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

Here’s what else happened this week…

Missed from Last Week:

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

Border Wall/Shutdown:

1. After requesting $5.7 billion for the wall and spurning Mike Pence’s negotiations to find a middle ground, Trump ups the ante and asks for $7 billion.
2. A group of Senate Republicans work on a deal to reopen the government, but Trump shoots that one down too.
3. The National Governors Association, a bipartisan group, calls on Trump and Congress to end the shutdown.
4. Last week I gave a link to a summary of the misrepresentations and lies being told about the border and illegal crossings. Well, the lies continue this week, so here’s another helpful explainer.
5. Trump holds a televised address from the Oval Office to talk about immigration policies, the wall, and the shutdown. Network stations agree to carry the address, even though they refused to air Obama’s speech on immigration policy because it was too political.

• • Fact checkers abound, but it’s not really necessary because he doesn’t say anything we haven’t already heard before.
  • Following the Oval Office address, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer give a rebuttal.
  • The address doesn’t change anyone’s mind, according to polls. But more people are now blaming Trump and Republican lawmakers than they were before. Which is weird because those earlier polls were before Democrats officially took back the House.
  • Trump tells TV anchors in an off-the-record lunch that he doesn’t really want to give the Oval Office address nor does he want to visit the border in Texas. His advisors talked him into it.

6. A second federal employees union sues the Trump administration over the shutdown. The named plaintiff in the case is a Customs and Border Patrol officer. In a similar suit brought against Obama’s administration during the 2013 shutdown, the court took the side of federal workers.
7. Trump storms out of a border security meeting with Democratic leaders. Trump says Democrats refused to negotiate; Democrats say Trump threw a temper tantrum.
8. The Coast Guard Support Program advises furloughed Coast Guard employees to have garage sales or become mystery shoppers to help make ends meet. The program warns that bankruptcy is the last option. Jeez… I hope the government isn’t going to bankrupt any of its employees.
9. Despite claiming hundreds of times (at least 212 just on the campaign trail) that Mexico would pay for the wall, Trump now says he never meant that Mexico would directly pay for the wall. Historical note: His campaign website featured a memo at one point suggesting that Mexico would pay a one-time fee of $5-$10 billion.
10. Trump cancels his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland because of the shutdown. He blames Democrats, though—and I can’t say this enough—the shutdown happened under full Republican control.
11. The first federal workers start missing their paychecks, and around 1,000 of them start GoFundMe accounts. Restaurants start offering them free meals. By the end of the week, there are over 10,000 GoFundMe accounts.

• • Interesting bit of shutdown history: Government workers are still waiting for back pay from the 2013 shutdown, and the government doesn’t even know how much they owe.

12. The House passes bills to reopen parts of the government, but Mitch McConnell refuses to bring them to a vote in the Senate. Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid did the same thing in 2013.
13. Around 100 landowners near the border have received letters from the government requesting access to their land for surveying for the wall. This is the first step in the process of eminent domain.

• • The landowners promise a legal battle to stop the land grab. It’s worth noting that lawsuits from use of eminent domain related to the 2006 Secure Fences Act are still being fought in court.

14. Another migrant caravan is organizing in Honduras, and Mexico is preparing a strategy to manage them. Trump says the only thing that will stop them is a big wall, though CBP has done a pretty good job of stopping the current caravan.

• • The number of people coming in caravans represents a minuscule proportion of the total number of border apprehensions. But caravans are cheaper and safer than coyotes, so they might become the new norm.

