What's Up in Politics

Keeping up with the latest happenings in US Politics

Week 126 in Trump

Posted on June 30, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Sorry for the long radio silence. I was derailed by family emergency, but now I’m back and trying to catch up on what I missed. Getting back into the news cycle reminds me that there are:

  • 10 federal criminal investigations,
  • 8 state and local investigations, and
  • 11 congressional investigations

into Trump, his family and business, and his associates. It reminds me that indictments continue to come down, trials are coming up, and Trump continues to interfere with witness testimony in ongoing investigations. And it reminds me that we’re still separating families at the border, and keeping kids separated from the U.S. families instead of releasing them into their custody.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending June 23…

Russia:

  1. The House Judiciary Committee questions Hope Hicks, who, under White House orders, refuses to answer any questions about conduct during the presidential transition and about the White House, including minutia, like where her office was located and other publicly available information.
    • Trump accuses House Democrats of putting Hicks “through hell.” For one day of questioning? Really? I refer you to Hillary’s 11-hour hearing.
    • You can read her testimony here.
  1. Felix Sater is scheduled to testify to the House Intelligence Committee about the Trump Tower Moscow project, but he doesn’t show up. So the committee issues him a subpoena.
    • Sater worked with Michael Cohen on the Trump Tower project (he actually worked on two different Trump Tower Moscow projects).
    • Sater says he’s been sick and slept through his alarm. He also says he’ll answer every single question.
  1. Prosecutors accuse Roger Stone of violating his gag order (yet again) through social media posts.
  2. A top aide to former White House Counsel Don McGahn is scheduled to testify to Congress, but the White House is expected to block her from doing so. Annie Donaldson has a special agreement to provide written answers since she’s pregnant.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Federal authorities are investigating Deutsche Bank yet again, this time for violating laws against money laundering. The investigation includes the bank’s handling of suspicious activity reports, and also covers several other banks.
  2. A federal court unseals text messages used as evidence between Paul Manafort and Sean Hannity, revealing a tight and ongoing relationship between the two. There’s legal advice, flattery, and persecution complexes throughout. They show Hannity was giving Manafort news time and credibility all along. Take a look – it’s an interesting read.
  3. Jeffrey Rosen, the top deputy to Attorney General William Barr, intervenes for Paul Manafort to prevent him from being moved to Rikers, where most federal inmates facing state charges are held. He’ll await trial at a federal prison instead.
  4. The Office of Special Counsel (not to be confused with Mueller’s office) just found that Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act multiple times in multiple ways. This week, another watchdog group files a complaint against Ivanka for violating the act.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court rules that you can be tried at both the state and federal levels for the same crimes, and that it doesn’t conflict with the double jeopardy clause in the Constitution, which prevents you from being tried for the same thing twice.
    • This is relevant right now with the idea of pardons being floated by Trump and his associates. Trump can only pardon at the federal level, and this ruling allows states to pick up investigations into crimes that otherwise could’ve been pardoned.
  1. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court rules that the lame duck special session called by outgoing state Republican legislators was constitutional, so the bills they passed in a last-ditch effort to limit the powers of the new Democratic governor will take effect.

Healthcare:

  1. While warming up the crowd at his Dad’s re-election campaign kickoff rally, Donald Trump, Jr., makes fun of Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden for his cancer “moon shot” (Biden’s promise to cure cancer).
  2. And then Trump promises he’ll cure cancer and AIDS if he gets re-elected. He promises he’ll “come up with the cures to many, many problems, to many, many diseases.” It’s worth noting that he’d have to reverse several of his policies to do this.
  3. Once again, Trump takes credit for a veteran’s health care bill that Obama signed into law five years ago, the Veterans Choice program.
  4. A federal appeals courts rules that Trump’s gag rule on women’s reproductive health can take effect immediately across the country. Now any medical facility that provides abortions or referrals to abortions can’t receive Title X funding.
  5. After a few weeks of the state of Missouri forcing doctors to perform unnecessary and invasive medical procedures prior to performing an abortion, doctors fight back and say they won’t do it. So Missouri refuses to renew the license for the state’s last abortion provider. However, a judge’s order allows the facility to remain open.
  6. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program tracks consumer claims of harm from vaccinations. Out of 126 million vaccinations over the past 12 years, 284 people have made claims of damage, and about half of those claims were dismissed. That’s about a .00011% chance of harm of any kind.

International:

  1. In another example of poor vetting, Patrick Shanahan resigns and withdraws from the confirmation process for Secretary of Defense. His background check showed his family to be involved in multiple counts of domestic violence, with the violence coming from him, his wife, and his son.
  2. The White House then announces that Trump will nominate Army Secretary Mark Esper to be Secretary of Defense.
  3. A UN investigator of the Jamal Khashoggi murder says we need to sanction and freeze assets of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. She says we’re not doing enough in the face of credible evidence that MbS was involved in the killing. Her report gives new details that spread the blame beyond the 11 currently on trial.
  4. The Republican-led Senate passes three measure blocking the sale of $8.1 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Trump will likely veto this, because he wants to sell them the weapons regardless of their guilt in the Khashoggi case.
  5. Trump and Republicans have long complained that the JCPOA (Iran deal) wasn’t working. Looking back, Iran never came close to breaking the deal before Trump broke our promise to the JCPOA; but now that we’ve pulled out, Iran is on schedule to pass the JCPOA-defined limits on their uranium stockpile within the next week.
    • Iran says they won’t let that happen if Europe promises to fight Trump’s economic sanctions against Iran.
  1. Trump says he’ll send 1,000 more U.S. troops to the Middle East because of what he calls hostile behavior by Iran and its proxies. The Pentagon backs that up.
  2. Trump tweets about new sanctions added against Iran, but it turns out there weren’t any. But then later sanctions were announced, so maybe it was just a timing thing.
  3. Following recent attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) says we should launch a retaliatory strike against Iran.
  4. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggests that Iran has ties to Al Qaeda. He wants to use this to justify allowing the Trump administration to start a war with Iran (using the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force).
  5. Tucker Carlson, of all people, compares Pompeo’s assertion that Iran attacked the tankers to when Colin Powell claimed erroneously that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
  6. Iran’s military claims responsibility for shooting down an American drone. Iran says the drone violated its territorial airspace, but the U.S. claims it was in international airspace.
  7. Trump approves a military attack against Iran in retaliation for the drone. But then he pulls back at the last minute, because (according to the White House) he had just learned that 150 people might die. I’m sure we all realize that a casualty report is given long before a strike is approved.
    • There’s some dispute over whether the planes were actually already in the air by the time Trump rescinded the order. He claims they weren’t, but military officials say they were.
  1. Trump sent Iran a warning via Oman to warn them that an attack was imminent.
  2. Fox & Friends say it was weak to rescind the order to attack.
  3. Putin says military conflict with Iran would be a catastrophe, and that he believes Iran is complying with the JCPOA. He says this just hours before Trump calls off the retaliatory strike.
  4. The White House didn’t notify the succession to the presidency of the plans to strike Iran (specifically Nancy Pelosi, who’s second in line behind Mike Pence).

