Category: Uncategorized

It’s another godawful week, particularly on the immigration front, as we zoom further and further into fascism. As I’ve done once before, this roundup has two extra sections: The Bad is broken up into The Bad (Original Flavor) and The Very Bad (Extra Crispy-Making), and I’m also including a What We Can Do section because I think we all need it. Also just like before, I moved The Good to the top because life’s too short and we all deserve to have our news dessert first. The closing has a rubber chicken singing Havana, because we can all use a unicorn chaser, and that rubber chicken is pretty talented.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a summit! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

The Good:

• Senate Strikes Back on ZTE. After Trump attempted to remove sanctions on Chinese communication giant ZTE, the Senate has adopted a measure that would block the action. Needless to say, the White House is not on board with this, but early attempts to get a GOP Senator to block the block provision have fallen flat to say the least. It’s looking very likely that the provision is going to end up in the annual defense bill, which means Trump can’t toss it without also vetoing the entire defense bill. So while it’s not a done deal, we’re in a good posture on this.
• Recent Court Resilience. A federal judge this week was having none of the Trump administration’s argument that violating the Emoluments Clause by taking the money of foreign officials at a Trump hotel in downtown DC is No Big, and the response was honestly pretty edifying to watch. (“Is your argument that as long as the president takes the money without corrupt intent, it’s O.K.?”) An official decision is due in just seven weeks, and I think it’s fair to assume that the Trump administration isn’t going to like it. Meanwhile, in a separate federal matter, a judge ruled that Michael Cohen can’t secretly object to documents he thinks might be implicated by attorney-client privilege, requiring him to file objections publicly with redaction to preserve the content in question. Basically: He can say “don’t take this document” without saying what the document is, but he can’t say it in secret.
• The Primary Trenches are Getting Deeper. Good news is coming in on the primary front: More women (Democrats in particular) are running than ever before, and a good deal of them are advancing in the polls! Meanwhile, the GOP contends with high-profile conservatives openly aligning themselves with white supremacists and a clear trend of intolerance for any Republican candidate who dares speak against Trump, which suggests that these elections may prove a good barometer for how well our nation can stand against the increasingly uniform far-right GOP.

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

This was yet another full week of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, unfortunately. Here are the main things to know:

• Is the Swamp Draining Itself? This past Wednesday, CBS news broke a story that Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders may be planning to leave the White House Staff, as may Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah. Trump and his aides immediately called the story fake news and Sanders tweeted a denial as well, but recent videos of Sanders fielding questions about immigration policy seem to suggest she may be finding her role quite taxing. (Besides, if there’s anything we’ve learned about the Sarah, it’s that her relationship to the truth is as smudgy as second-day smoky eye.) If they do leave, it will be an unprecedented amount of turnover for the White House press staff in one year; either way, it will be interesting to see what happens.
• North Korea Summit Summarized. Trump and Kim Jong-un did end up meeting at an abbreviated summit in Singapore, which resulted in a signed joint statement after five apparently “very special” hours together. (The statement agreed upon denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, which isn’t exactly a new promise, and Trump agreed to stop doing military demonstrations.) During the meeting, Trump pitched the idea of Trump hotels in North Korea (yes, really), aired a video the press assumed to be North Korean propaganda and restricted U.S. press access for several windows of time. He also didn’t use any notes, relying on what he called “one of the best memories of our time.” He wrapped the whole thing up by conceding he probably wouldn’t admit it if he were wrong about Kim’s sincere intent to denuclearize. Needless to say, there’s a lot to watch here.
• Trump’s Weird Totalitarian Love Affair. Trump showed a lot of figurative and literal love of dictators this week, as the summit summary suggests. In addition to the summit itself, footage was released of Trump saluting a North Korean general, which North Korea immediately pounced on as effective propaganda — and for good reason; the action isn’t customary for U.S. leaders interacting with dictatorships or hostile nations. He followed up by telling a CBS reporter to be quiet instead of answering her questions about the North Korea summit, observing that he wants ‘his people’ to ‘sit up at attention’ when he talks like Kim Jong-un’s sycophants do. Then he showed yet more totalitarian inclinations when discussing the Department of Justice report (discussed below), calling his own FBI a “den of thieves.” So… all of that sure happened.
• New York Straight Up Suing the Trumps. The New York Attorney General is suing two generations of Trumps over the mishandling of the Trump Foundation, which the state characterizes as “little more than a checkbook” for Donald Trump — and if even half the allegations in the suit are true, that seems like a pretty fair characterization. The case was brought in front of the New York Supreme Court, but the Attorney General has also notified the IRS and the FEC.

