The shutdown has finally come to an end, at least for now; but furloughed workers and the companies they owe will take some time to recover. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this past month cost us $11 billion, $3 billion of which we won’t make back. A complete waste of time and energy. Let’s get back to the business of governing and fixing the problems of the world.

Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Missed from Last Week:

1. The new Democratic governor of Maine makes good on her promise to expand Medicaid by signing an executive order that should give healthcare coverage to around 70,000 Mainers. Even though voters approved Medicaid expansion over a year ago, former governor Paul LePage refused to implement it.
2. Also, missed from last year: The DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women changed its definition of domestic violence. The definition was expanded under Obama and vetted by domestic violence experts. The new definition excludes psychological, mental, and emotional abuse; only felony acts can now be considered domestic violence.

Border Wall/Shutdown:

1. Nancy Pelosi sends Trump a letter saying she’s postponing his State of the Union address due to security concerns from the government shutdown. Trump says he’ll do it anyway… until someone tells him that Pelosi has to invite him and she can uninvited him.

• • Trump says he’ll find another venue for it, possibly the Senate or maybe a rally. And then he says he’ll postpone it until after the shutdown.

2. Meanwhile, both sides in both chambers of Congress work on deals to end the shutdown.
3. The House Ways and Means Committee cancels a hearing on how the shutdown is affecting American taxpayers because Steve Mnuchin refuses to appear.
4. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross says he doesn’t understand why furloughed and unpaid federal workers are using food banks. I guess when you have over $700 million, something like this can be hard to understand.

• • Ross says “There’s no reason why some institution wouldn’t be willing to lend.” His own department’s credit union charges federal workers 9% interest on emergency loans, while other lending institutions and cities begin offering them interest-free loans.
  • Because the Trump administration rescinded Obama’s payday lending regulations, the annual interest rate for payday loans in Missouri averages over 400%.

5. Trump says you can just talk to your grocer if you’re a furloughed worker who can’t pay their bills. And that grocer will float you until you get paid. Sure.
6. Nancy Pelosi defends the federal workers, saying they can’t just call their fathers for money.
7. The House has passed bills at least 11 times to reopen the government. Meanwhile, the Senate fails to pass any bills to reopen the government, even those that were introduced by majority GOP members.
8. The White House prepares a draft declaration of national emergency for the southern border as a possible means to end the shutdown.
9. The FAA briefly halts flights into New York’s La Guardia airport over safety concerns due to lack of air traffic control personnel. This causes flight delays across the country and especially in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Orlando, and Atlanta.
10. 14,000 unpaid IRS employees don’t show up to work. IT staffers at the IRS are finding work elsewhere.
11. Irony alert 1: The State Department delays its upcoming conference on border security because of the shutdown.
12. Irony alert 2: A lack of funding because of the shutdown hampers the FBI’s ability to fight child trafficking, violent crime, and terrorism according to the FBI Agents Association.
13. Five former Homeland Security secretaries sign a letter to Trump asking him to end the shutdown for national security reasons. The signers are John Kelly, Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano, and Jeh Johnson.
14. The most under-covered story of this shutdown seems to be the protests in DC over the shutdown. Hundreds of federal workers and supporters have been protesting in government offices for more than a week.
15. All nine Representatives for the southern border districts say a wall isn’t the right solution. Trump’s demeaning rhetoric about migrants is pushing the area toward Democrats—only one district there is represented by a Republican.

• • Interesting side note: Trump’s rhetoric about immigration and the wall worked best for elections in states that are furthest from the wall, like Montana and North Dakota. Closer to the border, residents resent the implications.

16. Trump and Congress reach a deal to end the shutdown for three weeks (that’s until February 15). They create a committee to negotiate a deal for DHS funding, including border security.
17. The deal is basically the same deal that House Democrats offered all along—reopen for three weeks and negotiate border security in the interim.
18. In his speech announcing an end to the shutdown, Trump continues to call it a wall. He doesn’t seem to understand the optics he’s created around that terminology. But he also says we don’t need 2,000 miles of concrete wall and says some can be steel slats.

• • Trump says he’d shut the government down again if needed, or declare a state of emergency.
  • He repeats the false claims that drug smugglers turn right and then make a left turn into the U.S. and that women are all taped up and trafficked over the border.
  • He claims that in the history of the WORLD it’s never been this bad.
  • He repeats false claims about gang members removed by ICE and about the number of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. He just can’t help himself from lying about this.

