What a week! Iran retaliated for our drone strike on General Soleimani, but then they accidentally shot down a passenger plane in the process. That turns the tens of thousands of Iranian mourners in the streets of Iran into tens of thousands of people protesting the missile strike on the plane. Iraq votes to expel U.S. troops, and then the U.S. sends them a letter saying we’re leaving, but then we say we’re not really leaving and the Iraqi Prime Minister asks Mike Pompeo to come talk about leaving. And we’re still not sure what the imminent threat was that led us to kill Soleimani now or if there even was an imminent threat.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending January 12…

Shootings This Week:

1. This is some kind of record. There were only TWO mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 2 people and injure 7 more.

• • A shooter ambushes a group outside an apartment complex in Bay Saint Louis, MS, killing 2 people and injuring 2 more.
  • A 16-year-old shooter in Aurora, CO (yes, that Aurora), injures 5 people at an apartment complex.

2. Texas Governor Greg Abbott awards the Medal of Courage to the security force volunteer who shot a gunman in a church in White Settlement, TX, last month.

Russia:

1. The Vietnam Veterans of America have been warning the Defense, Veterans Affairs, and other agencies—and even Trump—that Russian operatives are targeting vets with online disinformation campaigns on a massive scale. Those agencies have ignored the warnings, despite a report and congressional testimony supporting them.
2. Federal prosecutors recommend a 6-month prison term for Michael Flynn. That’s up from the zero time they had previously recommended before Flynn stopped cooperating and started lying to prosecutors and changing his testimony.
3. Newly released evidence from the Mueller investigation shows that:

• • Paul Manafort said he used Sean Hannity as a backchannel to Trump and that he believed Trump was sending him messages through Hannity.
  • Donald Trump Jr. asked for dirt on Hillary during the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
  • Hope Hicks thought George Papadopoulos was a problem child. Fun fact: Papadopoulos is running for the congressional seat vacated by Katie Hill last year.
  • K.T. McFarland, former deputy national security adviser under Mike Flynn, cooperated with the Mueller investigation under a proffer agreement. This is typically used for people under criminal investigation.

Legal Fallout:

1. The New York City Bar Association asks Congress to investigate Attorney General Bill Barr for his impartial conduct, which they say threatens our faith in our justice system. They cite his speech to the Federalist Society where he accused so-called progressives of trying to cripple the government and said conservatives have more scruples over their political tactics.
2. According to current and former officials, John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, is wrapping up his investigation into the sale of Uranium One, the Clinton Foundation, and Clinton’s use of a private email server. They say the investigation has ended without finding anything worth pursuing. His final report is yet to be released.
3. A panel of judges grants Trump’s request to have the New York Court of Appeals hear Summer Zervos’s defamation suit against him. In case you’re wondering how slowly the justice system works, this case is close to three years old.
4. Betsy DeVos’s brother, Erik Prince, is referred to the Treasury Department for possible violations of U.S. sanctions against Venezuelan entities.

Impeachment:

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

Courts/Justice:

1. Harvard law students aren’t applying to clerk for Trump’s court nominees. This is usually a plum position, but no one wants to clerk for judges who are deemed unqualified by the ABA, or who are ideologically rigid. These are the judges who most need the help of smart grads.
2. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg announces that blood tests show she is free of cancer after undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer.

Healthcare:

1. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom proposes that the state establish its own generic drug label to bring down prices. It would be the first state to do so, and due to the size of the state, it could bring down drug prices nationally.
2. The American Cancer Society says that the cancer death rate fell 2.2% from 2016 to 2017, the largest decline in one year ever reported. The rate dropped by 29% since 1991.

International:

1. Netanyahu calls Israel a nuclear power, before correcting himself. Israel is believed to have nuclear weapons, but it’s never been confirmed.
2. Britain’s House of Commons passes Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan. Now it heads to the House of Lords. If it passes, Brexit is a done deal at the end of the month.
3. A BMG survey of British citizens shows that a majority want to remain in the EU. They also expect Brexit to be bad for their economy, the health system, and Britain’s place in the world.
4. Trump’s actions in the Middle East open a rift between the U.S. and the U.K. Britain’s Defense Secretary says the U.K is working on stronger alliances with other countries that share its priorities. He also says Trump threatened to pull out of the intelligence-sharing relationship between the U.S. and U.K.
5. The U.K. is quick to call the strike on Soleimani a dangerous escalation and to criticize Trump’s threat to target Iranian cultural sites.
6. National security advisor Robert O’Brien says the conflicts with Iran won’t stop him from cutting around a third of the staff of the National Security Council. This was one of his top responsibilities when he took over in September, a time when NSC staff were beginning to testify about the hold on the aid to Ukraine.
7. Trump tells Laura Ingraham that Saudi Arabia pays our troops to defend their oil fields from Iran.
8. The U.S. will expel nearly two dozen Saudi military students who were part of the same programs as the Saudi student who carried out a mass shooting at Pensacola airbase. Bill Barr says the students had jihadist materials and child porn.
9. The Taal volcano erupts in the Philippines, triggering dozens of earthquakes and dropping ash across the country. Towns near the volcano evacuate, and airports and schools are closed.
10. Protestors in Chile are back in the streets to protest small pensions, a fragile safety net, and police brutality against protestors.
11. Protests increase in Lebanon against their crippling economic crisis.
12. Amid catastrophic fires in Australia, protests spring up there to fight their government’s inaction on climate change.
13. Protests continue in India against their new anti-Muslim citizenship rules.
14. The transport workers strike in France is in its 7^th week, and this week, thousands more join the protest. They’re striking for pension reform.
15. After Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of General Soleimani, Iranians take to the streets again to protest the Iranian military shooting down a passenger jet.

