Tag: mueller

Week 66 in Trump

Posted on April 30, 2018 in Politics, Trump

If you’re unsure of why we need to put an end to Citizen’s United, here’s my quote of the week; a confession from Mick Mulvaney, former Congressman and current head of the Office of Management and Budget and the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.


“If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

He was speaking to bankers and lobbyists about how they can help weaken the CFPB—the very agency he runs and the very agency that is supposed to be a watchdog over bankers. This guy is not looking out for the best interests of the people. And we need to get money out of politics.

Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Fox & Friends

I don’t usually report much on Trump’s rallies or speeches, but this stream of consciousness earned its own category this week.

  1. Trump phones in to Fox & Friends and talks for nearly half an hour non-stop devolving into a rant by the end. The anchors could barely get a word in, even though they tried to ask him questions, steer him away from legal danger, and stop the conversation. I’m not even sure I can summarize it all, but here goes:
    • He criticizes the Iran deal and says we gave them $1.8 billion dollars. (Background: Hardly any of this money was controlled by the U.S. or U.S. banks—it was mostly held overseas and much of the payment was in Euros. Some of it was frozen assets, and some of it was from a military hardware agreement that they paid for but that we never delivered on because of the revolution.)
    • He says he’s having a hard time getting things done because of the obstructionist Democrats. Except that the Republicans hold the House, the Senate, and the presidency. Democrats don’t have much power to obstruct.
    • He defends Dr. Ronny Jackson and says Montana Senator Jon Tester will pay in the midterms for publicizing criticism against Jackson. (Tip: If you vet your candidates before presenting them to Congress, you can also stop their dirty laundry from being aired in public.)
    • He (again) says James Comey is a leaker and a liar, and accuses him of crimes. He then threatens to intervene with the DOJ.
    • He (again) says the FBI was unfair to search Manafort’s and Cohen’s offices and homes.
    • He says Michael Cohen represented him in the Stormy Daniels affair, something he previously denied knowledge of.
    • He says Michael Cohen barely represented him (just a “tiny, little fraction”), opening the door to getting client/attorney privilege thrown out.
    • They talk Kanye West. I’m not sure how this is news. Even Kanye felt compelled to tweet he doesn’t agree with Trump 100%.
    • He says that Democrats outspent Republicans on a recent special election in Arizona that the Republican won by 5 points.
      Reality check: Republicans outspent Democrats 8.4 to 1, and they should’ve won that seat easily by 20-25 points.
    • He talks about the upcoming North Korea summit, saying he’s not giving up much in the negotiations.
    • He says he got more done in one year than any president. Historians have already debunked that one.
    • He (again) brings up his electoral win.
    • He criticizes Mueller’s team of attorney’s for being all Democrats (they are, but Mueller isn’t, and we don’t know the party affiliation or identities of DOJ and FBI staff doing the actual investigation).
    • He also says Mueller’s attorneys are all “Hillary people.”
    • He confirms that he spent a night in Moscow during the Miss America pageant, despite previous denials.
    • He ends with an almost unintelligible rant about Andy McCabe, Hillary money, Comey crimes, and Terry McAuliffe.
  1. Within an hour of the above, DOJ prosecutors file a statement with the courts saying that Trump said Cohen represented him just a “tiny, little fraction.” This, along with Sean Hannity claiming Cohen didn’t represent him, blows up the argument by Trump’s legal team that the documents seized from Michael Cohen are covered under client/attorney privilege.
  2. Also, Kellyanne Conway says Trump would like to appear regularly on Fox & Friends, but I’m guessing his legal team will work very hard to not let that happen.

Russia:

  1. The Senate Judiciary Committee advances a vote on legislation to protect Robert Mueller.
  2. House Intelligence Committee Republicans and Democrats each release very different reports on their conclusions in their Russia investigation. This whole thing seems like an enormous waste of time and energy, and only proves that Trey Gowdy was absolutely correct when he said:

“Congressional investigations unfortunately are usually overtly political investigations, where it is to one side’s advantage to drag things out. 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.”

  1. One main difference between the two reports is that Republicans say it was out of their scope of investigation to look into whether Trump colluded with Russia (though they concluded he didn’t). The Democrat’s report says the committee refused to follow up on leads about possible collusion.
  2. Another main difference is that the Republican report accuses our federal law enforcement agencies of doing shoddy work.

  3. Likely the differences between the two reports are things that Mueller’s investigation is already looking into.
  4. Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with key Trump campaign members in 2016, turns out to have closer ties to the Russian government than she’s previously admitted to. She was an informant for the prosecutor general.
  5. The contact to whom James Comey leaked his memos used to be a special government employee for the FBI.
  6. A federal judge throws out Paul Manafort’s lawsuit accusing Robert Mueller of going outside the scope of his investigation.
  7. A new court filing indicates that the purpose of the search warrant on Paul Manafort’s properties last year was to obtain information about the Trump Tower meeting between members of Trump’s campaign and Russian lobbyists.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court hears arguments about the third iteration of Trump’s Muslim ban. Early signs point to them not overturning it.
  2. Federal district judges vote unanimously to appoint Geoffrey Berman as U.S. attorney for New York’s southern district. Jeff Sessions appointed Berman as interim attorney, and the judges have taken the decision out of Trump’s hands for the time being by making the appointment.

Healthcare:

  1. A federal judge blocks Trump’s attempts to cut funding to a Planned Parenthood program to prevent teen pregnancy across the nation. This is on top of last week’s ruling that he couldn’t cut funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.
  2. Step away from the romaine! E-coli outbreaks related to romaine lettuce are reported in 22 states.

International:

  1. Mike Pompeo gets through his first round of confirmation votes, even though Rand Paul swore he would block Pompeo. That is, until Paul received several calls from Trump on the day of the vote.
  2. Senator Tom Cotton says that Democrats are involved in shameful political behavior for opposing Mike Pompeo’s nomination.
    Reality check: Cotton held back the confirmation of three of Obama’s appointees, including one, Cassandra Butts, who’s nomination he dragged out for two years. We’ll never know how much longer he would’ve dragged it out because she died of leukemia before he had a chance.
  3. Pompeo ends up getting confirmed by the end of the week, and flies right off to Brussels to meet with NATO allies.
  4. In Kabul, a suicide bomber bombs the gate of a voter registration center, injuring over 100 and killing at least 57. ISIS claims responsibility.
  5. Melania and Donald Trump host their first state dinner in honor of French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte. Breaking from the bipartisan tradition, they didn’t invite any Democrats or members of the press.
  6. Of note, the main purpose of Macron’s visit is to convince Trump to stay in the Iran deal, despite likely pressure from John Bolton to pull out.
  7. If we pull out of the Iran denuclearization deal so close to the North Korea denuclearization meetings, North Korea might not think we’re negotiating in good faith.
  8. In his speech to the joint Congress, French President Macron addresses #MeToo, climate change, the U.S. rejoining the Paris climate accord, fake news, democracy and the post-WWII democratic order, white nationalism, terrorist propaganda, North Korean denuclearization, stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons (while also calling for respect for Iran), and Mideast peace. He pushed for support of the JCPA (Iran agreement), saying France won’t leave it and Trump needs to take responsibility for his own actions around that.
  9. After Trump threatens economic sanctions against Iran unless our EU allies fix the JCPA, Iran says maybe they’ll just withdraw, freeing them to start up their nuclear program again.
  10. Ahead of Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in meet and agree to work to remove nuclear weapons from their respective countries. They also agree to officially end the Korean war.
  11. Police arrest the Waffle House shooter. He has a history of mental illness, at one time saying Taylor Swift was stalking him and at another showing up at the White House to set up a meeting with Trump.
  12. Trump threatens countries who might oppose the U.S.’s bid to hold the FIFA World Cup in 2026, saying we won’t support them if they don’t support us.
  13. Thousands of protestors come out in Germany to protest anti-Semitism. There’s been a rise in anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incidents across Europe, with Germany averaging about four a day right now.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Tennessee’s state Senate passes a bill to erect a monument to the victims of abortion. The state House already passed a similar bill, so it looks like it’ll be up to the governor to pass or veto it.
  2. The chaplain of the House of Representatives resigns, indicating in his resignation letter that it was at Paul Ryan’s request. Ryan later said that the House members’ pastoral needs weren’t being met.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. We find out that National Security Advisor John Bolton chaired the non-profit Gatestone Institute, which promotes false and misleading anti-Muslim stories (some of which were picked up and spread by Russian trolls in 2016). The group also warns of the coming jihad, warns against mixing Europeans with Muslims, and blames several national problems on immigrants.
  2. A federal judge orders the Trump administration to continue with the DACA program, this time forcing the administration to start processing new applications. Trump has 90 days to provide stronger legal justification for ending the program.
  3. Mississippi and Alabama state governments took a holiday on Monday to observe Confederate Memorial Day.
  4. The Department of Homeland Security prepares to end temporary protected status for over 9,000 immigrants from Nepal who came here after their country had a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. I’m losing count… we’re getting rid of Haitians, Sudanese, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, Syrians, Hondurans, Somalis, Yemenis, and now Nepalis. That’s over a half million displaced people.
  5. Montgomery, Alabama opens the nation’s first memorial for victims of lynching, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It features 800 steel columns hanging from a roof, each with the name of a county and the people who were lynched there.
  6. The Oklahoma state House passes a bill that would allow adoption agencies to discriminate against adoptive couples based on religious beliefs. This, of course, lets agencies halt adoptions to a variety of couples who offend their morals, but is most likely to affect gay and lesbian couples.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A federal judge rules against Trump’s attempt to delay a rule that would increase fines for automakers whose cars violate fuel efficient standards.
  2. Trump’s latest plans for EPA fuel economy standards is to freeze them at 2020 levels through 2026. California has long been able to create their own rules on auto emissions, and the latest plan would revoke that.
  3. Scott Pruitt signs the proposal mentioned last week that would force the raw data behind any EPA scientific studies to be released to the public. As a reminder, much of this data is personal medical data covered by privacy standards, so not all studies can legally follow Pruitt’s rule.
  4. Also, it turns out that internal EPA staff has been working on the above proposal in collaboration with Representative Lamar Smith, who authored a similar piece of legislation that passed the House. They want the proposal to be as close as possible to Smith’s bill.
  5. On top of forcing anchors to read propaganda pieces, Sinclair Broadcast Group fires a local reporter who refused to present global warming denier views in a piece on global warming.
  6. Scott Pruitt appears before two congressional committees to answer questions about his questionable expenses and his conflicts of interest.
  7. Ryan Zinke’s Department of Interior proposes cutting parts of the Well Control Rule. The Obama administration created this rule after the BP oil spill to provide safety standards to prevent blowouts and enact emergency response to offshore drilling disasters. Two things rankle me about this:
    • Zinke continues to protect his own state of Montana while disregarding the safety and health of other states.
    • Regulations don’t come out of a vacuum. They are largely in response to health and environmental disasters to prevent them from happening again.

Budget/Economy:

  1. A CBO report says that because of the GOP tax reform, owners of pass-through businesses will receive over $40 billion in tax breaks this year.
    • $17.4 billion will go to around 200,000 owners who make over $1 million a year (averaging to an $87,000 tax break per owner).
    • $3.6 billion will go to around 200,000 owners who make $500,000 to $1 million (averaging to an $18,000 tax break per owner).
    • $15.7 billion will go to around 9.2 million owners who make $100,000 to $500,000 (averaging to an $1,700 tax break per owner).

So yes, this is definitely a tax break for the rich.

  1. Ben Carson proposes a rent increase for people living in subsidized housing. Right now they pay 30% of their income; he wants to increase it to 35%.
  2. In the first quarter under the new tax plan, the economy grew at 2.3%, just above the yearly average since the recession ended nine years ago. It falls below the 2.9% from the previous quarter and below Trump’s expectation of 3%.
  3. Economists think we can’t extend this growth for more than a year or two because of our national debt (over $21 trillion now), which is expected to grow by around $1 trillion per year. If the Fed continues to raise interest rates, the cost of that debt will also increase.
  4. Both the Fed and the CBO expect growth to fall to 1.8%.
  5. Sprint and T-Mobile agree to a $27 billion merger. Verizon will be the only larger mobile provider.

