This is our weekly newsletter, Hard Reset. Sign up here.
Crunching the numbers
- Over 10 years, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, his family and their corporations earned more than $65 million in charitable funds, according to the Associated Press. That money came from the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a Christian legal advocacy charity, and other nonprofits connected to Sekulow. As a nonprofit, ACLJ can’t engage in political activities, but a half dozen of its employees represent President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial.
- Under a new plan, the Department of Justice could collect DNA from an estimated 743,000 immigrants in federal custody each year.
- The Congressional Budget Office projects the U.S. budget deficit will reach $1 trillion this year.
- Taco Bell wants to lure general managers into the fold with $100,000 salaries.
Eye on local news
- Five Cleveland journalism organizations and a Cleveland State University student journalist are collaborating on a six-month project that will examine the risks that crime witnesses take when they come forward.
- From The Tennessean: The Tennessee Department of Correction may not have enough lethal injection drugs for the state’s executions scheduled to take place this year. States that allow lethal injection have struggled to source the drugs since 2011, when manufacturers began distancing themselves from the products because of their use in executions. Lethal injection drugs also were linked to botched executions in Oklahoma and Arizona six years ago.
- From The Dallas Morning News: In January, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced two policy proposals that would roll back Obama-era school food rules. With a commitment to nutrition mirroring my own, the proposed rules would count pasta as a vegetable as long as it’s made out of vegetable flour, “even if the pasta is not served with another recognizable vegetable.”
From Big If True
- During the impeachment trial, Republicans and Trump’s defense team repeatedly said the House of Representatives failed to “do its job” during its investigation. But after Trump ordered his administration not to cooperate with the inquiry, at least a dozen witnesses refused to testify. The White House, the Office of Management and Budget, and the state, defense and energy departments all refused to provide documents despite receiving subpoenas.
- A defining moment during the trial came from Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz, who suggested corrupt acts aren’t impeachable if they’re meant to win elections. We factchecked his later claim that this comment was mischaracterized. It wasn’t.
- From The Curbside Chronicle, Oklahoma Gazette and Big If True: How Oklahoma City’s homeless census works. This story was funded through a grant funded by the Inasmuch Foundation and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and facilitated by the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University.
Thank you for reading Hard Reset. If you like what we do, consider supporting Big If True with a tax-deductible donation.
Send me feedback, questions and tips: bryant@bigiftrue.org and 405-990-0988. Or share your thoughts in our survey here.
– Mollie Bryant
