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Keeping up with the latest happenings in US Politics

Week 141 in Trump

Posted on October 9, 2019 in Impeachment, Politics, Trump

People attend a march in Causeway Bay in Hong Kong in solidarity with the student protester who got shot by police, October 2, 2019. (PHOTO: REUTERS/Susana Vera)

The U.S. isn’t the only country feeling the turmoil right now. There are massive ongoing protests all around the world, mostly against governments. It’s like we’re going through a whole cosmic shift or something. Here’s hoping the turmoil is short-lived and we land in the right place.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending October 5…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There are NINE mass shootings this week (defined as killing or injuring four or more people). Condensed version: Shooters kill seven people and injure 30.

Russia:

  1. Iranian hackers, with their government’s backing, have launched cyberattacks with the purpose of disrupting our 2020 elections. Rumor has it that it’s Trump’s campaign being attacked this time. Is foreign interference still OK?
  2. Russia takes advantage of our current turmoil by telling the rest of the world that we’re an unreliable ally and we can’t be trusted.
  3. Lawyers for the House of Representatives make a court filing alleging that Trump lied about whether he knew about his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks and that the grand-jury redactions in the Mueller report show it.

Legal Fallout:

  1. A federal judge (appointed by Bush II) orders the DOJ to either file charges against former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe by November 15 or drop the investigation completely. At that time, the judge will order the release of FBI documents around McCabe’s firing per a FOIA request.
  2. Matt Whittaker, who was the acting Attorney General for a hot minute, stumps for a Trump-supporting candidate in Kosovo’s elections. The U.S. embassy there quickly distances itself, saying Washington is completely, 100% neutral in the upcoming election.
    • Whittaker’s candidate loses, with the left nationalist party taking a surprise win.
  1. Representative Chris Collins (R-NY) resigns before pleading guilty to charges of insider trading. He was caught on video making the call that led to the charges.

Impeachment/Ukraine:

Including all this info just makes this too long, so I moved it out into its own post. You can skip right over to it if that’s your focus.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A federal court upholds the FCC’s right in repealing Obama’s net neutrality protections, but they also rule that the FCC can’t limit the states’ ability to create their own rules. That’s not likely to lead to any confusion at all, right?
  2. Protestors gather in front of Mitch McConnell’s house calling for Brett Kavanaugh’s impeachment. I’m a big supporter of protest, but not at someone’s private home.

Healthcare:

  1. The president’s schedule for Thursday includes this event — “THE PRESIDENT delivers remarks and signs an Executive Order Protecting Medicare from Socialist Destruction in The Villages, FL.”
    • Trump signs that EO, which he says will preserve and protect Medicare against Medicare for All. But part of the plan is to make the prices paid by Medicare closer to the prices paid by private insurance, which would shoot costs up enough to bankrupt the system.
  1. A growing number of rural Texas towns are declaring themselves “sanctuary cities for the unborn” and calling abortion “murder with malice.” The towns outlaw emergency contraceptives, criminalize groups that work for reproductive rights, and fine doctors for performing an abortion. Meanwhile, other towns are pushing ordinances that help women in those restrictive towns travel to have their reproductive health taken care of.
  2. The Supreme Court agrees to take up a Louisiana law that restricts abortions by forcing doctors who perform them to have admitting privileges nearby. The court struck down a similar law in Texas, but that was with a more balanced court.
  3. Trump decides to eliminate the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria.

International:

  1. Austria defeats the far-right nationalist party in their national elections, and the People’s party’s Sebastian Kurz reclaims his role as Chancellor (he was removed by a no-confidence vote earlier this year). The far-right was brought down by corruption. I’m sensing a global pattern.
  2. One day after North Korea agrees to meet to discuss nuclear weapons with U.S. officials, they conduct missile tests off their coast, launching missiles into the Sea of Japan.
  3. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman takes responsibility for journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, but says he didn’t order it. It’s the one-year anniversary of Khashoggi’s death.
  4. Hong Kong bans face masks at protests, motivating thousands of masked protestors to turn out in opposition. At one protest, an officer shoots a man in the thigh after protestors surround his car. Protestors then beat him and throw a gas bomb at him.
  5. On China’s celebration of 70 years of Communist Party rule, Hong Kong protests increase in violence. A police officer shoots a teenage protestor at point-blank range, luckily only injuring him.
    • Police exonerate the officer, who says the protestor was charging him. They instead charge the protestor.
  1. Nationwide protests in Iraq grow violent, with police firing tear gas and then live rounds into crowds. Five people are dead and around 300 wounded. The Prime Minister declares a curfew in Baghdad.
  2. Taking the State Department and Pentagon completely by surprise, Trump endorses a plan for the Turkish military to sweep away the American-backed Kurdish forces near the border with Syria. This happens on a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to one official on the call, Trump got rolled.
    • The Kurds have been our allies in the fight against ISIS, but Turkey sees them as terrorists. Turkey has also killed tens of thousands of Kurds.
    • The U.S. had already persuaded the Kurds to dismantle their defenses that served as a deterrent to Turkey based on guarantees that the U.S. would help keep them secure. So now the Kurds have few options to stop Turkey.
  1. Several of Trump’s GOP allies harshly criticize Trump over this move, including Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Kevin McCarthy, Nikki Haley, and Mike Huckabee.

Global Protests:

It seems like there’s a pervasive restlessness across the globe. There are a dozen major protests happening right now, and they all have the common thread of dissatisfaction with government. Here are the big ones (and this doesn’t include ongoing protests at our southern border or global climate protests):

  1. Hong Kong: These were parked by a Chinese extradition law, but morphed into a desire to protect their democratic freedoms.
  2. Jakarta: A new austere criminal code that criminalizes sex and cohabitation out of wedlock sparked protests.
  3. Netherlands: Farmers protest parliament members’ claim that farming has high emissions and some farms should be shut down.
  4. France: Did you know the yellow vests are still protesting?! It’s been 45 consecutive weeks. Farmers and police officers are also protesting.
  5. Russia: Protests are still going on there, even though the elections that sparked the initial protests are over and protestors won. Now they’re protesting for the release of protestors who were arrested.
  6. Peru: The dissolution of the congress sparks mass protests over the uncertainty.
  7. Haiti: Protestors want President Jovenel Moïse to resign over allegations of corruption and attempting to end subsidies.
  8. Egypt: Protestors want President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (Trump’s favorite dictator) to step down over his authoritarian policies.
  9. Lebanon: A worsening economy sparked these protests.
  10. Syria: Kurds are protesting being excluded from a UN committee that will rewrite the Syrian constitution.
  11. Iraq: Protestors are unhappy with Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, specifically around a lack of public services and high unemployment, but they have several complaints.
  12. Jerusalem: Palestinians protest Israeli forces for hospitalizing a Palestinian detainee during interrogation (they accuse the forces of torturing him). The detainee is accused of killing an Israeli teen in a bombing.
  13. United States: UAW workers at GM have been striking for three weeks, with nearly 50,000 workers walking off the job.

Family Separation:

  1. The ACLU launches a new lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking damages for families affected by its family separation policies. Here are some allegations:
    • When DHS was ordered to reunite families, some kids were too young to communicate so were asked to point to the flag of their country so DHS could narrow down the search for their parents.
    • Some kids were taken in the middle of the night while they were sleeping.
    • Parents were told they were signing papers to reunite them with their children or to help with their asylum cases, but they were actually signing voluntary deportation papers.
    • Many children were separated from their families for more than a year. Some of the youngest have forgotten their native languages.
    • Some are still separated.
    • Some of the children were beaten.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. While discussing the arrest of a black suspect, a New Jersey police officer says that Trump is the “last hope for white people.” He says if Hillary were elected, all those minorities would get a vote. Oh, the horror! The officer is on trial for hate crime assault and lying to the FBI.
  2. A jury finds former police officer Amber Guyger guilty of murder for shooting Jean Botham, a black man who she thought was in her apartment. It turned out she had entered his apartment thinking it was hers. Amazingly, Botham’s brother pleads for mercy for Guyger during the sentencing hearing and asks if he can hug her.
  3. Trump says his administration will deny visas to anyone who can’t prove they can pay for their own healthcare. I’d argue that most Americans can’t even prove that.
    • Trump argues that immigrants are three times more likely than American citizens to lack health insurance. So suddenly having health insurance is important to Republicans?
    • It turns out this is mostly directed at family migration. So it’s all about keeping families apart. Again.
  1. We learn that Trump has floated ideas for slowing down illegal border crossings like building a moat filled with alligators and snakes, putting spikes on the tops of our fences at the border, shooting border crossers in the legs (you know, to slow them down), and electrifying our fences, among other things. This was the same meeting where he told DHS to close down the southern border completely.
    • And this is telling. According to people at the meeting, Trump couldn’t be placated and “the president’s advisers left the meeting in a near panic.” This might’ve been a good time to reassess the administration and take a look at the 25th Amendment. Geez.
  1. DHS announces they’ll collect DNA from immigrant detainees to enter into the criminal database. I guess it still needs to be said…being an asylum seeker doesn’t make you a criminal.
  2. Journalist Ben Watson files a civil rights complaint with DHS after a CBP officer held his passport upon learning Watson is a journalist. The officer said, “So you write propaganda, right?” The officer withheld the passport until Watson agreed to the propaganda question. Several journalists are making similar reports of harassment.
  3. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals grants a stay of relief in the execution of a Jewish defendant whose trial was presided over by an antisemitic judge. How do we know he’s antisemitic? He referred to the defendant as “a goddamn Kike” and “That fuckin’ Jew.”

Climate:

  1. After California pushes back on Trump’s plan to push more water through the Delta, the Trump administration backs off. A rare moment of compromise between Trump and California.
  2. Trump plans to disband two environmental advisory boards, one on marine life run by NOAA and one on invasive species run by the Department of the Interior. We don’t need no stinking experts.
  3. When a far-right activist trolls AOC at a town hall by saying she loves the Green New Deal but it doesn’t go far enough and that we should start eating babies, AOC, out of concern that the woman was having a mental break, doesn’t argue but instead tries to deflect. Trump and his family don’t get the trolling and tweet about how this is normal for AOC and her supporters to want to eat babies. Turns out it was a Trump-loving baby-eating troll.
  4. Trump ends a 5-year-old moratorium on oil and gas drilling on 750,000 acres in California.
  5. The non-profit group Ocean Cleanup successfully implements a plastic-catching floating device to clean up our oceans.

Budget/Economy:

  1. You might remember a while back, the USDA uprooted all its DC employees and moved to Kansas City? Well, that move has delayed the publication of nearly 40 research reports, ended newer studies, and stopped the release of funding. Staff is down about 75% since the move.
  2. Trump has threatened for a year to leave the Universal Postal Union, the UN agency that links postal systems across the globe. The agency finally comes to an agreement with the U.S. about restructuring fees, fending off what would’ve been a fiasco for Americans who send and receive international mail. Expect to pay increasing fees on international mail over the next five years.
  3. The economy is super weird right now. You’d expect every western country’s economy to be chugging right along with record low unemployment, but everyone’s economy is a little sluggish and wages aren’t keeping up.
    • Unemployment in the U.S. falls to a 50-year low of 3.5%, but U.S. manufacturing slows for the second month in a row and wages stagnate. Manufacturing has been in recession all year and hit a 10-year low. It’s all part of a global manufacturing slowdown.
    • The U.S. only added 136,000 jobs in September.
    • Likewise, unemployment in the eurozone falls to it’s lowest rate in over a decade and manufacturing in the eurozone has it’s weakest month in seven years.
    • Export orders for the U.S. also dip to their lowest level in a decade.
  1. A report shows that Pennsylvania and Wisconsin lost the most manufacturing jobs over the past year.
  2. Cattle ranchers in Nebraska rally in Omaha to let Trump know that they think he’s backed out of promises by not changing labeling requirements for beef. I agree with them here. Labeling laws under Obama allow beef to be labeled as “Product of the USA” if it’s processed and packaged here even if it wasn’t raised here.
  3. After the World Trade Organization rules in favor of it, the Trump administration announces tariffs on European imports, including airplanes, agricultural products, whiskey, cheese, and wine.
  4. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says that maybe small dairy farmers can’t survive this economy, but that’s OK because the big get bigger and the small go out of business.
  5. This is the third week of the GM strike, and both GM and workers are feeling the hit. GM temporarily lays of 6,000 workers in Mexico as a result. Here are the sticking points:
    • GM’s use of temporary workers
    • Bringing jobs back from Mexico
    • Four plants that are slated for closure
  1. The Dow Jones closes out fiscal year 2019 up about 360 points over the beginning of the fiscal year, but then loses almost 1,000 points in the first two days of the next quarter. Analysts point to the ongoing trade war.
  2. In June, Trump privately made a promise to President Xi Jinping that the U.S. wouldn’t say anything about the protests in Hong Kong as trade talks continued. This conversation, like calls with Ukraine, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, was also placed in the codeword-level secure system.
  3. For the third time, the Trump administration moves to cut SNAP benefits, this time by $4.5 billion. This would cut benefits for almost 20% of recipients.
  4. Trump signs a trade deal with Japan aimed at helping farmers get what they lost when Trump pulled the U.S. out of the TPP. Dairy products (except cheese), rice, and some grains would’ve done better under TPP, but are now looking to do worse. But beef, pork, barley, wheat, and wine get a better deal. The deal doesn’t include major trading products, like automobiles, aircraft, propane, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

Elections:

  1. Bernie Sanders suffers a mild heart attack and is briefly hospitalized after getting two stents inserted. He cancels his upcoming campaign stops. Speedy recovery.
  2. California’s Secretary of State says he’ll appeal a federal judge’s order blocking the state’s new law that presidential candidates must provide their tax returns in order to be on the primary ballot. He’s arguing for transparency in financial dealings.
  3. A sixth Texas Representative announces he won’t seek reelection next year. Mac Thornberry is currently the top-ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, a position that he’d term out of next year anyway.
  4. Politicians are fundraising off impeachment on both sides. Republicans pull in $15 million in donations in the days after the impeachment announcement, according to Eric Trump. I don’t have the exact numbers for Democrats, though ActBlue showed $8.8 million in just the first two days after the announcement, and that doesn’t include all donations.
    • Here’s my PSA: It’s way past time to get money out of our elections. The taxpayers carry the burden for every single candidate that runs anywhere in this county.
  1. The RNC in Montana uses forms that resemble the official U.S. Census Forms to solicit donations for Trump’s reelection. They’re even labeled “2019 Congressional District Census.” State officials issue a warning to Montana residents that these are not official census documents and that the census never asks for money.

Week 141 in Trump – Impeachment News

Posted on October 9, 2019 in Impeachment, Trump

As more and more information comes out this week about how U.S. officials worked with Ukraine to help them acquiesce to Trump’s conditions, support for impeachment inquiries continues to grow. This week, we got a glimpse of the text messages being sent among our diplomats in Ukraine, plus a second whistleblower is in the wings. And Democratic Representatives have been at home talking to their constituents about impeachment concerns.

