Tag: representatives

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 62 in Trump

Posted on April 2, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Trump’s public attacks on major businesses like Amazon are not just bad presidenting, they’re bad for the economy. As I write this, the stock market is still dropping, partly on a tech sell off and partly on fears of a trade war. Both, you can argue, are sparked by Trump’s rhetoric, and now the market has lost all of its gains so far this year.

Here’s what else happened this week.

Russia:

  1. Over 20 countries expel Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of Russian ex-pats on British soil. Trump expels 60 Russian diplomats and closes their consulate in Seattle. Worldwide, over 100 Russian diplomats are expelled.
  2. Russia threatens to expel U.S. diplomats in retaliation.
  3. Russia performs another test of its latest nuclear missile that it says can reach anywhere in the world and get through any missile defense system.
  4. Emails turned over to investigators show that George Papadopolous had more contact with transition and campaign officials than has previously been recognized.
  5. A new court filing by Mueller shows that Rick Gates and Paul Manafort continued their ties to Russian intelligence during the 2016 campaign. Such links were previously known, just not that they had continued throughout the campaign.
  6. It turns out that Trump did speak with his attorneys about pardons for Manafort and Michael Flynn last year.
  7. Manafort asks a court to dismiss 18 criminal charges against him because his work with Russia ended in 2014. Reminder: Manafort’s business associate, Rick Gates, already pleaded guilty and is cooperating.
  8. Manafort’s friends think he’s counting on a presidential pardon, even though a pardon doesn’t apply to state crimes (which he will likely be charged with should a pardon be issued).
  9. The FBI issues Trump’s friend Ted Malloch a subpoena to testify for Mueller. They‘re interested in Malloch’s relationship with Roger Stone and Julian Assange.
  10. Mueller is taking another look at the 2016 Republican National Convention, specifically Jeff Sessions’ meetings with Russian officials and how language in the party platform that was hostile to Russia got removed.
  11. High profile law firms continue to turn down the opportunity to represent Trump in the Russia investigation. Most of them seem to be citing conflicts, and some are already representing witnesses.
  12. Ecuador cuts off Julian Assange’s access to the internet at the embassy in London where he’s been staying. Earlier this year, Ecuador granted Assange citizenship.
  13. Facebook announces plans to fight fake news and foreign interference in our elections. They’ll fact check stories, photos, and videos; add stricter requirements for political ads; notify people who share fake news; display a new dashboard that lets you see who’s buying political ads; and be more proactive about blocking fake accounts.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions directs the inspector general of the Justice Department to investigate the FBI and DOJ surveillance of former Trump campaign aides (that is, Carter Page). This isn’t enough for critics, who want a special counsel to investigate potential FISA abuses. The inspector general is also looking into whether the investigation into Uranium One was thorough enough.
  2. A federal judge says an emoluments lawsuit against Trump can continue. The lawsuit, brought by Maryland and DC, accuses Trump of accepting payments from foreign governments or individual states in violation of the emoluments clause.
  3. A New York judge allows Summer Zervos’s defamation case against Trump to continue.
  4. Judge Reinhardt of the ninth circuit court of appeals dies.
  5. The wife of the gunman who carried out the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL, is acquitted of being a co-conspirator to the crime.

Healthcare:

  1. After the largest black lung cluster in history is found in Kentucky, state legislators pass a law requiring pulmonologists and not radiologists to diagnose black lung. Most pulmonologists in the state are regularly hired by coal companies or the healthcare insurers used by coal companies. This cluster is especially confounding because it’s striking miners at a younger age and is very aggressive.

International:

  1. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has an unannounced meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping weeks ahead of a planned meeting between North Korea, South Korea, and the U.S.
  2. Satellite images indicate that North Korea is testing a new light water nuclear reactor and has brought another reactor online, bringing their promise to denuclearize into question.
  3. Over 200 former U.S. ambassadors and diplomats sign on to a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warning about the deterioration of U.S. leadership in the world and urging a restoration of U.S. diplomatic influence around the globe. The letter is in advance of the committee’s confirmation hearings for Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.
  4. Even though state and military officials say we should stay in Syria for the foreseeable future, Trump says we’ll be out of there very soon.
  5. U.S. military commanders say their ability to fight ISIS is hampered by a lack of direction from the White House. Ten weeks ago, they would’ve told you that ISIS would be taken down in Syria by mid-April, but now they see that falling apart.
  6. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announces that the U.S. will no longer pay over 25% of the UN’s peacekeeping costs.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. New York tightens gun ownership rules for domestic abusers, preventing them from owning any firearms at all.
  2. Vermont, which had some of the weakest gun laws in the country, passes a sweeping gun control bill that includes raising the minimum purchase age to 21, banning bump stocks, expanding background checks, and limiting magazine capacities.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. At least 12 states sue the Trump administration over the addition of a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. Critics say that the question will prevent some citizens from filling out the questionnaire, and that it goes against the Constitutional requirement that the census count everyone. The administration says the information will help enforce the Voting Rights Act.
    Background: The citizenship question was dropped from the census in 1960, and has only been added to supplemental questionnaires ever since. Most questions have years of vetting, but this was added suddenly.
  2. Orange County’s board of supervisors votes to fight California’s sanctuary laws.
  3. A draft of changes proposed by the Trump administration to immigration rules widens the definition of benefits for which immigrants can be penalized. Currently, immigrants who receive welfare are penalized, but the new definition of welfare would include Earned Income Tax Credits as well as health insurance subsidies.
  4. Trump pushes for the military to use part of their expanded budget to pay for the military wall. Repurposing military funds for the wall would require approval by Congress, and the wall is not popular with either party in Congress.
  5. Ben Carson moves to scale back enforcement of HUD’s fair housing rules, which protect people from racial, ethnic, and income segregation in federal housing projects.
  6. Chuck Grassley’s chief investigative counsel for the GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee is also the guy pushing the current attacks against the FBI and trying to undermine Mueller’s investigation. He’s the reason Grassley pushed for criminal charges against Christopher Steele. If you wonder what informs his choices, here are a few things he’s written on his blog:
    • Homosexuality is like incest
    • There’s an impending Islamic takeover
    • Liberals are anti-American
    • McCarthy should be remembered more kindly
  1. A federal judge cites Trump’s “racially charged language” when ruling that a lawsuit to prevent DACA from being ended can go forward. The judge says that Trump’s racial slurs and epithets infer that his ending DACA violates the equal protection clause of the constitution.
  2. The State Department issues notices that will require most visa applicants to hand over five years worth of social media accounts. The 60-day public comment period begins this week.
  3. Happy Easter. Here’s a round up of Trump’s Easter day tweet storm:
    • He says “ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release” make it too dangerous for Border Control to do their jobs, and calls on Republicans to unleash the nuclear option to overhaul immigration. Also, “NO MORE DACA DEAL!” There is no catch and release law, just a policy on when to detain asylum seekers. The courts might make Trump’s view on DACA irrelevant, but it’s not clear if he really means to end the program.
    • He then threatens to withdraw from NAFTA if Mexico doesn’t stem the flow of drugs and people into the country, and reiterates the need for the wall. Which experts says won’t stem the flow of either of those things.
    • This all seems to be a reaction to a Fox & Friends commentary labeled “CARAVAN OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS HEADED TO U.S.” talking about a group of Hondurans reportedly traveling through Mexico to seek asylum here.
  1. Trump clarifies the above to reporters as he goes into church that morning, saying Democrats prevented a potential DACA deal and a lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of the DACA program. (DACA is only available to people who arrived before 2007, so no one coming in now is eligible.)
  2. Trump tweets out pictures of a border project saying they’ve begun building the wall. Except the photos are of a fence repair project authorized under Obama.
  3. Trump once again opts out of the tradition started under Obama of holding a White House Seder to celebrate Passover.
  4. A black woman in Texas who voted illegally because she wasn’t aware she wasn’t eligible gets sentenced to five years. Meanwhile, a white woman in Iowa who tried to vote for Trump twice (once as her dead mother) gets probation. I’m not sure if the difference in treatment is due to state laws or to the color of their skin.
  5. In order to speed up deportation cases, Jeff Sessions is considering overruling judges who put these cases on hold. The Justice Department is also setting quotas for immigration judges.
  6. After ending temporary protected status for refugees from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan earlier this year, this week Trump lets it expire for Liberians as well. As before, some of the people have been here for nearly two decades.
  7. After the questionable shooting of Stephon Clark, the Sacramento Kings announce a partnership with activists against the shooting. Also, an independent autopsy shows he was shot 8 times in the back and side.
  8. No charges are brought against the officers who killed Alton Sterling in 2016, but the shooter is fired and his partner is suspended.
  9. ICE detains and deports an army veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Scott Pruitt wants the EPA to ignore any research based on raw data that is not publicly available. This data often includes people’s private information. So while Facebook is under attack for releasing private information, Scott Pruitt is asking scientists to publicize people’s private information or risk having their studies ignored.
    Background: This isn’t how science is done. When a scientist completes a study, other scientists try to replicate or refute it using their own data.
  2. Giraffes make the endangered species list. Yay us.
    CORRECTION: Giraffes are listed as vulnerable. They aren’t on the official list.
  3. The Sahara Desert is growing due to a combination of natural climate patterns and global warming.
  4. The UN Secretary General says that climate change is the biggest danger we face today. He also dismisses Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement, saying that the U.S. people are doing much on their own to help control greenhouse gases.
  5. The EPA distributes a list of climate change talking points to its staffers as part of guidance on how to talk to local communities about related issues. The talking points downplay climate science and question how much we actually know about human causes. This is either a way to downplay global warming while actually addressing the problem, or it’s a way to continue to stir up confusion on the issue.
  6. Scott Pruitt comes under even more scrutiny over his spending with the disclosure that he’s been renting one bedroom for $50 a night, but only when he stays there and even though all the other bedrooms in the apartment are empty. The apartment building is owned by the wife of an energy industry lobbyist.
  7. The House Oversight Committee is investigating Pruitt’s travel and security costs.

Budget/Economy:

  1. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer announces a new trade agreement with South Korea. Trump uses the threat of a steel tariff to get concessions in the deal.
  2. Wall Street bonuses are their highest level since before 2008, at an average of $184,220. There’s your trickle down economics.
  3. As a way of trying to show they’re for fiscal responsibility before the midterm elections, Republicans in the House are considering voting on a constitutional amendment that would require balanced budgets. This, after a $1.5 trillion tax cut and a $1.3 trillion spending bill. In order to pass, it would require Democrat votes plus ratification by 34 states.
  4. In protest of changes to their pension plan, teachers in Kentucky call in sick or call for substitutes, shutting down several schools across the state. Teachers in Arizona head to the capital building to demand higher pay and better funding.
  5. Trump goes after Amazon in a series of tweets, causing Amazon’s stock to drop and causing Jeff Bezos to lose over $10 billion in stock value.
    • Trump’s tweets about Amazon were inaccurate. The post office has a profitable agreement with Amazon, the Washington Post is not a lobbyist organization, and Amazon does pay state taxes.
    • This precipitated a continued fall in tech stock prices.
    • Could this be because Bezos also owns the Washington Post?

Elections:

  1. Ryan Costello, one of the strongest opponents of the redrawn district lines in PA is not running for re-election. He says pro-trumpers are too strident and anti-Trumpers are too angry. His timing leaves Republicans having to maneuver ways to get a new candidate on the ballot.
  2. Joe Arpaio, who is running for Senate in Arizona, promises to renew his efforts to prove that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.
  3. After being ordered by a court to hold special elections for two open seats, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker sets a date for June 12. GOP legislators in Wisconsin had considered holding a special session to change the rules in order to avoid a special election, but the court also denied Walker a delay he needed in order to get that done.
  4. Florida moves to give voting rights back to ex-felons. A judge ordered Governor Rick Scott to overturn Jim Crow-era laws that disenfranchised African Americans.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Puerto Ricans are having a hard time getting FEMA assistance for their damaged homes because it’s hard for some to prove that they own the homes.
  2. Wisconsin students march 50 miles to Paul Ryan’s hometown to get him to take action on gun violence.
  3. White House lawyers look into whether loans to the Kushner family business violated any laws or ethics rules. The loans in question were made after the loaning companies met with Kushner at the White House.
  4. Color me surprised. Mitch McConnell issues a bill to legalize hemp and remove it from the list of controlled substances.
  5. Lawyer Michael Cohen says Trump didn’t know about his $130,000 bribe to keep Stormy Daniels quiet, which could insulate Trump but could also invalidated the non-disclosure agreement.
  6. Sinclair Broadcasting forces anchors at local news stations to repeat the same script about fake news, biased media, and one-sided journalism.
  7. The FTC opens an investigation into Facebook‘s privacy practices.
  8. Trump fires the head of the VA, David Shulkin, and says he’ll nominate his personal physician, Ronny Jackson, to fill the position. Interestingly, Trump and Shulkin had a meeting about the VA and its programs right before Trump had John Kelly call Shulkin and fire him. There was no mention in the meeting that anything was up.
  9. Shulkin says he was prevented from defending himself from the accusations of taking his wife to Europe on the government’s dime. He says it was approved by the ethics committee, and after the controversy swelled, he paid the government back. He also says he was fired because people in the administration want to privatize the VA, though he had privatized several services himself.
  10. Official word from the White House is that Shulkin resigned. Official word from Shulkin is that he was fired. This is an important distinction because of the Federal Vacancies Act, which allows Trump to temporarily replace him without confirmation.
  11. Over a dozen advertisers pull out of Laura Ingraham’s show after she mocks a Parkland student activist and he calls her out on it.
  12. In a speech, Trump admits he doesn’t know what community colleges are, conflating them with vocational schools (not the same thing). Community colleges offer associates degrees and less-expensive prep for completing a 4-year degree at a university or college.
  13. The Texas police chief who called the Austin bomber a challenged young man now says the bomber was actually a domestic terrorist.
  14. The NRA confirms that it receives foreign donations, but denies that it uses any of those funds for election-related purposes.

Polls:

  1. A third of Americans say they see a bigger paycheck after the tax reform bill. 52% say they haven’t seen a change. In fairness, nobody noticed Obama’s tax cuts in 2009 either, when 97% of households got an average of $1,200 in tax cuts per year.
  2. 54% of Americans say Trump will lose in 2020. But that’s the same percentage who thought Obama would lose in 2012.

Quote of the Week

David Shulkin, outgoing head of the VA

“It should not be this hard to serve your country.”

Week 61 in Trump

Posted on March 26, 2018 in Politics, Trump

March For Our Lives, DC - Time Magazine

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

Cambridge Analytica:

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

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

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

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

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

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

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

Polls:

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

Quotes of the Week:

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

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

Week 60 in Trump

Posted on March 20, 2018 in Politics, Trump

This week, students at over 3,000 schools across the country protest gun violence and honor the Parkland victims in staged walkouts. Each walkout starts at 10 AM local time, and students stay out for 17 minutes in tribute to the 17 lost lives in Parkland. Students also march on Washington and the walkouts extend across the globe. Here’s what they want. It’s pretty simple, so accusing them of not knowing what they’re doing is pretty disingenuous:

  • Ban assault weapons
  • Universal background checks for all gun sales
  • Pass a gun violence restraining order law (so courts can disarm people who display warning signs)

Some schools punish students by giving them unexcused absences or suspensions—some even suspend students for five days (I’m looking at you Cobb County, Georgia). Others put their schools on lockdown so students can’t go out; students take a knee instead. Social media is awash with “grownups” saying students don’t know what they’re protesting, that students are forced into this, and that they couldn’t organize this movement on their own. It’s the 60s all over again.

And also, 7,000 pairs of shoes are laid out on the grounds in front of the U.S. Capitol, representing every child killed by a gun since Sandy Hook in 2012.


