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

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

Comey:

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

Russia:

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

Courts/Justice:

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

Healthcare:

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

International:

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

Legislation:

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

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

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

Climate/EPA:

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

Budget/Economy:

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

Miscellaneous:

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