Tag: politics

Week 63 in Trump

Posted on April 9, 2018 in Politics, Trump

YOU'RE FIRED Rubber Stamp over a white background.

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

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

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

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

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

Polls:

A new poll shows that:

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

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

Week 57 in Trump

Posted on February 27, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

Russia:

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

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

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Parkland:

And the gun debate goes on…

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Polls:

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

Week 56 in Trump

Posted on February 27, 2018 in Politics, Trump

I couldn’t get to this week’s recap on time for personal reasons, so here’s a late and rushed recap of Trump’s week 56.

Russia:

  1. All four directors of our intelligence agencies—Christopher Wray, Mike Pompeo, Mike Rogers, and Dan Coats—say the White House hasn’t asked any of them to do anything about Russian interference in our 2018 midterm elections.
  2. The directors also say Russia “will continue to use propaganda and social media as a means of deepening divisions and sowing discord.” They’ll continue to hack into our computer systems, and they’ll continue to pose as Americans.
  3. Trump and the intelligence directors aren’t publicly on the same page about Russia, and there isn’t an agency in charge of creating and implementing a plan to fight Russia’s future meddling. All agencies are worried that we won’t be able to fight it effectively.
  4. Buzzfeed sues the DNC over the Steele dossier as a way to force evidence into the open that would help Buzzfeed fight a libel lawsuit filed by Aleksej Gubarev. Gubarev is a Russian businessman tied to the DNC hacking in the dossier. The DNC says giving this info away would expose digital signatures and leave them more vulnerable to future attacks.
  5. Rick Gates is in the final stages of negotiating a plea deal.
  6. Mueller’s staff interviews Steve Bannon over multiple days (about 20 hours).
  7. But then Bannon tells the House Intelligence Committee that the White House told him to invoke executive privilege and not answer questions about Russia. He wouldn’t answer questions about his time in the White House or the Trump transition.
  8. Mueller’s grand jury indicts 13 Russian individuals and three Russian entities. Charges include conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit bank fraud, among others.
  9. One of the entities, the Internet Research Agency, is a Russian troll farm that used social media and fake accounts to misinform U.S. voters. Their posts and ads were designed to boost Trump and smear Hillary.
  10. The indictment describes a three-year plan to sow political discord in the U.S., to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and then later to bolster the campaigns of Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Jill Stein.
  11. The precise details in the indictment imply that the FBI had either intercepted communications or found an insider willing to cooperate.
  12. And just a side note here. The New York Times Magazine was reporting this as early as June of 2015. Why wasn’t this a bigger deal?
  13. Rod Rosenstein, Deputy AG, says the indictments don’t offer proof that the Russian disinformation campaign affected the outcome of the election.
  14. Trump seems to think the Russian indictments exonerate him.
  15. People who worked on the troll farms start to open up about their work there. Many call their time there Orwellian.
  16. Mueller charges Richard Pinedo with identity theft in relation to the Russia investigation. Pinedo is cooperating with Mueller and has pled guilty.
  17. After the Parkland shooting, Russian trolls and bots promote both pro-gun and gun control messaging to further deepen our divide. IGNORE THE TROLLS!
  18. And even though Trump thinks the indictments cleared him, he went on a 9-hour twitter rant attacking McMaster, Hillary Clinton, the FBI, the DOJ, CNN, Adam Schiff, Obama, the Democrats, John Podesta, and more. Everyone but the Russians who waged the misinformation war.
  19. Why did he attack McMaster? Because McMaster says that the evidence is incontrovertible that Russia meddled in our political system.
  20. Russians made a big effort in Florida to sow discord in our elections. They organized “Florida Goes Trump” rallies in more than 20 cities, and they generated some of the most commonly shared anti-Hillary displays, including getting people to dress up like her in prison garb or cages.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump’s new budget proposes to cut about half of the benefits of people who receive $90 or more per month in SNAP assistance. The difference would be made up by government food boxes (that is, government rations). The boxes would not include fresh fruits or vegetables, and local grocery stores will lose business. The current system is more free market.
  2. Blue Cross of Idaho announces they’ll offer a health insurance policy that ignores the ACA’s rules by charging more for pre-existing conditions. The company can do this because Idaho’s GOP governor signed an executive order allowing it.

International:

  1. Israeli police announce that there’s sufficient evidence to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They are currently looking into two corruption cases against him. The attorney general will decide whether to bring charges.
  2. Russian mercenaries attack a base and refinery in Syria held by the U.S. Over 200 of them are killed. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis says they don’t know if the attack was ordered by Russia.
  3. At a meeting of European foreign policy leaders, top U.S. officials—both Republican and Democrat—tell them not to pay any attention to Trump’s tweets.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Trey Gowdy says he’s leaving Congress because facts don’t matter there and he wants to work somewhere where facts do matter. Good to know.
  2. The Senate Judiciary Committee votes in favor of the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which eases federal sentencing rules around non-violent crimes (some retroactively) and increases sentences for domestic violence. Jeff Sessions says this will increase violent crime and make it harder to enforce federal laws.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Speaking at the National Sheriffs Association, Jeff Sessions praises our “Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.” Whatever that means.
  2. A second federal judge blocks Trump’s attempt to end DACA, and says the government must start processing both renewals and new applications.
  3. Another federal court of appeals blocks the latest Muslim ban.
  4. The State Department advises that refugee resettlement agencies close 20 U.S. offices because the Trump administration capped refugee admissions at 45,000. Under Obama, the cap was 110,000.
  5. Trump’s repeated desire to severely restrict family-based migration brings up questions about how Melania’s parents came to be in the U.S. and whether they’ll rush to get green cards before the law changes (if it does). At any rate, many other legal immigrants are rushing to bring family members into the U.S.
  6. The Senate debates DACA and immigration policy. Several bipartisan versions have been proposed. Here’s an example of a compromise: it’s more strict than Democrats want, but it doesn’t end family-based immigration. See? Compromise.
    • Path to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers.
    • $25 billion for border security.
    • The visa lottery system would become merit based.
  1. Trump shuts down all bipartisan immigration plans. Instead he tells GOP legislators to oppose bipartisan efforts to solve these issues and to support a GOP bill that would reduce legal immigration far more than even most hardliners are comfortable with.
  2. And then the Senate votes down a bipartisan agreement that would’ve saved DACA and added funding to the border. Then they vote down Trump’s plan too. Looks like a stalemate. Great negotiator my ass.
  3. Want to know how Trump really feels about immigrants workers? Across three of his properties, there were 144 seasonal job openings and only ONE went to a U.S. worker. He himself benefits from immigration.
  4. The House passes a bill limiting the power of the American with Disabilities Act, removing years of progress on rights for people with disabilities.
  5. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rules 9-4 that Trump’s latest travel ban,which targets largely Muslim countries, is unlawful because it discriminates based on religion.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A federal court rules that the Trump administration must implement the energy efficiency guidelines created in 2016 under Obama. A coalition of state attorneys general had sued the Department of Energy for refusing to implement the guidelines.
  2. Apparently Scott Pruitt flies first class on the recommendation of his security team because people in coach are abusive. One person yelled at him, “You’re fucking up the environment.”

Puerto Rico:

  1. It’s been five months since Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and still nearly a half million people are without power. Some people are working to restore power lines themselves.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump proposes a budget that pretty much concedes that they’ve dropped the goal of reducing the deficit. Between the recent tax cuts and the spending increases included in the budget, reducing the deficit would not be possible.
  2. Trump’s budget calls for major cuts to programs and agencies. People are making a big deal about it, but I don’t see it coming to fruition since Congress already signed a spending bill.
  3. Trump’s budget would make cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. On the campaign trail, Trump tweeted this:

“I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Huckabee copied me.”

  1. Trump endorses a 25-cent per gallon gas tax, but his party isn’t going for it so far. Seeing how the gas tax is playing out in California, I can’t say I blame them.
  2. Analysts estimate that the 25-cent gas tax would erase 60% of the tax cuts for individuals.
  3. Trump proposes an infrastructure plan that would provide up to $200 billion to encourage private and state investment in building projects and shoring up roads and bridges. He thinks this will incentivize $1.5 trillion in infrastructure spending.
  4. His plan also reduces the time allowed for environmental reviews by shortening the permit period.
  5. The total U.S. household debt is at a record high of $13.15 trillion.

Elections:

  1. Pennsylvania’s governor, Tom Wolf, rejects the redrawn district lines provided to him (under court order) by the Republican state legislature after an independent analysis found the lines to be just as partisan as the current lines. The analysis found that the chances of a random map being drawn as favorably to the GOP as the redrawn map is .1%.
  2. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit by Citizen’s United. The lawsuit was against a New York law requiring disclosure of the largest donors to non-profits.

Parkland:

The news was so full of the school shooting this week, I had to put it in a separate category.

  1. There’s another school shooting, this time in Florida. There’s been a school shooting about every other day this year. There are seventeen dead, and this time, the students aren’t taking any excuses for Congress’s lack of action around gun violence.
  2. Trump tweets that the students and neighbors should’ve reported the shooter for his behavior prior to the shooting, which they actually did. Multiple times. Way to blame the victim.
  3. The FBI says it failed to act on a tip about Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz. Apparently some protocols were not followed.
  4. Trump later says that if the FBI wasn’t so busy with the Russia investigation, they would’ve been able to take care of the shooter before this happened. Yes, the FBI was at fault here, but they can walk and chew gum at the same time. They have thousands of ongoing investigations that don’t interfere with each other.
  5. Florida Governor Rick Scott calls on FBI Director Wray to resign over the missed signals on the shooter. For real.
  6. Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin calls on Congress to look into gun violence issues. He’s the first senior member of the administration to do so.
  7. Once again, people argue that it’s too soon to talk about gun control. But with a school shooting nearly every other day, when will it ever NOT be too soon?
  8. Interesting fact: The CDC is prevented from researching guns and gun violence due to a law passed in 1996. Records on gun violence are non-standard and haphazard because there are few requirements.
  9. Interesting side note: Trump’s proposed budget cuts millions from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
  10. This time students are vocal and passionate and well-spoken, and they take to the media and social media to push for change. Finally a group is more organized on social media than Russia—though they still can’t drown out the bots. Students stage walk-outs and plan a March 24th march (March For Our Lives).
  11. Lawmakers seem to agree across the aisle on some basic gun purchasing reforms, like universal background checks, but the GOP-led Congress has refused to bring any debate to the floor.
  12. Some people think the answer is to have concealed carry in schools. There was an armed guard on site.
  13. Trump says the gunman is mentally disturbed and says he’ll tackle mental health issues. He says he won’t move on gun reform though.
  14. Oh. Also, Trump’s proposed budget cuts $100s of millions from mental health program funding. Destroying the ACA, as he’s been trying to do, would also cut mental health treatment.
  15. Oh. And one more thing. Last year, Trump reversed a rule limiting gun ownership for people with certain mental disabilities. The White house refuses to release the photo of him signing it. This wouldn’t have changed the Parkland shooting, but you can’t say this is a mental health problem and not a gun problem, and then loosen mental health restrictions on gun ownership.

