Drumpf Diary 3/27/17 - Medicare for All

With the AHCA defeated, progressive legislators and organizations are setting their sights on a push for Medicare-for-all, single-payer universal health insurance. The Huffington Post article linked notes that it is a non-starter in a Republican-controlled congress, "[b]ut the proactive strategy speaks to increasing confidence among progressives that if they stick to their ideals and build a grassroots movement around them, they will ultimately move the political spectrum in their direction."

It may also open a window for meaningful, positive steps in that direction to be enacted, such as allowing older Americans to buy into Medicare, which could have positive impacts on the ACA health exchanges because the costliest clients may leave the insurance pools.

Michael Moore observed on MSNBC that it is not time for Democrats to be complacent because Republicans and health insurance companies are now essentially counting on the ACA imploding, eating itself, and they will do what they can to essentially make it happen. "These people are out to make your lives a living hell," he tells Drumpf supporters in Michigan. "Democrats, you have to get this fixed."

Bernie Sanders, of course, will introduce a Medicare-for-all bill in the Senate. He previously introduced similar legislation in 2009 and 2011, to no avail.

Drumpf Diary 3/24/17 - The Fart of the Deal (RIP AHCA)

The American Health Care Act suffered a dramatic defeat today. House Republicans failed to finagle enough support among members of their own party to pass the legislation, and Drumpf had it tabled. The bill came up against opposition from extreme conservatives such as those in the House Freedom Caucus, and even powerful Republican donors led by the Koch brothers, who felt it didn't go nearly far enough in Obamacare repeal, and also from moderate Republicans concerned about the new bill's impacts on their constituents. This came after the vote was initially slated for yesterday, March 23rd, and Drumpf issued an ultimatum to Republicans: vote to pass the bill today, March 24th, or he would move on. When it became apparent that the Republicans didn't have the votes, instead of voting on the bill, the legislation was tabled.

My Facebook news feed was fairly alight with celebration.

"Obamacare is the law of the land... we're going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future." Those are the words of Paul Ryan after the bill was tabled.

Drumpf and Ryan have both said they are done with health care reform for the time-being and moving on to tax reform. It's damaging to Drumpf's image as a successful deal-maker, and to Ryan's as the Speaker of the House, whose job is to whip up support to get bills like this passed.

Matthew Yglesias over at Vox thinks Democrats should now propose their own alternative Obamacare replacement. He stops short of saying go for a single-payer, Medicare-for-all type of plan even though his last line in the 3rd paragraph suggests he might see it as the best plan in the long run, he certainly thinks Democrats feel that way. He thinks a replacement could be drafted which echoes things Drumpf himself claimed to support on the campaign trail, in that way, offering such a replacement would be holding Drumpf's feet to his own fire.

Ryan Cooper over at The Week goes you one better and says now is the time for Democrats to push for Medicare-for-all. Unlike Yglesias, he offers almost no practical advice on how exactly to get such a thing passed when Republicans control Congress and the Presidency. The piece is otherwise sound enough that I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows it is not going to happen. He mostly argues that it Medicare for all is the way to go based on its relative simplicity to understand. He compares it to the 2010 attempt to pass the Affordable Care Act and how the ACA was so convoluted that the idea that it was laced with "death panels" and other such horrible fantasies was an easy sell. Trying to find such a boogie-man with a simpler-to-understand concept like Medicare for All would not be so easy. Medicare is already a functioning and relatively popular method of health insurance delivery in the United States. As Cooper observes, most people know someone who is on Medicare or who is counting down the years until they can get on it. It is only for people 65 and older right now, though.

One unique thing about Cooper's piece is that it makes an attempt to address the one major criticism that Democrats have used as a defense against pursuing Medicare-for-All: it would be "too disruptive." Exactly how the disruption it would cause would be worse than the current system which allows people to be priced out of pursuing important medical care or go bankrupt pursuing it, not clear to me, but Cooper suggests it be passed in a package with some kind of labor market support to ease transition for people who may lose their jobs when insurance companies go out of business.

Again, exactly how this is to pass in a Republican-controlled federal government is very unclear. But it seems like there would be plenty of reason for Democrats to pursue it, anyway. It is a popular proposal that would help a lot of people. Making the Democrats the face for it and making it one of the tenets of the party could help (or, at least, couldn't hurt) in future elections.

