This is a really late post for the week ending 9/23/18. There was a lot of he-said/she-said, and the longer I let this post go, the harder it was to distill the facts around the Kavanaugh case. It also got harder to motivate myself as I watched not only old white men tear women down, but also white women. It devolved into a week of blaming the woman—the 80s are calling, they want their sexism back (sigh). We don’t know at this point the veracity of the accusations, but the first accuser told her therapist about it 6 years ago, and alluded to it to a friend previous to that. It doesn’t seem likely she’s been plotting Kavanaugh’s demise for that long.

Here’s what happened last week in politics…

Russia:

1. Trump declassifies the documents around Carter Page’s FISA warrant and Bruce Ohr’s contacts with Christopher Steele. He also orders the release of James Comey’s text messages about the Russia investigation, notes from DOJ officials, and unredacted text messages from Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Andrew McCabe.
2. In releasing the documents, Trump calls the FBI a “cancer in our country.” He also says he hasn’t read the documents (so why’s he so eager to release them?).
3. By the end of the week, Trump takes it back in a tweet, saying that the inspector general of the DOJ will perform a review of the documents. Apparently, some people told him that releasing the documents would negatively impact the Russia investigation, and others said that it could be harmful to the people gathering intelligence for us and to their processes. According to Trump, he’s been listening to people he trusts and they told him to release the information. Who might those be? In his own words, Sean Hannity, Janine Pirro, and Lou Dobbs.
4. Paul Manafort’s plea deal includes wording that could limit the impact of a presidential pardon should Trump decide to pardon him.
5. Since Maria Butina’s arrest, Russian government officials have visited her six times and have communicated several times with the State Department about her.
6. Trump again claims that intelligence used the Steele Dossier to get the FISA warrant for Carter Page, but it turns out that, at the time the FISA warrant was requested, the dossier was being held in the FBI’s New York field office in their organized crime unit. At the same time, intelligence agents in D.C. were already in the midst of investigating Russia’s meddling in our 2016 elections and were not aware of the dossier’s claims.
7. Michael Cohen has already met with Mueller’s team several times to discuss the Russia investigation.
8. Mueller is investigating $3.3 million in financial transactions between two of the people who organized the Trump Tower meeting in 2016.
9. After first refusing to do so, the U.S. certifies a Russian plane under the Open Skies Treaty, allowing it to do a surveillance flight over the U.S. The treaty allows member states to fly unarmed planes over each other’s territories to foster “mutual understanding and confidence.”
10. We learn that Russian diplomats at one point tried to smuggle Julian Assange out of the Ecuador embassy in London so he could escape the U.K. They planned to take him out in a diplomatic vehicle and then get him to another county that wouldn’t extradite him to the U.S.
11. John Dowd helped pay Paul Manafort’s and Rick Gate’s legal fees while he was leading Trump’s legal team.

Courts/Justice:

1. Trump rains some of his harshest criticism yet on Jeff Sessions, saying it’s so sad he doesn’t have an AG.
2. A few Senators, including Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), want to delay Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote to give his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, a chance to testify.
3. Blasey Ford receives death threats, and is forced to move her family out of their home for their safety. Their children are staying somewhere separate from them for security reasons. She was doxxed and impersonated online.
4. And then Kavanaugh and his wife receive death threats and vicious voice mails and emails.
5. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Susan Collins have also been receiving death threats.
6. Several men in the Senate blame Blasey Ford for not coming out with her accusations earlier. How many more experts can explain why victims of sexual attacks don’t come forward?
7. Lawyers for Ford request a nonpartisan FBI investigation into her accusations against Kavanaugh before she testifies to the committee. She says she’s fully willing to cooperate with the FBI. Her lawyers say that based on what Republicans on the committee have already said publicly about Ford, they’ve already made up their mind and can’t perform an objective investigation.
8. Mitch McConnell calls for the judiciary committee to rush this through, and Republicans on the committee push a vote all week. Actually, McConnell says “ram” it through. Poor choice of words in this type of case.
9. McConnell also indicates he doesn’t care to get to the truth of this. He says that no matter what happens, Kavanaugh will be seated on the Supreme Court bench.
10. Ben Carson says that socialists are behind all the accusations against Kavanaugh.
11. Republicans on the judiciary committee want Kavanaugh and his accuser to testify on Monday in the same place at the same time. Grassley scheduled this without consulting Blasey Ford on her availability or willingness.
12. Blasey Ford is willing to talk to the committee, but not in a hearing. She has security concerns and thinks setting a Monday date will rush the investigation. Republicans on the committee continue to push her to appear.
13. Mark Judge, who was allegedly in the room when the alleged attack happened, refuses to testify. Judge is the author of “Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk” where he talks about his high school days of drinking and debauchery, his alcoholism, and his subsequent recovery. He mentions someone named Bart O’Kavanaugh as a fellow drunk.
14. A close friend and advisor to Kavanaugh, Ed Whelan, lays out a series of tweets suggesting he found evidence that would exonerate Kavanaugh and shame Senator Dianne Feinstein.
15. Whelan then tries to throw the blame on a different classmate, who is now a middle school teacher. Jesus. Let’s just throw the victim under the bus along with some random classmate. He later apologizes for it and deletes the tweets, but friends say he spent a few days coming up with the idea. That’s plenty of time to think about what you’re doing.
16. Trump has been uncharacteristically reserved about the accusations, but is now defending Kavanaugh and discrediting the victim.
17. In 2015, Kavanaugh said in a speech that they had a saying, “What happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep.” And then he added “I think that’s been a good thing for all of us!” Seems possible.
18. Chuck Grassley officially delays the committee vote on moving Kavanaugh’s nomination forward.
19. Blasey Ford says she’s willing to talk to the judiciary committee as long as they provide fair and safe terms. Her team of lawyers express a strong desire to the committee that they have an FBI investigation first.
20. Chuck Grassley schedules hearings on her accusations for Monday and gives her a deadline of 10:00 on Friday to confirm that she’ll be there. Otherwise, they’ll go forward with their vote. After some tense wrangling on Friday and Saturday, Blasey Ford agrees to testify on Thursday. A few Republican Senators say that her testimony will not change their vote, so there’s nothing that will change their minds.
21. Kavanaugh agrees to turn over his calendars from 1982 to prove that he didn’t have the party marked on them. A) Who keeps a calendar from 35 years ago? and B) What kind of teen puts an illicit party in their calendar?
22. Trump says that investigating allegations like this is not really the FBI’s thing. But it’s exactly their thing, and several officials say it’s common for the FBI to do this. They did it for Anita Hill.
23. A former classmate of Blasey Ford’s posts on Facebook that she heard about the assault at the time, and then deletes the post and says she won’t say any more about it.
24. Lawyers for one of her witnesses draft a letter saying the witness wasn’t there, but the witness says they drafted it without her informing them.
25. In response to the letter signed by 65 women attesting to Kavanaugh’s character, over 300 people who grew up in Ford’s and Kavanaugh’s childhood neighborhoods sign a letter supporting Ford. Nearly 1,000 former students from Holton-Arms sign a similar letter.
26. Trump joins Republican legislators in questioning Blasey Ford’s credibility. White House officials have said they’ve been struggling to prevent Trump from criticizing her, but “you have no idea” how hard it is.
27. McConnell calls Trump to tell him that his tweets are not helpful.
28. A second accuser comes forward to say that Kavanaugh waved his penis in her face at a college party while she was drunk.
29. The White House and Kavanaugh say she, too, is lying.
30. And then Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, tweets that he has another accuser, warns Kavanaugh to be careful what he says, and gives a list of questions the Senate committee should be asking.
31. The percent of voters who oppose Kavanaugh’s confirmation increases over the week, while the percent who support it decreases to the low 30s.
32. Six Senate Democrats request a court order to compel the National Archives and Records Administration to turn over Kavanaugh’s records.
33. In other justice news, there was lots of Rod Rosenstein drama this week. First we hear that Rosenstein suggested secretly recording conversations with Trump. Then we hear he resigned. Then we hear it’s because Trump was going to fire him. And then we hear that none of this is true. And then Rosenstein went to the White House expecting to resign, but somehow it didn’t happen. The DOJ drafted an announcement of his departure naming his successor, and then THAT didn’t happen. Oh, and in the middle of all this, Republicans in Congress renewed efforts to impeach him.

Healthcare:

1. An Illinois law that will expand Medicaid and state-run health insurance to cover abortions was challenged by anti-abortion groups. A lower court dismissed the case, and this week, the appellate court upholds that dismissal.

International:

1. Kim Jong Un meets with South Korea’s Moon Jai-in in Pyongyang to continue their talks. The two countries have agreed to an era of “no war.”
2. Even though North Korea said they’d denuclearize and that they destroyed their primary test site, U.S. officials say they have proof that North Korea is secretly continuing its nuclear program. Hopefully not the same kind of proof that led to the Iraq war.
3. On the other hand, North Korea says they’ll only do these things if they get concessions from the U.S., concessions that aren’t very likely to happen.
4. Kim Jong Un wants Mike Pompeo to come back for meetings, and also wants to have another summit with Trump. There hasn’t been any progress in the negotiations between the U.S. and South Korea since June.
5. Poland wants to develop a U.S. military base in their country to deter Russian occupation.
6. Trump suggests to Josep Borrell, Spain’s Foreign Minister, that they should build a wall across the Sahara to mitigate the migration crisis in Europe. Spanish diplomats say that there are considerable differences between their situation and ours, but Trump doesn’t think the Sahara is bigger than our border. It is. By about 50%. And it goes through several countries.
7. A report from the State Department says that global terrorism is down 23%. They also point the finger at Iran for being the biggest state sponsor of terrorism.
8. The EU rejects Britain’s proposal for the Brexit process. Britain is trying to drive a wedge between EU nations in order to get approval.
9. The stock market is at record highs and unemployment is at 48-year lows, and yet the wealth gap keeps growing. Upper income households are increasing their income at a higher rate than middle and lower income households. Probably because the top 10% owns about 84% of the wealth of the stock market.
10. Real earnings are about the same now for the typical American household as they were before the Great Recession.
11. Fourteen countries that are trading partners with the U.S. have either filed a complaint against us with the World Trade Organization or have joined an existing complaint.
12. An attack on a military parade in Iran kills 25 and injures at least 70. Iran blames Arab states for the attack. The Ahvaz National Resistance (an Arab opposition group in Iran) claims responsibility.
13. Mike Pompeo is working to build back up the State Department, and has doubled the number of promotion opportunities for high-level diplomats.
14. Trump places sanction on the Chinese military for purchasing military equipment from Russia.

Legislation/Congress:

1. A Republican lawmaker in Pennsylvania proposes a law that would prevent teachers from talking about politics in school. They’d be unable to discuss legislation, regulations, executive orders, or even court cases involving government. Because why would kids need to know anything about government?

Family Separation:

1. Why do we still have children in immigration detention centers when they could be released to sponsors? Because 41 undocumented immigrants who did come forward to care for a child were arrested by ICE. ICE is using this as an opportunity to review the people who come forward and to arrest more undocumented immigrants. No undocumented relatives will step up anymore, leaving us with over 100 children in detention at a cost of almost $80,000 a day. Or almost $560,000 a week. Or almost $17 million a month.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

1. More information surfaces about where the administration will get the additional money needed to fund the increased ICE costs due to the high number of detainees. It’s not unusual to move money around within a department, but these funds are coming from HIV programs, Head Start, the CDC, Medicare and Medicaid operations, mother and child health programs, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Institutes of Health.
2. A Supreme Court decision last June threw a wrench into Trump’s decoration machine. The court threw out a case against an undocumented worker because immigration agents left his court date blank on his notice to appear. Apparently, this is a routine thing; and now tens of thousands of court cases could be thrown out or delayed.
3. Trump reduces the number of refugees the U.S. can accept in 2019 even further, down to 30,000. He reduced it to 45,000 in 2017, down from Obama’s level of 110,000. Compare this to the EU’s acceptance of 538,000 refugees in 2017. The EU’s population is less than 2 times ours, and they accepted 12 times as many refugees as we did.
4. Trump asks the Supreme Court to block a federal court order demanding that he release emails and documents about his decision to ban transgender people from the military.
5. A district court allows a case against Trump‘s policy to discharge all HIV-positive service members. Both the motion to block the policy and the complaint that the policy is discriminatory can move forward in the courts.
6. All border wall prototypes fail CBP tests, with all being breachable and one nearly collapsing.
7. An email shows that Army Reserve lawyers were asked to review immigrant recruit records for any signs of past criminal activity. The reason given in the emails is that ‘[Immigrant recruits] are currently suing the federal government claiming they were wrongfully discharged from the Army.’ Days later the Army reversed their decision to expel dozens of immigrant recruits. Dozens of dismissals had already been overturned.
8. Jeff Sessions announces new guidelines that limit immigration judges‘ ability to dismiss deportation cases.

Climate/EPA:

1. Hurricane Florence continues to devastate North Carolina with flooding. So far, over 3.4 million chickens and turkeys are dead, and at least 5,000 pigs are.
2. Trump officially reverses Obama’s methane limit regulations on oil and gas wells. Cue the lawsuits.

Budget/Economy:

1. Trump places tariffs of 10% on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. So China imposes tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods. So Trump threatens to impose tariffs on all remaining Chinese goods. We got ourselves a trade war.
2. Jack Ma, found of Alibaba, reverses his plans to create 1 million jobs in the U.S., citing the trade conflict as the reason.
3. The Senate passes a short-term spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. The bill, which avoids the fight over funding for a wall on our southern border, takes us through December 7th.
4. About 20 of the 70 highest paid HUD employees have no housing policy experience. Sixteen them worked on either Trump’s campaign or Ben Carson’s, or they have family ties to them.
5. The deficit for the 11 months ending in August surpasses CBO estimates rising to $898 billion (note: the fiscal year ends in September). Federal spending rose 7%, while revenue only rose 1%. The deficit for the same period the year before was $224 billion lower. For comparison, the deficit for the entire fiscal year 2016 was $350 billion lower.
6. The U.S. and Mexico are prepared to move forward on their NAFTA agreement without Canada if they don’t meet the October 1 deadline. This comes from a White House official, and we’ve heard this threat before.

Elections:

1. Trump does Florida’s GOP gubernatorial candidate, Ron DeSantis, no favors when he berates him for disagreeing with Trump on the number of casualties from Hurricane Maria.
2. As for DeSantis, he can’t get away from being associated with racism. One of his campaign allies tweets about Obama, “FUCK THE MUSLIM NIGGER.”
3. A federal judge denies a motion to make Georgia change their voting system from an electronic system to a paper-ballot system. The judge says it would cause too much chaos, but that Georgia must do something to shore up its electoral security.
4. At least two prominent Republican politicians in Kansas (including the current governor) throw their support behind the Democratic candidate for governor, Laura Kelly. Kelly is running against voter-fraud evangelist Kris Kobach.
5. The Supreme Court refuses to stay a lower courts decision that certain non-profits must release donor information. This could throw a wrench in some groups’ plans for political ads and campaigns.

Miscellaneous:

1. A homeless man kills a pro female golfer, who was also an immigrant from Spain, while she’s out golfing by herself. Why do I mention this? Because conservative news politicized the killing of Mollie Tibbetts by an immigrant; and while they reported on this killing, they didn’t politicize it in any way.
2. Well, this took an unexpected turn. Cody Wilson, the guy who put instructions for printing untraceable 3-D guns on the internet is charged with the sexual assault of a minor. He’s arrested after a short stint hiding out in Taiwan. Turns out he’s also a racist who started a racist, hate-speech site called Hatreon.
3. Trumps wants outgoing Republican Representative Darrell Issa to head the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. Issa’s history of holding endless investigations into Obama administration officials might get in the way of a confirmation in the Senate.
4. There are three mass shootings within 24 hours of each other. There were injuries but no deaths except the shooters in the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania shootings. In Maryland, the shooter killed four including herself, and injured three others. Female mass shooters are extremely rare.
5. An employee at a New York daycare stabs five people, including two newborns and an infant. All are in critical but stable condition. The daycare appears to be unlicensed.

Polls:

1. 40% of evangelicals with favorable views of Trump say there is nothing he could do that would change their minds about him.
2. 75% of evangelicals say they support Trump.