Tag: TrumpRussia

Week 95 in Trump

Posted on November 19, 2018 in Politics, Trump

If you’re watching the fracas around the tight races in our elections, just know that it’ll be exponentially more contentious in close races in 2020. This is a practice run for lawyers to dive in, learn the process, and figure out which legal attacks work and which don’t. They’ll be working now to tweak the rules in their party’s favor. It’s pretty crazy that our votes are so up for question. Why aren’t we better at this? How do other countries ensure that only eligible voters vote? How do they ensure more people vote? Why is it so easy to vote in other developed countries? I’m sure they look at our circus and laugh.

And speaking of circuses, here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. Trump has a little Twitter meltdown, tweeting that the Mueller investigation has gone nuts and that they’re threatening witnesses and screaming and shouting at people. Huh? We haven’t heard much from Mueller in the weeks surrounding the elections.
  2. Trump also calls Mueller’s staff a gang of Democrat thugs who only want to protect <insert list of Trump’s perceived enemies here>. Mueller’s staff is made up of both Democrats and Republicans, and Mueller is also Republican.
  3. New texts show that Roger Stone and Randy Credico shared information about Wikileaks just before Wikileaks started releasing John Podesta’s emails. In a text thread between the two, Credico says “Hillary’s campaign will die this week.”
  4. The texts also show that Credico was keeping Stone up to date on Julian Assange’s plans in the days before the emails were release.
  5. So now Robert Mueller is looking into whether Stone employed witness intimidation to stop Credico from talking.
  6. The DOJ accidentally leaks that they filed secret charges against Julian Assange. The disclosure came in a different court case as a copy and paste error into court documents.
  7. The Mueller investigation looks into John Hannah, an advisor to Dick Cheney and member of Trump’s transition team. He apparently had dealings with George Nader and Joel Zamel, who are both subjects of the investigation.
  8. Trump says that he’s answered the written questions Mueller submitted to him, but he hasn’t given his answers to Mueller yet because you have to be careful when people have bad intentions. He says it was very easy and he did it all by himself.
  9. George Papadopoulos is facing two weeks in jail, yet he asks a judge to delay the sentence until a challenge to the constitutionality of Mueller’s appointment is resolved.
  10. Russian hacker Cozy Bear sends emails containing malware to attempt to get access to government, think tank, and business computers. Cozy Bear impersonates a State Department aide in the emails.
  11. A federal judge refuses Concord Management and Consulting their motion to dismiss the charges filed against them by Mueller’s team.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Last year when Facebook was being highly criticized by activists for for compromising user privacy, they hired a Republican opposition research firm to boost their own reputation by smearing those activists. The smears included bringing George Soros into the mix.
  2. The research firm also discredited other tech companies, and was beginning a campaign against the Senators who would be questioning Sheryl Sandberg over the issue. Facebook has since cut ties with the firm.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The state of Maryland files a lawsuit challenging the appointment of Matt Whitaker to Acting Attorney General. The suit says that Trump doesn’t have the constitutional authority to appoint him and that he broke federal law by doing to. The suit is based on these legal grounds:
    • Federal rules of succession say that Rod Rosenstein should have the position.
    • The Attorney General is a principal officer, so they must be appointed by the president and approved by the Senate (so Trump could’ve moved someone to the position who had already been confirmed by the Senate to a different post).
  1. Senate Republicans urge Trump to nominate a new Attorney General quickly. They’re hoping he’ll select someone more traditional than Whitaker.
  2. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, calls for Whitaker to recuse himself from the Russia investigation due to his relationship with Sam Clovis, a subject of the investigation.
  3. Matt Whitaker has an interesting background, very different from those of his predecessors:
    1. Owned a day-care center.
    2. Owned a concrete supply business and trailer manufacturer.
    3. Led a taxpayer-subsidized affordable housing effort in Iowa, but abandoned it when it stalled and the state threatened him with a lawsuit. He defaulted on the loan
    4. Was a U.S. Attorney for 5 years in Iowa.
    5. Ran a small legal practice.
  4. Jeff Flake threatens to vote against Trump‘s judicial nominees if the Senate doesn’t pass legislation to protect Mueller. Susan Collins wavers on that for a hot minute before she refuses to do the same.
  5. Trump endorses the bipartisan First Step Act, a prison reform bill that would ease some of the harsh criminal justice laws implemented in the 80s and 90s and that disproportionately affect African Americans and other minorities.
    • The bill lowers mandatory minimum sentences and reduces penalties for three strikes; and while Trump says the laws will continue to clamp down on violent crimes, the bill reduces sentences for people who use a gun in the commission of a crime.
    • The bill has the support of the ACLU and the Koch family.
    • Jared Kushner brought the bill forward to Trump.
    • Democrats pushed to have the changes be retroactive for minor offenders already serving time, but that did not end up in the bill.
  1. The Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether Wilbur Ross can be compelled to testify in the lawsuit over adding a citizenship question to the census.

Healthcare:

  1. The FDA approves a new opioid named Dsuvia, which is 10 times stronger than fentanyl. This, while we’re in the middle of one of the worst drug epidemics in our history, brought to you by opioids.
  2. The FDA almost bans flavored e-cigarettes, but then backs down and limits the sales instead.
  3. Pfizer plans to raise drug prices by around 5% next year after holding prices down this year as a promise to Trump.

International:

  1. A study of satellite images shows that North Korea is continuing it’s ballistic missile program at 16 hidden bases. Trump says not to worry; he’ll let us know if anything goes wrong.
  2. Mike Pence says North Korea doesn’t have to give us a list of their nuclear weapons and missile sites before Trump meets with Kim Jong Un again. Even though North Korea has, according to Pence, steadfastly avoided providing that information.
  3. North Korea announces a successful and significant test of an “ultra-modern tactical weapon.”
  4. Angela Merkel joins Emmanuel Macron in his calls for a European Union military force, something that would be a complement to NATO forces.
  5. While more than 50 countries sign on to a cybersecurity pact during the Paris Peace Forum, the U.S., China, Russia, and North Korea refuse. Is this our new clique? The purpose of the pact is to create international laws and standards for cyberwarfare and security.
  6. Cabinet ministers in the UK reluctantly approve Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
  7. The chief negotiator for Brexit, Dominic Raab, resigns over disagreements with the deal. That’s followed by the resignation of a second minister, the work and pensions secretary.
  8. The U.S. sanctions 17 Saudis accused of taking part in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. Legislators say the punishments don’t go far enough, and introduce bipartisan legislation to increase congressional oversight and to suspend the sale of military weapons to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has indicted 11 people in the murder, and is seeking the death penalty for five of them.
  9. The CIA concludes that the Crown Prince ordered Khashoggi’s murder, though there is no solid evidence.
  10. The director for the Persian Gulf region on our National Security Council resigns. She was responsible for our policies toward Saudi Arabia.
  11. Trump is reviewing how he can extradite a U.S. resident to Turkey at the request of Turkish president Erdogan. Erdogan is convinced that a Turkish cleric living in the U.S. was behind the attempt coup a few years ago, and Trump is trying to placate Erdogan so he’ll ease up on Saudi Arabia.
  12. Trump closed the office that tracked released Guantanamo detainees and has now lost track of a bunch of them.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Outgoing Senator Heidi Heitkamp introduces new legislation to address the issue of missing and murdered Native American Women. The Savanah Act will help give tribal law enforcement tools they need to solve these crimes.
  2. After retaking the House, Democrats say their first bill will focus on strengthening our democracy. It’ll address automatic voter registration (AVR), restoring the Voting Rights Act, public financing of elections, and gerrymandering. They also want to overturn Citizens United through a constitutional amendment.
  3. Chuck Grassley will head the Senate Finance Committee next year, and Lindsey Graham will replace him as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Hate crimes were up again in 2017. Reported hate crimes rose 17%, compared to a 6% rise in 2016.
    • Of the single-bias hate crimes, nearly 60% were based on race or ethnicity, 21% on sexual orientation, 2% on gender identity, and .6% on gender.
    • Religious hate crimes made up 20.6% of all hate crimes: 58% were against Jews, 18.6% were against Muslims, and 10% were against Christians.
  1. Police shoot an armed black security guard who had just apprehended an active shooter. The police chief calls Jemel Roberson a brave man. They wouldn’t have shot this hero if he were white. Period.
  2. Just when women were feeling more empowered by #MeToo… Betsy DeVos releases her new rules guiding how colleges and universities handle allegations of sexual assault. The new rules give more rights to the accused and narrow the definition of sexual harassment. I’m all for due process, but women need to feel safe coming forward.
  3. The first groups of migrants that splintered off the caravan arrive in Tijuana, Mexico, near the border. The numbers reported are conflicting so far, but a group of about 80 LGBTQ people who were being harassed on the caravan have arrived and are trying to obtain appointments with Customs and Border Patrol.
  4. By the end of the week, the number of arrivals is in the thousands, and protests break out in Tijuana by residents who don’t want the migrants there.
  5. Confirmation hearings begin for Trump’s nominee to head ICE, Ron Vitiello. He’s a 30-year border patrol veteran. Vitiello refuses to deny the possibility that the agency will once again start separating families at the border.
  6. A judge rules that neo-Nazis don’t have a first amendment right to harass private citizens. The lawsuit stems from the Daily Stormer’s online harassment of a real estate agent in Whitefish, Montana, home of white supremacist Richard Spencer.
  7. The number of U.S. citizens applying for asylum in Canada rose 600% in 2017. The number is still small—around 2,500—and the rise is largely a result of Trump’s threats to end TPS for certain immigrants. Out of fear of being deported from the U.S., they’re taking their U.S.-born children to Canada to seek asylum. A judge recently blocked Trump from ending TPS while the case goes through court.
  8. Trump again floats the possibility that he’ll let the government shut down if he doesn’t get funding for the wall.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Police arrest Trump’s top EPA official in the southeast for a scheme to help a coal company avoid paying the high costs of cleaning up a toxic waste site.
    • Before Trump appointed Trey Glenn to the position, Glenn was an industrial lobbyist and worked for the coal company in question. He lobbied to stop the federal government from declaring the toxic waste site a Superfund site.
    • In 2009, Glenn resigned from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management because of another ethics scandal for which he was not charged.
  1. The death toll in the California wildfires is up to 78, with around 1,000 still missing.
  2. Trump tours the areas devastated by the wildfires with outgoing governor Jerry Brown and incoming governor Gavin Newsom.
  3. Trump says that the President of Finland told him that they rake their forests to prevent forest fires, so we should too. Finland’s president says he never said that. Also, Finland gets a ton of rain and snow, and has a much colder climate. Also different kinds of trees than California.
  4. Trump also says there’s no climate change and that he wants great climate. I hear ya. We all want that.
  5. Trump plans to nominate Andrew Wheeler, who is temporarily heading the EPA, to head the department permanently. Before working in government, Wheeler was a fossil fuel industry lobbyist.
  6. Trump doesn’t want to give Puerto Rico any more relief funds because he thinks they’re using it to pay off their debt. Turns out, they aren’t.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The original bump in corporate reinvestment from the tax reform plan of 2017 is fizzling. After two quarters of strong increases in capital reinvestment, the last quarter only rose at an annual pace of .8%
  2. Also, in the time since tax reform passed, the 1,000 largest companies have eliminated almost 140,000 jobs. That’s almost double the amount the say they created.
  3. Not surprisingly for a $2.7 trillion operation, the Pentagon fails it’s first comprehensive financial audit.
  4. The computer system at the VA broke down last summer, and vets have been receiving their GI bill payments late or not at all ever since.
  5. The administration lists its priorities for the next two months. Notably missing from the list is anything about the 10% tax cut he promised the middle class before the election and any mention of the migrant caravan.
  6. Under Ben Carson, over 1 in 28 multifamily properties subsidized by HUD failed recent inspections. This is up 30% from 2016. Trump’s hiring freeze decimated HUD staff, so now they don’t have enough staff to deal with this heavier case load. Carson also wants to raise rents on these families.
  7. Saudi Arabia is floating deep cuts in oil output over dissatisfaction with all the waivers that Trump allowed for the Iran sanctions.
  8. A lawsuit against Betsy DeVos alleges that she didn’t cancel debt that students owed colleges that were shut down. Last month, a judge ruled that she had to enact the regulations around debt cancellation immediately.

