Tag: Obamacare

Week 141 in Trump

Posted on October 9, 2019 in Impeachment, Politics, Trump

People attend a march in Causeway Bay in Hong Kong in solidarity with the student protester who got shot by police, October 2, 2019. (PHOTO: REUTERS/Susana Vera)

The U.S. isn’t the only country feeling the turmoil right now. There are massive ongoing protests all around the world, mostly against governments. It’s like we’re going through a whole cosmic shift or something. Here’s hoping the turmoil is short-lived and we land in the right place.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending October 5…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There are NINE mass shootings this week (defined as killing or injuring four or more people). Condensed version: Shooters kill seven people and injure 30.

Russia:

  1. Iranian hackers, with their government’s backing, have launched cyberattacks with the purpose of disrupting our 2020 elections. Rumor has it that it’s Trump’s campaign being attacked this time. Is foreign interference still OK?
  2. Russia takes advantage of our current turmoil by telling the rest of the world that we’re an unreliable ally and we can’t be trusted.
  3. Lawyers for the House of Representatives make a court filing alleging that Trump lied about whether he knew about his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks and that the grand-jury redactions in the Mueller report show it.

Legal Fallout:

  1. A federal judge (appointed by Bush II) orders the DOJ to either file charges against former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe by November 15 or drop the investigation completely. At that time, the judge will order the release of FBI documents around McCabe’s firing per a FOIA request.
  2. Matt Whittaker, who was the acting Attorney General for a hot minute, stumps for a Trump-supporting candidate in Kosovo’s elections. The U.S. embassy there quickly distances itself, saying Washington is completely, 100% neutral in the upcoming election.
    • Whittaker’s candidate loses, with the left nationalist party taking a surprise win.
  1. Representative Chris Collins (R-NY) resigns before pleading guilty to charges of insider trading. He was caught on video making the call that led to the charges.

Impeachment/Ukraine:

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

Courts/Justice:

  1. A federal court upholds the FCC’s right in repealing Obama’s net neutrality protections, but they also rule that the FCC can’t limit the states’ ability to create their own rules. That’s not likely to lead to any confusion at all, right?
  2. Protestors gather in front of Mitch McConnell’s house calling for Brett Kavanaugh’s impeachment. I’m a big supporter of protest, but not at someone’s private home.

Healthcare:

  1. The president’s schedule for Thursday includes this event — “THE PRESIDENT delivers remarks and signs an Executive Order Protecting Medicare from Socialist Destruction in The Villages, FL.”
    • Trump signs that EO, which he says will preserve and protect Medicare against Medicare for All. But part of the plan is to make the prices paid by Medicare closer to the prices paid by private insurance, which would shoot costs up enough to bankrupt the system.
  1. A growing number of rural Texas towns are declaring themselves “sanctuary cities for the unborn” and calling abortion “murder with malice.” The towns outlaw emergency contraceptives, criminalize groups that work for reproductive rights, and fine doctors for performing an abortion. Meanwhile, other towns are pushing ordinances that help women in those restrictive towns travel to have their reproductive health taken care of.
  2. The Supreme Court agrees to take up a Louisiana law that restricts abortions by forcing doctors who perform them to have admitting privileges nearby. The court struck down a similar law in Texas, but that was with a more balanced court.
  3. Trump decides to eliminate the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria.

International:

  1. Austria defeats the far-right nationalist party in their national elections, and the People’s party’s Sebastian Kurz reclaims his role as Chancellor (he was removed by a no-confidence vote earlier this year). The far-right was brought down by corruption. I’m sensing a global pattern.
  2. One day after North Korea agrees to meet to discuss nuclear weapons with U.S. officials, they conduct missile tests off their coast, launching missiles into the Sea of Japan.
  3. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman takes responsibility for journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, but says he didn’t order it. It’s the one-year anniversary of Khashoggi’s death.
  4. Hong Kong bans face masks at protests, motivating thousands of masked protestors to turn out in opposition. At one protest, an officer shoots a man in the thigh after protestors surround his car. Protestors then beat him and throw a gas bomb at him.
  5. On China’s celebration of 70 years of Communist Party rule, Hong Kong protests increase in violence. A police officer shoots a teenage protestor at point-blank range, luckily only injuring him.
    • Police exonerate the officer, who says the protestor was charging him. They instead charge the protestor.
  1. Nationwide protests in Iraq grow violent, with police firing tear gas and then live rounds into crowds. Five people are dead and around 300 wounded. The Prime Minister declares a curfew in Baghdad.
  2. Taking the State Department and Pentagon completely by surprise, Trump endorses a plan for the Turkish military to sweep away the American-backed Kurdish forces near the border with Syria. This happens on a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to one official on the call, Trump got rolled.
    • The Kurds have been our allies in the fight against ISIS, but Turkey sees them as terrorists. Turkey has also killed tens of thousands of Kurds.
    • The U.S. had already persuaded the Kurds to dismantle their defenses that served as a deterrent to Turkey based on guarantees that the U.S. would help keep them secure. So now the Kurds have few options to stop Turkey.
  1. Several of Trump’s GOP allies harshly criticize Trump over this move, including Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Kevin McCarthy, Nikki Haley, and Mike Huckabee.

Global Protests:

It seems like there’s a pervasive restlessness across the globe. There are a dozen major protests happening right now, and they all have the common thread of dissatisfaction with government. Here are the big ones (and this doesn’t include ongoing protests at our southern border or global climate protests):

  1. Hong Kong: These were parked by a Chinese extradition law, but morphed into a desire to protect their democratic freedoms.
  2. Jakarta: A new austere criminal code that criminalizes sex and cohabitation out of wedlock sparked protests.
  3. Netherlands: Farmers protest parliament members’ claim that farming has high emissions and some farms should be shut down.
  4. France: Did you know the yellow vests are still protesting?! It’s been 45 consecutive weeks. Farmers and police officers are also protesting.
  5. Russia: Protests are still going on there, even though the elections that sparked the initial protests are over and protestors won. Now they’re protesting for the release of protestors who were arrested.
  6. Peru: The dissolution of the congress sparks mass protests over the uncertainty.
  7. Haiti: Protestors want President Jovenel Moïse to resign over allegations of corruption and attempting to end subsidies.
  8. Egypt: Protestors want President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (Trump’s favorite dictator) to step down over his authoritarian policies.
  9. Lebanon: A worsening economy sparked these protests.
  10. Syria: Kurds are protesting being excluded from a UN committee that will rewrite the Syrian constitution.
  11. Iraq: Protestors are unhappy with Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, specifically around a lack of public services and high unemployment, but they have several complaints.
  12. Jerusalem: Palestinians protest Israeli forces for hospitalizing a Palestinian detainee during interrogation (they accuse the forces of torturing him). The detainee is accused of killing an Israeli teen in a bombing.
  13. United States: UAW workers at GM have been striking for three weeks, with nearly 50,000 workers walking off the job.

Family Separation:

  1. The ACLU launches a new lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking damages for families affected by its family separation policies. Here are some allegations:
    • When DHS was ordered to reunite families, some kids were too young to communicate so were asked to point to the flag of their country so DHS could narrow down the search for their parents.
    • Some kids were taken in the middle of the night while they were sleeping.
    • Parents were told they were signing papers to reunite them with their children or to help with their asylum cases, but they were actually signing voluntary deportation papers.
    • Many children were separated from their families for more than a year. Some of the youngest have forgotten their native languages.
    • Some are still separated.
    • Some of the children were beaten.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. While discussing the arrest of a black suspect, a New Jersey police officer says that Trump is the “last hope for white people.” He says if Hillary were elected, all those minorities would get a vote. Oh, the horror! The officer is on trial for hate crime assault and lying to the FBI.
  2. A jury finds former police officer Amber Guyger guilty of murder for shooting Jean Botham, a black man who she thought was in her apartment. It turned out she had entered his apartment thinking it was hers. Amazingly, Botham’s brother pleads for mercy for Guyger during the sentencing hearing and asks if he can hug her.
  3. Trump says his administration will deny visas to anyone who can’t prove they can pay for their own healthcare. I’d argue that most Americans can’t even prove that.
    • Trump argues that immigrants are three times more likely than American citizens to lack health insurance. So suddenly having health insurance is important to Republicans?
    • It turns out this is mostly directed at family migration. So it’s all about keeping families apart. Again.
  1. We learn that Trump has floated ideas for slowing down illegal border crossings like building a moat filled with alligators and snakes, putting spikes on the tops of our fences at the border, shooting border crossers in the legs (you know, to slow them down), and electrifying our fences, among other things. This was the same meeting where he told DHS to close down the southern border completely.
    • And this is telling. According to people at the meeting, Trump couldn’t be placated and “the president’s advisers left the meeting in a near panic.” This might’ve been a good time to reassess the administration and take a look at the 25th Amendment. Geez.
  1. DHS announces they’ll collect DNA from immigrant detainees to enter into the criminal database. I guess it still needs to be said…being an asylum seeker doesn’t make you a criminal.
  2. Journalist Ben Watson files a civil rights complaint with DHS after a CBP officer held his passport upon learning Watson is a journalist. The officer said, “So you write propaganda, right?” The officer withheld the passport until Watson agreed to the propaganda question. Several journalists are making similar reports of harassment.
  3. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals grants a stay of relief in the execution of a Jewish defendant whose trial was presided over by an antisemitic judge. How do we know he’s antisemitic? He referred to the defendant as “a goddamn Kike” and “That fuckin’ Jew.”

Climate:

  1. After California pushes back on Trump’s plan to push more water through the Delta, the Trump administration backs off. A rare moment of compromise between Trump and California.
  2. Trump plans to disband two environmental advisory boards, one on marine life run by NOAA and one on invasive species run by the Department of the Interior. We don’t need no stinking experts.
  3. When a far-right activist trolls AOC at a town hall by saying she loves the Green New Deal but it doesn’t go far enough and that we should start eating babies, AOC, out of concern that the woman was having a mental break, doesn’t argue but instead tries to deflect. Trump and his family don’t get the trolling and tweet about how this is normal for AOC and her supporters to want to eat babies. Turns out it was a Trump-loving baby-eating troll.
  4. Trump ends a 5-year-old moratorium on oil and gas drilling on 750,000 acres in California.
  5. The non-profit group Ocean Cleanup successfully implements a plastic-catching floating device to clean up our oceans.

Budget/Economy:

  1. You might remember a while back, the USDA uprooted all its DC employees and moved to Kansas City? Well, that move has delayed the publication of nearly 40 research reports, ended newer studies, and stopped the release of funding. Staff is down about 75% since the move.
  2. Trump has threatened for a year to leave the Universal Postal Union, the UN agency that links postal systems across the globe. The agency finally comes to an agreement with the U.S. about restructuring fees, fending off what would’ve been a fiasco for Americans who send and receive international mail. Expect to pay increasing fees on international mail over the next five years.
  3. The economy is super weird right now. You’d expect every western country’s economy to be chugging right along with record low unemployment, but everyone’s economy is a little sluggish and wages aren’t keeping up.
    • Unemployment in the U.S. falls to a 50-year low of 3.5%, but U.S. manufacturing slows for the second month in a row and wages stagnate. Manufacturing has been in recession all year and hit a 10-year low. It’s all part of a global manufacturing slowdown.
    • The U.S. only added 136,000 jobs in September.
    • Likewise, unemployment in the eurozone falls to it’s lowest rate in over a decade and manufacturing in the eurozone has it’s weakest month in seven years.
    • Export orders for the U.S. also dip to their lowest level in a decade.
  1. A report shows that Pennsylvania and Wisconsin lost the most manufacturing jobs over the past year.
  2. Cattle ranchers in Nebraska rally in Omaha to let Trump know that they think he’s backed out of promises by not changing labeling requirements for beef. I agree with them here. Labeling laws under Obama allow beef to be labeled as “Product of the USA” if it’s processed and packaged here even if it wasn’t raised here.
  3. After the World Trade Organization rules in favor of it, the Trump administration announces tariffs on European imports, including airplanes, agricultural products, whiskey, cheese, and wine.
  4. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says that maybe small dairy farmers can’t survive this economy, but that’s OK because the big get bigger and the small go out of business.
  5. This is the third week of the GM strike, and both GM and workers are feeling the hit. GM temporarily lays of 6,000 workers in Mexico as a result. Here are the sticking points:
    • GM’s use of temporary workers
    • Bringing jobs back from Mexico
    • Four plants that are slated for closure
  1. The Dow Jones closes out fiscal year 2019 up about 360 points over the beginning of the fiscal year, but then loses almost 1,000 points in the first two days of the next quarter. Analysts point to the ongoing trade war.
  2. In June, Trump privately made a promise to President Xi Jinping that the U.S. wouldn’t say anything about the protests in Hong Kong as trade talks continued. This conversation, like calls with Ukraine, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, was also placed in the codeword-level secure system.
  3. For the third time, the Trump administration moves to cut SNAP benefits, this time by $4.5 billion. This would cut benefits for almost 20% of recipients.
  4. Trump signs a trade deal with Japan aimed at helping farmers get what they lost when Trump pulled the U.S. out of the TPP. Dairy products (except cheese), rice, and some grains would’ve done better under TPP, but are now looking to do worse. But beef, pork, barley, wheat, and wine get a better deal. The deal doesn’t include major trading products, like automobiles, aircraft, propane, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

Elections:

  1. Bernie Sanders suffers a mild heart attack and is briefly hospitalized after getting two stents inserted. He cancels his upcoming campaign stops. Speedy recovery.
  2. California’s Secretary of State says he’ll appeal a federal judge’s order blocking the state’s new law that presidential candidates must provide their tax returns in order to be on the primary ballot. He’s arguing for transparency in financial dealings.
  3. A sixth Texas Representative announces he won’t seek reelection next year. Mac Thornberry is currently the top-ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, a position that he’d term out of next year anyway.
  4. Politicians are fundraising off impeachment on both sides. Republicans pull in $15 million in donations in the days after the impeachment announcement, according to Eric Trump. I don’t have the exact numbers for Democrats, though ActBlue showed $8.8 million in just the first two days after the announcement, and that doesn’t include all donations.
    • Here’s my PSA: It’s way past time to get money out of our elections. The taxpayers carry the burden for every single candidate that runs anywhere in this county.
  1. The RNC in Montana uses forms that resemble the official U.S. Census Forms to solicit donations for Trump’s reelection. They’re even labeled “2019 Congressional District Census.” State officials issue a warning to Montana residents that these are not official census documents and that the census never asks for money.

