Just a heads up, I’ve tried to move information about any of Trump’s rallies to the Elections section, because these are really campaign rallies and nothing else.

If you’re looking for ways to help out with the victims of Hurricane Harvey, here are a few options:

• From weather.com
• From NPR

 

Russia:

1. Glen Simpson, cofounder of Fusion GPS, testifies to the House Judiciary Committee. Fusion GPS was hired by unnamed Republicans to get opposition research on Trump, and then after the primaries, they were hired by unnamed Democrats. Fusion commissioned the Steele dossier.
2. The Senate Intelligence Committee wants to declare WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” This allows more surveillance of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, and makes intelligence agencies release information about Russian threats to the U.S.
3. New documents show that while Trump was running for office, his company was working on a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. They signed a letter of intent, but the project fell through and was abandoned in January of 2016.
4. Robert Mueller subpoenas testimony from associates of Paul Manafort for his grand jury.
5. Interesting side note: The PR company Manafort used, Mercury, worked with Anthony Podesta’s company (brother of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta) on a lobbying effort to improve relations between the Ukraine and EU.
6. Tensions escalate between Trump and some GOP Members of Congress after a series of conversations in which Trump complains to them about the Russia sanctions bill.

Courts/Justice:

1. Previously it was reported that the DOJ backed off on their request for information on visitors to an anti-Trump website, but this week a court orders the web hosting company to provide the information.
2. A division of the White House anti-drug office, the National Marijuana Initiative, asks Massachusetts for data on current medical marijuana patients, once again bringing up questions of the right to privacy. I’m not sure how HIPAA regulations tie in here.
3. Several state officials criticize Jeff Sessions for using incomplete, incorrect, and obsolete data in determining how the DOJ will handle states where marijuana is legal for either recreational or medical use.

Healthcare:

1. It turns out that when Trump spoke at the Boy Scouts Jamboree in Shelley Moore Capito’s state of West Virginia, White House aides told Capito that she could only fly with him to the jamboree on Air Force One if she promised to vote for the healthcare bill. She declined, not having even seen the bill yet.

International:

1. The U.S. Embassy in Russia suspends tourist visas until September 1 at all locations in Russia. On the 1^st, they’ll start granting visas again, but only in Moscow.
2. Trump reveals his strategy for Afghanistan. Though he had previously criticized the commander there and spoke against increasing troops, Trump ultimately bent to the commander’s will and agreed to a troop surge.
3. The Afghanistan strategy he revealed is missing concrete details. He talks about meeting benchmarks, but doesn’t give any specifics about what those benchmarks are.
4. Trump calls his plan dramatically different, but it’s largely a continuation of the previous administration.
5. In spite of the troop surge, Trump dissolves the office of the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which engages NATO to coordinate allied actions there.
6. The U.S. Treasury imposes sanctions against Russian and Chinese companies that provide support to North Korea.
7. The UN confirms that two shipments from North Korea to Syria were intercepted in the past six months. The shipments were to the government agency in charge of Syria’s chemical weapons program.
8. North Korea announces it’s producing more rocket engines and warhead tips, though Trump says in his Phoenix speech that we’re making progress with them.
9. Turkey stops teaching evolution in middle and high school because the theory is too nuanced for young minds. They only teach it in university now, and I guess only to those lucky enough to go to university.
10. Qatar re-establishes diplomatic ties with Iran after Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the UAE cut off diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar as a way of trying to get them to drop ties with Iran. Can you say backfire?
11. All terrorist suspects in the Barcelona attacks last week are dead.
12. An estimated half million people gather in Barcelona to denounce violence, extremism, and Islamophobia after attacks.
13. Jared Kushner travels to the Mideast to meet with leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan to discuss peace between Israel and Palestine. They’re trying a different method by bringing these surrounding countries to the table.
14. The military uses questionable accounting methods to count the number of troops abroad to get around the caps put on those numbers under Obama. For example, the cap in Afghanistan is 8,400 troops, but it looks like there are closer to 12,000 troops (thought the Pentagon says there are 5,200 troops there).

