Tag: giuliani

Week 141 in Trump – Impeachment News

Posted on October 9, 2019 in Impeachment, Trump

As more and more information comes out this week about how U.S. officials worked with Ukraine to help them acquiesce to Trump’s conditions, support for impeachment inquiries continues to grow. This week, we got a glimpse of the text messages being sent among our diplomats in Ukraine, plus a second whistleblower is in the wings. And Democratic Representatives have been at home talking to their constituents about impeachment concerns.

So here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending October 5…

General Happenings:

  1. Intelligence Inspector General Michael Atkinson testifies privately before Congress about his reasoning for finding the whistleblower complaint credible and urgent. Atkinson did his own investigation upon receiving the complaint.
  2. When it comes out that the whistleblower contacted House Intelligence Committee staff members to find out how to proceed, Trump accuses Chair Adam Schiff of orchestrating the complaint, even of helping the whistleblower to write the complaint.
    • The whistleblower came to the committee after he filed his complaint with the CIA general counsel because he was concerned it wasn’t being handled.
    • The CIA lawyer’s intent was to make a criminal referral to the DOJ, indicating she thought a potential crime was reported. The DOJ says they weren’t sure whether it was a criminal referral.
  1. Trump continues to lash out at the whistleblower and Democratic leadership throughout the week. He thinks he should be able to meet with the whistleblower. He thinks Schiff should be tried for treason for running impeachment inquiries (or maybe it’s because Schiff paraphrased Trump’s conversation with Ukraine President Zelensky in a hearing).
    • Just a reminder that the whistleblower is now under federal protection over fears for his safety.
  1. Trump repeats a conspiracy theory that the intelligence community recently eliminated a requirement that whistleblower information be firsthand. The office of the intelligence community inspector general denies there ever was such a requirement.
    • But that doesn’t matter anymore, because a second whistleblower with firsthand knowledge of the call is in negotiations to come forward.
  1. Mitch McConnell reiterates that if the House passes articles of impeachment, the Senate has no choice but to hold the trial.
  2. Even GOP lawmakers criticize Trump for retweeting a pastor who says that if Trump is removed from office, it will “cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation…”
  3. The GOP pushes all the conspiracy theories to defend Trump’s actions with Ukraine. So now Hillary’s missing emails are all mixed up with a missing DNC server (that’s not missing) and CrowdStrike being a Ukraine organization (that’s actually a U.S. company) and the Biden’s apparent conflict of interest in Ukraine.
    • These are sticking with the base, and the corruption and maneuvering by Ukraine officials, past and present, are only muddying the waters.
  1. Three House committees subpoena Rudy Giuliani for documents around his Ukraine dealings. They also request information from three of Giuliani’s business associates.
  2. We learn that Giuliani consulted with an imprisoned Paul Manafort on Ukraine through Manafort’s lawyer.
    • How does Manafort fit into all of this? Manafort lobbied for the pro-Russian former government in Ukraine. His name and payments made to him were included in a “black ledger” that was exposed as part of an anti-corruption campaign. Giuliani’s theory is that the DNC worked with Ukraine officials to release the book to force out Manafort and help Hillary.
    • Because of Giuliani’s conspiracy theory, at least two Senate committees renew their inquiries into whether the DNC and Ukraine coordinated efforts. These efforts are led by Senators Chuck Grassley (Senate Finance Chair) and Ron Johnson (Homeland Security Chair).
    • Manafort is in jail for this, so it’s not like he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
    • Giuliani says the ledger was a pretext to reopen investigations into Manafort, but the FBI had a case open against him before the 2016 campaign.
  1. Trump calls the impeachment inquiries “BULLSHIT,” and then gets into an argument with a reporter during a press conference with the president of Finland. He calls Schiff dishonest, shifty, treasonous. He again calls the press the enemy of the people.
  2. Nancy Pelosi holds a press conference, opening with what the House is doing to lower drug prices, to move the renegotiated NAFTA forward, and to restart infrastructure talks, showing that impeachment inquiries really aren’t taking up all their time.
    • She says it’s a sad time when we have to be impeaching the president.
  1. Jared Kushner will lead the White House’s impeachment strategy.
  2. In 2016, three Republican Senators signed on to a letter backing Joe Biden’s efforts in Ukraine, undercutting Trump’s claims of wrongdoing by Biden. Both Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) have come out publicly against Trump’s desire to investigate the Bidens over Ukraine, saying Shokin needed to be ousted. Trump calls Shokin a “good guy.” Johnson later backtracks.
  3. It’s possible Trump broke election laws with his call with Ukraine, but the FEC has so many empty positions that they don’t have a quorum to enforce the law. Normally, the backup would be the DOJ, but Barr won’t prosecute.
  4. Former and current officials say that Trump’s calls with foreign leaders have always been fraught with anxiety over what he’d say and horror with what he actually did say. These calls typically take weeks of preparation, and experts guide presidents as to what the other leader might say and how to best respond. But Trump improvs everything, including these calls, leading to embarrassments, scrapping weeks of work on an issue, and conflicts with U.S. foreign policy.
  5. The whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Zaid, says he’s representing multiple whistleblowers at this time. At least one more whistleblower has come forward that we know of, and this one has firsthand knowledge of the call.
  6. A district judge orders the White House to retain all records of Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders and to maintain records of efforts to hide that information. This stems from a lawsuit filed in May by activist groups and agencies focused on ethics and maintaining national records.
  7. State Department staff say the Ukraine scandal has opened a rift between apolitical career diplomats and political appointees who want to investigate the conspiracy theories.
  8. In the middle of all of this, Trump still publicly calls for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, and for China to do the same. He even asked China on a phone call, defeating the GOP’s efforts to dismiss that as a joke.
    • The China request originated from a multi-million-dollar deal that happened on a trip Hunter and Joe Biden took together—Hunter for business and Joe for government work. Trump says it was a $1.5 trillion deal and hasn’t provided any evidence of wrongdoing.

Who Else Is Involved:

  1. House committees subpoena acting Chief of Staff/OMB Director Mick Mulvaney for documents relating to Ukraine.
  2. It turns out that Attorney General William Barr is in this up to his nuts.
    • Not only did Trump tell Zelensky to talk to Barr about investigating the Bidens and CrowdStrike, but Barr asked Trump to call Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to help out with the DOJ’s review of FBI and CIA actions in 2016.
    • Trump made the call to Morrison and restricted access to the transcript of that call, just like with the Ukraine call transcript.
    • Morrison says Australia is always happy to shed light on investigations, but defends the Australian ambassador who alerted U.S. intelligence to George Papadopoulos’s drunken confession that he was working with Russia to get dirt on Hillary.
    • Barr has also traveled to Italy to meet with Italian and British officials to discuss the review and secure cooperation.
    • And yet Barr didn’t recuse himself from the decision not to follow up on the whistleblower complaint.
  1. Just a reminder that the DOJ already has two legitimate efforts going on to review the investigations into the 2016 elections:
    • DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is analyzing FBI and DOJ activity around Russian election interference and the FISA warrant approving the surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. That report is expected within weeks.
    • John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, is looking more broadly at intelligence activities around the election both abroad and here at home. This could take years to complete.
  1. After denying it for a week, Mike Pompeo says he took part in the Trump’s phone call with Zelensky. He only admits it after Giuliani outs him on national TV.
    • Pompeo had also argued against the White House releasing the excerpt of the call with Ukraine.
    • House committees subpoena him for records of the call.
    • Pompeo says he won’t let his subpoenaed employees talk to Congress. He says he’s protecting them from being bullied by Congress. What a whiner. Two of them say they’ll testify anyway, and committee heads accuse Pompeo of illegal obstruction.
    • Of note, both Barr’s and Pompeo’s predecessors’ relationships with Trump soured after they refused to carry out illegal requests by Trump.
    • Ironically, Pompeo was one of the loudest complainers that the Obama administration was “deeply obstructive.”
  1. Steve Mnuchin was also aware of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky and urged the White House not to release the excerpt of the call.
  2. Senator Lindsey Graham sent letters to the Prime Ministers of Australia, Great Britain, and Italy urging them to cooperate with Barr’s investigation. Here’s why those countries specifically:
    • Italy: Professor Joseph Mifsud, who offered George Papadopoulos dirt from the Russians on Hillary, is Italian. Everyone’s looking for him.
    • Australia: Papadopoulos spilled the tea about Mifsud to an Australian diplomat who then alerted U.S. intelligence, getting this whole ball rolling.
    • Great Britain: Christopher Steele, author of the Steele Dossier, was a British agent.
  1. State Department Inspector General Steve Linick requests an urgent meeting with House committees.
    • He turns over an envelope of documents sent from Giuliani to the State Department, full of mostly debunked conspiracy theories generated by the far-right and spread by far-right media outlets about the Bidens and the former ambassador to Ukraine.
    • Pompeo told Giuliani he’d investigate them.
  1. Trump throws Energy Secretary Rick Perry under the bus. He says that he didn’t even want to call Zelensky but that Perry urged him to do it. Perry wasn’t discussed in the call that we know of.
  2. The ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sends letters to Perry and to Vice President Pence demanding answers by the end of the week about what they knew and what their roles were regarding Ukraine.
    • Perry announces his resignation. Up until now, he’s kept a pretty low profile, but it turns out he’s traveled to Ukraine recently working on energy issues, including making changes to the state-run oil and gas company, Naftogaz. This puts him in the middle of the impeachment inquiry.
    • Pence was involved in Trump’s pressure campaign against Ukraine. Initially, Trump told Pence not to attend Zelensky’s inauguration (Perry went instead). Pence later told Zelensky he had to take more aggressive action against corruption and that U.S. aid was still being withheld. Also, one of Pence’s top advisors was on the Ukraine call, so Pence should’ve had access to the transcript within hours of the call. It’s not clear whether Pence was aware of the conditions Trump was placing on Ukraine, but if he wasn’t, then he wasn’t doing his job.
  1. A little more on Ukraine’s state-run oil and gas company. A group of American businessmen and Republican donors used their ties to Trump and Giuliani to try to install their handpicked management to run Naftogaz so they could steer lucrative contracts their way. The election of a new president, Zelensky, threw a wrench into their plans. But then Rick Perry takes up the mantel and tries to install his own donors in the company. All of this would require multiple global agencies to authorize.

And What About Ukraine?

  1. Super randomly, Ukraine signs an agreement with pro-Russia separatists allowing them to hold local elections in eastern Ukraine.
    • The separatists want special status for self-governance.
    • Ukraine says there won’t be any elections until troops from both sides are withdrawn, and only with international observers allowed in.
    • Russia has refused to participate in peace talks unless the separatists are allowed their own elections. Score one for the aggressors.
    • Hundreds march in Kyiv in protest.
  1. Serhiy Leshchenko, a former member of the Ukrainian Parliament and current advisor to Zelensky says it was well-known that Trump wanted compromising information on the Bidens and that officials knew U.S. aid was contingent on cooperating with that request.
  2. Zelensky says his country can’t be pressured to open investigations. They’re an independent country. He’s being squeezed between the U.S. and Russia and his promises to rout out corruption.
  3. Ukraine’s new chief prosecutor, Russian Ryaboshapka, says he’ll review all previous investigations into Burisma among other. He reiterates that he hasn’t seen any wrongdoing by either Biden.
  4. Also, it’s super hard to get a straight answer about what Burisma’s owner was being investigated for and how the cases were resolved. Here’s hoping the new guy will shed some light here; the previous prosecutors have put out conflicting stories, even contradicting their own stories.