15. Donald Trump Jr. posts on Instagram comparing the wall to the “walls” that separate animals and people at the zoo. First, is he comparing migrants to animals? And second, if the animals are separated from us by walls, how can we see them?
16. The shutdown becomes the longest in history.
17. Trump reiterates his desire to declare a national emergency and use funds earmarked for other purposes for the wall. Also, Border apprehensions are at some of the lowest levels in decades.
18. Trump considers using FEMA disaster relief funds (that is, those tagged for Puerto Rico, Florida, the Carolinas, and so on) to pay for his wall.
19. Trump and his advisors think if they declare an emergency, it would reopen the government but the declaration of emergency would be stuck in the courts for so long, that it might never actually happen. So the government would reopen and Trump could save face.
20. The DOJ furloughs 5,000 intelligence analysts, special agents, lawyers, and other employees. They also freeze funds for ongoing investigations.
21. The Mayors of McAllen, TX, and its sister city across the border, Reynosa, oppose building a wall between the two cities. The two mayors often work together on initiatives to improve both cities. Also, McAllen is rated the 7th safest city in the U.S., according to FBI statistics. Trump just visited the border there to gin up support for the wall.
22. GoFundMe says they’ll refund all the donors who donated a collective $20 million to go toward building the wall. The creator of the GoFundMe account had originally said all the money collected would go to the government to help build the wall, but he has since created a non-profit where he wants to direct the funds. His plan is to start building the wall himself, but that goes against his original GoFundMe mission.
23. Nine Republican Senators introduce a bill that would put an end to government shutdowns, including the current one.
24. Trump orders many of the activities that were prohibited under previous shutdowns to resume. Those include processing tax refunds, SNAP, mortgage processing, flood insurance programs, and national parks.

• • However, the FDA stops routine inspections of food-processing plants.

25. The mortgage industry lobbies to restart the IRS’s income verification service so that loans can be processed. Trump complies.
26. Mexican officials discover another tunnel under the border. This is the third tunnel they’ve found this month, adding more questions about how effective a wall would be.
27. Kevin Hassett, the chief economic adviser, says furloughed workers are better off because of the shutdown. They didn’t have to use any vacation days to get time off over the holidays.
28. Trump tweets misleading crime statistics for undocumented immigrants, citing numbers up to three times higher than they actually are. Now’s a good time for a reminder that crime rates for immigrants, documented or otherwise, are lower than crime rates for native-born Americans.
29. It turns out that this shutdown was at the urging of Freedom Caucus Reps. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan. The Tea Party is just the gift that keeps on giving. It completely took Mitch McConnell and a few others by surprise, because they thought they had a deal to avoid this.
30. McConnell, Ryan, and McCarthy all warned Trump against the shutdown, yet none of the three did anything to stop it. And McConnell and Ryan had the power to override it.
31. A passenger was able to board a flight from Atlanta to Tokyo carrying a firearm. That’s a pretty good argument for ending the shutdown and letting TSA workers get back to doing their jobs.
32. A group of Democrats catch flack from the right for heading to Puerto Rico during the weekend to attend a retreat, which includes the opening of Hamilton there. I’m torn—part of the reason for the opening is to support Puerto Rico’s recovery efforts, so it’s not all play.

Russia:

1. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan indict Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya (of Trump Tower meeting fame) for obstructing a money laundering investigation. This isn’t tied to the Trump Tower case, but it confirms her ties to Russian government officials.
2. Mueller interviewed Blackwater’s Erik Prince (Betsy DeVos’s brother) about meetings with Russians in the Seychelles two years ago. This week, Prince says he’d rather have a proctology exam than sit down with Mueller’s team.
3. A (Trump-appointed) federal judge scolds Russian company Concord Management, which was charged by Mueller. The judge says their brief was inappropriate, unprofessional, and ineffective. The brief quoted the movie Animal House. One of their previous briefs quoted Casablanca.
4. The Supreme Court refuses to vacate a lower-court order forcing a foreign-owned corporation to comply with a subpoena in the Russia investigation.
5. It seems Manafort’s lawyers accidentally reveal collusion (by Manafort, not by Trump). They fail to thoroughly black out redacted information in a court filing, and reporters were easily able to see the redacted text by copying and pasting the PDF.

• • The filing shows that one of the things Mueller thinks Manafort lied about was that he shared Trump campaign polling data with alleged Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik (who’s also criminally charged in the Russia investigation).
  • Mueller accuses Manafort of lying about a text message asking if someone could use Manafort’s name to get an “in” with Trump.
  • The filing also shows that Manafort and Kilimnik talked about a Ukraine peace plan, something Manafort previously denied. In 2016, the Trump campaign altered the GOP platform to block a provision for the U.S. to arm Ukraine in their fight against Russia. Michael Cohen has also confirmed work on a Ukraine peace plan that would benefit Russia.
  • There are three more breaches of the plea agreement that are not yet public.

