Tag: wall

Week 137 in Trump

Posted on September 12, 2019 in Politics, Trump

That crucial moment where everything went terribly awry.

Every week under this administration is a little weird, but this week was surreal. SharpieGate sucked up all the air in the room for nearly the entire freaking week. Any normal president would’ve just said ‘sorry, I made a mistake,’ thanked the weather service for the correction, and gotten on with the business of presidenting. But this isn’t a normal president, and so now we all know what a spaghetti graph is and why none of us can interpret one. We also know that our scientific federal agencies have now been compromised by politics and that we can’t rely on the president to give us truthful information during a disaster.

Here’s what else happened in politics for the week ending September 8…

Shootings This Week:

  1. The week‘s mass shootings (defined as killing or injuring four or more people):
    • Two shooters injure four men in Chicago’s Washington Park neighborhood.
    • Four people are injured in a shooting in Jacksonville, FL. The details aren’t known.
    • A shooter kills two people and injures two more, including an infant (who DOES that?), in Greensboro, NC.
    • A fourteen-year-old shooter kills his entire family of five in Elkmont, AL. This shooting includes another infant.
    • Two shooters kill two people, including a 7-year-old girl, and injure two others in Marrero, LA.
    • Shooters kill a family of three, including a 5-year-old boy, and injure one other in Whiteville, NC.
    • A female shooter kills one person and injures three more after an ongoing altercation in Alexandria, LA. This is the first known female mass shooter since I’ve been recording shootings.
    • A gang-related shooting in Sumter, SC, leaves two people dead and three others wounded.
    • A shooter injures four people in Chicago, IL.
  1. Walmart halts sales of all handgun ammunition, and while they don’t end their policy of allowing guns in the stores, they do request customers not openly carry weapons in Walmart and Sam’s Club stores.
  2. A federal judge rules that victims can sue the government when shooters obtain guns through background check loopholes. The suit stems from the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where the shooter obtained a weapon despite a prior drug offense. This ruling could make the federal government responsible for such loopholes in the law.
  3. In other background check loophole news, the Odessa, TX, shooter obtained his weapon from a private seller, which didn’t require a background check. The shooter had failed a previous background check for mental health issues. Close those damn loopholes, Congress!
  4. We find out that Texas Attorney General received more than 100 pages of racist letters filled with violence, threatening to kill undocumented immigrants. The letters poured in over the past year, and the Attorney General didn’t do or say anything about it. In the same period, police responded to 911 calls about the man who sent them at least 35 times. They didn’t do anything about it either.

Russia:

  1. A jury acquits former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig on charges of misleading the DOJ about the lobbying work he did for Ukraine. Craig is the only Democrat to be charged so far in Mueller’s investigation.
  2. Russians vote in local elections following months of opposition protests, which led to the biggest crackdown on dissenters in the country in years. Before the elections, Putin’s party, United Russia, held 40 out of 45 seats on the Moscow city council. They lost 15 of those seats in the elections to hold on to 25. Center-left and far-left parties took the remaining seats.
  3. Investigators in Congress find that Deutsche Bank had several points of failure in their money-laundering controls while handling financial dealings with Russian oligarchs.
  4. We learn that in 2017, the CIA extracted one of their most valuable assets in the Kremlin over fears that media scrutiny would give the spy away. This person is how the CIA found out that Putin was directly involved in our 2016 election interference.
    • At first, some media outlets (I’m looking at you, CNN) report that the extraction was over fears that Trump’s carelessness would give the spy away, but that is corrected by later New York Times reporting (always read your news; don’t watch it!).
  1. Michael Flynn refuses to cooperate with House Intelligence Committee subpoenas for testimony and documents. The committee gives him a deadline of September 25 for testimony and September 18 for documents.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The House Judiciary Committee is investigating Trump’s involvement with the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. He’s already named as a co-conspirator in the legal case in which Michael Cohen pleaded guilty.
  2. Mike Pence stays at Trump’s country club in Doonbeg, Ireland while attending meetings with Irish officials (including the Prime Minister). Pence flies back and forth an hour each way for the meetings instead of just staying closer to where the meetings are held.
  3. It comes to light that in 2014, Trump entered a partnership with a struggling airport near his Turnberry golf course in Scotland. In 2015, when Trump was running for president, the Pentagon started using that airport for flight refueling, requiring flight crews to use local accommodations for overnight stays. This sometimes means that flight crews end up staying at Trump Turnberry.
    • Trump tweets that he has nothing to do with the airport (which is demonstrably not true, but might not actually be relevant in this case).
    • This is a weird intersection of two separate things (Trump entering a partnership with the airport and the Pentagon entering a partnership with the airport). However, 180 Air Force planes stopped there in 2017, 257 stopped there in 2018, and 259 have already stopped there this year.
  1. The House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee open investigations into the self-dealing around Trump’s properties, including things like Pence’s stay in Doonbeg, the airport deal, and Trump’s announcement that next year’s G-7 will be held at his Doral property (you know, the one with the bedbugs).
  2. The House Judiciary Committee prepares a vote to define impeachment hearings.