Legislation/Congress:

1. Trump contradicts himself in a tweetstorm, first saying that Democrats are blocking congress from getting anything done, and then changing his mind by saying he’s signed more legislation than most administrations. Which is it?

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

Charlottesville Fallout:

1. The fallout from Trump’s Charlottesville comments continues, with the science envoy resigning from the State Department.
2. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination criticizes Trump for waffling in his condemnation of hate groups after Charlottesville, saying the U.S. must “unequivocally reject and condemn the racist violent events and demonstrations.” This type of early warning from the panel is usually only used in places with a lot of ethnic and religious violence.
3. When asked about the UN statement, Tillerson says that the state department upholds American values around the world and that the president speaks for himself, not America. Since when does the president not speak for America?
4. Paul Ryan says Trump messed up when calling out both sides in Charlottesville, but stops short of saying he should apologize.
5. Pence says we should build more monuments, not tear any down. “We ought to be celebrating the men and women who have helped our nation move towards a more perfect union and tell the whole story of America.” Soooo we should celebrate those who wanted to secede from the U.S. and fought for the right to enslave blacks? Horse puckey.
6. Rabbis from four different Jewish groups back out of next month’s traditional calls with the president around the Jewish holidays because of his waffling response.
7. Seven members of Trump’s infrastructure council resign partly because of his response to Charlottesville.
8. Economic advisor Gary Cohn publicly rebuked Trump for not being more outspoken against the white supremacist groups in Charlottesville. He also drew up a resignation letter, but decided to stay on instead, saying that Jew-hating white supremacists won’t make this Jew leave his job.
9. The police response in Charlottesville was so blasé that when a member of the white supremacist groups pointed a gun at the crowd of counter-protestors and then shot at the ground near them, police did nothing. The man was later arrested.
10. Here’s a summary of Trump’s vacillation around Charlottesville:
    • On the Saturday of the weekend of the violence, Trump calls out both sides and falsely blames the right and the left.
    • On Monday, he gives a scripted statement and denounces hate groups specifically by name.
    • On Tuesday, he yells angrily at reporters and blames both sides again.
    • On the following Monday, he strikes a conciliatory tone and calls for unity.
    • On Tuesday (in Phoenix), he spends about a half an hour blaming both sides and defending his response while omitting the part where he put both sides on the same footing.
    • On Wednesday, he speaks in Reno where he reads from a script and urges love and unity.
11. Ukraine removes 1,320 statues of Vladimir Lenin and 1,069 Soviet monuments from its public spaces.

The Rest:

1. Trump threatens to end DACA while his aides push him to protect Dreamers. They want him to use it as a bargaining chip.
2. Trump implements a new transgender ban in the military, giving John Mattis six months to work out the details (specifically around how to handle transgender troops currently serving). It sounds like no new openly transgender people can join the armed services.
3. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s daughter, who is also a veteran, responds to the ban, posting “This man is a disgrace. I’ve tried to keep politics out of my social media feed as much as possible, but this is inexcusable.” The rest of the post is, well… she talks like a sailor. I wonder if she and her dad talk politics?
4. Far-right activists use fake antifa Twitter accounts and images of battered women to smear the left, claiming antifa groups support beating women.
5. While most of the far-right, pro-Trump rallies scheduled this week across 36 states are cancelled citing security and safety reasons, thousands turn out to denounce white supremacy across the country. San Francisco looks like the largest. Most marches are peaceful, but the antifa in Berkeley have some violent scuffles with small groups of alt-right ralliers.
6. Unlike during previous strong hurricanes, INS says they’ll keep their checkpoints open as people try to get out of the path of Hurricane Harvey.
7. Trump controversially pardons Maricopa County’s ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He had previously asked AG Jeff Sessions to stop the federal case against Arpaio. When Sessions said that would be inappropriate, Trump decided to wait until the trial and then grant clemency. He’s been planning this all along.
8. The pardon generates criticism from all sides—from Democrats to Republicans to Judges. Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, John McCain, and John Kasich, among many others, all speak out. While the pardon is lawful, Trump didn’t officially alert the DOJ and didn’t follow the typical Office of Pardon Attorney process.
9. According to some nationalists in Trump’s base, the pardon erases any doubt about whether Trump meant to empower them after the Charlottesville violence.
10. One of Trump’s campaign advisors, Walid Phares, offers to testify on behalf of Iraqi Christians who are being deported under the new administration. The catch? He charges $15,000 a pop. During the campaign, Phares was a strong advocate of Trump’s harsh immigration laws. Opportunist.
11. During the hurricane, Trump again tweets about how Mexico will pay for the wall, though also he says he’ll shut down the government if Congress doesn’t include funding for the wall in the spending bill. Mexico again reiterates that no, it won’t be paying for a wall.

