Tag: Manafort

Week 100 in Trump

Posted on December 26, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Happy government shutdown! What better way to mark the 100th week under Trump? Just a reminder, he told Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer he’d take ownership of a shutdown, then he said he wouldn’t cause a shutdown, then he caused a shutdown, and then he blamed it on Democrats. Here’s what Trump had to say in 2013 about the shutdown under Obama:

“You have to get everybody in a room. You have to be a leader. The president has to lead. He has to get (the Speaker of the House) and everybody else in a room, and they have to make a deal. You have to be nice and be angry and be wild and cajole and do all sorts of things, but you have to get a deal… And, unfortunately, he has never been a dealmaker. That wasn’t his expertise before he went into politics and it’s obviously not his expertise now. But you have to get the people in a room and you have to get a deal.”

Here’s what else happened in week 100…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Democratic legislators in New Jersey rethink their plans to essentially make gerrymandering permanent in the state after receiving pushback from Republicans, Democrats, progressives, their Democratic governor, Eric Holder, and others. It’s no secret I’m for independent commissions drawing these lines; lawmakers should never be able to draw their own districts.
  2. The reasoning behind Betsy DeVos’s decision to end the policy of making sure minorities are not disciplined more harshly than white students is that it will help end school shootings. Huh? I don’t think any of the shootings have been perpetrated by a minority student.

Russia:

  1. We’re at the end of Trump’s second year in office, and there are 17 known investigations into Trump and Russia from seven different prosecutors (and not including congressional investigations). Here’s a list with the current status of each (all are still ongoing):
    • Russian government meddling in our elections: 25 indicted, 1 guilty plea, and 1 cooperation agreement.
    • Wikileaks: 2 Trump campaign associates implicated, with 1 of them breaking their plea agreement.
    • MidEast countries seeking to influence the Trump campaign: 2 cooperation agreements, but no public court activity.
    • Paul Manafort: 4 guilty pleas, 1 broken plea agreement, 1 indicted, and 1 convicted.
    • Trump Tower Moscow: 1 guilty plea
    • Trump campaign/transition team contacts with Russian officials: 2 guilty pleas, 16 people are known to have made contact.
    • Obstruction of justice: no public court activity.
    • Campaign involvement with Trump Organization finances: 1 guilty plea, 2 cooperation agreements.
    • Foreign donations to the inaugural committee and to Trump’s super PAC: 1 cooperation agreement, no public court activity.
    • Americans lobbying for foreign governments without registering as foreign agents: 2 charged, 1 cooperation agreement.
    • Russian spy embedded in the NRA: 1 guilty plea (Maria Butina).
    • Internet Research Agency’s election activities: 2 investigations and 2 indictments.
    • Michael Flynn’s activities in regard to Turkey: 1 guilty plea.
    • Tax fraud by Trump and Trump Organization: no indictments yet.
    • Campaign finance fraud and self-dealing by the Trump Foundation: Foundation closed.
    • Violations of the emoluments clause: making its way through court.
  1. Republicans in the House Judiciary and Oversight committees question James Comey again behind closed doors about the investigation into Hillary’s emails, the Steele Dossier, and Russian meddling in our elections. The transcript is made public the next day. There’s not really anything new to learn.
  2. Comey blasts the congressional hearings, saying they’re just wasting time and attacking U.S. intelligence agencies. He says Republican legislators need to stand up for American values and stop fearing their base.
  3. Comey explains his press conference in 2016 about the email investigation, saying he was worried about the leaks coming from the New York FBI office (to Rudy Giuliani) and felt he needed to get out ahead of those leaks.
  4. Comey accuses Trump of lying about the FBI to discredit investigations.
  5. New documents show that Trump had signed a letter of intent for the Trump Tower Moscow project on October 28, 2015. Giuliani previously said no one ever signed a letter of intent.
  6. Donald Trump Jr.’s testimony to Congress contradicted Cohen’s current testimony. Jr. also contradicted the letter of intent when he said all activity on the Trump Tower Moscow project ended in 2014.
  7. The judge for Michael Flynn’s sentencing rips into Flynn for selling out his country and asks the prosecutors if there’s anything else they can charge Flynn with. He asks Flynn if he wants a delay in sentencing in order to cooperate more fully, which Flynn accepts. A few things here:
    • The judge has access to the redacted information in the court documents that we can’t see.
    • Conservative pundits praise the judge in the days leading up to Flynn’s hearing. Not so much in the days after.
    • Flynn supporters demonstrate outside the courthouse for leniency.
    • Flynn seemed to be on the road to getting the lightest possible sentence (if any), but the judge is irked by Flynn’s lawyers’ attempt to blame the FBI for entrapping Flynn when they questioned him. The judge gets Flynn’s lawyers to retract those accusations.
    • The judge says that Flynn worked as a foreign agent while in the White House, which he later corrects. Flynn’s foreign activities had ended by the time he got to the White House.
    • Trump wishes Flynn luck before the hearing.
  1. Two of Michael Flynn’s associates are arrested over their activities on Turkey’s behalf. Prosecutors in Northern Virginia charge Bijan Rafiekian and Ekim Alptekin with conspiracy to “covertly and unlawfully” influence U.S. politicians.
  2. Mueller releases a redacted memo describing the lies Flynn told in his interviews with FBI agents. The two major lies are:
    • He said he didn’t try to sway the UN Security Council’s vote on Israeli settlements during the transition period.
    • He said he didn’t tell Russian Ambassador Kislyak not to retaliate over Obama’s sanctions against Russia during the transition period.
  1. For the third time, Mitch McConnell blocks Jeff Flake’s bill to protect Mueller’s investigation.
  2. It turns out that Russian trolls were behind a campaign to smear Mueller by claiming that he was corrupt, that he had worked with radical Islamic groups, and that Russian interference in our elections is all just conspiracy theories.
  3. The Trump administration plans to lift sanctions against three Russian companies with ties to Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska has had close financial ties to Paul Manafort.
  4. After consulting with ethics officials who tell him to recuse himself from any Russia investigations, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker refuses to do so.
  5. Putin accuses the U.S. of risking a collapse in the control of nuclear arms because Trump is threatening to pull out of a Cold War treaty limiting missile development. Putin also says the world is underestimating the threat of nuclear war.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The Donald J. Trump Foundation agrees to dissolve as part of an ongoing investigation and lawsuit. The Foundation will also give away its remaining assets. The New York attorney general accuses the foundation of providing money to Trump’s businesses and for his personal use, and of illegally providing campaign funds.
  2. Under the lawsuit, the foundation might have to pay restitution, and Trump, Trump Jr., Ivanka, and Eric could be barred from serving on other charity boards.
  3. Despite emails showing funds from the foundation being used for campaign purposes, Trump signed filings each year saying that the foundation never engaged in political activities.
  4. During the 2016 election cycle, the Trump campaign funded ad buys through groups accused of illegally coordinating between the campaign and the NRA. The groups used a shell company to hide their activities. The Trump campaign stopped funding the groups after the 2016 election, but now Trump’s 2020 campaign is using the same groups and the same shell company.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The federal judges assessing the 83 ethics complaints against Brett Kavanaugh dismiss all complaints, not because they don’t think the complaints are justified but because lower court judges have no authority to discipline Supreme Court justices.
  2. A judge rules that four people who brought a lawsuit against Trump and his organization over sham businesses can stay anonymous. They made the request to use pseudonyms over fear of retaliation, which the judge agreed with; she says “The manner in which the president has used his position and platform to affect the course of pending court cases is really without precedent.”
  3. The Supreme Court refuses to overturn a lower court ruling that Trump can’t immediately deport people who cross the border illegally to seek asylum. The administration argues that they can use the illegal action of crossing to deny asylum. Our law is pretty explicit that the administration is wrong—anyone who comes to the U.S. can apply for asylum no matter how they got here.
    • Not surprisingly, Justices Thomas, Kavanaugh, Alito, and Gorsuch support the administration’s argument. Ruth Bader Ginsberg voted in opposition from her hospital bed as she was recovering from lung surgery.

Healthcare:

  1. Senate Democrat send a letter to the head of the Health and Human Services Department accusing them of violating a federal court order by directing funds toward abstinence-only pregnancy prevention programs. The court order was put in place when a court found that the administration had illegally cancelled a pregnancy prevention program in favor of abstinence-only education.
  2. Ohio Governor Kasich signs a strict abortion bill into law, effectively banning abortions after 12 weeks of gestation. He vetoes a similar, more restrictive heartbeat bill (which would ban abortions after 10 weeks).
    • Ohio legislators say they’ll try to override his heartbeat bill veto.
    • Both bills would face uphill battles in courts.
  1. The VA hasn’t spend millions of dollars that were supposed to be used for suicide prevention for veterans.

International:

  1. Trump orders all U.S. troops out of Syria within 30 days. How’d that all go down? Oy…here’s a breakdown:
    • Trump speaks to Turkey’s President Erdogan on the phone. Erdogan can’t understand why the U.S. still arms Syrian Kurdish fighters (Turkey views the Kurds as a threat).
    • Trump says the Islamic State has been defeated in Syria (they haven’t; there are an estimated 14,500 IS fighters in Syria). Erdogan says their fighters can take care of what’s left.
    • Trump says, “You know what? It’s yours. I’m leaving.” And boom. The deed is done.
  1. Kurdish fighters consider releasing over 3,000 Islamic State prisoners.
  2. General Jim Mattis resigns as Secretary of Defense as of the end of February. Could this be related to Trump totally taking Mattis by surprise with his announcement on Syria? Oh yeah. Turns out it’s related, all right.
    • In his resignation letter, Mattis says he and Trump have different views on how to respect and work with our allies and how to deal with authoritarian leaders. He says Trump deserves a Secretary of State who sees things more closely to the way Trump does. His letter reads as a mild rebuke of Trump’s foreign policies.
    • After tweeting about Mattis’s distinguished service, Trump decides to remove him two months early and says Mattis will be out by the New Year. Trump was apparently unhappy over the news coverage of the implications of the resignation letter.
    • Mattis wanted to stay on long enough to ensure a smooth and informed transition.
    • Trump installs Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan as Acting Defense Secretary. Shanahan has no military, international, or counterterrorism experience.
  1. On the heels of Mattis’s resignation, Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the coalition to fight ISIS, resigns in protest of Trump’s abrupt decision to pull troops out of Syria.
  2. Trump says he’s withdrawing 7,000 troops from Afghanistan—around half of all our troops there. The Taliban then declares victory in Afghanistan.
  3. Trump creates a new “Space Command,” a precursor to the Space Force (a new 6th branch of the military).

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Voter rights groups file lawsuits against the lame duck bills passed by Republicans in the Wisconsin state legislature to cut the power of the incoming Democratic officials, specifically the bill cutting early voting periods.
  2. Congress passes a long-overdue prison reform bill. Here’s what’s in it:
    • Makes the conditions of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactive.
    • Eases mandatory minimum prison sentences.
    • Provides more incentives for good behavior by prisoners.
    • Provides more incentives for prisoners to participate in rehabilitation programs.
  1. Outgoing Representative Bob Goodlatte blocks the Savannah Act from getting out of committee. Outgoing Senator Heidi Heitkamp brought up the bill to address the number of missing and murdered Native American women.
  2. The Senate passes a bill making lynching a federal crime. There have been attempts to pass this legislation for over a century.
  3. Trump urges Mitch McConnell to change the Senate rules to get rid of the filibuster so they can get funding for the wall. McConnell refuses, which could imply there aren’t enough Republican votes to support the wall.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The World Economic Forum estimates that if the gap in economic opportunities between men and women keeps narrowing at its current rate, they will be equal in 202 years. Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland have the most economic equality; the U.S. ranks 51st.
  2. The judge who blocks Jeff Sessions‘ policy removing asylum protection from victims of domestic and gang violence also orders that anyone who was deported based on this policy be returned to the U.S. for a fair hearing. The judge (who is the same one overseeing Michael Flynn’s sentencing) says the policy violates the Immigration and Naturalization Act.
  3. U.S.-based anti-LGBTQ hate groups start working to meet, train, and support anti-LGBTQ groups in Italy. Good job, America—let’s spread the hate.
  4. A GoFundMe campaign raises about $14 million to help build the wall. So they’re about 1/100 of the way to raising enough to build about 1/8 of the wall.
    • The originator of the fundraiser is a triple-amputee Iraq vet.
    • The originator also lost his Facebook page, which trafficked in right-wing conspiracy theories.
    • Republican legislators question whether that money can be used for a wall.
    • What happens to that money if none of the wall gets built?
  1. The Air Force fires two HIV-positive service members despite them both passing the fitness assessments. They were found unfit for duty because of Trump’s policy for “deploy or get out.” The policy removes service members who can’t be deployed abroad for more than 12 months, and HIV-positive members fall into that category.
  2. Video evidence shows that the Proud Boys initiated the violence with protestors when one of their members spoke at a Republican Club in New York City earlier this year.
  3. The Trump administration prevents a Yemeni mother whose child is on life support in Oakland, CA, from coming to the U.S. to say goodbye because she’s from a country included in the Muslim ban. The child has a rare brain disease, and his father (who is a U.S. citizen) brought him here for treatment. After public pressure, the Trump administration relents and allows her to come visit.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The Interior Department takes a step forward in opening the Arctic Refuge for oil exploration and drilling by releasing its draft environmental impact report.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The Senate passes a short-term funding bill to keep the government open until February 8. It still needs to be passed by the House and signed by Trump, but then…
  2. Trump is too chicken to tell us himself right before Christmas that he won’t sign the temporary spending bill to keep the government open until February because it doesn’t fund the wall. So he makes Paul Ryan tell us. We’re looking at a shutdown the weekend before Christmas. Merry Christmas everyone!
  3. A shutdown means that more than 420,000 federal workers will work without pay and 380,000 will be furloughed. This also affects federal programs that help people obtain home and business loans, among other services.
  4. Trump blames Democrats for the shutdown even though when he met with Schumer and Pelosi, we all heard Trump say that he’d take full credit for a shutdown. He said he’d own it; he’d take the mantle.
  5. Because of the shutdown, Trump cancels his holiday trip to Mar-a-Lago and Senators who flew home turn right back around and get on a flight back to D.C.
  6. The Fed raises interest rates for the fourth time this year, but they’re also lowering expectations for the 2019 economy.
  7. The stock market has the worst week in a decade and the worst month since before the Great Depression. The market is on track to close down for the year.
  8. The Dow is up 18% so far under Trump; it was up 45% at this point under Obama. In fairness, Obama was starting from a Dow that was less than half what it was when Trump took over, so 45% was only around a 3,600 point gain under Obama. 18% under Trump is closer to a 3,000 point gain.
  9. Trump says it isn’t his fault that the stock market is down (even though he blamed Obama every time the market dropped under his administration).
  10. There’s a 23% chance of a recession in the next year.
  11. Steven Mnuchin tries to calm the market by making phone calls to certain financial CEOs, which only serves to confuse them. He wanted to reassure them that Trump isn’t planning to fire the Fed chairman as is rumored.
  12. Those CEOs say political noise is making the markets uncertain, including James Mattis’ departure, tariff threats, and the government shutdown.
  13. Trump authorizes the second rounds of bailout payments to farmers to help them get through the fallout from the tariffs, about $4.9 billion. China purchased no soy from the U.S. in November.
    • The USDA says some of the payments will be delayed due to the government shutdown.
  1. The House passes a new tax bill that provides disaster tax relief, delays and repeals some ACA taxes, fixes parts of last year’s tax cuts, improves the IRS, and repeals the Johnson Amendment (which bars nonprofits from endorsing political candidates).
  2. Sonny Perdue, head of the USDA, proposes changes to SNAP that would require “able-bodied” people between 18 and 49 with no dependents to either work or register for a training or education program if they’re on food stamps for three months or more. It’s estimated that this will drop 755,000 people from SNAP benefits.

Elections:

  1. In the 2017 Alabama senate elections where Democrat Doug Jones defeated Republican Roy Moore, a group of social media experts used tactics perfected by Russian trolls to try to sway support for Jones. Even though it was a small-scale operation, Jones calls for an FEC investigation to make sure no laws were violated.
    • The efforts were funded by a LinkedIn cofounder.
    • It was such a small effort that it likely did not effect the outcome of the election.
    • Alabama’s secretary of state says they were aware that groups from both sides were doing this but that they couldn’t get any help from Facebook or Twitter to stop it.
  1. Trump’s re-election committee and the Republican National Committee announce they’ll merge, which will strengthen his hold over the party and form a formidable fundraising machine. This is a first for a presidential campaign.
  2. The Mercers, who were implicated in the Russian social media influence campaigns in our 2016 elections, pull back on financial support to Republicans in opposition to Trump’s policies.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The Trump administration issues a regulation banning bump stocks. Anyone who already owns one has 90 days to turn them in or destroy them.
  2. Trump is already beginning to sour on Mick Mulvaney, who he just appointed as acting chief of staff. Trump’s not happy recently surfaced videos from before the election where we can hear Mulvaney calling Trump a terrible human being and describing Trump’s take on the border wall simplistic, absurd, and childish.

Week 98 in Trump

Posted on December 11, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Manafort, Cohen, and Flynn! Oh my!

Here’s some democracy in action. Dane Best, a 9-year-old in Colorado, wanted to be able to have snowball fights (more specifically, he wanted to bean his little brother). So he started a letter-writing campaign, spoke at a town council meeting, and convinced his community leaders to overturn a ban on snowball fights that had been in place for decades. Yes, decades. How is it that it took this long for an enterprising youngster to realize he can create the change that he wants to see? Why is it that we grownups don’t always realize we can create the change that we want to see?

Here’s what else happened in politics last week. It was a big week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. An Indiana judge orders the governor to turn over emails between then-governor Mike Pence and Trump about jobs at Carrier Corp.

Russia:

  1. Roger Stone refuses to testify or to turn over requested documents, invoking the Fifth. It’s possible (likely?) that Stone’s lawyer is mistaken in thinking the Fifth applies here.  
  2. Trump praises Stone for his lack of cooperation with the investigations.
  3. Sean Hannity tells listeners of his radio show not to talk to the FBI, even if they’re aware of crimes, because the FBI is too focused on the Russia investigation.
  4. Mueller’s team says they’re beginning to tie up loose ends in their investigation.
  5. Because of the false testimony exposed by the recent plea deals in the Russia investigation, House Democrats plan to send Mueller transcripts of the testimony given to them by Trump associates. They want Mueller to review the transcripts for any misinformation.
  6. Rudy Giuliani says they haven’t had time to draft a response or rebuttal to Mueller’s report, but Trump says they’re almost done with it—87 pages worth. Trump adds that they can’t finish it until Mueller issues his report.
  7. George Papadopoulos finishes his 12-day sentence and now has a year of probation and 200 hours of community service.
  8. Maria Butina’s boyfriend, Paul Erickson, is under suspicion of acting as a foreign agent and enabling Butina’s illegal activities by helping her develop contacts with political leaders, including in the NRA. Butina is in prison for her alleged activities and is likely to take a plea. (Note: I originally named Paul Erickson’s incorrectly as Erick Erickson.)

