Tag: steele

Week 86 in Trump

Posted on September 17, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Hurricane Florence hits the East Coast hard this week. I’m not blaming the victim, but North Carolina probably could’ve been more prepared for the flooding. In 2012, they didn’t like a scientific study outlining the predicted sea level rise for their coasts. So their state legislature passed a law that says “no rule, policy, or planning guideline that defines a rate of sea-level change for regulatory purposes shall be adopted.” Sea levels in some areas of the East Coast have been rising about an inch a year, and climate scientists predict that hurricanes will continue to become stronger with more rain. Coastal areas have no choice but to develop climate change mitigation policies, because even if we completely halt greenhouse gas emissions, the climate will continue to heat up for a while.

Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms ended the city’s ties with ICE. The city will no longer hold detainees in city jails, but will help support families that were separated and then reunited.

Russia:

  1. Trump is expected to declassify documents around the FISA warrant against Carter Page and around Bruce Ohr’s contact with Christopher Steele. He thinks doing this will taint Mueller’s investigation, but he should tread cautiously. When they’ve leaked supporting documents in the past, it’s only bolstered Mueller’s case.
  2. The lawyers for the DNC lawsuit against Russian operatives say that Joseph Mifsud has gone missing. Mifsud is the Maltese professor who told George Papadopoulos that Russians had dirt on Hillary.
  3. After being found guilty on eight counts in his first trial, Paul Manafort agrees to a plea deal with Mueller in his second court case. He pleads guilty to cheating the IRS out of $15 million and to lying to cover it up.
  4. Manafort had been charged with six additional crimes, which could still be brought up later at the state level. He did admit in his plea deal to committing every crime he was charged of, including those that resulted in a hung jury in the first trial.
  5. The plea agreement also describes Manafort’s lobbying activities for the Ukraine. In the process of trying to sway government and public support for specific Ukraine politicians, he planted “some stink” on political opponents, smeared Obama cabinet members, and got a foreign official to deliver a message directly to Obama.
  6. Manafort admits to manipulating the American government and media to make millions for himself.
  7. As part of the plea deal, the government will confiscate $47 million in real estate, financial accounts, and insurance policies.
  8. Manafort is now a cooperating witness in Mueller’s investigation and has already been talking.
  9. A Russian activist and member of the punk protest group Pussy Riot is hospitalized and appears to have been poisoned.
  10. Every Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee votes down Democrats’ request for all documents and recordings related to Trump’s summit with Putin. Even our top intelligence official Dan Coates says he doesn’t know what was said in that summit.
  11. A batch of newly released text message between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page show them discussing how to shape media perception with all the leaks that were going on during their investigations. The texts also show they used authorized means (the FBI National Press Office) to correct misinformation.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A federal court rules that Betsy DeVos must implement Obama-era student loan forgiveness rules. The rules protect students who’ve been defrauded by colleges that don’t deliver on their promises. DeVos has delayed putting those rules into effect with the hope that she could eliminate the rules.
  2. The hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh hits another snag when Dianne Feinstein refers an allegation of sexual abuse against Kavanaugh to the FBI. The alleged abuse happened when he was in high school.
    • The victim wanted to remain anonymous, but comes forward once rumors start to spread. Members of the political right mock and threaten her, including Donald Trump Jr.
    • Notes from the victim’s therapist back up her allegation, and she’s taken a polygraph test.
  1. In response, Republicans release a letter signed by 65 women Kavanaugh knew in high school saying that he always treated them with the utmost respect. That was pretty quick work to find all those women, so we can only assume they saw this coming.
  2. The Senate Judiciary Committee delays their vote on Kavanaugh for a week.
  3. The Government Accountability Office releases a report saying that the DOJ isn’t prosecuting people who lie on their background checks in order to illegally buy guns. In the same period that the DOJ prosecuted 12 cases, Pennsylvania alone prosecuted 472.

Healthcare:

  1. Lawyers begin their arguments in a lawsuit brought by 20 mostly conservative states to completely scrap the ACA. The lawsuit was brought after Congress ended the individual mandate, and would put an end to protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
  2. The Urban Institute estimates that 17 million people will lose their insurance if the lawsuit succeeds. Almost half of all non-elderly Americans have a pre-existing condition.
  3. Patient groups sue the Trump administration over it’s expansion of short-term insurance policies. These insurance policies do not have to comply with the ACA’s protections for pre-existing conditions, preventive care, out-of-pocket limits, and so on.
  4. From 2010 to 2016, the number of uninsured Americans dropped by about half. It’s remained steady since then, with slight rises.

