Tag: Flynn

Week 50 in Trump

Posted on January 8, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Week 50: Very stable genius.

I’m not going to report much on the revelations in Michael Wolff‘s new gossipy tell-all book because I don’t put a lot of credence in third-party political books (not since a slew of books pushing false narratives came out about Obama and Clinton). Wolff reportedly has recordings of his interviews in the West Wing, though, so if he’s just publishing what people said, he can back that up.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t secretly revel in some of the stories—they corroborate what most people who don’t support Trump already think anyway. Most of the staff quoted in the book think Trump is truly a dope and it doesn’t seem like he really wanted to be president at all. The book did launch a huge and public feud between the Trump and Bannon camps. I’ll talk about the fallout below.

But here’s what happened in real politics this week.

Missed from Last Week:

  1. The Interior Department rolls back yet another Obama-era regulation. This one protected migratory birds endangered by oil, gas, wind, and solar operations.
  2. The Interior Department reverses a decision by the Obama administration and renews leases for copper and nickel mining at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota.
  3. The Trump administration scales back Obama-era fines against nursing homes that harm or endanger residents. Enforcement of these Medicare programs were already weak, and this just gives fewer protections to their elderly residents.
  4. The DOJ wants to ask about citizenship on the 2020 census, which would certainly reduce participation by immigrants, both documented and undocumented. The results of the census determine the distribution of congressional seats, funding of social programs, elections, and ways that state and federal dollars are spent.

Russia:

  1. Paul Manafort sues Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, and the DOJ. The suit asks the federal court to narrow the scope of Mueller’s authority. Manafort’s legal team thinks Mueller is out of bounds investigating money laundering. Legal experts say the suit probably won’t hold water, based on Rod Rosenstein’s earlier testimony to Congress where he said he gave Mueller leeway to follow the investigation where it led. Remember, Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater investigation led to Monica Lewinsky.
  2. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Directory Christopher Wray meet with Paul Ryan about Representative Devin Nunes’ request for documents in the Russia investigation. Rosenstein and Wray were there to ask to keep the documents private at this time because sharing could hamper their investigation.
  3. Ryan, who had previously supported the Russia investigation, caves to Nunes and orders the FBI to turn over the documents to Nunes, which they do. Nunes, by the way, is supposed to be recused from this investigation. The documents in question are law enforcement sensitive and documents of this type are rarely shared outside the FBI.
  4. Fusion GPS founders write an op-ed asking the Senate to release their testimony and explaining some of the testimony they gave. Fusion thinks the Senate is trying to hide their testimony.
  5. Instead of complying with Fusion GPS’s request to publicize their testimony, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley instead says they can come back and testify publicly. Why not just save us the time and money and publish the testimony that was already given?
  6. Representatives Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, leaders of the Freedom Caucus, call on Jeff Sessions to step down over recusing himself from the Russia investigation.
  7. Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham send a letter to the FBI requesting an investigation into Christopher Steele, author of the Steele dossier. They claim that Steele misled the FBI when talking about his contacts with the media. After a year of investigation, this is all they’ve got? Mueller is light years ahead of them.
  8. The AP confirms that Trump directed his White House counsel to tell Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Sessions obviously refused the directive and recused himself shortly thereafter, prompting Trump to tell him to resign. Which he did. And which Trump refused to accept.
  9. Hand-written notes by Reince Priebus confirm some of James Comey’s testimony about Trump’s requests of him before he was fired.
  10. A few days before Trump fired Comey, an aide to Jeff Sessions asked one congressional staffer if he had any damaging information on Comey, an apparent effort to undermine the FBI.
  11. The FBI releases new documents that show Andy McCabe didn’t have any conflicts of interest overseeing the Clinton email investigation.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions reverses Obama-era guidance on keeping federal hands off of regulating states that have legalized marijuana. At his hearings, he said he would not change anything in this regard. On the flip side, veterans can now discuss marijuana use with the VA and not lose their benefits.
  2. Just in the nick of time, because the acting U.S. attorneys were temporary and their term runs out this week, Sessions appoints 17 interim attorneys. There’s a little cronyism going on here, starting with the replacement for Preet Bharara in the Southern District of New York. His replacement is a law partner with Rudy Giuliani.
  3. Scott Pruitt says he’d like to be attorney general if Jeff Sessions leaves.
  4. Trump calls on the DOJ to prosecute Hillary’s former aide Huma Abedin and also James Comey.
  5. Trump also calls the DOJ part of the “deep state.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders says he didn’t mean it.

Healthcare:

  1. Dismantling the ACA piece by piece. After removing the individual mandate in last year’s tax plan, Trump proposes alternative healthcare plans that wouldn’t have to cover the 10 essential health benefits required by the ACA.
  2. Deaths in the coal mining industry almost doubled this year over last, with 15 miners dying in 2017.
  3. Last year, Susan Collins (R-Maine) acknowledged that the healthcare reforms she was promised in return for her yes vote on the tax bill wouldn’t be enacted in 2017, but hopefully would be in January 2018. Now she’s saying she hopes to see them by 2019.

International:

  1. Protests continue in Iran this week. But Iran deploys the Revolutionary Guard, and at least 21 are dead and around 450 protestors are in custody in Tehran.
  2. The U.S. plans to call for an emergency UN session to address the Iranian protests.
  3. A few pro-government rallies pop up across Iran to counter the ongoing anti-government protests.
  4. Trump announces a freeze on military aid to Pakistan, which has been a strategic but befuddling ally in the fight against terrorism. The Pakistani government holds an emergency security meeting to figure out how to deal with Trump’s accusations of lies and deceit.
  5. The State Department also places Pakistan on a watch list of countries that don’t protect religious freedom.
  6. In response to Kim Jung Un tweeting that he has a nuclear button, Trump tweets that his button is bigger. Which only serves to work up more fear of a nuclear war.
  7. The CDC plans a briefing for how to prepare for a nuclear war.
  8. North and South Korea plan to sit down for formal talks to find ways to improve their relations and to cooperate on the Winter Olympics.
  9. The U.S. fails to make its scheduled payment of $125 million to the United National Relief and Works Agency. Some think it’s a ploy to get leverage on Israel/Palestine talks, but the U.S. says we’re just working out the details.
  10. The National Security Agency joins the State Department in losing its top talent under the Trump administration.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. New Senators Doug Jones (D-Ala.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) are sworn in. Smith replaces Al Franken, who stepped down at the urging of his colleagues over allegations of harassment.
  2. Congress comes back to a full schedule this year. Here are a few things on their plate:
    • Budget: Congress has until January 19 to sign a budget to avoid a government shutdown.
    • DACA: Congress technically has until March to prevent DACA recipients from potentially being deported (but in reality, this needs to be done sooner).
    • Disaster recovery: Last year was the most expensive year for U.S. emergency relief, coming in at around $306 billion, not all of which has been authorized.
    • FISA reauthorization: Constituents are asking for this to be reformed rather than simply reauthorized. This allows the NSA to collect communications information about U.S. citizens who communicate with foreigners suspected of spying or terrorism.
  3. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) releases a video defending the freedom of the press. Here are a few key quotes:
    • “A republic will not work if we don’t have shared facts.”
    • “The only way the republic can work is if we come together and defend each other’s rights to say things that we differ about.”
    • “And it’s not helpful to call the press the enemy of the American people.”

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. There were nearly 100 immigration-related retaliation claims to the California Labor Commissioner last year, up from 20 in 2016. Most say their bosses threatened to deport them. This largely occurs around workers contract to do work (like construction and odd jobs) and often when the worker asks for his agreed upon payment. People say they won’t pay and if the worker complains, they’ll report them to ICE.
  2. Washington’s attorney general files a suit against Motel 6 for sharing their guests’ personal information with ICE officials without warrants and without reasonable cause other than Hispanic sounding names.
  3. Democrats in Congress want a clean DREAM Act as part of any negotiations for a spending bill. Trump set a deadline of March 5, at which time DACA recipients could start being deported. Congress now has only two months to fix it. Even if they pass something now, it will take weeks if not months for the DHS to accommodate the changes.
  4. The FBI charges an armed man who stopped an Amtrak train in Nebraska with terrorism after finding the man has ties to a Neo-Nazi group and that he talked about killing black people.
  5. Trump’s pick to run ICE says that politicians in sanctuary cities should be charged with a crime and have their funding withheld, something courts have already called unconstitutional.
  6. Two Republican legislators are trying to put up monuments to African-Americans who fought with the Confederacy. They’re getting pushback from historians, who say no African-Americans chose to fight for the Confederacy, and from white supremacists, who want the Confederacy remembered as white supremacy.
  7. The price tag for Trump’s wall is expected to start at $18 billion, but to actually be closer to $33 billion. And since he’s asking Congress to fund it, the taxpayers will pay for it.
  8. And here’s why marijuana laws fall under discrimination: Police found less than an ounce of marijuana at a party in Cartersville, GA. They arrested all 65 people at the house, ranging in age from 15-31 and all black, and charged them with drug possession. Many who couldn’t afford bail were fired from their jobs because they couldn’t get out of jail, and their mug shots were publicly released. All of these people could end up with a police record. This is about 45 minutes from Atlanta, where if one person has that much pot, they might get a ticket.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump’s administration announces plans to allow offshore drilling in the Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific oceans, opening up about 90% of U.S. waters for exploration. This is opposed by both Democrats and Republicans in almost all east and west coast states, which have some control over certain portions of their coasts.
  2. Of note, part of the reason Obama didn’t approve this was because of objections from the military (along with the states).
  3. The governors from all three western states—Washington, Oregon, and California—promise they’ll do everything they can to prevent drilling off their coasts. Santa Barbara, CA, had an oil spill in 1969 and another in 2015, and no one wants to increase the odds of that. There’s already oil in the waters around Santa Barbara, and tar balls constantly wash up on the beaches.
  4. While northeastern U.S. gets hit by a frigid bomb cyclone, Australia is suffering a great heat wave that’s melting asphalt and causing wildfires.
  5. Scott Pruitt bragged that they’re cleaning up Superfund sites faster than ever, but the sites they removed from the contaminated list were actually cleaned up years ago. The only reason they were still on the list was because they required follow-up testing to evaluate the success of the cleanup.
  6. Trump rescinds rules requiring that companies disclose the chemicals they use when fracking.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Republicans on the hill are suddenly deficit hawks again, saying we need to cut spending. This is a shift from the tax bill passed in December, in which they added as much as they could to the deficit in a finance bill and still comply with parliamentarian rules on reconciliation.
  2. Fox News research reports the average monthly job gain by year, showing 2017 to be the lowest since 2010 (though it’s possible these numbers will be adjusted):
    • 2017: 171,000
    • 2016: 187,000
    • 2015: 226,000
    • 2014: 250,000
    • 2013: 192,000
    • 2012: 179,000
    • 2011: 174,000
    • 2010: 88,000
  3. 2017 was the strongest year for manufacturing in the U.S. since 2004.
  4. Following in the steps of AT&T, Comcast fired 500 salespeople after saying how they’d create thousands of new jobs with the recent tax cuts.
  5. The DOW passes 25,000 for the first time.
  6. California legislators propose a bill that would allow Californians to get around the tax bill by giving to the California Excellence Fund instead of paying certain taxes that are no longer deductible. Donations to the fund are deductible.

Elections:

  1. Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Senator in Utah history, announces his plans to retire, opening the door for Mitt Romney to run. Hatch says he’ll throw his support behind Romney.
  2. Trump dissolves his voter fraud commission because states weren’t cooperating and the commission was the target of several lawsuits. He still maintains that there’s a high level of voter fraud, but he’s throwing the issue over to the Department of Homeland Security (which indicates that he thinks most voter fraud is committed by illegal immigrants).
  3. Kris Kobach, the head of the voter fraud committee, dismisses the lawsuits as baseless, though he lost most of the lawsuits against him in Kansas for his similar efforts so doesn’t have the greatest track record.
  4. Postscript: Studies since 2000, including George Bush’s own voter fraud task force, have found that voter fraud is minuscule…extremely rare.
  5. Virginia drew Republican David Yancy’s name out of a bowl to push the GOP into the majority in the Virginia House of Delegates, 51-49. State law says the loser of the draw can demand a second recount, so this still might not be over.
  6. And speaking of Virginia, there’s still a challenge to the results of one House of Delegates race because nearly 200 homes were reassigned to the wrong district and given the wrong ballots. The race was won by less than 75 votes, and the voters are the ones challenging the results.
  7. The Trump administration puts Republican candidates on rocky ground with his expansion of oil drilling off our beaches and with the crackdown on state-legalized marijuana. Many politicians whose seats are up for grabs this year worked fast to distance themselves.

Miscellaneous:

  1. In his new book, Michael Wolff quotes Bannon criticizing and insulting Trump, and then Trump goes after Bannon in return. Trump’s lawyers send Bannon a cease and desist letter, saying legal action is imminent.
  2. After excerpts from the book start coming out, Chief of staff John Kelly bans the use of personal devices, like personal cell phones, in the West Wing. Wolff was allowed pretty open access during his time there, and even hosted dinner parties for White House staff.
  3. Trump’s legal team demands that Wolff and his publisher stop the release of the book and apologize. Which resulted in the publisher moving the publish date up.
    • If Obama and Clinton sued every author who lied about them, there wouldn’t be any books out there about them at all.
    • If the Trump legal team ends up suing, we’ll find out if there really are recordings.
  4. Of note, Trump had campaign staffers sign a non-disclosure agreement that said they couldn’t make any disparaging comments about Trump, his family, or the campaign.
  5. White House officials discuss whether to fire Katie Walsh for her statements in Wolff’s book (she said working with Trump is like trying to figure out what a child wants).
  6. Breitbart board members debate whether to fire Steve Bannon after excerpts from the book are published. His financier, Rebekah Mercer, says she won’t finance him any longer.
  7. Trump takes credit for a very safe year in airline travel, though there’s been no fatal commercial passenger airline incident since 2009.
  8. Several legislators meet with a psychiatry professor to discuss Trump’s mental state and fitness for office. The prognosis isn’t good, but you can’t really analyze someone without meeting with them.
  9. Trump nominates Marie Royce to a senior position in the State Department. Marie is the wife of Ed Royce (R-Calif.), who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, creating a conflict of interest since Ed’s committee is responsible for State Department oversight.
  10. Trump finally makes an appearance in the press briefing room, but it’s not in person. He pre-taped a message for the press briefing even though he was right there in the same building at the time.
  11. One of the women who accused Roy Moore of sexual misconduct loses everything she owns when her house burns down as a result of arson.
  12. Another of the women accusing Roy Moore’s of sexual misconduct is now suing him for defamation.
  13. Trump brings a bunch of his cabinet and top legislators to Camp David for a Republican leadership retreat.
  14. Big tech puts its weight behind opposing the repeal of net neutrality. A group called the Internet Association, which includes Facebook, Google, Netflix, and other large tech firms, is joining the lawsuit against the FCC.
  15. The FBI is investigating whether donations were made to the Clinton Foundation in return for political favors while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. Previous investigations have shown such allegations to be false, but we’ll have to wait and see if they turn up anything new.
  16. The chairman of Alaska’s Marijuana Control Board resigns when the DOJ announces its crackdown on marijuana use.

Polls:

  1. 61% of Americans support the legalization of marijuana.

Week 49 in Trump

Posted on January 2, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Here’s my last weekly recap for 2017, and I’m finally caught up from the holidays. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty happy to see 2017 circling the drain. It was an exhausting, emotional, and stressful year. In the words of Gin and Tacos and my husband Mohi:

But this year was such a thrill ride down Fuck Everything Boulevard… in a clown car.

So here’s hoping for a brighter, happier, lighter, easier, and more prosperous and joyful 2018.

And here’s what happened in week 49…

Russia:

  1. A small group of Republicans headed by Devin Nunes is investigating the FBI over its use of the Steele dossier to launch the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia. But then…
    • It turns out that it wasn’t the Steele dossier that launched the investigation.
    • Instead, it was George Papadopoulos’s drunken revelation to a top Australian diplomat that he knew the Russians had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.
    • Australian officials then reported that info to their American counterparts.
    • George spilled the beans in May 2016, the Australians reported it two months later (why the wait?), and the FBI opened the investigation in July 2016.
  1. Both Democrats and Republicans criticize Nunes over the tactics he’s using to attack federal law enforcement. Most think if there’s any corruption in the FBI, the DOJ should investigate it and that all Nunes will do is cause damage to law enforcement.
  2. On top of that, it turns out that Nunes never fully recused himself from the Russia investigation after his strange White House antics last year. While he handed over the day to day activities of the committee chair, he retained sole power to sign subpoenas, restricting committee Democrats‘ ability to do their jobs.
  3. There’s increased Russian submarine activity around undersea trans-Atlantic data cables. This is the most Russian sub activity we’ve seen since the Cold War. These cables provide internet to North American and Europe, so it’s possible Russia’s looking for ways to tap into the data.
  4. NATO responds to the activity by announcing plans to re-open a Cold War command post to secure the north Atlantic.
  5. Part of Robert Mueller’s investigation includes looking at whether the Trump campaign and RNC used voter information that was obtained through Russian hackers. We know that Russian hackers stole data from several states’ election databases in 2016. Jared Kushner was in charge of the campaign’s digital operations.
  6. A Russian who earlier admitted to hacking the DNC servers for the Russian government says he left a data signature that proves he’s telling the truth.
  7. Trump’s legal team, along with other Trump supporters in D.C. and in the media, start to paint Michael Flynn as a liar in order to discredit him before his testimony comes up in the Russia investigation.
  8. Putin expresses disappointment in the deteriorating relationship between Russia and the U.S.
  9. A Russian court upholds a ruling that bans Putin’s opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, from running against him in the next elections.
  10. Facebook announces it won’t use red flags to indicate fake news articles anymore. Apparently the flags just enticed more people to click on the stories. They found that showing related articles is more effective to combat fake stories.

