It’s interesting how the people Trump hires to run bits of his administration like to give big raises to the people they hire. Scott Pruitt did it, and Mick Mulvaney did it.

Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s appointee to oversee the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has given big pay raises to the deputies he has hired to help him run the bureau, according to salary records obtained by The Associated Press.

Mulvaney has hired at least eight political appointees since he took over the bureau in late November. Four of them are making $259,500 a year and one is making $239,595. That is more than the salaries of members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, and nearly all federal judges apart

AP reports a shift in Trump, from however reluctantly taking some guidance from his aides, to getting sick of them and doing whatever he wants. Last week in West Virginia he threw his prepared speech up in the air. BO-RING.

This president has never been one to stick to a script, but that abandoned speech illustrates a new phase in Trump’s presidency. He is increasingly at odds with his staff — and growing wise to their tactics.

One favored staff strategy: Guide the president to the right decision by making the conventional choice seem like the only realistic option. Except now, 14 months into his administration, Trump is on to them, and he’s making clear he won’t be boxed

You know how it’s been a theme of the coverage on Prince Jared that there’s this nagging $1.2 billion payment on 666 Fifth Avenue coming due and the Kushners have been sweating bullets trying to come up with the $$$? And how that is of course a massive red flag for corruption or worse? Well, Judd Legum at Think Progress reports that someone has come up with the $$$ and we don’t know who or how. People on Twitter suggest it’s MSB in payment for the secret intel that Jared gave him that prompted him to imprison more than 200 members of the House of Saud.

Upon entering the White House, Jared Kushner divested the property only in the most

Well at least Trump and his friends showed those chickens a thing or two.

The Trump administration officially withdrew an Obama-era rule that would set higher standards for the treatment of animals whose meat can be sold as organic.

The rule, created under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), would require poultry to be housed in spaces large enough to move freely and fully stretch their wings. Livestock would be required to have some access to outdoor space year-round.

The USDA officially overturned the rule Monday, after delaying its implementation three times. It was first created in 2016 and built on seven years of deliberation.

So I guess it’s not like all those reports about what Pruitt was doing when … Read the rest

Another entry in the “my enemies should be killed” department:

Musician and NRA board member Ted Nugent likened Democrats, members of the media and others to “rabid coyotes” on Friday and suggested people should not wait to “get” their guns and “shoot” them on sight.

Nugent, a major proponent of gun rights and the Second Amendment, applied the same comparison to Hollywood and RINOS – the common acronym standing for Republicans in name only – during an interview on InfoWars’ The Alex Jones Show.

“Don’t ask why. Just know that evil, dishonesty, and scam artists have always been around and that right now they’re liberal, they’re Democrat, they’re RINOs, they’re Hollywood, they’re fake news, they’re media, they’re academia, and they’re

Matt Yglesias decided to stir things up yesterday.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/982594029119590400

My guess is that if Hitch were alive today he’d be the leading pro-Trump columnist in America, following the siren song of faux contrarianism to its ultimate end.

That’s an incredibly stupid “guess,” as a number of people pointed out. Hitchens wasn’t right about everything, but he would never have been a toady of Trump’s. The idea is ludicrous.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/982594822195302400

He’d be a regular guest on Tucker Carlson’s show doing segments about the Deep State’s plot against Trump and how the left lost its way, calling Elizabeth Warren a shrill harpy, and denouncing the excesses of political correctness.

He seems to have him confused with Bannon. Other way around, dude – … Read the rest

Benjamin Wittes on “the perjury trap”:

Ok, here’s a little primer on the perjury trap: What it is, what it isn’t, and whether Bob Mueller’s seeking an interview with Trump in which Trump might lie is one or not.

First off, the perjury trap is a real thing. It’s not simply a concoction of the right-wing fever swamp. When it happens—and it is successfully argued only rarely—it is a form of entrapment that can constitute an affirmative defense against a charge of perjury.