Family Separation:

  1. Here’s the winner of the week’s gaslighting award. In an interview with Telemundo, Trump tells us that Obama is responsible for the family separation and Trump is the one who’s fixing it and bringing families together. Seriously. He really said this.
    • In 2018, Jeff Sessions announced the zero tolerance policy in a press conference. In the interview, Trump defends the zero tolerance policy while claiming he’s bringing families together.
    • The program was only ended because the ACLU and other activist groups sued the DHS.
    • The only reason any families were unified at all is that the ACLU and other activist groups sued for it.
    • They are still separating families at the borders! How else do you think we ended up with toddlers in a detainment camp for unaccompanied minors? In fairness, some are the children of minor girls, but not all of them are.
    • More debunking can be found here and here and here and here. I could go on, but I shouldn’t have to.
  1. Immigration lawyers visit a child detention center at the border and interview children who were dirty and sick, living in overcrowded rooms, and sleeping on concrete floors. They had to force the facility to send four toddlers with fevers, coughs, vomiting, and diarrhea to the hospital.
    • The lawyers noticed one little girl had a bracelet with a phone number and “U.S. parent” written on it. They dialed the phone number and found her parents. No one had even bothered to try the number before that.
    • And just a reminder, we’re all paying $750 per day to the businesses that run the private prisons that house each and every one of these children who could be released to family in the U.S.
  1. A federal attorney sets off a shitstorm by arguing in front of incredulous circuit court judges that children in detainment camps are being held in safe and sanitary conditions with no soap, no diapers, no toothpaste, and only a hard concrete floor to sleep on.
  2. And then Alexandria Ocasio Cortez sets off a new shitstorm by calling detainment centers “concentration camps” (which by definition, they are; and holocaust experts agree and agree).
  3. After all this, the Trump administration moves some of the children out of the overcrowded detention centers, but they run out of places to move them to, so some end up returning.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump announces that ICE will remove millions of undocumented immigrants over the weekend, spreading panic through immigrant neighborhoods. He then reduces that estimate to thousands of immigrants, with ICE ultimately cancelling the raids altogether because, according to Acting ICE Director Mark Morgan, “someone” leaked information about the raids.
    • Trump says he’ll delay the raids for two weeks so Congress can work out a solution. I’m not sure what solution he’s looking for here.
    • Pelosi called Trump two days before the planned raid to ask him to halt the operation.
  1. BTW, the number of migrant families crossing the southern border is decreasing again, as is the number of arrests. Even though ICE is increasing deportations, they’re still deporting fewer than in the first years under Obama.
  2. Mitch McConnell says that we paid for the sin of slavery by fighting the Civil War, by passing civil rights legislation, and ultimately by electing a black president. He needs to review the generational effects of having property confiscated, running freeways and railways through neighborhoods, being denied the same loans and assistance that are given to white people, forced segregation, and white flight. But, sure. A black president. That makes up for ALL that Jim Crow shit.
  3. The Trump administration announces that they’re permanently cutting off aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador; the three countries where most of our asylum seekers come from. The administration says they’ll resume aid when they see these countries taking concrete steps to stop people from leaving those countries for the U.S.
    • Let’s just file that one under “What could possibly go wrong?”
  1. In 1989, Trump took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the Central Park Five to be put to death. The Central Park Five were erroneously found guilty of the brutal beating and rape of the central park jogger, but they were exonerated in 2002 after someone else confessed and DNA tests proved it.
    • The five were all 16 or under at the time, and were all convicted on coerced confessions. Four are black and one is Latino.
    • Trump refuses to apologize for taking out the ad, saying you have people on both sides of that. How can there be a good person on the side of wrongful imprisonment?
    • When the city of New York settled with the five for $41 million, Trump called the settlement a disgrace. Watch “When They See Us” on Netflix to understand this whole thing fully.
  1. Journalist E. Jean Carroll releases an excerpt of her new book where she accuses Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf dressing room in the 1990s. Trump denies it, using a defense he’s used before, “she’s not my type.” He also says he doesn’t know Carroll, though photos of them together have surfaced.

Climate:

  1. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announces the Trump administration’s replacement for Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The new plan ends rules put in place by the Obama administration to combat climate change, including:
    • Scaling back tailpipe emission standards.
    • Removing state targets for reducing carbon emissions.
    • Removing regulations for carbon emissions from coal-powered plants.
    • Limiting the federal government’s ability to set carbon emission standards.
  1. Wheeler says the new plan might lead to new coal plants opening in the U.S. He also says that carbon emissions dropped by 14% between 2005 and 2017, but neglects to mention that they started to rise again in 2018.
  2. An EPA report last year claimed that this plan would result in 300 to 1,500 more deaths annually due to climate-related illnesses.
  3. At least seven State Attorney Generals say they’ll try to block the Clean Power Plan changes in court.
  4. Meanwhile, back in real science, the Arctic permafrost isn’t so permanent under climate change. Scientists find that it’s thawing 70 years earlier than they had predicted.
  5. Air quality in the U.S. has been improving over the past few decades, but the past two years both saw more unhealthy air days than the average from 2013 through 2016.
  6. A federal court rules that an environmental review must be performed for Cadiz Inc. to build a pipeline designed to remove water from the Mojave Trails National Park aquifer for city usage. The judge says Trump’s waiver of the review is illegal.
    • Cadiz claimed they could remove the water under an obscure law waiving environmental review if the water is used for railroad purposes. They claimed that some of the water would be used to power a steam engine.
    • Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration rejected that argument and ordered a review. The Trump administration reversed that decision after David Barnhardt was appointed to be Deputy Interior Secretary (he’s now Interior Secretary). Barnhardt was a lobbyist for Cadiz. Draining the swamp, right?
  1. The Department of Agriculture has been burying federal studies that show the impacts of climate change. The studies by the Agricultural Research Service are peer-reviewed. Some of their findings include:
    • Rice loses vitamins in an environment containing too much carbon.
    • Climate change exacerbates allergies.
    • Climate change will reduce the quality of grasses used to feed livestock.
  1. 70 medical and public health organizations call climate change a health emergency, and produce policy recommendations that are in conflict with Trump’s policies.
  2. Mike Pence says that the Trump administration will always follow the science on climate change. Huh? See all the above. He also refuses to acknowledge that climate change is a legitimate national threat (which the military has long been saying).

Budget/Economy:

  1. Mexico becomes the first country to ratify the updated NAFTA (or as Trump calls it, the USMCA).
  2. A bipartisan group of Congressional leaders meet to discuss deals to prevent automatic budget cuts this fall. If they don’t reach an agreement, $125 billion will be cut from Pentagon and domestic spending.
  3. Earlier this year Trump talked about firing Jerome Powell over interest rates, and the White House looking into demoting him. The day before the Fed announces its interest rate decision this week, Trump publicly says he’ll wait to see what Powell does before demoting him. That threat isn’t even thinly veiled. History 101: The Fed supposed to be completely independent from the executive branch.

Elections:

  1. Trump kicks off his re-election campaign in Orlando, FL. Not surprisingly, he gave a campaign speech that was crazy AF, so much so I can’t even track all the lies (I’ll let PBS do it for me). Also, he really, really hates Democrats.
  2. Roy Moore announces, with little Republican support, that he’ll run for Senate in Alabama again to win Democrat Doug Jones’ seat.
  3. The Supreme Court rules against Virginia’s Republican-led House of Delegates, keeping in place the redrawn district lines that fixed the previous lines gerrymandered by the GOP. SCOTUS upholds a lower court’s ruling that the GOP lines were racially gerrymandered. Sadly, SCOTUS once more avoided ruling on the constitutionality of gerrymandering by ruling that the House didn’t have cause to sue.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The father of one of the Sandy Hook victims wins a defamation lawsuit against the author of “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.” The publisher also pulls the books and apologizes to settle a claim against them. The publisher, Dave Gahary, says his conversations with the father have led him to believe that people actually did die. I’m speechless.
    • Just a reminder that these families have been harassed by Sandy Hook deniers ever since it happened, sometimes moving to get away from it but it never works. That’s why they’ve launched a slew of lawsuits against the offenders, including Alex Jones. And it finally seems to be working.
    • In a separate case against Alex Jones, a Connecticut judge sanctions Jones for a “despicable” tirade against the attorney’s representing Sandy Hook families. Jones accuses them of placing malware on his computer that, in turn, planted child pornography on InfoWars servers. WOW. The child pornography was discovered when InfoWars turned over evidence to the court.
  1. Trump appears to threaten a journalist with imprisonment over a photograph of a letter from Kim Jong Un.
  2. Someone leaks vetting documents from the Trump transition team to Axios. Some of that vetting was outsourced to the Republican National Committee. Here are a few highlights (file them under “Drain That Swamp!”):
    • Trump announced many of his nominees without a full FBI background check or a vetting from the Office of Government Ethics.
    • There’s an entire section of allegations of former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s coziness with big energy companies.
    • Multiple sections on former Health and Human services Secretary Tom Price criticize his management ability and his House Budget Committee leadership (calling it dysfunctional and divisive).
    • Mick Mulvaney said that Trump is not a very good person, among other things.
    • Rudy Giuliani has a whole separate document about his business ties and foreign entanglements.
    • The transition team flagged General David Petraeus because he’s opposed to torture.
    • Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first Secretary of State, has Russia ties that go deep.
    • Kris Kobach, who later headed Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity, has ties to white supremacist groups.
    • Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley once said that Trump is everything we “teach our kids not to do in kindergarten.”
    • Seema Verma, appointed to Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was at one time advising Indiana on how to spend Medicaid funds while at the same time representing a client that received those very funds.
    • Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has both business and family conflicts of interest.
    • Ryan Zinke once called Trump “undefendable.”
    • Rick Perry called Trumpism “a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition.”
    • People doing the vetting say they didn’t even know what job they were vetting people for.