International:

  1. It’s U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.
    • Parliament hands Johnson four straight defeats, opposing him on his first four votes as PM.
    • Johnson loses his first Brexit vote, despite his threats that if any of his Members of Parliament (MPs) oppose him, he’ll kick them out of the party. 20 of his MPs defy him. In fact, Parliament votes to seize control from Johnson in order to debate a bill that would prevent a no-deal Brexit (which the House of Commons later passes).
    • This means Johnson loses his majority in Parliament. Actually, he lost his majority when one of his MPs got up in the middle of his speech to cross over to the other side.
    • And then Parliament votes to scrap Johnson’s no-deal Brexit and to ask the EU for a delay, effectively rendering Johnson’s reasons for suspending Parliament moot.
    • Boris Johnson’s brother quits his positions as a Member of Parliament and Minister over his disagreements with his brother over Brexit.
    • Johnson calls for new elections, but it doesn’t pass the House of Commons with the two-thirds vote it needs. (It’s pretty inevitable that elections will happen, though; it’s just a matter of timing.)
  1. Demonstrators across the U.K. gather to protest Brexit; counter-protestors come out to defend Brexit. Things get violent between the two, and 16 are arrested.
  2. Pro-democracy protests pick back up again in Hong Kong this week, despite the withdrawal of the Chinese extradition bill they were protesting in the first place.
  3. France proposes offering credit lines worth $15 billion to Iran if they’ll come back into compliance with the JCPOA (aka the Iran Deal). This relies on Trump not blocking it.
  4. Conservatives defend Trump tweeting what appeared to be an image from a classified satellite of an explosion in Iran by saying he’s just showing them that we’re watching them closely. However, the satellite has been identified online, and now it’s possible that Iran can evade its surveillance.
  5. The top U.S. negotiator with Afghanistan and the Taliban announces there’s a peace deal in principal between the parties.
    • But then Trump announces that he cancelled a secret meeting at Camp David with senior Taliban leaders and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani because the Taliban took responsibility for an attack that killed a U.S. soldier.
    • Also, the week of 9/11 might not be the best week for a meeting at Camp David.
    • This pretty much puts an end to a year of peace negotiations, in which it was agreed that the U.S. would dramatically pull back on troops in Afghanistan.
  1. Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s chief negotiator in the Mideast peace process, steps down, putting a damper on any prospects for a peace deal there. The deal stalled after Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2017, recognizing it as Israel’s legit capital. Palestinians walked away at that point, and haven’t been seriously negotiating since.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The Cherokee Nation names Kimberly Teehee as their first delegate to the House of Representatives, finally exercising their 200-year-old right. Their Representative doesn’t get a vote in Congress.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. Defense Secretary Mark Esper agrees to release $3.6 billion for Trump’s border wall, as requested in Trump’s emergency declaration. He’s defunding 127 military projects to do it.
    • The affected projects include new cyber ops facilities, training facilities, hazardous materials warehouses and cargo pads, new and expanded weapons ranges, munition storage facilities, aircraft maintenance hangars, schools, power substations, SATCOM facilities, NORTHCOM alert facilities, flight simulators, rescue stations, security improvements, housing maintenance, and more.
    • Funds will be diverted from over 125 military projects in three U.S. territories, 23 states, and 21 countries.
  1. Several of these projects are modernization projects and future-looking technical projects, all being scuttled to go toward the wall, which is (IMO) a medieval solution.
  2. The Pentagon says that if Congress re-funds those projects, they won’t be delayed or canceled. So they’re asking Congress to fund these projects twice. That sounds so blackmaily to me.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump says he’ll reconsider his administration’s rule that would deny life-saving healthcare visas to immigrants. He doesn’t fully reverse the decision, which has received strong criticism, and he doesn’t say whether we’ll continue to grant these visas. Meanwhile, people who are alive here today because they’re receiving these services have one more week to leave the country or become in violation of immigration law.
  2. The State Department has dramatically reduced the number of foreign student visas issued each year. This year, 20 Chinese students returning to Arizona State University were denied entry into the U.S. They’re currently taking their classes online.
  3. Following the Hurricane Dorian disaster in the Bahamas, Trump claims we can’t provide refuge for Bahamans because the islands are filled with “very bad gang members” and “very, very bad drug dealers.” He says they have “tremendous problems” with people who “weren’t supposed to be there.” What does that even mean?? 45 people have died, and the Abaco Islands are largely uninhabitable.
  4. Meanwhile, politicians from both parties urge Trump to suspend visa requirements for Bahamans at this time to allow more refugees into the U.S.
  5. While Charles Koch is trying to rehabilitate his reputation by supporting immigrants and criticizing the way Trump scapegoats immigrants, his network is also mining data to rile up conservatives with dehumanizing messages about immigrants. His data analytics company, i360, pushes the image of immigrants as invading criminals and terrorists.
  6. A judge rules that the terrorist watch list violates our constitutional rights because the standards for inclusion are too vague. Being on the watchlist makes it harder to travel and puts you under extra police scrutiny, among other things.
  7. Trump is considering two options to drastically reduce how many refugees fleeing war and violence the U.S. allows in. One option would cut the number by half—to 10,000 to 15,000 refugees per year. Another option reduces the number to ZERO, at the advice of a “top level official” (I wonder who that could be, Steven Miller). Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis was a huge proponent in the administration for allowing refugees (it actually does make the world a safer place), but Mike Esper, who took over from Mattis, isn’t as strong-willed.

Climate:

  1. At least 45 are dead in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian stalled over the islands, decimating at least one of the islands. 70,000 people are homeless.
  2. Cruise ships begin evacuating refugees.
  3. Trump spends Labor Day fighting with meteorologists over the path of Dorian after several news outlets (and the National Weather Service) contradict his claim that Dorian would hit Alabama much harder than expected. And thus begins SharpieGate. Holy smokes.
    • The NWS was obligated to dispute Trump’s claim immediately in order to prevent panic in Alabama. At the time of Trump‘s claim, NWS forecast maps have Alabama at about a 5% chance of winds above 40 mph. The National Hurricane Center’s forecast at the same time show the path skimming the East Coast and missing Alabama completely.
    • Trump was looking at an outdated map of the hurricane (and it was also a spaghetti map, which show numerous possibilities and probabilities, and are notoriously impossible for laypeople to translate).
    • Trump can’t let it go, so he brings a Fox News correspondent into the Oval Office to vouch for him and holds up an official NOAA map that he had doctored by adding an extension to the hurricane path in black Sharpie to make it look like the official map includes Alabama.
    • And then, NOAA, damaging its own credibility, issues an unsigned statement that Trump was correct. The statement criticized the NWS (part of NOAA) for contradicting Trump. So we have NOAA contradicting its own scientific forecast which, by the way, was completely correct.
    • It just keeps getting worse… NOAA instructs its staff (including scientists and meteorologists) to not provide any opinion in response to Trump’s incorrect tweets about Alabama. So now we’re at a point where our scientific agencies would rather freak people out needlessly about a disaster that isn’t going to happen than contradict the president. This does not bode well if we can’t trust their forecasts.
    • And then, NOAA’s acting chief scientist says he’s investigating NOAA’s response and whether it’s in violation of NOAA policies and ethics. The Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General opens an investigation.
    • And then, NWS Director Louis Uccellini contradicts his bosses at NOAA and defends the his agency’s forecasters at a weather industry conference.
    • And then, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross threatens to fire the top employees responsible for the forecast that contradicted Trump’s claim EVEN THOUGH THEIR FORECAST WAS CORRECT. This would be comical at this point if it wasn’t actually so very serious.
    • Is SharpieGate over? I don’t know.
  1. It might be important to note that altering a weather map is illegal.
  2. Trump plans to weaken George Bush’s light bulb efficiency rules, which would’ve forced us to use more efficient bulbs. They’re also more expensive but they last a ton longer.
    • The rules would save the equivalent of the energy output of 25 large power plants.
    • My guess is that Trump thinks he’s reversing an Obama rule, since Obama gets blamed for this one all the time.
  1. Joe Balash leaves his job at the Department of the Interior to join a foreign oil company that’s expanding their drilling operations in Alaska. As assistant secretary, Balash oversaw drilling on federal lands.
    • Balash is at least the third high-level administration official to join up with a fossil fuel company after leaving (the other two are Scott Pruitt of the EPA and Vincent DeVito of the Interior).
  1. The DOJ opens an antitrust investigation into four of the automakers that joined with California to keep Obama’s emissions standards in place. They say Ford, Honda, VW, and BMW broke federal competition laws.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The president of the AFL-CIO workers union says that Trump has done more to hurt workers than to help them. He cites rising healthcare costs, rising housing costs, and the trade war, as well as GOP opposition to raising the minimum wage.
  2. The five U.S. industries expected to be hit hardest by the latest round of tariffs include: Food and agribusiness, retail, manufacturers and supplies, tech and telecom, and clothing and footwear. That doesn’t leave much out.
  3. Even though Congress expanded the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program last year, around 99% of applications for forgiveness are still denied. The program is designed for people who are employed by government or certain non-profit organizations providing a public service.
  4. The Trump administration releases a proposed overhaul of the U.S. housing market that would end government control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These two companies back half of all our nation’s mortgages.
    • Fannie and Freddie have been under federal control since the housing market collapse, and they’re the last loose string left from the Great Recession.
  1. Trump touts job numbers before they’re officially released (again). Despite lower-than-expected job growth numbers for August, we hit another record number of people employed (157,878,000). Of course, our population is also at a record high, so the unemployment rate is still unchanged.
    • The rise in government employment came largely from temporary workers hired to help out with the 2020 Census.
    • Employment growth is slowing down from a high of 250,000 jobs added per month in 2015 to 143,000 so far in 2019 (there were 187,000 new jobs per month in 2016, 182,000 in 2017, and 192,000 in 2018).
  1. Analysts think that tariffs will cost American households an average of $2,031 per year starting in 2020, erasing any economic gains brought by deregulation efforts.

Elections:

  1. A court rules that North Carolina must redraw their gerrymandered districting laws in time for the 2020 elections, and Republicans (finally) say they won’t appeal the ruling. This has been in the courts for ages, with one judge accusing them of drawing the lines to discriminate with surgical precision.
    • Curious about the inner workings of GOP gerrymandering? Check this out. (Note: I in no way believe that this only happens on the right; they‘ve just mastered the art since 2010.)
  1. Another Texas GOP Congressman announces he’ll retire. Bill Flores becomes the fifth Texas GOP Representative to retire.
  2. Four states plan to cancel their GOP presidential primaries, which isn’t unheard of when an incumbent president is running. But usually they wait to see how successful the challengers are before scrapping the primaries.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump says that we should have a state-run news outlet to counter CNN’s “fake news.” You know who else has state-run news agencies? Russia, China, Iran, petty dictators…

Trump’s Super Rambling Declaration of National Emergency Over the Wall

Posted on February 19, 2019 in Trump, Uncategorized

Trump gives a rambling speech where declares a national emergency so he can build his wall. One of the weirdest presidential speeches I’ve ever heard. I was going to include it in my weekly recap, but it got to be too long.

You can read an annotated version of the full transcript, as delivered, here, but below are some highlights.