Courts/Justice:

  1. An appeals court upheld its previous ruling that basically upheld an Obama-era fracking rule for federal lands. The Department of Interior is working to repeal the regulation anyway, but the rule could go back into effect on January 12.

Healthcare:

  1. Despite government outreach being cut by 90%, the sign-up window being cut in half, and Trump’s declaration that Obamacare is dead, enrollment in the ACA was surprisingly strong with nearly 9 million enrollees so far. That’s down from 12.2 million who signed up last year, but there are still more to be counted and not all markets are closed.
  2. Over 80% of people who enrolled in the ACA live in states where Trump won, with the top four states being Texas, George, North Carolina, and Florida.

International:

  1. Just days before Trump’s inauguration (between January 9 and 12, 2016) Romanian hackers took control of nearly two-thirds of D.C.’s surveillance cameras. The cameras were unable to record for several days. This doesn’t seem to be related to Trump—it was a ransomware scheme and the hackers have been arrested.
  2. At least four times in the past week, the Trump administration threatens the UN with dropping financial support if they don’t comply with U.S. demands.
  3. A Gunman attacks a Coptic Christian church in Egypt, killing nine. The police are criticized for their slow response.
  4. Anti-government protests erupt across Iran, largely spurred by a stagnant economy and a repressive regime. Twelve have died so far in the protests, and this is the largest uprising since the 2009 protests that were violently stamped out.
  5. Trump tweets support for the protesters, saying the Iranian government should listen to them. “Iranian govt should respect their people’s rights, including right to express themselves.” So protests against the government are a good thing in Iran, but not in the U.S.?
  6. Iranian President Rouhani walks a fine line between the protesters and the Ayatollah, saying that people have a right to criticize the government and protest, and that this could be an opportunity. But he also says he’ll crack down on lawbreakers. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the other hand, blames the protests on Iran’s enemies.
  7. Both Russia and China sneak around the sanctions on North Korea and trade goods.
  8. There are two bombings in Kabul this week—one on Christmas day and the other in the middle of a funeral for a government official.
  9. A defecting soldier from North Korea had traces of anthrax in his lungs, and others showed signs of exposure to radiation. This raises concerns that North Korea is working on biological weapons.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. While Trump says he’s signed more legislation than any other president in their first year, he’s actually signed the fewest since Eisenhower. In fairness, he got off to a strong start with all the Congressional Review signings that merely undid rules made by federal agencies under Obama.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A federal judge rules that Arizona’s law banning classes on ethnic studies is unconstitutional, saying it was motivated by racial animus. Ya think?
  2. Trump holds Dreamers hostage and says there will be no clean DREAM Act without funding for the wall between us and Mexico.
  3. Trump fires the remaining HIV/AIDS advisory council members via FedEx with no explanation. He does say they can reapply. If you remember, several members resigned together earlier in 2017.
  4. The Trump administration drops its appeal of the court decision blocking the transgender ban in the military after not just one, but two courts reject the ban.
  5. In a June meeting, Trump reportedly said that all Haitians have AIDS and that Nigerians would never go back to their huts. It’s no surprise that Trump uses fear tactics to stoke hatred of immigrants.
  6. At the same meeting, Trump was visibly upset over the number of foreign visitors to the U.S. during his first 6 months and he couldn’t understand that some were here temporarily—one-time visitors just here on vacation.
  7. A federal judge blocks Trump’s restrictions on “follow-to-join” refugees, which are spouses and children of refugees who are already settled here.
  8. The same federal judge partially suspends Trump’s ban on refugees from 11 largely Muslim countries, allowing refugees with bona fide relationships and granting bona fide relationship status to refugees who have agreements with humanitarian and relocation agencies.
  9. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules that Trump exceeded his authority in the latest travel ban and that it violates federal law. The law remains in effect, though, per the Supreme Court, while challenges move through the courts.
  10. Bitcoin is the currency of choice for far-right extremists and white nationalists because PayPal and other payment platforms have banned racists and extremists.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Proving once again that he doesn’t understand the difference between climate and weather or the effect of climate change on weather, Trump makes fun of global warming in a tweet because it’s so cold in the eastern U.S.
  2. Trump rolls back the safety rules for offshore drilling that were created after the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Puerto Rico:

Here’s where Puerto Rico stands more than three months after the hurricane:

  • 96% of the island has water.
  • Almost 70% of the island has electricity.
  • 88% of gas stations are open.
  • 8% of supermarkets are still closed.
  • 392 people still need shelter; 24 shelters are open.
  • 3,039 FEMA personnel, along with 15,000 civilian and military personnel, are on the ground there.
  • All airports and federally maintained ports are open.
  • All hospitals are open.
  • More than 168,000 Puerto Ricans have gone to Florida.

Budget/Economy:

  1. While praising the new tax plan and saying they’ll give everyone $1,000 bonuses, AT&T also announces that they’ll lay off over 1,000 employees.
  2. After signing the tax bill into law, Trump tells his friends at Mar-a-Lago, “You all just got a lot richer.” And for once he was telling the truth.
  3. Goldman Sachs expects that banks will take a hit to their profits this year because of taxes on money held overseas. But after taking that hit, banks will be the biggest winners of the new tax plan.
  4. Senator Marco Rubio says Republicans “went too far” in cutting taxes for corporations. He thinks companies will either buy back shares or increase dividends to shareholders, neither of which will create any great economic growth.
  5. Trump goes after the USPS about undercharging Amazon even though Amazon uses UPS and is working on delivering their own stuff.
  6. Despite being a cheerleader for infrastructure during the campaign, Trump stops funding for an Obama-era project to fix damaged railroad tunnels, tracks, and bridges in New York and New Jersey. This is an area where 9 of 10 workers commute.
  7. The Centre for Economics and Business Research projects that China will overtake the U.S. economy by 2032, and that India will move into the top 5 economies around the same time.

Elections:

  1. Roy Moore sues to block Alabama’s election results citing systematic voter fraud. The court dismisses Moore’s case and certifies Doug Jones, who is later sworn in.
  2. If you remember a while back, a Democrat on Trump’s voter fraud commission sued to get access to committee records from Kris Kobach and other Republicans on the commission. This week, a federal judge rules that they must share records with ALL members of the panel.
  3. The one remaining seat in the Virginia House of Delegates won’t be decided soon. The name-drawing to decide the tie vote is postponed, pending a court challenge over whether the election was actually a tie. If the Democrat wins, Democrats will have a 51-49 lead. If the Republican wins, the House will be tied.
  4. While the Department of Homeland Security has warned states about election-hacking threats in the 2018 elections, they might not be able to perform security screenings on all election servers in time for the elections.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump is the first to president not to win the most admired man of the year in the annual Gallup survey. President Obama wins that distinction for the 10th time. Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman for the 16th year in a row. Color me confused.
  2. The Trump foundation is being investigated for inappropriate use of funds, and cannot raise any funds until the probe is over. One of Trump’s golf courses has already had to pay back the Trump foundation for using foundation funds to pay the golf course’s legal fees.
  3. Trump is the first president not to host a state dinner in his first year.
  4. Trump says he’ll be back to work the day after Christmas. The day after Christmas, Trump goes golfing. Who really cares, right? Except that he made a big deal out of Obama golfing. Trump has definitely golfed at least 50% more than Obama in his first year and has likely golfed even more than that. He’s visited a golf course at least 88 times.
  5. Trump’s cabinet is unusually secretive, hiding their schedules, travel plans, and the people or groups they’re meeting with. At least six agencies don’t release appointment calendars, in potential violation of the Freedom of Information Act. This is a thing because department heads have been meeting with leaders from the industries that they’re supposed to be regulating.
  6. Trump gives an impromptu interview to a New York Times reporter. I won’t fact-check the whole thing, but here are a few tidbits:
    • He denies 16 times that his campaign colluded with Russia, but then says that even if there was collusion, it’s not a crime.
    • He says Democrats say there’s no collusion (they don’t).
    • However, he says there was collusion between the Russians and Democrats.
    • He thinks Mueller will treat him fairly.
    • He thinks he can do whatever he wants with the Department of Justice (he can’t). This was about reopening the investigation into Hillary’s emails.
    • He says he’ll win in 2020 because the media needs him and will tank without him. He says the media HAS TO LET HIM WIN. Wow.
    • He says he knows more about big bills than any other president. (Remember, it was a huge surprise to him that healthcare was so hard. Who knew?)
    • He also knows more about taxes than the greatest CPA, he says (lawmakers who worked with him on healthcare and taxes were shocked by how little he knew about both).
    • He thinks China’s hurting us on trade, but he hasn’t dealt with it yet because war is more important right now (I assume he’s talking about North Korea here).

    • He says he saved coal and that West Virginia is doing fantastically now (only 900 new coal jobs have been created since he became president).
    • He brings up the conspiracy theory around Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and a Pakistani IT staffer.
    • He says he boosted Luther Strange’s rating, and that before his endorsement Strange was in 5th place (in a race with only 3 people).
    • He says the reason the Alabama race was so close was because he endorsed Roy Moore (an accused child molester).
    • He says we’ve spent $7 trillion on the MidEast and it’s a bigger mess than ever (the actual number is $1.6 trillion, if he’s talking about the wars).
    • He says he’s created healthcare associations and that millions of people are joining—people who formerly had Obamacare or no insurance (the rules for the associations haven’t yet been issued and no one has joined).
    • He says the wall will stop the smuggling of drugs from Mexico (most drugs come in through legal ports of entry or from tunnels).
  1. The Trump administration has the highest first-year departure rate of any administration in the past four decades with 34% of senior officials having resigned, been fired, or been reassigned. Ronald Reagan’s was the second highest with half the departure rate.
  2. New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia file a lawsuit against the Department of Defense for inadequate reporting of service members who are not allowed to own guns. This stems from the shooter in a small town in Texas who should have been flagged in the background check database but wasn’t.
  3. Christmas couldn’t keep Trump satisfied for long. The day after, he goes after the FBI and Hillary on Twitter. Tip: Let it go, dude. You won.

Polls:

  1. 52% of us say the U.S. is less respected around the world than it was one year ago. 21% say we’re more respected than before.

Week 48 in Trump

Posted on January 1, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Sorry for the late post. This is a week behind because I got caught up in holiday merriment. I hope you all did too. And speaking of holidays, Trump declares victory in the war on Christmas, tweeting:

“People are proud to be saying Merry Christmas again… I am proud to have led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!”

90% of Americans celebrate Christmas, so if there’s a war around it, it’s pretty one-sided.

Russia:

  1. We learn that last summer, after Russians had already reached out to the Trump campaign, U.S. intelligence agencies warned both Trump and Clinton that foreign agents would try to infiltrate their campaigns and to be aware of any suspicious overtures. Both campaigns were told to alert the FBI immediately if any such overtures occurred.
  2. In January 2017, White House counsel knew Michael Flynn had likely broken two federal laws. And then:
    • 1/24/17: Flynn lies to the FBI
    • 1/27/17: Sally Yates warns White House counsel that Flynn could be compromised
    • 1/27/17: Trump asks Comey for his loyalty
    • 2/13/17: Trump fires Flynn
    • 2/14/17: Trump asks Comey to see a way to let the Flynn thing go
    • 5/09/17: Trump fires Comey
  1. The Senate Intelligence Committee brings Jill Stein into their Russia investigation with a request for documents about a trip to Russia in honor of Russian state media RT.
  2. Kaspersky Labs sues the US government for banning its software on government computers.
  3. The House Intelligence Committee interviews Andy McCabe, acting head of the FBI.
  4. Andy McCabe says he’ll retire as soon as he’s eligible for full pension in March. He’s been fielding much criticism from Trump’s administration and congressional Republicans.
  5. A small group of Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee, led by Devin Nunes, have been working in secret for weeks to build a case of corruption and conspiracy against senior officials in the DOJ and FBI. They think the Steele dossier was mishandled.
    • This small group thinks that the DOJ and FBI are working against Trump and for Hillary, even though actions by the FBI contributed to Clinton’s loss in 2016.
    • The group is expected to use their findings to discredit the investigation into Russian meddling in our election, and to discredit Mueller.
    • The group has kept Democrats on the committee in the dark about what they’re doing.
  1. The House Intelligence Committee requests interviews with both Steve Bannon and Corey Lewandowsky.
  2. Republicans in the House Intelligence Committee want to wrap up their investigation by the end of the year, though Democrats have several unanswered requests for more interviews. Also there are still interviews scheduled for January.
  3. Carter Page blamed his failure to complete his Ph.D. on “anti-Russian bias.” He failed it twice and finally obtained it on the third try. His advisors said his thesis was verbose and vague.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions asks the FBI to look into the Uranium One deal again, likely at congressional Republicans’ behest.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump admits that the tax plan is basically a repeal of the ACA. The GOP couldn’t get rid of the ACA on its own, but after the ANWR bribe to Lisa Murkowski, the false promises to Susan Collins, and the major windfall for Bob Corker, they managed to slip it by in the tax bill.
  2. Bragging that he managed to get tax reform passed and the ACA repealed, Trump says that repealing the mandate in the tax bill is essentially the same as repealing the ACA. But he told Republicans not to talk about that part of the bill before it was passed. He didn’t want the “fake media” talking about it too much.
  3. The day after the tax bill passes, Susan Collins concedes that she won’t be getting the healthcare fixes she demanded in return for her yes vote on the tax bill this year.
  4. More and more states warn that some of their children’s health programs will be terminated soon if CHIP is not fully funded.

International:

  1. The U.S. blocks a UN Security Council vote calling on nations to not build diplomatic offices in Jerusalem. Nikki Haley uses our veto power for the first time in over six years.
  2. Trump threatens to cut off U.S. aid to any country that voted for the above resolution.
  3. And then, in a largely symbolic vote and an act of defiance, a vast majority of countries rebuke Trump and denounce his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. 128 nations vote for a resolution demanding that Trump reverse the Jerusalem decision, 9 vote against it, and 35 abstain.
  4. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says Palestinians will never accept a peace plan from America because of Trump recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
  5. Trump reveals his “America First” foreign policy and security strategy. He paints Russia and China as powers who want to reshape the world in a way that goes against our interests and values (they’re our rivals).
  6. The strategy focuses on regaining economic competitiveness across the globe.
  7. Despite agreement among top brass in the military that climate change remains one of our biggest global security threats, Trump drops it from the list of global threats.
  8. The top threats according to the strategy are rogue regimes, terrorism, and cyber attacks.
  9. The strategy has four main principles:
    • Protect the U.S. homeland
    • Protect U.S. prosperity
    • Preserve peace through strength
    • Advance U.S. influence around the world
  1. The strategy calls for a wall between us and our neighbors to the south.
  2. Mike Pence pays a surprise visit to U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
  3. North Korea says the latest UN sanctions, written by the U.S., are an act of war.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Four Senators say the calls for Al Franken to resign were premature and they urge him to reconsider. Franken has said he’ll officially resign in January.
  2. As a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Elijah Cummings calls on Trump to release his downsizing plans for the government’s workforce. Trump is overseeing the biggest government reorganization in decades with no Congressional oversight and very little transparency.
  3. Rumors swirl around that Paul Ryan will retire in 2018.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A jury in Washington D.C. dismiss charges against the first six inauguration day protestors to be tried. A journalist was among those defendants. There are still 188 people facing trial, and this initial court result could affect how or if these cases move forward.

Climate/EPA:

  1. After they spoke out or raised concerns about the EPA, at least three EPA employees found themselves being investigated. Specifically they were requested to turn over any emails they wrote that mention Scott Pruitt or Trump along with any communications with Congress that are critical of the EPA.
  2. Scott Pruitt puts his red-team/blue-team debate on climate change on hold the same week that a slew of scientific data confirms anthropomorphic climate change. (Of note, the red-team/blue-team idea comes from the Heartland Institute.)
  3. The latest climate change reports show that the question is no longer how much people affect the climate. The questions scientists are interested in now are how much the climate has changed and what we can do at this point to mitigate it.
  4. Some key findings in the reports include:
    • Climate change set the stage for the extreme weather events we’ve seen in recent years.
    • The Arctic permafrost is melting at a faster rate than originally thought.
    • There is still time to prevent the worst impacts of climate change if we act now.
    • But we don’t have time to continue debating this.
  1. China announces the creation of a carbon market to help curb greenhouse gas emissions.
  2. A federal court upholds a 20-year ban on new uranium mining claims on a million acres of public land next to the Grand Canyon. The ban was put in place by the Department of the Interior, and the court rules that the ban is constitutional. The ban protects waterways to the Colorado River.
  3. On the flip side, the court says that Energy Fuels Inc. can operate a uranium mine in Kaibab National Forest without consulting with the affected Indian tribe.
  4. One of the worlds largest coal companies, B.H.P. Billiton, plans to withdraw from the World Coal Association over differences in climate policies. They’ll also review their association with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.
  5. Since Trump took office, over 200 scientists have left the EPA. Over 700 people have left the EPA overall.
  6. Last week we learned that Scott Pruitt had hired a right-leaning opposition research and media monitoring group for the EPA. This week, depending on who you believe, either the group quits or Pruitt fires them.
  7. France passes a law banning gas and oil production by 2040.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The House passes the reconciled tax plan on Tuesday, but then the Senate parliamentarian rejects it which means they have to vote again on Wednesday.
  2. Here’s a simple calculator showing what the tax plan means for you.
  3. Experts in the Treasury Office of Tax Policy say they were mostly shut out of the process for analyzing the tax bill, though Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin previously said he had 100 experts working on it. 100 experts to deliver a 1-page analysis.
  4. After criticizing constituent and media reactions to her healthcare deal with Mitch McConnell in return for her yes vote on the tax bill, Susan Collins concedes that there will be no vote this year to fix healthcare, as McConnell promised.
  5. In fairness, the Senate puts forth two measures to help stabilize the ACA, but not enough Republicans in the House support it, so they get pushed to next year.
  6. The GOP rushed the bill through quickly and didn’t include a standard delay, which is typically included in bills like this in order to give agencies, businesses, and people who provide financial services time to figure things out. For example, the IRS (which is being cut, BTW) has to figure out new withholding amounts for people’s paychecks and reconfigure their tax forms, and ADP has to reprogram their paycheck system.
  7. There’s talk that Trump will wait until January to sign the tax bill into law to put off triggering automatic cuts to Medicare and other programs until 2019. To work around this, the GOP adds last-minute wording to the spending bill. Otherwise, they would’ve had to explain these cuts during an election year. I hope they put more and better planning into the rest of the bill.
  8. Trump signs the tax bill into law; his first major piece of legislation in his first year in office.
  9. Trump says that the biggest part of the tax bill is corporate tax savings, not middle-class tax breaks as promised.
  10. Trump’s been asking people how their 401k is doing as a selling point for his policies, but most Americans don’t have a 401k.
  11. The Koch brothers plan to launch a multi-million dollar campaign through their super PAC in 2018 to help make the tax plan more popular.
  12. The House passes a temporary funding bill to prevent a government shutdown. The bill is not associated with a clean Dream Act and CHIP is only extended to March. The bill passes in the Senate as well.
  13. Congressional Democrats back off their promises not to sign a funding bill without a clean Dream Act.
  14. Trump signs the temporary funding bill, keeping the government running through January 19, 2018.
  15. Carrier Corp. lays off more than 600 employees from their Indianapolis factory just before Christmas. Trump got lots of kudos earlier this year for supposedly working out a deal where Carrier would keep jobs in the U.S.
  16. Analyses of the tax plans show that four states—New York, New Jersey, California, and Maryland—will subsidize most of the tax breaks for the rest of the states.
  17. The number of people who itemize their deductions on their taxes is expected to drop from 30% to 10%.
  18. The House proposes another $80 billion in disaster relief.
  19. The Senate Banking Committee rejects Trump’s pick to head the Import-Export Bank, Scott Garret, mostly because of his previous efforts to get the bank shut down.