Elections:

  1. Amid the chaos around ballot counts, and signature mismatches, and lawsuits from both sides, Trump seeks adds fuel to the fire by saying we have to use the vote count in Florida from election night. Meaning most people whose mail-in ballots arrived on or around election day wouldn’t have their votes count. This includes military personnel currently abroad.
  2. Rick Scott gives a press conference in front of his governor’s mansion accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election. This quickly results in multiple lawsuits over ethics and abuse of power. Scott does recuse himself from certifying the elections.
  3. A judge tells both sides to ramp down the rhetoric.
  4. Both Scott and Trump say there are ballots that are missing or forged (no evidence for this, BTW). The elections were also complicated by all the people displaced after the hurricane.
  5. A federal judge extends the deadline to resolve ballots for Florida voters whose ballots were rejected because of signature inconsistencies. The decision comes just hours before the machine recount deadline in the still-too-close-to-call Senate race between Rick Scott and Bill Nelson.
  6. While Scott doesn’t prevail in most of the lawsuits that came up (and a judge admonishes him for making unsubstantiated claims), the recount didn’t bring the race close enough to help Nelson win. Scott is declared the winner in the end.
  7. Also Republican Rick DeSantis defeats Andrew Gillum for governor of Florida. Congratulations, Florida. Not only can you not run an election, but now you’ve elected an overt racist to lead your state.
  8. Meanwhile in Georgia, a federal judge orders that the election results be delayed due to concerns about their voting systems and how provisional ballots are being handled.
  9. A judge also finds that the way ballots were handled in Gwinnet County violated the Civil Rights Act.
  10. In the end, after a series of accusation and lawsuits, Brian Kemp is declared the winner and Stacey Abrams sort of concedes. She plans to continue her lawsuit to ensure everyone’s vote is counted in future elections.
  11. After a similarly tight race in Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema defeats Martha McSally to become the first female Senator from that state. McSally took some heat from her party for not engaging in the same elections shenanigans as are happening in Florida and Georgia.
  12. Mia Love, who’s running in Utah, sues for her campaign to be allowed to verify the signatures on ballots. Love says that poll monitors can observe counting, but they can’t challenge decisions.
  13. All these lawsuits, but particularly those in Florida, bring into question voting laws requiring ballot signatures to match county records. Voting by mail has expanded too quickly for states to put standardized processes in place.
  14. Trump says you need to have an ID to buy cereal, so why not to vote? Then he says that voter fraud happens when someone votes, and then changes into a costume in their car and comes back to vote a gain. For the record, I’m fine with voter ID as long as the onus is on the government to ensure that every single eligible voter has such an ID free of charge.
  15. There are still races to be decided, but at this point, Democrats have increased their seats in the House by the largest amount since 1974, after the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation. Democrats netted 37 House seats with four still undecided, and Republicans netted two Senate seats with 1 runoff coming up on Nov. 27.
  16. Cindy Hyde-Smith isn’t scoring many points in the run-up to her runoff election. Last week she said she’d be in the front row if Trump invited her to a public hanging (her opponent is black). This week, she says it’d be a great idea to make it harder for liberal folks to vote, and especially some college students.

Miscellaneous:

  1. CNN and Jim Acosta file a lawsuit to get his press pass reinstated. The suit is against Trump and six of his aides who enforced revoking his press pass.
  2. Fox News files an amicus brief in support of CNN and Jim Acosta in their lawsuit to get Acosta’s press pass returned. Fox News says that Secret Service passes for journalists shouldn’t be weaponized.
  3. It seems what’s good for the U.S. when it comes to press freedoms isn’t good for anyone else, though. Mike Pence tells Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar, to release two journalists who were arrested for covering the government-sanctioned violence against Rohingya Muslims.
  4. A judge forces the Trump administration to temporarily restore Jim Acosta’s press pass while the lawsuit goes through the courts. His ruling isn’t based on first amendment rights, though; it’s based on the administration’s lack of due process.
  5. Continuing with the NRA/Physician feud, a group of 22 surgeons releases a set of reform recommendations for gun safety. Eighteen of them own guns themselves. We’ve heard these all before and watched them die in Congress: stronger background checks, better safety training, and improved technologies to prevent accidental discharge.
  6. Trump says that one of his greatest achievements is reducing the media’s credibility among U.S. citizens. Great. Making America Dumb Again.
  7. Several prominent Republican attorneys, led by Kellyanne Conway’s husband George, announce a new group they call “Checks and Balances.” Their goal is to bring back conservative support for the rule of law, and they’re worried about Trump’s efforts to consolidate power.
  8. Many of these lawyers are also members of the Federalist Society, which has had a huge influence on GOP politics. It’s power has never been greater than right now, because Trump has let them select the bulk of his judicial nominees.
  9. Michael Avenatti is arrested on suspicion of domestic violence and posts $50,000 bail. He denies wrong-doing, and the details are sketchy.
  10. Deputy national security adviser Mira Ricardel got on Melania’s bad side during their trip to Africa in October. Though Melania requested it, John Bolton refused to fire Ricardel after the trip. This week Melania tweets that Ricardel doesn’t deserve the honor of working in the White House.
  11. Trump offers Ricardel the post of Ambassador to Estonia. She declines, receives dozens of offers elsewhere, and moves to a new government position.
  12. Betsy DeVos has armed security 24/7, the only cabinet member to have an armed detail.
  13. Trump honors Sheldon Adelson’s wife with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Adelson donated $30 million to Trump’s campaign and $100 million to Republicans in the midterm elections.

Polls:

  1. 61% of Democrats see Republicans as racist/bigoted/sexist. 31% of Republicans feel the same about Democrats.

Week 94 in Trump

Posted on November 13, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

Here’s what else happened last week…

Russia:

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

Legal Fallout:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA/Environment:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Georgia:

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

Arizona:

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

Florida:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Week 92 in Trump

Posted on October 31, 2018 in Politics, Trump

This was an incredibly awful week. An ardent Trump supporter sent pipe bombs to over a dozen Democratic leaders and funders, a white supremacist killed two African-Americans in Kentucky (and the only reason that number isn’t higher is that the shooter couldn’t get into a locked Baptist church), and an anti-Semite opened fire in a Jewish synagogue in Pennsylvania and killed 11 people (because he thought Jews were funding the migrant Caravan in Central America). Words matter. The perpetrators were all mentally ill, yet all motivated by the same hateful, fearful rhetoric. I hope everyone who goes to the polls in the coming weeks thinks about that when they vote. Will you vote for someone who spreads this hate and fear? Who supports this hate and fear? Who says nothing when other leaders spread it? Or will you vote for someone works to unify us? Who calls out the fear mongers and hate mongers among us? Who works to decrease hate crimes like these? Words matter, and your votes matter.

Russia:

  1. National Security Advisor John Bolton goes to Moscow. While there, he says he doesn’t think Russia’s meddling in the 2016 elections had any effect on the outcome of the U.S. election. He also says all the meddling did was cause us to distrust Russia, which is partially true. But it has also caused us to distrust each other.
  2. A few months ago, a federal judge refused a request from House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) for sealed testimony of key witnesses in the Russia investigation. The judge requested followup info from Nunes, which he has not yet received after all this time. Must not’ve been important.
  3. U.S. intelligence agencies say that Chinese and Russian spies have been listening in on Trump’s unsecured cell phone, which he uses frequently. Aides have given up trying to get him to stop using that phone, and they worry that he might be discussing classified information on it. Spies can use the information to find out who Trump trusts and who influences him, along with what type of persuasion influences him most.
  4. Trump says the report is boring. I guess Hillary’s email server was a big nothing burger, too, then.
  5. Robert Mueller has emails from Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi to the Trump campaign where they take credit for John Podesta’s stolen emails. Mueller is looking into whether Corsi knew about the emails before Wikileaks published them, whether he told Stone, and whether Stone told the campaign.
  6. Text messages show that Stone was working on a blanket pardon for Julian Assange. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) also pushed for a pardon.
  7. Before Trump’s inauguration, a Saudi intelligence chief, Joel Zamel, Michael Flynn, and other member of the Trump transition team met to discuss strategies for ending the Iranian regime. Joey Zamel owns a media strategy company that pitched misinformation campaigns during the elections. The Saudi intelligence chief is also implicated in the Khashoggi murder.
  8. The company that runs USA Really, a website that pretends to be American but is really Russian, admits that Elena Khusyaynova is their CEO. Elena was arrested recently for meddling in our elections.
  9. George Papadopoulos testifies for House committees (again). Republicans come away saying this proves the investigation never should’ve been opened; Democrats say there wasn’t much new to learn from it.
  10. Papadopoulos requests immunity before his upcoming testimony before Senate committees.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Newly released documents show that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross met with Chevron executives to discuss “oil and gas developments, tax reform, and trade issues” at a time while Ross’s wife had $250,000 invested with the company. This puts him at risk of violating criminal conflict-of-interest laws.
  2. A judge rules that Trump must answer questions in the Summer Zervos sexual harassment case.
  3. A new lawsuit alleges that Trump Organization was paid by three businesses to promote get-rich-quick schemes and encourage vulnerable people to invest in sham business opportunities.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Florida’s Supreme Court denies outgoing Governor Rick Scott the ability to appoint three new judges to the court on the morning of the day their terms expire. Scott said he’d appoint them on that day before noon, at which time his successor will be sworn into office. The problem with that is technically Scott will no longer be governor on that day. So his successor will fill those seats. Scott is running for Senate.
  2. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley refers Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick to the DOJ for investigation. Grassley claims they lied to Congress. Grassley then refers them a second time for conspiracy, lying, and obstruction.
  3. Jeff Flake says he’s not sure he believes Kavanaugh, but he voted for him anyway.

Healthcare:

  1. Medicare enrollment dropped by .6% this year. It’s expected to rise by .9% next year. The drop is partly due to a good economy and partly due to stricter requirements, such as work requirements, which are dropping recipients in some states.

