Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

The Great Dismal Trump Swamp may have another endangered creature:

A federal grand jury in New York is investigating top Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy, examining whether he used his position as vice chair of President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee to drum up business deals with foreign leaders, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press and people familiar with the matter.

A wide-ranging subpoena the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn recently sent to Trump’s inaugural committee seeks records relating to 20 individuals and businesses. All have connections to Broidy, his investment and defense contracting firms, and foreign officials he pursued deals with — including the current president of Angola and two politicians in Romania.

Prosecutors appear to be investigating whether Broidy exploited his access to Trump for personal gain and violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to offer foreign officials “anything of value” to gain a business advantage. Things of value in this case could have been an invitation to the January 2017 inaugural events or access to Trump.

You may recall Broidy was embroiled in a scandal involving a mistress who got pregnant and needed to be paid hush money for an abortion by Trump's former fixer Michael Cohen. It's been speculated (it would be irresponsible not to) that the mistress and fetus were actually Trump's and not Broidy's.

The career DOJ lawyers who were humiliated by Trump's decision to press ahead with putting a citizenship question on the 2020 census form even after the Supreme Court said the assministration's rationale was "contrived" have decided they've had enough:

The Department of Justice switched up the team of lawyers representing the Trump administration in it push to get a citizenship question on the 2020 census, according to the Washington Post. 

The DOJ announced the decision in a statement after the Post asked the department about the move. A person familiar with the matter told the Post that some career lawyers within the department had concerns over how the case has been handled.

The Republican attorneys general in 18 states and a far- right Texas judge have now solidified the branding of their party as the "no health care for you" party, regardless of the outcome of this case:

On Tuesday, the Trump administration and 18 Republican-led states will face off against a score of Democratic-led states over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act — the sprawling law the Supreme Court has upheld twice but a federal district judge in Texas ruled invalid late last year.

If the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit hearing these arguments agrees with the lower court, the “win” for Republicans, who have sought for nearly a decade to ditch the ACA, could perversely cause the GOP the greatest trouble, according to analysts from both parties.

A 5th Circuit ruling that the health-care law is unconstitutional would almost certainly catapult the issue back before the Supreme Court — and to the forefront of the 2020 presidential and congressional races, say legal and political analysts. Even if the high court were to decline the case, the drama would raise fresh uncertainties about the millions of Americans who could lose insurance coverage and consumer protections created under the law — especially those with preexisting medical conditions, whom President Trump has vowed to protect even as his administration tries to eliminate the law.

Of course, the best outcome would be for the law to stand and the rotted out Republican Party be further exposed as the sociopaths they are.

Burr Deming asks about Trump's hatred of immigrants,

What is the commonality that flows from the black kids in Central Park, through the Papers-Please campaign against America’s first black President, and finally to the deadly waters of the Rio Grande, where brown skinned bodies float downstream?

We think you know the answer, but read Deming's piece for the thread.

That post, by the way, we found in Infidel 753's invaluable link round- up.  If you haven't checked it out by now, you're missing a f*ckton of interesting topics, vids, threads and esoterica.