Polls:

  1. The number of Democrats who want to begin impeachment hearings rose from 59% in April to 67% this week. This just tells me that enough people have still not read the report.

Week 119 in Trump

Posted on May 8, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Of all people, Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano penned an op-ed supporting Mueller and objecting to Barr’s handling of the report. It strikes me here that the Mueller report lists 127 interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, and not one person involved didn’t lie about them. Anyway, Napolitano says what anyone who read the Mueller report knows—Bill Barr was wrong to try to absolve Trump of obstruction of justice. Napolitano also says what Trump did was “unlawful, defenseless and condemnable” and it’s up to House Democrats to decide whether to impeach.

Here’s what else happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. Someone leaks a letter that Robert Mueller sent to Attorney General William Barr at the end of March objecting to the letter Barr released outlining his own summary of the Mueller report. The letter said:
    • Barr misrepresented Mueller’s findings.
    • Mueller wanted more of the report to come out.
    • Mueller had already provided Barr with redacted summaries of each of the report’s volumes, which were ready in March to be released to the public.
    • Barr’s summary didn’t capture the context, nature, and substance of Mueller’s findings.
    • Barr’s summary caused public confusion.
  1. As for Barr himself, he dismisses the letter in his congressional testimony by saying, “The letter’s a bit snitty and I think it was probably written by one of his staff people.”
  2. The letter also shows that Barr lied to Congress when he previously told them that he didn’t know whether Mueller had taken issue with his summary and subsequent public comments on the report.
  3. Barr testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the start, Lindsey Graham has to be reminded to swear him in, and then right off the bat, Barr contradicts what was in Mueller’s letter to him.
    • Committee Chair Lindsey Graham admits he hasn’t read the full report.
    • When pressed on Mueller accusing Barr of failing to capture context and substance in his summary, Barr tries to focus blame on the media.
    • Barr says (despite Mueller’s letter) that he didn’t know Mueller or his staff disagreed with his summary.
    • Barr defends Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice, despite the evidence laid out by Mueller.
    • Republicans on the committee weren’t really concerned about the nearly dozen instances of attempted obstruction detailed in the Mueller report. They mostly asked questions about investigating the investigators and about Hillary Clinton’s emails.
    • That’s OK, though, because Barr’s with them. He confirms he’s already started a review of how the FBI handled the Russia and Clinton email investigations.
    • Barr says he didn’t review Mueller’s underlying evidence before making a decision on obstruction charged. He didn’t look at the underlying evidence of possible coordination either.
    • And that totally explains why he doesn’t understand why Mueller would investigate obstruction of justice if he knew he couldn’t charge Trump under DOJ rules.
    • Barr says he hasn’t seen the report that launched the FBI investigation (the one provided by an Australian diplomat about George Papadopoulos). Despite calling for an investigation into the FISA warrant, Barr has not yet looked at the underlying evidence here. Earlier in his testimony, Barr told Lindsey Graham that he had concerns about how the investigation started (though apparently not enough concern to review the existing evidence).
    • Barr doesn’t even know what data Paul Manafort shared with a Russian operative nor who the Russian is, so as it turns out, Barr hasn’t read the full Mueller report either.
      • Hint: It was campaign polling data, and Manafort shared it with Konstantin Kilimnik. This is a large section in the Mueller report, and I’m not sure how it’s possible Barr didn’t know this.
    • Barr defends Trump’s attempts to fire Mueller, saying that a president can fire Special Counsel for conflict of interest. But he couldn’t come up with any specific conflicts of interest that might’ve existed.
    • Barr defends his use of the word “spying” for the FBI obtaining a FISA warrant on Carter Page.
    • Barr continues to say Trump fully cooperated, though Trump said he didn’t recall over 30 times in his written answers to Mueller.
    • Barr disputes Trump’s claim of being totally exonerated. Barr says he didn’t exonerate him either.
    • Barr says he “can’t fathom” why the FBI didn’t give the Trump campaign a defense briefing to let them know that Russia was targeting them in 2016. Both the Trump and Clinton campaigns received a security briefing in August of 2016. A security briefing is a step down from a defense briefing, but it’s not like both campaigns weren’t very aware of what was going on.
      • During those briefings, both campaigns were told to let the FBI know of any “suspicious overtures” from Russia to their campaigns.
    • Barr says that Mueller left the decision of whether to pursue obstruction up to Barr, and that the decision not to indict wasn’t influenced by DOJ guidelines. In the report, Mueller talks extensively about Congress’s duty here (so the decision of whether to pursue was left up to them), and talks about DOJ guidelines being one reason he didn’t indict.
  1. After his first hearing, Barr refuses to appear before the House Judiciary Committee due to the format of the questioning (the committee wants a lawyer to handle the questions). The committee threatens to hold him in contempt.
  2. DOJ prosecutors want to prevent Roger Stone from reviewing any parts of the Mueller report that are redacted due to his ongoing court case. They also subpoena Randy Credico to testify against Stone.
  3. A federal appeals court refuses to re-examine a case that claimed Mueller’s appointment was unconstitutional.
  4. Rod Rosenstein tenders his resignation. He’ll leave on May 11.
  5. White House lawyer Emmet Flood sends Barr a letter accusing Mueller of politicizing his report because the report explicitly says it doesn’t exonerate Trump. He also criticizes Mueller for not making a decision on prosecution, though Mueller says he couldn’t make that decision because DOJ guidelines say a sitting president can’t be indicted and therefore Trump would be denied due process because he wouldn’t get a chance to defend himself in a court of law. He’s pretty specific about leaving the next steps to Congress, as specified in the rules of impeachment.
  6. Nancy Pelosi says Barr did not tell the truth to Congress, and that’s a crime.
  7. Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirms that Trump and Putin spoke this week and that they agreed there was no collusion. Well, I guess we can put this whole thing to bed now, right?
  8. Lindsey Graham sends Bob Mueller a letter asking if he wants to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee over his dissatisfaction with Barr misrepresenting his report.
  9. Trump doesn’t want Mueller to testify before Congress, but says he’ll leave that up to Barr.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Trump and Trump Organization, along with Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, sue Deutsche Bank and Capital One over those companies complying with subpoenas for their financial records.They want to prevent the banks from releasing any private materials.
  2. The White House won’t release the documents requested by the House Oversight Committee related to security clearance overrides.
  3. A federal judge allows an emoluments case against Trump to move forward, refusing Trump’s lawyers’ request to dismiss the case. The suit was brought by congressional Democrats.
  4. After being convicted of jumping bail, Julian Assange receives a 50-week prison sentence in the UK. The judge says Assange has cost the UK $21 million, and that he could’ve left the embassy at any time (Assange was claiming he was like a prisoner).
  5. The House Intelligence Committee plans to make a criminal referral to the DOJ for Erik Prince. They say he might have given false testimony to Congress based on information contained in the Mueller report.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Wisconsin Supreme Court restores the 82 people appointed by outgoing Governor Scott Walker whose appointments were previously invalidated based on a lower court ruling. This only affects the 15 people who weren’t reappointed by the new governor. The lower court ruling is still going through appeals.

