Edward Snowden: Russian collusion is too 'complicated' for Trump

Edward Snowden in a recent interview expressed skepticism about special counsel Robert Mueller’s ability to find collusion between President Trump and Russia in his ongoing investigation, saying such a scheme would be too "complicated" for a "guy [that] can’t even remember what he was going to say at the end of a sentence.”

The former National Security Agency contractor and controversial whistleblower recommended that Americans temper their expectations that Mueller will come up with a “smoking gun” in the probe.

“I think people are asking for too much when they hope that the Mueller investigation is going to come up with kind of a smoking gun and say, ‘Yes! Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, in the hotel room with the piss tape!’” Snowden told The Intercept, referring to salacious allegations included in the so-called Steele dossier.

“You know that’s not how the world works, life is not that simple,” he said.

Snowden, who fled the US in 2013 and took refuge in Russia, suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have wanted to engage Trump in a direct plot to interfere in the presidential election because of his often erratic loquaciousness.

“And to be honest, everyone who has heard Trump speak for three minutes knows he’s a wrecking ball,” Snowden said. “This does not sound like the kind of person that you would want to engage in some kind of complicated Manchurian Candidate … the guy can’t even remember what he was going to say at the end of a sentence.”
Snowden added that the possibility of some sort of collusion is still there.

“But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t want to cooperate, that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t do anything to achieve an advantage,” he told The Intercept. “I just think we just need to be realistic about what an investigation can possibly find.”



http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/389594-edward-snowden-suggests-trump-couldnt-have-colluded-with-russia

Police: Flight instructors kidnapped Chinese student, tried to deport him

Authorities say a California pilot and flight instructor and his assistant kidnapped a foreign student and tried to deport him “back to China.”

Jonathan McConkey and ground instructor Kelsi Hoser are accused of kidnapping foreign student Tianshu Shi and trying to forcibly put him on a plane to China, KRCR News reported.

The pair showed up Thursday night at Shi’s apartment, which he shares with other students from the IASCO flight training school in Redding, Calif.

Shi had been living in the U.S. for seven months and is one of dozens of Chinese citizens with student visas who come to train at the flight school, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

They informed Shi that they were sending him back to China and would come return for him in the morning, according to a police statement.

When they returned around dawn on Friday, Shi reportedly refused to go with them.


http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/389632-flight-instructors-allegedly-kidnapped-chinese-student-tried-to-deport-him

America has a massive truck driver shortage. Here's why few want an $80,000 job.

America has a massive shortage of truck drivers. Joyce Brenny, head of Brenny Transportation in Minnesota, increased driver pay 15 percent this year to try to attract more drivers. Many of her drivers now earn $80,000, she says, yet she still can't find enough people for the job.

About 51,000 more drivers are needed to meet the demand from companies such as Amazon and Walmart that are shipping more goods across the country, according to the American Trucking Associations. The driver shortage is already leading to delayed deliveries and higher prices for goods that Americans buy. The ATA predicts that it's likely to get worse in the coming years.

Many trucking companies are so desperate for drivers that they are offering signing bonuses and pay raises. So why don't more Americans want this job? We asked truck drivers who have been doing the job anywhere from four months to 40 years for their views.

Most said the answer is simple: The lifestyle is rough. You barely see your family, you rarely shower, and you get little respect from car drivers, police or major retailers. Michael Dow said he has been divorced twice because of trucking. Donna Penland said she gained 60 pounds her first year from sitting all day and a lack of healthful food on the road.

A few drivers told The Washington Post that they earn $100,000, but many said their annual pay is less than $50,000 (government statistics say median pay for the industry is $42,000). As for the bonuses, driver Daniel Gollnick said they are a “complete joke” because of all the strings attached.

Despite the hardships, half said they would recommend the job to friends and family, chiefly because, as Gollnick said, “it's the easiest money you can get without a college degree.” Here are the drivers' perspectives on America's trucking crisis.



https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/america-has-a-massive-truck-driver-shortage-here’s-why-few-want-an-dollar80000-job/ar-AAxWhJx?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

Nunes feels Russia probe blowback at home

LOS ANGELES — Devin Nunes, the California congressman whose allegiance to Donald Trump has made him public enemy number one to many Democrats, is beginning to feel the heat back home.

His little-known challenger is awash in cash from across the country as a result of Nunes’ polarizing role in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. An independent expenditure campaign has posted hostile billboards along Highway 99, the heavily traveled main road through Nunes’ Central Valley district.

On Wednesday, a report in the Fresno Bee linked Nunes to a winery that allegedly held a wild cocaine-and-prostitutes evening yacht cruise — a winery where the congressman is a part-owner.

