If you’re unsure of why we need to put an end to Citizen’s United, here’s my quote of the week; a confession from Mick Mulvaney, former Congressman and current head of the Office of Management and Budget and the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.


“If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

He was speaking to bankers and lobbyists about how they can help weaken the CFPB—the very agency he runs and the very agency that is supposed to be a watchdog over bankers. This guy is not looking out for the best interests of the people. And we need to get money out of politics.

Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Fox & Friends

I don’t usually report much on Trump’s rallies or speeches, but this stream of consciousness earned its own category this week.

1. Trump phones in to Fox & Friends and talks for nearly half an hour non-stop devolving into a rant by the end. The anchors could barely get a word in, even though they tried to ask him questions, steer him away from legal danger, and stop the conversation. I’m not even sure I can summarize it all, but here goes:

• • He criticizes the Iran deal and says we gave them $1.8 billion dollars. (Background: Hardly any of this money was controlled by the U.S. or U.S. banks—it was mostly held overseas and much of the payment was in Euros. Some of it was frozen assets, and some of it was from a military hardware agreement that they paid for but that we never delivered on because of the revolution.)
  • He says he’s having a hard time getting things done because of the obstructionist Democrats. Except that the Republicans hold the House, the Senate, and the presidency. Democrats don’t have much power to obstruct.
  • He defends Dr. Ronny Jackson and says Montana Senator Jon Tester will pay in the midterms for publicizing criticism against Jackson. (Tip: If you vet your candidates before presenting them to Congress, you can also stop their dirty laundry from being aired in public.)
  • He (again) says James Comey is a leaker and a liar, and accuses him of crimes. He then threatens to intervene with the DOJ.
  • He (again) says the FBI was unfair to search Manafort’s and Cohen’s offices and homes.
  • He says Michael Cohen represented him in the Stormy Daniels affair, something he previously denied knowledge of.
  • He says Michael Cohen barely represented him (just a “tiny, little fraction”), opening the door to getting client/attorney privilege thrown out.
  • They talk Kanye West. I’m not sure how this is news. Even Kanye felt compelled to tweet he doesn’t agree with Trump 100%.
  • He says that Democrats outspent Republicans on a recent special election in Arizona that the Republican won by 5 points.
    Reality check: Republicans outspent Democrats 8.4 to 1, and they should’ve won that seat easily by 20-25 points.
  • He talks about the upcoming North Korea summit, saying he’s not giving up much in the negotiations.
  • He says he got more done in one year than any president. Historians have already debunked that one.
  • He (again) brings up his electoral win.
  • He criticizes Mueller’s team of attorney’s for being all Democrats (they are, but Mueller isn’t, and we don’t know the party affiliation or identities of DOJ and FBI staff doing the actual investigation).
  • He also says Mueller’s attorneys are all “Hillary people.”
  • He confirms that he spent a night in Moscow during the Miss America pageant, despite previous denials.
  • He ends with an almost unintelligible rant about Andy McCabe, Hillary money, Comey crimes, and Terry McAuliffe.

2. Within an hour of the above, DOJ prosecutors file a statement with the courts saying that Trump said Cohen represented him just a “tiny, little fraction.” This, along with Sean Hannity claiming Cohen didn’t represent him, blows up the argument by Trump’s legal team that the documents seized from Michael Cohen are covered under client/attorney privilege.
3. Also, Kellyanne Conway says Trump would like to appear regularly on Fox & Friends, but I’m guessing his legal team will work very hard to not let that happen.

Russia:

1. The Senate Judiciary Committee advances a vote on legislation to protect Robert Mueller.
2. House Intelligence Committee Republicans and Democrats each release very different reports on their conclusions in their Russia investigation. This whole thing seems like an enormous waste of time and energy, and only proves that Trey Gowdy was absolutely correct when he said:

“Congressional investigations unfortunately are usually overtly political investigations, where it is to one side’s advantage to drag things out. The notion that one side is playing the part of defense attorney and that the other side is just these white-hat defenders of the truth is laughable … This is politics.”

