We begin today’s roundup with Margaret Hartmann at New York magazine and the topic of the leaked Mueller investigation questions:
The questions mostly cover topics Mueller is already known to be investigating, such as Trump’s reasons for firing FBI director James Comey, why he publicly attacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and what he knew about Don Jr.’s meeting with Russians in Trump Tower. [...] Times reporter Michael Schmidt elaborated on MSNBC, seeming to confirm that the document came from Trump’s side (which makes sense because Mueller’s team has not been known to leak). [...]
As to why they were leaked, Hartmann has some theories:
To Convince Trump Not to Do the Interview
Trump has said publicly that he’s “looking forward” to talking with Mueller, and he’s reportedly said in private that he’s “champing at the bit” to sit for the interview. Trump seems to think the special counsel’s probe will come to a speedy end if he’s given the opportunity to explain himself, but no sane lawyer would agree.
Indeed, Schmidt reports that when Mueller’s team previewed the questions in March, it convinced Trump’s lead lawyer at the time, John Dowd, that he absolutely should not participate.
Here’s Paul Krugman’s latest analysis of the Republican tax scam:
Politically, the tax cut is a damp squib: Most voters say they haven’t seen any boost to their paychecks, and Republicans are barely talking about the law in their political campaigns. But what about the economics?
You might be tempted to say that it’s too early to tell. After all, the law has been in effect for only a few months, and we got our first look at post-tax-cut economic growth only last week. But here’s the thing: To deliver on its backers’ promises, the tax cut would have to produce a huge surge in business investment — not in the long run, not five or 10 years from now, but more or less right away. And there’s no sign that anything like that is happening.
More from NYT reporters Matt Phillips and Jim Tankersley:
Republicans sold the 2017 tax law as “rocket fuel” for American investment and growth, saying that corporations — flush with cash from lower tax rates — would channel money back into the economy by building factories and offices and investing in equipment, which would help companies grow and provide winnings for workers.
Economists say that may happen as companies readjust their spending plans over the coming months to take advantage of the new law, and they note that it is too early to tell how much the tax law will spread into the broader economy.
But, so far, hard evidence of such an acceleration has yet to appear in economic data, which show more of a steady investment roll than a rapid escalation. And while there are pockets of the economy where investment is picking up — among large tech companies and in shale oil business, for example — corporate spending on buying back stock is increasing at a far faster clip, prompting a debate about whether the law is returning money to the overall economy or just rewarding a small segment of investors.
The editors at USA Today call on Trump to fire Scott Pruitt:
Even in the scandal-plagued Trump administration, Pruitt stands out as an ethical train wreck who has displayed a jaw-dropping sense of entitlement. His relatively brief tenure as EPA administrator has already spawned no fewer than 11 federal inquiries. [...] Pruitt's defenders seem willing to overlook all of this because of the way he has pursued the administration's deregulatory agenda. But his record demonstrates that even his chops as a champion of deregulation are inflated.
Trump handpicked him to dismantle President Obama's environmental legacy by easing industry regulations. Those rules took time and significant research to implement and are just as difficult to reverse. And Pruitt hasn't shown the discipline or detail work to do it.
Courts have struck down six of his efforts to delay or roll back Obama regulations on pesticides, lead paint and renewable fuel.
In case people need it explained again, from Jen Chaney at Vulture:
The two jokes that seemed to irk critics were her Handmaid’s Tale dig — “I have to say I’m a little starstruck. I love you as Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale” — and the aforementioned line about Sanders’s smoky eye, which went like this: “I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful. She burns facts, and then she uses the ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”
Neither of these jokes are about Sanders’s appearance.
Here’s Ryan Cooper’s take on the WHCA dinner at The Week:
The elite press corps of the imperial capital plays an important part in our government's corruption, as was on vivid display once more with the tired charade of the White House Correspondents' Dinner this weekend. Comedian Michelle Wolf did what political comedians are supposed to do — use jokes to cut through the comfortable hypocrisy and expose some unpleasant truths, namely that the Trump administration is full of disgustingly amoral cretins. Much of the assembled crowd of bigshot reporters then played their part, performing scandalized outrage in defense of the corrupt regime.
On a final note Megan Garber’s at The Atlantic calls on scraping the current format:
She was the star of the show. And she was the one who emerged, whether you loved her set or hated it, as the person who could most obviously claim to have engaged, that evening, in journalism’s enduring mandate: to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted. [...] There’s the Correspondents’ Dinner as an event, and the Correspondents’ Dinner as a norm; both would benefit, at this point, from scaling back to become something smaller, more intimate, more meaningful—less about celebrity, less about comedy, and more about journalism. A smaller dinner would be more boring, definitely, but also more in line with journalism’s own best vision of itself: as a watchdog, as a safeguard, as an extension of the curiosity of the American people.