Volker, Text Messages, and the State Department:

  1. Kurt Volker, the former U.S. envoy to Ukraine, testifies privately before Congress and provides text messages showing that senior State Department officials didn’t think Trump would meet with Zelensky unless Zelensky promised to publicly launch investigations. According to the texts:
    • Our officials coordinated with Zelensky’s top aide (Andrey Yermak) and Giuliani to try to leverage that promise to make a summit happen between the two presidents.
    • Ukraine was afraid of looking like a U.S. puppet to the rest of the world.
    • A text from Volker to Yermak includes this: “… assuming President Z convinces Trump he will investigate / ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we can nail down date for visit…” This was just before the infamous phone call, and it’s a pretty explicit quid pro quo.
    • Two weeks after the phone call, there was still no date for a summit and State Department officials let the Ukrainians know that Trump needed a public pledge. So Ukraine agreed to announce that they’ll open the investigations requested by Trump along with a date for the summit.
    • Here’s the text from Yermak: “Once we have a date, will call for a press briefing, announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of US-UKRAINE relationship, including among other things Burisma and election meddling in investigations.”
    • Volker coached Yermak on what the message to use in order to convince Trump. He coached him to include the conspiracy theory about Ukraine involvement in our elections: “Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections, which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this problem in the future.”
    • Trump really, really wanted the public promise of investigations in order to meet with Zelensky.
    • After Trump skipped a trip to Poland where he was slated to meet with Zelensky, Bill Taylor, the U.S. Charges D’affaires to Ukraine, texted this to Sondland: “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?”
    • After the call, Taylor texted, “The nightmare is they give the interview and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love it. (And I quit.)”
    • Taylor told Sondland he’s counting on him to be right, and Sondland replied: “Bill, I never said I was “right”. I said we are where we are and believe we have identified the best pathway forward. Lets hope it works.” To which Taylor replied: “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”
    • “The president has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” Sondland replied.
    • It seems Sondland’s concern is getting aid to Ukraine no matter what he has to do to get it. Taylor is more concerned about ethics.
    • Here’s the kicker. A U.S. official says they didn’t use official State Department email for these conversations; they used WhatsApp.
  1. To me, the most important takeaway from the texts is that our ambassadors helped Yermak write a statement that would’ve publicly committed Ukraine to pursuing investigations into far-right conspiracy theories. This was unsuccessful, though, because the statement was never released. Ukraine wanted to make the statement less specific, simply saying they promised to go after corruption.
  2. The texts from Bill Taylor indicate a known quid pro quo. All participants in the text conversations seem to know that a meeting between Zelensky and Trump was contingent on the investigations.
  3. Volker says he warned Giuliani that the sources he was using for information about the Bidens in Ukraine were unreliable. Giuliani’s response? “Yes, I know that.”

Week 140 in Trump

Posted on October 2, 2019 in Impeachment, Legislation, Trump

Just read the damn transcript and claim already! They're short.

If you’re wondering whether your Members of Congress are really informed about what’s going on, you should know that many of them haven’t read the Mueller report yet. They haven’t even read the summaries. They also, obviously haven’t even bothered to read Trump’s 5-page excerpt from his conversation with the Ukraine president (as evidenced by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s interview on 60 Minutes where he didn’t even know that Trump said, “I would like you to do us a favor though.” It’s not even that far down in the conversation. Don’t let your elected officials be that lazy. Make them take this seriously whether you want Trump exonerated or impeached. Call them and write to them and ask them to be informed and do their jobs.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending September 29…

Shootings This Week:

I’m putting this section on hold this week. There’s too much else to sort out with the whistleblower complaint.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Research by the Senate Finance Committee’s Democratic staff finds that the NRA facilitated political access for Russians Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin to a greater extent than previously thought. New York and DC attorneys general are also investigating this.
  2. Trump meets with NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre to talk about how the NRA can support Trump financially. LaPierre is working to steer Trump away from universal background check legislation.
  3. A federal judge reverses Bijan Kian’s guilty verdict. Kian was Michael Flynn’s lobbying associate working on Turkish issues and was convicted of acting as a foreign agent and conspiring to hide it.
  4. The Southern District of New York drops their case against Tony Podesta and Vin Weber in connection with lobbying for Ukraine without registering as foreign agents.
  5. A judge says Trump must testify in a case from 2015 over a fight between his security guards and protestors. Protestors say Trump’s security guards assaulted them during a protest in the Bronx where they were protesting Trump’s derogatory comments about immigrants.
  6. And just a reminder, Trump now has two whistleblower complaints against him. The Ukraine one I’ll go into below, but there’s also a complaint that Trump tried to influence the IRS audit of his personal tax returns.
  7. The Manhattan District Attorney agrees to wait to enforce his subpoena to obtain eight years of Trump’s tax returns until after a judge rules on whether to dismiss Trump’s request to block the subpoena.
  8. Trump says he brought up the issue of Hunter Biden to his intermediary on the trade talks with China. He alleges that Hunter got China to put $1.5 billion into an investment fund. The dollar amount is vastly exaggerated—it was in the millions.
  9. The Trump administration intensifies their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, snaring about 130 officials who shared emails with her. The administration is reviewing each email, and in some cases retroactively marking them as classified. The 130 officials received letters saying there are potential security violations from them sharing those emails several years ago. Some of these officials have already retired or moved on to other jobs.

Impeachment/Ukraine:

  1. The background of this story is pretty complex, so I won’t get into it all here. Here are some resources:
  1. In mid-August, the whistleblower made his complaint to Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson. When Atkinson realized that whistleblower protocol wasn’t being followed, he alerted the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
  2. That same day, three House committees opened investigations into whether Trump and Rudy Giuliani acted improperly in pushing Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden and CrowdStrike.
  3. The Chairs of the House Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs committees send a letter to the White House counsel demanding the White House give them documents about Trump’s conversations with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky.
  4. The Senate unanimously passes a non-binding resolution demanding that Trump release the whistleblower complaint about pressuring Ukraine. No GOP Senators object to the resolution.
  5. After months of slow-walking an official impeachment inquiry, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the start of official impeachment inquiries, provoked by the whistleblower complaint. It’s what I like to call an impeachment buffet.
    • She directs the heads of six House committees to proceed with their own inquiries, each focused on a different issue.
    • Democrats debate whether the scope of the impeachment inquiry should focus on the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s dealing with Ukraine or if they should include other potential crimes, like those brought up in the Mueller report, financial transactions, FEC violations, emoluments clause violations, and so on.
  1. Trump and Pelosi have a phone conversation where Trump asks if they can “work something out” about the whistleblower complaint.
  2. Senate Republicans say they’ll quash any articles of impeachment passed by the House, but McConnell has said the Senate will have to hold a trial. As a refresher:
    • The House holds hearings and votes on articles of impeachment.
    • If they pass articles of impeachment, the Senate then holds a trial.
    • If found guilty, Trump would be removed from office (this has never happened, and I can’t imagine it happening here).
    • Otherwise, Trump goes on record has having been impeached by the House but can stay in office.
  1. At least a week before the call, Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine. The Office of Management and Budget (which is run by the same Mick Mulvaney) then relayed that info to the State Department and the Pentagon.
    • Legislators realized by mid-August that the OMB had taken over the decision-making process for the funds from the Defense and State Departments.
    • Administration officials were told to give Congress no explanation other than that the funding was delayed because of interagency processes.
  1. Trump released the money only after the whistleblower complaint became known, but administration officials say there’s no link. Congress also pressured the administration to release the funds.
  2. In early September, Ukrainian officials voiced concern about whether aid was cut off because the Ukraine government wasn’t investigating the Bidens.
  3. First Trump says he withheld the money over corruption concerns, but the next day he says it’s because NATO countries aren’t contributing enough money.
    • A letter from the Pentagon disputes the first point.
    • As for the second point, the EU has provided more aid to Ukraine than the U.S.
    • Trump’s defenders say he had to evaluate whether the newly elected Zelensky is pro-Russia or pro-United States and whether he is corrupt.
  1. Trump says that the money was eventually released, so that’s evidence he didn’t do anything wrong.
  2. Trump releases a partial transcript of his call with Ukraine President Zelensky. It corroborates much of the whistleblower complaint. It shows he did ask Zelensky to investigate the Bidens and to investigate CrowdStrike, the company that handled the review of the hacked DNC server. Here’s some background on CrowdStrike and the whole Ukraine conspiracy theory.
  3. Trump thinks the excerpt exonerates him; you can decide for yourself. Here’s the complete excerpt. Below are the highlights I pulled out:
    • Zelensky is either on the Trump train or he knows how to fluff Trump up (I think the latter).
    • They talk about Ukraine obtaining military weapons and then Trump says, “I would like you to do us a favor though…”
    • That favor is for the Ukraine government to investigate CrowdStrike and the DNC server (which, by the way, isn’t missing and isn’t sitting in some basement in Ukraine).
    • Several times, Trump mentions having Zelensky get in touch with Attorney General Barr (five times) and Rudy Giuliani (four times) to work on this.
    • Trump criticizes Mueller’s investigation (this is the day after Mueller testified to Congress).
    • Zelensky says that one of his aides spoke with Giuliani recently. He guarantees open and candid investigations. At this point, it seems he’s only referring to the server.
    • Trump appears to call Ukraine General Prosecutor Shokin a very good prosecutor who got shut down.
      Background: Shokin was voted out of office by the Ukraine Parliament for failing to prosecute corruption cases, which is what Biden was working on. Shokin‘s failure to act included the Burisma investigation, where Hunter Biden worked.
    • Then Trump makes the ask for Zelensky to open an investigation into the Bidens. He says Biden bragged about stopping the prosecution in that case. Just to set the record straight, Biden didn’t stop any prosecution of the Burisma case nor did he say he did. The Bidens were never being prosecuted. (This whole bit is super convoluted. I refer you back to the timeline.)
    • Zelensky assures Trump that the next prosecutor will be 100% Zelensky’s person. The former prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, stepped down in the middle of all this. Now there’s a new prosecutor.
    • Zelensky agrees to investigate Burisma and Biden, and brings up how bad the U.S. Ambassador is.
  1. On the same day Trump releases the rough notes of his conversation with Zelensky, certain members of Congress get access to the whistleblower complaint in a SCIF, which means it contains classified information.
  2. They later release an unclassified version of the complaint to the public without the underlying classified evidence. Here are a few points, but you can read it yourself (it’s concise and well-written).
    • The complaint discusses the phone call, attempts to hide the content of the call, and additional ongoing concerns, like the meetings between Ukraine officials and Giuliani, and between Ukraine officials and our ambassadors.
    • On August 9, Trump told reporters that he thinks Zelensky will make a deal with Putin. (UPDATE: It was just announced publicly that this is happening.)
    • The White House used a super-secure computer system (a codeword-level system) to store details about Trump’s conversation with Ukraine President Zelensky. This is a very unusual use for this computer system, designed for highly classified national security information and not for politically sensitive information. This was at the direction of National Security Council attorneys, so it was serious.
    • Most interesting is the section on all the events leading up to the call, I recommend you all read it.
  1. This isn’t the only time the White House used the codeword-level system to hide conversations with foreign leaders. The White House also took extraordinary efforts to conceal conversations Trump had with Putin and Saudi’s Mohammad bin Salman.
    • The Russian government warns Trump not to release transcripts of any of his calls with Putin.
    • In 2018, the White House asked DoD officials to return transcripts of calls over worries their contents would be disclosed.
    • The White House also cut the number of aides allowed to listen in on secure lines and the number of officials who could review memos about the contents of calls.
  1. The White House accidentally sends out their talking points defending Trump to a number of House Democrats. And then they asked the Democrats to send them back. Here’s a summary of the talking points, along with my take on them.
  2. Republicans defend Trump by pointing out that three Democratic lawmakers sent Ukraine a letter threatening Ukraine if they don’t keep up their investigations into Manafort (those investigations were in conjunction with the current U.S. cases against Manafort). IMO, the letter is more of an inquiry, and not threatening at all. You can read it here.
  3. Trump says Congress should ask about Vice-President Mike Pence’s conversations with Zelensky.
    • Pence advises Trump not to release any of the contents of Trump’s call with Zelensky.
  1. DNI Joseph Maguire testifies before Congress. Some key takeaways:
    • This is unprecedented. All of it.
    • He was concerned about executive privilege in handling the complaint. Once Trump released the transcript, though, executive privilege was gone. Of note, executive privilege doesn’t cover criminal acts.
    • He thinks the whistleblower did the right thing and is acting in good faith, and that he should be able to testify before Congress.
    • He questions whether it is the purview of Congress to investigate this.
    • He doesn’t think he’s the best guy for this job.
  1. The whistleblower tentatively agrees to meet with Members of Congress as long as the whistleblower’s lawyer has the required security clearances.
    • If you’re curious about his credibility, the whistleblower identified several people who can corroborate his report, and the inspector general did his own followup investigation before finding the claim credible and urgent.
  1. A former advisor to Zelensky says that discussing the Biden case was a prerequisite to having a conversation between the two presidents.
  2. It turns out that while former Ukraine prosecutor Shokin wasn’t aggressively investigating Burisma, he was using the threat of investigation to extort the company’s owner and his friends.
  3. Ukrainian officials say that Lutsenko, who at the time was the Ukraine general prosecutor, was trying to give Giuliani the information he wanted earlier this year as a way to get into Trump’s good graces and possibly extricate himself from Ukraine. Lutsenko has since contradicted himself and said the Bidens didn’t violate any Ukrainian laws.
  4. Lutsenko says that the violations being investigated at Burisma occurred two years before Hunter Biden came on board.
  5. Lutsenko closed the investigation into Burisma in 2017, but begin looking at the company again early this year after he started meeting with Giuliani. His office disputes that he ever re-opened an investigation into the company, though.
  6. Lutsenko says he told Giuliani to open his own investigation with the FBI or CIA, but not to drag Ukraine into our politics. He also told him to bring his own court case if he had any evidence.
  7. Lutsenko told Giuliani that former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch gave him a list of people not to prosecute.
    • Never one to let the chance at a good conspiracy slip by, Giuliani says the list was part of a liberal anti-trump conspiracy (is there any other kind?) that was bankrolled by George Soros (who else?).
    • The US State Department dismisses the list as an “outright fabrication.”
    • Nonetheless, the administration removed Yovanovitch from Ukraine in May.
  1. The number of Democrats in the House who support impeachment has grown to 224, from about 135 before the whistleblower complaint was made public.
  2. Over 300 former national security and foreign policy officials sign on to a statement voicing concern over the phone call with Ukraine and calling for impeachment inquiries to get to the facts. They say Trump’s actions constitute a profound national security risk.
  3. Three House committees issue subpoenas for documents from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and also instruct him to make these department employees available for deposition: former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, former Ambassador Kurt Volker, George Kent, T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, and Ambassador Gordon Sondland.
    • Volker is said to have arranged for Giuliani to meet with Ukrainian officials.
    • Volker resigns the day after the contents of the whistleblower complaint is published (which is also the day after Giuliani goes on the talkshow circuit showing everyone the texts he exchanged with Volker).
    • The whistleblower complaint alleges that the day after Trump’s phone call with Zelensky, Volker and Sondland met with Ukrainian officials to help them navigate Trump’s demands. Whatever that means. Volker will testify next week.
  1. In light of the impeachment announcement, the House Intelligence Committee will work through the two-week recess at the beginning of October.
  2. Trump defenders claim that the Intelligence Community changed the rules requiring whistleblower’s to have firsthand information just so this whistleblower could make a claim. Those rules were never in the code to begin with and the form hasn’t changed.
  3. Fox News reports that DC husband and wife lawyers Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing worked with Giuliani to get dirt on Biden from Ukrainian officials. They all three worked “off the books” and only Trump knew what they were doing. All three lawyers deny this.
  4. Trump and the GOP really push the narrative that Biden intervened in Ukraine to get the prosecutor to stop investigating his son. That’s really not what happened, but there was definitely the appearance of a conflict of interest. Here’s the straight scoop, with links to their sources.
  5. The whistleblower is now under federal protection out of fear for his safety.
  6. In 2018, Trump told the world he takes Putin at his word when he says Russia didn’t meddle in our 2016 elections. This week, we learn that in 2017, Trump did acknowledge that Russia meddled in our elections and that he told Russian officials that he didn’t care.
  7. Trump’s efforts with Ukraine seem to have three parts: 1) discredit his political opponent Biden, and 2) clear Russia of meddling in the 2016 election so we can drop sanctions, and 3) push Ukraine toward a peace agreement with Russia, again so we can drop sanctions.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A Michigan judge strikes down a law that would’ve made it harder for voters to get initiatives on the ballot. This was one of the laws passed by last year’s lame-duck legislature to restrict the new Democratic governor’s ability to enact his agenda.
  2. The day before Nancy Pelosi announces impeachment inquiries into Trump, Rep. Ayanna Pressley files articles of impeachment against Brett Kavanaugh.

