Politico: “If the president moves ahead with 25 percent tariffs on everything China exports to the United States, it could amount to a tax hike of more than $2,000 on the average American family, swamping the reduction they won from Trump’s signature legislative achievement — the 2017 tax law.”
How Mike Pence Took Over HHS
Politico: “Sweeping new protections for religious health care workers and an overhaul of family planning programs to effectively cut out Planned Parenthood represent something unusual in the Trump administration: a clear spotting of the fingerprints of Vice President Mike Pence.”
“From topics ranging from trade to the president’s scorched-earth attacks against the Mueller investigation, Pence has been the loyal foot soldier while often appearing uncomfortable amid the administration’s biggest fights.”
The Profanity Presidency
“In modern times, presidents have rarely been church mice afraid of a little salty language. But President Trump has grown increasingly willing in recent months to say in public what most of his predecessors tried to keep behind closed doors,” the New York Times reports.
“His is the profanity presidency, full of four-letter denunciations of his enemies and earthy dismissals of allegations lodged against him. At rallies and in interviews, on Twitter and in formal speeches, he relishes the bad-boy language of a shock jock, just one more way of gleefully provoking the political establishment bothered by his norm-shattering ways.”
Democrats May Use ‘Power of the Purse’ Next
“House Democrats are considering a new idea to pressure the Trump administration to comply with their subpoenas. The idea is to use the appropriations process as leverage and threaten to withhold funding until they get the documents and testimony they’ve requested,” Axios reports.
“It’s a move that has a high risk of failure, since appropriations bills have to be approved by a Republican-held Senate and signed by the president. But given the Trump administration’s determination to resist all of the Democrats’ oversight efforts, and the prospect that court fights could take years, they’re being forced to consider every tool they might have.”
“Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee are writing the bills that will fund the federal government for the next fiscal year — including the ones that will fund the Justice Department and the Treasury Department, two of the departments that have been resisting subpoenas.”
Trump’s Casino Years on the Big Screen
Financial Times: “As a top adviser to Jeb Bush’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, Mike Murphy was unable to convince Republican voters that Donald Trump was a disastrous businessman and charlatan unfit to run the country.”
“Now Mr Murphy is hoping to have the last word, this time via the big screen. The veteran Republican political strategist is shopping an unflattering movie project about Mr Trump’s ill-fated Atlantic City days.”
“Eighteen months ago he quietly bought the film rights to the book Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump — His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall, a first-hand account by John O’Donnell of his agony as a top executive at Mr Trump’s Atlantic City casinos in the 1980s. Dan Sterling, writer of the current Hollywood hit Long Shot, has helped turn it into a screenplay, which the two have begun circulating.”
Most Don’t Want Arabic Numerals Taught In Schools
A new Civic Science survey finds 56% of Americans don’t want Arabic numerals taught in schools.
Suspicious Activity Seen in Trump and Kushner Accounts
“Anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog,” the New York Times reports.
“The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity… Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes.”
“But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees’ advice. The reports were never filed with the government.”
Romney Won’t Support Impeachment
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) called Rep. Justin Amash’s (R-MI) call for impeaching President Trump “a courageous statement” while maintaining that impeachment is not warranted based on the special counsel’s report, Politico reports.
Said Romney: “I respect him. I think it’s a courageous statement. But I believe that to make a case for obstruction of justice, you just don’t have the elements that are evidenced in this document.”
Trump Calls Amash a ‘Loser’
President Trump called Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) a “total lightweight” who is causing controversy solely for “the sake of getting his name out there.”
Amash is the first GOP lawmaker to say he was in favor of impeaching Trump.
Said Trump: “If he actually read the biased Mueller Report, ‘composed’ by 18 Angry Dems who hated Trump, he would see that it was nevertheless strong on NO COLLUSION and, ultimately, NO OBSTRUCTION. Anyway, how do you Obstruct when there is no crime and, in fact, the crimes were committed by the other side? Justin is a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents hands!”
Obama and Trump Broke the Mold
Dan Balz: “For more than two centuries, until the election of 2008, American presidents all looked alike. They were white and male and every one of them came to office with experience in the government, military or both. Barack Obama, the first African American president, broke one mold. Donald Trump, who had neither military nor government experience, broke the other.”
