A House panel next week will be the first to wade into Democrats' efforts to ensure that President Donald Trump and his successors release their tax returns, setting the stage for possible political and legal battles to come.

The House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee specifically called next Thursday’s hearing to discuss a legislative proposal that would require presidents, vice presidents and major party nominees for those offices to release a decade’s worth of tax returns.

But the hearing is likely to also touch on the Ways and Means Committee’s efforts to acquire and release Trump’s returns through current legal channels. Trump broke with four decades of precedent in 2016 when he refused to divulge his tax returns, citing ongoing audits, after at first saying he would disclose them.

Democrats vowed to seek Trump’s returns if they took over the House, and some progressives have been pressing Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) to be more aggressive in his efforts.

An amended class-action lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court on Thursday accused President Donald Trump, his three eldest children and his company of collaborating with a fraudulent marketing scheme to prey on investors -- including by recruiting teenagers, promising them success as "The Trumps of Tomorrow."

The lawsuit alleges that in exchange for "secret" payments, Trump and three of his adult children used his former reality TV show "The Celebrity Apprentice" and other promotional events as vehicles to boost ACN Opportunity, a telecommunications marketing company linked to a nonprofit that used Trump's brand to appeal to teens.

After Trump joined the board of the nonprofit in 2009, the lawsuit alleges, it distributed an edition of its magazine, "Success from Home," that contained an article titled "The Trumps of Tomorrow," announcing his involvement and featuring an interview with him. Included in the magazine was an image of four teenagers, as well as references to Trump's children, "who all now work with the Trump dynasty."

"I think children learn by example," Trump was quoted as saying in the article, according to the lawsuit. "I'm happy to lend my support to charitable organizations like the SUCCESS Foundation that make a difference on the next generation of leaders."

In a brief but biting order, a federal judge in Oklahoma dismissed a defamation lawsuit Carter Page brought against the Democratic National Committee and its lawyers related to the involvement of the DNC’s law firm in funding the Trump-Russia dossier.

Chief Judge Joe Heaton of the Western District of Oklahoma, who is a George W. Bush appointee, said the court lacked jurisdiction over the case, given that the defendants have no relationship to Oklahoma, nor did their alleged actions.

“Plaintiff has offered nothing to suggest that the individual defendants are domiciled in Oklahoma and it appears undisputed that none of them are,” Heaton said, before critiquing Page’s arguments that the DNC has a relationship to Oklahoma, via its affiliate, the Oklahoma state Democratic Party.

“The DNC is a national organization with local affiliates throughout the United States. It cannot be ‘at home’ in every state,” the judge said.

You know you are something special in American politics when Congress threatens to pass a bill addressing your own particular scandal, under your own particular name. Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas resigned last year as the House Ethics Committee was investigating sexual harassment claims lodged against him by an aide, and after it was revealed that Congress had turned to taxpayers, not Farenthold, to pay the $84,000 settlement to his former aide. It capped a colorful, short career involving nasty online comments, an indecent domain name registered by Farenthold, and, of course, "ducky pajamas."

Farenthold did not fall far, though. After resigning from Congress, he quickly scored a new $160,000 per year gig lobbying the Congress he just left. (And then lost it again, after public outrage.) What he didn't do, and what he refused to do, is repay taxpayers the $84,000 we the people shelled out due to his actions.

That brings us to today. Rep. Mark Walker of North Carolina, a Republican, plans to introduce the Bad Lawmakers Accountability and Key Emends ("BLAKE" Act. Setting aside the continued tragedy of lawmakers coming up with too-clever names for their bills, the BLAKE Act bars former House members from lobbying Congress if they have not repaid taxpayers for funds used to settle sexual harassment complaints against them. It cannot force any lawmaker to actually repay that money; all it can do is cut off a thus-disgraced former congresscritter from the lucrative new job of glad-handing his old House pals on behalf of some new employer.

Why Farenthold's actual behavior was not sufficient to get him permanently booted from the building is another question. One would think a congressman who resigned in disgrace would not find many open doors on Capitol Hill, and the problem would solve itself. Apparently, though, if these things aren't codified into law, disgraced House ex-compatriots can scuttle right back in through the woodwork.

Yet another group of elite athletes has revealed that they refused to subject themselves to the disgusting disappointment promised by a visit to Donald Trump’s White House. One crucial fact seems to have been overlooked in favor of the well-deserved disgust over the president’s room-temperature value meal.

The Root has the exclusive:

The Root spoke with three black Clemson players who each separately confirmed that many players, both black and white, had no interest in making the trip. All three acknowledged that Donald Trump was the reason they chose not to attend. Even more telling, most of Clemson’s white players were in attendance while nearly three-fourths of the school’s black football players took a hard pass on the chance to eat cold fries with the president of people who eat salads from McDonald’s.

The players, speaking anonymously, reported that just 15 black players—out of at least 57 on the roster—opted to smash cold pizza with the popular-vote-loser on Jan. 14. That means roughly three out of four black players chose to stay home, which actually is better than the grifter in chief’s polling with African-Americans.