Miscellaneous

  1. The White House claimed last week that the FBI hadn’t completed Rob Porter’s background check and that’s why they weren’t aware of the abuse allegations. Which is why Porter was still around…reading all that classified information.
  2. But then FBI director Christopher Wray testifies to Congress that they finished checking Porter last July and provided requested updates to the White House. Wray didn’t say what their background check found, but Porter’s ex-wives say they gave all the abuse information to the FBI.
  3. Sarah Huckabee Sanders later says that the White House meant that the White House personnel security office hadn’t finished their process yet. Seven months after the FBI finished theirs.
  4. It turns out that Rob Porter was up for a promotion, even though John Kelly knew about the allegations of spousal abuse.
  5. It took a week after Rob Porter’s resignation for Trump to say he opposes domestic violence (after originally saying that baseless accusations are ruining careers).
  6. The House Oversight Committee begins investigating the handling of the Rob Porter situation.
  7. Last fall, the White House banned any new employees with interim security clearances.
  8. National Intelligence Director Dan Coats says anyone with interim security clearance should be limited in what sensitive information they can see. There are about 130 White House officials without permanent clearance.
  9. John Kelly approves changes to the vetting process that puts more onus on the FBI and Justice Department, though they are the agencies that actually did their jobs in the Porter matter.
  10. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump report $31-$155 million in debt.
  11. Ajit Pai is being investigated for corruption. The FCC is looking into whether he “Improperly coordinated” with Sinclair Broadcasting by changing the rules to facilitate Sinclair’s purchase of Tribune Media.
  12. Thomas Brunell withdraws from consideration to run the 2020 census after receiving pushback over his stance on redistricting. He thinks gerrymandering is A-OK and that elections don’t need to be competitive.
  13. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, says that he paid off adult film star Stormy Daniels with his own money.
  14. Apparently Cohen’s admission that he paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her to sign a non-disclosure agreement invalidates the NDA.
  15. David Shulkin, the Veterans Affairs secretary, had his chief of staff lie for him so the government would cover his wife’s travel expenses on a 10-day European trip.
  16. The IRS and DOJ issue new subpoenas to Jared Kushner’s family over their financial dealings.
  17. The Department of Defense is seriously looking into Trump’s military parade, with costs ranging from $3 million to $50 million. I don’t know if that covers fixing the streets of D.C. afterward.
  18. Trump has now gone the longest of any president in the last 50 years without holding an official press conference.
  19. The RNC refuses to return donations from their former finance chair Steve Wynn until formal investigations are complete. Wynn is accused of multiple instances of sexual assault occurring over several decades. This is notable only because of the outcry from the RNC that Democrats immediately return donations from Harvey Weinstein, whose investigation is also ongoing.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s approval rating is up to 44%, with 53% disapproving. This might be a high for him.

Week 54 in Trump

Posted on February 5, 2018 in Politics, Trump

No love lost here...

This was a huge week in Russia news, dwarfing most everything else. So I’ll skip the introduction and get right into it. Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe steps down from his job, but he’ll take leave until mid-March when he can retire with full benefits. It’s been rumored for a few weeks that he’d retire, but sources say he was forced out.
  2. McCabe is being investigated for whether he sat on the emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop for three weeks. An inspector general’s report is forthcoming on this and his handling of the Russia investigation. There’s also a question of whether McCabe should’ve recused himself from Clinton investigations because his wife received campaign donations from one of Clinton’s friend’s political organizations.
  3. Donald Trump Jr. questions whether McCabe should receive his pension. McCabe is a 20+ year veteran of the FBI and DOJ. Spoken like someone who never had to work to earn a pension nor pay into one. Junior also tweets that it was the Nunes memo that got McCabe fired.
  4. A Russian jet flew within five feet of a Navy surveillance plane over the Black Sea, forcing the Navy plane to stop its mission.
  5. Though the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to impose sanctions on Russia (only five members in total voted against it), Trump says he won’t impose the sanctions because the threat of sanctions has been enough of a deterrent.
  6. The House Intelligence Committee votes along party lines to release Nunes’ memo about classified FBI and DOJ information. They then vote to NOT release the memo written by the Democrats on the committee, which provides contextual and rebuttal information.
  7. The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, sends a letter to Nunes accusing him of making material changes to the memo after the committee voted on the release but before he gave it to the White House. Technically, the changes would require a second vote to release.
  8. The Republican majority in the House Intelligence Committee opens an investigation into the FBI and DOJ without consulting the Democratic minority.
  9. Caught on a hot mike, Trump says he’ll 100% release the memo. Sarah Huckabee Sanders later says he hasn’t read it yet. John Kelly says it will be released pretty quick. And then Trump authorizes the release of the memo (in its unredacted form) within days.
  10. Here’s a hint of what the memo alleges, along with information we know:
    • Christopher Steele passed bad information to the FBI in the dossier. (There is no evidence of this.)
    • The FBI based its warrant application for Carter Page on the dossier. (They didn’t. The application contains years worth of investigations.)
    • This was biased since the dossier hadn’t been proven. (Much of the dossier was independently corroborated by the time of the application.)
    • Steele was desperate to make sure Trump didn’t become president. (Maybe (it’s hearsay), but he allegedly said it after he wrote the dossier and learned what was going on.)
    • The FBI and DOJ are partisan and anti-Trump. (These agencies tend to lean Republican, but there’s a mix of political thought, of course.)
  1. A little background here. The FBI first started looking into Carter Page in 2013, so there was much more to the FISA application than just the dossier. The courts found reason to extend the surveillance warrant on Page three times. This means that each warrant delivered enough new information to legally justify extending the surveillance.
  2. FBI Director Christopher Wray says the FBI has grave concerns about releasing the memo because the memo omits certain facts that affect the accuracy of the information. Coming out against Trump on this could put Wray on rocky ground. This doesn’t tend to end well.
  3. There was concern that the memo would give away our intelligence gathering methods and sources, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
  4. It’ll be difficult for people who know the full story to correct the information because so much of the information is classified. So it really would require the disclosure of sensitive information about intelligence sources and their methods.
  5. Note that FISA warrant applications are typically around 50 pages long, so if Nunes condensed that to 4 pages, you can be sure it’s not the full story. Also, it turns out that Nunes never read the warrant application.
  6. Trump tells friends that he thinks the memo might discredit the Russia investigation and make it easier for him to make a case that the people running the Russia investigations are prejudiced against him.
  7. Trump also thinks releasing the memo could pave the way for him being able to make changes at the DOJ. Rod Rosenstein better watch his back.
  8. The FBI Agents Association reacts to the memo by reiterating that they never have and never will let partisan politics distract them from their mission.
  9. Trump accused Obama of wiretapping him in March of 2016, which means he’s known about the FISA warrant at least since then. Note that this doesn’t mean Obama wiretapped him, something Obama couldn’t do (I’m not sure he could even order it, but it definitely can’t be done without cause).
  10. In an interview in October of 2017, Carter Page gives an indication that he knew Paul Ryan was going to release details about the “dodgy dossier.” So it seems to have been the plan since last fall that some kind of memo would be released.
  11. Paul Ryan says that the memo isn’t an indictment of the FBI or DOJ, and he supports the release of the Democrats’ memo as well.
  12. But then Paul Ryan also calls for a cleanse of the FBI and DOJ.
  13. Trump says the memo completely exonerates him (it doesn’t) and that the investigation is a disgrace.
  14. There are many analyses of the memo, but this one from NPR is one of the better ones.
  15. And here’s a good explainer of why the memo could have the opposite of its intended effect.
  16. Rick Gates adds a new defense attorney to his team and his three existing attorneys withdraw from his case, sparking rumors that Gates is looking to strike a deal.
  17. The FBI is investigating a second dossier on Trump, this one written by a political activist and ex-journalist. It corroborates some of the Steele dossier, but the author doesn’t have an intelligence background and is an associate of the Clintons (though they didn’t know about it). Even Steele said he couldn’t vouch for all the info in the second dossier, though he did hand it over to the FBI.
  18. CIA Director Mike Pompeo (Trump appointee) says he has “every expectation” that Russia will continue their attempts to meddle in our elections, including the 2018 midterms. So please people, ignore the social media bots and fake stories.
  19. In December, Rod Rosenstein went to Trump to ask for help in stopping Nunes from getting the classified documents he requested, but instead Trump wanted to find out where the Russia investigation was going. He asked Rosenstein if he was “on my team” (his fourth loyalty request of a DOJ official). Rosenstein’s response? ”Of course. We’re all on your team, Mr. President.”
  20. We learn from Russian news sources that CIA officials met with Russian officials, including Sergey Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR. Naryshkin is barred from entering the U.S. under 2014 sanctions, so his arrival raises some questions.
  21. The DOJ files a motion to dismiss Paul Manafort’s civil suit against Mueller. Manafort’s suit claims Mueller exceeded his authority by prosecuting the crimes Manafort was indicted for, but Rosenstein says he gave Mueller broad authority.
  22. The former spokesperson for the White House legal team, Mark Corallo, warned that the statement drafted on Air Force One about Don Jr.’s Russia meeting could backfire if the underlying documents ever surfaced. Hope Hicks allegedly responded that the documents would never get out because only a few people had access to them. This is just before Don Jr. dropped all his emails to the public.
  23. One of the agents the GOP and Trump are seeking to discredit, Peter Strzok, is also the author of the letter announcing that Hillary’s email case was re-opened just before 2016’s election. That kind of pokes a hole in Strzok being biased toward her.
  24. Even though Trump has discussed firing and discrediting Mueller, Mitch McConnell says he doesn’t think Mueller needs protecting because there’s no indication anyone wants him fired or discredited. Republicans in the House and Senate refuse to advance bills protecting Mueller.
  25. Julian Assange accidentally sends a direct message to a fake Sean Hannity account, thinking he was offering the real Sean Hannity dirt on Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee that has its own Russia investigation.

Healthcare:

  1. The Trump-appointed head of the CDC resigns over her investments in multiple tobacco stocks, saying it would be too difficult to divest.
  2. An investigation by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce shows that two pharmacies in a small town of 3,000 in West Virginia received 20,800,000 prescription opioid painkillers from 2008 to 2015. That’s over 2,500,000 per year.
  3. A Texas judge temporarily blocks a state law requiring healthcare workers to bury or cremate fetal tissue after each abortion.
  4. The Senate votes down a bill passed in the House that would’ve put a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of gestation. Trump backs the House bill.
  5. The CDC plans to cut their efforts to prevent global outbreaks of disease by 80% because funding is running out.
  6. Indiana adds a work requirement to Medicaid, and will block coverage if paperwork showing eligibility is turned in late.

International:

  1. Trump signs an executive order to keep Gitmo open. This formally reverses Obama’s eight-year effort to close down the military prison. Interesting side note: There are 41 prisoners currently in Gitmo at an annual cost of $440 million.
  2. As one of the world’s largest financial centers, London is working on a free trade deal for financial services with the European Commission. This week, the EC rejects the deal, so London will probably have less favorable trading terms with the EU. EU considers moving their operations out of London and into EU countries, causing another drop in sterling.
  3. The White House drops their nominee for Ambassador to South Korea, Victor Cha, over disagreements on trade and military action in the region.
  4. Poland’s government tries to rewrite history by passing a bill that makes it illegal to accuse Poles of complicity in the Holocaust. It also outlaws the use of the phrase “Polish death camps.”
  5. After an increase in violence in Afghanistan, Trump says the U.S. isn’t interested in talking with the Taliban anymore. Except that’s what our military strategy in Afghanistan is—to force the Taliban to the negotiating table.
  6. The State Department’s inspector general opens an investigation into whether career workers in the department under Rex Tillerson have been unfairly and politically targeted.
  7. North Korea gets around sanctions by entering into joint ventures in fishing and other areas with Mozambique, using these businesses as a front.
  8. The Trump administration wants to develop smaller, lower-yield nuclear weapons.
  9. Trump wants more options for a military strike against North Korea, and he’s frustrated that his military leaders aren’t providing them.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Another sitting chair, Rodney Frelinghuysen of the House Appropriations Committee, announces he won’t seek re-election, bringing that number to nine.
  2. Trey Gowdy announces he won’t seek reelection. Gowdy is known for having lead the Benghazi hearings, and at the time said it wasn’t about politics. But now he has this to say about committee investigations.

