“Electronic intercepts picked up Russian officials discussing the 2016 U.S. presidential election — and how they could influence it — as early as mid-2015, a former U.S. official familiar with the intelligence told CBS News.” More …
Month: July 2017
Trump’s Long History with Russia Just Got a Lot More Complicated
“It begins in 1987, before the Soviet Union crumbled, when Trump mused in “The Art of the Deal” about building a hotel ‘across the street from the Kremlin,’ in partnership with the Soviet government. The hotel never got built, but Trump didn’t give up on Moscow.” More …
Week 8: Russians Bearing Dirt Come Calling and a Scandal Finds a Home
“The scandal with no name took an accelerating turn this week as the New York Times uncoiled three stunning stories about a June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower where Donald Trump’s president’s kin and campaign brain trust conferred with a Russian emissary and her entourage. The naming convention for political scandals insists that we incorporate a place name into it—Watergate, Teapot Dome, Whitewater, Chappaquiddick, My Lai, Abu Ghraib, Iran Contra, et al. In observance of this rule, the disquieting meeting in which a Russian offered dirt on Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and then-campaign director Paul Manafort in the Manhattan skyscraper suggests “Trump Kowtower” as the carnival’s best appellation.” More …
How Donald Trump Jr.’s Emails Have Cranked Up the Heat on His Family
“Like a farmer forecasting the weather by the ache in his knee, Washington has a feeling that this storm could be a monster. And the twinge that forecast the deluge was Donald Trump Jr. facing a camera and issuing what sounded a little like an apology. Which is an ominous sign in an Administration that means never having to say you’re sorry.” More …
Made in America??? Ivanka Trump Clothing Line Practices Are Out of Step with Industry Trends
“The first daughter talks about improving the lives of working women. Her father urges companies to “buy American.” But her fashion line’s practices collide with those principles – and are out of step with industry trends.” More …
I’ve Covered Obamacare Since Day One. I’ve Never Seen Lying and Obstruction Like This.
“Republicans do not want the country to know what is in their health care bill. This has become more evident each day, as the Senate plots out a secretive path toward Obamacare repeal — and top White House officials (including the president) consistently lie about what the House bill actually does.” More …
Children in Pro-Trump Rural Areas Have a Lot to Lose if GOP Rolls Back Medicaid
” … in Fayette County, West Virginia and 779 other mostly rural counties across the country — the vast majority of which went for Trump — more than half the children rely for coverage on Medicaid and the related Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, according to a Times analysis of county voting data, census data and Medicaid enrollment data.” More …
Who Gains and Who Loses under the Better Care Reconciliation Act
“We find that the BCRA’s changes to federal taxes and health care benefits would be very regressive: taking both tax reductions and benefit reductions into account, the average high-income family would be significantly better off, and the average low-income family would be significantly worse off. The average family with less than $10,000 of income in 2026 would be $2,550 worse off, a net reduction of more than 60 percent of the family’s income. The average family with more than $200,000 of income in 2026 would be $5,420 better off, a net increase of 1 percent of the family’s income. Most of the gain for high-income families would be concentrated among families with incomes above $1,000,000. The average gain for this group would be $49,000, a net increase of 1.5 percent of income.” More …
Trump’s Russian Laundromat
“How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.” More …
Trump’s Election Commission Has Been a Disaster. It’s Going Exactly as Planned.
“Less than two weeks after its attempts to extract voter information from every state, including birth dates, voting histories, and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, the commission has been stymied by varying degrees of resistance in almost every state. In addition, lawsuits have ground the commission’s work to a halt.” More …