memeorandum: Remember when Republicans were prepared to impeach Hillary Clinton? (Steve Benen/MSNBC)

8:45 PM ET, June 4, 2019

Top Items:

Joe Biden's climate plan appears to directly copy multiple lines from other organizations — but his campaign says it was a mistake … - Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden released a climate change proposal on Tuesday. — In at least three instances …

Discussion: New York Times, JustOneMinute, Breitbart, Front Page Magazine, Gizmodo, HuffPost, VICE, Splinter, twitchy.com and Common Dreams

Natasha Korecki / Politico:

Plagiarism charge hits Biden climate change plan — Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign came under fire on Tuesday for putting out a $1.7 trillion climate change plan that appeared to copy a handful of passages from previously published documents. — The incident recalled …

Discussion: National Review, Fox News, YouTube, Observer and Axios

Peter Hasson / The Daily Caller:
Joe Biden's Climate Plan Uses Nearly Identical Language As Other Sources

Discussion: Mother Jones, USA Today, CNN, PJ Media Home, Grist, Fox News, The Federalist, Politico, Mediaite, IJR and Lawyers, Guns & Money

Bill Barrow / Associated Press:
Biden campaign says his climate plan failed to cite sources

Discussion: Axios, KTLA and The Week

Alex Griswold / Washington Free Beacon:
Joe Biden's Climate Platform Appears to Plagiarize From Nonprofits

Discussion: Breitbart and IJR

Washington Post:

GOP lawmakers warn White House they'll try to block Trump's Mexico tariffs — Republican senators warned Trump administration officials Tuesday they were prepared to block the president's effort to impose tariffs on Mexican imports, promising what would be GOP lawmakers' most brazen defiance of the president since he took office.

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, Townhall, Breitbart, OpenSecrets.org, Daily Kos, The Mahablog, CNBC, The Daily Caller, Roll Call, ThinkProgress, Hullabaloo, Vanity Fair and VICE News

Eliana Johnson / Politico:

Republicans ready to quash Cuccinelli — Ken Cuccinelli has spent years attacking Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans. Now, it's time for payback. — President Donald Trump wants Cuccinelli, who most recently led the anti-establishment Senate Conservatives Fund, to be director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Amber Phillips / Washington Post:
Republicans' opposition to Trump's Mexico tariffs comes at great political risk

Discussion: Politico, Breitbart, Fox News and The Week

New York Times:
Senate Republicans Warn White House Against Mexico Tariffs

Discussion: Townhall, Politico and Mediaite

CNN:
Republicans signal to White House not to nominate Ken Cuccinelli for immigration post

Discussion: Political Wire

Elaina Plott / The Atlantic:
Trump's Two Crutches

Discussion: The Root, Vanity Fair, Associated Press, Townhall, Daily Wire, CNBC, Washington Times, Politico, Mediaite, spiked and Shareblue Media

Gabriel Sherman / Vanity Fair:

“Marla Was Under Duress”: Revealed in His Marla Maples Prenup, Donald Trump's Draconian Art of the Marriage Deal — She only got $1 million. Trump called himself a billionaire, but likely wasn't. Child support would cease if Tiffany joined the Army or the Peace Corps. And other secrets of the Trump-Marla prenup.

Discussion: Mother Jones, Jezebel, Mediaite and POLITICUSUSA

Susan Page / USA Today:

Harry Reid changes opinion, says Pelosi-led House should open Trump impeachment inquiry — Impeaching a U.S. president might not be the be all end all for their career. Not only can a president remain in office after impeachment, but even see higher approval ratings. We explain. — CONNECT

Discussion: CNN, Talking Points Memo, NBC News and The Guardian

CNN:

First on CNN: White House directs Hicks, Donaldson to withhold White House documents from House panel — (CNN)The White House has directed former officials Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson not to turn over any documents to the House Judiciary Committee relating to their time at the White House …

Discussion: CNBC, The Atlantic, Washington Post, Axios, Politico, Vanity Fair, Outside the Beltway, The Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, Joe.My.God., Daily Kos, UPI, Mediaite, New York Post and Political Wire

Matt Zapotosky / Washington Post:
Justice Department tells Congress it is willing to negotiate release of Mueller materials …

Discussion: The Daily Caller, The Week and Daily Kos

NBC News:
White House directs Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson to ignore House subpoenas

Discussion: BuzzFeed News, RedState, Washington Free Beacon, The Week and CNN

Ed Morrissey / Hot Air:

DoJ: Key Mueller Witness Arrested For Transporting Child Pornography ... Again — Adam Schiff's plans to go after Erik Prince may have hit a dead end. After the release of the Mueller report, the House Intelligence chair referred Prince for prosecution on perjury, thank to testimony …

Discussion: RedState, CNBC, Balloon Juice, CNN and U.S. Department of Justice

BuzzFeed News:

Justice Department Clarifies Redactions To Mueller Report — The Department of Justice told a federal court judge that it cannot disclose any redacted parts of special counsel Robert Mueller's report without harming ongoing national security investigations and other sensitive matters.

