Firm With Trump Camp Ties Obtained Data on 50 Million Facebook Users

Here’s what you’ll find on today’s show:

— Late Friday, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions after a yet-to-be-released inspector general report found that McCabe ‘lacked candor’ under oath and improperly authorized disclosures to the news media. His ouster occurred just two days before the date of his official resignation which would have been Sunday, his 50th birthday.

— On Friday, Facebook suspended ties with digital analytics firm Cambridge Analytica after it was revealed that 50 million Facebook profiles were harvested in a massive data breach. The profiles were obtained for research purposes by a Russian-American academic before being improperly leaked to Cambridge Analytica, which was also hired as a consultant for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

— On Sunday night, another bomb went off in an Austin, Texas, neighborhood, rattling residents and leaving two passersby with injuries. This is the fourth such explosion in recent weeks, and police told reporters on Monday that this most recent incident had “similarities” to the earlier explosions.

— Illinois voters head to the polls for a primary election on Tuesday. The contest will shape the Democratic roster come November and, depending on how progressives fare, it may indicate just how far left the party has shifted in the Trump era.

— In the 1980s, Congress created ‘compassionate release,’ a program allowing aging or terminally ill prisoners an early release from prison so they could pass away at home in the care of their loved ones. But a new investigation by The Marshall Project finds that compassionate release is rarely granted, and often when it is granted the prisoner has near-totally succumbed to illness.

— Many of America’s historically black colleges and universities played a vital role in the country’s civil rights movement. Influential black leaders such as Thurgood Marshall, Stokely Carmichael, and Courtland Cox were graduates of one such college, the prestigious Howard University in Washington, D.C. But fifty years ago this week, students on campus were deeply unhappy about the direction the institution was headed in the civil rights struggle.