Tag: roger stone

Week 130 in Trump

Posted on July 24, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Can we be done with this already?

What a week. The ongoing feud between Trump and the squad; a resolution of condemnation of Trump’s racist tweets; a failed impeachment vote; a contempt vote for Barr and Ross; newly unsealed evidence in Michael Cohen’s case; even more sex traffickers; tensions in Iran; Hong Kong protests; Puerto Rico protests; the USDA and BLM move across country; and an amazing database of all opioid sales between 2006 and 2012.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending July 21…

Russia:

  1. The judge in Roger Stone’s case bans him from all social media because the guy just can’t keep quiet about his case. The judge also limits Stone’s family’s use of social media. But two hours after the hearing, his wife posts a picture of her and Roger at the hearing
  2. The former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, says they knew that Julian Assange was interfering in our 2016 presidential election. He accuses Wikileaks of manipulating the information.
  3. The Trump administration is using executive privilege to block House committees from obtaining classified documents from Mueller’s investigation.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Texas Democrat Al Green forces a House vote on articles of impeachment against Trump with a focus on Trump’s behavior and moral fitness for office, which the House votes down. This resolution doesn’t cover obstruction, and it’s Green’s third time trying.
  2. Trump tells Kellyanne Conway to ignore a subpoena from Congress to testify about her violations of the Hatch Act. (She’s been accused of more Hatch Act violations than any other single person, and others have resigned over their violations.)
  3. The judge in Jeffrey Epstein’s child trafficking case denies him bail, ruling that Epstein will remain behind bars while he awaits trial. The judge also says that Epstein’s behavior around young girls seems uncontrollable.
  4. While the newly released evidence from Michael Cohen’s case implicate Trump in the conspiracy to pay hush money to women with whom he had affairs, the Southern District of New York announces there won’t be any more charges filed in the case.
    • It’s understandable, since the working theory is that you can’t indict a sitting president; but also confusing, since other people appear to be implicated in the crime as well (including Hope Hicks, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson, and AMI executive David Pecker).
    • The unsealed evidence shows the impetus to keep the women quiet came from the release of the Access Hollywood tapes where Trumps brags that he can (and does) grab women and do what he wants because he’s rich.
    • The judge ordered the release of the documents because he believes them to be a matter of national importance.
    • As a result of the document release, the House Judiciary Committee has asked Hope Hicks for clarity on the inconsistencies in her testimony.
  1. More information comes out about Epstein’s sweetheart deal brokered by Alex Acosta in 2008.
    • The jail supervisor wrote a memo to his staff to let them know that Epstein was a first-time offender “poorly versed in jail routine,” and “his adjustment to incarceration will most likely be atypical.”
    • The supervisor ordered Epstein’s cell to be unlocked with frequent access to the attorney room where they installed a TV for him.
    • Epstein was allowed to leave the jail for 12 hours a day, six days a week under a work release program. At times, he was left unattended.
  1. And because you just can’t know enough sex traffickers, the Eastern District of Virginia indicts George Nader on charges of trafficking a 14-year-old boy from Europe to have sex. George Nader worked with the Trump campaign to enable private meetings between the campaign and Russia, and between the campaign and the United Arab Emirates.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A court rules that the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, must pay $14 million in damages to a woman against whom they instigated a troll storm. The Daily Stormer launched “an online anti-Semitic harassment and intimidation campaign” against the Montana woman who had complained about her dealings with the mother of white supremacist leader Richard Spencer. This is the second multi-million judgement against the Daily Stormer.
  2. While the DOJ is concentrating on prosecuting immigration violations, opioid cases, and violent crimes, white collar prosecutions under Trump are down dramatically, both in the number of cases and the fines imposed.

Healthcare:

  1. A federal judge upholds Trump’s extension of bare-bones insurance policies that don’t meet the standards outlined in Obamacare. People can now keep these policies for up to three years.
  2. This database is whack. It turns out that the DEA has kept a database of every single oxycodone and hydrocodone transaction from 2006 to 2012. These account for 75% of all opioid drugs shipped to pharmacies. They’ve known all along where the problems were and where doctors and pharmacies were overselling.
    • 76 billion pills were distributed across the country during that time. In the areas hit hardest, that amounted to 150 or more pills per person per year. You can look up different areas of the country for yourself.
    • Six companies sold 75% of the pills tracked: McKesson Corp., Walgreens, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, CVS, and Walmart.
    • SpecGx manufactured 29 million of the pills sold; Actavis Pharma manufactured 26 million. Purdue Pharma, which has taken the brunt of the fight against opioids, manufactured 2.5 million by comparison.
  1. DHHS will begin enforcing a new regulation preventing family planning clinics that receive federal funding from performing or referring women for abortions.

International:

  1. The BBC agrees not to share information gathered by one of their correspondents in an upcoming trip to Iran with the BBC’s Persian language channel, giving in to the Iranian government’s restrictions on a free press.
  2. Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo is arrested under an extradition warrant on corruption charges. Now Peru has arrested all of its living former presidents in connection with bribery charges connected to Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company.
  3. The U.S. drops to 128th in the annual Global Peace Index, largely because of increases in violence and political instability. We’re now between South Africa and Saudi Arabia.
  4. Over the past two years under Trump, DHS has gotten rid of or reduced programs that were put in place to detect terrorist threats around weapons of mass destruction. These programs were put in place after the attacks on 9/11. DHS is tasked with domestic security, including identifying these threats.
  5. Iran seizes what appears to be a United Arab Emirates tanker carrying what Iran calls “smuggled fuel.”
  6. Trump announces that we brought down an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz.
  7. Britain officials claim that Iranian authorities seized two British oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, one under the British flag and one under Liberia’s flag.
  8. Angela Merkel joins the ranks of foreign leaders who criticize Trump’s racist tweets and comments about four Congresswomen of color. Leaders have also expressed disapproval of the crowds chanting “Send her back!”
  9. Trump denies that he gave Rand Paul permission to negotiate with Iran, and then the next day he reverses himself and says he did give Paul permission. Interesting choice, since Paul is an admitted isolationist.
  10. The protests in Hong Kong continue—we’re in the fourth month. Protesters vandalize the Chinese government’s liaison office there, and police use tear gas and rubber bullets in response. In a separate incident, masked men with sticks attack protesters in a train station. Even so, the protests have been mostly peaceful, and illustrate how the populace feels about Chinese sovereignty.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Mostly along party-line votes, the House votes to condemn Trump’s racist tweets about the four Congresswomen of color. The resolution “strongly condemns [Trump’s] racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color.” It received high criticism and little support from Republicans (four Republicans and one Independent voted for it). Some members of the GOP object to the use of the word “racist”n on the House floor. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…
  2. The House votes to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt after they ignore subpoenas for information in the investigation into adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.
  3. The House passes a bill to increase the minimum wage to $15. This will likely not be taken up in the Senate, and the Congressional Budget Office reports that this could cut jobs and might not result in higher incomes in the long term.
  4. Rep. Joaquin Castro introduces legislation to remove words from the federal government‘s vocabulary that describe immigrants in ways that are now considered derogatory.
  5. Following the Senate’s approval, the House passes a series of measures to prevent the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Trump is likely to veto this.

Family Separation:

  1. Here’s what happening at the border. A family at a Border Patrol holding facility in El Paso was told that one parent would be sent back to Mexico and one parent could stay in the U.S. with their children. The agent then asked their three-year-old daughter to choose whether her Mom or Dad should be the one to stay. The girl said Mom, but cried when they started to take away her Dad. The agent said to the girl, “You said with mom.”
    • By the way, the three-year-old has heart disease and has had open heart surgery.
    • The only reason this family is together right now is because of the hard work of an American doctor who examined the little girl.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. While defending Trump’s racist tweets, Kellyanne Conway asks a Jewish journalist what his ethnicity is. This is in response to the journalist asking which country Trump wants the [mostly U.S.-born] Congresswomen to return to.
  2. Trump says he tried to stop the crowd from chanting “Send her back” at his first campaign rally after he made his racist tweets about the Congresswomen of color. He says he started speaking very quickly to cut off the chant, but video shows that he leaned back and soaked it in for about 15-20 seconds before beginning to speak. And 12 minutes later, he says, “If they don’t like it, let them leave… You know what? If they don’t love it, TELL THEM to leave it.”
    • Lara Trump throws Trump’s supporters under the bus, saying they were the ones who started the chant. She says Trump didn’t do anything.
  1. The following days, Trump continues his fight against the women, calling them pro-terrorist and anti-Israel and anti-USA. Trump’s aides have been working overtime to get him to stop.
  2. But eight days later, Trump is still tweeting about the Congresswoman, accusing them of hating America and Israel. He lies about:
    • Ilhan Omar supporting Al Qaeda (she doesn’t).
    • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling the U.S. people garbage (she didn’t).
    • All four women calling Jews evil (they haven’t).
  1. The Anti-Defamation League, which was founded to stop defamation of Jewish people, criticizes Trump for using Israel as a shield to defend his racist tweets. They point out how white supremacists across the country are cheering his tweets. The neo-Nazi who runs the Daily Stormer tweeted, “This is the kind of WHITE NATIONALISM we elected him for…”
  2. The four Congresswomen hold a press conference condemning the “recent xenophobic, bigoted remarks from the occupant of the White House.” They call this a distraction. They also call for Trump’s impeachment.
  3. Now we’re learning that Trump’s attacks on the squad was part of a strategy gone awry, seemingly because he doesn’t understand how racist it was. He meant to drive a wedge between House leadership and the squad, but his words unified the two groups in their condemnation Trump. He’s also trying to make this four women the face of the Democratic party in the run-up to 2020.
  4. Upon returning to her home state of Minnesota, Ilhan Omar is welcomed home by cheering supporters at the airport.
  5. The DOJ issues a new rule that you can’t seek asylum in the U.S. if you traveled through another country to get here and didn’t request asylum from that country. This is targeted at Central Americans coming through Mexico, but the DOJ is forgetting that Mexico is not safe for many asylum seekers because people they are fleeing follow them there.
    • Unlike Canada, neither Mexico nor Guatemala has a safe third-country agreement with the U.S.
    • That’s OK, though. Trump’s new rule doesn’t require that the third country be deemed as safe for asylum seekers.
    • These rules also apply to minors crossing the border alone.
    • The ACLU files a lawsuit to block the rule, saying “It’s patently unlawful under U.S. law as well as international human rights law.”
  1. A federal judge definitively blocks Trump from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. The judge also retains jurisdiction in the case to ensure that the census is processed properly.
  2. Trump tells aides that he wants to fire Wilbur Ross after the failure to get the citizenship question on the 2020 Census.
  3. Customs and Border Protection open an investigation into 70 current or former Border Patrol employees who belong to the Facebook group that mocked and denigrated both migrants and elected officials.
  4. Wanna know how all that funding for border security is being spent? Southwest Key Programs paid six employees at least $1 million in 2017. Southwest Key is a nonprofit agency that provides housing for thousands of migrant children.
  5. Catholic sisters, clergy, and parishioners gather in the Russell Senate Office Building in DC to protest Trump’s immigration policies and our treatment of immigrants. 70 are arrested by DC police.
  6. Even though you can’t pray away the gay, Amazon is getting flack from House Republicans for no longer carrying books by a leading proponent of gay conversion therapy. Conversion therapy has not only been debunked, it’s also been found to lead to mental problems and even suicide.
  7. During a House Oversight and Reform Committee meeting, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asks DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan if he’d seen the photoshopped images of a violent rape of AOC that were being spread by border patrol agents. She then asks whether the people who spread these images are still in charge of taking care of women and children. McAleenan has no answer.

  8. Under the Trump administration, undocumented immigrants who serve in the military are being denied citizenship at rates higher than foreign-born immigrants who don’t serve.
  9. CBP uses tear gas to stop a group of about 50 migrants who try to rush the barriers on a bridge at the border in Rio Grande City.
  10. The Pentagon authorizes 1,100 more troops and 1,000 Texas National Guard soldiers to be deployed to the border.
  11. The DOJ announces they won’t bring charges against the police officer who killed Eric Garner because they say they can’t prove the officer acted willfully. Garner was killed five years ago. “I can’t breathe.”
  12. Three more white supremacists are sentenced to prison sentences for charges stemming from the violence in Charlottesville where activist Heather Heyer was killed.

Climate:

  1. The Trump campaign comes up with a novel way to own the libs. They start selling MAGA plastic straws to get back at environmentalists who have pushed through regulations banning plastic straws.
  2. NOAA and NASA say that this past June was the hottest June on record (which goes back to 1880).
  3. The EPA announces that they will not ban chlorpyrifos even though the EPA’s own experts have linked the pesticide to serious health problems, especially in children.
  4. The USDA blocks the release of their own plan for responding and adapting to the effects of climate change.

Budget/Economy:

  1. China’s economic growth continues to slow. Last month, their growth rate was the slowest it’s been in nearly three decades. This is partly from the trade war with the U.S., but their growth rate is still 6.2%.
  2. Manufacturing employment shows a slight increase in July, but is still down overall because of a deep dive in June.
  3. Retail growth slowed in the first half of the year, largely because of the struggles of brick-and-mortar stores. Online retail sales have also been slowing down over the past
  4. Corporate earnings decline for the second quarter in a row.
  5. Chinese investment in the U.S. has fallen from $46.5 billion in 2016 to $5.4 billion in 2018.

Elections:

  1. The Marine Corps orders Duncan Hunter to stop using their emblem and phrase on his re-election campaign materials.
    • Duncan’s racist mailers tie two of his fellow members of the House to terrorism as well as tying his Democratic opponent to terrorism.
    • The mailer, not surprisingly, does NOT mention that Hunter has been indicted on campaign finance charges. It also doesn’t mention the numerous affairs he had on his wife using said campaign finances.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump tweets that his administration will take a look into allegations by Peter Thiel that Google is compromised by China.
    • Thiel has no evidence and says he was just raising questions, but he did say they needed to be investigated by the FBI and CIA.
    • Larry Kudlow, Trump’s chief economic advisor, dismissed Thiel’s claims.
  1. Trump lets loose with a barrage of lies during his cabinet meeting. He falsely claims:
    • The governments of Guatemala and Honduras are forming and sending migrant caravans.
    • Asylum seekers who are released on their own recognizance don’t show up for hearings (89% do).
    • Human traffickers don’t come through ports of entry (they do).
    • Democrats want open borders (the vast majority do not).
    • He approved the permits for an energy facility in Louisiana (Obama’s administration approved them).
    • The program to repatriate remains of U.S. soldiers who died in North Korea is still going on (it’s been suspended).
    • The renegotiated NAFTA would force auto manufacturers to stay in the U.S. (there’s nothing in the new agreement that would require that).
    • We’re building lots of wall at the southern border (no actual construction has begun on any new fencing).
    • The most China has purchased from famers in a year is $16 billion, and since we’re taking in many times that in tariffs, we can pay the farmers $16 billion to make up for their loss in sales. (I can barely unwind this one. The most China spent in a year is nearly $30 billion, the tariffs have generated about $21 billion (which is not many times $16 billion), and Americans pay those costs, not China or Chinese companies).
    • During the Obama administration, the trade deficit with China was $500 billion (it’s never been that high; in fact, the highest it’s ever been is 2018 when it was $381 billion for goods and services, and $420 billion for just goods (we’re an exporter of services)).
    • The Chinese economy has lost $20 trillion since Trump’s election (China’s GDP continues to go up, and their economy grew by 6.6% last year).
    • The Iran deal cost Obama’s administration $150 billion (it wasn’t U.S. money, it was Iran’s; it wasn’t all held in the U.S. but in financial institutions around the world; and it was closer to $60 billion in Iranian-owned assets that were unfrozen).
  1. Trump announces he’ll nominate Eugene Scalia to be Secretary of Labor, replacing Alex Acosta who left over the Epstein scandal. Scalia is the son of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
  2. Puerto Rican protestors are out in force trying to oust their governor over leaked misogynistic and homophobic texts exchanged with his top advisors. Anger at the governor has been brewing over his mishandling of the economy, but this put a match to the flame. The governor says he won’t step down, but he won’t seek re-election next year. Protestors say that’s not good enough.
  3. The USDA suffers a brain drain, as they move offices from DC to Kansas City and force workers to move there as well if they want to keep their jobs. Less than 2/3 of the researchers asked to relocate have accepted the offer.
  4. At the same time, the BLM is moving its headquarters from DC to Grand Junction, CO. Some worry that this means the agency will have less clout in decision making in DC.
  5. A Pennsylvania school sends letters to parents threatening to send their kids to foster care if they don’t pay their past-due school lunch debts.
  6. Attorney General William Barr donated $51,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee over the five months leading up to his confirmation. Aside from that, he’s given just six times since 2009.

Polls:

  1. 68% of Americans polled say Trump’s tweets and comments about the four women in Congress are offensive. 75% of women find the tweets offensive. But only 25% of Republicans find them offensive. And here’s where we have the disconnect in this country. It’s also why you don’t hear Republicans in Congress calling Trump out for racism.
  2. A separate poll found Trump’s approval rating among Republican rose 5% after his racist tweets.

Week 126 in Trump

Posted on June 30, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Sorry for the long radio silence. I was derailed by family emergency, but now I’m back and trying to catch up on what I missed. Getting back into the news cycle reminds me that there are:

  • 10 federal criminal investigations,
  • 8 state and local investigations, and
  • 11 congressional investigations

into Trump, his family and business, and his associates. It reminds me that indictments continue to come down, trials are coming up, and Trump continues to interfere with witness testimony in ongoing investigations. And it reminds me that we’re still separating families at the border, and keeping kids separated from the U.S. families instead of releasing them into their custody.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending June 23…

Russia:

  1. The House Judiciary Committee questions Hope Hicks, who, under White House orders, refuses to answer any questions about conduct during the presidential transition and about the White House, including minutia, like where her office was located and other publicly available information.
    • Trump accuses House Democrats of putting Hicks “through hell.” For one day of questioning? Really? I refer you to Hillary’s 11-hour hearing.
    • You can read her testimony here.
  1. Felix Sater is scheduled to testify to the House Intelligence Committee about the Trump Tower Moscow project, but he doesn’t show up. So the committee issues him a subpoena.
    • Sater worked with Michael Cohen on the Trump Tower project (he actually worked on two different Trump Tower Moscow projects).
    • Sater says he’s been sick and slept through his alarm. He also says he’ll answer every single question.
  1. Prosecutors accuse Roger Stone of violating his gag order (yet again) through social media posts.
  2. A top aide to former White House Counsel Don McGahn is scheduled to testify to Congress, but the White House is expected to block her from doing so. Annie Donaldson has a special agreement to provide written answers since she’s pregnant.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Federal authorities are investigating Deutsche Bank yet again, this time for violating laws against money laundering. The investigation includes the bank’s handling of suspicious activity reports, and also covers several other banks.
  2. A federal court unseals text messages used as evidence between Paul Manafort and Sean Hannity, revealing a tight and ongoing relationship between the two. There’s legal advice, flattery, and persecution complexes throughout. They show Hannity was giving Manafort news time and credibility all along. Take a look – it’s an interesting read.
  3. Jeffrey Rosen, the top deputy to Attorney General William Barr, intervenes for Paul Manafort to prevent him from being moved to Rikers, where most federal inmates facing state charges are held. He’ll await trial at a federal prison instead.
  4. The Office of Special Counsel (not to be confused with Mueller’s office) just found that Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act multiple times in multiple ways. This week, another watchdog group files a complaint against Ivanka for violating the act.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court rules that you can be tried at both the state and federal levels for the same crimes, and that it doesn’t conflict with the double jeopardy clause in the Constitution, which prevents you from being tried for the same thing twice.
    • This is relevant right now with the idea of pardons being floated by Trump and his associates. Trump can only pardon at the federal level, and this ruling allows states to pick up investigations into crimes that otherwise could’ve been pardoned.
  1. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court rules that the lame duck special session called by outgoing state Republican legislators was constitutional, so the bills they passed in a last-ditch effort to limit the powers of the new Democratic governor will take effect.

Healthcare:

  1. While warming up the crowd at his Dad’s re-election campaign kickoff rally, Donald Trump, Jr., makes fun of Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden for his cancer “moon shot” (Biden’s promise to cure cancer).
  2. And then Trump promises he’ll cure cancer and AIDS if he gets re-elected. He promises he’ll “come up with the cures to many, many problems, to many, many diseases.” It’s worth noting that he’d have to reverse several of his policies to do this.
  3. Once again, Trump takes credit for a veteran’s health care bill that Obama signed into law five years ago, the Veterans Choice program.
  4. A federal appeals courts rules that Trump’s gag rule on women’s reproductive health can take effect immediately across the country. Now any medical facility that provides abortions or referrals to abortions can’t receive Title X funding.
  5. After a few weeks of the state of Missouri forcing doctors to perform unnecessary and invasive medical procedures prior to performing an abortion, doctors fight back and say they won’t do it. So Missouri refuses to renew the license for the state’s last abortion provider. However, a judge’s order allows the facility to remain open.
  6. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program tracks consumer claims of harm from vaccinations. Out of 126 million vaccinations over the past 12 years, 284 people have made claims of damage, and about half of those claims were dismissed. That’s about a .00011% chance of harm of any kind.

International:

  1. In another example of poor vetting, Patrick Shanahan resigns and withdraws from the confirmation process for Secretary of Defense. His background check showed his family to be involved in multiple counts of domestic violence, with the violence coming from him, his wife, and his son.
  2. The White House then announces that Trump will nominate Army Secretary Mark Esper to be Secretary of Defense.
  3. A UN investigator of the Jamal Khashoggi murder says we need to sanction and freeze assets of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. She says we’re not doing enough in the face of credible evidence that MbS was involved in the killing. Her report gives new details that spread the blame beyond the 11 currently on trial.
  4. The Republican-led Senate passes three measure blocking the sale of $8.1 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Trump will likely veto this, because he wants to sell them the weapons regardless of their guilt in the Khashoggi case.
  5. Trump and Republicans have long complained that the JCPOA (Iran deal) wasn’t working. Looking back, Iran never came close to breaking the deal before Trump broke our promise to the JCPOA; but now that we’ve pulled out, Iran is on schedule to pass the JCPOA-defined limits on their uranium stockpile within the next week.
    • Iran says they won’t let that happen if Europe promises to fight Trump’s economic sanctions against Iran.
  1. Trump says he’ll send 1,000 more U.S. troops to the Middle East because of what he calls hostile behavior by Iran and its proxies. The Pentagon backs that up.
  2. Trump tweets about new sanctions added against Iran, but it turns out there weren’t any. But then later sanctions were announced, so maybe it was just a timing thing.
  3. Following recent attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) says we should launch a retaliatory strike against Iran.
  4. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggests that Iran has ties to Al Qaeda. He wants to use this to justify allowing the Trump administration to start a war with Iran (using the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force).
  5. Tucker Carlson, of all people, compares Pompeo’s assertion that Iran attacked the tankers to when Colin Powell claimed erroneously that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
  6. Iran’s military claims responsibility for shooting down an American drone. Iran says the drone violated its territorial airspace, but the U.S. claims it was in international airspace.
  7. Trump approves a military attack against Iran in retaliation for the drone. But then he pulls back at the last minute, because (according to the White House) he had just learned that 150 people might die. I’m sure we all realize that a casualty report is given long before a strike is approved.
    • There’s some dispute over whether the planes were actually already in the air by the time Trump rescinded the order. He claims they weren’t, but military officials say they were.
  1. Trump sent Iran a warning via Oman to warn them that an attack was imminent.
  2. Fox & Friends say it was weak to rescind the order to attack.
  3. Putin says military conflict with Iran would be a catastrophe, and that he believes Iran is complying with the JCPOA. He says this just hours before Trump calls off the retaliatory strike.
  4. The White House didn’t notify the succession to the presidency of the plans to strike Iran (specifically Nancy Pelosi, who’s second in line behind Mike Pence).

Family Separation:

  1. Here’s the winner of the week’s gaslighting award. In an interview with Telemundo, Trump tells us that Obama is responsible for the family separation and Trump is the one who’s fixing it and bringing families together. Seriously. He really said this.
    • In 2018, Jeff Sessions announced the zero tolerance policy in a press conference. In the interview, Trump defends the zero tolerance policy while claiming he’s bringing families together.
    • The program was only ended because the ACLU and other activist groups sued the DHS.
    • The only reason any families were unified at all is that the ACLU and other activist groups sued for it.
    • They are still separating families at the borders! How else do you think we ended up with toddlers in a detainment camp for unaccompanied minors? In fairness, some are the children of minor girls, but not all of them are.
    • More debunking can be found here and here and here and here. I could go on, but I shouldn’t have to.
  1. Immigration lawyers visit a child detention center at the border and interview children who were dirty and sick, living in overcrowded rooms, and sleeping on concrete floors. They had to force the facility to send four toddlers with fevers, coughs, vomiting, and diarrhea to the hospital.
    • The lawyers noticed one little girl had a bracelet with a phone number and “U.S. parent” written on it. They dialed the phone number and found her parents. No one had even bothered to try the number before that.
    • And just a reminder, we’re all paying $750 per day to the businesses that run the private prisons that house each and every one of these children who could be released to family in the U.S.
  1. A federal attorney sets off a shitstorm by arguing in front of incredulous circuit court judges that children in detainment camps are being held in safe and sanitary conditions with no soap, no diapers, no toothpaste, and only a hard concrete floor to sleep on.
  2. And then Alexandria Ocasio Cortez sets off a new shitstorm by calling detainment centers “concentration camps” (which by definition, they are; and holocaust experts agree and agree).
  3. After all this, the Trump administration moves some of the children out of the overcrowded detention centers, but they run out of places to move them to, so some end up returning.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump announces that ICE will remove millions of undocumented immigrants over the weekend, spreading panic through immigrant neighborhoods. He then reduces that estimate to thousands of immigrants, with ICE ultimately cancelling the raids altogether because, according to Acting ICE Director Mark Morgan, “someone” leaked information about the raids.
    • Trump says he’ll delay the raids for two weeks so Congress can work out a solution. I’m not sure what solution he’s looking for here.
    • Pelosi called Trump two days before the planned raid to ask him to halt the operation.
  1. BTW, the number of migrant families crossing the southern border is decreasing again, as is the number of arrests. Even though ICE is increasing deportations, they’re still deporting fewer than in the first years under Obama.
  2. Mitch McConnell says that we paid for the sin of slavery by fighting the Civil War, by passing civil rights legislation, and ultimately by electing a black president. He needs to review the generational effects of having property confiscated, running freeways and railways through neighborhoods, being denied the same loans and assistance that are given to white people, forced segregation, and white flight. But, sure. A black president. That makes up for ALL that Jim Crow shit.
  3. The Trump administration announces that they’re permanently cutting off aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador; the three countries where most of our asylum seekers come from. The administration says they’ll resume aid when they see these countries taking concrete steps to stop people from leaving those countries for the U.S.
    • Let’s just file that one under “What could possibly go wrong?”
  1. In 1989, Trump took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the Central Park Five to be put to death. The Central Park Five were erroneously found guilty of the brutal beating and rape of the central park jogger, but they were exonerated in 2002 after someone else confessed and DNA tests proved it.
    • The five were all 16 or under at the time, and were all convicted on coerced confessions. Four are black and one is Latino.
    • Trump refuses to apologize for taking out the ad, saying you have people on both sides of that. How can there be a good person on the side of wrongful imprisonment?
    • When the city of New York settled with the five for $41 million, Trump called the settlement a disgrace. Watch “When They See Us” on Netflix to understand this whole thing fully.
  1. Journalist E. Jean Carroll releases an excerpt of her new book where she accuses Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf dressing room in the 1990s. Trump denies it, using a defense he’s used before, “she’s not my type.” He also says he doesn’t know Carroll, though photos of them together have surfaced.

Climate:

  1. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announces the Trump administration’s replacement for Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The new plan ends rules put in place by the Obama administration to combat climate change, including:
    • Scaling back tailpipe emission standards.
    • Removing state targets for reducing carbon emissions.
    • Removing regulations for carbon emissions from coal-powered plants.
    • Limiting the federal government’s ability to set carbon emission standards.
  1. Wheeler says the new plan might lead to new coal plants opening in the U.S. He also says that carbon emissions dropped by 14% between 2005 and 2017, but neglects to mention that they started to rise again in 2018.
  2. An EPA report last year claimed that this plan would result in 300 to 1,500 more deaths annually due to climate-related illnesses.
  3. At least seven State Attorney Generals say they’ll try to block the Clean Power Plan changes in court.
  4. Meanwhile, back in real science, the Arctic permafrost isn’t so permanent under climate change. Scientists find that it’s thawing 70 years earlier than they had predicted.
  5. Air quality in the U.S. has been improving over the past few decades, but the past two years both saw more unhealthy air days than the average from 2013 through 2016.
  6. A federal court rules that an environmental review must be performed for Cadiz Inc. to build a pipeline designed to remove water from the Mojave Trails National Park aquifer for city usage. The judge says Trump’s waiver of the review is illegal.
    • Cadiz claimed they could remove the water under an obscure law waiving environmental review if the water is used for railroad purposes. They claimed that some of the water would be used to power a steam engine.
    • Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration rejected that argument and ordered a review. The Trump administration reversed that decision after David Barnhardt was appointed to be Deputy Interior Secretary (he’s now Interior Secretary). Barnhardt was a lobbyist for Cadiz. Draining the swamp, right?
  1. The Department of Agriculture has been burying federal studies that show the impacts of climate change. The studies by the Agricultural Research Service are peer-reviewed. Some of their findings include:
    • Rice loses vitamins in an environment containing too much carbon.
    • Climate change exacerbates allergies.
    • Climate change will reduce the quality of grasses used to feed livestock.
  1. 70 medical and public health organizations call climate change a health emergency, and produce policy recommendations that are in conflict with Trump’s policies.
  2. Mike Pence says that the Trump administration will always follow the science on climate change. Huh? See all the above. He also refuses to acknowledge that climate change is a legitimate national threat (which the military has long been saying).

Budget/Economy:

  1. Mexico becomes the first country to ratify the updated NAFTA (or as Trump calls it, the USMCA).
  2. A bipartisan group of Congressional leaders meet to discuss deals to prevent automatic budget cuts this fall. If they don’t reach an agreement, $125 billion will be cut from Pentagon and domestic spending.
  3. Earlier this year Trump talked about firing Jerome Powell over interest rates, and the White House looking into demoting him. The day before the Fed announces its interest rate decision this week, Trump publicly says he’ll wait to see what Powell does before demoting him. That threat isn’t even thinly veiled. History 101: The Fed supposed to be completely independent from the executive branch.

Elections:

  1. Trump kicks off his re-election campaign in Orlando, FL. Not surprisingly, he gave a campaign speech that was crazy AF, so much so I can’t even track all the lies (I’ll let PBS do it for me). Also, he really, really hates Democrats.
  2. Roy Moore announces, with little Republican support, that he’ll run for Senate in Alabama again to win Democrat Doug Jones’ seat.
  3. The Supreme Court rules against Virginia’s Republican-led House of Delegates, keeping in place the redrawn district lines that fixed the previous lines gerrymandered by the GOP. SCOTUS upholds a lower court’s ruling that the GOP lines were racially gerrymandered. Sadly, SCOTUS once more avoided ruling on the constitutionality of gerrymandering by ruling that the House didn’t have cause to sue.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The father of one of the Sandy Hook victims wins a defamation lawsuit against the author of “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.” The publisher also pulls the books and apologizes to settle a claim against them. The publisher, Dave Gahary, says his conversations with the father have led him to believe that people actually did die. I’m speechless.
    • Just a reminder that these families have been harassed by Sandy Hook deniers ever since it happened, sometimes moving to get away from it but it never works. That’s why they’ve launched a slew of lawsuits against the offenders, including Alex Jones. And it finally seems to be working.
    • In a separate case against Alex Jones, a Connecticut judge sanctions Jones for a “despicable” tirade against the attorney’s representing Sandy Hook families. Jones accuses them of placing malware on his computer that, in turn, planted child pornography on InfoWars servers. WOW. The child pornography was discovered when InfoWars turned over evidence to the court.
  1. Trump appears to threaten a journalist with imprisonment over a photograph of a letter from Kim Jong Un.
  2. Someone leaks vetting documents from the Trump transition team to Axios. Some of that vetting was outsourced to the Republican National Committee. Here are a few highlights (file them under “Drain That Swamp!”):
    • Trump announced many of his nominees without a full FBI background check or a vetting from the Office of Government Ethics.
    • There’s an entire section of allegations of former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s coziness with big energy companies.
    • Multiple sections on former Health and Human services Secretary Tom Price criticize his management ability and his House Budget Committee leadership (calling it dysfunctional and divisive).
    • Mick Mulvaney said that Trump is not a very good person, among other things.
    • Rudy Giuliani has a whole separate document about his business ties and foreign entanglements.
    • The transition team flagged General David Petraeus because he’s opposed to torture.
    • Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first Secretary of State, has Russia ties that go deep.
    • Kris Kobach, who later headed Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity, has ties to white supremacist groups.
    • Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley once said that Trump is everything we “teach our kids not to do in kindergarten.”
    • Seema Verma, appointed to Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was at one time advising Indiana on how to spend Medicaid funds while at the same time representing a client that received those very funds.
    • Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has both business and family conflicts of interest.
    • Ryan Zinke once called Trump “undefendable.”
    • Rick Perry called Trumpism “a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition.”
    • People doing the vetting say they didn’t even know what job they were vetting people for.

Polls:

  1. The number of Democrats who want to begin impeachment hearings rose from 59% in April to 67% this week. This just tells me that enough people have still not read the report.

Week 110 in Trump

Posted on March 5, 2019 in Politics, Trump

By J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post via Getty Images.

It was week full of news and punctuated by Trump hugging the American flag and giving the longest speech ever at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference. It’s hard to fact-check a 20-minute Trump speech, much less one that lasts over two hours. So I’ll summarize. He lies about immigration, the VA, late-term abortions, tax reforms, the Green New Deal, Mueller’s investigative team, healthcare, solar power (actually what he says here is not so much a lie as it is just dumb), tariffs, Russia, crowd sizes, ISIS, and the economy. He brags about his 2016 election, brags about firing Comey, defends his declaration of national emergency, backtracks on his comments about Otto Warmbier, excuses poor cabinet choices, accuses Members of Congress of hating our country (wow), bags on Jim Mattis, claims he doesn’t have white hair (huh?), takes credit for the 2018 elections (Senate) but then says he’s not responsible for the 2018 elections (House), announces a “free speech” executive order for college campuses, and makes fun of a sitting Senator. And of course CPAC wouldn’t be complete if he didn’t berate Democrats as socialists.

Here’s what else happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. A county judge in North Carolina ruled that two amendments put forth to the voters last November by the state’s legislature are unconstitutional. The basis for his decision was that NC’s General Assembly was “illegally constituted” due to racial gerrymandering. NC’s government has been caught up in lawsuits for over two years. Dig deeper here.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. A bipartisan group of 58 former national security officials issue a statement saying there is no factual basis for the national emergency over the wall.
  2. A Republican group of 24 former Members of Congress sign a letter urging Republicans in office to pass a joint resolution to end the national emergency.
  3. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers recalls Wisconsin’s National Guard troops from the southern border saying there’s no justification for it. New Mexico has already ordered all troops away from their border, and California has pulled their troops out as well.
  4. Air Force Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy says there’s no military threat at our southern border and that we should be focused on risks from Russia and China. O’Shaughnessy is Commander, U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (USNORTHCOM).
  5. The House passes a resolution to end Trump’s declaration of national emergency over the wall. This means the Senate must vote on it. Mitch McConnell says it‘ll pass, but Trump will veto it.
  6. The House Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on the Trump administration’s policy of separating families seeking asylum at our southern border.

Russia:

  1. Adam Schiff, the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, says that if the final report on the Russia and obstruction investigations aren’t released to the public, he’ll subpoena the report and have Robert Mueller testify before the committee.
  2. Paul Manafort’s lawyers argue that he should get a lenient sentence in the D.C. case, because it’s not like he’s a drug dealer or murderer, there’s no evidence of Russia collusion, and he’s only guilty of garden variety crimes. Or rich people‘s crimes, as I call them.
    • Manafort has another sentencing hearing for a separate case on March 8 in Virginia.
    • On top of these, he could get more years for breaking his plea agreement and get additional trials for crimes for which he hasn’t been tried yet.
    • Mueller did amend one of his court statements that supported his claims that Manafort lied about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, but there’s still enough evidence to show Manafort lied.
  1. A federal judge rejects Andrew Miller’s claim that Mueller’s appointment is unconstitutional. Now Miller has to testify to the grand jury or go to jail.
  2. It doesn’t take Roger Stone long to violate his gag order and in multiple ways.
    • The day the judge issues the gag order, Stone violates the order with a tweet which he then deletes.
    • Next he responds to an email from VICE News saying that Cohen’s statement is entirely untrue.
    • Next he gets called back into court to explain the imminent release of a book that will likely violate the gag order and that neither he nor his defense team mentioned to the judge.
    • And THEN, Stone posts on Instagram that Mueller framed him. Seriously, this guy can’t help himself.
  1. Some of Stone’s actions flat-out violate the gag order, but others are a little ambiguous. Here are the judge’s parameters:
    • Stone cannot speak publicly or to the media about the investigation, the case, or any of the participants.
    • Stone can speak publicly about raising funds for his defense.
    • Stone can say that he is innocent of charges against him.
  1. Russia’s state-sponsored news announces that Russia is developing hypersonic missiles that can reach the U.S. targets, like the Pentagon and Camp David, in under five minutes.
  2. U.S. Cyber Command says they blocked internet access for the Internet Research Agency (a Russian troll farm) during the 2018 elections.

Legal Fallout:

  1. During Sean Hannity’s interview with Trump, he claims to have information that contradicts Michael Cohen’s testimony about the Stormy Daniel’s hush money payments. If he does, Hannity could be called before Congress himself to testify.
  2. Michael Cohen begins three days of Congressional hearings. Two are behind closed doors and one, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is public. Here are a few things Cohen alleges (remember these are allegations):
    • Trump knew in advance about WikiLeaks’ plans to release the DNC’s hacked emails, and he found out through Roger Stone. Roger Stone disputes this.
    • Trump was completely involved in the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. Cohen provided Congress with a check signed by Trump and another signed by both Donald Trump, Jr., and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.
    • Eric Trump was also involved the hush money payments.
    • Ivanka and Don, Jr., were both involved in the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations, which continued throughout the campaign.
    • Cohen threatened Trump’s schools so they wouldn’t release his grades or SAT scores after Trump told him he didn’t want those records released. Fordham University confirms that they received a threatening letter.
    • Trump inflated his net worth in order to secure loans and to get on Forbes’ lists, but he deflated the worth of his assets for tax purposes.
    • Trump‘s taxes are likely not under audit.
    • Weisselberg knew about all the things—hush money, Trump Tower Moscow, bank fraud, insurance fraud, and tax fraud.
    • BuzzFeed’s reporting that Trump directly told Cohen to lie to Congress isn’t accurate. Cohen says Trump implied he should lie. BuzzFeed continues to stand by their story, so now I’m super curious about their source.
    • The rumors about mistreatment of Melania, a love child, and the existence of a sex tape are likely not true.
    • Cohen’s never been to Prague, disputing one point in the Steele Dossier.
    • Cohen and Corey Lewandowski discussed a Trump trip to Russia during the campaign.
    • There are other illegal acts and wrongdoing that weren’t discussed during his testimony. Some of those are currently under investigation in New York state.
    • Cohen didn’t want a White House position, so he’s not doing this out of vengeance for that. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) later files a complaint alleging that Cohen is lying about this.
    • Trump purchased a third portrait of himself through the Trump Foundation (we already knew about the first two).
    • Jay Sekulow, Trump’s lawyer, edited Cohen’s previous testimony to Congress, causing it to be false.
    • Trump doesn’t email or text. That’s so old-school, but could be his saving grace.
  1. Cohen provides a list of Trump associates who can corroborate these allegations or who have additional information. The questioning also gave the committee the basis to subpoena Trump’s tax returns.
  2. During Cohen’s testimony, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) calls him a liar, Mark Meadows (R-NC) uses a black woman as a prop to prove Trump isn’t racist, and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) puts up a poster that says, “Liar Liar Pants On Fire.”
  3. During and after the hearing, committee chair Elijah Cummings worked hard to make sure both sides of the aisle felt heard and he concludes with a call for healing.
  4. Describing the destruction of our civility toward each other, Cohen says, “I’m responsible for your silliness because I did the same things that you’re doing now. I protected Mr. Trump for 10 years.”
  5. Just before Michael Cohen is to testify before Congress, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) tweets a thinly veiled threat. As a lawyer, he should know better. Here’s what he tweets:

“Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”

    • So then legal experts and fellow Representatives call this a violation of House ethics rules and potential witness tampering.
    • And then the Florida Bar opens an investigation into whether Gaetz violated their regulations.
    • And then, Gaetz apologizes for the tweet and deletes it.
    • But then Gaetz continues to tweet and retweet disparaging comments and articles about Cohen throughout the hearings.
  1. The House Oversight Committee wants to interview Ivanka and Don, Jr. The House Intelligence Committee will interview Cohen, Weisselberg, and Felix Sater.
  2. The House Judiciary Committee opens an inquiry into alleged abuses of power by Trump, based on his attacks against the press, the courts, the FBI, and the DOJ. Presidents actually have wide leeway here.
  3. The House Ways and Means Committee announces they’ll demand Trump’s tax returns. Cohen’s testimony pretty much forced their hand on this.
  4. D.C.’s attorney general subpoenas documents from the Trump inaugural committee. This is the third active investigation into the committee’s finances.
  5. The House Financial Services Committee announces an investigation into Trump’s personal finances, specifically why Deutsche Bank was willing to loan him money at a time when nobody else would.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A federal court upholds the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks, but the plaintiffs in the case say they’ll appeal.
  2. Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker abruptly leaves the DOJ.

Healthcare:

  1. The Senate votes against allowing the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” to proceed. A few things:
    • This bill appears to be intended to protect babies born alive after a botched abortion (this is a rare and extreme circumstance).
    • Late-term abortions can only be performed when the mother’s health or life is threatened, or when the fetus has a fatal condition. Less than 1% of abortions occur after fetal viability.
    • Infanticide is already illegal in the U.S., plus the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act was already signed into law in 2002. The current bill mostly adds criminal penalties against doctors.
    • Typically the procedure in which the baby survives is not actually an abortion but natural or induced early labor.
    • All this is to say, doctors aren’t out there killing live babies willy-nilly.

International:

  1. Mike Pence joins the self-proclaimed interim President of Venezuela Juan Guaido in Bogota, Colombia to express U.S. support for Venezuela and opposition to Nicolas Maduro.
  2. At the same time, Trump travels to Vietnam for another summit with Kim Jong Un. Kim travels the 2,700 miles across China by private train, a 48-hour trip.
    • The summit is supposed to end with a signing ceremony, but Trump (probably rightly) walks out early when they can’t agree on demands.
    • Depending on the version you believe, one sticking point is that North Korea wants sanction relief for giving up just one of their nuclear facilities.
    • Ahead of the summit, the U.S. already dropped the requirement that North Korea disclose all of their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
    • Trump ends our large-scale military drills with South Korea in the interest of diplomacy with North Korea. Small-scale drills will continue.
    • There are no current plans for continuing the conversation.
    • Trump says he believes Kim when he says he didn’t know about how Otto Warmbier was being treated. The next day, Warmbier’s parents clarify that they blame Kim for the death.
    • This is rich coming from a dictatorship. North Korea says the Trump administration is a billionaire’s club that holds policies of racism, exacerbates social inequality, suppresses freedom of the press, and denies health coverage to U.S. citizens.
    • Trump blames Michael Cohen’s testimony for the talks falling apart.
    • Throughout the summit, North Korean hackers continue to target the U.S.
    • While the GOP pushes the narrative that Democrats=Socialists, Trump says this about socialist dictator Kim Jong Un: He’s “very sharp” and “a real leader.” “I like him.”
    • The White House bans several reporters from a joint dinner likely based on shouted questions about denuclearization and Michael Cohen during an earlier press event.
  1. Britain’s Labour Party supports another Brexit voter referendum in case voters have changed their minds. The deadline for Brexit is the end of March.
  2. I don’t know if you can indict a president, but it looks like you can indict a prime minister. The Israeli Attorney General announces he’ll move forward on indicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges.
    • Netanyahu faces an election in April, and says he won’t step down if he is re-elected and also indicted.
  1. Jared Kushner meets with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. They don’t talk about Khashoggi’s murder.
  2. Pakistan shoots down an Indian fighter pilot, who then parachutes down and gets beaten by a mob before being rescued by the Pakistani military. Air fights and shelling along the border by Kashmir escalates as a result.
    • This all started with a suicide bombing of Indian troops a few weeks ago.
    • Pakistan releases the pilot by week’s end.
    • The last thing we need right now (or ever) is escalating tensions between two nuclear powers.
  1. Justin Trudeau faces unrest in his government after former attorney general Jodi Wison-Raybould testifies that she was pressured to ignore bribery charges against a Canadian engineering company. Et tu, Justin? Say it isn’t so.
  2. After negotiating with the Taliban, the Pentagon issues a proposal to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan within five years.
  3. We learn that Saudi Arabia detained and then tortured a U.S. citizen with dual citizenship with Saudi Arabia.
  4. An American who’d been held in Yemen for 18 months is finally freed.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House passes two background check bills:
    • The first fixes a loophole that currently allows gun dealers to transfer some guns before a background check is complete. Dylan Roof obtained his gun through this loophole.
    • The second bill requires a background check on ALL firearm sales. This is the first major gun control bill to pass the House in nearly 25 years.
  1. Republicans in the Senate say they don’t plan on dealing with any gun control bills, so these are both likely DOA.
  2. Trump says he’ll veto both bills if they make it to his desk.

Family Separation:

  1. Through a system of relief workers and immigration lawyers, 29 parents who were separated from the children last year make the trip back up to the border to demand asylum hearings and hopefully be reunited with their children. After 12 hours of negotiations, they’re all allowed into the U.S.
  2. At least 200 children are still separated from their parents.
  3. Because we’ve kept these children from their parents, those parents are now paying smugglers to come back to the U.S. illegally just to be with their kids. This isn’t working.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. West Virginia’s legislature got violent after the state Republican party set up a display in the statehouse linking Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to the 9/11 attacks.
    • Omar has been criticized repeatedly for what some call anti-Israel statements and what others call anti-Semitic statements.
    • Allegedly, the sergeant-at-arms for the state House said, “All Muslims are terrorists.”
  1. The Trump administration wants to expand their program to send Central American asylum seekers back to Mexico. Currently, this is only done at the Tijuana-San Diego ports of entry; the administration wants to do it in more border cities.
    • This is already endangering refugees in Tijuana, which doesn’t have the resources to handle the influx. Relief agencies are taking the brunt of this.
  1. Because of the barriers to legal immigration put in place by the Trump administration, more people are crossing the border illegally. Again, this isn’t working.
  2. Relief agencies claim that nine infants under one-year-old are being held in migrant detention centers without the required level of care.
  3. The U.S. government has received nearly 6,000 complaints of sexual abuse of detained migrant minors over the past four years.
  4. All four anti-transgender bills introduced in the South Dakota state legislature this year are now dead with the failure to pass the fourth one this week.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Following on the Senate’s passage of the bill last week, the House passes a public lands conservation bill that protects over a million acres of wilderness and reauthorizes conservation funding.
  2. A group of youth climate activists protest at Mitch McConnell’s Senate office to demand he take the Green New Deal seriously. Police arrest 42 of them.
  3. The Senate confirms fossil-fuel lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to run the EPA, and immediately Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) files an ethics complaint against him. Apparently he’s been participating in meetings on issues he previously lobbied for and he’s been holding meetings with his lobbying clients, both in violation of his signed ethics pledge.
  4. A court rules that Trump has to pay the legal costs for the Scottish government in a case where Trump tried to get them to halt a wind turbine project in Scotland.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The White House trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, corrects Trump about memorandums of understanding (MOUs) in the middle of a trade talk. Trump says they don’t mean anything, but Lighthizer explains to the press that an MOU is actually a binding contract. Trump says he doesn’t agree, at which point Chinese vice premier Liu He cracks up.
  2. It’s the retail apocalypse. So far, companies have announced 4,300 retail store closings slated for this year.
  3. Even though we’ve implemented steep tariffs, the U.S. trade deficit is now 16% larger than when Trump took office, with imports exceeding exports by a record high of $914 billion in 2018.
    • Part of the problem is that countries retaliated with their own tariffs, which caused U.S. exports decline starting in May of 2018.
    • According to economists, macroeconomic factors, like tax cuts and increased federal spending, overwhelmed Trump’s attempts to target specific trade deficits.
    • This all pretty much supports Janet Yellen’s statement earlier this week that Trump doesn’t understand macroeconomic policies (which would explain the scattershot combination of tax, trade, healthcare, immigration, spending, and foreign policies).
  1. A report shows that the caps on state and local tax deductions will hit around 11 million people this year. What was redacted from the report, though, was a description of the efforts by the Treasury to block state workarounds for the cap.
  2. Over 1,000 TSA employees still haven’t received back pay from the shutdown. I guess they better hold more bake sales.

Elections:

  1. Mitch McConnell blames Democrats for the election fraud in North Carolina that likely threw the election to the Republican candidate.
    • He conflates election fraud (where a third party tries to interfere in the votes of legitimate voters) with voter fraud (where someone tries to vote illegally). Republican voter policies, which Democrats tend to disagree with, target voter fraud not election fraud.
    • For comparison, this single case of election fraud in NC affected more ballots than did all of the proven cases of voter fraud over the past 70 years (even according to the Heritage Foundation’s inflated numbers which also include cases of election fraud).
  1. Mark Harris, the Republican at the heart of the fraud case, will not run again for health reasons. He suffered a stroke earlier this year.
  2. A grand jury charges Leslie Dowless with seven felonies in connection with election fraud. More charges could follow.
  3. And speaking of voter fraud, remember how Trump pointed to the attempted Texas voter role purge as evidence of voter fraud? Well, a judge just blocked that effort calling it ham-handed and threatening.
    • Just an FYI, this purging effort is a direct result of the gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, where the Supreme Court decided we are a post-discrimination society so we no longer need to monitor those states with a history of voter discrimination.

Miscellaneous:

  1. We learn that Trump ordered John Kelly to grant top-secret clearance to Jared Kushner, overruling the red flags brought up by security staff and officials. Kelly documented the request at the time.
  2. New defense rules change the way troops are reported on the census. Now they’ll be counted where they’re usually stationed instead of where they typically live, which could cut funding to their local communities.
  3. Wynn Resorts gets hit with a record $20 million fine for failing to investigate claims of sexual misconduct against Steve Wynn. Wynn left the company last year.

Polls:

  1. 68% of Americans want Mueller’s report to be released to the public.

Week 106 in Trump

Posted on February 5, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Trump gave two interviews this week, one seemingly spur of the moment to the New York Times and one on Face The Nation the day of the Super Bowl. I’m not going to talk about them here, because I feel we didn’t hear much that was new. Here are links to each, in case you’re interested: New York Times and Face The Nation.

Here’s what happened in politics last week…

Border Wall/Shutdown:

  1. Nancy Pelosi invites Trump to give his State of the Union address on the House floor on Tuesday, February 5, on the floor of the House.
  2. Trump continues to push the wall in public, but is staying out of the congressional negotiations on a border security plan.
  3. Trump says there must be funding for a wall, Pelosi says there won’t be funding for a wall, and the White House is still preparing a declaration of national emergency.
  4. Despite all the work to make the wall sound like a physical barrier or a fence and not a wall, Trump keeps reiterating that a WALL is a WALL.
  5. If you remember, last year the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could bypass environmental and impact studies for the border wall. Now, bulldozers are lined up outside the National Butterfly Center in Texas, waiting to destroy the protected habitat.
    • The habitat is home to 240 varieties of butterflies and 300 species of birds, and most of the areas people come to see will be behind the wall.
    • The wall here is envisioned to be 30 feet tall and made of concrete and steel, with a 150 foot enforcement zone in which all vegetation will be cleared.
    • CBP maps show that the construction would cut through the National Butterfly Center, a state park, and a 100-year-old Catholic church.
    • Legal action is still pending on all this.
  1. Last year, the Republican-held Congress required that CBP not build fencing in the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, but didn’t do the same for the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. So it’s expected that the wall will also cut through there.
  2. You know why the government can override environmental regulations here? Because of laws created after 9/11. The terrorists are winning.

Russia:

  1. Even though Trump canceled a planned meeting with Putin at the G20 in Buenos Aires last year after Russia opened fire on Ukraine naval ships, it turns out they did have a brief meeting with only Melania and Putin’s interpreter in attendance. Regardless of the innocence of this meeting, the lack of White House staff allowed the Russian press to spin it in Russia’s favor.
  2. Roger Stone pleads not guilty to all seven counts on which he’s charged—witness tampering, obstruction, and making false statements.
  3. After sanctions are lifted against Oleg Deripaska’s businesses, one of Deripaska’s companies appoints Christopher Burnham, a member of Trump’s transition team in the State Department, to their board of directors.
  4. A Kremlin-backed scheme to spread disinformation about the Mueller investigation fails because it was too farfetched. They claimed to have obtained all of Mueller’s database regarding the Russia investigation, but had only obtained what was revealed in court through a request for discovery by Russian company Concord. The trove also included fake documents to make it look like Mueller’s team is doing sloppy work.
  5. A district judge considers implementing a gag order on Roger Stone like she did with Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Her reason: “This is a criminal proceeding and not a public relations campaign.”
  6. The Trump administration announces they’re pulling the U.S. out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia because Russia isn’t holding up their end of the deal. (Funny. I just realized that’s always the case when Trump pulls out of an agreement. He thinks everyone is using the U.S.)
    • The treaty is regarded as a crucial moment for arms control during the Cold War. It got rid of over 2,600 missiles, and is key to Europe’s security strategy.
    • Putin says that’s fine, and pulls Russia out of the treaty in response. So now Russia can design new previously banned weapons. He also says Russia won’t start any more talks on nuclear arms control.
    • China criticizes the moves saying they’re bad for global security. China also says they wouldn’t join an expanded version of the treaty themselves, so there you are.
  1. Senate investigators conclude that the phone calls Donald Trump, Jr. made to a blocked number before and after the 2016 Trump Tower meeting were not to his father, but instead were to long-time business associates.
  2. The NRA denies they played an official role in a 2015 trip to Moscow to meet with Russian nationals. Emails and photos say otherwise. Maria Butina helped them with their travel arrangements and organized meetings with Kremlin officials.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Mike Pence has said he was unaware of Michael Flynn’s ties to Turkey and working as a foreign lobbyist. Now we learn that Elijah Cummings sent a letter to Pence about Mike Flynn during the transition in November of 2016. Cummings says he received a receipt confirming the transition team received the letter, so either Pence knew about Flynn, or his transition team kept it from him.
  2. Facebook says they’ve removed as many as 2.8 billion fake accounts over the past year.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Senate Judiciary Committee postpones the hearing for Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, William Barr, because of Democrats’ concerns over how he’ll handle Mueller’s investigation.
  2. A recent poll shows Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the most popular Supreme Court justice currently seated on the bench. Surprisingly—22% of respondents couldn’t name one justice sitting on the court.

Healthcare:

  1. A new VA policy allows veterans to choose a private physician if they have to drive more than a half hour to get to a VA facility. Previously, the rule was 40 miles.

International:

  1. The Trump administration places sanctions against Venezuela to pressure Maduro to step down.
  2. We learn from John Bolton inadvertently exposing notes on a legal pad ON LIVE TV that the administration is thinking about sending 5,000 troops to Colombia (which neighbors Venezuela). Colombia’s government says they don’t know what the note means.
  3. The U.S. government sends humanitarian assistance to Venezuela through USAID.
  4. The U.S. indicts major Chinese tech company Huawei on charges of lying to government officials and to business partners in an alleged scheme to pay employees to steal trade secrets. The indictment claims that:
    • Huawei’s founder and his daughter (the company’s CFO) lied to the FBI about dealing with Iran (to work around sanctions).
    • Employees received bonuses for stealing trade secrets.
  1. The UK’s House of Commons narrowly votes to have Theresa May renegotiate the Irish border issue with the EU as part of the Brexit agreement.
  2. The EU says there’s no more negotiating. Take it or leave it. No pun intended.
  3. Nissan cancels their plans to start production of a new car model in Britain, citing uncertainties around Brexit as a reason.
  4. The Senate passes an amendment to state opposition to Trump’s decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan. It passes with bipartisan approval (68 to 23)
  5. U.S. Intelligence officials testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in their annual worldwide threats hearing. Their testimony contradicts almost everything Trump says about national security. Here’s how:
    • Trump says North Korea isn’t a nuclear threat anymore.
      Intelligence officials say North Korea likely won’t give up their nuclear weapons.
    • Trump says Russia might not have meddled in our 2016 elections.
      Intelligence officials say Russia was so successful at it that they continued it in 2018 and will continue it into 2020.       They say this is our second most pressing challenge right behind cybersecurity.
    • Trump says a wall on our southern border is the most pressing security need (a national emergency even).
      Intelligence officials didn’t even mention that.
    • Trump says ISIS has been defeated.
      Intelligence officials say the group is weakened, but       it’s also returned to its “guerrilla warfare roots.”
    • Trump says Iran is continuing to build nuclear weapons.
      Intelligence officials say Iran is still in compliance with the JPOA, so is not building nuclear weapons.
    • Trump mocks climate change and calls it a hoax.
      Intelligence officials say it’s one of our greatest national and global security threats.
  1. In response, Trump trashes his intelligence leaders in a series of tweets, suggesting they should go back to school. But after they all meet, Trump says they’re more in agreement than it seems.
  2. One area of agreement between Trump and his intelligence officers is China, which both think is a major threat. But Trump thinks the threat is economic (trade) while intelligence officials think the threat is military and corporate espionage. They also say China is using cyber attacks to influence U.S. elections. (Dammit China and Russia! Stay out of our business.)
  3. Senior intelligence briefers say Trump is a danger to American security with his stubborn disregard for their security assessments. Two briefers say they’ve been warned not to give Trump information that contradicts his public stances because it makes him angry.
  4. Trump says that he’s free to ignore his intelligence officials and instead rely on his own beliefs. Which is technically true, but maybe not the most informed path. Trump also says he doesn’t want intelligence officials sharing their views with Congress.
  5. One major thing from the hearings that potentially got lost in all the conflict is the assessment that China and Russia are more closely aligned than at any time since the 1950s.
  6. The UK, France, and Germany form a new company to help them get around Trump’s Iran sanctions. The new company would avoid the U.S. banking system and thus would not be subject to the sanctions.

Family Separation:

  1. In a lawsuit launched by ACLU against ICE over family separations at the border, ICE files documents that not don’t deny that there are probably thousands more separated kids than initially reported. The filings also show that the administration thinks it would take too long to find all the people separated from their families because there was never any tracking system.
    • Of note, I see lawsuit filings over family separations in March of 2018, so family separations were happening long before Jeff Sessions announced it as policy.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Decades ago, Muslims settled in an area they called Holy Islamberg in upstate New York to get away from the dangers and temptations of the city. Now, conspiracy theorists and anti-Muslim groups smear the town as dangerous extremists, a jihadist training camp, a terrorist sleeper cell. Why is this news now? Because this week, police arrest four young men who were plotting an attack on the town. They confiscate 23 guns. This is the second recent threat against the town that police have thwarted in recent years.
  2. While Trump keeps pounding on the need for better border security, CPB and ICE haven’t really hired many new agents. Trump signed an order two years ago calling for 5,000 new CPB agents and 10,000 new ICE officers, but there hasn’t been an increase in numbers (for several reasons—the vetting and training processes, an inability to justify the hiring surge, high attrition rates, and so on).
  3. A Maryland State’s Attorney says her office will stop prosecuting marijuana possession regardless of quantity or prior crimes. If you’re wondering why this falls under “Discrimination,” check out the second paragraph here to see the real reason more African Americans than Caucasians are in jail for marijuana possession when both groups use pot at roughly the same rate.
  4. We’re not the only country arguing over asylum policies. In the Netherlands, police aren’t allowed to enter a church during an ongoing service to carry out police business. So a church there held a 24/7 prayer service for 97 days to protect one family from being deported. The service ends this week when the government agrees to a rule change that gives asylum seekers another chance.
  5. The U.S. flags the passports of at least two activists and two journalists working with the asylum seekers at the border. All four are detained by Mexican authorities and denied entry into the country. One resides in Tijuana, but is a U.S. citizen. She was denied access to her 10-month-old son, who was in Tijuana at the time. Another was separated from her husband and daughter while she was questioned. Her daughter sobbed so hard they let them stay in the interrogation room together.
  6. A day after Virginia Governor Ralph Northam ignites pro-life anger by describing in medical and practical terms what happens with a non-viable birth, his college yearbook page surfaces showing a picture of a man in blackface and a man in a KKK costume.
    • Northam take responsibility and apologizes, and that’s not enough—Democrats call for him to resign. Then he says doesn’t think it’s him and says he won’t resign. He does admit to using shoe polish on his face in a Michael Jackson imitation contest.
    • Should he resign, Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax, who is African American, would become governor. But the same site that published Northam’s yearbook also published information about claims of sexual assault against Fairfax. Fairfax says the sexual encounter in 2004 was consensual.
  1. The Department of Health and Human Services changes its rules so that religious foster-care and adoption agencies can discriminate against people they feel don’t agree with their religious teachings.
    • South Carolina’s governor previously signed an executive order that would allow Miracle Hill Ministries to discriminate, but the HHS rule overrode the governor’s EO. So HHS changed their rules.
    • Miracle Hill has previously refused to work with Jewish people and same-sex couples. This all goes back to the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision that supports exemptions to equality guidelines when they go against an organizations closely held religious beliefs.
  1. The Pentagon plans to send 3,500 additional troops to the southern border to help build and reinforce 160 miles of concertina wire fencing.
  2. Undercover Homeland Security agents end a sting operation where they created a fake university to snare foreign nationals who then enrolled in order to get or maintain student visas. DHS hired people to recruit the foreign citizens to enroll in the university. The sting results in the arrest of eight recruiters and could result in the deportation of dozens of “students.”

Climate/EPA:

  1. Another polar vortex hits the Midwest, and Trump wonders where that global warming is when you need it. Some researchers say global warming causes the polar vortex, but not all are convinced. The important thing to remember here is that weather is not the same thing as climate.
  2. The EPA says they won’t set limits on the amounts of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) allowed in our drinking water. Both are linked to cancer, thyroid disease, and immune issues.
  3. Compared to last year, there are 30 fewer lawmakers who are skeptical of any part of climate change than last year. That includes whether climate change is happening, whether it’s a danger, and whether it’s manmade. Deniers make up nearly 30% of Congress, and between them they’ve averaged around a half million in donations from the fossil fuel industry.
  4. France announces a new goal to double their renewable energy capacity within 10 years.
  5. The Bureau of Land Managements moves forward with their sales of oil and gas leases near sacred Native American sites, including the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Processing those energy leases is one thing that didn’t slow down during the shutdown.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The government won’t guarantee that over 1,000,000 federal contractors will receive any back pay from the shutdown, and these are already some of the lowest paid government workers (like janitors, guards, cooks, and so on).
  2. The Senate introduces a plan to repeal the estate tax entirely. Currently, no estate tax is paid for the first $22 million of an inherited estate.
  3. Foxconn announces changes to the Wisconsin campus that Paul Ryan worked so hard to secure. They’re moving away from manufacturing and instead will be a research center.
  4. The House passes a 2.6% pay raise for federal civilian workers. In December, Trump froze any raises for non-military federal workers.
  5. Rutger Bregman, who’s written about history, philosophy, and economics, speaks at Davos and lambasts the wealthy audience for not being willing to talk about taxes, which he says is the only way we know to fight the growing inequality. He says “It feels like I’m at a firefighters conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water.”
    • Ken Goldman, former CFO of Yahoo, denounces the speakers on the forum saying it was one-sided and demanding answers besides higher taxes (and sort of proving the point).
    • Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of Oxfam International, counters Goldman by talking about the lack of dignity in certain jobs and the powerlessness of workers, including those in the U.S. that have brought our unemployment so low.
  1. The economy added 304,000 new jobs last month, but the unemployment rate bumped up to 4%. This could be because people who were furloughed at the time might have reported (mistakenly) that they were unemployed.
  2. Government data shows that new orders for U.S. goods dropped in October and November last year, which suggests a slowdown in manufacturing. A new survey indicates things might’ve picked up again a bit in January.

Elections:

  1. Another state lawmaker switches party from Republican to Democrat. This time it’s New Jersey State Senator Dawn Addiego, who says “the party which once echoed the vision of Ronald Reagan no longer exists.”
  2. In recent weeks Texas flagged 95,000 registered voters for citizenship reviews. Now they’re saying that a substantial number of those flagged shouldn’t have been, and they’re working to remove those names. Apparently the Secretary of State neglected to check how many of these people had become citizens since last applying for a driver license as a non-citizen.
    • The list went back to drivers licenses issued in 1996.
    • Most of those flagged are Latino (shocking, I know).
    • The governor of Texas hasn’t stopped the operation from moving forward despite the errors.
    • The media spread headlines supporting Trump’s accusations of massive voter fraud, which has now turned out to not be the case.
  1. Mitch McConnell criticizes the House Democrats’ bills to make Election Day a federal holiday. He calls it a power grab. And he’s right. When everyone can vote, it’s a power grab by the people 😉

Miscellaneous:

  1. The first tornado in 80 years hits Havana, Cuba.
  2. The Pentagon drafts plans to create a space force under the Air Force rather than as a fully independent military branch as initially envisioned.
  3. A jury awards Rand Paul nearly $8,000 in medical costs, $200,000 for pain and suffering, and another $375,000 in punitive damages from when his neighbor attacked him at his home in 2017.
  4. Trump appoints Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson to be his chief medical adviser. Jackson was once Trump’s nominee for VA secretary, but couldn’t get through the confirmation process due to misconduct allegations. Trump also pushes for Jackson to receive his second star, but the previous allegations against him are still under investigation.
  5. There are three more mass shootings this week in Chicago, San Diego, and Houston. In total, they leave four dead and 13 injured.
  6. A White House staffer leaks three months worth of Trump’s schedules, which show an inordinate amount of time for “Executive Time.” I’m not going to report too much here because who knows what Executive Time actually is.
  7. Like another powerful woman before her (who I won’t name), Nikki Haley charges $200,000 to give speeches.

Polls:

  1. The U.S. falls from 16th to 22nd in the Corruption Perceptions Index (meaning we’re perceived as being more corrupt this year than last year).

Things Politicians Say:

“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president, and that’s why he’s there.”

~Sarah Huckabee Sanders to CBN’s David Brody and Jennifer Wishon

Week 105 in Trump

Posted on January 28, 2019 in Politics, Trump

The shutdown has finally come to an end, at least for now; but furloughed workers and the companies they owe will take some time to recover. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this past month cost us $11 billion, $3 billion of which we won’t make back. A complete waste of time and energy. Let’s get back to the business of governing and fixing the problems of the world.

Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. The new Democratic governor of Maine makes good on her promise to expand Medicaid by signing an executive order that should give healthcare coverage to around 70,000 Mainers. Even though voters approved Medicaid expansion over a year ago, former governor Paul LePage refused to implement it.
  2. Also, missed from last year: The DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women changed its definition of domestic violence. The definition was expanded under Obama and vetted by domestic violence experts. The new definition excludes psychological, mental, and emotional abuse; only felony acts can now be considered domestic violence.

Border Wall/Shutdown:

  1. Nancy Pelosi sends Trump a letter saying she’s postponing his State of the Union address due to security concerns from the government shutdown. Trump says he’ll do it anyway… until someone tells him that Pelosi has to invite him and she can uninvited him.
    • Trump says he’ll find another venue for it, possibly the Senate or maybe a rally. And then he says he’ll postpone it until after the shutdown.
  1. Meanwhile, both sides in both chambers of Congress work on deals to end the shutdown.
  2. The House Ways and Means Committee cancels a hearing on how the shutdown is affecting American taxpayers because Steve Mnuchin refuses to appear.
  3. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross says he doesn’t understand why furloughed and unpaid federal workers are using food banks. I guess when you have over $700 million, something like this can be hard to understand.
    • Ross says “There’s no reason why some institution wouldn’t be willing to lend.” His own department’s credit union charges federal workers 9% interest on emergency loans, while other lending institutions and cities begin offering them interest-free loans.
    • Because the Trump administration rescinded Obama’s payday lending regulations, the annual interest rate for payday loans in Missouri averages over 400%.
  1. Trump says you can just talk to your grocer if you’re a furloughed worker who can’t pay their bills. And that grocer will float you until you get paid. Sure.
  2. Nancy Pelosi defends the federal workers, saying they can’t just call their fathers for money.
  3. The House has passed bills at least 11 times to reopen the government. Meanwhile, the Senate fails to pass any bills to reopen the government, even those that were introduced by majority GOP members.
  4. The White House prepares a draft declaration of national emergency for the southern border as a possible means to end the shutdown.
  5. The FAA briefly halts flights into New York’s La Guardia airport over safety concerns due to lack of air traffic control personnel. This causes flight delays across the country and especially in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Orlando, and Atlanta.
  6. 14,000 unpaid IRS employees don’t show up to work. IT staffers at the IRS are finding work elsewhere.
  7. Irony alert 1: The State Department delays its upcoming conference on border security because of the shutdown.
  8. Irony alert 2: A lack of funding because of the shutdown hampers the FBI’s ability to fight child trafficking, violent crime, and terrorism according to the FBI Agents Association.
  9. Five former Homeland Security secretaries sign a letter to Trump asking him to end the shutdown for national security reasons. The signers are John Kelly, Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano, and Jeh Johnson.
  10. The most under-covered story of this shutdown seems to be the protests in DC over the shutdown. Hundreds of federal workers and supporters have been protesting in government offices for more than a week.
  11. All nine Representatives for the southern border districts say a wall isn’t the right solution. Trump’s demeaning rhetoric about migrants is pushing the area toward Democrats—only one district there is represented by a Republican.
    • Interesting side note: Trump’s rhetoric about immigration and the wall worked best for elections in states that are furthest from the wall, like Montana and North Dakota. Closer to the border, residents resent the implications.
  1. Trump and Congress reach a deal to end the shutdown for three weeks (that’s until February 15). They create a committee to negotiate a deal for DHS funding, including border security.
  2. The deal is basically the same deal that House Democrats offered all along—reopen for three weeks and negotiate border security in the interim.
  3. In his speech announcing an end to the shutdown, Trump continues to call it a wall. He doesn’t seem to understand the optics he’s created around that terminology. But he also says we don’t need 2,000 miles of concrete wall and says some can be steel slats.
    • Trump says he’d shut the government down again if needed, or declare a state of emergency.
    • He repeats the false claims that drug smugglers turn right and then make a left turn into the U.S. and that women are all taped up and trafficked over the border.
    • He claims that in the history of the WORLD it’s never been this bad.
    • He repeats false claims about gang members removed by ICE and about the number of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. He just can’t help himself from lying about this.
  1. Republicans in the Senate face much pressure from constituents. Their meetings get heated, with a bit of finger pointing (mostly at McConnell) and a lot of yelling. IMO, it’s because they aren’t leading with what they know is right on this issue.
  2. Trump promises federal workers they’ll receive their back pay very fast (the government still hasn’t completed the back pay from the 2013 shutdown).
  3. By the end of the week, the government will owe unpaid federal workers $6 billion in back pay.
  4. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the shutdown cost the U.S. taxpayers $11 billion.

Russia:

  1. Here’s a simple breakdown of where the Russia investigation stands right now—who’s been charged, who’s guilty, and how they’re related.
  2. The New York Times also has a clear breakdown of the over 100 contacts between Trump associates (including Trump himself) and Russia.
  3. Rudy Giuliani tries to walk back his previous claims that the discussions for Trump Tower Moscow were still going on into November 2016.
  4. Donald Trump Jr. states again that “we” (and by that I assume he means the Trumps) didn’t know anything about Trump Tower Moscow. He blames Michael Cohen for the whole thing. I give you exhibits a and b. There are also allegedly hundreds of pages of documents and plans.
    1. A 2013 tweet
    2. A letter of intent
  5. Michael Cohen delays his public testimony before Congress indefinitely after Trump makes vague comments that could be construed as threats of retaliation against Cohen’s family.
    • The Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenas him to appear before them in a closed-door hearing.
  1. Armed FBI agents raid Roger Stone’s home before dawn and arrest him on seven counts, including obstruction, lying, and witness tampering. Here are some claims in the indictment:
    • Stone communicated with the Trump campaign about the hacked emails in WikiLeaks’ possession.
    • Senior Trump campaign officials told Stone to find out more about WikiLeaks plans (WikiLeaks is “Organization 1” in the indictment).
    • Stone lied about having evidence to support these accusations, and he tried to get other witnesses to lie and withhold evidence.
    • Stone has always said (even on TV) that he had a middleman who actually contacted WikiLeaks. From this indictment it looks like there were two middlemen: “Person 1” is believed to be Jerome Corsi (confirmed by Corsi), and “Person 2” is believed to be Randy Credico.
    • After a release of hacked documents, a senior member of the Trump campaign was instructed to contact Stone to find out about any more planned releases. Stone kept this person informed of his progress. The senior member is assumed to be Steve Bannon, but this is only according to one source so far.
    • Emails and texts indicate that Stone was in frequent communication with the Trump campaign, Person 1, and Person 2 about the schedule for dumping the hacked emails as well as the content of those emails. (WaPo has a pretty thorough timeline of the messages.)
    • It was Corsi’s idea to start the rumors that Hillary is old, her memory’s bad, and she had a stroke.
    • There was a reporter who was aware of what was going on. Instead of covering it as the news it was, he or she was rooting for the emails to uncover something to destroy Hillary’s campaign.
    • After the dump of John Podesta’s emails, an associate of an unnamed senior campaign official sent Assange a message: “Well done.”
  1. Jerome Corsi says the indictment is accurate.
  2. The indictment quotes a bunch of documentary evidence supporting their charges, including emails and text messages between Stone and Person 1 and between Stone and Person 2.
  3. Stone pleads not guilty and is released on $250,000 bond. He says he’ll never make up lies against Trump, but he would be willing to testify to Mueller. Update: Whoops! He doesn’t plead not guilty until the following week.
  4. Stone is a decades-long advisor to Trump. He started his misinformation techniques on the Nixon campaign and has a tattoo of Nixon on his back.
  5. A Kiev court rules that the pro-Russian politician that Paul Manafort lobbied for, former President Viktor Yanukovych, committed treason. Yanukovych invited Russia to invade Ukraine, and has been accused of working for Russia, not Ukraine, while in office. He gets a 13-year prison sentence.
  6. Manafort has a court hearing over his alleged breach of his plea deal. The judge says she needs more information, and schedules a closed-door hearing for the first week of February.
  7. The Trump administration officially lifts the sanctions against Oleg Deripaska’s companies.
  8. It’s been three months since we determined that Russia violated the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act, but the Trump administration still hasn’t imposed the required sanctions as punishment for it.

Healthcare:

  1. The Department of Health and Human Services releases their changes to health insurance guidelines for 2020. If enacted, these changes are expected to increase premiums for ACA and employer plans, cut subsidies, and raise prescription costs.
    • The HHS says this will drop hundred of thousands of people off their insurance.
    • And I quote: “The savings to the Treasury are consistent with the idea that consumers would have to pay more.”
  1. The Massachusetts attorney general sues Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family who own it. The lawsuit alleges that they’re responsible for deceptive sales tactics for OxyContin. The AG accuses the family of engineering the opioid crisis.
  2. New York passes a bill to update their outdated abortion laws to protect and expand abortion rights in the state. It expands allowances for abortions after 24 weeks to include cases where the fetus is no longer viable and where the woman’s health is at risk (previously it only included when her life is at risk.) The bills also remove abortion from the criminal code and move it to the health code.
    • Pro-choice activists cheer the changes to the law law. Pro-life activists say the law allows abortion right up to birth. (It doesn’t. Also, just 1.4% of abortions occur after 21 weeks.)
  1. A state judge rules that Iowa’s fetal heartbeat abortion law is unconstitutional. It’s one of the country’s most restrictive abortion bans, as the heartbeat can be detected as early as 6 weeks in some cases.
  2. Washington state declares a state of emergency due to a measles outbreak. There are 35 confirmed cases, and measles can be fatal in young children and older people with lowered immunity. Measles was considered to be eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, but has seen a resurgence after some people stopped vaccinating their kids.

International:

  1. In the middle of U.S. trade negotiations with China, China grants Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for five new patents.
  2. The Taliban attacks a military base, killing dozens of Afghanistan intelligence agents. Taliban insurgents control over half of Afghanistan, but American, Afghan, and Taliban negotiators say they’re closing in on a truce.
  3. The U.S. officially quits UNESCO. Trump made the announcement last year, just as UNESCO was cleaning up most of the issues the U.S. had with the organization.
  4. After Nicolas Maduro announces he’s won the country’s presidential election, opposition leader Juan Guaidó says he won and even has his own swearing in.
    • The U.S. and most Latin American countries recognize Guaidó as the interim president and urge Maduro to give up power.
    • Maduro, in turn, gives U.S. diplomats 72 hours to leave. They refuse to leave.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Senate Republicans are working to shorten the length of time the Senate can spend debating a presidential nomination.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Supreme Court decides not to take up Trump’s DACA case for now, so Dreamers get another reprieve while the DACA program remains in place.
  2. But then…in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court allows Trump’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military to go into effect while the lower courts figure it out.
  3. The U.S. denies one of the stars of Roma, a 10-time Oscar nominated film, the visas needed to travel to the U.S. for the Oscars. Jorge Guerrero is a Mexican actor who’s been denied visas three times, despite letters from producers confirming his invitations. This isn’t the first time artists have been denied visas. Several South by Southwest artists were denied visas in 2017 after the initial Muslim ban.
  4. U.S. officials begin sending asylum seekers at the southern border back to Mexico to await the processing of their cases.
  5. The federal government issues a waiver that allows federally funded foster care agencies in South Carolina to deny services to same-sex or non-Christian couples.
  6. New York passes legislation to support Dreamers by allowing undocumented students to apply for assistance for college and by letting undocumented families take advantage of college savings programs. The bill also creates a college scholarship fund.
  7. The Trump Organization starts firing undocumented workers at its country clubs in New York. This is likely a reaction to a New York Times article that exposed them for not only hiring undocumented workers, but for also assisting these workers in obtaining false documents.
  8. Japan’s Supreme Court upholds a law that says if someone wants to change their gender on official documents, they must have their reproductive organs removed.
  9. Court records show that the police officer who led an investigation into a violent clash between anti-fascists and neo-Nazis in California focused his investigation on the anti-fascists.
    • The officer recommended charges be filed against 100 anti-fascists and against none of the neo-Nazis.
    • The officer researched the political leanings of the anti-fascists and not the neo-Nazis.
    • The officer considered the sticks for the flags carried by anti-fascists to be weapons; but then said that the sticks for the flags carried by the neo-Nazis weren’t weapons.
  1. In addition to the governor of Kansas reinstating protections for LGBTQ government workers, the governors of Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan do the same. Florida’s governor, on the other hand, omits LGBTQ people from an executive order on diversity in government.
  2. New York votes to ban conversion therapy for gay minors.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Under the Trump administration, civil penalties against polluters drop to their lowest level since 1994. And that’s not because companies stopped polluting.
  2. A Swedish teenage climate activist inspires youth rallies across Europe to bring attention to the lack of action on climate change. At Davos, she says:
    “Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope. But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.”
  3. 73% of Americans now believe that climate change is real, an increase of 10 percentage points over 2015. But it’s also about the same as 2009. We’ve literally gotten nowhere on this.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Furloughed and unpaid government workers will still be counted in the January jobs report as employed. Contractors who lost work because of the shutdown are considered unemployed for the jobs report.
  2. The Los Angeles teachers strike ends. Here’s what they get:
    • Smaller class sizes.
    • A nurse in every school, plus more counselors and librarians.
    • Steps against charter schools (privatization was a major issue of the strike).
    • Concessions on demands around immigrant rights, racial profiling, and green spaces at schools.
  1. Teachers are reviving the use of the strike as a worker weapon, something that’s been in decline for a while.
  2. More teacher strikes are on the horizon. Denver, Oakland, and Virginia teachers are talking about it.
  3. Union membership is at just 10.5%, down from 20.1% in 1983. The decline of unions is one of the causes for wage stagnation.
  4. The National Association of Business Economics finds that the 2017 tax reform bill hasn’t had a major impact on business investment or hiring plans.
  5. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross says that China and the U.S. are miles and miles away from ending the trade war.

Elections:

  1. Another state lawmaker changes party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. This time it’s San Diego Assemblymen Brian Maienschei, who says it’s partly because of Trump and partly because he’s changed.
  2. A judge in North Carolina denies Republican Mark Harris’s request to certify his election to Congress. His narrowly won election is still under dispute due to accusations of voter fraud and illegal ballot harvesting.
  3. A federal court decides on new district maps for Virginia’s House of Delegates districts. The maps would move the districts in favor of Democrats, which is no surprise since the gerrymandered lines were put in place by GOP legislatures.
  4. Even though ex-felons who’ve served their time can get their voting rights reinstated, several are saddled with incredible debt and owe restitution that they can’t afford. States are arguing right now whether to reinstate voting rights with or without full payment of restitution.

Miscellaneous:

  1. A 21-year-old man shoots and kills five people in a bank in Sebring, FL.
  2. Another 21-year-old man shoots and kills one man in a Pennsylvania bar and injures two others (one of whom later dies from his wounds). The shooter then breaks into a home and kills the homeowner and then himself.
  3. And yet another 21-year-old man shoots and kills five people in Louisiana, including his parents his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s father and brother. He’s later arrested in Virginia.
  4. A new report from the Anti-Defamation League finds that there were at least 50 extremist-related killings in the U.S. last year, and that every one of those was linked to at least one extreme right-wing movement (although one had switched to Islamic extremism). White supremacists were responsible for most killings.
  5. Jared Kushner’s security clearance was rejected by two career security specialists, but their supervisor, Carl Kline, overruled them. Kushner was one of at least 30 people in the administration for whom Kline overrode security clearance rejections.
  6. When Kushner’s security clearance request was bumped up to the CIA for the super-classified “sensitive compartmented information” (SCI) clearance, CIA officers called the White House security division to find out how Kushner ever got his original lower-level clearance.
  7. Trump says that he told Sarah Huckabee Sanders to stop having press briefings. SHS justifies this by saying reporters were just trying to make themselves into stars.
  8. Over the previous weekend, a viral video appeared to show students from an all-boys Catholic school mocking and disrespecting a Native American elder after the March for Life. This week, Twitter suspends the account apparently responsible for making the video go viral, calling it a fake account. (There are many interpretations of the hours and hours of video, and I’m not going to wade into that controversy. We’re all seeing it differently.)

Polls:

  1. Trump’s aggregated approval rating after the shutdown is around 39.4%.
  2. Trump’s losing his fight against the media:
    • Voters trust CBS more than him by 52% to 38%.
    • They trust NBC and the Washington Post more than him by 51% to 38%.
    • They trust ABC and the New York Times more than him by 51% to 39%.
    • They even trust CNN more than him by 49% to 39%.

Things Politicians Say:

“I am afraid it will be on my gravestone. ‘Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Trump.’”

~Rudy Giuliani, to The New Yorker

Trump has a “revolving door of deeply flawed individuals — amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons — who were hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes seemingly without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia.”

~Chris Christie, in Let Me Finish

Week 99 in Trump

Posted on December 18, 2018 in Politics, Trump

So much happened last week, but my favorite part of the week was when Trump surprised Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer with a meeting with the press when they thought they were having a closed-door meeting. As far as transparency goes, that was awesome. But things went downhill fast, with a lot of shouting, a lot of misinformation, a bit of man-splaining, and some name-calling; only Nancy Pelosi was trying to talk policy. Pelosi came out of it not only looking like the adult in the room but also firmly pinning any potential government shutdown on Trump. It’s easy to see how she got the votes for Speaker.

Here’s what else happened this week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. NASA spacecraft OSIRIS-REx arrived in the orbit of an asteroid named Bennu. OSIRIS-REx launched two years ago and will spend the next year surveying and mapping the asteroid and hopefully bring us back some rock samples. Seriously. We sent a spacecraft to an ASTEROID!
  2. The week had some hate:
    • Jehovah’s Witnesses have been targeted with hate crimes 5 times this year in Washington state. The latest attack destroyed a church in a fire.
    • Again in Washington, eight self-professed neo-Nazis assault a black man, yelling racist slurs as they attack him.
    • Someone spreads anti-Semitic pamphlets throughout Pittsburgh, and a student plasters State University of New York’s Purchase College with Nazi-themed posters.

Russia:

  1. Maria Butina pleads guilty to acting as an illegal foreign agent and agrees to cooperate with federal investigators. She’s the first Russian charged to admit trying to influence the 2016 elections.
  2. Here are some highlights:
    • In 2015, Butina began working with Alexander Torshin to establish “unofficial” lines of communication with political leaders for the benefit of the Russian Federation (because official lines weren’t working).
    • Butina targeted Republicans because she thought a Republican would win the presidency in 2016.
    • She worked with her boyfriend, South Dakotan Paul Erickson, on her plan and also to make the contacts she needed.
    • Butina planned to use the NRA to lay the groundwork because of their influence over the Republican party.
    • She received funding from a Russian billionaire.
    • In the middle of all this, Butina obtained a student visa so she could stay in the U.S.
    • She worked to meet with Trump’s advisors once he was elected. Butina and Erickson also tried to set up meetings between Trump advisors and Russian officials.
  1. As of this week, we know through court filings and guilty pleas that at least 16 Trump business and campaign associates had contact with Russians during the 2016 campaign. And every one of them lied about it.
  2. Newspapers and businesses across the country receive bomb threats, suspected to come from Russian hackers. The hackers ask for bitcoin in order to not detonate the (non-existent) bombs.
  3. Everything was going so well for Michael Flynn, who was probably on track to serve no jail time. And then, his lawyers file a court document claiming that the FBI didn’t let him know he maybe needed a lawyer during the interviews where he lied to investigators (which led to the charges against him). They say that the FBI tricked Flynn into lying but still don’t say why Flynn lied.
  4. Mueller says Flynn is an experienced military man in a high-level government position. He should know better than to lie to U.S. intelligence in any situation, and there was no coercion for him to lie.
  5. Two of Flynn’s associates say he was meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 elections to talk about cooperation between Russia and the U.S. Russia would help end the Syrian conflict and the U.S. would ease sanctions.
    • The talks continued even after U.S. intelligence agencies told Trump’s campaign that Russia was behind the DNC hacks and subsequent leaks.
  1. On judge‘s orders, Mueller turns over their documentation of the interviews with Flynn where he is said to have lied.
  2. Texts and emails show that Paul Manafort was advising the Trump administration on ways to discredit Mueller’s investigations. Manafort recommended attacking the FBI, the DOJ, the Steele Dossier (and the Clinton campaign’s involvement) and any Obama officials involved in getting the FISA warrant. He recommended accusing the DNC of colluding with Ukraine.
  3. Studies commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee find that clearly all of the messaging coming from Russian entities was designed to benefit the Republican party and later Trump specifically.
    • One report finds that Russians used every major social media platform to influence the elections in 2016.
    • The other report analyzed how the Russian company Internet Research Agency targeted specific demographics for political messaging. IRA targeted blacks and other minorities to either discourage them from voting and turn them against Democrats.
    • Russian trolls and bots put a lot of time into dividing us on gun rights and immigration issues. They’d embed themselves in specific circles using authentic content, and then start posting provocative misinformation.
    • Posts on Instagram generated more than twice the user engagement than other major platforms.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Trump says he never told Cohen to break the law, but didn’t dispute that he told Cohen to pay off his mistresses to keep them quiet about their affairs. Trump says Cohen should’ve known what was legal; Cohen says he was under Trump’s sway.
  2. Sources says that Trump was involved in meetings where Cohen and David Pecker (of American Media Inc. (AMI)) talked about the payments.
  3. In his sentencing hearing, Cohen implies that he has more to talk about than just hush money payments. He gets a three-year sentence plus fines.
    • As a reminder, he pled guilty to: tax evasion, campaign finance violations, lying to banks, and lying to Congress. These are not all his known crimes.
    • Sean Hannity deletes all his tweets linking him to Cohen just before Cohen is sentenced.
  1. AMI is also in a cooperation agreement and has agreed to tell prosecutors everything they know about Trump. If you remember, AMI also has a vault of the negative stories about Trump that they killed in the run-up to the 2016 elections.
  2. David Pecker also admits to the hush money payments. AMI says the payments were to influence the elections, giving even more credence to the allegation that these were illegal campaign donations.
  3. Investigators are looking into donations to Trump’s inaugural committee and to a pro-Trump super PAC. They say foreign agents from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE might have disguised donations to buy influence over U.S. policy. Not surprisingly, Manafort it involved in this.
  4. When Trump and his siblings inflated invoices for their shell company decades ago, they also used those invoices as justification to inflate rent increases in their apartment buildings. This has caused the rent in those buildings to be artificially inflated for decades, even though the Trumps no longer own them.
  5. In a defamation lawsuit, Roger Stone admits to telling lies on InfoWars. Stone says he didn’t do his research and took the word of Sam Nunberg about alleged foreign donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “Didn’t do his research” is how all this BS gets spread around in the first place so do your research!

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court refuses to hear cases about blocking funding for Planned Parenthood. This leaves in place the lower court rulings that say states can’t cancel Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood offices.
  2. The Senate confirms Jonathan Kobes to a federal appeals court despite the ABA questioning his knowledge of the law and ability to understand complex legal analysis. This is Trump’s second unqualified but confirmed judicial nominee.
  3. The chief justice of California’s Supreme Court changes her party affiliation from Republican to No Party Preference. She says it’s been coming for a while, but Kavanaugh’s confirmation was the nail in the coffin.

Healthcare:

  1. The Trump administration shuts down an HIV research project in Montana because they use fetal tissue to research a cure for HIV/AIDS. Restrictions on the use of fetal tissue have been shutting down research projects across the country.
  2. The Senate votes against a bill that would extend VA benefits for thousands of vets who were exposed to Agent Orange. The House passed this bill unanimously.
  3. A federal judge in Texas rules that without the mandate, certain parts of the ACA are unconstitutional. Trump says that’s great news, but even legislators who tried to kill the ACA aren’t thrilled with this ruling. Many are even confused by it. The White House assures us that the ACA will remain in place through the appeals process. Oh, and the ruling comes the day before open enrollment ends.

International:

  1. Trump rejects the information given by U.S. intelligence agencies in his daily briefings on world events. Specifically, he’s denied that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections, he says North Korea will halt their nuclear weapons program, and he disagrees with them about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, climate change, and the role of the Saudi Crown Prince in Khashoggi’s murder.
  2. Theresa May delays a vote to approve her Brexit deal, and then survives a vote of no confidence. She then returns to Brussels to negotiate once more, but returns empty-handed.
  3. On top of weeks of protests across France, a shooter kills three people and injures 13 at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, putting all Christmas Markets in France on high alert and launching a manhunt. Police later find and shoot the gunman.
  4. A cyber attack on the Marriott earlier this year accessed the personal information of around 500 million guests. Investigators blame the cyber attack on Chinese intelligence.
  5. Trump continues to stand by Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman despite GOP Senators standing against him on this. Interesting side note: Some members of the Saudi royal family would like to stop MbS from being crowned king, but support from the U.S. and Trump could sway them.
  6. The Senate passes a resolution that declares MbS is not only involved in Khashoggi’s murder but is responsible for it.
  7. The Senate passes a recommendation to end support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
  8. Party members in Hungary that are normally in opposition to one other unite in protest against Prime Minister Viktor Ordan’s authoritarian rule. Rallies and protests have spread across the country, taking the Prime Minister and his Fidesz party by surprise. Ordan has been steadily increasing his power while weakening democratic institutions and processes.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The Senate reverses a Trump policy that helped hide information about donors to political non-profits. With the Senate bill, donors must be disclosed to the IRS.
  2. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signs a series of lame duck bills into law, curtailing the power of the office he is leaving because the person taking his place is a Democrat. From what I can see, the GOP plan seems to be: 1) Gerrymander districts so the other party can’t ever get a majority (even with a majority of votes statewide); and 2) When the populace finally votes your party out, change all the rules of government to make sure they can’t get anything done. Such a bad precedent.
    • Lawsuits against these bills are already in the works. Several of North Carolina’s attempt at passing bills to weaken incoming Democratic officials two years ago are still stuck in the courts.
    • Republicans in Wisconsin’s state legislature started working on these bills months ago just in case there was a shift in parties.
  1. Florida’s governor-elect Ron DeSantis wants to delay implementation of the voter approved ballot initiative that restored voting rights to felons who’ve served their time (excepting certain violent crimes).
  2. The House passes a bill to prevent states from holding children in adult jails and to ban the practice of shackling pregnant girls. The bill also funds tutoring, mental health assistance, and drug and alcohol programs for juvenile offenders.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The number of migrant minors held in U.S. custody is now nearly 15,000. A big reason for the backlog is that sponsors for these children are afraid to come forward for fear of being deported themselves.
  2. Church leaders form an interfaith protest at the U.S.-Mexico border in support of those seeking asylum. Officials arrest 32 faith leaders and activists at the protest.
  3. Officials in Ohio arrest a man who was plotting to kill people in a Jewish synagogue. Hate crimes against Jews have increased more than any other type of hate crime.
  4. Immigration judges for the most part want to make the right choices and not send people back to their home countries to get killed. The Global Migration Project at Columbia University recently found over 60 people who were killed or harmed after being sent home.
  5. The Trump administration starts working once again to deport refugees from the Vietnam war who’ve lived in the U.S. for decades.
  6. Trump says the updated NAFTA deal means that Mexico will pay for his wall. In case you were wondering, it doesn’t.
  7. A seven-year-old migrant girl dies after getting sick eight hours after being taken into custody. Homeland Security says that she didn’t have anything to eat or drink for days before being detained, but her family says that’s not true. The fastest way to get her medical assistance was a 90-minute bus ride, during which she worsened until she was no longer breathing when they arrived. An investigation is underway.
  8. Trump uses the shooting in Strasbourg as a reason we need to shore up our borders, but it turns out the shooter was born in Strasbourg.
  9. Trump claims that the migrants coming in to this country are spreading contagious diseases. There’s no evidence of this.
  10. Trump says a lot of his wall is already built and that it has decreased illegal migration significantly. He seems to be referring to fencing built or fixed between 1992 and 2016.
  11. Trump says says migrants crossing the border illegally are pouring drugs into the country, but according to the DEA most drugs come in through legal ports of entry.
  12. In referring to illegal immigration over the southern border, Trump says: “We caught 10 terrorists over the last very short period of time. Ten.” I’m not sure what he means by ‘the last very short period of time,’ but most terrorists are blocked from entry into the U.S. at airports. And a State Department study found “no credible information that any member of a terrorist group has traveled through Mexico to gain access to the United States.”
  13. Betsy DeVos moves to rescind Obama-era guidance over school discipline that prevented minority students from receiving harsher punishments than their white classmates.
  14. Miss USA, Miss Columbia and Miss Australia are caught on tape mocking other Miss Universe contestants’ English-speaking skills.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A new study that compares past and future climates suggests that over the past 200 years, human activity has reversed millions of years of cooling. So yes, our climate changes, but generally not as rapidly as now.
  2. At the UN climate talks, Trump’s top climate and energy advisor is greeted with laughter when he gives a talk that includes pitching coal, the fossil fuel largely responsible for climate change. Turns out that most of the audience is there merely to protest; the U.S. couldn’t get enough people who are serious about climate change to attend.
  3. At the same talks, nations discuss the latest IPCC report which calls for dramatic cuts in emissions. Oil producing nations want to keep the report out of the final agreement, and the U.S. backs them. They end up welcoming the “timeliness” of the report as opposed to the content of the report.
  4. Even more interesting, though, is the fact that U.S. officials were working behind the scenes to continue making contributions to the Paris agreement.
  5. The Trump administration wants to reclassify nuclear waste so we don’t have to be so cautious in disposing of it, making disposal cheaper. Though this is the same administration that says a little radiation every day is good for you!
  6. The Trump administration proposes weakening the clean water rules that were created by George H.W. Bush and expanded on under Obama. The changes loosen protections against pollutants, pesticides, and toxic waste in certain waterways.
  7. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke resigns in the middle of more than a dozen ethics investigations into his political activity, travel expenses, and possible conflicts of interest. Zinke used his position roll back environmental protections and to exploit federal lands with the goal of global energy dominance.
  8. Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt will take over for Zinke temporarily. Bernhardt was a fossil fuels and water industry lobbyist before coming to the department (whose mission, by the way, is to be a good steward of our public lands).
  9. The Trump administration auctions off leases that will allow fracking on public lands near Utah’s national parks.
  10. A new study shows that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef might be adapting to the warmer waters caused by climate change. The harm done to the reef this year was less than expected despite warmer waters.

Budget/Economy:

  1. China agrees to cut tariffs on U.S. automobiles to 15%.
  2. Trump says he’ll shut down the government if the spending bill doesn’t fund his border wall. He even says he’ll be proud to shut it down.
  3. Trump signs an executive order to help fund underserved communities known as “opportunity zones.”
  4. Trump wants to get rid of subsidies for electric vehicles, which would give foreign automakers an advantage in EV development.
  5. The budget deficit for the first two months of fiscal year 2019 is double what it was in the first two months of fiscal year 2018. The administration predicts the deficit will be over $1 trillion for three straight years.
  6. In 2010, Wells Fargo incorrectly foreclosed on around 545 homeowners due to a computer glitch. Most of these people lost their homes, their current and future equity, and in some cases their pets because they had to move. To make up for it, Wells Fargo sends the borrowers checks that grossly under-compensated them for their losses.
  7. A few months ago, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau put out a report showing that Wells Fargo was price-gouging student borrowers. The Trump administration has been sitting on that information.
  8. Betsy DeVos loses a court battle and now has to cancel $150 million in federal student loan debt. The loan forgiveness affects 15,000 borrowers who were cheated by for-profit colleges.

Elections:

  1. A federal court in Virginia hands down documents in a case that concluded that 11 of Virginia’s districts are illegally gerrymandered. The case is pending before the Supreme Court, but the legislature must redraw the district lines anyway. One of the documents includes a variety of plans, but none of them redraw less than 21 districts.
  2. Things aren’t looking good for Mark Harris, Republican candidate for Congress in North Carolina’s 9th District. It turns out that he sought to hire Leslie Dowless to help win the 2018 race after losing a race in 2016, knowing Dowless’ reputation for using sketchy means to win elections. Dowless illegally harvested ballots according to witnesses.
  3. George Papadopoulos feels like he’s ready to run for Congress. Now that he’s done his jail time for lying about Russian contacts, that is.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Time Magazine names a group of journalist as their Person of the Year. The group, which Time calls The Guardians, include the slain journalists at the Capital Gazette and Jamal Khashoggi, among others. One of the reasons for this choice is that “manipulation and abuse of truth is really the common thread in so many of this year’s major stories.”
  2. The House Judiciary Committee questions a Google executive for over three hours because Republicans think Google searches bring up results that aren’t fair to conservatives. Both parties are concerned about privacy issues.
  3. Stormy Daniels has to pay Trump nearly $300,000 in legal fees because her defamation suit against him was dismissed.
  4. A Kansas state senator switches party affiliations from Republican to Democrat after being ostracized for supporting the Democratic candidate for governor over Kris Kobach.
  5. The Trumps cancel the White House tradition of a holiday press party. Last year, they held the event but declined the tradition of taking pictures with anyone who wanted one.
  6. After Nick Ayers turns down the chief of staff position, Chris Christie takes himself out of the running as well. Jared Kushner’s in the running, but then Trump picks Mick Mulvaney to be acting chief of staff. Mulvaney is already wearing a couple different hats.
  7. The Trumps plan to take a 16-day trip to Mar-a-Lago over the holidays.
  8. Voyager 2 becomes the second human-made object to leave our solar system (Voyager 1 was the first). Voyager 2 was launched in 1977 and its equipment still functions.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s approval rating in rural areas is 61% compared to 31% in urban areas and 41% in suburban areas.

Week 98 in Trump

Posted on December 11, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Manafort, Cohen, and Flynn! Oh my!

Here’s some democracy in action. Dane Best, a 9-year-old in Colorado, wanted to be able to have snowball fights (more specifically, he wanted to bean his little brother). So he started a letter-writing campaign, spoke at a town council meeting, and convinced his community leaders to overturn a ban on snowball fights that had been in place for decades. Yes, decades. How is it that it took this long for an enterprising youngster to realize he can create the change that he wants to see? Why is it that we grownups don’t always realize we can create the change that we want to see?

Here’s what else happened in politics last week. It was a big week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. An Indiana judge orders the governor to turn over emails between then-governor Mike Pence and Trump about jobs at Carrier Corp.

Russia:

  1. Roger Stone refuses to testify or to turn over requested documents, invoking the Fifth. It’s possible (likely?) that Stone’s lawyer is mistaken in thinking the Fifth applies here.  
  2. Trump praises Stone for his lack of cooperation with the investigations.
  3. Sean Hannity tells listeners of his radio show not to talk to the FBI, even if they’re aware of crimes, because the FBI is too focused on the Russia investigation.
  4. Mueller’s team says they’re beginning to tie up loose ends in their investigation.
  5. Because of the false testimony exposed by the recent plea deals in the Russia investigation, House Democrats plan to send Mueller transcripts of the testimony given to them by Trump associates. They want Mueller to review the transcripts for any misinformation.
  6. Rudy Giuliani says they haven’t had time to draft a response or rebuttal to Mueller’s report, but Trump says they’re almost done with it—87 pages worth. Trump adds that they can’t finish it until Mueller issues his report.
  7. George Papadopoulos finishes his 12-day sentence and now has a year of probation and 200 hours of community service.
  8. Maria Butina’s boyfriend, Paul Erickson, is under suspicion of acting as a foreign agent and enabling Butina’s illegal activities by helping her develop contacts with political leaders, including in the NRA. Butina is in prison for her alleged activities and is likely to take a plea. (Note: I originally named Paul Erickson’s incorrectly as Erick Erickson.)

Michael Flynn

  1. Robert Mueller issues his recommendation on Michael Flynn’s sentencing for his plea deal, recommending that Flynn serve no prison time due to the extent of his cooperation and his “substantial assistance.”
  2. Mueller’s sentencing memo is highly redacted, but implicates high-ranking transition officials in the Trump transition team, likely including Jared Kushner.
  3. Flynn says a very senior transition team member told him to contact foreign officials (including in Russia) about a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements. At the time this was going on, Obama was getting ready to allow a Security Council vote on the resolution.
  4. Flynn also called a senior transition official at Mar-a-Lago to talk about what to say to the Russian ambassador about the impending sanctions. Transition members wanted Flynn to let Russia know not to escalate the situation. At the time this was going on, Obama was preparing to hit Russia with additional sanctions over their election meddling.
  5. Flynn learned that transition members did not want Russia to escalate the situation, according to court papers.

Paul Manafort

  1. Robert Mueller files his report about why he thinks Paul Manafort breached his plea deal:
    • Manafort lied about contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, who is implicated in both the Russian hacking scheme and attempts to tamper with witnesses in Manafort’s cases.
    • Manafort lied about a wire transfer related to his charges.
    • Manafort lied about information relevant to an unrelated DOJ case.
    • Manafort lied about having recent contact with Trump administration officials.
    • Mueller has documented proof of the above lies.

Michael Cohen

  1. Even though Michael Cohen has been very cooperative with the investigation and complied with his plea agreements, federal prosecutors recommend substantial prison time for his crimes (four years). Mueller recommends concurrent time for lying to government officials.
  2. As a result of the court filings around Michael Cohen, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York determine that Trump participated in federal crimes with Cohen. Some of these crimes are around hush money to his mistresses. The coverup is always worse than the crime. Always.
  3. Mueller’s sentencing filing shows that the Trump campaign was approached by Russia in 2015 to develop government-level political synergy.
  4. It turns out that Cohen did expect a pardon if he just stayed on the president’s message.
  5. Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee make several referrals for prosecution to Mueller. It seems several referrals stem from what we’ve learned from Cohen recently.
  6. If Cohen’s account is accurate, then Russia did have leverage over Trump because they knew he was lying about contacts with Russians and business dealings with Russia.

James Comey

  1. James Comey testifies for House committees behind closed doors for six hours about the integrity of FBI investigations. Apparently six hours weren’t enough, because he’s testifying again on the 17th.
  2. This seems to be part of yet another congressional investigation into the FBI investigation into Clinton’s emails. The inspector general has investigated this as have multiple congressional committees.
  3. Here are some highlights from the released transcript:
    • Contrary to Trump’s accusations, he and Mueller are not best friends; not even social friends.
    • Barack Obama did not order the FBI to spy on Trump’s campaign, but if he would’ve, the FBI would’ve refused.
    • A lot of this is just rehashed information we already know from previous testimony and from the IG report.
    • Republicans say they’re unhappy that Comey’s lawyer advised against answering several questions, but the transcript contradicts this. Most of the questions he didn’t answer were about Mueller’s ongoing investigation. He was also unable to comment on hypotheticals.
    • Republicans also say they’re unhappy with the number of times he said he didn’t know or couldn’t remember. Many of these questions were about details of FBI investigations that were below his pay grade.
    • Comey acknowledged that the Steele Dossier was a result of opposition research, first by Republicans and then by Democrats.
    • The Russia investigation began because of Papadopoulos.
    • The FBI’s New York field office was leaking information to damage Clinton, which is why Comey decided to make the public statement on the email investigation in 2016.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The fallout from the Panama Papers begins in the U.S. when the DOJ charges four people with tax evasion based on information found in those papers.
  2. Maryland and DC subpoena financial records related to Trump’s hotel in Washington. It seems the lease is being violated; no elected official can hold the lease because it’s the Old Post Office building and leased from the federal government.
  3. The FBI raids the home of Dennis Cain, who was granted whistle-blower status for providing documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee around the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One.
  4. Jeff Sessions directed U.S. Attorney John Huber to open an investigation into the Clinton Foundation at congressional Republicans’ urging.
  5. A private investigation firm is also looking into the foundation. The firm, MDA Analytics LLC,reportedly used ex-U.S. intelligence to do the research, but I can’t find any information about the company.
  6. A federal judge orders more fact-finding about Clinton’s private email server in a case alleging that the she used the server to protect herself from the Freedom of Information Act.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Hundreds of former DOJ employees call on Trump to replace Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker (who is a walking, talking conflict of interest). They also call on Trump to quickly nominate someone, and in the meantime to replace Whitaker with someone who the Senate has actually confirmed.
  2. Whitaker has yet to tell us how he’ll handle conflicts of interest as Acting Attorney General, and we know there are a few.
  3. Trump nominates William Barr to take over as Attorney General. Barr served in that position under George H.W. Bush.
  4. Reminiscent of Bill Clinton running into Loretta Lynch when she was overseeing the investigation into Hillary’s emails, Jared Kushner invites Matt Whitaker on a flight with him aboard Marine One while Whitaker is overseeing an investigation of which Kushner is a subject.

International:

  1. CIA Directory Gina Haspel briefs senators on Saudi Arabia and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. GOP Senators contradict Trump and say they are more convinced than ever that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in this murder.
  2. Trump has held that evidence of the Crown Prince’s involvement is inconclusive, as did Mike Pompeo and Jim Mattis in an earlier briefing. GOP senators pretty much say Trump is trying to help Saudi Arabia cover this up, and that Pompeo and Mattis mislead the Senate.
  3. Here’s an interesting thing Lindsey Graham says about this: “If they [Pompeo and Mattis] were in a Democratic administration, I would be all over them for being in the pocket of Saudi Arabia.” So just to make sure I have this straight, since they’re in a Republican administration, they are not in the pocket of Saudi Arabia? Party over country…
  4. Turkey issues an arrest warrant for the top aide to MbS and to his deputy head of foreign intelligence.
  5. We learn that Jared Kushner, one of MbS’s fiercest defenders in the White House, advised MbS on how to manage the Khashoggi scandal.
  6. Trump nominates Heather Nauert to replace Nikki Haley as the UN ambassador. Nauert is the current spokesperson for the State Department, and before that was an anchor on Fox News. Trump will also downgrade the UN ambassador position from a cabinet-level position.
  7. Trump says that he’ll suspend our participation in the 1987 Treaty on Intermediate-range Nuclear Force in two months unless Russia starts to comply with the conditions. That would let us develop and test new missiles.
  8. Satellite images now show that North Korea is expanding one of their long-range missile bases.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. After losing all the statewide seats in the midterms (governor, lt. governor, and secretary of state), Republican state legislators in Wisconsin begin a power grab to change the rules of their government and limit the power of the incoming Democrats. They pass a plan to:
    • Limit early voting.
    • Restrict the new governor’s ability to make appointments.
    • Shift some of the legal responsibilities of the governor and secretary of state to the legislature.
    • Lock in a work requirement for Medicaid.
  1. Protestors take to the State Capitol to voice their disapproval, even shouting over the Christmas tree lighting ceremony and choirs of high school students singing carols. Conservatives are quick to denounce the Christmas protest because of those poor students, but it turns out the students were in on it as well.
  2. And then Michigan follows suit by passing bills to:
    • Restrict the voter-approved legalization of marijuana.
    • Override voter-approved minimum wage requirements.
    • Prevent political non-profits from having to disclose their donors.
    • Add restrictions to the “promote the vote” initiative passed by voters, making it harder instead of easier to vote.
    • Restrict the voter-approved redistricting plan that takes redistricting out of party hands and puts it into the hands of a non-partisan commission.
    • Shift some of the legal responsibilities of the governor and secretary of state to the legislature.
  1. Just a reminder that in 2016, North Carolina’s legislature tried to place limits on the incoming Democratic governor, who in turned filed a series of lawsuits. So far, the courts have found largely for the governor.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Last month, a court blocked Trump’s policy of overly stringent vetting of green-card holders in the military. So now, the Pentagon sends thousands of recruits to basic training who’ve been in a backlog waiting to get in.
  2. We’ve been expecting a new trial in Florida for Jeffrey Epstein, who’s been accused of multiple incidents of child and sexual abuse, but the case settles just before it was to start. After his first trial, Epstein’s charges were highly reduced, and he served a light sentence with freedom to leave jail to work for 12 hours a day, six days a week.
  3. A jury finds James Alex Fields guilty of first degree murder for killing Heather Heyer when he plowed his car into a group of people protesting a white nationalist rally. He was convicted of multiple other counts of wounding other protesters. He has yet to be tried for multiple federal hate crimes.
  4. Ammon Bundy leaves the patriot movement he helped lead. He faced harsh criticism over his views on immigration after he issued a compassionate statement about immigrants and asylum seekers who are in need and should get a fair hearing. He says the patriot movement blindly supports Trump.
  5. Trump’s New Jersey golf course hires undocumented workers, including Trump’s own personal housekeeper there. When Trump was elected, a supervisor told his housekeeper that she needed documentation showing permanent residency, which the supervisor helped her obtain (though not through legal channels from what I’ve read).
  6. The replacement for NAFTA removes protections for LGBTQ workers.
  7. Emantic Bradford, who was shot by police when they suspected he was an active shooter, turned out to have been helping people escape the gunfire. Bradford had a weapon, but also had a license to carry. The officer who shot him (three times in the back) is still on duty and was also the only person to kill someone that night.
  8. Not surprisingly, protests erupt over the shooting and several protesters are arrested.
  9. Trump has more confidence in Kirstjen Nielsen after her tough stance on the migrant caravan.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A judge refuses to hear a challenge to Trump’s border wall from an environmental non-profit. The non-profit says the wall will destroy a protected butterfly habitat and could harm endangered species like the monarch butterfly and ocelots.
  2. French President Emmanuel Macron suspends planned carbon taxes that sparked weeks-long protests.
  3. Climate scientists and policy experts say countries aren’t implementing strong enough rules to help fight climate change. Several major countries are failing in their targets set in the Paris agreement.
  4. Global carbon emissions reach their highest levels ever recorded. They grew 1.6% in 2017 and are expected to grow 2.7% in 2018. The U.S. is the second largest emitter; China is first.
  5. A 15-year-old activist calls out global leaders for their lack of climate action. Greta Thunberg, who’s been sitting in front of the Swedish parliament every Friday since September, says:

“For 25 years countless people have come to the UN climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions, and clearly that has not worked as emissions are continuing to rise… So we have not come here to beg the world leaders to care for our future. They have ignored us in the past and they will ignore us again. We have come here to let them know that change is coming whether they like it or not.”
You can listen to the full speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cve4bLDrlM

  1. The Trump administration plans to end tax credits and incentives for electric cars and renewable energy. Maybe he’ll end subsidies for the fossil fuel industry as well (LOL I crack myself up).
  2. Trump proposes increasing carbon emissions limits for new coal plants. Under Obama-era rules, they were required to burn some natural gas to keep their emissions lower.
  3. The Trump administration moves to loosen protections for the sage grouse to enable to more oil and gas drilling.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The market has a really rocky week, with the Dow Jones dropping 1,600 in two days, rising back up 700 the next day, and then dropping almost 1,100 points the next.
  2. The drop came as investors lose confidence that our trade war with China is actually de-escalating. The markets aren’t helped at all when Trump tweets, “I am a Tariff Man.”
  3. In truth, when Trump tweeted after the G-18 that China would reduce and remove tariffs on our cars, aides said they didn’t know of any such commitment from China. And the press statements issued from the White House and from China are contradictory, indicating that nothing solid was agreed upon.
  4. On the same day that Trump announces a trade truce with China, Canada arrests Wanzhou Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei, at the request of the U.S. Huawei is a major telecom company in China, and Meng is the founder’s daughter. This throws yet another wrench in efforts to stabilize tariffs. Her charges are based in trying to get around the sanctions against Iran to do business with sanctioned companies.
  5. And now I feel more secure… Trump says it doesn’t matter if he deals with our increasing debt because he won’t be around to shoulder the blame when it all blows up.
  6. Congress passes a two-week extension on the funding bill deadline, which means if that all blows up, it’ll happen four days before Christmas. The impasse is over funding the border wall. Trump says he’s fine with a government shutdown.
  7. The U.S. becomes a net oil exporter. Barely.

Elections:

  1. In a runoff election, Republican Brad Raffensperger defeats Democrat John Barrow to become Georgia’s secretary of state. This was a closely watched election because the previous GOP secretary of state oversaw an election in which he won the governorship and in which several registrations and ballots were rejected, allegedly for spurious reasons. The office faces accusations of ongoing voter suppression.
  2. During the 2018 midterm campaigns, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) was hacked and email accounts were monitored by the hackers for months.
    • They are working with the FBI, but they still don’t know who was behind it. There are some similarities to the DNC hacking in 2016.
    • The NRCC found out in April, but didn’t reveal it to the victims or GOP leaders until the press found out about it this week.
  1. The North Carolina Board of Elections and Ethics has refused to certify Republican Mark Harris’ apparent win due to voting irregularities. According to witnesses, an operative working for Harris paid people to “harvest” ballots. In other words, they illegally collected people’s mail-in ballots, and in some cases filled them out. (Note that collecting ballots in itself isn’t illegal, but getting paid for it, not turning ballots in, or filling in a ballot without the voter’s consent are all illegal.)
  2. Trump and the NRA used the same media consultants to launch complimentary ad campaigns during the 2016 elections. This gives the appearance of campaign finance law violations, but it’s not clear whether the two actually coordinated.
  3. Trump made extensive use of Air Force One to campaign during the midterms. It cost taxpayers around $17 million. Rules say he’s supposed to pay for some of that from party or campaign money, but so far he’s only reimbursed $112,000 (or less than 1%).
  4. Massachusetts’ former governor Deval Patrick, who thought about running for president, says:
“… knowing that the cruelty of our elections process would ultimately splash back on people whom Diane and I love, but who hadn’t signed up for the journey, was more than I could ask.” That says something about how we campaign now.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Wednesday is a national day of mourning for George H.W. Bush. Flags fly at half-staff and federal offices close for the day. His state funeral is held at Washington National Cathedral.
  2. And in what becomes one of the most awkward presidential moments in my lifetime, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, and Barack and Michelle Obama are joined in the front row of the cathedral by Donald and Melania Trump.
  3. In an interview, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says Trump is “pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read” and that he tries to do illegal things.
  4. Trump responds by calling Tillerson dumb and lazy.
  5. Trump announces that White House chief of staff John Kelly will leave by year’s end. Also, no one wants the job of replacing him.
  6. Trump nominates Army General Mark Miller to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Joseph Dunford, the current chairman, has nearly 10 months left to serve.
  7. Michael Avenatti says he won’t run for president in 2020 after all. Did anyone really think he would?
  8. Shortly after Trump tweets about the media being the enemy of the people, CNN evacuates their New York studio because of a bomb threat.

Polls:

  1. 58% of Americans agree that climate change is influenced by humans.

Week 97 in Trump

Posted on December 4, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Former President George H.W. Bush lying in state in the Rotunda. (Morry Gash/Pool/Getty Images)

George H.W. Bush passed away at 94 years old; just 7 months after his wife, Barbara, passed away. He’ll lie in state, and December 5 will be a national day of mourning for him. And even over this, we were so fast to divide ourselves. One group is wistful for a president with his grace and character; the other group thinks he was just plain awful. Can’t we just, for a short period, let people eulogize and remember a man who’s long and full life just came to an end? Give the family some time to grieve, and then go ahead and point out his policy flaws. We don’t have to hate at every turn. It makes me tired…

And you know what else makes me tired? Everything else that happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. In his first year, Trump ordered a complete and independent audit of the Pentagon. Now the auditors say the job is impossible to complete. The Pentagon fudges their numbers and documents in order to justify increases to the Pentagon budget (whether or not the money gets used–a common business practice). Their records have irregularities and errors, and lack the needed information. The Pentagon’s defense? “We didn’t expect to pass it.”
  2. A federal judges rules that a lawsuit against the Trump Foundation can proceed. The suit accuses Trump of misusing funds from the charity for political and personal gain. Trump’s legal team says he can’t be sued because he’s president; the judge says he can.

Russia:

  1. Robert Mueller drops Paul Manafort’s plea deal, saying Manafort breached their agreement by continually lying to investigators. On top of that, Manafort’s lawyers were keeping Trump’s legal team abreast of their discussions with Mueller’s team.
    • Mueller considers filing additional charges against Manafort, and will file a report on what Manafort lied about.
    • Since Manafort already pleaded guilty, he’s now on the hook for those crimes… and also probably for conspiring to defraud the U.S. and obstruct justice.
    • According to The Guardian, Manafort met with WikiLeak’s Julian Assange around the same time he joined Trump’s campaign, and the two had met a few times before that. Both deny they ever met and no other media outlet has confirmed this story, so I’m taking this report with a grain of salt.
    • After Mueller pulls Manafort’s plea deal, Trump says Mueller’s gone rogue and is forcing witnesses to lie.
    • Rudy Giuliani brags about the arrangement with Manafort’s lawyers. He says it was a valuable source of information about the investigation of which his client is a subject.
    • Trump doesn’t rule out a pardon for Manafort.
  1. Michael Cohen enters a new plea agreement with Mueller, pleading guilty to lying about when talks with Russia about a Trump property ended. Cohen told Congress that the talks ended in January 2016, but they were still going on until June 2016. We have the texts to prove it. 
Cohen is the 33rd person charged by Mueller in the Russia probe.
  2. Cohen says he spoke with Trump and his family about the Trump Tower negotiations during that time; previously Cohen said they didn’t talk about it.
  3. The new court filings show that:
    • Cohen, Trump, Felix Sater, and Russian officials were in negotiations from January through June of 2016 for Trump to travel to Russia to meet with Putin.
    • They discussed Cohen going to Russia to negotiate the details of the visit before the Republican National Convention, and Trump going to Russia after.
    • In early to mid-June of 2016, Cohen told Sater that the trips were cancelled and that the Trump property deal was also cancelled.
    • Cohen says he lied to Congress to limit the Russia investigation and to support Trump.
    • Trump Organization offered to give Putin a $50 million penthouse in the tower.
    • Trump lied to us all when he said he didn’t have any interests in Russia.
    • Trump Jr.’s testimony to Congress contradicts Michael Cohen’s testimony.
    • Trump was kept abreast of his campaign members who were contacting both Russia and Wikileaks, and they subsequently tried to hide those activities.
  1. Rudy Giuliani first says Cohen is a liar, and then says that Trump’s written answers match Cohen’s version. So either Trump is a liar, or Cohen is telling the truth.
  2. Trump says Cohen is a liar and a weak person who’s just trying to save himself from receiving a prison sentence for unrelated charges.
  3. The revelations about Trump Tower Moscow aren’t necessarily criminal or impeachable. Trump says there was nothing wrong with him continuing to do business as a candidate. Which is technically true. However, the American public have a right to know where a presidential candidate’s financial interests stand.
  4. We now know that the final House committee reports submitted by the majority Republicans include the lies from Cohen’s and Trump Jr.’s original testimony. Committee reports submitted by minority Democrats include snippets of emails that contradict those lies. Democrats want to call Cohen back in to correct the record.
  5. As a results of this plea deal, Senate committees begin reviewing the testimony given to them.
  6. The Trump Tower Moscow deal was dissolved right around the time the Washington Post published the first article detailing the Russian hacking of the DNC servers.
  7. Republican Senator Jeff Flake demands a vote on a bill to protect Mueller, or he’ll stop voting to advance Trump’s judicial nominations to a full Senate vote. Republican Senator Mike Lee blocked a bipartisan effort to force a vote on the bill.
  8. An email trail between Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi, who pulled back on his plea deal with Mueller, shows that two months before WikiLeaks dumped Clinton campaign emails, they were discussing details about an October dump that would be damaging to Clinton.
  9. Mueller investigates call logs from the 2016 campaign where Trump made several late-night calls from a blocked number to Roger Stone.
  10. Trump cancels his meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit over Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and then says he’ll meet with Putin one-on-one. They ended up having an informal meeting.
  11. James Comey asks a federal judge to block a request from Republicans in the House that he testify in private. In the end, Comey agrees to testify behind closed doors, but a transcript of his testimony will be made public.
  12. British intelligence say that Putin was likely behind the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter on UK soil.
  13. Democrats in the House start making a list of targets to investigate when they take back over the House next year. They’ll likely revisit the 64 subpoenas that Republicans blocked over the past year and a half.

Legal Fallout:

  1. German police raid Deutsche Bank headquarters as part of a money laundering investigation spawned by the Panama Papers. The bank was previously fined for helping to launder Russian money.
  2. The raid has no apparent ties to Trump, but after an internal investigation earlier this year, Deutsche Bank found questionable transactions by Jared Kushner, which they shared with Mueller. They were also one of the few banks willing to loan money to Trump after his financial collapses.
  3. Federal agents raid the Chicago offices of Ed Burke, who previously did tax work for Trump. We don’t know if the raid is related to Trump at all.
  4. It was a mystery to me why Facebook would launch a smear campaign against George Soros when defending themselves over personal data breaches. It turns out that Soros criticized the company at the World Economic Forum, so Sheryl Sandberg asked for information on whether Soros had something to gain from that. This led her staff to hire a GOP opposition research firm.
  5. House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) says that Ivanka’s use of personal email is OK because it’s just really hard to comply when you’re dealing with so many emails and so many rules. He says it’s nothing like Hillary’s use of a personal email server.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Mike Pence casts the tie-breaking vote when Jeff Flake refuses to advance Trump’s judicial nominee, Thomas Farr, out of committee for a floor vote. Flake didn’t refuse to advance Farr because of Farr’s long and sordid history of working to suppress the Black vote in North Carolina; Flake refused to advance him because he wants McConnell to bring the Mueller bill to the floor for a vote.
  2. Farr might have made it out of committee, but he wasn’t confirmed in the Senate. It turns out that the Black Republican in the Senate isn’t fond of judges who work to disenfranchise Black voters, so he joined Jeff Flake in voting against him.
  3. Christine Blasey Ford announces she’ll donate the remaining money raised from a GoFundMe campaign to organizations that support survivors of sexual assault. Up till now, the money went to securing and relocating her family multiple times due to threats of death and violence.
  4. New reports allege that Acting Attorney General Matt Whittaker continued his support of a patent company that was engaged in fraud while at the same time hindering an FTC investigation into that company.
  5. Whittaker is also under investigation by the Office of the Special Counsel (not to be confused with Robert Mueller) for possible Hatch Act violations for accepting political contributions while employed by the government.
  6. Bill Shine, the White House deputy communications chief, will receive about $15 million from Fox News over the next two years as severance pay and bonus. At the same time, he gets a U.S. government salary and he’s in a position to show favoritism to Fox News.

Healthcare:

  1. New enrollments for health insurance through the ACA is down 13% from last year at this time. The administration isn’t providing marketing or education for help with signing up (again).
  2. Drug overdoses reached a record high of 70,237 in 2017, largely due to fentanyl.
  3. Bloomberg’s foundation plans to donate $50 million to fight the opioid epidemic. They’ll start with a limited number of states and find out which programs are the most effective. Then they’ll put more money towards those programs in other states.
  4. The number of uninsured children increased in 2017 for the first time in a decade. Texas has the largest number of uninsured children, partly because they’re one of the states that refused to expand Medicaid under the ACA.

International:

  1. Just before Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, the Saudi Crown Prince exchanged several messages with the senior aide accused of overseeing the murder. These messages are part of what led our intelligence agencies to conclude that the Crown Prince likely ordered the killing.
  2. Even Mitch McConnell is pushing for a congressional response against Saudi Arabia in the Khashoggi case.
  3. The White House prevents CIA director Gina Haspel from briefing the Senate on Saudi Arabia. Instead, Mike Pompeo and James Mattis handle the briefing.
  4. Not only is the arms deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia non-binding (meaning either party can back out), but the dollar amount of the deal was inflated at Jared Kushner’s direction from $14.5 billion to $110 billion.
  5. Paris has its worst riots in 50 years. The riots started two weeks ago over a gas tax coupled with anti-Macron sentiment.
  6. Activists call Obama the ‘Drone President,‘ but Trump relaxed requirements for targets of drone strikes and has launched 30% more than Obama did in his first two years (238 drone strikes to Obama’s 186).

Legislation/Congress:

  1. House Democrats nominate Nancy Pelosi to be House Speaker.
  2. The Senate advances a resolution to stop providing military help to Saudi Arabia in the Yemen. Fourteen Republicans vote for the resolution, and 19 switch their votes from their previous vote because of an inadequate briefing by Mattis and Pompeo and because of Khashoggi’s murder.
  3. Congress reaches a deal on a farm bill that does not include work requirements for SNAP recipients. Trump and House Republicans were pushing for those requirements.

Family Separation:

  1. There are still around 60 children in custody who were separated from their (now-deported) parents. Almost all of these children have sponsors they could be released to in the U.S. In total, 140 children who were separated from their parents or guardian are still in custody.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump tweets that Mexico should just send back everyone in the migrant caravan to whatever country they came from and by any means possible. He says again (and without evidence) that many of them are stone cold criminals.
  2. A review of global terrorism shows that violent acts motivated by far right-wing ideologies far outnumber acts of domestic terrorism acts in any other category over the past decade.
  3. A memo from the Department of Health and Human Services shows that the Trump administration said it’s OK to not thoroughly vet staff at detention camps for migrant minors.
  4. Instead of releasing government documents on actual costs/benefits of undocumented immigrants, Trump retweets a false rumor that they receive $3,874 per month in assistance.
  5. The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2016 hit the lowest number in over a decade, with an estimated 10.7 million.
  6. The head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media apologizes to George Soros after they aired a program smearing Soros and using anti-Semitic tropes. The program called Soros a “non-practicing Jew of flexible morals” and said he was involved in “clandestine operations that led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union.” It also said he architected the 2008 financial collapse. The program got most of it’s information from Judicial Watch, which has long sought to pin some kind of wrongdoing on Soros.
  7. Deteriorating conditions at migrant camps near the border are leading more immigrants to attempt illegal crossings so they can seek asylum. This is what the Trump administration was trying to avoid, but by trapping them at the border, the administration created the conditions that are now worsening the problem.
  8. The ACLU files a lawsuit against a Florida Sheriff’s Office that detained a U.S. citizen on ICE’s request. The man was arrested in the Keys and detained for weeks despite having a U.S. birth certificate. He was finally transported to ICE, who released him once they looked up his birth certificate. In Miami. With no money or transportation to get back to the Keys. Interesting side note: ICE has an agreement with this Sheriff’s Office to pay them $50 per detainee.
  9. The police officer who shot her black neighbor when she mistakenly walked into his apartment thinking it was her own is charged with murder.
  10. One more reason we need #MeToo. Seven hospitals agree to a settlement after they illegally billed sexual assault victims for their own forensic rape exams.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Fox News disciplines employees who were involved in crafting topics and questions with the EPA for an interview with Scott Pruitt. Fox & Friends coordinated the entire interview with Pruitt (or his aides) and Pruitt lied about the number of Superfund sites cleaned up under Obama versus under Trump.
  2. Who knew all you had to do to get out of fraud charges is to quit? The inspector general of the EPA closes two investigations into Scott Pruitt’s conduct during his time as head of the EPA because he doesn’t work there anymore.
  3. At the G20 summit in Brazil, 19 world leaders reaffirm the Paris agreement with one leader abstaining. Trump reiterates our decision to withdraw. Yay us. We affirm our strong commitment to not deal with climate change.
  4. Exxon plans to use renewable energy—wind and solar—to help power up their gas and oil drilling in Texas’s Permian Basin, an area with extensive fracking operations.
  5. Washington, D.C.’s city council votes unanimously to adopt 100% clean electricity by 2032.
  6. Patagonia announces they’ll give $10 million of what they received in corporate tax cuts this year to grassroots organizations supporting the environment.
  7. Andrew Wheeler, the acting head of the EPA, gives Trump the credit for a 2.5% reduction in carbon emissions in 2016… before Trump took office. He also says carbon emissions are down 14% since 2005. This is in no small part due to the Obama regulations this administration has worked to reverse.
  8. Wheeler can’t name three Trump rules that contributed to the decrease in emissions, (unless you include the proposed reversals of Obama emissions-reducing rules that he named).
  9. Trump approves company requests to run seismic tests in the Atlantic Ocean, which could kill tens of thousands of marine animals. Underwater seismic tests are used to locate gas and oil.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The VA has been behind on GI Bill payments to vets because of a computer glitch, and now they’re saying they won’t reimburse vets who weren’t paid the full amount owed them.
  2. Auto companies warned us last summer that the tariffs would have negative economic effects on the industry. This week, GM announces they’ll stop production at five plants and layoff over 14,000 people. They offered buyout packages to 18,000 employees in October.
    • The reasons for the cutbacks include changing their lineup to align with Americans’ changing tastes, the decimation of unions (unions used to train employees on the new skills they need to adapt), and costs related to the trade war and tariffs.
  1. Trump threatens to eliminate GM’s subsidies if they go ahead with the closures. Trump also blames the declining stock market and the Fed for the closures and layoffs.
  2. Over 40% of companies say they’ll raise prices due to the higher costs they’re incurring as a result of the trade war. 10% say the tariffs are pushing them to move jobs offshore.
  3. Even though Paul Ryan oversaw legislation that will add trillions to our debt, he says his biggest regret is that he didn’t address our federal debt.
  4. Just before the start of the G20 summit, Trump, Trudeau, and Peña Nieto sign the updated NAFTA deal. Trump says it’s the biggest trade deal ever. But of course it is.
  5. Also at the G20, Trump and Chinese President Xi come to a verbal agreement on tariffs. They basically agreed that Trump won’t add any new tariffs, China will start buying our stuff again, and the two countries will begin talks.
  6. Qatar announces it’s leaving OPEC next year so they can develop their liquified natural gas.

Elections:

  1. Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith wins the Mississippi Senate race, showing once and for all why Mississippi is so far behind the rest of the country in race relations. But since it was the closest race there in 30 years, maybe that means they’re a little less racist than before. I can hope.
    • With her election, Republicans have picked up a total of three Senate seats in the midterms.
  1. Paul Ryan calls the ballot process in California bizarre and loosey-goosey after seven GOP House seats shifted to Democrats as mail-in and provisional ballots were counted. Ryan says he doesn’t question the validity of the results, though, so I guess he just wanted to be sure he planted that question mark in everyone’ heads.
  2. The Office of Special Counsel (again, not to be confused with Mueller’s office) says six Trump administration officials tweeted support for Republicans or for Trump on their government Twitter accounts. This is a violation of the Hatch Act, but not enough for disciplinary action.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Representative Raul Grijalva wrote an op-ed criticizing Ryan Zinke over his ethical scandals and saying Zinke should resign. Zinke’s response from his official Interior Department Twitter account? “It’s hard for him to think straight from the bottom of the bottle.” This country is being run by children.
  2. Trump threatens House Democrats, saying that if they play tough with him when they become the majority, he’ll declassify documents that will be “devastating” to them. He says he could’ve used those documents against them already, but he’s saving them for when he really needs to use them. A) I think that’s called extortion, and B) he doesn’t have a great track record so far of declassifying information to further his cause.
  3. Making good on a promise he made after the Las Vegas shooting, Trump says he’ll approve a federal rule banning bump stocks. Current owners will either have to destroy their bump stocks or turn them in.
  4. Eric Bauman, the chair of the California Democratic Party, resigns after accusations of sexual misconduct are publicized. An investigation is ongoing.
  5. NASA and JPL land another successful spacecraft on Mars. InSight will investigate the planet’s interior and measure Mars-quakes.
  6. And speaking of quakes, Anchorage experiences a huge earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale (with 1,000 aftershocks). We still don’t know the extent of the damage; there are collapsed roads, buckled bridges, cracked buildings, power outages, and people are still boiling water.

Week 89 in Trump

Posted on October 8, 2018 in Politics, Trump

One of these voted their conscience; two of them pretended to.

I’m so tired. I’m so tired of the Kavanaugh nomination sucking up all the air in the room and igniting everyone’s emotions. I’ve never seen people on both sides so emotionally vested in getting their way on a Supreme Court Nomination. It’s possibly because there’s more at stake right now, and none of our leaders made any effort to quiet down the vitriol. Voters from both sides ended up feeling unheard. Victims ended up feeling unheard. What was really painful was to have friends share their sex abuse stories with me, which was made all the more painful by friends who dismiss the claims of victims. It’s time to take a step back, regroup, and look at what we really believe in. Can we continue to let boys be boys while slut shaming the women those boys take advantage of? I just don’t think that’s gonna fly anymore.

Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox. Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Here’s a sad statement of the current politics of partisanship. When Jeff Flake was asked if he could’ve requested an FBI investigation and delay in Kavanaugh’s hearing if he was running again, he said “Of course not!”
  2. In case you were wondering if there’s any traction on making Trump’s tax returns or financial statements public, last week 21 Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee voted against releasing any of that information. That’s OK, because this week the New York Times beat them to the punch. More later.

Russia:

  1. Before the 2016 elections, several Republican Trump critics were victims of attempted hacking by Russian operatives. The FBI now says that the scope of that investigation has become greater than just computer intrusion, and they refer the case to Robert Mueller’s team.
  2. The DOJ indicts seven members of the Russian military, charging that they hacked into drug tests for Olympic athletes and leaked the information. This seems to have been in retaliation for all the investigations into Russian doping that resulted in several Russian athletes being unable to compete.
  3. Paul Manafort starts meeting with Mueller’s team as part of his plea agreement.
  4. Randy Credico, who was Roger Stone’s middleman between him and Julian Assange, says he’ll plead the fifth in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
  5. Two money laundering experts from Mueller’s team have left and gone back to their regular practices. Mueller team now has 13 staffers.
  6. Russian trolls and Russian TV have been supporting the Kavanaugh confirmation.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump told Michael Cohen to get a restraining order to prevent Stormy Daniels from talking to the press. Trump told Cohen to coordinate this with his son, Eric, who then asked a Trump Organization lawyer to draw up the papers.
  2. The New York Times publishes a lengthy article detailing the alleged methods, both legal and not so much, that the Trump family used to avoid paying hundreds of millions in taxes. Note: I haven’t read the full article yet, and I know there are some sketchy loopholes that blur the lines between legal and illegal tax avoidance.
  3. Here are some claims in the article:
    • Trump’s father gave him today’s equivalent of $413 million over the decades. Only a big deal because Trump says he’s a self-made billionaire, having only received $1 million in startup money from his father.
    • The Trumps transferred over $1 billion to their children, and paid a tax rate of about 5% on that.
    • Trump started earning $20,000 a year from his father’s company at age 3 in 1950.
    • After college, he received around $200,000 per year. This increased to about $2.5 million a year in his 40s. (Note: The NYT converted the numbers to today’s dollars; I converted them back for a little reality check. So these are approximations.)
    • Fred Trump also lent Donald Trump $60.7 million, most of which was never paid back. Fred bailed Donald out of a few potential bankruptcies, including making an illegal loan under New Jersey gaming laws. Fred provided the collateral for bank loans to Donald when he got into financial trouble.
    • When Fred Trump was ailing, Donald Trump tried to get him to change his will and to make him sole executor of the estate. At this point, it seems Fred no longer trusted Trump not to bankrupt the company and refused the changes.
    • The Trump children created a shell company to siphon money from Fred Trump’s estate into their own estates to avoid taxes. Family companies for managing family estates are not unusual, and they come with their own legal tax loopholes. But this company used questionable tactics like padded invoices to justify expenditures.
    • The family created a grantor-retained annuity trust, or GRAT, to transfer assets. Also completely legal, but in this case they severely undervalued the assets that were transferred in order to avoid taxes.
  1. After publication of the above article, New York Tax Department considers opening an investigation into the allegations. Even if the statute of limitations has expired, civil fines can still be levied for uncollected taxes.
  2. A lawyer for Trump says there was no “fraud or tax evasion” and that any actions taken were on the advice of financial professionals.
  3. Fun fact: If you’re wondering what led to the New York Times’ report, the story opened up when a reporter came across a filing from Maryanne Trump Barry, Trump’s sister. When she was being confirmed by the Senate to her judgeship, she included a document in her filing that showed a $1 million dollar contribution from what turned out to be a shell company.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Tom Cotton says they’re opening an investigation into Dianne Feinstein’s handling of Christine Blasey Ford’s letter and into Blasey Ford’s lawyers. Mitch McConnell echoes the call for investigation.
  2. Harvard cancels the classes taught by Kavanaugh. Then we hear that he withdrew from teaching, so I’m not sure exactly how that all shook out. Students were circulating a petition against him teaching there.
  3. McConnell says they’ll vote this week on Kavanaugh’s confirmation no matter the results of the investigation, and they do.
  4. At the opening of the FBI investigation into accusations against Kavanaugh, Trump tweets that the FBI can interview anybody they want, but at the time of the tweet, the FBI was still under the limits reported last week (with limits on who they can talk to and which allegations they can investigate). It sounds like Trump did want to give FBI free reign, but White House counsel said that would be disastrous.
    • The FBI didn’t interview either Blasey Ford or Kavanaugh.
    • Several accusers and witnesses request that the FBI interview them and try to get information to the FBI, including texts sent before some accusations came out. None of these are included in the investigation.
    • The above referenced text messages show that Kavanaugh was contacting classmates asking them to deny Ramirez’s accusations before those accusations were made public.
  1. Lindsey Graham tells Trump that if Kavanaugh’s nomination fails, he should renominate him.
  2. Two ethics complaints against Kavanaugh come before the DC District Court, which ironically is overseen by blocked Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. The complaints center around perjury (filed prior to his testimony about sexual misconduct) and partisanship (filed after that testimony).
  3. The DC Court has already forwarded more than a dozen complaints against Kavanaugh to Justice Roberts on the Supreme Court. The DC Court had already dismissed some of the complaints as frivolous, forwarding only those thought to have substance.
  4. It turns out the ABA had questions about Kavanaugh in his 2006 confirmation hearings as well. They downgraded his rating from “well qualified” to just “qualified,” which is still positive. Their change was based on evaluations of Kavanaugh’s temperament, where he was called “unprepared” and “sanctimonious,” and where his ability to be balanced and fair was questioned.
  5. Kavanaugh’s testimony this week even turned some of his long-time friends and colleagues (both Republican and Democrat) against his nomination.
  6. Trump mocks Christine Blasey Ford IN A CAMPAIGN RALLY. I don’t know what’s worse, the way he mocked her or the way the crowd cheered and then yelled “Lock her up!” At any rate, Trump lied about what Blasey Ford could and could not remember, and the crowd ate it up.
  7. Both Jeff Flake and Susan Collins denounce Trump for mocking Blasey Ford.
  8. The GOP accuses Democrats of using and dumping Blasey Ford. Meanwhile, Republicans have been following Trump’s lead by discrediting and mocking her.
  9. Sarah Huckabee Sanders defends Trump in a press briefing the next day, saying that he was only stating the facts.
  10. And then Trump mocks Al Franken for folding like a wet rag when accused of grabbing several women’s butts. This is how Trump feels about people who take responsibility.
  11. 2,400 law professors sign a letter outlining why Kavanaugh shouldn’t be confirmed.
  12. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says Kavanaugh shouldn’t be confirmed. Stevens first supported Kavanaugh, but changed his mind after Kavanaugh’s partisan statements during his testimony this week.
  13. The National Council of Churches calls on Kavanaugh to withdraw.
  14. Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) says Trump should’ve nominated someone else, gave an impassioned speech about the #MeToo movement and sexual assault, and then voted to confirm Kavanaugh.
  15. Kavanaugh writes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal apologizing for his behavior in front of the Senate. He claims he was overcome, even though he read a planned opening statement.
  16. Senators are allowed to view the FBI reports in a sealed room, one at a time and then in groups.
  17. Chuck Grassley releases an executive summary of the FBI report (though I don’t know who wrote the summary). The summary says their interviews provided no corroborating evidence, but Republicans start saying that the interviews refuted Blasey Ford’s account. Tip: Not corroborating something is not the same as refuting it.
  18. Eight Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee ask Chuck Grassley to correct the record when he says that there was no sign of any inappropriate sexual behavior or alcohol abuse in any of the six FBI reports on him. Those Democrats say that information is not accurate. But we’ll never know unless the information becomes public.
  19. Republicans say the FBI report was thorough; Democrats say it was incomplete.
  20. Emotions continue to escalate (I didn’t think they could get much higher than the previous week), and both pro- and anti-Kavanaugh protests pop up across the country. Hundreds of anti-Kavanaugh protestors are arrested in DC. My favorite protest is the kegger they throw outside of Mitch McConnell’s office. I like beer.
  21. Susan Collins and Joe Manchin, who are two of the key votes, say they’ll vote to confirm Kavanaugh. Heidi Heitkamp says she’ll vote no, and Jeff Flake, despite all his reservations, votes yes.
  22. The ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary revisits it’s evaluation of Kavanaugh’s rating based on his temperamental testimony this week.
  23. Trump threatens Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski’s re-election chances, saying that she’ll never recover from her “no” vote (which was actually a “present” vote). Trumps adds that he’s very popular in Alaska.
  24. Trump says it’s a scary time for men and boys right now because of all these accusations. I guess it’s a scary time if you have something to hide.
  25. And after all that turmoil, Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court by the narrowest margin for a Supreme Court Justice in over 130 years. The vote was 50-48. If Manchin would’ve voted no, Mike Pence would’ve come in to cast the deciding vote.
  26. There’s already an effort to drum up support to impeach Kavanaugh, so now’s a good time to remind everyone how hard that is. Even if it gets through the House, it would never pass the threshold in the Senate.
  27. And just a reminder, Blasey Ford still has been unable to return to her home due to threats. Remind me again why victims don’t come forward?

Healthcare:

  1. The EPA proposes loosening restrictions on radiation. Their announcement includes assessments from scientific outliers who say a little radiation could be good for human health. Even though very small amounts of radiation are known to cause cancer.

International:

  1. Mike Pompeo announces that the U.S. is ending the Treaty of Amity, a 1955 treaty with Iran, after the UN tries to use the treaty as a basis for ordering the U.S. to ease up on sanctions for humanitarian goods.
  2. John Bolton later says that the U.S. will also pull out of a dispute resolution protocol from the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. He bases this move on a challenge from the Palestinian Authority of our decision to move our Israel embassy to Jerusalem.
  3. Mike Pence gives a speech at the Hudson institute designed to move American public sentiment against China and to support the idea that they’re trying to meddle in our elections using economics because they don’t like Trump and want a different American president.
  4. The U.S. accuses Russia of building a missile system that could launch nuclear weapons to Europe and Alaska. The development of such a system was banned under a Cold War treaty.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. California has now passed over 1,000 new laws this year, including several aimed at recovering some of the regulations Trump has dissolved at the federal level around issues like net neutrality, energy and climate, gun control, and #MeToo.

Family Separation:

  1. An investigation by the Inspector General of the DHS finds that they never had a centralized database to track the immigrant families that they separated earlier this year. Instead, they were using spreadsheets that they compiled manually from emailed Word documents. That sure explains why they were unable to find family members in their computer system.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Trump administration begins denying visas to same-sex partners of foreign diplomats, saying they must be married in order to receive a visa. Some of these diplomats come from countries where gay marriage is illegal, so they’re unable to get married.
  2. Federal prosecutors charge and arrest four members of the California-based Rise Above Movement for their intent to incite a riot and commit violence at the white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville last year. This group is small but violent, calling themselves an alt-right fight club.
  3. Federal inspectors at the Adelanto detention center in San Bernardino County, CA, find dismal conditions. They find 15 nooses made out of bed sheets hanging in cells, and they find health and dental care severely lacking. Adelanto is part of the GEO Group, a private, for-profit prison company.
  4. I’ve talked before about steps taken by the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from Sudan, Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nigeria. This week, a federal judge grants a preliminary injunction that blocks any deportations for now. TPS protections will continue while a legal case is decided, giving temporary relief to over 300,000 people who were threatened with deportation.
  5. Even though Congress placed a hold on the funds, the Trump administration moved forward with plans to give Mexico $20 million to deport immigrants so they can’t make it to our borders. Despite the hold, Trump transferred the funds anyway. Mexico says they never approved of this plan.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A federal court holds that the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is in compliance with the law. Obama created the massive monument off of the New England coast in the Atlantic Ocean.
  2. Denmark says they’ll ban the sale of new fossil-fueled cars by 2030.
  3. California allocates $800 million to be able to store energy generated by solar panels to have more electricity available from solar in the nighttime hours.
  4. The EPA rewrites its rules about what scientific studies can be used in making public health policy against the wishes of its scientific advisors. Proprietary information can no longer be used, which will exclude findings from patients participating in private-sector studies.
  5. William Nordhaus and Paul Romer win the Nobel Prize for Economics. Nordhaus has been working in climate change’s effects on economy since the 1970s, and his model is widely used to show the relationship between the climate and the economy.
  6. A UN report on climate change expects an increase in global temperatures of 2.7 degrees F much sooner than previously thought. This would intensify sea level rise, droughts, wildfires, and poverty. They call for a 45% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and for halting them by 2050. Trump has said he’ll increase greenhouse gas emissions, though we’re already halfway to that 2.7 degree rise.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Amazon announces that they’ll start paying all of their employees at least $15 per hour.
  2. It turns out that most of the changes to NAFTA were already included in TPP. Trump and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly denounced those trade deals as two of the worst deals ever, but they’re calling the USMCA, basically a mashup of the NAFTA and TPP, one of the best deals ever. The dairy concessions from Canada are probably the biggest difference.
    • That means we could’ve pretty much gotten the same deal without alienating many of our trading partners and without giving China the extra trading power they obtained from the hole we left behind by cancelling the TPP.
  1. Unemployment hits record lows at 3.7%.
  2. The U.S. trade deficit expanded to 6.4% in August. Despite all the tariffs, the deficit was $53.2 billion, the highest level in six months.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Wikipedia says its authors shouldn’t use Breitbart and InfoWars as news sources on its pages. They call Breitbart unreliable, and say InfoWars is a “conspiracy theorist and fake news website.”
  2. In a press conference, Trump tells a female reporter “I know you’re not thinking. You never do,” while a group of men behind him chuckle and smirk.
  3. In the official White House transcript of the event, they change the word “thinking” to “thanking.” Mm-hmm…
  4. The Pentagon screening facility finds two envelopes suspected of contain ricin, and the Secret Service says that another suspicious envelope was addressed to Trump. A man was arrested in Utah in relation to the envelopes.
  5. The death toll in Indonesia from the earthquake and resulting tsunami reaches 2,000. Thousands are still missing.
  6. Trump falls back on that old tired narrative, claiming that Kavanaugh protestors are being paid by Soros. To which I say “Where’s my damn check, George ?”

Polls:

  1. Worldwide, 7 in 10 people have no confidence in Trump. Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Xi Jinping, and even Vladimir Putin all received higher confidence ratings.
  2. 37% of Americans have confidence in the Supreme Court, down from 60% in the 80s.
  3. This Quinnipiac poll on support for Kavanaugh’s confirmation is hard to distill, so here’s a link to the results, broken down by demographics. It’s pretty interesting.
  4. 41% of Americans oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination, with 33% supporting it.
  5. 45% of Americans believe Blasey Ford; 33% believe Kavanaugh.
  6. 56% of Republicans would still consider voting for a candidate accused of sexual harassment; 81% of Democrats say they’d definitely not.

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.