BY BRIAN BEUTLER, PRIYANKA ARIBINDI

& CROOKED MEDIA

Friday, May 10, 2019

—Ben Shapiro, letting facts hurt his feelings

WE'RE NOT, NOT GOING TO ASK AGAIN!

House Democrats continue to soft-pedal confrontation with the Trump administration, while President Trump accelerates abuses of power that should be at the center of an impeachment inquiry.

After fanning speculation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller might testify publicly on May 15, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler announced that Mueller will not testify next week.

Nadler also said the full House won’t vote to hold Attorney General WIlliam Barr in contempt next week—a decision that has fanned speculation that House Democratic leadership will bundle multiple contempt citations before asking a judge to enforce their subpoenas.

Relatedly, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal issued subpoenas to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig for the six years of Trump’s tax returns that he has already demanded and is entitled to by law, instead of taking them directly to court.

House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff said the House may try to fine Trump associates who defy congressional subpoenas, but has offered no explanation of how the House would enforce the penalties.

Trump, by contrast, asked his attorney Rudy Giuliani to take their collusion show on the road.

Rudy and right-wing lawyer Victoria Toensing will fly to Ukraine to pressure the country’s new government to reopen a sham investigation of Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. The pressure carries an implicit threat that the president of the United States will undermine Ukraine unless Ukraine dirties up his Democratic nemesis.

Reminder: it is illegal for a U.S. campaign to solicit anything of value from a foreign person, entity, or government.  So Giuliani, at Trump’s behest, will commit what are very likely crimes to help Trump win re-election with foreign government assistance, on the bet that Trump’s Justice Department will never indict him, Congress will never impeach him, or that Trump will pardon him. This isn’t going to get any better until House Democrats accept that there is one and only one straightforward way to capture the public’s attention and convince voters that what’s happening is an emergency.

A dozen current and former employees of a prison in Florida have come forward to describe horrific conditions, including violent abuse, coercion, bullying, and racism, as well as cover-ups of wrongdoing and threats of retaliation against employees who spoke out against their abuses.

They allege that officers targeted inmates they disliked with unsanctioned punishments, like physical abuse or starvation, and mistreated inmates in mental health dorms, raising concern in one case about whether they killed an inmate whose death was officially ruled a suicide. Despite its 2,600 inmate capacity, the prison housed over 3,300 inmates during its last audit in February 2015.

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President Trump increased tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports this morning, and his administration left trade negotiations with Chinese trade representatives without an agreement. He also sent markets into a tailspin by tweeting-and-deleting his impressions of the state of negotiations. It’s cool though because he added a selfie and said felt cute might delete later.

Uber began trading below its IPO price when it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange Friday, and its stock price closed 7.6 percent below where it opened. If you want another reason to hate tech companies, don’t miss this story about millionaire former Uber staffers who moved to Texas to avoid paying taxes.

All but four House Republicans voted against protections for people with pre-existing conditions on Thursday when the House passed a measure to overturn Trump administration guidance to allow states to bypass certain Affordable Care Act rules.

Pope Francis issued the first worldwide rules requiring all Catholic Church clergy to report accusations of sexual abuse, possession of child pornography, and cover-ups to church officials. The rules don’t require them to report abuse to the police or prosecutors.

Democratic presidential candidates and environmental groups have criticized Joe Biden’s forthcoming “middle ground” approach to addressing climate change, which would reportedly leave the country reliant on natural gas and fossil fuels. Biden has not backed the Green New Deal or its goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions in the U.S. over 10 years, and instead wants to find a plan that can appeal to working class voters. Not dying because of man-made climate change seems pretty appealing though, right?

As of Thursday there were over 13,000 undocumented immigrant children in U.S. custody, nearing an all-time high. Homeland Security detention facilities have reached capacity, creating a risk of dangerous overcrowding.

Chelsea Manning, the former intelligence analyst who leaked classified information to Wikileaks, was released from jail today, where she was detained for 62 days because she defied a subpoena to answer additional questions about Wikileaks. Manning argued that she revealed everything she knows in testimony during her 2013 trial. She now faces a new subpoena to testify before a grand jury on May 16.

A college-aged member of the right-wing group Turning Point USA used racist slurs and yelled “white power” on camera—the latest incidence of virulent racism from a group that is a breeding ground for Nazis and white nationalists, and that partners with [checks notes] Republicans all the time.

The latest story of Donald Trump shamelessly cheating at golf to declare himself the winner of his own golf club’s championship is… really something.

A second-grade teacher in San Francisco who’s battling breast cancer won’t be able to teach for the rest of the year, but she will be required to pay for the substitute teacher that the district will need to bring in to teach her classes. Substitute teachers can cost up to $240 per day.

According to a state policy in California, sick teachers are required to foot the bill for substitutes if they need to use over 10 sick days per year—even if they need to use those sick days for extended leave. In some cases they may use some of their colleagues’ sick days, which they pool into a “sick-leave bank” for other teachers in need (you gotta be fucking kidding me, part two), but these funds do not apply to the cost of substitutes.

Elizabeth Warren has plans for just about everything, and she’ll talk to voters about those plans just about anywhere.

Warren held an impromptu town hall about her plan to address the opioid epidemic and hold pharmaceutical executives accountable for their role in it with curious fellow passengers on a tram to their plane that was headed to West Virginia—a state that has been particularly hard-hit by the crisis.

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