SUICIDE BOMBER KILLS 22 AND INJURES 59 AT POP CONCERT IN MANCHESTER, ENG.

Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In Manchester, a Loud Bang, Three seconds of silence, Then Screaming and Blood.

WASHINGTON POST

 A lone suicide bomber blew himself up at a Ariana Grande pop concert  filled with teenagers in Manchester, England, killing 22 and injuring 59 more in an apparent effort to harm as many young people as possible. Griff Witte and Karla Adam report: “British Prime Minister Theresa May said it was ‘now beyond doubt’ that it was a ‘callous, terrorist attack.’...

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• ISIS claimed responsibility, but authorities are still trying to determine if the suicide bomber acted alone or was part of a larger network.
• The Greater Manchester Police said that they arrested a 23-year-old man in south Manchester in connection with the attack, as hundreds of police swarmed through the city in the aftermath of the blast.

-- Well into Tuesday morning, fathers and mothers who had lost contact with their children posted desperate pleas for information on social media using the hashtag #ManchesterMissing.

This graphic shows where the explosion took place, in the foyer area, leading towards Victoria railway station 

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 Amid the terror and chaos that gripped Manchester, many residents took to social media to offer aid to those affected by the deadly blast. Isaac Stanley-Becker reports: “They came offering rooms and rides, food and drink. They came by [Twitter]— so often a site of anonymous derision — as a tool of collective uplift. The messages, some of which gained thousands of retweets, offered a small glimmer of hope in an otherwise ghastly night of carnage, confusion and loss. And as fear and uncertainty yet again gripped Western Europe, the response from those closest to the violence suggested an unwillingness to be cowed by such strikes. ‘I have a sofa, floor, blankets and tea, 5 minutes from Arena for anyone in need,’ one user offered. ‘If you need a place to crash I live around the corner from Manchester Arena,’ another wrote. Several hotels in Manchester sheltered children — who made up a large share of concert-goers — as frantic parents sought to locate them. And taxis in the city's center offered free rides through the night.”

 Musician Ariana Grande, who was not injured in the blast, expressed her sorrow in a tweet: “broken,” she wrote. “from the bottom of my heart, i am so sorry. i don’t have words.” TMZ reports that she has suspended the rest of her “Dangerous Woman” tour, which was next scheduled for a stop in London on Thursday night.

 Armed police officers outside the town hall in Manchester. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

VOX

 Manchester, united.

The United Kingdom is still on critical terror alert — meaning more attacks may be imminent. Up to 5,000 soldiers will be deployed to assist police on the streets of the UK under Operation Temperer.

• The victims (consistent with Grande’s fan base) were largely young women and girls, including an 8-year-old; the bombing shattered a celebratory, joyful atmosphere, likely leaving lasting psychic marks on many of the attendees (not to mention Grande herself). [The Guardian / Alexis Petridis]
• The police say they believe the attacker was carrying an improvised explosive device, which he detonated. [The Guardian ]
• Multiple witnesses said they heard an explosion, with one telling the Guardian the blast shook the building, before “everyone screamed and tried to get out”. [The Guardian ]

 This is one of the first pictures of Manchester suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, taken some years ago during a class at a mosque. Photograph: handout

• The bomber ... has been identified as Salman Abedi, a 23-year-old born in Manchester to Libyan-immigrant parents, who was known to acquaintances as someone with extreme views but not as a possible mass murderer. [The Guardian / Ian Cobain, Frances Perraudin, Steven Morris, and Nazia Parveen] Abedi was known to the security services but was not part of any active investigation or regarded as a high risk.... 
• Salman and his brother Ismail worshipped at Didsbury mosque, where their father, who is known as Abu Ismail within the community, is a well-known figure .... Abu Ismail ...who worked as an odd-job man in Manchester, is thought to be in Tripoli. His wife, Samia, is thought to be in Manchester. The couple are believed to have another son, Hashem, and a daughter, Jomana.
  
