Tag: paul manafort

Week 110 in Trump

Posted on March 5, 2019 in Politics, Trump

By J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post via Getty Images.

It was week full of news and punctuated by Trump hugging the American flag and giving the longest speech ever at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference. It’s hard to fact-check a 20-minute Trump speech, much less one that lasts over two hours. So I’ll summarize. He lies about immigration, the VA, late-term abortions, tax reforms, the Green New Deal, Mueller’s investigative team, healthcare, solar power (actually what he says here is not so much a lie as it is just dumb), tariffs, Russia, crowd sizes, ISIS, and the economy. He brags about his 2016 election, brags about firing Comey, defends his declaration of national emergency, backtracks on his comments about Otto Warmbier, excuses poor cabinet choices, accuses Members of Congress of hating our country (wow), bags on Jim Mattis, claims he doesn’t have white hair (huh?), takes credit for the 2018 elections (Senate) but then says he’s not responsible for the 2018 elections (House), announces a “free speech” executive order for college campuses, and makes fun of a sitting Senator. And of course CPAC wouldn’t be complete if he didn’t berate Democrats as socialists.

Here’s what else happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. A county judge in North Carolina ruled that two amendments put forth to the voters last November by the state’s legislature are unconstitutional. The basis for his decision was that NC’s General Assembly was “illegally constituted” due to racial gerrymandering. NC’s government has been caught up in lawsuits for over two years. Dig deeper here.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. A bipartisan group of 58 former national security officials issue a statement saying there is no factual basis for the national emergency over the wall.
  2. A Republican group of 24 former Members of Congress sign a letter urging Republicans in office to pass a joint resolution to end the national emergency.
  3. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers recalls Wisconsin’s National Guard troops from the southern border saying there’s no justification for it. New Mexico has already ordered all troops away from their border, and California has pulled their troops out as well.
  4. Air Force Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy says there’s no military threat at our southern border and that we should be focused on risks from Russia and China. O’Shaughnessy is Commander, U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (USNORTHCOM).
  5. The House passes a resolution to end Trump’s declaration of national emergency over the wall. This means the Senate must vote on it. Mitch McConnell says it‘ll pass, but Trump will veto it.
  6. The House Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on the Trump administration’s policy of separating families seeking asylum at our southern border.

Russia:

  1. Adam Schiff, the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, says that if the final report on the Russia and obstruction investigations aren’t released to the public, he’ll subpoena the report and have Robert Mueller testify before the committee.
  2. Paul Manafort’s lawyers argue that he should get a lenient sentence in the D.C. case, because it’s not like he’s a drug dealer or murderer, there’s no evidence of Russia collusion, and he’s only guilty of garden variety crimes. Or rich people‘s crimes, as I call them.
    • Manafort has another sentencing hearing for a separate case on March 8 in Virginia.
    • On top of these, he could get more years for breaking his plea agreement and get additional trials for crimes for which he hasn’t been tried yet.
    • Mueller did amend one of his court statements that supported his claims that Manafort lied about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, but there’s still enough evidence to show Manafort lied.
  1. A federal judge rejects Andrew Miller’s claim that Mueller’s appointment is unconstitutional. Now Miller has to testify to the grand jury or go to jail.
  2. It doesn’t take Roger Stone long to violate his gag order and in multiple ways.
    • The day the judge issues the gag order, Stone violates the order with a tweet which he then deletes.
    • Next he responds to an email from VICE News saying that Cohen’s statement is entirely untrue.
    • Next he gets called back into court to explain the imminent release of a book that will likely violate the gag order and that neither he nor his defense team mentioned to the judge.
    • And THEN, Stone posts on Instagram that Mueller framed him. Seriously, this guy can’t help himself.
  1. Some of Stone’s actions flat-out violate the gag order, but others are a little ambiguous. Here are the judge’s parameters:
    • Stone cannot speak publicly or to the media about the investigation, the case, or any of the participants.
    • Stone can speak publicly about raising funds for his defense.
    • Stone can say that he is innocent of charges against him.
  1. Russia’s state-sponsored news announces that Russia is developing hypersonic missiles that can reach the U.S. targets, like the Pentagon and Camp David, in under five minutes.
  2. U.S. Cyber Command says they blocked internet access for the Internet Research Agency (a Russian troll farm) during the 2018 elections.

Legal Fallout:

  1. During Sean Hannity’s interview with Trump, he claims to have information that contradicts Michael Cohen’s testimony about the Stormy Daniel’s hush money payments. If he does, Hannity could be called before Congress himself to testify.
  2. Michael Cohen begins three days of Congressional hearings. Two are behind closed doors and one, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is public. Here are a few things Cohen alleges (remember these are allegations):
    • Trump knew in advance about WikiLeaks’ plans to release the DNC’s hacked emails, and he found out through Roger Stone. Roger Stone disputes this.
    • Trump was completely involved in the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. Cohen provided Congress with a check signed by Trump and another signed by both Donald Trump, Jr., and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.
    • Eric Trump was also involved the hush money payments.
    • Ivanka and Don, Jr., were both involved in the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations, which continued throughout the campaign.
    • Cohen threatened Trump’s schools so they wouldn’t release his grades or SAT scores after Trump told him he didn’t want those records released. Fordham University confirms that they received a threatening letter.
    • Trump inflated his net worth in order to secure loans and to get on Forbes’ lists, but he deflated the worth of his assets for tax purposes.
    • Trump‘s taxes are likely not under audit.
    • Weisselberg knew about all the things—hush money, Trump Tower Moscow, bank fraud, insurance fraud, and tax fraud.
    • BuzzFeed’s reporting that Trump directly told Cohen to lie to Congress isn’t accurate. Cohen says Trump implied he should lie. BuzzFeed continues to stand by their story, so now I’m super curious about their source.
    • The rumors about mistreatment of Melania, a love child, and the existence of a sex tape are likely not true.
    • Cohen’s never been to Prague, disputing one point in the Steele Dossier.
    • Cohen and Corey Lewandowski discussed a Trump trip to Russia during the campaign.
    • There are other illegal acts and wrongdoing that weren’t discussed during his testimony. Some of those are currently under investigation in New York state.
    • Cohen didn’t want a White House position, so he’s not doing this out of vengeance for that. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) later files a complaint alleging that Cohen is lying about this.
    • Trump purchased a third portrait of himself through the Trump Foundation (we already knew about the first two).
    • Jay Sekulow, Trump’s lawyer, edited Cohen’s previous testimony to Congress, causing it to be false.
    • Trump doesn’t email or text. That’s so old-school, but could be his saving grace.
  1. Cohen provides a list of Trump associates who can corroborate these allegations or who have additional information. The questioning also gave the committee the basis to subpoena Trump’s tax returns.
  2. During Cohen’s testimony, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) calls him a liar, Mark Meadows (R-NC) uses a black woman as a prop to prove Trump isn’t racist, and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) puts up a poster that says, “Liar Liar Pants On Fire.”
  3. During and after the hearing, committee chair Elijah Cummings worked hard to make sure both sides of the aisle felt heard and he concludes with a call for healing.
  4. Describing the destruction of our civility toward each other, Cohen says, “I’m responsible for your silliness because I did the same things that you’re doing now. I protected Mr. Trump for 10 years.”
  5. Just before Michael Cohen is to testify before Congress, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) tweets a thinly veiled threat. As a lawyer, he should know better. Here’s what he tweets:

“Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”

    • So then legal experts and fellow Representatives call this a violation of House ethics rules and potential witness tampering.
    • And then the Florida Bar opens an investigation into whether Gaetz violated their regulations.
    • And then, Gaetz apologizes for the tweet and deletes it.
    • But then Gaetz continues to tweet and retweet disparaging comments and articles about Cohen throughout the hearings.
  1. The House Oversight Committee wants to interview Ivanka and Don, Jr. The House Intelligence Committee will interview Cohen, Weisselberg, and Felix Sater.
  2. The House Judiciary Committee opens an inquiry into alleged abuses of power by Trump, based on his attacks against the press, the courts, the FBI, and the DOJ. Presidents actually have wide leeway here.
  3. The House Ways and Means Committee announces they’ll demand Trump’s tax returns. Cohen’s testimony pretty much forced their hand on this.
  4. D.C.’s attorney general subpoenas documents from the Trump inaugural committee. This is the third active investigation into the committee’s finances.
  5. The House Financial Services Committee announces an investigation into Trump’s personal finances, specifically why Deutsche Bank was willing to loan him money at a time when nobody else would.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A federal court upholds the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks, but the plaintiffs in the case say they’ll appeal.
  2. Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker abruptly leaves the DOJ.

Healthcare:

  1. The Senate votes against allowing the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” to proceed. A few things:
    • This bill appears to be intended to protect babies born alive after a botched abortion (this is a rare and extreme circumstance).
    • Late-term abortions can only be performed when the mother’s health or life is threatened, or when the fetus has a fatal condition. Less than 1% of abortions occur after fetal viability.
    • Infanticide is already illegal in the U.S., plus the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act was already signed into law in 2002. The current bill mostly adds criminal penalties against doctors.
    • Typically the procedure in which the baby survives is not actually an abortion but natural or induced early labor.
    • All this is to say, doctors aren’t out there killing live babies willy-nilly.

International:

  1. Mike Pence joins the self-proclaimed interim President of Venezuela Juan Guaido in Bogota, Colombia to express U.S. support for Venezuela and opposition to Nicolas Maduro.
  2. At the same time, Trump travels to Vietnam for another summit with Kim Jong Un. Kim travels the 2,700 miles across China by private train, a 48-hour trip.
    • The summit is supposed to end with a signing ceremony, but Trump (probably rightly) walks out early when they can’t agree on demands.
    • Depending on the version you believe, one sticking point is that North Korea wants sanction relief for giving up just one of their nuclear facilities.
    • Ahead of the summit, the U.S. already dropped the requirement that North Korea disclose all of their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
    • Trump ends our large-scale military drills with South Korea in the interest of diplomacy with North Korea. Small-scale drills will continue.
    • There are no current plans for continuing the conversation.
    • Trump says he believes Kim when he says he didn’t know about how Otto Warmbier was being treated. The next day, Warmbier’s parents clarify that they blame Kim for the death.
    • This is rich coming from a dictatorship. North Korea says the Trump administration is a billionaire’s club that holds policies of racism, exacerbates social inequality, suppresses freedom of the press, and denies health coverage to U.S. citizens.
    • Trump blames Michael Cohen’s testimony for the talks falling apart.
    • Throughout the summit, North Korean hackers continue to target the U.S.
    • While the GOP pushes the narrative that Democrats=Socialists, Trump says this about socialist dictator Kim Jong Un: He’s “very sharp” and “a real leader.” “I like him.”
    • The White House bans several reporters from a joint dinner likely based on shouted questions about denuclearization and Michael Cohen during an earlier press event.
  1. Britain’s Labour Party supports another Brexit voter referendum in case voters have changed their minds. The deadline for Brexit is the end of March.
  2. I don’t know if you can indict a president, but it looks like you can indict a prime minister. The Israeli Attorney General announces he’ll move forward on indicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges.
    • Netanyahu faces an election in April, and says he won’t step down if he is re-elected and also indicted.
  1. Jared Kushner meets with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. They don’t talk about Khashoggi’s murder.
  2. Pakistan shoots down an Indian fighter pilot, who then parachutes down and gets beaten by a mob before being rescued by the Pakistani military. Air fights and shelling along the border by Kashmir escalates as a result.
    • This all started with a suicide bombing of Indian troops a few weeks ago.
    • Pakistan releases the pilot by week’s end.
    • The last thing we need right now (or ever) is escalating tensions between two nuclear powers.
  1. Justin Trudeau faces unrest in his government after former attorney general Jodi Wison-Raybould testifies that she was pressured to ignore bribery charges against a Canadian engineering company. Et tu, Justin? Say it isn’t so.
  2. After negotiating with the Taliban, the Pentagon issues a proposal to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan within five years.
  3. We learn that Saudi Arabia detained and then tortured a U.S. citizen with dual citizenship with Saudi Arabia.
  4. An American who’d been held in Yemen for 18 months is finally freed.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House passes two background check bills:
    • The first fixes a loophole that currently allows gun dealers to transfer some guns before a background check is complete. Dylan Roof obtained his gun through this loophole.
    • The second bill requires a background check on ALL firearm sales. This is the first major gun control bill to pass the House in nearly 25 years.
  1. Republicans in the Senate say they don’t plan on dealing with any gun control bills, so these are both likely DOA.
  2. Trump says he’ll veto both bills if they make it to his desk.

Family Separation:

  1. Through a system of relief workers and immigration lawyers, 29 parents who were separated from the children last year make the trip back up to the border to demand asylum hearings and hopefully be reunited with their children. After 12 hours of negotiations, they’re all allowed into the U.S.
  2. At least 200 children are still separated from their parents.
  3. Because we’ve kept these children from their parents, those parents are now paying smugglers to come back to the U.S. illegally just to be with their kids. This isn’t working.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. West Virginia’s legislature got violent after the state Republican party set up a display in the statehouse linking Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to the 9/11 attacks.
    • Omar has been criticized repeatedly for what some call anti-Israel statements and what others call anti-Semitic statements.
    • Allegedly, the sergeant-at-arms for the state House said, “All Muslims are terrorists.”
  1. The Trump administration wants to expand their program to send Central American asylum seekers back to Mexico. Currently, this is only done at the Tijuana-San Diego ports of entry; the administration wants to do it in more border cities.
    • This is already endangering refugees in Tijuana, which doesn’t have the resources to handle the influx. Relief agencies are taking the brunt of this.
  1. Because of the barriers to legal immigration put in place by the Trump administration, more people are crossing the border illegally. Again, this isn’t working.
  2. Relief agencies claim that nine infants under one-year-old are being held in migrant detention centers without the required level of care.
  3. The U.S. government has received nearly 6,000 complaints of sexual abuse of detained migrant minors over the past four years.
  4. All four anti-transgender bills introduced in the South Dakota state legislature this year are now dead with the failure to pass the fourth one this week.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Following on the Senate’s passage of the bill last week, the House passes a public lands conservation bill that protects over a million acres of wilderness and reauthorizes conservation funding.
  2. A group of youth climate activists protest at Mitch McConnell’s Senate office to demand he take the Green New Deal seriously. Police arrest 42 of them.
  3. The Senate confirms fossil-fuel lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to run the EPA, and immediately Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) files an ethics complaint against him. Apparently he’s been participating in meetings on issues he previously lobbied for and he’s been holding meetings with his lobbying clients, both in violation of his signed ethics pledge.
  4. A court rules that Trump has to pay the legal costs for the Scottish government in a case where Trump tried to get them to halt a wind turbine project in Scotland.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The White House trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, corrects Trump about memorandums of understanding (MOUs) in the middle of a trade talk. Trump says they don’t mean anything, but Lighthizer explains to the press that an MOU is actually a binding contract. Trump says he doesn’t agree, at which point Chinese vice premier Liu He cracks up.
  2. It’s the retail apocalypse. So far, companies have announced 4,300 retail store closings slated for this year.
  3. Even though we’ve implemented steep tariffs, the U.S. trade deficit is now 16% larger than when Trump took office, with imports exceeding exports by a record high of $914 billion in 2018.
    • Part of the problem is that countries retaliated with their own tariffs, which caused U.S. exports decline starting in May of 2018.
    • According to economists, macroeconomic factors, like tax cuts and increased federal spending, overwhelmed Trump’s attempts to target specific trade deficits.
    • This all pretty much supports Janet Yellen’s statement earlier this week that Trump doesn’t understand macroeconomic policies (which would explain the scattershot combination of tax, trade, healthcare, immigration, spending, and foreign policies).
  1. A report shows that the caps on state and local tax deductions will hit around 11 million people this year. What was redacted from the report, though, was a description of the efforts by the Treasury to block state workarounds for the cap.
  2. Over 1,000 TSA employees still haven’t received back pay from the shutdown. I guess they better hold more bake sales.