Healthcare:

  1. The Trump administration submits a court filing claiming that the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) should be struck down.
    • If the court agrees, an estimated 21 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage.
    • Many millions more will be affected if we lose requirements for covering pre-existing conditions, pregnancy, prescription drugs, and mental health services.
    • Just a reminder, Republicans might want to strike this down, but they have no plan to replace it with.
  1. Trump announces a new rule that allows healthcare providers to refuse to provide services based on their religious beliefs. This includes abortions, sterilization, assisted suicide, and advance directives. The rule also lets parents refuse certain types of care for their children.
    • In the past, issues for some medical providers have included AIDS treatments, gender reassignment, and birth control.
  1. The Alabama House passes a bill that would criminalize abortions at any stage of pregnancy unless the mother’s life is threatened or if the fetus has a lethal anomaly. The woman wouldn’t be held criminally liable, but doctors would face a felony charge and up to 99 years in prison.
  2. Just a note here: Whether or not the mother’s life is threatened can be argued in court, so doctors are caught in a catch-22. They can save the fetus and let the mother die and NOT be criminally charged, or they can save the mother and abort the fetus and go to jail for the rest of their lives.
    • Several state legislatures are pushing this issue, hoping to get a case in front of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.
  1. A U.S. District Court jury finds the founder and four executives of Insys Therapeutics guilty of federal racketeering conspiracy. They bribed doctors to prescribe powerful opioids to patients who shouldn’t be using them and tricked providers into paying for them.

International:

  1. In Venezuela, self-declared president Juan Guaidó calls for an uprising against President Nicolás Maduro. Guaidó doesn’t have enough military defectors, the clashes turn violent, and five people are killed.
  2. More than 50 countries support Guaidó, including the U.S., UK, and most Latin American countries. Maduro is backed by Russia and China, among others.
  3. The Senate can’t muster enough votes to overturn Trump’s veto of a bill withdrawing U.S. support for the war in Yemen. So we’re still fighting there.
  4. Under the personal supervision of Kim Jong Un, North Korea tests rocket launchers and guided weapons off its east coast. (It’s OK, though, because they can’t reach the U.S. Forget about all the troops we have deployed in the area.)
  5. Trump deploys a carrier and bombers to the Middle East as a warning to Iran, claiming there have been troubling “indications and warnings” from Iran.
  6. Trump wants to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The Florida House passes a bill to let teachers carry weapons (with training, of course). Frankly, just from my limited and sometimes exasperating experience with teenagers, it’s rarely a good idea for adults to have weapons around them. But seriously, the group that will bear the brunt of this is young males of color.

Family Separation:

  1. The Trump administration promises to reunite thousands of migrant families they separated at the border, but at the same time they send each other private internal emails acknowledging that they only have information for about 60 parents and their kids. This highlights the fact that they were never planning on allowing the children to see their parents again (known in most circles as kidnapping).

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Two men found guilty of rape will do no jail time (and yes, they’re both white).
    • The first is a 25-year-old school bus driver who pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old girl. He has to register as a level 1 offender, so he won’t be on offender databases. Ya know, because there was only one victim and he’d never done it before. So yay justice.
    • The second guy kidnapped a 16-year-old girl, forced her to have sex, and kept her in a dog cage. He received a 10-year sentence, but got time served for the eight months he was in custody and nine years and four months of probation. He also has to register as a sex offender.
  1. A New York man who threatened to hang Barack Obama and kill Maxine Waters gets a four-year prison sentence. He called various offices making the threats and using racist slurs.
  2. Brunei says they won’t impose the death penalty for gay sex after all. They only reversed their initial decision after severe international backlash.
  3. The White House makes an emergency request to Congress for $4.5 billion for the southern border. $3.3 billion is for humanitarian assistance and $1.1 billion is to shore up the border. This is on top of the $8 billion they’re requesting for the border in Trump’s 2020 budget.
  4. Trump restricts asylum seekers by banning them from getting work permits if they cross outside a port of entry, imposing application fees, and limiting their access to relief. Trump also orders that all current asylum claims be settled within 180 days; the current time to settle is around two years.
    • This isn’t something we should rush. A team that followed several asylum seekers who were denied found 60 who had been killed upon their return home.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The White House lobbied to remove the words “climate change” from the Arctic Council’s declaration, refusing to sign on with the wording included. Other members refused to sign on without it. In the end, the declaration is watered down.
  2. South Dakota’s Oglala Sioux Tribal Council votes to ban Governor Kristi Noem from tribal land unless she rescinds her support for two state bills aimed at curbing and punishing protestors (specifically around the Keystone pipelines).
  3. In April, renewable energy sources provided more megawatt hours in the U.S. than coal for the first time ever.
  4. A court in Ecuador rules that the government must consult with an indigenous tribe, the Waorani, before opening up their land to oil exploration.
  5. Trump rolls back the safety rules that the Obama administration added after the 2010 BP oil spill. The rollback eases restrictions on offshore drilling and reduces testing of safety equipment like blowout preventers.
  6. The House passes a bill that requires Trump to create a plan for the U.S. to meet the goals of the Paris agreement, even though he’s withdrawing from it. Mitch McConnell says the Senate won’t take the bill up.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump’s nominee Stephen Moore withdraws his name from consideration for the Federal Reserve Board. He was a horrible choice partly because he’s so frequently wrong about economic happenings and partly because he’s a raging misogynist.
  2. In the middle of all the contention, Trump and Democratic leaders agree to pursue a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that will include improvements to highways, railroads, bridges, and broadband.
  3. On top of good GDP news, we also added 263,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate dropped to 3.6%.
  4. Trump says he’ll raise tariffs on Chinese goods from 10% to 25% because talks between the U.S. and China aren’t moving fast enough. Just a reminder, a recent study showed that the existing tariffs raised the costs of both domestic and imported goods.
    • Soon after, stock futures fall sharply.

Elections:

  1. Jack Burman and Jacob Wohl (right-wing lobbyist and internet troll, respectively) try to enact a social media scheme to smear presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg with fake sexual assault charges. They tried recruited young Republican men to make the accusations, and far-right news sources ran with the story. Just a reminder to not believe what you hear about any of the candidates. Check them out yourselves.
  2. The California Senate passes a bill requiring presidential candidates to release their taxes in order to be on the ballot. Several states have already proposed such bills.
  3. A three-judge panel in Ohio rules that the state’s congressional maps are partisan and unconstitutional. The judges say this partisan gerrymander was drawn with intent and that it can’t be justified. The lines were drawn to favor the GOP.
  4. After Joe Biden receives the endorsement of the largest firefighter union for his presidential run, Trump retweets 60 other Twitter users in under an hour to show he, too, has support from firefighters.
  5. The Trump campaign is resurrecting their “Lock her up!” slogan but with a new target. Trump wants Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, to be investigated for their actions around Ukraine. Biden’s son worked for a company called Burisma that was being investigated by a prosecutor that Biden was pressuring the Ukraine to remove from office as part of an anti-corruption campaign.
    • That prosecutor has been criticized around the globe for his corruption.
    • Rudy Giuliani says he wants Ukraine investigated because that’ll give us the origins of the Steele Dossier. Don’t we already know the origin?
    • Off topic, Hunter Biden seems to be a hot mess.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump says the Johnson Amendment (which prevents religious leaders and organizations from endorsing candidates) is effectively eliminated. Actually, it would take an act of Congress for that to happen.
  2. There’s another mass shooting, this time at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Two people are dead and four more are injured.
  3. Facebook announces a major purge, banning extremist figures like Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer, Paul Nehlen, and Louis Farrakhan. Their reasoning is that these people violate Facebook’s rules about promoting or engaging in violence and hate.
  4. When Democrats start walking out of Tennessee’s House chambers after Republican leadership appointed only Republican members to a committee, the Republican Speaker of the House, Glen Casada, orders the doors locked so they can’t leave. Their departure would’ve left the House without enough members to proceed.
  5. Trump retweets Jerry Falwell’s suggestion that he should get two extra years added to his term since his first two were stolen by a “failed coup.”

