What's Up in Politics

Keeping up with the latest happenings in US Politics

Week 109 in Trump

Posted on February 25, 2019 in Politics, Trump

NC Board of Elections video

Last week, rumors about winding down the Mueller investigation proved to be unfounded. I think we’re all ready and maybe a little anxious for it to be done. The Associated Press wrote up a good summary about what we’ve learned so far. It’s a longish read, but pretty interesting. A few things to brace for if you’re looking for impeachment here:

    • It’s not likely to happen.
    • It could be that Trump didn’t do anything knowingly wrong.
    • It could be that he did, but there’s no evidence of it.
    • It could be that he did, but there is evidence of it. And that case, we might find out about it and we might not.
    • All that is to say, don’t get your hopes up too high.

Here’s what else happened last week in politics…

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. At least sixteen states issue a legal challenge to Trump’s use of a national emergency to redirect billions in government funding to build his wall. The lawsuit claims that Trump doesn’t have the authority to override the funding decisions of Congress.
  2. Demonstrators at over 250 rallies across the country join to protest the national emergency declaration and the wall.
  3. Democrats in the House introduce a resolution to put an end to Trump’s national emergency for the wall. They’ll vote on it on Tuesday. If it passes, the Senate must take it up within 18 days.

Russia:

  1. The New York Times learns from documents and interviews that:
    • The Trump administration lied about the circumstances around Michael Flynn leaving.
    • Trump had private discussions with GOP Members of Congress about how to attack the Mueller investigation.
    • Trump called Matthew Whitaker last year when he was acting Attorney General and asked him to put Geoffrey Berman (or as Trump called him, “my guy”) in charge of the investigation into hush money payments to women. Berman is the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and had already recused himself over conflicts of interest.
      • This puts Whitaker at odds with the testimony he gave to a Congressional committee. The chair of the committee gives Whitaker a chance to fix his testimony.
  1. Former FBI director Andrew McCabe says he briefed the bipartisan Gang of Eight congressional leaders on two FBI investigations they were opening into Trump in May of 2017 (one about Comey’s firing and one about campaign ties with Russia). He says none of them objected to it at the time.
  2. After James Comey was fired, the FBI developed a plan to protect evidence in the Russia investigation under concerns that more top-level officials would be fired.
  3. Roger Stone gets called back into court after he posts a picture of the judge in his case next to an image of a crosshairs. The judge places a strict gag order on Stone’s social media, radio, press release, blog, and media activities and says if he violates that order, “I will find it necessary to adjust your environment.”
    • The judge also extends the order to Stone’s spokespersons, family, and volunteers.
    • Stone says he’s having trouble putting food on the table and making rent. His previous income was $47,000 month. That’s $564,000 a year, in case you were wondering. How much does that guy eat?
  1. Rod Rosenstein plans to leave the DOJ in March.
  2. New York state prosecutors are preparing a case against Manafort in the event that Trump issues him a pardon. There is no double jeopardy because these are state charges as opposed to the federal charges he’s already pleaded guilty to or been convicted of. New charges would include state tax evasion and corporate accounting violations, among others.
  3. Mueller files a sentencing memo for Manafort on two charges of conspiracy to which Manafort pled guilty. You can read the memo here and the attachments here.
  4. Mueller is expected to deliver his final report next week and Barr is preparing to announce an end to the investigation… and then whoops! That was premature. It turns out that he’s not; it was just random speculation.
  5. Russia has already launched a coordinated disinformation campaign against 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Most action so far is against Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Beto O’Rourke.
  6. So far, every 2020 presidential candidate except for Trump has promised not to knowingly use any hacked or illegally obtained materials in the election cycle.

Legal Fallout:

  1. As recently as last week, the Trump administration was considering a proposal to sell nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia. Several Trump appointees had been pushing for the plan, which would have American companies build the plants. The administration has ignored legal and ethical warnings about the possibilities of spreading nuclear weapons technology in the Mideast.
    • Michael Flynn was one of the appointees pushing for this. He had been working on this for the company promoting it (IP3 International) before he was appointed, and kept at it after he was appointed.
    • Flynn’s successor, H.R. McMaster, tried to put an end to it.
    • One proposal included naming Trump’s friend Tom Barrack as a “special representative” to carry out the plan.
    • Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings brought this to the to the attention of the House Oversight Committee in 2018, but the Republican chair of the committee, Trey Gowdy, refused to follow up.
  1. A judge rules against Trump’s Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta, saying he violated federal law by not notifying Jeff Epstein’s victims about a plea agreement with Epstein. Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from underage girls.
  2. Trump’s pick to be ambassador to the UN withdraws her name from consideration because of her family after it comes out that she had failed to pay taxes on time and had hired an undocumented nanny.
  3. The Office of Government Ethics finds that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross violated his ethics agreement and submitted false information on his financial disclosure.
  4. Emails show coordination between Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao’s office and the office of her husband, Mitch McConnell. She held meetings with politicians and business leaders at the request of McConnell, and in some cases, the people she met with received grants and assistance with state funding.
  5. A grand jury has been convened in an investigation into whether Ryan Zinke lied to federal investigators who were looking into whether Zinke did not approve a casino application because of political pressure. Two tribes in Connecticut say that MGM lobbied to oppose the casino.
  6. Democratic lawmakers say they have correspondence that indicates the Education Department tried to influence an investigation into the recognition of ACICS as an accreditor. ACICS accredited two for-profit colleges that were shut down by lawsuits. Under Obama, ACICS was no longer recognized as an accreditor. Documents show that the department wanted to replace their inspector general who was investigating the certification.
  7. A former Trump campaign staffer files a class action lawsuit against Trump’s practice of forcing staffers to sign non-disclosure agreements. The aim is to invalidate all the NDAs. Under the NDAs, staffers can’t criticize Trump or talk about their work with him.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court rules that lower courts in Texas interpreted precedent incorrectly when they ruled that a death row inmate was mentally capable and could thus be executed.
  2. Trump picks Jeff Rosen to be the new deputy attorney general, replacing Rod Rosenstein in March. Rosen is new to the DOJ and has no prosecutorial experience (most deputy AGs work their way up through the department).
  3. Justice Clarence Thomas calls on the Supreme Court to take another look at the New York Times v. Sullivan decision, which he says makes it hard for public officials to win libel suits against news media.

Healthcare:

  1. The Trump administration issues a new rule that blocks any taxpayer-funded family planning clinic from providing abortion referrals. Clinics that provide abortions can’t receive funds from the federal family planning program. Trump will redirect some of that money to religious anti-abortion groups.
    • Just a reminder, these facilities provide general healthcare, STD testing and treatment, preventative treatments, and prenatal care mostly to poor women who don’t otherwise have access to healthcare.
  1. Students in Colorado take the lead in supporting a new bill that would ban abstinence-only sex ed, and would require teaching about safe sex, consent, and sexual orientation. Currently:
    • Eight states require teaching about consent.
    • 37 states require covering or stressing abstinence.
    • Only 13 states require teaching to be medically accurate.
    • Seven states prohibit teachers from showing same-sex relationships in a positive light.
    • Less than half of schools still require sex ed.

International:

  1. Three Conservative Party MPs in the U.K. quit the party over the handling of Brexit. This is on top of two defections from the Labour Party earlier in the week. They join forces and the group grows to 11. They want to see a public vote on a new referendum.
  2. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan (who has said he’ll carry out Trump’s wishes rather than perform the actual duty of his position, which is to advise the president), briefs members of the Senate on Trump’s Syria policy. It gets very contentious when Lindsey Graham presses him for details.
  3. Putin says that Russia will target the U.S. with their new missiles if new missiles are placed in Europe. I’m not sure what spurred that comment.
  4. Though Trump promised a full troop withdrawal from Syria, now he says they’ll leave around 200 troops there to coordinate a safe zone. And then he moves the target again and says they’ll leave 400 troops.
  5. Despite Trump urging European countries to accept back their citizens who left to join ISIS, the U.S. refuses to accept back Hoda Muthana, a woman from the U.S. who joined ISIS. They say her citizenship is in question because her parents were here on a diplomatic mission from Yemen, though she was born in the U.S. after her father was discharged from service and she has a U.S. passport.
  6. Venezuelan soldiers open fire on civilians who were trying to keep part of the border open to receive humanitarian assistance. Two are dead and several injured.
  7. Venezuela cuts diplomatic ties with neighboring Colombia.
  8. Mike Pompeo says that Trump and Kim Jong Un might need to have another summit after their upcoming one because they might not be able to accomplish all they want to at this one. Pompeo also contradicts Trump, saying that North Korea remains a nuclear threat.
  9. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cuts a deal with a racist anti-Arab party, bringing an extremist fringe group into the mainstream. The move draws criticism from liberal Jewish groups like J Street and more conservative ones like AIPAC.

Family Separation:

  1. The practice of separating families, deporting the parents, and keeping the children here has brought the welfare system into the process. Foster parents aren’t supposed to be allowed to adopt these children, but it has happened before and could happen now, separating these families forever.
  2. A judge is deliberating over whether to force the U.S. government to pour over all their records in order to find the thousands of families they’ve separated. Look for a ruling on this soon.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Texts between a police lieutenant and right-wing organizers indicate bias in the handling of an alt-right clash with Antifa. However, the officer says he has similar texts with members of both sides. The mayor calls for an independent investigation.
  2. I can’t even keep up with the developments in the Jussie Smollett hate crime story. It seems right now like he faked the whole thing. Smollett maintains his innocence, but his character was cut from the last few episodes of Empire. We’ll see what happens in trial, if it goes that far.
  3. Trump continues to warn about migrant caravans heading our way. He’s an alarmist, plain and simple. It’s his job to handle things like this without creating pointless fear.
  4. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the U.S. is at an all-time high.
  5. An editorial in an Alabama newspaper calls for a resurgence of the KKK.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Several government reports produced under the Trump administration have found that climate change is for sure one of our biggest national security threats. Our top brass has testified repeatedly that climate change is one of our biggest security threats. Despite this, the White House plans to create a Presidential Committee on Climate Security to assess whether climate change is indeed a threat. It’ll be headed by William Happer, who says carbon emissions are an asset, not a pollutant.
    • Interestingly, the administration says the previous reports weren’t subject to rigorous and independent peer review. In fact, they have been reviewed. The reports that are unable to be replicated under peer review are those that try to disprove climate change.
  1. The EPA announces an effort to restrict perfluoroalkyl and related compounds (PFAS), which have been contaminating water systems across the country, particularly those by military bases.
  2. The EPA has reached out to a scientist who claims that low levels of pollution, toxic chemicals, and radiation are good for us. His suggestions for how the EPA should assess these issues has been added to the Federal Register nearly word for word.
  3. In Tasmania, brush fires that have been burning out of control for a month could wipe out ancient species.
  4. The Trump administration ends talks with California over fuel economy rules for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The administration wants to end Obama’s mileage standards and they’ve threatened to end California’s ability to set its own mileage standards.
  5. Patagonia made an additional $10 million in profits due to the business tax cuts implemented by the GOP. The founder is putting all that money toward fighting climate change.
  6. When asked about climate change, the new U.S. ambassador to Canada says that she believes in both sides of the science. There aren’t two sides. There’s the proven side, and then multiple sides trying to explain away the proven side with a multitude of unprovable hypotheses.
  7. Last week, we learned that Trump pressured the Tennessee Valley Authority to keep open two aging coal plants. This week, the TVA votes to close those plants.

Budget/Economy:

  1. In 2018, retail jobs were cut by their highest number since 2009, largely because of online shopping.
  2. Teachers strike in Oakland, demanding smaller classes, more counselors and full-time nurses, and a 12% raise over three years.
  3. China agrees to buy 10 million additional tons of soybeans from the United States. Since they canceled all orders in December, but did buy around 8 million tons in 2018, I’m not sure if that means they’re buying 10 million tons or 18 million tons in total, but either way it’s much less than what they bought in 2017.
  4. The Trump administration has paid $7.7 billion of the promised $12 billion in relief to farmers affected by the trade war with China.
  5. Trump says they made great progress in trade talks with China, so he delays raising tariffs from 10% to 25% on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.
  6. Most economists expect a recession by 2021 with about half of them expecting one this year or next.
  7. Illinois signs a bill to raise its minimum wage to $15 by 2025.

Elections:

  1. The elections board hearing into election fraud in North Carolina’s 9th district takes a dramatic turn this week:
    • Lisa Britt testifies that McCrae Dowless paid her to illegally collect and complete mail-in ballots and applications for mail-in ballots. Dowless was hired by a consulting group hired by the campaign for Republican candidate Mark Harris. Britt is Dowless’s step-daughter.
    • Harris sobs in court when his son testifies that he warned his dad about the questionable practices employed by Dowless, contradicting Mark Harris’s earlier testimony.
    • The next day, Harris says that North Carolina needs to hold another election to settle this race. It seems his attorneys are eager to put an end to the proceedings as their client is already guilty of perjuring himself on the stand.
    • North Carolina elections officials order a new election, putting an end to the investigation. I’m not clear if any criminal charge will arise from this, but states attorneys and the State Bureau of Investigation are looking into it.
    • Dowless has done work for both Republicans and Democrats in the past, and is also a convicted felon (on unrelated charges of fraud).
  1. Trump says he condemns all election fraud whether it’s Democrat or Republican (good) and then follows that with his unsupported accusations of voter fraud in California, Texas, and Florida (bad). He says they found millions of fraudulent votes in California and offers the late counts that leaned Democrat as proof. Likewise, he says the late counts in Florida prove fraud. He says votes in Texas weren’t properly done, referencing the Secretary of State’s efforts to clean out the voter rolls.
    • There’s never been any kind of indication or proof that people voted illegally in CA.
    • After 2016, I think they found 2 or 3 cases in Texas, at least two of whom voted Republican. This is a separate issue from the 95,000 or so voters the state was looking into for being illegally registered to vote. That number has been drastically reduced because most of the people on the list are actually citizens.
    • And in Florida, they were just counting all the votes; no fraud was found.
    • I think North Carolina has shown that fraud raises red flags and can be proven. Instead, Trump focuses on things he made up to justify his popular vote loss.
  1. New Jersey’s State Senate passes a bill requiring all presidential candidates to release their taxes in order to be included on the ballot. The bill has to get through the Assembly and then the governor.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The Transportation Department cancels nearly $1 billion in funding for California’s troubled high-speed train project. They’re also trying to find ways to make California pay back the $2.5 billion they’ve already received.
    • California Governor Gavin Newsom had previously reduced the scope of the project.
  1. New York City’s transportation department defrauded FEMA out of $5.3 million in claims after Superstorm Sandy. They city agrees to pay it all back.
  2. The latest rumor is that Trump wants to replace his director of National Intelligence Dan Coates because of his testimony before Congress in January. I usually don’t report on rumors, but last fall all the staff turnover rumors came true. So we’ll see.
  3. Police arrest a Coast Guard lieutenant who plotted to kill a laundry list of Democratic politicians and what he considered “leftist” professors, judges, and journalists. He describes himself as a white nationalist and skinhead, and he calls the people on his list traitors.
  4. The NRA posts a picture of Nancy Pelosi and shooting victim Gabby Giffords with the headline “Target Practice.” Oops.

Polls:

  1. 61% of American disapprove of Trump using a national emergency to build his wall. About the same number don’t think there’s a national emergency there.

Week 108 in Trump

Posted on February 19, 2019 in Politics, Trump

These guys are so going to jail...

It’s a national emergency! I know he’s been threatening it, but I really didn’t think even Trump would declare a national emergency over something he’s been talking about for three years. On top of that, our allies in Europe sent us a clear message about what they think of us now after two years with this administration. At least Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia still like us though!

Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Border Wall/Shutdown:

  1. We started the week with another stalemate on DHS funding, but then negotiators in Congress agree on a deal that:
    • Provides $1.375 billion for 55 miles of new border fencing (Trump wants $5.7 million for over 200 miles).
    • Provides $1.7 billion for border security, including more staff, humanitarian aid, and more modernized technology.
    • Reduces the number of detention beds allowed for unauthorized immigrants to 40,520 beds, but funds over 45,000 beds until September to give ICE time to comply.
  1. Trump says he doesn’t like the deal, but he’ll sign it. Mitch McConnell tells the Senate that Trump plans to declare a national emergency to bypass the bill they agreed upon. This way, Trump can keep the government open and fund his wall. The White House is also looking at other ways to fund the border wall, like redirecting money from flood control projects, disaster relief funds, and DOD funds.
  2. Nancy Pelosi warns the president not to declare a national emergency because it sets a bad president. 

  3. As promised, Trump signs the bill and declares a national emergency so he can build his wall. It was one of the weirdest presidential speeches I’ve ever heard. Especially from 22:08 to 22:48 here.
  1. The DOJ warns Trump that ahead of time that his national emergency would be held up in courts. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) sues over the national emergency declaration. California, New York, and the ACLU (among others) prepare to do the same.
  2. The Trump administration is already being sued over their new policy of forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for a hearing and over their policy of extreme vetting of sponsors (which is basically holding immigrant minors hostage in order to be able to deport some of the sponsors).
  3. The House Judiciary Committee announces an investigation into the emergency declaration based on comments Trump made during his announcement of the national emergency. Trump said that he didn’t need to do this, but that he’d rather do it (build the wall) much faster.
  4. Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX) says he’ll introduce a resolution to cancel the national emergency. Other House Democrats are on board. If the House passes such a resolution, the Senate has to vote on it as well. Trump says he’ll absolutely veto anything like that.
  5. Trump blocks back pay for contractors who worked during the government shutdown.

