ArchiveApril 2019

Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, really just wants Trump to be happy, according to a stunning new profile in the Atlantic. And because of that, Mulvaney is utterly uninterested in providing Trump any guidance or following any of his own principles. Mulvaney’s title — “acting chief of staff” — isn’t even a thing. The chief of staff position doesn’t...

In an effort to protect Trump from facing any consequences for his behavior, the White House is trying to block current and former aides from complying with a litany of congressional subpoenas. And Democrats, frustrated by the lawlessness and obstruction, have a message to those who are willfully ignoring the law to protect Trump: Jail awaits. Multiple Democratic lawmakers are coming around to...

A federal district court just dealt the Michigan GOP a massive blow by thwarting the party’s attempt to manipulate elections with partisan gerrymandering. On Thursday, a three-judge panel ruled that 34 of Michigan’s 162 legislative districts were a gerrymander of “historical proportions.” Back in 2011, Michigan’s GOP-controlled legislature drew districts that were...

The Trump administration has yet another new disturbing anti-immigrant idea: giving itself sweeping authority to deport potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants much faster than the courts would normally allow. The new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposal, reported Thursday by Politico, would give the Trump administration expanded authority to make use of a process known as...

Gun-toting groups of vigilantes are prowling the southern border and harassing migrant families — and they say that Trump’s fake declaration of a “national emergency” is inspiring their lawless actions. “We are simply there because President Trump declared a national emergency on the border,” said Jim Benvie, a spokesman for one such group, in a Facebook video posted on Tuesday night...

Out of 50 governors across the country, one man stands out as the least popular in America: Kentucky’s Matt Bevin. In a Thursday poll released by Morning Consult, Bevin, a first-term Republican, has a massive 19-point approval gap. A majority of Kentucky residents, 52%, disapprove of him while only 33% approve. Bevin is the only governor in the nation disapproved of by more than half the...

The Trump administration is trying to allow doctors and health care professionals to refuse to do their jobs if they can come up with a moral objection to providing proper care to their patients. Politico reported Thursday that Trump’s Health and Human Services (HHS) is preparing to roll out multiple rules which would allow doctors and nurses to refuse treatment to a wide variety of...

Twitter is running into obstacles in trying to eliminate white supremacists from its platform because the Republican Party has adopted so much of the same rhetoric. An employee of the company argued at an internal, all-hands meeting that “on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material,” Vice...

Trump has taken many victory laps since 2017, touting the return of comatose American student Otto Warmbier from North Korea as a major diplomatic achievement. However, new reporting from the Washington Post shows that the return of Warmbier, who died shortly after returning to U.S. soil, wasn’t quite the diplomatic feat Trump claimed. Rather, Trump ignored the United States’...

Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, has bent over backwards to protect Trump from the fallout of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. But back when the independent counsel was Ken Starr and the president being investigated was Bill Clinton, Barr was outraged that anyone might interfere with Starr’s work. In 1998, Barr gave an interview where he slammed then-Attorney...