memeorandum: Alabama bill would criminalize false rape accusations (Abbey Crain/al.com)

11:50 PM ET, May 9, 2019

Top Items:

Katelyn Polantz / CNN:

Judge fast-tracks fight over congressional subpoena of Trump financial records — NYT reporter calls Trump business losses ‘unbelievable’ — Washington (CNN)Congress and Donald Trump's fight over his financial records is now on the fast track. — Judge Amit Mehta plans next week to weigh …

Discussion: Law & Crime

Marianne LeVine / Politico:

Burr holds firm despite GOP anger over Don Jr. subpoena — Richard Burr faces intense pressure from Republicans to drop his subpoena of President Donald Trump's eldest son and quickly wrap up the Senate Intelligence Committee's Russia probe. — But despite a day facing attacks …

Discussion: Raw Story, BuzzFeed News and CNBC

Wall Street Journal:

Burr Draws GOP Scrutiny for Subpoena of Donald Trump Jr. — Senate Intelligence Committee chairman has investigated President Trump in a more bipartisan fashion than some of his fellow Republicans — The Senate Intelligence Committee's decision to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. opened …

Discussion: Political Wire

Kaitlan Collins / CNN:

Trump's inner circle frustrated by son's subpoena — Washington (CNN)Members of President Donald Trump's inner circle are frustrated that the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr., multiple sources tell CNN. — Those close to Trump are exasperated …

Discussion: Washington Post, Taylor Marsh, The Gateway Pundit, Washington Monthly, Conservative News Today, The Daily Caller, Above the Law, Splinter, The Root and twitchy.com

Lily Batchelder / New York Times:
Trump Is a Bad Businessman. Is He a Tax Cheat, Too?

Discussion: Bloomberg, Washington Post and Reason

Washington Post: Decision to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. sets off a Republican firefight

Caitlin MacNeal / Talking Points Memo:
Trump Goes On Extended Rant About Subpoena Of Don Jr.

Discussion: Washington Press, HillReporter.com and Hullabaloo

Alexander Bolton / The Hill:
Dem senator: Trump Jr. should be ‘locked up’ if he doesn't comply with subpoena

Discussion: Reuters, Breitbart, Shareblue Media, IJR, The New Civil Rights Movement and Mediaite

New York Times:

A Strategy Emerges to Counter House Democrats: Dare Them to Impeach — WASHINGTON — As the White House and Congress escalate their constitutional showdown, President Trump and his team are essentially trying to call what they see as the Democrats' bluff. The message: Put up or shut up.

Discussion: Raw Story

Max Boot / Washington Post:

Republicans are hall-of-fame hypocrites — “In scandals such as this, it is always members of the president's party who have particular leverage, and therefore who have a particular responsibility, to hold the president accountable for his actions.” — So wrote noted Republican moralist Bill Bennett …

Discussion: HillReporter.com, Raw Story, New York Times, Tampa Bay Times and Vox

Andrew Napolitano / Fox News:
Judge Andrew Napolitano: Did Attorney General William Barr deceive Congress?

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, The Daily Beast, Fox News Insider and Contemptor

New York Times:
Trump Suggests Mueller May Testify; Pelosi Declares ‘Constitutional Crisis’

Discussion: Mother Jones and The Daily Caller

Rebecca Shabad / NBC News:
Petitions with 10 million signatures to impeach Trump delivered to Congress

Discussion: Axios

New York Times:
Pelosi Declares Nation Is in a ‘Constitutional Crisis’

Discussion: The Hill, Fox News, New York Post, CNN, Slate, The Atlantic, The Federalist, ABC News and IJR

David French / National Review:
Against the Persecution of Bill Barr

Discussion: Hot Air, New York Times and Lawfare

Kenneth P. Vogel / New York Times:

Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump — WASHINGTON — Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, is encouraging Ukraine to wade further into sensitive political issues in the United States, seeking to push the incoming government in Kiev …

Discussion: Raw Story, New York Post, CNN and Foreign Policy

Abbey Crain / al.com:

Alabama bill would criminalize false rape accusations — A bill making it a crime to falsely accuse someone of a sexual crime was first read in the Alabama House of Representatives last week. — The bill, introduced by Rep. Dickie Drake, R-Leeds, would make falsely reporting a sex crime …

