Tag: honduras

Week 116 in Trump

Posted on April 15, 2019 in Politics, Trump

This week reminds me again of how we can all interpret the very same occurrence in vastly different ways. Even though we hear the exact same speeches, our reactions vary. Maybe we hear what we want to hear or maybe we actually do just support very different values in those speeches. No, I’m not talking about William Barr’s testimony. I’m talking about Candace Owens, who Republican leaders brought in to testify on the rising problem of white nationalism. Among other things, she said the Southern Strategy never happened (we have the audio to prove it did), that Democrats want black and brown people to live in fear (not any Democrats I know), that the statistics showing the rise in hate crimes are faked (even though the numbers come from Trump’s own government agencies), and the real problem isn’t white nationalism, it’s far-left extremism (even though our intelligence agencies say it’s far-right extremism).

I’m not saying Owens voice isn’t important, it is. But it didn’t add anything but controversy to a hearing with victims of white nationalist hate crimes in attendance. I remember white nationalist groups when I was a kid. I remember when we all took them as a serious threat. We should all take them as a serious threat now.

Anyway, off my soapbox. Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Russia:

  1. Attorney General William Barr testifies before the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. Here are some highlights:
    • Barr says that Mueller declined to review Barr’s initial letter summarizing the main findings of the report.
    • Barr won’t say whether he’s briefed the White House on the report or whether he even showed it to the White House.
    • Barr says he’ll release a redacted version of Mueller’s report to Congress and the public within a week.
    • The redactions will be color coded so we know the reason we can’t see the information. Some information is protected under grand jury rules, some affects ongoing investigations, some is defamatory (does that qualify as protected?), and some is simply classified.
    • Barr says he won’t ask a judge to rule on whether he can release any of the grand jury information.
    • And here we go again. Barr says he formed a team to investigate the investigations into the DOJ and FBI leading up to the federal probe and FISA warrants in the 2016 elections. This is the second IG review of the events, and the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee held year-long hearings on them.
    • Barr tells the Senate Appropriations Committee that the government was spying on Trump’s campaign, but he doesn’t give any evidence supporting that assertion. Barr does add that he didn’t think any rules were violated, and he doesn’t think there was an endemic problem in our intelligence agencies.
  1. Trump says Mueller‘s investigation was an attempted coup to remove him from office.
  2. In rare bipartisan form, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Ranking Member Devin Nunes send a demand to Barr, FBI Director Chris Wray, and Rod Rosenstein that Mueller must brief them on all materials obtained during his investigation.
  3. Nunes says the Mueller report is a partisan document, even though Mueller’s a Republican and Nunes hasn’t see a single word of the report.
  4. Devin Nunes says he’ll send eight criminal referrals in the Russia investigations to Barr. Most of the referrals are around lying to or misleading Congress, but three involve conspiracy and have to do with the FISA warrant request.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, retires as a federal appellate judge. She was under investigation for violating judicial conduct rules based on the tax schemes she and her family were involved in. Stepping down effectively ends the investigation.
  2. Steve Mnuchin says the Treasury will miss the deadline to deliver Trump’s tax returns. It’s OK though, because Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Congress isn’t smart enough to understand his tax returns.
  3. Mnuchin consulted with the White House over releasing the tax returns.
  4. Trump’s attorneys threaten legal action against an accounting firm if they comply with a subpoena to release his financial records.
  5. If federal efforts to obtain Trump’s tax returns fail, New York lawmakers prepare to introduce a bill allowing the New York Department of Taxation and Finance to release state tax returns if requested by a congressional committee.
  6. Officials in the UK arrest Julian Assange, and the U.S. charges him on conspiracy to hack a Pentagon computer. This is related to his 2010 dump of classified documents and his work to help Chelsea Manning crack a password. It’s not related to his actions during the 2016 elections.
    • Ecuador withdrew his asylum, opening the door for the arrest.
    • The U.S. has an extradition warrant for Assange.
    • Trump, who has previously said he loves WikiLeaks, now says he doesn’t know anything about WikiLeaks.
  1. At first, Assange’s arrest starts a major debate over what this means for freedom of the press (though I wouldn’t technically call WikiLeaks the press, some do). But it turns out he’s not being charged for disseminating classified information; just for the commission of a crime in obtaining it.
  2. The DOJ adopts a new and narrower definition of the emoluments clause, which would allows some of Trump’s hotels to accept foreign payments or gifts.
  3. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) introduces a bill to remove fellow Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) from his role as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. In a play on Trump’s nickname for Schiff, Gaetz calls it the PENCIL Act. He accuses Schiff of slandering the president and also wants Schiff’s security clearance revoked.
  4. U.S. attorneys charge Gregory Craig with lying to officials over whether his work for the Ukrainian government meant he should have registered as a foreign agent. Craig served as White House Counsel during Obama’s first two years, and not surprisingly was working with Paul Manafort when on the Ukraine project.
  5. Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti faces 36 charges of defrauding his clients. This is on top of the charges of attempting to extort Nike.
  6. Devin Nunes has been busy. He’s suing Twitter over two parody accounts that make fun of him and he’s suing McClatchy Company for defamation stemming from an article about a winery of which he is part owner.

