To Russia, With Love: The Trump administration announced new sanctions on Russia in retaliation for the nerve agent attack on a former Russian double agent and his daughter in England. Former agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter nearly died in March after they were exposed to a Russian-made agent.

The sanctions the administration announced could nearly cut in half the amount of exports from the US to Russia. That would include anything with potential national security purpose — engines, electronics, circuits, and testing equipment.

The Insider: US Rep. Christopher Collins of Western New York, one of the first members of Congress to endorse Donald Trump for president, was indicted yesterday on charges of insider trading.

The indictment in Manhattan federal court charges Collins, his son, and the father of his son’s fiancée with conspiracy, securities fraud, wire fraud, and lying to the FBI.

The indictment says that, as a board member and major investor in Innate Immunotherapeutics Limited, Collins was told that a multiple sclerosis drug the company was developing failed clinical trials. He was standing on the White House lawn when he got the message.

US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said at a news conference that Collins immediately used a phone to try to “reach his son six times in five minutes.” Berman said, “And then on the seventh attempt, he got through to his son and, as alleged in the indictment, he illegally relayed the results of that drug test so his son could trade on that information.”

Cameron Collins, 25, proceeded to sell off his stock, avoiding $571,000 in losses, th4e indictment charges.

Collins himself owned 17 percent of the company. After the public announcement that the company’s only drug was no good, the stock dove 92 percent.

Collins pleaded not guilty, but he’s going to have a tough time hanging on in Congress.

The Trumpster Fire: President Trump’s lawyers rejected the latest set of terms offered by the Special Counsel for an interview with the President. The NY Times reports that Trump’s lawyers don’t want him answering questions related to potential obstruction of justice. They are worried about questions they might consider to be “perjury traps.”

Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani claims Robert Mueller and his team already know everything they need to know. Arguing his case through the press, Giuliani said, “We’re restating what we have been saying for months: It is time for the Office of Special Counsel to conclude its inquiry without further delay.” That’s not likely to happen.

Water Everywhere: Commerce Secretary Wilbur ross ordered the National Marine Fisheries Service to divert all the water it can from protecting endangered species to fighting western wildfires. This follows President Trump’s completely ignorant tweet claiming environmental policy has denied firefighters the water they need.

Firefighting commanders say they have all the water they need. While they do use a lot of water, wildfires are not fought with water like a housefire. They are fought with bulldozers, chainsaws, axes, and intentionally set “backfires.”

What’s behind this is a dispute between the current federal government and water authorities in California, which have recently devoted more water to saving fish from extinction.

App This: New York has become the first major city to put a temporary limit on the number of Uber and Lyft drivers competing with the city’s taxis. The city council also set a minimum wage for app-based drivers to be the same as it is for cabbies. The city believes the app drivers are contributing to congestion while killing business for cab drivers.

Home Schooling: Prosecutors in New Mexico say some of the starving children found at a remote desert compound were being trained to become school shooters. The children are between ages 1 and 15.

Bring Up the Music: The Motion Picture Academy announced that it will limit the Oscar broadcast to exactly three hours — we’d like to thank the Academy —  and they are adding a category  for “popular’ films, an admission that they are trying to find a way to recognize the movies everyone likes the most that don’t win awards. The first winners will probably be from Wakanda.

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