It's Mueller Time, Con't

If you've been wondering when Mueller was going to make his move on Trump's longtime personal lawyer and bagman Michael Cohen, that day was Monday, and the move was a full out FBI raid on Cohen's home, office, and hotel room to seize documents pertaining to Trump.

Michael Cohen, the longtime attorney of President Trump, is under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations, according to three people with knowledge of the case.

FBI agents on Monday raided Cohen’s Manhattan office, home and hotel room as part of the investigation, seizing records about Cohen’s clients and personal finances. Among the records taken were those related to a 2016 payment Cohen made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a sexual encounter with Trump, according to a fourth person familiar with the investigation.

Investigators took Cohen’s computer, phone and personal financial records, including tax returns, as part of the search of his office at Rockefeller Center, that person said.

In a dramatic and broad seizure, federal prosecutors collected communications between Cohen and his clients — including those between the lawyer and Trump, according to both people.

The raids — part of an investigation referred by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to federal prosecutors in New York — point to escalating legal jeopardy for a longtime Trump confidant who is deeply intertwined in the president’s business and personal matters.

I can't begin to tell you the level of criminality and probable cause needed to authorize an FBI raid on the personal lawyer of the occupant of the Oval Office. A federal magistrate signed off on this, Rod Rosenstein signed off on this, the US Attorney's office in Manhattan signed off on this, and just to make sure Rosenstein and Mueller referred this to the US Attorney's office rather than do this himself with his team.  The bar for going after a attorney in a federal case where attorney-client privilege must be broken because of probable cause of evidence of criminal activity is sky high.

1. Before obtaining a search warrant, investigators had to try to obtain the evidence in another way, such as by subpoena.
2. The authorization for the warrant had to come from either the U.S. attorney or an assistant attorney general. (Rosenstein is deputy attorney general, a higher position than assistant attorney general.)
3. The prosecutor had to confer with the criminal division of the department before seeking the warrant.
4. The team conducting the search had to “employ adequate precautions” to ensure that they weren’t improperly viewing privileged communications between Cohen and his clients.
5. The search team would have included a “privilege team,” including lawyers and agents not working the case, which would work to ensure that investigators conducting the search didn’t see privileged communications.
6. The investigators had to develop a review process for the seized material.

Even with those checks in place, the U.S. attorney wasn’t guaranteed a warrant. Search warrants granted to U.S. attorneys are approved by magistrate judges serving in U.S. District Court.

The question of what qualifies as privileged communication is complex. Not every communication between an attorney and a client is included. One type of communication that’s excluded: communications between an attorney and a client that might be predicated on committing or covering up a crime.

In a phone call with The Post, law professor Robert Weisberg, co-director of the Stanford University Criminal Justice Center, explained where the lines might be drawn.

“There is a crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege,” Weisberg said. “The affidavits that went into the warrant application — and possibly direct conversations with the judge — would have had to give at least prima facie reason to believe that the communications, even where they were privileged, give some indication that Cohen was involved in committing or planning some kind of fraud.”

Needless to say, Trump is pissed.

If Trump's going to make his move on Mueller and Rosenstein, it's going to happen soon now.  Again, taking attorney-client communications only happens when there's probable cause that a crime has been committed and that those communications are evidence of that crime, and that probable cause involves Donald Trump.

It would not have happened if it there wasn't rock-solid indication that Cohen was covering up fraud.  That fact alone signals criminal activity by the man in the Oval Office, guys, and if you think that Trump has committed crimes in the last, oh, decade or so other than paying off hush money to a porn star using campaign funds, well the Feds have all of that now too.  Merry Christmas!

Needless to say I cannot overstate how bad this is for both Trump and Cohen.

But the FBI’s seizure on Monday of privileged communications between Trump and his private lawyer, Michael D. Cohen — as well as documents related to a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress who has alleged a sexual affair with Trump — was a particularly extraordinary move that opens a whole new front in the converging legal battles ensnaring the administration.

Cohen is Trump’s virtual vault — the keeper of his secrets, from his business deals to his personal affairs — and the executor of his wishes.

“This search warrant is like dropping a bomb on Trump’s front porch,” said Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama.

Mark S. Zaid, a Washington lawyer, said the seizure of Cohen’s records “should be the most concerning for the president.”

“You can’t get much worse than this, other than arresting someone’s wife or putting pressure on a family member,” he said. “This strikes at the inner sanctum: your lawyer, your CPA, your barber, your therapist, your bartender. All the people who would know the worst about you.”

And yes, I believe Trump's people are making it very, very clear this means he's fried like a egg on a Baghdad summer sidewalk.  This is a breach of his inner circle, a hole drilled into the Trump bunker. He's shaken to the core, and Trump will lash out.

Asked why he had not fired Mueller, Trump left the door open. “We’ll see what happens,” he told reporters. “Many people have said, ‘You should fire him,’ ” the president added.

We're very close now to a seminal moment in history, and not a pleasant one.  Trump has already canceled his Latin American summit trip scheduled this week to instead monitor developments in Syria and around the world and VP Mike Pence will go in his stead. My guess?  Trump is firing a crapload of something in the next 48 hours, whether it’s DoJ employees or Tomahawk missiles. Maybe both.