Washington Post:
Alabama Senate passes nation's strictest abortion bill, making performing the procedure a felony with few exceptions

Discussion: Axios, Jezebel, New York Times and Political Wire

Mike Cason / al.com:
Chaos erupts as Alabama Senate strips rape exception from abortion ban, delays vote

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, The Week, Raw Story and Splinter

Alan Blinder / New York Times:
Amid Chaos, Alabama Lawmakers Delay Vote on Far-Reaching Abortion Ban

Discussion: Balloon Juice, The Daily Caller, The Root and Hullabaloo

Elisha Fieldstadt / NBC News: Alabama bill banning nearly all abortions delayed after fiery debate on Senate floor

Washington Post:
After shouting match breaks out, Alabama Senate reverses course and tables controversial abortion vote

Discussion: Associated Press, The Hill, The Montgomery Advertiser, RedState, 1A, WHNT-TV and TheBlaze

John Solomon / The Hill:

FBI's Steele story falls apart: False intel and media contacts were flagged before FISA — The FBI's sworn story to a federal court about its asset, Christopher Steele, is fraying faster than a $5 souvenir t-shirt bought at a tourist trap. — Newly unearthed memos show a high-ranking government official …

Discussion: The Last Refuge, The Gateway Pundit, American Greatness, twitchy.com, Townhall, RealClearInvestigations and LewRockwell

Jay Weaver / Miami Herald:

Trump cheered Patriots to Super Bowl victory with founder of spa where Kraft was busted — The FBI has opened a public corruption investigation into Republican donor and South Florida massage-parlor entrepreneur Li “Cindy” Yang, focusing on whether she illegally funneled money from China …

Discussion: Raw Story, New York Post and The Guardian

John Verhovek / ABC News:

Colorado students walk out as school shooting vigil turns political — A vigil held Wednesday evening to recognize the victims and heroes of the shooting earlier this week at a Colorado high school turned into a political protest after some students in attendance expressed frustration with the tone and focus of the speeches.

Discussion: Splinter, Media Matters for America and KUSA-TV

USA Today:

Students walk out of Colorado school shooting vigil, saying their trauma was being politicized — HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. - Gun rights advocates posted support on social media Thursday for students who walked out of a gun-control rally in anger and tears over concerns the event inappropriately politicized their grief.

Discussion: New York Post, twitchy.com, Power Line, WORLD, Slate, Breitbart, VICE News and TheBlaze

Washington Post:

Trump and Kim battled subordinates ahead of spike in tensions — President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shattered more than a year of relative tranquility Thursday with the U.S. seizure of a North Korean vessel and the isolated regime's launch of two short-range ballistic missiles.

Discussion: BBC, New York Times and NPR

Tara Palmeri / ABC News:
Kim Jong Un wanted ‘famous’ US basketball players as part of denuclearization deal: Sources

Discussion: Rolling Stone, New York Times, One America News Network, NPR and Mediaite

Theodore Schleifer / Vox:

One out of every 11,600 people in San Francisco is a billionaire — Statistics like this throw into sharp relief the challenge for Silicon Valley and its leaders in 2019. — If you want to run into a celebrity, you go to Hollywood. If you want to run into a billionaire, you should move to San Francisco.

Discussion: SFist and Curbed SF

Carla Marinucci / Politico:
Mayor Pete blindsides Kamala Harris in California

Discussion: Breitbart, Variety, ActBlue and VodkaPundit

Kate Conger / New York Times:
They Got Rich Off Uber and Lyft. Then They Moved to Low-Tax States.

Discussion: National Review, Splinter and NPR

Chris Kahn / Reuters:

Americans' support for impeaching Trump rises: Reuters/Ipsos poll — NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of Americans who said President Donald Trump should be impeached rose 5 percentage points to 45 percent since mid-April, while more than half said multiple congressional probes of Trump interfered …

Discussion: The Hill, POLITICUSUSA and TheBlaze

Charles Leerhsen / Yahoo News:

Exclusive: Trump, the billion-dollar loser — I was his ghostwriter and saw it happen — On Tuesday, the New York Times scooped the world on the news that from 1985 to 1994, Donald Trump incurred the biggest business losses of any single taxpayer in American history.