6. A new report says that Mueller’s office has spoken with Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio.
7. Steve Mnuchin briefs House committee leaders on why the administration plans to lift sanctions on Russian companies associated with Oleg Deripaska, who’s implicated in Russia’s meddling in our 2016 elections. Democrats complain that most of the information they got was unclassified and that Mnuchin gave them little information. They call for a delay in dropping the sanctions.
8. Michael Cohen will give public testimony to the House Oversight Committee next week.
9. We learn that FBI counterintelligence opened an investigation into Trump following the firing of James Comey. They were looking into whether Trump was working on behalf of the Russian government against American interests (either with knowledge or unwittingly).

• • Even though they became suspicious during the 2016 campaign, the FBI hesitated to open the case, unsure how to handle such an unprecedented situation.
  • We don’t know if the investigation is still ongoing.

10. Trump confiscated the interpreter notes from his Hamburg meeting with Putin, and now we have no reliable record of what was discussed. Democrats discuss subpoenaing the interpreter, which is dicey since they’re supposed to keep their info confidential.
11. In case you were wondering whether Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin’s plans to infiltrate the NRA were sanctioned by the Russian government, it turns out that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed off on it.

Courts/Justice:

1. Ruth Bader Ginsburg misses oral arguments for the first time in 25 years while she’s at home recovering from lung surgery. She’s out all week recovering, and Trump and Republican lawmakers start talking about how they’ll be able to seat another conservative judge. Morbid.
2. Rod Rosenstein is expected to leave the Justice Department if and when a new attorney general is confirmed. Other sources say Rosentstein will stay until the Mueller investigation is complete. He’s not being forced out.
3. An appeals courts rules that politicians can’t block people on social media. This echoes a similar case against Trump, where it was ruled that he can’t block people on Twitter.
4. William Barr, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General begins speaking with members of the Senate Judicial Committee, or at least Republican members.

• • At first he refuses meetings with committee Democrats until one of them makes that public.
  • He drafts a memo saying a president can’t obstruct justice in the process of exercising his official powers. The memo also questions Mueller’s authority.
  • Interesting history: Barr is the reason that every person involved in the Iran-Contra affair got pardoned by Bush Sr.
  • Despite his previous criticism of Mueller’s investigation, Barr tells Senators that it’s vitally important that Mueller complete his investigation.

International:

1. Despite Trump’s claim that he’s removing troops from Syria by the end of the month (and they’ve already started removing equipment), John Bolton places conditions on removal that will slow it down.

• • The remaining bits of the Islamic State must be defeated.
  • Turkey must guarantee they won’t attack our Kurdish allies.
  • This kind of falls on Bolton. He’s mostly ended internal policy debates that allow administrations to flesh out and plan decisions like this. Bolton was taken by surprise with Trump’s decision, and has had to scramble to create a plan that in normal times would take weeks, if not months, to complete.

2. When asked if Trump made a mistake on this, Lindsey Graham says “This is the reality setting in that you’ve got to plan this out.” And this is why Trump as president makes people nervous. Planning isn’t in his nature.
3. Turkey’s President Erdogan harshly criticizes Bolton for saying Turkey has to promise not to attack the Kurds.
4. The month-long protests in Hungary against the autocratic regime of prime minister Viktor Orbán continue to spread. Orbán is another anti-immigrant hardliner trying to control the press and the judiciary. He’s working toward one-party rule in Hungary, and wants anti-immigrant leaders to take over the EU. He’s already created a coalition with the like-minded leaders of Poland and Italy.
5. The Trump administration reinstates the diplomatic status of the EU’s delegation to the U.S.

• • Trump quietly downgraded that status in December, and only brought it back temporarily and only because they protested it.
  • We only found out about it when the delegate’s name wasn’t called in the correct order during George W. Bush’s funeral.
  • Unlike every previous modern president, Trump views the EU as a foe.