Elections:

  1. Democrats in Arizona block a Republican effort to change how vacant Senate seats are filled. The GOP was trying to make sure that should John McCain have to give up his seat because of his health issues, his seat wouldn’t be up for election this year. If the bill passed, the governor would appoint a replacement who would hold that seat for two full years if a seat becomes vacation within 150 days of a primary election.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The day after Barbara Bush’s funeral, George Bush Sr. ends up in the ICU with an infection.
  2. A van drives down a Toronto sidewalk, killing 10 and injuring 15 more. The driver turns out to be kind of a social outcast belonging to a group called Incel (involuntary celibates). He tries to commit suicide by cop, but the officer involved refuses to shoot him and takes him in to custody.
  3. Accusations of impropriety mount against Dr. Ronny Jackson, Trump’s pick to run the Department of Veterans affairs. Allegations include over-prescribing drugs (uppers and downers), being drunk on the job, and creating a hostile work environment.
  4. An inspector general report from 2012 recommended terminating him for bad leadership of his department.
  5. And what the heck? The White House releases the inspector general report expecting it to exonerate Jackson, but it mostly backs up the accusations. Maybe they didn’t read it?
  6. Jackson denies all allegations, but the White House ends up withdrawing his nomination.
  7. The Presidential Personnel Staff, which is responsible for vetting candidates for government positions, has only 30 employees—less than a third of previous administrations. Most employees are young campaign workers, family members of staff, or more senior officials transitioning to other posts. Most also have no vetting experience.
  8. The Department of Education under Betsy DeVos has closed dozens of investigations into school disciplinary actions, most of which are civil rights issues. Blacks are 4 times as likely to receive suspensions as whites, and they are twice as likely to be arrested. And this starts at the freaking preschool level.
  9. In a joint press conference with French President Macron, Trump again accuses Democrats of being obstructionists. So I’ll remind everyone again that Democrats barely have enough power to obstruct. Republicans hold all branches of power.
  10. Michael Cohen says he’ll plead the fifth in court in order to avoid being deposed.
  11. A former federal judge will review the materials seized from Cohen’s home and offices to determine what falls under attorney/client privilege.
  12. Irony alert. Eric Greitens is the keynote speaker at a law enforcement prayer breakfast. He’s accused of two felonies, one around sexual blackmail and the other around computer tampering to gain a charity’s donor information.
  13. A jury finds Bill Cosby guilty on three charges of sexual misconduct.
  14. Reporters Without Borders drops the U.S. to 45th out of 180 countries in its ranking of press freedom. It was 41 in 2016 and 43 in 2017. I’m not clear how much credence to give this ranking.
  15. The FBI says they told the Trump administration about the spousal abuse allegations against Rob Porter in March of 2017, contradicting what the White House has been saying.
  16. Michelle Wolf doesn’t hold back at the White House Press Correspondence dinner, and gets raked over the coals by some and lauded by others. She called people out on their political BS without apology.

Polls:

  1. 74% of voters don’t want Trump to fire Mueller, but 71% think he will before this is over.
  2. 56% of voters think that Mueller will find that Trump did something criminal or impeachable.

Week 65 in Trump

Posted on April 24, 2018 in Politics, Trump

DRAKETOWN, GA - APRIL 21: Members of the National Socialist Party burn a Swastika (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

To me, the biggest news this week is that after decades of rule – longer than my entire lifetime – the Castro family is ceding leadership of Cuba. However, the new president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, is Raúl Castro’s handpicked successor and Castro will remain party leader until 2021. I wouldn’t expect much to change, at least not any time soon. At any rate, it will be interesting to watch.

Here’s what else happened last week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. April 10th was Equal Pay Day. That’s how far into this year white women had to work to make as much as their male counterparts did last year. For African-American women, this day doesn’t come until August 7th; for Native American women, it comes on September 7th; and for Latina women, it comes on November 1st. It’s a good time to remember that the administration stopped forcing companies to provide data on wages by race and gender, making it harder to close this wage gap.

Russia:

  1. So far this year, Trump’s reelection campaign has spent over $1 out of every $5 on legal fees.
  2. A judge rejects Trump’s request to review material seized from Michael Cohen before it can be allowed as evidence.
  3. We learn that Trump was surprised when he found out that the U.S. had expelled far more diplomats than our ally countries, and he was pretty pissed off about that.
  4. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley says new sanctions will be coming down on Russia. Trump says nope, not happening. And then, instead of the White House taking responsibility, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow says Haley must’ve been confused. And Haley says “I don’t get confused.” Kudlow says maybe he was the one who got confused. Haley, who was was repeating official White House talking points, wins the round but Trump still overrides her.
  5. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, is recused from the Michael Cohen case due to potential conflicts. He’s a temporary appointee and Trump could nominate him to a permanent position or not.
  6. Trump contradicts himself again on why he fired Comey, saying it wasn’t because of Russia. Last year, he said he was thinking about the Russia thing when he decided to fire Comey.
  7. Rudy Giuliani joins Trump’s legal team, saying he’ll get this Mueller thing wrapped up in two weeks.
  8. The DNC files a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Russian government, the GRU, several members of the Trump campaign, Russian nationals, and Wikileaks. The suit alleges a conspiracy to disrupt our presidential elections, and to favor Trump and harm Clinton in the election.
    • Defendants in the suit also include Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, Julian Assange, George Papadopoulos, Josef Mifsud (who leaked the email information to Papadopoulos), Aras and Emin Agalarov (Russian oligarchs who hosted the Miss Universe Pageant), the GRU, Russian hackers, and the Russian known as Guccifer 2.0.
    • The suit says that due to the nature of the crimes, Russia isn’t entitled to sovereign immunity.
    • The suit gives us some previously unknown dates. Russians first breached the DNC computer system on July 27, 2015. They breached it again on April 18, 2016, and began downloading documents on April 22. Four days later, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that Russians had emails that could harm Hillary’s campaign.
    • Analysts say the primary purpose of this suit is for the evidentiary discovery it will prompt.
  1. The DOJ finally releases Comey’s redacted memos to the House Republicans who then immediately turn around and release them to the public. House GOP had been threatening to hold DOJ officials in contempt if they didn’t turn the memos over, though it isn’t typical for the DOJ to release evidence relevant to an ongoing investigation.
  2. I haven’t read a lot that’s news in the memos, except maybe that:
    • Trump lied about whether he stayed overnight in Moscow, which his bodyguard already said he did. (Also, new news is that flight records confirm he stayed there.)
    • The administration (including Trump) had their doubts about Michael Flynn, which seem for Trump to stem from Flynn not telling him about a call from Vladimir Putin.
    • Trump wondered if Andrew McCabe had it in for him from the start.
    • Trump refused to criticize Putin even in private.
  1. We learn that House Republicans threatened Rosenstein with impeachment if he didn’t release information about the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and the Russia meddling. Sources say they’re trying to build a case against Rosenstein.
  2. We also learn that Trump pushed Jeff Sessions and Christopher Wray to investigate Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two investigators removed from the Russia case. He doesn’t understand why they still have jobs at the FBI, and wants Sessions and Wray to find information to discredit them.
  3. Rod Rosenstein tells Trump he’s not the target of an investigation, which seems to give Mueller a little breathing room and lifts the threat of being fired.
  4. We learn that Sessions told White House Counsel that if Trump fires Rod Rosenstein, Sessions might quit in protest. Not that there seems to be much love lost between Trump and Sessions, but an attorney general resigning could lead to a string of resignations.

Courts/Justice:

  1. While Trump’s been suggesting he might fire Mueller, the Supreme Court is set to hear a case on how SEC judges are appointed. Trump’s Solicitor General is urging the courts to make this case about the president’s power to fire all “officers of the United States” who “exercise significant authority” instead of limiting the scope to firing SEC judges.
  2. With Neil Gorsuch siding with the liberal judges, the Supreme Court invalidates part of a federal law that mandates deportation of immigrants convicted of certain “crimes of violence.” They say the law is too vague.
  3. Parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims finally bring Alex Jones to court for his repeated lies and conspiracy theories intended to convince the public that the parents are crisis actors and it was a “false flag” operation.
    • At least three lawsuits have been filed against him recently for defamation.
    • The parents have been receiving death threats from people who believe Alex Jones’ dangerous lies.
  1. A court holds Kris Kobach in contempt. Kobach led Trump’s voter fraud commission, and has been tied up in courts over his voter suppression efforts as Secretary of State in Kansas. The judge says Kobach disobeyed orders to let thousands of disenfranchised voters in Kansas know that they actually were registered to vote in 2016.
  2. Three federal judges rule that the Trump administration cannot withhold funds from so-called sanctuary cities, a decision roundly criticized by the DOJ. In case you think the judges are activist judges, they were appointed by Reagan, Bush Sr., and Ford.
  3. In response, Trump tweets that sanctuary cities released 142 gang members back into the streets in 2017. In reality, 142 detainer requests for suspected gang members failed for various reasons and not all in sanctuary areas. Reasons include administrative errors, ICE issuing the detainer request too late, ICE being unable to arrange custody transfer, and, yes, non-cooperation by local officials. (You can see the report here). 


Healthcare:

  1. Attorneys general in sixteen states file a motion to intervene in a lawsuit filed by several red states to overturn the ACA.
  2. Anti-abortion laws are on the rise. In 2017, 19 states passed 63 laws restricting abortions, some even trying to ban all abortions without regard for the mother’s life. Thirty-three states have placed restrictions on abortions since 2011.
  3. The ACLU and Education Law Center win a lawsuit requiring that kids in Flint, MI, get health checks to make sure they haven’t been harmed by the lead in their water supply. They’ll also get special health or education services if needed.
  4. A federal judge rules that the Trump administration can’t cut funding to the successful Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. The administration was trying to cut the program’s five-year grants down to three years.

International:

  1. Trump gives North and South Korea his blessing to talk about formally ending the Korean War. North Korea also drops it’s decades-long requirement that U.S. troops leave South Korea in order for North Korea to denuclearize.
  2. Ahead of the planned meeting with Trump, North Korea says it will suspend their nuclear tests and shut down a test site. Likely, the test site is degraded—nuclear test sites can only be used for so long. Kim Jong Un says there’s no more need for the sites, but it’s not clear if that’s because the country has advanced their weaponry as far as they need to or because they’re focused on peace.
  3. Trump meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe again at Mar-a-Lago, nearly a year from their first visit there. Both leaders are under investigation this time around.
  4. The White House says that Mike Pompeo met with Kim Jung Un over Easter weekend. We only learn about it now because Trump thinks it will help Pompeo get confirmed as Secretary of State.
  5. We learn that Jim Mattis pushed Trump to obtain congressional support before launching an attack on Syria. He was overruled, obviously.
  6. Anti-government protests break out across Nicaragua, spurred by changes to their social security system (but discontent against the Ortega government has been simmering for a while). After days of violence and at least 10 deaths, Ortega agrees to reverse the changes.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The Senate Judiciary Committee finally considers bipartisan legislation to prevent Trump from firing Mueller. Mitch McConnell says that even if the committee passes the legislation, he won’t bring it to a floor vote in the Senate. The committee says they’ll vote on it anyway
  2. A group of House Republicans ask the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Dana Boente, Loretta Lynch, and other perceived enemies, largely for activities surrounding the Steele dossier.
  3. Trump recently signed a law to protect victims of online sex trafficking, but it could have some unintended consequences. The way the new law is written, entities that host a website could now be held responsible for content that other people put on the site. Some sites are already doing damage control by closing down sections like personal ads and by rewriting the terms of service.
  4. Chuck Schumer introduces a bill to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level. This comes not long after we learn that John Boehner will be lobbying for the marijuana industry.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A Starbucks manager calls the police on two black men who ask to use the facilities while waiting for someone to join them and before they order coffee. The men decide to wait for their friend instead of ordering, and the police arrest them and detain them for 8 hours.
  2. The manager no longer works for the company, and Starbucks will close all stores on May 29 in order to train staff on racial bias.
  3. Trump says sanctuary cities are places where undocumented immigrants “breed.” I’m not sure what he means by that, but it’s dog-whistle language that plays on people’s fears of immigrants while at the same time dehumanizing them.
  4. Trump tweets that he won’t fund California’s national guard at the border after Governor Brown says they can only be used to fight drug smuggling and other illegal activities (and that they can’t be used for immigration enforcement).
  5. A jury convicts three men in Kansas of plotting to bomb an apartment complex largely populated by Somali immigrants. The men, part of a militia group called the Kansas Security Force, said their attack would wake people up. This is a good example of why anti-Muslim sentiment is so dangerous.
  6. GOP members of the Senate whip out their new favorite weapon, the Congressional Review Act, to overturn rules laid out by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that mandate fairness in auto loans. Studies find that lenders charges minorities more for auto loans than whites, so the CFPB was trying to level the playing field.
  7. Instead of dealing with actual problems facing Tennesseans, the Tennessee House of Representatives has been working on bills to punish Memphis for removing confederate statues. Nothing has passed, but now they voted to strip $250,000 from the city in next year’s budget. The money was for the city’s bicentennial event.
  8. Six children in California’s central valley are orphans after an ICE chase results in a car crash that leaves their parents dead. The people in the car weren’t even ICE targets. People in the area blame ICE and Trump’s immigration policies; ICE blames California’s sanctuary policies.
  9. The city councils in several Orange County cities have voted to fight California’s sanctuary policies against the wishes of many of their constituents. Now they’re starting to get sued over those decisions.
  10. While women and Democratic men in the Senate have signed on to a letter pushing an overhaul of their harassment rules, not one Republican man has signed on to it yet.
  11. Dozens of demonstrators surround a school in Michigan with pickups flying the confederate flag, which eventually forces the school to cancel classes. Despite racial bullying that accompanies the demonstration, the mayor says “people in this country have to start realizing we have to tolerate all peoples’ views.” Um no, sorry. #NoH8
  12. ICE has reportedly been targeting immigration activists, and this week a judge rules that activist Alejandra Pablos be released.
  13. Neo-nazis take to the streets in Newnan, Georgia, to commemorate Hitler’s birthday. Counter-protestors wrote messages of peace and love in chalk on the sidewalks, while Antifa protestors were a little less touchy-feely.
    • Speeches were largely about white power and taking our country back from “illegal immigrants.”
    • Here’s a telling quote: “We need to round them up and put them in camps if need be, like we did the Italians, Germans and Japanese. We are at war with the illegals.”
    • It was mostly non-violent, and the only arrests were for counter-protestors wearing masks.
    • Supporters later gather further away from Newnan to burn a swastika and othala rune.

Climate/EPA:

  1. New information about Scott Pruitt’s paranoia and overspending keeps popping up. It turns out he upgraded his official car to a larger SUV with bullet-resistant seat covers.
  2. 170 Members of Congress sign on to a resolution requesting Pruitt’s immediate resignation from the EPA. They say they have no confidence in his ability to run the agency.
  3. GOP Representative Jim Bridenstein is just barely confirmed as administrator of NASA in a vote along party lines. Jeff Flake was a holdout until he got concessions on an unrelated issue. Bridenstein is not a scientist, lacks aeronautical expertise, and denies climate change.
  4. Just a note on Earth Day. The environmental movement started nearly 50 years ago because of real disasters like burning rivers, thick smog, oil spills, toxic waste leaching into neighborhoods, and poisoned lakes. The movement led to Earth Day and these disasters led to the creation of the EPA and the regulations that helped us clean up the mess we made. And now Scott Pruitt’s EPA, along with the Republican-led Congress, is working to remove the protections that gave us clean air and water and that stopped businesses from dumping toxic wastes. Fortunately, the courts are ruling against most of these changes.
  5. Trump marks Earth Day by promising to reverse even more regulations. He says that a market-driven economy is what will protect the environment and give us clean air, land, and water. (See above explanation of Earth Day.)
  6. Just like the previous few years, this year is predicted to be the worst so far for allergies. Why? Blame climate change for higher concentrations of pollen for longer periods of time.

Budget/Economy:

  1. On tax day, the IRS’s online system for filing taxes failed. They gave everyone an extra day to file their taxes.
  2. Crude oil prices are on the rise again, with our stockpile shrinking and OPEC keeping their supply tight.
  3. Trump criticizes OPEC for rising gas prices. So I see how this works. Now high oil prices AREN’T the president’s fault? (For the record, they aren’t, and they weren’t under Obama either.)
  4. Trump tweets that Japan and South Korea want us to get back in to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but South Korea was never part of it.
  5. Marijuana is a big money-maker in states where it’s now legal, but sellers generally deal in cash because banks can’t get around federal law. California legislators are pushing a bill to let the state license banks especially to handle money generated by marijuana sales.
  6. Paul Ryan wants to pass another major tax cut this year. Republicans hope it will generate some enthusiasm with their GOP base and help out in the midterms.
  7. While some are benefiting from the new tariffs, they’re pushing up the cost of newsprint. The Tampa Bay Times announces dozens of job cuts.
  8. Arizona’s teachers vote to strike, even though their governor promised a phased in 20% raise by 2020. Teachers say the money to fund the raises will come out of necessary programs, and the raises don’t apply to support staff.
  9. It’s spreading like a virus. Teachers in Colorado march on the statehouse for higher salaries and retirement fund guarantees, causing school closures in the state.
  10. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to fine Wells Fargo $1 billion over lending abuses. The bank is still struggling to recover from last year’s scandal where account reps signed up customers for fake accounts.
  11. Trump’s tax cuts pay big dividends for our six largest banks (JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and so on). They made $3.6 billion off the tax cuts in just three months this year.

Elections:

  1. Representative Charlie Dent (R-PA) announces he’ll resign in the coming weeks, opening another GOP seat in Congress.
  2. The White House legislative director says that Mitch McConnell plans to make the Senate workweek longer to hurt vulnerable Democrats. By making them work longer hours, they have less time to campaign.
  3. Oh man… this is just wrong. Luke Messer is a Republican candidate for the Indiana state legislature where he’s running to fill a seat previously filled by someone who was killed by a drunk driver. Messer chose not to tell party leaders that he had two DUI convictions.

Miscellaneous:

  1. It turns out that Cohen’s mystery third client is none other than Sean Hannity. Hannity’s been reporting on Trump and Cohen, even interviewing Cohen, without giving us any disclosure. He also fought to have the courts keep his name out of it.
  2. Hannity shares the services of other Trump lawyers too, including Jay Sekulow and Victoria Toensing.
  3. Hannity owns several real estate properties under shell companies, some of which he purchased with the assistance of HUD. He also purchased some of those properties through Jeff Brock, who plead guilty to rigging foreclosure auctions from 2007 to 2012.
  4. Cohen requests a 90-day delay in the Stormy Daniels lawsuit, but the judge says he would have to plead the 5th to get that.
  5. Now that Michael Cohen is under criminal investigation, the White House says Cohen is just one of the several lawyers Trump has on retainer.
  6. Amid his fight to keep seized documents secret, Cohen drops his libel suits against BuzzFeed and Fusion GPS. He was suing over allegations in the Steele dossier, and likely wants to avoid being questioned by Fusion GPS lawyers or being forced to present evidence.
  7. Karen McDougall reaches a settlement with the parent company of the National Enquirer, freeing her to talk about her alleged affair with Trump.
  8. Students across the country stage another walkout, this time to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting, to protest gun violence, and to push for gun law reform.
  9. Missouri Governor Eric Greitens (R) faces a new scandal and is charged with a felony for misusing a charity donor list. He’s the same guy facing felony charges from taking a nonconsensual sexual picture of his mistress and then blackmailing her with it.
  10. Barbara Bush passes away at 92. While members of both parties praise her, Roger Stone calls her a “vindictive drunk” and we find out where the GOP draws the line at supporting Trump’s friends.
  11. The Washington post wins a Pulitzer for reporting on the Alabama Senate race (specifically the Roy Moore scandal). The New York Times in conjunction with the New Yorker, wins a Pulitzer, for work on breaking the Harvey Weinstein sex-abuse story. Both the Washington Post and New York Times win Pulitzers for their work on Russian interference in our elections.
  12. Electricity goes out across Puerto Rico, which still hadn’t restored electricity to all residents.
  13. A Southwest jet blows an engine, killing one passenger who was partially sucked out and apparently hit by shrapnel. The pilot shows nerves of steel, and turns out to be one of the Navy’s first female fighter pilots.
  14. The DOJ’s inspector general referred his findings on Andrew McCabe to the top federal prosecutor, who could file charges against McCabe.
  15. McCabe’s lawyers say that McCabe will sue Trump for defamation.
  16. A man shoots up a Waffle House in Tennessee, killing four people. Authorities had revoked his firearms license and seized his weapons last year, giving the weapons to the shooter’s father who then turned around and gave the guns back. The big hero of the day is James Shaw Jr., who charged the shooter, grabbed the weapon, and threw it to the other side of the counter.
  17. Ugh. Another data breach. SunTrust Banks announces that one of their employees might have stolen the personal data of 1.5 million customers. Not only that, but the employee likely gave that info to a “criminal third party.”
  18. After years of calling the parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims “crisis actors” in a false flag shooting, Alex Jones now says he believes the shooting really did happen. I’m guessing that’s because some of the parents are suing him for defamation. Of note, Alex Jones also recently lost custody of his children. His defense during that trial was that his decades of spreading conspiracy theories and lies is “performance art.”

Polls:

  1. Mueller’s favorability drops 11 points over the past month, likely a result of the Trump and GOP campaigns to attack his credibility. 32% see him favorably, 30% unfavorably, and 38% have no opinion.
  2. Mueller has a 19% unfavorability rating with Democrats, but almost half of Republicans view him unfavorably (up nearly 20 points from last month).
  3. Trump’s approval rating with white Evangelical Protestants hits a new high, reaching 75%. I wonder what he’s done that’s made them think more highly of him.

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 63 in Trump

Posted on April 9, 2018 in Politics, Trump

YOU'RE FIRED Rubber Stamp over a white background.

I’ve been thinking that Trump doesn’t fire people personally because he has an aversion to doing the actual firing as opposed to doing the reality show firing. You can tell he tries to make people so uncomfortable in their jobs that they’ll quit before he gets around to firing them. What I didn’t realize is that the president’s ability to fill a position under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act hinges around vague language that describes when the president can make his own appointments in case of vacancies, and firing someone doesn’t seem to be one of those cases. So it’s in his best interest if they quit. Crazy.

But I digress. Here’s what happened this week…

Russia:

  1. We learn through Russian media that Trump invited Putin for a White House visit when he congratulated Putin on his electoral victory.
  2. After opening arguments, Paul Manafort‘s lawyers withdrew part of their civil suit. Manafort says Mueller is overreaching in his investigation, but a court document shows that Rod Rosenstein gave Mueller authority to investigate Manafort’s relations with Russia and with the Ukraine. The judge doesn’t think Manafort has much of a case.
  3. The first prison sentence comes down in the Mueller investigation. It’s short — Alex van der Zwaan, the son-in-law of a Russian oligarch, gets 30 days in prison and a $20,000 fine for lying to the FBI.
  4. Konstantin Kilimnik is identified as the Russian agent with whom Manafort and Rick Gates had contact during the 2016 campaign.
  5. The State Department says that the expelled Russian diplomats can be replaced on a case-by-case basis. Expelling diplomats doesn’t change the agreement that outlines the number of Russian diplomats allowed in the states, so they can ramp it back up.
  6. While Mueller says Trump is a subject of the Russia investigation, he also says Trump is not a target. What this means is that Trump is anywhere between a witness and a suspect, and we don’t know which side he’s closer to. So this doesn’t tell us much.
  7. Mueller’s team questions two Russian oligarchs traveling to the U.S., searching at least one of their phones. Mueller also requests an interview with a third oligarch who has not traveled here. He’s looking into whether Russians illegally funded Trump’s campaign or inauguration.
  8. In his last public statement as national security advisor, H. R. McMaster says we haven’t done enough to punish Russia for its increased global aggression. Just hours before that, Trump said that no one has been tougher on Russia than him.
  9. But then, the U.S. sanctions 24 Russian oligarchs and government officials, including a few with ties to the Trump campaign. The sanctions also target about a dozen companies owned by the oligarchs.
  10. A newly released email shows that on the day Roger Stone went on InfoWars and predicted leaks about the Clinton Foundation, he emailed Sam Nunberg to say he had dinner with Julian Assange the night before. This indicates he had knowledge of the documents hacked by Wikileaks, but Stone now claims that he didn’t meet with Assange and flight records would prove it.
  11. Mark Zuckerberg says it’s reasonable for anyone on social media to expect that their data has been scraped in some way. And of course it is. We get warnings all the time about the info people are scraping and we choose to ignore it.
  12. Facebook estimates that Cambridge Analytica could have accessed information from up to 87 million users. They’ll start notifying Facebook users whose information was accessed.
  13. Mueller plans to issue a series of reports on his investigation. The first is about whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice and should be released this summer.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A federal judge dismisses a lawsuit against Massachusetts’s assault weapon ban, saying that right to own the banned guns and ammunition isn’t guaranteed by the second amendment.
  2. Florida officials appeal a court order directing them to create a new process to restore rights to former felons.