Healthcare:

  1. As an example of how we have a “do nothing” Congress who just wants to impeach him, Trump says that Democrats haven’t taken any action to lower drug prices. But just last week he praised the bill they passed and sent to the Senate that would… yes, lower drug prices.
  2. At the UN, Trump’s administration says abortion isn’t an international right, and they push to eliminate terms like sexual and reproductive health from UN documents. Only 19 nations agree, including those bastions of women’s rights, Saudi Arabia and Russia.
  3. Employer health insurance plans have become more expensive over the past decade and they provide less coverage.
  4. The suicide rate in the military hit its highest level in five years.
  5. The FDA delayed regulating vaping products for years, and only started to regulate them in 2016; still, they pushed back critical deadlines until 2022.

International:

  1. In the middle of all the whistleblower kerfuffle, Trump meets with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky at the UN and they hold a joint press conference.
    • Trump talks about having the best employment we’ve ever had and the best economy we’ve ever had.
    • He also resurrects his accusations that NATO countries don’t spend enough money to help Ukraine.
    • Zelensky says there was no pressure during the whistleblower phone call, and also says he doesn’t want to get in the middle of U.S. elections.
    • Trump closes with, “Unfortunately she [Nancy Pelosi] is no longer Speaker of the House.
  1. Trump complains that the press isn’t covering all the great things he did at the UN summit because they’re too busy covering the whistleblower complaint. Here are just a few things they covered:
    • In Trump’s UN speech, he promotes nationalism and criticizes globalists, socialists, and several countries.
    • On the plus side, he says his administration is working to end the criminalization of homosexuality abroad and to empower women.
    • Trump holds a session on ending religious persecution and protecting religious sites and relics.
    • Trump planned to skip the UN Climate Summit, but he makes a brief appearance.
  1. Without a clear winner in Israel’s second elections this year, President Reuven Rivlin gives Netanyahu first dibs at trying to form a government. If Netanyahu can’t form a government, the mandate goes back to the president. Or there could be yet more elections.
  2. Netanyahu and opponent Benny Gantz plan to meet next week to see if they can agree on a unity government. Those talks will be the same day that Netanyahu’s pre-indictment hearing begins.
  3. Parliament resumes in the UK after the Supreme Court rules that Boris Johnson’s suspension of the Parliament was unlawful. Johnson was trying to prevent them from blocking a no-deal Brexit.
  4. Johnson’s opposition in Parliament wants to hold a vote of no confidence in order to replace Johnson with an interim administrator.
  5. Oh, and Johnson is now embroiled in a romantic scandal. He had an affair with an American businesswomen who received money from an agency that Johnson controlled as Mayor of London.
  6. Hong Kong is in its 17th straight week of pro-democracy protests. In an unauthorized march, thousands of protestors clash with police, and the entryways to subway stations are closed. Protestors set one entryway on fire, police arrest more than 100 people, and more than 25 protestors are injured. This was a violent weekend, with police firing water canons, tear gas, and rubber bullets, and with protestors throwing gas bombs, starting fires, and breaking windows. China’s 70th anniversary of Communist Party rule (which the protestors are fighting against) is coming up,
  7. Protestors block streets in Lebanon over the country’s economic crisis. They accuse the ruling class of stealing from the people.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. If you don’t think the House should impeach because you want them passing laws and working for the American people instead, take a look at this. It’s what the House has been doing outside of investigating Trump. Impeachment isn’t taking up all their time.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. For the second time, the Senate approves a resolution to block Trump’s emergency declaration to fund his border wall. The House follows suit, but Trump can still veto it and is likely to do so.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump cuts the U.S. refugee program by nearly half. He had already dropped it from 110,000 per year under Obama to 30,000 per year in 2019. In 2020, we’ll only allow 18,000 refugees in.
    • The U.S. takes in less than 1 refugee for everyone 1,000 residents each year. France, Canada, and Israel take in 4 to 5 times what we do per capita. Even Ecuador and Venezuela take in more per capita than we do (around 7 times more). Iran takes in 12 times as many refugees per capita.
  1. A district court judge says she’ll block Trump’s changes to the rules for how long we can detain immigrant children.
  2. Insomniac Events (a music festival company) changes their tents into shelters for around 5,000 Bahamans displaced by Hurricane Dorian.
  3. It’s been four years since Germany took in 1 million + immigrants, mostly from Syria. After initial opposition, these immigrants are integrating and helping to revitalize rural areas.
  4. In 1968, Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos were expelled for raising their fists on the winners podium in protest of racial injustice. Now they’re being inducted into the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee’s Hall of Fame. Just another example of how prevailing attitudes change and aren’t always on the right side of history. Hmmm…
  5. Trump calls six non-white Members of Congress “savages.” Two are Jewish, one is Puerto Rican, two are African American, and one is Palestinian.

Climate:

  1. Three Norwegian legislators nominate 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg for the Nobel Peace Prize. While at the same time, Trump makes fun of her in a tweet.
    • Actually, since her speech, Greta has taken a shit-ton of online abuse from adults for her climate activism. What inspires people to be such assholes?
  1. Even Russia formally joins the Paris climate agreement.
  2. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro says the Amazon rainforest isn’t on fire; it’s brimming with riches that he wants to develop.
  3. A new report based on 7,000 studies says that climate change has heated the oceans and changed the ecosystem so dramatically that seafood supplies are threatened. The warmer ocean waters also fuel cyclones and flooding along coastal areas.
  4. At a meeting of fossil fuel executives, an industry lawyer says it’s time for energy companies to accept their role in fueling climate change. For decades, major oil companies have downplayed the effects of climate change, despite documents showing that their own studies supported the science as far back as the mid-80s.
    • Ironically, Trump’s deregulation efforts are part of what brought the industry to their “Come to Jesus” moment, because while larger companies will keep in place safety and environmental protections, smaller companies might take shortcuts. And that could be bad for the industry as a whole.
  1. Summer’s only been gone a week, but winter’s chomping at the bit. Parts of the West get hit with up to three feet of snow, with record low temps and strong winds. Montana Governor Steve Bullock declares a winter storm emergency.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The oldest travel company in the world, Thomas Cook, collapses, leaving hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded on their vacations. The British government refused to intervene to save the company, but they do say they’ll assist travelers. The collapse puts 21,000 jobs at risk.
  2. Just when the market looks optimistic, Trump addresses the UN and accuses China of not keeping its promises to us and engaging in predatory business practices. Stocks have their worst day of the month.
  3. And then, stocks fall further as more Democrats express support for impeaching Trump. But it ends the week pretty even. There’s no real precedent for how markets react to impeachment proceedings.
  4. The housing market slows a bit, with mortgage applications falling 10.1% and prices remaining steady.
  5. Income inequality is now at its highest level in over 50 years. Inequality is still highest in wealthy coastal states, but states in the middle saw the greatest growth in inequality in 2018 (the latest year for which we have numbers).
  6. The IMF names Kristalina Georgieva to be their managing director. Why is this news? Because, of all things, she’s an economist. Right now, Fed Chair Jerome Power, incoming ECB President Christine Lagarde, and World Bank President David Malpass are all lawyers with no solid backgrounds in economics. Having a lawyer in these positions makes them more agile, but also means they lack the understanding behind economic moves.
  7. The New York Fed continues to provide cash infusions to the repo market, but things continue to worsen. The problem is the decreasing level of liquidity, meaning banks don’t have fast access to cash.
  8. It’s been a while since we’ve heard about a teachers’ strike, but Chicago teachers vote to strike, possibly sometime in October.
  9. The UK economy shrank for the first time in seven years, with the GDP falling by 0.2%. The problem is largely uncertainty over Brexit.

Miscellaneous:

  1. At least 22 people are dead and 700 are injured after a 5.6-magnitude earthquake hits northern Pakistan.
  2. The former Chair of the North Carolina GOP, Robin Hayes, plans to plead guilty to lying to the FBI in a bribery case involving a major political donor. Hayes is also a former Member of Congress.
  3. New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger reveals that in 2017, a U.S. official sent The New York Times an urgent warning that Egypt wanted to arrest the paper’s Cairo reporter, Declan Walsh. The official also said that the Trump administration had tried to keep the warning secret and let the arrest occur.

Polls:

  1. Support for impeaching Trump jumped 13 percentage points among Democrats and 12 points among voters since the whistleblower claim came out.
  2. A majority of Americans approve of moving ahead with impeachment inquiries.
  3. In a Monmouth University Poll, 6 of 10 Republicans don’t think Trump mentioned Biden to Ukraine president Zelensky. Here’s a quote directly from the 5-page excerpt Trump released:
    “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”
    Moral of the story? READ THE DAMN SOURCE MATERIAL.

Week 104 in Trump

Posted on January 22, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Tijuana, Mexico--where the border wall meets the Pacific Ocean and people sit on the fence and dream. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

I’m so not ready for this… the 2020 campaign season is already starting, with a bunch of Democrats declaring a presidential run. And that means that the disinformation campaigns are already out in force. So please remember to check your facts and don’t believe everything you hear. Here’s some advice for trolls that’s circulating on 4Chan to make Democrats sound conflicted or negative about Elizabeth Warren:

“Pose as a concerned Democrat and criticize her for being white,” one wrote. “Criticize her for being a woman. Do whatever it takes to further divide the left and prevent them from unifying behind a candidate for 2020. If we can manufacture another Bernie/Hillary split, they’ll get crushed in the general election.”

Here’s what really happened last week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. In late December, Trump signed an executive order that expands logging on public lands. The EO also orders the clearing of underbrush on 4 million acres and treating pests on another 1.5 million acres. Trump says this will help prevent forest fires, but experts say this is only useful when done near homes. The EO could mean a 30% increase for the logging industry.

