Tag: paul ryan

Week 78 in Trump

Posted on July 23, 2018 in Politics, Trump

At least one of these guys looks happy.

Confused about all the Russia kerfuffle and whether Trump believes our intelligence agencies over Putin? John Hartzell’s tweet pretty much sums up the cleanup process after the joint press conference:

“Today, Trump lied, lied about lying, changed his mind, lied about changing his mind, changed his mind about lying, blamed someone else for something he did, lied about blaming someone else, took a breath, and lied.”

Even though intelligence agencies presented Trump with proof of Russian interference from the start, he has always muddied the waters to make sure that people continue to question the findings of our own intelligence agencies. It’s the reason he can never come up with a clear and cogent response to questions about it.

Russia:

There’s so much Russia news this week that I have to break it out into sub-sections. So here goes.

Trump/Putin Summit:

  1. Trump and Putin hold a two-hour summit, followed by a controversial press conference that sets off a worldwide firestorm. I’ll just start by saying that Russian officials call the summit and press conference major success for Putin, while Trump receives massive criticism back at home.
  2. What did they discuss at the summit? Trump says war and peace, Syria, Ukraine, and Israel (Putin loves Bibi, apparently). But no one really knows for sure.
  3. There was no one in attendance in the Trump/Putin summit except translators, so we have no official record of what happened. There was no joint statement so we don’t know what they agreed on.
  4. Here are some press conference highlights of what Trump says (remember this is just days after the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence agents for hacking the DNC and after Dan Coates told us that there are warning signs of more hacking):
    • When asked about Russian interference in the 2016 elections, Trump refuses to support our own intelligence agencies, and instead says Putin’s denials were forceful and credible.
    • He denies collusion and calls the Russia investigation a disaster for the U.S. Even though the Russia investigation has spawned state investigations and resulted in 32 indictments, 5 guilty pleas, and over 100 charges.
    • Trump suggests that our intelligence agencies (specifically Dan Coates) are not credible and are conspiring against him. Even though Coates told him that Russia was behind the hacking of the DNC servers, Trump doesn’t see any reason why Russia would do that and it could be anybody else.
    • Trump blames the U.S. for our current relationship with Russia, calling the U.S. foolish (and ignoring Russia’s attacks on Georgia, Crimea, and Ukraine; their actions in Syria; the poisonings in England; and the downing of the Malaysian passenger jet). Trump sees the U.S. and Russia as morally equivalent.
    • Trump brings up his electoral win, claiming incorrectly that it’s harder for a Republican to win the electoral college than a Democrat. In reality, Democrats need an extra margin of about 11% of the popular vote.
    • He brings up Hillary’s emails again, along with a debunked conspiracy theory about a Pakistani DNC staffer who was arrested. He adds that Russia would never let this happen in their country.
    • Trump calls Putin a good competitor, not an adversary… just after he called the EU one of our biggest foes.
    • He is impressed by Putin’s offer to have Mueller share his evidence on the 12 indicted Russian officials if we allow Russia to interrogate U.S. officials. This would give Russia a view into how our intelligence agencies work and what their capabilities are.
    • Trump also considers handing over Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, and Bill Browder for questioning. Putin has long wanted Bill Browder, who exposed the corruption in the Russian government that led to the Magnitsky Act. Side note: Browder is no longer a U.S. citizen, so we can’t really hand him over anyway.
  1. Here‘s some of what Putin says:
    • Russia has never interfered in a U.S. election and they never will.
    • Putin supports Trump in his assertion that there was no collusion.
    • Putin says he knows nothing about any kompromat, claiming he didn’t even know Trump was in town during the Miss Universe pageant. Uh-huh. Even though he cancelled a meeting with Trump during that time.
  1. Later, in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Putin says that our efforts to isolate Russia have failed.
  2. Putin also says he misspoke when he said that Clinton received $400 million from associates of Bill Browder and that it was $400,000 (the actual number is closer to $18,000).
  3. A member of Russia’s parliament says that Russian intelligence stole the 2016 presidential election right out from under the noses of U.S. intelligence.
  4. In a follow-up interview with Sean Hannity, Trump reiterates that Putin says there’s no collusion and that Putin is very, very strong on that. Trump also says Mueller’s Russia investigation is a “phony, witch hunt deal” and that Putin thinks it’s a shame.

Press Conference Fallout:

  1. Reaction is swift, harsh, and bipartisan. Politicians from both sides reiterate that Russia isn’t our friend, there‘s no doubt that Russia interfered in our 2016 elections, and the interference campaign was organized by the Russian government.
  2. Even Fox News is highly critical, with the exception of Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson.
  3. GOP critics use these words to describe the conference: tragic, disgraceful, bizarre, flat-out wrong, shameful, a propaganda win for Putin, and a missed opportunity to hold Russia accountable. Critics on the left call Trump’s response dangerous and weak.
  4. So Trump and the White House attempt some backpedaling… and then forward pedaling… and then backpedaling again:
    • Trump says he misspoke when he said he couldn’t see why Russia WOULD interfere, and says he meant to say WOULDN’T.
    • He accepts intelligence assessments that Russia interfered in our 2016 elections, but then adds that it could also be other people.
    • The next day Trump responds “no” to questions of whether Russia is still interfering, contradicting all of our intelligence agencies and the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee.
    • The White House tries to clarify by saying that Trump was saying “no” to answering any more questions, not “no” to whether Russia is still meddling. This could actually be true; it’s hard to tell.
    • Trump says he was very strong when admonishing Putin that he can’t interfere in our elections.
    • On Monday, Trump thinks Putin made an incredible offer to collaborate on investigations. On Wednesday, Trump says he’ll meet with his advisors to discuss handing over Browder, McFaul, and other government agents to Russia for questioning. And then on Thursday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Trump disagrees with the offer.
    • Trump says he believes Putin when he says he didn’t interfere, but then he says Putin must have known about the interference because he’s in charge of the country.
  1. Even Paul Ryan, who just the week before said we shouldn’t criticize Trump while he’s overseas (in reference to his NATO meetings), criticizes Trump’s words. Mitch McConnell reiterates that Russia is not our friend.
  2. European officials call Trump weak and say he can’t be counted on, though some NATO members do try to smooth things over.
  3. Democrats demand that Republican leaders (like they’re in a position to demand anything):
    • Strengthen sanctions against Russia
    • Force the security team that went to Helsinki with Trump to testify before Congress so we can learn about what was agreed
    • End their attacks on our intelligence agencies and Mueller
    • Extradite the 12 indicted Russian hackers.
  1. McConnell and Ryan consider additional Russia sanctions.
  2. The Russian Ambassador to the U.S. says the summit produced important verbal agreements. Russian officials and the Russian press start talking about all the agreements that were made, yet the American people have no idea what those are.
  3. The Russian Ministry of Defense says that they’re ready to implement all the summit agreements around global security.
  4. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says the summit was fabulous, “better than super.”
  5. In contrast, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refuses to talk to the press about it.
  6. House Intelligence Committee Democrats request a subpoena for the American interpreter, who was the only other American in the room at the meeting between Trump and Putin. The GOP leadership rejects that request.
  7. The whole thing incites protests in Washington, DC, including at the White House. These have been ongoing for a week now.
  8. Weeks before Trump’s inauguration, intelligence agencies presented him with proof that Putin personally directed the 2016 election interference. This proof included emails and texts from Russian military officers. Sources say Trump was “grudgingly” convinced.
  9. While Dan Coates is being interviewed by Andrea Mitchell, he finds out by tweet that Trump is inviting Putin to the White House in the fall. He appears to laugh at Trump at this point.
  10. At the same forum, Kirstjen Nielsen refuses to say she agrees with our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia, specifically Putin, was behind the election interference. She’s the Secretary of HOMELAND SECURITY. Come on!
  11. Trump tries to blame Obama for Russian interference. Obama probably could’ve done more but in reality he was blocked by Mitch McConnell.
    • McConnell received the same intelligence briefing, so he knew what was going on leading up to the 2016 elections.
    • When Obama asked him to sign on to a bipartisan public statement about it, McConnell refused.
    • McConnell told Obama not to release the information and that he [McConnell] would consider any efforts to publicly challenge Russia “an act of partisan politics.”
    • Well played, Mitch; well played.

