Texas Republicans were poised Wednesday to take a big step toward banning “sanctuary cities” in their state, debating a bill through which police chiefs and sheriffs could even be jailed for not cooperating fully with federal immigration authorities.

Although Democrats don’t have the votes in the Republican-controlled Legislature to stop the bill from going to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who made such a ban a priority, they vowed to fight it at every step, promising hours of emotionally charged debate on Wednesday before the Texas House votes.

Under the bill, the state could withhold funding from local governments for acting as sanctuary cities, even as the Trump administration’s efforts to do so nationally have hit roadblocks. Other Republican-controlled states have pushed for similar polices in recent years, just as more liberal ones have done the opposite. But Texas would be the first in which police chiefs and sheriffs could be jailed for not helping enforce immigration law. They could also lose their jobs.

President Trump on Wednesday will release the outlines of what Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin called “the biggest tax cut” in US history — a plan expected to include huge cuts for businesses and a modest reduction for the middle class. Trump wants to slash the corporate tax rate from 35 to 15 percent and also allow private and “pass-through businesses” like his own real estate empire to file like corporations. That could reduce his own taxes, as he would only have to pay the 15 percent rate instead of the top 39.6 percent personal rate that now applies. But Mnuchin said the plan won’t allow the wealthy to take advantage of the 15 percent rate for small businesses.

According to media expert and author Michael Levine(), a majority of Americans say they believe Russia tried to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and about 39 percent even say that Trump’scampaign tried to assist them. Noting the latest polling data, Levine notes that “fifty-six percent of respondents said they were convinced of the Kremlin’s meddling. Those opinions are largely drawn along party lines, with a majority of Democratic participants believing that Trump’s campaign helped the Russians and a majority of Republicans saying they think that former President Obama spied on the GOP candidate before he assumed office.” According to Levine “Overall, only 32 percent of respondents say they think Obama’s administration intentionally spied on Trump or any members of his campaign over the course of the election. Among Hillary Clinton voters, a full 72 percent say Trump’s team helped Russia meddle.”

President Trump vowed on Wednesday to challenge California jurisdictions all the way to the Supreme Court after a federal judge there stopped him from withholding funds to penalize them for shielding illegal immigrants. Mr. Trump, who twice has been blocked by courts from imposing a temporary travel ban on visitors from select Muslim-majority countries, expressed frustration that once again a judge in a single district could thwart him from taking action. The judge who issued the latest ruling hails from California, the same state as the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which heard the previous cases. “First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities-both ridiculous rulings,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “See you in the Supreme Court!

Turkish officials on Wednesday said they have arrested more than 1,000 people who they claim secretly infiltrated law enforcement throughout the country on behalf of Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based cleric who Turkey’s government blames for a failed coup last summer. Gulen is a former ally of President Tayyip Erdogan, but officials have accused him of organizing the attempted coup in July. Interior MinisterSuleyman Soylu told reporters that the crackdown, which happened overnight, targeted Gulen’s alleged network, which “infiltrated our police force.” He added, “One thousand and nine secret imams have been detained so far in 72 provinces, and the operation is ongoing.” Authorities have, since July, arrested more than 40,000 people—including teachers, soldiers, police officers, and public servants—over purported ties to terrorist groups.

Ivanka Trump, daughter and adviser to President Trump, is building a fund for female entrepreneurs, Axios reported on Wednesday. “The statistics and results prove that when you invest in women and girls, it benefits both developed and developing economies,” Trump told reporter Mike Allen in Berlin. “Women are an enormous untapped resource, critical to the growth of all countries.” Trump says the fund will provide capital to both small and medium enterprises run by women around the globe and that the financing will come from various countries and corporations. According to Axios, Trump’s father is supportive of the idea. World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim has allegedly consulted with the first daughter about the project.

LBN-INTEL FOR INFLUENCERS:

LBN-BUSINESS INSIDER:   ***More than a year into Twitter’s efforts to turn around the company under the leadership ofJack Dorsey, its business is shrinking. And yet, investors seem to have finally been given a glimmer of hope for the future. But first, the bad news. On Wednesday, Twitter reported its first fall in revenue since its initial public offering in 2013, posting sales of $548 million in the first quarter, down 7 percent from a year earlier. But that beat investors’ low expectations for the company; Wall Street analysts had predicted revenue of $509 million.