Russia:

  1. A federal judge rules that Paul Manafort did intentionally lie to federal prosecutors as alleged by Mueller’s team. He lied about:
    • His contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, an alleged Russian spy.
    • Certain financial transactions.
    • A business associate with suspected ties to Russian intelligence.
  1. His plea deal is effectively over, prosecutors can now prosecute him for crimes to which he’s already pleaded guilty, he’ll likely serve time for the crimes he already copped to and those he was already convicted of, and he could be charged on the additional crimes of lying to federal prosecutors.
  2. Manafort cannot retract his earlier guilty plea, and he still has to cooperate with prosecutors.
  3. Mueller recommends a sentence of 19.5 to 24.5 years for Manafort, because he “acted for more than a decade as if he were above the law” and deprived the government and banks of millions of dollars.
  4. Court documents show that Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were meeting with Kilimnik in August of 2016. Prosecutors think they talked about Russia as it relates to Trump’s campaign, resolving the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and Trump campaign internal polling data.
  5. Trump quotes Rush Limbaugh in calling for investigators in the Russia probe, including Robert Mueller, to be put in jail. He says it’s unprecedented that they’re working with Obama intelligence agencies, though intelligence agencies don’t belong to any president.
  6. In a 60 Minutes interview, former FBI director Andrew McCabe says that he launched investigations into the administration’s ties to Russia because he thought there would be an attempted coverup and the case would disappear. He also says:
    • There were conversations about working with Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment.
    • When intelligence officials told Trump that North Korea has missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, he responded, “I don’t care. I believe Putin.” Putin had apparently told him that North Korea doesn’t have such capabilities.
    • Mueller’s team has McCabe’s memorandums describing his transactions with Trump.
  1. After the interview, Trump accuses both McCabe and Rod Rosenstein of plotting treason against him and says they got caught.
  2. The judge in Roger Stone’s case issues a partial gag order. Attorney’s from both sides can’t talk to the media about the case, and Stone can’t talk to the media in the vicinity of the courthouse.
    • Stone requests a different judge, but is denied. Mueller designated Stone’s case as being related to the case indicting 12 Russian intelligence agents on charges of hacking and leaking Democrats’ emails in the 2016 election. Because these cases are related, they have the same judge.
    • It’s the same judge who oversees one of Paul Manafort’s cases as well.
  1. The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr (R-NC), says they haven’t discovered evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA), says the evidence is obvious and compelling. Maybe they have different definitions of collusion? Schiff does clarify that this does not yet prove criminal conspiracy.
  2. The House Judiciary Committee hires two lawyers to review Mueller’s investigation and allegations against Trump. They’re focused on ethics and corruption issues as well as possible obstruction of justice.

Legal Fallout:

  1. American Media, Inc., owner of the National Enquirer, asked the DOJ last year if they needed to register as a foreign agent for their work with and coverage of Saudi Arabia. Based on the limited information AMI provided the DOJ, they said AMI didn’t need to register.
  2. For the third time, Michael Cohen postpones a Congressional hearing, this time because of a recent surgery.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jerrold Nadler invites former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker back to clarify his testimony because his previous responses are contradicted by the evidence.
  2. The Senate confirms William Barr as our next Attorney General. Barr is sworn in and takes office. Interesting side notes:
    • Barr’s daughter and a son-in-law both work in the DOJ (which Barr will be heading), but are moving on to different jobs. Another son-in-law works in the National Security Division of the DOJ.
    • His daughter is going from being the director of Opioid Enforcement and Prevention Efforts to working in the Treasury’s financial crimes unit.
    • His son-in-law (married to a different daughter than above) is going from the Virginia U.S. attorney’s office to the White House counsel’s office. It’s not clear yet what his responsibilities will be.
  1. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg returns to the office for the first time since her surgery last December.

Healthcare:

  1. Teen children of parents who refused to vaccinate them are trying to get vaccines on their own without stepping on any parental landmines. This is difficult because parental consent is required in some states. These teens are also concerned for their younger siblings.
  2. Someone starts a fire at a Missouri Planned Parenthood Clinic and the FBI is investigating it as a hate crime.
  3. Even pediatricians who are publicly against vaccinations start to urge people to vaccinate their children in the midst of the latest measles outbreak. Even though these doc’s have long called measles a benign childhood disease, they know it can cause things like blindness, deafness, pneumonia, swelling in the brain, and even death. And new research says it makes you susceptible to other illnesses for years following an infection.
  4. Mississippi lawmakers pass a heartbeat abortion bill that could limit abortion after six weeks. It provides exceptions for cases where the mother’s life or health is threatened, but does not provide exceptions for incest or rape. The governor says he’ll sign it. A federal judge already found Mississippi’s previous 15-week ban from last year unconstitutional, so this is likely to be found the same.

International:

  1. A suicide bomber kills 27 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Iran blames the U.S. and Israel for the attack, but a militant Sunni Muslim group claims responsibility.
  2. The House passes a resolution to stop funding Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen. This would force the administration to pull U.S. troops out.
  3. The Trump administration misses its deadline to provide Congress with full information about the role the Saudi Crown Prince played in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. A Republican lawmaker had requested the information under the Magnitsky Act.
  4. The Munich Security Summit highlights the growing split between the U.S. and its European allies.
    • German Chancellor Angela Merkel receives a standing ovation for:
      • Defending multilateral institutions.
      • Pushing back against U.S. demands that Europe pull out of the JCPOA (Iran deal), adding that the agreement is a step toward containing Iran that will lead to more cooperation.
      • Criticizing unilateral moves by the Trump administration.
    • Vice President Mike Pence is greeted with silence during what he expected to be applause lines in his speech. In contrast to Merkel’s message of working together, Pence addressed a list of U.S. demands in our own interest.
    • Joe Biden also speaks at the summit and reassures our allies that this will pass, though allies say that the damage done will not be fixed anytime soon, no matter who succeeds Trump.
      • Allies agree that Trump is more a symptom than a cause of what’s going on in the U.S.
      • Allies also take it as a given that the liberal world order led by the U.S. has collapsed, and they wonder who will pick up the pieces.
  1. Mike Pompeo begins his time in Europe for the summit by visiting the authoritarian leader of Hungary, Viktor Orban. He then moves on to Slovakia, where the journalist who exposed their government corruption was murdered last year. Finally he meets up with Pence in Poland at a forum to rally the EU and MidEast against Iran. Europeans weren’t going for that, so they were forced to add sessions on Syria, Yemen, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
  2. Even though Trump is pulling our own troops out of Syria, he urges our allies to commit to sticking it out.
  3. One of the confusing things in Trump’s declaration of national emergency is when he says the Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace prize for his role is easing North Korea tensions. That turns out to be true, but it leaves out the fact that the U.S. government asked Abe to do so. It turns out that two Norwegian politicians nominated Trump for the same reason.
  4. The Trump administration has been accelerating a no-longer-secret program to cripple Iran’s military by sabotaging their weaponry. The program is also designed to isolate Iran’s economy. This program has been ongoing since the Bush (Jr.) administration.

Family Separation:

  1. The Trump administration still separates families at the border, removing young children from their parents even though a court ruled they could no longer do that. The administration formally ended the policy last summer. Annunciation House, one of many non-profit organizations near the border, receives one or two calls each week about new cases of separations (and that’s just in El Paso).

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. California Governor Gavin Newsom announces a withdrawal of National Reserve troops from the border. He’ll leave a couple hundred there to help CBP with trafficking problems, and the rest will be redeployed to help prevent wildfires.
  2. New Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar makes controversial comments about Israel, specifically around organized boycotts of Israeli companies and AIPAC funding of U.S. politicians. The Democratic House leadership rebukes Omar’s comments and call on her to apologize, which she later does.
    • Note, however, that pro-Israel lobbyists and donors spent more than $22 million on the last U.S. election cycle.
    • Trump calls on Omar to resign, saying we don’t have room for anti-Semitism. Which reminds me of that time when Trump said there were some fine people among the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us!” and “Blood and soil!”
    • Representative Kevin McCarthy calls Omar out for anti-Semitism. Which reminds me of the that time he deleted a tweet about three Jewish businessmen trying to buy our elections (Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg).
  1. Trump holds a rally in support of his wall at the border in El Paso, and Beto O’Rourke holds as counter rally down the street. Both draw similar sized crowds, despite Trump’s claims otherwise.
  2. The Senate unanimously passes a bill making lynching a federal crime. They’ve been trying to pass something like this for 100 years. The Senate passed it last year, but the House didn’t take it up.
  3. Tennessee joins the list of states that have introduced bills allowing foster and adoption agencies to discriminate against potential LGBTQ parents and other groups that don’t comply with their closely held religious beliefs.
  4. The ACLU files a lawsuit against CBP on behalf of two American women who say that a border patrol agent detained them in a small town near the Canadian border in Montana because they were speaking Spanish. The agent told them that Spanish is very unheard of up there.
  5. The Supreme Court agrees to hear a case about whether a citizenship question can be added to the 2020 Census.
  6. A white supremacist gets a life sentence for stabbing a black man with a sword in order to start a worldwide race war. Crazy people out there…

Climate/EPA:

  1. California adopts a plan to convert all city buses to electric by 2040 (and hopefully by 2035).
  2. Mitch McConnell says he’ll bring the Green New Deal to a Senate vote. It’s not likely to pass there, where Republicans hold the majority. Both parties think this will force members of the other party to make uncomfortable choices.
  3. The Senate passes a huge land conservation bill that:
    • Designates over a million acres for wilderness preservation in Utah, California, New Mexico, and Oregon.
    • Permanently reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which uses proceeds from offshore oil and gas drilling to fund onshore conservation efforts.
    • Protects millions of acres from mining and drilling.
    • Creates five new national monuments in Mississippi, California, Utah, and Kentucky.
    • Expands national parks in California and Georgia.
    • Protects some national parks in Montana and Washington from mining.
  1. The bill is likely to pass in the House as well. The bill has incredible bipartisan support, which makes me wonder how the administration was so successful at reducing the sizes of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante in order to allow mining and drilling.
    • And in case you were wondering, there are still ongoing lawsuits holding up development in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase.
  1. Trump wants the Tennessee Valley Authority to keep an aging coal plant open. The plant purchases coal from one of Trump’s leading donors, Robert Murray (of Murray Energy). This is one of two underused coal plants that the TVA is considering shutting down.
  2. The resolution that includes some funds for the border wall also creates a new national park: Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on Lake Michigan.
  3. A federal judge in North Dakota dismisses a lawsuit brought by Energy Transfer Partners against several DAPL protesters, including Greenpeace. It was a pretty crazy lawsuit, trying to make a RICO case against protesters.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The national debt surpasses $22 trillion for the first time. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it’ll keep growing and that by 2025 it will cost more to service the debt than what we’ll spend on defense.
  2. In evidence of a strong job market, employers posted a record 7.3 million job openings in December. There were just 6.3 million unemployed Americans.
  3. But then… retail sales fell dramatically in December—down 1.2% from November and the worst drop in nine years.
  4. Seven million Americans are delinquent on their car payments by 90 days or more. Previously the highest number was around six million and that was following the Great Recession. Economists say that this is a sign that even with low unemployment and a strong economy, low-income and working-class families are struggling to pay their bills.
  5. Following a series of teacher strikes across the country, teachers in Denver strike for better salaries, an end to exorbitant administrative salaries, and access to professional development.
  6. Ivanka Trump and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announce the creation of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board to help develop job training programs. The board is made up of prominent executive officers of major companies and it will work with the National Council for the American Worker, which was created last year.
  7. The House Finance Committee holds its first hearing of the session. It’s on the growing problem of homelessness in America.
  8. Trump signs an executive order to help increase development and regulation of artificial intelligence to make sure the U.S. stays ahead of the technology. The EO creates a new American Artificial Intelligence initiative that aims to improve education in the field, provide access to needed technology and tools, and promote international cooperation.
  9. As a result of the 2017 tax cuts, corporations spent $770 billion on stock buybacks in 2018. They expect to spend $940 billion on buybacks this year. In 2017, corporations spent about $150 million on employee compensation, mostly in the form of bonuses. No such employee perks have been announced yet for this year.
  10. Amazon had $11.2 billion in profits last year, but won’t pay any federal taxes this year. They didn’t pay last year either, and are actually looking at getting a $129 million rebate. It also looks like Netflix won’t pay any U.S. taxes either.

Elections:

  1. Trump downsizes two federal task forces that help safeguard our elections from foreign interference. The task forces were created in response to Russia’s meddling in our 2016 elections.
  2. A federal judge rules that a State Senate district in Mississippi is unfairly gerrymandered to dilute the African-American vote.
  3. We now have six women in the running for President of the United States. #YearOfTheWoman

Miscellaneous:

  1. Brock Long resigns his position as FEMA administrator. Peter Gaynor will serve as acting administrator.
  2. Sprint and T-Mobile come to Congress to defend their merger, and telecom companies end up getting an earful from lawmakers over spotty cell coverage in the U.S.
  3. The Office of Inspector General for the Department of Education issues a scathing report on the department’s handling of student loans. The report says that inconsistent oversight gives lenders a sense that noncompliance is OK. This lets lenders ignore the rules, cause harm to borrowers, and hold on to money they should be returned to the government.
  4. Remember how Trump’s doctor said last week that he’s in great health and will be healthy for the next two years and beyond? He forgot to mention that Trump also nudged up into the obese category.
  5. A gunman kills five people and wounds five police officers at the Henry Pratt Co. manufacturing plant near Chicago.
  6. Trump’s nomination to replace Nikki Haley as Ambassador to the UN withdraws her name from consideration. Heather Nauert, who IMO has done a bang up job as spokesperson for the State Department, cites concerns about her family as the reason.
  7. This is probably my favorite news tidbit of the week. Trump says he’d like to start a new 4th of July tradition… maybe a parade or gathering at the Capitol building. Except both are already a tradition.
  8. The White House security specialist who raised concerns about security clearance for certain administration officials (ahem, cough cough, Jared Kushner) asks for whistleblower protections.

Polls:

  1. 56% of Americans trust Mueller’s facts vs. 33% who trust Trump’s facts.
  2. 81% of Americans think Mueller’s report should be released in its entirety to the public.
  3. 33% of voters support another government shutdown in order to get Trump’s border wall; 60% oppose it (this was taken before the declaration of national emergency).
  4. The split for support of the wall is pretty even, with 47% of voters supporting it and 47% opposed.
  5. Trump’s approval rating bounced back up to it’s normal (around 41%) shortly after the shutdown ended (it tanked during the shutdown).

Trump’s Super Rambling Declaration of National Emergency Over the Wall

Posted on February 19, 2019 in Trump, Uncategorized

Trump gives a rambling speech where declares a national emergency so he can build his wall. One of the weirdest presidential speeches I’ve ever heard. I was going to include it in my weekly recap, but it got to be too long.

You can read an annotated version of the full transcript, as delivered, here, but below are some highlights.

  1. My favorite part is from 22:08 to 22:48 here. (And by the way, his Muslim ban as written did not survive the Supreme Court as he says here. The Supreme Court basically told him how he would need to change the ban to make it appear constitutional.)
  2. He says he’ll spend $8 billion on the wall.
  3. He starts out his emergency declaration for the wall by talking about China, trade, tariffs, the UK, Syria, North Korea, and what a great job he’s doing with the military and economy.
  4. He confuses journalists by talking about China and Russia living up to their requirements on the border (the Korean border?). And confuses them again by saying someone’s been taking advantage of the U.S. and billions have been paid to them. I think he might be talking about the UN.
  5. One of the reasons he gives for the national emergency is the influx of drugs, so he plans to siphon off money from existing drug programs.
  6. He says Democrats are lying when they say that drugs mostly come to the U.S. through ports of entry. He’s wrong, according to the DEA’s 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment (heroine, bottom of page 19; cocaine, pages 52-54; marijuana is the one drug that comes in between ports of entry and it’s also grown domestically).
  7. Trump brings up his debunked story of women being trafficked across the border with their mouths taped shut.
  8. He talks about the great job the military is doing at the border putting up concertina wire, ignoring that Nogales, AZ is suing to have it removed; just one border town that opposes it.
  9. Trump also plans to pull money from military construction funds, though they currently have a backlog of over $100 billion. Military families recently provided testimony about the deplorable living conditions on some of our military bases.
  10. He overstates the number of murders in Mexico by about 25%.
  11. And then again with the list of people killed by undocumented immigrants. Did he list the people killed by native-born mass shooters too? Um, no. No he didn’t.
  12. He apparently blames the influx of drugs on our own addictions. Actually, that might be correct.
  13. He seems to be pushing for the death penalty for drug dealers. Just a reminder, President Duterte of the Philippines is doing that, but with no due process.
  14. Then he talks about Japan, China, the stock market, and how the market would’ve tanked if Democrats had won in 2018 (counter to all economic indicators at the time).
  15. Trump sort of says that the reason he didn’t get the wall settled during the two years of Republican control is that he was too new to the job.
  16. He then admits that they haven’t really built any new “wall” but have been renovating existing “wall” (which is really “fence”). But then he later says he’s built a lot of wall. He has a lot of money.
  17. And finally he brings up MS-13, as usual.
  18. Trump repeatedly criticized Obama for executive overreach, but when a journalist calls him out on that after the speech, Trump says he went through Congress for this. Huh?
  19. Trump says this is all about the 2020 elections. So it’s not an emergency or it is?
  20. He blasts the immigration lottery, catch-and-release (another way to phrase it in such a way as to dehumanize migrants) and chain migration (which is how many of us got here).
  21. He admits to getting information on immigration from Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.
  22. Trump brings up a poll by outlier Rasmussen that shows his approval at 52% (his aggregate is just under 41%).
  23. He comments on the large number of undocumented immigrants in our federal prisons, ignoring the fact that just the condition of being here illegally can land you in federal prison. Plus, federal inmates make up a very small percent of our overall prison population.
  24. He ignores a reporter who says this: “I’m asking you to clarify where you get your numbers, because most of the DEA crime reporting statistics that we see show that drugs are coming across at the ports of entry, that illegal immigration is down and that the violence is down.” Refer to the DEA report linked above if you want to find out who’s right.
  25. He says that Obama told him he was close to starting a war with North Korea. This sounds pretty dubious.
  26. Trump says that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work with North Korea. He doesn’t mention that the U.S. asked Abe to do that.