Week 131 in Trump

Posted on July 31, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Best Image of the week. Victory is sometimes slow, but it is always sweet. Way to get 'er done, Jon.

In response to SCOTUS shutting down a lawsuit over the use of Pentagon funds to build a wall, Jon Zal has the most appropriate tweet for the week:

“JUST IN: Man who won election by promising voters he’d strengthen the military and force Mexico to pay for his border wall wins court battle that allows him to deplete the military and force his voters to pay for the border wall. #MAGA”

So much winning.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending July 27…

Russia:

  1. Ahead of Mueller’s testimony before Congress, the DOJ tells him he must limit his testimony to the public findings in his 448-page report. He said previously he would do this anyway.
  2. Mueller testifies to Congress, coming across a little feeble and off-guard. In fairness, he wears hearing aids (which don’t work well where he was sitting), he wasn’t presented with a portfolio highlighting the sections in his report that were referenced (so he had to search through the doc for every question), and he’s naturally curt and concise. But still, not compelling TV.
    • Probably no minds were changed, but I outlined a few highlights and some conspiracy theories that were new to me.
    • If you’ve read the report, the only thing new in the hearings was the astounding number of conspiracy theories that you would only know about if you watch Fox News.
    • Republicans on the committees didn’t challenge the facts stated in Mueller’s report, but did try to establish bias in the investigation.
    • Mueller definitely sticks to his promise to only testify about what’s in the report.
    • Following Mueller’s testimony, the number of House members endorsing the start of impeachment hearings increases to 107.
    • Also following Mueller’s testimony, House committees step up their requests and subpoenas for evidence. They also plan to petition a judge to unseal the grand jury evidence from Mueller’s investigation.
    • Meanwhile, Trump says the Russia investigations are finally over.
  1. One America News, which Trump promotes in his tweets, hires an anchor who’s still working for Sputnik (Russia’s state-owned media outlet).
  2. Several thousand people protest in Moscow, demanding that opposition candidates be allowed on the ballots for city council races. Around 300 people are arrested, including Putin opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who gets a 30-day sentence for organizing the protests.
  3. The Senate Intelligence Committee releases a (highly redacted) report concluding that Russian cyberactors hacked into election databases in all 50 states in 2016, and that they were in a position to change data in an Illinois database (and also in one other state, which isn’t named). There’s no evidence they did so, though. Here are some highlights:
    • Russia began the attacks as far back as 2014.
    • The committee couldn’t figure out what Russia’s intentions were.
    • Russian diplomats were planning to undermine the results of the election, anticipating that Clinton would win. The committee thinks it’s possible that Russia purposefully left their fingerprints on the databases in order to cast doubt on the validity of the elections.
    • There’s no evidence that any votes or voter tallies were changed.
  1. Following the release of the report and Mueller’s testimony, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans block three bills passed by the Democrat-led House to increase election security and help prevent attacks such as those described in the report. The bills would:
    • Require internet companies to disclose political ad buyers by internet companies in order to identify foreign influence.
    • Place sanctions on any entity that attacks a U.S. election.
    • Sanction Russia for its cyberattacks.
  1. Full disclosure: McConnell has received donations from lobbyists for four of the major makers of voting equipment, though their donations amount to less than $10,000.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Trump files a lawsuit to block the House Ways and Means Committee from obtaining his tax returns.
    • Trump claims the request from the House Ways and Means Committee for his tax returns is unprecedented. But documents show that when the same committee requested Richard Nixon’s tax returns, they got them within a day.
  1. A federal judge blocks subpoenas issued by Congress to obtain Trump organization financial records in their emoluments lawsuit against Trump. The judge says the suit should make its way through the appeals court first.
  2. And then, ironically, Trump’s Doral country club is listed among the finalists to hold next year’s G7 summit.
  3. Jeffrey Epstein is served court papers in jail in relation to a child rape lawsuit. A few days later, he’s found injured in his cell, semiconscious with marks on his neck.
  4. A judge rules that a class action suit against Trump, Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka for fraud, false advertising, and unfair competition in multilevel marketing companies they promoted can move forward. The judge dismisses allegations of conspiracy and racketeering.
  5. Michael Flynn’s former business partner Bijan Kian faces up to 15 years in prison after being convicted on foreign-agent felony charges.
  6. The DOJ declines to follow up on contempt of Congress charges against Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Justice Department announces they’ll resume the federal death penalty, and selects five inmates for whom they’ll schedule executions. Federal executions were largely ended in 1972, when the Supreme Court ruling found that the death penalty was imposed on blacks at a far higher rate than whites. Congress expanded the federal death penalty again in 1988, but there have only been three executions since then.
  2. At the same time, a Philadelphia DA asks the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to rule that the death penalty goes against the state constitution. He cites the inequity and prejudice with which the death penalty is served.
    • There are 45 people on death row in Philadelphia, 41 of whom are minorities.
    • Post-conviction reviews overturned 72% of Philadelphia’s death sentences.

Healthcare:

  1. The Senate finally passes a bill that funds the 9/11 victims fund in perpetuity. First responders no longer have to come back to Congress to plead their case every time funding comes up for a vote.
    • Comedian John Stewart has been fighting for this for nearly a decade.
    • A quick look back at votes and bill sponsorship indicates that this has largely been blocked by Republicans over the past 18 years. I don’t understand why this is.
  1. The Trump administration tells Utah legislators that it won’t approve their request for funding for Medicaid expansion under ACA because their plan leaves out certain income brackets covered by the ACA. The administration would fund full Medicaid expansion.

International:

  1. The Navy warship that brought down an Iranian drone last week brought down a second one in the process, according to CENTCOM Commander General Kenneth McKenzie….
  2. Trump says he could easily wipe Afghanistan off the face of the earth, but he doesn’t want to kill 10 million people. Afghanistan requests clarification.
  3. Trump vetos three bills that would’ve prevented the administration from selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Both the House and the Senate passed the bans largely over human rights issues.
  4. The UK selects Boris Johnson to be their next prime minister. Johnson is a populist who led the original Brexit movement and is OK with a no-deal Brexit. Oh how did we get here?
    • Johnson was a journalist who created sensationalist and inaccurate stories. He was an EU skeptic even back in the early 90s.
    • He was fired from the Times of London for making up quotes.
    • He meticulously creates his persona of a bumbling, unkempt buffoon.
    • He was fired from the Parliament before he became the mayor of London.
    • He’s long wanted to be Prime Minister, but he didn’t really want it under the current circumstances and he didn’t really think the Brexit referendum would pass. Now we’ll see what he does with it.
    • His first week in office, he ramps up the Brexit rhetoric and causes the pound to fall.
  1. The Senate confirms Mark Esper as Secretary of Defense, a position that’s been open more than half a year. Esper is a former Raytheon lobbyist. He replaces James Mattis.
  2. After France passes a law taxing big tech companies like Amazon and Google, Trump says he’ll take “substantial reciprocal action.” Ironically, Trump says if anyone’s going to tax American companies it should be America. These companies barely pay any taxes in the U.S., thanks in large part to the GOP’s 2017 tax cuts. France is only taxing the amount these companies make in France.
  3. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates resigns, and Trump nominates Representative John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) to replace him. You might have noticed several GOP Members of Congress auditioning for this role during the Mueller hearing, including Ratcliffe.
  4. It’s been a month since North Korea and the U.S. agreed to start up denuclearization negotiations again, but so far Kim Jong Un hasn’t even named a negotiator.
  5. Speaking of North Korea, they just launched two unidentified objects into the Sea of Japan.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. South Dakota passes a law requiring schools to display the country’s motto, “In God we trust.” State Republicans say it’s about history, but it only became the country’s motto in 1956, when Eisenhower signed it into law.
    • That was around the same time “under God” was added to the pledge of allegiance, and the same time that “In God we trust” was added to currency.
    • The author of the bill says it’s based on religion (Judeo-Christian principles).
    • Over a dozen other states have either passed a similar law or have proposed one.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. The Supreme Court finds that the plaintiffs in a lawsuit attempting to block Trump from using Pentagon money to build his wall don’t have a legal right to bring the case. They didn’t rule that Trump’s use of these funds is constitutional, but the ruling allows him to start using the funds.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Trump administration announces a deportation process that bypasses immigration judges and allows them to quickly deport undocumented immigrants who’ve been here less than two years. Before, this expedited process was reserved for undocumented migrants caught within 100 miles of the border and who had only been in the country two weeks.
  2. A district judge blocks Trump’s new “third-country” asylum rule that prevents refugees from seeking asylum in the U.S. if they pass through a third country and don’t seek asylum there first. The administration says they’ll fight the decision.
    • The judge says the rule could put people in imminent danger.
    • This could affect refugees who’ve been trying to do this the right way by waiting their turn at ports of entry. They’ve been waiting in Mexico for months, but if this rule goes into effect, they might be required to seek asylum in Mexico first.
    • Trump threatens Guatemala with tariffs if they don’t enter a safe country agreement for asylum seekers. He also threatens a travel ban against Guatemala.
  1. ICE releases a 16-year-old U.S. citizen after 23 days of detention in an immigration center. He says he lost 26 pounds, and described awful conditions there. There were extenuating circumstances, but in the end, a U.S. citizen was unlawfully detained by U.S. officials who refused to accept his birth certificate.
    • In March, ICE detained a nine-year-old girl and her 14-year-old brother, both of whom are U.S. citizens, for 32 hours. Even though they had U.S. passports, officials accused the brother of human trafficking. Their mother had to go through the Mexican consulate to free them.
  1. Remember the high school student made famous for staring down a Native American elder after a March for Life rally in DC last year? He sued the Washington Post for defamation, and a judge just dismissed the case with prejudice (meaning the suit can’t be brought up again). The family still has lawsuits pending against CNN and NBC.
  2. FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before Congress, and he says that domestic terrorism from white hate groups is on the rise. He also says, “A majority of the domestic terrorism cases we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.”
  3. Shit rolls downhill… Trump’s racist attacks against The Squad have trickled down.
    • Two New Jersey GOP officials call to eradicate Islam and call a sitting Member of Congress a terrorist on social media. They refuse to apologize.
    • The Republican County Chairmen’s association of Illinois posts and then removes a meme on Facebook that calls the squad “The Jihad Squad.” The meme also has the slogan, “Political Jihad Is Their Game,” and it shows Rep. Ayanna Pressley aiming a gun. The president of the association doesn’t apologize for the content.
  1. Trump’s mad at Elijah Cummings. He tweets that Cummings’ Baltimore district is “far worse and more dangerous” than the border, is the worst district in the U.S., and is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess—a “dangerous and filthy” place.
    • Even members of the GOP think this one went too far, and the Baltimore Sun publishes a scathing retort.
    • And, surprise! It appears that Kushner is a slumlord in that very district. Kushner Companies owns thousands of apartments in the district, which have accrued over 200 code violations in a single year, including mice infestation.
    • If you’re not clear on why these tweets are racist and hurtful, give this a listen.
  1. Active troops are now monitoring migrants at a detention center in Texas.
  2. After ICE traps a man and his 12-year-old son in their van for hours (threatening them with arrest), people in the Tennessee neighborhood provide the two with food and water. After four hours, the neighbors form a human chain around the van to help them get back into their house and prevent ICE agents from taking them into custody.
  3. A federal judge rules against North Carolina’s notorious bathroom bill, saying that the state can’t ban people from using bathrooms that match their identity. Also, the guy who authored that bill is running for the House of Representatives in a special election. Why is there a special election? Because the campaign of the Republican who ran last time committed voter fraud.
  4. Several U.S. Marines are arrested in Southern California for transporting undocumented migrants.

Climate:

  1. A new report shows that temperature variations at the end of the last century were more extreme than any variations over the past 2,000 years. Previous variations were contained to specific areas as opposed to the global variations we see now.
  2. India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are in monsoon season, and have seen over 650 people die so far from the extreme weather and flooding.
  3. Europe is continuing its hot streak, with Paris hitting 108.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest temperature ever recorded there. Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium also hit record highs.
  4. Four of the biggest auto manufacturers side with California in the state’s fight against Trump’s regulatory rollbacks on fuel efficiency. They strike a deal that‘s slightly looser than Obama‘s regulations, but much tougher than Trump’s. They‘ll reach 51 mpg by 2026 instead of 54.5 mpg by 2025. Trump lowered it to 37 mpg.
    • Trump is still likely to revoke California’s right to create its own emissions guidelines, but there are 13 other states who promise to uphold Obama’s tighter standards.
    • Additional automakers are interested in signing on to the deal.
  1. Tidewater glaciers are experiencing underwater melt at a rate 100 times faster than previously thought. Tidewater glaciers are glaciers that end in the ocean.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The White House and Congress reach a two-year budget deal that increases the spending cap by $320 billion and that suspends the debt ceiling until after the next presidential election (because who wants that hanging over an election?).
    • The Freedom Caucus (Tea Party wing) urges Trump to reject the deal.
    • A few months ago, the White House said they would force spending cuts in the budget, but they approved this increase anyway.
    • The deal puts us on track to add another $1 trillion to the deficit this year. Candidate Trump said he’d balance the budget within 5 years. He has an perplexing strategy…
  1. And then the next day, the Trump administration announces a proposed rule that will drop over 3 million Americans off of SNAP.
    • An interesting side effect of that is that share prices for major discount grocery stores dropped.
  1. Bernie Madoff asks Trump to reduce his prison sentence. Madoff is 81, and has about 140 years out of 150 to serve for cheating hundred of people out of their money (for an estimated $64.8 billion in total).
  2. Economic growth in the U.S. slowed to 2.1% last quarter.
  3. 2018’s newly revised economic growth is now 2.5%.
  4. China, which is hardly importing any U.S. soybeans at this point, approves imports of soybeans and wheat from Russia.
  5. The government announces another round of assistance to farmers hurt by the tariffs. Farmers will receive from $15 to $150 per acre, totaling $16 billion.
  6. The DOJ approves the T-Mobile/Sprint merger. States Attorneys Generals launch an antitrust lawsuit.