  1. My favorite part is from 22:08 to 22:48 here. (And by the way, his Muslim ban as written did not survive the Supreme Court as he says here. The Supreme Court basically told him how he would need to change the ban to make it appear constitutional.)
  2. He says he’ll spend $8 billion on the wall.
  3. He starts out his emergency declaration for the wall by talking about China, trade, tariffs, the UK, Syria, North Korea, and what a great job he’s doing with the military and economy.
  4. He confuses journalists by talking about China and Russia living up to their requirements on the border (the Korean border?). And confuses them again by saying someone’s been taking advantage of the U.S. and billions have been paid to them. I think he might be talking about the UN.
  5. One of the reasons he gives for the national emergency is the influx of drugs, so he plans to siphon off money from existing drug programs.
  6. He says Democrats are lying when they say that drugs mostly come to the U.S. through ports of entry. He’s wrong, according to the DEA’s 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment (heroine, bottom of page 19; cocaine, pages 52-54; marijuana is the one drug that comes in between ports of entry and it’s also grown domestically).
  7. Trump brings up his debunked story of women being trafficked across the border with their mouths taped shut.
  8. He talks about the great job the military is doing at the border putting up concertina wire, ignoring that Nogales, AZ is suing to have it removed; just one border town that opposes it.
  9. Trump also plans to pull money from military construction funds, though they currently have a backlog of over $100 billion. Military families recently provided testimony about the deplorable living conditions on some of our military bases.
  10. He overstates the number of murders in Mexico by about 25%.
  11. And then again with the list of people killed by undocumented immigrants. Did he list the people killed by native-born mass shooters too? Um, no. No he didn’t.
  12. He apparently blames the influx of drugs on our own addictions. Actually, that might be correct.
  13. He seems to be pushing for the death penalty for drug dealers. Just a reminder, President Duterte of the Philippines is doing that, but with no due process.
  14. Then he talks about Japan, China, the stock market, and how the market would’ve tanked if Democrats had won in 2018 (counter to all economic indicators at the time).
  15. Trump sort of says that the reason he didn’t get the wall settled during the two years of Republican control is that he was too new to the job.
  16. He then admits that they haven’t really built any new “wall” but have been renovating existing “wall” (which is really “fence”). But then he later says he’s built a lot of wall. He has a lot of money.
  17. And finally he brings up MS-13, as usual.
  18. Trump repeatedly criticized Obama for executive overreach, but when a journalist calls him out on that after the speech, Trump says he went through Congress for this. Huh?
  19. Trump says this is all about the 2020 elections. So it’s not an emergency or it is?
  20. He blasts the immigration lottery, catch-and-release (another way to phrase it in such a way as to dehumanize migrants) and chain migration (which is how many of us got here).
  21. He admits to getting information on immigration from Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.
  22. Trump brings up a poll by outlier Rasmussen that shows his approval at 52% (his aggregate is just under 41%).
  23. He comments on the large number of undocumented immigrants in our federal prisons, ignoring the fact that just the condition of being here illegally can land you in federal prison. Plus, federal inmates make up a very small percent of our overall prison population.
  24. He ignores a reporter who says this: “I’m asking you to clarify where you get your numbers, because most of the DEA crime reporting statistics that we see show that drugs are coming across at the ports of entry, that illegal immigration is down and that the violence is down.” Refer to the DEA report linked above if you want to find out who’s right.
  25. He says that Obama told him he was close to starting a war with North Korea. This sounds pretty dubious.
  26. Trump says that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize for his work with North Korea. He doesn’t mention that the U.S. asked Abe to do that.

Week 102 in Trump

Posted on January 8, 2019 in Politics, Trump

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

We have a new Senate and a new House, and our government is still shutdown. For the record, I’m confused by how Trump can blame the shutdown on Democrats when the shutdown started while Republicans controlled both the Senate and the House. It’s almost as if the outgoing Republican House set up the new Democratic House for an immediate clash with Trump.

Here’s what happened last week…

Border Wall/Shutdown:

The shutdown and wall deserve their own category, since they’re front and center of what’s been happening.

  1. A brief timeline; I’m sure we can all see the dysfunction at work here:
    1. In December, the Republican Senate passes two bills to keep the government running.
    2. Just before the outgoing Republican House was ready to pass those bills, Trump says he won’t approve them without funding for his wall.
    3. The Republican House fails to pass them.
    4. The government shuts down.
    5. Trumps says he won’t re-open the government until he has border wall funding.
    6. The new Democratic House passes the same two bills the Republican Senate did last year, but the Senate has to vote on them again since it’s a new session.
    7. Mitch McConnell refuses to bring the bills to a vote because Trump disapproves, even though there’s a veto-proof majority in the Republican Senate.
  2. Trump and his administration put out a number of “facts” about the illegal border crossings, but many are misleading or flat-out incorrect. Here’s a summary.
  3. As a defense for his wall, Trump says that the Obamas have a 10-foot wall around their house. Pictures of the property show that they don’t. They have a little retaining wall around the front of their property that looks to be about two feet hight, to which they added a security fence. They also added chain link fencing in the back for the Secret Service. People need to learn the difference between a fence and a wall. Jeez.
  4. Trump says he’ll keep the government shut down for months or even years if that’s what he has to do in order for his wall to be built.
  5. A federal workers union files a lawsuit against the Trump administration saying that the shutdown is illegally forcing federal workers to work without pay.
  6. Trump says he’ll consider declaring a state of emergency if that’s what it takes to get his border wall funded. It’s been three years since he started talking about his border wall; I think he’ll have a hard time proving there’s any imminent threat.
  7. As an example of how NOT a crisis this is, average monthly border apprehensions under Trump are just over a third what they were under Bush. They’ve been decreasing for decades.
  8. Though Trump tries to blame Democrats for the shutdown, he doesn’t deny it’s his fault when asked by reporters whether he’s still proud to call it his shutdown (as he said in a public meeting with Pelosi and Schumer in December).
  9. The idea of trading wall funding for a pathway to citizenship for DACA comes back up, but Trump refuses to consider that.
    • Just a reminder, last year, Democrats offered Trump full funding for his wall ($25 billion) in return for citizenship options for DACA and Trump turned it down.
  1. Security experts fear that since the wall has taken over the narrative, they won’t be able to get any of the other needed reforms around immigration.
  2. TSA screeners start calling in sick to work because they can’t afford to get to work without their wages. Some are finding part-time work that actually pays them for what they do. (Reports that air traffic controllers are calling in sick appear to be unfounded.)
  3. The largest airline pilots union sends a letter to Trump imploring him to end the shutdown out of concern for air safety.
  4. Senior administration officials say that the Trump administration is only just now starting to realize the longterm effects of a shutdown, such as delays in processing tax refunds, SNAP recipients being unable to buy food, and HUD assistance being withheld.
  5. Lawmakers on both sides request that their paychecks either be withheld or donated during the shutdown.
  6. The Trump administration sends a letter to congressional leaders indicating that there is no compromising on a wall. Though he does soften his language to say physical barrier.
  7. Mike Pence is tasked with negotiating a deal, and he brings a $2.5 billion compromise to the table. Which Trump promptly shoots down.
  8. Sarah Huckabee Sanders says that most illicit drugs in the U.S. come in through the border. The vast majority of drugs come in through legal ports of entry—by land, water, and air. Even Chris Wallace calls her out on that one.
  9. Trump gets a little reprieve from some of the lawsuits he’s facing when Manhattan federal courts shut down civil litigation due to the government shutdown.
  10. Trump has opted to leave national parks open during the shutdown despite lack of staff, while Obama closed them during his shutdown for safety reasons against much criticism. Three park visitors have died during the current shutdown.
  11. Polling shows that government employees really hate the shutdown. 71% oppose it while 22% support it. Trump says that they’re behind him and that he can relate to furloughed workers who can’t pay their bills. Sure.

