If you signed off early on Wednesday, you missed several major Trump-related stories that broke in the evening. The biggest of all, by far, was the news that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—the chump who allowed Donald Trump to use his memo about James Comey as a pretext for firing the former FBI director—issued a sharp about-face and announced that he had appointed another former FBI director, Robert Mueller, as special counsel to lead an investigation into the Trump team’s ties with Russia.

Mueller was appointed by George W. Bush but also served under Barack Obama, and Democrats hailed his selection. However, Mueller’s position does not come with immunity from Trump’s meddling: Trump could conceivably order Attorney General Jeff Session to fire Mueller, and if Sessions doesn’t comply, Trump could sack him and replace him with someone who would. Sound familiar?

Soon after the Mueller news broke, the Washington Post reported that last year, in a closed-door meeting of top GOP officials, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made some startling remarks about Trump, who was already the presumptive Republican nominee:

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.”

That’s California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, by the way, a notorious Putin stooge. A spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had tried to swear the attendees to secrecy, initially denied that McCarthy had said any such thing. Then, when the Post told him that they had a recording of the conversation, he immediately switched to claiming that it was all just a joke gone wrong. Nobody’s laughing.

Finally, the night wrapped up with two explosive stories about retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was fired in disgrace from his job as Trump’s national security advisor after serving just 24 days. According to the New York Times, Flynn had indeed informed Trump’s transition team that he was “under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign”—a gig that had paid him over $500,000. Despite this, Trump went ahead and hired Flynn anyway, for a role that, as the Times notes, gave Flynn access to “nearly every secret held by American intelligence agencies.”

McClatchy closed things out with another Flynn hit. It turns out that Flynn ordered a planned military campaign to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from ISIS be delayed, a move that was “consistent with the wishes of Turkey, which had long opposed the United States partnering with the Kurdish forces”—Turkey, which was Flynn’s paymaster. The operation had been planned for months by Obama’s national security team, which sought to hand it off to Trump’s. Only after Flynn got the boot was it finally put into action. And this is a man Trump has repeatedly called a “good guy.”

Much, much more to come—stay tuned to Daily Kos.

Leading Off

● Philadelphia, PA District Attorney: Criminal justice reformers scored a major victory on Tuesday when longtime civil rights attorney Larry Krasner won the Democratic primary for district attorney in Philadelphia, whose 1.5 million residents make it America's fifth-largest city. He earned 38 percent compared to just 20 percent for his nearest rival in a crowded field to succeed outgoing Democratic District Attorney Seth Williams, who will soon stand trial for corruption. Krasner is a defense attorney who supports Black Lives Matter and has promised to strike a blow against the practices that feed mass incarceration, never seek the death penalty, and abolish both civil asset forfeiture and stop-and-frisk programs that have been racially discriminatory and abusive.​

​This agenda is a marked turnaround from Philadelphia's recent history—indeed, the New York Times once called Democratic ex-District Attorney Lynne Abraham, who served from 1991 to 2010, "the deadliest D.A." in America. Krasner's win follows a string of major victories for criminal justice reformers in elections for prosecutors and law enforcement officers around the U.S. since 2016 in places like Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix that are home to millions of Americans. In contrast to many of those races though, Krasner didn't prevail by ousting a reactionary incumbent and his biggest rival Joe Khan was still quite progressive.

Krasner benefitted enormously from a late flood of $1.5 million in outside spending by billionaire progressive donor George Soros, who has poured millions into backing reformers in many recent key races around the country. However, police unions and many career prosecutors are not taking kindly to Krasner's victory, but it would take a monumental effort for the Republican candidate or an independent to defeat the Democratic nominee in a majority-nonwhite city that Hillary Clinton carried by 82-15 in 2016.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

The Child President

[Adjusts cold compress on head, washes down six aspirin with Scotch whiskey]

Jesus.

At next week's NATO summit, world leaders are---says a source to Vanity Fair---"preparing to deal with a child---someone with a short attention span and mood who has no knowledge of NATO, no interest in in-depth policy issues, nothing.” Apparently remarks are being limited to two minutes, and to keep his attention they've been told to sprinkle "Trump," "boobs," "pussy" and "golf" among the more complex words like "agreement," "defense" and"protocols."