Elections:

  1. Three House Republicans announce they won’t be running again in 2020. They are: Pete Olson (Texas), Martha Roby (Alabama), and Paul Mitchell (Michigan). Three House Republicans and two House Democrats announced earlier this year that they won’t be running.
  2. Lawyers in Miami-Dade County, FL, say they’ve found a loophole in the state’s recently passed bill that requires ex-felons to pay any fees and fines before they can be eligible to vote. This bill overrode a measure passed overwhelmingly by the voters. The loophole is that fees and fines are not usually listed in the sentencing documents.

Miscellaneous:

  1. In a speech to conservative teens, Trump works them up by repeating his debunked story that undocumented immigrants are voting illegally. They just aren’t. There are so many procedures in place to prevent this. He also tells the kids that Article II of the Constitution gives him the right to do whatever he wants, among other fish tales.
  2. The governor of Puerto Rico finally resigns after weeks of protests.
  3. Trump’s nominee for Ambassador to the UN has spent 7 out of 20 months of her time as Ambassador to Canada at homes she owns in the U.S.
  4. Lawyers for Cesar Sayoc, the MAGA Bomber, claim that Sayoc was influenced by Fox News, Trump’s tweets, and Facebook. His favorites were Fox & Friends and Hannity. Sayoc mailed 16 pipe bombs to Trump’s perceived enemies.
  5. A Pennsylvania school that sent out letters to parents threatening to call child services if they don’t pay their lunch debt rejects a local businessman’s offer to pay off those debts.
  6. Illustrating why Republicans are no longer the party of fiscal responsibility, Mitch McConnell tells Trump that no politician ever lost his seat by approving higher government spending.
  7. A police officer in Louisiana posts on social media that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needs a round.
  8. Trump calls for opening investigations into Obama’s book deal and reopening investigations into Hillary’s emails and the Clinton Foundation. He later complains about the air conditioning in the White House installed by the Obama’s saying that it worked fine before. Not sure how he’d know.
  9. There are eight mass shootings over the weekend. EIGHT.
    • A shooter kills three people and injures 15 more at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California. The shooter is also killed. He had previously posted a recommendation to read Might is Right, a white supremacist manifesto from the 1800s.
    • That same night, two shooters kill one person and injure 11 at a festival in a Brooklyn, NY, park.
    • The other mass shootings occur in DC, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Washington State,
  1. Dozens of links from major news media outlets online are now being redirected (without their knowledge) to advertising sites. I’m talking major media, like the New York Times, Forbes, BBC, and more.
  2. Brazil’s president threatens journalist Glenn Simpson of the Intercept with jail time over reporting hacked phone conversations involving the justice minister. Greenwald has generated his share of controversy, but he’s still protected by due process.

Week 97 in Trump

Posted on December 4, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Former President George H.W. Bush lying in state in the Rotunda. (Morry Gash/Pool/Getty Images)

George H.W. Bush passed away at 94 years old; just 7 months after his wife, Barbara, passed away. He’ll lie in state, and December 5 will be a national day of mourning for him. And even over this, we were so fast to divide ourselves. One group is wistful for a president with his grace and character; the other group thinks he was just plain awful. Can’t we just, for a short period, let people eulogize and remember a man who’s long and full life just came to an end? Give the family some time to grieve, and then go ahead and point out his policy flaws. We don’t have to hate at every turn. It makes me tired…

And you know what else makes me tired? Everything else that happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. In his first year, Trump ordered a complete and independent audit of the Pentagon. Now the auditors say the job is impossible to complete. The Pentagon fudges their numbers and documents in order to justify increases to the Pentagon budget (whether or not the money gets used–a common business practice). Their records have irregularities and errors, and lack the needed information. The Pentagon’s defense? “We didn’t expect to pass it.”
  2. A federal judges rules that a lawsuit against the Trump Foundation can proceed. The suit accuses Trump of misusing funds from the charity for political and personal gain. Trump’s legal team says he can’t be sued because he’s president; the judge says he can.

Russia:

  1. Robert Mueller drops Paul Manafort’s plea deal, saying Manafort breached their agreement by continually lying to investigators. On top of that, Manafort’s lawyers were keeping Trump’s legal team abreast of their discussions with Mueller’s team.
    • Mueller considers filing additional charges against Manafort, and will file a report on what Manafort lied about.
    • Since Manafort already pleaded guilty, he’s now on the hook for those crimes… and also probably for conspiring to defraud the U.S. and obstruct justice.
    • According to The Guardian, Manafort met with WikiLeak’s Julian Assange around the same time he joined Trump’s campaign, and the two had met a few times before that. Both deny they ever met and no other media outlet has confirmed this story, so I’m taking this report with a grain of salt.
    • After Mueller pulls Manafort’s plea deal, Trump says Mueller’s gone rogue and is forcing witnesses to lie.
    • Rudy Giuliani brags about the arrangement with Manafort’s lawyers. He says it was a valuable source of information about the investigation of which his client is a subject.
    • Trump doesn’t rule out a pardon for Manafort.
  1. Michael Cohen enters a new plea agreement with Mueller, pleading guilty to lying about when talks with Russia about a Trump property ended. Cohen told Congress that the talks ended in January 2016, but they were still going on until June 2016. We have the texts to prove it. 
Cohen is the 33rd person charged by Mueller in the Russia probe.
  2. Cohen says he spoke with Trump and his family about the Trump Tower negotiations during that time; previously Cohen said they didn’t talk about it.
  3. The new court filings show that:
    • Cohen, Trump, Felix Sater, and Russian officials were in negotiations from January through June of 2016 for Trump to travel to Russia to meet with Putin.
    • They discussed Cohen going to Russia to negotiate the details of the visit before the Republican National Convention, and Trump going to Russia after.
    • In early to mid-June of 2016, Cohen told Sater that the trips were cancelled and that the Trump property deal was also cancelled.
    • Cohen says he lied to Congress to limit the Russia investigation and to support Trump.
    • Trump Organization offered to give Putin a $50 million penthouse in the tower.
    • Trump lied to us all when he said he didn’t have any interests in Russia.
    • Trump Jr.’s testimony to Congress contradicts Michael Cohen’s testimony.
    • Trump was kept abreast of his campaign members who were contacting both Russia and Wikileaks, and they subsequently tried to hide those activities.
  1. Rudy Giuliani first says Cohen is a liar, and then says that Trump’s written answers match Cohen’s version. So either Trump is a liar, or Cohen is telling the truth.
  2. Trump says Cohen is a liar and a weak person who’s just trying to save himself from receiving a prison sentence for unrelated charges.
  3. The revelations about Trump Tower Moscow aren’t necessarily criminal or impeachable. Trump says there was nothing wrong with him continuing to do business as a candidate. Which is technically true. However, the American public have a right to know where a presidential candidate’s financial interests stand.
  4. We now know that the final House committee reports submitted by the majority Republicans include the lies from Cohen’s and Trump Jr.’s original testimony. Committee reports submitted by minority Democrats include snippets of emails that contradict those lies. Democrats want to call Cohen back in to correct the record.
  5. As a results of this plea deal, Senate committees begin reviewing the testimony given to them.
  6. The Trump Tower Moscow deal was dissolved right around the time the Washington Post published the first article detailing the Russian hacking of the DNC servers.
  7. Republican Senator Jeff Flake demands a vote on a bill to protect Mueller, or he’ll stop voting to advance Trump’s judicial nominations to a full Senate vote. Republican Senator Mike Lee blocked a bipartisan effort to force a vote on the bill.
  8. An email trail between Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi, who pulled back on his plea deal with Mueller, shows that two months before WikiLeaks dumped Clinton campaign emails, they were discussing details about an October dump that would be damaging to Clinton.
  9. Mueller investigates call logs from the 2016 campaign where Trump made several late-night calls from a blocked number to Roger Stone.
  10. Trump cancels his meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit over Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and then says he’ll meet with Putin one-on-one. They ended up having an informal meeting.
  11. James Comey asks a federal judge to block a request from Republicans in the House that he testify in private. In the end, Comey agrees to testify behind closed doors, but a transcript of his testimony will be made public.
  12. British intelligence say that Putin was likely behind the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter on UK soil.
  13. Democrats in the House start making a list of targets to investigate when they take back over the House next year. They’ll likely revisit the 64 subpoenas that Republicans blocked over the past year and a half.

Legal Fallout:

  1. German police raid Deutsche Bank headquarters as part of a money laundering investigation spawned by the Panama Papers. The bank was previously fined for helping to launder Russian money.
  2. The raid has no apparent ties to Trump, but after an internal investigation earlier this year, Deutsche Bank found questionable transactions by Jared Kushner, which they shared with Mueller. They were also one of the few banks willing to loan money to Trump after his financial collapses.
  3. Federal agents raid the Chicago offices of Ed Burke, who previously did tax work for Trump. We don’t know if the raid is related to Trump at all.
  4. It was a mystery to me why Facebook would launch a smear campaign against George Soros when defending themselves over personal data breaches. It turns out that Soros criticized the company at the World Economic Forum, so Sheryl Sandberg asked for information on whether Soros had something to gain from that. This led her staff to hire a GOP opposition research firm.
  5. House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) says that Ivanka’s use of personal email is OK because it’s just really hard to comply when you’re dealing with so many emails and so many rules. He says it’s nothing like Hillary’s use of a personal email server.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Mike Pence casts the tie-breaking vote when Jeff Flake refuses to advance Trump’s judicial nominee, Thomas Farr, out of committee for a floor vote. Flake didn’t refuse to advance Farr because of Farr’s long and sordid history of working to suppress the Black vote in North Carolina; Flake refused to advance him because he wants McConnell to bring the Mueller bill to the floor for a vote.
  2. Farr might have made it out of committee, but he wasn’t confirmed in the Senate. It turns out that the Black Republican in the Senate isn’t fond of judges who work to disenfranchise Black voters, so he joined Jeff Flake in voting against him.
  3. Christine Blasey Ford announces she’ll donate the remaining money raised from a GoFundMe campaign to organizations that support survivors of sexual assault. Up till now, the money went to securing and relocating her family multiple times due to threats of death and violence.
  4. New reports allege that Acting Attorney General Matt Whittaker continued his support of a patent company that was engaged in fraud while at the same time hindering an FTC investigation into that company.
  5. Whittaker is also under investigation by the Office of the Special Counsel (not to be confused with Robert Mueller) for possible Hatch Act violations for accepting political contributions while employed by the government.
  6. Bill Shine, the White House deputy communications chief, will receive about $15 million from Fox News over the next two years as severance pay and bonus. At the same time, he gets a U.S. government salary and he’s in a position to show favoritism to Fox News.

Healthcare:

  1. New enrollments for health insurance through the ACA is down 13% from last year at this time. The administration isn’t providing marketing or education for help with signing up (again).
  2. Drug overdoses reached a record high of 70,237 in 2017, largely due to fentanyl.
  3. Bloomberg’s foundation plans to donate $50 million to fight the opioid epidemic. They’ll start with a limited number of states and find out which programs are the most effective. Then they’ll put more money towards those programs in other states.
  4. The number of uninsured children increased in 2017 for the first time in a decade. Texas has the largest number of uninsured children, partly because they’re one of the states that refused to expand Medicaid under the ACA.

International:

  1. Just before Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, the Saudi Crown Prince exchanged several messages with the senior aide accused of overseeing the murder. These messages are part of what led our intelligence agencies to conclude that the Crown Prince likely ordered the killing.
  2. Even Mitch McConnell is pushing for a congressional response against Saudi Arabia in the Khashoggi case.
  3. The White House prevents CIA director Gina Haspel from briefing the Senate on Saudi Arabia. Instead, Mike Pompeo and James Mattis handle the briefing.
  4. Not only is the arms deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia non-binding (meaning either party can back out), but the dollar amount of the deal was inflated at Jared Kushner’s direction from $14.5 billion to $110 billion.
  5. Paris has its worst riots in 50 years. The riots started two weeks ago over a gas tax coupled with anti-Macron sentiment.
  6. Activists call Obama the ‘Drone President,‘ but Trump relaxed requirements for targets of drone strikes and has launched 30% more than Obama did in his first two years (238 drone strikes to Obama’s 186).

Legislation/Congress:

  1. House Democrats nominate Nancy Pelosi to be House Speaker.
  2. The Senate advances a resolution to stop providing military help to Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. Fourteen Republicans vote for the resolution, and 19 switch their votes from their previous vote because of an inadequate briefing by Mattis and Pompeo and because of Khashoggi’s murder.
  3. Congress reaches a deal on a farm bill that does not include work requirements for SNAP recipients. Trump and House Republicans were pushing for those requirements.