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

  1. The DOJ moves to dismiss corruption charges against Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, citing a previous court decision to acquit him on several of the charges.
  2. A chartered train carrying Republican leaders to a retreat in West Virginia collides with a truck, killing one person in the truck and injuring two others. No one on the train is seriously injured.
  3. The number of members of Congress members resigning this year is the highest it’s been in 117 years.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Homeland Security extends temporary protected status (TPS) for Syrian refugees here since late 2016 for an additional 18 months. This affects about 7,000 Syrians.
  2. Here’s a paradox. The places in the U.S. where people are overall most against immigration and would like to see it limited are also the places least affected by immigration. The places where people are most supportive of immigration are the places most affected by immigration.
  3. Members of Congress from both parties want Trump to drop his request to slash legal immigration. Trump’s plan would cut it by half at a time when economists say we need more immigrants, not fewer, in order to keep inflationary pressures down.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump’s reduction of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments goes into effect. Individuals and companies can now stake claims for hard rock mining (gold, silver, copper, uranium, and the like) under the General Mining law. You can stake a claim for a mere $212 filing fee and a $150 annual fee.
  2. In response, Congressman John Curtis (R-Utah) proposes a bill to withdraw all of the Bears Ears region from any future mining claims. Previous claims would still be honored.
  3. Trump’s proposed 2019 budget cuts clean energy research by 72%. This, along with the 30% tariffs on imported solar panels, would kill our solar industry, which currently employs more people than coal, oil, and natural gas power plants combined. It would also cut funding into electric vehicle research, ensuring that foreign automakers stay far ahead of us in that technology. Congress will likely not approve the cut.
  4. A Montana oil field explosion kills one worker.
  5. Trump formally suspends the Waters of the US rule, which was designed to expand the types of waterways that are protected from pollution by industry and farming.
  6. Here’s an interesting find on Scott Pruitt, who has been the most successful of Trump’s cabinet members in reversing things done under Obama. In a 2016 interview, Pruitt said that if Trump was elected he would most certainly act unconstitutionally.
  7. Scott Pruitt has either rescinded or is refusing to enforce over 66 environmental protections.
  8. California state legislators put forth a bill to protect their coastlines from offshore drilling so they can have the same protections that Ryan Zinke arbitrarily gave to Florida.
  9. The White House drops Kathleen Hartnett White’s nomination to head the Council on Environmental Quality. Her stances on the environment and fossil fuels are so controversial that not even Republicans can get behind her.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Due to revenue loss in federal withholding taxes from the changes to the tax law, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that Congress will need to re-up the debt limit sooner than expected because we’ll run out of money sooner than expected.
  2. Mick Mulvaney takes away enforcement power of the Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity, an office in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) responsible for pursuing discrimination in financial dealings. The office will no longer be responsible for oversight, but will instead be involved in outreach and education, allowing businesses to restart their discriminatory lending practices.
  3. We could see a rise in vegetable prices. Farmers in California say they’re having a hard time staffing up for their harvests, leaving some crops on the ground. Losses in two counties alone are at $13 million. Many farm workers are foreign born (largely from Mexico), and with more Mexicans leaving the US for Mexico than coming in, workers are hard to find.
  4. The Dow Jones drops 1,000 points in 5 days. I’m not panicked (yet) since it previously went up about the same amount in about the same amount of time.
  5. The government is set to borrow nearly a trillion dollars this fiscal year, the highest about in six years. This is almost double the amount borrowed in 2017.
  6. Betsy DeVos wants to issue federal student loans using debit cards so they can track how and where students spend the money.
  7. Paul Ryan tweets about how a teacher got an extra $1.50 in her paycheck because of tax reform, and that will cover her Costco membership. Twitter does not respond kindly, given the tens of thousands of dollars the tax plan gives back to the wealthy and corporations. Ryan deletes the tweet.

Elections:

  1. A federal judge says the system by which Florida reinstates voting rights for felons is arbitrary and unfair. The ruling doesn’t say that felon disenfranchisement is illegal, but the way Florida handles it is. This could help the measure on Florida’s November ballot that would automatically reinstate felons’ voting rights after they serve time except in the case of murder or felony sexual assault.
  2. The Pennsylvania GOP wants the Supreme Court to take a look at a lower court’s ruling that they must redraw their district lines due to overt gerrymandering.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Based on a recommendation from the National Security Council, Trump wants to centralize and nationalize a secure 5G network as a way to prevent cyber attacks. The FCC opposes this move. It’s an interesting deviation from the standard Republican view of a free market.
  2. Trump says he had the biggest audience ever for a State of the Union address with 45.6 million viewers. Actually, Bill Clinton’s 1993 SOTU address was the largest by a long shot, with 66.9 million watching. Bush and Obama each had SOTU dresses with higher viewership too.
  3. Fact-checking the State of the Union is too much for me, so I’m relying on the experts here. Below are a few takes on it:
  1. FEMA reaches an agreement with Puerto Rico to continue distributing aid one day after they said aid would stop. FEMA says it never intended to stop aid; it was just a re-evaluation of needs.
  2. We haven’t heard much about Ben Carson, Secretary of HUD, but now he’s run into some questions by ethics investigators. Turns out Carson let his son organize some events for him despite warnings that it could be a violation of ethics rules.
  3. Another school shooting turns out to be an accidental discharge. A 12-year-old student at Belmont School in Los Angeles brought a gun to school in her backpack.
  4. It turns out that pretty much with each new presidential administration, NASA’s mission changes. Trump wants to go back to George Bush’s plan to go back to the moon, though the reasons and purpose aren’t yet clear.
  5. Stormy Daniels signs a statement denying she had an affair with Trump (that she outlined in detail for In Touch magazine), but then walks back the denial. Sort of. She’s being coy and it’s a little weird.
  6. Trump declines the traditional presidential Super Bowl interview.
  7. Josh Hawley, Republican candidate for Senate, says human trafficking is the result of the sexual revolution of the 60s. This isn’t really news but it stuck out to me because a friend has been saying the sexual revolution is the root of liberal evil. It makes me wonder if it’s a new talking point from the right?
  8. K.T. McFarland asks to be dropped from consideration for the ambassadorship to Singapore after her hearing stalls over alleged communications with Russia.
  9. I couldn’t care less that Melania Trump took 21 trips on Air Force One before moving to the White House at a cost of over $650,000. I just put it out there for anyone who criticized Michelle Obama for the same kind of thing.

Polls:

  1. 71% of Americans think Trump should speak with Mueller, and 82% of those think he should do it under oath.

Week 52 in Trump

Posted on January 22, 2018 in Politics, Trump

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, here’s something to remember if the current atmosphere of protests makes you uncomfortable. Gallup polls show that King’s favorability ratings weren’t that high in the 60s. We might revere and respect him now, but we didn’t then. And people were just as uncomfortable with his protests. So just as a reminder of how history looks back on current events, here are a sampling of his ratings. We should all think about how history will look back on us, even if it means ruffling some feathers in the here and now.

  • 1963: 41% positive and 37% negative
  • 1964: 43% positive and 39% negative
  • 1965: 45% positive and 45% negative
  • 1966: 32% positive and 63% negative (the last year using this same type of polling)
  • 1999: MLK was ranked the second most admired person of the 20th century

Shutdown:

  1. Trump says he’ll sign anything bipartisan for a funding agreement with DACA protections. Congress comes up with an agreement, and Trump says no. Later, Trump and Schumer make an agreement, which is great until Trump’s extremist advisors say no and Trump follows suit.
  2. Here’s a timeline of events from the New York Times and my own notes:
    • 1/20/2017: Trump tells Senator Dick Durbin not to worry about Dreamers, because “we’re going to take care of those kids.”
    • 9/5/2017: Trump ends the DACA program and puts a deadline on their status, affecting over 800,000 people
    • 9/6/2017: Congress approves a bipartisan increase to the debt limit, and Trump tells Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi he wants to help Dreamers.
    • 9/13/2017: Trump, Schumer, and Pelosi come up with an agreement over dinner.
    • 9/14/2017: Immigration hardliners say no way.
    • 10/1/2017: The new fiscal year begins and we start running on stopgap funding. CHIP expires, putting children under medical care in danger of losing their coverage.
    • 10/8/2017: Trump makes the following demands in exchange for a Dream Act: full funding for the wall, increased border control personnel, tougher asylum laws, stopping grants to sanctuary localities, strict use of E-Verify, and more.
    • 12/7/2017: Democrats cave on their condition that a Dream Act be included in any funding measure, and agree to a two-week funding measure.
    • 12/20/2017: Democrats again agree to a short-term funding measure, this time with a promise from McConnell that they’ll get the Dream Act.
    • 1/9/2018: Trump appears to agree to a pathway to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants.
    • 1/11/2018: Dick Durbin and Lindsay Graham bring Trump a bipartisan immigration measure that could save Dreamers and pave the way to a budget agreement. It’s a good compromise on both sides, helping Dreamers and increasing border and immigration control.
    • 1/11/2018: During a meeting about the bipartisan compromise, Trump calls Haiti and African nations shithole countries, ending a process that was progressing well. This blows up the bipartisan agreement.
    • 1/18/2018: Trump tweets that CHIP shouldn’t be part of a short-term solution, causing confusion in the House, which thought Trump was on board with their plan. Aides say this came from watching Fox & Friends and nearly derailed negotiations in the House.
    • 1/18/2018: After clarifying Trump’s stance, the House passes a one-month stopgap funding measure. The Senate doesn’t and the shutdown begins at midnight.
    • 1/20/2018: The government partially shuts down on the one-year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration.
    • 1/20/2018: Democrat Claire McCaskill calls for not ending military pay during the shutdown and Mitch McConnell objects.
    • 1/20/2017: Democrats propose legislation that would prevent lawmakers from being paid during a shutdown. It doesn’t pass, though some say they’ll forego their paycheck (I’m not sure they can actually do that).
  1. Democrats demand that CHIP and DACA get resolved before we move forward.
  2. Of note, the federal government has never been shut down when one party controls both Houses and the executive branch.
  3. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says this has become a total “shitshow.”
  4. Before the shutdown, Trump blames Democrats for wanting a shutdown. Even though the bipartisan plan gave Trump much of what he wanted, he’s already blaming Democrats.
  5. Before the shutdown, conservatives say they can’t “support any spending bill that paves the way for a future immigration deal that could favor Democrats,” according to NPR.
  6. My analysis? Trump put a time bomb on DACA and Republicans put a time bomb on CHIP. In doing so they created bargaining chips in the most callous way.
  7. Trump’s own words from the 2013 shutdown surface. He said back then that any shutdown is the president’s fault.
  8. According to Lindsay Graham: “Every time we have a proposal it is only yanked back by staff members. As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we’re going nowhere.”
  9. Some Republicans try to play the shutdown against the Democrats, saying they’re putting the needs of immigrants above children and the military. There’s literally no reason not to include the bipartisan bill that includes DACA as a condition of passing a spending bill. Almost every legislator is for this, at least privately.
  10. And always the grownups in the room, the White House changes their outgoing message:

“Thank you for calling the White House. Unfortunately, we cannot answer your call today, because Congressional Democrats are holding government funding, including funding for our troops and other national security priorities, hostage to an unrelated immigration debate. Due to this obstruction, the government is shut down. In the meantime, you can leave a comment for the president at www.whitehouse.gov/contact. We look forward to taking your calls as soon as the government reopens.”

Russia:

  1. Robert Mueller subpoenas Steven Bannon in the Russia investigation. For now, Bannon won’t appear before the grand jury.
  2. Bannon meets with the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors, and says he won’t answer questions about the transition period nor his time in the White House. The committee immediately issues a subpoena. After the subpoena, Bannon’s lawyer calls the White House, and it seems Bannon was told to not say anything.
  3. Bannon does admit that he talked to both Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer as well as a legal spokesperson about the Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyers last year.
  4. White House Counsel, Don McGahn, advises Bannon on what he can say despite the fact that McGahn himself is a witness to the events under investigation.
  5. Hundreds of Twitter accounts controlled by the Kremlin call for the release of a memo commissioned by Devin Nunes that accuses the DOJ and FBI of having anti-Trump bias (even though these agencies tend to be more conservative than liberal).
  6. House Republicans have been sharing the memo among themselves, but refuse to share it with Democrats, the FBI, or the DOJ.
  7. A federal judge rejects Mueller’s bid to start Paul Manafort’s trial in May. It’ll probably start in September instead.
  8. Mueller is looking at financial transactions by Russian players, including by former Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak in the days around the election.
  9. Last week, Dianne Feinstein released Glenn Simpson’s (Fusion GPS) testimony for the Senate Intelligence Committee. This week, the House Intelligence Committee releases Simpson’s testimony for them.
  10. The financial aspect of the Russia investigation includes looking at the NRA, which spent $30 million on getting Trump elected.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Nothing major this week!