LBN-INVESTIGATES: Dinosaurs had different self-defense mechanisms. Some, like meat eaters, had sharp teeth. Plant eaters had long horns or sharp spikes. Other dinosaurs were covered in bony plates

LBN SPOTLIGHT: Tiananmen West: Why Nixon Ordered the Kent State Massacre is now available on Amazon in both e-book and paperback formats. It is a non-fiction study of the Nixon era.   Author, Jenny Deason Copeland, pitched the screenplay for 20 years only to hear Hollywood execs suggest it be a book first. The heroine and villain parts were written withSarandon and Nicholson in mind. Nixon confesses to ordering the massacre in his autobiography RN. After three decades of research using FOIA procedures, the book uncovers the possible motive behind the massacre. The FOIA results are available free at 

MY REVIEW: “Every day LBN makes me think. It expands my world and mind.”—– Rory L., an LBN reader from Newark, New Jersey.

LBN-HEALTH WATCH:   ***For those who can stomach it, working out before breakfast may be more beneficial for health than eating first, according to a useful new study of meal timing and physical activity. Its results indicate that when we eat affects how much fat we burn during exercise and also alters molecular activity within fat cells, in ways that could have long-term implications for our physical well-being. Athletes and scientists have long known that meal timing affects performance. Most obviously, if you eat first, you have relatively high levels of blood sugar. Working muscles can readily use this sugar as fuel. If, on the other hand, you have fasted before working out, your muscles must rely primarily on the body’s skimpy supply of stored carbohydrates or its larger reservoirs of fat. Accessing this fat, however, requires extra metabolic steps to become available as energy, which makes it a relatively inefficient fuel source during times of strenuous exercise. As a general rule, the body tends to turn to fat as its primary fuel source when exercise is more moderate.

LBN-MEDIA INSIDER:   ***James Heidenry, who once called Us Weekly “the biggest culprit of hypocrisy” has been named as the editor-in-chief of Us Weekly. Heidenry, who already edits AMI’s OK! and Star, was introduced as the new editor at an all-staff meeting on Monday.   ***Robert Siegel, who is 69, will step down later this year as the senior co-host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” after 30 years in the chair. NPR says it will conduct a national search for a new co-anchor to share duties with Ari Shapiro, Audie Cornish and (here in Culver City) Kelly McEvers.

LBN-NOTICED:   ***Oprah Winfrey dining at TAO Downtown in NYC with Tony Bennett, Spike Lee and Gayle King to celebrate her new HBO movie, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”.    ***John Lydon at Aisling Foley’s Shag party at Soho Grand in NYC.   ***Lena Dunham, Jenni Konner, andEbon Moss-Bachrach having a “Girls” reunion at a Tribeca Film Festival premiere of “Tokyo Project”.   ***Artist Marina Abramovic telling fotogs who asked her to smile on the carpet for “Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World,” “How can I? Trump is president.”

LBN-INVESTIGATES: Nearly 6 out of 10 Angelenos think another riot is likely in the next five years, increasing for the first time after two decades of steady decline. That’s higher than in any year except for 1997, the first year the survey was conducted, and more than a 10-point jump compared with the 2012 survey. Young adults ages 18 to 29, who didn’t directly experience the riots, were more likely than older residents to feel another riot was a possibility, with nearly 7 out of 10 saying one was likely, compared with about half of those 45 or older. Those who were unemployed or worked part-time were also more pessimistic, as were black and Latino residents, compared with whites and Asians, the poll found.

LBN-HOLLYWOOD INSIDER:  ***Miramax has named veteran film executive Bill Block to be its new CEO. Block, the founder/CEO of production company QED, most recently produced the comedy hit Bad Moms, which earned a surprise $184 million worldwide and is spawning a sequel. Block’s move to Miramax signals that Miramax is looking to expand significantly beyond its more recent incarnation as a lucrative library and return to its roots as a busy producer and distributor of high-end indie fare.

LBN-SPOTLIGHT: Coming soon – Episode #2 of “Without Notes” —- 

LBN-SITE OF THE DAY:

“With more than 1,000,000 human-edited definitions, Acronym Finder is the world’s largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms. Combined with the Acronym Attic, Acronym Finder contains more than 5 million acronyms and abbreviations. You can also search for more than 850,000 US and Canadian postal codes.”

LBN-R.I.P.:   ***Acclaimed director Jonathan Demme died on Wednesday morning in New York after suffering from esophageal cancer. He was 73. In a career that spanned more than four decades, Demme directed The Silence of the Lambs, for which he won an Academy Award in 1992, as well as dramas like Something Wild, Philadelphia and Beloved. In later years, he directed Anne Hathaway to an Oscar nomination for 2008’s Rachel Getting Married and just two years ago helmed Ricki and the Flash starring Meryl Streep. Demme was also well-known for his dynamic music documentaries, most famously 1984’s Stop Making Sense starring The Talking Heads, but also Neil Young: Heart of Gold in 2006 and most recently Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids.

LBN-COMMENTARY by Thomas L. Friedman: So a Hindu, a Muslim and a Jew are playing golf together in Dubai …Sounds like the first line of a joke, right? Actually, it’s the first line of one of those serendipitous stories that often happen when you play golf abroad. In my case, I was invited to play at the Emirates Club with a U.A.E. education expert and the famed Indian mystic, poet and yogi Jaggi Vasudev, who goes by his reverential name, Sadhguru. When I got to the first tee, I realized this was not going to be a normal round. Sadhguru is the founder of Isha, an Indian-based humanitarian and environmental movement with millions of followers (and some critics, too) — several of whom I could tell were at the course, because caddies and staff members kept coming over for selfies with Sadhguru and offering the traditional Hindu greeting, “I bow to the divine in you.”

LBN-A DIFFERENT VIEW:

LBN-OVERHEARD:   ***Johnny Depp isn’t just in the red—he’s seeing red. Depp sued The Management Group in January for $25 million, alleging fraud and negligence. He also accused the L.A.-based firm, run by brothers Joel Mandel and Rob Mandel, of failing to file his taxes on time and taking out high-interest loans on his behalf. Depp claimed that TMG led him to be more than $40 million in debt. In a countersuit, the actor’s ex-managers cited Depp’s lavish lifestyle as the cause of his financial downfall. “Depp lived an ultra-extravagant lifestyle that often knowingly cost Depp in excess of $2 million per month to maintain, which he simply could not afford,” the Mandel brothers’ attorney, Michael Kump, wrote in the cross-complaint. “Depp, and Depp alone, is fully responsible for any financial turmoil he finds himself in today.”   ***Al Pacino made the most of his 77th birthday celebrations with his stunning girlfriend Lucila Sola. The loved-up couple marked his birthday by soaking up the sun in Mexico. Pacino grinned as he walked into the waves with his 37-year-old partner. “The Godfather” star covered up in a dark colored t-shirt and stone shorts.   ***Gabourey Sidibe worked as a phone-sex operator to help make ends meet. The actress, now 33, opens up about the experience in her upcoming memoir, “This Is Just My Face,” writing, “I was 21, couldn’t afford to go to school, and couldn’t get a job.”

President Donald Trump signaled Monday that he would be fine with delaying a showdown over his planned wall at the U.S.-Mexico border until September, possibly averting a potential government shutdown this week as his presidency reaches the 100-day mark. Politico reported Trump made the remarks while speaking to a group of conservative media outlets during a reception at the White House. Trump, however, did not give up on the plan to get Congress to fund the wall’s construction. Democrats previously said they would not vote for spending legislation to keep the government open if it includes funds for the border wall. Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump declared that Mexico would pay for any such structure’s construction.

The Trump administration on Tuesday moved to impose a 20 percent tariff on softwood lumber arriving from Canada, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said. The tariff will be applied retroactively, Ross told The Wall Street Journal in an interview, and will affect some $5 billion in Canadian imports per year. “We tried to negotiate a settlement, but we were unable,” Ross said of conversations with Canadian officials. The Canadian government responded swiftly to the news, calling the reasons for the tariff “baseless and unfounded” and saying it “disagrees strongly” with the decision. Two more rounds of approvals are needed before full implementation—one from the Commerce Department and another from the U.S. International Trade Commission. Trump employed protectionist rhetoric on the campaign trail, and at the beginning of his presidency he pulled the U.S. out of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Chris Soules, a reality-TV star who appeared on two seasons of ABC’s The Bachelor and one season of Dancing With the Stars, was arrested overnight after he allegedly left the scene of a deadly car crash in Buchanan County, Iowa, on Monday night. The county sheriff’s office has not yet provided details on the crash, but the Iowa State Patrol reports one person was killed after a pickup truck rear-ended a tractor, which was plunged into a ditch on the side of the road. TMZ reports that Soules received medical attention. The incident occurred near Aurora, Iowa, north of Cedar Rapids. Soules, 35, came in third during the 10th season of the program, and then was the featured businessman/farmer Bachelor for the 19th season, which aired in 2015.