  “Abu Ismail comes and goes between here and there,” the family friend said. “I can’t believe [Salman Abedi] would have been radicalised in Tripoli. All those types have been driven out of the city. It must have happened here. ... Officers also searched the home of his brother Ismail in the Chorlton area of south Manchester.
• On Elsmore Road there was also some indication that Abedi was not always quiet and respectful. One neighbour said that when he spoke to him about parking his car so that others could not exit their drives, “all I got was this”, and he held up his middle finger.There were also reports that in recent weeks he had taken to chanting Islamic verses loudly in the street. Meanwhile, one former school friend was reported to have said that the last time he saw Abedi he had been a Manchester United fan who rarely discussed his faith. “He always had a bit of an attitude problem. I can’t say I really liked the man.” [The Guardian]
• (It’s ...worth pointing out that in Britain, news outlets often don’t report details of incidents, out of deference to ongoing law enforcement investigations; in this case, UK officials kept updating American officials, who would then turn around and leak to US outlets, which would then publish the information — freaking out the UK.) [BuzzFeed News / Mitch Prothero]]
• ...dozens of terrorists have emerged from this northern city – many from the area of Moss Side, which is less than two miles from Fallowfield, where Monday's bomber lived.
  Once impoverished, Moss Side has had its troubles: a white and West Indian gang culture, gun crime, and race riots. Now, even as it has been gentrified by students and young families, it suffers from another infamy.[ Daily Mail ]
  
  
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Bloodied concertgoers were pictured being helped by armed police outside the arena after explosions rang out at the gig

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REUTERS/Kevin Lamarq

Immigration Arrests Rise Almost 40 Percent in Trump’s First 100 Days

REUTERS

U.S. arrests of suspected illegal immigrants rose by nearly 40 percent in the first 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency, following executive orders that broadened the scope of who could be targeted for immigration violations, according to government data released on Wednesday.

The acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Thomas Homan said that arrests by his agency jumped to 41,318 between January 22 of this year and the end of April, up from 30,028 arrests in roughly the same period last year.

Of those arrested almost two-thirds had criminal convictions. But there was also a significant jump - of more than 150 percent - in the number of immigrants not convicted of further crimes arrested by ICE: 10,800 since the beginning of the year compared to 4,200 non-criminal arrests in the same period in 2016.

  ICE agents at a home in Atlanta during a targeted enforcement operation in February. (Bryan Cox / ICE via AP)

TRUTHDIG

The new data reflect Trump’s campaign promise to crack down on undocumented immigration in the U.S. and come after months of anecdotes about immigration raids and arrests in various communities. And while numbers have shown that deportations were lower under Trump than in the same period a year ago, the new information is the first concrete evidence of the new administration’s strict immigration policy in action.

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“Those that enter the country illegally, they do violate the law, that is a criminal act,” Homan said on the call, while emphasizing that immigrants who pose a threat to national security or have criminal records are still a priority for the agency.

He said ICE will continue to target people who have been issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge even if they have not committed another crime.

“When a federal judge makes a decision and issues an order that order needs to mean something,” Homan said. “If we don’t take action on those orders, then we are just spinning our wheels.”

Don’t underestimate Trump


WASHINGTON POST


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....as the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the Russia mess has Washington buzzing with nascent impeachment talk, 25th Amendment scenarios and rumors about resignation, it is worth remembering how tenaciously Trump pursued power, along with five key assets he has to maintain his grip on it.

First, while he is proving to be an incompetent president, Trump is an incredibly skilled politician. He did not come to the presidency by accident: He spent 30 years laying the groundwork for his run — attacking President Ronald Reagan on trade in the 1980s, putting out a campaign book in 2000, forcing President Barack Obama to release his birth certificate in 2011. He vanquished an all-star GOP field in 2016 — beating a Bush, the Republicans’ Obama (Marco Rubio) and lionized candidates such as Scott Walker and Chris Christie. He resoundingly won the Republican primary in New Hampshire.  He was the host of a top-rated television show for almost a decade: no small communications achievement.

Second, there is the power of the presidency, and Trump’s ability to use its allure as a bulwark against accountability. Trump’s staff may feud with one another, but — with two family members ensconced in the West Wing — they seem prepared to defend him by any means necessary. ...have shown a willingness to sacrifice their own credibility to protect Trump. And a retinue of prominent law firms appear ready to provide legal and public relations cover in defense of Trump and his family.

Third, there is the desire of many observers to try to normalize Trump and get “back to business.” This obviously includes most Republican members of Congress, who have shown a penchant for dismissing concerns about Trump so long as he continues to pursue an agenda of repealing Obamacare and cutting taxes.

But this instinct extends beyond partisans: Remember how media commentators, including some liberal voices, acclaimed Trump’s presidential leadership after one well-executed speech three months ago? It might take shockingly little — a successful foreign trip next week or progress on Obamacare repeal in Congress — for pundits to conclude that he is “back on track.”