Other Russia News:

  1. The head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command says he’s directed both agencies to coordinate to fight any future interference in our elections by foreign powers. But they’re on their own; he hasn’t received any White House guidance on this.
  2. Federal agents arrest Maria Butina, a gun rights advocate who is charged with being an unregistered foreign agent (aka “spy”). She allegedly infiltrated the NRA and cozied up to GOP politicians to influence U.S. politics in the interest of Russia.
    • According to prosecutors, Butina tried to exchange sex for influence. She’s been living with Paul Erickson, a conservative political operative from South Dakota who is under investigation for fraud.
    • Her alleged co-conspirator in Russia is Alexander Torshin, who is currently under U.S. sanctions. They were trying to develop back-channel lines of communication between Russian and American officials.
    • Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif) calls the indictment against Butina bogus. Does he protest too much? The affidavit implies that Butina was setting up a meeting between Rohrabacher and Torshin when Rohrabacher visited Russia in 2015.
    • The FBI has a proposal authored by Butina talking about how they can take power away from the Democrats in 2016 and give it to a (not named) party that will be more friendly to Russian interests. The influence campaign started with the NRA and CPAC.
    • It was Butina who secured invitations for Russian officials to attend the National Prayer Breakfast.
    • The affidavit also suggests that Russia had some influence on Trump’s selection for Secretary of State.
    • Butina was arrested when it appeared she was preparing to leave the country. She’s deemed a flight risk, so is being held without bail.
    • Russia’s foreign minister demands Butina’s immediate release.
  1. Twitter suspends the accounts of Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks after last week’s indictment of the Russian hackers.
  2. Trey Gowdy says there’s no good reason to impeach Rod Rosenstein.
  3. Mueller requests immunity for five witnesses in the Paul Manafort trial. He also releases over 500 pieces of evidence being used in the trial.
  4. Remember those Macedonian trolls who pushed pro-Trump, anti-Hillary, and conservative fake stories and conspiracy theories before the 2016 elections? It turns out the effort was started by a Macedonian attorney with the assistance of two American conservatives, Ben Goldman and Paris Wade (you might remember a profile done on them in 2016 describing them writing fake news stories out of their Long Beach apartment). Paris Wade is running for Nevada State Assembly.
  5. The data that Cambridge Analytica mined off Facebook was accessed by a server in Russia.
  6. Christopher Wray, head of the FBI, says Russia is very aggressive in election interference and that they’re actively creating discord and divisiveness in the U.S. right now.
  7. The DOJ releases highly redacted documents that were used to support the Carter Page FISA warrant application. This type of information is typically not made public.
  8. Trump claims that the redacted documents show that his campaign really was being illegally spied on, even though there’s nothing in the released documents that imply that.

Courts/Justice:

  1. I guess we’re cool with the FBI again? Jeff Sessions delivers an address to students at Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC). These are members of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. Sessions says, “You and your brothers and sisters are in every corner of America, working 24 hours a day to courageously and faithfully protect this nation and our people. We are proud of you.”
  2. Republicans in the Senate pull Trump’s nomination for the 9th circuit court of appeals, Ryan Bounds, not because of Bounds’ racist writings, but because they don’t have enough votes to confirm him.
  3. Mitch McConnell says that if Democrats keep pushing for documentation around Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, he’ll delay the confirmation hearings until right before the midterms to hurt vulnerable Democrats in their re-election efforts.

Healthcare:

  1. A district court judge rules in Trump’s favor on changes to Title X regarding family planning grants. The changes move the emphasis from contraception and safe sex to abstinence and natural family planning (whatever that is). Because we all know that when you tell youngsters to abstain from sex, that’s what they do, right?

International:

  1. Trumps says that NATO members agreed to pony up way more money because he was so assertive. NATO members say, not. They’re just meeting the conditions of their 2014 agreement with the Obama administration.
  2. During the NATO summit, Trump reportedly praised authoritarian Turkish president Erdogan while criticizing our allies in Europe for needing to consult with their respective legislative branches before making policy decisions.
  3. Trump questions why we would come to the defense of a small country like NATO member Montenegro.
  4. While Trump meets with Putin, leaders from the EU and China meet and agree on a joint resolution as well as a commitment to keep the global system strong.
  5. Trump tells diplomats to initiate negotiations directly with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Previously, we’ve worked to include the Afghanistan government in these talks, but the Taliban only wants to talk to the U.S. government.
  6. Israel’s parliament passes a bill that defines Israel as the Jewish nation-state, where Hebrew is the official language and Jerusalem is the capital.
  7. And speaking of Israel, moving our embassy to Jerusalem will cost us $21.2 million instead of the $250,000 Trump said it would.
  8. So far Brexit is costing the UK Treasury 440 million pounds a week; more than the EU ever cost them. Brexit was sold as an economic boon for the country.
  9. North Korean officials have been cancelling meetings and demanded more money. They don’t seem to be slowing down their nuclear program any either. Trump is frustrated by the slow pace and obstacles.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Senate Democrats put forth a resolution to prevent the president from turning over American citizens to hostile foreign powers. It passes unanimously.
  2. The House passes the BUILD Act, which will encourage private investment in countries with lower income economies to help fight extreme poverty.
  3. The GOP blocks Democratic legislation to question the translator at the Trump/Putin summit, to investigate NRA ties to Russian money, and to back our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections.
  4. Democrats continue to request a vote on an amendment that would provide funding to states for election security, but the GOP leadership continues to refuse the vote.

Separating Families:

  1. A judge blocks the government from deporting newly reunited families to make sure none are improperly deported.
  2. A court orders counseling for children who are victims of family separation at the border. They court calls it a constitutional injury, and in some cases may require treatment for PTSD.
  3. So far, only 364 of the more than 2,500 children taken at the border have been reunited with their parents. Of 1,600 parents waiting to be reunited, almost half are slated for deportation.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. More than 100 elected officials from 20 states sign on to an open letter arguing that we should abolish ICE, the agency created after 9/11 to keep our borders secure. They say ICE is too broken to be reformed and should be abolished. They don’t have an alternative yet.
  2. A district judge in Pennsylvania rules that religious adoption agencies do not have the right to discriminate against prospective parents based on religious beliefs while at the same time accepting taxpayer money.
  3. The NFL puts its new kneeling-during-the-anthem policy on hold while they negotiate the terms with the teams. So Trump tweets a call for extreme punishments for players who kneel.
  4. A federal appeals court rejects the Trump administration’s efforts to reinstate the ban on transgender troops while the his original ban makes its way through the courts.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The Department of the Interior issues a proposal to overhaul the endangered species act to make it more friendly to economic development (or as it’s better known, drilling and mining projects). This is the act that saved the Yellowstone grizzly and the BALD FREAKING EAGLE from extinction, among others.
  2. California just reached their goal of reducing their carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020—two years ahead of time.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The EU and Japan sign a major trade agreement that gets rid of most of the tariffs on goods imported between the two.
  2. Trump criticizes the Feds‘ decision to raise interest rates again, saying it’ll slow down our booming economy. Which is kind of the point of interest rate hikes.
  3. A group of major U.S. companies signs on to a new jobs training initiative by the Trump administration.
  4. China files a complaint with the World Trade Organization over Trump’s proposed tariffs, saying they fall under protectionism.
  5. The Congressional Budget Office updates its estimates, and now says our deficit will hit $1 trillion next year.
  6. Trump threatens even higher tariffs against China, saying he’ll go up to $500 billion if he has to.
  7. Republicans in Congress back off from making sure the sanctions against Chinese company ZTE stick, and instead allow Trump to make this a personal favor to China president Xi Jinping.

