Tag: Tillerson

Week 27 in Trump

Posted on July 31, 2017 in Politics, Trump

People are calling this week one of the worst for any president’s inaugural year in modern history… with some obvious exceptions, I’m guessing. The Boy Scouts had to apologize for Trump, New York police departments had to disclaim his remarks, the Pentagon got caught off-guard by his tweeted transgender ban, Congress failed to repeal the ACA (but they did manage to restrict Trump on Russia sanctions), the new comms director gave an immensely foul interview, Trump undermined his attorney general, he changed his chief of staff, and North Korea can reach us with a missile.

Here’s what happened this week:

Russia:

  1. Jared Kushner releases a written statement before testifying for Congress behind closed doors.
  2. Kushner discloses yet another previously undisclosed meeting with Russian officials that happened last April at the Mayflower Hotel. Actually, he confirms that the meeting he was already suspected of having actually did happen.
  3. Kushner also says he met with a Russian banker, Sergei Gorkov, to set up a private line of communication with Putin.
  4. Brian Benczkowsi, the nominee to head the criminal division at the Justice Department, says he worked for Russia’s Alfa Bank last year. He helped them determine whether its computers contacted the Trump Organization.
  5. The House finds agreement on the sanctions bill and forwards it to the Senate where it also passes.
  6. Trump announces he’ll sign the sanctions bill after congress threatens an override.
  7. In retaliation for the new Russian sanctions, Putin shuts down U.S. facilities in Russia and kicks out 755 U.S. foreign agents.
  8. The EU says they support sanctions but also voice concerns over how this will affect their workers in the energy sector.
  9. This part of the story is convoluted and I’m a bit confused about where things stand. I think we’ll have to wait for answers on this one. I am honestly not trying to ″Rachel Maddow″ the dots together here.
    • William Browder, an associate of Sergei Magnitsky, testifies to Congress.
    • He claims that Fusion GPS, the group that commissioned the Steel dossier, worked for Russian interests last year, including the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. (Veselnitskaya).
    • Browder also says Congress should investigate Fusion GPS for not registering as foreign agents under FARA and that they were hired to smear him and Magnitksy.
    • Fusion GPS says that they did work for an American law firm and not Russian interests, and therefore didn’t need to register.
    • Sarah Huckabee Sanders asserts that the author of the Steele dossier was also being paid by Russia. I think that’s what she took away from Browder’s testimony.
    • Magnitsky had uncovered $230 million in tax fraud by Russian interests. His treatment and subsequent death in a Russian prison led to the Magnitsky Act (sanctions) and subsequent hold on adoptions of Russian children.
    • The meeting with Donald Jr. and Veselnitskaya last year was likely about the Magnitsky act, though she baited him with dirt on Clinton.
    • A few years ago, the U.S. began a lawsuit against Russian-owned Prevezon Holdings, which was using real estate holdings in New York to launder money (related to the fraud Magnitsky found).
    • Jared Kushner bought New York real estate from Africa Israel Investments (AFI), which is a partner to Prevezon Holdings.
    • The Prevezon case was abruptly settled in May for $6 million and no admission of guilt. Full circle, right?
  10. Senator Lindsey Graham says he’s writing a bill that will protect the investigation and make it harder for Trump to fire special counsel Mueller.
  11. It seems that Russia’s meddling in our election has so far backfired. Relations between our countries have sunk even lower, and Trump’s hands are tied with the latest sanctions bill.
  12. Scaramucci, citing an anonymous source, says that if the Russians actually did hack our computer systems we’d never know it because they’re that good. They wouldn’t leave a trace. He later outs his own source—Trump.
  13. Security software company Kaspersky Labs continues to take a hit over rumors that it leaves a backdoor open for Russian hacking.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Trump continues to berate AG Jeff sessions, saying he’s going too easy on Hillary and that she never got the level of scrutiny that Trump is. Really? Where was he in 2015 and 2016? Or for the past 30 years for that matter? This widens speculation that Trump will fire Sessions.
  2. In one of his many tweet storms this week, Trump tweets unsubstantiated info about Hillary and wonders why Sessions didn’t investigate her harder… before he was even AG.
  3. Trump reportedly asks whether he should replace Sessions with a major conservative. If Sessions isn’t a major conservative, I don’t know who is.
  4. As Trump continues his public denigration of Sessions, some speculate he’s trying to make Sessions quit so he doesn’t have to fire him. Sessions has no intention of quitting.
  5. The two men are reportedly no longer talking to each other. Instead they send messages through intermediaries.
  6. Senators are quick to come to Sessions’ defense and to warn Trump away from firing him.

Healthcare:

  1. Texas Representative Blake Farenthold calls out and insults Susan Collins, Shelley Moore Capito, and Lisa Murkowski for their continued opposition to what they call bad bills. Blake says their actions are repugnant. Collins is later caught on a hot mike criticizing Blake’s appearance and wondering if Trump is crazy, also saying she’s worried. Collins and Blake end up making nice.
  2. Pence comes in to break a tie in the Senate to bring the healthcare bill to the floor for debate. Collins and Murkowski continue to vote country over party.
  3. At Trump’s request, Ryan Zinke, department head of the interior, calls Murkowski to say that her vote would affect programs in her state of Alaska. Murkowski then cancels hearings on nominee confirmations, including three to the Department of the Interior.
  4. After a dramatic week, the Senate fails to pass any healthcare bills. They voted on multiple versions: the Ted Cruz amendment, full repeal with no replacement, Medicare for all, and skinny repeal (the final nail in the coffin).
  5. Throughout the week, Trump continues pressure on and threats against Republican Senators who aren’t supporting these bills or this process, but based on his words, he doesn’t seem to have a grasp of what is in any of those bills.
  6. At one point, Democrats threaten to stall the bill and stop proposing amendments until they can see the actual text of the bill they are supposed to be debating.
  7. By the night before the final vote, Republicans still have not released the text of what they’re supposed to vote on after debate.
  8. While Senate Republicans want to pass SOME bill, they don’t want the bill they pass to become law.
  9. Some Senators say they won’t vote for their own bill unless House Republicans assure them that they will not pass it as is. There are rumors, though, that the House is ready to pass whatever the Senate sends them.
  10. Skinny repeal would likely have sent existing markets into turmoil, raised rates, and kicked people off insurance. This bill would’ve essentially defunded the ACA but kept some of the popular requirements.
  11. The bill fails because Republican holdouts Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski continue to oppose on the grounds that their constituents will be hurt by it, and because John McCain has nothing left to lose so he did the right thing and opposed it.
  12. Trump threatens to let the ACA implode, even to force its failure. He could stop the payments to insurance companies that keep prices down. For a select group, prices aren’t low now, so they will be priced out of the market completely.
  13. The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in the House has quietly been working on a plan to fix the ACA. More to come on this next week.
  14. Because Republicans have campaigned on repealing the ACA and maligned the bill for so long, they will likely keep working on ways to repeal it. This could suck up valuable time when they could be getting stuff done instead.

International:

  1. Hundreds of thousands of protestors in Poland turn out to demonstrate against the politicization of the judicial branch. In a surprise move, the Polish president vetoes the bill.
  2. Venezuela also continues its move toward authoritarianism, holding a vote that sparked violent protests across the county. The vote creates a new panel to rewrite their constitution.
  3. Trump tweets that the Washington Post got it wrong when they reported that the U.S. was ending a program to arm Syrian rebels, but then later confirmed the story.
  4. Trump announces he’ll nominate Sam Brownback (governor of Kansas) to serve as ambassador at large for international religious freedom. Brownback has recently faced blowback from his own Republican legislature because he went too far on tax cuts.
  5. While the administration works on ways to more strictly enforce the Iran deal, they’re also working to fix perceived flaws in the plan. If they don’t get the fixes in, Trump wants to pull out of the deal (even though top military officials say this is the best deal they can get).
  6. Tillerson wants to eliminate dozens of special envoy positions that deal with specific issues, like food shortages, civil rights, and labor rights. The more we can stabilize regions that need this help, the more secure we are as a country.
  7. North Korea executes another missile launch that puts the U.S. definitely within range of a strike. Trump again tweets his displeasure at China’s lack of help here.
  8. The U.S. flies two B-1 bombers over the Korean Peninsula and conducts a successful test of the missile defense system.
  9. After previously announcing a ramp up in troops in Afghanistan, Trump and his generals can’t agree on a plan. He’s now considering plans to scale back our troops there. But he’s also looking into making mining deals with the Afghan government, which would give him a reason to keep troops there.
  10. The extremist group Al-Shabab releases a video saying that U.S. voters elected “arguably the most stupid president a country could ever have” and that Trump is “making the United States the greatest joke on earth and is now propelling it further to its eventual defeat and destruction.”

Legislation/Congress:

  1. House Republicans send down two bills for a vote under suspension of rules. This expedites the process, limits debate to under an hour, allows no amendments, and requires 2/3 majority. In protest of the process, House Democrats and a few Republicans stop the passage of these completely non-controversial bills.
  2. Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee block Democrat requests to obtain Treasury Department documents on Trump.
  3. Using Congressional Review, the House rescinds a rule that would make it easier for Americans to bring lawsuits against financial institutions. It goes to the Senate for a vote.
  4. Upon his return from surgery followed by a cancer diagnosis, John McCain delivers a stern warning to Congress, saying they are getting nothing done. Complaining about bipartisanship, he says “There’s greater satisfaction in respecting our differences but not letting them prevent agreements.” It’s a pretty good speech; you can listen to it here.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. ICE agents have mixed feelings about deportations under Trump. Some feel they are freer to do their jobs and some feel they’re targeting vulnerable populations.
  2. Through a series of tweets, Trump announces he’ll ban transgender people from serving in the military in any capacity, reversing Obama’s direction. He cites disruption and higher medical costs.
  3. The Pentagon is taken by surprise and directs all queries on this to the White House, suggesting that even though Trump says he consulted his Generals, he probably didn’t.
  4. The Joint Chiefs of Staff say they were blindsided by this announcement. As of Thursday they hadn’t received any guidance on how to implement the ban.
  5. We currently have thousands transgender troops serving. Studies find the costs to be minimal with little to no disruption.
  6. It turns out Trump was just talking out of his ass (again). Joe Dunford, on behalf of the joint chiefs, says that there are no planned changes to the military’s policy on transgender troops despite Trump’s tweets.
  7. On the same day Trump tweets the ban, the Department of Justice files a legal brief saying that the Civil Rights Act doesn’t cover discrimination based on sexual orientation. It isn’t typical for the DoJ to weigh in on court cases like this.
  8. The House approves a spending bill that includes initial spending for the wall.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The Department of the Interior proposes to rescind safety rules on fracking and underwater drilling equipment. They’ve already rolled back a rule banning coal mining on pubic lands, as well as delayed methane emission controls.
  2. Changes are coming to the EPA museum. It’s being changed to reflect the administration’s disbelief in global warming. Displays that are already set up will be removed, and the EPA is thinking of adding a coal display.
  3. In one 3-month period, Scott Pruitt spend nearly half his time in Oklahoma or traveling to and from there. It makes me wonder where he finds the time to destroy the agency he runs.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Frustrated that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) won’t score their plans positively, Republicans plan to cut 89 jobs and $15 million in funding from the CBO. Piggybacking on their disbelief in science, they want the CBO to be a number aggregator rather than an independent number cruncher. Of note, the CBO has one of the most accurate track records of all similar estimators.
  2. Foxconn Technology Group announces that it’s in talks to build a $10 billion plant in Wisconsin. It could employ 3,000 to 13,000 people, and would receive up to $3 billion in subsidies.
  3. The Treasury Department shuts down an Obama program to help people whose companies don’t offer 401Ks to save for retirement anyway. The program was called MyRA.
  4. As mentioned above, the House passes a spending bill that includes $1.6 billion to start the border wall. It also gives a huge increase ($68.1 billion more) to the Pentagon. This might come up against spending limits set by earlier budget laws.
  5. Republicans in the House, Treasury, and administration are eager to dig in on tax reform, but are still light on details.

Elections:

  1. A federal judge rules that the Elections Integrity Commission is free to request voter roll data from states, including names, addresses, partial SSNs, party registration, felony convictions, and voting record (whether you voted, not who you voted for because that actually is secret). The judge did not rule on whether the commission can compel states to turn the info over.

Miscellaneous:

  1. In an apparent attempt to get science on board, Ivanka misattributes a tweet to Einstein: “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts. – Albert Einstein ‪#quote ‪#sunday‪“‬
  2. Trump again shows disrespect for Obama and Clinton both, by getting attendees at the Boy Scouts Jamboree to boo them during his speech. Boy Scouts. Way to cultivate their good souls.
  3. I’m not going to regurgitate Trump’s speech to the Boy Scouts because it’s hard to listen to. While there were some good bits mixed in with the bad, the speech is so partisan—and offensive—that the BSA feels obligated to put out a statement defending their honor.
  4. On complaints that their statement isn’t strong enough, the BSA issues an apology to the families of Boy Scouts for Trump inserting politics into the event.
  5. And then… Police departments in and around New York City have to issue a statement denouncing Trump’s remarks to them about new tactics to fight the MS13 gang. Trump advocated for officers to rough up suspects.
  6. And then… Trump holds another political rally in Ohio where he again puts out false and misleading information (see factcheck.org’s check).
  7. By now this is old news because Scaramucci is no longer with us. But here’s what led up to that.
    • Scaramucci promises to hunt down and fire leakers. Michael Short is the first to leave after Scaramucci says he’ll fire him.
    • Scaramucci accuses Reince Priebus of leaking financial information on him, but it turns out the information is publicly available. Still, he says the leak is a felony.
    • Scaramucci creates a diagram on news organizations to which they think Priebus leaked information.
    • Scaramucci gives a completely cray-cray interview to the New Yorker. As comms director, he apparently doesn’t know he needs to say ″off the record″ if he doesn’t want the information released. It is unbelievably profane.
    • New Chief of Staff Kelly says get this guy outta here, and now Scaramucci is gone. Quick as that.
  8. Democrats release their new agenda, A Better Deal, which includes an infrastructure plan and a plan to help workers by increasing wages and providing paid family and sick leave.
  9. House Republicans call for a special counsel to investigate James Comey, Hillary Clinton, and Loretta Lynch.
  10. Reince Priebus “resigns” as White House Chief of Staff. Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly takes his place. We learn this via Twitter. This leaves Trump with no real close relationships with high-profile members of the GOP. It also leaves him with an opening at DHS.
  11. Betsy DeVos sits on thousands of applications for debt relief from students defrauded by for-profit universities. She’s delayed Obama’s debt relief program, while thousands of people owe money for promises that were never delivered.
  12. Kellyanne Conway says Trump really does believe that Obama wiretapped him and that there were millions of undocumented immigrants who voted for Hillary (giving her the popular vote though he doesn’t think she won the popular vote).
  13. Six hours after pre-orders are announced for Hillary Clinton’s new book, it hit number 1 on Amazon.
  14. Interesting note: Behind the scenes, Marco Rubio maintains a database of political prisoners and human rights victims, He advocates for them generally through the state department and sometimes directly through world leaders.
  15. An aide to Debbie Wasserman Schultz is arrested for bank fraud. This is part of a bigger investigation, so I’m sure there’s more to come.
  16. Tillerson takes a little time off.
  17. Rick Perry is duped into taking a phone interview with some Russian comedians.
  18. Career civil servants in the Department of Energy say they aren’t getting any direction or policy information, and no one is sharing information with them. Nothing is getting done.

Polls:

  1. 49% of those who voted for Trump still believe he won the popular vote. Only 40% believe Clinton did.
  2. 58% of Americans think transgender troops should be able to serve in the military.
  3. Trump averages higher than 50% approval ratings in these states: West Virginia (60% approval), North Dakota (59%), South Dakota (57%), Montana (56%), Wyoming (56%), Alabama (55%), Oklahoma (54%), Kansas (53%), Kentucky (53%), Arkansas (53%), and Idaho (53%).
  4. Americans are divided over whether Trump should be removed from office 42% to 42%.

Political Quotes:

  1. Jeff Flake, Republican Senator from Arizona, talking about the baseball field shooting that left Scalise in the hospital:
    “The deterioration of political discourse in general aids this. When we ascribe motives to our opponents, that they are evil, then we’ve almost given license to extreme behavior.”

Week 26 in Trump

Posted on July 24, 2017 in Politics, Trump

Since we’re at the half-year mark, here’s a status update courtesy of Politico (plus a few extra):

  • Healthcare: Stalled for now, likely dead.
  • Infrastructure: This has moved to low place on the totem pole, with no signs of movement.
  • Tax Reform: Uncertain. Congress can’t do much with this until they pass a 2018 budget, which conservatives are already talking about killing.
  • Government Spending/Debt Ceiling: Behind. This needs to get done by the end of September.
  • The Wall: Stalled with the spending bill and budget, though companies are beginning soil tests to figure out the required structure of the wall.
  • Immigration: The ban is in place, sort of. It’s unclear where they are on analyzing and updating the vetting process.
  • ISIS: A strategy just came out that is very similar to Obama’s.
  • Supreme Court: A conservative judge, Gorsuch, is firmly in place.
  • Climate: This is probably where the most progress has been, though states and cities are able to mitigate. Trump announced our withdrawal from the Paris accord, and Congress has rescinded a gazillion environmental protections. Zinke is looking at which national monument designations he can remove or shrink. Also, the cabinet is full of global warming deniers. So things aren’t looking so great for the environment.