Family Separation:

  1. There are still around 60 children in custody who were separated from their (now-deported) parents. Almost all of these children have sponsors they could be released to in the U.S. In total, 140 children who were separated from their parents or guardian are still in custody.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump tweets that Mexico should just send back everyone in the migrant caravan to whatever country they came from and by any means possible. He says again (and without evidence) that many of them are stone cold criminals.
  2. A review of global terrorism shows that violent acts motivated by far right-wing ideologies far outnumber acts of domestic terrorism acts in any other category over the past decade.
  3. A memo from the Department of Health and Human Services shows that the Trump administration said it’s OK to not thoroughly vet staff at detention camps for migrant minors.
  4. Instead of releasing government documents on actual costs/benefits of undocumented immigrants, Trump retweets a false rumor that they receive $3,874 per month in assistance.
  5. The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2016 hit the lowest number in over a decade, with an estimated 10.7 million.
  6. The head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media apologizes to George Soros after they aired a program smearing Soros and using anti-Semitic tropes. The program called Soros a “non-practicing Jew of flexible morals” and said he was involved in “clandestine operations that led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union.” It also said he architected the 2008 financial collapse. The program got most of it’s information from Judicial Watch, which has long sought to pin some kind of wrongdoing on Soros.
  7. Deteriorating conditions at migrant camps near the border are leading more immigrants to attempt illegal crossings so they can seek asylum. This is what the Trump administration was trying to avoid, but by trapping them at the border, the administration created the conditions that are now worsening the problem.
  8. The ACLU files a lawsuit against a Florida Sheriff’s Office that detained a U.S. citizen on ICE’s request. The man was arrested in the Keys and detained for weeks despite having a U.S. birth certificate. He was finally transported to ICE, who released him once they looked up his birth certificate. In Miami. With no money or transportation to get back to the Keys. Interesting side note: ICE has an agreement with this Sheriff’s Office to pay them $50 per detainee.
  9. The police officer who shot her black neighbor when she mistakenly walked into his apartment thinking it was her own is charged with murder.
  10. One more reason we need #MeToo. Seven hospitals agree to a settlement after they illegally billed sexual assault victims for their own forensic rape exams.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Fox News disciplines employees who were involved in crafting topics and questions with the EPA for an interview with Scott Pruitt. Fox & Friends coordinated the entire interview with Pruitt (or his aides) and Pruitt lied about the number of Superfund sites cleaned up under Obama versus under Trump.
  2. Who knew all you had to do to get out of fraud charges is to quit? The inspector general of the EPA closes two investigations into Scott Pruitt’s conduct during his time as head of the EPA because he doesn’t work there anymore.
  3. At the G20 summit in Brazil, 19 world leaders reaffirm the Paris agreement with one leader abstaining. Trump reiterates our decision to withdraw. Yay us. We affirm our strong commitment to not deal with climate change.
  4. Exxon plans to use renewable energy—wind and solar—to help power up their gas and oil drilling in Texas’s Permian Basin, an area with extensive fracking operations.
  5. Washington, D.C.’s city council votes unanimously to adopt 100% clean electricity by 2032.
  6. Patagonia announces they’ll give $10 million of what they received in corporate tax cuts this year to grassroots organizations supporting the environment.
  7. Andrew Wheeler, the acting head of the EPA, gives Trump the credit for a 2.5% reduction in carbon emissions in 2016… before Trump took office. He also says carbon emissions are down 14% since 2005. This is in no small part due to the Obama regulations this administration has worked to reverse.
  8. Wheeler can’t name three Trump rules that contributed to the decrease in emissions, (unless you include the proposed reversals of Obama emissions-reducing rules that he named).
  9. Trump approves company requests to run seismic tests in the Atlantic Ocean, which could kill tens of thousands of marine animals. Underwater seismic tests are used to locate gas and oil.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The VA has been behind on GI Bill payments to vets because of a computer glitch, and now they’re saying they won’t reimburse vets who weren’t paid the full amount owed them.
  2. Auto companies warned us last summer that the tariffs would have negative economic effects on the industry. This week, GM announces they’ll stop production at five plants and layoff over 14,000 people. They offered buyout packages to 18,000 employees in October.
    • The reasons for the cutbacks include changing their lineup to align with Americans’ changing tastes, the decimation of unions (unions used to train employees on the new skills they need to adapt), and costs related to the trade war and tariffs.
  1. Trump threatens to eliminate GM’s subsidies if they go ahead with the closures. Trump also blames the declining stock market and the Fed for the closures and layoffs.
  2. Over 40% of companies say they’ll raise prices due to the higher costs they’re incurring as a result of the trade war. 10% say the tariffs are pushing them to move jobs offshore.
  3. Even though Paul Ryan oversaw legislation that will add trillions to our debt, he says his biggest regret is that he didn’t address our federal debt.
  4. Just before the start of the G20 summit, Trump, Trudeau, and Peña Nieto sign the updated NAFTA deal. Trump says it’s the biggest trade deal ever. But of course it is.
  5. Also at the G20, Trump and Chinese President Xi come to a verbal agreement on tariffs. They basically agreed that Trump won’t add any new tariffs, China will start buying our stuff again, and the two countries will begin talks.
  6. Qatar announces it’s leaving OPEC next year so they can develop their liquified natural gas.

Elections:

  1. Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith wins the Mississippi Senate race, showing once and for all why Mississippi is so far behind the rest of the country in race relations. But since it was the closest race there in 30 years, maybe that means they’re a little less racist than before. I can hope.
    • With her election, Republicans have picked up a total of three Senate seats in the midterms.
  1. Paul Ryan calls the ballot process in California bizarre and loosey-goosey after seven GOP House seats shifted to Democrats as mail-in and provisional ballots were counted. Ryan says he doesn’t question the validity of the results, though, so I guess he just wanted to be sure he planted that question mark in everyone’ heads.
  2. The Office of Special Counsel (again, not to be confused with Mueller’s office) says six Trump administration officials tweeted support for Republicans or for Trump on their government Twitter accounts. This is a violation of the Hatch Act, but not enough for disciplinary action.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Representative Raul Grijalva wrote an op-ed criticizing Ryan Zinke over his ethical scandals and saying Zinke should resign. Zinke’s response from his official Interior Department Twitter account? “It’s hard for him to think straight from the bottom of the bottle.” This country is being run by children.
  2. Trump threatens House Democrats, saying that if they play tough with him when they become the majority, he’ll declassify documents that will be “devastating” to them. He says he could’ve used those documents against them already, but he’s saving them for when he really needs to use them. A) I think that’s called extortion, and B) he doesn’t have a great track record so far of declassifying information to further his cause.
  3. Making good on a promise he made after the Las Vegas shooting, Trump says he’ll approve a federal rule banning bump stocks. Current owners will either have to destroy their bump stocks or turn them in.
  4. Eric Bauman, the chair of the California Democratic Party, resigns after accusations of sexual misconduct are publicized. An investigation is ongoing.
  5. NASA and JPL land another successful spacecraft on Mars. InSight will investigate the planet’s interior and measure Mars-quakes.
  6. And speaking of quakes, Anchorage experiences a huge earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale (with 1,000 aftershocks). We still don’t know the extent of the damage; there are collapsed roads, buckled bridges, cracked buildings, power outages, and people are still boiling water.

Week 82 in Trump

Posted on August 20, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

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

Missed From Last Week:

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

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Week 80 in Trump

Posted on August 7, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

Here’s what happened in week 80…

Missed from Last Week:

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

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Family Separation:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Polls:

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

Week 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 61 in Trump

Posted on March 26, 2018 in Politics, Trump

March For Our Lives, DC - Time Magazine

#DeleteFacebook is trending! I get the concerns, but let’s all slow down a bit. Every time you sign in to an app or site using your Facebook login and every time you take a Facebook quiz, they tell you right there what information they’re going to scrape. So here are a few things you can do instead of deleting your account:

Cambridge Analytica:

The Cambridge Analytica/Facebook thing is big enough to earn its own heading this week. I’ll try to break it down, but it’s unclear how much, if any, effect the company had on the 2016 elections.

  1. Cambridge Analytica is an offshoot of the SCL Group, a behavioral research and strategic communications company.
  2. Robert Mercer is part-owner of Cambridge Analytica and Steve Bannon headed it at the time the activity in question occurred.
  3. They hired Aleksandr Kogan, a professor at Cambridge, to write an app to scrape user data from Facebook for “academic purposes.” The app scraped not only participants’ data but also their friends’ data. Kogan also used Amazon Turk to collect data, ending up with data from an estimated 50 million users without their permission.
  4. A sting video shows the CEO of Cambridge Analytica (Alexander Nix) and other officials saying that:
    • The company has used honey pots, fake news, disinformation campaigns, blackmail, sting operations, and ex-spies to affect elections around the globe.
    • Cambridge Analytica ran the digital and TV campaigns for Trump and the Trump campaign used Cambridge Analytica‘s data to direct their strategy.
    • They were the brains behind the “defeat crooked Hillary” ad campaign.
    • Cambridge Analytica helped bring Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon on board the Trump campaign.
    • Cambridge Analytica worked to influence the UK campaign for Brexit.
    • They stay under cover by using a shifting network of operatives and front groups.
    • PACs and outside groups can work around federal election laws, implying possible illegal coordination.
    • They use fake academic projects as cover, as they did with Facebook, in possible violation of federal law. This supports what their staff has claimed previously.
  1. Cambridge Analytica suspends Nix after the video surfaces.
  2. The data they scraped includes personally identifying information, a rating on how important each issue is, and which party a user leans toward. They combined all that with our voting history.
  3. And then randomly, we learn that John Bolton’s PAC was one of Cambridge Analytica‘s first customers. They used the company for polling and micro-targeting voters on national security issues.
  4. Despite Cambridge Analytica‘s denials that they ever worked with Russians, it turns out they met with Russian oil company Lukoil multiple times over how to target American voters.
  5. The FTC is investigating whether Facebook violated a 2011 consent decree around sharing personal information.
  6. The previous week, Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica from the social network for its improper use of data. Cambridge Analytica officials, including Nix, dispute that they had ever received Facebook data.
  7. In 2015, Facebook already knew their privacy had issues and announced tightened security. Too late, because Cambridge Analytica had already scraped the data they needed.
  8. In late 2015, Facebook learned of the relationship between Cambridge Analytica and Kogan. Facebook says Kogan and Cambridge Analytica violated Facebook’s terms of service.
  9. Mark Zuckerberg says he welcomes federal regulation over Facebook’s data privacy procedures, but then we learn that Facebook lobbyists have actively lobbied against the disclosure rules for online ads.
  10. Facebook stock drops.
  11. Mueller is looking into coordination between Russian influence, Cambridge Analytica, and the Trump campaign.
  12. The British government has opened its own investigation into Cambridge Analytica, and they’ve already missed one deadline to comply with the investigation.
  13. At the end of the week, UK law enforcement officers raid Cambridge Analytica headquarters.
  14. Note that there is no proof of legal wrongdoing by Cambridge Analytica yet. They were aware of election and campaign rules and it’s possible they walked the very fine (albeit sleazy) line to keep things just on the right side of legal.

Russia:

  1. Trump’s lawyers turn documents over to Mueller that include information about key moments, like when Trump fired Flynn and Comey. They hope this will limit Trump’s exposure to the special counsel.
  2. At the start of the week, Trump hires lawyer and Fox contributor Joe diGenova. He’s out by the end of the week (along with his wife, Victoria Toensing) due to unspecified conflicts.
  3. Currently, only Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, represents Trump full-time in the Russia investigation. He’s assisted by White House attorney Ty Cobb.
  4. Both Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan say that legislation isn’t needed to protect Mueller, and Ryan says he’s received assurances that Mueller won’t be fired.
  5. Even though Trump’s security briefing said in capital letters not to congratulate Putin on his election, he congratulates Putin anyway, and then tells the press about four times that he’ll be meeting with Putin soon. Note: Obama also congratulated Putin on winning the last election, so I’m not clear the difference here unless it’s the timing. (Russia poisoning ex-pats on UK soil, meddling in our elections, and how quickly Trump congratulated him.)
  6. It’s a BFD that someone leaked any contents of the president’s security briefing, no matter how innocuous it seems.
  7. Trump blasts past presidents for not having the smarts, energy, or chemistry to work with Russia.
  8. Though Trump hasn’t directed our intelligence communities to protect our elections from foreign interference, the Senate Intelligence Committee:
    • Recommends an auditable paper trail for all U.S. voting machines.
    • Requests funds for securing databases, cyber security, auditing vote, and updating voting systems.
    • States that we need to declare that Russia’s meddling in our 2016 election was a hostile act.
  1. Senators from both parties criticize Trump for not doing anything to protect the 2018 midterms and they question Obama for not doing more to protect the 2016 elections.
  2. Both Democrat and Republican politicians call for hearings into Andrew McCabe’s firing.
  3. Mueller wants more information from Trump about four main issues:
    • Trump’s role, if any, in coming up with the public statement about Don Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with Russians.
    • The circumstances around that meeting.
    • The firing of James Comey and of Michael Flynn.
    • Any connections between the Trump campaign and Cambridge Analytica.
  1. John Dowd resigns as the lead lawyer for Trump in the Mueller investigation, seemingly over disagreements on whether Trump should be interviewed by Mueller.
  2. Guccifer 2.0, the hacker responsible for the DNC document and email dump, appears to be a Russian intelligence officer of the GRU (Russian military intelligence). At one point, he failed to disguise his IP address and left a real, Moscow-based IP address in a social media company’s logs. Mueller‘s looking into this.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions tells law enforcement officers he wants to see fuller jails.
  2. Sessions also calls for prosecutors to seek the death penalty in drug cases whenever appropriate (Trump called for the same thing last week).