Iran:

Justification for Targeting Soleimani:

1. In the days since Trump authorized the strike against Iranian General Soleimani, we still don’t have a solid picture of why the decision was made. This leads to doubt over whether there was an imminent threat.
2. First the Trump administration said the threat was imminent, but they couldn’t say how imminent or where the target was.
3. Then they said to look at what Soleimani had been doing the days before the strike.
4. Then Trump says Iran was going to blow up our embassy.
5. Mike Pompeo says that we don’t know when or where, but the threat was real.
6. But then, nearly a week after the strike, Trump says Soleimani was planning attacks on four of our embassies. But no U.S. embassy security officials at the State Department were notified of the threat. The State Department did send out a warning to embassies before the attack, but it didn’t mention any specific embassies nor did it mention an imminent threat.
7. Then Trump says we targeted Soleimani because Iran killed one of our contractors (an Iraqi-American). Where was that outrage when Saudi Arabia killed Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. citizen? Or when North Korea killed Otto Warmbier?
8. But then Mike Esper says he saw no evidence that Iran was targeting four embassies. Esper does say that embassies would be a likely target since they’re so prominent.
9. When officials finally briefed the Gang of Eight, they didn’t mention anything about four embassies.
10. Members of Congress get a private briefing about the Soleimani strike. Coming out, Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) rip the administration for what Lee calls the worst briefing he’s ever seen. Lee says they were warned not to debate Trump’s war powers because it would embolden Iran.

• • According to Lee, the officials were “unable or unwilling to identify any point” at which they’d come to Congress for authorization of military force.
  • Both Lee and Paul say they weren’t open to a resolution limiting Trump’s war powers before the briefing, but they are now.
  • Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, CIA Director Gina Haspel, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley. handle the briefing. They also brief the House.

11. The administration used the 2002 war authorization, which authorizes the president to use force against terrorists, to justify the killing. But this was never designed to justify killing foreign officials.
12. After 10 days, we still don’t have a solid answer to why Trump authorized the killing now.

Trump Threatens War Crimes:

1. The administration can’t keep their stories straight on bombing Iran’s cultural sites. Trump says he’ll do it (that’s a war crime). Pompeo says the U.S. would only look at lawful targets. And then Trump says, “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people, and we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”
2. But then the next day, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper says we won’t strike cultural targets because it’s a war crime.
3. Finally Trump relents, and says that he’ll abide by the law.

Should We Stay Or Should We Go Now?

1. The administration can’t keep their plans for our troops straight. The U.S. commander of coalition forces in Iraq accidentally sends the Iraqi government a letter announcing the repositioning of U.S. forces and preparation to move out of Iraq. He sends both an English and an Arabic version, which don’t match. The letter says, in part, “we respect your sovereign decision to order our departure.”
2. Esper and Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley scramble to deny that we’re pulling our troops out of Iraq.
3. Iraq’s Prime Minister says he considers the letter to be the official U.S. position, and he asks Pompeo to send a delegation over to discuss plans for withdrawing our troops.
4. This is important, along with the Iraqi parliament’s vote to expel U.S. troops, because one of Iran’s primary objectives is to force U.S. troops out of Iraq.

Aftermath:

1. Hours after the strike against Soleimani, the Trump administration sent a message to Iran telling them not to escalate. The message was sent via the Swiss Embassy in Iran. While Iran and the U.S. kept up a rational correspondence through the Swiss, politicians from both countries fired up the people with their public hyperbole.
2. Iran retaliates against the Soleimani strike by launching ballistic missiles at two military bases in Iraq that house U.S. troops. Officials say there were no causalities.
3. Iraq and the U.S. had advance warning of the strikes, and they were intended to let Iran save face by launching strikes but causing minimal casualties.
4. A senior commander in Iran’s army promises harsher retaliations. Another commander says this is just the beginning.
5. A Ukraine International Airlines passenger jet crashes on its way out of Tehran, killing all 176 people on board. Initial reports indicate mechanical issues, but Trump says he expects something else.