Michael Flynn

  1. Robert Mueller issues his recommendation on Michael Flynn’s sentencing for his plea deal, recommending that Flynn serve no prison time due to the extent of his cooperation and his “substantial assistance.”
  2. Mueller’s sentencing memo is highly redacted, but implicates high-ranking transition officials in the Trump transition team, likely including Jared Kushner.
  3. Flynn says a very senior transition team member told him to contact foreign officials (including in Russia) about a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements. At the time this was going on, Obama was getting ready to allow a Security Council vote on the resolution.
  4. Flynn also called a senior transition official at Mar-a-Lago to talk about what to say to the Russian ambassador about the impending sanctions. Transition members wanted Flynn to let Russia know not to escalate the situation. At the time this was going on, Obama was preparing to hit Russia with additional sanctions over their election meddling.
  5. Flynn learned that transition members did not want Russia to escalate the situation, according to court papers.

Paul Manafort

  1. Robert Mueller files his report about why he thinks Paul Manafort breached his plea deal:
    • Manafort lied about contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, who is implicated in both the Russian hacking scheme and attempts to tamper with witnesses in Manafort’s cases.
    • Manafort lied about a wire transfer related to his charges.
    • Manafort lied about information relevant to an unrelated DOJ case.
    • Manafort lied about having recent contact with Trump administration officials.
    • Mueller has documented proof of the above lies.

Michael Cohen

  1. Even though Michael Cohen has been very cooperative with the investigation and complied with his plea agreements, federal prosecutors recommend substantial prison time for his crimes (four years). Mueller recommends concurrent time for lying to government officials.
  2. As a result of the court filings around Michael Cohen, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York determine that Trump participated in federal crimes with Cohen. Some of these crimes are around hush money to his mistresses. The coverup is always worse than the crime. Always.
  3. Mueller’s sentencing filing shows that the Trump campaign was approached by Russia in 2015 to develop government-level political synergy.
  4. It turns out that Cohen did expect a pardon if he just stayed on the president’s message.
  5. Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee make several referrals for prosecution to Mueller. It seems several referrals stem from what we’ve learned from Cohen recently.
  6. If Cohen’s account is accurate, then Russia did have leverage over Trump because they knew he was lying about contacts with Russians and business dealings with Russia.

James Comey

  1. James Comey testifies for House committees behind closed doors for six hours about the integrity of FBI investigations. Apparently six hours weren’t enough, because he’s testifying again on the 17th.
  2. This seems to be part of yet another congressional investigation into the FBI investigation into Clinton’s emails. The inspector general has investigated this as have multiple congressional committees.
  3. Here are some highlights from the released transcript:
    • Contrary to Trump’s accusations, he and Mueller are not best friends; not even social friends.
    • Barack Obama did not order the FBI to spy on Trump’s campaign, but if he would’ve, the FBI would’ve refused.
    • A lot of this is just rehashed information we already know from previous testimony and from the IG report.
    • Republicans say they’re unhappy that Comey’s lawyer advised against answering several questions, but the transcript contradicts this. Most of the questions he didn’t answer were about Mueller’s ongoing investigation. He was also unable to comment on hypotheticals.
    • Republicans also say they’re unhappy with the number of times he said he didn’t know or couldn’t remember. Many of these questions were about details of FBI investigations that were below his pay grade.
    • Comey acknowledged that the Steele Dossier was a result of opposition research, first by Republicans and then by Democrats.
    • The Russia investigation began because of Papadopoulos.
    • The FBI’s New York field office was leaking information to damage Clinton, which is why Comey decided to make the public statement on the email investigation in 2016.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The fallout from the Panama Papers begins in the U.S. when the DOJ charges four people with tax evasion based on information found in those papers.
  2. Maryland and DC subpoena financial records related to Trump’s hotel in Washington. It seems the lease is being violated; no elected official can hold the lease because it’s the Old Post Office building and leased from the federal government.
  3. The FBI raids the home of Dennis Cain, who was granted whistle-blower status for providing documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee around the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One.
  4. Jeff Sessions directed U.S. Attorney John Huber to open an investigation into the Clinton Foundation at congressional Republicans’ urging.
  5. A private investigation firm is also looking into the foundation. The firm, MDA Analytics LLC,reportedly used ex-U.S. intelligence to do the research, but I can’t find any information about the company.
  6. A federal judge orders more fact-finding about Clinton’s private email server in a case alleging that the she used the server to protect herself from the Freedom of Information Act.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Hundreds of former DOJ employees call on Trump to replace Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker (who is a walking, talking conflict of interest). They also call on Trump to quickly nominate someone, and in the meantime to replace Whitaker with someone who the Senate has actually confirmed.
  2. Whitaker has yet to tell us how he’ll handle conflicts of interest as Acting Attorney General, and we know there are a few.
  3. Trump nominates William Barr to take over as Attorney General. Barr served in that position under George H.W. Bush.
  4. Reminiscent of Bill Clinton running into Loretta Lynch when she was overseeing the investigation into Hillary’s emails, Jared Kushner invites Matt Whitaker on a flight with him aboard Marine One while Whitaker is overseeing an investigation of which Kushner is a subject.

International:

  1. CIA Directory Gina Haspel briefs senators on Saudi Arabia and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. GOP Senators contradict Trump and say they are more convinced than ever that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in this murder.
  2. Trump has held that evidence of the Crown Prince’s involvement is inconclusive, as did Mike Pompeo and Jim Mattis in an earlier briefing. GOP senators pretty much say Trump is trying to help Saudi Arabia cover this up, and that Pompeo and Mattis mislead the Senate.
  3. Here’s an interesting thing Lindsey Graham says about this: “If they [Pompeo and Mattis] were in a Democratic administration, I would be all over them for being in the pocket of Saudi Arabia.” So just to make sure I have this straight, since they’re in a Republican administration, they are not in the pocket of Saudi Arabia? Party over country…
  4. Turkey issues an arrest warrant for the top aide to MbS and to his deputy head of foreign intelligence.
  5. We learn that Jared Kushner, one of MbS’s fiercest defenders in the White House, advised MbS on how to manage the Khashoggi scandal.
  6. Trump nominates Heather Nauert to replace Nikki Haley as the UN ambassador. Nauert is the current spokesperson for the State Department, and before that was an anchor on Fox News. Trump will also downgrade the UN ambassador position from a cabinet-level position.
  7. Trump says that he’ll suspend our participation in the 1987 Treaty on Intermediate-range Nuclear Force in two months unless Russia starts to comply with the conditions. That would let us develop and test new missiles.
  8. Satellite images now show that North Korea is expanding one of their long-range missile bases.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. After losing all the statewide seats in the midterms (governor, lt. governor, and secretary of state), Republican state legislators in Wisconsin begin a power grab to change the rules of their government and limit the power of the incoming Democrats. They pass a plan to:
    • Limit early voting.
    • Restrict the new governor’s ability to make appointments.
    • Shift some of the legal responsibilities of the governor and secretary of state to the legislature.
    • Lock in a work requirement for Medicaid.
  1. Protestors take to the State Capitol to voice their disapproval, even shouting over the Christmas tree lighting ceremony and choirs of high school students singing carols. Conservatives are quick to denounce the Christmas protest because of those poor students, but it turns out the students were in on it as well.
  2. And then Michigan follows suit by passing bills to:
    • Restrict the voter-approved legalization of marijuana.
    • Override voter-approved minimum wage requirements.
    • Prevent political non-profits from having to disclose their donors.
    • Add restrictions to the “promote the vote” initiative passed by voters, making it harder instead of easier to vote.
    • Restrict the voter-approved redistricting plan that takes redistricting out of party hands and puts it into the hands of a non-partisan commission.
    • Shift some of the legal responsibilities of the governor and secretary of state to the legislature.
  1. Just a reminder that in 2016, North Carolina’s legislature tried to place limits on the incoming Democratic governor, who in turned filed a series of lawsuits. So far, the courts have found largely for the governor.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Last month, a court blocked Trump’s policy of overly stringent vetting of green-card holders in the military. So now, the Pentagon sends thousands of recruits to basic training who’ve been in a backlog waiting to get in.
  2. We’ve been expecting a new trial in Florida for Jeffrey Epstein, who’s been accused of multiple incidents of child and sexual abuse, but the case settles just before it was to start. After his first trial, Epstein’s charges were highly reduced, and he served a light sentence with freedom to leave jail to work for 12 hours a day, six days a week.
  3. A jury finds James Alex Fields guilty of first degree murder for killing Heather Heyer when he plowed his car into a group of people protesting a white nationalist rally. He was convicted of multiple other counts of wounding other protesters. He has yet to be tried for multiple federal hate crimes.
  4. Ammon Bundy leaves the patriot movement he helped lead. He faced harsh criticism over his views on immigration after he issued a compassionate statement about immigrants and asylum seekers who are in need and should get a fair hearing. He says the patriot movement blindly supports Trump.
  5. Trump’s New Jersey golf course hires undocumented workers, including Trump’s own personal housekeeper there. When Trump was elected, a supervisor told his housekeeper that she needed documentation showing permanent residency, which the supervisor helped her obtain (though not through legal channels from what I’ve read).
  6. The replacement for NAFTA removes protections for LGBTQ workers.
  7. Emantic Bradford, who was shot by police when they suspected he was an active shooter, turned out to have been helping people escape the gunfire. Bradford had a weapon, but also had a license to carry. The officer who shot him (three times in the back) is still on duty and was also the only person to kill someone that night.
  8. Not surprisingly, protests erupt over the shooting and several protesters are arrested.
  9. Trump has more confidence in Kirstjen Nielsen after her tough stance on the migrant caravan.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A judge refuses to hear a challenge to Trump’s border wall from an environmental non-profit. The non-profit says the wall will destroy a protected butterfly habitat and could harm endangered species like the monarch butterfly and ocelots.
  2. French President Emmanuel Macron suspends planned carbon taxes that sparked weeks-long protests.
  3. Climate scientists and policy experts say countries aren’t implementing strong enough rules to help fight climate change. Several major countries are failing in their targets set in the Paris agreement.
  4. Global carbon emissions reach their highest levels ever recorded. They grew 1.6% in 2017 and are expected to grow 2.7% in 2018. The U.S. is the second largest emitter; China is first.
  5. A 15-year-old activist calls out global leaders for their lack of climate action. Greta Thunberg, who’s been sitting in front of the Swedish parliament every Friday since September, says:

“For 25 years countless people have come to the UN climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions, and clearly that has not worked as emissions are continuing to rise… So we have not come here to beg the world leaders to care for our future. They have ignored us in the past and they will ignore us again. We have come here to let them know that change is coming whether they like it or not.”
You can listen to the full speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cve4bLDrlM

  1. The Trump administration plans to end tax credits and incentives for electric cars and renewable energy. Maybe he’ll end subsidies for the fossil fuel industry as well (LOL I crack myself up).
  2. Trump proposes increasing carbon emissions limits for new coal plants. Under Obama-era rules, they were required to burn some natural gas to keep their emissions lower.
  3. The Trump administration moves to loosen protections for the sage grouse to enable to more oil and gas drilling.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The market has a really rocky week, with the Dow Jones dropping 1,600 in two days, rising back up 700 the next day, and then dropping almost 1,100 points the next.
  2. The drop came as investors lose confidence that our trade war with China is actually de-escalating. The markets aren’t helped at all when Trump tweets, “I am a Tariff Man.”
  3. In truth, when Trump tweeted after the G-18 that China would reduce and remove tariffs on our cars, aides said they didn’t know of any such commitment from China. And the press statements issued from the White House and from China are contradictory, indicating that nothing solid was agreed upon.
  4. On the same day that Trump announces a trade truce with China, Canada arrests Wanzhou Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei, at the request of the U.S. Huawei is a major telecom company in China, and Meng is the founder’s daughter. This throws yet another wrench in efforts to stabilize tariffs. Her charges are based in trying to get around the sanctions against Iran to do business with sanctioned companies.
  5. And now I feel more secure… Trump says it doesn’t matter if he deals with our increasing debt because he won’t be around to shoulder the blame when it all blows up.
  6. Congress passes a two-week extension on the funding bill deadline, which means if that all blows up, it’ll happen four days before Christmas. The impasse is over funding the border wall. Trump says he’s fine with a government shutdown.
  7. The U.S. becomes a net oil exporter. Barely.

Elections:

  1. In a runoff election, Republican Brad Raffensperger defeats Democrat John Barrow to become Georgia’s secretary of state. This was a closely watched election because the previous GOP secretary of state oversaw an election in which he won the governorship and in which several registrations and ballots were rejected, allegedly for spurious reasons. The office faces accusations of ongoing voter suppression.
  2. During the 2018 midterm campaigns, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) was hacked and email accounts were monitored by the hackers for months.
    • They are working with the FBI, but they still don’t know who was behind it. There are some similarities to the DNC hacking in 2016.
    • The NRCC found out in April, but didn’t reveal it to the victims or GOP leaders until the press found out about it this week.
  1. The North Carolina Board of Elections and Ethics has refused to certify Republican Mark Harris’ apparent win due to voting irregularities. According to witnesses, an operative working for Harris paid people to “harvest” ballots. In other words, they illegally collected people’s mail-in ballots, and in some cases filled them out. (Note that collecting ballots in itself isn’t illegal, but getting paid for it, not turning ballots in, or filling in a ballot without the voter’s consent are all illegal.)
  2. Trump and the NRA used the same media consultants to launch complimentary ad campaigns during the 2016 elections. This gives the appearance of campaign finance law violations, but it’s not clear whether the two actually coordinated.
  3. Trump made extensive use of Air Force One to campaign during the midterms. It cost taxpayers around $17 million. Rules say he’s supposed to pay for some of that from party or campaign money, but so far he’s only reimbursed $112,000 (or less than 1%).
  4. Massachusetts’ former governor Deval Patrick, who thought about running for president, says:
“… knowing that the cruelty of our elections process would ultimately splash back on people whom Diane and I love, but who hadn’t signed up for the journey, was more than I could ask.” That says something about how we campaign now.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Wednesday is a national day of mourning for George H.W. Bush. Flags fly at half-staff and federal offices close for the day. His state funeral is held at Washington National Cathedral.
  2. And in what becomes one of the most awkward presidential moments in my lifetime, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, and Barack and Michelle Obama are joined in the front row of the cathedral by Donald and Melania Trump.
  3. In an interview, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says Trump is “pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read” and that he tries to do illegal things.
  4. Trump responds by calling Tillerson dumb and lazy.
  5. Trump announces that White House chief of staff John Kelly will leave by year’s end. Also, no one wants the job of replacing him.
  6. Trump nominates Army General Mark Miller to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Joseph Dunford, the current chairman, has nearly 10 months left to serve.
  7. Michael Avenatti says he won’t run for president in 2020 after all. Did anyone really think he would?
  8. Shortly after Trump tweets about the media being the enemy of the people, CNN evacuates their New York studio because of a bomb threat.

Polls:

  1. 58% of Americans agree that climate change is influenced by humans.

Week 94 in Trump

Posted on November 13, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Even without last week’s midterm election, there was a lot going on last week. And the election isn’t even fully decided yet; in some places, the counting is still going on and there are runoff elections coming up. Several races have not yet been called, and a few are already looking like they’ll automatically trigger a recount. I’m sure by the time I post this, some of the election info will be obsolete. There was a lot that was interesting about this election, so I’ll summarize it all in a later blog post after things shake out.

Here’s what else happened last week…

Russia:

  1. The day after the midterm elections, Jeff Sessions tenders his resignation as Attorney General at Trump’s request. Until Trump nominates his permanent replacement, DOJ Chief of Staff Matthew Whitaker will serve as Acting Attorney General. The administration expects additional turnover after the elections, with possible ousters of Rod Rosenstein, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Jim Mattis, Ryan Zinke, Kirstjen Nielsen, and Wilbur Ross.
  2. Whitaker will take over Rod Rosenstein’s responsibilities in overseeing the Russia investigation. Whitaker has been a frequent talk-show guest speaking out strongly against the Russia investigation.
  3. A federal court orders Robert Mueller to explain how all this might influence Andrew Miller’s case. Miller has refused to respond to subpoenas and is challenging the constitutionality of Mueller’s appointment.
  4. Sessions’ firing results in over 900 protests and rallies held across the country in support of protecting Mueller and his investigation.
  5. Paul Manafort isn’t fully cooperating with Mueller’s investigation even though that was part of his agreement.
  6. Mueller’s team has begun writing their final report, though Trump has still not decided whether he’ll answer their questions.
  7. Russia had said Trump would meet with Putin in France at the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI. They did not end up meeting.
  8. After taking the House in the midterms, Democrats plan to open several investigations into Russia’s meddling in our elections, into actions taken by the administration around healthcare and education, and into Trump’s finances. Trump says he’ll take a “warlike posture” against Democrats should they decide to investigate him. He likens this to a game, saying Republicans can play the game better. But he also says he’ll make deals with Democrats.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump was involved in almost every action in the payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to keep them quiet about their affairs with him. The deals were made in the run-up to the 2016 elections, so are likely violations of campaign finance laws.
    • Trump has denied knowing anything about the $130,000 payout to Daniels.
    • David Pecker, CEO of American Media Inc., used the National Enquirer to buy off Karen McDougal.
    • Michael Cohen has admitted they made the payoffs to influence the outcome of the presidential election.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Kellyanne Conway’s husband writes an op-ed outlining why he thinks Whitaker’s appointment is unconstitutional. I’m dying to know what their home life is like.
  2. World Patent Marketing, where Matt Whitaker once served on the advisory board, is under FBI investigation for defrauding consumers out of millions of dollars. As part of his work there, he used his previous position as a federal prosecutor to intimidate consumers who attempted to get their money back.
  3. 29 days after Trump is on record saying he knows Matt Whitaker and that he’s a great guy, Trump says he doesn’t know Matt Whitaker. Kellyanne Conway confirms that Trump does, indeed, know Matt Whitaker.
  4. Whitaker says he won’t slash Mueller‘s budget and will allow the probe to continue unhindered.
  5. The harassment and death threats against Christine Blasey Ford continue. She’s had to move four times, she hired private security, and she hasn’t been able to return to her job.
  6. On his way out the door, Jeff Sessions gives us one parting shot by putting restrictions on consent decrees between the DOJ and local police departments. Consent decrees let federal agencies create agreements with local PDs to overhaul departments accused of civil rights violations. The new restrictions include:
    • Top political appointees must approve the agreements.
    • There must be evidence of additional violations beyond unconstitutional behavior.
    • All consent decrees must have an end date.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump issues the final version of new rules allowing employers to deny contraception coverage to employees based on religious grounds. His previous versions of the rules are pending litigation, but he issues the new ones anyway.