Russia:

  1. A judge extends Mueller’s grand jury for another six months. The jury is coming up on the end of its 18-month term.
  2. Russia detains a U.S. marine, accusing him of spying. Two things:
    • The marine has citizenship in four countries.
    • Russian politicians suggest they might be interested in swapping him for Maria Butina, the Russian national who pleaded guilty to espionage.
  1. Igor Korobov, who has run the GRU military intelligence agency since 2016, dies after a “long illness.” The agency is accused of meddling in U.S. elections and hacking our election systems, and Korobov is suspected to be behind the poisonings of Russian ex-pats.
  2. About that dossier, here’s a good summary of how it’s stood the test of time so far.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court agrees to hear two gerrymandering cases—one from North Carolina and one from Maryland. Two lower courts found the district maps violated the constitution. The Supreme Court has avoided ruling on gerrymandering, but with the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, the issue has become more urgent.

Healthcare:

  1. After years of taking steps to put abortion rights at risk at the state level, new state legislatures start proposing bills to make a woman’s right to choose more secure.

International:

  1. The Democratic Republic of Congo holds a chaotic presidential election where fake results start circulating on social media. So they cut internet and messaging service in the entire country.
  2. The State Department issues a warning that U.S. citizens could be randomly detained if they travel to China.
  3. National Security Advisor John Bolton says the U.S. won’t withdraw troops from Syria until Turkey promises not to attack the Kurds (who’ve been helping us in the region). Trump had previously said he wanted the withdrawal to happen quickly.
  4. The private information of hundreds of German politicians was hacked and released on Twitter. This affected every group except the far right.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The new Democratic-majority House gets sworn in and officially take their seats. There are 111 new representatives and senators, which includes 42 women and 24 people of color. This is the most diverse congress in history, but women still make up just 25%.
  2. The House elects Nancy Pelosi to Speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy becomes the House Minority Leader and Steny Hoyer becomes the House Majority Leader. No surprises there.
  3. Hours after being sworn in to Congress, Michigan Representative Rachida Tlaib recounts a conversation she had with her son where she told him “…we’re going to go in and impeach the motherfucker.” That creates lots of fodder for conservative circles.
  4. House GOP members boo Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as she places her vote for Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker. They really have it in for her.
  5. The new House immediately passes two bills to re-open the government. They are basically the same bills that the Senate passed before Christmas, but now that Trump refuses to support those bills, Mitch McConnell refuses to bring it to a vote in the Senate. Even though the Senate had veto-proof support.
  6. Trump tells a group of legislators that he can’t sign the two House bills because it would make him look foolish. I’m sure there are plenty of furloughed workers thinking that it’s better for him to look foolish than for them to keep losing their wages.
  7. Trump meets with congressional leaders for a border security briefing, hoping to reach a compromise.
  8. The evening before the new Congress begins, the Senate confirms 77 of Trump’s nominees in a bipartisan effort. They include the ambassador to Yemen, a Census director, a National Drug Control Policy director, and just a few judicial nominees. Most were for executive branch positions.
  9. This is the first time since the current budget process was put in place 42 years ago that Congress has transferred power with major parts of the government shut down.
  10. Democrats in the House make climate change a priority and create a select committee to focus on it.
  11. The first major bill put forward by the Democrats is a major elections reform bill. It includes:
    • Making it easier for citizens to vote.
    • Cracking down on voter suppression policies like voter roll purges and gerrymandering.
    • Reinstating parts of the Voting Rights Act that prohibit discrimination against groups of voters.
    • Making money in politics more transparent by disclosing donors and ad buyers.
    • Helping House candidates who can’t raise as much money by matching their fundraising with federal dollars.
    • Placing limits on super PACs.
    • Forcing presidential candidates to release their tax returns and requiring them to have ethics plans once elected.
    • Prohibiting House members from serving on corporate boards.
    • Prohibiting House members from using federal dollars to pay out sexual harassment settlements.
    • Cracking down on lobbyists.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Three teens with the migrant caravan in Tijuana are kidnapped, tortured, and held for ransom. When they can’t pay (because OF COURSE THEY CAN’T), the kidnappers kill two of them and the third manages to escape.
  2. A DOJ memo shows the Trump administration is thinking about rolling back parts of the Civil Rights Act known as “disparate impact.” Disparate impact labels actions as discriminatory if they have an uneven impact on different groups of people.
  3. The DOJ acknowledges errors in a report it issued last year linking immigration and terrorism, but once again refuses to correct the errors.
    • The report claims that nearly 75% of convicted terrorists are foreign-born. Of the people they included in this statistic, over 1/3 were never charged with a crime related to terrorism.
    • The report makes misleading statements about sex offenses committed by immigrants, claiming they were responsible for nearly 70,000 offenses in three years when it was actually over a 55 year period. The number also represents arrests, not convictions.
    • The report cherry-picks examples to support a policy of ending chain migration.
  1. Trump falsely claims that CBP has apprehended 3,775 known terrorists at our southern border. The numbers come from a DHS briefing, but the briefing doesn’t say where the apprehensions occurred. In reality, this number refers to apprehensions mostly at airports and across the globe, not just the U.S. Many of these were stopped simply because their name matched an entry on the terrorist watch list and not necessarily because they themselves were terrorists.
  2. Kirstjen Nielsen says they’ve apprehended 3,000 special interest aliens at the southern border (but didn’t specific a time period). For the record, anyone not from the Western Hemisphere who crosses the border legally or otherwise is classified as special interest.
  3. Maine’s outgoing Governor Paul LePage repeats his debunked claim that 90% of drug dealers in Maine are out-of-state blacks and Hispanics, and that they impregnate Maine’s white women. And then he pardons a former Republican (white) lawmaker who was convicted on drug trafficking charges.
  4. Trump’s administration stops cooperating with human rights investigations in the U.S. by the UN.
  5. Trump’s crackdown on MS-13 gangs caught up and deported high school students who had no criminal background and who were not actually associated with the gang. Many were here legally, but were deported anyway, destroying their American dream.

