Tag: steve king

Week 104 in Trump

Posted on January 22, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Tijuana, Mexico--where the border wall meets the Pacific Ocean and people sit on the fence and dream. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

I’m so not ready for this… the 2020 campaign season is already starting, with a bunch of Democrats declaring a presidential run. And that means that the disinformation campaigns are already out in force. So please remember to check your facts and don’t believe everything you hear. Here’s some advice for trolls that’s circulating on 4Chan to make Democrats sound conflicted or negative about Elizabeth Warren:

“Pose as a concerned Democrat and criticize her for being white,” one wrote. “Criticize her for being a woman. Do whatever it takes to further divide the left and prevent them from unifying behind a candidate for 2020. If we can manufacture another Bernie/Hillary split, they’ll get crushed in the general election.”

Here’s what really happened last week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. In late December, Trump signed an executive order that expands logging on public lands. The EO also orders the clearing of underbrush on 4 million acres and treating pests on another 1.5 million acres. Trump says this will help prevent forest fires, but experts say this is only useful when done near homes. The EO could mean a 30% increase for the logging industry.

Border Wall/Shutdown:

  1. Here’s some fallout from the shutdown this week:
    • The Federal Aviation Administration calls back furloughed safety inspectors to work without pay. The IRS does the same with its employees, and the FDA brings back food safety inspectors (without pay). U.S. Fish and Wildlife bring back some workers so people can hunt on wildlife refuges.
    • The Coast Guard becomes the first branch of the armed services to not get paid.
    • FBI agents are now working without pay.
    • The SEC stops processing initial public offerings.
    • The NTSB suspends investigations of fatal accidents.
    • The State Department is calling furloughed diplomats to come back to work without pay.
    • Trump’s economists double their estimation of how much economic growth is being lost each week of the shutdown.
    • Some states begin allowing federal workers who are working but not being paid to receive unemployment benefits. The Trump administration has said these workers don’t qualify for benefits.
    • Over 40,000 immigration hearings have been cancelled due to the shutdown. Immigrants who miss their hearings are being given new dates years from now.
    • Businesses are doing their part to help furloughed workers by helping them to delay payments and reorganize loans, and by providing free services and free food.
    • The NY Met gives free tickets to furloughed workers to see their performances.
  1. A federal judge denies requests from federal employees and unions 1) to require that air traffic controllers be paid, and 2) that employees who are essential shouldn’t be forced to work without pay.
  2. The House passes a package to reopen the government, and, for the third time this year, Mitch McConnell block bills to reopen the government in the Senate.
  3. Sarah Huckabee Sanders says it’s Democrats fault that Trump had to feed the Clemson Tigers champion football team fast food.
  4. Nancy Pelosi sends Trump a letter saying they need to postpone the State of the Union address until after the shutdown ends due to security concerns. The White House asks Mitch McConnell if he can invite them to do it in the Senate instead.
  5. In apparent retaliation, Trump postpones Pelosi’s congressional delegation (codel) trip where Pelosi planned to visit NATO officials in Brussels and then troops in Afghanistan. The codel was already on a bus on the way to the plane and Capitol Police already had their people on the ground in Europe awaiting their arrival.
  6. Trump orders that government officials can’t use military planes until the shutdown is over. Then he sends Melania to Mar-a-Lago on a military plane.
  7. Trump says Pelosi and her group can take a commercial flight if she wants. Recent history note: Trump took an official plane to Iraq during the shutdown.
  8. Pelosi says she’s now postponing even their commercial flight abroad because Trump took divulged the codel’s travel plans to the public.
  9. Nearly 400 immigrants tunneled under a border wall in Arizona and present themselves to border patrol agents for asylum.
  10. While border crossings are down, family units now makes up 80% of apprehensions. And they’re mostly seeking asylum.
  11. Trump starts telling stories about women trafficked over the border who’s mouths are taped with electrical tape. He morphs the story to include multiple kinds of tape and body parts. People who work with anti-trafficking NGOs at the border say it’s possible, but they haven’t seen it.
  12. Trump offers Democrats a three-year reprieve for people currently protected by DACA and TPS, saying he won’t try to deport them during that time if they fund his wall. Soooo he tried to take away DACA and TPS, and now he says he’ll give them back if Democrats give him the wall. Again, the courts have struck down his actions on DACA and TPS, so they’re currently protected by the courts.
    • Conservative pundits call this amnesty. To be clear, this is not what amnesty looks like.
  1. Here’s where Pelosi says Democrats want border funding to go toward:
    • Increased infrastructure investments at our ports of entry including additional ports and roads;
    • Advanced technology to scan for drugs, weapons and contraband and to detect unauthorized crossings;
    • More customs personnel including filling the more than 3,000 customs and border patrol vacancies; and
    • More immigration judges.
  1. The House cancels January recess in order to deal with the shutdown.
  2. The DOJ hires two lawyers likely to deal with issues of eminent domain at the border.

Russia:

  1. Mueller’s team subpoenas three new Jerome Corsi associates to testify before the grand jury. The Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenas Corsi himself.
  2. Both Mueller and Manhattan prosecutors are investigating a breakfast event held at the Trump International Hotel in DC two days before Trump’s inauguration. In attendance were Michael Flynn, Devin Nunes, and several foreign diplomats.
  3. The House votes to overturn the Treasury Department’s decision to lift sanctions on a company that Oleg Deripaska has a stake in. 57 Senators, including 11 Republicans, also vote to keep sanctions, but it falls short of the 60 votes required to overturn the decision.
    • Under the Treasury decision, Deripaska must reduce his stake in two companies and the other sanctions against him remain. But a binding and signed document shows that it allows Deripaska to get rid of $100s of millions in debt and for him and his associates to retain a large share of ownership.
    • The primary company involved is a major aluminum producer, and the sanctions are hurting American companies.
    • With an overwhelming majority, the House passes a resolution of disapproval for rolling back the sanctions.
  1. Last year, I refrained from reporting on Anastasia Vashukevich, who says she was Deripaska’s mistress and that she has tapes of him bragging about how Russia stole our 2016 elections. She was subsequently arrested in Thailand on charges of prostitution. So I was waiting to see what would come of this, if anything. This week, Thailand releases her and deports her to Belarus… with a layover in Moscow where officials there arrest her at the airport in dramatic fashion.
  2. BuzzFeed releases a report that starts out with a bang but quickly fizzles. (Note that I don’t typically use BuzzFeed as a source, but the story generated a lot of buzz, so I figured it was newsworthy.)
    • BuzzFeed reports that Trump personally directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations to hide Trump’s involvement.
    • Trump’s legal team reaches out to Mueller’s office about this.
    • Mueller’s office disputes parts of the reporting, but not the substance. This is important because his office rarely jumps in with statements on news stories. They issue this statement:
      “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.”
    • BuzzFeed stands by their story, but they’re also working to learn what specific parts Mueller’s team is disputing.
    • If the reporting turns out to be right, it would mean Donald Jr. perjured himself during his testimony to Congress.
  1. Rudy Giuliani says Trump and Cohen were discussing building a Trump Tower in Moscow throughout 2016, possibly into November.
  2. Giuliani also admits that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, but he maintains that Trump did not. He later says he doesn’t know if there was any collusion.
  3. Cohen’s testimony before Congress next month will be limited so as not to interfere with Mueller’s investigation. So if you were expecting the full scoop, you’re not going to get it.

Legal Fallout:

  1. A new report from the Inspector General for the General Services Administration says that GSA officials chose to ignore the constitution’s anti-corruption clauses when they continued leasing the Old Post Office Building to the Trump International Hotel after Trump took office.
    • An example of why this is an issue: Last year when T-Mobile needed approval from the Trump administration for a merger, nine T-Mobile executives booked rooms at the hotel with one of them staying there at least 10 times.
  1. Michael Cohen confirms that he paid a tech firm to rig online polls in Trump’s favor during the 2016 elections. He also says this was “at the direction of and the sole benefit of” Trump. I don’t think this is illegal, but it is ironic given that Trump kept complaining about how rigged the polls are.
    • Fun fact: Cohen also used this company to promote himself as a sex symbol on Twitter.
  1. Court filings show that Paul Manafort attempted to fill Trump’s administration with his allies, but it’s not clear how successful he was.

Courts/Justice:

  1. William Barr, who’s currently being evaluated for confirmation as Attorney General, once said that the DOJ might need some “political supervision.” He thinks that we went too far in pushing the DOJ to be independent following Watergate.
    • Barr doesn’t say he wouldn’t jail journalists if they report on things that “might hurt the country.”
    • Barr says it’s vitally important that Mueller be able to complete his investigation, but he refuses to recuse himself even though he has expressed opinions on the case previously without full knowledge of the evidence obtained so far.
    • It takes Trump by surprise to learn during Barr’s testimony that Barr has been friends and colleagues with Mueller for 30 years. I would’ve thought that would come out in the vetting process. Was there a vetting process?
    • Unlike Jeff Sessions, Barr says he won’t go after marijuana sales in states where it’s legal.
  1. A district judge says Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes must answer questions for a court case in writing, but denies a request to make them sit for depositions. The conservative group Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit against the State Department last year over the handling of missing emails. Rice and Rhodes will answer questions about the talking points used after the Benghazi attacks. Because that hasn’t been investigated enough yet.

Healthcare:

  1. A federal judge issues a nationwide injunction against Trump’s attempted rollback of the ACA’s birth-control mandate. Just previous to that, a different judge blocked the rule for several states just hours before it was to take effect.
    • If successful, Trump’s rollback would let employers avoid providing contraceptive coverage as part of the insurance policies they offer to their employees. Under the ACA, they must provide this at no cost.
  1. WHO issues a list of the top 10 most significant health issues facing us today (in no particular order):
    • Air pollution and climate change
    • Noncommunicable diseases (like heart disease, cancer, diabetes)
    • A global flu pandemic
    • Fragile and vulnerable settings (caused by things like drought, famine, and war)
    • Antimicrobial resistance to existing treatments
    • Weak primary healthcare
    • Anti-vaccination movements
    • High-threat pathogens (like Zika, Ebola, and SARS)
    • Dengue fever
    • HIV
  1. An appeals court vacates a previous ruling that stopped Texas from defunding Planned Parenthood. In the original case, Texas tried to oust Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid program based on the videos that purported to show Planned Parenthood workers discussing illegal sales of fetal material. This doesn’t reverse the ruling, but instead throws the ball back into the original judge’s court and forces him to use a different standard to review the case.
  2. The Senate fails to get the 60 votes needed to pass a bill that would permanently ban federal funding for abortions and place new restrictions on abortions.

International:

  1. Trump has privately and repeatedly pushed withdrawing from NATO. At the NATO summit last summer, he told his national security officials that he didn’t see the point of the coalition. Both Jim Mattis and John Bolton spent the summit scrambling to make sure there was no mention of a withdrawal.
  2. Turkish President Erdogan says Trump called him up and said that he’s still going to withdraw troops from Syria.
  3. The UK Parliament fails to pass Theresa May’s Brexit deal with a vote of 432 to 202, a huge defeat for her government.
    • As a result, May faces a vote of no confidence, which she wins.
    • The official Brexit due date is March 29. May can try to ask the EU for more concessions, but they’ve drawn a firm line.
    • It’s possible this will lead to another vote on Brexit, but it’s not clear that if voters decide to NOT Brexit that it wouldn’t happen anyway.
    • Parliament could amend the EU Withdrawal Act to force May to request an Article 50 extension on the Brexit deadline if there is no agreement on an exit plan.
  1. An explosion in Syria kills two U.S. troops and two civilians, with the Islamic State claiming responsibility. Just a few weeks ago, Trump said ISIS was defeated and we’re pulling troops out of Syria.
    • On the day of the explosion, Mike Pence states that “the caliphate has crumbled and ISIS has been defeated.”
    • Brett McGurk, former special envoy to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, says that Trump’s choice to withdraw troops is giving IS fighters new life.
  1. Trump plans another North Korea summit with Kim Jong Un in February. A new report claims there are at least 20 previously undisclosed ballistic missile sites in North Korea.
  2. The Trump administration rejects a deal with Russia to keep the Nuclear Forces Treaty, which is intended to contain nuclear arms proliferation. They say there’s no way to verify Russia is keeping their end of the deal. This sets the stage for a six-month withdrawal from the treaty starting next month.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Three GOP Members of Congress have either had their committee assignments stripped or won’t get any assignments due to misconduct:
    • Steve King: Stripped of assignments due to racist comments.
    • Duncan Hunter: Indicted (when elected)
    • Chris Collins: Indicted (when elected)

Family Separation:

  1. An audit finds that the Trump administration has separated thousands more children than was publicly known. They started separating families over six months before they announced it, and they didn’t track those families. So we don’t know exactly how many, where the parents or children are, or whether they’ve been reunited.
    • The first separations started no later than October of 2017; Jeff Sessions didn’t announce the policy until May of 2018.
    • The separations continued after Trump ended the policy in June of 2018 (largely due to a court order).
    • Amnesty International estimates 8,000 “family units” were separated. I’m not sure what they mean by family unit.
  1. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) asks the FBI to open an investigation into whether Kirstjen Nielsen lied under oath to Congress when she said that the administration never had a policy for family separation.
  2. Merkley gave NBC News a draft of a 2017 memo from the DHS and DOJ that describes plans to separate families, to deport minors and deny them asylum hearings, and to force asylum seekers to wait for their hearings in Mexico instead of the U.S.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A judge blocks the Commerce Department from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, and rakes Secretary Wilbur Ross over the coals in his ruling. He says Ross and his aides broke a “smorgasbord” of federal rules, cherry-picked facts, twisted evidence, hid their deliberations, and lied under oath.
  2. The Pentagon extends the mission of the troops assisting DHS along the border through September. There are about 2,300 troops still at the border, down from 5,900.
  3. The Virginia Senate ratifies the ERA (yes, this is still a thing). If the GOP-led House of Delegates follows suit, we’ll have enough state ratifications to finally ratify it. Interesting history note: The original draft of the amendment was created almost 100 years ago, in 1921. Can we get this done already? We shouldn’t need to!
  4. The House passes a resolution nearly unanimously condemning white supremacy and white nationalism. Even Steve King, at whom the resolution is directed, voted for it. The lone nay vote, Democrat Bobby Rush, doesn’t think the wording is strong enough.
  5. While Representative Tony Cárdenas was speaking on the House floor, a Republican representative yelled “Go back to Puerto Rico!” The congressman later called Cárdenas to apologize and said he wasn’t addressing him, he was referring to the Democratic contingent that had a retreat in Puerto Rico earlier this year. At the time, the House was trying to pass a continuing resolution to reopen nine departments.
  6. Hundreds of thousands show up across the country for the third annual Women’s March. The marches have gotten smaller each year, and this year the National March in DC was marred by accusations of anti-Semitism.
  7. New York bans gay conversation therapy, and adds gender identity and gender expression to their anti-discrimination laws.
  8. The new Democratic governor of Kansas reinstates protections for LGBTQ state employees.
  9. The Trump Organization received at least 192 visas for foreign workers last year. That’s the highest number since 2008.

Climate/EPA:

  1. On top of learning earlier this month that the oceans are warming waaaay faster than we thought, now we learn that the Antarctic is now losing six times as much ice each year as it was in the 80s. It’s gone from 40 billion tons a year to 252 billion tons.
  2. The U.S. is increasing oil and gas drilling faster than any other nation, even though scientists say we have just 11 years to sort out this whole climate change thing.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) becomes the first woman and the first African American to chart the Financial Services Committee in the House.
  2. Los Angeles County teachers strike for higher wages and an increase in staffing levels. They’re trying to bring attention to the needs of public schools.
  3. Our six biggest banks (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs) made $100 billion in profit last year. That’s a first, it’s expected to grow when 4th quarter numbers come in, and it’s due to the tax cuts.
  4. The Trump administration refuses to extend emergency food assistance to Puerto Rico, calling it “excessive and unnecessary.”
  5. Economists worry that the extended shutdown could push us into a contraction. A contraction starts when there are two consecutive quarters of GDP decline.
  6. Economic growth was already slowing in the last quarter of 2018, with downward pressures including the trade war with China, the fading effects of the $1.5 trillion tax cut, and slower global growth in general. The government shutdown is expected to slow it further.

Elections:

  1. A federal judge blocks parts of the lame duck bills passed in Wisconsin aimed at disenfranchising typically Democratic voters. The judge blocks attempts to curb early voting, to limit the use of student IDs, and to limit the use of receipts for people with exceptional barriers to getting IDs.
  2. McConnell accuses Democrats of encouraging voter fraud and trying to swing elections toward one party with their sweeping election reform bill. His exact words are “power grab” and “naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party.”
    • There’s a general summary of the bill here (under Legislation): http://cjrules.com/week-102-in-trump/
    • The point of the bill is to make sure every citizen can vote and none are disenfranchised from their right to vote. So I guess if more people voting swings elections toward one party…
  1. New York passes election reform bills to allow early voting, preregistration of minors (so they’re able to vote upon turning 18), and voting by mail.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump officials reverse an Obama-era safety rule (this is so commonplace that it isn’t even news). This rule required trains that carry flammable material (like oil) to install special brakes to reduce the risk of derailment and explosion. The move was proposed just over a year ago, right around the time the Amtrak train derailed in Washington.
  2. A federal judge finds four women guilty after they enter a national park and leave food and water for immigrants crossing the border. The charges include entering a national refuge without a permit, driving a vehicle in a national refuge, and leaving things behind in a national refuge.
  3. Ouch. Betsy DeVos breaks her pelvis and hip socket in a biking accident.

Polls:

  1. 57% of American voters say they’ll definitely vote against Trump in 2020.
    • 30% say they’ll vote for Trump in 2020.
    • 13% say they have no idea who they’ll vote for.
  1. 72% of federal workers oppose the shutdown, with 64% strongly opposed.
    • 21% support the shutdown, with 14% strongly supporting.
  1. 56% of federal workers oppose building the wall, with 45% strongly opposed.
    • 34% support building the wall, with 25% strongly supporting.

Week 103 in Trump

Posted on January 15, 2019 in Politics, Trump

A fence or a wall? Both are designed to separate, both disrupt migration for both people and animals. Is one better than the other?

Poor Mick Mulvaney. He was just trying to help. When Trump was negotiating with Congressional leaders over the budget for the wall, Mulvaney attempted to find middle ground by proposing that both sides give a little. Trump didn’t really like that much, and said, “You just fucked it all up, Mick.”

Here’s what else happened this week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Last week I reported that Ford scrapped plans to build a plant in Mexico in favor of expanding U.S. operations. I was wrong. This story was from two years ago, before Trump took office. This rumor recirculated when Donald Trump, Jr. retweeted a two-year-old story.
  2. Trump starts off a meeting with Members of Congress over the shutdown with 15 minutes of profanity-laced talk about impeachment. He also says he prefers to call it a “strike” and not a “shutdown.” (from the Wall Street Journal)
  3. It took two weeks after shutting down for the administration to realize that a shutdown would cause 38 million Americans to loose SNAP benefits and that, without continued HUD assistance, thousands of people could be evicted.

Border Wall/Shutdown:

  1. After requesting $5.7 billion for the wall and spurning Mike Pence’s negotiations to find a middle ground, Trump ups the ante and asks for $7 billion.
  2. A group of Senate Republicans work on a deal to reopen the government, but Trump shoots that one down too.
  3. The National Governors Association, a bipartisan group, calls on Trump and Congress to end the shutdown.
  4. Last week I gave a link to a summary of the misrepresentations and lies being told about the border and illegal crossings. Well, the lies continue this week, so here’s another helpful explainer.
  5. Trump holds a televised address from the Oval Office to talk about immigration policies, the wall, and the shutdown. Network stations agree to carry the address, even though they refused to air Obama’s speech on immigration policy because it was too political.
    • Fact checkers abound, but it’s not really necessary because he doesn’t say anything we haven’t already heard before.
    • Following the Oval Office address, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer give a rebuttal.
    • The address doesn’t change anyone’s mind, according to polls. But more people are now blaming Trump and Republican lawmakers than they were before. Which is weird because those earlier polls were before Democrats officially took back the House.
    • Trump tells TV anchors in an off-the-record lunch that he doesn’t really want to give the Oval Office address nor does he want to visit the border in Texas. His advisors talked him into it.
  1. A second federal employees union sues the Trump administration over the shutdown. The named plaintiff in the case is a Customs and Border Patrol officer. In a similar suit brought against Obama’s administration during the 2013 shutdown, the court took the side of federal workers.
  2. Trump storms out of a border security meeting with Democratic leaders. Trump says Democrats refused to negotiate; Democrats say Trump threw a temper tantrum.
  3. The Coast Guard Support Program advises furloughed Coast Guard employees to have garage sales or become mystery shoppers to help make ends meet. The program warns that bankruptcy is the last option. Jeez… I hope the government isn’t going to bankrupt any of its employees.
  4. Despite claiming hundreds of times (at least 212 just on the campaign trail) that Mexico would pay for the wall, Trump now says he never meant that Mexico would directly pay for the wall. Historical note: His campaign website featured a memo at one point suggesting that Mexico would pay a one-time fee of $5-$10 billion.
  5. Trump cancels his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland because of the shutdown. He blames Democrats, though—and I can’t say this enough—the shutdown happened under full Republican control.
  6. The first federal workers start missing their paychecks, and around 1,000 of them start GoFundMe accounts. Restaurants start offering them free meals. By the end of the week, there are over 10,000 GoFundMe accounts.
    • Interesting bit of shutdown history: Government workers are still waiting for back pay from the 2013 shutdown, and the government doesn’t even know how much they owe.
  1. The House passes bills to reopen parts of the government, but Mitch McConnell refuses to bring them to a vote in the Senate. Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid did the same thing in 2013.
  2. Around 100 landowners near the border have received letters from the government requesting access to their land for surveying for the wall. This is the first step in the process of eminent domain.
    • The landowners promise a legal battle to stop the land grab. It’s worth noting that lawsuits from use of eminent domain related to the 2006 Secure Fences Act are still being fought in court.
  1. Another migrant caravan is organizing in Honduras, and Mexico is preparing a strategy to manage them. Trump says the only thing that will stop them is a big wall, though CBP has done a pretty good job of stopping the current caravan.
    • The number of people coming in caravans represents a minuscule proportion of the total number of border apprehensions. But caravans are cheaper and safer than coyotes, so they might become the new norm.
  1. Donald Trump Jr. posts on Instagram comparing the wall to the “walls” that separate animals and people at the zoo. First, is he comparing migrants to animals? And second, if the animals are separated from us by walls, how can we see them?
  2. The shutdown becomes the longest in history.
  3. Trump reiterates his desire to declare a national emergency and use funds earmarked for other purposes for the wall. Also, Border apprehensions are at some of the lowest levels in decades.
  4. Trump considers using FEMA disaster relief funds (that is, those tagged for Puerto Rico, Florida, the Carolinas, and so on) to pay for his wall.
  5. Trump and his advisors think if they declare an emergency, it would reopen the government but the declaration of emergency would be stuck in the courts for so long, that it might never actually happen. So the government would reopen and Trump could save face.
  6. The DOJ furloughs 5,000 intelligence analysts, special agents, lawyers, and other employees. They also freeze funds for ongoing investigations.
  7. The Mayors of McAllen, TX, and its sister city across the border, Reynosa, oppose building a wall between the two cities. The two mayors often work together on initiatives to improve both cities. Also, McAllen is rated the 7th safest city in the U.S., according to FBI statistics. Trump just visited the border there to gin up support for the wall.
  8. GoFundMe says they’ll refund all the donors who donated a collective $20 million to go toward building the wall. The creator of the GoFundMe account had originally said all the money collected would go to the government to help build the wall, but he has since created a non-profit where he wants to direct the funds. His plan is to start building the wall himself, but that goes against his original GoFundMe mission.
  9. Nine Republican Senators introduce a bill that would put an end to government shutdowns, including the current one.
  10. Trump orders many of the activities that were prohibited under previous shutdowns to resume. Those include processing tax refunds, SNAP, mortgage processing, flood insurance programs, and national parks.
    • However, the FDA stops routine inspections of food-processing plants.
  1. The mortgage industry lobbies to restart the IRS’s income verification service so that loans can be processed. Trump complies.
  2. Mexican officials discover another tunnel under the border. This is the third tunnel they’ve found this month, adding more questions about how effective a wall would be.
  3. Kevin Hassett, the chief economic adviser, says furloughed workers are better off because of the shutdown. They didn’t have to use any vacation days to get time off over the holidays.
  4. Trump tweets misleading crime statistics for undocumented immigrants, citing numbers up to three times higher than they actually are. Now’s a good time for a reminder that crime rates for immigrants, documented or otherwise, are lower than crime rates for native-born Americans.
  5. It turns out that this shutdown was at the urging of Freedom Caucus Reps. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan. The Tea Party is just the gift that keeps on giving. It completely took Mitch McConnell and a few others by surprise, because they thought they had a deal to avoid this.
  6. McConnell, Ryan, and McCarthy all warned Trump against the shutdown, yet none of the three did anything to stop it. And McConnell and Ryan had the power to override it.
  7. A passenger was able to board a flight from Atlanta to Tokyo carrying a firearm. That’s a pretty good argument for ending the shutdown and letting TSA workers get back to doing their jobs.
  8. A group of Democrats catch flack from the right for heading to Puerto Rico during the weekend to attend a retreat, which includes the opening of Hamilton there. I’m torn—part of the reason for the opening is to support Puerto Rico’s recovery efforts, so it’s not all play.