6. In anticipation of Brexit, banks and financiers move $1 trillion from Britain into other EU countries. That’s about 10% of UK’s financial sector.
7. Mike Pompeo gives a speech in Egypt, criticizing Obama’s handling of the region. One of the biggest departures from the Obama administration is that there wasn’t any focus on democracy or human rights. Another difference was the venue: Obama chose one where he addressed the people, Pompeo chose one where he addressed elites and government officials.
8. U.S. officials say that the White House requested plans to launch an attack on Iran last year after an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad by a military group associated with Iran.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. The CEO of the Tornillo migrant child detention facility says that the head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement kept pressuring him to hold more minors at the facility. He says the reason the facility is being closed is that he refused to accept any more because ORR wasn’t releasing any of them.

• • The facility was able to rapidly release all the children in custody because HHS waived the new stringent vetting requirements for the children’s sponsors. In other words, U.S. taxpayers were paying to detain these children when they could’ve been staying with family or guardians who would’ve paid for their needs. Because what this administration really wants to do is deport people.

2. A judge rules that Sandy Hook families suing InfoWars can access InfoWars internal marketing and financial documents, among others. Next week, the judge will decide whether the families’ attorneys can depose Alex Jones.
3. Around 1.4 million Floridians become eligible to vote. Last year, voters there passed a referendum ending the practice of reinstating ex-felons’ rights on a case-by-case basis. The new rule automatically gives ex-felons their voting rights back after they’ve served all time and probation (excluding certain violent criminals).
4. A judge temporarily prohibits ICE’s new practice of conducting unannounced raids on Cambodian immigrants’ homes and businesses. Sudden deportations to Cambodia were up 279% last year. Deportees don’t get to talk to their lawyers or loved ones first, they haven’t been to Cambodia since childhood, and Cambodia doesn’t want them.

Climate/EPA:

1. Carbon emissions in the US increased by 3.4% in 2018, despite the large number of coal plant closures last year. This is likely tied to the uptick in manufacturing, and is a reversal from the previous 12 years during which emissions declined.
2. Trump threatens to halt FEMA payments to victims of the California wildfires, and then he later tweets that he’s already ordered FEMA to stop sending money. It’s not clear whether he actually did that and if he did, whether it’s legal.
3. I feel like this was already reported last year, but a new study shows that oceans are warming 40% faster than previously expected. 2018 is the warmest year for oceans, with 2017 coming second and 2016 coming third.

• • Oceans absorb nearly 93% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases.
  • Heat causes the water to expand, and that accounts for most of the rise in sea levels that we’ve seen so far.

4. State legislatures across the east and west coasts introduce bills to fight Trump’s expansion of offshore drilling, including Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island. California has already passed such a bill into law.
   

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Polls:

1. Here’s a great summary from Pew Research of their polling on immigration and the wall.
2. 74% of Americans say the shutdown is embarrassing; 72% say it’s hurting the U.S.
3. During the first days of the shutdown polls showed that between 43% and 47% blamed Trump for the shutdown and around 1/3 blamed Democrats. Now, 47% to 51% blame Trump, while 1/3 still blame Democrats.

• • What’s weird about this? Right before the shutdown, Trump took complete responsibility for any shutdown, Democrats weren’t even in power when it happened, and the Senate had a veto-proof majority to override Trump’s veto. So why weren’t more blaming Trump then?
  • Interesting history note: The country was similarly split during the 2013 shutdown, with 53% of Americans blaming Republicans.

4. 59% of Americans oppose the wall, and 39% support it.

• • 74% of Republicans support the wall, but that percentage drops for Republicans who live within the vicinity of the border.

5. 69% of Americans are against declaring a national emergency over the wall.
6. Trump’s approval rate is trending downward, now at 40.6%. His disapproval rate is trending up, now at 54.3%.

Things Politicians Say:

• “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?”
  —Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to the New York Times
  Thank you, Iowa, for continuing to force this racist on the rest of the United States.

• “When during the campaign I would say Mexico is going to pay for it. Obviously I never said that and I never meant they are going to write out a check.” —Donald J. Trump, this week.“It’s an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year.” —Donald J. Trump,three years ago.