More on that later today.

Last Call For Not Awful Enough

Here in Kentucky, GOP Gov. Matt Bevin says he will now veto the Republican budget and tax reform bills in their entirety because they basically aren't cruel enough to Kentucky taxpayers and state employees.

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin said Monday he will veto the legislature’s proposed two-year state budget and a tax bill that generates hundreds of millions of dollars to help fund it.

“The whole thing is not as thoughtful or as comprehensive as it needs to be,” Bevin said of the tax plan during an almost 30 minute harangue about fiscal responsibility. “If we’re going to do tax reform — and we need to do tax reform — it needs to be comprehensive.”

The bill, which was introduced and passed on April 2 before it was available to the public, applies Kentucky’s 6 percent sales tax to 17 services, increases the cigarette tax by 50 cents per pack, and cuts the individual and corporate income tax to a flat 5 percent tax. It also cuts some typical tax deductions, including those for medical expenses, medical insurance, paid taxes and investment income.

Bevin received a letter last week from his state budget director, John Chilton, indicating that the money generated by the legislature’s revenue bill will be around $50 million lower than anticipated.

“There are many legislators who literally just don’t understand this. They don’t,” Bevin said. “They’re smart people, they’re intelligent people, they’re educated people on many fronts. They don’t understand finance, they don’t understand pensions. And yet they’re the ones who are going to have to make decisions.”

Much of the $486.9 million in revenue generated from the tax bill will be used to fund education as teachers across the state have held “sick-outs” and rallies that have closed down school districts. Bevin, who proposed a plan that would have cut state funding for school transportation and would have provided less money per-pupil than what the legislature passed, said he wasn’t concerned about how his vetoes would affect education.

“It’s illegal for them to strike in this state,” Bevin said. “I would not advise that, I wouldn’t, I think that would be a mistake. The issue is not the teachers, the teachers want to teach their children. The KEA (Kentucky Education Association) has been a problem, it really has. They’ve been very loud after refusing to be a part of the solution, even though in reality their members are going to the beneficiary of us getting it right.”

"These K-12 education cuts aren't deep enough, and don't punish students and teachers enough, so I'm going to veto the whole thing!" is a hell of a position to take, but that's life in Bevinstan for you.

Republicans in the state legislature will have the opportunity to try to override Bevin's veto this weekend, so we'll see what happens in a few days, but I'm not sure if they have time to come up with another bill or not.  Remember Kentucky is a state with line-item veto and Bevin trashed the whole thing.

Remember too that Bevin vetoed the pension measure that would have allowed city and local governments to phase in pension costs, and that's only going to make the austerity bomb all the worse.

Ball's back in the KY Legislature's court now.

Labor Wages War On Trump

There are two big facts when it comes to raising the federal minimum wage: $7.25 an hour works for nobody in 2018, and $15 an hour doesn't work for everybody.  The goal is how to find a happy medium for workers in the Trump era, and increasingly that's looking more and more like sector-wide labor boards like they have in Europe, in particular, Germany.

The Center for American Progress (CAP), one of DC’s most influential liberal think tanks with deep ties to the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign, has just proposed a big idea for raising Americans’ wages.

A new paper by CAP’s David Madland calls for the creation of national wage boards, tasked with setting minimum wage and benefit standards for specific industries. Fast food companies, say, would send representatives to meet with union officials and other worker representatives, and hammer out a deal that ensures workers get a fair shake. Same goes for nurses, or retail workers, or home health aides, or accountants.

“Bargaining panels would have 11 members—five representing employers, five representing workers and one representing the government,” Madland explains. “The government representative would be the U.S. secretary of labor or their delegate. Employers would choose employer representatives through the employers’ industry associations.” Employees would be represented by unions, or other worker representatives. The secretary of labor would create separate boards for different industries and occupations, and work with unions and other worker groups to enforce the wage rules once they’re adopted.

This may seem like an extreme idea, an unprecedented government and union intrusion into the free market. But it reflects a model already gaining steam in some liberal states (like New York and California), and which owes a lot to policies in Europe. It’s the latest sign that pro-labor voices in America are looking to counterparts in France, Germany, and elsewhere across the Atlantic for signs of how to revive the labor movement and get the working class’s wages rising again.

And while ideas like wage boards and giving workers spots on corporate boards may seem pie-in-the-sky today, they could easily become part of the next Democratic president’s agenda, or become law in left-leaning states even before 2020.

Labor unions in America today are in crisis. In the mid-1950s, a third of Americans belonged to a labor union. Now, only 10.7 percent do, including a minuscule 6.4 percent of private-sector workers. The decline of union membership explains as much as a third of the increase in inequality in the US, has caused voter turnout among low-income workers to crater, and has weakened labor’s ability to check corporate influence in Washington, DC, and state capitals.

The future for traditional unions looks so bleak that a growing number of labor scholars and activists are coming to the conclusion that the US model, which relies on individual workers in individual workplaces getting together and organizing on their own, is dead and can’t be revived. What’s needed, they argue, is a more national or industry-wide approach to supplement or replace the old model of individual workplace-level organizing.

