Operation Trump The Vote

You guys know I've been talking about Kansas GOP Secretary of State Kris Kobach for a while now, as he's been the leading Republican on the party's national voter suppression efforts for the last several years now.  Kobach was also in the running for Trump's Attorney General but that ultimately went to Jeff Sessions.

However, it seems that Trump has found something for Kobach to do, and that is to officially lead up the regime's efforts to disenfranchise millions of Democratic voters in 2018.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order today establishing a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression in the American election system, multiple senior administration officials tell ABC News. 

The officials say Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will be announced as Chair and Vice Chair of the ‘Presidential Commission on Election Integrity’ in a press release today. It's not clear whether the White House will allow coverage of the order signing. 

The commission, which will include Republicans and Democrats, will be tasked with studying "vulnerabilities" in U.S. voting systems and potential effects on "improper voting, fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting," according to one official with knowledge of the announcement. 

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Trump claimed widespread voter fraud explained why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emerged with nearly 3 million more popular votes. To date, neither Trump nor his team has provided evidence to substantiate the claims, but they have promised an investigation. 

“You can never really find, you know, there are going to be -- no matter what numbers we come up with there are going to be lots of people that did things that we're not going to find out about,” Trump told ABC News' David Muir in January. "But we will find out because we need a better system where that can't happen." 

Administration officials would not provide a draft copy of the order but described its scope to ABC News. The commission's review is expected be broad in scope, and will not just address Trump's allegations about the 2016 election but also "systemic issues that have been raised over many years in terms of the integrity of the elections," one official said. 

There's no doubt in my mind that this commission is the first step on the way to de facto national Voter ID laws ahead of 2018 midterms and especially 2020 presidential elections, and the GOP effort to keep millions, maybe tens of millions of people from being able to ever vote again.

That was always the plan once the GOP got back in power again.  Looks like more than ever that this plan is on.

Drain Your Own Swamp For Once

Back in October, Hurricane Matthew tore up Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba as a Category 5 storm, killing more than 500, and then dumped feet of rain on the Carolinas and killing 50 more before stumbling into the Canadian Maritimes and setting rainfall records.

The flooding damage in North Carolina was particularly bad, especially near the border with SC and last month Gov. Roy Cooper and NC House Republicans requested nearly a billion dollars in FEMA aid for the state from the Trump regime to help families in the Fayetteville and Wilmington area. Lumberton, where interstates 74 and 95 cross, was the hardest hit.

This week the Trump regime got back to them on that request and told them to go pound sand.

The State of North Carolina requested $929 million from the federal government to help with costs associated with Hurricane Matthew, but the state will be receiving far less than that, according to an announcement by Gov. Roy Cooper. 

North Carolina will receive only $6.1 million from the Trump administration. That’s 99 percent less than the requested amount. 

In a letter Cooper sent to the president and other officials today, he expressed “shock and disappointment in the lack of federal funding for Hurricane Matthew recovery efforts.”
The governor had worked with Sen. Thom Tillis and Representatives David Price (D) and Rep. David Rouzer (R) in April to come up with a request to Congress to help cover the costs associated with the destruction left by Matthew. 

The $929 million requested would have been used to “help communities and families fix homes, repair businesses and recover from the historic flooding,” Cooper said. 

“Families across Eastern North Carolina need help to rebuild and recover, and it is an incredible failure by the Trump Administration and Congressional leaders to turn their backs,” said Cooper said in a statement released to the press. “Matthew was a historic storm and we are still working every day to help families return home and rebuild their communities. North Carolinians affected by this storm cannot be ignored by the Trump Administration and Congressional leadership, and I will continue to work with our Congressional delegation to get North Carolina residents affected by the storm the help they deserve.”

Southeastern NC?  Voted big for Trump and the GOP.

Here endeth the lesson.

StupidiNews!

• Under police watch, city parks crews in New Orleans have begun the removal of the city's Jefferson Davis memorial, the second of four Confederate monuments slated for relocation.
• China has issued warning statements to US members of Congress who visited the Dalai Lama in India last week, saying that it sends the wrong message about the status of Tibet.
• Pope Francis is expected to announce canonization of two Portuguese shepherd children who first reported visions of the Madonna a century ago in the town of Fatima.
• European airlines are already working to inform passengers to the US of the Trump regime's expected laptop ban being expanded to all incoming flights from Europe this week.
• Tech company Tesla is launching its solar roof panel nationally this week, pre-orders for the roof system require $1,000 to get on the waiting list.