Healthcare:

  1. The Department of Health and Human Services removes information from its website about low-cost and no-cost women’s health issues, specifically around breastfeeding issues and cancer.
  2. A federal judge orders the government to stop blocking undocumented women from getting access to medical appointments, counseling, and procedures (including abortions).
  3. The surgeon general issues a nationwide advisory to give more people access to naloxone, along with training on how to use it. Naloxone reverses the effects of opioid overdose.

International:

  1. Despite a public commitment that we won’t leave Syria hanging, Trump says we’ll be out of there soon and he freezes funds to help stabilize the area.
  2. Assad launches another chemical attack on Syrian rebels, killing at least 40 and injuring at least 500. And now it’s up to John Bolton to come up with our next steps. Oyveh.
  3. Trump‘s announcement about Syria takes his military staff by surprise. A day after Trump says we’ll be out of Syria soon because ISIS is almost defeated, the White House says that we remain committed to fighting ISIS in Syria.
  4. Russian and Chinese military leaders meet, to show America their close ties with each other and to reaffirm those ties.
  5. A delivery truck drives into a crowd in Germany killing two people and injuring 20. The driver, a German citizen, kills himself. There are no ties to ISIS so far.
  6. The Department of Homeland Security says it found cell tower simulators—called stingrays—last year in DC. Foreign spies and other criminals can use these to track people and to intercept communications, and hardly anything has been done to combat them.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Chicago bans a long list of semi-automatic weapons.
  2. I can’t believe this had to be done. State legislators in New York pass a law making it illegal for police officers to have sex with people in their custody.
  3. South Carolina representative Ralph Norman took out his loaded pistol and laid it on a table during a meeting with constituents while they were discussing gun violence. South Carolina’s Democratic party calls for an investigation. Never point your gun—loaded or not—at anything you don’t want to shoot. And it’s probably never a good idea to shoot your constituents.
  4. Representative Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) resigns over using taxpayer money for sexual harassment lawsuit payouts.
  5. While Marco Rubio has been telling Parkland students that he supports raising the purchase age for certain weapons to 21, he’s also been pushing to end a similar law in DC.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump tweets that DACA is dead and again blames Democrats in Congress. He encourages Republicans in Congress to stem the ‘massive influx’ of people and drugs over the border.
    Background: Trump rescinded DACA in fall of 2017 and gave Congress until March to fix it. The only reason it’s still going is that it’s held up in the courts. It’s possible this tweet storm stems from recent CBP data showing a major uptick in border crossings in March, which seems typical for every year except 2017.
  2. Adding a citizenship question to the census (which the administration wants to do) will likely hurt these states the most: Nevada, Texas, California, New Jersey, Arizona, Florida and Maryland. The census is the backbone for all sorts of government programs and for government representation. Tying the census to any kind of federal law enforcement inhibits full census reporting because people are afraid they’ll be reported to the DOJ.
    Background: Information from the 1940 census was secretly used in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II under the Second War Power Act.
  3. Seventeen states, DC, and six cities sue to get the question dropped.
  4. Trump announces he’ll send National Guard troops to help guard the border. From what he says, this seems like a reaction to Fox & Friends’ shady reporting about a caravan of immigrants traveling through Mexico to storm our borders. The caravan is actually an annual human rights protest march in which some people request asylum in Mexico and the U.S.
    Background: Bush spent $1.2 billion sending National Guards troops to help border patrol, and Obama spent $110 million on the same. But neither of them did it in reaction to a hyped up news story.
  5. In a tax roundtable:
    • Trump doubles down on his theme of Mexicans-as-rapists through a misunderstanding of the caravan in Mexico. He later says women are “being raped at levels never seen before” in response to reports that women and children travel in numbers as a safety measure.
    • Trump tells a story, clearly designed to heighten people’s fear of immigrants, about how young girls never see their parents again after they’re “cut up” by immigrant gang members.
  1. Trump takes credit for getting Mexico’s president to break up the caravan, saying he pressured Mexican officials in a conversation on Monday. The White House later says this conversation never took place. And also, the caravan didn’t break up.
  2. The Trump administration institutes quotas for immigration judges to speed up processing.
  3. Police shoot and kill another black man. This guy was holding a pipe, which I guess is more easily mistaken for a gun than a cellphone is.
  4. Though Native Americans only make up 10% of the Department of the Interior’s staff, 33% of the staff that Ryan Zinke reassigned are Native Americans.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Michigan says it’s done giving away free water to residents of Flint. They say the water has been up to par for two years. But they’re still replacing the contaminated pipes so you can see why residents are wary.
  2. Michigan, home of what is probably the largest clean water disaster in the U.S. (see above), approves Nestle’s request to increase the amount of water they pump out of the state. Over 80,000 people commented against the move during the public comment period.
  3. The EPA scraps the fuel mileage targets for passenger cars and SUVs that were put in place under Obama to help combat global warming. They also plan to challenge California’s right to set their own targets, which was established under the Clean Air Act due to the state’s history of smog problems. Even if we back off of our standards, the rest of the world won’t, and we’ll have to play catch-up at some point.
  4. The Justice Department sues California over a state law that limits the federal government’s right to buy or sell federal land in the state.
  5. The administration is looking into rescinding a rule that protects endangered wildlife in order to give agricultural and mineral interests more freedom and access to use land that is currently off limits.
  6. Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, picks Susan Combs to oversee federal wildlife policy. This is only important because she opposes the Endangered Species Act and has spent the last several years fighting it.
  7. Last week, I wrote about Scott Pruitt paying $50 a night for a room in a lobbyist’s DC apartment, which then turned out to be a whole apartment. This week, we learn that his daughter stayed with him there as well while she was interning at the White House. And also:
    • He paid about $2,150 less than the going rate in DC.
    • The ethics committee signed off on the agreement, but now say he didn’t give them complete information.
    • The condo is partially owned by the wife of the head of Enbridge Inc., whose pipeline-expansion project was approved last year by the EPA under Pruitt. The head of Enbridge has been a long-time fundraiser for Pruitt.

    • He didn’t always pay his $50, and he wouldn’t leave the apartment when his agreement was up.
    • He wanted to spend $100,000 a month on a private jet subscription.
    • His security detail is more than three times as large as his predecessor’s (and his predecessor’s was part-time, unlike Pruitt’s full-time detail).
    • He tried to get his security to use sirens to get through traffic so he wouldn’t be late for dinner.
    • He used an obscure provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act to give massive raises to some of his friends that he hired at the EPA, and then refused to take responsibility in a Fox interview.
    • Several EPA officials who confronted Pruitt about his spending were reassigned, were demoted, or requested new assignments because of the work environment.
  1. A federal judge dismisses Exxon Mobil’s lawsuit against states attorney generals, allowing the lawyers to continue investigating whether Exxon knew about climate change and lied to the public to cover it up.
  2. A district judge rules that officials must take climate change into account when making certain infrastructure decisions.
  3. Indonesia declares a state of emergency after an oil spill caused by a leak in a pipeline in Borneo. The spill has spread across an area larger than Paris and is now heading out into the open ocean. The spill caused the death of 5 fisherman caught when clean-up workers sparked a fire.

Budget/Economy:

  1. On Monday, Trump hits back at people who fact-checked his tweet storm about Amazon last week, maintaining that Amazon is bad for the USPS and that they don’t pay taxes.
    Background: Trump isn’t concerned about the USPS. He hasn’t even appointed a board of governors yet for the post office, so they’re running on a temporary emergency committee with limited powers. Also, the Trump campaign spent over $150,000 at Amazon for office supplies. So there’s that.
  2. And on Monday, stocks continue to dive on a tech sell off as Trump keeps up his criticism of Amazon. But then stocks recover on Tuesday. And then they’re down… and then…
  3. The market volatility continues throughout the week, with pretty major fluctuations. According to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, investors aren’t reading the Fed’s moves correctly. Vanguard founder Jack Bogle says he’s never seen anything like it. Bloomberg says that the market had it’s worst April start since 1929, however it looks to be recovering.
  4. China retaliates against Trump’s announced tariffs by placing tariffs of their own on 128 American goods, estimated at about $3 billion.
  5. Trump raises the tariff ante by threatening tariffs on an additional $50 billion of Chinese goods, and China threatens tariffs on another $50 billion worth of American goods. Both sides say they don’t want a trade war though.
  6. Agricultural organizations express concerns over potential trade disagreements, noting that the current situation will definitely cut into hog farmers’ bottom lines. Trade agreements have generally been good for farmers. When Trump pulled out of TPP, Japan instated emergency tariffs on U.S. beef of 50%. When Trump threatened NAFTA, Mexico increased their corn imports from Brazil. The price of soybeans also dropped this week on the threat of greater trade disputes.
  7. Teachers in Oklahoma walk out of classes in protest. They’re looking for better salaries and school funding. Kentucky teachers protest as well, and Arizona teachers are working on a date to start their protest.
  8. Mick Mulvaney, the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recommends weakening the bureau’s responsibilities and requiring congressional approval for CFPB rules. Instead of being an independent and apolitical agency, Mulvaney says the director should report to the president and that it should be funded by Congress and not the Fed.
  9. Trump and Kevin McCarthy (Majority House Leader) are working to rescind some of the funding agreed upon in the bipartisan spending bill earlier this year. Trump had tried to get a line-item veto for the bill, but the Supreme Court ruled that out in a court case 20 years ago.

Elections:

  1. One of the GOP candidates for Lieutenant Governor in Idaho says that maybe if we pushed women with the death penalty, they would stop seeking abortions. Don’t vote for this guy!
  2. In tax roundtable, Trump goes off script and says millions of people vote multiple times, specifically in California. Trust me, we can barely get anybody to vote once in CA, much less get them out there to do it again and again.
  3. Many Republicans in Congress see keeping control of the House in the midterm elections as hopeless, so Mitch McConnell is focused on keeping control of the Senate.
  4. A review of news subscriptions shows that Trump did better in areas where there’s a “news desert.” In other words, where there weren’t enough news outlets to quickly fact check what Trump said, people tended to believe him more.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Another woman files a suit to nullify a non-disclosure agreement related to Trump. She says she faced harassment while working on Trump’s campaign (to clarify, not from Trump himself).
  2. At the White House Easter Egg Roll, which is largely attended by kids, Trump takes a moment to talk up the U.S. economy and military might.
  3. Trump tweets about his latest polls, calling Obama ‘Cheating Obama’. Probably the first president to accuse a predecessor of cheating.
  4. Trump calls the (hardworking men and women of the) FBI and DOJ an embarrassment to our country.
  5. The former head of the VA, David Shulkin, says he was never asked to tender a resignation letter and never did so, which he offers as proof that he was fired.
  6. A shooting at YouTube’s headquarters sends three people to the hospital. The shooting, a female, was upset about YouTube’s new monetization policies.
  7. Trump will once again skip the White House Correspondents‘ dinner.
  8. A fire on the 50th floor of Trump Tower takes the life of one person living there, a death that might have been prevented if fire sprinklers had been installed in the upper residential floors. Six firemen were also injured. A minor fire broke out two months ago on the roof of the building.
  9. Trump steps into the fire story a little too quickly, and, before news breaks of the man’s death, tweets:

“Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!”