There were also a few noteworthy developments on the Russia Investigation front. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

• Your Weekly Cohen Updates. It was another bad week for Michael Cohen. He’s been telling friends he expects to get arrested soon, apparently in part because the feds have successfully reconstructed sixteen pages from his shredder and decrypted hundreds of phone messages. News also broke that his Trump-funded attorneys are expected to stop representing him when the document review completes. Meanwhile, he’s struggling with his relationship to the President in general (although we all are, Michael, you aren’t special on that front), and may or may not be considering cooperation with authorities as Trump waffles on pardoning him. Either way, he was denied a gag order against Stormy Daniels’s attorney Michael Avenetti at the end of the week, which I’m sure felt like a pretty low note to end on but was hilarious for the rest of us.
• Manafort In Jail. Things are also looking fairly grim for Trump’s former campaign head, Paul Manafort. Following an accusation by prosecutors that Manafort tried to convince witnesses to downplay his role in furthering Russian interests during the election, a federal judge has finally sent him to jail, a move that has drawn criticism not just from the defense, but from Donald Trump himself, who tweeted about the “unfair” decision and citing Manafort’s work with Reagan and Dole. It’s like a guy can’t even gently influence witnesses in his own trial any more!
• Roger Stone Remembers. News came to light this week that Trump campaign manager Roger Stone met with a Russian national who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton in 2016. Stone’s official position on this is that he ‘forgot’ about it when he was questioned by federal officials on collusion with Russia, but it’s totally fine because “I don’t think a failure of memory constitutes a perjury.” Which would probably even be true, if he had actually forgotten about it, but the texts back and forth with his colleague Michael Caputo seem to suggest that he hadn’t.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Somehow Even More Pruitt Scandals. A major hallmark of the modern GOP is an uncanny ability to shake off scandal and remain in the party’s good graces, but everything has a limit. That limit can evidently be found in Ill-Advised EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a man seemingly determined to have his fingers and toes in as many flavors of pie as exist, and who is currently phoning his contacts about grafting on more fingers and toes for additional pie coverage. Although Pruitt has coasted by well enough under Donald Trump’s protection, that protection is proving too thin — even Trump loyalists are starting to turn against him, including a Right-Wing Dark Money group and conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. The more stories about unprofessional conduct and misuse of influence pile up — including using his staff and contacts to find his wife a job, his daughter an internship, and himself tickets for a sold-out football game — the less likely Pruitt is to keep his job, which I guess he’s combating by… going on a weird publicity tour of Middle America. No, I don’t know either.
• Justice Department Election Report. The Justice Department’s Inspector General released a 500-page report on the FBI’s actions during the 2016 election, and needless to say the results were… mixed and confusing, and Trump’s lie fest didn’t exactly help, so let me try to break it down. The short version is that the FBI screwed up politically by appearing partisan but didn’t actually show bias in the investigation, and in fact the FBI probably should not have gone public with the Clinton investigation at all. Ironically, the report also noted that Comey used his own private email while conducting FBI business, prompting Hillary Clinton to throw very public shade at him. All told, there was a lot of hoopla but it’s not the exoneration Trump is claiming — in fact, to the extent it exonerates anybody, it pretty much just exonerates Hillary Clinton.
• DACA House Rounds. Paul Ryan agreed to a DACA vote this week to diffuse the discharge petition mutiny happening in the House, which seems like better news than it probably is. There will be two competing bills up for discussion; one of them is a conservative bill that follows Trump’s framework and the other is a bipartisan bill that includes a provision prohibiting separation of families but also ends the diversity visa lottery and funds more border security. Trump’s position on the bills has been incoherent but appears to have settled on supporting both bills. Needless to say, I don’t think this is the correct path to ending separation policies, especially with the Senate considering a cleaner bill.

