The Weekly List

This week Attorney General William Barr publicly  released a redacted version of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s  report, almost a month after he delivered it to Barr. The redacted  report differed substantially from Barr’s March 24 letter, as well as  from statements delivered by Barr at a press conference hours before the  report’s release — casting Barr more as a d...

This week, Trump’s frustration with migrants coming to the southern  border boiled over, as he purged the Department of Homeland Security,  and empowered immigrant hardliner Stephen Miller to be in charge of the  regime’s immigration policy. As the week ended, 12 of the 30 senior  roles at DHS were either vacant or filled with “acting” leaders.  Departures of senior offici...

This week, two weeks after Mueller had sent his final report to  Attorney General William Barr, members of the special counsel  anonymously broke their silence, indicating to the Times and the Post  that their findings were more troubling than Barr’s letter had  indicated. Meanwhile Trump changed his position on public release of the  report, as he and his surrogates went...

This week was dominated by news of the Mueller report, which was  delivered to Attorney General William Barr last Friday, but has yet to  be given to Congress or the American people. On Sunday, AG Barr sent a  four-page letter to Congress, which he characterized as a “summary” of  the Mueller report, but later in the week, in a second letter, wrote it  “did not purport to...

This week started with maniacal tweeting by Trump: more than 50 tweets  over the weekend on a variety of unrelated topics, including multiple  retweets of conspiracy theorists. The week’s news was overshadowed by  Trump’s daily attacks against deceased Senator John McCain and George  Conway, husband of senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway. The  off-kilter — even by...

Trump issued his first veto after the House and Senate voted to block  his emergency declaration. The veto followed Trump’s declaration of a  national emergency after Congress refused to fund his wall, which was  unprecedented. Taken together, Trump irreverently thumbed his nose at  the separations of power. Trump also continued his record pace of appointments to the judicial &...

This week a bombshell exposé by Jane Mayer on the ties between Trump and Fox News sparked questions of whether America had its first version of state TV. The piece had broad fallout, and sparked a renewed conversation on the line between journalism and propaganda. This week Democrats ramped up investigations, while Trump hit back and escalated his pace of daily lies and misleading statements. With...

This week the country was riveted by the public testimony of Michael  Cohen, Trump’s long-time attorney and fixer, before the House Oversight  Committee — the first public testimony in the new Democrat-controlled  Congress. Cohen’s testimony overwhelmed the spectacle of Trump’s second  summit with North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un in Hanoi — which produced  no concrete resu...

This week the FBI thwarted a major domestic terrorism plot by a white  nationalist serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard, who had  called for the establishment of a “white homeland.” His target list  included Democratic politicians and cable-TV hosts, almost all of whom  were subjects of Trump’s public ire on Twitter or in words. Nonetheless,  Trump continued his...

This was a jarring week as Trump declared a national emergency after  Congress refused to fund his wall — perhaps his most brazen  authoritarian act yet. Trump’s predilection not to govern, but rather  rule by an unprecedented executive fiat, set off alarm bells for  Constitutional separation of powers, as Trump departed early Friday for a  weekend of golf at Mar-a-Lago. T...

This week was filled with news of Congressional inquiries, subpoenas,  and investigations, as House committee chairs took the first steps to  hold Trump and his regime accountable. Leaks from the regime heightened  concerns about a White House rapidly devolving to the Trump  Organization, with Trump largely freelancing and acting unilaterally,  and taking the advice from a...

This week concerns about Trump’s foreign policy were front and center,  as the regime rolled back sanctions against a Russian oligarch, and  withdrew from the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces  Treaty — both seen as victories for Putin. The Financial Times  reported on a previously undisclosed one-on-one meeting between Trump  and Putin at the G20 just months...

This is the longest and perhaps most perilous week for Trump so far.  Not only did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi outmaneuver him in the  government shutdown, but by week’s end she was publicly questioning if  Trump is beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and if his  campaign coordinated efforts to subvert the 2016 U.S. election.  Meanwhile, House committees, now chai...

