What A Day: Missouri loves company

BY BRIAN BEUTLER, PRIYANKA ARIBINDI

& CROOKED MEDIA

Thursday, May 16, 2019

—Eric Swalwell, who wants to do a Fox News presidential town hall, but they aren’t interested...

IMMUNITY BY CONGRESSIONAL IGNORE-ITY

The mechanisms of presidential accountability have all failed so badly that Donald Trump now abuses his power in ways that would cripple past presidents and the political establishment completely ignores it.

On Wednesday night, Trump pardoned Conrad Black, the Canadian-born right-wing publisher who spent years in federal prison for fraud and obstruction of justice. But Black isn’t just guilty of crimes that Trump himself has committed. He also just wrote a fawning new biography called Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.

More importantly, Black is Trump’s one-time business partner. In 2001, Black’s publishing company struck a deal with Trump to allow him to build a skyscraper on the site of the Chicago Sun-Times’s old headquarters.

The pardon power is absolute, which means Congress can’t stop Trump from using it while he’s president, or pass laws to limit it. But abusing the pardon power—as Trump did to obstruct Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and as he has to absolve his political and business allies of felonies—is cut-and dry impeachable.

When President Bill Clinton pardoned a donor in his final hours in office, it set off an enormous scandal, and ended up under investigation by the Justice Department. A day after Trump pardoned Black, nobody in the Democratic leadership made an issue of it, and it fell off the front pages almost immediately.

The Black pardon caps off a week in which Trump’s personal lawyers argued in court that Congress has no legal right to investigate his personal crimes or public corruption. His White House counsel followed suit by informing Congress that Trump will not cooperate with any requests or subpoenas stemming from Congress’s interest in the Mueller report.

At her weekly Capitol briefing, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called this position “outrageous” but then said “I don’t have to have a position” on whether Democrats should take more aggressive steps to hold the Trump administration accountable. “We want to see what we can get respectfully,” she said. “First we ask. Then we subpoena friendly. Then we subpoena otherwise. And then we see what we get. So let’s not leapfrog over what we think should be the path that should be taken.”

That model has completely broken down, but Democrats haven't come to terms with it. In an alternate universe, Democratic leaders might have announced Thursday morning that they intended to tack the Black pardon on to their ongoing impeachment inquiry. In this universe, Trump felt completely free to pardon Conrad Black, and Pelosi got zero questions about it.

The Missouri Senate has passed a bill to ban abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy, and to punish doctors who perform abortions after eight weeks with up to 15 years in prison. The bill has yet to pass the state’s Republican-held House, but has the support of its Republican governor. GOP legislatures in multiple states have passed similar “heartbeat bills,” and just yesterday Alabama enacted the most draconian abortion ban in the country.

If you live in Missouri, call your state House Representatives ASAP and tell them to vote no on HB126. You can also:

Donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds and the Gateway Women’s Acces Fund, which are fighting to protect women who need abortions →
Donate to the ACLU, which fights laws like this in court →

The Trump administration has introduced a proposal to overhaul the immigration system that would prioritize immigrants who meet certain educational and skill requirements at the expense of the family-based system America has used for decades. Currently, immigrants admitted to the U.S. are allowed to bring their spouses and children with them, but under Trump’s proposed rules, people who want to immigrate to the U.S. will be required to be proficient in English, fulfill specific skills or jobs needs, meet certain education standards, and pass a civics test. Trump has promised that this plan will be a top legislative priority for him in 2021 if he wins re-election and Republicans win back the House.

The Department of Homeland Security has banned all commercial and cargo flights to Venezuela, which will severely limit our ability to provide humanitarian and medical aid to Venezuelans while their country’s political crisis continues.

President Trump made over $400 million from his properties and businesses in 2018, which he now operates and markets in conjunction with his official duties. It’s just so gross.

New York City, NY, Mayor Bill de Blasio just became the 23rd Democrat running for president.

There is no evidence that Joe Biden or his son Hunter did anything wrong in Ukraine, according to the country's prosecutor general—a direct repudiation of President Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and other associates who have pressured the country to gin up a criminal investigation of the 2020 Democratic primary candidate they reportedly fear the most.

A two-and-a-half year old Guatemalan boy has become at least the fourth migrant child since December to die after being apprehended at the southern border. He spent three days in federal custody, before being transferred to a hospital where he was diagnosed with pneumonia, and died weeks later.

The EPA’s inspector general says the agency should ask former administrator Scott Pruitt to reimburse the agency for $124,000 he spent on improper travel expenses before he resigned in disgrace amid over a dozen scandals.

Uber will introduce “Quiet Mode” on black car and SUV rides to let your driver know you’re not in the mood to chat. Cool, do “Pay Your Drivers a Living Wage Mode” next.