Russia:

  1. Revelations from the Russia/Trump Jr. meeting reveal that one of Russia’s goals in all this was to get the Magnitsky act repealed (in other words, sanctions).
  2. Robert Mueller asks the White House to keep all documents around the above meeting.
  3. Both Manafort and Trump Jr. make a deal with congressional committees to avoid a public hearing and instead to testify privately.
  4. Two weeks before Kushner released the emails about the meeting, the Trump reelection campaign paid $50,000 to Kushner’s attorney.
  5. It turns out Trump had a second meeting with Putin after their official 2 1/4 hour official meeting; this one was informal and lasted around an hour. The meeting was at a dinner at the G20, and the only other person speaking with them was Putin’s interpreter (though the other leaders and diplomats were around).
  6. Trump says he and Putin talked about adoptions, which we now know is code word for sanctions.
  7. Trump says he wouldn’t have nominated Jeff Sessions if he would’ve known he was going to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
  8. Trump warns Mueller against expanding the scope of his investigation to include financial and business transactions. The next day, we learn that Mueller is investigating business and real estate transactions between Russia and Trump businesses and associates.
  9. Trump’s team of lawyers look into ways to undermine Mueller and his investigation, as surrogates make the talk show rounds to throw doubt on both.
  10. Trump wonders if he can pardon his family and even himself. His lawyers are looking into it. There’s no real precedent, though documents from Nixon’s hearings could provide some guidance.
  11. He later asserts that he can pardon himself, saying he has the complete power to pardon his family, aides, and himself.
  12. The Senate Intelligence Committee thinks the Trump campaign digital team might have assisted Russians by boosting and helping to target fake stories. They’re investigating, but not likely to get help from companies like Facebook.
  13. Manafort’s troubles keep growing. Mueller is investigating him for possible money laundering involving contacts in Russia and the Ukraine, and before joining the Trump campaign he was millions in debt to pro-Russia interests.
  14. Trump’s personal lawyer, Mark Kasowitz, steps down as head of the legal team. The legal team’s spokesman, Mark Corallo, quits over disagreements about smearing Mueller and over all the infighting in the White House.
  15. After Jeff Sessions denied any meetings with Russian operatives, we learn that he did meet with their ambassador to the U.S. After Sessions admitted to that meeting but denied they spoke about campaign or policy issues, intelligence intercepts show that they did indeed talk about such things (according to the ambassador).
  16. The House finally reaches agreement on a Russia sanctions bill that would require congressional approval to lift sanctions on Russia.
  17. Susan Rice meets with the Senate Intelligence Committee, likely around unmasking U.S. names in intercepts.
  18. In case you were wondering, the special investigation into Bill Clinton headed by Kenneth Starr concluded that not even the president is above the law and therefore can be prosecuted. So yes, Trump could be prosecuted if Mueller’s investigation finds any illegal activity.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions reverses a policy that made it harder for local law enforcement to confiscate property of people who are merely suspected of a crime. Not charged, not indicted, not found guilty. Just suspected.
  2. The Senate confirms John K Bush to a lifetime appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He once compared abortion with slavery, saying they are “the two greatest tragedies in our country.”

Healthcare:

  1. Two more senators oppose the revised healthcare bill and it is effectively dead.
  2. In [what I thought was] a last-ditch effort, Mitch McConnell tries to push for a repeal-only bill that would delay actual repeal for two years (that is, after next year’s midterm elections). But it would repeal the mandate immediately, causing turmoil in the marketplaces. This doesn’t fly either.
  3. This is similar to a plan the Republicans passed in 2015 under reconciliation, but they knew Obama would veto it. That they can’t pass it now makes me think they were bluffing the last times they tried to repeal it in full or in part.
  4. Republicans play with a plan to stop supporting portions of the ACA to make it fail. This throws a curve ball into the insurance markets, so we can expect higher costs and fewer choices next year. Trump alternatively supports and rejects this.
  5. Trump hosts Republicans for lunch to talk healthcare, telling them they should work on repeal through the August recess. He says every American should have a good health care plan, apparently not understanding that repealing the ACA leaves us with no plan. He also issued not-so-thinly veiled threats to Senators who are holding out.
  6. If the senate actually repeals the ACA without any replacement, the CBO estimates that 32 million more people will be uninsured.
  7. In an interview Trump says, “Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance, and by the time you’re 70, you get a nice plan.” TWELVE DOLLARS? Try $12,000, if you’re lucky. This possibly explains the disconnect between the Republican plan and the actual reality of insurance. A Republican defended him saying he doesn’t need to know every detail. Some think he’s mixing up health insurance with an ad for life insurance that plays on Fox.
  8. The Department of Health and Human Services releases a fake score of Ted Cruz’s amendment to the healthcare bill. The CBO has had trouble scoring it because Cruz’s office won’t respond to questions.
  9. Legal experts request an investigation into the Department of Health and Human Services’ use of ACA funds to create a propaganda campaign against the ACA. They allege that HHS used funds designated to provide helpful information about the ACA. Some of the videos they produced highlighted personal stories caused by states not accepting the Medicaid expansion, and some caused by misunderstanding patient rights under the law.
  10. The Trump administration ends ACA contracts that helped shoppers get insurance through the exchanges. This, along with shortening the sign-up period, minimizing information campaigns, and creating anti-ACA propaganda, indicates that they are ready to force this ship to sink.
  11. But then, this effort just won’t die. By the end of the week, McConnell is still looking to pull something together for a vote. Senate Republicans plan a vote on whether to begin debate on a bill. Though there is confusion over which bill is actually going to be up for a vote.
  12. Democrats say certain wording in the bill needs to be removed because it doesn’t comply with reconciliation rules… but how do they know which bill they’re voting on?
  13. Trump says the healthcare bill will put money in the pockets of middle- and low-income earners, but the $700 billion in cuts will likely go mostly to the most wealthy.

International:

  1. Trump recertifies the Iran nuclear deal after a few hours of arguing with his national security advisors. This needs to be recertified every 90 days.
  2. He then puts together a group of White House staffers to come up with reasons not to recertify the Iran nuclear deal when it comes up next time around, bypassing the State Department. And apparently not judging it on what actually goes down over the next three months.
  3. Trump ends the CIA’s ongoing program to arm and train Syrian rebels fighting Assad, something Russia’s been wanting for a while.
  4. The EU threatens to remove Poland’s EU voting rights in response to Poland’s government’s plans to put the judiciary branch under full political control.
  5. Tillerson shuts down the war crimes office of the State Department.
  6. Trump’s nominee to head the Import-Export Bank has previously said he’d like to shut it down. No surprise here, based on recent experience.
  7. Trump nominates Jon Huntsman as ambassador to Russia.
  8. A strategy document outlining the Trump administration’s approach to defeating ISIS indicates that they plan to pretty much carry on with Obama’s approach without having learned from his errors.
  9. The administration puts the kibosh on travel to North Korea.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. House Republicans working on the defense spending bill remove an amendment that would have repealed the 2001 Authorization of War. The amendment had bipartisan support in the Appropriations Committee.
  2. Texas Governor Greg Abbott calls a special session of Senate to push through Republican initiatives, including a bathroom bill, abortion bills, limits on local ordinances, school vouchers, voter fraud investigations, and restricting union dues, among other issues. This draws community protests and criticism from local officials.
  3. The House Appropriations Committee approves the destruction of all remaining wild mustangs in the U.S.
  4. Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee files a no-confidence resolution against Trump, citing 88 reasons he’s unfit for office. This will not pass the House.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Six months later… When immigrants take the oath of citizenship, the welcome letter in their citizenship packet is still signed by Obama.
  2. The Supreme Court upholds a Hawaii judge’s ruling that extended family is exempted from the travel ban, so grandparents, nieces, and other relatives of U.S. residents can enter the country. However, the court struck down an exemption for certain refugees.
  3. Kim Davis’s refusal to issue marriages licenses to same-sex couples ends up costing Kentucky $224,000 in legal fees and costs.

Climate/EPA:

  1. California passed a bipartisan bill to extend the state’s cap-and-trade program. Far-left says it doesn’t go far enough; far-right says it’s too restrictive on businesses.
  2. The Army Corps of engineers says it’ll need the rest of 2017 to perform a court-ordered environmental review of DAPL. They’re suing to keep the pipeline running during the review.
  3. A study ordered by Energy Secretary Rick Perry showed that, contrary to Perry’s claims, solar and wind power don’t reduce the reliability of the electric grid. In fact, the power grid is more reliable today than it’s ever been.

Budget/Economy:

  1. It’s Made in America week, but Homeland Security allows an additional 15,000 H-2B visas (for low-wage, foreign workers). The reasoning is that these workers help American businesses to prosper.
  2. As Trump pushes Made in America week, the administration also tries to defund a Labor Department agency that helps American workers compete fairly in the global market.
  3. The Trump administration announces their NAFTA objectives, which so far mostly seem to be around tougher enforcements. Trump says that the current deal is good for farmers and ranchers, but maintains that it is bad for manufacturing.
  4. The House releases a budget plan this week that increases defense spending more than Trump’s plan, cuts domestic spending less, and assumes a lower rate of growth. It also pushes options for private plans in place of Medicare.
  5. At the same time, the Senate Appropriations Committee announces funding levels that are relatively in line with the current levels, giving House moderates more ammunition.
  6. The House budget bill pretty much cancels trumps budget provisions for school choice vouchers.
  7. Mexico signs a trade deal with Brazil, which means the U.S. is no longer their sole provider of corn. They’re working on another deal with Argentina. U.S. corn sales to Mexico are already down 7% this year.
  8. Canada finalized a trade deal with the EU that will cut into U.S. sales of processed goods to Canada.
  9. The U.S. signs a deal with China that’s been decades in the making and that will allow the U.S. to sell rice to China.
  10. Infrastructure, which IMO is the one thing that might get bipartisan agreement, is stuck behind other legislative issues, including the budget, the debt ceiling, tax reform, and immigration laws. It’s not looking like it’ll happen anytime soon.

Elections:

  1. A South Carolina State Election Commission report says there were about 150,000 attempts to hack into their voter registration system on Election Day last year.
  2. The Illinois State Board of Elections says they were being hit by hacking attempts 5 times per second, 24/7, from late June to mid-August 2016. Hackers accessed around 90,000 voter records.
  3. The Election Integrity Commission holds its first meeting. Commission member Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who is actively looking for massive voter fraud, hands out copies of his voter fraud database. To put voter fraud in perspective, the database contains around 1,000 prosecuted cases over the past 15 years. That’s fewer than 70 cases a year out of more than 100,000,000 votes (so conservatively, a .00007% incidence). A quick check of his database shows that several of those cases were by candidates, not voters, so the rate of actual voter fraud is even lower than that.
  4. Cory Booker introduces a bill to repeal Trumps executive order on the voter fraud commission and to block federal funds from being used for it.
  5. Obama’s cybersecurity team had a plan in place to minimize damage caused by any last-minute cyber attack efforts by the Russians on election day.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Sean Spicer resigns upon Trump’s hiring of Anthony Scaramucci as communications director. Scaramucci is the senior vice president and chief strategy officer at the Export-Import Bank.
  2. Scarmaucci’s hiring took most everyone in the White House by surprise.
  3. Scaramucci starts deleting old tweets and social media posts that spoke against Trump or the RNC. At least he’s being transparent about it. He announced he was doing it saying his views have evolved, after which social media users furiously comb through and save his old posts. The internet is forever folks.
  4. And no wonder he’s doing this. He “called Hillary Clinton incredibly competent and appeared to be at odds with his new boss on issues such as gun control, climate change, Islam and illegal immigration …”
  5. Doctors diagnose John McCain with aggressive brain cancer, the same one that both Ted Kennedy and Beau Biden had.
  6. Trump says Akie Abe, the wife of China’s prime minister, didn’t talk to him at the G20 dinner because she doesn’t speak any English. But she speaks it pretty well.
  7. In areas of Texas where Planned Parenthood facilities closed and abstinence-only sex ed is taught, the teen abortion rate has increased 3%. Meanwhile, the nationwide trend has been decreasing.
  8. Trump nominates Sam Clovis as head of science at the USDA. Clovis is a former radio talk show host who doesn’t have a background in science. This, even though the role is only available to scientists according to congressional rules. He also denies anthropogenic global warming.
  9. As a way to address problems around the opioid epidemic, a judge gives Tennessee inmates an option: early release or long-term contraception (vasectomy for men or contraceptive implant for women).
  10. Jared Kushner failed to disclose over 70 assets on his initial financial disclosure. He’s updated the disclosure over 30 times since March. This affects Ivanka as well as the disclosure includes family members.
  11. An interesting legal battle is brewing between federal agencies over ExxonMobil’s alleged violation of Russia sanctions. The violation occurred in 2014 under the helm of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Exxon was fined $2 million. In response, Exxon named Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin in a legal complaint.
  12. Tillerson hires consulting companies Deloitte and Insigniam to help with the State Department reorganization.
  13. New Hampshire becomes the 22nd state to legalize pot.
  14. One reason for the slowdown in the vetting process for Trump’s nominees is that we’ve never had so many nominees with such complex financial holdings and conflicts of interest. Several of them dropped out because they got frustrated with having to comply with the ethics rules.

Polls:

  1. Only 45% of Republicans believe that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer during the elections. Even though he not only said he met with Russians to get dirt on Hillary, but also tweeted out the entire email thread.
  2. A Bloomberg poll finds that 61% of Americans think we’re headed in the wrong direction, and 55% view Trump unfavorably.
  3. Trump’s approval is at 36%, lower than any other president at this time. His disapproval rating in 59%.

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

  1. OK. This isn’t really stupid, just something to think about. Ben Carson says:
    “Let me put it this way. I’m glad that Trump is drawing all the fire so I can get stuff done.”
    So maybe we should be paying more attention to what the federal departments and agencies are actually doing instead of to what Trump isn’t getting done.

Week 25 in Trump

Posted on July 17, 2017 in Legislation, Politics

(Credit: AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth/Getty/Don Emmert/Peter Muhly)

With Congress spinning their wheels and not able to actually push much through other than undoing some Obama rules, something John Boehner said several weeks ago rings true for several of their bigger goals. He said he doesn’t think tax reform is going to happen this year:

“I was a little more optimistic about it early in the year; now my odds are 60/40. The border adjustment tax is deader than a doornail. Tax reform is just a bunch of happy talk.”

And so once again Russia dominates the week. Here’s what happened…

Russia:

  1. Last week we heard about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer and the changing stories he gave around it. This week, he releases the entire email thread setting up the meeting. He says he’s just being transparent, but it turns out the New York Times was about to release them and were waiting his response. He scooped them.
  2. The emails show he was looking for compromising information on Clinton and that he was OK working with the Russian effort to discredit her.
  3. We learn the meetings were set up by British publicist Rod Goldstone, who offered to connect Don Jr. with sensitive documents from the Russia government that would be damaging to Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” To which Don Jr. said “I love it.”
  4. Before we get ahead of ourselves, the meeting may have broken federal law, but doesn’t amount to treason. It might be conspiracy, but definitely not treason.
  5. The meeting implicates Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, who didn’t reveal this meeting in his security clearance forms. Since May, Kushner has added over 100 names of foreign officials he had contact with last year. In his defense though, it appears Kushner’s lawyers found the email thread and turned the emails over.
  6. The Russian lawyer they met with says the meeting was always about sanctions, though the emails say otherwise.
  7. We still don’t have a complete list of all who attended the meeting, though the list of Russians keeps growing. We now know a Russian lobbyist and an interpreter were there as well, and possibly two more people.
  8. Trump Sr. says the Secret Service vetted the meeting. The Secret Service says that didn’t happen.
  9. Trump Sr. denies knowledge of this meeting, but after the meeting ended, he tweeted out a dig about Hillary’s emails. Two days before the meeting, he said he’d give a speech the following week that would tell all about the Clintons. That speech didn’t happen.
  10. It turns out that the White House crafted Trump Jr.’s initial statement about the meeting, which turned out to be untrue.
  11. A democratic representative files the first formal articles of impeachment against Trump over obstruction of justice in the firing of Comey.
  12. According to the Wall Street Journal, our intelligence agencies saw evidence of Russians attempting collusion with the Trump campaign in 2015, even before he officially declared his candidacy.
  13. Kushner’s digital campaign program is under investigation to find out if they assisted the Russians in targeting specific voter markets during the election meddling. Intelligence officials are pretty sure they had U.S. help.
  14. Trump backs off on the idea of a joint U.S. and Russia cybersecurity force saying that it can’t happen.
  15. Democratic lawyers from the Obama camp sue Trump over invasion of privacy. They allege that the campaign was involved in what has been seen as a Russian operation, but which now seems to include campaign members. This operation resulted in the dumps of tens of thousands of emails that included private information.
  16. After passing nearly unanimously in the Senate, the Russian sanctions bill stalls in the House while the White House continues pressure to soften the bill.
  17. Mike Pence’s spokesperson refuses three times to answer whether Pence has had any undisclosed meetings with Russians.
  18. According to a coroners report, Peter Smith asphyxiated himself. Smith died 10 days after an interview with the Wall Street Journal where he described his plan to work with Trump’s campaign to get dirt on Clinton. It’s not known whether Trump’s campaign was aware of Smith’s effort.
  19. People start comparing the DNC getting opposition information from Ukraine sources with Trump Jr.’s effort get oppo on Clinton. Right now it looks like comparing a traffic ticket with totaling your car, but more info will come out on both.
  20. Some of the memos Comey wrote summarizing his conversations with Trump contain classified information, but not the one that he leaked to the press. Comey said they were his personal memos, but the FBI now says they are FBI property and Trump accuses Comey of breaking the law. So now we’re looking at an investigation into Comey’s handling of the memos. Full. Circle.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Jeff Sessions takes credit for last week’s Medicare and Medicaid fraud bust saying it’s part of the administration’s effort to get tough on drugs. It turns out Medicare fraud is a huge thing, and all presidents since Clinton have funded task forces to crack down on it. They’ve recovered tens of billions of dollars since the 1990s.
  2. Twitter users blocked by Trump sue, saying that since Sean Spicer said Trump’s tweets are official statements, Twitter users can’t be barred from viewing them.

Healthcare:

  1. The Senate Republicans’ revised health bill increases insurance subsidies and keeps some of the ACA taxes.
  2. This new version allows insurance companies who do sell ACA-compliant policies to sell policies that don’t include all the mandated coverages as well.
  3. It also opens the door to insurance companies being able to deny people with pre-existing conditions access to certain healthcare plans.
  4. The latest version of the bill doesn’t change the cuts to Medicaid and keeps it as a block grant with per capita spending caps. It also includes $1 billion in Medicaid funding that only Alaska qualifies for, largely seen as a bribe for Lisa Murkowski’s support.
  5. With teen pregnancy at its lowest rate in recent history, the Trump administration cut $213.6 million in research and programs aimed at preventing teen pregnancy (this includes funding for Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins University, along with almost 80 others).
  6. Governors from both parties come out strongly against the new healthcare bill at their annual summer meeting. They don’t issue a joint statement, though, because they all have different reasons.
  7. Mitch McConnell delays the healthcare vote until John McCain comes back from what was deemed minor surgery. He’s expected to recover in a week, but health experts think it could be more like two weeks. This gives the bill an even slimmer chance of passing.
  8. Lindsay Graham also comes up with a healthcare plan, which basically gives more power to the states.
  9. From Politico’s talks with legislators: “Republicans REALLY want to wrap up the health care discussion. Sure, they want to repeal Obamacare. But the conversation they’re having now is how many people are going to get booted off their insurance. That’s not good politics.” Also it’s kind of heartless.
  10. Burglars break into Senator Dean Heller’s office in Las Vegas. Probably not related, but Heller was among the first Senators to say he wouldn’t approve the healthcare bill.

International:

  1. Trump celebrates Bastille Day in Paris with President Macron.
  2. Rex Tillerson heads to Qatar and then other Mideast countries to try to patch things up. Qatar agrees to stop funding terrorists.
  3. It turns out that the UAE was behind the cyberattacks that planted fake news stories and social media posts about Qatar’s empire, leading to the four-nation boycott and a new quagmire in the Mideast. It was originally thought that Russia was behind it. Now U.S. intelligence thinks it was part of a larger plan by the UAE to destabilize the area.
  4. If Tillerson can fix this, it will be his first major diplomatic accomplishment. If it backfires, it will strengthen Qatar’s relationship with Iran.
  5. Trump appears to support Saudi Arabia over Qatar in this standoff, but Saudi is known for funding terrorists as well.
  6. While Trump takes credit for sparking the Qatar standoff, some allege that this is more on Kushner. Kushner tried and failed to get a $500 million loan from a Qatari businessman, and then allegedly pushed Trump to take a hard stance on Qatar.
  7. Trump delays his state visit to the UK until next year.
  8. Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner look at proposals to use private mercenary firms to fight in Afghanistan.
  9. Iran has been stepping in to fill the void left when U.S. troops departed from Iraq. They’ve been giving aid, working with the government, and shipping food and supplies.
  10. Civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes in the Mideast are on pace to more than double under Trump.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The White House wants Congress to take care of these items before the August recess:
    • Repeal the ACA
    • Raise the debt ceiling
    • Agree on a general outline of tax reform
    • Clear remaining nominations

    Note: It’s almost August already.

  2. Mitch McConnell delays the August recess in order to take care of some of the above items. He blames the delay on lack of cooperation from Democrats, but with the Republican majorities in both houses, he doesn’t need Democrats’ cooperation.
  3. The bill to overhaul and privatize air traffic control stalls in the House.
  4. As a part of the effort by Everytown for Gun Safety, six states (Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Tennessee and Utah) pass gun restrictions for domestic abusers, bringing the total number of states with such laws to 23.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. After a huge public outcry, Trump intervenes to grant visas to the all-female Afghanistan robotics team so they can come here and compete. Very cool.
  2. Trump plans to delay or eliminate a rule to let foreign entrepreneurs come here to start companies. Business leaders and organizations are quick to criticize the move.
  3. Jeff Sessions speaks to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a group accused of being an anti-LGBTQ hate group.
  4. In a move to restore some of the protections for workers that one of Trump’s executive orders rescinded, the House unanimously passes a nondiscrimination bill.
  5. A federal judge in Hawaii rules that the administration’s definition of bona fide relationships in regard to the travel ban is too narrow. He ruled that the definition includes broader family ties, like grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins of people in the U.S.
  6. Trump shortens his requirement for the border wall from 2,000 miles to just 900, and says he wants it to be somewhat transparent so we can see people on other side throwing over bags of drugs. We don’t want Americans getting hit on the head by bags of drugs.
  7. The number of bullying incidents where the bully uses Trump’s words and slogans continues to rise in schools. The incidents are primarily based on religious or racial prejudice.
  8. Trump and some of his aides are working with two conservative senators (Tom Cotton and David Perdue) to draft legislation drastically curbing legal immigration. The legislation would cut legal immigration in half. Why is this important? Because economists say that the only way Trump can achieve his predicted economic growth is if the immigrant population doubles.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A chunk of ice nearly the size of Delaware breaks off from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf. The iceberg’s water volume is about twice Lake Erie’s. I mention it because some attribute this to global warming, but scientists are still looking at whether it’s related.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The White House objects to parts of both the House and Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2018. Specifically they object to a prohibition on the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) process (base closures). They also object to greater private audits of the Pentagon.
  2. In Senate testimony, Janet Yellen says, “I believe we have done a great deal since the financial crisis to strengthen the financial system and to make it more resilient.” She also indicates that some of the recent rollbacks passed by the House could lead to another crisis. She’s willing to consider changes to the regulations though.

Elections:

  1. The DoJ sends a letter to all states requesting information about voter rolls and related processes. States take this to indicate that the DoJ is looking to purge voter rolls and roll back some portions of the National Voter Registration Act, which sought to streamline the process of registering and make it easier for eligible voters.
  2. After running up against a slew of legal challenges, Trump’s voter fraud commission tells states not to send them any of the information they requested for now.
  3. The White House publishes all the comments they’ve received so far on the voter fraud commission’s request for information on a government website. The comments weren’t vetted and the now-public information includes commenters’ names, emails, addresses, and more. Some are pretty profane and some include links to porn.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The spin about Trump’s slow nomination process is giving me whiplash. Democrats have requested cloture on many more Trump nominees than were requested for Obama’s. But Trump is also way behind in nominating candidates, and often sends them over without the correct paperwork.
  2. Trump has an off-the-record talk with reporters on air force one, but then wonders why it wasn’t covered, so it becomes on the record.
  3. Paul Ryan puts the kibosh on holding any more townhalls, saying they’re just becoming screamfests.
  4. The FCC gives phone companies leeway to jack phone rates for prisoners, which were capped under Obama. Prisoners now have to pay more to phone home.
  5. Christopher Wray took questions in the Senate around his confirmation as FBI director to replace Comey.
  6. Trump’s personal attorney responded to an email from a critic with a series of profanity-laced emails.
  7. Both Mike Pence and Justin Trudeau join the governors meeting in Providence, RI. Trudeau is the first foreign head of state to attend, likely because renegotiations for NAFTA are about to begin.
  8. Highlighting the tepid relationship between AZ Senator Jeff Flake’s and the White House, the White House meets with three possible challengers to his seat in next year’s election. Trump isn’t afraid to bring in the big guns against lawmakers who disagree with him.
  9. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, our most powerful lobbying group, is not only losing power, but some of its largest members consider pulling out. Members disagree on a number of issues facing us right now.

Polls:

  1. Since 2015, Republicans who have a positive view of education has dropped from 54% to 36%. 58% of Republican say colleges and universities have a negative effect on the U.S.
  2. 54% of Americans think Trump did something wrong or illegal in regard to Russia. 58% think one of his campaign members did. 67% think Russia’s 2016 hacking poses a future threat.
  3. 82% of Americans say large businesses, lobbyists, the wealthy, and Wall Street have too much power in D.C. 75% say people like themselves don’t have enough power, and another 3% say people like themselves DO have too much power. Who are these altruistic 3%?
  4. An Iowa poll puts Trumps disapproval rating at 59%.

 

Week 24 in Trump

Posted on July 10, 2017 in Politics, Trump

With all eyes on the G20 this week, French Ambassador Gérard Araud says Trump isn’t the leader of the free world and that no one is now.

“This world order, the traditional liberal world order, is more or less undermined, really, or looks injured. Where [is] the United States?… I think it’s impossible to move on without America, and I think also that the United States really can’t let the world move on.”

Araud also points out that President Obama delegated the Ukraine response to Angela Merkel and took a hands-off approach to Syria. ”America First, in a sense, was raised in a discrete way, also under President Obama.”
Here’s what else happened this week…

Russia:

  1. Large U.S. oil companies lobby against the bills passed by the Senate to toughen sanctions against Russia and to make it harder for the president to rescind them.
  2. Investigators look into whether Russia colluded with far-right, pro-Trump sites to spread fake stories smearing Hillary Clinton. There were at least 1,000 paid internet trolls in Russia putting out the information.
  3. Trump meets with Putin at the G20. Before the meeting, Putin criticizes Trump’s trade policies and sanctions in an op-ed, and reaffirms Russia’s commitment to the Paris accord.
  4. Tillerson says that Putin denied meddling in our elections when Trump pushed him on it. Like he would admit it?
  5. Key points from the meeting:
    • Trump is ready to move on from the election hacking with no consequences for Russia.
    • The U.S. and Russia will cooperate on cybersecurity issues. Trump later walks this one back.
    • They agree not to meddle in each other’s domestic issues, making it sound like it was equally bad that we try to spread democracy while they try to undermine it.
    • They agree to a cease-fire in Syria, the fifth such agreement in six years.
    • They discuss the Ukraine, sanctions, and terrorism.
  6. Trump, Tillerson, and Putin all emerge with differing accounts of the meeting.
  7. Trump is reportedly focused on how to move forward in working with Putin.
  8. Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov says that Putin denied involvement in our elections, that Trump said reports of meddling were exaggerated, and that Trump accepted Putin’s denials.
  9. Russian hackers are suspected to be behind a breach of over 12 power plants in the U.S.
  10. After the G20 Trump tweets, “Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.” Republicans and Democrats alike say ummmm….no. Why don’t we just give them our passwords and be done with it?
  11. New documents show yet another undisclosed meeting between Russians and the Trump campaign. This one occurred two weeks after Trump became the Republican nominee, and was between a Russian lawyer and Kushner, Manafort, and Donald Trump Jr. A spokesperson for Trump’s lawyer says the meeting was a setup.
  12. Trump Jr. first explains the meeting as being about Russian adoptions, and then says it was supposed to be about obtaining dirt on Hillary but it ended up being about adoptions.
  13. Trump says the media lied when they said that all 17 intelligence agencies signed off on the statement that Russia meddled in our elections, saying that only four did. Technically he’s right, but one of those four who signed off, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, includes the remaining agencies.
  14. James Clapper warns that the 2016 meddling in the election was just a practice run for 2018.
  15. The State Department continues to issue temporary visas to suspected Russian operatives.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A Florida judge rules that changes to the stand your ground gun law are unconstitutional. The changes would’ve increased protections for people who kill someone using the stand your ground defense, giving protections even to those who have an opportunity to flee the situation.
  2. Eighteen states and Washington D.C. filed suit against the Department of Education and Betsy DeVos, saying they broke the law by rescinding the Borrower Defense Rule. The rule protects students from fraudulent, for-profit institutions (like Trump University, for example).

Healthcare:

  1. Congress moves toward preventing the IRS from enforcing the penalty for not having insurance, further weakening the ACA.
  2. According to a new report released by Trump’s own Department of Health and Human Services, the ACA is doing better than reported. The report provides evidence that the ACA marketplaces were relatively stable in 2016. The customer base is healthier, the risk pools are stabilizing, and premiums are moderating.
  3. Indiana GOP leaders, in an effort to gather ammunition to support the senate healthcare bill, posted a request on Facebook to “post your Obamacare horror stories here.” With about 1,500 posts, the vast majority were how the ACA had helped, not hurt.
  4. The Washington Post and the New York Times each publish a fact check on healthcare claims and bills. Worth a read if you’re on the fence.
  5. The GOP Twitter account tweets out to Hillary, Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Bill Clinton, and Joe Manchin asking where their health plans are. Hillary, for one, schools the GOP by pointing to her fully formed plan to fix the ACA and telling them to run with it.
  6. Freedom Works and Club for Growth push McConnell to adopt the more conservative changes to the healthcare bill, but these will likely make passing the bill impossible.
  7. Midweek, Mitch McConnell acknowledges that they might not be able to pass a replacement for the ACA, and in that case, Congress needs to do something to support the insurance markets.
  8. Pat Toomey (R-Pa) sort of explains why Republicans are having trouble with the bill: “I didn’t expect Donald Trump to win. I think most of my colleagues didn’t. So we didn’t expect to be in this situation.” In other words, we weren’t as ready as we said we were.
  9. Ted Cruz says the ACA should be repealed if the Senate vote falls apart again, aligning himself clearly with Trump and against McConnell.
  10. One thing missing from any healthcare discussions is the subsidy given to employers who offer insurance plans to their employees and the employees who receive them. Both employers and employees get a tax break, and employees get a good chunk of their premiums paid.
  11. Senators John Hoeven of North Dakota, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and John Boozman of Arkansas are the latest Republicans to withhold support for the bill.

International:

  1. North Korea fires another ballistic missile, but this time is more concerning because of the distance it was able to travel.
  2. The U.S. and South Korea stage military drills in the waters off North Korea. Good to know: The missile defense system still can’t reliably stop ICBMs and has failed 3 of 5 tests.
  3. After the launch, Trump sounds like he’s giving up on China. “So much for China working with us.”
  4. Russia and China make a joint proposal that would ban North Korea missile tests and would also ban joint U.S. and South Korea military drills.
  5. Some experts think Russian technology is behind North Korea’s huge advances in missile technology over the past two years.
  6. Trump stops in Poland before the G20 meeting in Hamburg. The government bussed in Trump supporters to hear his speech.
  7. Some hail his speech in Poland as one of his greatest and others say it’s just another one of his “failing dystopia” speeches. He criticizes the free press in a country where President Duda has restricted free press, and then watches Duda explain why he restricted Polish media from covering the parliament.
  8. Trump does state support for article 5 of the NATO agreement, which he failed to do in his NATO speech.
  9. Trump questions whether the West has the will to survive existentialist threats. I don’t know what he’s talking about here, though maybe ISIS?
  10. Leaders from several countries, as well as U.S. states and cities, attend the Global Citizen Festival in Hamburg just before the G20. The festival raises money to support global health, gender equality, and education. Trump isn’t invited.
  11. Trump’s team waited too long to book a hotel for the G20 and by the time they tried, everything was booked. The German government hosts him in Hamburg while his staff stays at the U.S. consulate. The same happened to Tillerson when he attended the G20 ministers meeting in February.
  12. At the G20, Trump’s message is “renegotiate everything.” Other leaders will either go along or forge their own deals without the U.S. (which they already seem to be doing, if that tells you anything).
  13. The G20 highlights a major shift in geopolitical relations, as European nations, China, and Japan navigate through a shifting landscape where the U.S. is no longer a leader. The U.S. typically sets the agenda at the summit, but this time we alienate our allies and are isolated from the rest of the G20 nations on the big issues, including climate change and trade.
  14. Germany and China have their own bilateral meeting, an indication that Xi Jinping wants to move into the widening gap between the U.S. and its longtime allies. He’s ready to move China into the U.S.’s position as the biggest defender of a global, multilateral system.
  15. There is agreement among all nations over cracking down on people who smuggle in illegal immigrants.
  16. Many leaders express concern that our new differences threaten the common good.
  17. Trump meets with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and reminds him that Mexico has to pay for the wall.
  18. Trump tweets from the G20: “Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!” So many things wrong here. Podesta never had anything to do with the DNC server; the CIA didn’t (and probably couldn’t) subpoena it; and the G20 has more pressing matters. Podesta’s twitter response is worth it, though, as is his WaPo op-ed.
  19. Trump is caught daydreaming at a G20 meeting, saved when Theresa May awakens him for a photo-op.
  20. Ivanka Trump sits in for the president during a G20 leaders session for a short period while he steps out of the room.
  21. The final communiqué from the G20 highlights a victory for the G19 and the isolation of the G20. U.S. views on global warming and protectionism are not accepted.
  22. 122 countries in the UN approve a ban on nuclear weapons, a potential start to nuclear disarmament…except that none of the nations that signed on are armed with nuclear weapons.
  23. Iraq declares victory over ISIS in Mosul after a 9-month push.
  24. Rex Tillerson works to personally defuse the situation in the Persian Gulf, which threatens our ability to combat terrorism because of our coordination with Qatar.
  25. A group of senators travel to Afghanistan as part of a diplomatic effort. The ambassador role there has yet to be filled and is currently filled by a chargé d’affaires who was about to retire. This is a critical time for diplomatic relations with the country.
  26. The ban on bringing laptops and other electronic devices on board flights from several Mideast countries was lifted for some countries.
  27. There were large anti-government protests in both Turkey and Venezuela this week, as well as protests at the G20 meetings in Hamburg. But there are always protests at the G20 for a multitude of causes.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The U.S. denies visas for an all-girl robotics team from Afghanistan who were hoping to come here along with groups from other countries to compete. Teams from Iraq, Iran, and Sudan received travel visas.
  2. Businesses in North Carolina get hit hard by cuts to visas for seasonal workers. One business hasn’t opened for the season because they couldn’t get any visas, and not one local applied for their $15/hour positions.
  3. As part of a PR campaign to educate the nation about Sikhs, a group of them chip in to sponsor a town’s fireworks display when the town can’t fund it. Part of the reason Sikhs are doing this is that people in the U.S. mistake them for Muslims and harass them.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A federal appeals court rules that the EPA can’t suspend an Obama-era rule that would restrict methane emissions from new oil and gas wells. They could try rewriting the rule.
  2. California Governor Jerry Brown and New York mayor Bill De Blasio speak at the Global Citizen Festival in Hamburg. Brown invites everyone to a global warming action meeting in San Francisco in 2018, saying Trump doesn’t speak for all of America on global warming.
  3. Volvo announces it will phase out combustion-only engines by 2019. All the cars they make will either be electric or hybrid.
  4. Germany, Japan, and other countries reiterate their commitment to the Paris accord ahead of the G20.
  5. The U.S. stands alone in the G20 summit statement on global warming and the Paris accord.

