Since Pence made a spectacle of this on Sunday, here’s a racial justice primer. NFL players who take a knee during the anthem aren’t protesting our flag, our anthem, or our military. They’re protesting racial injustice. And while the protest arose out of the killings of black men by police, our justice system treats them unfairly in general. They are more likely to get stopped (committing a crime or not), more likely to be arrested, more likely to be convicted, more likely to serve time, and more likely to serve a longer sentence. Every step adds to the disparity.

Using statistics for drug use and arrests as an example, say 1,000 white people and 200 black people commit the same crime. 100 white people and 74 black people might get arrested for it. (The actual numbers above aren’t accurate; they’re just to give an example. The ratios of white to black are accurate though.) So the arrest rate for white people is 10%, and for black people it’s 37%. Of those, 50 white people and 48 black people might be convicted—a 50% rate for whites and 65% for blacks. Of those, 19 white people and 24 black people might be incarcerated—a 38% rate for white people and 51% for black people. So in the end, 19 of 1,000 white people who commit the crime serve time, and 24 out of 200 black people do. So while 2% of white people who commit the crime serve time, 12% of black people do, a rate 6 times higher. And then on top of it all, those black people are more likely to get a longer sentence.

Lesson over. Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

1. Mueller’s team starts researching limits on presidential pardons, an indication that they think Trump will try to pardon those involved in the Russia investigation or use the promise of a pardon as leverage. Trump himself has said he has the complete power to pardon.
2. The CIA denies the Senate Judiciary Committee access to certain information about obstruction of justice in the Russia case, though it allowed the Senate Intelligence Committee to see it.
3. From Facebook, we learn that:
   • Russia used a retargeting tool on Facebook, Custom Audiences, to target ads and messages to Americans who visited misleading web sites and social media sites that imitated political activist pages.
   • The ads’ purpose was to further divisiveness and specifically promoted anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments.
   • The ads had an explicit pro-Trump and anti-Hillary tilt. One claimed that the only viable option was to elect Trump.
   • Russian-backed Facebook groups posing as U.S. activists groups liked and shared the ads.
   • Facebook estimates about 10 million people saw the ads and messages, but that doesn’t account for likes and shares. So the actual number is probably in the 100s of millions.
   • The ads targeted Michigan and Wisconsin, each of which Trump won by less than 1% of the vote.
4. Facebook didn’t identify Russians as the malicious actors at first, and removed mention of them from their reports.
5. The Senate Intelligence Committee leaders update us on the status of their Russia investigation. The issue of collusion and parts of the Steele dossier are still up for question, but here’s what they think so far:
   • Putin directed the hacking, propaganda, and meddling in our 2016 elections.
   • Russia was behind the hacking of John Podesta’s emails.
   • Russia tried to exploit our divisions using fake social media accounts.
6. Christopher Steele, the author of the Steele dossier, is in discussions to meet with congressional committees, but he already met with Robert Mueller.
7. Three Russians names in the Steele dossier sue Fusion GPS, which commissioned the Steele dossier. They previously sued BuzzFeed, which released the full text of the dossier.
8. U.S. Intelligence has verified parts of the Steele dossier, but won’t tell us which yet.
9. Demonstrators mark Putin’s 65th birthday by protesting in the streets in support of opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
10. Google also finds evidence of Russian meddling, saying they spread disinformation across Google’s products, including YouTube, Gmail, search, and the DoubleClick ad network. These don’t seem to be from the same troll farm as the Facebook ads, indicating that the propaganda effort was more widespread than originally thought.

Courts/Justice:

1. The DOJ releases legal memos that said presidents can’t appoint their own relatives to the White House staff, even if they’re unpaid. The DOJ overruled the memos in January, allowing Trump to appoint his family members.

Healthcare:

1. As part of a multi-pronged attack against women, Trump narrows the birth control coverage mandate of the ACA.
   • First, Trump repealed Obama’s efforts to ensure equal pay for equal work between genders.
   • Second, the House GOP eliminated Planned Parenthood from the budget. PP help helps women take control through screenings, birth control, and yes, abortion.
   • Third, the House GOP passed a bill restricting abortions, a bill which is based on incorrect science.
   • Finally, removing the birth control mandate of the ACA will make it that much harder for women to take charge of their own family planning.
2. Chuck Schumer turns down Trump’s offer to work together on ACA repeal and replace, saying he would be willing to work together to fix the current system instead.