Healthcare:

  1. And so it begins. After Trump gives states more leeway in Medicaid spending, Kentucky is the first to get permission to require that certain recipients work, among other requirements. An estimated 90,000 people will lose Medicaid coverage as a result. This is a big turnaround in Kentucky, which was a poster child for making the ACA work for it’s residents under their previous governor.
  2. Trump creates a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division in the Department of Health and Human Services. The purpose of this group is to protect health workers who oppose abortion, gender confirmation surgery, and other procedures or drugs based on religious beliefs. So a nurse can’t be reprimanded for refusing to assist in an abortion or a pharmacist can’t be reprimanded for refusing birth control—even if these are medically necessary.
  3. The number of Americans without insurance increased by 3.2 million last year.

International:

  1. Trump says Russia’s been helping North Korea get around sanctions by providing fuel to North Korea.
  2. As part of the expansion of the definition of which threats can be met with a nuclear response, the Pentagon proposes that cyberattacks could result in nuclear retaliation.
  3. Trump cuts aid to Palestine in half.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. No legislation this week. Lawmakers were too busy fighting with each other and tripping themselves up so they can shut down down the government.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Sarah Huckabee Sanders explains that Trump can’t be racist because he was on “The Apprentice” and they wouldn’t give him a TV show if he was racist. Huh?
  2. After his shithole comments last week, Trump apparently said he doesn’t care what the Congressional Black Caucus thinks.
  3. This falls under the category of “Don’t campaign on issues you don’t grasp.” According to Chief of Staff John Kelly, Trump’s campaign promises about building a border wall were uninformed and that we won’t build a physical wall across the entire border as Trump had promised. He also says that Mexico was never going to pay for it.
  4. Even so, Trump continues to repeat his promise to build the wall, and says that Mexico will pay for it indirectly through NAFTA renegotiations. Translation: You and I will pay for it with increased cost of goods from Mexico and less trade.
  5. Contrary to his campaign promise, Trump says that parts of the wall “will be, of necessity, see through and it was never intended to be built in areas where there is natural protection such as mountains, wastelands or tough rivers or water.”
  6. ICE plans a major sweep in the Bay area, targeting 1,500 undocumented immigrants and whatever collateral they find along the way. This is largely seen as retaliation for California’s sanctuary status (which they worked out with the Sheriff’s department, in case you were wondering).
  7. Kirstjen Nielsen testifies to Congress, and says that the DHS wants to prosecute state and local leaders who won’t comply with Trump’s deportation methods.
  8. More than 100 Jews from across the country arrive in D.C. to support a Dream Act and Dreamers. They refuse to move and 86 are arrested while being surrounded by Dreamers.
  9. Carl Higbie, Trump’s appointee to head the Corporation for National and Community Service, resigns based on his past disparaging comments about minorities and women. Higbie also once said that PTSD in soldiers is a sign of a weak mind.
  10. The DOJ asks the Supreme Court to review the lower court order that required the government to restart the DACA program.
  11. Trump really hates Haitians. He removed them from the list of countries eligible for H-2A and H-2B visas, which allow agricultural and seasonal workers to come here from foreign countries.
  12. The House proposes a bipartisan bill that would prevent taxpayer dollars from being used to settle sexual misconduct cases by lawmakers.
  13. Fifteen Syrian refugees are found frozen to death. Apparently they were trying to flee to Lebanon over the mountains and got caught in a storm.
  14. Trump tweets that 75% of people convicted on terrorism charges are foreign-born, even though the DOJ/DHS report this is based on says it doesn’t have final information on most of those convicted yet.
  15. Costa Rica legalizes same-sex marriage, making it legal in 20 countries in the Americas.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Nine of the 12 National Park System Advisory Board members resign out of frustration with the Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke. Zinke has refused to meet with them, and at one point suspended all outside committees pending review. This board designates national historic and natural landmarks.
  2. Scott Pruitt gets schooled when he asks climate scientists what the ideal temperature is. Hint: It’s not about temperature; it’s about temperature change and the speed of change. Our civilization developed in a relatively stable climate.
  3. Robert Murray, head of Murray Energy, gave Trump an action plan to influence policy and regulation changes. The plan also recommends replacing all members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). What’s important here is that it’s not legal for industries to instruct the government this way, specifically on who to hire or fire.
  4. NASA says that 2017 was the second-hottest year in recorded history, and NOAA says it’s the third hottest. (They use different methodologies. Why don’t they use the same one? Because that would skew the trends for the agency that has to switch.) Both agencies agree that the past four years were the hottest period in recorded history. Both also agree that 2017 was the hottest year without an El Nino influence.
  5. Mexico and New Zealand are leading an international effort to protect the oceans, and Belize is ending offshore oil activity in order to preserve their barrier reefs.
  6. The U.S. shatters its previous record for spending on natural, weather, and climate disasters, hitting $306 million. The previous high was $214 million and before that, $126 million.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Almost 40% of American students who started college in 2003 or 2004 are at risk for defaulting on their loans. The risk is highest for students who attended for-profit universities, like Trump University, and for black students.
  2. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to reconsider last year’s decision to restrict payday lenders. The lenders serve a purpose for people in need of quick cash, but they charge astronomical fees and interest and some people think they prey on the needy.
  3. And finally for some truly good news that came out of the tax plan, Apple announces that it will reinvest $350 billion in repatriated money into a new campus and U.S. manufacturing. No strings, no associated layoffs. Several other companies plan bonuses or reinvestments, mostly airlines and banks.
  4. The U.S. Treasury estimates that 90% of workers will have more take-home pay in their checks starting in the middle of February. However, with the rush to get this implemented, it’s possible the IRS will be taking out too much or too little, giving you a big surprise on tax day 2019. So be sure to check your paystubs on Feb. 15.
  5. Housing prices could take a hit in some areas because of the new caps on mortgage interest deductions and property taxes, along with rising interest rates.
  6. On top of loosening up oversight by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Director Mick Mulvaney didn’t request any funding for it this year.
  7. The Koch brothers spent millions to support the tax bill last year, and donated $500,000 to Paul Ryan after the plan passed.

Elections:

  1. Trump travels to Pennsylvania to campaign for Rick Saccone, though to get around election laws he claims that it was official White House business.
  2. Democrat Patty Schachtner wins a State Senate seat in a district in Wisconsin that went for Trump by 17 percentage points.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Activist groups start filing the first of many lawsuits against the FCC’s decision to repeal net neutrality. Attorneys general from 22 states file a lawsuit to block the repeal as well.
  2. An effort by Senate Democrats to restore net neutrality only needs one more Republican vote to reverse the FCC’s decision under the Congressional Review Act.
  3. Trump’s doctor gives him a clean bill of physical and mental health, saying he’s in excellent health overall (even though he’s one pound away from being obese).
  4. Trump’s lawyer paid $130,000 to a porn star last year for her to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump when he was newly married to Melania. In Touch magazine held back from publishing the porn star’s story after they were threatened by said lawyer.
  5. On the same day that Jeff Flake compares Trump’s treatment of the press with Stalin, Trump hands out his fake news awards. Ironic because he’s one of the biggest perpetrators of fake news, and reliable journalists work their butts off to keep us informed.
  6. There’s a warrant out for Sebastian Gorka in Hungary for “firearm or ammunition abuse.” The entire time he worked at the White House, he had a warrant out for his arrest. Confusing. Because they know where to find him.
  7. Tom Cotton issues a do-not-call-or-write notice to some of his more activist constituents. No judgement here. I don’t know what those activists were doing or saying.
  8. Federal prosecutors say they’ll drop charges against most of the protestors that were arrested on inauguration day, though not all of them.
  9. More than a million people march across America in the 2nd Women’s March over the weekend, along with sister marches around the world. This follows the March for Life, where thousands of pro-lifers took to the streets. I’m having a hard time getting solid numbers on either of these marches.
  10. Trump appears via video at the March for Life in D.C. where he told marchers “We are with you all the way.” This is the first time a president has really taken a position on the abortion issue while in office. They usually leave it to the courts.

Polls:

  1. A recent poll shows that 42% of Republicans think that negative but accurate news stories are fake news, compared to 17% of Democrats who think the same.
  2. 52% of Americans think that Trump’s first year in office was a failure.
  3. 61% of Americans think that Trump is dividing the country.
  4. Trump’s approval at the end of one year is 37%, a low compared to other presidents in recent history.

Week 50 in Trump

Posted on January 8, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Week 50: Very stable genius.

I’m not going to report much on the revelations in Michael Wolff‘s new gossipy tell-all book because I don’t put a lot of credence in third-party political books (not since a slew of books pushing false narratives came out about Obama and Clinton). Wolff reportedly has recordings of his interviews in the West Wing, though, so if he’s just publishing what people said, he can back that up.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t secretly revel in some of the stories—they corroborate what most people who don’t support Trump already think anyway. Most of the staff quoted in the book think Trump is truly a dope and it doesn’t seem like he really wanted to be president at all. The book did launch a huge and public feud between the Trump and Bannon camps. I’ll talk about the fallout below.

But here’s what happened in real politics this week.

Missed from Last Week:

  1. The Interior Department rolls back yet another Obama-era regulation. This one protected migratory birds endangered by oil, gas, wind, and solar operations.
  2. The Interior Department reverses a decision by the Obama administration and renews leases for copper and nickel mining at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota.
  3. The Trump administration scales back Obama-era fines against nursing homes that harm or endanger residents. Enforcement of these Medicare programs were already weak, and this just gives fewer protections to their elderly residents.
  4. The DOJ wants to ask about citizenship on the 2020 census, which would certainly reduce participation by immigrants, both documented and undocumented. The results of the census determine the distribution of congressional seats, funding of social programs, elections, and ways that state and federal dollars are spent.

Russia:

  1. Paul Manafort sues Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, and the DOJ. The suit asks the federal court to narrow the scope of Mueller’s authority. Manafort’s legal team thinks Mueller is out of bounds investigating money laundering. Legal experts say the suit probably won’t hold water, based on Rod Rosenstein’s earlier testimony to Congress where he said he gave Mueller leeway to follow the investigation where it led. Remember, Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater investigation led to Monica Lewinsky.
  2. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Directory Christopher Wray meet with Paul Ryan about Representative Devin Nunes’ request for documents in the Russia investigation. Rosenstein and Wray were there to ask to keep the documents private at this time because sharing could hamper their investigation.
  3. Ryan, who had previously supported the Russia investigation, caves to Nunes and orders the FBI to turn over the documents to Nunes, which they do. Nunes, by the way, is supposed to be recused from this investigation. The documents in question are law enforcement sensitive and documents of this type are rarely shared outside the FBI.
  4. Fusion GPS founders write an op-ed asking the Senate to release their testimony and explaining some of the testimony they gave. Fusion thinks the Senate is trying to hide their testimony.
  5. Instead of complying with Fusion GPS’s request to publicize their testimony, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley instead says they can come back and testify publicly. Why not just save us the time and money and publish the testimony that was already given?
  6. Representatives Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, leaders of the Freedom Caucus, call on Jeff Sessions to step down over recusing himself from the Russia investigation.
  7. Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham send a letter to the FBI requesting an investigation into Christopher Steele, author of the Steele dossier. They claim that Steele misled the FBI when talking about his contacts with the media. After a year of investigation, this is all they’ve got? Mueller is light years ahead of them.
  8. The AP confirms that Trump directed his White House counsel to tell Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Sessions obviously refused the directive and recused himself shortly thereafter, prompting Trump to tell him to resign. Which he did. And which Trump refused to accept.
  9. Hand-written notes by Reince Priebus confirm some of James Comey’s testimony about Trump’s requests of him before he was fired.
  10. A few days before Trump fired Comey, an aide to Jeff Sessions asked one congressional staffer if he had any damaging information on Comey, an apparent effort to undermine the FBI.
  11. The FBI releases new documents that show Andy McCabe didn’t have any conflicts of interest overseeing the Clinton email investigation.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions reverses Obama-era guidance on keeping federal hands off of regulating states that have legalized marijuana. At his hearings, he said he would not change anything in this regard. On the flip side, veterans can now discuss marijuana use with the VA and not lose their benefits.
  2. Just in the nick of time, because the acting U.S. attorneys were temporary and their term runs out this week, Sessions appoints 17 interim attorneys. There’s a little cronyism going on here, starting with the replacement for Preet Bharara in the Southern District of New York. His replacement is a law partner with Rudy Giuliani.
  3. Scott Pruitt says he’d like to be attorney general if Jeff Sessions leaves.
  4. Trump calls on the DOJ to prosecute Hillary’s former aide Huma Abedin and also James Comey.
  5. Trump also calls the DOJ part of the “deep state.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders says he didn’t mean it.