Yet Nunes isn’t blinking. In response to the first real challenge of his career, the House Intelligence Committee chairman recently raised a dizzying $2.3 million in just over six weeks — nearly as much as he raised in his entire 2016 campaign.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/story/2018/05/25/devin-nunes-russia-probe-fundraising-609492

ICE has a prison bus just for babies

Republicans turn on each other in California US House fight

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Twenty-three years ago, Scott Baugh was a little-known Southern California lawyer whose conservative politics and youthful brio impressed Republican U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who steered his new protege to a seat in the state Legislature.

Now, Baugh wants the congressman's job.

What was once a political kinship forged around the values of the Reagan revolution has deteriorated into a nasty rivalry in a state where Republicans can scarcely afford it.

Democrats are pursuing a string of Republican-held House seats in California, four of them partially or entirely in Orange County. But in the 48th District, Rohrabacher also is fighting off one of his own.

In a worst-case scenario, the intraparty feud could cost the GOP a seat in a year when the balance of power in Congress might hinge on a handful of California races.

"It's a dangerous situation," said Republican national committeeman Shawn Steel, who's known Rohrabacher since the 1960s and is backing his friend's bid for a 16th trip to Capitol Hill.

The bad blood between the old allies appears to stem at least partly from Baugh's belief that the congressman reneged on plans to retire at the end of the current term. It also reflects a new reality in the increasingly Democratic state: Republicans fighting over their shrinking turf.

Rohrabacher, 70, is a one-time Cold Warrior who became Russia's leading defender on Capitol Hill. His name has come up in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election; he has denied any wrongdoing.


http://www.tampabay.com/republicans-turn-on-each-other-in-california-us-house-fight-ap_national6431afb6c6f64003b1bec670167ce754

If Democrats are having a civil war, nobody told the voters

To peruse the coverage of the Democratic primaries of 2018, you’d think there was a battle royale within the Democratic Party: insurgent vs. establishment, Bernie vs. Hillary, progressive vs. moderate, grass roots vs. party bosses.

There’s been mention of a “battle between progressives and moderates” (the Guardian), a Democratic “identity crisis” (The Post), a “full-blown Democratic war” (CNN), a “civil war” (Fox News) and a “fight for the future of the Democratic Party” (BuzzFeed).

But if a civil war has been declared, somebody forgot to tell Democratic voters. They are stubbornly refusing to view 2018 through the progressive/moderate, insurgent/establishment lens.

In the Georgia Democratic gubernatorial primary Tuesday night, the winning candidate was a progressive darling who also had a lot of establishment support. In Kentucky on Tuesday night, a former Marine fighter pilot defeated an establishment favorite in a congressional primary.

But in Texas, a House candidate backed by the Sanders-inspired “Our Revolution” and trashed by the establishment Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) went down by a lopsided 2-to-1 margin.

In Nebraska a week earlier, a progressive congressional candidate upset a centrist in a House primary. But in Pennsylvania that same night, two congressional candidates backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) lost to candidates with establishment ties.

Those trying to plot these races on the progressive/centrist axis or the insurgent/establishment axis will have trouble discerning a pattern. That’s because those are false choices this year. Those distinctions are not driving voters in 2018.

Overriding all other considerations this year in Democratic voters’ minds (and candidates’ messages) is stopping President Trump and his congressional enablers. Related to that is the other major influence of this primary season: a huge rise in support for female candidates among men and women alike, likely driven by Trump’s misogyny, the #MeToo movement and Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016.

In Texas on Tuesday, the Democratic primary runoff in the 7th Congressional District, in suburban Houston, was supposed to be a Democratic donnybrook, according to the media narrative. The DCCC — a.k.a. the establishment — took the unusual step of criticizing candidate Laura Moser because party leaders thought she couldn’t win in November. In response, Our Revolution — a.k.a. the insurgents — jumped into the race and attempted to portray her opponent, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, as a tool of the establishment.

But when all the ballots were counted, it was no contest. Fletcher got 67 percent to Moser’s 33 percent. Those who followed the media narrative of the campaign will conclude that this was a major victory for the establishment, and for moderates. They would be dead wrong.

I didn’t write about the race, because my wife is Fletcher’s pollster. But one piece of Fletcher’s polling, printed here with the campaign’s permission, shows how phony the establishment vs. insurgent narrative was: Likely Democratic voters in the district had a highly positive view of the insurgent Sanders: 74 percent favorable, 15 percent unfavorable. But guess what? Their view of the establishment doyenne Hillary Clinton was virtually identical: 72 percent favorable, 17 percent unfavorable. If this was supposed to be a Democratic civil war, Democratic voters were noncombatants.

Certainly, there are policy differences among Democrats, and those will come out whenever they are again in a position to govern rather than resist. But Democrats are more ideologically homogenous than they have been historically. The Southern conservatives are long gone, and there is no equivalent to the “New Democrats” of the Bill Clinton era. The party has been pulled to a populist consensus by Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and pushed there by the Trump plutocracy, which has showered riches on the wealthy and the corporate.

