The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates today:

The tame inflation and weak retail-sales data released Wednesday won’t deter the Federal Reserve from raising short-term interest rates later in the day but do raise doubts about another rate hike in September….Vince Reinhart, chief economist at Standish Mellon AsseInft Management, said Fed officials repeated the same message over and over: the weak first-quarter spending was transitory, the economy is at full employment and inflation is headed toward the goal of 2%.

Really? Inflation is “headed toward” the goal of 2 percent? If that’s the case, it’s sure doing it in a roundabout way. I’m no economist, but it sure looks to me like every conceivable measure of inflation has been dropping like a stone all year.

Cheriss May/NurPhoto via ZUMA

President Trump met with 15 Republican senators today, and the Associated Press reports that he had nothing good to say about the Paul Ryan health care bill that passed the House last month:

One source said Trump called the House bill “mean, mean, mean” and said, “We need to be more generous, more kind.” The other source said Trump used a vulgarity to describe the House bill and told the senators, “We need to be more generous.”

The first thing that comes to mind, obviously, is that Trump sure seemed pretty pleased with the bill back when it passed, didn’t he? He had a grand old time celebrating in the Rose Garden with Paul Ryan and the gang. “Premiums will be coming down….Deductibles will be coming down,” he said. “It’s a great plan….What we have is something very, very incredibly well-crafted.”

But let’s put this aside and concentrate on something more important: what was Trump’s vulgarity? Was it something that sounds vaguely like “mean mean mean,” and the first source misheard it? Or was the first source just too delicate to mention the word? Either way, the public deserves to know what Trump said. Who will be the first senator to tell us?

During today’s congressional testimony by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Sen. Kamala Harris (D–CA) frequently interrupted Sessions as he meandered off the topic she asked about. This is a standard game: senators get only a short time for questioning, so witnesses often meander as a way of chewing up time and running out the clock. On the other hand, sometimes witnesses legitimately need time to fully answer a question, and are being badgered into “yes or no, please” by showboating senators.

At one point during her questioning, Harris was trying to get a straight answer about why Sessions thought he could refuse to testify regarding conversations he had with President Trump. Harris was pressuring Sessions and Sessions was tap dancing artfully when John McCain suddenly interrupted to complain that Harris wasn’t allowing Sessions to respond. Committee chair Richard Burr admonished McCain (“Senators will allow chair to control the hearing”) but then admonished Harris too (“Senator Harris, let him answer”). Here’s the relevant part of the questioning:

And here are a few Twitter reactions:

Speaking for myself, I’d guess that McCain’s interruption was likely due to several things: Harris is a woman; Harris is new to the Senate; Harris is a Democrat; Harris’s questioning was pretty aggressive; Sessions is a former senator and colleague of McCain’s; and McCain is a cranky old man.

But I doubt that race was part of it, either consciously or otherwise. School me in comments if you think this is insufferably naive.

I have no idea whether Jeff Sessions had any inappropriate contact with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. My gut tells me there’s probably nothing much here, but then again, my gut has been more like a Magic 8-Ball lately than a crystal ball. So who knows?

That said, I agree with David Corn that the most telling bit of Sessions’ testimony today was this:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s covert operation to subvert the 2016 election: “Prior to [the president being inaugurated]—in the campaign up until through the transition—was there ever any meetings that [Trump] showed any concern or consideration or just inquisitive of what the Russians were doing and if they really had done it?”

Sessions replied, “I don’t recall any such conversation. I’m not sure I understood your question. Maybe I better listen again.”

….Manchin continued: “You were part of the national security team, so if [Trump] would’ve heard something about Russia with their capabilities or concern about what they could do to our election process. Was there ever any conversations concerning that whatsoever?”

Sessions answered, “I don’t recall it.”

Sessions never heard Trump show any interest in Russian hacking before the inauguration. James Comey never heard Trump show any interest in Russian hacking after the inauguration. If Donald Trump ever showed the slightest interest in a hostile state actor trying to subvert an American election, not a single person seems to remember it.

I dunno. It sure seems like the kind of thing the president of the United States ought to be upset about. I wonder why Trump isn’t?