Healthcare:

  1. Texas State Rep. Tony Tinderholt introduces a bill that would criminalize all abortion without exception, and possibly give women the death penalty if they do it. Remind me again how this is pro-life?
    • Tinderholt, who’s been married five times, says he just wants to make women more responsible. Don’t get me started. Find me an unwanted pregnancy that a man wasn’t responsible for.
  1. As he does every year, Lindsey Graham sponsors a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks.
  2. The Ohio legislature passes one of the most restrictive “heartbeat” anti-abortion bills in the country, which would outlaw abortion after just five or six weeks, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Former Governor Kasich vetoed such bills, but current Governor Mike DeWine says he’ll sign it.
  3. Representative Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) blames people for being unhealthy and says healthy people shouldn’t have to share in the cost of their insurance. I get what he’s saying; people with unhealthy habits cost us all more. Except that cancer doesn’t care how you lived your life. Neither does MS, Crohn’s, arthritis, or a host of other diseases.
  4. Democrats in the House are trying to investigate prescription drug pricing, but are being thwarted by certain House Republicans who are warning drug companies against providing any information.
  5. New York orders mandatory vaccinations in areas hit hardest by the measles outbreak. They can’t force people to vaccinate, but they’re fining people who don’t $1,000.
  6. The measles outbreak in Madagascar has killed over 1,200 people. They have a vaccination rate of under 60%, but not because people don’t want to vaccinate their kids. They do. The country just doesn’t have the resources to get them all vaccinated.

International:

  1. Trump designates Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization. Benjamin Netanyahu says it was his idea. Iran responds by designating the United States Central Command a terrorist organization.
  2. Even though the parties of Benjamin Netanyahu and his opponent, Benny Gantz, nearly tied in this week’s elections, Netanyahu won by courting far-right extremist parties to establish a stronger coalition than Gantz pulled together.
    • Netanyahu is facing possible indictments on bribery and breach of trust. He calls it a witch hunt. Sounds familiar, no?
  1. Great Britain and the European Union agree to delay Brexit until the end of October, largely out of consideration for Ireland. The longer this drags out, the worse the effects are on the UK’s economy.
    • Theresa May and opposition party leader Jeremy Corbyn are now in negotiations.
    • This puts everyone in a weird spot when European parliament elections come up in next month. At first May said the UK wouldn’t participate, but now she says they will. I’m not sure why they should have a voice in the EU at all right now.
    • Residents of Britain are stockpiling their favorite supplies in case they lose access to goods during the Brexit process.
  1. The Trump administration cancels a deal made in December to provide a safe way for Cuban baseball players to come to the U.S. to play in the major league.
  2. Russia’s foreign minister says trust in the U.S. is waning across the globe and that the balance of economic power is shifting from the West to the East.
  3. Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir is ousted in a military coup. He led the genocide in Darfur, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House votes to reinstate net neutrality regulations, which were reversed by the FCC in 2017. Net neutrality prohibits service providers from slowing down internet traffic or from charging certain entities extra for service.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. The Pentagon awards almost $1 billion in contracts to build part of Trump’s wall. As it turns out, the contracts are for new fencing.