Border Wall/Shutdown:

  1. Here’s some fallout from the shutdown this week:
    • The Federal Aviation Administration calls back furloughed safety inspectors to work without pay. The IRS does the same with its employees, and the FDA brings back food safety inspectors (without pay). U.S. Fish and Wildlife bring back some workers so people can hunt on wildlife refuges.
    • The Coast Guard becomes the first branch of the armed services to not get paid.
    • FBI agents are now working without pay.
    • The SEC stops processing initial public offerings.
    • The NTSB suspends investigations of fatal accidents.
    • The State Department is calling furloughed diplomats to come back to work without pay.
    • Trump’s economists double their estimation of how much economic growth is being lost each week of the shutdown.
    • Some states begin allowing federal workers who are working but not being paid to receive unemployment benefits. The Trump administration has said these workers don’t qualify for benefits.
    • Over 40,000 immigration hearings have been cancelled due to the shutdown. Immigrants who miss their hearings are being given new dates years from now.
    • Businesses are doing their part to help furloughed workers by helping them to delay payments and reorganize loans, and by providing free services and free food.
    • The NY Met gives free tickets to furloughed workers to see their performances.
  1. A federal judge denies requests from federal employees and unions 1) to require that air traffic controllers be paid, and 2) that employees who are essential shouldn’t be forced to work without pay.
  2. The House passes a package to reopen the government, and, for the third time this year, Mitch McConnell block bills to reopen the government in the Senate.
  3. Sarah Huckabee Sanders says it’s Democrats fault that Trump had to feed the Clemson Tigers champion football team fast food.
  4. Nancy Pelosi sends Trump a letter saying they need to postpone the State of the Union address until after the shutdown ends due to security concerns. The White House asks Mitch McConnell if he can invite them to do it in the Senate instead.
  5. In apparent retaliation, Trump postpones Pelosi’s congressional delegation (codel) trip where Pelosi planned to visit NATO officials in Brussels and then troops in Afghanistan. The codel was already on a bus on the way to the plane and Capitol Police already had their people on the ground in Europe awaiting their arrival.
  6. Trump orders that government officials can’t use military planes until the shutdown is over. Then he sends Melania to Mar-a-Lago on a military plane.
  7. Trump says Pelosi and her group can take a commercial flight if she wants. Recent history note: Trump took an official plane to Iraq during the shutdown.
  8. Pelosi says she’s now postponing even their commercial flight abroad because Trump took divulged the codel’s travel plans to the public.
  9. Nearly 400 immigrants tunneled under a border wall in Arizona and present themselves to border patrol agents for asylum.
  10. While border crossings are down, family units now makes up 80% of apprehensions. And they’re mostly seeking asylum.
  11. Trump starts telling stories about women trafficked over the border who’s mouths are taped with electrical tape. He morphs the story to include multiple kinds of tape and body parts. People who work with anti-trafficking NGOs at the border say it’s possible, but they haven’t seen it.
  12. Trump offers Democrats a three-year reprieve for people currently protected by DACA and TPS, saying he won’t try to deport them during that time if they fund his wall. Soooo he tried to take away DACA and TPS, and now he says he’ll give them back if Democrats give him the wall. Again, the courts have struck down his actions on DACA and TPS, so they’re currently protected by the courts.
    • Conservative pundits call this amnesty. To be clear, this is not what amnesty looks like.
  1. Here’s where Pelosi says Democrats want border funding to go toward:
    • Increased infrastructure investments at our ports of entry including additional ports and roads;
    • Advanced technology to scan for drugs, weapons and contraband and to detect unauthorized crossings;
    • More customs personnel including filling the more than 3,000 customs and border patrol vacancies; and
    • More immigration judges.
  1. The House cancels January recess in order to deal with the shutdown.
  2. The DOJ hires two lawyers likely to deal with issues of eminent domain at the border.

Russia:

  1. Mueller’s team subpoenas three new Jerome Corsi associates to testify before the grand jury. The Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenas Corsi himself.
  2. Both Mueller and Manhattan prosecutors are investigating a breakfast event held at the Trump International Hotel in DC two days before Trump’s inauguration. In attendance were Michael Flynn, Devin Nunes, and several foreign diplomats.
  3. The House votes to overturn the Treasury Department’s decision to lift sanctions on a company that Oleg Deripaska has a stake in. 57 Senators, including 11 Republicans, also vote to keep sanctions, but it falls short of the 60 votes required to overturn the decision.
    • Under the Treasury decision, Deripaska must reduce his stake in two companies and the other sanctions against him remain. But a binding and signed document shows that it allows Deripaska to get rid of $100s of millions in debt and for him and his associates to retain a large share of ownership.
    • The primary company involved is a major aluminum producer, and the sanctions are hurting American companies.
    • With an overwhelming majority, the House passes a resolution of disapproval for rolling back the sanctions.
  1. Last year, I refrained from reporting on Anastasia Vashukevich, who says she was Deripaska’s mistress and that she has tapes of him bragging about how Russia stole our 2016 elections. She was subsequently arrested in Thailand on charges of prostitution. So I was waiting to see what would come of this, if anything. This week, Thailand releases her and deports her to Belarus… with a layover in Moscow where officials there arrest her at the airport in dramatic fashion.
  2. BuzzFeed releases a report that starts out with a bang but quickly fizzles. (Note that I don’t typically use BuzzFeed as a source, but the story generated a lot of buzz, so I figured it was newsworthy.)
    • BuzzFeed reports that Trump personally directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations to hide Trump’s involvement.
    • Trump’s legal team reaches out to Mueller’s office about this.
    • Mueller’s office disputes parts of the reporting, but not the substance. This is important because his office rarely jumps in with statements on news stories. They issue this statement:
      “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.”
    • BuzzFeed stands by their story, but they’re also working to learn what specific parts Mueller’s team is disputing.
    • If the reporting turns out to be right, it would mean Donald Jr. perjured himself during his testimony to Congress.
  1. Rudy Giuliani says Trump and Cohen were discussing building a Trump Tower in Moscow throughout 2016, possibly into November.
  2. Giuliani also admits that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, but he maintains that Trump did not. He later says he doesn’t know if there was any collusion.
  3. Cohen’s testimony before Congress next month will be limited so as not to interfere with Mueller’s investigation. So if you were expecting the full scoop, you’re not going to get it.

Legal Fallout:

  1. A new report from the Inspector General for the General Services Administration says that GSA officials chose to ignore the constitution’s anti-corruption clauses when they continued leasing the Old Post Office Building to the Trump International Hotel after Trump took office.
    • An example of why this is an issue: Last year when T-Mobile needed approval from the Trump administration for a merger, nine T-Mobile executives booked rooms at the hotel with one of them staying there at least 10 times.
  1. Michael Cohen confirms that he paid a tech firm to rig online polls in Trump’s favor during the 2016 elections. He also says this was “at the direction of and the sole benefit of” Trump. I don’t think this is illegal, but it is ironic given that Trump kept complaining about how rigged the polls are.
    • Fun fact: Cohen also used this company to promote himself as a sex symbol on Twitter.
  1. Court filings show that Paul Manafort attempted to fill Trump’s administration with his allies, but it’s not clear how successful he was.

Courts/Justice:

  1. William Barr, who’s currently being evaluated for confirmation as Attorney General, once said that the DOJ might need some “political supervision.” He thinks that we went too far in pushing the DOJ to be independent following Watergate.
    • Barr doesn’t say he wouldn’t jail journalists if they report on things that “might hurt the country.”
    • Barr says it’s vitally important that Mueller be able to complete his investigation, but he refuses to recuse himself even though he has expressed opinions on the case previously without full knowledge of the evidence obtained so far.
    • It takes Trump by surprise to learn during Barr’s testimony that Barr has been friends and colleagues with Mueller for 30 years. I would’ve thought that would come out in the vetting process. Was there a vetting process?
    • Unlike Jeff Sessions, Barr says he won’t go after marijuana sales in states where it’s legal.
  1. A district judge says Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes must answer questions for a court case in writing, but denies a request to make them sit for depositions. The conservative group Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit against the State Department last year over the handling of missing emails. Rice and Rhodes will answer questions about the talking points used after the Benghazi attacks. Because that hasn’t been investigated enough yet.

Healthcare:

  1. A federal judge issues a nationwide injunction against Trump’s attempted rollback of the ACA’s birth-control mandate. Just previous to that, a different judge blocked the rule for several states just hours before it was to take effect.
    • If successful, Trump’s rollback would let employers avoid providing contraceptive coverage as part of the insurance policies they offer to their employees. Under the ACA, they must provide this at no cost.
  1. WHO issues a list of the top 10 most significant health issues facing us today (in no particular order):
    • Air pollution and climate change
    • Noncommunicable diseases (like heart disease, cancer, diabetes)
    • A global flu pandemic
    • Fragile and vulnerable settings (caused by things like drought, famine, and war)
    • Antimicrobial resistance to existing treatments
    • Weak primary healthcare
    • Anti-vaccination movements
    • High-threat pathogens (like Zika, Ebola, and SARS)
    • Dengue fever
    • HIV
  1. An appeals court vacates a previous ruling that stopped Texas from defunding Planned Parenthood. In the original case, Texas tried to oust Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid program based on the videos that purported to show Planned Parenthood workers discussing illegal sales of fetal material. This doesn’t reverse the ruling, but instead throws the ball back into the original judge’s court and forces him to use a different standard to review the case.
  2. The Senate fails to get the 60 votes needed to pass a bill that would permanently ban federal funding for abortions and place new restrictions on abortions.

International:

  1. Trump has privately and repeatedly pushed withdrawing from NATO. At the NATO summit last summer, he told his national security officials that he didn’t see the point of the coalition. Both Jim Mattis and John Bolton spent the summit scrambling to make sure there was no mention of a withdrawal.
  2. Turkish President Erdogan says Trump called him up and said that he’s still going to withdraw troops from Syria.
  3. The UK Parliament fails to pass Theresa May’s Brexit deal with a vote of 432 to 202, a huge defeat for her government.
    • As a result, May faces a vote of no confidence, which she wins.
    • The official Brexit due date is March 29. May can try to ask the EU for more concessions, but they’ve drawn a firm line.
    • It’s possible this will lead to another vote on Brexit, but it’s not clear that if voters decide to NOT Brexit that it wouldn’t happen anyway.
    • Parliament could amend the EU Withdrawal Act to force May to request an Article 50 extension on the Brexit deadline if there is no agreement on an exit plan.
  1. An explosion in Syria kills two U.S. troops and two civilians, with the Islamic State claiming responsibility. Just a few weeks ago, Trump said ISIS was defeated and we’re pulling troops out of Syria.
    • On the day of the explosion, Mike Pence states that “the caliphate has crumbled and ISIS has been defeated.”
    • Brett McGurk, former special envoy to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, says that Trump’s choice to withdraw troops is giving IS fighters new life.
  1. Trump plans another North Korea summit with Kim Jong Un in February. A new report claims there are at least 20 previously undisclosed ballistic missile sites in North Korea.
  2. The Trump administration rejects a deal with Russia to keep the Nuclear Forces Treaty, which is intended to contain nuclear arms proliferation. They say there’s no way to verify Russia is keeping their end of the deal. This sets the stage for a six-month withdrawal from the treaty starting next month.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Three GOP Members of Congress have either had their committee assignments stripped or won’t get any assignments due to misconduct:
    • Steve King: Stripped of assignments due to racist comments.
    • Duncan Hunter: Indicted (when elected)
    • Chris Collins: Indicted (when elected)

Family Separation:

  1. An audit finds that the Trump administration has separated thousands more children than was publicly known. They started separating families over six months before they announced it, and they didn’t track those families. So we don’t know exactly how many, where the parents or children are, or whether they’ve been reunited.
    • The first separations started no later than October of 2017; Jeff Sessions didn’t announce the policy until May of 2018.
    • The separations continued after Trump ended the policy in June of 2018 (largely due to a court order).
    • Amnesty International estimates 8,000 “family units” were separated. I’m not sure what they mean by family unit.
  1. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) asks the FBI to open an investigation into whether Kirstjen Nielsen lied under oath to Congress when she said that the administration never had a policy for family separation.
  2. Merkley gave NBC News a draft of a 2017 memo from the DHS and DOJ that describes plans to separate families, to deport minors and deny them asylum hearings, and to force asylum seekers to wait for their hearings in Mexico instead of the U.S.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A judge blocks the Commerce Department from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, and rakes Secretary Wilbur Ross over the coals in his ruling. He says Ross and his aides broke a “smorgasbord” of federal rules, cherry-picked facts, twisted evidence, hid their deliberations, and lied under oath.
  2. The Pentagon extends the mission of the troops assisting DHS along the border through September. There are about 2,300 troops still at the border, down from 5,900.
  3. The Virginia Senate ratifies the ERA (yes, this is still a thing). If the GOP-led House of Delegates follows suit, we’ll have enough state ratifications to finally ratify it. Interesting history note: The original draft of the amendment was created almost 100 years ago, in 1921. Can we get this done already? We shouldn’t need to!
  4. The House passes a resolution nearly unanimously condemning white supremacy and white nationalism. Even Steve King, at whom the resolution is directed, voted for it. The lone nay vote, Democrat Bobby Rush, doesn’t think the wording is strong enough.
  5. While Representative Tony Cárdenas was speaking on the House floor, a Republican representative yelled “Go back to Puerto Rico!” The congressman later called Cárdenas to apologize and said he wasn’t addressing him, he was referring to the Democratic contingent that had a retreat in Puerto Rico earlier this year. At the time, the House was trying to pass a continuing resolution to reopen nine departments.
  6. Hundreds of thousands show up across the country for the third annual Women’s March. The marches have gotten smaller each year, and this year the National March in DC was marred by accusations of anti-Semitism.
  7. New York bans gay conversation therapy, and adds gender identity and gender expression to their anti-discrimination laws.
  8. The new Democratic governor of Kansas reinstates protections for LGBTQ state employees.
  9. The Trump Organization received at least 192 visas for foreign workers last year. That’s the highest number since 2008.