International:

  1. Just days after threatening to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a Cold War arms control treaty with Russia, Trump says we’ll start increasing our nuclear arsenal.
  2. And then Russia threatens a new arms race if he goes through with it. Russia has been violating the treaty for years, but it’s been holding us both somewhat in check.
  3. Even after saying he won’t meet with the Saudi prince after the Khashoggi killing, Steven Mnuchin ends up meeting with him after all.
  4. After Trump threatens to pull out of the Universal Postal Union, they reach out to us saying we’ll no longer receive international letters or packages.
  5. The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, a diplomat with over 30 years in government service, resigns her post over the ongoing strained relations with Mexico. She’s leaving even though she considers this a crucial moment in U.S.-Mexico relations.
  6. Surveillance videos show one member of the Saudi security team leaving the consulate in Turkey dressed as Khashoggi shortly after Khashoggi’s murder.
  7. Trump calls the Khashoggi killing a “complete fiasco.”
  8. In the fallout from Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, Trump said that we have $450 billion worth of orders from Saudi Arabia for various goods, including $110 billion in military goods. He also said about a million jobs were on the line. None of this turns out to be true.
  9. Khashoggi’s fiancé refuses Trump’s invitation to the White House saying the invitation was only for publicity purposes.
  10. Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor now says that the Khashoggi murder was likely premeditated.
  11. Brazil elects a far-right populist, Jair Bolsonaro, as president following a violent and polarizing campaign season.
  12. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but Yemen is being pushed into a catastrophic famine by the war being played out in their country between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Family Separation:

  1. The Trump administration begins releasing families being held in detention centers along with border. They’ve kept some of these families months beyond the allowed 20 days. They’re also releasing recent migrants who’ve been held only briefly, and the combined effect of releasing thousands of migrants is overwhelming non-profits who help house and settle the migrants.
  2. Health and Human Services confirms that the government failed to account for 14 additional children separated from their families at the border.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Protests break out over the Trump administration efforts the define gender as being unchangeable from what you’re born with. Protestors see this as an attempt to define transgender out of existence.
  2. The caravan of migrants coming up from Central America grows to 5,000 people (still smaller than the number that try to enter through the border each day). A second caravan forms behind it, but is having a hard time crossing into Mexico.
  3. Trump calls them hardened criminals and says there are random Middle Easterners in there. In other words, be very afraid. Neither of those statements are verifiable. Trump actually says he has no proof of this.
  4. Mike Pence repeats that lie, saying that it’s inconceivable that there aren’t people of Middle Eastern descent in the caravan.
  5. Trump says he’ll order armed troops to the border to handle the caravan of migrants. Even though Customs and Border Patrol is well equipped to handle this on their own. In the end, it looks like Trump will send more troops than there are migrants.
  6. Nearly 10 years after banning the practice of charging the families of people locked up in juvenile detention centers, LA County finally stops collecting any remaining debts, erasing nearly $90 million in debt.
  7. Three more members of the white supremacist group The Proud Boys are arrested for the New York City attacks on protestors. The arrests come from the violent fight that occurred after a Proud Boys member was invited to speak at a Republican group in New York City.
  8. Three members of the white supremacist group Rise Above Movement are arrested for attacking protestors, journalists, and a police officer in Huntington Beach, San Bernardino, and Berkley last year. This is on top of four other members who were arrested earlier this year for violence at the Charlottesville rally last year.
  9. One of those arrested had been hiding out in Central America.
  10. Yet another court ruling comes down against Trump’s attempts to defund sanctuary cities.
  11. We learn that Google covered up for three executives accused of sexual misconduct. One was given a $90 million golden parachute.
  12. A Florida man sends pipe bombs to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, CNN, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (sort of — she’s actually on the return address), Eric Holder, John Brennan, Maxine Waters, Joe Biden, Robert DeNiro, Cory Booker, James Clapper, Tom Steyer, and Kamala Harris. Luckily none of the devices explode, and the FBI arrest the suspected bomber after lifting a print off one of the packages.
  13. The suspect is a self-described white supremacist, likely mentally ill, and also recently radicalized.
  14. After the right floats conspiracy theories that these bombs were a hoax perpetrated by Democrats, FBI Director Chris Wray confirms that these devices were not a hoax.
  15. On top of that, an armed man in Kentucky tries to enter a locked Baptist church with a largely African American congregation shortly following services. When he can’t get in, he kills two African Americans at a Kroger instead. He tells a white witness that Whites don’t kill Whites.
  16. And then a shooter in Pittsburgh kills 11 people at a Jewish synagogue. He, too, seems to have been recently radicalized.
  17. Trump blames the media for the violence. Just a reminder of a few things Trump has said:
    • Maybe Hillary Clinton’s secret service should stop protecting her so we could “see what happens to her.”
    • He also suggested that “the Second Amendment people” maybe could do something about her should she become president.
    • “Maybe he should be roughed up.”
    • “Knock the crap out of ‘em, would you?”
    • “I’d like to punch him in the face.”
    • “Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!”
    • He’s said there will be violence if Democrats win the midterm elections.
    • He’s pushed the idea that the immigrant caravan is going to storm our border (all 5,000 of them) and that they’re funded by George Soros.
    • And finally, he’s applauded violence against protestors and police mistreating suspects, and frequently calls the press the enemy of the people, often singling out CNN.
  1. Trump then issues this statement about the violence.
    “In these times, we have to unify. We have to come together and send one very clear, strong and unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America. We’re extremely angry, upset, unhappy about what we witnessed this morning and we will get to the bottom of it.”
  2. Trump also says the synagogue should’ve had armed guards. IMO, houses of worship shouldn’t need armed guards.
  3. The #MeToo movement has outed 201 powerful men for sexual misconduct, and nearly half have been replaced by women.
  4. The Trump administration says they might close the U.S. border entirely to Central Americans and deny them the ability to seek asylum. I think that might be a violation of international treaties.

Climate/EPA:

  1. The Interior Department approves plans to drill in shallow waters 6 miles off Alaska’s shores in the Beaufort Sea. If it goes ahead, it’ll be the first oil and gas facility in federal waters around Alaska. Hilcorp Energy, the company that won approval, has already been responsible for several underwater oil spills.
  2. A UN report on climate change is accused of bias against nuclear power. While nuclear power doesn’t contribute to climate change (that we know of), its byproduct is obviously a major pollutant that we still haven’t figured out how to deal with.
  3. Oregon state will permanently ban offshore drilling on its coastline.
  4. The New York and New Jersey Port Authority says they’ll sign on to the Paris Agreement. A big deal, because it’s one of the busiest transportation systems in the U.S.
  5. Justin Trudeau says that Canada will implement a carbon tax on four provinces in 2019.
  6. The EPA plans to rescind an Obama-era proposal for uranium waste disposal which would have reduced radon pollution. Who was it who said that a little radiation could be good for us?
  7. The EPA says a small amount of glyphosate in children’s cereal is OK. The World Health Organization lists it as a carcinogen.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump promises a 10% tax cut for the middle class before midterms, but that’s just not going to happen. (LOL. Now that I’m re-reading the story, I see that he promised the tax cut would happen in a week.) No one so far is able to provide any additional details on this plan.
  2. Trump accuses the Fed of endangering the economy by raising interest rates.
  3. The market has erased all gains made in 2018.
  4. U.S. GDP annual growth was 3.5% in the third quarter. That was higher than economists expected, but lower than the previous quarter (which, in fairness, was a pretty high 4.2%).
  5. Markets continue to tumble, and global tech stocks have lost around $1 trillion in value in October. That’s about a 9% loss overall. The decline comes from expectations for decreased demand, lower valuations, and trade wars.
  6. China is working to wean the country off soybeans. Since the U.S. provides about a third of their beans, they’ll definitely be running out shortly.

Elections:

  1. The Georgia NAACP files a lawsuit saying voting machines are casting votes for the wrong candidates on party-line ballots.
  2. In a bit of positive news amid all the current voter suppression, Oregon passes a law that automatically registers every eligible voter unless they opt out.
  3. A court blocks Georgia from rejecting ballots where their amateur handwriting analysts think the signatures might not match. They must go through due process to reject any on that basis.
  4. Voters in Texas are enthused to vote. They camped out to vote hours before the polling places opened this week.
  5. In Dodge City, KS, they move their only polling location outside of city limits with no public transportation. Voto Latino and Lyft partner up to give voters rides, but they should not have to take up this responsibility.
  6. Black students at a Texas university sue for more early voting locations.
  7. An online fundraiser raises over $100,000 in an hour to help Native Americans in North Dakota get the newly required ID to vote.
  8. Officials are predicting the highest voter turnout for a midterm election in decades. I have to credit Trump for that.
  9. Trump is talking about ways to throw legal challenges at the election should Democrats take over the House or Senate. He’s looking into ways to discredit the elections or declare them illegitimate.
  10. Trump justifies holding his scheduled campaign rally the day of the mass shooting in Pittsburgh by saying that the New York Stock Exchange re-opened the day after 9/11. The NYSE didn’t open for nearly a week after 9/11 because of missing and dead employees. Trump did condemn the shooting, though.
  11. Here’s Trump’s takeaway from the mass bomb mailings:
    “    Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this “Bomb” stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows – news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on.”

Miscellaneous:

  1. Remember that fire in the National Museum of Brazil? Turns out that 80 pieces of the human fossil named Luzia were recovered. Luzia is named after the 3.2-million-year-old Lucy. Luzia is 12,000 years old, and is the oldest human skeleton from the area.
  2. A man allegedly gropes a female passenger during a flight and justifies it by saying “the president of the United States says it’s OK to grab women by their private parts.” I’m frankly surprised that didn’t happen sooner.
  3. Trump embraces the nationalist label, and proudly tells rally attendees that he’s a nationalist. Obviously not understanding the true meaning nor implication of being a nationalist.
  4. Not long after it was discovered George Soros was mailed a pipe bomb, Trump calls for unity and then repeats audience members’ chants to “Lock him [meaning Soros] up!” About a person who just received a bomb threat.
  5. Hours after the bomber is arrested, Trump holds a rally where he again criticizes “crooked Hillary” and the media (bombs were mailed to both Hillary and CNN). The crowd chants “Lock her up!” referring to Hillary. Who just received a bomb threat.
  6. In a speech that was supposed to unify after the bomber was arrested, Trump starts out condemning the violence. And then he complains that the bombs had taken the media spotlight away from him and the policies he’s pushing. He then suggests that the bombs are a left-wing false flag.
  7. After the bomber is arrested and found to be an ardent supporter of Trump. Trump’s response? The suspect “was a person that preferred me over others.” And “There’s no blame. There’s no anything.”
  8. Trump plans to visit Pittsburg on Monday, but Jewish leaders and the mayor ask him to postpone or not come at all.
  9. In the run-up to the midterm elections, Trump, along with several Republicans, continue to refer to Democrats as an out-of-control “angry mob” that is “too dangerous to govern.”
  10. A passenger plan crashes on take-off in Jakarta. There is no sign of survivors. The plane was carrying nearly 200 people.

Polls:

I am literally refusing to look at polls this close to the election. I don’t need that kind of stress.

Week 91 in Trump

Posted on October 22, 2018 in Politics, Trump

I heard something interesting on Marketplace. It turns out it doesn’t matter whether we cut funding for food assistance, or SNAP, like some in Congress want. Because of our trade war, many farmers lost the buyers for their crops. So part of the government bailout for farmers is going toward purchasing those crops, which will then be donated to food assistance programs like food banks, shelters, and so on. The charities currently don’t have enough resources to store all that food, and they estimate it’ll cost around $300 million to take care of it all. They say they’ll get it done, but what really just happened is that the U.S. lost all that income from those crops, the government is trying to cut taxpayer payments to SNAP, but the government did pay taxpayer money directly to the farmers who lost their buyers, and then turned around and gave that food right back to the needy. Talk about going around in circles.

Here’s what else happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. In the DOJ’s first case around Russian meddling in our elections, federal prosecutors charge a Russian woman, Elena Khusyaynova, with fraud against the U.S. She managed the finances for an operation funded by the Concord group that ran a social media disinformation campaign. This campaign wasn’t tilted toward either political side; it’s aim was to spread disinformation and increase divisiveness.
  2. This campaign spread misinformation about immigration, gun control, the NFL protests, LGBTQ and racial issues, the Confederate flag, and much more.
  3. Putin says that U.S. influence across the globe is almost over, and that he’s been more able to push Russian influence with Trump as president.
  4. Russian trolls have stepped up their spending on disinformation campaigns in 2018.
  5. Mueller will likely issue his findings in the Russia investigation after the midterm elections, specifically around whether Trump’s campaign coordinated in any way with the Russians and whether Trump obstructed justice during the investigation.
  6. It’s up to Rod Rosenstein, who’s defended Mueller’s investigation, to decide whether the results will become public.
  7. Remember when we kept hearing about SARs (suspicious activity reports)? A senior employee at the Treasury Department is charged with leaking those reports related to Paul Manafort’s financial activity, along with SARs for other subjects of the Mueller investigation.
  8. A federal judge refuses Paul Manafort’s request to wear a suit to his sentencing hearing. He shows up in a wheelchair.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Michael Cohen has met with both New York state and federal law enforcement about the Trump Organization and their charity.

Courts/Justice:

  1. A federal judge orders the Department of Education to implement regulations to protect students who were defrauded by for-profit colleges. The regulations help them get their federal student loans forgiven. Betsy DeVos has been delaying the regulations while the department rewrote rules around loans, but a different judge already called those rewrites capricious and arbitrary.