So here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending October 5…

General Happenings:

  1. Intelligence Inspector General Michael Atkinson testifies privately before Congress about his reasoning for finding the whistleblower complaint credible and urgent. Atkinson did his own investigation upon receiving the complaint.
  2. When it comes out that the whistleblower contacted House Intelligence Committee staff members to find out how to proceed, Trump accuses Chair Adam Schiff of orchestrating the complaint, even of helping the whistleblower to write the complaint.
    • The whistleblower came to the committee after he filed his complaint with the CIA general counsel because he was concerned it wasn’t being handled.
    • The CIA lawyer’s intent was to make a criminal referral to the DOJ, indicating she thought a potential crime was reported. The DOJ says they weren’t sure whether it was a criminal referral.
  1. Trump continues to lash out at the whistleblower and Democratic leadership throughout the week. He thinks he should be able to meet with the whistleblower. He thinks Schiff should be tried for treason for running impeachment inquiries (or maybe it’s because Schiff paraphrased Trump’s conversation with Ukraine President Zelensky in a hearing).
    • Just a reminder that the whistleblower is now under federal protection over fears for his safety.
  1. Trump repeats a conspiracy theory that the intelligence community recently eliminated a requirement that whistleblower information be firsthand. The office of the intelligence community inspector general denies there ever was such a requirement.
    • But that doesn’t matter anymore, because a second whistleblower with firsthand knowledge of the call is in negotiations to come forward.
  1. Mitch McConnell reiterates that if the House passes articles of impeachment, the Senate has no choice but to hold the trial.
  2. Even GOP lawmakers criticize Trump for retweeting a pastor who says that if Trump is removed from office, it will “cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation…”
  3. The GOP pushes all the conspiracy theories to defend Trump’s actions with Ukraine. So now Hillary’s missing emails are all mixed up with a missing DNC server (that’s not missing) and CrowdStrike being a Ukraine organization (that’s actually a U.S. company) and the Biden’s apparent conflict of interest in Ukraine.
    • These are sticking with the base, and the corruption and maneuvering by Ukraine officials, past and present, are only muddying the waters.
  1. Three House committees subpoena Rudy Giuliani for documents around his Ukraine dealings. They also request information from three of Giuliani’s business associates.
  2. We learn that Giuliani consulted with an imprisoned Paul Manafort on Ukraine through Manafort’s lawyer.
    • How does Manafort fit into all of this? Manafort lobbied for the pro-Russian former government in Ukraine. His name and payments made to him were included in a “black ledger” that was exposed as part of an anti-corruption campaign. Giuliani’s theory is that the DNC worked with Ukraine officials to release the book to force out Manafort and help Hillary.
    • Because of Giuliani’s conspiracy theory, at least two Senate committees renew their inquiries into whether the DNC and Ukraine coordinated efforts. These efforts are led by Senators Chuck Grassley (Senate Finance Chair) and Ron Johnson (Homeland Security Chair).
    • Manafort is in jail for this, so it’s not like he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
    • Giuliani says the ledger was a pretext to reopen investigations into Manafort, but the FBI had a case open against him before the 2016 campaign.
  1. Trump calls the impeachment inquiries “BULLSHIT,” and then gets into an argument with a reporter during a press conference with the president of Finland. He calls Schiff dishonest, shifty, treasonous. He again calls the press the enemy of the people.
  2. Nancy Pelosi holds a press conference, opening with what the House is doing to lower drug prices, to move the renegotiated NAFTA forward, and to restart infrastructure talks, showing that impeachment inquiries really aren’t taking up all their time.
    • She says it’s a sad time when we have to be impeaching the president.
  1. Jared Kushner will lead the White House’s impeachment strategy.
  2. In 2016, three Republican Senators signed on to a letter backing Joe Biden’s efforts in Ukraine, undercutting Trump’s claims of wrongdoing by Biden. Both Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) have come out publicly against Trump’s desire to investigate the Bidens over Ukraine, saying Shokin needed to be ousted. Trump calls Shokin a “good guy.” Johnson later backtracks.
  3. It’s possible Trump broke election laws with his call with Ukraine, but the FEC has so many empty positions that they don’t have a quorum to enforce the law. Normally, the backup would be the DOJ, but Barr won’t prosecute.
  4. Former and current officials say that Trump’s calls with foreign leaders have always been fraught with anxiety over what he’d say and horror with what he actually did say. These calls typically take weeks of preparation, and experts guide presidents as to what the other leader might say and how to best respond. But Trump improvs everything, including these calls, leading to embarrassments, scrapping weeks of work on an issue, and conflicts with U.S. foreign policy.
  5. The whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Zaid, says he’s representing multiple whistleblowers at this time. At least one more whistleblower has come forward that we know of, and this one has firsthand knowledge of the call.
  6. A district judge orders the White House to retain all records of Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders and to maintain records of efforts to hide that information. This stems from a lawsuit filed in May by activist groups and agencies focused on ethics and maintaining national records.
  7. State Department staff say the Ukraine scandal has opened a rift between apolitical career diplomats and political appointees who want to investigate the conspiracy theories.
  8. In the middle of all of this, Trump still publicly calls for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, and for China to do the same. He even asked China on a phone call, defeating the GOP’s efforts to dismiss that as a joke.
    • The China request originated from a multi-million-dollar deal that happened on a trip Hunter and Joe Biden took together—Hunter for business and Joe for government work. Trump says it was a $1.5 trillion deal and hasn’t provided any evidence of wrongdoing.

Who Else Is Involved:

  1. House committees subpoena acting Chief of Staff/OMB Director Mick Mulvaney for documents relating to Ukraine.
  2. It turns out that Attorney General William Barr is in this up to his nuts.
    • Not only did Trump tell Zelensky to talk to Barr about investigating the Bidens and CrowdStrike, but Barr asked Trump to call Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to help out with the DOJ’s review of FBI and CIA actions in 2016.
    • Trump made the call to Morrison and restricted access to the transcript of that call, just like with the Ukraine call transcript.
    • Morrison says Australia is always happy to shed light on investigations, but defends the Australian ambassador who alerted U.S. intelligence to George Papadopoulos’s drunken confession that he was working with Russia to get dirt on Hillary.
    • Barr has also traveled to Italy to meet with Italian and British officials to discuss the review and secure cooperation.
    • And yet Barr didn’t recuse himself from the decision not to follow up on the whistleblower complaint.
  1. Just a reminder that the DOJ already has two legitimate efforts going on to review the investigations into the 2016 elections:
    • DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is analyzing FBI and DOJ activity around Russian election interference and the FISA warrant approving the surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. That report is expected within weeks.
    • John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, is looking more broadly at intelligence activities around the election both abroad and here at home. This could take years to complete.
  1. After denying it for a week, Mike Pompeo says he took part in the Trump’s phone call with Zelensky. He only admits it after Giuliani outs him on national TV.
    • Pompeo had also argued against the White House releasing the excerpt of the call with Ukraine.
    • House committees subpoena him for records of the call.
    • Pompeo says he won’t let his subpoenaed employees talk to Congress. He says he’s protecting them from being bullied by Congress. What a whiner. Two of them say they’ll testify anyway, and committee heads accuse Pompeo of illegal obstruction.
    • Of note, both Barr’s and Pompeo’s predecessors’ relationships with Trump soured after they refused to carry out illegal requests by Trump.
    • Ironically, Pompeo was one of the loudest complainers that the Obama administration was “deeply obstructive.”
  1. Steve Mnuchin was also aware of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky and urged the White House not to release the excerpt of the call.
  2. Senator Lindsey Graham sent letters to the Prime Ministers of Australia, Great Britain, and Italy urging them to cooperate with Barr’s investigation. Here’s why those countries specifically:
    • Italy: Professor Joseph Mifsud, who offered George Papadopoulos dirt from the Russians on Hillary, is Italian. Everyone’s looking for him.
    • Australia: Papadopoulos spilled the tea about Mifsud to an Australian diplomat who then alerted U.S. intelligence, getting this whole ball rolling.
    • Great Britain: Christopher Steele, author of the Steele Dossier, was a British agent.
  1. State Department Inspector General Steve Linick requests an urgent meeting with House committees.
    • He turns over an envelope of documents sent from Giuliani to the State Department, full of mostly debunked conspiracy theories generated by the far-right and spread by far-right media outlets about the Bidens and the former ambassador to Ukraine.
    • Pompeo told Giuliani he’d investigate them.
  1. Trump throws Energy Secretary Rick Perry under the bus. He says that he didn’t even want to call Zelensky but that Perry urged him to do it. Perry wasn’t discussed in the call that we know of.
  2. The ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sends letters to Perry and to Vice President Pence demanding answers by the end of the week about what they knew and what their roles were regarding Ukraine.
    • Perry announces his resignation. Up until now, he’s kept a pretty low profile, but it turns out he’s traveled to Ukraine recently working on energy issues, including making changes to the state-run oil and gas company, Naftogaz. This puts him in the middle of the impeachment inquiry.
    • Pence was involved in Trump’s pressure campaign against Ukraine. Initially, Trump told Pence not to attend Zelensky’s inauguration (Perry went instead). Pence later told Zelensky he had to take more aggressive action against corruption and that U.S. aid was still being withheld. Also, one of Pence’s top advisors was on the Ukraine call, so Pence should’ve had access to the transcript within hours of the call. It’s not clear whether Pence was aware of the conditions Trump was placing on Ukraine, but if he wasn’t, then he wasn’t doing his job.
  1. A little more on Ukraine’s state-run oil and gas company. A group of American businessmen and Republican donors used their ties to Trump and Giuliani to try to install their handpicked management to run Naftogaz so they could steer lucrative contracts their way. The election of a new president, Zelensky, threw a wrench into their plans. But then Rick Perry takes up the mantel and tries to install his own donors in the company. All of this would require multiple global agencies to authorize.

And What About Ukraine?

  1. Super randomly, Ukraine signs an agreement with pro-Russia separatists allowing them to hold local elections in eastern Ukraine.
    • The separatists want special status for self-governance.
    • Ukraine says there won’t be any elections until troops from both sides are withdrawn, and only with international observers allowed in.
    • Russia has refused to participate in peace talks unless the separatists are allowed their own elections. Score one for the aggressors.
    • Hundreds march in Kyiv in protest.
  1. Serhiy Leshchenko, a former member of the Ukrainian Parliament and current advisor to Zelensky says it was well-known that Trump wanted compromising information on the Bidens and that officials knew U.S. aid was contingent on cooperating with that request.
  2. Zelensky says his country can’t be pressured to open investigations. They’re an independent country. He’s being squeezed between the U.S. and Russia and his promises to rout out corruption.
  3. Ukraine’s new chief prosecutor, Russian Ryaboshapka, says he’ll review all previous investigations into Burisma among other. He reiterates that he hasn’t seen any wrongdoing by either Biden.
  4. Also, it’s super hard to get a straight answer about what Burisma’s owner was being investigated for and how the cases were resolved. Here’s hoping the new guy will shed some light here; the previous prosecutors have put out conflicting stories, even contradicting their own stories.

Volker, Text Messages, and the State Department:

  1. Kurt Volker, the former U.S. envoy to Ukraine, testifies privately before Congress and provides text messages showing that senior State Department officials didn’t think Trump would meet with Zelensky unless Zelensky promised to publicly launch investigations. According to the texts:
    • Our officials coordinated with Zelensky’s top aide (Andrey Yermak) and Giuliani to try to leverage that promise to make a summit happen between the two presidents.
    • Ukraine was afraid of looking like a U.S. puppet to the rest of the world.
    • A text from Volker to Yermak includes this: “… assuming President Z convinces Trump he will investigate / ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we can nail down date for visit…” This was just before the infamous phone call, and it’s a pretty explicit quid pro quo.
    • Two weeks after the phone call, there was still no date for a summit and State Department officials let the Ukrainians know that Trump needed a public pledge. So Ukraine agreed to announce that they’ll open the investigations requested by Trump along with a date for the summit.
    • Here’s the text from Yermak: “Once we have a date, will call for a press briefing, announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of US-UKRAINE relationship, including among other things Burisma and election meddling in investigations.”
    • Volker coached Yermak on what the message to use in order to convince Trump. He coached him to include the conspiracy theory about Ukraine involvement in our elections: “Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections, which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this problem in the future.”
    • Trump really, really wanted the public promise of investigations in order to meet with Zelensky.
    • After Trump skipped a trip to Poland where he was slated to meet with Zelensky, Bill Taylor, the U.S. Charges D’affaires to Ukraine, texted this to Sondland: “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?”
    • After the call, Taylor texted, “The nightmare is they give the interview and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love it. (And I quit.)”
    • Taylor told Sondland he’s counting on him to be right, and Sondland replied: “Bill, I never said I was “right”. I said we are where we are and believe we have identified the best pathway forward. Lets hope it works.” To which Taylor replied: “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”
    • “The president has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” Sondland replied.
    • It seems Sondland’s concern is getting aid to Ukraine no matter what he has to do to get it. Taylor is more concerned about ethics.
    • Here’s the kicker. A U.S. official says they didn’t use official State Department email for these conversations; they used WhatsApp.
  1. To me, the most important takeaway from the texts is that our ambassadors helped Yermak write a statement that would’ve publicly committed Ukraine to pursuing investigations into far-right conspiracy theories. This was unsuccessful, though, because the statement was never released. Ukraine wanted to make the statement less specific, simply saying they promised to go after corruption.
  2. The texts from Bill Taylor indicate a known quid pro quo. All participants in the text conversations seem to know that a meeting between Zelensky and Trump was contingent on the investigations.
  3. Volker says he warned Giuliani that the sources he was using for information about the Bidens in Ukraine were unreliable. Giuliani’s response? “Yes, I know that.”

Week 140 in Trump

Posted on October 2, 2019 in Impeachment, Legislation, Trump

Just read the damn transcript and claim already! They're short.

If you’re wondering whether your Members of Congress are really informed about what’s going on, you should know that many of them haven’t read the Mueller report yet. They haven’t even read the summaries. They also, obviously haven’t even bothered to read Trump’s 5-page excerpt from his conversation with the Ukraine president (as evidenced by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s interview on 60 Minutes where he didn’t even know that Trump said, “I would like you to do us a favor though.” It’s not even that far down in the conversation. Don’t let your elected officials be that lazy. Make them take this seriously whether you want Trump exonerated or impeached. Call them and write to them and ask them to be informed and do their jobs.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending September 29…

Shootings This Week:

I’m putting this section on hold this week. There’s too much else to sort out with the whistleblower complaint.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Research by the Senate Finance Committee’s Democratic staff finds that the NRA facilitated political access for Russians Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin to a greater extent than previously thought. New York and DC attorneys general are also investigating this.
  2. Trump meets with NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre to talk about how the NRA can support Trump financially. LaPierre is working to steer Trump away from universal background check legislation.
  3. A federal judge reverses Bijan Kian’s guilty verdict. Kian was Michael Flynn’s lobbying associate working on Turkish issues and was convicted of acting as a foreign agent and conspiring to hide it.
  4. The Southern District of New York drops their case against Tony Podesta and Vin Weber in connection with lobbying for Ukraine without registering as foreign agents.
  5. A judge says Trump must testify in a case from 2015 over a fight between his security guards and protestors. Protestors say Trump’s security guards assaulted them during a protest in the Bronx where they were protesting Trump’s derogatory comments about immigrants.
  6. And just a reminder, Trump now has two whistleblower complaints against him. The Ukraine one I’ll go into below, but there’s also a complaint that Trump tried to influence the IRS audit of his personal tax returns.
  7. The Manhattan District Attorney agrees to wait to enforce his subpoena to obtain eight years of Trump’s tax returns until after a judge rules on whether to dismiss Trump’s request to block the subpoena.
  8. Trump says he brought up the issue of Hunter Biden to his intermediary on the trade talks with China. He alleges that Hunter got China to put $1.5 billion into an investment fund. The dollar amount is vastly exaggerated—it was in the millions.
  9. The Trump administration intensifies their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, snaring about 130 officials who shared emails with her. The administration is reviewing each email, and in some cases retroactively marking them as classified. The 130 officials received letters saying there are potential security violations from them sharing those emails several years ago. Some of these officials have already retired or moved on to other jobs.

