Category: Politics

Week 79 in Trump

Posted on July 30, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Credit: gguy/Shutterstock

Despite Trump’s spectacular tweet storm on Sunday, it was a relatively quiet week as far as political news. Maybe we’ll get a little summer break from political chaos for the next few weeks. Here’s what happened last week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Four members of the Homeland Security Advisory Committee resign, saying that they can no longer be associated with Trump’s immigration policies and calling the practice of family separation “morally repugnant.”

Russia:

  1. Even though Robert Mueller’s investigation has so far resulted in 32 indictments, 5 guilty pleas, and over 100 charges, this happens:
    • Sarah Huckabee Sanders calls Robert Mueller’s investigation a “hoax and a waste or time.”
    • Trump tweets that Russia’s interference in the election was “all a big hoax” (though last week he said that he concurs with our intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference in our election).
    • Then, even though it’s all a big hoax, Trump blames Obama for letting Russian interference in our election happen. He also wonders why Obama didn’t tell his campaign, though both the Clinton and Trump campaigns were warned about it.
  1. Carter Page has been downplaying his ties with Russian officials, but in a 2013 letter, he says he worked as an informal advisor to Kremlin staff.
  2. The judge in Paul Manafort’s trial grants immunity to five witnesses as requested by Mueller. The judge also orders that all witness names be made public (there are 30 prospective witnesses). The trial begins at the end of the month.
  3. Trump says that he thinks Russia will meddle in our midterm elections, but this time to help get Democrats elected because Trump’s been so tough on Russia. Despite his soft stance toward Putin, he has taken more actions against Russia than previous administrations (albeit grudgingly in many cases).
  4. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testifies to a senate committee about our Russia policy, including the actions taken by the administration (213 sanctions, weapons sales to Ukraine, 60 diplomats expelled, and Russian facilities closed). Pompeo refuses to discuss what was said in Trump’s meeting with Putin.
  5. Just before Pompeo’s testimony, the State Department restated their non-recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
  6. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Banking Committee schedule hearings to find out what was agreed upon in the Trump and Putin summit.
  7. Trump postpones Putin’s visit in the fall, blaming the Russia “witch hunt.” Soon after, Putin invites Trump to Moscow.
  8. The White House releases an edited transcript of the summit, omitting key questions. The Kremlin releases yet a different edited version that also omits key information. The White House later corrects their record.
  9. Eleven GOP members of the House, including Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, bring articles of impeachment against Rod Rosenstein, demanding a vote. House leadership and other members criticize this action, and the sponsors end up pulling their demand for a vote.
  10. According to “sources,” Michael Cohen says that Trump knew about the Russian offer that led to the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower before the 2016 elections. Cohen also says that Trump approved the meeting. Steve Bannon and Sam Nunberg have both said they think Trump knew about the meeting.
  11. Trump says he did not know about the meeting; Cohen says he’s willing to testify otherwise.
  12. Newly surfaced emails show that the Russian lawyer from the above meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is more closely linked to Russian government officials than she has let on.
  13. Russian hackers have been hacking into electric utility companies in the U.S.
  14. Elliot Broidy and Tom Barrack (a Trump friend and business associate) paid Rick Gates over $300,000 for help navigating Trump’s administration. Gates has plead guilty to fraud and lying to investigators.
  15. Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr (R-NC) contradicts his counterpart in the House, Devin Nunes, saying that the Carter Page warrant was based on solid intel.
  16. After Maria Butina’s arrest for espionage, Democratic senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee request an investigation into whether the NRA knew Russia was trying to funnel money through them to Trump’s campaign.
  17. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (D-Calif.) had dinner last year with Butina. Two years before that, Butina arranged a meeting between Rohrabacher and Alexander Torshin.
  18. Russian hackers are already at work in the 2018 midterm election. In August 2017, they attempted to hack into Claire McCaskill’s servers after Trump visited her state and encouraged crowds to vote her out of office.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions addresses a high school leadership summit, and joins in with the students in chanting “Lock her up!” He later says that in retrospect, he should’ve taken that moment to talk to the students about due process instead.
  2. A circuit court rules that the 2nd amendment does give us the right to open carry firearms for self defense. A previous ruling found that the 2nd amendment does NOT protect concealed carry.
  3. For the second time, a federal judge refuses to dismiss an emoluments lawsuit against Trump.

Healthcare:

  1. Kentucky reinstates the dental and vision benefits that the state took away from a half million Medicaid recipients several weeks ago. Outrage from local Democrats and local media pushed them to reverse their decision.
  2. Two things this week will affect privatization of veterans’ healthcare:
    • Trump creates a commission to review Veterans Administration facilities with the possible end goal of shutting down several. The commission will be able to make final decisions on this without congressional approval.
    • Congress provides more funding for the Veteran’s Choice Program, which is a vehicle to privatized healthcare. Putting more money there takes it away from the VA and starts a vicious cycle of underfunding VA facilities which could lead the above commission to shut them down.
  1. On rumors of pretty massive increases in premiums next year, the Trump administration will resume paying the risk adjustment payments to health insurers that he canceled just a few weeks ago.

International:

  1. After Iran’s President Rouhani warns the U.S. about starting any conflict, Trump threatens Iran in a tweet with “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED.”
  2. The Pentagon plans to send another $200 million to help the Ukraine fight off pro-Russian separatists. This is seen as a reaction to the Trump/Putin press conference in Helsinki.
  3. A recent review of international agreements concludes that countries are in compliance with these agreements about 77% of the time. So it seems these agreements do actually work.
  4. Keeping Kim Jong Un’s word to Trump, North Korea returns the remains of 55 people believed to be American soldiers from the Korean War. The country still hasn’t slowed down it’s nuclear activity though.
  5. The White House says they won’t publish conversations between Trump and other world leaders anymore.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Four Republican representatives accuse Twitter of “shadow banning” them, which is when either their posts don’t show up on other people’s newsfeeds or don’t show up in searches. Twitter says they don’t do that. Note that all four have posted incendiary or false stories.

Family Separation:

  1. While the administration scrambles to meet their court-ordered deadline to reunite families they separated at the border, they say over 700 families can’t be reunited. They also say that 463 of the parents were likely deported without their children.
  2. For these 463, the administration failed to document consent for most of them, so there’s no way that they can prove that any documents were signed consenting to being deported without their children.
  3. And as an example of what makes a family ineligible to be reunited, the administration refuses to reunite a child with her grandmother because the grandmother isn’t the child’s parent. Please.
  4. United Airlines donates flights to help reunite families that were separated at the border and who are now being forced to pay reunification costs incurred by the administration.
  5. A judge orders the Trump administration to provide assistance and information to lawyers who are working to reunite these families.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Documents released as part of a lawsuit show that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross lied about the origin of the new citizenship question on the 2020 census. Ross says the DOJ initially requested the question, but the documents show that it was Ross who was pushing for it.
  2. A judge rules that a lawsuit against the administration for adding the citizenship question to the census can move forward.
  3. A group of 36 people sue the Trump administration over the recently upheld Muslim ban saying that the waiver process is a sham. The 36 people represent all five of the Muslim-majority countries included in the ban.

Climate/EPA:

  1. While working to decrease the size of our national monuments, the Trump administration suppressed research that shows that national monuments boost both tourism and archaeological finds. Instead, Ryan Zinke emphasized ranch, logging, and energy development.
  2. A federal appeals court blocks the administration’s second try at stopping a climate change lawsuit. This lawsuit was brought by a group of children who say that the government is endangering their future by not doing enough about climate change.
  3. A federal appeals court also blocks one of Scott Pruitt’s last policy changes that would have lifted limits of sales of so-called super-polluting semi trucks.
  4. Democrats and conservationists in the House block the GOP’s attempt to suspend endangered species protections for certain birds and insects.

Budget/Economy:

  1. It sounds like Russia is giving up on the American economy. They’ve been buying gold and selling off U.S. Treasury bonds. Their bond ownership is around 1/6 what it used to be.
  2. Unexplainable, right? Whirlpool’s stock takes a dive. Whirlpool initially pushed Trump into harsher tariffs, but they’re blaming their stock drop on the resulting high prices of aluminum and steel. Their CEO says the high prices are unexplainable.
  3. According to the North Dakota Trade office, all of China’s firm orders for food-grade soybeans have been cancelled due to tariffs. Farmers won’t see effects from this immediately, but future harvests will be hit.
  4. The economy grew 4.1% in the second quarter of this year, the highest rate of growth since 2014 when it hit 5.2% under Obama. Economists think that the growth is due in part to the tax stimulus and in part to increased spending before the tariffs went into effect. (And in case you think this proves Trump is better for the economy, growth hit 4% under Obama four times.)
  5. Don Jr. says economic growth never passed 2% under Obama. Except that it did. 15 times.
  6. Facebook stock tanks on the low number of active users, and Twitter stock tanks after they purge thousands of fake accounts.
  7. Trump considers 25% tariffs on $200 billion of foreign-made cars, and when even Republicans criticize the idea, he says we just need to trust his business acumen.
  8. Trump meets with European Commission President Juncker where they agree to work toward zero tariffs on trade, reduce barriers to trade, and increase trade in certain sectors. They also agree to establish a working group to figure out the details.
  9. Trump backs away from this tariff threats against the EU, and the EU backs down from threats of retaliatory tariffs.
  10. There are reports that Juncker used colorful flashcards as a way to simplify complex issues and to explain global trade policy to Trump.
  11. Trump says he’s willing to force a government shutdown ahead of the September spending bill deadline if he doesn’t get what he wants on immigration, including funding for the border wall.
  12. Right after tweeting that tariffs are the greatest, the Trump administration announces a $12 billion assistance package to help farmers who might be hurt by the tariffs. Trump tells farmers to be patient, and not to believe what they see and hear right now.
  13. Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) says this bailout shows that Trump has too much power and that Congress needs to reassert its power. He also says that tariffs are a tax paid by the American people, and Trump is using that tax to bail out farmers.
  14. Coca-Cola says they’ll increase prices due to rising costs from the tariffs.
  15. Current measures indicate that the price changes caused by the trade war are temporary and should return to close to normal in a year or two.

Elections:

  1. Here’s an illustration of why we need to end gerrymandering. In emails disclosed as part of a lawsuit, Republican officials in Michigan brag about gerrymandering and celebrate sticking it to Democrats. The emails talk about concentrating “Dem garbage” into certain Democrat controlled districts, and about concentrating African Americans into a specific House district in Detroit. They even describe one of the oddly shaped districts as being like a finger, essentially flipping off that district’s Democratic representative.
  2. States purged 16 million voters from their rolls from 2014 to 2016, an increase from previous periods. The greatest rates of increase were in areas that were under federal watch for having previously violated the Voting Rights Act. In at least eight states, the purges violated the Voting Rights Act or were otherwise not legal.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump weighs stripping former officials who criticize him of their security clearances. This is an unusual move by any administration, and could hamper their ability to do consulting work on classified projects. It seems Rand Paul pushed him on this one.
  2. The Senate confirms Robert Wilkes to head the VA.
  3. Someone leaks a tape of a conversation between Michael Cohen and Trump where they discuss purchasing Karen McDougal’s story about her affair with Trump from American Media to prevent the story from getting out before the 2016 election.
  4. New York’s Department of Taxation and Finance opens an investigation into Trump’s foundation over whether it violated state tax laws.
  5. Ivanka shuts down her clothing line to focus on her work in Washington and also because conflicts of interest between her business and her government work are getting in the way.
  6. Apparently there’s a standing rule on Air Force One that all TVs be tuned to Fox News while Trump’s on board. He has a little tantrum when Melania’s TV is on CNN.
  7. Betsy DeVos eliminates Obama-era regulations that required for-profit colleges to be able to show proof that their claims of graduate employment are accurate. This rule protected students from being tricked into thinking that graduates of a school are more employable than they actually are.
  8. Vandals untie one of DeVos’s 10 yachts, releasing it from it’s dock in Ohio. Which is how we learn that her yacht is registered under the Cayman Island flag. Why is that?
  9. Trump criticizes the FCC for slowing down the merge between Sinclair Broadcasting and Tribune Media.
  10. Someone vandalizes Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a pickaxe for the second time.
  11. Fox News fires The Five host Kimberly Guilfoyle for sexual misconduct and abusive conduct. Side note: Guilfoyle is dating Don Jr.
  12. Karma bitches. Facebook suspends Alex Jones for bullying and hate speech.YouTube removes four of his videos and suspends him from live-streaming for three months.
  13. Emails surface that show that police in Ohio had been planning to arrest Stormy Daniels for months before her scheduled performance.
  14. After a meeting with the publisher of the New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, Trump tweets that they had a very good meeting and talked about the high volume of fake news put out by the mainstream media. Sulzberger’s response: “I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous.” “
  15. So then Trump accuses the media of having “Trump derangement syndrome.”

Polls:

  1. 71% of voters think Roe v. Wade should not be overturned.
  2. 51% think Russia has something on Trump, with Republicans being the only category of voter that doesn’t think so (categories include things like gender, party, education, age, race, and so on).
  3. 52% say Trump’s summit with Putin was a failure for Trump; 27% say it was a success.
  4. 73% say the summit was a success for Putin.
  5. 78% say Trump should defend all our NATO allies.
  6. 68% are concerned about Trump’s relationship with Russia.
  7. Trump’s approval rating fell to 38% after the Russia summit.
  8. Two groups give Trump clear support: Republicans at 82%, and white evangelical Christians at 71%.
  9. 58% of voters disapprove of Trump’s foreign policy, with 51% saying that he‘s weakened our position as leader of the free world.

 

Week 78 in Trump

Posted on July 23, 2018 in Politics, Trump

At least one of these guys looks happy.

Confused about all the Russia kerfuffle and whether Trump believes our intelligence agencies over Putin? John Hartzell’s tweet pretty much sums up the cleanup process after the joint press conference:

“Today, Trump lied, lied about lying, changed his mind, lied about changing his mind, changed his mind about lying, blamed someone else for something he did, lied about blaming someone else, took a breath, and lied.”

Even though intelligence agencies presented Trump with proof of Russian interference from the start, he has always muddied the waters to make sure that people continue to question the findings of our own intelligence agencies. It’s the reason he can never come up with a clear and cogent response to questions about it.

Russia:

There’s so much Russia news this week that I have to break it out into sub-sections. So here goes.

Trump/Putin Summit:

  1. Trump and Putin hold a two-hour summit, followed by a controversial press conference that sets off a worldwide firestorm. I’ll just start by saying that Russian officials call the summit and press conference major success for Putin, while Trump receives massive criticism back at home.
  2. What did they discuss at the summit? Trump says war and peace, Syria, Ukraine, and Israel (Putin loves Bibi, apparently). But no one really knows for sure.
  3. There was no one in attendance in the Trump/Putin summit except translators, so we have no official record of what happened. There was no joint statement so we don’t know what they agreed on.
  4. Here are some press conference highlights of what Trump says (remember this is just days after the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence agents for hacking the DNC and after Dan Coates told us that there are warning signs of more hacking):
    • When asked about Russian interference in the 2016 elections, Trump refuses to support our own intelligence agencies, and instead says Putin’s denials were forceful and credible.
    • He denies collusion and calls the Russia investigation a disaster for the U.S. Even though the Russia investigation has spawned state investigations and resulted in 32 indictments, 5 guilty pleas, and over 100 charges.
    • Trump suggests that our intelligence agencies (specifically Dan Coates) are not credible and are conspiring against him. Even though Coates told him that Russia was behind the hacking of the DNC servers, Trump doesn’t see any reason why Russia would do that and it could be anybody else.
    • Trump blames the U.S. for our current relationship with Russia, calling the U.S. foolish (and ignoring Russia’s attacks on Georgia, Crimea, and Ukraine; their actions in Syria; the poisonings in England; and the downing of the Malaysian passenger jet). Trump sees the U.S. and Russia as morally equivalent.
    • Trump brings up his electoral win, claiming incorrectly that it’s harder for a Republican to win the electoral college than a Democrat. In reality, Democrats need an extra margin of about 11% of the popular vote.
    • He brings up Hillary’s emails again, along with a debunked conspiracy theory about a Pakistani DNC staffer who was arrested. He adds that Russia would never let this happen in their country.
    • Trump calls Putin a good competitor, not an adversary… just after he called the EU one of our biggest foes.
    • He is impressed by Putin’s offer to have Mueller share his evidence on the 12 indicted Russian officials if we allow Russia to interrogate U.S. officials. This would give Russia a view into how our intelligence agencies work and what their capabilities are.
    • Trump also considers handing over Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, and Bill Browder for questioning. Putin has long wanted Bill Browder, who exposed the corruption in the Russian government that led to the Magnitsky Act. Side note: Browder is no longer a U.S. citizen, so we can’t really hand him over anyway.
  1. Here‘s some of what Putin says:
    • Russia has never interfered in a U.S. election and they never will.
    • Putin supports Trump in his assertion that there was no collusion.
    • Putin says he knows nothing about any kompromat, claiming he didn’t even know Trump was in town during the Miss Universe pageant. Uh-huh. Even though he cancelled a meeting with Trump during that time.
  1. Later, in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Putin says that our efforts to isolate Russia have failed.
  2. Putin also says he misspoke when he said that Clinton received $400 million from associates of Bill Browder and that it was $400,000 (the actual number is closer to $18,000).
  3. A member of Russia’s parliament says that Russian intelligence stole the 2016 presidential election right out from under the noses of U.S. intelligence.
  4. In a follow-up interview with Sean Hannity, Trump reiterates that Putin says there’s no collusion and that Putin is very, very strong on that. Trump also says Mueller’s Russia investigation is a “phony, witch hunt deal” and that Putin thinks it’s a shame.

Press Conference Fallout:

  1. Reaction is swift, harsh, and bipartisan. Politicians from both sides reiterate that Russia isn’t our friend, there‘s no doubt that Russia interfered in our 2016 elections, and the interference campaign was organized by the Russian government.
  2. Even Fox News is highly critical, with the exception of Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson.
  3. GOP critics use these words to describe the conference: tragic, disgraceful, bizarre, flat-out wrong, shameful, a propaganda win for Putin, and a missed opportunity to hold Russia accountable. Critics on the left call Trump’s response dangerous and weak.
  4. So Trump and the White House attempt some backpedaling… and then forward pedaling… and then backpedaling again:
    • Trump says he misspoke when he said he couldn’t see why Russia WOULD interfere, and says he meant to say WOULDN’T.
    • He accepts intelligence assessments that Russia interfered in our 2016 elections, but then adds that it could also be other people.
    • The next day Trump responds “no” to questions of whether Russia is still interfering, contradicting all of our intelligence agencies and the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee.
    • The White House tries to clarify by saying that Trump was saying “no” to answering any more questions, not “no” to whether Russia is still meddling. This could actually be true; it’s hard to tell.
    • Trump says he was very strong when admonishing Putin that he can’t interfere in our elections.
    • On Monday, Trump thinks Putin made an incredible offer to collaborate on investigations. On Wednesday, Trump says he’ll meet with his advisors to discuss handing over Browder, McFaul, and other government agents to Russia for questioning. And then on Thursday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Trump disagrees with the offer.
    • Trump says he believes Putin when he says he didn’t interfere, but then he says Putin must have known about the interference because he’s in charge of the country.
  1. Even Paul Ryan, who just the week before said we shouldn’t criticize Trump while he’s overseas (in reference to his NATO meetings), criticizes Trump’s words. Mitch McConnell reiterates that Russia is not our friend.
  2. European officials call Trump weak and say he can’t be counted on, though some NATO members do try to smooth things over.
  3. Democrats demand that Republican leaders (like they’re in a position to demand anything):
    • Strengthen sanctions against Russia
    • Force the security team that went to Helsinki with Trump to testify before Congress so we can learn about what was agreed
    • End their attacks on our intelligence agencies and Mueller
    • Extradite the 12 indicted Russian hackers.
  1. McConnell and Ryan consider additional Russia sanctions.
  2. The Russian Ambassador to the U.S. says the summit produced important verbal agreements. Russian officials and the Russian press start talking about all the agreements that were made, yet the American people have no idea what those are.
  3. The Russian Ministry of Defense says that they’re ready to implement all the summit agreements around global security.
  4. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says the summit was fabulous, “better than super.”
  5. In contrast, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refuses to talk to the press about it.
  6. House Intelligence Committee Democrats request a subpoena for the American interpreter, who was the only other American in the room at the meeting between Trump and Putin. The GOP leadership rejects that request.
  7. The whole thing incites protests in Washington, DC, including at the White House. These have been ongoing for a week now.
  8. Weeks before Trump’s inauguration, intelligence agencies presented him with proof that Putin personally directed the 2016 election interference. This proof included emails and texts from Russian military officers. Sources say Trump was “grudgingly” convinced.
  9. While Dan Coates is being interviewed by Andrea Mitchell, he finds out by tweet that Trump is inviting Putin to the White House in the fall. He appears to laugh at Trump at this point.
  10. At the same forum, Kirstjen Nielsen refuses to say she agrees with our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia, specifically Putin, was behind the election interference. She’s the Secretary of HOMELAND SECURITY. Come on!
  11. Trump tries to blame Obama for Russian interference. Obama probably could’ve done more but in reality he was blocked by Mitch McConnell.
    • McConnell received the same intelligence briefing, so he knew what was going on leading up to the 2016 elections.
    • When Obama asked him to sign on to a bipartisan public statement about it, McConnell refused.
    • McConnell told Obama not to release the information and that he [McConnell] would consider any efforts to publicly challenge Russia “an act of partisan politics.”
    • Well played, Mitch; well played.