Climate/EPA:

  1. Despite Trump’s efforts to resuscitate the coal industry, more coal plants have closed in Trump’s first two years than in Obama’s entire first term. The decline is expected to speed up in 2019 as coal consumption continues to fall.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The unemployment rate ticked up in December even though employment increased by 312,000. But that’s not bad news; it went up because more people have moved back into the job market. Wages were also up in December.
  2. Putin says that Russia will fill in the trade gap left by the U.S. by providing soybeans and poultry to China.
  3. Trump blames the stock market’s worst month since the Great Depression on a glitch.
  4. The U.S. national debt rises to $21.974 trillion. It’s grown $2 trillion in Trump’s first two years.
  5. Ford scraps plans to build a new plant in Mexico and will instead expand operations in Michigan. They’ll still move some production to Mexico though.

Elections:

  1. Another Republican Senator, Pat Roberts of Kansas, announces he won’t run for re-election.
  2. Courts in Virginia issue documents around congressional voting district maps, saying the current districts are gerrymandered. The court is redrawing the maps, but the case is before the Supreme Court.
  3. Elizabeth Warren kicks off her 2020 campaign for president. Julián Castro and John Delaney are also running.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Mitt Romney pens an op-ed criticizing Trump and saying that he hasn’t risen to the mantle of his office. Lindsay Graham warns him that criticizing Trump will hurt him and hurt Utah.
  2. Thirteen years after launch, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft visits Ultima Thule, the most distant object we’ve explored. New Horizons is sending back pictures of the 20-mile-long object.
  3. There’s another mass shooting this week, this time at a bowling alley in Torrance, CA. Three people are dead, two are injured.
  4. Trump holds a stream-of-consciousness press conference. Here are a few highlights.
    • In the midst of a government shutdown where hundreds of thousands of workers aren’t getting paid, he confirms that Pence and his cabinet get a $10,000 raise.
    • He says he’ll use Eminent Domain to take land from people who own it near the border so he can build his wall (or fence, or whatever he’s calling it now). He says he can do this without congressional approval.
    • He says he might declare a national emergency to get the wall built without congressional approval.
    • He claims that other presidents have told him they wished they built the wall themselves. (They haven’t. In fact, all four living presidents and a spokesperson for the late Bush Sr. deny having any such conversation.)
    • He calls Rashid Tlaib’s comment about impeachment and calling him a motherfucker “disgraceful.” He’s not that far off base here, but he’s also the pot calling the kettle black.
    • He says you can’t impeach someone who’s doing a great job (even Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), standing behind him, couldn’t help but chuckle).
    • He claims we’ve already built a lot of the wall. (We haven’t; we’ve only worked on existing fences.)
    • He claims drugs are pouring into the country and they don’t go through ports of entry. (The majority of drugs entering the country come in through legal ports of entry.)
    • The updated NAFTA deal will pay for the wall. (It won’t. If it did, he wouldn’t be asking for money. He also says the deal is brand new, which it isn’t.)
    • He says Russia’s not happy we’re pulling out of Syria. (Russia says their happy we’re pulling out of Syria.)
    • He takes credit for lower gas prices, and says he averted a recession. (Turns out the market for oil just relaxed on the realization that sanctions against Iran won’t create a shortage.)
    • He says the U.S. has taken in many billions of dollars of tariffs, apparently not understanding that the American people actually pay for the tariffs.
    • And it wouldn’t be complete if he didn’t say there was no collusion; that he won and Hillary lost; and that he’s done more in two years than any other president.
  1. Trump holds a cabinet meeting where he:
    • Compares the border wall to the walls in the Vatican (not the same thing).
    • Says there are 30-35 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. (there are closer to 11 million).
    • Says his generals are better looking than Tom Cruise.
    • Says he knows more about drones than anybody.
    • Claims that Obama gave Iran $150 billion and $1.8 billion in cash. This has been debunked a gazillion times, but as a reminder, the first amount was the release of frozen Iranian assets (in other words, property of Iran that we were holding) and the second amount was repayment of a debt owed.
  1. In a repeat of his first cabinet meeting, members took their turn at heaping praise on Trump.
  2. And in the realm of “draining the swamp,” a former Boeing executive runs the DOD, a former coal lobbyist runs the EPA, a former pharma lobbyist runs Health and Human Services, and a former fossil fuel lobbyist runs the Department of the Interior. Winning!