3. One main difference between the two reports is that Republicans say it was out of their scope of investigation to look into whether Trump colluded with Russia (though they concluded he didn’t). The Democrat’s report says the committee refused to follow up on leads about possible collusion.
4. Another main difference is that the Republican report accuses our federal law enforcement agencies of doing shoddy work.

5. Likely the differences between the two reports are things that Mueller’s investigation is already looking into.
6. Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with key Trump campaign members in 2016, turns out to have closer ties to the Russian government than she’s previously admitted to. She was an informant for the prosecutor general.
7. The contact to whom James Comey leaked his memos used to be a special government employee for the FBI.
8. A federal judge throws out Paul Manafort’s lawsuit accusing Robert Mueller of going outside the scope of his investigation.
9. A new court filing indicates that the purpose of the search warrant on Paul Manafort’s properties last year was to obtain information about the Trump Tower meeting between members of Trump’s campaign and Russian lobbyists.

Courts/Justice:

1. The Supreme Court hears arguments about the third iteration of Trump’s Muslim ban. Early signs point to them not overturning it.
2. Federal district judges vote unanimously to appoint Geoffrey Berman as U.S. attorney for New York’s southern district. Jeff Sessions appointed Berman as interim attorney, and the judges have taken the decision out of Trump’s hands for the time being by making the appointment.

Healthcare:

1. A federal judge blocks Trump’s attempts to cut funding to a Planned Parenthood program to prevent teen pregnancy across the nation. This is on top of last week’s ruling that he couldn’t cut funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.
2. Step away from the romaine! E-coli outbreaks related to romaine lettuce are reported in 22 states.

International:

1. Mike Pompeo gets through his first round of confirmation votes, even though Rand Paul swore he would block Pompeo. That is, until Paul received several calls from Trump on the day of the vote.
2. Senator Tom Cotton says that Democrats are involved in shameful political behavior for opposing Mike Pompeo’s nomination.
   Reality check: Cotton held back the confirmation of three of Obama’s appointees, including one, Cassandra Butts, who’s nomination he dragged out for two years. We’ll never know how much longer he would’ve dragged it out because she died of leukemia before he had a chance.
3. Pompeo ends up getting confirmed by the end of the week, and flies right off to Brussels to meet with NATO allies.
4. In Kabul, a suicide bomber bombs the gate of a voter registration center, injuring over 100 and killing at least 57. ISIS claims responsibility.
5. Melania and Donald Trump host their first state dinner in honor of French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte. Breaking from the bipartisan tradition, they didn’t invite any Democrats or members of the press.
6. Of note, the main purpose of Macron’s visit is to convince Trump to stay in the Iran deal, despite likely pressure from John Bolton to pull out.
7. If we pull out of the Iran denuclearization deal so close to the North Korea denuclearization meetings, North Korea might not think we’re negotiating in good faith.
8. In his speech to the joint Congress, French President Macron addresses #MeToo, climate change, the U.S. rejoining the Paris climate accord, fake news, democracy and the post-WWII democratic order, white nationalism, terrorist propaganda, North Korean denuclearization, stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons (while also calling for respect for Iran), and Mideast peace. He pushed for support of the JCPA (Iran agreement), saying France won’t leave it and Trump needs to take responsibility for his own actions around that.
9. After Trump threatens economic sanctions against Iran unless our EU allies fix the JCPA, Iran says maybe they’ll just withdraw, freeing them to start up their nuclear program again.
10. Ahead of Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in meet and agree to work to remove nuclear weapons from their respective countries. They also agree to officially end the Korean war.
11. Police arrest the Waffle House shooter. He has a history of mental illness, at one time saying Taylor Swift was stalking him and at another showing up at the White House to set up a meeting with Trump.
12. Trump threatens countries who might oppose the U.S.’s bid to hold the FIFA World Cup in 2026, saying we won’t support them if they don’t support us.
13. Thousands of protestors come out in Germany to protest anti-Semitism. There’s been a rise in anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incidents across Europe, with Germany averaging about four a day right now.

