Tag: john kelly

Week 70 in Trump

Posted on May 30, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Here’s an interesting fact from last week. Natural disasters in the U.S. target a small group. A recent analysis finds that around 90% of the costs associated with national disasters in the U.S. come from areas where less than 20% of the U.S. population lives.

But I digress… here’s what happened last week in politics.

Russia:

  1. During Trump’s transition, his trade adviser recommended Stefan Halper to ambassador roles in Asia. Halper is thought to be the covert FBI intelligence source who met with Trump officials during the campaign to learn about improper Russia advances.
  2. In yet another concession, Rod Rosenstein and other intelligence agency heads meet with congressional leaders to go over highly classified information in the Mueller investigation that Republicans in the House had been requesting. Though it could be a maneuver to avoid showing all documents and to buy time.
  3. At first, the agreement is to let Republican congressional leaders be briefed. This doesn’t sit with Democrats too well, though; so they arrange a second meeting with the bipartisan Gang of 8 congressional leaders.
  4. If you’ll remember, Devin Nunes has been pushing for this release of information, and most suspect it’s so he can let Trump know where Mueller’s investigation stands.
  5. Paul Ryan supports this review of the FBI and DOJ procedures.
  6. This meeting highlights how Trump is chipping away at DOJ norms bit by bit with each demand that the DOJ compromises on. Legal scholars and former LEOs think these things weaken the DOJ and that the president uses the department as a weapon against its political enemies. FBI agents might think twice about acting on intelligence for fear of retribution from the White House. Here’s what Rosenstein has done:
    • Drafted the memo used to justify Comey’s firing, which led to the special investigation.
    • Released private text messages between two FBI officials.
    • Shared the document that started the Russia investigation.
    • Allowed Representatives to see the classified FISA applications to monitor Carter Page.
    • Opened an investigation at Trump’s [Twitter] command.
  1. John Kelly and Emmet Flood attend at least part of both DOJ briefings, which is a little like putting the fox in the henhouse. The briefings center around possible crimes involving the Trump campaign and associates. Kelly is a Trump associate and Flood is the defense lawyer in the case.
  2. Steve Bannon, Corey Lewandowski, Dave Bossie, and Steve Cortes are a few outside advisors who are pushing Trump to go after the DOJ and FBI, and to paint himself as a victim in the Russia investigation. This explains Trump’s ramp-up last weekend that forced Rod Rosenstein to expand the investigation into FBI and DOJ practices and to show Nunes and Gowdy the information they want.
  3. George Nader, who is a subject of Mueller’s investigation for his role in back-channel international meetings during the 2016 campaign, and Elliot Broidy, who used Michael Cohen to pay off a playboy model he allegedly got pregnant, worked together on an anti-Qatar campaign in Washington D.C. last year for personal profit.
    • They wanted to isolate Qatar and diminish the Pentagon’s relationship with Qatar (where we have a military base), likely at the behest of UAE and Saudi princes for whom they were working.
    • They never registered under FARA.
    • Broidy wrote summaries of their meetings that indicate he spoke to Trump about them.
    • In a filing with the courts, Broidy alleges that hackers hired by Qatar targeted him, and that Qatar was helped by a former CIA operative and a former British spy as part of a larger conspiracy to make him stop criticizing Qatar.
  1. Paul Manafort requests an investigation into whether a lawyer on Mueller’s team, Andrew Weissman, leaked information to the AP last year though he doesn’t say what was leaked. Manafort’s filing relies heavily on reporting by a Fox News contributor.
  2. Sentencing begins for George Papadopolous, indicating he’s given Muelller all the information he has.
  3. Michael Cohen’s taxi business partner, Russian Evgeny Freidman, pleads guilty and is cooperating with both state and federal investigators.
  4. Michael Cohen met with American businessman Andrew Intrater and Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg a few days before Trump’s inauguration to talk about Russian-American relations. A few days after the inauguration, Intrater’s company Columbia Nova gave Cohen a $1 million consulting contract.
  5. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen says she’s not aware of any U.S. intelligence conclusion that Putin sought to help Trump win the election. You would think she’d be aware of the 2017 intelligence assessment that said Putin did just that.
  6. Her spokesperson later walks that back and says that of course Nielsen supports the conclusions of the intelligence community.
  7. Michael Cohen arranged a meeting between Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Trump for a mere $400,000. Also, Cohen “forgot” to register as a representative of the Ukraine.
  8. Not long after the meeting, the Ukraine ended its corruption investigation into Paul Manafort.
  9. On his tour of the talk shows to sell his book, James Clapper says he is certain that Russia tilted the election toward Trump.
  10. And then Pompeo reluctantly agrees with him during testimony to Congress, saying he backs the 2017 U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia meddled to help Trump and hurt Clinton.
  11. A team of investigators led by the Dutch conclude that the missile that shot down the Malaysian Airlines jet in Ukraine in 2014 was Russian military (as most people thought at the time anyway).
  12. Email threads show that Roger Stone did, in fact, try to get damaging information on Hillary Clinton from Wikileaks’ Julian Assange during the 2016 campaign through an intermediary. This contradicts testimony he gave to Congress last year.
  13. A special prosecutor in Spain says that Donald Trump Jr. should be very concerned knowing that Spanish intelligence gave the FBI wiretaps of Russian oligarch Alexander Torshin.
  14. Rudy Giuliani says that Trump’s “Spygate” accusations are just a tactic to influence public opinion so Trump won’t be impeached. And just an FYI, the real Spygate is the outing of Valerie Plame’s identity as a covert operative under Bush.
  15. The FBI gets control of a Russian server involved in the hacking of routers and that is also linked to the hacking of DNC documents in 2016.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A judge rules that Trump is violating the First Amendment by blocking his Twitter followers.

