Tag: tariffs

Week 136 in Trump

Posted on September 3, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Wages have decreased as union membership has decreased.

I hope you all had a happy Labor Day weekend! And I hope you were out celebrating all the benefits unions have given workers, like 40-hour workweeks and an 8-hour day; overtime pay; paid holidays and paid vacations; paid and unpaid leave (including military leave); a minimum wage; healthcare insurance; whistle-blower protections; an end to sweatshops; and safety regulations for the workplace. Before unions were gutted by things like right to work laws, they gave workers strong collective bargaining power so they weren’t at the whim of corporate executives. They also gave us higher wages, and one reason wages haven’t been rising lately is that unions don’t have the same power or membership they used to have. You can also see below that the drop in union membership corresponds with an increase in inequality.

Union membership compared with wealth inequality.

So if you see any of these benefits in your own job, thank the unions and don’t take advantage of them by not paying your union dues in right-to-work states.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending September 1…

Missing From Last Week:

  1. Last week I wrote, “The Amazon rainforest provides about 1/5 of the oxygen on the planet. So one out of every five breaths you take is thanks to the Amazon.” I have to retract that. Scientists don’t know where that 1/5 number came from and say it’s closer to 6%.
  2. Italy’s prime minister resigned, avoiding a no confidence vote from the far right.
  3. ICE made it easier to deport crime victims waiting for their U visa, which is a special category for victims who cooperate with law enforcement. Previously, ICE had to request a preliminary judgement from U.S. Customs and Immigrations Services. Now, ICE officers can make the preliminary determination themselves.

Shootings This Week:

  1. Here are the week‘s mass shootings (defined as killing or injuring four or more people). There were so many this week (FOURTEEN), I combined some:
    • Baltimore, MD: A drive-by shooter kills one person and injures three more. Another shooter kills one person and injures three more in a dispute at a residence. Yet another shooter injures four people in a domestic dispute in nearby Frederick. And yet another shooter injures four men, with very few details known about this one.
    • Alabama: A teenage shooter injures 10 teenagers at a football game in Mobile. A shooter injures seven people at Fairfax Kindergarten in Valley during a party and over a fight about something that happened at a football game. Also, I can’t tell if this is a real kindergarten or just the name of an event space.
    • Odessa and Midland, TX: A man shoots a police officer during a traffic stop and goes on a random shooting spree that kills eight people and injures 22 others. Police shoot and kill him in a theater parking lot.
    • South Carolina: Four people are injured in a shooting at a bar.
    • North Carolina: A shooter kills one person and injures three more near student housing at UNCC. Another shooter wounds four people outside a fraternal organization (the Moose Lodge).
    • Philadelphia, PA: A shooter kills two people and injures two others.
    • Chicago, IL: A shooter kills two people and injures three more. They were on the patio of a private home.
    • Hartford, CT: A shooter injures four men. The details aren’t known.
    • Toledo, OH: A shooter injures four people. The details aren’t known. 

  1. Police arrest a 19-year-old at a North Carolina university for threatening mass violence and for possessing guns in his dorm room.
  2. Since the shootings in El Paso and Dayton, over two dozen people have been arrested over threats to commit mass violence.
  3. Even as Texas Governor Greg Abbott addresses the Odessa shooting saying that words are inadequate and there must be action, a series of laws go into effect in Texas that make it easier to store, bring, and carry weapons to both private and public places, including school campuses and churches. Abbott also says that the status quo is unacceptable.
  4. The FBI says active shooter events are increasing, and that we’re seeing them about every other week right now. They also say people need to report changes in behavior to the authorities, especially when someone becomes darker, more violent, or appears to be distressed.

Russia:

  1. Following Russia’s blown (no pun intended) nuclear-propelled missile test, they set their first floating nuclear-power reactor afloat. This ship set off from a northwestern port city and is headed east, where it will power a region around Pevek (near Alaska).
  2. A bipartisan congressional delegation is planning a trip to Russia, but Russia denies visas to members of congress who’ve been critical of Russia. This includes Democrats and Republicans alike.
  3. Current and former intelligence experts criticize Trump’s defense of Putin and Russia at the G7 Summit. They’re so shocked by the fervency of his defense, they’re once again questioning whether Trump is a Russian asset.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The House Judiciary Committee subpoenas Rob Porter, a former administration aide, about his involvement in Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice.
  2. The DOJ inspector general releases the results of his investigation into James Comey. The IG finds that Comey broke FBI protocol in handling sensitive information, but the IG doesn’t find that Comey or his friends leaked any classified information. The main criticism is that he took his contemporaneous memos home with him.
    • Note that this report doesn’t address the actual FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton or Trump.
    • The DOJ decides not to prosecute, because there’s no finding he broke the law. What he did might have been unethical, but it wasn’t illegal.
    • You can read the report here.
  1. A federal judge dismisses the lawsuit again Jeffrey Epstein following his death by apparent suicide. Sixteen women testified during the hearing, saying that now they’ll never get justice. Several victims file civil suits against Epstein’s large estate.
  2. Deutsche Bank says it has some of the tax return information being sought by the House Financial and House Intelligence Committees. We’re not sure if they are Trump’s returns specifically or if they belong to another entity under subpoena.
  3. MSNBC’s Lawerence O’Donnell does a piece on how Russian oligarchs had co-signed Trump’s loans from Deutsche Bank, which he retracts the next day after Trump’s attorney threatens a lawsuit. He doesn’t retract because the story is found to be incorrect, but it was insufficiently sourced. So we’ll see what comes of that.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to lift an injunction against their rule requiring asylum seekers who pass through a third country on their way here to seek asylum in that country.
  2. Trump has requested special consideration from the Supreme Court 21 times in his first 2-1/2 years, compared to Bush and Obama requesting it a total of eight times over 16 years.

Healthcare:

  1. A court rules that Johnson & Johnson has to pay $572 million for its part in Oklahoma’s opioid epidemic.
    • Last spring, Purdue Pharma settled a suit with Oklahoma and agreed to pay $270 million.
    • Purdue Pharma is in negotiations to settle the many lawsuits against them. Reports say the payout could be between $10 billion and $12 billion.
  1. A judge in Missouri blocks their new law that would ban abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy.
  2. 58 immigration detention facilities in 19 states have reported mumps outbreaks over the past year. 898 adult migrants and 22 staff have been sickened, and more migrants are being infected as they are transferred between facilities.

International:

  1. While French President Emmanuel Macron was trying to arrange a meeting between Trump and Iran’s foreign minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his team were scrambling to reach Trump and prevent that meeting. The Israeli government expresses concern about new negotiations between Iran and the U.S.
  2. At the same time Rudy Giuliani is pressuring Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political foes (Biden and Clinton), the Trump administration delays paying the promised $250 million in military aid to Ukraine.
  3. Trump tweets a satellite image of the aftermath of a space launch explosion in Iran, which analysts immediately speculate came from a classified satellite or drone.
  4. Hong Kong’s ongoing protests erupt in violence once more. Protestors start fires and throw petrol bombs at police. The police, in turn, use tear gas and water canons containing dyed water (so they can identify protestors).

Legislation/Congress:

In case you’re wondering why this section has been empty, Congress has been on summer recess.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. Even though Trump says the wall is already being built and that some of it is done, none is done and the administration won’t say when they’ll start. Over 60 miles of existing fence have been fixed or replaced.
  2. Officials involved with the wall project say that Trump wants the wall done, he wants officials to take the land (from the people, organizations, and tribes that own it), ignore environmental regulations, and fast-track any approvals to start construction. And he’ll pardon any officials who break the law to get it done.
  3. With hurricane season upon us and the first hurricane expected to make landfall currently at a Category 5 level, DHS transfers $271 million from FEMA to the border. FEMA says as long as we don’t have any new catastrophic events, they’ll have enough money to operate.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. 19 states plus DC sue the Trump administration to block their new rule overturning the Flores Agreement. The new rule would allow Trump to detain immigrant children indefinitely.
  2. The Trump administration starts denying special protections to immigrant families who receive life saving medical care here in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sends out letters saying they’re not considering requests for medical relief and that people here under those protections have 33 days to leave the U.S.
    • Turns out they transferred that responsibility to ICE, though this was never announced and was not included in the letters. ICE says they don’t know anything about it, nor do they have the resources to handle the change.
    • Many of those affected are kids with diseases like cancer, cystic fibrosis, HIV, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, and epilepsy.
  1. New video surfaces of Quillette editor Andrew Ngo with the group Patriot Prayer planning attacks against a group of antifa who were gathered at a bar after a protest. Ngo does a lot of reporting on antifa, but he failed to report on the planned attack by Patriot Prayer.
    • If you remember, Ngo published video of his wounds after he was attacked by antifa members earlier this year, but failed to provide information about what led up to the attack.
    • Ngo leaves Quillette after the latest video is released, which Quillette says is just coincidence.
  1. The Trump administration announces that some children born to our troops and diplomats abroad will no longer be automatically considered U.S. citizens.
    • For some, this just requires that they apply for citizenship by a certain age. But there are already people who forget this requirement when they adopt children from abroad, which has resulted in deportation of adopted kids when they become adults. I don’t see this working out much better.
    • This rule seems to be designed for others, though; service members who aren’t themselves yet citizens. Their children will have a harder time getting citizenship.
    • Ken Cuccinelli says this doesn’t change who is born a U.S. citizen, but then he’s also the guy who said the poem at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty only welcomed immigrants who can stand on their own two feet.
  1. Right-wing hate groups are using video games to recruit youngsters into their ranks. 97% of teen boys play video games, and 83% of teen girls do. The associated chatrooms are a perfect recruitment tool, and it’s where white supremacists befriend the kids and subtly manipulate them into scapegoating their minority peers.
    • Chat logs from the online game Discord show that much of the far-right’s Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville was planned there.
  1. The Trump administration wants to run DNA tests on detained undocumented immigrants.
  2. The Cherokee Nation says they’ll appoint a delegate to the House of Representatives. They’ve never done this before, even though a 200-year-old treaty says they can. It’s not clear if that Representative would actually have a vote in the House.
  3. Migrant girls held in detention are given only limited access to basic needs like sanitary pads and tampons, in some cases given only one tampon per day. Toxic Shock Syndrome anyone?

Climate:

  1. Trump says that U.S. wealth is more important than saving the planet from climate change. Not in so many words, but he did say he prioritizes our wealth over climate “dreams” and “windmills.” But we knew this already. It’s the only reason to prioritize dirty energy over clean energy.
  2. Because Jakarta is sinking into the sea, Indonesia announces they’ll build a new capital city in another location at a cost of $34 billion.
  3. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro demands an apology from French President Emmanuel Macron before he’ll accept the $20 million in international assistance to help fight Amazon rainforest fires. Someone needs to put on their big-boy pants.
  4. While climate change is seen to be exacerbating wildfires in Arctic areas like Siberia and Alaska, those fires, along with those intentionally set in the Amazon and Indonesia, are also exacerbating climate change. A vicious cycle.
    • This is especially true with the increase in Arctic fires, which burn peat; peat releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than trees.
  1. The latest models coming out of the climate science community are alarming. They show much greater rates of temperature increase than had been previously thought, with the high range increasing from 4.5°C to 5.8°C. The latest reports say we still have the capability to limit the rise to 1.5°C, which is driving climate change scientists crazy. They’re having a hard time dealing with the general public’s inability to grasp how serious this is, and are experiencing stress and and even grief over it.
  2. Hurricane Dorian increases to a Category 5 and stalls out over the Bahamas. Five people are dead that we know of so far. Models predict Dorian will skim the east coast of Florida before hitting Georgia and North Carolina.
    • Trump says he doesn’t think he’s even heard of a Category 5 hurricane, even though three have hit U.S. land since he took office. No surprise, though. In the weeks between Hurricane Irma and Maria (both Cat 5s), he said he never knew Cat 5s existed.
  1. The EPA proposes a plan to completely eliminate requirements that oil and gas companies install tools to find and fix methane leaks in their wells, pipelines, and storage facilities. Even fossil fuel giants have come out against this plan, partly because this isn’t an expensive fix for an existential problem (costing just 0.01% of their annual revenue) and partly because they’re afraid it will cause some sort of disaster if methane is left unchecked by smaller companies.
  2. Trump tells Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions. The Tongass is the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest. This exemption would open it up to logging, drilling, and mining, and would violate Clinton’s roadless rule barring the construction of roads in certain parts of our national forests.

Budget/Economy:

  1. A number of farmers interviewed express frustration with Trump’s trade war and tariffs, and are concerned that it will take decades to rebuild those business relationships. Or they’ll just have to develop relationships with new buyers. At any rate, support for Trump is still pretty high among farmers.
  2. Farm bankruptcies have risen 13% so far this year, and more farmers are delinquent on their loans.
  3. Trump says trade negotiations with China have restarted, but doesn’t give any details.
  4. Trump’s aides later say he lied about trade talks with China in order to boost the markets.
  5. While central bank policies have been guiding the global economy, Fed Chair Jerome Powell says that there are no precedents to guide a policy response should we see a recession in our current situation. Interest rates are already low, and government spending doesn’t seem to be boosting the economy.
  6. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin proposes selling bonds that mature in 50 to 100 years.
  7. Trump reverses his earlier stance on freezing federal employees’ wages and sends a letter endorsing a 2.6% raise across the board.
    • This sounds great, but on further reading, it turns out if he didn’t send that letter, employees would’ve received the 2.6% raise plus cost-of-living increases based on where they work.
  1. More Americans see the economy in decline (37%) than see it improving (31%). In this environment, your guess is as good as mine as to which way it’ll go.
  2. Trump’s latest round of tariffs against Chinese goods go into effect. Tariffs on popular holiday items are still delayed, but this round of tariffs will increase the cost of some apparel, food products, American flags, tea, sporting goods, shoes, and so on.
  3. The tariffs haven’t seemed to dampen consumer spending, but business spending is in a slump.
  4. A group of laid-off miners in Kentucky are blocking a train loaded with coal from going to market in protest of the bankruptcy laws that allowed their company not to pay their final salary obligations.
    • After their company declared bankruptcy, paychecks bounced and some that had been deposited in workers’ accounts were pulled back out (leaving some with overdrafts in their accounts because they were already spending their own money).

Elections:

  1. After losing their vice chairman, the FEC is close to shutting down, putting the fight against election interference on the back burner. They’re down to three members, and no longer have enough commissioners to legally meet.
  2. DHS plans to start a program to protect voter registration databases and election systems from the types of ransomware attacks that have been hitting cities and towns around the country. Finally there’s some action against election interference.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Color me shocked. There’s a network of conservatives trying to discredit news organizations that Trump doesn’t like by smearing journalists from those outlets. They’ve already released info on journalists from CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. The group plans to ramp up the smear campaign in 2020 in support of Trump’s re-election campaign.
    • The network is compiling social media posts going back at least a decade.
    • Their efforts include the families of journalists, political activists, and other political opponents of Trump.
  1. Trump finally goes after Fox News (it had to happen — he turns on everyone eventually). He says Fox News “isn’t working for us anymore.” What’s that mean? The news isn’t supposed to be working for any part of government. Anyway, he accuses the network of heavily promoting the Democrats, and tells followers to find another news outlet.
  2. After passing a law reducing penalties for marijuana possession, New York plans to expunge thousands of marijuana convictions.
  3. Trump’s personal assistant spills the Trump family tea during an off-the-record dinner with reporters, and ends up getting fired. Apparently, drinks were involved.
  4. Trump formally establishes the U.S. Space Command. This is different from his Space Force, which is still waiting on congressional approval.
  5. Trump cancels his trip to Poland in order to monitor Hurricane Dorian, but then he heads to his Virginia golf course where he tweets and golfs over the long weekend.
  6. As Puerto Rico readies itself for Hurricane Dorian, Trump calls the territory corrupt and San Juan’s mayor incompetent. OTH, Trump says he’s the best thing to happen to Puerto Rico. Trump says Congress approved $92 billion after Hurricane Maria, but it was actually $42 billion. And not much of that has been spent so far.
  7. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis has been on a book tour, and says he had no choice but to leave after Trump said he’d withdraw troops from Syria. Mattis indirectly criticizes Trump, but doesn’t address specific complaints directly.

Week 134 in Trump

Posted on August 20, 2019 in Politics, Trump

(Credit: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)

This restores my faith in humanity. A man who lost his wife in the El Paso shooting and had no family left opened up her funeral to the entire community. Over 1,000 strangers showed up to comfort the grieving man and pay their respects to his wife. The funeral home was filled to capacity, and people waited outside for hours for their turn to come inside. People from across the globe send flowers, and some people even travel from out of town or out of state to get there.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending August 18…

Shootings This Week:

  1. The week‘s mass shootings (defined as killing or injuring four or more people):
    • A shooter wounds four people behind a grocery store in Greenwood, MS.
    • A shooter in Tacoma, WA, kills two people and injures three.
    • A shooter near the Alabama State University campus in Montgomery, AL, kills two people and injures three.
    • A shooter injures five people in Philadelphia.
    • A shooter injures seven people at a house party in Houston. It was a pop-up party, started by random invitations on Snapchat.
    • A shooter injures four teenagers in the Kansas City Sheraton Plaza hotel.
  1. This was another bad week for LEOs, too.
    • During a traffic stop in Riverside, CA, a shooter kills one police officer and injures two more before the police kill the suspect.
    • Six police officers are shot and injured in an hours-long shootout in Philadelphia during an attempted drug bust. The shooter was firing an AR-15.
  1. Public tips lead to three arrests in three states of men threatening mass shootings.
    • One posted his interest in committing a mass shooting on Facebook.
    • One texted his ex-girlfriend threatening a mass shooting.
    • On threatened to shoot up a Jewish community center.
  1. Prosecutors indict a young man who threatened federal agents. Agents seized 25 guns and around 10,000 rounds of ammunition from his house.
  2. The House Judiciary Committee announces they’ll cut their August recess short in order to move forward three gun safety bills.
  3. A leaked memo shows that Congressional Republicans’ talking points about mass shootings include labeling them “violence from the left.” Left-wing extremism is responsible for 3% of extremist killings as opposed to the right-wing’s 73%. In 2018, all extremist killings were related to right-wing extremism, mostly white supremacy.

