Blake Farenthold Finally Quit Congress to Pursue Being a Creep Full Time

Welcome to Barf Bag, a daily politics roundup to help you sort through the chaotic Trumpian news cycle.

Hey everyone, check out the GOP’s hot new FREEDOM HAT. It looks like freedom! (No it doesn’t.)

Here’s all the shit we couldn’t cover today:

• Less than four months after announcing he won’t run for re-election, Texas Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold has resigned from Congress abruptly, effective at 5:00 p.m. April 6, 2018. In December, CNN reported accounts of Farenthold’s alleged “vulgar and abusive” behavior. [Dallas News]
• In what the The National Immigration Law Center is calling the largest workplace raid in a decade, federal officials arrested 97 immigrants at a meat-packing plant in Tennessee. Local officials blocked off streets while a helicopter monitored the raid from above. Eleven individuals were arrested on federal or state criminal charges, while 86 undocumented immigrants were detained. [Washington Post]
• The death toll of Palestinians shot by the Israeli military at the Gaza border continues to rise, reaching 23 dead, as thousands of Palestinian refugees protest for the right to return. [The Guardian]
• Donald Trump is skipping the White House Correspondents Dinner for the second year in a row. Seems like someone is a little scared, no? [Deadline]
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Mick Mulvaney, who is so aggressive about cost-cutting measures that he suggested the quarterly budget be $0, is not so spend-thrift when it comes to salaries of CFPB officials, many of whom make upwards of $200,000. [The New York Times]
• Here’s something pretty scary for a free press: The Department of Homeland Security is quietly compiling a database of and journalists, bloggers, and other “media influencers,” and will monitor social media accounts and 290,000 global news for “any and all” coverage pertaining to the agency. [Bloomberg Law]
• Hoggwatch.com is a website dedicated to smearing the Parkland, Florida student activists fighting for gun control. Mike Adams, its twisted creator is “an alternative medicine grifter” and a maniac, unsurprisingly. [The New Republic]
• Environmental groups have plastered the face of EPA head Scott Pruitt, who will probably not be EPA head for much longer, all over Washington DC and are calling for his ouster. [The Hill]
• Pruitt’s imminent firing is the result of alleged domestic abuser and former White House aide Rob Porter, who reportedly leaked info to get back at his ex-girlfriend, Samatha Dravis, one of Pruitt’s aides. [Talking Points Memo]
• Michigan millionaire and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Shri Thanedar, who has cast himself as the next Bernie Sanders, is apparently so ideologically flexible that he privately considered running as a Republican to win the election? Love this new era of open-air opportunism! [The Intercept]
• Puerto Rico will close 283 schools this summer due to a steep drop in enrollments tied to economic devastation and families leaving in the wake of Hurricane Maria. [Associated Press]

Here are some tweets the President was allowed to publish:

This has been Barf Bag.