  2. The Supreme Court rules that workers can’t band together to challenge violations of federal labor laws. I’m not sure what this means for unions. The majority decision was based on an arbitration law that is superseded by more modern labor laws.

Healthcare:

  1. This is so not good. Three patients who were in the end stages of Ebola escape their isolation ward in an urban area in the Congo.
  2. California’s assisted suicide is still on hold after an appeals court upholds a ruling that it was improperly passed during a special legislative session.
  3. Health workers in countries affected by Trump’s international gag rule say that they’ve seen a rise in unwanted pregnancies and in back-alley abortions. By cutting funding to these agencies, Trump cut funding to contraceptives and programs to prevent unwanted pregnancy. And also, Trump is working on doing the same in the U.S.
  4. Rudy Giuliani represented pharmaceutical firm Purdue Pharma to stop a federal investigation into the firm’s marketing of Oxycontin.

International:

  1. Mike Pompeo says we’ll crush Iran with sanctions and military pressure if it doesn’t change its ways. Pompeo also gives 12 preconditions to negotiating with Iran, which most experts say are non-starters. He didn’t give specifics.
  2. Iranian Prime Minister Rouhani rejects this, saying countries have their own sovereignty and the U.S. doesn’t have the right to push them around. Israel’s Netanyahu supports the U.S. in this. In fact, Netanyahu gave Trump an excuse to attack with his public presentation on Iranian nuclear development.
  3. Many experts see this as intended to result in regime change, which (if successful) would result in U.S. investment in nation building in Iran.
  4. Tensions between Israel and Iran are heating up. So much so that Netanyahu moves his security cabinet meetings to an underground bunker.
  5. In a show that our representatives are worried about the direction our relations with Iran have turned, the House passes an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act clarifying that neither Trump nor Pompeo has the authority to start a war with Iran.
  6. Let’s compare this week’s statements from the White House on recent elections in Russia and Venezuela:
    • On Russia: “We’re focused on our elections. We don’t get to dictate how other countries operate… What we do know is Putin has been elected in their country… We can only focus on the freeness and the fairness of our elections.”
    • On Venezuela: “Venezuela’s election was a sham—neither free nor fair. The illegitimate result of this fake process is a further blow to the proud democratic tradition of Venezuela. … America stands against dictatorship and with the people of Venezuela.”
  1. Trump meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in to discuss the upcoming summit with South Korea. And then Trump says that the summit might not happen on June 12 as planned.
  2. North Korea makes a show of destroying the site where they conducted their nuclear weapons testing, and while they’re doing that...
  3. …Trump cancels the June 12 meeting with North Korea because of what he calls open hostility and tremendous anger on their side. This was just days after South Korean leader Moon was at the White House meeting with Trump and thinking everything was A-OK. Trump has been dampening expectations for days so the news wouldn’t seem so shocking.
  4. Trump didn’t appreciate North Korea’s criticism of Mike Pence. After Pence compared North Korea to Libya, North Korean officials called him a political dummy. They also said they wouldn’t beg for a meeting and threatened a nuclear showdown, and were reconsidering the planned summit themselves.
    • So basically here’s how it went down: Bolton mentioned the Libya model, Trump said that’s not how it would go down, and then Pence brought up the Libya model again. Voila. No summit.
  1. The military says they’re ready to respond to North Korea if necessary, and Trump holds open the door to future talks.
  2. South Korean officials say they were blindsided, confused, and disappointed by the news. They convened an emergency meeting at midnight to discuss this new development, and to try to figure out Trump.
  3. The new ambassador to South Korea is taking his position at a time of high drama, and will have his work cut out for him in answering to the South Korean government. Luckily both Ambassador Harry Harris and his wife are experts on Asia.
  4. The leaders of North and South Korea hold a surprise meeting to try to keep their talks on track, and to possibly keep the summit between Kim Jong Un and Trump in play.
  5. A group of U.S. officials go to North Korea to continue talks in preparation for a possible summit.
  6. The New York Times reports a senior White House official as saying that if the summit is back on, it would have to be delayed. And then Trump accuses the New York Times of making up the source… even though said source made the statement in a press briefing to a group of around 250 reporters.
  7. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) turns down Trump’s offer to become the U.S. ambassador to Australia. Corker plans to retire at the end of this year.
  8. The Senate Banking Committee overwhelmingly approves an amendment preventing Trump from aiding Chinese company ZTE without first proving that ZTE is in compliance with U.S. law.
  9. A U.S. embassy worker in China reports a strange noise and then suffers a brain injury. This is comparable to the experience of embassy workers in Cuba.