Impeachment/Ukraine:

  1. The background of this story is pretty complex, so I won’t get into it all here. Here are some resources:
  1. In mid-August, the whistleblower made his complaint to Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson. When Atkinson realized that whistleblower protocol wasn’t being followed, he alerted the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
  2. That same day, three House committees opened investigations into whether Trump and Rudy Giuliani acted improperly in pushing Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden and CrowdStrike.
  3. The Chairs of the House Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs committees send a letter to the White House counsel demanding the White House give them documents about Trump’s conversations with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky.
  4. The Senate unanimously passes a non-binding resolution demanding that Trump release the whistleblower complaint about pressuring Ukraine. No GOP Senators object to the resolution.
  5. After months of slow-walking an official impeachment inquiry, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the start of official impeachment inquiries, provoked by the whistleblower complaint. It’s what I like to call an impeachment buffet.
    • She directs the heads of six House committees to proceed with their own inquiries, each focused on a different issue.
    • Democrats debate whether the scope of the impeachment inquiry should focus on the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s dealing with Ukraine or if they should include other potential crimes, like those brought up in the Mueller report, financial transactions, FEC violations, emoluments clause violations, and so on.
  1. Trump and Pelosi have a phone conversation where Trump asks if they can “work something out” about the whistleblower complaint.
  2. Senate Republicans say they’ll quash any articles of impeachment passed by the House, but McConnell has said the Senate will have to hold a trial. As a refresher:
    • The House holds hearings and votes on articles of impeachment.
    • If they pass articles of impeachment, the Senate then holds a trial.
    • If found guilty, Trump would be removed from office (this has never happened, and I can’t imagine it happening here).
    • Otherwise, Trump goes on record has having been impeached by the House but can stay in office.
  1. At least a week before the call, Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine. The Office of Management and Budget (which is run by the same Mick Mulvaney) then relayed that info to the State Department and the Pentagon.
    • Legislators realized by mid-August that the OMB had taken over the decision-making process for the funds from the Defense and State Departments.
    • Administration officials were told to give Congress no explanation other than that the funding was delayed because of interagency processes.
  1. Trump released the money only after the whistleblower complaint became known, but administration officials say there’s no link. Congress also pressured the administration to release the funds.
  2. In early September, Ukrainian officials voiced concern about whether aid was cut off because the Ukraine government wasn’t investigating the Bidens.
  3. First Trump says he withheld the money over corruption concerns, but the next day he says it’s because NATO countries aren’t contributing enough money.
    • A letter from the Pentagon disputes the first point.
    • As for the second point, the EU has provided more aid to Ukraine than the U.S.
    • Trump’s defenders say he had to evaluate whether the newly elected Zelensky is pro-Russia or pro-United States and whether he is corrupt.
  1. Trump says that the money was eventually released, so that’s evidence he didn’t do anything wrong.
  2. Trump releases a partial transcript of his call with Ukraine President Zelensky. It corroborates much of the whistleblower complaint. It shows he did ask Zelensky to investigate the Bidens and to investigate CrowdStrike, the company that handled the review of the hacked DNC server. Here’s some background on CrowdStrike and the whole Ukraine conspiracy theory.
  3. Trump thinks the excerpt exonerates him; you can decide for yourself. Here’s the complete excerpt. Below are the highlights I pulled out:
    • Zelensky is either on the Trump train or he knows how to fluff Trump up (I think the latter).
    • They talk about Ukraine obtaining military weapons and then Trump says, “I would like you to do us a favor though…”
    • That favor is for the Ukraine government to investigate CrowdStrike and the DNC server (which, by the way, isn’t missing and isn’t sitting in some basement in Ukraine).
    • Several times, Trump mentions having Zelensky get in touch with Attorney General Barr (five times) and Rudy Giuliani (four times) to work on this.
    • Trump criticizes Mueller’s investigation (this is the day after Mueller testified to Congress).
    • Zelensky says that one of his aides spoke with Giuliani recently. He guarantees open and candid investigations. At this point, it seems he’s only referring to the server.
    • Trump appears to call Ukraine General Prosecutor Shokin a very good prosecutor who got shut down.
      Background: Shokin was voted out of office by the Ukraine Parliament for failing to prosecute corruption cases, which is what Biden was working on. Shokin‘s failure to act included the Burisma investigation, where Hunter Biden worked.
    • Then Trump makes the ask for Zelensky to open an investigation into the Bidens. He says Biden bragged about stopping the prosecution in that case. Just to set the record straight, Biden didn’t stop any prosecution of the Burisma case nor did he say he did. The Bidens were never being prosecuted. (This whole bit is super convoluted. I refer you back to the timeline.)
    • Zelensky assures Trump that the next prosecutor will be 100% Zelensky’s person. The former prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, stepped down in the middle of all this. Now there’s a new prosecutor.
    • Zelensky agrees to investigate Burisma and Biden, and brings up how bad the U.S. Ambassador is.
  1. On the same day Trump releases the rough notes of his conversation with Zelensky, certain members of Congress get access to the whistleblower complaint in a SCIF, which means it contains classified information.
  2. They later release an unclassified version of the complaint to the public without the underlying classified evidence. Here are a few points, but you can read it yourself (it’s concise and well-written).
    • The complaint discusses the phone call, attempts to hide the content of the call, and additional ongoing concerns, like the meetings between Ukraine officials and Giuliani, and between Ukraine officials and our ambassadors.
    • On August 9, Trump told reporters that he thinks Zelensky will make a deal with Putin. (UPDATE: It was just announced publicly that this is happening.)
    • The White House used a super-secure computer system (a codeword-level system) to store details about Trump’s conversation with Ukraine President Zelensky. This is a very unusual use for this computer system, designed for highly classified national security information and not for politically sensitive information. This was at the direction of National Security Council attorneys, so it was serious.
    • Most interesting is the section on all the events leading up to the call, I recommend you all read it.
  1. This isn’t the only time the White House used the codeword-level system to hide conversations with foreign leaders. The White House also took extraordinary efforts to conceal conversations Trump had with Putin and Saudi’s Mohammad bin Salman.
    • The Russian government warns Trump not to release transcripts of any of his calls with Putin.
    • In 2018, the White House asked DoD officials to return transcripts of calls over worries their contents would be disclosed.
    • The White House also cut the number of aides allowed to listen in on secure lines and the number of officials who could review memos about the contents of calls.
  1. The White House accidentally sends out their talking points defending Trump to a number of House Democrats. And then they asked the Democrats to send them back. Here’s a summary of the talking points, along with my take on them.
  2. Republicans defend Trump by pointing out that three Democratic lawmakers sent Ukraine a letter threatening Ukraine if they don’t keep up their investigations into Manafort (those investigations were in conjunction with the current U.S. cases against Manafort). IMO, the letter is more of an inquiry, and not threatening at all. You can read it here.
  3. Trump says Congress should ask about Vice-President Mike Pence’s conversations with Zelensky.
    • Pence advises Trump not to release any of the contents of Trump’s call with Zelensky.
  1. DNI Joseph Maguire testifies before Congress. Some key takeaways:
    • This is unprecedented. All of it.
    • He was concerned about executive privilege in handling the complaint. Once Trump released the transcript, though, executive privilege was gone. Of note, executive privilege doesn’t cover criminal acts.
    • He thinks the whistleblower did the right thing and is acting in good faith, and that he should be able to testify before Congress.
    • He questions whether it is the purview of Congress to investigate this.
    • He doesn’t think he’s the best guy for this job.
  1. The whistleblower tentatively agrees to meet with Members of Congress as long as the whistleblower’s lawyer has the required security clearances.
    • If you’re curious about his credibility, the whistleblower identified several people who can corroborate his report, and the inspector general did his own followup investigation before finding the claim credible and urgent.
  1. A former advisor to Zelensky says that discussing the Biden case was a prerequisite to having a conversation between the two presidents.
  2. It turns out that while former Ukraine prosecutor Shokin wasn’t aggressively investigating Burisma, he was using the threat of investigation to extort the company’s owner and his friends.
  3. Ukrainian officials say that Lutsenko, who at the time was the Ukraine general prosecutor, was trying to give Giuliani the information he wanted earlier this year as a way to get into Trump’s good graces and possibly extricate himself from Ukraine. Lutsenko has since contradicted himself and said the Bidens didn’t violate any Ukrainian laws.
  4. Lutsenko says that the violations being investigated at Burisma occurred two years before Hunter Biden came on board.
  5. Lutsenko closed the investigation into Burisma in 2017, but begin looking at the company again early this year after he started meeting with Giuliani. His office disputes that he ever re-opened an investigation into the company, though.
  6. Lutsenko says he told Giuliani to open his own investigation with the FBI or CIA, but not to drag Ukraine into our politics. He also told him to bring his own court case if he had any evidence.
  7. Lutsenko told Giuliani that former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch gave him a list of people not to prosecute.
    • Never one to let the chance at a good conspiracy slip by, Giuliani says the list was part of a liberal anti-trump conspiracy (is there any other kind?) that was bankrolled by George Soros (who else?).
    • The US State Department dismisses the list as an “outright fabrication.”
    • Nonetheless, the administration removed Yovanovitch from Ukraine in May.
  1. The number of Democrats in the House who support impeachment has grown to 224, from about 135 before the whistleblower complaint was made public.
  2. Over 300 former national security and foreign policy officials sign on to a statement voicing concern over the phone call with Ukraine and calling for impeachment inquiries to get to the facts. They say Trump’s actions constitute a profound national security risk.
  3. Three House committees issue subpoenas for documents from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and also instruct him to make these department employees available for deposition: former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, former Ambassador Kurt Volker, George Kent, T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, and Ambassador Gordon Sondland.
    • Volker is said to have arranged for Giuliani to meet with Ukrainian officials.
    • Volker resigns the day after the contents of the whistleblower complaint is published (which is also the day after Giuliani goes on the talkshow circuit showing everyone the texts he exchanged with Volker).
    • The whistleblower complaint alleges that the day after Trump’s phone call with Zelensky, Volker and Sondland met with Ukrainian officials to help them navigate Trump’s demands. Whatever that means. Volker will testify next week.
  1. In light of the impeachment announcement, the House Intelligence Committee will work through the two-week recess at the beginning of October.
  2. Trump defenders claim that the Intelligence Community changed the rules requiring whistleblower’s to have firsthand information just so this whistleblower could make a claim. Those rules were never in the code to begin with and the form hasn’t changed.
  3. Fox News reports that DC husband and wife lawyers Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing worked with Giuliani to get dirt on Biden from Ukrainian officials. They all three worked “off the books” and only Trump knew what they were doing. All three lawyers deny this.
  4. Trump and the GOP really push the narrative that Biden intervened in Ukraine to get the prosecutor to stop investigating his son. That’s really not what happened, but there was definitely the appearance of a conflict of interest. Here’s the straight scoop, with links to their sources.
  5. The whistleblower is now under federal protection out of fear for his safety.
  6. In 2018, Trump told the world he takes Putin at his word when he says Russia didn’t meddle in our 2016 elections. This week, we learn that in 2017, Trump did acknowledge that Russia meddled in our elections and that he told Russian officials that he didn’t care.
  7. Trump’s efforts with Ukraine seem to have three parts: 1) discredit his political opponent Biden, and 2) clear Russia of meddling in the 2016 election so we can drop sanctions, and 3) push Ukraine toward a peace agreement with Russia, again so we can drop sanctions.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A Michigan judge strikes down a law that would’ve made it harder for voters to get initiatives on the ballot. This was one of the laws passed by last year’s lame-duck legislature to restrict the new Democratic governor’s ability to enact his agenda.
  2. The day before Nancy Pelosi announces impeachment inquiries into Trump, Rep. Ayanna Pressley files articles of impeachment against Brett Kavanaugh.

Healthcare:

  1. As an example of how we have a “do nothing” Congress who just wants to impeach him, Trump says that Democrats haven’t taken any action to lower drug prices. But just last week he praised the bill they passed and sent to the Senate that would… yes, lower drug prices.
  2. At the UN, Trump’s administration says abortion isn’t an international right, and they push to eliminate terms like sexual and reproductive health from UN documents. Only 19 nations agree, including those bastions of women’s rights, Saudi Arabia and Russia.
  3. Employer health insurance plans have become more expensive over the past decade and they provide less coverage.
  4. The suicide rate in the military hit its highest level in five years.
  5. The FDA delayed regulating vaping products for years, and only started to regulate them in 2016; still, they pushed back critical deadlines until 2022.

International:

  1. In the middle of all the whistleblower kerfuffle, Trump meets with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky at the UN and they hold a joint press conference.
    • Trump talks about having the best employment we’ve ever had and the best economy we’ve ever had.
    • He also resurrects his accusations that NATO countries don’t spend enough money to help Ukraine.
    • Zelensky says there was no pressure during the whistleblower phone call, and also says he doesn’t want to get in the middle of U.S. elections.
    • Trump closes with, “Unfortunately she [Nancy Pelosi] is no longer Speaker of the House.
  1. Trump complains that the press isn’t covering all the great things he did at the UN summit because they’re too busy covering the whistleblower complaint. Here are just a few things they covered:
    • In Trump’s UN speech, he promotes nationalism and criticizes globalists, socialists, and several countries.
    • On the plus side, he says his administration is working to end the criminalization of homosexuality abroad and to empower women.
    • Trump holds a session on ending religious persecution and protecting religious sites and relics.
    • Trump planned to skip the UN Climate Summit, but he makes a brief appearance.
  1. Without a clear winner in Israel’s second elections this year, President Reuven Rivlin gives Netanyahu first dibs at trying to form a government. If Netanyahu can’t form a government, the mandate goes back to the president. Or there could be yet more elections.
  2. Netanyahu and opponent Benny Gantz plan to meet next week to see if they can agree on a unity government. Those talks will be the same day that Netanyahu’s pre-indictment hearing begins.
  3. Parliament resumes in the UK after the Supreme Court rules that Boris Johnson’s suspension of the Parliament was unlawful. Johnson was trying to prevent them from blocking a no-deal Brexit.
  4. Johnson’s opposition in Parliament wants to hold a vote of no confidence in order to replace Johnson with an interim administrator.
  5. Oh, and Johnson is now embroiled in a romantic scandal. He had an affair with an American businesswomen who received money from an agency that Johnson controlled as Mayor of London.
  6. Hong Kong is in its 17th straight week of pro-democracy protests. In an unauthorized march, thousands of protestors clash with police, and the entryways to subway stations are closed. Protestors set one entryway on fire, police arrest more than 100 people, and more than 25 protestors are injured. This was a violent weekend, with police firing water canons, tear gas, and rubber bullets, and with protestors throwing gas bombs, starting fires, and breaking windows. China’s 70th anniversary of Communist Party rule (which the protestors are fighting against) is coming up,
  7. Protestors block streets in Lebanon over the country’s economic crisis. They accuse the ruling class of stealing from the people.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. If you don’t think the House should impeach because you want them passing laws and working for the American people instead, take a look at this. It’s what the House has been doing outside of investigating Trump. Impeachment isn’t taking up all their time.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. For the second time, the Senate approves a resolution to block Trump’s emergency declaration to fund his border wall. The House follows suit, but Trump can still veto it and is likely to do so.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump cuts the U.S. refugee program by nearly half. He had already dropped it from 110,000 per year under Obama to 30,000 per year in 2019. In 2020, we’ll only allow 18,000 refugees in.
    • The U.S. takes in less than 1 refugee for everyone 1,000 residents each year. France, Canada, and Israel take in 4 to 5 times what we do per capita. Even Ecuador and Venezuela take in more per capita than we do (around 7 times more). Iran takes in 12 times as many refugees per capita.
  1. A district court judge says she’ll block Trump’s changes to the rules for how long we can detain immigrant children.
  2. Insomniac Events (a music festival company) changes their tents into shelters for around 5,000 Bahamans displaced by Hurricane Dorian.
  3. It’s been four years since Germany took in 1 million + immigrants, mostly from Syria. After initial opposition, these immigrants are integrating and helping to revitalize rural areas.
  4. In 1968, Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos were expelled for raising their fists on the winners podium in protest of racial injustice. Now they’re being inducted into the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee’s Hall of Fame. Just another example of how prevailing attitudes change and aren’t always on the right side of history. Hmmm…
  5. Trump calls six non-white Members of Congress “savages.” Two are Jewish, one is Puerto Rican, two are African American, and one is Palestinian.