Other Russia News:

  1. The head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command says he’s directed both agencies to coordinate to fight any future interference in our elections by foreign powers. But they’re on their own; he hasn’t received any White House guidance on this.
  2. Federal agents arrest Maria Butina, a gun rights advocate who is charged with being an unregistered foreign agent (aka “spy”). She allegedly infiltrated the NRA and cozied up to GOP politicians to influence U.S. politics in the interest of Russia.
    • According to prosecutors, Butina tried to exchange sex for influence. She’s been living with Paul Erickson, a conservative political operative from South Dakota who is under investigation for fraud.
    • Her alleged co-conspirator in Russia is Alexander Torshin, who is currently under U.S. sanctions. They were trying to develop back-channel lines of communication between Russian and American officials.
    • Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif) calls the indictment against Butina bogus. Does he protest too much? The affidavit implies that Butina was setting up a meeting between Rohrabacher and Torshin when Rohrabacher visited Russia in 2015.
    • The FBI has a proposal authored by Butina talking about how they can take power away from the Democrats in 2016 and give it to a (not named) party that will be more friendly to Russian interests. The influence campaign started with the NRA and CPAC.
    • It was Butina who secured invitations for Russian officials to attend the National Prayer Breakfast.
    • The affidavit also suggests that Russia had some influence on Trump’s selection for Secretary of State.
    • Butina was arrested when it appeared she was preparing to leave the country. She’s deemed a flight risk, so is being held without bail.
    • Russia’s foreign minister demands Butina’s immediate release.
  1. Twitter suspends the accounts of Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks after last week’s indictment of the Russian hackers.
  2. Trey Gowdy says there’s no good reason to impeach Rod Rosenstein.
  3. Mueller requests immunity for five witnesses in the Paul Manafort trial. He also releases over 500 pieces of evidence being used in the trial.
  4. Remember those Macedonian trolls who pushed pro-Trump, anti-Hillary, and conservative fake stories and conspiracy theories before the 2016 elections? It turns out the effort was started by a Macedonian attorney with the assistance of two American conservatives, Ben Goldman and Paris Wade (you might remember a profile done on them in 2016 describing them writing fake news stories out of their Long Beach apartment). Paris Wade is running for Nevada State Assembly.
  5. The data that Cambridge Analytica mined off Facebook was accessed by a server in Russia.
  6. Christopher Wray, head of the FBI, says Russia is very aggressive in election interference and that they’re actively creating discord and divisiveness in the U.S. right now.
  7. The DOJ releases highly redacted documents that were used to support the Carter Page FISA warrant application. This type of information is typically not made public.
  8. Trump claims that the redacted documents show that his campaign really was being illegally spied on, even though there’s nothing in the released documents that imply that.

Courts/Justice:

  1. I guess we’re cool with the FBI again? Jeff Sessions delivers an address to students at Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC). These are members of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. Sessions says, “You and your brothers and sisters are in every corner of America, working 24 hours a day to courageously and faithfully protect this nation and our people. We are proud of you.”
  2. Republicans in the Senate pull Trump’s nomination for the 9th circuit court of appeals, Ryan Bounds, not because of Bounds’ racist writings, but because they don’t have enough votes to confirm him.
  3. Mitch McConnell says that if Democrats keep pushing for documentation around Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, he’ll delay the confirmation hearings until right before the midterms to hurt vulnerable Democrats in their re-election efforts.

Healthcare:

  1. A district court judge rules in Trump’s favor on changes to Title X regarding family planning grants. The changes move the emphasis from contraception and safe sex to abstinence and natural family planning (whatever that is). Because we all know that when you tell youngsters to abstain from sex, that’s what they do, right?

International:

  1. Trumps says that NATO members agreed to pony up way more money because he was so assertive. NATO members say, not. They’re just meeting the conditions of their 2014 agreement with the Obama administration.
  2. During the NATO summit, Trump reportedly praised authoritarian Turkish president Erdogan while criticizing our allies in Europe for needing to consult with their respective legislative branches before making policy decisions.
  3. Trump questions why we would come to the defense of a small country like NATO member Montenegro.
  4. While Trump meets with Putin, leaders from the EU and China meet and agree on a joint resolution as well as a commitment to keep the global system strong.
  5. Trump tells diplomats to initiate negotiations directly with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Previously, we’ve worked to include the Afghanistan government in these talks, but the Taliban only wants to talk to the U.S. government.
  6. Israel’s parliament passes a bill that defines Israel as the Jewish nation-state, where Hebrew is the official language and Jerusalem is the capital.
  7. And speaking of Israel, moving our embassy to Jerusalem will cost us $21.2 million instead of the $250,000 Trump said it would.
  8. So far Brexit is costing the UK Treasury 440 million pounds a week; more than the EU ever cost them. Brexit was sold as an economic boon for the country.
  9. North Korean officials have been cancelling meetings and demanded more money. They don’t seem to be slowing down their nuclear program any either. Trump is frustrated by the slow pace and obstacles.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Senate Democrats put forth a resolution to prevent the president from turning over American citizens to hostile foreign powers. It passes unanimously.
  2. The House passes the BUILD Act, which will encourage private investment in countries with lower income economies to help fight extreme poverty.
  3. The GOP blocks Democratic legislation to question the translator at the Trump/Putin summit, to investigate NRA ties to Russian money, and to back our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections.
  4. Democrats continue to request a vote on an amendment that would provide funding to states for election security, but the GOP leadership continues to refuse the vote.

Separating Families:

  1. A judge blocks the government from deporting newly reunited families to make sure none are improperly deported.
  2. A court orders counseling for children who are victims of family separation at the border. They court calls it a constitutional injury, and in some cases may require treatment for PTSD.
  3. So far, only 364 of the more than 2,500 children taken at the border have been reunited with their parents. Of 1,600 parents waiting to be reunited, almost half are slated for deportation.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. More than 100 elected officials from 20 states sign on to an open letter arguing that we should abolish ICE, the agency created after 9/11 to keep our borders secure. They say ICE is too broken to be reformed and should be abolished. They don’t have an alternative yet.
  2. A district judge in Pennsylvania rules that religious adoption agencies do not have the right to discriminate against prospective parents based on religious beliefs while at the same time accepting taxpayer money.
  3. The NFL puts its new kneeling-during-the-anthem policy on hold while they negotiate the terms with the teams. So Trump tweets a call for extreme punishments for players who kneel.
  4. A federal appeals court rejects the Trump administration’s efforts to reinstate the ban on transgender troops while the his original ban makes its way through the courts.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The Department of the Interior issues a proposal to overhaul the endangered species act to make it more friendly to economic development (or as it’s better known, drilling and mining projects). This is the act that saved the Yellowstone grizzly and the BALD FREAKING EAGLE from extinction, among others.
  2. California just reached their goal of reducing their carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020—two years ahead of time.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The EU and Japan sign a major trade agreement that gets rid of most of the tariffs on goods imported between the two.
  2. Trump criticizes the Feds‘ decision to raise interest rates again, saying it’ll slow down our booming economy. Which is kind of the point of interest rate hikes.
  3. A group of major U.S. companies signs on to a new jobs training initiative by the Trump administration.
  4. China files a complaint with the World Trade Organization over Trump’s proposed tariffs, saying they fall under protectionism.
  5. The Congressional Budget Office updates its estimates, and now says our deficit will hit $1 trillion next year.
  6. Trump threatens even higher tariffs against China, saying he’ll go up to $500 billion if he has to.
  7. Republicans in Congress back off from making sure the sanctions against Chinese company ZTE stick, and instead allow Trump to make this a personal favor to China president Xi Jinping.

Elections:

  1. A lawyer for one of Roy Moore’s accusers has recorded conversations of two of Moore’s supporters offering him $10,000 to drop the case and discredit the victim before the Senate election that Democrat Doug Jones won.
  2. No dark money in politics, you say? The Trump administration ends IRS disclosure requirements for certain nonprofits, allowing donors to give money without any scrutiny. How many ways can we make Citizens United worse?
  3. Some states’ voter registration systems operate on systems owned by Russian-backed companies.
  4. A top voting machine manufacturer admits they issued a few of those servers with the remote sharing application pcAnywhere installed.
  5. The reason the FBI took so long to announce the reopening of Hillary Clinton’s email investigation (which is why it happened just nine days before the election) is that the bureau was so overwhelmed with the investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia.

Miscellaneous:

  1. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai pushes back on Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s merger with Tribune Media. There’s concern that even with the changes Sinclair is willing to make, they would still control too many stations.
  2. Also on the Sinclair front, the company recently announced that they’ll release a streaming app later this year to compete with other agencies, such as Fox News.
  3. A recent court filing indicates that the secret service has been blocking attempts to serve a subpoena to Jared Kushner.
  4. The inspector general for the Interior Department opens an investigation into a real estate deal between Ryan Zinke’s foundation and certain developers (including Halliburton).
  5. In the material seized from Michael Cohen, there’s a recorded conversation between him and Trump discussing payments to Karen McDougal, the Playboy model who says she had an affair with Trump. The conversation took place a few months before the election.
  6. Oddly enough, Trump’s lawyers waived attorney-client privilege around this recording.
  7. In the middle of a signing ceremony for work training and apprenticeships, Trump realizes that his reality show, The Apprentice, was about apprenticeships.
  8. Obama gives the 2018 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in South Africa, where he alludes to Trump without calling him out by name. He says these are strange and uncertain times, with the rise of strongman politics around the globe.
  9. Starting August 1, people can download plans for 3-D printable guns. None of which will be traceable because they don’t have a serial number. Yay us.

Polls:

The only thing I’ll say about polls is that Trump’s approval numbers should’ve changed this week, but they didn’t. ‘Nuff said.

Week 77 in Trump

Posted on July 16, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Sean Gallup / Getty Images

It was a busy week, with Trump going after NATO on his way to making nice with Putin, protests greeting him wherever he goes, and Mueller dropping a 29-page indictment days before Trump’s meeting with Putin. Back home, things aren’t getting much better for new asylum seekers and for families separated at the border (though some have been reunited). Tariffs are still a hot issue, as is Peter Strzok’s testimony (I swear the right saw one version of the hearing and the left saw a completely different one – crazy).

Here’s what happened last week…

Russia:

  1. Michael Flynn will likely be sentenced in the fall, right around midterm elections.
  2. We learn that during their trip to Moscow last week, Republican members of Congress met with two Russians who are currently under U.S. sanctions. While several lawmakers came back with a softened stance on Russia, Senator John Kennedy told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Congress will double down on sanctions if Russia interferes again.
  3. While working to get a meeting with Putin, Trump insulted members of his administration who didn’t think the meeting was a good idea, calling them “stupid people.” He berated his own people in deference to Putin.
  4. Twitter has deleted 70 million suspicious accounts, most of which are bots or fake accounts.
  5. Paul Manafort’s request for a delay of trial backfires when a judge denies it and moves him to a closer facility. Manafort says it’s too hard to prepared for trial while incarcerated 100 miles away, but objected strongly to the move—a big surprise to the judge. But then we learn that in his current prison, Manafort:
    • Has access to computers.
    • Has his own phone and no limit to how many calls he can make.
    • Has access to all his files.
    • Has private living quarters with his own bathroom and shower.
    • Doesn’t have to wear a uniform.
  1. Manafort asks the judge not to move him, but the judge thinks it’s the easiest fix to the problem of being 100 miles away.
  2. Mueller requests 100 new blank subpoenas for the Manafort trial on top of the 150 he requested last month.
  3. Peter Strzok, a former top counterintelligence FBI agent who was involved in the Russia investigation, testifies publicly before the House Oversight and Judiciary Committee.
  4. Strzok’s hearing devolves into a shouting match, with GOP Reps resorting to profanity and Strzok staunchly defending the FBI. Nothing new was learned, there was much posturing, and Strzok heartily defended the FBI and himself (leading to people who don’t like him to start calling him “smug”). He often had to explain how the FBI hierarchy works and how they check their politics at the door. Strzok was limited on what he could say about much of the ongoing investigation.
  5. A day after Strzok’s testimony, the woman he exchanged texts with, Lisa Page, testifies behind close doors. Despite Republicans previously trying to smear her by saying she wasn’t cooperating, Mark Meadows (R-NC) came out saying she was more forthcoming than Strzok. Like Strzok, she defended her texts, saying that their political feelings did not influence their work.
  6. GOP lawmakers don’t want Page to testify publicly (they were resistant to Strzok testifying publicly as well).
  7. After the farce of a hearing with Strzok, Trey Gowdy has this to say. You just don’t know which Gowdy you’re going to get from one day to the next…

“As I have repeatedly said, it is clear, based on the evidence, Russia had disdain for Secretary Clinton and was motivated in whole or in part by a desire to harm her candidacy or undermine her presidency had she prevailed.”

  1. Mueller comes down with 12 new indictments again Russian intelligence (GRU) officers in a filing that gives us much more detail about what happened with the hacking, who was involved, and what Mueller actually knows (which is a lot more than I thought). Here are some highlights:
    • The indictments are for stealing and leaking emails from Democrats and Democratic organizations to help Trump get elected in 2016.
    • Hackers used spearphishing and malware.
    • They used screen shots and keystroke loggers to monitor what DNC and DCCC employees were typing.
    • They extracted gigabytes of opposition research on Republican candidates.
    • The Russian government was behind the interference campaign.
    • The Russians being indicted created the Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks online personas.
    • An associate of senior members of Trump’s campaign was in touch with Guccifer 2.0. That person is believed to be Roger Stone, but that’s not spelled out in the indictment.
    • A congressional candidate asked Guccifer 2.0 for stolen documents on their opponent, which that candidate did receive.
    • The Russian hackers made their first attempt to hack Hillary’s personal emails on the same day that Trump (on TV) asked Russia to find the 30,000 missing emails.
    • Two of the hackers conspired to access servers of people and organizations that handle elections, like secretaries of state, state boards of elections, and supporting software companies.
    • The hackers breached a state board of elections website and accessed information for 500,000 voters along with DNC analytics.
    • The scope of the indictment shows that the misinformation campaign involved more than just propaganda and division.
  1. Democratic leaders on congressional intelligence committees urge Trump to cancel his meeting with Putin following the announcement of the indictments and to demand proof that Russia is no longer interfering in our elections.
  2. Trump says he might consider canceling joint NATO exercises in the Baltic States if Putin requests it.
  3. The White House orders the FBI to expand access to classified information to all intelligence committee members. Remember, these documents are about an ongoing investigation.
  4. After the indictment is published, Trump blames the DNC for the hack, saying Republicans had stronger internet security. And then he went on to blame Obama, since it happened under his administration.
    Side note: In his testimony, James Comey said that Republicans were also hacked, but the hacked information was never released. From what I can find, old RNC servers and Republican state campaigns were successfully hacked, but the Trump campaign and current RNC servers were not. I can’t verify this though.
  5. Trump also says it never occurred to him to demand the extradition of the Russians who’ve been indicted so far in the probe so they can face charges.
  6. Mitch McConnell rejects bipartisan requests for a select committee investigation into the Russian meddling and hacking in the 2016 elections. They aren’t requesting an investigation into Trump; just a non-partisan effort to understand what happened and to make sure Russia can’t do it again.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Trump nominates DC district court judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court to fill Kennedy’s seat. Kavanaugh clerked for Kennedy and been a part of the DC scene for much of his career.
  2. Rod Rosenstein has requested help from U.S district attorneys to review government documents related to Kavanaugh due to the scope of the documents requested.
  3. Even though Brian Benczkowski, Trump’s pick to head the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, has never prosecuted a criminal case and previously represented Alfa Bank, every GOP senator votes to confirm him to the position.
  4. Trump issues an executive order giving agency heads more leeway in hiring administrative judges, who implement much of the regulatory agenda in an administration.
  5. The DOJ files a notice that it will try to overturn a ruling that allows AT&T to buy Time Warner, claiming that the acquisition violates anti-trust laws.
  6. Trump wants to be able to hold prisoners for 100 years in Guantanamo without ever bringing charges.

Healthcare:

  1. Russian asbestos company Uralasbest creates asbestos pallets with Trump’s likeness on them. The company cites former EPA head Scott Pruitt’s and Trump’s voiced support for the carcinogenic product.
  2. A new congressional report says that from 2012 to 2017, three companies sent around 1.6 billion opioids to Missouri pharmacies (that averages to about 260 pills for every person in the state).
  3. The administration plans to shut down the National Guideline Clearinghouse, which keeps records of medical guidelines and research. This is an invaluable source of information for medical practitioners and gets about 200,000 visitors per month. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) says they won’t even keep an archived version.

International:

  1. Brexit leader Boris Johnson resigns as Foreign Secretary less than a day after Brexit Secretary David Davis resigns. Their resignations are over the regulatory and trade terms of Brexit.
  2. Israeli, Saudi Arabian, and UAE officials have been trying to get Trump to strike a bargain with Putin where Russia would help get Iran out of Syria and the U.S. would drop sanctions against Russia (for invading Ukraine and Crimea).
  3. Before his upcoming meetings with Putin and NATO, Trump says that he thinks his meetings with Putin will be easier than meetings with our allies in NATO.
  4. Irony alert. At the NATO summit, Trump says Germany is “a captive of Russia.”
  5. Though NATO nations have been increasing their military spending as a percent of GDP (per a 2014 agreement), Trump criticizes them for not yet meeting their 2% promise. And then says they should spend 4% of GDP on the military, a level above even U.S. spending.
  6. Trump claims we spend 4.2% of our GDP on defense instead of the reported 3.5%.
  7. Trump declares victory at the NATO summit, saying European nations quickly agreed to his spending demands and were grateful to him. But other nations say they just reaffirmed the 2014 agreement to reach 2% spending by 2024.
  8. The Sun publishes an interview with Trump where he’s highly critical of Theresa May’s approach to Brexit while praising former secretary Boris Yeltsin. In the interview, Trump says he told May how to do Brexit, but she “wrecked” it. And then he says the trade deal is off.
  9. The next day, Trump says May is doing a great job. May discounts the interview, saying it’s just the press, and Trump calls it fake news. Of note, The Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox (not fake) News.
  10. Sarah Huckabee Sanders then tries to clean it up by saying that he said he never said anything bad about May.
  11. And then May and Trump agree to pursue a free trade deal after Brexit is complete. Brexit is currently complicated by the departure of two key figures in the deal. Actually, it’s complicated by so many things.
  12. Taking a line from white nationalists, Trump says that immigration is changing Europe’s culture, and that it’s a bad thing.
  13. There are nationwide protests in the U.K. while Trump is there, including in Scotland where he goes to golf at one of his properties. In London, demonstrators fly a “Trump Baby” blimp as part of their protests. The protestors also play mariachi music and tapes of detained children crying for their parents.
  14. Trump and Melanie get called out for not bowing and curtsying to the queen, though that is not a required protocol, just a respectful one. But then Trump walks in front of the queen, leaving her to catch up and try to figure out what side to walk on while they inspect a guard of honour.
  15. Theresa May says Trump told her to sue the EU instead of negotiating with them.
  16. Trump says that our allies in the EU are our foes.
  17. All this time that Trump has been highly critical of Qatar for sponsoring terrorists, his administration has been working out a deal to sell Qatar $21 billion in weapons, authorized by none other than Trump.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Both the House and the Senate pass bipartisan resolutions reaffirming our support for NATO.
  2. Even though a bipartisan spending agreement earlier this year allowed for funding of CDC research into gun violence, GOP members of the House Appropriations Committee blocked a proposal to provide $10 million in such funding.
  3. The House Appropriations Committee passes an amendment that would let adoption agencies nationwide discriminate against prospective parents based on closely held religious beliefs. States that don’t comply could lose 15% of their funding for adoption agencies. Just another step to increase LGBTQ discrimination.
  4. The House passes with no objections an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act that will create a Foreign Malign Influence Response Center. The center will defend against foreign efforts to interfere in our elections (I think they’re looking at you, Russia). Dan Coates, Director of National Intelligence, will work to establish this collaboration across all relevant agencies.
  5. The Senate, in preparation for Trump’s meeting with NATO, passes a non-binding motion in support for NATO. The vote was 97-2.