Family Separation:

  1. Trump repeats the debunked narrative that family separations occurred under Obama and that he (Trump) was the one who stopped it. Let’s go over it again:
    • Under both Bush and Obama, children were separated from their family only when the family member was considered a danger or criminal.
    • The Obama administration did consider family separation, but deemed it too inhumane.
    • The Trump administration began a pilot separation program in the middle of 2017.
    • In April 2018, Jeff Sessions publicly announced their zero tolerance policy that led to widespread family separations (if it was already a thing under Obama, why would he have to announce the change in policy?).
    • The kids in cages that Trump points to under Obama were from an influx of unaccompanied minors (not the same as us separating them with no reunification plans).

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. At a presser, Trump says of people crossing the southern border: They wait at the gate (this seems to be in reference to gates on ranchers’ lands) and then when the gate is open, they kill people. And then they take the truck (because a lot of times they don’t even want to go to the house) so you always go to the gate in doubles. Some are good people and they’re dying on the way.
  2. A judge blocks Trump’s policy of forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico once their asylum application has been accepted. DHS implemented the policy at a few ports of entry, and Kirstjen Nielsen wanted to expand the program further. Migrants forced into Mexico can now come back to the U.S. while they await asylum hearings.
  3. The day after DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigns, Trump tells Mick Mulvaney to ask Secret Service Director Randolph Alles to leave as well. The DHS also lost its FEMA director this year, and when Kevin McAleenan moves over to temporarily replace Nielsen, the position to head the CBP will also be open. Also, under the law, Nielsen’s replacement should automatically be Undersecretary Claire Grady, but she was also asked to leave.
  4. After Trump drops Ron Vitiello from his nomination to head ICE, he replaces him with Matthew Albence, the guy who said that migrant detention centers are like summer camps. He also thinks we should be able to detain minors for as long as we want.
  5. The White House has been complaining that the DHS hasn’t done enough to stem immigration, which is likely the reason for the shakeup.
  6. It turns out that Trump threatened to cut aide to Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala the day after Kirstjen Nielsen signed a major pact with them to address immigration and smuggling.
  7. Five former SOUTHCOM commanders put out a statement condemning Trump’s decision to cut off aid funding for those Central American countries. The generals say cutting funding will increase the flow of refugees, and cite Colombia as an example of where funding has worked. It has also helped stem the flow from El Salvador.
  8. The number of attempted border crossings has ballooned this year, and now Trump is happy that the media is reporting about the crisis at the border. Instead of taking concrete steps to deal with this problem, he helped create the crisis by (according to my own analysis):
    • Detaining everyone who crosses illegally, not just criminals, and filling up detention centers and clogging courts.
    • Separating children from their parents so he can detain the parents longer.
    • Making it harder for sponsors to step forward and claim minors in custody, making sure detention centers stay full.
    • Attempting to overturn the Flores ruling so immigrant families could be detained together indefinitely.
    • Dealing with the now-overcrowded detention centers by forcing refugees to wait in Mexico to apply and by slowing down processing to a trickle, leaving them in cities south of the border that don’t have the resources to assist them.
    • Shifting border agents from ports of entry to border areas between ports (slowing down legal traffic).
    • Threatening to close down the border.
    • Cutting funding to the countries from which the refugees are fleeing.
    • Threatening to start separating every family again.
    • Gutting the top-level officials in the DHS and pulling his nomination to lead ICE.
  1. Trump wants to hand over the credible fear interviews for asylum seekers to CBP agents instead of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum officers who are actually trained in this matter. Stephen Miller says fewer people will pass if CBP handles this.
  2. Trump pressures immigration officials to release asylum seekers to so-called “sanctuary cities” as a way to punish those cities. Those cities, for the most part, say they’d welcome that, since they’re set up with the resources to assist refugees. Top ICE officials warn that this gives the appearance of political retribution.
  3. Trump tells the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection that he’d pardon him if he got sent to jail for breaking the law by stopping asylum seekers from entering the U.S.
  4. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump told Stephen Miller he’s in charge of immigration, but Trump pushes back saying he’s the only one in charge.
  5. Trump’s ban of transgender troops in the military goes into effect. Troops can no longer transition, and they can be discharged if they don’t present as their gender assigned at birth.
    • The ban has been blocked by the courts, but in January the Supreme Court allowed the ban to be enforced while it goes through the courts.
    • Certain military organizations are working on ways to circumvent the ban.
    • The ban could affect up to 13,700 troops. IMO, we should just let people who are willing and able to serve do so. And we should be grateful for their service.
  1. Massachusetts becomes the 16th state to ban conversion therapy for LGBTQ minors.
  2. Police arrest the suspected arsonist of three black churches in Louisiana. He turns out to be the son of a sheriff. They’re not saying whether it’s a suspected hate crime.
  3. Trump tweets a propaganda video vilifying Representative Ilhan Omar over her comments that seem to undermine the seriousness of 9/11.
    • Omar’s point was that you can’t judge all 1.8 billion Muslims because 20 Muslims carried out the attacks. She did misspeak about the origins of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), though.
    • Omar reports an increase in threats against her and her family after Trump’s tweet (arrests have previously been made for people threatening to kill her).
    • Speaker Nancy Pelosi then meets with the U.S. Capitol Police and sergeant-at-arms, who are now having to put extra work into assessing and protecting the safety of Omar, her family, and her staff.
    • And then Trump doubles down on his comments, accusing Pelosi of protecting Omar.
    • So basically, a statement by the president of the U.S. puts a sitting Representative in danger. And then the president criticizes the Speaker for protecting the Representative. This is just weird. And it’s not OK.
  1. White nationalists meet in Finland for their second annual “Awakening” conference, featuring prominent hate leaders and neo-Nazis from the US, Ukraine, Sweden, and Russia.
  2. The Trump administration proposes a new policy that lets the Social Security Administration monitor people’s social media accounts to make sure they qualify for disability benefits. Because God forbid anyone with a disability is just out there trying to lead a normal life.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump signs two executive orders to make it easier to build pipelines and harder for activists to stop or delay construction.
    • One order requests that the EPA review parts of the Clean Water Act that are used to block permits and makes it easier to transport natural gas, among other things.
    • The second order gives the president the power to issue permits for infrastructure projects that cross international borders with the U.S.
  1. The Senate confirms David Bernhardt to be Secretary of Interior. Bernhardt is a former fossil fuel and agribusiness lobbyist.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Herman Cain, Trump’s nominee for the Federal Reserve, says that we don’t have to worry about climate change. God will tell us when to stop using fossil fuels. He also calls the Senate Banking Committee a bunch of yahoos. The Senate Banking Committee has to approve his nomination.
  2. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) becomes the fourth GOP senator to come out against Herman Cain. Cain’s not likely to be confirmed at this point.
  3. The deficit grew to $693 billion in the first half of FY2019. It was $600 billion in the first half of FY2018. Tax revenues were up slightly, likely because people found themselves paying more at the end of the year or receiving smaller refunds (which doesn’t necessarily mean their taxes went up overall).
  4. The tax cuts of 2017 increased the number of companies that pay $0 in taxes from 30 to 60.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The woman who made her way into Mar-a-Lago last week with a variety of electronic devices had even more devices in her hotel room (not at Mar-a-Lago). She had a device to detect hidden cameras, more cell phones, nine USB drives, several SIM cards, thousands of dollars in cash, and several credit cards.
    • In case you’re wondering how they discovered the malware on her thumb drive, a Secret Service agent plugged the device into his computer, which started the installation of the malware on his computer.

