You wanna know how much faith we can put in Congressional hearings? Here’s a quote from Trey Gowdy, who relentlessly ran the Benghazi hearings that repeatedly found Clinton not guilty of anything while dragging her through the mud for a few years.

“Congressional investigations unfortunately are usually overtly political investigations, where it is to one side’s advantage to drag things out,” says Gowdy. “The notion that one side is playing the part of defense attorney and that the other side is just these white-hat defenders of the truth is laughable … This is politics.”

And apparently a waste of time that the taxpayers fund. Kevin McCarthy said as much when he said that the Benghazi hearings had done the intended job of smearing Clinton (which did lose him the speakership, so at least there’s that). I think we’ll have to rely on Mueller, not Congress, to learn what really happened last year.

That’s my rant and here’s what happened in week 39.

Russia:

1. Here’s what we learn this week about Russian troll farm workers:
   • They had a quota for the number of political and non-political posts they had to make, as well as for the number of daily comments. They wanted to flood social media with agitating propaganda (agitprop).
   • One troll worker says “Our goal wasn’t to turn the Americans toward Russia. Our task was to set Americans against their own government: to provoke unrest and discontent, and to lower Obama’s support ratings.” Well done, guys.
   • Their goal was to smear Hillary in three ways: Bill Clinton’s sex scandals, the Clintons’ wealth, and her use of a private email server.
   • They had to watch “House of Cards” to learn about American politics.
   • They organized events, rallies, and protests in the U.S. and hired activists to hold rallies. The activists didn’t know they were working for Russia.
2. U.S. investigators now believe that a man called Putin’s chef, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was behind one of the Russian troll farms.
3. Fusion GPS, the company that commissioned the Steele dossier, objects to the previous week’s subpoenas from the House Intelligence Committee, saying they aren’t even sure if Devin Nunes has the authority to sign off on them. Nunes is supposed to be recused from the investigation.
4. Facebook wants to hire people with national security clearance, likely to help prevent future attempts by foreign agents to manipulate information on the site.
5. Mueller interviews Matt Tait, the cyber expert who was recruited by Peter Smith to collude with Russia. He wrote a pretty interesting blog on it called The Time I Got Recruited to Collude with the Russians.
6. Sean Spicer meets with Robert Mueller’s team. They talk about James Comey’s firing and Trump’s meeting with Russian officials.
7. The Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenas Carter Page, who has been refusing to testify.
8. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, meets with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
9. Jeff Sessions testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend the firing of James Comey. Sessions hasn’t been interviewed by Mueller yet.
10. Members of the House Oversight Committee push for subpoenas of the White House for documents about Michael Flynn. The documents they are looking for could lead to criminal prosecution, though, and Congress doesn’t prosecute crimes.
11. A bipartisan bill in the Senate would force social media companies to disclose who purchased an online political ad so we would know if it was Russian-sponsored.
12. Russian state-owned media RT misses its deadline to register as a foreign agent under FARA after a DOJ request to do so.
13. In an about-face, Putin says the American people need to stop disrespecting Trump.
14. In a tweet, Trump basically accuses the FBI, Russia, and the Mueller investigation of conspiracy to frame him.
15. Partisanship gets in the way of the congressional investigations of Russia, leading some to express concern that each committee will come to two different conclusions.
16. Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, says Russian meddling didn’t affect the results of the election, even though the intelligence report concludes that was Russia’s aim. Whether they were successful hasn’t been concluded yet.

Courts/Justice:

1. A district judge refuses to vacate Joe Arpaio’s criminal contempt conviction, even though Trump pardoned him. Judge Bolton says the pardon doesn’t change the historical facts of the case. So while Arpaio won’t have to do jail time, he might now be more vulnerable to civil suits.
2. Trump personally interviews two candidates for U.S. District Attorney in New York, opening up the question of whether the people hired for these jobs will be beholden to him. This is a big question in light of Mueller seeming to look for state crimes as well as federal.
3. The DOJ dropped a request to obtain the names of Facebook users who liked a specific inauguration day protest page. This was part of the investigation into inauguration day riots, but this request was seen as overreach.
4. Justices Kagan and Gorsuch spar behind the scenes, and not in the good way Supreme Court justices typically do.

Healthcare:

1. Eighteen states and DC sue Trump over stopping the ACA subsidy payments.
2. After Trump’s decision to end healthcare subsidies, states work frantically to approve higher insurance rates to shore up the insurance companies and to stop them from leaving their markets. Medical and insurance stocks took a hit after Trump’s announcement.
3. Pennsylvania’s insurance commissioner says that insurance premiums will rise in Philadelphia an average of 30% due to Trump’s gutting of the ACA last week. Oregon has already told insurers to go ahead and raise premiums.
4. Republicans scramble to work out a deal that would continue the ACA subsidy payments, and a bipartisan agreement looks possible. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray create an agreement that could stabilize markets in the short term. Note that this is not a bill yet, it’s just a deal that they think both sides can get behind.
5. Trump expresses opposition to the bipartisan bill, and then later expresses support for it in a speech, and then later blasts the bill in a tweet. So I don’t know if he’s for or against it, but I think in the end he’s against it.
6. Paul Ryan doesn’t support the bipartisan agreement. All Democrats in the Senate say they’ll support it, which, combined with the 12 Republican cosponsors of the bill, gives a filibuster-proof majority.
7. The association health care plans Trump is pushing in place of the individual market have a history of fraud and abuse, as shown in dozens of court cases. In many cases, people were left on the hook for medical expenses that should’ve been covered by insurance.
8. Trump blindsided officials with his promise of an emergency declaration on the opioid crisis. Those officials scramble to create such a plan, saying they aren’t ready for it and there’s no consensus on how to implement it.
9. Betty Price, Georgia state Representative and wife of former HHS secretary Tom Price, suggests that people with HIV should be quarantined, and that in the past it wasn’t so much of a problem because they “died more readily.”
10. Due to the shortened enrollment period for the ACA, people who are automatically re-enrolled in their policy might not be getting the best option. Previously they’d receive a reminder to look for less expensive or more comprehensive policies. But the shortened period doesn’t give enough time for that.
11. Republican representative Tom Marino, Trump’s pick for drug czar, removes himself from the running due to his involvement in passing legislation that made it easier to distribute opioids while making it harder for the DEA to stop it.

International:

1. After reading the provisions of Trump’s Iran decree, it’s pretty apparent to me that he doesn’t understand that the Iran agreement is about nuclear proliferation only. It doesn’t address terrorism or security and that wasn’t the intent.
2. Forces backed by the U.S. liberate Raqqa from ISIS. ISIS has been consistently losing physical ground for several years now.
3. Two groups supported by the U.S. are fighting in Iraq. The Kurds want to separate from Iraq, which has spurred an armed conflict between the two.
4. The U.S. military starts evacuation drills to practice what they would do in case of armed conflict with North Korea.
5. Rex Tillerson says that our foreign policy is “resilient enough to accommodate unknowns,” including Trump’s tweets. While the tweets catch him off guard, Tillerson tries to include those messages in his strategies.
6. Japan holds a snap election so prime minister Abe can bolster support to update their constitution. The U.S. occupied Japan after WWII and rewrote their constitution to limit their military might. With the new threat from North Korea, Japan wants to build back up its military.
7. Trump tweets “United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror.” The U.K. Agency that published the crime stats says this is false; the rise in crime has nothing to do with terrorism. It’s possible this information came from a conspiracy TV network, OANN.
8. Information is still sketchy about the deaths of four Green Berets in Niger. The Pentagon is investigating the attack to determine whether our forces there were on an unapproved mission or just routine patrol. There are conflicting stories about what happened.
9. We should expect hearings over Niger. There was no overhead surveillance, no American quick-reaction force to back them up, French back-up couldn’t use force, and one body was found a mile away and two days later.
10. Chad helps us and our allies fight Islamic extremists, and has been since 2012. It’s where we set up strategic headquarters for the counterterrorist fight in Africa. They don’t have a lot of people joining Islamic militants, but neighboring places do (like Niger).
    • A few weeks ago, Trump adds Chad to the travel ban. (How does Chad end up on the banned list and not, say, Niger? No one knows. Maybe because Chad fined Exxon $74 billion?)
    • The state department and military oppose the move, and experts warn that putting Chad on the travel ban puts Americans in danger, as reported a few weeks back.
    • Four Green Berets are killed in Niger.
    • Chad begins removing troops from the fight in Niger against Islamic extremists.
    • Finally we find out. It turns out that Chad ran out of passport paper when they needed to send the administration a sample, and that’s how they ended up on the travel ban.
    • CORRECTION: It looks like Chad moved their troops after the ambush on our soldiers. I updated the order above. Given this chronology, the events appear to be unrelated.
11. At China’s Communist Party congress, Prime Minister Xi pushes an agenda to make China a stronger military and economic powerhouse, fight government corruption, and be a global leader in trade and global warming. He’s not wasting any time in taking advantage of the void left by the U.S.

