To me, the biggest news this week is that after decades of rule – longer than my entire lifetime – the Castro family is ceding leadership of Cuba. However, the new president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, is Raúl Castro’s handpicked successor and Castro will remain party leader until 2021. I wouldn’t expect much to change, at least not any time soon. At any rate, it will be interesting to watch.

Here’s what else happened last week…

Missed from Last Week:

1. April 10^th was Equal Pay Day. That’s how far into this year white women had to work to make as much as their male counterparts did last year. For African-American women, this day doesn’t come until August 7^th; for Native American women, it comes on September 7^th; and for Latina women, it comes on November 1^st. It’s a good time to remember that the administration stopped forcing companies to provide data on wages by race and gender, making it harder to close this wage gap.

Russia:

1. So far this year, Trump’s reelection campaign has spent over $1 out of every $5 on legal fees.
2. A judge rejects Trump’s request to review material seized from Michael Cohen before it can be allowed as evidence.
3. We learn that Trump was surprised when he found out that the U.S. had expelled far more diplomats than our ally countries, and he was pretty pissed off about that.
4. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley says new sanctions will be coming down on Russia. Trump says nope, not happening. And then, instead of the White House taking responsibility, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow says Haley must’ve been confused. And Haley says “I don’t get confused.” Kudlow says maybe he was the one who got confused. Haley, who was was repeating official White House talking points, wins the round but Trump still overrides her.
5. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, is recused from the Michael Cohen case due to potential conflicts. He’s a temporary appointee and Trump could nominate him to a permanent position or not.
6. Trump contradicts himself again on why he fired Comey, saying it wasn’t because of Russia. Last year, he said he was thinking about the Russia thing when he decided to fire Comey.
7. Rudy Giuliani joins Trump’s legal team, saying he’ll get this Mueller thing wrapped up in two weeks.
8. The DNC files a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Russian government, the GRU, several members of the Trump campaign, Russian nationals, and Wikileaks. The suit alleges a conspiracy to disrupt our presidential elections, and to favor Trump and harm Clinton in the election.

• • Defendants in the suit also include Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, Julian Assange, George Papadopoulos, Josef Mifsud (who leaked the email information to Papadopoulos), Aras and Emin Agalarov (Russian oligarchs who hosted the Miss Universe Pageant), the GRU, Russian hackers, and the Russian known as Guccifer 2.0.
  • The suit says that due to the nature of the crimes, Russia isn’t entitled to sovereign immunity.
  • The suit gives us some previously unknown dates. Russians first breached the DNC computer system on July 27, 2015. They breached it again on April 18, 2016, and began downloading documents on April 22. Four days later, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that Russians had emails that could harm Hillary’s campaign.
  • Analysts say the primary purpose of this suit is for the evidentiary discovery it will prompt.

9. The DOJ finally releases Comey’s redacted memos to the House Republicans who then immediately turn around and release them to the public. House GOP had been threatening to hold DOJ officials in contempt if they didn’t turn the memos over, though it isn’t typical for the DOJ to release evidence relevant to an ongoing investigation.
10. I haven’t read a lot that’s news in the memos, except maybe that:

• • Trump lied about whether he stayed overnight in Moscow, which his bodyguard already said he did. (Also, new news is that flight records confirm he stayed there.)
  • The administration (including Trump) had their doubts about Michael Flynn, which seem for Trump to stem from Flynn not telling him about a call from Vladimir Putin.
  • Trump wondered if Andrew McCabe had it in for him from the start.
  • Trump refused to criticize Putin even in private.

11. We learn that House Republicans threatened Rosenstein with impeachment if he didn’t release information about the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and the Russia meddling. Sources say they’re trying to build a case against Rosenstein.
12. We also learn that Trump pushed Jeff Sessions and Christopher Wray to investigate Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two investigators removed from the Russia case. He doesn’t understand why they still have jobs at the FBI, and wants Sessions and Wray to find information to discredit them.
13. Rod Rosenstein tells Trump he’s not the target of an investigation, which seems to give Mueller a little breathing room and lifts the threat of being fired.
14. We learn that Sessions told White House Counsel that if Trump fires Rod Rosenstein, Sessions might quit in protest. Not that there seems to be much love lost between Trump and Sessions, but an attorney general resigning could lead to a string of resignations.

Courts/Justice:

1. While Trump’s been suggesting he might fire Mueller, the Supreme Court is set to hear a case on how SEC judges are appointed. Trump’s Solicitor General is urging the courts to make this case about the president’s power to fire all “officers of the United States” who “exercise significant authority” instead of limiting the scope to firing SEC judges.
2. With Neil Gorsuch siding with the liberal judges, the Supreme Court invalidates part of a federal law that mandates deportation of immigrants convicted of certain “crimes of violence.” They say the law is too vague.
3. Parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims finally bring Alex Jones to court for his repeated lies and conspiracy theories intended to convince the public that the parents are crisis actors and it was a “false flag” operation.