  1. The Department of Homeland Security has a new media plan. They plan to compile a list of journalists and media influencers, and to monitor what the people on the list put out to the public.
  2. Sources say that Trump conferenced in Lou Dobbs to senior-level meetings during his first year in office, often interrupting officials to let Dobbs advise him.
  3. Todd Johnson, a Trump campaign manager in New Mexico and Defense Department appointee, resigned after it was discovered he posted controversial and false stories about Obama, like birtherism and how Obama is the anti-Christ. He also posted anti-Muslim propaganda.
  4. Twenty-six email domains managed by the Executive Office of the President were tested for security compliance, and 18 were found to be out of compliance. Only one had fully implemented the security protocol. But her emails!!!
  5. Trump says he didn’t know anything about Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, which would mean that Cohen committed fraud.
  6. Robert Mercer, a major funder of Breitbart and the Trump campaign, gave Secure America Now $2 million. Secure America Now is an extreme-right organization that bought anti-Muslim ads to place on Facebook and Google in 2016. The ads were micro-targeted to voters who would be receptive of them.
  7. Ronny Jackson is up for a military promotion, which means if he takes the job as head of the Veteran’s Administration, it could cost him nearly $1 million in lifetime retirement benefits.
  8. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) requests an explanation from Sinclair Broadcasting’s chairman about forcing their anchors at local stations to read propaganda statements.
  9. Fun fact: Sinclair’s contracts include a clause that penalizes employees for quitting, which might be discouraging anchors from protesting the propaganda pieces. Also, these clauses are likely not enforceable.

Polls:

A new poll shows that:

  • 48% of Americans trust CNN more than Trump.
  • 45% trust MSNBC more than Trump.
  • 30% trust Fox News more than Trump.
  • 75% of Republicans trust Trump more than CNN.
  • 72% of Republicans trust Trump more than MSNBC.
  • 35% of Republicans trust Trump more than Fox News.

  • Trump’s support among women fell from 41% to 35% this month.
  • Trump’s support among men rose from 50% to 53%.

Week 51 in Trump

Posted on January 16, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Shithole, shithole, shithole. There, I said it. But that’s not what we should be focused on here. We all know that Trump uses colorful language. What we should be focused on is the intent behind those words in a meeting on immigration. Whatever else guides our immigration process, respect for all parties involved is imperative. IMO, immigration makes America great, and we lose out when people stop coming here. And that’s what’s happening right now, especially apparent in college applications and in the tourism industry. By disrespecting any country, Trump discourages people of all nationalities from coming here. So whether or not you think what Trump said is racist, enough people (even Norwegians!) do think it’s racist. And that makes them not want to come here.

Here’s what happened this week…

Russia:

  1. Mueller has said he wants to interview Trump, and at first Trump’s legal team says sure. But Trump goes from saying it’s likely he’ll sit down with Mueller to saying it’s unlikely. The legal team wants to submit written responses instead of having a face-to-face sit-down.
  2. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s National Security Adviser, says there’s evidence of Russia meddling in Mexico’s upcoming election in July.
  3. Bannon clarifies his words quoted in the book “Fire & Fury” by explaining it wasn’t treasonous of Don Jr. to organize the meeting with Russians last year because he’s too inexperienced. However it was treasonous of Manafort to attend because he should’ve known better.
  4. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, releases Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson’s court testimony after Chairman Chuck Grassley drags his feet on it for months. Feinstein has long been known as a senator who can bridge both sides of the aisle; she’s a deal maker. But this is an indication that she’s fed up with D.C. partisanship and doesn’t care about burning bridges. I won’t go into detail, but here are a few bits:
    • Fusion GPS didn’t know what they’d find about Trump’s dealings with Russia. They were doing opposition research in other countries as well.
    • They say the FBI had a source in the Trump campaign, and that source had concerns about Russia ties.
    • Much of the information in the dossier has been corroborated by U.S. intelligence; none of it has been disproven.
    • Steel reached out to the FBI of his own accord because he was alarmed by what he found. Steel cut off ties with the FBI when he started to think they weren’t following up on the investigation.
    • It was a lot of info. You can read the whole thing here.
  1. Chuck Grassley says that Feinstein’s action will make it harder to secure testimony from other witnesses, even though Simpson himself requested the testimony be publicized and even though Grassley has been refusing to approve requests for witnesses.
  2. Trump criticizes Feinstein’s release of the document and calls it underhanded and possibly criminal. He gave her a new nickname—“Sneaky Dianne Feinstein.” LOL.
  3. The Senate’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in our election lacks staff and resources compared to other investigations. There are only 7 Senate staffers assigned, compared to 46 staffers assigned in the Benghazi investigation in 2014.
  4. Russia Ambassador Jon Huntsman says the relationship between U.S. and Russia will be over if they interfere in the 2018 midterms. He also warns that he doesn’t think they’re going to quit.
  5. Trump attorney Michael Cohen files defamation suits against Buzzfeed and Fusion GPS. He says the dossier incorrectly names him in association with Russian contacts.
  6. We find out that Mueller added a prosecutor with extensive cyber crime experience to his team last fall. It looks like they’re adding computer crimes to the focus of their investigation.
  7. Senator Ben Cardin releases a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report that describes two decades of Russian attacks against democracy, concluding that we are not prepared to defend ourselves against Russian meddling in our elections—including the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election. Why? Because the controlling party in Congress is too busy trying to prove it never happened in 2016.
  8. Trend Micro reveals that the Russian hacking group Fancy Bear is using the same hacking methods against the U.S. Senate that it used in the French elections last year against now President Macron. They set up a chain of websites mimicking U.S. Senate sites in order to harvest emails.
  9. The FBI has a foreign influence task force that will notify us about any Russian efforts to interfere in our elections and to manipulate social media.
  10. Facebook announces changes that will focus your news feed on family and friends instead of paid content as a way to fight fake news. Test runs of this haven’t been that successful, though.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A few of Trump’s judicial nominations expire, and Trump renominates two that the ABA rated not qualified to serve. He’s renominated 21 judicial nominees.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump signs an executive order giving the secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs 60 days to come up with a plan for veterans to have seamless access to coverage for mental health and suicide prevention resources for a year.
  2. A Florida court strikes down a law that mandated a 24-hour waiting period after meeting with a doctor before having an abortion. The court says the law is a violation of a woman’s right to privacy.
  3. Trump announces that states will be able to have more control over their Medicaid guidelines including requiring work for able-bodied recipients.
  4. The Trump administration ends the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices, which provides information to the public about evidence-based programs for mental health and substance abuse. The registry helps individuals and organizations see what programs are out there and the results of those programs in order to determine best practices for their own communities. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) says they’ll just handle it themselves from now on.
  5. The Trump administration agrees to pay legal fees in the lawsuits against the Obama administration over the birth control mandate of the ACA. Originally the law firm wanted the government to pay $29 million.
  6. A CBO analysis shows that reauthorizing CHIP for 10 years would actually save $6 billion. The program expired last year when Congress failed to reauthorize it, and some states are running on life support.
  7. Nearly a year into his term, Trump’s pledge to pull together people and resources to address the opioid epidemic isn’t showing much promise. The drug policy office (the ONDCP) doesn’t have a director and at least seven appointees have left. The deputy chief of staff is a recent graduate whose only experience is working on Trump’s campaign.

International:

  1. The UN pushes Israel to NOT deport tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers, mostly from Africa. Israel gave them until March to leave or face jail, and will even pay for their airfare home and pay them $3,500.
  2. Trump considers a small military attack against North Korea to let them know we’re serious, while at the same time hoping it doesn’t start a nuclear war. His administration is trying to convince him not to, saying nuclear war is not worth it.
  3. The Trump administration proposes a plan to ease restrictions on using nuclear weapons and also to develop new low-yield nuclear warheads for Trident missiles. The plan also increases the situations where we might use nuclear weapons.
  4. Trump cancels his planned trip to the UK, saying he doesn’t like Theresa May and then blaming Barrack Obama for George Bush’s plan to move the embassy in London. He criticizes Obama for selling the original embassy for too little, a price that was negotiated under Bush.
  5. Our ambassador to Panama, John Feeley, resigns because he can no longer serve under Trump. Feeley is a career diplomat and a former Marine. Here’s what he said:

“As a junior foreign service officer, I signed an oath to serve faithfully the president and his administration in an apolitical fashion, even when I might not agree with certain policies. My instructors made clear that if I believed I could not do that, I would be honor bound to resign. That time has come.”

  1. Trump OKs the Iran deal again, but adds sanctions to 14 individuals and entities for issues not related to Iran’s nukes.
  2. One of the individuals Trump sanctions is the head of Iran’s judiciary. Iran slams the decision and says it warrants a severe response.
  3. Trump sets a ticking clock in the Iran deal (he has a thing for setting random deadlines). He says he’ll approve the deal for now, but he gives Congress and our EU allies 120 days to alter the agreement according to his requirements. He wants to permanently block the path for Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Representative Ed Royce (R-CA), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announces his retirement from Congress. He’s the eighth committee chair to announce he won’t be returning.
  2. He’s followed by Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), who announces he won’t run again either, though there are rumors he’ll run for a neighboring district.
  3. One weird thing that comes up this week is that a member of Congress proposes putting earmarks back into legislation. Earmarks (pork barrel spending) have been restricted for 8 years because they were out of control. My opinion? I don’t think lawmakers should have to bribe each other just to get them to do what’s right.
  4. Trump also suggests Congress should go back to using earmarks to entice legislators to vote for bills, because the current system isn’t working.
  5. Following Trump’s tweet that he’s a “stable genius,” Representative Brendan Boyle (R-Penn.) proposes legislation that would require presidential candidates to undergo a mental health examination. He’s calling it the “Stable Genius Act.”