Family Separation:

  1. A federal judge rules that Trump can’t detain immigrant families long-term.
  2. Some women who were pregnant when detained by ICE complain of having miscarriages with no medical assistance.
  3. The Trump administration returns to ankle bracelet monitoring, or what he called “catch and release” under Obama. This method has historically resulted in an extremely high percentage of people showing up for their immigration hearings.
  4. In a court filing, ICE says it can’t reunite a separated family because they can’t locate the parents, who might be American citizens.
  5. A judge orders ICE to post notices in detention facilities letting detainees know that they don’t have to agree to be deported in order to be reunited with their families. It’s not like every deported parent has been reunited with their children anyway. Apparently ICE officials have been exploiting this to get people to be voluntarily deported.
  6. A judge orders the Trump administration to pay for reunification costs themselves. Before, if a parent didn’t have the money to travel to wherever their child has been moved to, they couldn’t be reunited. Some parents were told they have to pay for a DNA test to be reunited. There’s obviously a misunderstanding here over what it means to be an asylum seeker.
  7. The Trump administration puts an end to the Central American Minors program. This was an Obama-era program that reunited Central American children with their parents in the U.S. This is just one of several humanitarian relief programs the Trump administration has ended. There’s a class action lawsuit against the termination of this program.
  8. The Trump administration fails to reunite the youngest separated children by the court-ordered deadline.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Hate crimes across the country have been increasing since 2015, and experts say it’s partly because of political rhetoric, specifically Trump’s vitriolic brand of it. Hate crimes spiked right after the 2016 election.
  2. The DOJ issues new guidance to reject asylum claims based on gang or domestic violence. This means ICE can turn people away before they even get a chance to plead for asylum.
  3. John Schnatter resigns as chairman of Papa Johns after using a racial slur in a role-playing game on a company call. Schnatter has been a controversial figure, saying the ACA would increase the cost of each pizza by 14 cents and some franchises would have to cut employee’s hours. More recently, he’s complained that the NFL protest was costing his company.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A Pence family business, Kiel Bros. Oil Co., went bankrupt in 2004 leaving behind several abandoned gas stations. Kentucky, Illinois, and Mike Pence’s home state of Indiana have spent $10s of millions to clean up those gas stations.
  2. The EPA sends a proposed replacement for the Clean Power Plan to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review. The new plan would loosen limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, while the Clean Power Plan tightened them up. The changes are at the behest of industry lobbyists.

Budget/Economy:

  1. This week, federal agencies start implementing the guidelines in Trump’s executive orders on public employee unions.
  2. Randomly, Russia is the beneficiary of Trump’s trade war with China, as China triples its soybean imports from Russia and cancels 1.1 million tons worth of soybean orders from the U.S.
  3. The price of soybeans drops to a 10-year low in the U.S., as the prices in Brazil reach new highs, because of Trump’s trade wars.
  4. Other countries, including China, are unsure of what Trump wants from them in his trade war. Most think he doesn’t have a strategy.
  5. The Trump administration says they’re in the process of putting tariffs in place on $200 billion worth of goods from China, effectively halting trade talks between the U.S. and China.
  6. And according to Steven Mnuchin, trade talks with China have broken down. China says the U.S. is acting erratically and encouraging trade wars.
  7. Oh, and in case you were wondering, none of those tariffs affect the Ivanka lines manufactured in China.
  8. Despite the Senate having taken steps to make sure that Trump couldn’t help out sanctioned Chinese company ZTE, the Commerce Department loosens restrictions on the company, allowing it to continue doing business with US companies.
  9. Trump claims that our GDP has doubled and even tripled since he took office. First, it can only be one or the other and not both. Second, while the GDP is growing, it’s not even up 10% since he took office. The GDP has doubled since 2000, and tripled since 1992.
  10. A recent study from the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that the top 20% of U.S. earners received 65% of the benefit of tax reforms enacted since 2000. Here are a few findings:
    • Since 2000, tax cuts have cut federal revenue by $5.1 trillion, expected to double by 2025.
    • in 2012, when the Bush cuts and some Obama cuts were in place, the highest earners saw the most benefit.
    • in 2015, when some of the Bush cuts were reversed and ACA taxes were in place, the benefit was spread across all earners.
    • In 2018, now that the GOP tax reform is in place, the benefits go back to the high earners.
  1. Worker wages dropped 1% in the second quarter from the previous quarter. Real wages dropped 1.4% due to inflation levels hitting a 6-year high. Experts don’t know why wages aren’t seeing the increase that is typical in a tight labor market like this.
  2. Trump declares an end to the war on poverty, claiming (incorrectly) that only 3% of Americans are truly poor. While Republicans have long criticized safety net programs as ineffective, Trump is now saying that they’ve worked and the war is over. So now it’s time to reform social welfare and entitlement programs.

Elections:

  1. In a recorded conversation, a GOP candidate in the Georgia gubernatorial primary basically told one of his opponents that they cared about the same issues but that they couldn’t let the public in on that because of politics. He also explains how he shifted policies to stop donors from donating to a PAC that didn’t support him.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump pardons Dwight and Steven Hammond, two Oregon ranchers who set fire to federal land. Their arrests led to the armed standoff at a wildlife refuge by supporters of the Hammonds.
  2. Trump’s person driver of over two decades has received only two raises over the last 15 years. In order to get his last raise, he had to give up his employer-based health insurance. He’s suing for unpaid overtime to the tune of $200,000.

Week 76 in Trump

Posted on July 9, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Was your Member of Congress in Russia?

Thankfully it was a short news week with the 4th of July holiday falling right in the middle, but that didn’t stop the government from working. GOP Members of Congress traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian officials (over the 4th? weird); Pompeo met with North Korean officials; children are still separated from their parents at the border (surprisingly there was no plan to reunite them); Scott Pruitt retired; and let the trade wars begin.

Here’s what happened last week. I’m sure I missed things, so if you notice something, let me know.

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Paul Manafort’s personal assistant was the person who gave the FBI access to the storage locker where they found evidence in the case against Manafort. Manafort is now trying to have that evidence suppressed, but the assistant was likely within his rights to provide access.

Russia:

  1. Michael Cohen replaces his legal team with Lanny Davis, a former Clinton White House spokesperson and special counsel.
  2. Mueller is looking into whether Russian nationals used the NRA to illegally funnel funds to the Trump campaign.
  3. Mueller expands his team of prosecutors.
  4. Paul Manafort is spending much of his time in custody in solitary confinement for his own safety.
  5. Ahead of Trump’s upcoming visit with Putin, a delegation of GOP Senators and Representatives take a trip to Moscow to meet with Russian leaders.
    • John Neely Kennedy (R-La.)
    • Sen. John Thune (S.D.)
    • Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who denounced our sanctions against Russia when he returned
    • Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.)
    • Steve Daines (Mont.)
    • Jerry Moran (Kan.)
    • John Hoeven (N.D.)
    • Kay Granger (R-Texas)
  1. Coinciding with this visit, the Senate Intelligence Committee releases an interim report on their Russia investigation, concluding that the U.S. intelligence community was correct in its findings that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections to help elect Donald Trump. They also say that Putin ordered this interference.
  2. The committee’s main criticism is that the intelligence community could’ve been more thorough. The committee claims they found a far more extensive effort by the Russians to sow division and disrupt our elections.
  3. Independent journalist Marcy Wheeler becomes an FBI informant after spending more than a decade criticizing the U.S. intelligence community. She went to the FBI once she realized her informant played a part in the Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Chuck Schumer calls Trump to suggest he nominate Merrick Garland to Justice Kennedy’s about-to-be-empty seat. Seems the answer was no.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump halts payments to insurers that cover sicker patient populations, an ACA program to protect such insurers from loss and to spread the risk among all insurance companies. Note that these payments come from insurance companies and not taxpayer dollars.
  2. Insurance companies say to expect premium increases next year because of this.
  3. The U.S. refuses to sponsor a noncontroversial resolution at the World Health Assembly promoting the health benefits of breastfeeding, even threatening to withhold funding to WHO. Not only that, we threaten the country that introduced the resolution, Ecuador, with economic and military punishments. Ecuador withdraws the resolution. Health activists look for a replacement, but other countries are now too afraid to step up. Except Russia, that is, which steps up and saves the resolution. For some reason, we don’t threaten them over it.
  4. Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin (R) plans to cancel dental and vision benefits provided under Medicaid after a judge blocked his Medicaid work requirements.

International:

  1. Denmark now legally classifies low-income immigrants (in what they call “immigrant ghettos”) as “ghetto children” and “ghetto parents.” They also require these children spend 25 hours a week away from their parents starting at age one to get training in “Danish values.”
  2. Protests continue in Iran over water shortages caused by mismanagement and over the economy, now threatened by U.S. sanctions after we withdrew from the Iran deal.
  3. We learn that Trump has asked at least four times why we can’t just invade Venezuela.
  4. After Mike Pompeo’s meeting with North Korean officials, Pompeo says the meetings were productive but North Korea says the attitude of the U.S. team is “regrettable,” “gangster-like,” and “cancerous.”
  5. Over the past few months, North Korea’s been increasing their production of enriched uranium, indicating that they don’t currently have any intentions of denuclearizing. The country is also finishing up an expansion of a ballistic missile factory.
  6. John Bolton says North Korea could denuclearize in about a year, while Mike Pompeo says two and a half years.
  7. Trump threatens NATO allies, saying they must increase defense spending or the U.S. will decrease its military presence around the world.
  8. A British couple is exposed to the toxic nerve agents that was used on a former Russian spy and his daughter in March.
  9. With newly expanded powers, Turkey’s president Erdogan fires over 18,000 state employees because of alleged terrorist ties.

Separating Families:

  1. Groups have been raising money to make bail for mothers separated from their children because that’s the quickest way to reunite them. But now ICE agents are saying that they’ve been told to deny bonds for separated parents.
  2. ICE agents, under administration instructions, are using the separated children to extort asylum seekers into voluntary deportation.
  3. Asylum seekers are not being allowed to reunite with their children while awaiting their asylum hearings (even parents who have passed their initial asylum screening).
  4. A federal judge orders the administration to halt blanket arrests of asylum seekers. The judge also rules that asylum seekers must either be released or granted a hearing.
  5. ICE is reportedly not giving families a chance to officially seek asylum. They’re telling refugees that they can either leave with their children, or seek asylum and have their children taken away.
  6. All of this is increasing the calls to abolish, or at the very least restructure, ICE.
  7. A woman climbs the base of the Statue of Liberty after a protest to abolish ICE, shutting the statue down to the public for several hours while law enforcement brings her down.
  8. Local officials cancel their contracts with ICE to provide facilities to detain immigrants.
  9. The Trump administration requests more time to reunite families. A federal judge says children under 5 must be reunited by July 10, and others by July 26.
  10. Why are they having trouble reuniting these families? Because some records linking families have been misplaced or destroyed. It’s almost like they never intended to bring the families back together. They’re now using DNA testing to find families. Humanitarian issues aside, the zero-tolerance policy is ending up costing us an immense amount of money in the long run.
  11. Meanwhile, toddlers continue to appear before court in immigration hearings, with judges admittedly uncomfortable asking them if they understand the proceedings.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A federal judges rejects a Trump administration request to block three sanctuary laws in California.
  2. To justify his policy of family separation, Trump says we have a border crisis. But the numbers show that the number of border crossings has plummeted 80% from 2000 to 2017.
  3. Trump says he didn’t push Republicans to pass an immigration bill despite tweeting three days earlier that House Republicans should pass Goodlatte’s bill (while continuing to blame Democrats for the failings of the GOP-led Congress).
  4. The Trump administration plans to rescind Obama-era rules for colleges to consider race in order to diversify their student population. The DOJ says they’ll sue any universities who don’t follow the new policy. This is the seventh affirmative action rule Trump has rescinded.
  5. Trump repeats a lie that seems to have started with a hard-line Iranian cleric by saying that Obama gave citizenship to 2,500 Iranians as part of the Iran deal.
  6. The U.S. Army begins discharging immigrant recruits who were promised a pathway to citizenship at the end of their service. Some aren’t given a reason, some are told that something came up in their background checks, and some are suing the military.
  7. The above could be part of Trump’s new task force that was put in place to review immigrants who have been granted citizenship to find out if there’s anything in their background that we can use to deport them.
  8. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago has applied for 61 H2-B visas to hire temporary workers from abroad.
  9. A judge orders the Trump administration to provide documentation about how they decided to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The judge indicates the administration might have acted in bad faith.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Scott Pruitt and his staff keep secret calendars in order to hide meetings with people representing the very industries the EPA is supposed to watch over.
  2. EPA staffers even modified Pruitt’s official calendar to make sure there weren’t any meetings that might look bad.
  3. Staff members also testify to Congress that Pruitt ignored warnings about ethics violations and tried to use his position for personal gain.
  4. Scott Pruitt finally resigns, and Andrew Wheeler will take over as acting administrator for now. Wheeler was a coal lobbyist for Murray Energy.
  5. Pruitt pens quite the love letter to Trump as his resignation letter.
  6. Ah… but before he leaves, Pruitt gives us one last gift. He enacts a loophole that raises the limit on the number of trucks a manufacturer can produce that use old engines (super polluter trucks). These trucks emit up to 55 times the pollutants that trucks with more modern engines do.
  7. Locations all across the northern hemisphere log record high temperatures this week.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The latest BLS numbers show that while employment increased by 213,000 in June, the unemployment rate rose to 4.0% because of more people, largely college graduates, entering the workforce.
  2. Trump doesn’t like the updated NAFTA deal and says he won’t sign it until after the midterms. Is he really using this as an election campaign tool?
  3. U.S. tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese imports begin, while Chinese tariffs on the same amount of American goods go into effect, including on pork, wheat, rice and dairy products. China will also cancel orders for 1.1 million tons of soybeans.
  4. Canada places retaliatory tariffs on $12.5 billion in American goods.
  5. Mexico implements the second part of their retaliatory tariffs on $3 billion in American goods.
  6. Russia places retaliatory tariffs on American goods.
  7. Ahead of these tariffs, global export growth has slowed to a crawl.
  8. The [conservative] U.S. Chamber of Commerce launches a campaign opposing Trump’s trade policies.
  9. Trump says that Saudi leaders have agreed to his request to increase oil production, but Saudi leaders say they can increase production, not that they will.
  10. The Tax Foundation estimates that the current trade wars will cost us 250,000 jobs.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Leaked copies of Michael Cohen’s shredded documents seem to confirm his hush money payment to a playboy model on behalf of Elliot Broidy.
  2. Maybe this is why Jim Jordan is so mad. Several Ohio State wrestlers have come forward to say that Jordan was aware of alleged sexual abuse by the team doctor during his time there as coach. Jordan is a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, whose members are being urged to stand behind him.
  3. Trump hires Bill Shine to be Communications Director. You might remember that Fox News fired Shine for how he handled sexual harassment claims while there.
  4. Melania Trump has an agreement with Getty Images that not only pays royalties to the Trumps when photos of them are used, but that also says the photos can only be used in positive news stories.
  5. Public confrontations with people affiliated with the Trump administration are growing. Protestors follow Mitch McConnell in a parking lot asking him where the children are, and a woman is kicked out of a bookstore for calling Steve Bannon a piece of trash. A bartender flips off Steven Miller, so Miller throws away the take-out sushi he got there.
  6. Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, says he’ll run for president in 2020 if Trump does, because he alone can beat him. Where’ve we heard that before?

Polls:

  1. 63% of American voters support the Roe v. Wade decision.
  2. 64% of American voters want campaign spending limits for corporations and unions.
  3. 58% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration. I seriously can’t believe that 40% of Americans are OK with treating families this way.

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

Trump holds yet another campaign rally, this time in Montana. Here are a few highlights.

  1. A week after the mass shooting at the Capital Gazette in Maryland, he again makes a point of calling the media “fake news.”
  2. In another assault on our intelligence officers, he accuses them of giving Hillary Clinton special treatment.
  3. He says North Korea signed a denuclearization deal, which they haven’t yet.
  4. He once again hypes the threat of MS-13, saying that if Democrats win, MS-13 members will run free. A) MS-13 makes up .1% of all gang members in the U.S. and B) no one wants them to run free.
  5. He pushes the false theory that we have rampant voter fraud, and this time throws in the misinformation that Republicans have a tougher time winning the electoral vote. Of note, Democrats have won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 presidential elections, but have only won the electoral vote in 4 of them.
  6. He mocks the #MeToo movement, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, John McCain, and George Bush Sr. (whose eloquence apparently went over Trump’s head). But Putin? He says Putin’s fine.
  7. He also mocked people who say that Putin was KGB, despite the fact that Putin really was in the KGB for quite some time, rising to the level of directory by the time it became the FSB.
  8. He went into a stream of consciousness comparing his crowd size with Elton John’s:

“I have broken more Elton John records…and I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ.”

Week 75 in Trump

Posted on July 2, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Families Belong Together Rallies.

Jeff Sessions says that the outrage over family separation at the border is “radicalized” and calls the people who are outraged a “lunatic fringe.” He goes on to claim that immigration rights activists enjoy an “opulence” that is inaccessible to everyday people. Well let me tell you, the people I marched with, myself included, do not enjoy an opulence that is out of reach. If he was out there listening to us, he would see the diversity represented. 750 marches. Look at the map. It isn’t radical to expect that children, especially those under five, should not be separated from their parents whose only crime is trying to seek asylum in America. Caring for children is not a radical idea.

Here’s what else happened last week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. According to a federal indictment, three people bombed a mosque and a women’s health clinic in 2017, tried to set up a local militia, sold phony local currency, and then held a stretch of railroad track for ransom.

Russia:

  1. Blackwater founder (and Betsy DeVos’s brother) Erik Prince gives Mueller’s team complete access to his phone and computer.
  2. Mueller is working to have George Papadopoulos sentenced in September. He plans to produce conclusions and more indictments this fall.
  3. Tensions are still high between House GOP members and the DOJ, as the FBI turns over thousands of documents to Congress about the Russia investigation.
  4. And after that, Devin Nunes gives Rod Rosenstein a deadline to inform Congress whether the FBI used informants against the Trump campaign, even though they’ve already answered that. The answer is “no” in case you were wondering.
  5. And after that, the DOJ wrote back to Nunes saying, essentially, you already have all you’re going to get.
  6. Michael Cohen wants to prevent prosecutors from seeing 12,000 of the 4 million files seized in the raid on his home and office.
  7. A federal judge rejects Paul Manafort’s challenge to Mueller’s authority. Manafort’s team was trying to convince the judge that Mueller was only prosecuting him to get to Trump.
  8. According to a newly unsealed warrant, Manafort and his wife owed Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, $10 million. Deripaska gave Manafort a $26 million loan, bringing their business dealings to around $60 million over ten years.
  9. Mueller indicts Russian Konstantin Kilimnik, an intermediary between Manafort and Deripaska.
  10. FBI agent Peter Strzok testifies to Congress behind closed doors about his investigation into Clinton’s emails. He wants his testimony to be public. House Democrats want it to be public. House Republicans refuse to make it public.
  11. The House passes a resolution demanding documents from the DOJ around the Russia investigation, potentially setting Rod Rosenstein up for impeachment if he fails to deliver.
  12. Rosenstein and Chris Wray testify before the House Judiciary Committee in a very testy exchange. Republican Jim Jordan and Trey Gowdy were literally spitting mad, with Gowdy telling them to “finish the hell up.” Rosenstein, on the other hand, maintained his composure and schooled them a bit in the law.
  13. Trump again says that Russia didn’t interfere in our 2016 elections because Putin says so. And then Putin and Trump announce they’ll meet in July.
  14. And then Mike Pompeo says he’s certain Trump will warn Putin against interfering in our election because it’s clearly unacceptable.
  15. Even Justice Kennedy circles back to the Russia story, and I have no idea where this one will end up.
    • The day after Kennedy announces his retirement, stories break that his son Justin worked at Deutsche Bank as head of global real estate capital markets.
    • Deutsche Bank helped Trump obtain real estate loans at a time when no other banks would touch him because of his bankruptcies. They kept loaning him money even after he defaulted on a loan from them, with loans totaling over $1 billion.
    • Deutsche Bank has been under investigation and fined over the years for laundering money for Russians.
    • Trump dismissed some of those fines after Mueller began investigating and subpoenaing Deutsche Bank.
    • Deutsche Bank is very large, and it’s possible Kennedy had nothing to do with Trump’s loans. Also, it appears that much of the money laundering was done after Kennedy left the bank.
    • The White House has been courting Kennedy, and let him know that they’d uphold his legacy. They wanted him to be comfortable leaving the bench before the 2018 elections.
    • Remember The Big Short? Justin Kennedy also predicted the market crash in 2008 and capitalized on it for Deutsche Bank, shorting mortgages as early as 2006. He left the bank when regulations made it too hard to work these complex kinds of transactions. In 2009, he moved on to co-found a company that took advantage of commercial properties that had fallen victim to the real estate crash.
  1. Tech companies meet with the DHS to work on ways to stop Russia from interfering in our elections again. However, neither the FBI nor DHS provide the companies with any specific threat information, leaving them feeling unprepared.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme courts makes a series of rulings against progressive issues.
    • The court upholds Trump’s Muslim ban, with the majority ruling saying that they have to look at Trump’s proclamation in isolation and apart from his anti-Muslim rhetoric. Even though their last ruling was pretty much the opposite.
    • Non-medical pregnancy centers can mislead about their medical capabilities and don’t have to provide abortion options.
    • Unions can no longer collect fees from non-members, even though they bargain with companies for all employees’ benefits and wages.
    • In a blow to antitrust laws, the court upholds American Express’s rules that merchants can’t talk to customers about other credit cards, which allows Amex to continue charging exorbitant fees to merchants (which are then passed on to the customer).
  1. In its Muslim ban decision, the court overturns Korematsu v. United States, the decision that endorsed Japanese internment camps in the U.S.
  2. Justice Sotomayor excoriates the majority decision on the Muslim ban, comparing it to Korematsu v. United States. She also called out many of Trump’s anti-Muslim statements, entering them into the court record.
  3. Justice Kennedy announces his retirement at the end of July, giving Republicans the ability to turn the court hard right. This is a gut punch for civil rights and reproductive rights activists.
  4. And then Mitch McConnell promptly forgets the McConnell rule and promises a swift vote on his replacement. The McConnell rule came to be in 2016 when he said it wouldn’t be right to confirm a judge in an election year. Let the people have their voice heard first, he said in 2016.
  5. Trump says he’ll have a nominee to replace Kennedy within a few weeks.
  6. Susan Collins comes forward saying she won’t support any nominee who threatens to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Healthcare:

  1. The Iowa Supreme Court rules that a law requiring a 72-hour waiting period to have an abortion is unconstitutional.
  2. A healthcare fraud sweep results in the arrest of more than 600 people in an opioid scheme. 76 doctors and 86 other healthcare workers are charged for prescribing and distributing opioids.
  3. A federal judge blocks the Trump administration’s approval of Kentucky’s work requirements for Medicaid. The judge says the administration acted arbitrarily and capriciously. This is a blow to Kentucky’s governor, who wants to take away people’s healthcare by rolling back protections under the ACA.
  4. Trump proposes cutting the number of health professionals who are deployed during national disasters and disease outbreaks by 40%. This team also provides health care in our most rural and poor areas.