Elections:

  1. A lawyer for one of Roy Moore’s accusers has recorded conversations of two of Moore’s supporters offering him $10,000 to drop the case and discredit the victim before the Senate election that Democrat Doug Jones won.
  2. No dark money in politics, you say? The Trump administration ends IRS disclosure requirements for certain nonprofits, allowing donors to give money without any scrutiny. How many ways can we make Citizens United worse?
  3. Some states’ voter registration systems operate on systems owned by Russian-backed companies.
  4. A top voting machine manufacturer admits they issued a few of those servers with the remote sharing application pcAnywhere installed.
  5. The reason the FBI took so long to announce the reopening of Hillary Clinton’s email investigation (which is why it happened just nine days before the election) is that the bureau was so overwhelmed with the investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia.

Miscellaneous:

  1. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai pushes back on Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s merger with Tribune Media. There’s concern that even with the changes Sinclair is willing to make, they would still control too many stations.
  2. Also on the Sinclair front, the company recently announced that they’ll release a streaming app later this year to compete with other agencies, such as Fox News.
  3. A recent court filing indicates that the secret service has been blocking attempts to serve a subpoena to Jared Kushner.
  4. The inspector general for the Interior Department opens an investigation into a real estate deal between Ryan Zinke’s foundation and certain developers (including Halliburton).
  5. In the material seized from Michael Cohen, there’s a recorded conversation between him and Trump discussing payments to Karen McDougal, the Playboy model who says she had an affair with Trump. The conversation took place a few months before the election.
  6. Oddly enough, Trump’s lawyers waived attorney-client privilege around this recording.
  7. In the middle of a signing ceremony for work training and apprenticeships, Trump realizes that his reality show, The Apprentice, was about apprenticeships.
  8. Obama gives the 2018 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in South Africa, where he alludes to Trump without calling him out by name. He says these are strange and uncertain times, with the rise of strongman politics around the globe.
  9. Starting August 1, people can download plans for 3-D printable guns. None of which will be traceable because they don’t have a serial number. Yay us.

Polls:

The only thing I’ll say about polls is that Trump’s approval numbers should’ve changed this week, but they didn’t. ‘Nuff said.

Week 69 in Trump

Posted on May 21, 2018 in Politics, Trump

We’re in full election mode (already), with primaries happening across the country throughout the summer. So here’s my reminder to each of you to IGNORE the TV and radio ads, ignore the negative campaigns, throw away those mailers, and do your own research on the candidates and issues. Ads are solely designed to manipulate and often fool you, and they’re usually full of misinformation. And ignore what you read on social media unless it’s a trusted source, because we all know what happens when we fall for that BS.

Off my soap box. Here’s what happened this week in politics…

Russia:

UPDATE: Very belatedly, I learned that it was reported this week that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, of Trump Tower meeting fame, met with Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS before and after the Trump Tower meeting. Veselnitskaya says she doesn’t recall the meetings, but Simpson testified that they were invited by a client to a dinner meeting in New York the night before and attended a social event in DC the night after at which they didn’t speak much. They had a common client which included a court appearance on June 9, 2016, the same day as the Trump Tower meeting.

  1. It looks like Russia might not have been the only country working for a Trump win in 2016. A few months before the 2016 election, Donald Trump Jr. met with Erik Prince (of Blackwater), George Nader (an emissary for Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates princes), and Joel Zamel (an Israeli social media specialist). Trump aide Steven Miller was there as well.
    • Nader said the princes were eager to help Trump win the election.
    • Zamel’s firm had already proposed a multi-million-dollar social media effort to help Trump.
    • As this relationship was growing, Nader was also working on projects to destabilize Iran.
    • Nader met several times with Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn.
  1. And then there’s Qatar. A Qatari investor, met with Michael Cohen (and allegedly Michael Flynn) during the Trump transition. The investor later said in court that he bribed administration officials.
  2. Mueller is looking into foreign donations to Trump’s inaugural fund, including from the above countries and Russia-linked Columbus Nova.
  3. And speaking of inaugural funding, $1 million of it came from conservative activists at BH Group LLC, who provides Trump with lists of judicial nominees. The group was behind stalling Merrick Garland’s nomination and introducing Neil Gorsuch.
  4. Interesting side note: The inaugural committee treasurer was a co-conspirator in a fraud case, and two other members were convicted of financial crimes.
  5. Trump thinks that because Mueller is looking into these other countries, Mueller hasn’t found anything and he’s done with the Russia part. Mueller is investigating several aspects of the case right now.
  6. Trump also thinks that because the New York Times reported on this, the paper thinks Mueller didn’t find anything in his Russia investigation. The New York Times says uh… no.
  7. The FBI identifies a former CIA software engineer, Joshua A. Schulte, as being behind the leak of CIA files that were dumped by Wikileaks last year. However, instead of charging him with the leak, they are holding him on child pornography charges.
  8. A federal judge in D.C. denies Paul Manafort’s request to dismiss any of the charges Mueller brought against him.
  9. Mueller files the unredacted, classified memo defining the scope of his investigation with the court under seal. The judge requested this information in Manafort’s case.
  10. Mueller, the DOJ, and the FBI are all investigating Cambridge Analytica (but they aren’t the only ones investigating the company).
  11. The Mercers are liquidating Cambridge Analytica, and the company files for bankruptcy. The new Mercer company, Emerdata, is covering their legal fees.
  12. An ex-employee of Cambridge Analytica testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee that one of the things they were hired for was to target African-American communities to discourage them from voting and to suppress voter turnout. So much for representative democracy…
  13. The Senate Judiciary Committee releases interview transcripts about the meeting with Don Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner, and a Russian lawyer. The transcripts show how eager they were to get dirt on Hillary Clinton and how frustrated they were by their inability to get it.
  14. The Senate Intelligence Committee contradicts the House Intelligence Committee, saying that Russia did interfere with the 2016 election with the goal of electing Trump. Their findings support the intelligence communities’ conclusions.
  15. Paul Manafort’s son-in-law pleads guilty and is cooperating with Mueller.
  16. Mueller subpoenas two more associates of Roger Stone, Jason Sullivan (social media expert) and John Kakanis (accountant and driver).
  17. Trump repeats his unfounded accusation that the FBI was spying on him and that they had a secret informant embedded in his campaign. He tweets that “they are out to frame Donald Trump for crimes he didn’t commit.”
  18. The FBI says that when it was brought to their attention that Carter Page, Sam Clovis, and George Papadopolous each had questionable contact with Russians during the campaign, the FBI had an American intelligence source in England meet with the them to find out more information.
  19. The most likely reason the FBI did this covertly was to protect the Trump campaign in case it turned up nothing. This way avoided pre-election publicity, unlike the very public investigation into Hillary’s emails.
  20. Devin Nunes has been pushing for the release of classified material that would unmask the identity of the FBI’s source. This has the FBI so concerned that they’ve been scrambling for weeks to ensure the safety of the source (because they know Nunes will leak it).
  21. Trump initially backed the DOJ’s refusal to out the source, but now he’s backing Nunes’ efforts to unmask the source’s identity.
  22. And then someone does it for them. NBC publishes the suspected identity of the intelligence source as U.S. professor Stefan Halper, a former Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administration official. It’s not clear who leaked it.
    UPDATE! NBC clarified that there’s no proof Halper was the informant. The Daily Caller first reported it might be Halper in March.
  23. Devin Nunes accuses the DOJ of leaking the information to undermine the House Intelligence Committee. Nunes and Trey Gowdy refuse any further meetings with the DOJ on the matter.
  24. Trump unleashes a major tweet storm attacking the usual suspects: The New York Times, Hillary Clinton, Mueller’s team, Andrew McCabe, Terry McCauliffe, the DOJ and the FBI. FISA! Emails! Dossier!
  25. He follows that up with a promise to officially demand that the DOJ open an investigation into whether any FBI spies infiltrated his campaign.
  26. In response, the DOJ asks the inspector general to fold Trump’s request into his existing investigation into FBI surveillance procedures used during the 2016 campaigns.
  27. Brian Lanza goes from working on Trump’s transition team to being a lobbyist to the U.S. for a Russian energy and aluminum firm run by Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska is under U.S. sanctions.
  28. The lawyer at Novartis who signed the contract to hire Michael Cohen announces he’ll step down, calling the action “an error.” He says this will bring public debate about the matter to an end. LOL.
  29. The RNC has paid nearly $500,000 in legal fees for White House staff caught up in the Russia investigation.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump announces proposed changes to Title X to end funding to any clinics that provide abortions (even though none of that money can be used for abortions). It would also end funding to clinics that refer women for abortions.
  2. 19 states sue to block Trump from changing Title X requirements. They say that Trump’s changes threaten funding for women’s health services, including birth control, STD testing, cancer screenings, and infertility treatment. This would affect over 4 million people.