Climate/EPA:

  1. On top of learning earlier this month that the oceans are warming waaaay faster than we thought, now we learn that the Antarctic is now losing six times as much ice each year as it was in the 80s. It’s gone from 40 billion tons a year to 252 billion tons.
  2. The U.S. is increasing oil and gas drilling faster than any other nation, even though scientists say we have just 11 years to sort out this whole climate change thing.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) becomes the first woman and the first African American to chart the Financial Services Committee in the House.
  2. Los Angeles County teachers strike for higher wages and an increase in staffing levels. They’re trying to bring attention to the needs of public schools.
  3. Our six biggest banks (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs) made $100 billion in profit last year. That’s a first, it’s expected to grow when 4th quarter numbers come in, and it’s due to the tax cuts.
  4. The Trump administration refuses to extend emergency food assistance to Puerto Rico, calling it “excessive and unnecessary.”
  5. Economists worry that the extended shutdown could push us into a contraction. A contraction starts when there are two consecutive quarters of GDP decline.
  6. Economic growth was already slowing in the last quarter of 2018, with downward pressures including the trade war with China, the fading effects of the $1.5 trillion tax cut, and slower global growth in general. The government shutdown is expected to slow it further.

Elections:

  1. A federal judge blocks parts of the lame duck bills passed in Wisconsin aimed at disenfranchising typically Democratic voters. The judge blocks attempts to curb early voting, to limit the use of student IDs, and to limit the use of receipts for people with exceptional barriers to getting IDs.
  2. McConnell accuses Democrats of encouraging voter fraud and trying to swing elections toward one party with their sweeping election reform bill. His exact words are “power grab” and “naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party.”
    • There’s a general summary of the bill here (under Legislation): http://cjrules.com/week-102-in-trump/
    • The point of the bill is to make sure every citizen can vote and none are disenfranchised from their right to vote. So I guess if more people voting swings elections toward one party…
  1. New York passes election reform bills to allow early voting, preregistration of minors (so they’re able to vote upon turning 18), and voting by mail.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump officials reverse an Obama-era safety rule (this is so commonplace that it isn’t even news). This rule required trains that carry flammable material (like oil) to install special brakes to reduce the risk of derailment and explosion. The move was proposed just over a year ago, right around the time the Amtrak train derailed in Washington.
  2. A federal judge finds four women guilty after they enter a national park and leave food and water for immigrants crossing the border. The charges include entering a national refuge without a permit, driving a vehicle in a national refuge, and leaving things behind in a national refuge.
  3. Ouch. Betsy DeVos breaks her pelvis and hip socket in a biking accident.

Polls:

  1. 57% of American voters say they’ll definitely vote against Trump in 2020.
    • 30% say they’ll vote for Trump in 2020.
    • 13% say they have no idea who they’ll vote for.
  1. 72% of federal workers oppose the shutdown, with 64% strongly opposed.
    • 21% support the shutdown, with 14% strongly supporting.
  1. 56% of federal workers oppose building the wall, with 45% strongly opposed.
    • 34% support building the wall, with 25% strongly supporting.

Week 97 in Trump

Posted on December 4, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Former President George H.W. Bush lying in state in the Rotunda. (Morry Gash/Pool/Getty Images)

George H.W. Bush passed away at 94 years old; just 7 months after his wife, Barbara, passed away. He’ll lie in state, and December 5 will be a national day of mourning for him. And even over this, we were so fast to divide ourselves. One group is wistful for a president with his grace and character; the other group thinks he was just plain awful. Can’t we just, for a short period, let people eulogize and remember a man who’s long and full life just came to an end? Give the family some time to grieve, and then go ahead and point out his policy flaws. We don’t have to hate at every turn. It makes me tired…

And you know what else makes me tired? Everything else that happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. In his first year, Trump ordered a complete and independent audit of the Pentagon. Now the auditors say the job is impossible to complete. The Pentagon fudges their numbers and documents in order to justify increases to the Pentagon budget (whether or not the money gets used–a common business practice). Their records have irregularities and errors, and lack the needed information. The Pentagon’s defense? “We didn’t expect to pass it.”
  2. A federal judges rules that a lawsuit against the Trump Foundation can proceed. The suit accuses Trump of misusing funds from the charity for political and personal gain. Trump’s legal team says he can’t be sued because he’s president; the judge says he can.

Russia:

  1. Robert Mueller drops Paul Manafort’s plea deal, saying Manafort breached their agreement by continually lying to investigators. On top of that, Manafort’s lawyers were keeping Trump’s legal team abreast of their discussions with Mueller’s team.
    • Mueller considers filing additional charges against Manafort, and will file a report on what Manafort lied about.
    • Since Manafort already pleaded guilty, he’s now on the hook for those crimes… and also probably for conspiring to defraud the U.S. and obstruct justice.
    • According to The Guardian, Manafort met with WikiLeak’s Julian Assange around the same time he joined Trump’s campaign, and the two had met a few times before that. Both deny they ever met and no other media outlet has confirmed this story, so I’m taking this report with a grain of salt.
    • After Mueller pulls Manafort’s plea deal, Trump says Mueller’s gone rogue and is forcing witnesses to lie.
    • Rudy Giuliani brags about the arrangement with Manafort’s lawyers. He says it was a valuable source of information about the investigation of which his client is a subject.
    • Trump doesn’t rule out a pardon for Manafort.
  1. Michael Cohen enters a new plea agreement with Mueller, pleading guilty to lying about when talks with Russia about a Trump property ended. Cohen told Congress that the talks ended in January 2016, but they were still going on until June 2016. We have the texts to prove it. 
Cohen is the 33rd person charged by Mueller in the Russia probe.
  2. Cohen says he spoke with Trump and his family about the Trump Tower negotiations during that time; previously Cohen said they didn’t talk about it.
  3. The new court filings show that:
    • Cohen, Trump, Felix Sater, and Russian officials were in negotiations from January through June of 2016 for Trump to travel to Russia to meet with Putin.
    • They discussed Cohen going to Russia to negotiate the details of the visit before the Republican National Convention, and Trump going to Russia after.
    • In early to mid-June of 2016, Cohen told Sater that the trips were cancelled and that the Trump property deal was also cancelled.
    • Cohen says he lied to Congress to limit the Russia investigation and to support Trump.
    • Trump Organization offered to give Putin a $50 million penthouse in the tower.
    • Trump lied to us all when he said he didn’t have any interests in Russia.
    • Trump Jr.’s testimony to Congress contradicts Michael Cohen’s testimony.
    • Trump was kept abreast of his campaign members who were contacting both Russia and Wikileaks, and they subsequently tried to hide those activities.
  1. Rudy Giuliani first says Cohen is a liar, and then says that Trump’s written answers match Cohen’s version. So either Trump is a liar, or Cohen is telling the truth.
  2. Trump says Cohen is a liar and a weak person who’s just trying to save himself from receiving a prison sentence for unrelated charges.
  3. The revelations about Trump Tower Moscow aren’t necessarily criminal or impeachable. Trump says there was nothing wrong with him continuing to do business as a candidate. Which is technically true. However, the American public have a right to know where a presidential candidate’s financial interests stand.
  4. We now know that the final House committee reports submitted by the majority Republicans include the lies from Cohen’s and Trump Jr.’s original testimony. Committee reports submitted by minority Democrats include snippets of emails that contradict those lies. Democrats want to call Cohen back in to correct the record.
  5. As a results of this plea deal, Senate committees begin reviewing the testimony given to them.
  6. The Trump Tower Moscow deal was dissolved right around the time the Washington Post published the first article detailing the Russian hacking of the DNC servers.
  7. Republican Senator Jeff Flake demands a vote on a bill to protect Mueller, or he’ll stop voting to advance Trump’s judicial nominations to a full Senate vote. Republican Senator Mike Lee blocked a bipartisan effort to force a vote on the bill.
  8. An email trail between Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi, who pulled back on his plea deal with Mueller, shows that two months before WikiLeaks dumped Clinton campaign emails, they were discussing details about an October dump that would be damaging to Clinton.
  9. Mueller investigates call logs from the 2016 campaign where Trump made several late-night calls from a blocked number to Roger Stone.
  10. Trump cancels his meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit over Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and then says he’ll meet with Putin one-on-one. They ended up having an informal meeting.
  11. James Comey asks a federal judge to block a request from Republicans in the House that he testify in private. In the end, Comey agrees to testify behind closed doors, but a transcript of his testimony will be made public.
  12. British intelligence say that Putin was likely behind the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter on UK soil.
  13. Democrats in the House start making a list of targets to investigate when they take back over the House next year. They’ll likely revisit the 64 subpoenas that Republicans blocked over the past year and a half.

Legal Fallout:

  1. German police raid Deutsche Bank headquarters as part of a money laundering investigation spawned by the Panama Papers. The bank was previously fined for helping to launder Russian money.
  2. The raid has no apparent ties to Trump, but after an internal investigation earlier this year, Deutsche Bank found questionable transactions by Jared Kushner, which they shared with Mueller. They were also one of the few banks willing to loan money to Trump after his financial collapses.
  3. Federal agents raid the Chicago offices of Ed Burke, who previously did tax work for Trump. We don’t know if the raid is related to Trump at all.
  4. It was a mystery to me why Facebook would launch a smear campaign against George Soros when defending themselves over personal data breaches. It turns out that Soros criticized the company at the World Economic Forum, so Sheryl Sandberg asked for information on whether Soros had something to gain from that. This led her staff to hire a GOP opposition research firm.
  5. House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) says that Ivanka’s use of personal email is OK because it’s just really hard to comply when you’re dealing with so many emails and so many rules. He says it’s nothing like Hillary’s use of a personal email server.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Mike Pence casts the tie-breaking vote when Jeff Flake refuses to advance Trump’s judicial nominee, Thomas Farr, out of committee for a floor vote. Flake didn’t refuse to advance Farr because of Farr’s long and sordid history of working to suppress the Black vote in North Carolina; Flake refused to advance him because he wants McConnell to bring the Mueller bill to the floor for a vote.
  2. Farr might have made it out of committee, but he wasn’t confirmed in the Senate. It turns out that the Black Republican in the Senate isn’t fond of judges who work to disenfranchise Black voters, so he joined Jeff Flake in voting against him.
  3. Christine Blasey Ford announces she’ll donate the remaining money raised from a GoFundMe campaign to organizations that support survivors of sexual assault. Up till now, the money went to securing and relocating her family multiple times due to threats of death and violence.
  4. New reports allege that Acting Attorney General Matt Whittaker continued his support of a patent company that was engaged in fraud while at the same time hindering an FTC investigation into that company.
  5. Whittaker is also under investigation by the Office of the Special Counsel (not to be confused with Robert Mueller) for possible Hatch Act violations for accepting political contributions while employed by the government.
  6. Bill Shine, the White House deputy communications chief, will receive about $15 million from Fox News over the next two years as severance pay and bonus. At the same time, he gets a U.S. government salary and he’s in a position to show favoritism to Fox News.

Healthcare:

  1. New enrollments for health insurance through the ACA is down 13% from last year at this time. The administration isn’t providing marketing or education for help with signing up (again).
  2. Drug overdoses reached a record high of 70,237 in 2017, largely due to fentanyl.
  3. Bloomberg’s foundation plans to donate $50 million to fight the opioid epidemic. They’ll start with a limited number of states and find out which programs are the most effective. Then they’ll put more money towards those programs in other states.
  4. The number of uninsured children increased in 2017 for the first time in a decade. Texas has the largest number of uninsured children, partly because they’re one of the states that refused to expand Medicaid under the ACA.