Healthcare:

  1. Mississippi passes the most strict anti-abortion law in the nation, forbidding abortions after 15 weeks even in the case of rape or incest. The governor says he wants Mississippi to be the safest place in the world for an unborn child. Maybe Mississippi should focus on fixing things for the already-born children instead, which might help prevent unwanted pregnancies. Mississippi ranks:
    • 50th in infant mortality rate and in healthcare
    • 46th in education
    • 48th in economy and 49th in opportunity
    • 4th in gun shootings per capita
    • 42nd in gender wage gap, meaning that those women who are forced to carry unintended pregnancies are less able to afford them
  1. A federal judge temporarily blocks Mississippi’s bill.
  2. A group of Republican legislators in Ohio introduce a bill to ban all abortions in the state. Period. All of them. This despite the fact that federal courts have blocked their previous, and less extreme, attempts at abortion regulation.
  3. Roger Severino, who directs the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services, defends people’s right to refuse health services based on religious beliefs. Meanwhile, members of the LGBTQ community (especially transgender people) are denied treatment or have to struggle to get the appropriate care every day.
  4. Internal notes and emails show that Trump abruptly canceled a program to prevent teen pregnancy over the objection of experts in the department. He based his decision on the opinions of three of his appointees who think that abstinence teaching works best. Many medical professionals credit this program with bringing the teen pregnancy rate down to an all-time low.

International:

  1. Forty-four countries still don’t have an ambassador from the U.S.
  2. Trump freaks out Twitter users by tweeting about an arms race none of us knew existed.
  3. After a week of speculation (and after Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders refuted it), National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster announces his resignation. Trump announces former UN ambassador and Fox News analyst John Bolton to replace him.
  4. It surfaces that Bolton was appointed to the NRA’s international affairs subcommittee, and did a short video promoting gun ownership in Russia as part of an effort to get Russia to loosen their gun regulations.
  5. Bolton’s hawkish stances have some people concerned about potential wars with North Korea and Iran.
  6. A gunman kills two people in a French grocery store and holds another hostage, claiming allegiance to ISIS. A police officer convinces the shooter to take him as a hostage instead, and the gunman shoots and kills him. #RealHeros
  7. The UK and the EU come to an agreement to the terms of the Brexit transition.
  8. Boko Haram releases 104 girls they kidnapped last month in Nigeria, but with a warning. Don’t let your girls go to school.
  9. Officials drop charges against 11 of the 15 Turkish guards who attacked protestors last year and sent several people to the hospital.
  10. A contingent of House Democrats travels to the Mid East with a focus on security and cooperation in the region.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Representative Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) considers stepping down early to avoid an Ethics Committee investigation.
  2. Alibaba joins the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a coalition of businesses that writes boilerplate legislation for U.S. states and for the federal government. ALEC has a very large influence in our laws.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Negotiations between the White House and Democrats to come to a DACA and border wall agreement fall apart before the vote on the spending bill.
  2. Trump bans transgender people who have surgical or other medical needs from serving in the military, despite previous protestations from the military. One in five transgender people serve in our military.
  3. Protests shut down a freeway in Sacramento following the police shooting of a black man in his grandparents‘ backyard who was armed with a cell phone. Police shot at Stephon Clark—who was 22 and had two young children—20 times.
  4. The Department of Health and Human Services removes the pages from its website that provided resources for lesbian and bisexual women.
  5. The Department of the Interior joins other government agencies in removing diversity from its mission.
  6. Trump blames the opioid epidemic on immigrants and sanctuary cities.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The spending bill passed by the House includes this about Trump’s border wall.

“None of the funds provided in this or any other Act shall be obligated for construction of a border barrier in the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge.”

  1. The Interior Department auctions off all its available parcels of public land in Utah for oil and gas development, but doesn’t include any of the land recently removed from Bears Ears. Still, environmentalists are worried.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The Fed raises interest rates again to mitigate inflationary pressures.
  2. Trump announces $60 billion in tariffs against China on top of the steel and aluminum tariffs that went into effect last week. The new tariffs include some on intellectual property, partly as a way to punish China for its blatant trademark and patent infringements. China owns most of our debt, so we need to play our cards carefully.
  3. Threats of trade wars + rising interest rates + Facebook woes = major stock market volatility this week.
  4. Betsy DeVos testifies to the House Appropriations Committee to justify her budget, which includes a $1 billion voucher program. Members of her staff say she tried to withhold information about overhauling the department in her budget request.
  5. Three months after passing a GOP tax reform bill that cuts taxes by $1.5 trillion, Congress signs a bipartisan spending bill that increases spending by $1.3 trillion.
  6. Trump threatens to veto the spending bill hours before the government would shut down. Trump tries to blame the Democrats for not fixing DACA. (Can we just put the onus of this issue where it belongs? Trump broke DACA last fall, and the only reason it’s still alive right now is because it’s stuck in the court system.)
  7. Trump finally signs the spending bill, calling it ridiculous. Here are a few highlights. It:
    • Increases defense funding by $61 billion.
    • Increases funding to fight the opioid epidemic from $3 billion to $5 billion.
    • Includes $1.6 billion of the $25 billion requested for the border wall, which can actually only be used to repair existing fencing, for secondary barriers, and for 33 miles of non-concrete barrier.
    • Denies Betsy Devos’ budget requests, and denies defunding EPA projects.
    • Provides extra money to shore up infrastructure, but far short of the $250 billion Trump has talked about.
    • Includes legislation to improve the background check system for gun buyers.
    • Includes wording to allow the CDC to use public funds to study gun violence (previously prohibited).
    • Includes fixes to the recent tax plan, along with tax credits for low-income housing.
    • Bars employers from taking employees’ tips.
    • Includes funding to fight Russian interference in the 2018 elections and for the FBI to fight future Russian cyber attacks.
    • Denies funding for additional immigration detention beds and ICE.
    • Doesn’t include fixes to help DACA qualifiers.
    • Doesn’t include fixes to the healthcare system.
  1. China’s new economic czar says Trump violated international trade rules with his tariffs, and issues a vague threat of a trade war. China plans to raise tariffs on $3 billion in American goods.
  2. America’s oldest gun manufacturer, Remington, files for bankruptcy. They’ve long been having business problems, and last year, sales plummeted (likely because people stopped fearing gun control legislation and didn’t stockpile as much).

Elections:

  1. Eight months after the elections, no election official had yet received their security clearance. Currently, only 20 out of 150 elections officials have obtained clearance.
  2. Though the Illinois Republican Party campaigned against him, Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier accused of being a Nazi, wins the Republican primary for U.S. Congress. The party failed to run a candidate against him, and even with his known prejudices, Jones got over 20,000 votes.
  3. This is not what I expected Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) to get investigated for. The FEC opens an investigation into Nunes for alleged violations of campaign finance laws. The allegations seem pretty trivial, but could spell trouble for Nunes.
  4. A Wisconsin judge orders Governor Scott Walker (R) to call specials elections for two districts that have been vacant for months.
  5. And then GOP legislators in Wisconsin indicate that they’ll hold a special session to change the election law instead of running two special elections. It’s a brazen move, but they’ve postponed the special elections so long that they’d run into the regular elections.
  6. Pennsylvania State Rep. Cris Dush (R) introduces a resolution to impeach the state Supreme Court justices with whom he disagrees about the gerrymandered district lines. This happens just days after the Supreme Court refuses to hear the Republican-led house’s appeal.
  7. Washington becomes the 11th state since 2015 to adopt automatic voter registration. This year, legislators have introduced at least 206 laws in 30 states to expand voter access.

Miscellaneous:

  1. There’s yet another high school shooting, this time in Maryland. One student is injured, and another dies of her injuries. The shooter shoots himself and is simultaneously shot by a school security guard.
  2. Over a million people protest gun violence in our schools in Saturday’s March For Our Lives. There are over 700 marches in the U.S. and around the world.
  3. Hundreds of thousands march on Washington, but Trump heads to Mar-a-Lago, with the motorcade taking the long way there to avoid marchers. At least the White House issues the following statement of support:

“We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today.”

  1. Instead of labelling the man who terrorized Austin with a series of package bombs as a terrorist, police called him a challenged young man. The bomber killed himself in a car explosion, and though he left a taped confession, we don’t know the motive yet.
  2. In one week, TSA found 71 guns in carry-on bags around the U.S. Of those, 66 were loaded and 29 had a round in the chamber. TSA threatens penalties of over $13,000 per violation.
  3. We learn that Jared Kushner’s old real estate venture falsified information on their permit applications so they could push out rent-controlled tenants.
  4. Former Playboy model Karen McDougal sues to be released from an agreement not to talk about her affair with Trump. She goes on to give a salacious interview about their affair. She’s suing the company that owns The National Enquirer, which bought her story and then quashed it. The owner of the company is a friend of Trump’s.
  5. In 2011, Stormy Daniels took a polygraph which showed she was telling the truth when she said she and Trump had unprotected sex. Also, polygraphs are not 100% accurate.
  6. Stormy also gives an interview to Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes. I’m not going to go into any detail, because affairs are none of my business, IMO. I’m more concerned about the payoffs.
  7. Trump lawyer Michael Cohen sends Stormy a cease and desist letter following the interview.
  8. A New York judge rules that the defamation suit against Trump brought by an Apprentice contestant can go forward.
  9. Trump receives a summons in the emoluments case brought by Maryland and DC. The case was brought because of Trump’s refusal to fully divest himself of the family business.
  10. Trump praises Adapt Pharma for a program that provides public institutions with life-saving drugs to combat opioid overdoses. The program was created in partnership with the Clinton Foundation.
  11. Despite the fact that White House employees work for the public, Trump makes them all sign non-disclosure agreements.

Polls:

  1. For the first time since 2000, the NRA’s disapproval rating is higher than its approval rating.
  2. 69% of voters are in favor of stronger gun laws.
  3. 70% of millennial women identify as Democrats.
  4. 67% of voters don’t think Trump is a good role model for children, and 55% say he doesn’t have a good sense of decency.
  5. 57% of voters say Trump has damaged our global reputation instead of improved it.
  6. 59% of voters say Trump doesn’t share their values.

Quotes of the Week:

“How about kids instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that.”

~ Rick Santorum, who has apparently never seen the damage to a human body from an AR-15 shooting.

Week 59 in Trump

Posted on March 12, 2018 in Politics, Trump

As always, it was a busy week. But this piece of news jumped out at me. A report from Trump’s own Office of Management and Budget (OMB) concludes that regulations aren’t job killers after all and that their benefits outweigh their costs. The study looked at the decade from 2006 to 2016, and here are a few findings:

  • Benefits were estimated at $219 – $695 billion; costs were estimated at $59 – $88 billion. Even the most conservative benefit estimate is much higher than the most generous cost estimate.
  • Environmental regulations have both the highest costs and the highest benefits.
  • Air quality regulations redistribute wealth downward (because polluters could otherwise get away with polluting in poorer neighborhoods).
  • Regulations don’t have a noticeable effect on job gains or losses.

And here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Russia:

  1. Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg refuses to comply with Mueller’s subpoena. And then Nunberg goes on a talk-show blitz, becoming so erratic that one interviewer asks him if he’s drunk. At the end of the day he says he’ll probably comply with Mueller.
    • He says that, based on his conversation with Mueller, he thinks Trump probably did something wrong.
    • He also thinks Trump had prior knowledge of Don Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer.
  1. By the end of the week, Nunberg testifies to the grand jury.
  2. An escort from Belarus who’s in jail in Bangkok says she has over 16 hours of recordings of a Russian oligarch discussing meddling in our elections. She’s ready to hand them over to the U.S. if we’ll give her asylum.
  3. Mueller’s grand jury issues subpoenas for all communications involving Trump associates from November 2015 to the present. Among others, it covers Carter Page, Steve Bannon, Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Sam Nunberg, Keith Schiller, Roger Stone, and Michael Cohen.
  4. After the 2016 elections, Russian trolls targeted Mitt Romney in an effort to make sure he didn’t become Secretary of State. The trolls called him a globalist puppet and even organized rallies and spread petitions against him. Christopher Steele also says Russia asked Trump not to nominate him because they wanted someone less likely to implement sanctions.
  5. Denis McDonough, Obama’s former chief of staff, says that Mitch McConnell insisted on watering down a bipartisan effort to get states to increase election security. The effort was to help states guard specifically against Russian attacks.
  6. Trump agrees to speak with Mueller as long as Mueller promises to end his investigation within two months of the interview.
  7. Senate investigators bring social media sites Tumblr and Reddit into their investigation after they find documents showing that Tumblr accounts had ties to a Russian troll farm. Reddit had already shut down accounts suspected of being Russian trolls.
  8. Mueller meets with George Nader, an advisor to the United Arab Emirates. In January 2017, Nader met with Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, and an investor linked to Putin in the Seychelles. Nader was representing the UAE crown prince at the meeting, and he’s now cooperating with Mueller. The UAE believed that Erik Prince represented Trump and that the Russian represented Putin.
  9. Erik Prince claims the meeting was a chance encounter.
  10. Mueller requests documents and speaks to witnesses about Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Mueller’s interested in negotiations in 2015 to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and in a Russian-friendly peace proposal for the Ukraine given to Cohen by a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician a week after Trump took office.
  11. U.S. intelligence will announce sanctions against the 13 Russians charged by Mueller.
  12. Trump says that Russia did meddle in the elections and that we need to be vigilant to prevent foreign agents from interfering in the future.
  13. Trump has asked at least two witnesses in the Mueller probe what they talked to Mueller about.
  14. Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty to the 18 latest charges against him.
  15. I’m not sure if this is Russia related, but the day after Hope Hicks resigns, she tells the House Intelligence Committee that her emails were hacked.
  16. Russia claims to have completed a successful test launch of a hypersonic missile that can travel at 10 times the speed of sound.
  17. Corey Lewandowski meets with the House Intelligence Committee.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Department of Justice sues California over its sanctuary laws.