International:

  1. 60 business leaders in the UK are pushing for another Brexit vote, hoping to overturn the previous one (which frankly doesn’t seem to be working out well for the UK). They say none of the exit deals in the works are as good as what’s in place now.
  2. Turkey shares the audio recording of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey. Saudi Arabia, the U.S. , Britain, France, and Germany all have a copy.
  3. Trump meets with global leaders in France to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the end of WWI. When he arrives, Trump insults French President Macron in an angry tweet over Macron’s call for an EU army. He actually seems pretty sullen the whole trip.
  4. When a reporter asks Trump and Macron about Trump’s tweet, Macron reassuringly pats Trump’s knee to defuse tensions. Trump didn’t react at all.
  5. On the 243rd birthday of the Marine Corps, Trump forgoes attending a ceremony in France at a military cemetery (Aisne-Marne) where they buried the Marines who fought at Belleau Wood. They say his helicopter can’t operate in the rain (really?) and that he didn’t want to plug up the roads with a motorcade.
  6. And finally, while 60 other world leaders perform a symbolic walk up the Champs-Elysées to a World War I remembrance at the Arc de Triomphe, Trump and Putin both take private cars.
  7. Gun and air fights break out between Hamas and Israeli military in the Gaza Strip after a covert Israeli operation is uncovered. Eight people are dead.
  8. Over a year ago, Saudi intelligence discussed assassinating Iranian enemies. The Saudi official implicated in the death of Jamal Khashoggi had a meeting with businessmen who tried to sell him on a plan to sabotage Iran’s economy.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Wonder why we all think we hate Congress? Here’s part of why. A Washington Post and ProPublica study finds that the legislative branch is weak. Party leaders dictate what goes on and most of our elected officials don’t really get a say. Also, the threat of government shutdowns keeps us at an impasse. House committees met almost twice as often to deliberate legislation in 2005/2006 as they did in 2015/2016. Senate committees met around 3.5 times as often.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Ramping up the fear baiting, Trump floats a plan to deploy up to 15,000 troops to our border with Mexico to stop the migrant caravan. If my math is right, that’ll end up being around 10 soldiers for each migrant who makes it this far. It’s estimated to cost around $220 million. The Pentagon says the caravan poses no threat.
  2. There are an estimated 200 vigilante (and unregulated) armed militia members patrolling the border between the U.S. and Mexico.
    • The troops that Trump sent to the border are have to deal with the militias as well as their regular duties.
    • The militias have a record of stealing military supplies from troops deployed there.
    • The militias think we are under literal attack from people trying to cross the borders illegally and have put out calls to increase their numbers.
  1. Yet another federal appeals court rules that Trump can’t immediately end DACA. Even though there are three cases pending, Trump has asked the Supreme Court to rule on it now.
    • Note: Congress has always had the power to fix this, but has been unable to agree on the most minor immigration reform.
  1. Remember when we found out that Motel 6 was letting ICE know when people with Hispanic sounding names checked in? Well that was illegal, and now Motel 6 will pay out $7.6 million to their Hispanic guests. As part of the settlement, Motel 6 is forbidden from sharing guest information without a subpoena or warrant.
  2. The average number of people in ICE detention each day reaches a record high (44,631 people). This is larger than the number that Congress has approved funding for.
  3. The University of Virginia bans 10 people from their campus for their participation in the Unite the Right rally last year in Charlottesville. The ban is in effect for four years.
  4. Trump changes the rules of asylum so only people who show up at a port of entry can seek asylum. Previously, you had to seek asylum within a year of being physically present in the country. Lawsuits against the move are already filed.
  5. Major TV stations drop or refuse to even air an ad from Trump’s political team that was deemed so racist that even Fox News stopped airing it. The ad’s purpose was to drum up fear of Central American and Latin American immigrants.
  6. A review by ABC News found 17 cases of violent criminal acts or threats of violent acts where Trump’s name was invoked. There were none invoking his name in protest; rather 16 of the 17 cases have direct evidence of the suspect or perpetrator echoing Trump’s rhetoric. The suspects and perpetrators are mostly white men and the victims are mostly minorities. ABC News was unable to find similar cases carried out in Barack Obama’s name nor George W. Bush’s name.

Climate/EPA/Environment:

  1. The Supreme Court denies Trump’s request for a stay in the lawsuit brought by a group of young people against the government for its lack of action on climate change.
  2. Heavy rains and flooding devastate areas in Italy, killing at least 17 people. The rains have also destroyed around 14 million trees, devastating forests.
  3. A federal judge halts construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline saying that the environmental impact studies aren’t complete.
  4. A UN report says that it’s possible that the hole in the ozone layer could be fixed by the 2060s, thanks to the ban on chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons.
  5. Wildfires devastate California once again, burning down almost the entire community of Paradise in the north and threatening suburbs of Los Angeles in the south. The death toll is at least 31.
  6. In a tweet, Trump blames California for the wildfires, saying they mismanage their forest land. But the fires started on federal land, and California didn’t create the drought nor the Santa Ana winds that make the fires so much worse. Trump says there’s no reason for these fires. Firefighters say climate change is to blame.
  7. The International Firefighters Association criticize Trump for putting out a tweet like that at a time when lives and homes are being lost. They call his words reckless and irresponsible; The California Firefighters Association calls him ill-informed.
  8. Trump hasn’t read his own administration‘s National Climate Assessment report, but he says he thinks that climate change will probably reverse itself. Problem solved.
  9. The EPA’s website previously removed over 80 climate change websites, and noted that they were updating the site to reflect the administration’s views. Now they’ve removed the note about updating and any links to the archived climate change website from Obama’s administration.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The price of oil reached a four-year-high in October, and then proceeded to slide 21% to below $70 a barrel. The price rose because of imminent sanctions on Iran, but then dropped when Russian, Saudi, and U.S. oil companies overcompensated to make up the difference.
  2. The Trump administration reimposes all sanctions against Iran that Obama lifted under the joint agreement. The sanctions include an oil ban and are against over 700 Iranian banks, companies, and people.
  3. Trump grants China, India, Italy, Greece, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey waivers; so Iran might not be hit as hard as originally thought.
  4. The Trump administration isn’t watchdogging the big banks and corporations as much as previous administrations. SEC penalties are down 62% under Trump and criminal prosecution by the DOJ is down 72%. Maybe they all just cleaned up their act? Ha! I crack myself up.
  5. U.S. businesses paid 50% more in tariffs this September than last September, paying out $4.4 billion.

Elections:

  1. Despite a lack of evidence of voter fraud, Trump and Sessions both warn that there will be fraud in the midterm elections.
  2. Voter enthusiasm is up! Election day has the highest voter turnout for a midterm election in over 50 years, partly due to a drastic increase in young people voting.
  3. Democrats take back the House after 8 years of Republican control. With several races still too close to call, and some recounts pending, Democrats are predicted to take 35-40 seats. Republicans hold on to the Senate, and are predicted to gain 1-2 seats.
  4. Democrats took 7 additional governorships, including in Colorado (where they elected the first openly gay governor and their first Jewish governor) and in Kansas (where the leader of Trump’s voter fraud commission, Kris Kobach, lost his bid).
  5. At least 111 women win elections. We elect the first Native American women and the first Muslim women to Congress. Maine and South Dakota elect their first female governors.
  6. The people elect a number of open LGBTQ people to Congress.
  7. The North Dakota representative who sponsored the voter ID laws that disproportionately affected Native Americans loses his seat to a Native American woman.
  8. A few “notable” Republicans who won:
    • Representative Chris Collins: Under felony indictment for securities fraud.
    • Representative Duncan Hunter: Under felony indictment on 60 counts of conspiracy, fraud, and campaign finance violations.
    • Dennis Hof: Deceased brothel owner in Nevada.
    • Arthur Jones: Self-proclaimed Nazi.
  1. But Democrats aren’t immune:
    • Keith Ellison: Accused of domestic violence (but is requesting an investigation).
    • Bob Menendez: His corruption trial ended with a hung jury and charges were dismissed.
  1. U.S. intelligence officials say they haven’t seen any evidence of any foreign state interfering in the voting systems.
  2. Some of the races from the midterms are so tight they can’t be called, and some states will be counting votes into December. And everyone is suing in Florida, Arizona and Georgia to stop ballot counts, to make sure all ballots are counted, or to stop ballot counters from discarding ballots.
  3. Georgia, Florida, and Arizona are hotbeds of political gamesmanship after the elections. After observing the vote count for a bit, I say let these people do their jobs. They take their work very seriously.
  4. In California, Harley Rouda and Josh Harder both pull ahead of their Republican opponents in late counting, with Harley’s race being called for him. Two other races in Orange County are tightening and are too close to call, though 538 gives the Democratic candidates the highest probabilities.
  5. Cindy Hyde-Smith is in a special election runoff with Mike Espy. She says that if Trump invited her to a public hanging, she’d be first in line. Racist to begin with, but given that her opponent is black that comment is unconscionable.
  6. North Carolina got a reprieve on redrawing their unconstitutionally gerrymandered district lines for this election, but they must redraw them for 2020.
  7. In a ballot measure, Florida votes to reinstate voting rights to 1.4 million ex-felon Floridians. Previously, Governor Rick Scott decided which ex-felons could get their rights reinstated on a case-by-case basis.

Georgia:

  1. In Georgia and Texas people report that their party-line ballots cast votes for a member of the wrong party. Officials blame old and outdated computer systems. This really highlights the need for an auditable paper trail in all elections.
  2. In fact, earlier this year a federal judge found that continuing to use the Georgia machines disenfranchises voters, but did not force them to replace the machines before the election.
  3. Brian Kemp is Georgia’s Secretary of State and tasked with overseeing elections, including his own election for governor. Just before the elections, he accuses the Democratic Party of trying to hack into the voter system. He says he’s opening an investigation and taking it to the DHS and FBI.
    • It turns out that what really happened is that a man discovered a way to download voter information through a security hole. He reported it to the Democratic voter protection director.
  1. When Kemp tries to vote, his voter card says “invalid.” He has to get a replacement to vote.
  2. There are calls for Kemp to recuse himself from the election process and then from the ballot counting process. Kemp only steps down to start transitioning to the governorship which has still not been called for him.
  3. Democrats accuse Kemp of multiple counts of voter suppression; Kemp accuses Democrats of trying to get people to vote illegally and of hacking into the elections system.
  4. Currently, Kemp’s percentage of the vote sits at 50.3%, just slightly above the required 50% threshold. Stacey Abrams hasn’t yet conceded, and is hoping to get all votes counted and force a runoff.
  5. Kemp, for his part, stepped down from the SoS position to start transitioning to the role of governor, though a runoff is still possible.
  6. Meanwhile, all the lawsuits alleging voter suppression and invalid ballot counts are still going on.

Arizona:

  1. Arizona Republicans sue to challenge how counties count ballots, saying the process should be standard. At issue is the fact that some counties allow fixes to things like missing information or mismatched signatures after election day (which sort of makes sense, since mail-in ballots don’t have to arrive until election day).
  2. Arizona Republicans and Democrats come to an agreement that gives rural counties the same ability to fix errors as in urban counties.
  3. Democrat Kirsten Sinema is projected to win Jeff Flake’s old Senate Seat. The more ballots that are counted in Maricopa County, the bigger her lead gets.
  4. While the NRSC (National Republican Senate Committee) alleges corruption and fraud against Democrats in the ongoing ballot count, both Martha McSally, Sinema’s Republican opponent, and Jeff Flake say there is no evidence to support that. The NRSC files a FOIA request of the Maricopa county recorder to turn over any correspondence he’s had with George Soros and Tom Steyer. Huh? I’m dying to see the results of that request.
  5. Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO), the NRSC chair, tells Face The Nation that the Maricopa County Recorder is “cooking the books” for Sinema.
  6. Cindy McCain also speaks out against the NRSC’s attempts to stop the ballot count.
  7. Speaking of McCain, on Veterans Day, the Wall Street Journal chose to run an op-ed by a defeated Minnesota Republican blaming McCain for the Republican losses in the election. Aside from the misguided premise, who runs an op-ed disparaging a deceased military hero on Veterans Day?

Florida:

  1. In Florida, Governor Rick Scott threatens to send police to seize ballots in Broward County for a race in which he is running. He says there’s rampant fraud because they’re trying to count all the ballots. Scott and his Democratic opponent, Bill Nelson, are likely headed toward a recount.
  2. Trump also makes accusations of fraud. Florida Law Enforcement says there have been no claims of fraud and no evidence of fraud.
  3. Trump sends lawyers down to help Rick Scott’s case.
  4. Bill Nelson files a lawsuit challenging the rejection of certain ballots.
  5. Actually, there are a lot of lawsuits going around. Here’s a recap of the Florida lawsuits.

Miscellaneous:

  1. In a contentious press conference after the midterm elections, Jim Acosta refuses to back down from questioning the president about whether there is any threat posed by the “caravan of migrants.”
  2. Trump suspends Acosta’s press pass.
  3. Sarah Huckabee Sanders retweets a doctored video to support their accusation that Acosta was overly aggressive with the woman handling the microphone. Her video makes it look like Acosta karate chopped the woman’s arm, and also deletes the part where he says “excuse me, ma’am.” Does she think we don’t have access to the real-time videos?
  4. Trump calls reporter April Ryan a “loser” who “doesn’t know what the hell she is doing.” He also responds to reporter Abby Phillips by saying angrily “what a stupid question that is” and “you ask a lot of stupid questions.”
  5. Trump threatens to revoke press passes for more journalists.
  6. An ex-marine kills 12 people at the Borderline Bar and Grill, a country bar in Thousand Oaks, CA. One of the dead is the responding officer. The gunman then kills himself. Some of the victims and people at the bar had also been in the crowds during the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas last year.
  7. Just hours before the shooting, the NRA responds to a paper written by a group of physicians calling for a comprehensive approach to gun violence. The NRA tells doctors to stay in their lane, apparently not realizing that doctors are the ones left cleaning up the mess from gun violence. And doctors are the ones who have to tell people that their loved ones didn’t make it.
  8. Ruth Bader Ginsberg is hospitalized with fractured ribs (giving Democrats a collective panic attack), but she’s back a work within a few days.
  9. The Trump administration backs Sudan in a lawsuit brought by the families of military personnel killed in the bombing of the USS Cole. The lawsuit asserts that the bombers were funded by Sudan.
  10. A lawyer in the case of two men on trial for a bomb plot against Muslims in Kansas is pleading for leniency in the case, saying that Trump’s angry rhetoric spurred the plan. He says Trump’s language before the 2016 election fueled hysteria about Muslims and immigrants.

Week 82 in Trump

Posted on August 20, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Rudy Giuliani makes Chuck Todd crack up on air when he says (true quote) “truth isn’t truth.” This is just an example of why hundreds of newspapers across the country issue op-eds this week in support of a free press. The op-eds defend the role of the press while denouncing attacks on the press, specifically the “fake news” attacks. Upon the release of the editorials, Trump accuses the papers of collusion (collusion to defend a free press, I guess?). So the senate unanimously votes to “reaffirm the vital and indispensable role the free press serves.” You can’t make this Orwellian shit up.

Anyway, here’s what happened last week in politics…

Missed From Last Week:

  1. At DEFCON, an 11-year-old hacked into a replica of Florida’s election website and changed the voting results. In less than 10 minutes. Yep, we’re safe.

Russia:

  1. Here are some highlights from the Manafort Trial:
    • After delays from the previous week, the prosecution produces email evidence that Manafort participated in the alleged bank and tax fraud that Rick Gates admitted to being party to.
    • One email implicates Jared Kushner in bribing a bank CEO with the promise of a cabinet position.
    • The prosecution rests.
    • The defense requests that Manafort be acquitted, which the judge denies (duh).
    • The defense rests its case without calling a single witness to refute the prosecution’s case.
    • Manafort’s defense is basically that it doesn’t matter that he lied on his loan applications because the bank was going to give him the money anyway because he was bribing the CEO of said bank with a cabinet position in return for the loans. So we’re all good, right?
    • Trump says Manafort is a very good man and that his trial is a sad day for our country. Which hopefully won’t influence the non-sequestered jury. The judge himself is under U.S. Marshall protection due to death threats.
    • Just a heads up for the next Manafort trial, Mueller reportedly has three times the evidence against Manafort for that trial.
  1. White House counsel Don McGahn has had at least three interviews with investigators in Mueller’s Russia probe, and is reportedly being very forthcoming.
  2. A federal judge once again upholds the constitutionality of Mueller’s investigation, this time as part of an effort by Russian company Concord Management to invalidate the investigation. This is the fourth time a federal judge has ruled for the legitimacy of the investigation.
  3. Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly said that Mueller has to wrap things up by September in order to avoid violations of a Justice Department rule regarding elections. Both current and former officials disagree, however, and say Mueller can still continue his closed-door investigation and issue subpoenas. Trump wasn’t singing this tune when Comey openly announced an investigation into his opponent 11 days before the 2016 election.
  4. FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich fires Peter Strzok, despite the office that handles disciplinary actions recommending a demotion and suspension. Trump takes credit for firing him in a tweet.
  5. So far, the following notable intelligence or law enforcement agency members have been fired under Trump: Sally Yates, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, H.R. McMaster, Michael Anton, Tom Bossert, Derek Harvey, and Nadia Schadlow. Trump has also repeatedly threatened Jeff Sessions, Rod Rosenstein, and Robert Mueller. That pretty much covers most of the senior officials involved in the Russia investigation.
  6. In a move that seems more petty than strategic, Trump revokes John Brennan’s security clearance, likely because Brennan has been very outspoken about the dangers of Russian interference and critical of the administration’s lack of handling it. Trump is also looking at revoking security clearance for James Clapper, James Comey, Michael Hayden, Sally Yates, Susan Rice, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr. This is highly irregular since intelligence agencies rely on consultations with previous employees who require clearance in order to consult, and sometimes they need to review their old work for testimony.
  7. Just a few weeks before Trump announced Brennan’s clearance being revoked, Russian Artem Klyushin tweeted: “Ex-CIA directors John Brennan and Michael Hayden, ex-FBI director James Komi and his deputy Andrew McCabe, ex-director of the National Intelligence Service James Clapper, ex-national security adviser Susan Rice say goodbye to access to classified materials.” Who told him whose security clearance Trump is reviewing? Or did Russia tell Trump who’s clearance to revoke? So sketchy.
  8. In a scathing op-ed, retired Navy admiral William McRaven, who led the raid on Osama bin Laden, asks Trump to revoke his security clearance, too.
  9. The Treasury hasn’t been forthcoming with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s requests for information that would allow them to follow the money trail in the Russia investigation.
  10. Thirteen former U.S. intelligence heads write a letter in support of Brennan, rebuking Trump for revoking his security clearance. They call it inappropriate and deeply regrettable. By the end of the week, 70 former intelligence officers sign on.
    UPDATE: By Monday, over 175 members of the intelligence community have signed on.
  11. And in case you’re wondering why all this security clearance info is in the “Russia” category, it’s because Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders both connect revoking the security clearance to the Russia investigation. Trump said it in a quick Q&A on the way to his helicopter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it in her White House press briefing, Trump again said it in a Wall Street Journal interview, and then he implied it in a tweet. He also said he’s doing it because they’re “bad people.”
  12. Mueller recommends a jail sentence of 0-6 months for George Papadopoulos.
  13. Rand Paul plans to ask Trump to lift sanctions against certain Russian officials so they can come visit the U.S. later this year.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions says the Justice Department will “vigorously enforce” the law against creating 3D-printed guns “to the fullest extent.”
  2. The West Virginia GOP takes over the state’s Supreme Court by impeaching four justices just after a deadline that would’ve required the justices to be replaced by election in November. Waiting until after that deadline lets the GOP governor appoint all new (presumably GOP) justices. One judge resigned before the deadline, to be replaced by a judge to be elected in November. Not that the judges were behaving, though; they are accused of lavish spending on their offices.
  3. Brett Kavanaugh has the lowest public support of nearly any nominee from the last four administrations. Only 37% support him, while 40% don’t think he should be confirmed.

