>This was a big week. Andrew McCabe’s case is resolved, a Senate committee issues a new report on Russian interference, the DOJ (and maybe Trump) interferes in Roger Stone’s sentencing and in other cases, John Kelly spills some tea, the firings continue, Trump rolls out his budget, the House paves the way for the ERA to move ahead, and voting begins in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. All that, and so much more.

>Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending February 10…

Shootings This Week:

1. There are SIX mass shootings this week (defined as killing or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 3 people and injure 30 more.

• • A shooting in Dover, DE, leaves 1 person dead and 4 people injured.
  • A shooting at a gathering in an apartment in Chicago, IL, leaves 6 people injured.
  • A shooter in New Orleans, LA, injures 4 people during Mardi Gras celebrations.
  • Shooters in Memphis, TN, injure 7 people during a fight that broke out during a street race.
  • A shooter (or shooters) in Hartford, CT, kill 1 person and injures 5 more at a bar and lounge.
  • A drive-by shooting in Pensacola, FL, leaves 1 person dead and 4 people injured.

2. Teachers unions and activist groups call for an end to active-shooter lockdown drills, saying they’re too traumatic for students.

Russia:

1. Federal prosecutors decline to charge Andrew McCabe and officially close the investigation into whether he lied about leaking information to a journalist.
2. The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee releases a report on the government’s response to Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

• • The report says the Obama administration delayed their response, but also says the politicized environment prevented a more forceful response.
  • The report also places some of the blame on Mitch McConnell for being too skeptical and for resisting the administration’s request for a bipartisan statement.
  • Congressional leaders finally released a bipartisan statement in late September 2016, after much of the damage was done.
  • Obama’s administration directly warned Russia about the consequences of meddling five times, but the warnings weren’t effective.

3. Federal prosecutors issue a sentencing recommendation of seven to nine years for Roger Stone. He was convicted of lying, witness tampering, and obstruction, and the recommendation is within the sentencing guidelines.

• • Trump tweets that this is horrible, unfair, and a miscarriage of justice.
  • But then, in an extremely rare move, the DOJ overrules the prosecutors‘ recommendation and asks for a more lenient sentence. The DOJ calls their own prosecutors’ recommendation grossly disproportionate.
  • So then, all four federal prosecutors working the case withdraw from the case and two of them resign from the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C.
  • The DOJ claims to have decided to overrule the sentencing recommendation before Trump tweeted about it.
  • But then, Trump congratulates Barr on Twitter for “taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought.”
  • The top prosecutor who signed off on the original recommendation is Timothy Shea, who was handpicked by Barr to replace outgoing U.S. attorney Jessie Liu, who is supposed to move to the Treasury Department. But the same day as the DOJ overrules the sentencing recommendation, Trump withdraws Liu’s nomination to a top Treasury position. Liu oversaw the investigation into Andrew McCabe, where they were unable to obtain criminal charges. Liu ends up resigning from the administration.

• • Anyhoo, this sets off a shit storm in the media and in the minds of thinking people who love their democratic institutions.

4. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) asks the DOJ’s inspector general to investigate the decision to change Stone’s sentencing recommendations. The Senate Judiciary Committee won’t call Barr in to testify about the situation, but the House Judiciary Committee does. Barr will testify at the end of March.

• • The House wants to hear about the decision to overrule prosecutors in Stone’s case, the removal of Jessie Liu as U.S. attorney, and what Barr calls an “intake process” for processing information from Rudy Giuliani about Ukraine.

5. Trump criticizes the judge in Stone’s case for revoking Paul Manafort’s bail and for not treating Hillary Clinton harshly enough. AFAIK, Hillary has never appeared in this judge’s court.
6. 
In an interview with ABC News, Barr says Trump’s tweets make it impossible to do his job and that Trump shouldn’t tweet about DOJ investigations. IMO, Trump’s just saying the quiet part out loud.
7. Barr also says that Trump never asked him to do anything in a criminal case. So Trump tweets that he does have the legal right to influence the attorney general in a case.
8. After Trump tweets that the foreperson in Stone’s trial had significant bias, Stone’s lawyers request a new trial, which the judge denies. This happens after the foreperson speaks out in defense of the prosecutors who quit.

• • Stone also says that a person in the jury was biased against him because they work for the IRS on criminal tax cases and that the court should’ve removed that juror. FWIW, the lawyers from both sides determine the jury, not the court. Plus, a D.C. jury is likely to have a higher than normal number of government employees.
  • The blowback from the right against the jury spurs one of them to write an op-ed defending their decision. The juror says the evidence was substantial and uncontested.

