Today’s edition of quick hits:
* New information out of Sacramento: “Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man who was killed by Sacramento police officers earlier this month, was shot eight times, with nearly all of the shots striking him from behind, according to independent autopsy results announced Friday.”
* Ted Malloch: “A professor and author who once presented himself as a possible Trump administration ambassador to the European Union was detained and questioned by the FBI at Boston Logan airport and served a subpoena from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.”
* The Crystal Mason story strikes me as madness: “A Texas woman was sentenced to five years behind bars this week for voting illegally in the 2016 election while on supervised release from federal prison.”
* If only the White House were credible: “President Donald Trump said Thursday he fired Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin because he wanted to give veterans more choices, but a spokesperson said his actions did not signal a desire to privatize veterans’ health services. ‘No one is talking about privatizing the VA,’ deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said in an email.”
* Family values: “The Trump administration said it will treat pregnant immigrant women the same as any other detainees and decide who should be released on a case-by-case basis. The policy reverses an Obama-era policy that ordered immigration officials to release pregnant women from immigration jails in most cases.”
* Hmm: “Wall Street Journal employees circulated a letter this week that alleges a ‘senior editor’ at the newspaper attempted to remove an already-published multimedia graphic that the senior editor deemed ‘not politically palatable.’”
* George Conway: “Kellyanne Conway’s husband has begun deleting a series of tweets he posted in the last month that are critical of President Donald Trump.” * I wish he paid closer attention to current events: “President Donald Trump marveled Thursday at all the federal court vacancies he gets to fill and wondered why President Barack Obama left him so many ― apparently unaware that Senate Republicans blocked Obama’s judicial nominees to those seats for years in hopes that a GOP president would fill them.” * Attacking a Parkland teenager personally a month after a mass shooting was apparently unwise: “A number of advertisers have abandoned Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s weeknight show after she alleged that Parkland, Florida, shooting survivor David Hogg was bitter over being rejected for admission by multiple universities.” Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
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." Recommended