International:

  1. The U.S. opens their new embassy in Jerusalem, completing the move from Tel-Aviv.
  2. The U.S. delegation to celebrate the opening of the new U.S. embassy invites Pastor Robert Jeffress to speak at the opening. Ironic, since he’s said that you can’t be saved by being a Jew. He also says ‘Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell.’ He’s made similar comments about Islam.
  3. Several foreign envoys invited to the opening declined to come.
  4. Palestinians were protesting in the weeks before the embassy opening and the 70th anniversary of Nakba (which commemorates the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians from Israel). During the opening celebration, 60 protestors are shot and killed, and 37 are injured, by Israeli forces.
  5. The protests extend to Turkey.
  6. South Africa and Turkey recall their ambassadors from Tel-Aviv, and Kuwait requests an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
  7. Nikki Haley, our UN ambassador, walks out of the emergency meeting when the Palestinian representative begins to speak. She had just praised Israel for using restraint with the protestors.
  8. Then the U.S. blocks a security council resolution to look into the 60 Palestinian deaths.
  9. The White House blames the deaths at the wall on Hamas propaganda.
  10. The UN General Assembly votes 128 to 9 to declare Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital null and void saying it will hamper peace efforts there. This is really just symbolic. The nine who voted against are the U.S., Israel, Togo, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Micronesia, Palau, Honduras, and Guatemala
  11. An Iraqi party led by a cleric who has been highly critical of American politics in the Mideast is the big winner in the Iraqi elections. U.S. officials will need to rethink their strategy with Iraq since this party might choose the next Prime Minister.
  12. As he promised last week, and at the recommendation of John Bolton, Trump gets rid of our top cybersecurity position in the White House.
  13. North Korea threatens to cancel the upcoming meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un:
    • At first they say it’s because of U.S.-South Korean joint military drills.
    • They later say they don’t want Trump pushing them into a corner on nuclear agreement and that they won’t abandon their nuclear program.
    • Then they are angry over John Bolton saying that we could use a Libya model of disarmament… because we all remember how well that went down for Gaddafi.
    • North Korea does cancel talks with South Korea.
  1. Trump questions his aides about whether to proceed, and calls the South Korean president to find out why North and South Korea’s statements differ.
  2. The number of ISIS fighters in Afghanistan is estimated at 1,500 to 2,000, about half the number there a year and a half ago.
  3. ISIS is behind a series of bomb attacks and a sword attack on a police precinct in Indonesia.
  4. Despite Trump saying he’s going to pull us out of Syria ASAP, the State Department plans to keep the counterterrorism unit overseeing the situation open for at least six more months.
  5. But then State officials say Trump is slashing funding for the efforts in Syria.
  6. Recent statements from European leaders indicate that they have stopped holding out for better relations with the U.S. and are working on ways to take the lead on democracy across the world. They no longer believe that Trump’s nationalist movement is an aberration.
  7. Democrats in Congress call on the inspectors general of several agencies to open an investigation into why the Trump administration hasn’t implemented the required sanctions against Russia yet.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The North Carolina Senate GOP (possibly the worst legislative body in the nation) votes to cut education spending in only those districts with Democratic Senators. This is apparently in return for the Democrats forcing a late-night debate on the budget.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. After the DOJ announces that we’ll be separating parents and children trying to cross the border, Homeland Security prepares to house the children on military bases.
  2. Even though this is a new policy implemented under Trump’s DHS, Trump says it’s Democrats’ fault we have to separate families. Huh?
  3. Trump takes heat for calling MS-13 gang members animals in the context of undocumented immigration, while his supporters say his words were taken out of context. Well, they’re sort of right, but Trump has played on people’s fears by hyping up the power and violence of MS-13. A few MS-13 facts:
    • There are 10,000 MS-13 members in the U.S. out of around 1.4 million gang members total. MS-13 makes up about 0.7% of all U.S. gang members.
    • When ICE conducted a gang sweep last week, only 104 of the 1,300 arrested were MS-13 members, and of the 104, only 8 were here illegally.
    • Trump says many gang members have come in over a short period of time and that they’re taking over towns. In reality, there are less than half the number of MS-13 members than were here in 2012 (when there were 24,000). The gang is three decades old, and is not seeing a resurgence.
    • The Obama administration placed sanctions on the gang, labelling them a transnational criminal organization (they’re based in the U.S. and Central America).
  1. Even though Trump is deporting fewer undocumented immigrants than Obama, the percentage of people being deport who have committed no crime other than being here illegally is double what it was under Obama. This is why you’re seeing more stories about families being ripped apart and upstanding community members being deported.
  2. Last year, asylum seekers were denied at the highest rate in a decade. The most likely to be denied were from Central America.
  3. Trump appoints Tony Perkins to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). The mission of the USCIRF is to defend freedom of religion and belief abroad. Perkins is a strange choice given that he’s spread anti-Muslim propaganda and espoused anti-LGBTQ propaganda, likening it to bestiality and pedophilia.
  4. Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer signs a bill into law that allows faith-based adoption agencies to deny prospective parents based on religious beliefs. So these agencies can discriminate against LGBTQ parents and Muslim parents, among others. Because all those beautiful children would be better off in orphanages or foster care than in a loving family, right?

Climate/EPA:

  1. The EPA and the White House try to block a publication from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry that highlights a water contamination problem near military bases and chemical plants. The report says a class of chemicals that has contaminated the water supplies is more toxic at lower levels than was previously thought.
  2. Emails show Trump aides thought this would be a PR nightmare.
  3. Multi-year ice makes up 34% of the ice in the Arctic, down from 61% in 1984. Ice that’s more than five years old makes up only 2%. Young ice melts more quickly, exacerbating the effects of climate change.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Hundreds of people protest across the country as part of the Poor People’s Campaign. The campaign is demanding that our legislators do more to fight poverty and racism.
  2. Last week, Trump tweeted that he was going to help Chinese telecom company ZTE recover from U.S. sanctions. Now we learn that this happened just a few days after China provided $500 million in assistance to an Indonesian project that will financially benefit Trump.
  3. And then, in a show of bipartisan agreement, the House Appropriations Committee rejects any efforts from Trump to assist ZTE. They include a provision in an appropriations bill to maintain the sanctions.
  4. A renegotiated NAFTA isn’t looking likely this year, and GOP Senators from farm states work to prevent Trump from pulling out completely. They think such a move would hurt the GOP in the midterms in farm states. Really? Your concern isn’t the farmers, it’s whether or not you’ll get re-elected?
  5. Teacher strikes continue this week, this time in North Carolina. They’re striking for better salaries and better school funding. This is the sixth state to see a school strike, and it’s illegal in North Carolina.
  6. 43% of U.S. households, or 51 million households, can’t afford all of the following needs: housing, food, child care, healthcare, transportation, and a cell phone (and, yes, a cell phone is a need—especially for poor people). 16.1 million of these households live in poverty, and 34.7 million households have limited assets and low incomes even though they’re employed.
  7. The House fails to pass a farm bill, which would’ve overhauled certain welfare programs. Several members of the Freedom Caucus voted against it because they want immigration reform.
  8. Trump has been pushing the postmaster general to raise the shipping fees for Amazon and other companies by as much as double. The postmaster general has explained to Trump several times that these agreements must be reviewed by a regulatory committee. She can’t just raise their prices randomly.
  9. Treasure Secretary Mnuchin says that the trade war between the U.S. and China is on hold after an agreement to drop the threat of tariffs while they negotiate.
  10. Remember when Wilbur Ross held up a can of Campbell’s Soup to show how little affect the steel and aluminum tariffs would have? Well this week, Campbell announces a higher than expected decline in profits this year by 5-6%.

