FEATURING FRANK CLEMENTE – Trump’s tax returns for the last 6 years. Democrat Richard Neal, who chairs the committee, is apparently using a little known piece of federal tax law to make the request. The provision dates back to the so-called Teapot Dome scandal from the Warren G. Harding administration.

Progressive activists have been pressuring Mr. Neal for months to use his authority in what is sure to turn into a legal fight. The IRS has until only April 10th to provide the information. In a statement the Congressman said, “I take the authority to make this request very seriously, and I approach it with the utmost care and respect. This request is about policy, not politics.”

Trump has scrambled to respond saying that because he is under audit he cannot turn over his tax returns, and also saying that the Attorney General would respond. Mr. Neal’s request is to the IRS, not to Trump or the Attorney General.

Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness. 

FEATURING PHYLLIS BENNIS –  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has turned 70 and to mark the occasion, the foreign ministers of all the NATO nations gathered in Washington DC. There has been significant tension between the US and its European allies in NATO under President Trump who has sought to undermine the military cooperative that was historically aimed at fencing in Russia’s imperial ambitions. Trump’s main quibble has been that he feels NATO allies expect the US to pay disproportionately more for its defense budget.

Those tensions were on display in Washington DC over the past week. At an event marking the anniversary Mike Pence on Wednesday lashed out at NATO members Germany and Turkey for dealings with Russia. And in his address to Congress, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, “We have to be frank…Questions are being asked on both sides of the Atlantic about the strength” of the alliance.

Phyllis Bennis, Director, New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, author of numerous books including Understanding Isis and the New Global War on Terror and Ending the US War in Afghanistan.

President Donald Trump is visiting the US border with Mexico on Friday, specifically to tout the building of a border wall in Calexico. Except that the wall is not a wall, it’s more of a fence. And, construction began under President Obama, not as a new fence, but as an upgrade to an existing fence using recycled materials. That has not stopped the President from using the optics at the border to make claims about his anti-immigrant agenda. Last fall Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen had a plaque attached to the Calexico fence with Trump’s name on it. The plaque reads, “This plaque was installed on October 26, 2018, to commemorate the completion of the first section of President Trump’s border wall.” Trump’s Friday visit to the border comes a day after he backed off on his threat to shut down the Southern border saying he would be giving Mexico a year to stop the flow of illegal drugs. Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador has remained silent on the face of Trump’s belligerence.  Trump has threatened to slap a 25% tariff on auto exports from Mexico in retaliation. He also tweeted that this threat would “supersede the USMCA,” which is NAFTA’s replacement, yet to be ratified by Congress.

In other immigration news Trump has decided to pull his nomination of a man named Ron Vitiello to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) department. Speaking to reporters on Friday morning Trump said, “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.” The move came as a surprise to many including ICE officials Vitiello has been serving as acting ICE director but earlier this year the union representing ICE agents spoke out against him. In a letter to Senators National ICE Council President Chris Crane wrote, “Never before have we seen so many warning signs with respect to a nominee prior to confirmation and we believe him to be unfit to serve as director.” It is not yet clear who Trump will nominate instead.

Meanwhile the International Rescue Committee released a report on Friday entitled, “Disorder by design at the U.S.-Mexico border,” in which the humanitarian organization details how the Trump administration has manufactured a crisis at the US-Mexico border. The report also identifies that the real crisis is taking place in Central America – precisely the region where the US State Department just announced it would cut aid to. The report is based on interviews with hundreds of refugees fleeing insecurity and violence in countries like Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

In other news the US economy added 196,000 jobs in the month of March according to the latest jobs report. There had been sluggish job growth in February but economists are optimistic about the latest numbers issued by the Labor Department. But just a day earlier an independent report found that job layoffs for the first quarter of this financial year hit their highest level in a decade, jumping up by a whopping 35% from a year ago. Andrew Challenger,

FEATURING AARON WEISS – The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday voted 14-6 to advance Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt for a full Senate vote on his confirmation for permanent Secretary. Several Democrats voted with Republicans to advance Bernhardt’s nomination despite the severe conflicts of interest plaguing the former oil lobbyist.

Bernhardt faced questioning from lawmakers last week and during his hearing several environmental activists quietly donned monster masks to creatively make the point that Bernhardt was the quintessential “swamp monster” that President Trump boasted he would drain out of Washington.

Aaron Weiss, Deputy Director at the Center for Western Priorities.

FEATURING DR. BANDY X. LEE – President Donald Trump’s mental health status has always been in question as the nation reels from two years of abusive rhetoric, incessant lying, violent threats, and shameless narcissism. Most Americans who have watched his Presidency unfold with horror, have worried that we are being led into a dark abyss by a madman.

In a powerful book collecting essays and assessments of Trump’s mental health by dozens of experts, my guest Dr. Bandy Lee lays out The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.

Dr. Bandy Lee, Assistant Clinical Professor in Law and Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. She was previously Chief Resident at Mass General and a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and has also been a Fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health. She is the editor of the New York Times bestselling book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. The book is now out in its second updated and expanded edition, featuring essays by 37 experts.

The New York Times late Wednesday reported that some members of the Special Counsel team are saying the Attorney General William Barr, “failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.” According to the Times, “Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.” The President predictably lashed out at the paper on Twitter on Thursday morning complaining that, “The New York Times had no legitimate sources, which would be totally illegal, concerning the Mueller Report. In fact, they probably had no sources at all! They are a Fake News paper who have already been forced to apologize for their incorrect and very bad reporting on me!”

