Tag: borderwall

Week 114 in Trump

Posted on April 2, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Refugees waiting in a pen under a bridge in El Paso.

Robert Mueller’s work might be done, but there are a bunch of ongoing investigations—more than I realized. If you’re curious about the players, the charges, and evidence requested, check out CNN’s interactive guide. It’s ridiculously thorough, and you can view it by investigations, charges, people, and investigators. Pretty interesting, and something to keep you busy until we see the actual report.

Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Russia:

  1. After Attorney General William Barr released his summary of the Mueller report, the Trump campaign sends an email to several TV producers demanding they challenge guests who’ve accused his campaign of collusion with Russia. The email goes on to list Democratic politicians, the DNC chair, and former intelligence officers they should challenge.
    • The letter also says there’s no other way to interpret Mueller’s lack of action other than “as a total and complete vindication of President Trump.” Just a reminder that previous special counsels have also declined to decide on charges.
  1. Lawyers and former intelligence officials question Barr’s claim that there can’t be an obstruction case if there was no cooperation between Russia and Trump. According to legal precedent, obstruction is a crime whether or not you can prove an underlying crime.
    • Lawyers also question why Barr included his own legal argument in his summary.
  1. Lindsey Graham says that Barr told him he’ll send Mueller’s report to the White House first so they can make any redactions based on executive privilege.
  2. Barr sends a second letter to Congress saying that his original letter was misinterpreted and that he’ll provide the redacted Mueller report in mid-April. He says Mueller is helping with the redactions, and that he’ll redact:
    • Info that is secret according to the laws about grand juries.
    • Info affecting ongoing investigations.
    • Info that could compromise our intelligence community’s resources and methods.
    • Info that would “infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties” (that sounds pretty broad).
  1. Barr says he will NOT, in fact, submit the report to the White House for review before sending it out.
  2. Barr clarifies that his original letter was never intended to summarize Mueller’s findings.
  3. A federal prosecutor says in court that the grand jury convened by Mueller is still “continuing robustly,” indicating that there could be more developments.
  4. Mitch McConnell again blocks a resolution in the Senate to have the Mueller report be made public.
  5. Democratic chairs of House committees demand the Mueller report and underlying evidence be released in full to those committees by April 2.
  6. Kellyanne Conway says House Intelligence chairman Adam Schiff should resign. Schiff’s Republican colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee give their opening statements in a committee hearing criticizing Schiff and calling on his to resign.
    • Did people call for Devin Nunes to resign when he made his midnight run to the White House? I think they just requested that he recuse himself.
    • I’ve never seen Schiff mad, but his response was epically angry. You can see the Republican accusation at 6:15 and Schiff’s response at 9:30 in this C-SPAN video.
  1. BTA Bank, along with the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan, sues Trump real estate associate Felix Sater, accusing him of planning to launder money stolen from the bank. They say Sater used Trump real estate deals and Trump-branded skyscrapers to launder the money.
    • Sater is a convicted felon turned state’s witness in unrelated cases.
    • The House Intelligence Committee postpones Sater’s planned testimony.
  1. A Swedish bank (Swedbank) is accused of being a conduit to launder money from the former Soviet Union into the West. The bank is also accused of being the pipeline for sending money from Russia to the Trump campaign and Paul Manafort.
  2. In an interview with Sean Hannity, Trump promises to release the complete and unredacted documents used to obtain the FISA warrants in the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference. He’ll also release the FISA warrant itself.
    • Trump calls the FBI treasonous, calls the former director of the CIA mentally ill, and calls Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) a criminal.
    • Trump also says (possibly correctly) that none of this (the Russia investigation) would’ve happened if William Barr would’ve been his Attorney General from the start.
  1. A federal judge orders the release (to the courts) of James Comey’s unredacted memos covering his interactions with Trump. This is part of a lawsuit brought by media organizations to obtain the information.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Newly surfaced documents show how Trump inflated his assets in order to obtain loans. The “Statements of Financial Condition” show he lied about the number of lots available in a golf course development, the size of the vineyard in Virginia, and the number of stories in Trump Tower, among others.
  2. The GOP revs up their own plans for investigations into the 2016 elections, focusing on investigating the investigators of both Russia’s meddling and Hillary’s emails (again), abuses of FISA warrants (again), and former Obama officials.
    • Some claim that the Steele Dossier started the whole Russia investigation, but the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee found in 2018 that the investigation was triggered by George Papadopoulos’s drunken confession to an Australian diplomat.
  1. Here’s a weird one. According to Jeff Bezos’ security consultant, his investigation into the AMI release of Bezos’ private texts found that the Saudi Arabian government hacked into Bezos’ phone. He’s not sure if it’s related to the National Enquirer’s publication of private text messages between Bezos and his mistress.
    • Remember there was an issue a while back about AMI’s relationship with Saudi Arabia surrounding the fluff issue they published on the crown prince.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court refuses to temporarily block the federal ban on bump stocks, so the ban remains in place while the case moves through the justice system.

  2. The ACLU files suit against three South Dakota anti-protest laws, including the Riot Boosting Act, which could fine or criminalize protestors. Two previous laws put similar restrictions on freedom of speech.
  3. A federal judge in San Diego strikes down California’s ban on owning high-capacity gun magazines (defined by the law as holding more than 10 bullets). He based his ruling partly on instances he cited where people ran out of bullets while protecting themselves from home invaders.
    • The judge also claims that the problem of mass shootings is “very small.”
    • California’s ban on purchasing high-capacity magazines is still in place.
    • Also, the fact that a handful of homeowners ran out of bullets might support an argument that we need better training in order to obtain a gun.
  1. Trump told confidants that he’s saving Judge Amy Barrett for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat. That’s kind of morose, no?

Healthcare:

  1. In a new legal filing, the Department of Justice reverses its previous opinions and says we should strike all of the ACA from the law.
    • Previously, they said that only protections for people with pre-existing conditions needed to be stricken.
    • Striking the ACA would cause an estimated 20 million more Americans to be unable to obtain coverage.
    • Around 129 million Americans would lose coverage for pre-existing conditions or face higher premiums.
    • States’ attorneys are defending the law.
    • Even though Trump has promised a way better plan for three years, neither Republicans in Congress nor the White House have brought up a plan to replace the ACA. There aren’t even plans to make a plan.
    • This directive came straight from Trump, who was convinced by Mick Mulvaney. Attorney General William Barr, VP Mike Pence, and HHS secretary Alex Azar oppose it.
  1. At the same time, Democrats unveil their new plan to strengthen and expand healthcare. Their plan would:
    • Expand insurance subsidies by increasing tax credits and loosening eligibility requirements.
    • Reverse Trump’s changes to the ACA.
    • Create a national reinsurance program to offset high insurer costs and keep premium prices steady.
  1. Parts of the ACA are popular. Voters in several states have passed referendums to force the ACA’s Medicaid expansion after their own elected officials refused to do so. (Carol’s tip of the week: Stop electing those officials.)
  2. A federal judge rejects efforts by the Trump administration to place work requirements on people receiving Medicaid in Kentucky and Arkansas.
    • And yet, Indiana is phasing in work requirements with no plans to stop, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) continues to approve other states’ work requirements.
  1. A federal judge strikes down a law in North Carolina that bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. He gives the state two months to amend the law or appeal his ruling.
    • A bill in 2015 made the 1973 law more restrictive, but the state claims it never intended to enforce it. In that case, I don’t know why they bothered amending the original bill.
  1. This year alone, 14 states have brought up bills banning abortions after six weeks (commonly known as “heartbeat bills”). Most won’t pass, and the courts will strike down those that do. Pro-life advocates hope that one will make it to the Supreme Court and end up overturning Roe vs. Wade.
  2. A federal court strikes down Trump’s changes to the ACA that allowed small businesses to offer insurance policies that don’t fulfill the requirements of the ACA.
  3. Trump names Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) to be the point person on the GOP healthcare plan. Interesting choice, since Scott resigned as CEO from Columbia/HCA after what became the largest case of Medicare fraud in history. The company was fined $1.7 billion.

International:

  1. Palestinians launch a rocket from the Gaza Strip that hits near Tel Aviv and injures seven people. Hamas says it was a mistake. Israel responds with warplane attacks on Hamas targets. Egypt negotiates a cease-fire.
  2. Theresa May promises to resign if the parliament accepts the Brexit deal, and still they can’t agree on it. Now May wants to hold yet another vote (that’ll be the fourth vote on this).
    • So now they vote on a series of options to move forward, like renegotiating (it sounds like the EU is giving this a hard pass), having a new general election, or holding a vote of no confidence. April 12 is the new deadline.
  1. Here’s the most international story of the week: Ten members of a dissident group raid a North Korean embassy in Spain, stealing computers and documents. They flee through Portugal to the U.S. and offer their stolen goods to the FBI. A Mexican national who graduated from Yale and has done time in a Chinese jail is the group leader. They wants to topple the Kim regime.
  2. Slovakia elects their first female president, Zuzana Caputova.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL) reads Mein Kampf on the House floor to scold Democrats.
    • He compares the Russia investigation to Hitler’s “big lie.”
    • He mistakenly calls Hitler a socialist (he was closer to a fascist, though more extreme).
    • He seems to suggest that the Democratic party is repeating the moves of Hitler.
  1. Colorado’s Senate passes a “red flag” gun bill. Red flag laws allow judges to temporarily remove weapons from people deemed to be a risk to themselves or others. Some Colorado sheriffs say they won’t uphold the law.
  2. On the other end of the spectrum, North Dakota’s legislature passes a bill that bans taxpayer-funded gun buyback programs.
  3. The NRA opposes the expansion of the Violence Against Women Act. Specifically, they oppose preventing people who’ve committed domestic violence from obtaining weapons. Over half of the women murdered in the U.S. in a single-victim or single-perpetrator crime were romantic partners with their killer.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. After Trump vetoed a resolution passed by the House and the Senate to block his declaration of national emergency, the House fails to garner enough votes to override his veto. So the national emergency stands.
  2. The Pentagon tells Congress that they’ve authorized $1 billion earmarked for other projects to be used for new border wall construction. Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee lodge a protest against the transfer of funds.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. This story won’t die. Prosecutors drop all charges against Jussie Smollett, saying he’s already paid his penance by doing community service and donating his bond to the city. They do say, however, this doesn’t mean they don’t think he’s guilty; they do.
    • The mayor and chief of police are furious over the decision, so I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about it. Trump says the FBI is opening an investigation into it, but I doubt that.
  1. After conversations with academics and civil rights groups, Facebook expands its policies on hate groups by banning white nationalism and white supremacy.
  2. Trump delays the deportation of Liberians who migrated here under protected status. I don’t know what brought about his change of heart.
  3. Trump says he’ll close down the border with Mexico unless Mexico stops all unauthorized border crossings. DHS says that would be a disaster so it would only be used as a last resort. I’ll miss those delicious avocados and fresh veggies.
    • Over a half-million people cross that border legally each day in Texas alone, many for work (and it goes both ways).
  1. The next day, the State Department announces that Trump is cutting off all direct aid to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador (or as Fox News put it, the “three Mexican countries”). Because that will stop people from wanting to leave those countries for a better life here, right?
  2. CBP holds asylum seekers in El Paso in a makeshift, penned-in encampment under a bridge because there’s no space left for processing.
  3. Kirstjen Nielsen asks Congress for permission to immediately deport unaccompanied minor migrants back to their home countries. Currently, Mexican minors can be deported immediately, but not those from other countries. She also wants to detain migrant families together until their asylum requests are processed.
    • Why should we pay for this detention? It’s soooo much cheaper to release them on their own recognizance or to a sponsor.
    • Halting the previous release program and making it harder for sponsors to come forward are what’s causing most of the overcrowding in the detention centers.
  1. James Fields, the man found guilty of murdering Heather Heyer in the Charlottesville rallies, pleads guilty to 29 hate crimes.
  2. The House passes the Paycheck Fairness Act to strengthen the Equal Pay Act. It lets employees discuss salary, expands collection of pay data, prevents employers from requiring you to divulge your salary history, and helps people fight pay discrimination.
    • Women still make 80 cents to each dollar men make, and only about 27% of that difference can be explained by differences in education, occupation, or experience.
    • The pay gap is smaller for younger women than for older women, so there’s some good news.
    • Men are more likely to negotiate a higher starting salary, and women who do so are still likely to be punished for it.
  1. PR failure for NASA. They cancel their first all-woman spacewalk because they didn’t have enough spacesuits to fit them all. Now one woman and one man will go instead.
  2. Orange County ends its contract with ICE, meaning they won’t hold ICE detainees in their jails. Detainees will likely be sent to other holding facilities where they won’t get as much charitable assistance.
  3. The Supreme Court blocks a Texas execution because the prisoner was denied the presence of a Buddhist spiritual advisor. Compare this to the case in Alabama where the Supreme Court allowed them to execute a man though he was denied having a Muslim imam be there.
  4. Since the beginning of 2018, five white nationalists/supremacists have been convicted after threatening to kill Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA).
    • Prosecutions for death threats against Trump were also high in 2018, but not as high as for Obama in six of his eight years in office, for Bush during any year in office, or for Clinton for his last three years (the only years I have numbers for). In fairness, it depends on how each administration decides to prosecute.
    • Threats against officials overall were up 41% in 2018.
    • Going back to 1990, the perpetrators are 85% white males (almost all are male and U.S. citizens). 75% come from the far right.

Climate/EPA:

  1. House Democrats introduce the Climate Action Now Act to reduce carbon emissions, keep our part of the Paris agreement, and pave the way for more clean energy.
  2. In the Senate, Chuck Schumer announces a Special Committee on the Climate Crisis to help develop policies on energy and the environment.
  3. Mitch McConnell brings the Green New Deal to a Senate vote. He‘s trying to force Senate Democrats to put their support on record, but most simply vote “present.”
  4. Puerto Rico passes a bill requiring the island to be powered by 100% renewable energy sources by 2050.
  5. Two-thirds of Iran’s provinces are either already flooding or facing imminent flooding.
  6. In response to a judge delaying construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, Trump tries to circumvent the court by issuing a new permit for construction.
  7. A federal judge restores Obama’s ban on offshore drilling in parts of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. She says Trump exceeded his authority when he reversed the bans.
  8. At a rally in Michigan, Trump vows to fund the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative even though he proposed to cut by 90% in his recent budget. Well, actually in his last three budget proposals. The Great Lakes restoration was one of Obama’s campaign promises.
  9. David Bernhardt, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior, once blocked a report that found the pesticides malathion and chlorpyrifos to be so toxic that they endanger the existence of 1,200 species. No wonder people had so many health problems after they doused Los Angeles in malathion in the late 80s.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump’s tariffs cost Americans about $1.4 billion a month in reduced income according to the Fed. That’s if the government offset the cost; if the government didn’t, then the cost is closer to $12.3 billion.
  2. A different economic study says the trade policies of the last two years cost the American economy $7.8 billion.
  3. Betsy DeVos appears before Congress to defend the Trump budget cuts to educational programs, specifically to programs that help people with disabilities and most prominently to the Special Olympics.
    • After a major backlash, Trump takes credit for overriding DeVos and reinstating funding for the Special Olympics even though she just spent three days defending his cuts. He’s cut funding for this in all three of his budgets.
  1. Trump complains about the amount of disaster relief funds earmarked for Puerto Rico, claiming an amount that’s far higher than the actual. He wants to halt funds for their relief and refuses to meet with the governor.
  2. Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow wants the Fed to cut interest rates by 50 basis points (or .5%). Trump blames the Fed’s interest rate increases for slower economic growth.

Elections:

  1. A study finds that in Florida’s 2018 midterm elections, mail-in ballots from college-age voters in Parkland went uncounted at a much higher rate than the statewide average. About 15% of those ballots were rejected or didn’t arrive in time to be counted; the Florida average is 1.2%.
    • Election officials dispute these findings.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The EU votes to eliminate changing time zones during spring and fall (seems to be going around these days).
  2. Because Trump’s tweets are public record, Twitter wants to label any of his tweets that violate their policies instead of deleting them.
  3. Emails surface between NRA official Mark Richardson and Wolfgang Halbig, a Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist, harasser of victims‘ families, and Infowars employee. Richardson tried to get Halbig to push a conspiracy theory that there was more than one shooter at Parkland.
  4. Speaking of Infowars, Alex Jones says in a deposition that he had a form of psychosis when he was tormenting Sandy Hook families and pushing conspiracy theories about the shooting.
  5. Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, is charged in a multi-million-dollar extortion scheme against Nike. He’s already facing charges for bank fraud, tax fraud, and stealing $1.6 million from a client.
  6. Trump holds a campaign rally in Michigan, which I won’t go into. He doesn’t have any new material.
  7. According to a White House security adviser, Trump overrode 25 denials of security clearance in order to give clearance to people in the White House.
  8. Mike Pence talked Dan Coats out of resigning last year after Trump decided to pull troops out of Syria. And this was after Trump pushed Coats to prove that Obama wiretapped him, told Coats to say our intelligence agencies are biased, and accused Coats of leaking info.

Polls:

After William Barr releases his summary/not-summary of the Mueller report:

  1. 29% of Americans think Mueller’s report cleared Trump of wrongdoing.
  2. 40% believe he has not been cleared.
  3. 31% are unsure.

Well played, Mr. Barr. Well played.

Week 111 in Trump

Posted on March 13, 2019 in Politics, Trump

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen defends the family separation policy at the border. The two on the right likely disagree.

In case you’re keeping track (but seriously, who but a major media organization has the time to track this), Trump has lied over 9,000 times since taking office. He started out averaging around 6 lies per day in 2017, accelerated to around 16 per day in 2018, and in 2019 he’s already averaging 22 per day. You can read about them here.

Here’s what really happened last week in politics… Let me know if I missed anything.

Missed from Last Week:

While Trump was in Vietnam for the summit with Kim Jong Un, he announced a $20 billion deal with Vietnam to buy Boeing jets and engines.

Russia:

  1. Judge Amy Berman Jackson brings Roger Stone into court yet again to clarify the parameters of his gag order. This time, it’s over the re-release of a book where he calls Robert Mueller “crooked.”
  2. A judge finds Chelsea Manning in contempt of court and orders her to jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury. Manning received a subpoena to testify in a sealed case, most likely the sealed case against WikiLeaks that was accidentally revealed in court documents.
    • Just a reminder: Manning received a 35-year sentence for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, and Obama later commuted her sentence.
  1. Judge T.S. Ellis sentences Paul Manafort to just under four years, much less than prosecutors recommended (19-24 years). He’s scheduled to be sentenced in one more case this month. Ellis says Manafort “lived an otherwise blameless life” (WTF?) and that he was a good friend and a generous person.
  1. Erik Prince admits to attending a 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump, Jr., and George Nader to discuss Iran policy.
    • Nader said that during the meeting, Prince told them that the UAE and Saudi Arabia wanted to help Trump win the election.
    • Prince neglected to inform Congress of this during his testimony.
    • Prince also arranged a meeting with Don Junior, Israeli social media specialist Joel Zamel, and an emissary of two crown princes of the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The House Judiciary Committee launches an investigation into abuse of powers, corruption, and obstruction of justice. Committee chair Jerry Nadler emphasizes that they aren’t looking at impeachment at this time.
  2. The Judiciary Committee issues document requests to 81 people and organizations, including the White House, the Trump Foundation, Trump Organization, the transition team, the inauguration committee, 2016 campaign staff, long-time Trump associates, and Trump’s family.
    • The list of people receiving subpoenas reads like a summary of the investigation so far: Corey Lewandowski, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, Brad Parscale, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, Reince Priebus, Don McGahn, KT McFarland, Hope Hicks, Sean Spicer, Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Tom Barrack, Allen Weisellberg, WikiLeaks, American Media Inc. (and its CEO David Pecker), the NRA, and Cambridge Analytica.
    • They’re looking for information on Michael Flynn’s firing, Jeff Sessions recusal from the Russia investigation, and James Comey’s firing.
  1. New York officials subpoena the Trump Organization’s insurer as part of an investigation into whether Trump was personally involved in inflating company assets.
  2. Jerome Corsi apologizes to the family of Seth Rich for pushing the baseless theory that Rich was the source of the DNC document leak during the 2016 campaign.
    • InfoWars follows suit, removing Corsi’s column about it from their website.
    • Fox News pushed this story hard, and was forced to retract it 2017.
    • The Washington Times was also forced to retract an op-ed by a retired Navy admiral, which was the source of the entire conspiracy theory.
  1. A district court orders the release of previously redacted details about plans to build a new FBI HQ. Trump intervened in the decision of where to build the HQ when it was decided to build a new HQ on the location of the old one, across from the Trump Hotel in D.C. Under Obama, the administration planned to build a new HQ in the suburbs, which was more expensive.
  2. Cohen sues the Trump Organization to cover his legal fees saying they aren’t meeting their indemnification obligations.
  3. Michael Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis says that Cohen’s legal team brought up the idea of a pardon with Trump’s legal team last year after Trump’s team “dangled” the possibility last year. It’s not clear whether Cohen knew of the request.
    • According to Rudy Giuliani, several people being scrutinized in related investigations have approached Trump’s legal team to talk about pardons.
  1. Michael Cohen provides documentary evidence of the hush money payments. So now we know that while president, Trump took the time to write him a check for the hush money. We also know that Don Junior signed off on two of those checks.
  2. I don’t even know what to make of this one, so I’ll just say what we know.
    • As part of a bust that shutdown 10 Asian day spas, Patriot owner Bob Kraft was arrested for soliciting sex.
    • The original founder of the spa, Li (Cindy) Yang, is a Trump donor and fundraiser. She’s been selling access to Trump and his associates at Mar-a-Lago to her clients. (She no longer owns the spas, btw).
    • Yang and Trump watched the Super Bowl together, but it’s not clear if he even knows her.
  1. The DOJ unearths a 2017 letter from Jeff Sessions to the DOJ Inspector General John Huber ordering a review of the investigations into the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One. The DOJ previously denied the existence of this letter.
  2. Trump’s inauguration committee received funds from shell companies owned by foreigners or with foreign ties. The donors were from Israel, Taiwan, and India.

Healthcare:

  1. Medical and reproductive rights groups, including Planned Parenthood and the AMA, sue the Trump administration over their recent abortion rule prohibiting organizations that receive federal funds from mentioning or referring for abortions. The rule primarily affects low-income women who receive health services through HHS programs.
  2. On top of lawsuits from advocacy groups, 21 states sue over the abortion rule.
  3. Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, starts looking into filing for bankruptcy in light of the nearly 2,000 lawsuits against them for contributing to the opioid crisis.
  4. A Republican State Representative in Tennessee introduces a bill that would require women to prove their U.S. citizenship before receiving prenatal care or government benefits for their U.S.-born children.
  5. He introduces another bill that would only allow birth certificates to be given to children born to parents who are in the U.S. legally. (I think that might contradict federal law.)
  6. Tennessee passes a bill that would prevent abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected. No heartbeat bill has made it through the courts so far; this likely won’t either.
  7. A nationwide study in Denmark concludes that there is no relationship between MMR vaccines and autism or autism clusters. This is their second nationwide study to reach the same conclusion. Want details?
  8. The Democratic Republic of Congo is in the middle of their second largest Ebola outbreak, with nearly 600 dead. On top of mistrust from the communities they’re helping, aid workers also face violence—they’re in the middle of a conflict zone.

International:

  1. A second minister resigns from Justin Trudeau’s government after testimony about a scandal where the attorney general claims to have been pressured to back off on charging a Canadian company with corruption.
  2. Contradicting previous statements, Trump says he’s 100% behind keeping some troops in Syria.
  3. According to recent satellite images, it looks like North Korea is reactivating a long-range rocket test site.
  4. Trump reverses Obama’s policy requiring U.S. officials to publish a summary of drone strikes that occur outside of areas where there is active conflict. He also revoked a law passed by Congress saying that the drone strike report must be released to the public.
  5. After 2021, U.S. citizens will have to register for a travel visa to travel to EU countries.
  6. Arron Banks, one of the largest funders in support of Brexit, denies having financial dealings with Russia. But documents show that one of the companies in which Banks is a major stockholder pursued an offer from the Russian ambassador to invest in Russian gold mines, going so far as to identify a shell company to use to facilitate the deal. Sounds familiar, no?
  7. Trump’s administration devises a formula to make our allied countries that host U.S. military bases pay the full cost of stationing troops there plus 50% more. Our allies call this extortion.
  8. Trump accuses India of shutting out U.S. companies, and announces he’ll remove India from a program that reduces duties on exports from certain countries. The program opens up access to U.S. markets for developing countries.
  9. It’s a big week in Israel news:
    • Israel’s electoral committee bans two Arab parties and one Jewish candidate from running in the upcoming elections. The committee was responding to petitions from three right-wing factions, and it comes after Netanyahu entered a deal with the far-right extremist (and allegedly racist) party Otzma Yehudit.
    • The leader of Otzma Yehudit previously led a party that the U.S. labeled as a terrorist group and that Israel outlawed.
    • Netanyahu gets into a war of words with an Israeli celebrity and says (emphasis mine), “Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people—and only it.”
    • Just a reminder: Last year Israel passed a nationalistic nation-state law declaring Israel a homeland for Jews and prioritizing Jewish communities.
    • Israel’s attorney general agrees to Netanyahu’s request to wait until the day after the elections to hear evidence on his fraud and bribery indictments. His indictments haven’t hurt him in the polls yet.
    • A UN inquiry into the 2018 protests in Gaza finds that Israeli forces were not justified in using live ammunition to stop protestors. The skirmishes injured 10,000 Palestinians and killed 189, while also injuring four Israeli soldiers killing one. The commission calls for criminal investigations.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. After Michael Cohen’s testimony, former Rep. Trey Gowdy says in reference to it that we learned that public congressional hearings are “utterly useless.” I think he forgot that he called these hearings “political theater” a year or two ago, and he’s also the guy who held all those hearings on Benghazi.
  2. New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland becomes the first Native American woman to sit in the House Speaker’s chair when she presides over House debates.
  3. The House passes a sweeping campaign finance, voting rights, and ethics reform bill. I broke it down into a brief summary here.
    • Republican leadership says it’s a power grab by the Democratic party; Democrats say it’s a power grab by the American people.
    • Republicans also claim it doesn’t address the most recent problem we saw, which was ballot harvesting in North Carolina (it doesn’t; that’s a legit complaint).
  1. House Democrats introduce a bill to protect White House whistleblowers.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. The Pentagon says they’ll tap into $1 billion in leftover pay and pension accounts for military personnel to pay for Trump’s wall.
  2. Now that Congress ended the shutdown and Trump declared a national emergency over the wall, his draft budget will seek an additional $8.6 billion for the wall.

Family Separation:

  1. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testifies in support of asylum policy and family separation. For anyone who’s been to the border lately, it’s obvious she’s either lying about procedures and process there or she really doesn’t know what’s going on. She also either isn’t aware of or doesn’t care about the lifelong traumatizing effects of the family separation policy.
  2. The Trump administration has separated 250 children (that we know of) since a court ordered them to stop nine months ago.
  3. A judge rules that all families separated at the border are eligible to participate in the ACLU’s class action lawsuit against the government. The suit now includes families separated from July 1, 2017, to the present.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. There were 76,000 illegal border crossings in February. That’s the most in over a decade and almost double last year. So the problem is getting worse in some areas because of the tight restrictions on asylum seekers.
  2. A judge finds that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross violated the law and the constitution by trying to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. This is the second court to block the question.
    • And speaking of the Census, after the first judge blocked the citizenship question the Census Bureau proposed a plan to get comprehensive information about immigrants’ legal status from the Department of Homeland Security.
  1. A federal appeals court rules that asylum seekers can fully appeal their case in U.S. courts if they fail to pass the initial credible fear test to qualify for asylum.
  2. The Health and Human Services Department will funnel money away from health programs in order to house migrant children. There are sponsors in the states willing to take responsibility for so many of these minors. Detaining them is a waste of money.
  3. Former chief of staff General John Kelly defends NATO and also says that:
    • Migrants who cross our southern border aren’t criminals and don’t pose a serious threat.
    • A wall across the border would be a waste of money.
    • Trump can’t separate his personal views from policy issues.
  1. Someone from Homeland Security leaks documents showing that the Trump administration has a secret database of journalists, immigration advocates, and attorneys. The list is used by CBP, ICE, and the FBI.
    • Some of the targeted people have been denied entry into Mexico, have faced enhanced security screenings, or have even been arrested or detained.
    • Their profiles include information about their ties to migrant caravans (including reporters who are just covering the news).
    • People on the list had feared that they were being targeted but they couldn’t prove it until now.
  1. Seemingly bowing to GOP pressure to condemn Rep. Ilhan Omar for her comments about Israel, Nancy Pelosi brings a resolution to the floor. But she turns it into a resolution condemning all hate speech, including antisemitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Christian speech.
    • The resolution also condemns discrimination against minorities stemming from white supremacists, neo-Nazis, the KKK, and neo-Confederates.
    • The resolution passes with only 23 members voting against, all Republican.
    • And then Trump calls Democrats anti-Israel and anti-Jewish and calls the vote disgraceful.
  1. Fox News rebukes Janine Pirro for saying that Rep. Omar is against the constitution because she wears a hijab.
  2. Several stories hit the news this week about high school kids taking part in Nazi symbolism.
  3. A judge rules that the Trump administration can’t halt Obama’s rule requiring companies to disclose employee pay information by race, gender, nation of origin, and job title. The reason for collecting this information is to be able to address wage discrimination and disparity.
  4. Arizona Senator Martha McSalley reveals to the Senate Armed Services Committee that she was sexually assaulted by a senior officer. She says she didn’t report it at the time and that she felt ashamed. I believe her, just like I believe Blasey-Ford.
  5. A grand jury returns an indictment against Jussie Smollett on 16 felony counts for making a false police report and lying to the police about a hate crime he staged. Moron.
  6. On International Women’s Day, the U.S. women’s soccer team files a gender discrimination lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation. They argue that their highly successful team should be treated at least equal to the less successful men’s team.
  7. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Liberian refugees ends on March 31, which will deport people to Liberia who haven’t been to the country since they were small children. Courts already blocked efforts by Trump to deport TPS refugees from Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Lawsuits are ongoing for the remaining TPS countries.
  8. Since 2017, the FBI has worked more domestic terrorist cases (fueled largely by white nationalists and supremacists) than foreign-linked terrorist cases.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump finally has a science advisor who says mankind plays a significant role in climate change. Unfortunately, this same scientist says he’s not going say that to the president.
  2. Costa Rica aims for zero carbon emissions by 2050.
  3. Atlanta’s City Council votes to require all buildings in Atlanta to use renewable energy sources by 2035.
  4. FEMA says they’ll pay just over half of the $639 million needed for emergency repairs to the Orville Dam in California. After heavy rains damaged the dam’s main spillway last year, water overflowed the emergency spillway.
  5. Opponents of the Green New Deal have been claiming that a study shows it would cost $93 trillion, but that number appears nowhere in the study. Even the think tank behind the study say they don’t know how much it would cost.
  6. For comparison, a recent study actually did predict that global warming will cost $69 trillion (globally though, not just in the U.S.).

Budget/Economy:

  1. The U.S. deficit grew 77% in the first four months of fiscal year 2019 compared to the same four month in FY 2018 (our fiscal year begins in October). Tax revenue fell by $19 billion, corporate taxes fell by 23%, and spending increased by 9%.
  2. Our trade deficit with China also hit an all-time high, with a disparity of $419 billion (last week we learned that our overall trade deficit hit an all-time high as well).
  3. Americans have paid at least $12.3 billion in tariffs to the U.S. government as a result of the trade war.
  4. The job market added 20,000 jobs in February, about one-tenth of the typical number over the past several years. I expect that number to be revised, but it won’t come close to the norm.
    • The unemployment rate still dropped down a bit to 3.8% (it was 4% in January).
    • And wages had good growth—up 3.4% from the year prior.
    • This means it’s not likely we’ll see any interest rate hikes this year, or at least not many.
  1. The European Central Bank (ECB) lowered its economic growth forecast for the EU over trade uncertainties about U.S. actions on trade and tariffs.
  2. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also lowered their global growth forecast, so they think it’s not just Europe that’ll slow down.