Elections:

  1. The Virginia elections are still up in the air after weeks of recounts. For a moment it looked like the House of Delegates was going to change from Republican control to Democrat, but a court challenge to one ballot leaves two candidates tied and the balance left up to a coin toss. But then the Democratic candidate challenges the Republican’s court challenge.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The Trump administration takes down the ‘We The People’ petition site (they say it’s just temporary). The site was instituted under Obama as a way for all Americans to make their voices heard. The White House under Obama would respond to every petition that got 100,000 signatures.
  2. Trump’s new presidential coin replaces the phrase “E pluribus unum” with “Make America Great Again” – his campaign slogan. Trump includes his name three times on the coin, removes the presidential seal, and removes the 13 arrows that represented the 13 original states. Also, the coin is very gold.

Polls:

  1. A CNN poll has Trump’s approval at 35%, a historic low in that poll for a president in their first year.
  2. 55% of Americans oppose the tax bill. 66% say it helps the wealthy more than the middle class.

Week 46 in Trump

Posted on December 14, 2017 in Politics, Trump

After over half the Democrats in the Senate push for his resignation over accusations of sexual misconduct, Al Franken resigns from the Senate, saying:

“I of all people am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party.”

Come on Republicans. The moral high ground has a very slippery slope, and you might be at a point where you can never make it back to the top. You need to oust your own members who are accused of misconduct, whether or not they cop to it. If you don’t like the RNC supporting an alleged child molester, you need to stand up and tell them so.

Russia:

  1. The chief lawyer at the White House told Trump in January that Michael Flynn had likely lied to the FBI and Mike Pence. This was before Trump asked Comey to “see his way to letting it go.”
  2. In his December meeting with Russian officials, Mike Flynn told them the sanctions Obama was imposing at the time would be ripped up.
  3. Mueller asks a judge to deny Manafort’s request to be released from house arrest after learning the Manafort wrote an op-ed with a Russian operative in order to sway public opinion about his dealings with the Ukraine. Some people never learn.
  4. Mueller subpoenas Deutsche Bank for information about Trump’s accounts. Deutsche Bank has loaned millions to the Trump Organization. The White House denies that there are any subpoenas.
  5. Donald Trump Jr. spends eight hours in front of the House Intelligence Committee. He says he talked to Hope Hicks, and not his father, about how to respond to revelations of his meeting with a Russian lawyer.
  6. He also claims attorney-client privilege as a reason to not talk about the phone call with Trump Sr. where they discussed how they should handle the issue of Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer (because a lawyer was in the room when he called).
  7. Newly uncovered emails show there was follow-up within the Trump campaign to Trump Jr.’s meeting with the Russian lawyer.
  8. In his meeting with the Russian lawyer, Trump Jr. asked for information proving illegal donations to the Clinton campaign.
  9. Erik Prince testifies before the House Intelligence Committee, and says he met with Devin Nunes earlier this year to discuss the unmasking of names of Americans being investigated (after Nunes recused himself). He also discusses meetings with Emirati officials and a Russian banker in the Seychelles.
  10. The judge in the Flynn case recuses himself.
  11. Senate Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee hold up K.T. McFarland’s nomination based on questions around what she knew about contact between Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Kislyak.
  12. Hope Hicks meets with Mueller’s team, and we learn that the FBI warned her that Russian operatives had tried to contact her at least twice this year.

Healthcare:

  1. The DOJ picks up the investigations into abortion providers about the transfer of fetal tissue, taking over from the congressional inquiries held last year.
  2. The USDA rolls back Michelle Obama’s school lunch program. Because why should kids have to eat healthy food?

International:

  1. Apparently urged by Jared Kushner, Trump announces that he recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and that he plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. This is a new tactic for Middle East peace, and protests erupt abroad.
  2. Palestinian leader Abbas says maybe a one-state solution is the way to go because it would force Israel to choose whether they’ll be a true democracy, in which case Palestinians could have the majority voice.
  3. Hamas leaders push for a new uprising against Israel because of the announcement.
  4. Several advisers say Trump didn’t fully understand the ramifications of the Jerusalem move and that his focus is “seeming pro-Israel” and “making a deal.”
  5. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) bans Russia from the 2018 Olympics as punishment for their “systemic manipulation of the anti-doping system”. The IOC also creates a way for drug-free Russian athletes to compete under the Olympic flag.
  6. The Senate confirms Kirstjen Nielsen as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. She was previously Kelly’s chief of staff there.
  7. Germany’s acting foreign minister says that relations between Germany and the U.S. will never be the same, complaining that Trump looks at Europe as a rival instead of an ally.
  8. Tillerson gets a chilly reception from European leaders, who cite Trump’s nationalistic rhetoric, his tweets, and his announcement that the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as reasons for the tension.
  9. The State Department issues a worldwide caution for U.S. travelers abroad. The last time this happened was at the start of the Iraq war.
  10. North Korea says war is inevitable.
  11. Remember when we brought back our diplomats from Cuba because they were experiencing mysterious symptoms? Well doctors find brain damage in the victims, which makes the sonic weapon explanation a little less believable.
  12. Iraq says that ISIS no longer controls any land in the country and declares an end to their war on ISIS.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House passes the concealed carry reciprocity bill, which would let people who live in concealed carry states carry weapons in states that don’t have concealed carry. I guess states right are only right when you agree with them.
  2. So far, 44 U.S. Representatives and 2 Senators have announced they’ll retire, resign, or run for a different office. 30 of the 44 are Republicans and both Senators are. Some feel they can’t get anything done anymore, and some point to Trump.
  3. Senator Al Franken announces he’ll step down over sexual misconduct allegations. Representative Trent Frank (R-AZ) also steps down from complaints that he suggested members of his staff should be surrogate mothers for him and his wife.
  4. Democratic Representative John Conyers resigns after more accusations of sexual harassment. Still waiting for Trump to come clean here.
  5. A House vote to impeach Trump fails bigly.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Supreme Court allows Trump’s third iteration of the travel ban to take effect while arguments are heard in the court challenge.
  2. Despite Trump’s push to bolster staff at Customs and Border Patrol, the CPB hasn’t been able to hire enough people to make up for attrition.
  3. In a rally in Florida… Wait, really? Why is he still holding rallies? Anyway, at a rally In Florida, Trump stumps for Roy Moore and goes after one of Moore’s accusers (she had added notes to the one Moore wrote in her yearbook oh my). Trump has attacked his own accusers and Moore’s, but somehow all the other women coming forward are legit. WTF?
  4. 92 Somalis are taken back to Somalia on a deportation plane, but they have to land in Senegal, and end up returning to the U.S. because of logistical issues.
  5. Trump was originally scheduled to speak at the opening of the Civil Rights Museum in Mississippi, but due to threatened boycotts by civil rights leaders, Trump speaks at a private event and not the opening.
    UPDATE: I recant that. Despite protests, Trump spoke at the opening anyway.
  6. Trump holds the traditional Hanukkah party but doesn’t invite Democrats or Reformist Jews.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump shrinks Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, as promised. The first of many lawsuits is filed on the same day.
  2. The EPA inspector general announces an investigation into Scott Pruitt’s meeting with the National Mining Association earlier this year where Pruitt apparently asked industry members to urge Trump to exit the Paris agreement.
  3. The Trump administration auctions off drilling rights for 900 tracts in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, totaling 10.3 million acres. Only two companies bid and only on seven tracts, totaling only about $1.16 million. This was supposed to be the biggest lease sale ever.
  4. Trump approves a state of emergency for Southern California due to the rampant wildfires.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Congress pushes back a potential government shutdown by extending spending for two weeks. So now they have to sign a funding bill by the end of next week.
  2. Trump says a government shutdown could still happen, and it would benefit him because he’ll blame Democrats for obstructing. Democrats are withholding support for a spending bill because they want a clean DACA bill. They also want comparable increases for non-defense spending as for defense spending. The Freedom Caucus says they won’t support a bill that includes either of those things.
  3. The tax bills being reconciled include a boon to private schools by allowing tax-free 529 accounts to be used for private K-12 schools. Currently they are only allowed for college savings.
  4. The Senate forgot to reduce the ATM, one of many oversights in their tax plan. Experts find many loopholes and potential problems.
  5. The Senate removes the anti-abortion text that was inserted into the tax bill (personhood for fetuses). The parliamentarian says it violates the Byrd rule, which governs what can be included in finance bills.
  6. 13 GOP governors refuse to sign a letter of support for the proposed tax plans.
  7. Susan Collins’ vote on the bill is back in question as the planned fix won’t work for the problems that would be caused by getting rid of the ACA’s individual mandate.
  8. Economists wonder if this is the wrong time for a tax cut, usually a tool to stimulate the economy which is currently on an 86-month winning streak. It could backfire and push us into inflation.
  9. Hiring is still strong 8 years into the recovery. 228,000 jobs were added in November.
  10. But GE announces they’ll layoff 12,000 employees (globally, though they didn’t say how many in what countries).
  11. The repeal of the Johnson amendment in the tax bill could open the door to allowing large donations to 501(c)(3) charities, meaning you can donate as much as you want to political candidates and write it off as a tax deduction.
  12. Attorneys general from 17 states and D.C. file a brief challenging Trump’s right to appoint Mick Mulvaney to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
  13. Hours after Mulvaney becomes acting director of the CFPB, the bureau reverses its position on a case that was nearly over, so bureau will no longer take a position on whether Nationwide will pay $8 million for misleading over 100,000 customers on their mortgages. They also stopped payments to some victims of financial crimes. This after Mulvaney says he won’t blow up the bureau.
  14. Trump rescinds another Obama-era proposal that makes airlines disclose baggage fees up front. Because why should we get to know exactly how much we have to pay?
  15. The Department of Labor delays implementation of the fiduciary rule, which would protect consumers from financial advisors lining their own pockets instead of looking out for consumers’ best interests.

Elections:

  1. Trump calls Roy Moore to offer his endorsement, and stumps for Moore at Trump’s rally in Florida.
  2. And then the Republican National Committee (RNC) throws its support behind Moore once again, after distancing themselves just a few weeks ago. But no one in the RNC defends the move publicly. This is no longer the party of the moral majority.
  3. Republican Representative Ben Sasse criticizes the RNC for funding Roy Moore once more, and says he’ll pull out of the fundraising arm of the committee if they keep it up.
  4. Paul Ryan says Roy Moore should drop out of the race, while Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Trump has the highest level respect for women (after Trump voiced support for Moore).
  5. Coordination between the RNC and the president is at a low, with Trump not realizing he is the leader of the party.
  6. Trump’s voter fraud commission, headed by Kris Kobach, wants to create a centralized database that pulls together names, addresses, party affiliations, and partial security numbers for all voters in all states. Security and access to the database hasn’t been defined yet. This is similar to Kobach’s Crosscheck database, which has caused millions of voters to be accidentally dropped from the roles. States have tried to drop out but are finding it impossible.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Erik Prince and Oliver North (!) are trying to sell the administration on the idea of creating a secret spy network to protect us against our own government intelligence agencies.
  2. After the Access Hollywood tape was released, GOP donors reportedly asked the RNC how much they would have to pay Trump for him to drop out of the election. Mike Pence and Reince Priebus also reportedly made a plan for succession, with Pence running for president and Condoleeza Rice being his running mate.
  3. Trump’s lawyers argue that the defamation suit brought against him by one of his sexual harassment accusers should be thrown out because Trump’s attacks against his accusers falls under protected speech.
  4. The Veterans Affairs Secretary, David Shulkin, holds a DC event touting Trump’s promise to house homeless vets. Then four days later, the Veterans Affairs agency cut resources from a program that dramatically reduced homelessness for sick and vulnerable vets. After some blowback, Trump reverses this decision.
  5. There are protests across the country in support of net neutrality and against FCC chair Ajit Pai’s attempt to get rid of it.
  6. Trump rolls back another Obama administration safety rule, this one requiring that trains shipping highly explosive liquids be equipped with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes by 2021. This rule was put in place to prevent the explosive train wrecks we’ve seen in recent years.
  7. Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, defends the FBIs integrity to the House Judiciary Committee after Trump tweeted that the agency is in tatters.

Polls:

  1. Trump hits a new all-time low in the Pew Research poll, with an approval rating of 32%.
  2. 70% of Americans think Congress should investigate Trump for sexual harassment accusations.
  3. 59% of Americans think Trump’s team had improper contacts with Russia during the campaign.
  4. 57% think Mueller is fair in his handling of the investigation.

Week 45 in Trump

Posted on December 4, 2017 in Politics, Trump

Trump says Merry Christmas and then claims that the war on Christmas is over. Finally… I thought that war would never end. Or was it ever a war in the first place?

Russia:

  1. We find out that Mueller has interviewed Jared Kushner about meetings with Michael Flynn in December.
  2. Legislators and their aides say that over the summer, Trump pressured committee members to wrap up their investigations into Russian interference in our elections. The people he pressured include Richard Burr, Mitch McConnell, and Roy Blunt, among others.
  3. Mueller brings the fourth indictment in the Russia probe, this time against former national security advisor Michael Flynn. Flynn pleads guilty to lying to the FBI about discussing sanctions with Russian officials last December.
  4. Flynn is the second person to enter a guilty plea in the investigation, causing speculation that he is cooperating with Mueller.
  5. Lying might seem like a small crime but he lied about negotiating with the Russians against U.S. policy and U.S. interests before Trump took office and after we knew that Russia interfered in our election.
  6. Flynn’s admission brings other campaign officials into question. After he spoke with the Russian ambassador about sanctions, Flynn called one or more senior members of the transition team while they were at Mar-a-Lago with Trump. They discussed his meeting with Ambassador Kislyak and sanctions Obama imposed on Russia.
  7. While she was on Trump’s transition team, K.T. McFarland emailed a friend saying that Russia threw the election to Trump. McFarland went on to become deputy national security advisor for a bit.
  8. Trump responds to Flynn’s guilty plea in a number of ways… in tweets, of course. He attacks the FBI, saying they’re in tatters. He attacks the FBI and DOJ for not investigating Clinton thoroughly enough. He also says he fired Flynn because Flynn lied to the vice-president, which implies that Trump knew about Flynn’s interactions with Russians, knew that he lied to Pence, and then he asked James Comey to let the Flynn thing go AFTER he knew about the lies.
  9. Trump’s lawyer says he composed that tweet, and then goes on to say that a president cannot be guilty of obstruction because he’s the chief law enforcement officer. Apparently forgetting that both Nixon and Clinton had articles of impeachment against them for exactly that.
  10. Among the documents turned over to investigators is an email from an operative with ties to the NRA who said during the campaign that he could arrange a back-channel meeting with Trump and Putin. He said Russia was “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.” and wanted to make contact at the N.R.A.’s annual convention.
  11. Even though he “recused” himself from the Russia investigation, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes is pulling together contempt charges against the FBI and DOJ for not cooperating with requests for information by congressional committees. Both the FBI and DOJ say they’re complying fully.
  12. Paul Manafort reaches an $11 billion bail agreement with Mueller, getting rid of his ankle bracelet and putting up several real estate properties as collateral.
  13. We learn that Mueller got rid of one of his investigators last summer over anti-Trump texts. The right uses the firing of Peter Strzok to “prove” that Mueller’s investigation is tainted. The left says it shows he’s keeping bias out of the picture.
  14. The Senate Judiciary Committee is building an obstruction of justice case against Trump.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Subpoenas go out to 23 Trump businesses over the emoluments clause.
  2. Jeff Sessions picks Kellyanne Conway to head up the White House response to the opioid crisis.

