General
Trump and Congress race to avoid fiscal time bomb
Heather Caygle and Burgess Everett, Politico
Congressional leaders in both parties are confident they can reach a deal to stave off a funding fiasco this fall — if only President Donald Trump would stay out of the way. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top lawmakers will huddle with White House budget negotiators Wednesday.
US Navy expert: Tanker attack mine resembles Iranian mines
Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press
The limpet mines used to attack a Japanese-owned oil tanker near the Strait of Hormuz last week bore “a striking resemblance” to similar mines displayed by Iran, a U.S. Navy explosives expert said Wednesday, stopping short of directly blaming Tehran for the assault. Iran has denied being involved in the attack last Thursday that hit the Japanese tanker Kokuka Courageous and also the Norwegian-owned Front Altair.
The Postal Service Wants To Make Deep Cuts To Worker Benefits, Internal Plan Shows
Arthur Delaney and Dave Jamieson, HuffPost
The U.S. Postal Service wants Congress to help it make significant cuts to employee benefits as part of a plan to balance the agency’s books, according to a draft business plan HuffPost obtained. The proposal would save an estimated $18 billion on employee compensation over a decade by shaving paid leave, raising workers’ share of pension contributions, and shifting new employees into less secure 401(k)-style retirement plans.
The Evangelical, the ‘Pool Boy,’ the Comedian and Michael Cohen
Frances Robles and Jim Rutenberg, The New York Times
Senator Ted Cruz was running neck and neck with Donald J. Trump in Iowa just before the caucuses in 2016, but his campaign was expecting a last-minute boost from a powerful endorser, Jerry Falwell Jr. Mr. Falwell was chancellor of one of the nation’s largest Christian colleges, Liberty University, and a son of the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., the televangelist and co-founder of the modern religious right.
One Trump Tax Cut Was Meant to Help the Poor. A Billionaire Ended Up Winning Big.
Jeff Ernsthausen and Justin Elliott, ProPublica
Under a six-lane span of freeway leading into downtown Baltimore sit what may be the most valuable parking spaces in America. Lying near a development project controlled by Under Armour’s billionaire CEO Kevin Plank, one of Maryland’s richest men, and Goldman Sachs, the little sliver of land will allow Plank and the other investors to claim what could amount to millions in tax breaks for the project, known as Port Covington.
White House & Administration
Trump Administration’s Plan to Step Up Deportations Faces Obstacles
Louise Radnofsky, The Wall Street Journal
A push by the Trump administration to deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are subject to final removal orders faces immediate legal and logistical hurdles. President Trump said in a tweet late Monday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would “next week…begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in.”
Pompeo warns Iran about trigger for U.S. military action as some in administration question aggressive policy
Missy Ryan et al., The Washington Post
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has privately delivered warnings intended for Iranian leaders that any attack by Tehran or its proxies resulting in the death of even one American service member will generate a military counterattack, U.S. officials said. The potential for a significant military response to even an isolated event has fueled a broader internal debate among top Trump officials about whether the administration’s policy exceeds President Trump’s specific goal of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, the officials said.
Overruling his experts, Pompeo keeps Saudis off U.S. child soldiers list
Jonathan Landay and Matt Spetalnick, Reuters
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blocked the inclusion of Saudi Arabia on a U.S. list of countries that recruit child soldiers, dismissing his experts’ findings that a Saudi-led coalition has been using under-age fighters in Yemen’s civil war, according to four people familiar with the matter. The decision, which drew immediate criticism from human rights activists and a top Democratic lawmaker, could prompt new accusations that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is prioritizing security and economic interests in relations with oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a major U.S. ally and arms customer.
Trump plans Air Force One flyover of Mall for July Fourth celebration
Josh Dawsey and Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post
President Trump plans to have U.S. military planes, including one of the jetliners used as Air Force One, fly over the Mall as part of his Fourth of July celebration next month, according to three people briefed on the plans. The flyover reflects Trump’s long-standing interest in replicating the Bastille Day celebration he observed in France in 2017 and his desire to throw an extravagant patriotic celebration, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because final plans have not yet been announced.
Watchdogs Sue Trump Administration Over Missing Notes From Putin Meeting
Vera Bergengruen, TIME
A new lawsuit filed on Tuesday alleges that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo broke the law by allowing President Donald Trump to seize the notes from a key meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and failing to take any steps to preserve records of their other face-to-face meetings. The lawsuit filed by American Oversight and Democracy Forward, two progressive non-profit government watchdog organizations, says that the Federal Records Act requires Pompeo to preserve the meeting notes prepared by State Department employees.