Healthcare:

  1. Doctors in Canada ask that their salary increases instead go to other medical workers, like nurses and technicians. Crazy socialists.
  2. Federal regulators tell Idaho that they can’t go ahead with their plans to offer health insurance plans that don’t meet ACA guidelines. But Trump offers them a workaround by expanding the allowed duration of short-term policies. Idaho’s original plans violated at least eight ACA guidelines.

International:

  1. Kim Jong-un tells South Korean officials that he’s willing to negotiate with the U.S. on nuclear issues. He even says he’s willing to meet with Trump. Background: North Korea leaders have wanted to meet with a sitting president for decades, but because it’s so important to North Korea, the U.S. holds back on accepting the offer in order to use it as a bargaining chip.
  2. Trump says he accepts Kim Jong-un’s offer to meet, effectively taking that bargaining chip off the table.
  3. Then the White House walks this back, saying the two won’t meet unless we get some concessions from North Korea first.
  4. Once again, Trump is looking at ways to retaliate against Syria after recent chemical attacks by their government.
  5. The European Union rejects Theresa May’s trade proposal for after the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU is complete. The EU sees no reason for the UK to get all the benefits of EU membership without any of the cost.
  6. Jared Kushner meets with Mexico’s President Pena Nieto without the presence of the Mexican ambassador. Kushner has no experience in U.S. – Mexico relations.
  7. China eliminates term limits, effectively giving Xi Jinping the opportunity to be in power indefinitely.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. House Republicans vote down a bill that would have forced Trump to release his tax returns.
  2. Florida legislators pass gun control measures. The bill:
    • Allows teachers to be armed if they’ve had at least 144 hours of training.
    • Raises the legal age to buy a gun to 21.
    • Adds a three-day waiting period for gun purchases.
    • Increases funding for mental health services in schools.
    • Increases funding for school security.
    • Bans bump stocks.
    • Allows law enforcement to petition courts to prevent people from owning guns if they are seen to pose a threat.
    • Allows officers to confiscate someone’s guns in certain situations.
    • Prevents people who have been institutionalized from owning a gun until they’re cleared.
  1. The Maryland Senate approves a bill requiring presidential candidates to release their taxes in order to be on the ballot. The constitutionality of this bill is not clear.
  2. The Illinois House has passed gun bills that would ban bump stocks, raise the legal age to buy a gun, and increase the waiting period when purchasing a gun. These bills are now in Senate committee.
  3. Washington state bans bump stocks.
  4. Florida passes a law banning marriage to those under 17. A surprising number of states allow young teens to marry, some with the permission of parents. This is how you end up with girls as young as 13 married to much older men (aka statutory rape).
  5. Legislators in West Virginia vote to eliminate the Department of Education and the Arts in order to pay for the 5% increase in teacher wages. This is largely seen as a revenge move.
  6. At the same time, West Virginia legislators vote to put work requirements on SNAP recipients.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A court orders Bank of America to pay over $2 million in back wages to 1,147 African American job applicants. The judge finds that BofA’s Charlotte office was guilty of racial discrimination, routinely showing preference for white applicants.
  2. The Department of Housing and Urban Development removes language from their mission statement that promised to create inclusive communities free of discrimination.
  3. The deadline for DACA comes and goes, and we’re no closer to an agreement on immigration. However, the courts have blocked Trump’s order rescinding DACA, so they’re safe for now (but still wake up every day uncertain about their futures and their families’).
  4. The ACLU sues the Trump administration to stop them from separating parents and young children arriving at our borders.
  5. 22 GOP senators reintroduce a bill that would let people who are against same-sex marriage ignore federal anti-discrimination laws.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Ryan Zinke withdraws 26 parcels of land in Montana from a gas and oil auction, but leaves in 83 parcels. The withdrawal is the result of threats of lawsuits from environmental groups concerned about the Yellowstone River.
  2. Ryan Zinke says the Department of the Interior should partner with oil and gas companies who want to drill on public land. He also says that long regulatory reviews with uncertain outcomes are un-American. If reviews had certain outcomes, then reviews wouldn’t be necessary, right?
  3. The Republican-backed spending bills going through Congress include more than 80 anti-environmental riders. Last year, Democrats stripped out 160 anti-environmental riders from the spending bill.
  4. Trump reverses a previous stance by allowing sports hunters to import elephant trophies. He’s reversed direction here a few times.
  5. A federal appeals court rejects the Trump administration’s request to dismiss a climate change lawsuit against the government. The lawsuit was brought by a group of kids in an effort to force the government into greater action on climate change. This suit was originally brought against the Obama administration. The Trump administration argument is that the process of discovery would be too burdensome for them.
  6. Despite criticisms of Obama for not being friendly enough to oil, U.S. oil output rose from 5.6 million barrels per day in 2011 to 9.8 million in 2017.
  7. John Kelly kills Scott Pruitt’s idea of a public global warming debate between scientists. Pruitt really, really wants this, but Kelly thinks it could be a politically damaging spectacle. I wonder if that’s because he thinks global warming is real.
  8. A FOIA request reveals internal emails from the Department of the Interior showing department infighting over climate change. A press release announcing a U.S. Geological Survey study says that climate change has “dramatically reduced” the size of glaciers in Montana. The dispute is over the use of the word “dramatically” and one email accuses the climate scientists of being out of their wheelhouse. Except for this is their wheelhouse.
  9. The Keystone Pipeline springs its largest leak so far, spilling 210,00 gallons of oil in South Dakota.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Both versions of the Republican-backed spending bills in Congress would open campaigns and politics to more dark money. The Senate version would make it easier for mega-donors to give even more, and the House version would allow churches to make political donations.
  2. After Trump insists that Gary Cohn support his steel and aluminum tariff plan and Cohn refuses, Cohn resigns. Ironically he quits right after Trump says that everyone wants to work for him. Trump thinks Cohn will come back. Except a little market volatility from this.
  3. Trump announces the new tariffs will go into effect on March 23, but Canada and Mexico, which account for 25% of our steel imports, are exempt. All countries can negotiate their own exemptions.
  4. Republican Senator Jeff Flake says he’ll introduce a bill that would nullify the tariffs.
  5. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warn trade officials that the tariffs could weaken our security relationships with our allies.
  6. Economists say that despite job gains in steel and aluminum manufacturing, the tariffs will cause enough job losses in other industries to cancel the gains out.
  7. Members of Congress from both sides try to talk Trump out of implementing the tariffs, or at the very least into targeting them specifically to China. Even members of the House Freedom Caucus are split from Trump on this one.
  8. Charles Koch, whose companies manufacture steel, is opposed to this, according to his op-ed in the Washington Post.
  9. The Treasury estimates the government will borrow almost $1 trillion this fiscal year, which is the highest amount in six years. Last year, the government borrowed just over half a trillion.
  10. Here are just a handful of things Trump has done to roll back consumer financial protections:
    • Weakened the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects consumers from abuses by banks.
    • Delayed implementation of a rule that would force financial advisors and brokers to act in their client’s best interest instead of pushing investments that would enrich their own pockets.
    • Withdrawn regulations that helped protect student borrowers.
    • Dropped lawsuits and investigations into payday lenders that were charging as much as 950% interest.
    • Eased up on penalties against lenders who charge minorities higher interest rates than whites.
    • And now possibly weakening Dodd-Frank. It’s like we forgot how the recession happened.
  1. Seventeen Democrats join with Republicans to support a bill to weaken Dodd-Frank. Essentially the bill says that banks with $50 billion to $250 billion in assets are small community banks and shouldn’t be held to the same oversight as larger banks. Note that there are only 10 larger banks. This bill would allow those banks to hold riskier assets.
  2. A CBO report warns that the bill would increase the possibility of another economic collapse like we saw in 2008. Note that the probability is small under the current law and would be only slightly greater under the new one.
  3. Oh, but the bill would also increase the federal deficit by $671 million.
  4. Elaine Chao confirmed to Congress that Trump personally intervened to kill an essential tunnel project between New York and New Jersey.
  5. A group of eleven nations sign a trade pact that the U.S. originally proposed but that Trump pulled us out of. What used to be the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was originally intended to counter China’s power in the region, but the new pact fails to do that without U.S. influence.
  6. Senate Democrats announce a $1 trillion infrastructure plan that would be paid for by rolling back some of the tax cuts given to the richest Americans and largest companies in last year’s tax plan.
  7. January’s monthly U.S. trade deficit rose to its highest level since 2008. It was up 5% to $56.5 billion.
  8. The economy added a whopping 331,000 jobs in February. That’s the highest number since July of 2016. Wage gains fell, though, and the unemployment rate didn’t change from 4.1%.
  9. The tax reform bill passed last year has small errors and inconsistencies. Companies and trade groups want the Treasury and Congress to fix the bill and clarify provisions. Even the U.S. Chamber of Congress sent a letter requesting clarification. How are individual CPAs supposed to be able to work this out when even major corporations and lobbying groups can’t?
  10. Betsy DeVos tells state officials to back off from trying to rein in student loan collectors.
  11. Trump Twitter-shames former presidents Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama He says they are at fault for trade deficits and lost 6 million manufacturing jobs. I guess that means they’re also be responsible for the other 53 million jobs added. Trump left out the 1.6 million manufacturing jobs lost in the decade before Bush Sr.

Elections:

  1. Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi resigns, citing health concerns. Mississippi’s governor will appoint a temporary senator who will serve until the midterm elections in November.
  2. Trump stumps for Republican Rich Saccone in Pennsylvania’s special election. In his 70-minute, free-wheeling speech, Trump calls Chuck Todd a son of a bitch, floats the idea of executing drug dealers, says steel mills are already open after he signed the tariffs the day before, rails against the media, calls a sitting representative a low-IQ individual, says Democrats want to stop DACA (though Trump signed an EO stopping it), criticizes the same blue ribbon committees he was bragging about earlier, and my personal favorite, claims to be as handsome as Conor Lamb (fact check).
  3. Here are more stump statements, if you’re interested.
  4. Midterm season starts, with the first primaries being held in Texas this week.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump lawyer Michael Cohen says his hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels was late because he couldn’t get hold of Trump. Even though Cohen stresses that he, and not Trump, paid her off. The payment was flagged as suspicious when he paid it and again 11 months later. Cohen complained to friends at the time that Trump never reimbursed him.
  2. And then Stormy Daniels sues Trump, saying the non-disclosure agreement is void because he never signed it. The lawsuit does include some details of their alleged affair in the early year of his marriage to Melania, and alleges that Trump was involved in the hush money. She also alleges that she was coerced into signing a statement stating that there was no affair. Finally, she alludes to texts and images she has between her and Trump. Ew.
  3. We also learn Cohen obtained a restraining order the previous week to keep her quiet about the affair.
  4. Cohen used his Trump Organization email account to arrange the transfer, a potential violation of election law.
  5. Fun fact: Michael Cohen is the Deputy National Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
  6. Trump hires yet another lawyer to handle the Stormy issue.
  7. Two members of Colorado’s state congress start wearing bulletproof vests due to fears of retaliation by a fellow legislator. Colorado is a concealed carry state, and state legislators can carry weapons. The two members helped force a fellow legislator out of office for sexual misconduct.
  8. Washington’s governor signs a net neutrality bill into law, the first state net neutrality law so far. Expect more to follow.
  9. The Office of the Special Counsel finds that Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act when, as a White House representative, she criticized Doug Jones on TV multiple times during his campaign for Senate. Conway was thoroughly trained on the Hatch Act.
  10. Last week we found out that Trump Organization uses the presidential seal on golf course markers. Now we learn that the organization also sells swag at Trump Tower bearing the presidential seal.
  11. A court throws out a conviction against an inmate in Texas because the judge in the original case had the bailiff shock the defendant three times for refusing to answer questions to the judges satisfaction. The use of a stun belt is typically reserved for when a defendant becomes violent. The defendant was unable to attend the rest of his trial.
  12. Lawmakers joke about “Tuesday Trump” vs. “Thursday Trump.” Tuesday Trump is pretty agreeable. Thursday Trump revises everything he said Tuesday based on the reaction of his base and special interests.
  13. Sinclair Broadcasting forces anchors on local stations to read one-sided promos blasting the “fake news.” Anchors have been expressing discomfort with this (and hopefully they’ll refuse to comply).
  14. The Parkland shooter is indicted on 24 counts, possibly facing the death penalty.
  15. There have been more the 600 copycat threats at schools around the U.S.
  16. Interesting fact: Guns are now the third highest cause of death for children.
  17. By the end of the week, Trump has reversed himself again on gun legislation, calling for teachers to be armed and saying he won’t raise age limits. The White House does issue a list of recommendations though.
  18. David Shulkin, the head of the VA, trusts no one. He has an armed guard outside his office, has stopped meeting with senior management, and only meets with aides he trusts.
  19. Don McGahn has issued ethics waivers to 24 ex-lobbyists and lawyers to allow them to work in government and oversee the industries from which they came. Drain that swamp, baby!

Week 58 in Trump

Posted on March 5, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Jared was in the spotlight this week for a range of problems from his security clearance to his business dealings. I almost felt sorry for him. And also, John Kelly jokes that his current position (chief of staff) is punishment from God. Jared probably feels the same.

