Daily Bread for 5.4.18

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see gradual clearing and high of seventy-three. Sunrise is 5:43 AM and sunset 7:59 PM, for 14h 15m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous, with 80.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1961, the first Freedom Riders leave Washington, D.C. for the South.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Laurel White reports Memo: Proposed Farm Bill Would Push Thousands Of Wisconsin Children Off Food Stamps (“Nonpartisan Budget Office Estimates 8 Percent Drop In Eligibility For Wisconsin Children”):

Thousands of children in Wisconsin would lose access to food stamps under the proposed federal farm bill, according to a memo released by the Wisconsin Legislature’s nonpartisan budget office.

The GOP-backed bill has passed a House committee and is expected to come up for a vote in Washington later this month.

Under the proposal, Wisconsin and a number of other states would be barred from offering automatic food stamp benefits to families that are eligible for other support programs, including cash assistance and initiatives funded by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

According to the memo from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the state Department of Health Services estimated in 2017 that if those standards were applied, about 11 percent of Wisconsin food stamp recipients, or roughly 76,000 people, would lose eligibility for the program. About 23,000 of those would be children.

➤ Jennifer Rubin reminds readers of Paul Ryan’s unintended hilarity:

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s political obliviousness might be unrivaled. Running on a tax bill that voters dislike? Check! Hanging the party out to dry by announcing his retirement in April? Check! Nothing, however, quite beats his remarks on Wednesday. Warning against a Democratic majority in the House, the Wisconsin Republican declared: “You’ll have subpoenas, you’ll have just the system shutting down.” Thunk.

Actually, the system will work just fine — as it is supposed tounder the Constitution — if a Democratic majority takes its oversight responsibilities seriously, in contrast to the GOP-controlled House, which hasn’t lifted a finger to stop President Trump’s conflicts of interest or his unconstitutional receipt of foreign emoluments, nor to demand that he disclose his tax returns (which every modern president has done). House Republicans have not issued a single subpoena to investigate a plethora of financial concerns involving Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, and they have not called on secretaries of Treasury, Interior or Housing and Urban Development to testify under oath about their abuses of taxpayer funds.

The House Intelligence Committee ran a Mickey Mouse investigation of the Russia matter that failed to called dozens of relevant witnesses and did not look for collusion, thereby allowing it to claim there was no collusion. Ryan sat silently as Republican committee members cooked up a misleading memo and conducted a smear campaign against the FBI. The speaker also objected to a select committee or an independent commission on Russian interference in our election, and will not consider legislation to protect special counsel Robert S. Mueller III or Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

➤ Matt Zapotosky, Devlin Barrett, Carol D. Leonnig and Michelle Ye Hee Lee report Analysts: Giuliani’s media blitz gives investigators new leads, new evidence:

Rudolph W. Giuliani’s media blitz to convince the public that neither Donald Trump nor his lawyer had violated the law by paying a porn star to keep quiet about an alleged affair might have backfired, giving investigators new leads to chase and new evidence of potential crimes, legal analysts said.

Giuliani made statements that speak to Trump and lawyer Michael Cohen’s intent — an important aspect of some crimes — and he made assertions that investigators can now check against what they have already learned from documents and witnesses, legal analysts said. His comments to media outlets underscore a growing tension for the White House: The FBI investigation of Cohen presents a legal problem for the president that his own lawyer might have exacerbated.

➤ Harry Litman, former United States attorney and deputy assistant attorney general, writes Too Bad Rudy Doesn’t Lie as Well as TrumpToo Bad Rudy Doesn’t Lie as Well as Trump:

Just last month, President Trump told the American people that he knew nothing about how Stormy Daniels received $130,000 in hush money. His lawyer, Michael Cohen, has insisted for months that he had kept Mr. Trump completely in the dark and that he had handled the entire matter on his own as a personal favor to the man for whom he would “take a bullet.”

Enter Rudy Giuliani. On Wednesday night, the former mayor of New York and Mr. Trump’s latest legal fixer went on Fox News — where else? — to offer a new version of the Stormy Daniels affair. The president, Mr. Giuliani insisted, had in fact reimbursed Mr. Cohen the $130,000. Even the show’s host, Sean Hannity — another Cohen client — appeared stunned.

What in the world was going on?

The most generous read of Wednesday night’s showpiece is that Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump have made a calculated decision that Mr. Cohen faces real legal peril for having given an illegal campaign contribution in the form of the Stormy Daniels payment, and that Mr. Trump might be subject to co-conspirator liability. The best defense against a Cohen conviction — or worse, a plea deal — on these grounds would be for Mr. Trump to take credit for the payment, since the candidate can give as much money as he wants to his own campaign.

But whatever the plan, Mr. Giuliani’s comments have turned the heat up on the president.

Judging from Mr. Giuliani’s contrived and ham-handed delivery, it seems likely that this was a highly coordinated affair. Indeed, according to Robert Costa of The Washington Post, Mr. Giuliani said the president was “very pleased” with his remarks.

(It’s astonishing how much these attorneys, and their clients, talk, talk, talk.)

➤ May the 4th Be With You: