Tag: rod rosenstein

Week 88 in Trump

Posted on October 2, 2018 in Politics, Trump

This has been an ugly and uncomfortable couple of weeks. With Ford’s triggering testimony, Kavanaugh and Lindsey Graham screaming and crying, and additional accusers trying to come forward, it’s been exhausting. I’m not even taking sides about who is telling the truth here, but the way this was handled was atrocious.

Here’s why every accusation needs to be taken seriously. Every 98 seconds, someone is sexually assaulted in America. That’s 881 times a day. 321,795 times a year. How many of those are reported? How many aren’t reported for years or decades?

For every 1,000 sexual assaults:

  • 310 are reported to the police
  • 57 of those lead to an arrest
  • 11 of those are referred to prosecutors
  • 7 of those lead to a felony conviction
  • Which leads to just 6 out of 1,000 rapists going to jail.
  • So for all those 321,795 assaults, just under 2,000 of the perpetrators pay for their crime.

 

Is it any wonder victims don’t come forward? How does a real man handle a situation like Kavanaugh’s? He mans up, admits his mistake, and learns from it. Cue Cory Booker.

And here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. Sam Patten takes a plea deal in Mueller’s investigation, pleading guilty to funneling Russian money into Trump’s inaugural fund. He also pleads guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent for his lobbying work for a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch.
  2. Before the Kavanaugh vote got delayed, Trump and Rod Rosenstein were supposed to meet on Thursday to discuss Rosenstein’s employment situation. Once it becomes clear the vote won’t happen, that meeting is postponed.
  3. Emails show that Roger Stone tried to contact Julian Assange of Wikileaks during the 2016 campaign.
  4. The House Intelligence Committee votes to release transcripts of over 50 interviews done during their investigation into Russian meddling into our elections. Intelligence agencies will redact these documents before releasing them.
  5. House Democrats plan to force a vote on whether to protect Mueller’s investigation by adding an amendment to a tax-related bill.

Legal Fallout:

  1. A court rules to advance a case filed by 200 Democrats against Trump for alleged violations of the emoluments clause.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Kavanaugh and his wife appear on a Fox News interview to defend his integrity. He claims that he wasn’t a drinker in high school and that he was a virgin all through school and many years after. He says he didn’t even come close to having sex. These things are refuted by his classmates and his calendar.
  2. Four of Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate sign a statement disputing the account of Deborah Ramirez, Kavanaugh’s second accuser. However, two of those former students subsequently asked to have their names removed from that statement.
  3. Trump defends Kavanaugh, saying that Ramirez was drunk and “all messed up” so her allegations can’t be trusted.
  4. Michael Avenatti’s client, Julie Swetnick, signs an affidavit saying she witnessed Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge spiking punch at parties to get women drunk and take advantage of them. She says they also drugged women, and that Kavanaugh was overly aggressive with and verbally abusive to women.
  5. Swetnick also recalls an incident where she was taken advantage of by several drunken high school boys at a party where she says Kavanaugh was in attendance. She doesn’t say Kavanaugh participated.
  6. Kavanaugh says (under oath) that he doesn’t know who Swetnick is, and that she’s lying.
  7. There are additional anonymous accusations, but they’re impossible to corroborate.
  8. Amidst the additional accusations, Mitch McConnell says the votes will happen by the end of the week.
  9. Over 100 Yale law students walk out of classes and have a sit-in in support of Blasey Ford.
  10. Protests at the hearings in D.C. have been a daily thing, with hundreds of protestors being arrested. Even female members of the House stand in silent protest in the back of the committee room.
  11. Attorneys for Blasey Ford send affidavits to the Senate from four people who say that Ford talked to them about her accusations against Kavanaugh before Trump nominated him to SCOTUS. Some say she told them about it long before.
  12. Blasey Ford agrees to testify to the Judiciary Committee on Thursday, with Kavanaugh testifying afterward.
  13. Two men come forward individually to claim that they, not Kavanaugh, are guilty of the assault. GOP Senators dismiss their claims.
  14. Susan Collins questions why the Judiciary Committee hasn’t subpoenaed Mark Judge.
  15. Republicans on the committee hire a female lawyer who prosecutes sex crimes to question Blasey Ford. The original plan was to have her question Kavanaugh as well, but after Kavanaugh’s passionate and emotional opening, Republican Senators start asking their own questions.
  16. Lindsey Graham and Kavanaugh both scream at Democrats on the committee, accusing them of being behind Blasey Ford’s allegations and saying this is a coordinated smear campaign.
  17. Kavanaugh references the calendars he kept in 1982 as proof that he wasn’t at the party. In his Fox News interview, he said he didn’t drink in school, but his calendar was marked with dates with his buddies to drink beer.
  18. In their testimony, Blasey Ford says she’s 100% sure that Kavanaugh attacked her and Kavanaugh says he’s 100% sure he didn’t. So there we are.
  19. Blasey Ford did answer all questions she could and was fairly respectful to the committee; Kavanaugh didn’t answer all the questions directly and was fairly combative and angry.
  20. The committee plans to vote on Brett Kavanaugh the day after Blasey Ford and he both testify.
  21. Here’s what the oldest of the white men on the committee think about victims of assault:
    • When a women tells Lindsey Graham that she was raped, he walks by and says “I’m sorry, tell the cops.”
    • Orrin Hatch says Ford is an attractive witness, pleasing. Like that’s got anything to do with this.
    • I looked for anything similar from Patrick Leahy, the Democrat’s old white man, but all I could find is that he calls her testimony compelling.
  1. Add Jeff Flake to the list of people getting death threats. In talking about it, he says “The toxic political culture that we have created has infected everything, and we’ve done little to stop. Winning at all costs is too high a cost.” Too right.
    • And speaking of Flake, hours before the vote to move Kavanaugh out of committee, Flake is confronted in an elevator by two victims of sexual assault. The confrontation is intense, as these women opened up about their stories, and Flake is visibly shaken. 
Later in the committee room, Flake taps Democratic Senator Chris Coons on the shoulder and the two go outside for a long talk.
    • That’s when Flake agrees to vote Kavanaugh out of committee under the condition that Mitch McConnell must promise to delay the floor vote for a week so the FBI can investigate. Lisa Murkowski also calls for a full investigation. Four Republican governors join the call for a delay in order to investigate: John Kasich (OH), Larry Hogan (MD), Phil Scott (VT), and Charlie Baker (MA).
  1. Some of the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee walk out in protest before the vote.
  2. The committee votes along party lines to move Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote to the Senate floor. While at the same time…
    • The ABA, which originally gave Kavanaugh the highest ratings, calls for a delay in the Senate confirmation vote until the FBI can complete their investigation.
    • The Yale Law School Dean who endorsed Kavanaugh this summer calls for a full investigation.
    • The ACLU, which typically stays neutral on Supreme Court nominees, comes out against Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
    • The Jesuit Review pulls their endorsement of Kavanaugh (Kavanaugh had a Jesuit education at Georgetown Prep).
  1. Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge says he’ll cooperate fully with the FBI investigation. Judge’s ex-girlfriend also wants to talk to the FBI about her claim that Judge told her that he once joined a group of guys in taking turn having sex with a drunk woman.
  2. Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley seeks an injunction to stop a full vote on Kavanaugh due to the “unprecedented obstruction of the Senate’s advice and consent obligation.”
  3. Jeff Flake says that if Kavanaugh lied to the Senate, his confirmation is over. But we already know he lied about mostly little things and about some big things, for starters:
    • I got into Yale on my own (he didn’t).
    • I didn’t drink in high school (he did).
    • OK I did drink but it was legal (it wasn’t).
    • Holton-Arms girls didn’t hang out with us (they did).
    • Ford’s witnesses refuted her testimony (they didn’t)
    • I didn’t know about Ramirez’s allegations before the story came out (texts show he did).
    • I didn’t work on certain judge nominations (emails show he did).
    • I was unaware of any spying on Democrats under Bush (emails show he was).
  1. A Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s writes an op-ed in the New York Times saying that Kavanaugh mischaracterized his behavior in school and that he drank, drank a lot, and was a mean drunk. The classmate also says that Kavanaugh started a bar fight that landed one of their friends in jail.
  2. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee say they have had a hard time getting responses from Kavanaugh’s accusers, but recent emails show that a Republican aide refused calls from Deborah Ramirez and her lawyers.
  3. President George W. Bush starts calling up GOP Senators to urge them to confirm Kavanaugh.
  4. Texts show that Kavanaugh was working behind the scenes to convince his college friends defend him and not corroborate Ramirez’ accusations before she even brought them up, possibly as early as July. Kavanaugh has accused Ramirez of talking to classmates before the story broke, when it seems to have actually been him doing the talking.
  5. One of those friends gave the information to “Brett’s team” and to the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee. Another friend has been trying to get the texts to the FBI. One friend says that Kavanaugh reached out to her, worried that Deborah’s accusations would come out.
  6. The texts also show that Kavanaugh lied when he said the first he’d heard of this was when the story broke on September 30.
  7. In other SCOTUS news, a case coming before the Supreme Court could decide whether someone can be tried for the same thing at both the state and federal level. The precedent case, Gamble v. United States, says that they can; but the new case could change that. The outcome of this case could change Mueller’s strategy, since he might not have the promise of a state case against witnesses in the Russia investigation if Trump pardons them.
  8. After Blasey Ford’s testimony, calls to the National Sexual Assault Hotline were up over 200%.