Here’s what else happened last week…

Russia:

  1. Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee effectively close their Russia case, just as Robert Mueller is expanding his investigation into Trump associates, Trump Organization, and a secret meeting between Erik Prince, George Nader, and a UAE official. They release a report saying they’ve seen no evidence that there was collusion or that Russia was trying to tip the scales toward Trump. Investigations continue in other congressional committees.
  2. And who’s been feeding this guy truth serum? Republican Trey Goody, who actually read the underlying legal documents, disputes some of the report’s findings. Our intelligence community disputes even more of them.
  3. Representative Mike Conaway (R-Texas) says that it wasn’t part of the House Intelligence Committee’s mission to investigate collusion between Russia and Trump associates. So basically they said they didn’t find the collusion that they weren’t even looking for.
  4. Another Representative on the House Intelligence Committee, Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), also contradicts the report, saying that there is evidence Russia was trying to help Trump in the elections.
  5. Democrats release a rebuttal to the report, outlining the areas where they think the investigation is incomplete, including key witnesses that were never called, subpoenas that were never issued, organizations that were never questioned (like social media giants), and broad issues that were never investigated. For example, the committee hasn’t interviewed key players like Papadopoulos, Manafort, Gates, and Flynn.
  6. A former Russian spy and his daughter are found poisoned in a park and are currently in critical condition. Investigators confirm that the poison is definitely of Russian origin.
  7. And then Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov is found dead in London. Police are treating it as a murder.
  8. Prime Minister Therese May pretty much accuses Russia of an act of war and gives them 48 hours to answer for the poisonings.
  9. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson calls the act egregious and says there will be consequences. But Russia probably isn’t too worried about Tillerson anymore for obvious reasons.
  10. Theresa May’s first act of reprisal is to expel 23 Russian diplomats thought to be spies. She also cancels meetings with Russian officials.
  11. The U.S., France, and Germany join the United Kingdom in saying Russia is responsible for the poisonings.
  12. Two witnesses come forward to say Roger Stone spoke with Julian Assange in early 2016, and that he knew about the hacked emails before they were publicized.
  13. We learn that Qatari officials didn’t share information about the UAE having illicit influence over Kushner with Robert Mueller’s team because they were afraid it would hurt their relationship with the Trump administration.
  14. Trump finally imposes sanctions against Russia for meddling in our elections, one month after the deadline set by Congress. He doesn’t include all the recommended sanctions.
  15. Mueller subpoenas Trump Organization records, a sign that he’s expanding his investigation and that he’s not close to the end despite rumors to the contrary.
  16. Federal regulators say that a 2017 Russian hack into our energy grid didn’t compromise any of our power plants, including nuclear power plants. The hacks did, however, trigger a scramble to secure our networks, particularly those managing our infrastructure.
  17. Facebook suspends Cambridge Analytica for using an academic research cover to scrape data about hundreds of thousands of users. Cambridge Analytica also met with Russian businessmen to talk about how Cambridge Analytica used their data to target U.S. voters.
  18. The Massachusetts attorney general launches an investigation over claims that Cambridge Analytica scraped data from over 50 million Facebook users to develop social media techniques to help Trump’s campaign.
  19. Sessions fires Andy McCabe just over 24 hours before he was to retire, meaning be could lose his pension. McCabe will likely appeal this, other members of government extend offers to hire him short-term, and it is also possible that his pension won’t be that deeply affected.
  20. McCabe learned of his firing from a press release, though he likely saw it coming.
  21. Following Andrew McCabe’s firing, Trump’s lawyers says Mueller’s investigation should be halted and implied to Rod Rosenstein that he should end it.
  22. Andrew McCabe has contemporaneous memos of his interactions with Trump and of Comey’s descriptions of his interactions with Trump. He’s already met with Mueller and turned over copies.
  23. Trump says the Mueller investigation is partisan, even though there are charges and guilty pleas. And even though Mueller and many he works with are Republican.
  24. Senator Marco Rubio criticizes the McCabe firing. Representative Trey Gowdy criticizes the handling of the firing, saying Trump’s acting like he’s guilty. Senator Lindsey Graham says that if Trump tries to fire Mueller, it will be the end of his presidency. All Republicans.
  25. The FEC opens an investigation into whether the NRA received illegal contributions from Russian groups to support Trump’s campaign.
  26. A federal judge warns that Paul Manafort could spend the rest of his life in prison. Manafort is on 24-hour lockdown in his home.
  27. Seth Rich’s family files a lawsuit against Fox News over them promoting a rumor that Rich was the leaker of the DNC emails during the 2016 campaign and that he was killed because of that. If you remember, Seth Rich was a DNC staffer who was killed in an apparent random attack.
  28. Three sources say Jeff Sessions didn’t actually push back when George Papadopoulos suggested the Trump campaign meet with Russians, leading some to wonder whether he committed perjury in his congressional testimony.
  29. Russians elect Putin for another six years in a landslide victory.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Trump’s administration wants to permanently take away federal judges’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions, which stop policies from taking effect until the court can make a final ruling.