Elections:

  1. Mitch McConnell blames Democrats for the election fraud in North Carolina that likely threw the election to the Republican candidate.
    • He conflates election fraud (where a third party tries to interfere in the votes of legitimate voters) with voter fraud (where someone tries to vote illegally). Republican voter policies, which Democrats tend to disagree with, target voter fraud not election fraud.
    • For comparison, this single case of election fraud in NC affected more ballots than did all of the proven cases of voter fraud over the past 70 years (even according to the Heritage Foundation’s inflated numbers which also include cases of election fraud).
  1. Mark Harris, the Republican at the heart of the fraud case, will not run again for health reasons. He suffered a stroke earlier this year.
  2. A grand jury charges Leslie Dowless with seven felonies in connection with election fraud. More charges could follow.
  3. And speaking of voter fraud, remember how Trump pointed to the attempted Texas voter role purge as evidence of voter fraud? Well, a judge just blocked that effort calling it ham-handed and threatening.
    • Just an FYI, this purging effort is a direct result of the gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, where the Supreme Court decided we are a post-discrimination society so we no longer need to monitor those states with a history of voter discrimination.

Miscellaneous:

  1. We learn that Trump ordered John Kelly to grant top-secret clearance to Jared Kushner, overruling the red flags brought up by security staff and officials. Kelly documented the request at the time.
  2. New defense rules change the way troops are reported on the census. Now they’ll be counted where they’re usually stationed instead of where they typically live, which could cut funding to their local communities.
  3. Wynn Resorts gets hit with a record $20 million fine for failing to investigate claims of sexual misconduct against Steve Wynn. Wynn left the company last year.

Polls:

  1. 68% of Americans want Mueller’s report to be released to the public.

Week 106 in Trump

Posted on February 5, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Trump gave two interviews this week, one seemingly spur of the moment to the New York Times and one on Face The Nation the day of the Super Bowl. I’m not going to talk about them here, because I feel we didn’t hear much that was new. Here are links to each, in case you’re interested: New York Times and Face The Nation.

Here’s what happened in politics last week…

Border Wall/Shutdown:

  1. Nancy Pelosi invites Trump to give his State of the Union address on the House floor on Tuesday, February 5, on the floor of the House.
  2. Trump continues to push the wall in public, but is staying out of the congressional negotiations on a border security plan.
  3. Trump says there must be funding for a wall, Pelosi says there won’t be funding for a wall, and the White House is still preparing a declaration of national emergency.
  4. Despite all the work to make the wall sound like a physical barrier or a fence and not a wall, Trump keeps reiterating that a WALL is a WALL.
  5. If you remember, last year the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could bypass environmental and impact studies for the border wall. Now, bulldozers are lined up outside the National Butterfly Center in Texas, waiting to destroy the protected habitat.
    • The habitat is home to 240 varieties of butterflies and 300 species of birds, and most of the areas people come to see will be behind the wall.
    • The wall here is envisioned to be 30 feet tall and made of concrete and steel, with a 150 foot enforcement zone in which all vegetation will be cleared.
    • CBP maps show that the construction would cut through the National Butterfly Center, a state park, and a 100-year-old Catholic church.
    • Legal action is still pending on all this.
  1. Last year, the Republican-held Congress required that CBP not build fencing in the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, but didn’t do the same for the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. So it’s expected that the wall will also cut through there.
  2. You know why the government can override environmental regulations here? Because of laws created after 9/11. The terrorists are winning.

Russia:

  1. Even though Trump canceled a planned meeting with Putin at the G20 in Buenos Aires last year after Russia opened fire on Ukraine naval ships, it turns out they did have a brief meeting with only Melania and Putin’s interpreter in attendance. Regardless of the innocence of this meeting, the lack of White House staff allowed the Russian press to spin it in Russia’s favor.
  2. Roger Stone pleads not guilty to all seven counts on which he’s charged—witness tampering, obstruction, and making false statements.
  3. After sanctions are lifted against Oleg Deripaska’s businesses, one of Deripaska’s companies appoints Christopher Burnham, a member of Trump’s transition team in the State Department, to their board of directors.
  4. A Kremlin-backed scheme to spread disinformation about the Mueller investigation fails because it was too farfetched. They claimed to have obtained all of Mueller’s database regarding the Russia investigation, but had only obtained what was revealed in court through a request for discovery by Russian company Concord. The trove also included fake documents to make it look like Mueller’s team is doing sloppy work.
  5. A district judge considers implementing a gag order on Roger Stone like she did with Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Her reason: “This is a criminal proceeding and not a public relations campaign.”
  6. The Trump administration announces they’re pulling the U.S. out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia because Russia isn’t holding up their end of the deal. (Funny. I just realized that’s always the case when Trump pulls out of an agreement. He thinks everyone is using the U.S.)
    • The treaty is regarded as a crucial moment for arms control during the Cold War. It got rid of over 2,600 missiles, and is key to Europe’s security strategy.
    • Putin says that’s fine, and pulls Russia out of the treaty in response. So now Russia can design new previously banned weapons. He also says Russia won’t start any more talks on nuclear arms control.
    • China criticizes the moves saying they’re bad for global security. China also says they wouldn’t join an expanded version of the treaty themselves, so there you are.
  1. Senate investigators conclude that the phone calls Donald Trump, Jr. made to a blocked number before and after the 2016 Trump Tower meeting were not to his father, but instead were to long-time business associates.
  2. The NRA denies they played an official role in a 2015 trip to Moscow to meet with Russian nationals. Emails and photos say otherwise. Maria Butina helped them with their travel arrangements and organized meetings with Kremlin officials.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Mike Pence has said he was unaware of Michael Flynn’s ties to Turkey and working as a foreign lobbyist. Now we learn that Elijah Cummings sent a letter to Pence about Mike Flynn during the transition in November of 2016. Cummings says he received a receipt confirming the transition team received the letter, so either Pence knew about Flynn, or his transition team kept it from him.
  2. Facebook says they’ve removed as many as 2.8 billion fake accounts over the past year.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Senate Judiciary Committee postpones the hearing for Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, William Barr, because of Democrats’ concerns over how he’ll handle Mueller’s investigation.
  2. A recent poll shows Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the most popular Supreme Court justice currently seated on the bench. Surprisingly—22% of respondents couldn’t name one justice sitting on the court.

Healthcare:

  1. A new VA policy allows veterans to choose a private physician if they have to drive more than a half hour to get to a VA facility. Previously, the rule was 40 miles.

International:

  1. The Trump administration places sanctions against Venezuela to pressure Maduro to step down.
  2. We learn from John Bolton inadvertently exposing notes on a legal pad ON LIVE TV that the administration is thinking about sending 5,000 troops to Colombia (which neighbors Venezuela). Colombia’s government says they don’t know what the note means.
  3. The U.S. government sends humanitarian assistance to Venezuela through USAID.
  4. The U.S. indicts major Chinese tech company Huawei on charges of lying to government officials and to business partners in an alleged scheme to pay employees to steal trade secrets. The indictment claims that:
    • Huawei’s founder and his daughter (the company’s CFO) lied to the FBI about dealing with Iran (to work around sanctions).
    • Employees received bonuses for stealing trade secrets.
  1. The UK’s House of Commons narrowly votes to have Theresa May renegotiate the Irish border issue with the EU as part of the Brexit agreement.
  2. The EU says there’s no more negotiating. Take it or leave it. No pun intended.
  3. Nissan cancels their plans to start production of a new car model in Britain, citing uncertainties around Brexit as a reason.
  4. The Senate passes an amendment to state opposition to Trump’s decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan. It passes with bipartisan approval (68 to 23)
  5. U.S. Intelligence officials testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in their annual worldwide threats hearing. Their testimony contradicts almost everything Trump says about national security. Here’s how:
    • Trump says North Korea isn’t a nuclear threat anymore.
      Intelligence officials say North Korea likely won’t give up their nuclear weapons.
    • Trump says Russia might not have meddled in our 2016 elections.
      Intelligence officials say Russia was so successful at it that they continued it in 2018 and will continue it into 2020.       They say this is our second most pressing challenge right behind cybersecurity.
    • Trump says a wall on our southern border is the most pressing security need (a national emergency even).
      Intelligence officials didn’t even mention that.
    • Trump says ISIS has been defeated.
      Intelligence officials say the group is weakened, but       it’s also returned to its “guerrilla warfare roots.”
    • Trump says Iran is continuing to build nuclear weapons.
      Intelligence officials say Iran is still in compliance with the JPOA, so is not building nuclear weapons.
    • Trump mocks climate change and calls it a hoax.
      Intelligence officials say it’s one of our greatest national and global security threats.
  1. In response, Trump trashes his intelligence leaders in a series of tweets, suggesting they should go back to school. But after they all meet, Trump says they’re more in agreement than it seems.
  2. One area of agreement between Trump and his intelligence officers is China, which both think is a major threat. But Trump thinks the threat is economic (trade) while intelligence officials think the threat is military and corporate espionage. They also say China is using cyber attacks to influence U.S. elections. (Dammit China and Russia! Stay out of our business.)
  3. Senior intelligence briefers say Trump is a danger to American security with his stubborn disregard for their security assessments. Two briefers say they’ve been warned not to give Trump information that contradicts his public stances because it makes him angry.
  4. Trump says that he’s free to ignore his intelligence officials and instead rely on his own beliefs. Which is technically true, but maybe not the most informed path. Trump also says he doesn’t want intelligence officials sharing their views with Congress.
  5. One major thing from the hearings that potentially got lost in all the conflict is the assessment that China and Russia are more closely aligned than at any time since the 1950s.
  6. The UK, France, and Germany form a new company to help them get around Trump’s Iran sanctions. The new company would avoid the U.S. banking system and thus would not be subject to the sanctions.

Family Separation:

  1. In a lawsuit launched by ACLU against ICE over family separations at the border, ICE files documents that not don’t deny that there are probably thousands more separated kids than initially reported. The filings also show that the administration thinks it would take too long to find all the people separated from their families because there was never any tracking system.
    • Of note, I see lawsuit filings over family separations in March of 2018, so family separations were happening long before Jeff Sessions announced it as policy.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Decades ago, Muslims settled in an area they called Holy Islamberg in upstate New York to get away from the dangers and temptations of the city. Now, conspiracy theorists and anti-Muslim groups smear the town as dangerous extremists, a jihadist training camp, a terrorist sleeper cell. Why is this news now? Because this week, police arrest four young men who were plotting an attack on the town. They confiscate 23 guns. This is the second recent threat against the town that police have thwarted in recent years.
  2. While Trump keeps pounding on the need for better border security, CPB and ICE haven’t really hired many new agents. Trump signed an order two years ago calling for 5,000 new CPB agents and 10,000 new ICE officers, but there hasn’t been an increase in numbers (for several reasons—the vetting and training processes, an inability to justify the hiring surge, high attrition rates, and so on).
  3. A Maryland State’s Attorney says her office will stop prosecuting marijuana possession regardless of quantity or prior crimes. If you’re wondering why this falls under “Discrimination,” check out the second paragraph here to see the real reason more African Americans than Caucasians are in jail for marijuana possession when both groups use pot at roughly the same rate.
  4. We’re not the only country arguing over asylum policies. In the Netherlands, police aren’t allowed to enter a church during an ongoing service to carry out police business. So a church there held a 24/7 prayer service for 97 days to protect one family from being deported. The service ends this week when the government agrees to a rule change that gives asylum seekers another chance.
  5. The U.S. flags the passports of at least two activists and two journalists working with the asylum seekers at the border. All four are detained by Mexican authorities and denied entry into the country. One resides in Tijuana, but is a U.S. citizen. She was denied access to her 10-month-old son, who was in Tijuana at the time. Another was separated from her husband and daughter while she was questioned. Her daughter sobbed so hard they let them stay in the interrogation room together.
  6. A day after Virginia Governor Ralph Northam ignites pro-life anger by describing in medical and practical terms what happens with a non-viable birth, his college yearbook page surfaces showing a picture of a man in blackface and a man in a KKK costume.
    • Northam take responsibility and apologizes, and that’s not enough—Democrats call for him to resign. Then he says doesn’t think it’s him and says he won’t resign. He does admit to using shoe polish on his face in a Michael Jackson imitation contest.
    • Should he resign, Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax, who is African American, would become governor. But the same site that published Northam’s yearbook also published information about claims of sexual assault against Fairfax. Fairfax says the sexual encounter in 2004 was consensual.
  1. The Department of Health and Human Services changes its rules so that religious foster-care and adoption agencies can discriminate against people they feel don’t agree with their religious teachings.
    • South Carolina’s governor previously signed an executive order that would allow Miracle Hill Ministries to discriminate, but the HHS rule overrode the governor’s EO. So HHS changed their rules.
    • Miracle Hill has previously refused to work with Jewish people and same-sex couples. This all goes back to the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision that supports exemptions to equality guidelines when they go against an organizations closely held religious beliefs.
  1. The Pentagon plans to send 3,500 additional troops to the southern border to help build and reinforce 160 miles of concertina wire fencing.
  2. Undercover Homeland Security agents end a sting operation where they created a fake university to snare foreign nationals who then enrolled in order to get or maintain student visas. DHS hired people to recruit the foreign citizens to enroll in the university. The sting results in the arrest of eight recruiters and could result in the deportation of dozens of “students.”

Climate/EPA:

  1. Another polar vortex hits the Midwest, and Trump wonders where that global warming is when you need it. Some researchers say global warming causes the polar vortex, but not all are convinced. The important thing to remember here is that weather is not the same thing as climate.
  2. The EPA says they won’t set limits on the amounts of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) allowed in our drinking water. Both are linked to cancer, thyroid disease, and immune issues.
  3. Compared to last year, there are 30 fewer lawmakers who are skeptical of any part of climate change than last year. That includes whether climate change is happening, whether it’s a danger, and whether it’s manmade. Deniers make up nearly 30% of Congress, and between them they’ve averaged around a half million in donations from the fossil fuel industry.
  4. France announces a new goal to double their renewable energy capacity within 10 years.
  5. The Bureau of Land Managements moves forward with their sales of oil and gas leases near sacred Native American sites, including the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Processing those energy leases is one thing that didn’t slow down during the shutdown.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The government won’t guarantee that over 1,000,000 federal contractors will receive any back pay from the shutdown, and these are already some of the lowest paid government workers (like janitors, guards, cooks, and so on).
  2. The Senate introduces a plan to repeal the estate tax entirely. Currently, no estate tax is paid for the first $22 million of an inherited estate.
  3. Foxconn announces changes to the Wisconsin campus that Paul Ryan worked so hard to secure. They’re moving away from manufacturing and instead will be a research center.
  4. The House passes a 2.6% pay raise for federal civilian workers. In December, Trump froze any raises for non-military federal workers.
  5. Rutger Bregman, who’s written about history, philosophy, and economics, speaks at Davos and lambasts the wealthy audience for not being willing to talk about taxes, which he says is the only way we know to fight the growing inequality. He says “It feels like I’m at a firefighters conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water.”
    • Ken Goldman, former CFO of Yahoo, denounces the speakers on the forum saying it was one-sided and demanding answers besides higher taxes (and sort of proving the point).
    • Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of Oxfam International, counters Goldman by talking about the lack of dignity in certain jobs and the powerlessness of workers, including those in the U.S. that have brought our unemployment so low.
  1. The economy added 304,000 new jobs last month, but the unemployment rate bumped up to 4%. This could be because people who were furloughed at the time might have reported (mistakenly) that they were unemployed.
  2. Government data shows that new orders for U.S. goods dropped in October and November last year, which suggests a slowdown in manufacturing. A new survey indicates things might’ve picked up again a bit in January.