“In 2016, we had the most pro-labor president since the 1960s, the most pro-labor secretary of labor since [FDR’s Secretary] Frances Perkins, an economy with shrinking unemployment and rising wages — and yet we lost a quarter-million union members in the United States,” says David Rolf, president of SEIU 775, a local union representing home care workers in Washington and Montana. “We need to be trying everything.”

Yeah, it's an admission that the union shop model is broken and dead.  But it's not working, either. A ruling blowing a hole in public employee unions is due from the Supreme Court by the end of June. Something has to replace the existing model, or organized labor in America is done.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Publicly, Republicans predict they will hold the House and Senate and that the "blue wave" is a mirage, that the rest of the nation's Democratic strongholds will fall to Trumpism and that all the polls are wrong, just like in 2016.

In reality, they're already fighting over Paul Ryan's political corpse.

Two top members of Paul Ryan’s leadership team, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise, have begun angling for his job in the event the speaker calls it quits after the election.

They’re closely monitoring the moves of the other and quietly courting Republicans who could help them clinch the top post, according to 20 GOP lawmakers and aides interviewed for this story.

Neither man is actively rounding up votes at this point, and both of them downplayed the possibility of a looming clash. Scalise said in an interview that he would not challenge McCarthy for speaker — “I’m not running against Kevin for anything,” he told POLITICO — while McCarthy said he’s focused solely on keeping the House in November and pursuing President Donald Trump’s agenda.

But Scalise also expressed interest in leading the conference someday — remarks that only intensified simmering speculation in GOP circles about his intentions. Adding to the intrigue, some of Scalise’s allies have urged him to be ready if McCarthy falls short for speaker, as he did in 2015. And some of McCarthy’s allies discount Scalise’s vows not to mount a direct challenge, noting Scalise’s willingness to attempt to leapfrog more senior Republicans in the past.

“Everyone is talking about this,” said one veteran Republican House member who asked not to be named of the brewing rivalry. “We’re sizing them up, seeing who would be a better fit. It’s the prism that we look at them through now.”

As Ryan’s No. 2, McCarthy has the clearest path to the speakership, though it’s far from a lock. Distrust among the conference’s right flank contributed to his failed 2015 bid, when Ryan was recruited as a white knight. McCarthy did not lose interest, however, and he is trying to forge new alliances as well as patch up a once-rocky relationship with the House Freedom Caucus ahead of a potential second run.

The House is a lost cause, apparently.  The battle is on to save the Senate.

Republicans are increasingly worried they will lose control of the House in the midterm elections, furiously directing money and resources to hold and potentially boost their narrow majority in the Senate.

To many, the Senate is emerging as a critical barrier against Democrats demolishing President Trump’s agenda beginning in 2019. Worse yet, some in the GOP fear, Democrats could use complete control of Congress to co-opt the ideologically malleable president and advance their own priorities.

Democratic enthusiasm is surging in suburban districts that House Republicans are struggling to fortify, causing GOP officials, donors and strategists to fret. They have greater confidence in the more rural red states Trump won convincingly that make up the bulk of the Senate battlefield.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his allies are seeking to capitalize on concerns about the House. He is leading an effort to motivate conservative voters by reminding them that his side of the Capitol has the unilateral power to confirm federal judges and Trump administration nominees.

Trump is showing a keen interest in the Senate landscape, raising money for a highly touted challenger, helping clear the primary field for an endangered senator and playfully engaging in an intraparty contest.

One, the odds of the Republicans gaining Senate seats still remains much higher than the GOP keeping the House.  In the Senate, Dems have to defend 12 seats, 10 in Trump states, while the GOP has to defend just six seats with only one, Nevada, in a Clinton state.

The good news: a blue wave scenario means that Dems now can pick up the net two seats they need to take control, as Arizona, Nevada, and now Bob Corker's seat in Tennessee are absolutely 100% in play.  If Dems can hold the line and pick up two of those three, the Senate is theirs.  And down the line, Tex Cruz in Texas, Deb Fischer in Nebraska, and Thad Cochran's seat in Mississippi will have to be defended as well.

But the Dems still have a LOT of states to defend even with their advantage: Indiana, Missouri, WV, ND, Florida, Ohio, Montana, and yes, Minnesota's special election for Al Franken's old seat, now held by Tina Smith, and Tammy Baldwin's seat in Wisconsin aren't sure things anymore, even now.

The saving grace for the Dems is that after a year of Trump, college-educated white voters are abandoning the GOP in droves as Trump's policies are wrecking their 401(k)s.

Older, white, educated voters helped Donald Trump win the White House in 2016. Now, they are trending toward Democrats in such numbers that their ballots could tip the scales in tight congressional races from New Jersey to California, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll and a data analysis of competitive districts shows.

Nationwide, whites over the age of 60 with college degrees now favor Democrats over Republicans for Congress by a 2-point margin, according to Reuters/Ipsos opinion polling during the first three months of the year. During the same period in 2016, that same group favored Republicans for Congress by 10 percentage points.

