Obstruction Junction! Wonkagenda For Fri., July 27, 2018

Trump's Russian world is crumbling, and more Trumpvilles and baby jails. Your morning news brief!

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

SOMEBODY is telling CNN that Donald Trump knew about that 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Michael Cohen's people say they didn't do it, pointing their fingers at Trump and saying it's an attempt to undercut a deal with prosecutors. In yet another attempt to define irony, Rudy Giuliani called Cohen a liar , and said nobody should believe liars. [ Morning Maddow ]

 Robert Mueller wants to talk to Trump about his tweets ; now some of Trump's lawyers are terrified Mueller might have stumbled across Trump's super secret plot to obstruct the Trump-Russia investigation.

The CFO of the Trump Organization, Allan Weisselberg, has been subpoenaed as part of the in the criminal investigation into Michael Cohen, according to the WSJ. As the most senior person in the Trump business, it's rumored that he knows who paid what for Trump's hookers.

Yesterday, Jeff Sessions defended Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, and Paul Ryan criticized impeachment efforts, so the House Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows announced they'd pussed out of their latest lame stunt to impeach Rosenstein. Idiots.

The Daily Beast is reporting that Russian hackers have attempted to breach Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill through a faked internal Senate website.Last week security officials at Microsoft revealed that Russia's GRU had already targeted three Senate candidates. McCaskill declined to comment about the attack, but stated, "While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this. I will not be intimidated."

Ars Technica has a brilliant (read: long and nerdy) breakdown of the GRU operation to fuck with the US elections, complete with infographics, a timeline, and geeky jargon.

Immigration officials say they met the deadline to reunite kids held in Trump's baby jails with their families, but there's still hundreds of children being kept in Trump's infant internment camps. This morning authorities are shrugging off complaints that families now simply confined to plastic-wrapped Trumpvilles along the Southern border.

 ICE will deport the wife of Marine veteran Sgt. Cuauhtemoc “Temo" Juarez to Mexico because there's currently no law that says they can't deport undocumented spouses of immigrant veterans. Somehow this makes America great.

A federal judge has given the go-ahead on a lawsuit against the Trump administration's attempt to add citizenship questions to the census, stating there was plausible evidence that the administration intended to discriminate against immigrant communities based on Trump's daily Twitter tantrums.

Ethics experts are crying foul at Trump (again) after he used taxpayer money and stumped for Republican congressional candidates during hiscampaign event rallyin Granite City, Illinois, yesterday.

Citing the state's "sore loser law," West Virginia officials have denied ex-con Don Blankenship access to the November Senate ballot. An oblivious Blankenship commented to reporters, "they think they can control who can and who can not run for elected office."

A new NBC News/Marist poll shows Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker lagging behind education superintendent Tony Evers, 41-54, ahead of the crowded Aug. 14 primary that includes eight Democratic candidates. The same poll also shows Democrats leading Republicans in gubernatorial and Senate races in Michigan and Minnesota. 

Texas Tea Party Republican Rep. Pete Sessions is not doing so hot this year after Democrats placed a Texas-sized target on his congressional seat.

 Republicans are about to reach out and touch a million people in a massive test of their ground game in 27 states ahead of the midterms. Sadly, Republicans have no game, they've never had game.

Two cops in Georgia have been fired after they were caught on video using a coin toss app in a decision to arrest a woman pulled over for speeding when they didn't have speeding tickets or speed detection equipment.

 Trump is bragging about his "deal" with the EU, but foreign policy nerds have noticed that his "deals" are crappy versions of the trade negotiations the Obama administration were already working on. According to the WSJ, the EU Commission's Jean-Claude Juncker actually used flash cards to explain international trade to Trump.

The Syrian government of Bashar al Assad has started quietly admitting hundreds of people detained in prisons were actually killed, many of them years ago -- and that's only the crust on the Syrian shitsandwich.

North Korea has ALLEGEDLY given back the remains of 55 US personnel killed during the Korean War, but many remain skeptical that this is a true gesture of "goodwill," and not just another trolling attempt.

Security researchers have discovered a sophisticated Iranian-based cyber attack that's being used to spy on government institutions and financial agencies throughout the Middle East. The funny part is that the Iranians left their own backdoor open.

With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying , "Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews," embracing European neo-fascists, calls to boycott Israel in the US are growing louder and dividing congressional Democrats.  He ACTUALLY said that!

HuffPo reports that Kimberly Guilfoyle was forced out of Fox News after a "hostile whisper campaign" began due to her repeatedly showing colleagues dick pics, bragging about her sex life, and being an abusive asshole to the hair and makeup staff.Rule #1in TV Land: NEVER fuck with the hair and makeup staff.

After getting banned by Youtube for 90 days, Alex Jones streamed his his wannabe AM radio show on a different Youtube channel -- until that too was banned. Now it's a game of whack-a-Nazi.

In yet another sad and pathetic attempt to generate attention, Legion of Doom reject Omarosahired someone wrotea "tell-all" book about her time in Trump's inner circle -- just like Spicey and the Mooch. Here's a video of a cat bathing itself instead.

 Papa John's suing Papa John's after Papa John's tried to defend its shitty pizza by forcing Papa John's resignation over racial slurs.

The ACLU was dicking around with Amazon's new facial recognition tech when it matched 28 members of congress to criminal mugshots. In all fairness, Rep. Greg Gianforte is a criminal.

And here's your morning Nice Time! Giant otter swim lessons!

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