International:

  1. The Trump administration closes the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s mission office in DC. They say it’s because Palestine isn’t negotiating peace with Israel right now.
  2. John Bolton threatens that the U.S. will retaliate if the ICC acts on threats to prosecute Americans in Afghanistan for war crimes.
  3. Remember those weird brain injuries suffered by U.S. diplomats and personnel in Cuba and China? Intelligence officials now suspect that Russia is behind them.
  4. Trump cancels a planned visit to Ireland due to “scheduling conflicts.” But the announcement was made after there were mass protests against Trump‘s climate policies.
  5. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has begun rebuilding the State Department, which was decimated under Rex Tillerson. Pompeo is trying to bring back ex-diplomats and build up his ranks again.

Family Separation:

  1. Jeff Sessions defends his zero-tolerance policy toward asylum seekers as not only legitimate, but also moral and decent. Over 400 children separated at the border are still without their parents. And I wonder if he’s seen any of the videos of the children and parents describing their harrowing experience.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Sessions blames the number of asylum seekers at our southern border on Obama-era policies, ignoring the growing violence in the countries of origin.
  2. We learn that the Trump administration diverted $200 million from other DHS agencies to ICE to support ICE’s cost overruns due to housing and transporting such a high number of immigrant detainees. This includes $10 million from FEMA just before Hurricane Florence hit the East Coast. The cost of separating families isn’t just emotional; it’s hitting us all in the pocketbook.
  3. Congress has repeatedly warned Trump about ICE’s overspending and lack of financial discipline.
  4. And then ICE asks Congress for an extra $1 billion in funding so they can ramp up deportations.
  5. The U.S. is now detaining the highest number of immigrant children ever recorded, with a total of 12,800 children. This is 10,000 more than May 2017. (Note that these are mostly minors who crossed the border alone and were not separated from the parents.)
  6. Christian refugees are getting caught up in Trump’s efforts to stifle immigration to the U.S. The number of Christian refugees allowed into the U.S. is down 40% from last year.
  7. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) tells a group of students that it might be better to be raised in an orphanage than by LGBTQ parents.
  8. The Department of Education vacates a 2014 decision under Obama and reopens a seven-year-old investigation into whether Rutgers University allowed a hostile environment for Jewish students.
  9. The cartoon “Thomas & Friends” introduces two new female characters, one of whom is African. So NRA’s Dana Loesch thinks that’s ridiculous, and shows images of the Thomas trains dressed up in KKK robes. IDK why she’s getting so worked up over a kids’ show.

Climate/EPA:

  1. After an independent study finds that there were over 3,000 deaths in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria, Trump says those numbers are a lie and that Democrats are just trying to make him look bad.
  2. Hurricane Florence leaves 23 dead (so far) in North Carolina. Florence drops record rainfalls, up to 40 inches in some areas. At the same time, a typhoon leaves 100s dead in southeast Asia.
  3. Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit founded by a 24-year-old, deploys a 2000-foot floating boom designed to round up plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean. This is a test run to see if the boom performs as expected. Their aim is to clean up half of the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch in five years. That means collecting around 44,000 tons of debris while minimizing the accidental trapping of marine life.
  4. The EPA proposes weakening Obama-era requirements for monitoring and fixing methane leaks. This is on top of the Department of the Interior working to repeal Obama’s limits on methane emissions for oil drilling.
  5. The previous head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, is in talks with Alliance Resource Partners CEO Joseph W. Craft about becoming a consultant. Alliance Resource Partners is a coal mining company.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Ford cancels production of the Focus Active in China due to Trump’s tariffs, and then defies Trump when he urges them to move production to the U.S. They say it’s not cost-effective enough.
  2. Trump’s task force on analyzing the USPS delivers their report, but sources say Trump won’t make it public until after the election. I don’t know why.
  3. The GOP is creating their second tax cut bill, which would make some of the cuts from the last tax bill permanent. The CBO says that change alone will add $1.9 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. The Tax Policy Center says that the bill will add an additional $3.15 trillion in the decade after that.
  4. Marco Rubio says the latest GOP tax plan would necessitate cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
  5. The Tax Policy Center finds that the tax law gives far larger tax breaks to the richest among us (averaging $40,000 per year) instead of the middle class (averaging $980 per year).
  6. The plan is not likely to pass the Senate with the required 60 votes.
  7. Trump decides to impose his threatened tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods. More than 1,000 products will be affected, including appliances, furniture, toys, and more. The effects should hit just in time for holiday shopping.
  8. This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the start of the Great Recession. We are inundated with analyses of what happened and how we handled it.
    • Most analysts seem to think it won’t happen again thanks to financial reforms that were put in place, like Dodd-Frank and Base III.
    • The biggest risks are the rollbacks of parts of Dodd-Frank, debt levels in emerging markets, and cyber threats.
  1. House and Senate negotiators come to a funding agreement that should avoid a shutdown at the end of the month. The agreement includes restrictions on Trump’s plans for reorganizing the government (his 32 proposals issued in June). This is the first time Congress has formally blocked those changes.
  2. The amount of money that companies have repatriated to the U.S. as a result of the tax cuts is a mere fraction of what Trump predicted. He said companies would bring back over $4 trillion, and close to $5 trillion. But so far they’ve only brought back $143 billion with $37 billion more planned. Two-thirds of the returned money came from Cisco and Gilead Sciences.
  3. Median household income grew for the third straight year, with most of the benefit going to white Americans and men.