  10. The Pentagon rescinds an invitation to China to participate in naval exercises over China expanding their military into certain areas of the South China Sea. Over two dozen nations are participating.
  11. Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect (this is why you’ve been getting so many privacy policy notifications). The GDPR sets a high standard for how our personal data is collated through the web. The U.S. went the other way last year when Trump not only overturned Obama‘s privacy rules, but also specified that no similar rule could be made in the future without an act of Congress.
  12. Two men set off an explosion in an Indian restaurant in Mississauga, Ontario. Fifteen people are injured. Police have suspects, but no arrests and no motive.
  13. Ireland votes overwhelmingly to legalize abortion.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Trump signs a financial reform bill that will weaken Dodd-Frank by exempting “smaller” and “community” banks from the rules. It raises the threshold at which the rules apply from banks bigger than $50 billion to banks bigger than $250 billion.
  2. Trumps signs the Right To Try legislation, which allows terminally ill patients to try experimental and unapproved treatments.
  3. Trump signs a major Veterans Administration reform bill that, among other things, gives vets better access to private doctors.
  4. Trump signs the SECRET Act into law, which aims to expedite clearing the backlog of security clearances. Trump reserves the right to not comply saying that it encroaches on his constitutional authority. It seems he objects to the reporting requirements.
  5. Trump signs three executive orders this week that will make it easier to fire federal workers and to dampen the role of unions for federal workers.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump signs a resolution rolling back protections for minorities getting auto loans. The rule was put in place because auto lenders regularly charge minorities and women more for auto loans or make them harder to get.
  2. In a crackdown on free speech, the NFL says they’ll fine any team whose members kneel for the national anthem. The Jets owner says he’ll pay those fines, even though he voted for them.
  3. Trump approves of the NFL decision, of course, and says that maybe people who don’t stand for the anthem shouldn’t even be in this country (the country with the most free speech in the world).
  4. Betsy DeVos proves she doesn’t know the law when she says schools should decide whether to report undocumented students to ICE. She says Congress needs to clarify the law, but the Supreme Court already clarified it, deciding that schools can’t report these kids.
  5. According to the head of the nation Border Patrol union, deploying the National Guard to the border has so far been a huge waste of resources.
  6. DHS says they lost track of 1,500 migrant children they had placed with sponsors last year. This raised concern of them being lost to traffickers, but could simply be people who don’t want to be found. Once kids are released to sponsors (who are mostly family members), DHS is no longer responsible.
  7. A Border Patrol agent shot a young woman crossing the border in Texas, killing her. After initially saying a group of immigrants attacked him with blunt objects, the security guard changes his story to say that they rushed him.
  8. Gavin Grimm wins a lawsuit against a school in Virginia for discriminating against him by not letting him use the restroom for the gender he identifies with.
  9. Pilots at the IASCO Flight Training School take it upon themselves to kidnap and attempt to deport a Chinese student who they say doesn’t speak English well enough to fly a plane.
  10. Trump calls for major changes to immigration laws, even suggesting immigrants don’t deserve hearings. He says he won’t sign any immigration reform that doesn’t build his wall.
  11. Trump nominates Ronald Mortenson to be assistant secretary of state at the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. Mortenson says undocumented immigrants commit felonies to get jobs, that they’re thieves, and that they target children.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The EPA bars the Associated Press, CNN, and E&E (an environmental news organization) from a summit about toxic contaminants in water. Scott Pruitt had previously attempted to block a recent scientific report highlighting the dangers of this contamination.
  2. A wildlife commission in Wyoming unanimously approves the first grizzly bear hunt in Wyoming in over 40 years. Up to 22 bears could be killed, and this is just one year after these bears were taken off the endangered species list.
  3. Internal memos show that White House officials are weighing their options on climate change. Should they have a red-team/blue-team exercise to make people question the science? Just ignore climate change and hope it’ll go away? Give the science a more formal review? They’ve worked to eliminate policies that protect us from global warming, while their own researchers continue prove that global warming is a thing, it’s manmade, and it’s a threat to the U.S.
  4. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers publishes a letter they sent to Trump last month urging him to keep the fuel efficiency requirements that were set under Obama because “climate change is real.”

