April 05, 2019 10:24 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Friday (April 5)

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• by: Colorado Pols

Today is “Opening Day” for the Colorado Rockies; have fun parking downtown this afternoon. It’s time “Get More Smarter.” If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of a visual learner, check out The Get More Smarter Show.

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► Remember when President Trump asserted that he was “totally exonerated” after Attorney General William Barr issued a summary of the Mueller report? That talking point is not aging well.

As the Washington Post reports:

Revelations that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s still-confidential report may contain damaging information about President Trump ignited a fresh round of political fighting on Thursday, ushering in a new phase of the nearly two-year-old battle over the Russia probe.

Members of Mueller’s team have told associates they are frustrated with the limited information that Attorney General William P. Barr has provided about their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether Trump sought to obstruct justice, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

While Barr concluded the special counsel’s evidence was not sufficient to prove that the president obstructed justice, some of Mueller’s investigators have said their findings on obstruction were alarming and significant, one person with knowledge of their thinking said.

Some on the special counsel’s team were also frustrated that summaries they had prepared for different sections of the report — with the view that they could be made public fairly quickly — were not released by Barr, two people familiar with the matter said.

The truth shall set you free, as the saying goes…though it may yet have the opposite effect for many in Trumpland. Attorney General William Barr appears to be well on his way to getting tossed under the ol’ bus.

► Colorado lawmakers have reached an agreement on transportation funding, though as the Denver Post reports, the details are murky:

Colorado’s Republican and Democratic lawmakers reached a second and potentially final deal to spend $300 million more on transportation in the next budget year, but the big question still left to answer is what gets cut to pay for it.

This new deal struck Thursday afternoon is $36 million less than the amount agreed to in the Senate last week. The House got approval from their counterparts before announcing this compromise, which directs the six members of the Joint Budget Committee to find $70 million for the Department of Transportation in the $30.5 billion state budget.

“We are giving permission for your JBC members to go into conference committee and dig through the couch cushions a little harder,” Rep. Daneya Esgar, D-Pueblo, told her fellow Democrats during a meeting to explain the agreement.

This can serve as your regular reminder that TABOR is awful.

► Elections matter. Leadership matters.

Consider the rollout on Thursday of a plan from Gov. Jared Polis to reduce health care costs in Colorado. The “Roadmap to Saving Coloradans Money on Health Care” includes several pieces of legislation that have bipartisan support. Most of these bills could have been passed and implemented in prior years, but Senate Republicans had no interest in governing with their one-seat majority. This is why Colorado voters overwhelmingly elected Democrats in 2018.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► President Trump is visiting the U.S.-Mexico border today after weeks of threatening to complete shut it down.

► Denver7’s Blair Miller reports on another attempt by Congress to assert state’s rights on marijuana legalization:

Colorado’s U.S. senators, Cory Gardner and Michael Bennet, along with Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., on Thursday morning introduced for a second straight year the STATES Act, a states’ rights marijuana bill with bipartisan support.

The bill was unveiled in a Thursday morning news conference that featured Gardner, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Rep. David Joyce, D-Ohio.

The measure, the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States Act, is similar to the STATES Act introduced in 2018 , which President Trump said last June he would “probably end up supporting” but the measure never made it to his desk for consideration…

…There are several pillars to the STATES Act, which would change federal code to give more leeway to states where marijuana is legal after the Cole Memo was rescinded in January 2018 by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

► House Democrats have asked the Internal Revenue Service for President Trump’s tax returns. The White House is signaling that it will make every effort to block that request. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders continues to tout the increasingly-absurd company line that Trump’s tax returns can’t be released because they are still being audited.

► As CNN reports, President Trump has apparently soured on his own choice to be the next head of ICE — likely because he wasn’t going to make it through the confirmation process anyway:

President Donald Trump is pulling the nomination of Ron Vitiello to lead ICE, saying he wants to go in a “tougher direction.”

“We’re going in a little different direction. Ron’s a good man but we’re going in a tougher direction. We want to go in a tougher direction,” Trump told reporters Friday at the White House.

The White House on Thursday evening informed the Senate it was withdrawing its nomination of Vitiello to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a letter obtained by CNN.

This comes after a tough confirmation process in which Vitiello’s past controversial social media posts came to light and the agency’s union strongly opposed the nomination.

Trump nominated Vitiello, who’s been leading ICE in an acting capacity since late June, to head the agency in August. He previously served as chief of the US Border Patrol and acting deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

► Colorado native David Bernhardt is one step closer to being confirmed as the next Secretary of the Interior.

► Former Gov. John Hickenlooper is making a strong push for gun safety regulations as he campaigns for President.

► You didn’t think State Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg (R-Sterling) actually wrote legislation that he has introduced…

► The Colorado Independent explains how changes to oil and gas drilling regulations will be implemented when SB-181 goes into effect.

► Colorado Democrats are taking another shot at legislation for paid family leave.

► Politico takes an in-depth look at how President Trump and the House “Freedom Caucus” world together to shut down the federal government earlier this year:

Months after the 34-day standoff that followed, the full story of how the president was pushed into the shutdown is a lesson in how to take the reins in Trump’s Washington. The lawmakers around Trump who wanted a shutdown knew exactly how to bring the president around to their side: threaten that others might perceive him as weak and push that threat around Capitol Hill and, eventually, all the way to Fox News. It helped to have a man on the inside, too—in this case, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. As Meadows was about to find out, following this playbook was enough to get inside the head of the most powerful man in Washington, and use him to get what Meadows and his allies wanted.

► President Trump reportedly wants to appoint Herman Cain to the board of the Federal Reserve. Yeah, THAT Herman Cain.

► As the Huffington Post reports, House Republicans tried their best to scuttle legislation reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act:

The House passed legislation Thursday to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, despite the vast majority of Republicans opposing it amid pressure from the National Rifle Association.

The bill, which reauthorizes the landmark 1994 domestic violence law for another five years, easily passed. (The vote tally is here). But 157 Republicans voted against it, along with one Democrat, Rep. Collin Peterson (Minn.). For many of them, it was because the NRA was pushing them to oppose it over its gun safety provisions and warning that a vote in favor of the bill would be reflected in their NRA rating.

Under current federal law, only people convicted of domestic violence offenses against spouses or family members can lose their gun rights. The VAWA would add people convicted of abusing their dating partners, closing the so-called “boyfriend loophole.” It would also prohibit people convicted of misdemeanor stalking offenses from owning or buying firearms, as well as abusers subject to temporary protective orders.

Colorado’s three Republican Members of Congress — Reps. Scott Tipton, Ken Buck, and Doug Lamborn — all voted ‘NO.’

► Governor Jared Polis will sign legislation to allow Colorado to be a stronger advocate of Net Neutrality.

Your Daily Dose Of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

► Wait, what?

At the request of a GOP lawmaker, the House prayer this morning is being offered by “Dr. Chaps” — who once (jokingly) said now-Gov. Jared Polis, who is gay and Jewish, wanted to “join ISIS in beheading Christians.”https://t.co/2h7GPzTuYa#copolitics #coleg #cogov

— John Frank ☀️ (@ByJohnFrank) April 5, 2019

► It’s probably not a great idea for President Trump to mock former Vice President Joe Biden for allegedly being too handsy with women. You know, glass houses and all that.

ICYMI

► Best wishes to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Denver) as he battles prostate cancer. Bennet recently confirmed that he is committed to running for President in 2020 pending his health.

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