Russia:

  1. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan indict Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya (of Trump Tower meeting fame) for obstructing a money laundering investigation. This isn’t tied to the Trump Tower case, but it confirms her ties to Russian government officials.
  2. Mueller interviewed Blackwater’s Erik Prince (Betsy DeVos’s brother) about meetings with Russians in the Seychelles two years ago. This week, Prince says he’d rather have a proctology exam than sit down with Mueller’s team.
  3. A (Trump-appointed) federal judge scolds Russian company Concord Management, which was charged by Mueller. The judge says their brief was inappropriate, unprofessional, and ineffective. The brief quoted the movie Animal House. One of their previous briefs quoted Casablanca.
  4. The Supreme Court refuses to vacate a lower-court order forcing a foreign-owned corporation to comply with a subpoena in the Russia investigation.
  5. It seems Manafort’s lawyers accidentally reveal collusion (by Manafort, not by Trump). They fail to thoroughly black out redacted information in a court filing, and reporters were easily able to see the redacted text by copying and pasting the PDF.
    • The filing shows that one of the things Mueller thinks Manafort lied about was that he shared Trump campaign polling data with alleged Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik (who’s also criminally charged in the Russia investigation).
    • Mueller accuses Manafort of lying about a text message asking if someone could use Manafort’s name to get an “in” with Trump.
    • The filing also shows that Manafort and Kilimnik talked about a Ukraine peace plan, something Manafort previously denied. In 2016, the Trump campaign altered the GOP platform to block a provision for the U.S. to arm Ukraine in their fight against Russia. Michael Cohen has also confirmed work on a Ukraine peace plan that would benefit Russia.
    • There are three more breaches of the plea agreement that are not yet public.
  1. A new report says that Mueller’s office has spoken with Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio.
  2. Steve Mnuchin briefs House committee leaders on why the administration plans to lift sanctions on Russian companies associated with Oleg Deripaska, who’s implicated in Russia’s meddling in our 2016 elections. Democrats complain that most of the information they got was unclassified and that Mnuchin gave them little information. They call for a delay in dropping the sanctions.
  3. Michael Cohen will give public testimony to the House Oversight Committee next week.
  4. We learn that FBI counterintelligence opened an investigation into Trump following the firing of James Comey. They were looking into whether Trump was working on behalf of the Russian government against American interests (either with knowledge or unwittingly).
    • Even though they became suspicious during the 2016 campaign, the FBI hesitated to open the case, unsure how to handle such an unprecedented situation.
    • We don’t know if the investigation is still ongoing.
  1. Trump confiscated the interpreter notes from his Hamburg meeting with Putin, and now we have no reliable record of what was discussed. Democrats discuss subpoenaing the interpreter, which is dicey since they’re supposed to keep their info confidential.
  2. In case you were wondering whether Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin’s plans to infiltrate the NRA were sanctioned by the Russian government, it turns out that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed off on it.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Ruth Bader Ginsburg misses oral arguments for the first time in 25 years while she’s at home recovering from lung surgery. She’s out all week recovering, and Trump and Republican lawmakers start talking about how they’ll be able to seat another conservative judge. Morbid.
  2. Rod Rosenstein is expected to leave the Justice Department if and when a new attorney general is confirmed. Other sources say Rosentstein will stay until the Mueller investigation is complete. He’s not being forced out.
  3. An appeals courts rules that politicians can’t block people on social media. This echoes a similar case against Trump, where it was ruled that he can’t block people on Twitter.
  4. William Barr, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General begins speaking with members of the Senate Judicial Committee, or at least Republican members.
    • At first he refuses meetings with committee Democrats until one of them makes that public.
    • He drafts a memo saying a president can’t obstruct justice in the process of exercising his official powers. The memo also questions Mueller’s authority.
    • Interesting history: Barr is the reason that every person involved in the Iran-Contra affair got pardoned by Bush Sr.
    • Despite his previous criticism of Mueller’s investigation, Barr tells Senators that it’s vitally important that Mueller complete his investigation.

International:

  1. Despite Trump’s claim that he’s removing troops from Syria by the end of the month (and they’ve already started removing equipment), John Bolton places conditions on removal that will slow it down.