Budget/Economy/Trade:

  1. At a time when most countries are seeing solid recoveries from the 2008 crash, world leaders warn that nationalistic and protectionist trade policies will hamper global recovery, possibly causing a slide backwards. And this includes the U.S., but #MAGA, right?
  2. The European Union and Japan sign one of the world’s largest trade agreements, calling it ambitious, free, and fair. Unfortunately, the U.S. auto industry will be one of the hardest hit.
  3. And to top it off, the U.S. automobile industry says sales are slowing and jobs are declining. This is the sixth consecutive month of drooping sales.
  4. The U.S. hasn’t even begun to negotiate or renegotiate any meaningful bilateral agreements as promised during the campaign last year.
  5. The European Union and China are working on a broad trade agreement, as are Mexico and China.
  6. Trump threatens new tariffs on steel imports from Europe. The European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, says they’ll retaliate in kind, which could start a trade war.
  7. Stephen Bannon pushes to raise taxes on the wealthy and cut them for middle and low-income earners. His idea would raise the highest bracket above 40%, at odds with Trump’s current plan and the House’s current plan.
  8. Trump touts the latest job numbers, though growth as been a little slower so far this year than last.
  9. Several states are finding themselves in economic trouble or at a budget impasse, including New Jersey, Illinois, Maine, Alaska, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Connecticut, and Kansas.
  10. After a two-year standoff, Illinois lawmakers finally worked together to agree on a budget bill, which Governor Bruce Rauner promptly vetoed because it would raise taxes. Both the house and senate are expected to vote to override his veto.
  11. Trump’s cuts to transportation in his proposed budget could cause 220 cities to lose access to passenger train service and would halt any high-speed rail development. This is the opposite of infrastructure investment.
  12. Trump says he wants to make the U.S. an energy dominator, but his actual policies are pretty much the same as under Obama’s goal to make us energy independent.
  13. Trump proposes eliminating heating aid for low-income Americans, saying the program isn’t needed any longer and it’s being abused. He claims utility companies can’t cut off utilities in the dead of winter, so these people will be just fine…
  14. While domestic gas and oil development has been sluggish over several years due to low prices, Trump tweets, “Gas prices are the lowest in the U.S. in over ten years! I would like to see them go even lower.”

Elections:

  1. So far, 44 states push back on the voter fraud commission’s request for personal voter information. Nine major investigations over 20 years on voter fraud have turned up no evidence of widespread fraud. Most cases were found to not be fraudulent at all. Of the cases found to be actually fraudulent, most result from misunderstandings of the rules or from clerical or administrative errors.
  2. Maryland’s Republican deputy secretary of state, Luis E. Borunda, resigns from the voting commission. In fact, many people appointed to the commission don’t have election experience and don’t understand why they’re there.
  3. Lawmakers who criticize Trump or don’t support him are feeling the political heat of his pressure. Others who have criticized him in the past start to court him to make sure he doesn’t capsize their chances of re-election.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Workers still remaining at the State Department say the department is gutted at all levels of employment and that they can barely get anything done.
  2. In an act of I-just-don’t-care-anymore, Chris Christie and his family are spotted on a private beach on the day that public beaches are closed to the public because of a budget impasse.
  3. Trump signs an executive order aimed at reviving the National Space Council. Mike Pence will lead the effort.
  4. After Trump tweets a GIF of himself taking down CNN WWF-style, CNN finds the originator of the GIF who apologizes and takes all his offensive stuff down. CNN refuses to divulge his identity but for some reason left a bit in the story saying they might if he reneges on his promise. Which leads certain alt-right groups to speculate that he was blackmailed into the apology by CNN, so they dox the CNN group responsible for the story. The reporters and their families have been threatened both online and in person at their homes.
  5. Once again Trump reminds us that he is president and we are not. “The fake media is trying to silence us. But we will not let them. Because the people know the truth. The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House. But I’m president and they’re not.”
  6. Whoa! NPR caught a little blowback on the 4th when it tweeted the entirety of the declaration of independence in 113 tweets. They get accused of partisan politics, using propaganda, and trying to start a revolution.
  7. Steven Scalise is readmitted into ICU on worries of infection.
  8. It looks like an investigation and crackdown on leakers is about to start. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman, Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), releases a report on national security risks from the leaks.
  9. The government ethics chief, Walter Shaub, resigns saying he’s done all he can and criticizing the administration for a lack of transparency and the appearance of profiting from office. After repeatedly reaching out to the administration during the transition period and being ignored, Shaub took to trolling Trump on Twitter to get his attention. That didn’t work either. He’s never spoken with the president.
  10. There’s a power struggle going on between red state governments and their blue city governments, with states cracking down on city legislation. States have tied city’s hands on issues like minimum wage, civil rights, birth control, and sanctuary cities.
  11. The White House staff reveals it’s factional nature, as each has their own PR staffs to push their individual agendas, leaving behind the tradition of keeping a unified message.

Polls:

  1. 54% of Americans believe Trump has done something illegal; 29% think he’s done something unethical.
  2. A Pew survey shows that 56% of Americans have more confidence in Merkel than Trump, while 46% say they have more confidence in Trump.

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

Because this is what a free and open press is all about:

“I just love to sit in my office and make up wasters so [journalists] will write these stupid stories.”

– Maine GOP Gov. Paul LePage bragging that he lies to reporters so they will write misleading “stupid stories” about his governorship.

Week 23 in Trump

Posted on July 3, 2017 in Politics, Trump

With friends like these… as the healthcare battle heats up, Republicans start turning on their own, with a GOP PAC pushing ads against holdout senators and major donors threatening to shut their purses until they start seeing some action.

After the PAC attack on Dean Heller, Josh Holmes, Mr. McConnell’s former chief of staff, said, “That the White House is asking people to take a tough vote and then running ads against members while we’re still in negotiations is so dumb it’s amazing we even have to have the conversation.”

Here’s what happened this week in Trump:

Russia:

  1. Trump remains quiet about what he plans to do to prevent Russian interference in our elections in the future. He has never asked Comey how to stop a future cyber/disinformation attack, and Jeff Sessions has never received a classified briefing on the issue.
  2. Paul Manafort reveals that his firm received over $17 million from the Ukraine’s Party of Regions, which is affiliated with the Kremlin. He didn’t reveal this at the time it happened, which is required by law.
  3. Matt Tait, a security consultant, says that Peter Smith, a Republican opposition researcher, recruited him to authenticate the veracity of some hacked emails that were claimed to come from Clinton’s private server. He never completed the task and the emails seem to have been a hoax, but…
  4. It turns out that Smith claimed to represent Michael Flynn in an effort to find emails that Clinton deleted hoping to use them against her in the election. Smith also supported Flynn in his effort to establish relations with Russian officials. Smith spoke to the Wall Street Journal about this story 10 days before he died on May 14 (at age 81, no foul play suspected). Interesting fact: Smith funded the troopergate investigation into Clinton, bankrolled David Bock to smear Clinton, and tried to find a woman who would initiate a paternity suit against Clinton.
  5. Tait says he received a recruitment document from Smith listing these senior officials of the Trump campaign or staff: Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sam Clovis, Lt. Gen. Flynn, and Lisa Nelson.
  6. The document also lists a company Smith had set up, KLS Research, to avoid campaign reporting. It’s not clear who all was involved in that.
  7. U.S. intelligence reports that Russian hackers were looking for an intermediary through which they could get emails to Flynn last year, which fits into the role Smith was playing.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court rules that state grants that are available to nonprofits can’t be denied to a church-run school. This ruling applied specifically to playground safety, but it opens the door for taxpayers to provide funds to religious organizations.
  2. The Supreme Court says they’ll hear the gay wedding cake case (the one where some business owners want it to be legal to discriminate against gay couples).
  3. The compliance counsel at the DOJ, Hui Chen, resigns saying that the administration doesn’t live up to the standards she’s supposed to be enforcing in the business world.

Healthcare:

  1. After a group aligned with Trump and Pence went after Nevada Senator Dean Heller last week for his refusal to support the healthcare bill, Mitch McConnell called the White House to complain, calling the attack “beyond stupid.” The group pulls the ad campaign.
  2. The CBO scores the Senate’s healthcare plan. They estimate that 22 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage over the next decade, just slightly better then the 23 million that would lose it under the House plan. The CBO also estimates that premiums would rise before falling to less than under the ACA, out-of-pocket costs would increase, and there would be fewer covered benefits. But hey, we’ll save about $320 billion over 10 years.
  3. Senate republicans add a provision to their bill that would prevent someone with a lapse in coverage from receiving coverage for 6 months.
  4. Kellyanne Conway says people who lose Medicaid should look into getting jobs. Nearly 70% of able recipients already do work, but maybe we could find jobs for some of those folks in nursing homes?
  5. Despite continual promises that, no matter what, a vote will be held on the healthcare bill, Mitch McConnell abruptly announces that he’s postponing the vote until after the July 4 recess. Earlier he had warned that if the repeal doesn’t get done this week, the GOP would lose all leverage and be forced to compromise with Democrats.
  6. Trump invites all Republican senators to the White House for a meeting, during which he says “This will be great if we get it done. And if we don’t get it done, it’s just going to be something that we’re not going to like. And that’s OK, and I understand that very well.”
  7. After the meeting, some senators express that they don’t think Trump understands the bill and that Trump seemed surprised that some are calling it a tax break for the rich.
  8. A bipartisan group of governors who have been conspiring quietly on blocking the healthcare bill come out strongly against it this week. When Republican senators come home for July recess, these governors push back hard.
  9. But never ones to give up hope, GOP senators are working behind the scenes to change the bill enough to bring on more votes. Expect this to continue throughout the recess.
  10. While the hardliners want to cut more money from the healthcare bill, Trump says in a speech this week, “Add some money to it!”
  11. Trump later says they should just repeal the ACA and replace it at a later date. This is concerning because they don’t have anything they can agree on after 6 years of wanting it, and not having a replacement will knock even more people off insurance.
  12. The White House later denies that Trump has changed his mind on this.
  13. Forty economists write a letter to McConnell saying that the healthcare bill is a giant step in the wrong direction.
  14. Educators and school leaders come out against the healthcare bill, especially in depressed areas where the school nurse and therapists are reimbursed through Medicaid and tools are provided for students with special needs.

International:

  1. French President Macron invites Trump to France for Bastille Day.
  2. Trump looks at cracking down on Pakistani militants launching attacks on neighboring Afghanistan, including drone strikes and withholding aid from Pakistan.
  3. Trump is behind on getting foreign ambassadors nominated and confirmed. His are taking an average of 77 days, Obama’s took 26 days, and Bush’s took 11 days. The holdup seems to be in his formal submissions for approval.
  4. The CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation expresses concerns over the massive foreign aid cuts in Trump’s budget (which is less than 1% of our budget). A large amount of global progress in health and development is because of us. Private philanthropy can’t make up for it. The cuts would:
    • Make it harder for NGOs to eradicate diseases (the ebola outbreak is an example of how this affects us at home).
    • Make it harder to help women with reproductive health and choice.
    • Make it harder for President Bush’s PEPFAR program to prevent AIDs. In countries where PEPFAR is established, political instability has dropped 40%.
  5. The House Appropriations Committee approves an amendment that would revoke the president’s war authority, requiring congressional approval. It would repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) bill passed in response to 9/11. Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) has been trying to get this passed for years.
  6. The U.S. plans a $1.42 billion arms deal with Taiwan, sure to invoke a reaction from China.
  7. Tillerson and Mattis continue to work behind the scenes to find a solution to the stand-off in the Mideast between Qatar and four other nations. They are still at odds with Trump and Kushner on this because Qatar is actually a strategic ally for us.
  8. The UN agrees to a $570 million budget cut for its peacekeeping missions. The administration had fought for even larger cuts.

Legislation:

  1. The House passes two bills that target undocumented immigrants. Kate’s Law increases maximum penalties for deported immigrants who repeatedly try to enter the U.S. The No Sanctuary for Criminals Act eliminates federal grants for sanctuary cities and allows victims of crimes by undocumented immigrants sue those cities.
  2. Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin signs HB 128 into law, letting schools teach bible classes. No word on whether the Quran and Bhagavad Gita are also allowed.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Supreme Court agrees to hear the travel ban in the next session, but reinstates parts of it with strict guidelines. The ban won’t affect anyone with a bona fide relationship with an entity in the U.S. People can come here for family, work, school, and so on. The court agrees to hear it in October, by which point it could be moot. That’s plenty of time for the administration to review it’s vetting policies. For an idea of how the justices feel about immigration and discrimination, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch all would have reinstated the ban in its entirety.
  2. The administration issues guidelines for implementing the ban. People coming from the banned countries must have work, school, or close family ties—extended family (like grandparents, aunts and uncles, or nieces and nephews) does not count. Anyone with legal documents should be allowed in. Refugees are banned for 120 days. Somehow a step-sibling is defined as closer than a grandparent.
  3. Khaled Almilaji is a renowned Syrian doctor who ran a campaign to vaccinate 1.4 million Syrian children. Because of the ban, he gives up on returning to the U.S., opting for Canada instead.
  4. The Supreme Court overturns an Arkansas court and says that Arkansas discriminated against a lesbian couple by forcing them to go to court to get both women’s names on their child’s birth certificate. Under Arkansas law, a woman’s husband is listed as the father even if he’s not the biological father; gay couples want the same treatment.
  5. About a thousand military recruits are waiting for basic training but had their visas expire during their wait, leaving them undocumented. They were recruited for a fast-track citizenship program for their medical and language skills.
  6. The Texas Supreme Court rules against government-sponsored spousal benefit requirements for same-sex marriages. See you in the Supreme Court, I’m sure.
  7. Trump appoints Bethany Kozma, an anti-transgender activist, to the office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.
  8. The administration disbands the White House Council on Women and Girls.
  9. Jim Mattis delays a plan to allow transgender recruits in the military.
  10. June ends with no recognition of Pride Month from White House.
  11. White House aide Stephen Miller pushes Rex Tillerson to get tougher on immigration, which just seems to piss Tillerson off.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Emails show that the EPA’s chief of staff pressured one of the agency’s top scientists to change her testimony in a congressional hearing to downplay the firing of 57 scientific advisors. Scientists think the firings are evidence of the weakened role of science in the Trump administration. “The Board of Scientific Counselors had 68 members two months ago. It will have 11 come Sept. 1,” Dr. Swackhamer said. “They’ve essentially suspended scientific activities by ending these terms. We have no meetings scheduled, no bodies to do the work.”
  2. The House Science Committee majority sends daily emails to members and staff. This isn’t new, but now the emails include links to conservative media that deny global warming, including Breitbart, the Daily Mail, and Koch media sources like the Washington Free Beacon and the Daily Caller.
  3. Per Trump’s executive order, Scott Pruitt delivers a proposal to rescind Obama’s Waters of the United States (Wotus) protections. This will likely be a long legal battle. Wotus adds onto the Clean Water Act by protecting not only large bodies of water, but also smaller waterways that feed into them. The reversal removes protections from one-third of U.S. drinking water, and the administration openly admits it’s a business decision.
  4. Less than a month after meeting with the CEO of Dow Chemical, Scott Pruitt announces that the EPA would no longer pursue a ban on a Dow pesticide known to impact the development of brains of fetuses and infants.
  5. It looks like Rick Perry is going to get his wish for a red-team, blue-team climate study, which pits scientists with opposing views against each other basically trying to poke holes in the other’s research. Scott Pruitt plans to launch a critique of climate science with the goal of challenging mainstream climate science. Fingers crossed that they’ll do this right.
  6. Florida Governor Rick Scott sign HB 989, which lets Floridians object to specific teaching tools. This bill is widely regarded to be aimed at global warming and evolution. Anybody can complain, even if they don’t have a child in school, and a hearing officer must review each complaint.
  7. A coal power plant in central Mississippi gives up on it’s efforts to create clean coal power by capturing emissions. The technology isn’t working, so they plan to burn natural gas instead.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Janet Yellen says she doesn’t expect another major financial crisis in her lifetime, thanks to the consumer protections written into the banking reforms under Obama. She adds that unwinding those reforms would be a bad thing. Also that same day I got an email from Paul Ryan touting the House bill that reverses some of those banking reforms…
  2. The fight over tax reform is on in the House, upending a tentative agreement that would’ve initiated the process of tax reform and causing the budget committee to cancel their work this week.
  3. The dollar falls to 12-month low against the euro.
  4. Some Republican-dominated states are starting to approve significant tax increases after working for years under the theory that lower taxes lead to a stronger economy. Notably Kansas, South Carolina, and Tennessee are raising taxes to meet revenue requirements. This could pose a challenge to tax reform at the federal level.

Elections:

  1. Trump’s voter fraud commission asks states to provide detailed information about every voter in their systems, including addresses, 10-year voting histories, party registrations, and the last four digits of SSNs. This commission is headed by Mike Pence and Kris Kobach, who has written some of the harshest and most litigated voter suppression laws.
  2. While some states merely express concern about the request, at least 24 say they will not comply. Primary concerns are constitutionality, privacy, what the commission plans to do with the data, and how the data will be protected from Russian hackers.
  3. Trump wonders what these states are trying to hide.
  4. Kobach tried to implement a smaller version of this database in Kansas, and has been sued repeatedly for it and even fined in the process.
  5. Kobach promises to make some of the collected information public, though not the most sensitive information.
  6. The commission told states to send the information to an unsecured email address.
  7. And finally, Mike Pence’s state of Indiana says they won’t comply, and Kobach announces that his own state, Kansas, won’t comply with the request. WTF??