• • Despite Iran’s repeated denials, U.S. officials suspect the worst—that the plane was accidentally shot down by Iranian missiles. And this does turn out to be the case.
  • As soon as Ayatollah Khamenei announces that, the goodwill the Iranian government gained over the killing of Soleimani was gone and protestors took to the streets to protest the shooting down of the plane. Protestors call for Iranian leadership, including the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to step down.
  • Side note: I’d hate to be the guy who launched the missile that took down the plane for so many awful reasons.
  • We can keep going around in circles about who’s fault it is, but it’s both Iran’s and the U.S.’s. If we hadn’t killed Soleimani, it never would’ve happened. If Iran wasn’t a bad global neighbor, we wouldn’t have killed Soleimani. But seriously, why didn’t they ground their planes during an airstrike?
  • The downing of the plane brings Canada into the picture, as there were a lot of Canadians on board and Iranian students heading to schools in Canada. And it brings Ukraine into the picture as well, obviously.
  • Ukraine says they knew before Iran announced it that the plane was shot down, but they held off providing their evidence, letting Iran figure it out on their own. Ukraine and Iran have already agreed on full legal cooperation and compensation issues.

What Else Happened:

1. Trump sends another 2,500 U.S. Marines to the Middle East.
2. The Trump administration denies a visa to Iran’s top diplomat, who was supposed to address the UN Security Council this week. Iran says that it violates our UN host agreement.
3. Steven Mnuchin announces sanctions on Iran, but seems to be working toward de-escalation in his public remarks. For its part, Iran says they don’t want any escalation or war.
4. Trump calls on the other signatories to the JCPOA to withdraw. We can’t have that agreement hanging around that actually suspended Iran’s nuclear development.
5. Trump thinks he can make another nuclear agreement with Iran. But why would they sign onto another deal with us?
6. Trump says that as long as he’s president, Iran will never be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Then only reason Iran hasn’t developed nuclear weapons by this point is that they’ve been complying with the JCPOA, which Trump broke. Here’s an in-depth history of Iran’s weapons development.
7. Mike Pence highlights the distrustful relationship between Trump and Congress when he says that the intelligence was too sensitive to share about the Soleimani killing. That’s what the Gang of Eight is for. Pence repeats the dubious claim that Soleimani was planning an imminent attack.
8. The House passes a resolution asserting that Trump has to get Congressional approval before using further military action against Iran. It’s a symbolic gesture since the resolution is non-binding.

• • In response, Trump tells rally-goers that he has no obligation to give Congress advance warning. He says they’ll just leak it to the media.

9. Senator Tim Kaine introduces a similar proposal in the Senate, which faces an uphill battle.
10. The ongoing conflict in the region holds up humanitarian aid to thousands of refugees in Iraq.
11. On the same day that the military carried out the strike on Soleimani, they carried out another attack against an Iranian military official in Yemen.

• • It was unsuccessful.
  • It raises questions of whether there really was an imminent attack or if the attack on Soleimani was part of a larger effort to cripple Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

12. Trump warns Iraq that the U.S. will cut their access to their central bank account if they expel U.S. forces. The account is held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
13. Instagram and Facebook begin removing all posts expressing support for Soleimani, saying they violate the sanctions against Iran.
14. In April, the U.S. designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a foreign terrorist organization. If it’s allowable under international law to designate a foreign government’s military as a terrorist organization, Trump has an argument for the strike. But I don’t think we’d want other countries designating the Marines as a terrorist organization just so they can take out the leadership. Just thinking out loud here.
15. Russia offers Iraq an air defense system to help Iraqis ensure their own sovereignty.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

1. An Arizona state legislator introduces a bill that would allow property owners at the southern border to build sections of the wall on their own property without needing city or county permits. The bill is actually intended to help a group called We Build the Wall, a privately funded group that wants to build the wall themselves.
2. A panel of federal judges temporarily lifts a block from a lower court on the $3.6 billion Trump took from the Pentagon to build his border wall.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. A Delaware man spray paints “God wills it” in Latin on a Planned Parenthood building and throws a lit Molotov cocktail at it. The man’s social media posts show him to be pro-Christian, anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, anti-refugee, and pro-white supremacy.
2. Ahead of the upcoming vote in the Virginia state legislature to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the Justice Department issues a statement saying that the process has expired and it’s too late to ratify it anyway.

• • ERA supporters file a lawsuit about that, saying that because the deadline was included in legislation authorizing ratification of the amendment and not in the amendment itself, the deadline is non-binding. I hope they’re right. I don’t want the rug pulled out from under me again.