The Bad:

• Shelter and Checkpoint Conditions. A week or two after a Senator was denied entry at a shelter for 10- to 17-year-old boys in Brownsville, Texas, journalists were permitted to tour the facility (as well as a smaller facility in El Cajon). Those allowed entry described Casa Padre as overpopulated — unsurprising, given the official report that about 2,000 children have been separated from their parents since implementing a policy of total separation in May — and with a regimented schedule for the boys in custody that some outlets (accurately) described as “prison-like.” The Casa Padre site is nonetheless at least a licensed facility, which might stop being a realistic standard as all the DHS’s shelters reach capacity — more on that below. And either way, shelter conditions are still better than conditions at the CBP checkpoints where kids spend their first few days, which made news this week for keeping kids in cages under conditions so bad the cells are nicknamed “iceboxes.”
• Trade War Teasing. The bad blood between the U.S. and Canada continued and expanded this week, with Canadians calling for a boycott on the U.S., Gary Cohn threatening tariffs for imported every car coming into the country, China slapping tariffs on us, and Congress displeased by the whole thing. Their opinion is understandable, because the mere threat of a trade war is messing with the economy and experts caution that it could undo the tax benefits created last year. And even Cohn concedes that Trump maybe doesn’t know what he’s doing, so maybe we’ll get lucky and Trump will get distracted by going after him for saying the sky is blue.
• AT&T Merger. In a historic ruling, telecom giant AT&T has beaten a lawsuit intended to stop it from buying out media giant Time Warner, meaning that their 85 billion dollar deal can move forward. While news of one giant devouring another is huge as-is, it could be argued that the bigger impact of the case is the precedent it sets — now that it’s been established that telecom/media mergers don’t violate antitrust law, Comcast is already poised to purchase Fox. While it’s unknown what effect on the consumer these deals might herald, I expect that this won’t be the last time these issues appear on the roundup.

The Very Bad — Please Read It Anyway!:

• Unaccompanied Tent Cities. With shelters filling to capacity and no end to the “zero tolerance” policy in sight, the administration has begun discussing (and implementing) a parade of terrible plans for what to do with “unaccompanied” children when the shelters become completely full. Initially they were discussing putting children on military bases, but then they one-upped themselves and decided that children should be put in tent cities instead. And now the latter plan is actually being implemented, with a tent structure already erected in Tornillo, Texas to hold about 360 sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys. Despite already being in motion, the plan is drawing strenuous objection — in particular, people are concerned that the temperature, which regularly climbs above 100 degrees in Tornillo in the summer, could be fatal if not properly managed.
• Confusing, Conflicting Official Stories. One of the more noteworthy (and disturbing) things about the separation policy coverage is that the administration can’t agree on what their story actually is regarding it. Jeff Sessions, who described the practice as a ‘deterrent’ when first announcing it, defended the policy as righteous by citing Romans 13 (and there’s so much wrong with that sentence that I don’t even know where to start, but separation of church and state, historic use of that passage to propagate white supremacy, and the very fallible nature of our current administration all spring to mind). Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, in contrast, simply stated that there’s no policy of separating families at the border, because We Have Always Been At War with Eurasia. And Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is still repeating Trump’s party line that the Democrats have caused a separation policy, which is nearly as blatant of a lie. This type of inconsistent and obvious lying is really not a good sign.
• Denaturalization Efforts Begin. The Department of Homeland Security is forming a new office whose purpose is to investigate thousands of old fingerprint records in an effort to strip citizenship from people. The official word is that this will be limited to people the office believes “cheated” in the naturalization process by committing fraud on their applications. But denaturalization — the act of taking away citizenship from someone who earned it as an immigrant — is very rare, and we’ve never have an office dedicated to this before, so immigration activists are notably suspicious of this new initiative. And frankly, I’m right there with them — I wouldn’t trust this administration to tell me the way to the nearest McDonald’s, let alone why it’s systemically removing rights from people of color. We’ll need to keep an eye on this for abuses.
• US vs the UN Human Rights Council. The United Nations told the US to stop the practice of separating families this week, calling it an “unlawful interference in family life” as well as abusive to children — and since stories are increasingly trickling in of families being permanently separated by partial deportation, that seems like an understatement. But the US responded by planning to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council. Though the administration claims the imminent withdrawal is actually because of how the council treats Israel, to say the least the timing is pretty suspicious.