Here’s that and whatever else happened this week in politics…

Russia:

  1. Paul Manafort pleads not guilty to the slew of new charges against him. His trial date is September 17.
  2. As part of Rick Gates’ plea deal, Mueller moves to dismiss 22 counts of bank and tax fraud against him.
  3. We learn that during the 2016 campaigns and elections, Russian hackers compromised the state websites or voter regulations systems in at least seven states.
  4. Hope Hicks testifies to Congress, telling them she sometimes had to tell white lies for Trump. And then she resigns.
  5. U.S. Cyber Command chief Mike Rogers testifies to Congress. He says that in order to stop Russian cyber threats, he needs to be granted authority by the president. As of now, Trump hasn’t directed or authorized him to do that.
  6. The Atlantic obtains transcripts of private messages between Roger Stone and Wikileaks from 2016, showing that both parties lied when they claimed they never contacted each other.
  7. The Republican led Senate Intelligence Committee says that the House Intelligence Committee (specifically Devin Nunes) is behind the leak of Senator Mark Warner’s private text messages with a Russian contact about Christopher Steele. A little background—the Senate committee was having trouble contacting Steele, and according to both Republicans and Democrats, the texts were part of the effort to obtain more info. Nunes tried to make it look like Warner was colluding, but it’s just not the case.
  8. Subpoenas issued by Mueller indicate he’s focusing on political influence from the United Arab Emirates.
  9. Mueller’s investigating whether Trump knew about the hacked DNC emails before they were publicly released, and he’s looking into Trump’s business dealings before and around the time he decided to run.
  10. Mueller is also investigating Trump’s threats to fire Jeff Sessions last year, specifically over whether Trump wanted to install a new, more loyal attorney general who could control the Russia investigation better.
  11. Christopher Steele says that Russia advised Trump not to bring on Mitt Romney as Secretary of State. They tried to guide Trump toward someone more amenable to easing sanctions.
  12. Putin announces new nuclear weapons that he says can breach U.S. defenses. Hopefully not starting another arms race.
  13. Putin ally Alexander Torshin worked for six years to gain leverage and influence with the NRA in order to insert himself into U.S. politics. Mueller is investigating him to find out if he illegally funneled money through to NRA in order to help Trump’s campaign.
  14. The State Department has $120 million to secure our elections and guard against breaches from foreign agents. They haven’t spent any of it yet. As of now:
    • There are no Russian speakers in the department responsible for stopping Russia’s disinformation campaigns.
    • The hiring freeze means they haven’t been able to hire the needed computer experts to track Russian campaigns.
    • SoS Rex Tillerson doesn’t think we can do anything to counter Russia’s disinformation campaigns.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court hears a case about whether unions can collect fees from employees they represent but who haven’t actually joined the union. Unions use the fees to cover collective bargaining costs, which benefit all employees. This affects public unions that represent teachers, firefighters, nurses and other government employees.
  2. The Supreme Court refuses to hear a case over DACA, which means that the government must continue allowing and approving applications and renewals. This doesn’t mean that the issues around DACA are solved though.
  3. A Justice Department review criticizes Andy McCabe for leaking information about an ongoing investigation. This could bolster Trump’s theory that McCabe is at the center of a ‘deep state’ government trying to oust him… except that the leaked information led to a negative story about Clinton and Obama.
  4. Trump publicly criticizes Jeff Sessions‘ handling of the investigation into alleged FISA abuses.

Healthcare:

  1. ‪The Urban Institute estimates that recent GOP policy changes around the ACA—including getting rid of the mandate and extending short-term policy periods—will increase the number uninsured by over 6 million and the number of underinsured by 2.5 million. All this while costing the federal government an additional 9% compared to current healthcare costs. Oh, and premiums are expected to go up by 18%.‬ So good job?
  2. ‬Trump wants to penalize opioid manufacturers and distributors that allow or neglect to report drugs being funneled into the black market. Penalties could be in the form of fines or criminal charges.
  3. I don’t know… does this fall under “Healthcare”? Trumps takes a page from Philippine President and strongman Rodrigo Duterte, saying maybe we should execute drug dealers to manage the opioid crisis.
  4. Twenty Republican led states file a lawsuit against the Trump administration claiming that the entire ACA is invalid now that the mandate has been repealed.

International:

  1. The UN links the chemical weapons used by Syria to North Korea.
  2. The European Union announces new rules for tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter that give them one hour to remove terror content once it’s been identified.
  3. Chinese President receives approval to ignore the term limits put in place to avoid another Mao-like regime. Trump says it’s great that President Xi is now president for life, and maybe that’s something the U.S. should look into. Dear. God. No.
  4. The Chinese government takes over Anbang Insurance Group Co., which owns the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City (among its many other holdings).
  5. Italy’s elections don’t give any group a clear majority, but the biggest winners are populists and the far right. With gains by the League party, xenophobia raises its ugly head in yet another country.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. After Trump’s televised conference on gun violence, Mitch McConnell decides to prioritize deregulation of banks instead of looking seriously into changes to our gun laws.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a ruling that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects members of the LGBTQ community. This case was specifically around protecting them from discrimination in the workplace.
  2. The Supreme Court rules that the government can detain immigrants facing possible deportation for years without a court or bail hearing. The decision was strongly divided, and strikes down a previous requirement that detainees be given a bail hearing every six months. The ruling even applies to legal immigrants and asylum seekers.
  3. A federal judge rules in favor of DACA recipients who have had their status unlawfully revoked. The ruling says that the government can’t revoke someone’s DACA status if they haven’t been convicted of a serious crime and haven’t been given the opportunity to defend themselves.
  4. After counties in Alabama refuse to issue marriage licenses because same-sex marriage is now legal, Alabama is thinking about not issuing marriage licenses at all anymore. It turns out that then-chief justice Roy Moore told agencies in the state they don’t have to issue marriage licenses. Several other states are considering the same. It’s pretty amazing the lengths people will go to prevent gay marriage.
  5. Judge Gonzalo Curiel (the guy Trump once said couldn’t be partial because he’s Mexican) rules that Trump isn’t breaking any laws by waiving environmental reviews before building the wall, even though it crosses wildlife reserves and would block migration routes. Dammit. I hate this wall. It’s medieval.
  6. And then Trump somehow gets the idea that Californians want the wall built NOW (we don’t) and so decides to hold off on building any part of the wall until the whole thing is approved. I think he thinks he’s punishing us.
  7. Indiana implements a new law that allows the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency to refuse to give professional licenses to people with DACA status, effectively preventing them from working in a wide range of professions from medicine to cosmetology to architecture to general contractor. Those who already have their licenses can be refused renewal.
  8. Again in Indiana, a federal court rules against an order by then-governor Mike Pence that withheld payments from a refugee resettling agency in order to prevent Syrian refugees from settling in the state. Pence used terrorism as an excuse to stoke fear of the refugees in the state. The ruling permanently bars Indiana from stopping Syrian refugees from settling there.
  9. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf warns immigrants in advance of an upcoming ICE raid. According to ICE they still detained 115 people who had committed violent crimes or multiple low-level crimes.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The North Pole experiences a thaw in what is normally its coldest time, and the sun still has weeks before it shows up there. This happened four times between 1980 and 2010, but it’s happened four times in the last five winters.
  2. Internal documents from the Department of the Interior show that the primary reason for shrinking the size of Bears Ears National Monument is to increase drilling and mining in the area. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
  3. Another bomb cyclone on the east coast leaves eight people dead.

Budget/Economy:

  1. As a result of the recent tax reform, companies announce planned stock buybacks of around $180 billion (stock buybacks increase the price of stocks by reducing the number of stocks on the market).
  2. Trump shocks his aides and GOP lawmakers by announcing steep tariffs on steel and aluminum. Apparently it shocked investors too, because the Dow drops nearly 500 points after the announcement.
  3. Let the trade wars begin! The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, threatens to put tariffs on U.S. goods in retaliation for Trump’s announced tariffs on steel and aluminum. EU tariffs would include iconic American exports like Levi’s, Harley Davidsons, and bourbon.
  4. Trump says that trade wars are good and easy to win.
  5. Steel manufacturers on the west coast express concerns that the tariffs will drive up the prices of their raw materials and will hurt their bottom line.
  6. Paul Ryan pleads with Trump not to enact the tariffs, which could hurt Ryan’s constituents.
  7. Trump tries to use the tariffs as a bribe to Canada and Mexico saying he might waive tariffs for them if they sign a new NAFTA deal. Canada and Mexico don’t take the bait.
  8. GOP lawmakers in Georgia punish Delta when Delta announces it will end a once-a-year discount for NRA convention attendees (which has been used all of 13 times). First Lt. Governor Cagle threatens to block a provision in a bill passed by the state House to stop taxing airlines on jet fuel, and then the Senate passes the House bill after removing the jet fuel tax break. Georgia’s governor objects, but signs the tax bill anyway to give Georgians a tax break.
  9. In the weeks before Trump announced steel tariffs, Carl Icahn (who once worked in the Trump White House until he left with a hint of scandal) dumped $31.3 million dollars of stock in a company dependent on steel.
  10. West Virginia teachers go on strike to improve the conditions of their contract. The strike almost ends when the governor offers a 5% raise, but they continue to strike over the rising costs of their healthcare plan.
  11. On a tour of government housing Ben Carson warns that we shouldn’t make housing for the poor too comfortable. Based on the conditions he was talking about, he doesn’t even want to give them basic comforts other than a roof over their head and a platform to sleep on.
  12. More than a dozen Democrats are on board with a GOP bill in the Senate that would weaken some of the Dodd-Frank regulations that were implemented to keep financial agencies on the up and up. Their argument is that financial institutions with assets of $50 billion to $250 billion don’t qualify as big banks.
  13. Trump’s budget includes increases in military and Homeland Security funding, but also includes steep cuts to House and Urban Development core housing programs and to block grants for community development. Ben Carson says he might not be able to stay in his position with these cuts because he sees these programs as crucial.
  14. Trump asks Paul Ryan to cut funding for a tunnel between New York and New Jersey. His reasons aren’t clear, and the suspicion is that he’s targeting Democratic rivals.

Elections:

  1. Democrats flip their 39th congressional seat at state and federal levels since the 2016 election. Republicans have flipped four.
  2. Senator Bob Corker confirms that he will not be running for re-election after rumors start up that he’s thinking about running again.

Parkland:

  1. The father of one of the survivors of the Parkland shooting admitted that he doctored an email to make it look like CNN was scripting questions and remarks for students to use at a town hall meeting.
  2. Legislators in Florida reject a ban on assault weapons while advancing legislation to arm teachers. The bill also addresses mental health issues, gun safety, school safety, and communication.
  3. And then a teacher in Georgia fires off a gun in a classroom and then barricades himself in a room. No one is harmed.
  4. The list of companies adjusting their relationships with the NRA continues to grow and is now at 19. The list includes Dick’s Sporting Goods, REI, Walmart, Delta, MEC, and more. They’re either cutting ties, limiting weapons sales, or getting rid of perks for NRA members.
  5. Students from a neighboring school walk 16 miles to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to support students who survived the shooting in their fight to stop gun violence.
  6. After researching gun violence and gun laws for two years, RAND Corporation finds that we need way more research on this. They ask Congress to lift the funding freeze currently in place preventing the CDC from studying this themselves. You can read the full report here.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Jared Kushner has a super bad week.
    • John Kelly downgrades Kushner’s security clearance. He no longer has access to top-secret information.
    • We learn that foreign officials discussed how to leverage Kushner’s financial transactions to manipulate him. The UAE described him as particularly manipulable because of his business dealings.
    • His point man in the White House, Josh Raffel, steps down.
    • We also learn that Kushner’s family received nearly $509 million in loans from two companies shortly after taking part in White House meetings.
    • Mueller is investigating whether any of Kushner’s foreign ties influenced White House policies.
    • Fun fact: The White House chief calligrapher has higher clearance than Kushner.
  1. The White House downgrades the security clearance for 30 White House aides after it’s revealed that 130 staffers don’t have permanent security clearance yet.
  2. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel expresses concern about the current state of the FCC, saying that everything they’ve done under Trump has been geared to support conservative media company Sinclair Broadcasting.
  3. Trump announces his re-election campaign, and names Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign‘s digital manager, as the new campaign manager (because he can’t use the old one obviously).
  4. A week after praising the NRA and saying we should arm teachers, Trump holds a televised meeting with congressional leaders, where he:
    • Pushes for raising the age limits for purchasing guns.
    • Calls for expanded universal background checks.
    • Tosses out the idea of confiscating guns now and worrying about due process later.
    • Condemns concealed carry reciprocity.
    • Chides legislators for being under the NRA’s thumb and says he’s willing the fight the NRA is necessary.
  1. And then Trump meets with NRA officials and backs down on universal background checks. Republicans go back to their offices not knowing what direction to take so once again nothing is being done about gun violence.
  2. The House Administration Committee votes to allow members of the House to use taxpayer dollars to buy bulletproof vests.
  3. Another Trump cabinet member is under scrutiny for lavish spending. Ben Carson is under investigation for whether they exceeded spending limits in refurnishing the HUD offices.
  4. Several local governments are considering laws that get rid of bail bonds for low level offenses, and some have already passed such laws.
  5. A man shoots himself in front of the White House in an apparent suicide.
  6. A bill to make 18 the legal age to marry in Kentucky stalls over concerns about parental rights to allow their children to marry. These marriages often involve young girls who are sexually exploited by the men they then marry.
  7. The Trump Organization orders presidential seal replicas to use on golf course markers, a surprising violation of federal law.
  8. The FBI is investigating Ivanka Trump over her role in negotiating and financing a deal around the Trump Hotel and Tower in Vancouver.
  9. Trump’s latest pick to sit on the U.S. Sentencing Commission thinks the commission should be abolished and has a history of making racial comments about crime.
  10. Trump’s personal pilot is his pick to head the FAA. Really fun side note: Journalists who rode along with Trump during his campaign joked that each flight could be their last because the pilot had so many near misses and bad landings.
  11. Anthony Scaramucci is on a list of people who can’t enter the White House without special permission. He says John Kelly should resign.
  12. Democrats in both the Senate and House introduce bills using the Congressional Review Act that would keep net neutrality rules. The Senate version is one vote short, but the House faces an uphill battle. Seriously voters, unless you want everything on the internet to start getting packaged up like cable channels, call your elected officials and ask them to back this bill. Getting rid of net neutrality is going to cost everyone more $$ and it’s going to be a real pain in the ass to have to figure out which sites you’re willing to pay for.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s approval rating is pretty dependent on age. His approval rating is 46% among the silent generation; 44% among boomers; 36% among Gen Xers; and only 27% among millennials.
  2. 58% of Americans want to elect a Congress that will stand up to Trump.
  3. 70% of Americans support stricter gun laws. Not surprising, since only 30% of households own guns.
  4. 83% of Americans are in favor of continuing or fixing DACA. Why is this so hard for Congress to get done? Oh yeah… Trump shot down all their bipartisan agreements.
  5. 49% of Americans agree with Nancy Pelosi that the tax plan gives crumbs to everyday people. Count me among them. I know people getting thousands (and even tens of thousands) each year in tax breaks and I know people getting less than a thousand each year. And the money isn’t going to the people who really need it.
  6. The global approval rating of the U.S. is 30%, a low in the lifetime of this poll.