Week 118 in Trump

Posted on April 30, 2019 in Politics, Trump

This week, the White House directs a former security official not to appear before Congress and blocks Don McGahn from testifying. The DOJ ignores a Congressional subpoena, the Treasury ignores the House deadline to turn in Trump’s tax returns, and Trump sues to block a subpoena of his accounting firm. So House Democrats have started floating ways to get them to comply, including pursuing them in the courts (which would take a really long time) or changing the rules so they can fine them. Rep. Gerry Connolly says he’ll enforce House subpoenas in the courts, even if that means jail time. Rep. Jerrold Nadler proposes fining people who won’t comply. This is not politics as usual.

Here’s what else happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. As Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen tried to ramp up efforts to fight Russian meddling in the 2020 election. Mick Mulvaney told her not to talk to Trump about it pretty much because it makes him feel bad (it questions the legitimacy of his presidency).
    • As a result, we are not likely aware of nor prepared for the meddling to come.
  1. Trump calls the Russia investigation an attempted coup.
  2. The House Judiciary Committee issues a subpoena to Don McGahn, Trump’s former White House counsel who refused to carry out Trump’s instructions to obstruct justice.
    • Trump wants to stop McGahn from complying with the subpoena, but executive privilege went out the window when he allowed McGahn to be interviewed by Mueller.
    • McGahn told Mueller that Trump pressured him to have Mueller fired and then pressured him to deny that ever happened.
    • The Trump campaign hires a new attorney for 2020 to replace McGahn’s law firm.
  1. Trump opposes any current and former White House staff giving testimony to Congress. He plans to assert executive privilege, and says, “We’re fighting all the subpoenas” (because he thinks subpoenas are ridiculous).
  2. Trump doesn’t appear to have learned from the Mueller investigation, because he continues to threaten witnesses and refuses to cooperate with ongoing investigations, setting him up for more potential obstruction cases.
  3. Contradicting the Mueller report, Trump says, “Nobody disobeys my orders.” According to the report, the only thing that prevented Trump from succeeding in some of his attempts to commit obstruction of justice was that his staff disobeyed his orders.
  4. Trump says that he can’t be impeached because he didn’t commit any high crimes or misdemeanors. Mueller’s report lays out legal cases for obstruction, and how and why it’s now the responsibility of Congress to handle it.
  5. Democrats are still split on whether to move forward with impeachment proceedings.
  6. Attorney General William Barr is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, but he threatens not to because a lawyer would be doing the questioning. Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler threatens to subpoena him.
  7. Jared Kushner tries to minimize Russia’s interference in the 2016 and 2018 elections, saying it was just a few Facebook ads. The Mueller report and court filings describe interference efforts too numerous to describe here.
    • Meanwhile, FBI Director Christopher Wray says that Russia poses a significant counterintelligence threat. Rod Rosenstein says that hacking and social media manipulation are the tip of the iceberg.
  1. Over 5,000 Twitter bots push the idea that Mueller’s investigation was a Russiagate hoax. You’d think this would be a Russian effort, but no, it came from Saudi Arabia.
  2. Trump says he’ll take it to the Supreme Court if Democrats try to impeach him. A 1993 Supreme Court ruling says the House has the sole power of impeachment and the Senate has the sole power to try impeachments.
  3. Two prosecutors who worked on Mueller’s investigation say they found sufficient evidence to indict Trump on obstruction charges.
  4. On the same day that Maria Butina is sentenced to 18 months in prison, Trump speaks at the NRA convention. Butina took a plea deal last year for conspiring to act as a Russian agent by infiltrating the NRA.
  5. A new study of Russian troll tweets shows that the Russians were trying to use Bernie Sanders to drive a wedge between Democratic voters (good job on that, btw!).
    • Part of that effort was to get Sanders voters to vote for Trump or third-party candidates; another part was to simply discourage them from voting at all. The trolls also pushed the narrative that the party didn’t treat Sanders fairly.
    • Specifically, trolls were told to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them).”
  1. Do these disinformation campaigns work? Consider these survey results: 25% believe Clinton was in very poor health, 10% believe the pope endorsed Trump, and 35% believe Clinton approved weapons sales to Islamic militants, including ISIS. None of these stories are true.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Trump sues his own accounting firm and House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings over House subpoenas for his financial records.
    • The House Oversight Committee agrees to postpone the deadline on the subpoena until a court rules on it.
  1. Deutsche Bank starts providing the New York state’s attorney general with documents related to loans they made to Trump and to the Trump Organization.
  2. Carl Kline, the former White House personnel security director who overrode several security clearance recommendations, fails to appear before the House Oversight Committee after the White House tells him to ignore his subpoena. The committee moves to hold him in contempt of Congress. Before they do, though, the White House says he can give limited testimony.
  3. Steve Mnuchin once more delays his decision on whether to turn over Trump’s tax returns as requested by the House Ways and Means Committee.
  4. Not only is Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department under ethics investigations, but the agency’s inspector general also opened investigations into six other of Trump’s appointees in the department, largely for unethical lobbying activities.
  5. Michael Cohen now says he isn’t guilty of tax evasion, even though he pleaded guilty to five counts of it.

Courts/Justice:

  1. New York’s attorney general launches an investigation into the finances of both the NRA and its foundation. There are reports that the NRA foundation transferred more than $100 million from its charitable foundation, and there are allegations of extortion in their leadership fight.
    • Trump accuses the attorney general of opening an “illegal investigation” into the NRA.
  1. Gabrielle Giffords’ organization files a lawsuit against the FEC for not doing anything about the NRA’s alleged campaign finance violations, including using shell companies to donate to several GOP campaigns and coordinating with campaigns.
  2. The Supreme Court hears arguments about whether to add a citizenship question to the census. The question was previously blocked by three federal judges, partly based on Census Bureau experts saying that it would negatively affect the accuracy of the count.
    • This is a big deal because the census results determine many things, like representation at the state and local level and funding for programs.
    • Conservative judges on SCOTUS indicate support for the question. Some are the same judges who didn’t think we needed the Voting Rights Act anymore because we live in a post-discrimination society.
    • The question would likely discourage immigrants, both here legally and illegally, from completing the census.
  1. Outgoing deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein defends his handling of the Russia investigation while criticizing Congress, politics, and media (even though the media got most things right, according to the Mueller report). He also criticizes the Obama administration for not revealing more information about Russia sooner, apparently forgetting that Mitch McConnell refused to join a bipartisan statement and threatened Obama if he released it.

Healthcare:

  1. The World Health Organization begins administering the first ever malaria vaccine in several African nations.
  2. The U.S. threatens to veto a UN resolution on sexual violence in global conflicts because it includes giving timely “sexual and reproductive health” help to survivors of assault. The Trump administration translates that as “abortion” and forces the UN to water down their language on the resolution.
  3. The Kansas Supreme Court rules that the state constitution protects the “right of personal autonomy.” This means a woman has a right to make decisions about her own body. The ruling blocks previous restrictions.
  4. As of this week, three different federal judges have blocked Trump’s Title X “gag rule,” which eliminates federal funding for medical practitioners if they do or say anything that assists a patient in getting an abortion.
  5. In 2015, Trump linked vaccines to autism. Now he says children have to get their shots because it’s so important. I guess I applaud his evolution on the topic.