What We Can Do:

There are several initiatives being started to address the immigration issues listed above, and getting involved can be a great way to channel any rage and frustration you may be feeling from the news above. A good starting place is these suggestion lists, which have compiled resources and summarized courses of actions for you already, but I’ve also broken down their suggestions by category here:

• Immigration Initiatives: Calling Reps. Diane Feinstein introduced legislation in the Senate called the Keep Families Together Act, which as the name suggests is intended to prohibit the practice of separating families. It’s currently backed along party lines, with all the Senate Dems and none of the Senate GOP supporting it — which means your Dem senators can use some love to let them know you support their actions, and your GOP senators can use a piece of your mind. There are also two bills floating around the House right now, as I mentioned above, and though I don’t recommend either of them for immigration reform, it can be helpful to call your reps and tell them that, too. And you get an extra bonus option if you live in Massachusetts, because the House and Senate here are currently reconciling their budget bill, and the Senate version of the budget has several provisions to protect immigrant rights folded into it. Several sites have great scripts you to follow, and if you live in Massachusetts MIRA has a list of talking points you can take to Governor Baker (and while you’re at it, soften the blow by thanking him for condemning current border practices).
• Immigration Initiatives: Donation. There are many, many organizations that can use your support as they fight the current practices on the front lines (if you’re able to give financial support). If legal support is your thing: The ACLU is currently suing over the practices, the American Immigration Lawyers Association is organizing volunteer law efforts, Al Otro Lado is coordinating legal support for asylum seekers, Kids in Need of Defense supports unaccompanied minors in deportation proceedings, and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services appears to be leading the local charge in Texas for representing and coordinating legal care. If other on-the-ground services are more your thing, Pueblo Sin Fronteras assists caravans on the ground on the way in, Border Angels organizes water drops for people traveling on their way in, and No More Deaths documents CBP abuses. (And Act Blue has aggregated those and many others at one donation site, in case you want to give to multiple groups.)
• Immigration Initiatives: Action. There are already several initiatives being organized to take to the streets to protest and support people being detained. In Thursday, June 14, there were Families Belong Together rallies all over the country Yesterday, there was a Father’s Day vigil for ICE detainees here in Boston and several representatives took a trip to visit ICE detainees in Elizabeth, New Jersey as well. There’s also a virtual event called Lunchtime for Change happening this Wednesday at noon across the country, and here in Mass that’s dovetailing with a MIRA rally at the state house from 12:30–2:00. And, of course, all of us can take action between now and November by making sure we’re registered to vote in the upcoming election!

And that’s the news this week, and good job and my condolences for making it through the whole thing; your reward is this ridiculous video of a rubber chicken singing ‘Havana’ and hopefully an eventual better government. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me the abolition of CBP!

Y’all, I don’t even know what happened this week. To the extent that there was a coherent theme, that theme is “Everyone in Government Is Twelve Years Old and Everything is Terrible.” I got nothin’.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a G6! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

We had quite a week for Casual Disregard of Governing Norms, even by our modern low standards. Here are the main things to know:

• Giuliani Jamboree. This was an utterly incomprehensible week of Rudy Giuliani statements, and given how the last few weeks have been that’s really saying something. First he said that Trump would fight any subpoena from Mueller to testify, arguing that presidential immunity means that Trump can’t be subpoenaed or indicted for anything he does until he’s impeached. Inexplicably, his illustrative examples on this involved Trump hypothetically shooting James Comey, though he was quick to clarify that this was hypothetical (as if saying that made it better). Then, to follow up on this, Guiliani started claiming that Mueller was ‘framing’ Trump, repeating the beyond-tired half-truth that Mueller’s prosecutory team was full of “highly partisan Democrats” (when in reality the team does have 13 Democrats, but several members of the team have successfully worked under both parties and two of them worked for the current Department of Justice). And just to round out the entire thing, he also claimed that Kim Jong-un “got on his hands and knees and begged” to revive this week’s summit with Trump in Singapore (but more on that below).
• DOJ Not Doing Its Job. Jeff Sessions sent a letter to Paul Ryan explaining that the DoJ will not defend the ACA in court, claiming that protections against “pre-existing condition” insurance refusal practices are unconstitutional. Unsurprisingly, both Republicans and Democrats with upcoming elections are upset about this move, because the pre-existing condition clause is a pretty popular part of the ACA and because it’s likely to mess with the markets yet again. (Sessions also announced that the DOJ won’t be defending DACA, but that one was a little more predictable.)
• Somehow Even More Pruitt Scandals. Folks, it’s starting to seem like there’s a new Pruitt scandal literally every week — this time, it’s that he had his security detail picking up his dry cleaning and had a major Trump donor help him staff the EPA. Even Republicans are starting to grow really tired of the constant scandal stream, and while it’s happening Pruitt keeps making changes at the EPA. Literally none of this is normal, folks.
• Eagles and FOX. After Trump abruptly issued a statement that he would no longer welcome the Eagles to the White House — mostly because a bunch of them were planning to skip it — things started to get seriously weird, because it somehow ended in a prolonged fight between Trump and the city of Philadelphia. Significantly, Fox News got in on the action, airing footage of players praying before a game to back the President’s claim that the Eagles kneel during the anthem and are therefore unpatriotic and un-American. As is customary by this point for the Trump administration, this tactic included both a mischaracterization of the kneeling movement (because nobody is doing it to show they hate America) and also straight-up lies, because in fact not a single Eagle knelt in the entirety of the 2017 season. All told, the Eagles tight end Zach Ertz’s characterization of the whole thing as government propaganda seems… disturbingly accurate.