Elections:

  1. Another state lawmaker switches party from Republican to Democrat. This time it’s New Jersey State Senator Dawn Addiego, who says “the party which once echoed the vision of Ronald Reagan no longer exists.”
  2. In recent weeks Texas flagged 95,000 registered voters for citizenship reviews. Now they’re saying that a substantial number of those flagged shouldn’t have been, and they’re working to remove those names. Apparently the Secretary of State neglected to check how many of these people had become citizens since last applying for a driver license as a non-citizen.
    • The list went back to drivers licenses issued in 1996.
    • Most of those flagged are Latino (shocking, I know).
    • The governor of Texas hasn’t stopped the operation from moving forward despite the errors.
    • The media spread headlines supporting Trump’s accusations of massive voter fraud, which has now turned out to not be the case.
  1. Mitch McConnell criticizes the House Democrats’ bills to make Election Day a federal holiday. He calls it a power grab. And he’s right. When everyone can vote, it’s a power grab by the people 😉

Miscellaneous:

  1. The first tornado in 80 years hits Havana, Cuba.
  2. The Pentagon drafts plans to create a space force under the Air Force rather than as a fully independent military branch as initially envisioned.
  3. A jury awards Rand Paul nearly $8,000 in medical costs, $200,000 for pain and suffering, and another $375,000 in punitive damages from when his neighbor attacked him at his home in 2017.
  4. Trump appoints Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson to be his chief medical adviser. Jackson was once Trump’s nominee for VA secretary, but couldn’t get through the confirmation process due to misconduct allegations. Trump also pushes for Jackson to receive his second star, but the previous allegations against him are still under investigation.
  5. There are three more mass shootings this week in Chicago, San Diego, and Houston. In total, they leave four dead and 13 injured.
  6. A White House staffer leaks three months worth of Trump’s schedules, which show an inordinate amount of time for “Executive Time.” I’m not going to report too much here because who knows what Executive Time actually is.
  7. Like another powerful woman before her (who I won’t name), Nikki Haley charges $200,000 to give speeches.

Polls:

  1. The U.S. falls from 16th to 22nd in the Corruption Perceptions Index (meaning we’re perceived as being more corrupt this year than last year).

Things Politicians Say:

“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president, and that’s why he’s there.”

~Sarah Huckabee Sanders to CBN’s David Brody and Jennifer Wishon

Week 99 in Trump

Posted on December 18, 2018 in Politics, Trump

So much happened last week, but my favorite part of the week was when Trump surprised Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer with a meeting with the press when they thought they were having a closed-door meeting. As far as transparency goes, that was awesome. But things went downhill fast, with a lot of shouting, a lot of misinformation, a bit of man-splaining, and some name-calling; only Nancy Pelosi was trying to talk policy. Pelosi came out of it not only looking like the adult in the room but also firmly pinning any potential government shutdown on Trump. It’s easy to see how she got the votes for Speaker.

Here’s what else happened this week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. NASA spacecraft OSIRIS-REx arrived in the orbit of an asteroid named Bennu. OSIRIS-REx launched two years ago and will spend the next year surveying and mapping the asteroid and hopefully bring us back some rock samples. Seriously. We sent a spacecraft to an ASTEROID!
  2. The week had some hate:
    • Jehovah’s Witnesses have been targeted with hate crimes 5 times this year in Washington state. The latest attack destroyed a church in a fire.
    • Again in Washington, eight self-professed neo-Nazis assault a black man, yelling racist slurs as they attack him.
    • Someone spreads anti-Semitic pamphlets throughout Pittsburgh, and a student plasters State University of New York’s Purchase College with Nazi-themed posters.

Russia:

  1. Maria Butina pleads guilty to acting as an illegal foreign agent and agrees to cooperate with federal investigators. She’s the first Russian charged to admit trying to influence the 2016 elections.
  2. Here are some highlights:
    • In 2015, Butina began working with Alexander Torshin to establish “unofficial” lines of communication with political leaders for the benefit of the Russian Federation (because official lines weren’t working).
    • Butina targeted Republicans because she thought a Republican would win the presidency in 2016.
    • She worked with her boyfriend, South Dakotan Paul Erickson, on her plan and also to make the contacts she needed.
    • Butina planned to use the NRA to lay the groundwork because of their influence over the Republican party.
    • She received funding from a Russian billionaire.
    • In the middle of all this, Butina obtained a student visa so she could stay in the U.S.
    • She worked to meet with Trump’s advisors once he was elected. Butina and Erickson also tried to set up meetings between Trump advisors and Russian officials.
  1. As of this week, we know through court filings and guilty pleas that at least 16 Trump business and campaign associates had contact with Russians during the 2016 campaign. And every one of them lied about it.
  2. Newspapers and businesses across the country receive bomb threats, suspected to come from Russian hackers. The hackers ask for bitcoin in order to not detonate the (non-existent) bombs.
  3. Everything was going so well for Michael Flynn, who was probably on track to serve no jail time. And then, his lawyers file a court document claiming that the FBI didn’t let him know he maybe needed a lawyer during the interviews where he lied to investigators (which led to the charges against him). They say that the FBI tricked Flynn into lying but still don’t say why Flynn lied.
  4. Mueller says Flynn is an experienced military man in a high-level government position. He should know better than to lie to U.S. intelligence in any situation, and there was no coercion for him to lie.
  5. Two of Flynn’s associates say he was meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 elections to talk about cooperation between Russia and the U.S. Russia would help end the Syrian conflict and the U.S. would ease sanctions.
    • The talks continued even after U.S. intelligence agencies told Trump’s campaign that Russia was behind the DNC hacks and subsequent leaks.
  1. On judge‘s orders, Mueller turns over their documentation of the interviews with Flynn where he is said to have lied.
  2. Texts and emails show that Paul Manafort was advising the Trump administration on ways to discredit Mueller’s investigations. Manafort recommended attacking the FBI, the DOJ, the Steele Dossier (and the Clinton campaign’s involvement) and any Obama officials involved in getting the FISA warrant. He recommended accusing the DNC of colluding with Ukraine.
  3. Studies commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee find that clearly all of the messaging coming from Russian entities was designed to benefit the Republican party and later Trump specifically.
    • One report finds that Russians used every major social media platform to influence the elections in 2016.
    • The other report analyzed how the Russian company Internet Research Agency targeted specific demographics for political messaging. IRA targeted blacks and other minorities to either discourage them from voting and turn them against Democrats.
    • Russian trolls and bots put a lot of time into dividing us on gun rights and immigration issues. They’d embed themselves in specific circles using authentic content, and then start posting provocative misinformation.
    • Posts on Instagram generated more than twice the user engagement than other major platforms.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Trump says he never told Cohen to break the law, but didn’t dispute that he told Cohen to pay off his mistresses to keep them quiet about their affairs. Trump says Cohen should’ve known what was legal; Cohen says he was under Trump’s sway.
  2. Sources says that Trump was involved in meetings where Cohen and David Pecker (of American Media Inc. (AMI)) talked about the payments.
  3. In his sentencing hearing, Cohen implies that he has more to talk about than just hush money payments. He gets a three-year sentence plus fines.
    • As a reminder, he pled guilty to: tax evasion, campaign finance violations, lying to banks, and lying to Congress. These are not all his known crimes.
    • Sean Hannity deletes all his tweets linking him to Cohen just before Cohen is sentenced.
  1. AMI is also in a cooperation agreement and has agreed to tell prosecutors everything they know about Trump. If you remember, AMI also has a vault of the negative stories about Trump that they killed in the run-up to the 2016 elections.
  2. David Pecker also admits to the hush money payments. AMI says the payments were to influence the elections, giving even more credence to the allegation that these were illegal campaign donations.
  3. Investigators are looking into donations to Trump’s inaugural committee and to a pro-Trump super PAC. They say foreign agents from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE might have disguised donations to buy influence over U.S. policy. Not surprisingly, Manafort it involved in this.
  4. When Trump and his siblings inflated invoices for their shell company decades ago, they also used those invoices as justification to inflate rent increases in their apartment buildings. This has caused the rent in those buildings to be artificially inflated for decades, even though the Trumps no longer own them.
  5. In a defamation lawsuit, Roger Stone admits to telling lies on InfoWars. Stone says he didn’t do his research and took the word of Sam Nunberg about alleged foreign donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “Didn’t do his research” is how all this BS gets spread around in the first place so do your research!

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court refuses to hear cases about blocking funding for Planned Parenthood. This leaves in place the lower court rulings that say states can’t cancel Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood offices.
  2. The Senate confirms Jonathan Kobes to a federal appeals court despite the ABA questioning his knowledge of the law and ability to understand complex legal analysis. This is Trump’s second unqualified but confirmed judicial nominee.
  3. The chief justice of California’s Supreme Court changes her party affiliation from Republican to No Party Preference. She says it’s been coming for a while, but Kavanaugh’s confirmation was the nail in the coffin.

Healthcare:

  1. The Trump administration shuts down an HIV research project in Montana because they use fetal tissue to research a cure for HIV/AIDS. Restrictions on the use of fetal tissue have been shutting down research projects across the country.
  2. The Senate votes against a bill that would extend VA benefits for thousands of vets who were exposed to Agent Orange. The House passed this bill unanimously.
  3. A federal judge in Texas rules that without the mandate, certain parts of the ACA are unconstitutional. Trump says that’s great news, but even legislators who tried to kill the ACA aren’t thrilled with this ruling. Many are even confused by it. The White House assures us that the ACA will remain in place through the appeals process. Oh, and the ruling comes the day before open enrollment ends.

International:

  1. Trump rejects the information given by U.S. intelligence agencies in his daily briefings on world events. Specifically, he’s denied that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections, he says North Korea will halt their nuclear weapons program, and he disagrees with them about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, climate change, and the role of the Saudi Crown Prince in Khashoggi’s murder.
  2. Theresa May delays a vote to approve her Brexit deal, and then survives a vote of no confidence. She then returns to Brussels to negotiate once more, but returns empty-handed.
  3. On top of weeks of protests across France, a shooter kills three people and injures 13 at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, putting all Christmas Markets in France on high alert and launching a manhunt. Police later find and shoot the gunman.
  4. A cyber attack on the Marriott earlier this year accessed the personal information of around 500 million guests. Investigators blame the cyber attack on Chinese intelligence.
  5. Trump continues to stand by Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman despite GOP Senators standing against him on this. Interesting side note: Some members of the Saudi royal family would like to stop MbS from being crowned king, but support from the U.S. and Trump could sway them.
  6. The Senate passes a resolution that declares MbS is not only involved in Khashoggi’s murder but is responsible for it.
  7. The Senate passes a recommendation to end support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
  8. Party members in Hungary that are normally in opposition to one other unite in protest against Prime Minister Viktor Ordan’s authoritarian rule. Rallies and protests have spread across the country, taking the Prime Minister and his Fidesz party by surprise. Ordan has been steadily increasing his power while weakening democratic institutions and processes.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The Senate reverses a Trump policy that helped hide information about donors to political non-profits. With the Senate bill, donors must be disclosed to the IRS.
  2. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signs a series of lame duck bills into law, curtailing the power of the office he is leaving because the person taking his place is a Democrat. From what I can see, the GOP plan seems to be: 1) Gerrymander districts so the other party can’t ever get a majority (even with a majority of votes statewide); and 2) When the populace finally votes your party out, change all the rules of government to make sure they can’t get anything done. Such a bad precedent.
    • Lawsuits against these bills are already in the works. Several of North Carolina’s attempt at passing bills to weaken incoming Democratic officials two years ago are still stuck in the courts.
    • Republicans in Wisconsin’s state legislature started working on these bills months ago just in case there was a shift in parties.
  1. Florida’s governor-elect Ron DeSantis wants to delay implementation of the voter approved ballot initiative that restored voting rights to felons who’ve served their time (excepting certain violent crimes).
  2. The House passes a bill to prevent states from holding children in adult jails and to ban the practice of shackling pregnant girls. The bill also funds tutoring, mental health assistance, and drug and alcohol programs for juvenile offenders.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The number of migrant minors held in U.S. custody is now nearly 15,000. A big reason for the backlog is that sponsors for these children are afraid to come forward for fear of being deported themselves.
  2. Church leaders form an interfaith protest at the U.S.-Mexico border in support of those seeking asylum. Officials arrest 32 faith leaders and activists at the protest.
  3. Officials in Ohio arrest a man who was plotting to kill people in a Jewish synagogue. Hate crimes against Jews have increased more than any other type of hate crime.
  4. Immigration judges for the most part want to make the right choices and not send people back to their home countries to get killed. The Global Migration Project at Columbia University recently found over 60 people who were killed or harmed after being sent home.
  5. The Trump administration starts working once again to deport refugees from the Vietnam war who’ve lived in the U.S. for decades.
  6. Trump says the updated NAFTA deal means that Mexico will pay for his wall. In case you were wondering, it doesn’t.
  7. A seven-year-old migrant girl dies after getting sick eight hours after being taken into custody. Homeland Security says that she didn’t have anything to eat or drink for days before being detained, but her family says that’s not true. The fastest way to get her medical assistance was a 90-minute bus ride, during which she worsened until she was no longer breathing when they arrived. An investigation is underway.
  8. Trump uses the shooting in Strasbourg as a reason we need to shore up our borders, but it turns out the shooter was born in Strasbourg.
  9. Trump claims that the migrants coming in to this country are spreading contagious diseases. There’s no evidence of this.
  10. Trump says a lot of his wall is already built and that it has decreased illegal migration significantly. He seems to be referring to fencing built or fixed between 1992 and 2016.
  11. Trump says says migrants crossing the border illegally are pouring drugs into the country, but according to the DEA most drugs come in through legal ports of entry.
  12. In referring to illegal immigration over the southern border, Trump says: “We caught 10 terrorists over the last very short period of time. Ten.” I’m not sure what he means by ‘the last very short period of time,’ but most terrorists are blocked from entry into the U.S. at airports. And a State Department study found “no credible information that any member of a terrorist group has traveled through Mexico to gain access to the United States.”
  13. Betsy DeVos moves to rescind Obama-era guidance over school discipline that prevented minority students from receiving harsher punishments than their white classmates.
  14. Miss USA, Miss Columbia and Miss Australia are caught on tape mocking other Miss Universe contestants’ English-speaking skills.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A new study that compares past and future climates suggests that over the past 200 years, human activity has reversed millions of years of cooling. So yes, our climate changes, but generally not as rapidly as now.
  2. At the UN climate talks, Trump’s top climate and energy advisor is greeted with laughter when he gives a talk that includes pitching coal, the fossil fuel largely responsible for climate change. Turns out that most of the audience is there merely to protest; the U.S. couldn’t get enough people who are serious about climate change to attend.
  3. At the same talks, nations discuss the latest IPCC report which calls for dramatic cuts in emissions. Oil producing nations want to keep the report out of the final agreement, and the U.S. backs them. They end up welcoming the “timeliness” of the report as opposed to the content of the report.
  4. Even more interesting, though, is the fact that U.S. officials were working behind the scenes to continue making contributions to the Paris agreement.
  5. The Trump administration wants to reclassify nuclear waste so we don’t have to be so cautious in disposing of it, making disposal cheaper. Though this is the same administration that says a little radiation every day is good for you!
  6. The Trump administration proposes weakening the clean water rules that were created by George H.W. Bush and expanded on under Obama. The changes loosen protections against pollutants, pesticides, and toxic waste in certain waterways.
  7. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke resigns in the middle of more than a dozen ethics investigations into his political activity, travel expenses, and possible conflicts of interest. Zinke used his position roll back environmental protections and to exploit federal lands with the goal of global energy dominance.
  8. Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt will take over for Zinke temporarily. Bernhardt was a fossil fuels and water industry lobbyist before coming to the department (whose mission, by the way, is to be a good steward of our public lands).
  9. The Trump administration auctions off leases that will allow fracking on public lands near Utah’s national parks.
  10. A new study shows that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef might be adapting to the warmer waters caused by climate change. The harm done to the reef this year was less than expected despite warmer waters.