Miscellaneous:

  1. The AP releases an analysis showing how partisan gerrymandering has benefited the GOP, finding that Republicans widened or retained power because of the district lines they drew. The AP looked at all 435 House races and about 4,700 state seats. Four times as many states have Republican skewed districts than Democratic ones.
  2. Sean Spicer continues to ban live broadcasts and video recordings of the daily briefings.
  3. Europe gets hit with another ransomware attack called Petya.
  4. Time magazine finds that fake covers featuring Trump are hanging in many of his country clubs. They ask the Trump Organization to remove them all.
  5. Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekalow, is accused of filtering millions from his charity to his family and himself.
  6. Spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders accuses the media of being fake news while telling them to watch a video that might be fake news. In a briefing, she denounced the media (to a room full of the media) for producing fake news, using CNN’s recent retraction as an example AND telling journalists to watch a video by the discredited James O’Keefe as proof, though with the caveat ″whether it’s accurate or not I don’t know…″ Playboy reporter Brian Karem unloaded on her for inflaming a room full of journalists who’re just trying to get the story right while the White House continues to lie to them (and can I say, that was a beautiful moment).
  7. Tillerson blows up—I mean really blows up—at a high-level aide, apparently from building frustration about not being able to staff up his department because of White House oversight.
  8. Trump holds a fundraiser for his re-election campaign in 3 years at his own hotel.
  9. Trump continues to call Democrats on the Hill obstructionists, even though they tried working with him at first and they’ve offered to work together on healthcare. Everyone probably could’ve worked together on an infrastructure bill, but that good will is gone now.
  10. Trump goes on a bizarre Twitter rant where he says Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski (of Morning Joe) tried to get into Mar-a-Lago last winter and that Mika was bleeding from a bad facelift.
  11. This results in a unified, bipartisan chorus of protests that the tweets went too far…from pretty much everybody except Sarah Huckabee Sanders who defended the tweet.
  12. Then Joe and Mika accuse White House staff members of trying to blackmail them by promising to stop a negative story about Mika in the Enquirer if they apologized to Trump for their coverage of him.
  13. While the majority of Democrats are counseling against talk of impeachment, a group of House Democrats push a bill that would create a commission to investigate Trump and, if applicable, use the 25th amendment to remove Trump from office.
  14. Ivanka Trump, senior advisor to the president, says she tries to stay out of politics.
  15. The Inspector General clears the National Park Service of charges that they altered pictures of the sizes of crowds at Trump’s and Obama’s inaugurations. Whew. I was worried.
  16. Trump reportedly watches five hours of TV per day.
  17. The birth rate for teenage girls dropped 67% from 1991 to last year. It’s now at an all-time low and doctors point to knowledge of and access to contraceptives.
  18. Trump sends federal agents to help Chicago deal with its crime problem.
  19. Jason Chaffetz’ last day as a representative is this week. I don’t understand at all why he quit 6 months into his term.
  20. Impeachment marches and counter protests are held across the country.
  21. The last staffers of the science division at the White House leave this week. They were charged with policy issues like STEM education, biotechnology, and crisis response.
  22. Public beaches in New Jersey are closed Sunday due to a budget impasse. Chris Christie takes his family to the beach while all other beach goers are turned away.

Polls:

  1. The annual Pew Research Global Attitudes survey shows that 22% of people outside the U.S. have confidence that Trump will do the right thing, compared with 64% who had confidence in Obama at the same stage of his presidency. Trump rated higher than Obama in only 2 of the 37 countries polled: Russia and Israel.
  2. 74% in the Pew survey don’t trust Trump to do the right thing versus 59% who think the same of Putin.
  3. The survey also finds that U.S. favorability abroad has dropped from 64% to 49% under Trump.

Week 22 in Trump

Posted on June 26, 2017 in Politics, Trump

Russia, Russia, Russia. The Washington Post published a timeline of events in the Russian hacking probe, so this week’s recap is pretty full of all things Russia. But then the Senate finally released their super-secret healthcare bill, so between those two, this week’s post is pretty long.

Russian Investigation:

  1. We now know that Russian hackers launched cyber attacks last year on at least 21 state election servers, that they changed at least one voter roll, and that they stole voter records. Russian military intelligence also hacked a voting software vendor and sent spear-phishing emails to local election officials. Voting systems weren’t affected as far as we know.
  2. Congressional committees are investigating whether any of the hacked data ended up with the Trump campaign.
  3. We also know that even though senior government officials knew that Flynn was a security risk, they continued to give him security briefings.
  4. The Washington Post timeline of events shows that Putin led the Russian meddling op and that his specific goals were to defeat or harm Clinton and help elect Trump.
  5. We learn that partisanship slowed down our reaction at all levels.
    • Obama received intelligence about Russia meddling in a CIA report in August and wrestled with what to do. He didn’t want to be seen as swaying the election, leading Republicans opposed publicizing it, intelligence agencies were slow to move on it.
    • Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson (who also testified to Congress this week) tried to launch an effort to secure systems at a state level. However, he faced resistance from state officials who saw it as a federal takeover.
    • The bipartisan Congressional Gang of 8 was slow to schedule a meeting, though intelligence tried repeatedly.
  6. Here are a few things that were done to address the problem:
    • Obama had a three-point plan: assess Russia’s role and intent, strengthen areas of vulnerability, and get bipartisan support from congressional leaders and states to accept federal help.
    • The Obama administration warned Putin several times, increased sanctions, closed down two Russian facilities in the U.S., and sent dozens of Russian agents packing.
    • Last fall there was a surge in requests for special visas for Russians with highly technical skills to work at Russian facilities. They were denied until after the election.
    • Obama approved planting cyber weapons in Russia’s infrastructure, which could be triggered if things escalate between our countries. It’s up to Trump to decide whether to use this.
  7. Russia’s interference is unprecedented and mostly successful, though they were found out fairly quickly. So far, Russia hasn’t faced consequences proportionate to the damage caused by the attack.
  8. Intelligence officials voice concern that the State Department is being too lax with Russian diplomats and say we should crack down on their travel in the U.S. since the evidence shows the diplomats are taking advantage of lax enforcement to continue running intelligence ops.
  9. Bipartisan lawmakers complain that the administration is trying to delay their efforts to get tough on Russia.
  10. Democratic representatives say Kushner’s security clearance should be suspended. They also criticize the White House for allowing Michael Flynn to have security clearance for three weeks while they knew of his Russian activities.
  11. Jeff Sessions hires outside counsel.
  12. Trump admits he doesn’t have and didn’t make recordings of his conversations with Comey. Ironically, if he never would have brought it up, Comey might not have released the memo and Trump might not be under investigation for obstruction.
  13. Trump indicates that he bluffed about the tapes to influence Comey’s testimony. Note that this is witness tampering even if he was only trying to get Comey to be truthful.
  14. Trump blames Obama for not taking enough steps to protect us from Russia’s meddling. In blaming Obama for not doing more,Trump inadvertently admits that Russia did meddle, something he has until now mostly denied.
  15. Trump blames White House counsel Donald McGahn for letting the Russia probe spin out of control.
  16. Trey Gowdy, who ran something like 8 hearings on Benghazi, says he won’t hold any hearings on Russia’s meddling nor on Jared Kushner’s security clearance. His predecessor on the oversight committee, Jason Chaffetz, held hearings.
  17. The Kremlin calls Ambassador Sergey Kislyak back to Russia and will likely replace him with deputy foreign minister Anatoly Antonov.
  18. It turns out that Europe has been working on ways to fight meddling from the Russians for years. They’ve been using the same tactics—spreading disinformation, hacking, and trolling—across the continent. Europeans feel they have a better handle on it than we do here, and say looking at us is like watching ″House of Cards.″
  19. Spicer says he hasn’t talked to the president about Russia interference in the elections. Seriously?
  20. More troubles for Michael Flynn. He didn’t report a trip to Saudi Arabia where he represented U.S., Russian, and Saudi interests. His former business partner is also under investigation around payments from foreign clients.
  21. Tillerson has a plan for future relations with Russia: warn them about any more aggressive actions, work together on strategic interests, and emphasize stability.
  22. The administration debates withdrawing from the INF treaty with Russia, a disarmament pact that bans a class of nuclear missiles. Welcome to the new arms race.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Last week wasn’t a big week for courts, but this coming week will be. Last week, the Supreme court agrees to hear Wisconsin’s gerrymandering case. This could have long-reaching implications on how district lines can be drawn.

Healthcare:

  1. Senate Democrats invite Senate Republicans to a sit-down over healthcare, “so we can hear your plans and talk about how to make healthcare more affordable and accessible…” Mitch McConnell says that Democrats refuse to participate. Democrats, it seems, just called his bluff.
  2. Democrats hold the Senate floor overnight. At one point, Schumer tried to get McConnell to agree to at least 10 hours of debate, but he didn’t bite. The ACA had about 26 days of debate.
  3. The Senate releases their version of the ACA replacement, The Better Care Reconciliation Act, with a CBO score expected sometime this week. The Senate promised a top-to-bottom rewrite of the House bill, but it’s similar to the House version; and though it’s a little more modest, it’s still mean. Like the House bill, it’s expected to raise premiums, lower coverage, and cut Medicaid.
  4. Here are the basics of the Senate bill:
    • Caps and reduces Medicaid expansion, eliminating the expansion by 2024 (this insured 14 million people under the ACA).
    • States can implement a work requirement for able-bodied Medicaid recipients.
    • Reduces the number of people eligible for healthcare coverage subsidies.
    • Provides $50 billion to states over four years to help offset costs.
    • Provides $62 billion over 10 years to a fund that would help states offset gaps in coverage.
    • Keeps protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
    • Ends employer and individual mandates.
    • Lets states define mandated coverages.
    • Cuts funding to Planned Parenthood (or any other medical facility that provides abortions).
    • Repeals all taxes, but the Cadillac tax on employer plans would return in 2025.
    • Provides $2 billion to help fight the opioid epidemic.
  5. Whether or not there are enough votes, and right now there aren’t, it seems the Senate plans to vote on the bill before the July 4 recess.
  6. Even Republicans complain about the rush to bring this bill to vote and the secrecy in which it was developed.
  7. The AARP and AMA weigh in against the bill, citing concerns about older citizens and the disabled. Even insurance companies hate this bill, predicting a 25% shortfall in covering the actual cost of care.
  8. On the day the new bill is released, protestors outside McConnell’s office are forcibly removed for demonstrating, many of whom were disabled—using wheelchairs and other assistive devices.
  9. The following senators say they won’t vote for the bill in its current form: Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson. A 5th, Dean Heller of Nevada, later comes out against the bill. Others, like Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, and Bill Cassidy, are on the fence.
  10. Obama makes a rare policy statement and slams the Senate healthcare bill as inhumane.
  11. Sean Spicer says that Trump is “committed to making sure that no one who currently is in the Medicaid program is affected in anyway, which is reflected in the Senate Bill and he’s pleased with that.” This makes me think Trump doesn’t know what’s in the bill.
  12. Trump slams Democrats for opposing the healthcare bills, but it’s his own party really holding this up since they have a majority. Republicans on the Hill know that they now own healthcare as a political issue.
  13. As soon as Dean Heller comes out against the healthcare bill, America First Policies (a group Mike Pence fundraised for), goes after him with an ad campaign. They did this so quickly, they must have been prepared for it. Heller’s seat is one of the least safe Republican seats in 2018, but even so, the campaign aims to punish Heller and to force his vote, an act of retaliation that is making senior Republicans nervous.
  14. California’s bill for single payer is shelved for now. Speaker Anthony Rendon says it needs to be fleshed out before they can pass it.

International:

  1. An armed attacker drove into police on the Champs Elysees, but was killed before he could do much damage. Less that 24 hours later, police foil a suicide bomber attack in a Brussels train station, with the attacker killing only himself.
  2. Saudi security forces disrupt a planned terrorist attack near the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and the suicide bomber ends up blowing himself up, killing only himself and injuring 11.
  3. Canada’s plan to deal with the new administration’s protectionist tendencies is to organize a network of American officials, lawmakers and businesses in order to cultivate relationships beyond the White House. Canadian officials have been speaking with mayors, governors, members of Congress, and business leaders, circumventing the White House.
  4. Talks between the U.S. and Asian countries left delegates more pessimistic than ever about issues with North Korea, with North Korea leaving no room for negotiation.
  5. Turkey bans teaching evolution in schools and police fire rubber bullets into an LGBTQ pride parade there. This is what a burgeoning authoritarian regime looks like.
  6. An oil tanker explodes in Pakistan, leaving at least 148 dead and 50 more in critical condition.
  7. Some Trump advisors push for regime change in Tehran, with war a possibility. Tillerson would like to work with Iran towards a ″peaceful transition of that government.″ Iran is not amused.
  8. Tillerson plans to remove Iraq and Myanmar from the list of worst offenders of the use of child soldiers, and refuses to add Afghanistan. This goes against recommendations of experts and senior diplomats, and indicates human rights is not a big concern.

Legislation:

  1. A draft of an executive order to address drug prices actually doesn’t reduce prices and even allows pharmaceutical companies to charge higher prices abroad and to stop selling to hospitals in need at discount prices.
  2. After the Missouri Senate passed the anti-abortion bill SB 5, the House amended it to be even more misogynistic. It now preempts a St. Louis ordinance that bans landlords from discriminating based on your method of birth control, whether you’re pregnant, or whether you’ve had an abortion.
  3. Trump signs into law a bipartisan bill to reform the VA system. The bill makes it easier to fire and discipline problem employees, and is a result of the problem with wait times for patients.
  4. As the Senate bill imposing harsher sanctions on Iran and Russia goes to the House, the White House lobbies the House to weaken the bill. The bill restricts the president’s ability to weaken Russia sanctions.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump has yet to comment on the act of terror committed in London by a white guy against Muslims leaving a mosque.
  2. Following the Philando Castile case, another officer, Dominique Heaggan-Brown, is found not guilty of first-degree reckless homicide. She was on trial for fatally shooting Sylville Smith during a foot chase.
  3. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin (so far) join together in suing the state of Texas over the recently passed sanctuary cities bill, SB 4.
  4. A federal appeals court lifts an injunction on a Mississippi law that lets individuals and government employees discriminate against members of the LGBTQ community on religious grounds. The law is likely to remain blocked through the appeals process, though.
  5. California restricts state employees from taking business trips to Texas, Alabama, Kentucky, and South Dakota after those states pass bills that allow discrimination against LGBTQ (and other) parents in adoption and foster care cases or that allow school groups to ban LGBTQ members. Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee were already barred for similar reasons.
  6. The State Department restarts the Countering Violent Extremism program, but cancels funding for Life After Hate (whose purpose is to de-radicalize neo-Nazis and stop white extremism). Life After Hate has seen a 20-fold increase in requests for help since the election.

Climate/EPA:

  1. DOE Secretary Rick Perry says he doesn’t believe the primary driver in global warming is CO2 and implies that the oceans might have something to do with it instead. This is refuted by conclusions of the EPA, NASA, and NOAA, to name a few. However, it does match what the head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, has said.
  2. Scott Pruitt says he won’t renew the contracts of 38 scientists currently on the Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC). He also plans to lay off 1,200 people from the EPA.
  3. Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, plans to cut at least 4,000 jobs in his department.
  4. India joins other members of BRICS (a group including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) in nudging the U.S. back into the climate agreement and in asking developed countries to fulfill their commitments.
  5. The Trump administration removes the Yellowstone grizzly bear from the endangered species list. Depending on who you talk to, this is either a prime example of how well the endangered species program works or a dangerous step for grizzlies.
  6. OSHA rolls back some Obama-era protections for workers in the maritime and construction industries around exposure to beryllium, a potentially deadly mineral.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Economists say the only way to hit the 3% GDP growth projected in Trump’s budget is to increase the workforce. The only way to do that is to double the immigrant population.
  2. The Department of Labor won’t enforce the Fiduciary Rule created under Obama. This rule would make retirement plan managers provide unbiased investment advice instead of advice that would line their own pockets.
  3. The House Subcommittee on Health, Labor, Employment and Pensions discusses three anti-union bills.
  4. Boeing and Carrier, both companies that Trump previously negotiated with to keep jobs in the U.S., announce layoffs and additional moves to manufacturing abroad.
  5. Trump’s proposed budget would cut HUD programs to shelter the poor and fight homelessness, but the federal housing subsidy that pays him millions of dollars a year wouldn’t be affected.
  6. In a rally, Trump says he’s for the poor people, but that he doesn’t want any poor people in his cabinet. And poor people cheered.

Elections:

  1. Republican Karen Handel defeats Democrat Jon Ossoff in the Representative runoff in Georgia’s 6th (Tom Price’s seat). Republican Ralph Norman also defeats Democrat Archie Parnell in South Carolina’s 5th (Nick Mulvaney’s seat). These lead to much over-analysis and reading too much into it from both sides.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus reject an invitation to meet with Trump, saying they’re pessimistic after their last visit and don’t want to be a part of another photo op.
  2. A man stabs a police officer at the Flint, Michigan, airport while allegedly yelling “God is great!” in Arabic.
  3. Rumor is that Trump hopes to nominate Sam Clovis, a talk show radio host, as Chief Scientist at the Department of Agriculture (USDA). In fairness, Clovis does have a PhD in Public Administration, but he’s no scientist.
  4. Deep Root Analytics, a Republican data analytics firm, accidentally stores personal information on 198 million American voters out in the open on an unsecured server. The ID for each voter exposed enough data points to pull together an incredible amount of private information for each name.
  5. Trump holds his 5th political rally since taking office, this time in Iowa. He makes more misstatements than I can include here, but here are a few.
    • He promises to pass a law that would ban immigrants from getting welfare benefits until they’ve been here five years, which has been law since the 1990s.
    • He criticizes wind energy in a state that gets a third of its energy from wind.
    • He denounces the wars in the Mideast even though he just authorized additional forces to Afghanistan.
    • He calls the Paris agreement binding, though he called it non-binding in his Rose Garden speech a month ago. Hint: it’s non-binding.
    • He derides trade deals, though the Iowa economy partly relies on exports.
    • He says the U.S. is one of the highest taxed nations. We rank 31st in order of highest taxes paid in developed countries (or 4th lowest), and we’re well below the average for developed countries.
  6. Trump selects Jerry Falwell Jr. to head an education reform task force charged with reducing student protections mandated by the Department of Education, including certain Title IX rules on reporting and investigating sexual assault on campus.
  7. Trump appoints lobbyist Richard Hohlt to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships. Hohlt is a registered agent of Saudi Arabia, and was paid nearly a half million dollars to lobby on their behalf.
  8. Jane Sanders (Bernie’s wife) retains a lawyer to represent her in a fraud investigation around the loans she received for the Vermont college she was once president of.
  9. A judge sanctions Kris Kobach for deceptive conduct in a court case brought by the ACLU over voter rights. Kobach withheld subpoenaed documents containing proposed changes to the National Voter Registration Act, saying they weren’t relevant to the case. The judge determined that to be a lie. Kobach is Trump’s pick to head his voter fraud commission.
  10. Mike Pence officiates Steve Mnuchin’s wedding.
  11. The Koch network works to influence the Trump administration after first giving them the cold shoulder, starting with a meeting with Mike Pence. The Kochs announce plans to spend $300-$400 million in the next election cycle with the goals of influencing tax reforms, rolling back protections, and pushing for a more conservative healthcare bill.
  12. An AP analysis concludes that the most recent partisan gerrymandering efforts mostly benefitted the GOP. Redistricting has been so blatant that many states have spent years fighting over their district lines in courts.
  13. Matt Mika, a victim of the baseball practice shooting, is released from the hospital.