Climate/EPA:

1. The Department of the Interior orders the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to stop working on a study on health risks for people who live near mountaintop removal coal mining. The problem is likely toxic metals leaching into the water supply. There are elevated death rates and birth defects in the affected communities.
2. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke sends Trump his recommendations of changes to the size of three national monuments and management changes for other monuments.
3. He recommends reducing the size of these monument, most likely to open them up to drilling, mining, logging, or recreational vehicles: Bears Ears (Utah), Grand Staircase-Escalante (Utah), and Cascade-Siskiyou (Oregon).
4. He also recommends changing management guidelines for several monuments, including allowing fishing in marine sanctuaries (which kind of defeats the purpose, no?).
5. In response, Patagonia takes out $700,000 in ads against Ryan Zinke.
6. The EPA pulls out of the Climate Leadership Awards program and conference, which it has the lead sponsor of since 2012. The program recognizes companies that reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.
7. Leaders in the petroleum industry publicly praise Trump’s deregulation efforts, but privately wish he’d slow down. They’re afraid of a backlash and of loosening regulations so much that a disaster happens.
8. Companies that are already retrofitting to meet some of the standards worry that less scrupulous companies will take advantage of looser regulations. For the methane regulation, the fix is cheap and easy, yet publicly the industry still praises its rollback.
9. Oil and gas companies also fear removing too many regulations will result in severe setbacks for the industry.

10. Trump prevents the National Park Service from voicing concerns about NRA-backed legislation that would restrict the agency’s jurisdiction over hunting and fishing inside park boundaries.
11. Alaska’s permafrost is melting as a result of global warming. This, in turn, releases more carbon and methane trapped inside the permafrost, exacerbating the cycle of global warming even further.
12. Category 4 Hurricane Harvey is the harshest hurricane in a decade to hit the U.S. It quickly diminishes to a category 1 storm, but causes massive damage and flooding. I put this under Climate not because the hurricane was caused by global warming, but because scientists say global warming contributed to the factors that caused massive flooding, including rising sea levels and a new tendency for pressure systems to hold weather patterns in place.
13. Help comes from all over to assist with the flooding. Louisiana, New York, California, Utah, North Carolina, and more states all send assistance.
14. Questions abound over why Houston and Harris County weren’t evacuated. Evacuating 6.5 million people is no easy task, and would have required more time than they had. Also they thought maybe the media was hyping it up… fake news, right?
15. The hurricane shuts down oil and gas facilities in the gulf and companies evacuate drilling platforms. Experts predict gas prices might increase as much as 24 cents a gallon.

