'Be A Little Bit More Paranoid.' Wonkagenda For Wed., April 3, 2019

Republicans letting Trump be Trump, McConnell set to go nuclear, and Chicago elects first gay black lady for mayor. Your morning news brief!

Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things wemaybe talking about today!

 Trump's domestic agenda has Republicans wondering just what the hell he's doing. As Trump ranted about oranges in the Oval Office yesterday, Republicans on and off the Hill were scrambling to figure out how to close the Mexican border, release the Mueller report without being indicted, become "the party of healthcare," and scream, "veni, vidi, vici" at starving homeless Puerto Ricans (who may or may not be part of our country). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to have talked Trump off the healthcare cliff before the 2020 elections, while the White House seems to be quietly changing its tune about releasing the full Mueller report . Later in the evening, Trump gave a long, sweaty, and rambling speech to the National Republican Campaign Committee about Joe Biden being afraid of "socialists," bragged about sexually assaulting a military general, said the GOP was no longer "the party of the rich person," proclaimed he deserved to lose if he's beat with the Green New Deal, and told Republicans to be "more paranoid" aboutvote counting. 

The Secret Service arrested a Chinese woman at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend just for trying to take a dip in the pool! Nevermind that instead of a bathing suit she had a thumb drive full "malicious malware," a bunch of cellphones, a laptop, a hard drive, a fake invitation for a fake event written in Chinese and was trying to take pictures of Trump's "living room." As the purported daughter of a Mar-a-Lago member, she has (ALLEGEDLY paid for) certain privileges that the rest of us proles don't have!

 Jared Kushner is trying to fix immigration (on top of creating peace in the Middle East, criminal justice reform, curing cancer, and bringing back the dinosaurs) by enlisting the Koch Brothers and others in the business community. McClatchy reports that a plan could be presented to Trump as early as next week, and is expected to increase caps on employment-based visas and tighten up rules around temporary guest worker visas. As sane people wonder what could possibly go wrong, immigration hardliners (read: racists) are sleeping easy as Stephen Miller has to check all of Jared's homework.

 Nancy Pelosi says there won't be any NAFTA 2 : Milk Mafia Boogaloo until she's damn sure Mexico changes its labor laws. This likely dooms Trump's attempted (and horribly named USMCA), and all the carve outs for big pharma and the NFL. :(

 Seven Republicans voted against naming a post office after the late Rep. Louis Slaughter and her husband, Bob. When Roll Call asked why thescumbagsRepublicans were being dicks about renaming a suburban post office the "Louis and Bob Slaughter Post Office," they bitched about wasting time, and said hashtag support our troops. Slaughter's nemesis, indicted Trump-loving Rep. Chris Collins, didn't vote.

Mitch McConnell has successfully fought off his political rivals in 2020 by learning to stop worrying and love Trump World. McClatchy reports they just didn't feel like running against a turtle hiding in a pile of old money.

Senators are nervously wringing their hands as Mitch McConnell gets ready to use the "nuclear option," eliminating the 60-vote threshold and filibuster in order to pack the courts and halls of government with Trumpian ideologues. Politico reports a number of senators expect it's only a matter of time before the power balancing rules are blown apart, either by Democrats or Republicans, leaving the Senate to be nothing more than bunch of bickering jabronis, like the House.

2020 Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren has an op-ed in WaPo calling for corporate greaseballs to be thrown in jail if they're convicted of scamming and defrauding people out of millions of Ameros. The way she see it, this is no different than a pickpocket walking around on the street (except with golden parachutes). Warren also proposes building upon existing laws to hold corporate executives criminally accountable if they're found to be negligently screwing up the environment, arguing, "Corporate America needs a wake-up call."

Yep. There's ANOTHER "Joe Biden is a creeper" story. Similar to previous stories, two women report feeling "very uncomfortable" upon meeting Biden at political events. Older folks are defending Biden, arguing kids these days just don't get old school retail politics, while the whippersnappers are wondering why the hell old people have to touch everything.

2020 Democratic candidate and darling of internet Nazis everywhere Andrew Yang raised $1.7 million dollars by promising to end circumcisions and giving everyone $1,000 a month. It's still unclear if Yang will qualify for the Democratic debates.

CNN will host the second 2020 Democratic presidential primary debate on July 30 and 31. The debate will be held in Michigan so everyone can talk about how they'll fix Detroit, and Flint, and the Great Lakes, etc.

Voters in Chicago made history last night, electing Lori Lightfoot in a brutal landslide, 71 to 28 percent. Lightfoot easily won all of Chicago's 50 wards, with the AP calling the race within an hour of polls closing. Lightfoot, a progressive who previously served as the police board president, now becomes thefirst openly gay black femaleto head up any major city. This follows a string of stunning upsets in aldermanic races throughout Chicago where progressive and Democratic Socialist candidates narrowly swept to power, dealing a major blow to the old machine and making the new city council the most Hispanic and least white in the city's history. [ Full Results ]

A program that sniffs out child porn is being questioned after dozens of defense attorneys began demanding to know how it was tracking down the alleged oglers. ProPublica reports the prosecutions of alleged child pornographers are now being dropped due to the program's tendency to root around in places it doesn't belong -- and neither the government nor the manufacturer will give anyone a peek at its source code to see what's really going on.

Last week Motherboard published a brilliant investigation into Facebook's policy of dealing with white supremacists, and the social media shithole was so triggered (read: embarrassed) that it decided to kick-punch all the Nazis off of Facebook. HOWEVER, Twitter and Youtube don't seem to have gotten that memo as they've decided not to use their ban hammers to beat down white nationalist propaganda videos, despite having very explicit policies about hateful conduct. In addition, Bloomberg has found Youtube's suits took a long look at its white people problem, and decided not to do anything. When its CEO Susan Wojcicki tried to inject "social responsibility" into the platform's AI recommendations, employees were discouraged from looking for fucked up videos that clearly violated its own policies as a way to mitigate legal liability.

While Paul Manafort's ex-son-in-law Jeffrey Yohai was locked up in a Los Angeles jail, Yohai was doing cocaine and meth. He then tried to cut a deal with federal prosecutors, even bragging about heading to DC to spill the beans on Manafort, but nobody bought his schtick and the courts decided to LOCK HIM UP.

 Randy Rainbow has some problems with Betsy DeVos, and YOU'RE ALL GONNA HEAR ABOUT 'EM!

CRUELLA DEVOS - Randy Rainbow Song Parody    www.youtube.com 

And here's your morning Nice Time! SEA OTTERS!
 

Sea otters playing in a bucket of water    www.youtube.com 

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