Tag: netanyahu

Week 111 in Trump

Posted on March 13, 2019 in Politics, Trump

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen defends the family separation policy at the border. The two on the right likely disagree.

In case you’re keeping track (but seriously, who but a major media organization has the time to track this), Trump has lied over 9,000 times since taking office. He started out averaging around 6 lies per day in 2017, accelerated to around 16 per day in 2018, and in 2019 he’s already averaging 22 per day. You can read about them here.

Here’s what really happened last week in politics… Let me know if I missed anything.

Missed from Last Week:

While Trump was in Vietnam for the summit with Kim Jong Un, he announced a $20 billion deal with Vietnam to buy Boeing jets and engines.

Russia:

  1. Judge Amy Berman Jackson brings Roger Stone into court yet again to clarify the parameters of his gag order. This time, it’s over the re-release of a book where he calls Robert Mueller “crooked.”
  2. A judge finds Chelsea Manning in contempt of court and orders her to jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury. Manning received a subpoena to testify in a sealed case, most likely the sealed case against WikiLeaks that was accidentally revealed in court documents.
    • Just a reminder: Manning received a 35-year sentence for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, and Obama later commuted her sentence.
  1. Judge T.S. Ellis sentences Paul Manafort to just under four years, much less than prosecutors recommended (19-24 years). He’s scheduled to be sentenced in one more case this month. Ellis says Manafort “lived an otherwise blameless life” (WTF?) and that he was a good friend and a generous person.
  1. Erik Prince admits to attending a 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump, Jr., and George Nader to discuss Iran policy.
    • Nader said that during the meeting, Prince told them that the UAE and Saudi Arabia wanted to help Trump win the election.
    • Prince neglected to inform Congress of this during his testimony.
    • Prince also arranged a meeting with Don Junior, Israeli social media specialist Joel Zamel, and an emissary of two crown princes of the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The House Judiciary Committee launches an investigation into abuse of powers, corruption, and obstruction of justice. Committee chair Jerry Nadler emphasizes that they aren’t looking at impeachment at this time.
  2. The Judiciary Committee issues document requests to 81 people and organizations, including the White House, the Trump Foundation, Trump Organization, the transition team, the inauguration committee, 2016 campaign staff, long-time Trump associates, and Trump’s family.
    • The list of people receiving subpoenas reads like a summary of the investigation so far: Corey Lewandowski, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, Brad Parscale, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, Reince Priebus, Don McGahn, KT McFarland, Hope Hicks, Sean Spicer, Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Tom Barrack, Allen Weisellberg, WikiLeaks, American Media Inc. (and its CEO David Pecker), the NRA, and Cambridge Analytica.
    • They’re looking for information on Michael Flynn’s firing, Jeff Sessions recusal from the Russia investigation, and James Comey’s firing.
  1. New York officials subpoena the Trump Organization’s insurer as part of an investigation into whether Trump was personally involved in inflating company assets.
  2. Jerome Corsi apologizes to the family of Seth Rich for pushing the baseless theory that Rich was the source of the DNC document leak during the 2016 campaign.
    • InfoWars follows suit, removing Corsi’s column about it from their website.
    • Fox News pushed this story hard, and was forced to retract it 2017.
    • The Washington Times was also forced to retract an op-ed by a retired Navy admiral, which was the source of the entire conspiracy theory.
  1. A district court orders the release of previously redacted details about plans to build a new FBI HQ. Trump intervened in the decision of where to build the HQ when it was decided to build a new HQ on the location of the old one, across from the Trump Hotel in D.C. Under Obama, the administration planned to build a new HQ in the suburbs, which was more expensive.
  2. Cohen sues the Trump Organization to cover his legal fees saying they aren’t meeting their indemnification obligations.
  3. Michael Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis says that Cohen’s legal team brought up the idea of a pardon with Trump’s legal team last year after Trump’s team “dangled” the possibility last year. It’s not clear whether Cohen knew of the request.
    • According to Rudy Giuliani, several people being scrutinized in related investigations have approached Trump’s legal team to talk about pardons.
  1. Michael Cohen provides documentary evidence of the hush money payments. So now we know that while president, Trump took the time to write him a check for the hush money. We also know that Don Junior signed off on two of those checks.
  2. I don’t even know what to make of this one, so I’ll just say what we know.
    • As part of a bust that shutdown 10 Asian day spas, Patriot owner Bob Kraft was arrested for soliciting sex.
    • The original founder of the spa, Li (Cindy) Yang, is a Trump donor and fundraiser. She’s been selling access to Trump and his associates at Mar-a-Lago to her clients. (She no longer owns the spas, btw).
    • Yang and Trump watched the Super Bowl together, but it’s not clear if he even knows her.
  1. The DOJ unearths a 2017 letter from Jeff Sessions to the DOJ Inspector General John Huber ordering a review of the investigations into the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One. The DOJ previously denied the existence of this letter.
  2. Trump’s inauguration committee received funds from shell companies owned by foreigners or with foreign ties. The donors were from Israel, Taiwan, and India.

