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 his standards — behavior by Trump seemed  foreboding, and sure enough, on Friday, Mueller’s final report was  delivered to Attorney General William Barr.

Among the subjects of his ire on Twitter this week, Trump continued  to focus on alleged and unsubstantiated bias of social media companies,  as his ally Rep. Devin Nunes filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit  against Twitter and three Twitter accounts. Congressional probes moved  ahead, including new revelations that Jared Kushner used WhatsApp to  communicate on official White House business, including with foreign  officials, and in possible violations of the Presidential Records  Act — as did Ivanka Trump for White House business with her use of a  personal email account. Meanwhile the White House refused to cooperate  with Congressional document requests, as Rep. Elijah Cummings accused  them of “stonewalling.”

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-123/

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  branch, this week with the aid of newly installed ally Sen. Lindsey  Graham as Judiciary Committee Chair. Graham discarded a century old norm  of allowing in-state senators to submit a “blue slip” to oppose  nominations, allowing Trump to appoint two judges to the 9th Circuit  Court.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-122/

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 Congressional hearings finally underway, Trump and his regime continued a pattern of irreverent corruption and kleptocracy, as well as continued efforts to limit transparency and hide information.

A shocking story by an NBC affiliate revealed U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has been keeping a database of journalists and other activists involved at the Southern border, the second list by the Trump regime targeting U.S. journalists that has been uncovered since Trump came into power. The regime also reportedly revoked an award from a journalist who had been critical of Trump on social media.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-121/

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 results, despite a pre-planned joint signing ceremony.  Cohen, who said he is now in “constant contact” with federal  prosecutors, gave seven hours of testimony, offering an insider’s  perspective and many new details which, by week’s end, were already  leading Congressional investigators to call more witnesses and open new  areas of inquiry.

As Cohen was testifying and Trump meeting with Kim, Jared Kushner met  with the Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince MBS, then Turkish President  Recep Erdogan. Just as Kushner stayed silent during his Saudi visit on  the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Trump sided with another dictator, saying  he believed Kim played no part of the brutal torture and death of  American college student Otto Warmbier, before trying to reverse himself  the next day. During Kushner’s trip, the Times reported Trump  had ordered officials to grant his son-in-law top-secret security  clearance, overruling concerns by U.S. intelligence and former White  House Counsel Don McGahn.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-120/

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 attacks on the media, calling them the “enemy of  the people,” and repeatedly referring to them as “fake news.” When asked  if his rhetoric played a role, Trump responded, “No, I don’t. I think  my language is very nice.” Trump has also started in recent weeks to  attack fact-checkers as fake news.

Trump ally Roger Stone found himself hauled back into court this week  for posting an image of a federal judge next to a crosshairs, while  other Trump supporters used words like “civil war” and “coup” on-air as  the country waited for Mueller’s findings. In conjunction with his new  book, former FBI director Andrew McCabe spoke to media outlets about  F.B.I. investigations into Trump, the prospect of invoking the 25th  Amendment, and concern that Trump is a Russian asset. In response, Trump  spent the week attacking his old, familiar target.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-119/

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.

This week the Mueller probe made news as reporting indicated Trump’s  former campaign chair Paul Manafort discussed a peace plan for Ukraine  and handed off internal polling data in a secretive meeting to a  business associate with ties to Russian intelligence, and a search  warrant revealed Roger Stone was in direct contact with WikiLeaks while  interacting with the Trump campaign —both in the months before the 2016  election.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-118/

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 small group of sycophantic insiders.

With the government reopened, Trump delivered an otherwise mundane  State of the Union speech, with the most memorable part being his attack  on the investigations against him, evoking former President Richard  Nixon’s 1974 speech shortly before impeachment proceedings began. Trump  continued to push his manufactured crisis at the southern border,  sending thousands more troops as he stoked racism and fear.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-117/

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 after Helsinki. Congress rebuked  Trump’s foreign policy again this week in a piece of legislation drafted  by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over Trump’s withdrawal of troops  from Syria and Afghanistan. Heads of U.S. Intelligence agencies  testified before the Senate on their annual “Worldwide Threat  Assessment,” revealing findings in sharp contrast from Trump on Iran,  ISIS, and North Korea, as well as the southern border. Trump reacted by  castigating his appointed agency heads, then later inviting them to the  Oval office and blaming the media instead.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-116/

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 chaired by Democrats, geared up to  challenge Trump and his regime on a number of fronts, including  inquiries into Deutsche Bank’s handling of Trump’s accounts and the  regime’s process of granting of security clearances.

Following dire warnings from agencies, unions, and former government  officials about safety and security risks, public outcries and protests  from unpaid furloughed workers, and plummeting approval, Trump finally  agreed to reopen the government Friday. The final impetus appeared to be  delayed flights at New York’s LaGuardia Airport due to staffing issues  with unpaid air traffic controllers.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-115/

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 indicating he is losing support from his base.  Conversely, House Speaker Pelosi’s popularity hit a 10-year high as the  two did battle, and Trump reckoned with the first check on his power.

This week was full of bombshell stories which, along with the  continued shutdown, rocked the country and made people increasingly  anxious and scared about the direction of the country. Major storylines  included Trump concealing contents of meetings with Russian President  Vladimir Putin, Trump’s continued fixation of withdrawing the U.S. from  NATO — a boon to Russia, and Michael Cohen paying an IT firm to rig  online polls to boost Trump. Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani made  headlines, telling CNN, “I never said there was no collusion between the  campaign or between people in the campaign,” which he later retracted. A  bombshell BuzzFeed News story suggesting Trump directed Cohen to lie to  Congress on Trump Tower Moscow was refuted by Mueller’s team, which  Trump and his allies quickly weaponized to attack the credibility of the  media.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-114/