This is by far the longest weekly recap yet. I didn’t think that much happened last week, but with so much up in the air, there was actually a lot going on. Here’s what happened last week:

1. The CBO releases their report on the plan to replace the ACA. As far as healthcare goes, the report is pretty damaging, but it does predict that it would lower the deficit by $337 billion over the next decade.
2. The White House and certain GOP members continue to try to delegitimize the CBO report, though the CBO is non-partisan and about the most reliable we have. Here’s a quick fact check on them.
3. Paul Ryan says in an interview that the goal of the healthcare bill isn’t to insure all people; it’s to give all people choice of whether to buy insurance. That is, if you can afford it.
4. Ryan says his plan gives people the freedom to buy the insurance that fits their needs (except you really don’t know what your needs are until they come up).
5. Mick Mulvaney, head of the OMB, says that health insurance “is not really the end goal.” Trump has assured us in the past, though, that we’ll all have “beautiful” coverage.
6. According to a Public Policy poll, 24% of Americans approve of the new healthcare plan. 47% approve of the ACA.
7. There is growing concern around the CBO’s estimate that millions will lose healthcare under this bill, and additional organizations come out against the replacement bill, including the American Cancer Association.
8. Republican Senators call for changes to the healthcare bill, saying it won’t pass the senate otherwise. They want lower costs for lower-income, older Americans, and more funding for states with high populations of hard to insure constituents. Conversely, some of the more conservative Republicans want to provide less funding.
9. Close advisors to Trump urge him to distance himself from the healthcare reform bill, saying it will hurt him politically. The Trump team starts blaming problems with the bill on Ryan. Trump also admits the bill in its current form is not a good deal for his supporters.
10. At the same time, Breitbart releases audio of Ryan from October saying he would never support Trump. That’s the sound of someone getting thrown under the bus.
    
11. Tom Price claims that the government will pay for health coverage for those who need it, and everyone will be covered.
12. Paul Ryan plans to modify the healthcare bill to make is easier for older Americans to buy insurance.
13. Seems Verma, the top official for Medicaid, urges states to charge insurance premiums to people on Medicaid, make them pay part of their emergency room bills, and encouraged them to get jobs. Medicaid recipients are largely children, followed by disabled and elderly people who can’t work. But some do work and get paid so little they can’t afford basic care.
14. Tom Price thinks that states should be able to decide whether or not to mandate vaccinations. Tom is a 3^rd generation physician, so is certainly aware a) of the ravages of the diseases vaccines prevent, b) that the relationship between vaccines and autism has been scientifically discredited, and c) that we need a certain percentage of the population to be vaccinated in order to keep those diseases at bay.
15. Trump issues an executive order to reorganize the executive branch, instructing each agency to look for ways to reorganize for efficiency, including the possible elimination of entire agencies.
16. The Trump administration reverses Obama’s guidance on the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program, which would have limited the fees that could be collected on loans that are past due, putting a greater financial burden on vulnerable borrowers.
    
17. Sean Spicer walks back its claim that Obama wiretapped Trump’s phones. From CNN: “Trump didn’t mean wiretapping when he tweeted about wiretapping.”
18. On Monday, the Justice Department fails to deliver the awaited evidence that Obama had wiretapped Trump. Devin Nunes, chair of the intelligence committee, threatens to subpoena any relevant information. He says  “clearly the president was wrong” if he literally meant that Obama had wiretapped his home.
19. Spicer says that he’s confident evidence will surface that will prove Trump’s wiretapping claims.
20. Kellyanne Conway introduces a novel way Obama was spying on Trump — through microwaves that turn into cameras
21. Documents reveal that Michael Flynn received payments from Russian-based companies in addition to state media RT. One was part of a corruption scandal that got them banned from selling to the UN, and another (Kapersky) was trying to expand U.S. business.
22. Flynn’s recent filling reveals that he had also worked for Turkish government agencies. Even though Trump’s transition team was told about Flynn’s foreign agent status, he was still allowed to attend security briefings.
23. The DOJ announces indictments against two Russian spies in the FSB along with two hackers in the case of the 2104 breach of Yahoo’s networks (unrelated to the investigations around election interference).
24. A Secret Service agent in New York leaves her laptop, containing highly sensitive information, in her car from which it is stolen. Said laptop contains floor plans for the Trump Tower and details on Clinton’s emails.
25. The Russian bank that seemed to be communicating with a Trump server last year claims that it was hacked and is being set up.
26. Comey meets with top senators to brief them on the ongoing Russia investigations. Whatever they talked about is classified; no one said much on the way out.
27. And even after this meeting, Sean Spicer continues to stand by the wiretapping claims tweeted by Trump. Trump says he will provide evidence very soon. Senate Intelligence Committee leaders say they haven’t seen evidence of this, even after meeting with Comey on highly classified material around this.
28. Trump and Spicer both accuse British agents of being involved with the [alleged] wiretapping. The GCHQ (British equivalent of the NSC) says that’s ridiculous. The White House later apologizes, but Spicer later denies there was any apology. It turns out Trump got this news from Fox and Friends, where the analyst they were speaking with got his news from Russian state media, RT.
    
29. Representative Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee said this of the Russia ties: “There is circumstantial evidence of collusion. There is direct evidence, I think, of deception and that’s where we begin the investigation.”
    
30. Hearings on the latest travel ban start just before it’s set to go into effect, and a federal judge in Hawaii orders a stay. Simply removing the religious language didn’t convince the judge that it wasn’t based on religious discrimination. A Maryland judge also put a stay on the ban.
31. After hearing this, Trump says it was a watered down version and he wants to go back to the original ban. Nonetheless, the Justice Department says it will defend the new travel ban. The case is slated to move on to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
32. Immigration agents in California have been hanging around courthouses to arrest undocumented immigrants. California’s chief justice asks the administration to put a stop to it.
33. The Los Angeles County Sheriff, among other law agencies, have come out against the state-wide sanctuary bill.
34. A former police chief of Greenville, NC, Hassan Aden, says he was detained at a CPB detention center for an hour and a half.
35. Several bands slated to perform at SxSW have been denied entry to the US, though some could be because of incomplete paperwork.
36. The DOJ temporarily transfers judges to detention centers near the Mexico border to help with the backlog of cases — currently there are over half a million cases waiting.
37. Trump asks for $4.1 billion for the border wall, but estimates are as much as 6 times that.
38. A poll of opinions on immigration shows the following: 60% of us are for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. 26% say shoring up the border should be a priority. 13% say deportation should be the highest priority. 58% think if someone has been here a long time and not committed serious crimes, they shouldn’t be deported. 90% favor allowing people who’ve been here a long time, know English, and are will to pay back taxes to stay and apply for citizenship.
39. A waiter in Orange County, CA, is fired after he asks a table of 4 women to show ID to prove that they are residents.
    
40. Breitbart has lost at least 1,200 advertisers since the election due to alleged hate speech. While this is cutting into their profitability, they are mostly funded by donors on the right (largely Robert Mercer).
41. The New York AG accuses Rex Tillerson of using an email under a pseudonym to talk about climate change and other sensitive issues while at Exxon, using the name Wayne Tracker. These emails were not turned over as part of a court order in a New York law suit.
42. Trump directs the EPA to stop the fuel economy standards put in place by Obama and to review fuel emission standards. Waivers still allow states to set their own fuel emissions standards.
43. Mick Mulvaney says, “As to climate change, I think the president was fairly straightforward: We’re not spending money on that anymore.”
44. Seventeen House Republicans submit a resolution acknowledging the human impact on climate change and resolving to work on efforts to mitigate that impact.
45. Scott Pruitt’s EPA is being staffed by former aides to Senator James Inhoffe, who’s been one of the loudest climate change skeptics in Congress.
    
46. After Pruitt’s comments last week that CO2 doesn’t cause climate change, scientists write a letter to correct him.
47. Since we’re talking about climate, in his testimony during his hearings earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Mattis said climate change is a global threat to our security, writing that “Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today.”
48. More than a dozen countries meet in Chile to discuss and bargain over trade deals now that the U.S. has withdrawn from the TPP. China, which was not originally in the TPP, has entered the fray with a new Pacific Rim plan. These deals could mean tougher competition for American exports.
49. In an indicator that the economy continues to do well, the Fed raised the interest rate .25% on the premise that the current job growth is unsustainable and that faster growth would lead to inflation and then recession. Trump, on the other hand, describes the economy bleakly and has pushed for a dramatic increase in growth.
50. For a different view of the economy, a Business Roundtable survey says that CEOs of major companies approve of what they’re seeing so far and they think Trump’s policies will allow them to expand business more quickly and increase profits.
51. Mulvaney accuses the Obama administration of manipulating jobs data. There is no evidence of this — the BLS has used the same methods for over 75 years.
52. Trump introduces his budget proposal, which cuts domestic programs drastically while increasing military spending by 10%. I’ll try to do another write-up on it later this week, but below are a few tidbits.
53. The budget includes billions in cuts to the UN, including for humanitarian issues. This would cause a “breakdown of the international humanitarian system as we know it,” according to Richard Gowan an expert on the European Council on Foreign Relations.
54. While Trump is asking for billions to complete his wall, Congress has some different ideas on immigration, including more drones and more border patrol agents.
55. Canadians worry about the effects of Trump’s budget and EPA guidance on the Great Lakes, which, of course, we share with them.
56. Even Newt Gingrich comes out against parts of the budget proposal, specifically the drastic cuts to the NIH, calling the cuts to research irresponsible and shortsighted.
57. Scientists worry that Trump’s drastic cuts to research will lead to a “lost generation” in American research. Maybe other countries will take the lead.
58. The budget would axe the national endowments for the arts and the humanities, both of which several Republican legislators support funding.
    