Week 57 in Trump

Posted on February 27, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Last week’s shooting lit up the gun control debate once more, but this time sounds different and this time the polls are moving in favor of some moderate restrictions. I, for one, am hoping we can make some reasonable changes without taking away everyone’s guns (which I’m pretty sure will never happen anyway). Anyway, here’s what else happened in politics this week…

Russia:

  1. Robert Mueller charges Alex Van Der Zwaan with making false statements to the FBI about Rick Gates and with deleting documents requested by prosecutors. Van Der Zwaan pleads guilty, but he’s not cooperating.
  2. Rick Gate pleads guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements. He’s cooperating with the Mueller investigation. This is the fifth guilty plea in the Russia probe.
  3. Mueller brings nearly three dozen additional charges against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.
  4. The Democrats release their redacted memo, which says:
    • The FBI and DOJ didn’t abuse the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), didn’t omit relevant information from the FISA request, and didn’t use FISA to spy on Trump or his campaign.
    • The FBI opened their investigation months before they knew of the Steele dossier.
    • The Steele dossier was a very small part of the FISA request.
    • The FBI didn’t pay Steele for this information.
    • If the FISA warrant wasn’t paying off, the courts wouldn’t have continued to reauthorize it.

The memo includes excerpts directly from the FISA warrant application that prove the Nunes memo was incorrect. NPR has the full text with annotations.

  1. Trump wants Jeff Sessions to launch an investigation into whether the Obama administration did enough to stop Russia from interfering in our 2016 elections.
  2. A federal judge who was appointed by Trump, worked on Trump’s transition team, and donated to Trump’s campaign refuses to recuse himself from a case involving Fusion GPS (the firm that commissioned Christopher Steele’s dossier).
  3. Mike Flynn refuses to accept money from Trump’s legal fund, Trump, or Trump Organization to help out with his legal fees in the Russia case.
  4. One reason Jared Kushner hasn’t received full security clearance yet is the ongoing Russia investigation.
  5. Russian hackers attack hundreds of Olympic computers and then plant fake evidence to make investigators think that North Korea was behind it.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rules that Maryland’s ban on assault weapons and their magazine size restrictions aren’t in violation of the constitution. The court says the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to weapons of war.
  2. The Supreme Court rejects a case against California’s 10-day waiting period for purchasing assault weapons.
  3. Maryland and DC attorneys general expand their lawsuit against Trump for accepting gifts from foreign and state governments.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump proposes a regulation to allow short-term health insurance policies that aren’t required to meet ACA-defined protections and to let them last up to a year. They don’t even have to offer a comprehensive package.‪‬

International:

  1. U.S. intelligence agencies believe that the person who is in charge of Russian mercenaries in Syria was in touch with both the Kremlin and Syrian officials before the mercenary attack on U.S. held assets last week.
  2. Trump announces new sanctions against North Korea. These sanctions focus on shipping companies and ships, which are thought to be used to help North Korea get around the sanctions that are already in place.
  3. The UN Security Council passes a 30-day cease fire in Syria after a barrage of bombings on civilians.
  4. Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto cancels his first planned trip to the Trump White House after a tense phone call about the border wall.
  5. The international group Financial Action Task Force places Pakistan on it’s terrorist-funded watch list. This comes at the urging of the U.S.
  6. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption scandal grows as more accusations are brought against him and as friends and colleagues are charged and arrested.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. After the Parkland shooting and in front of students, the Florida state House voted against a move to merely allow the House to consider a bill banning assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A couple ways Trump has moved the Republican party on immigration:
    • GOP leaders in Congress are now insisting that any immigration reform include reducing legal immigration. Up until 2016, this was considered extreme by the vast majority of Republicans in office.
    • The first time Trump brought up a Muslim ban in his campaign, Republicans roundly criticized the idea. When he actually rolled it out, Republicans praised him for it. When Republican-appointed judges blocked the ban (saying it was unconstitutional), Republicans criticized those judges.
  1. A lesbian couple in Texas sues the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for not allowing them to be foster parents to a refugee child. Apparently they were told that they don’t “mirror the Holy Family.” Also, there’s a shortage of foster parents…
  2. Melania Trump’s parents are permanent residents of the U.S., triggering speculation that they were allowed here through family-based migration programs (or chain-migration, if you’re looking for the more racially charged term for it).
  3. Trump threatens to pull ICE agents from California as punishment for sanctuary policies.
  4. A civil rights group sues the Trump administration to prevent him from deporting certain immigrant groups here under temporary protected status.
  5. ICE has increasingly been using a little-known law to conduct searches on private property and in areas up to 100 miles from the border. They’re also using it to search trains and buses.

Climate/EPA:

  1. One of Trump’s biggest successes last year seemed to be efforts to reverse environmental, health, and other protections, but many got caught up in legal challenges. Here are a few regulations the courts upheld:
    • Dentists must prevent their mercury waste from getting into waterways.
    • Methane emission limits on oil and gas wells.
    • Ground-level ozone standards to reduce smog-causing air pollutants.
    • Limits on levels of lead in paint and dust.
    • Listing the rusty patched bumblebee on the endangered species list.
    • New energy efficiency regulations for certain appliances.
    • Restrictions on mining in Bristol Bay, AL (home of a major salmon fishery).

Many others are in legal limbo right now or facing new legal challenges.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Missouri’s governor is indicted for invasion of privacy. He took nude photos of his mistress, and then allegedly used them to blackmail her to keep quiet about their affair. Fun side note: This guy actually reduced Missouri’s minimum wage.
  2. Trump’s infrastructure plan drops his promised requirement that oil and gas pipelines use steel manufactured in the U.S.
  3. After announcing bonuses for employees because of last year’s tax reform, Walt Disney says it will withhold bonuses for union members (who are in the midst of negotiations) until they sign on to a contract favored by Disney. I think there’s a word for that. Like extortion.
  4. Glitches in the new tax law have been popping up. Some are drafting errors and some rules just weren’t thought all the way through. Here are just a few:
    • Legislators intended for businesses to be able to take advantage of deductions for certain building improvements, but the new law denies this to restaurants and retailers, among others.
    • Wealthy money managers can avoid losing a lucrative tax break around carried interest, which will let them pay a lower rate on some income.
    • Farmers who sell grain to co-ops could avoid taxes all together.
    • The law contains conflicting dates about when certain rules kick in.

Elections:

  1. Because Pennsylvania’s governor rejected the GOP’s court-ordered redrawing of their gerrymandered districts, an independent analyst redraws the map. The state supreme court approves the map, which is even more favorable to Democrats than the map the Democrats themselves submitted. Analysts say this map represents the state much more fairly.
  2. Trump supports the GOP fight against the new districts and says that they must fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. Fun fact: The Supreme Court has already refused to hear this case… just a few weeks ago.
  3. In the middle of an election year during which we are woefully unprepared to prevent further meddling by Russia, Paul Ryan decides to replace the chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. They’re still looking for a potential nominee to the position, which oversees election security.
  4. State election officials across the county are returning to paper ballots for better security and to prevent foreign interference.

Parkland:

And the gun debate goes on…

  1. #NeverAgain. Students across the country stage walkouts to protest gun violence.
  2. Schools threaten to discipline students who participate in walkouts in protest of gun violence. Universities assure students that walking out won’t count against them when they apply for colleges.
  3. Conspiracy theories abound on social media, and Donald Trump Jr. liked several conspiracy theories on Twitter.
  4. Russian bots and far right trolls make up stories about students who survived the shooting and are now speaking out. Many of their families are now receiving death threats. Seriously. Gun rights advocates need to DIAL IT BACK.
  5. As a result of the publicity and backlash against the NRA, major corporations begin to cut ties with the NRA.
  6. Opinion alert: NRA speakers and listeners at CPAC this week behave horribly in the wake of this tragedy. There’s just no excuse for this no matter how much you love your guns.
  7. Wayne LaPierre, CEO and VP of the NRA, blames the shooting on the failure of the family and a failure of school security. LaPierre also warns of a wave of socialism that will take away your guns.
  8. NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch says that the media loves mass shootings. She also blames the Broward County Sheriffs and the FBI.
  9. This is rich. LaPierre says, “The elites care not one whit about America’s school system and schoolchildren.” LaPierre makes $5,000,000 per year. How is that not elite?
  10. Florida Governor Rick Scott at first pushes back against any changes to gun laws, but with the continued student protests, he begins to soften on things like age limits and addressing mental health.
  11. Students and parents attend town halls with elected officials, including Marco Rubio, and a listening session with Donald Trump.
  12. Trump promotes arming teachers, rejects active shooter drills, repeats things Wayne LaPierre said at CPAC the previous day, and is open to banning bump stocks. But he balks at restrictions on assault rifles.
  13. Attendees heckle Rubio when he refuses to back a full ban on assault weapons. Rubio supports raising the legal age to 21 and creating gun violence restraining orders, opposes arming teachers, and is reconsidering a ban on high-capacity magazines. Students didn’t let him off easy; they pressed him hard on key questions.
  14. Trump appears unsure of next steps on gun violence. He surveys guests at Mar-a-Lago for their opinions. He seems to agree with gun controls a few times but then comes back around to a more hardline stance. At one point he agrees that we should tighten background checks, and wants to ban bump stocks.
  15. The security guard at the school is suspended and then resigns after it comes out that he hid instead of going in the school to confront the shooter.
  16. Both Trump and the NRA endorse arming teachers. However, in May 2016, Trump tweeted: “Crooked Hillary said that I want guns brought into the school classroom…Wrong!” After the Columbine shooting, the NRA also endorsed gun-free schools. At the time, LaPierre said, “First, we believe in absolutely gun free, zero tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America’s schools, period, with the rare exception of law enforcement officers or trained security personnel.”

Miscellaneous:

  1. Twitter continues a purge of suspected Russian bots, resulting in conservative Twitter users losing thousands of followers in one day.
  2. CPAC continues its march to the far right this year. Speakers include French politician Marion Marechal-Le Pen, Breitbart London Editor Raheem Kassam, and Brexit leader Nigel Farage. Former White House staffer Sebastian Gorka participate on a panel. Both Trump and Mike Pence addressed the conference.
  3. The Department of Health and Human Services puts Jon Cordova, a top official at the agency, on leave while they investigate his social media activity. Cordova posts baseless claims, smear campaigns, and conspiracy theories. How did our government fill up with people like this?
  4. Jared Kushner will continue in his role, which includes access to highly classified material, despite his inability to obtain permanent government security clearance.
  5. But then John F. Kelly says no one whose clearance hasn’t been finalized will be able to look at top-secret information. So they could stop letting Kushner see top-secret documents by next week.
  6. The FCC officially files their order to repeal net neutrality, which will go into effect April 23.
  7. After a backlash against the RNC using campaign funds to pay for Trump’s legal bills in the Russia investigation, the RNC now pays over $37,000 per month in rent at Trump Tower. They also pay a monthly salary to Mike Pence’s nephew John.
  8. There’s a dating site for Trump supporters. It features a man convicted of having sex with a minor on its homepage. I guess the real news here is… there’s a dating site for Trump supporters?
  9. The head of the VA, David Shulkin, has permission from the White House to get rid of any subversion in his agency. He says anyone who defies his authority will be fired. This comes after the inspector general found that Shulkin pressured his chief of staff to doctor an email so the VA would cover his wife’s European airfare. The inspector also found Shulkin improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets on the same trip.
  10. Trump wants his military parade to be on Veterans Day, and to start at the White House and end at the Capitol.
  11. The majority owner of the Trump-branded hotel in Panama orders all Trump employees out of the building in an attempt to take over the hotel. He says that the Trump name is bringing down revenue and keeping rooms empty.
  12. Elaine Duke, deputy secretary of Homeland Security, says she’ll step down. Her role has been minimized since Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen took over last year.

Polls:

  1. 62% of Americans blame Trump and Congress for not doing enough about mass shootings.
  2. 77% of Americans think better mental health screening and treatment could’ve prevented the shooting last week.
  3. 66% of Americans support stronger gun laws, including 50% of gun owners.
  4. The Presidential Greatness Survey (a survey of presidential scholars) ranks Trump as the worst president so far. Among just Republican scholars surveyed, he’s the fourth worst. They ranked him most polarizing.
  5. 51% of voters say they haven’t seen an increase in take-home pay since the new tax law passed. 25% say they have.
  6. After a brief boost, Trump’s approval rating is back down to 37% with 58% disapproving.