Climate:

  1. Three Norwegian legislators nominate 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg for the Nobel Peace Prize. While at the same time, Trump makes fun of her in a tweet.
    • Actually, since her speech, Greta has taken a shit-ton of online abuse from adults for her climate activism. What inspires people to be such assholes?
  1. Even Russia formally joins the Paris climate agreement.
  2. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro says the Amazon rainforest isn’t on fire; it’s brimming with riches that he wants to develop.
  3. A new report based on 7,000 studies says that climate change has heated the oceans and changed the ecosystem so dramatically that seafood supplies are threatened. The warmer ocean waters also fuel cyclones and flooding along coastal areas.
  4. At a meeting of fossil fuel executives, an industry lawyer says it’s time for energy companies to accept their role in fueling climate change. For decades, major oil companies have downplayed the effects of climate change, despite documents showing that their own studies supported the science as far back as the mid-80s.
    • Ironically, Trump’s deregulation efforts are part of what brought the industry to their “Come to Jesus” moment, because while larger companies will keep in place safety and environmental protections, smaller companies might take shortcuts. And that could be bad for the industry as a whole.
  1. Summer’s only been gone a week, but winter’s chomping at the bit. Parts of the West get hit with up to three feet of snow, with record low temps and strong winds. Montana Governor Steve Bullock declares a winter storm emergency.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The oldest travel company in the world, Thomas Cook, collapses, leaving hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded on their vacations. The British government refused to intervene to save the company, but they do say they’ll assist travelers. The collapse puts 21,000 jobs at risk.
  2. Just when the market looks optimistic, Trump addresses the UN and accuses China of not keeping its promises to us and engaging in predatory business practices. Stocks have their worst day of the month.
  3. And then, stocks fall further as more Democrats express support for impeaching Trump. But it ends the week pretty even. There’s no real precedent for how markets react to impeachment proceedings.
  4. The housing market slows a bit, with mortgage applications falling 10.1% and prices remaining steady.
  5. Income inequality is now at its highest level in over 50 years. Inequality is still highest in wealthy coastal states, but states in the middle saw the greatest growth in inequality in 2018 (the latest year for which we have numbers).
  6. The IMF names Kristalina Georgieva to be their managing director. Why is this news? Because, of all things, she’s an economist. Right now, Fed Chair Jerome Power, incoming ECB President Christine Lagarde, and World Bank President David Malpass are all lawyers with no solid backgrounds in economics. Having a lawyer in these positions makes them more agile, but also means they lack the understanding behind economic moves.
  7. The New York Fed continues to provide cash infusions to the repo market, but things continue to worsen. The problem is the decreasing level of liquidity, meaning banks don’t have fast access to cash.
  8. It’s been a while since we’ve heard about a teachers’ strike, but Chicago teachers vote to strike, possibly sometime in October.
  9. The UK economy shrank for the first time in seven years, with the GDP falling by 0.2%. The problem is largely uncertainty over Brexit.

Miscellaneous:

  1. At least 22 people are dead and 700 are injured after a 5.6-magnitude earthquake hits northern Pakistan.
  2. The former Chair of the North Carolina GOP, Robin Hayes, plans to plead guilty to lying to the FBI in a bribery case involving a major political donor. Hayes is also a former Member of Congress.
  3. New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger reveals that in 2017, a U.S. official sent The New York Times an urgent warning that Egypt wanted to arrest the paper’s Cairo reporter, Declan Walsh. The official also said that the Trump administration had tried to keep the warning secret and let the arrest occur.

Polls:

  1. Support for impeaching Trump jumped 13 percentage points among Democrats and 12 points among voters since the whistleblower claim came out.
  2. A majority of Americans approve of moving ahead with impeachment inquiries.
  3. In a Monmouth University Poll, 6 of 10 Republicans don’t think Trump mentioned Biden to Ukraine president Zelensky. Here’s a quote directly from the 5-page excerpt Trump released:
    “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”
    Moral of the story? READ THE DAMN SOURCE MATERIAL.

GOP Talking Points About Ukraine

Posted on October 2, 2019 in Impeachment, Trump

Official Republican Talking Points Defending Trump

The White House accidentally sends House Democrats the talking points that GOP members are supposed to use to defend Trump‘s actions regarding Ukraine. Here they are:

  1. They claim the excerpt shows there’s no quid pro quo.
    In reality, quid pro quo doesn’t have to be explicit, and it’s implied in the transcript.
  2. They claim that it’s a myth that Trump made some kind of promise to Zelensky.
    I don’t know of this myth, but maybe they misconstrued quid pro quo?
  3. They claim it’s a myth that Trump urged Zelensky to work with Giuliani eight times.
    I don’t know where the “eight times” came from, but Trump does mention Giuliani four times and Attorney General Barr five times in just the excerpt Trump released.
  4. They claim it’s entirely appropriate to ask a foreign leader to investigate Ukraine meddling in the 2016 election.
    Even if it’s based on a conspiracy theory? Nonetheless, it’s not OK to withhold aid over whether that country will do your bidding.
  5. They say Trump didn’t mention Giuliani until after Zelensky did.
    Zelensky mentioned a previous contact with Giuliani after Trump suggested he talk to Attorney General Barr.
  6. And of course they say that Biden bragged about derailing an investigation.
    Biden never bragged about that. He bragged about helping to oust a corrupt prosecutor. I’m not defending Biden on the conflict of interest here, but you can decide for yourself if that was OK.
  7. They say the real scandal is the leaks, and that the “Deep State,” the media, and Democrats are hurting our national security.
    Just because information about a crime is leaked, that doesn’t make it any less of a crime.
  8. They also say the complaint was handled by the book.
    This could be mostly true. The DNI consulted the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel to find out if the scope fell under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act. The DOJ’s OLC says it didn’t, but then the head of the DOJ is also implicated in all this.

A Little Background on CrowdStrike

Posted on October 2, 2019 in Impeachment, Trump

Background on CrowdStrike and the Ukraine Conspiracy Theory

There’s been an ongoing far-right conspiracy theory that CrowdStrike is based in Ukraine, that they were behind the hacks and leaks in the 2016 election, and that they framed Russia for it all.

  1. CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that investigated the hack of the Democratic Party’s servers in the 2016 election. So it became the focus of conspiracy theories.
  2. The company is based in Irvine, CA, but Trump apparently believes it operates from Ukraine.
  3. Trump and his fellow Ukraine conspiracy theorists believe that there’s a “missing” DNC server sitting somewhere in a Ukraine basement. They also think this server is the key to the truth of what happened in 2016.
    • Tip: There is no missing DNC server. The FBI didn’t “take” the computer because they took an image of it. That’s how investigations are handled. Investigators don’t confiscate a victim’s computer.
  1. They believe that CrowdStrike is part of an anti-Trump conspiracy and that they falsified their findings that Russia was behind the hack.
  2. CrowdStrike made public certain evidence that definitively points to Russia.
  3. CrowdStrike is also likely a target because they’ve been working with the Ukraine government to fight off Russia’s sustained cyberwarfare against the country.
  4. Trump’s own staff has repeatedly warned him that the Ukraine conspiracy theory he and Giuliani (and apparently Attorney General William Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo) are pursuing is “completely debunked.”
  5. Trump’s first Homeland Security Advisor, Thom Bossert, says he told Trump there was no basis to the theory that Ukraine meddled in our 2016 elections to help Democrats, that Russia is the party that intervened in our elections.
  6. The conspiracy theory also claims that the DNC hack was an inside job, which is how Seth Rich and his family got dragged through the mud after Seth’s murder. Seth’s family has a lawsuit against Fox News for propagating that particular aspect of this conspiracy theory.

How The Whistleblower Complaint Came About

Posted on October 2, 2019 in Impeachment, Trump

Was the Whistleblower Complaint Handled Correctly?

The stories about how the whistleblower’s complaint was handled have been dicey. Here’s a simple breakdown of what went down. For a more detailed discussion, I recommend a quick listen to “The Daily” podcast episode on it.

  1. A few days after Trump’s conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, a CIA agent learns about it from concerned people in the White House. The agent reports it to the top CIA lawyers.
  2. The CIA lawyer, as per protocol, reaches out to her counterpart in the White House to let them know about it.
  3. The White House lawyer starts investigating, and interviews people in the White House who are aware of or heard the conversation. Some of these people are the same ones who told the CIA agent what went on.
  4. The White House lawyers also bring the concern to top lawyers at the DOJ, who bring it to their boss, who happens to be Attorney General William Barr.
    UPDATE: We now know Barr has also been working on getting foreign governments to help Trump in exonerating Russia and implicating Biden.
  5. The people at the White House who White House lawyers interviewed tell the CIA agent about it. They’re concerned that White House lawyers and not CIA lawyers are investigating.
  6. This concerns the CIA agent because it’s like the fox guarding the henhouse; so he decides to go the whistleblower route and files a complaint with the intelligence community’s inspector general.
  7. The Inspector general does his research and corroborates the whistleblower’s story. He finds the complaint credible and urgent. As per protocol, he forwards the information to the DNI (Director of National Intelligence), who is only there in an acting capacity and has been on the job for all of a hot minute.
  8. The DNI is unclear about how to handle this because it involves the president, so he takes it to the DOJ, who (as we now know) has already gotten a heads up from the White House lawyers. The DOJ lawyers quash the complaint, saying it isn’t covered by intelligence community whistleblower protections,
  9. And that’s how it ended up not going to Congress within the required timeframe.
  10. The IG becomes concerned when he doesn’t hear anything, so he alerts Congress about the complaint.
  11. The House Intelligence Committee, which is supposed to receive whistleblower information, is unable to obtain it, so the chair of the committee goes public.
  12. The chair continues to have a hard time obtaining the document until public backlash forces the DOJ to turn it over.

Week 139 in Trump

Posted on September 25, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Leila Navidi, leila.navidi@startribune.com

Corey Lewandowski makes a spectacle of his hearing; details about the whistleblower complaint come out, and yes, it’s about Trump; huge Youth Climate Strikes span the globe; Boris Johnson might have illegally suspended Parliament; Israel holds new elections (yet again); costs stall Trump’s border wall; DHS reinstates medically protected status; Trump waives more tariffs; and will we go to war with Iran? It was a big week, and it’s already totally eclipsed by the news from the following week.

Here what happened in politics for the week ending September 22…

Shootings This Week:

  1. Here are this week’s mass shootings (defined as killing or injuring four or more people):
    • A shooter kills two adults and injures two teenagers in Cheyenne, WY. It was apparently a drug deal gone wrong.
    • A shooter in Wilmington, CA, walks up to a group of people and kills two of them and injures two others.
    • A drive-by shooter kills three people and injures one more in Chicago.
    • A shooter kills one person and injures five others in Washington, DC.
    • A shooter kills one person and injures five others in New Orleans.
    • A shooter in a nightclub in Lancaster, SC, kills two people and injures eight others.
    • Four people are found dead from gunshot wounds in an abandoned house in Cleveland, OH.
    • A shooting between two cars in New Orleans leaves four people injured.
    • A nightclub shooting in Kansas City, MO, leaves five people injured.
    • Two people are dead and two are injured in Gary, IN, after someone shoots at a car and the driver swerves into a tree.
    • A shooter kills one teenage boy and injures three others as they’re walking down a street in Chicago.
  1. Almost 230,000 people have experienced a school shooting since the Columbine shootings.
  2. Colt announces that they’ll suspend production of the AR-15 for civilian use. They say it’s because they’ve reached market capacity, not that they don’t think civilians should have the weapons.
    • Colt’s competitors sell similar guns for less than what Colt charges for theirs.

Russia:

  1. Corey Lewandowski “testifies” to the House Judiciary Committee. He says the White House told him not to provide any answers that can’t already be found in the Mueller report, and as such he is combative.
    • Lewandowski does confirm that everything in the report about Trump asking him to fire Jeff Sessions is accurate.
    • Lewandowski says the investigation is an attempt to “take down a duly elected President of the United States.” But then he says he never questioned the validity of the Mueller report.
    • Lewandowski appears to be using the hearing to make a splash in New Hampshire, where he plans a Senate run.
  1. The hearing is chaotic until the staff counsel starts asking the questions (as opposed to Members of Congress). Counsel gets Lewandowski to admit:
    • He lied to the American people multiple times on TV. Lewandowski says he doesn’t have to tell the media, and by extension the American people, the truth.
    • He took the Fifth and asked for immunity before meeting with Mueller’s team. Lewandowski has also said publicly that you only take the Fifth when you’ve done something wrong.
    • Before Trump asked him to fire Sessions, he brought up the possibility of giving Lewandowski a job in the White House.
    • He wanted to meet in private with Sessions so there would be no record.
  1. Trump tweets his appreciation of Lewandowski’s performance.
  2. Committee Chair Jerry Nadler is considering holding Lewandowski in contempt.
  3. There’s an explosion in Russia at the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology, which is one of two locations in the world where live smallpox viruses are stored. Russia says there’s no threat from the virus, just like they said there was no radiation released from the explosion of their nuclear-propelled missile.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The Manhattan district attorney subpoenas eight years of tax returns from Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA. This is related to the Stormy Daniels case. Mazars says they’ll comply.
    • I feel like I just keep writing the same stories over and over again, but yet again, Trump sues his accounting firm to stop them from complying with the subpoena.
    • In attempting to block the subpoena, Trump’s lawyers argue that a sitting president can’t be subject to the criminal process, suggesting that Trump can’t be investigated or tried.
  1. Senator Chris Coons says he told the FBI last year about the allegations of more bad behavior by Brett Kavanaugh while in school, but the FBI doesn’t appear to have followed up on it.
  2. In addition to the Air Force sometimes housing their crew at Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, Turnberry gifts high-ranking officials with special pins on their visits, and some of the visits last for up to five days. Sometimes the crew gets stranded due to bad weather, and some complain that their per diem is barely enough to get by at the expensive resort.
    • In the past two years, Air Force spending at Trump’s Turnberry golf course has nearly tripled from the previous two years.
  1. It’s still in question whether the DOJ will prosecute former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe for allegedly lying about a media leak, but his lawyers say Trump’s attacks on McCabe have made a fair prosecution impossible.
  2. A federal court of appeals reinstates the lawsuit filed by Seth Rich’s parents against Fox News. Rich was a DNC staffer who was murdered in a botched robbery, and Fox repeatedly pushed the conspiracy theory that he was murdered because he was behind the leak of DNC documents in 2016.
  3. Last week we learned about a whistleblower report that wasn’t turned over to Congress as required. Per the Wall Street Journal, the complaint revolves around the Ukraine. During a phone call in July, Trump repeatedly pressured Ukraine’s new president to investigate Joe Biden’s son, and asked him several times to work with Rudy Giuliani on this. Giuliani met with top Ukrainian officials in June and August about it.
    • Trump doesn’t deny asking Ukraine’s president about Joe Biden and says he didn’t do anything wrong. He also says someone should look into Biden’s efforts force out Ukraine’s prosecutor general as it relates to Biden’s son, Hunter, being on the board of Burisma Holdings, which at one point was under investigation by Ukraine’s prosecutor.
    • A Ukrainian prosecutor has already found there was no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or by his son.
    • Background: This has been fully investigated in Ukraine, and neither Joe Biden nor his son Hunter were found to have done anything wrong. The investigation into Burisma Holdings didn’t involve Hunter and was over a deal that occurred before Hunter joined the board. Around that time, Biden threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine in order to battle the corruption of the government (which, in a strange way of coming full circle, Paul Manafort helped into power). Joe Biden’s actions to remove Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokin were coordinated with our allies, and the recommendation to do so came from our embassy in Kiev. In fact, the IMF had threatened to withhold money for the same reason a month earlier.
    • Trump says the complaint was filed by a partisan whistleblower. Does that mean he knows the identity of the whistleblower? He says he doesn’t, which means he’s just making that partisan bit up.
    • Trump says it doesn’t matter what he discussed with foreign leaders.
    • Three House committees are already investigating Rudy Giuliani over this matter, and committee chairs and Nancy Pelosi threaten additional legal actions if the whistleblower complaint isn’t turned over as mandated by law.
    • Rudy Giuliani goes on the press circuit to try to get ahead of the Ukraine story. He says he didn’t ask Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden, but literally less than 30 seconds later he says that of course he did.
    • The news of the whistleblower story causes growing support in the Democratic House caucus for impeachment.
    • Both Representative Adam Schiff and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi say that impeachment might be the only way forward now. This is notable because both have been reticent to fully commit to impeachment.