Last Call For Houston, We Have A Model

If you want to know what America in 30 years will look like according to demographic projections, take a look at the most diverse major metro area in the country today in Houston.

Houston boomed through the mid-20th century, thanks to the oil bonanza, and most of those who came to get rich were white. Large numbers of Vietnamese refugees began arriving in the 1970s, and after an oil collapse in 1982, they were followed by an influx of Latinos driven by cheap housing and employment opportunities. Whites, meanwhile, started drifting out. 

The multi-ethnic boom has occurred deep in the heart of a state that has often seemed to regard conservatism, and Texas identity, as an element of religion. 

The state’s Republican leadership has helped lead the fight this year not only on sanctuary cities, but to defend President Trump’s order on border security and immigration enforcement. Texas went to court in 2015 to successfully block expanded deportation protections for young “Dreamers” and their parents who brought them here illegally. 

Yet demographic experts say the Houston metro area, home to the third-largest population of undocumented immigrants in the country — behind New York and Los Angeles — is a roadmap to what U.S. cities will look like in the coming decades as whites learn to live as minorities in the American heartland. 

Census projections have opened a window into the America of 2050, “and it’s Houston today,” said Stephen Klineberg, a sociology professor at Rice University. 

“This biracial Southern city dominated by white men throughout all of its history has become, by many measures, the single most ethnically diverse major metropolitan area in the country,” Klineberg said. “Who knew Houston would turn out to be at the forefront of what’s happening across all of America?”

Ahh, but the political fight to shape 2050 is happening in 2017 and 2018, in states with far less diversity that are doing everything they can to keep it that way.  History teaches us that while the moral arc of history bends towards justice, it only does so slowly and it takes tremendous pressure to force that bending at all.  And like in 2016, sometimes that arc gets bent violently in the other direction by reactionary forces, erasing a lot of hard work.

It's taken centuries, but America does move on.  Eventually. Kicking and screaming.  Also, occasionally a war or two is necessary.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Once again, FBI Director James Comey was fired because he was investigating Trump's ties to Russia.

President Donald Trump weighed firing his FBI director for more than a week. When he finally pulled the trigger Tuesday afternoon, he didn’t call James Comey. He sent his longtime private security guard to deliver the termination letter in a manila folder to FBI headquarters. 

He had grown enraged by the Russia investigation, two advisers said, frustrated by his inability to control the mushrooming narrative around Russia. He repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldn’t disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said.

Trump’s firing of the high-profile FBI director on the 110th day after the president took office marked another sudden turn for an administration that has fired its acting attorney general, national security adviser and now its FBI director, whom Trump had praised until recent weeks and even blew a kiss to during a January appearance. 

The news stunned Comey, who saw news of his dismissal on TV while speaking inside the FBI office in Los Angeles. It startled all but the uppermost ring of White House advisers, who said grumbling about Comey hadn’t dominated their own morning senior staff meetings. Other top officials learned just before it happened and were unaware Trump was considering firing Comey. “Nobody really knew,” one senior White House official said. “Our phones all buzzed and people said, ‘What?’” 

By ousting the FBI director investigating his campaign and associates, Trump may have added more fuel to the fire he is furiously trying to contain — and he was quickly criticized by a chorus of Republicans and Democrats. “The timing of this firing was very troubling,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican.

Mitch McConnell moved swiftly this morning to kill any talk of a special counsel.  No Republican has taken up the call for one, not a single of them.  They all know Trump is guilty and they are either complicit or they don't care.

By the way, the Trumpies were tipped off last week that the hammer was coming when Comey asked for more resources in order to expand the investigation.

Days before he was fired, James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, asked the Justice Department for a significant increase in resources for the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election, according to four congressional officials, including Senator Richard J. Durbin. 

Mr. Comey made his appeal to Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who also wrote the Justice Department’s memo that was used to justify the firing of Mr. Comey this week, the officials said. 

“I’m told that as soon as Rosenstein arrived, there was a request for additional resources for the investigation and that a few days afterwards, he was sacked,” said Mr. Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois. “I think the Comey operation was breathing down the neck of the Trump campaign and their operatives, and this was an effort to slow down the investigation.” 