19. Republicans in the Senate face much pressure from constituents. Their meetings get heated, with a bit of finger pointing (mostly at McConnell) and a lot of yelling. IMO, it’s because they aren’t leading with what they know is right on this issue.
20. Trump promises federal workers they’ll receive their back pay very fast (the government still hasn’t completed the back pay from the 2013 shutdown).
21. By the end of the week, the government will owe unpaid federal workers $6 billion in back pay.
22. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the shutdown cost the U.S. taxpayers $11 billion.

Russia:

1. Here’s a simple breakdown of where the Russia investigation stands right now—who’s been charged, who’s guilty, and how they’re related.
2. The New York Times also has a clear breakdown of the over 100 contacts between Trump associates (including Trump himself) and Russia.
3. Rudy Giuliani tries to walk back his previous claims that the discussions for Trump Tower Moscow were still going on into November 2016.
4. Donald Trump Jr. states again that “we” (and by that I assume he means the Trumps) didn’t know anything about Trump Tower Moscow. He blames Michael Cohen for the whole thing. I give you exhibits a and b. There are also allegedly hundreds of pages of documents and plans.
   1. A 2013 tweet
   2. A letter of intent
5. Michael Cohen delays his public testimony before Congress indefinitely after Trump makes vague comments that could be construed as threats of retaliation against Cohen’s family.

• • The Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenas him to appear before them in a closed-door hearing.

6. Armed FBI agents raid Roger Stone’s home before dawn and arrest him on seven counts, including obstruction, lying, and witness tampering. Here are some claims in the indictment:

• • Stone communicated with the Trump campaign about the hacked emails in WikiLeaks’ possession.
  • Senior Trump campaign officials told Stone to find out more about WikiLeaks plans (WikiLeaks is “Organization 1” in the indictment).
  • Stone lied about having evidence to support these accusations, and he tried to get other witnesses to lie and withhold evidence.
  • Stone has always said (even on TV) that he had a middleman who actually contacted WikiLeaks. From this indictment it looks like there were two middlemen: “Person 1” is believed to be Jerome Corsi (confirmed by Corsi), and “Person 2” is believed to be Randy Credico.
  • After a release of hacked documents, a senior member of the Trump campaign was instructed to contact Stone to find out about any more planned releases. Stone kept this person informed of his progress. The senior member is assumed to be Steve Bannon, but this is only according to one source so far.
  • Emails and texts indicate that Stone was in frequent communication with the Trump campaign, Person 1, and Person 2 about the schedule for dumping the hacked emails as well as the content of those emails. (WaPo has a pretty thorough timeline of the messages.)
  • It was Corsi’s idea to start the rumors that Hillary is old, her memory’s bad, and she had a stroke.
  • There was a reporter who was aware of what was going on. Instead of covering it as the news it was, he or she was rooting for the emails to uncover something to destroy Hillary’s campaign.
  • After the dump of John Podesta’s emails, an associate of an unnamed senior campaign official sent Assange a message: “Well done.”

7. Jerome Corsi says the indictment is accurate.
8. The indictment quotes a bunch of documentary evidence supporting their charges, including emails and text messages between Stone and Person 1 and between Stone and Person 2.
9. Stone pleads not guilty and is released on $250,000 bond. He says he’ll never make up lies against Trump, but he would be willing to testify to Mueller. Update: Whoops! He doesn’t plead not guilty until the following week.
10. Stone is a decades-long advisor to Trump. He started his misinformation techniques on the Nixon campaign and has a tattoo of Nixon on his back.
11. A Kiev court rules that the pro-Russian politician that Paul Manafort lobbied for, former President Viktor Yanukovych, committed treason. Yanukovych invited Russia to invade Ukraine, and has been accused of working for Russia, not Ukraine, while in office. He gets a 13-year prison sentence.
12. Manafort has a court hearing over his alleged breach of his plea deal. The judge says she needs more information, and schedules a closed-door hearing for the first week of February.
13. The Trump administration officially lifts the sanctions against Oleg Deripaska’s companies.
14. It’s been three months since we determined that Russia violated the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act, but the Trump administration still hasn’t imposed the required sanctions as punishment for it.

Healthcare:

1. The Department of Health and Human Services releases their changes to health insurance guidelines for 2020. If enacted, these changes are expected to increase premiums for ACA and employer plans, cut subsidies, and raise prescription costs.