International:

  1. Just before Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, the Saudi Crown Prince exchanged several messages with the senior aide accused of overseeing the murder. These messages are part of what led our intelligence agencies to conclude that the Crown Prince likely ordered the killing.
  2. Even Mitch McConnell is pushing for a congressional response against Saudi Arabia in the Khashoggi case.
  3. The White House prevents CIA director Gina Haspel from briefing the Senate on Saudi Arabia. Instead, Mike Pompeo and James Mattis handle the briefing.
  4. Not only is the arms deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia non-binding (meaning either party can back out), but the dollar amount of the deal was inflated at Jared Kushner’s direction from $14.5 billion to $110 billion.
  5. Paris has its worst riots in 50 years. The riots started two weeks ago over a gas tax coupled with anti-Macron sentiment.
  6. Activists call Obama the ‘Drone President,‘ but Trump relaxed requirements for targets of drone strikes and has launched 30% more than Obama did in his first two years (238 drone strikes to Obama’s 186).

Legislation/Congress:

  1. House Democrats nominate Nancy Pelosi to be House Speaker.
  2. The Senate advances a resolution to stop providing military help to Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. Fourteen Republicans vote for the resolution, and 19 switch their votes from their previous vote because of an inadequate briefing by Mattis and Pompeo and because of Khashoggi’s murder.
  3. Congress reaches a deal on a farm bill that does not include work requirements for SNAP recipients. Trump and House Republicans were pushing for those requirements.

Family Separation:

  1. There are still around 60 children in custody who were separated from their (now-deported) parents. Almost all of these children have sponsors they could be released to in the U.S. In total, 140 children who were separated from their parents or guardian are still in custody.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump tweets that Mexico should just send back everyone in the migrant caravan to whatever country they came from and by any means possible. He says again (and without evidence) that many of them are stone cold criminals.
  2. A review of global terrorism shows that violent acts motivated by far right-wing ideologies far outnumber acts of domestic terrorism acts in any other category over the past decade.
  3. A memo from the Department of Health and Human Services shows that the Trump administration said it’s OK to not thoroughly vet staff at detention camps for migrant minors.
  4. Instead of releasing government documents on actual costs/benefits of undocumented immigrants, Trump retweets a false rumor that they receive $3,874 per month in assistance.
  5. The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2016 hit the lowest number in over a decade, with an estimated 10.7 million.
  6. The head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media apologizes to George Soros after they aired a program smearing Soros and using anti-Semitic tropes. The program called Soros a “non-practicing Jew of flexible morals” and said he was involved in “clandestine operations that led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union.” It also said he architected the 2008 financial collapse. The program got most of it’s information from Judicial Watch, which has long sought to pin some kind of wrongdoing on Soros.
  7. Deteriorating conditions at migrant camps near the border are leading more immigrants to attempt illegal crossings so they can seek asylum. This is what the Trump administration was trying to avoid, but by trapping them at the border, the administration created the conditions that are now worsening the problem.
  8. The ACLU files a lawsuit against a Florida Sheriff’s Office that detained a U.S. citizen on ICE’s request. The man was arrested in the Keys and detained for weeks despite having a U.S. birth certificate. He was finally transported to ICE, who released him once they looked up his birth certificate. In Miami. With no money or transportation to get back to the Keys. Interesting side note: ICE has an agreement with this Sheriff’s Office to pay them $50 per detainee.
  9. The police officer who shot her black neighbor when she mistakenly walked into his apartment thinking it was her own is charged with murder.
  10. One more reason we need #MeToo. Seven hospitals agree to a settlement after they illegally billed sexual assault victims for their own forensic rape exams.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Fox News disciplines employees who were involved in crafting topics and questions with the EPA for an interview with Scott Pruitt. Fox & Friends coordinated the entire interview with Pruitt (or his aides) and Pruitt lied about the number of Superfund sites cleaned up under Obama versus under Trump.
  2. Who knew all you had to do to get out of fraud charges is to quit? The inspector general of the EPA closes two investigations into Scott Pruitt’s conduct during his time as head of the EPA because he doesn’t work there anymore.
  3. At the G20 summit in Brazil, 19 world leaders reaffirm the Paris agreement with one leader abstaining. Trump reiterates our decision to withdraw. Yay us. We affirm our strong commitment to not deal with climate change.
  4. Exxon plans to use renewable energy—wind and solar—to help power up their gas and oil drilling in Texas’s Permian Basin, an area with extensive fracking operations.
  5. Washington, D.C.’s city council votes unanimously to adopt 100% clean electricity by 2032.
  6. Patagonia announces they’ll give $10 million of what they received in corporate tax cuts this year to grassroots organizations supporting the environment.
  7. Andrew Wheeler, the acting head of the EPA, gives Trump the credit for a 2.5% reduction in carbon emissions in 2016… before Trump took office. He also says carbon emissions are down 14% since 2005. This is in no small part due to the Obama regulations this administration has worked to reverse.
  8. Wheeler can’t name three Trump rules that contributed to the decrease in emissions, (unless you include the proposed reversals of Obama emissions-reducing rules that he named).
  9. Trump approves company requests to run seismic tests in the Atlantic Ocean, which could kill tens of thousands of marine animals. Underwater seismic tests are used to locate gas and oil.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The VA has been behind on GI Bill payments to vets because of a computer glitch, and now they’re saying they won’t reimburse vets who weren’t paid the full amount owed them.
  2. Auto companies warned us last summer that the tariffs would have negative economic effects on the industry. This week, GM announces they’ll stop production at five plants and layoff over 14,000 people. They offered buyout packages to 18,000 employees in October.
    • The reasons for the cutbacks include changing their lineup to align with Americans’ changing tastes, the decimation of unions (unions used to train employees on the new skills they need to adapt), and costs related to the trade war and tariffs.
  1. Trump threatens to eliminate GM’s subsidies if they go ahead with the closures. Trump also blames the declining stock market and the Fed for the closures and layoffs.
  2. Over 40% of companies say they’ll raise prices due to the higher costs they’re incurring as a result of the trade war. 10% say the tariffs are pushing them to move jobs offshore.
  3. Even though Paul Ryan oversaw legislation that will add trillions to our debt, he says his biggest regret is that he didn’t address our federal debt.
  4. Just before the start of the G20 summit, Trump, Trudeau, and Peña Nieto sign the updated NAFTA deal. Trump says it’s the biggest trade deal ever. But of course it is.
  5. Also at the G20, Trump and Chinese President Xi come to a verbal agreement on tariffs. They basically agreed that Trump won’t add any new tariffs, China will start buying our stuff again, and the two countries will begin talks.
  6. Qatar announces it’s leaving OPEC next year so they can develop their liquified natural gas.

Elections:

  1. Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith wins the Mississippi Senate race, showing once and for all why Mississippi is so far behind the rest of the country in race relations. But since it was the closest race there in 30 years, maybe that means they’re a little less racist than before. I can hope.
    • With her election, Republicans have picked up a total of three Senate seats in the midterms.
  1. Paul Ryan calls the ballot process in California bizarre and loosey-goosey after seven GOP House seats shifted to Democrats as mail-in and provisional ballots were counted. Ryan says he doesn’t question the validity of the results, though, so I guess he just wanted to be sure he planted that question mark in everyone’ heads.
  2. The Office of Special Counsel (again, not to be confused with Mueller’s office) says six Trump administration officials tweeted support for Republicans or for Trump on their government Twitter accounts. This is a violation of the Hatch Act, but not enough for disciplinary action.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Representative Raul Grijalva wrote an op-ed criticizing Ryan Zinke over his ethical scandals and saying Zinke should resign. Zinke’s response from his official Interior Department Twitter account? “It’s hard for him to think straight from the bottom of the bottle.” This country is being run by children.
  2. Trump threatens House Democrats, saying that if they play tough with him when they become the majority, he’ll declassify documents that will be “devastating” to them. He says he could’ve used those documents against them already, but he’s saving them for when he really needs to use them. A) I think that’s called extortion, and B) he doesn’t have a great track record so far of declassifying information to further his cause.
  3. Making good on a promise he made after the Las Vegas shooting, Trump says he’ll approve a federal rule banning bump stocks. Current owners will either have to destroy their bump stocks or turn them in.
  4. Eric Bauman, the chair of the California Democratic Party, resigns after accusations of sexual misconduct are publicized. An investigation is ongoing.
  5. NASA and JPL land another successful spacecraft on Mars. InSight will investigate the planet’s interior and measure Mars-quakes.
  6. And speaking of quakes, Anchorage experiences a huge earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale (with 1,000 aftershocks). We still don’t know the extent of the damage; there are collapsed roads, buckled bridges, cracked buildings, power outages, and people are still boiling water.

Week 85 in Trump

Posted on September 10, 2018 in Politics, Trump

This week we learned that during Trump rallies they fluff up the crowd standing behind Trump before the rally, they make sure that the crowd will be enthusiastic, and they make people wear MAGA hats. And if you don’t comply they kick you out in the middle of the rally. Thank you, plaid shirt guy.

Here’s what else happened this week…

Russia:

  1. Giuliani says that the White House won’t let the final Mueller report be publicized after he is finished with his investigation.
  2. George Papadopoulos takes his plea agreement and gets sentenced to 14 days in jail, a $9,500 fee, and community service. His lawyer says that Trump hindered the investigation far more than Papadopoulos ever did.
  3. Papadopoulos says in a TV interview that members of the Trump campaign not only knew that he was working to set up meetings with Putin, but that they were supportive of those efforts.
  4. Protests break out across Russia over a proposed pension revamping that includes raising the retirement age. The protests are organized by opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s supporters.
  5. Trump’s criticism of our law officials now extends to Christopher Wray, director of the FBI.
  6. From recent interviews and subpoenas, it looks like the Mueller investigation is now focussing on Roger Stone.
  7. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who has previously denied Russian meddling in our elections, calls out Putin for meddling in our elections.
  8. The U.K formally charges two Russian agents with the poisoning of a former Russian spy in England.
  9. Federal prosecutors say their accusations against Maria Butina of exchanging sex for influence was mistaken and was based on joke texts between her and a friend.
  10. If you’re keeping track, here are the Russia investigation stats:
    • 35 people or organizations indicted
    • 191 criminal counts
    • 1 conviction
    • 6 guilty pleas
    • 2 prison sentences

Legal Fallout:

  1. Pursuant to Michael Cohen’s guilty plea, the New York attorney general opens an investigation into the Trump Organization and whether anyone there violated campaign finance laws. The organization’s CFO is already cooperating with investigations.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court begin, though Democrats on the judiciary committee try to postpone the hearing after receiving a dump of 42,000 documents the night before.
  2. Democrats are also trying to get a delay over questions about Trump’s legal issues. Committee chair Chuck Grassley refuses to hear Democrats’ arguments.
  3. Democrats are also complaining about transparency, since the documents released on Kavanaugh’s time in the White House were redacted by his former deputy, then by the Trump White House, and yet again by Grassley.
  4. Republicans say Democrats are obstructing the confirmation and also say they’ve released more records for Kavanaugh than for any other nominee. It’s reported that only 7% of Kavanaugh’s White House records have been released compared to the 99% that were released for Elena Kagan’s hearing.
  5. The hearings opened with protests and heckling from those opposed to placing Kavanaugh on the bench. Police arrest 22 protestors for being disruptive.
  6. In his opening statement, Kavanaugh calls Merrick Garland superb. He also said this about Garland while the Senate was refusing to even meet with him: Garland is “supremely qualified by the objective characteristics of experience, temperament, writing ability, scholarly ability for the Supreme Court.” This drives home the point that McConnell had no reason other than partisanship and hatred for Obama for not holding hearings for Merrick Garland.
  7. Of note, Kavanaugh has a very low approval rating from the American people for a Supreme Court nominee. It’s only at 37%, lower than Trump‘s.
  8. The Congressional Black Caucus, along with civil rights leaders, say Kavanaugh would threaten human rights if he’s confirmed. They point to the racist voter ID laws he’s voted to uphold. I point to the young immigrant for whom he voted to refuse a legal abortion.
  9. Leaked emails show that Kavanaugh:
    • Has questioned whether Roe v. Wade is settled law;
    • Has been critical of affirmative action and supportive of racial profiling;
    • Appears to have lied in a previous confirmation hearing about whether he knew about Bush’s warrantless surveillance program;
    • Lied multiple times in his confirmation hearings about whether he had received stolen documents outlining Democratic strategy at one point (documents show that not only did he receive the documents, but that he had an actual mole in Democratic circles who was providing them);
    • Lied about being involved with Charles PIckering’s nomination to an appeals court; and
    • Lied in a previous hearing about interviewing William Pryor, who was another judicial nominee.
  1. In his hearing, Kavanaugh refers to birth control pills “abortion inducing drugs.” This is from a case he presided over, and it’s not clear whether he’s quoting the plaintiffs here or if he actually thinks that’s what they are.
  2. The DOJ says that Jeff Sessions will meet with state attorneys general over whether social media platforms are suppressing conservative views. This follows a Senate hearing with Facebook and Twitter. A House committee is also holding a hearing on this alleged bias.