Drumpf Diary 3/22/17 part 2: Notes on the American Health Care Act

1.) LOOKING AT THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE ACT (AHCA)

The Kaiser Family Foundation, an excellent source of information about healthcare in the United States, offers interactive maps detailing the changes in costs expected for people under the AHCA (the new Republican plan) vs. the ACA ("Obamacare").

Quartz details how ACA repeal may specifically hurt transgender people, who "rely on the Obama administration's specific, trans-friendly guidelines for hormones and other transition-related care. These crucial services save lives..." This sounds like another example of people who live on the margins and for whom the difference between Republicans and Democrats is very real and life-altering. These are the kinds of people put at risk when one does not vote to block the worst of two likely candidates to win an office. It sounds like trans advocates are specifically concerned about the loss of section 1557 in the ACA, which provides for trans health care rights.

Jason Cianciotto, vice president of policy, advocacy and communications for the HIV advocacy group Harlem United, says the elimination of Section 1557 is a real concern. 

“It would ultimately kick millions of people off their health insurance,” Cianciotto says, “targeting vulnerable communities like transgender people, people of color, and those living with HIV/AIDS. It would be devastating for populations who are already underinsured under the current system and often go without health-care treatment.”

But will the AHCA even pass the House of Representatives? Since the House is GOP-controlled, one would think so. But, as Vox details in this article, "[o]ver the past two weeks, multiple health industry groups and Republicans had come out against the bill." Drumpf has apparently told many in his party that they will lose their seats in 2018 if this doesn't get done. Unclear whether that is meant as a threat to not support them, or simply a prediction of GOP fortunes if they fail to deliver on this key promise of the last 9 years. I find it hard to believe the GOP isn't going to fall sufficiently in line and get behind the AHCA. I guess we will see tomorrow.

Dr. Charles R. Peterson, a retired cardiologist, wrote an informed defense of expanding Obamacare and/or transitioning to a Medicare-for-all healthcare system, published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Dr. Peterson's piece was a rebutal to an articulate and well-argued defense of the AHCA by MN GOP Rep. Jason Lewis (my congressman). This is not to say I now favor the AHCA, simply to say that Rep. Lewis argues his point well.

The NY Times' Upshot column makes a surprising point: that if the ACA were simply repealed, rather than replaced by the AHCA, 1 million *fewer* people would lose insurance coverage. Again, that means simply wiping out the ACA would result in fewer people losing insurance than implementing the AHCA. This is based on different CBO estimates of each circumstance.

Drumpf Diary 3/22/17 - Much Ado About Budgeting

1. Much has been made of the Drumpf budget proposal. It has made headlines for proposals to dramatically cut the EPA budget by 31%, as well as cuts to National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, Public Broadcasting, and other programs that aid the poor, disadvantaged, and sciences. Defense and the military are the big winners, with proposed spending increases. It's also been noted that Drumpf is wasting millions in government funds with his frequent visits to his Mar-a-Logo resort and allowing his wife to remain living in New York City, two actions that cost taxpayers millions. Vox provides some gory details specific to cuts to science.

Sources usually observe that the budget is unlikely to pass as proposed, there are cuts which both Republicans and Democrats find unpopular. It is useful as a reflection of Drumpf's priorities, however. In that respect, it is ugly. It is almost certain that, with congress under Republican control, many unsavory cuts to science and aid programs will pass.

Mother Jones observes, hopefully:

Thanks to the landmark 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts vs. EPA, the EPA is obligated by law to come up with a way to regulate greenhouse gasses from vehicles, power plants, and other sources. The decision stated: "Under the Act’s clear terms, EPA can avoid promulgating regulations only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do."

Snopes reviews some details on the budget, clarifying that the budget calls for complete elimination of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. What the federal government spends on those programs is incredibly small. It makes an almost completely imperceptible dent in the debt, especially compared to the tens of billions to be spent on Drumpf's wall. The Snopes article points out that the budget is inspired deeply by a Heritage Foundation 2016 budget proposal which also called for elimination of these programs. The Heritage Foundation didn't necessarily promote the cuts based on the grounds that it would solve debt problems, moreso on philosophical grounds that "actors, artists, and academics are no more deserving of subsidies than their counterparts in other fields; the federal government should refrain from funding all of them."

Drumpf budget director Mike Mulvaney has taken flak from opponents for saying that it's OK to cut funds to Meals on Wheels and after-school lunch programs because "there's no evidence they're helping results."

