Two bits of business before the list:
- All donations to me through February 28th, 2017, will go to Trans Lifeline. To avoid the processing fee that my donation processor takes, please feel free to donate directly to them at https://www.translifeline.org/donate
- I am going to take Saturday off again this week and do a weekend round up on Sunday night.
- On February 23rd, 2017, Representative Peter King said that he will not host any town hall meetings because angry constituents "trivialize" and "diminish" democracy. It is unclear how he intends to represent people whose opinions he doesn't know.
- On February 23rd, 2017, Representative Matt Gaetz surprised his constituents by saying he does think that DT should release his tax returns, but of course didn't go so far as to say that Congress should subpoena the documents. For the most part, however, his constituents were furious with him over his plans to attempt to dismantle the EPA, chanting, "YOUR LAST TERM!"
- On February 23rd, 2017, Bill O'Reilly brought on a "Swedish defense and national security advisor" from the country's Armed Forces to talk about immigrant and refugee violence in Sweden... however, the Swedish Armed Forces have never heard of the guy.
- On February 23rd, 2017, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations reported that, despite their claim to never want to raise taxes, congressional republicans are quietly trying to tax employer provided health care benefits. Surprise, surprise.
- On February 24th, 2017, video surfaced of Senator Marco Rubio in Miami after he had told his constituents he would be in Europe on business and so would not hold any town halls.
- On February 24th, 2017, thousands showed up to a Friday night town hall for Representative John Faso, who no showed his constituents.
- On February 24th, 2017, the generally conservative magazine The Week broke down how Ivanka Trump's proposed childcare tax credit is only a boon to wealthy families, title, appropriately, "Ivanka Trump wants to help the wealthy pay their au pairs." Because the tax credit would only benefit families after they have spent money, when they file their taxes, it gives no benefits to those who cannot afford childcare out of pocket.
“So we see the overall shape of Ivanka Trump’s signature policy idea. Wealthy families who can easily front the cash for a daycare or an au pair will get a nice fat tax reduction when their accountant files their taxes for them — and the richer they are, they more they will get, up to quite a high bar. The top half of poor families will get a few scraps, assuming they can navigate their way through the hellish paperwork to claim the EITC properly, while the poorest of the poor will get little or nothing.”
- On February 24th, 2017, the AP reported that a draft of a report from the Department of Homeland Security shows that there is no credible threat of terrorism from people barred by the executive order banning travel to the US for visa holders from 7 majority Muslim nations, something that virtually anyone with a lick of sense could have told you when the executive order was passed. The Wall Street Journal later reported that DT has rejected the intelligence report.
- Source: https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-02-24/dhs-intel-report-disputes-threat-posed-by-travel-ban-nations
- Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-rejects-intelligence-report-on-travel-ban-1487987629?tesla=y
- On February 24th, 2017, a pair of pretty hilarious activists pulled a brilliant prank by handing out tiny Russian flags that read "Trump" on one side, resulting in a bunch of the audience waving Russian flags during DT's speech. Brave, gentlemen, bravo.
- On February 24th, 2017, the widow of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, the Indian born engineer killed by an armed white supremacist in Kansas on Wednesday night spoke at Garmin, the company where her murdered husband worked. In her speech at the company, Sunayana Dumala demanded, "I need an answer. I need an answer from the government... What are they going to do to stop this hate crime?" No one from the White House has issued a statement about her husband's death and the injury of two others in Wednesday night's shooting.
- On February 24th, 2017, Kuchibhotla's father was interviewed for the Hindustan Times and begged parents in India not to send their children to the US. Before his son's murder, Jaganmohan Reddy had asked his son to return to India, fearing that the culture of racism and violence surrounding DT's campaign and administration made the country unsafe for his son. I can't imagine a man has ever felt worse about being right.
- On February 24th, 2017, another ranting, violent gun nut laid out an attack, this time only verbal, on resistance protestors, democrats, and anyone at all who doesn't like DT. NRA leader and gun violence inciter Wayne LaPierre told the audience at CPAC that protesters are paid $1,500 / week to resist DT, are prone to "criminal violence" but don't know what they are protesting, and are going to harbor terrorists, and that the judiciary's halting the "Muslim ban" was a molotov cocktail to the Constitution. I would say that LaPierre's speech was unhinged even for him, but this is a man who thought the proper response to the Newtown massacre was to arm everyone in schools. What is dangerous about this man is that he just told a roomful of people that we're violent... and that they should buy guns.