International:

  1. Trump fires Rex Tillerson, reportedly via Twitter but with a warning from John Kelly. Trump picks Mike Pompeo, currently CIA director, to replace him as Secretary of State.
  2. Pompeo has a background of voting against women’s and LGBTQ rights, as well as making anti-Muslim comments. He has also supports torture. So there’s that.
  3. Trump then fires Tillerson’s top aide, Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein, for giving an account of the firing that differed from the official White House story.
  4. Trump picks Gina Haspel to replace Mike Pompeo. She’d be the first woman to hold the top position at the CIA, and seems widely respected at the CIA. Her confirmation could be tough though, because of issues around her role the torture of al-Qaeda prisoners.
  5. Prosecutors in Germany are reviewing a request from the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) to issue an arrest warrant on Haspel for her involvement in extreme torture measures after 9/11. NOTE: A report on her role in waterboarding suspected terrorists was later retracted. She was not involved in the waterboarding of a suspect who was later found to be innocent.
  6. Steve Bannon addresses France’s far right party, spreading his own brand of white nationalism and telling them to wear labels like racist, xenophobic, and nativist proudly.
  7. Trump brags that he just made up trade deficit “facts” in a meeting with Justin Trudeau, saying the U.S. had a trade deficit with Canada. According to Trump, Trudeau disputed that, saying there is no deficit. And Trudeau’s right. You can read the actual facts at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
  8. And then, to make it even weirder, Justin Trudeau says they had no such conversation. So it seems Trump lied about making up facts at a meeting he made up.
  9. And then Trump doubles down, tweeting that we do have a trade deficit with Canada. Again, we do not.
  10. In a fundraising speech, Trump:
    • Accuses the European Union, China, Japan, and South Korea of ripping us off and pillaging our work force.
    • Calls NAFTA a disaster and then criticizes the World Trade Organization.
    • Threatens Seoul if they give us a better trade deal.
  1. The White House plans to have Ivanka Trump meet with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha when she visits the U.S. Normally the minister would meet with the Secretary of State, but Tillerson was fired. Among other things, Tillerson and Kang planned to discuss talks with North Korea.
  2. Philippine President Duterte says he’ll pull the Philippines out of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC is investigating Duterte for crimes against humanity for his handling of the drug problem.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Kentucky takes a page from Florida and bans child marriages.
  2. The House passes a school safety bill. It provides training for both school employees and law enforcement to manage mental health issues and provides money to put systems in place for reporting threats.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Homeland Security spokesman James Schwab resigns, saying that he can’t continue to “perpetuate misleading facts” for the administration. In other words, he’s tired of lying for Trump.
  2. Trump says it’s Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s fault that ICE didn’t pick up more undocumented immigrants in a sweep last week after she issued a warning before the raid took place. ICE typically picks up about a third of their targets in these sweeps, and here they picked up 232 out of 1,000. Trump said they were all violent criminals, but just under half of those picked up had criminal records of any kind.
  3. Trump blames Obama-era rules for mass shootings. The rules in question were an effort to rein in the harsher disciplines brought down on minority students, like suspensions and expulsions. IKYDK, no black student has been the perpetrator of a mass school shooting and minority schools aren’t the targets of these shootings.
  4. Attorney General Jeff Sessions re-opens a court decision that protects domestic violence victims seeking asylum in the U.S. This indicates he’s contemplating removing or weakening these protections.
  5. Trump visits the wall prototypes south of San Diego, only to find protests on both sides of the border.
  6. The ACLU sues ICE for detaining hundreds of asylum seekers with no due process.
  7. A court clears DeAndre Harris of assault charges stemming from the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville last year where he was severely beaten. Yes, they charged the man who himself was severely beaten. The men who beat him haven’t been tried yet.
  8. Trump wants to trade a short-term DACA deal for funding for his border wall.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Why are we suddenly hearing so much about bomb cyclones? Because abnormally warm temperatures in the Arctic can bring them on, according to a recent study. And since four of the past five years have had an Arctic thaw, we’re seeing rougher weather on the upper east coast.
  2. 2017 was the costliest year yet for weather and climate disasters in the U.S., and yet FEMA just removed any reference to climate change from its strategic planning document. Because if we don’t talk about global warming, it doesn’t exist, right? It’ll just go away?

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump blocks the $117 billion bid from Broadcom to buy Qualcomm citing security concerns. Broadcom drop its bid.
  2. Trump names TV personality Larry Kudlow to Gary Cohn’s old position as top economic advisor. Kudlow has gotten some things very, very wrong, including predicting these things wouldn’t occur: the positive effects of Bill Clinton’s tax plan, the negative effects of Bush Jr.’s tax plan, the housing bubble in 2007, and the great recession.
  3. The Senate passes a bill to weaken the financial protections in Dodd-Frank, increasing the size of banks that do not need to follow the regulations. They say that this will help small community banks get out from under regulatory red tape, but most community banks have less than $10 billion in assets and this bill only helps banks that have $50 billion to $250 billion in assets. So I guess if you consider that a small bank… What the bill changes is that these banks no longer need to have an emergency plan for in case they fail.
  4. The House passes a bill requiring federal financial regulatory agencies to limit burdens on institutions. In other words, the bill favors institutions over consumer rights and once again would allow them to engage in the risky behavior that led to the great recession. And just to make sure they erase Obama’s and Elizabeth Warren’s fingerprints on any regulations, they make it retroactive to any regulations passed in the last seven years.
  5. A federal court tosses out the fiduciary rule, an Obama-era rule that required your financial advisor to act in your best interest instead of pushing you into investments that would put money in your advisor’s pockets.
  6. According to Puerto Rico’s governor, the Treasury reduced their $4.7 billion disaster relief loan to just $2 billion.