The 12-point swing is one of the largest shifts in support toward Democrats that the Reuters/Ipsos poll has measured over the past two years. If that trend continues, Republicans will struggle to keep control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, in the November elections, potentially dooming President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.

“The real core for the Republicans is white, older white, and if they’re losing ground there, they’re going to have a tsunami,” said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist who closely tracks political races. “If that continues to November, they’re toast.”

It's going to be tough.  We'll see.

Last Call For A Syria's Problem

If one of the bonuses of Putin's interference with our elections and the Trump regime is "getting away with literal murder in Syria" then the Kremlin has to be pretty pleased with itself right about now.

President Trump on Sunday promised a “big price” to be paid for what he said was a chemical weapons attack that choked dozens of Syrians to death the day before, and a top White House official said the administration would not rule out a missile strike to retaliate against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

In a tweet, Mr. Trump laid the blame for the attack partly on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the first time since his election that he has criticized the Russian leader by name on Twitter. Mr. Putin’s forces have been fighting for years to keep the Assad government in power amid Syria’s brutal civil war.

Mr. Trump also left no doubt that he believed the assessment of aid groups that Mr. Assad’s military had used chemical weapons to inflict the carnage on Saturday in Douma, a rebel-held suburb of Damascus. The attack left at least 42 people dead in their homes from apparent suffocation and sent many others to clinics with burning eyes and breathing problems.

“Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria,” Mr. Trump wrote. “President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad.”

“Big price to pay,” Mr. Trump continued in a second tweet. “Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!”

Thomas P. Bossert, Mr. Trump’s homeland security adviser, said he and the rest of the president’s national security team had been in talks with Mr. Trump late Saturday and early Sunday about how to respond. Asked specifically about the possibility of a missile strike, Mr. Bossert did not rule it out.

“I wouldn’t take anything off the table,” Mr. Bossert said on ABC’s “This Week.” “These are horrible photos; we’re looking into the attack at this point.”

That raised the prospect of a strike along the lines of one that the president ordered almost exactly a year ago after a sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 80 civilians. In that strike, the United States military dropped 59 Tomahawk missiles on the Al Shayrat airfield, where the chemical weapons attack had originated.

Mr. Trump may be considering such a strike even as he has expressed his desire in recent days to pull American troops out of Syria, where they are seeking to eliminate the last vestiges of the Islamic State. White House officials said Mr. Trump would have a meeting and dinner on Monday at the White House with senior military leaders.

Nikki R. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, announced an emergency meeting there on Monday to demand immediate access to Douma for emergency workers, urge an independent investigation of the massacre, and “hold accountable those responsible for this atrocious act.”

The assault on Douma and the president’s response also showed how Syria has bedeviled Mr. Trump just as it did his predecessor, repeatedly presenting them with grave challenges and few good options for confronting them.

Understand that if Trump responds with another Tomahawk missile attack, Putin wins.

There's no reason to believe at this point that Trump won't declare victory over ISIS in Syria and complete the withdrawal of troops, either.  It's easy and fashionable to pin all this on Obama too, but the reality is that the US has been outmanuevered by Putin for some time now in both Europe and the Middle East dating back to almost two decades.  Putin can afford to play the longest of games, and he's been winning for some time now.  I don't see any way to stop him at this point, either.

There's enough chaos in the former Baltics and Eastern Europe now that the buffer between Russia and the European Union is non-existent, with several Eastern European countries now firmly under the sway of virulent nationalism. In the Middle East, propping up Syria and winning over Iran has been Putin's crowning achievement. And there's every indication that Trump is doing all Putin's heavy lifting for him and is clearing the decks to get the last obstacles between the Kremlin and Russian hegemony in the Middle East out of the way.

Where we go from here is anyone's guess, but my gut tells me Trump is going to do something catastrophically stupid and soon.

Sunday Long Read: Vacate The Premises

Ten years ago the Great Recession destroyed the black middle class, wiping out 85%+ of black net worth and more than 50% of wealth in the United States, what little we had.  Black and Latino household median net worth is headed for zero now and that's before his trade wars and disastrous economic policy move up that timetable from 2053-2073 to much, much sooner.

We already know what that future looks like today: the massive eviction machinery in the South in states like Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia that exists to put an increasing number of black renters out on the streets to disappear into the black hole that is America's criminal justice system.

Before the first hearings on the morning docket, the line starts to clog the lobby of the John Marshall Courthouse. No cellphones are allowed inside, but many of the people who’ve been summoned don’t learn that until they arrive. “Put it in your car,” the sheriff’s deputies suggest at the metal detector. That advice is no help to renters who have come by bus. To make it inside, some tuck their phones in the bushes nearby.

This courthouse handles every eviction in Richmond, a city with one of the highest eviction rates in the country, according to new data covering dozens of states and compiled by a team led by the Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond.