Elections:

  1. The trial in the lawsuit against Ohio’s gerrymandered congressional map begins. The map creates a 12-4 district advantage for Republicans even though they only receive about 51% of the statewide vote.
  2. The right-leaning National Legal and Policy Center files a complaint with the FEC against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign. The complaint sounds like a pay-for-play scheme, but it turns out that the campaign likely only described services provided by their LLC incorrectly, a minor FEC infraction.
  3. After the New Yorker publishes an article about the symbiotic relationship between the Republican Party (specifically Trump) and Fox News, the DNC announces that they won’t let Fox News host any Democratic primary debates. Not really a BFD. Fox hasn’t hosted a Democratic primary debate in 15 years, and Republicans cut off debates on NBC in 2015.
  4. The House Oversight Committee opens an investigation into voter irregularities in the Georgia midterm elections.
  5. 80% of our election equipment comes from companies that have installed remote access software (like PCAnywhere) on the county-based systems that pull together precinct tallies.
  6. Despite shutting her company down last July, Ivanka obtains a patent for voting machines in China. Trademark requests are often very broad, but voting machines? She obtained trademarks for clothing and jewelry, but also for some random things like nursing homes and sausage casing.
  7. Remember the kerfuffle over Donna Brazile giving Hillary Clinton advance notice of one debate question? Well, it turns out that Rupert Murdoch did the same for Trump.
  8. Well, this is weird. It turns out that Trump and Ivanka have donated to six of the 2020 Democratic candidates for president at some point.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump promises A+ assistance to the great state of Alabama following devastating tornadoes. Pretty much the opposite of his response to the hurricane in Puerto Rico and the California wildfires.
  2. Last week we learned that Trump intervened to get Jared Kushner his top-secret clearance. Now we learn that he pressured John Kelly and Don McGahn to give Ivanka security clearance. They objected, and Trump ended up granting it himself.
  3. Meanwhile, the White House rejects the House Oversight Committee’s request for documents regarding the security clearance for Jared and Ivanka.
  4. Police arrest dozens of people in California who were protesting the decision not to charge the officers who killed Stephon Clark after mistaking his cell phone for a gun.
  5. Trump’s communications director, Bill Shine, resigns to start working on Trump’s 2020 campaign.
  6. An Ethiopian Airlines plane crashes on takeoff killing all 157 people on board. It’s the same Boeing model as the one that crashed last year in Jakarta.
  7. We learn that Trump directed Gary Cohn to push the DOJ to block the AT&T merger with Time Warner (which owns CNN).

Polls:

Here are some polling numbers from Quinnipiac:

  1. 64% of voters think Trump committed crimes before he became president. 45% think he committed crimes during his term.
  2. 59% say Congress should not begin impeachment, but about the same number say Congress should keep investigating.
  3. 50% of voters believe Michael Cohen over Trump.
  4. 36% of voters disapprove of how Democrats handled the Cohen hearing; 51% disapprove of how the Republicans handled it.
  5. 65% of voters think Trump is not honest.
  6. 22% think he’s a good role model for children.
  7. 66% disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are doing their job.
  8. 56% disapprove of the way Democrats in Congress are doing their job.

Week 110 in Trump

Posted on March 5, 2019 in Politics, Trump

By J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post via Getty Images.

It was week full of news and punctuated by Trump hugging the American flag and giving the longest speech ever at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference. It’s hard to fact-check a 20-minute Trump speech, much less one that lasts over two hours. So I’ll summarize. He lies about immigration, the VA, late-term abortions, tax reforms, the Green New Deal, Mueller’s investigative team, healthcare, solar power (actually what he says here is not so much a lie as it is just dumb), tariffs, Russia, crowd sizes, ISIS, and the economy. He brags about his 2016 election, brags about firing Comey, defends his declaration of national emergency, backtracks on his comments about Otto Warmbier, excuses poor cabinet choices, accuses Members of Congress of hating our country (wow), bags on Jim Mattis, claims he doesn’t have white hair (huh?), takes credit for the 2018 elections (Senate) but then says he’s not responsible for the 2018 elections (House), announces a “free speech” executive order for college campuses, and makes fun of a sitting Senator. And of course CPAC wouldn’t be complete if he didn’t berate Democrats as socialists.

Here’s what else happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. A county judge in North Carolina ruled that two amendments put forth to the voters last November by the state’s legislature are unconstitutional. The basis for his decision was that NC’s General Assembly was “illegally constituted” due to racial gerrymandering. NC’s government has been caught up in lawsuits for over two years. Dig deeper here.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. A bipartisan group of 58 former national security officials issue a statement saying there is no factual basis for the national emergency over the wall.
  2. A Republican group of 24 former Members of Congress sign a letter urging Republicans in office to pass a joint resolution to end the national emergency.
  3. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers recalls Wisconsin’s National Guard troops from the southern border saying there’s no justification for it. New Mexico has already ordered all troops away from their border, and California has pulled their troops out as well.
  4. Air Force Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy says there’s no military threat at our southern border and that we should be focused on risks from Russia and China. O’Shaughnessy is Commander, U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (USNORTHCOM).
  5. The House passes a resolution to end Trump’s declaration of national emergency over the wall. This means the Senate must vote on it. Mitch McConnell says it‘ll pass, but Trump will veto it.
  6. The House Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on the Trump administration’s policy of separating families seeking asylum at our southern border.

Russia:

  1. Adam Schiff, the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, says that if the final report on the Russia and obstruction investigations aren’t released to the public, he’ll subpoena the report and have Robert Mueller testify before the committee.
  2. Paul Manafort’s lawyers argue that he should get a lenient sentence in the D.C. case, because it’s not like he’s a drug dealer or murderer, there’s no evidence of Russia collusion, and he’s only guilty of garden variety crimes. Or rich people‘s crimes, as I call them.
    • Manafort has another sentencing hearing for a separate case on March 8 in Virginia.
    • On top of these, he could get more years for breaking his plea agreement and get additional trials for crimes for which he hasn’t been tried yet.
    • Mueller did amend one of his court statements that supported his claims that Manafort lied about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, but there’s still enough evidence to show Manafort lied.
  1. A federal judge rejects Andrew Miller’s claim that Mueller’s appointment is unconstitutional. Now Miller has to testify to the grand jury or go to jail.
  2. It doesn’t take Roger Stone long to violate his gag order and in multiple ways.
    • The day the judge issues the gag order, Stone violates the order with a tweet which he then deletes.
    • Next he responds to an email from VICE News saying that Cohen’s statement is entirely untrue.
    • Next he gets called back into court to explain the imminent release of a book that will likely violate the gag order and that neither he nor his defense team mentioned to the judge.
    • And THEN, Stone posts on Instagram that Mueller framed him. Seriously, this guy can’t help himself.
  1. Some of Stone’s actions flat-out violate the gag order, but others are a little ambiguous. Here are the judge’s parameters:
    • Stone cannot speak publicly or to the media about the investigation, the case, or any of the participants.
    • Stone can speak publicly about raising funds for his defense.
    • Stone can say that he is innocent of charges against him.
  1. Russia’s state-sponsored news announces that Russia is developing hypersonic missiles that can reach the U.S. targets, like the Pentagon and Camp David, in under five minutes.
  2. U.S. Cyber Command says they blocked internet access for the Internet Research Agency (a Russian troll farm) during the 2018 elections.