International:

  1. Even after the historic meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un, U.S. intelligence says North Korea is moving forward with its nuclear program. Satellite Images show that North Korea continues to make upgrades to its Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center.
  2. There’s another NATO summit coming up in July, at a time when tensions between Europe and the U.S. are higher than ever. At the G7, Trump said that NATO is as bad as NAFTA.
  3. Apparently Trump once tried to bribe France to leave the EU by promising Emmanuel Macron a favorable free trade agreement. He made the same attempt with Germany.
  4. While tensions grow between Trump and German Chancellor Merkel, Trump expresses interest in pulling troops out of Germany and orders the Pentagon to analyze the costs.
  5. Far left candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador wins Mexico’s presidential elections.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House shoots down its most recent major immigration reform bill despite Trump’s last ditch efforts to save it. Trump’s criticism basically killed it in the first place last week, along with a more bipartisan version. This bill would increase border security, help Dreamers become citizens, and allow families showing up at the border to be detained indefinitely.
  2. Congress puts forth a bipartisan bill to give Puerto Rico full statehood.

Separating Families:

  1. The immigrant group RAICES has now raised over $20 million. A National Guard member posted on their fundraiser that they’re lucky we aren’t executing undocumented immigrants. He’ll face punishment from the guard. Online calls for violence against immigrants have increased in recent weeks.
  2. The story about children is darker than it first appeared.
    • The Trump administration launched a pilot program last year to start quietly separating families at the border.
    • An additional 1,700 children were separated between October 2016 and February 2018, but DHS won’t break it down by month so we don’t know how many, if any, were separated before Trump took office.
    • The number of children separated is estimated to be around 4,100, but like I said, DHS isn’t being forthcoming with the numbers.
    • Immigrants as young as three-years-old are ordered to appear in court for their own deportation hearings. Children have been put through this process alone before but usually not this young and never in these numbers. Typically families appear together in court.
  1. Seventeen states sue to force the administration to reunite the families it separated.
  2. A federal judge rules that the administration can no longer separate families and must reunite all those that have been separated within 30 days. Kids under 5 must be reunited within two weeks. Yes, I said FIVE.
  3. Clergy members protesting Jeff Sessions’ appearance in Los Angeles are arrested.
  4. As outrage grows over ICE treatment of immigrants, calls arise from the left to abolish ICE. The right mocks this as extremism.
  5. And then ICE officials call to abandon ICE, or at least restructure it.
    • These special ICE agents investigate hard crimes like cartels, drug smuggling, money laundering, and human trafficking.
    • They want to start their own agency because ICE’s everyday actions hamper their ability to investigate and no one wants to cooperate with them.
    • They say the priority has moved from a focus on national security and public safety to more low-level immigration violations. It’s more about discrimination than crime.
  1. The Pentagon says that DHS asked for their help in housing and caring for up to 12,000 undocumented immigrants.
  2. The GAO and the HHS inspector general launch reviews of Trump’s handling of families at the border.
  3. Mexico asks the UN to intervene in this matter, calling the separation cruel and a human rights violation.
  4. Nearly 600 demonstrators, mostly women and including elected officials, are arrested during a non-violent protest in Washington D.C.
  5. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators show up to over 750 marches and rallies around the world to protest the treatment of families at the border. A handful of counter-protestors show up to support Trump’s policies.
  6. The marches are largely peaceful, except one instance in Alabama where a counter-protestor pulls a gun. A far-right Prayer Patriot rally in Portland, on the other hand, turns into a riot when an equal number of Antifa shows up to counter-protest.
  7. The DOJ’s response to this outcry of support for immigrants and criticism of DOJ policies? To try to detain migrant families indefinitely.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A district judge rejects a motion to dismiss a case against the administration brought by immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Trump’s decision to rescind TPS for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua, and Honduras could deprive hundreds of thousands of immigrants of legal status.
  2. Legal issues aside, rescinding TPS could also send 250,000 people back to the very countries where most of our border crossers come from, causing an even greater border surge in the future.
  3. The Muslim ban goes into effect, blocking certain travelers from Iran, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and North Korea. The ban includes Syrian refugees, those traveling on business or tourist visas, and just government officials in the case of Venezuela. Certain waivers might still be granted for close family members.
  4. The man who drove his car into protestors in Charlottesville, killing one of them, is charged with several hate crimes.
  5. A Thomson Reuters Foundation survey of 550 women’s issues experts ranked the U.S. as the 10th most dangerous country for women in areas of sexual violence, harassment, and being coerced into sex.
  6. A Harvard Business Review study finds that women ask for raises as often as men, but get rejected more often.
  7. In another hardliner approach, the DOJ drafts a rule that says if you’re criminally prosecuted for crossing the border, you can’t be granted asylum. The rule would also increase scrutiny of asylum seekers from Central America. Note that border crossers are only criminally prosecuted because of Sessions’ zero-tolerance policy.
  8. A chief counsel at ICE in Seattle gets four years in prison for identify theft. He stole immigrants identities, opening credit cards and taking out loans in their names.
  9. Former ICE spokesman James Schwab corrects statements he made about Oakland’s mayor when she warned constituents of an upcoming ICE raid. At the time, he gave the party line that she put officers lives in danger and that they lost a lot of the people they were after. In truth, they arrested 16% more than their highest expectations. Schwab resigned when asked to uphold a statement by Jeff Sessions that 800 people got away, which Schwab says is a flat-out lie.
  10. For the first time in almost 70 years, an American won’t be leading the UN International Organization for Migration. Trump’s nominee was voted down, with the agency looking outside of the U.S. because of our current attitudes and actions around migration and refugees.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The EPA is in charge of coal ash disposal because the residue from coal power plants can contaminate drinking water. This week, the EPA gives Oklahoma the right to dispose of its own coal ash, making it the first state to be able to do so.
  2. A train hauling oil derails in Iowa, spilling around 230,000 gallons of crude oil into the surrounding floodwaters.
  3. Ireland bans fracking.
  4. A hand-written thank you note shows that EPA administrator Scott Pruitt attended the American Petroleum Institute’s private board dinner.
  5. Emails show that conservatives lobbied Scott Pruitt to fire a career staffer in order to derail the National Climate Assessment compiled by 13 agencies. Their assessment found that human activity is extremely likely to cause climate change.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Harley-Davidson announces they’ll move some production abroad in order to avoid retaliatory EU tariffs in the ongoing trade wars.
  2. Aaaand then Trump threatens Harley-Davidson, saying that if they move offshore they’ll be taxed like never before.
  3. The DOW drops 405 points on news that Trump plans to stop Chinese companies from investing in U.S. tech firms and in technologies that can be sold to China. This could create two competing global tech markets, one in the U.S. and one in China, with both pushing their own standards. Differing standards just makes it harder on everyday people.
  4. The White House later reverses this decisions and says there won’t be any new restrictions on investments (aside from what Congress already has planned).
  5. The bond market’s yield curve, which has been predictive of all nine recessions since 1955, is predicting another recession. However, the economy under Trump hasn’t necessarily followed traditional patterns.
  6. The UN releases a report that says 40 million Americans live in poverty and 18.5 million live in extreme poverty. The administration says no, there are only 250,000 Americans in extreme poverty. I guess it depends on your definition.
  7. Manufacturing dipped in June, but manufacturers are still hiring and raising prices. Some factories begin layoffs, though, as the effects of the tariffs start to be felt.
  8. China and the EU together promise to avoid trade protectionism. They’re worried that U.S. trade policies could trigger another global recession.
  9. Financial experts say the debt is likely to reach 78% of GDP by the end of 2018. This is the highest level since the 1950s. It’s expected to surpass the historical high of 106% within 10 years.
  10. Despite these stats, Trump’s chief financial advisor, Larry Kudlow, says that the federal budget deficit is “coming down rapidly.”
  11. Major auto trade groups warn that Trump’s proposed tariffs will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, increase the price of new vehicles, and cut back progress on self-driving cars.
  12. Trump apparently ordered an investigation into whether importing foreign cars poses a national security threat.
  13. Canada announces billions of dollars in retaliatory tariffs
  14. Axios reports that Trump wants to take the U.S. out of the World Trade Organization (WTO), but Treasury Secretary Mnuchin says that’s not true. Instead, they just don’t like the WTO.

Elections:

  1. The Supreme Court fails to uphold lower court decisions that would’ve forced Texas and North Carolina to draw fair district lines before the 2018 midterms. They sidestep making a real decision by sending the cases back to the lower courts.
  2. A court orders that Trump’s now-defunct voter fraud commission must hand over documents to Democrats by July 18.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The Red Hen restaurant, which refused service to Sarah Huckabee Sanders (SHS) and her family, doesn’t open on Tuesday due to protests and even having chicken shit dumped on their doorstep. Where’s the civility, right? Trump’s supporters even send death threats to a Red Hen restaurant that isn’t even affiliated with the one in Lexington. Calm down folks. People get 86ed all the damn time.
  2. And then SHS gets temporary Secret Service protection because of the hoopla.
  3. After the restaurant denied service to SHS, Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said we should call out the bigotry of members of this administration where we see them — in restaurants, at the gas station, at the drug store. This week she cancels two appearances because of death threats.
  4. A man fires a shotgun through a newspaper agency’s glass doors, killing five journalists and injuring two. He had a long-running vendetta against the paper, though people on the far-left blame MAGA and people on the far-right celebrate because “fake news.”
  5. Bill Shine, former executive at Fox News, is slated to become the next White House Communications Director.
  6. After several years of calling the media “fake news” and egging his supporters into violent acts against journalists, Trump says the shooting “shocked the conscience of our nation and filled our hearts with grief.” He also says “journalists like all Americans should be free from the fear of being violently attacked” while doing their job.
  7. A few days before the shooting, Milo Yiannopoulos called for “vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.” But that’s not what motivated the shooter, as far as we know.
  8. Spicer’s back. Sean Spicer will launch a new talk show in July as a platform for “civil, respectful, and information discussions.” Notice that he left out “honest.”

Polls:

  1. 72% of Americans think it’s important to not charge sick people more for healthcare coverage (an ACA rule).
  2. 76% think it’s important to not be able to deny someone healthcare coverage because of a pre-existing condition (another ACA rule).
  3. Why is this important? Because the administration is trying to get around those two rules.
  4. 92% of Republicans think that the news intentionally publishes false or misleading stories, compared to 52% of Democrats (which is still strangely high).

Week 74 in Trump

Posted on June 25, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Border policy is the big story this week. 538 gives a good wrap up about how family separation is just part of a bigger plan to control and limit immigration. The administration has tried to end DACA; reviewed applications (going back decades) of immigrants who’ve been granted citizenship; deported non-criminal immigrants who’ve made lives here for decades; and tried to curtail refugee admissions, work visas, travel from Muslim countries, and immigration by international entrepreneurs. Now they’re separating children from their parents at the border. Put together, these policies will force some immigrants here to return to their home countries, they’ll make it harder to help relatives come to the country, and they’ll reduce the number of immigrants and refugees coming here in the first place. So the overall goal seems to be to reduce the foreign-born population in the U.S.

And just a reminder of how these policies are based on misleading information: The Trump administration tried to stifle a report they commissioned that shows refugees added $63 billion to US economy over the past decade. The released version was manipulated to only show the costs of refugees and none of the profits. Trump also holds up Germany as example of how bad immigration is, saying crime in Germany is way up. In real life, the crime rate in Germany is at it’s lowest point in 26 years and was down 10% in 2017 from 2016.

But here’s what else happened last week…

Russia:

  1. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, along with the FBI’s Christopher Wray, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his newly released report on the investigation into Hillary’s emails.
  2. Republicans aren’t satisfied with the 580-page report, so they threaten to investigate the investigation into the investigation of Clinton’s emails.
  3. Wray supports Mueller’s investigation and says this is not a witch hunt.
  4. The FBI turns over thousands of documents to congressional committees about its processes and sources for finding information on Russian contacts with Trump campaign members. Wait for the leaks…
  5. In the run-up to the 2016 elections, the National Enquirer got Michael Cohen’s approval before running stories about Trump. This allowed Cohen to limit negative press and is being looked into as a violation of campaign finance laws.
  6. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan subpoena the publisher of the National Enquirer over their payment to Karen McDougal to keep her story of her alleged affair with Trump out of the news.
  7. Even Mueller’s team worries that the Russia investigation is being overexposed in the press and has already biased potential jurors.
  8. A judge denies Paul Manafort’s request to suppress evidence against him and says that the money laundering charges won‘t be dismissed.
  9. Mueller tries to thwart further moves for dismissal by filing a request preventing the defense from saying Manafort was targeted because of his proximity to Trump.
  10. Michael Cohen resigns as deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee. This makes him the third person to step down from the RNC finance committee over scandals.
  11. Joshua Schulte, a former CIA engineer, is indicted for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks.
  12. House Democrats release thousands of RussiaToday Twitter ads that were used before the 2016 election.
  13. In a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, two former Obama officials say we didn’t do enough to deter Russian meddling in our elections.
  14. We find out from the Kremlin that John Bolton is going to Russia in the coming week. Four Senators are heading there too.
  15. The House Judiciary Committee issues a subpoena to Peter Strzok even though Strzok has already offered to appear voluntarily.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court throws out a 1992 ruling that blocked states from collecting taxes from online entities.
  2. The Supreme Court rules that the government can’t track or obtain cellphone location data without a warrant.
  3. A federal judge strikes down Kris Kobach’s voter registration law in Kansas that requires proof of citizenship, saying that it violates constitutional rights, that Kobach failed to prove cases of fraud, and that the burden of proof had disenfranchised thousands of voters. This makes an earlier injunction of the law permanent.
  4. The same judge forces Kobach to attend legal classes because he is too unfamiliar with the law.

Healthcare:

  1. The House passes a bipartisan group of bills aimed at fixing the opioid epidemic. The bills address expanding treatment, looking at alternative treatments, stopping the transfer of illegal opioids, and preventing the use of fentanyl.
  2. Trump issues a rule that allows small businesses to circumvent some of the ACA consumer protections in order to provide cheaper, and possibly substandard, health insurance policies.
  3. Trump creates a commission to look into closing down some VA facilities to save money. He also wants to transfer funding from VA facilities to private facilities.

International:

  1. A UN report on chemical weapons attacks and potential war crimes in Syria omits allegations that chemical weapons attacks were more common than has been reported. The authors say they need more corroboration.
  2. Trump accuses Canadians of coming across the border to buy shoes and smuggle them back into Canada. He says they scuff them up to make them look and sound old. Sneaky Canadians.
  3. Canada becomes the second country to legalize pot (Uruguay is the other one).
  4. Trump calls North Korea destabilizing, repressive, and a continued threat to the U.S. Last week, Kim Jong Un was a great leader who Trump was honored to meet. Last year, Kim was “little rocket man.”
  5. Tens of thousands of people turn out in London to protest Brexit and demand a final vote on the terms of the deal. Hundreds of pro-Brexit protestors turn out as well.
  6. Turkey re-elects Erdogan president and abolishes the position of prime minister. This move increases Erdogan’s authority greatly.
  7. European Union leaders hold a small summit to modify immigration rules, with countries that have been taking on the brunt of refugees asking other countries to do their part.
  8. Saudi Arabia ends their ban on women driving.
  9. Protests break out in Tehran, Iran. It’s not clear who’s leading the protests but the impetus seems related to the economy.
  10. Secretary of Defense James Mattis says he’s not aware of any moves North Korea has made yet to denuclearize.
  11. However, Trump has been ignoring Mattis’s advice on foreign-policy, or just leaving him out of the loop completely.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Paul Ryan delays the House vote on an immigration compromise bill that funds the wall, gives Dreamers a pathway to citizenship, and keeps families together (though detained indefinitely).
  2. And then Trump says GOP lawmakers should wait until after the midterms to deal with immigration, likely scuttling the deal through the end of the year.
  3. Paul Ryan continues his practice of only bringing bills to a vote if he thinks Trump is ready for it.
  4. The Senate votes against Trump’s $15 billion cuts to the previously approved spending plan.
  5. Trump threatens to shut down the government in the fall if he doesn’t get his wall. Senators are willing to fund border security at $1.6 billion, though Trump just scuttled the above House bill that would’ve given him $25 billion.