Mr. Comey briefed members of Congress in recent days, telling them about his meeting with Mr. Rosenstein, who is the most senior law enforcement official supervising the Russia investigation. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself because of his close ties to the Trump campaign and his undisclosed meetings with the Russian ambassador. 

The timing of Mr. Comey’s request is not clear-cut evidence that his firing was related to the Russia investigation. But it is certain to fuel bipartisan criticism that President Trump appeared to be meddling in an investigation that had the potential to damage his presidency.

As I told you yesterday, the investigation is now far beyond Flynn.  Comey asking for more resources was the event that triggered the plan to fire him before the investigation could reach critical mass and start threatening Trump.

The GOP at this point doesn't care.  Mitch and Paul Ryan will not allow anything to go forward because if they do, they will be indicted and imprisoned, and they know it.

Whoever replaces Comey will be under tremendous pressure from Trump to end the investigation.  I fully expect that to happen before the end of the month.  Even if Democrats move to filibuster a replacement, Mitch will move to kill the filibuster.

Pray there's elections still in 2018.  For the first time I feel that will be in doubt.

StupidiNews!

• Newly-elected South Korean President Moon Jae-in was sworn in today with a message of diplomacy towards North Korea as he wants the return of the "Sunshine Policy" between them.
• A tunnel partially collapsed at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State yesterday, no injuries were reported and no radioactive material was released.
• Defense Secretary James Mattis is criticizing build-up of Russian troops near the Balkans, saying the US could deploy Patriot missile batteries for NATO exercises there in July.
• Donald Trump will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the White House today, less than 24 hours after firing FBI Director James Comey.
• New medical studies show that US life expectancy varies greatly by which county you live in, and that these more than two-decade discrepancies are only getting larger.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

We now know why the White House was in full-blown panic mode for the last 48 hours, culminating in the firing of FBI Director James Comey:  the fecal matter has just impacted the oscillating atmospheric turbine unit as the FBI is now starting to close in on the regime, beginning with grand jury subpoenas of people related to former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.

Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn seeking business records, as part of the ongoing probe of Russian meddling in last year's election, according to people familiar with the matter. CNN learned of the subpoenas hours before President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey. 

The subpoenas represent the first sign of a significant escalation of activity in the FBI's broader investigation begun last July into possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia. 

The subpoenas issued in recent weeks by the US Attorney's Office in Alexandria, Virginia, were received by associates who worked with Flynn on contracts after he was forced out as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, according to the people familiar with the investigation. 

Robert Kelner, an attorney for Flynn, declined to comment. The US Attorney's Office in Alexandria, the Justice Department and the FBI also declined to comment. 

Investigators have been looking into possible wrongdoing in how Flynn handled disclosures about payments from clients tied to foreign governments including Russia and Turkey, US officials briefed on the matter have told CNN. 

The Flynn inquiry is one piece of the broader investigation, which FBI Director James Comey testified in a Senate hearing last week is led jointly by the Alexandria US Attorney's Office and the Justice Department's National Security Division.

For those of you asking just where the leaks were if there really was a smoking gun in the Trump/Russia investigation, you have just been presented with your answer within hours of Trump firing the man in charge of said investigation.  There is no doubt that Comey was fired because of this grand jury investigation, and because the grand jury investigation will end up going up the chain well above Flynn.

He was fired to end this investigation, so that he could be replaced by someone who would try to stop it.

They believe they will get away with it.

America must disabuse them of this notion, or we deserve Trump to rule for life.

BREAKING: Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey

The head of the agency investigating the Trump regime has been fired by Trump on the advice of Jeff Sessions.

President Donald Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey – a move that comes as the FBI is probing potential contacts between Trump’s campaign aides and Russian officials ahead of the election.

"The president has accepted the recommendation of the Attorney General and the deputy Attorney General regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.

The recommendation letters from AG Sessions and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein both state that the Comey had to be fired over his handling of...you guessed it!

Clinton's emails, and his failure to bring charges.

I woke up in a mostly-broken representative democracy.  Tonight I fall asleep in a regime.

