A Summary of Bad Things Trump Did This Week, 4/9/17-4/15/17
Ahhh! Life is crazy and busy, which I’m sure is the case for everyone reading this. We at Bad Things Trump Did Today definitely want to bring you accurate and timely news about the doings of the Trump administration and Congress in general, however we can be limited by our own personal time constraints. We absolutely appreciate everyone’s understanding, and without further ado here’s the summary of Bad Things Trump Did This Week!
This summary mainly includes the bad things Trump and Congress did this week, as well as some news that’s important to note.
Republican leaders avoid town halls after House health care vote
The migration away from public forums has been going on for months, despite complaints from constituents and local media. There have been roughly 30 recent newspaper editorials slamming lawmakers for avoiding town halls and calling on members to face their voters, not only in bluer portions of the country like New York but also in critical battlegrounds like Pennsylvania’s 6th and 7th districts[...]
Trump on track to surpass 8 years of Obama’s travel expenses in just 1 year
Trump's frequent weekend travel makes it all but certain the 45th President will surpass Obama's spending in his first term, likely within months.
The spending comes as Trump asks the federal government to slash non-defense spending by $54 billion, including deep cuts to the State Department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the wholesale elimination of other federal programs. The proposed cuts, which are unlikely to be adopted in total, will correspond with $54 billion in increases to defense spending.
As CNN reports, Trump’s expenses for his Mar-a-Lago trips has already surpassed a fifth of what Obama spent on travel in his entire 8 years as presidency. Obama’s expenses included both personal and work trips.
Sessions orders an end to forensic science commission and suspension of policy review
Source: The Washington Post
The commission was a partnership started in 2013 between the Justice Department and independent scientists. It’s purpose was to evaluate and elevate the standards of forensic science in the U.S., and Session’s decision has led to criticism from members:
Several commission members who have worked in criminal courts and supported the input of independent scientists said the department risks retreating into insularity and repeating past mistakes, saying that no matter how well-intentioned, prosecutors lack scientists’ objectivity and training.
U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff of New York, the only federal judge on the commission, said, “It is unrealistic to expect that truly objective, scientifically sound standards for the use of forensic science . . . can be arrived at by entities centered solely within the Department of Justice.”
In suspending reviews of past testimony and the development of standards for future reporting, “the department has literally decided to suspend the search for the truth,” said Peter S. Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, which has reported that nearly half of 349 DNA exonerations involved misapplications of forensic science. “As a consequence innocent people will languish in prison or, God forbid, could be executed,” he said.
Two members of extreme anti-immigration groups hired in high-level advisory roles
Jon Feere, a former legal policy analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), has been hired as an adviser to the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Meanwhile, Julie Kirchner, former executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), has been hired as an adviser to the acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. Both CIS and FAIR are both anti-immigration groups representing the extreme far-right, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center:
"CIS has published articles that labeled immigrants 'third world gold diggers' and that blamed Central American asylum seekers for the 'burgeoning street gang problem' in the US, while Dan Stein has said that many immigrants that come to the US hate America and everything the country stands for," said Heidi Beirich, director of Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which oversees the center's yearly count of anti-immigrant groups. "We take these designations very seriously, and CIS and FAIR are far-right fringe groups that regularly publish racist, xenophobic material and spread misinformation about immigrants and immigration."
Despite claims from anti-immigration groups that they are willing to enter discussions with immigration rights groups and the government, many immigration rights organizations fear what these appointments could mean:
"This isn't exactly the same situation as having Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, both in the same room," countered one pro-immigrant advocate. "The fundamental difference is that their agenda is driven by a nativist white supremacist approach to policy. So, to sit together in a room, not only does it have a chilling effect, but I think that many of the advocacy organizations, including ours, fear that we would be normalizing the nativist agenda as it gets into the halls of our government."
Spicer claims that Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons while discussing Assad’s use of such weapons in Syria
“We did not use chemical weapons in World War II. You had someone as despicable as Hitler who did not even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said. “If you are Russia, ask yourself, is this a country and regime that you want to align yourself with?”
Given an opportunity to clarify his comments, Spicer misspoke again by trying once more to draw a distinction between Assad and Hitler, whom the press secretary said did not gas “his own people.”
“When it comes to sarin gas, [Hitler] was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing,” Spicer said to audible groans from some reporters. He also referred to concentration camps as “Holocaust centers.”
Spicer’s remarks, made during Passover, have drawn criticism from numerous groups, including the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect:
“On Passover no less, Sean Spicer has engaged in Holocaust denial, the most offensive form of fake news imaginable, by denying Hitler gassed millions of Jews to death,” said Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center.
