senate, and House Speaker Paul Ryan can’t even get that done. Bills designed to get bipartisan support could clear the House and the Senate, but those wouldn’t be harsh enough for Trump to sign.

The bad news is, unless Republican leaders somehow discover their missing spines, Trump’s separated-family crisis and a brewing indefinite-detention crisis—which even a humane and competent administration would have a hard time resolving—will fester at least through the midterms in November.

If Democrats retake the House, they can conceivably force Trump to accept measures that would fix the problems he created at the border, and help Dreamers and other immigrants. And they can make headway toward that goal by making reuniting children with their parents a part of their campaign platform.

From Brian: There is a risk, reflected in punditry, that Democrats will convince themselves Trump has the better of the politics of immigration, and shy away from taking his cruelty and demagoguery on directly. This would be a tragic error. No matter how much ground Democrats cede to Trump, he will lie and accuse them of supporting open borders anyhow. The best Democrats can do is refuse to reward liars, accept what they’re up against, and support policies they believe will do the most possible good.

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STEVE KING, RACIST AND KINGMAKER

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has been incredibly racist forever, but under Trump he has accelerated his transformation from standard-issue right-wing xenophobe into an advocate for white-purity politics.

A couple weeks ago he retweeted a self-described Nazi sympathizer named Mark Collett, who is a prominent British far-right activist. Today, he described young boys the Trump administration separated from their parents as “prime MS-13 gang material,” and earlier this week he lamented that he doesn’t hear Trump “speaking much about race.”

“For me, there are cultural distinctions that matter,” he said. “Whenever you import large numbers of people from singular cultures, you import the culture, too.”

We’re past expecting Republicans to find their consciences. But not only have they said literally nothing about King’s white supremacy, they continue to treat him as a kingmaker in Iowa politics. That’s unacceptable. It would also be unacceptable for Republican leaders to condemn him meaninglessly on Twitter, and think they’d done enough. And as luck would have it, there is a better option.

The Supreme Court ruled today that prosecutors need warrants to get customer location data from cell phone companies. Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberal justices in a 5-4 decision. (Or just tap ‘allow government to access your location data.')

House GOP leaders have further delayed a vote on the immigration bill they wrote in an effort to bridge differences between moderate Republicans and GOP hardliners, over concerns that it would fail. Surprise.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) has finally discovered that his powers of office extend beyond writing sad tweets and scolding President Trump on the Senate floor. He’s threatening to withhold support for all of Trump’s judicial nominees unless Trump reverses his Cuba and tariff policies. Assuming Democrats align behind him (not always a safe assumption) he could unilaterally grind Trump’s transformation of the judiciary to a halt. Let’s see if he caves and hope he doesn’t. Let’s also ask why THIS was Flake’s line in the sand.

The family separation crisis has given rise to a new issue: there aren’t enough lawyers to handle the sudden influx of urgent immigration cases, especially now that parents and children have been split up, requiring multiple attorneys.

As part of Trump’s plan to reorganize the federal government, he wants to house all social safety net programs, including food stamps, under the same organization, potentially leaving millions at risk by making these programs easier to cut. This is not likely to pass in Congress, but it does tell you a lot about Republicans’ true priorities, behind the populist facade.

Under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, over 1,200 civil rights probes from the Obama-era Department of Education have been quickly closed without consequences or punishments for wrongdoing largely due to “insufficient evidence.” Elections matter.

ABC has picked up a spinoff of Roseanne featuring all the series leads except for Roseanne herself. The show will be called “The Conners.” Don’t be surprised if the actual Roseanne starts a Pizzagate-style conspiracy theory about it.

The D.C. dating pool doesn’t want Trump supporters. Womp, womp.

A new New York Times investigation revealed that the business of detaining and transporting migrant children in the U.S. is extremely lucrative, valued at a billion dollars, with nearly a dozen contractors operating over 100 shelters across 17 states. These private operators stand to profit even more from Trump’s policy revision that now calls for families to be detained together.

On With Friends Like These: Ana talks to the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer about Trump’s family separation policy, and her experience at Trump’s disconcertingly joyful Duluth, MN rally.

Listen →

Brian Kilmeade of FOX & Friends accidentally said what he really thinks about how we treat perfectly innocent children: "These aren't our kids,” he said of migrant children separated from their parents. “Show them compassion, but it's not like he is doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas.”

As if to one-up Kilmeade, Trump hosted parents of children killed by immigrants at the White House, to malign immigrants generally and justify his treatment of the migrants and kids he’s ordered detained at the border. The parents held up enlarged pictures of their children. Trump had autographed the pictures. As vulgar and depraved as it gets.

Vox found that male political reporters are three times likelier to retweet their male colleagues than their female ones, and they reply nearly exclusively to tweets from other guys. HuffPost’s Washington Bureau chief Amanda Terkel came up with a solution:

THIS IS FROM 2015 BUT IT'S FINE BC IT'S FUNNY.

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