Legal Fallout:

  1. During Sean Hannity’s interview with Trump, he claims to have information that contradicts Michael Cohen’s testimony about the Stormy Daniel’s hush money payments. If he does, Hannity could be called before Congress himself to testify.
  2. Michael Cohen begins three days of Congressional hearings. Two are behind closed doors and one, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is public. Here are a few things Cohen alleges (remember these are allegations):
    • Trump knew in advance about WikiLeaks’ plans to release the DNC’s hacked emails, and he found out through Roger Stone. Roger Stone disputes this.
    • Trump was completely involved in the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. Cohen provided Congress with a check signed by Trump and another signed by both Donald Trump, Jr., and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.
    • Eric Trump was also involved the hush money payments.
    • Ivanka and Don, Jr., were both involved in the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations, which continued throughout the campaign.
    • Cohen threatened Trump’s schools so they wouldn’t release his grades or SAT scores after Trump told him he didn’t want those records released. Fordham University confirms that they received a threatening letter.
    • Trump inflated his net worth in order to secure loans and to get on Forbes’ lists, but he deflated the worth of his assets for tax purposes.
    • Trump‘s taxes are likely not under audit.
    • Weisselberg knew about all the things—hush money, Trump Tower Moscow, bank fraud, insurance fraud, and tax fraud.
    • BuzzFeed’s reporting that Trump directly told Cohen to lie to Congress isn’t accurate. Cohen says Trump implied he should lie. BuzzFeed continues to stand by their story, so now I’m super curious about their source.
    • The rumors about mistreatment of Melania, a love child, and the existence of a sex tape are likely not true.
    • Cohen’s never been to Prague, disputing one point in the Steele Dossier.
    • Cohen and Corey Lewandowski discussed a Trump trip to Russia during the campaign.
    • There are other illegal acts and wrongdoing that weren’t discussed during his testimony. Some of those are currently under investigation in New York state.
    • Cohen didn’t want a White House position, so he’s not doing this out of vengeance for that. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) later files a complaint alleging that Cohen is lying about this.
    • Trump purchased a third portrait of himself through the Trump Foundation (we already knew about the first two).
    • Jay Sekulow, Trump’s lawyer, edited Cohen’s previous testimony to Congress, causing it to be false.
    • Trump doesn’t email or text. That’s so old-school, but could be his saving grace.
  1. Cohen provides a list of Trump associates who can corroborate these allegations or who have additional information. The questioning also gave the committee the basis to subpoena Trump’s tax returns.
  2. During Cohen’s testimony, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) calls him a liar, Mark Meadows (R-NC) uses a black woman as a prop to prove Trump isn’t racist, and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) puts up a poster that says, “Liar Liar Pants On Fire.”
  3. During and after the hearing, committee chair Elijah Cummings worked hard to make sure both sides of the aisle felt heard and he concludes with a call for healing.
  4. Describing the destruction of our civility toward each other, Cohen says, “I’m responsible for your silliness because I did the same things that you’re doing now. I protected Mr. Trump for 10 years.”
  5. Just before Michael Cohen is to testify before Congress, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) tweets a thinly veiled threat. As a lawyer, he should know better. Here’s what he tweets:

“Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”

    • So then legal experts and fellow Representatives call this a violation of House ethics rules and potential witness tampering.
    • And then the Florida Bar opens an investigation into whether Gaetz violated their regulations.
    • And then, Gaetz apologizes for the tweet and deletes it.
    • But then Gaetz continues to tweet and retweet disparaging comments and articles about Cohen throughout the hearings.
  1. The House Oversight Committee wants to interview Ivanka and Don, Jr. The House Intelligence Committee will interview Cohen, Weisselberg, and Felix Sater.
  2. The House Judiciary Committee opens an inquiry into alleged abuses of power by Trump, based on his attacks against the press, the courts, the FBI, and the DOJ. Presidents actually have wide leeway here.
  3. The House Ways and Means Committee announces they’ll demand Trump’s tax returns. Cohen’s testimony pretty much forced their hand on this.
  4. D.C.’s attorney general subpoenas documents from the Trump inaugural committee. This is the third active investigation into the committee’s finances.
  5. The House Financial Services Committee announces an investigation into Trump’s personal finances, specifically why Deutsche Bank was willing to loan him money at a time when nobody else would.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A federal court upholds the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks, but the plaintiffs in the case say they’ll appeal.
  2. Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker abruptly leaves the DOJ.

Healthcare:

  1. The Senate votes against allowing the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” to proceed. A few things:
    • This bill appears to be intended to protect babies born alive after a botched abortion (this is a rare and extreme circumstance).
    • Late-term abortions can only be performed when the mother’s health or life is threatened, or when the fetus has a fatal condition. Less than 1% of abortions occur after fetal viability.
    • Infanticide is already illegal in the U.S., plus the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act was already signed into law in 2002. The current bill mostly adds criminal penalties against doctors.
    • Typically the procedure in which the baby survives is not actually an abortion but natural or induced early labor.
    • All this is to say, doctors aren’t out there killing live babies willy-nilly.

International:

  1. Mike Pence joins the self-proclaimed interim President of Venezuela Juan Guaido in Bogota, Colombia to express U.S. support for Venezuela and opposition to Nicolas Maduro.
  2. At the same time, Trump travels to Vietnam for another summit with Kim Jong Un. Kim travels the 2,700 miles across China by private train, a 48-hour trip.
    • The summit is supposed to end with a signing ceremony, but Trump (probably rightly) walks out early when they can’t agree on demands.
    • Depending on the version you believe, one sticking point is that North Korea wants sanction relief for giving up just one of their nuclear facilities.
    • Ahead of the summit, the U.S. already dropped the requirement that North Korea disclose all of their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
    • Trump ends our large-scale military drills with South Korea in the interest of diplomacy with North Korea. Small-scale drills will continue.
    • There are no current plans for continuing the conversation.
    • Trump says he believes Kim when he says he didn’t know about how Otto Warmbier was being treated. The next day, Warmbier’s parents clarify that they blame Kim for the death.
    • This is rich coming from a dictatorship. North Korea says the Trump administration is a billionaire’s club that holds policies of racism, exacerbates social inequality, suppresses freedom of the press, and denies health coverage to U.S. citizens.
    • Trump blames Michael Cohen’s testimony for the talks falling apart.
    • Throughout the summit, North Korean hackers continue to target the U.S.
    • While the GOP pushes the narrative that Democrats=Socialists, Trump says this about socialist dictator Kim Jong Un: He’s “very sharp” and “a real leader.” “I like him.”
    • The White House bans several reporters from a joint dinner likely based on shouted questions about denuclearization and Michael Cohen during an earlier press event.
  1. Britain’s Labour Party supports another Brexit voter referendum in case voters have changed their minds. The deadline for Brexit is the end of March.
  2. I don’t know if you can indict a president, but it looks like you can indict a prime minister. The Israeli Attorney General announces he’ll move forward on indicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges.
    • Netanyahu faces an election in April, and says he won’t step down if he is re-elected and also indicted.
  1. Jared Kushner meets with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. They don’t talk about Khashoggi’s murder.
  2. Pakistan shoots down an Indian fighter pilot, who then parachutes down and gets beaten by a mob before being rescued by the Pakistani military. Air fights and shelling along the border by Kashmir escalates as a result.
    • This all started with a suicide bombing of Indian troops a few weeks ago.
    • Pakistan releases the pilot by week’s end.
    • The last thing we need right now (or ever) is escalating tensions between two nuclear powers.
  1. Justin Trudeau faces unrest in his government after former attorney general Jodi Wison-Raybould testifies that she was pressured to ignore bribery charges against a Canadian engineering company. Et tu, Justin? Say it isn’t so.
  2. After negotiating with the Taliban, the Pentagon issues a proposal to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan within five years.
  3. We learn that Saudi Arabia detained and then tortured a U.S. citizen with dual citizenship with Saudi Arabia.
  4. An American who’d been held in Yemen for 18 months is finally freed.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House passes two background check bills:
    • The first fixes a loophole that currently allows gun dealers to transfer some guns before a background check is complete. Dylan Roof obtained his gun through this loophole.
    • The second bill requires a background check on ALL firearm sales. This is the first major gun control bill to pass the House in nearly 25 years.
  1. Republicans in the Senate say they don’t plan on dealing with any gun control bills, so these are both likely DOA.
  2. Trump says he’ll veto both bills if they make it to his desk.