Drumpf Diary 3/17/17 - War Zones: Rex Tillerson in Korea and U.S. and Israeli attacks in Syria

1. Travel Ban 2 has been stopped hours before implementation by a federal judge in Hawaii.

2. Rex Tillerson is in Asia. The BBC reports on his statement that 20 years of U.S. patience with North Korea over its nuclear weapon ambitions is "at an end." In my non-expert opinion, the BBC is just a bit sensational in reporting on the fact that Tillerson has stated that pre-emptive military action is "on the table," a statement noted in its headline and Facebook posting, but the article itself notes that the U.S. policy change so far is not noticeably different than that under Obama.

The Associated Press offers a good analysis of U.S./North Korea relations (or lack thereof), including historical context. An excerpt:

attention-demanding problems are increasing: 

—The U.S. and South Korea are currently holding their biggest-ever annual joint military exercises, which are seen by the North as a dress rehearsal for invasion. Washington and Seoul claim the maneuvers are purely defensive, but they bring a rise in tensions that increases the possibility of a clash, either intentional or in response to an accident or misjudgment in the field. 

—North Korea just last week fired four ballistic missiles into the Japan Sea, reportedly coming to within just 200 kilometers (120 miles) of Japan's shoreline. 

—The U.S. and South Korea are planning to set up the state-of-the-art missile defense system known as THAAD, which along with the predictable opposition from Pyongyang has antagonized Beijing because it can monitor activity in China as well. 

—North Korea says it is in the final stages of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. mainland, and fit it with a nuclear warhead. More tests of both nuclear devices and long-range missiles are almost a certainly on the near future, though no one can predict when. 

For Tillerson and Trump — and for America's nervous Asian allies looking to them for leadership — acknowledging past failures will without doubt be a lot easier than finding future successes.

Reuters reports on a Japanese fishing town holding new civilian evacuation drills in response to recent saber-rattling by North Korea.

3. The U.S. bombed what it called an Al Qaeda target in Syria, killing human beings it conveniently labels "suspected terrorists." Initial reports were much more devastating, claiming that a mosque had been hit during prayers. That was claimed initially by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and reported by Al Jazeera. The SOHR had stated that it did not know who was behind the airstrikes, only that they occurred, as hours went by and it got near and past midnight in most parts of the U.S., the U.S. claimed responsibility for the air strike. Now in the U.S. morning hours, latest reports suggest the U.S. is stating that the mosque was not struck. There is some suggestion that there may have been a raid on the mosque after the bombing. Who carried out the raid is unknown. This will probably be an episode puzzled over for a while. Here is a recent Al Jazeera report. It includes video from Bilal Abdul Kareem, who has posted videos straight from Aleppo for some time now.

4. Israel has carried out air strikes in Syria. A Haaretz article declares it "the most serious incident between the two countries since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war six years ago." Syrian army high command called it an act of aggression and Syria retaliated with anti-aircraft missiles, one of which was intercepted by Israel. It sounds like Israel may have been targeting shipments of weapons it believed were headed to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Haaretz article suggests that Israel has taken action like this in the recent past, this is the first time they seem to have acknowledged doing so, and Syria has responded.

Watching Bojack Horseman at the End of the World

Bojack Horseman is a good animated show on Netflix. I watched it at 4am while food was going to waste in my fridge and pantry. Meanwhile, the Associated Press and the International Rescue Committee were splashing headlines across my news feed like, “UN says world faces largest humanitarian crisis since 1945,” and detailing how millions of children are malnourished and at serious risk of starvation and death, especially in South Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, and Kenya.

It’s surreal to be conscious of this and be lying on my couch watching Bojack Horseman. I donated $100 to the International Rescue Committee last week. What else can one person do? It is the constant conscientious citizen’s conundrum. No one can solve the world’s problems alone. There is no use in constantly monitoring your own every move and gauging whether or not what you are doing is contributing to making the world a better place. At the same time, South Sudanese children do not have the luxury of letting food rot, drinking Diet Sierra Mist and eating pretzels on the couch at 4am. They are counting on people in more privileged positions to take action to help. But what action? What organization can I meet with tomorrow that will bring about the change that will save the cholera-stricken South Sudanese child? There is no such organization. But some organizations are actively trying to help, so I donate money to them. I can also share stories on social media and encourage others to donate.

As far as how the comfortable westerner should regard the starving African child, the YouTube series Crash Course once wrestled with the quandary in its series on Philosophy. It used a thought experiment comfortably analogous to how most westerners probably regard the problem. If you walk by a lake and see a child drowning in the middle of the lake, do you have a moral obligation to help the child? It seems just about anyone made of remotely moral fiber would try to do their best to immediately save the child, whether that means swimming out to save them, or yelling for help, calling 911, something. It is an emergency and any moral person would try to help.