International:

1. The State Department is losing career officers in droves and we’re losing our next wave of foreign policy leaders. These are people with expertise in specific areas who have established relationships with their foreign counterparts.
2. Trump says he’ll decertify the Iran agreement next week, kicking the responsibility back to Congress to decide whether to reinstate sanctions, which would completely blow up the deal.
3. It’s kind of important to mention that the Iran agreement, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), stands between Iran and a nuclear weapon. Trump has no replacement and he’s passing it off to a congress that doesn’t want it.
4. Here are some important things to know about the JCPOA:
   • It’s not a bilateral or multi-lateral agreement; it’s a UN Security Council resolution. We don’t have the power to change it.
   • It doesn’t prevent Iran from developing its military capabilities; it only prevents them from developing nuclear weapons.
   • We don’t have the power to decertify the actual agreement; only the International Atomic Energy Agency does. Our recertification is to make us feel good.
   • There is no sunset clause 10 years. Some parts will expire, but the crucial parts won’t.
5. International diplomats say the JCPOA is vital to the security interests of the U.S. and its allies.
6. One member of congress says this is like Trump pulling the pin out of a grenade and handing it over to Congress.
7. All national security advisors say we should recertify the JCPOA.
8. Despite Trump’s tweets that Kim Jong-un is a madman, the CIA thinks he’s crazy like a fox. Kim doesn’t want nuclear war; he’d rather just live out his days ruling his country. The CIA says Kim ramps up confrontations with the U.S. to keep his grip on power.
9. Trump urges his staff to portray him as crazy when negotiating trade deals and diplomacy, thinking it’ll scare other countries into agreement.
10. Demonstrators march in Barcelona to protest the effort for Catalonia independence and to push for Spanish unity.
11. In the face of major military losses, over a thousand ISIS fighters surrender.
12. World leaders mostly recognize that Trump’s tweets are disconnected from actual policy.

Legislation/Congress:

1. On top of the current House bill that would make silencers easier to buy, a second gun bill is working its way through Congress that would allow people to carry a concealed weapon in any state as long as it’s allowed in the state where they live.
2. Nancy Pelosi and Mark Kelly (husband of shooting victim and former Rep. Gabby Giffords) push for a bipartisan commission to study gun violence and ways to deal with it. The House GOP votes it down.
3. Pelosi calls on Paul Ryan to take up a bipartisan bill expanding background checks for firearms.
4. There’s bipartisan support for banning the sale of mechanisms like the bump stock used in Las Vegas.
5. House GOP supporters of gun rights claim to have never heard of the bump stock even though Diane Feinstein introduced legislation that included prohibitions on them in 2013.
6. A week after letting healthcare coverage for children lapse, the House passes a new anti-abortion bill.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. Mississippi’s sweeping anti-LGBT legislation goes into effect. This lets people and businesses discriminate against LGBT people in the areas of housing, employment, foster and adoptive care, selling goods and services, medical care, and schooling.
2. A UN measure banning the death penalty for being gay or transgender passes, but the U.S. votes against it.
3. Jeff Sessions issues a DOJ memo removing civil rights protections for transgender people in the workplace and reversing an Obama-era stance that included protections for transgender people in the Civil Rights Act.
4. Sessions also issues a directive to accommodate religious groups who say their religious rights are being violated if they’re forced to give equal treatment to all human beings. This takes the onus off of them of having to prove their discrimination is because of a closely held belief.
5. The mission of the Department of Health and Human Services is to protect the health of all Americans, yet they removed any mention of the specific health needs of the LGBTQ community from it’s latest 4-year plan. The plan promotes faith-based organizations, makes no mention of the ACA, and includes anti-abortion language.
6. Steve Scalise, who was saved by a lesbian, plans to speak at an anti-gay summit sponsored by a group that states homosexuality shouldn’t be treated equally to heterosexuality “in law, in the media, and in schools.”
7. The deadline for DACA renewal arrives, though it might be a surprise to some. Homeland Security originally sent out notifications with the wrong deadline date, and then never bothered to send out corrections.
8. California governor Jerry brown signs the sanctuary state law. Here’s what that means:
   • Police can still work with ICE to detain and transfer serious criminals.
   • Police can’t unconstitutionally detain someone at ICE’s request.
   • Hospitals, schools and courthouses are safe zones for immigrants.
   • Most of the efforts implemented by police departments to work with immigrant communities will continue.
9. The DOJ and ICE threaten retaliatory sweeps in California as a result of the sanctuary bill. They warn that there will be collateral damage, and that innocent people will be picked up as well as criminals.
10. Recently released documents show that ICE agents were pressured to present real-life stories to support Trump’s expanded detention guidelines.
    • They went out of their way to portray immigrants as hardened criminals.
    • They tried but couldn’t come up with enough stories and were pressured to fake it.
    • This was part of an effort to deflect attention from detainees who had never committed a crime.
    • They tried to create a narrative around how undocumented immigrants threaten public safety as a way of gaining public support.
11. The House Homeland Security Committee approves $10 billion for the border wall with Mexico.
12. In a reversal of his previous agreement with Democrats, Trump releases immigration law requests that will hamper a new DACA solution in Congress. This includes funding the wall, cracking down on undocumented minors, and cutting funding to sanctuary cities and holds DACA kids hostage, just like he said he wouldn’t.
13. Mike Pence walks out of the Colts game because some players took a knee, which he knew they’d do. This seems to be a preplanned publicity stunt on the taxpayers’ dime.
    • Pence flies from Las Vegas to Indianapolis on Saturday, goes to the game, and then turns around and flies back out west to Los Angeles for several fundraiser (where he’ll likely raise more money because of this).
    • Once at the game, Pence tells his press pool to stay in the van and expect an early departure.
    • Trump takes credit for the move in a tweet, saying he told Pence to leave if player knelt.
14. White supremacists rally once again in Charlottesville, carrying torches and chanting “You will not replace us!” And “The South will rise again. Russia is our friend.” Less than 50 people were there and the rally lasted about 10 minutes.
15. Internal emails obtained from Breitbart show that Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, and their staff purposefully pushed an agenda based on neo-nazi and white nationalist group input.

