Month: August 2019

Week 135 in Trump

Posted on August 27, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Even though the stock market did well under Obama, I would still argue that the president doesn’t have that much control over the markets. But in this new world where everything’s upside down, you can see by the image above that yes, the president does have some control over the markets. I’ve lost count of how many times the market has dumped because of Trump’s careless speech and tweets, and then perked back up because he announced something that didn’t come to fruition. Maybe he has more power over the markets because he’s the chosen one, the King of Israel, and the second coming. And yes, he did say he was all that…

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending August 25…

Missing From Last Week:

  1. In July, Trump expanded his policy of making asylum seekers wait in Mexico to two additional cities, more than doubling the number of refugees ordered to wait out their time in Mexico.
  2. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue cracks jokes about whiny farmers two days after China says they’ll stop buying all U.S. agricultural products. Farmers are already hurting because of the trade wars, and the bailout isn’t paying them anything close to what they’d make if they could actually sell their products.

Shootings This Week:

  1. The week‘s mass shootings (defined as killing or injuring four or more people):
    • A shooter injures four people at a block party near the campus of Clark Atlanta University.
    • A shooter injures four people, including a social worker and a security guard, near Skid Row in Los Angeles.
    • A shooter kills two people and injures two more outside a bar in Columbia, South Carolina.
    • A shooter kills an eight-year-old and injures three people after a football jamboree in St. Louis.
    • A shooter kills three people and injures two more in Houston. Police think it’s gang-related.
    • A shooter injures seven people at a toddler’s birthday party in Maryland.
    • A shooter kills one person and injures three more at a playground in Massachusetts. That asshole also kills the dog of one of the victims.
    • A teenager in New Mexico kills three people and injures four more.
    • Someone fires shots into a crowd in Chicago killing one and injuring three.
  1. After Trump lays the blame for mass shootings on mental illness, DHHS warned federal health officials not to post anything on social media about it, fearing the experts would contradict Trump.
    • What were they afraid they’d say? They’d say that mental illness is not a predictor in mass shootings and the vast majority of mass shooters have no diagnosed mental illness.
  1. The Parkland students release an ambitious gun control plan that includes expanding background checks, increasing wait periods, raising the minimum purchase age, instituting red flag laws, creating a national licensing and gun registry, banning assault weapons (which still need to be defined) and high capacity magazines, and creating a new director role to coordinate the federal response.
  2. Trump says he’s in favor of expanding background checks, and then after a call with NRA head Wayne LaPierre he says he’s not for it. And then later he says he might be for it.
  3. Dick’s Sporting Goods has a strong quarter despite their decision to reduce gun sales.
  4. The day before the El Paso shooting, Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent out a fundraising mailer calling on Republicans to “DEFEND TEXAS NOW” and to take matters into their own hands. The mailer referenced the number of immigrants caught crossing the border illegally the previous month.

Russia:

  1. Since the explosion of the nuclear-propelled missile Russia was testing, four of the nearby nuclear monitoring stations have gone silent. The monitoring stations are part of a global network created to verify everyone is complying with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
  2. Like Russia, China gets into the disinformation game. Twitter removes nearly 1,000 accounts and suspends around 200,000 because a state-backed disinformation campaign has been targeting the pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong.
  3. Trump says he’ll invite Putin to next year’s G-7 Summit, which will likely be hosted at a Trump property. He just can’t let this one go.

Legal Fallout:

  1. An IRS whistle blower reports to the House Ways and Means Committee that there has been potentially inappropriate interference with the process of auditing Trump’s tax returns.
  2. Trump’s financial disclosure statements conflict with his filings with the United Kingdom regarding the value and income of his golf courses in Scotland. This is a violation of the Ethics in Government Act.
  3. Rudy Giuliani confirms that the State Department helped him push Ukraine to open investigations into former Vice President Biden and into the Democratic National Committee, which Ukraine is now doing. Giuliani thinks possible crimes might include “bribery, extortion, fraud, money laundering and illegal interference in 2016 election.”
    • The current Ukrainian prosecutor general says they’ve already looked into Biden and there’s nothing there.

Healthcare:

  1. Because of Trump’s changes to the rules, Planned Parenthood withdraws from the Title X family planning program, which provides funding for healthcare services for low-income and underserved communities. Trump’s rule prohibits Title X recipients from providing abortions or referring patients for abortions except in the case of rape, incest, or medical emergency.
    • Planned Parenthood serves about 40% of all Title X recipients, providing preventive care, contraception, and yes, abortions.
    • Maine’s sole Title X provider also withdraws.
    • Title X has had a huge influence in reducing unintended pregnancies and thus reducing abortions. Without it, the number of unintended pregnancies is estimated to double for poor women.
    • IMO, now we’ll have more babies on welfare and we’ll bitch about that too.
  1. At least three children held in migrant detention centers have died, in part from the flu; yet the government won’t be giving any detainees a flu shot. It’s like they’re hoping to cause a pandemic or something.
    • Fun fact: Prior to Trump, no child had died in U.S. immigration custody in nearly a decade.
  1. Five years into the ACA, it’s eliminated 44% of the gap between insured wealthy and insured poor, and 27% of the gap between whites and minorities. Also, Lindsey Graham says Republicans will run on trying to repeal the ACA again in 2020.

International:

  1. The Pentagon’s inspector general reports their findings that ISIS is growing again in Syria and Iraq. The report blames Trump for the instability caused by drawing down troops in Syria too quickly and pulling all diplomatic personnel out of Iraq, which allowed a space for the militants to regroup.
    • Brett McGurk, the Special Envoy who resigned following Trump’s drawdown announcement, says he warned of this repeatedly at the time.
  1. After Trump floats buying Greenland from Denmark, the prime minister of Denmark says that’s absurd. So Trump calls her nasty (all strong women are nasty, right?). And since the world laughs at him, Trump decides to cancel his state visit to Denmark. He had been invited by Queen Margrethe II for a state visit the first week in September.
    • Why does Trump want to buy Greenland? Likely to exploit its fossil fuel reserves and to have a strategic military base location.
  1. Leaders in the European Union reject UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s request to restart Brexit negotiations.
  2. The British government announces they’ll halt all free movement between the UK and EU countries on day one of Brexit, even though there are no systems in place to support this. Experts say there’s no way that can be done because it can’t be enforced.
    • There are 3 million EU citizens in the UK. It’s unknown yet what will happen to the 1.3 million Brits living abroad in EU countries.
    • Immigration to Britain is at a five-year low, but that’s mostly from the EU. Migrants from other countries, which appeared to be what concerned Brexiters the most, is still high.
  1. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells the World Zionist Congress that Hitler only wanted to expel Jews, he didn’t want to exterminate them. He repeats a widely debunked conspiracy theory laying the blame for the holocaust on a Muslim leader named Haj Amin al-Husseini. I did not expect him to be a Hitler apologist.
  2. Trump heads off to the G-7 Summit, which is typically a time when some of the world’s major economies come together to work toward global solutions. But this time, the U.S. is an outlier in terms of trade, climate change, and Iran, and that throws a wrench in the typical agreements made here.
    • Instead of endorsing the standard communique (which reflects the G-7’s shared values), they end by endorsing a one-page document of issues they’ll continue to work on. This is only the second time since 1975 a communique hasn’t been endorsed.
    • Trump says these deals are unfair to the U.S. But of course he does. We’re always the victim in his mind.
    • Trump says Melania has gotten to know Kim Jong Un well. Not sure when they would’ve met? Turns out they have never met.
    • As far as Iran goes, Trump says, “The biggest part of the conclusion, they can’t have nuclear weapons.” Just a little history lesson. The reason conservatives gave for calling the Iran deal the worst deal ever is that it only dealt with nuclear weapons and didn’t deal with state-sponsored violence and terrorism. The deal was by all accounts tremendously successful in curtailing Iran’s nuclear capabilities. And now that Trump has scrapped that deal, all he wants is to curb their nuclear weapons? WTAF?
    • French President Macron invites the Iranian foreign minister to come by the G-7. He’s hoping to get Trump to meet with him eventually.
  1. Protests in Hong Kong escalate after a police officer shoots a live round into the air while police armed with water canons to disperse crowd. Demonstrators barricade streets and try to dismantle monitoring cameras installed around the city.
  2. Russia’s protests also continue. Several students have been arrested, and the opposition leader is finally released from a month-long stay in prison for starting the protests.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The NYPD fires the officer who killed Eric Garner.
  2. A federal judge allows a lawsuit against Trump’s transgender military ban to move forward because transgender service members’ claim is constitutionally valid. However, only transgender troops who were forced to leave the military can file suit.
  3. A school board in Virginia that recently lost its court battle to defend its transgender bathroom bill says they’ll continue to fight the ruling. Don’t they have anything more productive to throw their energy behind?
  4. Trump accuses Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats of being disloyal, or if not disloyal, ignorant. Maybe I should send him a copy of “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
    • This is the same Jewish trope that Ilhan Omar got called out for. Omar met with Jewish people, educated herself on why it was wrong, and apologized. I wonder if Trump will do the same?
    • Also, IKYMI, Jewish Americans overwhelmingly vote Democratic (by about 75% to 25%).
  1. The Trump administration issues a rule that allows them to indefinitely detain people who cross the border illegally, including families.
    • The change will also take away state’s licensing authority and give it to ICE.
    • I’m not sure how they’re getting around the Flores agreement, which limits the length of time we can detain minors.
    • Just a reminder, releasing them with papers allowing them to work costs us far, far less than detaining them. Detaining them costs around $750 per day, or nearly $274,000 per year. Given an average of 40,000 detainees, that’s close to $11 billion year. Do we hate them so much we’re willing to pay that price for their pain?
  1. The top aide to Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan resigns, frustrated with how the White House handles major policy rollouts.
    • The White House is mad that McAleenan undersold the rollout of the change in policy allowing indefinite detention.
  1. The Army lowers its recruitment expectations for 2019 after missing its goals in 2018. This is in no small part due to how immigrant and minority soldiers have been treated under this administration. They previously had certain protections, but now have to deal with fears of being deported, fears of their families being deported, and other soldiers who wear MAGA hats and patches. If you don’t know why that sparks fear in minorities, it‘s because white hate groups have embraced those hats and changed what was once just random campaign swag to a symbol of hate.
  2. North Carolina’s governor vetoes a bill that would have required sheriffs to work closely with ICE on immigration enforcement.
  3. Trump wants to end birthright citizenship, granted in the 14th Amendment, for children of immigrants.
  4. Trump also wants to reduce the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. each year. That number is already down to 30,000 from 85,000 in 2016.
  5. The DOJ sends an email to all immigration employees that includes a link to a white nationalist article that attacks immigration judges and uses racial slurs. The DOJ says the email is compiled by a third-party vendor and that they don’t review it before it goes out.
  6. New York, Connecticut, and Vermont sue to block Trump’s rule that could put immigrants’ legal residency or citizenship in jeopardy if they use any social welfare programs.

