Stormy Days Ahead

Best Laid Plans:  It was supposed to be a redemption weekend for Trump, a private lesson on how to fake compassion followed by a trip to Houston and then an oh so meaningful day of prayer for the Harvey victims or at least the legal ones.  Trump even put off announcing his Dreamers decision so that images of him serving the water logged and hanging with the religious set would receive maximum air time.  After doing a reasonably good job pulling off the compassionate part in Texas and Louisiana, Trump went to sleep on Saturday night only to wake up and learn that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un had messed up his plans, bigly.  Overnight, North Korea had completed an underground test of a huge hydrogen bomb, their first nuclear test during the Trump administration.  Depressingly, the “peanut” shaped bomb could fit on an intercontinental ballistic missile, moving North Korea another step closer to threatening the US mainland.  Ironically, on Saturday before the H bomb test,  against the advice of his economic advisors, Chief of Staff Kelly and many Senators, including  Nebraska’s Sasse who bashed Trump’s 18^th century view of trade, Trump had started preparations to withdraw the US from a free-trade agreement with South Korea, a move that could only complicate tensions with South Korea at a time that being supportive and on the same page is more important than ever.  Talk about kicking your ally to the ground when it’s facing a nightmare from the north.  Trump responded to the North Korean test with a series of tweets and oddly enough initially the toughest one was directed at South Korea for being an appeaser.  Later in the day he tweet threatened to stop trade with any countries that do any business with North Korea, a not so subtle jab at China. Defense Secretary Mattis responded with an equally disturbing but more coherent statement warning of a massive military response if the US or one of its allies is attacked before adding that we are not interested in the annihilation of a country, North Korea are you listening?  On Monday at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, Ambassador Haley called for harsher sanctions while saying that Kim Jong Un is begging for war, an outcome we don’t want but our “patience is not unlimited.”  The collected experts continue to insist that Kim Jong Un only wants his nukes so that he can attain big boy status with the other nuclear powers and that he is a “rational” actor who wouldn’t really use those nukes.  However, for what it’s worth, many of the same experts also claimed that he was years away from advancing his nuclear program to where it is today.  South Korea’s defense minister is now mulling over a request that the US redeploy the tactical nuclear weapons that were removed from the Korea peninsula in the early 1990s.  Sadly, nothing good to report on this increasingly scary front.

Dreams Delayed:  Expectations are high that Trump will attempt to deflect blame for his decision to cancel DACA by punting the final responsibility to Congress today, ending the program with a six month delay.  It will then be left to Congress to either come up with a permanent solution or to abandon the undocumented children and young adults who are guilty only of being brought to the US by their parents.  Trump wants us to think that he is anguishing over what to do about the DACA kids because of his huge “heart” but let’s be real here.  If he was really anguishing he would do his best to keep the program alive and wouldn’t be intimidated by threatened lawsuits from the coalition of nine anti-immigration state attorneys general.  He would even try tweet smacking some of those guys out of their lawsuit.   Instead he’s kicking DACA to Congress, where attempts at passing similar legislation have languished for years.  More and more legislators, including some Republicans, have expressed a desire to come up with a solution to allow the DACA kids to stay and work and maybe even have a path to citizenship but it will take heavy lifting by Republican leadership to make this happen and it’s not clear that McConnell and Ryan will be willing to expend any political capital introducing legislation especially since passage would require reaching across the aisle to the Democrats.  Six months from now, the DACA kids may be no further along in their quest to stay in the US.   

The September Agenda:  House Speaker Ryan is expected to introduce a bill to provide around $8 billion of Hurricane Harvey aid today for a vote on Wednesday, a noncontroversial first installment for what is likely to be a $150 billion program.  The initial request will fund FEMA’s activities with some additional money for the Small Business Administration.  The objective is to get something through the house quickly without raising objections from budget hawks.  Once passed on to the Senate, Majority Leader McConnell’s current plan is to tack on a provision to raise the debt ceiling in an effort to kill two birds with one stone.   Then the amended bill will go back to the House for their signoff, but it won’t be smooth sailing.  Already some conservative groups, including the 170 member Republican Study Group (where do these guys get their names and what are they really studying?  Obstreperousness?) are squawking.  Democrats, if asked, and they probably will be asked, will likely vote for the aid and the raising of the debt ceiling.  Trump’s budget had anticipated cuts in disaster funding in order to pay for his border wall, but between Harvey and Irma, who is waiting in the wings, wall funding is fading, another one of those best laid plans that isn’t going anywhere.  Just a few weeks ago, at the press conference where Trump was supposed to roll out his infrastructure program but where he instead doubled down on his Charlottesville comments, he announced that he was rolling back Obama era rules intended to reduce the risks posed by flooding that had established new standards for roads, housing and other federally funded infrastructure. That may be just another one of those plans that is getting thrown away too. While still refusing to acknowledge or even use the words “climate change,” the Trump administration is now considering whether to issue their own Obama like requirements to build higher in flood-prone areas as they anticipate the costs of Harvey related infrastructure expenditures and the folly of building flood vulnerable roads and buildings.  

Surprise:  Late Friday, when few were paying attention the Department of Justice confirmed what we all knew from the start, there is no evidence that Obama wiretapped Trump.  Also, Trump disclosed plans to appoint Oklahoma Congressman Jim Bridenstine to be the first politician to head NASA.  He has no science background, is a climate change denier, and believes that NASA spends too much money on climate change research.  In 2013 Bridenstine demanded that Obama apologize for spending money to research climate change, which he said had “stopped” not so presciently adding “severe weather is on the decline anyway.”  In other words by Trumpian standards he is perfect for the job. Florida’s Senator Rubio has expressed serious reservations about the appointment, usually feckless, he will get a chance to put some muscle behind his rhetoric when Bridenstine comes up for Senate confirmation.