Hi everyone-- in light of the executive order rescinding the DOJ's guidelines for the treatment of trans students, all donations that I receive from now until the end of the month will go to support Trans Lifeline. Because a percentage of your donations to me have a processing fee, I encourage you to donate to them directly, but I just want you to know that I will be turning over what I do receive to them as soon as the money comes into my account.
If you want to donate to Trans Lifeline directly, go to https://www.translifeline.org/donate.
- On February 21st, 2017, the Army reported that DT's federal hiring freeze executive order had caused at least two army bases to close their childcare programs with only a few days notice-- one in Fort Knox, Kentucky and the other in Wiesbaden, Germany.
- On February 21st, 2017, NYPD commissioner James O'Neill sent a letter to New York City members of Congress stating that the cost of protecting Melania and Barron Trump between Election Day and Inauguration Day has been $25.7M. The cost of the first month DT has been at the White House has not yet been disclosed. Despite Mayor DeBlasio's request for $35M per month from the Congress to support DT's wife and youngest child, Congress has earmarked just $7M.
- On February 21st, 2017, a 45-year-old Mexican man who had come to the US to escape Sinaloa, a city formerly ruled by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and still considered extremely dangerous because of drug cartels, committed suicide after he was deported for the third time to an area of Mexico where he had no family, friends, or prospects.
- On February 22nd, 2017, Politico published an article based on interviews with former DT campaign staffers claiming that they pushed stories laudatory of DT to conservative news outlets in order to keep him off of Twitter. Apparently, as long as he was getting praise from the echo chamber he was less likely to go on one of his infamous Twitter tantrums.
- On February 22nd, 2017, The Week reported that Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, instead of organizing an investigation of DT's ties to Russia or his obvious business conflicts of interest, is investigating the park service after a seemingly innocuous tweet from a Utah national park back in December. Utah should really dump this guy come midterms-- he's an embarrassment and a disgrace, full stop.
- On February 22nd, 2017, the Guardian reported that Chris Hurst of Virginia, whose girlfriend was shot and killed by a former colleague on live television, is running for state office on a gun violence prevention platform. Two of his legislative platforms are a gun violence protection order that would keep guns away from people who have had an emergency protective order granted against them, and a gun violence restraining order, which would allow police or family members to temporarily confiscate guns "from someone who seems to be heading towards violence, whether to harm themselves or someone else."
- On February 22nd, 2017, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton was taken to task in one of the most uproarious town hall meetings in a very aggressive town hall season. The two short videos linked below are just the best examples of the anger and frustration of his constituents over the proposed "repeal and replace" of the Affordable Care Act.
- Source, full replay of the town hall: http://heavy.com/news/2017/02/tom-cotton-town-hall-live-stream-streaming-video-arkansas-youtube-watch-full-replay-crowd-size/
- Source: http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/02/23/tom-cotton-emotional-town-hall-crowd.kark/video/playlists/angry-town-halls/
- Source: http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/02/22/tom-cotton-town-hall-ignores-obamacare-question-sot.kark
- On February 22nd, 2017. the Guardian published a heart breaking piece on how the Muslim community in a Kansas town is rebuilding after three white men in a "national anti-government militia movement" plotted to blow up a mosque in their town. Of course, DT has recently refocused federal anti-extremism efforts to only investigate Muslim extremists, not the growing white supremacist extremism in the US.
- On February 22nd, 2017, DT directed the Department of Justice to rescind guidelines that instructed schools to allow transgender students to use the restroom consistent with their gender identity. Weirdly, this was above the protestations of his hyper-religious Secretary of Education, Betsy "Bears in Schools" DeVos.
- On February 22nd, 2017, a Quinnipiac University poll showed that DT is losing his war with the media. Of those polled, 52% trust the mainstream media more than DT with only 37% saying they trusted DT more than the media (10% said they did not know or did not answer).
- On February 22nd, 2017, Jackie Evancho, the 16-year-old The Voice runner up who sang the national anthem at DT's inauguration expressed her dismay with the DOJ's rescinding the guidelines for transgender students. Evancho has a trans sister, Juliet, who is suing her school district because they blocked access for trans students to bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity.
- On February 22nd, 2017, US envoys visiting Mexico for DT were told that the Mexican government will not accept his administration's immigration proposals that would send undocumented immigrants to Mexico... regardless of where they are from originally.
- On February 22nd, 2017, republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that members are likely to demand that Mike Flynn formerly testify before the committee. She also said that the committee may subpoena DT's tax returns, as well.
- On February 22nd, 2017, DT delivered the following word-salad nonsense about the republican tax reform plan: "Before we do the tax — which is actually very well finalized — but we can't submit it until the health care statutorily or otherwise. So we're doing the health care — again moving along very well — sometime during the month of March, maybe mid-to-early March, we'll be submitting something that I think people will be very impressed by." As usual, the White House has not released any details about the tax plan.
- On February 22nd, 2017, Bloomberg reported that the Air Force has no knowledge of the $1B (one billion dollars) in savings that DT claimed he negotiated for the new Air Force One program.
- On February 22nd, 2017, Bloomberg reported on a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that found that, contrary to the average DT supporter's popular belief, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would actually hurt the economy, as undocumented workers contribute approximately $94B (yes, ninety-four BILLION) per 1 million undocumented workers to GDP every year. With approximately 8 million undocumented workers, that would result in an anuual $752B drop in GDP.
- On February 22nd, 2017, the Washington Post made my paid subscription worth it with a single new feature-- "The Yell-O-Matic," where you can choose a politician from a drop down menu and watch them get roasted by their constituents.
- On February 22nd, 2017, Raw Story posted video of passengers on a flight from Chicago to Houston, continuing the weird new trend of political fights on plane. The video starts after the reported incident, where a man twice asked a Pakistani-born couple had bombs in their bags, and while they are being escorted off the plane. The racist couple told the Muslim passengers, "Happy flight home-- hope you stay there!" and flipped them the bird on the video while they were asked to get their things and get off the flight.