Healthcare:

  1. Arkansas has a test program running to analyze the effects of work requirements on Medicaid. The Trump administration says those requirements will lift people out of poverty, but in the first month alone, 4,300 people were kicked off the program.
  2. The House and Senate both pass a bill that lets pharmacists tell customers whether it would be cheaper for them to pay out of pocket for medications instead of using insurance. How is it that they couldn’t before?
  3. It turns out insurance companies overshot their mark in 2017, raising their premiums too high. Premiums will likely go down some for the next enrollment period.

International:

  1. Trump discovers that his rally talking points don’t work on an international audience. His claim that no administration has done as much as his has done in two years plays well to his base here in America, but when he uses it in his opening speech at the UN, the world laughs at him. Trump always said the world laughed at Obama; now the world has laughed at Trump IRL.
  2. Trump later claims that they were laughing with him, not at him.
  3. When he repeats his claim that Germany will be totally dependent on Russian energy, the German delegation laughs at him. Of note, Germany has an ambitious program to transition to renewable energy sources.
  4. He says that he’s wiped out ISIS in Syria, but the Pentagon says there are still many threats and still much to do there.
  5. At the UN meeting, French President Macron slams Trump’s protectionist policies, criticizing Trump’s policies on Iran, climate change, the UN, migration, Mideast peace, and more. He lauds the continuation of the Paris accord, and suggests that we shouldn’t do business with countries that don’t comply.
  6. Even though Trump vilifies Iran, all other signatories to the Iran deal reaffirm their commitment to the agreement.
  7. Trump praises North Korea and Kim Jong Un, a complete about-face from what he said about him one year ago in this very venue. He says when he and Kim met, they fell in love.
  8. Trump says he declined a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canada says they never asked for.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. California follows Florida’s lead and signs into law new age restrictions on buying guns. The law also bans gun ownership for domestic abusers and for some people with a history of certain mental illnesses. The law increases training requirements for concealed carry permits and also includes red-flag restraining orders, which allow police officers to remove somebody’s weapons if they are deemed a danger.
  2. California signs net neutrality into law, reinstating the FEC’s previous rules under Obama. The Justice Department immediately threatens to sue.