Healthcare:

  1. Medical and reproductive rights groups, including Planned Parenthood and the AMA, sue the Trump administration over their recent abortion rule prohibiting organizations that receive federal funds from mentioning or referring for abortions. The rule primarily affects low-income women who receive health services through HHS programs.
  2. On top of lawsuits from advocacy groups, 21 states sue over the abortion rule.
  3. Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, starts looking into filing for bankruptcy in light of the nearly 2,000 lawsuits against them for contributing to the opioid crisis.
  4. A Republican State Representative in Tennessee introduces a bill that would require women to prove their U.S. citizenship before receiving prenatal care or government benefits for their U.S.-born children.
  5. He introduces another bill that would only allow birth certificates to be given to children born to parents who are in the U.S. legally. (I think that might contradict federal law.)
  6. Tennessee passes a bill that would prevent abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected. No heartbeat bill has made it through the courts so far; this likely won’t either.
  7. A nationwide study in Denmark concludes that there is no relationship between MMR vaccines and autism or autism clusters. This is their second nationwide study to reach the same conclusion. Want details?
  8. The Democratic Republic of Congo is in the middle of their second largest Ebola outbreak, with nearly 600 dead. On top of mistrust from the communities they’re helping, aid workers also face violence—they’re in the middle of a conflict zone.

International:

  1. A second minister resigns from Justin Trudeau’s government after testimony about a scandal where the attorney general claims to have been pressured to back off on charging a Canadian company with corruption.
  2. Contradicting previous statements, Trump says he’s 100% behind keeping some troops in Syria.
  3. According to recent satellite images, it looks like North Korea is reactivating a long-range rocket test site.
  4. Trump reverses Obama’s policy requiring U.S. officials to publish a summary of drone strikes that occur outside of areas where there is active conflict. He also revoked a law passed by Congress saying that the drone strike report must be released to the public.
  5. After 2021, U.S. citizens will have to register for a travel visa to travel to EU countries.
  6. Arron Banks, one of the largest funders in support of Brexit, denies having financial dealings with Russia. But documents show that one of the companies in which Banks is a major stockholder pursued an offer from the Russian ambassador to invest in Russian gold mines, going so far as to identify a shell company to use to facilitate the deal. Sounds familiar, no?
  7. Trump’s administration devises a formula to make our allied countries that host U.S. military bases pay the full cost of stationing troops there plus 50% more. Our allies call this extortion.
  8. Trump accuses India of shutting out U.S. companies, and announces he’ll remove India from a program that reduces duties on exports from certain countries. The program opens up access to U.S. markets for developing countries.
  9. It’s a big week in Israel news:
    • Israel’s electoral committee bans two Arab parties and one Jewish candidate from running in the upcoming elections. The committee was responding to petitions from three right-wing factions, and it comes after Netanyahu entered a deal with the far-right extremist (and allegedly racist) party Otzma Yehudit.
    • The leader of Otzma Yehudit previously led a party that the U.S. labeled as a terrorist group and that Israel outlawed.
    • Netanyahu gets into a war of words with an Israeli celebrity and says (emphasis mine), “Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people—and only it.”
    • Just a reminder: Last year Israel passed a nationalistic nation-state law declaring Israel a homeland for Jews and prioritizing Jewish communities.
    • Israel’s attorney general agrees to Netanyahu’s request to wait until the day after the elections to hear evidence on his fraud and bribery indictments. His indictments haven’t hurt him in the polls yet.
    • A UN inquiry into the 2018 protests in Gaza finds that Israeli forces were not justified in using live ammunition to stop protestors. The skirmishes injured 10,000 Palestinians and killed 189, while also injuring four Israeli soldiers killing one. The commission calls for criminal investigations.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. After Michael Cohen’s testimony, former Rep. Trey Gowdy says in reference to it that we learned that public congressional hearings are “utterly useless.” I think he forgot that he called these hearings “political theater” a year or two ago, and he’s also the guy who held all those hearings on Benghazi.
  2. New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland becomes the first Native American woman to sit in the House Speaker’s chair when she presides over House debates.
  3. The House passes a sweeping campaign finance, voting rights, and ethics reform bill. I broke it down into a brief summary here.
    • Republican leadership says it’s a power grab by the Democratic party; Democrats say it’s a power grab by the American people.
    • Republicans also claim it doesn’t address the most recent problem we saw, which was ballot harvesting in North Carolina (it doesn’t; that’s a legit complaint).
  1. House Democrats introduce a bill to protect White House whistleblowers.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. The Pentagon says they’ll tap into $1 billion in leftover pay and pension accounts for military personnel to pay for Trump’s wall.
  2. Now that Congress ended the shutdown and Trump declared a national emergency over the wall, his draft budget will seek an additional $8.6 billion for the wall.

Family Separation:

  1. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testifies in support of asylum policy and family separation. For anyone who’s been to the border lately, it’s obvious she’s either lying about procedures and process there or she really doesn’t know what’s going on. She also either isn’t aware of or doesn’t care about the lifelong traumatizing effects of the family separation policy.
  2. The Trump administration has separated 250 children (that we know of) since a court ordered them to stop nine months ago.
  3. A judge rules that all families separated at the border are eligible to participate in the ACLU’s class action lawsuit against the government. The suit now includes families separated from July 1, 2017, to the present.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. There were 76,000 illegal border crossings in February. That’s the most in over a decade and almost double last year. So the problem is getting worse in some areas because of the tight restrictions on asylum seekers.
  2. A judge finds that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross violated the law and the constitution by trying to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. This is the second court to block the question.
    • And speaking of the Census, after the first judge blocked the citizenship question the Census Bureau proposed a plan to get comprehensive information about immigrants’ legal status from the Department of Homeland Security.
  1. A federal appeals court rules that asylum seekers can fully appeal their case in U.S. courts if they fail to pass the initial credible fear test to qualify for asylum.
  2. The Health and Human Services Department will funnel money away from health programs in order to house migrant children. There are sponsors in the states willing to take responsibility for so many of these minors. Detaining them is a waste of money.
  3. Former chief of staff General John Kelly defends NATO and also says that:
    • Migrants who cross our southern border aren’t criminals and don’t pose a serious threat.
    • A wall across the border would be a waste of money.
    • Trump can’t separate his personal views from policy issues.
  1. Someone from Homeland Security leaks documents showing that the Trump administration has a secret database of journalists, immigration advocates, and attorneys. The list is used by CBP, ICE, and the FBI.
    • Some of the targeted people have been denied entry into Mexico, have faced enhanced security screenings, or have even been arrested or detained.
    • Their profiles include information about their ties to migrant caravans (including reporters who are just covering the news).
    • People on the list had feared that they were being targeted but they couldn’t prove it until now.
  1. Seemingly bowing to GOP pressure to condemn Rep. Ilhan Omar for her comments about Israel, Nancy Pelosi brings a resolution to the floor. But she turns it into a resolution condemning all hate speech, including antisemitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Christian speech.
    • The resolution also condemns discrimination against minorities stemming from white supremacists, neo-Nazis, the KKK, and neo-Confederates.
    • The resolution passes with only 23 members voting against, all Republican.
    • And then Trump calls Democrats anti-Israel and anti-Jewish and calls the vote disgraceful.
  1. Fox News rebukes Janine Pirro for saying that Rep. Omar is against the constitution because she wears a hijab.
  2. Several stories hit the news this week about high school kids taking part in Nazi symbolism.
  3. A judge rules that the Trump administration can’t halt Obama’s rule requiring companies to disclose employee pay information by race, gender, nation of origin, and job title. The reason for collecting this information is to be able to address wage discrimination and disparity.
  4. Arizona Senator Martha McSalley reveals to the Senate Armed Services Committee that she was sexually assaulted by a senior officer. She says she didn’t report it at the time and that she felt ashamed. I believe her, just like I believe Blasey-Ford.
  5. A grand jury returns an indictment against Jussie Smollett on 16 felony counts for making a false police report and lying to the police about a hate crime he staged. Moron.
  6. On International Women’s Day, the U.S. women’s soccer team files a gender discrimination lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation. They argue that their highly successful team should be treated at least equal to the less successful men’s team.
  7. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Liberian refugees ends on March 31, which will deport people to Liberia who haven’t been to the country since they were small children. Courts already blocked efforts by Trump to deport TPS refugees from Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Lawsuits are ongoing for the remaining TPS countries.
  8. Since 2017, the FBI has worked more domestic terrorist cases (fueled largely by white nationalists and supremacists) than foreign-linked terrorist cases.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump finally has a science advisor who says mankind plays a significant role in climate change. Unfortunately, this same scientist says he’s not going say that to the president.
  2. Costa Rica aims for zero carbon emissions by 2050.
  3. Atlanta’s City Council votes to require all buildings in Atlanta to use renewable energy sources by 2035.
  4. FEMA says they’ll pay just over half of the $639 million needed for emergency repairs to the Orville Dam in California. After heavy rains damaged the dam’s main spillway last year, water overflowed the emergency spillway.
  5. Opponents of the Green New Deal have been claiming that a study shows it would cost $93 trillion, but that number appears nowhere in the study. Even the think tank behind the study say they don’t know how much it would cost.
  6. For comparison, a recent study actually did predict that global warming will cost $69 trillion (globally though, not just in the U.S.).

Budget/Economy:

  1. The U.S. deficit grew 77% in the first four months of fiscal year 2019 compared to the same four month in FY 2018 (our fiscal year begins in October). Tax revenue fell by $19 billion, corporate taxes fell by 23%, and spending increased by 9%.
  2. Our trade deficit with China also hit an all-time high, with a disparity of $419 billion (last week we learned that our overall trade deficit hit an all-time high as well).
  3. Americans have paid at least $12.3 billion in tariffs to the U.S. government as a result of the trade war.
  4. The job market added 20,000 jobs in February, about one-tenth of the typical number over the past several years. I expect that number to be revised, but it won’t come close to the norm.
    • The unemployment rate still dropped down a bit to 3.8% (it was 4% in January).
    • And wages had good growth—up 3.4% from the year prior.
    • This means it’s not likely we’ll see any interest rate hikes this year, or at least not many.
  1. The European Central Bank (ECB) lowered its economic growth forecast for the EU over trade uncertainties about U.S. actions on trade and tariffs.
  2. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also lowered their global growth forecast, so they think it’s not just Europe that’ll slow down.

Elections:

  1. The trial in the lawsuit against Ohio’s gerrymandered congressional map begins. The map creates a 12-4 district advantage for Republicans even though they only receive about 51% of the statewide vote.
  2. The right-leaning National Legal and Policy Center files a complaint with the FEC against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign. The complaint sounds like a pay-for-play scheme, but it turns out that the campaign likely only described services provided by their LLC incorrectly, a minor FEC infraction.
  3. After the New Yorker publishes an article about the symbiotic relationship between the Republican Party (specifically Trump) and Fox News, the DNC announces that they won’t let Fox News host any Democratic primary debates. Not really a BFD. Fox hasn’t hosted a Democratic primary debate in 15 years, and Republicans cut off debates on NBC in 2015.
  4. The House Oversight Committee opens an investigation into voter irregularities in the Georgia midterm elections.
  5. 80% of our election equipment comes from companies that have installed remote access software (like PCAnywhere) on the county-based systems that pull together precinct tallies.
  6. Despite shutting her company down last July, Ivanka obtains a patent for voting machines in China. Trademark requests are often very broad, but voting machines? She obtained trademarks for clothing and jewelry, but also for some random things like nursing homes and sausage casing.
  7. Remember the kerfuffle over Donna Brazile giving Hillary Clinton advance notice of one debate question? Well, it turns out that Rupert Murdoch did the same for Trump.
  8. Well, this is weird. It turns out that Trump and Ivanka have donated to six of the 2020 Democratic candidates for president at some point.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump promises A+ assistance to the great state of Alabama following devastating tornadoes. Pretty much the opposite of his response to the hurricane in Puerto Rico and the California wildfires.
  2. Last week we learned that Trump intervened to get Jared Kushner his top-secret clearance. Now we learn that he pressured John Kelly and Don McGahn to give Ivanka security clearance. They objected, and Trump ended up granting it himself.
  3. Meanwhile, the White House rejects the House Oversight Committee’s request for documents regarding the security clearance for Jared and Ivanka.
  4. Police arrest dozens of people in California who were protesting the decision not to charge the officers who killed Stephon Clark after mistaking his cell phone for a gun.
  5. Trump’s communications director, Bill Shine, resigns to start working on Trump’s 2020 campaign.
  6. An Ethiopian Airlines plane crashes on takeoff killing all 157 people on board. It’s the same Boeing model as the one that crashed last year in Jakarta.
  7. We learn that Trump directed Gary Cohn to push the DOJ to block the AT&T merger with Time Warner (which owns CNN).

Polls:

Here are some polling numbers from Quinnipiac:

  1. 64% of voters think Trump committed crimes before he became president. 45% think he committed crimes during his term.
  2. 59% say Congress should not begin impeachment, but about the same number say Congress should keep investigating.
  3. 50% of voters believe Michael Cohen over Trump.
  4. 36% of voters disapprove of how Democrats handled the Cohen hearing; 51% disapprove of how the Republicans handled it.
  5. 65% of voters think Trump is not honest.
  6. 22% think he’s a good role model for children.
  7. 66% disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are doing their job.
  8. 56% disapprove of the way Democrats in Congress are doing their job.