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Trump administration announces an end to Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 200,000 El Salvadorians who’ve lived here more than 17 years. They have 18 months to leave the U.S. or possibly be deported. There’s no clear path to citizenship for them as they aren’t necessarily eligible to apply for permanent status.
  2. The Supreme Court refuses to hear Mississippi’s new law that allows government workers and private businesses to deny service to people based on religious beliefs. This opens up the LGBTQ community and non-Christians to discrimination. The law states that marriage is between one man and one woman only, that sex can only happen in such a marriage, and that a birth gender can’t be changed. This could affect marriage licenses, adoptions, foster families, medical care, and so on. Also, you better not be having sex out of wedlock in Mississippi! The court says the law can only be challenged by people who’ve already been harmed by the law.
  3. Jeff Sessions rescinds more that two dozen documents that provide guidance for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). People with disabilities are particularly worried about the removal of the guidelines around employing people with disabilities.
  4. Trump opens to the press a bipartisan immigration meeting that was supposed to be closed to the press. In it, he agrees with Democrat Dianne Feinstein’s proposal for a clean DREAM Act until Republican Kevin McCarthy reminds him that’s not what he really wants. Even still, he keeps going back to it.
  5. Here’s how the meeting went:
    • He wants the Democrats to participate.
    • He says we can handle DACA and them move on to full immigration reform.
    • But then he says the DACA bill must include funding for the wall.
    • Oh, and then it also has to end the visa lottery and family based migration.
    • Result: There still is no clean DREAM Act.
  1. And then on the same day, a federal judge blocks Trump’s executive order to stop DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). The administration begins accepting renewal actions again, a relief to the thousands whose status is about to expire. The court says that Jeff Sessions’ claim that DACA is illegal is “based on a flawed legal premise.” So DACA will stay in effect as the lawsuit makes its way through the courts.
  2. The day after the immigration meeting, Trump clarifies that he wants any DACA bill to fund the wall, because without the wall it doesn’t work. Whatever that means. A wall won’t improve much along the border, and Customs and Border Patrol want the money spent elsewhere. Most illegal entries are at actual ports of entry.
  3. Trump proposes cutting proven security measures to fund the border wall. He’d cut funding for surveillance, radar, and patrol boats, all of which experts and officials say are more effective than a wall would be.
  4. Also, Trump backs away from the idea of a big beautiful wall across the entire length of the southern border, because who knew that it would have to cross rivers and ravines and mountainous terrain? He says there’ll be some fence, some wall, and some high-tech deterrents.
  5. Border crossings from Mexico are at a low, with apprehensions at their lowest since the early 70s. However, deportations and detentions of people who have been living in the U.S. are up, and ICE is targeting people with clean records.
  6. After raiding nearly 100 7-11 stores, ICE detains 21 people.
  7. Despite Trump’s expressed willingness to work on immigration in a bipartisan way, Republicans have come out with a hardline policy that clashes with both Trump’s and Democrats’ visions.
  8. At an immigration meeting, Trump wonders why we let in people from “shithole” countries like Africa, El Salvador, and Haiti. Which leads to us hearing “shithole” on the news for the first time ever. And reading it in the papers. He thinks we should let in more Norwegians, who, by the way, are single-payer socialists. Not surprisingly, this leads to a shitstorm in the media and on social media.
  9. It also leads to the Haitian government and several African governments calling in U.S. diplomats for a meeting.
  10. The UN denounces Trump’s statement as racist. The African Union Mission condemns the comments, and demands both a retraction and an apology.
  11. Trump then denies ever saying it, despite people in attendance confirming it. The one African-American Republican in the Senate, who was in attendance, called it disappointing. Trump suggests these meetings should be recorded. That would be terrific. At the end of the weekend, it’s still a he-said/she-said with some saying he did say it (including Lindsay Graham) and some saying they don’t recall it.
  12. After the blowout from his statement, Trump gets mad and says democrats don’t want a DACA deal. Jeff Flakes calls BS, saying he’s worked with democrats on this for 17 years and of course they want it. There’s actually a bipartisan plan with good compromises that Trump shot down.
  13. Trump also tweets that he has a wonderful relationship with Haitians… even though the administration just decided to deport 20,000 of them who are here under TPS.
  14. Jeff Bezos donates $33 million to a scholarship fund for Dreamers.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejects Rick Perry’s proposal for nuclear and coal power. The proposal would prop up coal power plants by requiring renewable energy power plants to keep a minimum amount of coal power on hand. Instead of forcing competition between fossil fuels and cleaner, cheaper sources, the plan would’ve forced customers to pay for unnecessary coal plants.
  2. After colliding with another ship, the Iranian oil tanker Sanchi is on fire and leaking oil into the China Sea. It finally sinks after several days, and 29 sailors are missing and presumed dead.
  3. Florida Governor Scott Brown pushes back against Trump’s plan to open 90% of U.S. coastal waters to oil and gas exploration, which leads to Florida getting an exemption to the rule less than a week after it was announced. Apparently it would hit their tourism business, but California’s tourism industry is twice as large. Also, nearly every governor in the other affected states opposes this, and it opens the Department of the Interior to legal challenges..
  4. The CEO of BP, Bob Dudley, says they already have a full plate in the U.S. and expresses caution about exploring new areas. The price of oil is still low (though rising), and the focus right now is on shale oil (on-land fracking).
  5. A newly released memo from Robert E. Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp., to Trump shows that Trump has granted him (or at least tried to grant him) his 3-page wishlist of getting rid of environmental protections around fossil fuels. Among his requests—getting rid of the Clean Power Plan, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, cutting the EPA staff by 50%, and getting rid of a tax credit for wind and solar energy. And before you say we shouldn’t subsidize wind and solar, remember they are not nearly as heavily subsidized as gas, oil, and coal.
  6. Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico, North Carolina, and South Carolina had their warmest year on record last year, and last month was Alaska’s warmest December on record, especially concerning because of the Arctic ice melt.
  7. Ryan Zinke announces a major overhaul of the Department of the Interior and changes to the way federal land is managed.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump speaks to farmers in Nashville to bolster his tax plan. He tells them they are “so lucky” he gave them the privilege of voting for him.
  2. Trump announces he’ll travel to Devos, Switzerland, to the world economic forum, where he’ll push his America first agenda to global business and political leaders. Presidents typically don’t attend this meeting due to its association with the wealthy elite.
  3. The Trump administration exempted 5 banks from being punished after they were convicted for manipulating global interest rates. One of those was Deutsche Bank.
  4. Canadian leaders are increasingly convinced that Trump will pull the U.S. out of NAFTA.
  5. Some good news from Walmart: They announce that they’ll raise their starting wage to $11/hour due to the new tax plan. In fairness, they‘ve been steadily increasing the wage in recent years, and several states where they operate already had an $11 minimum in place.
  6. Or maybe it’s not good news. They’ll give bonuses only to people who’ve been there 20 years or more, and they’re laying off thousands and closing dozens of Sam’s Club stores.

Elections:

  1. The Supreme Court hears arguments over Ohio’s method of striking voters from their roles. In the state, failure to vote triggers the removal process, which could drop legit voters. The suit argues that this is illegal.
  2. Former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio says he’ll run for Senate. Trump pardoned Arpaio after his conviction for criminal contempt for continuing to racially profile Latinos after a court ordered him to stop.
  3. Arizona’s consent decree preventing bullying or intimidating at poll sites expires.
  4. A federal court threw out North Carolina’s district maps because they were drawn to favor one party (Republicans). This could change everything, because previous thought was that gerrymandering couldn’t be based on racial or other discriminatory divides. This is the first time maps were thrown out because they disenfranchise a party. The judge said that the Republican drawn districts “were “motivated by invidious partisan intent” that would divide the state into 13 districts, 10 of which are Republican.”
  5. Trump’s voter fraud commission plans to destroy the data they collected instead of handing it over to DHS, which is taking over the issue.

Miscellaneous:

  1. A Senate bill that uses the Congressional Review Act to reverse the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality gets enough cosponsors to require a vote on the Senate floor.
  2. Steve Bannon steps down as executive chairman of Breitbart after his inflammatory statements about Trump and his family are published. Rebekah Mercer, once Bannon’s wealthy supporter, is behind it.
  3. Trump is still trying to fit Andrew Puzder into his administration somehow. Puzder used to run Carl’s Jr. and pulled out of his previous nomination to labor secretary after domestic abuse allegations came up.
  4. The Committee to Protect Journalists name Trump as the world’s most oppressive leader for all he’s done to undermine global press freedom. He beat Erdogan and Putin.
  5. Fact checkers find errors in Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury”. Some are factual, and some are just sloppy writing with typos and wrong words.
  6. After the book is published, Trump says he’ll look at loosening libel laws so it’ll be easier to sue people who spread lies about you. This seems to me like a dangerous road for him to walk.
  7. Vermont’s Senate approves legalized marijuana, just as Jeff Sessions announces the DOJ will not continue their hands-off policy for states that have legalized pot.
  8. White House aides have until the end of the month to decide if they’ll stay through November (and the midterm elections).
  9. The Trump administration enthusiastically pushes for the reauthorization of FISA. But just as the House is about to vote on it and just after watching a Fox News segment criticizing FISA, Trump tweets against the act, saying that’s what Obama used to spy on him. Then it seems someone caught him up on the administration’s actual stance on FISA and he tweets support for it, saying that he fixed the whole unmasking thing.
  10. The White House sends out a report certifying Trump’s health after his physical. The report is supposed to be from the White House physician, but they misspell his name.
  11. The D.C. Trump Hotel gets reassessed for 2018 and gets a $1 million tax break.
  12. The Hawaiian Emergency Management Agency sends out a false ballistic missile alarm, sending email and text alerts to people across the islands. It turns out that someone pushed the wrong button on a shift change. It takes over a half hour to issue a correction, and instead of reassuring his people, Trump golfs through it.
  13. The Department of Education (under Betsy Devos) awards a contract for collecting student debts to a company Devos invested in.
  14. We learn that Trump’s lawyer paid a porn star $130,000 one month before the election so she wouldn’t talk about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

Polls:

  1. This is surprising. 49% of Americans give credit to Obama for the current state of the economy. 40% give credit to Trump.

Week 47 in Trump

Posted on December 18, 2017 in Politics, Trump

It’s looking more and more likely that we’ll have tax reform by the end of the year. It doesn’t look like it will actually simplify the tax code at all, and it might add a few layers of complexity on top of our 75,000 pages of tax code. As usual, some will win and some will lose, but the ultra-wealthy and corporations won’t be on the losing side.

Here’s what happened this week…

Russia:

  1. Republicans make much ado about Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who was released from the Russia investigation last summer after texts were uncovered where he was critical of Trump and supportive of Clinton. However, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, in his testimony to Congress, says that all federal employees are entitled to their political views and that political leanings do not disqualify them from doing their jobs. It’s actually a violation of federal practices to take political leanings into account for any applicant.
  2. Russian hacker Konstantin Kozlovsky confesses in court to being hired by the FSB (Russian intelligence) to hack the DNC’s computer systems in 2016.
  3. Mueller’s team requests emails from all Cambridge Analytica employees who worked on the Trump campaign. Cambridge Analytica is the data, polling, and research firm that helped target Trump’s social media campaign.
  4. Putin considers Trump’s tweets to be official statements from the White House, and he gets reports of the tweets along with reports of other leaders’ official statements.
  5. Trump has never held a cabinet meeting about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and it’s not talked about in the White House.
  6. Citizens United opened the door to all sorts of donor manipulation around our elections. Mueller is investigating Russian donors and donors with Russian ties in the 2016 elections. Here’s an in-depth piece on the people involved.

  7. Rumors abound on the left that Trump plans to fire Mueller on December 22. Trump denies this, saying that the investigation is almost wrapped up and that he’ll be cleared soon.
  8. Trump’s lawyers say Mueller obtained Trump’s transition team documents using inappropriate methods. But according to lawyers for the Government Services Administration (GSA), it went like this:
    • The GSA told Trump’s transition team during the transition that materials “would not be held back in any law enforcement” requests.
    • Mueller’s team requested the materials.
    • The GSA turned over the materials.
  1. Jared Kushner’s legal team is working on hiring a crisis PR agency.
  2. Internet traffic for four major corporations—Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft—is briefly rerouted through a Russian ISP.
  3. Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, says, “The Russians offered help. The campaign accepted help. The Russians gave help. And the president made full use of that help.” He calls the evidence pretty damning, though he wouldn’t say whether it’s beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Two of Trump’s nominees for judge will not move forward for confirmation. Brett Talley is rated as unqualified by the ABA, and Jeff Mateer admits he discriminates against the LGBTQ community.
  2. However, Congress approves Leonard Steven Grasz, who couldn’t answer even the most basic of law questions during his confirmation hearing.
    UPDATE: My bad! I had Grasz (who was confirmed) confused with Matthew Peterson (who withdrew his nomination after his truly bad confirmation hearing).

Healthcare:

  1. A federal judge temporarily blocks Trump’s rule that let employers and universities opt out of providing healthcare coverage for contraception. Trump tried to rescind the ACA rule that mandated contraceptive coverage, but the Pennsylvania judge says that contradicts the text of the ACA.
  2. Legislators in Ohio pass a law criminalizing abortions that doctors think might be due to finding out the child will be born with Down Syndrome. North Dakota and Indiana have similar laws.
  3. The Trump administration issues a list of terms the CDC cannot use in budget documents. They include: vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, evidence-based, and science-based.
  4. Instead of the last two, the recommended wording is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.” Wishes, huh? Well then I wish there was a cure for every single disease and bigotry so we wouldn’t have to censor like this.
  5. Several documents have been sent back to the CDC for correction of the above terms.
  6. The Mine Safety and Health Administration asks for public comments on regulations around coal and rock dust (responsible for black lung in miners) and around diesel (known to cause cancer). This indicates that the administration is looking at loosening these protections, too.
  7. The Trump administration sends some emergency funding to keep the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) running.