Climate:

  1. 16 of the past 17 years have been the hottest ever recorded, according to the National Climate Assessment. This heat correlates with an increase in intense and heavy precipitation.
  2. Mercedes-Benz joins VW, Ford, BMW, and Honda in their agreement with California on emissions limitations, which is in opposition to Trump’s recent reversal of Obama’s emissions regulations.
    • Last month, Trump summoned leaders of Toyota, General Motors, Chrysler, and Fiat to pressure them not to join in.
  1. Trump suggests in a meeting that we should drop nuclear bombs into the eyes of hurricanes to weaken them before they hit the U.S. This has been floated before, but it’s been known for decades that it wouldn’t work. There’s the obvious problem of radiation fallout, but also, a nuclear blast wouldn’t be strong enough to significantly affect the storm. My favorite description of the meeting so far? “You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting.”
  2. Trump skips the G-7 meeting on climate change, saying he had to deal with issues with Germany and India, but those leaders are actually in attendance at the meeting on climate change.
  3. At the end of the G-7, Trump says he‘s the greatest environmentalist to be president. Confusing, since most of his changes to regulations open us up to more pollution, worsening climate change, and exploitation by the fossil fuel industry. But then he addresses that by saying he cares more about keeping the U.S. wealthy. Ah… so greed is better than doing what’s right?
  4. At the G-7, leaders approve providing aide to help Brazil combat fires in the Amazon rainforest.
  5. The rainforest has been on fire for three weeks, with the number of fires up 85% from last year to more than 80,000 fires.
    • Brazil declared a state of emergency, but it seems that most of these fires were set by farmers, miners, and loggers who were encouraged by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
    • Bolsonaro says non-governmental organizations (NGOs) started the fires, but shows no evidence. He also fires the scientist who heads the agency that discovered the steep rise in deforestation.
  1. Why is this fire such a big deal?
    • The Amazon rainforest provides about 1/5 of the oxygen on the planet. So one out of every five breaths you take is thanks to the Amazon.
      UPDATE: I have to retract the above statement. Scientists don’t know where that 1/5 number came from and say it’s closer to 6%.
    • The fires release plumes of carbon monoxide, which cause smog and can exacerbate climate change.
    • The Amazon absorbs excess carbon dioxide, helping to stave off climate change.
    • Scientists predict that losing too much of the rainforest will change rainfall patterns around the globe, including in the U.S. Midwest, which would see a decline in rainfall.

Budget/Economy:

  1. J.P. Morgan predicts that tariffs will cost American families up to $1,000 per year.
  2. U.S. Steel plans to lay off 200 Michigan workers. This comes after their announcement that they’ll idle two blast furnaces due to declining steel prices and lower demand.
  3. Business analysts say the economic boost from the GOP tax cuts have dwindled, and they expect the economy to shrink by the second quarter of next year. Looks like that tax cut was just a quick sugar fix after all…
  4. Trump, along with two senior economic advisers, brush off concerns about an impending recession. Larry Kudlow and Peter Navarro both say the trade war isn’t hurting the economy, contradicting Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s words from the previous week. This is in response to economic indicators flashing recession warnings starting last week.
  5. Trump wants the Fed to cut interest rates by a full percentage point. Interest rates are already relatively low, and cutting them too much right now doesn’t give the Fed much wiggle room in case a slowing economy necessitates further cuts.
  6. The White House floats a temporary payroll tax cut to boost the economy and encourage spending. This could 1) cut into Social Security and Medicare funds and 2) increase the already-ballooning deficit.
  7. But then, Trump takes tax cuts off the table for now, because “we have a strong economy.” Mixed messages.
  8. Trump’s trade wars and tax changes are having a negative effect on the ability of truck drivers to make a living. About 75% of truck drivers supported Trump.
  9. Trump signs an executive order that forgives all student loan debt for permanently disabled veterans.
  10. The mayors of 70 cities send a letter to the SNAP administrator complaining about Trump’s proposed changes to the SNAP program, which would dump millions off the program.
  11. The week ends with Trump calling China’s President Xi Jinping his enemy and announcing that he would increase his planned tariffs by 5% on $550 million worth of goods. China says they’ll increase tariffs on vehicles to 25% plus other retaliatory tariffs. Trump calls China an enemy of the U.S.
  12. The Dow Jones drops over 600 points (around 2.4%), the Nasdaq drops 3%, and the S&P drops 2.6%. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell says it’s because of trade policy uncertainty, so Trump calls him an enemy of the U.S. Ya know, just like China.
  13. And after China announces their retaliatory tariffs, Trump tweets, “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” Pretty sure he can’t do that, even though he’s the chosen one.
  14. He also orders all shipping carriers to search for and refuse any Fentanyl deliveries.
  15. The BLS revises its estimate of total jobs created from March 2018 to March 2019 downward by 501,000. This type of revision isn’t unusual once the actual numbers are reported, though the revisions are usually in 10s of thousands, not 100s of thousands.
  16. At the G-7, Trump says we’re working on trade deals with multiple countries, including Japan. That’s not what Japan says.
  17. Trump also says that we’re back in trade talks with China, and that calls were made over the weekend. That’s not what China says. When he gets called out for making conflicting statements about trade with China, he says it’s just how he negotiates.
  18. Trump expresses regret at the hard line he’s taken on the trade war with China, but his aides are quick to clarify that he meant he should’ve been harsher.
  19. Trump says next year’s G-7 summit will be held at one of his country clubs. No conflict of interest there.
  20. The number of Americans who think current economic conditions are good dropped 5 points from 70% in May to 65% now.

Elections:

  1. Trump tweets that Google gave Hillary anywhere from 2.6 million to 16 million votes in 2016. In fairness, he was taking (and exaggerating) the word of Dr. Robert Epstein, a researcher who testified to Congress; but further inspection of the study doesn’t bear out his conclusions.
    • Epstein himself says that there’s no evidence Google manipulated search results to favor Clinton. Also, the number of voters he alleges were influenced is not much more than a guess.
    • Epstein has tangled with Google since 2012, when they tagged his website for spreading malware. He then spent four years claiming their search results could influence elections. And then amazingly, the conclusions from his research (which included studying a grand total of 95 people) matched his predictions exactly.
  1. I’ve been staying out of the presidential elections because there are so many Democratic candidates, I was waiting until a few of them got weeded out. But now we have a new candidate, Joe Walsh, trying to primary Trump. You might remember him as the member of congress who yelled out “You lie!” during one of the Barack Obama’s state of the union addresses. Or you might remember him as a birther and a conspiracy theorist. But he’s apologized for all that and thinks he should be president.