Budget/Economy:

  1. Goldman Sachs predicts that, after the Republican tax reform last year, our economic outlook isn’t good. The tax reform gave major tax cuts to business and the wealthy, increasing the deficit to over $1 trillion. The expanding deficit and higher debt level could cause interest rates to spike, which would expand the deficit further.
  2. The Congressional Budget Office says that the tax reform will likely stimulate job growth but that it will also cause us to have a deficit that matches our GDP by 2028.
  3. China triples its purchase of soy from Russia and cancels orders from the U.S. amid trade disputes with the U.S.
  4. Mixed messages. Steven Mnuchin says the U.S. will put the trade war with China on hold. A few hours later, the U.S. trade representative tells Beijing that we might still impose tariffs.
  5. China says it’ll cut tariffs on imported cars and automotive parts, as promised.
  6. Federal regulators plan to weaken the Volcker Rule, which was put in place to prevent another financial crisis by preventing financial institutions from making risky bets with our money. Banks have long complained that these rules are too hard in them, apparently forgetting how hard the recession they largely caused was on every American, and many people never fully recovered from it.
  7. As part of their Better Deal economic plan, Democrats announce a $50 billion plan to increase spending on schools, education, and teacher salaries. The money would come from rescinding the tax cuts on the most wealthy.
  8. The GAO approves Trump’s request to freeze $15 billion in funds while waiting for Congress to approve the removal of those funds from budget spending.
  9. As a way to force Canada’s and Mexico’s hands in NAFTA negotiations, Trump says he’s considering a 25% tax on imported cars.
  10. The average price of gas is up 31 cents over the past year.
  11. The House passes a bill that includes approval of Trump’s military parade.
  12. Four months after getting a tax cut from the GOP tax reform plan, Harley-Davidson lays off 800 workers, closes a factory, and increases shareholder profits in a stock buy-back.

Elections:

  1. A new economic study from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that Twitter bots could have been effective enough to influence the 2016 presidential elections by 3.23 percentage points and the Brexit vote by 1.76 percentage points. This only matters because the margins in both races were so narrow.
  2. Stacy Abrams wins the Democratic primary in Georgia, becoming the first African-American woman to be on a major party ticket for governor of Georgia.
  3. And another first, former Sheriff Lupe Valdez won her Democratic primary, becoming the first gay Latina to be on a major party ticket for governor in Texas.
  4. Students at Florida colleges sue Governor Rick Scott for not allowing early voting at their schools.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The DOJ’s inspector general wraps up his investigation into the Hillary Clinton email investigation (yes, the investigation was being investigated, not Hillary herself). He releases a draft to Congress but doesn’t give a date for the official release.
  2. Trump’s cellphone doesn’t have the required security features because it’s too inconvenient. Obama turned over his devices every 30 days for a security review. But hey. Lock HER up! Right?
  3. Journalist Lesley Stahl says that before an interview last year, Trump told her that he bashes the press in order to “discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.” So there you have it.
  4. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump finally both get permanent top secret security clearance.
  5. Six families of children killed at Sandy Hook file a defamation lawsuit against Alex Jones, who calls the attack a “false flag” and the mourning families “crisis actors.” Too bad they can’t sue him for being a vile human being.
  6. Jeff Flake flames Trump in a college commencement speech, saying we might have hit rock bottom.
  7. Trump is known to tell a lie or two, but his rate of lying has escalated from about 4.9 lies a day in his first 100 days in office to 9 lies a day as of March.
  8. A turf war between Jeff Sessions and Jared Kushner over prison reforms leads to the resignation of the federal prisons director, just nine months after Trump appointed him.
  9. Police in Chicago protest Rahm Emanuel over the status of Officer Robert Rialmo’s suspension, possibly without pay. Rialmo shot a teen carrying a baseball bat and an innocent bystander.
  10. Parents of Santa Fe shooting victims sue the parents of the shooter for failing to secure their guns.
  11. The firm of Stormy Daniel’s lawyer, Michael Avanatti, gets fined in bankruptcy court and needs to cough up $10 million.
  12. Another school shooting, in Indiana this time.

