February 8th, 2018
Written by - Elena Householder '18
Everything that happened this month, told through Donald Trump’s tweets (and my corrections to them).
I really can’t explain this one, so here’s the link: https://gop.com/the-highly-anticipated-2017-fake-news-awards/
Most of the “Fake News” was corrected before the awards came out.
Trump and Kim Jong Un went back and forth quite a bit this month, which doesn’t really seem like a good thing if we’re trying to stay away from a nuclear war. It seems like the relationship between North and South Korea might be warming up, though. With the start of the Winter Olympics possibly helping to ease the tension, nobody can really predict what will happen next.
Some companies did give out extra bonuses this holiday season and cited the tax cuts as a big difference maker. The effects of the Tax Cut Bill are much more complicated than more bonuses for workers, though. Many companies are using the extra money to buy stock, which is part of why the stock market has been so out of whack lately. We are going to have to wait and see what will be the lasting effects of the cuts.
Feinstein went against her republican peers to release transcripts of an interview regarding Russia’s effects on the election. Feinstein has stated that she felt she should release the transcripts after much discussion surrounding the validity of the information in the interview.
Trump is referring to the decision to move the U.S. embassy in London from Mayfair to Nine Elms, which was actually first announced under George W. Bush. However, the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, along with many others, suspects Trump’s decision had much more to do with imminent protests than where the embassy is located.
The term “chain migration” refers to the current U.S. system in which people can sponsor nuclear family members to immigrate. Trump has repeatedly suggested a merit-based immigration system, instead. So far, though, we have not seen any details about what exactly that would entail or how it would work.
Trump originally criticized FISA, suggesting that it’s policies made unfair surveillance of the Trump campaign possible. However, he quickly went back on his statements, and the House voted to reauthorize section 702 soon after.
According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, the female unemployment rate in January was at 4%. It was at 3.9% in October of 2017, and the next most recent time it dropped this low was in 2000. So, that’s actually true. Whether or not you attribute the low rate of unemployment to Trump’s policies is up to you. Besides that, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say most of the women marching on January 20th were not celebrating any “historic milestones” of the Trump administration.
So, the government needed to pass a budget. Trump tweeted so much about this, so I’m just going to give an overview of the whole situation here. The main points of contention between the two parties were CHIP, DACA, and military and border patrol spending. Republicans could not get enough votes to pass the budget without a little bit of bipartisan support, so the government ended up shutting down for three days until they could pass a stopgap spending bill. The bill included 6 years of funding for CHIP, but nothing for DACA other than a promise from Republican leaders to address the fate of the Dreamers soon.
2 students were killed and 18 more were injured by a 15-year-old classmate at a high school in Benton, Kentucky. This is the 11th school shooting of 2018. There have not been any moves for a change in gun control legislation. In fact, this has gotten a considerably low level of media attention.
The president wrapped up this month with a trip to Davos to attend The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. Apparently, he left with an even stronger relationship with Mr. Netanyahu but a rockier one with Palestine after threatening to cut off aid due to their withdrawal from peace negotiations. He also managed to smooth over his relationship with Theresa May, despite the general awkwardness of the meeting as many of the issues discussed were related to recently updated United States policies.
Bonus!!!: I don’t have a tweet for it, but Trump delivered his first State of the Union Address on January 30th. It was one of the longest speeches in State-of-the-Union history, so there’s no way to cover it all here. But, you can click here for a recap and here for a full transcript.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/12/donald-trump-visit-to-london-called-off-amid-fears-of-mass-protests
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/us/kentucky-school-shooting.htmlfe
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/us/politics/government-shutdown.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/us/politics/feinstein-fusion-gps-glenn-simpson-transcript.html
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/40481/is-female-unemployment-lowest-in-18-years
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/11/politics/trump-fisa-section-702-surveillance-data/index.html
http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/30/news/economy/trump-state-of-the-union-worker-bonuses/index.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/trump-cotton-perdue-merit-based-immigration-system/518985/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/06/chain-migration-is-not-bringing-floods-of-terrorists-to-america/?utm_term=.675027bd82c8
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/world/europe/donald-trump-davos-trade.html
Comments