• • The HHS says this will drop hundred of thousands of people off their insurance.
  • And I quote: “The savings to the Treasury are consistent with the idea that consumers would have to pay more.”

2. The Massachusetts attorney general sues Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family who own it. The lawsuit alleges that they’re responsible for deceptive sales tactics for OxyContin. The AG accuses the family of engineering the opioid crisis.
3. New York passes a bill to update their outdated abortion laws to protect and expand abortion rights in the state. It expands allowances for abortions after 24 weeks to include cases where the fetus is no longer viable and where the woman’s health is at risk (previously it only included when her life is at risk.) The bills also remove abortion from the criminal code and move it to the health code.

• • Pro-choice activists cheer the changes to the law law. Pro-life activists say the law allows abortion right up to birth. (It doesn’t. Also, just 1.4% of abortions occur after 21 weeks.)

4. A state judge rules that Iowa’s fetal heartbeat abortion law is unconstitutional. It’s one of the country’s most restrictive abortion bans, as the heartbeat can be detected as early as 6 weeks in some cases.
5. Washington state declares a state of emergency due to a measles outbreak. There are 35 confirmed cases, and measles can be fatal in young children and older people with lowered immunity. Measles was considered to be eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, but has seen a resurgence after some people stopped vaccinating their kids.

International:

1. In the middle of U.S. trade negotiations with China, China grants Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for five new patents.
2. The Taliban attacks a military base, killing dozens of Afghanistan intelligence agents. Taliban insurgents control over half of Afghanistan, but American, Afghan, and Taliban negotiators say they’re closing in on a truce.
3. The U.S. officially quits UNESCO. Trump made the announcement last year, just as UNESCO was cleaning up most of the issues the U.S. had with the organization.
4. After Nicolas Maduro announces he’s won the country’s presidential election, opposition leader Juan Guaidó says he won and even has his own swearing in.

• • The U.S. and most Latin American countries recognize Guaidó as the interim president and urge Maduro to give up power.
  • Maduro, in turn, gives U.S. diplomats 72 hours to leave. They refuse to leave.

Legislation/Congress:

1. Senate Republicans are working to shorten the length of time the Senate can spend debating a presidential nomination.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. The Supreme Court decides not to take up Trump’s DACA case for now, so Dreamers get another reprieve while the DACA program remains in place.
2. But then…in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court allows Trump’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military to go into effect while the lower courts figure it out.
3. The U.S. denies one of the stars of Roma, a 10-time Oscar nominated film, the visas needed to travel to the U.S. for the Oscars. Jorge Guerrero is a Mexican actor who’s been denied visas three times, despite letters from producers confirming his invitations. This isn’t the first time artists have been denied visas. Several South by Southwest artists were denied visas in 2017 after the initial Muslim ban.
4. U.S. officials begin sending asylum seekers at the southern border back to Mexico to await the processing of their cases.
5. The federal government issues a waiver that allows federally funded foster care agencies in South Carolina to deny services to same-sex or non-Christian couples.
6. New York passes legislation to support Dreamers by allowing undocumented students to apply for assistance for college and by letting undocumented families take advantage of college savings programs. The bill also creates a college scholarship fund.
7. The Trump Organization starts firing undocumented workers at its country clubs in New York. This is likely a reaction to a New York Times article that exposed them for not only hiring undocumented workers, but for also assisting these workers in obtaining false documents.
8. Japan’s Supreme Court upholds a law that says if someone wants to change their gender on official documents, they must have their reproductive organs removed.
9. Court records show that the police officer who led an investigation into a violent clash between anti-fascists and neo-Nazis in California focused his investigation on the anti-fascists.

• • The officer recommended charges be filed against 100 anti-fascists and against none of the neo-Nazis.
  • The officer researched the political leanings of the anti-fascists and not the neo-Nazis.
  • The officer considered the sticks for the flags carried by anti-fascists to be weapons; but then said that the sticks for the flags carried by the neo-Nazis weren’t weapons.

10. In addition to the governor of Kansas reinstating protections for LGBTQ government workers, the governors of Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan do the same. Florida’s governor, on the other hand, omits LGBTQ people from an executive order on diversity in government.
11. New York votes to ban conversion therapy for gay minors.