Russia:

  1. The nuclear blast that killed five Russians occurred during a failed test of a nuclear-powered missile, likely the one that Putin has called “invincible.”
    • Days after the blast, which caused local radiation levels to spike, Russian officials ordered an evacuation of a small town near the blast for “military drills.” They then cancel the evacuation, saying the drills have been cancelled, leading defense experts to believe they’re suspending more tests for now.
  1. FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub accuses her Republican colleagues of blocking an investigation into a complaint of allegations of Russian money laundering involving the NRA. The complaint stems from a reported FBI investigation.
    • Weintraub claims Republicans on the FEC stopped the General Counsel from even reaching out to the FBI to confirm whether or not this investigation actually exists.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The guards who neglected to check on Jeffrey Epstein before he hanged himself didn’t check on him because they fell asleep. They falsified records to cover it up.
  2. Epstein’s autopsy found broken bones in his neck that can happen in a suicidal hanging, but that are more common in a homicidal strangling. The conspiracy theories grow.
  3. But then, the cause of death is listed as suicide by hanging. And the conspiracy theories continue to grow. *sigh*
  4. Two women file lawsuits against Epstein’s estate under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
  5. The House Judiciary Committee subpoenas Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and former White House official Rick Dearborn to testify September 17. We’ll see if it actually happens this time.
    • The White House wants to invoke executive privilege to restrict Lewandowski’s testimony, but he never worked for the White House.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The DOJ submits a brief asking the Supreme Court to rule that Title VII (which prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sex, race, color, religion or national origin) does not apply to transgender people.

Healthcare:

  1. Despite the spate of highly restrictive abortion laws passed by states in recent years, draconian restrictions on abortion are extremely unpopular in the U.S., with less than 25% of people supporting total bans. 58% of Americans support legalized abortion in all or most cases.
  2. A Kaiser Family Foundation study shows that support for so-called heartbeat bills, which ban abortions later than six weeks into pregnancy, plummets when people are told what those laws actually do.
  3. Doctors in Congo say they’ve cured two Ebola patients they treated with new Ebola drugs.
  4. A VA inspector general report shows that for a six-month period in 2017, the VA incorrectly denied about 17,400 veterans $53.3 million in medical claims. A bipartisan group of lawmakers pushes for reconsideration of those claims.

International:

  1. Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests continue this week, with flash-mob style protests across the territory.
    • Officials shut down all outgoing flights at the airport, and requested incoming flights not come, for two days due to the number of protestors at the airport.
    • Violence breaks out sporadically, but the largest protest over the weekend is mostly peaceful. Nearly 1.7 million people, or a quarter of the city show up in the pouring rain to protest.
    • Satellite images of the Hong Kong border show over 500 Chinese military vehicles hidden along the border, waiting to be deployed against protestors.
  1. Pro-democracy protests also continue in Russia for the sixth straight week.
  2. Last week, I said that Israel doesn’t let Trump tell them what to do. But it turns out Israel does. They bar Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering Israel because they support BDS (and because Trump said to). Israel later says Tlaib can come visit her Palestinian grandmother, but Tlaib declines because of the restriction and conditions place on the visit.
  3. I’m still confused over Trump’s concern over A$AP Rocky, but anyhoo… a Swedish court finds Rocky guilty of assault, but doesn’t give him any more jail time.
  4. Trump floats purchasing Greenland.
  5. A suicide bomber at a wedding reception in Kabul kills 63 people and injures 182 more. The Islamic State claims responsibility; the Taliban denies any responsibility.
  6. Foreign diplomates and officials are already making contingency plans in case they have to deal with Trump for four more years, fearing he’ll win in 2020. 
Countries are holding off on launching new initiatives with the U.S. as a precaution.
  7. It’s kind of telling that the leaders Trump has the most goodwill with right now are those who are gutting democracy in their countries (Hungary, Poland, and Israel).
  8. Trump wants to create a naval blockade along Venezuela’s coast to stop the import and export of goods from the country. Sr. Pentagon officials don’t see the point, think it’s impractical, and say it would stretch them even thinner in the international arena.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. The Trump administration plans to dig up Native American gravesites in order to build the border wall. Democrats in Congress are working to exempt historic cemeteries like this from being part of the wall.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. An American fencer who won bronze and helped Team USA win gold at the Pan Am Games takes a knee during the national anthem to protest racism, gun violence, our horrific treatment of immigrants, and Trump.
    • A hammer thrower who took gold raises her fist in protest at the end of the national anthem.
  1. Last year, Alabama filed a suit against the Commerce Department and the Census Bureau arguing that undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be counted when apportioning federal representation and funding. This would be a major shift away from how we’ve done things in the past.
  2. Families separated at the border by the Trump administration are suing for damages, specifically families with kids who claim they were abused in foster care. As expensive as family separation and endless detention has been for taxpayers, these lawsuit settlements could cost us 100s of millions more.
  3. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a nationwide injunction against Trump’s policy of denying any asylum claims for people who enter the U.S. via a third country. So the policy goes back into effect in Texas and New Mexico, but not California and Arizona.
  4. The Trump administration introduces a new rule that changes how recipients of public assistance are evaluated for U.S. residency and citizenship. The rule adds things like receiving food stamps or medicaid to the things immigration officials can take into consideration.
    • Pros: Fewer people getting public assistance.
    • Cons: People will forego the help they need for fear that they won’t get residency or citizenship (meaning children will go hungry, for a start).
  1. In defending the new rule, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli rewrites the poem at the base of the statue of liberty. He says:

“Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge.”

    • Here’s the actual line from the poem. I’ll let you compare the difference. Jeez.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

    • He later says that the poem only refers to people coming from Europe.
    • In implementing the rule, the DHS ignored a majority of the 266,077 public comments submitted.
    • California seeks an injunction to block the new rule on the basis that it’s intended to discriminate.
  1. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to be a very good friend to the LGBTQ community. Well, a couple bans later (along with with removing protections against discrimination), he proposes a new rule that would let companies doing federal business discriminate against LGBTQ workers based on closely held religious beliefs.
    • The rule also allows discrimination based on race, ethnicity, nation of origin, gender, and more.
    • This is just one in a string of new rules that makes it harder to win a discrimination case in court.
  1. Representative Steve King (R-IA) defends his anti-abortion stance in cases of rape and incest by asking, if we didn’t have rape and incest, would there be any population left?” Makes me wonder what kind of sex this guy is having.
  2. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a lower court’s ruling that DHS must provide immigrant children in detention centers with edible food, clean water, soap, and toothbrushes. The ruling also says that the children cannot be sleep-deprived.
  3. Gavin Grimm finally wins his discrimination case against a Virginia school board over transgender bathroom use. The case was temporarily put on hold when Trump rescinded the bill allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their gender identity.
  4. The officer who drove into a group of people protesting at an immigrant detention center resigns. One of the protestors suffered a broken leg and internal bleeding, while other were sprayed by other officers with pepper spray.
  5. A new analysis shows that black men are 2.5 times more likely that white men to die during a police encounter. Latino men, black women, and all Native Americans are also killed by police at a higher rate.
  6. Well this is so not good. Experts at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) argue that domestic terrorists, like ISIS, are trying to create dirty bombs (that is, radioactive bombs). This includes white hate groups and neo-Nazis.

Alt-Right vs. Antifa:

  1. While Portland police planned well for a white supremacist rally and the corresponding counter-protests by antifa, several fights broke out and police arrested 13 people and seized several weapons.
  2. Trump says we should designate antifa as a terrorist group (just a reminder that antifa stands for anti-fascist, and it’s not an organized enough group to be considered a terrorist group).
  3. One of the alt-right leaders just turned himself in for charges of felony rioting from a previous fight.
  4. The alt-right organizer says the whole point of the rally is to bring attention to antifa after the beating of far-right journalist Andy Ngo.
  5. If you don’t think that Trump fans the flames of white supremacy, white supremacists would disagree with you. The Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggsold says:

“Go look at President Trump’s Twitter. He talked about Portland, said he’s watching antifa. That’s all we wanted. We wanted national attention, and we got it. Mission success.”

  1. My question here is, if there were no white supremacy groups, would there be any antifa? And does antifa organize protests on their own, or do they just come out to protest white hate groups? The only exception to that that I’ve seen is the inauguration day vandalism.

Climate:

  1. 29 states and cities sue the Trump administration over the new rules attempting to rescind Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The new rules would ease emissions restrictions on coal-burning power plants.
  2. The Interior Department issues new rules to weaken the Endangered Species Act. The act, which was passed by Republicans in 1973, protects hundreds of species. The Secretary of the Interior is a former fossil fuel lobbyists, so the speculation is that this will allow for more drilling. Cue the lawsuits.
  3. The use of neonicotinoid pesticides (neonics, for short) has made our farms around 50 times more toxic to honeybees and likely to other insects as well.
  4. In another testament to the impulsive nature of this administration, the EPA reverses its decision to allow “cyanide bombs” to kill wildlife. Apparently the public outcry over this took them by surprise.
  5. India holds a tree-planting marathon, with students, volunteers, and government officials planting 220 million trees in just one day.
  6. A U.S. Geological Survey study found plastic particles in more than 90% of the rainwater samples they tested in the Denver-Boulder areas and surrounding mountains. It’s raining plastic, folks.
  7. While the globe is still waiting for the fateful day when warming reaches 2 degrees Celsius, several U.S. areas have already reached it and are feeling the effects.
    • New Jersey and other New England states, New York City, and Los Angeles, are among the most rapidly heating areas.
    • Other states feeling the burn include northern parts of Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Michigan. Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Oregon, and Arizona also have some hot spots.
    • The warming affects industries and causes overgrowths of toxic algae and seaweeds.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Seemingly spooked by the market’s reaction to tariff announcements, Trump delays tariffs on Chinese goods that are big-sellers during the holidays. They’ll go into effect in mid-December.
  2. So far this year, tariffs have doubled customs duties to $57 billon.
  3. This fiscal year’s budget deficit grows to $866.8 billion, surpassing last year’s total and we still have two months to go in the fiscal year. The deficit is expected to surpass $1 trillion this year, two years earlier than previously predicted.
  4. GDP growth slowed in fiscal year 2019, indicating that tax cuts and deficit spending aren’t what will boost the economy in the long term. And after all the financial maneuverings, the economy is on pace to keep up the steady growth of the past 10 years.
  5. Analysts attribute the slowing to the GOP tax cuts, increased government spending, and a population that’s getting older. The GOP still says that the tax cuts will boost GDP growth.
  6. In case you thought last week would be the worst for the markets… Stocks took a little rollercoaster ride, dropping nearly 1,000 points in one day. Most indexes drop around 3%. They bounce back up (mostly), but bond yields are still pushing lower.
    • Trump blames his own Fed and pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong.
  1. The 10-year and 2-year bond yield curves invert for the first time since 2007, a fairly predictable indication of recession. But we’re not in predictable times right now. This is what triggered the stock market drop.
    • A yield curve inversion occurs when the yields for short-term bonds is higher than the yields for long-term bonds. If investors think a recession is coming, they’ll settle for those lower yields in long-term bonds.
    • You can look at Treasury bonds as a bet on economic growth. What’s happening now indicates that investors think the damage is done and this market bounce is temporary.
    • We had warnings in March and May, where the 3-year yield curve temporarily inverted.
    • The caveat? Steps the Fed took to get us out of the Great Recession changed some of the fundamentals of the market. So it could be the yield curve isn’t the reliable indicator it’s been in the past. Another caveat? Economists have also made that caveat before previous recessions.
  1. The New York Fed recession indicator issues recession warnings as well.
  2. And more recession jitters. Goldman Sachs expresses concern that a protracted trade war will trigger a recession.
  3. At a rally, Trump says, “I never said China was going to be easy,” directly contradicting what he said in March 2018: trade wars “are easy to win.”
  4. Moody Analytics estimates the trade war has axed 300,000 jobs and blunted GDP growth by 0.3 percentage points.
  5. John Deere and Caterpillar both fall short of investor expectations and Deere lowers its annual earnings forecast as a result of the trade war with China coupled with extreme weather.
  6. The yield curve inversion occurs in the UK as well.
  7. The UK’s economy shrank last quarter for the first time in nearly seven years. The European economy is slowing in general right now, but the UK is facing a possible no-deal Brexit, which would slow them down even further.
  8. Germany‘s economy, the EU’s largest, shrank in the second quarter of fiscal year 2019. Germany has taken a hit in their auto industry because of the trade wars.
  9. The European Central Bank proposes stimulus measures in expectation of a global downturn. Their interest rates are already negative, and they’re considering further cuts.
  10. China’s industrial output growth was at its weakest in 17 years.
  11. Japan buys $22 billion in U.S. Treasuries in June. That’s the most of any country and it makes Japan the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasuries.
  12. Finally for some good news. Retail sales in the U.S. beat expectations in July, and major retailers had their biggest sales increase in four months. Economists raise their GDP growth expectations for the quarter.
  13. Trump says he met with Apple CEO Tim Cook over the weekend to talk about how tariffs affect Apple and how Apple’s major competitor, Samsung, gets around the tariffs. Is that normal for a president to meet with one CEO? I don’t know.
  14. Trump says the stock market will collapse if we don’t vote for him next year. It might collapse either way. He has a 50/50 chance of being right.
  15. Trump’s administration is reviewing unspent funds for foreign programs that were approved by Congress with an eye on redirecting those funds in a process called rescission. But he won’t touch Mike Pence’s or Ivanka’s programs.

Elections:

  1. A Republican group files a lawsuit against the voter-passed citizen redistricting commission in Michigan. They say the commission is unconstitutional. Voters passed similar anti-gerrymandering measures in other states, where the GOP is also trying to circumvent the vote of the people.
  2. At least eight state still use paperless ballots, so there’s no audit trail in the case of a challenge or recount. However, a judge orders Georgia to stop using paperless touchscreen voting machines by 2020.
  3. Trump holds a rally at a Shell plant in Pennsylvania where thousands of union workers are told to show up and to not yell or protest, or they won’t get paid. The rally was held during a time when workers get overtime, so they were looking at a good loss if they didn’t show.
    • Trump tells that group of workers that Shell‘s manufacturing complex never would’ve happened without him, even though Shell announced it under Obama in 2012.
  1. Trump renews his claims of voter fraud in New Hampshire, and receives a quick rebuke from FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub, who says:

“People have studied this. Academics have studied this. Lawyers have studied this. The government has studied this. Democrats have studied this. Republicans have studied this. And no one can find any evidence of rampant voter fraud either historically or particularly in the 2016 elections.”

  1. While both parties have used the recall to try to get rid of elected officials they don’t like, the GOP wields it like a weapon. There have been 45 state-level recall elections in the history of the U.S., and 20 of those were just in the past 10 years.
    • In California, they recalled a state senator to break the Democratic supermajority in 2018.
    • In Nevada, they tried to recall three lawmakers in 2018.
    • In New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon, Nevada, and California, they’re trying or planning to recall the governors.
    • In Colorado they recalled two lawmakers in 2013. This year, they’re trying to recall four lawmakers and are targeting more.
    • In comparison, Democrats tried to recall Scott Walker and his Lt. Governor in Wisconsin in 2012, and are working on a recall of the governor of Alaska.
  1. Trump says he can decide which TV networks air the presidential debates.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Remember that big scandal under Obama where we all found out that the National Security Agency (NSA) was surveilling our phone records? Well, that program has been shut down indefinitely, but Trump wants to reauthorize it and make it permanent.
  2. Trump says being president will cost him $5 billion. Isn’t that all he was worth in the first place?

Polls:

  1. 72% of Americans support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Even 54% of Republicans do, thought that’s down from 59% in March, 2017.

Quote of the Week:

This quote comes from a surprising source: former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci (the Mooch).

“We recognize that the president is a clear and present danger to the American society, the American culture. There are many people inside the White House and in the Cabinet. I would ask the left to let’s create an off-ramp for those people because when you’re trying to deprogram people from a cult, one of the first things you have to do is allow them to change their mind, and you have to allow them to have the space to change their mind.”

Week 133 in Trump

Posted on August 14, 2019 in Politics, Trump

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

This week, Tucker Carlson calls white supremacy a hoax, just like the Russia thing. Maybe he meant that white supremacy is not a hoax just the way the Russia thing is not a hoax. It is so far past time for ALL of us to take a stand against white supremacy. Any of you who still pretend it’s not a thing need to take a deep look inside about why it’s so important to hold on to the idea that we don’t have a white supremacist problem in this country. Because we do. We really, really do.