Separating Families:

  1. Every living first lady— from Rosalynn Carter to Melania Trump—speaks out against the separation of families.
  2. 55% of Republicans approve of this policy. 66% of Americans in general do not. Republicans are the only listed demographic in the poll to support family separation; they’re also the only other group to support building a wall.
  3. A bipartisan group of over 70 former US attorneys urge Jeff Sessions to reverse the zero-tolerance policy. They say it’s dangerous, expensive, and doesn’t live up to the our values.
  4. Trump continues to blame Democrats, which is provably false since no administration has done this before and Jeff Sessions announced the change in policy on April 6th and then went on to speak about it on May 7.
  5. Cities and states refuse to provide assistance to the DOJ or CBP in the detention of separated families.
  6. Four governors refuse to send National Guard troops to the border, and eleven governors pull their National Guard troops out. Colorado bans the use of state resources for child separations.
  7. Detained parents of separated children get no legal counsel prior to appearing before a judge and are processed in large groups in a single hearing. Prosecutors’ goals are to get through as many as possible and to have them all plead guilty, which many do because they think that’s the only way to find their kids.
  8. The Flores decision of 1997 specifies that immigrant children can only be detained for up to 20 days and after that, they can only be held in licensed facilities. The DOJ asks a judge to waive that limit so they can house immigrant families indefinitely.
  9. After a week of saying only Democrats can fix this, Trump signs an executive order drafted by Kirstjen Nielsen to attempt to fix this crisis of his own making.
    • The EO says Homeland Security will still prosecute border crossers as criminals, but that they’ll detain families together. This requires them to file a brief against the Flores decision. What they’re aiming for is to detain families indefinitely, which is far more costly than releasing them with mandatory check-ins.
      Side note: Releasing families under an Obama-era program costs about $36 per day, and families show up for meetings and hearings around 99% of the time. Detaining families together costs nearly $300 per day, and separating families has cost nearly $800 per day.
    • The EO has no provision to reunite families that Trump has already separated.
    • After the EO, border workers are left to figure out how to implement it on their own with little guidance. We hear mixed reports over whether they’re still enforcing zero tolerance and whether they’re supposed to.
  1. Melania visits a holding center for immigration children and one for immigrant families. In an unfortunate choice, she wears a coat that says “I don’t care. Do u?” Her publicist says it didn’t mean anything, but then Trump negates that in a tweet saying it was about the fake news.
  2. A dozen states plan to sue the administration over the policy of family separation. They say the EO doesn’t fix it.
  3. Health and Human Services asks the Pentagon to house up to 20,000 unaccompanied immigrant minors.
  4. There was a huge drop in illegal border crossings last year over fear of Trump’s hardline policies. But they’re up nearly triple from this time last year now that people see that Trump is having a hard time getting his policies implemented.
  5. On the Christian Broadcasting Network, Sessions says they never intended to separate families. I can’t even with this. Maybe he’s just saying this because his church has condemned his actions.
  6. Both Stephen Miller and Kirstjen Nielsen, staunch defenders of family separation policies, get heckled eating out at Mexican restaurants.
  7. And then a restaurant owner tells Sarah Huckabee Sanders that she and her family can’t eat there. She tweets about it on her official account, which turns out to be a violation of the ethics code.
  8. Corey Lewandowski’s speakers bureau drops him after he makes fun of a child with Downs Syndrome being separated from her mother on national TV.
  9. Protestors play the recording of separated children crying for the parents outside a Trump fundraiser and outside Kirstjen Nielsen’s house. Representative Ted Lieu (R-CA) goes against House rules and plays the recording on the floor to get it entered into the congressional record.
  10. Detained children are shipped to centers and foster care across the country.
  11. An army of volunteer attorneys is working to reunite separated families. They’re finding that officials are unable locate all the children. Of 300 parents represented, only 2 children have been located.
  12. The U.S. Attorney’s Office announces they’ll dismiss cases where parents were charged with illegal entry and separated from their kids.
  13. On Friday, a government source said all families would be reunited that day. But by Saturday night, only about 21% has been reunited. The administration says that 500 children have been reunited with their parents so far.
  14. The DNA company 23andMe offers to donate DNA kits to help locate children and reunite families that were separated.
  15. The American Academy of Pediatrics calls the separation of families child abuse.
  16. Protestors hold marches and toy/supply drives for children in holding in over 60 cities nationwide. Members of Congress head to detention facilities to protest.
  17. The Methodist Church files a complaint against family separation and 600 members file a complaint against Sessions. He could ousted from the church, but the members say they want a reconciliation process that would bring Sessions back to Christian values.
  18. An online fundraiser goes viral, raising nearly $20 million for RAICES, which helps provide legal aid to immigrant families, children, and refugees.
  19. By the end of the week, the administration says they’ll reunite families when the parents agree to give up their quest for asylum, meaning that the whole family must be deported in order for parents and children to be reunited. Until that agreement is made, parents will only have phone visitation with their children, and that is not guaranteed due to logistics.
  20. Lawsuits are filed, alleging abuse and administering drugs without consent in the detention centers for children.
  21. Notes and interviews show that the administration has been planning this since last spring.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump continues to use exaggerations of criminal behavior and of MS-13 to get people behind his harsh immigration policies.
  2. The zero-tolerance policy was supposed to deter undocumented immigrants, but instead there was a spike in border crossings after the policy was announced.
  3. Steven Miller says it was a simple decision to separate children from their parents at the border. In comparison, when the Obama administration was working on ways to strengthen border security, they talked about this for about five minutes before throwing it away as an incredibly bad idea.
  4. The National Park Service gives their initial approval to “Unite the Right” to hold a “white civil rights” rally at the National Mall. This is the same group that held the infamous Charlottesville rally.
  5. After Trump shoots down the immigration bills currently in the House, he tells Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) that he backs the compromise bill. But it’s too little, too late. Representatives who were already lukewarm on the bill already moved to the other side.
  6. The Senate Appropriations Committee approves a spending bill for Homeland Security that doesn’t include full funding for the border wall, nor increased funding for CBP, nor increased funding for detainment beds. It also requires the administration to report monthly on family separations.
  7. Trump calls for deporting undocumented immigrants with no judge or court hearing, saying they should be removed immediately. And without due process apparently.
  8. Trump again quotes bad data, this time numbers he got from the mother of a victim killed by an undocumented immigrant. She said undocumented immigrants have killed 63,000 Americans since 9/11. GAO numbers actually show that immigrants, including undocumented ones, commit crimes at a far lower rate that native-born Americans (about half the rate). The false number seems to come from Steve King (R-Iowa).
  9. At the beginning of the week, Trump derides Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) idea to hire thousands of immigration judges as crazy. By the end of the week, Trump tweets that it’s what we need to do.
  10. The World Health Organization removes transgender from their list of mental disorders. About time.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The Trump Tower in Chicago is the only user of Chicago River water that fails to comply with Chicago’s fish-protecting regulations. They use river water for their cooling systems.
  2. Trump rescinds Obama’s executive order aimed at protecting the Great Lakes and oceans. Trump’s order encourages offshore drilling and more industrial use of these waters. Obama’s order came about because of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
  3. A Canadian mining firm prepares to start mining in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
  4. The EPA’s Scott Pruitt shutters three more advisory boards to the agency, further isolating the EPA from expertise in the areas the agency is supposed to protect.
  5. Emails released as part of a lawsuit show that Pruitt considered hiring a friend of the Harts, the family that rented him their condo for $50 a night. The emails also indicate that Pruitt has a closer relationship with the Harts than previously disclosed, and that Mr. Hart lobbied the EPA last year even though both parties had previously denied this.
  6. The special counsel opens a new probe into Pruitt for retaliating against employees who pushed back against his policies. There are around dozen other probes into his activities.
  7. The official EPA paper trail shows that Pruitt only sent one single email to anyone outside the EPA from his government account. Seems sketchy.
  8. Pruitt’s most recent financial disclosure shows he spent over $4.6 million on security. And that included things like “tactical pants” and “tactical polos.”
  9. The Trump administration finally releases a report on unsafe drinking water after working to suppress it for months. The danger in the water comes from nonstick chemicals leaked into drinking water, and affects 126 military bases.
  10. Ryan Zinke and his wife run a foundation that’s working on a real estate deal with the chairman of Halliburton. Halliburton will benefit from Ryan Zinke opening up national monuments to mining and drilling, and the Zinkes will benefit from the real estate deal, which involves building a resort on land that borders a property owned by the Zinkes. The House calls for an investigation.

Budget/Economy:

  1. House Republicans reveal their 2019 budget, which includes $4 billion in cuts to Social Security, around $500 billion in cuts to Medicare, and $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. We all knew that’s how they planned to balance their tax cuts from last year.
  2. The House Republicans pass a farm bill, and in the process cut SNAP benefits. This could affect around 23,000 active duty military families and 1.5 million veterans.
  3. Mick Mulvaney wants to shut down the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau database of consumer complaints against the banking industry.
  4. Trump threatens China with additional tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods, which would bring the total of tariffed goods to $450 billion… and the Dow dropped nearly 300 points on its way to a six-day losing streak.
  5. Via tweet, Trump threatens tariffs on auto imports from Europe in response to Europe placing tariffs on $3.2 billion in U.S. goods.
  6. Ambassador Nikki Haley says that it’s ridiculous for the UN to study poverty in the U.S. The UN’s report says of the developed nations, the U.S. ranks highest in rates of infant mortality, incarceration, youth poverty, income inequality, and obesity. The report also says that our current policies are making these things worse and deepening the wealth divide.
  7. 11,000 AT&T workers strike against unfair labor practices. The issue started to heat up after AT&T announces $1,000 bonuses to many in their workforce, and then laid off a bunch of workers who had received that bonus.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump directs the DoD and the Pentagon to create a sixth Armed Forces Branch: the Space Force. Yes. For outer space. For real, and over James Mattis’s objections. Mattis says this isn’t the time to be creating a new branch of the military.
  2. Trump also wants to open space for more commercial development.
  3. Trump releases his proposal for reorganizing the government. Key points:

    • Merge the Department of Labor and the Department of Education.
    • Move the USDA’s food and nutrition programs to the Department of Health and Human Services (which will be renamed to the Department of Health and Public Welfare).
    • Combine the USDA’s Safety and Inspection Service with the Food and Drug Administration (currently under HHS) into a single agency under the USDA. Wait… so the USDA would essentially be its own watchdog.
    • Move the USDA’s programs to assist with rural housing and rent to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
    • Move the Army Corps of Engineers from the Department of Defense to Transportation and the Interior.
    • Create a new Office of Energy Innovation under the Department of Energy that would combine all of the current applied energy programs.
  1. Wikileaks publishes a searchable database of ICE agents and their personal information scraped from multiple public sites. DHS blame this on liberals, even though Wikileaks doesn’t have a record of supporting Democrats.
  2. Wilbur Ross shorted a shipping firm stock after learning that reporters were planning a negative story about the firm. Shorting is something you do to profit from a drop in stock price, and doing it based on nonpublic information is called securities fraud.

Polls:

  1. 75% of Americans think immigration is good for the U.S. Approval goes up to 84% when the question specifies “legal immigration.”

Week 70 in Trump

Posted on May 30, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Here’s an interesting fact from last week. Natural disasters in the U.S. target a small group. A recent analysis finds that around 90% of the costs associated with national disasters in the U.S. come from areas where less than 20% of the U.S. population lives.

But I digress… here’s what happened last week in politics.

Russia:

  1. During Trump’s transition, his trade adviser recommended Stefan Halper to ambassador roles in Asia. Halper is thought to be the covert FBI intelligence source who met with Trump officials during the campaign to learn about improper Russia advances.
  2. In yet another concession, Rod Rosenstein and other intelligence agency heads meet with congressional leaders to go over highly classified information in the Mueller investigation that Republicans in the House had been requesting. Though it could be a maneuver to avoid showing all documents and to buy time.
  3. At first, the agreement is to let Republican congressional leaders be briefed. This doesn’t sit with Democrats too well, though; so they arrange a second meeting with the bipartisan Gang of 8 congressional leaders.
  4. If you’ll remember, Devin Nunes has been pushing for this release of information, and most suspect it’s so he can let Trump know where Mueller’s investigation stands.
  5. Paul Ryan supports this review of the FBI and DOJ procedures.
  6. This meeting highlights how Trump is chipping away at DOJ norms bit by bit with each demand that the DOJ compromises on. Legal scholars and former LEOs think these things weaken the DOJ and that the president uses the department as a weapon against its political enemies. FBI agents might think twice about acting on intelligence for fear of retribution from the White House. Here’s what Rosenstein has done:
    • Drafted the memo used to justify Comey’s firing, which led to the special investigation.
    • Released private text messages between two FBI officials.
    • Shared the document that started the Russia investigation.
    • Allowed Representatives to see the classified FISA applications to monitor Carter Page.
    • Opened an investigation at Trump’s [Twitter] command.
  1. John Kelly and Emmet Flood attend at least part of both DOJ briefings, which is a little like putting the fox in the henhouse. The briefings center around possible crimes involving the Trump campaign and associates. Kelly is a Trump associate and Flood is the defense lawyer in the case.
  2. Steve Bannon, Corey Lewandowski, Dave Bossie, and Steve Cortes are a few outside advisors who are pushing Trump to go after the DOJ and FBI, and to paint himself as a victim in the Russia investigation. This explains Trump’s ramp-up last weekend that forced Rod Rosenstein to expand the investigation into FBI and DOJ practices and to show Nunes and Gowdy the information they want.
  3. George Nader, who is a subject of Mueller’s investigation for his role in back-channel international meetings during the 2016 campaign, and Elliot Broidy, who used Michael Cohen to pay off a playboy model he allegedly got pregnant, worked together on an anti-Qatar campaign in Washington D.C. last year for personal profit.
    • They wanted to isolate Qatar and diminish the Pentagon’s relationship with Qatar (where we have a military base), likely at the behest of UAE and Saudi princes for whom they were working.
    • They never registered under FARA.
    • Broidy wrote summaries of their meetings that indicate he spoke to Trump about them.
    • In a filing with the courts, Broidy alleges that hackers hired by Qatar targeted him, and that Qatar was helped by a former CIA operative and a former British spy as part of a larger conspiracy to make him stop criticizing Qatar.
  1. Paul Manafort requests an investigation into whether a lawyer on Mueller’s team, Andrew Weissman, leaked information to the AP last year though he doesn’t say what was leaked. Manafort’s filing relies heavily on reporting by a Fox News contributor.
  2. Sentencing begins for George Papadopolous, indicating he’s given Muelller all the information he has.
  3. Michael Cohen’s taxi business partner, Russian Evgeny Freidman, pleads guilty and is cooperating with both state and federal investigators.
  4. Michael Cohen met with American businessman Andrew Intrater and Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg a few days before Trump’s inauguration to talk about Russian-American relations. A few days after the inauguration, Intrater’s company Columbia Nova gave Cohen a $1 million consulting contract.
  5. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen says she’s not aware of any U.S. intelligence conclusion that Putin sought to help Trump win the election. You would think she’d be aware of the 2017 intelligence assessment that said Putin did just that.
  6. Her spokesperson later walks that back and says that of course Nielsen supports the conclusions of the intelligence community.
  7. Michael Cohen arranged a meeting between Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Trump for a mere $400,000. Also, Cohen “forgot” to register as a representative of the Ukraine.
  8. Not long after the meeting, the Ukraine ended its corruption investigation into Paul Manafort.
  9. On his tour of the talk shows to sell his book, James Clapper says he is certain that Russia tilted the election toward Trump.
  10. And then Pompeo reluctantly agrees with him during testimony to Congress, saying he backs the 2017 U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia meddled to help Trump and hurt Clinton.
  11. A team of investigators led by the Dutch conclude that the missile that shot down the Malaysian Airlines jet in Ukraine in 2014 was Russian military (as most people thought at the time anyway).
  12. Email threads show that Roger Stone did, in fact, try to get damaging information on Hillary Clinton from Wikileaks’ Julian Assange during the 2016 campaign through an intermediary. This contradicts testimony he gave to Congress last year.
  13. A special prosecutor in Spain says that Donald Trump Jr. should be very concerned knowing that Spanish intelligence gave the FBI wiretaps of Russian oligarch Alexander Torshin.
  14. Rudy Giuliani says that Trump’s “Spygate” accusations are just a tactic to influence public opinion so Trump won’t be impeached. And just an FYI, the real Spygate is the outing of Valerie Plame’s identity as a covert operative under Bush.
  15. The FBI gets control of a Russian server involved in the hacking of routers and that is also linked to the hacking of DNC documents in 2016.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A judge rules that Trump is violating the First Amendment by blocking his Twitter followers.

  2. The Supreme Court rules that workers can’t band together to challenge violations of federal labor laws. I’m not sure what this means for unions. The majority decision was based on an arbitration law that is superseded by more modern labor laws.

Healthcare:

  1. This is so not good. Three patients who were in the end stages of Ebola escape their isolation ward in an urban area in the Congo.
  2. California’s assisted suicide is still on hold after an appeals court upholds a ruling that it was improperly passed during a special legislative session.
  3. Health workers in countries affected by Trump’s international gag rule say that they’ve seen a rise in unwanted pregnancies and in back-alley abortions. By cutting funding to these agencies, Trump cut funding to contraceptives and programs to prevent unwanted pregnancy. And also, Trump is working on doing the same in the U.S.
  4. Rudy Giuliani represented pharmaceutical firm Purdue Pharma to stop a federal investigation into the firm’s marketing of Oxycontin.

International:

  1. Mike Pompeo says we’ll crush Iran with sanctions and military pressure if it doesn’t change its ways. Pompeo also gives 12 preconditions to negotiating with Iran, which most experts say are non-starters. He didn’t give specifics.
  2. Iranian Prime Minister Rouhani rejects this, saying countries have their own sovereignty and the U.S. doesn’t have the right to push them around. Israel’s Netanyahu supports the U.S. in this. In fact, Netanyahu gave Trump an excuse to attack with his public presentation on Iranian nuclear development.
  3. Many experts see this as intended to result in regime change, which (if successful) would result in U.S. investment in nation building in Iran.
  4. Tensions between Israel and Iran are heating up. So much so that Netanyahu moves his security cabinet meetings to an underground bunker.
  5. In a show that our representatives are worried about the direction our relations with Iran have turned, the House passes an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act clarifying that neither Trump nor Pompeo has the authority to start a war with Iran.
  6. Let’s compare this week’s statements from the White House on recent elections in Russia and Venezuela:
    • On Russia: “We’re focused on our elections. We don’t get to dictate how other countries operate… What we do know is Putin has been elected in their country… We can only focus on the freeness and the fairness of our elections.”
    • On Venezuela: “Venezuela’s election was a sham—neither free nor fair. The illegitimate result of this fake process is a further blow to the proud democratic tradition of Venezuela. … America stands against dictatorship and with the people of Venezuela.”
  1. Trump meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in to discuss the upcoming summit with South Korea. And then Trump says that the summit might not happen on June 12 as planned.
  2. North Korea makes a show of destroying the site where they conducted their nuclear weapons testing, and while they’re doing that...
  3. …Trump cancels the June 12 meeting with North Korea because of what he calls open hostility and tremendous anger on their side. This was just days after South Korean leader Moon was at the White House meeting with Trump and thinking everything was A-OK. Trump has been dampening expectations for days so the news wouldn’t seem so shocking.
  4. Trump didn’t appreciate North Korea’s criticism of Mike Pence. After Pence compared North Korea to Libya, North Korean officials called him a political dummy. They also said they wouldn’t beg for a meeting and threatened a nuclear showdown, and were reconsidering the planned summit themselves.
    • So basically here’s how it went down: Bolton mentioned the Libya model, Trump said that’s not how it would go down, and then Pence brought up the Libya model again. Voila. No summit.
  1. The military says they’re ready to respond to North Korea if necessary, and Trump holds open the door to future talks.
  2. South Korean officials say they were blindsided, confused, and disappointed by the news. They convened an emergency meeting at midnight to discuss this new development, and to try to figure out Trump.
  3. The new ambassador to South Korea is taking his position at a time of high drama, and will have his work cut out for him in answering to the South Korean government. Luckily both Ambassador Harry Harris and his wife are experts on Asia.
  4. The leaders of North and South Korea hold a surprise meeting to try to keep their talks on track, and to possibly keep the summit between Kim Jong Un and Trump in play.
  5. A group of U.S. officials go to North Korea to continue talks in preparation for a possible summit.
  6. The New York Times reports a senior White House official as saying that if the summit is back on, it would have to be delayed. And then Trump accuses the New York Times of making up the source… even though said source made the statement in a press briefing to a group of around 250 reporters.
  7. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) turns down Trump’s offer to become the U.S. ambassador to Australia. Corker plans to retire at the end of this year.
  8. The Senate Banking Committee overwhelmingly approves an amendment preventing Trump from aiding Chinese company ZTE without first proving that ZTE is in compliance with U.S. law.
  9. A U.S. embassy worker in China reports a strange noise and then suffers a brain injury. This is comparable to the experience of embassy workers in Cuba.
  10. The Pentagon rescinds an invitation to China to participate in naval exercises over China expanding their military into certain areas of the South China Sea. Over two dozen nations are participating.
  11. Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect (this is why you’ve been getting so many privacy policy notifications). The GDPR sets a high standard for how our personal data is collated through the web. The U.S. went the other way last year when Trump not only overturned Obama‘s privacy rules, but also specified that no similar rule could be made in the future without an act of Congress.
  12. Two men set off an explosion in an Indian restaurant in Mississauga, Ontario. Fifteen people are injured. Police have suspects, but no arrests and no motive.
  13. Ireland votes overwhelmingly to legalize abortion.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Trump signs a financial reform bill that will weaken Dodd-Frank by exempting “smaller” and “community” banks from the rules. It raises the threshold at which the rules apply from banks bigger than $50 billion to banks bigger than $250 billion.
  2. Trumps signs the Right To Try legislation, which allows terminally ill patients to try experimental and unapproved treatments.
  3. Trump signs a major Veterans Administration reform bill that, among other things, gives vets better access to private doctors.
  4. Trump signs the SECRET Act into law, which aims to expedite clearing the backlog of security clearances. Trump reserves the right to not comply saying that it encroaches on his constitutional authority. It seems he objects to the reporting requirements.
  5. Trump signs three executive orders this week that will make it easier to fire federal workers and to dampen the role of unions for federal workers.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump signs a resolution rolling back protections for minorities getting auto loans. The rule was put in place because auto lenders regularly charge minorities and women more for auto loans or make them harder to get.
  2. In a crackdown on free speech, the NFL says they’ll fine any team whose members kneel for the national anthem. The Jets owner says he’ll pay those fines, even though he voted for them.
  3. Trump approves of the NFL decision, of course, and says that maybe people who don’t stand for the anthem shouldn’t even be in this country (the country with the most free speech in the world).
  4. Betsy DeVos proves she doesn’t know the law when she says schools should decide whether to report undocumented students to ICE. She says Congress needs to clarify the law, but the Supreme Court already clarified it, deciding that schools can’t report these kids.
  5. According to the head of the nation Border Patrol union, deploying the National Guard to the border has so far been a huge waste of resources.
  6. DHS says they lost track of 1,500 migrant children they had placed with sponsors last year. This raised concern of them being lost to traffickers, but could simply be people who don’t want to be found. Once kids are released to sponsors (who are mostly family members), DHS is no longer responsible.
  7. A Border Patrol agent shot a young woman crossing the border in Texas, killing her. After initially saying a group of immigrants attacked him with blunt objects, the security guard changes his story to say that they rushed him.
  8. Gavin Grimm wins a lawsuit against a school in Virginia for discriminating against him by not letting him use the restroom for the gender he identifies with.
  9. Pilots at the IASCO Flight Training School take it upon themselves to kidnap and attempt to deport a Chinese student who they say doesn’t speak English well enough to fly a plane.
  10. Trump calls for major changes to immigration laws, even suggesting immigrants don’t deserve hearings. He says he won’t sign any immigration reform that doesn’t build his wall.
  11. Trump nominates Ronald Mortenson to be assistant secretary of state at the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. Mortenson says undocumented immigrants commit felonies to get jobs, that they’re thieves, and that they target children.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The EPA bars the Associated Press, CNN, and E&E (an environmental news organization) from a summit about toxic contaminants in water. Scott Pruitt had previously attempted to block a recent scientific report highlighting the dangers of this contamination.
  2. A wildlife commission in Wyoming unanimously approves the first grizzly bear hunt in Wyoming in over 40 years. Up to 22 bears could be killed, and this is just one year after these bears were taken off the endangered species list.
  3. Internal memos show that White House officials are weighing their options on climate change. Should they have a red-team/blue-team exercise to make people question the science? Just ignore climate change and hope it’ll go away? Give the science a more formal review? They’ve worked to eliminate policies that protect us from global warming, while their own researchers continue prove that global warming is a thing, it’s manmade, and it’s a threat to the U.S.
  4. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers publishes a letter they sent to Trump last month urging him to keep the fuel efficiency requirements that were set under Obama because “climate change is real.”