Week 134 in Trump

Posted on August 20, 2019 in Politics, Trump

(Credit: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)

This restores my faith in humanity. A man who lost his wife in the El Paso shooting and had no family left opened up her funeral to the entire community. Over 1,000 strangers showed up to comfort the grieving man and pay their respects to his wife. The funeral home was filled to capacity, and people waited outside for hours for their turn to come inside. People from across the globe send flowers, and some people even travel from out of town or out of state to get there.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending August 18…

Shootings This Week:

  1. The week‘s mass shootings (defined as killing or injuring four or more people):
    • A shooter wounds four people behind a grocery store in Greenwood, MS.
    • A shooter in Tacoma, WA, kills two people and injures three.
    • A shooter near the Alabama State University campus in Montgomery, AL, kills two people and injures three.
    • A shooter injures five people in Philadelphia.
    • A shooter injures seven people at a house party in Houston. It was a pop-up party, started by random invitations on Snapchat.
    • A shooter injures four teenagers in the Kansas City Sheraton Plaza hotel.
  1. This was another bad week for LEOs, too.
    • During a traffic stop in Riverside, CA, a shooter kills one police officer and injures two more before the police kill the suspect.
    • Six police officers are shot and injured in an hours-long shootout in Philadelphia during an attempted drug bust. The shooter was firing an AR-15.
  1. Public tips lead to three arrests in three states of men threatening mass shootings.
    • One posted his interest in committing a mass shooting on Facebook.
    • One texted his ex-girlfriend threatening a mass shooting.
    • On threatened to shoot up a Jewish community center.
  1. Prosecutors indict a young man who threatened federal agents. Agents seized 25 guns and around 10,000 rounds of ammunition from his house.
  2. The House Judiciary Committee announces they’ll cut their August recess short in order to move forward three gun safety bills.
  3. A leaked memo shows that Congressional Republicans’ talking points about mass shootings include labeling them “violence from the left.” Left-wing extremism is responsible for 3% of extremist killings as opposed to the right-wing’s 73%. In 2018, all extremist killings were related to right-wing extremism, mostly white supremacy.

Russia:

  1. The nuclear blast that killed five Russians occurred during a failed test of a nuclear-powered missile, likely the one that Putin has called “invincible.”
    • Days after the blast, which caused local radiation levels to spike, Russian officials ordered an evacuation of a small town near the blast for “military drills.” They then cancel the evacuation, saying the drills have been cancelled, leading defense experts to believe they’re suspending more tests for now.
  1. FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub accuses her Republican colleagues of blocking an investigation into a complaint of allegations of Russian money laundering involving the NRA. The complaint stems from a reported FBI investigation.
    • Weintraub claims Republicans on the FEC stopped the General Counsel from even reaching out to the FBI to confirm whether or not this investigation actually exists.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The guards who neglected to check on Jeffrey Epstein before he hanged himself didn’t check on him because they fell asleep. They falsified records to cover it up.
  2. Epstein’s autopsy found broken bones in his neck that can happen in a suicidal hanging, but that are more common in a homicidal strangling. The conspiracy theories grow.
  3. But then, the cause of death is listed as suicide by hanging. And the conspiracy theories continue to grow. *sigh*
  4. Two women file lawsuits against Epstein’s estate under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
  5. The House Judiciary Committee subpoenas Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and former White House official Rick Dearborn to testify September 17. We’ll see if it actually happens this time.
    • The White House wants to invoke executive privilege to restrict Lewandowski’s testimony, but he never worked for the White House.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The DOJ submits a brief asking the Supreme Court to rule that Title VII (which prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sex, race, color, religion or national origin) does not apply to transgender people.

Healthcare:

  1. Despite the spate of highly restrictive abortion laws passed by states in recent years, draconian restrictions on abortion are extremely unpopular in the U.S., with less than 25% of people supporting total bans. 58% of Americans support legalized abortion in all or most cases.
  2. A Kaiser Family Foundation study shows that support for so-called heartbeat bills, which ban abortions later than six weeks into pregnancy, plummets when people are told what those laws actually do.
  3. Doctors in Congo say they’ve cured two Ebola patients they treated with new Ebola drugs.
  4. A VA inspector general report shows that for a six-month period in 2017, the VA incorrectly denied about 17,400 veterans $53.3 million in medical claims. A bipartisan group of lawmakers pushes for reconsideration of those claims.

International:

  1. Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests continue this week, with flash-mob style protests across the territory.
    • Officials shut down all outgoing flights at the airport, and requested incoming flights not come, for two days due to the number of protestors at the airport.
    • Violence breaks out sporadically, but the largest protest over the weekend is mostly peaceful. Nearly 1.7 million people, or a quarter of the city show up in the pouring rain to protest.
    • Satellite images of the Hong Kong border show over 500 Chinese military vehicles hidden along the border, waiting to be deployed against protestors.
  1. Pro-democracy protests also continue in Russia for the sixth straight week.
  2. Last week, I said that Israel doesn’t let Trump tell them what to do. But it turns out Israel does. They bar Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering Israel because they support BDS (and because Trump said to). Israel later says Tlaib can come visit her Palestinian grandmother, but Tlaib declines because of the restriction and conditions place on the visit.
  3. I’m still confused over Trump’s concern over A$AP Rocky, but anyhoo… a Swedish court finds Rocky guilty of assault, but doesn’t give him any more jail time.
  4. Trump floats purchasing Greenland.
  5. A suicide bomber at a wedding reception in Kabul kills 63 people and injures 182 more. The Islamic State claims responsibility; the Taliban denies any responsibility.
  6. Foreign diplomates and officials are already making contingency plans in case they have to deal with Trump for four more years, fearing he’ll win in 2020. 
Countries are holding off on launching new initiatives with the U.S. as a precaution.
  7. It’s kind of telling that the leaders Trump has the most goodwill with right now are those who are gutting democracy in their countries (Hungary, Poland, and Israel).
  8. Trump wants to create a naval blockade along Venezuela’s coast to stop the import and export of goods from the country. Sr. Pentagon officials don’t see the point, think it’s impractical, and say it would stretch them even thinner in the international arena.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. The Trump administration plans to dig up Native American gravesites in order to build the border wall. Democrats in Congress are working to exempt historic cemeteries like this from being part of the wall.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. An American fencer who won bronze and helped Team USA win gold at the Pan Am Games takes a knee during the national anthem to protest racism, gun violence, our horrific treatment of immigrants, and Trump.
    • A hammer thrower who took gold raises her fist in protest at the end of the national anthem.
  1. Last year, Alabama filed a suit against the Commerce Department and the Census Bureau arguing that undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be counted when apportioning federal representation and funding. This would be a major shift away from how we’ve done things in the past.
  2. Families separated at the border by the Trump administration are suing for damages, specifically families with kids who claim they were abused in foster care. As expensive as family separation and endless detention has been for taxpayers, these lawsuit settlements could cost us 100s of millions more.
  3. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a nationwide injunction against Trump’s policy of denying any asylum claims for people who enter the U.S. via a third country. So the policy goes back into effect in Texas and New Mexico, but not California and Arizona.
  4. The Trump administration introduces a new rule that changes how recipients of public assistance are evaluated for U.S. residency and citizenship. The rule adds things like receiving food stamps or medicaid to the things immigration officials can take into consideration.
    • Pros: Fewer people getting public assistance.
    • Cons: People will forego the help they need for fear that they won’t get residency or citizenship (meaning children will go hungry, for a start).
  1. In defending the new rule, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli rewrites the poem at the base of the statue of liberty. He says:

“Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge.”

    • Here’s the actual line from the poem. I’ll let you compare the difference. Jeez.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

    • He later says that the poem only refers to people coming from Europe.
    • In implementing the rule, the DHS ignored a majority of the 266,077 public comments submitted.
    • California seeks an injunction to block the new rule on the basis that it’s intended to discriminate.
  1. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to be a very good friend to the LGBTQ community. Well, a couple bans later (along with with removing protections against discrimination), he proposes a new rule that would let companies doing federal business discriminate against LGBTQ workers based on closely held religious beliefs.
    • The rule also allows discrimination based on race, ethnicity, nation of origin, gender, and more.
    • This is just one in a string of new rules that makes it harder to win a discrimination case in court.
  1. Representative Steve King (R-IA) defends his anti-abortion stance in cases of rape and incest by asking, if we didn’t have rape and incest, would there be any population left?” Makes me wonder what kind of sex this guy is having.
  2. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a lower court’s ruling that DHS must provide immigrant children in detention centers with edible food, clean water, soap, and toothbrushes. The ruling also says that the children cannot be sleep-deprived.
  3. Gavin Grimm finally wins his discrimination case against a Virginia school board over transgender bathroom use. The case was temporarily put on hold when Trump rescinded the bill allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their gender identity.
  4. The officer who drove into a group of people protesting at an immigrant detention center resigns. One of the protestors suffered a broken leg and internal bleeding, while other were sprayed by other officers with pepper spray.
  5. A new analysis shows that black men are 2.5 times more likely that white men to die during a police encounter. Latino men, black women, and all Native Americans are also killed by police at a higher rate.
  6. Well this is so not good. Experts at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) argue that domestic terrorists, like ISIS, are trying to create dirty bombs (that is, radioactive bombs). This includes white hate groups and neo-Nazis.

Alt-Right vs. Antifa:

  1. While Portland police planned well for a white supremacist rally and the corresponding counter-protests by antifa, several fights broke out and police arrested 13 people and seized several weapons.
  2. Trump says we should designate antifa as a terrorist group (just a reminder that antifa stands for anti-fascist, and it’s not an organized enough group to be considered a terrorist group).
  3. One of the alt-right leaders just turned himself in for charges of felony rioting from a previous fight.
  4. The alt-right organizer says the whole point of the rally is to bring attention to antifa after the beating of far-right journalist Andy Ngo.
  5. If you don’t think that Trump fans the flames of white supremacy, white supremacists would disagree with you. The Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggsold says:

“Go look at President Trump’s Twitter. He talked about Portland, said he’s watching antifa. That’s all we wanted. We wanted national attention, and we got it. Mission success.”