Elections:

  1. Trump tweets that the expanding scope of Mueller’s investigation is designed specifically to hurt the Republican party in this year’s midterms. Law enforcement experts say that the more likely case is that Mueller is working overtime to get parts of the investigation wrapped up months BEFORE the midterms in order to avoid influencing those elections. Despite Comey’s actions in 2016, federal law enforcement tries to keep things quiet in the run-up to an election.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Gina Haspel admits that in hindsight, torture was a bad idea and something the CIA shouldn’t have undertaken.
  2. The Senate confirms Haspel to head the CIA, the first woman to hold that position.
  3. Blake Farenthold, who resigned from the House of Representatives after using taxpayer dollars to pay off a sexual harassment settlement, is now a government lobbyist for the Calhoun Port Authority. Despite his new 6-figure salary, he won’t repay us for that $84,000 settlement. Also, who would hire a guy like this? Calhoun Port Authority, I guess.
  4. Trump files his financial disclosure, which shows that he repaid Michael Cohen in full for the Stormy Daniels hush money.
  5. Upon receiving Trump’s financial disclosure, the Office of Government Ethics refers Trump to the DOJ for filing false financials, saying that this might be relevant to any inquiry Rod Rosenstein might be pursuing.
  6. Here’s one for the nepotism files. Trump picks Mitch McConnell’s brother-in-law to lead the Department of Labor’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
  7. The leaker of the suspicious action reports (SARs) on Michael Cohen’s financial transactions says he leaked the info because two SARs reporting even larger transactions are missing from the government database. It turns out that those SARs have restricted access. These reports are from prior to September 2017 and include transactions totaling around $3 million.
  8. The leaker risked a possible $250,000 in fines and up to 5 years in prison to leak the documents, which are supposed to be held secret. He feared that information was being withheld from law enforcement.
  9. Here’s some recent news on Qatar. It could be all related or not related at all.
    • A Canadian firm with funding from the Qatar Investment Authority is close to finalizing a deal that would bail the Kushner family company out of it’s troubled property at 666 5th Avenue.
    • Qatari officials recently said that when Trump backed the Saudi Arabian blockade against them in 2017, they thought it was payback for Qatar refusing to financially back Jared Kushner’s father on the above property.
    • Qatari officials considered turning information over to the Mueller investigation about Kushner’s relationship with the UAE, but in the end decided against it fearing further retribution.
    • Now Trump, who last year said Qatar was a sponsor of Mideast terrorism, says that they’re an ally in the fight against terrorism. Mike Pompeo recently urged Saudi officials to end the Qatari crisis.
  1. Two school shootings this week: one in Santa Fe, Texas, and one in Jonesboro, Georgia. In Georgia, two people were shot and one killed. In Texas, there are 10 dead and 10 injured.
    • Students protest gun violence at Paul Ryan’s Washington office. Several are arrested.
    • Just like after the Parkland shooting, Trump promises action.
    • A Fox News commentator blames the Texas shooting on Common Core.
    • Texas Governor Greg Abbott blames it on too many doors.
    • Ollie North, new NBA president, blames the shooting on ADHD, saying these kids are drugged on Ritalin.
    • The Lt. Gov. of Texas blames the shootings on violent video games, no religion in schools, abortion, broken families, doors (again), unarmed teachers, and irresponsible gun owners.
    • The police chief of Houston writes an impassioned plea for action on gun reform, saying he’s no longer interested in hearing about gun rights anymore.
  1. A gunman fires his weapon at the Trump National Doral Golf Club, ranting about Donald Trump, Barrack Obama, and P. Diddy. He doesn’t shoot anyone, but police do shoot him. He’s in stable condition. One police officer suffers a broken wrist.
  2. A passenger jet crashes in Havana, Cuba shortly after taking off. 110 are dead, and 3 passengers survive.
  3. Trump nominates the acting head of the VA, Robert Wilkie, to be the next Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Here’s hoping they did a preliminary vetting this time.

Polls:

  1. 74% of Americans think the evidence is solid that the earth has been getting warmer.
  2. 53% say global warming is caused by human activity.
  3. The percent of Americans who believe in global warming is highest in Millennials (81%) and lowest in the Silent Generation (63%).
  4. The percent of Americans who think global warming is caused by human activity is also highest with Millennials at 65%.

Week 67 in Trump

Posted on May 7, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

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

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

Also, ICYMI, you should change your Twitter password.

Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Week 64 in Trump

Posted on April 16, 2018 in Politics, Trump

I open this week with a quote from Trump on how a trade war might affect farmers:

“But if we do a deal with China, if, during the course of a negotiation they want to hit the farmers because they think that hits me, I wouldn’t say that’s nice. But I tell you, our farmers are great patriots… They understand that they’re doing this for the country. And we’ll make it up to them. And in the end, they’re going to be much stronger than they are right now.”

He also said that farm income has been trending downward over the last eight years (it’s actually the last four) and said that because of his actions on NAFTA and China, “farmers will be better off than they ever were.” I hope he’s right but if he’s not, then thanks, farmers, for taking a hit for the rest of us.

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

Russia:

  1. The FBI raids Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s office and hotel room, seizing emails, tax records, and business documents. Which seriously enraged Trump, based on his subsequent comments. As a reminder, Cohen paid off Stormy Daniels and at least one other woman who allegedly had an affair with Trump.
  2. Reportedly, Cohen made recordings of meetings and conversations, which the FBI also seized.
  3. The raids were based on a referral from Robert Mueller, so Trump calls Mueller’s team “the most biased group of people” and says they’re mostly Democrats with a few Obama-appointed Republicans. Though they are actually mostly Republicans.
  4. Trump calls Cohen just to check in and see how he’s doing.
  5. We learn that Cohen is being investigated for bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations. Mueller handed this investigation off to a New York attorney likely because it was out of his jurisdiction. Rod Rosenstein signed off on the search warrant.
  6. Most legal experts say that this warrant must have been bullet-proof in order for the FBI to get it, because it’s extraordinary to serve a warrant on a lawyer like this.
  7. Trump isn’t the only guy Cohen negotiates hush deals for. He also negotiated one for major RNC fundraiser and RNC deputy finance chairman Elliott Broidy. This makes Broidy the third RNC official to be caught up in scandal in the past year and the second to step down from his position.
  8. Trump requests an emergency order preventing prosecutors from looking at the seized material, saying he should be able to review them first because of client/attorney privilege.
  9. In response to the raid, Lou Dobbs (who has apparently been advising Trump all along) tells Trump he should fire Mueller. Trump mulls it over in the middle of a publicized meeting with military brass while they were supposed to be talking about a response to Syria’s chemical weapons attack.
  10. Trump calls it an attack on the country and says the FBI “broke in” to Cohen’s office. His rants attack the usual suspects: Jeff Sessions, the FBI, Hillary Clinton, Rod Rosenstein, Andrew McCabe. He even steps up his Twitter game for this one.
  11. Politicians from both sides step in to support Mueller, including Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) who confirms widespread respect for Mueller in Washington and warns Trump against firing him.
  12. While many legal minds have said Trump doesn’t have the power to fire Mueller, he and his press secretary both say he does.
  13. The White House says they aren’t sure if Cohen still represents Trump. Also, Trump isn’t so sure he wants to sit down with Mueller anymore.
  14. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York recuses himself from the Cohen investigation because of his ties with donors to the Trump campaign.
  15. We learn that Trump tried to have Mueller fired last December, but his lawyers talked him out of it.
  16. Mueller is looking at a $150,000 donation to the Trump Organization from a Ukrainian billionaire (Victor Punchuk). In return for the donation, Trump appeared in a 20-minute video for a conference in Kiev.
  17. Mark Zuckerberg submits written testimony and then testifies before Congress for two days about data privacy (fully illustrating the technology gap between the generations).
  18. Paul Manafort’s lawyers file another motion to suppress evidence. This time it’s the evidence found in a storage unit and they say the employee didn’t have the authority to open the unit for the FBI.
  19. A judge denies Manafort’s request for bail. He’s been denied bail multiple times now. His trial is scheduled to start in July.
  20. The NRA admits to receiving money from almost two dozen Russians (or Americans living in Russia) over the past two years.
  21. Veteran Republicans form a group, Republicans for the Rule of Law, to help protect Mueller from being fired. Also, a bipartisan group of Senators introduce a bill to protect Mueller. Mitch McConnell agrees that Mueller should continue his work, but he doesn’t think Mueller needs to be protected.
  22. Steve Bannon floats a plan to put an end to the Mueller investigation:
    • Fire Rosenstein.
    • Stop cooperating with Mueller.
    • Assert executive privilege and make all White House interviews with Mueller over the past year null and void.
  1. Excerpts leak from James Comey’s soon-to-be-released book, and it becomes an immediate best seller almost a week before its scheduled release. Trump does not respond well. I’m not going to go into what Comey says on his media blitz nor what’s in the book, because it’s not really confirmable.
  2. The RNC actively works to discredit Comey ahead of his book release. They create a website called “Lyin’ Comey” that features quotes of Democrats criticizing him. Their campaign plan includes: digital ads, monitoring Comey’s appearances, a rapid response team to provide rebuttals, and coordinating surrogates to fan out and defend Trump. I don’t know if I’m more bothered that such a campaign exists or that they don’t mind making it public knowledge.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Judge Curiel finalizes the $25 million Trump University settlement. Curiel’s the guy who Trump said couldn’t be unbiased in the case because he’s Mexican.
  2. The Justice Department’s inspector general releases their report on Andy McCabe. (Caveat: I have yet to read the full report.) It doesn’t sound like there’s much that we haven’t already heard, and the report doesn’t include McCabe’s rebuttal. The dispute centers around a Wall Street Journal article in which McCabe authorized staff to rebut the allegations made in the article. McCabe, who first denied giving permission until he was served a reminder, says he authorized it to preserve the reputation of the FBI; the OIG says he did it to preserve his own reputation.