    • The remaining bits of the Islamic State must be defeated.
    • Turkey must guarantee they won’t attack our Kurdish allies.
    • This kind of falls on Bolton. He’s mostly ended internal policy debates that allow administrations to flesh out and plan decisions like this. Bolton was taken by surprise with Trump’s decision, and has had to scramble to create a plan that in normal times would take weeks, if not months, to complete.
  1. When asked if Trump made a mistake on this, Lindsey Graham says “This is the reality setting in that you’ve got to plan this out.” And this is why Trump as president makes people nervous. Planning isn’t in his nature.
  2. Turkey’s President Erdogan harshly criticizes Bolton for saying Turkey has to promise not to attack the Kurds.
  3. The month-long protests in Hungary against the autocratic regime of prime minister Viktor Orbán continue to spread. Orbán is another anti-immigrant hardliner trying to control the press and the judiciary. He’s working toward one-party rule in Hungary, and wants anti-immigrant leaders to take over the EU. He’s already created a coalition with the like-minded leaders of Poland and Italy.
  4. The Trump administration reinstates the diplomatic status of the EU’s delegation to the U.S.
    • Trump quietly downgraded that status in December, and only brought it back temporarily and only because they protested it.
    • We only found out about it when the delegate’s name wasn’t called in the correct order during George W. Bush’s funeral.
    • Unlike every previous modern president, Trump views the EU as a foe.
  1. In anticipation of Brexit, banks and financiers move $1 trillion from Britain into other EU countries. That’s about 10% of UK’s financial sector.
  2. Mike Pompeo gives a speech in Egypt, criticizing Obama’s handling of the region. One of the biggest departures from the Obama administration is that there wasn’t any focus on democracy or human rights. Another difference was the venue: Obama chose one where he addressed the people, Pompeo chose one where he addressed elites and government officials.
  3. U.S. officials say that the White House requested plans to launch an attack on Iran last year after an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad by a military group associated with Iran.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The CEO of the Tornillo migrant child detention facility says that the head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement kept pressuring him to hold more minors at the facility. He says the reason the facility is being closed is that he refused to accept any more because ORR wasn’t releasing any of them.
    • The facility was able to rapidly release all the children in custody because HHS waived the new stringent vetting requirements for the children’s sponsors. In other words, U.S. taxpayers were paying to detain these children when they could’ve been staying with family or guardians who would’ve paid for their needs. Because what this administration really wants to do is deport people.
  1. A judge rules that Sandy Hook families suing InfoWars can access InfoWars internal marketing and financial documents, among others. Next week, the judge will decide whether the families’ attorneys can depose Alex Jones.
  2. Around 1.4 million Floridians become eligible to vote. Last year, voters there passed a referendum ending the practice of reinstating ex-felons’ rights on a case-by-case basis. The new rule automatically gives ex-felons their voting rights back after they’ve served all time and probation (excluding certain violent criminals).
  3. A judge temporarily prohibits ICE’s new practice of conducting unannounced raids on Cambodian immigrants’ homes and businesses. Sudden deportations to Cambodia were up 279% last year. Deportees don’t get to talk to their lawyers or loved ones first, they haven’t been to Cambodia since childhood, and Cambodia doesn’t want them.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Carbon emissions in the US increased by 3.4% in 2018, despite the large number of coal plant closures last year. This is likely tied to the uptick in manufacturing, and is a reversal from the previous 12 years during which emissions declined.
  2. Trump threatens to halt FEMA payments to victims of the California wildfires, and then he later tweets that he’s already ordered FEMA to stop sending money. It’s not clear whether he actually did that and if he did, whether it’s legal.
  3. I feel like this was already reported last year, but a new study shows that oceans are warming 40% faster than previously expected. 2018 is the warmest year for oceans, with 2017 coming second and 2016 coming third.
    • Oceans absorb nearly 93% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases.
    • Heat causes the water to expand, and that accounts for most of the rise in sea levels that we’ve seen so far.
  1. State legislatures across the east and west coasts introduce bills to fight Trump’s expansion of offshore drilling, including Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island. California has already passed such a bill into law.