Healthcare:

  1. You might remember that a while back, Trump loosened up the laws on temporary healthcare plans that don’t meet the standards of the ACA by expanding their coverage from three months to one year. Well, now those plans have flooded the market, and people are finding out that their healthcare costs aren’t being covered. Just one success in the GOP’s efforts to gut the ACA.
  2. Two bills expanding access to abortions go into effect in Maine after anti-abortion activists fail to get the necessary signatures to fight them. One bill requires insurance plans covering prenatal care to also cover abortion care, and the other overturns a ban on nurse practitioners providing abortion care.
  3. A federal judge denies Missouri’s request to put into effect their ban on abortions after 20 weeks while the case against it moves through the courts. The original law bans abortions after 8 weeks, but includes triggers to ban abortions at 14, 18, and 20 weeks if the 8-week ban is found unconstitutional.
  4. The House passes a bill designed to help lower prescription drug prices by increasing the ability to negotiate prices. Trump praises the bill right after Mitch McConnell says the bill is dead on arrival in the Senate because it’s “socialist.”
  5. Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, files for bankruptcy.

International:

  1. The Trump administration releases satellite images that appear to implicate Iran in the attacks on Saudi oil plants. The images show 19 strikes at two facilities, which Trump officials say couldn’t be carried out with 10 drones, as claimed by the Yemeni rebels. Iran continues to deny involvement.
    • Officials say that our surveillance satellites caught Iran preparing for the attacks, but are calling the evidence circumstantial.
    • Trump and Rouhani were working on setting up a meeting at the UN summit, but now Iran is ruling that out completely.
    • Mike Pompeo heads over to Saudi Arabia to discuss a response to the attacks. Pompeo says the administration wants a peaceful resolution, but defense officials present a list of potential targets should we decide to retaliate alongside Saudi Arabia.
    • Iran’s foreign minister threatens an all-out war if the U.S. or Saudi Arabia strikes Iran.
    • Trump deploys 500 additional U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia.
    • Trump announces additional sanctions on Iran, which target their national bank.
  1. Two suicide bombings in Afghanistan kill nearly 50 people. One was near the U.S. embassy and NATO compound.
  2. A Scottish court finds that Boris Johnson illegally suspended Parliament last month, pushing the case up to Britain’s Supreme Court.
  3. Does this sound familiar? Close to the Israeli election, Netanyahu and his party accuse minority Arab citizens of voter fraud and they send out racist robocalls warning about high Arab turnout.
    • The Israeli vote is too close to call. Netanyahu’s Likud party trails the centrist Blue and White party by two seats. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin will consult with party leaders and decide whether Netanyahu or Gantz gets a first shot at forming a government. In a first, Arab parties have said they’d be open to forming a government with Blue and White.
    • With his lead, Gantz declares victory, but Netanyahu says they should share power. Gantz rejects the power sharing offer, and says he’ll lead a coalition of parties from across the political spectrum.
  1. Trump names Robert O’Brien to be the new National Security Advisor. O’Brien is the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs (aka a hostage negotiator) who recently made news when Trump sent him to Sweden to monitor the trial of A$AP Rocky.
  2. In the middle of the whistleblower controversy, Trump says he’ll meet with the Ukraine president at next week’s UN summit.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. House Democrats hold hearings on DC statehood.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. Trump starts to discuss sensors in the fences going up at the border, which is apparently sensitive technology. When he asks the General in charge to describe the technology, the General says, “Sir, there could be some merit in not discussing that.”
  2. At the same visit, Trump says that the world’s best mountain climbers have tested his wall and couldn’t scale it. I think rock climbers would be better testers, but regardless, world-class mountain climbers have no idea what he’s talking about.
  3. The Department of Defense says they won’t go forward with three projects to build border wall in Arizona and California because it’s too expensive. So far 60 miles of fencing have been updated.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A new study finds that one in 16 women say their first sexual experience was rape, and those women tend to have higher rates of unwanted first pregnancies, abortions, and subsequent physical and mental health problems. 75% were younger than 17 when it happened, and nearly half of those were younger than 14.
  2. After Trump says the DOJ should rescue Brett Kavanaugh, Attorney General William Barr’s past skepticism over rape claims comes to light. Barr has accused Obama of “fanning the false narrative of rape culture” (um, see above study, Mr. Barr). He also endorsed a book that accuses schools of treating people accused of rape unfairly.
  3. Immigration services reverses their new policy of deporting people who are here under medical protected status (the deferred action program) after a huge public outcry and a House hearing about it.
  4. The Pentagon is the group in the Trump administration still fighting against Stephen Miller’s plans to drastically cut the number of refugees allowed in the U.S. The Pentagon argues that bringing in refugees is in our national security interest, and they’re specifically arguing for visas for Iraqis who’ve helped out U.S. troops.
  5. Trump plans to skip the UN summit on climate change next week and instead will chair a session on worldwide religious persecution.
  6. Due to the recent mass shootings, the Department of Homeland Security finally adds White Supremacy to its list of terrorist threats. The DHS was formed as a reaction to the 9/11 attacks, so their focus was on Muslim extremists, rightly or wrongly so. They unbelievably expanded to include minority groups before they included the White Supremacists attacking those groups.
    • This victory rings hollow to me. Six of the victims of the El Paso shooting were family members of DHS employees. So this is another instance of “it’s not a problem until it affects me.”

Climate:

  1. EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler threatens to cut U.S. highway funds to California, saying that our air is too polluted.
    • Why is this ironic? At the same time, Trump formally revokes California’s waiver on federal emission standards. The waiver allows the state to set stricter emissions limits than what the federal government mandates so that we can reduce our air pollution.
    • But whatevs. Ford, Honda, BMW and Volkswagen all say they’ll stick to their agreement with California on stricter emissions standards. Industry leaders say that Trump’s anti-trust lawsuit against them is causing other automakers to think twice about joining them, though.
  1. Tropical Depression Imelda drops over 40 inches of rain on parts of Texas, causing massive flooding and killing three people. This is the same area hit by Hurricane Harvey.
  2. Before the upcoming UN summit on climate change, millions of people march in the Youth Climate Strike in over 150 countries. An estimated 4 million people in thousands of cities participate.
  3. The bird population in the U.S. and Canada has fallen by almost a third since 1970, partly due to our encroachment on their habitats and the growing use of pesticides.
  4. In order to justify cutting aid to Guatemala, the Trump administration had to ignore its own evidence of climate change being a major factor in the current migration from Guatemala. Part of the aid Trump froze was supposed to go to help small farmers mitigate the effects of climate change. From a DHS official:
    • “Everyone knows [White House adviser Stephen] Miller isn’t interested in hearing about climate change,”
  1. Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, finally shuts down for good. Because of the nature of nuclear energy, it will take decades to completely decommission the plant—it should be complete in 2078.

Budget/Economy:

  1. In the first auto workers strike in 12 years, about 46,000 members of the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) at GM walk off the job. At issue is GM’s idling of five plants, wages, healthcare, and permanent positions for temporary employees.
    • There’s also a scandal within the union right now regarding misappropriation of funds. Bad timing there.
  1. All market indicators seem to be weird right now. The inverted bond yield might or might not be predicting a recession. The consumer price index might or might not be predicting inflation. Your guess is as good as anybody’s at this point.
  2. Trump complains that homeless people live in “our best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings.” He says he’s speaking to tenants who “want to leave the country,” whatever that means. He also says homelessness started two years ago, and that he ended it in DC already.
  3. CEO confidence is at its lowest level since before Trump took office, and they’re downgrading their expectations for hiring and growth.
  4. The Fed cuts interest rates by 1/4 point for the second consecutive quarter with three dissenting votes from the board, reflecting 1) concerns about an economic downturn and 2) conflict within the Fed over whether the action is warranted.
  5. For the first time since 2007, the Fed injects money into the short-term money market due to a spiking “repo” rate. The repo rate is the price at which securities like U.S. government bonds can be temporarily swapped for cash. The Fed pumps up the market with $128 billion in cash.
  6. Trump waives tariffs on over 400 items imported from China. He says he’s having a little spat with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
  7. The farm bailout reaches $28 billion, which is more than twice what the automaker bailout cost us after they paid everything back (the auto bailout ended up costing U.S. taxpayers around $12 billion).
  8. Saudi Arabia says their oil output and production will return to normal by the end of the month.
  9. Amid hopes that Britain will avoid a no-deal Brexit, the British pound rises to a 2-month high against the dollar. Which isn’t saying much. In August, the pound was at its lowest rate against the dollar since 1985.
  10. The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to hear a case that could allow them to fire the head of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the agency created by Elizabeth Warren to be a watchdog against the kind of corporate malfeasance that played such a big role in the Great Recession.

Elections:

  1. Republicans in four states have cancelled their GOP primary elections, but Michigan Republicans aren’t able to. So instead they change the rules to ensure Trump gets all their delegates.
  2. The Alaska Republican Party cancels its 2020 presidential primary, becoming the fifth state to do so.
  3. Hate those coastal elites? Well, Trump just fundraised about $15 million off of them in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
  4. Finally Mitch McConnell puts his support behind $250 million in funding to harden our election security.

Miscellaneous:

  1. With Trump’s current nominee to head up FEMA being held up for personal issues, Trump will nominate Peter Gaynor to head up FEMA. He’s the current deputy director of FEMA.
  2. Police finally arrest Democratic donor Ed Buck after a third victim nearly dies at his home, which police are calling a drug house. This is a super bizarre story, and I don’t know how he wasn’t arrested sooner.
  3. Darrell Issa’s FBI file is holding up his nomination for director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. No word on what specifically is in that file, but Issa’s already looking into running for the House again in California’s 50th district where the current representative, Duncan Hunter, is indicted on 60 felony counts.
  4. Mike Pence brings his motorcade (eight SUVs) to Mackinac Island, MI, a national historic site that typically doesn’t allow non-emergency vehicular traffic. Pence is the first government official to break with the island’s tradition of not allowing cars. His trek from the airport to the Grand Hotel, host of the Republican Party conference, is all of one mile.
  5. Trump’s administration has one of the highest levels of turnover, with change in 78% of the positions. 31% of those have turned over multiple times.

Polls:

  1. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that 69% of registered voters do not like Trump, even if they like his policies. That makes him the most disliked out of his five most recent predecessors.

Week 138 in Trump

Posted on September 18, 2019 in Trump

In the 60s and 70s, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught on fire — a lot.

Despite all the distractions, much of Trump’s accomplishments so far are around deregulations, and he caps it off this week by reversing Obama’s Clean Water rules. Even members of the industries that pollute say he’s gone too far. I’m happy to live in California, where although we struggle with pollution and greenhouse gases, we also work on and support solutions for it. I remember pictures from when I was young of smog-filled air and brown lakes and streams that sometimes caught on fire. Those should remind us why there’s a reason and a need for some federal regulation.

Here’s what else happened in politics for the week ending September 15…

Shootings This Week:

  1. The week‘s mass shootings (defined as killing or injuring four or more people). There’s not as much information as usual about most of these shootings:
    • A shooter injures four teenage boys in Chicago.
    • A shooting in Albuquerque, NM, leaves four people dead and two more injured.
    • Another shooting in Albuquerque leaves one person dead and three more injured.
    • A shooting in Lagrange, GA, leaves four people injured.
    • A shooting that started outside a bar in Oakland, CA, leaves two people dead and seven more injured.
    • A shooting in St. Louis, MO, leaves one person dead and three more injured.
  1. 145 CEOs send a letter to members of the Senate urging them to move forward on gun control measures. They say that doing nothing at this point is simply unacceptable. They want universal background checks and red flag laws, among other reforms.
  2. During the Democratic presidential primary debates, Beto O’Rourke says, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15’s.” In response, Texas legislator Briscoe Cain tweets, “My AR is ready for you Robert Francis.” (Robert Francis is Beto’s legal name.) Twitter sees it as a threat and removes the tweet, and Cain is reported to the FBI.
  3. Trump honors first responders from Dayton, OH, and El Paso, TX, at a White House event, but excludes first responders from the Gilroy Garlic Festival, where a shooting occurred just days before Dayton and El Paso.

Russia:

  1. The DOJ seeks to block House Democrats from getting the requested unredacted Mueller report along with the underlying evidence, including grand jury testimony.
  2. On the other hand, the DOJ does release parts of Mueller’s conflict-of-interest waiver. The portions released show that a top DOJ ethics official determined that Mueller’s background and reputation would make any reasonable person trust his independence. Despite this, Trump and his allies have tried to portray Mueller as running a team of Democrats executing a vendetta against Trump.