59. A big kerfuffle erupts on social media about how the budget cuts will affect Meals on Wheels – specifically the cuts to HUD and state block grants. Mulvaney says it will not be cut.
60. Trump gives power back to the CIA to order drone strikes, something they couldn’t do under Obama because this power was limited to the Pentagon.
61. The U.S. military denies accusations that they bombed a mosque in Syria, saying they targeted Al Qaeda militants.
62. Reports surface that the U.S. military drafted plans to deploy up to 1,000 troops to Syria to support the retaking of Raqqa, the so-called headquarters of ISIS.
63. Tillerson takes one journalist (from the Independent Journal Review) on his flight to Asia. He calls for a new approach to North Korea, calling the policies of the last 20 years “failed.” He refuses to negotiate on freezing their nuclear weapon programs and leaves military options open (while China urges us to remain “coolheaded”).
64. In a closely watched election, Geert Wilders’ extreme far-right Party for Freedom came in a distant second to the center-right VVD party. Wilders campaigned against the EU, against Muslims, and for white nationalism. This was seen as a test for the extreme right.
65. Trump has a strange meeting with Angela Merkel during which he accuses a German reporter of reading fake news, suggests that he and Merkel have something in common around wiretapping, and seems to refuse to shake her hand. Trump did assure her that he strongly supports NATO.
66. During a joint press conference, a German reporter asked what so many of us want to know the answer to: “Why are you so scared of diversity in the news, and in the media, that you speak so often of fake news? And that things after all, in the end, cannot be proven, for example, the fact that you have been wiretapped by (Barack) Obama?” She asked the question in German so Trump would have to wait for the translation and therefore not be able to interrupt before she was finished.
67. After meeting with Merkel, Trump tweets that Germany owes the U.S. and NATO “vast sums of money”, indicating he doesn’t understand how NATO works.
    
68. Other countries offer to help out in countries where Trump’s Mexico Rule prohibits aid from going to agencies that mention abortion.
69. At the G-20 meeting, U.S. delegates reject wording in a free-trade statement that warned against protectionism and that stressed rules-based free trade following “existing standards and agreements.” This signals that we won’t accept trade norms and we’ll pursue more a more antagonistic approach.
70. Major agencies, including the State Department, the Pentagon, and the Treasury, are operating without key officials due to the slow progression of the transition.
71. Miami prosecutors have an ongoing investigation into Steve Bannon for potential voter fraud. Bannon calls his ex-wife’s FL address his primary residence, though it appears he was actually a CA resident.
72. Trump takes his paychecks instead of donating them, and says he’ll let the media decide where he should donate his salary at the end of the year.
73. The Palm Beach sheriff’s department says it costs about $60,000 in overtime every day Trump spends in Florida
74. Rachel Maddow majorly over-hypes a leak of Trump’s 2005 taxes (which Trump calls fake news). It showed net income of $153 million, a $105 million business loss write-down, and taxes of $38 million. Much of what he paid was from the alternative minimum tax, which he wants to get rid of.
75. The Justice Department goes to court to fight two conservative legal groups suing for more of Clinton’s emails to be released. This supports Trump assertion that he doesn’t want to pursue this.
76. Kellyanne Conway’s husband is the likely choice to run the civil division of the Department of Justice.
77. Polls start to show we are losing our global appeal:
    • 40% of colleges report declines in applications from international students
    • In November, 59% of Germans believed us to be a trustworthy ally. By February, that number had dropped to 22%.
78. In a poll of millennials, 57% of Americans age 18-34 see Trump as an illegitimate president (though they don’t say why or what they mean by that). Also, Trump’s approval rating falls to 37%.
79. Trump has appointed senior White House advisers in every Cabinet agency to monitor the various secretaries and to ensure their loyalty to Trump (verified by records first obtained by ProPublica through a Freedom of Information Act request).