Here’s what happened in politics in the week ending August 11…

Shootings This Week:

  1. Here’s a list of the week‘s mass shootings (defined as killing or injuring four or more people):
    • A drive-by shooter in Chicago injures six people.
    • Another drive-by in Chicago injures four people.
    • A drive-by shooter in San Francisco injures four people.
    • A shooter injures four people near Richmond, VA, outside a hotel and bar.
    • Two people are dead and two injured in a shooting connected to a traffic accident in St. Louis.
    • A shooter kills one person and injures three at an altercation following a funeral in Maryland.
    • A shooter or multiple shooters injure four people at a community vigil in Brooklyn.
    • And a near miss in Springfield, MO. After an alert Walmart clerk pulls the fire alarm to get people out of the store, a former firefighter detains a man armed with tactical weapons, body armor, and over 100 rounds of ammunition.
  1. Trump calls for stronger background checks, but earlier he threatened to veto House legislation that strengthened background checks.
  2. Gun rights supporters single out mental health as the big issue in gun violence, but only a small fraction of mass shooters have a previous history of mental illness (and most mentally ill aren’t violent). The most common factors of mass shooters are:
    • Strong sense of resentment
    • Desire for infamy
    • Domestic violence
    • Study of other shooters
    • Narcissism (not to be confused with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is a mental illness)
    • Misogyny (so if you think the Incel movement is nothing to worry about, think again)
    • Access to firearms
  1. Trump speaks out against white supremacy, bigotry, and hatred, and says we need to do something about gun safety… and that maybe we should tie that together with immigration reform. I’m not sure what the two have to do with each other.
  2. Whoops! Trump refers to Toledo instead of Dayton in his speech. And then Joe Biden refers to Houston instead of El Paso, and to Michigan instead of Ohio.
  3. Trump calls for unity in his speech, but then later that day he and his staff were back to targeting his perceived political opponents, including those affected by the shootings.
  4. Trump tweets that the Dayton shooter supported Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Antifa. Police haven’t determined a political motive for that particular shooting, though violent misogyny seems to have played a part.
  5. None of the El Paso shooting victims are willing to meet with Trump, so they make a photo op by bringing in the baby whose parents were both killed in the shooting.
  6. FBI Director Christopher Wray orders the FBI to conduct a threat assessment to help find and stop possible mass shootings in the future. They’ll work to identify threats similar to the recent shootings and hopefully stop them before they occur.
  7. The FBI has around 850 active domestic terrorism investigations, down from nearly 1,000 a year earlier.
  8. The FBI opens a domestic terrorism investigation into the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting after finding a list of additional targets.
  9. After the recent mass shootings, Trump says “fake news” contributed to the anger and fate that led to these problems. The problem is, most of the recent shooters cited race and immigration, and echoed rhetoric used by Trump and white supremacists. The Dayton shooter was different–a violent misogynist whose motivation in unclear.
  10. Following the recent shootings, the FBI urges Congress to make domestic terrorism a federal crime, as it should be.
    • The gap in the law allows self-radicalized Americans who attack immigrants, Jews, African Americans, etc., to be tried for hate crimes instead of terrorism.
    • Even though both the Gilroy and El Paso shooters are being investigated for domestic terrorism, there’s no law that lets them get charged with that.
  1. The El Paso shooter said he was targeting Mexicans.
  2. Google and Amazon are both found to be selling gun accessories in violation of their own policies.
  3. Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine listens to his people and rolls out a 17-point gun safety plan that includes expanded background checks, red flag laws, improved access to mental health services, and social media monitoring.
    • These are the same laws Democrats have been trying to pass in the state (and around the country) for 20 years.
    • The state’s GOP legislators are dragging their feet on the bills already.
    • A Republican state representative in Ohio backs a ban on assault weapons and limits on magazine sizes. His change of heart came because his daughter was near the shooting in Dayton.
    • A group of activists is already working to get expanded background checks on the ballot in November 2020 as a voter referendum. If legislators won’t act, the people will.
  1. California Governor Gavin Newsom proposes expanding an existing commission on terrorism to find ways to reduce these kinds of gun violence at schools and at public events.
  2. Foreign journalists covering mass shootings in the U.S. say it’s hard to explain the issues surrounding mass shootings in the U.S.—our gun culture, politics, and extremism. People abroad frankly think Americans are a little nuts.
  3. Amnesty International issues a travel warning for the U.S. due to all the gun violence, as do countries like Japan, Venezuela, and Uruguay. Other countries urge caution when traveling here because of the number of shootings, especially mass shootings.
    • Trump threatens retaliation against these countries.
  1. For over a year, the White House has been blocking requests from the DHS to make fighting domestic terrorism a priority. The White House preferred to concentrate on the jihadist threat… because, you know, brown people and scary Muslims.
    • The majority of domestic terrorist cases involve white supremacy.
  1. A group of Walmart employees walk out in protest of the company continuing to sell guns.
  2. Trump says he’s been tough on guns, but his administration has actually worked to make them easier to obtain over the past 2-1/2 years by:
    • Lifting bans on certain locations.
    • Limiting the capabilities of the background check database.
    • Reversing Obama’s limits on gun ownership by people with certain and severe mental disabilities.
    • Working to make it easier for private sellers to sell weapons to foreign buyers.
  1. He‘s also banned bump stocks, increased penalties for agencies that don’t report information to the background check system, and approved funds to combat violence in schools. So it’s a mixed bag.
  2. Ten new laws loosening up gun regulations in Texas are set to go into effect over the next month. These laws make it easier to carry weapons in churches, on school grounds, in apartments, and following natural disasters, among other things.
  3. Congress calls the owner of the 8chan online message board to testify after the website is linked to the El Paso shooter (and it does seem to be the place to air your white supremacist angst).

Russia:

  1. A blast kills five workers and two military personnel at the Russian nuclear agency during a missile test. Russia’s Defense Ministry says they were testing a liquid jet propulsion system and that there were no dangerous gases released, though local authorities reported a radiation spike.
    • Russia later confirms that there were radioactive materials involved in the blast.
    • Later yet, they confirm that they were testing a nuclear-engine missile.
  1. JU.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman resigns, possibly to run for governor of Utah.
  2. The House Judiciary Committee files a formal lawsuit to force former White House Counsel Don McGahn to testify about Trump’s potential obstruction of justice. So far, the White House has blocked his testimony.
  3. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, says that formal impeachment proceedings have already begun in that they are investigating the allegations of obstruction of justice in Mueller’s report, as well as other potential crimes.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Fired FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok sues for reinstatement, saying he was unfairly terminated for criticizing this president (which we all have a right to do, even in the FBI).
    • He argues that the Trump administration has tolerated and encouraged partisan political speech by federal employees as long as Trump’s in agreement with them.
    • He also alleges that DOJ violated the Privacy Act in releasing the texts and that the DOJ violated Strzok’s Fifth Amendment rights by not allowing him to appeal.
  1. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe sues the DOJ and FBI over his firing, saying it was politically motivated.
    • McCabe was hours from retirement when he was fired.
    • The lawsuit quotes a lot of publicly available material, like Trump’s tweets, so it will be hard to argue against that.
  1. Accused child molester and sex trafficker Jeff Epstein is found dead in his cell by apparent suicide. He had been on suicide watch, but psychologists took him off it over a week ago.
    • The prison guards miss their scheduled cell check on Epstein the night before.
    • And then cue the conspiracy theories. Trump retweets a conspiracy theory that the Clintons killed Epstein (this one’s magnified on the right). Some on the left say it was Trump or Bill Barr (magnified on the left). Others say there are many judges and politicians who wanted him dead.
  1. A federal judge orders the departments of State and Defense to produce thousands of documents related to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
  2. The DOJ urges a federal court to overrule a ruling that requires Trump’s accounting firm to release Trump’s financial records to Congress.
  3. Six major banks comply with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena and turn over documents relating to Trump, his family, Russians who had dealings with Trump, and Trump Organization.
  4. The founder of Students For Trump pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He created a fake persona to run a legal consulting scheme that bilked victims out of $50,000.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Two Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee ask the National Archives for Brett Kavanaugh’s records during his time serving under George Bush, since they were concealed during his hearings.

Healthcare:

  1. A federal judge blocks Arkansas’ 18-week abortion ban as well as a new law preventing women from seeking abortion at any time based on a diagnosis of Down’s Syndrome.
  2. Senator Lindsey Graham says that if Republicans take back the House in 2020, they’ll try to repeal and replace the ACA again. That’s what 2020 is all about, he says.

International:

  1. For the third time in a month, Iran seizes a foreign tanker in nearby waters, this time an Iraqi ship that Iran said was smuggling fuel. The Iraqi oil ministry denies the ship is theirs.
  2. Trump tells advisors that Israel should block Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering the country because of their views on BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions). Israel says don’t tell us what to do.
  3. Kim Jong Un supervises a demonstration of North Korea’s newly development short-range missiles.
  4. The protests in Hong Kong continue, having evolved from a protest against an extradition law to a protest against China and for democracy. Though many protests have been peaceful, some protestors escalate the demonstrations, blocking traffic, starting fires, and occupying the airport.
    • China’s reaction is bringing up comparisons to their mishandling of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Two Galveston police officers on horseback arrest a black man for trespassing and, instead of waiting for a transport vehicle, tie a rope to his handcuffs and make him walk alongside them while they ride through town. How did they miss the optics on this one? They say they made a bad decision and they’re very sorry.
  2. A federal judge forces some of the people and groups involved in 2017’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville to pay attorney fees for the people who sued them.
  3. The State Department suspends an official who was also a leader in the white nationalist movement. He attended the Charlottesville rally and posted Nazi propaganda online.
  4. Here’s what else has happened to some of the rally attendees, who came from 39 states and represented about 50 different extreme-right groups:
    • Three former Marines were discharged from the corps.
    • More than a dozen attendees have been imprisoned for various crimes.
    • Unite the Right organizers have been hounded by lawsuits, several leaders have left the movement, and some leaders have moved into new roles in the white supremacist movement.
    • Several attendees have been banned from social media platforms or banned from travel. Some have lost their jobs and some have been ostracized by their communities.
    • But most importantly, most attendees are still active in white nationalist, white supremacist, and racist movements, and some are running for office.
  1. John McCollister, a Republican State Representative in Nebraska, says the “Republican Party is COMPLICIT to obvious racist and immoral activity” inside the party, and that Trump “continually stokes racist fears in his base.” After listing some of Trump’s racist rhetoric, he says, “No more. When the history books are written, I refuse to be someone who said nothing. The time is now for us Republicans to be honest with what is happening inside our party. We are better than this and I implore my Republican colleagues to stand up and do the right thing.”
    • He clarifies that he’s not saying all Republican are white supremacists or racists.
    • In response, the Nebraska Republican Party says McCollister should leave the party. A little self reflection might be in order…
  1. In the largest ICE raid in a decade, immigration officials sweep seven Mississippi food processing plants and arrest 680 people. They leave the children of the arrestees to fend for themselves, so neighbors take over the care of the families left behind.
    • The raid occurs just hours before Trump travels to El Paso and Dayton to “unify” the country.
    • The companies involved could be charged. One of the companies raided is Koch Foods, Inc.
  1. A Michigan man who had been deported to Iraq, even though he had never lived in Iraq and doesn’t speak Arabic, is dead (possibly because he was unable to get his insulin).
    • This isn’t new. Investigators followed the lives of asylum seekers we’ve deported, and 62 of them were killed or died after being sent to the country they were born in.
    • Trump’s deportation policies hit the Iraqi Christian population in Michigan particularly hard, even though many family members of these deportees voted for Trump never thinking he would come after their non-citizen family members. We never think they’ll come for us, right?
  1. Police in El Paso arrest an armed man found lurking outside a migrant shelter. The man had been sitting in a truck with a likeness of Trump as Rambo painted on it. Police release him because they found no crime was committed. Wut?
  2. Trump says, “I am concerned about the rise of any group of hate, whether it’s white supremacy, or any other kind of supremacy.” What other kind of supremacy is there?
  3. Trump Organization hires undocumented workers for construction projects, and has been doing it for two decades. New York’s attorney general is investigating allegations that Trump didn’t pay several of them.
    • We already knew they were hiring undocumented workers at their country clubs after some of them came out publicly and eight were fired last year (even though their employers helped them get the necessary documentation to work).
  1. Federal agents arrest an Ohio man who threatened to shoot Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on social media. The man was also stockpiling weapons and says he’s proud of those posts.
  2. The FBI arrests a neo-Nazi in Las Vegas who was plotting to bomb a gay club and a synagogue.
  3. The DOJ files a petition to potentially decertify the union representing federal immigration judges. The union has been critical of Trump’s immigration policies.
  4. The Trump campaign has paid for about $1.25 million in Facebook ads about immigration (over 20% of their Facebook ads). Over 2,000 of those ads refer to immigration as an invasion.

Climate:

  1. The EPA reauthorizes using poison devices called cyanide bombs to kill wild animals like coyotes and foxes in order to protect livestock. This practice was previously considered inhumane, and has injured humans, domestic pets, and endangered species, too. During the public comment period, over 90% of the comments were opposed. I guess the EPA doesn’t really care what you think.

Budget/Economy:

  1. China said to Trump, I see your bet and I raise you. After Trump says he’ll add a 10% tariff to an additional $300 billion of Chinese goods, China lets it’s currency drop to an 11-year low against the dollar, imposes additional tariffs, and suspends the purchase of all agricultural goods from the U.S.
  2. Trump accuses them of currency manipulation, and the Treasury Department officially designates China as a currency manipulator. This is really just symbolic, and according to the IMF, China’s actions don’t technically qualify as that.
  3. Many U.S. farmers lose one of their largest customers with China’s announcement, and after a year of devastating heat waves and floods, too.
    • China bought $19.5 billion in farm goods in 2017; just $9.2 billion in 2018; and so far this year, it’s down 20% more.
  1. As a result of all the above, the Dow Jones has its worst day of the year, dropping 760 points, or nearly 3%. The S&P also fell 3% and Nasdaq fell 3.5%. The Dow was down nearly 1,000 at one point.
  2. The international travel industry continues to lose business, with a loss of 14 million international travelers, $59 billion in income, and 120,000 jobs in the U.S. Forecasters expect the decline to continue at least through 2022.

Elections:

  1. The Trump campaign and the Republican Party sue California over its new law requiring candidates for president to release five years of tax returns in order to be included on the ballot.
  2. Joe Biden joins the ranks of Democratic presidential hopefuls calling Trump out directly for his racist statements. He says:
    • “How far is it from the white supremacists and Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville ― Trump’s ‘very fine people’ ― chanting ‘You will not replace us’ ― to the shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh saying Jews ‘were committing genocide to his people?’ Not far at all. In both clear language and in code, this president has fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation.”
    • Kamala Harris says it’s no longer debatable that Trump is a white supremacist with no empathy.
    • Even Paul Ryan has said Trump’s remarks are the “textbook definition” of racist.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Puerto Rico gets its third governor in five days. After elected Governor Ricardo Rosselló resigns over homophobic and misogynistic text messages, Secretary of State Pedro Pierluisi is sworn in. But courts say that since Pierluisi wasn’t approved as SoS by both houses of congress, he’s not the legitimate successor. So then Justice Secretary Wanda Vázquez, who’s said she doesn’t want the job, gets sworn in.
  2. Trump says his rhetoric brings people together. Like this tweet, right?
    • “Beto (phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage) O’Rourke, who is embarrassed by my last visit to the Great State of Texas, where I trounced him, and is now even more embarrassed polling at 1% in the Democratic Primary, should respect the victims & law enforcement – & be quiet!”
  1. Mitch McConnell calls the police when a group forms a protest outside his home in Kentucky. He says their actions constitute calls to violence. Frankly, I’m with him on this one. Private homes should be off limits.
    • On the other hand, his campaign tweeted a photo of headstones emblazoned with the names of his political opponents, including Amy McGrath and Merrick Garland.
    • And then a photo of several “Team Mitch” high school boys groping a cardboard cutout of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez goes viral on Twitter. Teach your boys better—this is how we end up with grown men who demean women.
  1. Cesar Sayac, who mailed pipe bombs to several Democratic targets of Trump’s rhetoric, receives a 20-year prison sentence for his crimes. Sayac drove a van covered in pro-Trump stickers. He sent the bombs to Hillary Clinton, Obama, Joe Biden, Eric Holder, George Soros, Maxine Waters, and more.
  2. Criminals are invoking Trump’s name for their defense:
    • Sayac’s lawyers say that he was radicalized by Trump’s rhetoric.
    • A man who slammed a thirteen-year-old’s head to the ground because the kid didn’t take off his hat during the national anthem says he thought he was doing what Trump wanted.
    • Defendants raise objections to people who turn state‘s evidence because Trump says that “flippers” should be illegal.
    • The defendant in a mob killing cited QAnon conspiracies and says he thought his victim was a member of the “deep state” that’s out to get Trump.
  1. Crime rates decreased from 2007 to 2017, and fewer people are in prison compared to 2007.
  2. Intelligence sources say that after he resigned, Dan Coates interrupted a meeting Deputy Director Sue Gordon was running on election security to urge her to resign as well. Trump didn’t follow normal protocol, which would’ve been to make Gordon acting directory.
  3. The White House drafts an executive order that would give the FCC more control over how social media sites curate what is allowed or suppressed on their websites.

Polls:

  1. 54% of Republicans polled support a ban on assault-style weapons.
  2. 85% of Democrats support one.
  3. 70% of registered voters overall support one. (I could’ve tell whether they defined assault-style weapons in the poll.)

Week 132 in Trump

Posted on August 6, 2019 in Politics, Trump, Uncategorized

This week, I’m adding a new news category, sadly out of necessity. Since we’re on mass shooting number 253 for the year (defined as four or more people shot or killed), I think it’s only appropriate to highlight them all in their own section. Jesus. When does his end, folks? When will we actually do something about it?

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending August 4…

Missing From Previous Weeks:

  1. The origins of the Seth Rich conspiracy story were published in early July. It turns out that three days’ after Rich’s murder, Russian Intelligence planted a story that he was the leak of the hacked DNC documents and that he was on his way to the FBI to spill the beans on Clinton’s corruption when Clinton’s hit squad killed him.
    • Jerome Corsi, Fox News (especially Sean Hannity), Steve Bannon, Jay Sekulow, and other right-wing figures ran with the story, even though the police concluded it was a botched robbery and even though Rich’s parents begged them to stop. They didn’t stop until a court forced them to.
    • Russia’s RT and Sputnik media outlets kept boosting this conspiracy theory for two years.
  1. Here are a few other stories that Russian trolls pushed in recent years and that mostly less-than-reliable media outlets picked up:
    • A young German girl claimed she was raped by Middle Eastern immigrants. She recanted—in reality she spent the night with a friend and was scared to tell her parents. But the alt-right pushed an anti-immigrant, anti-police, and anti-media narrative that took hold across the globe.
    • Rumors flew around Twin Falls, ID, that two Syrian refugees aged seven and 10 raped a five-year-old girl at knifepoint and they were later seen high-fiving their dads over it. This also didn’t happen, but exactly what did happen is under seal due to the children’s ages.

Shootings This Week:

  1. The gun used in the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting last week was purchased legally in Nevada, a state with looser gun regulations than California.
  2. A shooter at a Walmart in Southaven, MS, kills two men and injures an officer. The shooter is also injured.
  3. A gunman opens fire in an El Paso Walmart and nearby shopping mall, killing 20 people and injuring 26.
    • The suspect is taken into custody without the police firing a shot. It turns out he drove 10 hours to stop the “invasion” by immigrants crossing the southern border.
    • He posted a short screed online attacking immigrants and expressing empathy for the Christchurch shooter. He says he wanted to shoot as many Mexicans as he could.
  1. After to the shooting, Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick issues this warning to Antifa:

“Stay out of El Paso. Stay out of TX … scratch TX off your map and don’t come in … it is not the time and place for them to come at any time…”

    • He’s referring to a story posted by the Daily Caller about Antifa planning a “siege of El Paso”. Only it turns out Antifa isn’t involved, it’s a training not a siege, and the Daily Caller issued a correction.
    • So the Lt. Governor repeated a conspiracy theory started by a tweet and escalated by a media outlet founded by Tucker Carlson. Reminiscent of the Jade Helm conspiracy, no?
  1. Seven Mexican nationals are among the dead and the Mexican government says they’ll take legal action.
  2. The head of Cloudfare says the company will stop hosting 8chan following the discovery of the shooter’s screed on the site. 8chan is a home for white hate, white supremacy, and terrorist activity.
  3. Less than 24 hours after the El Paso shooting, another shooter attacks an upscale entertainment area in Dayton, Ohio. He kills nine people and injures 29 even though police neutralize him less than a minute after he starts shooting.
    • The motive for the second shooting isn’t yet known, though rumors abound.
  1. Beto O’Rourke is done with the bullshit. He gives an emotional response at a presidential forum, and then cuts his trip short to return to El Paso to be with his family and town. Here’s what he has to say about the El Paso mass shooting:
    • “We’ve got to acknowledge the hatred, the open racism that we’re seeing. There is an environment of it … We see it from our commander-in-chief. He is encouraging this. He doesn’t just tolerate it, he encourages it.”
    • When asked if he thinks Trump is a white nationalist, Beto says yes.
    • And then, as Beto is on his way to meet up with his family a journalist asks if there’s anything Trump can do now to make this better. Beto’s response:

“What do you think? You know the shit he’s been saying. He’s been calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. I don’t know, like, members of the press, what the fuck?”