Polls:

  1. I’m pretty surprised by this Pew studyJust 25% of white evangelicals think the U.S. has a responsibility to take in refugees. 51% of Americans overall think we do, and 65% of the religiously unaffiliated think we do.
  2. The numbers for Democrats and Republicans are inverse, with 26% of Republicans saying it’s our responsibility compared to 74% of Democrats.
  3. 59% of Americans don’t think Mueller’s uncovered any crimes, even though there are 17 criminal indictments, five guilty pleas, one person involved is serving jail time, and another is about to be sentenced.

Week 37 in Trump

Posted on October 9, 2017 in Politics, Trump

AP / John Bazemore

Since Pence made a spectacle of this on Sunday, here’s a racial justice primer. NFL players who take a knee during the anthem aren’t protesting our flag, our anthem, or our military. They’re protesting racial injustice. And while the protest arose out of the killings of black men by police, our justice system treats them unfairly in general. They are more likely to get stopped (committing a crime or not), more likely to be arrested, more likely to be convicted, more likely to serve time, and more likely to serve a longer sentence. Every step adds to the disparity.

Using statistics for drug use and arrests as an example, say 1,000 white people and 200 black people commit the same crime. 100 white people and 74 black people might get arrested for it. (The actual numbers above aren’t accurate; they’re just to give an example. The ratios of white to black are accurate though.) So the arrest rate for white people is 10%, and for black people it’s 37%. Of those, 50 white people and 48 black people might be convicted—a 50% rate for whites and 65% for blacks. Of those, 19 white people and 24 black people might be incarcerated—a 38% rate for white people and 51% for black people. So in the end, 19 of 1,000 white people who commit the crime serve time, and 24 out of 200 black people do. So while 2% of white people who commit the crime serve time, 12% of black people do, a rate 6 times higher. And then on top of it all, those black people are more likely to get a longer sentence.

Lesson over. Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. Mueller’s team starts researching limits on presidential pardons, an indication that they think Trump will try to pardon those involved in the Russia investigation or use the promise of a pardon as leverage. Trump himself has said he has the complete power to pardon.
  2. The CIA denies the Senate Judiciary Committee access to certain information about obstruction of justice in the Russia case, though it allowed the Senate Intelligence Committee to see it.
  3. From Facebook, we learn that:
    • Russia used a retargeting tool on Facebook, Custom Audiences, to target ads and messages to Americans who visited misleading web sites and social media sites that imitated political activist pages.
    • The ads’ purpose was to further divisiveness and specifically promoted anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments.
    • The ads had an explicit pro-Trump and anti-Hillary tilt. One claimed that the only viable option was to elect Trump.
    • Russian-backed Facebook groups posing as U.S. activists groups liked and shared the ads.
    • Facebook estimates about 10 million people saw the ads and messages, but that doesn’t account for likes and shares. So the actual number is probably in the 100s of millions.
    • The ads targeted Michigan and Wisconsin, each of which Trump won by less than 1% of the vote.
  4. Facebook didn’t identify Russians as the malicious actors at first, and removed mention of them from their reports.
  5. The Senate Intelligence Committee leaders update us on the status of their Russia investigation. The issue of collusion and parts of the Steele dossier are still up for question, but here’s what they think so far:
    • Putin directed the hacking, propaganda, and meddling in our 2016 elections.
    • Russia was behind the hacking of John Podesta’s emails.
    • Russia tried to exploit our divisions using fake social media accounts.
  6. Christopher Steele, the author of the Steele dossier, is in discussions to meet with congressional committees, but he already met with Robert Mueller.
  7. Three Russians names in the Steele dossier sue Fusion GPS, which commissioned the Steele dossier. They previously sued BuzzFeed, which released the full text of the dossier.
  8. U.S. Intelligence has verified parts of the Steele dossier, but won’t tell us which yet.
  9. Demonstrators mark Putin’s 65th birthday by protesting in the streets in support of opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
  10. Google also finds evidence of Russian meddling, saying they spread disinformation across Google’s products, including YouTube, Gmail, search, and the DoubleClick ad network. These don’t seem to be from the same troll farm as the Facebook ads, indicating that the propaganda effort was more widespread than originally thought.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The DOJ releases legal memos that said presidents can’t appoint their own relatives to the White House staff, even if they’re unpaid. The DOJ overruled the memos in January, allowing Trump to appoint his family members.

Healthcare:

  1. As part of a multi-pronged attack against women, Trump narrows the birth control coverage mandate of the ACA.
    • First, Trump repealed Obama’s efforts to ensure equal pay for equal work between genders.
    • Second, the House GOP eliminated Planned Parenthood from the budget. PP help helps women take control through screenings, birth control, and yes, abortion.
    • Third, the House GOP passed a bill restricting abortions, a bill which is based on incorrect science.
    • Finally, removing the birth control mandate of the ACA will make it that much harder for women to take charge of their own family planning.
  2. Chuck Schumer turns down Trump’s offer to work together on ACA repeal and replace, saying he would be willing to work together to fix the current system instead.