The Scarlet Letter, Con't

So Sunday when I said that FBI Director James Comey's letter cost Hillary the election and Nate Silver presented the case for that I noted that Comey would have a lot to answer for.  It turns out that we may have reached that point far sooner than anyone had anticipated.

FBI Director James B. Comey overstated key findings involving the Hillary Clinton email investigation during testimony to Congress last week, according to people close to the inquiry. 

In defending the probe, Comey offered seemingly new details to underscore the seriousness of the situation FBI agents faced last fall when they discovered thousands of Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s emails on the computer of her husband, Anthony Weiner. 

“Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information,” Comey said, adding later, “His then-spouse Huma Abedin appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him for him I think to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the secretary of state.” 

At another point in the testimony, Comey said Abedin “forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information.’’ 

Neither of those statements is accurate, said people close to the investigation. The inquiry found that Abedin did occasionally forward emails to her husband for printing, but it was a far smaller number than Comey described, and it wasn’t a “regular practice,” these people said. None of the forwarded emails were marked classified, but a small number — a handful, one person said — contained information that was later judged to contain classified information, these people said. 

Justice Department and FBI officials are considering whether and how to clarify the misstatements, said people familiar with the matter. The issue of the misstatements was first reported by ProPublica.

Not giving accurate statements to Congress under oath has a name, and that's perjury.  From that ProPublica story linked above:

According to two sources familiar with the matter — including one in law enforcement — Abedin forwarded only a handful of Clinton emails to her husband for printing — not the “hundreds and thousands” cited by Comey. It does not appear Abedin made “a regular practice” of doing so. Other officials said it was likely that most of the emails got onto the computer as a result of backups of her Blackberry. 

It was not clear how many, if any, of the forwarded emails were among the 12 “classified” emails Comey said had been found on Weiner’s laptop. None of the messages carried classified markings at the time they were sent. 

Comey’s Senate testimony about Abedin came as he offered his first public explanation for his decision to reveal the existence of the emails on Oct. 28, days ahead of the 2016 election and before FBI agents had examined them. 

When agents obtained a search warrant that allowed them to read the messages, they turned out to be mostly duplicates of emails the bureau had obtained earlier in the investigation. Comey announced just before Election Day that nothing had changed in the Clinton case, which had been closed four months earlier without criminal charges. 

During his testimony, Comey said that part of the reason for revealing the existence of the messages was that some appeared to fill an eight-week gap in records from early in Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. Comey said the FBI viewed them as “the golden missing emails that would change this case” because they might provide insights into Clinton’s intent when she set up her private server. 

Comey testified that investigators searching Weiner’s laptop in the days before the election also found that “somehow, her emails are being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information, by [Clinton’s] assistant, Huma Abedin.” Abedin, he later testified, “appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him, for him I think to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the Secretary of State.”

In other words, even if you don't buy that Comey perjured himself (and the FBI is apparently still trying to figure out how to get out of that mess), Comey clearly jumped the gun and never should have gone public with what was massively misleading information in an ongoing investigation because -- surprise! -- it directly affected the outcome of a presidential election.

So yeah, Comey's in trouble at this point.  It's all starting to come unglued.

The Great Yates Debates, Con't

Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates lit into the GOP yesterday as she confirmed under oath widely-reported information about fired Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn: that Flynn was absolutely compromised by the Russians, and that Yates made it very clear to the White House that this was an imminent threat to America's national security.

Making her first public statements about the issue, Yates said she feared Moscow could try to blackmail Flynn because it also knew he had not been truthful about conversations he had with Ambassador Sergei Kislyak about U.S. sanctions on Russia.

Flynn, a retired general once seen as a potential Trump vice president, has emerged as a central figure in the Russian probes. Russia has repeatedly denied any meddling in the election and the Trump administration denies allegations of collusion with Russia.

Yates told the hearing she had been concerned that "the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians."

"Logic would tell you that you don't want the national security adviser to be in a position where the Russians have leverage over him," she said.

Trump, who continued to praise Flynn, waited 18 days after Yates' warning before Flynn's forced resignation for failing to disclose the content of his talks with Kislyak and then misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

Several Democratic senators questioned Trump's delay. Yates said that in her meetings, McGahn "demonstrated that he understood this was serious. .. If nothing was done, certainly that would be concerning." 