Budget/Economy:

  1. China agrees to cut tariffs on U.S. automobiles to 15%.
  2. Trump says he’ll shut down the government if the spending bill doesn’t fund his border wall. He even says he’ll be proud to shut it down.
  3. Trump signs an executive order to help fund underserved communities known as “opportunity zones.”
  4. Trump wants to get rid of subsidies for electric vehicles, which would give foreign automakers an advantage in EV development.
  5. The budget deficit for the first two months of fiscal year 2019 is double what it was in the first two months of fiscal year 2018. The administration predicts the deficit will be over $1 trillion for three straight years.
  6. In 2010, Wells Fargo incorrectly foreclosed on around 545 homeowners due to a computer glitch. Most of these people lost their homes, their current and future equity, and in some cases their pets because they had to move. To make up for it, Wells Fargo sends the borrowers checks that grossly under-compensated them for their losses.
  7. A few months ago, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau put out a report showing that Wells Fargo was price-gouging student borrowers. The Trump administration has been sitting on that information.
  8. Betsy DeVos loses a court battle and now has to cancel $150 million in federal student loan debt. The loan forgiveness affects 15,000 borrowers who were cheated by for-profit colleges.

Elections:

  1. A federal court in Virginia hands down documents in a case that concluded that 11 of Virginia’s districts are illegally gerrymandered. The case is pending before the Supreme Court, but the legislature must redraw the district lines anyway. One of the documents includes a variety of plans, but none of them redraw less than 21 districts.
  2. Things aren’t looking good for Mark Harris, Republican candidate for Congress in North Carolina’s 9th District. It turns out that he sought to hire Leslie Dowless to help win the 2018 race after losing a race in 2016, knowing Dowless’ reputation for using sketchy means to win elections. Dowless illegally harvested ballots according to witnesses.
  3. George Papadopoulos feels like he’s ready to run for Congress. Now that he’s done his jail time for lying about Russian contacts, that is.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Time Magazine names a group of journalist as their Person of the Year. The group, which Time calls The Guardians, include the slain journalists at the Capital Gazette and Jamal Khashoggi, among others. One of the reasons for this choice is that “manipulation and abuse of truth is really the common thread in so many of this year’s major stories.”
  2. The House Judiciary Committee questions a Google executive for over three hours because Republicans think Google searches bring up results that aren’t fair to conservatives. Both parties are concerned about privacy issues.
  3. Stormy Daniels has to pay Trump nearly $300,000 in legal fees because her defamation suit against him was dismissed.
  4. A Kansas state senator switches party affiliations from Republican to Democrat after being ostracized for supporting the Democratic candidate for governor over Kris Kobach.
  5. The Trumps cancel the White House tradition of a holiday press party. Last year, they held the event but declined the tradition of taking pictures with anyone who wanted one.
  6. After Nick Ayers turns down the chief of staff position, Chris Christie takes himself out of the running as well. Jared Kushner’s in the running, but then Trump picks Mick Mulvaney to be acting chief of staff. Mulvaney is already wearing a couple different hats.
  7. The Trumps plan to take a 16-day trip to Mar-a-Lago over the holidays.
  8. Voyager 2 becomes the second human-made object to leave our solar system (Voyager 1 was the first). Voyager 2 was launched in 1977 and its equipment still functions.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s approval rating in rural areas is 61% compared to 31% in urban areas and 41% in suburban areas.

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 91 in Trump

Posted on October 22, 2018 in Politics, Trump

I heard something interesting on Marketplace. It turns out it doesn’t matter whether we cut funding for food assistance, or SNAP, like some in Congress want. Because of our trade war, many farmers lost the buyers for their crops. So part of the government bailout for farmers is going toward purchasing those crops, which will then be donated to food assistance programs like food banks, shelters, and so on. The charities currently don’t have enough resources to store all that food, and they estimate it’ll cost around $300 million to take care of it all. They say they’ll get it done, but what really just happened is that the U.S. lost all that income from those crops, the government is trying to cut taxpayer payments to SNAP, but the government did pay taxpayer money directly to the farmers who lost their buyers, and then turned around and gave that food right back to the needy. Talk about going around in circles.

Here’s what else happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. In the DOJ’s first case around Russian meddling in our elections, federal prosecutors charge a Russian woman, Elena Khusyaynova, with fraud against the U.S. She managed the finances for an operation funded by the Concord group that ran a social media disinformation campaign. This campaign wasn’t tilted toward either political side; it’s aim was to spread disinformation and increase divisiveness.
  2. This campaign spread misinformation about immigration, gun control, the NFL protests, LGBTQ and racial issues, the Confederate flag, and much more.
  3. Putin says that U.S. influence across the globe is almost over, and that he’s been more able to push Russian influence with Trump as president.
  4. Russian trolls have stepped up their spending on disinformation campaigns in 2018.
  5. Mueller will likely issue his findings in the Russia investigation after the midterm elections, specifically around whether Trump’s campaign coordinated in any way with the Russians and whether Trump obstructed justice during the investigation.
  6. It’s up to Rod Rosenstein, who’s defended Mueller’s investigation, to decide whether the results will become public.
  7. Remember when we kept hearing about SARs (suspicious activity reports)? A senior employee at the Treasury Department is charged with leaking those reports related to Paul Manafort’s financial activity, along with SARs for other subjects of the Mueller investigation.
  8. A federal judge refuses Paul Manafort’s request to wear a suit to his sentencing hearing. He shows up in a wheelchair.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Michael Cohen has met with both New York state and federal law enforcement about the Trump Organization and their charity.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A federal judge orders the Department of Education to implement regulations to protect students who were defrauded by for-profit colleges. The regulations help them get their federal student loans forgiven. Betsy DeVos has been delaying the regulations while the department rewrote rules around loans, but a different judge already called those rewrites capricious and arbitrary.

Healthcare:

  1. Along party lines, the Senate votes down a repeal of Trump’s expansion of short-term insurance plans that do not have to comply with ACA guidelines. So now we’ll have cheaper plans available for the short-term, but they won’t have to cover anything required by the ACA.
  2. Mitch McConnell suggests that Republicans will try again next year to repeal the ACA, but no word yet what they’d replace it with.

International:

  1. Reports are that the U.S. intelligence community knew that the Saudis planned to kidnap Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and possibly harm him. This information had been spread across all relevant government agencies, yet Trump pretended to know nothing about this for days.
  2. Turkey says they have audio tapes of the killing, and Trump requests the tapes to be released to U.S. intelligence. As far as I know, this hasn’t yet happened.
  3. Early in the week, Trumps says he’ll send Mike Pompeo to meet with Saudi King Salman over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Trump also says the king firmly denies involvement, and he suggests rogue killers could be responsible.
  4. And then Trump tells the Associated Press that blaming Saudi Arabia without evidence is like blaming Kavanaugh without evidence. Just another case of “guilty until proven innocent.”
  5. Pompeo has a friendly meeting with the Saudi prince who says they’ll perform a thorough and transparent investigation into the killing.
  6. The day Pompeo arrives, the Saudi government transfers $100 million to the U.S. to help stabilize things in Syria.
  7. Trump is also concerned about a $110 million arms deal with Saudi Arabia, and he doesn’t want the Khashoggi affair to get in the way of it.
  8. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin joins many other foreign officials in saying they won’t attend what’s been called “Davos in the Desert.” It’s an economic investment conference in Saudi Arabia.
  9. Jared Kushner, who is a close friend of the Saudi prince, is involved with the Trump administration response to the killing.
  10. The ranking members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker (R) and Bob Melendez (D) send a letter to Trump triggering the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. The administration must now investigate the killing.
  11. The Saudi government prepares us for their admission that Khashoggi didn’t leave the consulate in Turkey and is indeed dead, but they say it was an interrogation that went wrong. And then they say that a fight broke out (which I guess somehow required the 15-man security team to kill Khashoggi and then dismember him with the bone saw that they conveniently had thought to bring with them ahead of time by the doctor they conveniently had the forethought to invite along).
  12. So the Saudi’s have gone from:
    • Khashoggi left the consulate alive, to
    • He is probably dead but we didn’t kill him, to
    • We’ll investigate this fully, to
    • He was killed by our security team but it was his fault because he started a fistfight (against 15 security guys, uh-huh), but
    • The Saudi prince knew nothing of this plan.
  1. U.S. intelligence says evidence points to the Saudi prince being involved, but it’s circumstantial right now.
  2. This comes at a critical time for the administration because we need Saudi Arabian oil to make the sanctions against Iran work.
  3. Saudi Arabia has apprehended several suspects. Four suspects are linked to the Saudi prince’s security detail.
  4. And is this always going to be their comeback? Republican lawmakers and pundits begin smearing Khashoggi to dampen criticism of Trump’s handling of the situation. They bring up his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and say he’s a friend of terrorists and “not a good guy.”
  5. Trump says we have an investigation on the ground in Turkey, but U.S. officials are unaware of any such effort.
  6. While Trump appears to be defending Saudi Arabia publicly, privately he has doubts they’re telling the truth.
  7. Germany halts all weapons deals with Saudi Arabia until further notice.
  8. The UN warns that Yemen is facing its worst famine in history because Saudi Arabia continues to launch airstrikes against them. We’re looking at over 12 million people facing starvation, which will only add to the global refugee crisis. Yemen is trapped in the middle of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
  9. The Taliban wipes out all of the top leadership in Kandahar Province in an assassination strike.
  10. Trump says the U.S. will withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a Cold War arms control agreement with Russia. Trump says that Russia is violating the treaty and that it prevents us from developing weapons to combat China’s new weaponry.
  11. Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the treaty’s signers, says this decision is reckless and “not the work of a great mind.”
  12. Trump suspends yet another military exercise with South Korea. It seems they’re trying to further nuclear negotiations with North Korea.

Family Separation:

  1. The U.S. still has 245 children in custody who were separated from their parents. The parents of 175 of them were deported, and, of those, 125 have chosen to remain in the U.S. and request asylum. That leaves 50 kids with deported parents, and another 70 who haven’t been reunited.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump threatens to cancel aid to Honduras if they don’t stop the caravan of migrants headed our way. Because cutting off a lifeline for the country will really make people want to stay there, right?
  2. He also threatens to send the U.S. military to the border to meet the migrants, and then threatens to throw out the renegotiated NAFTA if Mexico let’s them through.
  3. The Trump administration looks at redefining gender so that people can only be defined by their biological sex at birth based on genitalia. I wonder what they think they’ll do for those born intersex? At any rate, it’s pretty easy to make the argument that transgender people are the most targeted group under this administration. Right up there with black and brown asylum seekers.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump visits the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Florida and Georgia. The death toll from the storm is up to 36. FEMA is still on the ground helping the hardest hit areas, but certain areas are pulling back on food and water in an effort to get back to a sense of normalcy. Some areas still don’t have electricity, though.
  2. Climate change is expected to dramatically increase the price of beer this century because drought will affect our ability to grow barley.
  3. Trump says at a Cabinet meeting that California better get its act together to fight forest fires, or he’ll stop giving the state federal funding for either fire prevention programs or disaster relief (it’s hard to tell which he’s referring to).
  4. Trump says he has a natural instinct for science, which is how he knows climate change isn’t manmade. Like many who deny manmade climate change, he says the climate goes back and forth, and back and forth. He also says that even scientists are divided on it, which really isn’t true.
  5. Trump claims to be an environmentalist despite rescinding regulations designed to protect the environment.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Another department store bites the dust when Sears declares bankruptcy. Trump says it’s been mismanaged for years; Trump’s Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin was on the company’s board from 2005 to 2016.
  2. Interesting tidbit: Sears CEO Eddie Lampert is an Ayn Rand follower, and has been trying to run the company under the principles she espoused.
  3. The numbers are in for the end of Trump’s first full fiscal year. The federal deficit expanded to $779 billion, which is up 17% from last year when it was $667 billion. (OK. That last digit is actually a 6, but I can’t bring myself to type the devil numbers. Ask me about the sump pump incident.) The deficit as a percent of GDP also rose. Taxes received from businesses dropped by 31% from the previous year, while taxes received from individuals rose 6%.
  4. So the deficit increased by $113 billion, and federal income from corporations went down by about $92 billion.
  5. This is the largest deficit since 2012, when we were still recovering from the Great Recession.
  6. Spending only increased by 3%, but still Mick Mulvaney claims the reason for the large deficit is out-of-control spending.
  7. Mitch McConnell says the increased deficit isn’t because of the Republican tax bill, but it’s because of Medicare, Medicaid, and social security (all of which are supposed to come out of a separate fund, by the way). The tax bill is predicted to add nearly $1 trillion to the debt next year. So basically after passing a $1.5 trillion tax cut and increasing the budget for the DoD, he says the only thing we can do is cut assistance to the needy and senior citizens. Also, since McConnell became majority leader nearly four years ago, the deficit has increased 77%.
  8. In contrast, the Treasury Department says deficit growth is because of the of the tax cuts, bipartisan spending increases, and rising interest payments.
  9. In response to the news, Trump announces he’ll ask each of his cabinet members to cut the budget for their respective agency by 5%.
  10. On the plus side, job openings hit a record high in August.
  11. Looking back over the year, big banks did the best as a result of the GOP tax reform. They saw the most profit of any other industry.
  12. Volvo says it might move some of their current U.S. manufacturing operations to China.
  13. China has been importing around 330,000 barrels per day of U.S. crude oil. Those imports were down to 0 in August.
  14. Mitch McConnell says he won’t bring the renegotiated NAFTA deal to a vote until next year.
  15. China criticizes the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Universal Postal Union, especially with the trade wars going on. Trumps says the UPU, which is 144 years old, makes it easier for Chinese nationals to ship illicit drugs to the U.S.