International:

  1. The State Department is losing career officers in droves and we’re losing our next wave of foreign policy leaders. These are people with expertise in specific areas who have established relationships with their foreign counterparts.
  2. Trump says he’ll decertify the Iran agreement next week, kicking the responsibility back to Congress to decide whether to reinstate sanctions, which would completely blow up the deal.
  3. It’s kind of important to mention that the Iran agreement, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), stands between Iran and a nuclear weapon. Trump has no replacement and he’s passing it off to a congress that doesn’t want it.
  4. Here are some important things to know about the JCPOA:
    • It’s not a bilateral or multi-lateral agreement; it’s a UN Security Council resolution. We don’t have the power to change it.
    • It doesn’t prevent Iran from developing its military capabilities; it only prevents them from developing nuclear weapons.
    • We don’t have the power to decertify the actual agreement; only the International Atomic Energy Agency does. Our recertification is to make us feel good.
    • There is no sunset clause 10 years. Some parts will expire, but the crucial parts won’t.
  5. International diplomats say the JCPOA is vital to the security interests of the U.S. and its allies.
  6. One member of congress says this is like Trump pulling the pin out of a grenade and handing it over to Congress.
  7. All national security advisors say we should recertify the JCPOA.
  8. Despite Trump’s tweets that Kim Jong-un is a madman, the CIA thinks he’s crazy like a fox. Kim doesn’t want nuclear war; he’d rather just live out his days ruling his country. The CIA says Kim ramps up confrontations with the U.S. to keep his grip on power.
  9. Trump urges his staff to portray him as crazy when negotiating trade deals and diplomacy, thinking it’ll scare other countries into agreement.
  10. Demonstrators march in Barcelona to protest the effort for Catalonia independence and to push for Spanish unity.
  11. In the face of major military losses, over a thousand ISIS fighters surrender.
  12. World leaders mostly recognize that Trump’s tweets are disconnected from actual policy.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. On top of the current House bill that would make silencers easier to buy, a second gun bill is working its way through Congress that would allow people to carry a concealed weapon in any state as long as it’s allowed in the state where they live.
  2. Nancy Pelosi and Mark Kelly (husband of shooting victim and former Rep. Gabby Giffords) push for a bipartisan commission to study gun violence and ways to deal with it. The House GOP votes it down.
  3. Pelosi calls on Paul Ryan to take up a bipartisan bill expanding background checks for firearms.
  4. There’s bipartisan support for banning the sale of mechanisms like the bump stock used in Las Vegas.
  5. House GOP supporters of gun rights claim to have never heard of the bump stock even though Diane Feinstein introduced legislation that included prohibitions on them in 2013.
  6. A week after letting healthcare coverage for children lapse, the House passes a new anti-abortion bill.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Mississippi’s sweeping anti-LGBT legislation goes into effect. This lets people and businesses discriminate against LGBT people in the areas of housing, employment, foster and adoptive care, selling goods and services, medical care, and schooling.
  2. A UN measure banning the death penalty for being gay or transgender passes, but the U.S. votes against it.
  3. Jeff Sessions issues a DOJ memo removing civil rights protections for transgender people in the workplace and reversing an Obama-era stance that included protections for transgender people in the Civil Rights Act.
  4. Sessions also issues a directive to accommodate religious groups who say their religious rights are being violated if they’re forced to give equal treatment to all human beings. This takes the onus off of them of having to prove their discrimination is because of a closely held belief.
  5. The mission of the Department of Health and Human Services is to protect the health of all Americans, yet they removed any mention of the specific health needs of the LGBTQ community from it’s latest 4-year plan. The plan promotes faith-based organizations, makes no mention of the ACA, and includes anti-abortion language.
  6. Steve Scalise, who was saved by a lesbian, plans to speak at an anti-gay summit sponsored by a group that states homosexuality shouldn’t be treated equally to heterosexuality “in law, in the media, and in schools.”
  7. The deadline for DACA renewal arrives, though it might be a surprise to some. Homeland Security originally sent out notifications with the wrong deadline date, and then never bothered to send out corrections.
  8. California governor Jerry brown signs the sanctuary state law. Here’s what that means:
    • Police can still work with ICE to detain and transfer serious criminals.
    • Police can’t unconstitutionally detain someone at ICE’s request.
    • Hospitals, schools and courthouses are safe zones for immigrants.
