Light News Dump

Trump admits in explicit admission that Russia helped get him elected: "I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected"
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1134066371510378501

McConnell once again blocks bills to combat election interference because allowing votes on election reform means admitting Russia rigged the election for Trump means Trump did not win the election means Hillary is the legitimate President means Republicans must at all costs shut down election reform
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/mcconnell-blocks-bills-to-combat-election-interference-60531781794

Reminder: The Trump campaign had contact with Russians 251 times that we know of.
https://themoscowproject.org/explainers/trumps-russia-cover-up-by-the-numbers-70-contacts-with-russia-linked-operatives/

Israel heads to new election: The Knesset voted Wednesday night to dissolve itself after PM Netanyahu failed to form a governing coalition, sending Israel to a new election mere seven weeks after the last one.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/hours-left-to-deadline-netanyahu-races-to-dissolve-knesset-live-updates-1.7302559

'Criminalizing Compassion': Trial Begins for Humanitarian Facing 20 Years in Prison for Giving Water to Migrants in Arizona Desert
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/05/29/criminalizing-compassion-trial-begins-humanitarian-facing-20-years-prison-giving

Jared Kushner Dismissed Killing Of Saudi Dissident Jamal Khashoggi: 'This Was A Terrorist Masquerading As A Journalist,' Claims Book
https://www.newsweek.com/kushner-khashoggi-saudi-terrorist-wolff-book-1439068

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweets about the toll of receiving death threats against her and says she spends some mornings 'reviewing photos of the men who want to kill me'
https://www.businessinsider.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tweets-about-toll-of-getting-death-threats-2019-5

Bangladesh: Teenager burned to death: Possible death penalty for all 16 charged
https://www.9news.com.au/world/news-world-possible-death-penalty-16-charged-over-murder-of-teenager-burned-to-death/ba300100-8ec7-4e12-a1a2-0882a3eab772

British supermarkets have admitted that they could be selling olive oil produced in a way which kills millions of songbirds every year, as they promise to investigate their sourcing.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/29/british-supermarkets-admit-olive-oils-could-killing-birds-pledge/

Four people accused of poaching threatened Bengal tigers were shot dead by Bangladesh police on Wednesday during a gunfight in a mangrove forest, officials said.
https://www.france24.com/en/20190529-four-poachers-shot-dead-bangladesh-mangrove-gunfight

DNA discovery traces most of the world's macadamias back to one Australian tree
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-05-30/macadamia-research-nuts/11160786

Thomas B. Hofeller achieved near-mythic status in the Republican Party as the Michelangelo of gerrymandering, the architect of partisan political maps that cemented the party’s dominance across the country. But after he died last summer, his estranged daughter discovered hard drives in her father’s home that revealed something else: Mr. Hofeller had played a crucial role in the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Files on those drives showed that he wrote a study in 2015 concluding that adding a citizenship question to the census would allow Republicans to draft even more extreme gerrymandered maps to stymie Democrats. And months after urging President Trump’s transition team to tack the question onto the census, he wrote the key portion of a draft Justice Department letter claiming the question was needed to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act — the rationale the administration later used to justify its decision. Those documents, cited in a federal court filing Thursday by opponents seeking to block the citizenship question, have emerged only weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of the citizenship question. Critics say adding the question would deter many immigrants from being counted and shift political power to Republican areas.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-question-hofeller.html
https://www.commoncause.org/page/read-the-gops-plan-to-supercharge-gerrymandering-with-a-census-citizenship-question/

China halts purchases of U.S. soybeans
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-china-trade-war-china-halts-purchases-of-u-s-soybeans-report-says/

More Than 62,000 Pounds of Beef Recalled Because of E. Coli. All the cows raped/tortured/murdered for nothing. Their lives a living hell, murdered for nothing.
http://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/beef-recalled-because-of-e-coli-concerns/

