It was a no good, very bad week for Trump on the impeachment front. The big news should’ve been that we killed the leader of ISIS. But Republican Representatives storm the SCIF where the depositions are taking place to protest that they aren’t allowed in the room. Except that about half of the people protesting actually are allowed in the room. And then William Taylor provides the most damning and wide-reaching testimony so far. And then to top his week off, he gets booed at a Nationals World Series game. It’s lonely at the top.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending October 27…

Missed From Last Week:

1. Miami Beach passes a resolution declaring a climate emergency, thanks to local youth climate strikes. This is the second bit of good climate news from a state where the phrase “climate change” is still forbidden in official documents.

Shootings This Week:

1. There were five mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing or injuring four or more people):

• • A shooter injures four people in Sumter, SC. The shootings are random.
  • A shooter (or possibly multiple shooters) kills one person and injures three more at an apartment complex in Midwest City, OK.
  • In a separate shooting in Oklahoma City, OK, a shooter kills two people and injures two people.
  • A shooter at a crowded college homecoming party for Texas A&M University-Commerce kills two people and injures six more. Additionally, six people suffered injuries trying to get away.
  • A shooter kills one person and injures four more at a party in Lansing, MI.

2. A court awards the father of a boy killed in the Sandy Hook school $450,000 in a lawsuit against conspiracy theorist James Fetzer, who wrote the book “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook” with co-author Mike Palacek.

• • Palacek settled for an undisclosed sum last month.
  • Despite the loss, Fetzer still claims his book to be true. Are these folks delusional or just assholes? It’s hard to tell.

Russia:

1. The Turla group is a group of Russian cyber actors who disguise themselves as Iranian spies to orchestrate attacks on countries around the world. They attacked military organizations, government departments, scientific agencies, and universities in 35 countries, including the U.S. and U.K.
2. Attorney General Andrew Barr kicks his investigations into the origins of the Russia investigation up a notch. He opens a criminal inquiry into how the investigation began.
3. This gives John Durham, the U.S. prosecutor handling the investigation, subpoena power, the ability to convene a grand jury, and the power to file criminal charges.

• • To be clear, the DoJ has launched a criminal investigation into itself.
  • Durham only needs a reasonable indication that a crime was committed to open the criminal inquiry, which is a lower standard than the probable cause requirement for a typical criminal case.

• • The FISA warrant for surveilling Carter Page is a big part of this investigation, though several judges found the evidence sufficient to continue reissuing the FISA warrant.
  • The DOJ inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is conducting his own investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation. His report should be complete long before Durham concludes his investigation.

4. Russian agent Maria Butina completes her sentence and is deported back to Russia.

Legal Fallout:

1. A federal judge holds Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in contempt because she continued to collect student debt for loans for Corinthian College in violation of a previous court order. Corinthian is a defunct for-profit college that was found to be defrauding students. The judge fines the Department of Education $100,000.
2. Trump’s lawyers take their “you can’t investigate a sitting president” a step too far when a judge gets them to argue that this is the case even if Trump does shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue. The judge asks, “Local authorities… couldn’t do anything about it?” To which Trump’s lawyer replies, “That is correct.”
3. The National Archives opens an investigation into Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s use of private email for official business.
4. Trump once again files an appeal to prevent the release of his financial statements and taxes by Mazars USA, his accounting firm.

Impeachment:

Including all this info just makes this too long, so I moved it out into its own post. You can skip right over to it if that’s your focus.

Healthcare:

1. Just in time for World Polio Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) says another strain of the poliovirus is eradicated worldwide. This leaves one more strain to go and is thanks to a global vaccination effort. Polio was once a leading killer of children.
2. Since the Trump administration stopped funding medical facilities that refer patients for abortion services, nearly 900 clinics have lost Title X family planning funding. Five states don’t have any Title X clinics.
3. A judge in Oklahoma temporarily blocks a new law that would require medical practitioners to let their patients who are receiving medical abortions know that the procedure is reversible. Except that it isn’t reversible, so they’re forcing doctors to lie. Oklahoma isn’t the only state that passed this law.
4. Northern Ireland decriminalizes abortion.
5. Between December 2017 and June 2019, more than 1 million children were dropped from Medicaid and CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program).