To give you an idea what kind of challenge NATO will be dealing with, here's a look---via The President Show---at Trump's recent visit to Great Falls Country Day School:

And whatever you do, NATO, keep him away from blinking buttons.

Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

OK, the leak of Israeli intelligence to the Russians has got to be it, right? And the Comey memo? Peak Trump insanity, right?

And a special prosecutor, too!

I think we can handle it from here. It literally cannot get any… OMFG! HOW DID THEY GET THESE REPUBLICANS ON TAPE?

Ow! My head! Help!

Listen LIVE, right here at 9:00 AM ET!

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Kagro in the Morning is good!

Imagine reading and discussing the news every morning with your favorite Daily Kos editors! Now imagine doing that with David Waldman, Greg Dworkin, Joan McCarter, and even Armando! Pretty close, right?

Why let the corporate news drive you crazy with biased content and exorbitant subscription fees, when Daily Kos Radio can do it at half the cost? Help keep us up and running with a monthly, sustaining donation to our Patreon account! Or choose your own schedule with our Square Cash account.

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YouTube | iTunes | LibSyn | Keep us on the air! Donate via Patreon or Square Cash

David Waldman’s refrigerator is broken. Is your refrigerator running? If so, more Americans would vote for it over Trump... Before his appliance troubles, David would eat avocado toast three, four times a day, which sure adds up. So consider a donation to either Patreon or Square Cash. Quick! Greg Dworkin cuts through the chaos to point out that all the chaos is baffling the public less and less, even amongst the hard core Trumpists, who are beginning to slip into the enthusiasm gap. The Health Care bill already has the house in play, but now impeachment is becoming a winning Democratic issue. Republicans need votes too, so Trump’s protective wall is beginning to crack. Jason Chaffetz’s subpoena pen is starting to rise in anticipation. Of course, most polling occurred before news of the Comey Memo, and of course Trump’s overseas fiascos. Fox talkers are sooo bored with all of this, and anyhow they need to tune up for “Nearer My God to Thee”. Vlad throws in the anchor. Today Armando came to praise Greg, not to dispute him. What will it be, impeachment or the 25th amendment? Trump’s exceptional dealings with Russians continue to grow. Joan McCarter discusses the three exits Republicans are running for: “Trump is a victim”, “Trump is an idiot”, or “Trump is king”. Intelligence Trump leaked to Russians came from Israel, so maybe he should have checked his itinerary first. Looks like it will be a family trip, then. Donald threatens to ruin Mitch and Paul’s lifetime chance to ruin things, but not if their love holds strong, so Democrats have one choice: Shut. It. Down. KITM welcomes WRFZ 106.3 Rochester NY, Rochester Free Radio to our radio lineup! But, before you run away from the internet to turn on your radio, check out 5calls.org, and MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD.

(Thanks again to Scott Anderson for the show summary!)

Need more info on how to listen? Find it below the fold.

Even the most optimistic person on the left could not have imagined on January 20 how quickly Donald Trump would spark so many serious mentions of “impeachment.” But, then, the four-month interval of surreality we’ve just endured is unlike anything before in American politics at the top. 

What will be seen every day now after the latest developments is the steady sagging of support for Trump among conservatives. It’s reckless to predict such things, but the point when sagging turns into breaking can’t be far away unless Trump manages to turn things around. And that would require Trump to stop being Trump.

A whole lot of prominent conservatives didn’t want this guy elected in the first place. And it’s only 18 months until the mid-terms. And some of them who haven’t completely lost their moral compass know in their heart-of-hearts what they would be doing right now if Hillary Clinton (or Barack Obama or Bernie Sanders) was president and being accused with good evidence of doing what we know The Donald has done, much less what he is suspected of. Shackles and orange jumpsuits by lunchtime.

Plenty of liberals are excerpted in today’s APR, but it’s worth first noting a few words from Bret Stephens, the climate science-denier The New York Times recently hired to be a regular conservative voice on its Op-Ed pages. Stephens was never in Trump’s camp. In fact, he said just a year ago that he wanted Trump beaten so badly in the general election that Republican voters “learn their lesson.” So it’s no news that Stephens’ Thursday column states: 

No staff shake-up would have prevented any of this from happening. It would have descended on a hapless White House staff like a superheated pyroclastic flow from a presidential Pinatubo. And it will continue to descend, week after grim week, until Trump leaves or is forced from office.