International:

  1. This isn’t political news, but it’s big news. The world’s largest anthropological museum burns down in Brazil, destroying millions of archeological and natural artifacts. Some of these artifacts were the only things that remained of lost cultures.
  2. Trump fills the Western Hemisphere Affairs office at the National Security Council with Cuban hard-liners. The latest addition, Mauricio Claver-Carone, is a pro-embargo activist, and is also dedicated to promoted human rights and democracy in Cuba.
  3. Later this month, Trump will preside over the UN Security Council. He’s already stirring up controversy by saying he’ll focus solely on Iran.
  4. And once again, fears of a far-right, anti-immigrant, protectionist, white nationalist take over in a European country are greatly exaggerated. Elections in Sweden maintain about the same level of support for most parties, though the far-right Sweden Democrats did make big gains. Power still rests with the Social Democrats and the Moderates.
  5. We learn that last year, the Trump administration met with Venezuelan rebels to discuss plans for a coup. One of the rebels is on our own sanctions list of corrupt officials. Nothing came of it.
  6. The Trump administration is expanding a drone program in Africa that the Obama administration had constricted due to collateral damage.

Family Separation:

  1. More than 400 immigrant children are still separated from their parents. Of these, around 300 of the parents are out of the country, either because they were deported or because the children came with other family members.
  2. 199 of the parents signed papers stating that they didn’t want to be reunited. Some might be valid, but most are suspected to have been coerced by immigration officials.
  3. 34 of the parents had red flags in their background checks or were deemed unsafe.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Trump administration proposed rules blocking immigrants who have used any kind of welfare from ever becoming citizens. Even though these rules haven’t been implemented yet, immigrants are dropping out of these programs out of fear of a crackdown.
  2. Nike announces Colin Kaepernick as the new face of the company in ad campaigns. People cut the Nike logo off their shirts and burn their shoes in protest. Also, Nike sees a 31% increase in sales.
  3. And here’s another way Trump is getting rid of immigrants in the U.S. The administration has been trying to deport Vietnamese immigrants who are here under a formal agreement with Vietnam. They’ve been here for over two decades.
  4. It turns out that the Trump administration ignored a report from the National Counterterrorism Center that showed that refugees do not pose a domestic threat. They replaced it instead with a report written by immigration hardliners in the administration that over-inflate the cost and threat of refugees here. In the end, the administration didn’t cite security as an excuse to reduce the number of refugees we accept; instead they said DHS was shorthanded and couldn’t handle any more.
  5. The Trump administration proposes a regulation to overrule the Flores rule that blocks us from detaining immigrant children indefinitely. This is how they’re trying to get around the laws about detaining or separating families seeking asylum.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Eight states’ attorneys general bring a suit against the Department of the Interior over their narrowing of migratory bird protections. I thought Trump loved birds. Isn’t that why he doesn’t like wind turbines?
  2. Eric Buermann, the former general counsel of Florida’s Republican Party and the chair of the South Florida Water Management District, puts the blame for the current toxic algae bloom on Governor Rick Scott, who is running for Senate. Buermann says that Scott only recently started to address the issue because it’s become political and not because Scott wants to address pollution or climate change. The blooms are devastating Florida communities.
  3. I’m not sure where to put this since it covers a few things, but Trump plans to roll back regulations on safety inspections for underground mines, on offshore oil rigs, and on meat processing plants, all pretty dangerous occupations. The offshore rig rules were put in place to prevent another Deepwater Horizon disaster.
  4. A jury finds Plains All American Pipeline guilty of one felony and eight misdemeanors in the Santa Barbara oil spill in the waters off Refugio State Beach. The felony was for failure to maintain the pipeline. The misdemeanors were things like not reporting the spill right away, killing marine life, and lying about it.
  5. Tens of thousands of climate activists hold rallies and marches around the globe to demand action on climate change.
  6. Ryan Zinke opens 251,000 acres in 30 wildlife refuges to hunting and fishing.
  7. California Governor Jerry Brown signs a bill into law blocking Trump’s expansion of offshore drilling in the state. Brown also announces opposition to Trump’s expansion of BLM land for new oil drilling.
  8. The inspector general for the EPA releases their final report on the cost of Scott Pruitt’s protective services. The report says there is no justification for the costs.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Economists think that U.S. GDP growth might have peaked in the second quarter at 4.2%.
  2. The U.S. trade deficit is getting larger despite Trump’s trade wars and threats. It’s growing at its fastest rate since 2015, reaching new records with the EU and China.
  3. The new farm bill in the House would knock nearly 2 million low-income Americans off their SNAP benefits.
  4. The latest BLS report shows the economy added 201,000 jobs in August, and the unemployment rate held at 3.9%.
  5. Ahead of the elections, Republicans shelve a plan to make the limits on SALT (State And Local Taxes) deductions permanent. This rule hits people hardest in states with high property values and high taxes, and Republicans are afraid that pushing it through now would make it harder for Republicans to win elections.
  6. Trump is open to shutting down the government if a spending bill agreement can’t be reached in September.

Elections:

  1. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey appoints former U.S. Senator Jon Kyl to fill John McCain’s old Senate seat.
  2. ICE subpoenas voter information from the North Carolina Elections Board in an apparent hunt for undocumented voters. The Elections Board fights those subpoenas for both the state and county elections boards. The information ICE is looking for even includes what the ballots look like. So they want to know how people voted. What’s up with that?
  3. Due to the influx of Puerto Ricans into Florida, a judge rules that election ballots must be printed in both Spanish and English.
  4. Former president Obama hits the campaign trail to stump for Democratic congressional candidates. Republicans dig up their old vitriol against him.
  5. Even though a court ruled that North Carolina’s congressional maps are unconstitutionally gerrymandered and that they must redraw the lines for the midterm elections, the same court now acknowledges they don’t have time. So the elections will continue to be racially and politically gerrymandered for this election.

Miscellaneous:

  1. On Labor Day, Trump criticizes AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka in a tweet, saying he didn’t represent his labor union well over the weekend. Trumka had said that the things Trump has done to hurt workers are greater than the things he’s done to help them.
  2. Bob Woodward releases his new book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” in which accounts from White House insiders give a anxiety-provoking glance into the inner workings of Trump’s White House.
    • I don’t typically like tell-all books, but Bob Woodward is a well-sourced journalist who’s written about many presidents (most of whom complain about his books, Republican or Democrat).
    • Woodward’s account portrays a White House staff that feels they must protect Trump (and us, I guess) from his worst impulses and that frankly seems to be performing a subversive coup by not allowing the president to fulfill his agenda.
  1. Here are a few highlights from the book (or so I’ve heard):
    • John Mattis had to stop Trump from ordering an assassination of Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad.
    • Trump thinks that denouncing white supremacists and Neo-Nazis after the Charlottesville rally was one of the worst things he’s ever done. Apparently he was being sincere the first time when he said there were good Nazis and white supremacists.
    • Trump called Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” and a “dumb southerner.” He denies this, saying it isn’t how he talks; but he’s on record saying both of these things at different times in the past.
    • To quote John Kelly (from the book): “We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
  1. Trump calls Woodward to discuss the book, and Woodward (after telling Trump he’s recording it) releases the recording of their discussion.
  2. A top official fans the flames by publishing an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times basically confirming the allegations in Woodward’s book. This official seems to think this little group of resistors on the inside are saving the world from Trump, but I think they’re only doing it to be self-serving. They‘re using Trump to get their own agenda through.
  3. Trump wonders if this might amount to treason and calls on the NYT to release the name of the author.
  4. Journalists and bloggers furiously speculate about who the author could be, while top officials furiously deny it was them. All distracting from the real news of the week, the Kavanaugh hearings.
  5. The op-ed leads a few Democratic officials to urge White House staff to invoke the 25th amendment if they think Trump really isn’t fit for office.
  6. After merely suspending Alex Jones for a week, Twitter bans Infowars and Alex Jones permanently for abusive behavior.
  7. Trump is on the campaign trail, stumping across the midwest. At one rally, he says that someday his speeches will be viewed as being as good as the Gettysburg Address. He also says the “fake news” bashed the Gettysburg Address. Huh?
  8. Trump suggests that protests should be illegal. This isn’t the first time.
  9. Omarosa Manigault-Newman says she recorded nearly every single conversation she had while working in the White House. She’s no fool. But where are the recordings?
  10. The latest rumor is that Trump is looking to replace Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. I only report this because those rumors do actually seem to pan out. We’ll see.
  11. I’d like to catalogue this one under “What a fucking waste of money and time.” The Interior Department inspector general actually looked into inauguration crowd size drama, and found that a photographer had digitally edited the photos to make the crowd size look like it was larger than it actually was.
  12. Trump agrees not to enforce Stormy Daniels’ non-disclosure agreement, likely to get out of testifying in the case.

Week 84 in Trump

Posted on September 10, 2018 in Politics, Trump

This week was all about saying goodbye to Senator John McCain. I don’t remember politics without him being in the thick of it. In planning his services, he gave Trump some parting shots, excluding him from the memorials and final funeral and enlisting politicians from all sides in a final show of working both sides of the aisle.

Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. 16 states filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to rule that the 1964 Civil Rights Act doesn’t cover rights for the LGBTQ community and therefore you can fire someone based on their sexual orientation or their gender identity. Or deny them housing. Or refuse to serve them. Or…

Russia:

  1. The judge grants a brief delay in Paul Manafort’s second trial because his lawyers haven’t had time to recover from his first trial. Remember, they could have done this all in one trial, but Manafort chose to have two trials instead.
  2. Manafort’s legal team was in negotiations with Mueller to avoid a second trial, but those negotiations fell apart.
  3. Earlier this month, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes travelled to the UK to dig up dirt on Christopher Steele. Nunes tried to meet with leaders of British intelligence agencies, but they were wary of Nunes’ intentions; so he ended up meeting with the deputy national security advisor, Madeline Alessandri.
  4. Trump tweets that China hacked Clinton’s emails and that they got classified info. That was just little false info he picked up from the Daily Caller.
  5. Trump accuses NBC of editing interviews with him. He’s specifically pointing at his interview with Lester Holt when he admitted that he had the Russia investigation in mind when he fired Comey. If there were any merit to the accusation, you’d think he would’ve brought it up when the interview aired.
  6. Now we know why Trump is working so hard to discredit DOJ lawyer Bruce Ohr. Ohr told lawmakers that two years ago, he met with Christopher Steele who told him that he thought Russia had leverage over Trump (or in his words, Russia had him over a barrel).
  7. Michael Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, is backing down from his claim that Cohen knows that Trump Sr. knew ahead of time about Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russian lawyers in 2016.
  8. George Papadopoulos accepts his plea deal and pleads guilty to lying to the FBI. He had previously been considering backing out of the deal.
  9. Sam Patten, a former associate of Paul Manafort and a former employee of Cambridge Analytica, agrees to a plea deal and to cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. He pleads guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent and lying to a Senate committee.
  10. Trump says that the Supreme Court Chief Justice should tell the FISA court to investigate the DOJ and FBI over their FISA requests during the 2016 campaign.
  11. Trump says he should get personally involved if the FBI and DOJ don’t do their job, accusing them of being biased against Republicans. Even though many of them are themselves Republicans.
  12. We’re coming up to 60 days before the election, so Rudy Giuliani says Mueller has to stop investigating. Which isn’t true since this isn’t a hard and fast rule. Even if it were a hard rule, Mueller could continue his investigation behind closed doors right up through the election as long as he doesn’t publicize information.
  13. Mueller says he’ll accept some answers from Trump in writing. Giuliani says they won’t be providing any answers to questions about obstruction of justice.

