Hurricane Florence hits the East Coast hard this week. I’m not blaming the victim, but North Carolina probably could’ve been more prepared for the flooding. In 2012, they didn’t like a scientific study outlining the predicted sea level rise for their coasts. So their state legislature passed a law that says “no rule, policy, or planning guideline that defines a rate of sea-level change for regulatory purposes shall be adopted.” Sea levels in some areas of the East Coast have been rising about an inch a year, and climate scientists predict that hurricanes will continue to become stronger with more rain. Coastal areas have no choice but to develop climate change mitigation policies, because even if we completely halt greenhouse gas emissions, the climate will continue to heat up for a while.

Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

1. Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms ended the city’s ties with ICE. The city will no longer hold detainees in city jails, but will help support families that were separated and then reunited.

Russia:

1. Trump is expected to declassify documents around the FISA warrant against Carter Page and around Bruce Ohr’s contact with Christopher Steele. He thinks doing this will taint Mueller’s investigation, but he should tread cautiously. When they’ve leaked supporting documents in the past, it’s only bolstered Mueller’s case.
2. The lawyers for the DNC lawsuit against Russian operatives say that Joseph Mifsud has gone missing. Mifsud is the Maltese professor who told George Papadopoulos that Russians had dirt on Hillary.
3. After being found guilty on eight counts in his first trial, Paul Manafort agrees to a plea deal with Mueller in his second court case. He pleads guilty to cheating the IRS out of $15 million and to lying to cover it up.
4. Manafort had been charged with six additional crimes, which could still be brought up later at the state level. He did admit in his plea deal to committing every crime he was charged of, including those that resulted in a hung jury in the first trial.
5. The plea agreement also describes Manafort’s lobbying activities for the Ukraine. In the process of trying to sway government and public support for specific Ukraine politicians, he planted “some stink” on political opponents, smeared Obama cabinet members, and got a foreign official to deliver a message directly to Obama.
6. Manafort admits to manipulating the American government and media to make millions for himself.
7. As part of the plea deal, the government will confiscate $47 million in real estate, financial accounts, and insurance policies.
8. Manafort is now a cooperating witness in Mueller’s investigation and has already been talking.
9. A Russian activist and member of the punk protest group Pussy Riot is hospitalized and appears to have been poisoned.
10. Every Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee votes down Democrats’ request for all documents and recordings related to Trump’s summit with Putin. Even our top intelligence official Dan Coates says he doesn’t know what was said in that summit.
11. A batch of newly released text message between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page show them discussing how to shape media perception with all the leaks that were going on during their investigations. The texts also show they used authorized means (the FBI National Press Office) to correct misinformation.

Courts/Justice:

1. A federal court rules that Betsy DeVos must implement Obama-era student loan forgiveness rules. The rules protect students who’ve been defrauded by colleges that don’t deliver on their promises. DeVos has delayed putting those rules into effect with the hope that she could eliminate the rules.
2. The hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh hits another snag when Dianne Feinstein refers an allegation of sexual abuse against Kavanaugh to the FBI. The alleged abuse happened when he was in high school.

• • The victim wanted to remain anonymous, but comes forward once rumors start to spread. Members of the political right mock and threaten her, including Donald Trump Jr.
  • Notes from the victim’s therapist back up her allegation, and she’s taken a polygraph test.

3. In response, Republicans release a letter signed by 65 women Kavanaugh knew in high school saying that he always treated them with the utmost respect. That was pretty quick work to find all those women, so we can only assume they saw this coming.
4. The Senate Judiciary Committee delays their vote on Kavanaugh for a week.
5. The Government Accountability Office releases a report saying that the DOJ isn’t prosecuting people who lie on their background checks in order to illegally buy guns. In the same period that the DOJ prosecuted 12 cases, Pennsylvania alone prosecuted 472.

Healthcare:

1. Lawyers begin their arguments in a lawsuit brought by 20 mostly conservative states to completely scrap the ACA. The lawsuit was brought after Congress ended the individual mandate, and would put an end to protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
2. The Urban Institute estimates that 17 million people will lose their insurance if the lawsuit succeeds. Almost half of all non-elderly Americans have a pre-existing condition.
3. Patient groups sue the Trump administration over it’s expansion of short-term insurance policies. These insurance policies do not have to comply with the ACA’s protections for pre-existing conditions, preventive care, out-of-pocket limits, and so on.
4. From 2010 to 2016, the number of uninsured Americans dropped by about half. It’s remained steady since then, with slight rises.