9. Trump says that Mueller lied to Congress but doesn’t give any evidence to back it up.
10. The New York City bar association sends a letter about Barr to the DOJ’s inspector general and the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. They call for investigations into the DOJ’s actions around Stone’s sentencing, and they say recent events give the appearance of Trump and Barr acting together to prevent Stone from being punished.
11. It comes out that this isn’t the first time Barr has interfered in investigations into Trump’s associates.

• • DOJ officials intervened in Michael Flynn’s case to change his sentencing recommendations. And now Barr has appointed an outside prosecutor to review the Flynn case.
  • Barr appointed outside attorneys to review other politically sensitive cases, and they’ve already been interviewing prosecutors about them.

12. More than 2,000 former DOJ lawyers and employees sign an open letter condemning the actions of Trump and Barr in the Stone case and pushing for Barr to step down. The lawyers come from across the political spectrum.
13. Facebook removes the “Being Patriotic” page after finding out that it’s run by a group from Ukraine that spreads content used by Russia’s Internet Research Agency (the troll farm responsible for the social media disinformation campaign in 2016).

Legal Fallout:

1. A conservative federal judge rebukes Barr for saying that a court’s decision in an immigration case was incorrect. The Board of Immigration Appeals used Barr’s statements as justification to deport someone against the court’s ruling.
2. Amazon wants Trump and Defense Secretary Mike Esper to be deposed in a lawsuit over whether there were corruption and presidential interference in awarding a contract for cloud computing to Microsoft instead of Amazon. Amazon claims that Trump’s desire to punish founder Jeff Bezos influenced the contract,
3. Stormy Daniels’ former lawyer, Michael Avenatti, is convicted on charges that he tried to extort up to $25 million from Nike. He has two more trials coming up on charges of financial malfeasance.

Impeachment:

1. Trump suggests the military should look into disciplining Lt. Col. Vindman. The Pentagon says no, they won’t be doing that.
2. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) says he tried to stop Trump from firing Gordon Sondland.
3. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) says she regrets saying that she thought Trump had learned a lesson from the impeachment trial.
4. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) says there are no signs that Trump learned anything from being impeached.
5. Contradicting his previous denials, Trump says he did send Giuliani to Ukraine to find damaging information about political opponents.
6. Continuing on last week’s firings of witnesses, Trump withdraws Elaine McCusker’s nomination to be the Pentagon’s comptroller and CFO. McCusker advised Office of Management and Budget Officials on the legalities of withholding aid to Ukraine, and her advice tried to help the White House set policy while staying within the law. It’s not her fault it was outside the law.
7. Chuck Schumer asks all 74 inspectors general to investigate retaliation against whistleblowers who report misconduct.
8. Former chief of staff John Kelly speaks freely about his misgivings about Trump. Kelly says:

• • Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is blameless and was just following his training.
  • Trump’s actions with Ukraine upended long-standing U.S. policy, and Trump did condition the aid upon investigations into the Bidens, which was “tantamount to an illegal order.”
  • Trump’s efforts with North Korea, including his two summits with Kim Jong Un, are futile.
  • The press isn’t the enemy of the people.
  • Migrants are overwhelmingly good people.
  • Trump shouldn’t have interfered in the case of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was convicted of war crimes.

Courts/Justice:

1. White-collar crime prosecutions are at their lowest level since 1998 when researchers began tracking them. And it’s not because fewer white-collar crimes are being committed, they’re just getting away with it more often.

Health/Healthcare:

1. There was a rumor a while back that Trump told his aides that gutting medicare would be a fun second-term project. I didn’t report it then because it seemed like just a rumor, but his latest budget cuts spending for Medicaid and ACA subsidies by $1 trillion over ten years.
2. China has confirmed nearly 60,000 cases of coronavirus infection.
3. Trump says the coronavirus will miraculously go away when it gets a little warmer. While heat and humidity usually help crush the flu season, scientists don’t know if it will have the same effect on this virus.
4. Mitch McConnell schedules two votes on anti-abortion bills, both of which will likely fail. This is seen as a move to rally the base. Democrats say the “Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” is redundant because infanticide is already a crime everywhere in the U.S.
5. Corteva, the largest manufacturer of chlorpyrifos, announces it’ll stop producing the pesticide by the end of the year despite the Trump administration loosening regulations. Chlorpyrifos is known to cause health issues and brain damage, especially in children.
6. Utah’s public insurer sends patients to Mexico to buy medications. Even with the cost of the flight, it’s cheaper than getting those drugs in the U.S.