Family Separation:

  1. Through a system of relief workers and immigration lawyers, 29 parents who were separated from the children last year make the trip back up to the border to demand asylum hearings and hopefully be reunited with their children. After 12 hours of negotiations, they’re all allowed into the U.S.
  2. At least 200 children are still separated from their parents.
  3. Because we’ve kept these children from their parents, those parents are now paying smugglers to come back to the U.S. illegally just to be with their kids. This isn’t working.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. West Virginia’s legislature got violent after the state Republican party set up a display in the statehouse linking Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to the 9/11 attacks.
    • Omar has been criticized repeatedly for what some call anti-Israel statements and what others call anti-Semitic statements.
    • Allegedly, the sergeant-at-arms for the state House said, “All Muslims are terrorists.”
  1. The Trump administration wants to expand their program to send Central American asylum seekers back to Mexico. Currently, this is only done at the Tijuana-San Diego ports of entry; the administration wants to do it in more border cities.
    • This is already endangering refugees in Tijuana, which doesn’t have the resources to handle the influx. Relief agencies are taking the brunt of this.
  1. Because of the barriers to legal immigration put in place by the Trump administration, more people are crossing the border illegally. Again, this isn’t working.
  2. Relief agencies claim that nine infants under one-year-old are being held in migrant detention centers without the required level of care.
  3. The U.S. government has received nearly 6,000 complaints of sexual abuse of detained migrant minors over the past four years.
  4. All four anti-transgender bills introduced in the South Dakota state legislature this year are now dead with the failure to pass the fourth one this week.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Following on the Senate’s passage of the bill last week, the House passes a public lands conservation bill that protects over a million acres of wilderness and reauthorizes conservation funding.
  2. A group of youth climate activists protest at Mitch McConnell’s Senate office to demand he take the Green New Deal seriously. Police arrest 42 of them.
  3. The Senate confirms fossil-fuel lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to run the EPA, and immediately Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) files an ethics complaint against him. Apparently he’s been participating in meetings on issues he previously lobbied for and he’s been holding meetings with his lobbying clients, both in violation of his signed ethics pledge.
  4. A court rules that Trump has to pay the legal costs for the Scottish government in a case where Trump tried to get them to halt a wind turbine project in Scotland.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The White House trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, corrects Trump about memorandums of understanding (MOUs) in the middle of a trade talk. Trump says they don’t mean anything, but Lighthizer explains to the press that an MOU is actually a binding contract. Trump says he doesn’t agree, at which point Chinese vice premier Liu He cracks up.
  2. It’s the retail apocalypse. So far, companies have announced 4,300 retail store closings slated for this year.
  3. Even though we’ve implemented steep tariffs, the U.S. trade deficit is now 16% larger than when Trump took office, with imports exceeding exports by a record high of $914 billion in 2018.
    • Part of the problem is that countries retaliated with their own tariffs, which caused U.S. exports decline starting in May of 2018.
    • According to economists, macroeconomic factors, like tax cuts and increased federal spending, overwhelmed Trump’s attempts to target specific trade deficits.
    • This all pretty much supports Janet Yellen’s statement earlier this week that Trump doesn’t understand macroeconomic policies (which would explain the scattershot combination of tax, trade, healthcare, immigration, spending, and foreign policies).
  1. A report shows that the caps on state and local tax deductions will hit around 11 million people this year. What was redacted from the report, though, was a description of the efforts by the Treasury to block state workarounds for the cap.
  2. Over 1,000 TSA employees still haven’t received back pay from the shutdown. I guess they better hold more bake sales.

Elections:

  1. Mitch McConnell blames Democrats for the election fraud in North Carolina that likely threw the election to the Republican candidate.
    • He conflates election fraud (where a third party tries to interfere in the votes of legitimate voters) with voter fraud (where someone tries to vote illegally). Republican voter policies, which Democrats tend to disagree with, target voter fraud not election fraud.
    • For comparison, this single case of election fraud in NC affected more ballots than did all of the proven cases of voter fraud over the past 70 years (even according to the Heritage Foundation’s inflated numbers which also include cases of election fraud).
  1. Mark Harris, the Republican at the heart of the fraud case, will not run again for health reasons. He suffered a stroke earlier this year.
  2. A grand jury charges Leslie Dowless with seven felonies in connection with election fraud. More charges could follow.
  3. And speaking of voter fraud, remember how Trump pointed to the attempted Texas voter role purge as evidence of voter fraud? Well, a judge just blocked that effort calling it ham-handed and threatening.
    • Just an FYI, this purging effort is a direct result of the gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, where the Supreme Court decided we are a post-discrimination society so we no longer need to monitor those states with a history of voter discrimination.

Miscellaneous:

  1. We learn that Trump ordered John Kelly to grant top-secret clearance to Jared Kushner, overruling the red flags brought up by security staff and officials. Kelly documented the request at the time.
  2. New defense rules change the way troops are reported on the census. Now they’ll be counted where they’re usually stationed instead of where they typically live, which could cut funding to their local communities.
  3. Wynn Resorts gets hit with a record $20 million fine for failing to investigate claims of sexual misconduct against Steve Wynn. Wynn left the company last year.

Polls:

  1. 68% of Americans want Mueller’s report to be released to the public.