According to the Indianapolis Star, Pence used a personal email account (an AOL account, proving that he is indeed a grumpy old man with Lego hair) to conduct official business, including matters of homeland security, when he was governor of Indiana. While public officials are not barred from using private email accounts in Indiana, they are supposed to retain and record any emails involving official business for the public record. Per the Star’s reporting, Pence did not start preserving his private emails until he was leaving the governor’s office.

The funniest bit part of the story is the fact that Pence’s AOL account was hacked in the same way old people’s accounts have been hacked since email has existed: “Pence’s account was actually compromised last summer by a scammer who sent an email to his contacts claiming Pence and his wife were stranded in the Philippines and in urgent need of money.” Pence had to send an email apologizing to his friends and family.

Of course, EMAILS: Mike Pence Edition is not quite as damning as the not-so-damning Hillary Clinton private email server situation, in which she was dealing with classified information as secretary of state. But it’s still a double-standard for Pence, who excoriated Clinton during the campaign for her lack of transparency and diligence.

Sessions announced on Thursday that he would recuse himself from the Department of Justice’s investigation into contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russian intelligence agents, after The Washington Post reported that he had lied during his confirmation hearings about his own contacts with the Russian ambassador during the campaign. “I should not be involved in investigating a campaign I had a role in,” Sessions said.

This was what Sessions had to do. By Thursday morning the consensus in both parties was that the attorney general had to recuse himself. But, in characteristic Trump administration fashion, he half-assed it. Sessions’s recusal is partial and limited to investigations of the campaign, which as Ari Melber pointed out on MSNBC, means that he is not recusing himself from the investigation into contacts between Russia and the Trump transition team that occurred after the election. (You will recall that it was in this period that Michael Flynn got into trouble.)

Similarly, Sessions did little to explain why he lied to Congress. In fact, in his statement, he only made the lie seem worse. On Wednesday evening, for instance, Sessions said, “I don’t remember the contents of the meeting” he had with the Russian ambassador. But in a press conference on Thursday he suddenly remembered the conversation in vivid detail:

I don’t remember a lot of it, but I do remember saying I’d gone to Russia with a church group in 1991, and he said he was not a believer himself but he was glad to have church people come there. Indeed, I thought he was pretty much of an old-style Soviet type ambassador.

And so, we talked about a little bit about terrorism as I recall.

And somehow the subject of the Ukraine came up. I had had the Ukraine ambassador in my office the day before. And to listen to him, nothing that Russia—Russia had done nothing that was wrong in any area, and everybody else was wrong with regard to the Ukraine. It got to be a little bit of a testy conversation at that point.

By recusing himself—sort of—Sessions has temporarily stopped the bleeding. It’s possible, given his closeness to Trump and his importance to the administration’s immigration and crime policies, that he’s untouchable. But after the events of the last 24 hours, it looks like he’s one revelation away from losing his job.

And, even with this recusal, his influence will still hang over any investigation of Trump. It’s still his Department of Justice, and any investigation will therefore be tainted by Sessions. An independent investigation is becoming more of a possibility with each new revelation, and that is very bad news for Trump indeed.

The education secretary started the week by calling historically black colleges and universities “pioneers when it comes to school choice,” appearing ignorant that these schools started because black Americans typically had no educational choices under segregation. Her comment was criticized for its ahistoricism and racial insensitivity, but journalist Soledad O’Brien pointed out it was part of a broader statement that included some pretty poor writing. Then, on Thursday, in an opinion piece for USA Today, DeVos referred to former President Barack Obama’s School Improvement Grants as “Student Improvement Grants.”

It’s a minor mistake, perhaps—one that would probably go unnoticed if its author weren’t famously lacking in basic knowledge about education. DeVos flubbed the difference between academic proficiency and growth—and seemed unaware of federal disability law—during her confirmation hearing. Then she insulted teachers at a Washington, D.C., public school by saying they were operating in “receive mode.”

A good editor can’t save DeVos from verbal gaffes. But knowing that journalists will scrutinize her prepared statements, she ought to find someone in her press shop who can polish and fact-check her prose.

Jon Ossoff is running for Tom Price’s vacant House seat in Georgia’s Sixth District. He is young (he’s 30) and every young person who lives outside of the Atlanta area seems to know him. Ossoff’s youth has been a major driver of his candidacy, which has raised boatloads of money. He’s a long shot in a conservative district—but that pile of cash clearly has Republicans feeling uneasy. So the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Super PAC that focuses on Republican congressional races, released this insane and borderline incoherent attack ad.

This ad is called “The Truth Strikes Back” and “the truth” in question seems to be that Ossoff was in college in the last decade. To be fair, the footage in the ad is a bit embarrassing—a better ad would just roast him for his bad Han Solo costume—but that is also true about footage of literally everyone who has been to college. (Especially Republicans.) For some reason the ad is narrated in Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s doofy TV journalist voice. Actually it mostly resembles Gob’s ad for George Michael in Arrested Development.

Eleven of the 48 U.S. senators who caucus with the Democrats cast yes votes alongside Senate Republicans on Thursday for Perry to head the department that controls our nuclear arsenal. Perry, who will never escape the fact that he once forgot the name of the Department of Energy before stating he would like to abolish it, was confirmed by a vote of 61-37.

Perry is far from the first Trump-appointed cabinet nominee to receive some Democratic support. The vast majority of Democratic senators voted to approve retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to be Trump’s Defense secretary, Nikki Haley as ambassador to the United Nations and Elaine Chao as Secretary of Labor. But those nominees were hardly as controversial as Perry, who but has no science background—bizarre for a man who is supposed to control 17 national laboratories. The DOE’s past two leaders were a nuclear physicist and a Nobel laureate. Perry, who has a bachelors degree in animal science, got Cs, Ds and Fs in his college science courses. Perry also has not fully embraced the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. As governor of Texas, he supported schools that taught creationist theory alongside evolution.