Right after two Cleveland police officers fatally shot 12-year-oldTamir Rice, they sat down for video interviews, which have just now—two and a half years later—been released to the public. The stories of the shooting told by Timothy Loehmann andFrank Garmback on the never-before-seen video vary in some ways from their written statements that were presented to a grand jury, which declined to indict the officers. Tamir Rice was killed on Nov. 22, 2014, outside the Cudell Recreation Center. Garmback and Loehmann willingly agreed to be interviewed on camera by internal-affairs officers and homicide detectives. In doing so, they invoked what are called Garrity rights, meaning they are protected from incriminating themselves in the statements to their employer, Cleveland.com reports. Loehmann says in the video that he opened his car door when the cruiser was still about 30 yards away from Rice and that he presented his weapon and yelled “Put your hands in the air! Let me see your weapon! Freeze!” But in his written statement to the grand jury, he said he didn’t begin acting until the car had rolled to a stop. “The threat just became incredible,” Loehmann said in the video. “I had to make the decision fast because Frank and I were in immediate danger. If the subject did pull out the gun and point it towards us, I would have been shot and possibly my partner… We were basically sitting ducks.”

Serena Williams responded Monday evening to racist and sexist comments from Romanian team captain and former tennis star Ilie Nastase, 70, that were overheard Friday at a press conference. Nastase said about Williams’s unborn child: “Let’s see what color it has. Chocolate with milk?” Williams’s fiancé, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, is white. Nastase also called two members of the British women’s team “fucking bitches” during a heated match over the weekend. Williams wrote on Instagram: “It disappoints me to know we live in a society in which people like Ilie Nastase can make such racist comments towards myself and unborn child, and sexist comments against my peers.” She added, “I have said it once and I’ll say it again, this world has come so far but yet we have so much further to go. Yes, we have broken down so many barriers–however there are a plethora more to go.”

California officials on Monday were investigating a bizarre weekend robbery at an Oakland train station, in which a mob of between 40 and 60 teens targeted train passengers in a coordinated attack around 9:30 p.m. Seven people were robbed at the Oakland Coliseum BART station, and some of them were punched or otherwise injured, police say. The youths jumped the fare gates Saturday night and many of them boarded the train, demanding purses, phones, and duffel bags. None of the victims or witnesses reported seeing guns or weapons during the attack, which lasted about five minutes before the group bolted, authorities said. All of the suspects are minors, but officials have not released detailed descriptions or an age range

Days after the University of California, Berkeley, canceled an appearance by the author Ann Coulter, two conservative organizations filed a federal lawsuit on Monday accusing the university of trying to “to restrict conservative speech” on campus.The legal action came after the university canceled Ms. Coulter’s appearance, scheduled for this week, on the grounds that specific threats by anarchist groups threatened security on campus. The groups that invited Ms. Coulter say she is planning to come anyway. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in San Francisco, was brought by the Berkeley College Republicans and the Young America’s Foundation, a national organization that promotes conservative causes.

LBN-INVESTIGATES: Middle-class Americans have fared worse in many ways than their counterparts in economically advanced countries in Western Europe in recent decades, according to a study released Monday by the Pew Research Center. “Compared with the Western European experience, the adult population in the U.S. is more economically divided,” said Rakesh Kochhar, associate director for research at Pew. “It is more hollowed out in the middle. This speaks to the higher level of income inequality in the United States.”

LBN-BUSINESS INSIDER:   ***The scandal at Wells Fargo over the creation of millions of fake bank accounts cost more than 5,300 people their jobs, many of them tellers and other low-level employees. The bank then clawed back tens of millions of dollars in pay from its retired chief executive and fired the former head of the retail operation. The next group of employees who could lose their jobs are Wells Fargo’s board of directors, who face re-election on Tuesday at the bank’s annual shareholder meeting.

