memeorandum: Erik Prince: I ‘Cooperated’ With Mueller (Betsy Woodruff/The Daily Beast)

12:10 PM ET, June 19, 2018

Top Items:

The GOP's Immigration Meltdown — Restrictionists may cost Republicans their majorities in Congress. — Are Republicans trying to lose their majorities in Congress this November? We assume not, but you can't tell from the party's internal feuding over immigration that is fast becoming …

Discussion: Washington Post, New York Times, Raw Story, Axios, The Week and Vox

Politico:

Nielsen becomes face of Trump's border separations — The Homeland Security secretary has been seen as weak on enforcement, but on Monday she defended decisions that have left kids warehoused on the border. — Kirstjen Nielsen, President Donald Trump's secretary of Homeland Security …

Discussion: Shareblue Media, Vox, Washington Monthly, Booman Tribune, Hot Air, Talking Points Memo, Splinter, Daily Kos, Raw Story, New York Magazine, Washington Post, Axios, The Week, CNN and Mediaite

New York Times:

Forget Tax Cuts. Trump Wants to Rally G.O.P. Base Over Immigration — WASHINGTON — As Republicans try to keep their midterm election strategy focused on the economy, tax cuts and falling unemployment, President Trump sent his clearest signal yet on Monday that he intends to make divisive …

Discussion: Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, CNN and New Republic

Former U.S. Attorneys:

Bipartisan Group of Former United States Attorneys Call on Sessions to End Family Separation — Dear Attorney General Jefferson B. Sessions: — We write as former United States Attorneys who have served under both Republican and Democratic Presidents. Like the majority of Americans …

Discussion: Vox, CNN, HuffPost, Politico, Talking Points Memo and Law & Crime

McKay Coppins / The Atlantic:

The Outrage Over Family Separation Is Exactly What Stephen Miller Wants — When the news stories began to surface last month of sobbing young migrant children being forcibly removed from their parents at the border, many close White House watchers instantly suspected Stephen Miller was behind it.

Discussion: New Republic, Washington Post, Politico, Shareblue Media, The Daily Caller, Raw Story and Vox

Salvador Rizzo / Washington Post:

The facts about Trump's policy of separating families at the border — “I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That's their law.” — “We have the worst immigration laws in the entire world. Nobody has such sad, such bad and actually, in many cases …

Discussion: Bloomberg, @politifact, New York Magazine, HuffPost and The Crime Report

George Takei / Foreign Policy:

‘At Least During the Internment ...’ Are Words I Thought I'd Never Utter — I was sent to a camp at just five years old — but even then, they didn't separate children from families — Imagine this scene: Tens of thousands of people, mostly families with children, are labeled by the government …

Discussion: The Atlantic, CNN, Religion News Service, NPR and Shareblue Media

Ginger Thompson / ProPublica:

Listen to Children Who've Just Been Separated From Their Parents at the Border — Leer en Español. — The desperate sobbing of 10 Central American children, separated from their parents one day last week by immigration authorities at the border, makes for excruciating listening.

Discussion: Politico, Fox News, CNN, Talking Points Memo, Washington Post, Mother Jones, New York Times, sandiegouniontribune.com, ThinkProgress, Refinery29, Media Matters for America, Gizmodo, CNBC, Splinter, HuffPost, Shakesville, The Week, Raw Story, Patterico's Pontifications, Mediaite, twitchy.com, Department of Homeland …, MyNorthwest.com, FiveThirtyEight, The Atlantic, The Guardian, NTK Network, USA Today, CBS Los Angeles, Axios, BloombergQuint, Al Jazeera English, VICE News, Esquire, Daily Wire, POLITICUSUSA, Washington Press, The Daily Caller, ImmigrationProf Blog, Breitbart, Towleroad, ABC News, The Hill, NBC News, RealClearPolitics, CBS News, Bloomberg, FOX6Now.com, Mashable, GeekWire, The Colorado Independent, YouTube, Hot Air, AOL, Media Matters for America, Law & Crime, IJR, Q13 FOX News, The Daily Beast, New York Post, America's Voice, Vox, VICE, Right Wing Watch, Balloon Juice, FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV, Daily Kos, Wall Street Journal, New Republic, Bangor Daily News and Lawyers, Guns & Money, more at Techmeme »

New York Times:

How Anti-Immigration Passion Was Inflamed From the Fringe — WASHINGTON — Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller spent years on the political fringe in the nation's capital as high-decibel immigration hard-liners, always warning about the dangers of open borders but rarely in a position to affect law or policy.

Discussion: Political Wire

Burgess Everett / Politico:
Trump loses temper over border wall funding

Discussion: Raw Story

John Kruzel / @politifact:
No, Donald Trump's separation of immigrant families was not Barack Obama's policy

Discussion: The Guardian, Vox and HuffPost

Bill D'Agostino / NewsBusters:
Cable News: 22 Comparisons of Immigration Policy to the Holocaust, Slavery

Discussion: Washington Free Beacon, The Daily Caller, National Review, Breitbart, CNN and Mediaite

David M. Drucker / Washington Examiner:
Republicans fret about what family separations will cost them

Discussion: Washington Post, Roll Call, MSNBC and Slate

David A. Graham / The Atlantic:
From ‘I Alone Can Fix It’ to ‘Change the Laws!’