Legislation/Congress:

1. Tennessee’s state Senate passes a bill to erect a monument to the victims of abortion. The state House already passed a similar bill, so it looks like it’ll be up to the governor to pass or veto it.
2. The chaplain of the House of Representatives resigns, indicating in his resignation letter that it was at Paul Ryan’s request. Ryan later said that the House members’ pastoral needs weren’t being met.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. We find out that National Security Advisor John Bolton chaired the non-profit Gatestone Institute, which promotes false and misleading anti-Muslim stories (some of which were picked up and spread by Russian trolls in 2016). The group also warns of the coming jihad, warns against mixing Europeans with Muslims, and blames several national problems on immigrants.
2. A federal judge orders the Trump administration to continue with the DACA program, this time forcing the administration to start processing new applications. Trump has 90 days to provide stronger legal justification for ending the program.
3. Mississippi and Alabama state governments took a holiday on Monday to observe Confederate Memorial Day.
4. The Department of Homeland Security prepares to end temporary protected status for over 9,000 immigrants from Nepal who came here after their country had a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. I’m losing count… we’re getting rid of Haitians, Sudanese, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, Syrians, Hondurans, Somalis, Yemenis, and now Nepalis. That’s over a half million displaced people.
5. Montgomery, Alabama opens the nation’s first memorial for victims of lynching, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It features 800 steel columns hanging from a roof, each with the name of a county and the people who were lynched there.
6. The Oklahoma state House passes a bill that would allow adoption agencies to discriminate against adoptive couples based on religious beliefs. This, of course, lets agencies halt adoptions to a variety of couples who offend their morals, but is most likely to affect gay and lesbian couples.

Climate/EPA:

1. A federal judge rules against Trump’s attempt to delay a rule that would increase fines for automakers whose cars violate fuel efficient standards.
2. Trump’s latest plans for EPA fuel economy standards is to freeze them at 2020 levels through 2026. California has long been able to create their own rules on auto emissions, and the latest plan would revoke that.
3. Scott Pruitt signs the proposal mentioned last week that would force the raw data behind any EPA scientific studies to be released to the public. As a reminder, much of this data is personal medical data covered by privacy standards, so not all studies can legally follow Pruitt’s rule.
4. Also, it turns out that internal EPA staff has been working on the above proposal in collaboration with Representative Lamar Smith, who authored a similar piece of legislation that passed the House. They want the proposal to be as close as possible to Smith’s bill.
5. On top of forcing anchors to read propaganda pieces, Sinclair Broadcast Group fires a local reporter who refused to present global warming denier views in a piece on global warming.
6. Scott Pruitt appears before two congressional committees to answer questions about his questionable expenses and his conflicts of interest.
7. Ryan Zinke’s Department of Interior proposes cutting parts of the Well Control Rule. The Obama administration created this rule after the BP oil spill to provide safety standards to prevent blowouts and enact emergency response to offshore drilling disasters. Two things rankle me about this:

• • Zinke continues to protect his own state of Montana while disregarding the safety and health of other states.
  • Regulations don’t come out of a vacuum. They are largely in response to health and environmental disasters to prevent them from happening again.

Budget/Economy:

1. A CBO report says that because of the GOP tax reform, owners of pass-through businesses will receive over $40 billion in tax breaks this year.

• • $17.4 billion will go to around 200,000 owners who make over $1 million a year (averaging to an $87,000 tax break per owner).
  • $3.6 billion will go to around 200,000 owners who make $500,000 to $1 million (averaging to an $18,000 tax break per owner).
  • $15.7 billion will go to around 9.2 million owners who make $100,000 to $500,000 (averaging to an $1,700 tax break per owner).