LBN-HOLLYWOOD INSIDER:   ***Unions representing 12,000 Hollywood writers said on Monday that members had overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike, bringing show business closer to its first production shutdown in a decade. Leaders of the Writers Guild of America, East, and the Writers Guild of America, West, announced the results of an online strike authorization vote in an email to members. The unions said that 6,310 eligible members voted; 96 percent of the vote was in favor of a strike. A three-year contract between the guilds and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the makers of films and TV series, expires at midnight on May 1. Negotiators were set to resume talks on Tuesday, with funding of a failing union health care plan a sticking point.

LBN-NOTICED:   ***Rupert Murdoch, current executive chairman and CEO of Fox News, took network co-presidents Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy to lunch today––the day of Fox’s big new primetime lineup. Fox News has been embroiled in troubled waters, and some wondered what the future might hold for executives throughout the cable news ratings leader.  An AP photographer snapped two photos today of, according to the description, Murdoch leaving a “power lunch” spot Marea in Manhattan in NYC with both Shine and Abernethy.

LBN-MUSIC INSIDER:   ***Elton John has canceled a string of performances at Caesar’s Palace after a contracting a “potentially deadly” bacterial infection in South America that landed him in the intensive-care ward of a British hospital for two nights. Sir Elton’s management released a statement saying that the singer became “violently ill” during a flight back to Britain from Santiago, Chile, where he performed on April 10, bringing down the curtain on a six-concert tour that had also included stops in Brazil and Argentina. “Infections of this nature are rare and potentially deadly. Thankfully, Elton’s medical team identified this quickly and treated it successfully. He is expected to make a full and complete recovery,” the statement from his management team said.   ***Paul McCartney expanded his long-running “One on One” tour with several new U.S. dates. The singer will perform in Newark, New Jersey on September 11th, followed by a trio of New York dates: New York City’s Madison Square Garden on September 15th (his first show at the iconic venue since 2005), Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on September 19th and Uniondale on September 26th.

LBN-VIDEO LINK: Sheryl Sandberg: If We Grow Old, We Are Lucky —- The author and Facebook executive reflects on her late husband’s passing and her subsequent grief in her new book ‘Option B.’ —– 

LBN-R.I.P.:   ***Robert M. Pirsig, whose “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” a dense and discursive novel of ideas, became an unlikely publishing phenomenon in the mid-1970s and a touchstone in the waning days of the counterculture, died on Monday at his home in South Berwick, Me. He was 88. His publisher, William Morrow, announced his death, saying his health had been failing. He had been living in Maine for the last 30 years.

LBN-INVESTIGATES: In contrast to South Korea’s per capita GDP of $18,000, North Korea’s GDP is $1,000.

LBN-THIS DAY IN HISTORY

United Negro College Fund Established (1944)

Founded in 1944 by Frederick D. Patterson and Mary McLeod Bethune, the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) provides college tuition for African-American students and scholarship funds for its approximately 40 member colleges. Many of its beneficiaries are the first in their families to attend college, and it counts many distinguished individuals among its alumni, including Martin Luther King, Jr.

LBN-A DIFFERENT VIEW:….

LBN-OVERHEARD:   ***While appearing on Good Morning America Tuesday morning, Heather Morris revealed that her Dancing With the Stars partner, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, was unavailable to do the interview because someone had allegedly tried to break into his and Peta Murgatroyd‘shome. “They had some sort of run in with some man near their house trying to break in, but the police were there,” Morris, 30, said. “They took care of it. So they’re safe and Peta’s okay. That’s the most important thing.” The scary incident comes three months after the couple welcomed their first child together, a boy named Shai Aleksander.   ***Actress Faye Dunaway says she thought co-presenter Warren Beatty was joking when he paused before showing her the envelope that should have contained the Oscar’s best picture winner. Dunaway tells Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News she thought Beatty was stalling for effect. Dunaway read “La La Land” as best picture winner rather than “Moonlight” after PwC partner Brian Cullinan mistakenly handed them the back-up envelope for Actress in a Leading Role instead of the envelope for Best Picture.