The news also broke yesterday by NBC that President Obama personally warned Donald Trump not to hire Mike Flynn, which Trump regime spokesman Sean Spicer later dismissed as perfectly normal because they thought the warning was "in jest" and then because Flynn was "an outspoken critic" of the former president.

Former President Obama warned President Donald Trump against hiring Mike Flynn as his national security adviser, three former Obama administration officials tell NBC News.

The warning, which has not been previously reported, came less than 48 hours after the November election when the two sat down for a 90-minute conversation in the Oval Office.

A senior Trump administration official acknowledged Monday that Obama raised the issue of Flynn, saying the former president made clear he was "not a fan of Michael Flynn." Another official said Obama's remark seemed like it was made in jest.

According to all three former officials, Obama warned Trump against hiring Flynn. The Obama administration fired Flynn in 2014 from his position as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, largely because of mismanagement and temperament issues.

Obama's warning pre-dated the concerns inside the government about Flynn's contacts with the Russian ambassador, one of the officials said. Obama passed along a general caution that he believed Flynn was not suitable for such a high level post, the official added.

Of course the notion that Obama's November warning "pre-dated" Flynn being compromised by the Russians is not true, as John Schindler made it clear that Flynn was in bed with Moscow back in July, when Flynn was in the running for Trump's possible VP.

It seems that Flynn remains furious at Obama for firing him, and that anger may be the driving force behind his cozy relationship with the Kremlin. General Flynn has frequently appeared on RT (formerly Russia Today), the Russian government’s news channel aimed at the outside world. RT is unadulterated Kremlin propaganda—not a normal news network—as evidenced by its showcasing avowed neo-Nazis and having its own Illuminati correspondent.

Since Flynn is a Cold War veteran and a career spy, he knows exactly what RT is—he has no excuses. Yet this has not deterred him from appearing there regularly. To top it off, last December he attended RT’s 10th anniversary gala in Moscow, including a photo op with President Vladimir Putin.

It’s safe to say Putin would have a word for any top retired Russian intelligence general who regularly appeared on official U.S. television and did a photo op with President Obama. It’s not a nice word, and that general would be well advised to avoid drinking tea.

To make matters worse, neither General Flynn nor RT were willing to comment if he is a paid contributor to the network. If a possible vice president is an actual paid employee of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, that seems like something the American people should know.

Those concerns about a top US intelligence official with a suspiciously cozy relationship with Moscow as veep still applies as National Security Adviser.  It's silly to think that by November, President Obama wouldn't have had a pretty clear picture about who Flynn was really working for.

StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime will be considering US troop increase options in Afghanistan this week, ranging from 1,500 to 5,000 or more in order to break a "stalemate" against the Taliba.
• Donald Trump is expected to name two Republicans to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this week, both would need Senate confirmation.
• South Koreans head to the polls today to choose a replacement for impeached former President Park Geun-hye, record voter turnout is expected with liberal Moon Jae-in as the favorite.
• Texas Republicans have scrapped plans for $30 billion in public-private infrastructure projects as polls show residents are strongly against lawmakers approving new toll roads.
• California lawmakers are considering bi-partisan legislation that would allow residents to cover license plates when parked for privacy reasons.

Last Call For No Sanctuary At All

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has followed through on his threat to sign a law banning sanctuary cities into law this weekend, and now we'll see how the judiciary will react to it ahead of the law going into effect on September 1.

Opponents of the law were quick to condemn the signing. Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that the law was a "colossal blunder" and that the lawmakers who championed it were small-hearted.

"MALDEF will do its level best, in court and out, to restore Texas, the state where MALDEF was founded, to its greater glory, and to help Texas to overcome 'Abbott's Folly,' " he said in a written statement.

Saenz said the law would alienate "nearly half the state population" and make people subject to widespread racial profiling. He said the law undermines voters' rights to choose elected officials who set local policy, makes the job of local law enforcement more difficult by straining relationships with immigrant communities and would cost Texas in trade and tourism, as well as legal challenges.

"This racist and wrongheaded piece of legislation ignores our values, imperils our communities and sullies our reputation as a free and welcoming state," Terri Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas said in a prepared statement. "We will fight this assault in the courts, at the ballot box, and in the streets if we have to."

So what does the law actually do?  It's complicated, messay, and almost surely parts of it will be struck down.