Healthcare:

  1. Six members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) resign. They say they can’t effectively work under a president who just doesn’t care about addressing AIDS or HIV.

International:

  1. North Korea tests an ICBM that it says can reach the U.S. mainland.
  2. Ivanka takes a trip to India for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. Tillerson declines to send a high-level State Department delegation along with her.
  3. Rumors abound that Trump plans to replace Tillerson with CIA director Mike Pompeo, and then to appoint Senator Tom Cotton to the position of CIA director. Trump denies all this.
  4. The board of the UK’s Social Mobility Commission resign, saying it’s impossible to work on issues around social mobility as long as the government is focused on Brexit. The board members accuse the government of abandoning the people who voted for Brexit and of not doing anything to change the conditions that led to the vote.
  5. The U.S. pulls out of the UN’s global compact on migration, saying it undermines our sovereignty, but the likely reason is that it was created under Obama. The compact helps refugees migrate in an orderly way instead of the haphazard way that occurred over the past several years.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. After Trump tweets that there will be no deal in their scheduled meeting, Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer skip a meeting with Trump and Republican leaders about government funding. Pelosi and Schumer say they’ll work directly with Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan instead.
  2. After they skip the meeting, Trump accuses them of pettiness, though one could easily say his tweet was pretty petty.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump shares inflammatory posts from a member of the far-right group Britain First (you might remember the group from the guy who killed an MP last year shouting “Britain First!”). The posts are anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant videos, one of which turns out to be ISIS propaganda and the other two of which didn’t reflect the message that went along with them.
  2. Britain First is labeled an extremist group that targets Muslims and mosques. IMO, our president shouldn’t be spreading dangerous, extremist propaganda. Our president should be better than that.
  3. His tweets draw a quick rebuke from British politicians, including Theresa May. Which starts a brief war of words between the two leaders. Trump responds by implying May isn’t taking care of “Radical Islamic Terrorism.”
  4. Of note, the woman who originally posted these videos is on trial for hate crimes.
  5. In response to criticism of the videos, Sarah Huckabee Sanders says it doesn’t matter if the videos are real because the threat is real and we need to strengthen our borders. Soooo we should be making policy based on ISIS propaganda and falsified events. Great.
  6. And props to Trump. Britain First gets an increase in supporters. Good job.
  7. The British parliament holds an animated discussion about whether Trump should be allowed to visit and about his fitness. One member suggests that Trump should delete his Twitter account.
  8. In his World AIDS day statement, Trump fails to mention the LGBTQ community, even though they are disproportionately affected.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Barry Meyers, Trump’s pick to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), breaks from the administration’s party line and says that he agrees climate change is caused primarily by humans.
  2. Trump announces plans to reduce the size of the Bears Ears National Monument by 85% and the Grand Staircase-Escalante by more than previously announced. These were designated by Obama and Bill Clinton, respectively. He plans to:
    • Split the Grand Staircase-Escalante into three different areas – Grand Staircase National Monument, Kaiparowits National Monument, and Escalante Canyons National Monument.
    • Split Bears Ears into two areas – Indian Creek National Monument and the Shash Jaa National Monument.
  3. The EPA holds its only listening session about repealing the Clean Power Plan in Charleston, West Virginia. Coal Country. Around 230 people attend and only about 30 of them support the repeal. The Clean Power Plan regulates coal plan emissions.
  4. Moody’s is about to make climate change very relevant to coastal and low elevation cities, including in some red states (specifically George, Florida, Mississippi, and Texas). Moody’s says they’ll rate municipal bonds in at-risk areas based on how prepared they are to mitigate the effects of climate change. This could hurt those areas economically unless they comply.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Two people show up on Monday to run the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFBB). One is Trump’s pick to head the agency, OMB director Mick Mulvaney, and the other is Leandra English, who is next in succession according to the CPFB bylaws. A Trump-appointed federal judge rules in favor of the presidential power to fill vacancies and Mulvaney becomes the acting director in the end.
  2. Of note, Mulvaney has sharply criticized this bureau and thinks it stifles financial institutions. Because how can banks make money if they can’t fuck over the populace, amiright?
  3. On top of the cost of recovering from hurricane Maria, Puerto Rican manufacturers could be hit with another economic problem The House tax bill includes a 20% tax on Puerto Rican goods shipped to the mainland. This could decimate their manufacturing sector.
  4. Trump gives a pro-tax reform speech in Missouri. Here are some Tax Policy Center findings disputing some of the points he made:
    • Only 20% of the tax savings would go to the 60% of people making $87,000 or less.
    • 63% of the savings would go to the 20% of people making 150,000 or more.
    • 25% of the savings would go to the 5% of people making $303,000 or more.
    • Despite the good job reports, job growth this year has been slightly less than last year.
    • Trump is right that economic growth has been strong over the last two quarters.
  1. The Senate Budget Committee votes to advance the Senate tax plan to the floor on a party-line vote. In a no-debate, no-hearing process. While looking protesters with disabilities in the eye.
  2. Several Republican Senators express concerns about the Senate bill for varying reasons. Bob Corker thinks it adds too much to the deficit, Ron Johnson worries it doesn’t do enough for small businesses, others worry that their constituents will lose their healthcare coverage, and yet others worry that it will raise taxes on the middle class.
  3. The first vote, on Thursday, is halted when the Senate parliamentarian finds it doesn’t pass requirements. The bill had a clause that said if the tax cuts caused the deficit to increase too much, it would trigger an increase in individual taxes. Not good enough to get past the $1 trillion it was predicted to add to the deficit.
  4. On Friday, Senate Republicans scramble to make deals and get in last-minute changes, and ultimately deliver nearly 500 pages, giving Senators a few hours to read it before the vote. Some of the pages are so fresh, the changes are written in cursive in the margins and some of the words get cut off by the copy machine.
  5. Lobbyists get copies of the marked up bill before the Senators who have to vote on it.
  6. After much deal-making, the bill passes the full Senate in the wee hours Saturday morning. Here’s how they brought in some hold-outs:
    • Susan Collins gets promises of future bills to make sure people don’t lose healthcare and to reduce premiums.
    • Jeff Flake gets a promise that the situation of the Dreamers will be taken care of with a clean bill.
    • Steve Daines and Ron Johnson got a deeper tax break for pass-through corporations.
    • Lisa Murkowski gets to exploit the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) by opening it up to drilling and mining.
  1. THE AARP releases a report showing that millions of seniors’ taxes will go up under the Senate tax plan.
  2. Despite Steve Mnuchin’s repeated assurances that he had a hundred analysts working on the tax bill ramifications, there is no report from the Treasury Department. Normally, the administration would release a report supporting their economic assertions, especially given that most independent analysts have refuted the claims made by the GOP.
  3. The Treasury Department’s inspector general launches an inquiry into what happened at Treasury. Did they create a report and hide it? Did they even create a report? Did they do any analytics?
  4. Here’s a couple random things the bill includes:
    • A repeal of the Johnson amendment, so your priest can tell you who to vote for.
    • Wording that gives personhood to fetuses.
    • Opening ANWR to drilling and mining.
    • A tax on private university endowments except for Hillsdale College, which is funded by the DeVos family.
  1. Marco Rubio says we’ll make up the deficit by cutting Medicare and Social Security down the road.
  2. Republicans have been very candid about the fact that their largest donors have threatened to stop funding the party if they don’t get tax reform through. Some continue to say this is for the people, but big donors get the biggest tax breaks. See the quotes at the end of this recap.
  3. The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation releases their report on the cost of the tax bill an hour after the vote, which means they passed the bill without knowing the economic ramifications.
  4. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities publishes a new report finding that 27% of the Bush tax cuts benefited the wealthiest 1%.
  5. Trump thinks a government shutdown would benefit him politically, saying he’ll just blame it on the Democrats and use it as leverage to get funding for his wall.

Elections:

  1. A 1982 federal consent decree in New Jersey on voter rights expires, though the judge says it can be re-opened if violations against voters come up again. The decree was put in place when the Republican National Party was found guilty of voter intimidation and harassment and the RNC was barred from any activity that suppressed the vote. Yes, folks, the Republican party has been trying to suppress minority votes for at least 36 years.
  2. Senator Lindsey Graham says his party should learn something from nominating someone like Roy Moore.
  3. A retired Marine starts a write-in campaign to oppose Roy Moore in Alabama. Apparently there have been a large number of requests on how to write-in a new candidate.
  4. Trump endorses alleged child molester Roy Moore for Senate. Other Republicans who had come out against Moore because of the accusations (like Mitch McConnell) soften their stance and say they’ll let the people of Alabama decide.
  5. The Office of the Special Counsel begins investigating Kellyanne Conway over violations of the Hatch Act for using her office to campaign for alleged pedophile Roy Moore.
  6. Trump pushes Orrin Hatch to run again, likely because he wants to keep Mitt Romney out of the Senate.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump’s ethics lawyer resigns.
  2. Trump continues to bring up conspiracy theories in private, to name a few:
    • He questions the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate.
    • He says millions of undocumented immigrants voted for Hillary.
    • He says that the Russian investigation will exonerate him by Christmas.
    • He says that the Access Hollywood tape isn’t his voice despite previously saying it was. People around him say he’s convinced it isn’t his voice.
  1. Jeff Flake is the only GOP member of Congress calling him out on these things, while others shake their head and chuckle or refuse to go on record.
  2. Fox News goes off the air for good in the United Kingdom.
  3. Trump arrives in New York City for some fundraisers and is greeted by chants of “Lock him up!” Ah, Mike Flynn’s favorite campaign chant. Look who’s getting locked up now, Mike.

Polls:

  1. One of our parties needs a little more introspection, IMO. Despite the fact that sexual harassment is apolitical (and despite the fact that Republicans have been involved in nearly twice as many (known) sex scandals since 1980):
    • 76% of Republicans think Democrats have a serious problem with sexual harassment.
    • 40% of Republicans think Republicans have a serious problem with sexual harassment.
    • 43% of Republicans think it’s not an issue within their own party.
    • 60% of Democrats think Democrats have a serious problem with sexual harassment.
    • 75% of Democrats think Republicans have a serious problem with sexual harassment.

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

With the passage of the tax bill, members of Congress have just given up on any pretense they’re looking out for our best interests. Here are a few quotes:

  1. Senator Chuck Grassley: “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” (Even if he’s right, one group is hoarding and one group is putting their money back into the economy.)
  2. Representative Chris Collins: “My donors are basically saying: ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.’”
  3. Senator Cory Gardner: “Donors are furious.”
  4. Senator Lindsey Graham: “The financial contributions will stop [if we don’t pass tax reform].”
  5. Senator Orrin Hatch, on why we can’t fund CHIP yet, says CHIP has done a “terrific job for people who really need the help” and then “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.” (Yes, those lazy-ass 8-year-olds who won’t help themselves…)
  6. Representative Steve Scalise: “Every time we’ve cut taxes you’ve seen the economy take off.” (Conveniently overlooking the tax cuts during George W. Bush’s entire presidency.)
  7. Donald Trump: “You know, for years they have not been able to get tax cuts, many, many years since Reagan.” (Except for that one time under Clinton, and all those times under Bush, and that time under Obama, I guess.)

Week 44 in Trump

Posted on November 28, 2017 in Politics, Trump

This week, I’m thankful for much-needed vacations. Which means this week’s recap is short and sweet. I do want to highlight my favorite story of the week though…

In a meeting with Democratic Senators on tax reform, Gary Cohn fakes a bad connection to get Trump off the call. Senator Tom Carper said “We’re not going to have a real conversation here – can’t you just tell the president that he is brilliant and say we’re losing … the connection and then hang up?” So Cohn did just that.

If this is how advisors and members of Congress have to work with the president, what does it say about him? Anyway, here’s what else happened in week 44…

Russia:

  1. Mueller is now interested in Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) over meetings he had with Julian Assange in August. The Kremlin regards Rohrabacher as an intelligence source, and values him enough to give him a secret code name.
  2. In a sign he might be negotiating a deal with Mueller, Michael Flynn cuts ties with Trump’s lawyers.
  3. Mueller adds Michael Flynn’s business partner to the list of people he’s investigating.
  4. Jared Kushner’s role in the white house diminishes as he becomes further involved in the Russia investigation. Kushner says he’s just focusing on the important things and that there’s nothing to worry about.
  5. The FBI knew for at least a year that Russian hackers were trying to break into many U.S. officials’ gmail accounts, but the FBI never bothered to warn the targeted officials about it.

Courts/Justice:

  1. In yet another instance where state abortion laws ignore the the actual law, a federal court overturns Texas’s latest anti-abortion law.
  2. Police chiefs in several cities are frustrated by the DOJ’S hands-off approach to the consent decrees agreed to under Obama. These decrees were put in place to help police departments deal with problems of injustice and systemic prejudice.

International:

  1. Trump adds North Korea back to the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
  2. In the midst of impeachment hearings, Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe resigns after 37 years in power.
  3. About a dozen State Department officials formally accuse Secretary of State Tillerson of violating a federal law, in this case one to prevent enlisting child soldiers. He did this by excluding Iraq, Afghanistan, and Myanmar from a list of offenders.
  4. A few weeks ago, the prime minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, resigned suddenly citing issues with Iran and Hezbollah. Now he says he’s not resigning yet. Apparently the Iran-backed president of Lebanon urged him to rethink it.
  5. Despite coming out tough on Syria at the start of his term, Trump has pretty much ceded leadership on post-war planning to Putin. Putin hosts the leaders of Iran and Turkey in a planning meeting, and experts say Putin has won in Syria.
  6. Terrorists bomb a Sufi Mosque in Egypt, killing at least 305 people. Trump responds by saying we need to build that wall.
  7. Despite Clinton being criticized as Secretary of state for security issues, Tillerson not only refused to meet with his security director for most of this year, but he dismissed the director after one 5-minute meeting, leaving the security position empty.
  8. The Trump administration announces that the Palestinian diplomatic delegation in D.C. will be shut down, but then changes its mind and says it can stay open for at least 90 more days. After the initial decision, Abbas refuses a call from Kushner, referring him instead to the Palestinian Authority’s representative in Washington.
  9. Air Force General John Hyten, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), says if Trump made an illegal nuclear launch request, he would push back against it.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Even Congress gets a break over Thanksgiving…

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. While House Republicans oblige Trump’s request for hiring a large number of ICE officers, Senate Republicans don’t include funding for it in their version of the appropriations bill. Both houses included extra funding for Customs and Border Patrol though.
  2. The U.S. votes against a UN resolution that condemns the glorification of Nazism, basically saying that the U.S. values freedom of speech over condemning hate speech. The only two other countries to vote against it are Ukraine and Palau.
  3. Trump says what a great thing it is that women are speaking out about sexual misconduct (that is, except for those coming out against Roy Moore and those who came out against Trump himself).
  4. For the second time, a federal judge blocks Trump’s ban on transgender troops. This judge says that Trump’s tweets on the ban were “capricious, arbitrary, and unqualified.”
  5. Customs and Border Patrol confirms they were taken completely by surprise with Trump’s first executive order demanding a travel ban. It turns out that the Trump administration disobeyed a court order in its implementation of the initial travel ban.
  6. The DHS apparently tried to hide a damning report from its inspector general and hasn’t been complying with oversight efforts.
  7. A district court judge blocks an executive order that would cut funding to sanctuary cities, saying that Trump can’t change the conditions for funding that’s already approved by Congress.
  8. Trump speaks at an event to honor the Native American Code Talkers who served in WWII, and in doing so repeats his standard attack on Elizabeth Warren by calling her Pocahontas. He’s roundly criticized for using a racial slur at this event.

Puerto Rico:

  1. Trump withdraws the USNS Comfort hospital ship from Puerto Rico, even though the island is still largely without power.

Budget/Economy:

  1. 37 out of 38 economists say that the GOP House and Senate tax plans would increase the debt substantially faster than they would improve the economy. The sole economist who disagreed says he misread the question.
  2. According to the Tax Policy Center, 50% of Americans would see higher taxes by 2027 in the Senate tax plan.
  3. The house tax plan removes the $250 deduction teachers receive in order to buy school supplies; the Senate version doubles the deduction. (Remember that even with the deduction, teachers still pay most of this out of their own pockets.)
  4. A CBO analysis finds that the Senate tax plan hurts the poor. Here are some highlights:
    • People making $30,000 or less would pay more in taxes starting in 2019.
    • Starting in 2021, people making $40,000 or less would pay more.
    • After a decade, most people making $75,000 or less would pay more.
    • Millionaires and people making $100,000 to $500,000 get tax cuts all around.
    • The healthcare changes in the Senate bill would disproportionately affect the poor.
  5. The DOJ plans to sue to prevent the merger between AT&T and Time Warner. The DOJ requested that AT&T sell CNN as a precondition, but AT&T says no thanks.
  6. After the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) steps down, his deputy director becomes the acting director. But Trump uses a presidential power that lets him fill vacancies and appoints Mick Mulvaney, who is also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. So now the courts will have to decide who will lead the agency.
  7. The FCC announces plans to end net neutrality. This means that your internet service providers will be able to tier services much like your cable company, and this means you might have to pay to access your favorite sites. In response to states promising to protect net neutrality locally, the FCC also plans to prevent states from implementing their own net neutrality rules.
  8. The legalization of marijuana in the U.S. has brought the price down by two-thirds. You’d think that would discourage the Mexican cartels, but they just moved over to shipping us more heroin instead.