Polls:

  1. 51% of voters support the efforts by House Democrats to obtain Trump’s tax returns.
  2. 64% of Americans think Trump should release those returns himself.

Week 74 in Trump

Posted on June 25, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Border policy is the big story this week. 538 gives a good wrap up about how family separation is just part of a bigger plan to control and limit immigration. The administration has tried to end DACA; reviewed applications (going back decades) of immigrants who’ve been granted citizenship; deported non-criminal immigrants who’ve made lives here for decades; and tried to curtail refugee admissions, work visas, travel from Muslim countries, and immigration by international entrepreneurs. Now they’re separating children from their parents at the border. Put together, these policies will force some immigrants here to return to their home countries, they’ll make it harder to help relatives come to the country, and they’ll reduce the number of immigrants and refugees coming here in the first place. So the overall goal seems to be to reduce the foreign-born population in the U.S.

And just a reminder of how these policies are based on misleading information: The Trump administration tried to stifle a report they commissioned that shows refugees added $63 billion to US economy over the past decade. The released version was manipulated to only show the costs of refugees and none of the profits. Trump also holds up Germany as example of how bad immigration is, saying crime in Germany is way up. In real life, the crime rate in Germany is at it’s lowest point in 26 years and was down 10% in 2017 from 2016.

But here’s what else happened last week…

Russia:

  1. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, along with the FBI’s Christopher Wray, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his newly released report on the investigation into Hillary’s emails.
  2. Republicans aren’t satisfied with the 580-page report, so they threaten to investigate the investigation into the investigation of Clinton’s emails.
  3. Wray supports Mueller’s investigation and says this is not a witch hunt.
  4. The FBI turns over thousands of documents to congressional committees about its processes and sources for finding information on Russian contacts with Trump campaign members. Wait for the leaks…
  5. In the run-up to the 2016 elections, the National Enquirer got Michael Cohen’s approval before running stories about Trump. This allowed Cohen to limit negative press and is being looked into as a violation of campaign finance laws.
  6. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan subpoena the publisher of the National Enquirer over their payment to Karen McDougal to keep her story of her alleged affair with Trump out of the news.
  7. Even Mueller’s team worries that the Russia investigation is being overexposed in the press and has already biased potential jurors.
  8. A judge denies Paul Manafort’s request to suppress evidence against him and that the money laundering charges won‘t be dismissed.
  9. Mueller tries to thwart further moves for dismissal by filing a request preventing the defense from saying Manafort was targeted because of his proximity to Trump.
  10. Michael Cohen resigns as deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee. This makes him the third person to step down from the RNC finance committee over scandals.
  11. Joshua Schulte, a former CIA engineer, is indicted for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks.
  12. House Democrats release thousands of RussiaToday Twitter ads that were used before the 2016 election.
  13. In a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, two former Obama officials say we didn’t do enough to deter Russian meddling in our elections.
  14. We find out from the Kremlin that John Bolton if going to Russia in the coming week. Four Senators are heading there too.
  15. The House Judiciary Committee issues a subpoena to Peter Strzok even though Strzok has already offered to appear voluntarily.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court throws out a 1992 ruling that blocked states from collecting taxes from online entities.
  2. The Supreme Court rules that the government can’t track or obtain cellphone location data without a warrant.
  3. A federal judge strikes down Kris Kobach’s voter registration law in Kansas that requires proof of citizenship, saying that it violates constitutional rights, that Kobach failed to prove cases of fraud, and that the burden of proof had disenfranchised thousands of voters. This makes an earlier injunction of the law permanent.
  4. The same judge forces Kobach to attend legal classes because he is too unfamiliar with the law.

Healthcare:

  1. The House passes a bipartisan group of bills aimed at fixing the opioid epidemic. The bills address expanding treatment, looking at alternative treatments, stopping the transfer of illegal opioids, and preventing the use of fentanyl.
  2. Trump issues a rule that allows small businesses to circumvent some of the ACA consumer protections in order to provide cheaper, and possibly substandard, health insurance policies.
  3. Trump creates a commission to look into closing down some VA facilities to save money. He also wants to transfer funding from VA facilities to private facilities.

International:

  1. A UN report on chemical weapons attacks and potential war crimes in Syria omits allegations that chemical weapons attacks were more common than has been reported. The authors say they need more corroboration.
  2. Trump accuses Canadians of coming across the border to buy shoes and smuggle them back into Canada. He says they scuff them up to make them look and sound old. Sneaky Canadians.
  3. Canada becomes the second country to legalize pot (Uruguay is the other one).
  4. Trump calls North Korea destabilizing, repressive, and a continued threat to the U.S. Last week, Kim Jong Un was a great leader who Trump was honored to meet. Last year, Kim was “little rocket man.”
  5. Tens of thousands of people turn out in London to protest Brexit and demand a final vote on the terms of the deal. Hundreds of pro-Brexit protestors turn out as well.
  6. Turkey re-elects Erdogan president and abolishes the position of prime minister. This move increases Erdogan’s authority greatly.
  7. European Union leaders hold a small summit to modify immigration rules, with countries that have been taking on the brunt of refugees asking other countries to do their part.
  8. Saudi Arabia ends their ban on women driving.
  9. Protests break out in Tehran, Iran. It’s not clear who’s leading the protests but the impetus seems related to the economy.
  10. Secretary of Defense James Mattis says he’s not aware of any moves North Korea has made yet to denuclearize.
  11. However, Trump has been ignoring Mattis’s advice on foreign-policy, or just leaving him out of the loop completely.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Paul Ryan delays the House vote on an immigration compromise bill that funds the wall, gives Dreamers a pathway to citizenship, and keeps families together (though detained indefinitely).
  2. And then Trump says GOP lawmakers should wait until after the midterms to deal with immigration, likely scuttling the deal through the end of the year.
  3. Paul Ryan continues his practice of only bringing bills to a vote if he thinks Trump is already for it.
  4. The Senate votes against Trump’s $15 billion cuts to the previously approved spending plan.
  5. Trump threatens to shut down the government in the fall if he doesn’t get his wall. Senators are willing to fund border security at $1.6 billion, though Trump just scuttled the above House bill that would’ve given him $25 billion.

Separating Families:

  1. Every living first lady— from Rosalynn Carter to Melania Trump—speak out against the separation of families.
  2. 55% of Republicans approve of this policy. 66% of Americans in general do not. Republicans are the only listed demographic in the poll to support family separation; they’re also the only other group to support building a wall.
  3. A bipartisan group of over 70 former US attorneys urge Jeff Sessions to reverse the zero-tolerance policy. They say it’s dangerous, expensive, and doesn’t live up to the our values.
  4. Trump continues to blame Democrats, which is provably false since no administration has done this before and Jeff Sessions announced the change in policy on April 6th and then went on to speak about it on May 7.
  5. Cities and states refuse to provide assistance to the DOJ or CBP in the detention of separated families.
  6. Four governors refuse to send National Guard troops to the border, and eleven governors pull their National Guard troops out. Colorado bans the use of state resources for child separations.
  7. Detained parents of separated children get no legal counsel prior to appearing before a judge and are processed in large groups in a single hearing. Prosecutors’ goals are to get through as many as possible and to have them all plead guilty, which many do because they think that’s the only way to find their kids.
  8. The Flores decision of 1997 specifies that immigrant children can only be detained for up to 20 days and after that, they can only be held in licensed facilities. The DOJ asks a judge to waive that limit so they can house immigrant families indefinitely.
  9. After a week of saying only Democrats can fix this, Trump signs an executive order drafted by Kirstjen Nielsen to attempt to fix this crisis of his own making.
    • The EO says Homeland Security will still prosecute border crossers as criminals, but that they’ll detain families together. This requires them to file a brief against the Flores decision.What they’re aiming for is to detain families indefinitely, which is far more costly than releasing them with mandatory check-ins.
      Side note: Releasing families under an Obama-era program costs about $36 per day, and families show up for meetings and hearings around 99% of the time. Detaining families together costs nearly $300 per day, and separating families has cost nearly $800 per day.
    • The EO has no provision to reunite families that Trump has already separated.
    • After the EO, border workers are left to figure out how to implement it on their own with little guidance. We hear mixed eports over whether they’re still enforcing zero tolerance and whether they’re supposed to.
  1. Melania visits a holding center for immigration children and one for immigrant families. In an unfortunate choice, she wears a coat that says “I don’t care. Do u?” Her publicist says it didn’t mean anything, but then Trump negates that in a tweet saying it was about the fake news.
  2. A dozen states plan to sue the administration over the policy of family separation. They say the EO doesn’t fix it.
  3. Health and Human Services asks the Pentagon to house up to 20,000 unaccompanied immigrant minors.
  4. There was a huge drop in illegal border crossings last year over fear of Trump’s hardline policies. But they’re up nearly triple from this time last year now that people see that Trump is having a hard time getting his policies implemented.
  5. On the Christian Broadcasting Network, Sessions says they never intended to separate families. I can’t even with this. Maybe he’s just saying this because his church has condemned his actions.
  6. Both Stephen Miller and Kirstjen Nielsen, staunch defenders of family separation policies, get heckled eating out at Mexican restaurants.
  7. And then a restaurant owner tells Sarah Huckabee Sanders that she and her family can’t eat there. She tweets about it on her official account, which turns out to be a violation of the ethics code.
  8. Corey Lewandowski’s speakers bureau drops him after he makes fun of a child with Downs Syndrome being separated from her mother on national TV.
  9. Protestors play the recording of separated children crying for the parents outside a Trump fundraiser and outside Kirstjen Nielsen’s house. Representative Ted Lieu (R-CA) goes against House rules and plays the recording on the floor to get it entered into the congressional record.
  10. Detained children are shipped to centers and foster care across the country.
  11. An army of volunteer attorneys is working to reunite separated families. They’re finding that officials are unable locate all the children. Of 300 parents represented, only 2 children have been located.
  12. The U.S. Attorney’s Office announces they’ll dismiss cases where parents were charged with illegal entry and separated from their kids.
  13. On Friday, a government source said all families would be reunited that day. But by Saturday night, only about 21% has been reunited. The administration says that 500 children have been reunited with their parents so far.
  14. The DNA company 23andMe offers to donate DNA kits to help locate children and reunite families that were separated.
  15. The American Academy of Pediatrics calls the separation of families child abuse.
  16. Protestors hold marches and toy/supply drives children in holding in over 60 cities nationwide. Members of Congress head to detention facilities to protest.