Polls:

  1. 81% of Americans don’t want Trump to interfere with Mueller.
  2. Trump’s approval rating in the CBS News Poll is at a new low of 36%, with a 57% disapproval rating.
  3. 18% of Americans support withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, while 70% are concerned that it will hurt the country’s standing in the world.
  4. 64% of Americans disapprove of the administration’s handling of global warming; 34% approve.
  5. Americans believe Comey more than Trump 2-to-1.
  6. 16% of Americans think the House healthcare plan is good; 48% say it’s bad.

Week 20 in Trump

Posted on June 12, 2017 in Politics, Trump

Attribution: Getty Images

Sorry for the long post but a lot happened again this week—though the news was all about Comey, all the time.

“Lordy, I hope there are tapes.” The White House won’t confirm the existence of the tapes Trump tweeted about, but if they do exist we could get through this a lot faster.

Comey:

  1. The Great America Alliance PAC takes out an attack ad against Comey the day before he testifies. The White House tries to undermine Comey and the RNC mobilizes its base by issuing an email: “Talking Points and Digital Packet for Senate Intelligence Committee Hearing.” Tip: This is not a court of public opinion.
  2. Trump’s lawyers urge him not to tweet during Comey’s testimony, and Trump’s staff keeps him busy throughout most of the hearing.
  3. Comey testifies in front of a Senate committee (as if you didn’t know). Half of the committee asks about the Russia probe and alleged interference by Trump while the other half asks about Clinton’s email investigation. Main takeaways:
    • Trump wasn’t personally under investigation at the time of Comey’s firing, though the issue of collusion is being taken up by Special Prosecutor Mueller.
    • Trump asked Comey to take it easy on Flynn in a conversation where he asked everyone but Comey to leave the room. Mueller is looking into this.
    • The day after the above, Comey asked Sessions not to leave him alone with Trump, saying private interactions were inappropriate.
    • After Trump tweeted that he had tapes of their conversations, Comey leaked his own memo about the Flynn conversation in order to force the appointment of a special prosecutor. He has since provided copies of all his memoranda to Mueller. Note that this is not illegal but is also not consistent with FBI employment agreements.
    • Sessions never questioned why Trump kicked everyone but Comey out of the Oval Office for a private meeting.
    • Comey was so worried about misunderstandings and lies in his conversations with Trump, he made copious notes of all of them.
    • Comey suspected beforehand that Sessions would have to recuse himself and also didn’t seem to trust Sessions to keep sensitive information from the White House. The only way Comey would have known this beforehand is if Sessions’ name had come up in the investigation.
    • Comey believes Trump when he says he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation. Comey also accused the administration of defaming both him and the FBI as part of that firing.
    • Neither Sessions nor Rosenstein expressed dissatisfaction with Comey’s job performance prior to the letters they sent to Trump (at Trump’s request).
    • Russia interfered in our elections and will continue to do so.
    • There is still a lot of information Comey can’t talk about.
    • Comey said an article published last February in the NY Times was largely inaccurate, though the NY Times stands by their reporting and much of the substance of the story has already been shown to be true.
  4. Paul Ryan defends Trump’s actions with Comey, saying “he’s new to this.”
  5. Trump basically says Comey lied under oath and that he’d go under oath to dispute Comey’s testimony. But he also says that Comey vindicated him… so either Comey lied under oath or he cleared Trump.
  6. Trump calls Comey’s testimony “an excuse by the Democrats, who lost an election they shouldn’t have lost,” though Comey’s a lifelong Republican. And also Republicans control congress and the committees investigating Russia ties.
  7. In his rebuttal to Comey’s version of events, Trump’s lawyer gets the timeline wrong for what the NY Times reported and when they reported it in relation to the release of Comey’s memo.
  8. Both sides are claiming victory here, or as was heard over the weekend “Comey Poisons Trump: Trump Claims Victory.”
  9. Representative Al Green (D-Texas) begins writing articles of impeachment against Trump for his firing of Comey. #premature

Russia:

  1. A classified document shows that Russian military intelligence ran cyberattacks against voting system software vendors. They used the hacked data to send spear-phishing emails to over 100 local election officials before last year’s elections. They targeted multiple states and got into at least one voter database.
  2. The above information was leaked to The Intercept. The Feds arrest the suspected leaker, Reality Winner, confirming the existence of the document.
  3. It turns out that the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee, which recently issued subpoenas to learn more about the unmasking of names of U.S. citizens, had also themselves asked to unmask the names of organizations and individuals last year. Devin Nunes signed off on all subpoenas.
  4. Putin denies that he has compromising information on Trump.
  5. This was under International last week, but all things come around to Russia. After four nations—Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, and Bahrain—cut ties with Qatar, the FBI joins the Qatar government in investigating the involvement of Russian hackers. They suspect the hackers planted a false story with Qatar’s state news agency, launching a Mideast crisis.
  6. Trump is smart to get private counsel from outside the White House. When Ken Starr was investigating Clinton, he got attorney/client privilege thrown out when it came to conversations with White House counsel, setting a precedent that could still be used.
  7. Intelligence Director Dan Coats corroborates Comey’s story that Trump requested that he lay off Flynn in the Russia probe. Officials corroborated that story in March. In testimony, though, both Coats and Rogers say they’ve never felt pressured to do something immoral, illegal, or inappropriate. They both refuse to discuss specifics of conversations between them and Trump, and refuse to answer questions directly.
  8. The Kremlin turns its attention to our military members and veterans by ratcheting up hacks, trolling, fake news, and propaganda directed at them. Russians set up fake Facebook accounts posing as attractive young women to friend service members and target the DoD on Twitter for phishing attacks.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Once again, the Supreme Court upholds a lower court ruling that threw out North Carolina state legislative district lines that discriminate against voters based on race. This is the latest in a string of rulings against NC’s highly gerrymandered districts. Literally, NC is the poster child for how not to run a democratic republic.
  2. Trump is frustrated with AG Sessions because Session’s recused himself from the Russia investigations and because Trump thinks that the DOJ should’ve stuck with the first travel ban, not the “watered down, politically correct” [though still unconstitutional] version. Sessions had apparently offered to step down at one point.
  3. The Justice Department considers major changes to the H-1B visa program, including forcing companies to advertise jobs online first and hire U.S. workers first, as well as reducing cap and duration of visas.
  4. Trump nominates Christopher Wray to FBI chief. The law firm where Wray works represents Rosneft, the Russian oil company at the center of the Russia probe.

Healthcare:

  1. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wants a Senate vote on the ACA replacement bill by the July 4 recess. He’s bypassing procedure and trying to schedule a vote without going through committee hearings. Props to Claire McCaskill for calling him out on this. For the ACA, there were committee hearings, amendments, and a public comment period.
  2. Senators don’t sound positive, and word is McConnell just wants this done. It’s possible he’ll bring up the vote whether it can pass or not, just so they can move on to tax reform.
  3. The healthcare committee starts sending the bill piecemeal to the CBO.
  4. McConnell seems optimistic he has the votes needed to pass a replacement, but the bill is still being modified to accommodate various factions, including moves to accommodate moderates that will likely alienate more conservative Republicans.
  5. Meanwhile, five states—California,New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts—all have single payer legislation floating around.
  6. The Department of Health and Human Services signals a reversal of an Obama-era rule that prevented nursing homes from forcing tenants to sign an arbitration agreement as a requirement of being admitted.

International:

  1. As we learn of potential Russian hacking in the Qatar/Saudi issue, Trump takes credit for causing the situation, calling it “hard but necessary” (and apparently forgetting they’re a strong ally). He says the nations spoke to him about it before they cut ties, and that he and Tillerson agreed it was time to end funding to Qatar. Just before Trump said that, though, Tillerson asked the four nations involved to ease their blockade because it’s causing humanitarian problems for Qatar and logistics issues on our military base there. Trump later offers to help mediate the conflict.
  2. Trump doubles down on his criticism of London’s mayor after being called out for taking the mayor’s words out of context, tweeting: “Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his ‘no reason to be alarmed’ statement.” Londoners love Khan. This would be like Tony Blair calling Rudy Giuliani pathetic after 9/11.
  3. Mayor Khan suggests that the U.K. should cancel Trump’s state visit.
  4. Trump puts his visit to England on hold amid worries of protests.
  5. A man attacks a police officer with a hammer at Notre Dame. It’s being looked at as a terror attack.
  6. The death toll in the Kabul bombing from the previous week rises to over 150.
  7. Terrorist attacks in the parliament building and Ayatollah’s mausoleum in Iran kill at least 12 and wound dozens. ISIS claims responsibility, though Iran points the finger at Saudi Arabia and the U.S. The White House sends a message of support, but then closes out by blaming Iran for sponsoring terrorism.
  8. It turns out no real deal-making happened on Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia. According to the Brookings Institution, there are no deals or contracts, just letters of interest or intent. The Senate hasn’t received anything to review, and so far all the deals began during the Obama administration.
  9. Theresa May’s Tory party suffered a setback in a snap election, losing their parliamentary majority while the Labour party gained several seats. She called a snap election three years early to bolster her negotiating power with the EU over Brexit, but now it looks like her position is weakened and she’ll have to form a coalition.
  10. Unlike May’s party, French President Macron’s party is about to win a very large majority of parliamentary seats. Round one of votes was this week; candidates who didn’t win outright go on to round two next week.
  11. US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces break into Raqa, an ISIS stronghold in Syria.
  12. The U.S. provides military air assistance to Philippine troops fighting off a Muslim militant siege in Malawi.
  13. The U.S. launches an airstrike in Somalia, killing 8 in an action that was only possible because Trump changed the designation of that part of Somalia to a war zone.
  14. The Senate confirms former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown as Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, who credits former opponent Elizabeth Warren with moving his nomination through Senate.
  15. Romanian President Ioannis contradicts Trump in a joint press conference. When asked about including Romania in our Visa Waiver Program (VWP), Trump says they didn’t talk about it, but Ioannis says they did and that it’s very important to Romanians.

Legislation:

  1. After nearly half a year, the only notable legislative achievements of the administration are rollbacks to existing legislation and regulations.
  2. Congress looks at Trump’s push to privatize air traffic control through a non-profit company, which has bipartisan support and has already been done in several European countries with success. However, this has been around before and not passed Congress.
  3. It’s looking possible that Congress might raise the debt ceiling and continue funding Planned Parenthood without repealing the ACA, reforming taxes, or passing an infrastructure bill.
  4. Senators from both parties push for a vote on harsher sanctions against Russia, making it harder to rollback any current sanctions.
  5. The House votes along partisan lines to roll back parts of Dodd Frank, passing a bill named the Financial Choice Act. They’re calling it a jobs bill, but it really gives banks more freedom to pull the same risky crap that led to the financial crisis. The Senate has a bipartisan effort going to rewrite the regulations as well.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Kellyanne Conway’s husband sends out a series of tweets critical of Trump’s tweets about the travel ban, saying it only hurts his chances of winning the lawsuit.
  2. This isn’t really new news, but it’s in the news this week. School kids often quote Trump to bully classmates, with many reported incidents of white students bullying Latino, Middle Eastern, Asian, black, or Jewish classmates using the same rhetoric as Trump. How do you convince kids that even though the president of the United States does it, it’s not OK?
  3. Anti-Sharia marches around the country are met with counter-protestors of similar sizes. We need better education on what Sharia is and isn’t.
  4. It’s Pride month, but annual parades around the country morph into a mixture of pride and resistance, as hundreds of thousands of marchers show up not to just support LGBTQ rights, but also to resist Trump’s agenda.

Climate/EPA:

  1. While discussing our withdrawal from the Paris agreement, Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, says, ”I think the rest of the world applauded what we did in Paris.” First, this is the EPA. And also, no, much of the world chastised us out loud.
  2. The second highest ranking U.S. diplomat at the Beijing embassy resigns in the wake of the Paris agreement withdrawal, refusing to officially notify the Chinese of our withdrawal. He was a 27-year diplomat and was acting ambassador until the new ambassador arrives. The acting ambassador to England and the ambassador to Qatar have also publicly broken with Trump.
  3. California Governor Jerry Brown takes a leadership role by meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping to discuss climate change, highlighting how Trump’s ‘America first’ policy is sidelining him on the world stage.
  4. The United States Climate Alliance expands to include 13 states representing about 35% of our economy. Ten additional governors and the mayor of D.C. express support for the Paris agreement, but have not yet joined the coalition.
  5. I don’t know whether this falls under climate or travel ban, but Trump floats the idea of putting solar panels on the wall to pay for it, since Mexico for some reason still says they won’t.
  6. Hawaii becomes the first state to enact legislation supporting the Paris agreement. Under the new law, Hawaii will measure the sea level rise and set a strategy to reduce greenhouse gases.
  7. Democratic Senators question Betsy DeVos on whether the DOE was behind the recent mailings sent out by the Heartland Institute to 300,000 science teachers about how to teach that climate change is not manmade. Interesting Fact: Heartland Institute tried to convince us smoking doesn’t have adverse health effects.
  8. A federal court gives the EPA until June 15 to justify why they should be able to pause regulations limiting methane emissions while they do a review.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump’s infrastructure briefing includes no written plan, not even bullet points.
  2. Scott Pruitt implies that almost 50,000 jobs have been created in coal since Trump took office. The actual number is 1,000; the rest are in mining in general.
  3. Kansas legislators override Governor Brownback’s veto of their tax reform bill. Kansas has been undergoing a failed experiment since 2012, working under the theory that low taxes would result in a thriving economy. But it’s done the opposite and Kansas is in a world of hurt. Even still, the state congress barely pulled enough votes together to override his veto.
  4. In the aftermath of the vote, Kris Kobach launches his run for governor on an anti-immigration platform. Kobach’s the author of the strident and much-litigated voting laws in Kansas, leading many to accuse him of voter suppression. Kobach also serves on Trump’s voter fraud committee.
  5. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin takes his first foreign trip, meeting with Canadian officials on trade, economy, and national security issues.
  6. Trump withdraws Obama-era guidance on how employees are classified; a win for business, a loss for workers being misclassified as independent contractors (which are cheaper for business than actual employees). He also withdraws guidance that made parent companies liable for labor violations by their franchises.
  7. The U.S. and Mexico avert a trade crisis by coming to an agreement over Mexican sugar exports.
  8. The DOJ ends the practice of forcing companies to make payouts to affected groups when settling law suits. For example, when cases against banks for predatory lending practices were settled, the banks had to pay reparations to affected homeowners. No more.
  9. Trump proposes charging retailers a fee for accepting food stamps, a move that will largely affect small grocers but will also generate over $2 billion over the next decade.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Frustrated by Trump’s order to only comply with information requests from Republican congressional leaders, Democratic congressional leaders consider posting all questions publicly. DHS Secretary Kelly says his department will respond to all congressional requests, regardless of who they come from.
  2. Trump blames Democrats for holding up his ambassadorship nominations, even though there aren’t enough Democrats in the Senate to block them. It turns out that while he’s tapped several nominees, he hasn’t officially submitted them to the Senate even though he selected some as far back as April.
  3. Four law firms have turned down requests to represent Trump in the Russia probe amid concerns he wouldn’t listen or wouldn’t pay.
  4. Sean Spicer says we should consider Trump’s tweets to be official statements.
  5. It appears that, while Eric Trump’s foundation started out doing good work, at some point Donald Trump decided the foundation should be billed for everything for events held at a Trump golf course. So Eric ended up funneling charity dollars back into the Trump business. This is under investigation.
  6. Newly elected Montana Congressman Greg Gianforte published an apology to the Guardian reporter he assaulted, saying his actions were unacceptable. He also donated $50,000 to the Committee to Protect Journalists. He still faces legal charges, but there won’t be a civil suit.
  7. Trump headlines the luncheon kick-off event of the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s 2017 Road to Majority gathering in D.C.
  8. For all you Trey Gowdy fans, he’s the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee where he’ll lead oversight of the Trump administration.
  9. Melania and Barron Trump move into the White House.
  10. The Michigan Democratic Party agrees to pay a $500,000 fine for misreporting contributions raised by bingo fundraisers prior to 2014. It’s the largest fine paid for breaking campaign finance laws.
  11. Trump’s approval rating drops to near lows of 36% in the Gallup Poll and to 34% in the Quinnipiac poll.

Week 18 in Trump

Posted on May 30, 2017 in Politics, Trump

With Trump off on his whirlwind trip abroad, I figured it would be all international news this week. But the chaos and drama at home seem to be never-ending. Here’s what happened last week.

Russia:

  1. The director of national intelligence (Daniel Coats) and the director of the NSA (Adm. Michael Rogers) testify before the House Intelligence Committee. We learn that in March, Trump asked both to deny publicly that there is evidence of collusion between his campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.
  2. The Senate Intelligence Committee announces additional subpoenas to require Michael Flynn to turn over documents. He could be held in contempt of Congress if he refuses.
  3. Joe Lieberman withdraws from consideration for the position of FBI director after Trump retains Marc Kasowitz to represent him on Russia issues. Lieberman cites conflict of interest, since he is currently senior counsel at Kasowitz’s law firm.
  4. Former CIA director John Brennan testifies before the House Intelligence Committee, saying he saw intelligence that showed contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, and that he is convinced that Russia aggressively tried to interfere in the election.
  5. Brennan says that the CIA intelligence found that Russians discussed how to influence Trump advisors but whether they actually tried to influence either is still being investigated
  6. There are currently at least five probes related to Russia, from ties with Trump campaign staff and associates to James Comey’s firing.
  7. Fox News retracts a story about DNC staffer Seth Rich where they implied that he was the leaker to Wikileaks and that his death was related to the DNC. Sean Hannity refuses to let it go completely, despite all players saying there’s no evidence of either the contact with Wikileaks or the murder being anything other than a robbery gone bad.
  8. Jeff Sessions says he was advised not to disclose his meetings with foreign leaders as a senator on his security clearance application, including meetings with Russian officials. It seems this is standard for legislators, since they meet with many officials, but still… you’d think he’d have thought this one through a little better.
  9. The new person of interest this week in the Russia investigation is Jared Kushner. The Russian ambassador told Moscow that Kushner wanted a back door communication channel to the Kremlin.
  10. The Wall Street Journal publishes a report about Aaron Nevins, a Florida-based Republican who was provided hacked DNC information from Guccifer 2.0 and shared that information with others in the GOP. The info was used by Paul Ryan’s campaign and PAC, among others.
  11. According to Comey, he knew a piece of evidence he was working on in relation to Clinton’s email investigation was false and planted by Russian intelligence. There was a document indicating Loretta Lynch told the Clinton campaign not to worry about the emails–no charges would be brought. This led to Comey overriding Lynch last year when he made the public announcement that the investigation was over.

