This week, House Democrats released some of the propaganda and ads posted by Russian trolls during the 2016 campaigns. If you want to see them yourselves, you can download them here. If you want to know if you actually liked one of those ads, Facebook has a tool that lets you check.

Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

1. Seattle puts the wheels in motion to vacate all marijuana possession charges dating back to the 90s.
2. Thomas Homan, Trump’s temporary appointee to head ICE, resigns. Trump finally nominated Homan to head the department permanently, but his confirmation has been held up in Congress over his aggressive immigration enforcement tactics.

Russia:

1. We find out that Michael Cohen (Trump’s personal lawyer) used a shell company, Essential Consultants, for business activities. This in itself is not unusual… but then…

• • The shell company was created just before Trump was elected.
  • The shell company made the payment to keep Stormy Daniels quiet.
  • The shell company made the payments to keep Elliot Broidy’s affair with a playboy model quiet. He allegedly got the model pregnant.
  • And this is where the Stormy Daniels affair collides with the Russia investigation. The shell company received a half million dollars from Columbus Nova, whose biggest client is Renova Group, owned by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. Their contract with Cohen was for $1 million.
  • Other clients of the shell company include AT&T, Novartis, and Korea Aerospace Industries, among others. Cohen also approached Ford Motor Cars, but they declined.
  • All of the above companies backpedal hard to distance themselves from Cohen as information changes over the week about how much they paid him and the reasons. Novartis has the best reason; they say they paid him $1.2 million for nothing.
  • Basically Cohen raked in millions of dollar for companies to have insider access to the Trump administration. Novartis was afraid to cancel their contract with Cohen because it might anger Trump.
  • Columbus Nova says Renova is their biggest client, but that they were never owned by a foreign company. However, Columbus Nova listed Renova on their website through 2017, and Renova listed Columbus Nova on theirs. That information is now gone. Also, SEC filings say it’s a U.S. affiliate of Renova.
  • In 2016 and 2017, Columbus Nova registered at least eight websites for white supremacists and alt-right groups. They also registered cnnjournal.com, which is a standard format for fake news sites (the URL looks like it comes from a real news source).

2. Important notes here:

• • AT&T was lobbying for a merger with Time Warner. Trump opposed the merger during the campaign, and the DOJ blocked it in November.
  • Shortly after Novartis made their last payment to Cohen, Trump met with company leaders in Davos.
  • Korea Aerospace Industries is competing for a multi-billion dollar defense contract.
  • Renova Group is a target of U.S. sanctions.
  • Four years ago, the FBI warned that a foundation controlled by Vekselberg was working for Russian intelligence, spying to collect U.S. science and technology advances.
  • Vekselberg is one of the oligarchs the FBI detained and questioned at the airport as he entered the country.

3. And as always, we’re four steps behind Mueller, who’s been aware of all this since last year.
4. Here’s how the House fight against the Mueller investigation is going:

• • House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) has been subpoenaing documents from the DOJ that could potentially expose a top-secret intelligence source and put the Russia investigation at risk. The source is a U.S. citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI. The White House backs the DOJ in withholding this information.
  • Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy meet with DOJ officials to go over the request for classified documents, which seems to quiet things down for now.
  • Paul Ryan backs Devin Nunes in his attempt to obtain the classified documents. Ryan says it’s in the scope of the committee’s investigation, though they ended their investigation last month so I’m not sure what investigation he’s talking about.
  • And also, Nunes is still supposed to be recused from the Russia investigation.
  • House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) requests a financial audit of Mueller’s investigation.