There were a couple of developments on the Russia Investigation front too. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

• Et Tu Ivanka? Buzzfeed reported this week that Ivanka Trump connected Michael Cohen with a Russian contact during the campaign, with the end goal of arranging a meeting between Putin and Trump. This was apparently in November 2015, and connected to setting up a Trump Tower in Moscow, but it’s nonetheless an incredible story in the larger context of the Russia investigation.
• More Mueller Indictments. Mueller’s team has issued new obstruction of justice charges and a witness tampering indictment against Paul Manafort as well as his associate Konstantin Kilimnik for their attempt to influence the testimony of two witnesses in Manafort’s underlying case. There’s not much risk for Kilimnik at this time, because he’s not in the United States and Russia doesn’t seem willing to extradite to us, but the move still carries symbolic significance for obvious reason. It’s sort of like yelling at your cat after he’s eaten your sandwich; you can’t really do anything about it now but at least he knows you know.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Now I’m Feeling So Wry Like a G6.* As last week’s jabs about Canada burning down the White House forecast, we ended up with a G6 instead of a G7 Summit after all. This was mostly because Trump pushed for the group to re-admit Russia, insulted everyone else in the group, and then left early in a huff. For an encore, he also disavowed the statement he signed by tweet after he was out the door, and now we’re openly fighting with Canada over their retaliatory tariffs and the EU is likely not far behind. Lots of foreign officials had commentary about the President’s behavior, and most of it can be approximately summarized as “What is he, twelve?” (And this before news had even hit about his kindergartener habit of ripping up papers he’s supposed to preserve and leaving aides to tape them back together. Our best guess is he’s more like two, Europe, and we’re super sorry about it.)
• Mitch McConnell Ruins Recess. Mitch McConnell canceled the August recess this week, which might end up impacting incumbents’ campaign strategies, but most of those folks are Democrats so who cares I guess? And speaking of Democrats, he went ahead and blamed them for his decision to cancel most of the recess, stating that “historic obstruction . . . of the president’s nominees” was the culprit (as opposed to, you know, the utterly bonkers nominees being put forward). Seriously, is anybody in our government an adult?
• Melania’s Amazing Disappearing Reappearance. People have been speculating rampantly about Melania’s one-month disappearance, which hasn’t been made better by Trump announcing she got an operation and can’t fly. This was probably not helped by MSNBC speculating that she’s “dead inside,” although she was apparently still alive and kicking enough this week to contradict Rudy Giuliani about her opinions on Trump’s affair with Stormy Daniels.
• Facebook Faces More Music.* The New York Times reported this week that Facebook gave device makers deep access to data on its users, a charge that Facebook is at least vaguely denying but seems more than plausible to the rest of us. And it apparently seemed plausible to Congress, too, because the head of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee has announced that they’ll be seeking more information on this. Honestly, the more comes out about Facebook, the more I think they might as well just pick another date for testimony.