Week 67 in Trump

Posted on May 7, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Here’s how fast things change from week to week. From Peter Baker of the New York Times:

“As of last week, the American public had been told that President Trump’s doctor had certified he would be the “the healthiest individual ever elected.” That the president was happy with his legal team and would not hire a new lawyer. That he did not know about the $130,000 payment to a former pornographic film actress who claimed to have had an affair with him.

As of this week, it turns out that the statement about his health was not actually from the doctor but had been dictated by Mr. Trump himself. That the president has split with the leaders of his legal team and hired the same new lawyer he had denied recruiting. And that Mr. Trump himself financed the $130,000 payment intended to buy the silence of the actress known as Stormy Daniels.”

Also, ICYMI, you should change your Twitter password.

Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. The New York Time obtains a list of questions that Mueller supposedly wants to ask the president. The questions turn out to be written by Trump’s legal team (specifically Jay Sekulow) after Mueller gave them the topics he wants to talk about.
  2. But still, Trump tries to use the questions as proof that Mueller isn’t looking into collusion… even though several of the questions are about collusion.
  3. The leaked questions apparently came from the Trump team, who is blaming the leak on Mueller, which is unlikely because Mueller’s team has probably never seen this list.
  4. At any rate, the president’s team says this proves that Mueller has overreached the scope of his investigation even though they aren’t Mueller’s questions.
  5. Trump’s lead attorney John Dowd (now resigned) says that Mueller recently brought up the idea of subpoenaing Trump if he refuses to appear. In response, Trump says Mueller is trying to set him up and trap him.
  6. Ty Cobb announces his retirement as White House Counsel, and Emmet Flood will replace him. Flood was an impeachment lawyer for Bill Clinton in the 90s.
  7. No one in Trump’s current legal team has the security clearances needed to discuss sensitive issues should Trump meet with Mueller. John Dowd, who left in March, was the only one on the team who had the needed clearance.
  8. Cambridge Analytica closes its operations after losing clients and facing steep legal fees. The company is accused of misusing Facebook data to influence the 2016 elections in the U.S. and to influence the Brexit vote in the UK.
  9. But then we learn that Rebekah and Jennifer Mercer have already joined a new data company, Emerdata, as directors. The Mercers were the money behind Cambridge Analytica, and Emerdata is owned by Cambridge Analytica’s parent company. The CEO and other members of Cambridge Analytica have also moved over to Emerdata. It seems they’re just rebranding Cambridge Analytica as Emerdata.
  10. UK regulators order Cambridge Analytica to release the information they scraped about a U.S. voter along with details on how they obtained the data and what they did with it. The voter requested the information under UK laws, getting around the U.S. system that doesn’t provide the means to obtain this data. It’s possible we could all force Cambridge Analytica to give us this information about our own data.
  11. In a round of media interviews, Rudy Giuliani says:
    • Trump is immune from being subpoenaed in a criminal proceeding (something the Supreme Court has not yet supported—the court tends to reject efforts to protect the president this way).
    • Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein should redeem themselves by ending the special counsel’s investigation.
    • FBI agents are like Nazi stormtroopers.
  1. The judge in Paul Manafort’s trial questions why Mueller’s investigation into Manafort falls under his jurisdiction but the investigation into Michael Cohen doesn’t. He wonders if Mueller is just trying to squeeze Manafort for information about Trump.
  2. None of the above means the judge thinks Manafort isn’t guilty; he just raises the possibility of sending the case down to a state prosecutor.
  3. Mueller puts in a request for 70 blank subpoenas in the Manafort case.
  4. Mueller also requests a 60-day postponement in Michael Flynn’s sentencing.
  5. Devin Nunes didn’t bother to read a document turned over to him by the DOJ after Nunes threatened impeachment against Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray. The 2-page document contains the evidence used by the DOJ and FBI to open the Russia investigation (not the same as the Steele dossier, BTW).
  6. And now Nunes wants to hold Jeff Sessions in contempt of Congress for not releasing classified documents to Nunes‘ committee, which is investigating FISA abuses.
  7. Rod Rosenstein responds to the articles of impeachment drawn up against him by the House Freedom Caucus by saying that the DOJ won’t be extorted and that threats won’t stop him from doing his job.
  8. We learn that after Trump agreed to sell the Ukraine missiles to help in their fight against Russia last year, the Ukraine stopped cooperating with the Mueller investigation and they halted their own investigation into Paul Manafort.
  9. Demonstrators across Russia rally to protest Vladimir Putin’s inauguration. Nearly 1,600 protesters are arrested, including Putin’s most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny.