  1. A drive-by shooter injures seven people in Chicago. Another shooter kills one person and injures seven in Chicago.
  2. A shooter kills one person and injures three at a gas station in Memphis.
  3. A domestic killing leaves two people dead and three injured in Suffolk, VA.
  4. Five people are injured during a shooting at a party in Columbus, OH.
  5. Trump spent the first hours after the shootings tweeting from his golf course in New Jersey.

Russia:

  1. After Mitch McConnell blocks the election security bills passed by the House, #MoscowMitch and #MoscowMitchMcTreason trend on Twitter. Finally a moniker that actually gets through to him. Trump defends him, calling the Washington Post a Russian asset.
  2. In the months before Dan Coates resigned, the White House had been watering down his warnings about the threats posed by Russia, including interference in our elections, past, present, and future.
  3. A federal judge dismisses a case brought by the DNC against the Trump campaign related to the cyberattacks on their computers and subsequent release of the hacked information.
  4. Trump imposes additional sanctions against Russia for using chemical weapons to poison Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in 2018.
  5. Trump and Putin hold a phone meeting to talk about Siberian wildfires and a new U.S. ambassador to Russia. They don’t talk about Russia’s meddling in our elections.
  6. Trump formally pulls the U.S. out of the INF arms control treaty, saying Russia isn’t keeping up their end of the deal.
    • The U.S. plans to start testing a new non-nuclear missile, which would’ve been prohibited under the treaty.
    • Leaving the treaty allows the U.S. to counter new developments by both Russia and China.
  1. After the proof presented in Robert Mueller’s report and in the Senate Intelligence Committee report about Russian interference in the 2016 elections, and after Mueller confirmed those findings in his congressional hearings, Trump has this exchange with a reporter:

REPORTER: Mr. President, Robert Mueller said last week that Russia is interfering in the U.S. elections right now. Is that —

TRUMP: “Oh you don’t really believe this. Do you believe this? Ok, fine. We didn’t talk about it. I spoke with President Putin of Russia yesterday.”

  1. Protests continue in Moscow for free elections (the government isn’t letting opposition candidates on the ballot in Moscow city council races). 1,000 people are arrested, on top of the 1,300 arrested the previous week.Putin’s approval is at a low point.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Trump sues to prevent New York from releasing his tax returns, as allowed by a recently passed bill. A federal judge temporarily prevents the state from sharing Trump’s returns while the case moves through the courts.
  2. Support for beginning impeachment hearings is growing in the House, and now more than half of House Democrats support it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still hesitant.
  3. State prosecutors in New York subpoena Trump Organization records relevant to the Stormy Daniels hush-money case.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The DOJ declines to prosecute James Comey over the leak of his personal memos that were later determined to contain classified information. The DOJ says there’s no evidence that he intended to violate rules on handling classified information or that he knew he was doing so.
  2. A new FBI bulletin calls fringe domestic terrorism driven by conspiracy theories a growing threat, and specifically mentions QAnon.
    • QAnon believes there’s a deep-state conspiracy against Trump and he’s leading a covert effort to dismantle both that and an international child sex trafficking ring run by global elites.
    • The group also believes that Clinton and Podesta were running a pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizzeria (that doesn’t have a basement).
    • The report says conspiracy-driven violence is likely to increase in the 2020 election cycle. Great.
    • The report lists several conspiracy theories that have already led to violent attacks.
  1. Democrats demand an answer from Attorney General William Barr about why changes were made to funding for victims of trafficking. Trump ended the practice of using federal funds to help victims of sex trafficking clear their criminal records, which often stem from the activities they were forced into doing (like prostitution).
    • People who are trafficked have a very tough time getting their lives back together, and if they have a criminal record, they often can’t get a job, get housing, get loans… you see where this is going.

Healthcare:

  1. A federal judge strikes down Medicaid work requirements in New Hampshire—the third state where the requirements have been blocked.
    • The state had already put the policy on hold after learning that 17,000 residents would lose coverage. (Then why the fuck did they pass it in the first place?)
  1. A new study finds that raising the minimum wage and increasing tax credits decreases the suicide rate. There’s actually a name for what low-wage workers experience — deaths of despair — which include things like overdoses and suicides.

International:

  1. The Senate fails to garner enough support to override Trump’s veto of their bills banning sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
  2. New documents show that Trump’s friend Thomas Barrack Jr. and campaign manager Paul Manafort helped officials from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates edit a campaign speech made by Trump in May 2016.
    • This was part of an attempt to have the U.S. share nuclear information with Saudi Arabia, and Barrack planned to finance nuclear power plant construction in the Middle East.
    • Just after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed, Trump authorized two U.S. companies to share nuclear information with Saudi Arabia.
    • Barrack also lobbied to be appointed as a special envoy to the Middle East.
  1. Trump’s new nominee for Director of National Intelligence has no background in intelligence and is considered by many to be too partisan for the position.
    • Ratcliffe spread the theory of a secret society in the FBI that was out to get Trump.
    • He lied about being appointed special prosecutor in a case against funders of Hamas.
    • He downplayed the issue of Russian interference in our elections during Robert Mueller’s testimony a few weeks ago.
  1. Well that was quick! Ratcliffe withdraws his name from consideration following intense scrutiny over his lack of experience in the area and padding his resume.
    • Trump says Ratcliffe was being slandered in the media. FFS. Since when is vetting an official and bringing up their past slander? If Trump’s team would take the time and effort to vet half of his nominees, we wouldn’t have to vet them in the press. Sheez.
    • And just after I wrote that, Trump says that he White House has a great vetting process. He throws out a name and then the press vets them for the White House. Argh!
    • Trump won’t allow the deputy director, Sue Gordon, to take over as acting director of national intelligence, as per federal statute. Trump refuses to allow her to give the most recent intelligence briefing after she arrived at the White House to deliver it.
  1. The Trump administration opposes sanctions against Iran’s Foreign Minister, their top diplomat. This is retaliation for Iran taking down a drone, seizing a British tanker, and running a missile-test.
  2. The Senate confirms Trump’s pick for ambassador to the UN. Kelly Craft is currently our ambassador to Canada, where she appears to hardly have spent any time. She and her husband have donated millions to Republican candidates, and she’ll be the first in her position to be a major political donor.
  3. Trump sends a special envoy for hostage affairs to Sweden to monitor court proceedings in the case of American rapper A$AP Rocky. Is anyone else confused by Trump’s concern over this case?
  4. The U.S. will withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan as part of the negotiated deal with the Taliban. The deal hasn’t been finalized.
  5. After North Korea tests some short-range missiles, Trump praises Kim Jong Un and tells him to “do the right thing.”
  6. Boris Johnson’s party majority in Parliament shrinks to just one seat when a special election moves a rural seat from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Democrat party. Now Johnson can’t lose even one pro-Brexit vote.
  7. Even though the original impetus for the Hong Kong riots has been tabled, the riots continue and worsen, causing businesses to close early and residents to shelter in place. The protestors now want liberation from China.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House reintroduces an amendment to overturn Citizens United and get corporate and dark money out of politics.
  2. After three major mass shootings in the span of a week, Democrats ask Mitch McConnell to call the Senate back into a special session to vote on the gun safety bills that the House has already passed.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. Remember last week when SCOTUS said that Trump could use DoD funding to build his wall along the southern border? It turns out that the funds pegged for the job will come out of retirement programs for our military, among other programs.
    • SCOTUS didn’t give Trump a blank check to build a wall, nor did they say that the wall is legal. Their ruling is limited to specific projects.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump continues his attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings, accusing Cummings of stealing funds from the district.
    • Four years ago, Trump said Obama wasn’t doing enough to fix the problems in Baltimore. Trump said he’d fix it fast. He hasn’t, according to his own tweets.
    • Also, Trump’s own eateries in New York have been flagged for vermin infestations.
  1. The House Oversight Committee requests documents related to the private Facebook page for current and former CBP officers, which contains violent, racist, and misogynistic posts. The committee is concerned some of these officers might still be working with migrant women and children.
  2. As part of Trump’s new “third-country” asylum policy, DHS cuts a question for asylum seekers, which was intended to be sure Mexico wasn’t a dangerous place for them. The question asked whether they had a fear of being returned to another country and, if so, which ones.
  3. The Trump administration is still taking children away from their migrant parents—at least 1,000 since a judge ordered them to stop family separations. They’re being separated for minor reasons. 20% of these are children under five years old.
  4. White House advisor Stephen Miller proposes using border patrol agents to screen asylum seekers because they’d be tougher critics.
  5. After someone tries to break into Rep. Elijah Cummings home in Baltimore, Trump tweets a seemingly sarcastic “Too Bad!” but later says he really meant it was too bad.
  6. An NYPD departmental judge recommends that officer Daniel Pantaleo should be fired because of his involvement in Eric Garner’s death.
  7. A federal judge throws out Trump’s policy that immigrants who enter the U.S. in places other than ports of entry cannot apply for asylum. The judge says the policy violates the Immigration and Nationality Act.
  8. Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) says Native American tribes are destroying our western way of life after tribes and environmentalists successfully get the grizzly bear back on the endangered species list. That’s irony, right?
  9. Hours after the FBI releases the report calling out QAnon as one of the originators of conspiracy theories driving domestic terrorism, one of the speakers who warms up the crowd at Trump’s campaign rally casually drops QAnon’s rallying call: “Where we go one, we go all.”
    • QAnon believers have been common at Trump’s rallies, and more recently have been showing up in QAnon gear.

Climate:

  1. California Governor Gavin Newsom signs a bill requiring more environmental impact reviews for the Cadiz water project (which would drain the aquifer under the Mojave National Reserve). The Trump administration has tried to fast-track this project.
  2. The heat wave that hit Europe last week hits Greenland this week, accelerating the melt rate for the Greenland ice sheet, which in July alone poured 197 billion tons a water into the Atlantic. July 31 has the most ice melt of any day in the past seven years.
  3. In general, July was the earth’s hottest month on record (previously that was July 2016).
  4. Ethiopian citizens plant 353 million trees in a single day to help combat climate change. In 2017, volunteers in India planted 66 million trees. In China, users of the Alibaba pay app planted 100 million trees over two years. Conversely, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro ended protections for the Amazon rainforest, opening it to clear-cutting and development.
  5. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt appoints William Pendley as the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management. Pendley is now tasked with managing federal lands, but doesn’t believe there should be federal lands. He says the Founding Fathers intended for all federal land to be sold.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Under Trump’s proposed cuts to the SNAP program, more than 500,000 kids would lose their eligibility for free school lunches. The USDA failed to include this in their assessment when they proposed the new rules, so this is on top of the 3.1 million people expected to be dropped off the program.
  2. Over 50% of the money given to farmers so far to help ease the effects of tariffs went to just 10% of all recipients.
  3. The Federal Reserve cuts interest rates by one quarter of a percentage point. This isn’t a typical move when the economy is booming, and could signal that they’re trying to soften an economic slowdown that could become a recession. Trumps wants it cut a full percentage point and says Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has let him down again.
  4. Trump ends the trade truce with China saying he’ll impose a 10% tariff on the remaining $300 billion of imported Chinese goods. Negotiators for the two sides had just wrapped up a round of talks the day before.
    • China threatens retaliatory tariffs, and companies consider moving up production and shipment of goods to get it done before the tariffs take effect.
    • Experts say this trade war could last years or even decades. So much for “trade wars are easy to win!”
    • The Dow Jones drops 600 points on the news and the S&P drops 45 points.
    • The National Retail Federation refers to the new tariffs as a “tax increase.”
  1. The Senate and House both pass a $2.7 trillion spending bill that also lifts the debt ceiling for two years, or as Trump put it, until after the 2020 election.
  2. Because of the tariffs against imported Chinese goods, manufacturers are moving some production outside of China. But they aren’t bringing it back to the U.S. They’re moving it to factories in Southeast Asia.
  3. The Trump administration considers cutting capital gains taxes, giving the wealthy a $100 billion tax cut (because that first trillion just wasn’t enough). They’d have to bypass Congress to do it.
  4. The economy added 164,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate remained at 3.7%.

Elections:

  1. More House Republicans announce they’ll step down from Congress next year, including Rep. Will Hurd (TX). This brings the total to 12, and makes it much harder for Republicans to take back the House next year.
    • Hurd’s district has the longest stretch of the southern border of any U.S. district.
    • He has been a vocal opponent of Trump’s plans to build a wall.
    • He is the only black Republican in the House.
  1. Lawyers file a court brief accusing Georgia election officials of destroying evidence related to a court case that alleges Georgia’s voting systems are outdated and vulnerable to hackers.
  2. If you want to get on the presidential ballot in California, you now have to provide five years of your income tax filings. Lawsuits to follow, I’m sure.
  3. In North Carolina, Leslie Dowless is charged with two felonies related to his ballot fraud activity in the 2018 midterms. The ballot fraud led to the election results being overturned, and the special election is finally being held next month.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump orders the Navy to strip the commendations from the Navy prosecutors involved in the war crimes trial of a Navy SEAL who was acquitted.
  2. The DOJ is investigating accusations that Ryan Zinke used a personal email account while he was head of the Interior Department. Ooh.
  3. Despite allegations of sexual assault against Air Force General John Hyten, the Senate Armed Services Committee approves his nomination to be the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The vote now goes to the Senate.
  4. The Intelligence Community’s inspector general won’t investigate how Jared Kushner, Ivanka, and other White House officials were granted security clearances. He says he’ll only conduct the investigation if Trump asks him too.
  5. Oracle’s been complaining about Amazon getting the military’s cloud computing contract, so Trump tells the Secretary of Defense to re-examine the contract. Sounds like a little political favoritism there.
    • Also, the project has a cool name: Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI.
  1. Trump holds his 64th campaign rally on his 923rd day in office (that’s roughly one every two weeks for those of you counting).
  1. Mitch McConnell falls at his Kentucky home and fractures his shoulder.
  2. Trump considers declaring a state of emergency in Baltimore because he says living conditions there are unacceptable. He also floats doing the same in other Democratic-led cities like San Francisco and Detroit.
  3. And just in case you’ve forgotten, Trump got the idea to go after Cummings and Baltimore from an episode Fox & Friends.

Polls:

Here are the results of a new Quinnipiac poll on whether respondents think that Trump is racist:

  • African Americans: 80% yes, 11% no
  • Latinos: 55% yes, 44% no
  • Whites: 46% yes, 50% no
  • Democrats: 86% yes, 9% no
  • Independents: 56% yes, 38% no
  • Republicans: 8% yes, 91% no

Week 98 in Trump

Posted on December 11, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Manafort, Cohen, and Flynn! Oh my!

Here’s some democracy in action. Dane Best, a 9-year-old in Colorado, wanted to be able to have snowball fights (more specifically, he wanted to bean his little brother). So he started a letter-writing campaign, spoke at a town council meeting, and convinced his community leaders to overturn a ban on snowball fights that had been in place for decades. Yes, decades. How is it that it took this long for an enterprising youngster to realize he can create the change that he wants to see? Why is it that we grownups don’t always realize we can create the change that we want to see?

Here’s what else happened in politics last week. It was a big week…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. An Indiana judge orders the governor to turn over emails between then-governor Mike Pence and Trump about jobs at Carrier Corp.

Russia:

  1. Roger Stone refuses to testify or to turn over requested documents, invoking the Fifth. It’s possible (likely?) that Stone’s lawyer is mistaken in thinking the Fifth applies here.  
  2. Trump praises Stone for his lack of cooperation with the investigations.
  3. Sean Hannity tells listeners of his radio show not to talk to the FBI, even if they’re aware of crimes, because the FBI is too focused on the Russia investigation.
  4. Mueller’s team says they’re beginning to tie up loose ends in their investigation.
  5. Because of the false testimony exposed by the recent plea deals in the Russia investigation, House Democrats plan to send Mueller transcripts of the testimony given to them by Trump associates. They want Mueller to review the transcripts for any misinformation.
  6. Rudy Giuliani says they haven’t had time to draft a response or rebuttal to Mueller’s report, but Trump says they’re almost done with it—87 pages worth. Trump adds that they can’t finish it until Mueller issues his report.
  7. George Papadopoulos finishes his 12-day sentence and now has a year of probation and 200 hours of community service.
  8. Maria Butina’s boyfriend, Paul Erickson, is under suspicion of acting as a foreign agent and enabling Butina’s illegal activities by helping her develop contacts with political leaders, including in the NRA. Butina is in prison for her alleged activities and is likely to take a plea. (Note: I originally named Paul Erickson’s incorrectly as Erick Erickson.)

Michael Flynn

  1. Robert Mueller issues his recommendation on Michael Flynn’s sentencing for his plea deal, recommending that Flynn serve no prison time due to the extent of his cooperation and his “substantial assistance.”
  2. Mueller’s sentencing memo is highly redacted, but implicates high-ranking transition officials in the Trump transition team, likely including Jared Kushner.
  3. Flynn says a very senior transition team member told him to contact foreign officials (including in Russia) about a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements. At the time this was going on, Obama was getting ready to allow a Security Council vote on the resolution.
  4. Flynn also called a senior transition official at Mar-a-Lago to talk about what to say to the Russian ambassador about the impending sanctions. Transition members wanted Flynn to let Russia know not to escalate the situation. At the time this was going on, Obama was preparing to hit Russia with additional sanctions over their election meddling.
  5. Flynn learned that transition members did not want Russia to escalate the situation, according to court papers.

Paul Manafort

  1. Robert Mueller files his report about why he thinks Paul Manafort breached his plea deal:
    • Manafort lied about contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, who is implicated in both the Russian hacking scheme and attempts to tamper with witnesses in Manafort’s cases.
    • Manafort lied about a wire transfer related to his charges.
    • Manafort lied about information relevant to an unrelated DOJ case.
    • Manafort lied about having recent contact with Trump administration officials.
    • Mueller has documented proof of the above lies.