Cuomo Prime Time
‏Verified account @CuomoPrimeTime
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke faces questions from @ChrisCuomo, tonight 9 p.m. ET on CNN and http://CNN.it/go
https://twitter.com/CuomoPrimeTime/status/1134151884384718849

Corporations paid $91 billion less in taxes in 2018 under Republican tax law
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/corporations-paid-91-billion-less-in-taxes-in-2018-under-trumps-tax-law-160745447.html

Republican Justin Amash stands by position to start impeachment proceedings despite criticism . More than 800 people showed up to a town hall to both praise and berate the only Republican member of Congress who has called for impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/republican-justin-amash-stands-position-start-impeachment-proceedings-despite-criticism-n1011176

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made it clear that the US won't get special treatment in a trade deal with Japan. He says Japan isn't willing to provide better access to its agricultural markets than it offered to other countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20190530_39/

Exxon rejects shareholder resolution that would have forced it to have a climate change plan - BP and Royal Dutch Shell have publicly acknowledged that their business has to evolve, but Exxon hasn't
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/exxon-environmental-1.5155475

Unexpected asteroid just missed Earth, closer than the Moon (0.85 lunar distance)
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1133102/NASA-asteroid-tracker-Asteroid-2019-KT-Earth-close-approach-Moon/

Trustee Miguel Solis to Beto-"You are willing to get out into the community, to throw out ideas but to listen as much as you talk. We have been removed from that type of politics for far to long. So on behalf of all of us, we'd like to all say 'thank you."
https://twitter.com/Rusmokin/status/1134166849644425216

It’s Getting Worse: The IRS Now Audits Poor Americans at About the Same Rate as the Top 1%
https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-now-audits-poor-americans-at-about-the-same-rate-as-the-top-1-percent

Thousands of tufted puffins in the Bering Sea are dead partly because of starvation and stress brought on by changing climate conditions, researchers say. The puffins' food supply has been disrupted by changes in air and sea temperature, and in winter ice levels, according to a new study in the journal PLOS ONE.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/stress-climate-change-puffins-death-1.5154749
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216532

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on The View: If Trump weren't president 'he'd be in handcuffs'
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sen-elizabeth-warren-view-trump-president-hed-handcuffs/story?id=63355626

Feds Subpoena Mar-a-Lago, Trump Campaign in Cindy Yang Massage Parlor Probe
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/feds-subpoena-mar-a-lago-trump-campaign-in-cindy-yang-massage-parlor-probe

Beto O’Rourke just finished discussing his new immigration plan with advocates and activists in Dallas, saying: “There are so many things that we wrote down that we will add to the plan. We want this to be a plan that was written by the people, and you all are writing it for us.”
https://twitter.com/wpjenna/status/1134165331424043009

For The Third Time In A Week, A Lone Republican Has Blocked $19 Billion In Disaster Aid. The bill was brought up in the House by unanimous consent (meaning members don’t have to record their votes), but Rep. John Rose of Tennessee objected, marking the third time in a week a Republican has stopped the bill from passing. The bill has already passed the Senate.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/paulmcleod/for-the-third-time-in-a-week-a-lone-republican-has-blocked

Paul Manafort officially forfeits Trump Tower condo to U.S. government
https://www.axios.com/paul-manafort-trump-tower-condo-mueller-investigation-0cdfffa6-c8e4-45c5-bb30-dffda895a82b.html

Hundreds of minors held at U.S. border facilities are there beyond legal time limits
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/hundreds-of-minors-held-at-us-border-facilities-are-there-beyond-legal-time-limits/2019/05/30/381cf6da-8235-11e9-bce7-40b4105f7ca0_story.html

The oil industry is watching the progress of a Chinese supertanker that is loaded with Iranian crude, potentially in violation of U.S. sanctions
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/30/a-single-oil-tanker-could-become-a-factor-in-both-the-china-trade-war-and-iran-tensions.html

Judge rejects Trump administration request to start border wall construction despite injunction
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/446240-judge-rejects-trump-admin-request-to-start-border-wall-construction

Measles record means US could lose eradication status
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48468801