There is a crucial angle missing to the moral thought experiment, though: what if we bear some responsibility for the drowning child being in their predicament in the first place? Modern Africa is the product of a centuries-long history of colonial exploitation, plunder, and inexplicable boundary-drawing. I may not be actively trying to bring violence or starvation to the African children, but I am the beneficiary of an economic system that favors me and provides me with my position of comfort at the expense of the African. It is a manmade economic system. Each individual one of us may not be capable of changing it, but collectively we could. Every little failure to partake in the effort to change that system is a failure of the people who will be perpetually harmed by it.

International Women's Day, Post 1

1.) It is International Women's Day and a Women's Strike was organized and carried out in the United States and elsewhere in the world. Women were encouraged to refrain as much as possible from any and all paid and unpaid labor, including child care and housework. The march was criticized as an action for privileged (read: mostly white) women only. Jia Tolentino argues in the New Yorker, however:

...privileged women are uniquely positioned to use their surfeit of cultural leverage to clear space for the causes of everyone else. And that seems to be the fundamental idea of the Women’s Strike: that it could help to forge solidarity between women with favorable working conditions and women who have no such thing.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein issued a statement that progress for women has been real, but also slow, uneven, and has brought about its own challenges.

There have been roll-backs of women's rights worldwide:

Among examples he gave, he pointed to recent legislation in Bangladesh, Burundi and the Russian Federation, which weakens women’s rights to fight against child marriage, marital rape and domestic violence, respectively. 

He noted also the “fierce resistance” in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua to political and civil society efforts to open up access to sexual and reproductive rights.

 The IPS article linked-to above goes on:

In Africa, women continue to be denied full enjoyment of their rights in every country, according to a new report released on Mach 7 entitled Women’s Rights in Africa. Statistics show that some African countries have no legal protection for women against domestic violence, and they are forced to undergo female genital mutilation, and to marry while still children.

According to the report, however, in Africa – as around the globe – when women exercise their rights to access to education, skills, and jobs, there is a surge in prosperity, positive health outcomes, and greater freedom and well-being, not only of women but of the whole society.

Some other key facts highlighted about the problems still facing women worldwide:

1. Up to 23 per cent global pay gap between men and women according to the International Labour Organization’s ‘Women at Work: Trends 2016’. 

2. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2016 estimates it will now take 170 years to close the 23 per cent global pay gap between men and women and gender inequality in the economy is now back to where it stood in 2008.

3. The global value of women’s unpaid care work each year is estimated at 10 trillion dollars according to McKinsey Global Institute report 2015.

4. The Global GDP in 2015 is estimated by the CIA World Factbook as 75.73 trillion dollars at the official exchange rate.

5. Up to 9 trillion dollars – annual cost of economic inequality to women in developing countries according to Action Aid’s Close the gap! The cost of inequality in women’s work report.

6. The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) estimates that women still carry out between two to 10 times more unpaid care work than men: OECD stat Employment: ‘Time spent in paid and unpaid work, by sex.

7. On average in Asia women earn between 70 to 90 per cent of what men earn and carry out around 2.5 times the amount of unpaid care work that men do.

"Despair is a Way of Living," Heartbreaking Homelessness in America.

"I wake up at 5:30 in the morning, drop off my kids at school, then I go to work from 8 to 5... I go pick up my kids... then I go to my other job at night."

The above is a quote from a woman in Santa Barbara, CA. Sounds like a normal, hard-working life... except she and her two sons sleep in a car every night. She works two jobs and she and her family are homeless. She and people like her are profiled in an article originally posted in The Nation and also to Bill Moyers' website.



My news feed has had a small bump in stories about homelessness in America, for some reason I don't understand. It is not a new problem. It is always worth attention, though.

I think first about the debate over supporting Democrats. I have a lot of feelings about it and generally I condone the strategy of voting Democrat if it will help prevent a worse candidate from being elected- so voting for a Democratic presidential candidate if you live in a swing state. I have encountered a mentality among hardcore supporters of Democrats that change happens incrementally. The old "you can't make the perfect the enemy of the good," argument. You can't vote for Ralph Nader if the outcome will be a George W. Bush presidency.

