Happy birthday, Michelle Obama! The Trump administration has a gift for you: fewer fruits and vegetables and a lot more pizza, burgers, and fries in school lunches.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced new standards for the Food and Nutrition Service, the agency which determines the nutritional programs that feed approximately 30 million students across the country.
From the Washington Post, emphasis ours:
[USDA Deputy Under Secretary Brandon] Lipps said the changes will help address what he described as unintended issues that developed as a result of the regulations put in place during the Obama administration. For example, when schools were trying to implement innovative solutions such as grab-and-go breakfast off a cart or meals in the classroom, they were forced to give kids two bananas to meet minimum federal requirements.
Two bananas! The horror. Of course the solution is to… let the potato lobby pander to you aggressively enough to get more potatoes on the menu (emphasis ours):
[Colin Schwartz, deputy director of legislative affairs for Center for Science in the Public Interest] says that limiting the variety of vegetables served allows french fries to become even more central to students’ diets. He says the potato lobby has been pushing for this change, and that the potato industry was behind a change that happened quietly last March. The USDA allowed school food authorities participating in the School Breakfast Program to substitute potatoes in place of fruit without including vegetables from other subgroups in the weekly menus.
Normal country!
President Trump’s legal team for his upcoming impeachment trial is panning out to be the worst ‘90s flashback ever. Like, frosted lipstick and overly plucked eyebrows levels of grim. Trump has added Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz to his defense team. Starr is notorious for his investigation of President Clinton, which led to his subsequent impeachment in 1999 while Dershowitz is an entertainment lawyer who made a name for himself as O.J. Simpson’s defense counsel during his murder trial. Rounding out the team is Robert Ray, who succeeded Starr as head of the Office of the Independent Counsel and submitted final reports on the Clinton-Lewinsky controversy.
This trio of goons is determined to do everything they can to make the trial look like a sham. From the New York Times:
In choosing Mr. Starr, Mr. Dershowitz and Mr. Ray, the president in effect assembled his view of an all-star television legal team. While best known to the general public in the 1990s, all three have made the rounds of Fox News and other media outlets lately to defend Mr. Trump and accuse House Democrats of pursuing a partisan witch hunt, appearances that appealed to the president, who complains that many of his allies do not defend him vigorously enough.
Meanwhile, at Monica Lewinsky’s house:
- President Trump accused the Democrats of using the impeachment trial to derail Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in a fruitless attempt to stir shit up. [Politico]
- Georgia’s election servers might have been hacked before the 2016 and 2018 elections due to a 2014 incident. Cool, normal. [Politico]
- Looks like the Trump administration and the Justice Department are obsessed with leaks again. [Washington Post]
- That guy from Law and Order endorsed Mike Bloomberg. [CNN]
- Watch a bunch of LSU football players suffer through President Trump turning their big moment into a campaign event:
- The Supreme Court is taking on a case regarding the suitability of gay foster parents. [NBC]
- In other shitty Supreme Court news, they’re reportedly considering allowing the Trump administration to allow more employers to deny insurance coverage for contraceptives. [Washington Post]
- The restoration of voting rights for formerly incarcerated people is under attack in Florida. [New York Times]
- Anderson Cooper is big mad:
- Tulsi Gabbard is really good at push-ups, less good at remaining relevant in the polls.
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