International:

  1. Now that Trump wants to recognize Golan Heights as being under the sovereignty of Israel, Netanyahu wants to name a neighborhood in Golan Heights after Trump.
  2. The U.S. charges an American engineer and a Chinese business person with espionage for trying to steal turbine technology for the Chinese government.
  3. Kim Jong Un travels to Russia where he has his first meeting with Putin. Kim wants to save face after the breakdown in denuclearization talks with the U.S. and Putin gets to intervene in our negotiations.
  4. A new report says that the Trump administration agreed to pay North Korea $2 million for Otto Warmbier’s healthcare. Both Trump and John Bolton deny it was ever paid, though.
  5. The head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan meets with Taliban leaders to start full peace negotiations.
  6. Saudi Arabia beheads 37 people convicted of offenses related to terrorism. It’s the largest mass execution in three years, when they executed 47 people. It also brings the total executed this year to 105.
  7. During his NRA speech, Trump not only announces he’s ending support for the Arms Trade Treaty, he signs a document asking the Senate to return the pact to the White House.
    • The treaty was agreed upon under the George W. Bush administration, and was later signed by Obama. It regulates international sales of all kinds of weaponry.
    • It’s meant to prevent illicit arms sales that escalate armed conflicts.
    • Congress never ratified the pact, but 100 countries did. An additional 30 countries have signed on but not ratified.
    • Again we’re joining exemplary global leaders like Russia, North Korea, and Syria to oppose global agreements.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Florida’s Senate passes a bill that would allow teachers to be armed. The House still needs to vote on the bill.
  2. Florida’s House passes a bill that restores felon’s voting rights only after they’ve paid any fees, fines, and court costs. Florida voters voted overwhelmingly to restore voting rights for all but the most heinous felons, regardless of ability to pay.
  3. Irony alert. In an op-ed, Mitch McConnell accuses Democrats of histrionic obstruction. And then at a rally he says that if he’s in power after 2020, he won’t let any Democratic bills pass the Senate. He also poses with someone holding a t-shirt celebrating the expiration of Merrick Garland’s nomination to SCOTUS. He’s a master obstructor.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. The House files a motion in court to block Trump’s plan to use Department of Defense funds to build his wall.
  2. Last week, Mexican troops pulled their weapons on two of our National Guard at the border. It turned out to be a geographical error, but Trump says (with no proof) it was just a diversionary tactic to allow drug smugglers through the border.

Family Separation:

  1. A federal judge gives Trump’s administration six months to identify and reunite the remaining migrant children they separated from their parents who were seeking asylum at the southern border. The administration says it might take longer than that, because they didn’t keep track of them.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Supreme Court says it will hear two cases about whether the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prevents discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community.
  2. The National Guard in five states will continue to allow transgender troops to serve, in opposition to Trump’s transgender ban in the military.
  3. Brunei defends their new policy of stoning people for having gay sex by saying it’s rarely prosecuted. So no big, right?
  4. Sri Lankan officials have arrested 60 people for the Easter Sunday bombings. Their president orders two top security officials to step down over the government’s handling of advance warning of the attacks. They also face coverings. The death toll from the attacks is over 320.
  5. The leader of the militia that’s been detaining migrants crossing the southern border says that his militia was training to assassinate Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George Soros.
    • The FBI has known about this since October 2017, but didn’t do anything about it until the New York Times reported it.
  1. Remember that Coast Guard officer who was arrested with a stash of weapons and was planning a terrorist attack on liberal politicians and journalists? Prosecutors now allege that he was driven by his views on race. He had searched the internet for the best gun to kill black people with, “white homeland,” and “please god let there be a race war.”
    • A federal judge orders him released from detention. They‘re working on options for supervised release.
  1. An Alabama sheriff is placed on leave after he mocks a teen who committed suicide over being bullied over his sexuality. In his anti-LGBTQ post, the sheriff says it stands for Liberty Guns Bible Trump BBQ.
  2. The Department of Justice refuses to comply with a subpoena from the House Oversight and Reform Committee over the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. Attorney General Barr directs John Gore to defy the subpoena and won’t let him testify unless he can have a DOJ attorney present.
    • The census hasn’t asked a citizenship question since 1950.
  1. In keeping with Trump’s threats, the White House refuses to allow Stephen Miller to testify before the House Oversight Committee about immigration policies.
  2. The Pentagon prepares to expand the military’s role at the border, and is changing the rules about how troops can interact with immigrants.
  3. A driver intentionally drives his car into a group of pedestrians in Sunnyvale, CA. Police say the driver thought he was targeting a Muslim family. None were killed, but a young girl is in a coma.
  4. The FBI thwarts a terrorist attack planned to hit Huntington Beach, CA, a white power rally in Long Beach, and the Santa Monica Pier. The potential terrorist is a vet looking for retribution for the attacks on the mosques in New Zealand.
  5. A 19-year-old man shoots worshipers at a synagogue in Poway, CA. He kills one person, and people say he would’ve shot more but it seems like his gun jammed.
    • He posted an antisemitic and anti-Muslim manifesto online and took credit for a mosque fire a few weeks ago.
    • According to the manifesto, he was radicalized over a period of 18 months on 8Chan, an online discussion board.
  1. A small white nationalist group storms a bookstore in protest of an event on racial politics. The far-right group is linked to Identity Evropa.
  2. Joe Biden puts out a video pointing out that there were not “very fine people on both sides” of the clashes in Charlottesville during the “Unite the Right” rally, reigniting the “Charlottesville Hoax” cries from the right.
    • Trump defends his words by saying he was talking about people who were protesting the removal of a confederate statue.
    • Context: It was a white nationalist rally sponsored by hate groups and neo-Nazis. Attendees wore swastikas and chanted antisemitic slogans, like “Jews will not replace us!” If there were very fine people among that group, you would think they would’ve distanced themselves fairly quickly.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The Trump administration pushes Republicans in Congress to act quickly to raise the debt ceiling and avoid another standoff.
  2. The S&P 500 hits an all-time high of 2,943, likely on optimism over trade talks with China. Nasdaq also hit an all-time high of 8,161.85.
  3. The U.S. economy far exceeds economist expectations by posting a GDP growth rate of 3.2%. Drivers include companies stockpiling their inventory and higher U.S. exports. These aren’t expected to last, but the fears of a recession are slightly eased.
  4. Trump is working hard to wind down the trade wars so he can remove tariffs before the 2020 elections. With the tariffs came higher prices for imported goods, so domestic manufacturers raised their prices to match. Trade wars are easy to win, right?
  5. The Trump administration tried to pre-empt an independent report showing minimal improvements in the renegotiated NAFTA by releasing their own, more flattering report first.
  6. The GOP tax reform forced some Gold Star families to spend thousands more in taxes by changing the way survivor benefits are taxed.
  7. After the White House decides to stop renewing waivers for countries to buy oil from Iran, oil prices hit a six-month high.
  8. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has spent decades courting members of the GOP. Now they’re working to become less aligned with the right. The GOP has moved toward nativism, isolationism, and protectionism, contrary to the Chamber’s support for legal immigration, infrastructure investment, and free trade.
    • According to the president and CEO, they don’t want to play to the extremes on either side and they want to fill in the gaping hole in the political middle.
  1. Likewise, the Koch political network is moving away from the GOP, despite being probably the largest benefactor of Republicans in power.
  2. She gets it. Disney heiress Abigail Disney calls on the company to give 50% of executive bonuses to their lowest-paid employees.
  3. Trump’s pick for the Federal Reserve Board, Stephen Moore, says his enemies are “pulling a Kavanaugh against” him. We have it in his own writings, though, that women shouldn’t be allowed to referee men’s sports (unless they’re attractive), that female athletes want equal pay for inferior work, and that his own wife is a “loss leader” who doesn’t have a job. He’s mocked AIDS, objectified women, and has been held in contempt of court for failing to pay alimony and child support to the woman who, not surprisingly, divorced him.
  4. Herman Cain, another Trump nominee for the Federal Reserve Board, withdraws after accusations of sexual harassment arise. Trump calls the accusations a witch hunt.

Elections:

  1. Tampa elects Jane Castor as mayor, the first openly gay women to be mayor in a major city in the Southeast.
  2. As part of the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s re-election effort, a Malaysian development company is under investigation for money laundering. Attorney General Barr gets a waiver to participate in the investigation even though his former employer represents a party in the investigation.
  3. The DNC makes a pledge not to use stolen or hacked material in the 2020 presidential election, and they challenge the RNC to do the same. So far, the Trump campaign has refused to make the pledge.
  4. Federal judges order Michigan state lawmakers to redraw their gerrymandered districts. They rule that 34 state and federal legislative districts are unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans. Last year, private emails showed that Republicans drew the district lines with bias, contradicting their own defense.