International:

1. The Senate finally passes its resolution to limit Trump’s power to order military strikes against Iran without congressional approval. The House is likely to pass it (they’ve already passed a version) and Trump is likely to veto it.
2. The number of troops with concussive and traumatic brain injuries following Iran’s retaliatory strikes on bases housing U.S. troops increases to 109. Trump says he won’t be changing his mind that these injuries are “not very serious.”
3. The White House sends a memo to Congress that implicitly confirms there was no imminent threat involved in the decision to strike Iranian General Soleimani, contradicting Trump’s earlier assertions about the attack.
4. Iowa isn’t the only place having trouble with their election app. A glitch in a voter outreach app used by Israel’s far-right Likud party leaks the personal information of around 6.5 million Israelis—every eligible voter in Israel. Israel’s third election in less than a year is on March 2.
5. The U.S. and the Taliban reach a tentative agreement on ending the 18-year war in Afghanistan.
6. Trump doesn’t want to hold another summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un until after our November election. In the meantime, though, North Korea resumes its tests of ballistic missiles.
7. Mike Pompeo meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Munich, though the State Department hasn’t mentioned the meeting and has offered no readout.
8. Protestors in Ontario, Canada block a railroad track, disrupting service between Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa. They’re protesting pipeline construction in British Columbia.
9. Students continue their anti-government sit-in in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. The protests forced out the Iraqi prime minister in December.
10. Iraqi feminists march for women’s rights in nationwide rallies. Opponents criticize them, saying it’s unethical and immoral for women to protest.
11. Hundreds of women protest in Mexico City over the brutal murder of a young woman by her boyfriend. Pictures of her mutilated corpse were leaked and posted by local media.
12. Protests against social inequality in Chile continue.
13. Hong Kong protests subside over worries about the coronavirus until the end of the week when people protest the quarantine locations.

Legislation/Congress:

1. In a TV interview, Mitch McConnell says that, why yes, there are 395 bills awaiting passage in the Senate that are never going to be passed, including several bipartisan bills. So rather than working on amending bills on things like infrastructure, the Senate will be voting on anti-abortion bills.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. Customs and Border Protection admits that “overzealous” agents detained hundreds of Iranians and Iranian-Americans for up to 10 hours at the Canadian border following the attack on Iranian General Soleimani.

• • They say it was an isolated incident at one location, but students from the Mideast have been detained and deported all cross the U.S.
  • CBP isn’t supposed to select travelers for further questioning based on their national origin.
  • Last month, CBP denied that Iran was the reason for the detentions, but an internal memo directed officers in that office to target travelers with links to Iran or Lebanon for “specialized vetting procedures.”

2. Jared Kushner is trying to re-open discussions to reform our immigration system. I’m sure he’ll be just as fair as he was with the Mideast peace plan.
3. The Trump administration has been rejecting valid asylum and U-visa applications if there are any missing fields on the application (U-visas protect victims of crimes who cooperate with law enforcement). For example, if you don’t have a middle name and you leave that field blank, they’ll deny it. The policy was announced last fall and originally affected only asylum applicants.
4. A judge blocks Trump’s new policy that would change how immigration officials calculate visa overstays. The judge says it conflicts with immigration law.
5. New York sues Trump over what they call a punitive ban on approving people for traveler programs.
6. Border Patrol plans to deploy tactical agents to so-called sanctuary cities. The agents come from teams that normally fight smuggling at the border.

• • This includes members of BORTAC, the SWAT team of Border Patrol. They use things like stun grenades and snipers, and typically target violent criminals. But in sanctuary cities, they’ll be helping with run-of-the-mill immigration arrests. What could go wrong?

7. The House votes to remove a 1982 deadline for states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Virginia just became the 38th state to ratify the ERA, finally reaching the requirement to ratify. On the other hand, five states have tried to rescind their ratification, but it doesn’t seem like they can.

• • Republican lawmakers argue that passing the ERA would mean abortion could not be restricted. Not the best argument, IMO, because it shows they know that restricting abortion treats women unequally.
  • The ERA was first proposed in Congress in 1923 and was reintroduced every single year until 1972, when it passed.
  • It’s tied up in a few court battles already.
  • Enshrining the ERA in the constitution would mean that the rights of all genders would no longer be subject to the political whims of Congress or the president. Here’s the full text of the amendment:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Climate:

1. A new study finds that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 was much worse than previously thought. The oil spread out over an area 30% greater than the original estimate of 92,500 miles, and it was more toxic to marine life than estimated as well. The Trump administration has pushed to expand permits for deep-sea drilling (it’s stalled in the courts right now) and has rolled back safety regulations for oil platforms.
2. A court rules that the EPA can’t exclude scientists from EPA advisory panels just because they’ve received EPA research grants and are associated with universities. The case comes from changes made by former EPA head Scott Pruitt, who tried to exclude scientists with university ties but not those with ties to chemical or fossil fuel companies.
3. House Republicans release a bill to address climate change, including things like reforestation and carbon capture technologies, but it doesn’t address the issue of curbing carbon emissions. However, it’s a start that they’re acknowledging we need to act.