International:

Syria/Kurds:

1. As the cease-fire brokered by the U.S. in Syria comes to an end, Putin meets with Turkish President Erdogan to discuss how Russia, Turkey, and other Mideast players will divide control of Syria.

• • The two countries will take over northeastern Syria, which was previously held by Kurds.
  • Erdogan opposes Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but Putin supports Assad.
  • Russia is filling the vacuum we left behind, and Putin is solidifying Russia’s power in the Mideast.

2. Russia deploys military police in Syria’s northeast border to help Turkey drive out Kurdish fighters. Assad’s military forces will be allowed back to the area for the first time in years.
3. Trump ends the economic sanctions against Turkey that were just placed on the country a week ago for their attacks on Kurdish Syrians. He declares success in the region and says the cease-fire is permanent (though it was a five-day cease-fire). Foreign policy experts and even Republican lawmakers say it’s a success for Turkey and Russia.
4. Erdogan says Trump’s recent letter to him departed from “diplomatic and political courtesy.” He won’t forget Trump’s “lack of respect.”
5. U.S. forces report seeing evidence of war crimes during Turkey’s attacks on Syrian Kurds, though they didn’t see evidence of ethnic cleansing. Turkey allegedly used white phosphorus against civilians in northern Syria. Images surface of civilians, including children, with gruesome burns like those caused by the chemical.

• • The UN, the U.S., and WHO are all looking into whether Turkey actually did air-drop white phosphorus on civilians.

6. Iraq says U.S. troops who crossed the border into Iraq as they retreated from northern Syria cannot stay there longterm.
7. Trump says a small number of troops will stay in Syria “to protect the oilfields.”
8. Trump announces that a U.S. military operation led to the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. According to Trump, Baghdadi used a suicide vest, resulting in his death as well as the death of three of his children.

• • Trump says he went out whimpering and screaming, though Trump’s generals say they didn’t see any evidence of that. Trump also says al-Baghdadi is “dead as a doornail.”
  • Trump says that he didn’t give Democratic House leaders forewarning of the attack because he was afraid they would leak it.
  • He did, however, tell their corresponding Republican Senate leaders.
  • He also notified Russia in advance.
  • Typically, the Gang of Eight gets notified of national security and intelligence operations.
  • Multiple countries claim to have assisted with this raid, mostly through intelligence gathering.
  • Trump knew that we were zeroing in on al-Baghdadi’s location when he decided to withdraw U.S. troops from the region. Trump’s withdrawal of troops from Syria forced us to move this operation up. It also started dismantling the infrastructure that made the raid possible.
  • U.S. officials say Trump gave away classified information during his briefing on al-Baghdadi’s death and that he gave inaccurate information. There’s a reason presidents usually keep their statements on these matters short.

• • State officials say that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) played a key role in carrying out this mission.
  • As with Osama bin Laden, al-Baghdadi’s remains are buried at sea.
  • U.S. and Kurdish forces kill al-Baghdadi’s righthand man hours later.

9. Mitch McConnell says he’ll come up with his own resolution to urge Trump to end the troop withdrawal from Syria.

Other International:

1. Israeli President Rueven Rivlin gives Benny Gantz a shot at forming a governing coalition after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unable to do so. If Gantz is successful at getting 61 supporters in the Knesset to support him, he’ll become the new prime minister.

• • Netanyahu continues his racist warnings that Arab lawmakers might back Gantz.

2. Justin Trudeau barely wins re-election in Canada’s elections, illustrating another country with a rural vs. urban split. Politicians there also adopted some of our less savory political ploys in a fairly ugly race.
3. The European Union agrees to delay Brexit by three months after the British Parliament fails to approve Boris Johnson’s negotiated deal. Johnson calls for a December 12 election, which he thinks will bolster his position.
4. The Treasury designates Iran as a “jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern” and places additional restrictions on foreign banks where Iranian financial institutions maintain their accounts. At the same time, the Treasury says they’re trying to make it easier to get humanitarian aid into the country.
5. Iraq’s pro-American President Barham Salih says he’s not sure Iraq can still rely on the U.S. and is open to resetting relations with other countries, including Russia and Iran. He says Trump‘s policies are making it hard to honor our alliance. Salih is Kurdish, so Trump’s abandonment of the Syrian Kurds makes him concerned.
6. Trump says he’s trying to get us out of wars, but that we might have to get into wars, too.
7. After millions of Chileans take to the streets to protest inequality, Chile’s President Sebastion Piñera dismisses his entire cabinet in order to form a new government. Over the week, 17 people are killed in marches and 100s more are injured.