Legal Fallout:

  1. In response to claims that he’s profiting off the presidency, Trump says he’ll release an “extremely complete” report about his financial records. He doesn’t say when, though.
  2. It turns out that Air Force crews have used Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland at least 40 times since 2015, more than was previously thought.
  3. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reinstates a lawsuit that accuses Trump of violating the emoluments clause. The suit was brought by businesses that compete with Trump. A separate emoluments clause brought by two state attorneys general was already dismissed, and another one brought by Democrats in Congress is still in court.
  4. The Director of National Intelligence has neglected to turn over required whistleblower documents to Congress. Intelligence employees can report urgent concerns to the Inspector General, who has 14 days to report those concerns to the Director of National Intelligence. The Director then has 7 days to forward the information to the intelligence committees in Congress.
    • Acting DNI Joseph Maguire has not forwarded the information by the deadline, which was September 2.
    • Maguire did, however, bring the information to the DOJ.
    • The IG alerted House Intelligence Committee heads to let them know about it.
    • Committee Chair Adam Schiff sends two letters to Maguire and finally subpoenas the information.
  1. Michael Flynn’s sentencing is set for December 18th. This has been a long time coming—he pleaded guilty on December 1, 2017.
  2. The House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight committees all open investigations into whether Trump, Giuliani and others tried to manipulate the Ukraine justice system and applied pressure to Ukraine’s government in order to help with Trump’s re-election.
  3. The House Judiciary Committee approves a resolution defining an impeachment roadmap and making changes to their operations to make their hearings similar to Watergate.
    • This gives the chairman, Jerry Nadler, powers to convene hearings more quickly.
    • It gets rid of the questioning format where each member gets 5 minutes to question a witness. The new format will allow committee staff counsels to do the questioning.
    • The committee can now collect information in secret sessions.
    • The committee is looking at the hush money payments to mistresses, allegations of emoluments clause violations, and five areas of obstruction of justice outlined in Robert Mueller’s report.
  1. After the DOJ refuses Andrew McCabe’s request to drop their case against him, the grand jury for the case is called back to DC courthouses. But by the end of the week, they still haven’t indicted McCabe on anything. We don’t know if they rejected the indictment, because the DOJ isn’t talking about it.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes a blistering dissent to the ruling that Trump can carry out his “third-country” ban on asylum seekers while the lawsuit is going through the courts. The ban requires refugees who pass through a third country to apply for asylum there before applying in the U.S.
    • The Supreme Court acknowledges that Trump will likely lose the case on legal merits because we don’t have a safe third-country agreement with Mexico.
  1. Two New York Times reporters release an excerpt of a new book about their investigation into the allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh from his high school and college days. They uncover another allegation, but the victim doesn’t remember it happening. A witness says he saw it happen. And now everyone’s talking about impeaching Kavanaugh again.
  2. And what timing. The DOJ gives the lawyers who worked to push through Kavanaugh’s confirmation the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service. It’s the second highest honor in the DOJ.
  3. Trump says “his” DOJ should rescue Kavanaugh. 1) They’re not his DOJ and 2) they don’t represent SCOTUS.

Healthcare:

  1. After six people die and 450 get sick with a vaping-related lung disease, Health and Human Services announces they’ll pull flavored e-cigarettes off the market leaving only tobacco-flavored ones.
  2. The number of uninsured children in the U.S. went up by almost half a million in 2018 from 2017. This is the second year the number increased. One reason is that they’re being dropped from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
  3. The number of uninsured Americans increases for the first time since the ACA passed in 2010. 27.5 million people now lack health insurance.
  4. A federal court blocks North Dakota’s law that would’ve required doctors to lie to their patients about being able to reverse a medical abortion.
  5. Purdue Pharma reaches a tentative agreement for a $3 billion settlement. But then we find out that the Sackler family, which owns Purdue, is trying to hide a significant amount of wealth in companies, trusts, and offshore accounts.
    • The New York State Attorney General says they found at least $1 billion in wire transfers.
    • Some states reject the proposed agreement and instead want something closer to $12 billion.
  1. An anti-vaccination activist throws a menstrual cup filled with blood at state senators in California as they’re wrapping up their legislative session. They had earlier passed a bill tightening vaccination rules and a bill allowing abortion pills on California college campuses. It’s not clear which one she was protesting.
  2. The House of Representatives passes a bill requiring carbon monoxide detectors in public housing.

International:

  1. Iran acknowledges that they’re breaking their part of the Iran Deal, just like they promised they would when the U.S. made it impossible for all involved parties to keep their parts of the deal.
  2. The Senate confirms Kelly Kraft as UN Ambassador. Kraft was previously the Ambassador to Canada, but didn’t spend much time there. She also thinks there are “good scientists on both sides” of the climate debate.
  3. Trump considers easing up on the pressure on Iran, and gets pushback from John Bolton (who probably would like nothing more than to invade Iran). That might’ve led to his ouster.
  4. In the run-up to the Israeli elections, Prime Minister Netanyahu promises to annex all Israeli settlements (a third of the West Bank) if voters elect him again.
    • Wait. Didn’t Israel just have elections? Yes, but Netanyahu failed to build a coalition government and now they’re having redo.
  1. A court in Scotland rules that Prime Minister Boris Johnson lied to the queen in order to obtain approval to suspend Parliament.
  2. The Wall Street Journal reports that at the G-7 Summit in France last month, Trump loudly asked, “Where’s my favorite dictator?” He was looking for Egyptian President (and real life dictator) Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
  3. Saudi Arabia’s oil industry suffers major losses in a series of drone attacks. Yemeni Houthi rebels take credit, but Mike Pompeo says Iran is behind the attacks. Half of Saudi Arabia’s crude production shuts down for the day, and oil prices spikes.
    • Trump tweets that we’re “locked and loaded” and waiting for further information from Saudi Arabia to determine a plan of action.
    • After the attacks, Trump says he never said he’d meet with Iranian President Rouhani without conditions. It was Trump’s own cabinet who made those claims in the first place (Pompeo and Mnuchin).
  1. A counterterrorism operation results in the death of Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza Bin Laden.
  2. It turns out that Trump is skeptical of using foreign intelligence from covert sources (aka spies). He says they aren’t credible and undermine his relationships with foreign leaders. This comes out after the kerfuffle about extracting our mole in the Kremlin, where news agencies have all but outed his identity.
  3. Federal agencies, including the FBI, accuse Israel of trying to spy on Trump by putting cell phone surveillance devices called StingRays near the White House. Trump defends Israel, saying he finds it hard to believe the devices were placed by Israeli agents.
  4. The U.S. prepares to send 150 additional troops to Syria despite Trump’s previous announcement of a troop withdrawal.
  5. After demonstrators march in Hong Kong again, violence breaks out between protestors and police and between different protest groups. Protestors throw gasoline bombs toward the Legislative Council Building, while police respond with tear gas and water canons.
    • Protestors also ask Britain and the U.S. to liberate them from China.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. North Carolina politics are our worst example of democracy, and this week is no different. Republicans in the State House have been waiting for the chance to override the governor’s veto of a budget bill passed by both state chambers. Both chambers are held by Republicans, and the governor is a Democrat. They get their chance on 9/11 when Democrats are told they don’t need to be in chambers for a vote and Republicans are told they do need to be in chambers for a vote. Now the State Senate needs to vote to override the veto.
    • Conflicting reports emerge after the public outcry over this, with Republicans saying Democrats knew about this. So we’re stuck in a he-said/she-said moment.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. The U.S. Air Force releases a report describing each of the military projects that will lose their funding because of Trump’s wall. The report says that this plan puts our national security at greater risk.
  2. The defunding affects over 50 military projects, in the U.S. and abroad, all to build 175 miles of fence along the 2,000-mile-long border.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump’s xenophobia is on display. He dismisses the idea of letting residents of the hardest hit parts of the Bahamas into the U.S. on humanitarian grounds He thinks they should just go to the “large sections” of their country that weren’t hit, because “bad people” might exploit the refugee process. He then announces that he won’t extend temporary protected status to them either. Despite that, 1,500 Bahamans have come here.
  2. Trump’s African American leaves the GOP. Gregory Cheadle was at a Trump rally when Trump pointed him out and declared him “my African American.” Cheadle’s now running for the House as an Independent. When made aware of this, Trump doesn’t remember who Cheadle is.
  3. Remember how the judge in Brock Turner’s rape case let him off with a six-month sentence because he was a good kid with a promising future? That judge got knocked off the bench but then somehow secured a job as a girls tennis coach. The judge who thinks boys who rape girls don’t need to be punished is coaching… girls. It takes just a day or two of opposition for the school to realize their mistake and fire him.
  4. After John Bolton’s ouster, Trump names Charles M. Kupperman to be acting National Security Director. Kupperman once served on the board of the Center for Security Policy, designated as an anti-Muslim hate group. The center spread unfounded stories about Obama being Muslim, and released a report on how the Muslim Brotherhood is stealthily imposing Sharia law in Western countries.
  5. The Supreme Court ruling that Trump can temporarily enforce his safe third-country asylum rule for refugees who travel through Mexico affects people who started the asylum process earlier this summer who now might not be eligible. They’ll have to start the process all over again.
    • And I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but Mexico has no safe third-country agreement with us, so it’s pretty certain Trump will lose this in court. So all this upending of refugees who are seeking asylum will be a lot of harm for no good reason.
    • Again, Mexico is not a safe country for many people fleeing gangs, because the gangs just follow them there. Refugees waiting to get into the U.S. are routinely kidnapped in Mexico.
  1. We still don’t know the immigration status of people who are getting life-saving medical treatment in the U.S. through special medical visas. They are supposed to self-deport at the end of the week. Administration officials still can’t explain how or why the rules were changed, though we do know that a top official recommends that Citizenship and Immigration Services not be allowed to delay these deportations.
  2. A Muslim mayor in New Jersey says he was stopped by Customs and Border Protection agents at JFK airport, where he was detained for three hours and questioned about his knowledge of terrorists. CPB confiscated his cell phone and held it for 12 days.
  3. Italy loosens its hard stance on taking in refugees, allowing a rescue vessel to bring its 82 refugees ashore. Italy’s new administration is looking to end the previous administration’s hostility toward migrants.
  4. An arsonist destroys a 119-year-old synagogue in Duluth, MN.
  5. California adds Iowa to its travel ban for trips funded by taxpayers. This is the 11th state to be banned by California for perceived violations of civil rights. In Iowa’s case, they removed gender identity protections under Medicaid.
  6. Anti-ICE protestors stage a sit-in at the Microsoft store in New York City, demanding the company end its contracts with ICE. 76 are arrested.
  7. Maybe #MeToo has been more successful than I thought. In 2018 (and for the first time), more CEOs were let go because of ethical lapses than because of financial performance or struggles within the board, and sexual indiscretions were among those ethical lapses.
  8. California upends its private prison industry by banning private prisons, including migrant detention centers.

Climate:

  1. To put a cap on SharpieGate, it turns out that Trump pushed his aides to have NOAA refute weather forecasters about Hurricane Dorian’s path. In response, Mick Mulvaney asked Wilbur Ross to have NOAA spokespeople contradict the forecasters in Alabama who corrected the president on Dorian’s path. NOAA spokespeople did so, even though the forecasters were right.
  2. And then the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology opens an investigation into whether Ross pressured NOAA’s administrator into publicly contradicting their own forecasters. Seems pretty cut and dried.
  3. The Trump administration repeals Obama’s Waters of the US rule that protected drinking water for over 100 million Americans and that extended the federal government’s ability to limit pollution in large bodies of water. The EPA also plans to further restrict what can be defined as protected bodies of water later this year.
  4. In response to all of Trump’s rollbacks of environmental and labor protections, the California legislature passes a bill to reinstate all of those protections in the state. It’s not certain the governor will sign it, though, because some of the water provisions could adversely affect farmers in the Central Valley.
  5. Somalia is in the midst of its worst drought in 8 years.
  6. The House passes a bill to block offshore drilling in Alaska near the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump calls on the Fed to reduce interest rates to “ZERO, or less.” Many countries in Europe have done the same to bolster their sluggish economies.
    • If we lower our interest rates too much in an economy that’s still doing well, we won’t be able to lower them again to slow down a recession should one occur.
  1. The Consumer Price Index rose 2.4% in August over the previous year, indicating possible sustained inflation. This could make it harder for the Fed to justify lowering interest rates again.
  2. Trump says the Fed should start refinancing our debt. There’s no precedent for us to do that, but maybe it’s possible? I don’t know.
  3. Trumps postpones his latest tariffs against Chinese imports for two weeks in order to sooth a jumpy stock market. China responds by suspending tariff increases on U.S. pork and soybeans.
  4. Economists say the damage is done, though, and there are clear downturns in fixed investment and capital expenditures, CEO and business confidence, job openings and plans for hiring, consumer spending, and hours worked per week.
    • They blame the trade war for reducing U.S. employment by 300,000 jobs, which is expected to be 450,000 by the end of the year. If nothing changes, it could be 900,000 by the end of 2020.
  1. The deficit passed $1 trillion for the fiscal year, but there’s one month left in the year, and that’s the month that quarterly tax payments come in. So the deficit could narrow.
  2. Corporations paid 7.6% of the total taxes collected by the U.S. government in 2018, nearly a 60-year low.
  3. California passes a statewide rent control bill limiting annual rent increases and tightening rules around evictions. California’s housing costs are soaring, contributing to the problems of homelessness and poverty. Very few states have rent controls, but housing is a problem across the country, so states will be looking to see how rent control succeeds.
  4. At the same time, Trump orders White House officials to address homelessness in California. He’s often attacked California over this problem, placing the blame on Democratic politicians. He calls California’s homelessness problems a “disgrace to our country.”
    • We’ll see what his plans are. It’s a very tough issue to tackle, especially with a weakened social safety net and rising housing costs nationwide.

Elections:

  1. Trump takes time out from presidenting to hold a campaign rally for a Representative seat in North Carolina. The race is super close, but the Republican pulls it out in the end.
  2. A federal judge blocks Tennessee’s latest law restricting paid voter registration drives. The judge says that state officials didn’t offer any basis for the law, which would restrict free speech and intimidate organizers.
  3. Trump posts a “Trump 2024” campaign sign, joking about serving more than two terms. Haha. Ha. Ha. No.
  4. During the Democratic presidential primary debates, ABC airs an ad from the GOP that depicts a fire burning Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s face and then showing dead bodies and skeletons from the Khmer Rouge. Because socialism=Khmer Rouge, right?

Miscellaneous:

  1. John Bolton is out! This makes number 54 gone from Trump’s administration. Trump says he fired him; Bolton says he resigned. Bolton goes so far as to tweet into a live airing of Fox & Friends to correct the record.
  2. I rarely agree with Bolton, but I agree with him when he said meeting the Taliban on U.S. soil so close to 9/11 would be tone deaf. The meeting was Trump’s idea, and Bolton’s objections annoyed him.
  3. Trump calls H.R. McMaster, his second National Security Advisor, to say that he misses him. It turns out that Trump has consulted with McMaster a few times since he fired him by tweet.
  4. Three of Bolton’s aides also resign.

Week 137 in Trump

Posted on September 12, 2019 in Politics, Trump

That crucial moment where everything went terribly awry.

Every week under this administration is a little weird, but this week was surreal. SharpieGate sucked up all the air in the room for nearly the entire freaking week. Any normal president would’ve just said ‘sorry, I made a mistake,’ thanked the weather service for the correction, and gotten on with the business of presidenting. But this isn’t a normal president, and so now we all know what a spaghetti graph is and why none of us can interpret one. We also know that our scientific federal agencies have now been compromised by politics and that we can’t rely on the president to give us truthful information during a disaster.