Climate/EPA:

1. Here’s an interesting and easy read about the environmental rules and protections overturned by the Trump administration: 52 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump
2. Scott Pruitt’s schedule consists mainly of meeting with industry leaders and lobbyists of the businesses he’s supposed to be regulating. He rarely meets with environmental groups, consumer and public health advocates, or actual scientists.
3. The EPA plans to repeal the Clean Power Plan, which would help cut carbon emissions from power plant and meet the goals of the Paris agreement. He plans to create a new rule based on input from the fossil fuel industry.
4. The only thing slowing down the deregulation so far is the courts, even though fossil fuel industry leaders also say the EPA needs to slow down. Expect many lawsuits against the repeal of the Clean Power Act as well.
5. A senior climate scientist and policy expert resigns a few months after being reassigned to an accounting job for which he had no experience. Joel Clement blew the whistle on Ryan Zinke for the reassignment, which is under investigation. I think his resignation letter is worth the read.
6. Hurricane Nate is the fourth hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. in six weeks, causing power outages in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, along with storm surges.
7. The San Jacinto Waste Pits near Houston have a dioxin level of more the 2,000 times the level that triggers a cleanup. The hurricane has spread toxic sludge.

Budget/Economy:

1. Trump says we’ll wipe out Puerto Rico’s debt, causing a brief panic in the bond market. Mick Mulvaney backpedals and says we won’t bail them out, even after the devastation from hurricane Maria.
2. The House passes a 2018 budget bill. Here are a few highlights:
   • The budget is about 6-months behind schedule. They’ve already passed their 2018 spending bills.
   • The bill sets up the tax reform bill so they won’t need any Democrats to vote for it.
   • It calls for $5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade.
   • It increases defense spending by $72 billion and cuts the rest by $5 billion in 2018.
   • It cuts Medicare and Medicaid, and also relies on repealing the ACA.
   • It cuts $203 billion from welfare programs in areas like nutritional assistance and education.
   • It leaves no room for tax reform to add to the deficit, though the tax plan is expected to add $1.5 trillion over a decade.
   • The Senate budget does take into account the tax reform deficit, and also keeps spending levels even.
3. Democrats Tammy Baldwin and Cory Booker release a Democratic version of the tax plan, which targets tax credits toward the middle class but doesn’t simplify the loopholes.
4. Mike Pence holds a closed-door deregulation summit. But because it’s closed-door, I can’t find any information on what was said.

Elections:

1. You remember a while back when Trump’s voter fraud commission requested voter information from every state? A Texas judge rules this week that providing the information would violate citizens’ privacy rights.
2. Mike Pence’s chief of staff urges donors to stop donating to politicians who are disloyal to Trump.
3. Recently unsealed court documents show that Kris Kobach pitched a proposal to Trump to change the national voting laws last fall. Kobach’s voter laws in Kansas discouraged thousands of people from voting and have been getting struck down courts ever since he implemented them.