Elections:

  1. A court blocks Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State, from enforcing his law requiring a voter ID to register to vote. The 10th circuit court calls it a denial of a fundamental constitutional right. If you’ll remember, Kobach believes there are thousands of undocumented immigrants who are registered to vote, even though decades of commissions and studies (both conservative and liberal) conclude that this isn’t the case.
  2. Democrat Conor Lamb defeats Republican Rick Saccone in Pennsylvania’s district 18 special election for House of Representatives. The race was to replace Republican Representative Tim Murphy, who was staunchly anti-abortion, except, it turns out, when it’s his mistress who is pregnant.
  3. This is the 42nd seat to flip from Republican to Democrat since Trump’s election. Four have flipped the other way.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Three packages left outside homes explode in Austin, killing two people and injuring another.
  2. Betsy DeVos can barely answer basic questions about our education system in an interview on 60 Minutes. She also says that she doesn’t intentionally visit troubled schools.
  3. Trump considers firing David Shelkin from the VA and moving Rick Perry from the Department of Energy to the VA. Though by the end of the week, he’s looking at different replacements
  4. The White House fires Trump’s personal assistant, John McEntee, because of financial crimes being investigated by DHS. The crimes must’ve been bad, because they didn’t even give him a chance to get his coat before walking him out. But then Trump gives him a job as senior advisor for his campaign operations.
  5. Data scientists at MIT publish a study concluding that fake news is shared much, much more than real news on social media and in one test, fake news reached 1,500 people 6 times faster than real news. Even when controlling for verified accounts, fake news is 70% more likely to be shared.
  6. Well, that was brief. At the beginning of the week, Trump reverses his stance on the NRA and drops his promises on gun control efforts, like raising the purchase age and expanding background checks. Here’s what he offers instead:
    • Rigorous firearm training to school employees who want it
    • Modest fixes to the background check process
    • A new Federal Commission on School Safety, chaired by Betsy DeVos.
  1. A bill in the Senate to improve the background check database has 62 co-sponsors (so by definition, it’s bipartisan). But it’s being held up by the remaining Republicans.
  2. Another teacher accidentally discharges a weapon in class, injuring three students.
  3. Leaked emails imply that the purging of career officials at the State Department was politically motivated and targeted people who weren’t loyal to Trump.
  4. Donald Trump Jr.’s wife of twelve years files for divorce.
  5. A UPenn study concludes that when a Trump rally comes to a town, there’s a rise in violence on that day. There was an average of 2.3 more assaults on the days of the rallies in the data and cities they studied.
  6. Trump’s lawyers say Stormy Daniels violated her non-disclosure 20 times and wants $20 million in damages ($1 million per violation).
  7. Trump lays down an epic tweetstorm following McCabe’s firing. Here’s some of what he said:
    • Mueller’s team has 13 Democrats and no Republicans, so it must be partisan. (Except Mueller himself is a Republican, so already we know that’s false.)
    • Andy McCabe and James Comey are both liars, and Comey even lied under oath. (His source was Fox & Friends.)
    • The following all came from one tweet: No collusion, no crime, fake dossier, crooked Hillary, FISA court, WITCH HUNT!
    • He brings up the donations made from the DNC to McCabe’s wife’s campaign. (This isn’t even being investigated.)
    • The House Intelligence Committee found no collusion. (In fairness, that wasn’t part of their investigation and Republicans on the committee disagree.)
    • And my favorite:

Quote of the Week:

Or maybe this is just the understatement of the week…

“I anticipated that this would be a lower-profile job.”

~Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein:

Week 59 in Trump

Posted on March 12, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

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

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

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Week 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 53 in Trump

Posted on January 29, 2018 in Politics, Trump

This week, Trump takes credit for an all-time low in African-American unemployment. And African-American unemployment is down under him; but it’s also a continuation of the trend started under Obama. And the far right will never give Obama the credit he deserves for helping our economy recover so much faster than the rest of the world. Look at the graph above, and you can see Trump inherited an economy already trending in his favor. I remember hearing all through Obama’s presidency that economic indicators were faked, and that the Bureau of Labor and Statistics uses misleading data. I give credit to Trump for keeping the economy going; but conservatives need to give Obama some credit for jump-starting it. Take a look at these graphs to see the trends.

Russia:

  1. According to Joe Biden, Obama didn’t speak out about the Russian interference in our elections because Mitch McConnell refused to sign on to a bipartisan statement of condemnation.
  2. Paul Manafort’s attorneys accidentally file a memo in their court filings that indicates that federal investigators had a mole in Manafort’s company. The mole is the source of the information about his financial transactions.
  3. Mueller wants to talk with Trump about the firing of both James Comey and Michael Flynn.
  4. Flynn spoke with the Mueller investigation a year ago this week, and never told the White House about it.
  5. After seesawing over whether he was willing to speak with Mueller, Trump says he will. Then his lawyer says Trump spoke too fast. Then Trump again says he will. Then his lawyer walks it back again. He wants his testimony to be part oral and part written statements.
  6. Mueller gives Trump a list of topics he wants to talk about.
  7. Mueller questions CIA Director Mike Pompeo, National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, and NSA Director Mike Rogers.
  8. The Justice Department confirms that Mueller questioned Jeff Sessions last week. He’s the first member of Trump’s cabinet to be questioned.
  9. We learn that Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI, threatened to quit after being pressured by Trump and Sessions to fire Deputy Director Andy McCabe. White House counsel Don McGahee told Sessions it wasn’t worth losing the director over this.
  10. The New York Time reports that in June, Trump tried to fire Mueller, but his White House Counsel threatened to quit if he did. Trump and his team denied this at least eight times since June of last year.
  11. Wray is replacing two senior positions that were appointed by James Comey.
  12. Mueller questions at least one Facebook employee who was embedded in the Trump campaign.
  13. Rick Gates hires a new attorney, indicating he’s in the middle of negotiations with Mueller.
  14. The Senate Judiciary Committee says they’ll release the transcripts of Donald Trump Jr.’s closed-door testimony.
  15. Congressional Republicans spread a conspiracy theory about a secret society within the FBI to take down Trump. Their proof is a text between two FBI staffers who were having an affair where they talked about a “secret society.” Because if the FBI had a secret society, that’s exactly what they’d call it, right?
  16. Sessions orders an investigation into months of missing text messages between the two above FBI staffers. Because of a Samsung 5 update problem, the texts weren’t properly archived. The texts are located by the end of the week.
  17. With all the hype about the memo commissioned by Devin Nunes on the FBI and DOJ, it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. Axios has a pretty decent time line of the whole thing.
  18. Trump makes it clear that he wants the memo released, and says if the House Intelligence Committee wants to release the memo, he’ll approve it.
  19. The DOJ says it would be irresponsible and reckless to release the memo.
  20. It’s easy to see what side Russians are on. After Russian bots on social media make #releasethememo the top trending hashtag, they surpass it with #SchumerShutdown.
  21. White House sources say that last June, Trump pressed staff to carry out a campaign to discredit three members of the FBI who would likely be witnesses in the Russia probe: FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe, Comey’s chief of staff Jim Rybicki, and former general counsel James Baker.
  22. It turns out that Dutch intelligence was also monitoring Cozy Bear, the Russia group behind the DNC email hacks. They’ve been providing U.S. intelligence with information.
  23. People across Russia rally in protest of the upcoming presidential election. They say the election is rigged for Putin after Putin’s opponent, Alexei Navalny, is once again arrested.

Courts/Justice:

Nothing major this week.

Healthcare:

  1. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, once a strong opponent of Obamacare, proposes funding the state ACA market with an additional $200.
  2. The first legal challenges are filed against Trump’s changes to Medicaid waivers for states.
  3. Over 1,000 community health centers, which help over 27 million Americans, remain without funding four months after Congress fails to renew funds. While Congress renewed CHIP funding, they failed to renew it for community health centers.
  4. The Senate will likely have a procedural vote on a 20-week abortion ban. Proponents of the bill say fetuses can feel pain at 20-weeks. Scientists say fetuses can feel pain at 27-30 weeks.
  5. In one of the worst flu seasons in years, hospitals run short on the saline drip bags used to treat severe flu cases because most of the bags come from Puerto Rico, which is still recovering from hurricane.

International:

  1. Members of the Taliban drive an ambulance loaded with explosives into a crowd in Kabul, killing at least 95 and injuring at least 158.
  2. State Department employees accuse the administration of punishing them for their work under the Obama administration by reassigning them to positions for which they are either over-qualified or don’t have any experience with. Not only do many retain lawyers, fearing retaliation for their past work, but congressional Democrats call for an investigation by the State Department’s inspector general.
  3. The doomsday clock takes a 30-second jump closer to midnight due to the state of geopolitical affairs, specifically our inability to deal with nuclear threats.
  4. Here’s a note of interest with the deadline for implementing Russian sanctions coming up. The drain of expertise from the State Department extends to experts on sanctions, and the number of people who know how to implement them is dwindling.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. For the eighth time, Vice President Mike Pence casts a vote to break a tie in the Senate. This time was to confirm Kansas Governor Sam Brownback as ambassador at large for international religious freedom.
  2. It turns out that Patrick Meehan, who was investigating sexual harassment claims against four congressmen, used taxpayer dollars to pay off a sexual harassment claim against him.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Because of Trump’s actions during the funding negotiations, Schumer withdraws a deal to include funding for the wall in their DACA negotiations. Schumer also shoots down Trump’s immigration reform proposal, which would create a pathway to citizenship for up to 1.8 million immigrants brought here as children, fund $25 billion for the wall, restrict family-based immigration, and get rid of the visa lottery system.
  2. The DOJ threatens 23 “sanctuary cities” with subpoenas to prove they’re cooperating with federal ICE authorities. As a result, mayors from across the country boycott a planned meeting with Trump.
  3. Trump says the mayors put the needs of “criminal illegal immigrants over law-abiding Americans.”
  4. After Trump rejects a bipartisan plan that includes a path to citizenship for Dreamers, Trump says he supports such a path. He continues to go back and forth on this. I don’t think he really knows what he wants here, except for funding for the wall.
  5. Trump says he’d be willing to apologize for retweeting anti-Muslim videos from a known British hate group whose leader is in jail for hate crimes. He then goes on to NOT apologize.
  6. A judge blocks ICE from deporting a group of Somalis held in custody. In a separate case, a judge rules that ICE can’t simply deport 92 Cambodians, many of whom came here to escape the Khmer Rouge.
  7. ICE targets activists who stand up for immigration rights.
  8. ICE arrests a Polish doctor who came to the U.S. when he was 5. He’s now a doctor at Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo.