• • At least three lawsuits have been filed against him recently for defamation.
  • The parents have been receiving death threats from people who believe Alex Jones’ dangerous lies.

4. A court holds Kris Kobach in contempt. Kobach led Trump’s voter fraud commission, and has been tied up in courts over his voter suppression efforts as Secretary of State in Kansas. The judge says Kobach disobeyed orders to let thousands of disenfranchised voters in Kansas know that they actually were registered to vote in 2016.
5. Three federal judges rule that the Trump administration cannot withhold funds from so-called sanctuary cities, a decision roundly criticized by the DOJ. In case you think the judges are activist judges, they were appointed by Reagan, Bush Sr., and Ford.
6. In response, Trump tweets that sanctuary cities released 142 gang members back into the streets in 2017. In reality, 142 detainer requests for suspected gang members failed for various reasons and not all in sanctuary areas. Reasons include administrative errors, ICE issuing the detainer request too late, ICE being unable to arrange custody transfer, and, yes, non-cooperation by local officials. (You can see the report here). 


Healthcare:

1. Attorneys general in sixteen states file a motion to intervene in a lawsuit filed by several red states to overturn the ACA.
2. Anti-abortion laws are on the rise. In 2017, 19 states passed 63 laws restricting abortions, some even trying to ban all abortions without regard for the mother’s life. Thirty-three states have placed restrictions on abortions since 2011.
3. The ACLU and Education Law Center win a lawsuit requiring that kids in Flint, MI, get health checks to make sure they haven’t been harmed by the lead in their water supply. They’ll also get special health or education services if needed.
4. A federal judge rules that the Trump administration can’t cut funding to the successful Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. The administration was trying to cut the program’s five-year grants down to three years.

International:

1. Trump gives North and South Korea his blessing to talk about formally ending the Korean War. North Korea also drops it’s decades-long requirement that U.S. troops leave South Korea in order for North Korea to denuclearize.
2. Ahead of the planned meeting with Trump, North Korea says it will suspend their nuclear tests and shut down a test site. Likely, the test site is degraded—nuclear test sites can only be used for so long. Kim Jong Un says there’s no more need for the sites, but it’s not clear if that’s because the country has advanced their weaponry as far as they need to or because they’re focused on peace.
3. Trump meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe again at Mar-a-Lago, nearly a year from their first visit there. Both leaders are under investigation this time around.
4. The White House says that Mike Pompeo met with Kim Jung Un over Easter weekend. We only learn about it now because Trump thinks it will help Pompeo get confirmed as Secretary of State.
5. We learn that Jim Mattis pushed Trump to obtain congressional support before launching an attack on Syria. He was overruled, obviously.
6. Anti-government protests break out across Nicaragua, spurred by changes to their social security system (but discontent against the Ortega government has been simmering for a while). After days of violence and at least 10 deaths, Ortega agrees to reverse the changes.

Legislation/Congress:

