Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) announces she’s decided to support beginning an impeachment inquiry of President Trump. Here’s the video of her announcement. The Cook Report rates her district (CA-45) as a R+3 district.

Today I wanted to speak directly to the people of CA-45. There's been a lot of noise in D.C. and in the press about impeachment, so I wanted to share my thoughts with you. pic.twitter.com/ceri6lHwbY

— Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) June 18, 2019

President Trump’s instantly notorious interview with George Stephanopoulos in which he expressed openness to receiving foreign government assistance in the 2020 presidential election sparked a flurry of pushback and denunciations. The Chair of the FEC released a statement rebuking the President. Various lawyers noted laws prohibiting candidates from accepting things of value from foreign nationals. But many of the criticisms themselves illustrate more than anything the impact almost three years of Republican gaslighting, goal post moving and obfuscation has had on the public debate in this country. The fact that accepting assistance from a foreign government – which President Trump wants to establish as the new norm – might technically be construed as a campaign finance violation is close to the least relevant thing about what happened in the 2016 election. This should also remind us that most the scandal of the 2016 election and what amounts to the permanent scandal of the Trump presidency involves wrongdoing and misrule that is simply not captured by our statutory law. They are attacks on the nature of a civic republican government and principles embedded throughout the federal constitution.

Happy Monday, June 17. Democrats are trying a new strategy to dodge President Donald Trump’s executive privilege claims. Here’s more on that and the other stories we’re watching.

According to the Times, the Pentagon’s cybercommand is taking newly aggressive steps to inject cyberweapons into Russian critical infrastructure. But they are withholding this information from the President because among other reasons they consider him a security threat and they fear he might countermand the orders or share the information with Russian officials.

Yet more evidence that (now deceased) GOP consultant specializing in increasing voting power of white Americans was behind Census Bureau decision to add citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

TPM Reader JO has some thoughts on impeachment and accountability …

I admit that part of the reason I enjoy TPM is that it confirms my biases. I value the reporting, insight, and analysis more, but the other part is undeniably comforting. I find myself agreeing with your editorial writings on pretty much everything. But I just do not understand your position on impeachment. There are two parts to this.

Hello TPM members and welcome to the weekend. In case you missed it, we did a Reddit AMA with Josh this week. You can see some highlights here.

Here’s what happened in Prime this week.

The current (as yet) low level crisis in the Persian Gulf is a good example of the consequences of extreme, chronic lying on the part of the US government. All government’s lie, as I.F.Stone put it. But they don’t all lie to the same degree or in the same way. The Trump administration lies at almost unprecedented levels even compared to the Bush, Nixon and Johnson administrations. Those three lied about intelligence and international incidents with far greater consequences (so far); but for pure willingness to lie and frequency, it’s just not even close.

With that said, you don’t need to assume irrationality or perfidy on the part of the Iranians for them to be behind this. We had a deal with the Iranians backed by all the global powers. We broke the agreement and are now trying to strangle the Iranian economy with new sanctions. By historical standards those actions are reasonably understood to be acts of war. Low level attacks on commercial shipping just under the level that might trigger direct US retaliation has a clear logic to it.

On the other hand, pretty much every regional adversary has a strong incentive to mount some kind of false flag operation, or rush to blame the Iranians. At least a couple have recent histories of reckless, high-risk gambits to advance their perceived goals. The obvious player here is Saudi Arabia and its de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salman. Others seem possible as well.

Josh Marshall sat for a wide-ranging Reddit AMA on Friday afternoon, trying in vain to answer all the questions Redditors had for him in his allotted hour. Josh was asked about the state of modern GOP, running TPM, the future of news publishing and, of course, Donald Trump.

We compiled some highlights below.