Elections:

  1. Trump pretty much endorses Roy Moore for Senate. He says, “We don’t need a liberal Democrat in that seat. He totally denies [the accusations], you have to listen to him also … we don’t need somebody soft on crime like [Doug] Jones.” Except that Doug Jones IS tough on crime. He prosecuted the KKK members who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church and he indicted the Atlanta Olympic bomber, for starters.
  2. Kellyanne Conway’s comments get her in trouble again with the Office of Government Ethics. The office accuses Conway of violating the Hatch Act when she attacked Alabama Senate candidate Doug Jones.
  3. There have so far been at least three different efforts to discredit Roy Moore’s accusers and the press covering the story:
    • A Twitter account, which has since been deleted, started a false story about a Washington Post reporter offering money for dirt on Moore.
    • A group sent out robocalls pretending to be WaPo reporters and again offering bribes for dirt on Moore.
    • A woman associated with Project Veritas contacted a WaPo reporter saying Moore had impregnated her when she was 15 and helped her get an abortion. Her facts didn’t check out though, and reporters later saw her entering Veritas’ offices. (Fun fact: Trump has made donations to Project Veritas.)

These all show an incredible lack of understanding of how real journalism works, and should show everyone how vigorously major newspapers research their stories.

Miscellaneous:

  1. One border patrol agent is killed and one badly wounded on the job, both apparently hit over the head and beaten.
  2. Trump’s current pick to lead the 2020 census is a professor who wrote a book on why competitive elections are a bad thing, which signals an effort to politicize the census.
  3. Representative Dave Trott (R-MI), who already announced he wouldn’t run for re-election, cites Trump as a factor in his decision.
  4. New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman is investigating the FCC for a scheme to corrupt the comment process on net neutrality, saying public commenters impersonated 100,000s of Americans.
  5. Trump spends Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago. Trump and the White House both say he’s working and very busy just an hour before he ends up on a golf course. Trump has golfed every 5.1 days of his presidency, even though he said he wouldn’t have time for that because he’d be busy working for us.
  6. Trump’s charitable foundation is in the process of shutting down. He agreed to do this last year to avoid conflicts of interest, but the foundation has also admitted to self-dealing (which means funneling charity funds to yourself, your business, or your family). For example, Trump’s golf club in Westchester County used Trump Foundation money to settle a lawsuit.
  7. Florida Democrat John Morgan says he’s leaving the party to be an independent, but also encourages Democrat Bill Nelson to leave Congress and run for governor.
  8. And in completely non-political news, Charles Manson dies. This is huge for people my age (or at least for me), because we grew up with him as the boogeyman and got scared out of our wits by Helter Skelter. Good riddance, Chuck.

Week 42 in Trump

Posted on November 13, 2017 in Politics, Trump

Here’s my plug for the week:

We all hate money in politics. We all think it’s corrupt. Maybe we can come together to force Congress to do something about it. The Citizens United decision makes sure that elected officials spend more time fundraising than they do legislating. A recent poll shows we agree:

  • 81% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans think Congress needs to get money out of politics.
  • 78% think we need “sweeping new laws to reduce the influence of money in politics.”
  • 80% think that money in politics is a bigger problem now than ever before.
  • 93% think their elected officials listen to donors more than to voters.

I recently used OpenSecrets.org to look into the founder of a company I do business with. He gives millions every year to candidates and causes I oppose. Millions. I can’t match that. Not even close. The bottom 95% of us can’t match the top 5%. So let’s put a stop to it. Here are some (mostly bipartisan) places to start if you want to help get this done:

Thanks for indulging me. Here’s what happened this week in politics…

Russia:

Update: I learned belatedly that Russian Lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya told NBC this week that she got some of the information she brought to the Trump Tower meeting with Don Jr. from Glenn Simpson. She received this information part of a case alleging money laundering against Russian company Prevezon in which Fusion GPS had been hired to do research.

  1. Here’s a recap of the Trump associates that we know had contacts with Russian officials during the campaign or transition: Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, J.D. Gordon, Michael Flynn (and his son), Wilbur Ross, and Jeff Sessions. There were 21 known meetings and at least 30 reported meetings. Additional associates knew about the meetings, including Corey Lewandowski and Trump himself. Might not have been such a big deal if they just ‘fessed up in the first place.
  2. Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya says that Trump Jr. asked for evidence that donations were made to Clinton’s campaign using money that had evaded U.S. taxes. She didn’t have any such evidence.
  3. Veselnitskaya also says that Trump Jr. said they’d look into rescinding the Magnitsky Act if Trump won the election.
  4. Robert Mueller interviews Stephen Miller, who attended the meeting in March of 2016 where Papadopoulos said he could arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin.
  5. Mueller questions witnesses about a meeting in September 2016 between Flynn and Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Cal), bringing a member of Congress into the probe for the first time. We don’t know what was discussed yet, but Kevin McCarthy (R-Cal), once said, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.”
  6. Corey Lewandowski, who previously had no recollection of conversations about Russia, now says Carter Page’s testimony has refreshed his memory and that he knew of Page’s trip to Russia in 2016 in which Page talked about the campaign with Russian officials.
  7. Trump’s bodyguard testifies that while Trump was in Russia, Trump’s hosts offered to send 5 women to his hotel room but Trump declined.
  8. Mueller requests documents relevant to the proposed Trump Tower in Moscow.
  9. Mueller has enough evidence on Flynn and his son to charge them both. Charges include money laundering, lying to federal agents, and what sounds like conspiracy to kidnap. Flynn allegedly agreed to forcibly remove a Turkish cleric from the U.S. to Turkey for $15 million.
  10. Jared Kushner didn’t disclose on his financial disclosure that a company he cofounded was partially funded by a Russian tech leader (Yuri Milner). Kushner said he never relied on Russian funding for his business ventures.
  11. Unrelated to Russia specifically, the DOJ seeks a plea agreement with Manafort’s son-in-law, Jeffrey Yohai, related to financial crimes involved with Manafort’s crimes.
  12. A federal judge places a gag order on the Manafort and Gates cases, forbidding them from making any public statements that could be prejudicial.
  13. Russian trolls made a final propaganda push as soon as our polls opened on Nov. 8, 2016. They used accounts that they had started years ago to build large followings on social media. These “sleeper” accounts issued very targeted and metered tweets with praise for Trump and contempt for Clinton. This lasted from the time the first polls opened to the time the last ones closed.
  14. Several of the Russian troll Twitter accounts that posted about our election also posted about Brexit, with a big push on voting day in Great Britain.
  15. On his Asia trip, Trump reiterates that he takes Putin at his word when he says Russia didn’t meddle in our elections, contradicting the findings of our intelligence agencies. He says again that there was no collusion.
  16. Trump then flip-flops and says that he believes Putin believes he didn’t meddle in the election, but that Trump himself is with our own intelligence agencies.
  17. Previous intelligence officials say they think Trump is being played by Putin.
  18. A group of House and Senate Republicans are working to discredit Mueller in order to force him out of the investigation. They say we’re in danger of a coup d’etat. They’re trying to tie Mueller to the 2010 Uranium One sale, Bill Clinton’s speeches in Russia, and the Steele dossier. The main players here are Representatives Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Louie Gohmert (R-TX).
  19. It’s reported that Trump asked CIA Director Pompeo to meet with a conspiracy theorist who claims that the DNC leaked their own emails instead of the Russians hacking and releasing them. Even Pompeo says that’s wrong, though he once testified that Russia was unsuccessful in its attempts to meddle in our elections. The CIA later walked that back.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A year after his election, Trump has filled eight appellate judges, more than any other president at this point in their term since Nixon. A ninth is in the midst of approval right now.
  2. Just before Trump took office, lawyers joining his administration came up with a plan to fill federal appeals courts with young and conservative judges in order to take advantage of this chance to reshape our judiciary. They started by filling open seats where Democrats in Trump-supporting states are up for re-election next year so they’d feel pressure to approve his nominees.
  3. The Senate Judiciary committee approves Brett Talley, nominated by Trump for a lifetime judgeship. Talley is a lawyer and far-right blogger who has never tried a case.

Healthcare:

  1. The White House prepares an executive order that would loosen the requirement that all Americans have health insurance.
  2. The attempts at discouraging people from signing up for the ACA aren’t working. A record number of people signed up in the first week, with 600,000 signing up in just the first four days. Enrollment this year lasts half as long as last year, though some states will allow signups into January.
  3. The Department of Health and Human Services says states can require Medicaid recipients to work in order to receive benefits even though over 70% of recipients are disabled and many of them can’t work.
  4. In a referendum, Maine voters vote to expand Medicaid under the ACA. Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, has refused the expansion ever since the ACA passed, and now says he’ll refuse to implement the voters’ referendum.
  5. Even though Notre Dame fought the ACA requirement to cover birth control in its insurance plans, the school announces they’ll continue coverage through a third party, just like they have ever since the ACA passed.
  6. Five states file a preliminary injunction against the rollback of the birth control mandate of the ACA, calling it unconstitutional and discriminatory.

International:

  1. Trumps spends the week in Asia, meeting with his counterparts in Japan, China, South Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
  2. Trump asks Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe if Japan could start making cars in the United States. Which they‘ve been doing for decades.
  3. Trump says Japan could shoot down North Korea’s missiles if they bought American military equipment.
  4. Trump says he doesn’t blame China for what he perceives as one-sided trade deals; he blames previous administrations pretty much for being spineless.
  5. Trump meets with the Philippines’ Duterte on the last days of his trip, ending his trip the way it started—amid protests.
  6. Last week, I missed reporting that the Prime Minister of Lebanon resigned, citing an inability to unify the different religious factions of his government. Now rumors abound that Saudi Arabia is behind this and that the prime minister is a prisoner there. There’s speculation that Saudi Arabia is making a bolder move against Iran.
  7. The Trump administration imposes new travel sanctions on Cuba, rolling back Obama’s opening up of travel to the country. Americans are once again restricted on why they can travel there, and on where they can stay and spend their money in Cuba.
  8. The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) leader says Trump is hurting diplomacy by cutting senior diplomats and officials in the State Department. The expertise and experience of the exiting officials will be hard (if not impossible) to replace.
  9. Interest in joining the Foreign Service has declined steeply this year.
  10. On top of all that, Tillerson announces plans to offer more buyouts to staff.
  11. A 7.3 earthquake shocks the Iraq/Iran border, killing more than 450.
  12. After spending 10 months learning about the Middle East, Trump’s team begins drafting their peace plan.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Paul Ryan sets a new record for the most closed rules in a session with a total of 49. A closed rule process prevents legislators from proposing amendments to a bill, and Ryan hasn’t let one bill go through the amendment process. He’s the only speaker in modern history to completely forego the open process. So enough already with the “Democrats are obstructing” complaint.
  2. Senate Democrats introduce the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017, a bill to “ban the sale, transfer, manufacture and importation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.”
  3. Senators plan to draft a bill that would force all military branches to report domestic violence instances to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The system failed at many points to prevent the Sutherland Springs shooter from obtaining a weapon. The Air Force didn’t report the shooter’s domestic violence background, and the Pentagon says that military branches have failed to report the outcomes of criminal cases to the background check system for decades.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The DHS ends Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Nicaraguans who were allowed into the U.S. in 1998 after Nicaragua was hit by a hurricane. Their status has been routinely renewed for the 19 years they’ve been here, but now they either need to leave or apply for permanent status.
  2. Under the same review, the DHS allows Hondurans here under the same program to stay, with their status to be evaluated at a later time. There are also a number of Haitians and Salvadorans here under TPS.
  3. Trump’s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, puts pressure on Elaine Duke of the DHS to expel the Hondurans who are in the U.S. under TPS, but she declines.
  4. There are around 300,000 immigrants here under TPS who could be deported if their status isn’t renewed. They’ve been here long enough to build lives, careers, and families, including around 275,000 children born in the U.S.
  5. Dozens of DACA applications were delayed by the Postal Service and arrived a day late, even though they were sent weeks in advance. So far, those applications have been rejected, but lawyers are suing to get them accepted.
  6. Under Trump, an estimated 1,400 veterans have been deported.
  7. Illustrating the growing white nationalist sentiment in Europe and the U.S., 60,000 white nationalists march on Poland’s independence day. They want to cleanse Poland of Jews, Muslims, and gay people.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Syria announces they’ll join the Paris climate agreement, leaving the U.S. as the sole climate change denier.
  2. Trump wasn’t invited to the climate change summit later this year in France.
  3. A proposal from the Trump administration would force markets to guarantee profits to coal-fired and nuclear power plants that aren’t doing well in competitive electricity markets. This is most interesting because the GOP has long complained about subsidies for renewable energies while at the same time fossil fuel subsidies have been through the roof.
  4. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) proposes legislation to open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling. Because it’s part of the Budget Resolution, it only requires 51 votes to pass in the Senate.
  5. Senate Democrats call for an investigation into the EPA for their plan to remove independent scientists from advisory boards and replace them instead with scientists from the industries they’re supposed to oversee (fossil fuels and chemicals, mostly).
  6. Documents show that Duke Energy edited reports from professors they hired to study the impact of coal ash ponds on groundwater safety. The professors were supposed to work independently of the company, but emails show they coordinated their work.
  7. Despite last week’s report that manmade climate change is the real deal, the EPA’s Scott Pruitt continues to dismantle the Clean Power Plan. Pruitt says the report is part of the ongoing climate debate.
  8. Filling the void at the federal level, a group of U.S. businessmen and state and local government officials attend the Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, where they showcase their coalition’s plans to meet our commitments to mitigate climate change.

Budget/Economy:

  1. According to the Tax Policy Center’s corrected analysis of the tax plan:

In 2018, 76% of taxpayers would see a tax cut of $1,900 on average, and 7% would see an increase of around $2,100. The top 1% of earners would see the biggest increase. In 2027, 59% of taxpayers would see a tax cut of about $2,300, and 25% would see an increase of about $2,100. The lowest earning 25% would have the greatest percent decrease, while those earning in the 90-95th income percentile would see the greatest increase (largely due to the loss of deductions like state and local taxes). The number of people using itemized deductions would fall by 75% in 2018 and by 65% in 2027.

  1. The CBO says the tax plan will add $1.7 trillion to the debt over the next decade.
  2. The tax plan would discourage post-grad work for college students by taxing them on their tuition waivers.
  3. The Senate releases their tax package, which differs from the House version on some key issues:
    • Delays cutting the corporate tax from 35% to 20% until 2019.
    • Keeps seven brackets instead of reducing them to four.
    • Keeps the estate tax but also doubles the exemption amount.
    • Keeps the mortgage interest deduction.
    • Eliminates the state and local tax deduction.
  1. Trump says that the new tax plan would kill him.
  2. Over 400 of America’s wealthiest sign on to a letter to Congress urging them not to cut their taxes.
  3. In revealing the ways the wealthy save their money, the Paradise Papers also show that U.S. Universities send money overseas to avoid taxes, using offshore accounts to invest in things like oil, gas, and coal.
  4. After months of putting up with Trump’s efforts to renegotiate NAFTA, agricultural groups start fighting to save the agreement. NAFTA has been beneficial to the U.S. ag business, just as TPP would have been. According to one association leader, “The importance of trade to economic growth in the food and ag sector is so fundamental that there tends to be an assumption that everyone understands that.” Obviously, not everybody does.
  5. Hours after Trump says (on his Pacific Rim tour) that we won’t be “taken advantage of anymore” by poor trade agreements, 11 Pacific Rim nations announce key agreements on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement without us.
  6. China also moves ahead on a potential deal with 16 other Asian countries, and the European Union and Japan are working on trade deals with a group of South American countries that includes Brazil and Argentina.
  7. The Department of Education plans to offer buyouts to 255 employees after already cutting about 8% of its staff this year. Betsy DeVos’s budget cuts $9.2 billion from the education budget and gets rid of teacher training and college prep programs. Of course it invests in charter schools and vouchers. Congress will likely restore any cuts she makes.
  8. The DOJ tells AT&T and Time Warner that if they want their merger to go through, they have to sell off CNN.

Elections:

  1. Democrats make gains in state and local elections across the country, winning the top offices in New Jersey and Virginia, several mayoral elections, and turning one (possibly two) state houses Democrat (there are some recounts in VA). People of color, especially women of color, and openly LGBT people make big gains in elected office.
  2. Four women accuse Republican candidate for Alabama Senate, Roy Moore, of sexual misconduct that allegedly occurred when they were teenagers and Moore was in his 30s.
  3. Trump and Republicans continue to support Moore, using a variety of justifications: They call the accusations unproven; they cast doubt on the women’s reliability (though Moore’s colleagues also say he dated teenagers while in his 30s); and my favorite, a pastor says that Joseph and Mary had the same age difference.
  4. Republicans consider alternatives to Moore, like fielding a write-in candidate or pushing back the election date. They did stop fundraising for Moore, and Mitch McConnell says Moore needs to step down if the allegations are true.
  5. Remember Trump’s voter fraud commission? Committee member Matt Dunlap files a federal suit against the commission saying that Democrats on the committee aren’t being kept apprised of what’s going on.

Miscellaneous:

  1. It’s amazing how quickly rumors sped around that Rand Paul’s attacker was a deranged Democrat. Turns out they just had neighbor issues. But Paul is hurt pretty badly and won’t be back to work for a bit.
  2. The U.S. is one of only three countries that protects the right to bear arms in its constitution.
  3. Trump says the Texas shooting is a mental health issue. Of note, in February the GOP Congress and Trump rescinded a rule that would prevent some mentally disabled people from getting guns.
  4. Representative Ted Lieu (R-Cal) walks out of a moment of silence in the House for the victims of the Texas shooting. Lieu says he can no longer stay silent about gun violence and it’s time for Congress to take action. His short time in office has seen three of the worst mass shootings in the U.S.
  5. After a cooling off period, talks stall in Congress over banning bump stocks like the one used in the Las Vegas shootings. Bump stocks are also being sold again after a brief pause.
  6. Remember when Carl Icahn quietly left his role as Trump’s special advisor on regulatory reform? Well, this week New York state attorneys issue his company several subpoenas around his actions in the market during the time he was advising Trump.
  7. Trump ends the Warrior Canine Connection program, which trains service dogs for wounded veterans and their families. They’ve been partnering with military facilities since 2009. Trainers and puppy raisers at Fort Belvoir and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center were given less than a day to vacate their offices with no reason given.
  8. Mental health professional send a “duty to warn” letter to Congress about Trump’s fitness for office.
  9. The FBI database of gun buyers is missing millions of criminal and mental health records that would prevent some people from getting guns. Agencies responsible for sending the information simply haven’t been doing it.
  10. And now for a little good news, the DOJ is liquidating Bernie Madoff’s companies and distributing recovered funds to his victims. They’ll likely get back about 75% of their losses. It’s still a loss, but at least not a complete loss.