To me, the argument is sound. However, this homelessness persisted through the Obama administration. The Nation article specifically talks about homeless people in deep-blue state California. Massive amounts of people are left behind in America, even under Democrats. They can't wait for incremental change. What are we to do? Everything we can to provide a salve- non-profit charity- while we quietly await incremental change to improve everyone's life? The lives of people working two jobs while still sleeping in cars with their kids... are we to celebrate incremental progress in this case? That this is their reality rather than a life of early death from cholera that might've befallen them in a previous time and place? Obviously not. This is wholly unacceptable at a time of such fabulous wealth. It is unconscionable. What are we to do? While we are voting for Democrats, we do not seem to have an answer about what to do for those desperate and marginalized. This is what drives a lot of opposition to Democrats from the left, the idea that there are marginalized people in desperate situations who cannot wait for incremental change. The Democrats do not have an answer for them.

Coincidentally, the BBC released an article about "The US poverty challenge facing [Drumpf]." "In this economy, there is no trickle-down. Gun crime is surging here." The report focuses on Baltimore, where 25% of residents live in poverty. One resident interviewed sums it up articulately and starkly: "The neighborhoods are falling apart not because the people are bad people. They're underpaid, undereducated, and so many of us have been living like this for 2nd or 3rd generations... we don't know how to change. Despair is a way of living."

"For so many... this is no longer a land of opportunity.... The children... have no American dream."

Dennis Kucinich writes in The Nation that this poverty exists by the design of our economic and political system:

In America today there are tens of millions of people with a hard-luck story. Tens of millions out of work, in ill health, in search of affordable rent, having neither a place nor a home to call their own; millions of people for whom, as Langston Hughes put it, life “ain’t been no crystal stair.” 

No one who escapes such an environment physically or economically does it alone. There are teachers, coaches, doctors, lawyers, aunts, uncles, neighbors who appear as angels in our lives, who catch us when we are about to fall, who lift us up at the right moment, who show us a different path, who guide us in a new direction, who transport us to new possibilities, new futures. 

But for every person upon whom fortune smiles, opportunity calls, and destiny stirs, there are many others for whom the future is obscured, for whom society is harsh, punitive, and unwelcoming.

...
Nineteen of every 20 dollars of new wealth created goes to the top 1 percent. The top 1 percent has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.
This cataclysm for our democracy was accelerated with the subprime meltdown of a decade ago.

According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, as many as 10 million families lost their homes to foreclosure during the housing crisis, and as a result had to move, in some cases resulting in a resegregation of city neighborhoods.

During this period, the Federal Reserve created trillions of dollars and gave them to banks, while Congress authorized $700 billion to bail out banks, without passing a program to make sure that the masses of people underwater in their mortgages or those caught up in no-doc low-doc schemes would have a chance to hold onto their homes.

Meanwhile, one of the few investments held by the middle class, home equity, plummeted as housing values sank in many city neighborhoods.

Much of America has not recovered from the carnival of financial corruption of a decade ago—except for the finance economy, of course.

For those barely holding on to middle-class status, the median income for a four-person family is just over $54,000. Yet the average US household owes more than $16,000 to credit card companies, $172,806 on its mortgage, $28,535 on its car and $49,042 in student loans.

Health-care consumes about 17.8 percent of America’s GDP, or three trillion two hundred billion dollars. The Kaiser Foundation reports that the average month premiums for family coverage in 2016 is $1,511 a month, or $18,132 a year.

It is heartbreaking that this is our country.

Drumpf Diary 3/6/17 - Obamacare 2.0, Muslim Ban 2.0

1.) House Republicans have released their replacement for the ACA/Obamacare, the American Health Care Act. Ezra Klein writes:

what I think we’re seeing here is Republicans trying desperately to come up with something that would allow them to repeal and replace Obamacare; this is a compromise of a compromise of a compromise aimed at fulfilling that promise.

The bill sounds so far kinda like Obamacare Lite, which makes almost no one happy. It keeps a somewhat surprising amount of things from Obamacare intact, like mandating coverage of pre-existing conditions, allowing children to stay on their parents' healthcare plans until age 26, and it maintains Medicare expansion until 2020. These Obamacare provisions leave it open to criticism from anyone who wants Obamacare radically rolled back. However, it reduces or eliminates Obamacare provisions which controlled costs, such as the "individual mandate" that forced everyone to either purchase insurance or pay a penalty, and Medicare subsidies.