Healthcare:

  1. Three Arkansas residents file a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the new work requirements for Medicaid in Arkansas.
  2. The CDC is monitoring a measles outbreak across 21 states. With 107 cases reported so far this year, it’s on track to be the worst measles outbreak in a decade. Vaccinate your kids and help save those who are can’t be vaccinated (like infants, the elderly, and people with cancer).
  3. One in six hospital patients is now treated at a Catholic-run hospital, where certain procedures might be limited or prohibited based on religious beliefs. So one in six patients isn’t getting complete care, and I’m not just talking abortions here either.

International:

  1. ISIS is rebounding in Syria and Iraq, with more than 30,000 fighters in those areas.
  2. A 29-year-old Sudanese immigrant in the UK hits pedestrians with his vehicle before ramming it into the barriers at the Palace of Westminster. He didn’t kill anyone, but they’re looking at it as a terrorist incident.
  3. After a bridge collapses in Genoa, Italy, killing at over 40 people, Italy’s deputy prime minister blames the European Union’s budget rules for the lack of maintenance. Even so, Italy’s European allies offer assistance.
  4. Blackwater founder Erik Prince has long been proposing that we privatize military operations in Afghanistan, which both Trump and John Bolton are now considering. Military contractors would report directly to Trump. So we’re looking at a group of mercenaries accountable only to Trump. What could go wrong?
    Background: You might remember Blackwater from the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Iraq where their mercenaries killed innocent civilians and then lied about being fired on first. Even one of their own allegedly pointed his gun at his fellow mercenaries in an attempt to get them to stop shooting. Five of these operatives have since been convicted or pleaded guilty, and just recently got their charges reduced.
  5. The White House is trying to use an obscure budget rule to cancel $3 billion in foreign aid.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The DHS Inspector General opens an investigation into the department’s Quiet Skies program. Under this 2010 TSA program, DHS surveils travelers in airports whether or not they’re suspected of a crime or on a watch list.
  2. A class-action lawsuit brought by the ACLU reveals that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has been conspiring with ICE in bait-and-switch stings. At least 17 people thought they were going to routine green-card interviews at CIS, but were instead greeted by, and subsequently arrested by, ICE.
  3. Los Angeles turns down hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the Department of Homeland Security that would’ve helped target extremism. The problem with the money is that DHS wants the funds to go toward fighting Muslim extremism, which isn’t a problem in Los Angeles. Los Angeles wants to target white supremacist extremism, which actually is a problem.
  4. The White House fires Darren Beattie, a speech writer, for his connections with white supremacists and his writings in support of white supremacy.
  5. Steven Miller’s uncle writes an op-ed denouncing Miller’s views on race and immigration, calling him a hypocrite because their family came to the U.S. using family-based immigration. Miller is the architect behind some of Trump’s most restrictive and cruel immigration policies.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump plans to further weaken Obama’s Clean Power Plan by allowing states to set their own standards for coal-burning power plants. More to come on this next week.
  2. A federal court orders a full environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline project before the project can continue across Nebraska. Nebraskan landowners and tribal members have joined together to fight the pipeline.
  3. Despite scientific evidence otherwise, Ryan Zinke says that the role of humans in climate change is unknown. In a separate interview, Zinke blames California’s wildfires on environmental terrorist groups and says climate change isn’t to blame.
  4. And speaking of Zinke, he’s hired one of his high-school football teammates, Steve Howke, to oversee the review process for climate change research funding. Howke has been holding up funding, forcing these projects to undergo unprecedented review processes. He also has no background in science or climate issues, and holds only a degree in business administration.
  5. The Fish and Wildlife Service adds the once-common rusty patched bumblebee to the endangered species list. It’s the first bumblebee species to officially be endangered.
  6. A judge orders the Trump administration to immediately implement the Obama-era Chemical Disaster Rule, which was created in response to an explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas.
  7. Newly released documents show that the EPA ignored its own scientific research when the agency claimed that freezing fuel efficiency standards in automobiles would save lives. Their reasoning was based on flawed models, which will help states when they fight back against freezing standards.

Budget/Economy:

  1. After making a BFD of his signing of the defense authorization bill this week, Trump signs a statement saying several (around 50) of the statutes in the bill are unconstitutional limits on his presidential powers. One of those statutes bans military funding for anything supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
  2. Turkey raises tariffs on U.S. imports.
  3. Trump asks the SEC to look into reducing companies’ required reporting from quarterly to half-yearly. He says business leaders told him that would reduce pressure on them and give them more flexibility. Economists say maybe, but less transparency into business operations is not good for consumers or investors.
  4. Over the past 40 years, CEO compensation for major corporations has grown 1070%. Average worker compensation, by comparison, has grown 11%.
  5. The U.S. and Mexico are reportedly close to an agreement on NAFTA. Maybe.
  6. The U.S. and China plan to come back to the negotiating table after walking away amid trade wars. However, the U.S. delegation doesn’t have a unified message or goal, and there’s doubt that Trump has a specific goal in mind. There is no one point person who has the authorization to speak for Trump even if he did have a goal.
    Background: Trump fixates on trade deficits, which he doesn’t seem to fully grasp. Trade deficits are a reflection of countries’ growth rates, currency values, and investments, among other things. It’s not a straight-up win/lose equation, but sometimes a trade deficit means you’re winning.
  7. Sarah Huckabee Sanders apologizes for saying that Trump has created three times as many jobs for African Americans in 20 months as Obama did in eight years. She said 195,000 black workers found employment under Obama when it was actually 3 million. 700,000 black workers found work in the first 20 months under Trump.

Elections:

  1. Bobby Goodlatte, the son of House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), is working to get a Democrat elected to his father’s seat. Bobby tweets, “I’m deeply embarrassed that Peter Strzok’s career was ruined by my father’s political grandstanding. That committee hearing was a low point for Congress.”
  2. Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer concedes the GOP gubernatorial primary to Kris Kobach. Kobach has instituted several voter ID laws that were struck down by the court. In fact, his court showing is so poor that a judge ordered him to go back to lawyer school.
  3. Voting rights organizations sue Arizona’s secretary of state over violations of the National Voter Registration Act. The secretary hasn’t been updating addresses in accordance with the federal “motor voter” requirements, which say each state must update a voter’s address information whenever their address on their driver’s license changes. This has resulted in thousands of votes being discarded.
  4. Whoopsies! The Treasury accidentally violates federal campaign laws by retweeting Trump’s tweet predicting a “red wave” for November’s midterms. It’s a violation of the Hatch Act, which says federal employees can’t engage in political activity while serving in an official capacity. I’m not clear, then, why it’s OK for Trump to tweet about it.
  5. A Georgia county plans to close 3/4 of their polling locations, mostly in black communities. The same thing happened in Alabama just before last year’s Senate elections, and it took a huge effort to make sure black voters were able get to the polls.
  6. Dr. Hans Keirstead, one of the democratic candidates running against Dana Rohrabacher for Congress, was hacked during the primaries. Keirstead lost out on the second position in the top-two primary to another democratic candidate by 125 votes. Law enforcement doesn’t know where the hacks came from.
  7. And the political ads are back. GOP super PACs are gearing up for the November midterms by unleashing a series of ads against several Democrats in tight districts. I’m sure it won’t be long before Democratic PACs do the same, so now’s a good time for my reminder that ALL POLITICAL ADS ARE LIES DESIGNED TO MANIPULATE YOU. DO NOT BASE YOUR VOTE ON ADS.
  8. And speaking of ads, Google posts a searchable library of political ads along with information about who funded the ads and who the ads target. They’ll update this weekly so you’ll have ready information about who is saying what.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Omarosa Manigault-Newman releases another taped conversation about her firing, this one with Trump where he professes to not know she was being fired and where he sounds perplexed that she might be leaving.
  2. Omarosa releases a taped conversation where Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, offered her hush money after she left the White House. Lara told her the money would come from political donations.
  3. Trump sues Omarosa for violating her nondisclosure agreement, which many legal experts say isn’t enforceable in this case anyway. Oh. And he also calls her a dog.
  4. Omarosa claims to have over 200 recorded conversations, and she’s trickling them out one at a time (to sell her book of course).
  5. Trump has forced several of his White House staff into signing non-disclosure agreements, but most legal experts say they can’t be enforced.
  6. Trump signs a defense bill named in honor of John McCain and refuses to mention McCain’s name during the signing. But he criticizes McCain just hours later at a fundraiser.
  7. This isn’t political, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it. Over 300 Catholic clergy in Pennsylvania are accused of molesting over 1,000 child victims. The church has been involved in a massive coverup of the whole thing for 70 years. There’s another scandal like this bubbling up in Chile as well.
  8. Twitter still won’t go all in with a ban on Alex Jones, but it did suspend him for a week over a recent post.
  9. The FCC shuts down Alex Jones‘ radio station and fines it $15,000. I wish they could shut him down for being a liar, conspiracy nut, and provoker of violence, but they shut him down for operating without a license.
  10. In their first execution in over 20 years, Nebraska becomes the first state to use fentanyl for a death penalty lethal injection.
  11. Trump cancels his military parade due to the high costs. Even though local officials have been trying to explain the costs to him, he blames them for inflating costs.
  12. The National Park Service, under Ryan Zinke’s direction, wants to charge protestors for demonstrating in our capital. AFAIK, cities don’t charge demonstrators because it’s a violation of their first amendment rights. If you have an opinion on this, you can comment here: https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=NPS-2018-0007

Week 80 in Trump

Posted on August 7, 2018 in Politics, Trump

The big story in the news this week has been the trial of Paul Manafort, Trump’s one-time campaign manager. Though Trump says Manafort barely worked with the campaign, Manafort was there for four months, nearly a third of the campaign. Manafort’s associate, Rick Gates, worked with the campaign much longer and through the transition. Rick Gates was testifying in Manafort’s case as I was writing this, and his testimony was pretty juicy. I’ll round that up in next week’s recap.

Here’s what happened in week 80…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. I’m not sure how I missed this story from April, but Wisconsin officials admit that their strong voter ID laws gave Republicans a boost in the 2016 elections.
  2. Trump criticized China for being a currency manipulator and then criticized the Fed for raising interest rates. The value of the dollar dropped shortly thereafter.

Russia:

  1. Paul Manafort’s trial gets off to a fast start, with the jury picked and opening statements delivered all on the first day. Here are the highlights:
    • Accountants and vendors for Manafort testify about his lavish spending and faked invoices, though it’s not clear what those invoices mean.
    • Accountants testify about falsified profit and loss statements for Manafort’s company, that Manafort was broke in 2016, and that he was falsifying his worth and income on bank documents to obtain loans.
    • In addition to bank fraud, accountants testify about alleged tax fraud.
    • Vendors testify that Manafort paid them with wire transfers from an account in Cyprus, a method few, if any, of their other clients used.
  1. Trump’s lawyers brief him on the latest developments in the Mueller investigation, which appears to include evidence of obstruction of justice along with testimony that contradicts Trump’s claims around Michael Flynn’s firing.
  2. Hours later, Trump tells Jeff Sessions in a tweet to shut down the Mueller investigation. Notably, Trump is in the middle of an investigation where Mueller is looking at his tweets for evidence of obstruction.
  3. White House staff say he was just stating his opinion, though staff has previously said we should take Trump’s tweets as his official word.
  4. Trump’s story line has evolved from “there was no collusion” to “collusion is not a crime” to “fire Mueller.”
  5. The Spanish police give the FBI recordings of their wiretaps on Alexander Torshin. Torshin was one of the Russians present at the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. in Trump Tower before the 2016 elections.
  6. Trump tweets that the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting between Trump Jr., campaign staff, and Russian lawyers was to get information on an opponent. This is something they’ve been denying since news of the meeting came out.
  7. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who has previously denied Russian meddling in our elections, now says that democracy is “in the cross hairs.” She and several other officials say they’ll defend our elections from Russian threats.
  8. We learn that the day after Trump interviewed Mueller for the FBI Director role to replace James Comey, Mueller took the job as special counsel in the Russia probe. The move took both Trump and Jeff Sessions by surprise.
  9. A federal judge rules that Andrew Miller, a former aide to Roger Stone, must testify to Mueller’s grand jury.
  10. Facebook has already detected political interference campaigns for the midterm elections, and has remove several accounts as a result. While they say the methods are similar to those used by Russia in 2016, they have not definitively linked those accounts to Russia.
  11. The Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approves releasing documents related to Russian agent Maria Butina.
  12. Mueller refers three investigations related to Manafort to New York prosecutors. The cases all involve foreign lobbying from Manafort’s work with Ukraine, and include both Democrat and Republican lobbyists.
  13. Russia has long tried to use Red Notices (kind of an international arrest warrant) against Russian dissidents. The U.S. typically ignores these notices because Russia is notorious for abusing dissidents, but under Trump, both the DOJ and DHS have been facilitating extraditions based on these notices.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rules that Trump’s executive order to punish sanctuary cities by withholding federal funds is unconstitutional. However, they also ruled that the original court went too far in issuing a nationwide block on the order.
  2. The Justice Department concedes that Trump was lying when he told Congress that the majority of people convicted of terrorism or terrorist-related activities since 9/11 came from abroad. The DOJ says they have no records to support that.
  3. The National Archives can’t deliver all the requested documents related to Brett Kavanaugh until October, but Republicans still think they’ll start confirmation hearings in September. Note that these are the same types of documents requested for Justice Kagan, who (like Kavanaugh) once worked in the White House.
  4. Mitch McConnell tells Democrats to back off their document requests on Kavanaugh or he’ll let the confirmation slip until right before the elections, which would interfere with their re-election campaigns.

Healthcare:

  1. A Koch-backed study from the Mercatus Center found that while Bernie Sander’s Medicare for All plan would cost the federal government an additional $32 trillion over 10 years, it would also save the U.S. overall $2 trillion in healthcare costs over the same period.
  2. The Trump administration continues to kill the ACA with death by a thousand cuts. They issue rules reinstating short-term skimpy insurance policies that don’t cover all the conditions required by the ACA, that can cap how much they pay each year, and that can deny consumers with pre-existing conditions. This is expected to push premiums up for other policy holders.

International:

  1. U.S. officials have been quietly talking to the Taliban since November to find ways to bring the 17-year war in Afghanistan to a peaceful end.
  2. Spy satellites show increased activity at the factory in North Korea where they produced their first ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles). The country also continues developing nuclear fuel.
  3. Mike Pompeo warned Russia not to help North Korea get around the UN sanctions that even Russia voted for.
  4. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong says North Korea is still committed to the summit agreement from June, but he also criticizes the White House for maintaining sanctions.
  5. The Treasury Department sanctions two Turkish officials over a U.S. pastor who has been detained there since October 2016. The pastor is accused of being a spy and trying to overthrow the government.

Family Separation:

  1. After a lawyer tweets about it, there are rumors that a child died in ICE custody. It was later corrected to say the child died after being released, but there is still no verification of this.
  2. A U.S. health official testifies that Trump’s administration was warned ahead of time about the harmful and long-term effects on children’s wellbeing caused by separating families at the border. The administration knew the effects. The official’s exact words:
    “Separation of children from their parents entails significant harm to children…. there’s no question that separation of children from parents entails significant potential for traumatic psychological injury to the child,”
  3. In an interview, Ivanka calls the family separation at the border a low point in the White House, and says that she is vehemently against it.
  4. The Trump administration tries to put the responsibility for finding and reuniting immigrant families on the ACLU and other organizations helping immigrant families. A federal judge isn’t letting them abdicate responsibility though, saying that the government bears the full responsibility to fix this.
  5. The same judge calls the administration’s reunification plan disappointing.
  6. The judge will also order the administration to appoint a single person to oversee the entire reunification process. He reminds us that every parent who isn’t found means a permanently orphaned child who is 100% the responsibility of Trump’s administration.
  7. A judge finds that the Shiloh Treatment Center in Texas violated the laws around detention of minors and orders the transfer of all but the most troubled immigrant children to other facilities. Allegedly, the center was giving children psychotropic drugs.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. At a time when Trump has ended Temporary Protected Status for 5,300 Nicaraguans here in the U.S., the UN asks nations to take in the thousands of refugees fleeing Nicaragua after five months of government crackdowns on people protesting changes to their social security system. So tens of thousands are fleeing Nicaragua while Trump is working to deport people who live in the U.S. back to Nicaragua.
  2. A federal judge upholds his order to fully restore DACA. He had set a deadline for the administration to argue against his previous ruling, but their arguments apparently don’t satisfy the judge. Again.
  3. Jeff Sessions announces a new Religious Liberty Task Force to enforce his 2017 order to interpret religious liberty very broadly when enforcing federal law. For example, that memo states that the IRS can’t threaten an organization’s tax-exempt status even if they actively lobby for a political candidate, a violation of the Johnson Amendment. I wonder how well this will hold up the first time they’re forced to defend a mosque?
  4. In the announcement, Sessions says that this is needed in order to fight the growing dangers of secularism (which, by the way, is also protected under freedom of religion).
  5. After his speech, Sessions turns the floor over to Catholic Archbishop Joseph Kurtz. Kurtz is known for advocating against same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws for the LGBTQ community.
  6. Trump is thinking about drastically reducing the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. down to 25,000. This would be the smallest number we’ve admitted since the refugee program started in 1980.

Climate/EPA:

  1. In another attempt to undermine Obama’s climate change regulations, the administration freezes federal fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. The proposal also rolls back California’s long-standing waiver, which is more than the automobile industry wants. Expect lawsuits from environmentalists, consumer groups, states, and automakers, all of whom oppose this proposal.
  2. Members of regulated industries have warned Trump to slow down his deregulation, saying that narrow regulations are better than no regulation. But Trump isn’t taking that advice, which has resulted in several lawsuits and business uncertainty around regulations.
  3. We’re having a global heat wave, with the Arctic Circle reaching 90 degrees, and fires hitting the Arctic Circle in parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia.
  4. 2017 was either the second or third hottest year on record (depending on the data set you use), and it was the hottest non-El Niño year on record. 2017’s La Niña didn’t regulate the temperature as much is normal for a La Niña year.
  5. Warmer oceans caused the sea level to rise for the sixth straight year (it’s risen for 22 of the last 24 years). Warmer oceans also caused sea ice at both poles to hit record lows.
  6. The Trump administration rescinds an Obama regulation barring the use of certain pesticides linked to the problem of declining bee populations.
  7. Conservationists sue the Trump administration over the pro-hunting international council established by Ryan Zinke last fall (I don’t know how I missed that one!). By law, the council, named the International Wildlife Conservation Council, must be made up of a balanced mix of advisors, but most members are pro-hunting industry reps or recreational hunters. The week the council was created, Trump reversed the ban on importing hunting trophies ( a decision that was reversed and then reversed again).
  8. Levi Strauss & Co. commits to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90% in all their facilities and by 40% throughout their supply chain.
  9. Trump tweets baseless claims against California governor Jerry Brown and bad environmental laws, blaming the wildfires on California. He doesn’t seem to understand water policies nor the effects of climate change and drought.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The Trump administration is considering another tax reduction, this time for people who get a lot of income from capital gains on investments. They’re looking into whether it would require congressional approval.
  2. Trump said earlier this year that he would work on major cuts for the middle class, but the wealthy would benefit most from a cut to capital gains taxes (the top 5% of households owns about 67% of stocks and mutual funds). We’re also looking at record deficits in the coming years, and this would make those worse.
  3. Even though we added fewer jobs than expected last month (157,000), the unemployment rate still edged down to 3.9%.
  4. Wage gains reach their highest level since before the great recession, rising 2.7% over a year ago. The cost of living rose 2.9% over the same period.
  5. The minimum wage for retail workers is rising, but pay for more experienced retail workers is not.
  6. Companies continue to buy back stocks with their tax breaks instead of investing in their employees.
  7. American auto makers are speeding up their plans to invest in R&D and factories in China due to the trade wars. This could give China the edge in the future when it comes to new automotive technologies.
  8. A recent UBS Wealth Management poll gives some interesting insight into tariffs:
    • 71% of business owners want more tariffs. Even though most think there could be negative effects on the economy, many think it would be good for their business. Most business owners focus on U.S. markets, so they likely think tariffs on foreign goods would be a boon for them.
    • Just over half of high net worth investors support more tariffs on China, while less than half support tariffs on other countries.
    • Americans in general see tariffs as harmful to the economy.
  1. Taxes and tax withholding payments are about $1.75 trillion so far this year, only down about 1% from last year but also below the predicted tax revenue.
  2. The Treasury says they’ll borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, a big increase from last year’s $519 billion. This is the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and is largely because of the expected decrease in tax revenue from last year’s GOP tax reform.
  3. The Treasury will increase the amount of bond auctions to help fund the government. The budget deficit is growing rapidly, and the Economic Outlook Group doesn’t see an end to trillion-dollar deficits.
  4. The government isn’t alone in their borrowing; corporations have also taken on record debt because of the low cost of borrowing
  5. Under Trump, governmental watchdog agencies have drastically reduced enforcement of penalties imposed on corporations caught violating rules and regulations. The only agency to increase fines in 2017 was the Office of Foreign Assets Control.”
  6. China and the U.S. no longer seem to be negotiating an end to the trade war and both countries are threatening new tariffs.
  7. Two of the biggest steel manufacturers in America, Nucor and United States Steel, have blocked requests from 100s of American companies to exempt them from Trump’s steel tariffs and let them buy foreign steel.
  8. DHS takes away $750 million in funding for Coast Guard ice breakers for the Arctic and directs it to Trump’s border wall instead. Meanwhile, Russia is investing heavily in ice breakers for the Arctic, which is rich in national resources. Russia is also expanding its military there.
  9. The Senate increases the 2019 military budget by $82 billion, the second largest increase in modern history. The largest was the increase during the buildup to the Iraq war.

Elections:

  1. Even though U.S. intelligence agencies are raising red flags about election interference from Russia, Senate Republicans filibuster a Democratic proposal to help states upgrade their voting systems.
  2. After receiving documents produced by Trump’s voter fraud commission (per a court order), commission member Matthew Dunlap says there was no fraud found. Dunlap had to go through the court system to get the docs because Kris Kobach wouldn’t share them with Democrats on the commission. Dunlap says that after reviewing around 8,000 documents, the purpose of the commission actually seemed to be to validate Trump’s claims of voter fraud after the election. He also says this was one of the most bizarre things he’s ever been a part of.
  3. In a small hit against Citizens United, a federal judge invalidates an FEC regulation that allows donors to certain non-profits to remain anonymous. This regulation has contributed to a massive increase in so-called dark-money contributions to PACs.
  4. Trump tweets support for a Republican candidate for Congress who is no longer on the ballot.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Downloading the schematics for 3D printable guns is legal. And then it isn’t. After speaking with NRA leaders, Trump says these guns don’t make sense.
  2. After the Koch network says it won’t support North Dakota Senate candidate Kevin Cramer over his Democratic opponent Heidi Heitkamp, Trump calls the Kochs a joke in Republican circles. Even though they prop up pretty much all the Republican circles.
  3. Jim Acosta once again gets harassed by Trump supporters at a rally in Tampa, FL, during a live shot. Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Trump doesn’t support violence against anyone… forgetting almost every previous rally.
  4. In her press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders refuses to say whether she thinks the press is really the enemy of the people.
  5. The conspiracy group QAnon shows up en force at the Tampa rally. QAnon might seem fringe and somewhat harmless, but they’ve moved from the web to real life, sometimes showing up at places that the anonymous “Q” has mentioned in his baseless conspiracy theories.
  6. The TSA is thinking about getting rid of security screenings at over 150 small to medium airports around the U.S.
  7. Trump Jr. says the Democratic platform is similar to the Nazi Party platform and that history classes are biased against conservatives. Actual source documents from the time show that Hitler hijacked the National Socialist German Workers Party in its infancy and then based their platform on racism and the idea of Aryan superiority. The Democratic platform is closer to the Social Democratic platform, as you can see here and here.
  8. In a lawsuit the NRA is fighting with the state of New York, the NRA claims it’s running out of money because insurers and lenders won’t work with them. They say they might not be able to exist much longer.
  9. Meanwhile, proponents of common-sense gun reform rally and march on Saturday in the March on the NRA.
  10. Franklin Haney, who donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, had agreed to pay Michael Cohen $10 million if he could get help Haney get governmental approval on a $5 billion loan for a nuclear power plant in Alabama. The loan is still pending, but the agreement is off. Obviously.
  11. After Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify removed some Alex Jones content from their sites, Apple removed almost the entire Alex Jones and InfoWars library from iTunes. Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube have all now removed most of their Alex Jones content or suspended the accounts due to violations of their rules about hate speech.
  12. Antifa and the far right clash in Portland during a Patriot Prayer “Freedom March” in support of Joey Gibson, who is their founder and is running for U.S. Senate. I’m still not clear if the march had any purpose other than to promote Gibson’s run for Senate.
  13. After the Parkland shootings, Florida passed a red-flag gun law, which means that courts can remove guns from people who are deemed a threat to themselves or others. So far, Florida has ordered over 450 people to surrender their weapons.
  14. After LeBron James opens a public school that will serve around 240 at-risk students and their parents, Trump criticizes James’ intellect on Twitter. And then Melania’s office praises James. Trump’s tweet was triggered when James said that Trump uses sports to divide us. On top of opening this school, James will also cover local college tuition for its graduates.
  15. Pope Francis breaks with tradition and calls for the entire world to abolish the death penalty.
  16. Hope Hicks is back in the picture, seen boarding Air Force One near the Trump Bedminster resort where Trump was staying.
  17. During an on-air call with C-SPAN, a Trump supporter threatens to shoot journalists Don Lemon and Brian Stelter.

Polls:

  1. There’s a 77 percentage-point gap between Democratic and Republican approval of Trump, the most polarized gap since Eisenhower.

Week 79 in Trump

Posted on July 30, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Credit: gguy/Shutterstock

Despite Trump’s spectacular tweet storm on Sunday, it was a relatively quiet week as far as political news. Maybe we’ll get a little summer break from political chaos for the next few weeks. Here’s what happened last week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Four members of the Homeland Security Advisory Committee resign, saying that they can no longer be associated with Trump’s immigration policies and calling the practice of family separation “morally repugnant.”

Russia:

  1. Even though Robert Mueller’s investigation has so far resulted in 32 indictments, 5 guilty pleas, and over 100 charges, this happens:
    • Sarah Huckabee Sanders calls Robert Mueller’s investigation a “hoax and a waste or time.”
    • Trump tweets that Russia’s interference in the election was “all a big hoax” (though last week he said that he concurs with our intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference in our election).
    • Then, even though it’s all a big hoax, Trump blames Obama for letting Russian interference in our election happen. He also wonders why Obama didn’t tell his campaign, though both the Clinton and Trump campaigns were warned about it.
  1. Carter Page has been downplaying his ties with Russian officials, but in a 2013 letter, he says he worked as an informal advisor to Kremlin staff.
  2. The judge in Paul Manafort’s trial grants immunity to five witnesses as requested by Mueller. The judge also orders that all witness names be made public (there are 30 prospective witnesses). The trial begins at the end of the month.
  3. Trump says that he thinks Russia will meddle in our midterm elections, but this time to help get Democrats elected because Trump’s been so tough on Russia. Despite his soft stance toward Putin, he has taken more actions against Russia than previous administrations (albeit grudgingly in many cases).
  4. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testifies to a senate committee about our Russia policy, including the actions taken by the administration (213 sanctions, weapons sales to Ukraine, 60 diplomats expelled, and Russian facilities closed). Pompeo refuses to discuss what was said in Trump’s meeting with Putin.
  5. Just before Pompeo’s testimony, the State Department restated their non-recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
  6. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Banking Committee schedule hearings to find out what was agreed upon in the Trump and Putin summit.
  7. Trump postpones Putin’s visit in the fall, blaming the Russia “witch hunt.” Soon after, Putin invites Trump to Moscow.
  8. The White House releases an edited transcript of the summit, omitting key questions. The Kremlin releases yet a different edited version that also omits key information. The White House later corrects their record.
  9. Eleven GOP members of the House, including Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, bring articles of impeachment against Rod Rosenstein, demanding a vote. House leadership and other members criticize this action, and the sponsors end up pulling their demand for a vote.
  10. According to “sources,” Michael Cohen says that Trump knew about the Russian offer that led to the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower before the 2016 elections. Cohen also says that Trump approved the meeting. Steve Bannon and Sam Nunberg have both said they think Trump knew about the meeting.
  11. Trump says he did not know about the meeting; Cohen says he’s willing to testify otherwise.
  12. Newly surfaced emails show that the Russian lawyer from the above meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is more closely linked to Russian government officials than she has let on.
  13. Russian hackers have been hacking into electric utility companies in the U.S.
  14. Elliot Broidy and Tom Barrack (a Trump friend and business associate) paid Rick Gates over $300,000 for help navigating Trump’s administration. Gates has plead guilty to fraud and lying to investigators.
  15. Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr (R-NC) contradicts his counterpart in the House, Devin Nunes, saying that the Carter Page warrant was based on solid intel.
  16. After Maria Butina’s arrest for espionage, Democratic senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee request an investigation into whether the NRA knew Russia was trying to funnel money through them to Trump’s campaign.
  17. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (D-Calif.) had dinner last year with Butina. Two years before that, Butina arranged a meeting between Rohrabacher and Alexander Torshin.
  18. Russian hackers are already at work in the 2018 midterm election. In August 2017, they attempted to hack into Claire McCaskill’s servers after Trump visited her state and encouraged crowds to vote her out of office.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions addresses a high school leadership summit, and joins in with the students in chanting “Lock her up!” He later says that in retrospect, he should’ve taken that moment to talk to the students about due process instead.
  2. A circuit court rules that the 2nd amendment does give us the right to open carry firearms for self defense. A previous ruling found that the 2nd amendment does NOT protect concealed carry.
  3. For the second time, a federal judge refuses to dismiss an emoluments lawsuit against Trump.

Healthcare:

  1. Kentucky reinstates the dental and vision benefits that the state took away from a half million Medicaid recipients several weeks ago. Outrage from local Democrats and local media pushed them to reverse their decision.
  2. Two things this week will affect privatization of veterans’ healthcare:
    • Trump creates a commission to review Veterans Administration facilities with the possible end goal of shutting down several. The commission will be able to make final decisions on this without congressional approval.
    • Congress provides more funding for the Veteran’s Choice Program, which is a vehicle to privatized healthcare. Putting more money there takes it away from the VA and starts a vicious cycle of underfunding VA facilities which could lead the above commission to shut them down.
  1. On rumors of pretty massive increases in premiums next year, the Trump administration will resume paying the risk adjustment payments to health insurers that he canceled just a few weeks ago.

International:

  1. After Iran’s President Rouhani warns the U.S. about starting any conflict, Trump threatens Iran in a tweet with “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED.”
  2. The Pentagon plans to send another $200 million to help the Ukraine fight off pro-Russian separatists. This is seen as a reaction to the Trump/Putin press conference in Helsinki.
  3. A recent review of international agreements concludes that countries are in compliance with these agreements about 77% of the time. So it seems these agreements do actually work.
  4. Keeping Kim Jong Un’s word to Trump, North Korea returns the remains of 55 people believed to be American soldiers from the Korean War. The country still hasn’t slowed down it’s nuclear activity though.
  5. The White House says they won’t publish conversations between Trump and other world leaders anymore.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Four Republican representatives accuse Twitter of “shadow banning” them, which is when either their posts don’t show up on other people’s newsfeeds or don’t show up in searches. Twitter says they don’t do that. Note that all four have posted incendiary or false stories.

Family Separation:

  1. While the administration scrambles to meet their court-ordered deadline to reunite families they separated at the border, they say over 700 families can’t be reunited. They also say that 463 of the parents were likely deported without their children.
  2. For these 463, the administration failed to document consent for most of them, so there’s no way that they can prove that any documents were signed consenting to being deported without their children.
  3. And as an example of what makes a family ineligible to be reunited, the administration refuses to reunite a child with her grandmother because the grandmother isn’t the child’s parent. Please.
  4. United Airlines donates flights to help reunite families that were separated at the border and who are now being forced to pay reunification costs incurred by the administration.
  5. A judge orders the Trump administration to provide assistance and information to lawyers who are working to reunite these families.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Documents released as part of a lawsuit show that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross lied about the origin of the new citizenship question on the 2020 census. Ross says the DOJ initially requested the question, but the documents show that it was Ross who was pushing for it.
  2. A judge rules that a lawsuit against the administration for adding the citizenship question to the census can move forward.
  3. A group of 36 people sue the Trump administration over the recently upheld Muslim ban saying that the waiver process is a sham. The 36 people represent all five of the Muslim-majority countries included in the ban.

Climate/EPA:

  1. While working to decrease the size of our national monuments, the Trump administration suppressed research that shows that national monuments boost both tourism and archaeological finds. Instead, Ryan Zinke emphasized ranch, logging, and energy development.
  2. A federal appeals court blocks the administration’s second try at stopping a climate change lawsuit. This lawsuit was brought by a group of children who say that the government is endangering their future by not doing enough about climate change.
  3. A federal appeals court also blocks one of Scott Pruitt’s last policy changes that would have lifted limits of sales of so-called super-polluting semi trucks.
  4. Democrats and conservationists in the House block the GOP’s attempt to suspend endangered species protections for certain birds and insects.

Budget/Economy:

  1. It sounds like Russia is giving up on the American economy. They’ve been buying gold and selling off U.S. Treasury bonds. Their bond ownership is around 1/6 what it used to be.
  2. Unexplainable, right? Whirlpool’s stock takes a dive. Whirlpool initially pushed Trump into harsher tariffs, but they’re blaming their stock drop on the resulting high prices of aluminum and steel. Their CEO says the high prices are unexplainable.
  3. According to the North Dakota Trade office, all of China’s firm orders for food-grade soybeans have been cancelled due to tariffs. Farmers won’t see effects from this immediately, but future harvests will be hit.
  4. The economy grew 4.1% in the second quarter of this year, the highest rate of growth since 2014 when it hit 5.2% under Obama. Economists think that the growth is due in part to the tax stimulus and in part to increased spending before the tariffs went into effect. (And in case you think this proves Trump is better for the economy, growth hit 4% under Obama four times.)
  5. Don Jr. says economic growth never passed 2% under Obama. Except that it did. 15 times.
  6. Facebook stock tanks on the low number of active users, and Twitter stock tanks after they purge thousands of fake accounts.
  7. Trump considers 25% tariffs on $200 billion of foreign-made cars, and when even Republicans criticize the idea, he says we just need to trust his business acumen.
  8. Trump meets with European Commission President Juncker where they agree to work toward zero tariffs on trade, reduce barriers to trade, and increase trade in certain sectors. They also agree to establish a working group to figure out the details.
  9. Trump backs away from this tariff threats against the EU, and the EU backs down from threats of retaliatory tariffs.
  10. There are reports that Juncker used colorful flashcards as a way to simplify complex issues and to explain global trade policy to Trump.
  11. Trump says he’s willing to force a government shutdown ahead of the September spending bill deadline if he doesn’t get what he wants on immigration, including funding for the border wall.
  12. Right after tweeting that tariffs are the greatest, the Trump administration announces a $12 billion assistance package to help farmers who might be hurt by the tariffs. Trump tells farmers to be patient, and not to believe what they see and hear right now.
  13. Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) says this bailout shows that Trump has too much power and that Congress needs to reassert its power. He also says that tariffs are a tax paid by the American people, and Trump is using that tax to bail out farmers.
  14. Coca-Cola says they’ll increase prices due to rising costs from the tariffs.
  15. Current measures indicate that the price changes caused by the trade war are temporary and should return to close to normal in a year or two.

Elections:

  1. Here’s an illustration of why we need to end gerrymandering. In emails disclosed as part of a lawsuit, Republican officials in Michigan brag about gerrymandering and celebrate sticking it to Democrats. The emails talk about concentrating “Dem garbage” into certain Democrat controlled districts, and about concentrating African Americans into a specific House district in Detroit. They even describe one of the oddly shaped districts as being like a finger, essentially flipping off that district’s Democratic representative.
  2. States purged 16 million voters from their rolls from 2014 to 2016, an increase from previous periods. The greatest rates of increase were in areas that were under federal watch for having previously violated the Voting Rights Act. In at least eight states, the purges violated the Voting Rights Act or were otherwise not legal.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump weighs stripping former officials who criticize him of their security clearances. This is an unusual move by any administration, and could hamper their ability to do consulting work on classified projects. It seems Rand Paul pushed him on this one.
  2. The Senate confirms Robert Wilkes to head the VA.
  3. Someone leaks a tape of a conversation between Michael Cohen and Trump where they discuss purchasing Karen McDougal’s story about her affair with Trump from American Media to prevent the story from getting out before the 2016 election.
  4. New York’s Department of Taxation and Finance opens an investigation into Trump’s foundation over whether it violated state tax laws.
  5. Ivanka shuts down her clothing line to focus on her work in Washington and also because conflicts of interest between her business and her government work are getting in the way.
  6. Apparently there’s a standing rule on Air Force One that all TVs be tuned to Fox News while Trump’s on board. He has a little tantrum when Melania’s TV is on CNN.
  7. Betsy DeVos eliminates Obama-era regulations that required for-profit colleges to be able to show proof that their claims of graduate employment are accurate. This rule protected students from being tricked into thinking that graduates of a school are more employable than they actually are.
  8. Vandals untie one of DeVos’s 10 yachts, releasing it from it’s dock in Ohio. Which is how we learn that her yacht is registered under the Cayman Island flag. Why is that?
  9. Trump criticizes the FCC for slowing down the merge between Sinclair Broadcasting and Tribune Media.
  10. Someone vandalizes Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a pickaxe for the second time.
  11. Fox News fires The Five host Kimberly Guilfoyle for sexual misconduct and abusive conduct. Side note: Guilfoyle is dating Don Jr.
  12. Karma bitches. Facebook suspends Alex Jones for bullying and hate speech.YouTube removes four of his videos and suspends him from live-streaming for three months.
  13. Emails surface that show that police in Ohio had been planning to arrest Stormy Daniels for months before her scheduled performance.
  14. After a meeting with the publisher of the New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, Trump tweets that they had a very good meeting and talked about the high volume of fake news put out by the mainstream media. Sulzberger’s response: “I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous.” “
  15. So then Trump accuses the media of having “Trump derangement syndrome.”