Discussion: New York Post, Raw Story and The Daily Beast

Devlin Barrett / Washington Post:

‘Things were often a bit not normal’: Rosenstein gets fond, jokey send-off from Justice Dept. — Rod J. Rosenstein, whose two-year tenure as the Justice Department's No. 2 official was spent in the eye of a public storm surrounding special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation of President Trump …

David Dayen / American Prospect:

Trump's Most Nakedly Corrupt Tweet Yet — As the president props up lobbyists and cronies, Democrats must respond with aggressive oversight. — It used to be that I was concerned that the media was paying too much attention to Donald Trump's tweets; now I'm concerned that they're not paying enough.

Discussion: Splinter, CNBC and CBS Boston

Bonchie / RedState:

AOC and Bernie Have a Brilliant New Idea for Banking — There are dumb ideas and then there's whatever this is. — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have teamed up to introduce the idea of “non-profit banking services” done via the post office, where sub-prime loans would be given …

Discussion: Hot Air and PJ Media Home

Renae Merle / Washington Post:
Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez want to cap credit card interest rates at 15 percent

Discussion: CreditCards.com, Bloomberg, Daily Kos, The Root, Roll Call, Reason, Fox News, Mother Jones, Politico, ThinkProgress, The Intercept, Splinter, Axios, Breitbart, Common Dreams and New York Post

Anita Hill / New York Times:

Let's Talk About How to End Sexual Violence — That's the most important conversation right now. — Ms. Hill is a professor at Brandeis University. — Last month, Joe Biden called me to talk about his conduct during Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991.

Discussion: Axios

Polls:

Trump Bigger Factor than Obama for 2020 Dem Primary Voters — West Long Branch, NJ - Former Vice President Joe Biden is the clear front-runner for New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation Democratic primary, according to the first Monmouth University Poll of Granite State primary voters in the 2020 cycle.

Discussion: RedState, Fox News and Washington Free Beacon

New York Times:

It's Time to Break Up Facebook — The last time I saw Mark Zuckerberg — was in the summer of 2017, several months before the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. We met at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., office and drove to his house, in a quiet, leafy neighborhood.

Bryn Elise Sandberg / Hollywood Reporter:

Three Production Companies Say They Won't Film in Georgia Over Abortion Law — David Simon's Blown Deadline Productions, Killer Films CEO Christine Vachon and Mark Duplass pledged to no longer shoot in the state as long as the law exists. — Georgia, no stranger to threats of boycotts due …

Discussion: Breitbart, Washington Times, The Wrap and Deadline

ProPublica:

Listen to TurboTax Lie to Get Out of Refunding Overcharged Customers — TurboTax successfully lobbied to keep the IRS from offering free tax prep. Now it's pretending the government already does it. … The makers of TurboTax have long been luring customers into paying for a service …

Discussion: Above the Law

U.S. Department of Justice:

Former Intelligence Analyst Charged with Disclosing Classified Information — ALEXANDRIA, Va. - An indictment was unsealed today charging a former intelligence analyst with illegally obtaining classified national defense information and disclosing it to a reporter.

Discussion: RedState, Shadowproof, Vanity Fair, The Gateway Pundit, Reason, The Intercept, Washington Post, KTLA, New York Times, NPR, Politico, Fox News, Mediaite, CNN, Axios and Law & Crime, more at Mediagazer »

Karen Tumulty / Washington Post:

It turns out Trump's business success was a media-made myth — President Trump has finally proved, beyond any doubt, that there is such a thing as #FakeNews. — In the 1980s and 1990s, the media conspired to perpetrate a vast fraud on the American people.

Discussion: RedState, Hollywood Reporter and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion

Poolreports / Public Pool:

Subject: Pool report 3: POTUS on Mueller/NK/China/Venezuela/Iran — There is NO service in Roosevelt Room but have been trying to send. Here we go: — POTUS entered at 12:07 to talk about medical billing (more on that in a sec) then went on a tangent about Mueller, North Korea and China.

Chris Buskirk / American Greatness:

Yes, Christians Can Support Trump Without Risk to Their Witness — Can an adulterer be a great surgeon? If your child needed care and the best surgeon had cheated on his wife, maybe more than once, would you let him operate? What if you are a Christian and he is not? Does that matter?