5. When asked whether the Senate findings would differ from the House findings released last month, the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, Richard Burr (R-NC), says “I’m not sure that the House was required to substantiate every conclusion with facts.”
6. A Senate Intelligence Committee report says the election systems in at least 18, and maybe 21, states were targeted by Russian hackers in the 2016 elections. The report also says that Russia launched an unprecedented cyber campaign to make voters lose confidence in the elections, and provides recommendations for security.
7. This report is the first of four planned to be released to address different aspects of the Russia investigation.
8. The lawyers representing the Russian companies and trolls charged by Mueller in the Russia investigation try to bury Mueller’s team with an avalanche of discovery requests, including non-public information going back as far as the 1940s. A court denies Mueller’s request for a delay.
9. Alex van der Zwaan begins his 30-day prison sentence for lying to federal agents, the first to serve time related to the Mueller investigation.
10. House Democrats release 3,500 of the more than 200,000 Russian social media ads. The ads were aimed at creating divisiveness in the American electorate, and targeted issues like Black Lives Matter, immigration, gun rights, Muslims, Texas secession, and, of course, Hillary Clinton.
11. These 3,500 ads alone reached over 33 million people.
12. Mike Pence says it’s time for Mueller to start wrapping up his year-long investigation. Apparently he forgot that the special investigation into Bill Clinton went on for 5 years, despite not finding him guilty of anything except lying about an affair. Clinton’s investigation only resulted in the indictment of the McDougals. Mueller’s already obtained several guilty pleas.
13. Mueller interviews Blackwater founder, Erik Prince.
14. U.S. jets intercept two Russian bombers off the coast of Alaska.
15. A public records request shows that Russian officials started courting conservatives in the U.S. as early as 2009, establishing and cultivating common political interests.

Courts/Justice:

1. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley urges any sitting supreme court justice who’s thinking of retiring to do it ASAP so he can rush through confirmation of a new Trump appointee. Seems he’s worried Democrats might take back the Senate and House in November and stall any new appointments kinda like the Republicans did to Merrick Garland. And Victoria Nourse. And Linda Walker. And Cassandra Butts. And…
2. Senate Republicans once again ignore the blue slip tradition of allowing Senators to veto judicial nominees from their own state. They’re pushing through the nomination of Ryan Bounds, who as a student wrote about his racist views and recommended not expelling men accused of rape from school.
3. The Senate votes along party lines to confirm Michael Brennan to a seat on the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals that Republicans prevented Obama from filling for SIX YEARS.

Healthcare:

1. Anti-abortion violence is increasing again, doubling in 2017 over 2016. Instances of trespassing and obstruction have more than tripled.
2. John Bolton disbands the global health security team, which was responsible for our response to deadly pandemics. Timothy Ziemer, the top official responsible for the group, resigned, leaving us with no one focused on global health security.
3. Tom Bossert, the White House homeland security advisor, also left after Bolton started. Bossert advised that we need a comprehensive defense strategy for pandemics and biological attacks.
4. Trump announces a strategy to reduce drug prices, including promoting generics, creating incentives, improving negotiations, and forcing companies to list prices. He stops short of his campaign promise to allow Medicare work directly with manufacturers to lower prices, which is something his HHS secretary (who also used to head Eli Lilly) opposes.
5. Instead of raising taxes to make up for the state’s shortfall, the Louisiana state House votes largely along party lines to slash Medicaid eligibility by nearly two-thirds. They are currently planning for the evictions of over 30,000 elderly or disabled assisted living and group home residents.

International:

1. Trump pulls the U.S. out of the Iran deal against the advice of the EU, Russia, China, hundreds of foreign relations experts and military leaders, and pretty much everyone except the GOP…
2. Well, actually even members of Congress who voted against the Iran deal under Obama expressed disappointment in Trump’s decision. And I’m talking both Democrat and Republican members.
3. All signatories on the deal vow to stay in and find a way to work around the U.S. withdrawal, which could weaken our position. They’ve all gone back to the bargaining table to discuss how to move forward without the U.S.
4. Trump promises tougher sanctions on Iran that will be phased in over six months, which could possibly allow enough time to negotiate new terms.
5. Trump is betting that Iran will be willing to renegotiate once they start to feel the sanctions, but he also admits he has no plan B, saying “But they’ll negotiate, or something will happen.” Who knows what that something is?
6. By the way, the sanctions office in the State Department was closed by Rex Tillerson, and the head of the sanctions department at the Treasury quit.
7. Estimates are that Iranian oil exports would be cut by 200,000 to 300,000 barrels per day. As a comparison, Obama cut them by 1 million to 1.5 million barrels a day in the five-year lead-up that forced Iran to the negotiating table.
8. John Bolton predicts that Iran will cave in under pressure, but Obama put them under pressure for five years and at five times the level that Trump plans to do
9. As a result of us pulling out of the Iran deal, Boeing and Airbus each lose contracts worth $20 billion to sell jets to Iranian airlines.
10. European leaders say they’ll work to protect their businesses from the sanctions, and will probably try to create a financial system that can circumvent around the U.S. dollar.
11. China and Russia should have a fairly easy time getting around any sanctions we implement against Iran, but our European allies will have a harder time navigating around the finances.
12. European oil companies will lose out if they can’t find a way to save the deal.
13. Whaaat? Even though the U.S. has now violated the Iran deal, Trumps says that he expects Iran to continue to comply with it. If the deal falls apart, Iran has no reason not to start up their nuclear weapons program again.
14. Iranian president Rouhani says they’ll decide in a few weeks whether to ramp up uranium enrichment. Rouhani is a moderating force who believes in diplomacy with the West.
15. And then Saudi Arabia says that if Iran tries to make nuclear weapons, Saudi will as well.
16. After Trump’s announcement, hardliners in the Iranian government burn American flags chanting “Death to America!” This could weaken the more moderate influences in the Iranian government as hardliners are already pushing to get out of the deal.
17. Cyber warfare analysts at the Pentagon predict a new surge of cyber attacks out of Iran. Within 24 hours of Trump withdrawing from the Iran deal, they noticed a marked uptick in cyber activity from Iran.
18. Oh, and also John Bolton wants to eliminate the top cybersecurity job at the White House.
19. After Trump announces the withdrawal, Iran and Israel engage in military attacks against each other in Syria. The two have been fighting a shadow war in Syria that is coming out into the open with the heightened tensions there. Even Russia, which has close ties to both governments, calls for restraint.
20. The U.S. finally sends an ambassador to Germany after leaving the post empty for a year. Within hours of assuming the post, he tweets that “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.” This draws rebukes from officials, one of whom says, “It’s not my task to teach people about the fine art of diplomacy, especially not the U.S. ambassador.” German businesses perceive it as a threat.
21. Mike Pompeo meets with Kim Jong Un and sets a date for Trump to meet. They secure the release of the three U.S. prisoners from North Korea.
22. An upswing in activity between North Korea and China points to China holding leverage in the Korean peace talks.
23. Mike Pompeo’s initial remarks to State Department employees indicate that he will work to build our diplomatic ranks back up throughout the world.
24. Our actions with the Paris climate accord, tariffs and trade spats, the U.S. embassy in Israel, and the Iran deal have created a rift with our traditionally closest allies.

• • The president of the European Commission says that the U.S. is turning its back on allies and cooperation with ferocity. He also says we’ve lost out vigor and influence.
  • A former French ambassador to Washington concurs, saying they can’t work with a U.S. leadership that doesn’t want to be a leader. European leaders are mulling ways to move forward without U.S. leadership.

25. The Pentagon concludes that the special ops mission in Niger that killed four American soldiers was the fault of numerous planning failures. They also dispute the rumor that one of the soldiers was captured alive.
26. Iraqi and U.S. intelligence capture five top ISIS leaders in a three-month operation between Washington and Baghdad.
27. Twenty people who were beaten by Turkish security guards outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in DC last year file a lawsuit against the Turkish government.
28. Australia sees its worse mass killing since they passed strict gun control laws in 1996. While gun violence has dropped 47% in Australia since the laws passed, they can’t prevent every shooting.
29. We learn that Paul Ryan spoke in March to the Czech Parliament where, in a split from Trump talking points, he admitted Russian election hacking, praised NATO, and accused Russia of subversive tactics and aggressive action against our allies. He also negotiated for a Russian hacker to be extradited to the U.S. instead of Russia.