Elections:

  1. DHS reports an increase in the number of cyber attacks attempted on U.S. election databases, and they don’t know who’s behind it. Yay for safe and secure elections.
  2. Georgia uses amateur handwriting analysis to determine the authenticity of voter registrations and ballots.
  3. Officials in Gwinnett County Georgia have rejected around a third of the absentee ballots cast so far. Over half of those thrown out were from African Americans or Asian Americans. On top of that, officials didn’t notify the voters whose ballots were rejected as required by law. Instead, these voters found out from CNN. Gwinnett is the most diverse and populous county in Georgia.
  4. So far Georgia has purged about 8% of the voters on their rolls.
  5. Officials in Jefferson County Georgia make a group of senior citizens get off the bus that was taking them to vote early. The Senior center was worried that it was a partisan event because a Democrat helped organize the event with a non-partisan voting advocacy group.
  6. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement voice concern about ongoing attempts to interfere with our elections by Russia, China, and Iran—both in the midterms and the 2020 presidential race. But still they’ve seen no signs of them being able to interfere with our actual votes.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Elizabeth Warren announces the results of her DNA test, which show she has Native American ancestry going back 6-10 generations. Trump mocks her; Lindsey Graham mocks her; Fox mocks her. WTH? Who even cares? Why is this a thing?
  2. Also, cue the amateur scientists who estimate that this makes her 1/64 to 1/1024 Native American. Except that’s not how genetics works and for some reason it took days for anyone to talk to an actual geneticist and correct the record. She could have far more than 1/64 Native American DNA or far less than 1/1024.
  3. Trump calls her a complete and total fraud. He refuses to give $1 million to a charity of her choice, even though he said he would if she got a DNA test and it showed Native American heritage. Also, donating the million was his idea, not hers.
  4. Even though Warren says she doesn’t claim tribal affiliation, the chairman of the Cherokee Nation criticizes her use of a DNA test to find out if she does have Native American heritage.
  5. A group of free-press advocates sues Trump to block him from using his office to retaliate against the press. They say that Trump’s threats and use of regulations and enforcement powers for this purpose are unconstitutional.
  6. Trump again praises Montana Republican Representative Greg Gianforte for assaulting a Guardian journalist before his special election last year. “Anybody who can do that kind of body slam, he’s my kind of guy.”
  7. The Trump administration abruptly replaces the acting Inspector General for the Department of the Interior. This is the person who will handle all the current investigations into Ryan Zinke’s potential ethical lapses and she has no investigative experience. But that turns out to be OK, because she resigns shortly thereafter.
  8. The previous Inspector General just released findings that Zinke tried to get around or change policies to justify trips with his wife that were paid for by the taxpayers, including a trip to Turkey.
  9. Don McGahn leaves his post as White House Counsel. He was going to leave later in the fall, but Trump already announced his replacement, Patrick Cipollone. Cipollone was a DOJ lawyer under Bush Sr.
  10. Remember the fire in a Trump Tower condo earlier this year where the guy died? The Trump Organization sues his estate for $90,000 in unpaid maintenance fees.

Polls:

  1. Apparently forgetting the uproar over Obama locking Fox out of one press event, 44% of Republicans think Trump should be able to shut down news agencies for “bad behavior.”
  2. 49% of Trump voters think men face a lot of discrimination in American. In fact, they think men face more discrimination than LGBTQ folks (41%), African-Americans (38%), and women (30%). Cray.
  3. Only 25% of Americans think Kavanaugh told the truth in his hearings. 35% approve of his confirmation and 43% disapprove.

Week 89 in Trump

Posted on October 8, 2018 in Politics, Trump

One of these voted their conscience; two of them pretended to.

I’m so tired. I’m so tired of the Kavanaugh nomination sucking up all the air in the room and igniting everyone’s emotions. I’ve never seen people on both sides so emotionally vested in getting their way on a Supreme Court Nomination. It’s possibly because there’s more at stake right now, and none of our leaders made any effort to quiet down the vitriol. Voters from both sides ended up feeling unheard. Victims ended up feeling unheard. What was really painful was to have friends share their sex abuse stories with me, which was made all the more painful by friends who dismiss the claims of victims. It’s time to take a step back, regroup, and look at what we really believe in. Can we continue to let boys be boys while slut shaming the women those boys take advantage of? I just don’t think that’s gonna fly anymore.

Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox. Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Here’s a sad statement of the current politics of partisanship. When Jeff Flake was asked if he could’ve requested an FBI investigation and delay in Kavanaugh’s hearing if he was running again, he said “Of course not!”
  2. In case you were wondering if there’s any traction on making Trump’s tax returns or financial statements public, last week 21 Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee voted against releasing any of that information. That’s OK, because this week the New York Times beat them to the punch. More later.

Russia:

  1. Before the 2016 elections, several Republican Trump critics were victims of attempted hacking by Russian operatives. The FBI now says that the scope of that investigation has become greater than just computer intrusion, and they refer the case to Robert Mueller’s team.
  2. The DOJ indicts seven members of the Russian military, charging that they hacked into drug tests for Olympic athletes and leaked the information. This seems to have been in retaliation for all the investigations into Russian doping that resulted in several Russian athletes being unable to compete.
  3. Paul Manafort starts meeting with Mueller’s team as part of his plea agreement.
  4. Randy Credico, who was Roger Stone’s middleman between him and Julian Assange, says he’ll plead the fifth in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
  5. Two money laundering experts from Mueller’s team have left and gone back to their regular practices. Mueller team now has 13 staffers.
  6. Russian trolls and Russian TV have been supporting the Kavanaugh confirmation.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump told Michael Cohen to get a restraining order to prevent Stormy Daniels from talking to the press. Trump told Cohen to coordinate this with his son, Eric, who then asked a Trump Organization lawyer to draw up the papers.
  2. The New York Times publishes a lengthy article detailing the alleged methods, both legal and not so much, that the Trump family used to avoid paying hundreds of millions in taxes. Note: I haven’t read the full article yet, and I know there are some sketchy loopholes that blur the lines between legal and illegal tax avoidance.
  3. Here are some claims in the article:
    • Trump’s father gave him today’s equivalent of $413 million over the decades. Only a big deal because Trump says he’s a self-made billionaire, having only received $1 million in startup money from his father.
    • The Trumps transferred over $1 billion to their children, and paid a tax rate of about 5% on that.
    • Trump started earning $20,000 a year from his father’s company at age 3 in 1950.
    • After college, he received around $200,000 per year. This increased to about $2.5 million a year in his 40s. (Note: The NYT converted the numbers to today’s dollars; I converted them back for a little reality check. So these are approximations.)
    • Fred Trump also lent Donald Trump $60.7 million, most of which was never paid back. Fred bailed Donald out of a few potential bankruptcies, including making an illegal loan under New Jersey gaming laws. Fred provided the collateral for bank loans to Donald when he got into financial trouble.
    • When Fred Trump was ailing, Donald Trump tried to get him to change his will and to make him sole executor of the estate. At this point, it seems Fred no longer trusted Trump not to bankrupt the company and refused the changes.
    • The Trump children created a shell company to siphon money from Fred Trump’s estate into their own estates to avoid taxes. Family companies for managing family estates are not unusual, and they come with their own legal tax loopholes. But this company used questionable tactics like padded invoices to justify expenditures.
    • The family created a grantor-retained annuity trust, or GRAT, to transfer assets. Also completely legal, but in this case they severely undervalued the assets that were transferred in order to avoid taxes.
  1. After publication of the above article, New York Tax Department considers opening an investigation into the allegations. Even if the statute of limitations has expired, civil fines can still be levied for uncollected taxes.
  2. A lawyer for Trump says there was no “fraud or tax evasion” and that any actions taken were on the advice of financial professionals.
  3. Fun fact: If you’re wondering what led to the New York Times’ report, the story opened up when a reporter came across a filing from Maryanne Trump Barry, Trump’s sister. When she was being confirmed by the Senate to her judgeship, she included a document in her filing that showed a $1 million dollar contribution from what turned out to be a shell company.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Tom Cotton says they’re opening an investigation into Dianne Feinstein’s handling of Christine Blasey Ford’s letter and into Blasey Ford’s lawyers. Mitch McConnell echoes the call for investigation.
  2. Harvard cancels the classes taught by Kavanaugh. Then we hear that he withdrew from teaching, so I’m not sure exactly how that all shook out. Students were circulating a petition against him teaching there.
  3. McConnell says they’ll vote this week on Kavanaugh’s confirmation no matter the results of the investigation, and they do.
  4. At the opening of the FBI investigation into accusations against Kavanaugh, Trump tweets that the FBI can interview anybody they want, but at the time of the tweet, the FBI was still under the limits reported last week (with limits on who they can talk to and which allegations they can investigate). It sounds like Trump did want to give FBI free reign, but White House counsel said that would be disastrous.
    • The FBI didn’t interview either Blasey Ford or Kavanaugh.
    • Several accusers and witnesses request that the FBI interview them and try to get information to the FBI, including texts sent before some accusations came out. None of these are included in the investigation.
    • The above referenced text messages show that Kavanaugh was contacting classmates asking them to deny Ramirez’s accusations before those accusations were made public.
  1. Lindsey Graham tells Trump that if Kavanaugh’s nomination fails, he should renominate him.
  2. Two ethics complaints against Kavanaugh come before the DC District Court, which ironically is overseen by blocked Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. The complaints center around perjury (filed prior to his testimony about sexual misconduct) and partisanship (filed after that testimony).
  3. The DC Court has already forwarded more than a dozen complaints against Kavanaugh to Justice Roberts on the Supreme Court. The DC Court had already dismissed some of the complaints as frivolous, forwarding only those thought to have substance.
  4. It turns out the ABA had questions about Kavanaugh in his 2006 confirmation hearings as well. They downgraded his rating from “well qualified” to just “qualified,” which is still positive. Their change was based on evaluations of Kavanaugh’s temperament, where he was called “unprepared” and “sanctimonious,” and where his ability to be balanced and fair was questioned.
  5. Kavanaugh’s testimony this week even turned some of his long-time friends and colleagues (both Republican and Democrat) against his nomination.
  6. Trump mocks Christine Blasey Ford IN A CAMPAIGN RALLY. I don’t know what’s worse, the way he mocked her or the way the crowd cheered and then yelled “Lock her up!” At any rate, Trump lied about what Blasey Ford could and could not remember, and the crowd ate it up.
  7. Both Jeff Flake and Susan Collins denounce Trump for mocking Blasey Ford.
  8. The GOP accuses Democrats of using and dumping Blasey Ford. Meanwhile, Republicans have been following Trump’s lead by discrediting and mocking her.
  9. Sarah Huckabee Sanders defends Trump in a press briefing the next day, saying that he was only stating the facts.
  10. And then Trump mocks Al Franken for folding like a wet rag when accused of grabbing several women’s butts. This is how Trump feels about people who take responsibility.
  11. 2,400 law professors sign a letter outlining why Kavanaugh shouldn’t be confirmed.
  12. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says Kavanaugh shouldn’t be confirmed. Stevens first supported Kavanaugh, but changed his mind after Kavanaugh’s partisan statements during his testimony this week.
  13. The National Council of Churches calls on Kavanaugh to withdraw.
  14. Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) says Trump should’ve nominated someone else, gave an impassioned speech about the #MeToo movement and sexual assault, and then voted to confirm Kavanaugh.
  15. Kavanaugh writes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal apologizing for his behavior in front of the Senate. He claims he was overcome, even though he read a planned opening statement.
  16. Senators are allowed to view the FBI reports in a sealed room, one at a time and then in groups.
  17. Chuck Grassley releases an executive summary of the FBI report (though I don’t know who wrote the summary). The summary says their interviews provided no corroborating evidence, but Republicans start saying that the interviews refuted Blasey Ford’s account. Tip: Not corroborating something is not the same as refuting it.
  18. Eight Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee ask Chuck Grassley to correct the record when he says that there was no sign of any inappropriate sexual behavior or alcohol abuse in any of the six FBI reports on him. Those Democrats say that information is not accurate. But we’ll never know unless the information becomes public.
  19. Republicans say the FBI report was thorough; Democrats say it was incomplete.
  20. Emotions continue to escalate (I didn’t think they could get much higher than the previous week), and both pro- and anti-Kavanaugh protests pop up across the country. Hundreds of anti-Kavanaugh protestors are arrested in DC. My favorite protest is the kegger they throw outside of Mitch McConnell’s office. I like beer.
  21. Susan Collins and Joe Manchin, who are two of the key votes, say they’ll vote to confirm Kavanaugh. Heidi Heitkamp says she’ll vote no, and Jeff Flake, despite all his reservations, votes yes.
  22. The ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary revisits it’s evaluation of Kavanaugh’s rating based on his temperamental testimony this week.
  23. Trump threatens Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski’s re-election chances, saying that she’ll never recover from her “no” vote (which was actually a “present” vote). Trumps adds that he’s very popular in Alaska.
  24. Trump says it’s a scary time for men and boys right now because of all these accusations. I guess it’s a scary time if you have something to hide.
  25. And after all that turmoil, Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court by the narrowest margin for a Supreme Court Justice in over 130 years. The vote was 50-48. If Manchin would’ve voted no, Mike Pence would’ve come in to cast the deciding vote.
  26. There’s already an effort to drum up support to impeach Kavanaugh, so now’s a good time to remind everyone how hard that is. Even if it gets through the House, it would never pass the threshold in the Senate.
  27. And just a reminder, Blasey Ford still has been unable to return to her home due to threats. Remind me again why victims don’t come forward?

Healthcare:

  1. The EPA proposes loosening restrictions on radiation. Their announcement includes assessments from scientific outliers who say a little radiation could be good for human health. Even though very small amounts of radiation are known to cause cancer.

International:

  1. Mike Pompeo announces that the U.S. is ending the Treaty of Amity, a 1955 treaty with Iran, after the UN tries to use the treaty as a basis for ordering the U.S. to ease up on sanctions for humanitarian goods.
  2. John Bolton later says that the U.S. will also pull out of a dispute resolution protocol from the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. He bases this move on a challenge from the Palestinian Authority of our decision to move our Israel embassy to Jerusalem.
  3. Mike Pence gives a speech at the Hudson institute designed to move American public sentiment against China and to support the idea that they’re trying to meddle in our elections using economics because they don’t like Trump and want a different American president.
  4. The U.S. accuses Russia of building a missile system that could launch nuclear weapons to Europe and Alaska. The development of such a system was banned under a Cold War treaty.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. California has now passed over 1,000 new laws this year, including several aimed at recovering some of the regulations Trump has dissolved at the federal level around issues like net neutrality, energy and climate, gun control, and #MeToo.

