THE MONEY WALL: The Senate stayed up all night while Republicans rammed through a $70 billion immigration bill that pays for President Trump’s hard line through the end of his presidency. 

  The vote was 52-47, a big win for Trump and his party as they continue his campaign against illegal immigration.

  The result was stalled for hours as Democrats tried to put in an amendment that would prevent the Justice Department from establishing a fund to pay people aggrieved by their legal treatment during the Biden administration. The amendment, which was shot down, put Republicans opposed to the fund in an embarrassing position, challenging them to support their party against their will.

  Also defeated by Republicans was a move by Democrats to bar Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing and Finance, from serving also as director of national intelligence, by declaring that no official could do that job while also heading another agency. 

POLICE BEAT: Former national security adviser in the first Trump administration, John Bolton, has reached a tentative deal to plead guilty to mishandling classified information while writing his book that was harshly critical of the President, The NY Times reports. He could be subject to a fine and up to five years in prison, but it looks like he will avoid jail and pay $2 million.

  A guilty plea would be the Trump Justice Department’s first successful prosecution of one of the President’s political enemies.

  The indictment accused Bolton of using personal email and a messaging app to share more than 1,000 pages of notes, which included national defense information, with his wife and daughter who did not have security clearances.

  Unlike the charges against Trump, in which he was found to have stashed actual classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Bolton was accused of keeping diaries and sending emails that mentioned national security information.

TICK, TICK TICK: Nick Bilton, the new executive producer of “60 Minutes,” is moving to shore up what’s left of the legendary news show that has lost four of its seven correspondents.

  Bilton met with Jon Wertheim, Bill Whitaker, and the 84 year-old Lesley Stahl, all of whom have been contemplated whether to stay or go after management demolition of both on and off-air staff. The firing of correspondent Scott Pelley, a pillar of the show, put the broadcast’s future in doubt.

  In a new memo Bilton said he had met with the remaining correspondents, said  “60 Minutes”  is an extraordinary show, but in the language of the tech world, “We also talked about change: About new audiences, new platforms, and new ways of storytelling that these new audiences need.” 

INFINITE SCROLL:

— President Trump says he plans to nominate Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for official appointment to the job. Blanche, a former personal defense lawyer for Trump, is the man who approved immunity from IRA prosecution for the President and his family as well as what would have been a $1.8 billion compensation fund for people who claim they were victims of political prosecution under the Biden Administration.

  Former Attorney General Pam Bodi also recently told Congress that Blanche had been the man in charge of what became a partial and troubled release of the files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 

— Lawyers for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ordered management to remove President Trump’s name from the building by June 12^th in compliance with a court order. Trump had ordered the center to be re-named “The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy” center.

  The order commands removal of the Trump name from signage, brochures, the website, and other materials.

— The President yesterday claimed that there’s cheating in the California primary vote because the counting was not complete. “Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting DELAY???” he asked on his Truth Social. 

  He also posted that, “I believe we have the Most Dishonest Elections of any Country, anywhere in the World!” 

— In the President’s campaign for what he calls “clean coal,” although there is no such thing, Trump announced $700 million in new federal funding for the country’s dwindling coal industry, including money to help build the first two new coal-burning power plants in the United States in more than 10 years.

  Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel. In recent months, the Energy Department has ordered units at five aging coal plants to stay open instead of shutting down as planned. Trump also directed the Defense Department to buy more electricity from coal plants to power military installations.

THE OBIT PAGE: Alan Gribben, a Mark Twain scholar who outraged mainstream colleagues with an attempt to replace the word “nigger” with “slave” in revised editions of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” died on May 9 at his home in Montgomery, Alabama. He was 84.

  The objectionable word appears more than 200 times in “Huck Finn.” Gribben said he wanted to offer an alternative to schools that had stopped teaching Twain’s books because of the blunt and dated reference to its Black characters.

THE SPIN RACK: A case of New World screwworm, a flesh-eating pest, has been found in Texas 60 years after it was largely eradicated in the United States. The livestock industry is taking an aggressive response to stopping potential spread.  New World screwworm is a parasitic fly lays eggs in open wounds or orifices, with the hatched maggots burrowing into and feeding on flesh.  

BELOW THE FOLD: Commenting on President Trump’s re-decoration of Washington, “The Daily Show’s” Michael Kosta said, “He’s building an arch, he’s covering statues in gold, he’s adding a s’mores station to Kennedy’s eternal flame. But his biggest project has been renovating the reflecting pool by the Lincoln Memorial. Because, as you know, one of the powers granted to the president in the Constitution is pool boy.”

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