Miscellaneous:

  1. A NASA subcontractor who falsified test results in aluminum manufacturing for nearly 20 years has to pay a $46 million fine. NASA says their parts caused two rocket launches to fail.
  2. Trump wants people who went through a criminal diversion program instead of serving time to divulge that information on federal job applications, making it harder for former offenders to get jobs.
  3. A bipartisan group of lawmakers oppose this move, saying it contradicts the First Step Act that Trump signed into law last year.
  4. Trump orders his administration to boycott the White House Correspondents’s Association dinner. This year, instead of being roasted by a comedian, the association hired a historian to speak.
  5. In a meeting with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Trump accuses them of messing with his follower count (apparently he’s a little alarmed that he lost followers). Trump says a bunch of conservatives have lost followers. Dorsey says followers fluctuate, especially right now while they’re trying to keep fake accounts and bots off the platform. Dorsey, himself, has lost followers.
  6. Sonny Perdue is relocating two scientific agencies currently located in downtown Washington D.C. This will likely lead to some brain drain, as scientists and experts might not move with those agencies.
  7. Kentucky’s governor blames teachers’ “sick outs” for the shooting death of a seven-year-old girl. She was accidentally shot by her brother with their uncle’s weapon. They were home because of a sick out, but no teacher put a gun in his hands.
  8. In the midst of their national convention (at which Trump spoke), the NRA seems to have a midlife crisis. They suspend their lawyer, and Ollie North steps down as leader after just six months and accuses CEO Wayne LaPierre of financial misconduct and suggests they could lose their nonprofit status. New York launches an investigation into them and a lawsuit is filed over the handling of their election activities.

Polls:

  1. Gallup polled over 150,000 people globally and found Americans to be the most stressed out. 55% of us reported experiencing a lot of stress the previous day, compared with 35% globally.
  2. 43% of Americans feel like they’ve benefited from recent economic growth; 54% say they haven’t.

Week 117 in Trump

Posted on April 23, 2019 in Politics, Trump

The Mueller report is out!

Finally the Mueller report is released, if only in redacted form. Now we can put it all behind us and lay it to rest, right? Wrong. That couldn’t be more wrong. The reactions to the report couldn’t be more different, ranging from complete exoneration to obviously there were some bad deeds done to we must impeach. Even my quick take on the report is too long to include here, but it doesn’t really exonerate anybody, there are still ongoing cases, and Congress will have to figure out whether to do the ethical thing and start impeachment hearings or the political thing and hope for the best in 2020.

Here’s that and what else happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. I’m working on a more detailed summary of the Mueller report, but here’s my quick take on what I’ve read so far. If you want to read the full report, here’s a good version.
  2. Russian aluminum company Rusal announces it’s spending $200 million on a new low-carbon aluminum mill in Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky. Last year, the company was under U.S. sanctions under the ownership of oligarch Oleg Deripaska. The Treasury lifted sanctions once Deripaska divested.
  3. House committees subpoena Trump’s financial records from Deutsche Bank. They also subpoena documents from JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America regarding potential money laundering by Russians and Eastern Europeans.
  4. During a FOIA hearing, a federal judge says that Attorney General William Barr has created an environment of distrust around the DOJ’s commitment to sharing information about the Mueller investigation. Still, the judge denies a request to disclose the full and unredacted report.
  5. Current and former White House staffers are anxious about whether their cooperation with the Mueller investigation will be revealed in his report. They say they’re doubly concerned over how Trump will respond.
  6. Officials from the DOJ met with White House lawyers several times to discuss the findings in the Mueller report, giving them nearly a month to prepare rebuttals. This is a break from precedent. Kenneth Starr didn’t let the Clinton White House review his report, but then he also released his report in full, excruciating detail on the web.
  7. The DOJ refuses to release sealed records in Paul Manafort’s court cases because there are still ongoing investigations. The Washington Post had requested the release, but ongoing cases around Manafort include Gregory Craig, Sam Patten (just sentenced), Roger Stone, Stormy Daniels hush money payments, Rick Gates, and Michael Flynn.
  8. Attorney General William Barr announces he’ll hold a press conference to talk about the Mueller report before he actually releases the redacted version. This means reporters are going in with no background information on which to base their questions. Democratic House committee chairs demand he cancel the press conference, saying it’s “unnecessary and inappropriate, and appears designed to shape public perceptions of the report before anyone can read it.” And it seems they’re right. Here are some highlights.
  9. Mueller’s team, which was tight-lipped and pretty leak-proof during the investigation, has been opening up to say Barr is minimizing the evidence and findings from the investigation.
  10. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler subpoenas the full, unredacted Mueller report. For certain, the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, along with the Gang of Eight will receive a version of the report with redactions only for grand jury information unless a judge rules otherwise on the grand jury bit.
  11. Even though Trump and his legal team claim that Mueller’s report exonerates him, they’re putting together a rebuttal to the report’s findings.
  12. Republicans for the Rule of Law, a conservative group formed to defend “the institutions of our republic,” runs an ad on Fox News urging Republicans in Congress to hold Trump accountable for the wrongdoing presented in Mueller’s report and to rebuild the Republican party back to what it once was.
  13. Rudy Giuliani says there’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians. Even if the FBI warned the campaign about it and asked to be alerted about Russian contacts?

Legal Fallout:

  1. The inspector general for the Department of the Interior opens an ethics investigation into the newly confirmed secretary of the department, David Bernhardt.
  2. Sears sues Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and their former CEO, Edward Lampert. Sears alleges that as member of the board, Mnuchin helped Lampert strip Sears of more than $2 billion.
  3. The White House refuses to comply with a request from the House Judiciary Committee for documents regarding the merger between AT&T and Time Warner. If you remember, Trump told Gary Cohn to pressure the DOJ to prevent the merger (Time Warner owns CNN).

Healthcare:

  1. The DOJ brings charges against 60 medical professionals, including 31 doctors, in five states for illegally prescribing opiates and for exchanging sex for pills. The states span areas where the opioid crisis is hitting hardest (Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama, and West Virginia).
  2. McConnell says he’ll block any attempts at Medicare for All. His words: ”Medicare for all? Not as long as I’m majority leader. It ought to be called Medicare for none.”

International:

  1. Trump vetoes a resolution passed in both the House and Senate that would’ve withdrawn U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
  2. The EU has been building schools for Palestinian children in the West Bank. This week, Israel damages or demolishes three of them citing permitting issues. These kids have to go to school outdoors or in tents.
  3. The Trump administration announces new restrictions against Cuba, reversing steps made under Obama to help improve relations between the U.S. and Cuba. They place restrictions on travel and on the amount of money Cuban Americans can send to relatives there. They also allow Cuban exiles to sue the government for seized property.
    • The announcement also includes new sanctions against Venezuela and Nicaragua .
  1. North Korea announces a test of a new tactical guided weapon, likely a short-range missile.
  2. A new study shows that Russia’s been hacking into the global navigation satellite system (GNSS), and using it to confuse ships and planes. Almost 10,000 incidents have been reported or detected.
  3. Trump orders the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to dismiss most of their Palestinian aid workers. Eventually he wants to bring it down to 14 workers.
  4. Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo wins a second term.
  5. Ukraine elects a TV Comedian as President by a landslide—he wins by nearly a 50 point spread. He’s a bit of a populist and ran on a platform of anti-corruption.

Legislation/Congress:

Congress is on recess. I hope you all went to a town hall with your Representative!

