Daily Update | July 19, 2019
Kyle Skinner // 7/19/19 //
Newly unsealed court documents show that Trump communicated repeatedly with Michael Cohen during the election to keep the Stormy Daniels story quiet. The acting Secretary of Homeland Security has testified that the number of family separations at the border has fallen. The Senate has passed a bill making hacking elections a crime.
IMMIGRATION
The acting Secretary of Homeland Security has testified that the number of family separations at the border has fallen (WaPo, NPR).
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
William Barr’s donations to Senate Republicans spiked just before they confirmed him as AG (Quartz).
DEMOCRACY
The Senate has passed a bill making hacking elections a crime (The Hill).
Mother Jones reports that after the citizenship question was permanently stricken from the census, Trump issued an executive order calling on the Census Bureau to gather citizenship data from administrative records.
- The census debacle may be leading the White House to attempt ousting senior Commerce official Earl Comstock (Politico).
- LInda Greenhouse writes that though the rule of law prevailed in the census case, it “hangs by a thread” (NYT).
- Incidentally, yesterday would have been the 275th birthday of Eldridge Gerry, the founding father whose name forms the root of the word “gerrymander” (Yahoo News).
INVESTIGATIONS
Newly unsealed court documents show that Trump communicated repeatedly with Michael Cohen during the election to keep the Stormy Daniels story quiet (WaPo, NPR, Politco).