Week 107 in Trump

Posted on February 12, 2019 in Politics, Trump

In honor of the Green New Deal, let’s talk climate change. 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record, behind 2015, 2016, and 2017. This could lead some to think things are cooling down again; but if you look at the graph above, you’ll see many spikes followed by a few cooler years. But the trend is still up. Here’s some food for thought:

  • There were 14 weather and climate disasters in the U.S. in 2018 that cost $1 billion or more each.
  • Climate change and natural disasters cost the U.S. over $91 billion and 247 human lives in 2018.
  • 73% of Americans believe that climate change is real. That’s up 10 points from just three years ago.
  • The Trump administration concludes in the National Climate Assessment that global warming is “transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us.”
  • So climate change is no longer something we have to look forward to. It’s here now.
  • Global emissions are at their highest level.

Will the Green New Deal fix any of this? Time will tell.

Here’s what happened in politics last week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Correction: For several weeks I’ve been referring to Trump’s nominee for Attorney General as Andrew Barr. It’s actually William Barr.

State of the Union:

  1. Trump gives his “unifying” State of the Union address, but beforehand he lunches with a group of television anchors where he blasts a host of Democratic politicians.
  2. I won’t get into the whole address, but a few highlights are below. Here’s the full text, with the New York Times annotations.
    • He starts with a unifying message, but moves into some partisan issues like the Mueller investigation, the border wall, and late-term abortion.
    • He starts out fairly truthful, but the false statements increase as he goes on. I find this odd, because there’s no reason to fudge his economic numbers right now.
    • His two main points are the strong economy and the border crisis that he says necessitates the wall.
    • He says the economy will crash if the Russia investigations continue or if Congress blocks the withdrawal of troops from Syria.
    • He says there can’t be any legislation as long as there are also investigations.
    • He says he’ll end the HIV epidemic in the U.S. by 2030 and will include paid family leave in his budget.
    • He notes the increase in women in the workforce and in Congress, which elicits a huge response from the Congressional women, many of whom dressed in suffragette white.
  1. Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic candidate for Governor in Georgia, delivers the Democratic response. Her focus is voter rights.

Border Wall/Shutdown:

  1. The Trump administration continues to issue new waivers on environmental impact reviews to replace and add fencing at the border.
  2. The National Butterfly Center files an emergency restraining order against constructing the wall across their reserve.
  3. Mick Mulvaney blames Democrats for refusing to fund the wall… which Republicans have also refused to do for two years.
  4. Negotiations over border security are close to agreement, with funding for new technology, more border patrol agents, and fencing in certain border areas. Border security would be funded at around $2 billion, which Trump says he’ll accept. There’s no mention of a wall.
  5. And then what happened?? Budget negotiations to avoid another government shutdown are stalled. Again. We have until Friday to come to an agreement.
  6. And now they’re on track again.

Russia:

  1. Congress delays Michael Cohen’s testimony until February 28 “in the interest of the investigation.”
  2. Federal prosecutors in New York subpoena documents from Trump’s inaugural committee. They’re looking for info about donors (including foreign donors), vendors, contractors, payments, and bank accounts.
    • The subpoena includes documents related to fundraising activities. Rick Gates, who’s already pled guilty in a case related to Paul Manafort, headed up Trump’s fundraising operation.
  1. Federal prosecutors in New York request interviews with senior members of the Trump Organization.
  2. Adam Schiff, the new Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, announces new hearings into whether Russia or any other foreign government has leverage over the current administration, potential obstruction into investigations, and whether the administration has tried to influence U.S. policy in favor of foreign interests.
  3. The House Intelligence Committee sends Mueller transcripts of previous committee interviews in the Russia investigation. They had been unable to comply with Mueller’s request until Republicans finally seated all their members on the committee.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The South Dakota U.S. Attorney indicts Paul Erickson on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. Erickson was dating Maria Butina and helped her get access to the NRA and to political operatives in the GOP. These charges are unrelated to Butina’s espionage charges—it seems he was just bilking everyday people out of their money.
  2. The House Ways and Means Committee holds their first hearing on requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns. The committee plans to request Trump’s tax returns under an IRS provision that allows it.
  3. A federal judge orders the DOJ to release redacted versions of the search warrant for Michael Cohen’s home and office.
  4. This story oh-so-weirdly fits in this section. Jeff Bezos accuses American Media, Inc. (parent company of the National Enquirer) of trying to extort and blackmail him.
    • AMI releases texts that show Bezos was cheating on his wife.
    • So Bezos starts his own investigation into how AMI got his texts. He suggests it was politically motivated, but is also looking at his mistress’s brother as the culprit.
    • Bezos says AMI threatened to release nude photos and racy texts between him and his mistress if he didn’t drop his investigation.
  1. Some background:
    • Bezo’s Washington Post not only employed Jamal Khashoggi but has been relentless in reporting on the incident. AMI has been talking with Saudi Arabian financiers to help shore up their business.
    • AMI entered into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors last year in which they agreed to commit “no crimes whatsoever” for three years.
    • So now federal prosecutors are once again investigating AMI, this time to determine whether they violated the cooperation agreement by committing a crime.
  1. Federal prosecutors are investigating three major lobbying firms to determine if they should’ve been registered as foreign agents for their work with Paul Manafort for the former president of Ukraine.
    • This is major because of the high-profile players involved, both Democrat and Republican.
    • It has lobbyists anxious because the investigation underscores the crackdown on lobbyists who have lucrative deals with foreign entities.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The number of federal appeals court judges nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate is more than any other president at this point in their term, with 30 so far.
  2. Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker testifies to the House Judiciary Committee. He says he hasn’t spoken to Trump about Mueller’s investigation. Not surprisingly, it was another nutty hearing with lots of grandstanding.
    • While he’s being questioned by the committee Chair (Jerry Nadler), Whitaker tells the Nadler that his five minutes are up.
    • Whitaker didn’t want to testify without a guarantee that he wouldn’t be subpoenaed. He testified anyway.
  1. Ruth Bader Ginsburg makes her first public appearance after her recovery from surgery.
  2. Missouri’s Supreme Court orders new limits on how long a suspect can be held without a hearing and the amount of cash bail they can be charged. The effects of the cash bail system are onerous and lasting, especially for low-income people.
  3. William Barr makes it through the Senate Judiciary Committee so now the full Senate can vote on his nomination to Attorney General.

Healthcare:

  1. The Supreme Court temporarily blocks a new Louisiana law that placed tight restrictions on clinics that perform abortions. If left in place, the restrictions will close most abortion clinics in Louisiana.
  2. Though Trump pledges to stop the HIV epidemic in the U.S. within ten years, already in his term he’s cut almost $1 billion in global funding to fight HIV/AIDS, he’s rolled back patient protections for people with [the pre-existing condition of] HIV, and has cut health benefits for the LGBTQ community that were put in place under Obama.
  3. Ironically, just this week the Department of Heath and Human Services announces new proposals that would allow medical practitioners to withhold treatment based on closely held religious or moral beliefs, which is likely to affect the LGBTQ community.
  4. Utah’s State Senate passes a bill to override the vote of their residents and replace the Medicaid expansion plan that voters approved last November. According to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities, the voters’ plan would add coverage for about 150,000 low-income residents; the Senate plan would add coverage for about 100,000 and would cost $50 million more in just the first two years. Idaho’s GOP legislature is trying something similar. Maine’s Governor did the same a year ago.
  5. The Massachusetts lawsuit against Purdue Pharma alleges that the company devised a strategy to become the end-to-end provider of pain relief. The plan, called Project Tango, was that they’d sell both addictive opioids AND the drugs to treat the addiction.
  6. The board members of Purdue Pharma, mostly members of the Sackler family, netted over $4 billion in profits in the process.

International:

  1. Gen. Joseph Votel, head of US Central Command (in the MidEast), testifies that Trump didn’t consult with him before making the decision to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan.
  2. A new report from the Pentagon’s Inspector General asserts that ISIS will likely take back lost territory if the US withdraws from Syria. ISIS will also use our withdrawal as part of a PR campaign declaring victory against us.
  3. Trump says that officials will soon announce that we have taken back 100% of the ISIS-claimed lands in Syria and Iraq. ISIS still holds territory in Afghanistan, Libya, Africa, and the Sinai.
    • His plan is to remove all U.S. troops from Syria by the end of April, and to move a couple hundred troops from Syria to Iraq to keep an eye on Iran.
  1. The Trump administration refuses to release a report to Congress on whether Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince was responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
  2. Rep. Michael McCaul (TX), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, releases a statement criticizing the administration’s handling of Saudi Arabia and the Khashoggi murder. He says they failed to meet the requirements of the Magnitsky Act and calls on them to comply.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House holds its first gun violence hearing in eight years. What’s happened in those eight years? The Seal Beach salon shooting, Aurora theater shooting, the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting, the Empire State Building shooting, the Sandy Hook shooting, the Washington Navy Yard shooting, the Charleston church shooting, the Waco motorcycle shootout, the Harris County shooting, the Roseburg shooting, the San Bernardino terror attacks, the Pulse nightclub shooting, the Dallas police shooting, the Mississippi shooting, the Plano football shooting, the Las Vegas shooting, the Sutherland Springs church shooting, the Parkland school shooting, the Santa Fe school shooting, the Pittsburg synagogue shooting, and the Thousand Oaks country bar shooting.
    • These are just the ones where eight or more people died (and I think I missed a few).
    • There’ve been 31 mass shootings so far this year (defined as 4 or more people shot in one incident).
    • There were 323 mass shootings in 2018.
  1. During the gun violence hearing, Freedom Caucus member Matt Gaetz (R-FL) tries to switch the conversation to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. Two fathers of murdered Parkland children protest. So Gaetz tries to have them thrown out of the hearing.
    • For the record, mass shootings by undocumented immigrants are extremely rare. In fact, I haven’t been able to find one conviction yet, but I’m still looking.
  1. The House Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change holds the first hearing on climate change in over five years. During those five years, the military has called climate change one of our greatest national security threats.

Family Separation:

  1. A senior Health and Human Services official tells the House Energy and Commerce Committee that he warned three Trump appointees about the health risks of their plan to separate migrant families at the border. He first learned of the plan in February of 2017.
    • Now the administration says that taking children away from their sponsors to reunite them with their families would be too traumatic. You know what’s really traumatic? Being taken away from your family in the first place!
    • The HHS Deputy Director of Refugee Resettlement says this about why kids shouldn’t be removed from their sponsors:
      “Disrupting the family relationship is not a recommended child welfare practice.”
      I don’t even know how to dissemble that. These people are monsters.
    • The administration says it would be impossible to find all the separated children because it would be too hard and cost too much.
  1. Currently, there are thousands of children separated from their families (we’ll never know exactly how many because they kept no records), and these children might not ever be returned. Can you imagine that? How far would you go to get your child back?

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The governor of New Mexico, Lujan Grisham, orders a withdrawal of most of the National Guard troops deployed at New Mexico’s southern border. She says they’re only here on a “charade of border fear-mongering” by Trump.
  2. Our troops at the border have been stringing concertina wire just along the top of existing fencing, but now they’re also putting it along the entire height in some areas.
    • Nogales, Arizona adopts a resolution that condemns using concertina wire as a deterrent at the border. They say it’s an indiscriminate use of lethal force, and demand that it be removed.
    • The mayor of Nogales sits down with CBP officers to discuss why he wasn’t notified this was going to happen. CBP says there are rapists, murderers, drug dealers, and lots of fence jumpers. This was news to the police chief.
  1. Even though CBP is one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the world, they are only able to process about 10 asylum seekers a day at each port of entry. With 5,100 waiting in Tijuana alone, people could be stuck there until summer.
    • Mexican border cities like Tijuana don’t have the resources to handle the influx, which is creating dangerous conditions. American relief agencies are down there helping out, so no matter how you look at it, Americans are paying for this.
    • In Tijuana, they moved the migrant camps so far from the border that they can’t walk there—it’s a 30-minute drive.
    • Several lawsuits are pending against CBP because they’re illegally turning away asylum seekers at ports of entry.
  1. There are seven lawsuits against the administration for their attempts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. In one case, a federal judge blocked the question and that case is awaiting Supreme Court consideration. In another case, a district judge declined to block the question.
  2. Tennessee legislators introduce the Natural Marriage Defense Act again. It’s failed twice before, and would cost the state around $9 billion. The act would void the Supreme Court decision to allow gay couples to marry.
  3. Tampa has a ban on gay conversion therapy for minors, but a judge rules that it violates the first amendment rights of therapists.
  4. A federal judge says the Trump administration is discriminating against Puerto Ricans and violating their equal protection rights.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ed Markey (D-MA) announce the outline for their Green New Deal. It’s vague on details but calls for a 10-year national shift away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy, upgrading buildings to be more energy efficient, working with farmers to reduce methane gases, and overhauling our transportation systems (including more high-speed trains and fewer planes).
  2. Trump nominates David Bernhardt to succeed Ryan Zinke as Secretary of the Interior. Bernhardt is currently the deputy chief, and is a former oil lobbyist.
  3. The EPA appoints several new Science Advisory Board members. One is a climate change denier, one denies the dangers of formaldehyde, one criticizes efforts to minimize radiation leaks at nuclear facilities, and one is skeptical about the dangers of lead to children.
  4. 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record.
  5. A new assessment says that at least a third of the Himalayan ice cap will melt by 2100 if we curb emissions now. If we don’t, two-thirds will melt.
  6. Scientists discover a growing cavity about 2/3 the size of Manhattan in a West Antarctic glacier. Most of that ice has melted in the past three years.
  7. Michigan’s governor becomes the 20th to join the U.S. Climate Alliance (New Mexico and Illinois also recently joined).

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump nominates David Malpass to lead the World Bank’s board. Malpass is an outspoken critic of the agency who says it creates “mountains of debt without solving problems.”
  2. The GOP promised higher paychecks as a result of their 2017 tax reform bill, so the Trump administration pressured the IRS to change withholding rules so that less was taken out of paychecks rather than more. This was especially important to them in the run-up to the midterm elections. Now, people are surprised to find out they owe more at the end of the year than expected or that they’re getting a smaller refund. Because of all the obfuscation, I can’t tell yet whether taxes went up or down for most people.
  3. The 30-year-old founder and CEO of Quadriga dies, taking his password with him. Around $137 million in cryptocurrencies are frozen and can’t be accessed. The founder’s poor widow has been searching for the password to repay the 115,000 affected people.
  4. Trump tells upstate New York residents who are unhappy with the local economy to move somewhere else.
    • New York officials say tax collections are down about 50%, and that the GOP tax plan hit New York hard because of the limits on SALT deductions.
    • Trump says those limits shouldn’t hurt upstate New York because it only affects the wealthy. Reporters have to clarify for him the effects of limiting SALT deductions.
  1. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposes weakening the rules that protect consumers from payday lenders. Just a reminder, the APR on these loans can end up being more than 1,000%.

Elections:

  1. The Clark County Commission appoints two women to vacant state Assembly seats, making Nevada the first state to have a majority-female legislature.
  2. A federal judiciary panel denies Ohio their request to delay a gerrymandering lawsuit that could force them to redraw their districts by 2020.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Only 54% of Trump’s civilian executive branch nominees have been confirmed. On top of that, these are all only acting positions: Chief of Staff, Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Interior, Office and Management and Budget director, and EPA Administrator. The administration has yet to fill more than half of the positions in the Departments of Labor, Justice, and Interior.
  2. Ugh. What’s going on in Virginia? We have racist photos of the Governor, two accusations of sexual assault against the Lt. Governor, and the Attorney General said he dressed up as his favorite rap artist in the 80s and darkened his skin. And then it turns out the Majority Leader in the State Senate was the editor of a yearbook that contained a bunch of racist material. No one’s stepped down yet. Calls for Governor Northam’s resignation seem to be waning, calls for Lt. Governor Fairfax to resign are still strong, but I haven’t heard calls for Attorney General Herring’s resignation.
  3. The Trump administration issues new rules on exporting weapons outside the U.S., making it easier to sell semi-automatic weapons, flamethrowers, and grenades, among others. These changes were originally considered under Obama, but were shelved after the Sandy Hook shootings.
  4. A federal court rules against Ajit Pai and the FCC in their attempt to gut the Lifeline program, which brings high-speed internet to rural areas.
  5. Where does Trump find these guys? Trump’s doctor performs a physical and writes a letter that concludes with “I am happy to announce the President of the United States is in very good health and I anticipate he will remain so for the duration of his presidency, and beyond.” This leads doctors across the country to wonder where they can get training in this kind of predictive medicine.
    • Last year his [different] doctor said he has incredible genes.
  1. In the midst of a polar vortex last week, the heat and electricity goes out at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. It doesn’t get turned back on until crowds protest outside the center in the freezing cold for days.
  2. And what’s wrong with sports fans? Police arrest over 30 people for sex trafficking during the Super Bowl in Atlanta. They also rescue four victims.
  3. We receive another leak of Trump’s schedule. Mick Mulvaney is working hard to root out the leaker(s).
  4. So far, Trump has appointed eight people to senior administration positions who are or were members at Mar-a-Lago.

Polls:

  1. 34% of Americans think it’s OK to wear blackface as part of a costume.

Week 106 in Trump

Posted on February 5, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Trump gave two interviews this week, one seemingly spur of the moment to the New York Times and one on Face The Nation the day of the Super Bowl. I’m not going to talk about them here, because I feel we didn’t hear much that was new. Here are links to each, in case you’re interested: New York Times and Face The Nation.

Here’s what happened in politics last week…

Border Wall/Shutdown:

  1. Nancy Pelosi invites Trump to give his State of the Union address on the House floor on Tuesday, February 5, on the floor of the House.
  2. Trump continues to push the wall in public, but is staying out of the congressional negotiations on a border security plan.
  3. Trump says there must be funding for a wall, Pelosi says there won’t be funding for a wall, and the White House is still preparing a declaration of national emergency.
  4. Despite all the work to make the wall sound like a physical barrier or a fence and not a wall, Trump keeps reiterating that a WALL is a WALL.
  5. If you remember, last year the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could bypass environmental and impact studies for the border wall. Now, bulldozers are lined up outside the National Butterfly Center in Texas, waiting to destroy the protected habitat.
    • The habitat is home to 240 varieties of butterflies and 300 species of birds, and most of the areas people come to see will be behind the wall.
    • The wall here is envisioned to be 30 feet tall and made of concrete and steel, with a 150 foot enforcement zone in which all vegetation will be cleared.
    • CBP maps show that the construction would cut through the National Butterfly Center, a state park, and a 100-year-old Catholic church.
    • Legal action is still pending on all this.
  1. Last year, the Republican-held Congress required that CBP not build fencing in the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, but didn’t do the same for the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. So it’s expected that the wall will also cut through there.
  2. You know why the government can override environmental regulations here? Because of laws created after 9/11. The terrorists are winning.

Russia:

  1. Even though Trump canceled a planned meeting with Putin at the G20 in Buenos Aires last year after Russia opened fire on Ukraine naval ships, it turns out they did have a brief meeting with only Melania and Putin’s interpreter in attendance. Regardless of the innocence of this meeting, the lack of White House staff allowed the Russian press to spin it in Russia’s favor.
  2. Roger Stone pleads not guilty to all seven counts on which he’s charged—witness tampering, obstruction, and making false statements.
  3. After sanctions are lifted against Oleg Deripaska’s businesses, one of Deripaska’s companies appoints Christopher Burnham, a member of Trump’s transition team in the State Department, to their board of directors.
  4. A Kremlin-backed scheme to spread disinformation about the Mueller investigation fails because it was too farfetched. They claimed to have obtained all of Mueller’s database regarding the Russia investigation, but had only obtained what was revealed in court through a request for discovery by Russian company Concord. The trove also included fake documents to make it look like Mueller’s team is doing sloppy work.
  5. A district judge considers implementing a gag order on Roger Stone like she did with Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Her reason: “This is a criminal proceeding and not a public relations campaign.”
  6. The Trump administration announces they’re pulling the U.S. out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia because Russia isn’t holding up their end of the deal. (Funny. I just realized that’s always the case when Trump pulls out of an agreement. He thinks everyone is using the U.S.)
    • The treaty is regarded as a crucial moment for arms control during the Cold War. It got rid of over 2,600 missiles, and is key to Europe’s security strategy.
    • Putin says that’s fine, and pulls Russia out of the treaty in response. So now Russia can design new previously banned weapons. He also says Russia won’t start any more talks on nuclear arms control.
    • China criticizes the moves saying they’re bad for global security. China also says they wouldn’t join an expanded version of the treaty themselves, so there you are.
  1. Senate investigators conclude that the phone calls Donald Trump, Jr. made to a blocked number before and after the 2016 Trump Tower meeting were not to his father, but instead were to long-time business associates.
  2. The NRA denies they played an official role in a 2015 trip to Moscow to meet with Russian nationals. Emails and photos say otherwise. Maria Butina helped them with their travel arrangements and organized meetings with Kremlin officials.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Mike Pence has said he was unaware of Michael Flynn’s ties to Turkey and working as a foreign lobbyist. Now we learn that Elijah Cummings sent a letter to Pence about Mike Flynn during the transition in November of 2016. Cummings says he received a receipt confirming the transition team received the letter, so either Pence knew about Flynn, or his transition team kept it from him.
  2. Facebook says they’ve removed as many as 2.8 billion fake accounts over the past year.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Senate Judiciary Committee postpones the hearing for Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, William Barr, because of Democrats’ concerns over how he’ll handle Mueller’s investigation.
  2. A recent poll shows Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the most popular Supreme Court justice currently seated on the bench. Surprisingly—22% of respondents couldn’t name one justice sitting on the court.

Healthcare:

  1. A new VA policy allows veterans to choose a private physician if they have to drive more than a half hour to get to a VA facility. Previously, the rule was 40 miles.

International:

  1. The Trump administration places sanctions against Venezuela to pressure Maduro to step down.
  2. We learn from John Bolton inadvertently exposing notes on a legal pad ON LIVE TV that the administration is thinking about sending 5,000 troops to Colombia (which neighbors Venezuela). Colombia’s government says they don’t know what the note means.
  3. The U.S. government sends humanitarian assistance to Venezuela through USAID.
  4. The U.S. indicts major Chinese tech company Huawei on charges of lying to government officials and to business partners in an alleged scheme to pay employees to steal trade secrets. The indictment claims that:
    • Huawei’s founder and his daughter (the company’s CFO) lied to the FBI about dealing with Iran (to work around sanctions).
    • Employees received bonuses for stealing trade secrets.
  1. The UK’s House of Commons narrowly votes to have Theresa May renegotiate the Irish border issue with the EU as part of the Brexit agreement.
  2. The EU says there’s no more negotiating. Take it or leave it. No pun intended.
  3. Nissan cancels their plans to start production of a new car model in Britain, citing uncertainties around Brexit as a reason.
  4. The Senate passes an amendment to state opposition to Trump’s decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan. It passes with bipartisan approval (68 to 23)
  5. U.S. Intelligence officials testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in their annual worldwide threats hearing. Their testimony contradicts almost everything Trump says about national security. Here’s how:
    • Trump says North Korea isn’t a nuclear threat anymore.
      Intelligence officials say North Korea likely won’t give up their nuclear weapons.
    • Trump says Russia might not have meddled in our 2016 elections.
      Intelligence officials say Russia was so successful at it that they continued it in 2018 and will continue it into 2020.       They say this is our second most pressing challenge right behind cybersecurity.
    • Trump says a wall on our southern border is the most pressing security need (a national emergency even).
      Intelligence officials didn’t even mention that.
    • Trump says ISIS has been defeated.
      Intelligence officials say the group is weakened, but       it’s also returned to its “guerrilla warfare roots.”
    • Trump says Iran is continuing to build nuclear weapons.
      Intelligence officials say Iran is still in compliance with the JPOA, so is not building nuclear weapons.
    • Trump mocks climate change and calls it a hoax.
      Intelligence officials say it’s one of our greatest national and global security threats.
  1. In response, Trump trashes his intelligence leaders in a series of tweets, suggesting they should go back to school. But after they all meet, Trump says they’re more in agreement than it seems.
  2. One area of agreement between Trump and his intelligence officers is China, which both think is a major threat. But Trump thinks the threat is economic (trade) while intelligence officials think the threat is military and corporate espionage. They also say China is using cyber attacks to influence U.S. elections. (Dammit China and Russia! Stay out of our business.)
  3. Senior intelligence briefers say Trump is a danger to American security with his stubborn disregard for their security assessments. Two briefers say they’ve been warned not to give Trump information that contradicts his public stances because it makes him angry.
  4. Trump says that he’s free to ignore his intelligence officials and instead rely on his own beliefs. Which is technically true, but maybe not the most informed path. Trump also says he doesn’t want intelligence officials sharing their views with Congress.
  5. One major thing from the hearings that potentially got lost in all the conflict is the assessment that China and Russia are more closely aligned than at any time since the 1950s.
  6. The UK, France, and Germany form a new company to help them get around Trump’s Iran sanctions. The new company would avoid the U.S. banking system and thus would not be subject to the sanctions.

Family Separation:

  1. In a lawsuit launched by ACLU against ICE over family separations at the border, ICE files documents that not don’t deny that there are probably thousands more separated kids than initially reported. The filings also show that the administration thinks it would take too long to find all the people separated from their families because there was never any tracking system.
    • Of note, I see lawsuit filings over family separations in March of 2018, so family separations were happening long before Jeff Sessions announced it as policy.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Decades ago, Muslims settled in an area they called Holy Islamberg in upstate New York to get away from the dangers and temptations of the city. Now, conspiracy theorists and anti-Muslim groups smear the town as dangerous extremists, a jihadist training camp, a terrorist sleeper cell. Why is this news now? Because this week, police arrest four young men who were plotting an attack on the town. They confiscate 23 guns. This is the second recent threat against the town that police have thwarted in recent years.
  2. While Trump keeps pounding on the need for better border security, CPB and ICE haven’t really hired many new agents. Trump signed an order two years ago calling for 5,000 new CPB agents and 10,000 new ICE officers, but there hasn’t been an increase in numbers (for several reasons—the vetting and training processes, an inability to justify the hiring surge, high attrition rates, and so on).
  3. A Maryland State’s Attorney says her office will stop prosecuting marijuana possession regardless of quantity or prior crimes. If you’re wondering why this falls under “Discrimination,” check out the second paragraph here to see the real reason more African Americans than Caucasians are in jail for marijuana possession when both groups use pot at roughly the same rate.
  4. We’re not the only country arguing over asylum policies. In the Netherlands, police aren’t allowed to enter a church during an ongoing service to carry out police business. So a church there held a 24/7 prayer service for 97 days to protect one family from being deported. The service ends this week when the government agrees to a rule change that gives asylum seekers another chance.
  5. The U.S. flags the passports of at least two activists and two journalists working with the asylum seekers at the border. All four are detained by Mexican authorities and denied entry into the country. One resides in Tijuana, but is a U.S. citizen. She was denied access to her 10-month-old son, who was in Tijuana at the time. Another was separated from her husband and daughter while she was questioned. Her daughter sobbed so hard they let them stay in the interrogation room together.
  6. A day after Virginia Governor Ralph Northam ignites pro-life anger by describing in medical and practical terms what happens with a non-viable birth, his college yearbook page surfaces showing a picture of a man in blackface and a man in a KKK costume.
    • Northam take responsibility and apologizes, and that’s not enough—Democrats call for him to resign. Then he says doesn’t think it’s him and says he won’t resign. He does admit to using shoe polish on his face in a Michael Jackson imitation contest.
    • Should he resign, Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax, who is African American, would become governor. But the same site that published Northam’s yearbook also published information about claims of sexual assault against Fairfax. Fairfax says the sexual encounter in 2004 was consensual.
  1. The Department of Health and Human Services changes its rules so that religious foster-care and adoption agencies can discriminate against people they feel don’t agree with their religious teachings.
    • South Carolina’s governor previously signed an executive order that would allow Miracle Hill Ministries to discriminate, but the HHS rule overrode the governor’s EO. So HHS changed their rules.
    • Miracle Hill has previously refused to work with Jewish people and same-sex couples. This all goes back to the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision that supports exemptions to equality guidelines when they go against an organizations closely held religious beliefs.
  1. The Pentagon plans to send 3,500 additional troops to the southern border to help build and reinforce 160 miles of concertina wire fencing.
  2. Undercover Homeland Security agents end a sting operation where they created a fake university to snare foreign nationals who then enrolled in order to get or maintain student visas. DHS hired people to recruit the foreign citizens to enroll in the university. The sting results in the arrest of eight recruiters and could result in the deportation of dozens of “students.”

Climate/EPA:

  1. Another polar vortex hits the Midwest, and Trump wonders where that global warming is when you need it. Some researchers say global warming causes the polar vortex, but not all are convinced. The important thing to remember here is that weather is not the same thing as climate.
  2. The EPA says they won’t set limits on the amounts of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) allowed in our drinking water. Both are linked to cancer, thyroid disease, and immune issues.
  3. Compared to last year, there are 30 fewer lawmakers who are skeptical of any part of climate change than last year. That includes whether climate change is happening, whether it’s a danger, and whether it’s manmade. Deniers make up nearly 30% of Congress, and between them they’ve averaged around a half million in donations from the fossil fuel industry.
  4. France announces a new goal to double their renewable energy capacity within 10 years.
  5. The Bureau of Land Managements moves forward with their sales of oil and gas leases near sacred Native American sites, including the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Processing those energy leases is one thing that didn’t slow down during the shutdown.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The government won’t guarantee that over 1,000,000 federal contractors will receive any back pay from the shutdown, and these are already some of the lowest paid government workers (like janitors, guards, cooks, and so on).
  2. The Senate introduces a plan to repeal the estate tax entirely. Currently, no estate tax is paid for the first $22 million of an inherited estate.
  3. Foxconn announces changes to the Wisconsin campus that Paul Ryan worked so hard to secure. They’re moving away from manufacturing and instead will be a research center.
  4. The House passes a 2.6% pay raise for federal civilian workers. In December, Trump froze any raises for non-military federal workers.
  5. Rutger Bregman, who’s written about history, philosophy, and economics, speaks at Davos and lambasts the wealthy audience for not being willing to talk about taxes, which he says is the only way we know to fight the growing inequality. He says “It feels like I’m at a firefighters conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water.”
    • Ken Goldman, former CFO of Yahoo, denounces the speakers on the forum saying it was one-sided and demanding answers besides higher taxes (and sort of proving the point).
    • Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of Oxfam International, counters Goldman by talking about the lack of dignity in certain jobs and the powerlessness of workers, including those in the U.S. that have brought our unemployment so low.
  1. The economy added 304,000 new jobs last month, but the unemployment rate bumped up to 4%. This could be because people who were furloughed at the time might have reported (mistakenly) that they were unemployed.
  2. Government data shows that new orders for U.S. goods dropped in October and November last year, which suggests a slowdown in manufacturing. A new survey indicates things might’ve picked up again a bit in January.

Elections:

  1. Another state lawmaker switches party from Republican to Democrat. This time it’s New Jersey State Senator Dawn Addiego, who says “the party which once echoed the vision of Ronald Reagan no longer exists.”
  2. In recent weeks Texas flagged 95,000 registered voters for citizenship reviews. Now they’re saying that a substantial number of those flagged shouldn’t have been, and they’re working to remove those names. Apparently the Secretary of State neglected to check how many of these people had become citizens since last applying for a driver license as a non-citizen.
    • The list went back to drivers licenses issued in 1996.
    • Most of those flagged are Latino (shocking, I know).
    • The governor of Texas hasn’t stopped the operation from moving forward despite the errors.
    • The media spread headlines supporting Trump’s accusations of massive voter fraud, which has now turned out to not be the case.
  1. Mitch McConnell criticizes the House Democrats’ bills to make Election Day a federal holiday. He calls it a power grab. And he’s right. When everyone can vote, it’s a power grab by the people 😉

Miscellaneous:

  1. The first tornado in 80 years hits Havana, Cuba.
  2. The Pentagon drafts plans to create a space force under the Air Force rather than as a fully independent military branch as initially envisioned.
  3. A jury awards Rand Paul nearly $8,000 in medical costs, $200,000 for pain and suffering, and another $375,000 in punitive damages from when his neighbor attacked him at his home in 2017.
  4. Trump appoints Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson to be his chief medical adviser. Jackson was once Trump’s nominee for VA secretary, but couldn’t get through the confirmation process due to misconduct allegations. Trump also pushes for Jackson to receive his second star, but the previous allegations against him are still under investigation.
  5. There are three more mass shootings this week in Chicago, San Diego, and Houston. In total, they leave four dead and 13 injured.
  6. A White House staffer leaks three months worth of Trump’s schedules, which show an inordinate amount of time for “Executive Time.” I’m not going to report too much here because who knows what Executive Time actually is.
  7. Like another powerful woman before her (who I won’t name), Nikki Haley charges $200,000 to give speeches.

Polls:

  1. The U.S. falls from 16th to 22nd in the Corruption Perceptions Index (meaning we’re perceived as being more corrupt this year than last year).

Things Politicians Say:

“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president, and that’s why he’s there.”

~Sarah Huckabee Sanders to CBN’s David Brody and Jennifer Wishon

Week 105 in Trump

Posted on January 28, 2019 in Politics, Trump

The shutdown has finally come to an end, at least for now; but furloughed workers and the companies they owe will take some time to recover. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this past month cost us $11 billion, $3 billion of which we won’t make back. A complete waste of time and energy. Let’s get back to the business of governing and fixing the problems of the world.

Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. The new Democratic governor of Maine makes good on her promise to expand Medicaid by signing an executive order that should give healthcare coverage to around 70,000 Mainers. Even though voters approved Medicaid expansion over a year ago, former governor Paul LePage refused to implement it.
  2. Also, missed from last year: The DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women changed its definition of domestic violence. The definition was expanded under Obama and vetted by domestic violence experts. The new definition excludes psychological, mental, and emotional abuse; only felony acts can now be considered domestic violence.

