Eric Schneiderman asks to close loophole that could let Trump pardons block state charges

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Wednesday asked state legislators and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to close a loophole that could let recipients of pardons for federal crimes from President Donald Trump avoid state criminal charges.

Schneiderman said he was asking for the loophole to be eliminated because of "disturbing news" that Trump "may be considering issuing pardons that may impede criminal investigations."

Shortly after Schneiderman made his request, state Sen. Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat and former federal prosecutor who represents a district on Long Island, announced he would introduce a bill seeking to accomplish the attorney general's goal."

Schneiderman, a Democrat, is a long-time antagonist of Trump. Shortly after the presidential election in 2016, he obtained a $25 million settlement for customers of Trump University who claimed to have been swindled by that entity.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/18/new-york-ag-eric-schneiderman-seeks-to-close-trump-pardon-loophole.html

Scientists have developed an enzyme which is able to "digest" some of the planet's most commonly polluting plastics.

Undertaken by teams at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the U.K.'s University of Portsmouth, the research could potentially lead to a "recycling solution" for plastic bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which lingers in the environment for hundreds of years.

The researchers were initially examining the crystal structure of PETase, an enzyme that can digest PET, in order to understand how it works. But during their research, the scientists managed to engineer an enzyme that was more effective at "degrading" the plastic than the naturally occurring one, which was recently discovered in the soil of a Japanese recycling plant.

"Serendipity often plays a significant role in fundamental scientific research and our discovery here is no exception," John McGeehan, director of the Institute of Biological and Biomedical Sciences in the School of Biological Sciences at Portsmouth, said in a statement Monday.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/17/scientists-develop-mutant-enzyme-that-eats-plastic.html

Yesterday was a long decade.

By the end of the day, when my head finally hit the pillow I felt ten years older; as if I’d somehow spent far more than merely 24 hours on the planet, gone through much more than just one earthly rotation.

By nightfall, after weathering another turbulent day here, I felt disproportionately older than I should have.

I know I’m not alone.

This exhaustion is a national epidemic.

This fatigue has become commonplace here now.

In this Presidency, America is living dog years.

We’re all aging unnaturally rapidly, friends.

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2018/04/15/the-dog-years-of-this-presidency/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=johnpavlovitz

Older, white, educated voters helped Donald Trump win the White House in 2016. Now, they are trending toward Democrats in such numbers that their ballots could tip the scales in tight congressional races from New Jersey to California, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll and a data analysis of competitive districts shows.

Nationwide, whites over the age of 60 with college degrees now favor Democrats over Republicans for Congress by a 2-point margin, according to Reuters/Ipsos opinion polling during the first three months of the year. During the same period in 2016, that same group favored Republicans for Congress by 10 percentage points.

The 12-point swing is one of the largest shifts in support toward Democrats that the Reuters/Ipsos poll has measured over the past two years. If that trend continues, Republicans will struggle to keep control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, in the November elections, potentially dooming President Trump's legislative agenda.

The real core for the Republicans is white, older white, and if they're losing ground there, they're going to have a tsunami, said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist who closely tracks political races. If that continues to November, they're toast.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/09/as-elections-near-many-older-educated-white-voters-shift-away-from-trumps-party.html

President Trump has blasted Amazon the last few days, alleging the e-commerce giant is taking advantage of the U.S. Postal Service and failing to pay enough in state and local taxes. Mr. Trump claims his criticisms of Amazon long predate his election.

But Mr. Trump's presidential campaign relied on Amazon for office supplies regularly, spending $158,498.41 in 379 transactions labeled as office supply purchases in 2015 and 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by CBS News. In the average transaction, Mr. Trump's campaign spent $418.20, and the most the campaign spent in a single transaction was $3,890. The Donald J. Trump for President committee continued to use Amazon well after the election, spending more than $2,000 in 2017, FEC records show.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-trump-campaign-spent-thousands-office-supplies-tweet-post-office-scam-today/