Budget/Economy:

  1. Goldman Sachs predicts that, after the Republican tax reform last year, our economic outlook isn’t good. The tax reform gave major tax cuts to business and the wealthy, increasing the deficit to over $1 trillion. The expanding deficit and higher debt level could cause interest rates to spike, which would expand the deficit further.
  2. The Congressional Budget Office says that the tax reform will likely stimulate job growth but that it will also cause us to have a deficit that matches our GDP by 2028.
  3. China triples its purchase of soy from Russia and cancels orders from the U.S. amid trade disputes with the U.S.
  4. Mixed messages. Steven Mnuchin says the U.S. will put the trade war with China on hold. A few hours later, the U.S. trade representative tells Beijing that we might still impose tariffs.
  5. China says it’ll cut tariffs on imported cars and automotive parts, as promised.
  6. Federal regulators plan to weaken the Volcker Rule, which was put in place to prevent another financial crisis by preventing financial institutions from making risky bets with our money. Banks have long complained that these rules are too hard in them, apparently forgetting how hard the recession they largely caused was on every American, and many people never fully recovered from it.
  7. As part of their Better Deal economic plan, Democrats announce a $50 billion plan to increase spending on schools, education, and teacher salaries. The money would come from rescinding the tax cuts on the most wealthy.
  8. The GAO approves Trump’s request to freeze $15 billion in funds while waiting for Congress to approve the removal of those funds from budget spending.
  9. As a way to force Canada’s and Mexico’s hands in NAFTA negotiations, Trump says he’s considering a 25% tax on imported cars.
  10. The average price of gas is up 31 cents over the past year.
  11. The House passes a bill that includes approval of Trump’s military parade.
  12. Four months after getting a tax cut from the GOP tax reform plan, Harley-Davidson lays off 800 workers, closes a factory, and increases shareholder profits in a stock buy-back.

Elections:

  1. A new economic study from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that Twitter bots could have been effective enough to influence the 2016 presidential elections by 3.23 percentage points and the Brexit vote by 1.76 percentage points. This only matters because the margins in both races were so narrow.
  2. Stacy Abrams wins the Democratic primary in Georgia, becoming the first African-American woman to be on a major party ticket for governor of Georgia.
  3. And another first, former Sheriff Lupe Valdez won her Democratic primary, becoming the first gay Latina to be on a major party ticket for governor in Texas.
  4. Students at Florida colleges sue Governor Rick Scott for not allowing early voting at their schools.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The DOJ’s inspector general wraps up his investigation into the Hillary Clinton email investigation (yes, the investigation was being investigated, not Hillary herself). He releases a draft to Congress but doesn’t give a date for the official release.
  2. Trump’s cellphone doesn’t have the required security features because it’s too inconvenient. Obama turned over his devices every 30 days for a security review. But hey. Lock HER up! Right?
  3. Journalist Lesley Stahl says that before an interview last year, Trump told her that he bashes the press in order to “discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.” So there you have it.
  4. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump finally both get permanent top secret security clearance.
  5. Six families of children killed at Sandy Hook file a defamation lawsuit against Alex Jones, who calls the attack a “false flag” and the mourning families “crisis actors.” Too bad they can’t sue him for being a vile human being.
  6. Jeff Flake flames Trump in a college commencement speech, saying we might have hit rock bottom.
  7. Trump is known to tell a lie or two, but his rate of lying has escalated from about 4.9 lies a day in his first 100 days in office to 9 lies a day as of March.
  8. A turf war between Jeff Sessions and Jared Kushner over prison reforms leads to the resignation of the federal prisons director, just nine months after Trump appointed him.
  9. Police in Chicago protest Rahm Emanuel over the status of Officer Robert Rialmo’s suspension, possibly without pay. Rialmo shot a teen carrying a baseball bat and an innocent bystander.
  10. Parents of Santa Fe shooting victims sue the parents of the shooter for failing to secure their guns.
  11. The firm of Stormy Daniel’s lawyer, Michael Avanatti, gets fined in bankruptcy court and needs to cough up $10 million.
  12. Another school shooting, in Indiana this time.

Polls:

  1. I’m pretty surprised by this Pew study… Just 25% of white evangelicals think the U.S. has a responsibility to take in refugees. 51% of Americans overall think we do, and 65% of the religiously unaffiliated think we do.
  2. The numbers for Democrats and Republicans are inverse, with 26% of Republicans saying it’s our responsibility compared to 74% of Democrats.
  3. 59% of Americans don’t think Mueller’s uncovered any crimes, even though there are 17 criminal indictments, five guilty pleas, one person involved is serving jail time, and another is about to be sentenced.

Week 69 in Trump

Posted on May 21, 2018 in Politics, Trump

We’re in full election mode (already), with primaries happening across the country throughout the summer. So here’s my reminder to each of you to IGNORE the TV and radio ads, ignore the negative campaigns, throw away those mailers, and do your own research on the candidates and issues. Ads are solely designed to manipulate and often fool you, and they’re usually full of misinformation. And ignore what you read on social media unless it’s a trusted source, because we all know what happens when we fall for that BS.

Off my soap box. Here’s what happened this week in politics…

Russia:

UPDATE: Very belatedly, I learned that it was reported this week that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, of Trump Tower meeting fame, met with Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS before and after the Trump Tower meeting. Veselnitskaya says she doesn’t recall the meetings, but Simpson testified that they were invited by a client to a dinner meeting in New York the night before and attended a social event in DC the night after at which they didn’t speak much. They had a common client which included a court appearance on June 9, 2016, the same day as the Trump Tower meeting.

  1. It looks like Russia might not have been the only country working for a Trump win in 2016. A few months before the 2016 election, Donald Trump Jr. met with Erik Prince (of Blackwater), George Nader (an emissary for Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates princes), and Joel Zamel (an Israeli social media specialist). Trump aide Steven Miller was there as well.
    • Nader said the princes were eager to help Trump win the election.
    • Zamel’s firm had already proposed a multi-million-dollar social media effort to help Trump.
    • As this relationship was growing, Nader was also working on projects to destabilize Iran.
    • Nader met several times with Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn.
  1. And then there’s Qatar. A Qatari investor, met with Michael Cohen (and allegedly Michael Flynn) during the Trump transition. The investor later said in court that he bribed administration officials.
  2. Mueller is looking into foreign donations to Trump’s inaugural fund, including from the above countries and Russia-linked Columbus Nova.
  3. And speaking of inaugural funding, $1 million of it came from conservative activists at BH Group LLC, who provides Trump with lists of judicial nominees. The group was behind stalling Merrick Garland’s nomination and introducing Neil Gorsuch.
  4. Interesting side note: The inaugural committee treasurer was a co-conspirator in a fraud case, and two other members were convicted of financial crimes.
  5. Trump thinks that because Mueller is looking into these other countries, Mueller hasn’t found anything and he’s done with the Russia part. Mueller is investigating several aspects of the case right now.
  6. Trump also thinks that because the New York Times reported on this, the paper thinks Mueller didn’t find anything in his Russia investigation. The New York Times says uh… no.
  7. The FBI identifies a former CIA software engineer, Joshua A. Schulte, as being behind the leak of CIA files that were dumped by Wikileaks last year. However, instead of charging him with the leak, they are holding him on child pornography charges.
  8. A federal judge in D.C. denies Paul Manafort’s request to dismiss any of the charges Mueller brought against him.
  9. Mueller files the unredacted, classified memo defining the scope of his investigation with the court under seal. The judge requested this information in Manafort’s case.
  10. Mueller, the DOJ, and the FBI are all investigating Cambridge Analytica (but they aren’t the only ones investigating the company).
  11. The Mercers are liquidating Cambridge Analytica, and the company files for bankruptcy. The new Mercer company, Emerdata, is covering their legal fees.
  12. An ex-employee of Cambridge Analytica testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee that one of the things they were hired for was to target African-American communities to discourage them from voting and to suppress voter turnout. So much for representative democracy…
  13. The Senate Judiciary Committee releases interview transcripts about the meeting with Don Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner, and a Russian lawyer. The transcripts show how eager they were to get dirt on Hillary Clinton and how frustrated they were by their inability to get it.
  14. The Senate Intelligence Committee contradicts the House Intelligence Committee, saying that Russia did interfere with the 2016 election with the goal of electing Trump. Their findings support the intelligence communities’ conclusions.
  15. Paul Manafort’s son-in-law pleads guilty and is cooperating with Mueller.
  16. Mueller subpoenas two more associates of Roger Stone, Jason Sullivan (social media expert) and John Kakanis (accountant and driver).
  17. Trump repeats his unfounded accusation that the FBI was spying on him and that they had a secret informant embedded in his campaign. He tweets that “they are out to frame Donald Trump for crimes he didn’t commit.”
  18. The FBI says that when it was brought to their attention that Carter Page, Sam Clovis, and George Papadopolous each had questionable contact with Russians during the campaign, the FBI had an American intelligence source in England meet with the them to find out more information.
  19. The most likely reason the FBI did this covertly was to protect the Trump campaign in case it turned up nothing. This way avoided pre-election publicity, unlike the very public investigation into Hillary’s emails.
  20. Devin Nunes has been pushing for the release of classified material that would unmask the identity of the FBI’s source. This has the FBI so concerned that they’ve been scrambling for weeks to ensure the safety of the source (because they know Nunes will leak it).
  21. Trump initially backed the DOJ’s refusal to out the source, but now he’s backing Nunes’ efforts to unmask the source’s identity.
  22. And then someone does it for them. NBC publishes the suspected identity of the intelligence source as U.S. professor Stefan Halper, a former Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administration official. It’s not clear who leaked it.
    UPDATE! NBC clarified that there’s no proof Halper was the informant. The Daily Caller first reported it might be Halper in March.
  23. Devin Nunes accuses the DOJ of leaking the information to undermine the House Intelligence Committee. Nunes and Trey Gowdy refuse any further meetings with the DOJ on the matter.
  24. Trump unleashes a major tweet storm attacking the usual suspects: The New York Times, Hillary Clinton, Mueller’s team, Andrew McCabe, Terry McCauliffe, the DOJ and the FBI. FISA! Emails! Dossier!
  25. He follows that up with a promise to officially demand that the DOJ open an investigation into whether any FBI spies infiltrated his campaign.
  26. In response, the DOJ asks the inspector general to fold Trump’s request into his existing investigation into FBI surveillance procedures used during the 2016 campaigns.
  27. Brian Lanza goes from working on Trump’s transition team to being a lobbyist to the U.S. for a Russian energy and aluminum firm run by Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska is under U.S. sanctions.
  28. The lawyer at Novartis who signed the contract to hire Michael Cohen announces he’ll step down, calling the action “an error.” He says this will bring public debate about the matter to an end. LOL.
  29. The RNC has paid nearly $500,000 in legal fees for White House staff caught up in the Russia investigation.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump announces proposed changes to Title X to end funding to any clinics that provide abortions (even though none of that money can be used for abortions). It would also end funding to clinics that refer women for abortions.
  2. 19 states sue to block Trump from changing Title X requirements. They say that Trump’s changes threaten funding for women’s health services, including birth control, STD testing, cancer screenings, and infertility treatment. This would affect over 4 million people.

International:

  1. The U.S. opens their new embassy in Jerusalem, completing the move from Tel-Aviv.
  2. The U.S. delegation to celebrate the opening of the new U.S. embassy invites Pastor Robert Jeffress to speak at the opening. Ironic, since he’s said that you can’t be saved by being a Jew. He also says ‘Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell.’ He’s made similar comments about Islam.
  3. Several foreign envoys invited to the opening declined to come.
  4. Palestinians were protesting in the weeks before the embassy opening and the 70th anniversary of Nakba (which commemorates the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians from Israel). During the opening celebration, 60 protestors are shot and killed, and 37 are injured, by Israeli forces.
  5. The protests extend to Turkey.
  6. South Africa and Turkey recall their ambassadors from Tel-Aviv, and Kuwait requests an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
  7. Nikki Haley, our UN ambassador, walks out of the emergency meeting when the Palestinian representative begins to speak. She had just praised Israel for using restraint with the protestors.
  8. Then the U.S. blocks a security council resolution to look into the 60 Palestinian deaths.
  9. The White House blames the deaths at the wall on Hamas propaganda.
  10. The UN General Assembly votes 128 to 9 to declare Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital null and void saying it will hamper peace efforts there. This is really just symbolic. The nine who voted against are the U.S., Israel, Togo, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Micronesia, Palau, Honduras, and Guatemala
  11. An Iraqi party led by a cleric who has been highly critical of American politics in the Mideast is the big winner in the Iraqi elections. U.S. officials will need to rethink their strategy with Iraq since this party might choose the next Prime Minister.
  12. As he promised last week, and at the recommendation of John Bolton, Trump gets rid of our top cybersecurity position in the White House.
  13. North Korea threatens to cancel the upcoming meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un:
    • At first they say it’s because of U.S.-South Korean joint military drills.
    • They later say they don’t want Trump pushing them into a corner on nuclear agreement and that they won’t abandon their nuclear program.
    • Then they are angry over John Bolton saying that we could use a Libya model of disarmament… because we all remember how well that went down for Gaddafi.
    • North Korea does cancel talks with South Korea.
  1. Trump questions his aides about whether to proceed, and calls the South Korean president to find out why North and South Korea’s statements differ.
  2. The number of ISIS fighters in Afghanistan is estimated at 1,500 to 2,000, about half the number there a year and a half ago.
  3. ISIS is behind a series of bomb attacks and a sword attack on a police precinct in Indonesia.
  4. Despite Trump saying he’s going to pull us out of Syria ASAP, the State Department plans to keep the counterterrorism unit overseeing the situation open for at least six more months.
  5. But then State officials say Trump is slashing funding for the efforts in Syria.
  6. Recent statements from European leaders indicate that they have stopped holding out for better relations with the U.S. and are working on ways to take the lead on democracy across the world. They no longer believe that Trump’s nationalist movement is an aberration.
  7. Democrats in Congress call on the inspectors general of several agencies to open an investigation into why the Trump administration hasn’t implemented the required sanctions against Russia yet.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The North Carolina Senate GOP (possibly the worst legislative body in the nation) votes to cut education spending in only those districts with Democratic Senators. This is apparently in return for the Democrats forcing a late-night debate on the budget.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. After the DOJ announces that we’ll be separating parents and children trying to cross the border, Homeland Security prepares to house the children on military bases.
  2. Even though this is a new policy implemented under Trump’s DHS, Trump says it’s Democrats’ fault we have to separate families. Huh?
  3. Trump takes heat for calling MS-13 gang members animals in the context of undocumented immigration, while his supporters say his words were taken out of context. Well, they’re sort of right, but Trump has played on people’s fears by hyping up the power and violence of MS-13. A few MS-13 facts:
    • There are 10,000 MS-13 members in the U.S. out of around 1.4 million gang members total. MS-13 makes up about 0.7% of all U.S. gang members.
    • When ICE conducted a gang sweep last week, only 104 of the 1,300 arrested were MS-13 members, and of the 104, only 8 were here illegally.
    • Trump says many gang members have come in over a short period of time and that they’re taking over towns. In reality, there are less than half the number of MS-13 members than were here in 2012 (when there were 24,000). The gang is three decades old, and is not seeing a resurgence.
    • The Obama administration placed sanctions on the gang, labelling them a transnational criminal organization (they’re based in the U.S. and Central America).
  1. Even though Trump is deporting fewer undocumented immigrants than Obama, the percentage of people being deport who have committed no crime other than being here illegally is double what it was under Obama. This is why you’re seeing more stories about families being ripped apart and upstanding community members being deported.
  2. Last year, asylum seekers were denied at the highest rate in a decade. The most likely to be denied were from Central America.
  3. Trump appoints Tony Perkins to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). The mission of the USCIRF is to defend freedom of religion and belief abroad. Perkins is a strange choice given that he’s spread anti-Muslim propaganda and espoused anti-LGBTQ propaganda, likening it to bestiality and pedophilia.
  4. Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer signs a bill into law that allows faith-based adoption agencies to deny prospective parents based on religious beliefs. So these agencies can discriminate against LGBTQ parents and Muslim parents, among others. Because all those beautiful children would be better off in orphanages or foster care than in a loving family, right?

Climate/EPA:

  1. The EPA and the White House try to block a publication from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry that highlights a water contamination problem near military bases and chemical plants. The report says a class of chemicals that has contaminated the water supplies is more toxic at lower levels than was previously thought.
  2. Emails show Trump aides thought this would be a PR nightmare.
  3. Multi-year ice makes up 34% of the ice in the Arctic, down from 61% in 1984. Ice that’s more than five years old makes up only 2%. Young ice melts more quickly, exacerbating the effects of climate change.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Hundreds of people protest across the country as part of the Poor People’s Campaign. The campaign is demanding that our legislators do more to fight poverty and racism.
  2. Last week, Trump tweeted that he was going to help Chinese telecom company ZTE recover from U.S. sanctions. Now we learn that this happened just a few days after China provided $500 million in assistance to an Indonesian project that will financially benefit Trump.
  3. And then, in a show of bipartisan agreement, the House Appropriations Committee rejects any efforts from Trump to assist ZTE. They include a provision in an appropriations bill to maintain the sanctions.
  4. A renegotiated NAFTA isn’t looking likely this year, and GOP Senators from farm states work to prevent Trump from pulling out completely. They think such a move would hurt the GOP in the midterms in farm states. Really? Your concern isn’t the farmers, it’s whether or not you’ll get re-elected?
  5. Teacher strikes continue this week, this time in North Carolina. They’re striking for better salaries and better school funding. This is the sixth state to see a school strike, and it’s illegal in North Carolina.
  6. 43% of U.S. households, or 51 million households, can’t afford all of the following needs: housing, food, child care, healthcare, transportation, and a cell phone (and, yes, a cell phone is a need—especially for poor people). 16.1 million of these households live in poverty, and 34.7 million households have limited assets and low incomes even though they’re employed.
  7. The House fails to pass a farm bill, which would’ve overhauled certain welfare programs. Several members of the Freedom Caucus voted against it because they want immigration reform.
  8. Trump has been pushing the postmaster general to raise the shipping fees for Amazon and other companies by as much as double. The postmaster general has explained to Trump several times that these agreements must be reviewed by a regulatory committee. She can’t just raise their prices randomly.
  9. Treasure Secretary Mnuchin says that the trade war between the U.S. and China is on hold after an agreement to drop the threat of tariffs while they negotiate.
  10. Remember when Wilbur Ross held up a can of Campbell’s Soup to show how little affect the steel and aluminum tariffs would have? Well this week, Campbell announces a higher than expected decline in profits this year by 5-6%.