Polls:

  1. 8% of Trump voters say they’d vote for a generic Democrat in 2020.
  2. After Virginia’s elections, 51% of voters say their vote was partially because of Trump. 34% voted in opposition Trump; 17% voted in support of Trump.
  3. Only 32% of voters in counties that Trump won think the country is better off now; 41% say it’s worse off; and 53% don’t think Trump has a clear agenda.
  4. 65% of Americans don’t think Trump has accomplished much as president.
  5. The percentage of Americans who are very concerned about Trump-Russia contacts rises from 27% in July to 44% today.

Week 41 in Trump

Posted on November 6, 2017 in Politics, Trump

Getty Images

Another mass shooting ends the week, this one being the fourth most deadly shooting in the U.S. and a real small-town tragedy. The shooter, who was discharged from the Air Force for bad conduct around a domestic dispute, entered a church in small Texas town and killed 26 people. On his way out, a local shot at him and he took off in his car. The brave local chased him, the shooter crashed his car, and he was later found dead. If the Air Force had correctly registered his domestic assault charge, the shooter might not have been able to get his hands on a gun.

Here’s what else happened in week 41…

Russia:

Mueller’s Charges and Legal Documents:

The first of the charges in Mueller’s investigation come out, along with evidentiary documents. Here’s what comes from all that:

  1. Mueller unveils 12 counts against Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates, including conspiracy against the U.S., conspiracy to launder money, FARA violations, false statements, and failure to report financial information.
  2. Trump tweets a response that this shows there was “no collusion,” which might have been a little premature, because an hour later George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign’s former foreign policy advisor, pleads guilty to making a false statement to the FBI.
  3. Documents show that Corey Lewandowski was also involved in discussions with Papadopoulos about Russia meetings.
  4. Carter Page (also a foreign policy advisor to the campaign) says he spoke about Russia with Papadopoulos after originally denying it, and he also testifies that he told Sessions about a trip he took to Russia during the campaign. During this July 2016 trip, he met with Russian government officials. Remember, Sessions testified under oath to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he didn’t have any knowledge of Russian contact with the campaign.
  5. Page emailed campaign staff about his findings from the trip, which were read at testimony
  6. An email from Manafort to a campaign official says about the trips to Russia, “We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”
  7. Manafort has a trial date in May of 2018.
  8. Rick Gates was also being paid by the RNC for political strategy services.
  9. Sam Clovis, who was about to go up for confirmation to the post of top scientist of the Department of Agriculture (even though he has no science background, but that’s another story), withdraws his nomination. It turns out he testified to the grand jury the previous week, which the White House didn’t find out until the media broke the news.
  10. An email chain shows that Clovis discussed the potential Russia meetings with Papadopoulos, and Clovis is referenced in the court filing. And according to Papadopoulos’ plea agreement, Clovis impressed on him that relations with Russia were a primary focus of their foreign policy efforts.
  11. Here’s a timeline of Russian contact to help you keep it all straight.
  12. The Papadopoulos plea agreement and supporting documents reveal:
    • He met with a Russian agent (the Professor) in March of 2016 (after Papadopoulos knew he would be a foreign policy advisor for Trump’s campaign).
    • The Professor was only interested in him after finding out he was working with Trump’s campaign.
    • In April of 2016, the Professor told him that Russian agents have dirt on Clinton (a month after Papadopoulos joined Trump’s campaign).
    • The Professor then told him that the Russians had emails on Clinton, thousands of emails.
    • A person at the March 2016 meeting where Papadopoulos brought up meeting with the Putin says Trump didn’t dismiss the idea but Jeff Sessions did object.
    • In July 2016, Papadopoulos sent an email to his Russian contact the saying the meeting had been approved.
    • The above implies that the Trump campaign knew about the hacked emails long before they were released. And while both Trump and Jeff Sessions deny any knowledge of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, the latest court documents indicate otherwise.
    • Papadopoulos has been cooperating with the investigation since July 2017.
  1. Jeff Sessions led the foreign policy group that Papadopoulos was part of.
  2. Interesting note: It was Jared Kushner and Ivanka who pushed for Trump to hire Manafort to the campaign.
  3. Also of note: Despite attempts by certain parties to draw the dossier into question, none of the charges revealed this week stemmed from the dossier.
  4. Trump, conservative media, and some GOP politicians try to deflect attention off the charges by belittling Papadopoulos’ role in the campaign, by saying Manafort‘s crimes occurred long before Manafort was part of the campaign, and by focusing attention on Obamacare, Hillary Clinton, Democrats, the Fusion GPS dossier, tax cuts, the uranium deal, and Mueller’s (made up) conflict of interest.
  5. Jared Kushner provides Mueller with documents related to his potential role in obstructing justice.
  6. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) introduces a House resolution saying Mueller has a conflict of interest because he worked at the FBI with James Comey and he worked there when the Uranium One deal went through. A deal that had nothing to do with Mueller or the FBI. How did Mueller go from the perfect investigator for all sides to being compromised in the GOP’s view?
  7. Tony Podesta steps down from his role at The Podesta Group. Even though the firm wasn’t named in the indictments and so far there are no accusations of wrong-doing, they worked with Manafort in the past to help improve the Ukrainian government’s image.

And The Rest of Russia Things:

  1. I‘m compiling a list of the fake stories and ads pushed by Russian troll farms to interfere with our elections just to see how many I saw last year. Here’s the first few. Feel free to add more in the comments if you know of any I missed.
  2. And since we’re on fake news, former FBI agent Clint Watts says Russia’s been using this strategy to manipulate us since 2014. He testifies again to the Senate this week.
  3. A Russian troll farm created a persona named Jenna Abrams in 2014. She built a solid base and, once established, she began posting divisive propaganda. Russia created a fake “real American” who showed up in most major news outlets.
  4. Members of the Trump campaign followed Russian accounts on Twitter and shared their posts.
  5. Facebook, Twitter, and Google testify in three hearings to a Senate Judiciary sub-committee. Here’s what we learn there:
    • Russian trolls used Facebook accounts to instigate violence against social and political groups, including undocumented immigrants, Muslims, police officers, Black Lives Matter activists, and more.
    • Facebook exposed Russia-linked pages to 126 million Americans, slightly less than the number that actually voted.
    • The posts by Russian trolls focused on our divisions in order to spread discord—primarily around race, religion, gun rights, and LGBTQ issues.
    • The posts also targeted users based on where they live, race, religion, and political leanings.
    • Instagram exposed Russian ads to millions of their users also.
  1. Russian interests hold large stakes in Twitter and Facebook. Documents show that Yuri Milner, a Russian tech leader, invested in Facebook and Twitter through a Kushner associate and he has a stake in a company co-owned by Kushner.
  2. Russian hacking didn’t stop with U.S. Democrats. They targeted thousands of national and international government officials and defense contractors during a multi-year attempt to break into email accounts worldwide. They mostly targeted the U.S. and Ukraine.
  3. The DOJ says they have enough evidence to charge six Russian government officials who were involved in the DNC email hack.
  4. Billionaire and conservative funder Robert Mercer sells his stake in Breitbart to his daughter and steps down from his company in an effort to distance himself from Trump and the Russia probe. Mercer was also a big funder for Cambridge Analytica, which provided big data and demographic targeting services for the Trump campaign.
  5. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross has a stake in a shipping venture with Putin’s son-in-law, which Ross didn’t disclose during his confirmation process.
  6. It’s proven that Guccifer 2.0 modified some of the campaign emails leaked on Wikileaks.

Courts/Justice:

  1. After the New York City terror attack, Trump calls our justice system a joke and a laughing stock. He then calls for the terrorist to be sent to Gitmo, but then recants when he learns that our justice system is actually faster and more efficient.
  2. Trump interferes in two cases: one for the New York terrorist and one for Bowe Bergdahl.
    • Trump calls for the terrorist to be sentenced to death, which experts say will now likely not happen in order to avoid the perception of the president having undue influence.
    • The judge in the Bowe Bergdahl trial gave him a dishonorable discharge with no time served, which Trump criticized as light. But the judge was likely trying to prevent the appearance of undue influence after Trump made inflammatory comments about the case, which Bergdahl’s lawyers continually argued made it impossible to have a fair trial.
  1. Trump’s influence over the DOJ is further questioned after he refuses to rule out firing Jeff Sessions if he won’t investigate the things Trump wants investigated. He wants Sessions to look into his adversaries (mostly Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren), setting up the DOJ for a breach of protocol if they follow through on it.
  2. While Congress is trying to pass more restrictive abortion bills, a federal court just struck down two abortion restrictions passed in Alabama
  3. A Cleveland court throws out all charges against 12 protestors at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Healthcare:

  1. Based on conflicting actions coming from the White House, there seems to be a battle going on over whether to save the ACA and if so, by how much:
    • The administration lets the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) send out notices with ACA enrollment reminders, man their call centers, and work to enroll the currently uninsured. They also made the plans publicly available a week in advance so consumers could preview them.
    • At the same time, the administration ended ACA enrollment partnerships across the country, ended insurance subsidies, discouraged Congress from passing a bill that would stabilize the markets, and cut the budget for outreach and assistance by 90%.
  1. The IRS announces that it will continue to fully enforce the mandate that everyone have insurance.
  2. The House and Senate agree to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), but disagree on how to pay for it. The House version would be funded by 700,000 low-income people losing their insurance.

International:

  1. U.S. forces capture one of the terrorists who attacked the Benghazi compound in 2012.
  2. In defending the lack of staffing at the State Department, Trump says that the only who matters is him because he makes all the policy.
  3. The U.S. pulls out of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which is an effort to fight corruption in the energy market. The EITI requires countries to disclose fossil fuel and mining revenues.
  4. Trump starts his trip to Asia with a few days in Hawaii, where he’s greeted by hundreds of protestors.
  5. Saudi Arabia arrests several princes in what they call an anti-corruption crackdown, but what really appears to be a consolidation of power.
  6. White House officials say that the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan might be reinstated. Trump got rid of the office shortly after taking office himself.
  7. Yet another set of confidential documents is leaked. The Paradise Papers include information about tax havens for the super rich and where they keep their money. The information touches on celebrities, government officials, Trump associates and cabinet members, businessmen, and corporations. Here’s a list, if you’re interested.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Trump signs a bill that repeals the Obama-era consumer protections that prevented financial institutions from forcing customers into arbitration clauses, preventing legal action in cases of wrongdoing against consumers.
  2. Senators Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) propose a bill that would require more disclosure in social media ads, specifically around who’s funding them.
  3. Here’s a little roundup of what Congress has been doing around women’s reproductive health. Do you see the problem here?
    • Making it harder to get birth control, and then…
    • Making it harder to get reproductive health and counseling services, and then…
    • Making it harder to get an abortion, and then…
    • Making it harder to adopt unwanted or orphaned children.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A federal judge blocks Trump’s transgender ban in the military from being fully enforced.
  2. Trump says Congress should end an immigration lottery program that the New York City terrorist used to come to the U.S., blaming the program on Chuck Schumer. Schumer was one of the Gang of 8 that worked on a bill to get rid of the program a few years ago. The Senate passed the bill, but it didn’t get through the GOP-led House.
  3. Lawyers sue to have ICE release the 10-year-old undocumented immigrant with cerebral palsy who was detained when she came out of gall bladder surgery. She’s finally released later in the week.
  4. After 62 venues refuse to host Milo Yiannopolous, he’s forced to cancel his public appearance.
  5. New York City passes a series of “sanctuary” bills to protect undocumented immigrants and to limit how city employees can work with ICE.
  6. Contractors that are building the wall prototypes south of San Diego are afraid they’ll lose business because of it (and they will). They want the DOJ to sue to prevent state and local governments from denying them contracts or divesting from their companies.
  7. These same contractors also want to be reimbursed for any security they provide and they want local authorities to provide protection as well.
  8. Mar-a-Lago gets permission to hire 70 foreign workers for the 2017-2018 season.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The White House approves a report concluding that climate change is real and manmade. At odds with their current stance on the subject. According to the report:

“Every day we see more evidence that climate change is dramatically affecting our planet. This week, we found out the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached its highest level in 800,000 years in 2016. The majority of Americans understand the seriousness of climate change, and they demand action. We need to invest in clean energy alternatives to fossil fuels and work toward a 100 percent clean energy system—not continue to let the fossil fuel industry make billions in profits and buy out politicians while destroying our planet.”

  1. The EPA bans scientists who receive grant money from serving on advisory panels, even though these advisors sign an agreement to not take any grant money during their time on the panel. It is expected that Scott Pruitt will replace these scientists with industry officials who have previously fought against EPA standards.
  2. New Mexico defeats an effort to remove jaguars from their endangered species list.
  3. The hole in the ozone layer shrinks to its smallest size since 1988, partly due to warmer weather and partly due to a united global effort to reduce ozone-depleting chemicals.
  4. The Trump administration has so far failed three times to repeal Obama’s methane emissions rules, foiled once by the Senate and twice by the courts. This has the gas and oil industry working to fill the void by creating voluntary programs to address the problem of emissions.

Budget/Economy:

  1. House Republicans release their tax package. I listed out a few details in a separate post because these recaps are getting long!
  2. Small businesses come out against the plan. 60% of Americans don’t think businesses will spend their tax savings on employees. Only 12% of Americans approve of the plan.
  3. Trump nominates Jerome Powell to head the Fed. He’s already on the board, so likely won’t change course much. He might be a little more business friendly.
  4. Out-of-work coal miners have training for new jobs freely available to them, but they aren’t taking it because they think their coal jobs are coming back.
  5. With monumental rebuilding efforts going on as a result of fires, floods, and hurricanes in the U.S., Trump slaps tariffs on imports of certain Canadian lumber, which will certainly cause an increase in costs. And it’s increasing tensions in already tense NAFTA negotiations.
  6. Trump throws a little influence into the stock market by tweeting “Would very much appreciate Saudi Arabia doing their IPO of Aramco with the New York Stock Exchange. Important to the United States!”

Elections:

  1. All eyes are on Virginia and New Jersey elections on the 7th, though there are state elections around the country going on at the same time.
  2. In what could be a case of the second worst timing ever (right behind the timing of Comey’s re-opening the Clinton email case last November), the week before the Virginia elections Donna Brazile releases an excerpt from her book where she implies that the DNC and Clinton campaigns colluded. It turns out she didn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know two years ago, and that both the Bernie and Hillary campaigns were made the same offer by the DNC. It probably wasn’t a fair deal, but the elections weren’t rigged. Her book comes out this week… on election day.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Some Fox employees express embarrassment and frustration over their network’s (nonexistent) coverage of the Russia charges revealed this week, with many saying they want to quit.
  2. An outgoing Twitter employee becomes a hero for a day when they briefly shut down Trump’s Twitter account.
  3. Far right media manufacture an antifa uprising for the weekend calling it a planned civil war. When the Civil War doesn’t happen, that same media makes fun of antifa for failing.
  4. Rand Paul‘s neighbor assaults him in his yard, breaking some ribs and bruising his lung. The reason for the attack isn’t yet known, though the neighbor is cooperating with police.
  5. Over half of Trump’s nominees have close ties to the industries they’re supposed to regulate.
  6. Bush Jr. and Sr. release a book in which Sr. calls Trump a blowhard and Jr. says Trump just fans anger and doesn’t understand the job.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s approval rating in the Gallup poll hits an all-time low of 33%.
  2. Almost 80% of Trump voters think he shouldn’t leave office even if the Russia allegations are proven. Even so, the number of Americans who think he should be impeached is greater than the number who think he shouldn’t be.
  3. Nearly half of Americans think Trump committed a crime.
  4. An ABC/WaPo poll says that 65% of Americans don’t think Trump has accomplished much.
  5. Trump’s “enemy of the people” rhetoric is sticking with some. 63% of Republicans think the press is the enemy of the people, followed by 38% of independents, and 11% of Democrats.

Week 40 in Trump

Posted on October 30, 2017 in Politics, Trump

If you were wondering why all sorts of stories about investigations into Clinton popped up this week, we found out on Friday that Mueller filed the first charges in the Russia investigation. By the time I publish this, we’ll know much more about the charges, but the message for week 40 was deflect, deflect, deflect.

Here’s what happened.

Missed Previously:

Around the time that the U.S. recalled much of the diplomatic personnel from Cuba, we also expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from the U.S. I missed this when researching the mysterious symptoms our personnel were experiencing in Cuba.