Legislation/Congress:

1. Six Republicans members on the House Ways and Means Committee are retiring or resigning from Congress. That’s about a quarter of the GOP members of this elite panel who are checking out. Representatives spend years trying to get on this panel.
2. Congress is going to make Dreamers wait to find out their fate; they’re completely focused on tax reform right now.
3. Interestingly, one congressional aide says they have the bandwidth to deal with both tax reform and immigration, but only if Democrats agree to increased border security. Democrats have already indicated support for enhanced security, just not a border wall.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. In the midst of the anthem debate, the NFL throws its support behind criminal justice reform.
2. Colin Kaepernick files a grievance against the NFL, accusing them of colluding against him.
3. NFL owners decide not to change their rules. Players can kneel or stand during the anthem. Trump continues his war on the NFL.
4. A federal judge in Hawaii blocks Trump’s travel ban nationwide just hours before it would’ve taken effect. The block does not include the ban on travel from North Korea and Venezuela.
5. A day later, a second federal judge, this time in Maryland, blocks the travel ban.
6. Donald Trump Jr.‘s take on sexual harassment in the workplace (at least last year) is this: “If you can’t handle some of the basic stuff that’s become a problem in the workforce today, then you don’t belong in the workforce. Like, you should go maybe teach kindergarten.” Or maybe men should just not sexually harass women. Or discriminate against them.
7. A unit of an upstate New York police department surveils Black Lives Matters members despite being told by the courts to stop. This comes on top of learning that black activist groups are being eyed as terrorist groups by some in the FBI, raising concerns of racial profiling and further marginalization.
8. The Customs and Border Patrol denies Indonesia’s military chief entry to the U.S. He was invited to an event by U.S. General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. U.S. officials apologize, but Indonesia is demanding answers.
9. We learn that Trump teases Mike Pence about his views on the LGBTQ community, having joked around that Pence wants to hang all gays. He also teases him for a lack of success in making abortion illegal, and for making people pray. Real funny stuff.
10. Businesses band together in the Coalition for the American Dream to support Dreamers and push immigration reform, focusing entirely on Republican legislators. Here are a few of those businesses: Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Google, Apple, Cisco, Intel, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Spotify, Under Armour, Chobani, Marriott, Hilton, Ikea, and Best Buy.
11. Hotels have been quietly refusing to let white nationalists book their conventions at the hotels.
12. White nationalist Richard Spencer speaks to an unfriendly crowd at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Three of Spencer’s supporters are arrested for attempted homicide after shooting guns at protestors.
13. Trump considers suspending the refugee family reunification program, which allows the families of refugees to join them in the U.S. He’s also looking at putting women from designated high-risk countries through the same scrutiny as men.