Polls:

  1. 71% of voters think Roe v. Wade should not be overturned.
  2. 51% think Russia has something on Trump, with Republicans being the only category of voter that doesn’t think so (categories include things like gender, party, education, age, race, and so on).
  3. 52% say Trump’s summit with Putin was a failure for Trump; 27% say it was a success.
  4. 73% say the summit was a success for Putin.
  5. 78% say Trump should defend all our NATO allies.
  6. 68% are concerned about Trump’s relationship with Russia.
  7. Trump’s approval rating fell to 38% after the Russia summit.
  8. Two groups give Trump clear support: Republicans at 82%, and white evangelical Christians at 71%.
  9. 58% of voters disapprove of Trump’s foreign policy, with 51% saying that he‘s weakened our position as leader of the free world.

 

Week 76 in Trump

Posted on July 9, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Was your Member of Congress in Russia?

Thankfully it was a short news week with the 4th of July holiday falling right in the middle, but that didn’t stop the government from working. GOP Members of Congress traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian officials (over the 4th? weird); Pompeo met with North Korean officials; children are still separated from their parents at the border (surprisingly there was no plan to reunite them); Scott Pruitt retired; and let the trade wars begin.

Here’s what happened last week. I’m sure I missed things, so if you notice something, let me know.

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Paul Manafort’s personal assistant was the person who gave the FBI access to the storage locker where they found evidence in the case against Manafort. Manafort is now trying to have that evidence suppressed, but the assistant was likely within his rights to provide access.

Russia:

  1. Michael Cohen replaces his legal team with Lanny Davis, a former Clinton White House spokesperson and special counsel.
  2. Mueller is looking into whether Russian nationals used the NRA to illegally funnel funds to the Trump campaign.
  3. Mueller expands his team of prosecutors.
  4. Paul Manafort is spending much of his time in custody in solitary confinement for his own safety.
  5. Ahead of Trump’s upcoming visit with Putin, a delegation of GOP Senators and Representatives take a trip to Moscow to meet with Russian leaders.
    • John Neely Kennedy (R-La.)
    • Sen. John Thune (S.D.)
    • Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who denounced our sanctions against Russia when he returned
    • Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.)
    • Steve Daines (Mont.)
    • Jerry Moran (Kan.)
    • John Hoeven (N.D.)
    • Kay Granger (R-Texas)
  1. Coinciding with this visit, the Senate Intelligence Committee releases an interim report on their Russia investigation, concluding that the U.S. intelligence community was correct in its findings that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections to help elect Donald Trump. They also say that Putin ordered this interference.
  2. The committee’s main criticism is that the intelligence community could’ve been more thorough. The committee claims they found a far more extensive effort by the Russians to sow division and disrupt our elections.
  3. Independent journalist Marcy Wheeler becomes an FBI informant after spending more than a decade criticizing the U.S. intelligence community. She went to the FBI once she realized her informant played a part in the Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Chuck Schumer calls Trump to suggest he nominate Merrick Garland to Justice Kennedy’s about-to-be-empty seat. Seems the answer was no.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump halts payments to insurers that cover sicker patient populations, an ACA program to protect such insurers from loss and to spread the risk among all insurance companies. Note that these payments come from insurance companies and not taxpayer dollars.
  2. Insurance companies say to expect premium increases next year because of this.
  3. The U.S. refuses to sponsor a noncontroversial resolution at the World Health Assembly promoting the health benefits of breastfeeding, even threatening to withhold funding to WHO. Not only that, we threaten the country that introduced the resolution, Ecuador, with economic and military punishments. Ecuador withdraws the resolution. Health activists look for a replacement, but other countries are now too afraid to step up. Except Russia, that is, which steps up and saves the resolution. For some reason, we don’t threaten them over it.
  4. Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin (R) plans to cancel dental and vision benefits provided under Medicaid after a judge blocked his Medicaid work requirements.

International:

  1. Denmark now legally classifies low-income immigrants (in what they call “immigrant ghettos”) as “ghetto children” and “ghetto parents.” They also require these children spend 25 hours a week away from their parents starting at age one to get training in “Danish values.”
  2. Protests continue in Iran over water shortages caused by mismanagement and over the economy, now threatened by U.S. sanctions after we withdrew from the Iran deal.
  3. We learn that Trump has asked at least four times why we can’t just invade Venezuela.
  4. After Mike Pompeo’s meeting with North Korean officials, Pompeo says the meetings were productive but North Korea says the attitude of the U.S. team is “regrettable,” “gangster-like,” and “cancerous.”
  5. Over the past few months, North Korea’s been increasing their production of enriched uranium, indicating that they don’t currently have any intentions of denuclearizing. The country is also finishing up an expansion of a ballistic missile factory.
  6. John Bolton says North Korea could denuclearize in about a year, while Mike Pompeo says two and a half years.
  7. Trump threatens NATO allies, saying they must increase defense spending or the U.S. will decrease its military presence around the world.
  8. A British couple is exposed to the toxic nerve agents that was used on a former Russian spy and his daughter in March.
  9. With newly expanded powers, Turkey’s president Erdogan fires over 18,000 state employees because of alleged terrorist ties.

Separating Families:

  1. Groups have been raising money to make bail for mothers separated from their children because that’s the quickest way to reunite them. But now ICE agents are saying that they’ve been told to deny bonds for separated parents.
  2. ICE agents, under administration instructions, are using the separated children to extort asylum seekers into voluntary deportation.
  3. Asylum seekers are not being allowed to reunite with their children while awaiting their asylum hearings (even parents who have passed their initial asylum screening).
  4. A federal judge orders the administration to halt blanket arrests of asylum seekers. The judge also rules that asylum seekers must either be released or granted a hearing.
  5. ICE is reportedly not giving families a chance to officially seek asylum. They’re telling refugees that they can either leave with their children, or seek asylum and have their children taken away.
  6. All of this is increasing the calls to abolish, or at the very least restructure, ICE.
  7. A woman climbs the base of the Statue of Liberty after a protest to abolish ICE, shutting the statue down to the public for several hours while law enforcement brings her down.
  8. Local officials cancel their contracts with ICE to provide facilities to detain immigrants.
  9. The Trump administration requests more time to reunite families. A federal judge says children under 5 must be reunited by July 10, and others by July 26.
  10. Why are they having trouble reuniting these families? Because some records linking families have been misplaced or destroyed. It’s almost like they never intended to bring the families back together. They’re now using DNA testing to find families. Humanitarian issues aside, the zero-tolerance policy is ending up costing us an immense amount of money in the long run.
  11. Meanwhile, toddlers continue to appear before court in immigration hearings, with judges admittedly uncomfortable asking them if they understand the proceedings.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A federal judges rejects a Trump administration request to block three sanctuary laws in California.
  2. To justify his policy of family separation, Trump says we have a border crisis. But the numbers show that the number of border crossings has plummeted 80% from 2000 to 2017.
  3. Trump says he didn’t push Republicans to pass an immigration bill despite tweeting three days earlier that House Republicans should pass Goodlatte’s bill (while continuing to blame Democrats for the failings of the GOP-led Congress).
  4. The Trump administration plans to rescind Obama-era rules for colleges to consider race in order to diversify their student population. The DOJ says they’ll sue any universities who don’t follow the new policy. This is the seventh affirmative action rule Trump has rescinded.
  5. Trump repeats a lie that seems to have started with a hard-line Iranian cleric by saying that Obama gave citizenship to 2,500 Iranians as part of the Iran deal.
  6. The U.S. Army begins discharging immigrant recruits who were promised a pathway to citizenship at the end of their service. Some aren’t given a reason, some are told that something came up in their background checks, and some are suing the military.
  7. The above could be part of Trump’s new task force that was put in place to review immigrants who have been granted citizenship to find out if there’s anything in their background that we can use to deport them.
  8. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago has applied for 61 H2-B visas to hire temporary workers from abroad.
  9. A judge orders the Trump administration to provide documentation about how they decided to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The judge indicates the administration might have acted in bad faith.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Scott Pruitt and his staff keep secret calendars in order to hide meetings with people representing the very industries the EPA is supposed to watch over.
  2. EPA staffers even modified Pruitt’s official calendar to make sure there weren’t any meetings that might look bad.
  3. Staff members also testify to Congress that Pruitt ignored warnings about ethics violations and tried to use his position for personal gain.
  4. Scott Pruitt finally resigns, and Andrew Wheeler will take over as acting administrator for now. Wheeler was a coal lobbyist for Murray Energy.
  5. Pruitt pens quite the love letter to Trump as his resignation letter.
  6. Ah… but before he leaves, Pruitt gives us one last gift. He enacts a loophole that raises the limit on the number of trucks a manufacturer can produce that use old engines (super polluter trucks). These trucks emit up to 55 times the pollutants that trucks with more modern engines do.
  7. Locations all across the northern hemisphere log record high temperatures this week.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The latest BLS numbers show that while employment increased by 213,000 in June, the unemployment rate rose to 4.0% because of more people, largely college graduates, entering the workforce.
  2. Trump doesn’t like the updated NAFTA deal and says he won’t sign it until after the midterms. Is he really using this as an election campaign tool?
  3. U.S. tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese imports begin, while Chinese tariffs on the same amount of American goods go into effect, including on pork, wheat, rice and dairy products. China will also cancel orders for 1.1 million tons of soybeans.
  4. Canada places retaliatory tariffs on $12.5 billion in American goods.
  5. Mexico implements the second part of their retaliatory tariffs on $3 billion in American goods.
  6. Russia places retaliatory tariffs on American goods.
  7. Ahead of these tariffs, global export growth has slowed to a crawl.
  8. The [conservative] U.S. Chamber of Commerce launches a campaign opposing Trump’s trade policies.
  9. Trump says that Saudi leaders have agreed to his request to increase oil production, but Saudi leaders say they can increase production, not that they will.
  10. The Tax Foundation estimates that the current trade wars will cost us 250,000 jobs.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Leaked copies of Michael Cohen’s shredded documents seem to confirm his hush money payment to a playboy model on behalf of Elliot Broidy.
  2. Maybe this is why Jim Jordan is so mad. Several Ohio State wrestlers have come forward to say that Jordan was aware of alleged sexual abuse by the team doctor during his time there as coach. Jordan is a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, whose members are being urged to stand behind him.
  3. Trump hires Bill Shine to be Communications Director. You might remember that Fox News fired Shine for how he handled sexual harassment claims while there.
  4. Melania Trump has an agreement with Getty Images that not only pays royalties to the Trumps when photos of them are used, but that also says the photos can only be used in positive news stories.
  5. Public confrontations with people affiliated with the Trump administration are growing. Protestors follow Mitch McConnell in a parking lot asking him where the children are, and a woman is kicked out of a bookstore for calling Steve Bannon a piece of trash. A bartender flips off Steven Miller, so Miller throws away the take-out sushi he got there.
  6. Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, says he’ll run for president in 2020 if Trump does, because he alone can beat him. Where’ve we heard that before?

Polls:

  1. 63% of American voters support the Roe v. Wade decision.
  2. 64% of American voters want campaign spending limits for corporations and unions.
  3. 58% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration. I seriously can’t believe that 40% of Americans are OK with treating families this way.

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

Trump holds yet another campaign rally, this time in Montana. Here are a few highlights.

  1. A week after the mass shooting at the Capital Gazette in Maryland, he again makes a point of calling the media “fake news.”
  2. In another assault on our intelligence officers, he accuses them of giving Hillary Clinton special treatment.
  3. He says North Korea signed a denuclearization deal, which they haven’t yet.
  4. He once again hypes the threat of MS-13, saying that if Democrats win, MS-13 members will run free. A) MS-13 makes up .1% of all gang members in the U.S. and B) no one wants them to run free.
  5. He pushes the false theory that we have rampant voter fraud, and this time throws in the misinformation that Republicans have a tougher time winning the electoral vote. Of note, Democrats have won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 presidential elections, but have only won the electoral vote in 4 of them.
  6. He mocks the #MeToo movement, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, John McCain, and George Bush Sr. (whose eloquence apparently went over Trump’s head). But Putin? He says Putin’s fine.
  7. He also mocked people who say that Putin was KGB, despite the fact that Putin really was in the KGB for quite some time, rising to the level of directory by the time it became the FSB.
  8. He went into a stream of consciousness comparing his crowd size with Elton John’s:

“I have broken more Elton John records…and I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ.”

Week 64 in Trump

Posted on April 16, 2018 in Politics, Trump

I open this week with a quote from Trump on how a trade war might affect farmers:

“But if we do a deal with China, if, during the course of a negotiation they want to hit the farmers because they think that hits me, I wouldn’t say that’s nice. But I tell you, our farmers are great patriots… They understand that they’re doing this for the country. And we’ll make it up to them. And in the end, they’re going to be much stronger than they are right now.”

He also said that farm income has been trending downward over the last eight years (it’s actually the last four) and said that because of his actions on NAFTA and China, “farmers will be better off than they ever were.” I hope he’s right but if he’s not, then thanks, farmers, for taking a hit for the rest of us.

Anyway, here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. The FBI raids Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s office and hotel room, seizing emails, tax records, and business documents. Which seriously enraged Trump, based on his subsequent comments. As a reminder, Cohen paid off Stormy Daniels and at least one other woman who allegedly had an affair with Trump.
  2. Reportedly, Cohen made recordings of meetings and conversations, which the FBI also seized.
  3. The raids were based on a referral from Robert Mueller, so Trump calls Mueller’s team “the most biased group of people” and says they’re mostly Democrats with a few Obama-appointed Republicans. Though they are actually mostly Republicans.
  4. Trump calls Cohen just to check in and see how he’s doing.
  5. We learn that Cohen is being investigated for bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations. Mueller handed this investigation off to a New York attorney likely because it was out of his jurisdiction. Rod Rosenstein signed off on the search warrant.
  6. Most legal experts say that this warrant must have been bullet-proof in order for the FBI to get it, because it’s extraordinary to serve a warrant on a lawyer like this.
  7. Trump isn’t the only guy Cohen negotiates hush deals for. He also negotiated one for major RNC fundraiser and RNC deputy finance chairman Elliott Broidy. This makes Broidy the third RNC official to be caught up in scandal in the past year and the second to step down from his position.
  8. Trump requests an emergency order preventing prosecutors from looking at the seized material, saying he should be able to review them first because of client/attorney privilege.
  9. In response to the raid, Lou Dobbs (who has apparently been advising Trump all along) tells Trump he should fire Mueller. Trump mulls it over in the middle of a publicized meeting with military brass while they were supposed to be talking about a response to Syria’s chemical weapons attack.
  10. Trump calls it an attack on the country and says the FBI “broke in” to Cohen’s office. His rants attack the usual suspects: Jeff Sessions, the FBI, Hillary Clinton, Rod Rosenstein, Andrew McCabe. He even steps up his Twitter game for this one.
  11. Politicians from both sides step in to support Mueller, including Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) who confirms widespread respect for Mueller in Washington and warns Trump against firing him.
  12. While many legal minds have said Trump doesn’t have the power to fire Mueller, he and his press secretary both say he does.
  13. The White House says they aren’t sure if Cohen still represents Trump. Also, Trump isn’t so sure he wants to sit down with Mueller anymore.
  14. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York recuses himself from the Cohen investigation because of his ties with donors to the Trump campaign.
  15. We learn that Trump tried to have Mueller fired last December, but his lawyers talked him out of it.
  16. Mueller is looking at a $150,000 donation to the Trump Organization from a Ukrainian billionaire (Victor Punchuk). In return for the donation, Trump appeared in a 20-minute video for a conference in Kiev.
  17. Mark Zuckerberg submits written testimony and then testifies before Congress for two days about data privacy (fully illustrating the technology gap between the generations).
  18. Paul Manafort’s lawyers file another motion to suppress evidence. This time it’s the evidence found in a storage unit and they say the employee didn’t have the authority to open the unit for the FBI.
  19. A judge denies Manafort’s request for bail. He’s been denied bail multiple times now. His trial is scheduled to start in July.
  20. The NRA admits to receiving money from almost two dozen Russians (or Americans living in Russia) over the past two years.
  21. Veteran Republicans form a group, Republicans for the Rule of Law, to help protect Mueller from being fired. Also, a bipartisan group of Senators introduce a bill to protect Mueller. Mitch McConnell agrees that Mueller should continue his work, but he doesn’t think Mueller needs to be protected.
  22. Steve Bannon floats a plan to put an end to the Mueller investigation:
    • Fire Rosenstein.
    • Stop cooperating with Mueller.
    • Assert executive privilege and make all White House interviews with Mueller over the past year null and void.
  1. Excerpts leak from James Comey’s soon-to-be-released book, and it becomes an immediate best seller almost a week before its scheduled release. Trump does not respond well. I’m not going to go into what Comey says on his media blitz nor what’s in the book, because it’s not really confirmable.
  2. The RNC actively works to discredit Comey ahead of his book release. They create a website called “Lyin’ Comey” that features quotes of Democrats criticizing him. Their campaign plan includes: digital ads, monitoring Comey’s appearances, a rapid response team to provide rebuttals, and coordinating surrogates to fan out and defend Trump. I don’t know if I’m more bothered that such a campaign exists or that they don’t mind making it public knowledge.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Judge Curiel finalizes the $25 million Trump University settlement. Curiel’s the guy who Trump said couldn’t be unbiased in the case because he’s Mexican.
  2. The Justice Department’s inspector general releases their report on Andy McCabe. (Caveat: I have yet to read the full report.) It doesn’t sound like there’s much that we haven’t already heard, and the report doesn’t include McCabe’s rebuttal. The dispute centers around a Wall Street Journal article in which McCabe authorized staff to rebut the allegations made in the article. McCabe, who first denied giving permission until he was served a reminder, says he authorized it to preserve the reputation of the FBI; the OIG says he did it to preserve his own reputation.