Courts/Justice:

  1. It’s been a bad couple of weeks for the North Caroline GOP. On May 15, the Supreme Court struck down a voter law designed to depress black voter turnout ″with almost surgical precision.″ The following week, a court also ruled against new maps of congressional districts that were also designed to limit the black vote. The message here is that states need to stop gerrymandering.

Healthcare:

  1. The CBO releases it’s analysis of the healthcare bill passed by the house. Main takeaways:
    • Premiums would vary significantly according to health.
    • People with pre-existing conditions would likely not be able to afford premiums over time.
    • Around 1/6 of Americans live in states that would request waivers, and those markets will be less likely to be stable.
    • Premiums would likely be lower for healthy people.
    • It would likely reduce the deficit by around $120 billion.
    • The 10-year outlook estimates that 23 million more people will be uninsured.
  2. Mitch McConnell says he doesn’t know how he can get to 50 votes. My advice? Come up with a plan that works for all Americans.
  3. Senate Republicans, who are working on their own version of repeal and replace, consider pushing back the repeal of Obamacare to 2020. Hmmm. Election year. Coincidence?

International:

  1. A suicide bomber detonates a bomb at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester England, killing 22 and injuring 58 more. This leads investigators to a network of suspected terrorists and at least 13 people are arrested in connection with the bombing.
  2. And the above continues the ongoing leak saga… apparently the name of the bomber along with crime scene photos were leaked to U.S. news agencies who later published the information.
  3. The Philippines government releases a transcript of Trump’s call with Duterte from last month in which Trump praised Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem.” Of note, Duterte started a drug war that sanctioned killing suspects in the streets with no trial. Over 7,000 people have been killed.
  4. In the same tape, Trump mentions “two nuclear submarines” off the coast of North Korea. This info isn’t technically classified, but the Pentagon typically doesn’t talk about nuclear sub locations.
  5. Wilbur Ross expresses surprise that there weren’t any protests against Trump in Saudi Arabia. Protesting isn’t allowed in Saudi Arabia.
  6. Trump continues his trip abroad, meeting with Netanyahu in Israel, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and Pope Francis. Then on to the NATO and G7 summits.
  7. The warmth evident in Trump’s visits with Mid Eastern leaders sits in stark contrast to the icy chill around the summits with our traditional allies.
  8. In the NATO summit, Trump scolds nations not living up to the 2% guideline of military spending to GDP, refuses to reconfirm the ″all for one, one for all″ alliance (specifically the collective defense clause), and criticizes Germany for our trade deficit with them.
  9. At the G7 summit, Trump refuses to commit one way or the other on the Paris agreement, but acquiesces on trade and protectionism.
  10. After the European meetings, Angela Merkel suggests that Europe and U.S. relationship is at a point where they can’t fully rely on each other anymore. While emphasizing maintaining friendly relationships with the U.S., England, and Russia, she also says Europe basically needs to do its own thing.
  11. The Pentagon apologizes to all affected in a botched airstrike on Mosul in March in which over 100 civilians were killed.
  12. Trump calls Korean leader Kim Jung Un a madman with nukes just days before he says he’d be honored to meet with Kim.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rules against the Muslim ban 10-3, saying that taken in context, the executive order “drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.”
  2. The State Department lifts the restriction on the number of refugees allowed to enter the U.S. Currently around 800 refugees enter each week; it’s estimated that will rise to over 1,500 per month.
  3. Though Tillerson made a statement about Ramadan, he’s breaking with two decades of tradition and declining to host a commemorative event this year.
  4. A white supremacist harangues two teenage girls for being Muslim (only one is, and she was wearing a hijab). Three heroes step in to defend them–two pay for it with their lives and the other with serious injuries. Prosecutors are trying to figure out if they can try this as a hate crime.
  5. In international discrimination, militants opened fire on a bus of Christians, killing at least 26 and wounding 25. This is the fourth attack on Christians in Egypt since December.
  6. And some good news in international discrimination, Tawain’s highest court rules against their marriage law saying that defining marriage as between a man and a women violates equal rights.
  7. Nevada and Connecticut ban conversion therapy for minors, which has been proven not to work. Duh.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A group of 22 Republican senators urge Trump to leave the Paris agreement. They say it will get in the way of legally gutting the Clean Power Plan.
  2. The G7 summit declaration for 2017 includes the following text:
    “The United States of America is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics,” the leaders wrote. “Understanding this process, the Heads of State and of Government of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom and the Presidents of the European Council and of the European Commission reaffirm their strong commitment to swiftly implement the Paris Agreement, as previously stated at the Ise-Shima Summit.”

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump’s budget released this week doesn’t account for the loss in revenue from tax cuts, leading some to say there is a $2 trillion basic math error.
  2. The budget estimates 3% economic growth, something economists are skeptical about.
  3. The new budget would lead to cuts to social security, MediCare, Medicaid, healthcare services, veterans’ benefits, food stamps, NIH, the State Department, CDC, food safety and inspections, education, transportation, agriculture assistance, international funding, the Justice Department, and more. Take a look at the NY Times breakdown for a deeper dive.
  4. The largest cuts (percentage-wise) are to the EPA, State Department, and USDA (including crop insurance, conservation programs, and rural development programs).
  5. In opposition to promises made, this budget cuts Medicare and social security; doesn’t include funding for the wall or police training; doesn’t increase funding for PTSD treatment; and doesn’t defund sanctuary cities;
  6. Carrier announces they’re sending 600 jobs to Mexico and the huge monetary investment they made in their U.S. plant is going into automation, not new jobs.
  7. And in the ″I’m taking this personally″ category, the budget gets rid of federal spending for the earthquake early warning system.
  8. Trump says Germany should stop selling so many cars in the U.S. Even though most of those sold here are made in the U.S.

Elections:

  1. The day Greg Gianforte is charged with misdemeanor assault, Montana elects him in a special election for the House seat left empty by Ryan Zinke’s move to the cabinet. He allegedly knocked over and began punching a reporter who interrupted a meeting with two Fox News reporters.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The OGE rejects a White House request to stop the agency from looking into waivers granted to Trump administration officials that were hired from corporations and lobbying firms. Note that waivers are granted under most administrations, but the OGE has always looked into them. The Obama administration made their waivers public.
  2. It appears that the Trump administration is adopting the Russian strategy of feeding false information. According to NY Times reporters, they have received misinformation from people in the administration on several occasions, but the lies were caught during the news vetting process.
  3. A conservative group of Congress urge Trump to fire NIH director Dr. Francis Collins saying he’s not pro-life enough. They object to stem cell research and using human embryos in research.
  4. John Boehner says Trump is still learning how to be president. Other than getting the House to pass a healthcare bill, he says everything else has been a disaster. (Though I would argue getting Gorsuch confirmed was also a success.)
  5. According to the Wall Street Journal, the administration might get a legal team to review Trump’s tweets to avoid political and legal trouble, especially in light of the special counsel. His tweets have gotten him in trouble in the past, most recently around Comey’s firing and most notably when he accused Obama of wiretapping him.
  6. Chris Christie advises Jared Kushner that the president should lawyer up and keep his mouth shut.
  7. Graduating students at Notre Dame walked out on their graduation in protest of Mike Pence giving the commencement address.
  8. 65% of voters say there’s a lot of fake news in mainstream media. My advice? Stick with reputable news agencies. Here’s a site I find helpful: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com. Click around the categories in the black bar, but mostly avoid the questionable sources!

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

  1. Robert Mulvaney, budget director: “If you’re on food stamps and you’re able-bodied, we need you to go to work. If you’re on disability insurance and you’re not supposed to be — if you’re not truly disabled, we need you to go back to work.” In reality, around half of those relying on SNAP have at least one person in the family working (numbers vary), and an estimated 82% work within a year of receiving SNAP. The budget director should have these numbers.

Week 16 in Trump

Posted on May 15, 2017 in Politics, Trump

Attribution: Getty Images

Last week, the news was absolutely dominated by the firing of FBI director James Comey. So much so that I added a new section just for that. But what should’ve been the big news of the week wasn’t political; it was a world-wide hack of an estimated 200,000 computers by the WannaCry virus. The virus controls files on a computer and the hacker asks for a ransom to give you back control. So here’s a friendly reminder to be careful when clicking links and to do frequent backups of your computer (so if anyone does hold your files for ransom, you can say pffft, I have copies anyway). This is more likely to hit PCs than Macs, but these are good practices for both.

James Comey:

  1. Trump abruptly fires James Comey. The termination letter indicates that the decision is based on recommendations from AG Sessions (supposedly recused from anything Russia related) and Deputy AG Rosenstein.
  2. The White House gives mixed timelines for how long Trump has been considering this, starting anywhere from the day he was elected to a few months to a few weeks to just this week. The firing comes less than a week after Comey’s testimony to a Senate committee.
  3. Despite praising Comey for months, Trump suddenly says he’s not doing a good job.
  4. Comey is the third person investigating the Trump administration that Trump has fired (the other two are acting AG Sally Yates and NY U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara).
  5. White House spokespersons scramble to get the right story out. Sean Spicer literally hides in the bushes for several minutes before finally coming out to speak with reporters.
  6. Sarah Huckabee Sanders says that FBI agents, along with Trump and AG Sessions, had lost confidence in the director (later contradicted by Andy McCabe’s testimony).
  7. Early talking points put Rosenstein’s recommendation front and center as the reason for firing Comey. He pushes back against that and asks the White House to correct the record. He put together a memo at the request of the president, who was looking for a reason to release Comey.
  8. White House sources say that Trump made the decision after watching the Sunday talk shows over the weekend. He told some of his aides that there is something wrong with Comey.
  9. The reasons given for firing Comedy start to unravel. I don’t even know how to put this all in order, so here’s a deep dive from WaPo if you’re interested.
  10. By Friday, in an interview with Lester Holt, Trump calls Comey a “showboat” and “grandstander,” and says that he would’ve fired Comey regardless of the DoJ’ opinion.
  11. In the same interview, Trump says he was thinking about the Russia probe when he decided to fire Comey. “In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.’” This undercut the denials from the White House that Comey’s firing had anything to do with the Russia investigation.
  12. Comey learns he was fired while speaking to a group of FBI employees in California when he sees his image on the TV behind the group of employees. At first he thinks it’s a joke. But nope, he really just got fired on live TV. It appears the termination letter was delivered to the FBI offices in Washington AFTER the news broke on TV.
  13. Days before he was terminated, Comey reportedly met with Rosenstein to ask for additional resources for the Russia investigation. Andy McCabe later said he didn’t know about this.
  14. AG Sessions will be instrumental in hiring a replacement for Comey, which would put him right back in the center of the Russian investigation he is supposed to be recused from.
  15. FBI agents fear that the firing will disrupt the Russia investigation.
  16. FBI morale plummets with many agents angry over Comey’s firing, throwing shade on Trump’s allegations that morale was at a low under Comey.
  17. Trump plans a visit to FBI offices but later cancels when he learns he wouldn’t receive a warm reception there after firing a reportedly popular director.
  18. We learn that Comey had apparently refused to give Trump aides a preview of the testimony he was planning to give to a Senate Judiciary Committee prior to his firing.
  19. Comey’s scheduled testimony in the Senate is canceled, and acting director Andy McCabe testifies in his place. Congress invites Comey to testify next week behind closed doors and he says no thanks, I’d rather testify publicly.
  20. Even Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) is scratching his head over this. He asked the inspector general to add Comey’s firing to the Russia investigation.
  21. Trump suggests in a tweet that there he might have tapes of his conversations with Comey and warns him against “leaking to the press.” Comey says he isn’t worried about what might be on any tapes, if there are any.
  22. Reportedly, Trump had asked Comey to pledge his loyalty to Trump more than once and Comey refused.

 

Russia:

  1. Sally Yates testifies to a Senate Judiciary committee. Here are the main takeaways:
    • Michael Flynn was at risk for being compromised by Russian blackmail.
    • There is overwhelming evidence that Russia meddled to help Trump into office.
    • She indicated that there is evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians (by saying she was unable to answer the question without divulging classified info).
  1. The partisanship of the committee is on display, with Republicans focusing on Yates’ refusal to support the travel ban and Democrats focusing on Flynn and Russia.
  2. After Yates’ testimony, Spicer downplays her warnings and accused her of having an agenda against Trump.
  3. In James Clapper’s testimony, he says he hasn’t seen evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia. Trump jumped on that as vindication, saying Clapper said there is no evidence. Not the same thing.
  4. During his testimony, Comey overstates the amount of email Huma Abedin forwarded to her husband’s server. He also mistakenly says the emails were marked as classified.
  5. The day after he fires Comey, Trump hosts Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Survey Kislyak (Kislyak was the target of last year’s intelligence surveillance). The White House allows only a Russian photographer into the Oval Office and bars U.S. media. The White House is surprised to learn that the photographer, who they thought was Lavrov’s official photographer, also works for the Russian news agency Tass. They claim they were “tricked” when the photographs show up in Russian propaganda and social media.
  6. Henry Kissinger also pays a surprise visit to the White House.
  7. Even after Comey’s firing, Mitch McConnell continues to reject calls for an independent investigation, saying it will impede the current investigations.
  8. Federal prosecutors issue grand jury subpoenas to associates of Michael Flynn, according to CNN. Note: Only CBS has confirmed this story so far.
  9. The Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenas Michael Flynn to obtain documents surrounding interactions with Russians.
  10. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) agrees to share financial information with Senate investigators regarding Russia ties. FinCEN tackles money laundering, and will provide financial records related to Trump or to his associates.
  11. Trump hires a law firm to send a certified letter to Lindsay Graham saying he doesn’t have monetary dealings with Russia (excepting a Miss Universe contest and a real estate deal). The law firm, Morgan and Lewis, won the Russia Law Firm of the Year award in 2016.
  12. Andy McCabe testifies to the Senate committee. The main takeaways from his testimony are:
    • Comey had not lost the support of FBI agents; he is respected and morale was high until his termination.
    • He knows of no attempts by the White House to impede the Russia investigation.
    • The Russia investigation will go on regardless of the change in leadership at the FBI.
    • This investigation is a very large part of what the FBI is working on now.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Attorney General Jeff Sessions reverses Eric Holder’s sentencing policies on low-level drug crimes, and presses federal prosecutors to charge people with the most serious offense they can and to push for the harshest sentencing (for federal offenses only).
  2. The reversal reverts back to the ‘tough on crime’ policies of the 90s that (opinion alert) gave us harsher sentences, overcrowded prisons, and a generation of mostly minority men who were aggressively pursued and prosecuted. These are the policies that were highly criticized during the 2016 election.
  3. The reversal also contradicts bipartisan agreement in Washington and the states that we put too many people behind bars for too long for mild offenses, and that our large prison population is too costly to both communities and the affected families. As a Senator, Sessions backed legislation creating harsh penalties for marijuana offenses, and he stalled bipartisan sentencing reform.
  4. The DoJ won’t say whether AG Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia investigation, will recuse himself from the selection process for Comey’s replacement.
  5. A Senate subcommittee, led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), is looking into breaking up or restructuring the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Though Trump’s threat to break up the court makes this look suspicious, they’re looking at this because the population represented by this court is outsized.

Healthcare:

  1. Nothing new on healthcare this week aside from some raucous townhalls where GOP Representatives were forced to defend their votes. But I have to give kudos to Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ), even though he authored the state waiver amendment that saved the replacement for the ACA. He listened to his constituents argue with, yell at, and boo him for FIVE hours–mostly about healthcare and Russia. Regardless of whether you agree with his politics, that takes some steel balls.

International:

  1. Senior military and foreign policy advisers propose a new Afghanistan strategy that would add more than 3,000 new troops on top of the existing 5,400, stepping up the war with the Taliban again.
  2. Trump approves a plan to arm Syrian Kurds against ISIS. This could put U.S./Turkey relations on ice, and Erdogan does, in fact, register his disapproval later in the week.
  3. Jared Kushner’s family business brings up ethics questions when his sister encourages Chinese investors to invest at least $500,000 in a real estate deal in return for receiving visas through the EB-5 program. This is completely lawful, but bad optics.
  4. North Korea launches yet another missile test that lands near Russia. No wonder Putin’s starting to get a little edgy about North Korea.
  5. Chinese President Xi Jinping holds an infrastructure summit with 29 other heads of state from Asia, Europe, the Mid East, and Africa. China proposes a multibillion dollar plan to boost transportation and power plants throughout the participating countries, increasing their global trade and potentially pushing China past the U.S. as a global power.

