With his relationship with Deutsche Bank under scrutiny, the president turns to a little-known bank.

By Karoun Demirjian and Missy Ryan @ WashingtonPost.com, May 23

Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are urging President Trump not to go over Congress’s head to complete controversial arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other countries amid concerns that he may soon use his emergency powers to sidestep lawmakers’ power to check such deals.

Lawmakers and human rights advocates are anticipating that the administration may exploit a legal window that permits the president to circumvent congressional roadblocks, or “holds,” on proposed arms sales. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has placed such a hold on a planned sale of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia, over concerns that the weapons may be used against civilian targets in war-torn Yemen.

Such holds are common, and Republicans and Democrats have placed them on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Persian Gulf countries in recent years. Presidents have seldom exploited their emergency powers to work around them — and the prospect that Trump may try to blow through several objections to such arms sales has alarmed lawmakers, who are anxious to protect their authority to have a say on the executive branch’s ability to export lethal weaponry to foreign actors [....]

By Patti Neighmond @ Public Health section @ NPR.org, May 10

[....] Black mothers die at a rate that's 3.3 times greater than whites, and Native American or Alaskan Native women die at a rate 2.5 times greater than whites, according to a report out this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yet, the report concluded, roughly 3 in 5 pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. The racial disparity in maternal death rates is a dramatic argument for prevention efforts that address diverse populations, says Dr. Wanda Barfield, director of the Division of Reproductive Health and assistant surgeon general in the U.S. Public Health Service [....]

When addressing racial disparities, it's important to note the difference in underlying chronic disease risk, Barfield says. Cardiovascular disease is more common among black women and can occur at earlier ages than in white women, she says. It may be that cardiovascular symptoms are never identified in these women or that they simply cannot overcome social factors such as a lack of transportation to access health care, she says.

In addition, Barfield says that some inequities can be explained by variation in hospital quality. "This can mean that effective interventions may not be occurring for black women," she says, or that the timing of the intervention may not be appropriate. "Minority women are delivering in different and lower-quality hospitals than white women," she says, adding that this could clearly affect outcomes [....]

Op-ed by Dana Milbank  @ WashingtonPost.com, May 22 at 6:53 PM

This is not the work of an orderly mind.

President Trump stormed into the Cabinet Room 15 minutes late Wednesday morning and immediately proceeded to blow up a long-planned meeting with Democratic leaders about an infrastructure bill. He raged against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for the terrible, horrible things she has said about him, and he vowed not to work on any legislation until Democrats stop investigating his administration. He stomped out of the room before Democrats had a chance to reply, then marched into the Rose Garden for an unscheduled news conference — or, more accurately, a 12-minute parade of paranoia.

Positively everybody was out to get him. They were out to get him in the third person: [....]

He raged on [....]

He ricocheted randomly among inchoate thought fragments:[....]

Nobody seemed to know what to make of the explosion. White House officials reportedly said they tried to stop Trump from making the Rose Garden appearance. And for good reason: With Wednesday’s public announcement that he won’t negotiate with Democrats, the president has taken ownership of the lack of progress on infrastructure and other legislation — much the way he took ownership of the government shutdown.[....]

By Abha Bhattarai @ WashingtonPost.com, May 21

For years, Walmart workers have attended the company’s annual shareholders meeting to call for higher wages, better benefits and more predictable schedules.

This year they’ll have someone new delivering the message on their behalf: Sen. Bernie Sanders. The presidential candidate, who has repeatedly called on Walmart to improve its working conditions, is heading to Bentonville, Ark., on June 5 to introduce a shareholders’ proposal that would give hourly Walmart workers a seat on the company’s board [....]

Such a conflict isn’t unique to the U.S., but the consequences are far-reaching here. Caption to first graph illustration: Most Americans voted for Hillary Clinton, but most Americans live in a neighborhood won by President Trump

By Emily Badger @ NYTimes.com, May 21

It’s true across many industrialized democracies that rural areas lean conservative while cities tend to be more liberal, a pattern partly rooted in the history of workers’ parties that grew up where urban factories did.

But urban-rural polarization has become particularly acute in America: particularly entrenched, particularly hostile, particularly lopsided in its consequences. Urban voters, and the party that has come to represent them, now routinely lose elections and power even when they win more votes.

Democrats have blamed the Senate, the Electoral College and gerrymandering for their disadvantage. But the problem runs deeper, according to Jonathan Rodden, a Stanford political scientist: The American form of government is uniquely structured to exacerbate the urban-rural divide — and to translate it into enduring bias against the Democratic voters, clustered at the left of the accompanying chart.

Yes, the Senate gives rural areas (and small states) disproportionate strength. “That’s an obvious problem for Democrats,” Mr. Rodden said. “This other problem is a lot less obvious.” In a new book, “Why Cities Lose,” he describes the problem as endemic, affecting Congress but also state legislatures; red states but blue ones, too [....]

By David Enrich @ NYTimes.com/Business, May 19

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Anti-money-laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.

The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes.

But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees’ advice. The reports were never filed with the government. The nature of the transactions was not clear. At least some of them involved money flowing back and forth with overseas entities or individuals, which bank employees considered suspicious [....]