Legislation/Congress:

1. While the FCC says that net neutrality will be repealed next month, Senate Democrats are one vote short of passing a bill to make net neutrality the law.
2. Connecticut bans bump stocks, the ninth state to do so.
3. Delaware bans child marriage. How is this not a federal law??
4. Cory Booker puts forth legislation to remove marijuana from the controlled substances list, making it legal at the federal level.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. Sessions speaks on immigration at the border. He announces crackdowns on illegal border crossings, saying it will be our policy going forward to separate children from their parents at the border.
2. Sessions also says he might eliminate political asylum for victims of domestic abuse. So far, he’s set aside four decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals on this subject.
3. Fair housing groups sue HUD and Secretary Ben Carson over suspending an Obama-era rule that required communities receiving HUD funds to work to desegregate their communities. Carson’s actions would let communities receive full funding without complying with the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
4. Senate Democrats refer the Trump administration to the Government Accountability Office over their actions against immigrants with Temporary Protected Status. The investigation exposed warnings from several senior diplomats last year that deporting these immigrants would destabilize the regions and lead to an increase in illegal immigration. Apparently former Secretary of State Tillerson ignored their cables.
5. New Hampshire passes a law protecting transgender residents from discrimination in employment, housing, and public spaces.
6. Even Pakistan passes legislation to protect their transgender citizens.
7. The House passes a resolution to repeal a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule that protects consumers from discrimination when getting a car loan. Because they use the Congressional Review Act to repeal the rule, it blocks the CFPB from creating a similar rule in the future. The bill heads to Trump for signing into law.
8. Far-right political parties across Europe are playing on anti-Jewish stereotypes like the Nazis used to. Muslim immigrants contribute to the anti-Jewish sentiment, but it’s mostly coming from Christian anti-Zionist factions that have grown because of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment.
9. Trump, furious that border crossings are on the rise again, unleashes a 30-minute tirade against Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen during a cabinet meeting. He blames the increase on her, though her policies have been pretty darn tight. Many attendees were taken aback by the tirade.
10. There’s a bipartisan push to force a vote on immigration bills, and Paul Ryan is working to halt it. He says he’d like to take up an immigration bill, but not at this time. Or ever, it seems.
11. John Kelly takes heat for his comments that undocumented immigrants don’t assimilate well because they have little education, they’re rural, they don’t speak English, and don’t have skills. These assertions don’t hold up in real life studies. Also, what does being rural have to do with assimilating in the U.S.? Does he have something against rural Americas? Even the right-leaning Cato Institute disagrees with Kelly.
12. If you thought the FBI’s push to prosecute black identity “extremists” was a myth, it turns out that they arrested a black activist, held him without bail for five months, and didn’t have anything to prosecute him on. He lost his house, and to top it off, it turns out that the FBI was using conspiracy site Infowars to get information.
13. A New Hampshire court rules that a Border Patrol checkpoint set up last year was illegal. Turns out they set up a drug checkpoint framed as an immigration checkpoint, and illegally searched thousands of cars.

Climate/EPA:

1. The Trump administration ends NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), which uses satellite and aircraft instruments to monitor the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane remotely. These measurements are invaluable to climate research and high-res models of the earth’s carbon flows.
2. India’s Supreme Court upholds a ruling that Monsanto can’t patent its genetically modified cotton seeds in India.
3. Studies link climate change to the increasing severity of hurricanes. Climate change causes the oceans to trap more heat, and that heat is released as energy during a hurricane. So the more heat in the ocean, the more powerful the storm. Ocean temperatures were at record highs last year before Hurricane Harvey.
4. When automobile executives lobbied the Trump administration to loosen emissions standards, they didn’t expect the administration to go as far as they did or to attack California’s long-standing ability to set their own standards. This week, the executives meet again with the White House, saying the regulation was taken over by anti-regulatory members of the administration who pushed it way too far. They’re asking Trump to let California keep its own standards; they don’t want to pick a fight.