Healthcare:

  1. Dismantling the ACA piece by piece. After removing the individual mandate in last year’s tax plan, Trump proposes alternative healthcare plans that wouldn’t have to cover the 10 essential health benefits required by the ACA.
  2. Deaths in the coal mining industry almost doubled this year over last, with 15 miners dying in 2017.
  3. Last year, Susan Collins (R-Maine) acknowledged that the healthcare reforms she was promised in return for her yes vote on the tax bill wouldn’t be enacted in 2017, but hopefully would be in January 2018. Now she’s saying she hopes to see them by 2019.

International:

  1. Protests continue in Iran this week. But Iran deploys the Revolutionary Guard, and at least 21 are dead and around 450 protestors are in custody in Tehran.
  2. The U.S. plans to call for an emergency UN session to address the Iranian protests.
  3. A few pro-government rallies pop up across Iran to counter the ongoing anti-government protests.
  4. Trump announces a freeze on military aid to Pakistan, which has been a strategic but befuddling ally in the fight against terrorism. The Pakistani government holds an emergency security meeting to figure out how to deal with Trump’s accusations of lies and deceit.
  5. The State Department also places Pakistan on a watch list of countries that don’t protect religious freedom.
  6. In response to Kim Jung Un tweeting that he has a nuclear button, Trump tweets that his button is bigger. Which only serves to work up more fear of a nuclear war.
  7. The CDC plans a briefing for how to prepare for a nuclear war.
  8. North and South Korea plan to sit down for formal talks to find ways to improve their relations and to cooperate on the Winter Olympics.
  9. The U.S. fails to make its scheduled payment of $125 million to the United National Relief and Works Agency. Some think it’s a ploy to get leverage on Israel/Palestine talks, but the U.S. says we’re just working out the details.
  10. The National Security Agency joins the State Department in losing its top talent under the Trump administration.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. New Senators Doug Jones (D-Ala.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) are sworn in. Smith replaces Al Franken, who stepped down at the urging of his colleagues over allegations of harassment.
  2. Congress comes back to a full schedule this year. Here are a few things on their plate:
    • Budget: Congress has until January 19 to sign a budget to avoid a government shutdown.
    • DACA: Congress technically has until March to prevent DACA recipients from potentially being deported (but in reality, this needs to be done sooner).
    • Disaster recovery: Last year was the most expensive year for U.S. emergency relief, coming in at around $306 billion, not all of which has been authorized.
    • FISA reauthorization: Constituents are asking for this to be reformed rather than simply reauthorized. This allows the NSA to collect communications information about U.S. citizens who communicate with foreigners suspected of spying or terrorism.
  3. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) releases a video defending the freedom of the press. Here are a few key quotes:
    • “A republic will not work if we don’t have shared facts.”
    • “The only way the republic can work is if we come together and defend each other’s rights to say things that we differ about.”
    • “And it’s not helpful to call the press the enemy of the American people.”

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. There were nearly 100 immigration-related retaliation claims to the California Labor Commissioner last year, up from 20 in 2016. Most say their bosses threatened to deport them. This largely occurs around workers contract to do work (like construction and odd jobs) and often when the worker asks for his agreed upon payment. People say they won’t pay and if the worker complains, they’ll report them to ICE.
  2. Washington’s attorney general files a suit against Motel 6 for sharing their guests’ personal information with ICE officials without warrants and without reasonable cause other than Hispanic sounding names.
  3. Democrats in Congress want a clean DREAM Act as part of any negotiations for a spending bill. Trump set a deadline of March 5, at which time DACA recipients could start being deported. Congress now has only two months to fix it. Even if they pass something now, it will take weeks if not months for the DHS to accommodate the changes.
  4. The FBI charges an armed man who stopped an Amtrak train in Nebraska with terrorism after finding the man has ties to a Neo-Nazi group and that he talked about killing black people.
  5. Trump’s pick to run ICE says that politicians in sanctuary cities should be charged with a crime and have their funding withheld, something courts have already called unconstitutional.
  6. Two Republican legislators are trying to put up monuments to African-Americans who fought with the Confederacy. They’re getting pushback from historians, who say no African-Americans chose to fight for the Confederacy, and from white supremacists, who want the Confederacy remembered as white supremacy.
  7. The price tag for Trump’s wall is expected to start at $18 billion, but to actually be closer to $33 billion. And since he’s asking Congress to fund it, the taxpayers will pay for it.
  8. And here’s why marijuana laws fall under discrimination: Police found less than an ounce of marijuana at a party in Cartersville, GA. They arrested all 65 people at the house, ranging in age from 15-31 and all black, and charged them with drug possession. Many who couldn’t afford bail were fired from their jobs because they couldn’t get out of jail, and their mug shots were publicly released. All of these people could end up with a police record. This is about 45 minutes from Atlanta, where if one person has that much pot, they might get a ticket.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump’s administration announces plans to allow offshore drilling in the Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific oceans, opening up about 90% of U.S. waters for exploration. This is opposed by both Democrats and Republicans in almost all east and west coast states, which have some control over certain portions of their coasts.
  2. Of note, part of the reason Obama didn’t approve this was because of objections from the military (along with the states).
  3. The governors from all three western states—Washington, Oregon, and California—promise they’ll do everything they can to prevent drilling off their coasts. Santa Barbara, CA, had an oil spill in 1969 and another in 2015, and no one wants to increase the odds of that. There’s already oil in the waters around Santa Barbara, and tar balls constantly wash up on the beaches.
  4. While northeastern U.S. gets hit by a frigid bomb cyclone, Australia is suffering a great heat wave that’s melting asphalt and causing wildfires.
  5. Scott Pruitt bragged that they’re cleaning up Superfund sites faster than ever, but the sites they removed from the contaminated list were actually cleaned up years ago. The only reason they were still on the list was because they required follow-up testing to evaluate the success of the cleanup.
  6. Trump rescinds rules requiring that companies disclose the chemicals they use when fracking.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Republicans on the hill are suddenly deficit hawks again, saying we need to cut spending. This is a shift from the tax bill passed in December, in which they added as much as they could to the deficit in a finance bill and still comply with parliamentarian rules on reconciliation.
  2. Fox News research reports the average monthly job gain by year, showing 2017 to be the lowest since 2010 (though it’s possible these numbers will be adjusted):
    • 2017: 171,000
    • 2016: 187,000
    • 2015: 226,000
    • 2014: 250,000
    • 2013: 192,000
    • 2012: 179,000
    • 2011: 174,000
    • 2010: 88,000
  3. 2017 was the strongest year for manufacturing in the U.S. since 2004.
  4. Following in the steps of AT&T, Comcast fired 500 salespeople after saying how they’d create thousands of new jobs with the recent tax cuts.
  5. The DOW passes 25,000 for the first time.
  6. California legislators propose a bill that would allow Californians to get around the tax bill by giving to the California Excellence Fund instead of paying certain taxes that are no longer deductible. Donations to the fund are deductible.

Elections:

  1. Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Senator in Utah history, announces his plans to retire, opening the door for Mitt Romney to run. Hatch says he’ll throw his support behind Romney.
  2. Trump dissolves his voter fraud commission because states weren’t cooperating and the commission was the target of several lawsuits. He still maintains that there’s a high level of voter fraud, but he’s throwing the issue over to the Department of Homeland Security (which indicates that he thinks most voter fraud is committed by illegal immigrants).
  3. Kris Kobach, the head of the voter fraud committee, dismisses the lawsuits as baseless, though he lost most of the lawsuits against him in Kansas for his similar efforts so doesn’t have the greatest track record.
  4. Postscript: Studies since 2000, including George Bush’s own voter fraud task force, have found that voter fraud is minuscule…extremely rare.
  5. Virginia drew Republican David Yancy’s name out of a bowl to push the GOP into the majority in the Virginia House of Delegates, 51-49. State law says the loser of the draw can demand a second recount, so this still might not be over.
  6. And speaking of Virginia, there’s still a challenge to the results of one House of Delegates race because nearly 200 homes were reassigned to the wrong district and given the wrong ballots. The race was won by less than 75 votes, and the voters are the ones challenging the results.
  7. The Trump administration puts Republican candidates on rocky ground with his expansion of oil drilling off our beaches and with the crackdown on state-legalized marijuana. Many politicians whose seats are up for grabs this year worked fast to distance themselves.

Miscellaneous:

  1. In his new book, Michael Wolff quotes Bannon criticizing and insulting Trump, and then Trump goes after Bannon in return. Trump’s lawyers send Bannon a cease and desist letter, saying legal action is imminent.
  2. After excerpts from the book start coming out, Chief of staff John Kelly bans the use of personal devices, like personal cell phones, in the West Wing. Wolff was allowed pretty open access during his time there, and even hosted dinner parties for White House staff.
  3. Trump’s legal team demands that Wolff and his publisher stop the release of the book and apologize. Which resulted in the publisher moving the publish date up.
    • If Obama and Clinton sued every author who lied about them, there wouldn’t be any books out there about them at all.
    • If the Trump legal team ends up suing, we’ll find out if there really are recordings.
  4. Of note, Trump had campaign staffers sign a non-disclosure agreement that said they couldn’t make any disparaging comments about Trump, his family, or the campaign.
  5. White House officials discuss whether to fire Katie Walsh for her statements in Wolff’s book (she said working with Trump is like trying to figure out what a child wants).
  6. Breitbart board members debate whether to fire Steve Bannon after excerpts from the book are published. His financier, Rebekah Mercer, says she won’t finance him any longer.
  7. Trump takes credit for a very safe year in airline travel, though there’s been no fatal commercial passenger airline incident since 2009.
  8. Several legislators meet with a psychiatry professor to discuss Trump’s mental state and fitness for office. The prognosis isn’t good, but you can’t really analyze someone without meeting with them.
  9. Trump nominates Marie Royce to a senior position in the State Department. Marie is the wife of Ed Royce (R-Calif.), who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, creating a conflict of interest since Ed’s committee is responsible for State Department oversight.
  10. Trump finally makes an appearance in the press briefing room, but it’s not in person. He pre-taped a message for the press briefing even though he was right there in the same building at the time.
  11. One of the women who accused Roy Moore of sexual misconduct loses everything she owns when her house burns down as a result of arson.
  12. Another of the women accusing Roy Moore’s of sexual misconduct is now suing him for defamation.
  13. Trump brings a bunch of his cabinet and top legislators to Camp David for a Republican leadership retreat.
  14. Big tech puts its weight behind opposing the repeal of net neutrality. A group called the Internet Association, which includes Facebook, Google, Netflix, and other large tech firms, is joining the lawsuit against the FCC.
  15. The FBI is investigating whether donations were made to the Clinton Foundation in return for political favors while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. Previous investigations have shown such allegations to be false, but we’ll have to wait and see if they turn up anything new.
  16. The chairman of Alaska’s Marijuana Control Board resigns when the DOJ announces its crackdown on marijuana use.