Legal Fallout:

  1. GOP Members of Congress circulate a spreadsheet itemizing the things they think Democrats might investigate if they win the House in November. Those things include:
    • Trump’s tax returns
    • Trump Organization, specifically around the emoluments clause.
    • Trump’s dealings with Russia and his preparation for the meeting with Putin
    • The Stormy Daniels payment
    • Trump’s firings of James Comey and of U.S. attorneys
    • The transgender ban in the military
    • Steven Mnuchin’s business dealings
    • The use of personal email by White House staff
    • Abused perks, mostly by cabinet members like Scott Pruitt, Ben Carson, and Ryan Zinke
    • That time he discussed classified information at a public dinner at Mar-a-Lago
    • Whether Jared Kushner is in compliance with ethics laws
    • Firing the EPA board of scientific counselors
    • The Muslim ban
    • The family separation policy and the failure to reunite separated families
    • The response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico
    • Election security and hacking attempts
    • Security clearances
  1. New York City fines Jared Kushner’s family business once again. This time, the fine is $210,000 for falsifying building permits. This brings the total the company’s been fined over the past few years to over $500,000.
  2. The above leads to the DCCC issuing warnings to other Democratic candidates about being doxxed.
  3. Lawyers for GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter accuse federal prosecutors of rushing to indict his client. Interesting tact, since they’ve been accusing prosecutors of dragging out this investigation over two years.
  4. Trump blames the DOJ for allowing the indictment of both Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins, two “very popular Republican Congressman” (according to Trump). He complained that these would’ve been two easy GOP wins. I guess it doesn’t matter if they might be criminals.
  5. An inspector general reports that Trump participated in a decision to cancel a 10-year effort to develop a new FBI headquarters in the suburbs of Maryland or Virginia. The plan now is to develop the headquarters right across the street from Trump’s hotel in DC, which turns out to be more expensive. Government employees were told not to talk about anything Trump said about this.
  6. According to a recorded conversation, Michael Cohen and Trump tried to buy up all the damaging information the National Enquirer had on him and was storing in their vaults.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Chuck Schumer makes a deal with Mitch McConnell to fast-track 15 of Trump’s lower court judicial nominees. We don’t know yet what he got in return, if anything. Unless he did it just so his Senators could have some time to campaign.
  2. A judge in Texas allows a defamation lawsuit against Infowars’ Alex Jones to move forward. The suit was brought by parents of Sandy Hook victims who’ve been harassed and further victimized by Jones’ supporters.
  3. Trump refuses to release over 100,000 pages of Brett Kavanaugh’s records during the time he worked in the White House under George W. Bush. Trump cites executive privilege as a reason.
  4. Marches and protests against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court continue this week. 7 in 10 Americans are pro-choice, and don’t want him confirmed.
  5. Trump reconsiders firing Jeff Sessions. Again.

Healthcare:

  1. An appeals court rules that Alabama can’t ban “dilation & evacuation” abortions after 15 weeks. Note that over 90% of abortions do occur before 15 weeks so don’t use that method.
  2. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) introduces legislation with 13 other Democrats aimed at reducing the racial disparities in maternity care and deaths in the U.S. Currently there are about 40 deaths out of 100,000 live births for black women versus 12 for white women.

International:

  1. The Trump administration announces plans to cut all U.S. funding for the UN program that provides aid to Palestinian refugees. It’s pretty amazing that there have been Palestinian refugees for over 50 years now.
  2. We learn that Trump’s last meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe turned sour when Trump said he remembers Pearl Harbor and then criticized Japan’s economy and our trade deficit with them. Up to now, the two seemed to have a good working relationship.
  3. Trump blames China for the lack of progress in the negotiations with North Korea. He says China is applying pressure on North Korea.
  4. Trump announces that joint U.S. – South Korea military exercises will be temporarily suspended as a gesture of goodwill toward North Korea.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. California’s legislature passes a bill raising the age for buying assault weapons from 18 to 21. The bill also limits gun purchases to one per month per person.
  2. California passes net neutrality laws. The bill brings back the FCC guidelines put in place under Obama, but only for California.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Will the ways in which we can push Hispanics out of the country never end? Now the U.S. is denying passports to people with U.S. birth certificates, or even revoking them for people who already have them. The problem arises from cases in the 1990’s where some midwives admitted to falsifying birth documents, and now anyone born to a midwife is suspect. Some have been detained and some are in deportation proceedings. Even though there is no proof that they were NOT born here.
  2. Some passports were denied under Bush and Obama for the same reason, but a lawsuit ended the practice in Obama’s first year as president.
  3. California signs a bill into law overhauling its money bail system. The bill mostly gets rid of money bail and instead would use a system of probation departments to analyze flight risk and risks to the community. Opponents of money bail say this still won’t fix the problem.
  4. We’re on day 14 of the 19-day prison strike. Prisoners have stopped eating and working to protest unsafe and unjust conditions. Some immigrant detainees have joined in on the strike.
  5. The mother of a toddler who died after being separated and then reunited files a lawsuit against the city where her daughter was detained. Allegedly, the child became ill at the detention center, wasn’t given adequate medial care, and was released with a clean bill of health by a nurse who didn’t have the authority. Once reunited, the mother tried to see a doctor but was turned away several times.
  6. And finally some justice. A jury convicts a police officer in Texas of killing Jordan Edwards, an unarmed, 15-year-old black teen. The officer gets a 15-year sentence.
  7. A judge rules against Texas and other states trying to end DACA, saying they waited too long to file suit. The ruling doesn’t protect DACA long term, though, and the judge leaves an opening for the states to file again, saying that DACA is likely illegal.
  8. The backlog is growing for immigrants who have applied for citizenship and are still being processed. Part of the slowdown is a longer questionnaire created under Obama, and part is longer delays for getting interview appointments. Part of it could also be an increase in the number people trying to get their citizenship.
  9. The family of Mollie Tibbetts, who was allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant, asks people to stop politicizing her death. Specifically, they say Mollie would be against using this as an excuse to hate undocumented immigrants.
  10. Ron DeSantis, who is the Republican nominee for governor of Florida, was an administrator of a Facebook page that features conspiracy theories as well as racist and anti-Muslim rhetoric. The page also attacks Parkland shooting survivors. Remember, this is the guy who said “we don’t want to monkey this up” by electing a black governor.
  11. 16 states have introduced legislation to restrict the use of non-disclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases.

Climate/EPA

  1. The California legislature passes a bill that would require the state to get its energy from 100% carbon-free sources by 2045. Several other states are considering the same, and Hawaii has already passed it into law. Orlando, FL, has the same goal for 2050.
  2. The BLM publishes a notice of intent to open 1.6 million acres of publicly held land in California to fracking and oil drilling. There’s been a moratorium on leasing federal land in California to oil companies.
  3. Despite the governor of Puerto Rico recently raising the official Hurricane Maria death toll to 2,975 (up from the previous 64), Trump says the administration’s response to the disaster was fantastic.
  4. The EPA considers reversing Obama-era limits on mercury emissions from coal power plants. The health effects of mercury exposure can include tremors, neurological damage, emotional changes, headaches, impaired mental performance, and muscle weakness, among others.
  5. According to a new study, hotter temperatures caused by climate change will make insects hungrier, causing diseases to spread faster and ruining crops.
  6. Over 100 schools in Detroit don’t have drinking water after tests find elevated levels of lead.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The U.S. and Mexico reach a preliminary agreement to update NAFTA, possibly without Canada. Trump wants to drop the name NAFTA because he calls it the worst trade deal in history and says it has a bad connotation.
  2. The TPP, the Obama trade pact that Trump disbanded, was basically a renegotiation of NAFTA but with nine additional countries. TPP and Trump’s renegotiated NAFTA are very similar with the exception of the North American auto industry. The updated NAFTA has tighter restrictions and better worker protections than TPP.
  3. Trump says the deal will be good for farmers and for manufacturers. (Note: I haven’t found a good analysis to verify this yet.)
  4. Stocks jump on Trump’s announcement that we’ve reached a trade deal with Mexico, calming down some of the uncertainty over trade. The NASDAQ hits an all-time high on the news.
  5. Mexico is a little more subdued about the agreement, saying that we’re continuing to make progress.
  6. Canada misses Trump’s Friday deadline to agree to the new terms of NAFTA. Both sides say negotiations are ongoing, though. Trump says he won’t give in to any of Canada’s requests and that this will all be on our terms.
  7. Seth Frotman, the student loan ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, resigns in protest. He says that the bureau has lost sight of its mission to protect consumers, and specifically that they no longer protect students’ financial futures and are openly hostile to protecting student borrowers.
  8. The USDA announces it’s ready to accept applications from farmers who’ve been hurt by the tariffs. They play to make payments totaling $4.7 billion, their first installment of the $12 billion bailout.
  9. Trump cancels a planned cost-of-living pay raise for federal employees citing budget constraints. This is not something you do during a booming economy. Unless, of course, you already created a $1 trillion deficit by giving out big tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy.
  10. Trump also wants to get rid of locality adjustments for federal worker wages. These are cost-of-living adjustments based on the standard of living in the city in which a worker resides. Most large companies adjust wages this way.
  11. The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) blocks the Trump administration’s tariff on newsprint. They say there’s no sign of any unfair competition from Canadian imports.
  12. Trump wants to impose the additional $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods next week.
  13. Trump also threatens to pull out of the World Trade Organization, saying they’ve treated the U.S. very badly and that it’s all very unfair. How did the biggest economy in the world get such a persecution complex?
  14. Did you know that many restaurant chains have policies where they don’t allow employees to try for higher-paying jobs at other locations of the same chain? Now 15 chains have ended that policy. But that businesses continue to do things like this is why we still need unions.

Elections:

  1. The DNC voted to limit the powers of their superdelegates for the 2020 primaries.
  2. For a second time, a North Carolina court rules that the state’s congressional districts are unconstitutionally gerrymandered. The first time, the lines were deemed to be racially motivated; this time they were seen as politically motivated to benefit Republicans. They might have to redraw the lines, just 9 weeks before the midterm elections.
  3. The lawmaker responsible for the congressional districts lines said they were designed to maintain Republican dominance because “electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats.”
  4. The USPS accidentally releases security clearance paperwork for an ex-CIA operative who is now running as a Democratic candidate for Congress (Abigail Spanberger). The Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP PAC closely linked to Paul Ryan, then uses some of the sensitive information in those papers against Spanberger’s campaign.
  5. I’m not sure whether this should go under elections or discrimination, but Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was pardoned by Trump last year, lost bigly in the Republican primary for Senate in Arizona. Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt of court for refusing to stop racially profiling Arizona residents.
  6. Trump meets with evangelical leaders and urges them to campaign for Republicans from the pulpit. He also says that if Democrats take over, there will be violence. Though he seems to be saying the Democrats will be violent. I’m not sure why the winner would be violent.
    • Just for the record, Trump did not overturn the Johnson Amendment as he’s claimed, and religious organizations still can’t endorse a political candidate.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Last week, Trump refused to sign off on the full White House statement commemorating John McCain. This week, he raises the flags back up to full mast. After blowback from that, Trump places the flag back at half mast and issues a full statement on McCain.
  2. Even the American Legion felt they had to write a letter to Trump urging him to follow protocol and to honor McCain.
  3. As the Senate reconvenes, Senators each take some time to honor McCain on the Senate floor. McCain will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until his interment.
  4. There are a number of memorials for McCain, including one in Arizona, one in the Capitol Rotunda, and the final one at the Washington National Cathedral.
    • Joe Biden is among the speakers at the service in Arizona.
    • Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Mike Pence speak in the Capitol Rotunda.
    • McCain had requested former presidents Bush (Jr.) and Obama to deliver eulogies, as well as Joe Lieberman. A Republican, a Democrat, and an Independent. A quaint throwback to bipartisanship.
    • McCain’s daughter Meghan gives an emotional eulogy, crediting her father for making her tough and criticizing the divisive politics of today.
    • Many of the speakers at the events take the opportunity to support reaching across the aisle and to take jabs at the current administration.
  1. McCain is buried at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD.
  2. Republicans bury Chuck Schumer’s proposal to rename the Russell Senate Building after John McCain.
  3. Senator James Inhofe says McCain is partly to blame for Trump bungling how McCain was honored because McCain was too outspoken and criticized Trump. That’s not how this works.
  4. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral, but Ivanka and Jared Kushner did attend at Lindsey Graham’s invitation.
  5. Trump claims that Google’s search results are rigged against him to only show bad news about him. Looks like he got this from a PJ Media article that was covered by Lou Dobbs on Fox.
  6. Larry Kudlow says the administration is looking at whether the government should regulate Google search results (can you say ‘state run media’?). This largely came about because of social media’s efforts to stop the spread of fake stories and lies, which often come from sources Trump relies on.
  7. Don’t mess with Google. After Trump’s accusations, Google adds his picture next to the definition of imbecile.
  8. Trump announces that White House Counsel Don McGahn will leave in the fall. It’s not clear if it’s by choice or if he was fired.
  9. Robert Chain calls the Boston Globe to tell them they are the enemy of the people and says “we’re going to kill every fucking one of you.” The FBI arrests Chain, who owns several guns and a recently purchased rifle.
  10. A judge sentences two Reuters journalists in Myanmar to seven years each for possessing confidential documents. The two were investigating the killings of Rohingya Muslims in the country.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s approval rating dips back down below 40%.