  1. My question here is, if there were no white supremacy groups, would there be any antifa? And does antifa organize protests on their own, or do they just come out to protest white hate groups? The only exception to that that I’ve seen is the inauguration day vandalism.

Climate:

  1. 29 states and cities sue the Trump administration over the new rules attempting to rescind Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The new rules would ease emissions restrictions on coal-burning power plants.
  2. The Interior Department issues new rules to weaken the Endangered Species Act. The act, which was passed by Republicans in 1973, protects hundreds of species. The Secretary of the Interior is a former fossil fuel lobbyists, so the speculation is that this will allow for more drilling. Cue the lawsuits.
  3. The use of neonicotinoid pesticides (neonics, for short) has made our farms around 50 times more toxic to honeybees and likely to other insects as well.
  4. In another testament to the impulsive nature of this administration, the EPA reverses its decision to allow “cyanide bombs” to kill wildlife. Apparently the public outcry over this took them by surprise.
  5. India holds a tree-planting marathon, with students, volunteers, and government officials planting 220 million trees in just one day.
  6. A U.S. Geological Survey study found plastic particles in more than 90% of the rainwater samples they tested in the Denver-Boulder areas and surrounding mountains. It’s raining plastic, folks.
  7. While the globe is still waiting for the fateful day when warming reaches 2 degrees Celsius, several U.S. areas have already reached it and are feeling the effects.
    • New Jersey and other New England states, New York City, and Los Angeles, are among the most rapidly heating areas.
    • Other states feeling the burn include northern parts of Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Michigan. Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Oregon, and Arizona also have some hot spots.
    • The warming affects industries and causes overgrowths of toxic algae and seaweeds.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Seemingly spooked by the market’s reaction to tariff announcements, Trump delays tariffs on Chinese goods that are big-sellers during the holidays. They’ll go into effect in mid-December.
  2. So far this year, tariffs have doubled customs duties to $57 billon.
  3. This fiscal year’s budget deficit grows to $866.8 billion, surpassing last year’s total and we still have two months to go in the fiscal year. The deficit is expected to surpass $1 trillion this year, two years earlier than previously predicted.
  4. GDP growth slowed in fiscal year 2019, indicating that tax cuts and deficit spending aren’t what will boost the economy in the long term. And after all the financial maneuverings, the economy is on pace to keep up the steady growth of the past 10 years.
  5. Analysts attribute the slowing to the GOP tax cuts, increased government spending, and a population that’s getting older. The GOP still says that the tax cuts will boost GDP growth.
  6. In case you thought last week would be the worst for the markets… Stocks took a little rollercoaster ride, dropping nearly 1,000 points in one day. Most indexes drop around 3%. They bounce back up (mostly), but bond yields are still pushing lower.
    • Trump blames his own Fed and pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong.
  1. The 10-year and 2-year bond yield curves invert for the first time since 2007, a fairly predictable indication of recession. But we’re not in predictable times right now. This is what triggered the stock market drop.
    • A yield curve inversion occurs when the yields for short-term bonds is higher than the yields for long-term bonds. If investors think a recession is coming, they’ll settle for those lower yields in long-term bonds.
    • You can look at Treasury bonds as a bet on economic growth. What’s happening now indicates that investors think the damage is done and this market bounce is temporary.
    • We had warnings in March and May, where the 3-year yield curve temporarily inverted.
    • The caveat? Steps the Fed took to get us out of the Great Recession changed some of the fundamentals of the market. So it could be the yield curve isn’t the reliable indicator it’s been in the past. Another caveat? Economists have also made that caveat before previous recessions.
  1. The New York Fed recession indicator issues recession warnings as well.
  2. And more recession jitters. Goldman Sachs expresses concern that a protracted trade war will trigger a recession.
  3. At a rally, Trump says, “I never said China was going to be easy,” directly contradicting what he said in March 2018: trade wars “are easy to win.”
  4. Moody Analytics estimates the trade war has axed 300,000 jobs and blunted GDP growth by 0.3 percentage points.
  5. John Deere and Caterpillar both fall short of investor expectations and Deere lowers its annual earnings forecast as a result of the trade war with China coupled with extreme weather.
  6. The yield curve inversion occurs in the UK as well.
  7. The UK’s economy shrank last quarter for the first time in nearly seven years. The European economy is slowing in general right now, but the UK is facing a possible no-deal Brexit, which would slow them down even further.
  8. Germany‘s economy, the EU’s largest, shrank in the second quarter of fiscal year 2019. Germany has taken a hit in their auto industry because of the trade wars.
  9. The European Central Bank proposes stimulus measures in expectation of a global downturn. Their interest rates are already negative, and they’re considering further cuts.
  10. China’s industrial output growth was at its weakest in 17 years.
  11. Japan buys $22 billion in U.S. Treasuries in June. That’s the most of any country and it makes Japan the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasuries.
  12. Finally for some good news. Retail sales in the U.S. beat expectations in July, and major retailers had their biggest sales increase in four months. Economists raise their GDP growth expectations for the quarter.
  13. Trump says he met with Apple CEO Tim Cook over the weekend to talk about how tariffs affect Apple and how Apple’s major competitor, Samsung, gets around the tariffs. Is that normal for a president to meet with one CEO? I don’t know.
  14. Trump says the stock market will collapse if we don’t vote for him next year. It might collapse either way. He has a 50/50 chance of being right.
  15. Trump’s administration is reviewing unspent funds for foreign programs that were approved by Congress with an eye on redirecting those funds in a process called rescission. But he won’t touch Mike Pence’s or Ivanka’s programs.

Elections:

  1. A Republican group files a lawsuit against the voter-passed citizen redistricting commission in Michigan. They say the commission is unconstitutional. Voters passed similar anti-gerrymandering measures in other states, where the GOP is also trying to circumvent the vote of the people.
  2. At least eight state still use paperless ballots, so there’s no audit trail in the case of a challenge or recount. However, a judge orders Georgia to stop using paperless touchscreen voting machines by 2020.
  3. Trump holds a rally at a Shell plant in Pennsylvania where thousands of union workers are told to show up and to not yell or protest, or they won’t get paid. The rally was held during a time when workers get overtime, so they were looking at a good loss if they didn’t show.
    • Trump tells that group of workers that Shell‘s manufacturing complex never would’ve happened without him, even though Shell announced it under Obama in 2012.
  1. Trump renews his claims of voter fraud in New Hampshire, and receives a quick rebuke from FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub, who says:

“People have studied this. Academics have studied this. Lawyers have studied this. The government has studied this. Democrats have studied this. Republicans have studied this. And no one can find any evidence of rampant voter fraud either historically or particularly in the 2016 elections.”

  1. While both parties have used the recall to try to get rid of elected officials they don’t like, the GOP wields it like a weapon. There have been 45 state-level recall elections in the history of the U.S., and 20 of those were just in the past 10 years.
    • In California, they recalled a state senator to break the Democratic supermajority in 2018.
    • In Nevada, they tried to recall three lawmakers in 2018.
    • In New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon, Nevada, and California, they’re trying or planning to recall the governors.
    • In Colorado they recalled two lawmakers in 2013. This year, they’re trying to recall four lawmakers and are targeting more.
    • In comparison, Democrats tried to recall Scott Walker and his Lt. Governor in Wisconsin in 2012, and are working on a recall of the governor of Alaska.
  1. Trump says he can decide which TV networks air the presidential debates.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Remember that big scandal under Obama where we all found out that the National Security Agency (NSA) was surveilling our phone records? Well, that program has been shut down indefinitely, but Trump wants to reauthorize it and make it permanent.
  2. Trump says being president will cost him $5 billion. Isn’t that all he was worth in the first place?

Polls:

  1. 72% of Americans support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Even 54% of Republicans do, thought that’s down from 59% in March, 2017.

Quote of the Week:

This quote comes from a surprising source: former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci (the Mooch).

“We recognize that the president is a clear and present danger to the American society, the American culture. There are many people inside the White House and in the Cabinet. I would ask the left to let’s create an off-ramp for those people because when you’re trying to deprogram people from a cult, one of the first things you have to do is allow them to change their mind, and you have to allow them to have the space to change their mind.”

Week 133 in Trump

Posted on August 14, 2019 in Politics, Trump

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

This week, Tucker Carlson calls white supremacy a hoax, just like the Russia thing. Maybe he meant that white supremacy is not a hoax just the way the Russia thing is not a hoax. It is so far past time for ALL of us to take a stand against white supremacy. Any of you who still pretend it’s not a thing need to take a deep look inside about why it’s so important to hold on to the idea that we don’t have a white supremacist problem in this country. Because we do. We really, really do.

