Tag: senate

Week 79 in Trump

Posted on July 30, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Credit: gguy/Shutterstock

Despite Trump’s spectacular tweet storm on Sunday, it was a relatively quiet week as far as political news. Maybe we’ll get a little summer break from political chaos for the next few weeks. Here’s what happened last week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Four members of the Homeland Security Advisory Committee resign, saying that they can no longer be associated with Trump’s immigration policies and calling the practice of family separation “morally repugnant.”

Russia:

  1. Even though Robert Mueller’s investigation has so far resulted in 32 indictments, 5 guilty pleas, and over 100 charges, this happens:
    • Sarah Huckabee Sanders calls Robert Mueller’s investigation a “hoax and a waste or time.”
    • Trump tweets that Russia’s interference in the election was “all a big hoax” (though last week he said that he concurs with our intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference in our election).
    • Then, even though it’s all a big hoax, Trump blames Obama for letting Russian interference in our election happen. He also wonders why Obama didn’t tell his campaign, though both the Clinton and Trump campaigns were warned about it.
  1. Carter Page has been downplaying his ties with Russian officials, but in a 2013 letter, he says he worked as an informal advisor to Kremlin staff.
  2. The judge in Paul Manafort’s trial grants immunity to five witnesses as requested by Mueller. The judge also orders that all witness names be made public (there are 30 prospective witnesses). The trial begins at the end of the month.
  3. Trump says that he thinks Russia will meddle in our midterm elections, but this time to help get Democrats elected because Trump’s been so tough on Russia. Despite his soft stance toward Putin, he has taken more actions against Russia than previous administrations (albeit grudgingly in many cases).
  4. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testifies to a senate committee about our Russia policy, including the actions taken by the administration (213 sanctions, weapons sales to Ukraine, 60 diplomats expelled, and Russian facilities closed). Pompeo refuses to discuss what was said in Trump’s meeting with Putin.
  5. Just before Pompeo’s testimony, the State Department restated their non-recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
  6. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Banking Committee schedule hearings to find out what was agreed upon in the Trump and Putin summit.
  7. Trump postpones Putin’s visit in the fall, blaming the Russia “witch hunt.” Soon after, Putin invites Trump to Moscow.
  8. The White House releases an edited transcript of the summit, omitting key questions. The Kremlin releases yet a different edited version that also omits key information. The White House later corrects their record.
  9. Eleven GOP members of the House, including Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, bring articles of impeachment against Rod Rosenstein, demanding a vote. House leadership and other members criticize this action, and the sponsors end up pulling their demand for a vote.
  10. According to “sources,” Michael Cohen says that Trump knew about the Russian offer that led to the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower before the 2016 elections. Cohen also says that Trump approved the meeting. Steve Bannon and Sam Nunberg have both said they think Trump knew about the meeting.
  11. Trump says he did not know about the meeting; Cohen says he’s willing to testify otherwise.
  12. Newly surfaced emails show that the Russian lawyer from the above meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is more closely linked to Russian government officials than she has let on.
  13. Russian hackers have been hacking into electric utility companies in the U.S.
  14. Elliot Broidy and Tom Barrack (a Trump friend and business associate) paid Rick Gates over $300,000 for help navigating Trump’s administration. Gates has plead guilty to fraud and lying to investigators.
  15. Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr (R-NC) contradicts his counterpart in the House, Devin Nunes, saying that the Carter Page warrant was based on solid intel.
  16. After Maria Butina’s arrest for espionage, Democratic senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee request an investigation into whether the NRA knew Russia was trying to funnel money through them to Trump’s campaign.
  17. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (D-Calif.) had dinner last year with Butina. Two years before that, Butina arranged a meeting between Rohrabacher and Alexander Torshin.
  18. Russian hackers are already at work in the 2018 midterm election. In August 2017, they attempted to hack into Claire McCaskill’s servers after Trump visited her state and encouraged crowds to vote her out of office.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions addresses a high school leadership summit, and joins in with the students in chanting “Lock her up!” He later says that in retrospect, he should’ve taken that moment to talk to the students about due process instead.
  2. A circuit court rules that the 2nd amendment does give us the right to open carry firearms for self defense. A previous ruling found that the 2nd amendment does NOT protect concealed carry.
  3. For the second time, a federal judge refuses to dismiss an emoluments lawsuit against Trump.

Healthcare:

  1. Kentucky reinstates the dental and vision benefits that the state took away from a half million Medicaid recipients several weeks ago. Outrage from local Democrats and local media pushed them to reverse their decision.
  2. Two things this week will affect privatization of veterans’ healthcare:
    • Trump creates a commission to review Veterans Administration facilities with the possible end goal of shutting down several. The commission will be able to make final decisions on this without congressional approval.
    • Congress provides more funding for the Veteran’s Choice Program, which is a vehicle to privatized healthcare. Putting more money there takes it away from the VA and starts a vicious cycle of underfunding VA facilities which could lead the above commission to shut them down.
  1. On rumors of pretty massive increases in premiums next year, the Trump administration will resume paying the risk adjustment payments to health insurers that he canceled just a few weeks ago.

International:

  1. After Iran’s President Rouhani warns the U.S. about starting any conflict, Trump threatens Iran in a tweet with “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED.”
  2. The Pentagon plans to send another $200 million to help the Ukraine fight off pro-Russian separatists. This is seen as a reaction to the Trump/Putin press conference in Helsinki.
  3. A recent review of international agreements concludes that countries are in compliance with these agreements about 77% of the time. So it seems these agreements do actually work.
  4. Keeping Kim Jong Un’s word to Trump, North Korea returns the remains of 55 people believed to be American soldiers from the Korean War. The country still hasn’t slowed down it’s nuclear activity though.
  5. The White House says they won’t publish conversations between Trump and other world leaders anymore.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Four Republican representatives accuse Twitter of “shadow banning” them, which is when either their posts don’t show up on other people’s newsfeeds or don’t show up in searches. Twitter says they don’t do that. Note that all four have posted incendiary or false stories.

Family Separation:

  1. While the administration scrambles to meet their court-ordered deadline to reunite families they separated at the border, they say over 700 families can’t be reunited. They also say that 463 of the parents were likely deported without their children.
  2. For these 463, the administration failed to document consent for most of them, so there’s no way that they can prove that any documents were signed consenting to being deported without their children.
  3. And as an example of what makes a family ineligible to be reunited, the administration refuses to reunite a child with her grandmother because the grandmother isn’t the child’s parent. Please.
  4. United Airlines donates flights to help reunite families that were separated at the border and who are now being forced to pay reunification costs incurred by the administration.
  5. A judge orders the Trump administration to provide assistance and information to lawyers who are working to reunite these families.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Documents released as part of a lawsuit show that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross lied about the origin of the new citizenship question on the 2020 census. Ross says the DOJ initially requested the question, but the documents show that it was Ross who was pushing for it.
  2. A judge rules that a lawsuit against the administration for adding the citizenship question to the census can move forward.
  3. A group of 36 people sue the Trump administration over the recently upheld Muslim ban saying that the waiver process is a sham. The 36 people represent all five of the Muslim-majority countries included in the ban.

Climate/EPA:

  1. While working to decrease the size of our national monuments, the Trump administration suppressed research that shows that national monuments boost both tourism and archaeological finds. Instead, Ryan Zinke emphasized ranch, logging, and energy development.
  2. A federal appeals court blocks the administration’s second try at stopping a climate change lawsuit. This lawsuit was brought by a group of children who say that the government is endangering their future by not doing enough about climate change.
  3. A federal appeals court also blocks one of Scott Pruitt’s last policy changes that would have lifted limits of sales of so-called super-polluting semi trucks.
  4. Democrats and conservationists in the House block the GOP’s attempt to suspend endangered species protections for certain birds and insects.

Budget/Economy:

  1. It sounds like Russia is giving up on the American economy. They’ve been buying gold and selling off U.S. Treasury bonds. Their bond ownership is around 1/6 what it used to be.
  2. Unexplainable, right? Whirlpool’s stock takes a dive. Whirlpool initially pushed Trump into harsher tariffs, but they’re blaming their stock drop on the resulting high prices of aluminum and steel. Their CEO says the high prices are unexplainable.
  3. According to the North Dakota Trade office, all of China’s firm orders for food-grade soybeans have been cancelled due to tariffs. Farmers won’t see effects from this immediately, but future harvests will be hit.
  4. The economy grew 4.1% in the second quarter of this year, the highest rate of growth since 2014 when it hit 5.2% under Obama. Economists think that the growth is due in part to the tax stimulus and in part to increased spending before the tariffs went into effect. (And in case you think this proves Trump is better for the economy, growth hit 4% under Obama four times.)
  5. Don Jr. says economic growth never passed 2% under Obama. Except that it did. 15 times.
  6. Facebook stock tanks on the low number of active users, and Twitter stock tanks after they purge thousands of fake accounts.
  7. Trump considers 25% tariffs on $200 billion of foreign-made cars, and when even Republicans criticize the idea, he says we just need to trust his business acumen.
  8. Trump meets with European Commission President Juncker where they agree to work toward zero tariffs on trade, reduce barriers to trade, and increase trade in certain sectors. They also agree to establish a working group to figure out the details.
  9. Trump backs away from this tariff threats against the EU, and the EU backs down from threats of retaliatory tariffs.
  10. There are reports that Juncker used colorful flashcards as a way to simplify complex issues and to explain global trade policy to Trump.
  11. Trump says he’s willing to force a government shutdown ahead of the September spending bill deadline if he doesn’t get what he wants on immigration, including funding for the border wall.
  12. Right after tweeting that tariffs are the greatest, the Trump administration announces a $12 billion assistance package to help farmers who might be hurt by the tariffs. Trump tells farmers to be patient, and not to believe what they see and hear right now.
  13. Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) says this bailout shows that Trump has too much power and that Congress needs to reassert its power. He also says that tariffs are a tax paid by the American people, and Trump is using that tax to bail out farmers.
  14. Coca-Cola says they’ll increase prices due to rising costs from the tariffs.
  15. Current measures indicate that the price changes caused by the trade war are temporary and should return to close to normal in a year or two.

Elections:

  1. Here’s an illustration of why we need to end gerrymandering. In emails disclosed as part of a lawsuit, Republican officials in Michigan brag about gerrymandering and celebrate sticking it to Democrats. The emails talk about concentrating “Dem garbage” into certain Democrat controlled districts, and about concentrating African Americans into a specific House district in Detroit. They even describe one of the oddly shaped districts as being like a finger, essentially flipping off that district’s Democratic representative.
  2. States purged 16 million voters from their rolls from 2014 to 2016, an increase from previous periods. The greatest rates of increase were in areas that were under federal watch for having previously violated the Voting Rights Act. In at least eight states, the purges violated the Voting Rights Act or were otherwise not legal.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump weighs stripping former officials who criticize him of their security clearances. This is an unusual move by any administration, and could hamper their ability to do consulting work on classified projects. It seems Rand Paul pushed him on this one.
  2. The Senate confirms Robert Wilkes to head the VA.
  3. Someone leaks a tape of a conversation between Michael Cohen and Trump where they discuss purchasing Karen McDougal’s story about her affair with Trump from American Media to prevent the story from getting out before the 2016 election.
  4. New York’s Department of Taxation and Finance opens an investigation into Trump’s foundation over whether it violated state tax laws.
  5. Ivanka shuts down her clothing line to focus on her work in Washington and also because conflicts of interest between her business and her government work are getting in the way.
  6. Apparently there’s a standing rule on Air Force One that all TVs be tuned to Fox News while Trump’s on board. He has a little tantrum when Melania’s TV is on CNN.
  7. Betsy DeVos eliminates Obama-era regulations that required for-profit colleges to be able to show proof that their claims of graduate employment are accurate. This rule protected students from being tricked into thinking that graduates of a school are more employable than they actually are.
  8. Vandals untie one of DeVos’s 10 yachts, releasing it from it’s dock in Ohio. Which is how we learn that her yacht is registered under the Cayman Island flag. Why is that?
  9. Trump criticizes the FCC for slowing down the merge between Sinclair Broadcasting and Tribune Media.
  10. Someone vandalizes Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a pickaxe for the second time.
  11. Fox News fires The Five host Kimberly Guilfoyle for sexual misconduct and abusive conduct. Side note: Guilfoyle is dating Don Jr.
  12. Karma bitches. Facebook suspends Alex Jones for bullying and hate speech.YouTube removes four of his videos and suspends him from live-streaming for three months.
  13. Emails surface that show that police in Ohio had been planning to arrest Stormy Daniels for months before her scheduled performance.
  14. After a meeting with the publisher of the New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, Trump tweets that they had a very good meeting and talked about the high volume of fake news put out by the mainstream media. Sulzberger’s response: “I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous.” “
  15. So then Trump accuses the media of having “Trump derangement syndrome.”

Polls:

  1. 71% of voters think Roe v. Wade should not be overturned.
  2. 51% think Russia has something on Trump, with Republicans being the only category of voter that doesn’t think so (categories include things like gender, party, education, age, race, and so on).
  3. 52% say Trump’s summit with Putin was a failure for Trump; 27% say it was a success.
  4. 73% say the summit was a success for Putin.
  5. 78% say Trump should defend all our NATO allies.
  6. 68% are concerned about Trump’s relationship with Russia.
  7. Trump’s approval rating fell to 38% after the Russia summit.
  8. Two groups give Trump clear support: Republicans at 82%, and white evangelical Christians at 71%.
  9. 58% of voters disapprove of Trump’s foreign policy, with 51% saying that he‘s weakened our position as leader of the free world.

 

Week 66 in Trump

Posted on April 30, 2018 in Politics, Trump

If you’re unsure of why we need to put an end to Citizen’s United, here’s my quote of the week; a confession from Mick Mulvaney, former Congressman and current head of the Office of Management and Budget and the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.


“If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

He was speaking to bankers and lobbyists about how they can help weaken the CFPB—the very agency he runs and the very agency that is supposed to be a watchdog over bankers. This guy is not looking out for the best interests of the people. And we need to get money out of politics.

Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Fox & Friends

I don’t usually report much on Trump’s rallies or speeches, but this stream of consciousness earned its own category this week.

  1. Trump phones in to Fox & Friends and talks for nearly half an hour non-stop devolving into a rant by the end. The anchors could barely get a word in, even though they tried to ask him questions, steer him away from legal danger, and stop the conversation. I’m not even sure I can summarize it all, but here goes:
    • He criticizes the Iran deal and says we gave them $1.8 billion dollars. (Background: Hardly any of this money was controlled by the U.S. or U.S. banks—it was mostly held overseas and much of the payment was in Euros. Some of it was frozen assets, and some of it was from a military hardware agreement that they paid for but that we never delivered on because of the revolution.)
    • He says he’s having a hard time getting things done because of the obstructionist Democrats. Except that the Republicans hold the House, the Senate, and the presidency. Democrats don’t have much power to obstruct.
    • He defends Dr. Ronny Jackson and says Montana Senator Jon Tester will pay in the midterms for publicizing criticism against Jackson. (Tip: If you vet your candidates before presenting them to Congress, you can also stop their dirty laundry from being aired in public.)
    • He (again) says James Comey is a leaker and a liar, and accuses him of crimes. He then threatens to intervene with the DOJ.
    • He (again) says the FBI was unfair to search Manafort’s and Cohen’s offices and homes.
    • He says Michael Cohen represented him in the Stormy Daniels affair, something he previously denied knowledge of.
    • He says Michael Cohen barely represented him (just a “tiny, little fraction”), opening the door to getting client/attorney privilege thrown out.
    • They talk Kanye West. I’m not sure how this is news. Even Kanye felt compelled to tweet he doesn’t agree with Trump 100%.
    • He says that Democrats outspent Republicans on a recent special election in Arizona that the Republican won by 5 points.
      Reality check: Republicans outspent Democrats 8.4 to 1, and they should’ve won that seat easily by 20-25 points.
    • He talks about the upcoming North Korea summit, saying he’s not giving up much in the negotiations.
    • He says he got more done in one year than any president. Historians have already debunked that one.
    • He (again) brings up his electoral win.
    • He criticizes Mueller’s team of attorney’s for being all Democrats (they are, but Mueller isn’t, and we don’t know the party affiliation or identities of DOJ and FBI staff doing the actual investigation).
    • He also says Mueller’s attorneys are all “Hillary people.”
    • He confirms that he spent a night in Moscow during the Miss America pageant, despite previous denials.
    • He ends with an almost unintelligible rant about Andy McCabe, Hillary money, Comey crimes, and Terry McAuliffe.
  1. Within an hour of the above, DOJ prosecutors file a statement with the courts saying that Trump said Cohen represented him just a “tiny, little fraction.” This, along with Sean Hannity claiming Cohen didn’t represent him, blows up the argument by Trump’s legal team that the documents seized from Michael Cohen are covered under client/attorney privilege.
  2. Also, Kellyanne Conway says Trump would like to appear regularly on Fox & Friends, but I’m guessing his legal team will work very hard to not let that happen.

Russia:

  1. The Senate Judiciary Committee advances a vote on legislation to protect Robert Mueller.
  2. House Intelligence Committee Republicans and Democrats each release very different reports on their conclusions in their Russia investigation. This whole thing seems like an enormous waste of time and energy, and only proves that Trey Gowdy was absolutely correct when he said:

“Congressional investigations unfortunately are usually overtly political investigations, where it is to one side’s advantage to drag things out. The notion that one side is playing the part of defense attorney and that the other side is just these white-hat defenders of the truth is laughable … This is politics.”

  1. One main difference between the two reports is that Republicans say it was out of their scope of investigation to look into whether Trump colluded with Russia (though they concluded he didn’t). The Democrat’s report says the committee refused to follow up on leads about possible collusion.
  2. Another main difference is that the Republican report accuses our federal law enforcement agencies of doing shoddy work.

  3. Likely the differences between the two reports are things that Mueller’s investigation is already looking into.
  4. Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with key Trump campaign members in 2016, turns out to have closer ties to the Russian government than she’s previously admitted to. She was an informant for the prosecutor general.
  5. The contact to whom James Comey leaked his memos used to be a special government employee for the FBI.
  6. A federal judge throws out Paul Manafort’s lawsuit accusing Robert Mueller of going outside the scope of his investigation.
  7. A new court filing indicates that the purpose of the search warrant on Paul Manafort’s properties last year was to obtain information about the Trump Tower meeting between members of Trump’s campaign and Russian lobbyists.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court hears arguments about the third iteration of Trump’s Muslim ban. Early signs point to them not overturning it.
  2. Federal district judges vote unanimously to appoint Geoffrey Berman as U.S. attorney for New York’s southern district. Jeff Sessions appointed Berman as interim attorney, and the judges have taken the decision out of Trump’s hands for the time being by making the appointment.

Healthcare:

  1. A federal judge blocks Trump’s attempts to cut funding to a Planned Parenthood program to prevent teen pregnancy across the nation. This is on top of last week’s ruling that he couldn’t cut funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.
  2. Step away from the romaine! E-coli outbreaks related to romaine lettuce are reported in 22 states.

International:

  1. Mike Pompeo gets through his first round of confirmation votes, even though Rand Paul swore he would block Pompeo. That is, until Paul received several calls from Trump on the day of the vote.
  2. Senator Tom Cotton says that Democrats are involved in shameful political behavior for opposing Mike Pompeo’s nomination.
    Reality check: Cotton held back the confirmation of three of Obama’s appointees, including one, Cassandra Butts, who’s nomination he dragged out for two years. We’ll never know how much longer he would’ve dragged it out because she died of leukemia before he had a chance.
  3. Pompeo ends up getting confirmed by the end of the week, and flies right off to Brussels to meet with NATO allies.
  4. In Kabul, a suicide bomber bombs the gate of a voter registration center, injuring over 100 and killing at least 57. ISIS claims responsibility.
  5. Melania and Donald Trump host their first state dinner in honor of French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte. Breaking from the bipartisan tradition, they didn’t invite any Democrats or members of the press.
  6. Of note, the main purpose of Macron’s visit is to convince Trump to stay in the Iran deal, despite likely pressure from John Bolton to pull out.
  7. If we pull out of the Iran denuclearization deal so close to the North Korea denuclearization meetings, North Korea might not think we’re negotiating in good faith.
  8. In his speech to the joint Congress, French President Macron addresses #MeToo, climate change, the U.S. rejoining the Paris climate accord, fake news, democracy and the post-WWII democratic order, white nationalism, terrorist propaganda, North Korean denuclearization, stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons (while also calling for respect for Iran), and Mideast peace. He pushed for support of the JCPA (Iran agreement), saying France won’t leave it and Trump needs to take responsibility for his own actions around that.
  9. After Trump threatens economic sanctions against Iran unless our EU allies fix the JCPA, Iran says maybe they’ll just withdraw, freeing them to start up their nuclear program again.
  10. Ahead of Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in meet and agree to work to remove nuclear weapons from their respective countries. They also agree to officially end the Korean war.
  11. Police arrest the Waffle House shooter. He has a history of mental illness, at one time saying Taylor Swift was stalking him and at another showing up at the White House to set up a meeting with Trump.
  12. Trump threatens countries who might oppose the U.S.’s bid to hold the FIFA World Cup in 2026, saying we won’t support them if they don’t support us.
  13. Thousands of protestors come out in Germany to protest anti-Semitism. There’s been a rise in anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incidents across Europe, with Germany averaging about four a day right now.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Tennessee’s state Senate passes a bill to erect a monument to the victims of abortion. The state House already passed a similar bill, so it looks like it’ll be up to the governor to pass or veto it.
  2. The chaplain of the House of Representatives resigns, indicating in his resignation letter that it was at Paul Ryan’s request. Ryan later said that the House members’ pastoral needs weren’t being met.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. We find out that National Security Advisor John Bolton chaired the non-profit Gatestone Institute, which promotes false and misleading anti-Muslim stories (some of which were picked up and spread by Russian trolls in 2016). The group also warns of the coming jihad, warns against mixing Europeans with Muslims, and blames several national problems on immigrants.
  2. A federal judge orders the Trump administration to continue with the DACA program, this time forcing the administration to start processing new applications. Trump has 90 days to provide stronger legal justification for ending the program.
  3. Mississippi and Alabama state governments took a holiday on Monday to observe Confederate Memorial Day.
  4. The Department of Homeland Security prepares to end temporary protected status for over 9,000 immigrants from Nepal who came here after their country had a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. I’m losing count… we’re getting rid of Haitians, Sudanese, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, Syrians, Hondurans, Somalis, Yemenis, and now Nepalis. That’s over a half million displaced people.
  5. Montgomery, Alabama opens the nation’s first memorial for victims of lynching, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It features 800 steel columns hanging from a roof, each with the name of a county and the people who were lynched there.
  6. The Oklahoma state House passes a bill that would allow adoption agencies to discriminate against adoptive couples based on religious beliefs. This, of course, lets agencies halt adoptions to a variety of couples who offend their morals, but is most likely to affect gay and lesbian couples.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A federal judge rules against Trump’s attempt to delay a rule that would increase fines for automakers whose cars violate fuel efficient standards.
  2. Trump’s latest plans for EPA fuel economy standards is to freeze them at 2020 levels through 2026. California has long been able to create their own rules on auto emissions, and the latest plan would revoke that.
  3. Scott Pruitt signs the proposal mentioned last week that would force the raw data behind any EPA scientific studies to be released to the public. As a reminder, much of this data is personal medical data covered by privacy standards, so not all studies can legally follow Pruitt’s rule.
  4. Also, it turns out that internal EPA staff has been working on the above proposal in collaboration with Representative Lamar Smith, who authored a similar piece of legislation that passed the House. They want the proposal to be as close as possible to Smith’s bill.
  5. On top of forcing anchors to read propaganda pieces, Sinclair Broadcast Group fires a local reporter who refused to present global warming denier views in a piece on global warming.
  6. Scott Pruitt appears before two congressional committees to answer questions about his questionable expenses and his conflicts of interest.
  7. Ryan Zinke’s Department of Interior proposes cutting parts of the Well Control Rule. The Obama administration created this rule after the BP oil spill to provide safety standards to prevent blowouts and enact emergency response to offshore drilling disasters. Two things rankle me about this:
    • Zinke continues to protect his own state of Montana while disregarding the safety and health of other states.
    • Regulations don’t come out of a vacuum. They are largely in response to health and environmental disasters to prevent them from happening again.

Budget/Economy:

  1. A CBO report says that because of the GOP tax reform, owners of pass-through businesses will receive over $40 billion in tax breaks this year.
    • $17.4 billion will go to around 200,000 owners who make over $1 million a year (averaging to an $87,000 tax break per owner).
    • $3.6 billion will go to around 200,000 owners who make $500,000 to $1 million (averaging to an $18,000 tax break per owner).
    • $15.7 billion will go to around 9.2 million owners who make $100,000 to $500,000 (averaging to an $1,700 tax break per owner).

So yes, this is definitely a tax break for the rich.

  1. Ben Carson proposes a rent increase for people living in subsidized housing. Right now they pay 30% of their income; he wants to increase it to 35%.
  2. In the first quarter under the new tax plan, the economy grew at 2.3%, just above the yearly average since the recession ended nine years ago. It falls below the 2.9% from the previous quarter and below Trump’s expectation of 3%.
  3. Economists think we can’t extend this growth for more than a year or two because of our national debt (over $21 trillion now), which is expected to grow by around $1 trillion per year. If the Fed continues to raise interest rates, the cost of that debt will also increase.
  4. Both the Fed and the CBO expect growth to fall to 1.8%.
  5. Sprint and T-Mobile agree to a $27 billion merger. Verizon will be the only larger mobile provider.