Two years ago, Mr. Desmond turned eviction into a national topic of conversation with “Evicted,” a book that chronicled how poor families who lost their homes in Milwaukee sank ever deeper into poverty. It became a favorite among civic groups and on college campuses, some here in Richmond. Bill Gates and former President Obama named it among the best books they had read in 2017, and it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

But for all the attention the problem began to draw, even Mr. Desmond could not say how widespread it was. Surveys of renters have tried to gauge displacement, but there is no government data tracking all eviction cases in America. Now that Mr. Desmond has been mining court records across the country to build a database of millions of evictions, it’s clear even in his incomplete national picture that they are more rampant in many places than what he saw in Milwaukee.

Mr. Desmond’s team found records for nearly 900,000 eviction judgments in 2016, meaning landlords were given the legal right to remove at least one in 50 renter households in the communities covered by this data. That figure was one in 25 in Milwaukee and one in nine in Richmond. And one in five renter households in Richmond were threatened with eviction in 2016. Their landlords began legal proceedings, even if those cases didn’t end with a lasting mark on a tenant’s record.

For landlords, these numbers represent a financial drain of unpaid rent; for tenants, a looming risk of losing their homes.

In Richmond, most of those evicted never made it to a courtroom. They didn’t appear because the process seemed inscrutable, or because they didn’t have lawyers to navigate it, or because they believed there is not much to say when you simply don’t have the money. The median amount owed was $686.

Inside the courtroom, cases sometimes brought in bulk by property managers are settled in minutes when defendants aren’t present.

“The whole system works on default judgments and people not showing up,” said Martin Wegbreit, director of litigation at the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society. “Imagine if every person asked for a trial. The system would bog down in a couple of months.”

The consequences of what happens here then spread across the city. The Richmond public school system reroutes buses to follow children from apartments to homeless shelters to pay-by-the-week motels. City social workers coach residents on how to fill out job applications when they have no answer for the address line. Families lose their food stamps and Medicaid benefits when they lose the permanent addresses where renewal notices are sent.

“An eviction isn’t one problem,” said Amy Woolard, a lawyer and the policy coordinator at the Legal Aid Justice Center in town. “It’s like 12 problems.”

I know it's fashionable to lay all this at the feet of Obama in an effort to strip the black and Latino vote away from the Democrats, but considering Trump destroyed what Obama was able to accomplish in a matter of months without a peep from the usual suspects tells me all I need to know.

We saddled Obama with a GOP House in just two years and kept making it worse for 99% of us because they promised to rectify the "error" of electing a black president.  Now we're all surprised that the most suffering is once again brought upon the black community.

This is what America voted for, though.

Alaska About Equality And You'll Say Sure

Voters in Anchorage, Alaska have rejected a local "bathroom bill", showing that good ol' West-Of-The-Rockies "to each their own" does come in handy every now and again.

Anchorage voters have rejected an initiative that would have regulated access to restrooms and locker rooms by a person's sex at birth instead of gender identity, a local version of what's known nationally as a "bathroom bill" that sparked massive spending by an opposition campaign.

The latest election results released Friday show Proposition 1 was failing by a six-point margin, with 77,766 ballots counted. There are fewer than 1,000 ballots left to be counted, election officials said.

Opponents of Prop. 1 declared victory Friday night. Lillian Lennon, an organizer with the Fair Anchorage campaign and a transgender woman, read the results aloud to a small group assembled at the city's election headquarters on Ship Creek.

"It means that Anchorage stood together as one community against a discriminatory proposition," Lennon said in an interview later.

Fair Anchorage raised more than $800,000 toward advertising, consulting services, phone banking, events and other campaign activities, making it one of the most expensive campaigns in the city's history. The records indicate a large infusion of Outside cash from various donors.

The city has fought bitter battles over LGBT rights in the past, most recently in 2012.

Good on you, Anchorage.  It's nice to be reminded that Sarah Palin isn't every Alaskan more than Rand Paul is every Kentuckian.

Immigration Nation, Con't

I've long said that the endgame of the Trump regime's immigration policy is to effectively end immigration, legal or otherwise, and begin mass deportation procedures of undocumented immigrants as the infrastructure to detain and process millions of people as enemies of the state is created to do just that.

We took yet another step towards that reality this week with new edicts from Dear Leader.

The Trump administration announced two measures late Friday to further restrict illegal border crossings.

The president issued a presidential memorandum ending a policy commonly called "catch and release," which released illegal immigrants from detention as they awaited an immigration court hearing.

The memo directs various government agencies, the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Justice and Defense to report within 45 days on measures they are taking to end "catch and release."

For example, the Defense Department is instructed to identify all existing facilities, including military sites, that can be "used, modified, or repurposed to detain aliens for violations of immigration law" at or near U.S. borders.

Within 60 days, the Departments of State and Homeland Security will report on diplomatic efforts to force countries to accept the repatriation of their nationals.

Within 75 days, the attorney general and secretary of homeland security will submit a report identifying additional resources needed to "expeditiously end catch and release practices."

Considering illegal border crossings are actually at a near 50-year low, all that new infrastructure will have to be turned inward.

Earlier in the day, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered federal prosecutors to adopt a "zero tolerance" policy toward people trying to enter the United States from Mexico illegally by targeting first-time offenders. Traditionally, people who were caught trying to cross the border for the first time were charged with misdemeanor crimes.

