LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: YouTube Shooter Identified and Much, Much More. “So we have another shooting where authorities were given some kind of advanced warning. This situation wasn’t as specific as the Parkland shooting but nevertheless, did police contact YouTube to tell them a disgruntled ‘creator’ might be headed their way?”

THIS IS CNN: CNN Criticized for “Sexist” Coverage of YouTube Shooting.

After local authorities confirmed the suspect was a woman, CNN’s screen read “Female Suspect Dead” and on-air personalities speculated as to reasons for the incident.

One personality, CNN’s crime and justice reporter Shimon Prokupecz, speculated on The Situation Room that the motivation for the shooting was “perhaps a love triangle.” Ongoing conversations centered on the possibility of the shooter reacting to a relationship-gone-bad.

The coverage was immediately called out as odd on Twitter, with many pointing out Porkupecz’s “love triangle” remark in particular.

They went there.

HMM: The Department of Homeland Security has detected rogue devices that foreign spies and criminals could be using to track people’s calls and texts in DC.

In a March 26 letter to Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that last year it identified suspected unauthorized cell-site simulators in the nation’s capital. The agency said it had not determined the type of devices in use or who might have been operating them. Nor did it say how many it detected or where.

The agency’s response, obtained by The Associated Press from Wyden’s office, suggests little has been done about such equipment, known popularly as Stingrays after a brand common among US police departments. The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the nation’s airwaves, formed a task force on the subject four years ago, but it never produced a report and no longer meets regularly.

The devices work by tricking mobile devices into locking onto them instead of legitimate cell towers, revealing the exact location of a particular cellphone. More sophisticated versions can eavesdrop on calls by forcing phones to step down to older, unencrypted 2G wireless technology. Some attempt to plant malware.

They can cost anywhere from $1,000 to about $200,000. They are commonly the size of a briefcase; some are as small as a cellphone. They can be placed in a car next to a government building. The most powerful can be deployed in low-flying aircraft.

Thousands of members of the military, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI and the rest of the national-security apparatus live and work in the Washington area. The surveillance-savvy among them encrypt their phone and data communications and employ electronic countermeasures. But unsuspecting citizens could fall prey.

Given their track record, I’m not so convinced that our intelligence agency people are actually so tech-savvy.

BLUE WAVE? Democrats Still Struggling for Party Unity in Colorado ‘Toss Up’ District.

“One thing I’ve said in the past: I don’t really believe in the Republican concept of ‘trickle down’ economics,” [Democratic candidate Levi ] Tillemann told the Washington Free Beacon in a recent phone interview. “But it doesn’t work in the political system either. We don’t want to be in a country where political parties are practicing ‘trickle down’ politics, where they give all the money and the resources to people who they perceive to be at the top and try to shut people out of the conversation.”

Tillemann upset the normal order last January when he blasted the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and accused House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of telling him he should drop out of the race earlier this year so the party could unify behind former Army Ranger Jason Crow.

Intra-party fighting such as this worried Democrats in the early campaign months of 2017, when they hoped to defeat incumbent Republican Mike Coffman and flip the most competitive district in a purple state.

Democrats rigged the primaries for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but that didn’t quite work out as planned.

“EXILED JURISTS” SAYS A LOT ABOUT A COUNTRY: Exiled jurists hear graft claims against Venezuela’s Maduro.

The jurists, known as the “Supreme Court in Exile,” held a public hearing in Colombia’s elegant congressional building to review accusations linking Maduro to the giant Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, which has acknowledged paying bribes in many Latin American countries.

The proceedings were notably one-sided: While an attorney was assigned for Maduro, his government considers the body illegitimate and both the judges and prosecutor have conflicts of interest, having fled into exile to avoid Maduro’s reach.

Ousted Venezuelan Chief Prosecutor Luisa Ortega, who long had access to the country’s investigative files, told the jurists that she has evidence that Maduro sought $50 million from Odebrecht to finance his 2013 presidential campaign. Ortega said that in exchange for Odebrecht’s help, Maduro promised the construction firm new public works contracts in Venezuela as well as help in facilitating tens of millions of dollars in overdue payments.

Why, it’s almost as though socialism is more about state-sanctioned graft and corruption than it is about helping “the people.”

Flashback: Iron-Fisted Socialism Benefited Hugo Chavez’s Daughter To The Tune Of BILLIONS, Reports Say.

MARK PENN: Roseanne is bringing conservative American women out of the closet.

“Roseanne,” the ABC sitcom, brought in 25 million viewers and counting to the shock of elites who believed that the biggest new draw on TV was Jimmy Kimmel and comedy tilting politically left. But there are an estimated 15 million closet conservatives in America today — people who have views that are more conservative than they let on to friends and family — and series star Roseanne Barr tapped into that enormous constituency.

Hillary Clinton recently suggested that women were being in some sense forced or brainwashed into following their spouses. And yet, the real phenomenon seems to be the opposite: women who say to their friends and family that they are liberal when, in fact, they harbor more conservative views, especially on hot-button issues like immigration, crime and even taxes.

At long last millions of women feel free to strike back, even in a small way, against the progressive patriarchy.

CELEBRATE DIVERSITY: Woman Brutally Assaulted in D.C. Restaurant After Professing to be a Trump Supporter.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: The Sinclair Broadcast Group Is Trying to Control Your Mind, or Something.

MEGAN FOX: Parents Stage Walkout Over Planned Parenthood’s Graphic, Violent Sex Ed in Public Schools.

NEVER GO OUTSIDE THE FAMILY: Hamza bin Laden Vows to ‘Redistribute the Riches’ of Saudi Arabia to Poor in Call for Uprising.

That’s a pretty pathetic attempt at unseating Crown Prince Salman.

IT ISN’T ALWAYS NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY: Yes, Andrea Mitchell. We see the ‘pattern.’ Trump is doing the same things as Obama yet the MSM only freaks out about Trump.

LIZ PEEK: The infuriating invisibility of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Where is Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg? The alleged “adult in the room” has been nearly missing in action since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke on March 17.

To date she has offered up only one measly post, which echoed CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s explanation of what went wrong, and one interview on CNBC.

For a woman known as a great communicator, not to mention the company’s critical No. 2 in command, credited with building the very advertising model that has got Facebook in hot water, Sandberg’s reticence is not only mystifying but also inexcusable.

It was former Google CEO Eric Schmidt who dismissed privacy concerns with a blithe, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Back in 2009, Schmidt’s statement was creepy and offensive. But now that the big networking firms are the ones being exposed, it’s full of schadenfreudeliciousness.

WHISTLEBLOWER: Anonymous Parkland Faculty Member Claims School Failed To Act on Threat Assessment. “Lives would have been saved.”

YOU’VE HEARD THAT GENERALS ALWAYS PREPARE TO FIGHT THE LAST WAR, BUT THIS IS RIDICULOUS: 68% of Indian military equipment is ‘vintage’ say officials.

HARDBALL: Trump Threatens To End NAFTA, Foreign Aid Unless “Immigrant Caravan” Is Stopped.

BLUE WAVE? Republicans should remain calm about 2018.

According to the FiveThirtyEight Generic Ballot, the Democrats’ lead over Republicans is slowly narrowing. Last December, Democrats led Republicans by a 14-point margin (50 percent to 36 percent). As of this week, their lead has shrunk to six points (46 percent to 40 percent). Fox News has the lead at five points, while Quinnipiac University’s pollsters peg it at just four points.

In nautical terms, a four- to six-point advantage is barely a ripple, let alone a “blue wave.” Republicans should take a deep breath and count their blessings in 2018. Despite the prevailing media narrative, there are many of them.

For starters, Republicans continue to outraise Democrats. In February, the Republican National Committee raised nearly $13 million, breaking its previous February fundraising record. The debt-ridden Democratic National Committee raised less $7 million last month, while seeing its total liabilities rise to over $6 million.

In 2017, the RNC raised $130 million — more than twice the DNC’s haul. Much of it came from digital fundraising, as Republicans added more than one million email addresses in the last quarter of 2017 alone. The RNC is also expected to double the small-dollar donation database that raised more than $250 million for President Trump in 2016. The RNC’s counterparts at House and Senate campaign arms are breaking similar fundraising records.

Fundraising remains solid, but conservative sentiment is likely tepid after last month’s budget-busting budget deal.

DONNA BRAZILE: Democratic Party Told Me ‘Shut up, Donna’ and ‘I Said Hell No.’ “‘They will drive right past you and will come after you in the last 48 hours of the campaign,’ former DNC chief warned African-American voters.”

OF COURSE HE DID: Mueller Found a Very Dishonest Way to Shroud His Investigation in Secrecy.

Special counsel Robert Mueller and his deputy Andrew Weissmann filed a three-page notice on Monday arguing that Alex Van Der Zwaan should not be allowed to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to the ongoing Russia investigation.

As the notice points out, Van Der Zwaan originally agreed to waive his rights to “request or receive” such records from the government during his plea agreement. In the notice, Mueller claims his legal arguments are being filed because the court “drew attention” to a similar waiver agreement during Richard Gates‘ recent arraignment.

That’s likely true, but it strains credulity to think there’s not at least something else going on behind the scenes here. One plausible scenario: Van Der Zwaan’s attorneys have signaled their intent to challenge the government’s FOIA waiver because there’s not much in the way of precedent that actually binds the court to enforce the waiver.

Such waivers are generally considered enforceable, but this is a hotly contested body of law and civil libertarians–as well as defense attorneys–frequently press the issue in the U.S. court system. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the exact question, so consider this all in flux.

Read the whole thing.

HMM: Clouds form over Iran deal as Trump deadline nears.

It was Trump’s choice of John Bolton as his incoming national security advisor that Iran deal supporters have seen as the biggest death knell for the deal.

Bolton penned an op-ed while the deal was being negotiated that was bluntly titled, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” He also encouraged Trump to “abrogate the Iran nuclear deal in his first days in office” last year.

Tillerson may have been hoping for a framework agreement with the Europeans that would allow Trump to save face without killing the deal, experts said, but Pompeo and Bolton are unlikely to accept something that’s mostly symbolic.

“The views of Bolton and Pompeo matter quite a bit” to the success or failure of the European negotiations, Taleblu said. “I don’t think both of them will settle for anything that’s just crossing Ts and dotting Is.”

Before Obama’s 2015 deal, Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons but hemmed in by sanctions — and was believed to be at the “breaking point” as recently as 2014. Under the deal, Iran is still pursuing nuclear weapons (at a slightly slower pace), but is far less hindered by sanctions.

The real trick is whether Trump can pull the Europeans along on a new and meaningful sanctions regime.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Ingraham Stays, Andy’s Cash Money Windfall and Much, Much More. “Operation Rehabilitate Andy McCabe has been in full swing following the FBI’s decision to fire the former senior official. Whatever is in that Inspector General report must be pretty bad if they have to get in front of it with a PR blitz.”

CHANGE: In a wide-ranging conversation, Prince Mohammed bin Salman also recognized the Jewish peoples’ right to “their own land.”

The well-protected Prince Mohammed does not seem particularly worried about mortal threats, however. He was jovial to the point of ebullience when I met him at his brother’s compound outside Washington (his brother, Prince Khalid bin Salman, is the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.). Prince Mohammed (who is known widely by his initials, MbS) seemed eager to download his heterodoxical, contentious views on a number of subjects—on women’s rights (he appears doubtful about the laws that force Saudi women to travel with male relatives); on Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who is, in the prince’s mind, worse than Hitler; and on Israel. He told me he recognizes the right of the Jewish people to have a nation-state of their own next to a Palestinian state; no Arab leader has ever acknowledged such a right.

Message sent to the Palestinians: You can stick a fork in “right to return” — it’s done.

HMM: Trump Freezes Syria Aid Funds, Sends Mixed Messages On Anti-ISIS Strategy.

The hold on the money and the status of the anti-ISIS campaign in Syria will be discussed at a National Security Council meeting next week. Trump reportedly ordered the funding to be frozen after reading a report about it in The Washington Post, U.S. officials told Reuters.

The Pentagon has estimated that ISIS has surrendered about 98 percent of its territory in Iraq and Syria, but U.S. military leaders are still concerned by Trump’s calls to reverse course, says Richard Engel, a reporter for MSNBC, who just returned from Syria. They say withdrawing the nearly 2,000 U.S. troops too early would leave the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in a lurch.

“It is a very sensitive time where the U.S. can see the end zone, can smell the finish line, and if we leave prematurely, ISIS comes back and this partner — will be left to fend for themselves against Turkey which is not an adversary that they are in a position to confront,” Engel tells Here & Now’s Peter O’Dowd.

If American troops withdraw, the Kurds will have to fend for themselves against Turkish forces, who they are fighting in northern Syria. The U.S. remains stuck in the middle of a conflict between two allies – the Kurds and Turkey – while also weighing the need to maintain some sort of military presence in Syria in order to prevent ISIS from rising again.

As always in the Middle East: It’s complicated.

SOLID STATE’S EVIDENCE: Heart rate recorded by smart device worn by woman, 57, ‘bashed to death by her daughter-in-law reveals she was the victim of an ambush attack.’

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Zuckerberg slams Apple, unveils network’s chilling ambitions.

The founder of the world’s most popular social platform outlined his ambitions for Facebook to act as a democratic system, with an independent “Supreme Court”, which people will be able to petition for their content to be restored.

“I think in any kind of good-functioning democratic system, there needs to be a way to appeal,” said the 33-year-old, positioning the social media network almost as its own state, although staff are not elected. “I think we can build that internally as a first step.

“What I’d really like to get to is an independent appeal. So maybe folks at Facebook make the first decision based on the community standards that are outlined, and then people can get a second opinion. You can imagine some sort of structure, almost like a Supreme Court, that is made up of independent folks who don’t work for Facebook, who ultimately make the final judgment call on what should be acceptable speech in a community that reflects the social norms and values of people all around the world.”

“Social norms and values” around the world include everything from constitutional recognition of individual rights, to forced female genital mutilation, and all the way to ethnic cleansing and genocide — and everybody gets a vote on who is allowed to post what?

Perhaps Facebook would be less creepy if its CEO weren’t so blithely ignorant.

CLOSE THE BORDERS AND PRAY FOR THE BEST? Latin America’s Burning Question: What to Do About Venezuela.

The waves of migration caused by Venezuela’s impending implosion have affected Colombia and Brazil most severely, although the two neighbors have pursued widely divergent policies on how to deal with its root cause – the country’s foundering economy. Colombia backs heavier U.S. sanctions as part of an attempt to drive the Venezuelan government from power so that a successor can begin addressing the profound economic deterioration. Brazil, by contrast, has long espoused a policy of non-intervention in Venezuelan affairs, restricting itself to encouraging political dialogue between the opposition and the government to steer them toward free elections. At present, however, the gap between Colombia and Brazil may be narrowing after the Brazilian Finance Ministry agreed during the G-20 summit that it would coordinate financial actions against Caracas. As a result, Brazil will likely allocate some of its sizable intelligence resources to the Lima Group.

That’s all fine and good, but “the country’s foundering economy” is not the root cause of the Venezuela’s troubles. The economy is but a symptom of the real root cause: Socialism.