Week 28 in Trump

Posted on August 7, 2017 in Politics, Trump

Well we’re at 200 days, and here’s what Trump says he’s accomplished so far: Supreme Court Justice confirmation, surging economy and jobs, border and military security, ISIS, and cracking down on the MS-13 gang. I can give him Gorsuch and increased border security, but the rest? The economy is a continuation of Obama’s last budget (though the current stock market bubble I would give to Trump), he’s continuing Obama’s program against ISIS, and every administration cracks down on the MS-13 gang. I suppose he could also point to his rollbacks of air, water, and environmental protections as well as worker protections and civil rights protections.

At any rate, Trump is still pushing for healthcare reform, but most members of congress think they’ll have to choose between that and tax reform. They also need to raise the debt ceiling by the end of September.

Meanwhile, here’s what happened this week.

Russia:

  1. Trump signs the Russia/Iran/North Korea sanctions bill into law, though he calls it flawed and possibly unconstitutional.
  2. Trump says U.S.-Russia relations are at an all-time low and that it’s Congress’s fault. John McCain’s response: “Our relationship w/ Russia is at dangerous low. You can thank Putin for attacking our democracy, invading neighbors & threatening our allies.”
  3. We learn that Trump dictated Donald Jr.’s misleading statement about his meeting with Russians last year (or at the very least, he participated in forming it). This could put Trump Sr. and those who helped him in legal trouble.
  4. Representative Tim Franks (R-AZ) tries to cast doubts on Mueller’s integrity due to his relationship with Comey, and calls on him to resign.
  5. A new lawsuit accuses Fox and Ed Bukowski (a Trump donor) of creating a fake news story to move the attention away from Trump and the Russia investigation to the DNC and Clinton. Here are the moving pieces:
    • According to the suit Fox misquoted the plaintiff (Rod Wheeler) in a story about Seth Rich’s murder, in which Fox alleged that Seth had hacked the DNC for Russia and that’s why he was murdered.
    • The Rich family asked Fox to stop and Fox later did recant the story, but Sean Hannity kept it alive.
    • The lawsuit alleges that the White House knew about and supported the story, which Sean Spicer has denied.
    • A text between Bukowski and Wheeler indicates that Trump knew about the story.
    • Despite the retractions, the Fox story led to conspiracy theories, including that Hillary Clinton had Seth killed in retribution for hacking the DNC emails (adding just another dead body to her string of dozens—seriously there is no better serial killer mastermind than Hillary).
  6. Kushner told interns on the Hill that Trump’s campaign wasn’t organized enough to collude with Russia saying, “they thought we colluded, but we couldn’t even collude with our local offices.”
  7. Democrats move to revoke Kushner’s security clearance, though it’s doubtful it will go anywhere.
  8. Robert Mueller now has 16 lawyers working on the special investigation.The latest lawyer to join used to work on fraud and foreign bribery for the DoJ.
  9. The Russia investigation expands to include financial crimes.
  10. Mueller launches a grand jury. A grand jury gives the investigation more power to obtain documents, question witnesses under oath, and obtain indictments.
  11. The grand jury issues subpoenas for witnesses, as well as phone and other records, regarding the meeting Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner took with a number of Russians in June of last year. Congressional committees ask for phone records as well.
  12. GOP staffers fly to England to try to get Christopher Steele, author of the infamous Steele dossier, to testify for the House Intelligence Committee.
  13. The House Judiciary Committee prioritizes investigating Hillary Clinton over Russia meddling in the elections, possible collusion, and the firing of Comey. The chairman, Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), asks the DoJ to appoint a special investigator to investigate “troubling” and “unanswered” questions about Clinton and other Obama appointees.
  14. The Senate Judiciary Committee, on the other hand, is very focused on the Russia investigation.
  15. The RNC tells staff to preserve all documents related to the 2016 elections.
  16. Acting FBI director Andy McCabe tells top FBI officials that they could be called as witnesses in the Russia investigation.
  17. The Senate Judiciary Committee proposes a bill to protect the special investigator.
  18. Sources say Kelly was so upset about Comey’s firing that he thought about resigning, but Comey told him not to.
  19. Along with monitoring cyber threats on election day last year, FBI analysts also monitored social media for fake news. They had already identified several social media user accounts behind the stories, many from abroad.
  20. Russia’s been circling the Baltic States, but this week NATO says ‘knock it off.’

Courts/Justice:

  1. A judge found former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio guilty of criminal contempt. Arpaio defied a court order by detaining people he suspected of being undocumented.
  2. In a private meeting, Jeff Sessions takes the brunt of police department anger over Trump’s statements the previous week about roughing up suspects
  3. Trump’s picks for lower-court lifelong judgeship terms are young and conservative (not surprisingly). He’s filling lower court positions faster than his predecessors, with 5 judge seats filled.
  4. While encouraging police departments to crack down on crime, Sessions also says that police misconduct won’t be tolerated.
  5. General Kelly tells Jeff Sessions his job is safe. He has to tell him because, of course, Trump and Sessions aren’t talking.
  6. A federal judge strikes down parts of Alabama’s new state abortion law based on constitutionality. Alabama law requires minors to have parental permission for an abortion, but they can get a legal waiver. Under the parts of the law that got struck down, minors would have faced a legal proceeding involving her parents, the DA, and someone to represent the fetus.
  7. Jeff Sessions says that the DoJ has opened as many leaker investigations in the last 6 months as were opened in the previous 3 years. He says they’re cracking down on both leakers and journalists, but later backs off the journalist part after receiving criticism even from leaders in his own party.
  8. A Republican donor sues the Republican party for fraud for failing to repeal the ACA, saying that the plan to repeal the ACA was used for fundraising even though candidates knew they wouldn’t get it done.