International:

  1. The deadline for Congress to re-implement sanctions against Iran after Trump decertified the Iran nuclear deal passes with no action from Congress. This despite Republicans calling the deal the worst deal ever and pushing to overrule it. Perhaps that was all talk.
  2. A resigning State Department official says Trump and Tillerson put Americans at risk because they don’t understand the role of the State Department. Diplomats and officials across the globe are leaving the department, which helps shape foreign policy and gets Americans overseas out of harms way. It also develops strategic relationships around the globe so the U.S. can come in when needed to help solve problems. You can’t do that without established people on the ground.
  3. In response to Trump declaring that the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, leaders of Muslim nations declare East Jerusalem the capital of Palestine.
  4. Republicans are pushing a bill through the House that would require the Treasury to report on assets held by Iranian leaders, whether or not they are subject to sanctions.
  5. Nikki Haley claims that there is undeniable evidence that Iran supplied weapons to insurgents in Yemen. The UN Secretary-General says the evidence does not support this claim. It sounds like another administration creating a reason to go to war with a Middle Eastern country.
  6. Trump changes the U.S. stance on Syria and says Assad should remain as president until the next elections.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. After Senator Kirstin Gillibrand calls for Trump to step down because of accusations of sexual misconduct, Trump tweets that there was a time Gillibrand would do anything for his donations back in the day. Anything.
  2. Rumors abound that Paul Ryan is considering retiring after this term.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Republican Representative Blake Farenthold says he won’t run again because of sexual harassment accusations. He should step down now, like Conyers, Trent, and Franken.
  2. Women sue a congressional ethics official for physical and verbal assault. Ironically, the official was investigating sexual harassment claims into Members of Congress.
  3. A Kentucky lawmaker apparently commits suicide over sexual misconduct claims.
  4. Three of Trump’s accusers call on Congress to investigate the accusations of sexual assault against him.
  5. 56 female Democrats in Congress request the House Oversight Committee investigate Trump for the accusations of sexual assault. 17 women have accused Trump, though he says the accusations are false and that he doesn’t even know these women or has never met them. Videos and pictures contradict those claims.
  6. Trump speaks to graduates at the FBI National Academy in Quantico and says that immigrants who come to the U.S. through visa lotteries are the worst of the worst. He apparently doesn’t understand how the system works, because foreign leaders can’t pick who wins the lottery nor how they’re vetted. And reading through a few stories, many are professionals, doctors, engineers, etc.

Climate/EPA:

  1. World leaders and investors meet in Paris to discuss climate change, and they announce over $1 billion in investments to help countries and industries transition from coal and oil. Trump isn’t invited, but current and former U.S. officials represent, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Bloomberg, John Kerry, and Jerry Brown.
  2. During the meeting, state and local leaders from the U.S. affirmed their commitment to adhering to the Paris Agreement targets, with or without the federal government.
  3. French President Macron announces research grants to U.S. climate scientists who might be losing grants (not to mention the will to go on) under Trump. He’ll grant $70 million to 50 climate research projects to help “Make America Great Again!”
  4. Michael Dourson, Trump’s nominee to head the chemical safety division of the EPA, withdraws from consideration. His support in Congress was weak due to a career spent pushing for fewer safety measures around hazardous chemicals.
  5. Because he can’t leave an Obama rule untouched, Trump plans to rescind regulations requiring organic egg farmers to make sure their hens can graze outdoors.
  6. Federal records show that Scott Pruitt hired a contractor at the EPA to for the purpose of finding employees who are critical of the Trump administration.
  7. Barrows, Alaska is warming up so fast that the computer algorithm used by NOAA to compile global temperature changes flagged the measurement there as not being real. The algorithm removes outliers in temperatures to make sure no fake data gets into their research.
  8. Oklahomans are fighting for the findings of an audit of the Tar Creek Superfund site to be released. When he was Oklahoma’s Secretary of State, Scott Pruitt used his power to keep the audit from the public. After the EPA worked to clean up the site, Senator Jim Inhofe, along with Pruitt, endorsed a plan to use federal funds along with local citizens to clean up the site, which is now deserted and still polluted. Tar Creek holds a reservoir of lead-zinc ore, the mining of which resulted in levels of lead far above the acceptable limits, causing things like learning disabilities and memory loss.
  9. We learn that Ryan Zinke flew a national park leader to Washington D.C. to reprimand him for tweeting about climate change. Regardless of whether or not you think climate change is manmade, its effects on our national parks are visible and important.
  10. Scott Pruitt hires an opposition research team to help shape press coverage of the EPA.

Budget/Economy:

Lemme just say that tax reform has been an interesting process to me because it’s the first time I can recall really seeing how the sausage is made in Washington, and it’s not pretty. Politicians have been pretty outspoken about the backroom deals and about the fear and threats of losing big donors.

  1. The tax bill gets reconciled between the House and Senate. I could sum it up here, but the New York Times does a great job of it here.
  2. Here’s a good chart to see how the bill affects your income bracket. It looks like some will go up and some will go down.
  3. A few things the final bill does:
    • Removes the wording that would’ve rescinded the Johnson Act (so non-profits and religious organizations still can’t tell you how to vote)
    • Keeps and expands education deductions that the House wanted to get rid of
    • Limits mortgage interest, state and local tax, and property tax deductions, but at a higher level than the original House bill
    • Adds more deductions for pass-through entities than either original bill
    • Removes the wording giving personhood status to fetuses
    • Keeps the estate tax, but doubles the unified tax credit (the amount above which estates are taxed)
    • Eliminates the deduction of losses due to earthquakes and wildfires, but not for floods and hurricanes (obviously targeting a specific state where I live)
    • Keeps deductions for high medical costs, and actually lets you deduct more
    • Removes the ACA mandate, which could finally give the Republicans the victory they want by bringing the ACA to its knees
    • Opens up ANWR for drilling
  1. Even the Treasury Department says the tax plan won’t increase economic growth enough to pay for itself, saying we’ll also need regulatory reform, infrastructure development, and welfare reform.
  2. Mike Pence delays his trip to Israel in the likely case his vote is needed to break a tie on this pretty unpopular tax bill.
  3. John McCain is in the hospital and might not be available for the tax plan vote.
  4. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who last week said he was a yes on the tax bill, sends a letter to Orrin Hatch to find out how an additional 20% deduction for pass-through companies that own income-producing real estate got into the tax bill. Apparently, they still all don’t know what’s in this bill.
  5. Paul Ryan says Americans need to have more babies to save the economy. Economists say we need to allow in more immigrants to save the economy.
  6. The Fed raises the interest rate again (likely to guard against inflation).
  7. In a lawsuit, a group of small farmers charge the administration with “arbitrary and capricious” behavior over rolling back two protections for small farms. One of the rules made it easier for small farmers to sue for anti-competitive behavior (mostly by meat-packers). Obama’s administration negotiated for almost 8 years to create protections for small farmers and ranchers, but the Trump administration never implemented any of them.
  8. As a result of a study by Michigan State University scholars, the Defense Departments starts its first agency-wide financial audit ever. First EVER. The study found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending between 1998 and 2015.
  9. Canada cancels plans to buy fighter jets from Boeing due to a trade dispute between Boeing and Canada’s Bombadier. Canada will get their planes from Australia instead, costing Boeing $5.23 billion.
  10. A U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights is touring the U.S. to examine our own areas of extreme poverty. You can read the full report here – a long but fascinating read.
  11. Trump calls Rupert Murdoch to congratulate him on his $52.4 billion deal with Disney and to make sure he didn’t sell Fox News as part of the deal.

Elections:

  1. An RNC member from Nebraska resigns over the party’s support for Roy Moore after he was accused of pursuing teenage girls and molesting one.
  2. Doug Jones wins the Senate seat in Alabama. Roy Moore refuses to concede because, as explained by one Alabamian, he can’t believe God would will a Democrat to win.
  3. The African American vote goes to Doug Jones 96% to 4%.
  4. Trump somehow claims victory in Moore’s loss, saying he knew he couldn’t win. After endorsing him for the past several weeks.
  5. Trump plans to travel extensively campaigning and holding rallies for down-ticket Republicans for much of 2018. Who will be presidenting during that time, I wonder?
  6. In polling neither Democrat nor Republican voters see Trump as the leader of the GOP, though there are districts where Trump could be helpful.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The FCC votes to rescind net neutrality rules, despite public protest and majority support in favor of the rules (83% of Americans favor net neutrality). Also despite many irregularities in the public comment process, which appears to have been dominated by bots.
  2. The FCC’s new plan would require ISPs to disclose whether they might violate the rules that were just rescinded, which shifts enforcement from the FCC to the FTC. So for example, your cable company will have to tell you that they might throttle Netflix or charge more for Hulu. Be sure to read the fine print!
  3. In response, several state leaders announce plans to protect net neutrality in their own states, and 17 states sue the FCC over the changes.
  4. Senator Schumer says Senate Democrats will force a vote on a bill to repeal the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality rules. He’ll use the Congressional Review Act, which Republicans have used nearly 20 times this year to rescind regulatory agency decisions.
  5. The Wall Street Journal publishes an op-ed intended to calm people down about net neutrality, but it turns out to be authored by a former Comcast lawyer.
  6. Just a little reminder of what Ajit Pai has done this year as head of the FCC:
    • Loosened limits on media ownership that were in place to prevent information monopolies
    • Increased the amount broadband providers can charge businesses
    • Scaled back a program to provide internet to low-income areas (a program that was supposed to be expanded)
    • Reversed net neutrality
  1. Someone sends reporters a forged document they say is a court filing charging Chuck Schumer with sexual harassment. Both Schumer and the alleged accuser report the document as a forgery to the police. Just before the news broke, two conservative provocateurs bragged about documents that would bring down a U.S. Senator. Leaving us all with the implication that they were the ones behind it?
  2. Omarosa is out. And it sounds weird.
  3. Trump directs NASA to make another moon landing.
  4. Trump solicits advice from Janine Pirro. Not just this week, but all the time.
  5. NRA president Wayne LaPierre attends a White House party on the fifth anniversary of the Sand Hook shooting. Really bad optics.
  6. Just before going in and telling FBI graduates at Quantico that he has their back 100%, Trump calls the FBI a “shame.”
  7. Sean Spicer is writing a book about the 2016 elections.
  8. There was a botched terrorist attack in a New York subway where the only one seriously hurt was the bomber himself.
  9. Trump takes credit for getting rid of 469 regulations, 42% of which were either never implemented or already shelved.

Week 32 in Trump

Posted on September 4, 2017 in Politics, Trump

Photo courtesy of NBC

This is a photo of DACA recipient Jesus Contreras. He’s an EMT in Houston who’s been working tirelessly to rescue and assist victims of the flooding. If DACA is repealed, he could be deported. Another DACA recipient, Alonso Guillen, died while out rescuing others. These are the kinds of people Trump wants to deport. It’s time for us to give these youngsters a break and find a path to citizenship for them. Please write your members of congress and urge them to work out a solution that does not tear families apart.
Anyway, here’s what happened last week in Trump:

Russia:

  1. Michael Cohen, who was helping Trump Organization in the effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, asked Putin’s personal spokesperson for assistance. Michael’s emails reveal the following:
    • While Trump was running for president, his company was working on a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and Trump personally spoke with Cohen about it at least three times (despite him claiming over and over again that he had no dealings with Russia).
    • The people handling this for Trump said Putin would help Trump become president. And I quote: “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it.”
    • Trump signed a letter of intent to develop the tower when he was four months into his campaign.
  1. Trump refuses to call Russia a security threat.
  2. The Kremlin confirms that Trump’s lawyer requested help from them with the stalled Trump Tower project.
  3. Representative Ron DeSantis (R-FL) issues a proposal to reduce funding for the Mueller investigation.
  4. The IRS Office of Special Investigations is helping Mueller in the Russia investigation.
  5. Donald Trump Jr. agrees to testify in closed-door congressional hearings.
  6. Trump’s calls Chuck Grassley to pledge support for the ethanol industry, an issue important to Grassley’s state of Iowa. Coincidentally, Grassley is investigating Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russians last year.
  7. Mueller obtains a draft letter showing Trump’s original reasoning for firing Comey. White House counsel opposed the letter, so it was never sent, but it gives an idea of what was behind Trump’s thinking when he fired Comey.
  8. Mueller coordinates with NY State Attorney Eric Schneiderman to share evidence on Manafort’s potential financial crimes.
  9. In response to Russia kicking out hundreds of U.S. diplomats, the Trump administration closes several Russian consulates around the U.S. Russia calls it an act of aggression.
  10. As a result of a Freedom of Information request, the DOJ confirms that there is no evidence that either the DOJ or the FBI were surveilling Trump Tower during the 2016 elections. This directly contradicts Trump’s wiretapping tweets where he accused Obama of illegally spying on him.
  11. American-Russian lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin testifies before Mueller’s grand jury.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Trump administration restores the use of military surplus equipment by police departments, leading to concerns of over-militarization of the police.
  2. Jeff Sessions put together the Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, which he thought would give him ammunition for his war on marijuana. However, the task force says we should just keep current policies.
  3. Texas loses another federal case. This time its latest abortion law was struck down. Texas isn’t having a great track record on its legislation this year. They’ve had voter, redistricting, abortion, and sanctuary city laws struck down or blocked by the courts. Maybe it’s time their legislators review the constitution.