Now Sessions says, under a "zero tolerance" policy, illegal entry should be prosecuted to the "extent practicable." The order contained few specifics on how that policy will be implemented.

As The Associated Press reports:

"A conviction for illegal entry carries a maximum penalty of six months in prison for first-time crossers and two years for repeat offenses. In practice, many are deported after pleading guilty and spending a few days in jail. ...

"Smugglers and frequent offenders are usually charged with more serious crimes."

Sessions' order comes on the heels of his instruction to immigration judges, who are employees of the Justice Department, to meet a quota of 700 completed immigration cases each year. That order is being opposed by the president of the immigration judges' union.

None of this is accidental, guys.  The Trump regime is constructing the means to round up, detain, process and deport millions of undocumented immigrants in the US.  This infrastructure will be used, and used in brutal fashion sooner than you think.  Some of it is already being used, and when the last logistical, social, and legal barriers to full implementation are removed over the next weeks and months, the storm will come with startling alacrity.

How much we can do in order to stop it depends largely on November's elections.

Environment Of Paranoia

Embattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt is under heavy pressure to resign (or to be fired by Trump) for the only actual punishable sin in this regime, making Donald Trump look bad.  Turns out even some Republicans are uncomfortable at how incompetent Pruitt is at grifting badly enough to get caught.

Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt’s concern with his safety came at a steep cost to taxpayers as his swollen security detail blew through overtime budgets and at times diverted officers away from investigating environmental crimes.

Altogether, the agency spent millions of dollars for a 20-member full-time detail that is more than three times the size of his predecessor’s part-time security contingent.

New details in Pruitt’s expansive spending for security and travel emerged from agency sources and documents reviewed by The Associated Press. They come as the embattled EPA leader fends off allegations of profligate spending and ethical missteps that have imperiled his job.

Shortly after arriving in Washington, Pruitt demoted the career staff member heading his security detail and replaced him with EPA Senior Special Agent Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta, a former Secret Service agent who operates a private security company.

An EPA official with direct knowledge of Pruitt’s security spending says Perrotta oversaw a rapid expansion of the EPA chief’s security detail to accommodate guarding him day and night, even on family vacations and when Pruitt was home in Oklahoma. The EPA official spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Perrotta also signed off on new procedures that let Pruitt fly first-class on commercial airliners, with the security chief typically sitting next to him with other security staff farther back in the plane. Pruitt’s premium status gave him and his security chief access to VIP airport lounges.

The EPA official said there are legitimate concerns about Pruitt’s safety, given public opposition to his rollbacks of anti-pollution measures.

But Pruitt’s ambitious domestic and international travel led to rapidly escalating costs, with the security detail racking up so much overtime that many hit annual salary caps of about $160,000. The demands of providing 24-hour coverage even meant taking some investigators away from field work, such as when Pruitt traveled to California for a family vacation.

The EPA official said total security costs approached $3 million when pay is added to travel expenses.

Millions in wasted taxpayer dollars is one thing, wasting even more in an effort to reassign personnel in an effort to cover up your waste and excess is to be expected if not encouraged in 2018, but wasting time and money because it makes you look like a wimp and that ends up embarrassing Trump, well, that's the real strike here against Pruitt in this day and age.

Last Call For The Friday Night News Dump™

Friday evening, where bad news for the GOP goes to die unnoticed (hopefully they think) but it never does, of course.  Today's contestant: Texas GOP Rep. Blake Farenthold, who was already retiring this year after a sexual harassment scandal where he settled an $84,000 claim using taxpayer money, has now abruptly resigned from the House this afternoon.

Since being elected to Congress in 2010, I've worked to make government more efficient and responsive, cut government spending, repeal Obamacare, protect life and reduce the debt. Locally, I've worked tirelessly to get federal funding for the widening and deepening project at the Port of Corpus Christi and help our other area ports and military facilities. I've also been extremely successful in working with our communities on recovering from Hurricane Harvey. Most importantly, I've been able to help countless people, especially veterans with their problems with the federal government. 

"While I planned on serving out the remainder of my term in Congress, I know in my heart it's time for me to move along and look for new ways to serve. 

Therefore, I sent a letter to Governor Greg Abbott today resigning from the House of Representatives effective at 5:00 p.m. today, April 6, 2018.

Several Republicans were already vying for his seat, and even with the midterm losses that the GOP will undoubtedly suffer this year, Farenthold's TX-27 seat isn't going to be one of them.

Which makes me wonder very much why he's getting out now.  Politico hinted a couple of weeks ago that this was coming.

Tales of allegations of misbehavior in Farenthold's office first surfaced late last year. Lauren Greene, a former aide to Farenthold, sued the Texas Republican for creating a hostile work environment, gender discrimination and sexual harassment. She said Farenthold told her he had fantasies and "wet dreams" about her. After complaining about the behavior, Greene said she was fired. 

CNN reported last year that Michael Rekola, another former aide to the Texan, told the Ethics Committee that Farenthold was verbally abusive to him. He said that the congressman suggested Rekola have oral sex with his fiancee before their marriage because it would be the last time he would be able to do so. Farenthold denied making those comments. 