So yes, this is definitely a tax break for the rich.

2. Ben Carson proposes a rent increase for people living in subsidized housing. Right now they pay 30% of their income; he wants to increase it to 35%.
3. In the first quarter under the new tax plan, the economy grew at 2.3%, just above the yearly average since the recession ended nine years ago. It falls below the 2.9% from the previous quarter and below Trump’s expectation of 3%.
4. Economists think we can’t extend this growth for more than a year or two because of our national debt (over $21 trillion now), which is expected to grow by around $1 trillion per year. If the Fed continues to raise interest rates, the cost of that debt will also increase.
5. Both the Fed and the CBO expect growth to fall to 1.8%.
6. Sprint and T-Mobile agree to a $27 billion merger. Verizon will be the only larger mobile provider.

Elections:

1. Democrats in Arizona block a Republican effort to change how vacant Senate seats are filled. The GOP was trying to make sure that should John McCain have to give up his seat because of his health issues, his seat wouldn’t be up for election this year. If the bill passed, the governor would appoint a replacement who would hold that seat for two full years if a seat becomes vacation within 150 days of a primary election.

Miscellaneous:

1. The day after Barbara Bush’s funeral, George Bush Sr. ends up in the ICU with an infection.
2. A van drives down a Toronto sidewalk, killing 10 and injuring 15 more. The driver turns out to be kind of a social outcast belonging to a group called Incel (involuntary celibates). He tries to commit suicide by cop, but the officer involved refuses to shoot him and takes him in to custody.
3. Accusations of impropriety mount against Dr. Ronny Jackson, Trump’s pick to run the Department of Veterans affairs. Allegations include over-prescribing drugs (uppers and downers), being drunk on the job, and creating a hostile work environment.
4. An inspector general report from 2012 recommended terminating him for bad leadership of his department.
5. And what the heck? The White House releases the inspector general report expecting it to exonerate Jackson, but it mostly backs up the accusations. Maybe they didn’t read it?
6. Jackson denies all allegations, but the White House ends up withdrawing his nomination.
7. The Presidential Personnel Staff, which is responsible for vetting candidates for government positions, has only 30 employees—less than a third of previous administrations. Most employees are young campaign workers, family members of staff, or more senior officials transitioning to other posts. Most also have no vetting experience.
8. The Department of Education under Betsy DeVos has closed dozens of investigations into school disciplinary actions, most of which are civil rights issues. Blacks are 4 times as likely to receive suspensions as whites, and they are twice as likely to be arrested. And this starts at the freaking preschool level.
9. In a joint press conference with French President Macron, Trump again accuses Democrats of being obstructionists. So I’ll remind everyone again that Democrats barely have enough power to obstruct. Republicans hold all branches of power.
10. Michael Cohen says he’ll plead the fifth in court in order to avoid being deposed.
11. A former federal judge will review the materials seized from Cohen’s home and offices to determine what falls under attorney/client privilege.
12. Irony alert. Eric Greitens is the keynote speaker at a law enforcement prayer breakfast. He’s accused of two felonies, one around sexual blackmail and the other around computer tampering to gain a charity’s donor information.
13. A jury finds Bill Cosby guilty on three charges of sexual misconduct.
14. Reporters Without Borders drops the U.S. to 45th out of 180 countries in its ranking of press freedom. It was 41 in 2016 and 43 in 2017. I’m not clear how much credence to give this ranking.
15. The FBI says they told the Trump administration about the spousal abuse allegations against Rob Porter in March of 2017, contradicting what the White House has been saying.
16. Michelle Wolf doesn’t hold back at the White House Press Correspondence dinner, and gets raked over the coals by some and lauded by others. She called people out on their political BS without apology.

Polls:

1. 74% of voters don’t want Trump to fire Mueller, but 71% think he will before this is over.
2. 56% of voters think that Mueller will find that Trump did something criminal or impeachable.