Here’s what happened in politics in the week ending August 11…

Shootings This Week:

  1. Here’s a list of the week‘s mass shootings (defined as killing or injuring four or more people):
    • A drive-by shooter in Chicago injures six people.
    • Another drive-by in Chicago injures four people.
    • A drive-by shooter in San Francisco injures four people.
    • A shooter injures four people near Richmond, VA, outside a hotel and bar.
    • Two people are dead and two injured in a shooting connected to a traffic accident in St. Louis.
    • A shooter kills one person and injures three at an altercation following a funeral in Maryland.
    • A shooter or multiple shooters injure four people at a community vigil in Brooklyn.
    • And a near miss in Springfield, MO. After an alert Walmart clerk pulls the fire alarm to get people out of the store, a former firefighter detains a man armed with tactical weapons, body armor, and over 100 rounds of ammunition.
  1. Trump calls for stronger background checks, but earlier he threatened to veto House legislation that strengthened background checks.
  2. Gun rights supporters single out mental health as the big issue in gun violence, but only a small fraction of mass shooters have a previous history of mental illness (and most mentally ill aren’t violent). The most common factors of mass shooters are:
    • Strong sense of resentment
    • Desire for infamy
    • Domestic violence
    • Study of other shooters
    • Narcissism (not to be confused with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is a mental illness)
    • Misogyny (so if you think the Incel movement is nothing to worry about, think again)
    • Access to firearms
  1. Trump speaks out against white supremacy, bigotry, and hatred, and says we need to do something about gun safety… and that maybe we should tie that together with immigration reform. I’m not sure what the two have to do with each other.
  2. Whoops! Trump refers to Toledo instead of Dayton in his speech. And then Joe Biden refers to Houston instead of El Paso, and to Michigan instead of Ohio.
  3. Trump calls for unity in his speech, but then later that day he and his staff were back to targeting his perceived political opponents, including those affected by the shootings.
  4. Trump tweets that the Dayton shooter supported Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Antifa. Police haven’t determined a political motive for that particular shooting, though violent misogyny seems to have played a part.
  5. None of the El Paso shooting victims are willing to meet with Trump, so they make a photo op by bringing in the baby whose parents were both killed in the shooting.
  6. FBI Director Christopher Wray orders the FBI to conduct a threat assessment to help find and stop possible mass shootings in the future. They’ll work to identify threats similar to the recent shootings and hopefully stop them before they occur.
  7. The FBI has around 850 active domestic terrorism investigations, down from nearly 1,000 a year earlier.
  8. The FBI opens a domestic terrorism investigation into the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting after finding a list of additional targets.
  9. After the recent mass shootings, Trump says “fake news” contributed to the anger and fate that led to these problems. The problem is, most of the recent shooters cited race and immigration, and echoed rhetoric used by Trump and white supremacists. The Dayton shooter was different–a violent misogynist whose motivation in unclear.
  10. Following the recent shootings, the FBI urges Congress to make domestic terrorism a federal crime, as it should be.
    • The gap in the law allows self-radicalized Americans who attack immigrants, Jews, African Americans, etc., to be tried for hate crimes instead of terrorism.
    • Even though both the Gilroy and El Paso shooters are being investigated for domestic terrorism, there’s no law that lets them get charged with that.
  1. The El Paso shooter said he was targeting Mexicans.
  2. Google and Amazon are both found to be selling gun accessories in violation of their own policies.
  3. Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine listens to his people and rolls out a 17-point gun safety plan that includes expanded background checks, red flag laws, improved access to mental health services, and social media monitoring.
    • These are the same laws Democrats have been trying to pass in the state (and around the country) for 20 years.
    • The state’s GOP legislators are dragging their feet on the bills already.
    • A Republican state representative in Ohio backs a ban on assault weapons and limits on magazine sizes. His change of heart came because his daughter was near the shooting in Dayton.
    • A group of activists is already working to get expanded background checks on the ballot in November 2020 as a voter referendum. If legislators won’t act, the people will.
  1. California Governor Gavin Newsom proposes expanding an existing commission on terrorism to find ways to reduce these kinds of gun violence at schools and at public events.
  2. Foreign journalists covering mass shootings in the U.S. say it’s hard to explain the issues surrounding mass shootings in the U.S.—our gun culture, politics, and extremism. People abroad frankly think Americans are a little nuts.
  3. Amnesty International issues a travel warning for the U.S. due to all the gun violence, as do countries like Japan, Venezuela, and Uruguay. Other countries urge caution when traveling here because of the number of shootings, especially mass shootings.
    • Trump threatens retaliation against these countries.
  1. For over a year, the White House has been blocking requests from the DHS to make fighting domestic terrorism a priority. The White House preferred to concentrate on the jihadist threat… because, you know, brown people and scary Muslims.
    • The majority of domestic terrorist cases involve white supremacy.
  1. A group of Walmart employees walk out in protest of the company continuing to sell guns.
  2. Trump says he’s been tough on guns, but his administration has actually worked to make them easier to obtain over the past 2-1/2 years by:
    • Lifting bans on certain locations.
    • Limiting the capabilities of the background check database.
    • Reversing Obama’s limits on gun ownership by people with certain and severe mental disabilities.
    • Working to make it easier for private sellers to sell weapons to foreign buyers.
  1. He‘s also banned bump stocks, increased penalties for agencies that don’t report information to the background check system, and approved funds to combat violence in schools. So it’s a mixed bag.
  2. Ten new laws loosening up gun regulations in Texas are set to go into effect over the next month. These laws make it easier to carry weapons in churches, on school grounds, in apartments, and following natural disasters, among other things.
  3. Congress calls the owner of the 8chan online message board to testify after the website is linked to the El Paso shooter (and it does seem to be the place to air your white supremacist angst).

Russia:

  1. A blast kills five workers and two military personnel at the Russian nuclear agency during a missile test. Russia’s Defense Ministry says they were testing a liquid jet propulsion system and that there were no dangerous gases released, though local authorities reported a radiation spike.
    • Russia later confirms that there were radioactive materials involved in the blast.
    • Later yet, they confirm that they were testing a nuclear-engine missile.
  1. JU.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman resigns, possibly to run for governor of Utah.
  2. The House Judiciary Committee files a formal lawsuit to force former White House Counsel Don McGahn to testify about Trump’s potential obstruction of justice. So far, the White House has blocked his testimony.
  3. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, says that formal impeachment proceedings have already begun in that they are investigating the allegations of obstruction of justice in Mueller’s report, as well as other potential crimes.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Fired FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok sues for reinstatement, saying he was unfairly terminated for criticizing this president (which we all have a right to do, even in the FBI).
    • He argues that the Trump administration has tolerated and encouraged partisan political speech by federal employees as long as Trump’s in agreement with them.
    • He also alleges that DOJ violated the Privacy Act in releasing the texts and that the DOJ violated Strzok’s Fifth Amendment rights by not allowing him to appeal.
  1. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe sues the DOJ and FBI over his firing, saying it was politically motivated.
    • McCabe was hours from retirement when he was fired.
    • The lawsuit quotes a lot of publicly available material, like Trump’s tweets, so it will be hard to argue against that.
  1. Accused child molester and sex trafficker Jeff Epstein is found dead in his cell by apparent suicide. He had been on suicide watch, but psychologists took him off it over a week ago.
    • The prison guards miss their scheduled cell check on Epstein the night before.
    • And then cue the conspiracy theories. Trump retweets a conspiracy theory that the Clintons killed Epstein (this one’s magnified on the right). Some on the left say it was Trump or Bill Barr (magnified on the left). Others say there are many judges and politicians who wanted him dead.
  1. A federal judge orders the departments of State and Defense to produce thousands of documents related to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
  2. The DOJ urges a federal court to overrule a ruling that requires Trump’s accounting firm to release Trump’s financial records to Congress.
  3. Six major banks comply with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena and turn over documents relating to Trump, his family, Russians who had dealings with Trump, and Trump Organization.
  4. The founder of Students For Trump pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He created a fake persona to run a legal consulting scheme that bilked victims out of $50,000.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Two Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee ask the National Archives for Brett Kavanaugh’s records during his time serving under George Bush, since they were concealed during his hearings.

Healthcare:

  1. A federal judge blocks Arkansas’ 18-week abortion ban as well as a new law preventing women from seeking abortion at any time based on a diagnosis of Down’s Syndrome.
  2. Senator Lindsey Graham says that if Republicans take back the House in 2020, they’ll try to repeal and replace the ACA again. That’s what 2020 is all about, he says.