Farenthold said in December he would repay the $84,000 in taxpayer funds used to settle the lawsuit. It is not clear if he has.

So we'll see when the other shoe drops, but it's not a real mystery: the faster he resigns, the faster he gets on board with FOX News and the right-wing gravy train. Just ask former GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz.   There's going to be a flood of lame duck GOP Representatives on the market in a few months, so he's acting now.

Now that a budget bill has passed, expect a lot more Republicans to hang it up.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

More major leaks from the Mueller probe as somebody is very interested in keeping Mueller's actions in the news and publicly so to prevent a Saturday Night Massacre firing spree.  The best way to do that is to show Mueller closing on on Trump's shady business deals and money laundering schemes to keep Trump in panic mode, and so far it's working.

No new indictments yet, but plenty of additional details today on a previous indictment: Paul Manafort is in a metric crapton of trouble and almost certainly is going to flip if he hasn't already.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office moved to seize bank accounts at three different financial institutions last year just one day before former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was indicted, prosecutors disclosed in a court filing Thursday.

The previously unknown move against the bank accounts was revealed in a list of search and seizure warrants prosecutors submitted to a federal court in Washington after Manafort's defense team complained that the government was withholding too many details about how the warrants were obtained.

The new filing also indicated that Mueller's investigators have been pressing on with their work in recent weeks despite the pair of indictments pending against Manafort and a detailed indictment in February of the Russia-based Internet Research Agency and a dozen Russian nationals for alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

On March 9, the special counsel's office obtained a search warrant for information related to "five telephone numbers controlled by AT&T," the prosecution said. It did not reveal who the numbers belonged to, although it said some information about the search was given to Manafort's defense on Wednesday, so presumably there is some connection to the veteran political consultant who held a top role in the Trump campaign for several months in 2016.

Prosecutors said some information about the various searches was withheld from Manafort because it relates to the identity of informants or "to ongoing investigations that are not the subject of either of the current prosecutions involving Manafort." POLITICO reported in January that an errant court filing by the defense indicated that at least one employee of a Manafort consulting firm was surreptitiously cooperating with the FBI and journalists.

This is how good Mueller is at this game, it's not a leak if Manafort's defense team is requesting additional information from the prosecution in order to prepare said defense and Mueller just so happens to get that information in a public filing that just so happens to inform a whole bunch of journalists that new wiretaps have been requested, because the defense team's client just so happens to be possibly involved in charges that haven't been announced yet because they just so happen to involve a new aspect of the Mueller investigation, and that wiretap request supporting those new charges just so happened to be as recent as last month. 

It's all an amazing coincidence, you know.

Paul Manafort is going away for a very long time, kids.  He's in so much trouble at this point I'd have to say that the window on him flipping may already be closed.  But that would mean Mueller has a even bigger fish on the line and that Manafort's usefulness has come to an end.

You think Tangerine Tyrant Toddler is sweating yet?

If he's not, just a reminder that while Trump's long-time personal lawyer Michael Cohen is currently under a lot of legal scrutiny for his conduct involving $130,000 in hush money to Stormy Daniels, Cohen was also Trump's personal lawyer during the 2016 campaign and was apparently deeply involved in the money laundering aspect of Mueller's ongoing probe.  Meet the bigger fish...

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators this week questioned an associate of the Trump Organization who was involved in overseas deals with President Donald Trump’s company in recent years.

Armed with subpoenas compelling electronic records and sworn testimony, Mueller’s team showed up unannounced at the home of the business associate, who was a party to multiple transactions connected to Trump’s effort to expand his brand abroad, according to persons familiar with the proceedings.

Investigators were particularly interested in interactions involving Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former Trump Organization employee. Among other things, Cohen was involved in business deals secured or sought by the Trump Organization in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia.

The move to question business associates of the president adds a significant new element to the Mueller investigation, which began by probing whether the Trump campaign and Russia colluded in an effort to get Trump elected but has branched far beyond that.

It’s unclear how many properties or deals the Mueller team might be looking at; the Trump Organization’s foreign business relationships span the globe from properties in Panama, Brazil and Uruguay to Azerbaijan and Georgia. Trump’s children — Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric — were parties to talks involving many of the dealings. Generally, the discussions revolved around licensing fees for use of the Trump name.

Prior indictments and guilty pleas secured by the Mueller team to date have focused on campaign personnel such as ex-campaign chief Paul J. Manafort, his aide Richard Gates and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

The New York Times reported on March 15 that Mueller had subpoenaed unspecified records from the Trump Organization. Days before that, the Washington Post reported that Mueller’s team was looking into a Moscow hotel deal for which Cohen brought to Donald Trump a letter of intent from a Moscow developer during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Cohen left the Trump Organization in January 2017, and has been front-page news of late because of his acknowledgement that he paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the November 2016 elections through a company established for the purpose of buying her silence with a non-disclosure agreement. Daniels has sought to toss out that agreement, appearing last month on a 60 Minutes broadcast to describe her alleged 2006 extramarital affair with then-businessman Trump. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One Thursday, Trump denied knowledge of the payment to Daniels, deferring to Cohen.

