Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Coming home: “Venezuela released 10 jailed Americans Friday in exchange for getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.”
* It’s painful even to imagine being in their shoes: “They are nurses, mechanics, sanitation workers and executives. They’ve fallen in love, bought houses and raised children. They’ve opened restaurants and construction companies, paid taxes and contributed to Social Security, living and working legally in the United States since 1999. Now more than 50,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans stand to abruptly lose their legal status as the Trump administration seeks to end their protections, in place since the Clinton era, under the temporary protected status program, or TPS.”
* I guess the industry’s massive campaign donations paid dividends: “The cryptocurrency industry reached a major milestone in Washington on Thursday, as Congress cleared legislation outlining the first federal rules for stablecoins, a popular form of digital currency. A bipartisan vote in the House to approve the bill, known as the Genius Act, sent it to the White House for President Trump’s signature.”
* Another lawsuit worth keeping an eye on: “A coalition of 20 Democratic attorneys general sued the Trump administration Thursday to block implementation of a rule they argue will undermine the Affordable Care Act.”
* Someday, we’ll have to put the State Department back together again: “The United States should no longer publicly comment on elections, including making an assessment of whether the election was ‘free and fair,’ unless there is a ‘clear and compelling U.S. foreign policy interest to do so,’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a cable to diplomats sent on Thursday.”
* In related news: “As President Donald Trump takes a beating from his own MAGA crowd for his handling of the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased pedophile and sex trafficker, his State Department pulled a surprising move: It decimated its office combating human trafficking. As part of a downsizing, the Trump administration on Friday cut 1,353 positions at State, about 15 percent of its Washington-based staff, and the largest reduction in decades.”
* What could possibly go wrong? “The Trump administration will start sharing the personal information of nearly 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including home addresses and ethnicities, with federal immigration authorities as the president seeks to ramp up deportations.” * What a fiasco: “President Donald Trump has looked to the marble finishes and hefty price tag of the Federal Reserve headquarters to claim grounds to fire Chair Jerome Powell, with whom he has tussled for years over interest rates. But the extensive use of marble in the building is, at least in part, the result of policies backed by Trump himself.” * All is not well at CBS: “In a decision that shocked the entertainment industry and comedy world, CBS said on Thursday that it was canceling the most-watched show in late night, ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,’ and ending a franchise that has existed for more than three decades.” Have a safe weekend.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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