The Secret Service rented a room at President Trump’s Washington hotel for 137 consecutive nights in 2017 — paying Trump’s company more than $33,000 — so it could guard Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin while he lived in one of the hotel’s luxury suites, according to federal documents and people familiar with the arrangement.

Mnuchin, a financier from New York, lived in the Trump International Hotel for several months before moving to a home in Washington. Mnuchin paid for his hotel suite himself, a Treasury Department spokesperson said.

But during his stay, the Secret Service also rented the room next door at taxpayer expense, to screen Mnuchin’s visitors and packages, according to three people familiar with that arrangement who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

For that room, the Trump hotel charged the maximum rate that federal agencies were generally allowed to pay in 2017: $242 per night, according to the billing records. The Secret Service checked in Jan. 25, according to billing records obtained by The Washington Post, and didn’t make its last payment until June 12.

The total bill was $33,154.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-paid-trumps-dc-hotel-more-than-33000-for-lodging-to-guard-treasury-secretary/2020/04/30/cd38e864-8987-11ea-ac8a-fe9b8088e101_story.html

Multiple armed gunmen storm Michigan’s State House, State police are protecting @GovWhitmer
and blocking the gunmen from gaining access to the house floor.

This is America in the age of Trump.

https://twitter.com/vote4robgill/status/1255922426120146947

Organizers of today's protest order at the Michigan Capitol asked people not to bring Trump signs so it wouldn't look like a political rally. Not everyone got the message

LANSING, MI — A state administrative judge has upheld a permit that allows global food and beverage giant Nestle to boost the amount of Michigan groundwater it extracts for sale under the Ice Mountain bottled water brand.

In a decision dated April 24, Judge Dan Pulter ruled that Nestle’s plans to withdrawal 576,000 gallons of groundwater per day from the headwaters of two cold water trout streams in Osceola County will not negatively impact the surrounding natural resources.

The ruling upholds a controversial and unpopular permit approval Nestle received just over two years ago from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) under former Gov. Rick Snyder.

The Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation (MCWC) and the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians filed a challenge to that permit approval in July 2018.

https://www.mlive.com/news/2020/04/nestle-wins-legal-challenge-to-michigan-groundwater-extraction.html

In Oval as reporters listen, Trump jokes he’s a little jealous of Fauci and Birx being more famous than he is. And calls Jared Kushner brilliant.



https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1255528560162414592