International:

  1. For the third time in a month, Iran seizes a foreign tanker in nearby waters, this time an Iraqi ship that Iran said was smuggling fuel. The Iraqi oil ministry denies the ship is theirs.
  2. Trump tells advisors that Israel should block Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering the country because of their views on BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions). Israel says don’t tell us what to do.
  3. Kim Jong Un supervises a demonstration of North Korea’s newly development short-range missiles.
  4. The protests in Hong Kong continue, having evolved from a protest against an extradition law to a protest against China and for democracy. Though many protests have been peaceful, some protestors escalate the demonstrations, blocking traffic, starting fires, and occupying the airport.
    • China’s reaction is bringing up comparisons to their mishandling of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Two Galveston police officers on horseback arrest a black man for trespassing and, instead of waiting for a transport vehicle, tie a rope to his handcuffs and make him walk alongside them while they ride through town. How did they miss the optics on this one? They say they made a bad decision and they’re very sorry.
  2. A federal judge forces some of the people and groups involved in 2017’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville to pay attorney fees for the people who sued them.
  3. The State Department suspends an official who was also a leader in the white nationalist movement. He attended the Charlottesville rally and posted Nazi propaganda online.
  4. Here’s what else has happened to some of the rally attendees, who came from 39 states and represented about 50 different extreme-right groups:
    • Three former Marines were discharged from the corps.
    • More than a dozen attendees have been imprisoned for various crimes.
    • Unite the Right organizers have been hounded by lawsuits, several leaders have left the movement, and some leaders have moved into new roles in the white supremacist movement.
    • Several attendees have been banned from social media platforms or banned from travel. Some have lost their jobs and some have been ostracized by their communities.
    • But most importantly, most attendees are still active in white nationalist, white supremacist, and racist movements, and some are running for office.
  1. John McCollister, a Republican State Representative in Nebraska, says the “Republican Party is COMPLICIT to obvious racist and immoral activity” inside the party, and that Trump “continually stokes racist fears in his base.” After listing some of Trump’s racist rhetoric, he says, “No more. When the history books are written, I refuse to be someone who said nothing. The time is now for us Republicans to be honest with what is happening inside our party. We are better than this and I implore my Republican colleagues to stand up and do the right thing.”
    • He clarifies that he’s not saying all Republican are white supremacists or racists.
    • In response, the Nebraska Republican Party says McCollister should leave the party. A little self reflection might be in order…
  1. In the largest ICE raid in a decade, immigration officials sweep seven Mississippi food processing plants and arrest 680 people. They leave the children of the arrestees to fend for themselves, so neighbors take over the care of the families left behind.
    • The raid occurs just hours before Trump travels to El Paso and Dayton to “unify” the country.
    • The companies involved could be charged. One of the companies raided is Koch Foods, Inc.
  1. A Michigan man who had been deported to Iraq, even though he had never lived in Iraq and doesn’t speak Arabic, is dead (possibly because he was unable to get his insulin).
    • This isn’t new. Investigators followed the lives of asylum seekers we’ve deported, and 62 of them were killed or died after being sent to the country they were born in.
    • Trump’s deportation policies hit the Iraqi Christian population in Michigan particularly hard, even though many family members of these deportees voted for Trump never thinking he would come after their non-citizen family members. We never think they’ll come for us, right?
  1. Police in El Paso arrest an armed man found lurking outside a migrant shelter. The man had been sitting in a truck with a likeness of Trump as Rambo painted on it. Police release him because they found no crime was committed. Wut?
  2. Trump says, “I am concerned about the rise of any group of hate, whether it’s white supremacy, or any other kind of supremacy.” What other kind of supremacy is there?
  3. Trump Organization hires undocumented workers for construction projects, and has been doing it for two decades. New York’s attorney general is investigating allegations that Trump didn’t pay several of them.
    • We already knew they were hiring undocumented workers at their country clubs after some of them came out publicly and eight were fired last year (even though their employers helped them get the necessary documentation to work).
  1. Federal agents arrest an Ohio man who threatened to shoot Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on social media. The man was also stockpiling weapons and says he’s proud of those posts.
  2. The FBI arrests a neo-Nazi in Las Vegas who was plotting to bomb a gay club and a synagogue.
  3. The DOJ files a petition to potentially decertify the union representing federal immigration judges. The union has been critical of Trump’s immigration policies.
  4. The Trump campaign has paid for about $1.25 million in Facebook ads about immigration (over 20% of their Facebook ads). Over 2,000 of those ads refer to immigration as an invasion.

Climate:

  1. The EPA reauthorizes using poison devices called cyanide bombs to kill wild animals like coyotes and foxes in order to protect livestock. This practice was previously considered inhumane, and has injured humans, domestic pets, and endangered species, too. During the public comment period, over 90% of the comments were opposed. I guess the EPA doesn’t really care what you think.

Budget/Economy:

  1. China said to Trump, I see your bet and I raise you. After Trump says he’ll add a 10% tariff to an additional $300 billion of Chinese goods, China lets it’s currency drop to an 11-year low against the dollar, imposes additional tariffs, and suspends the purchase of all agricultural goods from the U.S.
  2. Trump accuses them of currency manipulation, and the Treasury Department officially designates China as a currency manipulator. This is really just symbolic, and according to the IMF, China’s actions don’t technically qualify as that.
  3. Many U.S. farmers lose one of their largest customers with China’s announcement, and after a year of devastating heat waves and floods, too.
    • China bought $19.5 billion in farm goods in 2017; just $9.2 billion in 2018; and so far this year, it’s down 20% more.
  1. As a result of all the above, the Dow Jones has its worst day of the year, dropping 760 points, or nearly 3%. The S&P also fell 3% and Nasdaq fell 3.5%. The Dow was down nearly 1,000 at one point.
  2. The international travel industry continues to lose business, with a loss of 14 million international travelers, $59 billion in income, and 120,000 jobs in the U.S. Forecasters expect the decline to continue at least through 2022.

Elections:

  1. The Trump campaign and the Republican Party sue California over its new law requiring candidates for president to release five years of tax returns in order to be included on the ballot.
  2. Joe Biden joins the ranks of Democratic presidential hopefuls calling Trump out directly for his racist statements. He says:
    • “How far is it from the white supremacists and Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville ― Trump’s ‘very fine people’ ― chanting ‘You will not replace us’ ― to the shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh saying Jews ‘were committing genocide to his people?’ Not far at all. In both clear language and in code, this president has fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation.”
    • Kamala Harris says it’s no longer debatable that Trump is a white supremacist with no empathy.
    • Even Paul Ryan has said Trump’s remarks are the “textbook definition” of racist.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Puerto Rico gets its third governor in five days. After elected Governor Ricardo Rosselló resigns over homophobic and misogynistic text messages, Secretary of State Pedro Pierluisi is sworn in. But courts say that since Pierluisi wasn’t approved as SoS by both houses of congress, he’s not the legitimate successor. So then Justice Secretary Wanda Vázquez, who’s said she doesn’t want the job, gets sworn in.
  2. Trump says his rhetoric brings people together. Like this tweet, right?
    • “Beto (phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage) O’Rourke, who is embarrassed by my last visit to the Great State of Texas, where I trounced him, and is now even more embarrassed polling at 1% in the Democratic Primary, should respect the victims & law enforcement – & be quiet!”
  1. Mitch McConnell calls the police when a group forms a protest outside his home in Kentucky. He says their actions constitute calls to violence. Frankly, I’m with him on this one. Private homes should be off limits.
    • On the other hand, his campaign tweeted a photo of headstones emblazoned with the names of his political opponents, including Amy McGrath and Merrick Garland.
    • And then a photo of several “Team Mitch” high school boys groping a cardboard cutout of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez goes viral on Twitter. Teach your boys better—this is how we end up with grown men who demean women.
  1. Cesar Sayac, who mailed pipe bombs to several Democratic targets of Trump’s rhetoric, receives a 20-year prison sentence for his crimes. Sayac drove a van covered in pro-Trump stickers. He sent the bombs to Hillary Clinton, Obama, Joe Biden, Eric Holder, George Soros, Maxine Waters, and more.
  2. Criminals are invoking Trump’s name for their defense:
    • Sayac’s lawyers say that he was radicalized by Trump’s rhetoric.
    • A man who slammed a thirteen-year-old’s head to the ground because the kid didn’t take off his hat during the national anthem says he thought he was doing what Trump wanted.
    • Defendants raise objections to people who turn state‘s evidence because Trump says that “flippers” should be illegal.
    • The defendant in a mob killing cited QAnon conspiracies and says he thought his victim was a member of the “deep state” that’s out to get Trump.
  1. Crime rates decreased from 2007 to 2017, and fewer people are in prison compared to 2007.
  2. Intelligence sources say that after he resigned, Dan Coates interrupted a meeting Deputy Director Sue Gordon was running on election security to urge her to resign as well. Trump didn’t follow normal protocol, which would’ve been to make Gordon acting directory.
  3. The White House drafts an executive order that would give the FCC more control over how social media sites curate what is allowed or suppressed on their websites.

Polls:

  1. 54% of Republicans polled support a ban on assault-style weapons.
  2. 85% of Democrats support one.
  3. 70% of registered voters overall support one. (I could’ve tell whether they defined assault-style weapons in the poll.)

Week 132 in Trump

Posted on August 6, 2019 in Politics, Trump, Uncategorized

This week, I’m adding a new news category, sadly out of necessity. Since we’re on mass shooting number 253 for the year (defined as four or more people shot or killed), I think it’s only appropriate to highlight them all in their own section. Jesus. When does his end, folks? When will we actually do something about it?

