Shithole, shithole, shithole. There, I said it. But that’s not what we should be focused on here. We all know that Trump uses colorful language. What we should be focused on is the intent behind those words in a meeting on immigration. Whatever else guides our immigration process, respect for all parties involved is imperative. IMO, immigration makes America great, and we lose out when people stop coming here. And that’s what’s happening right now, especially apparent in college applications and in the tourism industry. By disrespecting any country, Trump discourages people of all nationalities from coming here. So whether or not you think what Trump said is racist, enough people (even Norwegians!) do think it’s racist. And that makes them not want to come here.

Here’s what happened this week…

Russia:

1. Mueller has said he wants to interview Trump, and at first Trump’s legal team says sure. But Trump goes from saying it’s likely he’ll sit down with Mueller to saying it’s unlikely. The legal team wants to submit written responses instead of having a face-to-face sit-down.
2. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s National Security Adviser, says there’s evidence of Russia meddling in Mexico’s upcoming election in July.
3. Bannon clarifies his words quoted in the book “Fire & Fury” by explaining it wasn’t treasonous of Don Jr. to organize the meeting with Russians last year because he’s too inexperienced. However it was treasonous of Manafort to attend because he should’ve known better.
4. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, releases Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson’s court testimony after Chairman Chuck Grassley drags his feet on it for months. Feinstein has long been known as a senator who can bridge both sides of the aisle; she’s a deal maker. But this is an indication that she’s fed up with D.C. partisanship and doesn’t care about burning bridges. I won’t go into detail, but here are a few bits:

• • Fusion GPS didn’t know what they’d find about Trump’s dealings with Russia. They were doing opposition research in other countries as well.
  • They say the FBI had a source in the Trump campaign, and that source had concerns about Russia ties.
  • Much of the information in the dossier has been corroborated by U.S. intelligence; none of it has been disproven.
  • Steel reached out to the FBI of his own accord because he was alarmed by what he found. Steel cut off ties with the FBI when he started to think they weren’t following up on the investigation.
  • It was a lot of info. You can read the whole thing here.

5. Chuck Grassley says that Feinstein’s action will make it harder to secure testimony from other witnesses, even though Simpson himself requested the testimony be publicized and even though Grassley has been refusing to approve requests for witnesses.
6. Trump criticizes Feinstein’s release of the document and calls it underhanded and possibly criminal. He gave her a new nickname—“Sneaky Dianne Feinstein.” LOL.
7. The Senate’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in our election lacks staff and resources compared to other investigations. There are only 7 Senate staffers assigned, compared to 46 staffers assigned in the Benghazi investigation in 2014.
8. Russia Ambassador Jon Huntsman says the relationship between U.S. and Russia will be over if they interfere in the 2018 midterms. He also warns that he doesn’t think they’re going to quit.
9. Trump attorney Michael Cohen files defamation suits against Buzzfeed and Fusion GPS. He says the dossier incorrectly names him in association with Russian contacts.
10. We find out that Mueller added a prosecutor with extensive cyber crime experience to his team last fall. It looks like they’re adding computer crimes to the focus of their investigation.
11. Senator Ben Cardin releases a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report that describes two decades of Russian attacks against democracy, concluding that we are not prepared to defend ourselves against Russian meddling in our elections—including the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election. Why? Because the controlling party in Congress is too busy trying to prove it never happened in 2016.
12. Trend Micro reveals that the Russian hacking group Fancy Bear is using the same hacking methods against the U.S. Senate that it used in the French elections last year against now President Macron. They set up a chain of websites mimicking U.S. Senate sites in order to harvest emails.
13. The FBI has a foreign influence task force that will notify us about any Russian efforts to interfere in our elections and to manipulate social media.
14. Facebook announces changes that will focus your news feed on family and friends instead of paid content as a way to fight fake news. Test runs of this haven’t been that successful, though.

Courts/Justice:

1. A few of Trump’s judicial nominations expire, and Trump renominates two that the ABA rated not qualified to serve. He’s renominated 21 judicial nominees.

Healthcare:

1. Trump signs an executive order giving the secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs 60 days to come up with a plan for veterans to have seamless access to coverage for mental health and suicide prevention resources for a year.
2. A Florida court strikes down a law that mandated a 24-hour waiting period after meeting with a doctor before having an abortion. The court says the law is a violation of a woman’s right to privacy.
3. Trump announces that states will be able to have more control over their Medicaid guidelines including requiring work for able-bodied recipients.
4. The Trump administration ends the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices, which provides information to the public about evidence-based programs for mental health and substance abuse. The registry helps individuals and organizations see what programs are out there and the results of those programs in order to determine best practices for their own communities. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) says they’ll just handle it themselves from now on.
5. The Trump administration agrees to pay legal fees in the lawsuits against the Obama administration over the birth control mandate of the ACA. Originally the law firm wanted the government to pay $29 million.
6. A CBO analysis shows that reauthorizing CHIP for 10 years would actually save $6 billion. The program expired last year when Congress failed to reauthorize it, and some states are running on life support.
7. Nearly a year into his term, Trump’s pledge to pull together people and resources to address the opioid epidemic isn’t showing much promise. The drug policy office (the ONDCP) doesn’t have a director and at least seven appointees have left. The deputy chief of staff is a recent graduate whose only experience is working on Trump’s campaign.

International:

1. The UN pushes Israel to NOT deport tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers, mostly from Africa. Israel gave them until March to leave or face jail, and will even pay for their airfare home and pay them $3,500.
2. Trump considers a small military attack against North Korea to let them know we’re serious, while at the same time hoping it doesn’t start a nuclear war. His administration is trying to convince him not to, saying nuclear war is not worth it.
3. The Trump administration proposes a plan to ease restrictions on using nuclear weapons and also to develop new low-yield nuclear warheads for Trident missiles. The plan also increases the situations where we might use nuclear weapons.
4. Trump cancels his planned trip to the UK, saying he doesn’t like Theresa May and then blaming Barrack Obama for George Bush’s plan to move the embassy in London. He criticizes Obama for selling the original embassy for too little, a price that was negotiated under Bush.
5. Our ambassador to Panama, John Feeley, resigns because he can no longer serve under Trump. Feeley is a career diplomat and a former Marine. Here’s what he said:

“As a junior foreign service officer, I signed an oath to serve faithfully the president and his administration in an apolitical fashion, even when I might not agree with certain policies. My instructors made clear that if I believed I could not do that, I would be honor bound to resign. That time has come.”

6. Trump OKs the Iran deal again, but adds sanctions to 14 individuals and entities for issues not related to Iran’s nukes.
7. One of the individuals Trump sanctions is the head of Iran’s judiciary. Iran slams the decision and says it warrants a severe response.
8. Trump sets a ticking clock in the Iran deal (he has a thing for setting random deadlines). He says he’ll approve the deal for now, but he gives Congress and our EU allies 120 days to alter the agreement according to his requirements. He wants to permanently block the path for Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

Legislation/Congress:

1. Representative Ed Royce (R-CA), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announces his retirement from Congress. He’s the eighth committee chair to announce he won’t be returning.
2. He’s followed by Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), who announces he won’t run again either, though there are rumors he’ll run for a neighboring district.
3. One weird thing that comes up this week is that a member of Congress proposes putting earmarks back into legislation. Earmarks (pork barrel spending) have been restricted for 8 years because they were out of control. My opinion? I don’t think lawmakers should have to bribe each other just to get them to do what’s right.
4. Trump also suggests Congress should go back to using earmarks to entice legislators to vote for bills, because the current system isn’t working.
5. Following Trump’s tweet that he’s a “stable genius,” Representative Brendan Boyle (R-Penn.) proposes legislation that would require presidential candidates to undergo a mental health examination. He’s calling it the “Stable Genius Act.”

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. The Trump administration announces an end to Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 200,000 El Salvadorians who’ve lived here more than 17 years. They have 18 months to leave the U.S. or possibly be deported. There’s no clear path to citizenship for them as they aren’t necessarily eligible to apply for permanent status.
2. The Supreme Court refuses to hear Mississippi’s new law that allows government workers and private businesses to deny service to people based on religious beliefs. This opens up the LGBTQ community and non-Christians to discrimination. The law states that marriage is between one man and one woman only, that sex can only happen in such a marriage, and that a birth gender can’t be changed. This could affect marriage licenses, adoptions, foster families, medical care, and so on. Also, you better not be having sex out of wedlock in Mississippi! The court says the law can only be challenged by people who’ve already been harmed by the law.
3. Jeff Sessions rescinds more that two dozen documents that provide guidance for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). People with disabilities are particularly worried about the removal of the guidelines around employing people with disabilities.
4. Trump opens to the press a bipartisan immigration meeting that was supposed to be closed to the press. In it, he agrees with Democrat Dianne Feinstein’s proposal for a clean DREAM Act until Republican Kevin McCarthy reminds him that’s not what he really wants. Even still, he keeps going back to it.
5. Here’s how the meeting went:

• • He wants the Democrats to participate.
  • He says we can handle DACA and them move on to full immigration reform.
  • But then he says the DACA bill must include funding for the wall.
  • Oh, and then it also has to end the visa lottery and family based migration.
  • Result: There still is no clean DREAM Act.

6. And then on the same day, a federal judge blocks Trump’s executive order to stop DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). The administration begins accepting renewal actions again, a relief to the thousands whose status is about to expire. The court says that Jeff Sessions’ claim that DACA is illegal is “based on a flawed legal premise.” So DACA will stay in effect as the lawsuit makes its way through the courts.
7. The day after the immigration meeting, Trump clarifies that he wants any DACA bill to fund the wall, because without the wall it doesn’t work. Whatever that means. A wall won’t improve much along the border, and Customs and Border Patrol want the money spent elsewhere. Most illegal entries are at actual ports of entry.
8. Trump proposes cutting proven security measures to fund the border wall. He’d cut funding for surveillance, radar, and patrol boats, all of which experts and officials say are more effective than a wall would be.
9. Also, Trump backs away from the idea of a big beautiful wall across the entire length of the southern border, because who knew that it would have to cross rivers and ravines and mountainous terrain? He says there’ll be some fence, some wall, and some high-tech deterrents.
10. Border crossings from Mexico are at a low, with apprehensions at their lowest since the early 70s. However, deportations and detentions of people who have been living in the U.S. are up, and ICE is targeting people with clean records.
11. After raiding nearly 100 7-11 stores, ICE detains 21 people.
12. Despite Trump’s expressed willingness to work on immigration in a bipartisan way, Republicans have come out with a hardline policy that clashes with both Trump’s and Democrats’ visions.
13. At an immigration meeting, Trump wonders why we let in people from “shithole” countries like Africa, El Salvador, and Haiti. Which leads to us hearing “shithole” on the news for the first time ever. And reading it in the papers. He thinks we should let in more Norwegians, who, by the way, are single-payer socialists. Not surprisingly, this leads to a shitstorm in the media and on social media.
14. It also leads to the Haitian government and several African governments calling in U.S. diplomats for a meeting.
15. The UN denounces Trump’s statement as racist. The African Union Mission condemns the comments, and demands both a retraction and an apology.
16. Trump then denies ever saying it, despite people in attendance confirming it. The one African-American Republican in the Senate, who was in attendance, called it disappointing. Trump suggests these meetings should be recorded. That would be terrific. At the end of the weekend, it’s still a he-said/she-said with some saying he did say it (including Lindsay Graham) and some saying they don’t recall it.
17. After the blowout from his statement, Trump gets mad and says democrats don’t want a DACA deal. Jeff Flakes calls BS, saying he’s worked with democrats on this for 17 years and of course they want it. There’s actually a bipartisan plan with good compromises that Trump shot down.
18. Trump also tweets that he has a wonderful relationship with Haitians… even though the administration just decided to deport 20,000 of them who are here under TPS.
19. Jeff Bezos donates $33 million to a scholarship fund for Dreamers.

Climate/EPA:

1. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejects Rick Perry’s proposal for nuclear and coal power. The proposal would prop up coal power plants by requiring renewable energy power plants to keep a minimum amount of coal power on hand. Instead of forcing competition between fossil fuels and cleaner, cheaper sources, the plan would’ve forced customers to pay for unnecessary coal plants.
2. After colliding with another ship, the Iranian oil tanker Sanchi is on fire and leaking oil into the China Sea. It finally sinks after several days, and 29 sailors are missing and presumed dead.
3. Florida Governor Scott Brown pushes back against Trump’s plan to open 90% of U.S. coastal waters to oil and gas exploration, which leads to Florida getting an exemption to the rule less than a week after it was announced. Apparently it would hit their tourism business, but California’s tourism industry is twice as large. Also, nearly every governor in the other affected states opposes this, and it opens the Department of the Interior to legal challenges..
4. The CEO of BP, Bob Dudley, says they already have a full plate in the U.S. and expresses caution about exploring new areas. The price of oil is still low (though rising), and the focus right now is on shale oil (on-land fracking).
5. A newly released memo from Robert E. Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp., to Trump shows that Trump has granted him (or at least tried to grant him) his 3-page wishlist of getting rid of environmental protections around fossil fuels. Among his requests—getting rid of the Clean Power Plan, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, cutting the EPA staff by 50%, and getting rid of a tax credit for wind and solar energy. And before you say we shouldn’t subsidize wind and solar, remember they are not nearly as heavily subsidized as gas, oil, and coal.
6. Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico, North Carolina, and South Carolina had their warmest year on record last year, and last month was Alaska’s warmest December on record, especially concerning because of the Arctic ice melt.
7. Ryan Zinke announces a major overhaul of the Department of the Interior and changes to the way federal land is managed.

Budget/Economy:

1. Trump speaks to farmers in Nashville to bolster his tax plan. He tells them they are “so lucky” he gave them the privilege of voting for him.
2. Trump announces he’ll travel to Devos, Switzerland, to the world economic forum, where he’ll push his America first agenda to global business and political leaders. Presidents typically don’t attend this meeting due to its association with the wealthy elite.
3. The Trump administration exempted 5 banks from being punished after they were convicted for manipulating global interest rates. One of those was Deutsche Bank.
4. Canadian leaders are increasingly convinced that Trump will pull the U.S. out of NAFTA.
5. Some good news from Walmart: They announce that they’ll raise their starting wage to $11/hour due to the new tax plan. In fairness, they‘ve been steadily increasing the wage in recent years, and several states where they operate already had an $11 minimum in place.
6. Or maybe it’s not good news. They’ll give bonuses only to people who’ve been there 20 years or more, and they’re laying off thousands and closing dozens of Sam’s Club stores.

Elections:

1. The Supreme Court hears arguments over Ohio’s method of striking voters from their roles. In the state, failure to vote triggers the removal process, which could drop legit voters. The suit argues that this is illegal.
2. Former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio says he’ll run for Senate. Trump pardoned Arpaio after his conviction for criminal contempt for continuing to racially profile Latinos after a court ordered him to stop.
3. Arizona’s consent decree preventing bullying or intimidating at poll sites expires.
4. A federal court threw out North Carolina’s district maps because they were drawn to favor one party (Republicans). This could change everything, because previous thought was that gerrymandering couldn’t be based on racial or other discriminatory divides. This is the first time maps were thrown out because they disenfranchise a party. The judge said that the Republican drawn districts “were “motivated by invidious partisan intent” that would divide the state into 13 districts, 10 of which are Republican.”
5. Trump’s voter fraud commission plans to destroy the data they collected instead of handing it over to DHS, which is taking over the issue.

Miscellaneous:

1. A Senate bill that uses the Congressional Review Act to reverse the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality gets enough cosponsors to require a vote on the Senate floor.
2. Steve Bannon steps down as executive chairman of Breitbart after his inflammatory statements about Trump and his family are published. Rebekah Mercer, once Bannon’s wealthy supporter, is behind it.
3. Trump is still trying to fit Andrew Puzder into his administration somehow. Puzder used to run Carl’s Jr. and pulled out of his previous nomination to labor secretary after domestic abuse allegations came up.
4. The Committee to Protect Journalists name Trump as the world’s most oppressive leader for all he’s done to undermine global press freedom. He beat Erdogan and Putin.
5. Fact checkers find errors in Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury”. Some are factual, and some are just sloppy writing with typos and wrong words.
6. After the book is published, Trump says he’ll look at loosening libel laws so it’ll be easier to sue people who spread lies about you. This seems to me like a dangerous road for him to walk.
7. Vermont’s Senate approves legalized marijuana, just as Jeff Sessions announces the DOJ will not continue their hands-off policy for states that have legalized pot.
8. White House aides have until the end of the month to decide if they’ll stay through November (and the midterm elections).
9. The Trump administration enthusiastically pushes for the reauthorization of FISA. But just as the House is about to vote on it and just after watching a Fox News segment criticizing FISA, Trump tweets against the act, saying that’s what Obama used to spy on him. Then it seems someone caught him up on the administration’s actual stance on FISA and he tweets support for it, saying that he fixed the whole unmasking thing.
10. The White House sends out a report certifying Trump’s health after his physical. The report is supposed to be from the White House physician, but they misspell his name.
11. The D.C. Trump Hotel gets reassessed for 2018 and gets a $1 million tax break.
12. The Hawaiian Emergency Management Agency sends out a false ballistic missile alarm, sending email and text alerts to people across the islands. It turns out that someone pushed the wrong button on a shift change. It takes over a half hour to issue a correction, and instead of reassuring his people, Trump golfs through it.
13. The Department of Education (under Betsy Devos) awards a contract for collecting student debts to a company Devos invested in.
14. We learn that Trump’s lawyer paid a porn star $130,000 one month before the election so she wouldn’t talk about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

Polls:

1. This is surprising. 49% of Americans give credit to Obama for the current state of the economy. 40% give credit to Trump.