Healthcare:

  1. Governors Kasich and Hinkenlooper announce a bipartisan deal on a way to stabilize Obamacare markets.
  2. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) says they’ll gut funding for ads and education for the ACA by 90% ahead of the open enrollment period.

International:

  1. North Korea launches a missile over Japan, placing Japan on high alert and drawing rebukes from around the globe.
  2. Trump responds by saying all options are on the table, but that talking is not the answer. Mattis contradicts him, saying diplomatic efforts are always an option.
  3. Nikki Haley says something must be done; that sanctions don’t seem to be helping and their current actions are unacceptable.
  4. South Korea responds by flying fighter jets over the border and dropping bombs.
  5. Trump says that the U.S. pays extortion money to North Korea. It’s not clear what money he’s talking about.
  6. Later on in the week, North Korea detonates a nuclear device that they say is a hydrogen bomb that could be attached to a missile that could reach the U.S.
  7. As part of his reorganization efforts, Tillerson says he’ll cut around three dozen special envoys, including the representative for climate change (because of course he would).
  8. China and India pull troops away from their border standoff in the Himalayas.
  9. Two more State Department officials step down—the lead envoy to the UN and the U.S. assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs. The State Department is very minimally staffed right now.
  10. In a press conference with Finland’s president, Trump says Finland is buying “large amounts” of F-18s from us. Finland later clarifies, “No, we’re not.”
  11. After Hurricane Harvey hits Texas, there are fewer foreign governments offering assistance than in previous disasters. Trump’s “America First” approach seems to have alienated even our allies.
  12. A federal grand jury indicts 15 of Turkish president Erdogon’s bodyguards and 4 other Turkish nationals involved in the attack on protestors last May.
  13. Mexico and Canada both offer aid to Texas after massive flooding, but neither have been accepted yet.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. In light of the flooding after Hurricane Harvey, Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling is hoping to get reforms to the National Flood Assistance Program passed as soon as Congress reconvenes.
  2. Bannon throws his and Breitbart’s support behind Roy Moore, who is running against Trump-backed Luther Strange in Alabama.
  3. Both Texas Senators (Ted Cruz and John Cornyn) voted against additional funds for the recovery from Super Storm Sandy. Now that they need to ask for federal assistance themselves, they both back pedal and try to explain away their previous votes. We’ll see how much they end up requesting.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump threatens to end DACA, leaving hundreds of thousands in limbo. Both democrats and republicans in Congress implore him not to end it. Interestingly, while Paul Ryan says Obama overstepped in creating DACA, he does not support ending it. Instead, he thinks we need a legislative answer. Obama asked them for a legislative answer for years and got nothing, which is why he wrote the executive order in the first place. And why we’re where we are now.
  2. Business leaders ask Trump not to end DACA, saying it’ll cost them millions and they’ll lose valued workers.
  3. When asked about his pardon of Joe Arpaio, Trump says “I assumed the ratings would be far higher” because of Hurricane Harvey coverage.
  4. The judge in Joe Arpaio’s case refuses to throw out the conviction (per Trump’s pardon) without oral arguments as to why.
  5. Faith leaders and their congregants from multiple denominations and religions march in Washington D.C. to protest Trump’s lack of moral leadership, especially around the Charlottesville violence.
  6. Other faith leaders and progressives continue their 10-day march from Charlottesville to Washington D.C. in protest of white supremacists.
  7. Under Trumps travel ban, all green card applicants could be required to do an interview starting in October. Currently, interviews are limited to higher risk groups and we don’t have the resources in place to interview everyone.
  8. Mattis says that in spite of Trump’s transgender ban, there will be no changes to current policy for those already serving until he’s put together a panel to analyze it and received their recommendations. But it sounds like, for now, no new openly transgender service members are allowed.
  9. Senate Democrats are working on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that could reverse Trump’s transgender ban or at least protect those who are already serving.
  10. The city of Houston felt it necessary to put out a statement that they are not checking papers or looking for undocumented immigrants in any of the shelters.
  11. A federal judge blocks Texas anti-sanctuary city bill while the case is being heard.
  12. Several Members of Congress from both parties urge a vote to protect DACA recipients.
  13. Homeland Security selects its first contractors to build prototypes of the wall, even though they haven’t received authorization or funding. These contracts are not public info, so we don’t know who the contractors are. I wish they’d do it somewhere besides California. I don’t want the eyesore in my backyard.
  14. With the estimates of the damage from Hurricane Harvey in the 10s of billions, Trump backs down on his threat to defund the government if he doesn’t get funding for the wall.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Earlier in August, the Trump administration rescinded an Obama-era rule that required all new infrastructure projects to be designed for climate resilience. Under the rule, things like roads and bridges would need to be built taking into consideration things like rising sea levels in flood-prone areas. Obama’s rule had bipartisan and business support, and experts urged Trump to reconsider. But real estate developer lobbied hard to overturn the rule.
  2. After seeing the devastation from Hurricane Harvey, the administration considers implementing a new, similar rule.
  3. The devastation from Hurricane Harvey is immense. Countless people have been rescued, at least 50 are dead, and shelters and churches are overflowing with people.
  4. Hurricane Harvey brings so much rain to Texas that the National Weather Service has to add new colors to its weather map to show it. More than 50 inches in some areas.
  5. There are a series of explosions at the Arkema plant, which stores volatile peroxides. The smoke is noxious and anyone living nearby is told to stay indoors.
  6. The Chemical Safety Board (which Trump wants to eliminate) starts investigating the Arkema plant explosion.
  7. The EPA gets criticism for not starting to evaluate the “Superfund” areas in Houston yet. These are the areas most likely to be contaminated.
  8. Damage to refineries and plants in Texas releases about two million pounds of noxious chemicals into the air.
  9. Interesting side note: Houston has no zoning laws.
  10. Louisiana also gets hit by the remnants of the storm, with more flooding there.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Mexico says they won’t negotiate NAFTA over social media.
  2. Under the Trump administration, the number of federal employees drops by 11,000. In 2013, sequestration forced a reduction of 57,000 jobs, most of which were added back in 2015 and 2016.
  3. All 19 agencies threatened with defunding in Trump’s early drafts of the budget appear to be safe for now. Trump changed his mind on a few, and the Congress is so far protecting the rest. Not all of the spending bills have been passed yet though.
  4. Trump launches his tax reform push in Missouri, though it looks like both the House and Senate are going their own way on the issue.
  5. Only 15% of households in Harris County, Texas, have flood insurance, which means they will have to rely more than ever on FEMA and other government assistance.
  6. Gary Cohn dismisses Democratic concerns about repealing the estate tax by saying “Only morons pay the estate tax.”
  7. Trump rejects an offer from China to cut overcapacity of steel, though his advisors support the deal. Trump would rather just impose steeper tariffs.
  8. The Trump administration ends a rule that required large companies to report employee salaries by race and gender. This was an Obama policy targeting the wage gap.
  9. Nebraska Republican Representative Ben Sasse says Trump has an 18th century view of trade, thinking of it as a zero-sum game instead of the nuanced and complicated strategy it actually is.
  10. Trump wants to halt the trade deal between the U.S. and South Korea.
  11. Trump wants to tie recovery aid for Hurricane Harvey to raising the debt ceiling, but backs off of that later in the week.
  12. House Republicans look to cut $1 billion in FEMA funds to help pay for the border wall, while at the same time Trump asks for billions in relief for the hurricane victims.

Elections:

  1. Illinois passes a law enabling automatic voter registration, becoming the 10th state to do so.
  2. As of this week, there are seven lawsuits pending against Trump’s voter fraud committee.
  3. Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State and head of Trump’s election commission, is now a paid columnist for Breitbart. Steve Bannon, who runs Breitbart, was previously on the board of Cambridge Analytica, potentially giving Kobach tools to target his voter restriction efforts.
  4. Democrat Adam Schiff is pushing to defund the elections commission as part of the spending bill. Democrats are concerned that the commission’s actual goal is to restrict minority voting.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Texas activates the National Guard to help out with the flooding.
  2. Donald and Melania Trump visits Texas.
  3. 21st Century Fox announces it’s dropping FoxNews in the U.K. due to lack of interest.
  4. Betsy DeVos selects a former DeVry official to head the watchdog agency that monitors for-profit schools like DeVry, which was fined $100 million last year for fraud.
  5. The UN Human Rights Chief condemns Trump for attacking the media, saying it could incite violence and delegitimize democratic norms. He specifically denounced Trump calling the media “crooked” and “fake news.”
  6. After smaller than normal crowds at his Phoenix rally, Trump informs the guy who organized it that he will never manage another Trump rally again.
  7. The administration puts a halt to plans to test truck drivers and train engineers for sleep apnea. The condition has been blamed for fatal crashes.
  8. Trump pledges to donate $1 million to the Hurricane Harvey recovery effort.
  9. Rumor has it that Trump’s generals have a deal that at least one of them would be in town at all times to make sure Trump doesn’t do anything destructive, like start a war.
  10. 60% of the public comments received by the FCC are against overturning net neutrality. If you remove spam and form letters, the difference is more stark: 1,520,000 comments for net neutrality and just 23,000 comments against. That’s 98.5% for preserving net neutrality.
  11. Trump tweets that Comey prematurely cleared Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing in the email investigation. This is after two congressional Republicans accuse Comey of drafting a statement clearing Clinton before the final two interviews of the investigation.
  12. The Pentagon says they sent 6,300 active troops to Texas to help with Harvey, but they only sent 1,638. They blame an accounting error.
  13. The AP reports that Trump received $17 million from his insurance policy for hurricane damage at Mar-a-Lago years ago, but the AP couldn’t find evidence of that much damage. Trump acknowledged that he transferred some of those funds into his personal accounts. AFAIK, that’s perfectly legal and the amount he kept for himself is not known.
  14. Controversial Sheriff David Clarke resigns as sheriff. I assumed it was to accept a job in the Trump administration, but I haven’t heard any word on that yet.
  15. Hours after CNN reports on Trump’s pledge to donate $1 million to Hurricane Harvey victims, Eric Trumps tweets: “Let’s see if @CNN or the #MSM acknowledges this incredible generosity. My guess: they won’t…” Moron.
  16. It turns out the Kushner real estate company has been deep in debt for a few years.
  17. Trump makes over three dozen nominations to government positions this week.
  18. Trump nominates Republican Representative James Bridenstine to head up NASA, generating a backlash from both of Florida’s senators. They say the head of NASA should be a space professional and not a politician.
  19. In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, Laura Ingraham criticizes Trump’s lack of staffing for FEMA. He responds (by Twitter) that he’s leaving the FEMA positions empty on purpose as a way of downsizing government.
  20. A voter focus group in Pennsylvania came down hard on Trump, criticizing his performance so far. The group was a pretty even mix of Trump and Hillary voters and one Jill Stein voter.
  21. Republicans in 20 states have proposed anti-protestor legislation. Six states have approved it. A) This violates our first amendment rights, and B) we didn’t see this same kind of action from Democratic states when the Tea Party protests picked up.
  22. Chief of Staff John Kelly filters out The Daily Caller and Breitbart from Trump’s daily information feed.

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

“I hope they are found & hung from a tall tree with a long rope.”

– GOP Missouri state Rep. Warren Love on Wednesday calling for a lynching of an unidentified vandal who threw paint on a Confederate memorial in Springfield National Cemetery.