Polls:

  1. 61% of Americans support the legalization of marijuana.

Week 49 in Trump

Posted on January 2, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Here’s my last weekly recap for 2017, and I’m finally caught up from the holidays. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty happy to see 2017 circling the drain. It was an exhausting, emotional, and stressful year. In the words of Gin and Tacos and my husband Mohi:

But this year was such a thrill ride down Fuck Everything Boulevard… in a clown car.

So here’s hoping for a brighter, happier, lighter, easier, and more prosperous and joyful 2018.

And here’s what happened in week 49…

Russia:

  1. A small group of Republicans headed by Devin Nunes is investigating the FBI over its use of the Steele dossier to launch the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia. But then…
    • It turns out that it wasn’t the Steele dossier that launched the investigation.
    • Instead, it was George Papadopoulos’s drunken revelation to a top Australian diplomat that he knew the Russians had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.
    • Australian officials then reported that info to their American counterparts.
    • George spilled the beans in May 2016, the Australians reported it two months later (why the wait?), and the FBI opened the investigation in July 2016.
  1. Both Democrats and Republicans criticize Nunes over the tactics he’s using to attack federal law enforcement. Most think if there’s any corruption in the FBI, the DOJ should investigate it and that all Nunes will do is cause damage to law enforcement.
  2. On top of that, it turns out that Nunes never fully recused himself from the Russia investigation after his strange White House antics last year. While he handed over the day to day activities of the committee chair, he retained sole power to sign subpoenas, restricting committee Democrats‘ ability to do their jobs.
  3. There’s increased Russian submarine activity around undersea trans-Atlantic data cables. This is the most Russian sub activity we’ve seen since the Cold War. These cables provide internet to North American and Europe, so it’s possible Russia’s looking for ways to tap into the data.
  4. NATO responds to the activity by announcing plans to re-open a Cold War command post to secure the north Atlantic.
  5. Part of Robert Mueller’s investigation includes looking at whether the Trump campaign and RNC used voter information that was obtained through Russian hackers. We know that Russian hackers stole data from several states’ election databases in 2016. Jared Kushner was in charge of the campaign’s digital operations.
  6. A Russian who earlier admitted to hacking the DNC servers for the Russian government says he left a data signature that proves he’s telling the truth.
  7. Trump’s legal team, along with other Trump supporters in D.C. and in the media, start to paint Michael Flynn as a liar in order to discredit him before his testimony comes up in the Russia investigation.
  8. Putin expresses disappointment in the deteriorating relationship between Russia and the U.S.
  9. A Russian court upholds a ruling that bans Putin’s opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, from running against him in the next elections.
  10. Facebook announces it won’t use red flags to indicate fake news articles anymore. Apparently the flags just enticed more people to click on the stories. They found that showing related articles is more effective to combat fake stories.

Courts/Justice:

  1. An appeals court upheld its previous ruling that basically upheld an Obama-era fracking rule for federal lands. The Department of Interior is working to repeal the regulation anyway, but the rule could go back into effect on January 12.

Healthcare:

  1. Despite government outreach being cut by 90%, the sign-up window being cut in half, and Trump’s declaration that Obamacare is dead, enrollment in the ACA was surprisingly strong with nearly 9 million enrollees so far. That’s down from 12.2 million who signed up last year, but there are still more to be counted and not all markets are closed.
  2. Over 80% of people who enrolled in the ACA live in states where Trump won, with the top four states being Texas, George, North Carolina, and Florida.

International:

  1. Just days before Trump’s inauguration (between January 9 and 12, 2016) Romanian hackers took control of nearly two-thirds of D.C.’s surveillance cameras. The cameras were unable to record for several days. This doesn’t seem to be related to Trump—it was a ransomware scheme and the hackers have been arrested.
  2. At least four times in the past week, the Trump administration threatens the UN with dropping financial support if they don’t comply with U.S. demands.
  3. A Gunman attacks a Coptic Christian church in Egypt, killing nine. The police are criticized for their slow response.
  4. Anti-government protests erupt across Iran, largely spurred by a stagnant economy and a repressive regime. Twelve have died so far in the protests, and this is the largest uprising since the 2009 protests that were violently stamped out.
  5. Trump tweets support for the protesters, saying the Iranian government should listen to them. “Iranian govt should respect their people’s rights, including right to express themselves.” So protests against the government are a good thing in Iran, but not in the U.S.?
  6. Iranian President Rouhani walks a fine line between the protesters and the Ayatollah, saying that people have a right to criticize the government and protest, and that this could be an opportunity. But he also says he’ll crack down on lawbreakers. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the other hand, blames the protests on Iran’s enemies.
  7. Both Russia and China sneak around the sanctions on North Korea and trade goods.
  8. There are two bombings in Kabul this week—one on Christmas day and the other in the middle of a funeral for a government official.
  9. A defecting soldier from North Korea had traces of anthrax in his lungs, and others showed signs of exposure to radiation. This raises concerns that North Korea is working on biological weapons.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. While Trump says he’s signed more legislation than any other president in their first year, he’s actually signed the fewest since Eisenhower. In fairness, he got off to a strong start with all the Congressional Review signings that merely undid rules made by federal agencies under Obama.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A federal judge rules that Arizona’s law banning classes on ethnic studies is unconstitutional, saying it was motivated by racial animus. Ya think?
  2. Trump holds Dreamers hostage and says there will be no clean DREAM Act without funding for the wall between us and Mexico.
  3. Trump fires the remaining HIV/AIDS advisory council members via FedEx with no explanation. He does say they can reapply. If you remember, several members resigned together earlier in 2017.
  4. The Trump administration drops its appeal of the court decision blocking the transgender ban in the military after not just one, but two courts reject the ban.
  5. In a June meeting, Trump reportedly said that all Haitians have AIDS and that Nigerians would never go back to their huts. It’s no surprise that Trump uses fear tactics to stoke hatred of immigrants.
  6. At the same meeting, Trump was visibly upset over the number of foreign visitors to the U.S. during his first 6 months and he couldn’t understand that some were here temporarily—one-time visitors just here on vacation.
  7. A federal judge blocks Trump’s restrictions on “follow-to-join” refugees, which are spouses and children of refugees who are already settled here.
  8. The same federal judge partially suspends Trump’s ban on refugees from 11 largely Muslim countries, allowing refugees with bona fide relationships and granting bona fide relationship status to refugees who have agreements with humanitarian and relocation agencies.
  9. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules that Trump exceeded his authority in the latest travel ban and that it violates federal law. The law remains in effect, though, per the Supreme Court, while challenges move through the courts.
  10. Bitcoin is the currency of choice for far-right extremists and white nationalists because PayPal and other payment platforms have banned racists and extremists.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Proving once again that he doesn’t understand the difference between climate and weather or the effect of climate change on weather, Trump makes fun of global warming in a tweet because it’s so cold in the eastern U.S.
  2. Trump rolls back the safety rules for offshore drilling that were created after the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Puerto Rico:

Here’s where Puerto Rico stands more than three months after the hurricane:

  • 96% of the island has water.
  • Almost 70% of the island has electricity.
  • 88% of gas stations are open.
  • 8% of supermarkets are still closed.
  • 392 people still need shelter; 24 shelters are open.
  • 3,039 FEMA personnel, along with 15,000 civilian and military personnel, are on the ground there.
  • All airports and federally maintained ports are open.
  • All hospitals are open.
  • More than 168,000 Puerto Ricans have gone to Florida.

Budget/Economy:

  1. While praising the new tax plan and saying they’ll give everyone $1,000 bonuses, AT&T also announces that they’ll lay off over 1,000 employees.
  2. After signing the tax bill into law, Trump tells his friends at Mar-a-Lago, “You all just got a lot richer.” And for once he was telling the truth.
  3. Goldman Sachs expects that banks will take a hit to their profits this year because of taxes on money held overseas. But after taking that hit, banks will be the biggest winners of the new tax plan.
  4. Senator Marco Rubio says Republicans “went too far” in cutting taxes for corporations. He thinks companies will either buy back shares or increase dividends to shareholders, neither of which will create any great economic growth.
  5. Trump goes after the USPS about undercharging Amazon even though Amazon uses UPS and is working on delivering their own stuff.
  6. Despite being a cheerleader for infrastructure during the campaign, Trump stops funding for an Obama-era project to fix damaged railroad tunnels, tracks, and bridges in New York and New Jersey. This is an area where 9 of 10 workers commute.
  7. The Centre for Economics and Business Research projects that China will overtake the U.S. economy by 2032, and that India will move into the top 5 economies around the same time.

Elections:

  1. Roy Moore sues to block Alabama’s election results citing systematic voter fraud. The court dismisses Moore’s case and certifies Doug Jones, who is later sworn in.
  2. If you remember a while back, a Democrat on Trump’s voter fraud commission sued to get access to committee records from Kris Kobach and other Republicans on the commission. This week, a federal judge rules that they must share records with ALL members of the panel.
  3. The one remaining seat in the Virginia House of Delegates won’t be decided soon. The name-drawing to decide the tie vote is postponed, pending a court challenge over whether the election was actually a tie. If the Democrat wins, Democrats will have a 51-49 lead. If the Republican wins, the House will be tied.
  4. While the Department of Homeland Security has warned states about election-hacking threats in the 2018 elections, they might not be able to perform security screenings on all election servers in time for the elections.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump is the first to president not to win the most admired man of the year in the annual Gallup survey. President Obama wins that distinction for the 10th time. Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman for the 16th year in a row. Color me confused.
  2. The Trump foundation is being investigated for inappropriate use of funds, and cannot raise any funds until the probe is over. One of Trump’s golf courses has already had to pay back the Trump foundation for using foundation funds to pay the golf course’s legal fees.
  3. Trump is the first president not to host a state dinner in his first year.
  4. Trump says he’ll be back to work the day after Christmas. The day after Christmas, Trump goes golfing. Who really cares, right? Except that he made a big deal out of Obama golfing. Trump has definitely golfed at least 50% more than Obama in his first year and has likely golfed even more than that. He’s visited a golf course at least 88 times.
  5. Trump’s cabinet is unusually secretive, hiding their schedules, travel plans, and the people or groups they’re meeting with. At least six agencies don’t release appointment calendars, in potential violation of the Freedom of Information Act. This is a thing because department heads have been meeting with leaders from the industries that they’re supposed to be regulating.
  6. Trump gives an impromptu interview to a New York Times reporter. I won’t fact-check the whole thing, but here are a few tidbits:
    • He denies 16 times that his campaign colluded with Russia, but then says that even if there was collusion, it’s not a crime.
    • He says Democrats say there’s no collusion (they don’t).
    • However, he says there was collusion between the Russians and Democrats.
    • He thinks Mueller will treat him fairly.
    • He thinks he can do whatever he wants with the Department of Justice (he can’t). This was about reopening the investigation into Hillary’s emails.
    • He says he’ll win in 2020 because the media needs him and will tank without him. He says the media HAS TO LET HIM WIN. Wow.
    • He says he knows more about big bills than any other president. (Remember, it was a huge surprise to him that healthcare was so hard. Who knew?)
    • He also knows more about taxes than the greatest CPA, he says (lawmakers who worked with him on healthcare and taxes were shocked by how little he knew about both).
    • He thinks China’s hurting us on trade, but he hasn’t dealt with it yet because war is more important right now (I assume he’s talking about North Korea here).