Fourth, there is the intensity of his most devout supporters. While Trump has falsely boasted about many things, he was probably right when he said that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and still maintain their support. Trump’s “tribal” supporters back him, not because of what Trump does or says, but because they want the affiliation they enjoy as Trump supporters. While these hard-core supporters were not sufficient to put Trump in office — experts believe this group is 25 percent to 40 percent of the electorate — even at the lower end of that range, they make up a majority of Republican primary voters in most Republican-held districts. That is a powerful check on Republican senators and representatives who might stand up to Trump....

And fifth, there is the frightening risk that Trump’s die-hard supporters are more devoted to Trump than they are to the rule of law. The United States prides itself on being “a government of laws, not of men,” but polls show that an increasing number of Americans generally, and Trump supporters specifically, have “lost faith in democracy.” Sinclair Lewis’s brilliant novel “It Can’t Happen Here” portrayed an alliance between populist rhetoric and corporatist policies that established an iron grip on government and trampled legal accountability. A Trump campaign email, sent the day the latest Comey allegations emerged, echoed Lewis’s depiction, labelling the growing scrutiny of Trump as “sabotage,” accusing government officials of being against an “America First agenda” and urging supporters to “be prepared to go into the trenches to FIGHT.”

Report: Trump Asked Intelligence Chiefs to Deny Evidence of Campaign’s Collusion With Russia

President Donald Trump asked two of the country’s most senior intelligence officials to publicly deny the existence of any evidence linking his presidential campaign with Russian efforts to undermine the American political process, The Washington Post reported on Monday evening. According to the Post, Trump appealed to Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, and to Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, after then-FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee that the bureau was investigating “the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government.” The Post also reports that White House officials asked intelligence officials about the possibility of directing Comey to end the FBI’s investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, apparently out of a lack of understanding of how much influence the president has over FBI investigations. “The White House does not confirm or deny unsubstantiated claims based on illegal leaks from anonymous individuals,” a White House spokesperson an anonymously said of the report. “The president will continue to focus on his agenda that he was elected to pursue by the American people.”

READ IT AT THE WASHINGTON POST

ON TRUMP, KUSHNER, THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION AND THE SPECIAL COUNSEL.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Jared Kushner is part of Trump’s Russia problem.

Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

VOX
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As the Trump administration’s been sent into a death spiral over the firing of FBI Director James Comey last week — a failed move to curtail the Justice Department investigation into contact between his campaign and the Russian government — Kushner hasn’t been the “adult in the room” urging caution and scrupulousness. To the contrary, he’s been urging aggression and retaliation.

And the White House’s reaction to the appointment of Robert Mueller as a special counsel in the Russia inquiry, including a possible attempt to use ethics rules to limit the scope of his investigation, shows that somebody in the White House is deeply worried about what might happen if Kushner were included in the probe.

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By now, though, it’s clear that Kushner (at least sometimes) is the person who wants to lash out at the investigators. Here’s what happened (according to reports from the New York Times) when the Trump administration found out that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed Mueller as a special counsel to lead the Trump/Russia probe:

Most of those gathered recommended that the president adopt a conciliatory stance and release a statement accepting Mr. Rosenstein’s decision and embracing a swift investigation that would clear the cloud of suspicion hovering over the West Wing.

Mr. Kushner — who had urged Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Comey — was one of the few dissenting voices, urging the president to counterattack, according to two senior administration officials. After a brief discussion, however, calmer heads prevailed, and Mr. Trump’s staff huddled over a computer just outside the Oval Office to draft the statement that was ultimately released, asserting the president’s innocence and determination to move on.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

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 It’s also interesting that, according to Reuters’ Julia Edwards Ainsley, the White House is considering trying to hobble Mueller — using a regulation barring Mueller from investigating anyone his former law firm had represented. In practice, that would be Kushner and former campaign head Paul Manafort.

Legal experts said the ethics rule can be waived by the Justice Department, which appointed Mueller. He did not represent Kushner or Manafort directly at his former law firm.

If the department did not grant a waiver, Mueller would be barred from investigating Kushner or Manafort, and this could greatly diminish the scope of the probe, experts said.

For all the reporting that President Trump is still deeply committed to Mike Flynn, this proposed “solution” to the Mueller investigation wouldn’t protect Flynn. It would protect Manafort, who has been out of the Trump family’s orbit for quite some time. And it would protect Kushner.

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What could Kushner be so worried about?

He does appear to have been relatively close to the disgraced Flynn. According to at least one report (from NBC News’ Peter Alexander), he and Ivanka Trump were the ones who assured Flynn he could get the job of National Security Advisor — at a meeting at Trump Tower after the election, Alexander said, Ivanka Trump and Kushner told Flynn that his “loyalty” to the family would be rewarded.

