A political newsletter for normal people
WTF Just Happened Today? is a sane, once-a-day newsletter helping normal people make sense of the news. Curated daily by Matt Kiser and delivered to 200,000+ people every afternoon around 3 pm Pacific.
Day 232: Operation mega.
1/ The House passed a $15 billion disaster relief package, sending the measure to Trump to sign. The bipartisan deal also raises the debt limit and funds the government through December, despite objections from conservatives. (NBC News / ABC News)
2/ ICE cancelled its plan to round up 8,400 undocumented immigrants, citing the “weather situation” in Florida and Texas. Homeland Security referred to the plan as “Operation Mega,” and described it as “the largest operation of its kind in the history” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (NBC News)
3/ The White House’s Election Integrity Commission accused New Hampshire voters of fraud for using out-of-state driver’s licenses to vote. In a Breitbart op-ed, Kris Kobach, the vice chairman of the commission, alleges that approximately 5,500 same-day voters may have stolen New Hampshire’s four electoral votes and a US Senate seat away from Republicans, because they haven’t registered vehicles in New Hampshire or gotten in-state driver’s licenses since the election. Experts say the allegation is baseless. New Hampshire is one of fifteen states that allow same-day voter registration. (Washington Post / New Hampshire Public Radio)
4/ Robert Mueller’s team wants to interview White House staffers about Trump Jr.’s initial statement regarding his meeting with the Russian lawyer at Trump Tower during the campaign. Trump personally helped craft his son’s misleading statement while aboard Air Force One. It claimed Trump Jr. “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” during his meeting with the Russian lawyer. That claim was later debunked by multiple accounts of the meeting. Mueller wants to know whether information was intentionally left out and who was involved. (CNN)
5/ Scott Pruitt doesn’t want to talk about climate change right now. The EPA chief said that with Hurricane Irma, “to have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm – versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm – is misplaced.” Experts have said that climate change has contributed to the increased strength of hurricanes this season. (CNN)
6/ The Senate Appropriations Committee passed a $10 million spending bill to help fund the United Nations’ climate change group that oversees the Paris Climate Agreement, despite Trump’s decision to stop funding it. The panel approved funding for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (Reuters)
A political newsletter for normal people
WTF Just Happened Today? is a sane, once-a-day newsletter helping normal people make sense of the news. Curated daily by Matt Kiser and delivered to 200,000+ people every afternoon around 3 pm Pacific.
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