Day 931: "Hostile actions."
1/ White House officials refused requests by the Department of Homeland Security for more than a year to make combating domestic terror a greater priority. While the National Strategy for Counterterrorism, issued last fall, stated that “Radical Islamist terrorists remain the primary transnational terrorist threat to the United States and its vital national interests,” it included one paragraph about domestic terrorism and made no mention of white supremacists. FBI Director Christopher Wray testified in July that there have been almost as many domestic terror arrests in the last nine months – about 100 – as there have been arrests connected to international terror. Wray also noted that most of the domestic terrorism cases were motivated by white supremacist violence. (CNN)
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📌 Day 803: The Department of Homeland Security quietly disbanded its domestic terrorism unit last year, saying that the threat of “homegrown violent extremism and domestic terrorism,” including the threat from white supremacists, has been “significantly reduced.” The branch of analysts in DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis were reassigned to new positions. (Daily Beast)
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📌 Day 854: The FBI has seen a significant rise in white supremacist domestic terrorism in recent months. No specific numbers were provided, but an FBI official said the cases generally include suspects involved in violence related to anti-government views, racial or religious bias, environmental extremism and abortion-related views. (CNN)
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📌 Day 915: The FBI recorded about 90 domestic terrorism arrests in the past nine months and about 100 international terrorism arrests. Most of the domestic terrorism cases involved a racial motive believed to be spurred by white supremacy. (Washington Post)
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📌 Day 928: FBI Director Christopher Wray ordered the agency to conduct a new threat assessment in order to identify and stop potential future mass shootings. A command group in Washington, D.C. will oversee the effort, during which FBI field offices will actively work to identify threats that are similar to the attacks last week at a food festival and over the weekend in Texas and Ohio. In recent congressional testimony, senior FBI officials said they were conducting about 850 domestic terrorism investigations — down from a year earlier, when there were roughly 1,000. (CNN / Washington Post)
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📌 Day 930: The FBI warned that fringe conspiracy theories are a new domestic terrorist threat. The document specifically mentions QAnon, a network that believes in a deep state conspiracy against Trump, and Pizzagate, the theory that a pedophile ring involving Clinton associates was being run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant, which doesn’t have a basement. (Yahoo News)
2/ Twitter suspended Mitch McConnell’s account after the campaign tweeted a profanity-laced video of protesters outside his home. According to Twitter spokesperson, Team Mitch “was temporarily locked out of their account for a Tweet that violated our violent threats policy, specifically threats involving physical safety.” McConnell’s campaign manager, however, called Twitter’s action part of a “problem with the speech police in America today” and that “Twitter will allow the words of ‘Massacre Mitch’ to trend nationally on their platform but locks our account for posting actual threats against us.” Following the shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, the hashtag “Massacre Mitch” trended on Twitter, in reference to two gun control bills that McConnell has refused to bring to a vote. (Courier-Journal / Axios)
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The National Republican Senatorial Committee stopped advertising on Twitter after the social media platform temporarily locked McConnell’s account for violating the company’s “violent threats policy.” The NRSC claimed Twitter’s “hostile actions” were “outrageous” and said the committee would “not tolerate” or “spend our resources on a platform that silences conservatives.” (Politico)
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The White House is preparing an executive order to address allegations of anti-conservative bias by social media companies. While the contents of the order remain unknown, last month Trump said he would be exploring “all regulatory and legislative solutions” to deal with the supposed issue. (Politico)
3/ The NRA warned Trump against endorsing extensive background checks for gun sales, saying the legislation would not be popular among his supporters. Before visiting Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Trump claimed there “was great appetite for background checks,” which the NRA opposes. About 9 in 10 Americans support background checks for all gun purchases, including more than 8 in 10 Republicans, Democrats, and independents. (Washington Post)
4/ McConnell promised that expanding background checks for all gun purchasers would “front and center” in the coming Senate debate on how to respond to gun violence. McConnell previously said he will not bring any gun control legislation to the floor without widespread Republican support. McConnell, however, rejected Democrats’ calls to cancel the August recess and address the issue immediately, saying the proposals needed “discussions” before they were brought to the floor. (New York Times / NBC News / Politico)