3. Trump is renewing his focus on immigration—both legal and not—and wants to expand the Muslim ban. The affected countries are redacted from documents, so we don’t know who they’re targeting.
4. Under Trump’s new refugee rules, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announces that the state won’t accept new refugees. Texas is the first state to do so; a county in Minnesota became the first county to do so. Religious groups and other non-profits file a lawsuit against Abbott to fight his decision.
5. The Trump administration is deporting asylum-seeking Mexicans, El Salvadorans, and Hondurans, but not to their home countries. They’re deporting them to Guatemala! A super safe place for a refugee, right?

Climate:

1. A 2007 report by the UN’s IPCC predicted the catastrophic 2019/2020 fire season in Australia. To quote from the report:
   “An increase in fire danger in Australia is likely to be associated with a reduced interval between fires, increased fire intensity, a decrease in fire extinguishments and faster fire spread. … In south-east Australia, the frequency of very high and extreme fire danger days is likely to rise 4-25% by 2020.”
2. 2019 registers as the second hottest year on record, finishing off the hottest decade on record. The past five years averaged 2 to 2.2 degrees higher than the benchmark preindustrial levels and above the Paris Accord’s goals.
3. On the bright side, greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. declined a bit in 2019. Data research relates the decrease to a drop in the use of coal. An increase in the use of natural gas somewhat offset the savings made by using less coal.
4. A new study estimates that shifting from coal to gas prevented about 26,610 deaths related to heart and respiratory problems.
5. The Keystone XL isn’t the only unpopular pipeline. Activists have been fighting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would deliver shale oil from West Virginia to the North Carolina coast. The status of the pipeline has been in question since 2013, and a federal court just overturned one of the developer’s permits.

Budget/Economy:

1. The Institute for Supply Management reported an increase in its non-manufacturing index and a continued decrease in the manufacturing index. This indicates that the services sector is strong; the manufacturing sector, not so much.
2. Tom Donahue, long-time CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urges bipartisan support for issues like climate change and investing in infrastructure. Interestingly enough, the Chamber under his watch has fought climate change and environmental regulations, along with workplace discrimination regulations and raising the minimum wage.
3. The New York Fed keeps pumping money into the repo market—so far more than $1 trillion in temporary financing. This means banks don’t have enough liquid assets, and the Fed is helping them out.

• • Normally, this is a quantitative easing move, but right now the back up is caused by the government’s unexpectedly large budget deficits.

Elections:

1. Mike Pompeo has been toying with running for Senate in Kansas, but this week he says he doesn’t plan to run. That leaves Kris Kobach as the Republican candidate with the highest name recognition. Kobach is extremely popular with the hard right, but extremely unpopular with everybody else.
2. Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) finally resigns from Congress following his December 3 guilty plea. He’s getting off easy because he was charged with 60 felony counts and he only pleaded guilty to one.

• • Several out-of-district Republicans are vying for his seat, including former Representative Darrell Issa.
  • It’s really notable that the district re-elected Hunter despite the fact that he was charged with those 60 felonies BEFORE the 2018 elections.
  • It’s also really notable that he immediately threw his wife under the bus when he was charged, and unsurprisingly she later agreed to cooperate with the prosecution.
  • Despite his plea, he won’t own up to any wrongdoing and continues to excuse his actions.
  • Hunter’s seat will remain empty until 2021.

3. Steve Mnuchin pushes to delay the disclosure of the money spent on the Secret Service for presidential travel until after the 2020 presidential election.

• • In January 2019, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that it cost federal agencies $13.6 million for four trips to Mar-a-Lago during one month-long period in 2017.

Miscellaneous:

1. Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s chief of staff, Eric Chewning, resigns. Chewning has worked for three defense secretaries since January 2019.

• • Chewning was a participant in the newly released email threads showing how worried Pentagon officials were over the holdup in aid to Ukraine.
  • He’s the sixth high-level DOD official to resign in the past month; five DOD officials resigned within a one-week period in December 2019.

2. Trump approves a declaration of emergency for Puerto Rico after the island experiences a series of sizable earthquakes. The island is still struggling to recover from hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.
3. A New York State Supreme Court judge denies Trump’s request to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him. Trump’s lawyers say she can’t sue Trump in New York because he made the allegedly defamatory statements in Washington D.C.

Polls:

1. 56% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling Iran. 55% say killing Soleimani has made us less safe. 52% say Trump’s actions were reckless.
2. 57% of Americans think Trump committed an impeachable offense, and 52% think he should be removed from office.
3. A Pew Research Center survey shows a median of 64% of adults in 32 countries don’t trust Trump to do the right thing when it comes to world affairs.

• • Confidence in Obama in 2016 was at 74%, compared to Trump’s high of 31%.
  • Trump has pockets of support in the Philippines, Israel, Kenya, Nigeria, India, and Poland.

4. Mike Pence, Donald Trump Jr., Nikki Halley, and Ivanka are the GOP’s top choices for the presidential nomination in 2020.