Family Separation:

  1. An investigation by the Inspector General of the DHS finds that they never had a centralized database to track the immigrant families that they separated earlier this year. Instead, they were using spreadsheets that they compiled manually from emailed Word documents. That sure explains why they were unable to find family members in their computer system.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Trump administration begins denying visas to same-sex partners of foreign diplomats, saying they must be married in order to receive a visa. Some of these diplomats come from countries where gay marriage is illegal, so they’re unable to get married.
  2. Federal prosecutors charge and arrest four members of the California-based Rise Above Movement for their intent to incite a riot and commit violence at the white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville last year. This group is small but violent, calling themselves an alt-right fight club.
  3. Federal inspectors at the Adelanto detention center in San Bernardino County, CA, find dismal conditions. They find 15 nooses made out of bed sheets hanging in cells, and they find health and dental care severely lacking. Adelanto is part of the GEO Group, a private, for-profit prison company.
  4. I’ve talked before about steps taken by the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from Sudan, Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nigeria. This week, a federal judge grants a preliminary injunction that blocks any deportations for now. TPS protections will continue while a legal case is decided, giving temporary relief to over 300,000 people who were threatened with deportation.
  5. Even though Congress placed a hold on the funds, the Trump administration moved forward with plans to give Mexico $20 million to deport immigrants so they can’t make it to our borders. Despite the hold, Trump transferred the funds anyway. Mexico says they never approved of this plan.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A federal court holds that the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is in compliance with the law. Obama created the massive monument off of the New England coast in the Atlantic Ocean.
  2. Denmark says they’ll ban the sale of new fossil-fueled cars by 2030.
  3. California allocates $800 million to be able to store energy generated by solar panels to have more electricity available from solar in the nighttime hours.
  4. The EPA rewrites its rules about what scientific studies can be used in making public health policy against the wishes of its scientific advisors. Proprietary information can no longer be used, which will exclude findings from patients participating in private-sector studies.
  5. William Nordhaus and Paul Romer win the Nobel Prize for Economics. Nordhaus has been working in climate change’s effects on economy since the 1970s, and his model is widely used to show the relationship between the climate and the economy.
  6. A UN report on climate change expects an increase in global temperatures of 2.7 degrees F much sooner than previously thought. This would intensify sea level rise, droughts, wildfires, and poverty. They call for a 45% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and for halting them by 2050. Trump has said he’ll increase greenhouse gas emissions, though we’re already halfway to that 2.7 degree rise.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Amazon announces that they’ll start paying all of their employees at least $15 per hour.
  2. It turns out that most of the changes to NAFTA were already included in TPP. Trump and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly denounced those trade deals as two of the worst deals ever, but they’re calling the USMCA, basically a mashup of the NAFTA and TPP, one of the best deals ever. The dairy concessions from Canada are probably the biggest difference.
    • That means we could’ve pretty much gotten the same deal without alienating many of our trading partners and without giving China the extra trading power they obtained from the hole we left behind by cancelling the TPP.
  1. Unemployment hits record lows at 3.7%.
  2. The U.S. trade deficit expanded to 6.4% in August. Despite all the tariffs, the deficit was $53.2 billion, the highest level in six months.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Wikipedia says its authors shouldn’t use Breitbart and InfoWars as news sources on its pages. They call Breitbart unreliable, and say InfoWars is a “conspiracy theorist and fake news website.”
  2. In a press conference, Trump tells a female reporter “I know you’re not thinking. You never do,” while a group of men behind him chuckle and smirk.
  3. In the official White House transcript of the event, they change the word “thinking” to “thanking.” Mm-hmm…
  4. The Pentagon screening facility finds two envelopes suspected of contain ricin, and the Secret Service says that another suspicious envelope was addressed to Trump. A man was arrested in Utah in relation to the envelopes.
  5. The death toll in Indonesia from the earthquake and resulting tsunami reaches 2,000. Thousands are still missing.
  6. Trump falls back on that old tired narrative, claiming that Kavanaugh protestors are being paid by Soros. To which I say “Where’s my damn check, George ?”

Polls:

  1. Worldwide, 7 in 10 people have no confidence in Trump. Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Xi Jinping, and even Vladimir Putin all received higher confidence ratings.
  2. 37% of Americans have confidence in the Supreme Court, down from 60% in the 80s.
  3. This Quinnipiac poll on support for Kavanaugh’s confirmation is hard to distill, so here’s a link to the results, broken down by demographics. It’s pretty interesting.
  4. 41% of Americans oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination, with 33% supporting it.
  5. 45% of Americans believe Blasey Ford; 33% believe Kavanaugh.
  6. 56% of Republicans would still consider voting for a candidate accused of sexual harassment; 81% of Democrats say they’d definitely not.

Week 86 in Trump

Posted on September 17, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Hurricane Florence hits the East Coast hard this week. I’m not blaming the victim, but North Carolina probably could’ve been more prepared for the flooding. In 2012, they didn’t like a scientific study outlining the predicted sea level rise for their coasts. So their state legislature passed a law that says “no rule, policy, or planning guideline that defines a rate of sea-level change for regulatory purposes shall be adopted.” Sea levels in some areas of the East Coast have been rising about an inch a year, and climate scientists predict that hurricanes will continue to become stronger with more rain. Coastal areas have no choice but to develop climate change mitigation policies, because even if we completely halt greenhouse gas emissions, the climate will continue to heat up for a while.

Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms ended the city’s ties with ICE. The city will no longer hold detainees in city jails, but will help support families that were separated and then reunited.

Russia:

  1. Trump is expected to declassify documents around the FISA warrant against Carter Page and around Bruce Ohr’s contact with Christopher Steele. He thinks doing this will taint Mueller’s investigation, but he should tread cautiously. When they’ve leaked supporting documents in the past, it’s only bolstered Mueller’s case.
  2. The lawyers for the DNC lawsuit against Russian operatives say that Joseph Mifsud has gone missing. Mifsud is the Maltese professor who told George Papadopoulos that Russians had dirt on Hillary.
  3. After being found guilty on eight counts in his first trial, Paul Manafort agrees to a plea deal with Mueller in his second court case. He pleads guilty to cheating the IRS out of $15 million and to lying to cover it up.
  4. Manafort had been charged with six additional crimes, which could still be brought up later at the state level. He did admit in his plea deal to committing every crime he was charged of, including those that resulted in a hung jury in the first trial.
  5. The plea agreement also describes Manafort’s lobbying activities for the Ukraine. In the process of trying to sway government and public support for specific Ukraine politicians, he planted “some stink” on political opponents, smeared Obama cabinet members, and got a foreign official to deliver a message directly to Obama.
  6. Manafort admits to manipulating the American government and media to make millions for himself.
  7. As part of the plea deal, the government will confiscate $47 million in real estate, financial accounts, and insurance policies.
  8. Manafort is now a cooperating witness in Mueller’s investigation and has already been talking.
  9. A Russian activist and member of the punk protest group Pussy Riot is hospitalized and appears to have been poisoned.
  10. Every Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee votes down Democrats’ request for all documents and recordings related to Trump’s summit with Putin. Even our top intelligence official Dan Coates says he doesn’t know what was said in that summit.
  11. A batch of newly released text message between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page show them discussing how to shape media perception with all the leaks that were going on during their investigations. The texts also show they used authorized means (the FBI National Press Office) to correct misinformation.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A federal court rules that Betsy DeVos must implement Obama-era student loan forgiveness rules. The rules protect students who’ve been defrauded by colleges that don’t deliver on their promises. DeVos has delayed putting those rules into effect with the hope that she could eliminate the rules.
  2. The hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh hits another snag when Dianne Feinstein refers an allegation of sexual abuse against Kavanaugh to the FBI. The alleged abuse happened when he was in high school.
    • The victim wanted to remain anonymous, but comes forward once rumors start to spread. Members of the political right mock and threaten her, including Donald Trump Jr.
    • Notes from the victim’s therapist back up her allegation, and she’s taken a polygraph test.
  1. In response, Republicans release a letter signed by 65 women Kavanaugh knew in high school saying that he always treated them with the utmost respect. That was pretty quick work to find all those women, so we can only assume they saw this coming.
  2. The Senate Judiciary Committee delays their vote on Kavanaugh for a week.
  3. The Government Accountability Office releases a report saying that the DOJ isn’t prosecuting people who lie on their background checks in order to illegally buy guns. In the same period that the DOJ prosecuted 12 cases, Pennsylvania alone prosecuted 472.

Healthcare:

  1. Lawyers begin their arguments in a lawsuit brought by 20 mostly conservative states to completely scrap the ACA. The lawsuit was brought after Congress ended the individual mandate, and would put an end to protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
  2. The Urban Institute estimates that 17 million people will lose their insurance if the lawsuit succeeds. Almost half of all non-elderly Americans have a pre-existing condition.
  3. Patient groups sue the Trump administration over it’s expansion of short-term insurance policies. These insurance policies do not have to comply with the ACA’s protections for pre-existing conditions, preventive care, out-of-pocket limits, and so on.
  4. From 2010 to 2016, the number of uninsured Americans dropped by about half. It’s remained steady since then, with slight rises.

International:

  1. The Trump administration closes the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s mission office in DC. They say it’s because Palestine isn’t negotiating peace with Israel right now.
  2. John Bolton threatens that the U.S. will retaliate if the ICC acts on threats to prosecute Americans in Afghanistan for war crimes.
  3. Remember those weird brain injuries suffered by U.S. diplomats and personnel in Cuba and China? Intelligence officials now suspect that Russia is behind them.
  4. Trump cancels a planned visit to Ireland due to “scheduling conflicts.” But the announcement was made after there were mass protests against Trump‘s climate policies.
  5. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has begun rebuilding the State Department, which was decimated under Rex Tillerson. Pompeo is trying to bring back ex-diplomats and build up his ranks again.

Family Separation:

  1. Jeff Sessions defends his zero-tolerance policy toward asylum seekers as not only legitimate, but also moral and decent. Over 400 children separated at the border are still without their parents. And I wonder if he’s seen any of the videos of the children and parents describing their harrowing experience.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Sessions blames the number of asylum seekers at our southern border on Obama-era policies, ignoring the growing violence in the countries of origin.
  2. We learn that the Trump administration diverted $200 million from other DHS agencies to ICE to support ICE’s cost overruns due to housing and transporting such a high number of immigrant detainees. This includes $10 million from FEMA just before Hurricane Florence hit the East Coast. The cost of separating families isn’t just emotional; it’s hitting us all in the pocketbook.
  3. Congress has repeatedly warned Trump about ICE’s overspending and lack of financial discipline.
  4. And then ICE asks Congress for an extra $1 billion in funding so they can ramp up deportations.
  5. The U.S. is now detaining the highest number of immigrant children ever recorded, with a total of 12,800 children. This is 10,000 more than May 2017. (Note that these are mostly minors who crossed the border alone and were not separated from the parents.)
  6. Christian refugees are getting caught up in Trump’s efforts to stifle immigration to the U.S. The number of Christian refugees allowed into the U.S. is down 40% from last year.
  7. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) tells a group of students that it might be better to be raised in an orphanage than by LGBTQ parents.
  8. The Department of Education vacates a 2014 decision under Obama and reopens a seven-year-old investigation into whether Rutgers University allowed a hostile environment for Jewish students.
  9. The cartoon “Thomas & Friends” introduces two new female characters, one of whom is African. So NRA’s Dana Loesch thinks that’s ridiculous, and shows images of the Thomas trains dressed up in KKK robes. IDK why she’s getting so worked up over a kids’ show.

Climate/EPA:

  1. After an independent study finds that there were over 3,000 deaths in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria, Trump says those numbers are a lie and that Democrats are just trying to make him look bad.
  2. Hurricane Florence leaves 23 dead (so far) in North Carolina. Florence drops record rainfalls, up to 40 inches in some areas. At the same time, a typhoon leaves 100s dead in southeast Asia.
  3. Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit founded by a 24-year-old, deploys a 2000-foot floating boom designed to round up plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean. This is a test run to see if the boom performs as expected. Their aim is to clean up half of the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch in five years. That means collecting around 44,000 tons of debris while minimizing the accidental trapping of marine life.
  4. The EPA proposes weakening Obama-era requirements for monitoring and fixing methane leaks. This is on top of the Department of the Interior working to repeal Obama’s limits on methane emissions for oil drilling.
  5. The previous head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, is in talks with Alliance Resource Partners CEO Joseph W. Craft about becoming a consultant. Alliance Resource Partners is a coal mining company.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Ford cancels production of the Focus Active in China due to Trump’s tariffs, and then defies Trump when he urges them to move production to the U.S. They say it’s not cost-effective enough.
  2. Trump’s task force on analyzing the USPS delivers their report, but sources say Trump won’t make it public until after the election. I don’t know why.
  3. The GOP is creating their second tax cut bill, which would make some of the cuts from the last tax bill permanent. The CBO says that change alone will add $1.9 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. The Tax Policy Center says that the bill will add an additional $3.15 trillion in the decade after that.
  4. Marco Rubio says the latest GOP tax plan would necessitate cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
  5. The Tax Policy Center finds that the tax law gives far larger tax breaks to the richest among us (averaging $40,000 per year) instead of the middle class (averaging $980 per year).
  6. The plan is not likely to pass the Senate with the required 60 votes.
  7. Trump decides to impose his threatened tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods. More than 1,000 products will be affected, including appliances, furniture, toys, and more. The effects should hit just in time for holiday shopping.
  8. This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the start of the Great Recession. We are inundated with analyses of what happened and how we handled it.
    • Most analysts seem to think it won’t happen again thanks to financial reforms that were put in place, like Dodd-Frank and Base III.
    • The biggest risks are the rollbacks of parts of Dodd-Frank, debt levels in emerging markets, and cyber threats.
  1. House and Senate negotiators come to a funding agreement that should avoid a shutdown at the end of the month. The agreement includes restrictions on Trump’s plans for reorganizing the government (his 32 proposals issued in June). This is the first time Congress has formally blocked those changes.
  2. The amount of money that companies have repatriated to the U.S. as a result of the tax cuts is a mere fraction of what Trump predicted. He said companies would bring back over $4 trillion, and close to $5 trillion. But so far they’ve only brought back $143 billion with $37 billion more planned. Two-thirds of the returned money came from Cisco and Gilead Sciences.
  3. Median household income grew for the third straight year, with most of the benefit going to white Americans and men.

Elections:

  1. Obama is back on the campaign trail, and Trump reacts by tweeting out a bunch of misstatements about the economy and jobs. He then has his chief economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, do a press conference to defend him. Hassett uses some misleading charts to back up Trump’s assertions. You can easily chart economic data using the Federal Reserve Economic Data site. (Note: This is not to say that Trump doesn’t deserve any credit for the economy; just pointing out that Obama deserves it, too).
  2. George W. Bush is out on the campaign trail too, stumping for Republican candidates. This has to be the first time two former presidents are out campaigning.
  3. Florida Representative Ron DeSantis resigns from Congress to campaign full time in his run for Governor.
  4. Trump signs an executive order authorizing sanctions against any foreign country, business, or person who tries to interfere in our elections.
  5. An audio recording surfaces that shows the NRA might have violated campaign laws by giving Montana Senator Jon Tester’s opponent advance notice of their funding efforts to defeat Tester. The NRA cannot coordinate ad buys with a federal campaign.
  6. A judge rules that the Americans for Prosperity Foundation must release the names of their donors to the California Secretary of State per California law.
  7. 75% of the dark money spent in recent U.S. elections came from just 15 companies, and those same 15 companies are funding the 2018 elections as well. This is a direct result of the Citizens United decision. The two largest funders by far are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Crossroads GPS. Here they are, along with their political leanings and funding, where available.
    • 45Committee: right, largely funded by Sheldon Adelson
    • 60 Plus Association: right, partly funded by the Kochs
    • American Action Network: right
    • Americans for Job Security: right
    • Americans for Prosperity: right, Charles and David Koch
    • Americans for Tax Reform: right, run by Grover Norquist
    • American Future Fund: right, once part of the Koch network but got kicked out
    • Crossroads GPS: right, founded by Karl Rove with large contributions from Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson
    • National Rifle Association: mostly right, funded by gun owners and manufacturers
    • U.S. Chamber of Commerce: typically right, funded by businesses
    • National Association of Realtors: mix of right and left, funded by realtors
    • League of Conservation Voters: typically left, focused on environment
    • Planned Parenthood Action Fund: typically left, focused on family planning and reproductive health issues
    • VoteVets Action Fund: left, funded by multiple sources
    • Patriot Majority USA: left

Miscellaneous:

  1. The DHS inspector general is investigating whether FEMA administrator Brock Long misused government vehicles. On the scandal scale, this seems pretty minor.
  2. Facebook allows a right-wing magazine, the Weekly Standard, to fact check articles (along with non-partisan organizations like Snopes and Politifact, but no left-learning ones). The first thing the Weekly Standard did was censor a negative story about Brett Kavanaugh and redirect readers to their own site.
  3. Trump achieves the dubious honor of telling over 5,000 lies or misleading statements since taking office.
  4. Retired Admiral Bill McRaven resigns from the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board. McRaven has criticized Trump for revoking John Brennan’s security clearance.
  5. It looks like Facebook’s efforts to crack down on trolls, bots, and false news stories is working. They’re reporting lower user engagement with such posts. The downside is that they all seem to be moving over to Twitter, where engagement is higher.
  6. FEMA says it will test a new “Presidential Alert” system that would let Trump send personal text alerts to most U.S. cell phones.
  7. The president’s first tweet on the morning of the 18th anniversary of 9/11 is him defending himself in the Russia investigation and attacking the FBI. But a few hours later he tweets, “17 years since September 11th!” Getting off Air Force One on his way to honor the victims of Flight 93, he pumps his fists in the air.