Miscellaneous:

1. Here’s some of what we learn this week about the Las Vegas shooter:
   • He had 23 guns inside the room, and 24 more in his houses.
   • 33 of those guns were bought just in the last year from several different stores.
   • He sent money to his girlfriend in the Philippines, through she came back to talk to the police.
   • He set up a video surveillance system inside and outside his room.
2. Fake news sites from both sides spread false stories about the shooting, each blaming the other side. This is why we only share stories from trusted sources people! Have we learned nothing from the Russia investigation?
3. And we have the same fight again, with the left calling for better regulation and the right saying it’s too soon, and the left using Australia as an example and the right using Chicago. Our divide on guns is even greater than our divide on abortions.
4. Trump calls the Las Vegas shooter a sick and demented man. This, after he rescinded Obama’s rule that prevented the severely mentally ill from obtaining weapons.
5. Americans own half the guns in the world, even though only about a third of American households own guns.
6. There’s a huge increase in bump stock sales.
7. Trump visits the devastation in Puerto Rico. At the time, FEMA was still organizing, only 5% of the electrical grid was working, 17% of cellphone towers were, and more than half the residents were still without water.
8. Trump continues the war with San Juan’s mayor first by refusing to respond to her and then by refusing to let her speak at the roundtable.
9. Trump approves a request to let hurricane victims use food stamps to buy prepared hot meals (usually restricted for food stamps) after first appearing to deny it.
10. On his visit, Trump accuses Puerto Rico of throwing “our” budget out of whack. He also implies that this wasn’t a “real catastrophe” like Katrina, and goes on to compare death counts.
11. We do live in two completely separate universes. I’m watching Fox News where the banner says “San Juan mayor praises Trump meeting” and reading on CNN that “San Juan mayor criticizes Trump’s comments.”
12. FEMA removes information from its website that showed the condition of utilities and water in Puerto Rico. These charts show the actual progress.
13. In response to San Juan’s mayor’s request for a backup generator for a hospital that lost power, FEMA’s Brock Long says, “We filtered out the mayor a long time ago. We don’t have time for the political noise.” People had to be airlifted out of that hospital.
14. When Tom Price was appointed to the HHS, it triggered a special election in Georgia. An election that cost $50 million. And he didn’t even last a year.
15. Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA) is a vocal abortion opponent, yet texts show he asked his mistress to get one when they had a pregnancy scare. When she calls out his hypocrisy, he says he doesn’t write his March for Life messages, his staff does.
16. Murphy later resigns his congressional seat. Ironically, he resigns due to investigations into mistreatment of his staff, not because of the abortion controversy.
17. NBC reports that Tillerson called Trump a f***ing moron and threatened to quit after a national security meeting in July. Tillerson denies the threatening to quit part, but doesn’t deny the moron part.
18. After the report, Trump can’t resist a good tweet storm and insults NBC the worse way he knows how, calling them worse than CNN!
19. John Kelly prevents Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Cal) from speaking with Trump. Rohrabacher is a pro-Russia, Julian Assange ally.
20. A criminal case against Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. was dropped after Trump’s attorney met with the DA and donated to his reelection campaign despite hard evidence of them giving false info to prospective buyers in the Trump SoHo hotel.
21. After a dinner with military personnel, Trump alludes to a military photo-op as being the calm before the storm. When pressed on that, he says we’ll find out. No clarification yet.
22. The White House believes that John Kelly’s phone is compromised and has been for some time.
23. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump dumped emails from their private accounts to the Trump organization after being asked to retain them. But her emails, though, right?
24. Trump has reportedly sunk $200 million into his golf courses in Scotland, but they are losing millions.
25. Senator Bob Corker gives a brief interview where he defends Tillerson over Trump, saying that Tillerson, Kelly, and Mattis are the people who separate the U.S. from chaos in this presidency, and they make sure our policies are sound and coherent.
26. Trump responds in his weekend tweet storm, saying Corker begged him for an endorsement and when Trump refused, Corker dropped out. He blames Corker for the Iran deal.
27. Corker brings a strong response: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”
28. In fact, Corker decided on his own not to run and Trump called him to ask him to reconsider. Of note, Corker and Trump have been on friendly terms, and Corker was considered for the vice presidency.
29. Corker goes on to give an interview to the New York Times where he says Trump’s reckless threats could start WWIII, Trump treats the presidency like a reality show, and every day takes a tremendous effort for his staff to contain him.

Polls:

1. 48% of Americans have confidence in the press, up 10 points from last year.
2. 68% of voters disagree with Trump’s call to boycott NFL teams with protesting players.
3. This one’s almost offensive in its wording. 54% of Republicans say homosexuality should be accepted by society, the first time that’s been a majority.
4. 32% of Americans approve of Trump and 67% disapprove. This is a new low, but it’s also a different metric from my previous polls.