Budget/Economy:

1. Despite Trump’s threats, Mitch McConnell is certain the debt ceiling raise will go through.
2. Trump threatens to terminate NAFTA in a tweet because Canada and Mexico are being difficult. This would cut us off economically from our neighbors. So much for the art of the deal.
3. The deadline for tax reform has been punted from the August recess to Thanksgiving and now to the end of the year. Trump had originally planned to release his own tax reform plan at the end of August recess, but now they say they’re leaving the plan up to Congress.
4. The tax reform details are sketchy, but so far it looks like they want to lower taxes on corporations and make up for it by getting rid of certain loopholes for taxpayers (like interest deductions on your mortgage and federal deductions for state and local taxes). In plain terms, taxes for corporations go down; taxes for most people go up.
5. Also on the table in the tax plan is taxing 401k contributions. WTF? What would be the benefit of putting money in a 401k in that case?
6. Trump blames McConnell and Ryan for the debt ceiling “mess,” saying if they would’ve listened to Trump and tagged it on to the veteran’s bill, it would be done already. Now, Trump says, Democrats are holding it up, which is patently false since it hasn’t even been brought down for debate yet.

Elections:

1. Following the previous week’s ruling that the Texas district lines were discriminatory and unconstitutional, a court this week rules that the rewrite of the Texas voter ID law is also discriminatory and unconstitutional. This is the second time the voter ID law has been struck down. Texas has had six such violations so far this year. If it gets four more, it’s a civil rights violation.
2. Trump holds another 2020 election rally, this time in Phoenix. He spends about half of his 77-minute speech defending his response to Charlottesville, omitting key parts of his response. He attacks two Republican senators in their home state, lies about his crowd size and the size of the crowd protesting him, goes after the media, and blames Democrats for Republicans not being able to get anything done. Tip: Republicans don’t need Democrats to get anything done right now.
3. I’m not going to go through the entire speech, but CNN critiques it here if you’re interested.
4. A study shows that 1 in 10 Bernie Sanders primary voters voted for Trump in the general, enough to make a difference in the three states that won him the election. Note that some transfer between the primaries and the general election is normal. We’ve been hearing it was about the economy and trade, but the study shows that these hardly played a role. The biggest factor was race. (I haven’t broken down the source data, but NPR has a pretty good summary.)
5. GOP leaders express support for Jeff Flake after Trump’s criticism. The Senate Leadership Fund plans to target his primary opponent, Kelli Ward, who Trump has been praising.

Miscellaneous:

1. A prankster who emails one of Breitbart’s editors reveals that, more than getting out the truth, the site is interested in propaganda, specifically smearing whoever Bannon says.
2. The rift between McConnell and Trump deepens, and the two haven’t spoken in weeks; not since their August 9 call that devolved into a screaming match..
3. By one count, Trump has made 1057 false or misleading statements since his inauguration, averaging nearly five a day.
4. Another one for your White House bingo card: Sebastian Gorka’s out. There’s a dispute over whether he quit or was fired.
5. GOP Senator Thom Tillis introduces bill to protect Mueller. Trump calls him to tell him he hopes it doesn’t pass.
6. Trump monitors the situation in Texas closely over the weekend, and FEMA is on the ground and working, but Trump also found time to tweet insults to Claire McCaskill, promises for a wall with Mexico, and threats to pull out of NAFTA.
7. After aides warn him not to, Trump looks directly at the eclipse.
8. Military officials appear to consolidate power in the White House as they continue to advise a president with little foreign experience.
9. After last week’s destroyer accident that killed 10, the Navy Admiral in charge of the boat is relieved of his command.
10. John Kelly and White House staff secretary Rob Porter now make the decisions on what gets to the president. Members of the conservative media complain. It looks like uber-conservative sites like Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, and Infowars are out.
11. Despite quitting five weeks ago, Sean Spicer is still at the White House and apparently still getting a paycheck.
12. Jim Mattis speaks to soldiers in Jordan, telling them they’re a great example to our country right now and that they need to hold the line until Americans get back to understanding and respecting each other and just being friendly again.
13. OSHA removes the list of workplace deaths from the home page of its website and replaces it with ways companies can voluntarily work with OSHA to improve safety.
14. Trump says he’ll visit Texas as soon as he can do so without disruption.