Discussion: New York Times, HuffPost and The Hill

Washington Post:
Trump defiant as crisis grows over family separation at the border

Discussion: Splinter, HuffPost, Daily Kos, One America News Network, Althouse, Vox, POLITICUSUSA, Breitbart, CNBC and The Week

Jeh Charles Johnson / Washington Post:
Trump's ‘zero-tolerance’ border policy is immoral, un-American — and ineffective

Discussion: The Atlantic, VICE News and Splinter

Anita Kumar / McClatchy Washington Bureau:

Buyers tied to Russia, former Soviet republics paid $109 million cash for Trump properties — WASHINGTON — Aleksandr Burman, a Ukrainian who engaged in a health care scheme that cost the federal government $26 million and was sentenced to a decade in prison, paid $725,000 cash for a condo …

Betsy Woodruff / The Daily Beast:

Erik Prince: I ‘Cooperated’ With Mueller … Erik Prince, the founder of private security company Blackwater, has found himself embroiled in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. — During the campaign …

Discussion: Raw Story

CNBC:

Dow tumbles 400 points, wiping out gain for year, as Trump directs more tariffs at China — Stocks fell sharply on Tuesday after President Donald Trump's latest threat to China increased fears of an impending trade war between the world's largest economies.

Huileng Tan / CNBC:
China says the US ‘has initiated a trade war,’ and Beijing isn't afraid to fight back

Discussion: Reuters, The Daily Caller, HuffPost and Conservative News Today

Jane Perlez / New York Times:
Kim Jong-un Returns to China, This Time With Leverage

Discussion: Washington Post and The Week

John Hendel / Politico:
Senate rejects Trump's rescue of Chinese firm ZTE

Discussion: Investor's Business Daily, Gizmodo, The Week, ABC News, CNBC, POLITICUSUSA, The Hill and The American Conservative, more at Techmeme »

Washington Post:
Trump escalates China trade war, threatens tariffs on $200 billion in products

Discussion: National Review and Reuters

Will Sommer / The Daily Beast:

QAnon, the Crazy Pro-Trump Conspiracy, Melts Down Over OIG Report … A man armed with a rifle and a handgun drove an armored truck to the Hoover Dam last Friday and started blocking traffic. He brought a homemade sign with him that said, “Release the OIG report.” — Except the report was already out.

Darren Samuelsohn / Politico:
Call to suspend Mueller probe was just posturing, Giuliani says

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and HuffPost

Hiroko Tabuchi / New York Times:

How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country — NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A team of political activists huddled at a Hardee's one rainy Saturday, wolfing down a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. Then they descended on Antioch, a quiet Nashville suburb, armed with iPads full of voter data and a fiery script.

Margaret Sullivan / Washington Post:

A reporter at the White House decided to play the audio of children sobbing. Somebody had to. — Olivia Nuzzi had no plans of playing the heart-rending audio of Central American children crying for their parents when she arrived in the White House briefing room Monday.

Discussion: MSNBC

U.S. Department of Justice:

Joshua Adam Schulte Charged With The Unauthorized Disclosure Of Classified Information And Other Offenses Relating To The Theft Of Classified Material From The Central Intelligence Agency — Geoffrey S. Berman, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, John C. Demers …

Discussion: BuzzFeed, Motherboard, Reuters, Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Law & Crime, The Daily Caller and Axios, more at Techmeme »

Josh Gerstein / Politico:
Ex-CIA engineer charged with massive leak to WikiLeaks

Discussion: CNN

Adam Goldman / New York Times: New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

Wichita Eagle:

Judge strikes down Kansas voter law, orders Kobach to take classes — TOPEKA — A federal judge has struck down a Kansas voter citizenship law that Secretary of State Kris Kobach had personally defended. — Judge Julie Robinson also ordered Kobach, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor …

Discussion: MSNBC and Media Matters for America

Sam Levine / HuffPost:
Federal Judge Strikes Down Kansas Proof Of Citizenship Law

Discussion: Mother Jones and Splinter

Isaac Chotiner / Slate:

“Just Me. The President of the United States, Facing a Mob of Accusers” — “It's a role like any other, a coat she puts on when necessary and sheds as soon as she's done, but she can see it's working: the men trying for eye contact, checking the cleavage she's made sure to reveal …

Justin Mattingly / www.richmond.com:

Richmond's J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School — honoring a Confederate — will be renamed for Barack Obama — Richmond City Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras (left) and School Board Chair Dawn Page attended the Richmond School Board meeting Monday. Kamras advised the 2008 Obama campaign on education issues.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, HuffPost and The Week

Brendan King / WTVR-TV:
School honoring Confederate general renamed Barack Obama Elementary

Discussion: KJRH, CNN, The Daily Caller, Fox17 and KTLA

Monmouth University Polling Institute:

No Change in House Ballot — Nation on right track is up, tax reform approval is down — West Long Branch, NJ - Democrats hold a 7 point lead over Republicans in the generic House ballot, which is basically the same as the 8 point lead they held in a Monmouth University Poll taken in late April.

Discussion: Political Wire and NTK Network

Jonathan Blitzer / New Yorker:

In ICE Detention, a Honduran Woman Fears Deportation Without Her Son — On May 5th, just after midnight, a Honduran woman named Ana Rivera and her five-year-old son, Jairo, tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. They were caught scaling a fence in El Paso, and spent the night in a holding cell …

Thomas J. Donohue / U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

Separating Children from Families Must End Now — President and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce — Thousands of children are being forcibly removed from their parents by our government. There is no other way to say it, this is not who we are and it must end now.

Nick Juliano / Politico:

Exclusive: Zinke linked to real estate deal with Halliburton chairman — WHITEFISH, Mont. — A foundation established by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and headed by his wife is playing a key role in a real-estate deal backed by the chairman of Halliburton, the oil-services giant that stands …