Legislation:

  1. Texas Governor Abbott signs SB 4, a racial-profiling law that allows local police offers to ask anyone for proof of citizenship, similar to Arizona’s controversial laws. Some local police departments voice concern that this will further strain relationships with immigrant communities. Some say nothing will change.
  2. Trump signs an executive order creating a commission on voter fraud, specifically Trump’s allegations of massive voter fraud, and to investigate vulnerabilities in our voting systems. To sweeten the deal for Democrats, they’ll also investigate voter suppression. Mike Pence and Kris Kobach head the commission. Kobach instituted the much litigated voter ID laws in Kansas, which studies have shown reduced voter turnout.
  3. Trump signs an executive order on cyber security that builds on Obama’s previous efforts to improve security over government networks. Cyber experts and industry groups praise the order.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A reporter queries Spicer about Trump’s use of the phrase “Muslim ban” in the campaign, specifically about the page on the campaign website titled “DONALD J. TRUMP STATEMENT ON PREVENTING MUSLIM IMMIGRATION.” Minutes later, that page is gone.
  2. The revised travel ban goes before the 4th circuit court, with hearings in the 9th circuit court scheduled for next week. At issue is whether the ban was intended to discriminate against Muslims.
  3. The Texas legislature proposes a bill similar to the one Alabama signed into law last week that would allow adoption agencies to reject adoptive parents on religious grounds. This opens the door for discrimination against gay couples, couples of multiple faiths, and single parents.
  4. The Supreme Court reverses an Alabama court that ruled Alabama doesn’t have to honor adoptions from other states (specifically, the case was about a lesbian adoption, of course). The Supreme Court ruled that gay adoptions are no exception to the law that all states must honor other states’ agreements.
  5. The Virginia Supreme Court upholds a ruling that crimes against members of the LGBTQ community don’t qualify as hate crimes.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump names Ivanka to lead a group to review our policies on climate change, and meetings to start discussions are set for this week. He’s still considering pulling out of the Paris Agreement.
  2. White House advisors postpone the above meetings.
  3. The Senate rejects a Congressional Resolution passed by the House that would repeal limits on methane emissions from oil and gas drilling. This is the first resolution to repeal an Obama-era regulation that has been rejected.
  4. Secretary of State Tillerson signs the Fairbanks Declaration, acknowledging the threat of climate change to the Arctic and also stating that we need to do something about it. Again, at the same time Trump is considering leaving the Paris Agreement.
  5. Two expert EPA advisors resign to protest last week’s firing of members of a science committee, saying “We cannot in good conscience be complicit in our co-chairs’ removal, or in the watering down of credible science, engineering, and methodological rigor that is at the heart of that decision.”
  6. The Department of the Interior suspends over 200 advisory panels pending review.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The administration won’t finish its review of Dodd-Frank within the 120-day deadline. Instead, it’ll get reviewed piece-meal, with information being reported as each piece is completed.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump threatens to end White House press briefings because it’s to hard to speak accurately. In other words, being honest is hard.
  2. Reince Priebus warned White House staffers against trying to secretly hand news info to Trump. Apparently a staffer gave Trump a climate change article that turned out to be a hoax. Luckily, someone caught it before Trump could tweet about it. Sometimes aides slip him information to boost their agenda, and sometimes they do it as a game.
  3. Fun fact: Trump has been sued 134 times since his inauguration on a variety of issues. Several of the suits stemmed from the travel ban, and some are frivolous. But this number is 3 times that of the past 3 presidents combined for the first months of their terms.
  4. A new study finds that Wisconsin’s new voter ID requirements suppressed up to 200,000 votes in last year’s election. Trump won Wisconsin by 22,748 votes. Caveat: This study was conducted by the progressive group Priorities USA so the numbers are probably high, but the problem of voter suppression was confirmed in several other studies to a lesser extent.
  5. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) requests info from the Senate Intelligence Committee about whether the Obama administration or the intelligence community surveilled any of members of Congress.
  6. Betsy DeVos gets booed while giving a commencement address at Bethune-Cookman University.

Polls:

  1. The latest Quinnipiac poll shows Trump’s approval dropped back down to 36%. Additional results from the poll include:
    • His disapproval rating is at an all-time high of 58%
    • The percentage of Americans who strongly approve of him is tied for an all-time low at 25 percent.
    • The percentage who strongly disapprove has reached an all-time high of 51 percent.
    • For the first time the numbers are turning in his base. The number of white people without college degrees who approve dropped from 57% to 47%
  1. According to an NBC poll, 48% of Americans say the latest healthcare legislation to pass the House is a bad thing compared to 23% who say it’s good.

Things Politicians Say:

  1. When asked by Time magazine if he feels his administration has been too combative, Trump says, “It could be my fault. I don’t want to necessarily blame, but there’s a great meanness out there that I’m surprised at.” Sorry dude, but if you can’t take it, don’t dish it out in the first place.
  2. Trump calls the Navy’s new electromagnetic catapult to launch planes off aircraft carriers “no good” and says they need to go back to “goddamned steam.” This catches Navy leaders off-guard as the new digital system, though imperfect, has many benefits over the older steam systems. But it’s all part of modernizing and making our military great again.
  3. And I’ll leave you with this, from Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS): “Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us.’ There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves. Just, like, homeless people … I think just morally, spiritually, socially, [some people] just don’t want health care. The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card, as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I’m not judging, I’m just saying socially that’s where they are. So there’s a group of people that even with unlimited access to health care are only going to use the emergency room when their arm is chopped off or when their pneumonia is so bad they get brought [into] the ER.”

Week 15 In Trump

Posted on May 8, 2017 in Healthcare, Politics, Trump

I had to bring back the Stupid Things Politicians Say category this week… because you know when healthcare reform gets hot, people say some pretty stupid stuff. Here’s that and everything else that happened last week.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The EPA starts firing members of one of its main scientific advisory boards, releasing 5 scientists this week. Scott Pruitt says he wants to replace those empty positions with people from the very industries that the EPA is tasked with regulating.
  2. Emmanuel Macron, President Elect of France, has a message for U.S. scientists. France welcomes you and we’ll be spending money on scientific research, specifically in the area of climate change. Look for a little brain drain in the future.
  3. Flint notifies around 8,000 Flint residents that are risking tax liens on their homes for unpaid water bills.

Russia:

  1. Comey testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee about events before last year’s election. Specifically about his announcement a week before the election, Comey says “This was terrible. It makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election.” Thanks for that—it makes a bunch of us more than mildly nauseous.
  2. Here are a few take always from Comey’s testimony:
    • He said that he had no choice about breaking the news of the newly found emails in the last week of the election, even though he knew he was affecting the election.
    • He wanted to go public with the Russian meddling last summer, but the Obama administration prevented it. The administration only made the info public after 17 agencies came forward in October.
    • He confirmed that Russia was behind the DNC hack.
    • He said that Russia will continue to meddle in our elections and politics because the outcome of the election showed that their methods work.
    • He confirmed that he is being investigated for his role in the email probe and the elections.
    • He confirmed that the FBI is investigating whether active FBI agents leaked info to Giuliani in the run-up to the elections.
    • He also said that Huma Abedin had forwarded classified material to her husband’s server (Anthony Weiner).
  1. Hackers break into the campaign servers of French presidential candidate Macron (now President Elect) and dump 9 gigs of campaign documents just hours before the traditional media blackout France imposes in the 44 hours around an election. Macron wins the election handily anyway.
  2. A month before Michael Flynn was caught on tape talking with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about lifting U.S. sanctions, Flynn was warned about U.S. surveillance of Kislyak’s conversations. Maybe he just forgot?
  3. It turns out that Obama had warned Trump against hiring Flynn during the transition period, though Spicer continues to blame the Flynn problem on the Obama administration.
  4. Trump criticizes Susan Rice for refusing to testify in the Russia hearings, though she says her reason is that it was a partisan request. The leading Republican on the committee wants her to testify; the leading Democrat disagrees.
  5. Trump ends an interview abruptly when pushed on his accusation that Obama was spying on him.

Healthcare:

  1. Early in the week, moderate Republicans have concerns over the new healthcare bill, and say it needs to be rewritten. The primary concerns are:
    • Deep cuts to Medicaid.
    • Higher premiums for older Americans.
    • Insufficient protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
  1. The bill’s authors add an $8 billion fund for the high-risk pool to bring moderate Republicans on board.
  2. In an interview with CBS, Trump’s answers indicate he doesn’t know what’s actually in the latest version of the healthcare bill.
  3. In the middle of the week, Ryan doesn’t have enough Republicans committed to a yes vote on the healthcare bill. 20 Republicans are a definite no.
  4. By Thursday, the House finally feels confident to move ahead with a vote on the new bill. It narrowly passes 217-213, with 20 Republicans voting no and 1 not voting. Here’s how the new bill changes the ACA:
    • Replace existing subsidies with refundable tax credits based mostly on age and partially on income.
    • Remove cost sharing subsidies for people making less than $30,000.
    • End Medicaid expansion and place a cap on federal Medicaid spending.
    • Repeal the ACA tax on individuals making more than $200,000 or families making more than $250,000.
    • Remove age-based premium limits, allowing older people to be charged up to 5x the premiums of someone younger .
    • Remove guarantees for people with pre-existing conditions and other coverages mandated by the ACA (by giving states waivers, but states then have to provide an alternative).
    • Implement more generous HSAs.
    • Eliminate the individual and employer mandate (but still fine people whose insurance lapses).
  1. On Friday, the House unanimously passed a bill that would not let them be exempt from the AHCA.
  2. Democrats warn that the House bill contains certain provisions that don’t comply with special budget rules, which could allow for a filibuster if it comes to that.
  3. Some Senate Republicans are in such disagreement with the House-passed healthcare bill that they say they’ll write their own from scratch. They form a group of 13 (all men) to start the process.
  4. Hospitals, physicians, and insurers all criticize the bill saying people will lose coverage and some won’t get the care they need.
  5. On the day the House passes the bill estimated to cause millions to lose insurance, Trump praises the House Republicans’ efforts on this. Seconds later, he praises Australia’s universal healthcare system. So as we move our healthcare system further away from universal care, Trump says universal care is far better than ours.

International:

  1. Reports came out this week that the Trump administration is discontinuing the ″Let Girls Learn″ global program sponsored by Michelle Obama, but according to the White House, there are no changes to the program. Something to keep an eye on.
  2. South Korea’s missile defense system is up and running.
  3. Trump says he’d be ″honored″ to meet with Kim Jung Un.
  4. Trump and Putin have a tepid phone call, where they discuss Syria, North Korea, and a possible meeting this summer.
  5. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross recalls how Trump told Chinese President Xi about the Syrian bombing over desert, saying it was “free after dinner entertainment.”
  6. McMaster says that Trump’s foreign policy approach is disruptive, and thinks that could help stabilize things in the Mideast.
  7. Trump hosts Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at the White House.
  8. Trump announces a visit to Israel, the Vatican, and Saudi Arabia in an effort to unite the world’s three leading faiths in the fight against terror.
  9. Emmanuel Macron, who founded his own ″En Marche!″ party, is elected President of France over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

Legislation:

  1. An Alabama judge rules to allow a mostly white city to secede from a more racially diverse school district, even though she also found the reasons for the move to be racially biased. The city must meet certain conditions regarding desegregation, but it’s likely to be caught up in lawsuits before they can even get that far.
  2. Trump signs a religious liberties executive order that the ACLU says will have ″no discernible policy outcome.″ While not changing any laws, it does the following:
    • Reiterates the governments support for freedom of religion and religious speech.
    • Essentially gives the IRS permission to relax enforcement of a rule restricting political actions and advocacy on the part of religious entities (by the way, the IRS has never prosecuted a religious entity based on this rule).
    • Directs agencies to explore avenues of relief for religious organizations in providing healthcare.
    • Gives the DoJ more freedom to interpret religious liberty protections versus civil rights.
  1. 1,330 clergy members took out a full-page ad against the executive order.
  2. Alabama’s governor, Kay Ivey, signs a law that gives adoption agencies the freedom to refuse to adopt out to parents based on religious beliefs. This is an obvious move toward allowing discrimination against gay parents. South Dakota, Michigan, North Dakota, and Virginia also have similar adoption laws.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Spicer gives the press a brief presentation of proposals for the wall, which appear to downgrade the wall to a series of fences and leads to a debate during the press briefing of the definition of a wall.
  2. Border agents have been turning away asylum seekers over the past several months. Under both U.S. and international law, asylum seekers are supposed to be allowed in to plead their case; it’s not up to border agents to decide.
  3. The number of refugees coming to the U.S. plummets to only 2,070 refugees in March and 3,316 in April, the lowest numbers since 2013.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The temporary spending measure signed by Congress to keep the government running allocates $120 million to help cover the increased security costs of protecting the first family, with about half going to the Secret Service and half going to reimburse the costs imposed on the municipalities they visit, like Palm Beach. This is just to get them through to September—5 months worth.
  2. The spending bill funds protections for refugees, H-2B visas, and the threatened Pell grants, NEA, NEH, ARC, EPA, Planned Parenthood, ACA subsidies, and Obama’s cancer moonshot at NIH. It doesn’t fund the border wall, not does it reduce funding for sanctuary cities. It does expand the military and border protection budgets. Democrats won concessions to keep Puerto Rico’s Medicaid program, while Republicans won on D.C.’s school choice program.
  3. Corn and soy farmers are now worried that Trump was serious about pulling out of NAFTA, and are concerned that renegotiating or pulling out completely could negatively affect the market for their crops.
  4. The budget Trump released in March would cut funding to programs under the Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER). These Obama-era programs work together at revitalizing coal communities with things like new business development and job and skills training. The approximately $1.13 billion cut would affect 7 of the 12 programs.
  5. In what appears to be an openness to suggestions from people in the trenches, Tillerson asks his staff for feedback on the budget cuts to the State Department.
  6. The economy adds 211,000 jobs this month and the unemployment rate edges down to 4.4%. Labor force participation is also down, but this is still good news.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Though Trump promised to drain the swamp, including barring his transition staff from lobbying for six month, at least nine people who worked on the transition have already registered as lobbyists.
  2. Transfers of cash from the U.S. to Mexico jumped 15% in the last month due to uncertainty around travel to the U.S. and relations with Mexico.
  3. Trump returns to New York City for the first time since taking office, to be greeted by protests and angry chants.
  4. The administration begins removing the staffers that they had installed to serve as Trump’s eyes and ears in various agencies (AKA, internal spies). Tensions have been growing between these monitors and the heads of the agencies.
  5. Hillary Clinton gives Christianne Amanpour a blistering interview where she takes responsibility for losing but also blames Comey’s timing of the email announcement along with Russian meddling. She also criticizes Trump’s performance so far and says she’s part of the resistance.
  6. According to 538, the letter Comey sent to Congress the week before the election probably did cost her the election. At a maximum, they estimate it might have shifted the race by 3 or 4 percentage points in states where she lost by less than 1 percentage point. And before you start up with how inaccurate the polls were, the final popular results was well within the margin of error of most reliable polls.
  7. It sounds like Trump wants to change the rules of passing a bill, not seeming to understand the system of checks and balances our usually slow-moving government applies. He called the system rough and archaic, and called Congressional rules bad for the country, saying that they should be changed.
  8. Trump launches a series of campaign ads singing the praises of his first 100 days in office, starting with a 30-second TV ad along with a series of more targeted online ads. It is an early return to campaigning for any sitting president. Usually they take this time to push through their most important policy changes.
  9. CNN refuses to air one of Trump’s campaign ads because it has a graphic with “Fake News” plastered across images of some familiar journalists. CNN says they aren’t fake news, therefore the ad is false and does not comply with their guidelines. Trump says this is censorship, but experts say CNN is within their rights not to air it.
  10. North Dakota is requesting $38 million from the federal government to pay for the DAPL protests.
  11. Thousands gather across the country for May Day marches and strikes. May Day, also called International Workers‘ Day, originated when U.S. trade unions declared the work day would be an 8-hour day, which united several groups and mobilized the workforce to fight for workers’ rights. Two years later, this movement brought about the first May Day strike on May 1, 1886.
  12. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Army, Mark Green, withdraws from consideration over controversies around past comments on gender, Islam, and evolution.
  13. Sonny Perdue ends nutritional standards at schools, reducing whole-grain requirements, allowing higher sodium levels, and restoring high-fat, sweetened milk. Because childhood obesity isn’t a problem here in the states, right?

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

  1. From Donald Trump: “I also applaud the Palestinian Authority’s continued cooperation with Israel. They get along unbelievably well… They work together beautifully.”
  2. Trump wonders why we had to fight the Civil War and surmises that if Andrew Jackson would’ve still been in power, he would’ve nipped it in the bud. History lesson: Unlike Lincoln, Andrew Jackson owned many slaves. And isn’t Lincoln supposed to be the big Republican hero? Here’s the full quote:

″I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. And he was really angry that — he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, “There’s no reason for this.” People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War — if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?″

  1. Arizona House Majority Leader John Allen, on teachers who have to work two jobs to make ends meet: “They’re making it out as if anybody who has a second job is struggling. That’s not why many people take a second job. They want to increase their lifestyles… They want to pay for a boat. They want a bigger house.”
  2. Wow. Just… wow. Rep. David Eastman (R-Wasilla) thinks that women in Alaska are getting abortions for the exciting travel opportunity, saying, “You have individuals who are in villages and are glad to be pregnant, so that they can have an abortion because there’s a free trip to Anchorage involved.”
  3. Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC) on pre-existing conditions: “People can go to the state that they want to live in. States have all kinds of different policies and there are disparities among states for many things: driving restrictions, alcohol, whatever. We’re putting choices back in the hands of the states.” As if moving to another state to get the care you need is a viable option for most people.
  4. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price says people who are sicker and riskier have to pay more for health insurance, and that it’s “pricing for what an individual’s health status is.” In reality, the reason we don’t rely on free-market pricing for health care is that the older and sicker would be charged higher insurance premiums because they’re more likely to cost more, and the younger and healthier would be charged less because they’re likely to cost less. Except you can’t predict when you’ll get sick.
  5. Rep. Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho): “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.” Prior to the ACA, around 45,000 Americans died annually because of lack of health insurance (according to a 2009 Harvard study). Additional studies back this up.
  6. Jimmy Kimmel’s son is born with a heart condition, and he makes an emotional plea on live TV to make sure that nobody loses healthcare and that every baby is covered. Joe Walsh, former Republican Congressman tweets this response: “Sorry Jimmy Kimmel: you’re [sic] sad story doesn’t obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else’s health care.”
  7. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), defending an amendment that would require sicker people to pay more insurance costs: “My understanding is that it will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool that helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, you know, they are doing the things to keep their bodies healthy.” Because, you know good people who live healthy lives never get sick.