Healthcare:

  1. Voters in Utah, Nebraska, and Idaho are working to get Medicaid expansion on the ballot since their governors refused the federal money they could have received under the ACA to do it.
  2. An appeals court in Maryland rules that a law preventing price gouging by pharmaceutical companies is unconstitutional.

International:

  1. Trump calls out Putin, Russia, and Iran for backing “Animal Assad” in Syria in a barrage of tweets. Russia responds that they don’t do Twitter diplomacy.
  2. Russia says great Britain staged the chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
  3. Trump, along with Great Britain and France, orders airstrikes on chemical weapons facilities in Syria in retaliation for the regime’s chemical weapon attack. Putin calls this an act of aggression and calls for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
  4. After the missile strike, Trump tweets those ill-fated words, “Mission accomplished!” Also, Russia says Syrian air defenses shot down most of our missiles. Doubtful, but impossible to verify.
  5. Russia also vetoes a UN resolution to set up an independent investigation into Syria’s use of chemical weapons.
  6. Tom Bossert, Homeland Security adviser, resigns at the request of the new National Security Adviser, John Bolton. Bolton appears to be cleaning house.
  7. Trump cancels his trip to South America to respond to Syria’s chemical weapons attack. Mike Pence takes his place on the trip to South America.
  8. Mike Pompeo prepares for his confirmation hearing for Secretary of State by calling Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, among other former secretaries. If you remember, Pompeo helped keep Benghazi in the news and called Clinton‘s response “morally reprehensible.” He also liked a tweet calling Kerry a traitor. So either he didn’t mean those things, or he’s looking for some morally reprehensible and traitorous advice. For her part, Clinton has been willing to talk with him and help him out.
  9. Pompeo’s confirmation will be tough, as he failed to sway any of his opponents in his hearing.
  10. We learn that Russia has been thwarting our efforts in Syria by jamming our drone’s reception of GPS satellite signals.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Trump signs legislation to crack down on online companies that aid and abet sex trafficking of minors. The bill establishes punishments, including jail time, for people who run these sites.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Justice Department removes questions on crime surveys about sexual orientation and gender identity, effectively preventing the monitoring of hate crimes against the LGBTQ community.
  2. Maryland bans conversion therapy on minors (that is, therapy that attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation). Both the American Psychological Association and the American Counseling Association find the practice harmful and ineffective. Hawaii will likely follow suit.
  3. A large number of Americans don’t believe 6 million Jews were killed in the holocaust. They think the number is much, much smaller. They also didn’t know that Auschwitz was a notorious concentration camp. Are our schools really that bad?
  4. Facebook bans white nationalist Richard Spencer, but he still has Twitter accounts. Last month, Facebook banned the anti-Muslim hate group Britain First.
  5. On top of sending tens of thousands of Nicaraguans, Haitians, Nigerians, and Syrians back to countries they haven’t been to in the decades since they received temporary protected status, Trump also wants to send Vietnamese immigrants who are protected by a bilateral treaty back to communist-led Vietnam.
  6. All states that border Mexico agree to provide National Guard troops to help CBP per Trump’s request.
  7. Hungarian journalists at state-run media outlets say they pushed an anti-immigrant message before the elections to create animosity toward immigrants and increase nationalist sentiment. They also pushed lies about George Soros influencing the election.

Climate/EPA:

  1. EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson takes responsibility for the questionable pay raises for Scott Pruitt’s friends, though an email from one of the people who got a questionable raise contradicts this.
  2. News breaks that Scott Pruitt fired his former deputy chief of staff for refusing to retroactively approve Pruitt’s travel demands. Apparently, he asked the employee to come up with justification for a trip.
  3. Trump signs an executive order that would loosen air pollution standards and sideline science in setting pollution regulations in individual states.
  4. The Government Accountability Office says that Scott Pruitt broke the law by installing a $43,000 sound proof phone booth. Spending more than $5,000 requires him to notify Congress first.
  5. The non-profit Environmental Defense Fund plans to launch a satellite that can monitor methane releases and pinpoint the biggest offenders.

Budget/Economy:

  1. After all of Trump’s criticism of Amazon for not collecting state taxes (which it mostly does), we learn that the Trump Organization’s online store only collects taxes in two states.
  2. According to the CBO, the budget deficit is on track to surpass $1 trillion again sooner than expected (by 2020). They raised the expected deficit for this year to $804 billion and for 2019 to $981 billion. And this is under a forecast with an upgraded GDP growth rate of 3.1%.
  3. Trump tells his top officials to look into getting back in to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which he pulled out of last year because it was such a “disaster.” In February, nearly half the Senate Republicans urged him to rejoin.
  4. TPP member countries express an unwillingness to reopen TPP negotiations to include the U.S., and then Trump reverses course and says he’d only consider rejoining if the term were substantially better for the U.S.
    Background: Joining the TPP would’ve given us a trade advantage against China with Pacific Rim countries, but China has been moving in to fill that gap.
  5. Jobless rates continue to fall, marking the 162nd week that claims have been below 300,000. That’s since March of 2015.
  6. Both Oklahoma and Arizona teachers wind their protests down. Arizona’s governor promises a phased 20% raise for teachers by 2020.
  7. The White House proposes large cuts to public assistance programs along with work requirements. They request a $17 billion cut to SNAP that would affect around 23,000 military families. Which again begs the question “Why aren’t we paying our men and women in the military enough to live on?”
  8. They also propose to expand the definition of welfare to include SNAP, Medicaid, and other safety-net programs. This is part of their effort to overhaul public assistance, which also includes work requirements.
  9. Republicans in Congress unveil a new farm bill that would require SNAP recipients to either work or attend school or training for 20 hours a week. The plan does not include Trump’s idea of providing some of the food to SNAP recipients in the form of government rations. The CBO estimates that this could remove 1 million people from SNAP over 10 years.
  10. Good news for people who eat organic, though. The farm bill cracks down on inspections of imported products that are labeled organic.
  11. Trump orders an audit of the US postal service.
  12. Trump wants to try to rescind billions of dollars in spending that he signed into law last month. Mick Mulvaney is developing the plan, even though Republican lawmakers don’t want these negotiations to start up again.
  13. On the other hand, House Majority leader is working in tandem to get this through the House, and Mitch McConnell seems open to getting it done in the Senate. This is being done alongside a Balanced Budget Amendment to the constitution, which has very little chance of passing.
  14. The Department of the Interior walks back its plans to drastically raise entrance fees at national parks, and will instead raise prices $5 across the board.
  15. Federal appeal judges seem to think that it’s a conflict of interest that Mick Mulvaney heads both the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget.