Border Wall/Shutdown:

  1. Nancy Pelosi sends Trump a letter saying she’s postponing his State of the Union address due to security concerns from the government shutdown. Trump says he’ll do it anyway… until someone tells him that Pelosi has to invite him and she can uninvited him.
    • Trump says he’ll find another venue for it, possibly the Senate or maybe a rally. And then he says he’ll postpone it until after the shutdown.
  1. Meanwhile, both sides in both chambers of Congress work on deals to end the shutdown.
  2. The House Ways and Means Committee cancels a hearing on how the shutdown is affecting American taxpayers because Steve Mnuchin refuses to appear.
  3. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross says he doesn’t understand why furloughed and unpaid federal workers are using food banks. I guess when you have over $700 million, something like this can be hard to understand.
    • Ross says “There’s no reason why some institution wouldn’t be willing to lend.” His own department’s credit union charges federal workers 9% interest on emergency loans, while other lending institutions and cities begin offering them interest-free loans.
    • Because the Trump administration rescinded Obama’s payday lending regulations, the annual interest rate for payday loans in Missouri averages over 400%.
  1. Trump says you can just talk to your grocer if you’re a furloughed worker who can’t pay their bills. And that grocer will float you until you get paid. Sure.
  2. Nancy Pelosi defends the federal workers, saying they can’t just call their fathers for money.
  3. The House has passed bills at least 11 times to reopen the government. Meanwhile, the Senate fails to pass any bills to reopen the government, even those that were introduced by majority GOP members.
  4. The White House prepares a draft declaration of national emergency for the southern border as a possible means to end the shutdown.
  5. The FAA briefly halts flights into New York’s La Guardia airport over safety concerns due to lack of air traffic control personnel. This causes flight delays across the country and especially in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Orlando, and Atlanta.
  6. 14,000 unpaid IRS employees don’t show up to work. IT staffers at the IRS are finding work elsewhere.
  7. Irony alert 1: The State Department delays its upcoming conference on border security because of the shutdown.
  8. Irony alert 2: A lack of funding because of the shutdown hampers the FBI’s ability to fight child trafficking, violent crime, and terrorism according to the FBI Agents Association.
  9. Five former Homeland Security secretaries sign a letter to Trump asking him to end the shutdown for national security reasons. The signers are John Kelly, Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano, and Jeh Johnson.
  10. The most under-covered story of this shutdown seems to be the protests in DC over the shutdown. Hundreds of federal workers and supporters have been protesting in government offices for more than a week.
  11. All nine Representatives for the southern border districts say a wall isn’t the right solution. Trump’s demeaning rhetoric about migrants is pushing the area toward Democrats—only one district there is represented by a Republican.
    • Interesting side note: Trump’s rhetoric about immigration and the wall worked best for elections in states that are furthest from the wall, like Montana and North Dakota. Closer to the border, residents resent the implications.
  1. Trump and Congress reach a deal to end the shutdown for three weeks (that’s until February 15). They create a committee to negotiate a deal for DHS funding, including border security.
  2. The deal is basically the same deal that House Democrats offered all along—reopen for three weeks and negotiate border security in the interim.
  3. In his speech announcing an end to the shutdown, Trump continues to call it a wall. He doesn’t seem to understand the optics he’s created around that terminology. But he also says we don’t need 2,000 miles of concrete wall and says some can be steel slats.
    • Trump says he’d shut the government down again if needed, or declare a state of emergency.
    • He repeats the false claims that drug smugglers turn right and then make a left turn into the U.S. and that women are all taped up and trafficked over the border.
    • He claims that in the history of the WORLD it’s never been this bad.
    • He repeats false claims about gang members removed by ICE and about the number of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. He just can’t help himself from lying about this.
  1. Republicans in the Senate face much pressure from constituents. Their meetings get heated, with a bit of finger pointing (mostly at McConnell) and a lot of yelling. IMO, it’s because they aren’t leading with what they know is right on this issue.
  2. Trump promises federal workers they’ll receive their back pay very fast (the government still hasn’t completed the back pay from the 2013 shutdown).
  3. By the end of the week, the government will owe unpaid federal workers $6 billion in back pay.
  4. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the shutdown cost the U.S. taxpayers $11 billion.

Russia:

  1. Here’s a simple breakdown of where the Russia investigation stands right now—who’s been charged, who’s guilty, and how they’re related.
  2. The New York Times also has a clear breakdown of the over 100 contacts between Trump associates (including Trump himself) and Russia.
  3. Rudy Giuliani tries to walk back his previous claims that the discussions for Trump Tower Moscow were still going on into November 2016.
  4. Donald Trump Jr. states again that “we” (and by that I assume he means the Trumps) didn’t know anything about Trump Tower Moscow. He blames Michael Cohen for the whole thing. I give you exhibits a and b. There are also allegedly hundreds of pages of documents and plans.
    1. A 2013 tweet
    2. A letter of intent
  5. Michael Cohen delays his public testimony before Congress indefinitely after Trump makes vague comments that could be construed as threats of retaliation against Cohen’s family.
    • The Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenas him to appear before them in a closed-door hearing.
  1. Armed FBI agents raid Roger Stone’s home before dawn and arrest him on seven counts, including obstruction, lying, and witness tampering. Here are some claims in the indictment:
    • Stone communicated with the Trump campaign about the hacked emails in WikiLeaks’ possession.
    • Senior Trump campaign officials told Stone to find out more about WikiLeaks plans (WikiLeaks is “Organization 1” in the indictment).
    • Stone lied about having evidence to support these accusations, and he tried to get other witnesses to lie and withhold evidence.
    • Stone has always said (even on TV) that he had a middleman who actually contacted WikiLeaks. From this indictment it looks like there were two middlemen: “Person 1” is believed to be Jerome Corsi (confirmed by Corsi), and “Person 2” is believed to be Randy Credico.
    • After a release of hacked documents, a senior member of the Trump campaign was instructed to contact Stone to find out about any more planned releases. Stone kept this person informed of his progress. The senior member is assumed to be Steve Bannon, but this is only according to one source so far.
    • Emails and texts indicate that Stone was in frequent communication with the Trump campaign, Person 1, and Person 2 about the schedule for dumping the hacked emails as well as the content of those emails. (WaPo has a pretty thorough timeline of the messages.)
    • It was Corsi’s idea to start the rumors that Hillary is old, her memory’s bad, and she had a stroke.
    • There was a reporter who was aware of what was going on. Instead of covering it as the news it was, he or she was rooting for the emails to uncover something to destroy Hillary’s campaign.
    • After the dump of John Podesta’s emails, an associate of an unnamed senior campaign official sent Assange a message: “Well done.”
  1. Jerome Corsi says the indictment is accurate.
  2. The indictment quotes a bunch of documentary evidence supporting their charges, including emails and text messages between Stone and Person 1 and between Stone and Person 2.
  3. Stone pleads not guilty and is released on $250,000 bond. He says he’ll never make up lies against Trump, but he would be willing to testify to Mueller. Update: Whoops! He doesn’t plead not guilty until the following week.
  4. Stone is a decades-long advisor to Trump. He started his misinformation techniques on the Nixon campaign and has a tattoo of Nixon on his back.
  5. A Kiev court rules that the pro-Russian politician that Paul Manafort lobbied for, former President Viktor Yanukovych, committed treason. Yanukovych invited Russia to invade Ukraine, and has been accused of working for Russia, not Ukraine, while in office. He gets a 13-year prison sentence.
  6. Manafort has a court hearing over his alleged breach of his plea deal. The judge says she needs more information, and schedules a closed-door hearing for the first week of February.
  7. The Trump administration officially lifts the sanctions against Oleg Deripaska’s companies.
  8. It’s been three months since we determined that Russia violated the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act, but the Trump administration still hasn’t imposed the required sanctions as punishment for it.

Healthcare:

  1. The Department of Health and Human Services releases their changes to health insurance guidelines for 2020. If enacted, these changes are expected to increase premiums for ACA and employer plans, cut subsidies, and raise prescription costs.
    • The HHS says this will drop hundred of thousands of people off their insurance.
    • And I quote: “The savings to the Treasury are consistent with the idea that consumers would have to pay more.”
  1. The Massachusetts attorney general sues Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family who own it. The lawsuit alleges that they’re responsible for deceptive sales tactics for OxyContin. The AG accuses the family of engineering the opioid crisis.
  2. New York passes a bill to update their outdated abortion laws to protect and expand abortion rights in the state. It expands allowances for abortions after 24 weeks to include cases where the fetus is no longer viable and where the woman’s health is at risk (previously it only included when her life is at risk.) The bills also remove abortion from the criminal code and move it to the health code.
    • Pro-choice activists cheer the changes to the law law. Pro-life activists say the law allows abortion right up to birth. (It doesn’t. Also, just 1.4% of abortions occur after 21 weeks.)
  1. A state judge rules that Iowa’s fetal heartbeat abortion law is unconstitutional. It’s one of the country’s most restrictive abortion bans, as the heartbeat can be detected as early as 6 weeks in some cases.
  2. Washington state declares a state of emergency due to a measles outbreak. There are 35 confirmed cases, and measles can be fatal in young children and older people with lowered immunity. Measles was considered to be eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, but has seen a resurgence after some people stopped vaccinating their kids.

International:

  1. In the middle of U.S. trade negotiations with China, China grants Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for five new patents.
  2. The Taliban attacks a military base, killing dozens of Afghanistan intelligence agents. Taliban insurgents control over half of Afghanistan, but American, Afghan, and Taliban negotiators say they’re closing in on a truce.
  3. The U.S. officially quits UNESCO. Trump made the announcement last year, just as UNESCO was cleaning up most of the issues the U.S. had with the organization.
  4. After Nicolas Maduro announces he’s won the country’s presidential election, opposition leader Juan Guaidó says he won and even has his own swearing in.
    • The U.S. and most Latin American countries recognize Guaidó as the interim president and urge Maduro to give up power.
    • Maduro, in turn, gives U.S. diplomats 72 hours to leave. They refuse to leave.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Senate Republicans are working to shorten the length of time the Senate can spend debating a presidential nomination.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Supreme Court decides not to take up Trump’s DACA case for now, so Dreamers get another reprieve while the DACA program remains in place.
  2. But then…in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court allows Trump’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military to go into effect while the lower courts figure it out.
  3. The U.S. denies one of the stars of Roma, a 10-time Oscar nominated film, the visas needed to travel to the U.S. for the Oscars. Jorge Guerrero is a Mexican actor who’s been denied visas three times, despite letters from producers confirming his invitations. This isn’t the first time artists have been denied visas. Several South by Southwest artists were denied visas in 2017 after the initial Muslim ban.
  4. U.S. officials begin sending asylum seekers at the southern border back to Mexico to await the processing of their cases.
  5. The federal government issues a waiver that allows federally funded foster care agencies in South Carolina to deny services to same-sex or non-Christian couples.
  6. New York passes legislation to support Dreamers by allowing undocumented students to apply for assistance for college and by letting undocumented families take advantage of college savings programs. The bill also creates a college scholarship fund.
  7. The Trump Organization starts firing undocumented workers at its country clubs in New York. This is likely a reaction to a New York Times article that exposed them for not only hiring undocumented workers, but for also assisting these workers in obtaining false documents.
  8. Japan’s Supreme Court upholds a law that says if someone wants to change their gender on official documents, they must have their reproductive organs removed.
  9. Court records show that the police officer who led an investigation into a violent clash between anti-fascists and neo-Nazis in California focused his investigation on the anti-fascists.
    • The officer recommended charges be filed against 100 anti-fascists and against none of the neo-Nazis.
    • The officer researched the political leanings of the anti-fascists and not the neo-Nazis.
    • The officer considered the sticks for the flags carried by anti-fascists to be weapons; but then said that the sticks for the flags carried by the neo-Nazis weren’t weapons.
  1. In addition to the governor of Kansas reinstating protections for LGBTQ government workers, the governors of Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan do the same. Florida’s governor, on the other hand, omits LGBTQ people from an executive order on diversity in government.
  2. New York votes to ban conversion therapy for gay minors.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Under the Trump administration, civil penalties against polluters drop to their lowest level since 1994. And that’s not because companies stopped polluting.
  2. A Swedish teenage climate activist inspires youth rallies across Europe to bring attention to the lack of action on climate change. At Davos, she says:
    “Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope. But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.”
  3. 73% of Americans now believe that climate change is real, an increase of 10 percentage points over 2015. But it’s also about the same as 2009. We’ve literally gotten nowhere on this.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Furloughed and unpaid government workers will still be counted in the January jobs report as employed. Contractors who lost work because of the shutdown are considered unemployed for the jobs report.
  2. The Los Angeles teachers strike ends. Here’s what they get:
    • Smaller class sizes.
    • A nurse in every school, plus more counselors and librarians.
    • Steps against charter schools (privatization was a major issue of the strike).
    • Concessions on demands around immigrant rights, racial profiling, and green spaces at schools.
  1. Teachers are reviving the use of the strike as a worker weapon, something that’s been in decline for a while.
  2. More teacher strikes are on the horizon. Denver, Oakland, and Virginia teachers are talking about it.
  3. Union membership is at just 10.5%, down from 20.1% in 1983. The decline of unions is one of the causes for wage stagnation.
  4. The National Association of Business Economics finds that the 2017 tax reform bill hasn’t had a major impact on business investment or hiring plans.
  5. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross says that China and the U.S. are miles and miles away from ending the trade war.

Elections:

  1. Another state lawmaker changes party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. This time it’s San Diego Assemblymen Brian Maienschei, who says it’s partly because of Trump and partly because he’s changed.
  2. A judge in North Carolina denies Republican Mark Harris’s request to certify his election to Congress. His narrowly won election is still under dispute due to accusations of voter fraud and illegal ballot harvesting.
  3. A federal court decides on new district maps for Virginia’s House of Delegates districts. The maps would move the districts in favor of Democrats, which is no surprise since the gerrymandered lines were put in place by GOP legislatures.
  4. Even though ex-felons who’ve served their time can get their voting rights reinstated, several are saddled with incredible debt and owe restitution that they can’t afford. States are arguing right now whether to reinstate voting rights with or without full payment of restitution.

Miscellaneous:

  1. A 21-year-old man shoots and kills five people in a bank in Sebring, FL.
  2. Another 21-year-old man shoots and kills one man in a Pennsylvania bar and injures two others (one of whom later dies from his wounds). The shooter then breaks into a home and kills the homeowner and then himself.
  3. And yet another 21-year-old man shoots and kills five people in Louisiana, including his parents his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s father and brother. He’s later arrested in Virginia.
  4. A new report from the Anti-Defamation League finds that there were at least 50 extremist-related killings in the U.S. last year, and that every one of those was linked to at least one extreme right-wing movement (although one had switched to Islamic extremism). White supremacists were responsible for most killings.
  5. Jared Kushner’s security clearance was rejected by two career security specialists, but their supervisor, Carl Kline, overruled them. Kushner was one of at least 30 people in the administration for whom Kline overrode security clearance rejections.
  6. When Kushner’s security clearance request was bumped up to the CIA for the super-classified “sensitive compartmented information” (SCI) clearance, CIA officers called the White House security division to find out how Kushner ever got his original lower-level clearance.
  7. Trump says that he told Sarah Huckabee Sanders to stop having press briefings. SHS justifies this by saying reporters were just trying to make themselves into stars.
  8. Over the previous weekend, a viral video appeared to show students from an all-boys Catholic school mocking and disrespecting a Native American elder after the March for Life. This week, Twitter suspends the account apparently responsible for making the video go viral, calling it a fake account. (There are many interpretations of the hours and hours of video, and I’m not going to wade into that controversy. We’re all seeing it differently.)

Polls:

  1. Trump’s aggregated approval rating after the shutdown is around 39.4%.
  2. Trump’s losing his fight against the media:
    • Voters trust CBS more than him by 52% to 38%.
    • They trust NBC and the Washington Post more than him by 51% to 38%.
    • They trust ABC and the New York Times more than him by 51% to 39%.
    • They even trust CNN more than him by 49% to 39%.

Things Politicians Say:

“I am afraid it will be on my gravestone. ‘Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Trump.’”

~Rudy Giuliani, to The New Yorker

Trump has a “revolving door of deeply flawed individuals — amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons — who were hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes seemingly without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia.”

~Chris Christie, in Let Me Finish

Week 104 in Trump

Posted on January 22, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Tijuana, Mexico--where the border wall meets the Pacific Ocean and people sit on the fence and dream. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

I’m so not ready for this… the 2020 campaign season is already starting, with a bunch of Democrats declaring a presidential run. And that means that the disinformation campaigns are already out in force. So please remember to check your facts and don’t believe everything you hear. Here’s some advice for trolls that’s circulating on 4Chan to make Democrats sound conflicted or negative about Elizabeth Warren:

“Pose as a concerned Democrat and criticize her for being white,” one wrote. “Criticize her for being a woman. Do whatever it takes to further divide the left and prevent them from unifying behind a candidate for 2020. If we can manufacture another Bernie/Hillary split, they’ll get crushed in the general election.”

Here’s what really happened last week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. In late December, Trump signed an executive order that expands logging on public lands. The EO also orders the clearing of underbrush on 4 million acres and treating pests on another 1.5 million acres. Trump says this will help prevent forest fires, but experts say this is only useful when done near homes. The EO could mean a 30% increase for the logging industry.