Donald Trump Refused To Apologize To The Exonerated Central Park Five: “There Are People On Both Sides Of That”
Krystie Lee Yandoli, BuzzFeed News
Donald Trump is refusing to apologize to the Central Park Five for taking out full-page advertisements in New York City newspapers in 1989 calling for the death penalty in response to a case in which the five black and Latino teenagers were wrongfully convicted of rape. Days after the rape of an investment banker in Central Park, Trump ran the ads that read: “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!”
A Top Immigration Official Appears To Be Warning Asylum Officers About Border Screenings
Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeed News
The newly appointed leader of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli, sent an email to staffers Tuesday in which he appeared to push asylum officers to stop allowing some people seeking refuge in the country passage at an initial screening at the border. “Under our abused immigration system if an alien comes to the United States and claims a fear of return the alien is entitled to a credible fear screening by USCIS and a hearing by an immigration judge,” Cuccinelli wrote to USCIS staffers.
White House Explored Legality of Demoting Fed Chairman Powell
Saleha Mohsin and Jennifer Jacobs, Bloomberg
The White House explored the legality of demoting Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in February, soon after President Donald Trump talked about firing him, according to people familiar with the matter. The White House counsel’s office weighed the legal implications of stripping Powell of his chairmanship and leaving him as a Fed governor, the people said, in what would be an unprecedented move.
Senate
Fight over flight to Cochran funeral breaks out in Senate Appropriations Committee
John Bresnahan, Politico
What started as a routine request — arranging for a government flight to take senators to the funeral of the late Sen. Thad Cochran — has become a controversy over Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby’s running of the once-powerful panel, including whether committee aides were retaliated against for complaining about the episode. The dispute comes as Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, has increasingly asserted his power since taking over the Appropriations Committee last year when Cochran gave up the gavel.
Mitch McConnell Says He Doesn’t Support Reparations: “We’ve Elected An African American President”
Kadia Goba, BuzzFeed News
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said reparations are a no-go on Tuesday, citing the election of former president Barack Obama as one way the nation has dealt with its “original sin of slavery.” “I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday when asked whether he supported reparations for slavery.
House
Ocasio-Cortez Calls Migrant Detention Centers ‘Concentration Camps,’ Eliciting Backlash
Sheryl Gay Stolbert, The New York Times
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the liberal freshman Democrat from New York who has made fighting for immigrants’ rights a signature issue, on Tuesday described the Trump administration’s border detention facilities as “concentration camps,” provoking backlash from Republicans who said she was minimizing the Holocaust. “This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter, amplifying comments she had made on her Instagram feed on Monday night.
House votes to block Trump’s transgender troop ban
Connor O’Brien, Politico
The House voted Tuesday to block the Pentagon’s new transgender troop policy, taking a swipe at President Donald Trump’s move to ban transgender service in the military. During debate on a $1 trillion spending package, lawmakers voted 243-183 to adopt an amendment from Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) to block funding to implement the new policy, which Democrats slammed as discriminatory and arbitrary.
Democrats to pass spending bill with Hyde despite 2020 uproar
Jessie Hellmann, The Hill
The House is poised to pass spending legislation on Wednesday that includes the Hyde Amendment, the decades-old ban on federal abortion funding that recently created an uproar in the Democratic race for the White House. Weeks after former Vice President Joe Biden flip-flopped from supporter to opponent of the amendment under heavy pressure from his party’s liberal base, the Democratic House will vote in favor of a package that retains Hyde — which progressives say disproportionately hurts poor and minority women.
House Deal Would Keep ExIm Bank Functioning Through 2026
Andrew Ackerman, The Wall Street Journal
A House agreement reached late Tuesday would give new life and political stability to an embattled agency that smooths export deals between U.S. manufacturers and overseas buyers. Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif), the House Financial Services Committee chairwoman, and Rep. Patrick McHenry (R., N.C.), the ranking Republican member of the committee, agreed Tuesday night to a long-term deal that would keep the U.S. Export-Import Bank open for business for seven years and impose a series of new financing restrictions aimed in part at placating GOP critics of the bank, according to people familiar with the matter and a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
2020
Biden Tells Elite Donors He Doesn’t Want to ‘Demonize’ the Rich
Jennifer Epstein, Bloomberg
Former Vice President Joe Biden told affluent donors Tuesday that he wanted their support and — perhaps unlike some other Democratic presidential candidates — wouldn’t be making them political targets because of their wealth. “Remember, I got in trouble with some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side, because I said, you know, what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic as poor people. Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who’s made money,” Biden told about 100 well-dressed donors at the Carlyle Hotel on New York’s Upper East Side, where the hors d’oeuvres included lobster, chicken satay and crudites.