Bennett Gershman, in a law review article on the subject, described the perjury trap as “the deliberate use of the grand jury to secure perjured testimony” and suggested that the hallmarks include the intentional solicitation of

Susan Walsh at Politico says it’s a myth that Scott Pruitt has already trashed a lot of environmental laws and regulations. It’s true that he’s tried, but (hooray) it’s not that easy.

The truth is that Scott Pruitt has done a lot less to dismantle the EPA than he—or his critics—would have you believe.

It’s not for lack of trying. Pruitt has taken aim at just about every major Obama-era EPA rule, which has made him a pariah on the left, a hero on the right and the bureaucratic face of Trump’s vocal advocacy for fossil-fuel interests and other industrial polluters. But so far he’s only managed to delay a few rules that hadn’t yet taken effect. His supporters,

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the NFL versus the witches:

Witches, man. Just when you thought we were safe from their malignant influence on America’s virtue, the NFL has proven we are still in real danger from their dark powers.

In danger how? Witchy witchy seduction.

Bailey Davis, the 22-year-old former New Orleans Saints cheerleader, was recently fired for violating team social media rules by posting an Instagram photo of herself in one-piece lingerie that shows as much skin as a one-piece swimsuit in a Nordstrom’s ad, and a lot less than their cheerleading outfits. She has since filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for gender discrimination. When she spoke to a representative from the Saints’ human resources

In the New Yorker, Molly Ringwald looks at the three John Hughes movies she starred in in the 80s, when she was a teenager. She starts with watching The Breakfast Club with her 10-year-old daughter.

It’s a strange experience, watching a younger, more innocent version of yourself onscreen. It’s stranger still—surreal, even—watching it with your child when she is much closer in age to that version of yourself than you are. My friend was right: my daughter didn’t really seem to register most of the sex stuff, though she did audibly gasp when she thought I had showed my underwear. At one point in the film, the bad-boy character, John Bender, ducks under the table where my character, Claire, is

How They see Trump.

Hope one day you find someone who sees you like Ben Garrison sees Trump. pic.twitter.com/f2IhCwJxDQ

— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) April 7, 2018

… Read the rest

It was windy at Andrews yesterday.

Very windy.

Windy every whichaway.

… Read the rest

Classic. Trump’s own people tell him that Scott Pruitt’s many corrupt and/or brainless acts have made him toxic and Trump reeeeeeeally ought to replace him with someone not quite so extravagant and cozy with lobbyists, but Trump is so happy with the way Pruitt is making the water dirty again that he just can’t bear to lose him. Dirty water and filthy air for the people! Wave the tiny fist!

John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, told President Trump last week that Scott Pruitt, the embattled administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, needed to go in the wake of damaging allegations about ethical infractions and spending irregularities, according to two officials briefed about the conversation.

But Mr.

When the ideology becomes life-threatening.

A young #trans man broke his arm playing football & is rushed to hospital. Before being treated he is asked to discuss his trans status & hormones at length. Why? So wrong! SEE: https://t.co/iJ8K3u47jk @RozKaveney @MunroeBergdorf @JakeGraf1 @christineburns @MxJackMonroe

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) April 5, 2018

Peter Tatchell tweets:

A young #trans man broke his arm playing football & is rushed to hospital. Before being treated he is asked to discuss his trans status & hormones at length. Why? So wrong!

It’s called taking a medical history, and it has to be done. They have to know what meds patients are on in order to avoid killing them. That’s why.… Read the rest

Jessica Valenti points out what one would think was obvious: something said on Twitter isn’t magically not what the tweeter actually thinks, simply by virtue of being on Twitter.

On Thursday, the recently hired columnist Kevin Williamson was fired from the Atlantic after an uproar over his views on abortion – namely his belief, first mentioned in a 2014 tweet, that women who have the procedure should be executed by hanging.

Initially, the editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, defended Williamson, writing in a memo to staff that he did not believe “taking a person’s worst tweets … in isolation is the best journalistic practice”. But after the release of a podcast in which Williamson talked at length about hanging women, the