Here’s what else happened in politics for the week ending September 8…

Shootings This Week:

  1. The week‘s mass shootings (defined as killing or injuring four or more people):
    • Two shooters injure four men in Chicago’s Washington Park neighborhood.
    • Four people are injured in a shooting in Jacksonville, FL. The details aren’t known.
    • A shooter kills two people and injures two more, including an infant (who DOES that?), in Greensboro, NC.
    • A fourteen-year-old shooter kills his entire family of five in Elkmont, AL. This shooting includes another infant.
    • Two shooters kill two people, including a 7-year-old girl, and injure two others in Marrero, LA.
    • Shooters kill a family of three, including a 5-year-old boy, and injure one other in Whiteville, NC.
    • A female shooter kills one person and injures three more after an ongoing altercation in Alexandria, LA. This is the first known female mass shooter since I’ve been recording shootings.
    • A gang-related shooting in Sumter, SC, leaves two people dead and three others wounded.
    • A shooter injures four people in Chicago, IL.
  1. Walmart halts sales of all handgun ammunition, and while they don’t end their policy of allowing guns in the stores, they do request customers not openly carry weapons in Walmart and Sam’s Club stores.
  2. A federal judge rules that victims can sue the government when shooters obtain guns through background check loopholes. The suit stems from the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where the shooter obtained a weapon despite a prior drug offense. This ruling could make the federal government responsible for such loopholes in the law.
  3. In other background check loophole news, the Odessa, TX, shooter obtained his weapon from a private seller, which didn’t require a background check. The shooter had failed a previous background check for mental health issues. Close those damn loopholes, Congress!
  4. We find out that Texas Attorney General received more than 100 pages of racist letters filled with violence, threatening to kill undocumented immigrants. The letters poured in over the past year, and the Attorney General didn’t do or say anything about it. In the same period, police responded to 911 calls about the man who sent them at least 35 times. They didn’t do anything about it either.

Russia:

  1. A jury acquits former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig on charges of misleading the DOJ about the lobbying work he did for Ukraine. Craig is the only Democrat to be charged so far in Mueller’s investigation.
  2. Russians vote in local elections following months of opposition protests, which led to the biggest crackdown on dissenters in the country in years. Before the elections, Putin’s party, United Russia, held 40 out of 45 seats on the Moscow city council. They lost 15 of those seats in the elections to hold on to 25. Center-left and far-left parties took the remaining seats.
  3. Investigators in Congress find that Deutsche Bank had several points of failure in their money-laundering controls while handling financial dealings with Russian oligarchs.
  4. We learn that in 2017, the CIA extracted one of their most valuable assets in the Kremlin over fears that media scrutiny would give the spy away. This person is how the CIA found out that Putin was directly involved in our 2016 election interference.
    • At first, some media outlets (I’m looking at you, CNN) report that the extraction was over fears that Trump’s carelessness would give the spy away, but that is corrected by later New York Times reporting (always read your news; don’t watch it!).
  1. Michael Flynn refuses to cooperate with House Intelligence Committee subpoenas for testimony and documents. The committee gives him a deadline of September 25 for testimony and September 18 for documents.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The House Judiciary Committee is investigating Trump’s involvement with the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. He’s already named as a co-conspirator in the legal case in which Michael Cohen pleaded guilty.
  2. Mike Pence stays at Trump’s country club in Doonbeg, Ireland while attending meetings with Irish officials (including the Prime Minister). Pence flies back and forth an hour each way for the meetings instead of just staying closer to where the meetings are held.
  3. It comes to light that in 2014, Trump entered a partnership with a struggling airport near his Turnberry golf course in Scotland. In 2015, when Trump was running for president, the Pentagon started using that airport for flight refueling, requiring flight crews to use local accommodations for overnight stays. This sometimes means that flight crews end up staying at Trump Turnberry.
    • Trump tweets that he has nothing to do with the airport (which is demonstrably not true, but might not actually be relevant in this case).
    • This is a weird intersection of two separate things (Trump entering a partnership with the airport and the Pentagon entering a partnership with the airport). However, 180 Air Force planes stopped there in 2017, 257 stopped there in 2018, and 259 have already stopped there this year.
  1. The House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee open investigations into the self-dealing around Trump’s properties, including things like Pence’s stay in Doonbeg, the airport deal, and Trump’s announcement that next year’s G-7 will be held at his Doral property (you know, the one with the bedbugs).
  2. The House Judiciary Committee prepares a vote to define impeachment hearings.

International:

  1. It’s U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.
    • Parliament hands Johnson four straight defeats, opposing him on his first four votes as PM.
    • Johnson loses his first Brexit vote, despite his threats that if any of his Members of Parliament (MPs) oppose him, he’ll kick them out of the party. 20 of his MPs defy him. In fact, Parliament votes to seize control from Johnson in order to debate a bill that would prevent a no-deal Brexit (which the House of Commons later passes).
    • This means Johnson loses his majority in Parliament. Actually, he lost his majority when one of his MPs got up in the middle of his speech to cross over to the other side.
    • And then Parliament votes to scrap Johnson’s no-deal Brexit and to ask the EU for a delay, effectively rendering Johnson’s reasons for suspending Parliament moot.
    • Boris Johnson’s brother quits his positions as a Member of Parliament and Minister over his disagreements with his brother over Brexit.
    • Johnson calls for new elections, but it doesn’t pass the House of Commons with the two-thirds vote it needs. (It’s pretty inevitable that elections will happen, though; it’s just a matter of timing.)
  1. Demonstrators across the U.K. gather to protest Brexit; counter-protestors come out to defend Brexit. Things get violent between the two, and 16 are arrested.
  2. Pro-democracy protests pick back up again in Hong Kong this week, despite the withdrawal of the Chinese extradition bill they were protesting in the first place.
  3. France proposes offering credit lines worth $15 billion to Iran if they’ll come back into compliance with the JCPOA (aka the Iran Deal). This relies on Trump not blocking it.
  4. Conservatives defend Trump tweeting what appeared to be an image from a classified satellite of an explosion in Iran by saying he’s just showing them that we’re watching them closely. However, the satellite has been identified online, and now it’s possible that Iran can evade its surveillance.
  5. The top U.S. negotiator with Afghanistan and the Taliban announces there’s a peace deal in principal between the parties.
    • But then Trump announces that he cancelled a secret meeting at Camp David with senior Taliban leaders and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani because the Taliban took responsibility for an attack that killed a U.S. soldier.
    • Also, the week of 9/11 might not be the best week for a meeting at Camp David.
    • This pretty much puts an end to a year of peace negotiations, in which it was agreed that the U.S. would dramatically pull back on troops in Afghanistan.
  1. Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s chief negotiator in the Mideast peace process, steps down, putting a damper on any prospects for a peace deal there. The deal stalled after Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2017, recognizing it as Israel’s legit capital. Palestinians walked away at that point, and haven’t been seriously negotiating since.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The Cherokee Nation names Kimberly Teehee as their first delegate to the House of Representatives, finally exercising their 200-year-old right. Their Representative doesn’t get a vote in Congress.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. Defense Secretary Mark Esper agrees to release $3.6 billion for Trump’s border wall, as requested in Trump’s emergency declaration. He’s defunding 127 military projects to do it.
    • The affected projects include new cyber ops facilities, training facilities, hazardous materials warehouses and cargo pads, new and expanded weapons ranges, munition storage facilities, aircraft maintenance hangars, schools, power substations, SATCOM facilities, NORTHCOM alert facilities, flight simulators, rescue stations, security improvements, housing maintenance, and more.
    • Funds will be diverted from over 125 military projects in three U.S. territories, 23 states, and 21 countries.
  1. Several of these projects are modernization projects and future-looking technical projects, all being scuttled to go toward the wall, which is (IMO) a medieval solution.
  2. The Pentagon says that if Congress re-funds those projects, they won’t be delayed or canceled. So they’re asking Congress to fund these projects twice. That sounds so blackmaily to me.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump says he’ll reconsider his administration’s rule that would deny life-saving healthcare visas to immigrants. He doesn’t fully reverse the decision, which has received strong criticism, and he doesn’t say whether we’ll continue to grant these visas. Meanwhile, people who are alive here today because they’re receiving these services have one more week to leave the country or become in violation of immigration law.
  2. The State Department has dramatically reduced the number of foreign student visas issued each year. This year, 20 Chinese students returning to Arizona State University were denied entry into the U.S. They’re currently taking their classes online.
  3. Following the Hurricane Dorian disaster in the Bahamas, Trump claims we can’t provide refuge for Bahamans because the islands are filled with “very bad gang members” and “very, very bad drug dealers.” He says they have “tremendous problems” with people who “weren’t supposed to be there.” What does that even mean?? 45 people have died, and the Abaco Islands are largely uninhabitable.
  4. Meanwhile, politicians from both parties urge Trump to suspend visa requirements for Bahamans at this time to allow more refugees into the U.S.
  5. While Charles Koch is trying to rehabilitate his reputation by supporting immigrants and criticizing the way Trump scapegoats immigrants, his network is also mining data to rile up conservatives with dehumanizing messages about immigrants. His data analytics company, i360, pushes the image of immigrants as invading criminals and terrorists.
  6. A judge rules that the terrorist watch list violates our constitutional rights because the standards for inclusion are too vague. Being on the watchlist makes it harder to travel and puts you under extra police scrutiny, among other things.
  7. Trump is considering two options to drastically reduce how many refugees fleeing war and violence the U.S. allows in. One option would cut the number by half—to 10,000 to 15,000 refugees per year. Another option reduces the number to ZERO, at the advice of a “top level official” (I wonder who that could be, Steven Miller). Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis was a huge proponent in the administration for allowing refugees (it actually does make the world a safer place), but Mike Esper, who took over from Mattis, isn’t as strong-willed.

Climate:

  1. At least 45 are dead in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian stalled over the islands, decimating at least one of the islands. 70,000 people are homeless.
  2. Cruise ships begin evacuating refugees.
  3. Trump spends Labor Day fighting with meteorologists over the path of Dorian after several news outlets (and the National Weather Service) contradict his claim that Dorian would hit Alabama much harder than expected. And thus begins SharpieGate. Holy smokes.
    • The NWS was obligated to dispute Trump’s claim immediately in order to prevent panic in Alabama. At the time of Trump‘s claim, NWS forecast maps have Alabama at about a 5% chance of winds above 40 mph. The National Hurricane Center’s forecast at the same time show the path skimming the East Coast and missing Alabama completely.
    • Trump was looking at an outdated map of the hurricane (and it was also a spaghetti map, which show numerous possibilities and probabilities, and are notoriously impossible for laypeople to translate).
    • Trump can’t let it go, so he brings a Fox News correspondent into the Oval Office to vouch for him and holds up an official NOAA map that he had doctored by adding an extension to the hurricane path in black Sharpie to make it look like the official map includes Alabama.
    • And then, NOAA, damaging its own credibility, issues an unsigned statement that Trump was correct. The statement criticized the NWS (part of NOAA) for contradicting Trump. So we have NOAA contradicting its own scientific forecast which, by the way, was completely correct.
    • It just keeps getting worse… NOAA instructs its staff (including scientists and meteorologists) to not provide any opinion in response to Trump’s incorrect tweets about Alabama. So now we’re at a point where our scientific agencies would rather freak people out needlessly about a disaster that isn’t going to happen than contradict the president. This does not bode well if we can’t trust their forecasts.
    • And then, NOAA’s acting chief scientist says he’s investigating NOAA’s response and whether it’s in violation of NOAA policies and ethics. The Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General opens an investigation.
    • And then, NWS Director Louis Uccellini contradicts his bosses at NOAA and defends the his agency’s forecasters at a weather industry conference.
    • And then, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross threatens to fire the top employees responsible for the forecast that contradicted Trump’s claim EVEN THOUGH THEIR FORECAST WAS CORRECT. This would be comical at this point if it wasn’t actually so very serious.
    • Is SharpieGate over? I don’t know.
  1. It might be important to note that altering a weather map is illegal.
  2. Trump plans to weaken George Bush’s light bulb efficiency rules, which would’ve forced us to use more efficient bulbs. They’re also more expensive but they last a ton longer.
    • The rules would save the equivalent of the energy output of 25 large power plants.
    • My guess is that Trump thinks he’s reversing an Obama rule, since Obama gets blamed for this one all the time.
  1. Joe Balash leaves his job at the Department of the Interior to join a foreign oil company that’s expanding their drilling operations in Alaska. As assistant secretary, Balash oversaw drilling on federal lands.
    • Balash is at least the third high-level administration official to join up with a fossil fuel company after leaving (the other two are Scott Pruitt of the EPA and Vincent DeVito of the Interior).
  1. The DOJ opens an antitrust investigation into four of the automakers that joined with California to keep Obama’s emissions standards in place. They say Ford, Honda, VW, and BMW broke federal competition laws.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The president of the AFL-CIO workers union says that Trump has done more to hurt workers than to help them. He cites rising healthcare costs, rising housing costs, and the trade war, as well as GOP opposition to raising the minimum wage.
  2. The five U.S. industries expected to be hit hardest by the latest round of tariffs include: Food and agribusiness, retail, manufacturers and supplies, tech and telecom, and clothing and footwear. That doesn’t leave much out.
  3. Even though Congress expanded the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program last year, around 99% of applications for forgiveness are still denied. The program is designed for people who are employed by government or certain non-profit organizations providing a public service.
  4. The Trump administration releases a proposed overhaul of the U.S. housing market that would end government control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These two companies back half of all our nation’s mortgages.
    • Fannie and Freddie have been under federal control since the housing market collapse, and they’re the last loose string left from the Great Recession.
  1. Trump touts job numbers before they’re officially released (again). Despite lower-than-expected job growth numbers for August, we hit another record number of people employed (157,878,000). Of course, our population is also at a record high, so the unemployment rate is still unchanged.
    • The rise in government employment came largely from temporary workers hired to help out with the 2020 Census.
    • Employment growth is slowing down from a high of 250,000 jobs added per month in 2015 to 143,000 so far in 2019 (there were 187,000 new jobs per month in 2016, 182,000 in 2017, and 192,000 in 2018).
  1. Analysts think that tariffs will cost American households an average of $2,031 per year starting in 2020, erasing any economic gains brought by deregulation efforts.

Elections:

  1. A court rules that North Carolina must redraw their gerrymandered districting laws in time for the 2020 elections, and Republicans (finally) say they won’t appeal the ruling. This has been in the courts for ages, with one judge accusing them of drawing the lines to discriminate with surgical precision.
    • Curious about the inner workings of GOP gerrymandering? Check this out. (Note: I in no way believe that this only happens on the right; they‘ve just mastered the art since 2010.)
  1. Another Texas GOP Congressman announces he’ll retire. Bill Flores becomes the fifth Texas GOP Representative to retire.
  2. Four states plan to cancel their GOP presidential primaries, which isn’t unheard of when an incumbent president is running. But usually they wait to see how successful the challengers are before scrapping the primaries.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump says that we should have a state-run news outlet to counter CNN’s “fake news.” You know who else has state-run news agencies? Russia, China, Iran, petty dictators…

Week 136 in Trump

Posted on September 3, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Wages have decreased as union membership has decreased.

I hope you all had a happy Labor Day weekend! And I hope you were out celebrating all the benefits unions have given workers, like 40-hour workweeks and an 8-hour day; overtime pay; paid holidays and paid vacations; paid and unpaid leave (including military leave); a minimum wage; healthcare insurance; whistle-blower protections; an end to sweatshops; and safety regulations for the workplace. Before unions were gutted by things like right to work laws, they gave workers strong collective bargaining power so they weren’t at the whim of corporate executives. They also gave us higher wages, and one reason wages haven’t been rising lately is that unions don’t have the same power or membership they used to have. You can also see below that the drop in union membership corresponds with an increase in inequality.

Union membership compared with wealth inequality.