Kushner also accompanied Flynn to his meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period — part of the pattern of contacts between Flynn and Kislyak that Flynn subsequently lost his job for lying about. Kushner, however, also arranged subsequent meetings with Kislyak and other Russian officials — and the White House didn’t disclose those at the time, either.

The Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, met with Jared Kushner in December. Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Kushner’s meetings with Russian officials were enough to bring him onto the radar of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Trump/Russia probe, which is questioning all Trumpworld figures who had contacts with Russia. And his failure to disclose all of those meetings — even when applying for a security clearance — has raised some eyebrows (Democratic Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) has called for Kushner’s clearance to be stripped.)

At least one figure within the Trump White House saw Kushner’s contacts with Russia as a disaster waiting to happen for the administration: Steve Bannon. During a power struggle between Kushner and Bannon in early April, the Times reported that “Mr. Bannon has told confidants that he believes Mr. Kushner’s contact with Russians, and his expected testimony before Congress on the subject, will become a major distraction for the White House.”....

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This Special Counsel Won’t Stop Trump.

The order creating the special prosecutor lets him probe only into Russia. 

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY LYNE LUCIEN/THE DAILY BEAST

DAILY BEAST, DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

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The order creating the new special counsel’s office run by Robert Mueller, a serious and determined former FBI director, is much too narrow. It authorizes Mueller only to pursue “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”
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A much broader investigation is required, one that reaches to all his business activities involving foreign money, especially his involvement with Russians and Russian dirty money back to 1990.

Jim Henry, the investigative economist who has exposed money laundering for four decades and now writes about Trump’s Russian money connections for my nonprofit DCReport news service, thinks the order is so narrow it may be intended to sink the inquiry.

“Of all the smoke pouring out of Trump’s basement, the dirtiest, darkest smoke comes from his involvement in money laundering and financial fraud, including keeping from his investors when he knew about the organized crime involvements of his close associates,” Henry says.

Henry points to financial deals from Panama to Manhattan to Iceland to Toronto and beyond that all involve criminals and in some cases come perilously close to Vladimir Putin, the kleptocrat in Moscow whom Trump frequently praises as a great leader.

Henry notes that from a Wall Street Journal report, “we learned just this week that Trump’s leading partner in the bankrupt Trump Tower in Toronto was able to channel at least $15 million to Trump from a loan that came from a Russian bank whose executive chairman is Vladimir Putin.”

Read more at  DAILY BEAST, DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

TRUMP GOES ABROAD AS INVESTIGATIONS BEGIN TO HEAT UP.

You will be shocked and appalled to learn that Donald Trump said some stuff to some Russians that he probably shouldn’t have.

President Trump met with Russian officials at the White House last week. American journalists were barred, but Russia released photographs. CreditRussian Foreign Ministry

The New York Times reports that President Trump told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (to whom he also famously leaked classified intel about ISIS), "I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job. I face great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off." [NYT / Matt Apuzzo, Maggie Haberman, and Matthew Rosenberg] 
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• Meanwhile, the Washington Post is reporting that a current senior White House adviser is a person of interest in the FBI's investigation into coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. [Washington Post / Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky] 

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, failed to mention having met with the Russian ambassador and the head of a Russian bank when applying for national security clearance. CreditAl Drago/The New York Times

• The Post didn’t specify who this person is, but speculation immediately turned to Jared Kushner, who failed to disclose meetings with Russian officials in his security clearance paperwork. [NYT / Jo Becker and Matthew Rosenberg] 
• Another sign it might be Kushner: Apparently the White House is considering invoking an obscure ethics rule that would bar special prosecutor Robert Mueller from investigating clients of his firm (WilmerHale). Those clients include Paul Manafort and … Jared Kushner. [Reuters / Julia Edwards Ainsley] 
• In interpreting this, keep in mind that "person of interest" has no specific legal meaning and doesn't necessarily mean "suspect." This doesn't mean Jared Kushner or anybody else is about to be indicted, or suspected of criminal misconduct. But it’s, uh, not good. [Vox / Zack Beauchamp] 

• Trump’s comments to the Russians could also provide ammo if he’s eventually accused of obstruction of justice. They lend credibility to the idea that he fired Comey to impede the investigation into collusion with Russia during the campaign. [Washington Post / Aaron Blake] 