Healthcare:

  1. Voters in Utah, Nebraska, and Idaho are working to get Medicaid expansion on the ballot since their governors refused the federal money they could have received under the ACA to do it.
  2. An appeals court in Maryland rules that a law preventing price gouging by pharmaceutical companies is unconstitutional.

International:

  1. Trump calls out Putin, Russia, and Iran for backing “Animal Assad” in Syria in a barrage of tweets. Russia responds that they don’t do Twitter diplomacy.
  2. Russia says great Britain staged the chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
  3. Trump, along with Great Britain and France, orders airstrikes on chemical weapons facilities in Syria in retaliation for the regime’s chemical weapon attack. Putin calls this an act of aggression and calls for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
  4. After the missile strike, Trump tweets those ill-fated words, “Mission accomplished!” Also, Russia says Syrian air defenses shot down most of our missiles. Doubtful, but impossible to verify.
  5. Russia also vetoes a UN resolution to set up an independent investigation into Syria’s use of chemical weapons.
  6. Tom Bossert, Homeland Security adviser, resigns at the request of the new National Security Adviser, John Bolton. Bolton appears to be cleaning house.
  7. Trump cancels his trip to South America to respond to Syria’s chemical weapons attack. Mike Pence takes his place on the trip to South America.
  8. Mike Pompeo prepares for his confirmation hearing for Secretary of State by calling Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, among other former secretaries. If you remember, Pompeo helped keep Benghazi in the news and called Clinton‘s response “morally reprehensible.” He also liked a tweet calling Kerry a traitor. So either he didn’t mean those things, or he’s looking for some morally reprehensible and traitorous advice. For her part, Clinton has been willing to talk with him and help him out.
  9. Pompeo’s confirmation will be tough, as he failed to sway any of his opponents in his hearing.
  10. We learn that Russia has been thwarting our efforts in Syria by jamming our drone’s reception of GPS satellite signals.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Trump signs legislation to crack down on online companies that aid and abet sex trafficking of minors. The bill establishes punishments, including jail time, for people who run these sites.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Justice Department removes questions on crime surveys about sexual orientation and gender identity, effectively preventing the monitoring of hate crimes against the LGBTQ community.
  2. Maryland bans conversion therapy on minors (that is, therapy that attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation). Both the American Psychological Association and the American Counseling Association find the practice harmful and ineffective. Hawaii will likely follow suit.
  3. A large number of Americans don’t believe 6 million Jews were killed in the holocaust. They think the number is much, much smaller. They also didn’t know that Auschwitz was a notorious concentration camp. Are our schools really that bad?
  4. Facebook bans white nationalist Richard Spencer, but he still has Twitter accounts. Last month, Facebook banned the anti-Muslim hate group Britain First.
  5. On top of sending tens of thousands of Nicaraguans, Haitians, Nigerians, and Syrians back to countries they haven’t been to in the decades since they received temporary protected status, Trump also wants to send Vietnamese immigrants who are protected by a bilateral treaty back to communist-led Vietnam.
  6. All states that border Mexico agree to provide National Guard troops to help CBP per Trump’s request.
  7. Hungarian journalists at state-run media outlets say they pushed an anti-immigrant message before the elections to create animosity toward immigrants and increase nationalist sentiment. They also pushed lies about George Soros influencing the election.

Climate/EPA:

  1. EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson takes responsibility for the questionable pay raises for Scott Pruitt’s friends, though an email from one of the people who got a questionable raise contradicts this.
  2. News breaks that Scott Pruitt fired his former deputy chief of staff for refusing to retroactively approve Pruitt’s travel demands. Apparently, he asked the employee to come up with justification for a trip.
  3. Trump signs an executive order that would loosen air pollution standards and sideline science in setting pollution regulations in individual states.
  4. The Government Accountability Office says that Scott Pruitt broke the law by installing a $43,000 sound proof phone booth. Spending more than $5,000 requires him to notify Congress first.
  5. The non-profit Environmental Defense Fund plans to launch a satellite that can monitor methane releases and pinpoint the biggest offenders.

Budget/Economy:

  1. After all of Trump’s criticism of Amazon for not collecting state taxes (which it mostly does), we learn that the Trump Organization’s online store only collects taxes in two states.
  2. According to the CBO, the budget deficit is on track to surpass $1 trillion again sooner than expected (by 2020). They raised the expected deficit for this year to $804 billion and for 2019 to $981 billion. And this is under a forecast with an upgraded GDP growth rate of 3.1%.
  3. Trump tells his top officials to look into getting back in to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which he pulled out of last year because it was such a “disaster.” In February, nearly half the Senate Republicans urged him to rejoin.
  4. TPP member countries express an unwillingness to reopen TPP negotiations to include the U.S., and then Trump reverses course and says he’d only consider rejoining if the term were substantially better for the U.S.
    Background: Joining the TPP would’ve given us a trade advantage against China with Pacific Rim countries, but China has been moving in to fill that gap.
  5. Jobless rates continue to fall, marking the 162nd week that claims have been below 300,000. That’s since March of 2015.
  6. Both Oklahoma and Arizona teachers wind their protests down. Arizona’s governor promises a phased 20% raise for teachers by 2020.
  7. The White House proposes large cuts to public assistance programs along with work requirements. They request a $17 billion cut to SNAP that would affect around 23,000 military families. Which again begs the question “Why aren’t we paying our men and women in the military enough to live on?”
  8. They also propose to expand the definition of welfare to include SNAP, Medicaid, and other safety-net programs. This is part of their effort to overhaul public assistance, which also includes work requirements.
  9. Republicans in Congress unveil a new farm bill that would require SNAP recipients to either work or attend school or training for 20 hours a week. The plan does not include Trump’s idea of providing some of the food to SNAP recipients in the form of government rations. The CBO estimates that this could remove 1 million people from SNAP over 10 years.
  10. Good news for people who eat organic, though. The farm bill cracks down on inspections of imported products that are labeled organic.
  11. Trump orders an audit of the US postal service.
  12. Trump wants to try to rescind billions of dollars in spending that he signed into law last month. Mick Mulvaney is developing the plan, even though Republican lawmakers don’t want these negotiations to start up again.
  13. On the other hand, House Majority leader is working in tandem to get this through the House, and Mitch McConnell seems open to getting it done in the Senate. This is being done alongside a Balanced Budget Amendment to the constitution, which has very little chance of passing.
  14. The Department of the Interior walks back its plans to drastically raise entrance fees at national parks, and will instead raise prices $5 across the board.
  15. Federal appeal judges seem to think that it’s a conflict of interest that Mick Mulvaney heads both the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget.

Elections:

  1. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announces he won’t seek reelection, bringing the total number of House Republicans not seeking reelection to 46.
  2. There are two Republicans vying for his Wisconsin seat, the most prominent of which is a white supremacist who got banned from Twitter.
  3. Ryan endorses California Representative Kevin McCarthy to replace him as Speaker of the House. If you’ll remember, Kevin lost out on his initial bid to become speaker when he admitted that the Benghazi hearings were dragged out in order to smear Hillary Clinton.
  4. The New Jersey legislature passes an automatic voter registration bill. It will be the 13th state to implement this, and Nevada has it on the ballot this year.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump met with the chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group to talk about a new broadcasting standard that Sinclair is invested in. It would let authorities broadcast to any American’s phone.
  2. Sinclair’s chairman says that during the 2016 campaign, he told Trump: “We are here to deliver your message.”
  3. Several senators request that the FCC investigate Sinclair after complaints arose about Sinclair forcing anchors at local stations to read propaganda pieces. Ajit Pai, FCC chairman, refuses.
  4. Since the Parkland shootings, several cities and states have begun implementing gun regulations, and there’ve even been some changes at the federal level, like allowing the CDC to study gun violence.
  5. On the other hand, a school district in Pennsylvania opts to arm their teachers with miniature baseball bats.
  6. Senator Tammy Duckworth gives birth to her daughter, becoming the first sitting senator have a baby.
  7. Trump issues a full pardon to Scooter Libby, who was Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.
    Background: Libby was convicted of perjury, making false statements to the FBI, and obstruction of justice in the investigation into the information leak that lead to exposing the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. The leak appeared to be in retribution for criticism of the Bush administration by Valerie’s husband.

  8. Marches across the country this week include the March for Science, the Tax March (to protest the new tax bill), and gun rights marches. Of note, gun rights groups encouraged people to carry unloaded weapons, which many did. At least I assume they were unloaded.

Polls:

  1. Just over half of Americans now support a single-payer healthcare system.

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, who tried to stop bills to expand the state’s education funding, says that children were physically harmed during the teacher strikes because they were left at home alone.

“I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them.”

Week 62 in Trump

Posted on April 2, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Trump’s public attacks on major businesses like Amazon are not just bad presidenting, they’re bad for the economy. As I write this, the stock market is still dropping, partly on a tech sell off and partly on fears of a trade war. Both, you can argue, are sparked by Trump’s rhetoric, and now the market has lost all of its gains so far this year.

Here’s what else happened this week.

Russia:

  1. Over 20 countries expel Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of Russian ex-pats on British soil. Trump expels 60 Russian diplomats and closes their consulate in Seattle. Worldwide, over 100 Russian diplomats are expelled.
  2. Russia threatens to expel U.S. diplomats in retaliation.
  3. Russia performs another test of its latest nuclear missile that it says can reach anywhere in the world and get through any missile defense system.
  4. Emails turned over to investigators show that George Papadopolous had more contact with transition and campaign officials than has previously been recognized.
  5. A new court filing by Mueller shows that Rick Gates and Paul Manafort continued their ties to Russian intelligence during the 2016 campaign. Such links were previously known, just not that they had continued throughout the campaign.
  6. It turns out that Trump did speak with his attorneys about pardons for Manafort and Michael Flynn last year.
  7. Manafort asks a court to dismiss 18 criminal charges against him because his work with Russia ended in 2014. Reminder: Manafort’s business associate, Rick Gates, already pleaded guilty and is cooperating.
  8. Manafort’s friends think he’s counting on a presidential pardon, even though a pardon doesn’t apply to state crimes (which he will likely be charged with should a pardon be issued).
  9. The FBI issues Trump’s friend Ted Malloch a subpoena to testify for Mueller. They‘re interested in Malloch’s relationship with Roger Stone and Julian Assange.
  10. Mueller is taking another look at the 2016 Republican National Convention, specifically Jeff Sessions’ meetings with Russian officials and how language in the party platform that was hostile to Russia got removed.
  11. High profile law firms continue to turn down the opportunity to represent Trump in the Russia investigation. Most of them seem to be citing conflicts, and some are already representing witnesses.
  12. Ecuador cuts off Julian Assange’s access to the internet at the embassy in London where he’s been staying. Earlier this year, Ecuador granted Assange citizenship.
  13. Facebook announces plans to fight fake news and foreign interference in our elections. They’ll fact check stories, photos, and videos; add stricter requirements for political ads; notify people who share fake news; display a new dashboard that lets you see who’s buying political ads; and be more proactive about blocking fake accounts.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions directs the inspector general of the Justice Department to investigate the FBI and DOJ surveillance of former Trump campaign aides (that is, Carter Page). This isn’t enough for critics, who want a special counsel to investigate potential FISA abuses. The inspector general is also looking into whether the investigation into Uranium One was thorough enough.
  2. A federal judge says an emoluments lawsuit against Trump can continue. The lawsuit, brought by Maryland and DC, accuses Trump of accepting payments from foreign governments or individual states in violation of the emoluments clause.
  3. A New York judge allows Summer Zervos’s defamation case against Trump to continue.
  4. Judge Reinhardt of the ninth circuit court of appeals dies.
  5. The wife of the gunman who carried out the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL, is acquitted of being a co-conspirator to the crime.

Healthcare:

  1. After the largest black lung cluster in history is found in Kentucky, state legislators pass a law requiring pulmonologists and not radiologists to diagnose black lung. Most pulmonologists in the state are regularly hired by coal companies or the healthcare insurers used by coal companies. This cluster is especially confounding because it’s striking miners at a younger age and is very aggressive.

International:

  1. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has an unannounced meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping weeks ahead of a planned meeting between North Korea, South Korea, and the U.S.
  2. Satellite images indicate that North Korea is testing a new light water nuclear reactor and has brought another reactor online, bringing their promise to denuclearize into question.
  3. Over 200 former U.S. ambassadors and diplomats sign on to a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warning about the deterioration of U.S. leadership in the world and urging a restoration of U.S. diplomatic influence around the globe. The letter is in advance of the committee’s confirmation hearings for Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.
  4. Even though state and military officials say we should stay in Syria for the foreseeable future, Trump says we’ll be out of there very soon.
  5. U.S. military commanders say their ability to fight ISIS is hampered by a lack of direction from the White House. Ten weeks ago, they would’ve told you that ISIS would be taken down in Syria by mid-April, but now they see that falling apart.
  6. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announces that the U.S. will no longer pay over 25% of the UN’s peacekeeping costs.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. New York tightens gun ownership rules for domestic abusers, preventing them from owning any firearms at all.
  2. Vermont, which had some of the weakest gun laws in the country, passes a sweeping gun control bill that includes raising the minimum purchase age to 21, banning bump stocks, expanding background checks, and limiting magazine capacities.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. At least 12 states sue the Trump administration over the addition of a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. Critics say that the question will prevent some citizens from filling out the questionnaire, and that it goes against the Constitutional requirement that the census count everyone. The administration says the information will help enforce the Voting Rights Act.
    Background: The citizenship question was dropped from the census in 1960, and has only been added to supplemental questionnaires ever since. Most questions have years of vetting, but this was added suddenly.
  2. Orange County’s board of supervisors votes to fight California’s sanctuary laws.
  3. A draft of changes proposed by the Trump administration to immigration rules widens the definition of benefits for which immigrants can be penalized. Currently, immigrants who receive welfare are penalized, but the new definition of welfare would include Earned Income Tax Credits as well as health insurance subsidies.
  4. Trump pushes for the military to use part of their expanded budget to pay for the military wall. Repurposing military funds for the wall would require approval by Congress, and the wall is not popular with either party in Congress.
  5. Ben Carson moves to scale back enforcement of HUD’s fair housing rules, which protect people from racial, ethnic, and income segregation in federal housing projects.
  6. Chuck Grassley’s chief investigative counsel for the GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee is also the guy pushing the current attacks against the FBI and trying to undermine Mueller’s investigation. He’s the reason Grassley pushed for criminal charges against Christopher Steele. If you wonder what informs his choices, here are a few things he’s written on his blog:
    • Homosexuality is like incest
    • There’s an impending Islamic takeover
    • Liberals are anti-American
    • McCarthy should be remembered more kindly
  1. A federal judge cites Trump’s “racially charged language” when ruling that a lawsuit to prevent DACA from being ended can go forward. The judge says that Trump’s racial slurs and epithets infer that his ending DACA violates the equal protection clause of the constitution.
  2. The State Department issues notices that will require most visa applicants to hand over five years worth of social media accounts. The 60-day public comment period begins this week.
  3. Happy Easter. Here’s a round up of Trump’s Easter day tweet storm:
    • He says “ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release” make it too dangerous for Border Control to do their jobs, and calls on Republicans to unleash the nuclear option to overhaul immigration. Also, “NO MORE DACA DEAL!” There is no catch and release law, just a policy on when to detain asylum seekers. The courts might make Trump’s view on DACA irrelevant, but it’s not clear if he really means to end the program.
    • He then threatens to withdraw from NAFTA if Mexico doesn’t stem the flow of drugs and people into the country, and reiterates the need for the wall. Which experts says won’t stem the flow of either of those things.
    • This all seems to be a reaction to a Fox & Friends commentary labeled “CARAVAN OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS HEADED TO U.S.” talking about a group of Hondurans reportedly traveling through Mexico to seek asylum here.
  1. Trump clarifies the above to reporters as he goes into church that morning, saying Democrats prevented a potential DACA deal and a lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of the DACA program. (DACA is only available to people who arrived before 2007, so no one coming in now is eligible.)
  2. Trump tweets out pictures of a border project saying they’ve begun building the wall. Except the photos are of a fence repair project authorized under Obama.
  3. Trump once again opts out of the tradition started under Obama of holding a White House Seder to celebrate Passover.
  4. A black woman in Texas who voted illegally because she wasn’t aware she wasn’t eligible gets sentenced to five years. Meanwhile, a white woman in Iowa who tried to vote for Trump twice (once as her dead mother) gets probation. I’m not sure if the difference in treatment is due to state laws or to the color of their skin.
  5. In order to speed up deportation cases, Jeff Sessions is considering overruling judges who put these cases on hold. The Justice Department is also setting quotas for immigration judges.
  6. After ending temporary protected status for refugees from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan earlier this year, this week Trump lets it expire for Liberians as well. As before, some of the people have been here for nearly two decades.
  7. After the questionable shooting of Stephon Clark, the Sacramento Kings announce a partnership with activists against the shooting. Also, an independent autopsy shows he was shot 8 times in the back and side.
  8. No charges are brought against the officers who killed Alton Sterling in 2016, but the shooter is fired and his partner is suspended.
  9. ICE detains and deports an army veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Scott Pruitt wants the EPA to ignore any research based on raw data that is not publicly available. This data often includes people’s private information. So while Facebook is under attack for releasing private information, Scott Pruitt is asking scientists to publicize people’s private information or risk having their studies ignored.
    Background: This isn’t how science is done. When a scientist completes a study, other scientists try to replicate or refute it using their own data.
  2. Giraffes make the endangered species list. Yay us.
    CORRECTION: Giraffes are listed as vulnerable. They aren’t on the official list.
  3. The Sahara Desert is growing due to a combination of natural climate patterns and global warming.
  4. The UN Secretary General says that climate change is the biggest danger we face today. He also dismisses Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement, saying that the U.S. people are doing much on their own to help control greenhouse gases.
  5. The EPA distributes a list of climate change talking points to its staffers as part of guidance on how to talk to local communities about related issues. The talking points downplay climate science and question how much we actually know about human causes. This is either a way to downplay global warming while actually addressing the problem, or it’s a way to continue to stir up confusion on the issue.
  6. Scott Pruitt comes under even more scrutiny over his spending with the disclosure that he’s been renting one bedroom for $50 a night, but only when he stays there and even though all the other bedrooms in the apartment are empty. The apartment building is owned by the wife of an energy industry lobbyist.
  7. The House Oversight Committee is investigating Pruitt’s travel and security costs.