Climate/EPA:

  1. NOAA says the Arctic’s permafrost is melting and shows no signs of going back to it’s previously frozen condition. Scientists fear that melting of the permafrost could unleash massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
  2. Scientists sue the EPA over the removal of many scientists from EPA advisory boards and committees. They were removed because of new EPA guidelines about receiving federal grants, but the lawsuit claims the removals violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
  3. The Department of the Interior prepares to roll back protections for migratory birds under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The act previously applied to both intentional and unintentional killings, but now will apply only to intentional killings, letting certain industries off the hook.
  4. Solar company Sun Power suspends its plans to invest $20 million into a U.S. factory expansion after Trump announces tariffs on imported solar panels. They’re asking for an exception from the tariff so they can continue to grow in California and Texas. 
  5. The EPA withdraws a policy of the Clean Air Act that categorized high-polluting facilities as major sources of pollutants even if they lower their emissions. The policy focuses on toxic pollutants like mercury and lead.
  6. California develops its own rules to protect waterways to mitigate the effects of the Trump administration’s repeals of federal water protections, specifically the Clean Water Act.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Enough Senate Democrats vote with Republicans to pass another short-term funding bill to reopen the government. The bill also reauthorizes CHIP for six years and rolls back some healthcare taxes. In exchange, Chuck Schumer got promises from Mitch McConnell that there would be a vote on DACA. Sure there will…
  2. The U.S. loses it’s standing as the second-most popular travel destination by foreigners, costing the tourism industry $4.6 billion and 40,000 jobs.
  3. Trump imposes 30% tariffs on imported solar panel technology. We currently get around 80% of our solar panel equipment from China, and they have undercut companies across the globe with their low prices. Still, this will hurt domestic solar companies at least in the short term, resulting 23,000 fewer jobs in the industry.
  4. However, Al Gore defends the idea of tariffs, but not the way Trump implemented them. He says solar technology needs to be more competitive globally. Analysts don’t think tariffs are enough to bring back our solar manufacturing industry.
  5. On the anniversary of Trump withdrawing from TPP, Justin Trudeau announces the signing of the TPP between the remaining countries. Trump pulled us out of the TPP last year, and assumed the deal would be dead without us.
  6. The next day, Trump says he’d be open to rejoining the TPP if he could negotiate a better deal. Interest from the TPP partners is… nonexistent.
  7. Trump’s threats to withdraw from NAFTA make some sectors in the U.S. nervous. Farmers stand to lose trading partners, and a new economic analysis says 1.8 million U.S. jobs would likely be lost in the first year.
  8. The world moves on without us when it comes to trade. There are 35 new bilateral and regional trade agreements currently being negotiated, with the U.S. being part of just one of them (with the European Union and negotiations are stalled). A spokesperson for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association says pulling out of the TPP marks “a missed opportunity for the United States to gain greater access to some of the world’s most vibrant and growing markets.”
  9. Trump pushes his America first message to mixed review at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
  10. At the same forum, Trudeau tells CEOs Canada won’t be cutting taxes like the U.S. He also tells them they need to change the way they do business by putting workers before profits and supporting women’s rights. In his words, “Too many corporations have put the pursuit of profit before the well-being of their workers … but that approach won’t cut it any more.”
  11. At Davos, Trump markets America to business leaders, saying the new tax plan makes us a better place to do business. He doesn’t mention the contentious geopolitical atmosphere.
  12. GDP growth slowed down slightly in the last quarter of 2017, ending economists hopes of having three straight months of 3% or better growth.
  13. The U.S. International Trade Commission rules in favor of Canada’s Bombardier in a trade dispute brought by Boeing against Bombardier over planes sold to Delta Airlines.

Elections:

  1. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court rules that the GOP-drawn congressional district lines violate the state constitution and that they must redraw all district lines by February 9.
  2. Released documents from Trump’s disbanded voter fraud commission show that when they requested voter information from Texas, they specifically asked for information about voters with Hispanic surnames. Even so, Kris Kobach says that “at no time did the commission request any state to flag surnames by ethnicity or race.”

Miscellaneous:

  1. An explosion on a gas rig in Oklahoma kills five workers.
  2. A shooter in a Kentucky school kills two and injures 18.
  3. Jared Kushner still doesn’t have his security clearance, yet he still gets the president’s daily briefing.
  4. The Senate confirms Alex Azar to replace Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services. While the administration praises Azar for being a proponent of better healthcare and lower drug prices, Azar has been criticized for raising drug prices while CEO of Eli Lilly USA. The company was fined for colluding on drug prices under Azar.
  5. About the World Economic Forum, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao says, “Davos should feel very flattered that he [Trump] has chosen this as a forum. Those who don’t want to listen to him can leave.”
  6. The NSA removes honesty and transparency from their stated mission, and adds commitment to service, respect for people, and accountability.
  7. A draft of Trump’s 2019 budget proposal calls for an end to funding of the International Space Station by 2025. Support for the station currently costs NASA between $3 and $4 billion each year.
  8. All in one show, Sean Hannity says that there’s no confirmation of the story about Trump wanting to fire Mueller (and that the New York Times always gets stories wrong) and then says the story is confirmed.
  9. Steve Wynn resigns as finance chairman for the Republican National Committee after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. What we don’t hear are cries for Republican officials to return his donations like there were for Democrats to return Harvey Weinstein’s.
  10. The entire USA Gymnastics board resigns amid the sexual harassment scandal with Dr. Nassar.
  11. The FBI arrests a Michigan man who threatened to shoot and kill CNN employees because of their fake news.
  12. Montana becomes the first state to pass laws protecting net neutrality.
  13. Trump complains to aides that he doesn’t understand why he can’t just give orders to his guys at the DOJ.

Polls:

  1. 74% of Americans favor granting legal status to children brought here illegally.
  2. 60% of Americans oppose the wall.
  3. Trump’s approval rating among Evangelicals is down to 61%.
  4. 60% of Americans don’t trust Trump with the power to launch a nuclear war.

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

“I found out for the first time last night that the person who technically shuts the government down is me, which is kind of cool”.

~ Mick Mulvaney WH Budget Director

No, that’s not cool, Mick. Not cool at all.

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.