Erica Orden / CNN: Judge orders key Mueller witness arrested on child porn charges be driven by FBI to Virginia for court appearance

William K. Rashbaum / New York Times:

Paul Manafort to Be Sent to Rikers, Where He Faces Solitary Confinement — Mr. Manafort was indicted on state charges, which prosecutors brought to ensure he would go to prison if pardoned by President Trump. High-profile inmates are often held in protective custody.

Discussion: Fox News, The Daily Beast, Gothamist, The Root, Washington Monthly, Spectator USA, Townhall, CNN, Mediaite, UPI, Breitbart, VICE News and Right Wing Watch

Fox News:
Judge orders Paul Manafort to be transferred to New York City's notorious Rikers Island

Discussion: Politico, The Daily Beast, The Rush Limbaugh Show, Reason, The Daily Caller, New York Post, Daily Wire, Sean Hannity, Daily Kos, American Greatness, Law & Crime, The Week, CNBC, Joe.My.God. and RedState

New York Times:

For Trump, U.K. State Visit Is a (Royal) Family Affair — LONDON — When Queen Elizabeth II welcomed the president on Monday for his first state visit to Britain, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner watched from a Buckingham Palace balcony. Later, at a state banquet, Eric Trump posed for photographs.

Discussion: POLITICUSUSA, CNN, Shareblue Media, Fox News and The Sun

Guillermo Contreras / ExpressNews.com:

Emails show Texas governor requested the voter purge that used flawed data — Electronic communications made public Tuesday show Gov. Greg Abbott's office was a driving force in the state's program to purge nearly 100,000 suspected non-U.S. citizens from Texas' voter rolls.

Discussion: Campaign Legal Center and Political Wire

Jason Rezaian / Washington Post:

The State Department has been funding trolls. I'm one of their targets. — Even after spending a year and a half in prison in Tehran, I knew that if I wanted to go on writing about Iran, I would be a target for plenty of public attacks despite the abuse I had suffered at the hands of the Islamic Republic.

Discussion: The American Conservative

Washington Post:

Meet the GOP operatives who aim to smear the 2020 Democrats — but keep bungling it — Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl — a pair of boundlessly eager, profoundly unrepentant aspirants to the dankest depths of political chicanery — were watching television together the other day when something caught Burkman's eye.

Alex Horton / Washington Post:

A teacher asked Trump to round up ‘illegal students’ — in tweets she says she thought were private — Georgia Clark, a veteran high school English teacher in Fort Worth, had an urgent request for President Trump: She needed help pulling undocumented immigrants from her school.

Discussion: Townhall, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Root, Splinter and Mercury News

Dominick Mastrangelo / Washington Examiner:

Biden carries double-digit lead in state Trump won in 2016 — Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign is off to a good start in North Carolina. — Biden carried a double-digit lead in a new Emerson College poll released Tuesday. — Biden is ahead of President Trump 56% to 44% in the Tar Heel State …

Discussion: Political Wire and Washington Free Beacon

CNN:
CNN Poll: Biden continues to lead crowded Democratic field

Discussion: NBC News, Splinter, Breitbart, Fox News, Washington Times, The Week, Politico and Political Wire

Los Angeles Times:

Homelessness jumps 12% in L.A. County and 16% in the city; officials ‘stunned’ — In a hard reality check for Los Angeles County's multimillion-dollar hope of ending homelessness, officials reported Tuesday that the number of people living on the streets, in vehicles and in shelters increased by about 12% over last year.

Discussion: Media Matters for America, Sean Hannity and Mediaite

Tom Winter / NBC News:

Hate crimes surge in NYC, attacks on Jews almost double — The NYPD recorded 184 hate crimes through June 2 — up from 112 in 2018 — during a period when the city experienced a continued reduction in overall crimes. — The number of hate crimes in New York City jumped by 64 percent this year …

Discussion: The Week

HuffPost:

Campaign Money Helping Make Up For Tenant Shortage At Trump Tower — As commercial renters flee, Trump keeps spending $37,500 a month in campaign funds at his own building — even though much of the Republican Party's leased space in Virginia is going unused.