    • He says he saved coal and that West Virginia is doing fantastically now (only 900 new coal jobs have been created since he became president).
    • He brings up the conspiracy theory around Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and a Pakistani IT staffer.
    • He says he boosted Luther Strange’s rating, and that before his endorsement Strange was in 5th place (in a race with only 3 people).
    • He says the reason the Alabama race was so close was because he endorsed Roy Moore (an accused child molester).
    • He says we’ve spent $7 trillion on the MidEast and it’s a bigger mess than ever (the actual number is $1.6 trillion, if he’s talking about the wars).
    • He says he’s created healthcare associations and that millions of people are joining—people who formerly had Obamacare or no insurance (the rules for the associations haven’t yet been issued and no one has joined).
    • He says the wall will stop the smuggling of drugs from Mexico (most drugs come in through legal ports of entry or from tunnels).
  1. The Trump administration has the highest first-year departure rate of any administration in the past four decades with 34% of senior officials having resigned, been fired, or been reassigned. Ronald Reagan’s was the second highest with half the departure rate.
  2. New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia file a lawsuit against the Department of Defense for inadequate reporting of service members who are not allowed to own guns. This stems from the shooter in a small town in Texas who should have been flagged in the background check database but wasn’t.
  3. Christmas couldn’t keep Trump satisfied for long. The day after, he goes after the FBI and Hillary on Twitter. Tip: Let it go, dude. You won.

Polls:

  1. 52% of us say the U.S. is less respected around the world than it was one year ago. 21% say we’re more respected than before.

Week 48 in Trump

Posted on January 1, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Sorry for the late post. This is a week behind because I got caught up in holiday merriment. I hope you all did too. And speaking of holidays, Trump declares victory in the war on Christmas, tweeting:

“People are proud to be saying Merry Christmas again… I am proud to have led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!”

90% of Americans celebrate Christmas, so if there’s a war around it, it’s pretty one-sided.

Russia:

  1. We learn that last summer, after Russians had already reached out to the Trump campaign, U.S. intelligence agencies warned both Trump and Clinton that foreign agents would try to infiltrate their campaigns and to be aware of any suspicious overtures. Both campaigns were told to alert the FBI immediately if any such overtures occurred.
  2. In January 2017, White House counsel knew Michael Flynn had likely broken two federal laws. And then:
    • 1/24/17: Flynn lies to the FBI
    • 1/27/17: Sally Yates warns White House counsel that Flynn could be compromised
    • 1/27/17: Trump asks Comey for his loyalty
    • 2/13/17: Trump fires Flynn
    • 2/14/17: Trump asks Comey to see a way to let the Flynn thing go
    • 5/09/17: Trump fires Comey
  1. The Senate Intelligence Committee brings Jill Stein into their Russia investigation with a request for documents about a trip to Russia in honor of Russian state media RT.
  2. Kaspersky Labs sues the US government for banning its software on government computers.
  3. The House Intelligence Committee interviews Andy McCabe, acting head of the FBI.
  4. Andy McCabe says he’ll retire as soon as he’s eligible for full pension in March. He’s been fielding much criticism from Trump’s administration and congressional Republicans.
  5. A small group of Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee, led by Devin Nunes, have been working in secret for weeks to build a case of corruption and conspiracy against senior officials in the DOJ and FBI. They think the Steele dossier was mishandled.
    • This small group thinks that the DOJ and FBI are working against Trump and for Hillary, even though actions by the FBI contributed to Clinton’s loss in 2016.
    • The group is expected to use their findings to discredit the investigation into Russian meddling in our election, and to discredit Mueller.
    • The group has kept Democrats on the committee in the dark about what they’re doing.
  1. The House Intelligence Committee requests interviews with both Steve Bannon and Corey Lewandowsky.
  2. Republicans in the House Intelligence Committee want to wrap up their investigation by the end of the year, though Democrats have several unanswered requests for more interviews. Also there are still interviews scheduled for January.
  3. Carter Page blamed his failure to complete his Ph.D. on “anti-Russian bias.” He failed it twice and finally obtained it on the third try. His advisors said his thesis was verbose and vague.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions asks the FBI to look into the Uranium One deal again, likely at congressional Republicans’ behest.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump admits that the tax plan is basically a repeal of the ACA. The GOP couldn’t get rid of the ACA on its own, but after the ANWR bribe to Lisa Murkowski, the false promises to Susan Collins, and the major windfall for Bob Corker, they managed to slip it by in the tax bill.
  2. Bragging that he managed to get tax reform passed and the ACA repealed, Trump says that repealing the mandate in the tax bill is essentially the same as repealing the ACA. But he told Republicans not to talk about that part of the bill before it was passed. He didn’t want the “fake media” talking about it too much.
  3. The day after the tax bill passes, Susan Collins concedes that she won’t be getting the healthcare fixes she demanded in return for her yes vote on the tax bill this year.
  4. More and more states warn that some of their children’s health programs will be terminated soon if CHIP is not fully funded.

International:

  1. The U.S. blocks a UN Security Council vote calling on nations to not build diplomatic offices in Jerusalem. Nikki Haley uses our veto power for the first time in over six years.
  2. Trump threatens to cut off U.S. aid to any country that voted for the above resolution.
  3. And then, in a largely symbolic vote and an act of defiance, a vast majority of countries rebuke Trump and denounce his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. 128 nations vote for a resolution demanding that Trump reverse the Jerusalem decision, 9 vote against it, and 35 abstain.
  4. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says Palestinians will never accept a peace plan from America because of Trump recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
  5. Trump reveals his “America First” foreign policy and security strategy. He paints Russia and China as powers who want to reshape the world in a way that goes against our interests and values (they’re our rivals).
  6. The strategy focuses on regaining economic competitiveness across the globe.
  7. Despite agreement among top brass in the military that climate change remains one of our biggest global security threats, Trump drops it from the list of global threats.
  8. The top threats according to the strategy are rogue regimes, terrorism, and cyber attacks.
  9. The strategy has four main principles:
    • Protect the U.S. homeland
    • Protect U.S. prosperity
    • Preserve peace through strength
    • Advance U.S. influence around the world
  1. The strategy calls for a wall between us and our neighbors to the south.
  2. Mike Pence pays a surprise visit to U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
  3. North Korea says the latest UN sanctions, written by the U.S., are an act of war.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Four Senators say the calls for Al Franken to resign were premature and they urge him to reconsider. Franken has said he’ll officially resign in January.
  2. As a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Elijah Cummings calls on Trump to release his downsizing plans for the government’s workforce. Trump is overseeing the biggest government reorganization in decades with no Congressional oversight and very little transparency.
  3. Rumors swirl around that Paul Ryan will retire in 2018.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A jury in Washington D.C. dismiss charges against the first six inauguration day protestors to be tried. A journalist was among those defendants. There are still 188 people facing trial, and this initial court result could affect how or if these cases move forward.

Climate/EPA:

  1. After they spoke out or raised concerns about the EPA, at least three EPA employees found themselves being investigated. Specifically they were requested to turn over any emails they wrote that mention Scott Pruitt or Trump along with any communications with Congress that are critical of the EPA.
  2. Scott Pruitt puts his red-team/blue-team debate on climate change on hold the same week that a slew of scientific data confirms anthropomorphic climate change. (Of note, the red-team/blue-team idea comes from the Heartland Institute.)
  3. The latest climate change reports show that the question is no longer how much people affect the climate. The questions scientists are interested in now are how much the climate has changed and what we can do at this point to mitigate it.
  4. Some key findings in the reports include:
    • Climate change set the stage for the extreme weather events we’ve seen in recent years.
    • The Arctic permafrost is melting at a faster rate than originally thought.
    • There is still time to prevent the worst impacts of climate change if we act now.
    • But we don’t have time to continue debating this.
  1. China announces the creation of a carbon market to help curb greenhouse gas emissions.
  2. A federal court upholds a 20-year ban on new uranium mining claims on a million acres of public land next to the Grand Canyon. The ban was put in place by the Department of the Interior, and the court rules that the ban is constitutional. The ban protects waterways to the Colorado River.
  3. On the flip side, the court says that Energy Fuels Inc. can operate a uranium mine in Kaibab National Forest without consulting with the affected Indian tribe.
  4. One of the worlds largest coal companies, B.H.P. Billiton, plans to withdraw from the World Coal Association over differences in climate policies. They’ll also review their association with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.
  5. Since Trump took office, over 200 scientists have left the EPA. Over 700 people have left the EPA overall.
  6. Last week we learned that Scott Pruitt had hired a right-leaning opposition research and media monitoring group for the EPA. This week, depending on who you believe, either the group quits or Pruitt fires them.
  7. France passes a law banning gas and oil production by 2040.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The House passes the reconciled tax plan on Tuesday, but then the Senate parliamentarian rejects it which means they have to vote again on Wednesday.
  2. Here’s a simple calculator showing what the tax plan means for you.
  3. Experts in the Treasury Office of Tax Policy say they were mostly shut out of the process for analyzing the tax bill, though Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin previously said he had 100 experts working on it. 100 experts to deliver a 1-page analysis.
  4. After criticizing constituent and media reactions to her healthcare deal with Mitch McConnell in return for her yes vote on the tax bill, Susan Collins concedes that there will be no vote this year to fix healthcare, as McConnell promised.
  5. In fairness, the Senate puts forth two measures to help stabilize the ACA, but not enough Republicans in the House support it, so they get pushed to next year.
  6. The GOP rushed the bill through quickly and didn’t include a standard delay, which is typically included in bills like this in order to give agencies, businesses, and people who provide financial services time to figure things out. For example, the IRS (which is being cut, BTW) has to figure out new withholding amounts for people’s paychecks and reconfigure their tax forms, and ADP has to reprogram their paycheck system.
  7. There’s talk that Trump will wait until January to sign the tax bill into law to put off triggering automatic cuts to Medicare and other programs until 2019. To work around this, the GOP adds last-minute wording to the spending bill. Otherwise, they would’ve had to explain these cuts during an election year. I hope they put more and better planning into the rest of the bill.
  8. Trump signs the tax bill into law; his first major piece of legislation in his first year in office.
  9. Trump says that the biggest part of the tax bill is corporate tax savings, not middle-class tax breaks as promised.
  10. Trump’s been asking people how their 401k is doing as a selling point for his policies, but most Americans don’t have a 401k.
  11. The Koch brothers plan to launch a multi-million dollar campaign through their super PAC in 2018 to help make the tax plan more popular.
  12. The House passes a temporary funding bill to prevent a government shutdown. The bill is not associated with a clean Dream Act and CHIP is only extended to March. The bill passes in the Senate as well.
  13. Congressional Democrats back off their promises not to sign a funding bill without a clean Dream Act.
  14. Trump signs the temporary funding bill, keeping the government running through January 19, 2018.
  15. Carrier Corp. lays off more than 600 employees from their Indianapolis factory just before Christmas. Trump got lots of kudos earlier this year for supposedly working out a deal where Carrier would keep jobs in the U.S.
  16. Analyses of the tax plans show that four states—New York, New Jersey, California, and Maryland—will subsidize most of the tax breaks for the rest of the states.
  17. The number of people who itemize their deductions on their taxes is expected to drop from 30% to 10%.
  18. The House proposes another $80 billion in disaster relief.
  19. The Senate Banking Committee rejects Trump’s pick to head the Import-Export Bank, Scott Garret, mostly because of his previous efforts to get the bank shut down.

Elections:

  1. The Virginia elections are still up in the air after weeks of recounts. For a moment it looked like the House of Delegates was going to change from Republican control to Democrat, but a court challenge to one ballot leaves two candidates tied and the balance left up to a coin toss. But then the Democratic candidate challenges the Republican’s court challenge.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The Trump administration takes down the ‘We The People’ petition site (they say it’s just temporary). The site was instituted under Obama as a way for all Americans to make their voices heard. The White House under Obama would respond to every petition that got 100,000 signatures.
  2. Trump’s new presidential coin replaces the phrase “E pluribus unum” with “Make America Great Again” – his campaign slogan. Trump includes his name three times on the coin, removes the presidential seal, and removes the 13 arrows that represented the 13 original states. Also, the coin is very gold.