Mini mart at the corner of Chapman and Lewis, Orange, California.

Jeff Stein explains in a nutshell why Republicans are hellbent on hiding their health care bill from the public:

Nothing about GOP health bill today on the front pages of any of 4 of America’s most influential papers — LA Times; NYT; WashPo; WSJ pic.twitter.com/p85FbL0vDl

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_Vox) June 13, 2017

As long as Republicans keep everything tightly under wraps, there’s nothing new for reporters to write about. And if there’s nothing new to write about, it won’t get covered.

This is the same strategy that Donald Trump followed with his tax returns. What are reporters going to do? Write a story every day that tells us Trump still hasn’t released his tax returns? Of course not. So the whole topic disappeared during the campaign except on the rare occasions when something happened to leak out about Trump’s taxes.

The Senate health care bill will take away insurance from millions. It will slash Medicaid. It will wipe out Obamacare’s promise of coverage for essential benefits. It will gut protections for pre-existing conditions. It will reduce subsidies for the poor and working class. And it will give millionaires a big tax break.

How do I know this? Technically, I don’t. Like everyone else, I haven’t seen a draft of the bill. I haven’t watched any hearings. I haven’t read a CBO score. I haven’t heard from the Senate parliamentarian about what she plans to allow under reconciliation rules.

But let’s get serious. I know the bill is going to do these things because it’s a Republican bill. This is what they’ve been promising to do for years. If they had undergone a change of heart, they wouldn’t be keeping their deliberations secret, would they? They’re keeping their bill secret because they know it’s both heartless and massively unpopular, and they want liberals to have as little time as possible to generate any outrage about it. So they’re going to finish the bill, get it on the floor, and vote fast before the working-class public has a chance to realize how badly they’re getting screwed for the benefit of the rich.

Everyone knows this. It’s shameless. But it’s also working. As long as what Republicans are doing stays off the front page and the nightly news, it’s a win.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to go after medical marijuana suppliers:

I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime. The Department must be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American lives.

Uh huh. Let’s check out this “potentially long-term” uptick in violent crime. I’m using numbers from the National Crime Victimization Survey for 1994-2015 (see here for background). The projection for 2016 is based on an increase of 5.3 percent reported by the FBI for the first half of 2016:

If you think that this plus an opioid epidemic justifies cracking down on medical marijuana, I don’t have anything more for you. This is my best shot. But I’d sure suggest cracking down on drug gangs and opioid manufacturers first.

Gee, I wonder what Republicans have to hide?

ALERT: Reporters at Capitol have been told they are not allow to film interviews with senators in hallways, contrary to years of precedent

— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) June 13, 2017

Rep for Mike Matrisian, who gave directive re not filming Senate, is no comment. I ask her name. “I’m not going to give you that,” hangs up.

— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) June 13, 2017

You know it’s a good health bill when one GOP candidate attacks a reporter for asking about it + the Senate tries to shut down press access.

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) June 13, 2017

Alexei Druzhinin/Planet Pix via ZUMA

A few days ago the Intercept got hold of an NSA document outlining Russian plans to hack directly into voting operations throughout the US:

Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions. … The actors likely used data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.

Today Bloomberg reports that this was just the tip of the iceberg:

Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported.

In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.

….Such operations need not change votes to be effective. In fact, the Obama administration believed that the Russians were possibly preparing to delete voter registration information or slow vote tallying in order to undermine confidence in the election. That effort went far beyond the carefully timed release of private communications by individuals and parties.

As we all know, last year the Obama administration tried to promote a bipartisan declaration that voting equipment was “national critical infrastructure,” which would have given the FBI and others more authority to investigate and deter Russian hacking. This failed because Mitch McConnell didn’t care about Russian hacking. He cared only that public acknowledgement of Russian hacking might somehow hurt Republicans. Mitch is quite the patriot, no?

For some reason, the death of malls is suddenly an obsession of newspapers everywhere. I’m not sure why, but I guess e-commerce has hit some kind of tipping point. For the record, then, here is total e-commerce sales as a share of all sales. The best fit for its growth rate isn’t linear. It’s accelerating. By the end of next year more than a tenth of all sales will be done online.