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Trump switches sides on four policies over the course of a day, backing away from some campaign promises
Trump swapped positions on the future of NATO, naming China a currency manipulator, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, and the Export-Import bank. The Hill provides a breakdown in their article above.
Trump signs law allowing states to choose to defund Planned Parenthood
This law was one of a number that was passed using the Congressional Review Act, which allows the house to overturn legislation made during the last 6 months of the previous President’s administration. The legislation overrules the regulation put in place under Obama that protects federal funds from being withheld by individual states:
Now that the rule has been repealed, states can effectively block Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers from funds associated with the Title X Family Planning program, which was established in 1970 to subsidize organizations that offer services related to contraception, pregnancy care, fertility and cancer screenings primarily for low-income people.
Breaking: US drops America’s largest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan
The bomb drop, which targeted an ISIS cave and tunnel complex, has never before happened in combat:
The US military dropped America's most powerful non-nuclear bomb on ISIS targets in Afghanistan Thursday, the first time this type of weapon has been used in battle, according to US officials.
A GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), nicknamed the "mother of all bombs," was dropped at 7:32 p.m. local time, according to four US military officials with direct knowledge of the mission. A MOAB is a 30-foot-long, 21,600-pound, GPS-guided munition.President Donald Trump called it "another successful job" later Thursday.
The bomb was dropped by an MC-130 aircraft, stationed in Afghanistan and operated by Air Force Special Operations Command, Pentagon spokesman Adam Stump told CNN.
Concrete evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia has reportedly been handed to the investigation
The official investigation into relations between Donald Trump and Russia now has "specific, concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion", it has been reported.
New evidence proves discussions took place “between people in the Trump campaign and agents of [Russian] influence relating to the use of hacked material,” a source allegedly told the Guardian.
The developments come as it has emerged that Britain’s spy agencies were among the first to alert their American counterparts to contact between members of Mr Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives.
The Secret Service has spent $35,000 on gold cart rentals since inauguration
The Secret Service has spent over $35k on gold cart rentals at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort since January 20. This information, first reported by CBS news, came as Trump settles in at the resort over the holiday weekend:
CBS' new report comes as Trump spends the full three-day Easter weekend at Mar-a-Lago. No senior staff took the Air Force One flight to Florida, according to a report.
Trump says that he can’t be sued for inciting violence at rallies because he won election
Source: The Washington Post
Trump’s team rebuffed a suit filed by protesters claiming that Trump incited a riot against them in May of last year at a rally in Louisville. According to his team, Trump is immune to lawsuit since he is the President. The Washington Post reports more:
Trump's team challenged the accusations — negligence and incitement to riot — on many other grounds, too.
But a federal judge already rejected their attempt to have the lawsuit thrown out earlier this month.
And in another new filing in the same case, a Trump supporter accused of assaulting protesters agreed with the plaintiffs that Trump wanted a riot — while denying he actually harmed anyone.
Alvin Bamberger, who was seen in a video pushing a protester through a jeering crowd at the Louisville convention center, “would not have acted as he did without Trump and/or the Trump Campaign’s specific urging and inspiration,” Bamberger's lawyer wrote.
Bamberger denied “shoving … and striking” anyone, as the lawsuit accuses him of. But he admitted to touching plaintiff Kashiya Nwanguma, a 21-year-old college student who had gone to the rally with a protest sign.
And he accepted as true her claims that Trump's speech “was calculated to incite violence” against the protesters.
Trump continues hiring lobbyists without input from the Office on Government Ethics
Despite claims during his campaign that he would be willing to ban lobbyists from his administration, Trump has hired lobbyists from over 300 different corporations:
One striking case involves Michael Catanzaro, an appointee on the National Economic Council whose portfolio includes energy and environmental issues. Catanzaro was formerly a lobbyist for oil and coal companies that strenuously opposed the Obama administration’s clean power regulation. Three industry sources told the Times that Catanzaro is now working on that same issue in the Trump administration.
Even under Trump’s weakened ethics rules, former lobbyists like Catanzaro are not supposed to work on issues that they formerly had lobbied on.
Still, under Trump’s executive order, he can issue waivers at any time to staffers, Catanzaro included, for any reason, and never disclose it.
Even the federal government’s top ethics official, Walter Shaub, who runs the Office of Government Ethics, is being kept in the dark.
“There’s no transparency, and I have no idea how many waivers have been issued,” Shaub told the Times.
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