That is the Trump reality. A man with a deformed personality and a defective intellect runs a dysfunctional administration — a fact finally visible even to its most ardent admirers. Who could have seen that one coming? Who knew that character might be destiny?

Let me predict one more thing. Unless Trump stops being Trump, over the next few weeks, ever more conservatives are going to accept the reality of Stephens’ conclusion, even if they don’t express themselves quite so colorfully.

Onward to what the non-conservatives have to say.

Edwin Rios at Mother Jones reports—Los Angeles Just Had the Most Expensive School Board Race Ever—and Betsy DeVos Couldn't Be Happier:

Charter school advocates landed a major victory Tuesday night, winning two seats on the Los Angeles Board of Education in the most expensive school board race in US history. Now, with charter supporters making up a majority of the board for the first time since 2010, the country's second-largest school district could see a charter school expansion—just as it confronts a looming budget deficit and declining enrollment.

Charter-backed Nick Melvoin unseated board president Steve Zimmer, who was running for his third and final term, according to unofficial results. Kelly Gonez, a pro-reform candidate, declared victory late Tuesday night over Imelda Padilla.

The board election capped a long-standing battle between teachers' unions and wealthy charter school proponents like former mayor Richard Riordan, Walmart heirs Alice and Jim Walton, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, philanthropist and major charter backer Eli Broad, and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who gave $5 million to the California Charter Schools Association Advocates, a pro-charter PAC. Both sides attacked candidates in brutal advertisements—as of Wednesday, outside spending on the school board races reached more than $14 million, twice the amount spent in 2013, according to Los Angeles Ethics Commission campaign finance data.

TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES

QUOTATION

“At the risk of sounding really corny now, I’m a career prosecutor. I’ve been doing this for a very long time. And I believe in holding people responsible when they violate the law. But our sole responsibility is to seek justice. And sometimes that means a very lengthy sentence, for people who are dangerous and from which society must be protected. But it always means seeking a proportional sentence. And that’s what this sentencing reform is really about.”
                    ~Sally Yates, interview on reforming mandatory minimum drug sentences, July 2015

TWEET OF THE DAY

BLAST FROM THE PAST

At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—Mitt, you dunce, you have to remember your lies:

Mitt Romney, who has a few months yet to stumble-tongue his way into another dozen or so memorable head-shakers before he actually gets the nomination, offered what may well turn out to be this campaign's most blunderful word-blunder yet. It's already viral, unrecallable:

Uh, I'm actually going to to, I'm not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was. And with regards to, uh, I'll go back and take at what was said there.

What's in evidence in this remarkable word salad is the mark of the bad liar.

We all know that Romney is a major liar. We've seen it over and over during this campaign. The pile of his lies already has grown enormously and the general election campaign is barely under way.

For someone with his assets, you would think he would have hired himself a better coach of effective lying. He can certainly afford it given the gobs of cash he's sucked up by destroying jobs and being rewarded for it. But apparently he's been a cheapskate on that front. Because he just isn't very good at it despite all the practice.

On Tuesday night, Republican Kay Kirkpatrick, a retired orthopedic surgeon, easily defeated Democratic attorney Christine Triebsch by a 57-43 margin in a special election for Georgia's 32nd State Senate District, which happens to be located almost entirely within Georgia's 6th Congressional District. (Republican Judson Hill vacated the seat to run in the House special election, finishing a distant 5th in last month's primary.) While you might think Republicans, who have good reason to fret about the June 20 runoff in the 6th, are breathing a sigh of relief, a closer look at the numbers in the 32nd should only worry them.

For starters, in the primary, which took place on the same day as the congressional primary, the five Republican candidates on the ballot combined for 60 percent of the vote while the three Democrats took 40 percent. (As with the race for the 6th, all candidates ran together on a single ballot, with the top two vote-getters advancing.) This means that the GOP saw its overall margin slip from 20 points to just 14, a drop of 6 points. Needless to say, a similar shift in the 6th District would be lights out for Republican Karen Handel.

It's also worth noting that Triebsch took 43 percent despite raising just $5,000; Kirkpatrick, meanwhile, brought in a hefty $300,000. As it happens, Democrat Jon Ossoff won 42 percent within the confines of the 32nd District while spending millions of dollars, so Triebsch actually did a tinch better despite running a shoestring campaign. This suggests a GOP fade in the month since the primaries.