Michael Cohen

  1. Even though Michael Cohen has been very cooperative with the investigation and complied with his plea agreements, federal prosecutors recommend substantial prison time for his crimes (four years). Mueller recommends concurrent time for lying to government officials.
  2. As a result of the court filings around Michael Cohen, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York determine that Trump participated in federal crimes with Cohen. Some of these crimes are around hush money to his mistresses. The coverup is always worse than the crime. Always.
  3. Mueller’s sentencing filing shows that the Trump campaign was approached by Russia in 2015 to develop government-level political synergy.
  4. It turns out that Cohen did expect a pardon if he just stayed on the president’s message.
  5. Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee make several referrals for prosecution to Mueller. It seems several referrals stem from what we’ve learned from Cohen recently.
  6. If Cohen’s account is accurate, then Russia did have leverage over Trump because they knew he was lying about contacts with Russians and business dealings with Russia.

James Comey

  1. James Comey testifies for House committees behind closed doors for six hours about the integrity of FBI investigations. Apparently six hours weren’t enough, because he’s testifying again on the 17th.
  2. This seems to be part of yet another congressional investigation into the FBI investigation into Clinton’s emails. The inspector general has investigated this as have multiple congressional committees.
  3. Here are some highlights from the released transcript:
    • Contrary to Trump’s accusations, he and Mueller are not best friends; not even social friends.
    • Barack Obama did not order the FBI to spy on Trump’s campaign, but if he would’ve, the FBI would’ve refused.
    • A lot of this is just rehashed information we already know from previous testimony and from the IG report.
    • Republicans say they’re unhappy that Comey’s lawyer advised against answering several questions, but the transcript contradicts this. Most of the questions he didn’t answer were about Mueller’s ongoing investigation. He was also unable to comment on hypotheticals.
    • Republicans also say they’re unhappy with the number of times he said he didn’t know or couldn’t remember. Many of these questions were about details of FBI investigations that were below his pay grade.
    • Comey acknowledged that the Steele Dossier was a result of opposition research, first by Republicans and then by Democrats.
    • The Russia investigation began because of Papadopoulos.
    • The FBI’s New York field office was leaking information to damage Clinton, which is why Comey decided to make the public statement on the email investigation in 2016.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The fallout from the Panama Papers begins in the U.S. when the DOJ charges four people with tax evasion based on information found in those papers.
  2. Maryland and DC subpoena financial records related to Trump’s hotel in Washington. It seems the lease is being violated; no elected official can hold the lease because it’s the Old Post Office building and leased from the federal government.
  3. The FBI raids the home of Dennis Cain, who was granted whistle-blower status for providing documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee around the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One.
  4. Jeff Sessions directed U.S. Attorney John Huber to open an investigation into the Clinton Foundation at congressional Republicans’ urging.
  5. A private investigation firm is also looking into the foundation. The firm, MDA Analytics LLC,reportedly used ex-U.S. intelligence to do the research, but I can’t find any information about the company.
  6. A federal judge orders more fact-finding about Clinton’s private email server in a case alleging that the she used the server to protect herself from the Freedom of Information Act.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Hundreds of former DOJ employees call on Trump to replace Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker (who is a walking, talking conflict of interest). They also call on Trump to quickly nominate someone, and in the meantime to replace Whitaker with someone who the Senate has actually confirmed.
  2. Whitaker has yet to tell us how he’ll handle conflicts of interest as Acting Attorney General, and we know there are a few.
  3. Trump nominates William Barr to take over as Attorney General. Barr served in that position under George H.W. Bush.
  4. Reminiscent of Bill Clinton running into Loretta Lynch when she was overseeing the investigation into Hillary’s emails, Jared Kushner invites Matt Whitaker on a flight with him aboard Marine One while Whitaker is overseeing an investigation of which Kushner is a subject.

International:

  1. CIA Directory Gina Haspel briefs senators on Saudi Arabia and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. GOP Senators contradict Trump and say they are more convinced than ever that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in this murder.
  2. Trump has held that evidence of the Crown Prince’s involvement is inconclusive, as did Mike Pompeo and Jim Mattis in an earlier briefing. GOP senators pretty much say Trump is trying to help Saudi Arabia cover this up, and that Pompeo and Mattis mislead the Senate.
  3. Here’s an interesting thing Lindsey Graham says about this: “If they [Pompeo and Mattis] were in a Democratic administration, I would be all over them for being in the pocket of Saudi Arabia.” So just to make sure I have this straight, since they’re in a Republican administration, they are not in the pocket of Saudi Arabia? Party over country…
  4. Turkey issues an arrest warrant for the top aide to MbS and to his deputy head of foreign intelligence.
  5. We learn that Jared Kushner, one of MbS’s fiercest defenders in the White House, advised MbS on how to manage the Khashoggi scandal.
  6. Trump nominates Heather Nauert to replace Nikki Haley as the UN ambassador. Nauert is the current spokesperson for the State Department, and before that was an anchor on Fox News. Trump will also downgrade the UN ambassador position from a cabinet-level position.
  7. Trump says that he’ll suspend our participation in the 1987 Treaty on Intermediate-range Nuclear Force in two months unless Russia starts to comply with the conditions. That would let us develop and test new missiles.
  8. Satellite images now show that North Korea is expanding one of their long-range missile bases.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. After losing all the statewide seats in the midterms (governor, lt. governor, and secretary of state), Republican state legislators in Wisconsin begin a power grab to change the rules of their government and limit the power of the incoming Democrats. They pass a plan to:
    • Limit early voting.
    • Restrict the new governor’s ability to make appointments.
    • Shift some of the legal responsibilities of the governor and secretary of state to the legislature.
    • Lock in a work requirement for Medicaid.
  1. Protestors take to the State Capitol to voice their disapproval, even shouting over the Christmas tree lighting ceremony and choirs of high school students singing carols. Conservatives are quick to denounce the Christmas protest because of those poor students, but it turns out the students were in on it as well.
  2. And then Michigan follows suit by passing bills to:
    • Restrict the voter-approved legalization of marijuana.
    • Override voter-approved minimum wage requirements.
    • Prevent political non-profits from having to disclose their donors.
    • Add restrictions to the “promote the vote” initiative passed by voters, making it harder instead of easier to vote.
    • Restrict the voter-approved redistricting plan that takes redistricting out of party hands and puts it into the hands of a non-partisan commission.
    • Shift some of the legal responsibilities of the governor and secretary of state to the legislature.
  1. Just a reminder that in 2016, North Carolina’s legislature tried to place limits on the incoming Democratic governor, who in turned filed a series of lawsuits. So far, the courts have found largely for the governor.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Last month, a court blocked Trump’s policy of overly stringent vetting of green-card holders in the military. So now, the Pentagon sends thousands of recruits to basic training who’ve been in a backlog waiting to get in.
  2. We’ve been expecting a new trial in Florida for Jeffrey Epstein, who’s been accused of multiple incidents of child and sexual abuse, but the case settles just before it was to start. After his first trial, Epstein’s charges were highly reduced, and he served a light sentence with freedom to leave jail to work for 12 hours a day, six days a week.
  3. A jury finds James Alex Fields guilty of first degree murder for killing Heather Heyer when he plowed his car into a group of people protesting a white nationalist rally. He was convicted of multiple other counts of wounding other protesters. He has yet to be tried for multiple federal hate crimes.
  4. Ammon Bundy leaves the patriot movement he helped lead. He faced harsh criticism over his views on immigration after he issued a compassionate statement about immigrants and asylum seekers who are in need and should get a fair hearing. He says the patriot movement blindly supports Trump.
  5. Trump’s New Jersey golf course hires undocumented workers, including Trump’s own personal housekeeper there. When Trump was elected, a supervisor told his housekeeper that she needed documentation showing permanent residency, which the supervisor helped her obtain (though not through legal channels from what I’ve read).
  6. The replacement for NAFTA removes protections for LGBTQ workers.
  7. Emantic Bradford, who was shot by police when they suspected he was an active shooter, turned out to have been helping people escape the gunfire. Bradford had a weapon, but also had a license to carry. The officer who shot him (three times in the back) is still on duty and was also the only person to kill someone that night.
  8. Not surprisingly, protests erupt over the shooting and several protesters are arrested.
  9. Trump has more confidence in Kirstjen Nielsen after her tough stance on the migrant caravan.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A judge refuses to hear a challenge to Trump’s border wall from an environmental non-profit. The non-profit says the wall will destroy a protected butterfly habitat and could harm endangered species like the monarch butterfly and ocelots.
  2. French President Emmanuel Macron suspends planned carbon taxes that sparked weeks-long protests.
  3. Climate scientists and policy experts say countries aren’t implementing strong enough rules to help fight climate change. Several major countries are failing in their targets set in the Paris agreement.
  4. Global carbon emissions reach their highest levels ever recorded. They grew 1.6% in 2017 and are expected to grow 2.7% in 2018. The U.S. is the second largest emitter; China is first.
  5. A 15-year-old activist calls out global leaders for their lack of climate action. Greta Thunberg, who’s been sitting in front of the Swedish parliament every Friday since September, says:

“For 25 years countless people have come to the UN climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions, and clearly that has not worked as emissions are continuing to rise… So we have not come here to beg the world leaders to care for our future. They have ignored us in the past and they will ignore us again. We have come here to let them know that change is coming whether they like it or not.”
You can listen to the full speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cve4bLDrlM

  1. The Trump administration plans to end tax credits and incentives for electric cars and renewable energy. Maybe he’ll end subsidies for the fossil fuel industry as well (LOL I crack myself up).
  2. Trump proposes increasing carbon emissions limits for new coal plants. Under Obama-era rules, they were required to burn some natural gas to keep their emissions lower.
  3. The Trump administration moves to loosen protections for the sage grouse to enable to more oil and gas drilling.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The market has a really rocky week, with the Dow Jones dropping 1,600 in two days, rising back up 700 the next day, and then dropping almost 1,100 points the next.
  2. The drop came as investors lose confidence that our trade war with China is actually de-escalating. The markets aren’t helped at all when Trump tweets, “I am a Tariff Man.”
  3. In truth, when Trump tweeted after the G-18 that China would reduce and remove tariffs on our cars, aides said they didn’t know of any such commitment from China. And the press statements issued from the White House and from China are contradictory, indicating that nothing solid was agreed upon.
  4. On the same day that Trump announces a trade truce with China, Canada arrests Wanzhou Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei, at the request of the U.S. Huawei is a major telecom company in China, and Meng is the founder’s daughter. This throws yet another wrench in efforts to stabilize tariffs. Her charges are based in trying to get around the sanctions against Iran to do business with sanctioned companies.
  5. And now I feel more secure… Trump says it doesn’t matter if he deals with our increasing debt because he won’t be around to shoulder the blame when it all blows up.
  6. Congress passes a two-week extension on the funding bill deadline, which means if that all blows up, it’ll happen four days before Christmas. The impasse is over funding the border wall. Trump says he’s fine with a government shutdown.
  7. The U.S. becomes a net oil exporter. Barely.

Elections:

  1. In a runoff election, Republican Brad Raffensperger defeats Democrat John Barrow to become Georgia’s secretary of state. This was a closely watched election because the previous GOP secretary of state oversaw an election in which he won the governorship and in which several registrations and ballots were rejected, allegedly for spurious reasons. The office faces accusations of ongoing voter suppression.
  2. During the 2018 midterm campaigns, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) was hacked and email accounts were monitored by the hackers for months.
    • They are working with the FBI, but they still don’t know who was behind it. There are some similarities to the DNC hacking in 2016.
    • The NRCC found out in April, but didn’t reveal it to the victims or GOP leaders until the press found out about it this week.
  1. The North Carolina Board of Elections and Ethics has refused to certify Republican Mark Harris’ apparent win due to voting irregularities. According to witnesses, an operative working for Harris paid people to “harvest” ballots. In other words, they illegally collected people’s mail-in ballots, and in some cases filled them out. (Note that collecting ballots in itself isn’t illegal, but getting paid for it, not turning ballots in, or filling in a ballot without the voter’s consent are all illegal.)
  2. Trump and the NRA used the same media consultants to launch complimentary ad campaigns during the 2016 elections. This gives the appearance of campaign finance law violations, but it’s not clear whether the two actually coordinated.
  3. Trump made extensive use of Air Force One to campaign during the midterms. It cost taxpayers around $17 million. Rules say he’s supposed to pay for some of that from party or campaign money, but so far he’s only reimbursed $112,000 (or less than 1%).
  4. Massachusetts’ former governor Deval Patrick, who thought about running for president, says:
“… knowing that the cruelty of our elections process would ultimately splash back on people whom Diane and I love, but who hadn’t signed up for the journey, was more than I could ask.” That says something about how we campaign now.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Wednesday is a national day of mourning for George H.W. Bush. Flags fly at half-staff and federal offices close for the day. His state funeral is held at Washington National Cathedral.
  2. And in what becomes one of the most awkward presidential moments in my lifetime, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, and Barack and Michelle Obama are joined in the front row of the cathedral by Donald and Melania Trump.
  3. In an interview, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says Trump is “pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read” and that he tries to do illegal things.
  4. Trump responds by calling Tillerson dumb and lazy.
  5. Trump announces that White House chief of staff John Kelly will leave by year’s end. Also, no one wants the job of replacing him.
  6. Trump nominates Army General Mark Miller to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Joseph Dunford, the current chairman, has nearly 10 months left to serve.
  7. Michael Avenatti says he won’t run for president in 2020 after all. Did anyone really think he would?
  8. Shortly after Trump tweets about the media being the enemy of the people, CNN evacuates their New York studio because of a bomb threat.

Polls:

  1. 58% of Americans agree that climate change is influenced by humans.

Week 96 in Trump

Posted on November 27, 2018 in Politics, Trump, Uncategorized

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all got past any awkward political discussions and had a wonderful holiday with family. How did Trump spend his Thanksgiving? At Mar-a-Lago confounding our troops and journalists. To journalists, he denies the CIA’s findings on Khashoggi; threatens Mexico, attacks Hillary’s use of her personal email while defending Ivanka’s use of her personal email; says the GDP was going down to “like minus 4” when he took office (which is untrue); and suggests he’ll shut down the government if he doesn’t get his border wall. When asked about what he’s most thankful for, Trump pretty much just says he’s thankful for himself (and his family).

To troops he talks about barbed wire and troop deployment at the border; says we have no good trade deals (which a commander on the other end contradicts); criticizes the Navy for using electromagnetic catapults instead of steam (because EM is too hard to figure out, and which again an officer contradicts); and asks if the troops in Afghanistan are enjoying themselves. And then he goes golfing while former president Obama dishes food at a soup kitchen.

Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Russia:

  1. New emails show that Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica were involved in disinformation campaigns for Brexit. We already knew they were both involved in fostering nationalist populist movements in the U.S. elections in 2016. But now we know that Bannon, who then worked at Cambridge Analytica, was included on emails with Arron Banks, the leader of the Leave.EU campaign. The emails suggest that all three were involved in fundraising and media campaigns for both Brexit and the U.S. elections.
  2. Trump gives Robert Mueller his handwritten answers to the questions from the special counsel in the Russia investigation. He did not answer questions about his actions as president, including about obstruction of justice.
  3. The House Judiciary Committee subpoenas James Comey and Loretta Lynch for closed door hearings about how they handled the investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email server and the investigations into the Trump campaign and Russia.
  4. And speaking of emails, Ivanka used a personal email account to send government documents. Trump says it’s nothing like Hillary because at least she didn’t delete 30,000 of them. Fact of the matter is, we don’t know how many emails Ivanka’s deleted from that account.
  5. And speaking of James Comey and Hillary Clinton, Trump told White House counsel earlier this year that he wanted the DOJ to prosecute both of them. It’s not clear on what charges.
    • White House counsel told Trump he didn’t have the authority to order such a prosecution. He could request an investigation, but that, too, could be impeachable.
    • Trump is considering the appointment of a second special counsel to investigate the Comey and Clinton.
    • Trump thinks FBI Director Christopher Wray is weak for not investigating Clinton more thoroughly.
  1. A judge orders George Papadopoulos to start serving his two-week prison sentence on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Papadopoulos was trying to get his sentence stayed while a court decides whether Mueller has overreached in his investigation.
  2. Russia opened fire on three Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait, a strategic waterway for both countries. Ukrainian military says Russia also seized the three vessels.
    • Ukraine will vote on whether to declare martial law.
    • The UN Security Council calls an emergency meeting to discuss it.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Trump blasts a federal judge for blocking his restrictions on asylum seekers and calls the judge an “Obama judge.” Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts hits back, saying there are no “Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.” Roberts also says we should all be grateful to have independent judiciary.
  2. Trump responds, picking a fight with our Supreme Court Chief Justice. He specifically calls out the Ninth Circuit for their decisions around immigration.
  3. And then Chuck Schumer blows his retort by saying that he doesn’t always agree with Roberts‘ partisan decisions, but he agrees with Roberts that judges aren’t partisan. Whoops.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump’s administration approves Kentucky’s work requirements for Medicaid for a second time. The requirements were modified slightly because they were already struck down in court once.
  2. Ohio considers legislation to criminalize abortion and to redefine personhood to include any unborn human.
  3. A federal judge permanently blocks Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

International:

  1. As you read the following, remember this quote from Trump during a 2015 campaign rally:
    “Saudi Arabia, I like the Saudis. I make a lot of money with them. They buy all sorts of my stuff. All kinds of toys from Trump. They pay me millions and hundreds of millions.”
    • Trump tries to cast doubt on the CIA conclusion that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was behind the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This isn’t the first time he’s done this; Trump has also publicly doubted U.S. intelligence findings that Russia, and specifically Putin, meddled in our 2016 elections.
    • Trump says he won’t punish Saudi Arabia for the killing, because the country is a critical ally and that our strategic and economic relationships are too important to derail over a journalist. At issue is primarily oil, military equipment sales, and their partnership with us against Iran.
    • Trump justifies this by bringing up economic deals with Saudi Arabia that either don’t exist or that are inflated.
    • Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announces that Germany will end arm sales to Saudi Arabia. Finland and Denmark follow suit.
    • Congress issues a request to Trump’s administration to investigate the crown prince’s role in Khashoggi’s death.
  1. The U.S. has dropped more bombs in Afghanistan so far in 2018 than it has in any other year of this war. Even though it’s the longest war we’ve fought, the Taliban has retaken half of Afghanistan.
  2. On top of that, a suicide bomber kills at least 50 at a religious gathering in Afghanistan celebrating the birth of the prophet Muhammad.
  3. Syrian officials say that terrorist rebels launched a chemical attack near Aleppo, so they respond with an airstrike. The rebels deny carrying out the chemical attacks. The airstrikes violate the truce brokered by Russia and Turkey.
  4. Demonstrators rally across France all week to protest the gas tax.
  5. European Union leaders formally agree on a deal with the UK for Brexit. It still needs to be approved by Theresa May’s government.
  6. Reports are that talks with North Korea have stalled, and they’ve made no progress on reducing their nuclear arsenal or production.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. House Republicans elect Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to minority leader.