Budget/Economy:

1. With the current administration curbing the power of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, California’s governor proposes a new statewide Department of Financial Protection and Innovation to solidify consumer protections for the state.
2. Trump brags a lot about the state of the U.S. economy, but he recently cut a scheduled pay raise for federal employees because of “serious economic conditions.”
3. The Trump administration rolls out its new $4.8 trillion budget. It includes cuts to social safety programs and boosts defense spending.

• • The budget reduces access to SNAP, imposes new work requirements on Medicaid benefits, and makes it harder to access federal disability benefits. It caps increases on Medicaid spending at 3% (this ties in with his plan to implement Medicaid block grants).
  • Under the new budget, federal employees would have to pay more for retirement benefits, but those benefits would also be reduced.
  • The budget cuts spending on foreign aid by 21%, which could hurt our diplomatic efforts around the world.
  • It cuts the EPA’s budget by 26% and cuts research and development spending by nearly 50%.
  • The budget adds $3.4 trillion to the debt over the next four years. What kind of genius can’t figure out how to save more money during an economic boom? Even Obama managed to bring the annual deficit down to less than half of this budget’s projected deficit.
  • It targets a balanced budget by 2035, but that doesn’t match federal projections. The annual deficit has nearly doubled under Trump, even though he said he’d get rid of it.
  • The budget recommends eliminating subsidized federal student loans and ending the loan program completely.
  • Trump’s budget completely cuts funds for the Stevens Initiative, an organization dedicated to cultivating international exchange as a way to honor Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the Benghazi attacks. Trump has removed it three years in a row, but Congress restores it each year.

4. 2019 lost the largest number of work days in the U.S. to labor strikes in more than 15 years. There were 25 labor disputes, and 425,500 workers joined in work stoppages.
5. OPEC reduces its projected growth in global oil demand by about 20%, largely due to the coronavirus outbreak.
6. At a rally, Trump brags about his economy but neglects to mention that 1.5 million fewer jobs were created under him from 2017-2020 than were created under Obama in the three years prior (2014-2017).

• • That’s a decline of 19%, but it’s understandable given that the unemployment rate was already pretty low when Trump took office.
  • The Labor Department reports the lowest number of job openings in two years, with November and December seeing the largest two-month decrease on record. 2019 was the first calendar year that job openings declined since the recession in 2009.

Elections:

1. Three more Democratic presidential candidates drop out of the race after the New Hampshire polls close—Andrew Yang, Senator Michael Bennet, and former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
2. Bernie Sanders wins the New Hampshire primary with 25.7% of the vote, Pete Buttigieg comes in second with 24.4%, and Amy Klobuchar has a surprise surge to end in third with 19.8%. Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, and Tom Steyer trail with single-digit support.
3. Senate Republicans block three bills related to election security. The bills would require campaigns to alert the FBI and FEC about foreign offers of assistance, increase election funding, and prevent voting machines from being connected to the internet. Ten bills related to election security are currently stalled in the Republican Senate.
4. Virginia is on track to get rid of a holiday celebrating confederate generals and replace it by giving people a day off to vote.
5. Sheldon Adelson plans to donate $100 million to Trump’s re-election and GOP congressional races. Meanwhile, the Koch network of political organizations is now as large as the RNC.

Miscellaneous:

1. Former Trump aide Hope Hicks is returning to the White House, this time to work for Jared Kushner.
2. The administration also brings back Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus. They’ll be part of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships.
3. A Tennessee Republican lawmaker introduces an amendment to recognize CNN and the Washington Post as fake news, saying they’re “part of the media wing of the Democratic party.” The irony is rich.
4. The Pentagon cuts all federal funding for the military publication Stars and Stripes, which is distributed to troops deployed around the world.

Polls:

1. It’s way too early to trust the polling, but here are the results of Quinnipiac’s recent polls of head-to-head competitions between Trump and Democratic presidential candidates:

• • Bloomberg beats Trump 51 – 42%
  • Sanders beats Trump 51 – 43%
  • Biden beats Trump 50 – 43%
  • Klobuchar beats Trump 49 – 43%
  • Warren beats Trump 48 – 44%
  • Buttigieg beats Trump 47 – 43%