So if you see any of these benefits in your own job, thank the unions and don’t take advantage of them by not paying your union dues in right-to-work states.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending September 1…

Missing From Last Week:

  1. Last week I wrote, “The Amazon rainforest provides about 1/5 of the oxygen on the planet. So one out of every five breaths you take is thanks to the Amazon.” I have to retract that. Scientists don’t know where that 1/5 number came from and say it’s closer to 6%.
  2. Italy’s prime minister resigned, avoiding a no confidence vote from the far right.
  3. ICE made it easier to deport crime victims waiting for their U visa, which is a special category for victims who cooperate with law enforcement. Previously, ICE had to request a preliminary judgement from U.S. Customs and Immigrations Services. Now, ICE officers can make the preliminary determination themselves.

Shootings This Week:

  1. Here are the week‘s mass shootings (defined as killing or injuring four or more people). There were so many this week (FOURTEEN), I combined some:
    • Baltimore, MD: A drive-by shooter kills one person and injures three more. Another shooter kills one person and injures three more in a dispute at a residence. Yet another shooter injures four people in a domestic dispute in nearby Frederick. And yet another shooter injures four men, with very few details known about this one.
    • Alabama: A teenage shooter injures 10 teenagers at a football game in Mobile. A shooter injures seven people at Fairfax Kindergarten in Valley during a party and over a fight about something that happened at a football game. Also, I can’t tell if this is a real kindergarten or just the name of an event space.
    • Odessa and Midland, TX: A man shoots a police officer during a traffic stop and goes on a random shooting spree that kills eight people and injures 22 others. Police shoot and kill him in a theater parking lot.
    • South Carolina: Four people are injured in a shooting at a bar.
    • North Carolina: A shooter kills one person and injures three more near student housing at UNCC. Another shooter wounds four people outside a fraternal organization (the Moose Lodge).
    • Philadelphia, PA: A shooter kills two people and injures two others.
    • Chicago, IL: A shooter kills two people and injures three more. They were on the patio of a private home.
    • Hartford, CT: A shooter injures four men. The details aren’t known.
    • Toledo, OH: A shooter injures four people. The details aren’t known. 

  1. Police arrest a 19-year-old at a North Carolina university for threatening mass violence and for possessing guns in his dorm room.
  2. Since the shootings in El Paso and Dayton, over two dozen people have been arrested over threats to commit mass violence.
  3. Even as Texas Governor Greg Abbott addresses the Odessa shooting saying that words are inadequate and there must be action, a series of laws go into effect in Texas that make it easier to store, bring, and carry weapons to both private and public places, including school campuses and churches. Abbott also says that the status quo is unacceptable.
  4. The FBI says active shooter events are increasing, and that we’re seeing them about every other week right now. They also say people need to report changes in behavior to the authorities, especially when someone becomes darker, more violent, or appears to be distressed.

Russia:

  1. Following Russia’s blown (no pun intended) nuclear-propelled missile test, they set their first floating nuclear-power reactor afloat. This ship set off from a northwestern port city and is headed east, where it will power a region around Pevek (near Alaska).
  2. A bipartisan congressional delegation is planning a trip to Russia, but Russia denies visas to members of congress who’ve been critical of Russia. This includes Democrats and Republicans alike.
  3. Current and former intelligence experts criticize Trump’s defense of Putin and Russia at the G7 Summit. They’re so shocked by the fervency of his defense, they’re once again questioning whether Trump is a Russian asset.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The House Judiciary Committee subpoenas Rob Porter, a former administration aide, about his involvement in Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice.
  2. The DOJ inspector general releases the results of his investigation into James Comey. The IG finds that Comey broke FBI protocol in handling sensitive information, but the IG doesn’t find that Comey or his friends leaked any classified information. The main criticism is that he took his contemporaneous memos home with him.
    • Note that this report doesn’t address the actual FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton or Trump.
    • The DOJ decides not to prosecute, because there’s no finding he broke the law. What he did might have been unethical, but it wasn’t illegal.
    • You can read the report here.
  1. A federal judge dismisses the lawsuit again Jeffrey Epstein following his death by apparent suicide. Sixteen women testified during the hearing, saying that now they’ll never get justice. Several victims file civil suits against Epstein’s large estate.
  2. Deutsche Bank says it has some of the tax return information being sought by the House Financial and House Intelligence Committees. We’re not sure if they are Trump’s returns specifically or if they belong to another entity under subpoena.
  3. MSNBC’s Lawerence O’Donnell does a piece on how Russian oligarchs had co-signed Trump’s loans from Deutsche Bank, which he retracts the next day after Trump’s attorney threatens a lawsuit. He doesn’t retract because the story is found to be incorrect, but it was insufficiently sourced. So we’ll see what comes of that.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to lift an injunction against their rule requiring asylum seekers who pass through a third country on their way here to seek asylum in that country.
  2. Trump has requested special consideration from the Supreme Court 21 times in his first 2-1/2 years, compared to Bush and Obama requesting it a total of eight times over 16 years.

Healthcare:

  1. A court rules that Johnson & Johnson has to pay $572 million for its part in Oklahoma’s opioid epidemic.
    • Last spring, Purdue Pharma settled a suit with Oklahoma and agreed to pay $270 million.
    • Purdue Pharma is in negotiations to settle the many lawsuits against them. Reports say the payout could be between $10 billion and $12 billion.
  1. A judge in Missouri blocks their new law that would ban abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy.
  2. 58 immigration detention facilities in 19 states have reported mumps outbreaks over the past year. 898 adult migrants and 22 staff have been sickened, and more migrants are being infected as they are transferred between facilities.

International:

  1. While French President Emmanuel Macron was trying to arrange a meeting between Trump and Iran’s foreign minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his team were scrambling to reach Trump and prevent that meeting. The Israeli government expresses concern about new negotiations between Iran and the U.S.
  2. At the same time Rudy Giuliani is pressuring Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political foes (Biden and Clinton), the Trump administration delays paying the promised $250 million in military aid to Ukraine.
  3. Trump tweets a satellite image of the aftermath of a space launch explosion in Iran, which analysts immediately speculate came from a classified satellite or drone.
  4. Hong Kong’s ongoing protests erupt in violence once more. Protestors start fires and throw petrol bombs at police. The police, in turn, use tear gas and water canons containing dyed water (so they can identify protestors).

Legislation/Congress:

In case you’re wondering why this section has been empty, Congress has been on summer recess.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. Even though Trump says the wall is already being built and that some of it is done, none is done and the administration won’t say when they’ll start. Over 60 miles of existing fence have been fixed or replaced.
  2. Officials involved with the wall project say that Trump wants the wall done, he wants officials to take the land (from the people, organizations, and tribes that own it), ignore environmental regulations, and fast-track any approvals to start construction. And he’ll pardon any officials who break the law to get it done.
  3. With hurricane season upon us and the first hurricane expected to make landfall currently at a Category 5 level, DHS transfers $271 million from FEMA to the border. FEMA says as long as we don’t have any new catastrophic events, they’ll have enough money to operate.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. 19 states plus DC sue the Trump administration to block their new rule overturning the Flores Agreement. The new rule would allow Trump to detain immigrant children indefinitely.
  2. The Trump administration starts denying special protections to immigrant families who receive life saving medical care here in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sends out letters saying they’re not considering requests for medical relief and that people here under those protections have 33 days to leave the U.S.
    • Turns out they transferred that responsibility to ICE, though this was never announced and was not included in the letters. ICE says they don’t know anything about it, nor do they have the resources to handle the change.
    • Many of those affected are kids with diseases like cancer, cystic fibrosis, HIV, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, and epilepsy.
  1. New video surfaces of Quillette editor Andrew Ngo with the group Patriot Prayer planning attacks against a group of antifa who were gathered at a bar after a protest. Ngo does a lot of reporting on antifa, but he failed to report on the planned attack by Patriot Prayer.
    • If you remember, Ngo published video of his wounds after he was attacked by antifa members earlier this year, but failed to provide information about what led up to the attack.
    • Ngo leaves Quillette after the latest video is released, which Quillette says is just coincidence.
  1. The Trump administration announces that some children born to our troops and diplomats abroad will no longer be automatically considered U.S. citizens.
    • For some, this just requires that they apply for citizenship by a certain age. But there are already people who forget this requirement when they adopt children from abroad, which has resulted in deportation of adopted kids when they become adults. I don’t see this working out much better.
    • This rule seems to be designed for others, though; service members who aren’t themselves yet citizens. Their children will have a harder time getting citizenship.
    • Ken Cuccinelli says this doesn’t change who is born a U.S. citizen, but then he’s also the guy who said the poem at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty only welcomed immigrants who can stand on their own two feet.
  1. Right-wing hate groups are using video games to recruit youngsters into their ranks. 97% of teen boys play video games, and 83% of teen girls do. The associated chatrooms are a perfect recruitment tool, and it’s where white supremacists befriend the kids and subtly manipulate them into scapegoating their minority peers.
    • Chat logs from the online game Discord show that much of the far-right’s Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville was planned there.
  1. The Trump administration wants to run DNA tests on detained undocumented immigrants.
  2. The Cherokee Nation says they’ll appoint a delegate to the House of Representatives. They’ve never done this before, even though a 200-year-old treaty says they can. It’s not clear if that Representative would actually have a vote in the House.
  3. Migrant girls held in detention are given only limited access to basic needs like sanitary pads and tampons, in some cases given only one tampon per day. Toxic Shock Syndrome anyone?

Climate:

  1. Trump says that U.S. wealth is more important than saving the planet from climate change. Not in so many words, but he did say he prioritizes our wealth over climate “dreams” and “windmills.” But we knew this already. It’s the only reason to prioritize dirty energy over clean energy.
  2. Because Jakarta is sinking into the sea, Indonesia announces they’ll build a new capital city in another location at a cost of $34 billion.
  3. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro demands an apology from French President Emmanuel Macron before he’ll accept the $20 million in international assistance to help fight Amazon rainforest fires. Someone needs to put on their big-boy pants.
  4. While climate change is seen to be exacerbating wildfires in Arctic areas like Siberia and Alaska, those fires, along with those intentionally set in the Amazon and Indonesia, are also exacerbating climate change. A vicious cycle.
    • This is especially true with the increase in Arctic fires, which burn peat; peat releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than trees.
  1. The latest models coming out of the climate science community are alarming. They show much greater rates of temperature increase than had been previously thought, with the high range increasing from 4.5°C to 5.8°C. The latest reports say we still have the capability to limit the rise to 1.5°C, which is driving climate change scientists crazy. They’re having a hard time dealing with the general public’s inability to grasp how serious this is, and are experiencing stress and and even grief over it.
  2. Hurricane Dorian increases to a Category 5 and stalls out over the Bahamas. Five people are dead that we know of so far. Models predict Dorian will skim the east coast of Florida before hitting Georgia and North Carolina.
    • Trump says he doesn’t think he’s even heard of a Category 5 hurricane, even though three have hit U.S. land since he took office. No surprise, though. In the weeks between Hurricane Irma and Maria (both Cat 5s), he said he never knew Cat 5s existed.
  1. The EPA proposes a plan to completely eliminate requirements that oil and gas companies install tools to find and fix methane leaks in their wells, pipelines, and storage facilities. Even fossil fuel giants have come out against this plan, partly because this isn’t an expensive fix for an existential problem (costing just 0.01% of their annual revenue) and partly because they’re afraid it will cause some sort of disaster if methane is left unchecked by smaller companies.
  2. Trump tells Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions. The Tongass is the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest. This exemption would open it up to logging, drilling, and mining, and would violate Clinton’s roadless rule barring the construction of roads in certain parts of our national forests.

Budget/Economy:

  1. A number of farmers interviewed express frustration with Trump’s trade war and tariffs, and are concerned that it will take decades to rebuild those business relationships. Or they’ll just have to develop relationships with new buyers. At any rate, support for Trump is still pretty high among farmers.
  2. Farm bankruptcies have risen 13% so far this year, and more farmers are delinquent on their loans.
  3. Trump says trade negotiations with China have restarted, but doesn’t give any details.
  4. Trump’s aides later say he lied about trade talks with China in order to boost the markets.
  5. While central bank policies have been guiding the global economy, Fed Chair Jerome Powell says that there are no precedents to guide a policy response should we see a recession in our current situation. Interest rates are already low, and government spending doesn’t seem to be boosting the economy.
  6. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin proposes selling bonds that mature in 50 to 100 years.
  7. Trump reverses his earlier stance on freezing federal employees’ wages and sends a letter endorsing a 2.6% raise across the board.
    • This sounds great, but on further reading, it turns out if he didn’t send that letter, employees would’ve received the 2.6% raise plus cost-of-living increases based on where they work.
  1. More Americans see the economy in decline (37%) than see it improving (31%). In this environment, your guess is as good as mine as to which way it’ll go.
  2. Trump’s latest round of tariffs against Chinese goods go into effect. Tariffs on popular holiday items are still delayed, but this round of tariffs will increase the cost of some apparel, food products, American flags, tea, sporting goods, shoes, and so on.
  3. The tariffs haven’t seemed to dampen consumer spending, but business spending is in a slump.
  4. A group of laid-off miners in Kentucky are blocking a train loaded with coal from going to market in protest of the bankruptcy laws that allowed their company not to pay their final salary obligations.
    • After their company declared bankruptcy, paychecks bounced and some that had been deposited in workers’ accounts were pulled back out (leaving some with overdrafts in their accounts because they were already spending their own money).

Elections:

  1. After losing their vice chairman, the FEC is close to shutting down, putting the fight against election interference on the back burner. They’re down to three members, and no longer have enough commissioners to legally meet.
  2. DHS plans to start a program to protect voter registration databases and election systems from the types of ransomware attacks that have been hitting cities and towns around the country. Finally there’s some action against election interference.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Color me shocked. There’s a network of conservatives trying to discredit news organizations that Trump doesn’t like by smearing journalists from those outlets. They’ve already released info on journalists from CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. The group plans to ramp up the smear campaign in 2020 in support of Trump’s re-election campaign.
    • The network is compiling social media posts going back at least a decade.
    • Their efforts include the families of journalists, political activists, and other political opponents of Trump.
  1. Trump finally goes after Fox News (it had to happen — he turns on everyone eventually). He says Fox News “isn’t working for us anymore.” What’s that mean? The news isn’t supposed to be working for any part of government. Anyway, he accuses the network of heavily promoting the Democrats, and tells followers to find another news outlet.
  2. After passing a law reducing penalties for marijuana possession, New York plans to expunge thousands of marijuana convictions.
  3. Trump’s personal assistant spills the Trump family tea during an off-the-record dinner with reporters, and ends up getting fired. Apparently, drinks were involved.
  4. Trump formally establishes the U.S. Space Command. This is different from his Space Force, which is still waiting on congressional approval.
  5. Trump cancels his trip to Poland in order to monitor Hurricane Dorian, but then he heads to his Virginia golf course where he tweets and golfs over the long weekend.
  6. As Puerto Rico readies itself for Hurricane Dorian, Trump calls the territory corrupt and San Juan’s mayor incompetent. OTH, Trump says he’s the best thing to happen to Puerto Rico. Trump says Congress approved $92 billion after Hurricane Maria, but it was actually $42 billion. And not much of that has been spent so far.
  7. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis has been on a book tour, and says he had no choice but to leave after Trump said he’d withdraw troops from Syria. Mattis indirectly criticizes Trump, but doesn’t address specific complaints directly.