Family Separation:

  1. The number of migrant children in U.S. custody is at an all-time high of 14,030. Largely to blame is the new rule of fingerprinting people who are willing to be sponsors (and who might be family to the minor in question). At least 40 sponsors who don’t have legal status were arrested after the rule took effect. The number of detained children is almost triple what it was last year.
  2. As part of a settlement of three separate lawsuits over the family separation policy, the DOJ agrees to give some parents a second chance to apply for asylum. This includes some parents who were already deported. The lawsuits say that the asylum interview process was skewed by the parents’ distress at being separated from their children.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Now that factions of the migrant caravan are starting to arrive at our southern border, Trump decides to start pulling troops out and letting them go home.
  2. A judge blocks Trump’s effort to make it illegal for immigrants to apply for asylum if they don’t enter the country at a point of entry. Our asylum law only says you have to present yourself for asylum within a year of being physically in the country, which is how Cubans arriving in boats were able to request asylum in Florida.
  3. The Trump administration and Mexico come to an agreement that would allow migrants in the caravans to stay in Mexico while their asylum applications are processed. He then threatens to close the southern border if we have to. Mexico says this isn’t a permanent solution.
  4. Migrants in the caravans who didn’t apply for asylum in Mexico and who make it to Tijuana are staying in makeshift shelters as they are not allowed to enter the U.S. to apply for asylum.
  5. In one presser, Trump says he shut down the border, then says he will shut down the border if he has to, and then says he already did. Turns out, certain entries were shut down along the border for short periods over Thanksgiving week.
  6. Trump authorizes troops to use lethal force against migrants at the border. What could possibly go wrong?
  7. Border Patrol closes the San Ysidro entry point on Sunday (the day vacationers are trying to get back to the U.S.). They also use tear gas on a group of migrants who broke away from a peaceful march to rush the entry point. They say it was because people were throwing rocks, and Mexico says they’ll deport any migrants who did. San Ysidro is one of the world’s busiest international border crossings.
  8. A member of Trump’s administration defends the use of tear gas saying it’s natural; just pepper, water, and alcohol. You can spray it on your nachos. Wow. To that I say, try spraying it on yourself.
  9. Officials in Mexico put immigrants waiting to apply for asylum on wait lists. Some officials demand money in return for letting migrants pass.
  10. Trump revokes Obama’s guidance that protected transgender people in prison from rape and violence. Under Trump’s rules, prisons must use a person’s biological sex to determine where they’re housed.
  11. Trump asks the Supreme Court to hear cases against his transgender ban in the military. This would bypass the legal process, so it’s doubtful they’ll hear it now. He seems to be putting in quite a bit of effort against the transgender community. I’m curious why.
  12. The Mashpee Indian tribe could lose their land’s status as a reservation based on a new court decision involving a casino developer and a group of right-wing activists. This would be the first time in 60 years that reservation land would be removed from trust in the U.S.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The U.S. government tells Taylor Energy Co. that they have to stop an oil spill that’s leaked thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day for over 14 years. But it makes sense to open all our waters to more drilling, right?
  2. A new report from Trump’s administration finds that climate change could reduce our GDP by 10% by the end of the century. This is the second part of their findings. The first part, released last fall, found that there’s no other explanation for climate change than humankind. Here are some of the findings:
    • Climate change will have a huge effect on farming, reducing some crops by as much as 75% and reducing the number of hours a day that farm workers can work.
    • It will also hurt the fishing and seafood industry with acidification of our oceans.
    • There will be an increase in insect-spread diseases, like Ebola and Zika virus. Asthma and allergies will also worsen.
    • Food-borne and waterborne diseases will increase.
    • Wildfires could increase by six times, and flooding will also have a dramatic increase.
  1. Another study finds that better landscape management could store enough carbon to offset our output by 21% (this is a huge amount). The top actions include reforestation (and not culling trees in the first place) and planting cover crops for off-years on farms.
  2. Officials recall romaine lettuce across the country and in Canada due to an E. Coli outbreak.
  3. On a related note, after E. Coli outbreaks in 2011, Congress ordered the FDA to create safety rules requiring produce growers to test their water supplies regularly. That would’ve gone into effect this year, but Trump put those regulations on hold for at least four more years. Most California and Arizona growers had volunteered to follow those rules.
  4. Spain announces an energy plan that would require them to reduce carbon emissions by 90% by 2050 (compared to 1990 emissions).

Budget/Economy:

  1. The stock market had another shaky week, with the Dow Jones dropping 551 points in one day, erasing all the gains made in 2018. The five major tech stocks have lost over $1 trillion in two months.
  2. Gas and oil drilling applications in Wyoming are up more than 400% in the past five years, partly due to higher oil prices, better technology, and Trump’s push for U.S. energy dominance.
  3. Some farmers are not only unable to sell their crops to China because of the trade wars, they also can’t find places to store their harvest until it can be used. Most elevators that usually buy and store the crops are full; some are taking advantage of the need and are charging farmers additional fees. Some farmers with damaged crops are just plowing this year’s crops under.
  4. Soybean exports to the EU have risen slightly this year, while exports to China have tanked, as you can see below.

Elections:

  1. At least six major companies request that Mississippi Senate candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith return their campaign contribution because of her recent seemingly racist comments. Tip to politicians: If you apologize right away, these things would be non-issues.
  2. California Republicans work to regroup after losing every House seat in Orange County, a traditionally Republican stronghold.
  3. Democrats won the popular vote in the House by almost 9 million votes, increasing their seats by 39 (with one race yet to be decided, but leaning toward the Democrat). That 8% margin is the largest for either party in a midterm election.
  4. Conversely, Republicans won seats in the Senate. There’s one runoff election yet to go, so they’ll increase their seats by 1 or 3, depending on the outcome of the runoff.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Since a judge ordered Trump to reinstate Jim Acosta’s press pass, the White House says they’ll come up with a code of conduct. If Acosta breaks any of the new rules, he’ll be kicked out again.
  2. A shooter at Chicago Mercy hospital kills three, including a police officer, a doctor, and a recent grad. The gunman himself is also dead.
  3. A shooter in a Kentucky mall opens fire, injuring two. Police kill the gunman. Except that he wasn’t really the gunman; he was just black and licensed to carry. It takes the police a few days to correct the record. Not surprisingly, protests erupt.
  4. A review by Trump’s administration of his regulation rollbacks finds that these rollbacks will result in increased costs in multiple ways: there will be an increase in deaths from pollution, an increase in medical bills, and an increase in student debt.

Polls:

  1. 59% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling race relations, with Democrats and African Americans having the highest rates of disapproval. I think African American gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum summed it up when he said:

“I have not called the president a racist, but there are racists in his sympathizers who believe he may be, which is why they go to his aid, which is why he has provided them cover. I believe his cover has led to much of the degradation in our political discourse.”

Week 94 in Trump

Posted on November 13, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Even without last week’s midterm election, there was a lot going on last week. And the election isn’t even fully decided yet; in some places, the counting is still going on and there are runoff elections coming up. Several races have not yet been called, and a few are already looking like they’ll automatically trigger a recount. I’m sure by the time I post this, some of the election info will be obsolete. There was a lot that was interesting about this election, so I’ll summarize it all in a later blog post after things shake out.

Here’s what else happened last week…

Russia:

  1. The day after the midterm elections, Jeff Sessions tenders his resignation as Attorney General at Trump’s request. Until Trump nominates his permanent replacement, DOJ Chief of Staff Matthew Whitaker will serve as Acting Attorney General. The administration expects additional turnover after the elections, with possible ousters of Rod Rosenstein, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Jim Mattis, Ryan Zinke, Kirstjen Nielsen, and Wilbur Ross.
  2. Whitaker will take over Rod Rosenstein’s responsibilities in overseeing the Russia investigation. Whitaker has been a frequent talk-show guest speaking out strongly against the Russia investigation.
  3. A federal court orders Robert Mueller to explain how all this might influence Andrew Miller’s case. Miller has refused to respond to subpoenas and is challenging the constitutionality of Mueller’s appointment.
  4. Sessions’ firing results in over 900 protests and rallies held across the country in support of protecting Mueller and his investigation.
  5. Paul Manafort isn’t fully cooperating with Mueller’s investigation even though that was part of his agreement.
  6. Mueller’s team has begun writing their final report, though Trump has still not decided whether he’ll answer their questions.
  7. Russia had said Trump would meet with Putin in France at the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI. They did not end up meeting.
  8. After taking the House in the midterms, Democrats plan to open several investigations into Russia’s meddling in our elections, into actions taken by the administration around healthcare and education, and into Trump’s finances. Trump says he’ll take a “warlike posture” against Democrats should they decide to investigate him. He likens this to a game, saying Republicans can play the game better. But he also says he’ll make deals with Democrats.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump was involved in almost every action in the payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to keep them quiet about their affairs with him. The deals were made in the run-up to the 2016 elections, so are likely violations of campaign finance laws.
    • Trump has denied knowing anything about the $130,000 payout to Daniels.
    • David Pecker, CEO of American Media Inc., used the National Enquirer to buy off Karen McDougal.
    • Michael Cohen has admitted they made the payoffs to influence the outcome of the presidential election.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Kellyanne Conway’s husband writes an op-ed outlining why he thinks Whitaker’s appointment is unconstitutional. I’m dying to know what their home life is like.
  2. World Patent Marketing, where Matt Whitaker once served on the advisory board, is under FBI investigation for defrauding consumers out of millions of dollars. As part of his work there, he used his previous position as a federal prosecutor to intimidate consumers who attempted to get their money back.
  3. 29 days after Trump is on record saying he knows Matt Whitaker and that he’s a great guy, Trump says he doesn’t know Matt Whitaker. Kellyanne Conway confirms that Trump does, indeed, know Matt Whitaker.
  4. Whitaker says he won’t slash Mueller‘s budget and will allow the probe to continue unhindered.
  5. The harassment and death threats against Christine Blasey Ford continue. She’s had to move four times, she hired private security, and she hasn’t been able to return to her job.
  6. On his way out the door, Jeff Sessions gives us one parting shot by putting restrictions on consent decrees between the DOJ and local police departments. Consent decrees let federal agencies create agreements with local PDs to overhaul departments accused of civil rights violations. The new restrictions include:
    • Top political appointees must approve the agreements.
    • There must be evidence of additional violations beyond unconstitutional behavior.
    • All consent decrees must have an end date.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump issues the final version of new rules allowing employers to deny contraception coverage to employees based on religious grounds. His previous versions of the rules are pending litigation, but he issues the new ones anyway.

International:

  1. 60 business leaders in the UK are pushing for another Brexit vote, hoping to overturn the previous one (which frankly doesn’t seem to be working out well for the UK). They say none of the exit deals in the works are as good as what’s in place now.
  2. Turkey shares the audio recording of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey. Saudi Arabia, the U.S. , Britain, France, and Germany all have a copy.
  3. Trump meets with global leaders in France to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the end of WWI. When he arrives, Trump insults French President Macron in an angry tweet over Macron’s call for an EU army. He actually seems pretty sullen the whole trip.
  4. When a reporter asks Trump and Macron about Trump’s tweet, Macron reassuringly pats Trump’s knee to defuse tensions. Trump didn’t react at all.
  5. On the 243rd birthday of the Marine Corps, Trump forgoes attending a ceremony in France at a military cemetery (Aisne-Marne) where they buried the Marines who fought at Belleau Wood. They say his helicopter can’t operate in the rain (really?) and that he didn’t want to plug up the roads with a motorcade.
  6. And finally, while 60 other world leaders perform a symbolic walk up the Champs-Elysées to a World War I remembrance at the Arc de Triomphe, Trump and Putin both take private cars.
  7. Gun and air fights break out between Hamas and Israeli military in the Gaza Strip after a covert Israeli operation is uncovered. Eight people are dead.
  8. Over a year ago, Saudi intelligence discussed assassinating Iranian enemies. The Saudi official implicated in the death of Jamal Khashoggi had a meeting with businessmen who tried to sell him on a plan to sabotage Iran’s economy.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Wonder why we all think we hate Congress? Here’s part of why. A Washington Post and ProPublica study finds that the legislative branch is weak. Party leaders dictate what goes on and most of our elected officials don’t really get a say. Also, the threat of government shutdowns keeps us at an impasse. House committees met almost twice as often to deliberate legislation in 2005/2006 as they did in 2015/2016. Senate committees met around 3.5 times as often.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Ramping up the fear baiting, Trump floats a plan to deploy up to 15,000 troops to our border with Mexico to stop the migrant caravan. If my math is right, that’ll end up being around 10 soldiers for each migrant who makes it this far. It’s estimated to cost around $220 million. The Pentagon says the caravan poses no threat.
  2. There are an estimated 200 vigilante (and unregulated) armed militia members patrolling the border between the U.S. and Mexico.
    • The troops that Trump sent to the border are have to deal with the militias as well as their regular duties.
    • The militias have a record of stealing military supplies from troops deployed there.
    • The militias think we are under literal attack from people trying to cross the borders illegally and have put out calls to increase their numbers.
  1. Yet another federal appeals court rules that Trump can’t immediately end DACA. Even though there are three cases pending, Trump has asked the Supreme Court to rule on it now.
    • Note: Congress has always had the power to fix this, but has been unable to agree on the most minor immigration reform.
  1. Remember when we found out that Motel 6 was letting ICE know when people with Hispanic sounding names checked in? Well that was illegal, and now Motel 6 will pay out $7.6 million to their Hispanic guests. As part of the settlement, Motel 6 is forbidden from sharing guest information without a subpoena or warrant.
  2. The average number of people in ICE detention each day reaches a record high (44,631 people). This is larger than the number that Congress has approved funding for.
  3. The University of Virginia bans 10 people from their campus for their participation in the Unite the Right rally last year in Charlottesville. The ban is in effect for four years.
  4. Trump changes the rules of asylum so only people who show up at a port of entry can seek asylum. Previously, you had to seek asylum within a year of being physically present in the country. Lawsuits against the move are already filed.
  5. Major TV stations drop or refuse to even air an ad from Trump’s political team that was deemed so racist that even Fox News stopped airing it. The ad’s purpose was to drum up fear of Central American and Latin American immigrants.
  6. A review by ABC News found 17 cases of violent criminal acts or threats of violent acts where Trump’s name was invoked. There were none invoking his name in protest; rather 16 of the 17 cases have direct evidence of the suspect or perpetrator echoing Trump’s rhetoric. The suspects and perpetrators are mostly white men and the victims are mostly minorities. ABC News was unable to find similar cases carried out in Barack Obama’s name nor George W. Bush’s name.

Climate/EPA/Environment:

  1. The Supreme Court denies Trump’s request for a stay in the lawsuit brought by a group of young people against the government for its lack of action on climate change.
  2. Heavy rains and flooding devastate areas in Italy, killing at least 17 people. The rains have also destroyed around 14 million trees, devastating forests.
  3. A federal judge halts construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline saying that the environmental impact studies aren’t complete.
  4. A UN report says that it’s possible that the hole in the ozone layer could be fixed by the 2060s, thanks to the ban on chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons.
  5. Wildfires devastate California once again, burning down almost the entire community of Paradise in the north and threatening suburbs of Los Angeles in the south. The death toll is at least 31.
  6. In a tweet, Trump blames California for the wildfires, saying they mismanage their forest land. But the fires started on federal land, and California didn’t create the drought nor the Santa Ana winds that make the fires so much worse. Trump says there’s no reason for these fires. Firefighters say climate change is to blame.
  7. The International Firefighters Association criticize Trump for putting out a tweet like that at a time when lives and homes are being lost. They call his words reckless and irresponsible; The California Firefighters Association calls him ill-informed.
  8. Trump hasn’t read his own administration‘s National Climate Assessment report, but he says he thinks that climate change will probably reverse itself. Problem solved.
  9. The EPA’s website previously removed over 80 climate change websites, and noted that they were updating the site to reflect the administration’s views. Now they’ve removed the note about updating and any links to the archived climate change website from Obama’s administration.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The price of oil reached a four-year-high in October, and then proceeded to slide 21% to below $70 a barrel. The price rose because of imminent sanctions on Iran, but then dropped when Russian, Saudi, and U.S. oil companies overcompensated to make up the difference.
  2. The Trump administration reimposes all sanctions against Iran that Obama lifted under the joint agreement. The sanctions include an oil ban and are against over 700 Iranian banks, companies, and people.
  3. Trump grants China, India, Italy, Greece, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey waivers; so Iran might not be hit as hard as originally thought.
  4. The Trump administration isn’t watchdogging the big banks and corporations as much as previous administrations. SEC penalties are down 62% under Trump and criminal prosecution by the DOJ is down 72%. Maybe they all just cleaned up their act? Ha! I crack myself up.
  5. U.S. businesses paid 50% more in tariffs this September than last September, paying out $4.4 billion.

Elections:

  1. Despite a lack of evidence of voter fraud, Trump and Sessions both warn that there will be fraud in the midterm elections.
  2. Voter enthusiasm is up! Election day has the highest voter turnout for a midterm election in over 50 years, partly due to a drastic increase in young people voting.
  3. Democrats take back the House after 8 years of Republican control. With several races still too close to call, and some recounts pending, Democrats are predicted to take 35-40 seats. Republicans hold on to the Senate, and are predicted to gain 1-2 seats.
  4. Democrats took 7 additional governorships, including in Colorado (where they elected the first openly gay governor and their first Jewish governor) and in Kansas (where the leader of Trump’s voter fraud commission, Kris Kobach, lost his bid).
  5. At least 111 women win elections. We elect the first Native American women and the first Muslim women to Congress. Maine and South Dakota elect their first female governors.
  6. The people elect a number of open LGBTQ people to Congress.
  7. The North Dakota representative who sponsored the voter ID laws that disproportionately affected Native Americans loses his seat to a Native American woman.
  8. A few “notable” Republicans who won:
    • Representative Chris Collins: Under felony indictment for securities fraud.
    • Representative Duncan Hunter: Under felony indictment on 60 counts of conspiracy, fraud, and campaign finance violations.
    • Dennis Hof: Deceased brothel owner in Nevada.
    • Arthur Jones: Self-proclaimed Nazi.
  1. But Democrats aren’t immune:
    • Keith Ellison: Accused of domestic violence (but is requesting an investigation).
    • Bob Menendez: His corruption trial ended with a hung jury and charges were dismissed.
  1. U.S. intelligence officials say they haven’t seen any evidence of any foreign state interfering in the voting systems.
  2. Some of the races from the midterms are so tight they can’t be called, and some states will be counting votes into December. And everyone is suing in Florida, Arizona and Georgia to stop ballot counts, to make sure all ballots are counted, or to stop ballot counters from discarding ballots.
  3. Georgia, Florida, and Arizona are hotbeds of political gamesmanship after the elections. After observing the vote count for a bit, I say let these people do their jobs. They take their work very seriously.
  4. In California, Harley Rouda and Josh Harder both pull ahead of their Republican opponents in late counting, with Harley’s race being called for him. Two other races in Orange County are tightening and are too close to call, though 538 gives the Democratic candidates the highest probabilities.
  5. Cindy Hyde-Smith is in a special election runoff with Mike Espy. She says that if Trump invited her to a public hanging, she’d be first in line. Racist to begin with, but given that her opponent is black that comment is unconscionable.
  6. North Carolina got a reprieve on redrawing their unconstitutionally gerrymandered district lines for this election, but they must redraw them for 2020.
  7. In a ballot measure, Florida votes to reinstate voting rights to 1.4 million ex-felon Floridians. Previously, Governor Rick Scott decided which ex-felons could get their rights reinstated on a case-by-case basis.

Georgia:

  1. In Georgia and Texas people report that their party-line ballots cast votes for a member of the wrong party. Officials blame old and outdated computer systems. This really highlights the need for an auditable paper trail in all elections.
  2. In fact, earlier this year a federal judge found that continuing to use the Georgia machines disenfranchises voters, but did not force them to replace the machines before the election.
  3. Brian Kemp is Georgia’s Secretary of State and tasked with overseeing elections, including his own election for governor. Just before the elections, he accuses the Democratic Party of trying to hack into the voter system. He says he’s opening an investigation and taking it to the DHS and FBI.
    • It turns out that what really happened is that a man discovered a way to download voter information through a security hole. He reported it to the Democratic voter protection director.
  1. When Kemp tries to vote, his voter card says “invalid.” He has to get a replacement to vote.
  2. There are calls for Kemp to recuse himself from the election process and then from the ballot counting process. Kemp only steps down to start transitioning to the governorship which has still not been called for him.
  3. Democrats accuse Kemp of multiple counts of voter suppression; Kemp accuses Democrats of trying to get people to vote illegally and of hacking into the elections system.
  4. Currently, Kemp’s percentage of the vote sits at 50.3%, just slightly above the required 50% threshold. Stacey Abrams hasn’t yet conceded, and is hoping to get all votes counted and force a runoff.
  5. Kemp, for his part, stepped down from the SoS position to start transitioning to the role of governor, though a runoff is still possible.
  6. Meanwhile, all the lawsuits alleging voter suppression and invalid ballot counts are still going on.

Arizona:

  1. Arizona Republicans sue to challenge how counties count ballots, saying the process should be standard. At issue is the fact that some counties allow fixes to things like missing information or mismatched signatures after election day (which sort of makes sense, since mail-in ballots don’t have to arrive until election day).
  2. Arizona Republicans and Democrats come to an agreement that gives rural counties the same ability to fix errors as in urban counties.
  3. Democrat Kirsten Sinema is projected to win Jeff Flake’s old Senate Seat. The more ballots that are counted in Maricopa County, the bigger her lead gets.
  4. While the NRSC (National Republican Senate Committee) alleges corruption and fraud against Democrats in the ongoing ballot count, both Martha McSally, Sinema’s Republican opponent, and Jeff Flake say there is no evidence to support that. The NRSC files a FOIA request of the Maricopa county recorder to turn over any correspondence he’s had with George Soros and Tom Steyer. Huh? I’m dying to see the results of that request.
  5. Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO), the NRSC chair, tells Face The Nation that the Maricopa County Recorder is “cooking the books” for Sinema.
  6. Cindy McCain also speaks out against the NRSC’s attempts to stop the ballot count.
  7. Speaking of McCain, on Veterans Day, the Wall Street Journal chose to run an op-ed by a defeated Minnesota Republican blaming McCain for the Republican losses in the election. Aside from the misguided premise, who runs an op-ed disparaging a deceased military hero on Veterans Day?

Florida:

  1. In Florida, Governor Rick Scott threatens to send police to seize ballots in Broward County for a race in which he is running. He says there’s rampant fraud because they’re trying to count all the ballots. Scott and his Democratic opponent, Bill Nelson, are likely headed toward a recount.
  2. Trump also makes accusations of fraud. Florida Law Enforcement says there have been no claims of fraud and no evidence of fraud.
  3. Trump sends lawyers down to help Rick Scott’s case.
  4. Bill Nelson files a lawsuit challenging the rejection of certain ballots.
  5. Actually, there are a lot of lawsuits going around. Here’s a recap of the Florida lawsuits.

Miscellaneous:

  1. In a contentious press conference after the midterm elections, Jim Acosta refuses to back down from questioning the president about whether there is any threat posed by the “caravan of migrants.”
  2. Trump suspends Acosta’s press pass.
  3. Sarah Huckabee Sanders retweets a doctored video to support their accusation that Acosta was overly aggressive with the woman handling the microphone. Her video makes it look like Acosta karate chopped the woman’s arm, and also deletes the part where he says “excuse me, ma’am.” Does she think we don’t have access to the real-time videos?
  4. Trump calls reporter April Ryan a “loser” who “doesn’t know what the hell she is doing.” He also responds to reporter Abby Phillips by saying angrily “what a stupid question that is” and “you ask a lot of stupid questions.”
  5. Trump threatens to revoke press passes for more journalists.
  6. An ex-marine kills 12 people at the Borderline Bar and Grill, a country bar in Thousand Oaks, CA. One of the dead is the responding officer. The gunman then kills himself. Some of the victims and people at the bar had also been in the crowds during the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas last year.
  7. Just hours before the shooting, the NRA responds to a paper written by a group of physicians calling for a comprehensive approach to gun violence. The NRA tells doctors to stay in their lane, apparently not realizing that doctors are the ones left cleaning up the mess from gun violence. And doctors are the ones who have to tell people that their loved ones didn’t make it.
  8. Ruth Bader Ginsberg is hospitalized with fractured ribs (giving Democrats a collective panic attack), but she’s back a work within a few days.
  9. The Trump administration backs Sudan in a lawsuit brought by the families of military personnel killed in the bombing of the USS Cole. The lawsuit asserts that the bombers were funded by Sudan.
  10. A lawyer in the case of two men on trial for a bomb plot against Muslims in Kansas is pleading for leniency in the case, saying that Trump’s angry rhetoric spurred the plan. He says Trump’s language before the 2016 election fueled hysteria about Muslims and immigrants.

Week 89 in Trump

Posted on October 8, 2018 in Politics, Trump

One of these voted their conscience; two of them pretended to.

I’m so tired. I’m so tired of the Kavanaugh nomination sucking up all the air in the room and igniting everyone’s emotions. I’ve never seen people on both sides so emotionally vested in getting their way on a Supreme Court Nomination. It’s possibly because there’s more at stake right now, and none of our leaders made any effort to quiet down the vitriol. Voters from both sides ended up feeling unheard. Victims ended up feeling unheard. What was really painful was to have friends share their sex abuse stories with me, which was made all the more painful by friends who dismiss the claims of victims. It’s time to take a step back, regroup, and look at what we really believe in. Can we continue to let boys be boys while slut shaming the women those boys take advantage of? I just don’t think that’s gonna fly anymore.

Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox. Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Here’s a sad statement of the current politics of partisanship. When Jeff Flake was asked if he could’ve requested an FBI investigation and delay in Kavanaugh’s hearing if he was running again, he said “Of course not!”
  2. In case you were wondering if there’s any traction on making Trump’s tax returns or financial statements public, last week 21 Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee voted against releasing any of that information. That’s OK, because this week the New York Times beat them to the punch. More later.

Russia:

  1. Before the 2016 elections, several Republican Trump critics were victims of attempted hacking by Russian operatives. The FBI now says that the scope of that investigation has become greater than just computer intrusion, and they refer the case to Robert Mueller’s team.
  2. The DOJ indicts seven members of the Russian military, charging that they hacked into drug tests for Olympic athletes and leaked the information. This seems to have been in retaliation for all the investigations into Russian doping that resulted in several Russian athletes being unable to compete.
  3. Paul Manafort starts meeting with Mueller’s team as part of his plea agreement.
  4. Randy Credico, who was Roger Stone’s middleman between him and Julian Assange, says he’ll plead the fifth in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
  5. Two money laundering experts from Mueller’s team have left and gone back to their regular practices. Mueller team now has 13 staffers.
  6. Russian trolls and Russian TV have been supporting the Kavanaugh confirmation.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump told Michael Cohen to get a restraining order to prevent Stormy Daniels from talking to the press. Trump told Cohen to coordinate this with his son, Eric, who then asked a Trump Organization lawyer to draw up the papers.
  2. The New York Times publishes a lengthy article detailing the alleged methods, both legal and not so much, that the Trump family used to avoid paying hundreds of millions in taxes. Note: I haven’t read the full article yet, and I know there are some sketchy loopholes that blur the lines between legal and illegal tax avoidance.
  3. Here are some claims in the article:
    • Trump’s father gave him today’s equivalent of $413 million over the decades. Only a big deal because Trump says he’s a self-made billionaire, having only received $1 million in startup money from his father.
    • The Trumps transferred over $1 billion to their children, and paid a tax rate of about 5% on that.
    • Trump started earning $20,000 a year from his father’s company at age 3 in 1950.
    • After college, he received around $200,000 per year. This increased to about $2.5 million a year in his 40s. (Note: The NYT converted the numbers to today’s dollars; I converted them back for a little reality check. So these are approximations.)
    • Fred Trump also lent Donald Trump $60.7 million, most of which was never paid back. Fred bailed Donald out of a few potential bankruptcies, including making an illegal loan under New Jersey gaming laws. Fred provided the collateral for bank loans to Donald when he got into financial trouble.
    • When Fred Trump was ailing, Donald Trump tried to get him to change his will and to make him sole executor of the estate. At this point, it seems Fred no longer trusted Trump not to bankrupt the company and refused the changes.
    • The Trump children created a shell company to siphon money from Fred Trump’s estate into their own estates to avoid taxes. Family companies for managing family estates are not unusual, and they come with their own legal tax loopholes. But this company used questionable tactics like padded invoices to justify expenditures.
    • The family created a grantor-retained annuity trust, or GRAT, to transfer assets. Also completely legal, but in this case they severely undervalued the assets that were transferred in order to avoid taxes.
  1. After publication of the above article, New York Tax Department considers opening an investigation into the allegations. Even if the statute of limitations has expired, civil fines can still be levied for uncollected taxes.
  2. A lawyer for Trump says there was no “fraud or tax evasion” and that any actions taken were on the advice of financial professionals.
  3. Fun fact: If you’re wondering what led to the New York Times’ report, the story opened up when a reporter came across a filing from Maryanne Trump Barry, Trump’s sister. When she was being confirmed by the Senate to her judgeship, she included a document in her filing that showed a $1 million dollar contribution from what turned out to be a shell company.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Tom Cotton says they’re opening an investigation into Dianne Feinstein’s handling of Christine Blasey Ford’s letter and into Blasey Ford’s lawyers. Mitch McConnell echoes the call for investigation.
  2. Harvard cancels the classes taught by Kavanaugh. Then we hear that he withdrew from teaching, so I’m not sure exactly how that all shook out. Students were circulating a petition against him teaching there.
  3. McConnell says they’ll vote this week on Kavanaugh’s confirmation no matter the results of the investigation, and they do.
  4. At the opening of the FBI investigation into accusations against Kavanaugh, Trump tweets that the FBI can interview anybody they want, but at the time of the tweet, the FBI was still under the limits reported last week (with limits on who they can talk to and which allegations they can investigate). It sounds like Trump did want to give FBI free reign, but White House counsel said that would be disastrous.
    • The FBI didn’t interview either Blasey Ford or Kavanaugh.
    • Several accusers and witnesses request that the FBI interview them and try to get information to the FBI, including texts sent before some accusations came out. None of these are included in the investigation.
    • The above referenced text messages show that Kavanaugh was contacting classmates asking them to deny Ramirez’s accusations before those accusations were made public.
  1. Lindsey Graham tells Trump that if Kavanaugh’s nomination fails, he should renominate him.
  2. Two ethics complaints against Kavanaugh come before the DC District Court, which ironically is overseen by blocked Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. The complaints center around perjury (filed prior to his testimony about sexual misconduct) and partisanship (filed after that testimony).
  3. The DC Court has already forwarded more than a dozen complaints against Kavanaugh to Justice Roberts on the Supreme Court. The DC Court had already dismissed some of the complaints as frivolous, forwarding only those thought to have substance.
  4. It turns out the ABA had questions about Kavanaugh in his 2006 confirmation hearings as well. They downgraded his rating from “well qualified” to just “qualified,” which is still positive. Their change was based on evaluations of Kavanaugh’s temperament, where he was called “unprepared” and “sanctimonious,” and where his ability to be balanced and fair was questioned.
  5. Kavanaugh’s testimony this week even turned some of his long-time friends and colleagues (both Republican and Democrat) against his nomination.
  6. Trump mocks Christine Blasey Ford IN A CAMPAIGN RALLY. I don’t know what’s worse, the way he mocked her or the way the crowd cheered and then yelled “Lock her up!” At any rate, Trump lied about what Blasey Ford could and could not remember, and the crowd ate it up.
  7. Both Jeff Flake and Susan Collins denounce Trump for mocking Blasey Ford.
  8. The GOP accuses Democrats of using and dumping Blasey Ford. Meanwhile, Republicans have been following Trump’s lead by discrediting and mocking her.
  9. Sarah Huckabee Sanders defends Trump in a press briefing the next day, saying that he was only stating the facts.
  10. And then Trump mocks Al Franken for folding like a wet rag when accused of grabbing several women’s butts. This is how Trump feels about people who take responsibility.
  11. 2,400 law professors sign a letter outlining why Kavanaugh shouldn’t be confirmed.
  12. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says Kavanaugh shouldn’t be confirmed. Stevens first supported Kavanaugh, but changed his mind after Kavanaugh’s partisan statements during his testimony this week.
  13. The National Council of Churches calls on Kavanaugh to withdraw.
  14. Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) says Trump should’ve nominated someone else, gave an impassioned speech about the #MeToo movement and sexual assault, and then voted to confirm Kavanaugh.
  15. Kavanaugh writes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal apologizing for his behavior in front of the Senate. He claims he was overcome, even though he read a planned opening statement.
  16. Senators are allowed to view the FBI reports in a sealed room, one at a time and then in groups.
  17. Chuck Grassley releases an executive summary of the FBI report (though I don’t know who wrote the summary). The summary says their interviews provided no corroborating evidence, but Republicans start saying that the interviews refuted Blasey Ford’s account. Tip: Not corroborating something is not the same as refuting it.
  18. Eight Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee ask Chuck Grassley to correct the record when he says that there was no sign of any inappropriate sexual behavior or alcohol abuse in any of the six FBI reports on him. Those Democrats say that information is not accurate. But we’ll never know unless the information becomes public.
  19. Republicans say the FBI report was thorough; Democrats say it was incomplete.
  20. Emotions continue to escalate (I didn’t think they could get much higher than the previous week), and both pro- and anti-Kavanaugh protests pop up across the country. Hundreds of anti-Kavanaugh protestors are arrested in DC. My favorite protest is the kegger they throw outside of Mitch McConnell’s office. I like beer.
  21. Susan Collins and Joe Manchin, who are two of the key votes, say they’ll vote to confirm Kavanaugh. Heidi Heitkamp says she’ll vote no, and Jeff Flake, despite all his reservations, votes yes.
  22. The ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary revisits it’s evaluation of Kavanaugh’s rating based on his temperamental testimony this week.
  23. Trump threatens Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski’s re-election chances, saying that she’ll never recover from her “no” vote (which was actually a “present” vote). Trumps adds that he’s very popular in Alaska.
  24. Trump says it’s a scary time for men and boys right now because of all these accusations. I guess it’s a scary time if you have something to hide.
  25. And after all that turmoil, Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court by the narrowest margin for a Supreme Court Justice in over 130 years. The vote was 50-48. If Manchin would’ve voted no, Mike Pence would’ve come in to cast the deciding vote.
  26. There’s already an effort to drum up support to impeach Kavanaugh, so now’s a good time to remind everyone how hard that is. Even if it gets through the House, it would never pass the threshold in the Senate.
  27. And just a reminder, Blasey Ford still has been unable to return to her home due to threats. Remind me again why victims don’t come forward?

Healthcare:

  1. The EPA proposes loosening restrictions on radiation. Their announcement includes assessments from scientific outliers who say a little radiation could be good for human health. Even though very small amounts of radiation are known to cause cancer.

International:

  1. Mike Pompeo announces that the U.S. is ending the Treaty of Amity, a 1955 treaty with Iran, after the UN tries to use the treaty as a basis for ordering the U.S. to ease up on sanctions for humanitarian goods.
  2. John Bolton later says that the U.S. will also pull out of a dispute resolution protocol from the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. He bases this move on a challenge from the Palestinian Authority of our decision to move our Israel embassy to Jerusalem.
  3. Mike Pence gives a speech at the Hudson institute designed to move American public sentiment against China and to support the idea that they’re trying to meddle in our elections using economics because they don’t like Trump and want a different American president.
  4. The U.S. accuses Russia of building a missile system that could launch nuclear weapons to Europe and Alaska. The development of such a system was banned under a Cold War treaty.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. California has now passed over 1,000 new laws this year, including several aimed at recovering some of the regulations Trump has dissolved at the federal level around issues like net neutrality, energy and climate, gun control, and #MeToo.