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Yo-Yo Ma gives a performance at the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge, which spans between Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. His message is unity, and he says, “A country is not a hotel, and it’s not full.”
  2. Last week, ICE deported the spouse of a U.S. soldier who was killed in Afghanistan in 2020, leaving their 12-year-old daughter in Phoenix. This week, ICE reverses that decision and brings him back. I don’t know the reason.
  3. Attorney General Barr orders immigration judges to deny bail to some asylum seekers, which will keep even more migrants in detention centers indefinitely (and cost us more money). DHS will have sole authority to decide who is released.
  4. Trump decides not to nominate anyone to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a continuation of his withdrawal from international agencies on human rights.
  5. Democrats in Arizona try to force a vote on the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment—yes, it’s still a thing). Republicans block the vote.
  6. Texas passes state bills that would allow municipalities to not enforce anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ Texans.
  7. The House Judiciary Committee is looking into Trump’s alleged promise to pardon Kevin McAleenan, the Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, if he illegally blocks asylum seekers from entering the U.S. From what I’ve read about McAleenan, the offer was pointless; he doesn’t seem like a law-breaker.
  8. Trump wants 9,000 to 10,000 additional troops deployed to the border. The Pentagon says they’ll add about 3,000.
  9. The Ninth Court of Appeals temporarily lifts the injunction against Trump’s policy to make asylum applicants remain in Mexico to await their court hearings. The administration is already working to send refugees back while court cases are pending.
  10. The Mexican government contradicts Trump’s claims that they agreed to this policy of making refugees wait in Mexico.
  11. The White House considers restricting travel from counties whose citizens have high rates of overstaying their visas in the U.S. They’re largely focused on African nations.
  12. Leaders in sanctuary cities and states have varied responses to Trump’s “threats” to send asylum seekers to sanctuary localities. While they say they welcome refugees, they also say Trump thinks he’s punishing his political opponents and that it would be illegal anyway. But still, we’re set up for this and we welcome migrants, so bring it on.
    • Three House committees are looking into this proposal, and want Stephen Miller to testify since he seems to be the “boss” of all things around immigration.
  1. Despite an increase in threats that led to an increase in security for Representative Ilhan Omar, Trump continues his attacks on her, calling her out of control, antisemitic, and anti-Israel, and saying she hates the U.S.
  2. At least four House freshman women are under death threats—Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Katie Hill. I’m not sure whether this goes under “Discrimination” or mere “Far-Right Assholery” since the women in question fall into one or more of these categories: Muslim, black, Palestinian, Puerto Rican, and bisexual.
  3. U.S. officials arrest a Florida man who made threatening and hate-filled calls to Democratic officials. He specifically ranted about Muslims, black people, and Ilhan Omar. He threatened Eric Swalwell with death if he “comes after our guns.” He called Rashida Tlaib to rant about Omar. He also called Cory Booker, among others.
  4. Authorities charge Holden Matthews with additional counts of hate crimes after arresting him for starting three black churches in Louisiana on fire.
  5. Starting in 2020, based on Trump’s transgender ban, the U.S. Naval Academy will stop enrolling transgender students.
  6. Steve Bannon is funding a new academy at a monastery in Italy. They’re creating the Academy for the Judeo-Christian West, a Christian nationalist institute. I hope this goes about as well as the fortified city Glenn Beck was planning in Idaho.
  7. Here’s a twist. Canada asks the U.S. for help in stemming the flow of refugees across their southern border… with the U.S.
  8. An armed civilian militia group holds over 200 asylum seekers at gunpoint as they tried to cross the border. The United Constitutional Patriots have been “guarding” this area of the border for a few months. The FBI later arrests the leader of the group on weapons charges. Customer and Border Patrol does not support this kind of vigilante action.
  9. Fire destroys the main offices of the Highlander Center, a Tennessee social justice center that has hosted several civil rights leaders. A white power symbol is found spray-painted on the parking lot.
  10. Washington State Representative Matt Shea discussed acts of extreme violence, intimidation, and surveillance against perceived enemies (AKA, the left) with far-right figures Jack Robertson and Anthony Bosworth. Shea outed three individuals for the group to target. Shea has pushed right-wing conspiracy theories for years. Vote him out!
  11. The week ends with horrific terrorist bombings of churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. Nearly 300 are dead, and over 500 injured. The attack was carried out by local militant groups, and the Islamic State claims credit for it. Police arrest thirteen suspects, and three officers are killed in the process.
    • Security officials were warned of a threat to churches 10 days prior to the attacks, and it’s not clear if any action was taken to address them.
    • Trump tweets that at least 138 million were killed, and then deletes it.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A new study concludes that climate change is partly to blame for the strength of Hurricane Maria in 2017. The central region of the island typically gets 150 inches of rain a year, and Maria dropped nearly 1/4 of that in one day.
  2. Several states, including Idaho, Colorado, and New Mexico, plan to retire old coal plants early thanks to lower costs of renewable energy sources. This isn’t happening due to political pressure nor to renewable energy mandates. Several states are working to ease the transition, but coal in southeast and northeast states are subsidized and immune to these market pressures.
  3. Duke Energy plans to develop six utility-scale power plants in North Carolina.
  4. New York City passes a bill limiting greenhouse gas emissions from big buildings.
  5. Over 3,000 scientists sign on to a letter of support for Youth Strike for Climate, led by Swedish student activist Greta Thunberg. The letter emphasizes the need to act now, and says that our current actions are not adequate.
  6. The EPA’s Andrew Wheeler previously dismissed a qualified and independent panel of air pollution scientists (because, you know, Obama), and now the panel admits they don’t have the expertise to make recommendations. But they propose changes to the Clean Air Act anyway that would put people’s health at risk.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Illinois passes a bill banning “right to work” laws for municipalities in the state. Right to work laws are touted as being better for everyone, but they really take away employees’ collective bargaining power.
  2. An independent analysis by the International Trade Commission shows that Trump’s renegotiated NAFTA will have a limited effect on the economy (boosting it by just 0.35%). The greatest positive effects are in manufacturing and services, but it’ll make U.S. production more expensive overall, reduce exports, and cut wages and possibly employment.
    • This still has to be approved by Congress. Democrats are pushing for better labor protections and tougher compliance enforcement with Mexico. Republicans are pushing to remove tariffs.
  1. February’s deficit was the largest one-month deficit in history, reaching $234 billion. This is partly from the GOP tax reform bill and partly from the spending bill compromise.
  2. Tariffs have brought in $82 million to the Treasury, but they also raised consumer prices in the U.S. by $1.5 billion. They did create about 1,800 new jobs, but at a cost of over $800,000 per job.

Elections:

  1. Kansas passes a law allowing people to vote anywhere in their county instead of just one assigned polling place. In 2018, they closed or moved several polling places, making it harder for people to vote. Around 1,100 voters voted in the wrong polling place so their votes weren’t fully counted.
  2. Former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld announces he’ll run against Trump in the 2020 presidential Republican primary.
  3. Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders accuses the “establishment” of working against him (again) after Think Progress publishes an article that’s critical of him. They’ve published articles criticizing several other candidates, “establishment” and otherwise.
  4. Elizabeth Warren is the first Democratic presidential candidate to call for the House to start impeachment proceedings. There are two camps on this: one that thinks impeachment is a moral and ethical imperative, and one that thinks it would be political suicide for the Democratic party. IMO, this shows Warren puts ethics above politics.
    • While most candidates back more investigations before making a decision on impeachment, a handful followed Warren’s lead.

Miscellaneous:

  1. While I was writing my recap last week, Paris’s 800-year-plus-old Notre Dame cathedral went up in flames. It’s spire collapsed, but firefighters had saved the structure and stopped its spread.
    • Online conspiracy theorists immediately began spreading vile hoaxes about arson, people with Arabic-sounding names celebrating, terrorism, Muslims, and Ilhan Omar saying they reap what they sow. (She didn’t—I can’t believe I have to clarify that. She actually tweeted about the wonder of Notre Dame and prayed for firefighters.)
    • The fire is suspected to have been ignited by accident.
  1. Trump advises French firefighters to dump water from air tankers on the Notre Dame blaze to put it out. Is there anything he doesn’t know how to do better than the experts? French firefighters let him know that it could cause the entire structure to collapse. Looks like they did a fine job all on their own.
  2. Trump says Boeing should just fix the 737 MAX airliners and rebrand them with a new name. Because that’ll make everyone forget about the two deadly plane crashes, right?
  3. With the 20th anniversary of the Columbine shooting this week, a young woman from Florida who was fixated on the shooting causes Denver area schools to shut down when she travels to Denver and purchases a shotgun near the school. She’s later found dead from a self-inflicted gun shot wound.
  4. Days after the Notre Dame fire, a man goes into St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City carrying gallons of gas, lighters, and lighter fluid. He’s charged with attempted arson and reckless endangerment. Earlier in the week, he was arrested for refusing to leave the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark, NJ.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s approval rating took a slight dip, but is holding surprisingly steady after the release of the Mueller report. It’s at an aggregate of 41.4%.
  2. The electorate is pretty equally divided over whether to impeach or not following the release of the Mueller report.