Elections:

  1. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announces he won’t seek reelection, bringing the total number of House Republicans not seeking reelection to 46.
  2. There are two Republicans vying for his Wisconsin seat, the most prominent of which is a white supremacist who got banned from Twitter.
  3. Ryan endorses California Representative Kevin McCarthy to replace him as Speaker of the House. If you’ll remember, Kevin lost out on his initial bid to become speaker when he admitted that the Benghazi hearings were dragged out in order to smear Hillary Clinton.
  4. The New Jersey legislature passes an automatic voter registration bill. It will be the 13th state to implement this, and Nevada has it on the ballot this year.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump met with the chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group to talk about a new broadcasting standard that Sinclair is invested in. It would let authorities broadcast to any American’s phone.
  2. Sinclair’s chairman says that during the 2016 campaign, he told Trump: “We are here to deliver your message.”
  3. Several senators request that the FCC investigate Sinclair after complaints arose about Sinclair forcing anchors at local stations to read propaganda pieces. Ajit Pai, FCC chairman, refuses.
  4. Since the Parkland shootings, several cities and states have begun implementing gun regulations, and there’ve even been some changes at the federal level, like allowing the CDC to study gun violence.
  5. On the other hand, a school district in Pennsylvania opts to arm their teachers with miniature baseball bats.
  6. Senator Tammy Duckworth gives birth to her daughter, becoming the first sitting senator have a baby.
  7. Trump issues a full pardon to Scooter Libby, who was Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.
    Background: Libby was convicted of perjury, making false statements to the FBI, and obstruction of justice in the investigation into the information leak that lead to exposing the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. The leak appeared to be in retribution for criticism of the Bush administration by Valerie’s husband.

  8. Marches across the country this week include the March for Science, the Tax March (to protest the new tax bill), and gun rights marches. Of note, gun rights groups encouraged people to carry unloaded weapons, which many did. At least I assume they were unloaded.

Polls:

  1. Just over half of Americans now support a single-payer healthcare system.

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, who tried to stop bills to expand the state’s education funding, says that children were physically harmed during the teacher strikes because they were left at home alone.

“I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them.”

Week 47 in Trump

Posted on December 18, 2017 in Politics, Trump

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

Here’s what happened this week…

Russia:

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

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Week 33 in Trump

Posted on September 12, 2017 in Politics, Trump

Hurricanes, earthquakes, and fires! Oh my! If you’re looking for more ways to help with hurricane relief, here are two good sources:

This week was a perfect example of how Trump shoots the hostage. By rescinding DACA, he forces Congress’s hand in making real, lasting immigration change. But he also throws nearly 800,000 DACA protected workers and students into limbo for the next six months and generates a boatload of ill will. This year, he could’ve used many of Obama’s leftovers as bargaining chips (the Paris accord, TPP, the Iran deal, DACA) but instead, he tends to rip the band-aid off too fast and lose his leverage in the process.

Here’s what happened in week 33…

Russia:

  1. In a review of their own operations, Facebook finds that 33,000 ads bought during the election have links to a Russian “troll farm” that pushes pro-Kremlin propaganda. $100,000 worth of ads lead to a Russian company that targeted voters in 2016.
  2. As part of their audit, they also found nearly 500 suspicious accounts operated out of Russia. That actually seems pretty small in the scheme of things.
  3. We learn that the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed FBI and DOJ documents around the Steele Dossier a few months ago. According to the head of the House investigation, Republican Rep. Michael Conaway, “We’ve got to run this thing to ground.” Whatever that means?
  4. Even though he stepped aside as the head of the House investigation, Devin Nunes (R-Cali) has been running his own side investigation into Russia, which might be hurting Trump’s case more than helping it.
  5. Donald Trump Jr. testifies for five hours behind closed doors. The interview was mostly conducted by committee staff with only a handful of committee members attending.
  6. In testimony, Don Jr. says he met with Russians last year because they said they had dirt and he was trying to determine Hillary Clinton’s “fitness for office.” He also denied that his father helped draft his original (and incorrect) statement.
  7. Like Kushner, Don Jr. tries to paint the Trump campaign as too chaotic and disorganized to have had a plan for collusion.
  8. There were gaps in Don Jr.’s testimony and he’ll likely be asked back for a public hearing.
  9. Trump has already met with the new Russian Ambassador to the U.S. with zero publicity. It wasn’t on his public schedule and there are no pictures and no info from the White House. Why did we not hear about this in the news? Because American press wasn’t invited. However, Russian press did report on the meeting.
  10. Around 3,000 cyber attacks hit Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, some of which they traced back to Russian IP addresses. Hopefully Europe has learned from the Russian meddling in both England’s and our elections…
  11. Mueller announces his intention to interview Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, Hope Hicks, and several White House lawyers.
  12. Ahead of next year’s elections, the DNC begins shoring up it’s cybersecurity. About time, no?

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Justice Department drops its defense of Obama’s overtime rule, denying workers of their earned wages. The overtime rule would have required overtime pay for about 4 million more workers, putting more money in people’s pockets.
  2. Trump and Attorney General Sessions file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court that argues that it’s a constitutional right for businesses to discriminate against people in the LGBTQ community. If the court finds this to be true, a business could literally put a sign in their window that says “We don’t serve gays” and it would be legal. This is a slippery slope for anti-discrimination protections and equal protections under the law.

Healthcare:

  1. Not only did the Health and Humans Services Department defund almost all ACA outreach prior to open enrollment, but they put out ads criticizing the ACA to discourage enrollment. They also launched a social media attack against the ACA.
  2. Insurance regulators ask the government to extend the ACA subsidies past 2018 to help stabilize the insurance market.

International:

  1. The UN Security Council holds an emergency meeting to discuss North Korea’s nuclear threat. The U.S. urges the council to impose an oil embargo on North Korea and ban their textile exports.
  2. South Korea leaders think Trump is a little crazy, especially after he criticized them (in a tweet) over their handling of North Korea.
  3. The EU says that all their member countries must open their doors to refugees. Countries like Hungary and Slovakia have been holding out, and Slovakia is still refusing.
  4. It appears the U.S. didn’t offer Mexico any aid after the earthquake and hurricane that hit within days of each other, even though Mexico offered assistance for Harvey.
  5. Areas recently liberated from ISIS in Iraq and Syria provide a trove of intelligence info, giving us thousands of names of suspected ISIS operatives.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House unanimously approves a bill that says states can’t block the use of self-driving cars. This bill also allows the auto industry to place up to 25,000 self-driving cars on our roads without having to meet auto safety standards.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump ends DACA, saying he’ll phase it out over six months and that Congress should fix it within that time. Some of his advisors fear he doesn’t understand what it means to rescind DACA. The current end date is March 5, 2018.
  2. And as is the new norm under this presidency, there is an angry outcry with protests and rallies across the country. Protests last throughout the week.
  3. After Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali) urges Trump to reassure DACA recipients that they’ll be OK, Trump tweets that he’ll revisit DACA in 6 months if Congress hasn’t codified it. DACA recipients are still shell-shocked and scared.
  4. Trumps aides say he asked them for a way out of his campaign promise to rescind DACA while several state Attorneys General threatened a lawsuit against DACA.
  5. Mayors and law officials from around the country denounce the move to rescind DACA and express support for their DACA populations.
  6. As a result of the changes to DACA, the president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce resigns from Trump’s National Diversity Coalition.
  7. State Attorneys General across the country threaten to sue Trump over his DACA. At least 20 have urged him not to follow through on this.
  8. Fifteen states plus D.C. bring a lawsuit challenging Trump’s decision to rescind DACA.
  9. Business leaders speak out against rescinding DACA.
  10. Both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton came out against rescinding DACA.
  11. Colleges and universities say they started last fall to implement steps to protect their DACA students from a Trump presidency.
  12. The University of California school system files a lawsuit against Trump for rescinding DACA.
  13. Janet Napolitano files a lawsuit against Trump over DACA.
  14. The Department of Homeland Security puts out a talking points memo that includes this: “The Department of Homeland Security urges DACA recipients to use the time remaining on their work authorizations to prepare for and arrange their departure from the United States—including proactively seeking travel documentation—or to apply for other immigration benefits for which they may be eligible.” Basically they’re threatening deportation.
  15. If DACA expires with no congressional fix, the DHS says it won’t “proactively provide immigration officers with a list with the names and addresses of DACA recipients, but if ICE officers ask for it, the agency will provide it.”
  16. Another lawsuit is filed against Trump’s transgender ban in the military.
  17. This is also listed under “Courts/Justice”, but it’s so discriminatory that it’s worth mentioning in this category as well. Trump and Sessions came out in favor of a baker who discriminated against a gay couple by refusing to bake them a wedding cake.
  18. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a previous court ruling expanding the definition of “bona fide relationship” in Trump’s travel ban (expanded now to include grandparents, nieces and nephews, and so on). The court also ruled that working with a resettlement agency constitutes a bona fide relationship, opening the door to letting in more refugees.
  19. The Department of Homeland Security announces that it cancelled its plans to conduct nationwide ICE raids, which would have targeted around 8,400 undocumented immigrants—the largest ICE raid of its kind. In light of the hurricanes, they decided to cancel it.
  20. A bipartisan group of Senators roll out a joint resolution condemning the white supremacists rallies in Charlottesville and denouncing hate groups like white supremacists, the KKK, neo-nazis, and so on. If the resolution passes, it will force Trump to either sign it (thus endorsing the condemnation) or not sign it (indicating that his loyalties do lie with these hate groups).

Climate/EPA:

  1. In a rare trifecta, there are three concurrent hurricanes threatening land. Along with Irma, Katia hits Mexico’s east side and Jose is expected to hang around Bermuda and Bahamas before hopefully going back out into the Atlantic.
  2. Hurricane Irma becomes a category 5, one of the strongest storms ever recorded In the Atlantic. The storm slams into the Caribbean islands and makes its way up the west side of Florida before becoming a tropical storm by the time it hits Georgia.
  3. The EPA claims they haven’t visited 13 Superfund sites in Texas because they aren’t accessible, but an Associated Press reporter went to 12 of them by land vehicle or foot and 1 by boat. The EPA called the story misleading and went after the reporter personally.
  4. Trump’s nominee to head up NASA, James Bridenstine, doesn’t believe in anthropogenic global warming. So he will be the head of a science-based agency.
  5. The EPA hired an inexperienced political employee to review grants and make final funding decisions for research projects. John Konkus reviews every award and grant, and has warned staff that he will be on the look out for the double C (climate change). Scientists will have to come up with a code word.
  6. While much of what Konkus has cut so were Obama’s priorities, he’s giving the heavily Republican state of Alaska the most scrutiny. This is likely related to threats from government agencies over Lisa Murkowski’s healthcare vote.
  7. The Senate Appropriations Committee voted to restore funding to the UN’s climate change agency, the agency that oversees the Paris accord. According to Rex Tillerson, we need to continue monitoring climate change and keep our seat at the table. Trump wants to stop funding the agency.
  8. EPA head Scott Pruitt says this isn’t the time to talk about climate change, even though the worsened storms we’re seeing now were predicted by scientists over a decade ago. At the very least, now is the time to talk about developing infrastructure to withstand climate change.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump continues to say that the U.S. is one of the highest taxed countries in the world. In truth, personal income tax falls somewhere near the middle compared with developed countries (when looking at tax revenue as a percent of GDP). Corporate tax revenue is even lower in comparison to other countries (538). The Tax Policy Center rates us even lower.
  2. Trump heads to North Dakota to push his tax plan.
  3. In a meeting with Senate and House leaders, Trump strikes a deal with Congressional Democrats on hurricane relief, the debt ceiling, and government funding. The caveat is that the debt ceiling and funding portions are only for the next three months; Republicans were looking for something longer term. This is a clean bill with no border wall funding and no protections for DACA (but it should give Congress some space to focus on immigration over the next few months).
  4. Republican leaders express disbelief and frustration to Mick Mulvaney that Trump struck a deal with Democratic leaders to pass a clean debt ceiling and spending bill. Chuck ain’t “Crying Chuck” no more…at least for now.
  5. After receiving positive press over the deal, Trump calls Schumer and Pelosi both to revel in the news.
  6. Congress signs the hurricane relief bill just in time. FEMA was expected to run out of money by the weekend.
  7. Schumer and Trump agree to try and end the debt ceiling, putting an end to a contentious ritual that has outlived its usefulness.

Elections:

  1. After the hacking attempts during the 2016 elections, some successful and some not, the U.S. needs to spend hundreds of millions to improve cybersecurity and voting practices. However, Congress is still fighting over the role Russian hackers played in the election (as are the American people), and they can’t agree on a way forward. Ideas include replacing voting equipment, strengthening state voter databases, training election workers better, and conducting post-election audits.
  2. Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State and the head of the voter suppression commission, publishes an essay on Breitbart claiming he has proof that thousands of out-of-state voters illegally voted in New Hampshire in 2016 and that they probably affected the results of the elections in that state.
  3. WaPo easily debunks Kobach’s “proof” with interviews of college students who did vote on out-of-state licenses, which is completely legal. Note that studies estimate Kobach’s voter laws in Kansas prevented about 34,000 legal voters in that state from having their votes count.
  4. Kobach’s suggestion that New Hampshire Democrat Maggie Hassan’s election was rigged has ignited a firestorm before the voter commission’s second meeting.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Almost 80 lobbyists and government contractors have memberships at Trump’s golf courses, and around 2/3 of them have golfed there at the same time as Trump. This leads some to question the constitutionality of Trump making money off people who are trying to access the office of the president.
  2. Word has it that Trump hasn’t even interviewed a candidate to replace John Kelly as Secretary of Homeland Security.
  3. In North Dakota, Trump tells the crowd that even with the drought (that is killing their crops), Dakotans are better off than those affected by Hurricane Harvey. He also says he’ll make the drought go away and is surprised that drought could happen this far north. Dust bowl anyone?
  4. Betsy DeVos rolls back Obama-era protections for victims of rape and sexual assault on campuses without replacing them with any new protections or guidelines.
  5. Trump denies emergency assistance to Oregon for the fires. He approved it for Montana after originally denying it, so maybe it’ll be the same here.
  6. An 8.1 earthquake strikes off the southwest coast of Mexico. Nearly 100 are dead and the recovery is still underway.
  7. The Florida corrections agency evacuates thousands of federal inmates, though it’s also reported that thousands are left in the hurricane evacuation zone.
  8. Trump begins selling gold “presidential medals” with his face on them to fundraise for his re-election campaign.
  9. In the weirdest Hurricane Irma news, someone starts a Facebook page on a lark urging people to shoot their guns into Irma to stop the hurricane and providing a “scientific” explanation for how it will all work. This forces Florida officials to issue several warnings to NOT shoot into Irma.
  10. All five living ex-presidents come together in an ad campaign for unity and to drum up aid for hurricane victims.

Polls:

  1. According to a recent poll, 76% of Americans think Dreamers should not be deported and should be allowed to obtain either citizenship or permanent residence.