Polls:

  1. A CNN poll has Trump’s approval at 35%, a historic low in that poll for a president in their first year.
  2. 55% of Americans oppose the tax bill. 66% say it helps the wealthy more than the middle class.

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 46 in Trump

Posted on December 14, 2017 in Politics, Trump

After over half the Democrats in the Senate push for his resignation over accusations of sexual misconduct, Al Franken resigns from the Senate, saying:

“I of all people am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party.”

Come on Republicans. The moral high ground has a very slippery slope, and you might be at a point where you can never make it back to the top. You need to oust your own members who are accused of misconduct, whether or not they cop to it. If you don’t like the RNC supporting an alleged child molester, you need to stand up and tell them so.

Russia:

  1. The chief lawyer at the White House told Trump in January that Michael Flynn had likely lied to the FBI and Mike Pence. This was before Trump asked Comey to “see his way to letting it go.”
  2. In his December meeting with Russian officials, Mike Flynn told them the sanctions Obama was imposing at the time would be ripped up.
  3. Mueller asks a judge to deny Manafort’s request to be released from house arrest after learning the Manafort wrote an op-ed with a Russian operative in order to sway public opinion about his dealings with the Ukraine. Some people never learn.
  4. Mueller subpoenas Deutsche Bank for information about Trump’s accounts. Deutsche Bank has loaned millions to the Trump Organization. The White House denies that there are any subpoenas.
  5. Donald Trump Jr. spends eight hours in front of the House Intelligence Committee. He says he talked to Hope Hicks, and not his father, about how to respond to revelations of his meeting with a Russian lawyer.
  6. He also claims attorney-client privilege as a reason to not talk about the phone call with Trump Sr. where they discussed how they should handle the issue of Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer (because a lawyer was in the room when he called).
  7. Newly uncovered emails show there was follow-up within the Trump campaign to Trump Jr.’s meeting with the Russian lawyer.
  8. In his meeting with the Russian lawyer, Trump Jr. asked for information proving illegal donations to the Clinton campaign.
  9. Erik Prince testifies before the House Intelligence Committee, and says he met with Devin Nunes earlier this year to discuss the unmasking of names of Americans being investigated (after Nunes recused himself). He also discusses meetings with Emirati officials and a Russian banker in the Seychelles.
  10. The judge in the Flynn case recuses himself.
  11. Senate Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee hold up K.T. McFarland’s nomination based on questions around what she knew about contact between Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Kislyak.
  12. Hope Hicks meets with Mueller’s team, and we learn that the FBI warned her that Russian operatives had tried to contact her at least twice this year.

Healthcare:

  1. The DOJ picks up the investigations into abortion providers about the transfer of fetal tissue, taking over from the congressional inquiries held last year.
  2. The USDA rolls back Michelle Obama’s school lunch program. Because why should kids have to eat healthy food?

International:

  1. Apparently urged by Jared Kushner, Trump announces that he recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and that he plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. This is a new tactic for Middle East peace, and protests erupt abroad.
  2. Palestinian leader Abbas says maybe a one-state solution is the way to go because it would force Israel to choose whether they’ll be a true democracy, in which case Palestinians could have the majority voice.
  3. Hamas leaders push for a new uprising against Israel because of the announcement.
  4. Several advisers say Trump didn’t fully understand the ramifications of the Jerusalem move and that his focus is “seeming pro-Israel” and “making a deal.”
  5. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) bans Russia from the 2018 Olympics as punishment for their “systemic manipulation of the anti-doping system”. The IOC also creates a way for drug-free Russian athletes to compete under the Olympic flag.
  6. The Senate confirms Kirstjen Nielsen as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. She was previously Kelly’s chief of staff there.
  7. Germany’s acting foreign minister says that relations between Germany and the U.S. will never be the same, complaining that Trump looks at Europe as a rival instead of an ally.
  8. Tillerson gets a chilly reception from European leaders, who cite Trump’s nationalistic rhetoric, his tweets, and his announcement that the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as reasons for the tension.
  9. The State Department issues a worldwide caution for U.S. travelers abroad. The last time this happened was at the start of the Iraq war.
  10. North Korea says war is inevitable.
  11. Remember when we brought back our diplomats from Cuba because they were experiencing mysterious symptoms? Well doctors find brain damage in the victims, which makes the sonic weapon explanation a little less believable.
  12. Iraq says that ISIS no longer controls any land in the country and declares an end to their war on ISIS.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House passes the concealed carry reciprocity bill, which would let people who live in concealed carry states carry weapons in states that don’t have concealed carry. I guess states right are only right when you agree with them.
  2. So far, 44 U.S. Representatives and 2 Senators have announced they’ll retire, resign, or run for a different office. 30 of the 44 are Republicans and both Senators are. Some feel they can’t get anything done anymore, and some point to Trump.
  3. Senator Al Franken announces he’ll step down over sexual misconduct allegations. Representative Trent Frank (R-AZ) also steps down from complaints that he suggested members of his staff should be surrogate mothers for him and his wife.
  4. Democratic Representative John Conyers resigns after more accusations of sexual harassment. Still waiting for Trump to come clean here.
  5. A House vote to impeach Trump fails bigly.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Supreme Court allows Trump’s third iteration of the travel ban to take effect while arguments are heard in the court challenge.
  2. Despite Trump’s push to bolster staff at Customs and Border Patrol, the CPB hasn’t been able to hire enough people to make up for attrition.
  3. In a rally in Florida… Wait, really? Why is he still holding rallies? Anyway, at a rally In Florida, Trump stumps for Roy Moore and goes after one of Moore’s accusers (she had added notes to the one Moore wrote in her yearbook oh my). Trump has attacked his own accusers and Moore’s, but somehow all the other women coming forward are legit. WTF?
  4. 92 Somalis are taken back to Somalia on a deportation plane, but they have to land in Senegal, and end up returning to the U.S. because of logistical issues.
  5. Trump was originally scheduled to speak at the opening of the Civil Rights Museum in Mississippi, but due to threatened boycotts by civil rights leaders, Trump speaks at a private event and not the opening.
    UPDATE: I recant that. Despite protests, Trump spoke at the opening anyway.
  6. Trump holds the traditional Hanukkah party but doesn’t invite Democrats or Reformist Jews.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump shrinks Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, as promised. The first of many lawsuits is filed on the same day.
  2. The EPA inspector general announces an investigation into Scott Pruitt’s meeting with the National Mining Association earlier this year where Pruitt apparently asked industry members to urge Trump to exit the Paris agreement.
  3. The Trump administration auctions off drilling rights for 900 tracts in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, totaling 10.3 million acres. Only two companies bid and only on seven tracts, totaling only about $1.16 million. This was supposed to be the biggest lease sale ever.
  4. Trump approves a state of emergency for Southern California due to the rampant wildfires.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Congress pushes back a potential government shutdown by extending spending for two weeks. So now they have to sign a funding bill by the end of next week.
  2. Trump says a government shutdown could still happen, and it would benefit him because he’ll blame Democrats for obstructing. Democrats are withholding support for a spending bill because they want a clean DACA bill. They also want comparable increases for non-defense spending as for defense spending. The Freedom Caucus says they won’t support a bill that includes either of those things.
  3. The tax bills being reconciled include a boon to private schools by allowing tax-free 529 accounts to be used for private K-12 schools. Currently they are only allowed for college savings.
  4. The Senate forgot to reduce the ATM, one of many oversights in their tax plan. Experts find many loopholes and potential problems.
  5. The Senate removes the anti-abortion text that was inserted into the tax bill (personhood for fetuses). The parliamentarian says it violates the Byrd rule, which governs what can be included in finance bills.
  6. 13 GOP governors refuse to sign a letter of support for the proposed tax plans.
  7. Susan Collins’ vote on the bill is back in question as the planned fix won’t work for the problems that would be caused by getting rid of the ACA’s individual mandate.
  8. Economists wonder if this is the wrong time for a tax cut, usually a tool to stimulate the economy which is currently on an 86-month winning streak. It could backfire and push us into inflation.
  9. Hiring is still strong 8 years into the recovery. 228,000 jobs were added in November.
  10. But GE announces they’ll layoff 12,000 employees (globally, though they didn’t say how many in what countries).
  11. The repeal of the Johnson amendment in the tax bill could open the door to allowing large donations to 501(c)(3) charities, meaning you can donate as much as you want to political candidates and write it off as a tax deduction.
  12. Attorneys general from 17 states and D.C. file a brief challenging Trump’s right to appoint Mick Mulvaney to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
  13. Hours after Mulvaney becomes acting director of the CFPB, the bureau reverses its position on a case that was nearly over, so bureau will no longer take a position on whether Nationwide will pay $8 million for misleading over 100,000 customers on their mortgages. They also stopped payments to some victims of financial crimes. This after Mulvaney says he won’t blow up the bureau.
  14. Trump rescinds another Obama-era proposal that makes airlines disclose baggage fees up front. Because why should we get to know exactly how much we have to pay?
  15. The Department of Labor delays implementation of the fiduciary rule, which would protect consumers from financial advisors lining their own pockets instead of looking out for consumers’ best interests.

Elections:

  1. Trump calls Roy Moore to offer his endorsement, and stumps for Moore at Trump’s rally in Florida.
  2. And then the Republican National Committee (RNC) throws its support behind Moore once again, after distancing themselves just a few weeks ago. But no one in the RNC defends the move publicly. This is no longer the party of the moral majority.
  3. Republican Representative Ben Sasse criticizes the RNC for funding Roy Moore once more, and says he’ll pull out of the fundraising arm of the committee if they keep it up.
  4. Paul Ryan says Roy Moore should drop out of the race, while Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Trump has the highest level respect for women (after Trump voiced support for Moore).
  5. Coordination between the RNC and the president is at a low, with Trump not realizing he is the leader of the party.
  6. Trump’s voter fraud commission, headed by Kris Kobach, wants to create a centralized database that pulls together names, addresses, party affiliations, and partial security numbers for all voters in all states. Security and access to the database hasn’t been defined yet. This is similar to Kobach’s Crosscheck database, which has caused millions of voters to be accidentally dropped from the roles. States have tried to drop out but are finding it impossible.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Erik Prince and Oliver North (!) are trying to sell the administration on the idea of creating a secret spy network to protect us against our own government intelligence agencies.
  2. After the Access Hollywood tape was released, GOP donors reportedly asked the RNC how much they would have to pay Trump for him to drop out of the election. Mike Pence and Reince Priebus also reportedly made a plan for succession, with Pence running for president and Condoleeza Rice being his running mate.
  3. Trump’s lawyers argue that the defamation suit brought against him by one of his sexual harassment accusers should be thrown out because Trump’s attacks against his accusers falls under protected speech.
  4. The Veterans Affairs Secretary, David Shulkin, holds a DC event touting Trump’s promise to house homeless vets. Then four days later, the Veterans Affairs agency cut resources from a program that dramatically reduced homelessness for sick and vulnerable vets. After some blowback, Trump reverses this decision.
  5. There are protests across the country in support of net neutrality and against FCC chair Ajit Pai’s attempt to get rid of it.
  6. Trump rolls back another Obama administration safety rule, this one requiring that trains shipping highly explosive liquids be equipped with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes by 2021. This rule was put in place to prevent the explosive train wrecks we’ve seen in recent years.
  7. Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, defends the FBIs integrity to the House Judiciary Committee after Trump tweeted that the agency is in tatters.

Polls:

  1. Trump hits a new all-time low in the Pew Research poll, with an approval rating of 32%.
  2. 70% of Americans think Congress should investigate Trump for sexual harassment accusations.
  3. 59% of Americans think Trump’s team had improper contacts with Russia during the campaign.
  4. 57% think Mueller is fair in his handling of the investigation.