The law will ban cities, counties and universities from prohibiting their local law enforcement officers from asking about immigration status and enforcing immigration law. It will create a criminal charge for police chiefs, county sheriffs and constables who violate the ban and will charge local jurisdictions up to $25,000 for each day they are in violation.

The law will also allow police officers to ask about a person's immigration status during any legal detention, which could include a routine traffic stop. Opponents have likened the law to Arizona's "papers, please" legislation, parts of which were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Elected or appointed officials who violate the ban could be removed from office -- another portion of the law that is likely to face legal challenges.

Abbott addressed possible challenges in his roughly five-minute Facebook Live signing, saying the key provisions in the bill have been tested at the U.S. Supreme Court and approved.

"It simply makes sense," he said. "Citizens expect law enforcement officers to enforce the law, and citizens deserve lawbreakers to face legal consequences."

Proponents of the ban say it is necessary to keep criminal immigrants off Texas streets. If local law enforcement officials don't turn over unauthorized immigrants to federal authorities, they argue, those people could go on to commit more serious crimes.

But as I've said before, really the law is about fear.  Local cops being drafted as immigration agents will make it all but impossible for Texas to get cooperation from the Latino communities in the state, not to mention stories of overeager cops looking to racially profile and round up "illegal" immigrants will be a nightmare scenario for the state's Republican majority, but this is the path Abbott and the Texas GOP have chosen.

We'll see what the federal courts have to say, but I'm thinking that demographic shift towards the Dems in Texas might start happening sooner than people have expected.

California Dreamin' (Of November In '18)

Sarah Wire at the LA Times reminds us that every single member of California's House GOP delegation voted for Trumpcare 3.0, and if there's any place where Dems can pick up districts that weren't in play before the vote, the Golden State is ripe with opportunity for Team Blue next November.

More than half of the Golden State’s Republicans were among the members who were leery of the bill when it was changed to accommodate the far-right Freedom Caucus, including allowing states to scrap protections for people with preexisting conditions. But an amendment that added $8 billion to offset insurance costs for some people with preexisting conditions appears to have swayed some of the holdouts, including Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock), who earlier this week said he would vote against the bill.

House Republican leaders, including House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), insist the bill will still cover people with preexisting conditions such as asthma, pregnancy or cancer. Conditions such as those were used by insurance companies to deny coverage prior to Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act. But most healthcare experts and patient advocates dispute that. The House did not wait for an official report from the Congressional Budget Office on how much the bill would cost or how it would affect Americans.

New tax credits created under the bill could not be spent on any policy that covers abortions, which will significantly affect any Californian who receives federal assistance to pay for insurance. Under California law, all insurance policies offered in the state must include abortion coverage.

As expected, all 39 California House Democrats voted against the bill.

Seven of the 14 Republicans in California’s delegation represent districts that picked Hillary Clinton for president in November, and Democrats have already announced they will focus on winning those seats.

Democrats are expected to lambaste their Republican colleagues in the 2018 midterm election for supporting the bill, just as Republicans did to win a wave of seats after the Affordable Care Act passed.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) opened with a warning during a Thursday morning news conference. "Most people don't even know who their congressperson is in many places. And now they'll find out. They will find out that their congressperson voted to take away their healthcare," she told reporters before the vote.

By the way, those seven Republicans (in order of largest Clinton margin to smallest):

• David Valadao (CA-21, Hanford)
• Ed Royce (CA-39, Fullerton)
• Darrell Issa (CA-49, Oceanside)
• Steve Knight (CA-25, Palmdale)
• Mimi Walters (CA-45, Irvine)
• Jeff Denham (CA-10, Modesto)
• Dana Rohrabacher (CA-48, Costa Mesa)

Getting rid of Issa (the wealthiest person in Congress by far, worth a quarter-billion plus!) has to be the top target of California Dems, with Rohrabacher a close second.  Let's help make this happen, guys.  I know I have more than a few readers on the West Coast, if not in and around these districts, so let's go get some seats back.

The Great Yates Debates

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates was canned by the Trump regime less than two weeks into the new "administration" presumably over her refusal to support the clearly unconstitutional Muslim immigration and refugee ban program, but the real reason may have been what she found out about fired Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn when she took over in January.  Now Yates will testify to the Senate today about what she found out about Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in those key first days.