Courts/Justice:

Apparently the Justice Department has been too busy fighting congressional subpoenas to get anything done this week.

Healthcare:

  1. Tom Price, former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, says that last year’s tax reform will raise health insurance costs because it repealed the individual mandate. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agrees, saying average premiums will increase by around 10% per year more than if the mandate remained in place. This will amount to about an 18% increase this year, according to the Urban Institute.
  2. Whoops! Tom Price later walks those statements back, saying repealing the mandate was absolutely the right thing to do.
  3. The Urban Institute also predicts that getting rid of the mandate, along with other changes like allowing substandard policies, will cost the federal government $33 billion per year MORE to insure 6.4 million FEWER people.
  4. Four million fewer people are already uninsured compared to this time in 2016.
  5. Iowa passes the “Fetal Heartbeat” bill, making most abortions illegal after about 6 weeks (or once a heartbeat is detected). Many women don’t even know they’re pregnant at this point.
  6. Because it’s not enough that fentanyl added to heroine led to a massive increase in overdoses, dealers are also adding fentanyl to cocaine. Cocaine deaths have been rising as dealers target drug users who are trying to avoid opiates. Many states don’t keep record of this kind of drug combination, but in Connecticut where they do track it, cocaine+fentanyl deaths rose 420% over the past three years.
  7. Trump says he’ll appoint Dr. Mehmet Oz to the Sport, Fitness, and Nutrition council.

International:

  1. In a public presentation to the Israeli Defense Ministry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that Iran has lied about its nuclear weapons program. The information he presents is from 1999-2003, a time when we pretty much knew Iran was lying about their program, but the presentation seems aimed at making us think they’ve broken the Iran deal, which Netanyahu wants Trump to dump.
    My 2 cents? Leaving the agreement frees up Iran to develop whatever nuclear program they want, and we will have given them back $1.7 billion worth of previously frozen assets to do it. What kind of deal is that?
  2. We learn that Trump aides hired Israeli private investigators last year to find dirt on key members of the Obama administration who were responsible for negotiating the Iran deal, including national security advisors Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl. One thing they were trying to find is whether either Rhodes or Kahl had benefited personally or professionally from the deal (which IMO reveals more about Trump than it does about Rhodes or Kahl).
  3. Kahl reveals a mysterious attempt from a UK company last year to contact his wife about a school she volunteers with. The company’s website has since been taken down, and Kahl thinks it was part of the above investigation.
  4. The Israeli investigators hired by Trump’s aides were also hired by Harvey Weinstein to go after his accusers and stop the publicity around his sexual harassment and abuse.
  5. After Netanyahu’s presentation, the White House issues a statement that Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear program that it hides from the world and Iranian citizens. This alarms many people because of its similarities to the accusations that pushed us into the Iraq war. The White House later updates the statement to say Iran HAD not HAS such a program. They blame the error on a typo.
  6. John Kerry has been working behind the scenes to save the Iran deal, meeting with UN and foreign officials to find ways to keep the deal in place.
  7. Trumps says that withdrawing from the Iran deal sends North Korea the right message in the lead up to our negotiations with them. I guess that could be true if the right message is that we don’t hold up our agreements.
  8. If the U.S. pulls out of the Iran deal, it would leave the rest of the world to navigate a very complicated web of sanctions on international businesses.
  9. The Trump administration is working to get three U.S. hostages held in North Korea released. I wish him success, but two things: 1) Rudy Giuliani claims that their release has already been obtained (it hasn’t), and 2) Trump says that the past administration tried to get them released with no success (two of the three were imprisoned last year, so it’s highly doubtful Obama was involved).
  10. North Korea accuses Trump of provoking them with his tough talk on military might. They also warn us not to mistake their willingness to talk for weakness.
  11. Ahead of his meeting with North Korea, Trump orders the Pentagon to prepare for pulling troops out of South Korea.
  12. Trump freezes funding for Syria‘s main humanitarian group, the White Helmets. If you don’t know who they are, check out the short documentary about them.
  13. Suicide bombers in Kabul kill at least 31 people.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House chaplain, who Paul Ryan forced to resign last week, rescinds his resignation, forcing Ryan to either fire him or keep him on. Ryan decides to keep him, leaving us all wondering what the heck happened there.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Seven states, including Texas, file a lawsuit against the Trump administration to end DACA, even though Trump has already attempted to do this and the courts stopped him.
    • Here are the states involved in the suit, along with the number of people with DACA status: Texas (121,000), South Carolina (6,400), Arkansas (5,100), Alabama (4,300), Nebraska (3,400), Louisiana (2,000), and West Virginia (100).
    • Compare that to California (223,000), Illinois (42,000), New York (42,000), and Florida (33,000). It seems the states least affect by DACA (with the exception of Texas) are the ones that want to end it.
  1. An all-black, all-female team of three was named a finalist in NASA’s high school competition, but NASA had to end public voting early when racists on 4chan launched a racially-based social media campaign against them.
  2. Kirstjen Nielsen, Homeland Security Secretary, ends temporary protected status for the Hondurans who came hear nearly two decades ago as refugees after Hurricane Mitch devastated their country. That’s nearly 86,000 people who have called the U.S. their home for 20 years.
  3. They may not call it a Muslim ban, but actions speak louder than words. So far this fiscal year, Christians refugees admitted into the U.S. outnumber Muslims by more almost four times. 1,800 Muslims have been allowed compared to 6,700 Christians, and the number of Muslims has shrunk by more than any other religious group, right in line with Trump having said he’ll prioritize Christian refugees.
  4. Several U.S. citizens get caught up each year in ICE detainments, some of whom have been detained for over three years. The average time U.S. citizens are detained is 180 days; that’s a half a year these people lose. Citizens have also been deported, and had to have an embassy intervene for their return.
    Side note: It’s illegal for ICE to detain U.S. citizens. Where’s the accountability here?
  5. About 250 members of the caravan of asylum seekers marching across Mexico reach the U.S. border, where most are turned away by border patrol. 49 have been admitted to the U.S. while the rest are living in a tent city south of the border.
  6. Mike Pence calls Joe Arpaio a tireless champion for the rule of law. In case you forgot, Arpaio’s lost countless civil suits for his treatment of prisoners and is also a convict himself, though he was pardoned by Trump.
  7. 2017 saw a 17% drop in international students coming to the U.S. Why is this important? Foreign students contribute about $37 billion to the U.S. economy each year.
  8. In 44 states, a majority of residents support the right for same-sex couples to marry. The states that don’t support it: Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, West Virginia, Louisiana, and North Carolina. Alabama is the only state where a majority oppose that right.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Eighteen states, including California, sue the Trump administration over its attempts to roll back Obama-era fuel efficiency goals.
  2. The sea ice cover in the Bering Sea this winter hit a record low, and a striking low at that. It was just half the cover of the previous record low.
  3. Scott Pruitt’s questionable foreign travel has been facilitated by lobbyists and wealthy donors, including Richard Smotkin, who arranged Pruitt’s trip to Morocco was later awarded a $40,000/month contract to lobby for the Moroccan government. Sheldon Adelson helped him with his trip to Israel. And former lobbyist Matthew Freedman worked to line up a trip to Australia.
  4. Three top-level officials part ways with the EPA after Pruitt testified to Congress the previous week. Pruitt blamed subordinates for his own ethical lapses.
  5. Under Ryan Zinke, the Fish and Wildlife Service removes Yellowstone grizzlies from the endangered species list. At the same time they’re working on solutions to diversify this small group of bears by importing bears from other areas. So they’ll take bears from areas where they’re still considered endangered, and move them to an area where they are not considered endangered?
  6. There are rumors of a power struggle between Pruitt and Zinke, which could be why so many negative stories about both of them are coming out.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The unemployment rate drops to 3.9%, and wages rise slightly, though not as much as economists expect in such a tight labor market. One reason could be increasing inflation or fears of it.
  2. California moves up to fifth in the world economies, behind the U.S., China, Japan, and Germany. The state is 12% of the U.S. population (nearing 40 million) and provides 14.2% of the U.S. economy.
  3. Marco Rubio criticizes the GOP tax reform, saying, “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”
  4. Whoops again! He later walks that statement back (just like Tom Price did on healthcare).
  5. Arizona teachers end their walkout after getting most, but not all, of what they were protesting for.
  6. Here’s a new one for corporations. They’ve started creating response plans just in case Trump targets them or their industry in one of his Twitter rants.
  7. The Purdue University Ag Economy Barometer, which shot up on Trump’s election, falls for the second month in a row. The barometer is an indicator of how the agricultural industry is doing as a whole.

Elections:

  1. All four Federal Election Commission (FEC) commissioners have held their jobs well past their intended terms. They’ve stayed on 11, 9, 7, and 5 years past the end of their terms. Also, there are supposed to be six commissioners, not four. The Senate majority and minority leaders are supposed to recommend replacements, but they haven’t.
  2. The DOJ updates its policy manual, removing a reference to maintaining a free press and expanding their policy on whistleblowers.
  3. Paul Ryan warns that if Democrats win in the November midterms, they could make it impossible to get anything done and would be more aggressive in congressional oversight of the administration. Well if that’s not the pot calling the kettle black…
  4. Since not enough has been done to ensure the security of our midterm elections from foreign interference, Democrats in Congress pledge to NOT exploit any stolen materials in their campaigns. Republicans have so far refused to do the same, leaving us open to continued interference.
  5. Dianne Feinstein is the frontrunner in California’s senate race, but the second place runner is an anti-Semite running on the Republican ticket. The GOP just kicked him out of their convention and plan to vote to kick him out of the party. But how is this guy second?!