Healthcare:

  1. Along party lines, the Senate votes down a repeal of Trump’s expansion of short-term insurance plans that do not have to comply with ACA guidelines. So now we’ll have cheaper plans available for the short-term, but they won’t have to cover anything required by the ACA.
  2. Mitch McConnell suggests that Republicans will try again next year to repeal the ACA, but no word yet what they’d replace it with.

International:

  1. Reports are that the U.S. intelligence community knew that the Saudis planned to kidnap Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and possibly harm him. This information had been spread across all relevant government agencies, yet Trump pretended to know nothing about this for days.
  2. Turkey says they have audio tapes of the killing, and Trump requests the tapes to be released to U.S. intelligence. As far as I know, this hasn’t yet happened.
  3. Early in the week, Trumps says he’ll send Mike Pompeo to meet with Saudi King Salman over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Trump also says the king firmly denies involvement, and he suggests rogue killers could be responsible.
  4. And then Trump tells the Associated Press that blaming Saudi Arabia without evidence is like blaming Kavanaugh without evidence. Just another case of “guilty until proven innocent.”
  5. Pompeo has a friendly meeting with the Saudi prince who says they’ll perform a thorough and transparent investigation into the killing.
  6. The day Pompeo arrives, the Saudi government transfers $100 million to the U.S. to help stabilize things in Syria.
  7. Trump is also concerned about a $110 million arms deal with Saudi Arabia, and he doesn’t want the Khashoggi affair to get in the way of it.
  8. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin joins many other foreign officials in saying they won’t attend what’s been called “Davos in the Desert.” It’s an economic investment conference in Saudi Arabia.
  9. Jared Kushner, who is a close friend of the Saudi prince, is involved with the Trump administration response to the killing.
  10. The ranking members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker (R) and Bob Melendez (D) send a letter to Trump triggering the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. The administration must now investigate the killing.
  11. The Saudi government prepares us for their admission that Khashoggi didn’t leave the consulate in Turkey and is indeed dead, but they say it was an interrogation that went wrong. And then they say that a fight broke out (which I guess somehow required the 15-man security team to kill Khashoggi and then dismember him with the bone saw that they conveniently had thought to bring with them ahead of time by the doctor they conveniently had the forethought to invite along).
  12. So the Saudi’s have gone from:
    • Khashoggi left the consulate alive, to
    • He is probably dead but we didn’t kill him, to
    • We’ll investigate this fully, to
    • He was killed by our security team but it was his fault because he started a fistfight (against 15 security guys, uh-huh), but
    • The Saudi prince knew nothing of this plan.
  1. U.S. intelligence says evidence points to the Saudi prince being involved, but it’s circumstantial right now.
  2. This comes at a critical time for the administration because we need Saudi Arabian oil to make the sanctions against Iran work.
  3. Saudi Arabia has apprehended several suspects. Four suspects are linked to the Saudi prince’s security detail.
  4. And is this always going to be their comeback? Republican lawmakers and pundits begin smearing Khashoggi to dampen criticism of Trump’s handling of the situation. They bring up his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and say he’s a friend of terrorists and “not a good guy.”
  5. Trump says we have an investigation on the ground in Turkey, but U.S. officials are unaware of any such effort.
  6. While Trump appears to be defending Saudi Arabia publicly, privately he has doubts they’re telling the truth.
  7. Germany halts all weapons deals with Saudi Arabia until further notice.
  8. The UN warns that Yemen is facing its worst famine in history because Saudi Arabia continues to launch airstrikes against them. We’re looking at over 12 million people facing starvation, which will only add to the global refugee crisis. Yemen is trapped in the middle of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
  9. The Taliban wipes out all of the top leadership in Kandahar Province in an assassination strike.
  10. Trump says the U.S. will withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a Cold War arms control agreement with Russia. Trump says that Russia is violating the treaty and that it prevents us from developing weapons to combat China’s new weaponry.
  11. Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the treaty’s signers, says this decision is reckless and “not the work of a great mind.”
  12. Trump suspends yet another military exercise with South Korea. It seems they’re trying to further nuclear negotiations with North Korea.

Family Separation:

  1. The U.S. still has 245 children in custody who were separated from their parents. The parents of 175 of them were deported, and, of those, 125 have chosen to remain in the U.S. and request asylum. That leaves 50 kids with deported parents, and another 70 who haven’t been reunited.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump threatens to cancel aid to Honduras if they don’t stop the caravan of migrants headed our way. Because cutting off a lifeline for the country will really make people want to stay there, right?
  2. He also threatens to send the U.S. military to the border to meet the migrants, and then threatens to throw out the renegotiated NAFTA if Mexico let’s them through.
  3. The Trump administration looks at redefining gender so that people can only be defined by their biological sex at birth based on genitalia. I wonder what they think they’ll do for those born intersex? At any rate, it’s pretty easy to make the argument that transgender people are the most targeted group under this administration. Right up there with black and brown asylum seekers.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Trump visits the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Florida and Georgia. The death toll from the storm is up to 36. FEMA is still on the ground helping the hardest hit areas, but certain areas are pulling back on food and water in an effort to get back to a sense of normalcy. Some areas still don’t have electricity, though.
  2. Climate change is expected to dramatically increase the price of beer this century because drought will affect our ability to grow barley.
  3. Trump says at a Cabinet meeting that California better get its act together to fight forest fires, or he’ll stop giving the state federal funding for either fire prevention programs or disaster relief (it’s hard to tell which he’s referring to).
  4. Trump says he has a natural instinct for science, which is how he knows climate change isn’t manmade. Like many who deny manmade climate change, he says the climate goes back and forth, and back and forth. He also says that even scientists are divided on it, which really isn’t true.
  5. Trump claims to be an environmentalist despite rescinding regulations designed to protect the environment.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Another department store bites the dust when Sears declares bankruptcy. Trump says it’s been mismanaged for years; Trump’s Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin was on the company’s board from 2005 to 2016.
  2. Interesting tidbit: Sears CEO Eddie Lampert is an Ayn Rand follower, and has been trying to run the company under the principles she espoused.
  3. The numbers are in for the end of Trump’s first full fiscal year. The federal deficit expanded to $779 billion, which is up 17% from last year when it was $667 billion. (OK. That last digit is actually a 6, but I can’t bring myself to type the devil numbers. Ask me about the sump pump incident.) The deficit as a percent of GDP also rose. Taxes received from businesses dropped by 31% from the previous year, while taxes received from individuals rose 6%.
  4. So the deficit increased by $113 billion, and federal income from corporations went down by about $92 billion.
  5. This is the largest deficit since 2012, when we were still recovering from the Great Recession.
  6. Spending only increased by 3%, but still Mick Mulvaney claims the reason for the large deficit is out-of-control spending.
  7. Mitch McConnell says the increased deficit isn’t because of the Republican tax bill, but it’s because of Medicare, Medicaid, and social security (all of which are supposed to come out of a separate fund, by the way). The tax bill is predicted to add nearly $1 trillion to the debt next year. So basically after passing a $1.5 trillion tax cut and increasing the budget for the DoD, he says the only thing we can do is cut assistance to the needy and senior citizens. Also, since McConnell became majority leader nearly four years ago, the deficit has increased 77%.
  8. In contrast, the Treasury Department says deficit growth is because of the of the tax cuts, bipartisan spending increases, and rising interest payments.
  9. In response to the news, Trump announces he’ll ask each of his cabinet members to cut the budget for their respective agency by 5%.
  10. On the plus side, job openings hit a record high in August.
  11. Looking back over the year, big banks did the best as a result of the GOP tax reform. They saw the most profit of any other industry.
  12. Volvo says it might move some of their current U.S. manufacturing operations to China.
  13. China has been importing around 330,000 barrels per day of U.S. crude oil. Those imports were down to 0 in August.
  14. Mitch McConnell says he won’t bring the renegotiated NAFTA deal to a vote until next year.
  15. China criticizes the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Universal Postal Union, especially with the trade wars going on. Trumps says the UPU, which is 144 years old, makes it easier for Chinese nationals to ship illicit drugs to the U.S.

Elections:

  1. DHS reports an increase in the number of cyber attacks attempted on U.S. election databases, and they don’t know who’s behind it. Yay for safe and secure elections.
  2. Georgia uses amateur handwriting analysis to determine the authenticity of voter registrations and ballots.
  3. Officials in Gwinnett County Georgia have rejected around a third of the absentee ballots cast so far. Over half of those thrown out were from African Americans or Asian Americans. On top of that, officials didn’t notify the voters whose ballots were rejected as required by law. Instead, these voters found out from CNN. Gwinnett is the most diverse and populous county in Georgia.
  4. So far Georgia has purged about 8% of the voters on their rolls.
  5. Officials in Jefferson County Georgia make a group of senior citizens get off the bus that was taking them to vote early. The Senior center was worried that it was a partisan event because a Democrat helped organize the event with a non-partisan voting advocacy group.
  6. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement voice concern about ongoing attempts to interfere with our elections by Russia, China, and Iran—both in the midterms and the 2020 presidential race. But still they’ve seen no signs of them being able to interfere with our actual votes.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Elizabeth Warren announces the results of her DNA test, which show she has Native American ancestry going back 6-10 generations. Trump mocks her; Lindsey Graham mocks her; Fox mocks her. WTH? Who even cares? Why is this a thing?
  2. Also, cue the amateur scientists who estimate that this makes her 1/64 to 1/1024 Native American. Except that’s not how genetics works and for some reason it took days for anyone to talk to an actual geneticist and correct the record. She could have far more than 1/64 Native American DNA or far less than 1/1024.
  3. Trump calls her a complete and total fraud. He refuses to give $1 million to a charity of her choice, even though he said he would if she got a DNA test and it showed Native American heritage. Also, donating the million was his idea, not hers.
  4. Even though Warren says she doesn’t claim tribal affiliation, the chairman of the Cherokee Nation criticizes her use of a DNA test to find out if she does have Native American heritage.
  5. A group of free-press advocates sues Trump to block him from using his office to retaliate against the press. They say that Trump’s threats and use of regulations and enforcement powers for this purpose are unconstitutional.
  6. Trump again praises Montana Republican Representative Greg Gianforte for assaulting a Guardian journalist before his special election last year. “Anybody who can do that kind of body slam, he’s my kind of guy.”
  7. The Trump administration abruptly replaces the acting Inspector General for the Department of the Interior. This is the person who will handle all the current investigations into Ryan Zinke’s potential ethical lapses and she has no investigative experience. But that turns out to be OK, because she resigns shortly thereafter.
  8. The previous Inspector General just released findings that Zinke tried to get around or change policies to justify trips with his wife that were paid for by the taxpayers, including a trip to Turkey.
  9. Don McGahn leaves his post as White House Counsel. He was going to leave later in the fall, but Trump already announced his replacement, Patrick Cipollone. Cipollone was a DOJ lawyer under Bush Sr.
  10. Remember the fire in a Trump Tower condo earlier this year where the guy died? The Trump Organization sues his estate for $90,000 in unpaid maintenance fees.

Polls:

  1. Apparently forgetting the uproar over Obama locking Fox out of one press event, 44% of Republicans think Trump should be able to shut down news agencies for “bad behavior.”
  2. 49% of Trump voters think men face a lot of discrimination in American. In fact, they think men face more discrimination than LGBTQ folks (41%), African-Americans (38%), and women (30%). Cray.
  3. Only 25% of Americans think Kavanaugh told the truth in his hearings. 35% approve of his confirmation and 43% disapprove.

Highlights From Trump’s 60 Minutes Interview

Posted on October 16, 2018 in Trump

On Sunday, 10/14/18, Trump gave an interview to 60 Minute’s Lesley Stahl. I was going to include the highlights in my weekly news recap, but the recap was getting too long as it was, and is this really news? Here are the highlights:

  1. When talking about whether he really needed to mock Christine Blasey Ford, he says he thinks he treated Blasey Ford with respect. Remember that he had his whole crowd laughing and jeering at her, and she did say that the one thing that is stuck in her memory is how her attackers laughed about it.
  2. When Stahl pushed Trump on whether he said Blasey Ford lied, Trump says “I’m not gonna get into it because we won. It doesn’t matter. We won.” Then he goes on to say that “we won – have you seen the polls?”
  3. Stahl pushes him on climate change after he says he doesn’t think it’s a hoax (in 2016, it was a Chinese hoax, remember?). But he still won’t give in to science.
  4. Trump says he wouldn’t take the potential arms sale to Saudi Arabia off the table if we find out they were behind the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Because we won it. Everyone else wanted it, and we won it.
  5. Trumps says the day before he came into office, we were going to war with North Korea. Just an FYI, we weren’t.
  6. Trump says the EU was formed to take advantage of the U.S. on trade. Wow. We’re not the center of everybody’s universe. He also calls them hostile. Our allies.
  7. Trump refuses to say that NATO has helped keep the peace for 70 years. He also says that General Mattis never told him that the reason for NATO and our alliances is to prevent World War III. He goes on to say that he knows more than Mattis about this.
  8. Trump agrees that Russia meddled in our elections, but says China did, too.
  9. Trump refuses to pledge to not interfere with or shut down Mueller’s investigation.
  10. When Stahl asks him if there’s anything he’s said that he regrets, he says his only regret is that the press treats him so badly.
  11. He refuses to say that family separation was a bad idea and deflects blame to Obama. He also won’t say whether or not he’ll start it up again. Just FYI, this wasn’t done under Obama’s administration.
  12. Trump blames the country’s divisiveness on Obama, and says he sees the country uniting. Huh? When asked why he doesn’t try to bring us together and heal the nation, he says that Hillary made a really nasty comment.
  13. And finally, because it’s all about winning, Trump says, “Lesley, it’s okay. In the meantime, I’m president–and you’re not.”

Week 89 in Trump

Posted on October 8, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

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

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

Missed from Last Week:

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

Russia:

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

Legal Fallout:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation/Congress:

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

Family Separation:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Polls:

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

Week 88 in Trump

Posted on October 2, 2018 in Politics, Trump

This has been an ugly and uncomfortable couple of weeks. With Ford’s triggering testimony, Kavanaugh and Lindsey Graham screaming and crying, and additional accusers trying to come forward, it’s been exhausting. I’m not even taking sides about who is telling the truth here, but the way this was handled was atrocious.

Here’s why every accusation needs to be taken seriously. Every 98 seconds, someone is sexually assaulted in America. That’s 881 times a day. 321,795 times a year. How many of those are reported? How many aren’t reported for years or decades?

For every 1,000 sexual assaults:

  • 310 are reported to the police
  • 57 of those lead to an arrest
  • 11 of those are referred to prosecutors
  • 7 of those lead to a felony conviction
  • Which leads to just 6 out of 1,000 rapists going to jail.
  • So for all those 321,795 assaults, just under 2,000 of the perpetrators pay for their crime.

 

Is it any wonder victims don’t come forward? How does a real man handle a situation like Kavanaugh’s? He mans up, admits his mistake, and learns from it. Cue Cory Booker.

And here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

  1. Sam Patten takes a plea deal in Mueller’s investigation, pleading guilty to funneling Russian money into Trump’s inaugural fund. He also pleads guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent for his lobbying work for a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch.
  2. Before the Kavanaugh vote got delayed, Trump and Rod Rosenstein were supposed to meet on Thursday to discuss Rosenstein’s employment situation. Once it becomes clear the vote won’t happen, that meeting is postponed.
  3. Emails show that Roger Stone tried to contact Julian Assange of Wikileaks during the 2016 campaign.
  4. The House Intelligence Committee votes to release transcripts of over 50 interviews done during their investigation into Russian meddling into our elections. Intelligence agencies will redact these documents before releasing them.
  5. House Democrats plan to force a vote on whether to protect Mueller’s investigation by adding an amendment to a tax-related bill.

Legal Fallout:

  1. A court rules to advance a case filed by 200 Democrats against Trump for alleged violations of the emoluments clause.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Kavanaugh and his wife appear on a Fox News interview to defend his integrity. He claims that he wasn’t a drinker in high school and that he was a virgin all through school and many years after. He says he didn’t even come close to having sex. These things are refuted by his classmates and his calendar.
  2. Four of Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate sign a statement disputing the account of Deborah Ramirez, Kavanaugh’s second accuser. However, two of those former students subsequently asked to have their names removed from that statement.
  3. Trump defends Kavanaugh, saying that Ramirez was drunk and “all messed up” so her allegations can’t be trusted.
  4. Michael Avenatti’s client, Julie Swetnick, signs an affidavit saying she witnessed Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge spiking punch at parties to get women drunk and take advantage of them. She says they also drugged women, and that Kavanaugh was overly aggressive with and verbally abusive to women.
  5. Swetnick also recalls an incident where she was taken advantage of by several drunken high school boys at a party where she says Kavanaugh was in attendance. She doesn’t say Kavanaugh participated.
  6. Kavanaugh says (under oath) that he doesn’t know who Swetnick is, and that she’s lying.
  7. There are additional anonymous accusations, but they’re impossible to corroborate.
  8. Amidst the additional accusations, Mitch McConnell says the votes will happen by the end of the week.
  9. Over 100 Yale law students walk out of classes and have a sit-in in support of Blasey Ford.
  10. Protests at the hearings in D.C. have been a daily thing, with hundreds of protestors being arrested. Even female members of the House stand in silent protest in the back of the committee room.
  11. Attorneys for Blasey Ford send affidavits to the Senate from four people who say that Ford talked to them about her accusations against Kavanaugh before Trump nominated him to SCOTUS. Some say she told them about it long before.
  12. Blasey Ford agrees to testify to the Judiciary Committee on Thursday, with Kavanaugh testifying afterward.
  13. Two men come forward individually to claim that they, not Kavanaugh, are guilty of the assault. GOP Senators dismiss their claims.
  14. Susan Collins questions why the Judiciary Committee hasn’t subpoenaed Mark Judge.
  15. Republicans on the committee hire a female lawyer who prosecutes sex crimes to question Blasey Ford. The original plan was to have her question Kavanaugh as well, but after Kavanaugh’s passionate and emotional opening, Republican Senators start asking their own questions.
  16. Lindsey Graham and Kavanaugh both scream at Democrats on the committee, accusing them of being behind Blasey Ford’s allegations and saying this is a coordinated smear campaign.
  17. Kavanaugh references the calendars he kept in 1982 as proof that he wasn’t at the party. In his Fox News interview, he said he didn’t drink in school, but his calendar was marked with dates with his buddies to drink beer.
  18. In their testimony, Blasey Ford says she’s 100% sure that Kavanaugh attacked her and Kavanaugh says he’s 100% sure he didn’t. So there we are.
  19. Blasey Ford did answer all questions she could and was fairly respectful to the committee; Kavanaugh didn’t answer all the questions directly and was fairly combative and angry.
  20. The committee plans to vote on Brett Kavanaugh the day after Blasey Ford and he both testify.
  21. Here’s what the oldest of the white men on the committee think about victims of assault:
    • When a women tells Lindsey Graham that she was raped, he walks by and says “I’m sorry, tell the cops.”
    • Orrin Hatch says Ford is an attractive witness, pleasing. Like that’s got anything to do with this.
    • I looked for anything similar from Patrick Leahy, the Democrat’s old white man, but all I could find is that he calls her testimony compelling.
  1. Add Jeff Flake to the list of people getting death threats. In talking about it, he says “The toxic political culture that we have created has infected everything, and we’ve done little to stop. Winning at all costs is too high a cost.” Too right.
    • And speaking of Flake, hours before the vote to move Kavanaugh out of committee, Flake is confronted in an elevator by two victims of sexual assault. The confrontation is intense, as these women opened up about their stories, and Flake is visibly shaken. 
Later in the committee room, Flake taps Democratic Senator Chris Coons on the shoulder and the two go outside for a long talk.
    • That’s when Flake agrees to vote Kavanaugh out of committee under the condition that Mitch McConnell must promise to delay the floor vote for a week so the FBI can investigate. Lisa Murkowski also calls for a full investigation. Four Republican governors join the call for a delay in order to investigate: John Kasich (OH), Larry Hogan (MD), Phil Scott (VT), and Charlie Baker (MA).
  1. Some of the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee walk out in protest before the vote.
  2. The committee votes along party lines to move Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote to the Senate floor. While at the same time…
    • The ABA, which originally gave Kavanaugh the highest ratings, calls for a delay in the Senate confirmation vote until the FBI can complete their investigation.
    • The Yale Law School Dean who endorsed Kavanaugh this summer calls for a full investigation.
    • The ACLU, which typically stays neutral on Supreme Court nominees, comes out against Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
    • The Jesuit Review pulls their endorsement of Kavanaugh (Kavanaugh had a Jesuit education at Georgetown Prep).
  1. Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge says he’ll cooperate fully with the FBI investigation. Judge’s ex-girlfriend also wants to talk to the FBI about her claim that Judge told her that he once joined a group of guys in taking turn having sex with a drunk woman.
  2. Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley seeks an injunction to stop a full vote on Kavanaugh due to the “unprecedented obstruction of the Senate’s advice and consent obligation.”
  3. Jeff Flake says that if Kavanaugh lied to the Senate, his confirmation is over. But we already know he lied about mostly little things and about some big things, for starters:
    • I got into Yale on my own (he didn’t).
    • I didn’t drink in high school (he did).
    • OK I did drink but it was legal (it wasn’t).
    • Holton-Arms girls didn’t hang out with us (they did).
    • Ford’s witnesses refuted her testimony (they didn’t)
    • I didn’t know about Ramirez’s allegations before the story came out (texts show he did).
    • I didn’t work on certain judge nominations (emails show he did).
    • I was unaware of any spying on Democrats under Bush (emails show he was).
  1. A Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s writes an op-ed in the New York Times saying that Kavanaugh mischaracterized his behavior in school and that he drank, drank a lot, and was a mean drunk. The classmate also says that Kavanaugh started a bar fight that landed one of their friends in jail.
  2. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee say they have had a hard time getting responses from Kavanaugh’s accusers, but recent emails show that a Republican aide refused calls from Deborah Ramirez and her lawyers.
  3. President George W. Bush starts calling up GOP Senators to urge them to confirm Kavanaugh.
  4. Texts show that Kavanaugh was working behind the scenes to convince his college friends defend him and not corroborate Ramirez’ accusations before she even brought them up, possibly as early as July. Kavanaugh has accused Ramirez of talking to classmates before the story broke, when it seems to have actually been him doing the talking.
  5. One of those friends gave the information to “Brett’s team” and to the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee. Another friend has been trying to get the texts to the FBI. One friend says that Kavanaugh reached out to her, worried that Deborah’s accusations would come out.
  6. The texts also show that Kavanaugh lied when he said the first he’d heard of this was when the story broke on September 30.
  7. In other SCOTUS news, a case coming before the Supreme Court could decide whether someone can be tried for the same thing at both the state and federal level. The precedent case, Gamble v. United States, says that they can; but the new case could change that. The outcome of this case could change Mueller’s strategy, since he might not have the promise of a state case against witnesses in the Russia investigation if Trump pardons them.
  8. After Blasey Ford’s testimony, calls to the National Sexual Assault Hotline were up over 200%.

Healthcare:

  1. Arkansas has a test program running to analyze the effects of work requirements on Medicaid. The Trump administration says those requirements will lift people out of poverty, but in the first month alone, 4,300 people were kicked off the program.
  2. The House and Senate both pass a bill that lets pharmacists tell customers whether it would be cheaper for them to pay out of pocket for medications instead of using insurance. How is it that they couldn’t before?
  3. It turns out insurance companies overshot their mark in 2017, raising their premiums too high. Premiums will likely go down some for the next enrollment period.