Kirkpatrick did manage to match the 14-point margin racked up by Donald Trump, who won here 54-40, but she fell far short of Mitt Romney's massive 67-31 victory. And that leads us to the final interesting observation about this race: Of all the legislative and congressional special elections held since Trump won last November that have pitted a Republican against a Democrat, this is the first to take place in a seat where Hillary Clinton performed better than Barack Obama—yet Kirkpatrick couldn't gain any headway on Trump.

That's a big deal because it had been reasonable to wonder whether voters in districts that had shifted to the right last year were just reverting to form.

This is some transition Mike Pence ran. New York Times with another big scoop on disgraced national security adviser Michael Flynn:

Michael T. Flynn told President Trump’s transition team weeks before the inauguration that he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign, according to two people familiar with the case.

Despite this warning, which came about a month after the Justice Department notified Mr. Flynn of the inquiry, Mr. Trump made Mr. Flynn his national security adviser. The job gave Mr. Flynn access to the president and nearly every secret held by American intelligence agencies.

Mr. Flynn’s disclosure, on Jan. 4, was first made to the transition team’s chief lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, who is now the White House counsel. That conversation, and another one two days later between Mr. Flynn’s lawyer and transition lawyers, shows that the Trump team knew about the investigation of Mr. Flynn far earlier than has been previously reported.

McGahn knew a lot and he knew it early. It also brings into question McGahn’s second talk with Sally Yates—the one in which she had to explain to him why Flynn being compromised was worrisome. It makes one wonder if that second go was more of a fishing expedition, where McGahn had time to consider their first talk, mull over unanswered questions, and then figure out what else he needed to know if Yates knew.

Bottom line: Mike Pence was running the transition.

Daily Kos Elections' project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation hits Iowa, which swung very sharply against the Democrats: Barack Obama carried the state 52-46 in 2012, but Donald Trump won it 52-42 last year, a shift of 16 points. As a result, Republicans also took full control of Iowa’s state government for the first time since the mid-1990s. You can find our master list of states here, which we'll be updating as we add new data sets. You can also find all our data from 2016 and past cycles here.

While Iowa Republicans flipped the state House and the governorship during the 2010 GOP wave, Democrats managed to narrowly maintain control of the state Senate for the next six years. However, while Team Blue held on to their slim 26-24 Senate majority even through the awful 2014 cycle, Trump’s 52-42 victory was just too much. Republicans jumped out to a huge 29-20 advantage (state Sen. David Johnson left the GOP before the election over Trump and remains an independent) and also netted two state House seats to expand their majority in the lower chamber to 59-41. In all, Trump carried 33 of the state’s 50 Senate seats and 65 of 100 House districts. Four years before, it was Obama who won 33 Senate seats, and he also carried 61 state House seats.

Predictably, Hawkeye State Republicans immediately set to work using their new powers to pass a deeply conservative agenda, including a voter ID bill, restrictions on abortion, and legislation aimed at weakening organized labor. And Trump’s huge success, as well as Republican Joni Ernst’s 52-44 victory in 2014’s U.S. Senate race, give Team Red strong reason to be optimistic that they’ll remain in control of Iowa for a while to come.

However, if a backlash against Trump next year gives local Democrats a chance to capitalize, they’ll have a big opening, at least in the state House. Next year, the entire lower chamber and half of the state Senate is up; as we’ll explain below, the 2018 Senate map is very daunting for Democrats, but the state House is more reasonable. Democrats also have a chance to retake the governor’s office from Republican Kim Reynolds, who is set to be elevated from lieutenant governor to governor once GOP Gov. Terry Branstad is confirmed as Trump’s ambassador to China.

While the GOP was able to gerrymander their districts to lock in majorities in states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, it’s a different story in Iowa. In the Hawkeye State, both legislative and congressional maps are drawn by an independent commission and sent to the legislature for approval. If the legislature rejects three of the commission’s maps, it’s then given the chance to draw its own districts, but the Democratic Senate and GOP House approved the commission’s initial proposals without any fuss in 2011.

Two undocumented immigrant workers are facing deportation after security officials at Travis Air Force Base contacted ICE when the two men could not provide valid Social Security numbers to get through a security check for a construction job. Hugo Mejia and Rodrigo Nuñez—neither of whom have criminal records, according to their attorney—both say they were not aware that the hospital where they were supposed to put up sheet rock was on a military base.