5/ Wall Street banks turned over documents related to Russians who may have had dealings with Trump, his family or the Trump Organization. Bank of America, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank AG, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo all turned over documents to the House Financial Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee. Separately, Deutsche Bank has turned over emails, loan agreements and other documents related to the Trump Organization to the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James. (Wall Street Journal)
6/ Andrew McCabe filed a lawsuit against the FBI and the Justice Department alleging that he was illegally demoted and fired in retaliation for not being sufficiently loyal to Trump. The former FBI deputy director alleged that Trump “purposefully and intentionally” pushed the Justice Department to fire him as part of an “unconstitutional plan” to discredit and remove Justice Department and FBI employees who were “deemed to be his partisan opponents.” McCabe authorized the counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia and obstruction of justice after Trump fired James Comey. McCabe was also the subject of a Justice Department inspector general report that accused him of violating bureau policy when he authorized the disclosure of information to the press and then misleading investigators about what he had done. McCabe’s termination occurred less than two days before he was to retire and become eligible for full pension benefits. (NBC News / Politico / New York Times / Washington Post)
7/ ICE raided seven poultry processing plants in Mississippi and arrested at least 680 people in “what is believed to be the largest single-state immigration enforcement operation in our nation’s history,” according to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi. Roughly 600 ICE agents fanned out across plants in Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie and Sebastapol, surrounding the perimeters to prevent workers from fleeing. ICE Acting Director Matt Albence said the arrests were part of a year-long investigation. (KTVU / NBC News / Associated Press / The Hill / BuzzFeed News)
8/ An Iraqi man from Detroit died after the Trump administration deported him back to Iraq and was unable to get access to the insulin he needed to treat his diabetes in Baghdad. Jimmy Aldaoud was an Iraqi national, who was born in Greece and came to the U.S. as a young child. He never lived in Iraq and did not speak Arabic. (Politico)
9/ The deputy director of national intelligence resigned and will step down on Aug. 15 – the same day her boss, Dan Coats, is scheduled to leave. Sue Gordon was in line to replace Coats in an acting capacity until the Senate confirmed Trump’s nominee for a permanent replacement. Several Trump allies outside the White House saw Gordon as too close to former CIA Director John Brennan, who has publicly criticized Trump’s leadership. (Bloomberg / Politico / CNN / NBC News)
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📌 Day 925: The White House will block the nation’s No. 2 intelligence official from taking over as acting director of national intelligence when Dan Coats steps down. A federal statute requires that if the director of national intelligence role becomes vacant, the deputy director — currently Sue Gordon — will serve as acting director. The White House, however, can choose who to appoint as acting deputy if the No. 2 position is vacant, raising the question of whether Gordon will be ousted as part of a leadership shuffle. The White House, meanwhile, has asked the national intelligence office for a list of all its employees at the federal government’s top pay scale who have worked there for 90 days or more. While it’s unclear what the White House will do with the list, many of the people on it may be eligible to temporarily takeover as acting director of national intelligence. (New York Times / Daily Beast)
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The assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere resigned, leaving a vacancy at the top diplomatic office in charge of Trump’s efforts to deal with immigration from Mexico and Central America. The position is also in charge of building stronger relationships between the U.S. and South America. Kimberly Breier has held the position since October. She referred questions about her departure to the State Department press office, which refused to comment. (Washington Post)
10/ Climate change is putting pressure on the ability of humanity to feed itself, according to a new United Nations report that was prepared by more than 100 experts from 52 countries and, unanimously approved. The report warns that the world’s land and water resources are being exploited at “unprecedented rates” and “the cycle is accelerating.” Climate change has already degraded lands, caused deserts to expand, permafrost to thaw, and made forests more vulnerable to drought, fire, pests and disease. “The stability of food supply is projected to decrease as the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events that disrupt food chains increases,” the report said. The report offered several proposals for addressing food supplies, including reducing red meat consumption, adopting plant-based diets, and eating more fruits, vegetables and seeds. As a result, the world could reduce carbon pollution up to 15% of current emissions levels by 2050. It would also make people healthier. (New York Times / Associated Press / Nature)