Week 84 in Trump

Posted on September 10, 2018 in Politics, Trump

This week was all about saying goodbye to Senator John McCain. I don’t remember politics without him being in the thick of it. In planning his services, he gave Trump some parting shots, excluding him from the memorials and final funeral and enlisting politicians from all sides in a final show of working both sides of the aisle.

Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. 16 states filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to rule that the 1964 Civil Rights Act doesn’t cover rights for the LGBTQ community and therefore you can fire someone based on their sexual orientation or their gender identity. Or deny them housing. Or refuse to serve them. Or…

Russia:

  1. The judge grants a brief delay in Paul Manafort’s second trial because his lawyers haven’t had time to recover from his first trial. Remember, they could have done this all in one trial, but Manafort chose to have two trials instead.
  2. Manafort’s legal team was in negotiations with Mueller to avoid a second trial, but those negotiations fell apart.
  3. Earlier this month, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes travelled to the UK to dig up dirt on Christopher Steele. Nunes tried to meet with leaders of British intelligence agencies, but they were wary of Nunes’ intentions; so he ended up meeting with the deputy national security advisor, Madeline Alessandri.
  4. Trump tweets that China hacked Clinton’s emails and that they got classified info. That was just little false info he picked up from the Daily Caller.
  5. Trump accuses NBC of editing interviews with him. He’s specifically pointing at his interview with Lester Holt when he admitted that he had the Russia investigation in mind when he fired Comey. If there were any merit to the accusation, you’d think he would’ve brought it up when the interview aired.
  6. Now we know why Trump is working so hard to discredit DOJ lawyer Bruce Ohr. Ohr told lawmakers that two years ago, he met with Christopher Steele who told him that he thought Russia had leverage over Trump (or in his words, Russia had him over a barrel).
  7. Michael Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, is backing down from his claim that Cohen knows that Trump Sr. knew ahead of time about Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russian lawyers in 2016.
  8. George Papadopoulos accepts his plea deal and pleads guilty to lying to the FBI. He had previously been considering backing out of the deal.
  9. Sam Patten, a former associate of Paul Manafort and a former employee of Cambridge Analytica, agrees to a plea deal and to cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. He pleads guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent and lying to a Senate committee.
  10. Trump says that the Supreme Court Chief Justice should tell the FISA court to investigate the DOJ and FBI over their FISA requests during the 2016 campaign.
  11. Trump says he should get personally involved if the FBI and DOJ don’t do their job, accusing them of being biased against Republicans. Even though many of them are themselves Republicans.
  12. We’re coming up to 60 days before the election, so Rudy Giuliani says Mueller has to stop investigating. Which isn’t true since this isn’t a hard and fast rule. Even if it were a hard rule, Mueller could continue his investigation behind closed doors right up through the election as long as he doesn’t publicize information.
  13. Mueller says he’ll accept some answers from Trump in writing. Giuliani says they won’t be providing any answers to questions about obstruction of justice.

Legal Fallout:

  1. GOP Members of Congress circulate a spreadsheet itemizing the things they think Democrats might investigate if they win the House in November. Those things include:
    • Trump’s tax returns
    • Trump Organization, specifically around the emoluments clause.
    • Trump’s dealings with Russia and his preparation for the meeting with Putin
    • The Stormy Daniels payment
    • Trump’s firings of James Comey and of U.S. attorneys
    • The transgender ban in the military
    • Steven Mnuchin’s business dealings
    • The use of personal email by White House staff
    • Abused perks, mostly by cabinet members like Scott Pruitt, Ben Carson, and Ryan Zinke
    • That time he discussed classified information at a public dinner at Mar-a-Lago
    • Whether Jared Kushner is in compliance with ethics laws
    • Firing the EPA board of scientific counselors
    • The Muslim ban
    • The family separation policy and the failure to reunite separated families
    • The response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico
    • Election security and hacking attempts
    • Security clearances
  1. New York City fines Jared Kushner’s family business once again. This time, the fine is $210,000 for falsifying building permits. This brings the total the company’s been fined over the past few years to over $500,000.
  2. The above leads to the DCCC issuing warnings to other Democratic candidates about being doxxed.
  3. Lawyers for GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter accuse federal prosecutors of rushing to indict his client. Interesting tact, since they’ve been accusing prosecutors of dragging out this investigation over two years.
  4. Trump blames the DOJ for allowing the indictment of both Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins, two “very popular Republican Congressman” (according to Trump). He complained that these would’ve been two easy GOP wins. I guess it doesn’t matter if they might be criminals.
  5. An inspector general reports that Trump participated in a decision to cancel a 10-year effort to develop a new FBI headquarters in the suburbs of Maryland or Virginia. The plan now is to develop the headquarters right across the street from Trump’s hotel in DC, which turns out to be more expensive. Government employees were told not to talk about anything Trump said about this.
  6. According to a recorded conversation, Michael Cohen and Trump tried to buy up all the damaging information the National Enquirer had on him and was storing in their vaults.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Chuck Schumer makes a deal with Mitch McConnell to fast-track 15 of Trump’s lower court judicial nominees. We don’t know yet what he got in return, if anything. Unless he did it just so his Senators could have some time to campaign.
  2. A judge in Texas allows a defamation lawsuit against Infowars’ Alex Jones to move forward. The suit was brought by parents of Sandy Hook victims who’ve been harassed and further victimized by Jones’ supporters.
  3. Trump refuses to release over 100,000 pages of Brett Kavanaugh’s records during the time he worked in the White House under George W. Bush. Trump cites executive privilege as a reason.
  4. Marches and protests against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court continue this week. 7 in 10 Americans are pro-choice, and don’t want him confirmed.
  5. Trump reconsiders firing Jeff Sessions. Again.

Healthcare:

  1. An appeals court rules that Alabama can’t ban “dilation & evacuation” abortions after 15 weeks. Note that over 90% of abortions do occur before 15 weeks so don’t use that method.
  2. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) introduces legislation with 13 other Democrats aimed at reducing the racial disparities in maternity care and deaths in the U.S. Currently there are about 40 deaths out of 100,000 live births for black women versus 12 for white women.

International:

  1. The Trump administration announces plans to cut all U.S. funding for the UN program that provides aid to Palestinian refugees. It’s pretty amazing that there have been Palestinian refugees for over 50 years now.
  2. We learn that Trump’s last meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe turned sour when Trump said he remembers Pearl Harbor and then criticized Japan’s economy and our trade deficit with them. Up to now, the two seemed to have a good working relationship.
  3. Trump blames China for the lack of progress in the negotiations with North Korea. He says China is applying pressure on North Korea.
  4. Trump announces that joint U.S. – South Korea military exercises will be temporarily suspended as a gesture of goodwill toward North Korea.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. California’s legislature passes a bill raising the age for buying assault weapons from 18 to 21. The bill also limits gun purchases to one per month per person.
  2. California passes net neutrality laws. The bill brings back the FCC guidelines put in place under Obama, but only for California.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Will the ways in which we can push Hispanics out of the country never end? Now the U.S. is denying passports to people with U.S. birth certificates, or even revoking them for people who already have them. The problem arises from cases in the 1990’s where some midwives admitted to falsifying birth documents, and now anyone born to a midwife is suspect. Some have been detained and some are in deportation proceedings. Even though there is no proof that they were NOT born here.
  2. Some passports were denied under Bush and Obama for the same reason, but a lawsuit ended the practice in Obama’s first year as president.
  3. California signs a bill into law overhauling its money bail system. The bill mostly gets rid of money bail and instead would use a system of probation departments to analyze flight risk and risks to the community. Opponents of money bail say this still won’t fix the problem.
  4. We’re on day 14 of the 19-day prison strike. Prisoners have stopped eating and working to protest unsafe and unjust conditions. Some immigrant detainees have joined in on the strike.
  5. The mother of a toddler who died after being separated and then reunited files a lawsuit against the city where her daughter was detained. Allegedly, the child became ill at the detention center, wasn’t given adequate medial care, and was released with a clean bill of health by a nurse who didn’t have the authority. Once reunited, the mother tried to see a doctor but was turned away several times.
  6. And finally some justice. A jury convicts a police officer in Texas of killing Jordan Edwards, an unarmed, 15-year-old black teen. The officer gets a 15-year sentence.
  7. A judge rules against Texas and other states trying to end DACA, saying they waited too long to file suit. The ruling doesn’t protect DACA long term, though, and the judge leaves an opening for the states to file again, saying that DACA is likely illegal.
  8. The backlog is growing for immigrants who have applied for citizenship and are still being processed. Part of the slowdown is a longer questionnaire created under Obama, and part is longer delays for getting interview appointments. Part of it could also be an increase in the number people trying to get their citizenship.
  9. The family of Mollie Tibbetts, who was allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant, asks people to stop politicizing her death. Specifically, they say Mollie would be against using this as an excuse to hate undocumented immigrants.
  10. Ron DeSantis, who is the Republican nominee for governor of Florida, was an administrator of a Facebook page that features conspiracy theories as well as racist and anti-Muslim rhetoric. The page also attacks Parkland shooting survivors. Remember, this is the guy who said “we don’t want to monkey this up” by electing a black governor.
  11. 16 states have introduced legislation to restrict the use of non-disclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases.

Climate/EPA

  1. The California legislature passes a bill that would require the state to get its energy from 100% carbon-free sources by 2045. Several other states are considering the same, and Hawaii has already passed it into law. Orlando, FL, has the same goal for 2050.
  2. The BLM publishes a notice of intent to open 1.6 million acres of publicly held land in California to fracking and oil drilling. There’s been a moratorium on leasing federal land in California to oil companies.
  3. Despite the governor of Puerto Rico recently raising the official Hurricane Maria death toll to 2,975 (up from the previous 64), Trump says the administration’s response to the disaster was fantastic.
  4. The EPA considers reversing Obama-era limits on mercury emissions from coal power plants. The health effects of mercury exposure can include tremors, neurological damage, emotional changes, headaches, impaired mental performance, and muscle weakness, among others.
  5. According to a new study, hotter temperatures caused by climate change will make insects hungrier, causing diseases to spread faster and ruining crops.
  6. Over 100 schools in Detroit don’t have drinking water after tests find elevated levels of lead.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The U.S. and Mexico reach a preliminary agreement to update NAFTA, possibly without Canada. Trump wants to drop the name NAFTA because he calls it the worst trade deal in history and says it has a bad connotation.
  2. The TPP, the Obama trade pact that Trump disbanded, was basically a renegotiation of NAFTA but with nine additional countries. TPP and Trump’s renegotiated NAFTA are very similar with the exception of the North American auto industry. The updated NAFTA has tighter restrictions and better worker protections than TPP.
  3. Trump says the deal will be good for farmers and for manufacturers. (Note: I haven’t found a good analysis to verify this yet.)
  4. Stocks jump on Trump’s announcement that we’ve reached a trade deal with Mexico, calming down some of the uncertainty over trade. The NASDAQ hits an all-time high on the news.
  5. Mexico is a little more subdued about the agreement, saying that we’re continuing to make progress.
  6. Canada misses Trump’s Friday deadline to agree to the new terms of NAFTA. Both sides say negotiations are ongoing, though. Trump says he won’t give in to any of Canada’s requests and that this will all be on our terms.
  7. Seth Frotman, the student loan ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, resigns in protest. He says that the bureau has lost sight of its mission to protect consumers, and specifically that they no longer protect students’ financial futures and are openly hostile to protecting student borrowers.
  8. The USDA announces it’s ready to accept applications from farmers who’ve been hurt by the tariffs. They play to make payments totaling $4.7 billion, their first installment of the $12 billion bailout.
  9. Trump cancels a planned cost-of-living pay raise for federal employees citing budget constraints. This is not something you do during a booming economy. Unless, of course, you already created a $1 trillion deficit by giving out big tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy.
  10. Trump also wants to get rid of locality adjustments for federal worker wages. These are cost-of-living adjustments based on the standard of living in the city in which a worker resides. Most large companies adjust wages this way.
  11. The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) blocks the Trump administration’s tariff on newsprint. They say there’s no sign of any unfair competition from Canadian imports.
  12. Trump wants to impose the additional $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods next week.
  13. Trump also threatens to pull out of the World Trade Organization, saying they’ve treated the U.S. very badly and that it’s all very unfair. How did the biggest economy in the world get such a persecution complex?
  14. Did you know that many restaurant chains have policies where they don’t allow employees to try for higher-paying jobs at other locations of the same chain? Now 15 chains have ended that policy. But that businesses continue to do things like this is why we still need unions.

Elections:

  1. The DNC voted to limit the powers of their superdelegates for the 2020 primaries.
  2. For a second time, a North Carolina court rules that the state’s congressional districts are unconstitutionally gerrymandered. The first time, the lines were deemed to be racially motivated; this time they were seen as politically motivated to benefit Republicans. They might have to redraw the lines, just 9 weeks before the midterm elections.
  3. The lawmaker responsible for the congressional districts lines said they were designed to maintain Republican dominance because “electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats.”
  4. The USPS accidentally releases security clearance paperwork for an ex-CIA operative who is now running as a Democratic candidate for Congress (Abigail Spanberger). The Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP PAC closely linked to Paul Ryan, then uses some of the sensitive information in those papers against Spanberger’s campaign.
  5. I’m not sure whether this should go under elections or discrimination, but Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was pardoned by Trump last year, lost bigly in the Republican primary for Senate in Arizona. Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt of court for refusing to stop racially profiling Arizona residents.
  6. Trump meets with evangelical leaders and urges them to campaign for Republicans from the pulpit. He also says that if Democrats take over, there will be violence. Though he seems to be saying the Democrats will be violent. I’m not sure why the winner would be violent.
    • Just for the record, Trump did not overturn the Johnson Amendment as he’s claimed, and religious organizations still can’t endorse a political candidate.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Last week, Trump refused to sign off on the full White House statement commemorating John McCain. This week, he raises the flags back up to full mast. After blowback from that, Trump places the flag back at half mast and issues a full statement on McCain.
  2. Even the American Legion felt they had to write a letter to Trump urging him to follow protocol and to honor McCain.
  3. As the Senate reconvenes, Senators each take some time to honor McCain on the Senate floor. McCain will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until his interment.
  4. There are a number of memorials for McCain, including one in Arizona, one in the Capitol Rotunda, and the final one at the Washington National Cathedral.
    • Joe Biden is among the speakers at the service in Arizona.
    • Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Mike Pence speak in the Capitol Rotunda.
    • McCain had requested former presidents Bush (Jr.) and Obama to deliver eulogies, as well as Joe Lieberman. A Republican, a Democrat, and an Independent. A quaint throwback to bipartisanship.
    • McCain’s daughter Meghan gives an emotional eulogy, crediting her father for making her tough and criticizing the divisive politics of today.
    • Many of the speakers at the events take the opportunity to support reaching across the aisle and to take jabs at the current administration.
  1. McCain is buried at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD.
  2. Republicans bury Chuck Schumer’s proposal to rename the Russell Senate Building after John McCain.
  3. Senator James Inhofe says McCain is partly to blame for Trump bungling how McCain was honored because McCain was too outspoken and criticized Trump. That’s not how this works.
  4. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral, but Ivanka and Jared Kushner did attend at Lindsey Graham’s invitation.
  5. Trump claims that Google’s search results are rigged against him to only show bad news about him. Looks like he got this from a PJ Media article that was covered by Lou Dobbs on Fox.
  6. Larry Kudlow says the administration is looking at whether the government should regulate Google search results (can you say ‘state run media’?). This largely came about because of social media’s efforts to stop the spread of fake stories and lies, which often come from sources Trump relies on.
  7. Don’t mess with Google. After Trump’s accusations, Google adds his picture next to the definition of imbecile.
  8. Trump announces that White House Counsel Don McGahn will leave in the fall. It’s not clear if it’s by choice or if he was fired.
  9. Robert Chain calls the Boston Globe to tell them they are the enemy of the people and says “we’re going to kill every fucking one of you.” The FBI arrests Chain, who owns several guns and a recently purchased rifle.
  10. A judge sentences two Reuters journalists in Myanmar to seven years each for possessing confidential documents. The two were investigating the killings of Rohingya Muslims in the country.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s approval rating dips back down below 40%.