Regarding elimination of the individual mandate, the Los Angeles Times states:

Without a requirement that individuals carry health insurance, the insurance markets are almost certain to collapse. The repeal is retroactive back to the beginning of 2016, but the real problem is in the market starting this year. Individuals would be able to drop their coverage immediately, which will wreak havoc with the market starting right now. Aetna’s chairman and chief executive, Mark Bertolini, said recently that the individual market was entering a “death spiral” in which healthier customers dropped coverage, leaving sicker customers who know they need insurance facing an ever-increasing rates. 

Naturally the bill will be a tax-cut boondoggle for the rich.


2.) While the GOP House has unveiled Obamacare 2.0, Drumpf has unveiled Muslim Ban 2.0. After his first ban was struck down by the courts, he is now trying again, this time with a ban that restricts Muslims from 6 countries, rather than the previous 7 (he's taken Iraq off the list). Residents of Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya will be barred from entering the United States for 90 days. Ironically, Drumpf has discussed wanting to get tough on ISIS, yet removing Iraq from the list removes one of the two countries from which ISIS operates. 60,000 people who had their visas revoked would have them reinstated. The new travel restriction is more limited in scope and this is intended to help it withstand legal challenges.

Drumpf Diary 3/5/17 - A Most Colorful Cabinet

1. Bloomberg asks if Drumpf has sidelined his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. I am currently reading Hillary Clinton's Hard Choices, her memoirs about her time as U.S. Secretary of State under Barak Obama. The Bloomberg article's 2nd paragraph relays the words of Secretary Tillerson upon his arrival to the State Department, and the remarks quoted sound like they could've been uttered by Clinton herself: “You have accumulated knowledge and experience that cannot be replicated anywhere else... Your wisdom, your work ethic and patriotism, is as important as ever.” So there was perhaps reason to believe Tillerson would have a "moderating" effect on Drumpf's foreign policy.

It hasn’t happened. Far from curbing [Drumpf]’s excesses, Tillerson has been blindsided by them: a travel ban that alienated much of the Muslim world and originally barred the entry of Iraqis who’d fought alongside U.S. troops; a crackdown on immigrants that’s poisoned relations with America’s third-largest trading partner, Mexico; [Drumpf]’s suggestion that the U.S. could live with a permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank, so long as everyone else is cool with it. Tillerson was absent from White House meetings with the leaders of Canada, Japan, and Israel. His pick for deputy secretary, Elliott Abrams, was rejected after [Drumpf] learned Abrams had criticized him during the 2016 campaign.

...

Senior State Department officials are livid at the White House’s proposal to cut by a third the $50 billion base budget for the department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham declared the Trump plan “a disaster” and “dead on arrival” in Congress. So far, Tillerson has remained characteristically impassive, but protecting the State Department’s resources will require him to step outside his comfort zone and send clear, vigorous, and public messages about the value of diplomacy as a tool of U.S. power.

2. Embattled Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he intends to have the Dept. of Justice "pull back" on Obama-era federal scrutiny of police department civil rights violations, examples of which include its investigations of the Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD police departments after the high profile killings of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, respectively.

Sessions has also reversed an Obama order to phase out government contracting with private prisons.

The federal Bureau of Prisons currently holds 12 private prison contracts, housing nearly 21,000 inmates across the country. 

The Justice Department began issuing contracts with private prisons when the prison population boosted up to 800 percent between 1980 and 2013.

 Now, with President Trump’s strict immigration policies on the horizon, private prisons could make major profits in the coming years.

 3. The Intercept claims that Defense Secretary James Mattis nearly brought us to war with Iran.

Defense Secretary James Mattis... had wanted the U.S. Navy to “intercept and board an Iranian ship to look for contraband weapons possibly headed to Houthi fighters in Yemen. … But the ship was in international waters in the Arabian Sea, according to two officials. Mr. Mattis ultimately decided to set the operation aside, at least for now. White House officials said that was because news of the impending operation leaked.” 

Get that? It was only thanks to what Mattis’s commander in chief has called “illegal leaks” that the operation was (at least temporarily) set aside and military action between the United States and Iran was averted. 

Am I exaggerating? Ask the Iranians. “Boarding an Iranian ship is a shortcut” to confrontation, says Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, former member of Iran’s National Security Council and a close ally of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Even if a firefight in international waters were avoided, the Islamic Republic, Mousavian tells me, “would retaliate” and has “many other options for retaliation.” 

Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council and author of the forthcoming book “Losing an Enemy — Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy,” agrees. Such acts of “escalation” by the Trump administration, he tells me, “significantly increases the risk of war.”