  17. The Methodist Church files a complaint against family separation and 600 members file a complaint against Sessions. He could ousted from the church, but the members say they want a reconciliation process that would bring Sessions back to Christian values.
  18. An online fundraiser goes viral, raising nearly $20 million for RAICES, which helps provide legal aid to immigrant families, children, and refugees.
  19. By the end of the week, the administration says they’ll reunite families when the parents agree to give up their quest for asylum, meaning that the whole family must be deported in order for parents and children to be reunited. Until that agreement is made, parents will only have phone visitation with their children, and that is not guaranteed due to logistics.
  20. Lawsuits are filed, alleging abuse and administering drugs without consent in the detention centers for children.
  21. Notes and interviews show that the administration has been planning this since last spring.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump continues to use exaggerations of criminal behavior and of MS-13 to get people behind his harsh immigration policies.
  2. The zero-tolerance policy was supposed to deter undocumented immigrants, but instead there was a spike in border crossings after the policy was announced.
  3. Steven Miller says it was a simple decision to separate children from their parents at the border. In comparison, when the Obama administration was working on ways to strengthen border security, they talked about this for about five minutes before throwing it away as an incredibly bad idea.
  4. The National Park Service gives their initial approval to “Unite the Right” to hold a “white civil rights” rally at the National Mall. This is the same group that held the infamous Charlottesville rally.
  5. After Trump shoots down the immigration bills currently in the House, he tells Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) that he backs the compromise bill. But it’s too little, too late. Representatives who were already lukewarm on the bill already moved to the other side.
  6. The Senate Appropriations Committee approves a spending bill for Homeland Security that doesn’t include full funding for the border wall, nor increased funding for CBP, nor increased funding for detainment beds. It also requires the administration to report monthly on family separations.
  7. Trump calls for deporting undocumented immigrants with no judge or court hearing, saying they should be removed immediately. And without due process apparently.
  8. Trump again quotes bad data, this time numbers he got from the mother of a victim killed by an undocumented immigrant. She said undocumented immigrants have killed 63,000 Americans since 9/11. GAO numbers actually show that immigrants, including undocumented ones, commit crimes at a far lower rate that native-born Americans (about half the rate). The false number seems to come from Steve King (R-Iowa).
  9. At the beginning of the week, Trump derides Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) idea to hire thousands of immigration judges as crazy. By the end of the week, Trump tweets that it’s what we need to do.
  10. The World Health Organization removes transgender from their list of mental disorders. About time.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The Trump Tower in Chicago is the only user of Chicago River water that fails to comply with Chicago’s fish-protecting regulations. They use river water for their cooling systems.
  2. Trump rescinds Obama’s executive order aimed at protecting the Great Lakes and oceans. Trump’s order encourages offshore drilling and more industrial use of these waters. Obama’s order came about because of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
  3. A Canadian mining firm prepares to start mining in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
  4. The EPA’s Scott Pruitt shutters three more advisory boards to the agency, further isolating the EPA from expertise in the areas the agency is supposed to protect.
  5. Emails released as part of a lawsuit show that Pruitt considered hiring a friend of the Harts, the family that rented him their condo for $50 a night. The emails also indicate that Pruitt has a closer relationship with the Harts than previously disclosed, and that Mr. Hart lobbied the EPA last year even though both parties had previously denied this.
  6. The special counsel opens a new probe into Pruitt for retaliating against employees who pushed back against his policies. There are around dozen other probes into his activities.
  7. The official EPA paper trail shows that Pruitt only sent one single email to anyone outside the EPA from his government account. Seems sketchy.
  8. Pruitt’s most recent financial disclosure shows he spent over $4.6 million on security. And that included things like “tactical pants” and “tactical polos.”
  9. The Trump administration finally releases a report on unsafe drinking water after working to suppress it for months. The danger in the water comes from nonstick chemicals leaked into drinking water, and affects 126 military bases.
  10. Ryan Zinke and his wife run a foundation that’s working on a real estate deal with the chairman of Halliburton. Halliburton will benefit from Ryan Zinke opening up national monuments to mining and drilling, and the Zinkes will benefit from the real estate deal, which involves building a resort on land that borders a property owned by the Zinkes. The House calls for an investigation.

