BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI & CROOKED MEDIA

Friday, January 4, 2019

—Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA), who plans to pardon over 3,500 marijuana convictions

"MONTHS OR EVEN YEARS"

Day 14 of the government shutdown: At a meeting with bipartisan Congressional leaders, President Trump threatened to let the government shutdown last “months or even years” until he gets the funding he wants for his border wall. He is also considering declaring a state of national emergency to go around Congress to get the funds (legal experts are skeptical about this).

Here’s who this shutdown is hurting:

• Over 800,000 federal workers around the country, who will not receive paychecks until the government is reopened.
  • Meanwhile, Mike Pence and other senior appointees are getting $10,000 raises because the shutdown caused a pay freeze enacted by Congress to lapse. Trump previously cancelled the scheduled 1.9 percent raise for most federal workers.
• The country’s poorest, sick, and elderly people, who are at risk of losing their housing and/or being subjected to unsafe conditions.
  • 95 percent of the Department of Housing and Urban Development is furloughed, with mandatory health and safety inspections suspended. Officials also don’t know how much longer rental assistance will last, which could put millions at risk of losing their housing.
• Anyone who travels by air
  • Hundreds of TSA officials who were required to work without pay have called out from work at four major airports. Without paychecks, many of them can no longer afford childcare, or need work that will pay their bills. These figures are expected to increase, and air travel may slow and be less safe as a result.
• Taxpayers
  • The IRS will not pay refunds, perform audits, or even offer assistance to taxpayers during the shutdown.  
• Many Native American tribes
  • Tribes that rely heavily on federal funding, given in exchange for millions of acres of land, are being forced to use their own money to keep their health care systems and food pantries open.

After retaking control of the House yesterday, the Democratic majority passed two bills to reopen the government, though both are expected to die in the Senate, where Leader Mitch McConnell has said he will not allow votes on any measures that President Trump doesn’t support (aka ones without funding for his wall). This is the same Mitch McConnell who presided over a Senate that, in December, passed a bill to fund the government without an extra cent of wall funding 100-0 (h/t Sens. Brian Schatz and Sherrod Brown). Last we checked, that’s enough votes to override a veto from Trump.

McConnell also doesn’t have the full support of his caucus. Yesterday, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) called for an end to the shutdown, whether or not wall funding is received, and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who along with Gardner is up for re-election in 2020, has also said that bills to fund other parts of the government shouldn’t be held up over the wall. Since Trump doesn’t seem to care at all about the human or political consequences of a shutdown, it may be time to focus pressure on McConnell, who can spare his more vulnerable Republican Senators a lot of political pain by ending this shutdown with a vote that overrides Trump’s veto.

Last night at a progressive rally, newly-sworn in Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) promised to “impeach that motherfucker,” referring to Donald Trump.

Was it the best thing to say? Who knows. Was it a big deal? Definitely not. From Jon Favreau: “One thing we have the power to do is ignore the obviously bad faith and hypocritical condemnations about coarse language from Republicans. Let them freak out about it in their little echo chamber. The rest of us have real problems to deal with.”

The Supreme Court agreed to hear cases on partisan gerrymandering from North Carolina and Maryland after two lower courts found that the maps violated the constitution. Historically, the court has struggled with how to determine these cases.

Yesterday, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan was formally charged by Russia with espionage. Aside from the U.S., Whelan has sought assistance from the consulates of three other nations that acknowledge him as a citizen—Canada, where he was born, as well as Britain and Ireland, where he obtained passports through his lineage. (FYI, having four passports is… not normal.) So far, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the U.S. will demand Whelan’s release if his arrest is deemed inappropriate.

Judges have ruled that the Flint water crisis lawsuit against the city and many of its current and former officials may continue, after denying an appeal to dismiss the claims against the officials themselves.

Yesterday the State Department warned U.S. citizens that they could be arbitrarily detained if they travel to China, after China prevented an American family from leaving the country amid tense relations between the two countries following the arrest of Huawei executive in Vancouver at the request of the U.S.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) will not run for re-election in 2020. The Republican primary is expected to be crowded, and former U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom (D) is also weighing a run.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) took his talents to Fox News, where he hosted a show this afternoon…. From Dan Pfeiffer: “This tells you everything you need to know about the Republican Party and Fox News”

Barack Obama made his debut on Billboard’s Hot R&B Songs chart this week.

It probably comes as no surprise now that leading white nationalist talking points are regularly on Fox News, courtesy of Tucker Carlson, and now two hosts of a prominent white nationalist podcast confirmed that Carlson repeats their points “for an audience of millions around the country.”

Carlson has lost over two dozen advertisers in recent weeks, spurred by his comments that immigrants were making America “poorer and dirtier,” but it hasn’t stopped his bullshit. This week, he pivoted from racism to sexism, claiming that women earning more money than men has put “men in decline,” leading to “more drug and alcohol abuse” and “higher incarceration rates.”

Lifetime’s new docuseries Surviving R. Kelly has brought decades of sexual abuse allegations against the musician back into the spotlight, featuring the women who he abused, witnesses, and those who were close to Kelly.

Why is Ellen DeGeneres urging Kevin Hart to not let “these people” win and to re-accept the Oscars hosting gig he backed out of after his resurfaced homophobic remarks that he has repeatedly refused to apologize for generated intense backlash?

America and the people who represent its citizens in Congress may be getting more diverse, but the newsroom employees who cover it are more likely than all U.S. workers to be white and male. The news and perspectives you read shape how you see the world, and the people in newsrooms are largely responsible for what you end up reading.

YEA, STEPHEN.

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