    • Most of the efforts implemented by police departments to work with immigrant communities will continue.
  9. The DOJ and ICE threaten retaliatory sweeps in California as a result of the sanctuary bill. They warn that there will be collateral damage, and that innocent people will be picked up as well as criminals.
  10. Recently released documents show that ICE agents were pressured to present real-life stories to support Trump’s expanded detention guidelines.
    • They went out of their way to portray immigrants as hardened criminals.
    • They tried but couldn’t come up with enough stories and were pressured to fake it.
    • This was part of an effort to deflect attention from detainees who had never committed a crime.
    • They tried to create a narrative around how undocumented immigrants threaten public safety as a way of gaining public support.
  11. The House Homeland Security Committee approves $10 billion for the border wall with Mexico.
  12. In a reversal of his previous agreement with Democrats, Trump releases immigration law requests that will hamper a new DACA solution in Congress. This includes funding the wall, cracking down on undocumented minors, and cutting funding to sanctuary cities and holds DACA kids hostage, just like he said he wouldn’t.
  13. Mike Pence walks out of the Colts game because some players took a knee, which he knew they’d do. This seems to be a preplanned publicity stunt on the taxpayers’ dime.
    • Pence flies from Las Vegas to Indianapolis on Saturday, goes to the game, and then turns around and flies back out west to Los Angeles for several fundraiser (where he’ll likely raise more money because of this).
    • Once at the game, Pence tells his press pool to stay in the van and expect an early departure.
    • Trump takes credit for the move in a tweet, saying he told Pence to leave if player knelt.
  14. White supremacists rally once again in Charlottesville, carrying torches and chanting “You will not replace us!” And “The South will rise again. Russia is our friend.” Less than 50 people were there and the rally lasted about 10 minutes.
  15. Internal emails obtained from Breitbart show that Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, and their staff purposefully pushed an agenda based on neo-nazi and white nationalist group input.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Here’s an interesting and easy read about the environmental rules and protections overturned by the Trump administration: 52 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump
  2. Scott Pruitt’s schedule consists mainly of meeting with industry leaders and lobbyists of the businesses he’s supposed to be regulating. He rarely meets with environmental groups, consumer and public health advocates, or actual scientists.
  3. The EPA plans to repeal the Clean Power Plan, which would help cut carbon emissions from power plant and meet the goals of the Paris agreement. He plans to create a new rule based on input from the fossil fuel industry.
  4. The only thing slowing down the deregulation so far is the courts, even though fossil fuel industry leaders also say the EPA needs to slow down. Expect many lawsuits against the repeal of the Clean Power Act as well.
  5. A senior climate scientist and policy expert resigns a few months after being reassigned to an accounting job for which he had no experience. Joel Clement blew the whistle on Ryan Zinke for the reassignment, which is under investigation. I think his resignation letter is worth the read.
  6. Hurricane Nate is the fourth hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. in six weeks, causing power outages in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, along with storm surges.
  7. The San Jacinto Waste Pits near Houston have a dioxin level of more the 2,000 times the level that triggers a cleanup. The hurricane has spread toxic sludge.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump says we’ll wipe out Puerto Rico’s debt, causing a brief panic in the bond market. Mick Mulvaney backpedals and says we won’t bail them out, even after the devastation from hurricane Maria.
  2. The House passes a 2018 budget bill. Here are a few highlights:
    • The budget is about 6-months behind schedule. They’ve already passed their 2018 spending bills.
    • The bill sets up the tax reform bill so they won’t need any Democrats to vote for it.
    • It calls for $5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade.
    • It increases defense spending by $72 billion and cuts the rest by $5 billion in 2018.
    • It cuts Medicare and Medicaid, and also relies on repealing the ACA.
    • It cuts $203 billion from welfare programs in areas like nutritional assistance and education.
    • It leaves no room for tax reform to add to the deficit, though the tax plan is expected to add $1.5 trillion over a decade.
    • The Senate budget does take into account the tax reform deficit, and also keeps spending levels even.
  3. Democrats Tammy Baldwin and Cory Booker release a Democratic version of the tax plan, which targets tax credits toward the middle class but doesn’t simplify the loopholes.
  4. Mike Pence holds a closed-door deregulation summit. But because it’s closed-door, I can’t find any information on what was said.