“Mejia told CBS13 he gave security his legal California issued driver’s license number,” but that Travis Air Force Base called ICE after finding out they were undocumented, and both were arrested and detained. Now, Congressman Jared Huffman and more than 100 community members have voiced their support for the men, one of whom has three U.S. citizen kids. “This is the kind of inhumane deportation that even President Trump has said we weren’t going to see,” Rep. Huffman said:

“The first thing that came to my mind was why me?” Mejia said in Spanish during a phone interview with this news organization from the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center in Elk Grove, where he is being held.

“I’ve been here for 17 years and my record is excellent. I’ve never done anything to anyone. My bills are paid on time, I have a clean record, we’ve never asked the government for help.”

A spokeswoman for the air force base confirmed the incident in a prepared statement, saying, “As part of normal protocol, Security Forces personnel entered the individuals’ information into the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, which identified them as undocumented immigrants. Security Forces then telephoned Immigration Customs Enforcement, who confirmed the status of the individuals and responded to take custody.”

But according to the Mercury News, “it’s unclear if employees or officials at military bases across the U.S. are required to report undocumented immigrants who visit the bases to ICE. A spokeswoman for Travis did not say if there are any such policies in place or if the individual who reported Mejia and Nuñez to ICE used his own discretion.”

Republicans in Missouri are so desperate for women not to have abortions that they are willing to cut uninsured women’s access to any kind of family planning services. The budget that lawmakers have passed and are sending to Republican Gov. Eric Greitens for signing prevents hospitals and clinics which participate in the uninsured women’s health services program from receiving state funds if the organization provides abortion services. But apparently, punishing these women isn’t enough. The Republican budget also includes cutting the program by 2.1 million dollars. How’s that for compassion? So much for the party of morality and values.

That means patients insured through the program, like Alecia Deal, 37, may need to find another doctor. Her coverage currently pays for checkups, birth control and cancer screenings at a Planned Parenthood clinic in south St. Louis, which does not provide abortions but can provide a referral. Though limited, it’s the only health coverage she has.

“I’m trying to wrap my mind around why the government has anything to say about it,” Deal said.

Why indeed? Other than the fact that they simply hate and want to punish women. Or force their religious views onto women’s bodies. And re-litigate a legal decision, Roe v. Wade, that has been US law for nearly 45 years. But what this really does is marginalize women who are poor and cannot afford access to contraception or family planning any other way. 

About 70,000 Missourians receive care through the state’s uninsured women’s health services program. Enrollees must be between the ages of 18 and 55, and with a family income below 201 percent of the federal poverty level — about $41,000 a year for a family of three. [...]

The legislature's decision last year [to eliminate organizations from the program that provide abortions for reasons other than saving the mother’s life] forced the Missouri Department of Social Services to give up an annual $8.3 million in federal funds for the state’s program for family planning, because federal Medicaid rules prevent states from restricting provider choice. The requirement [also] eliminated several hospitals from the coverage network. 

Way to go, Missouri. The “show me state” is showing women just how little it cares about their reproductive health, well-being and right to access safe contraception.

The White House is getting battered with one scandal after another, thanks to the unstable, irresponsible, dangerous narcissist in the Oval Office. And it sometimes seems as though the only break Donald Trump’s staff are taking from trying to respond to and manage the scandals he creates is when they go dish to reporters about the chaos in the White House. The Trump team has been plagued by leaks from the beginning, but every new scandal now comes with a predictable torrent of quotes like “we are kind of helpless” and tales of Trump yelling at his advisers for problems he has caused:

Mr. Trump’s rattled staff kept close tabs on a meeting early Monday in which the president summoned Mr. Spicer; the deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders; and the communications director, Michael Dubke, to lecture them on the need “to get on the same page,” according to a person briefed on the meeting.

That was Monday. Tuesday, after the reports of James Comey’s memo detailing pressure from Trump to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s Russia ties:

Trump was furious about the story, one of the officials said, but retreated to the White House residence within 75 minutes of it going online – leaving aides to “figure out how bad the fallout was.”

It’s a routine by now: Trump’s actions get reported and he blames his staff for the consequences. When they try to put the fires out, within a day he makes them look terrible by showing the world that they were lying—which makes them less able to respond to the next crisis.