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

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

But here’s what else happened last week…

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Separating Families:

1. Every living first lady— from Rosalynn Carter to Melania Trump—speaks out against the separation of families.
2. 55% of Republicans approve of this policy. 66% of Americans in general do not. Republicans are the only listed demographic in the poll to support family separation; they’re also the only other group to support building a wall.
3. A bipartisan group of over 70 former US attorneys urge Jeff Sessions to reverse the zero-tolerance policy. They say it’s dangerous, expensive, and doesn’t live up to the our values.
4. Trump continues to blame Democrats, which is provably false since no administration has done this before and Jeff Sessions announced the change in policy on April 6th and then went on to speak about it on May 7.
5. Cities and states refuse to provide assistance to the DOJ or CBP in the detention of separated families.
6. Four governors refuse to send National Guard troops to the border, and eleven governors pull their National Guard troops out. Colorado bans the use of state resources for child separations.
7. Detained parents of separated children get no legal counsel prior to appearing before a judge and are processed in large groups in a single hearing. Prosecutors’ goals are to get through as many as possible and to have them all plead guilty, which many do because they think that’s the only way to find their kids.
8. The Flores decision of 1997 specifies that immigrant children can only be detained for up to 20 days and after that, they can only be held in licensed facilities. The DOJ asks a judge to waive that limit so they can house immigrant families indefinitely.
9. After a week of saying only Democrats can fix this, Trump signs an executive order drafted by Kirstjen Nielsen to attempt to fix this crisis of his own making.

• • The EO says Homeland Security will still prosecute border crossers as criminals, but that they’ll detain families together. This requires them to file a brief against the Flores decision. What they’re aiming for is to detain families indefinitely, which is far more costly than releasing them with mandatory check-ins.
    Side note: Releasing families under an Obama-era program costs about $36 per day, and families show up for meetings and hearings around 99% of the time. Detaining families together costs nearly $300 per day, and separating families has cost nearly $800 per day.
  • The EO has no provision to reunite families that Trump has already separated.
  • After the EO, border workers are left to figure out how to implement it on their own with little guidance. We hear mixed reports over whether they’re still enforcing zero tolerance and whether they’re supposed to.

10. Melania visits a holding center for immigration children and one for immigrant families. In an unfortunate choice, she wears a coat that says “I don’t care. Do u?” Her publicist says it didn’t mean anything, but then Trump negates that in a tweet saying it was about the fake news.
11. A dozen states plan to sue the administration over the policy of family separation. They say the EO doesn’t fix it.
12. Health and Human Services asks the Pentagon to house up to 20,000 unaccompanied immigrant minors.
13. There was a huge drop in illegal border crossings last year over fear of Trump’s hardline policies. But they’re up nearly triple from this time last year now that people see that Trump is having a hard time getting his policies implemented.
14. On the Christian Broadcasting Network, Sessions says they never intended to separate families. I can’t even with this. Maybe he’s just saying this because his church has condemned his actions.
15. Both Stephen Miller and Kirstjen Nielsen, staunch defenders of family separation policies, get heckled eating out at Mexican restaurants.
16. And then a restaurant owner tells Sarah Huckabee Sanders that she and her family can’t eat there. She tweets about it on her official account, which turns out to be a violation of the ethics code.
17. Corey Lewandowski’s speakers bureau drops him after he makes fun of a child with Downs Syndrome being separated from her mother on national TV.
18. Protestors play the recording of separated children crying for the parents outside a Trump fundraiser and outside Kirstjen Nielsen’s house. Representative Ted Lieu (R-CA) goes against House rules and plays the recording on the floor to get it entered into the congressional record.
19. Detained children are shipped to centers and foster care across the country.
20. An army of volunteer attorneys is working to reunite separated families. They’re finding that officials are unable locate all the children. Of 300 parents represented, only 2 children have been located.
21. The U.S. Attorney’s Office announces they’ll dismiss cases where parents were charged with illegal entry and separated from their kids.
22. On Friday, a government source said all families would be reunited that day. But by Saturday night, only about 21% has been reunited. The administration says that 500 children have been reunited with their parents so far.
23. The DNA company 23andMe offers to donate DNA kits to help locate children and reunite families that were separated.
24. The American Academy of Pediatrics calls the separation of families child abuse.
25. Protestors hold marches and toy/supply drives for children in holding in over 60 cities nationwide. Members of Congress head to detention facilities to protest.
26. The Methodist Church files a complaint against family separation and 600 members file a complaint against Sessions. He could ousted from the church, but the members say they want a reconciliation process that would bring Sessions back to Christian values.
27. An online fundraiser goes viral, raising nearly $20 million for RAICES, which helps provide legal aid to immigrant families, children, and refugees.
28. By the end of the week, the administration says they’ll reunite families when the parents agree to give up their quest for asylum, meaning that the whole family must be deported in order for parents and children to be reunited. Until that agreement is made, parents will only have phone visitation with their children, and that is not guaranteed due to logistics.
29. Lawsuits are filed, alleging abuse and administering drugs without consent in the detention centers for children.
30. Notes and interviews show that the administration has been planning this since last spring.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Miscellaneous:

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


• • Merge the Department of Labor and the Department of Education.
  • Move the USDA’s food and nutrition programs to the Department of Health and Human Services (which will be renamed to the Department of Health and Public Welfare).
  • Combine the USDA’s Safety and Inspection Service with the Food and Drug Administration (currently under HHS) into a single agency under the USDA. Wait… so the USDA would essentially be its own watchdog.
  • Move the USDA’s programs to assist with rural housing and rent to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
  • Move the Army Corps of Engineers from the Department of Defense to Transportation and the Interior.
  • Create a new Office of Energy Innovation under the Department of Energy that would combine all of the current applied energy programs.

4. Wikileaks publishes a searchable database of ICE agents and their personal information scraped from multiple public sites. DHS blame this on liberals, even though Wikileaks doesn’t have a record of supporting Democrats.
5. Wilbur Ross shorted a shipping firm stock after learning that reporters were planning a negative story about the firm. Shorting is something you do to profit from a drop in stock price, and doing it based on nonpublic information is called securities fraud.

Polls:

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