- On February 24th, 2017, both the Washington Post and the New York Times published fact check lists of DT's speech at CPAC. In what will come as no surprise, both papers found that it was riddled with errors, lies, misleading statements, and outright fantasy.
- Source, New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/politics/fact-check-trump-blasts-fake-news-and-repeats-inaccurate-claims-at-cpac.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
- Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/02/24/fact-checking-president-trumps-cpac-speech/?utm_term=.50d81ccc7e38
- On February 24th, 2017, in what can only be described as a tremendously worrying attack on the free press, Sean Spicer banned the New York Times, CNN, Buzzfeed, Politico, the Los Angeles Times from the daily press briefing. Spicer had previously said, in December, that open press access is “what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship.” Unlike previous press briefs, video was not permitted and the briefing was not streamed, but the Washington Post posted audio of the entire gaggle. Time Magazine and the AP boycotted the gaggle in response.
- Source, audio of press gaggle: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/heres-the-audio-from-the-white-house-briefing-that-blocked-cnn-new-york-times/2017/02/24/3732ef32-fad2-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334_video.html
- Source: http://fortune.com/2017/02/24/white-house-bars-nyt-cnn/
- Source, with Spicer video from December: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/02/24/in-december-spicer-said-barring-media-access-is-what-a-dictatorship-does-today-he-barred-media-access/?utm_term=.28a28af3f19b
- Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/politics/white-house-sean-spicer-briefing.html?action=Click&contentCollection=BreakingNews&contentID=64956142&pgtype=Homepage&smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1
- Source: https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/white-house-blocks-cnn-new-york-times-press-briefing-1201995894/
- On February 24th, 2017, DT again tweeted that leakers from the White House giving the press information about his ties to Russia were divulging classified information, once again basically asserting that the information is true.
- On February 24th, 2017, the Washington Post reported that, after failing to get the FBI to do so, DT enlisted lawmakers and intelligence officials to specifically reach out to the press to counter stories about his ties to Russia.
- On February 24th, 2017, NBC News published a poll that says 53% of Americans support a Congressional investigation into DT's ties to and communication with Russia. Get on it, Congress!
- On February 24th, 2017, the Washington Post reported that republican lawmakers in EIGHTEEN STATES have either introduced legislation to crack down on protests or have publicly announced their intention to do so.
- On February 24th, 2017, the Courier-Journal reported that Muhammad Ali's son and ex-wife (his mother) were detained at at Fort Lauderdale airport on their way back from Jamaica on February 7th. Muhammad Ali, Jr. was detained "for nearly two hours, repeatedly asking him, 'Where did you get your name from?' and 'Are you Muslim?'" Khalilah Camaco-Ali showed immigration officers a photo of herself with her famous boxer ex-husband and was released.
- On February 24th, 2017, Al Jazeera reported that congressional democrats have invited immigrants to DT's first state of the union next Tuesday. While it's unclear that DT will in any way be affected by being confronted with the humanity of people he has tried to dehumanize, what is clear is that we are going to be subjected to an embarrassing and abusive speech next week.
- On February 24th 2017, NPR reported that LA officials have had to ask Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducting raids in the city to stop identifying themselves as police officers. "In Los Angeles, the term 'police' is synonymous with the Los Angeles Police Department, so for ICE agents to represent themselves as police misleads the public into believing they are interacting with LAPD. This is especially corrosive given that to advance public safety, the LAPD does not initiate police action with the objective of determining a person's immigration status." Drafts of new executive orders, however, show that DT plans to extend immigration officer status to local law enforcement.
- On February 24th, 2017, DT signed another executive order, again surrounded by a bunch of right white men in suits. The executive order would designate a task force in every federal agency to research every regulation and mark those that should be axed. Each agency has 60 days to choose their "regulatory reform officers" and 90 days to send in a progress report. The language of the order particularly targets protections that he nebulously defines as those that "inhibit job creation."