Elections:

  1. You remember a while back when Trump’s voter fraud commission requested voter information from every state? A Texas judge rules this week that providing the information would violate citizens’ privacy rights.
  2. Mike Pence’s chief of staff urges donors to stop donating to politicians who are disloyal to Trump.
  3. Recently unsealed court documents show that Kris Kobach pitched a proposal to Trump to change the national voting laws last fall. Kobach’s voter laws in Kansas discouraged thousands of people from voting and have been getting struck down courts ever since he implemented them.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Here’s some of what we learn this week about the Las Vegas shooter:
    • He had 23 guns inside the room, and 24 more in his houses.
    • 33 of those guns were bought just in the last year from several different stores.
    • He sent money to his girlfriend in the Philippines, through she came back to talk to the police.
    • He set up a video surveillance system inside and outside his room.
  2. Fake news sites from both sides spread false stories about the shooting, each blaming the other side. This is why we only share stories from trusted sources people! Have we learned nothing from the Russia investigation?
  3. And we have the same fight again, with the left calling for better regulation and the right saying it’s too soon, and the left using Australia as an example and the right using Chicago. Our divide on guns is even greater than our divide on abortions.
  4. Trump calls the Las Vegas shooter a sick and demented man. This, after he rescinded Obama’s rule that prevented the severely mentally ill from obtaining weapons.
  5. Americans own half the guns in the world, even though only about a third of American households own guns.
  6. There’s a huge increase in bump stock sales.
  7. Trump visits the devastation in Puerto Rico. At the time, FEMA was still organizing, only 5% of the electrical grid was working, 17% of cellphone towers were, and more than half the residents were still without water.
  8. Trump continues the war with San Juan’s mayor first by refusing to respond to her and then by refusing to let her speak at the roundtable.
  9. Trump approves a request to let hurricane victims use food stamps to buy prepared hot meals (usually restricted for food stamps) after first appearing to deny it.
  10. On his visit, Trump accuses Puerto Rico of throwing “our” budget out of whack. He also implies that this wasn’t a “real catastrophe” like Katrina, and goes on to compare death counts.
  11. We do live in two completely separate universes. I’m watching Fox News where the banner says “San Juan mayor praises Trump meeting” and reading on CNN that “San Juan mayor criticizes Trump’s comments.”
  12. FEMA removes information from its website that showed the condition of utilities and water in Puerto Rico. These charts show the actual progress.
  13. In response to San Juan’s mayor’s request for a backup generator for a hospital that lost power, FEMA’s Brock Long says, “We filtered out the mayor a long time ago. We don’t have time for the political noise.” People had to be airlifted out of that hospital.
  14. When Tom Price was appointed to the HHS, it triggered a special election in Georgia. An election that cost $50 million. And he didn’t even last a year.
  15. Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA) is a vocal abortion opponent, yet texts show he asked his mistress to get one when they had a pregnancy scare. When she calls out his hypocrisy, he says he doesn’t write his March for Life messages, his staff does.
  16. Murphy later resigns his congressional seat. Ironically, he resigns due to investigations into mistreatment of his staff, not because of the abortion controversy.
  17. NBC reports that Tillerson called Trump a f***ing moron and threatened to quit after a national security meeting in July. Tillerson denies the threatening to quit part, but doesn’t deny the moron part.
  18. After the report, Trump can’t resist a good tweet storm and insults NBC the worse way he knows how, calling them worse than CNN!
  19. John Kelly prevents Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Cal) from speaking with Trump. Rohrabacher is a pro-Russia, Julian Assange ally.
  20. A criminal case against Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. was dropped after Trump’s attorney met with the DA and donated to his reelection campaign despite hard evidence of them giving false info to prospective buyers in the Trump SoHo hotel.
  21. After a dinner with military personnel, Trump alludes to a military photo-op as being the calm before the storm. When pressed on that, he says we’ll find out. No clarification yet.
  22. The White House believes that John Kelly’s phone is compromised and has been for some time.
  23. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump dumped emails from their private accounts to the Trump organization after being asked to retain them. But her emails, though, right?
  24. Trump has reportedly sunk $200 million into his golf courses in Scotland, but they are losing millions.
  25. Senator Bob Corker gives a brief interview where he defends Tillerson over Trump, saying that Tillerson, Kelly, and Mattis are the people who separate the U.S. from chaos in this presidency, and they make sure our policies are sound and coherent.
  26. Trump responds in his weekend tweet storm, saying Corker begged him for an endorsement and when Trump refused, Corker dropped out. He blames Corker for the Iran deal.
  27. Corker brings a strong response: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”
  28. In fact, Corker decided on his own not to run and Trump called him to ask him to reconsider. Of note, Corker and Trump have been on friendly terms, and Corker was considered for the vice presidency.
  29. Corker goes on to give an interview to the New York Times where he says Trump’s reckless threats could start WWIII, Trump treats the presidency like a reality show, and every day takes a tremendous effort for his staff to contain him.

Polls:

  1. 48% of Americans have confidence in the press, up 10 points from last year.
  2. 68% of voters disagree with Trump’s call to boycott NFL teams with protesting players.
  3. This one’s almost offensive in its wording. 54% of Republicans say homosexuality should be accepted by society, the first time that’s been a majority.
  4. 32% of Americans approve of Trump and 67% disapprove. This is a new low, but it’s also a different metric from my previous polls.