Border Wall/Shutdown:

  1. Here’s some fallout from the shutdown this week:
    • The Federal Aviation Administration calls back furloughed safety inspectors to work without pay. The IRS does the same with its employees, and the FDA brings back food safety inspectors (without pay). U.S. Fish and Wildlife bring back some workers so people can hunt on wildlife refuges.
    • The Coast Guard becomes the first branch of the armed services to not get paid.
    • FBI agents are now working without pay.
    • The SEC stops processing initial public offerings.
    • The NTSB suspends investigations of fatal accidents.
    • The State Department is calling furloughed diplomats to come back to work without pay.
    • Trump’s economists double their estimation of how much economic growth is being lost each week of the shutdown.
    • Some states begin allowing federal workers who are working but not being paid to receive unemployment benefits. The Trump administration has said these workers don’t qualify for benefits.
    • Over 40,000 immigration hearings have been cancelled due to the shutdown. Immigrants who miss their hearings are being given new dates years from now.
    • Businesses are doing their part to help furloughed workers by helping them to delay payments and reorganize loans, and by providing free services and free food.
    • The NY Met gives free tickets to furloughed workers to see their performances.
  1. A federal judge denies requests from federal employees and unions 1) to require that air traffic controllers be paid, and 2) that employees who are essential shouldn’t be forced to work without pay.
  2. The House passes a package to reopen the government, and, for the third time this year, Mitch McConnell block bills to reopen the government in the Senate.
  3. Sarah Huckabee Sanders says it’s Democrats fault that Trump had to feed the Clemson Tigers champion football team fast food.
  4. Nancy Pelosi sends Trump a letter saying they need to postpone the State of the Union address until after the shutdown ends due to security concerns. The White House asks Mitch McConnell if he can invite them to do it in the Senate instead.
  5. In apparent retaliation, Trump postpones Pelosi’s congressional delegation (codel) trip where Pelosi planned to visit NATO officials in Brussels and then troops in Afghanistan. The codel was already on a bus on the way to the plane and Capitol Police already had their people on the ground in Europe awaiting their arrival.
  6. Trump orders that government officials can’t use military planes until the shutdown is over. Then he sends Melania to Mar-a-Lago on a military plane.
  7. Trump says Pelosi and her group can take a commercial flight if she wants. Recent history note: Trump took an official plane to Iraq during the shutdown.
  8. Pelosi says she’s now postponing even their commercial flight abroad because Trump took divulged the codel’s travel plans to the public.
  9. Nearly 400 immigrants tunneled under a border wall in Arizona and present themselves to border patrol agents for asylum.
  10. While border crossings are down, family units now makes up 80% of apprehensions. And they’re mostly seeking asylum.
  11. Trump starts telling stories about women trafficked over the border who’s mouths are taped with electrical tape. He morphs the story to include multiple kinds of tape and body parts. People who work with anti-trafficking NGOs at the border say it’s possible, but they haven’t seen it.
  12. Trump offers Democrats a three-year reprieve for people currently protected by DACA and TPS, saying he won’t try to deport them during that time if they fund his wall. Soooo he tried to take away DACA and TPS, and now he says he’ll give them back if Democrats give him the wall. Again, the courts have struck down his actions on DACA and TPS, so they’re currently protected by the courts.
    • Conservative pundits call this amnesty. To be clear, this is not what amnesty looks like.
  1. Here’s where Pelosi says Democrats want border funding to go toward:
    • Increased infrastructure investments at our ports of entry including additional ports and roads;
    • Advanced technology to scan for drugs, weapons and contraband and to detect unauthorized crossings;
    • More customs personnel including filling the more than 3,000 customs and border patrol vacancies; and
    • More immigration judges.
  1. The House cancels January recess in order to deal with the shutdown.
  2. The DOJ hires two lawyers likely to deal with issues of eminent domain at the border.

Russia:

  1. Mueller’s team subpoenas three new Jerome Corsi associates to testify before the grand jury. The Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenas Corsi himself.
  2. Both Mueller and Manhattan prosecutors are investigating a breakfast event held at the Trump International Hotel in DC two days before Trump’s inauguration. In attendance were Michael Flynn, Devin Nunes, and several foreign diplomats.
  3. The House votes to overturn the Treasury Department’s decision to lift sanctions on a company that Oleg Deripaska has a stake in. 57 Senators, including 11 Republicans, also vote to keep sanctions, but it falls short of the 60 votes required to overturn the decision.
    • Under the Treasury decision, Deripaska must reduce his stake in two companies and the other sanctions against him remain. But a binding and signed document shows that it allows Deripaska to get rid of $100s of millions in debt and for him and his associates to retain a large share of ownership.
    • The primary company involved is a major aluminum producer, and the sanctions are hurting American companies.
    • With an overwhelming majority, the House passes a resolution of disapproval for rolling back the sanctions.
  1. Last year, I refrained from reporting on Anastasia Vashukevich, who says she was Deripaska’s mistress and that she has tapes of him bragging about how Russia stole our 2016 elections. She was subsequently arrested in Thailand on charges of prostitution. So I was waiting to see what would come of this, if anything. This week, Thailand releases her and deports her to Belarus… with a layover in Moscow where officials there arrest her at the airport in dramatic fashion.
  2. BuzzFeed releases a report that starts out with a bang but quickly fizzles. (Note that I don’t typically use BuzzFeed as a source, but the story generated a lot of buzz, so I figured it was newsworthy.)
    • BuzzFeed reports that Trump personally directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations to hide Trump’s involvement.
    • Trump’s legal team reaches out to Mueller’s office about this.
    • Mueller’s office disputes parts of the reporting, but not the substance. This is important because his office rarely jumps in with statements on news stories. They issue this statement:
      “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.”
    • BuzzFeed stands by their story, but they’re also working to learn what specific parts Mueller’s team is disputing.
    • If the reporting turns out to be right, it would mean Donald Jr. perjured himself during his testimony to Congress.
  1. Rudy Giuliani says Trump and Cohen were discussing building a Trump Tower in Moscow throughout 2016, possibly into November.
  2. Giuliani also admits that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, but he maintains that Trump did not. He later says he doesn’t know if there was any collusion.
  3. Cohen’s testimony before Congress next month will be limited so as not to interfere with Mueller’s investigation. So if you were expecting the full scoop, you’re not going to get it.

Legal Fallout:

  1. A new report from the Inspector General for the General Services Administration says that GSA officials chose to ignore the constitution’s anti-corruption clauses when they continued leasing the Old Post Office Building to the Trump International Hotel after Trump took office.
    • An example of why this is an issue: Last year when T-Mobile needed approval from the Trump administration for a merger, nine T-Mobile executives booked rooms at the hotel with one of them staying there at least 10 times.
  1. Michael Cohen confirms that he paid a tech firm to rig online polls in Trump’s favor during the 2016 elections. He also says this was “at the direction of and the sole benefit of” Trump. I don’t think this is illegal, but it is ironic given that Trump kept complaining about how rigged the polls are.
    • Fun fact: Cohen also used this company to promote himself as a sex symbol on Twitter.
  1. Court filings show that Paul Manafort attempted to fill Trump’s administration with his allies, but it’s not clear how successful he was.

Courts/Justice:

  1. William Barr, who’s currently being evaluated for confirmation as Attorney General, once said that the DOJ might need some “political supervision.” He thinks that we went too far in pushing the DOJ to be independent following Watergate.
    • Barr doesn’t say he wouldn’t jail journalists if they report on things that “might hurt the country.”
    • Barr says it’s vitally important that Mueller be able to complete his investigation, but he refuses to recuse himself even though he has expressed opinions on the case previously without full knowledge of the evidence obtained so far.
    • It takes Trump by surprise to learn during Barr’s testimony that Barr has been friends and colleagues with Mueller for 30 years. I would’ve thought that would come out in the vetting process. Was there a vetting process?
    • Unlike Jeff Sessions, Barr says he won’t go after marijuana sales in states where it’s legal.
  1. A district judge says Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes must answer questions for a court case in writing, but denies a request to make them sit for depositions. The conservative group Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit against the State Department last year over the handling of missing emails. Rice and Rhodes will answer questions about the talking points used after the Benghazi attacks. Because that hasn’t been investigated enough yet.

Healthcare:

  1. A federal judge issues a nationwide injunction against Trump’s attempted rollback of the ACA’s birth-control mandate. Just previous to that, a different judge blocked the rule for several states just hours before it was to take effect.
    • If successful, Trump’s rollback would let employers avoid providing contraceptive coverage as part of the insurance policies they offer to their employees. Under the ACA, they must provide this at no cost.
  1. WHO issues a list of the top 10 most significant health issues facing us today (in no particular order):
    • Air pollution and climate change
    • Noncommunicable diseases (like heart disease, cancer, diabetes)
    • A global flu pandemic
    • Fragile and vulnerable settings (caused by things like drought, famine, and war)
    • Antimicrobial resistance to existing treatments
    • Weak primary healthcare
    • Anti-vaccination movements
    • High-threat pathogens (like Zika, Ebola, and SARS)
    • Dengue fever
    • HIV
  1. An appeals court vacates a previous ruling that stopped Texas from defunding Planned Parenthood. In the original case, Texas tried to oust Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid program based on the videos that purported to show Planned Parenthood workers discussing illegal sales of fetal material. This doesn’t reverse the ruling, but instead throws the ball back into the original judge’s court and forces him to use a different standard to review the case.
  2. The Senate fails to get the 60 votes needed to pass a bill that would permanently ban federal funding for abortions and place new restrictions on abortions.

International:

  1. Trump has privately and repeatedly pushed withdrawing from NATO. At the NATO summit last summer, he told his national security officials that he didn’t see the point of the coalition. Both Jim Mattis and John Bolton spent the summit scrambling to make sure there was no mention of a withdrawal.
  2. Turkish President Erdogan says Trump called him up and said that he’s still going to withdraw troops from Syria.
  3. The UK Parliament fails to pass Theresa May’s Brexit deal with a vote of 432 to 202, a huge defeat for her government.
    • As a result, May faces a vote of no confidence, which she wins.
    • The official Brexit due date is March 29. May can try to ask the EU for more concessions, but they’ve drawn a firm line.
    • It’s possible this will lead to another vote on Brexit, but it’s not clear that if voters decide to NOT Brexit that it wouldn’t happen anyway.
    • Parliament could amend the EU Withdrawal Act to force May to request an Article 50 extension on the Brexit deadline if there is no agreement on an exit plan.
  1. An explosion in Syria kills two U.S. troops and two civilians, with the Islamic State claiming responsibility. Just a few weeks ago, Trump said ISIS was defeated and we’re pulling troops out of Syria.
    • On the day of the explosion, Mike Pence states that “the caliphate has crumbled and ISIS has been defeated.”
    • Brett McGurk, former special envoy to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, says that Trump’s choice to withdraw troops is giving IS fighters new life.
  1. Trump plans another North Korea summit with Kim Jong Un in February. A new report claims there are at least 20 previously undisclosed ballistic missile sites in North Korea.
  2. The Trump administration rejects a deal with Russia to keep the Nuclear Forces Treaty, which is intended to contain nuclear arms proliferation. They say there’s no way to verify Russia is keeping their end of the deal. This sets the stage for a six-month withdrawal from the treaty starting next month.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Three GOP Members of Congress have either had their committee assignments stripped or won’t get any assignments due to misconduct:
    • Steve King: Stripped of assignments due to racist comments.
    • Duncan Hunter: Indicted (when elected)
    • Chris Collins: Indicted (when elected)

Family Separation:

  1. An audit finds that the Trump administration has separated thousands more children than was publicly known. They started separating families over six months before they announced it, and they didn’t track those families. So we don’t know exactly how many, where the parents or children are, or whether they’ve been reunited.
    • The first separations started no later than October of 2017; Jeff Sessions didn’t announce the policy until May of 2018.
    • The separations continued after Trump ended the policy in June of 2018 (largely due to a court order).
    • Amnesty International estimates 8,000 “family units” were separated. I’m not sure what they mean by family unit.
  1. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) asks the FBI to open an investigation into whether Kirstjen Nielsen lied under oath to Congress when she said that the administration never had a policy for family separation.
  2. Merkley gave NBC News a draft of a 2017 memo from the DHS and DOJ that describes plans to separate families, to deport minors and deny them asylum hearings, and to force asylum seekers to wait for their hearings in Mexico instead of the U.S.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A judge blocks the Commerce Department from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, and rakes Secretary Wilbur Ross over the coals in his ruling. He says Ross and his aides broke a “smorgasbord” of federal rules, cherry-picked facts, twisted evidence, hid their deliberations, and lied under oath.
  2. The Pentagon extends the mission of the troops assisting DHS along the border through September. There are about 2,300 troops still at the border, down from 5,900.
  3. The Virginia Senate ratifies the ERA (yes, this is still a thing). If the GOP-led House of Delegates follows suit, we’ll have enough state ratifications to finally ratify it. Interesting history note: The original draft of the amendment was created almost 100 years ago, in 1921. Can we get this done already? We shouldn’t need to!
  4. The House passes a resolution nearly unanimously condemning white supremacy and white nationalism. Even Steve King, at whom the resolution is directed, voted for it. The lone nay vote, Democrat Bobby Rush, doesn’t think the wording is strong enough.
  5. While Representative Tony Cárdenas was speaking on the House floor, a Republican representative yelled “Go back to Puerto Rico!” The congressman later called Cárdenas to apologize and said he wasn’t addressing him, he was referring to the Democratic contingent that had a retreat in Puerto Rico earlier this year. At the time, the House was trying to pass a continuing resolution to reopen nine departments.
  6. Hundreds of thousands show up across the country for the third annual Women’s March. The marches have gotten smaller each year, and this year the National March in DC was marred by accusations of anti-Semitism.
  7. New York bans gay conversation therapy, and adds gender identity and gender expression to their anti-discrimination laws.
  8. The new Democratic governor of Kansas reinstates protections for LGBTQ state employees.
  9. The Trump Organization received at least 192 visas for foreign workers last year. That’s the highest number since 2008.

Climate/EPA:

  1. On top of learning earlier this month that the oceans are warming waaaay faster than we thought, now we learn that the Antarctic is now losing six times as much ice each year as it was in the 80s. It’s gone from 40 billion tons a year to 252 billion tons.
  2. The U.S. is increasing oil and gas drilling faster than any other nation, even though scientists say we have just 11 years to sort out this whole climate change thing.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) becomes the first woman and the first African American to chart the Financial Services Committee in the House.
  2. Los Angeles County teachers strike for higher wages and an increase in staffing levels. They’re trying to bring attention to the needs of public schools.
  3. Our six biggest banks (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs) made $100 billion in profit last year. That’s a first, it’s expected to grow when 4th quarter numbers come in, and it’s due to the tax cuts.
  4. The Trump administration refuses to extend emergency food assistance to Puerto Rico, calling it “excessive and unnecessary.”
  5. Economists worry that the extended shutdown could push us into a contraction. A contraction starts when there are two consecutive quarters of GDP decline.
  6. Economic growth was already slowing in the last quarter of 2018, with downward pressures including the trade war with China, the fading effects of the $1.5 trillion tax cut, and slower global growth in general. The government shutdown is expected to slow it further.

Elections:

  1. A federal judge blocks parts of the lame duck bills passed in Wisconsin aimed at disenfranchising typically Democratic voters. The judge blocks attempts to curb early voting, to limit the use of student IDs, and to limit the use of receipts for people with exceptional barriers to getting IDs.
  2. McConnell accuses Democrats of encouraging voter fraud and trying to swing elections toward one party with their sweeping election reform bill. His exact words are “power grab” and “naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party.”
    • There’s a general summary of the bill here (under Legislation): http://cjrules.com/week-102-in-trump/
    • The point of the bill is to make sure every citizen can vote and none are disenfranchised from their right to vote. So I guess if more people voting swings elections toward one party…
  1. New York passes election reform bills to allow early voting, preregistration of minors (so they’re able to vote upon turning 18), and voting by mail.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump officials reverse an Obama-era safety rule (this is so commonplace that it isn’t even news). This rule required trains that carry flammable material (like oil) to install special brakes to reduce the risk of derailment and explosion. The move was proposed just over a year ago, right around the time the Amtrak train derailed in Washington.
  2. A federal judge finds four women guilty after they enter a national park and leave food and water for immigrants crossing the border. The charges include entering a national refuge without a permit, driving a vehicle in a national refuge, and leaving things behind in a national refuge.
  3. Ouch. Betsy DeVos breaks her pelvis and hip socket in a biking accident.

Polls:

  1. 57% of American voters say they’ll definitely vote against Trump in 2020.
    • 30% say they’ll vote for Trump in 2020.
    • 13% say they have no idea who they’ll vote for.
  1. 72% of federal workers oppose the shutdown, with 64% strongly opposed.
    • 21% support the shutdown, with 14% strongly supporting.
  1. 56% of federal workers oppose building the wall, with 45% strongly opposed.
    • 34% support building the wall, with 25% strongly supporting.

Week 103 in Trump

Posted on January 15, 2019 in Politics, Trump

A fence or a wall? Both are designed to separate, both disrupt migration for both people and animals. Is one better than the other?

Poor Mick Mulvaney. He was just trying to help. When Trump was negotiating with Congressional leaders over the budget for the wall, Mulvaney attempted to find middle ground by proposing that both sides give a little. Trump didn’t really like that much, and said, “You just fucked it all up, Mick.”

Here’s what else happened this week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Last week I reported that Ford scrapped plans to build a plant in Mexico in favor of expanding U.S. operations. I was wrong. This story was from two years ago, before Trump took office. This rumor recirculated when Donald Trump, Jr. retweeted a two-year-old story.
  2. Trump starts off a meeting with Members of Congress over the shutdown with 15 minutes of profanity-laced talk about impeachment. He also says he prefers to call it a “strike” and not a “shutdown.” (from the Wall Street Journal)
  3. It took two weeks after shutting down for the administration to realize that a shutdown would cause 38 million Americans to loose SNAP benefits and that, without continued HUD assistance, thousands of people could be evicted.