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending August 4…

Missing From Previous Weeks:

  1. The origins of the Seth Rich conspiracy story were published in early July. It turns out that three days’ after Rich’s murder, Russian Intelligence planted a story that he was the leak of the hacked DNC documents and that he was on his way to the FBI to spill the beans on Clinton’s corruption when Clinton’s hit squad killed him.
    • Jerome Corsi, Fox News (especially Sean Hannity), Steve Bannon, Jay Sekulow, and other right-wing figures ran with the story, even though the police concluded it was a botched robbery and even though Rich’s parents begged them to stop. They didn’t stop until a court forced them to.
    • Russia’s RT and Sputnik media outlets kept boosting this conspiracy theory for two years.
  1. Here are a few other stories that Russian trolls pushed in recent years and that mostly less-than-reliable media outlets picked up:
    • A young German girl claimed she was raped by Middle Eastern immigrants. She recanted—in reality she spent the night with a friend and was scared to tell her parents. But the alt-right pushed an anti-immigrant, anti-police, and anti-media narrative that took hold across the globe.
    • Rumors flew around Twin Falls, ID, that two Syrian refugees aged seven and 10 raped a five-year-old girl at knifepoint and they were later seen high-fiving their dads over it. This also didn’t happen, but exactly what did happen is under seal due to the children’s ages.

Shootings This Week:

  1. The gun used in the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting last week was purchased legally in Nevada, a state with looser gun regulations than California.
  2. A shooter at a Walmart in Southaven, MS, kills two men and injures an officer. The shooter is also injured.
  3. A gunman opens fire in an El Paso Walmart and nearby shopping mall, killing 20 people and injuring 26.
    • The suspect is taken into custody without the police firing a shot. It turns out he drove 10 hours to stop the “invasion” by immigrants crossing the southern border.
    • He posted a short screed online attacking immigrants and expressing empathy for the Christchurch shooter. He says he wanted to shoot as many Mexicans as he could.
  1. After to the shooting, Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick issues this warning to Antifa:

“Stay out of El Paso. Stay out of TX … scratch TX off your map and don’t come in … it is not the time and place for them to come at any time…”

    • He’s referring to a story posted by the Daily Caller about Antifa planning a “siege of El Paso”. Only it turns out Antifa isn’t involved, it’s a training not a siege, and the Daily Caller issued a correction.
    • So the Lt. Governor repeated a conspiracy theory started by a tweet and escalated by a media outlet founded by Tucker Carlson. Reminiscent of the Jade Helm conspiracy, no?
  1. Seven Mexican nationals are among the dead and the Mexican government says they’ll take legal action.
  2. The head of Cloudfare says the company will stop hosting 8chan following the discovery of the shooter’s screed on the site. 8chan is a home for white hate, white supremacy, and terrorist activity.
  3. Less than 24 hours after the El Paso shooting, another shooter attacks an upscale entertainment area in Dayton, Ohio. He kills nine people and injures 29 even though police neutralize him less than a minute after he starts shooting.
    • The motive for the second shooting isn’t yet known, though rumors abound.
  1. Beto O’Rourke is done with the bullshit. He gives an emotional response at a presidential forum, and then cuts his trip short to return to El Paso to be with his family and town. Here’s what he has to say about the El Paso mass shooting:
    • “We’ve got to acknowledge the hatred, the open racism that we’re seeing. There is an environment of it … We see it from our commander-in-chief. He is encouraging this. He doesn’t just tolerate it, he encourages it.”
    • When asked if he thinks Trump is a white nationalist, Beto says yes.
    • And then, as Beto is on his way to meet up with his family a journalist asks if there’s anything Trump can do now to make this better. Beto’s response:

“What do you think? You know the shit he’s been saying. He’s been calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. I don’t know, like, members of the press, what the fuck?”

  1. A drive-by shooter injures seven people in Chicago. Another shooter kills one person and injures seven in Chicago.
  2. A shooter kills one person and injures three at a gas station in Memphis.
  3. A domestic killing leaves two people dead and three injured in Suffolk, VA.
  4. Five people are injured during a shooting at a party in Columbus, OH.
  5. Trump spent the first hours after the shootings tweeting from his golf course in New Jersey.

Russia:

  1. After Mitch McConnell blocks the election security bills passed by the House, #MoscowMitch and #MoscowMitchMcTreason trend on Twitter. Finally a moniker that actually gets through to him. Trump defends him, calling the Washington Post a Russian asset.
  2. In the months before Dan Coates resigned, the White House had been watering down his warnings about the threats posed by Russia, including interference in our elections, past, present, and future.
  3. A federal judge dismisses a case brought by the DNC against the Trump campaign related to the cyberattacks on their computers and subsequent release of the hacked information.
  4. Trump imposes additional sanctions against Russia for using chemical weapons to poison Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in 2018.
  5. Trump and Putin hold a phone meeting to talk about Siberian wildfires and a new U.S. ambassador to Russia. They don’t talk about Russia’s meddling in our elections.
  6. Trump formally pulls the U.S. out of the INF arms control treaty, saying Russia isn’t keeping up their end of the deal.
    • The U.S. plans to start testing a new non-nuclear missile, which would’ve been prohibited under the treaty.
    • Leaving the treaty allows the U.S. to counter new developments by both Russia and China.
  1. After the proof presented in Robert Mueller’s report and in the Senate Intelligence Committee report about Russian interference in the 2016 elections, and after Mueller confirmed those findings in his congressional hearings, Trump has this exchange with a reporter:

REPORTER: Mr. President, Robert Mueller said last week that Russia is interfering in the U.S. elections right now. Is that —

TRUMP: “Oh you don’t really believe this. Do you believe this? Ok, fine. We didn’t talk about it. I spoke with President Putin of Russia yesterday.”

  1. Protests continue in Moscow for free elections (the government isn’t letting opposition candidates on the ballot in Moscow city council races). 1,000 people are arrested, on top of the 1,300 arrested the previous week.Putin’s approval is at a low point.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Trump sues to prevent New York from releasing his tax returns, as allowed by a recently passed bill. A federal judge temporarily prevents the state from sharing Trump’s returns while the case moves through the courts.
  2. Support for beginning impeachment hearings is growing in the House, and now more than half of House Democrats support it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still hesitant.
  3. State prosecutors in New York subpoena Trump Organization records relevant to the Stormy Daniels hush-money case.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The DOJ declines to prosecute James Comey over the leak of his personal memos that were later determined to contain classified information. The DOJ says there’s no evidence that he intended to violate rules on handling classified information or that he knew he was doing so.
  2. A new FBI bulletin calls fringe domestic terrorism driven by conspiracy theories a growing threat, and specifically mentions QAnon.
    • QAnon believes there’s a deep-state conspiracy against Trump and he’s leading a covert effort to dismantle both that and an international child sex trafficking ring run by global elites.
    • The group also believes that Clinton and Podesta were running a pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizzeria (that doesn’t have a basement).
    • The report says conspiracy-driven violence is likely to increase in the 2020 election cycle. Great.
    • The report lists several conspiracy theories that have already led to violent attacks.
  1. Democrats demand an answer from Attorney General William Barr about why changes were made to funding for victims of trafficking. Trump ended the practice of using federal funds to help victims of sex trafficking clear their criminal records, which often stem from the activities they were forced into doing (like prostitution).
    • People who are trafficked have a very tough time getting their lives back together, and if they have a criminal record, they often can’t get a job, get housing, get loans… you see where this is going.

Healthcare:

  1. A federal judge strikes down Medicaid work requirements in New Hampshire—the third state where the requirements have been blocked.
    • The state had already put the policy on hold after learning that 17,000 residents would lose coverage. (Then why the fuck did they pass it in the first place?)
  1. A new study finds that raising the minimum wage and increasing tax credits decreases the suicide rate. There’s actually a name for what low-wage workers experience — deaths of despair — which include things like overdoses and suicides.

International:

  1. The Senate fails to garner enough support to override Trump’s veto of their bills banning sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
  2. New documents show that Trump’s friend Thomas Barrack Jr. and campaign manager Paul Manafort helped officials from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates edit a campaign speech made by Trump in May 2016.
    • This was part of an attempt to have the U.S. share nuclear information with Saudi Arabia, and Barrack planned to finance nuclear power plant construction in the Middle East.
    • Just after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed, Trump authorized two U.S. companies to share nuclear information with Saudi Arabia.
    • Barrack also lobbied to be appointed as a special envoy to the Middle East.
  1. Trump’s new nominee for Director of National Intelligence has no background in intelligence and is considered by many to be too partisan for the position.
    • Ratcliffe spread the theory of a secret society in the FBI that was out to get Trump.
    • He lied about being appointed special prosecutor in a case against funders of Hamas.
    • He downplayed the issue of Russian interference in our elections during Robert Mueller’s testimony a few weeks ago.
  1. Well that was quick! Ratcliffe withdraws his name from consideration following intense scrutiny over his lack of experience in the area and padding his resume.
    • Trump says Ratcliffe was being slandered in the media. FFS. Since when is vetting an official and bringing up their past slander? If Trump’s team would take the time and effort to vet half of his nominees, we wouldn’t have to vet them in the press. Sheez.
    • And just after I wrote that, Trump says that he White House has a great vetting process. He throws out a name and then the press vets them for the White House. Argh!
    • Trump won’t allow the deputy director, Sue Gordon, to take over as acting director of national intelligence, as per federal statute. Trump refuses to allow her to give the most recent intelligence briefing after she arrived at the White House to deliver it.
  1. The Trump administration opposes sanctions against Iran’s Foreign Minister, their top diplomat. This is retaliation for Iran taking down a drone, seizing a British tanker, and running a missile-test.
  2. The Senate confirms Trump’s pick for ambassador to the UN. Kelly Craft is currently our ambassador to Canada, where she appears to hardly have spent any time. She and her husband have donated millions to Republican candidates, and she’ll be the first in her position to be a major political donor.
  3. Trump sends a special envoy for hostage affairs to Sweden to monitor court proceedings in the case of American rapper A$AP Rocky. Is anyone else confused by Trump’s concern over this case?
  4. The U.S. will withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan as part of the negotiated deal with the Taliban. The deal hasn’t been finalized.
  5. After North Korea tests some short-range missiles, Trump praises Kim Jong Un and tells him to “do the right thing.”
  6. Boris Johnson’s party majority in Parliament shrinks to just one seat when a special election moves a rural seat from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Democrat party. Now Johnson can’t lose even one pro-Brexit vote.
  7. Even though the original impetus for the Hong Kong riots has been tabled, the riots continue and worsen, causing businesses to close early and residents to shelter in place. The protestors now want liberation from China.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House reintroduces an amendment to overturn Citizens United and get corporate and dark money out of politics.
  2. After three major mass shootings in the span of a week, Democrats ask Mitch McConnell to call the Senate back into a special session to vote on the gun safety bills that the House has already passed.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. Remember last week when SCOTUS said that Trump could use DoD funding to build his wall along the southern border? It turns out that the funds pegged for the job will come out of retirement programs for our military, among other programs.
    • SCOTUS didn’t give Trump a blank check to build a wall, nor did they say that the wall is legal. Their ruling is limited to specific projects.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump continues his attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings, accusing Cummings of stealing funds from the district.
    • Four years ago, Trump said Obama wasn’t doing enough to fix the problems in Baltimore. Trump said he’d fix it fast. He hasn’t, according to his own tweets.
    • Also, Trump’s own eateries in New York have been flagged for vermin infestations.
  1. The House Oversight Committee requests documents related to the private Facebook page for current and former CBP officers, which contains violent, racist, and misogynistic posts. The committee is concerned some of these officers might still be working with migrant women and children.
  2. As part of Trump’s new “third-country” asylum policy, DHS cuts a question for asylum seekers, which was intended to be sure Mexico wasn’t a dangerous place for them. The question asked whether they had a fear of being returned to another country and, if so, which ones.
  3. The Trump administration is still taking children away from their migrant parents—at least 1,000 since a judge ordered them to stop family separations. They’re being separated for minor reasons. 20% of these are children under five years old.
  4. White House advisor Stephen Miller proposes using border patrol agents to screen asylum seekers because they’d be tougher critics.
  5. After someone tries to break into Rep. Elijah Cummings home in Baltimore, Trump tweets a seemingly sarcastic “Too Bad!” but later says he really meant it was too bad.
  6. An NYPD departmental judge recommends that officer Daniel Pantaleo should be fired because of his involvement in Eric Garner’s death.
  7. A federal judge throws out Trump’s policy that immigrants who enter the U.S. in places other than ports of entry cannot apply for asylum. The judge says the policy violates the Immigration and Nationality Act.
  8. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) says Native American tribes are destroying our western way of life after tribes and environmentalists successfully get the grizzly bear back on the endangered species list. That’s irony, right?
  9. Hours after the FBI releases the report calling out QAnon as one of the originators of conspiracy theories driving domestic terrorism, one of the speakers who warms up the crowd at Trump’s campaign rally casually drops QAnon’s rallying call: “Where we go one, we go all.”
    • QAnon believers have been common at Trump’s rallies, and more recently have been showing up in QAnon gear.

Climate:

  1. California Governor Gavin Newsom signs a bill requiring more environmental impact reviews for the Cadiz water project (which would drain the aquifer under the Mojave National Reserve). The Trump administration has tried to fast-track this project.
  2. The heat wave that hit Europe last week hits Greenland this week, accelerating the melt rate for the Greenland ice sheet, which in July alone poured 197 billion tons a water into the Atlantic. July 31 has the most ice melt of any day in the past seven years.
  3. In general, July was the earth’s hottest month on record (previously that was July 2016).
  4. Ethiopian citizens plant 353 million trees in a single day to help combat climate change. In 2017, volunteers in India planted 66 million trees. In China, users of the Alibaba pay app planted 100 million trees over two years. Conversely, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro ended protections for the Amazon rainforest, opening it to clear-cutting and development.
  5. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt appoints William Pendley as the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management. Pendley is now tasked with managing federal lands, but doesn’t believe there should be federal lands. He says the Founding Fathers intended for all federal land to be sold.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Under Trump’s proposed cuts to the SNAP program, more than 500,000 kids would lose their eligibility for free school lunches. The USDA failed to include this in their assessment when they proposed the new rules, so this is on top of the 3.1 million people expected to be dropped off the program.
  2. Over 50% of the money given to farmers so far to help ease the effects of tariffs went to just 10% of all recipients.
  3. The Federal Reserve cuts interest rates by one quarter of a percentage point. This isn’t a typical move when the economy is booming, and could signal that they’re trying to soften an economic slowdown that could become a recession. Trumps wants it cut a full percentage point and says Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has let him down again.
  4. Trump ends the trade truce with China saying he’ll impose a 10% tariff on the remaining $300 billion of imported Chinese goods. Negotiators for the two sides had just wrapped up a round of talks the day before.
    • China threatens retaliatory tariffs, and companies consider moving up production and shipment of goods to get it done before the tariffs take effect.
    • Experts say this trade war could last years or even decades. So much for “trade wars are easy to win!”
    • The Dow Jones drops 600 points on the news and the S&P drops 45 points.
    • The National Retail Federation refers to the new tariffs as a “tax increase.”
  1. The Senate and House both pass a $2.7 trillion spending bill that also lifts the debt ceiling for two years, or as Trump put it, until after the 2020 election.
  2. Because of the tariffs against imported Chinese goods, manufacturers are moving some production outside of China. But they aren’t bringing it back to the U.S. They’re moving it to factories in Southeast Asia.
  3. The Trump administration considers cutting capital gains taxes, giving the wealthy a $100 billion tax cut (because that first trillion just wasn’t enough). They’d have to bypass Congress to do it.
  4. The economy added 164,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate remained at 3.7%.

Elections:

  1. More House Republicans announce they’ll step down from Congress next year, including Rep. Will Hurd (TX). This brings the total to 12, and makes it much harder for Republicans to take back the House next year.
    • Hurd’s district has the longest stretch of the southern border of any U.S. district.
    • He has been a vocal opponent of Trump’s plans to build a wall.
    • He is the only black Republican in the House.
  1. Lawyers file a court brief accusing Georgia election officials of destroying evidence related to a court case that alleges Georgia’s voting systems are outdated and vulnerable to hackers.
  2. If you want to get on the presidential ballot in California, you now have to provide five years of your income tax filings. Lawsuits to follow, I’m sure.
  3. In North Carolina, Leslie Dowless is charged with two felonies related to his ballot fraud activity in the 2018 midterms. The ballot fraud led to the election results being overturned, and the special election is finally being held next month.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump orders the Navy to strip the commendations from the Navy prosecutors involved in the war crimes trial of a Navy SEAL who was acquitted.
  2. The DOJ is investigating accusations that Ryan Zinke used a personal email account while he was head of the Interior Department. Ooh.
  3. Despite allegations of sexual assault against Air Force General John Hyten, the Senate Armed Services Committee approves his nomination to be the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The vote now goes to the Senate.
  4. The Intelligence Community’s inspector general won’t investigate how Jared Kushner, Ivanka, and other White House officials were granted security clearances. He says he’ll only conduct the investigation if Trump asks him too.
  5. Oracle’s been complaining about Amazon getting the military’s cloud computing contract, so Trump tells the Secretary of Defense to re-examine the contract. Sounds like a little political favoritism there.
    • Also, the project has a cool name: Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI.
  1. Trump holds his 64th campaign rally on his 923rd day in office (that’s roughly one every two weeks for those of you counting).
  1. Mitch McConnell falls at his Kentucky home and fractures his shoulder.
  2. Trump considers declaring a state of emergency in Baltimore because he says living conditions there are unacceptable. He also floats doing the same in other Democratic-led cities like San Francisco and Detroit.
  3. And just in case you’ve forgotten, Trump got the idea to go after Cummings and Baltimore from an episode Fox & Friends.

Polls:

Here are the results of a new Quinnipiac poll on whether respondents think that Trump is racist:

  • African Americans: 80% yes, 11% no
  • Latinos: 55% yes, 44% no
  • Whites: 46% yes, 50% no
  • Democrats: 86% yes, 9% no
  • Independents: 56% yes, 38% no
  • Republicans: 8% yes, 91% no