The Weekly List

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/

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 started to cut back or cease operations and  functions.

This was a week of bombshells on the Trump-Russia front, as an  inadvertently unredacted filing by Paul Manafort’s attorneys revealed  Manafort had delivered 2016 president campaign polling data to  Konstantin Kilimnik, who the FBI believes has ties to Russian  intelligence. Michael Cohen set a date to testify before the House, and  Natalie Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin who  attended the June 9 Trump Tower meeting was back in the news. Late  Friday, a bombshell story by the Times revealed the FBI had  opened an inquiry in May 2017 into whether Trump was knowingly working  for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

Read the full list: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-113/

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 race, religion, and gender — on the  Democratic side — stood in sharp contrast to Trump, who increasingly  surrounds himself with rooms full of white men.

The government shutdown passed three weeks, with no end in sight, as  Trump dug in his heels and Pelosi’s House voted to reopen the government  without any funding for his wall. As the shutdown’s impact was  increasingly felt across the country, including unpaid essential TSA  workers calling in sick at four major airports, reporting indicated the  Trump regime had not planned for or anticipated a long-term shutdown,  and is caught flat-footed. Trump’s lack of empathy for those impacted by  the shutdown, and threat to call a national emergency, further belied  his autocratic tendencies.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-112/

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 Eve day, as the stock market was plummeting, Trump  bemoaned his self-imposed status, tweeting, “I am all alone (poor me) in  the White House.” Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley called it, “a  sad and pathetic moment.” As the week came to a close, Trump again  complained: “I am in the White House waiting for the Democrats.”

This week the stock market continued wild gyrations, as Trump again  publicly lashed out at his Federal Reserve Chair, and privately  threatened to fire his Treasury Secretary. Parts of the government were  shuttered during the holiday week, and the effects of the shutdown  started to be felt. Trump took a surprise visit — his first — to a  combat zone, but even that backfired and led to further criticism as he  held a campaign rally-style event with U.S. troops at a military base in  Iraq, and continued his partisan criticisms of Democrats and  demagoguery about his wall and the shutdown while abroad. Iraqi  politicians denounced Trump’s visit and demanded U.S. troops leave their  country.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-111/

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 Erdogan the week before. Mattis’ departure elicited  bipartisan concern, and placed the country on edge.

This week Trump’s beloved stock market continued to crater, as the  markets entered a correction period with Dow Jones Industrial Average’s  worst weekly performance in 10 years, and on track for the worst  December since the Great Depression. By the week’s end, Trump was  privately agitating about firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, in  what would be an unprecedented act.

Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-110/