International:

  1. Trump discovers that his rally talking points don’t work on an international audience. His claim that no administration has done as much as his has done in two years plays well to his base here in America, but when he uses it in his opening speech at the UN, the world laughs at him. Trump always said the world laughed at Obama; now the world has laughed at Trump IRL.
  2. Trump later claims that they were laughing with him, not at him.
  3. When he repeats his claim that Germany will be totally dependent on Russian energy, the German delegation laughs at him. Of note, Germany has an ambitious program to transition to renewable energy sources.
  4. He says that he’s wiped out ISIS in Syria, but the Pentagon says there are still many threats and still much to do there.
  5. At the UN meeting, French President Macron slams Trump’s protectionist policies, criticizing Trump’s policies on Iran, climate change, the UN, migration, Mideast peace, and more. He lauds the continuation of the Paris accord, and suggests that we shouldn’t do business with countries that don’t comply.
  6. Even though Trump vilifies Iran, all other signatories to the Iran deal reaffirm their commitment to the agreement.
  7. Trump praises North Korea and Kim Jong Un, a complete about-face from what he said about him one year ago in this very venue. He says when he and Kim met, they fell in love.
  8. Trump says he declined a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canada says they never asked for.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. California follows Florida’s lead and signs into law new age restrictions on buying guns. The law also bans gun ownership for domestic abusers and for some people with a history of certain mental illnesses. The law increases training requirements for concealed carry permits and also includes red-flag restraining orders, which allow police officers to remove somebody’s weapons if they are deemed a danger.
  2. California signs net neutrality into law, reinstating the FEC’s previous rules under Obama. The Justice Department immediately threatens to sue.

Family Separation:

  1. DHS moves hundreds of detained immigrant children to a tent city in Texas due to overcrowding. Changes to immigration rules under Sessions have resulted in exponentially higher rates of detention, and they didn’t anticipate it well enough to be prepared for this. These are mostly children that they think will be released shortly.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. An appeals court vacates a previous ruling that would have denied immigrant children the right to a court-appointed attorney regardless of whether they are seeking asylum.
  2. PayPal ends it’s dealings with InfoWars, Alex Jones‘ platform for conspiracy theories and hate speech.
  3. Trump announces a new policy that prevents non-citizen immigrants who use public benefits from obtaining green cards. These people must now choose between assistance they need right now and trying for a green card that will let them work legally at some point in the future. While this isn’t supposed to affect people with green cards who want to become citizens, many are afraid that using public benefits will count against them in their citizenship requests.
  4. A black female state legislator in Vermont resigns over ongoing racial harassment.
  5. Mike Pence legitimizes hate against the LGBTQ community by speaking at the Values Voter Summit.
  6. Trump backs down from his promise to shut the government down if he doesn’t get funding for his border wall, now promising to keep the government open.
  7. Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) asks the House Ethics Committee to investigate claims by his ex, Karen Monahan, that he abused her.

Climate/EPA:

  1. A federal judge blocks the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from removing endangered species protections for grizzly bears around Yellowstone National Park.
  2. The Trump administration predicts a rise in global temperatures of 7 degrees F (or 4 degrees C) by the end of the century. Instead of seeing this as a call to take action, they say the planet’s fate is sealed and there’s nothing we can do about it. Even though scientists know what we can do about it…
  3. A recent study shows that warming waters in the Antarctic are caused by human activity.
  4. The Northern Indiana Public Service Company announces a plan to close down all of their coal power plants and replace them with wind and solar within a decade.
  5. The EPA plans to eliminate the Office of the Science Advisor. This is a senior post that advises the agency about the scientific research on which health and environmental regulations are based. Their mission is to ensure that the agency’s policies are based on the highest quality research.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump finalizes his first bilateral trade deal. The deal with South Korea is not much changed from the agreement negotiated under Obama. It does open the South Korean market to more U.S. automobiles and excludes South Korea from steel tariffs. No U.S. automaker has come close to the existing caps, so this isn’t likely to give much of a bump to the auto industry.
  2. Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, says businesses are increasingly concerned about the trade wars. They say there have been supply chain disruptions and increased costs as a result.
  3. Trump has said he’s turned the economy of West Virginia around, even though the state is one of two whose poverty rate has risen in the past year
  4. Canada and the U.S. agree to new terms for NAFTA. Mexico and the U.S. agreed on terms about a month ago. The new deal leaves much of the old deal in place.
  5. The Canada compromise includes giving the U.S. a slightly bigger dairy market, a slightly higher threshold below which goods can come from Canada duty-free, and protections from certain automotive tariffs for Canada. The biggest changes in the deal favors automakers in North America over Mexico.
  6. The updated deal will be called USMCA (United States, Mexico and Canada Agreement), because, you know, NAFTA was “one of the worst deals” in history (as was the Paris agreement, the Iran deal, TPP, and so on and so on).
  7. The House passes a tax bill that will make the previous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy permanent. The bill would increase the deficit over 10 years by $631 billion, on top of the $1.5 trillion of the previous tax cut.
  8. The SEC orders Elon Musk to step down as the chairman of the board at Tesla, and forbids him from serving on the board for 3 years. They also fine him $20 million. He’s still the CEO though.
  9. Farmers say that Trump’s aide package won’t make up for the losses they’re seeing because of tariffs.

Elections:

  1. Trump holds a campaign rally in Las Vegas, where he again brings up his electoral college win, Hillary Clinton, and Obama. He paints Democrats as evil and laughs at their reaction to his election. But this could be any of his rally speeches.
  2. Candidates for Senate must file their financial reports electronically, which will make donor information publicly available more quickly.
  3. Ted Cruz got heckled out of a restaurant in D.C. by people protesting Kavanaugh. In response, Cruz’s opponent in the race for his Senate seat tweets that this is not cool and there needs to be some respect.
  4. Trump tells the UN that China is interfering in our 2018 midterm elections because they don’t want him to win (because he’s the first president to shake up trade). They’re interfering by targeting their tariffs strategically apparently.

Miscellaneous:

  1. A 7.5 earthquake and resulting tsunami hits Indonesia, killing more than 800 people.
  2. Raj Shah, the White House deputy press secretary, will leave his position after Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote.
  3. Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) pawns himself off as a California farmer, and while his family did farm in the Central Valley for decades, they’ve since moved their farm operations to Iowa. AND sources say they employ undocumented workers (as does nearly every large farm in the area).

Polls:

  1. 52% of voters want Democrats to control Congress and 40% want Republicans to. With gerrymandering, though, it could still fall in the Republicans favor.

Week 86 in Trump

Posted on September 17, 2018 in Politics, Trump

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

Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

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

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Family Separation:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Elections:

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

Miscellaneous:

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

Week 85 in Trump

Posted on September 10, 2018 in Politics, Trump

This week we learned that during Trump rallies they fluff up the crowd standing behind Trump before the rally, they make sure that the crowd will be enthusiastic, and they make people wear MAGA hats. And if you don’t comply they kick you out in the middle of the rally. Thank you, plaid shirt guy.

Here’s what else happened this week…

Russia:

  1. Giuliani says that the White House won’t let the final Mueller report be publicized after he is finished with his investigation.
  2. George Papadopoulos takes his plea agreement and gets sentenced to 14 days in jail, a $9,500 fee, and community service. His lawyer says that Trump hindered the investigation far more than Papadopoulos ever did.
  3. Papadopoulos says in a TV interview that members of the Trump campaign not only knew that he was working to set up meetings with Putin, but that they were supportive of those efforts.
  4. Protests break out across Russia over a proposed pension revamping that includes raising the retirement age. The protests are organized by opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s supporters.
  5. Trump’s criticism of our law officials now extends to Christopher Wray, director of the FBI.
  6. From recent interviews and subpoenas, it looks like the Mueller investigation is now focussing on Roger Stone.
  7. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who has previously denied Russian meddling in our elections, calls out Putin for meddling in our elections.
  8. The U.K formally charges two Russian agents with the poisoning of a former Russian spy in England.
  9. Federal prosecutors say their accusations against Maria Butina of exchanging sex for influence was mistaken and was based on joke texts between her and a friend.
  10. If you’re keeping track, here are the Russia investigation stats:
    • 35 people or organizations indicted
    • 191 criminal counts
    • 1 conviction
    • 6 guilty pleas
    • 2 prison sentences

Legal Fallout:

  1. Pursuant to Michael Cohen’s guilty plea, the New York attorney general opens an investigation into the Trump Organization and whether anyone there violated campaign finance laws. The organization’s CFO is already cooperating with investigations.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court begin, though Democrats on the judiciary committee try to postpone the hearing after receiving a dump of 42,000 documents the night before.
  2. Democrats are also trying to get a delay over questions about Trump’s legal issues. Committee chair Chuck Grassley refuses to hear Democrats’ arguments.
  3. Democrats are also complaining about transparency, since the documents released on Kavanaugh’s time in the White House were redacted by his former deputy, then by the Trump White House, and yet again by Grassley.
  4. Republicans say Democrats are obstructing the confirmation and also say they’ve released more records for Kavanaugh than for any other nominee. It’s reported that only 7% of Kavanaugh’s White House records have been released compared to the 99% that were released for Elena Kagan’s hearing.
  5. The hearings opened with protests and heckling from those opposed to placing Kavanaugh on the bench. Police arrest 22 protestors for being disruptive.
  6. In his opening statement, Kavanaugh calls Merrick Garland superb. He also said this about Garland while the Senate was refusing to even meet with him: Garland is “supremely qualified by the objective characteristics of experience, temperament, writing ability, scholarly ability for the Supreme Court.” This drives home the point that McConnell had no reason other than partisanship and hatred for Obama for not holding hearings for Merrick Garland.
  7. Of note, Kavanaugh has a very low approval rating from the American people for a Supreme Court nominee. It’s only at 37%, lower than Trump‘s.
  8. The Congressional Black Caucus, along with civil rights leaders, say Kavanaugh would threaten human rights if he’s confirmed. They point to the racist voter ID laws he’s voted to uphold. I point to the young immigrant for whom he voted to refuse a legal abortion.
  9. Leaked emails show that Kavanaugh:
    • Has questioned whether Roe v. Wade is settled law;
    • Has been critical of affirmative action and supportive of racial profiling;
    • Appears to have lied in a previous confirmation hearing about whether he knew about Bush’s warrantless surveillance program;
    • Lied multiple times in his confirmation hearings about whether he had received stolen documents outlining Democratic strategy at one point (documents show that not only did he receive the documents, but that he had an actual mole in Democratic circles who was providing them);
    • Lied about being involved with Charles PIckering’s nomination to an appeals court; and
    • Lied in a previous hearing about interviewing William Pryor, who was another judicial nominee.
  1. In his hearing, Kavanaugh refers to birth control pills “abortion inducing drugs.” This is from a case he presided over, and it’s not clear whether he’s quoting the plaintiffs here or if he actually thinks that’s what they are.
  2. The DOJ says that Jeff Sessions will meet with state attorneys general over whether social media platforms are suppressing conservative views. This follows a Senate hearing with Facebook and Twitter. A House committee is also holding a hearing on this alleged bias.

International:

  1. This isn’t political news, but it’s big news. The world’s largest anthropological museum burns down in Brazil, destroying millions of archeological and natural artifacts. Some of these artifacts were the only things that remained of lost cultures.
  2. Trump fills the Western Hemisphere Affairs office at the National Security Council with Cuban hard-liners. The latest addition, Mauricio Claver-Carone, is a pro-embargo activist, and is also dedicated to promoted human rights and democracy in Cuba.
  3. Later this month, Trump will preside over the UN Security Council. He’s already stirring up controversy by saying he’ll focus solely on Iran.
  4. And once again, fears of a far-right, anti-immigrant, protectionist, white nationalist take over in a European country are greatly exaggerated. Elections in Sweden maintain about the same level of support for most parties, though the far-right Sweden Democrats did make big gains. Power still rests with the Social Democrats and the Moderates.
  5. We learn that last year, the Trump administration met with Venezuelan rebels to discuss plans for a coup. One of the rebels is on our own sanctions list of corrupt officials. Nothing came of it.
  6. The Trump administration is expanding a drone program in Africa that the Obama administration had constricted due to collateral damage.