Budget/Economy:

1. Trump tries to make up for the ballooning deficit by asking for $15 billion in cuts to spending previously approved by Congress. Almost most half the cuts would come from children’s health programs. Most of the rest would come from money earmarked for the ACA. The cuts amount to 0.4% of this year’s spending.
2. After touting his infrastructure plan in March, Trump’s administration now says there likely won’t be an infrastructure plan this year. Last month, the top infrastructure advisor resigned.
3. According to Paul Ryan, we have a shortage of workers. Seems like a bad time to remove nearly a million Dreamers from the work place, deport around a half million TPS immigrants, and cut back on legal immigration (which the administration has been pushing for).
4. Continuing on with the teachers’ strikes, University of California workers strike for better wages, benefits, and job security.
5. The Trump administration wants to freeze federal workers’ salaries and cut their retirement benefits.
6. Trump tweets that he’s working with Chinese president Xi Jingping to save Chinese company ZTE, which largely shutdown after last month’s sanctions prevented them from getting the needed parts for their electronics. ZTE is known to pirate U.S. intellectual property, which Trump counted as a reason for China sanctions. Trump says there were too many jobs lost in China… which is kind of how sanctions work.
7. Chinese custom inspections are holding up automobiles, soybeans, and other agricultural projects, earmarking them for deeper inspection over trade uncertainty.

Elections:

1. Ohio votes to end gerrymandering.
2. Connecticut passes a bill to commit their electoral votes in the presidential election to the winner of the national popular vote. It joins 10 other states and DC in this effort.
3. A Dallas judge dismisses a case brought by Republicans to drop over 80 Democrats off the midterm ballot.

Miscellaneous:

1. New York Attorney General Eric Schneidermann resigns amid multiple accusations of sexual violence.
2. Around 5 years ago, two women contacted attorney Peter Gleason about sex abuse complaints against Schneidermann. Gleason then shared information about those complaints with Michael Cohen in case it could be used against Schneidermann if he brought a lawsuit against Trump University. Gleason recently filed to have those records remain sealed after they were seized from Cohen’s home. Trump appears to have known about it. In 2013, he tweeted about Schneidermann, “Wait and see, worse than Spitzer or Weiner.”
3. As part of Melania Trump’s new program “Be Best” the White House reissues an Obama-era pamphlet rebranded for Melania’s program. The White House says it’s written by Melania, immediately undermining her credibility. Also, the DOJ could’ve waited to announce their family separation policy instead of doing it within an hour of Melania announcing her children’s program.
4. A group of governors joins to study gun violence since the federal government is failing to make any progress on it.
5. Kansas passes a law to make it illegal for domestic abusers to own guns.
6. Gina Haspel appears before the Senate in her confirmation hearing to head the CIA. Her confirmation is in trouble due to her connection with the torture of detainees. She also participated in destroying evidence of the torture.
7. A little respect please? In response to John McCain speaking out again Gina Haspel’s use of torture, White House staffer Kelly Sadler says McCain is irrelevant because he’s dying. Later, a retired three-star general says on Fox News that torture worked on John, propagating the pants-on-fire lie that McCain told his torturers what they wanted to know.
8. Mick Mulvaney and others in the White House say that it’s worse Sadler’s words were leaked than that she said it in the first place. Can they not just apologize and move on? They just make everything worse.
9. New NRA president Oliver North says that Parkland activists are criminals, and he compares threats and vandalism against NRA officials to the Jim Crow era. North knows a thing or two about being a criminal, but apparently not much about Jim Crow.
10. Last week, Rudy Giuliani said it’s common for lawyers to make payoffs for their wealthy clients without telling them, so common that it’s even done at the law firm he works at. In response, the law firm he works at says Giuliani no longer works there and that’s not the kind of law we practice.
11. An email sent out to FDA staff says that the TV monitors at one of their campuses can’t be changed from Fox News per a directive from the administration.
12. Democrats are forcing a vote on net neutrality in the coming week.

Polls:

1. 63% of American think we should stay in the Iran accord; 29% think we should withdraw.
2. 57% of young Arabs see the U.S. as an enemy; 35% see us as an ally. That’s a reversal of the numbers from 2016.