“You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney,” Trump said. “You’ll have to ask Michael.”

Cohen and Trump Organization attorney Alan Garten did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump's already throwing Cohen under his golf cart.  I bet Cohen wants to return the favor, especially if motivated by a long involuntary stint in decidedly substandard concrete federal housing.

I've been saying that Mueller's next round of indictments would focus on Jared Kushner, but looking at this I'd have to say that Michael Cohen may very well be the next target instead.  Having Trump's personal lawyer flip would be the golden arrow in Mueller's quiver on everything else he wants to nail Trump on, and could be an even more important get for Mueller than Kushner in the long run.

We'll see.  Stay tuned, kids.  It's gonna be a long weekend for Trump.

StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime is considering a new round of an additional $100 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods as the trade war between the US and China is only getting worse.
• Donald Trump is once again lying about "millions of illegal votes" in California, accusing the state of covering up voting records in order to protect Democratic politicians.
• Oklahoma Republicans are considering raising hotel, internet sales and gambling income taxes to pay striking schoolteachers a proposed $10,000 raise over three years.
• Former South Korean President Park Geun-hye has been sentenced to 24 years in prison on corruption charges after her impeachment last year, she is expected to appeal. 
• Video game makers are joining the lawsuit by Democratic attorneys general to keep net neutrality rules, the Entertainment Software Association argues repealing those rules harms online gaming.

Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

GOP Gov. Matt Bevin and Kentucky Republicans are about to raise taxes on 95% of Kentuckians in order to give millions to the wealthiest one percent in the state.  Surprise!

A new study of the tax bill rushed through the Kentucky General Assembly Monday shows the changes it makes to the tax code are likely to lower taxes for the wealthy while raising taxes for 95 percent of Kentuckians. 

The analysis, performed by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington D.C., a liberal-leaning think tank, studied the impact of the tax cuts and increases on Kentuckians. 

The bill applies Kentucky’s 6 percent sales tax to 17 services, increases the cigarette tax by 50 cents per pack, and cuts the individual and corporate income tax to a flat 5 percent tax. It also cuts some typical tax deductions, including those for medical expenses, medical insurance, paid taxes and investment income. 

“When sales taxes are increased, it’s going to hit lower-income people harder,” said Aidan Davis, a senior policy analyst with the institute. 

According to the study, the top 1 percent of Kentuckians will see an average tax cut of $7,086 from the plan. People who make between $175,000 and $427,000 a year are likely to see an average tax cut of $776. Anyone who makes below $175,000 is likely to see a tax increase of $93 to $213. 

The bulk of the increase for Kentuckians comes from the sales tax.

The hardest hit dollar-wise: Kentuckians making between $55,000 and  $92,000 will see their taxes go up by an average of $213 a year.  Percentage-wise, the bill is a nearly 1% tax increase on the poorest people in the state just to save millionaires a lousy seven grand.

Also if you still get your insurance and retirement plan through your employer, congratulations, you won't be able to deduct as much for it so you'll be paying more taxes on those benefits as well.

So go for it Matt Bevin, sign into law the biggest tax increase on Kentuckians in state history.

Watch what happens to you in 2019.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Republicans like Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker are in full panic mode now as they are warning that they expect massive carnage for Republicans in November. Steve Benen:

Ordinarily, a state Supreme Court race wouldn’t garner national attention, but yesterday’s contest in Wisconsin was anything but a local affair.

Liberal judge Rebecca Dallet’s runaway victory in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race cheered Democrats eager for more evidence their party is ready for a winning fall in midterm elections.

And Dallet’s hammering of conservative judge Michael Screnock on Tuesday prodded Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who had endorsed Screnock, to warn his fellow Republicans that more losses could be coming.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, her victory marked “the first time in 23 years that a liberal candidate who wasn’t an incumbent won a seat on the high court.” What’s more, it wasn’t close: as of the latest tally, Dallet appears to have won this race by nearly 12 points.

Scott Walker, who’s running for a third term this year, pointed to the results as proof that a “blue wave” may be coming to Wisconsin.

The latest Cook Political Report numbers for the House are grim for the GOP, seven pickups and anywhere from 40 to 66 more Republican districts in play, including 21 GOP tossup districts, and it's only April.

Dems could pick up as many as seven seats in Pennsylvania alone. Another nine could come from California, five in New York, and four in Texas.  Just those four states alone could give the Dems the numbers they need to take back the House.

Now imagine what could happen in the other 46.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump will keep US troops in Syria for now after advisors warned against an immediate withdrawal but reportedly he has given the Pentagon six months to "get the job done".
• Four NYPD officers fatally shot a black man in Brooklyn who was holding a metal pipe, police officials say the shooting is being investigated and body camera footage reviewed.
• The Trump regime reportedly plans new sanctions against Russian oligarchs under laws Congress passed directing the Treasury Department to take action against Moscow's elite.
• Citing a "border crisis" the Trump regime will direct the Defense Department to come up with a plan to send National Guard troops to the US/Mexico border within 30 days.
• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company will voluntarily implement EU privacy standards for everyone after admitting as many as 87 million profiles may have been compromised.