Russia:

  1. Putin places Bill Browder on the Interpol list, which led to the U.S. border control temporarily halting his travel to the U.S. Browder was instrumental in the Magnitsky Act and he’s testified in the Russia investigation.
  2. Kaspersky Labs allows outside experts to come in and look at their software to dispel any worries that the Kremlin uses their products to spy on the U.S.
  3. Even though a foreign country worked to undermine our democracy, and even though we know they are still doing it and will continue doing it into the next elections, it doesn’t appear that Congress is motivated to do much about it. It’s up to us, people. Let’s not fall for the bullshit again.
  4. The Trump administration still hasn’t implemented the sanctions on Russia that Congress signed into law last August. They’re almost a month past deadline to implement the policy.
  5. It turns out that the reason behind the failure to implement sanctions is that Rex Tillerson dissolved the office responsible for that (the Coordinator for Sanctions Policy).
  6. With big news coming up in the Russia investigation, there’s a new push to deflect attention to Hillary Clinton:
    • Devin Nunez announces a new congressional probe into Russia’s relationship with the Clintons regarding a 2010 uranium mine deal.
    • Trump personally tells the Justice Department to lift a gag order on an FBI informant around the uranium deal so the informant can testify to Congress. The U.S. has already prosecuted Russian agents for bribery and kickbacks to a trucking a company.
    • The House announces two committee inquiries into James Comey’s handling of the Clinton email case and into the FBI’s 2016 investigation of some members of Trump‘s campaign.
    • We learn that the Podesta Group and its chairman Tony Podesta (brother of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta) is part of the Mueller investigation for working with Paul Manafort’s agency on a pro-Ukraine PR campaign.
    • The original funder of Fusion GPS’s opposition research on Trump is a conservative website, The Washington Free Beacon, which hired Fusion GPS in fall of 2015 presumably on behalf of a Republican primary candidate. This initial research found Trump’s business interests were heavily weighted toward Russia.
    • Around the time the Beacon stopped funding the opposition (in May), the DNC and Clinton campaign (through a lawyer) hired Fusion GPS to continue their work (in April).
    • Since Fusion GPS’s previous research had already led them to Russia, they contracted Steele to continue that line of research.
    • The Campaign Legal Center files a complaint with the FEC against the DNC and Clinton campaign saying they hid payments to Fusion GPS on their FEC filings.
    • Trump personally tells the State Department to speed up the release of all remaining Clinton emails.
    • Hyperbole much? Sebastian Gorka says Hillary should be tried for treason and executed.
  1. While much of the above is coming out now in an attempt to discredit the Steele dossier, the intelligence community came to their conclusions about Russia meddling without using the dossier at all.
  2. A top employee at Cambridge Analytica, the firm the Trump campaign used to target certain demographics, says he contacted Wikileaks about Clinton’s emails, offering to help index them so they’d be more easily searchable online. Julian Assange refused the offer. This occurred in August 2016. After we knew Russia was behind the hack, and after Cambridge Analytica started working with the Trump campaign.
  3. Trump plans to pay almost a half million dollars for his aides legal fees around the Russia investigation.
  4. Mueller files the initial charges in the Russia probe. As of the end of the week, they’re still sealed under orders from the court.
  5. After the charges are announced, Roger Stone unleashes a profane tirade on Twitter, which gets him banned permanently from Twitter.
  6. Twitter bans ads from Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik.
  7. Facebook, Twitter, and Google played a much bigger role in the election than we thought. The companies offered to embed their employees in both Clinton’s and Trump’s campaigns, though Clinton declined. Those employees created campaign strategies and communications for Trump’s campaign, including targeting voters and preparing responses to attacks.
  8. Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. last year, says the information she had to share was from her own research, but it turns out that her paperwork included verbatim text from Russia’s prosecutor general.
  9. To help combat the disinformation campaign, Quartz creates a bot that hunts down political bots on Twitter, @probabot. You can follow it on Twitter.
  10. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, meets with the House Intelligence Committee to discuss a request he made to Dmitry Peskov for help in building Trump Tower Moscow. The request was made during the 2016 campaign.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The inspector general for the Treasury Department releases a report on the allegations that the IRS under Obama targeted conservative organizations for heavier scrutiny of eligibility for tax-exempt status. It turns out that equal scrutiny was given to both liberal and conservative groups during this time, and that both were more heavily scrutinized.
  2. However, despite all the above information, the DOJ under Sessions settles cases with some conservative groups anyway. The settlements are pending court approval.

Healthcare:

  1. The company that created OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, is spreading the opioid epidemic abroad. They’re pushing into international markets, and providing educational tools and text for medical schools.
  2. Trump declares a national public health emergency instead of a national emergency in the opioid epidemic. This gives agencies more flexibility in dealing with the problem but doesn’t provide funding like a national emergency would. This only provides $57,000 in funding and doesn’t improve access to the life-saving drug naloxone.
  3. Trump’s solution to the problem seems to be “just say no,” which didn’t work the first time we tried it in the 1980s. Agencies dealing with the crisis still haven’t been given direction from the administration.
  4. While opioid addiction is the big problem, the increased number of deaths seems to be coming from fentanyl mixed in with heroin.
  5. The CBO estimates that the latest bipartisan healthcare bill being proposed would reduce the deficit by $4 billion while funding the insurance subsidies and giving states more flexibility. They also say that not funding subsidies would increase the deficit by $194 billion over 9 years.
  6. Joshua Kushner, Jared’s brother, writes an op-ed supporting the ACA and criticizing Trump’s handling of it. He’s in the insurance industry.
  7. While industry experts say that the healthcare markets and associated premiums had pretty much stabilized, now it turns out that premiums are increasing 34% as a result of the uncertainty around Trump’s and the GOP’s policies.
  8. Congress let the funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) expire more than three weeks ago. Some states can continue funding it for a few more months, but others are running out of money.

International:

  1. General Dunford holds a press conference to answer questions about how the troops died in Niger.
  2. It turns out that hardly any members of Congress knew we had so many troops in Niger. They’ve been there since 2013.
  3. While the administration has been pushing a narrative of success with security in Afghanistan, Rex Tillerson meets with the president of Afghanistan in what he says is the capital city of Kabul. But they actually met at a military base, as noticed by the military clock on the wall in the press photo of the two. At least Afghanistan PR was smart enough to photoshop the clock out of the picture.
  4. Trump says the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight, and he could be right thanks to steady losses over the past three years. Anti-ISIS fighters have squeezed ISIS down into a tiny fraction of the land they once occupied.
  5. Jared Kushner takes an unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia to continue Middle East peace talks.
  6. Cuba blames the “sonic attacks” that led to many U.S. diplomats there returning home on cicadas. They got this from comparing recordings the U.S. embassy provided them for investigation.
  7. Airlines with direct flights to the U.S. from abroad must now comply with new HHS rules that include tougher screenings, including interviews with security. The tougher rules come from the findings earlier this year that explosive devices could be hidden inside laptops.
  8. Normally the different areas in Spain are mostly run by their own local governments, but the government of Spain is taking over Catalonia’s government after their recent attempt to gain independence.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House schedules a hearing on a heartbeat abortion bill. This could pass the House but it’s doubtful it would pass the Senate. Even if it gets signed into law, the courts would strike it down as it has with each state that’s tried to pass similar legislation.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. ICE detains a 10-year-old with cerebral palsy immediately following an emergency surgery. She’s been in the U.S. since she was three months old.
  2. Trump lifts the refugee ban, but the administration caps the number of refugees allowed each year and implements new and more strict vetting rules.
  3. White Lives Matter holds rallies in Tennessee, chanting “Closed borders, white nation! Now we start the deportation!” I only found one incidence of violence, where white supremacists beat an interracial couple in a restaurant.
  4. Counter-protestors outnumber the White Lives Matter crowd, and they play Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech over their speaker system, drowning out the White Lives Matter speakers.
  5. HUD secretary Ben Carson ends a rule to prevent housing segregation. The rule would’ve stopped a practice that limited the areas where low-income families could live and would’ve allowed them to move into areas with more opportunities. In response, civil rights groups sue Carson and HUD.
  6. While Trump goes ahead with his border wall prototypes, emails show a chaotic and confusing bidding process. Even basic details, like how and where to submit bids, were confusing. One industry expert says that this indicates the administration doesn’t have a clear picture of what they want. Shocking, I know.
  7. Senate Republicans form a group to work on immigration issues, including saving Dreamers.

Climate/EPA:

  1. China shuts down tens of thousands of factories in a crackdown on pollution violations. China has been making great headway in clean energy sources, but it needs to clean up its smog problem before it can make full use of solar, because the sun doesn’t make it through the smog enough.
  2. The National Park Service plans to increase fees to our national parks, in some cases more than double the current price. One example is Joshua Tree in California, where the price per car would go from $25 to $75, and would increase to $50 per motorcycle and $30 for biking or walking in.
  3. To compound matters, Trump’s budget cuts $400 million from parks. Members of Congress have proposed bipartisan bills that would use $12 billion in federal oil and gas revenue to pay for long-needed maintenance in the parks, which is the reason for the above increases.
  4. The Department of the Interior’s four-year strategic plan removes any mention of climate change. Rather than emphasizing conservation, their strategy appears to emphasize “American energy dominance” by exploiting public lands for their “vast amounts” of energy reserves.
  5. Trump announces plans to shrink two national monuments in Utah, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase – Escalante.
  6. Rick Perry wants to reward coal and nuclear plants for storing 90 days of fuel on site saying it makes the power grid more reliable. Natural gas and renewable energy producers, along with public utilities, say it would inhibit competition and increase prices for consumers.

Puerto Rico:

  1. A few GOP Senators hold up the disaster relief bill, citing concerns for Puerto Rico. Jeff Flake and Mike Lee have fiscal concerns but also want Puerto Rico to be able to ignore the Jones Act.
  2. The electric company that won the contract in Puerto Rico is a 2-man operation from Whitefish, MT, where Ryan Zinke is from.
  3. Two House committees and one federal watchdog (the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General) open investigations into how the contract was awarded.
  4. Whitefish also gets into a Twitter war with San Juan’s mayor over her requests for an open process, threatening to stop working.
  5. While the contract with Whitefish says that FEMA reviewed and approved it, FEMA says they never saw it. And even though FEMA’s responsible for paying WhiteFish, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) is the agency that authorized the contract.
  6. The governor of Puerto Rico demands that PREPA cancel the contract with Whitefish citing a lack of transparency.
  7. The rates charged by Whitefish are more than double those that would be paid by the Army Corps of Engineers. The contract includes a clause that says the government can’t review the labor rates.
  8. Questions come up about the number of dead from hurricane Maria as well as the methodology of counting them. Some put the number closer to 1,000 than the official count of 51, largely due to lack of medical care after the hurricane struck.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Wall Street scores another win, as Republicans in the Senate barely pass a bill to repeal Obama-era rules about forced arbitration clauses. This repeal makes it harder for consumers to fight back against unscrupulous acts by financial institutions by allowing consumers to be forced into arbitration clauses. In other words, banks can sue you, but you can’t sue banks. The Obama-era rule is what allowed Wells Fargo customers to file a suit against the bank after learning Wells Fargo signed people up for accounts without their knowledge.
  2. The GOP tax and budget framework gets mixed reviews. Some of the changes include:
    • Immediate write-offs for equipment investment.
    • Cutting corporate tax rates, which decreases tax revenue and raises deficits.
    • Windfall subsidies on past corporate investments.
    • Not charging companies U.S. taxes on foreign income, which could encourage companies to ship jobs and profits overseas.
    • A $1 trillion cut to Medicaid and a $1/2 trillion cut to Medicare.
  1. 100% of leading economists surveyed don’t think the tax plan will boost the economy enough to pay for itself.
  2. While Senators Corker, Flake, and McCain have been speaking up for what they think is morally right, they all also just voted to give consumers no recourse when they are swindled by banks and they voted for a tax cut for the wealthy accompanied by a $1.5 trillion cut to healthcare for the elderly and needy.
  3. The currently approved framework leaves 401K limits alone for now. Previously, Congress floated dropping the annual limit that you can put in your 401K from $18,000 to $2,400.
  4. There’s disagreement among Republicans in Congress over getting rid of two tax deductions, one for local property taxes and one for state taxes.
  5. Building contractors and realtors object to the possibility of removing the tax deduction on mortgage interest.
  6. Scott Garrett, Trump’s pick for the import-export bank, goes before the Senate November 1. In the model of other Trump appointees who’s job seems to be dismantling their agencies, Garrett has spent many years trying to dismantle the bank.
  7. Every investor in Trump Tower Toronto lost money on their investment except Trump.
  8. Since Trump made his “Buy American” promise, imports of foreign steel are up 24%.
  9. Republicans in Congress are increasingly certain they can pass tax reform by year’s end. They think passing reform will cause some Republicans to rethink their decision to retire out of frustration at not being able to get anything done. The push for passing tax reform is so strong because the GOP thinks this will secure them majorities in the House and Senate in 2018. They plan to run a multi-million-dollar ad campaign to promote their plan.
  10. Congressional Republicans worry that Trump will make passing tax reform harder by what he says and does. Remember the hit the ACA repeal effort took when Trump called the House healthcare plan “mean.”

Elections:

  1. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) announces it will investigate Trump’s voter fraud commission over how it’s using federal funds, its methodology, and how it’s protecting voter information and following regulations.
  2. Trump’s voter fraud commission isn’t keeping the Democrats on the commission in the loop.

Miscellaneous:

  1. File this one under hypocrisy. After criticizing Democrats for not distancing themselves from Weinstein fast enough, not returning his donated money fast enough, and not doing enough to stop him, FoxNews brings accused predator Bill O’Reilly back on air to let him air his grievances about being set up. I’m sure the women he’s harassed were thrilled to see him there.
  2. On top of that, we learn that before FoxNews fired him, they renewed O’Reilly’s contract for $100 million for four years, and this was after he settled what was at least his SIXTH sexual harassment suit, this one for $32 million dollars. So please stop trying to make sexual predation a political issue. It’s a power issue.
  3. Trump has a very bad Tuesday. Jeff Flake gives a 20-minute impassioned critique on the Senate floor about the state of politics and Trump, saying he won’t run again. Bob Corker gives a brutally honest 6-minute interview on the way to the GOP lunch. And then, as Trump walks to the lunch with Mitch McConnell, a protestor throws Russian flags at them and calls Trump a traitor.
  4. Both Mitch McConnell and John McCain praise Flake for his speech on the Senate floor. Sarah Huckabee Sanders calls it petty and not “befitting of the Senate floor.”
  5. The latest Pew Research study on politics and policy shows that a majority of both Republicans and Democrats think that “their side” is losing. Surprising for Republicans, since they control the federal government and over half of state governments.
  6. Trump brags for at least the 20th time this year about getting standing ovations, this time at the Senate luncheon.
  7. Trump announces the release of the remaining JFK files as per a pre-scheduled release date, but there’s a short delay because they didn’t know that certain files needed to be reviewed and redacted. Several documents were released, but some will be released next April.
  8. The Education Department is no longer fully protecting students who were defrauded by for-profit colleges. Instead of forgiving their loans, which was the policy under Obama, the students are responsible for half the amount.
  9. In a profile with Politico, John Boehner blames the increasing divide and partisanship on the rise of talk radio and social media. He also says “Fuck [Rep. Jim] Jordan. Fuck [Rep. Jason] Chaffetz. They’re both assholes.” Jordan helped cofound the Freedom Caucus (which caused Boehner no end of trouble) and Chaffetz chaired the House Oversight Committee. It’s a long piece, but lots of interesting tidbits.
  10. Ajit Pai announces plans to loosen media ownership regulations, opening the door for even more consolidation in media outlets and less consumer choice. The FCC will vote on this in November.
  11. As of this week, 1 in 5 Senate Republicans have been the target of Trump’s attacks, including Bob Corker, Ted Cruz, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham, Dean Heller, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Ben Sasse. The great negotiator might be forgetting that he can only afford to lose two Republican votes on any Senate bill.

Polls:

  1. 58% of Republicans say that Trump is the hardest working president since WWII. This, despite the fact that as of October 22, he has spent 75 out of 279 days playing golf, or 1 of every 3.7 days. Or 3 times as much vacation times as Obama took by this time.
  2. 71% of Americans think U.S. politics “have reached a dangerous low point.” 80% say Congress is dysfunctional. 60% say Trump is making it more dysfunctional.
  3. The percent of American who think politicians are honest has dropped from 39 to 14 since 1987.
  4. 87% think politicians will do whatever it takes to get re-elected.
  5. 48% of registered voters prefer a Congress controlled by Democrats. 41% prefer Republican control.
  6. 53% of military officers disapprove of Trump, and 40% of all troops disapprove of him.

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

“The people that made the Russians successful are the Democrats, and the people who have continued this nonsense over and over and over again, looking for Russians behind every tree.”

– House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), as a way of blaming Democrats for the Russian meddling in 2016. Even though what really made the Russians successful were the people who believed and helped spread the fake stories out of Russia and Macedonia.

Week 39 in Trump

Posted on October 23, 2017 in Politics, Trump

You wanna know how much faith we can put in Congressional hearings? Here’s a quote from Trey Gowdy, who relentlessly ran the Benghazi hearings that repeatedly found Clinton not guilty of anything while dragging her through the mud for a few years.

“Congressional investigations unfortunately are usually overtly political investigations, where it is to one side’s advantage to drag things out,” says Gowdy. “The notion that one side is playing the part of defense attorney and that the other side is just these white-hat defenders of the truth is laughable … This is politics.”

And apparently a waste of time that the taxpayers fund. Kevin McCarthy said as much when he said that the Benghazi hearings had done the intended job of smearing Clinton (which did lose him the speakership, so at least there’s that). I think we’ll have to rely on Mueller, not Congress, to learn what really happened last year.

That’s my rant and here’s what happened in week 39.