The Bad:

• Voting Rights Loss.* The Supreme Court issued a 5–4 opinion upholding Ohio’s voter registration law, which permits voters to be purged from voting rolls if they miss one federal election cycle and don’t respond to a notice sent to their address. The court’s logic was that the failure to respond to the notice is really what kicks people off the roll, not the failure to vote, although the dissent definitely didn’t buy that argument. Voter rights groups are understandably outraged — between suppression practices aimed to stop people from getting to the polls and common residence patterns in urban areas, this rule disproportionately impacts minorities and by extension Democrats. If nothing else, Trump thinks it’s a sound victory, which can be probably taken as a sign that the decision won’t mean anything good.
• Immigration Updates. This was another utterly horrorshow week in immigration news — bear with me; this will be long and upsetting. We kicked off with a raid in Ohio (why is all the bad news from Ohio this week?); 114 workers were arrested at a gardening company by a large force of 200 agents using helicopters and dogs. Some of the workers were subsequently released because they had legal status, and others were released to care for the dozens of children left stranded by the raid. And speaking of kids, news also broke that children are being routinely held longer than is legal at border checkpoints because CBP is taking so many kids from their parents that there is nowhere to put them. This is likely one of many reasons that the United Nations is telling the US to stop the practice of separating families, (correctly) calling it an “unlawful interference in family life.” But instead of listening, this administration is doubling down, sending 1600 detainees, including some asylum seekers, to await their civil deportation proceedings in federal prison (yes, really). And the Department of Homeland Security is moving forward with a plan to do full immigration checks on anyone who tries to sponsor an unaccompanied minor, which will almost certainly drive the number of available sponsors down and make it even harder to place kids they have separated from their parents. And just to cap everything off, Sessions announced today that families fleeing domestic violence or gang homicide will no longer qualify for asylum literally because he says so, using his authority as Attorney General to reverse a judicial ruling holding the exact opposite. This ultimately undoes years of precedent designed to assist people facing horrifically violent realities and is, frankly, one of the most morally bankrupt things Sessions has done in the past year.
• Medicare Meltdown. Several outlets ran a story this week on the Medicare Trustees’ annual report, though they disagreed about what the takeaway should be. Bloomberg’s version was that the Trustees expect Medicare funds to run out in 2026 — three years earlier than initially forecast. Though Forbes takes umbrage with this interpretation of the Trustee’s report, even they don’t think Medicare is in good shape; their theory is that Congress will just keep accruing debt as Medicare eats up more and more of the national GDP. Good times.

The Good:

• DACA Updates. We’re rapidly approaching the point where House Republicans can force a vote on DACA legislation by discharge petition, which is a promising oasis of reasonable immigration policy in a desert of racist garbage. The House returns from the weekend tomorrow, which not-coincidentally is also the last day of the window to procure signatures, and right now they are only three shy of the 218 signatures needed. We’ll need to see what happens, but absolute minimum the more moderate House Republicans are causing major headaches for Paul Ryan, and frankly that’s pretty great and I’ll take it.

And that’s the news this week — less than last week, but it makes up for it by being terrible. I’ll catch you next week, hopefully with more good news. In the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me government officials who act their age!

Well, this week is definitely making up for lost time. It’s like all relevant parties tried News Week Lite last week and decided it wasn’t enough calories, so this week has three extra helpings of Modern Flavor Trash Fire. But there’s a lot of good news, too — turns out some of it makes a good Garbage Bin Flambe — so it could be worse.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a congressional hearing! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

There was a lot of Casual Disregard of Governing Norms this week, even by our ordinary standards — it’s like the executive branch was saving up for a special occasion. Here are the wacko highlights:

• Mick Mulvaney’s Surprisingly Honest Corruption.* Mick Mulvaney gave a surprisingly honest account of his own policy-making practice at an American Bankers’ Association conference this week. Between acknowledging that he only talked to lobbyists who pay him and telling people his plans to get around consumer protection bureau regulations, it was a real rousing endorsement of democratic process.
• Pruitt Proceedings. Scott Pruitt testified in a congressional hearing this week, defending his multiple scandals with the ever-popular ‘I didn’t know about it, it was my staff, I’m just incompetent’ defense. Unsurprisingly, House Democrats were not impressed with these defenses, with ranking Democrat Frank Pallone point-blank telling Pruitt, “You are unfit to hold public office and undeserving of the public trust.” But despite political pressure (and Pallone’s frankly accurate observations), Pruitt still rolled out new regulations this week limiting data use in EPA reports. Though he argues the new regulations are about transparency in reporting, experts say the new rules could force the EPA to ignore major scientific studies moving forward. So he’s clearly not going gentle into that good night anytime soon.
• Michael Cohen Mayhem. There was a lot of movement on Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, and Trump’s role in it all this week, and absolutely all of it was pretty bonkers. First Michael Cohen indicated he plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment (which permits him to refuse to testify if that would incriminate him in a criminal case) to delay the Stormy Daniels case. It’s a savvy move, given the larger criminal investigation at play, because the criminal judge can take notice of anything said in the civil case — but it still has potential to backfire spectacularly. In that criminal case, incidentally, Trump graciously offered to personally review all of the materials seized from the Cohen raid “to aid in privilege review.” Judge Kimba Wood of course denied this, presumably after she stopped laughing, and instead tapped a former federal judge for the task. And speaking of Trump, he also announced on national television that Cohen did represent him on the Stormy Daniels matter (even as he tried to distance himself from the raid in the same interview).