Border Wall/Shutdown:

  1. After requesting $5.7 billion for the wall and spurning Mike Pence’s negotiations to find a middle ground, Trump ups the ante and asks for $7 billion.
  2. A group of Senate Republicans work on a deal to reopen the government, but Trump shoots that one down too.
  3. The National Governors Association, a bipartisan group, calls on Trump and Congress to end the shutdown.
  4. Last week I gave a link to a summary of the misrepresentations and lies being told about the border and illegal crossings. Well, the lies continue this week, so here’s another helpful explainer.
  5. Trump holds a televised address from the Oval Office to talk about immigration policies, the wall, and the shutdown. Network stations agree to carry the address, even though they refused to air Obama’s speech on immigration policy because it was too political.
    • Fact checkers abound, but it’s not really necessary because he doesn’t say anything we haven’t already heard before.
    • Following the Oval Office address, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer give a rebuttal.
    • The address doesn’t change anyone’s mind, according to polls. But more people are now blaming Trump and Republican lawmakers than they were before. Which is weird because those earlier polls were before Democrats officially took back the House.
    • Trump tells TV anchors in an off-the-record lunch that he doesn’t really want to give the Oval Office address nor does he want to visit the border in Texas. His advisors talked him into it.
  1. A second federal employees union sues the Trump administration over the shutdown. The named plaintiff in the case is a Customs and Border Patrol officer. In a similar suit brought against Obama’s administration during the 2013 shutdown, the court took the side of federal workers.
  2. Trump storms out of a border security meeting with Democratic leaders. Trump says Democrats refused to negotiate; Democrats say Trump threw a temper tantrum.
  3. The Coast Guard Support Program advises furloughed Coast Guard employees to have garage sales or become mystery shoppers to help make ends meet. The program warns that bankruptcy is the last option. Jeez… I hope the government isn’t going to bankrupt any of its employees.
  4. Despite claiming hundreds of times (at least 212 just on the campaign trail) that Mexico would pay for the wall, Trump now says he never meant that Mexico would directly pay for the wall. Historical note: His campaign website featured a memo at one point suggesting that Mexico would pay a one-time fee of $5-$10 billion.
  5. Trump cancels his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland because of the shutdown. He blames Democrats, though—and I can’t say this enough—the shutdown happened under full Republican control.
  6. The first federal workers start missing their paychecks, and around 1,000 of them start GoFundMe accounts. Restaurants start offering them free meals. By the end of the week, there are over 10,000 GoFundMe accounts.
    • Interesting bit of shutdown history: Government workers are still waiting for back pay from the 2013 shutdown, and the government doesn’t even know how much they owe.
  1. The House passes bills to reopen parts of the government, but Mitch McConnell refuses to bring them to a vote in the Senate. Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid did the same thing in 2013.
  2. Around 100 landowners near the border have received letters from the government requesting access to their land for surveying for the wall. This is the first step in the process of eminent domain.
    • The landowners promise a legal battle to stop the land grab. It’s worth noting that lawsuits from use of eminent domain related to the 2006 Secure Fences Act are still being fought in court.
  1. Another migrant caravan is organizing in Honduras, and Mexico is preparing a strategy to manage them. Trump says the only thing that will stop them is a big wall, though CBP has done a pretty good job of stopping the current caravan.
    • The number of people coming in caravans represents a minuscule proportion of the total number of border apprehensions. But caravans are cheaper and safer than coyotes, so they might become the new norm.
  1. Donald Trump Jr. posts on Instagram comparing the wall to the “walls” that separate animals and people at the zoo. First, is he comparing migrants to animals? And second, if the animals are separated from us by walls, how can we see them?
  2. The shutdown becomes the longest in history.
  3. Trump reiterates his desire to declare a national emergency and use funds earmarked for other purposes for the wall. Also, Border apprehensions are at some of the lowest levels in decades.
  4. Trump considers using FEMA disaster relief funds (that is, those tagged for Puerto Rico, Florida, the Carolinas, and so on) to pay for his wall.
  5. Trump and his advisors think if they declare an emergency, it would reopen the government but the declaration of emergency would be stuck in the courts for so long, that it might never actually happen. So the government would reopen and Trump could save face.
  6. The DOJ furloughs 5,000 intelligence analysts, special agents, lawyers, and other employees. They also freeze funds for ongoing investigations.
  7. The Mayors of McAllen, TX, and its sister city across the border, Reynosa, oppose building a wall between the two cities. The two mayors often work together on initiatives to improve both cities. Also, McAllen is rated the 7th safest city in the U.S., according to FBI statistics. Trump just visited the border there to gin up support for the wall.
  8. GoFundMe says they’ll refund all the donors who donated a collective $20 million to go toward building the wall. The creator of the GoFundMe account had originally said all the money collected would go to the government to help build the wall, but he has since created a non-profit where he wants to direct the funds. His plan is to start building the wall himself, but that goes against his original GoFundMe mission.
  9. Nine Republican Senators introduce a bill that would put an end to government shutdowns, including the current one.
  10. Trump orders many of the activities that were prohibited under previous shutdowns to resume. Those include processing tax refunds, SNAP, mortgage processing, flood insurance programs, and national parks.
    • However, the FDA stops routine inspections of food-processing plants.
  1. The mortgage industry lobbies to restart the IRS’s income verification service so that loans can be processed. Trump complies.
  2. Mexican officials discover another tunnel under the border. This is the third tunnel they’ve found this month, adding more questions about how effective a wall would be.
  3. Kevin Hassett, the chief economic adviser, says furloughed workers are better off because of the shutdown. They didn’t have to use any vacation days to get time off over the holidays.
  4. Trump tweets misleading crime statistics for undocumented immigrants, citing numbers up to three times higher than they actually are. Now’s a good time for a reminder that crime rates for immigrants, documented or otherwise, are lower than crime rates for native-born Americans.
  5. It turns out that this shutdown was at the urging of Freedom Caucus Reps. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan. The Tea Party is just the gift that keeps on giving. It completely took Mitch McConnell and a few others by surprise, because they thought they had a deal to avoid this.
  6. McConnell, Ryan, and McCarthy all warned Trump against the shutdown, yet none of the three did anything to stop it. And McConnell and Ryan had the power to override it.
  7. A passenger was able to board a flight from Atlanta to Tokyo carrying a firearm. That’s a pretty good argument for ending the shutdown and letting TSA workers get back to doing their jobs.
  8. A group of Democrats catch flack from the right for heading to Puerto Rico during the weekend to attend a retreat, which includes the opening of Hamilton there. I’m torn—part of the reason for the opening is to support Puerto Rico’s recovery efforts, so it’s not all play.

Russia:

  1. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan indict Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya (of Trump Tower meeting fame) for obstructing a money laundering investigation. This isn’t tied to the Trump Tower case, but it confirms her ties to Russian government officials.
  2. Mueller interviewed Blackwater’s Erik Prince (Betsy DeVos’s brother) about meetings with Russians in the Seychelles two years ago. This week, Prince says he’d rather have a proctology exam than sit down with Mueller’s team.
  3. A (Trump-appointed) federal judge scolds Russian company Concord Management, which was charged by Mueller. The judge says their brief was inappropriate, unprofessional, and ineffective. The brief quoted the movie Animal House. One of their previous briefs quoted Casablanca.
  4. The Supreme Court refuses to vacate a lower-court order forcing a foreign-owned corporation to comply with a subpoena in the Russia investigation.
  5. It seems Manafort’s lawyers accidentally reveal collusion (by Manafort, not by Trump). They fail to thoroughly black out redacted information in a court filing, and reporters were easily able to see the redacted text by copying and pasting the PDF.
    • The filing shows that one of the things Mueller thinks Manafort lied about was that he shared Trump campaign polling data with alleged Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik (who’s also criminally charged in the Russia investigation).
    • Mueller accuses Manafort of lying about a text message asking if someone could use Manafort’s name to get an “in” with Trump.
    • The filing also shows that Manafort and Kilimnik talked about a Ukraine peace plan, something Manafort previously denied. In 2016, the Trump campaign altered the GOP platform to block a provision for the U.S. to arm Ukraine in their fight against Russia. Michael Cohen has also confirmed work on a Ukraine peace plan that would benefit Russia.
    • There are three more breaches of the plea agreement that are not yet public.
  1. A new report says that Mueller’s office has spoken with Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio.
  2. Steve Mnuchin briefs House committee leaders on why the administration plans to lift sanctions on Russian companies associated with Oleg Deripaska, who’s implicated in Russia’s meddling in our 2016 elections. Democrats complain that most of the information they got was unclassified and that Mnuchin gave them little information. They call for a delay in dropping the sanctions.
  3. Michael Cohen will give public testimony to the House Oversight Committee next week.
  4. We learn that FBI counterintelligence opened an investigation into Trump following the firing of James Comey. They were looking into whether Trump was working on behalf of the Russian government against American interests (either with knowledge or unwittingly).
    • Even though they became suspicious during the 2016 campaign, the FBI hesitated to open the case, unsure how to handle such an unprecedented situation.
    • We don’t know if the investigation is still ongoing.
  1. Trump confiscated the interpreter notes from his Hamburg meeting with Putin, and now we have no reliable record of what was discussed. Democrats discuss subpoenaing the interpreter, which is dicey since they’re supposed to keep their info confidential.
  2. In case you were wondering whether Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin’s plans to infiltrate the NRA were sanctioned by the Russian government, it turns out that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed off on it.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Ruth Bader Ginsburg misses oral arguments for the first time in 25 years while she’s at home recovering from lung surgery. She’s out all week recovering, and Trump and Republican lawmakers start talking about how they’ll be able to seat another conservative judge. Morbid.
  2. Rod Rosenstein is expected to leave the Justice Department if and when a new attorney general is confirmed. Other sources say Rosentstein will stay until the Mueller investigation is complete. He’s not being forced out.
  3. An appeals courts rules that politicians can’t block people on social media. This echoes a similar case against Trump, where it was ruled that he can’t block people on Twitter.
  4. William Barr, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General begins speaking with members of the Senate Judicial Committee, or at least Republican members.
    • At first he refuses meetings with committee Democrats until one of them makes that public.
    • He drafts a memo saying a president can’t obstruct justice in the process of exercising his official powers. The memo also questions Mueller’s authority.
    • Interesting history: Barr is the reason that every person involved in the Iran-Contra affair got pardoned by Bush Sr.
    • Despite his previous criticism of Mueller’s investigation, Barr tells Senators that it’s vitally important that Mueller complete his investigation.

International:

  1. Despite Trump’s claim that he’s removing troops from Syria by the end of the month (and they’ve already started removing equipment), John Bolton places conditions on removal that will slow it down.
    • The remaining bits of the Islamic State must be defeated.
    • Turkey must guarantee they won’t attack our Kurdish allies.
    • This kind of falls on Bolton. He’s mostly ended internal policy debates that allow administrations to flesh out and plan decisions like this. Bolton was taken by surprise with Trump’s decision, and has had to scramble to create a plan that in normal times would take weeks, if not months, to complete.
  1. When asked if Trump made a mistake on this, Lindsey Graham says “This is the reality setting in that you’ve got to plan this out.” And this is why Trump as president makes people nervous. Planning isn’t in his nature.
  2. Turkey’s President Erdogan harshly criticizes Bolton for saying Turkey has to promise not to attack the Kurds.
  3. The month-long protests in Hungary against the autocratic regime of prime minister Viktor Orbán continue to spread. Orbán is another anti-immigrant hardliner trying to control the press and the judiciary. He’s working toward one-party rule in Hungary, and wants anti-immigrant leaders to take over the EU. He’s already created a coalition with the like-minded leaders of Poland and Italy.
  4. The Trump administration reinstates the diplomatic status of the EU’s delegation to the U.S.
    • Trump quietly downgraded that status in December, and only brought it back temporarily and only because they protested it.
    • We only found out about it when the delegate’s name wasn’t called in the correct order during George W. Bush’s funeral.
    • Unlike every previous modern president, Trump views the EU as a foe.
  1. In anticipation of Brexit, banks and financiers move $1 trillion from Britain into other EU countries. That’s about 10% of UK’s financial sector.
  2. Mike Pompeo gives a speech in Egypt, criticizing Obama’s handling of the region. One of the biggest departures from the Obama administration is that there wasn’t any focus on democracy or human rights. Another difference was the venue: Obama chose one where he addressed the people, Pompeo chose one where he addressed elites and government officials.
  3. U.S. officials say that the White House requested plans to launch an attack on Iran last year after an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad by a military group associated with Iran.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The CEO of the Tornillo migrant child detention facility says that the head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement kept pressuring him to hold more minors at the facility. He says the reason the facility is being closed is that he refused to accept any more because ORR wasn’t releasing any of them.
    • The facility was able to rapidly release all the children in custody because HHS waived the new stringent vetting requirements for the children’s sponsors. In other words, U.S. taxpayers were paying to detain these children when they could’ve been staying with family or guardians who would’ve paid for their needs. Because what this administration really wants to do is deport people.
  1. A judge rules that Sandy Hook families suing InfoWars can access InfoWars internal marketing and financial documents, among others. Next week, the judge will decide whether the families’ attorneys can depose Alex Jones.
  2. Around 1.4 million Floridians become eligible to vote. Last year, voters there passed a referendum ending the practice of reinstating ex-felons’ rights on a case-by-case basis. The new rule automatically gives ex-felons their voting rights back after they’ve served all time and probation (excluding certain violent criminals).
  3. A judge temporarily prohibits ICE’s new practice of conducting unannounced raids on Cambodian immigrants’ homes and businesses. Sudden deportations to Cambodia were up 279% last year. Deportees don’t get to talk to their lawyers or loved ones first, they haven’t been to Cambodia since childhood, and Cambodia doesn’t want them.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Carbon emissions in the US increased by 3.4% in 2018, despite the large number of coal plant closures last year. This is likely tied to the uptick in manufacturing, and is a reversal from the previous 12 years during which emissions declined.
  2. Trump threatens to halt FEMA payments to victims of the California wildfires, and then he later tweets that he’s already ordered FEMA to stop sending money. It’s not clear whether he actually did that and if he did, whether it’s legal.
  3. I feel like this was already reported last year, but a new study shows that oceans are warming 40% faster than previously expected. 2018 is the warmest year for oceans, with 2017 coming second and 2016 coming third.
    • Oceans absorb nearly 93% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases.
    • Heat causes the water to expand, and that accounts for most of the rise in sea levels that we’ve seen so far.
  1. State legislatures across the east and west coasts introduce bills to fight Trump’s expansion of offshore drilling, including Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island. California has already passed such a bill into law.

Budget/Economy:

  1. China starts buying soybeans from the U.S. again, and they’ve cut tariffs on American cars. They say they’ll stop demanding corporate secrets from companies doing business in China.
  2. Trump puts a freeze on the planned $10,000 pay raises for Mike Pence’s staff.
  3. Democrats propose rescinding the tax breaks for the top 1% to fund raises for the country’s teachers.
  4. One year into the new tax plan, it hasn’t panned out as planned. Federal tax revenues fell by 2.7%, despite strong annual economic growth of 3%. The last time growth came close to this, tax revenues increased by 7%.

Elections:

  1. Democratic Senator Doug Jones officially requested an investigation into the social media disinformation campaign run by a Democratic group in Alabama when Jones got elected. The group ran test cases against Jones’ opponent using Russian disinformation methods on social media.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump has had twice as much staff turnover as any other president at this point in their presidency. He’s at 12; Clinton is the next highest with six.
  2. In 2013, Mike Pence harshly criticized Obama for some of the same things he’s supporting Trump on now in regard to government shutdowns.
  3. Three top Republican members of the House rebuke Representative Steve King for wondering what’s wrong with the phrases white nationalist and white supremacist. When King made racist statements prior to the 2018 midterms, only one member of the House said anything.
  4. Former GOP Senator Jon Kyl turns down Trump’s offer to take over as Secretary of Defense.

Polls:

  1. Here’s a great summary from Pew Research of their polling on immigration and the wall.
  2. 74% of Americans say the shutdown is embarrassing; 72% say it’s hurting the U.S.
  3. During the first days of the shutdown polls showed that between 43% and 47% blamed Trump for the shutdown and around 1/3 blamed Democrats. Now, 47% to 51% blame Trump, while 1/3 still blame Democrats.
    • What’s weird about this? Right before the shutdown, Trump took complete responsibility for any shutdown, Democrats weren’t even in power when it happened, and the Senate had a veto-proof majority to override Trump’s veto. So why weren’t more blaming Trump then?
    • Interesting history note: The country was similarly split during the 2013 shutdown, with 53% of Americans blaming Republicans.
  1. 59% of Americans oppose the wall, and 39% support it.
    • 74% of Republicans support the wall, but that percentage drops for Republicans who live within the vicinity of the border.
  1. 69% of Americans are against declaring a national emergency over the wall.
  2. Trump’s approval rate is trending downward, now at 40.6%. His disapproval rate is trending up, now at 54.3%.

Things Politicians Say:

  • “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?”
    —Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to the     New York Times
    Thank you, Iowa, for continuing to force this racist on the rest of the United States.
  • “When during the campaign I would say Mexico is going to pay for it. Obviously I never said that and I never meant they are going to write out a check.” —Donald J. Trump, this week.“It’s an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year.” —Donald J. Trump,three years ago.

Week 102 in Trump

Posted on January 8, 2019 in Politics, Trump

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

We have a new Senate and a new House, and our government is still shutdown. For the record, I’m confused by how Trump can blame the shutdown on Democrats when the shutdown started while Republicans controlled both the Senate and the House. It’s almost as if the outgoing Republican House set up the new Democratic House for an immediate clash with Trump.

Here’s what happened last week…

Border Wall/Shutdown:

The shutdown and wall deserve their own category, since they’re front and center of what’s been happening.

