O Hey Can You Be By The Donzer Lee Kite? Wonkagenda For Wed., June 6, 2018

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

There were primaries yesterday! We may be talking about them today!

 Trump's new fetish for pardons is freaking people out, according to a WaPo report that states Trump's random pardons are not just a matter of ear-bending, but a means of exerting uncontested power.

 Andrew McCabe may plead the Fifth if called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week, and his lawyers are asking for "suitable legal protection."

 Trump's "Celebration of America"tantrum   rally was the shitshow you'd expect, complete with Trump forgetting words to songs, a dude kneeling during the national anthem, and hecklers -- anything to avoid talking about cops killing black folks.

A judge in the Summer Zervos lawsuit has ruled that Trumpcanbe deposed as part of Zervos's defamation suit.

The Trump administration won't replace a top role in the Justice Department after it was unable to find anyone willing to take the job. [ Archive ]

Jeff Sessions defended the kidnapping of children from undocumented immigrants as an unfortunate side effect of his/Trump's anti-immigration strategy in an interview with a conservative radio show, stating, "If people don’t want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them."

According to Betsy DeVos, Trump's gun safety commission, created in the wake of the Parkland massacre, will not focus on the roles guns play in school shootings. This is an example of the Chewbacca Defense. 

 Steve Mnuchin has curiously redacted large portions of his schedule that were FOIA'd by nosey geeks who wanted to see just how many fancy flights and shady meetings he's been holding.

 Kelly Sadler has lost her spat with Mercedes Schlapp and will be reassigned to some other government job where she's less likely to insult John McCain, or piss off the oldest conservative lobby in #Murica.

 A contractor working in Trump's White House was arrested on the White House grounds on suspicion of murder and it took 17 days for the Secret Service to find out there was a warrant. [ Archive ]

 The Social Security Administration will dip into its $3 trillion trust fund to cover benefits, three years sooner than initial forecasts thought. [ Archive ]

 Congress members are getting ready to fight the opioid crisis with bills that don't actually do much, but they sound nice.

 Jill Stein has (finally) filed her recount paperwork with the FEC, but there's still a lot of discrepancies about where all the money went.

 A Cuban-born billionaire and Republican mega donor has closed his coin purse and is refusing to give any more money until Republicans do something about DACA.

 Two more Democrats in the House have signed on to the discharge petition to force a floor vote on immigration in the House. Shit's about to get real!

 Mitch McConnell has canceled most of the August recess so that he can help Trump pack the courts and fill staffing holes in his administration. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has asked if the Senate could focus on healthcare, but nah.

Brad Parscale, the patchy pubic beard aficionado running Trump's 2020 reelection campaign, has launched a website to tout Trump's accomplishments. So far it's just pictures of chocolate cake, children crying in a jail cell, and Obama's inauguration crowd.

 A town hall for Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner drew justoneperson, 33-year-old Dave Mantz, who pressed the congressman on net neutrality.

 Joe Manchin is making a deal with the devil as he rushes to embrace Trump ahead of his reelection.

 Prominent California Democrats and Republicans managed to avoid a worst case scenario yesterday, setting the stage for traditional red versus blue elections up and down the ticket in November.

 Democrats in Orange County, California,seemto have avoided shooting themselves in the face, but there's still provisional and mail-in ballots that have yet to be counted.

Alabama Republican Rep. Martha Roby, who un-endorsed Trump after the Access Hollywood tape during the 2016 election, has been forced into a run-off after she failed to secure a majority of the vote. 

 Democrats flipped a state Senate seat in suburban Kansas City, Missouri, after State Rep. Lauren Arthur clobbered Rep. Kevin Corlew. I mean, just CLOBBERED.

 Todd Entrekin, the sheriff of Etowah County, Alabama, has lost the Republican primary. Entrekin was the yokel who pocketed $750,000 meant to feed inmates. And it was legal .

 Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison has suddenly decided to run for the Minnesota AG, setting the stage for a lot of infighting at the national and state level.

California Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky was voted out of office last night for giving Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner a slap on the wrist for sexually assaulting an unconscious student. Bye, Felicia!

Some dumbshit rednecks in Tucson have concocted an overly elaborate conspiracy theory around an abandoned homeless camp being used in a child sex trafficking ring. Fucking Tucson, man.

Not American dictators and leaders are trying to worm their way into the ears of Trump and Kim Jong Un ahead of their nuclear summit next week.

 China is hoping to buy its way out of Trump's trade war with a $70 billion offer to buy US agriculture and energy products, like soybeans and coal. [ Archive ]

A new Politico/Morning Consult poll shows an overwhelming majority of Americans think that tariffs are a stupid idea best left in high school history books.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has moved quickly to capitalize on Trump's trade war with Europe by casting himself as the only man with a remarkable ability to negotiate with Trump, and one in tune with all the neo-Nazis running around Europe. He alone can fix it!

MSNBC's obnoxious, line-toeing super conservative, Hugh Hewitt, has been propping up the Alliance Defending Freedom, an international anti-LGBT equality group, on the air without disclosing that the group is a major sponsor of his radio show.

 Bari Weiss has an op-ed about the new Miss America pageant and it's a hot mess of jumbled feminisht theory that will leave you sighing as you shake your head and reach for some booze to numb the pain.

In their never-ending quest to get you to "Like" everything, Facebook also gave user data to Chinese tech manufacturers. 

New emails show the FCC purposely lied to the public about problems with its commenting system after John Oliver ran a story on net neutrality, falsely claiming a non-traditional DDoS attack was responsible. 

And here's your morning Nice Time! Baby goats and elephants!

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