There was a fair amount happening this week on the Russia Investigation front too, as several different interrelated issues moved forward. Here’s a summary of the main things to know:

• Mueller Protection Legislation (Again). This bill appeared stalled earlier in the week, after concerns that the bill may overstep its constitutional authority led Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley to introduce an amendment to the bill that left ranking Democrat Diane Feinstein fit to be tied. But on Wednesday night, Grassley released a new version with his amendment removed, and with that change in place the bill did indeed go through the committee with a 14–7 vote. It’s unclear what will happen with the bill from here, particularly in light of McConnell’s vocal opposition to even allowing a vote, but presumably we’ll all find out together!
• Sessions Dodge Spectacular. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said some pretty noteworthy stuff indirectly about the Mueller investigation this week. When speaking with a U.S. House appropriations panel on Wednesday, Sessions refused to appoint a second special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton, saying that such an investigation “can really take on a life of its own.” Then, just in case we didn’t know what he was talking about, towards the end of the hearing he said Mueller’s investigation “needs to conclude.” (He also refused to clarify whether he would recuse himself from the Cohen investigation or whether he talked to White House staff about it at all.)
• House ‘Intelligence’ Committee Findings.* The House Intelligence Committee officially released their formal report this week, which concluded that there was no evidence of Trump colluding with Russia in its attempts to meddle in the 2016 election. Trump of course wasted no time yelling about how this proves the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt. But the timing of the report release is curious, because it coincides with evidence surfacing that supports the pee tape allegations — excuse me, the Steele dossier — and news that the Russian attorney who met with Trump campaign officials has official ties to the Kremlin. So I sure hope that 220-page report makes a good door stop, because concurrent news suggests it’s not useful for much else.

Your “Normal” Weird:

• Kris Kobach’s Filing Issues. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach showed the world he doesn’t know how to use the Word comments feature or a red pen this week, leaving notes in the body of a federal filing such as “PROBABLY NOT WORTH ARGUING?” and “[It] has been illegal to register to vote in Kansas for years” and “CITE [GOES HERE].” And though it’s fun to laugh at Kris Kobach’s apparent lack of proofreading, the underlying case is pretty important — it’s an ACLU case about voting rights in Kansas, and this is far from the first thing he has done to draw a judge’s ire. His lack of credibility can have real impact on voting policy, and that in turn can have impact in November.
• White House Dinner Party Madness. This was a weird week for White House dinners. First the White House hosted its first state dinner for French President Emmanuel Macron, inviting literally one Democrat on the entire guest list (Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards) and not many politicians in general. They did, however, invite current Apple CEO Tim Cook, who brought Obama’s former head of the EPA as his plus-one. But the dinner people are really talking about from this week was the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday, where Michelle Wolf roasted our current political reality so hard I think she burned the room down. While Trump snubbed the dinner a second year to go hold a campaign rally in Michigan and criticize the media, Michelle Wolf literally called him ‘possibly responsible for the collapse of the republic.’ And she also told a room full of media that they enabled and permitted Trump’s rise to power. But weirdly, all everybody wants to talk about is her comments on Sarah Huckabee’s eyeliner — we live in the worst-written timeline, y’all.
• I’m Sorry, Ron Jackson, You Are a Heel. First Ronny Jackson’s confirmation hearing was postponed amid significant scandal, with multiple sources alleging that he handed out so many drugs people called him ‘the Candyman,’ drank on the job, and oversaw a hostile work environment. Then, as the details trickling in became weirder and weirder — he didn’t just drink on the job, for example; he wrecked a government vehicle while drunk — eventually this week his nomination was withdrawn entirely. He’s also no longer welcome back as a White House physician. And since Mike Pompeo managed to get confirmed as Secretary of State this same week, I can’t decide if the whole thing says more about Jackson or Pompeo.
• Macron Failed Bromance.* As suggested by the state dinner, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Trump this past week to try to talk some sense into him on the Iran deal. Sadly, Macron didn’t exactly end the week optimistic, calling Trump’s abrupt policy reversals “insane” and saying he thinks the US will exit the Iran deal within the month. So I guess the bromance is over. At any rate, Trump has until May 12 to decide, which means we’ll know more soon.