This week marked 29 days of the government being shuttered, with no  end in sight. Agencies continued to feel the effects, as thousands of  furloughed employees were called back to work unpaid. Federal workers  formed blocks-long lines at food banks, and borrowed from retirement  accounts to make ends meet. Trump’s approval continued to fall this  week, with one poll indic...

This week Trump struggled to create stagecraft and find narratives to  justify funding for his border wall, while keeping the government  shuttered. Trump delivered a prime-time Oval Office address, visited the  U.S.-Mexico border, and held an immigration round-table to make his  case, while the reality of the shutdown hurt federal workers and  contractors, and agencies st...

This week, for the first time since he took office, Trump faced a  check on his power as the 116th Congress was sworn in. As House Speaker  Nancy Pelosi took back the gavel, she made clear she will take Trump on,  telling the Times she considers herself Trump’s equal, and the  “TODAY” show that Trump can be indicted while in office. The 116th  Congress, the most diverse by...

Increasingly, Trump stands alone. The generals are gone, much of his  experienced and competent senior staffers have resigned or been fired.  This week, in a tantrum over his decision to shut down the government,  Trump stewed and tweeted and blamed and attacked from the White House,  while the rest of Congress was home for the Christmas holiday. At one  point on Christmas...

This week Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, thought to be one of the sane  and sober voices remaining in the regime, resigned in a public letter  rebuking Trump’s treatment of allies and deference to authoritarians.  Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria was the last straw  for Mattis, a decision reportedly made on a call with Turkish President  Recep Tayyip Erdo...

As I’ve been listing, I’ve always suspected things would crescendo as we were moving towards the end of the Trump era. Week 109 is the longest list so far, with 181 not normal items. Up until now, Trump has never been questioned or countered in his authority, other than in rulings by the Judicial branch. Soon he will be facing Democrats as equals — a House that can hold him accountable — as well a...

This week featured the normalcy and tranquility of the funeral of George H.W. Bush, juxtaposed with bombshells of damning information on Trump coming from the Mueller probe and other investigations. As the Mueller probe is reportedly nearing its close, Mueller’s team filed court memos relating to three of its most high profile defendants: Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, and Paul Manafort. The Southe...

This week started with escalations, both between Russia and Ukraine, and at the U.S.-Mexico border. Heartbreaking images and video surfaced from Tijuana of migrants from Central America, including women and children, some in diapers, being showered with tear gas from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. As Trump and the regime sought to justify the use of force, and Republicans remained almost univ...

There is no such thing as a slow holiday news week in the era of Trump! This week, in the chaos of news and not normal, reporting of Ivanka Trump’s use of a personal email account for White House business — remarkably similar to Hillary Clinton’s private server on which Trump fixated throughout his 2016 campaign and beyond — was barely mentioned in the news 48 hours later. This week there were mor...

We are back after a midterm hiatus. Reporting this week indicates Trump is reeling from the midterms, as additional House seats were called for Democrats, possibly leading to a 40 seat pick-up, as well as the Mueller probe, from which additional indictments are expected soon. This week Trump skipped many duties typically carried out by a head of state, instead brooding and threatening to fire more...

This was a heartbreaking week in America, after several domestic attacks left the country shaken, frightened, and on edge. On Monday, an explosive device mailed in a package to the home of George Soros was discovered. Then starting Wednesday, one by one, 13 more packages addressed to high profile Democrats, all of whom were Trump critics and people Trump had publicly and repeatedly attacked, were...

With midterms approaching, the country is electrified and on edge. This week Trump recycled themes from his 2016 campaign to help boost Republican messaging: stoking fear of “the others” (a caravan of immigrants), accusing Democrats of being the party of open borders and crime and claiming the left is encouraging violence (“the mob”). Journalists and watchdog groups in several states continued to...