Budget/Economy:

  1. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer announces a new trade agreement with South Korea. Trump uses the threat of a steel tariff to get concessions in the deal.
  2. Wall Street bonuses are their highest level since before 2008, at an average of $184,220. There’s your trickle down economics.
  3. As a way of trying to show they’re for fiscal responsibility before the midterm elections, Republicans in the House are considering voting on a constitutional amendment that would require balanced budgets. This, after a $1.5 trillion tax cut and a $1.3 trillion spending bill. In order to pass, it would require Democrat votes plus ratification by 34 states.
  4. In protest of changes to their pension plan, teachers in Kentucky call in sick or call for substitutes, shutting down several schools across the state. Teachers in Arizona head to the capital building to demand higher pay and better funding.
  5. Trump goes after Amazon in a series of tweets, causing Amazon’s stock to drop and causing Jeff Bezos to lose over $10 billion in stock value.
    • Trump’s tweets about Amazon were inaccurate. The post office has a profitable agreement with Amazon, the Washington Post is not a lobbyist organization, and Amazon does pay state taxes.
    • This precipitated a continued fall in tech stock prices.
    • Could this be because Bezos also owns the Washington Post?

Elections:

  1. Ryan Costello, one of the strongest opponents of the redrawn district lines in PA is not running for re-election. He says pro-trumpers are too strident and anti-Trumpers are too angry. His timing leaves Republicans having to maneuver ways to get a new candidate on the ballot.
  2. Joe Arpaio, who is running for Senate in Arizona, promises to renew his efforts to prove that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.
  3. After being ordered by a court to hold special elections for two open seats, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker sets a date for June 12. GOP legislators in Wisconsin had considered holding a special session to change the rules in order to avoid a special election, but the court also denied Walker a delay he needed in order to get that done.
  4. Florida moves to give voting rights back to ex-felons. A judge ordered Governor Rick Scott to overturn Jim Crow-era laws that disenfranchised African Americans.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Puerto Ricans are having a hard time getting FEMA assistance for their damaged homes because it’s hard for some to prove that they own the homes.
  2. Wisconsin students march 50 miles to Paul Ryan’s hometown to get him to take action on gun violence.
  3. White House lawyers look into whether loans to the Kushner family business violated any laws or ethics rules. The loans in question were made after the loaning companies met with Kushner at the White House.
  4. Color me surprised. Mitch McConnell issues a bill to legalize hemp and remove it from the list of controlled substances.
  5. Lawyer Michael Cohen says Trump didn’t know about his $130,000 bribe to keep Stormy Daniels quiet, which could insulate Trump but could also invalidated the non-disclosure agreement.
  6. Sinclair Broadcasting forces anchors at local news stations to repeat the same script about fake news, biased media, and one-sided journalism.
  7. The FTC opens an investigation into Facebook‘s privacy practices.
  8. Trump fires the head of the VA, David Shulkin, and says he’ll nominate his personal physician, Ronny Jackson, to fill the position. Interestingly, Trump and Shulkin had a meeting about the VA and its programs right before Trump had John Kelly call Shulkin and fire him. There was no mention in the meeting that anything was up.
  9. Shulkin says he was prevented from defending himself from the accusations of taking his wife to Europe on the government’s dime. He says it was approved by the ethics committee, and after the controversy swelled, he paid the government back. He also says he was fired because people in the administration want to privatize the VA, though he had privatized several services himself.
  10. Official word from the White House is that Shulkin resigned. Official word from Shulkin is that he was fired. This is an important distinction because of the Federal Vacancies Act, which allows Trump to temporarily replace him without confirmation.
  11. Over a dozen advertisers pull out of Laura Ingraham’s show after she mocks a Parkland student activist and he calls her out on it.
  12. In a speech, Trump admits he doesn’t know what community colleges are, conflating them with vocational schools (not the same thing). Community colleges offer associates degrees and less-expensive prep for completing a 4-year degree at a university or college.
  13. The Texas police chief who called the Austin bomber a challenged young man now says the bomber was actually a domestic terrorist.
  14. The NRA confirms that it receives foreign donations, but denies that it uses any of those funds for election-related purposes.

Polls:

  1. A third of Americans say they see a bigger paycheck after the tax reform bill. 52% say they haven’t seen a change. In fairness, nobody noticed Obama’s tax cuts in 2009 either, when 97% of households got an average of $1,200 in tax cuts per year.
  2. 54% of Americans say Trump will lose in 2020. But that’s the same percentage who thought Obama would lose in 2012.

Quote of the Week

David Shulkin, outgoing head of the VA

“It should not be this hard to serve your country.”

Week 60 in Trump

Posted on March 20, 2018 in Politics, Trump

This week, students at over 3,000 schools across the country protest gun violence and honor the Parkland victims in staged walkouts. Each walkout starts at 10 AM local time, and students stay out for 17 minutes in tribute to the 17 lost lives in Parkland. Students also march on Washington and the walkouts extend across the globe. Here’s what they want. It’s pretty simple, so accusing them of not knowing what they’re doing is pretty disingenuous:

  • Ban assault weapons
  • Universal background checks for all gun sales
  • Pass a gun violence restraining order law (so courts can disarm people who display warning signs)

Some schools punish students by giving them unexcused absences or suspensions—some even suspend students for five days (I’m looking at you Cobb County, Georgia). Others put their schools on lockdown so students can’t go out; students take a knee instead. Social media is awash with “grownups” saying students don’t know what they’re protesting, that students are forced into this, and that they couldn’t organize this movement on their own. It’s the 60s all over again.

And also, 7,000 pairs of shoes are laid out on the grounds in front of the U.S. Capitol, representing every child killed by a gun since Sandy Hook in 2012.


Here’s what else happened last week…

Russia:

  1. Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee effectively close their Russia case, just as Robert Mueller is expanding his investigation into Trump associates, Trump Organization, and a secret meeting between Erik Prince, George Nader, and a UAE official. They release a report saying they’ve seen no evidence that there was collusion or that Russia was trying to tip the scales toward Trump. Investigations continue in other congressional committees.
  2. And who’s been feeding this guy truth serum? Republican Trey Goody, who actually read the underlying legal documents, disputes some of the report’s findings. Our intelligence community disputes even more of them.
  3. Representative Mike Conaway (R-Texas) says that it wasn’t part of the House Intelligence Committee’s mission to investigate collusion between Russia and Trump associates. So basically they said they didn’t find the collusion that they weren’t even looking for.
  4. Another Representative on the House Intelligence Committee, Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), also contradicts the report, saying that there is evidence Russia was trying to help Trump in the elections.
  5. Democrats release a rebuttal to the report, outlining the areas where they think the investigation is incomplete, including key witnesses that were never called, subpoenas that were never issued, organizations that were never questioned (like social media giants), and broad issues that were never investigated. For example, the committee hasn’t interviewed key players like Papadopoulos, Manafort, Gates, and Flynn.
  6. A former Russian spy and his daughter are found poisoned in a park and are currently in critical condition. Investigators confirm that the poison is definitely of Russian origin.
  7. And then Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov is found dead in London. Police are treating it as a murder.
  8. Prime Minister Therese May pretty much accuses Russia of an act of war and gives them 48 hours to answer for the poisonings.
  9. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson calls the act egregious and says there will be consequences. But Russia probably isn’t too worried about Tillerson anymore for obvious reasons.
  10. Theresa May’s first act of reprisal is to expel 23 Russian diplomats thought to be spies. She also cancels meetings with Russian officials.
  11. The U.S., France, and Germany join the United Kingdom in saying Russia is responsible for the poisonings.
  12. Two witnesses come forward to say Roger Stone spoke with Julian Assange in early 2016, and that he knew about the hacked emails before they were publicized.
  13. We learn that Qatari officials didn’t share information about the UAE having illicit influence over Kushner with Robert Mueller’s team because they were afraid it would hurt their relationship with the Trump administration.
  14. Trump finally imposes sanctions against Russia for meddling in our elections, one month after the deadline set by Congress. He doesn’t include all the recommended sanctions.
  15. Mueller subpoenas Trump Organization records, a sign that he’s expanding his investigation and that he’s not close to the end despite rumors to the contrary.
  16. Federal regulators say that a 2017 Russian hack into our energy grid didn’t compromise any of our power plants, including nuclear power plants. The hacks did, however, trigger a scramble to secure our networks, particularly those managing our infrastructure.
  17. Facebook suspends Cambridge Analytica for using an academic research cover to scrape data about hundreds of thousands of users. Cambridge Analytica also met with Russian businessmen to talk about how Cambridge Analytica used their data to target U.S. voters.
  18. The Massachusetts attorney general launches an investigation over claims that Cambridge Analytica scraped data from over 50 million Facebook users to develop social media techniques to help Trump’s campaign.
  19. Sessions fires Andy McCabe just over 24 hours before he was to retire, meaning be could lose his pension. McCabe will likely appeal this, other members of government extend offers to hire him short-term, and it is also possible that his pension won’t be that deeply affected.
  20. McCabe learned of his firing from a press release, though he likely saw it coming.
  21. Following Andrew McCabe’s firing, Trump’s lawyers says Mueller’s investigation should be halted and implied to Rod Rosenstein that he should end it.
  22. Andrew McCabe has contemporaneous memos of his interactions with Trump and of Comey’s descriptions of his interactions with Trump. He’s already met with Mueller and turned over copies.
  23. Trump says the Mueller investigation is partisan, even though there are charges and guilty pleas. And even though Mueller and many he works with are Republican.
  24. Senator Marco Rubio criticizes the McCabe firing. Representative Trey Gowdy criticizes the handling of the firing, saying Trump’s acting like he’s guilty. Senator Lindsey Graham says that if Trump tries to fire Mueller, it will be the end of his presidency. All Republicans.
  25. The FEC opens an investigation into whether the NRA received illegal contributions from Russian groups to support Trump’s campaign.
  26. A federal judge warns that Paul Manafort could spend the rest of his life in prison. Manafort is on 24-hour lockdown in his home.
  27. Seth Rich’s family files a lawsuit against Fox News over them promoting a rumor that Rich was the leaker of the DNC emails during the 2016 campaign and that he was killed because of that. If you remember, Seth Rich was a DNC staffer who was killed in an apparent random attack.
  28. Three sources say Jeff Sessions didn’t actually push back when George Papadopoulos suggested the Trump campaign meet with Russians, leading some to wonder whether he committed perjury in his congressional testimony.
  29. Russians elect Putin for another six years in a landslide victory.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Trump’s administration wants to permanently take away federal judges’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions, which stop policies from taking effect until the court can make a final ruling.

International:

  1. Trump fires Rex Tillerson, reportedly via Twitter but with a warning from John Kelly. Trump picks Mike Pompeo, currently CIA director, to replace him as Secretary of State.
  2. Pompeo has a background of voting against women’s and LGBTQ rights, as well as making anti-Muslim comments. He has also supports torture. So there’s that.
  3. Trump then fires Tillerson’s top aide, Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein, for giving an account of the firing that differed from the official White House story.
  4. Trump picks Gina Haspel to replace Mike Pompeo. She’d be the first woman to hold the top position at the CIA, and seems widely respected at the CIA. Her confirmation could be tough though, because of issues around her role the torture of al-Qaeda prisoners.
  5. Prosecutors in Germany are reviewing a request from the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) to issue an arrest warrant on Haspel for her involvement in extreme torture measures after 9/11. NOTE: A report on her role in waterboarding suspected terrorists was later retracted. She was not involved in the waterboarding of a suspect who was later found to be innocent.
  6. Steve Bannon addresses France’s far right party, spreading his own brand of white nationalism and telling them to wear labels like racist, xenophobic, and nativist proudly.
  7. Trump brags that he just made up trade deficit “facts” in a meeting with Justin Trudeau, saying the U.S. had a trade deficit with Canada. According to Trump, Trudeau disputed that, saying there is no deficit. And Trudeau’s right. You can read the actual facts at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
  8. And then, to make it even weirder, Justin Trudeau says they had no such conversation. So it seems Trump lied about making up facts at a meeting he made up.
  9. And then Trump doubles down, tweeting that we do have a trade deficit with Canada. Again, we do not.
  10. In a fundraising speech, Trump:
    • Accuses the European Union, China, Japan, and South Korea of ripping us off and pillaging our work force.
    • Calls NAFTA a disaster and then criticizes the World Trade Organization.
    • Threatens Seoul if they give us a better trade deal.
  1. The White House plans to have Ivanka Trump meet with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha when she visits the U.S. Normally the minister would meet with the Secretary of State, but Tillerson was fired. Among other things, Tillerson and Kang planned to discuss talks with North Korea.
  2. Philippine President Duterte says he’ll pull the Philippines out of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC is investigating Duterte for crimes against humanity for his handling of the drug problem.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Kentucky takes a page from Florida and bans child marriages.
  2. The House passes a school safety bill. It provides training for both school employees and law enforcement to manage mental health issues and provides money to put systems in place for reporting threats.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Homeland Security spokesman James Schwab resigns, saying that he can’t continue to “perpetuate misleading facts” for the administration. In other words, he’s tired of lying for Trump.
  2. Trump says it’s Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s fault that ICE didn’t pick up more undocumented immigrants in a sweep last week after she issued a warning before the raid took place. ICE typically picks up about a third of their targets in these sweeps, and here they picked up 232 out of 1,000. Trump said they were all violent criminals, but just under half of those picked up had criminal records of any kind.
  3. Trump blames Obama-era rules for mass shootings. The rules in question were an effort to rein in the harsher disciplines brought down on minority students, like suspensions and expulsions. IKYDK, no black student has been the perpetrator of a mass school shooting and minority schools aren’t the targets of these shootings.
  4. Attorney General Jeff Sessions re-opens a court decision that protects domestic violence victims seeking asylum in the U.S. This indicates he’s contemplating removing or weakening these protections.
  5. Trump visits the wall prototypes south of San Diego, only to find protests on both sides of the border.
  6. The ACLU sues ICE for detaining hundreds of asylum seekers with no due process.
  7. A court clears DeAndre Harris of assault charges stemming from the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville last year where he was severely beaten. Yes, they charged the man who himself was severely beaten. The men who beat him haven’t been tried yet.
  8. Trump wants to trade a short-term DACA deal for funding for his border wall.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Why are we suddenly hearing so much about bomb cyclones? Because abnormally warm temperatures in the Arctic can bring them on, according to a recent study. And since four of the past five years have had an Arctic thaw, we’re seeing rougher weather on the upper east coast.
  2. 2017 was the costliest year yet for weather and climate disasters in the U.S., and yet FEMA just removed any reference to climate change from its strategic planning document. Because if we don’t talk about global warming, it doesn’t exist, right? It’ll just go away?

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump blocks the $117 billion bid from Broadcom to buy Qualcomm citing security concerns. Broadcom drop its bid.
  2. Trump names TV personality Larry Kudlow to Gary Cohn’s old position as top economic advisor. Kudlow has gotten some things very, very wrong, including predicting these things wouldn’t occur: the positive effects of Bill Clinton’s tax plan, the negative effects of Bush Jr.’s tax plan, the housing bubble in 2007, and the great recession.
  3. The Senate passes a bill to weaken the financial protections in Dodd-Frank, increasing the size of banks that do not need to follow the regulations. They say that this will help small community banks get out from under regulatory red tape, but most community banks have less than $10 billion in assets and this bill only helps banks that have $50 billion to $250 billion in assets. So I guess if you consider that a small bank… What the bill changes is that these banks no longer need to have an emergency plan for in case they fail.
  4. The House passes a bill requiring federal financial regulatory agencies to limit burdens on institutions. In other words, the bill favors institutions over consumer rights and once again would allow them to engage in the risky behavior that led to the great recession. And just to make sure they erase Obama’s and Elizabeth Warren’s fingerprints on any regulations, they make it retroactive to any regulations passed in the last seven years.
  5. A federal court tosses out the fiduciary rule, an Obama-era rule that required your financial advisor to act in your best interest instead of pushing you into investments that would put money in your advisor’s pockets.
  6. According to Puerto Rico’s governor, the Treasury reduced their $4.7 billion disaster relief loan to just $2 billion.

Elections:

  1. A court blocks Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State, from enforcing his law requiring a voter ID to register to vote. The 10th circuit court calls it a denial of a fundamental constitutional right. If you’ll remember, Kobach believes there are thousands of undocumented immigrants who are registered to vote, even though decades of commissions and studies (both conservative and liberal) conclude that this isn’t the case.
  2. Democrat Conor Lamb defeats Republican Rick Saccone in Pennsylvania’s district 18 special election for House of Representatives. The race was to replace Republican Representative Tim Murphy, who was staunchly anti-abortion, except, it turns out, when it’s his mistress who is pregnant.
  3. This is the 42nd seat to flip from Republican to Democrat since Trump’s election. Four have flipped the other way.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Three packages left outside homes explode in Austin, killing two people and injuring another.
  2. Betsy DeVos can barely answer basic questions about our education system in an interview on 60 Minutes. She also says that she doesn’t intentionally visit troubled schools.
  3. Trump considers firing David Shelkin from the VA and moving Rick Perry from the Department of Energy to the VA. Though by the end of the week, he’s looking at different replacements
  4. The White House fires Trump’s personal assistant, John McEntee, because of financial crimes being investigated by DHS. The crimes must’ve been bad, because they didn’t even give him a chance to get his coat before walking him out. But then Trump gives him a job as senior advisor for his campaign operations.
  5. Data scientists at MIT publish a study concluding that fake news is shared much, much more than real news on social media and in one test, fake news reached 1,500 people 6 times faster than real news. Even when controlling for verified accounts, fake news is 70% more likely to be shared.
  6. Well, that was brief. At the beginning of the week, Trump reverses his stance on the NRA and drops his promises on gun control efforts, like raising the purchase age and expanding background checks. Here’s what he offers instead:
    • Rigorous firearm training to school employees who want it
    • Modest fixes to the background check process
    • A new Federal Commission on School Safety, chaired by Betsy DeVos.
  1. A bill in the Senate to improve the background check database has 62 co-sponsors (so by definition, it’s bipartisan). But it’s being held up by the remaining Republicans.
  2. Another teacher accidentally discharges a weapon in class, injuring three students.
  3. Leaked emails imply that the purging of career officials at the State Department was politically motivated and targeted people who weren’t loyal to Trump.
  4. Donald Trump Jr.’s wife of twelve years files for divorce.
  5. A UPenn study concludes that when a Trump rally comes to a town, there’s a rise in violence on that day. There was an average of 2.3 more assaults on the days of the rallies in the data and cities they studied.
  6. Trump’s lawyers say Stormy Daniels violated her non-disclosure 20 times and wants $20 million in damages ($1 million per violation).
  7. Trump lays down an epic tweetstorm following McCabe’s firing. Here’s some of what he said:
    • Mueller’s team has 13 Democrats and no Republicans, so it must be partisan. (Except Mueller himself is a Republican, so already we know that’s false.)
    • Andy McCabe and James Comey are both liars, and Comey even lied under oath. (His source was Fox & Friends.)
    • The following all came from one tweet: No collusion, no crime, fake dossier, crooked Hillary, FISA court, WITCH HUNT!
    • He brings up the donations made from the DNC to McCabe’s wife’s campaign. (This isn’t even being investigated.)
    • The House Intelligence Committee found no collusion. (In fairness, that wasn’t part of their investigation and Republicans on the committee disagree.)
    • And my favorite:

Quote of the Week:

Or maybe this is just the understatement of the week…

“I anticipated that this would be a lower-profile job.”

~Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein: