I open this week with a quote from Trump on how a trade war might affect farmers:

“But if we do a deal with China, if, during the course of a negotiation they want to hit the farmers because they think that hits me, I wouldn’t say that’s nice. But I tell you, our farmers are great patriots… They understand that they’re doing this for the country. And we’ll make it up to them. And in the end, they’re going to be much stronger than they are right now.”

He also said that farm income has been trending downward over the last eight years (it’s actually the last four) and said that because of his actions on NAFTA and China, “farmers will be better off than they ever were.” I hope he’s right but if he’s not, then thanks, farmers, for taking a hit for the rest of us.

Anyway, here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

1. The FBI raids Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s office and hotel room, seizing emails, tax records, and business documents. Which seriously enraged Trump, based on his subsequent comments. As a reminder, Cohen paid off Stormy Daniels and at least one other woman who allegedly had an affair with Trump.
2. Reportedly, Cohen made recordings of meetings and conversations, which the FBI also seized.
3. The raids were based on a referral from Robert Mueller, so Trump calls Mueller’s team “the most biased group of people” and says they’re mostly Democrats with a few Obama-appointed Republicans. Though they are actually mostly Republicans.
4. Trump calls Cohen just to check in and see how he’s doing.
5. We learn that Cohen is being investigated for bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations. Mueller handed this investigation off to a New York attorney likely because it was out of his jurisdiction. Rod Rosenstein signed off on the search warrant.
6. Most legal experts say that this warrant must have been bullet-proof in order for the FBI to get it, because it’s extraordinary to serve a warrant on a lawyer like this.
7. Trump isn’t the only guy Cohen negotiates hush deals for. He also negotiated one for major RNC fundraiser and RNC deputy finance chairman Elliott Broidy. This makes Broidy the third RNC official to be caught up in scandal in the past year and the second to step down from his position.
8. Trump requests an emergency order preventing prosecutors from looking at the seized material, saying he should be able to review them first because of client/attorney privilege.
9. In response to the raid, Lou Dobbs (who has apparently been advising Trump all along) tells Trump he should fire Mueller. Trump mulls it over in the middle of a publicized meeting with military brass while they were supposed to be talking about a response to Syria’s chemical weapons attack.
10. Trump calls it an attack on the country and says the FBI “broke in” to Cohen’s office. His rants attack the usual suspects: Jeff Sessions, the FBI, Hillary Clinton, Rod Rosenstein, Andrew McCabe. He even steps up his Twitter game for this one.
11. Politicians from both sides step in to support Mueller, including Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) who confirms widespread respect for Mueller in Washington and warns Trump against firing him.
12. While many legal minds have said Trump doesn’t have the power to fire Mueller, he and his press secretary both say he does.
13. The White House says they aren’t sure if Cohen still represents Trump. Also, Trump isn’t so sure he wants to sit down with Mueller anymore.
14. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York recuses himself from the Cohen investigation because of his ties with donors to the Trump campaign.
15. We learn that Trump tried to have Mueller fired last December, but his lawyers talked him out of it.
16. Mueller is looking at a $150,000 donation to the Trump Organization from a Ukrainian billionaire (Victor Punchuk). In return for the donation, Trump appeared in a 20-minute video for a conference in Kiev.
17. Mark Zuckerberg submits written testimony and then testifies before Congress for two days about data privacy (fully illustrating the technology gap between the generations).
18. Paul Manafort’s lawyers file another motion to suppress evidence. This time it’s the evidence found in a storage unit and they say the employee didn’t have the authority to open the unit for the FBI.
19. A judge denies Manafort’s request for bail. He’s been denied bail multiple times now. His trial is scheduled to start in July.
20. The NRA admits to receiving money from almost two dozen Russians (or Americans living in Russia) over the past two years.
21. Veteran Republicans form a group, Republicans for the Rule of Law, to help protect Mueller from being fired. Also, a bipartisan group of Senators introduce a bill to protect Mueller. Mitch McConnell agrees that Mueller should continue his work, but he doesn’t think Mueller needs to be protected.
22. Steve Bannon floats a plan to put an end to the Mueller investigation:

• • Fire Rosenstein.
  • Stop cooperating with Mueller.
  • Assert executive privilege and make all White House interviews with Mueller over the past year null and void.

23. Excerpts leak from James Comey’s soon-to-be-released book, and it becomes an immediate best seller almost a week before its scheduled release. Trump does not respond well. I’m not going to go into what Comey says on his media blitz nor what’s in the book, because it’s not really confirmable.
24. The RNC actively works to discredit Comey ahead of his book release. They create a website called “Lyin’ Comey” that features quotes of Democrats criticizing him. Their campaign plan includes: digital ads, monitoring Comey’s appearances, a rapid response team to provide rebuttals, and coordinating surrogates to fan out and defend Trump. I don’t know if I’m more bothered that such a campaign exists or that they don’t mind making it public knowledge.

Courts/Justice:

1. Judge Curiel finalizes the $25 million Trump University settlement. Curiel’s the guy who Trump said couldn’t be unbiased in the case because he’s Mexican.
2. The Justice Department’s inspector general releases their report on Andy McCabe. (Caveat: I have yet to read the full report.) It doesn’t sound like there’s much that we haven’t already heard, and the report doesn’t include McCabe’s rebuttal. The dispute centers around a Wall Street Journal article in which McCabe authorized staff to rebut the allegations made in the article. McCabe, who first denied giving permission until he was served a reminder, says he authorized it to preserve the reputation of the FBI; the OIG says he did it to preserve his own reputation.

Healthcare:

1. Voters in Utah, Nebraska, and Idaho are working to get Medicaid expansion on the ballot since their governors refused the federal money they could have received under the ACA to do it.
2. An appeals court in Maryland rules that a law preventing price gouging by pharmaceutical companies is unconstitutional.

International:

1. Trump calls out Putin, Russia, and Iran for backing “Animal Assad” in Syria in a barrage of tweets. Russia responds that they don’t do Twitter diplomacy.
2. Russia says great Britain staged the chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
3. Trump, along with Great Britain and France, orders airstrikes on chemical weapons facilities in Syria in retaliation for the regime’s chemical weapon attack. Putin calls this an act of aggression and calls for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
4. After the missile strike, Trump tweets those ill-fated words, “Mission accomplished!” Also, Russia says Syrian air defenses shot down most of our missiles. Doubtful, but impossible to verify.
5. Russia also vetoes a UN resolution to set up an independent investigation into Syria’s use of chemical weapons.
6. Tom Bossert, Homeland Security adviser, resigns at the request of the new National Security Adviser, John Bolton. Bolton appears to be cleaning house.
7. Trump cancels his trip to South America to respond to Syria’s chemical weapons attack. Mike Pence takes his place on the trip to South America.
8. Mike Pompeo prepares for his confirmation hearing for Secretary of State by calling Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, among other former secretaries. If you remember, Pompeo helped keep Benghazi in the news and called Clinton‘s response “morally reprehensible.” He also liked a tweet calling Kerry a traitor. So either he didn’t mean those things, or he’s looking for some morally reprehensible and traitorous advice. For her part, Clinton has been willing to talk with him and help him out.
9. Pompeo’s confirmation will be tough, as he failed to sway any of his opponents in his hearing.
10. We learn that Russia has been thwarting our efforts in Syria by jamming our drone’s reception of GPS satellite signals.

Legislation/Congress:

1. Trump signs legislation to crack down on online companies that aid and abet sex trafficking of minors. The bill establishes punishments, including jail time, for people who run these sites.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. The Justice Department removes questions on crime surveys about sexual orientation and gender identity, effectively preventing the monitoring of hate crimes against the LGBTQ community.
2. Maryland bans conversion therapy on minors (that is, therapy that attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation). Both the American Psychological Association and the American Counseling Association find the practice harmful and ineffective. Hawaii will likely follow suit.
3. A large number of Americans don’t believe 6 million Jews were killed in the holocaust. They think the number is much, much smaller. They also didn’t know that Auschwitz was a notorious concentration camp. Are our schools really that bad?
4. Facebook bans white nationalist Richard Spencer, but he still has Twitter accounts. Last month, Facebook banned the anti-Muslim hate group Britain First.
5. On top of sending tens of thousands of Nicaraguans, Haitians, Nigerians, and Syrians back to countries they haven’t been to in the decades since they received temporary protected status, Trump also wants to send Vietnamese immigrants who are protected by a bilateral treaty back to communist-led Vietnam.
6. All states that border Mexico agree to provide National Guard troops to help CBP per Trump’s request.
7. Hungarian journalists at state-run media outlets say they pushed an anti-immigrant message before the elections to create animosity toward immigrants and increase nationalist sentiment. They also pushed lies about George Soros influencing the election.

Climate/EPA:

1. EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson takes responsibility for the questionable pay raises for Scott Pruitt’s friends, though an email from one of the people who got a questionable raise contradicts this.
2. News breaks that Scott Pruitt fired his former deputy chief of staff for refusing to retroactively approve Pruitt’s travel demands. Apparently, he asked the employee to come up with justification for a trip.
3. Trump signs an executive order that would loosen air pollution standards and sideline science in setting pollution regulations in individual states.
4. The Government Accountability Office says that Scott Pruitt broke the law by installing a $43,000 sound proof phone booth. Spending more than $5,000 requires him to notify Congress first.
5. The non-profit Environmental Defense Fund plans to launch a satellite that can monitor methane releases and pinpoint the biggest offenders.

Budget/Economy:

1. After all of Trump’s criticism of Amazon for not collecting state taxes (which it mostly does), we learn that the Trump Organization’s online store only collects taxes in two states.
2. According to the CBO, the budget deficit is on track to surpass $1 trillion again sooner than expected (by 2020). They raised the expected deficit for this year to $804 billion and for 2019 to $981 billion. And this is under a forecast with an upgraded GDP growth rate of 3.1%.
3. Trump tells his top officials to look into getting back in to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which he pulled out of last year because it was such a “disaster.” In February, nearly half the Senate Republicans urged him to rejoin.
4. TPP member countries express an unwillingness to reopen TPP negotiations to include the U.S., and then Trump reverses course and says he’d only consider rejoining if the term were substantially better for the U.S.
   Background: Joining the TPP would’ve given us a trade advantage against China with Pacific Rim countries, but China has been moving in to fill that gap.
5. Jobless rates continue to fall, marking the 162nd week that claims have been below 300,000. That’s since March of 2015.
6. Both Oklahoma and Arizona teachers wind their protests down. Arizona’s governor promises a phased 20% raise for teachers by 2020.
7. The White House proposes large cuts to public assistance programs along with work requirements. They request a $17 billion cut to SNAP that would affect around 23,000 military families. Which again begs the question “Why aren’t we paying our men and women in the military enough to live on?”
8. They also propose to expand the definition of welfare to include SNAP, Medicaid, and other safety-net programs. This is part of their effort to overhaul public assistance, which also includes work requirements.
9. Republicans in Congress unveil a new farm bill that would require SNAP recipients to either work or attend school or training for 20 hours a week. The plan does not include Trump’s idea of providing some of the food to SNAP recipients in the form of government rations. The CBO estimates that this could remove 1 million people from SNAP over 10 years.
10. Good news for people who eat organic, though. The farm bill cracks down on inspections of imported products that are labeled organic.
11. Trump orders an audit of the US postal service.
12. Trump wants to try to rescind billions of dollars in spending that he signed into law last month. Mick Mulvaney is developing the plan, even though Republican lawmakers don’t want these negotiations to start up again.
13. On the other hand, House Majority leader is working in tandem to get this through the House, and Mitch McConnell seems open to getting it done in the Senate. This is being done alongside a Balanced Budget Amendment to the constitution, which has very little chance of passing.
14. The Department of the Interior walks back its plans to drastically raise entrance fees at national parks, and will instead raise prices $5 across the board.
15. Federal appeal judges seem to think that it’s a conflict of interest that Mick Mulvaney heads both the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget.

Elections:

1. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announces he won’t seek reelection, bringing the total number of House Republicans not seeking reelection to 46.
2. There are two Republicans vying for his Wisconsin seat, the most prominent of which is a white supremacist who got banned from Twitter.
3. Ryan endorses California Representative Kevin McCarthy to replace him as Speaker of the House. If you’ll remember, Kevin lost out on his initial bid to become speaker when he admitted that the Benghazi hearings were dragged out in order to smear Hillary Clinton.
4. The New Jersey legislature passes an automatic voter registration bill. It will be the 13^th state to implement this, and Nevada has it on the ballot this year.

Miscellaneous:

1. Trump met with the chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group to talk about a new broadcasting standard that Sinclair is invested in. It would let authorities broadcast to any American’s phone.
2. Sinclair’s chairman says that during the 2016 campaign, he told Trump: “We are here to deliver your message.”
3. Several senators request that the FCC investigate Sinclair after complaints arose about Sinclair forcing anchors at local stations to read propaganda pieces. Ajit Pai, FCC chairman, refuses.
4. Since the Parkland shootings, several cities and states have begun implementing gun regulations, and there’ve even been some changes at the federal level, like allowing the CDC to study gun violence.
5. On the other hand, a school district in Pennsylvania opts to arm their teachers with miniature baseball bats.
6. Senator Tammy Duckworth gives birth to her daughter, becoming the first sitting senator have a baby.
7. Trump issues a full pardon to Scooter Libby, who was Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.
   Background: Libby was convicted of perjury, making false statements to the FBI, and obstruction of justice in the investigation into the information leak that lead to exposing the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. The leak appeared to be in retribution for criticism of the Bush administration by Valerie’s husband.

8. Marches across the country this week include the March for Science, the Tax March (to protest the new tax bill), and gun rights marches. Of note, gun rights groups encouraged people to carry unloaded weapons, which many did. At least I assume they were unloaded.

Polls:

1. Just over half of Americans now support a single-payer healthcare system.

Stupid Things Politicians Say:

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, who tried to stop bills to expand the state’s education funding, says that children were physically harmed during the teacher strikes because they were left at home alone.

“I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them.”