Budget/Economy:

  1. House Republicans reveal their 2019 budget, which includes $4 billion in cuts to Social Security, around $500 billion in cuts to Medicare, and $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. We all knew that’s how they planned to balance their tax cuts from last year.
  2. The House Republicans pass a farm bill, and in the process cut SNAP benefits. This could affect around 23,000 active duty military families and 1.5 million veterans.
  3. Mick Mulvaney wants to shut down the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau database of consumer complaints against the banking industry.
  4. Trump threatens China with additional tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods, which would bring the total of tariffed goods to $450 billion… and the Dow dropped nearly 300 points on its way to a six-day losing streak.
  5. Via tweet, Trump threatens tariffs on auto imports from Europe in response to Europe placing tariffs on $3.2 billion in U.S. goods.
  6. Ambassador Nikki Haley says that it’s ridiculous for the UN to study poverty in the U.S. The UN’s report says of the developed nations, the U.S. ranks highest in rates of infant mortality, incarceration, youth poverty, income inequality, and obesity. The report also says that our current policies are making these things worse and deepening the wealth divide.
  7. 11,000 AT&T workers strike against unfair labor practices. The issue started to heat up after AT&T announces $1,000 bonuses to many in their workforce, and then laid off a bunch of workers who had received that bonus.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump directs the DoD and the Pentagon to create a sixth Armed Forces Branch: the Space Force. Yes. For outer space. For real, and over James Mattis’s objections. Mattis says this isn’t the time to be creating a new branch of the military.
  2. Trump also wants to open space for more commercial development.
  3. Trump releases his proposal for reorganizing the government. Key points:

    • Merge the Department of Labor and the Department of Education.
    • Move the USDA’s food and nutrition programs to the Department of Health and Human Services (which will be renamed to the Department of Health and Public Welfare).
    • Combine the USDA’s Safety and Inspection Service with the Food and Drug Administration (currently under HHS) into a single agency under the USDA. Wait… so the USDA would essentially be its own watchdog.
    • Move the USDA’s programs to assist with rural housing and rent to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
    • Move the Army Corps of Engineers from the Department of Defense to Transportation and the Interior.
    • Create a new Office of Energy Innovation under the Department of Energy that would combine all of the current applied energy programs.
  1. Wikileaks publishes a searchable database of ICE agents and their personal information scraped from multiple public sites. DHS blame this on liberals, even though Wikileaks doesn’t have a record of supporting Democrats.
  2. Wilbur Ross shorted a shipping firm stock after learning that reporters were planning a negative story about the firm. Shorting is something you do to profit from a drop in stock price, and doing it based on nonpublic information is called securities fraud.

Polls:

  1. 75% of Americans think immigration is good for the U.S. Approval goes up to 84% when the question specifies “legal immigration.”