Joe Biden, Recalling ‘Civility’ in Senate, Invokes Two Segregationist Senators
Katie Glueck, The New York Times
Joseph R. Biden Jr., defending himself on Tuesday night against suggestions that he is too “old fashioned” for today’s Democratic Party, invoked two Southern segregationist senators by name as he fondly recalled the “civility” of the Senate in the 1970s and 1980s. Speaking at a fund-raiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, Mr. Biden, 76, stressed the need to “be able to reach consensus under our system,” and cast his decades in the Senate as a time of relative comity.
Billionaire GOP donor and Trump supporter says he rejected Joe Biden’s request for fundraising help
Brian Schwartz, CNBC
Democratic front-runner Joe Biden on Monday appealed to a billionaire Republican donor for fundraising help in his presidential campaign. But the financier, Trump-supporting New York supermarket magnate John Catsimatidis, declined.
States
‘She’s extremely serious’: Sarah Sanders eyes run for Arkansas governor
Andrew Restuccia and Daniel Lippman, Politico
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the outgoing White House press secretary, is seriously considering running for governor of Arkansas, according to three people who have spoken to her in recent days. While Sanders and her associates have been quietly talking about the possibility for months, sometimes in jest, she has shown renewed interest in the prospect as she’s started contemplating her post-White House plans, the people said.
New York to Approve One of the World’s Most Ambitious Climate Plans
Jesse McKinley and Brad Plumer, The New York Times
New York lawmakers have agreed to pass a sweeping climate plan that calls for the state to all but eliminate its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, envisioning an era when gas-guzzling cars, oil-burning heaters and furnaces would be phased out, and all of the state’s electricity would come from carbon-free sources. Under an agreement reached this week between legislative leaders and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act would require the state to slash its planet-warming pollution 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and offset the remaining 15 percent, possibly through measures to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
California Utility PG&E To Pay $1 Billion To Local Governments For Wildfire Damage
Richard Gonzales, NPR News
California utility giant Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has agreed to pay $1 billion to 14 local governments throughout the state for the wildfire damage caused by its equipment and practices. Attorneys for a group of local public entities — counties and cities — announced the proposed settlement Tuesday to help cover taxpayer losses due to the 2015 Butte Fire, the 2017 North Bay Fires and the 2018 Camp Fire.
Advocacy
A Foreigner Paid $200,000 for Tickets to Trump’s Inaugural. Now He Says He Was Duped.
Kenneth P. Vogel, The New York Times
A Ukrainian-Russian developer who wanted access to President Trump’s inauguration filed a lawsuit on Tuesday saying he was bilked out of the $200,000 he paid for what he thought would be V.I.P. tickets to the event. The developer, Pavel Fuks, who once discussed a Moscow real estate project with Mr. Trump, said in the lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, that he had paid the money to a firm at the direction of Yuri Vanetik, a prominent Republican fund-raiser and sometime lobbyist.
Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives
Republicans, we must take socialism seriously – or we will really regret it
Tom Emmer, Fox News
When the National Republican Congressional Committee identified the 55 districts we are targeting to regain the majority, our mandate was to make the 2020 election a choice between socialism and freedom. Now that we are a quarter of the way through the 116th Congress, this choice is as clear as ever. But Republicans must ensure every voter understands what is at stake.
Jared Kushner Was My Boss
Aaron Gell, Medium
If you want to understand Jared Kushner, I recommend starting with the dimples. When Jared smiles, his dimples do the work, cleaving his supple cheeks in an unconvincing approximation of contentment.
Bolton moves to promote loyalists at the National Security Council
Josh Rogin, The Washington Post
Staff changes are coming to the National Security Council this summer as national security adviser John Bolton elevates some of the senior officials he brought on and bids farewell to some of the people he inherited from his predecessor. The NSC’s top official dealing with Russia, Fiona Hill, will return to the Brookings Institution, two administration officials told me.
Research Reports and Polling
Electability Reflects What Americans Believe is Possible
Avalanche Strategy
Between May 30-June 3, we conducted a listening survey to 1,871 registered voters to understand how the concept of electability is influencing the beliefs and behavior of the American electorate. While traditional research has struggled to define and measure electability, our unique methodology provides unique insight into this complex concept.
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