“In their own ways, Obama and Trump were two of the most unlikely people ever elected to the presidency, raising the question of whether voters in America are using a new lens through which to judge the qualities and qualifications of presidential aspirants. Trump’s presidency continues that experiment, as does the competition among the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to oppose him in 2020.”
Cultural Issues Crowd Out GOP’s Economic Message
New York Times: “The unemployment rate is at a 50-year low, companies are adding jobs and the gross domestic product grew by 3.2 percent in the first quarter, undercutting predictions of a coming recession.”
“Yet for all that political upside, Republicans demonstrated repeatedly last week that they were not positioning themselves to wage the 2020 election over the strength of the economy.”
“President Trump and his top advisers sent mixed signals about a possible war with Iran. Mr. Trump outlined a hard-line immigration proposal that had little chance of passing, but refocused attention on the most incendiary issue of his presidency. His drumbeat about tariffs on China sent the stock market gyrating. And in Alabama, the Republican governor signed a bill that would effectively ban abortion, the most recent and far-reaching of new state restrictions and a step toward a possible Supreme Court showdown over abortion rights.”
GOP Lawmaker Unloads on Trump and Barr
Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) slammed President Trump and Attorney General William Barr is a series of tweets, while saying he offers his conclusions “only after having read Mueller’s redacted report carefully and completely.”
Amash states his “principal conclusions” as follows:
- Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.
- President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.
- Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.
- Few members of Congress have read the report.
He concludes: “America’s institutions depend on officials to uphold both the rules and spirit of our constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome. Our Constitution is brilliant and awesome; it deserves a government to match it.”
Trump May Pardon Servicemen Convicted of War Crimes
“President Trump has requested the immediate preparation of paperwork needed to pardon several American military members accused or convicted of war crimes — including high-profile cases of murder, attempted murder and desecration of a corpse — indicating that he is considering pardons for the men on or around Memorial Day,” the New York Times reports.
Austrian Leader Calls for Snap Election
“Austria’s chancellor called Saturday for snap elections after the country’s far-right vice chancellor resigned over a secretly filmed video from 2017 that renewed questions about whether Russia had a direct line into a government at the heart of Europe,” the New York Times reports.
“The video showed Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache of the far-right Freedom Party promising government contracts to a woman claiming to be the niece of a Russian oligarch.”
Tories In for a Brexit Party Trouncing
A new Observer/Opinium poll in the U.K. finds more voters now say they would back the Brexit party at the next general election than the Conservatives.
“Nigel Farage’s party increased its support by three points to 24% of the vote, leapfrogging the Tories and trailing Labour by just five points. The Conservatives claimed 22% of the vote, the same figure they recorded in last week’s poll.”
Biden Delivers Call for National Unity at Philadelphia Rally
“Joe Biden, sometimes known to Democrats in this city as Pennsylvania’s ‘third senator,’ returned to the state of his birth on Saturday to deliver a forceful call for national unity, looking past the Democratic presidential primary to directly appeal to the voters who helped power President Trump’s victory in this state and across the country in 2016,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Biden… trained his eye squarely on the general election as he cast the contest against Mr. Trump as one for the soul of the country. And he struck a defiant tone toward those in his own party who had expressed discomfort with Mr. Biden’s emphasis on bipartisanship and his legacy of Washington deal-making, as he argued that the stakes of the coming presidential election should transcend partisan passions of the moment.”
Said Biden: “They say Democrats are so angry, the angrier a candidate can be, the better chance he or she has to win the Democratic nomination. Well I don’t believe it, I really don’t.”
He added: “If the American people want a president to add to our division, lead with a clenched fist, closed hand, a hard heart, to demonize the opponents and spew hatred — they don’t need me. They’ve got President Donald Trump. Folks, I am running to offer our country — Democrats, Republicans and independents — a different path. Not back to a path that never was, but to a future that fulfills our true potential as a country.”
Oregon Man Sentenced for Threatening Senator
An Oregon man was sentenced to two years of federal supervision after threatening to chop off the tongue and “wedding ring finger” of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the Oregonian reports.
De Blasio Targets ‘Con Don’ In Iowa
Politico: “Clearly energized by being out on the trail, de Blasio, who has long sought a national profile, posited that he has already tangled with Trump — and won — in a fight over federal security funding that had been tied to the city’s immigration policies.”
“He also took a stab at Trump’s nickname game, calling him ‘Con Don’ and urging everyone in attendance to use the pejorative title.”