* First we learned that Mueller’s team was preparing indictments against both Michael Flynn and his son. Then it was reported that Flynn’s lawyers had cut off communications with Trump’s legal team. Today, this is what ABC News is reporting:
The lawyer for President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn met Monday morning with members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team — the latest indication that both sides are discussing a possible plea deal, ABC News has learned…
That process would typically include a series of off-the-record discussions in which prosecutors lay out in detail for Flynn and his lawyers the fruits of their investigation into his activities. Prosecutors would also provide Flynn an opportunity to offer what’s called a proffer, detailing what information, if any, he has that could implicate others in wrongdoing.
* Kevin Drum has a good summary of the shootout at the CFPB corral.
As a reminder, here’s the basic dispute:
The 1998 Vacancies Reform Act gives the president the power to fill vacant positions in the executive branch. It is the “exclusive” means for filling positions “unless” another statute expressly names a successor.
The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act expressly says that the deputy director of the CFPB “shall” become director in case of a vacancy.
This might be a good time to remind you that Elizabeth Warren, who was originally angry that the Obama administration didn’t put her in charge of the CFPB, is a lot better off representing Massachusetts in the Senate.
* Here is the video of Trump’s remarks in reference to Warren at the event today honoring Native American code talkers:
Here’s the video: Trump calls Elizabeth Warren ‘Pocahontas’ while honoring Native American code talkers: “You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas.” pic.twitter.com/hjZ5MInDDf
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 27, 2017
* Calling Sen. Warren “Pocahontas” is hardly the first time we’ve seen Trump engage in racism against Native Americans.
Donald Trump claimed that Indian reservations had fallen under mob control. He secretly paid for more than $1 million in ads that portrayed members of a tribe in Upstate New York as cocaine traffickers and career criminals. And he suggested in testimony and in media appearances that dark-skinned Native Americans in Connecticut were faking their ancestry.
“I think I might have more Indian blood than a lot of the so-called Indians that are trying to open up the reservations,” Trump said during a 1993 radio interview with shock jock Don Imus.
Trump’s harsh rhetoric on Native Americans was part of his aggressive war on the expanding Native American casino industry during the 1990s, which posed a threat to his gambling empire. The racially tinged remarks and broad-brush characterizations that Trump employed against Indian tribes for over a decade provided an early glimpse of the kind of incendiary language that he would use about racial and ethnic groups in the 2016 presidential campaign.
* According to CBO, the Senate GOP tax bill is even worse than we thought.
The Senate Republican tax plan gives substantial tax cuts and benefits to Americans earning more than $100,000 a year, while the nation’s poorest would be worse off, according to a report released Sunday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
By 2019, Americans earning less than $30,000 a year would be worse off under the Senate bill, CBO found. By 2021, Americans earning $40,000 or less would be net losers, and by 2027, most people earning less than $75,000 a year would be worse off. On the flip side, millionaires and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 would be big beneficiaries, according to the CBO’s calculations.
* According to Dave Weigel, white suburban women in Alabama are facing a dilemma.
In the closing days of Alabama’s unexpectedly close race ahead of a special election, a battle is emerging for voters like McCafferty: white suburban women who typically support GOP candidates but who, unlike many of their male counterparts, have become uneasy about Moore.
Each side, relying at times on the candidates’ wives to make their case, is presenting female voters with an awkward choice regarding their vote Dec. 12: Stand by a man accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward teenage girls when he was in his 30s, or vote for a Democrat with liberal views on abortion and other issues and whose victory could imperil the Senate’s Republican majority…
“I’d like to see someone in there who’d support Trump, but I believe the women” who have accused Moore, said Turner, 67. “I put a Doug Jones sign in my yard. I felt a little sick doing that. But I had to.”
* Gregory Schneider reports on another group that is part of the developing blue wave in Virginia.
As bad as the overall outcome of Virginia’s recent election was for Republicans, there was one facet of the vote that raises special alarm for the party’s future.
That’s the performance of young voters, who came out in historic numbers and overwhelmingly cast their ballots for the Democratic candidate for governor, Ralph Northam.
While Republicans have been wrestling with an aging demographic for some time, analysts say the unpopular actions of President Trump are pushing away a new generation…
Young voters — who are often among the least-engaged, especially in a nonpresidential election — had a turnout rate of 34 percent, according to an analysis of exit polling by a group at the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. That’s up from 26 percent in the 2013 governor’s race and double the youth turnout in 2009.
And that surge of millennials was a windfall for Democrats: Sixty-nine percent of those voters supported Northam, vs. 30 percent for Gillespie.
* Finally, here’s a video to get you prepped for a big event tomorrow.