Miscellaneous:

  1. Thousands of demonstrators in Puerto Rico protest over austerity measures, which come at a horrible time as they try to rebuild. Police shut the protests down using tear gas.
  2. The Department of Education is sending $600 million in disaster assistance to Puerto Rico.
  3. Trump’s previous personal physician, Harold Bornstein, who before the 2016 election purportedly wrote a glowing letter about Trump’s health in hyperbolic terms, now says that Trump dictated that letter. You’re shocked, I know. I was shocked too.
  4. Bornstein also says that Trump aides, including his personal bodyguard, raided Bornstein’s office and took all of Trump’s medical records. The White House says that was just part of the transition into office.
  5. With both Trump and Pence slated to speak at the NRA convention, parts of the convention have ironically been designated gun-free zones. Good thing the bad guy with a gun didn’t find out there were no good guys with a gun there.
  6. During his NRA speech (and also full of irony), Trump reads an article from “fake news” CNN as proof that Mueller overreached in his investigation (though the article didn’t really say that).
  7. Also in his speech, Trump criticized both France’s and the UK’s gun laws, saying those laws failed to prevent the 2015 terrorist attack in France and the knife violence in the UK. To bring his point home, Trump mimed shooting a gun at one victim at a time in reference to the Paris attacks. France and the UK are both pretty pissed.
  8. At the NRA convention, you can buy pistols that look like cell phones. This come just one month after Sacramento police killed an unarmed man because they mistook his cell phone for a gun.
  9. Rudy Giuliani tries to clear Trump of one crime by insinuating he committed another—and on a Hannity interview no less. He says Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen for the Stormy Daniels payment, inferring that Trump knew about the hush money despite his claims otherwise.
  10. Giuliani also says it’s possible Trump paid hush money to additional women, but later walks that back.
  11. Trump, or more likely someone more speaking for Trump, tweets an explanation for what Giuliani said, but basically confirms that he reimbursed Cohen.
  12. Trump himself excuses Giuliani saying that he’s the new guy and he’ll get his facts straight. Well then what was he doing touring national TV talk shows?
  13. In another less than helpful moment, Giuliani says it would be OK if Mueller went after Jared Kushner, but not Ivanka. Apparently Kushner is disposable.
  14. Giuliani later says that Trump didn’t realize until just last week that his payments to Michael Cohen were to cover the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels.
  15. Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George Conway, tweets the relevant FEC rules, which suggest that no matter how the payment went down, election rules were violated.
  16. Trump signs an executive order to expand grants and partnerships with faith-based groups in an effort to reduce separation of church and state. Every agency is ordered to work on faith-based partnerships.
  17. Even the Nobel prize runs up against #MeToo. There will be no prize in literature awarded this year because of a sex scandal. They’ll name two winners next year instead.
  18. And speaking of the Nobel prize, several House Republicans nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for the work he’s doing with North Korea.
  19. In John McCain’s new book, he says he regrets not picking Joe Lieberman as his 2008 running mate instead of Sarah Palin. Even if they still wouldn’t have been elected, I would argue that picking Lieberman would’ve drastically changed our current political climate.
  20. Gina Haspel offers to withdraw her name from the nomination for CIA director, but the White House says they’ll continue to back her.
  21. Rick Perry supports ending the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) because he thinks applied research belongs in the private sector (I guess so someone can profit off it). ARPA-E advances innovative energy research, often resuscitating research that stalled in the private sector. George W. Bush created ARPA-E, but it was first funded by Obama, so that could be why Trump wants to kill it.
  22. You remember that lobbyist’s condo that Scott Pruitt was paying submarket rents for? Well it turns out that Mike Crapo (R-ID), the Senate Banking Committee chair, held 78 campaign events there.
  23. NASA launches a new mission to Mars. The InSight robotic lander will send a probe into the layers of Mars’ surface and study the structure. It’s scheduled to land on Mars on November 26.
  24. And in nonpolitical news, Mt. Kilauea erupts on Hawaii’s big island, opening multiple fissures in Leilani Estates, causing evacuations, and destroying homes, cars, and structures. The eruption caused several earthquakes, including one 6.9 in magnitude. The smaller island of Kauai had it’s own national disaster a few weeks ago, with severe flooding on the north side after receiving 50 inches of rain in 24 hours.