International:

1. The Trump administration closes the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s mission office in DC. They say it’s because Palestine isn’t negotiating peace with Israel right now.
2. John Bolton threatens that the U.S. will retaliate if the ICC acts on threats to prosecute Americans in Afghanistan for war crimes.
3. Remember those weird brain injuries suffered by U.S. diplomats and personnel in Cuba and China? Intelligence officials now suspect that Russia is behind them.
4. Trump cancels a planned visit to Ireland due to “scheduling conflicts.” But the announcement was made after there were mass protests against Trump‘s climate policies.
5. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has begun rebuilding the State Department, which was decimated under Rex Tillerson. Pompeo is trying to bring back ex-diplomats and build up his ranks again.

Family Separation:

1. Jeff Sessions defends his zero-tolerance policy toward asylum seekers as not only legitimate, but also moral and decent. Over 400 children separated at the border are still without their parents. And I wonder if he’s seen any of the videos of the children and parents describing their harrowing experience.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. Sessions blames the number of asylum seekers at our southern border on Obama-era policies, ignoring the growing violence in the countries of origin.
2. We learn that the Trump administration diverted $200 million from other DHS agencies to ICE to support ICE’s cost overruns due to housing and transporting such a high number of immigrant detainees. This includes $10 million from FEMA just before Hurricane Florence hit the East Coast. The cost of separating families isn’t just emotional; it’s hitting us all in the pocketbook.
3. Congress has repeatedly warned Trump about ICE’s overspending and lack of financial discipline.
4. And then ICE asks Congress for an extra $1 billion in funding so they can ramp up deportations.
5. The U.S. is now detaining the highest number of immigrant children ever recorded, with a total of 12,800 children. This is 10,000 more than May 2017. (Note that these are mostly minors who crossed the border alone and were not separated from the parents.)
6. Christian refugees are getting caught up in Trump’s efforts to stifle immigration to the U.S. The number of Christian refugees allowed into the U.S. is down 40% from last year.
7. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) tells a group of students that it might be better to be raised in an orphanage than by LGBTQ parents.
8. The Department of Education vacates a 2014 decision under Obama and reopens a seven-year-old investigation into whether Rutgers University allowed a hostile environment for Jewish students.
9. The cartoon “Thomas & Friends” introduces two new female characters, one of whom is African. So NRA’s Dana Loesch thinks that’s ridiculous, and shows images of the Thomas trains dressed up in KKK robes. IDK why she’s getting so worked up over a kids’ show.
   

Climate/EPA:

1. After an independent study finds that there were over 3,000 deaths in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria, Trump says those numbers are a lie and that Democrats are just trying to make him look bad.
2. Hurricane Florence leaves 23 dead (so far) in North Carolina. Florence drops record rainfalls, up to 40 inches in some areas. At the same time, a typhoon leaves 100s dead in southeast Asia.
3. Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit founded by a 24-year-old, deploys a 2000-foot floating boom designed to round up plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean. This is a test run to see if the boom performs as expected. Their aim is to clean up half of the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch in five years. That means collecting around 44,000 tons of debris while minimizing the accidental trapping of marine life.
4. The EPA proposes weakening Obama-era requirements for monitoring and fixing methane leaks. This is on top of the Department of the Interior working to repeal Obama’s limits on methane emissions for oil drilling.
5. The previous head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, is in talks with Alliance Resource Partners CEO Joseph W. Craft about becoming a consultant. Alliance Resource Partners is a coal mining company.

Budget/Economy:

1. Ford cancels production of the Focus Active in China due to Trump’s tariffs, and then defies Trump when he urges them to move production to the U.S. They say it’s not cost-effective enough.
2. Trump’s task force on analyzing the USPS delivers their report, but sources say Trump won’t make it public until after the election. I don’t know why.
3. The GOP is creating their second tax cut bill, which would make some of the cuts from the last tax bill permanent. The CBO says that change alone will add $1.9 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. The Tax Policy Center says that the bill will add an additional $3.15 trillion in the decade after that.
4. Marco Rubio says the latest GOP tax plan would necessitate cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
5. The Tax Policy Center finds that the tax law gives far larger tax breaks to the richest among us (averaging $40,000 per year) instead of the middle class (averaging $980 per year).
6. The plan is not likely to pass the Senate with the required 60 votes.
7. Trump decides to impose his threatened tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods. More than 1,000 products will be affected, including appliances, furniture, toys, and more. The effects should hit just in time for holiday shopping.
8. This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the start of the Great Recession. We are inundated with analyses of what happened and how we handled it.

• • Most analysts seem to think it won’t happen again thanks to financial reforms that were put in place, like Dodd-Frank and Base III.
  • The biggest risks are the rollbacks of parts of Dodd-Frank, debt levels in emerging markets, and cyber threats.

9. House and Senate negotiators come to a funding agreement that should avoid a shutdown at the end of the month. The agreement includes restrictions on Trump’s plans for reorganizing the government (his 32 proposals issued in June). This is the first time Congress has formally blocked those changes.
10. The amount of money that companies have repatriated to the U.S. as a result of the tax cuts is a mere fraction of what Trump predicted. He said companies would bring back over $4 trillion, and close to $5 trillion. But so far they’ve only brought back $143 billion with $37 billion more planned. Two-thirds of the returned money came from Cisco and Gilead Sciences.
11. Median household income grew for the third straight year, with most of the benefit going to white Americans and men.

Elections:

1. Obama is back on the campaign trail, and Trump reacts by tweeting out a bunch of misstatements about the economy and jobs. He then has his chief economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, do a press conference to defend him. Hassett uses some misleading charts to back up Trump’s assertions. You can easily chart economic data using the Federal Reserve Economic Data site. (Note: This is not to say that Trump doesn’t deserve any credit for the economy; just pointing out that Obama deserves it, too).
2. George W. Bush is out on the campaign trail too, stumping for Republican candidates. This has to be the first time two former presidents are out campaigning.
3. Florida Representative Ron DeSantis resigns from Congress to campaign full time in his run for Governor.
4. Trump signs an executive order authorizing sanctions against any foreign country, business, or person who tries to interfere in our elections.
5. An audio recording surfaces that shows the NRA might have violated campaign laws by giving Montana Senator Jon Tester’s opponent advance notice of their funding efforts to defeat Tester. The NRA cannot coordinate ad buys with a federal campaign.
6. A judge rules that the Americans for Prosperity Foundation must release the names of their donors to the California Secretary of State per California law.
7. 75% of the dark money spent in recent U.S. elections came from just 15 companies, and those same 15 companies are funding the 2018 elections as well. This is a direct result of the Citizens United decision. The two largest funders by far are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Crossroads GPS. Here they are, along with their political leanings and funding, where available.

• • 45Committee: right, largely funded by Sheldon Adelson
  • 60 Plus Association: right, partly funded by the Kochs
  • American Action Network: right
  • Americans for Job Security: right
  • Americans for Prosperity: right, Charles and David Koch
  • Americans for Tax Reform: right, run by Grover Norquist
  • American Future Fund: right, once part of the Koch network but got kicked out
  • Crossroads GPS: right, founded by Karl Rove with large contributions from Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson
  • National Rifle Association: mostly right, funded by gun owners and manufacturers
  • U.S. Chamber of Commerce: typically right, funded by businesses
  • National Association of Realtors: mix of right and left, funded by realtors
  • League of Conservation Voters: typically left, focused on environment
  • Planned Parenthood Action Fund: typically left, focused on family planning and reproductive health issues
  • VoteVets Action Fund: left, funded by multiple sources
  • Patriot Majority USA: left

Miscellaneous:

1. The DHS inspector general is investigating whether FEMA administrator Brock Long misused government vehicles. On the scandal scale, this seems pretty minor.
2. Facebook allows a right-wing magazine, the Weekly Standard, to fact check articles (along with non-partisan organizations like Snopes and Politifact, but no left-learning ones). The first thing the Weekly Standard did was censor a negative story about Brett Kavanaugh and redirect readers to their own site.
3. Trump achieves the dubious honor of telling over 5,000 lies or misleading statements since taking office.
4. Retired Admiral Bill McRaven resigns from the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board. McRaven has criticized Trump for revoking John Brennan’s security clearance.
5. It looks like Facebook’s efforts to crack down on trolls, bots, and false news stories is working. They’re reporting lower user engagement with such posts. The downside is that they all seem to be moving over to Twitter, where engagement is higher.
6. FEMA says it will test a new “Presidential Alert” system that would let Trump send personal text alerts to most U.S. cell phones.
7. The president’s first tweet on the morning of the 18^th anniversary of 9/11 is him defending himself in the Russia investigation and attacking the FBI. But a few hours later he tweets, “17 years since September 11th!” Getting off Air Force One on his way to honor the victims of Flight 93, he pumps his fists in the air.