Climate/EPA:

1. Environmental groups often sue the EPA to get them to enforce their own regulations, but Scott Pruitt makes this more difficult and expensive by ending the practice of settling lawsuits against the EPA. This could backfire, though, if the courts find against the EPA in future suits.
2. A study links pollution to almost 1 in every 6 deaths in 2015, mostly from air pollution, mostly in rapidly industrializing nations, and mostly affecting children and the poor. So yes, let’s dismantle the EPA.
3. Three EPA experts were scheduled to speak about their findings in a 500-page report on climate change effects on an eastern estuary. The EPA cancels their appearance, intensifying concerns that the government will prevent scientists from talking about climate change or even from working on climate issues.

4. The EPA says higher radiation levels have no harmful health effects, setting the acceptable level for drinking water at 10 times what it was under Obama. Previous EPA guidelines said that NO level was safe.
5. The EPA removes yet more climate change resources from its website. These resources helped local governments to deal with the effects of climate change that affect them directly and to come up with plans to adapt.
6. A Trump appointee to the EPA was a leader in the chemical industry. She’s trying to change the rules to make it harder to track perfluorooctanoic acid, of PFOA, which is linked to serious health problems like kidney cancer and birth defects. The EPA has struggled to keep PFOA from contaminating our drinking water. This appointee has also proposed rewriting a dozen rules in order to align the EPA more with the chemical industry’s wishes.

Puerto Rico:

1. The USNS Comfort is still mostly empty instead of handling urgent patients in Puerto Rico. Only 13% of the beds are being used, despite a great need and overwhelmed hospitals on the island.
2. Reports are that the death count in Puerto Rico is inaccurate and could possibly be up to 450. Congressional Democrats request an accurate count.
3. According to recent interviews, many Trump supporters who were victims of the Houston hurricane and are receiving government funds to rebuild don’t think that Puerto Ricans should receive the same assistance. The overriding sentiment here appears to be that Houstonians aren’t taking advantage of the system, but those darn Puerto Ricans are. Makes you proud to be an American, right?
4. About a month into recovery, Trump rates his hurricane response to Puerto Rico a 10 out of 10. 30% of the island is still without drinking water and 80% are still without power. St. Croix and the U.S. Virgin Islands also have around 80% without power.

Budget/Economy:

1. The Senate approves a budget that lets the GOP avoid a Democratic filibuster. The House needs to sign an identical version to bypass the filibuster.
2. The Senate version of the budget cuts energy and national resource spending by $1 billion over a decade. It also calls for legislation to cut domestic spending by $5.1 trillion, including cutting Medicaid by $1 trillion and medicare by $470 billion.
3. The House version includes a directive for the oversight and reform committee to find ways to save $32 billion over 10 years.
4. Republican Senator Bob Corker calls the Senate budget a “meaningless hoax” and says it’s only designed to bypass the Democrats in order to sign a tax plan.
5. Republicans are considering reducing the allowable annual 401K contribution from $18,000 per year to $2,400, reducing workers’ ability to save for retirement.
6. Almost half the income from pass-through corporations goes to the top 1%. Almost 80% of pass-through income goes to the top 20%. So Republicans are incorrect when they say their tax break for pass-through corporations will help middle income ranges and small business owners.
7. In talking about the latest budget, Mulvaney admits that it’s difficult to cut spending in Washington.
8. Trump pushes for bipartisan tax reform, but it’s already too late for that. Republicans have already been working behind closed doors for weeks.
9. Steve Mnuchin warns that if Congress fails to cut taxes, they could tank the stock market. I’m not sure if that was a warning or a threat.
10. He also says that it’s hard not to give tax cuts to the wealthy.
11. Because marijuana is still not federally legal, marijuana farmer’s can’t get crop insurance. Farmers in Northern California lost millions in the fires that they won’t be able to recoup.