Family Separation:

  1. More than 400 immigrant children are still separated from their parents. Of these, around 300 of the parents are out of the country, either because they were deported or because the children came with other family members.
  2. 199 of the parents signed papers stating that they didn’t want to be reunited. Some might be valid, but most are suspected to have been coerced by immigration officials.
  3. 34 of the parents had red flags in their background checks or were deemed unsafe.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Trump administration proposed rules blocking immigrants who have used any kind of welfare from ever becoming citizens. Even though these rules haven’t been implemented yet, immigrants are dropping out of these programs out of fear of a crackdown.
  2. Nike announces Colin Kaepernick as the new face of the company in ad campaigns. People cut the Nike logo off their shirts and burn their shoes in protest. Also, Nike sees a 31% increase in sales.
  3. And here’s another way Trump is getting rid of immigrants in the U.S. The administration has been trying to deport Vietnamese immigrants who are here under a formal agreement with Vietnam. They’ve been here for over two decades.
  4. It turns out that the Trump administration ignored a report from the National Counterterrorism Center that showed that refugees do not pose a domestic threat. They replaced it instead with a report written by immigration hardliners in the administration that over-inflate the cost and threat of refugees here. In the end, the administration didn’t cite security as an excuse to reduce the number of refugees we accept; instead they said DHS was shorthanded and couldn’t handle any more.
  5. The Trump administration proposes a regulation to overrule the Flores rule that blocks us from detaining immigrant children indefinitely. This is how they’re trying to get around the laws about detaining or separating families seeking asylum.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Eight states’ attorneys general bring a suit against the Department of the Interior over their narrowing of migratory bird protections. I thought Trump loved birds. Isn’t that why he doesn’t like wind turbines?
  2. Eric Buermann, the former general counsel of Florida’s Republican Party and the chair of the South Florida Water Management District, puts the blame for the current toxic algae bloom on Governor Rick Scott, who is running for Senate. Buermann says that Scott only recently started to address the issue because it’s become political and not because Scott wants to address pollution or climate change. The blooms are devastating Florida communities.
  3. I’m not sure where to put this since it covers a few things, but Trump plans to roll back regulations on safety inspections for underground mines, on offshore oil rigs, and on meat processing plants, all pretty dangerous occupations. The offshore rig rules were put in place to prevent another Deepwater Horizon disaster.
  4. A jury finds Plains All American Pipeline guilty of one felony and eight misdemeanors in the Santa Barbara oil spill in the waters off Refugio State Beach. The felony was for failure to maintain the pipeline. The misdemeanors were things like not reporting the spill right away, killing marine life, and lying about it.
  5. Tens of thousands of climate activists hold rallies and marches around the globe to demand action on climate change.
  6. Ryan Zinke opens 251,000 acres in 30 wildlife refuges to hunting and fishing.
  7. California Governor Jerry Brown signs a bill into law blocking Trump’s expansion of offshore drilling in the state. Brown also announces opposition to Trump’s expansion of BLM land for new oil drilling.
  8. The inspector general for the EPA releases their final report on the cost of Scott Pruitt’s protective services. The report says there is no justification for the costs.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Economists think that U.S. GDP growth might have peaked in the second quarter at 4.2%.
  2. The U.S. trade deficit is getting larger despite Trump’s trade wars and threats. It’s growing at its fastest rate since 2015, reaching new records with the EU and China.
  3. The new farm bill in the House would knock nearly 2 million low-income Americans off their SNAP benefits.
  4. The latest BLS report shows the economy added 201,000 jobs in August, and the unemployment rate held at 3.9%.
  5. Ahead of the elections, Republicans shelve a plan to make the limits on SALT (State And Local Taxes) deductions permanent. This rule hits people hardest in states with high property values and high taxes, and Republicans are afraid that pushing it through now would make it harder for Republicans to win elections.
  6. Trump is open to shutting down the government if a spending bill agreement can’t be reached in September.

Elections:

  1. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey appoints former U.S. Senator Jon Kyl to fill John McCain’s old Senate seat.
  2. ICE subpoenas voter information from the North Carolina Elections Board in an apparent hunt for undocumented voters. The Elections Board fights those subpoenas for both the state and county elections boards. The information ICE is looking for even includes what the ballots look like. So they want to know how people voted. What’s up with that?
  3. Due to the influx of Puerto Ricans into Florida, a judge rules that election ballots must be printed in both Spanish and English.
  4. Former president Obama hits the campaign trail to stump for Democratic congressional candidates. Republicans dig up their old vitriol against him.
  5. Even though a court ruled that North Carolina’s congressional maps are unconstitutionally gerrymandered and that they must redraw the lines for the midterm elections, the same court now acknowledges they don’t have time. So the elections will continue to be racially and politically gerrymandered for this election.

Miscellaneous:

  1. On Labor Day, Trump criticizes AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka in a tweet, saying he didn’t represent his labor union well over the weekend. Trumka had said that the things Trump has done to hurt workers are greater than the things he’s done to help them.
  2. Bob Woodward releases his new book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” in which accounts from White House insiders give a anxiety-provoking glance into the inner workings of Trump’s White House.
    • I don’t typically like tell-all books, but Bob Woodward is a well-sourced journalist who’s written about many presidents (most of whom complain about his books, Republican or Democrat).
    • Woodward’s account portrays a White House staff that feels they must protect Trump (and us, I guess) from his worst impulses and that frankly seems to be performing a subversive coup by not allowing the president to fulfill his agenda.
  1. Here are a few highlights from the book (or so I’ve heard):
    • John Mattis had to stop Trump from ordering an assassination of Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad.
    • Trump thinks that denouncing white supremacists and Neo-Nazis after the Charlottesville rally was one of the worst things he’s ever done. Apparently he was being sincere the first time when he said there were good Nazis and white supremacists.
    • Trump called Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” and a “dumb southerner.” He denies this, saying it isn’t how he talks; but he’s on record saying both of these things at different times in the past.
    • To quote John Kelly (from the book): “We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
  1. Trump calls Woodward to discuss the book, and Woodward (after telling Trump he’s recording it) releases the recording of their discussion.
  2. A top official fans the flames by publishing an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times basically confirming the allegations in Woodward’s book. This official seems to think this little group of resistors on the inside are saving the world from Trump, but I think they’re only doing it to be self-serving. They‘re using Trump to get their own agenda through.
  3. Trump wonders if this might amount to treason and calls on the NYT to release the name of the author.
  4. Journalists and bloggers furiously speculate about who the author could be, while top officials furiously deny it was them. All distracting from the real news of the week, the Kavanaugh hearings.
  5. The op-ed leads a few Democratic officials to urge White House staff to invoke the 25th amendment if they think Trump really isn’t fit for office.
  6. After merely suspending Alex Jones for a week, Twitter bans Infowars and Alex Jones permanently for abusive behavior.
  7. Trump is on the campaign trail, stumping across the midwest. At one rally, he says that someday his speeches will be viewed as being as good as the Gettysburg Address. He also says the “fake news” bashed the Gettysburg Address. Huh?
  8. Trump suggests that protests should be illegal. This isn’t the first time.
  9. Omarosa Manigault-Newman says she recorded nearly every single conversation she had while working in the White House. She’s no fool. But where are the recordings?
  10. The latest rumor is that Trump is looking to replace Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. I only report this because those rumors do actually seem to pan out. We’ll see.
  11. I’d like to catalogue this one under “What a fucking waste of money and time.” The Interior Department inspector general actually looked into inauguration crowd size drama, and found that a photographer had digitally edited the photos to make the crowd size look like it was larger than it actually was.
  12. Trump agrees not to enforce Stormy Daniels’ non-disclosure agreement, likely to get out of testifying in the case.

Week 84 in Trump

Posted on September 10, 2018 in Politics, Trump

This week was all about saying goodbye to Senator John McCain. I don’t remember politics without him being in the thick of it. In planning his services, he gave Trump some parting shots, excluding him from the memorials and final funeral and enlisting politicians from all sides in a final show of working both sides of the aisle.

Here’s what else happened this week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

  1. 16 states filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to rule that the 1964 Civil Rights Act doesn’t cover rights for the LGBTQ community and therefore you can fire someone based on their sexual orientation or their gender identity. Or deny them housing. Or refuse to serve them. Or…

Russia:

  1. The judge grants a brief delay in Paul Manafort’s second trial because his lawyers haven’t had time to recover from his first trial. Remember, they could have done this all in one trial, but Manafort chose to have two trials instead.
  2. Manafort’s legal team was in negotiations with Mueller to avoid a second trial, but those negotiations fell apart.
  3. Earlier this month, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes travelled to the UK to dig up dirt on Christopher Steele. Nunes tried to meet with leaders of British intelligence agencies, but they were wary of Nunes’ intentions; so he ended up meeting with the deputy national security advisor, Madeline Alessandri.
  4. Trump tweets that China hacked Clinton’s emails and that they got classified info. That was just little false info he picked up from the Daily Caller.
  5. Trump accuses NBC of editing interviews with him. He’s specifically pointing at his interview with Lester Holt when he admitted that he had the Russia investigation in mind when he fired Comey. If there were any merit to the accusation, you’d think he would’ve brought it up when the interview aired.
  6. Now we know why Trump is working so hard to discredit DOJ lawyer Bruce Ohr. Ohr told lawmakers that two years ago, he met with Christopher Steele who told him that he thought Russia had leverage over Trump (or in his words, Russia had him over a barrel).
  7. Michael Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, is backing down from his claim that Cohen knows that Trump Sr. knew ahead of time about Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russian lawyers in 2016.
  8. George Papadopoulos accepts his plea deal and pleads guilty to lying to the FBI. He had previously been considering backing out of the deal.
  9. Sam Patten, a former associate of Paul Manafort and a former employee of Cambridge Analytica, agrees to a plea deal and to cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. He pleads guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent and lying to a Senate committee.
  10. Trump says that the Supreme Court Chief Justice should tell the FISA court to investigate the DOJ and FBI over their FISA requests during the 2016 campaign.
  11. Trump says he should get personally involved if the FBI and DOJ don’t do their job, accusing them of being biased against Republicans. Even though many of them are themselves Republicans.
  12. We’re coming up to 60 days before the election, so Rudy Giuliani says Mueller has to stop investigating. Which isn’t true since this isn’t a hard and fast rule. Even if it were a hard rule, Mueller could continue his investigation behind closed doors right up through the election as long as he doesn’t publicize information.
  13. Mueller says he’ll accept some answers from Trump in writing. Giuliani says they won’t be providing any answers to questions about obstruction of justice.

Legal Fallout:

  1. GOP Members of Congress circulate a spreadsheet itemizing the things they think Democrats might investigate if they win the House in November. Those things include:
    • Trump’s tax returns
    • Trump Organization, specifically around the emoluments clause.
    • Trump’s dealings with Russia and his preparation for the meeting with Putin
    • The Stormy Daniels payment
    • Trump’s firings of James Comey and of U.S. attorneys
    • The transgender ban in the military
    • Steven Mnuchin’s business dealings
    • The use of personal email by White House staff
    • Abused perks, mostly by cabinet members like Scott Pruitt, Ben Carson, and Ryan Zinke
    • That time he discussed classified information at a public dinner at Mar-a-Lago
    • Whether Jared Kushner is in compliance with ethics laws
    • Firing the EPA board of scientific counselors
    • The Muslim ban
    • The family separation policy and the failure to reunite separated families
    • The response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico
    • Election security and hacking attempts
    • Security clearances
  1. New York City fines Jared Kushner’s family business once again. This time, the fine is $210,000 for falsifying building permits. This brings the total the company’s been fined over the past few years to over $500,000.
  2. The above leads to the DCCC issuing warnings to other Democratic candidates about being doxxed.
  3. Lawyers for GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter accuse federal prosecutors of rushing to indict his client. Interesting tact, since they’ve been accusing prosecutors of dragging out this investigation over two years.
  4. Trump blames the DOJ for allowing the indictment of both Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins, two “very popular Republican Congressman” (according to Trump). He complained that these would’ve been two easy GOP wins. I guess it doesn’t matter if they might be criminals.
  5. An inspector general reports that Trump participated in a decision to cancel a 10-year effort to develop a new FBI headquarters in the suburbs of Maryland or Virginia. The plan now is to develop the headquarters right across the street from Trump’s hotel in DC, which turns out to be more expensive. Government employees were told not to talk about anything Trump said about this.
  6. According to a recorded conversation, Michael Cohen and Trump tried to buy up all the damaging information the National Enquirer had on him and was storing in their vaults.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Chuck Schumer makes a deal with Mitch McConnell to fast-track 15 of Trump’s lower court judicial nominees. We don’t know yet what he got in return, if anything. Unless he did it just so his Senators could have some time to campaign.
  2. A judge in Texas allows a defamation lawsuit against Infowars’ Alex Jones to move forward. The suit was brought by parents of Sandy Hook victims who’ve been harassed and further victimized by Jones’ supporters.
  3. Trump refuses to release over 100,000 pages of Brett Kavanaugh’s records during the time he worked in the White House under George W. Bush. Trump cites executive privilege as a reason.
  4. Marches and protests against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court continue this week. 7 in 10 Americans are pro-choice, and don’t want him confirmed.
  5. Trump reconsiders firing Jeff Sessions. Again.

Healthcare:

  1. An appeals court rules that Alabama can’t ban “dilation & evacuation” abortions after 15 weeks. Note that over 90% of abortions do occur before 15 weeks so don’t use that method.
  2. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) introduces legislation with 13 other Democrats aimed at reducing the racial disparities in maternity care and deaths in the U.S. Currently there are about 40 deaths out of 100,000 live births for black women versus 12 for white women.

International:

  1. The Trump administration announces plans to cut all U.S. funding for the UN program that provides aid to Palestinian refugees. It’s pretty amazing that there have been Palestinian refugees for over 50 years now.
  2. We learn that Trump’s last meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe turned sour when Trump said he remembers Pearl Harbor and then criticized Japan’s economy and our trade deficit with them. Up to now, the two seemed to have a good working relationship.
  3. Trump blames China for the lack of progress in the negotiations with North Korea. He says China is applying pressure on North Korea.
  4. Trump announces that joint U.S. – South Korea military exercises will be temporarily suspended as a gesture of goodwill toward North Korea.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. California’s legislature passes a bill raising the age for buying assault weapons from 18 to 21. The bill also limits gun purchases to one per month per person.
  2. California passes net neutrality laws. The bill brings back the FCC guidelines put in place under Obama, but only for California.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Will the ways in which we can push Hispanics out of the country never end? Now the U.S. is denying passports to people with U.S. birth certificates, or even revoking them for people who already have them. The problem arises from cases in the 1990’s where some midwives admitted to falsifying birth documents, and now anyone born to a midwife is suspect. Some have been detained and some are in deportation proceedings. Even though there is no proof that they were NOT born here.
  2. Some passports were denied under Bush and Obama for the same reason, but a lawsuit ended the practice in Obama’s first year as president.
  3. California signs a bill into law overhauling its money bail system. The bill mostly gets rid of money bail and instead would use a system of probation departments to analyze flight risk and risks to the community. Opponents of money bail say this still won’t fix the problem.
  4. We’re on day 14 of the 19-day prison strike. Prisoners have stopped eating and working to protest unsafe and unjust conditions. Some immigrant detainees have joined in on the strike.
  5. The mother of a toddler who died after being separated and then reunited files a lawsuit against the city where her daughter was detained. Allegedly, the child became ill at the detention center, wasn’t given adequate medial care, and was released with a clean bill of health by a nurse who didn’t have the authority. Once reunited, the mother tried to see a doctor but was turned away several times.
  6. And finally some justice. A jury convicts a police officer in Texas of killing Jordan Edwards, an unarmed, 15-year-old black teen. The officer gets a 15-year sentence.
  7. A judge rules against Texas and other states trying to end DACA, saying they waited too long to file suit. The ruling doesn’t protect DACA long term, though, and the judge leaves an opening for the states to file again, saying that DACA is likely illegal.
  8. The backlog is growing for immigrants who have applied for citizenship and are still being processed. Part of the slowdown is a longer questionnaire created under Obama, and part is longer delays for getting interview appointments. Part of it could also be an increase in the number people trying to get their citizenship.
  9. The family of Mollie Tibbetts, who was allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant, asks people to stop politicizing her death. Specifically, they say Mollie would be against using this as an excuse to hate undocumented immigrants.
  10. Ron DeSantis, who is the Republican nominee for governor of Florida, was an administrator of a Facebook page that features conspiracy theories as well as racist and anti-Muslim rhetoric. The page also attacks Parkland shooting survivors. Remember, this is the guy who said “we don’t want to monkey this up” by electing a black governor.
  11. 16 states have introduced legislation to restrict the use of non-disclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases.

Climate/EPA

  1. The California legislature passes a bill that would require the state to get its energy from 100% carbon-free sources by 2045. Several other states are considering the same, and Hawaii has already passed it into law. Orlando, FL, has the same goal for 2050.
  2. The BLM publishes a notice of intent to open 1.6 million acres of publicly held land in California to fracking and oil drilling. There’s been a moratorium on leasing federal land in California to oil companies.
  3. Despite the governor of Puerto Rico recently raising the official Hurricane Maria death toll to 2,975 (up from the previous 64), Trump says the administration’s response to the disaster was fantastic.
  4. The EPA considers reversing Obama-era limits on mercury emissions from coal power plants. The health effects of mercury exposure can include tremors, neurological damage, emotional changes, headaches, impaired mental performance, and muscle weakness, among others.
  5. According to a new study, hotter temperatures caused by climate change will make insects hungrier, causing diseases to spread faster and ruining crops.
  6. Over 100 schools in Detroit don’t have drinking water after tests find elevated levels of lead.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The U.S. and Mexico reach a preliminary agreement to update NAFTA, possibly without Canada. Trump wants to drop the name NAFTA because he calls it the worst trade deal in history and says it has a bad connotation.
  2. The TPP, the Obama trade pact that Trump disbanded, was basically a renegotiation of NAFTA but with nine additional countries. TPP and Trump’s renegotiated NAFTA are very similar with the exception of the North American auto industry. The updated NAFTA has tighter restrictions and better worker protections than TPP.
  3. Trump says the deal will be good for farmers and for manufacturers. (Note: I haven’t found a good analysis to verify this yet.)
  4. Stocks jump on Trump’s announcement that we’ve reached a trade deal with Mexico, calming down some of the uncertainty over trade. The NASDAQ hits an all-time high on the news.
  5. Mexico is a little more subdued about the agreement, saying that we’re continuing to make progress.
  6. Canada misses Trump’s Friday deadline to agree to the new terms of NAFTA. Both sides say negotiations are ongoing, though. Trump says he won’t give in to any of Canada’s requests and that this will all be on our terms.
  7. Seth Frotman, the student loan ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, resigns in protest. He says that the bureau has lost sight of its mission to protect consumers, and specifically that they no longer protect students’ financial futures and are openly hostile to protecting student borrowers.
  8. The USDA announces it’s ready to accept applications from farmers who’ve been hurt by the tariffs. They play to make payments totaling $4.7 billion, their first installment of the $12 billion bailout.
  9. Trump cancels a planned cost-of-living pay raise for federal employees citing budget constraints. This is not something you do during a booming economy. Unless, of course, you already created a $1 trillion deficit by giving out big tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy.
  10. Trump also wants to get rid of locality adjustments for federal worker wages. These are cost-of-living adjustments based on the standard of living in the city in which a worker resides. Most large companies adjust wages this way.
  11. The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) blocks the Trump administration’s tariff on newsprint. They say there’s no sign of any unfair competition from Canadian imports.
  12. Trump wants to impose the additional $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods next week.
  13. Trump also threatens to pull out of the World Trade Organization, saying they’ve treated the U.S. very badly and that it’s all very unfair. How did the biggest economy in the world get such a persecution complex?
  14. Did you know that many restaurant chains have policies where they don’t allow employees to try for higher-paying jobs at other locations of the same chain? Now 15 chains have ended that policy. But that businesses continue to do things like this is why we still need unions.

Elections:

  1. The DNC voted to limit the powers of their superdelegates for the 2020 primaries.
  2. For a second time, a North Carolina court rules that the state’s congressional districts are unconstitutionally gerrymandered. The first time, the lines were deemed to be racially motivated; this time they were seen as politically motivated to benefit Republicans. They might have to redraw the lines, just 9 weeks before the midterm elections.
  3. The lawmaker responsible for the congressional districts lines said they were designed to maintain Republican dominance because “electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats.”
  4. The USPS accidentally releases security clearance paperwork for an ex-CIA operative who is now running as a Democratic candidate for Congress (Abigail Spanberger). The Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP PAC closely linked to Paul Ryan, then uses some of the sensitive information in those papers against Spanberger’s campaign.
  5. I’m not sure whether this should go under elections or discrimination, but Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was pardoned by Trump last year, lost bigly in the Republican primary for Senate in Arizona. Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt of court for refusing to stop racially profiling Arizona residents.
  6. Trump meets with evangelical leaders and urges them to campaign for Republicans from the pulpit. He also says that if Democrats take over, there will be violence. Though he seems to be saying the Democrats will be violent. I’m not sure why the winner would be violent.
    • Just for the record, Trump did not overturn the Johnson Amendment as he’s claimed, and religious organizations still can’t endorse a political candidate.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Last week, Trump refused to sign off on the full White House statement commemorating John McCain. This week, he raises the flags back up to full mast. After blowback from that, Trump places the flag back at half mast and issues a full statement on McCain.
  2. Even the American Legion felt they had to write a letter to Trump urging him to follow protocol and to honor McCain.
  3. As the Senate reconvenes, Senators each take some time to honor McCain on the Senate floor. McCain will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until his interment.
  4. There are a number of memorials for McCain, including one in Arizona, one in the Capitol Rotunda, and the final one at the Washington National Cathedral.
    • Joe Biden is among the speakers at the service in Arizona.
    • Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Mike Pence speak in the Capitol Rotunda.
    • McCain had requested former presidents Bush (Jr.) and Obama to deliver eulogies, as well as Joe Lieberman. A Republican, a Democrat, and an Independent. A quaint throwback to bipartisanship.
    • McCain’s daughter Meghan gives an emotional eulogy, crediting her father for making her tough and criticizing the divisive politics of today.
    • Many of the speakers at the events take the opportunity to support reaching across the aisle and to take jabs at the current administration.
  1. McCain is buried at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD.
  2. Republicans bury Chuck Schumer’s proposal to rename the Russell Senate Building after John McCain.
  3. Senator James Inhofe says McCain is partly to blame for Trump bungling how McCain was honored because McCain was too outspoken and criticized Trump. That’s not how this works.
  4. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral, but Ivanka and Jared Kushner did attend at Lindsey Graham’s invitation.
  5. Trump claims that Google’s search results are rigged against him to only show bad news about him. Looks like he got this from a PJ Media article that was covered by Lou Dobbs on Fox.
  6. Larry Kudlow says the administration is looking at whether the government should regulate Google search results (can you say ‘state run media’?). This largely came about because of social media’s efforts to stop the spread of fake stories and lies, which often come from sources Trump relies on.
  7. Don’t mess with Google. After Trump’s accusations, Google adds his picture next to the definition of imbecile.
  8. Trump announces that White House Counsel Don McGahn will leave in the fall. It’s not clear if it’s by choice or if he was fired.
  9. Robert Chain calls the Boston Globe to tell them they are the enemy of the people and says “we’re going to kill every fucking one of you.” The FBI arrests Chain, who owns several guns and a recently purchased rifle.
  10. A judge sentences two Reuters journalists in Myanmar to seven years each for possessing confidential documents. The two were investigating the killings of Rohingya Muslims in the country.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s approval rating dips back down below 40%.