Elections:

  1. Trump tweets that the expanding scope of Mueller’s investigation is designed specifically to hurt the Republican party in this year’s midterms. Law enforcement experts say that the more likely case is that Mueller is working overtime to get parts of the investigation wrapped up months BEFORE the midterms in order to avoid influencing those elections. Despite Comey’s actions in 2016, federal law enforcement tries to keep things quiet in the run-up to an election.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Gina Haspel admits that in hindsight, torture was a bad idea and something the CIA shouldn’t have undertaken.
  2. The Senate confirms Haspel to head the CIA, the first woman to hold that position.
  3. Blake Farenthold, who resigned from the House of Representatives after using taxpayer dollars to pay off a sexual harassment settlement, is now a government lobbyist for the Calhoun Port Authority. Despite his new 6-figure salary, he won’t repay us for that $84,000 settlement. Also, who would hire a guy like this? Calhoun Port Authority, I guess.
  4. Trump files his financial disclosure, which shows that he repaid Michael Cohen in full for the Stormy Daniels hush money.
  5. Upon receiving Trump’s financial disclosure, the Office of Government Ethics refers Trump to the DOJ for filing false financials, saying that this might be relevant to any inquiry Rod Rosenstein might be pursuing.
  6. Here’s one for the nepotism files. Trump picks Mitch McConnell’s brother-in-law to lead the Department of Labor’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
  7. The leaker of the suspicious action reports (SARs) on Michael Cohen’s financial transactions says he leaked the info because two SARs reporting even larger transactions are missing from the government database. It turns out that those SARs have restricted access. These reports are from prior to September 2017 and include transactions totaling around $3 million.
  8. The leaker risked a possible $250,000 in fines and up to 5 years in prison to leak the documents, which are supposed to be held secret. He feared that information was being withheld from law enforcement.
  9. Here’s some recent news on Qatar. It could be all related or not related at all.
    • A Canadian firm with funding from the Qatar Investment Authority is close to finalizing a deal that would bail the Kushner family company out of it’s troubled property at 666 5th Avenue.
    • Qatari officials recently said that when Trump backed the Saudi Arabian blockade against them in 2017, they thought it was payback for Qatar refusing to financially back Jared Kushner’s father on the above property.
    • Qatari officials considered turning information over to the Mueller investigation about Kushner’s relationship with the UAE, but in the end decided against it fearing further retribution.
    • Now Trump, who last year said Qatar was a sponsor of Mideast terrorism, says that they’re an ally in the fight against terrorism. Mike Pompeo recently urged Saudi officials to end the Qatari crisis.
  1. Two school shootings this week: one in Santa Fe, Texas, and one in Jonesboro, Georgia. In Georgia, two people were shot and one killed. In Texas, there are 10 dead and 10 injured.
    • Students protest gun violence at Paul Ryan’s Washington office. Several are arrested.
    • Just like after the Parkland shooting, Trump promises action.
    • A Fox News commentator blames the Texas shooting on Common Core.
    • Texas Governor Greg Abbott blames it on too many doors.
    • Ollie North, new NBA president, blames the shooting on ADHD, saying these kids are drugged on Ritalin.
    • The Lt. Gov. of Texas blames the shootings on violent video games, no religion in schools, abortion, broken families, doors (again), unarmed teachers, and irresponsible gun owners.
    • The police chief of Houston writes an impassioned plea for action on gun reform, saying he’s no longer interested in hearing about gun rights anymore.
  1. A gunman fires his weapon at the Trump National Doral Golf Club, ranting about Donald Trump, Barrack Obama, and P. Diddy. He doesn’t shoot anyone, but police do shoot him. He’s in stable condition. One police officer suffers a broken wrist.
  2. A passenger jet crashes in Havana, Cuba shortly after taking off. 110 are dead, and 3 passengers survive.
  3. Trump nominates the acting head of the VA, Robert Wilkie, to be the next Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Here’s hoping they did a preliminary vetting this time.

Polls:

  1. 74% of Americans think the evidence is solid that the earth has been getting warmer.
  2. 53% say global warming is caused by human activity.
  3. The percent of Americans who believe in global warming is highest in Millennials (81%) and lowest in the Silent Generation (63%).
  4. The percent of Americans who think global warming is caused by human activity is also highest with Millennials at 65%.

Week 68 in Trump

Posted on May 14, 2018 in Politics, Trump

This week, House Democrats released some of the propaganda and ads posted by Russian trolls during the 2016 campaigns. If you want to see them yourselves, you can download them here. If you want to know if you actually liked one of those ads, Facebook has a tool that lets you check.

Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Seattle puts the wheels in motion to vacate all marijuana possession charges dating back to the 90s.
  2. Thomas Homan, Trump’s temporary appointee to head ICE, resigns. Trump finally nominated Homan to head the department permanently, but his confirmation has been held up in Congress over his aggressive immigration enforcement tactics.

Russia:

  1. We find out that Michael Cohen (Trump’s personal lawyer) used a shell company, Essential Consultants, for business activities. This in itself is not unusual… but then…
    • The shell company was created just before Trump was elected.
    • The shell company made the payment to keep Stormy Daniels quiet.
    • The shell company made the payments to keep Elliot Broidy’s affair with a playboy model quiet. He allegedly got the model pregnant.
    • And this is where the Stormy Daniels affair collides with the Russia investigation. The shell company received a half million dollars from Columbus Nova, whose biggest client is Renova Group, owned by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. Their contract with Cohen was for $1 million.
    • Other clients of the shell company include AT&T, Novartis, and Korea Aerospace Industries, among others. Cohen also approached Ford Motor Cars, but they declined.
    • All of the above companies backpedal hard to distance themselves from Cohen as information changes over the week about how much they paid him and the reasons. Novartis has the best reason; they say they paid him $1.2 million for nothing.
    • Basically Cohen raked in millions of dollar for companies to have insider access to the Trump administration. Novartis was afraid to cancel their contract with Cohen because it might anger Trump.
    • Columbus Nova says Renova is their biggest client, but that they were never owned by a foreign company. However, Columbus Nova listed Renova on their website through 2017, and Renova listed Columbus Nova on theirs. That information is now gone. Also, SEC filings say it’s a U.S. affiliate of Renova.
    • In 2016 and 2017, Columbus Nova registered at least eight websites for white supremacists and alt-right groups. They also registered cnnjournal.com, which is a standard format for fake news sites (the URL looks like it comes from a real news source).
  1. Important notes here:
    • AT&T was lobbying for a merger with Time Warner. Trump opposed the merger during the campaign, and the DOJ blocked it in November.
    • Shortly after Novartis made their last payment to Cohen, Trump met with company leaders in Davos.
    • Korea Aerospace Industries is competing for a multi-billion dollar defense contract.
    • Renova Group is a target of U.S. sanctions.
    • Four years ago, the FBI warned that a foundation controlled by Vekselberg was working for Russian intelligence, spying to collect U.S. science and technology advances.
    • Vekselberg is one of the oligarchs the FBI detained and questioned at the airport as he entered the country.
  1. And as always, we’re four steps behind Mueller, who’s been aware of all this since last year.
  2. Here’s how the House fight against the Mueller investigation is going:
    • House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) has been subpoenaing documents from the DOJ that could potentially expose a top-secret intelligence source and put the Russia investigation at risk. The source is a U.S. citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI. The White House backs the DOJ in withholding this information.
    • Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy meet with DOJ officials to go over the request for classified documents, which seems to quiet things down for now.
    • Paul Ryan backs Devin Nunes in his attempt to obtain the classified documents. Ryan says it’s in the scope of the committee’s investigation, though they ended their investigation last month so I’m not sure what investigation he’s talking about.
    • And also, Nunes is still supposed to be recused from the Russia investigation.
    • House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) requests a financial audit of Mueller’s investigation.
  1. When asked whether the Senate findings would differ from the House findings released last month, the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, Richard Burr (R-NC), says “I’m not sure that the House was required to substantiate every conclusion with facts.”
  2. A Senate Intelligence Committee report says the election systems in at least 18, and maybe 21, states were targeted by Russian hackers in the 2016 elections. The report also says that Russia launched an unprecedented cyber campaign to make voters lose confidence in the elections, and provides recommendations for security.
  3. This report is the first of four planned to be released to address different aspects of the Russia investigation.
  4. The lawyers representing the Russian companies and trolls charged by Mueller in the Russia investigation try to bury Mueller’s team with an avalanche of discovery requests, including non-public information going back as far as the 1940s. A court denies Mueller’s request for a delay.
  5. Alex van der Zwaan begins his 30-day prison sentence for lying to federal agents, the first to serve time related to the Mueller investigation.
  6. House Democrats release 3,500 of the more than 200,000 Russian social media ads. The ads were aimed at creating divisiveness in the American electorate, and targeted issues like Black Lives Matter, immigration, gun rights, Muslims, Texas secession, and, of course, Hillary Clinton.
  7. These 3,500 ads alone reached over 33 million people.
  8. Mike Pence says it’s time for Mueller to start wrapping up his year-long investigation. Apparently he forgot that the special investigation into Bill Clinton went on for 5 years, despite not finding him guilty of anything except lying about an affair. Clinton’s investigation only resulted in the indictment of the McDougals. Mueller’s already obtained several guilty pleas.
  9. Mueller interviews Blackwater founder, Erik Prince.
  10. U.S. jets intercept two Russian bombers off the coast of Alaska.
  11. A public records request shows that Russian officials started courting conservatives in the U.S. as early as 2009, establishing and cultivating common political interests.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley urges any sitting supreme court justice who’s thinking of retiring to do it ASAP so he can rush through confirmation of a new Trump appointee. Seems he’s worried Democrats might take back the Senate and House in November and stall any new appointments kinda like the Republicans did to Merrick Garland. And Victoria Nourse. And Linda Walker. And Cassandra Butts. And…
  2. Senate Republicans once again ignore the blue slip tradition of allowing Senators to veto judicial nominees from their own state. They’re pushing through the nomination of Ryan Bounds, who as a student wrote about his racist views and recommended not expelling men accused of rape from school.
  3. The Senate votes along party lines to confirm Michael Brennan to a seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that Republicans prevented Obama from filling for SIX YEARS.

Healthcare:

  1. Anti-abortion violence is increasing again, doubling in 2017 over 2016. Instances of trespassing and obstruction have more than tripled.
  2. John Bolton disbands the global health security team, which was responsible for our response to deadly pandemics. Timothy Ziemer, the top official responsible for the group, resigned, leaving us with no one focused on global health security.
  3. Tom Bossert, the White House homeland security advisor, also left after Bolton started. Bossert advised that we need a comprehensive defense strategy for pandemics and biological attacks.
  4. Trump announces a strategy to reduce drug prices, including promoting generics, creating incentives, improving negotiations, and forcing companies to list prices. He stops short of his campaign promise to allow Medicare work directly with manufacturers to lower prices, which is something his HHS secretary (who also used to head Eli Lilly) opposes.
  5. Instead of raising taxes to make up for the state’s shortfall, the Louisiana state House votes largely along party lines to slash Medicaid eligibility by nearly two-thirds. They are currently planning for the evictions of over 30,000 elderly or disabled assisted living and group home residents.

International:

  1. Trump pulls the U.S. out of the Iran deal against the advice of the EU, Russia, China, hundreds of foreign relations experts and military leaders, and pretty much everyone except the GOP…
  2. Well, actually even members of Congress who voted against the Iran deal under Obama expressed disappointment in Trump’s decision. And I’m talking both Democrat and Republican members.
  3. All signatories on the deal vow to stay in and find a way to work around the U.S. withdrawal, which could weaken our position. They’ve all gone back to the bargaining table to discuss how to move forward without the U.S.
  4. Trump promises tougher sanctions on Iran that will be phased in over six months, which could possibly allow enough time to negotiate new terms.
  5. Trump is betting that Iran will be willing to renegotiate once they start to feel the sanctions, but he also admits he has no plan B, saying “But they’ll negotiate, or something will happen.” Who knows what that something is?
  6. By the way, the sanctions office in the State Department was closed by Rex Tillerson, and the head of the sanctions department at the Treasury quit.
  7. Estimates are that Iranian oil exports would be cut by 200,000 to 300,000 barrels per day. As a comparison, Obama cut them by 1 million to 1.5 million barrels a day in the five-year lead-up that forced Iran to the negotiating table.
  8. John Bolton predicts that Iran will cave in under pressure, but Obama put them under pressure for five years and at five times the level that Trump plans to do
  9. As a result of us pulling out of the Iran deal, Boeing and Airbus each lose contracts worth $20 billion to sell jets to Iranian airlines.
  10. European leaders say they’ll work to protect their businesses from the sanctions, and will probably try to create a financial system that can circumvent around the U.S. dollar.
  11. China and Russia should have a fairly easy time getting around any sanctions we implement against Iran, but our European allies will have a harder time navigating around the finances.
  12. European oil companies will lose out if they can’t find a way to save the deal.
  13. Whaaat? Even though the U.S. has now violated the Iran deal, Trumps says that he expects Iran to continue to comply with it. If the deal falls apart, Iran has no reason not to start up their nuclear weapons program again.
  14. Iranian president Rouhani says they’ll decide in a few weeks whether to ramp up uranium enrichment. Rouhani is a moderating force who believes in diplomacy with the West.
  15. And then Saudi Arabia says that if Iran tries to make nuclear weapons, Saudi will as well.
  16. After Trump’s announcement, hardliners in the Iranian government burn American flags chanting “Death to America!” This could weaken the more moderate influences in the Iranian government as hardliners are already pushing to get out of the deal.
  17. Cyber warfare analysts at the Pentagon predict a new surge of cyber attacks out of Iran. Within 24 hours of Trump withdrawing from the Iran deal, they noticed a marked uptick in cyber activity from Iran.
  18. Oh, and also John Bolton wants to eliminate the top cybersecurity job at the White House.
  19. After Trump announces the withdrawal, Iran and Israel engage in military attacks against each other in Syria. The two have been fighting a shadow war in Syria that is coming out into the open with the heightened tensions there. Even Russia, which has close ties to both governments, calls for restraint.
  20. The U.S. finally sends an ambassador to Germany after leaving the post empty for a year. Within hours of assuming the post, he tweets that “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.” This draws rebukes from officials, one of whom says, “It’s not my task to teach people about the fine art of diplomacy, especially not the U.S. ambassador.” German businesses perceive it as a threat.
  21. Mike Pompeo meets with Kim Jong Un and sets a date for Trump to meet. They secure the release of the three U.S. prisoners from North Korea.
  22. An upswing in activity between North Korea and China points to China holding leverage in the Korean peace talks.
  23. Mike Pompeo’s initial remarks to State Department employees indicate that he will work to build our diplomatic ranks back up throughout the world.
  24. Our actions with the Paris climate accord, tariffs and trade spats, the U.S. embassy in Israel, and the Iran deal have created a rift with our traditionally closest allies.
    • The president of the European Commission says that the U.S. is turning its back on allies and cooperation with ferocity. He also says we’ve lost out vigor and influence.
    • A former French ambassador to Washington concurs, saying they can’t work with a U.S. leadership that doesn’t want to be a leader. European leaders are mulling ways to move forward without U.S. leadership.
  1. The Pentagon concludes that the special ops mission in Niger that killed four American soldiers was the fault of numerous planning failures. They also dispute the rumor that one of the soldiers was captured alive.
  2. Iraqi and U.S. intelligence capture five top ISIS leaders in a three-month operation between Washington and Baghdad.
  3. Twenty people who were beaten by Turkish security guards outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in DC last year file a lawsuit against the Turkish government.
  4. Australia sees its worse mass killing since they passed strict gun control laws in 1996. While gun violence has dropped 47% in Australia since the laws passed, they can’t prevent every shooting.
  5. We learn that Paul Ryan spoke in March to the Czech Parliament where, in a split from Trump talking points, he admitted Russian election hacking, praised NATO, and accused Russia of subversive tactics and aggressive action against our allies. He also negotiated for a Russian hacker to be extradited to the U.S. instead of Russia.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. While the FCC says that net neutrality will be repealed next month, Senate Democrats are one vote short of passing a bill to make net neutrality the law.
  2. Connecticut bans bump stocks, the ninth state to do so.
  3. Delaware bans child marriage. How is this not a federal law??
  4. Cory Booker puts forth legislation to remove marijuana from the controlled substances list, making it legal at the federal level.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Sessions speaks on immigration at the border. He announces crackdowns on illegal border crossings, saying it will be our policy going forward to separate children from their parents at the border.
  2. Sessions also says he might eliminate political asylum for victims of domestic abuse. So far, he’s set aside four decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals on this subject.
  3. Fair housing groups sue HUD and Secretary Ben Carson over suspending an Obama-era rule that required communities receiving HUD funds to work to desegregate their communities. Carson’s actions would let communities receive full funding without complying with the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
  4. Senate Democrats refer the Trump administration to the Government Accountability Office over their actions against immigrants with Temporary Protected Status. The investigation exposed warnings from several senior diplomats last year that deporting these immigrants would destabilize the regions and lead to an increase in illegal immigration. Apparently former Secretary of State Tillerson ignored their cables.
  5. New Hampshire passes a law protecting transgender residents from discrimination in employment, housing, and public spaces.
  6. Even Pakistan passes legislation to protect their transgender citizens.
  7. The House passes a resolution to repeal a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule that protects consumers from discrimination when getting a car loan. Because they use the Congressional Review Act to repeal the rule, it blocks the CFPB from creating a similar rule in the future. The bill heads to Trump for signing into law.
  8. Far-right political parties across Europe are playing on anti-Jewish stereotypes like the Nazis used to. Muslim immigrants contribute to the anti-Jewish sentiment, but it’s mostly coming from Christian anti-Zionist factions that have grown because of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment.
  9. Trump, furious that border crossings are on the rise again, unleashes a 30-minute tirade against Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen during a cabinet meeting. He blames the increase on her, though her policies have been pretty darn tight. Many attendees were taken aback by the tirade.
  10. There’s a bipartisan push to force a vote on immigration bills, and Paul Ryan is working to halt it. He says he’d like to take up an immigration bill, but not at this time. Or ever, it seems.
  11. John Kelly takes heat for his comments that undocumented immigrants don’t assimilate well because they have little education, they’re rural, they don’t speak English, and don’t have skills. These assertions don’t hold up in real life studies. Also, what does being rural have to do with assimilating in the U.S.? Does he have something against rural Americas? Even the right-leaning Cato Institute disagrees with Kelly.
  12. If you thought the FBI’s push to prosecute black identity “extremists” was a myth, it turns out that they arrested a black activist, held him without bail for five months, and didn’t have anything to prosecute him on. He lost his house, and to top it off, it turns out that the FBI was using conspiracy site Infowars to get information.
  13. A New Hampshire court rules that a Border Patrol checkpoint set up last year was illegal. Turns out they set up a drug checkpoint framed as an immigration checkpoint, and illegally searched thousands of cars.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The Trump administration ends NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), which uses satellite and aircraft instruments to monitor the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane remotely. These measurements are invaluable to climate research and high-res models of the earth’s carbon flows.
  2. India’s Supreme Court upholds a ruling that Monsanto can’t patent its genetically modified cotton seeds in India.
  3. Studies link climate change to the increasing severity of hurricanes. Climate change causes the oceans to trap more heat, and that heat is released as energy during a hurricane. So the more heat in the ocean, the more powerful the storm. Ocean temperatures were at record highs last year before Hurricane Harvey.
  4. When automobile executives lobbied the Trump administration to loosen emissions standards, they didn’t expect the administration to go as far as they did or to attack California’s long-standing ability to set their own standards. This week, the executives meet again with the White House, saying the regulation was taken over by anti-regulatory members of the administration who pushed it way too far. They’re asking Trump to let California keep its own standards; they don’t want to pick a fight.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump tries to make up for the ballooning deficit by asking for $15 billion in cuts to spending previously approved by Congress. Almost most half the cuts would come from children’s health programs. Most of the rest would come from money earmarked for the ACA. The cuts amount to 0.4% of this year’s spending.
  2. After touting his infrastructure plan in March, Trump’s administration now says there likely won’t be an infrastructure plan this year. Last month, the top infrastructure advisor resigned.
  3. According to Paul Ryan, we have a shortage of workers. Seems like a bad time to remove nearly a million Dreamers from the work place, deport around a half million TPS immigrants, and cut back on legal immigration (which the administration has been pushing for).
  4. Continuing on with the teachers’ strikes, University of California workers strike for better wages, benefits, and job security.
  5. The Trump administration wants to freeze federal workers’ salaries and cut their retirement benefits.
  6. Trump tweets that he’s working with Chinese president Xi Jingping to save Chinese company ZTE, which largely shutdown after last month’s sanctions prevented them from getting the needed parts for their electronics. ZTE is known to pirate U.S. intellectual property, which Trump counted as a reason for China sanctions. Trump says there were too many jobs lost in China… which is kind of how sanctions work.
  7. Chinese custom inspections are holding up automobiles, soybeans, and other agricultural projects, earmarking them for deeper inspection over trade uncertainty.