Russia:

  1. Here’s what we learn this week about Russian troll farm workers:
    • They had a quota for the number of political and non-political posts they had to make, as well as for the number of daily comments. They wanted to flood social media with agitating propaganda (agitprop).
    • One troll worker says “Our goal wasn’t to turn the Americans toward Russia. Our task was to set Americans against their own government: to provoke unrest and discontent, and to lower Obama’s support ratings.” Well done, guys.
    • Their goal was to smear Hillary in three ways: Bill Clinton’s sex scandals, the Clintons’ wealth, and her use of a private email server.
    • They had to watch “House of Cards” to learn about American politics.
    • They organized events, rallies, and protests in the U.S. and hired activists to hold rallies. The activists didn’t know they were working for Russia.
  2. U.S. investigators now believe that a man called Putin’s chef, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was behind one of the Russian troll farms.
  3. Fusion GPS, the company that commissioned the Steele dossier, objects to the previous week’s subpoenas from the House Intelligence Committee, saying they aren’t even sure if Devin Nunes has the authority to sign off on them. Nunes is supposed to be recused from the investigation.
  4. Facebook wants to hire people with national security clearance, likely to help prevent future attempts by foreign agents to manipulate information on the site.
  5. Mueller interviews Matt Tait, the cyber expert who was recruited by Peter Smith to collude with Russia. He wrote a pretty interesting blog on it called The Time I Got Recruited to Collude with the Russians.
  6. Sean Spicer meets with Robert Mueller’s team. They talk about James Comey’s firing and Trump’s meeting with Russian officials.
  7. The Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenas Carter Page, who has been refusing to testify.
  8. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, meets with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
  9. Jeff Sessions testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend the firing of James Comey. Sessions hasn’t been interviewed by Mueller yet.
  10. Members of the House Oversight Committee push for subpoenas of the White House for documents about Michael Flynn. The documents they are looking for could lead to criminal prosecution, though, and Congress doesn’t prosecute crimes.
  11. A bipartisan bill in the Senate would force social media companies to disclose who purchased an online political ad so we would know if it was Russian-sponsored.
  12. Russian state-owned media RT misses its deadline to register as a foreign agent under FARA after a DOJ request to do so.
  13. In an about-face, Putin says the American people need to stop disrespecting Trump.
  14. In a tweet, Trump basically accuses the FBI, Russia, and the Mueller investigation of conspiracy to frame him.
  15. Partisanship gets in the way of the congressional investigations of Russia, leading some to express concern that each committee will come to two different conclusions.
  16. Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, says Russian meddling didn’t affect the results of the election, even though the intelligence report concludes that was Russia’s aim. Whether they were successful hasn’t been concluded yet.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A district judge refuses to vacate Joe Arpaio’s criminal contempt conviction, even though Trump pardoned him. Judge Bolton says the pardon doesn’t change the historical facts of the case. So while Arpaio won’t have to do jail time, he might now be more vulnerable to civil suits.
  2. Trump personally interviews two candidates for U.S. District Attorney in New York, opening up the question of whether the people hired for these jobs will be beholden to him. This is a big question in light of Mueller seeming to look for state crimes as well as federal.
  3. The DOJ dropped a request to obtain the names of Facebook users who liked a specific inauguration day protest page. This was part of the investigation into inauguration day riots, but this request was seen as overreach.
  4. Justices Kagan and Gorsuch spar behind the scenes, and not in the good way Supreme Court justices typically do.

Healthcare:

  1. Eighteen states and DC sue Trump over stopping the ACA subsidy payments.
  2. After Trump’s decision to end healthcare subsidies, states work frantically to approve higher insurance rates to shore up the insurance companies and to stop them from leaving their markets. Medical and insurance stocks took a hit after Trump’s announcement.
  3. Pennsylvania’s insurance commissioner says that insurance premiums will rise in Philadelphia an average of 30% due to Trump’s gutting of the ACA last week. Oregon has already told insurers to go ahead and raise premiums.
  4. Republicans scramble to work out a deal that would continue the ACA subsidy payments, and a bipartisan agreement looks possible. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray create an agreement that could stabilize markets in the short term. Note that this is not a bill yet, it’s just a deal that they think both sides can get behind.
  5. Trump expresses opposition to the bipartisan bill, and then later expresses support for it in a speech, and then later blasts the bill in a tweet. So I don’t know if he’s for or against it, but I think in the end he’s against it.
  6. Paul Ryan doesn’t support the bipartisan agreement. All Democrats in the Senate say they’ll support it, which, combined with the 12 Republican cosponsors of the bill, gives a filibuster-proof majority.
  7. The association health care plans Trump is pushing in place of the individual market have a history of fraud and abuse, as shown in dozens of court cases. In many cases, people were left on the hook for medical expenses that should’ve been covered by insurance.
  8. Trump blindsided officials with his promise of an emergency declaration on the opioid crisis. Those officials scramble to create such a plan, saying they aren’t ready for it and there’s no consensus on how to implement it.
  9. Betty Price, Georgia state Representative and wife of former HHS secretary Tom Price, suggests that people with HIV should be quarantined, and that in the past it wasn’t so much of a problem because they “died more readily.”
  10. Due to the shortened enrollment period for the ACA, people who are automatically re-enrolled in their policy might not be getting the best option. Previously they’d receive a reminder to look for less expensive or more comprehensive policies. But the shortened period doesn’t give enough time for that.
  11. Republican representative Tom Marino, Trump’s pick for drug czar, removes himself from the running due to his involvement in passing legislation that made it easier to distribute opioids while making it harder for the DEA to stop it.

International:

  1. After reading the provisions of Trump’s Iran decree, it’s pretty apparent to me that he doesn’t understand that the Iran agreement is about nuclear proliferation only. It doesn’t address terrorism or security and that wasn’t the intent.
  2. Forces backed by the U.S. liberate Raqqa from ISIS. ISIS has been consistently losing physical ground for several years now.
  3. Two groups supported by the U.S. are fighting in Iraq. The Kurds want to separate from Iraq, which has spurred an armed conflict between the two.
  4. The U.S. military starts evacuation drills to practice what they would do in case of armed conflict with North Korea.
  5. Rex Tillerson says that our foreign policy is “resilient enough to accommodate unknowns,” including Trump’s tweets. While the tweets catch him off guard, Tillerson tries to include those messages in his strategies.
  6. Japan holds a snap election so prime minister Abe can bolster support to update their constitution. The U.S. occupied Japan after WWII and rewrote their constitution to limit their military might. With the new threat from North Korea, Japan wants to build back up its military.
  7. Trump tweets “United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror.” The U.K. Agency that published the crime stats says this is false; the rise in crime has nothing to do with terrorism. It’s possible this information came from a conspiracy TV network, OANN.
  8. Information is still sketchy about the deaths of four Green Berets in Niger. The Pentagon is investigating the attack to determine whether our forces there were on an unapproved mission or just routine patrol. There are conflicting stories about what happened.
  9. We should expect hearings over Niger. There was no overhead surveillance, no American quick-reaction force to back them up, French back-up couldn’t use force, and one body was found a mile away and two days later.
  10. Chad helps us and our allies fight Islamic extremists, and has been since 2012. It’s where we set up strategic headquarters for the counterterrorist fight in Africa. They don’t have a lot of people joining Islamic militants, but neighboring places do (like Niger).
    • A few weeks ago, Trump adds Chad to the travel ban. (How does Chad end up on the banned list and not, say, Niger? No one knows. Maybe because Chad fined Exxon $74 billion?)
    • The state department and military oppose the move, and experts warn that putting Chad on the travel ban puts Americans in danger, as reported a few weeks back.
    • Four Green Berets are killed in Niger.
    • Chad begins removing troops from the fight in Niger against Islamic extremists.
    • Finally we find out. It turns out that Chad ran out of passport paper when they needed to send the administration a sample, and that’s how they ended up on the travel ban.
    • CORRECTION: It looks like Chad moved their troops after the ambush on our soldiers. I updated the order above. Given this chronology, the events appear to be unrelated.
  11. At China’s Communist Party congress, Prime Minister Xi pushes an agenda to make China a stronger military and economic powerhouse, fight government corruption, and be a global leader in trade and global warming. He’s not wasting any time in taking advantage of the void left by the U.S.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Six Republicans members on the House Ways and Means Committee are retiring or resigning from Congress. That’s about a quarter of the GOP members of this elite panel who are checking out. Representatives spend years trying to get on this panel.
  2. Congress is going to make Dreamers wait to find out their fate; they’re completely focused on tax reform right now.
  3. Interestingly, one congressional aide says they have the bandwidth to deal with both tax reform and immigration, but only if Democrats agree to increased border security. Democrats have already indicated support for enhanced security, just not a border wall.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. In the midst of the anthem debate, the NFL throws its support behind criminal justice reform.
  2. Colin Kaepernick files a grievance against the NFL, accusing them of colluding against him.
  3. NFL owners decide not to change their rules. Players can kneel or stand during the anthem. Trump continues his war on the NFL.
  4. A federal judge in Hawaii blocks Trump’s travel ban nationwide just hours before it would’ve taken effect. The block does not include the ban on travel from North Korea and Venezuela.
  5. A day later, a second federal judge, this time in Maryland, blocks the travel ban.
  6. Donald Trump Jr.‘s take on sexual harassment in the workplace (at least last year) is this: “If you can’t handle some of the basic stuff that’s become a problem in the workforce today, then you don’t belong in the workforce. Like, you should go maybe teach kindergarten.” Or maybe men should just not sexually harass women. Or discriminate against them.
  7. A unit of an upstate New York police department surveils Black Lives Matters members despite being told by the courts to stop. This comes on top of learning that black activist groups are being eyed as terrorist groups by some in the FBI, raising concerns of racial profiling and further marginalization.
  8. The Customs and Border Patrol denies Indonesia’s military chief entry to the U.S. He was invited to an event by U.S. General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. U.S. officials apologize, but Indonesia is demanding answers.
  9. We learn that Trump teases Mike Pence about his views on the LGBTQ community, having joked around that Pence wants to hang all gays. He also teases him for a lack of success in making abortion illegal, and for making people pray. Real funny stuff.
  10. Businesses band together in the Coalition for the American Dream to support Dreamers and push immigration reform, focusing entirely on Republican legislators. Here are a few of those businesses: Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Google, Apple, Cisco, Intel, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Spotify, Under Armour, Chobani, Marriott, Hilton, Ikea, and Best Buy.
  11. Hotels have been quietly refusing to let white nationalists book their conventions at the hotels.
  12. White nationalist Richard Spencer speaks to an unfriendly crowd at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Three of Spencer’s supporters are arrested for attempted homicide after shooting guns at protestors.
  13. Trump considers suspending the refugee family reunification program, which allows the families of refugees to join them in the U.S. He’s also looking at putting women from designated high-risk countries through the same scrutiny as men.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Environmental groups often sue the EPA to get them to enforce their own regulations, but Scott Pruitt makes this more difficult and expensive by ending the practice of settling lawsuits against the EPA. This could backfire, though, if the courts find against the EPA in future suits.
  2. A study links pollution to almost 1 in every 6 deaths in 2015, mostly from air pollution, mostly in rapidly industrializing nations, and mostly affecting children and the poor. So yes, let’s dismantle the EPA.
  3. Three EPA experts were scheduled to speak about their findings in a 500-page report on climate change effects on an eastern estuary. The EPA cancels their appearance, intensifying concerns that the government will prevent scientists from talking about climate change or even from working on climate issues.

  4. The EPA says higher radiation levels have no harmful health effects, setting the acceptable level for drinking water at 10 times what it was under Obama. Previous EPA guidelines said that NO level was safe.
  5. The EPA removes yet more climate change resources from its website. These resources helped local governments to deal with the effects of climate change that affect them directly and to come up with plans to adapt.
  6. A Trump appointee to the EPA was a leader in the chemical industry. She’s trying to change the rules to make it harder to track perfluorooctanoic acid, of PFOA, which is linked to serious health problems like kidney cancer and birth defects. The EPA has struggled to keep PFOA from contaminating our drinking water. This appointee has also proposed rewriting a dozen rules in order to align the EPA more with the chemical industry’s wishes.

Puerto Rico:

  1. The USNS Comfort is still mostly empty instead of handling urgent patients in Puerto Rico. Only 13% of the beds are being used, despite a great need and overwhelmed hospitals on the island.
  2. Reports are that the death count in Puerto Rico is inaccurate and could possibly be up to 450. Congressional Democrats request an accurate count.
  3. According to recent interviews, many Trump supporters who were victims of the Houston hurricane and are receiving government funds to rebuild don’t think that Puerto Ricans should receive the same assistance. The overriding sentiment here appears to be that Houstonians aren’t taking advantage of the system, but those darn Puerto Ricans are. Makes you proud to be an American, right?
  4. About a month into recovery, Trump rates his hurricane response to Puerto Rico a 10 out of 10. 30% of the island is still without drinking water and 80% are still without power. St. Croix and the U.S. Virgin Islands also have around 80% without power.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The Senate approves a budget that lets the GOP avoid a Democratic filibuster. The House needs to sign an identical version to bypass the filibuster.
  2. The Senate version of the budget cuts energy and national resource spending by $1 billion over a decade. It also calls for legislation to cut domestic spending by $5.1 trillion, including cutting Medicaid by $1 trillion and medicare by $470 billion.
  3. The House version includes a directive for the oversight and reform committee to find ways to save $32 billion over 10 years.
  4. Republican Senator Bob Corker calls the Senate budget a “meaningless hoax” and says it’s only designed to bypass the Democrats in order to sign a tax plan.
  5. Republicans are considering reducing the allowable annual 401K contribution from $18,000 per year to $2,400, reducing workers’ ability to save for retirement.
  6. Almost half the income from pass-through corporations goes to the top 1%. Almost 80% of pass-through income goes to the top 20%. So Republicans are incorrect when they say their tax break for pass-through corporations will help middle income ranges and small business owners.
  7. In talking about the latest budget, Mulvaney admits that it’s difficult to cut spending in Washington.
  8. Trump pushes for bipartisan tax reform, but it’s already too late for that. Republicans have already been working behind closed doors for weeks.
  9. Steve Mnuchin warns that if Congress fails to cut taxes, they could tank the stock market. I’m not sure if that was a warning or a threat.
  10. He also says that it’s hard not to give tax cuts to the wealthy.
  11. Because marijuana is still not federally legal, marijuana farmer’s can’t get crop insurance. Farmers in Northern California lost millions in the fires that they won’t be able to recoup.

Elections:

  1. Trump says he’ll try to talk Steve Bannon out of his “season of war” against Republicans in next year’s elections. Trump and McConnell meet about this, and afterward, Trump says they’re closer than ever.
  2. On average, a member of Congress running for re-election raises $24,149 each week. Maybe we should get the money out of politics so they can legislate instead of fundraise.
  3. Trump’s campaign has raised $36,469,896 this year.
  4. Joe Arpaio speaks at a fundraiser at the Trump National Golf Club in Southern California in support of a GOP opponent to Representative Maxine Waters.

Miscellaneous:

  1. In one week, John McCain, Barack Obama, and George Bush all take thinly veiled jabs at the Trump administration and the nationalism and populism that put him in office.
  2. In his speech accepting the Liberty Medal, John McCain warned against “half-baked, spurious nationalism.” In his own words: “We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain the last best hope of earth for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”
  3. Afterward, Trump warns McCain to be careful, because eventually Trump will fight back.
  4. Also, during a panel discussion, Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright school Nikki Haley on statesmanship.
  5. According to Forbes, Trump’s worth dropped by $600 million over the past year due to a tough New York real estate market, expensive lawsuits, and an expensive presidential campaign. Also, the least wealthy person on the Forbes richest 400 Americans is worth $2 billion. 169 billionaires didn’t make the list this year.
  6. John Kelly gives Cabinet members more freedom to choose their staff, reversing the way things were done under Reince Priebus. So maybe they’ll finally get staffed up.
  7. As part of an ongoing suit resulting from sexual harassment charges, subpoenas are issued to Trump for any documents from his campaign that relate to any woman that accused him of sexual assault or harassment
  8. 6,663 Texas inmates pulled together $53,863 in donations for Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.
  9. When a reporter asks Trump why he hadn’t yet made a statement yet about the deaths of the four soldiers in Niger, it launches the week’s wars. Trump accuses previous presidents, and specifically Obama, of not calling the families of fallen troops–this is easily disproven. As is his claim that he calls all the families, which leads his staff to scramble to get the names of all soldiers fallen this year so Trump can hurry up and call them. Trump drags John Kelly unwillingly into the fray. One of his calls to the families of the four Green Berets killed in Niger is leaked leading to a fight with both a Congresswoman and the widow of the deceased soldier. And then Kelly joins the fight, and seriously things just get so darn ugly. You need a chart of all the missteps just to keep it straight. Trump could’ve ended this with a single empathetic phone call.
  10. All five living ex-president come together for a fundraising concert for hurricane victims.
  11. Shareholders at Tribune Media vote to approve the merger with Sinclair Broadcasting, though the FCC is still taking public comment.
  12. Trump signs an Executive Order to expand the authority of service secretaries to recall both enlisted and officer retirees to Active Duty.
  13. Trump brags about discrediting the media when a poll comes out showing nearly half of Americans don’t trust the media. He says they make up stories about him. Real media sources literally do not do this.
  14. As of this week, the Education Department under Betsy Devon has rescinded 72 documents defining rights for students with disabilities. They say the documents are outdated or unnecessary, but disability rights groups are reviewing them.
  15. 18 Democratic attorneys general sue Betsy DeVos over her department’s refusal enforce rules that protect people from predatory colleges.
  16. Trump promised to drain the swamp, but only one of his five proposals to limit lobbying is implemented so far. Spending on lobbying came to nearly $1.7 billion for the first half of this year, which is the highest since 2012.
  17. Fox and Friends increasingly sets the media tone for the day. Trump watches it in the morning, tweets something from it, and the rest of the media takes the bait.
  18. Trump announces he’ll declassify the remaining JFK assassination files.

Polls:

  1. Nearly 60% of Americans think the current tax plan favors the rich.
  2. 66% of Americans want the ACA fixed instead of repealed.
  3. Trump’s attacks on the media are working. 46% of voters think that the media makes up stories about Trump and his staff. 76% of Republicans believe it.
  4. 42% of Americans think Trump will go down as one of worst presidents in history.