Elections:

  1. Obama is back on the campaign trail, and Trump reacts by tweeting out a bunch of misstatements about the economy and jobs. He then has his chief economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, do a press conference to defend him. Hassett uses some misleading charts to back up Trump’s assertions. You can easily chart economic data using the Federal Reserve Economic Data site. (Note: This is not to say that Trump doesn’t deserve any credit for the economy; just pointing out that Obama deserves it, too).
  2. George W. Bush is out on the campaign trail too, stumping for Republican candidates. This has to be the first time two former presidents are out campaigning.
  3. Florida Representative Ron DeSantis resigns from Congress to campaign full time in his run for Governor.
  4. Trump signs an executive order authorizing sanctions against any foreign country, business, or person who tries to interfere in our elections.
  5. An audio recording surfaces that shows the NRA might have violated campaign laws by giving Montana Senator Jon Tester’s opponent advance notice of their funding efforts to defeat Tester. The NRA cannot coordinate ad buys with a federal campaign.
  6. A judge rules that the Americans for Prosperity Foundation must release the names of their donors to the California Secretary of State per California law.
  7. 75% of the dark money spent in recent U.S. elections came from just 15 companies, and those same 15 companies are funding the 2018 elections as well. This is a direct result of the Citizens United decision. The two largest funders by far are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Crossroads GPS. Here they are, along with their political leanings and funding, where available.
    • 45Committee: right, largely funded by Sheldon Adelson
    • 60 Plus Association: right, partly funded by the Kochs
    • American Action Network: right
    • Americans for Job Security: right
    • Americans for Prosperity: right, Charles and David Koch
    • Americans for Tax Reform: right, run by Grover Norquist
    • American Future Fund: right, once part of the Koch network but got kicked out
    • Crossroads GPS: right, founded by Karl Rove with large contributions from Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson
    • National Rifle Association: mostly right, funded by gun owners and manufacturers
    • U.S. Chamber of Commerce: typically right, funded by businesses
    • National Association of Realtors: mix of right and left, funded by realtors
    • League of Conservation Voters: typically left, focused on environment
    • Planned Parenthood Action Fund: typically left, focused on family planning and reproductive health issues
    • VoteVets Action Fund: left, funded by multiple sources
    • Patriot Majority USA: left

Miscellaneous:

  1. The DHS inspector general is investigating whether FEMA administrator Brock Long misused government vehicles. On the scandal scale, this seems pretty minor.
  2. Facebook allows a right-wing magazine, the Weekly Standard, to fact check articles (along with non-partisan organizations like Snopes and Politifact, but no left-learning ones). The first thing the Weekly Standard did was censor a negative story about Brett Kavanaugh and redirect readers to their own site.
  3. Trump achieves the dubious honor of telling over 5,000 lies or misleading statements since taking office.
  4. Retired Admiral Bill McRaven resigns from the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board. McRaven has criticized Trump for revoking John Brennan’s security clearance.
  5. It looks like Facebook’s efforts to crack down on trolls, bots, and false news stories is working. They’re reporting lower user engagement with such posts. The downside is that they all seem to be moving over to Twitter, where engagement is higher.
  6. FEMA says it will test a new “Presidential Alert” system that would let Trump send personal text alerts to most U.S. cell phones.
  7. The president’s first tweet on the morning of the 18th anniversary of 9/11 is him defending himself in the Russia investigation and attacking the FBI. But a few hours later he tweets, “17 years since September 11th!” Getting off Air Force One on his way to honor the victims of Flight 93, he pumps his fists in the air.

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.