Family Separation:

  1. An investigation by the Inspector General of the DHS finds that they never had a centralized database to track the immigrant families that they separated earlier this year. Instead, they were using spreadsheets that they compiled manually from emailed Word documents. That sure explains why they were unable to find family members in their computer system.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Trump administration begins denying visas to same-sex partners of foreign diplomats, saying they must be married in order to receive a visa. Some of these diplomats come from countries where gay marriage is illegal, so they’re unable to get married.
  2. Federal prosecutors charge and arrest four members of the California-based Rise Above Movement for their intent to incite a riot and commit violence at the white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville last year. This group is small but violent, calling themselves an alt-right fight club.
  3. Federal inspectors at the Adelanto detention center in San Bernardino County, CA, find dismal conditions. They find 15 nooses made out of bed sheets hanging in cells, and they find health and dental care severely lacking. Adelanto is part of the GEO Group, a private, for-profit prison company.
  4. I’ve talked before about steps taken by the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from Sudan, Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nigeria. This week, a federal judge grants a preliminary injunction that blocks any deportations for now. TPS protections will continue while a legal case is decided, giving temporary relief to over 300,000 people who were threatened with deportation.
  5. Even though Congress placed a hold on the funds, the Trump administration moved forward with plans to give Mexico $20 million to deport immigrants so they can’t make it to our borders. Despite the hold, Trump transferred the funds anyway. Mexico says they never approved of this plan.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A federal court holds that the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is in compliance with the law. Obama created the massive monument off of the New England coast in the Atlantic Ocean.
  2. Denmark says they’ll ban the sale of new fossil-fueled cars by 2030.
  3. California allocates $800 million to be able to store energy generated by solar panels to have more electricity available from solar in the nighttime hours.
  4. The EPA rewrites its rules about what scientific studies can be used in making public health policy against the wishes of its scientific advisors. Proprietary information can no longer be used, which will exclude findings from patients participating in private-sector studies.
  5. William Nordhaus and Paul Romer win the Nobel Prize for Economics. Nordhaus has been working in climate change’s effects on economy since the 1970s, and his model is widely used to show the relationship between the climate and the economy.
  6. A UN report on climate change expects an increase in global temperatures of 2.7 degrees F much sooner than previously thought. This would intensify sea level rise, droughts, wildfires, and poverty. They call for a 45% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and for halting them by 2050. Trump has said he’ll increase greenhouse gas emissions, though we’re already halfway to that 2.7 degree rise.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Amazon announces that they’ll start paying all of their employees at least $15 per hour.
  2. It turns out that most of the changes to NAFTA were already included in TPP. Trump and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly denounced those trade deals as two of the worst deals ever, but they’re calling the USMCA, basically a mashup of the NAFTA and TPP, one of the best deals ever. The dairy concessions from Canada are probably the biggest difference.
    • That means we could’ve pretty much gotten the same deal without alienating many of our trading partners and without giving China the extra trading power they obtained from the hole we left behind by cancelling the TPP.
  1. Unemployment hits record lows at 3.7%.
  2. The U.S. trade deficit expanded to 6.4% in August. Despite all the tariffs, the deficit was $53.2 billion, the highest level in six months.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Wikipedia says its authors shouldn’t use Breitbart and InfoWars as news sources on its pages. They call Breitbart unreliable, and say InfoWars is a “conspiracy theorist and fake news website.”
  2. In a press conference, Trump tells a female reporter “I know you’re not thinking. You never do,” while a group of men behind him chuckle and smirk.
  3. In the official White House transcript of the event, they change the word “thinking” to “thanking.” Mm-hmm…
  4. The Pentagon screening facility finds two envelopes suspected of contain ricin, and the Secret Service says that another suspicious envelope was addressed to Trump. A man was arrested in Utah in relation to the envelopes.
  5. The death toll in Indonesia from the earthquake and resulting tsunami reaches 2,000. Thousands are still missing.
  6. Trump falls back on that old tired narrative, claiming that Kavanaugh protestors are being paid by Soros. To which I say “Where’s my damn check, George ?”

Polls:

  1. Worldwide, 7 in 10 people have no confidence in Trump. Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Xi Jinping, and even Vladimir Putin all received higher confidence ratings.
  2. 37% of Americans have confidence in the Supreme Court, down from 60% in the 80s.
  3. This Quinnipiac poll on support for Kavanaugh’s confirmation is hard to distill, so here’s a link to the results, broken down by demographics. It’s pretty interesting.
  4. 41% of Americans oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination, with 33% supporting it.
  5. 45% of Americans believe Blasey Ford; 33% believe Kavanaugh.
  6. 56% of Republicans would still consider voting for a candidate accused of sexual harassment; 81% of Democrats say they’d definitely not.

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 83 in Trump

Posted on August 27, 2018 in Politics, Trump

Duncan Hunter, Michael Cohen, and Paul Manafort

This is a big week for legal trouble for Trump‘s associates. Paul Manafort: convicted on eight counts. Michael Cohen: guilty plea on eight counts. Duncan Hunter: indicted on I-lost-count-of-how-many counts. Hunter was the second member of Congress to endorse Trump in 2016; Chris Collins, the first member of Congress to endorse Trump, suspended his campaign for Congress when he, too, was indicted. And even though legal minds think he inadvertently incriminated himself by admitting to campaign finance violations, Trump isn’t likely to be indicted and I don’t think he’ll be impeached. At least not in the Senate. Not unless it turns out he’s done something extremely egregious.

And so it goes on. Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. Trump signed legislation updating rules for how the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) vets investments from foreigners in U.S. assets. CFIUS specifically addresses national security issues around foreign investment, and this legislation gives them more specific control, especially in investments that involve critical technology, infrastructure, and personal data management.

Russia:

  1. Russian hackers start to target conservative think tanks that have broken ranks with Trump. Microsoft announces that it discovered Russian hackers use imitation websites to attack groups that continue to push for sanctions against Russia or that push for examining human rights violations.
  2. A jury convicts Paul Manafort on eight out of 18 counts, with one lone juror holding out on the remaining 10 counts. Those 10 counts result in a mistrial, so prosecution can bring them up again at a later date.
  3. Manafort is convicted on counts of bank fraud, tax fraud, and concealing a foreign bank account. The maximum sentence for all this is around 80 years.

  4. Manafort is the first person in the Mueller investigation to be tried, and he faces a second trial next month on a second set of charges. The second set of charges center more around his work with Ukraine instead of around his shady financial activity.
  5. The reason there are two trials is that Manafort had the right to stand trial in the state where he lives for some of the charges. Mueller gave him the option of being tried just in Washington, or being tried in Virginia for some and in Washington for the rest.
  6. For the record: Manafort’s charges aren’t related to the Trump campaign, but to his work with Ukrainian leaders. Also, Manafort really was Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman for about half of his campaign, despite claims that he was barely involved.
  7. A juror in the Manafort trial (who identifies as a Trump supporter) says there was one lone juror holding out on convicting Manafort on all counts. The juror also said that she, herself, didn’t want Manafort to be guilty and that she thought prosecutor’s final aim was to get dirt on Trump.
  8. The juror says the evidence against Manafort was overwhelming, but that she and her fellow jurors had to lay out the evidence trail over and over again for the lone holdout.
  9. Rudy Giuliani tells reporters that Trump has asked him about pardoning Manafort.
  10. A judge throws out a defamation suit brought by three Russian oligarchs against Christopher Steele (yes, of the infamous Steele dossier).
  11. Mueller requests another delay in Michael Flynn’s sentencing, indicating that they are still in talks.
  12. Many of our CIA informants close to the Kremlin have gone silent since the expulsion of American diplomats from Russia, the outing of an FBI informant, and the poisoning of Russian dissidents.
  13. Reality Winner, who leaked a top-secret report on Russian hacking efforts to The Intercept, is sentenced to 63 months in prison.

Legal Fallout:

It’s getting a little hard to discern what’s related to Russia, what’s related to Trump’s campaign, and what’s just politicians being corrupt. So I created a new category for related legal mischief.

  1. While I was making a note that Michael Cohen is in talks for a plea deal, but that it could fall apart, Cohen did indeed plead guilty on eight counts. The counts include:
    • Tax fraud
    • Bank fraud
    • Campaign contribution violations
  1. Cohen says he took out a home equity loan, which he obtained fraudulently, to cover the payment. He then invoiced the Trump Organization for reimbursement.
  2. Interestingly, his plea agreement doesn’t say he has to cooperate with federal prosecutors, but he could still cooperate with Mueller.
  3. Cohen told the court that an unnamed candidate who is now president told him to pay $130,000 in hush money right before the election to keep Trump’s affairs out of the media. They both knew this wasn’t legal, as evidenced by the shell companies they set up to take care of the payment.
  4. Also, as we’ve heard, Cohen has tapes to back up his statements.
  5. After Cohen pleads guilty, Trump tweets that Obama’s campaign did the same thing. Only it wasn’t the same thing, and Trump’s campaign even had the same issues as Obama’s, just with the added fraud on top.
  6. Cohen deletes this tweet from 2015: “@HillaryClinton when you go to prison for defrauding America and perjury, your room and board will be free!” Ironic, right?
  7. Trump, who has denied paying any hush money, now says that he did it but it wasn’t wrong.
  8. The publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, gets immunity in exchange for his testimony about the hush money payments, among other things (including keeping negative stories about Trump out of the news).
  9. Pecker and Cohen worked together to pay off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal so they would keep quiet about their affairs with Trump. Pecker corroborates Cohen’s account.
  10. It’s reported that the National Enquirer had a safe where they kept information about both the hush money and the stories it killed in the run up to the election that were damaging to Trump. They don’t know if those documents were destroyed or just moved. People who work for the company say they kept information like this on many celebrities to use it as leverage over them.
  11. The CFO of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, gets immunity in exchange for his testimony about $420,000 in payments to Michael Cohen for him taking care of Stormy Daniels. Weisselberg has worked at the organization for decades.
  12. Representative Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and his wife are indicted on $250,000 in campaign finance violations. They used those campaign donations for personal use. Some of the things they spent the money on?
    • Dental work
    • Private schools
    • Theater tickets
    • Trips to Hawaii and Italy
    • An airplane seat for a pet rabbit
  1. But the most damning thing is the documentation of how they worked to conceal their expenditures.
  2. New financial filings show that Eric Trump lied about how certain funds were spent by the Eric Trump Foundation. Specifically, he lied about payments to Trump Organization businesses for fundraising events.
  3. The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance subpoenas Michael Cohen as part of their investigation into the Trump Foundation. Note that this is separate from the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against the foundation, though if the tax department finds anything, they would refer it to the AG.
  4. After all the convicting, pleading, indicting, and flipping by his associates, Trump does a one-on-one interview with Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt. Which showed us all why it’s really not in his best interest to sit down with Mueller.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Amid all that came out this week around Russia and fraud investigations. Trump criticizes Jeff Session for never taking charge of the DOJ. Sessions, for once, fights back saying he did. Sessions also says he would never let the DOJ be improperly influenced by politics.
  2. And just like that, the Twitter wars are on. Between a sitting president and his Attorney General. For real. Trump challenges Sessions to look into the “corruption on the other side” like the emails, and “Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr…” and “FISA abuse, Christopher Steele & his phony and corrupt Dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump Campaign, Russian collusion by Dems.”
  3. This leads Republican leadership in the Senate to signal their OK for Trump to fire Sessions, saying they could confirm a new attorney general after the midterms. A new AG opens the door to firing Mueller and ending the Russia investigation. Though I’m not sure it would since several state laws seem to have been broken as well.
  4. A federal judge orders experts to review a private prison in Mississippi where inmates are claiming that their constitutional rights are being violated. There’s also a nationwide prison strike and rallies across the country to bring attention to justice system reform.
  5. In a 1998 memo that Kavanaugh wrote during the Clinton investigation, we learn than Kavanaugh wanted to question Clinton on the seedy details of his sexual activities with Monica Lewinsky.
  6. A federal judge turns down Trump’s request to dismiss a lawsuit filed against him by people who were attacked by Trump’s guards during a protest. The point of the lawsuit is to determine the extent to which Trump authorized or condoned the attacks.
  7. Demonstrators hold marches and rallies across the country to protest the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Healthcare:

  1. Last week I mentioned a measles outbreak in the U.S. Across Europe, there have been more than 41,000 people infected, 37 of whom have died. That’s up from around 24,000 the year before and 5,237 the year before that. Health experts say it’s because fewer people are vaccinating their kids.
  2. Nebraska is working to put Medicaid expansion on the November ballot.
  3. Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court rules that the governor must expand Medicaid, which the state’s residents voted for in 2017. Governor LePage has sworn he’ll never do it.
  4. Ohio releases a report of their first five years of having expanded Medicaid with no work requirement. Here are some findings:
    • The uninsured fell by more than half (from 32.4% to 12.8%).
    • Before the ACA 1 in 3 people at or near poverty were uninsured; after the ACA that dropped to 1 in 8.
    • Around 60% of people covered by the expansion transfer out, usually getting a job or a better paying job. Some were able to get coverage outside of Medicaid.
    • People said having Medicaid made it easier for them to either look for work or to keep working.
    • People with continuous Medicaid coverage had less medical debt (no brainer there).

International:

  1. ICE deports Jakiw Palij, who we’ve been trying to deport for decades but no country would take him. He was a Nazi SS camp guard in Poland during WWII. He’s now 95.
  2. Trump tweets about the non-existent seizing of land from and large-scale killing of white farmers in South Africa, prompting a bunch of confused responses from South African citizens who don’t know WTF he’s talking about.
  3. South African officials say Trump is just trying to sow division in South Africa. There has been ongoing redistribution of land, because blacks weren’t allowed to own land under apartheid. Even though apartheid fell in the early 90s, black South Africans still only own 1% of the land. They make up more than 75% of the population.
  4. Australia moves on to its fifth leader in five years. Malcom Turnball steps down despite winning a vote of confidence. Elections are coming up soon, though, so there will probably be a sixth leader soon.
  5. Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee request the translator notes from Trump’s meeting with Putin in Helsinki.
  6. Trump cancels Mike Pompeo’s trip to North Korea, saying they aren’t making any progress and blaming China for it.
  7. We learn that Trump told Italy’s prime minister that we’d help fund Italy’s debt by buying up Italian government bonds.

Family Separation:

  1. Nearly 700 children who were separated from their parents at the border have still not been reunited with their families. 40 of them are less than five years old.The ACLU continues to work for their reunification, since the government is failing at it.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Los Angeles sues the administration again to stop them from forcing immigration conditions on the city as a condition for receiving $1 million for fighting gang activity.
  2. A White House speech writer was fired when it was revealed that he joined white nationalist Peter Brimelow in a 2016 panel. The day after that firing, Peter Brimelow attended a birthday party for Trump’s economic advisor, Larry Kudlow at Kudlow’s house.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A U.S. district court in South Carolina reinstates WOTUS, Obama’s Waters of the United States expansion of the Clean Water Act, which defines environmental protection regulations for our waterways. Two courts have already blocked WOTUS in 24 states, leaving 26 states where it now must be implemented.
  2. The Trump administration announces its Affordable Clean Energy rule, which is intended to replace Obama’s Clean Power Plan. This is despite the administration’s own findings that the new plan would result in 1,400 premature deaths each year.
  3. Let the water wars begin. Chinatown anyone? The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation notifies officials in California that they want to renegotiate the statewide water agreements, specifically the ones governing how water moves through the Delta to Southern California. The federal bureau wants to save more water for farmers, meaning there would be less water for state projects. Maybe that’s why Nunes is buddying up to Trump.
  4. The Trump administration is reversing course on their plans to sell off federal land that fell within the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument before Trump reduced the size of the monument. They’ve scrapped the plans to sell 1,600 acres of that land for now.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Additional tariffs on $16 billion in Chinese goods kick in, and China responds by instituting their own tariffs of 25% on the same amount of American goods. So far, both sides have implemented tariffs on $50 billion worth of goods.
  2. A federal judges strikes down several parts of three of Trump’s executive orders that were designed to curtail the power of unions for government workers.
  3. Mick Mulvaney is trying to get protection from Trump’s tariffs for Element Electronics, which I mentioned a few weeks ago. It’s a South Carolina company that plans to close its doors due to tariffs. Mulvaney used to be a congressman in SC.

Elections:

  1. Trump plans on having 40 days of campaign-related travel between now and the midterms, which are around 70 days away. So it looks like he’ll be spending most of the next 2 1/2 months focused on winning elections and not so much on presidenting. He’s starting with Senate races.
  2. The Senate has bipartisan agreement on a bill to help protect our upcoming elections from cyber threats, but Trump says he won’t sign it so they tabled the bill. The bill would’ve given state election officials security clearance so that states and the DHS could all share information with each other. The bill also would’ve created a standard auditing system.
  3. Last week I reported on a proposal to shut down 7 out of 9 polling places in a largely black district in Georgia. It took the elections board less than a minute to vote that proposal down at their last meeting. The guy who proposed the closure had been recommended to the board by current Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is running for governor against a black female candidate.
  4. After McCain’s family announces that he was ending his treatment, Arizona Senatorial candidate Kelli Ward accuses them of using the timing to derail her campaign. Please do not vote for this loon in the upcoming elections.
  5. Now Texas thinks they should close 87 driver’s license offices, largely in rural and poor areas. Why is this in the Elections category? Because Texas has voter ID laws, and closing these offices could prevent some people from getting the IDs they need to vote in time for the midterms.
  6. The DNC alerts the FBI of a hacking attempt, but it turns out to be an unauthorized test from a third party.
  7. The DNC votes to limit the powers of the superdelegates in presidential primaries.

Miscellaneous:

  1. After reports came out that H.R. McMaster had talked Trump out of restricting Obama’s access to intelligence briefings, Trump denies that he had even considered it.
  2. Trump holds another election rally, this one in West Virginia. I’m not sure if it’s worth it to debunk his rally lies, because he just keeps repeating them rally after rally.
  3. Ahead of Hurricane Lane in Hawaii, Trump declares a state of emergency so FEMA can prepare and plan.
  4. The family of Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) announces he’ll end his treatment for cancer, and then within a day of that announcement he passes away after a long fight against glioblastoma.
  5. Trump declines to release the White House statement honoring John McCain and instead issues a short tweet. He flies the flags at half mast over the weekend.
  6. McCain‘s body will lie in state at both the U.S. and Arizona Sate Capitols, and he’ll be buried at the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis.
  7. George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Senator Jeff Flake will deliver eulogies. AFAIK, Trump won’t attend. There are several reports that McCain’s family asked that Trump not attend.
  8. Senator Chuck Schumer proposes that the Russell Senate building be renamed in honor of McCain.
  9. After losing at a Madden gaming tournament in Jacksonville, FL, a gamer opens fire on his fellow gamers and then shoots himself. Two people are dead and 11 are injured.

Polls:

  1. Now 59% of registered voters approve of Mueller’s investigation; an increase of 11 percentage points from last month.