Elections:

1. Trump says he’ll try to talk Steve Bannon out of his “season of war” against Republicans in next year’s elections. Trump and McConnell meet about this, and afterward, Trump says they’re closer than ever.
2. On average, a member of Congress running for re-election raises $24,149 each week. Maybe we should get the money out of politics so they can legislate instead of fundraise.
3. Trump’s campaign has raised $36,469,896 this year.
4. Joe Arpaio speaks at a fundraiser at the Trump National Golf Club in Southern California in support of a GOP opponent to Representative Maxine Waters.

Miscellaneous:

1. In one week, John McCain, Barack Obama, and George Bush all take thinly veiled jabs at the Trump administration and the nationalism and populism that put him in office.
2. In his speech accepting the Liberty Medal, John McCain warned against “half-baked, spurious nationalism.” In his own words: “We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain the last best hope of earth for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”
3. Afterward, Trump warns McCain to be careful, because eventually Trump will fight back.
4. Also, during a panel discussion, Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright school Nikki Haley on statesmanship.
5. According to Forbes, Trump’s worth dropped by $600 million over the past year due to a tough New York real estate market, expensive lawsuits, and an expensive presidential campaign. Also, the least wealthy person on the Forbes richest 400 Americans is worth $2 billion. 169 billionaires didn’t make the list this year.
6. John Kelly gives Cabinet members more freedom to choose their staff, reversing the way things were done under Reince Priebus. So maybe they’ll finally get staffed up.
7. As part of an ongoing suit resulting from sexual harassment charges, subpoenas are issued to Trump for any documents from his campaign that relate to any woman that accused him of sexual assault or harassment
8. 6,663 Texas inmates pulled together $53,863 in donations for Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.
9. When a reporter asks Trump why he hadn’t yet made a statement yet about the deaths of the four soldiers in Niger, it launches the week’s wars. Trump accuses previous presidents, and specifically Obama, of not calling the families of fallen troops–this is easily disproven. As is his claim that he calls all the families, which leads his staff to scramble to get the names of all soldiers fallen this year so Trump can hurry up and call them. Trump drags John Kelly unwillingly into the fray. One of his calls to the families of the four Green Berets killed in Niger is leaked leading to a fight with both a Congresswoman and the widow of the deceased soldier. And then Kelly joins the fight, and seriously things just get so darn ugly. You need a chart of all the missteps just to keep it straight. Trump could’ve ended this with a single empathetic phone call.
10. All five living ex-president come together for a fundraising concert for hurricane victims.
11. Shareholders at Tribune Media vote to approve the merger with Sinclair Broadcasting, though the FCC is still taking public comment.
12. Trump signs an Executive Order to expand the authority of service secretaries to recall both enlisted and officer retirees to Active Duty.
13. Trump brags about discrediting the media when a poll comes out showing nearly half of Americans don’t trust the media. He says they make up stories about him. Real media sources literally do not do this.
14. As of this week, the Education Department under Betsy Devon has rescinded 72 documents defining rights for students with disabilities. They say the documents are outdated or unnecessary, but disability rights groups are reviewing them.
15. 18 Democratic attorneys general sue Betsy DeVos over her department’s refusal enforce rules that protect people from predatory colleges.
16. Trump promised to drain the swamp, but only one of his five proposals to limit lobbying is implemented so far. Spending on lobbying came to nearly $1.7 billion for the first half of this year, which is the highest since 2012.
17. Fox and Friends increasingly sets the media tone for the day. Trump watches it in the morning, tweets something from it, and the rest of the media takes the bait.
18. Trump announces he’ll declassify the remaining JFK assassination files.

Polls:

1. Nearly 60% of Americans think the current tax plan favors the rich.
2. 66% of Americans want the ACA fixed instead of repealed.
3. Trump’s attacks on the media are working. 46% of voters think that the media makes up stories about Trump and his staff. 76% of Republicans believe it.
4. 42% of Americans think Trump will go down as one of worst presidents in history.