Budget/Economy:

  1. China starts buying soybeans from the U.S. again, and they’ve cut tariffs on American cars. They say they’ll stop demanding corporate secrets from companies doing business in China.
  2. Trump puts a freeze on the planned $10,000 pay raises for Mike Pence’s staff.
  3. Democrats propose rescinding the tax breaks for the top 1% to fund raises for the country’s teachers.
  4. One year into the new tax plan, it hasn’t panned out as planned. Federal tax revenues fell by 2.7%, despite strong annual economic growth of 3%. The last time growth came close to this, tax revenues increased by 7%.

Elections:

  1. Democratic Senator Doug Jones officially requested an investigation into the social media disinformation campaign run by a Democratic group in Alabama when Jones got elected. The group ran test cases against Jones’ opponent using Russian disinformation methods on social media.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump has had twice as much staff turnover as any other president at this point in their presidency. He’s at 12; Clinton is the next highest with six.
  2. In 2013, Mike Pence harshly criticized Obama for some of the same things he’s supporting Trump on now in regard to government shutdowns.
  3. Three top Republican members of the House rebuke Representative Steve King for wondering what’s wrong with the phrases white nationalist and white supremacist. When King made racist statements prior to the 2018 midterms, only one member of the House said anything.
  4. Former GOP Senator Jon Kyl turns down Trump’s offer to take over as Secretary of Defense.

Polls:

  1. Here’s a great summary from Pew Research of their polling on immigration and the wall.
  2. 74% of Americans say the shutdown is embarrassing; 72% say it’s hurting the U.S.
  3. During the first days of the shutdown polls showed that between 43% and 47% blamed Trump for the shutdown and around 1/3 blamed Democrats. Now, 47% to 51% blame Trump, while 1/3 still blame Democrats.
    • What’s weird about this? Right before the shutdown, Trump took complete responsibility for any shutdown, Democrats weren’t even in power when it happened, and the Senate had a veto-proof majority to override Trump’s veto. So why weren’t more blaming Trump then?
    • Interesting history note: The country was similarly split during the 2013 shutdown, with 53% of Americans blaming Republicans.
  1. 59% of Americans oppose the wall, and 39% support it.
    • 74% of Republicans support the wall, but that percentage drops for Republicans who live within the vicinity of the border.
  1. 69% of Americans are against declaring a national emergency over the wall.
  2. Trump’s approval rate is trending downward, now at 40.6%. His disapproval rate is trending up, now at 54.3%.

Things Politicians Say:

  • “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?”
    —Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to the     New York Times
    Thank you, Iowa, for continuing to force this racist on the rest of the United States.
  • “When during the campaign I would say Mexico is going to pay for it. Obviously I never said that and I never meant they are going to write out a check.” —Donald J. Trump, this week.“It’s an easy decision for Mexico: make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion to ensure that $24 billion continues to flow into their country year after year.” —Donald J. Trump,three years ago.