Discussion: Daily Kos, Shareblue Media, Politico and Talking Points Memo

Emily Todd VanDerWerff / Vox:

HBO's Chernobyl is a terrific miniseries. Its writer hopes you don't think it's the whole truth. — Craig Mazin on turning disaster into great TV and narrative poison. — HBO's terrific five-episode miniseries Chernobyl has two big surprises up its sleeve.

Katherine Clarke / Wall Street Journal:

Jeff Bezos Buys Fifth Avenue Condo Spread for Around $80 Million — The Amazon CEO is finalizing the purchase of three units at 212 Fifth Avenue near Madison Square Park — Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos is set to finalize the purchase of three New York apartments Tuesday in a deal valued …

Discussion: Washington Post, Fortune and New York Post

Steve Benen / MSNBC:

Remember when Republicans were prepared to impeach Hillary Clinton? — On Nov. 8, 2016, Donald Trump unexpectedly won the U.S. presidential election. Just four days earlier, however, the Washington Post published this report on Republican plans to impeach Hillary Clinton, whom they expected to win.

Ross Douthat / New York Times:

What Are Conservatives Actually Debating? — What the strange war over “David French-ism” says about the right. — In March the religious journal First Things published a short manifesto, signed by a group of notable conservative writers and academics, titled “Against the Dead Consensus.”

Discussion: Arc Digital, American Enterprise Institute, National Review, Washington Monthly, the way of improvement …, The American Conservative, The Week, Tablet Magazine and American Greatness

Adam Forrest / Yahoo News:

Trump baby blimp ‘stabbed with sharp object’ by pro-Trump activist in London — Trump baby blimps flown at today's protests in London against the US president's visit was attacked by a pro-Trump supporter carrying a sharp object. — A woman approached a group anti-Trump activists outside …

Discussion: The Gateway Pundit and Splinter

Matthew Schmitz / First Things:

Sohrab Ahmari Is Right — Judging by the number of articles they have written and the tweets they have sent, certain conservative writers view Sohrab Ahmari as a major threat to public decency. Nothing outraged these writers more than Ahmari's observation that “civility and decency are secondary values.”

Camilo Montoya-Galvez / CBS News:

House passes latest DREAM Act, hoping to place millions of immigrants on path to citizenship — Washington — With a handful of Republican votes, House Democrats passed the latest version of the DREAM Act, an ambitious expansion of a nearly two-decades-long legislative effort that would place millions …

TMZ.com:

Central Park 5 Investigator Linda Fairstein Resigns from Nonprofit Org — LINDA FAIRSTEIN RESIGNS FROM NONPROFIT ORG — EXCLUSIVE — 5:19 PM PT — A rep for Safe Horizon tells us, “After careful consideration, Lina Fairstein has made the difficult decision to resign from the Safe Horizon Board of Directors.

Discussion: The Daily Beast, The FADER, theGrio, Mercury News, Decider and New York Post

Sam Dorman / Fox News:

Adam Schiff continues attack on Barr, says AG is ‘second most dangerous man’ in US — Attorney General William Barr is acting like the president's defense attorney and is the “second most dangerous man in the country,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said on Tuesday.

Discussion: Breitbart and Mediaite

Alex Pappas / Fox News:

Dossier author Christopher Steele will be questioned by US investigators: report — Former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the anti-Trump dossier of salacious and unverified claims about the president's ties to Russia, has agreed to be questioned by investigators from the United States, according to a report in Britain.

Discussion: The Times & The Sunday Times, Law & Crime, The Gateway Pundit, RedState, Breitbart and Sean Hannity

Adam Goldman / New York Times:

F.B.I., Pushing to Stop Domestic Terrorists, Grapples With Limits on Its Power — EVERETT, Wash. — Dakota Reed's mind brimmed with thoughts of mass murder. In November, he wrote on Facebook, “I am shooting for 30 Jews.” — The next month, he uploaded a video of himself in his bedroom …

Discussion: Daily Kos

Associated Press:

Trump administration bans educational and recreational travel to Cuba — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Tuesday imposed major new travel restrictions on visits to Cuba by U.S. citizens, including a ban on many forms of educational and recreational travel.

Discussion: Axios and The Week

Sean Trende / Real Clear Politics:

Is GOP's Senate Majority in More Peril Than We Think? — The general thinking about the Republican Senate majority is that it has solidified to the point where Democrats are effectively shut out of gaining control of the upper chamber in 2020. But in truth, the GOP majority is in more danger than many analysts believe.