Early this month, workers at the Washington headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management gathered to discuss a Trump administration plan that would force some 200 people to uproot their lives or find other jobs.

With a vague plan that keeps changing as officials describe it — and no guarantees that Congress would fully fund their relocations — the employees were being detailed to distant locations in the West like Grand Junction, Colorado, and Reno, Nevada. Many career staff saw the move as part of a wider Trump administration effort to drive federal employees out of their jobs. Acting White House chief of staff Mike Mulvaney has described that approach as a “wonderful way to streamline government.”

The hemorrhaging has already begun. After an hour of exasperated questions from employees, Steve Tryon, a deputy assistant director, told the room he had taken an assignment elsewhere in the Interior Department, the BLM’s parent agency. The post, he explained, had a chance of leading to a permanent placement in Washington.

“I hope you can […]

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  Republican Senator Richard Shelby Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  51 US senators and their spouses have up to $96 million invested in corporate stocks, according to an analysis by Sludge and the Guardian, raising conflict of interest concerns.

• Sen. Richard Shelby, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, and Sen. Jacky Rosen own significant amounts of stock in companies they oversee.
• Together, 10 members of the Senate banking committee hold up to $8 million worth of stock in finance, securities, and real estate companies.

Fifty-one US senators and their spouses have up to $96 million invested in corporate stocks, raising conflict of interest concerns because many of them could pass laws that help those businesses and thus enrich themselves. (emphasis added)

An analysis by Sludge and the Guardian — a deep dive you can check out here — looked at the senators’ disclosed stakes totaling $28 million to $96 million across finance, defense, health, communications and electronics, and energy and natural resources companies.

Members of Congress aren’t legally barred from owning stock in companies they oversee, but […]

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Moscow Mitch
Credit: Illustration by Victor Juhasz for Rolling Stone

Fittingly enough, it was hot as blazes in Kentucky when Mitch McConnell slunk back home for Congress’ annual summer recess. One week earlier, Robert Mueller had testified that Russia was meddling in the 2020 U.S. elections. McConnell, the Senate majority leader, responded by shooting down Democrats’ efforts to bring two election-security bills to a vote — bills that McConnell, in his familiar fashion, had previously sentenced to quiet deaths after they passed the House. In the hailstorm of opprobrium that followed, McConnell had been tagged by “Morning Joe” Scarborough with the indelible nickname “Moscow Mitch.” The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank called him a “Russian asset.” Twitter couldn’t decide whether he was #putinsbitch or #trumpsbitch. The Kentucky Democratic Party was selling red “Just Say Nyet to Moscow Mitch” T-shirts, emblazoned with an image of the senator’s jowly visage in a Cossack hat, as fast as they could print them up.

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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks during a town hall event September 19, 2019. in Iowa City, Iowa.
Joshua Lott / Getty

Sen. Elizabeth Warren accused the U.S. Congress of complicity in President Donald Trump’s continued abuse of power late Friday, after reports surfaced of his alleged attempts to solicit foreign meddling in the 2020 presidential election, and reiterated her demand that Democrats use their majority in the House to pursue impeachment.

Warren’s tweeted statement came hours after the Wall Street Journalreported that Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s opposition to a Ukrainian prosecutor in 2016.

Warren wrote that House Democrats should have promptly pursued impeachment after the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Trump’s campaign, which outlined a number of instances in which the president obstructed justice during Mueller’s investigation—similar to the actions that led Congress to draft articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon in 1974.

By failing to act, Congress is complicit in Trump’s latest […]

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