Elections:

  1. Democrats in Arizona block a Republican effort to change how vacant Senate seats are filled. The GOP was trying to make sure that should John McCain have to give up his seat because of his health issues, his seat wouldn’t be up for election this year. If the bill passed, the governor would appoint a replacement who would hold that seat for two full years if a seat becomes vacation within 150 days of a primary election.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The day after Barbara Bush’s funeral, George Bush Sr. ends up in the ICU with an infection.
  2. A van drives down a Toronto sidewalk, killing 10 and injuring 15 more. The driver turns out to be kind of a social outcast belonging to a group called Incel (involuntary celibates). He tries to commit suicide by cop, but the officer involved refuses to shoot him and takes him in to custody.
  3. Accusations of impropriety mount against Dr. Ronny Jackson, Trump’s pick to run the Department of Veterans affairs. Allegations include over-prescribing drugs (uppers and downers), being drunk on the job, and creating a hostile work environment.
  4. An inspector general report from 2012 recommended terminating him for bad leadership of his department.
  5. And what the heck? The White House releases the inspector general report expecting it to exonerate Jackson, but it mostly backs up the accusations. Maybe they didn’t read it?
  6. Jackson denies all allegations, but the White House ends up withdrawing his nomination.
  7. The Presidential Personnel Staff, which is responsible for vetting candidates for government positions, has only 30 employees—less than a third of previous administrations. Most employees are young campaign workers, family members of staff, or more senior officials transitioning to other posts. Most also have no vetting experience.
  8. The Department of Education under Betsy DeVos has closed dozens of investigations into school disciplinary actions, most of which are civil rights issues. Blacks are 4 times as likely to receive suspensions as whites, and they are twice as likely to be arrested. And this starts at the freaking preschool level.
  9. In a joint press conference with French President Macron, Trump again accuses Democrats of being obstructionists. So I’ll remind everyone again that Democrats barely have enough power to obstruct. Republicans hold all branches of power.
  10. Michael Cohen says he’ll plead the fifth in court in order to avoid being deposed.
  11. A former federal judge will review the materials seized from Cohen’s home and offices to determine what falls under attorney/client privilege.
  12. Irony alert. Eric Greitens is the keynote speaker at a law enforcement prayer breakfast. He’s accused of two felonies, one around sexual blackmail and the other around computer tampering to gain a charity’s donor information.
  13. A jury finds Bill Cosby guilty on three charges of sexual misconduct.
  14. Reporters Without Borders drops the U.S. to 45th out of 180 countries in its ranking of press freedom. It was 41 in 2016 and 43 in 2017. I’m not clear how much credence to give this ranking.
  15. The FBI says they told the Trump administration about the spousal abuse allegations against Rob Porter in March of 2017, contradicting what the White House has been saying.
  16. Michelle Wolf doesn’t hold back at the White House Press Correspondence dinner, and gets raked over the coals by some and lauded by others. She called people out on their political BS without apology.

Polls:

  1. 74% of voters don’t want Trump to fire Mueller, but 71% think he will before this is over.
  2. 56% of voters think that Mueller will find that Trump did something criminal or impeachable.

Week 63 in Trump

Posted on April 9, 2018 in Politics, Trump

YOU'RE FIRED Rubber Stamp over a white background.

I’ve been thinking that Trump doesn’t fire people personally because he has an aversion to doing the actual firing as opposed to doing the reality show firing. You can tell he tries to make people so uncomfortable in their jobs that they’ll quit before he gets around to firing them. What I didn’t realize is that the president’s ability to fill a position under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act hinges around vague language that describes when the president can make his own appointments in case of vacancies, and firing someone doesn’t seem to be one of those cases. So it’s in his best interest if they quit. Crazy.

But I digress. Here’s what happened this week…

Russia:

  1. We learn through Russian media that Trump invited Putin for a White House visit when he congratulated Putin on his electoral victory.
  2. After opening arguments, Paul Manafort‘s lawyers withdrew part of their civil suit. Manafort says Mueller is overreaching in his investigation, but a court document shows that Rod Rosenstein gave Mueller authority to investigate Manafort’s relations with Russia and with the Ukraine. The judge doesn’t think Manafort has much of a case.
  3. The first prison sentence comes down in the Mueller investigation. It’s short — Alex van der Zwaan, the son-in-law of a Russian oligarch, gets 30 days in prison and a $20,000 fine for lying to the FBI.
  4. Konstantin Kilimnik is identified as the Russian agent with whom Manafort and Rick Gates had contact during the 2016 campaign.
  5. The State Department says that the expelled Russian diplomats can be replaced on a case-by-case basis. Expelling diplomats doesn’t change the agreement that outlines the number of Russian diplomats allowed in the states, so they can ramp it back up.
  6. While Mueller says Trump is a subject of the Russia investigation, he also says Trump is not a target. What this means is that Trump is anywhere between a witness and a suspect, and we don’t know which side he’s closer to. So this doesn’t tell us much.
  7. Mueller’s team questions two Russian oligarchs traveling to the U.S., searching at least one of their phones. Mueller also requests an interview with a third oligarch who has not traveled here. He’s looking into whether Russians illegally funded Trump’s campaign or inauguration.
  8. In his last public statement as national security advisor, H. R. McMaster says we haven’t done enough to punish Russia for its increased global aggression. Just hours before that, Trump said that no one has been tougher on Russia than him.
  9. But then, the U.S. sanctions 24 Russian oligarchs and government officials, including a few with ties to the Trump campaign. The sanctions also target about a dozen companies owned by the oligarchs.
  10. A newly released email shows that on the day Roger Stone went on InfoWars and predicted leaks about the Clinton Foundation, he emailed Sam Nunberg to say he had dinner with Julian Assange the night before. This indicates he had knowledge of the documents hacked by Wikileaks, but Stone now claims that he didn’t meet with Assange and flight records would prove it.
  11. Mark Zuckerberg says it’s reasonable for anyone on social media to expect that their data has been scraped in some way. And of course it is. We get warnings all the time about the info people are scraping and we choose to ignore it.
  12. Facebook estimates that Cambridge Analytica could have accessed information from up to 87 million users. They’ll start notifying Facebook users whose information was accessed.
  13. Mueller plans to issue a series of reports on his investigation. The first is about whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice and should be released this summer.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A federal judge dismisses a lawsuit against Massachusetts’s assault weapon ban, saying that right to own the banned guns and ammunition isn’t guaranteed by the second amendment.
  2. Florida officials appeal a court order directing them to create a new process to restore rights to former felons.

Healthcare:

  1. The Department of Health and Human Services removes information from its website about low-cost and no-cost women’s health issues, specifically around breastfeeding issues and cancer.
  2. A federal judge orders the government to stop blocking undocumented women from getting access to medical appointments, counseling, and procedures (including abortions).
  3. The surgeon general issues a nationwide advisory to give more people access to naloxone, along with training on how to use it. Naloxone reverses the effects of opioid overdose.

International:

  1. Despite a public commitment that we won’t leave Syria hanging, Trump says we’ll be out of there soon and he freezes funds to help stabilize the area.
  2. Assad launches another chemical attack on Syrian rebels, killing at least 40 and injuring at least 500. And now it’s up to John Bolton to come up with our next steps. Oyveh.
  3. Trump‘s announcement about Syria takes his military staff by surprise. A day after Trump says we’ll be out of Syria soon because ISIS is almost defeated, the White House says that we remain committed to fighting ISIS in Syria.
  4. Russian and Chinese military leaders meet, to show America their close ties with each other and to reaffirm those ties.
  5. A delivery truck drives into a crowd in Germany killing two people and injuring 20. The driver, a German citizen, kills himself. There are no ties to ISIS so far.
  6. The Department of Homeland Security says it found cell tower simulators—called stingrays—last year in DC. Foreign spies and other criminals can use these to track people and to intercept communications, and hardly anything has been done to combat them.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Chicago bans a long list of semi-automatic weapons.
  2. I can’t believe this had to be done. State legislators in New York pass a law making it illegal for police officers to have sex with people in their custody.
  3. South Carolina representative Ralph Norman took out his loaded pistol and laid it on a table during a meeting with constituents while they were discussing gun violence. South Carolina’s Democratic party calls for an investigation. Never point your gun—loaded or not—at anything you don’t want to shoot. And it’s probably never a good idea to shoot your constituents.
  4. Representative Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) resigns over using taxpayer money for sexual harassment lawsuit payouts.
  5. While Marco Rubio has been telling Parkland students that he supports raising the purchase age for certain weapons to 21, he’s also been pushing to end a similar law in DC.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump tweets that DACA is dead and again blames Democrats in Congress. He encourages Republicans in Congress to stem the ‘massive influx’ of people and drugs over the border.
    Background: Trump rescinded DACA in fall of 2017 and gave Congress until March to fix it. The only reason it’s still going is that it’s held up in the courts. It’s possible this tweet storm stems from recent CBP data showing a major uptick in border crossings in March, which seems typical for every year except 2017.
  2. Adding a citizenship question to the census (which the administration wants to do) will likely hurt these states the most: Nevada, Texas, California, New Jersey, Arizona, Florida and Maryland. The census is the backbone for all sorts of government programs and for government representation. Tying the census to any kind of federal law enforcement inhibits full census reporting because people are afraid they’ll be reported to the DOJ.
    Background: Information from the 1940 census was secretly used in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II under the Second War Power Act.
  3. Seventeen states, DC, and six cities sue to get the question dropped.
  4. Trump announces he’ll send National Guard troops to help guard the border. From what he says, this seems like a reaction to Fox & Friends’ shady reporting about a caravan of immigrants traveling through Mexico to storm our borders. The caravan is actually an annual human rights protest march in which some people request asylum in Mexico and the U.S.
    Background: Bush spent $1.2 billion sending National Guards troops to help border patrol, and Obama spent $110 million on the same. But neither of them did it in reaction to a hyped up news story.
  5. In a tax roundtable:
    • Trump doubles down on his theme of Mexicans-as-rapists through a misunderstanding of the caravan in Mexico. He later says women are “being raped at levels never seen before” in response to reports that women and children travel in numbers as a safety measure.
    • Trump tells a story, clearly designed to heighten people’s fear of immigrants, about how young girls never see their parents again after they’re “cut up” by immigrant gang members.
  1. Trump takes credit for getting Mexico’s president to break up the caravan, saying he pressured Mexican officials in a conversation on Monday. The White House later says this conversation never took place. And also, the caravan didn’t break up.
  2. The Trump administration institutes quotas for immigration judges to speed up processing.
  3. Police shoot and kill another black man. This guy was holding a pipe, which I guess is more easily mistaken for a gun than a cellphone is.
  4. Though Native Americans only make up 10% of the Department of the Interior’s staff, 33% of the staff that Ryan Zinke reassigned are Native Americans.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Michigan says it’s done giving away free water to residents of Flint. They say the water has been up to par for two years. But they’re still replacing the contaminated pipes so you can see why residents are wary.
  2. Michigan, home of what is probably the largest clean water disaster in the U.S. (see above), approves Nestle’s request to increase the amount of water they pump out of the state. Over 80,000 people commented against the move during the public comment period.
  3. The EPA scraps the fuel mileage targets for passenger cars and SUVs that were put in place under Obama to help combat global warming. They also plan to challenge California’s right to set their own targets, which was established under the Clean Air Act due to the state’s history of smog problems. Even if we back off of our standards, the rest of the world won’t, and we’ll have to play catch-up at some point.
  4. The Justice Department sues California over a state law that limits the federal government’s right to buy or sell federal land in the state.
  5. The administration is looking into rescinding a rule that protects endangered wildlife in order to give agricultural and mineral interests more freedom and access to use land that is currently off limits.
  6. Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, picks Susan Combs to oversee federal wildlife policy. This is only important because she opposes the Endangered Species Act and has spent the last several years fighting it.
  7. Last week, I wrote about Scott Pruitt paying $50 a night for a room in a lobbyist’s DC apartment, which then turned out to be a whole apartment. This week, we learn that his daughter stayed with him there as well while she was interning at the White House. And also:
    • He paid about $2,150 less than the going rate in DC.
    • The ethics committee signed off on the agreement, but now say he didn’t give them complete information.
    • The condo is partially owned by the wife of the head of Enbridge Inc., whose pipeline-expansion project was approved last year by the EPA under Pruitt. The head of Enbridge has been a long-time fundraiser for Pruitt.

    • He didn’t always pay his $50, and he wouldn’t leave the apartment when his agreement was up.
    • He wanted to spend $100,000 a month on a private jet subscription.
    • His security detail is more than three times as large as his predecessor’s (and his predecessor’s was part-time, unlike Pruitt’s full-time detail).
    • He tried to get his security to use sirens to get through traffic so he wouldn’t be late for dinner.
    • He used an obscure provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act to give massive raises to some of his friends that he hired at the EPA, and then refused to take responsibility in a Fox interview.
    • Several EPA officials who confronted Pruitt about his spending were reassigned, were demoted, or requested new assignments because of the work environment.
  1. A federal judge dismisses Exxon Mobil’s lawsuit against states attorney generals, allowing the lawyers to continue investigating whether Exxon knew about climate change and lied to the public to cover it up.
  2. A district judge rules that officials must take climate change into account when making certain infrastructure decisions.
  3. Indonesia declares a state of emergency after an oil spill caused by a leak in a pipeline in Borneo. The spill has spread across an area larger than Paris and is now heading out into the open ocean. The spill caused the death of 5 fisherman caught when clean-up workers sparked a fire.

Budget/Economy:

  1. On Monday, Trump hits back at people who fact-checked his tweet storm about Amazon last week, maintaining that Amazon is bad for the USPS and that they don’t pay taxes.
    Background: Trump isn’t concerned about the USPS. He hasn’t even appointed a board of governors yet for the post office, so they’re running on a temporary emergency committee with limited powers. Also, the Trump campaign spent over $150,000 at Amazon for office supplies. So there’s that.
  2. And on Monday, stocks continue to dive on a tech sell off as Trump keeps up his criticism of Amazon. But then stocks recover on Tuesday. And then they’re down… and then…
  3. The market volatility continues throughout the week, with pretty major fluctuations. According to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, investors aren’t reading the Fed’s moves correctly. Vanguard founder Jack Bogle says he’s never seen anything like it. Bloomberg says that the market had it’s worst April start since 1929, however it looks to be recovering.
  4. China retaliates against Trump’s announced tariffs by placing tariffs of their own on 128 American goods, estimated at about $3 billion.
  5. Trump raises the tariff ante by threatening tariffs on an additional $50 billion of Chinese goods, and China threatens tariffs on another $50 billion worth of American goods. Both sides say they don’t want a trade war though.
  6. Agricultural organizations express concerns over potential trade disagreements, noting that the current situation will definitely cut into hog farmers’ bottom lines. Trade agreements have generally been good for farmers. When Trump pulled out of TPP, Japan instated emergency tariffs on U.S. beef of 50%. When Trump threatened NAFTA, Mexico increased their corn imports from Brazil. The price of soybeans also dropped this week on the threat of greater trade disputes.
  7. Teachers in Oklahoma walk out of classes in protest. They’re looking for better salaries and school funding. Kentucky teachers protest as well, and Arizona teachers are working on a date to start their protest.
  8. Mick Mulvaney, the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recommends weakening the bureau’s responsibilities and requiring congressional approval for CFPB rules. Instead of being an independent and apolitical agency, Mulvaney says the director should report to the president and that it should be funded by Congress and not the Fed.
  9. Trump and Kevin McCarthy (Majority House Leader) are working to rescind some of the funding agreed upon in the bipartisan spending bill earlier this year. Trump had tried to get a line-item veto for the bill, but the Supreme Court ruled that out in a court case 20 years ago.

Elections:

  1. One of the GOP candidates for Lieutenant Governor in Idaho says that maybe if we pushed women with the death penalty, they would stop seeking abortions. Don’t vote for this guy!
  2. In tax roundtable, Trump goes off script and says millions of people vote multiple times, specifically in California. Trust me, we can barely get anybody to vote once in CA, much less get them out there to do it again and again.
  3. Many Republicans in Congress see keeping control of the House in the midterm elections as hopeless, so Mitch McConnell is focused on keeping control of the Senate.
  4. A review of news subscriptions shows that Trump did better in areas where there’s a “news desert.” In other words, where there weren’t enough news outlets to quickly fact check what Trump said, people tended to believe him more.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Another woman files a suit to nullify a non-disclosure agreement related to Trump. She says she faced harassment while working on Trump’s campaign (to clarify, not from Trump himself).
  2. At the White House Easter Egg Roll, which is largely attended by kids, Trump takes a moment to talk up the U.S. economy and military might.
  3. Trump tweets about his latest polls, calling Obama ‘Cheating Obama’. Probably the first president to accuse a predecessor of cheating.
  4. Trump calls the (hardworking men and women of the) FBI and DOJ an embarrassment to our country.
  5. The former head of the VA, David Shulkin, says he was never asked to tender a resignation letter and never did so, which he offers as proof that he was fired.
  6. A shooting at YouTube’s headquarters sends three people to the hospital. The shooting, a female, was upset about YouTube’s new monetization policies.
  7. Trump will once again skip the White House Correspondents‘ dinner.
  8. A fire on the 50th floor of Trump Tower takes the life of one person living there, a death that might have been prevented if fire sprinklers had been installed in the upper residential floors. Six firemen were also injured. A minor fire broke out two months ago on the roof of the building.
  9. Trump steps into the fire story a little too quickly, and, before news breaks of the man’s death, tweets:

“Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!”

  1. The Department of Homeland Security has a new media plan. They plan to compile a list of journalists and media influencers, and to monitor what the people on the list put out to the public.
  2. Sources say that Trump conferenced in Lou Dobbs to senior-level meetings during his first year in office, often interrupting officials to let Dobbs advise him.
  3. Todd Johnson, a Trump campaign manager in New Mexico and Defense Department appointee, resigned after it was discovered he posted controversial and false stories about Obama, like birtherism and how Obama is the anti-Christ. He also posted anti-Muslim propaganda.
  4. Twenty-six email domains managed by the Executive Office of the President were tested for security compliance, and 18 were found to be out of compliance. Only one had fully implemented the security protocol. But her emails!!!
  5. Trump says he didn’t know anything about Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, which would mean that Cohen committed fraud.
  6. Robert Mercer, a major funder of Breitbart and the Trump campaign, gave Secure America Now $2 million. Secure America Now is an extreme-right organization that bought anti-Muslim ads to place on Facebook and Google in 2016. The ads were micro-targeted to voters who would be receptive of them.
  7. Ronny Jackson is up for a military promotion, which means if he takes the job as head of the Veteran’s Administration, it could cost him nearly $1 million in lifetime retirement benefits.
  8. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) requests an explanation from Sinclair Broadcasting’s chairman about forcing their anchors at local stations to read propaganda statements.
  9. Fun fact: Sinclair’s contracts include a clause that penalizes employees for quitting, which might be discouraging anchors from protesting the propaganda pieces. Also, these clauses are likely not enforceable.

Polls:

A new poll shows that:

  • 48% of Americans trust CNN more than Trump.
  • 45% trust MSNBC more than Trump.
  • 30% trust Fox News more than Trump.
  • 75% of Republicans trust Trump more than CNN.
  • 72% of Republicans trust Trump more than MSNBC.
  • 35% of Republicans trust Trump more than Fox News.

  • Trump’s support among women fell from 41% to 35% this month.
  • Trump’s support among men rose from 50% to 53%.

Week 62 in Trump

Posted on April 2, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

Here’s what else happened this week.

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Polls:

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

Quote of the Week

David Shulkin, outgoing head of the VA

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

Week 59 in Trump

Posted on March 12, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

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

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

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Week 58 in Trump

Posted on March 5, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Jared was in the spotlight this week for a range of problems from his security clearance to his business dealings. I almost felt sorry for him. And also, John Kelly jokes that his current position (chief of staff) is punishment from God. Jared probably feels the same.

Here’s that and whatever else happened this week in politics…

Russia:

  1. Paul Manafort pleads not guilty to the slew of new charges against him. His trial date is September 17.
  2. As part of Rick Gates’ plea deal, Mueller moves to dismiss 22 counts of bank and tax fraud against him.
  3. We learn that during the 2016 campaigns and elections, Russian hackers compromised the state websites or voter regulations systems in at least seven states.
  4. Hope Hicks testifies to Congress, telling them she sometimes had to tell white lies for Trump. And then she resigns.
  5. U.S. Cyber Command chief Mike Rogers testifies to Congress. He says that in order to stop Russian cyber threats, he needs to be granted authority by the president. As of now, Trump hasn’t directed or authorized him to do that.
  6. The Atlantic obtains transcripts of private messages between Roger Stone and Wikileaks from 2016, showing that both parties lied when they claimed they never contacted each other.
  7. The Republican led Senate Intelligence Committee says that the House Intelligence Committee (specifically Devin Nunes) is behind the leak of Senator Mark Warner’s private text messages with a Russian contact about Christopher Steele. A little background—the Senate committee was having trouble contacting Steele, and according to both Republicans and Democrats, the texts were part of the effort to obtain more info. Nunes tried to make it look like Warner was colluding, but it’s just not the case.
  8. Subpoenas issued by Mueller indicate he’s focusing on political influence from the United Arab Emirates.
  9. Mueller’s investigating whether Trump knew about the hacked DNC emails before they were publicly released, and he’s looking into Trump’s business dealings before and around the time he decided to run.
  10. Mueller is also investigating Trump’s threats to fire Jeff Sessions last year, specifically over whether Trump wanted to install a new, more loyal attorney general who could control the Russia investigation better.
  11. Christopher Steele says that Russia advised Trump not to bring on Mitt Romney as Secretary of State. They tried to guide Trump toward someone more amenable to easing sanctions.
  12. Putin announces new nuclear weapons that he says can breach U.S. defenses. Hopefully not starting another arms race.
  13. Putin ally Alexander Torshin worked for six years to gain leverage and influence with the NRA in order to insert himself into U.S. politics. Mueller is investigating him to find out if he illegally funneled money through to NRA in order to help Trump’s campaign.
  14. The State Department has $120 million to secure our elections and guard against breaches from foreign agents. They haven’t spent any of it yet. As of now:
    • There are no Russian speakers in the department responsible for stopping Russia’s disinformation campaigns.
    • The hiring freeze means they haven’t been able to hire the needed computer experts to track Russian campaigns.
    • SoS Rex Tillerson doesn’t think we can do anything to counter Russia’s disinformation campaigns.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court hears a case about whether unions can collect fees from employees they represent but who haven’t actually joined the union. Unions use the fees to cover collective bargaining costs, which benefit all employees. This affects public unions that represent teachers, firefighters, nurses and other government employees.
  2. The Supreme Court refuses to hear a case over DACA, which means that the government must continue allowing and approving applications and renewals. This doesn’t mean that the issues around DACA are solved though.
  3. A Justice Department review criticizes Andy McCabe for leaking information about an ongoing investigation. This could bolster Trump’s theory that McCabe is at the center of a ‘deep state’ government trying to oust him… except that the leaked information led to a negative story about Clinton and Obama.
  4. Trump publicly criticizes Jeff Sessions‘ handling of the investigation into alleged FISA abuses.

Healthcare:

  1. ‪The Urban Institute estimates that recent GOP policy changes around the ACA—including getting rid of the mandate and extending short-term policy periods—will increase the number uninsured by over 6 million and the number of underinsured by 2.5 million. All this while costing the federal government an additional 9% compared to current healthcare costs. Oh, and premiums are expected to go up by 18%.‬ So good job?
  2. ‬Trump wants to penalize opioid manufacturers and distributors that allow or neglect to report drugs being funneled into the black market. Penalties could be in the form of fines or criminal charges.
  3. I don’t know… does this fall under “Healthcare”? Trumps takes a page from Philippine President and strongman Rodrigo Duterte, saying maybe we should execute drug dealers to manage the opioid crisis.
  4. Twenty Republican led states file a lawsuit against the Trump administration claiming that the entire ACA is invalid now that the mandate has been repealed.

International:

  1. The UN links the chemical weapons used by Syria to North Korea.
  2. The European Union announces new rules for tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter that give them one hour to remove terror content once it’s been identified.
  3. Chinese President receives approval to ignore the term limits put in place to avoid another Mao-like regime. Trump says it’s great that President Xi is now president for life, and maybe that’s something the U.S. should look into. Dear. God. No.
  4. The Chinese government takes over Anbang Insurance Group Co., which owns the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City (among its many other holdings).
  5. Italy’s elections don’t give any group a clear majority, but the biggest winners are populists and the far right. With gains by the League party, xenophobia raises its ugly head in yet another country.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. After Trump’s televised conference on gun violence, Mitch McConnell decides to prioritize deregulation of banks instead of looking seriously into changes to our gun laws.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a ruling that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects members of the LGBTQ community. This case was specifically around protecting them from discrimination in the workplace.
  2. The Supreme Court rules that the government can detain immigrants facing possible deportation for years without a court or bail hearing. The decision was strongly divided, and strikes down a previous requirement that detainees be given a bail hearing every six months. The ruling even applies to legal immigrants and asylum seekers.
  3. A federal judge rules in favor of DACA recipients who have had their status unlawfully revoked. The ruling says that the government can’t revoke someone’s DACA status if they haven’t been convicted of a serious crime and haven’t been given the opportunity to defend themselves.
  4. After counties in Alabama refuse to issue marriage licenses because same-sex marriage is now legal, Alabama is thinking about not issuing marriage licenses at all anymore. It turns out that then-chief justice Roy Moore told agencies in the state they don’t have to issue marriage licenses. Several other states are considering the same. It’s pretty amazing the lengths people will go to prevent gay marriage.
  5. Judge Gonzalo Curiel (the guy Trump once said couldn’t be partial because he’s Mexican) rules that Trump isn’t breaking any laws by waiving environmental reviews before building the wall, even though it crosses wildlife reserves and would block migration routes. Dammit. I hate this wall. It’s medieval.
  6. And then Trump somehow gets the idea that Californians want the wall built NOW (we don’t) and so decides to hold off on building any part of the wall until the whole thing is approved. I think he thinks he’s punishing us.
  7. Indiana implements a new law that allows the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency to refuse to give professional licenses to people with DACA status, effectively preventing them from working in a wide range of professions from medicine to cosmetology to architecture to general contractor. Those who already have their licenses can be refused renewal.
  8. Again in Indiana, a federal court rules against an order by then-governor Mike Pence that withheld payments from a refugee resettling agency in order to prevent Syrian refugees from settling in the state. Pence used terrorism as an excuse to stoke fear of the refugees in the state. The ruling permanently bars Indiana from stopping Syrian refugees from settling there.
  9. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf warns immigrants in advance of an upcoming ICE raid. According to ICE they still detained 115 people who had committed violent crimes or multiple low-level crimes.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The North Pole experiences a thaw in what is normally its coldest time, and the sun still has weeks before it shows up there. This happened four times between 1980 and 2010, but it’s happened four times in the last five winters.
  2. Internal documents from the Department of the Interior show that the primary reason for shrinking the size of Bears Ears National Monument is to increase drilling and mining in the area. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
  3. Another bomb cyclone on the east coast leaves eight people dead.

Budget/Economy:

  1. As a result of the recent tax reform, companies announce planned stock buybacks of around $180 billion (stock buybacks increase the price of stocks by reducing the number of stocks on the market).
  2. Trump shocks his aides and GOP lawmakers by announcing steep tariffs on steel and aluminum. Apparently it shocked investors too, because the Dow drops nearly 500 points after the announcement.
  3. Let the trade wars begin! The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, threatens to put tariffs on U.S. goods in retaliation for Trump’s announced tariffs on steel and aluminum. EU tariffs would include iconic American exports like Levi’s, Harley Davidsons, and bourbon.
  4. Trump says that trade wars are good and easy to win.
  5. Steel manufacturers on the west coast express concerns that the tariffs will drive up the prices of their raw materials and will hurt their bottom line.
  6. Paul Ryan pleads with Trump not to enact the tariffs, which could hurt Ryan’s constituents.
  7. Trump tries to use the tariffs as a bribe to Canada and Mexico saying he might waive tariffs for them if they sign a new NAFTA deal. Canada and Mexico don’t take the bait.
  8. GOP lawmakers in Georgia punish Delta when Delta announces it will end a once-a-year discount for NRA convention attendees (which has been used all of 13 times). First Lt. Governor Cagle threatens to block a provision in a bill passed by the state House to stop taxing airlines on jet fuel, and then the Senate passes the House bill after removing the jet fuel tax break. Georgia’s governor objects, but signs the tax bill anyway to give Georgians a tax break.
  9. In the weeks before Trump announced steel tariffs, Carl Icahn (who once worked in the Trump White House until he left with a hint of scandal) dumped $31.3 million dollars of stock in a company dependent on steel.
  10. West Virginia teachers go on strike to improve the conditions of their contract. The strike almost ends when the governor offers a 5% raise, but they continue to strike over the rising costs of their healthcare plan.
  11. On a tour of government housing Ben Carson warns that we shouldn’t make housing for the poor too comfortable. Based on the conditions he was talking about, he doesn’t even want to give them basic comforts other than a roof over their head and a platform to sleep on.
  12. More than a dozen Democrats are on board with a GOP bill in the Senate that would weaken some of the Dodd-Frank regulations that were implemented to keep financial agencies on the up and up. Their argument is that financial institutions with assets of $50 billion to $250 billion don’t qualify as big banks.
  13. Trump’s budget includes increases in military and Homeland Security funding, but also includes steep cuts to House and Urban Development core housing programs and to block grants for community development. Ben Carson says he might not be able to stay in his position with these cuts because he sees these programs as crucial.
  14. Trump asks Paul Ryan to cut funding for a tunnel between New York and New Jersey. His reasons aren’t clear, and the suspicion is that he’s targeting Democratic rivals.

Elections:

  1. Democrats flip their 39th congressional seat at state and federal levels since the 2016 election. Republicans have flipped four.
  2. Senator Bob Corker confirms that he will not be running for re-election after rumors start up that he’s thinking about running again.

Parkland:

  1. The father of one of the survivors of the Parkland shooting admitted that he doctored an email to make it look like CNN was scripting questions and remarks for students to use at a town hall meeting.
  2. Legislators in Florida reject a ban on assault weapons while advancing legislation to arm teachers. The bill also addresses mental health issues, gun safety, school safety, and communication.
  3. And then a teacher in Georgia fires off a gun in a classroom and then barricades himself in a room. No one is harmed.
  4. The list of companies adjusting their relationships with the NRA continues to grow and is now at 19. The list includes Dick’s Sporting Goods, REI, Walmart, Delta, MEC, and more. They’re either cutting ties, limiting weapons sales, or getting rid of perks for NRA members.
  5. Students from a neighboring school walk 16 miles to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to support students who survived the shooting in their fight to stop gun violence.
  6. After researching gun violence and gun laws for two years, RAND Corporation finds that we need way more research on this. They ask Congress to lift the funding freeze currently in place preventing the CDC from studying this themselves. You can read the full report here.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Jared Kushner has a super bad week.
    • John Kelly downgrades Kushner’s security clearance. He no longer has access to top-secret information.
    • We learn that foreign officials discussed how to leverage Kushner’s financial transactions to manipulate him. The UAE described him as particularly manipulable because of his business dealings.
    • His point man in the White House, Josh Raffel, steps down.
    • We also learn that Kushner’s family received nearly $509 million in loans from two companies shortly after taking part in White House meetings.
    • Mueller is investigating whether any of Kushner’s foreign ties influenced White House policies.
    • Fun fact: The White House chief calligrapher has higher clearance than Kushner.
  1. The White House downgrades the security clearance for 30 White House aides after it’s revealed that 130 staffers don’t have permanent security clearance yet.
  2. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel expresses concern about the current state of the FCC, saying that everything they’ve done under Trump has been geared to support conservative media company Sinclair Broadcasting.
  3. Trump announces his re-election campaign, and names Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign‘s digital manager, as the new campaign manager (because he can’t use the old one obviously).
  4. A week after praising the NRA and saying we should arm teachers, Trump holds a televised meeting with congressional leaders, where he:
    • Pushes for raising the age limits for purchasing guns.
    • Calls for expanded universal background checks.
    • Tosses out the idea of confiscating guns now and worrying about due process later.
    • Condemns concealed carry reciprocity.
    • Chides legislators for being under the NRA’s thumb and says he’s willing the fight the NRA is necessary.
  1. And then Trump meets with NRA officials and backs down on universal background checks. Republicans go back to their offices not knowing what direction to take so once again nothing is being done about gun violence.
  2. The House Administration Committee votes to allow members of the House to use taxpayer dollars to buy bulletproof vests.
  3. Another Trump cabinet member is under scrutiny for lavish spending. Ben Carson is under investigation for whether they exceeded spending limits in refurnishing the HUD offices.
  4. Several local governments are considering laws that get rid of bail bonds for low level offenses, and some have already passed such laws.
  5. A man shoots himself in front of the White House in an apparent suicide.
  6. A bill to make 18 the legal age to marry in Kentucky stalls over concerns about parental rights to allow their children to marry. These marriages often involve young girls who are sexually exploited by the men they then marry.
  7. The Trump Organization orders presidential seal replicas to use on golf course markers, a surprising violation of federal law.
  8. The FBI is investigating Ivanka Trump over her role in negotiating and financing a deal around the Trump Hotel and Tower in Vancouver.
  9. Trump’s latest pick to sit on the U.S. Sentencing Commission thinks the commission should be abolished and has a history of making racial comments about crime.
  10. Trump’s personal pilot is his pick to head the FAA. Really fun side note: Journalists who rode along with Trump during his campaign joked that each flight could be their last because the pilot had so many near misses and bad landings.
  11. Anthony Scaramucci is on a list of people who can’t enter the White House without special permission. He says John Kelly should resign.
  12. Democrats in both the Senate and House introduce bills using the Congressional Review Act that would keep net neutrality rules. The Senate version is one vote short, but the House faces an uphill battle. Seriously voters, unless you want everything on the internet to start getting packaged up like cable channels, call your elected officials and ask them to back this bill. Getting rid of net neutrality is going to cost everyone more $$ and it’s going to be a real pain in the ass to have to figure out which sites you’re willing to pay for.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s approval rating is pretty dependent on age. His approval rating is 46% among the silent generation; 44% among boomers; 36% among Gen Xers; and only 27% among millennials.
  2. 58% of Americans want to elect a Congress that will stand up to Trump.
  3. 70% of Americans support stricter gun laws. Not surprising, since only 30% of households own guns.
  4. 83% of Americans are in favor of continuing or fixing DACA. Why is this so hard for Congress to get done? Oh yeah… Trump shot down all their bipartisan agreements.
  5. 49% of Americans agree with Nancy Pelosi that the tax plan gives crumbs to everyday people. Count me among them. I know people getting thousands (and even tens of thousands) each year in tax breaks and I know people getting less than a thousand each year. And the money isn’t going to the people who really need it.
  6. The global approval rating of the U.S. is 30%, a low in the lifetime of this poll.

Week 57 in Trump

Posted on February 27, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Last week’s shooting lit up the gun control debate once more, but this time sounds different and this time the polls are moving in favor of some moderate restrictions. I, for one, am hoping we can make some reasonable changes without taking away everyone’s guns (which I’m pretty sure will never happen anyway). Anyway, here’s what else happened in politics this week…

Russia:

  1. Robert Mueller charges Alex Van Der Zwaan with making false statements to the FBI about Rick Gates and with deleting documents requested by prosecutors. Van Der Zwaan pleads guilty, but he’s not cooperating.
  2. Rick Gate pleads guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements. He’s cooperating with the Mueller investigation. This is the fifth guilty plea in the Russia probe.
  3. Mueller brings nearly three dozen additional charges against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.
  4. The Democrats release their redacted memo, which says:
    • The FBI and DOJ didn’t abuse the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), didn’t omit relevant information from the FISA request, and didn’t use FISA to spy on Trump or his campaign.
    • The FBI opened their investigation months before they knew of the Steele dossier.
    • The Steele dossier was a very small part of the FISA request.
    • The FBI didn’t pay Steele for this information.
    • If the FISA warrant wasn’t paying off, the courts wouldn’t have continued to reauthorize it.

The memo includes excerpts directly from the FISA warrant application that prove the Nunes memo was incorrect. NPR has the full text with annotations.

  1. Trump wants Jeff Sessions to launch an investigation into whether the Obama administration did enough to stop Russia from interfering in our 2016 elections.
  2. A federal judge who was appointed by Trump, worked on Trump’s transition team, and donated to Trump’s campaign refuses to recuse himself from a case involving Fusion GPS (the firm that commissioned Christopher Steele’s dossier).
  3. Mike Flynn refuses to accept money from Trump’s legal fund, Trump, or Trump Organization to help out with his legal fees in the Russia case.
  4. One reason Jared Kushner hasn’t received full security clearance yet is the ongoing Russia investigation.
  5. Russian hackers attack hundreds of Olympic computers and then plant fake evidence to make investigators think that North Korea was behind it.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rules that Maryland’s ban on assault weapons and their magazine size restrictions aren’t in violation of the constitution. The court says the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to weapons of war.
  2. The Supreme Court rejects a case against California’s 10-day waiting period for purchasing assault weapons.
  3. Maryland and DC attorneys general expand their lawsuit against Trump for accepting gifts from foreign and state governments.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump proposes a regulation to allow short-term health insurance policies that aren’t required to meet ACA-defined protections and to let them last up to a year. They don’t even have to offer a comprehensive package.‪‬

International:

  1. U.S. intelligence agencies believe that the person who is in charge of Russian mercenaries in Syria was in touch with both the Kremlin and Syrian officials before the mercenary attack on U.S. held assets last week.
  2. Trump announces new sanctions against North Korea. These sanctions focus on shipping companies and ships, which are thought to be used to help North Korea get around the sanctions that are already in place.
  3. The UN Security Council passes a 30-day cease fire in Syria after a barrage of bombings on civilians.
  4. Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto cancels his first planned trip to the Trump White House after a tense phone call about the border wall.
  5. The international group Financial Action Task Force places Pakistan on it’s terrorist-funded watch list. This comes at the urging of the U.S.
  6. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption scandal grows as more accusations are brought against him and as friends and colleagues are charged and arrested.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. After the Parkland shooting and in front of students, the Florida state House voted against a move to merely allow the House to consider a bill banning assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A couple ways Trump has moved the Republican party on immigration:
    • GOP leaders in Congress are now insisting that any immigration reform include reducing legal immigration. Up until 2016, this was considered extreme by the vast majority of Republicans in office.
    • The first time Trump brought up a Muslim ban in his campaign, Republicans roundly criticized the idea. When he actually rolled it out, Republicans praised him for it. When Republican-appointed judges blocked the ban (saying it was unconstitutional), Republicans criticized those judges.
  1. A lesbian couple in Texas sues the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for not allowing them to be foster parents to a refugee child. Apparently they were told that they don’t “mirror the Holy Family.” Also, there’s a shortage of foster parents…
  2. Melania Trump’s parents are permanent residents of the U.S., triggering speculation that they were allowed here through family-based migration programs (or chain-migration, if you’re looking for the more racially charged term for it).
  3. Trump threatens to pull ICE agents from California as punishment for sanctuary policies.
  4. A civil rights group sues the Trump administration to prevent him from deporting certain immigrant groups here under temporary protected status.
  5. ICE has increasingly been using a little-known law to conduct searches on private property and in areas up to 100 miles from the border. They’re also using it to search trains and buses.

Climate/EPA:

  1. One of Trump’s biggest successes last year seemed to be efforts to reverse environmental, health, and other protections, but many got caught up in legal challenges. Here are a few regulations the courts upheld:
    • Dentists must prevent their mercury waste from getting into waterways.
    • Methane emission limits on oil and gas wells.
    • Ground-level ozone standards to reduce smog-causing air pollutants.
    • Limits on levels of lead in paint and dust.
    • Listing the rusty patched bumblebee on the endangered species list.
    • New energy efficiency regulations for certain appliances.
    • Restrictions on mining in Bristol Bay, AL (home of a major salmon fishery).

Many others are in legal limbo right now or facing new legal challenges.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Missouri’s governor is indicted for invasion of privacy. He took nude photos of his mistress, and then allegedly used them to blackmail her to keep quiet about their affair. Fun side note: This guy actually reduced Missouri’s minimum wage.
  2. Trump’s infrastructure plan drops his promised requirement that oil and gas pipelines use steel manufactured in the U.S.
  3. After announcing bonuses for employees because of last year’s tax reform, Walt Disney says it will withhold bonuses for union members (who are in the midst of negotiations) until they sign on to a contract favored by Disney. I think there’s a word for that. Like extortion.
  4. Glitches in the new tax law have been popping up. Some are drafting errors and some rules just weren’t thought all the way through. Here are just a few:
    • Legislators intended for businesses to be able to take advantage of deductions for certain building improvements, but the new law denies this to restaurants and retailers, among others.
    • Wealthy money managers can avoid losing a lucrative tax break around carried interest, which will let them pay a lower rate on some income.
    • Farmers who sell grain to co-ops could avoid taxes all together.
    • The law contains conflicting dates about when certain rules kick in.

Elections:

  1. Because Pennsylvania’s governor rejected the GOP’s court-ordered redrawing of their gerrymandered districts, an independent analyst redraws the map. The state supreme court approves the map, which is even more favorable to Democrats than the map the Democrats themselves submitted. Analysts say this map represents the state much more fairly.
  2. Trump supports the GOP fight against the new districts and says that they must fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. Fun fact: The Supreme Court has already refused to hear this case… just a few weeks ago.
  3. In the middle of an election year during which we are woefully unprepared to prevent further meddling by Russia, Paul Ryan decides to replace the chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. They’re still looking for a potential nominee to the position, which oversees election security.
  4. State election officials across the county are returning to paper ballots for better security and to prevent foreign interference.

Parkland:

And the gun debate goes on…

  1. #NeverAgain. Students across the country stage walkouts to protest gun violence.
  2. Schools threaten to discipline students who participate in walkouts in protest of gun violence. Universities assure students that walking out won’t count against them when they apply for colleges.
  3. Conspiracy theories abound on social media, and Donald Trump Jr. liked several conspiracy theories on Twitter.
  4. Russian bots and far right trolls make up stories about students who survived the shooting and are now speaking out. Many of their families are now receiving death threats. Seriously. Gun rights advocates need to DIAL IT BACK.
  5. As a result of the publicity and backlash against the NRA, major corporations begin to cut ties with the NRA.
  6. Opinion alert: NRA speakers and listeners at CPAC this week behave horribly in the wake of this tragedy. There’s just no excuse for this no matter how much you love your guns.
  7. Wayne LaPierre, CEO and VP of the NRA, blames the shooting on the failure of the family and a failure of school security. LaPierre also warns of a wave of socialism that will take away your guns.
  8. NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch says that the media loves mass shootings. She also blames the Broward County Sheriffs and the FBI.
  9. This is rich. LaPierre says, “The elites care not one whit about America’s school system and schoolchildren.” LaPierre makes $5,000,000 per year. How is that not elite?
  10. Florida Governor Rick Scott at first pushes back against any changes to gun laws, but with the continued student protests, he begins to soften on things like age limits and addressing mental health.
  11. Students and parents attend town halls with elected officials, including Marco Rubio, and a listening session with Donald Trump.
  12. Trump promotes arming teachers, rejects active shooter drills, repeats things Wayne LaPierre said at CPAC the previous day, and is open to banning bump stocks. But he balks at restrictions on assault rifles.
  13. Attendees heckle Rubio when he refuses to back a full ban on assault weapons. Rubio supports raising the legal age to 21 and creating gun violence restraining orders, opposes arming teachers, and is reconsidering a ban on high-capacity magazines. Students didn’t let him off easy; they pressed him hard on key questions.
  14. Trump appears unsure of next steps on gun violence. He surveys guests at Mar-a-Lago for their opinions. He seems to agree with gun controls a few times but then comes back around to a more hardline stance. At one point he agrees that we should tighten background checks, and wants to ban bump stocks.
  15. The security guard at the school is suspended and then resigns after it comes out that he hid instead of going in the school to confront the shooter.
  16. Both Trump and the NRA endorse arming teachers. However, in May 2016, Trump tweeted: “Crooked Hillary said that I want guns brought into the school classroom…Wrong!” After the Columbine shooting, the NRA also endorsed gun-free schools. At the time, LaPierre said, “First, we believe in absolutely gun free, zero tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America’s schools, period, with the rare exception of law enforcement officers or trained security personnel.”

Miscellaneous:

  1. Twitter continues a purge of suspected Russian bots, resulting in conservative Twitter users losing thousands of followers in one day.
  2. CPAC continues its march to the far right this year. Speakers include French politician Marion Marechal-Le Pen, Breitbart London Editor Raheem Kassam, and Brexit leader Nigel Farage. Former White House staffer Sebastian Gorka participate on a panel. Both Trump and Mike Pence addressed the conference.
  3. The Department of Health and Human Services puts Jon Cordova, a top official at the agency, on leave while they investigate his social media activity. Cordova posts baseless claims, smear campaigns, and conspiracy theories. How did our government fill up with people like this?
  4. Jared Kushner will continue in his role, which includes access to highly classified material, despite his inability to obtain permanent government security clearance.
  5. But then John F. Kelly says no one whose clearance hasn’t been finalized will be able to look at top-secret information. So they could stop letting Kushner see top-secret documents by next week.
  6. The FCC officially files their order to repeal net neutrality, which will go into effect April 23.
  7. After a backlash against the RNC using campaign funds to pay for Trump’s legal bills in the Russia investigation, the RNC now pays over $37,000 per month in rent at Trump Tower. They also pay a monthly salary to Mike Pence’s nephew John.
  8. There’s a dating site for Trump supporters. It features a man convicted of having sex with a minor on its homepage. I guess the real news here is… there’s a dating site for Trump supporters?
  9. The head of the VA, David Shulkin, has permission from the White House to get rid of any subversion in his agency. He says anyone who defies his authority will be fired. This comes after the inspector general found that Shulkin pressured his chief of staff to doctor an email so the VA would cover his wife’s European airfare. The inspector also found Shulkin improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets on the same trip.
  10. Trump wants his military parade to be on Veterans Day, and to start at the White House and end at the Capitol.
  11. The majority owner of the Trump-branded hotel in Panama orders all Trump employees out of the building in an attempt to take over the hotel. He says that the Trump name is bringing down revenue and keeping rooms empty.
  12. Elaine Duke, deputy secretary of Homeland Security, says she’ll step down. Her role has been minimized since Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen took over last year.

Polls:

  1. 62% of Americans blame Trump and Congress for not doing enough about mass shootings.
  2. 77% of Americans think better mental health screening and treatment could’ve prevented the shooting last week.
  3. 66% of Americans support stronger gun laws, including 50% of gun owners.
  4. The Presidential Greatness Survey (a survey of presidential scholars) ranks Trump as the worst president so far. Among just Republican scholars surveyed, he’s the fourth worst. They ranked him most polarizing.
  5. 51% of voters say they haven’t seen an increase in take-home pay since the new tax law passed. 25% say they have.
  6. After a brief boost, Trump’s approval rating is back down to 37% with 58% disapproving.

Week 55 in Trump

Posted on February 12, 2018 in Politics, Trump

In the midst of the dueling memos, we did manage to pass a budget. But I’m starting with my favorite recap of the Nunes memo. It came from Jon Zal.

“Yes, we did some treason, but one of the guys who caught us doing the treason was biased against us because he doesn’t like people who commit treason, and the people who paid the people who paid him to investigate us didn’t like us either, so the evidence of our treason must be ignored.”

Russia:

  1. Now Trump’s lawyers want him to refuse any requests to be questioned by Mueller. Trump’s lawyers don’t even want him talking to Mueller, but Trump wants to do it anyway… but then he doesn’t. He’s keeping us guessing.
  2. The House Intelligence Committee votes to release the Democratic memo regarding the issues in the Nunes memo, which Trump released earlier. Trump refuses to release the Democratic memo.
  3. The New York Times makes a FISA request to publicize documents about Carter Page’s surveillance. The Times argues that since Trump decided to declassify the Nunes memo, public interest outweighs confidentiality.
  4. Devin Nunes acknowledges that, contrary to what his memo says, the FBI did disclose the political backing of the Steele dossier when requesting the FISA warrant on Carter Page.
  5. Nunes wants to build a physical wall to separate Republican and Democratic staffers working for the House Intelligence Committee members. Typically, these staffers work together.
  6. Republican Representative Thomas Rooney says that the Office of Congressional Ethics has ethics investigations into every single Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, including their staff. The investigations are further eroding trust in the committee.
  7. Rex Tillerson says that Russia has a lot of tools to influence our elections and that they’re already working on our midterms later this year. He says we’re no better prepared than we were in 2016, basically implying that there’s nothing we can do because the Russians will adapt.
  8. At an economic summit, former President George W. Bush says that there is “pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled” in our 2016 elections. He also says that “it’s problematic that a foreign nation is involved in our election system. Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.”
  9. The DOJ’s number 3 attorney resigns, in part because she thought she’d have to take over the Russia investigation if Trump fires Rod Rosenstein. Also, 25% of the divisions she oversaw are still unfilled, making her job that much more difficult.

Healthcare:

  1. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health says they’ve found the largest cluster of advanced black lung disease we’ve ever seen. This disease was once nearly eradicated, but now it strikes and kills miners at a younger age than before, and it progresses more quickly than before. The cluster is located in Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia. One possible explanation is new mining techniques.
  2. Though the Trump administration says they won’t reverse Obama’s regulations to protect miners against black lung, the rule is marked for evaluation and as “deregulatory,” indicating it could be on the chopping block like so many other protections.
  3. Kellyanne Conway leads Trump’s efforts to deal with the opioid epidemic, but she doesn’t rely on drug policy professionals and instead leans on political staff. There’s no permanent director for the drug policy office, and the acting director hasn’t been invited to any meetings.
  4. Conway’s plans so far are to build the wall to stop the influx of drugs (it won’t—so many addictions begin with prescribed drugs) and to start a “just say no” campaign (because that obviously worked the last time, right?).
  5. The most senior official in the drug policy office is a 24-year-old appointee with no relevant experience. He just stepped down.
  6. Trump indicates he’ll focus on legal crackdowns on opioids instead of treatment options.
  7. As a result of lawsuits, Perdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, says they’ll stop marketing the drug to physicians. There are at least 200 lawsuits by local governments, and now 14 states are suing Perdue as well.

International:

  1. The UN investigates several reports of the Syrian military using chemical weapons against the rebels this week.
  2. The Syrian military shoots down Israeli fighter plane. Syrian rebels shoot down a Russian fighter plane.
  3. The U.S-led coalition in Syria ramps up air and artillery strikes against Syria’s forces. This is unusual in that we most often target ISIS forces, but the military says they were acting out of self defense.
  4. The UN wants a month-long cease fire so they can get aid in to areas trapped by the fighting.
  5. Olympics and politics don’t mix Part I: Mike Pence and his wife don’t stand for their host country’s athletes in the opening ceremonies.
  6. South Korea and the U.S. agree to negotiating terms with North Korea.
  7. Support grows in Great Britain for a second vote on Brexit after the government seems to not be making much progress on the exit agreement with the European Union. The most likely way this would happen is if the Brexit negotiations fall apart, causing Theresa May’s coalition to crumble and triggering a new general election.
  8. We learn that the Trump administration secretly reached out to Iran to negotiate a prisoner release last December. Iran refused the request.


Legislation/Congress:

  1. Nancy Pelosi takes up the House floor, speaking for eight hours in defense of Dreamers and telling their stories as a protest against not including a clean Dreamer bill as part of the budget negotiations. She wants Paul Ryan to make the same commitment that Mitch McConnell made to getting a clean bill.
  2. The House passes a bill that would require lawmakers to use their own funds to pay for sexual harassment and abuse settlements instead of using taxpayer dollars. I can’t believe we even have to have a law like this. I just can’t.
  3. Devin Nunes doesn’t like real news, so his PAC created its own alternative news site named “The California Republican.” It’s listed as a Media/News Company on Facebook, claiming to deliver “the best of US, California, and Central Valley news, sports, and analysis.” The site resembles a news site, but is designed to shine up Nunes’ image.
  4. The California Republican site gets knocked down by a denial of service report.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. John Kelly says that Trump is not likely to extend DACA if Congress can’t agree on a solution by the March deadline. But then he says Dreamers won’t be a priority for deportation. We’ve heard that before. Ask the Iraqi Christians who got sent home, or the doctor who just got sent back to Jordan, or the science teacher who just got sent back to Mexico, or any activist who’s been making noise about DACA protections. Ask them what it means to not be a priority.
  2. Trump says that we might need a shutdown—he would even love a shutdown—if Democrats won’t agree to his immigration policies.
  3. Senators John McCain and Chris Coons are set to propose a bipartisan immigration bill, but Trump shoots it down before it even comes out.
  4. The Austin, TX, city council votes 10-1 to boycott any contractors who work on building the wall. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao doesn’t think this should be tolerated.
  5. You might remember a story last November (which Trump repeated) that two border agents were attacked and brutally beaten near the border by undocumented immigrants. One agent was killed and the other was in serious condition. Fox News reported that an agent was “brutally murdered.” The surviving agent doesn’t remember what happened. The FBI investigation found nothing consistent with an assault or scuffle, and thinks it looks more like there was an accident. They haven’t reached a conclusion yet.
  6. A former leader of the American Nazi Party (and current anti-Semite and white nationalist) is likely to be the Republican candidate for an Illinois state congressional seat. Come on, Republicans. You have to do better than this.
  7. The DHS drafts rules that could target undocumented immigrants who use certain benefits, making it harder for them to gain permanent residency even if those benefits are used for their children who are U.S. citizens.
  8. Olympics and politics don’t mix Part II. Skater Adam Rippon says he wouldn’t visit the White House. An openly gay athlete, Rippon has come out strongly against Mike Pence’s support of gay conversion therapy.
  9. Trump orders the creation of a National Vetting Center to focus on immigrants, refugees, and other visitors to the U.S. The purpose is to identify people who present a security threat. It will be part of the DHS.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Employment is down in the US solar industry for the first time since 2010.
  2. Nineteen governors of western states protest Ryan Zinke’s plans to reorganize the Interior Department, saying that he promised he would consult with them and he hasn’t done so. The governors represent Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. That’s a diverse and bipartisan group.
  3. And under the heading of Read A Damn Book Already: Despite scientific evidence pointing to serious health, agricultural, and economic impacts of climate change, not to mention climate-related natural disasters and droughts, Scott Pruitt says that maybe climate change will be good for us. Because who knows what the ideal temperature will be in 2100? Scientists know, Scott. That’s who knows.
  4. At least Pruitt also says climate change is real and that humans contribute to it “to an extent.”
  5. The White House sends out a draft memo to federal agencies that would speed up permitting for infrastructure projects by shortcutting environment reviews.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The Dow makes its largest one-day point drop (not its largest percentage drop), going down by 1,175. Overall, the Dow drops around 2,700 points in a long-expected market correction.
  2. TV stations airing a Trump rally show side-by-side panels of Trump touting the economy and the market on one side and the Dow Jones dropping precipitously on the other side.
  3. Trump gets mad at the stock market for taking a 2-day nosedive, saying it made a big mistake!
  4. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) drops its investigation into the Equifax breach, where the person information of 143 million Americans was hacked. State attorney generals are picking up the slack, evaluating over 240 class action law suits.
  5. On top of ending protections and lawsuits against payday lenders that have been charging up to 900% interest on loans, Mick Mulvaney requests a review of all current CFPB cases and policies to see which he wants to drop. This is what happens when the man in charge of a protection agency also thinks we should shut that agency down.
  6. The deadline for funding the government is already up this week. It has to be passed by Friday to avoid a shutdown.
  7. The Senate reaches a deal on Wednesday… but then when it comes time to vote, Rand Paul takes the floor for several hours pushing the vote past the deadline and briefly shutting down the government. And keeping lawmakers up all night.
  8. The Senate passes a two-year spending bill that really is the result of compromise, but that increases spending for pretty much everyone. The House also passes the bill and Trump signs it. Here’s some of what it does:
    • Raises caps on spending that were imposed in 2011 and that were once seen as a key Republican victory.
    • Increases defense spending by $165 billion over two years.
    • Increases domestic spending by $131 billion over two years.
    • Increases disaster aid for hurricane and fire victims by $90 billion.
    • Extends CHIP for 10 years (when added to the previous six-year extension).
    • Refutes many of the cuts Trump requested in his budget.
    • Combined with the tax bill, ends any semblance of fiscal conservatism.
  1. Republicans concede that with the recent tax cuts and spending bill, eliminating the federal deficit is not possible.
  2. Trump proposes a $4.4 trillion budget that cuts social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP, while increasing military spending and the immigration enforcement budget. It also asks for $200 billion for infrastructure. It cuts the State Department by 27% and the EPA by 34%.

  3. Since Congress just passed their own two-year spending bill, and Trump signed it, his proposed budget will likely be ignored.
  4. The Defense Logistics Agency of the Pentagon can’t account for $800 million in construction spending. Apparently they don’t keep very good records.
  5. Even after the bad publicity around cabinet members like Tom Price overspending taxpayer dollars on travel, Scott Pruitt still flies first class and stays in luxury hotels. His excuse is security concerns.

Elections:

  1. The Supreme Court refuses a request from the Pennsylvania GOP leadership to delay a state Supreme Court ruling requiring them to redraw their gerrymandered district lines.
  2. A Republican state representative wants to impeach those state Supreme Court judges for forcing them to redraw district lines, saying they usurped the state constitution.
  3. Pennsylvania Republicans submit their redrawn district lines, which no longer have the obvious physical shape of gerrymandered districts, but which the plaintiffs in the original case say are still as demographically gerrymandered.
  4. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf must approve the new district lines. If he rejects the plan, an independent redistricting expert will redraw the lines.
  5. The Supreme Court is looking at gerrymandering cases in Maryland and Wisconsin as well.
  6. Fun Fact: In 1812, Elbridge Gerry became the first person to draw partisan district lines, and his district looked like a salamander. Thus, the Gerry-mander.
  7. Six teenagers are running for governor in Kansas. The state doesn’t have any age requirements for the governor, but now they’re trying to make the age 18 or over (still seems young!).
  8. Since the 2016 elections, Democrats have flipped 35 Republican seats and Republicans have flipped four. Democrats are targeting 101 House districts in November.

Miscellaneous:

  1. At what was supposed to be a rally to support his tax plan, Trump hypes the memo instead, and talks about how it clears him and proves how bad the DOJ and FBI are.
  2. Trump accuses Democrats of treason for not clapping for him at the State of the Union. Photos abound of Paul Ryan not clapping for Obama. Get over it.
  3. Trump wants a military parade. No, seriously. Members of both parties in Congress say this is a waste of money. Our last military parade was in 1991 to commemorate the Gulf War victory.
  4. A 6.4 earthquake in Taiwan causes buildings to shift on their foundations. Seventeen are dead and 280 injured.
  5. Chief of Staff Kelly defends Staff Secretary Rob Porter, who left his job this week due to allegations of abuse from two ex-wives. Kelly later clarifies his statement, saying he wasn’t aware of the photos. He was, however, aware of the allegations because Porter STILL doesn’t have security clearance because of them.
  6. In a staff meeting, some staffers feel that Kelly is telling them to lie about the actions he took after the abuse allegations surfaced.
  7. Trump tells the press that Porter will have a great career ahead of him and that it’s a tough time for Porter. I’m sure living with Porter was tough on his wives too. Trump wishes him well.
  8. Kelly says he’s willing to resign over the handling of the Porter issue.
  9. A second White House staffer, speechwriter David Sorensen, resigns over allegations of spousal abuse.
  10. Trump defends both staffers on Twitter, saying “lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation.” Just an FYI, lives are also being shattered and destroyed by abuse.
  11. While Trump defends those accused of domestic violence, two police officers are killed responding to a report of domestic violence. Officers are killed every year responding to domestic disputes, deaths that could be prevented if we would stop ignoring the problem of domestic violence.
  12. Trump calls former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus (who Trump pushed out) to complain about John Kelly (who replaced Priebus).
  13. Sinclair Broadcast Group solicits its news directors for contributions to its political action committee, which could cross the boundaries of ethics in journalism.
  14. A CNN employee finds DHS documents outlining a terrorism drill for the Super Bowl in the seat-back pocket of a passenger plane.
  15. After finding that a mass shooter in Texas last year should’ve been on the gun ban list, the military adds more than 4,000 people who they had previously neglected to add to the list.
  16. The Trump administration wants to stop funding the International Space Station by 2025 and turn it over to the private sector.

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

When Obama first extended the offer of DACA, many people who were eligible didn’t trust the government would have their backs or their families’ backs, so they didn’t sign up. And now, people who did sign up for DACA are now in danger of being deported, along with their families.

But here’s White House chief of staff John Kelly‘s take on that (emphasis mine):

“The difference between [690,000] and 1.8 million were the people that some would say were too afraid to sign up, others would say were too lazy to get off their asses, but they didn’t sign up.”

Week 54 in Trump

Posted on February 5, 2018 in Politics, Trump

No love lost here...

This was a huge week in Russia news, dwarfing most everything else. So I’ll skip the introduction and get right into it. Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe steps down from his job, but he’ll take leave until mid-March when he can retire with full benefits. It’s been rumored for a few weeks that he’d retire, but sources say he was forced out.
  2. McCabe is being investigated for whether he sat on the emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop for three weeks. An inspector general’s report is forthcoming on this and his handling of the Russia investigation. There’s also a question of whether McCabe should’ve recused himself from Clinton investigations because his wife received campaign donations from one of Clinton’s friend’s political organizations.
  3. Donald Trump Jr. questions whether McCabe should receive his pension. McCabe is a 20+ year veteran of the FBI and DOJ. Spoken like someone who never had to work to earn a pension nor pay into one. Junior also tweets that it was the Nunes memo that got McCabe fired.
  4. A Russian jet flew within five feet of a Navy surveillance plane over the Black Sea, forcing the Navy plane to stop its mission.
  5. Though the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to impose sanctions on Russia (only five members in total voted against it), Trump says he won’t impose the sanctions because the threat of sanctions has been enough of a deterrent.
  6. The House Intelligence Committee votes along party lines to release Nunes’ memo about classified FBI and DOJ information. They then vote to NOT release the memo written by the Democrats on the committee, which provides contextual and rebuttal information.
  7. The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, sends a letter to Nunes accusing him of making material changes to the memo after the committee voted on the release but before he gave it to the White House. Technically, the changes would require a second vote to release.
  8. The Republican majority in the House Intelligence Committee opens an investigation into the FBI and DOJ without consulting the Democratic minority.
  9. Caught on a hot mike, Trump says he’ll 100% release the memo. Sarah Huckabee Sanders later says he hasn’t read it yet. John Kelly says it will be released pretty quick. And then Trump authorizes the release of the memo (in its unredacted form) within days.
  10. Here’s a hint of what the memo alleges, along with information we know:
    • Christopher Steele passed bad information to the FBI in the dossier. (There is no evidence of this.)
    • The FBI based its warrant application for Carter Page on the dossier. (They didn’t. The application contains years worth of investigations.)
    • This was biased since the dossier hadn’t been proven. (Much of the dossier was independently corroborated by the time of the application.)
    • Steele was desperate to make sure Trump didn’t become president. (Maybe (it’s hearsay), but he allegedly said it after he wrote the dossier and learned what was going on.)
    • The FBI and DOJ are partisan and anti-Trump. (These agencies tend to lean Republican, but there’s a mix of political thought, of course.)
  1. A little background here. The FBI first started looking into Carter Page in 2013, so there was much more to the FISA application than just the dossier. The courts found reason to extend the surveillance warrant on Page three times. This means that each warrant delivered enough new information to legally justify extending the surveillance.
  2. FBI Director Christopher Wray says the FBI has grave concerns about releasing the memo because the memo omits certain facts that affect the accuracy of the information. Coming out against Trump on this could put Wray on rocky ground. This doesn’t tend to end well.
  3. There was concern that the memo would give away our intelligence gathering methods and sources, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
  4. It’ll be difficult for people who know the full story to correct the information because so much of the information is classified. So it really would require the disclosure of sensitive information about intelligence sources and their methods.
  5. Note that FISA warrant applications are typically around 50 pages long, so if Nunes condensed that to 4 pages, you can be sure it’s not the full story. Also, it turns out that Nunes never read the warrant application.
  6. Trump tells friends that he thinks the memo might discredit the Russia investigation and make it easier for him to make a case that the people running the Russia investigations are prejudiced against him.
  7. Trump also thinks releasing the memo could pave the way for him being able to make changes at the DOJ. Rod Rosenstein better watch his back.
  8. The FBI Agents Association reacts to the memo by reiterating that they never have and never will let partisan politics distract them from their mission.
  9. Trump accused Obama of wiretapping him in March of 2016, which means he’s known about the FISA warrant at least since then. Note that this doesn’t mean Obama wiretapped him, something Obama couldn’t do (I’m not sure he could even order it, but it definitely can’t be done without cause).
  10. In an interview in October of 2017, Carter Page gives an indication that he knew Paul Ryan was going to release details about the “dodgy dossier.” So it seems to have been the plan since last fall that some kind of memo would be released.
  11. Paul Ryan says that the memo isn’t an indictment of the FBI or DOJ, and he supports the release of the Democrats’ memo as well.
  12. But then Paul Ryan also calls for a cleanse of the FBI and DOJ.
  13. Trump says the memo completely exonerates him (it doesn’t) and that the investigation is a disgrace.
  14. There are many analyses of the memo, but this one from NPR is one of the better ones.
  15. And here’s a good explainer of why the memo could have the opposite of its intended effect.
  16. Rick Gates adds a new defense attorney to his team and his three existing attorneys withdraw from his case, sparking rumors that Gates is looking to strike a deal.
  17. The FBI is investigating a second dossier on Trump, this one written by a political activist and ex-journalist. It corroborates some of the Steele dossier, but the author doesn’t have an intelligence background and is an associate of the Clintons (though they didn’t know about it). Even Steele said he couldn’t vouch for all the info in the second dossier, though he did hand it over to the FBI.
  18. CIA Director Mike Pompeo (Trump appointee) says he has “every expectation” that Russia will continue their attempts to meddle in our elections, including the 2018 midterms. So please people, ignore the social media bots and fake stories.
  19. In December, Rod Rosenstein went to Trump to ask for help in stopping Nunes from getting the classified documents he requested, but instead Trump wanted to find out where the Russia investigation was going. He asked Rosenstein if he was “on my team” (his fourth loyalty request of a DOJ official). Rosenstein’s response? ”Of course. We’re all on your team, Mr. President.”
  20. We learn from Russian news sources that CIA officials met with Russian officials, including Sergey Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR. Naryshkin is barred from entering the U.S. under 2014 sanctions, so his arrival raises some questions.
  21. The DOJ files a motion to dismiss Paul Manafort’s civil suit against Mueller. Manafort’s suit claims Mueller exceeded his authority by prosecuting the crimes Manafort was indicted for, but Rosenstein says he gave Mueller broad authority.
  22. The former spokesperson for the White House legal team, Mark Corallo, warned that the statement drafted on Air Force One about Don Jr.’s Russia meeting could backfire if the underlying documents ever surfaced. Hope Hicks allegedly responded that the documents would never get out because only a few people had access to them. This is just before Don Jr. dropped all his emails to the public.
  23. One of the agents the GOP and Trump are seeking to discredit, Peter Strzok, is also the author of the letter announcing that Hillary’s email case was re-opened just before 2016’s election. That kind of pokes a hole in Strzok being biased toward her.
  24. Even though Trump has discussed firing and discrediting Mueller, Mitch McConnell says he doesn’t think Mueller needs protecting because there’s no indication anyone wants him fired or discredited. Republicans in the House and Senate refuse to advance bills protecting Mueller.
  25. Julian Assange accidentally sends a direct message to a fake Sean Hannity account, thinking he was offering the real Sean Hannity dirt on Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee that has its own Russia investigation.

Healthcare:

  1. The Trump-appointed head of the CDC resigns over her investments in multiple tobacco stocks, saying it would be too difficult to divest.
  2. An investigation by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce shows that two pharmacies in a small town of 3,000 in West Virginia received 20,800,000 prescription opioid painkillers from 2008 to 2015. That’s over 2,500,000 per year.
  3. A Texas judge temporarily blocks a state law requiring healthcare workers to bury or cremate fetal tissue after each abortion.
  4. The Senate votes down a bill passed in the House that would’ve put a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of gestation. Trump backs the House bill.
  5. The CDC plans to cut their efforts to prevent global outbreaks of disease by 80% because funding is running out.
  6. Indiana adds a work requirement to Medicaid, and will block coverage if paperwork showing eligibility is turned in late.

International:

  1. Trump signs an executive order to keep Gitmo open. This formally reverses Obama’s eight-year effort to close down the military prison. Interesting side note: There are 41 prisoners currently in Gitmo at an annual cost of $440 million.
  2. As one of the world’s largest financial centers, London is working on a free trade deal for financial services with the European Commission. This week, the EC rejects the deal, so London will probably have less favorable trading terms with the EU. EU considers moving their operations out of London and into EU countries, causing another drop in sterling.
  3. The White House drops their nominee for Ambassador to South Korea, Victor Cha, over disagreements on trade and military action in the region.
  4. Poland’s government tries to rewrite history by passing a bill that makes it illegal to accuse Poles of complicity in the Holocaust. It also outlaws the use of the phrase “Polish death camps.”
  5. After an increase in violence in Afghanistan, Trump says the U.S. isn’t interested in talking with the Taliban anymore. Except that’s what our military strategy in Afghanistan is—to force the Taliban to the negotiating table.
  6. The State Department’s inspector general opens an investigation into whether career workers in the department under Rex Tillerson have been unfairly and politically targeted.
  7. North Korea gets around sanctions by entering into joint ventures in fishing and other areas with Mozambique, using these businesses as a front.
  8. The Trump administration wants to develop smaller, lower-yield nuclear weapons.
  9. Trump wants more options for a military strike against North Korea, and he’s frustrated that his military leaders aren’t providing them.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Another sitting chair, Rodney Frelinghuysen of the House Appropriations Committee, announces he won’t seek re-election, bringing that number to nine.
  2. Trey Gowdy announces he won’t seek reelection. Gowdy is known for having lead the Benghazi hearings, and at the time said it wasn’t about politics. But now he has this to say about committee investigations.

“Congressional investigations unfortunately are usually overtly political investigations, where it is to one side’s advantage to drag things out.… This is politics.”

  1. The DOJ moves to dismiss corruption charges against Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, citing a previous court decision to acquit him on several of the charges.
  2. A chartered train carrying Republican leaders to a retreat in West Virginia collides with a truck, killing one person in the truck and injuring two others. No one on the train is seriously injured.
  3. The number of members of Congress members resigning this year is the highest it’s been in 117 years.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Homeland Security extends temporary protected status (TPS) for Syrian refugees here since late 2016 for an additional 18 months. This affects about 7,000 Syrians.
  2. Here’s a paradox. The places in the U.S. where people are overall most against immigration and would like to see it limited are also the places least affected by immigration. The places where people are most supportive of immigration are the places most affected by immigration.
  3. Members of Congress from both parties want Trump to drop his request to slash legal immigration. Trump’s plan would cut it by half at a time when economists say we need more immigrants, not fewer, in order to keep inflationary pressures down.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump’s reduction of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments goes into effect. Individuals and companies can now stake claims for hard rock mining (gold, silver, copper, uranium, and the like) under the General Mining law. You can stake a claim for a mere $212 filing fee and a $150 annual fee.
  2. In response, Congressman John Curtis (R-Utah) proposes a bill to withdraw all of the Bears Ears region from any future mining claims. Previous claims would still be honored.
  3. Trump’s proposed 2019 budget cuts clean energy research by 72%. This, along with the 30% tariffs on imported solar panels, would kill our solar industry, which currently employs more people than coal, oil, and natural gas power plants combined. It would also cut funding into electric vehicle research, ensuring that foreign automakers stay far ahead of us in that technology. Congress will likely not approve the cut.
  4. A Montana oil field explosion kills one worker.
  5. Trump formally suspends the Waters of the US rule, which was designed to expand the types of waterways that are protected from pollution by industry and farming.
  6. Here’s an interesting find on Scott Pruitt, who has been the most successful of Trump’s cabinet members in reversing things done under Obama. In a 2016 interview, Pruitt said that if Trump was elected he would most certainly act unconstitutionally.
  7. Scott Pruitt has either rescinded or is refusing to enforce over 66 environmental protections.
  8. California state legislators put forth a bill to protect their coastlines from offshore drilling so they can have the same protections that Ryan Zinke arbitrarily gave to Florida.
  9. The White House drops Kathleen Hartnett White’s nomination to head the Council on Environmental Quality. Her stances on the environment and fossil fuels are so controversial that not even Republicans can get behind her.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Due to revenue loss in federal withholding taxes from the changes to the tax law, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that Congress will need to re-up the debt limit sooner than expected because we’ll run out of money sooner than expected.
  2. Mick Mulvaney takes away enforcement power of the Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity, an office in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) responsible for pursuing discrimination in financial dealings. The office will no longer be responsible for oversight, but will instead be involved in outreach and education, allowing businesses to restart their discriminatory lending practices.
  3. We could see a rise in vegetable prices. Farmers in California say they’re having a hard time staffing up for their harvests, leaving some crops on the ground. Losses in two counties alone are at $13 million. Many farm workers are foreign born (largely from Mexico), and with more Mexicans leaving the US for Mexico than coming in, workers are hard to find.
  4. The Dow Jones drops 1,000 points in 5 days. I’m not panicked (yet) since it previously went up about the same amount in about the same amount of time.
  5. The government is set to borrow nearly a trillion dollars this fiscal year, the highest about in six years. This is almost double the amount borrowed in 2017.
  6. Betsy DeVos wants to issue federal student loans using debit cards so they can track how and where students spend the money.
  7. Paul Ryan tweets about how a teacher got an extra $1.50 in her paycheck because of tax reform, and that will cover her Costco membership. Twitter does not respond kindly, given the tens of thousands of dollars the tax plan gives back to the wealthy and corporations. Ryan deletes the tweet.

Elections:

  1. A federal judge says the system by which Florida reinstates voting rights for felons is arbitrary and unfair. The ruling doesn’t say that felon disenfranchisement is illegal, but the way Florida handles it is. This could help the measure on Florida’s November ballot that would automatically reinstate felons’ voting rights after they serve time except in the case of murder or felony sexual assault.
  2. The Pennsylvania GOP wants the Supreme Court to take a look at a lower court’s ruling that they must redraw their district lines due to overt gerrymandering.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Based on a recommendation from the National Security Council, Trump wants to centralize and nationalize a secure 5G network as a way to prevent cyber attacks. The FCC opposes this move. It’s an interesting deviation from the standard Republican view of a free market.
  2. Trump says he had the biggest audience ever for a State of the Union address with 45.6 million viewers. Actually, Bill Clinton’s 1993 SOTU address was the largest by a long shot, with 66.9 million watching. Bush and Obama each had SOTU dresses with higher viewership too.
  3. Fact-checking the State of the Union is too much for me, so I’m relying on the experts here. Below are a few takes on it:
  1. FEMA reaches an agreement with Puerto Rico to continue distributing aid one day after they said aid would stop. FEMA says it never intended to stop aid; it was just a re-evaluation of needs.
  2. We haven’t heard much about Ben Carson, Secretary of HUD, but now he’s run into some questions by ethics investigators. Turns out Carson let his son organize some events for him despite warnings that it could be a violation of ethics rules.
  3. Another school shooting turns out to be an accidental discharge. A 12-year-old student at Belmont School in Los Angeles brought a gun to school in her backpack.
  4. It turns out that pretty much with each new presidential administration, NASA’s mission changes. Trump wants to go back to George Bush’s plan to go back to the moon, though the reasons and purpose aren’t yet clear.
  5. Stormy Daniels signs a statement denying she had an affair with Trump (that she outlined in detail for In Touch magazine), but then walks back the denial. Sort of. She’s being coy and it’s a little weird.
  6. Trump declines the traditional presidential Super Bowl interview.
  7. Josh Hawley, Republican candidate for Senate, says human trafficking is the result of the sexual revolution of the 60s. This isn’t really news but it stuck out to me because a friend has been saying the sexual revolution is the root of liberal evil. It makes me wonder if it’s a new talking point from the right?
  8. K.T. McFarland asks to be dropped from consideration for the ambassadorship to Singapore after her hearing stalls over alleged communications with Russia.
  9. I couldn’t care less that Melania Trump took 21 trips on Air Force One before moving to the White House at a cost of over $650,000. I just put it out there for anyone who criticized Michelle Obama for the same kind of thing.

Polls:

  1. 71% of Americans think Trump should speak with Mueller, and 82% of those think he should do it under oath.

Week 53 in Trump

Posted on January 29, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

Nothing major this week.

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Polls:

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

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

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

~ Mick Mulvaney WH Budget Director

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