Healthcare:

  1. Trump continues to threaten withholding payments to insurance companies. Insurance companies complain about the uncertainty coming from the White House and estimate an average of 21% in insurance premium hikes if they don’t get clarification soon.
  2. Trump’s threats keep healthcare alive in Congress when members of Congress would rather get busy on tax reform, which is already on a very tight deadline.
  3. Along with the bipartisan committee in the House working on fixes to the ACA, a bipartisan Senate group also begins hearings to shore it up.
  4. The bipartisan House committee releases their plan, which includes:
    • Shoring up the subsidies and creating a stabilization fund.
    • Getting rid of the tax on medical devices.
    • Giving states more control, but not as much as other House or Senate bills.
    • Easing the employer mandate so it applies to companies with more than 500 workers instead of 50.

International:

  1. Apparently I missed last week that Iran tested a space missile, which ramped up tensions between Iran and the U.S. again. The purpose of the missile is to launch satellites into orbit though.
  2. The current draft of the new State Department statement of purpose eliminates the promotion of justice and democracy, indicating that those are no longer our global priorities.
  3. Tillerson refuses to fund the Global Engagement Center, which among other things fights Russian and terrorist propaganda.
  4. The U.S. military thinks there’s evidence that North Korea has tested how to launch missiles from a submarine.
  5. Someone leaks the White House records of Trump’s early conversations with world leaders—specifically Australian Prime Minister Turnbull and Mexican President Pena Nieto. This is IMO one of the most egregious leaks from this White House, as these are typically classified. It did provide these tidbits though:
    • Trump told Pena Nieto that the wall isn’t important, but that Pena Nieto needed to stop saying that Mexico won’t pay for it for appearances sake.
    • Trump got extremely rude with Turnbull over accepting refugees under a previous agreement. He said: “I have had it. I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day. Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous.”
  6. Trump is frustrated with the situation Afghanistan because we aren’t winning. He wants to replace the commander of U.S. forces there. He complains that NATO isn’t doing enough and suggests we should get a piece of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth.
  7. The UN passes a resolution that will cut North Korea’s foreign income by about a billion (with both China and Russia endorsing). Big win for Nikki Haley.
  8. Trump signs sanctions against Venezuela.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Prior to August recess, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) confirmed nine “pro-forma” sessions with full senate agreement. This blocks Trump from making any recess appointments. They most likely did this so he wouldn’t fire and replace Jeff Sessions. I wouldn’t mess with Lisa…

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The DoJ goes after affirmative action, launching investigations into whether colleges and universities discriminate against white people. The Supreme Court has recently upheld affirmative action.
  2. At a recent conference, John Kelly said he thinks he talked Trump out of the border wall. ICYDK, the only reason we have the idea of a border wall is that Trump’s campaign managers couldn’t get him to focus on immigration. So they gave him the slogan ″build that wall″ to focus his attention.
    UPDATE: I’m downgrading that second part to “rumor has it” until I can vet it. I can’t locate my source for that.     UPDATE 2: This is confirmed in Forbes.
  3. Trump endorses the RAISE Act from senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, saying it will reduce poverty, raise wages, and save taxpayers billions and billions. He says our current system favors low-wage immigrants and puts pressure on our resources. This act proposes a points-based system favoring those who speak English, can support themselves, and have a high skill set. Points would be based on age, education, English ability, job offer, Nobel prize, Olympics, investors, and spouses.
  4. Trump says the RAISE Act would prevent new immigrants from receiving welfare, which is actually already the law.
  5. The RAISE Act would cut immigration roughly in half, though economists say that in order to meet Trump’s predicted economic growth, we need to double our current number of immigrants.
  6. During a press briefing on the above, Steven Miller becomes extremely rude and condescending when Jim Acosta from CNN presses him on whether they are socially engineering ethnic flow into the U.S.
    • Miller said that because we allow in more immigrants now than we ever before, the RAISE act isn’t biased. He didn’t take into account that the immigration rate per capita in the U.S. is already lower than in most developed countries.
    • He said you do have to speak English already to become a citizen, but didn’t take into account that there are exceptions.
    • He butchers the meaning of the New Colossus (the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty).
    • He tells Acosta that his question ”is one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things you’ve ever said.” Miller then calls Acosta “cosmopolitan” and chides him like a child.
  7. Trump says that Mexican President Pena Nieto called him to compliment him on what a great job he’s doing with immigration. Nieto says nyet. Didn’t happen. Sarah Huckabee Sanders also admits it didn’t happen.
  8. In a first, the NAACP issues a travel advisory for a U.S. state—Missouri.
  9. The DoJ sends letters to four cities saying they won’t receive money to fight drug and gang crime unless they give ICE officials access to jails. These cities are having major issues with gun violence, which that money would go toward fighting.
  10. Non-scientist Sam Clovis, Trump’s pick for USDA chief scientist, wrote in his old blog that black leaders are race traders, that progressives enslave minorities, and that Obama is a Maoist with communist roots.
  11. Trump considers Rick Perry to replace John Kelly at Homeland Security. Perry’s views on immigration are much softer than Trump’s.

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