Week 83 in Trump

Posted on August 27, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Duncan Hunter, Michael Cohen, and Paul Manafort

This is a big week for legal trouble for Trump‘s associates. Paul Manafort: convicted on eight counts. Michael Cohen: guilty plea on eight counts. Duncan Hunter: indicted on I-lost-count-of-how-many counts. Hunter was the second member of Congress to endorse Trump in 2016; Chris Collins, the first member of Congress to endorse Trump, suspended his campaign for Congress when he, too, was indicted. And even though legal minds think he inadvertently incriminated himself by admitting to campaign finance violations, Trump isn’t likely to be indicted and I don’t think he’ll be impeached. At least not in the Senate. Not unless it turns out he’s done something extremely egregious.

And so it goes on. Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Trump signed legislation updating rules for how the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) vets investments from foreigners in U.S. assets. CFIUS specifically addresses national security issues around foreign investment, and this legislation gives them more specific control, especially in investments that involve critical technology, infrastructure, and personal data management.

Russia:

  1. Russian hackers start to target conservative think tanks that have broken ranks with Trump. Microsoft announces that it discovered Russian hackers use imitation websites to attack groups that continue to push for sanctions against Russia or that push for examining human rights violations.
  2. A jury convicts Paul Manafort on eight out of 18 counts, with one lone juror holding out on the remaining 10 counts. Those 10 counts result in a mistrial, so prosecution can bring them up again at a later date.
  3. Manafort is convicted on counts of bank fraud, tax fraud, and concealing a foreign bank account. The maximum sentence for all this is around 80 years.

  4. Manafort is the first person in the Mueller investigation to be tried, and he faces a second trial next month on a second set of charges. The second set of charges center more around his work with Ukraine instead of around his shady financial activity.
  5. The reason there are two trials is that Manafort had the right to stand trial in the state where he lives for some of the charges. Mueller gave him the option of being tried just in Washington, or being tried in Virginia for some and in Washington for the rest.
  6. For the record: Manafort’s charges aren’t related to the Trump campaign, but to his work with Ukrainian leaders. Also, Manafort really was Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman for about half of his campaign, despite claims that he was barely involved.
  7. A juror in the Manafort trial (who identifies as a Trump supporter) says there was one lone juror holding out on convicting Manafort on all counts. The juror also said that she, herself, didn’t want Manafort to be guilty and that she thought prosecutor’s final aim was to get dirt on Trump.
  8. The juror says the evidence against Manafort was overwhelming, but that she and her fellow jurors had to lay out the evidence trail over and over again for the lone holdout.
  9. Rudy Giuliani tells reporters that Trump has asked him about pardoning Manafort.
  10. A judge throws out a defamation suit brought by three Russian oligarchs against Christopher Steele (yes, of the infamous Steele dossier).
  11. Mueller requests another delay in Michael Flynn’s sentencing, indicating that they are still in talks.
  12. Many of our CIA informants close to the Kremlin have gone silent since the expulsion of American diplomats from Russia, the outing of an FBI informant, and the poisoning of Russian dissidents.
  13. Reality Winner, who leaked a top-secret report on Russian hacking efforts to The Intercept, is sentenced to 63 months in prison.

Legal Fallout:

It’s getting a little hard to discern what’s related to Russia, what’s related to Trump’s campaign, and what’s just politicians being corrupt. So I created a new category for related legal mischief.

  1. While I was making a note that Michael Cohen is in talks for a plea deal, but that it could fall apart, Cohen did indeed plead guilty on eight counts. The counts include:
    • Tax fraud
    • Bank fraud
    • Campaign contribution violations
  1. Cohen says he took out a home equity loan, which he obtained fraudulently, to cover the payment. He then invoiced the Trump Organization for reimbursement.
  2. Interestingly, his plea agreement doesn’t say he has to cooperate with federal prosecutors, but he could still cooperate with Mueller.
  3. Cohen told the court that an unnamed candidate who is now president told him to pay $130,000 in hush money right before the election to keep Trump’s affairs out of the media. They both knew this wasn’t legal, as evidenced by the shell companies they set up to take care of the payment.
  4. Also, as we’ve heard, Cohen has tapes to back up his statements.
  5. After Cohen pleads guilty, Trump tweets that Obama’s campaign did the same thing. Only it wasn’t the same thing, and Trump’s campaign even had the same issues as Obama’s, just with the added fraud on top.
  6. Cohen deletes this tweet from 2015: “@HillaryClinton when you go to prison for defrauding America and perjury, your room and board will be free!” Ironic, right?
  7. Trump, who has denied paying any hush money, now says that he did it but it wasn’t wrong.
  8. The publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, gets immunity in exchange for his testimony about the hush money payments, among other things (including keeping negative stories about Trump out of the news).
  9. Pecker and Cohen worked together to pay off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal so they would keep quiet about their affairs with Trump. Pecker corroborates Cohen’s account.
  10. It’s reported that the National Enquirer had a safe where they kept information about both the hush money and the stories it killed in the run up to the election that were damaging to Trump. They don’t know if those documents were destroyed or just moved. People who work for the company say they kept information like this on many celebrities to use it as leverage over them.
  11. The CFO of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, gets immunity in exchange for his testimony about $420,000 in payments to Michael Cohen for him taking care of Stormy Daniels. Weisselberg has worked at the organization for decades.
  12. Representative Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and his wife are indicted on $250,000 in campaign finance violations. They used those campaign donations for personal use. Some of the things they spent the money on?
    • Dental work
    • Private schools
    • Theater tickets
    • Trips to Hawaii and Italy
    • An airplane seat for a pet rabbit
  1. But the most damning thing is the documentation of how they worked to conceal their expenditures.
  2. New financial filings show that Eric Trump lied about how certain funds were spent by the Eric Trump Foundation. Specifically, he lied about payments to Trump Organization businesses for fundraising events.
  3. The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance subpoenas Michael Cohen as part of their investigation into the Trump Foundation. Note that this is separate from the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against the foundation, though if the tax department finds anything, they would refer it to the AG.
  4. After all the convicting, pleading, indicting, and flipping by his associates, Trump does a one-on-one interview with Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt. Which showed us all why it’s really not in his best interest to sit down with Mueller.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Amid all that came out this week around Russia and fraud investigations. Trump criticizes Jeff Session for never taking charge of the DOJ. Sessions, for once, fights back saying he did. Sessions also says he would never let the DOJ be improperly influenced by politics.
  2. And just like that, the Twitter wars are on. Between a sitting president and his Attorney General. For real. Trump challenges Sessions to look into the “corruption on the other side” like the emails, and “Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr…” and “FISA abuse, Christopher Steele & his phony and corrupt Dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump Campaign, Russian collusion by Dems.”
  3. This leads Republican leadership in the Senate to signal their OK for Trump to fire Sessions, saying they could confirm a new attorney general after the midterms. A new AG opens the door to firing Mueller and ending the Russia investigation. Though I’m not sure it would since several state laws seem to have been broken as well.
  4. A federal judge orders experts to review a private prison in Mississippi where inmates are claiming that their constitutional rights are being violated. There’s also a nationwide prison strike and rallies across the country to bring attention to justice system reform.
  5. In a 1998 memo that Kavanaugh wrote during the Clinton investigation, we learn than Kavanaugh wanted to question Clinton on the seedy details of his sexual activities with Monica Lewinsky.
  6. A federal judge turns down Trump’s request to dismiss a lawsuit filed against him by people who were attacked by Trump’s guards during a protest. The point of the lawsuit is to determine the extent to which Trump authorized or condoned the attacks.
  7. Demonstrators hold marches and rallies across the country to protest the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Healthcare:

  1. Last week I mentioned a measles outbreak in the U.S. Across Europe, there have been more than 41,000 people infected, 37 of whom have died. That’s up from around 24,000 the year before and 5,237 the year before that. Health experts say it’s because fewer people are vaccinating their kids.
  2. Nebraska is working to put Medicaid expansion on the November ballot.
  3. Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court rules that the governor must expand Medicaid, which the state’s residents voted for in 2017. Governor LePage has sworn he’ll never do it.
  4. Ohio releases a report of their first five years of having expanded Medicaid with no work requirement. Here are some findings:
    • The uninsured fell by more than half (from 32.4% to 12.8%).
    • Before the ACA 1 in 3 people at or near poverty were uninsured; after the ACA that dropped to 1 in 8.
    • Around 60% of people covered by the expansion transfer out, usually getting a job or a better paying job. Some were able to get coverage outside of Medicaid.
    • People said having Medicaid made it easier for them to either look for work or to keep working.
    • People with continuous Medicaid coverage had less medical debt (no brainer there).

International:

  1. ICE deports Jakiw Palij, who we’ve been trying to deport for decades but no country would take him. He was a Nazi SS camp guard in Poland during WWII. He’s now 95.
  2. Trump tweets about the non-existent seizing of land from and large-scale killing of white farmers in South Africa, prompting a bunch of confused responses from South African citizens who don’t know WTF he’s talking about.
  3. South African officials say Trump is just trying to sow division in South Africa. There has been ongoing redistribution of land, because blacks weren’t allowed to own land under apartheid. Even though apartheid fell in the early 90s, black South Africans still only own 1% of the land. They make up more than 75% of the population.
  4. Australia moves on to its fifth leader in five years. Malcom Turnball steps down despite winning a vote of confidence. Elections are coming up soon, though, so there will probably be a sixth leader soon.
  5. Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee request the translator notes from Trump’s meeting with Putin in Helsinki.
  6. Trump cancels Mike Pompeo’s trip to North Korea, saying they aren’t making any progress and blaming China for it.
  7. We learn that Trump told Italy’s prime minister that we’d help fund Italy’s debt by buying up Italian government bonds.

Family Separation:

  1. Nearly 700 children who were separated from their parents at the border have still not been reunited with their families. 40 of them are less than five years old.The ACLU continues to work for their reunification, since the government is failing at it.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Los Angeles sues the administration again to stop them from forcing immigration conditions on the city as a condition for receiving $1 million for fighting gang activity.
  2. A White House speech writer was fired when it was revealed that he joined white nationalist Peter Brimelow in a 2016 panel. The day after that firing, Peter Brimelow attended a birthday party for Trump’s economic advisor, Larry Kudlow at Kudlow’s house.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A U.S. district court in South Carolina reinstates WOTUS, Obama’s Waters of the United States expansion of the Clean Water Act, which defines environmental protection regulations for our waterways. Two courts have already blocked WOTUS in 24 states, leaving 26 states where it now must be implemented.
  2. The Trump administration announces its Affordable Clean Energy rule, which is intended to replace Obama’s Clean Power Plan. This is despite the administration’s own findings that the new plan would result in 1,400 premature deaths each year.
  3. Let the water wars begin. Chinatown anyone? The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation notifies officials in California that they want to renegotiate the statewide water agreements, specifically the ones governing how water moves through the Delta to Southern California. The federal bureau wants to save more water for farmers, meaning there would be less water for state projects. Maybe that’s why Nunes is buddying up to Trump.
  4. The Trump administration is reversing course on their plans to sell off federal land that fell within the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument before Trump reduced the size of the monument. They’ve scrapped the plans to sell 1,600 acres of that land for now.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Additional tariffs on $16 billion in Chinese goods kick in, and China responds by instituting their own tariffs of 25% on the same amount of American goods. So far, both sides have implemented tariffs on $50 billion worth of goods.
  2. A federal judges strikes down several parts of three of Trump’s executive orders that were designed to curtail the power of unions for government workers.
  3. Mick Mulvaney is trying to get protection from Trump’s tariffs for Element Electronics, which I mentioned a few weeks ago. It’s a South Carolina company that plans to close its doors due to tariffs. Mulvaney used to be a congressman in SC.

Elections:

  1. Trump plans on having 40 days of campaign-related travel between now and the midterms, which are around 70 days away. So it looks like he’ll be spending most of the next 2 1/2 months focused on winning elections and not so much on presidenting. He’s starting with Senate races.
  2. The Senate has bipartisan agreement on a bill to help protect our upcoming elections from cyber threats, but Trump says he won’t sign it so they tabled the bill. The bill would’ve given state election officials security clearance so that states and the DHS could all share information with each other. The bill also would’ve created a standard auditing system.
  3. Last week I reported on a proposal to shut down 7 out of 9 polling places in a largely black district in Georgia. It took the elections board less than a minute to vote that proposal down at their last meeting. The guy who proposed the closure had been recommended to the board by current Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is running for governor against a black female candidate.
  4. After McCain’s family announces that he was ending his treatment, Arizona Senatorial candidate Kelli Ward accuses them of using the timing to derail her campaign. Please do not vote for this loon in the upcoming elections.
  5. Now Texas thinks they should close 87 driver’s license offices, largely in rural and poor areas. Why is this in the Elections category? Because Texas has voter ID laws, and closing these offices could prevent some people from getting the IDs they need to vote in time for the midterms.
  6. The DNC alerts the FBI of a hacking attempt, but it turns out to be an unauthorized test from a third party.
  7. The DNC votes to limit the powers of the superdelegates in presidential primaries.

Miscellaneous:

  1. After reports came out that H.R. McMaster had talked Trump out of restricting Obama’s access to intelligence briefings, Trump denies that he had even considered it.
  2. Trump holds another election rally, this one in West Virginia. I’m not sure if it’s worth it to debunk his rally lies, because he just keeps repeating them rally after rally.
  3. Ahead of Hurricane Lane in Hawaii, Trump declares a state of emergency so FEMA can prepare and plan.
  4. The family of Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) announces he’ll end his treatment for cancer, and then within a day of that announcement he passes away after a long fight against glioblastoma.
  5. Trump declines to release the White House statement honoring John McCain and instead issues a short tweet. He flies the flags at half mast over the weekend.
  6. McCain‘s body will lie in state at both the U.S. and Arizona Sate Capitols, and he’ll be buried at the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis.
  7. George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Senator Jeff Flake will deliver eulogies. AFAIK, Trump won’t attend. There are several reports that McCain’s family asked that Trump not attend.
  8. Senator Chuck Schumer proposes that the Russell Senate building be renamed in honor of McCain.
  9. After losing at a Madden gaming tournament in Jacksonville, FL, a gamer opens fire on his fellow gamers and then shoots himself. Two people are dead and 11 are injured.

Polls:

  1. Now 59% of registered voters approve of Mueller’s investigation; an increase of 11 percentage points from last month.

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