I copied this entry from a facebook post, factchecked it, and made some edits. Sorry I can’t give props to the original author since I don’t know who it was. But here it is. The first 10 days of 2017.
Just so you can keep it all organized, here’s the first week in review:
- Trump orders home all Ambassadors and Special Envoys without exception, ordering them out by inauguration day.
- House brings back the Holman rule allowing them to reduce an individual civil service, SES positions, or political appointee’s salary to $1, effectively firing them by amendment to any piece of legislation. We now know why they wanted names and positions of people in Energy and State.
- Senate schedules 6 simultaneous hearings on cabinet nominees and triple-books those hearings with Trump’s first press conference in months and an ACA budget vote, effectively preventing any concentrated coverage or protest.
- In the House Rules doc, the House GOP expressly forbids the Congressional Budget Office from reporting or tracking any costs related to the repeal of the ACA (though the CBO has issued a few reports on this already).
- Despite the growing mountain of evidence that the Russians deliberately interfered in our election, Trump continues to deny the intelligence community’s findings and instead favors Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange.
- Trump asks Congress (in other words, the taxpayers) to pay for the wall, not Mexico.
- Trump threatens Toyota over a new plant that was never coming to the US nor will take jobs out of the US.
- House passes the REINS act, giving them veto power over any rules enacted by any federal agency or department–for example, if the FDA or EPA bans a drug or pesticide, Congress can overrule regardless of the science behind it. Don’t like that endangered species designation? Congress can kill it.