• Indeed, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told senators that the investigation has been expanded to include looking into a possible cover-up — and that this expansion happened because of reports that Trump ordered Comey to scuttle an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. [McClatchy / Matthew Schofield and Lesley Clark] 

KEVIN LAMARQUE

• CNN is reporting that the White House's legal team has begun researching impeachment procedures to prepare for the possibility that Congress might try to remove Trump. [CNN / Evan Perez] 
• At this point, we mostly need to wait. Special prosecutor Robert Mueller has expansive powers to indict White House officials and other figures he thinks have committed criminal offenses, but if indictments come, it won’t be for a little while at least.
• But we could also learn a lot when James Comey testifies before an open Senate Intelligence Committee hearing — as he has agreed to do, shortly after Memorial Day.. [Washington Post] 

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President Donald Trump has departed on a five-stop diplomacy tour through Europe and the Middle East that will cover 15,600 miles in the air over the course of nine days. The president, the first lady Melania Trump, Chief of staff Reince Priebus, Jared Kushner, and Trump's eldest daughter, Ivanka, left the White House aboard Marine One... The first couple stopped and waved as they boarded Air Force One. They are currently on a 12-hour flight to Saudi Arabia. The last four U.S. presidents kept their first international voyages confined to North America. Not so for Trump. He will deliver a high-stakes speech about Islam in the heart of Saudi Arabia, meet with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his nemesis Mahmoud Abbas and take in an audience with Pope Francis. And that's before a NATO summit and a meeting of the G7 leaders. 

Presidential trips abroad are difficult and unpredictable even under the best circumstances...And harder still when the president doesn’t have a lot of key regional or national security staff with him, and doesn’t really listen to the ones he does have. [CNN / Jake Tapper] 
.

Despite Trump’s brooding and desperation to turn the page, the truth is that he doesn’t really want to go on this trip. “In recent days, Mr. Trump has groused to several friends that he is not looking forward to leaving his new White House cocoon,” Maggie Haberman and Mike Shear report in the New York Times. “At one point, he barked at an aide that he thought his first tour abroad should be only about half as long. He will have to abandon his well-known preference for sleeping in his own bed (or in one at the hotels or golf resorts he owns) as he hops between … places without a Trump-branded property. … In private, Mr. Trump’s advisers acknowledge that they are concerned about his off-script eruptions, his tendency to be swayed by flattery and the possibility that foreign leaders may present him with situations he does not know how to handle. They worry he will accidentally commit the United States to something unexpected, and they have tried to caution him about various scenarios.”

-- The domestic drama Trump has created threatens to cloud his overseas trip and complicate his conversations with foreign leaders. Michael Birnbaum reports from Brussels: “Washington’s closest allies in Europe are increasingly worried that rising political chaos in the United States is undermining the strength of the most powerful nation in the world. In conversations with more than two dozen current and former European ministers, lawmakers, diplomats, intelligence officials and military officers in recent days, there was a common theme: …. Many fear that mounting domestic scandals could sap Washington’s ability to respond to challenges ranging from Russia to terrorism to North Korea.”

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Christopher Lee for The New York Times

Anthony Weiner pled guilty to “sexting” with a minor in federal court today. The New York Times’ Benjamin Weiser and William K. Rashbaum report: “Mr. Weiner [pled] guilty to a single charge of transferring obscene material to a minor, pursuant to a plea agreement with the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan … The federal authorities have been investigating reports that, beginning in January 2016, Mr. Weiner, then 51, exchanged sexually explicit messages with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.”  Prosecutors are recommending a two-year prison sentence. He also will have to register as a sex offender. He was released on bail and will be sentenced on September 8, four days after his 53rd birthday. 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4522532/Anthony-Weiner-guilty-transferring-obscene-material.html#ixzz4hbGb6gOw
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ON MICHAEL FLYNN, IMPEACHMENT AND TRUMP ENDANGERING ISRAELI SPY.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

WASHINGTON POST

Why [does] Trump want to protect Flynn? What might he know that the president doesn’t want to get out? Many unanswered questions remain about why it took 18 DAYS for Flynn to resign after the acting attorney general warned the White House counsel that he had been compromised and was susceptible to blackmail by the Russians. Could Trump have secretly authorized Flynn’s contacts with Sergey Kislyak during the transition?