Elections:

  1. Ohio votes to end gerrymandering.
  2. Connecticut passes a bill to commit their electoral votes in the presidential election to the winner of the national popular vote. It joins 10 other states and DC in this effort.
  3. A Dallas judge dismisses a case brought by Republicans to drop over 80 Democrats off the midterm ballot.

Miscellaneous:

  1. New York Attorney General Eric Schneidermann resigns amid multiple accusations of sexual violence.
  2. Around 5 years ago, two women contacted attorney Peter Gleason about sex abuse complaints against Schneidermann. Gleason then shared information about those complaints with Michael Cohen in case it could be used against Schneidermann if he brought a lawsuit against Trump University. Gleason recently filed to have those records remain sealed after they were seized from Cohen’s home. Trump appears to have known about it. In 2013, he tweeted about Schneidermann, “Wait and see, worse than Spitzer or Weiner.”
  3. As part of Melania Trump’s new program “Be Best” the White House reissues an Obama-era pamphlet rebranded for Melania’s program. The White House says it’s written by Melania, immediately undermining her credibility. Also, the DOJ could’ve waited to announce their family separation policy instead of doing it within an hour of Melania announcing her children’s program.
  4. A group of governors joins to study gun violence since the federal government is failing to make any progress on it.
  5. Kansas passes a law to make it illegal for domestic abusers to own guns.
  6. Gina Haspel appears before the Senate in her confirmation hearing to head the CIA. Her confirmation is in trouble due to her connection with the torture of detainees. She also participated in destroying evidence of the torture.
  7. A little respect please? In response to John McCain speaking out again Gina Haspel’s use of torture, White House staffer Kelly Sadler says McCain is irrelevant because he’s dying. Later, a retired three-star general says on Fox News that torture worked on John, propagating the pants-on-fire lie that McCain told his torturers what they wanted to know.
  8. Mick Mulvaney and others in the White House say that it’s worse Sadler’s words were leaked than that she said it in the first place. Can they not just apologize and move on? They just make everything worse.
  9. New NRA president Oliver North says that Parkland activists are criminals, and he compares threats and vandalism against NRA officials to the Jim Crow era. North knows a thing or two about being a criminal, but apparently not much about Jim Crow.
  10. Last week, Rudy Giuliani said it’s common for lawyers to make payoffs for their wealthy clients without telling them, so common that it’s even done at the law firm he works at. In response, the law firm he works at says Giuliani no longer works there and that’s not the kind of law we practice.
  11. An email sent out to FDA staff says that the TV monitors at one of their campuses can’t be changed from Fox News per a directive from the administration.
  12. Democrats are forcing a vote on net neutrality in the coming week.

Polls:

  1. 63% of American think we should stay in the Iran accord; 29% think we should withdraw.
  2. 57% of young Arabs see the U.S. as an enemy; 35% see us as an ally. That’s a reversal of the numbers from 2016.

Week 67 in Trump

Posted on May 7, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Here’s how fast things change from week to week. From Peter Baker of the New York Times:

“As of last week, the American public had been told that President Trump’s doctor had certified he would be the “the healthiest individual ever elected.” That the president was happy with his legal team and would not hire a new lawyer. That he did not know about the $130,000 payment to a former pornographic film actress who claimed to have had an affair with him.

As of this week, it turns out that the statement about his health was not actually from the doctor but had been dictated by Mr. Trump himself. That the president has split with the leaders of his legal team and hired the same new lawyer he had denied recruiting. And that Mr. Trump himself financed the $130,000 payment intended to buy the silence of the actress known as Stormy Daniels.”

Also, ICYMI, you should change your Twitter password.

Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. The New York Time obtains a list of questions that Mueller supposedly wants to ask the president. The questions turn out to be written by Trump’s legal team (specifically Jay Sekulow) after Mueller gave them the topics he wants to talk about.
  2. But still, Trump tries to use the questions as proof that Mueller isn’t looking into collusion… even though several of the questions are about collusion.
  3. The leaked questions apparently came from the Trump team, who is blaming the leak on Mueller, which is unlikely because Mueller’s team has probably never seen this list.
  4. At any rate, the president’s team says this proves that Mueller has overreached the scope of his investigation even though they aren’t Mueller’s questions.
  5. Trump’s lead attorney John Dowd (now resigned) says that Mueller recently brought up the idea of subpoenaing Trump if he refuses to appear. In response, Trump says Mueller is trying to set him up and trap him.
  6. Ty Cobb announces his retirement as White House Counsel, and Emmet Flood will replace him. Flood was an impeachment lawyer for Bill Clinton in the 90s.
  7. No one in Trump’s current legal team has the security clearances needed to discuss sensitive issues should Trump meet with Mueller. John Dowd, who left in March, was the only one on the team who had the needed clearance.
  8. Cambridge Analytica closes its operations after losing clients and facing steep legal fees. The company is accused of misusing Facebook data to influence the 2016 elections in the U.S. and to influence the Brexit vote in the UK.
  9. But then we learn that Rebekah and Jennifer Mercer have already joined a new data company, Emerdata, as directors. The Mercers were the money behind Cambridge Analytica, and Emerdata is owned by Cambridge Analytica’s parent company. The CEO and other members of Cambridge Analytica have also moved over to Emerdata. It seems they’re just rebranding Cambridge Analytica as Emerdata.
  10. UK regulators order Cambridge Analytica to release the information they scraped about a U.S. voter along with details on how they obtained the data and what they did with it. The voter requested the information under UK laws, getting around the U.S. system that doesn’t provide the means to obtain this data. It’s possible we could all force Cambridge Analytica to give us this information about our own data.
  11. In a round of media interviews, Rudy Giuliani says:
    • Trump is immune from being subpoenaed in a criminal proceeding (something the Supreme Court has not yet supported—the court tends to reject efforts to protect the president this way).
    • Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein should redeem themselves by ending the special counsel’s investigation.
    • FBI agents are like Nazi stormtroopers.
  1. The judge in Paul Manafort’s trial questions why Mueller’s investigation into Manafort falls under his jurisdiction but the investigation into Michael Cohen doesn’t. He wonders if Mueller is just trying to squeeze Manafort for information about Trump.
  2. None of the above means the judge thinks Manafort isn’t guilty; he just raises the possibility of sending the case down to a state prosecutor.
  3. Mueller puts in a request for 70 blank subpoenas in the Manafort case.
  4. Mueller also requests a 60-day postponement in Michael Flynn’s sentencing.
  5. Devin Nunes didn’t bother to read a document turned over to him by the DOJ after Nunes threatened impeachment against Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray. The 2-page document contains the evidence used by the DOJ and FBI to open the Russia investigation (not the same as the Steele dossier, BTW).
  6. And now Nunes wants to hold Jeff Sessions in contempt of Congress for not releasing classified documents to Nunes‘ committee, which is investigating FISA abuses.
  7. Rod Rosenstein responds to the articles of impeachment drawn up against him by the House Freedom Caucus by saying that the DOJ won’t be extorted and that threats won’t stop him from doing his job.
  8. We learn that after Trump agreed to sell the Ukraine missiles to help in their fight against Russia last year, the Ukraine stopped cooperating with the Mueller investigation and they halted their own investigation into Paul Manafort.
  9. Demonstrators across Russia rally to protest Vladimir Putin’s inauguration. Nearly 1,600 protesters are arrested, including Putin’s most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny.

Courts/Justice:

Apparently the Justice Department has been too busy fighting congressional subpoenas to get anything done this week.

Healthcare:

  1. Tom Price, former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, says that last year’s tax reform will raise health insurance costs because it repealed the individual mandate. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agrees, saying average premiums will increase by around 10% per year more than if the mandate remained in place. This will amount to about an 18% increase this year, according to the Urban Institute.
  2. Whoops! Tom Price later walks those statements back, saying repealing the mandate was absolutely the right thing to do.
  3. The Urban Institute also predicts that getting rid of the mandate, along with other changes like allowing substandard policies, will cost the federal government $33 billion per year MORE to insure 6.4 million FEWER people.
  4. Four million fewer people are already uninsured compared to this time in 2016.
  5. Iowa passes the “Fetal Heartbeat” bill, making most abortions illegal after about 6 weeks (or once a heartbeat is detected). Many women don’t even know they’re pregnant at this point.
  6. Because it’s not enough that fentanyl added to heroine led to a massive increase in overdoses, dealers are also adding fentanyl to cocaine. Cocaine deaths have been rising as dealers target drug users who are trying to avoid opiates. Many states don’t keep record of this kind of drug combination, but in Connecticut where they do track it, cocaine+fentanyl deaths rose 420% over the past three years.
  7. Trump says he’ll appoint Dr. Mehmet Oz to the Sport, Fitness, and Nutrition council.

International:

  1. In a public presentation to the Israeli Defense Ministry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that Iran has lied about its nuclear weapons program. The information he presents is from 1999-2003, a time when we pretty much knew Iran was lying about their program, but the presentation seems aimed at making us think they’ve broken the Iran deal, which Netanyahu wants Trump to dump.
    My 2 cents? Leaving the agreement frees up Iran to develop whatever nuclear program they want, and we will have given them back $1.7 billion worth of previously frozen assets to do it. What kind of deal is that?
  2. We learn that Trump aides hired Israeli private investigators last year to find dirt on key members of the Obama administration who were responsible for negotiating the Iran deal, including national security advisors Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl. One thing they were trying to find is whether either Rhodes or Kahl had benefited personally or professionally from the deal (which IMO reveals more about Trump than it does about Rhodes or Kahl).
  3. Kahl reveals a mysterious attempt from a UK company last year to contact his wife about a school she volunteers with. The company’s website has since been taken down, and Kahl thinks it was part of the above investigation.
  4. The Israeli investigators hired by Trump’s aides were also hired by Harvey Weinstein to go after his accusers and stop the publicity around his sexual harassment and abuse.
  5. After Netanyahu’s presentation, the White House issues a statement that Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear program that it hides from the world and Iranian citizens. This alarms many people because of its similarities to the accusations that pushed us into the Iraq war. The White House later updates the statement to say Iran HAD not HAS such a program. They blame the error on a typo.
  6. John Kerry has been working behind the scenes to save the Iran deal, meeting with UN and foreign officials to find ways to keep the deal in place.
  7. Trumps says that withdrawing from the Iran deal sends North Korea the right message in the lead up to our negotiations with them. I guess that could be true if the right message is that we don’t hold up our agreements.
  8. If the U.S. pulls out of the Iran deal, it would leave the rest of the world to navigate a very complicated web of sanctions on international businesses.
  9. The Trump administration is working to get three U.S. hostages held in North Korea released. I wish him success, but two things: 1) Rudy Giuliani claims that their release has already been obtained (it hasn’t), and 2) Trump says that the past administration tried to get them released with no success (two of the three were imprisoned last year, so it’s highly doubtful Obama was involved).
  10. North Korea accuses Trump of provoking them with his tough talk on military might. They also warn us not to mistake their willingness to talk for weakness.
  11. Ahead of his meeting with North Korea, Trump orders the Pentagon to prepare for pulling troops out of South Korea.
  12. Trump freezes funding for Syria‘s main humanitarian group, the White Helmets. If you don’t know who they are, check out the short documentary about them.
  13. Suicide bombers in Kabul kill at least 31 people.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House chaplain, who Paul Ryan forced to resign last week, rescinds his resignation, forcing Ryan to either fire him or keep him on. Ryan decides to keep him, leaving us all wondering what the heck happened there.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Seven states, including Texas, file a lawsuit against the Trump administration to end DACA, even though Trump has already attempted to do this and the courts stopped him.
    • Here are the states involved in the suit, along with the number of people with DACA status: Texas (121,000), South Carolina (6,400), Arkansas (5,100), Alabama (4,300), Nebraska (3,400), Louisiana (2,000), and West Virginia (100).
    • Compare that to California (223,000), Illinois (42,000), New York (42,000), and Florida (33,000). It seems the states least affect by DACA (with the exception of Texas) are the ones that want to end it.
  1. An all-black, all-female team of three was named a finalist in NASA’s high school competition, but NASA had to end public voting early when racists on 4chan launched a racially-based social media campaign against them.
  2. Kirstjen Nielsen, Homeland Security Secretary, ends temporary protected status for the Hondurans who came hear nearly two decades ago as refugees after Hurricane Mitch devastated their country. That’s nearly 86,000 people who have called the U.S. their home for 20 years.
  3. They may not call it a Muslim ban, but actions speak louder than words. So far this fiscal year, Christians refugees admitted into the U.S. outnumber Muslims by more almost four times. 1,800 Muslims have been allowed compared to 6,700 Christians, and the number of Muslims has shrunk by more than any other religious group, right in line with Trump having said he’ll prioritize Christian refugees.
  4. Several U.S. citizens get caught up each year in ICE detainments, some of whom have been detained for over three years. The average time U.S. citizens are detained is 180 days; that’s a half a year these people lose. Citizens have also been deported, and had to have an embassy intervene for their return.
    Side note: It’s illegal for ICE to detain U.S. citizens. Where’s the accountability here?
  5. About 250 members of the caravan of asylum seekers marching across Mexico reach the U.S. border, where most are turned away by border patrol. 49 have been admitted to the U.S. while the rest are living in a tent city south of the border.
  6. Mike Pence calls Joe Arpaio a tireless champion for the rule of law. In case you forgot, Arpaio’s lost countless civil suits for his treatment of prisoners and is also a convict himself, though he was pardoned by Trump.
  7. 2017 saw a 17% drop in international students coming to the U.S. Why is this important? Foreign students contribute about $37 billion to the U.S. economy each year.
  8. In 44 states, a majority of residents support the right for same-sex couples to marry. The states that don’t support it: Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, West Virginia, Louisiana, and North Carolina. Alabama is the only state where a majority oppose that right.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Eighteen states, including California, sue the Trump administration over its attempts to roll back Obama-era fuel efficiency goals.
  2. The sea ice cover in the Bering Sea this winter hit a record low, and a striking low at that. It was just half the cover of the previous record low.
  3. Scott Pruitt’s questionable foreign travel has been facilitated by lobbyists and wealthy donors, including Richard Smotkin, who arranged Pruitt’s trip to Morocco was later awarded a $40,000/month contract to lobby for the Moroccan government. Sheldon Adelson helped him with his trip to Israel. And former lobbyist Matthew Freedman worked to line up a trip to Australia.
  4. Three top-level officials part ways with the EPA after Pruitt testified to Congress the previous week. Pruitt blamed subordinates for his own ethical lapses.
  5. Under Ryan Zinke, the Fish and Wildlife Service removes Yellowstone grizzlies from the endangered species list. At the same time they’re working on solutions to diversify this small group of bears by importing bears from other areas. So they’ll take bears from areas where they’re still considered endangered, and move them to an area where they are not considered endangered?
  6. There are rumors of a power struggle between Pruitt and Zinke, which could be why so many negative stories about both of them are coming out.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The unemployment rate drops to 3.9%, and wages rise slightly, though not as much as economists expect in such a tight labor market. One reason could be increasing inflation or fears of it.
  2. California moves up to fifth in the world economies, behind the U.S., China, Japan, and Germany. The state is 12% of the U.S. population (nearing 40 million) and provides 14.2% of the U.S. economy.
  3. Marco Rubio criticizes the GOP tax reform, saying, “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”
  4. Whoops again! He later walks that statement back (just like Tom Price did on healthcare).
  5. Arizona teachers end their walkout after getting most, but not all, of what they were protesting for.
  6. Here’s a new one for corporations. They’ve started creating response plans just in case Trump targets them or their industry in one of his Twitter rants.
  7. The Purdue University Ag Economy Barometer, which shot up on Trump’s election, falls for the second month in a row. The barometer is an indicator of how the agricultural industry is doing as a whole.

Elections:

  1. All four Federal Election Commission (FEC) commissioners have held their jobs well past their intended terms. They’ve stayed on 11, 9, 7, and 5 years past the end of their terms. Also, there are supposed to be six commissioners, not four. The Senate majority and minority leaders are supposed to recommend replacements, but they haven’t.
  2. The DOJ updates its policy manual, removing a reference to maintaining a free press and expanding their policy on whistleblowers.
  3. Paul Ryan warns that if Democrats win in the November midterms, they could make it impossible to get anything done and would be more aggressive in congressional oversight of the administration. Well if that’s not the pot calling the kettle black…
  4. Since not enough has been done to ensure the security of our midterm elections from foreign interference, Democrats in Congress pledge to NOT exploit any stolen materials in their campaigns. Republicans have so far refused to do the same, leaving us open to continued interference.
  5. Dianne Feinstein is the frontrunner in California’s senate race, but the second place runner is an anti-Semite running on the Republican ticket. The GOP just kicked him out of their convention and plan to vote to kick him out of the party. But how is this guy second?!

Miscellaneous:

  1. Thousands of demonstrators in Puerto Rico protest over austerity measures, which come at a horrible time as they try to rebuild. Police shut the protests down using tear gas.
  2. The Department of Education is sending $600 million in disaster assistance to Puerto Rico.
  3. Trump’s previous personal physician, Harold Bornstein, who before the 2016 election purportedly wrote a glowing letter about Trump’s health in hyperbolic terms, now says that Trump dictated that letter. You’re shocked, I know. I was shocked too.
  4. Bornstein also says that Trump aides, including his personal bodyguard, raided Bornstein’s office and took all of Trump’s medical records. The White House says that was just part of the transition into office.
  5. With both Trump and Pence slated to speak at the NRA convention, parts of the convention have ironically been designated gun-free zones. Good thing the bad guy with a gun didn’t find out there were no good guys with a gun there.
  6. During his NRA speech (and also full of irony), Trump reads an article from “fake news” CNN as proof that Mueller overreached in his investigation (though the article didn’t really say that).
  7. Also in his speech, Trump criticized both France’s and the UK’s gun laws, saying those laws failed to prevent the 2015 terrorist attack in France and the knife violence in the UK. To bring his point home, Trump mimed shooting a gun at one victim at a time in reference to the Paris attacks. France and the UK are both pretty pissed.
  8. At the NRA convention, you can buy pistols that look like cell phones. This come just one month after Sacramento police killed an unarmed man because they mistook his cell phone for a gun.
  9. Rudy Giuliani tries to clear Trump of one crime by insinuating he committed another—and on a Hannity interview no less. He says Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen for the Stormy Daniels payment, inferring that Trump knew about the hush money despite his claims otherwise.
  10. Giuliani also says it’s possible Trump paid hush money to additional women, but later walks that back.
  11. Trump, or more likely someone more speaking for Trump, tweets an explanation for what Giuliani said, but basically confirms that he reimbursed Cohen.
  12. Trump himself excuses Giuliani saying that he’s the new guy and he’ll get his facts straight. Well then what was he doing touring national TV talk shows?
  13. In another less than helpful moment, Giuliani says it would be OK if Mueller went after Jared Kushner, but not Ivanka. Apparently Kushner is disposable.
  14. Giuliani later says that Trump didn’t realize until just last week that his payments to Michael Cohen were to cover the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels.
  15. Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George Conway, tweets the relevant FEC rules, which suggest that no matter how the payment went down, election rules were violated.
  16. Trump signs an executive order to expand grants and partnerships with faith-based groups in an effort to reduce separation of church and state. Every agency is ordered to work on faith-based partnerships.
  17. Even the Nobel prize runs up against #MeToo. There will be no prize in literature awarded this year because of a sex scandal. They’ll name two winners next year instead.
  18. And speaking of the Nobel prize, several House Republicans nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for the work he’s doing with North Korea.
  19. In John McCain’s new book, he says he regrets not picking Joe Lieberman as his 2008 running mate instead of Sarah Palin. Even if they still wouldn’t have been elected, I would argue that picking Lieberman would’ve drastically changed our current political climate.
  20. Gina Haspel offers to withdraw her name from the nomination for CIA director, but the White House says they’ll continue to back her.
  21. Rick Perry supports ending the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) because he thinks applied research belongs in the private sector (I guess so someone can profit off it). ARPA-E advances innovative energy research, often resuscitating research that stalled in the private sector. George W. Bush created ARPA-E, but it was first funded by Obama, so that could be why Trump wants to kill it.
  22. You remember that lobbyist’s condo that Scott Pruitt was paying submarket rents for? Well it turns out that Mike Crapo (R-ID), the Senate Banking Committee chair, held 78 campaign events there.
  23. NASA launches a new mission to Mars. The InSight robotic lander will send a probe into the layers of Mars’ surface and study the structure. It’s scheduled to land on Mars on November 26.
  24. And in nonpolitical news, Mt. Kilauea erupts on Hawaii’s big island, opening multiple fissures in Leilani Estates, causing evacuations, and destroying homes, cars, and structures. The eruption caused several earthquakes, including one 6.9 in magnitude. The smaller island of Kauai had it’s own national disaster a few weeks ago, with severe flooding on the north side after receiving 50 inches of rain in 24 hours.