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📌 Day 627: A U.N. report on the effects of climate change predicts a strong risk of an environmental crisis much sooner than expected. The report finds that the atmosphere could warm by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels by 2040 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, which would cause sea levels to rise, intensify droughts, wildfires, and poverty, and cause a mass die-off of coral reefs. To prevent 2.7 degrees of warming, greenhouse pollution must be reduced by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, and fully eliminated by 2050. The use of coal as an electricity source would have to drop from nearly 40% today to between 1% and 7% by 2050. Renewable energy would have to increase to about 67%. Trump has mocked the science of human-caused climate change, vowing to increase the burning of coal, and he intends to withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement. The world is already more than halfway to the 2.7-degree mark and “there is no documented historic precedent” for the scale of changes required, the report said. (New York Times / Washington Post)
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📌 Day 676: The National Climate Assessment concludes that global warming is already “transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us.” The findings from the landmark scientific report, issued by 13 federal agencies, are at odds with the Trump administration’s environmental deregulation agenda, which Trump claims will lead to economic growth, and its plans to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. The report predicts that the effects of global warming could eliminate as much as 10% of the U.S. economy by the end of the century, and warns that humans must act aggressively now “to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades.” The first report, released in November 2017, concluded that there is “no convincing alternative explanation” for the changing climate other than “human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases.” Trump recently questioned the science of climate change, saying that “I don’t know that it’s man-made” and that the warming trend “could very well go back.” (New York Times / Associated Press / Washington Post / CNN)
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📌 Day 685: Global emissions of carbon dioxide have reached the highest levels on record. Global emissions grew 1.6% in 2017 with 2018 expected to increase 2.7%. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon emissions, but that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from moving to roll back regulations designed to limit those emissions from vehicle tailpipes and power-plant smokestacks. As United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said this week at the opening of the 24th annual U.N. climate conference: “We are in trouble. We are in deep trouble with climate change.” (Washington Post / New York Times)
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📌 Day 740: Trump dismissed climate change as a hoax, calling for “global warming” to “come back fast” as a dangerous deep freeze hits the Midwest where a polar vortex is expected to drop temperatures to negative 30F with the wind chill driving temperatures as low as negative 50F or 60F — the lowest in more than two decades. Roughly 83 million Americans – about 25% of the U.S. population – will experience temperatures below zero this week. Weather and climate are two different things: Weather is what you experience in the moment, while climate is the broader trend. Trump’s tweet, asking “What the hell is going on with Global Waming?” – misspelling “warming” – suggests he doesn’t understand the difference between climate and weather. In 2017, Trump also tweeted that the U.S. could use some “good old Global Warming” while most of the Northeast was experiencing record-breaking cold weather. (Chicago Tribune / Vox / CNN)
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📌 Day 678: Trump – again – dismissed his own government’s report on the devastating impacts of climate change and global warming, saying he doesn’t see climate change as a man-made issue and that he doesn’t believe the scientific consensus. “One of the problems that a lot of people like myself,” Trump said, “we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers.” He continued: “You look at our air and our water, and it’s right now at a record clean.” (Washington Post)
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📌 Day 886: The Trump administration stopped promoting dozens of taxpayer-funded studies about the impacts of climate change. The studies include a discovery that rice loses vitamins in a carbon-rich environment, a finding that climate change would exacerbate allergy seasons, and a warning to farmers about an expected reduction in the quality of important grasses used to feed and raise cattle. All of the studies were peer-reviewed and cleared through the Agricultural Research Service. (Politico)
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📌 Day 733: 73% of Americans believe that climate change is real– a jump of 10 percentage points from 2015, and three points since last March. 72% also said that global warming is personally important to them. (New York Times)