  1. A brief timeline; I’m sure we can all see the dysfunction at work here:
    1. In December, the Republican Senate passes two bills to keep the government running.
    2. Just before the outgoing Republican House was ready to pass those bills, Trump says he won’t approve them without funding for his wall.
    3. The Republican House fails to pass them.
    4. The government shuts down.
    5. Trumps says he won’t re-open the government until he has border wall funding.
    6. The new Democratic House passes the same two bills the Republican Senate did last year, but the Senate has to vote on them again since it’s a new session.
    7. Mitch McConnell refuses to bring the bills to a vote because Trump disapproves, even though there’s a veto-proof majority in the Republican Senate.
  2. Trump and his administration put out a number of “facts” about the illegal border crossings, but many are misleading or flat-out incorrect. Here’s a summary.
  3. As a defense for his wall, Trump says that the Obamas have a 10-foot wall around their house. Pictures of the property show that they don’t. They have a little retaining wall around the front of their property that looks to be about two feet hight, to which they added a security fence. They also added chain link fencing in the back for the Secret Service. People need to learn the difference between a fence and a wall. Jeez.
  4. Trump says he’ll keep the government shut down for months or even years if that’s what he has to do in order for his wall to be built.
  5. A federal workers union files a lawsuit against the Trump administration saying that the shutdown is illegally forcing federal workers to work without pay.
  6. Trump says he’ll consider declaring a state of emergency if that’s what it takes to get his border wall funded. It’s been three years since he started talking about his border wall; I think he’ll have a hard time proving there’s any imminent threat.
  7. As an example of how NOT a crisis this is, average monthly border apprehensions under Trump are just over a third what they were under Bush. They’ve been decreasing for decades.
  8. Though Trump tries to blame Democrats for the shutdown, he doesn’t deny it’s his fault when asked by reporters whether he’s still proud to call it his shutdown (as he said in a public meeting with Pelosi and Schumer in December).
  9. The idea of trading wall funding for a pathway to citizenship for DACA comes back up, but Trump refuses to consider that.
    • Just a reminder, last year, Democrats offered Trump full funding for his wall ($25 billion) in return for citizenship options for DACA and Trump turned it down.
  1. Security experts fear that since the wall has taken over the narrative, they won’t be able to get any of the other needed reforms around immigration.
  2. TSA screeners start calling in sick to work because they can’t afford to get to work without their wages. Some are finding part-time work that actually pays them for what they do. (Reports that air traffic controllers are calling in sick appear to be unfounded.)
  3. The largest airline pilots union sends a letter to Trump imploring him to end the shutdown out of concern for air safety.
  4. Senior administration officials say that the Trump administration is only just now starting to realize the longterm effects of a shutdown, such as delays in processing tax refunds, SNAP recipients being unable to buy food, and HUD assistance being withheld.
  5. Lawmakers on both sides request that their paychecks either be withheld or donated during the shutdown.
  6. The Trump administration sends a letter to congressional leaders indicating that there is no compromising on a wall. Though he does soften his language to say physical barrier.
  7. Mike Pence is tasked with negotiating a deal, and he brings a $2.5 billion compromise to the table. Which Trump promptly shoots down.
  8. Sarah Huckabee Sanders says that most illicit drugs in the U.S. come in through the border. The vast majority of drugs come in through legal ports of entry—by land, water, and air. Even Chris Wallace calls her out on that one.
  9. Trump gets a little reprieve from some of the lawsuits he’s facing when Manhattan federal courts shut down civil litigation due to the government shutdown.
  10. Trump has opted to leave national parks open during the shutdown despite lack of staff, while Obama closed them during his shutdown for safety reasons against much criticism. Three park visitors have died during the current shutdown.
  11. Polling shows that government employees really hate the shutdown. 71% oppose it while 22% support it. Trump says that they’re behind him and that he can relate to furloughed workers who can’t pay their bills. Sure.

Russia:

  1. A judge extends Mueller’s grand jury for another six months. The jury is coming up on the end of its 18-month term.
  2. Russia detains a U.S. marine, accusing him of spying. Two things:
    • The marine has citizenship in four countries.
    • Russian politicians suggest they might be interested in swapping him for Maria Butina, the Russian national who pleaded guilty to espionage.
  1. Igor Korobov, who has run the GRU military intelligence agency since 2016, dies after a “long illness.” The agency is accused of meddling in U.S. elections and hacking our election systems, and Korobov is suspected to be behind the poisonings of Russian ex-pats.
  2. About that dossier, here’s a good summary of how it’s stood the test of time so far.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court agrees to hear two gerrymandering cases—one from North Carolina and one from Maryland. Two lower courts found the district maps violated the constitution. The Supreme Court has avoided ruling on gerrymandering, but with the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, the issue has become more urgent.

Healthcare:

  1. After years of taking steps to put abortion rights at risk at the state level, new state legislatures start proposing bills to make a woman’s right to choose more secure.

International:

  1. The Democratic Republic of Congo holds a chaotic presidential election where fake results start circulating on social media. So they cut internet and messaging service in the entire country.
  2. The State Department issues a warning that U.S. citizens could be randomly detained if they travel to China.
  3. National Security Advisor John Bolton says the U.S. won’t withdraw troops from Syria until Turkey promises not to attack the Kurds (who’ve been helping us in the region). Trump had previously said he wanted the withdrawal to happen quickly.
  4. The private information of hundreds of German politicians was hacked and released on Twitter. This affected every group except the far right.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The new Democratic-majority House gets sworn in and officially take their seats. There are 111 new representatives and senators, which includes 42 women and 24 people of color. This is the most diverse congress in history, but women still make up just 25%.
  2. The House elects Nancy Pelosi to Speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy becomes the House Minority Leader and Steny Hoyer becomes the House Majority Leader. No surprises there.
  3. Hours after being sworn in to Congress, Michigan Representative Rachida Tlaib recounts a conversation she had with her son where she told him “…we’re going to go in and impeach the motherfucker.” That creates lots of fodder for conservative circles.
  4. House GOP members boo Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as she places her vote for Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker. They really have it in for her.
  5. The new House immediately passes two bills to re-open the government. They are basically the same bills that the Senate passed before Christmas, but now that Trump refuses to support those bills, Mitch McConnell refuses to bring it to a vote in the Senate. Even though the Senate had veto-proof support.
  6. Trump tells a group of legislators that he can’t sign the two House bills because it would make him look foolish. I’m sure there are plenty of furloughed workers thinking that it’s better for him to look foolish than for them to keep losing their wages.
  7. Trump meets with congressional leaders for a border security briefing, hoping to reach a compromise.
  8. The evening before the new Congress begins, the Senate confirms 77 of Trump’s nominees in a bipartisan effort. They include the ambassador to Yemen, a Census director, a National Drug Control Policy director, and just a few judicial nominees. Most were for executive branch positions.
  9. This is the first time since the current budget process was put in place 42 years ago that Congress has transferred power with major parts of the government shut down.
  10. Democrats in the House make climate change a priority and create a select committee to focus on it.
  11. The first major bill put forward by the Democrats is a major elections reform bill. It includes:
    • Making it easier for citizens to vote.
    • Cracking down on voter suppression policies like voter roll purges and gerrymandering.
    • Reinstating parts of the Voting Rights Act that prohibit discrimination against groups of voters.
    • Making money in politics more transparent by disclosing donors and ad buyers.
    • Helping House candidates who can’t raise as much money by matching their fundraising with federal dollars.
    • Placing limits on super PACs.
    • Forcing presidential candidates to release their tax returns and requiring them to have ethics plans once elected.
    • Prohibiting House members from serving on corporate boards.
    • Prohibiting House members from using federal dollars to pay out sexual harassment settlements.
    • Cracking down on lobbyists.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Three teens with the migrant caravan in Tijuana are kidnapped, tortured, and held for ransom. When they can’t pay (because OF COURSE THEY CAN’T), the kidnappers kill two of them and the third manages to escape.
  2. A DOJ memo shows the Trump administration is thinking about rolling back parts of the Civil Rights Act known as “disparate impact.” Disparate impact labels actions as discriminatory if they have an uneven impact on different groups of people.
  3. The DOJ acknowledges errors in a report it issued last year linking immigration and terrorism, but once again refuses to correct the errors.
    • The report claims that nearly 75% of convicted terrorists are foreign-born. Of the people they included in this statistic, over 1/3 were never charged with a crime related to terrorism.
    • The report makes misleading statements about sex offenses committed by immigrants, claiming they were responsible for nearly 70,000 offenses in three years when it was actually over a 55 year period. The number also represents arrests, not convictions.
    • The report cherry-picks examples to support a policy of ending chain migration.
  1. Trump falsely claims that CBP has apprehended 3,775 known terrorists at our southern border. The numbers come from a DHS briefing, but the briefing doesn’t say where the apprehensions occurred. In reality, this number refers to apprehensions mostly at airports and across the globe, not just the U.S. Many of these were stopped simply because their name matched an entry on the terrorist watch list and not necessarily because they themselves were terrorists.
  2. Kirstjen Nielsen says they’ve apprehended 3,000 special interest aliens at the southern border (but didn’t specific a time period). For the record, anyone not from the Western Hemisphere who crosses the border legally or otherwise is classified as special interest.
  3. Maine’s outgoing Governor Paul LePage repeats his debunked claim that 90% of drug dealers in Maine are out-of-state blacks and Hispanics, and that they impregnate Maine’s white women. And then he pardons a former Republican (white) lawmaker who was convicted on drug trafficking charges.
  4. Trump’s administration stops cooperating with human rights investigations in the U.S. by the UN.
  5. Trump’s crackdown on MS-13 gangs caught up and deported high school students who had no criminal background and who were not actually associated with the gang. Many were here legally, but were deported anyway, destroying their American dream.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Despite Trump’s efforts to resuscitate the coal industry, more coal plants have closed in Trump’s first two years than in Obama’s entire first term. The decline is expected to speed up in 2019 as coal consumption continues to fall.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The unemployment rate ticked up in December even though employment increased by 312,000. But that’s not bad news; it went up because more people have moved back into the job market. Wages were also up in December.
  2. Putin says that Russia will fill in the trade gap left by the U.S. by providing soybeans and poultry to China.
  3. Trump blames the stock market’s worst month since the Great Depression on a glitch.
  4. The U.S. national debt rises to $21.974 trillion. It’s grown $2 trillion in Trump’s first two years.
  5. Ford scraps plans to build a new plant in Mexico and will instead expand operations in Michigan. They’ll still move some production to Mexico though.

Elections:

  1. Another Republican Senator, Pat Roberts of Kansas, announces he won’t run for re-election.
  2. Courts in Virginia issue documents around congressional voting district maps, saying the current districts are gerrymandered. The court is redrawing the maps, but the case is before the Supreme Court.
  3. Elizabeth Warren kicks off her 2020 campaign for president. Julián Castro and John Delaney are also running.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Mitt Romney pens an op-ed criticizing Trump and saying that he hasn’t risen to the mantle of his office. Lindsay Graham warns him that criticizing Trump will hurt him and hurt Utah.
  2. Thirteen years after launch, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft visits Ultima Thule, the most distant object we’ve explored. New Horizons is sending back pictures of the 20-mile-long object.
  3. There’s another mass shooting this week, this time at a bowling alley in Torrance, CA. Three people are dead, two are injured.
  4. Trump holds a stream-of-consciousness press conference. Here are a few highlights.
    • In the midst of a government shutdown where hundreds of thousands of workers aren’t getting paid, he confirms that Pence and his cabinet get a $10,000 raise.
    • He says he’ll use Eminent Domain to take land from people who own it near the border so he can build his wall (or fence, or whatever he’s calling it now). He says he can do this without congressional approval.
    • He says he might declare a national emergency to get the wall built without congressional approval.
    • He claims that other presidents have told him they wished they built the wall themselves. (They haven’t. In fact, all four living presidents and a spokesperson for the late Bush Sr. deny having any such conversation.)
    • He calls Rashid Tlaib’s comment about impeachment and calling him a motherfucker “disgraceful.” He’s not that far off base here, but he’s also the pot calling the kettle black.
    • He says you can’t impeach someone who’s doing a great job (even Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), standing behind him, couldn’t help but chuckle).
    • He claims we’ve already built a lot of the wall. (We haven’t; we’ve only worked on existing fences.)
    • He claims drugs are pouring into the country and they don’t go through ports of entry. (The majority of drugs entering the country come in through legal ports of entry.)
    • The updated NAFTA deal will pay for the wall. (It won’t. If it did, he wouldn’t be asking for money. He also says the deal is brand new, which it isn’t.)
    • He says Russia’s not happy we’re pulling out of Syria. (Russia says their happy we’re pulling out of Syria.)
    • He takes credit for lower gas prices, and says he averted a recession. (Turns out the market for oil just relaxed on the realization that sanctions against Iran won’t create a shortage.)
    • He says the U.S. has taken in many billions of dollars of tariffs, apparently not understanding that the American people actually pay for the tariffs.
    • And it wouldn’t be complete if he didn’t say there was no collusion; that he won and Hillary lost; and that he’s done more in two years than any other president.
  1. Trump holds a cabinet meeting where he:
    • Compares the border wall to the walls in the Vatican (not the same thing).
    • Says there are 30-35 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. (there are closer to 11 million).
    • Says his generals are better looking than Tom Cruise.
    • Says he knows more about drones than anybody.
    • Claims that Obama gave Iran $150 billion and $1.8 billion in cash. This has been debunked a gazillion times, but as a reminder, the first amount was the release of frozen Iranian assets (in other words, property of Iran that we were holding) and the second amount was repayment of a debt owed.
  1. In a repeat of his first cabinet meeting, members took their turn at heaping praise on Trump.
  2. And in the realm of “draining the swamp,” a former Boeing executive runs the DOD, a former coal lobbyist runs the EPA, a former pharma lobbyist runs Health and Human Services, and a former fossil fuel lobbyist runs the Department of the Interior. Winning!

Week 101 in Trump

Posted on January 7, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Yep, we're still shut down. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP/Getty Images)

This is a catch up entry for the week ending 12/30/18. Thankfully it was a slow news week because of the holidays, but unthankfully the holiday week was marred by the government shutdown and ongoing chaos at the border.

Here’s what happened in week 101…

Russia:

  1. House committees conclude their investigations into Russia’s meddling in our elections and into the investigations into the investigation. In a letter to the DOJ, Republican committee leaders reiterate their concerns over how the investigations were handled.
  2. We learn that when Marine Le Pen needed extra cash for her campaign for president in France, she took out a 9.4-million-euro loan from a Russian bank. The bank has since gone under and now Russian officials are demanding payment.
  3. UPDATE: I don’t know how this one slipped under my radar, but a former Mossad chief reiterates that Russia worked to make Trump president, and that their online disinformation campaigns are the greatest threat to democracy and the world order right now.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Trump’s lawyers request a delay in the emoluments case against him due to the government shutdown.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is released from the hospital following surgery to remove tumors from her lungs.

International:

  1. Russia sends two Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela. These bombers have nuclear capability.
  2. Hot on the heels of an NBC story about how Trump is the first president to not visit any troops over the Christmas holiday, Trump and Melania pay a surprise visit to troops in Iraq.
  3. Following his visit, Iraqi officials demand the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from their country. Iraqi government officials are reportedly angry that Trump didn’t visit the Prime Minister while he was there.
  4. Trump posted a video following his visit that revealed the identities and location of a SEAL team, traditionally protected information.
  5. Israel’s government announces that the Knesset will dissolve and new elections will be held in April. Netanyahu has a narrow majority, and his defense minister resigned recently.
  6. The acting secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan, says he won’t push back against Trump’s ideas the way James Mattis did.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Merry Christmas, refugees. ICE drops off 200 refugees at a bus stop in El Paso with no assistance two days before Christmas. Because of the government shutdown, the local officials had no warning. ICE drops off another 1,000 by the end of the week.
  2. A new lawsuit alleges that in Vermont, ICE placed spies inside migrant activist groups and attempted to hack into their networks. Vermont’s DMV helped them out by passing on drivers permit information about undocumented immigrants. ICE used the information to target activists.
  3. A second migrant child dies in DHS custody. Trump blames the deaths on Democrats. Kirstjen Nielsen says there are more sick migrant children coming to the U.S., but doctors who are examining the children dispute that assertion.
  4. Trump begins readying Americans for what a barrier at the border might really look like. He starts using terms like “wall system” and “fence”, indicating that he realizes a big wall across the entire border is not achievable or practical.
  5. The FBI and state investigators are looking into Trump’s Bedminster golf club for their alleged practice of hiring undocumented workers and helping them to get papers to cover it up.
  6. After Mollie Tibbetts’ murderer was arrested, several immigrant workers fled the town. Mollie Tibbetts’ mother adopted one of their children so he could finish out his school years in the town he grew up in. So please stop making political hay about the fact that the murderer was an undocumented immigrant. Her family doesn’t want that.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A tugboat pushing 15 coal barges in the Ohio River hits a bridge, causing six of those barges to sink into the river and spilling tons of coal into the water. The cleanup effort is going on 24/7, but workers aren’t getting paid because of the government shutdown.
  2. The Trump administration announces a new policy that would loosen limits on pollutants emitted by coal powered plants, including mercury. Under the Obama policy that is being changed, mercury pollution has been reduced by 80%.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump discusses firing Fed chairman Jerome Powell.
  2. Trump says federal employees support his government shutdown over the wall. Federal workers take to Twitter to say otherwise. #ShutdownStories
  3. Trump says most of the workers who are furloughed because of the shutdown are Democrats. So not true.
  4. On Christmas Day, Trump says he’ll keep the government closed until he gets funding for his wall. Then he says he’ll shutdown the border if Democrats don’t cave in and give him his wall. Shutting down the border would cost an estimated $1 billion per day.
  5. Trump suggests that furloughed workers offer to help their landlords with chores in return for reduced rent (because landlords love to use amateur electricians and carpenters). The administration actually sends them a draft letter that they can use to make such an offer. The administration also gives them advice on how to survive financial hardship by negotiating with lenders and utilities.
  6. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, says it’s not his job to end the shutdown.
  7. Trump institutes a pay freeze for federal civilian employees. Merry Christmas!

Elections:

  1. North Carolina’s election board dissolves following a court decision that it was unconstitutional. This throws the one remaining congressional race that the board refused to certify into further chaos.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump spends most of Christmas Eve attacking his perceived enemies on Twitter, including Democrats, Republican Senators, the fake news, our former envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition, and the Federal Reserve, among others.
  2. His tweet storm seemed to be a drag on the stock markets, which fell again on Christmas Eve.
  3. Trump tells troops in Iraq that he got them a giant pay raise — 10% — after a decade of no raises. In reality, they’ve received raises of between 1% and 4% each year for the past 10 years, and there is no 10% raise this year.
  4. Departing Chief of Staff John Kelly gives an exit interview in which he says:
    • The wall isn’t actually a wall (I’m guessing he means it’s more like a fence). In fact, he says that they gave up on the idea of a wall a long time ago, but Trump still uses it to stir up his base.
    • The family separation coming from the zero-tolerance policy at the border was Jeff Sessions’ fault.
    • Trump surprised Kelly with his Muslim Ban order.
  1. An American becomes the first person to complete a solo crossing of Antarctica.
  2. A tsunami in Indonesia caused by an underwater volcanic eruption kills over 400 people with many still missing.