BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER,
& CROOKED MEDIA

Thursday, June 28th, 2018

—Rod Rosenstein explaining the basics to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)

SUPREMELY SCREWED

There are signs that Democrats won’t even put up a united front against President Trump’s nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Democrats are not speaking with one voice, and vulnerable incumbents won’t rule out helping to confirm the nominee in the fall.

This would be a huge mistake. Democrats can’t promise victory, but their odds aren’t zero, there are very good arguments for providing Trump no votes, and their constituents’ lives and livelihoods are on the line.

• On purely moral grounds, Democrats should oppose any change to the ideological balance of the Court that is likely to place health care, reproductive rights, and LGBT equality at risk.
• Trump and his goons are under federal investigation and/or were indicted and/or already confessed. If any challenges reach the Supreme Court, Trump may literally be picking a judge in his own case.
• The people didn’t vote for two new right-wing justices. Lockstep opposition to Trump’s nominee would reflect the will of the people (who, of course, will have to live under the rule of whoever is confirmed for decades).
• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell created a new and extraordinary precedent by preventing Obama from reshaping the Court. If only for the party’s own dignity, Democrats should be willing to draw a line here. It wouldn’t even cut against existing norms. Won’t someone think of the norms?

The least Democrats can do is give their voters a fighting chance, so losing the Court for a generation does not become a foregone conclusion. Come on, Senate Dems. Give this all you’ve got.

Read →

REMEMBER RUSSIA?

Special Counsel Robert Mueller wants to know why Russian and Russia-linked billionaires had such unusual access to President Trump at his inaugural festivities, including the Inaugural Day luncheon in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, which is typically off limits to donors and even most elected members of Congress. RIGHT FROM THE START. AMAZING.

Mueller has also subpoenaed Andrew Miller, a former aide to Roger Stone, to provide documents and grand jury testimony, pursuant to the Russia investigation.

And, in case you missed it yesterday, Mueller revealed that Paul Manafort, who managed Trump’s campaign for free, had an outstanding $10 million loan from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Paul Manafort has a lot of intersecting problems at the moment.

This news was so alarming to Republicans that they convened a hearing…

...to discredit the investigation, and set both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray up to be held in contempt of Congress and possibly fired. They also voted nearly unanimously in support of a non-binding resolution meant to pressure Rosenstein to turn more documents pertinent to the investigation over to Congress.

Checks and balances? More like, check out how the GOP has turned the oversight committees of Congress into extensions of the Trump defense team to protect Trump even though they don’t fully know what they’re trying to cover up.  

A shooter opened fire at the Capital Gazette office in Annapolis, Maryland killing at least five people and leaving several others “gravely injured.” After mutilating his fingers in order to remain unidentified, authorities have now been able to identify the suspect, a 39-year-old white male, through the use of facial recognition software. Meanwhile, the reporters at the Capital Gazette are still working to put out a newspaper tomorrow. Heroes.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly will reportedly step down this summer. Frontrunners to replace him include Vice President Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff Nick Ayers, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, and Martin Shkreli.

Leading candidates to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy include staunch right wingers Thomas Hardiman, William Pryor, and Amul Thapar. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), once a Tea Party favorite, has also been floated and is super thirsty.

Hundreds of women conducted sit-ins at Justice Department headquarters and the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC to protest ICE and the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) joined the protesters. Capitol Police arrested Jayapal.

New satellite imagery indicates that North Korea has been moving quickly to upgrade a nuclear facility, even though Trump returned from a summit with Kim Jong-Un earlier this month and said the North Korean nuclear threat was no longer an issue.

Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer’s book Yes We (Still) Can hit number one on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. From Tommy Vietor: “More like Dammmmmmn, Pfeiffer.”

John Legend is selling his own rosé, and used the New York Times coverage about it to talk about criminal justice, mass incarceration, and how educating himself led to his involvement with the Meet Your D.A. campaign. From Brian, a 35-year-old man: Did someone say rosé?

Hysteria is here!

Check out the first episode of our newest pod, “Courts, Civility, and Other C Words.” In this episode, we meet all six of our bicoastal squad of cohosts to discuss the Anthony Kennedy retirement announcement. Then, the squad judges insincere public apologies and offers recommendations for cool stuff women are doing and making.

Listen →

The State Department just released a report condemning governments that separate families and detain children, which says “removal of a child from the family should only be considered as a temporary, last resort. Studies have found that both private and government-run residential institutions for children, or places such as orphanages and psychiatric wards that do not offer a family-based setting, cannot replicate the emotional companionship and attention found in family environments that are prerequisites to healthy cognitive development.”

You guys might wanna cc a few more people on this report.

Department of Homeland Security Inspector General agents paid a surprise visit to an ICE whistleblower, three months after he left the agency, as he was in the middle of an interview with a journalist…  

The mainstream media missed the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive 28-year-old first-time candidate who defeated Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY), the fourth-ranked Democrat in the House.

Former New York TImes executive editor Jill Abramson had some thoughts about this—and particularly for her old outlet, after it published a piece titled “Who Is Ocasio-Cortez”: “Kind of pisses me off that [the NYT] is still asking Who Is Ocasio-Cortez… Missing her rise [is] akin to not seeing Trump’s win coming in 2016.” The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan likened the oversight less to missing Trump, than to missing Bernie Sanders.

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