• • The unrest started over an increase in metro fares, which is now suspended.
  • Santiago is still under a state of emergency.

8. Amid an economic crisis, Argentina elects a new, center-left president, Alberto Fernandez. 80.0% of voters turn out (that’s a WAY higher turnout rate than we ever have in the U.S.).
9. It’s week 21 of the protests in Hong Kong, and they don’t seem to be abating at all. Protestors continue to set fire to shops, throw Molotov cocktails, and vandalize property. Police continue to use tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons to disperse the crowds.

• • Now the activists are protesting police brutality during the past four months of demonstrations.

10. Not wanting to be caught off guard again like they were with Syria, the Pentagon starts coming up with plans for an abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan just in case Trump impulsively decides to order one there, too.
11. Trump bans all flights to Cuba except to Havana.

Legislation/Congress:

1. President Obama, President Clinton, Speaker Pelosi, and Hillary Clinton are among the speakers at Elijah Cummings’ funeral, held at the church he attended in Baltimore, MD. Everyone speaks of Cummings’ kindness and his fight for the oppressed. Trump does not attend.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

1. Trump says he’s building a wall in Colorado. Everyone else in the country is wondering what he’s trying to protect Colorado from. Nebraskans? Utahns? Those pesky Wyomingites?

Family Separation:

1. An ACLU lawsuit finds that Trump’s zero tolerance policy separated 1,556 more migrant families than were previously known. 207 of the children are under five years old, and five are under one year old.

• • This means we have to spend time and resources investigating across the globe to locate parents and find out whether they are reunited yet.
  • We could’ve saved all of this money if the government had either not separated families in the first place or, at the very least, kept track of the families they split up.
  • Trump’s cruelty is costing billions just on reunification alone. So much winning.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. Here’s why even undocumented immigrants need legal protection. A lawsuit brought by a Honduran woman living in Connecticut alleges that an ICE agent threatened her with deportation unless she had sex with him.

• • He then raped her several times a week for seven years, even getting her pregnant three times.
  • She aborted all three pregnancies, and the ICE agent paid for one of those abortions.
  • The woman had previously cooperated with law enforcement to help indict three undocumented immigrants who had stabbed her husband.

2. The U.S. deports a Marine Corps combat veteran to El Salvador without notifying him so he could put everything in order. He hasn’t lived there since he was a toddler.

• • The veteran came back from his last tour in Iraq with a brain injury and PTSD, which landed him in legal trouble.
  • So not only did we not give him the support he needs here, but now he’s in a country where he’ll never get the help he needs.

3. Northern Ireland legalizes same-sex marriage.
4. Tanzania’s Supreme Court of Appeal upholds a law banning child marriage. Before you judge, remember several areas of the U.S. still allow child marriage.
5. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services modifies how they determine whether to waive filing fees for immigrants who can’t afford the fees. They previously considered certain benefits, like Medicaid and SNAP, as income when considering their poverty level.
6. Trump has to fill the now-open Secretary of Homeland Security position, but his top-two picks aren’t eligible under federal law. That’s because he hasn’t had any confirmed appointments in so long, and both his picks are already in an acting (and unconfirmed) capacity.
7. Kris Kobach enters a diversion agreement over complaints about his conduct during federal court proceedings over the past few years. The court cases were about his signature legislation making it harder for Kansas residents to register to vote.

• • He was disciplined and fined throughout the hearings, and was even ordered to take online classes in civil court proceedings (he is a lawyer).
  • The terms of the diversion agreement are undisclosed.

Climate:

1. New data show that air pollution in the U.S., measured as fine particulate air pollution, started increasing in 2016 after years of national decline.

• • Likely contributors are thought to be increases in driving and burning more natural gas. Wildfires are also to blame in certain areas.
  • The greatest increases are in the West and Midwest, with the Northeast and Southeast slightly decreasing.