In other news the House Ways and Means Committee has submitted a request to the IRS for Trump’s tax returns for the last 6 years. Democrat Richard Neal, who chairs the committee, is apparently using a little known piece of federal tax law to make the request. The provision dates back to the so-called Teapot Dome scandal from the Warren G. Harding administration. Progressive activists have been pressuring Mr. Neal for months to use his subpoena authority in what is sure to turn into a legal fight. The IRS has until only April 10th to provide the information. In a statement the Congressman said, “I take the authority to make this request very seriously, and I approach it with the utmost care and respect. This request is about policy, not politics; my preparations were made on my own track and timeline, entirely independent of other activities in Congress and the administration.” Trump responded to the request for his tax returns on Wednesday at the White House saying because he was being audited he couldn’t turn over his tax returns (even though he’s not the one being asked to turn them over).

The House of Representatives on Thursday voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and approved the closing of the so-called “boyfriend loophole.” The current version of the act bars current or former spouses from legally owning firearms if they have been charged with abuse or stalking, but it did not apply that standard to romantic partners. In the face of strong opposition from the NRA, Representatives passed the updated version of the Act. Representative Jennifer Wexton explained her support of the bill on the House floor.  The bill now heads to the Senate for a vote.

On Thursday the House voted to approve a resolution that had already passed the Senate ending US support for the Saudi war on Yemen. The vote passed 247-175 with strong bi-partisan support, just as it did in the Senate. For the first time in history, Congress is sending a resolution to the President’s desk for a signature based on the War Powers Act. Trump is expected to veto the bill. The House had already voted on the bill in February but in the Senate version of the bill,

FEATURING ERIC LECOMPTE – President Trump’s battles with Puerto Rico continued on Monday night as he tweeted erroneously that, “Puerto Rico got far more money than Texas & Florida combined, yet their government can’t do anything right, the place is a mess – nothing works.” He said, “Puerto Rico got 91 Billion Dollars for the hurricane, more money than has ever been gotten for a hurricane before,” and then he called San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, “crazed and incompetent,” and then said that, “The best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico is President Donald J. Trump.” Multiple news outlets exposed his $91 billion figure and claims that Puerto Rico received more money than any other region for a hurricane as flat-out lies. The President’s unhinged comments come after the Senate voted down a billto bolster the island’s food stamp program.

Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of Jubilee USA.

FEATURING DENNIS CARTER – Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is expected any day now to sign a so-called fetal heartbeat bill into law. HB 481, which passed along party lines, would ban most abortions six weeks into a pregnancy – which is about the time when many women first discover they are pregnant. Georgia joins a growing number of states including Ohio, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Mississippi in attempting to ban women’s constitutional rights to control their own bodies. Legal challenges are likely to prevent any of the laws from taking effect, but anti-abortion activists hope one of them will make it to the Supreme Court.

Dennis Carter, senior news editor for Rewire.News, where he oversees regional coverage and federal policy coverage.

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning voted to subpoena the Special Counsel’s report on the 2016 election. The vote took place along party lines and means that Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler will issue a subpoena to the Justice Department. Ahead of the vote Republican committee member Jim Jordan insisted that Democrats only wanted to see the report because it didn’t adhere to their expectations.  Chairman Nadler has said that he wants to allow Attorney General William Barr, “time to change his mind…But if we cannot reach an accommodation, then we will have no choice but to issue subpoenas for these materials.”

Another House committee, on Oversight and Reform, on Tuesday voted to subpoena a former White House personnel security division chief named Carl Kline. The subpoena was issued on the basis of testimony earlier this week by a whistleblower named Tricia Newbold who is a career security staffer at the White House. Newbold urged lawmakers to examine the reversals of 25 security clearance decisions that Trump’s team made. And, the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday also issued multiple subpoenas of Trump officials in the decision making to add a citizenship question to the US Census.

The city of Chicago, Illinois has a new mayor and she’s unlike anyone who has ever held that office. Lori Lightfoot won Tuesday’s run-off race to become Chicago’s first black female mayor, as well as the first openly gay person in that position. She defeated city council woman Toni Preckwinkle in every ward in the city. Here’s part of her victory speech, Mayor elect Lori Lightfoot won a historic run-off race to replace outgoing mayor Rahm Emanuel. Among the issues Lightfoot campaigned on was justice for the police killing of a young black teenager named Laquan McDonald.

In Los Angeles, police confirmed that they have taken into custody a suspect named Eric Holder in the shooting death of Grammy-nominated rapper and social justice activist Nipsey Hussle. Surveillance videos of the shooting are now making the rounds of news media. Hussle’s killing has sent shock waves throughout Southern California. He was integral in promoting black owned businesses and community projects in South Los Angeles where he grew up.

In other news, President Trump is backing off on his decision to try to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shot down the plan. McConnell said on Tuesday, “I made it clear to him that we were not going to be doing that in the Senate,” and, “He did say, as he later tweeted, that he accepted that and that he would be developing a plan that he would take to the American people during the 2020 campaign.”

McConnell is also overseeing the changing of Senate rules this week that could help Republicans speed up Trump’s judicial appointments.