Lawmakers want to question Yates about her conversation in January with White House counsel Donald McGahn regarding former national security adviser Michael Flynn. People familiar with that conversation say she went to the White House days after the inauguration to tell officials that statements made by Vice President Pence and others about Flynn’s discussions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were wrong, and to warn them that those contradictions could expose Flynn or others to potential manipulation by the Russians.

Yates’s testimony Monday is expected to contradict public statements made by White House press secretary Sean Spicer and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who described the Yates-McGahn meeting as less of a warning and more of a “heads up’’ about an issue involving Flynn.

In February, Spicer told reporters that Yates had “informed the White House counsel that they wanted to give a heads up to us on some comments that may have seemed in conflict. . . . The White House counsel informed the president immediately. The president asked him to conduct a review of whether there was a legal situation there. That was immediately determined that there wasn’t.’’

The same month, Priebus described the Yates conversation in similar terms, telling CBS’s “Face the Nation’’ that “our legal counsel got a heads up from Sally Yates that something wasn’t adding up with his story. And then so our legal department went into a review of the situation. . . . The legal department came back and said they didn’t see anything wrong with what was actually said.’’

People familiar with the matter say both statements understate the seriousness of what Yates told McGahn — that she went to the White House to warn them that Flynn could be compromised — or blackmailed — by the Russians at some point if they threatened to reveal the true nature of his conversations with the ambassador.

Those people said that although Yates’s testimony may contradict Spicer and Priebus, her appearance Monday is unlikely to reveal new details about the FBI’s investigation into whether any Trump associates coordinated with Russian officials to meddle with last year’s presidential election, in part because many of the details of that probe remain classified. Former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. is also scheduled to testify at Monday’s hearing. Lawmakers had invited another Obama administration official, Susan E. Rice, to testify but she declined.

In other words, as acting AG, Yates immediately took a look at the situation with the ongoing investigation into Mike Flynn and his relationship with the Russians and immediately notified Trump's White House counsel that Flynn was compromised, and that keeping him around as National Security Adviser was a direct threat to the country.

The Trump regime is terrified of this, to the point of looking to sacrifice Flynn to the Gods of Political Expediency as soon as Yates testifies, according to the gang at Politico 2.0.

On Monday, Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general under President Obama, is expected to tell a Senate panel how she warned top White House officials that Gen. Flynn misled the Vice President and others about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. It should be an uncomfortable morning for the West Wing.

The White House's strategy to push back:

1. Brand Yates as a Democratic operative who was out to get Trump from the beginning and willing to torque the facts to advance her agenda;
2. Put as much distance as possible between Flynn and the man whose side he rarely left during the campaign (which could be a tall order.)
3. Portray Flynn, and no one else, as responsible for this mess.

Here's the case against Flynn that administration officials — including Flynn's former allies — have been making anonymously to reporters:

• Flynn's only priority was getting the president on board with his agenda.
• The White House and the national security process is infinitely more synchronized and functional without him. He isn't missed.
• Flynn pushed his own points of view — selectively presenting information to Trump in ways favorable to his own positions — rather than serving as an honest broker as national security advisors should.
• His lawyer's statement that Flynn "certainly has a story to tell" and that he'd only tell it if granted immunity, looked "desperate," according to a senior administration official. (Harvard Law professor Alex Whiting made the same case back in March in a post on the site Just Security that's well worth a read.)

Our thought bubble: It's worth noting that the one person in the White House who remains reluctant to undermine Flynn is the man who fired him. President Trump says Flynn is the victim of a Democrat/media-fuelled "witch hunt," and has publicly endorsed Flynn's request for immunity.

Get ready for a nasty week in Washington, even by this regime's standards.

StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime's immigration ban is headed back to court today, all 15 judges on the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals will hear a challenge to a Maryland judge's freeze on the order.
• The father of slain Texas teenager Jordan Edwards is suing the former police officer who killed his son last month, the suit claims the officer was not trained properly.
• Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem says that the Abbas regime will abide by a Russian plan calling for "de-escalation zones" in the country as long as rebel forces also abide by them.
• French President-Elect Emmanuel Macron is vowing to bring France together after his overwhelming 2-1 margin victory on Sunday, congratulated by world leader across the globe.
• Amazon and Apple may finally be reaching an agreement to put Amazon Prime video on Apple TV after a more than two-year battle between the rivals.