Jobs Report
• The February jobs report saw 235,000 jobs added and the unemployment rate tick down to 4.7%. Quite a startling turnaround from the campaign when the candidate claimed the numbers were cooked. Asked about why they suddenly accept the numbers, Spicey said that the President told him that, "They may have been phony in the past, but they're real now." They had a hearty chuckle...literally.
POTUS
• At a photo op ABC's Jonathan Karl repeatedly, and bluntly, asked the President what evidence he had of wiretapping. Other reporters asked about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn & his now-disclosed work for Turkey. The President didn’t answer and the press was quickly ushered out of the room.
Treasury
• Remember 2013 when the GOP threw a hissy fit and shut down the government because raising the debt ceiling was the worst thing that had ever happened in this country? Well Thursday Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin began taking “extraordinary measures” to delay the U.S. government from defaulting, and called on Congress to lift the debt ceiling. We’ll see how that turns out this time.
State Department
• Rex Tillerson is on his first major trip as secretary and his personal media blackout continues as the press were not taken along on the trip to Asia. When asked about this today, Spicey claimed it was “to save money.”
Media reimburse the government for the cost of their travel and lodging on trips. As CNN’s Jake Tapper said, “Not bringing press on a trip like that is unusual & insulting to any American who is looking for anything but a state-run version of events.”
• Further promoting the “State is sidelined by Bannon/Kushner” narrative, Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray met senior White House aides without the State Department's knowledge.
• One win for common sense, in February Tillerson managed to keep the President under control when he complained that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act costs the United States billions of dollars in lost sales overseas and millions of jobs. The President literally was upset that we could not bribe foreign officials.
• Tillerson has recused himself from decisions related to the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Tillerson was previously the CEO of Exxon and a functioning KXL would raise the value of crude oil from Alberta, where Exxon has investments
Department of Education
• Secretary Betsy DeVos met with transgender students and their families today. They were hoping to persuade DeVos to do more to protect transgender students after the administration rolled back protections two weeks ago. They spoke about the violence, discrimination, and humiliation these children face and about the astronomical attempted suicide rate (41%).
Department of Justice
• Forty-six U.S. attorneys were ordered to resign today, all holdovers from the previous administration. Deputy U.S. attorneys, career officials of the DOJ, will act in their steads until replacements can be confirmed. In 1993, the Clinton administration fired all 93 United States attorneys on the same day. The firings came less than 24 hours after Fox News’ Sean Hannity called for a “purge” of Obama appointees at the Justice Department on his show.
Dumbasses
• Rep. Mike Kelly thinks that President Obama is staying in D.C. to run a shadow government. 65,844,95 voters wishes this were true.
HHS
• Scott Gottlieb is expected to be named Food and Drug Administration commissioner. He’s a fairly establishment Republican who wants to speed drug approval times and was a deputy FDA commissioner under President George W. Bush. Notably he has been a vocal critic of vaccine safety skeptics — a stance opposed to the rather anti-vax President.
Health Care
• Because of legislative rules, bills passed in the Senate via budget reconciliation (like TrumpCare) need only a simple majority and cannot be filibustered, as long as they have a direct impact on spending or tax levels. The TrumpCare/AHCA bill was written in a very specific way to address only those parts of the ACA that it could, under these rules. That’s why Phases 2 & 3 of the complete health care overhaul are coming later.
Some members of the GOP, led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) & Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and vice chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), are suggesting that the party disregard the rules altogether. They are seeking to cram as much as possible into the bill and when the Senate parliamentarian rules them out of order, get Vice-President Pence, as the presiding officer of the Senate, to overrule her. According to Cruz, the law regulating reconciliation gives the power of deciding what is permissible in reconciliation to the presiding officer.
• A second bill will be coming to the floor when the AHCA does. This is presumably “Phase 3” and is the new legislation controlling the health insurance market. Among other things it will include a provision allowing people to buy insurance through association health plans. The chances of it passing are slim as it will need 18 Democrat votes to pass.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell echoed Democratic lawmakers today, saying that the scoring of the health care plan by the Congressional Budget Office was necessary for a vote to move forward.
The Hill
• The completely bonkers H.R. 1313 passed the Workplace & Education Committee on a party-line 22-17 vote. It would allow companies to require employees to undergo genetic testing and provide the same about their families and share it with their employer or risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars. It gets around existing legislation preventing that very thing by making it “voluntary” part of a “workplace wellness” program.
Direct Action Report
• Today was the culmination of four days of protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline and the President as thousands of protesters and dozens of indigenous tribes marched through the streets of D.C.
• EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s phone has literally been ringing off the hook today with people bitching him out for not believing human-released CO2 is driving global warming. (Psst. It’s 202-564-4700) (Actually they have interns answering the phones now so be nice.)
Spicey Meatball
• The Press Secretary’s American flag pin was on upside down today during the briefing, a recognized symbol of distress. #SurrenderSpicey
• Broke a federal rule that prohibits executive branch employees from publicly commenting on principal economic indicators within one hour of release by tweeting about the jobs report 20 minutes after it was released. The Reagan-era rule was to prevent commodity or financial markets from being affected. Asked about this, Spicey waved it off saying he doubted the markets would care.
Reminder that the White House refused ethics training as it did not “accurately reflect the current needs of the Presidential Transition Team.”
• Claimed that there was no way that at the time Mike Flynn was named National Security Advisor the President or anyone at all would have known that he was acting as a foreign agent.
OR everyone DID know, because on November 18, Rep. Elijah Cummings sent a letter to Vice President-Elect Mike Pence asking for information on Flynn’s conflicts of interests after a Politico story reported on his lobbying for Turkey.
No comments:
Post a Comment