Some within the party are fomenting division with litmus tests, such as Tom Steyer’s effort to get Democrats to commit to impeaching Trump. But while 71 percent of Democrats want impeachment, according to last month’s Quinnipiac Poll, there’s little evidence that voters are punishing candidates who don’t commit to what would be a futile gesture without a Democratic supermajority in the Senate.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/if-democrats-are-having-a-civil-war-nobody-told-the-voters/2018/05/25/849c6f3e-5eca-11e8-a4a4-c070ef53f315_story.html?utm_term=.601298d910c5

Former GOP lawmaker says Obama got elected because he was black

ormer Republican congressman Joe Walsh (Ill.) said Saturday that former President Barack Obama was elected because of his skin color.

"Barack Obama did," the conservative radio and TV host said on Twitter in response to a user who stated that politicians don't get elected because they're black.

Walsh, who served in Congress during both of Obama's terms, has made similar racially driven suggestions in the past.

In a 2011 interview, Walsh said Obama was only elected because he was "a black man who was articulate," suggesting that he wouldn't have risen to political prominence by being a "dynamic, white" state senator.


https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/389529-former-gop-lawmaker-says-obama-got-elected-because-he-was-black%3famp

Border Patrol beat, sexually assaulted, and denied medical care to immigrant children, ACLU says

As a detained 16-year-old immigrant waited in her cell with her infant child, a Border Patrol stood in the doorway and warned her, “Right now, we close the door, we rape you and fuck you.” On a separate occasion, an agent tossed an immigrant child to the ground, leveled a gun at him, and told the kid, “Stop or I will shoot you.” A group of officers once told several pregnant girls that they’d "come to contaminate this country with all those things. Look at all those other girls, all fat.”

These incidents, and dozens of similar allegations of child abuse by Border Patrol agents, are all detailed in a report released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union’s Border Litigation Project and the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago School of Law. All of the incidents, which are drawn from complaints filed with a Department of Homeland Security watchdog agency and obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, took place between 2009 and 2014, under the Obama administration.

“The records show that the leadership at Customs and Border Protection were well aware of the allegations of unlawful child abuse — including people still now directing the agency — yet there is no indication that any individual official was ever held accountable for abuse,” Mitra Ebadolahi, a staff attorney with the Border Litigation project and the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties, wrote in a blog post accompanying the report’s release. (CBP oversees the Border Patrol.)

CBP flatly denied the allegations in the ACLU report.

“The false accusations made by the ACLU against the previous administration are unfounded and baseless,” CBP spokesperson Dan Hetlage said in a statement, adding the ACLU’s report “ignores a number of improvements” and oversight mechanisms implemented by the CBP. “The [Office of Inspector General] has already completed an investigation and found these claims unsubstantiated and did not observe misconduct or inappropriate conduct. CBP takes seriously all allegations of misconduct, but without new specifics is unable to check to commence reasonable steps to examine these assertions and address the accusations levied.”


https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/4353eq/border-patrol-beat-sexually-assaulted-and-denied-medical-care-to-immigrant-children-aclu-says?utm_campaign=sharebutton

Meet 18 Candidates Leading the Historic Rise of Black Women Running for Office in Alabama

Before Black Panther celebrated the all-­female freedom fighters of Wakanda, real-life black women formed their own type of special-forces unit in Alabama. When a whopping 98 percent of African American women voters united behind Doug Jones, they were able to elect him as the first Democrat to represent Alabama in the U.S. Senate in more than 20 years. They didn’t just defeat Roy Moore; they rocked the political status quo.

They have no intention of stopping there.

An unprecedented groundswell of at least 70 black women have launched electoral campaigns across Alabama for local, state, and national offices in 2018, according to the nonprofit Emerge America, which trains women to run for office. While this echoes a national trend (the Black Women in Politics database lists 590 black female candidates across the country, 97 of them for federal seats), experts say the numbers in Alabama are particularly striking. From first-time hopefuls to seasoned veterans, twenty-somethings to sixty-somethings, women are lining up to disrupt the mostly white, mostly Republican old boys’ club in the state. (Only two black women are running as Republicans in Alabama this year, both for local seats, according to the state’s GOP office.) “African Americans are a quarter of the population here, yet they aren’t seeing their issues front and center,” says Rhonda Briggins, a cofounder of VoteRunLead and an Alabama native, “so they’ve decided to run themselves.”

Representative Terri Sewell, 53, who’s up for reelection this year, was the first black woman to represent Alabama in Congress when she was elected in 2011. “As a congressional intern during the late eighties, I remember walking the halls of the Capitol and not seeing many black women in any role, let alone as elected officials,” she says. “When I was first elected, making my voice heard as a black woman surrounded by older white men was a challenge. This year we’re proving the strength of our voice at the ballot box.”



https://www.glamour.com/story/black-women-running-alabama-midterms