Family Separation:

  1. DHS moves hundreds of detained immigrant children to a tent city in Texas due to overcrowding. Changes to immigration rules under Sessions have resulted in exponentially higher rates of detention, and they didn’t anticipate it well enough to be prepared for this. These are mostly children that they think will be released shortly.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. An appeals court vacates a previous ruling that would have denied immigrant children the right to a court-appointed attorney regardless of whether they are seeking asylum.
  2. PayPal ends it’s dealings with InfoWars, Alex Jones‘ platform for conspiracy theories and hate speech.
  3. Trump announces a new policy that prevents non-citizen immigrants who use public benefits from obtaining green cards. These people must now choose between assistance they need right now and trying for a green card that will let them work legally at some point in the future. While this isn’t supposed to affect people with green cards who want to become citizens, many are afraid that using public benefits will count against them in their citizenship requests.
  4. A black female state legislator in Vermont resigns over ongoing racial harassment.
  5. Mike Pence legitimizes hate against the LGBTQ community by speaking at the Values Voter Summit.
  6. Trump backs down from his promise to shut the government down if he doesn’t get funding for his border wall, now promising to keep the government open.
  7. Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) asks the House Ethics Committee to investigate claims by his ex, Karen Monahan, that he abused her.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A federal judge blocks the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from removing endangered species protections for grizzly bears around Yellowstone National Park.
  2. The Trump administration predicts a rise in global temperatures of 7 degrees F (or 4 degrees C) by the end of the century. Instead of seeing this as a call to take action, they say the planet’s fate is sealed and there’s nothing we can do about it. Even though scientists know what we can do about it…
  3. A recent study shows that warming waters in the Antarctic are caused by human activity.
  4. The Northern Indiana Public Service Company announces a plan to close down all of their coal power plants and replace them with wind and solar within a decade.
  5. The EPA plans to eliminate the Office of the Science Advisor. This is a senior post that advises the agency about the scientific research on which health and environmental regulations are based. Their mission is to ensure that the agency’s policies are based on the highest quality research.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump finalizes his first bilateral trade deal. The deal with South Korea is not much changed from the agreement negotiated under Obama. It does open the South Korean market to more U.S. automobiles and excludes South Korea from steel tariffs. No U.S. automaker has come close to the existing caps, so this isn’t likely to give much of a bump to the auto industry.
  2. Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, says businesses are increasingly concerned about the trade wars. They say there have been supply chain disruptions and increased costs as a result.
  3. Trump has said he’s turned the economy of West Virginia around, even though the state is one of two whose poverty rate has risen in the past year
  4. Canada and the U.S. agree to new terms for NAFTA. Mexico and the U.S. agreed on terms about a month ago. The new deal leaves much of the old deal in place.
  5. The Canada compromise includes giving the U.S. a slightly bigger dairy market, a slightly higher threshold below which goods can come from Canada duty-free, and protections from certain automotive tariffs for Canada. The biggest changes in the deal favors automakers in North America over Mexico.
  6. The updated deal will be called USMCA (United States, Mexico and Canada Agreement), because, you know, NAFTA was “one of the worst deals” in history (as was the Paris agreement, the Iran deal, TPP, and so on and so on).
  7. The House passes a tax bill that will make the previous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy permanent. The bill would increase the deficit over 10 years by $631 billion, on top of the $1.5 trillion of the previous tax cut.
  8. The SEC orders Elon Musk to step down as the chairman of the board at Tesla, and forbids him from serving on the board for 3 years. They also fine him $20 million. He’s still the CEO though.
  9. Farmers say that Trump’s aide package won’t make up for the losses they’re seeing because of tariffs.

Elections:

  1. Trump holds a campaign rally in Las Vegas, where he again brings up his electoral college win, Hillary Clinton, and Obama. He paints Democrats as evil and laughs at their reaction to his election. But this could be any of his rally speeches.
  2. Candidates for Senate must file their financial reports electronically, which will make donor information publicly available more quickly.
  3. Ted Cruz got heckled out of a restaurant in D.C. by people protesting Kavanaugh. In response, Cruz’s opponent in the race for his Senate seat tweets that this is not cool and there needs to be some respect.
  4. Trump tells the UN that China is interfering in our 2018 midterm elections because they don’t want him to win (because he’s the first president to shake up trade). They’re interfering by targeting their tariffs strategically apparently.

Miscellaneous:

  1. A 7.5 earthquake and resulting tsunami hits Indonesia, killing more than 800 people.
  2. Raj Shah, the White House deputy press secretary, will leave his position after Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote.
  3. Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) pawns himself off as a California farmer, and while his family did farm in the Central Valley for decades, they’ve since moved their farm operations to Iowa. AND sources say they employ undocumented workers (as does nearly every large farm in the area).

Polls:

  1. 52% of voters want Democrats to control Congress and 40% want Republicans to. With gerrymandering, though, it could still fall in the Republicans favor.

Week 77 in Trump

Posted on July 16, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Sean Gallup / Getty Images

It was a busy week, with Trump going after NATO on his way to making nice with Putin, protests greeting him wherever he goes, and Mueller dropping a 29-page indictment days before Trump’s meeting with Putin. Back home, things aren’t getting much better for new asylum seekers and for families separated at the border (though some have been reunited). Tariffs are still a hot issue, as is Peter Strzok’s testimony (I swear the right saw one version of the hearing and the left saw a completely different one – crazy).

Here’s what happened last week…

Russia:

  1. Michael Flynn will likely be sentenced in the fall, right around midterm elections.
  2. We learn that during their trip to Moscow last week, Republican members of Congress met with two Russians who are currently under U.S. sanctions. While several lawmakers came back with a softened stance on Russia, Senator John Kennedy told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Congress will double down on sanctions if Russia interferes again.
  3. While working to get a meeting with Putin, Trump insulted members of his administration who didn’t think the meeting was a good idea, calling them “stupid people.” He berated his own people in deference to Putin.
  4. Twitter has deleted 70 million suspicious accounts, most of which are bots or fake accounts.
  5. Paul Manafort’s request for a delay of trial backfires when a judge denies it and moves him to a closer facility. Manafort says it’s too hard to prepared for trial while incarcerated 100 miles away, but objected strongly to the move—a big surprise to the judge. But then we learn that in his current prison, Manafort:
    • Has access to computers.
    • Has his own phone and no limit to how many calls he can make.
    • Has access to all his files.
    • Has private living quarters with his own bathroom and shower.
    • Doesn’t have to wear a uniform.
  1. Manafort asks the judge not to move him, but the judge thinks it’s the easiest fix to the problem of being 100 miles away.
  2. Mueller requests 100 new blank subpoenas for the Manafort trial on top of the 150 he requested last month.
  3. Peter Strzok, a former top counterintelligence FBI agent who was involved in the Russia investigation, testifies publicly before the House Oversight and Judiciary Committee.
  4. Strzok’s hearing devolves into a shouting match, with GOP Reps resorting to profanity and Strzok staunchly defending the FBI. Nothing new was learned, there was much posturing, and Strzok heartily defended the FBI and himself (leading to people who don’t like him to start calling him “smug”). He often had to explain how the FBI hierarchy works and how they check their politics at the door. Strzok was limited on what he could say about much of the ongoing investigation.
  5. A day after Strzok’s testimony, the woman he exchanged texts with, Lisa Page, testifies behind close doors. Despite Republicans previously trying to smear her by saying she wasn’t cooperating, Mark Meadows (R-NC) came out saying she was more forthcoming than Strzok. Like Strzok, she defended her texts, saying that their political feelings did not influence their work.
  6. GOP lawmakers don’t want Page to testify publicly (they were resistant to Strzok testifying publicly as well).
  7. After the farce of a hearing with Strzok, Trey Gowdy has this to say. You just don’t know which Gowdy you’re going to get from one day to the next…

“As I have repeatedly said, it is clear, based on the evidence, Russia had disdain for Secretary Clinton and was motivated in whole or in part by a desire to harm her candidacy or undermine her presidency had she prevailed.”

  1. Mueller comes down with 12 new indictments again Russian intelligence (GRU) officers in a filing that gives us much more detail about what happened with the hacking, who was involved, and what Mueller actually knows (which is a lot more than I thought). Here are some highlights:
    • The indictments are for stealing and leaking emails from Democrats and Democratic organizations to help Trump get elected in 2016.
    • Hackers used spearphishing and malware.
    • They used screen shots and keystroke loggers to monitor what DNC and DCCC employees were typing.
    • They extracted gigabytes of opposition research on Republican candidates.
    • The Russian government was behind the interference campaign.
    • The Russians being indicted created the Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks online personas.
    • An associate of senior members of Trump’s campaign was in touch with Guccifer 2.0. That person is believed to be Roger Stone, but that’s not spelled out in the indictment.
    • A congressional candidate asked Guccifer 2.0 for stolen documents on their opponent, which that candidate did receive.
    • The Russian hackers made their first attempt to hack Hillary’s personal emails on the same day that Trump (on TV) asked Russia to find the 30,000 missing emails.
    • Two of the hackers conspired to access servers of people and organizations that handle elections, like secretaries of state, state boards of elections, and supporting software companies.
    • The hackers breached a state board of elections website and accessed information for 500,000 voters along with DNC analytics.
    • The scope of the indictment shows that the misinformation campaign involved more than just propaganda and division.
  1. Democratic leaders on congressional intelligence committees urge Trump to cancel his meeting with Putin following the announcement of the indictments and to demand proof that Russia is no longer interfering in our elections.
  2. Trump says he might consider canceling joint NATO exercises in the Baltic States if Putin requests it.
  3. The White House orders the FBI to expand access to classified information to all intelligence committee members. Remember, these documents are about an ongoing investigation.
  4. After the indictment is published, Trump blames the DNC for the hack, saying Republicans had stronger internet security. And then he went on to blame Obama, since it happened under his administration.
    Side note: In his testimony, James Comey said that Republicans were also hacked, but the hacked information was never released. From what I can find, old RNC servers and Republican state campaigns were successfully hacked, but the Trump campaign and current RNC servers were not. I can’t verify this though.
  5. Trump also says it never occurred to him to demand the extradition of the Russians who’ve been indicted so far in the probe so they can face charges.
  6. Mitch McConnell rejects bipartisan requests for a select committee investigation into the Russian meddling and hacking in the 2016 elections. They aren’t requesting an investigation into Trump; just a non-partisan effort to understand what happened and to make sure Russia can’t do it again.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Trump nominates DC district court judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court to fill Kennedy’s seat. Kavanaugh clerked for Kennedy and been a part of the DC scene for much of his career.
  2. Rod Rosenstein has requested help from U.S district attorneys to review government documents related to Kavanaugh due to the scope of the documents requested.
  3. Even though Brian Benczkowski, Trump’s pick to head the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, has never prosecuted a criminal case and previously represented Alfa Bank, every GOP senator votes to confirm him to the position.
  4. Trump issues an executive order giving agency heads more leeway in hiring administrative judges, who implement much of the regulatory agenda in an administration.
  5. The DOJ files a notice that it will try to overturn a ruling that allows AT&T to buy Time Warner, claiming that the acquisition violates anti-trust laws.
  6. Trump wants to be able to hold prisoners for 100 years in Guantanamo without ever bringing charges.

Healthcare:

  1. Russian asbestos company Uralasbest creates asbestos pallets with Trump’s likeness on them. The company cites former EPA head Scott Pruitt’s and Trump’s voiced support for the carcinogenic product.
  2. A new congressional report says that from 2012 to 2017, three companies sent around 1.6 billion opioids to Missouri pharmacies (that averages to about 260 pills for every person in the state).
  3. The administration plans to shut down the National Guideline Clearinghouse, which keeps records of medical guidelines and research. This is an invaluable source of information for medical practitioners and gets about 200,000 visitors per month. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) says they won’t even keep an archived version.

International:

  1. Brexit leader Boris Johnson resigns as Foreign Secretary less than a day after Brexit Secretary David Davis resigns. Their resignations are over the regulatory and trade terms of Brexit.
  2. Israeli, Saudi Arabian, and UAE officials have been trying to get Trump to strike a bargain with Putin where Russia would help get Iran out of Syria and the U.S. would drop sanctions against Russia (for invading Ukraine and Crimea).
  3. Before his upcoming meetings with Putin and NATO, Trump says that he thinks his meetings with Putin will be easier than meetings with our allies in NATO.
  4. Irony alert. At the NATO summit, Trump says Germany is “a captive of Russia.”
  5. Though NATO nations have been increasing their military spending as a percent of GDP (per a 2014 agreement), Trump criticizes them for not yet meeting their 2% promise. And then says they should spend 4% of GDP on the military, a level above even U.S. spending.
  6. Trump claims we spend 4.2% of our GDP on defense instead of the reported 3.5%.
  7. Trump declares victory at the NATO summit, saying European nations quickly agreed to his spending demands and were grateful to him. But other nations say they just reaffirmed the 2014 agreement to reach 2% spending by 2024.
  8. The Sun publishes an interview with Trump where he’s highly critical of Theresa May’s approach to Brexit while praising former secretary Boris Yeltsin. In the interview, Trump says he told May how to do Brexit, but she “wrecked” it. And then he says the trade deal is off.
  9. The next day, Trump says May is doing a great job. May discounts the interview, saying it’s just the press, and Trump calls it fake news. Of note, The Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox (not fake) News.
  10. Sarah Huckabee Sanders then tries to clean it up by saying that he said he never said anything bad about May.
  11. And then May and Trump agree to pursue a free trade deal after Brexit is complete. Brexit is currently complicated by the departure of two key figures in the deal. Actually, it’s complicated by so many things.
  12. Taking a line from white nationalists, Trump says that immigration is changing Europe’s culture, and that it’s a bad thing.
  13. There are nationwide protests in the U.K. while Trump is there, including in Scotland where he goes to golf at one of his properties. In London, demonstrators fly a “Trump Baby” blimp as part of their protests. The protestors also play mariachi music and tapes of detained children crying for their parents.
  14. Trump and Melanie get called out for not bowing and curtsying to the queen, though that is not a required protocol, just a respectful one. But then Trump walks in front of the queen, leaving her to catch up and try to figure out what side to walk on while they inspect a guard of honour.
  15. Theresa May says Trump told her to sue the EU instead of negotiating with them.
  16. Trump says that our allies in the EU are our foes.
  17. All this time that Trump has been highly critical of Qatar for sponsoring terrorists, his administration has been working out a deal to sell Qatar $21 billion in weapons, authorized by none other than Trump.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Both the House and the Senate pass bipartisan resolutions reaffirming our support for NATO.
  2. Even though a bipartisan spending agreement earlier this year allowed for funding of CDC research into gun violence, GOP members of the House Appropriations Committee blocked a proposal to provide $10 million in such funding.
  3. The House Appropriations Committee passes an amendment that would let adoption agencies nationwide discriminate against prospective parents based on closely held religious beliefs. States that don’t comply could lose 15% of their funding for adoption agencies. Just another step to increase LGBTQ discrimination.
  4. The House passes with no objections an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act that will create a Foreign Malign Influence Response Center. The center will defend against foreign efforts to interfere in our elections (I think they’re looking at you, Russia). Dan Coates, Director of National Intelligence, will work to establish this collaboration across all relevant agencies.
  5. The Senate, in preparation for Trump’s meeting with NATO, passes a non-binding motion in support for NATO. The vote was 97-2.

Family Separation:

  1. A federal judge rules that Trump can’t detain immigrant families long-term.
  2. Some women who were pregnant when detained by ICE complain of having miscarriages with no medical assistance.
  3. The Trump administration returns to ankle bracelet monitoring, or what he called “catch and release” under Obama. This method has historically resulted in an extremely high percentage of people showing up for their immigration hearings.
  4. In a court filing, ICE says it can’t reunite a separated family because they can’t locate the parents, who might be American citizens.
  5. A judge orders ICE to post notices in detention facilities letting detainees know that they don’t have to agree to be deported in order to be reunited with their families. It’s not like every deported parent has been reunited with their children anyway. Apparently ICE officials have been exploiting this to get people to be voluntarily deported.
  6. A judge orders the Trump administration to pay for reunification costs themselves. Before, if a parent didn’t have the money to travel to wherever their child has been moved to, they couldn’t be reunited. Some parents were told they have to pay for a DNA test to be reunited. There’s obviously a misunderstanding here over what it means to be an asylum seeker.
  7. The Trump administration puts an end to the Central American Minors program. This was an Obama-era program that reunited Central American children with their parents in the U.S. This is just one of several humanitarian relief programs the Trump administration has ended. There’s a class action lawsuit against the termination of this program.
  8. The Trump administration fails to reunite the youngest separated children by the court-ordered deadline.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Hate crimes across the country have been increasing since 2015, and experts say it’s partly because of political rhetoric, specifically Trump’s vitriolic brand of it. Hate crimes spiked right after the 2016 election.
  2. The DOJ issues new guidance to reject asylum claims based on gang or domestic violence. This means ICE can turn people away before they even get a chance to plead for asylum.
  3. John Schnatter resigns as chairman of Papa Johns after using a racial slur in a role-playing game on a company call. Schnatter has been a controversial figure, saying the ACA would increase the cost of each pizza by 14 cents and some franchises would have to cut employee’s hours. More recently, he’s complained that the NFL protest was costing his company.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A Pence family business, Kiel Bros. Oil Co., went bankrupt in 2004 leaving behind several abandoned gas stations. Kentucky, Illinois, and Mike Pence’s home state of Indiana have spent $10s of millions to clean up those gas stations.
  2. The EPA sends a proposed replacement for the Clean Power Plan to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review. The new plan would loosen limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, while the Clean Power Plan tightened them up. The changes are at the behest of industry lobbyists.

Budget/Economy:

  1. This week, federal agencies start implementing the guidelines in Trump’s executive orders on public employee unions.
  2. Randomly, Russia is the beneficiary of Trump’s trade war with China, as China triples its soybean imports from Russia and cancels 1.1 million tons worth of soybean orders from the U.S.
  3. The price of soybeans drops to a 10-year low in the U.S., as the prices in Brazil reach new highs, because of Trump’s trade wars.
  4. Other countries, including China, are unsure of what Trump wants from them in his trade war. Most think he doesn’t have a strategy.
  5. The Trump administration says they’re in the process of putting tariffs in place on $200 billion worth of goods from China, effectively halting trade talks between the U.S. and China.
  6. And according to Steven Mnuchin, trade talks with China have broken down. China says the U.S. is acting erratically and encouraging trade wars.
  7. Oh, and in case you were wondering, none of those tariffs affect the Ivanka lines manufactured in China.
  8. Despite the Senate having taken steps to make sure that Trump couldn’t help out sanctioned Chinese company ZTE, the Commerce Department loosens restrictions on the company, allowing it to continue doing business with US companies.
  9. Trump claims that our GDP has doubled and even tripled since he took office. First, it can only be one or the other and not both. Second, while the GDP is growing, it’s not even up 10% since he took office. The GDP has doubled since 2000, and tripled since 1992.
  10. A recent study from the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that the top 20% of U.S. earners received 65% of the benefit of tax reforms enacted since 2000. Here are a few findings:
    • Since 2000, tax cuts have cut federal revenue by $5.1 trillion, expected to double by 2025.
    • in 2012, when the Bush cuts and some Obama cuts were in place, the highest earners saw the most benefit.
    • in 2015, when some of the Bush cuts were reversed and ACA taxes were in place, the benefit was spread across all earners.
    • In 2018, now that the GOP tax reform is in place, the benefits go back to the high earners.
  1. Worker wages dropped 1% in the second quarter from the previous quarter. Real wages dropped 1.4% due to inflation levels hitting a 6-year high. Experts don’t know why wages aren’t seeing the increase that is typical in a tight labor market like this.
  2. Trump declares an end to the war on poverty, claiming (incorrectly) that only 3% of Americans are truly poor. While Republicans have long criticized safety net programs as ineffective, Trump is now saying that they’ve worked and the war is over. So now it’s time to reform social welfare and entitlement programs.

Elections:

  1. In a recorded conversation, a GOP candidate in the Georgia gubernatorial primary basically told one of his opponents that they cared about the same issues but that they couldn’t let the public in on that because of politics. He also explains how he shifted policies to stop donors from donating to a PAC that didn’t support him.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump pardons Dwight and Steven Hammond, two Oregon ranchers who set fire to federal land. Their arrests led to the armed standoff at a wildlife refuge by supporters of the Hammonds.
  2. Trump’s person driver of over two decades has received only two raises over the last 15 years. In order to get his last raise, he had to give up his employer-based health insurance. He’s suing for unpaid overtime to the tune of $200,000.

Week 75 in Trump

Posted on July 2, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Families Belong Together Rallies.

Jeff Sessions says that the outrage over family separation at the border is “radicalized” and calls the people who are outraged a “lunatic fringe.” He goes on to claim that immigration rights activists enjoy an “opulence” that is inaccessible to everyday people. Well let me tell you, the people I marched with, myself included, do not enjoy an opulence that is out of reach. If he was out there listening to us, he would see the diversity represented. 750 marches. Look at the map. It isn’t radical to expect that children, especially those under five, should not be separated from their parents whose only crime is trying to seek asylum in America. Caring for children is not a radical idea.

Here’s what else happened last week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. According to a federal indictment, three people bombed a mosque and a women’s health clinic in 2017, tried to set up a local militia, sold phony local currency, and then held a stretch of railroad track for ransom.

Russia:

  1. Blackwater founder (and Betsy DeVos’s brother) Erik Prince gives Mueller’s team complete access to his phone and computer.
  2. Mueller is working to have George Papadopoulos sentenced in September. He plans to produce conclusions and more indictments this fall.
  3. Tensions are still high between House GOP members and the DOJ, as the FBI turns over thousands of documents to Congress about the Russia investigation.
  4. And after that, Devin Nunes gives Rod Rosenstein a deadline to inform Congress whether the FBI used informants against the Trump campaign, even though they’ve already answered that. The answer is “no” in case you were wondering.
  5. And after that, the DOJ wrote back to Nunes saying, essentially, you already have all you’re going to get.
  6. Michael Cohen wants to prevent prosecutors from seeing 12,000 of the 4 million files seized in the raid on his home and office.
  7. A federal judge rejects Paul Manafort’s challenge to Mueller’s authority. Manafort’s team was trying to convince the judge that Mueller was only prosecuting him to get to Trump.
  8. According to a newly unsealed warrant, Manafort and his wife owed Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, $10 million. Deripaska gave Manafort a $26 million loan, bringing their business dealings to around $60 million over ten years.
  9. Mueller indicts Russian Konstantin Kilimnik, an intermediary between Manafort and Deripaska.
  10. FBI agent Peter Strzok testifies to Congress behind closed doors about his investigation into Clinton’s emails. He wants his testimony to be public. House Democrats want it to be public. House Republicans refuse to make it public.
  11. The House passes a resolution demanding documents from the DOJ around the Russia investigation, potentially setting Rod Rosenstein up for impeachment if he fails to deliver.
  12. Rosenstein and Chris Wray testify before the House Judiciary Committee in a very testy exchange. Republican Jim Jordan and Trey Gowdy were literally spitting mad, with Gowdy telling them to “finish the hell up.” Rosenstein, on the other hand, maintained his composure and schooled them a bit in the law.
  13. Trump again says that Russia didn’t interfere in our 2016 elections because Putin says so. And then Putin and Trump announce they’ll meet in July.
  14. And then Mike Pompeo says he’s certain Trump will warn Putin against interfering in our election because it’s clearly unacceptable.
  15. Even Justice Kennedy circles back to the Russia story, and I have no idea where this one will end up.
    • The day after Kennedy announces his retirement, stories break that his son Justin worked at Deutsche Bank as head of global real estate capital markets.
    • Deutsche Bank helped Trump obtain real estate loans at a time when no other banks would touch him because of his bankruptcies. They kept loaning him money even after he defaulted on a loan from them, with loans totaling over $1 billion.
    • Deutsche Bank has been under investigation and fined over the years for laundering money for Russians.
    • Trump dismissed some of those fines after Mueller began investigating and subpoenaing Deutsche Bank.
    • Deutsche Bank is very large, and it’s possible Kennedy had nothing to do with Trump’s loans. Also, it appears that much of the money laundering was done after Kennedy left the bank.
    • The White House has been courting Kennedy, and let him know that they’d uphold his legacy. They wanted him to be comfortable leaving the bench before the 2018 elections.
    • Remember The Big Short? Justin Kennedy also predicted the market crash in 2008 and capitalized on it for Deutsche Bank, shorting mortgages as early as 2006. He left the bank when regulations made it too hard to work these complex kinds of transactions. In 2009, he moved on to co-found a company that took advantage of commercial properties that had fallen victim to the real estate crash.
  1. Tech companies meet with the DHS to work on ways to stop Russia from interfering in our elections again. However, neither the FBI nor DHS provide the companies with any specific threat information, leaving them feeling unprepared.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme courts makes a series of rulings against progressive issues.
    • The court upholds Trump’s Muslim ban, with the majority ruling saying that they have to look at Trump’s proclamation in isolation and apart from his anti-Muslim rhetoric. Even though their last ruling was pretty much the opposite.
    • Non-medical pregnancy centers can mislead about their medical capabilities and don’t have to provide abortion options.
    • Unions can no longer collect fees from non-members, even though they bargain with companies for all employees’ benefits and wages.
    • In a blow to antitrust laws, the court upholds American Express’s rules that merchants can’t talk to customers about other credit cards, which allows Amex to continue charging exorbitant fees to merchants (which are then passed on to the customer).
  1. In its Muslim ban decision, the court overturns Korematsu v. United States, the decision that endorsed Japanese internment camps in the U.S.
  2. Justice Sotomayor excoriates the majority decision on the Muslim ban, comparing it to Korematsu v. United States. She also called out many of Trump’s anti-Muslim statements, entering them into the court record.
  3. Justice Kennedy announces his retirement at the end of July, giving Republicans the ability to turn the court hard right. This is a gut punch for civil rights and reproductive rights activists.
  4. And then Mitch McConnell promptly forgets the McConnell rule and promises a swift vote on his replacement. The McConnell rule came to be in 2016 when he said it wouldn’t be right to confirm a judge in an election year. Let the people have their voice heard first, he said in 2016.
  5. Trump says he’ll have a nominee to replace Kennedy within a few weeks.
  6. Susan Collins comes forward saying she won’t support any nominee who threatens to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Healthcare:

  1. The Iowa Supreme Court rules that a law requiring a 72-hour waiting period to have an abortion is unconstitutional.
  2. A healthcare fraud sweep results in the arrest of more than 600 people in an opioid scheme. 76 doctors and 86 other healthcare workers are charged for prescribing and distributing opioids.
  3. A federal judge blocks the Trump administration’s approval of Kentucky’s work requirements for Medicaid. The judge says the administration acted arbitrarily and capriciously. This is a blow to Kentucky’s governor, who wants to take away people’s healthcare by rolling back protections under the ACA.
  4. Trump proposes cutting the number of health professionals who are deployed during national disasters and disease outbreaks by 40%. This team also provides health care in our most rural and poor areas.

International:

  1. Even after the historic meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un, U.S. intelligence says North Korea is moving forward with its nuclear program. Satellite Images show that North Korea continues to make upgrades to its Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center.
  2. There’s another NATO summit coming up in July, at a time when tensions between Europe and the U.S. are higher than ever. At the G7, Trump said that NATO is as bad as NAFTA.
  3. Apparently Trump once tried to bribe France to leave the EU by promising Emmanuel Macron a favorable free trade agreement. He made the same attempt with Germany.
  4. While tensions grow between Trump and German Chancellor Merkel, Trump expresses interest in pulling troops out of Germany and orders the Pentagon to analyze the costs.
  5. Far left candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador wins Mexico’s presidential elections.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House shoots down its most recent major immigration reform bill despite Trump’s last ditch efforts to save it. Trump’s criticism basically killed it in the first place last week, along with a more bipartisan version. This bill would increase border security, help Dreamers become citizens, and allow families showing up at the border to be detained indefinitely.
  2. Congress puts forth a bipartisan bill to give Puerto Rico full statehood.

Separating Families:

  1. The immigrant group RAICES has now raised over $20 million. A National Guard member posted on their fundraiser that they’re lucky we aren’t executing undocumented immigrants. He’ll face punishment from the guard. Online calls for violence against immigrants have increased in recent weeks.
  2. The story about children is darker than it first appeared.
    • The Trump administration launched a pilot program last year to start quietly separating families at the border.
    • An additional 1,700 children were separated between October 2016 and February 2018, but DHS won’t break it down by month so we don’t know how many, if any, were separated before Trump took office.
    • The number of children separated is estimated to be around 4,100, but like I said, DHS isn’t being forthcoming with the numbers.
    • Immigrants as young as three-years-old are ordered to appear in court for their own deportation hearings. Children have been put through this process alone before but usually not this young and never in these numbers. Typically families appear together in court.
  1. Seventeen states sue to force the administration to reunite the families it separated.
  2. A federal judge rules that the administration can no longer separate families and must reunite all those that have been separated within 30 days. Kids under 5 must be reunited within two weeks. Yes, I said FIVE.
  3. Clergy members protesting Jeff Sessions’ appearance in Los Angeles are arrested.
  4. As outrage grows over ICE treatment of immigrants, calls arise from the left to abolish ICE. The right mocks this as extremism.
  5. And then ICE officials call to abandon ICE, or at least restructure it.
    • These special ICE agents investigate hard crimes like cartels, drug smuggling, money laundering, and human trafficking.
    • They want to start their own agency because ICE’s everyday actions hamper their ability to investigate and no one wants to cooperate with them.
    • They say the priority has moved from a focus on national security and public safety to more low-level immigration violations. It’s more about discrimination than crime.
  1. The Pentagon says that DHS asked for their help in housing and caring for up to 12,000 undocumented immigrants.
  2. The GAO and the HHS inspector general launch reviews of Trump’s handling of families at the border.
  3. Mexico asks the UN to intervene in this matter, calling the separation cruel and a human rights violation.
  4. Nearly 600 demonstrators, mostly women and including elected officials, are arrested during a non-violent protest in Washington D.C.
  5. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators show up to over 750 marches and rallies around the world to protest the treatment of families at the border. A handful of counter-protestors show up to support Trump’s policies.
  6. The marches are largely peaceful, except one instance in Alabama where a counter-protestor pulls a gun. A far-right Prayer Patriot rally in Portland, on the other hand, turns into a riot when an equal number of Antifa shows up to counter-protest.
  7. The DOJ’s response to this outcry of support for immigrants and criticism of DOJ policies? To try to detain migrant families indefinitely.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A district judge rejects a motion to dismiss a case against the administration brought by immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Trump’s decision to rescind TPS for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua, and Honduras could deprive hundreds of thousands of immigrants of legal status.
  2. Legal issues aside, rescinding TPS could also send 250,000 people back to the very countries where most of our border crossers come from, causing an even greater border surge in the future.
  3. The Muslim ban goes into effect, blocking certain travelers from Iran, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and North Korea. The ban includes Syrian refugees, those traveling on business or tourist visas, and just government officials in the case of Venezuela. Certain waivers might still be granted for close family members.
  4. The man who drove his car into protestors in Charlottesville, killing one of them, is charged with several hate crimes.
  5. A Thomson Reuters Foundation survey of 550 women’s issues experts ranked the U.S. as the 10th most dangerous country for women in areas of sexual violence, harassment, and being coerced into sex.
  6. A Harvard Business Review study finds that women ask for raises as often as men, but get rejected more often.
  7. In another hardliner approach, the DOJ drafts a rule that says if you’re criminally prosecuted for crossing the border, you can’t be granted asylum. The rule would also increase scrutiny of asylum seekers from Central America. Note that border crossers are only criminally prosecuted because of Sessions’ zero-tolerance policy.
  8. A chief counsel at ICE in Seattle gets four years in prison for identify theft. He stole immigrants identities, opening credit cards and taking out loans in their names.
  9. Former ICE spokesman James Schwab corrects statements he made about Oakland’s mayor when she warned constituents of an upcoming ICE raid. At the time, he gave the party line that she put officers lives in danger and that they lost a lot of the people they were after. In truth, they arrested 16% more than their highest expectations. Schwab resigned when asked to uphold a statement by Jeff Sessions that 800 people got away, which Schwab says is a flat-out lie.
  10. For the first time in almost 70 years, an American won’t be leading the UN International Organization for Migration. Trump’s nominee was voted down, with the agency looking outside of the U.S. because of our current attitudes and actions around migration and refugees.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The EPA is in charge of coal ash disposal because the residue from coal power plants can contaminate drinking water. This week, the EPA gives Oklahoma the right to dispose of its own coal ash, making it the first state to be able to do so.
  2. A train hauling oil derails in Iowa, spilling around 230,000 gallons of crude oil into the surrounding floodwaters.
  3. Ireland bans fracking.
  4. A hand-written thank you note shows that EPA administrator Scott Pruitt attended the American Petroleum Institute’s private board dinner.
  5. Emails show that conservatives lobbied Scott Pruitt to fire a career staffer in order to derail the National Climate Assessment compiled by 13 agencies. Their assessment found that human activity is extremely likely to cause climate change.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Harley-Davidson announces they’ll move some production abroad in order to avoid retaliatory EU tariffs in the ongoing trade wars.
  2. Aaaand then Trump threatens Harley-Davidson, saying that if they move offshore they’ll be taxed like never before.
  3. The DOW drops 405 points on news that Trump plans to stop Chinese companies from investing in U.S. tech firms and in technologies that can be sold to China. This could create two competing global tech markets, one in the U.S. and one in China, with both pushing their own standards. Differing standards just makes it harder on everyday people.
  4. The White House later reverses this decisions and says there won’t be any new restrictions on investments (aside from what Congress already has planned).
  5. The bond market’s yield curve, which has been predictive of all nine recessions since 1955, is predicting another recession. However, the economy under Trump hasn’t necessarily followed traditional patterns.
  6. The UN releases a report that says 40 million Americans live in poverty and 18.5 million live in extreme poverty. The administration says no, there are only 250,000 Americans in extreme poverty. I guess it depends on your definition.
  7. Manufacturing dipped in June, but manufacturers are still hiring and raising prices. Some factories begin layoffs, though, as the effects of the tariffs start to be felt.
  8. China and the EU together promise to avoid trade protectionism. They’re worried that U.S. trade policies could trigger another global recession.
  9. Financial experts say the debt is likely to reach 78% of GDP by the end of 2018. This is the highest level since the 1950s. It’s expected to surpass the historical high of 106% within 10 years.
  10. Despite these stats, Trump’s chief financial advisor, Larry Kudlow, says that the federal budget deficit is “coming down rapidly.”
  11. Major auto trade groups warn that Trump’s proposed tariffs will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, increase the price of new vehicles, and cut back progress on self-driving cars.
  12. Trump apparently ordered an investigation into whether importing foreign cars poses a national security threat.
  13. Canada announces billions of dollars in retaliatory tariffs
  14. Axios reports that Trump wants to take the U.S. out of the World Trade Organization (WTO), but Treasury Secretary Mnuchin says that’s not true. Instead, they just don’t like the WTO.

Elections:

  1. The Supreme Court fails to uphold lower court decisions that would’ve forced Texas and North Carolina to draw fair district lines before the 2018 midterms. They sidestep making a real decision by sending the cases back to the lower courts.
  2. A court orders that Trump’s now-defunct voter fraud commission must hand over documents to Democrats by July 18.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The Red Hen restaurant, which refused service to Sarah Huckabee Sanders (SHS) and her family, doesn’t open on Tuesday due to protests and even having chicken shit dumped on their doorstep. Where’s the civility, right? Trump’s supporters even send death threats to a Red Hen restaurant that isn’t even affiliated with the one in Lexington. Calm down folks. People get 86ed all the damn time.
  2. And then SHS gets temporary Secret Service protection because of the hoopla.
  3. After the restaurant denied service to SHS, Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said we should call out the bigotry of members of this administration where we see them — in restaurants, at the gas station, at the drug store. This week she cancels two appearances because of death threats.
  4. A man fires a shotgun through a newspaper agency’s glass doors, killing five journalists and injuring two. He had a long-running vendetta against the paper, though people on the far-left blame MAGA and people on the far-right celebrate because “fake news.”
  5. Bill Shine, former executive at Fox News, is slated to become the next White House Communications Director.
  6. After several years of calling the media “fake news” and egging his supporters into violent acts against journalists, Trump says the shooting “shocked the conscience of our nation and filled our hearts with grief.” He also says “journalists like all Americans should be free from the fear of being violently attacked” while doing their job.
  7. A few days before the shooting, Milo Yiannopoulos called for “vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.” But that’s not what motivated the shooter, as far as we know.
  8. Spicer’s back. Sean Spicer will launch a new talk show in July as a platform for “civil, respectful, and information discussions.” Notice that he left out “honest.”

Polls:

  1. 72% of Americans think it’s important to not charge sick people more for healthcare coverage (an ACA rule).
  2. 76% think it’s important to not be able to deny someone healthcare coverage because of a pre-existing condition (another ACA rule).
  3. Why is this important? Because the administration is trying to get around those two rules.
  4. 92% of Republicans think that the news intentionally publishes false or misleading stories, compared to 52% of Democrats (which is still strangely high).

Week 69 in Trump

Posted on May 21, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

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

Russia:

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

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Polls:

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

Week 67 in Trump

Posted on May 7, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

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

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

Also, ICYMI, you should change your Twitter password.

Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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