VOX

• ...the New York Times reported last night that Flynn informed the Trump transition team on January 4, ahead of inauguration, that he was under FBI investigation. They let him become national security adviser anyway. Keep in mind that the head of the transition was Mike Pence. [NYT / Matthew Rosenberg and Mark Mazzetti]
• Then McClatchy revealed that Flynn halted an Obama administration plan to use Kurdish fighters to retake Raqqa from ISIS. Given that we know Flynn took money to lobby for the Turkish government, and the Turkish government opposed this operation, that looks … suspicious. [McClatchy / Vera Bergengruen]
• So is President Trump disturbed by his former aide's behavior? Apparently not. The president apparently sent a message to Flynn telling him to "stay strong." [Yahoo! / Michael Isikoff]
• Multiple White House sources told the Daily Beast that Trump wants to rehire Flynn, that he "feels really, really, really bad about firing him, and he genuinely thinks if the investigation is over Flynn can come back." [The Daily Beast / Lachlan Markay, Asawin Suebsaeng, Kimberly Dozier, and Jana Winter]
• ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Trump was also vocally frustrated publicly, saying on Twitter, "This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” [NYT / Mark Landler and Glenn Thrush]
• Seth Moulton, the Congress member from Salem, Massachusetts, disputed this claim. [Seth Moulton]
• ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Win McNamee/Getty Images

• And Trump is getting close to picking a new FBI director, and the frontrunner appears to be … Joe Lieberman. Who, in addition to being a loathed turncoat by most Democratic rank and file, who watered down Obamacare and endorsed McCain in 2008, is currently working at a law firm representing Trump. [Vox / Matthew Yglesias]
• It makes sense that Trump would want someone friendly to him in federal law enforcement. Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who wrote the memo explaining the reasons why FBI Director James Comey was fired, apparently told senators that Trump decided to fire Comey before Rosenstein wrote the memo. Since FBI directors are only supposed to be fired for cause, that’s … bad. [NYT / Matthew Rosenberg and Rebecca Ruiz​]

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WASHINGTON POST

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said he has “no doubt” that Republicans would have already voted to impeach Hillary Clinton if she had done what Trump did. "For one millionth of what has happened with Trump, they would have impeached her,” Cummings said in a radio interview picked up by CNN. “I'm just telling you. They would have been going crazy. That's what makes this so egregious.”

Doug Mills/The New York Times

 New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat floats another idea for removing Trump: “Ultimately I do not believe that our president sufficiently understands the nature of the office that he holds, the nature of the legal constraints that are supposed to bind him, perhaps even the nature of normal human interactions, to be guilty of obstruction of justice in the Nixonian or even Clintonian sense of the phrase. I do not believe he is really capable of the behind-the-scenes conspiring that the darker Russia theories envision. And it is hard to betray an oath of office whose obligations you evince no sign of really understanding or respecting. Which is not an argument for allowing him to occupy that office. It is an argument, instead, for using a constitutional mechanism more appropriate to this strange situation than impeachment: the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.… The Trump situation is not exactly the sort that the amendment’s Cold War-era designers were envisioning. But his incapacity to really govern, to truly execute the serious duties that fall to him to carry out, is nevertheless testified to daily — not by his enemies or external critics, but by precisely the men and women whom the Constitution asks to stand in judgment on him, the men and women who serve around him in the White House and the cabinet.”

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President Trump escorting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel into the White House in February.tephen Crowley/The New York Times

Trump's disclosure endangered spy placed inside ISIS by Israel, officials say.

-- ABC News says Trump’s disclosure has endangered the life of a spy placed inside ISIS by Israel. From Brian Ross, James Gordon Meek and Randy Kreider: “The spy provided intelligence involving an active ISIS plot to bring down a passenger jet en route to the United States, with a bomb hidden in a laptop that U.S. officials believe can get through airport screening machines undetected. The information was reliable enough that the U.S. is considering a ban on laptops on all flights from Europe to the United States. 'The real risk is not just this source,' said Matt Olsen, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center … 'but future sources of information about plots against us' ... 'Russia is not part of the ISIS coalition,' Olsen said. 'They are not our partner.' Dan Shapiro, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, agreed -- saying in an interview that Trump and his team were 'careless,' and that the disclosures demonstrate a “poor understanding of how to guard sensitive information."

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times both reported that  ...The Israeli source was considered so sensitive that the U.S. hadn't shared it with its closest allies in the so-called Five Eyes group, which includes the U.K. and Canada." (Israel's biggest enemy is Iran, which is one of Russia's close allies, so it seems very plausible that what Trump said could wind up in the hands of Jerusalem's enemies in Tehran.)

-- “Trump Called Netanyahu, but White House and Israel Kept Mum,” from Haaretz’s Barak Ravid.