Budget/Economy:

1. A. Wayne Johnson, a senior official in the Education Department appointed by Betsy DeVos, resigns and calls the student loan system broken. He calls for billions of dollars of debt forgiveness. Johnson says the majority of student debt will never be repaid in the current system.
2. Trump’s tax reform of 2017 included a 1.4% tax on schools with more than $500,000 in endowments per student. This affects some of our most well-known private schools, like Harvard, MIT, Yale, and Princeton, and will cost them millions to tens of millions in annual taxes.

• • It’s interesting that big business and the wealthy got a huge tax break, but that private universities got dinged with a surtax.

3. According to James Mattis’s new book, Trump ordered him to screw Amazon in a Pentagon contract. That contract was awarded to Microsoft this week, much to the confusion of anyone who knows anything about cloud computing.

Elections:

1. The Republican Speaker of the Texas House announces he’ll step down after his term is up. Earlier this summer he was caught on tape disparaging fellow Republicans and Democrats alike and making plans to target them in coming elections.
2. Students across the country are becoming more and more politically active, leading several states to put up roadblocks to college-age voters. Roadblocks include outlawing pop-up voting booths, preventing students from outside of the district from voting (even if they currently live in the district for school), creating laws about parking spaces that schools can’t accommodate, creating hard-to-implement voter ID rules, and more.

• • New Hampshire has set up enormous hurdles for out-of-state students to vote. The words of the state’s Republican House speaker explains it all. He calls them “kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience.”

3. Once again, Republican Senators block a vote on three election security bills passed by the House. This time, Marsha Blackburn steps up to block it.
4. Trump says he’ll veto a bill that would require federal election campaigns to report any offers from foreign governments or agents for campaign assistance.
5. The FEC only has three sitting members, not enough for a quorum, heading into the 2020 elections. Trump could still appoint members, but it doesn’t look promising.

Miscellaneous:

1. White House computer security Chief Dimitrios Vistakis resigns, calling White House policies absurd and claiming that officials put Trump‘s comfort over actual computer security. Here’s a quote from his resignation letter:

“Unfortunately given all of the changes I’ve seen in the past three months, I foresee the White House is posturing itself to be electronically compromised once again. Allowing for a large portion of institutional knowledge to concurrently walk right out the front door seems contrary to the best of interests of the mission and organization as a whole.”

2. Trump holds a meeting of his Cabinet where he lectures reporters with a series of falsehoods.

• • He says Obama tried to call Kim Jong Un 11 times, but Kim didn’t respect him enough to take the call.
  • Trump says he made a deal between Turkey and the Syrian Kurds that people have been trying to make for years. I guess, if you call giving Turkey what they want and letting them attack the Kurds a deal. I’m pretty sure no one else was trying to make that deal.
  • He takes credit for a drug buyback program that was implemented in 2010.
  • He claims most of the people testifying in the impeachment hearings were put in their positions by past administrations. Seven of the nine were appointed by his own administration.
  • He suggests that Rep. Adam Schiff was the whistleblower’s informant. I’m not sure how Schiff would’ve even known about a call between Trump and the Ukraine president.
  • He claims Obama getting a book deal was like running a business while he was in office. Obama got the deal after he left office.

3. Trump cancels his subscription to The New York Times, and the White House urges all federal agencies to cancel subscriptions to the Washington Post and The New York Times. You know, from what I hear from people who’ve visited The Hill, Republican lawmakers have Fox News on 24/7. So this seems meaningless; they’re already getting their news from one source.

• • Ironically, while having a political discussion on Facebook this week, I was told to get my news from more sources than just ABC, CBS, NBC, AP, NYT, WaPo, Reuters, and CNN (for the record, I don’t watch CNN). I guess she was saying I should get my news from Fox News (I do read Fox News daily).
  • All this is to say that if you support Trump’s request here, you might need to expand your news bubble.

4. An inspector general report into Trump’s VA Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection finds the office to have significant deficiencies. Instead of protecting whistleblowers, they stifled claims and retaliated against employees.
5. The Trump Organization is looking into selling its lease on the Trump International Hotel in DC.
6. Trump is surprised to be overwhelmingly booed when he attends the fifth game of the world series. Not surprising when you consider his public outings are largely to places he owns and crowds he controls.