Remember that story earlier this year about Rep. Devin Nunes blowing $15,000 in Leadership PAC money to go watch his favorite basketball team, the Boston Celtics, live and in person? Well, a review of Nunes’ Leadership PAC records indicates that he also has been spending Leadership PAC money on swanky, overseas travel– namely an apparent vacation to his family’s native Portugal. According to a letter sent to the Federal Elections Commission in October by the Swamp Accountability Project, a group that has been deeply critical of Nunes, “Nunes financed a trip to Portugal including a visit to the swanky Tivoli Avenida Liberdade Lisboa hotel using Leadership PAC funds.” The letter adds: As you are no doubt aware, Rep. Nunes is of Portuguese descent; since 2013, he has been a “Grand Officer” of the Portuguese “Order of Prince Henry”; he likely boasts many friends and family in Portugal. However, as Portuguese…

By the time we get to election day, proponents and opponents of California’s Proposition 10– the rent control initiative on this year’s ballot– may  have dumped nearly $100 million into the fight. But that’s not the weirdest thing about the battle over Prop 10. In fact, it’s this: Big Pharma is playing in the Prop 10 war, apparently to stick it to a major backer of rent control that is engaged in a separate policy fight with the industry over a drug discount program you’ve probably never even heard of. Here’s the dirt. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation is a major proponent of a drug discount program called 340B. Here’s a picture of an ad they’re running at bus stops all over Washington, D.C., aimed at preventing Congress from gutting the program (which actually receives zero taxpayer dollars). Big Pharma hates 340B, with a passion. The drug industry thinks that despite…

Have you read Ryan Lizza’s big scoop about Rep. Devin Nunes, his family and their farm in Esquire yet? If not, you probably should. The story is getting a lot of play in national and California media, and it ties right in with this attack ad being run by the Swamp Accountability Project in Nunes’ district: “Not Who He Says.” The ad hasn’t received a lot of attention in the media. But its entire point is that Nunes is totally disconnected from the Central Valley: He’s gone MIA on water issues, he was dead silent on family separations, he isn’t doing anything about tariffs hurting farmers in the Central Valley, while the Farm Bill was dying on a vine, he was busy threatening Jeff Sessions, yada, yada, yada. (There’s also stuff in the ad about Nunes’ winery’s scandal involving the alleged use of a corporate yacht by Nunes’ co-investors to…