Getting ready for Trump wins in their home states may just be good politics for moderate senators.

"If Donald Trump is elected president there will be a great opportunity to sit down and have a conversation about what that agenda looks like,” says Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.

As Democrats portray Donald Trump as a dangerous leader for his party, most of them barely acknowledge he could be president. But some centrist Democrats say they’re ready and willing to work with the business mogul should he defeat their party’s nominee.

“The people will have a chance to vote. If Donald Trump is elected president there will be a great opportunity to sit down and have a conversation about what that agenda looks like,” explained Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who has long backed Hillary Clinton. “If he’s president, we’re going to have disagreement. But we’d better all figure out how to come up with an agenda for the American people.”

Getting ready for a potential Trump presidency in their home states may just be good politics for moderate senators such as Heitkamp, Jon Tester of Montana and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. They’ll be top targets for Republicans in 2018, a midterm year that could favor the GOP if recent trends of lower turnouts in nonpresidential elections continue. And it’s a good bet that they’ll need Trump voters to keep their jobs.
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For Democrats in those states, ignoring Trump’s political success, and by extension his supporters, would be a risky move. So some Democrats say they can see some opportunities for working together during a hypothetical Trump presidency, given that the Republican front-runner has based his campaign on being a deal maker — unlike any other prominent GOP candidate this cycle.
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Actor Wendell Pierce, who is in Atlanta shooting a film, was arrested after allegedly attacking a Bernie Sanders supporter, according to TMZ.

TMZ said Pierce, at the Loews hotel last night, met with a woman and her boyfriend in the lobby. They supposedly had a conversation that went political. Pierce is a Hillary Clinton supporter. The woman was supposedly a supporter of Bernie Sanders. Pierce allegedly pushed the boyfriend and went after the woman, grabbing her hair and smacking her in the head.

...some laws and legal obligations are only civil in nature, for which there exist only monetary or administrative sanctions at best. Such is the case with federal records laws such as the Federal Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act...

The Federal Records Act (or “FRA”) is a decades-old federal law that governs the creation, maintenance, preservation, and disposition of federal records, regardless of form or format, including electronic records such as e-mail. Simply put, it tells those who work for the federal government that they must document their work and keep such records safe during their tenures. Then, when someone leaves a federal position, the FRA requires that all such records be reviewed in conjunction with an agency records officer so that the agency (i.e., not the employee alone) can make decisions about which records will be preserved. Then the employee is required to sign a document certifying that this has been done comprehensively and accurately, lest that not be the case.

Any failure to meet these legal obligations, from the beginning of an employee’s tenure to the end, is punishable with administrative sanctions up to and including dismissal. And the entire process is overseen by agency records officers, by an agency’s chief records officer, and by the FRA experts at the National Archives and Records Administration (or “NARA”), who hold ultimate responsibility for making sure that agencies properly implement the FRA.

The importance of the FRA’s proper implementation becomes quite evident when, for example, questions are raised about the propriety of some agency activity (sometimes in full “controversy” or even “scandal” mode) and the records pertaining to that activity need to be reviewed by an agency inspector general, by federal law enforcement personnel, or even by congressional investigators on behalf of a legislative committee. If relevant records have not been properly preserved, then such inquiries are greatly impaired and sometimes the word “cover-up” is used.

Furthermore, even inquiries of a lesser magnitude depend upon a foundation of proper FRA compliance. When a Freedom of Information Act (or “FOIA”) request is made to a federal agency, for example, that agency has a legal obligation to search for all agency records responsive to that request’s subject matter. But if a responsive record is not maintained, in a readily searchable form or location, the FOIA can readily be circumvented as a result.

Recently, these two key civil laws have figured prominently in the wide-ranging controversies surrounding Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a personal e-mail account, compounded by a private e-mail server, during nearly the entirety of her four-year tenure.
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Yet there are absolutely no penalties provided by law for this misconduct. The FRA, if violated, does provide a basis for some action being taken against an employee — but only a personnel-type administrative action that simply does not work if the employee is “long gone.”