Climate/EPA:

1. Under the Trump administration, civil penalties against polluters drop to their lowest level since 1994. And that’s not because companies stopped polluting.
2. A Swedish teenage climate activist inspires youth rallies across Europe to bring attention to the lack of action on climate change. At Davos, she says:
   “Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope. But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.”
3. 73% of Americans now believe that climate change is real, an increase of 10 percentage points over 2015. But it’s also about the same as 2009. We’ve literally gotten nowhere on this.

Budget/Economy:

1. Furloughed and unpaid government workers will still be counted in the January jobs report as employed. Contractors who lost work because of the shutdown are considered unemployed for the jobs report.
2. The Los Angeles teachers strike ends. Here’s what they get:

• • Smaller class sizes.
  • A nurse in every school, plus more counselors and librarians.
  • Steps against charter schools (privatization was a major issue of the strike).
  • Concessions on demands around immigrant rights, racial profiling, and green spaces at schools.

3. Teachers are reviving the use of the strike as a worker weapon, something that’s been in decline for a while.
4. More teacher strikes are on the horizon. Denver, Oakland, and Virginia teachers are talking about it.
5. Union membership is at just 10.5%, down from 20.1% in 1983. The decline of unions is one of the causes for wage stagnation.
6. The National Association of Business Economics finds that the 2017 tax reform bill hasn’t had a major impact on business investment or hiring plans.
7. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross says that China and the U.S. are miles and miles away from ending the trade war.

Elections:

1. Another state lawmaker changes party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. This time it’s San Diego Assemblymen Brian Maienschei, who says it’s partly because of Trump and partly because he’s changed.
2. A judge in North Carolina denies Republican Mark Harris’s request to certify his election to Congress. His narrowly won election is still under dispute due to accusations of voter fraud and illegal ballot harvesting.
3. A federal court decides on new district maps for Virginia’s House of Delegates districts. The maps would move the districts in favor of Democrats, which is no surprise since the gerrymandered lines were put in place by GOP legislatures.
4. Even though ex-felons who’ve served their time can get their voting rights reinstated, several are saddled with incredible debt and owe restitution that they can’t afford. States are arguing right now whether to reinstate voting rights with or without full payment of restitution.

Miscellaneous:

1. A 21-year-old man shoots and kills five people in a bank in Sebring, FL.
2. Another 21-year-old man shoots and kills one man in a Pennsylvania bar and injures two others (one of whom later dies from his wounds). The shooter then breaks into a home and kills the homeowner and then himself.
3. And yet another 21-year-old man shoots and kills five people in Louisiana, including his parents his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s father and brother. He’s later arrested in Virginia.
4. A new report from the Anti-Defamation League finds that there were at least 50 extremist-related killings in the U.S. last year, and that every one of those was linked to at least one extreme right-wing movement (although one had switched to Islamic extremism). White supremacists were responsible for most killings.
5. Jared Kushner’s security clearance was rejected by two career security specialists, but their supervisor, Carl Kline, overruled them. Kushner was one of at least 30 people in the administration for whom Kline overrode security clearance rejections.
6. When Kushner’s security clearance request was bumped up to the CIA for the super-classified “sensitive compartmented information” (SCI) clearance, CIA officers called the White House security division to find out how Kushner ever got his original lower-level clearance.
7. Trump says that he told Sarah Huckabee Sanders to stop having press briefings. SHS justifies this by saying reporters were just trying to make themselves into stars.
8. Over the previous weekend, a viral video appeared to show students from an all-boys Catholic school mocking and disrespecting a Native American elder after the March for Life. This week, Twitter suspends the account apparently responsible for making the video go viral, calling it a fake account. (There are many interpretations of the hours and hours of video, and I’m not going to wade into that controversy. We’re all seeing it differently.)

Polls:

1. Trump’s aggregated approval rating after the shutdown is around 39.4%.
2. Trump’s losing his fight against the media:

• • Voters trust CBS more than him by 52% to 38%.
  • They trust NBC and the Washington Post more than him by 51% to 38%.
  • They trust ABC and the New York Times more than him by 51% to 39%.
  • They even trust CNN more than him by 49% to 39%.

Things Politicians Say:

“I am afraid it will be on my gravestone. ‘Rudy Giuliani: He lied for Trump.’”

~Rudy Giuliani, to The New Yorker

Trump has a “revolving door of deeply flawed individuals — amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons — who were hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes seemingly without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia.”

~Chris Christie, in Let Me Finish