BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER 

& CROOKED MEDIA

Monday, February 11, 2019

—Elizabeth Warren

SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT DAY

President Trump is threatening another government shutdown, because what else would he do? Previously on Shutdown Island, Trump told Chuck and Nancy in the Oval that he would own the shutdown over the border wall. He did NOT like how that turned out. So this time he’s trying to avoid being held responsible for a potential shutdown, even as he issues the same old threats and demands.  

That’s why Trump and Republican congressional leaders claim, dishonestly, that negotiations over funding the government broke down this weekend over what they describe as an out-of-the-blue Democratic request to cap the number of detained immigrants captured in the interior of the country at 16,500. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described it as a “poison pill” and Trump claimed Democrats “don’t even want to take murderers into custody.”

Oh no! Lies!

• Democrats have been asking for this cap since these negotiations began last month, so it wasn’t “sprung” last minute. 

• The proposal is actually geared toward arresting more violent criminals. The idea is to target immigration enforcement at those who have committed crimes—making it harder for Trump to continue to run a dragnet on law-abiding immigrants who have lived in the country for years.

• It’s not a poison pill—it’s a concession Democrats are seeking in exchange for over $1 billion in new border fencing.

Trump will speak in El Paso, TX, tonight, in an event that will be split-screened with an anti-wall rally organized by Beto O’Rourke. It’s a great opportunity to prevent Trump from going unchallenged—on the manufactured crisis along the border, the smears he directs at immigrants, and the fresh new lies about these budget negotiations.

Republicans want media outlets to treat the impasse as the result of Democrat demands—to stir up some good old fashioned “both sides are to blame.” But what’s happening is really just a replay of the last shutdown fight. If Trump wants wall money, he can offer Democrats concessions in return. If he doesn’t want to concede anything, he can just fund the government with legislation that doesn’t include any of these measures. Should the government shut down this Friday night, it’ll be because Trump didn’t get his wall money, and he decided to hurt the country. Again. Like last time.

Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has apologized for tweets about House Republicans that many interpreted as anti-Semitic.

Omar, one of the first two Muslim women in Congress, has been a vocal critic of the Israeli government over its treatment of Palestinians. This weekend, she brushed off a threat from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to take “action” against her for her comments about Israel as a play for donations. “All about the Benjamins,” she tweeted.

House Democratic leaders including Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Omar to apologize for her “use of anti-Semitic tropes.”

Omar’s tweet did genuinely upset a lot of Jewish people, and she apologized for the language she used while “reaffirm[ing] the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA, or the fossil fuel industry.”  

Of course, McCarthy's outrage over supposedly antisemitic rhetoric is VERY selective. Ahead of the midterms, he himself tweeted, “We can not allow Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg to BUY this election!” McCarthy is a bad-faith operator who wants to draw a false equivalence between Republicans like Donald Trump and Steve King and Israel critics like Omar, and to hoover up pro-Israel donations for his party in the process. Omar should be allowed to point that out.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) both officially announced their presidential candidacies over the weekend. Cold and bold!

Special Counsel Robert Mueller thinks there might have been a quid pro quo arrangement between the Trump campaign and Russia: Sanctions relief in exchange for criminal election interference on Donald Trump’s behalf.

The Virginia Democrat who proposed initiating impeachment proceedings against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D-VA) has backed off, citing the need for “additional conversations” to discuss every option. Fairfax is accused of sexual assault by two women, and many of his staffers have resigned. He maintains that the encounters were both consensual, and has called for the FBI (a law-enforcement agency with no jurisdiction over these matters) to investigate.

Denver’s teachers have gone on strike for the first time in 25 years, after 15 months of failed negotiations over teacher pay. Teachers nationwide have organized similar strikes for the past year.

The Cleveland Browns signed running back Kareem Hunt two months after the Kansas City Chiefs cut him over a video that shows him pushing and kicking a woman. Good look, guys.

Illinois’s new attorney general, Kwame Raoul, has asked the state’s supreme court to review the length of the prison sentence of Jason Van Dyke, the officer who was convicted of killing Laquan McDonald last year. Van Dyke’s current sentence only reflects his second-degree murder conviction, which he could serve out in as few as three years. He was not sentenced for 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm for the shots he fired at McDonald, and for which he was also found guilty.

A mass insect extinction could herald a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems,” meaning that because the bugs are all gonna die, we’re all gonna die. So don’t forget that’s happening!

Lawyers under then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris once argued against releasing non-violent offenders from prison because the prison system would lose cheap labor. Harris maintains that when she learned of this two months later she was “shocked” and instructed them to drop that argument.  

YouTube won’t recommend conspiracy videos anymore, so let’s hope we can say goodbye to the wild “up next” lists that show up next to our very good video #content (like & subscribe!).

Cardi B won a Grammy!!!! So did some other people, but this is a Cardi fanpage, and you should know that by now.

“Right now, Virginia needs someone who can heal. There is no better person than a doctor.”

—Ralph Northam’s latest not good justification for not resigning from the Virginia governorship yet.

Big changes are coming to the Iowa caucus system—Democrats will create six over-the-phone “virtual caucuses” for Iowa voters who can’t caucus in-person.

Last year President Trump considered appointing Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, which would have put him in charge of veterans’ healthcare.

Thousands of teenagers led by young women across Europe are boycotting classes and marching to protest their political leaders’ unwillingness to take action against climate change. The protest is scheduled to reach the U.S. on an international day of action on March 15. “Nobody is going to hand us this. We have to step up and raise our voices,” said Jamie Margolin, the 17-year-old in charge of the group organizing the protest in the U.S.

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