1. The Senate Judiciary Committee finally considers bipartisan legislation to prevent Trump from firing Mueller. Mitch McConnell says that even if the committee passes the legislation, he won’t bring it to a floor vote in the Senate. The committee says they’ll vote on it anyway
2. A group of House Republicans ask the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Dana Boente, Loretta Lynch, and other perceived enemies, largely for activities surrounding the Steele dossier.
3. Trump recently signed a law to protect victims of online sex trafficking, but it could have some unintended consequences. The way the new law is written, entities that host a website could now be held responsible for content that other people put on the site. Some sites are already doing damage control by closing down sections like personal ads and by rewriting the terms of service.
4. Chuck Schumer introduces a bill to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level. This comes not long after we learn that John Boehner will be lobbying for the marijuana industry.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. A Starbucks manager calls the police on two black men who ask to use the facilities while waiting for someone to join them and before they order coffee. The men decide to wait for their friend instead of ordering, and the police arrest them and detain them for 8 hours.
2. The manager no longer works for the company, and Starbucks will close all stores on May 29 in order to train staff on racial bias.
3. Trump says sanctuary cities are places where undocumented immigrants “breed.” I’m not sure what he means by that, but it’s dog-whistle language that plays on people’s fears of immigrants while at the same time dehumanizing them.
4. Trump tweets that he won’t fund California’s national guard at the border after Governor Brown says they can only be used to fight drug smuggling and other illegal activities (and that they can’t be used for immigration enforcement).
5. A jury convicts three men in Kansas of plotting to bomb an apartment complex largely populated by Somali immigrants. The men, part of a militia group called the Kansas Security Force, said their attack would wake people up. This is a good example of why anti-Muslim sentiment is so dangerous.
6. GOP members of the Senate whip out their new favorite weapon, the Congressional Review Act, to overturn rules laid out by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that mandate fairness in auto loans. Studies find that lenders charges minorities more for auto loans than whites, so the CFPB was trying to level the playing field.
7. Instead of dealing with actual problems facing Tennesseans, the Tennessee House of Representatives has been working on bills to punish Memphis for removing confederate statues. Nothing has passed, but now they voted to strip $250,000 from the city in next year’s budget. The money was for the city’s bicentennial event.
8. Six children in California’s central valley are orphans after an ICE chase results in a car crash that leaves their parents dead. The people in the car weren’t even ICE targets. People in the area blame ICE and Trump’s immigration policies; ICE blames California’s sanctuary policies.
9. The city councils in several Orange County cities have voted to fight California’s sanctuary policies against the wishes of many of their constituents. Now they’re starting to get sued over those decisions.
10. While women and Democratic men in the Senate have signed on to a letter pushing an overhaul of their harassment rules, not one Republican man has signed on to it yet.
11. Dozens of demonstrators surround a school in Michigan with pickups flying the confederate flag, which eventually forces the school to cancel classes. Despite racial bullying that accompanies the demonstration, the mayor says “people in this country have to start realizing we have to tolerate all peoples’ views.” Um no, sorry. #NoH8
12. ICE has reportedly been targeting immigration activists, and this week a judge rules that activist Alejandra Pablos be released.
13. Neo-nazis take to the streets in Newnan, Georgia, to commemorate Hitler’s birthday. Counter-protestors wrote messages of peace and love in chalk on the sidewalks, while Antifa protestors were a little less touchy-feely.

• • Speeches were largely about white power and taking our country back from “illegal immigrants.”
  • Here’s a telling quote: “We need to round them up and put them in camps if need be, like we did the Italians, Germans and Japanese. We are at war with the illegals.”
  • It was mostly non-violent, and the only arrests were for counter-protestors wearing masks.
  • Supporters later gather further away from Newnan to burn a swastika and othala rune.

Climate/EPA:

1. New information about Scott Pruitt’s paranoia and overspending keeps popping up. It turns out he upgraded his official car to a larger SUV with bullet-resistant seat covers.
2. 170 Members of Congress sign on to a resolution requesting Pruitt’s immediate resignation from the EPA. They say they have no confidence in his ability to run the agency.
3. GOP Representative Jim Bridenstein is just barely confirmed as administrator of NASA in a vote along party lines. Jeff Flake was a holdout until he got concessions on an unrelated issue. Bridenstein is not a scientist, lacks aeronautical expertise, and denies climate change.
4. Just a note on Earth Day. The environmental movement started nearly 50 years ago because of real disasters like burning rivers, thick smog, oil spills, toxic waste leaching into neighborhoods, and poisoned lakes. The movement led to Earth Day and these disasters led to the creation of the EPA and the regulations that helped us clean up the mess we made. And now Scott Pruitt’s EPA, along with the Republican-led Congress, is working to remove the protections that gave us clean air and water and that stopped businesses from dumping toxic wastes. Fortunately, the courts are ruling against most of these changes.
5. Trump marks Earth Day by promising to reverse even more regulations. He says that a market-driven economy is what will protect the environment and give us clean air, land, and water. (See above explanation of Earth Day.)
6. Just like the previous few years, this year is predicted to be the worst so far for allergies. Why? Blame climate change for higher concentrations of pollen for longer periods of time.

Budget/Economy:

1. On tax day, the IRS’s online system for filing taxes failed. They gave everyone an extra day to file their taxes.
2. Crude oil prices are on the rise again, with our stockpile shrinking and OPEC keeping their supply tight.
3. Trump criticizes OPEC for rising gas prices. So I see how this works. Now high oil prices AREN’T the president’s fault? (For the record, they aren’t, and they weren’t under Obama either.)
4. Trump tweets that Japan and South Korea want us to get back in to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but South Korea was never part of it.
5. Marijuana is a big money-maker in states where it’s now legal, but sellers generally deal in cash because banks can’t get around federal law. California legislators are pushing a bill to let the state license banks especially to handle money generated by marijuana sales.
6. Paul Ryan wants to pass another major tax cut this year. Republicans hope it will generate some enthusiasm with their GOP base and help out in the midterms.
7. While some are benefiting from the new tariffs, they’re pushing up the cost of newsprint. The Tampa Bay Times announces dozens of job cuts.
8. Arizona’s teachers vote to strike, even though their governor promised a phased in 20% raise by 2020. Teachers say the money to fund the raises will come out of necessary programs, and the raises don’t apply to support staff.
9. It’s spreading like a virus. Teachers in Colorado march on the statehouse for higher salaries and retirement fund guarantees, causing school closures in the state.
10. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to fine Wells Fargo $1 billion over lending abuses. The bank is still struggling to recover from last year’s scandal where account reps signed up customers for fake accounts.
11. Trump’s tax cuts pay big dividends for our six largest banks (JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and so on). They made $3.6 billion off the tax cuts in just three months this year.