The Bad:

• HUD Dare You. This was a bad week for most things real estate, I tell you what. Ben Carson announced plans to make HUD recipients pay more rent, including disabled and elderly tenants, both by increasing minimum payments and by increasing income percentage payments to 35% of recipients’ income. Y’all, I have a lot of news to get to, so I’m not sure I can take the time to unpack exactly what an appallingly bad policy proposal this is — but suffice to say, I’m not sure a dude who can’t buy a chair for under $5K should get to throw any stones. Meanwhile, news also broke that HUD insured Sean Hannity’s real estate empire, issuing mortgages that allowed him to buy $22.27M in property — and under Carson’s watch the loans increased by $5M. I guess if you need $15,000 from HUD you’re a freeloader, but if you need $5,000,000 you’re a dear friend.
• Incel-Related Tragedy. A driver in Toronto intentionally drove into a crowd of pedestrians this week, killing ten people and injuring fifteen more. The driver faces ten murder charges, but police are not using the t-word at this time. This is confusing, because the dude apparently posted “The Incel rebellion has already begun!” to Facebook ten minutes before killing a bunch of people, also noting that “we will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys” — in other words, he posted ideology contextualizing his unprovoked act of violence, which is pretty much a textbook definition of terrorism. Toronto police, get your act together.
• Immigration Updates. The travel ban oral arguments happened this week, and Justice Kennedy’s line of questioning bodes poorly for Team You are Welcome Here. (Although that said, I enjoy Bloomberg’s theory that Kagan plans to work on him.) We still have a bit of time before a decision will be made, which means the fifteen-month saga will continue on for now. In the meantime, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it will end TPS for Nepal in June 2019, marking the fifth TPS program to be terminated in the past year. And about 150 people from Latin America arrived at the border this week, ending the pilgrimage of the once-thousand-person caravan of asylum seekers — only to be told they couldn’t be processed and remain stuck at the Mexican border.
• Trump Tribal Sovereignty Challenge. This week’s How Is This Real News? award goes to Trump signaling that he plans to revoke centuries-old federal recognition of Native tribal sovereignty over Medicaid work requirements, of all things, because — and again, I can’t believe I’m not making this up — it would “raise…federal civil rights law concerns” to recognize a sesquicentennial history of legal precedent. The administration’s entire argument is so asinine I’m convinced even they see the straw peeking out, so suffice to say I hope they don’t double down.

The Good:

• Arizona Special Election. Though Democrats did not end up carrying the Arizona special election, they did close the gap to a five-point advantage in a district that went to Trump by more than twenty points in 2016. The special election is yet another sign that things are not looking great for Republicans as we gear up for the November election, or even the upcoming Ohio special election.
• Recent Resilience Decisions. This was another great week for governing decisions in both judicial and state executive branches. On the judicial front, a DC district court judge found the rescission of DACA arbitrary and capricious, giving the Trump administration 90 days to come up with a better reason or start accepting new DACA applications. Meanwhile, another federal judge threw out Paul Manafort’s case challenging the validity of the special counsel investigation. The city of Seattle asked the Seattle Municipal Court to vacate all convictions for marijuana misdemeanor charges in the jurisdiction, including those that took place before the 2012 legalization. And in minor miracle territory, Jeff Sessions walked back his threat to cut off funding from the Vera Institute’s immigration program. So a good week on several fronts.
• North Korea News. North Korea and South Korea agreed to end their decades-long war at the end of a historic summit this week. Kim Jong-un also has agreed to denuclearize on the condition that the United States not invade him any time soon. The agreement is short on specifics, but it’s still a promising piece of news.

So that’s what I have for now, and I think we can all agree it is more than enough. I’ll be back next week, and if you need anything before then, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box — send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me trash fire recipes!