These caveats were controversial enough for most Democrats to vote against Perry, but not everyone—mostly centrist figures like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Missouri’s Claire McCaskill cast yes votes on Thursday (you can see the full list here). But perhaps they were just looking at things through rose-colored glasses. After all, when you have a fossil fuel ally in charge of the EPA; an anti-public school crusader in charge of the Department of Education; and an Attorney General who lied about his contacts with Russia; maybe Rick Perry at DOE’s helm doesn’t seem so bad.

House Republicans are busy drafting their new Obamacare replacement bill in a closed-off room to ensure complete secrecy. According to Bloomberg, even Republicans who are given access to the document aren’t allowed to make copies to take with them. This is to guard against a repeat of last week, when an older working draft of the bill was leaked to Politico and quickly excoriated by conservatives like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul.

An incensed Paul, who called the previously leaked draft “Obamacare lite,” declared in a very Nic Cage voice that he was going to steal the Declaration of Independence Republicans’ health care bill.

Paul then tried to force his way into the GOP’s Health Care Bill Drafting Safe Space.

So far, it seems that Paul has been unable to see or obtain a copy of the bill. Even the Declaration of Independence was probably kept under looser security.

In the wake of news that President Donald Trump’s budget slashes the Environmental Protection Agency by 25 percent, the department’s new administrator called for calm and insisted he’s not totally on board with the administration’s plan. “Civility in our discourse is really, really important,” Pruitt, who is wrongly skeptical of man-made climate change and frequently sued the EPA as Oklahoma’s attorney general, said at a U.S. Conference of Mayors event in D.C. on Thursday. He implored those around him to “lean on these issues with some level of civility.”

Pruitt said he opposes some of Trump’s ideas for his agency—specifically Trump’s idea to cut a number of popular grant programs for states. Pruitt said he’d like to preserve Brownfields grants, which help states clean up and reuse highly polluted industrial sites. He also cited federal grant programs that rebuild aging drinking water infrastructure, like the $100 million EPA grant that Flint, Michigan, received last year to improve its corroded pipes. “I want you to know that with the White House and also with Congress, I am communicating a message that the Brownfields Program, the Superfund program, water infrastructure … are essential to protect,” Pruitt said.

Afterward, an EPA spokesperson declined to say if Pruitt opposed any other parts of Trump’s reported slash-and-burn budget for the EPA, such as eliminating the Office of Environmental Justice, reducing the workforce from 15,000 to about 12,000, and zeroing out funds for climate change initiatives and native Alaskan villages.

As many as 22,600 retired coal miners and miners’ widows received notice that their pensions and health care benefits will be cut off in 60 days, United Mineworkers for America reports. In a press release issued yesterday, UMWA President Cecil Roberts said it’s the third such notice that miners have received since October of last year, and urged Congress to vote on the Miners Protection Act, which would permanently protect their benefits:

Congress cannot keep kicking this can down the road. This is causing tremendous mental and in some cases physical trauma to these senior citizens. They will now have to begin contemplating whether to continue to get medicines and treatments they need to live or to buy groceries. They will now have to wonder if they can go see a doctor for chronic conditions like black lung or cancer or pay the mortgage.

The underfunded pension plan is another symptom of the industry’s general decline. As established in 1946, it’s a benefit pool supported by the contributions of mining companies. But as West Virginia Public Broadcasting notes, these contributions have vanished along with the companies themselves: They aren’t obligated to contribute if they’ve declared bankruptcy. The Miners Protection Act, introduced by Senator Joe Manchin (D?), would “reallocate money from the Abandoned Mine Lands Reclamation Fund” to shore up the failing plan. That’s a tough sell to a Republican-dominated Congress, and Manchin’s overtures to President Trump haven’t been enough to protect his constituents.

This is a matter of justice, and it should be a source of bipartisan consensus. Mining is dangerous, even deadly, work. In monoeconomies like central Appalachia, it’s also frequently the only work available. Miners did not create this monoeconomy and they should not be penalized for trying to survive it. If Congress allows the plan to fail, elderly men and women will suffer—and Democrats should be ready to point the finger at Republicans.

And if he were still in the Senate, dealing with an attorney general who had lied under oath, you better believe he’d do more than demand that the attorney general recuse himself from an ongoing investigation.

To be fair, Democrats—including Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, Elijah Cummings, and Joe Freaking Manchin—are calling on Sessions to resign as attorney general after The Washington Post revealed that he lied to Congress about contacts he had with the Russian ambassador during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. But it’s clear that Democrats haven’t learned much from watching how Republicans treated the last two Democratic presidents. From Whitewater to Benghazi to Fast and Furious, Republicans tried to shoot the moon with every scandal or pseudo-scandal.

Democrats surely don’t want to destroy their credibility in the way that Republicans have. But in this case, calling for Sessions’s resignation is a bare minimum. That no one has yet to call for a criminal probe suggests that Democrats are still bringing knives to gun fights.

The demands for Sessions’s resignation have painted him into a corner. He now has to choose between appointing a special prosecutor and resigning, and it seems like that will be a pretty easy choice to make. That in itself is a significant victory for Democrats that could pay dividends down the line. Even Jason Chaffetz, who only a couple of weeks ago was behaving as if he had taken a blood oath to never investigate a Republican, is now calling for Sessions to recuse himself. Democrats could get more if they put the screws on.