Elections:

1. Representative Charlie Dent (R-PA) announces he’ll resign in the coming weeks, opening another GOP seat in Congress.
2. The White House legislative director says that Mitch McConnell plans to make the Senate workweek longer to hurt vulnerable Democrats. By making them work longer hours, they have less time to campaign.
3. Oh man… this is just wrong. Luke Messer is a Republican candidate for the Indiana state legislature where he’s running to fill a seat previously filled by someone who was killed by a drunk driver. Messer chose not to tell party leaders that he had two DUI convictions.

Miscellaneous:

1. It turns out that Cohen’s mystery third client is none other than Sean Hannity. Hannity’s been reporting on Trump and Cohen, even interviewing Cohen, without giving us any disclosure. He also fought to have the courts keep his name out of it.
2. Hannity shares the services of other Trump lawyers too, including Jay Sekulow and Victoria Toensing.
3. Hannity owns several real estate properties under shell companies, some of which he purchased with the assistance of HUD. He also purchased some of those properties through Jeff Brock, who plead guilty to rigging foreclosure auctions from 2007 to 2012.
4. Cohen requests a 90-day delay in the Stormy Daniels lawsuit, but the judge says he would have to plead the 5^th to get that.
5. Now that Michael Cohen is under criminal investigation, the White House says Cohen is just one of the several lawyers Trump has on retainer.
6. Amid his fight to keep seized documents secret, Cohen drops his libel suits against BuzzFeed and Fusion GPS. He was suing over allegations in the Steele dossier, and likely wants to avoid being questioned by Fusion GPS lawyers or being forced to present evidence.
7. Karen McDougall reaches a settlement with the parent company of the National Enquirer, freeing her to talk about her alleged affair with Trump.
8. Students across the country stage another walkout, this time to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting, to protest gun violence, and to push for gun law reform.
9. Missouri Governor Eric Greitens (R) faces a new scandal and is charged with a felony for misusing a charity donor list. He’s the same guy facing felony charges from taking a nonconsensual sexual picture of his mistress and then blackmailing her with it.
10. Barbara Bush passes away at 92. While members of both parties praise her, Roger Stone calls her a “vindictive drunk” and we find out where the GOP draws the line at supporting Trump’s friends.
11. The Washington post wins a Pulitzer for reporting on the Alabama Senate race (specifically the Roy Moore scandal). The New York Times in conjunction with the New Yorker, wins a Pulitzer, for work on breaking the Harvey Weinstein sex-abuse story. Both the Washington Post and New York Times win Pulitzers for their work on Russian interference in our elections.
12. Electricity goes out across Puerto Rico, which still hadn’t restored electricity to all residents.
13. A Southwest jet blows an engine, killing one passenger who was partially sucked out and apparently hit by shrapnel. The pilot shows nerves of steel, and turns out to be one of the Navy’s first female fighter pilots.
14. The DOJ’s inspector general referred his findings on Andrew McCabe to the top federal prosecutor, who could file charges against McCabe.
15. McCabe’s lawyers say that McCabe will sue Trump for defamation.
16. A man shoots up a Waffle House in Tennessee, killing four people. Authorities had revoked his firearms license and seized his weapons last year, giving the weapons to the shooter’s father who then turned around and gave the guns back. The big hero of the day is James Shaw Jr., who charged the shooter, grabbed the weapon, and threw it to the other side of the counter.
17. Ugh. Another data breach. SunTrust Banks announces that one of their employees might have stolen the personal data of 1.5 million customers. Not only that, but the employee likely gave that info to a “criminal third party.”
18. After years of calling the parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims “crisis actors” in a false flag shooting, Alex Jones now says he believes the shooting really did happen. I’m guessing that’s because some of the parents are suing him for defamation. Of note, Alex Jones also recently lost custody of his children. His defense during that trial was that his decades of spreading conspiracy theories and lies is “performance art.”

Polls:

1. Mueller’s favorability drops 11 points over the past month, likely a result of the Trump and GOP campaigns to attack his credibility. 32% see him favorably, 30% unfavorably, and 38% have no opinion.
2. Mueller has a 19% unfavorability rating with Democrats, but almost half of Republicans view him unfavorably (up nearly 20 points from last month).
3. Trump’s approval rating with white Evangelical Protestants hits a new high, reaching 75%. I wonder what he’s done that’s made them think more highly of him.