justsomeantifas:

Here’s your dose of “What the Fuck Is Going On” news (April 24th 2017 - April 25th 2017)

• The House oversight panel said that Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn not properly disclosing payments from Russia may have broken the law. “I see no data to support the notion that Gen. Flynn complied with the law,” House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz said. Security clearance states that knowingly leaving off payments from foreign governments is a felony punishable with up to five years in prison but it’s unknown if Flynn will face charges. (source)
  
  
• Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are both going to testify before the House Intelligence Committee as part of ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence has already concluded that Russia attempted to help Trump win the election, these upcoming investigations examine what Russia did exactly and if the Trump campaign was involved.. Yates and Clapper are scheduled to appear before the House committee on May 8. (source)
  
  
• A federal judge has blocked Trump’s directive seeking to deny federal funding to “sanctuary cities.” San Francisco-based Judge William Orrick issued the preliminary injunction and cited public comments from Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions as his reason for the block. He says that their comments to the public have shown the order intended to sweep more broadly than allowed by federal law. (source)
  
  
• Trump is planning to unveil the outline of a tax reform plan tomorrow (Wednesday, April 26th). Officials are declining to discuss details of the plan but they did confirm that Trump would seek to cut the corporate tax rate 15%. Trump is claiming that it will be “the biggest tax cut we’ve ever had.” (source)
  
  
• Trump has backed off his demand that the border wall must receive down payment funding in the upcoming spending measure. His demands were previously causing concern that the spending measure would cause a government shutdown because the bill must be passed by Friday. The fight for funding the wall will likely come up again in September and Trump said on Twitter that he has still not changed his position on building the wall. (source) 
  
  
• Dozens of republican lawmakers are asking Trump to scale back protections for people who are LGBT on order to make good on a campaign promise to protect religious liberty. Trump was considering signing an executive order in Feb. that would reverse protections that prohibit discrimination in the federal workforce and these 51 republicans are asking for him to now sign that executive order. The same religious liberty order would have also eliminated the contraceptive mandate that provides health insurance for birth control, allowed doctors to refuse to perform abortions, and sought protections for religious non-profits to be able to express political opinions without losing their tax-exempt status. White House officials are saying that a new sort of policy to protect religious liberty is in the works. (source) 
  
  
• Ivanka Trump spoke at an event in Berlin, marking her first trip abroad as an official representative of the United States. At the event she was questioned about her role in the White House (which she refused to define), asked about her business ties, and about her father. During the event she called herself a feminist and spoke about her father being a champion for women, which drew boos from the audience. (source)
  
  
• Last summer the Canadian government reclassified ultra-filtered milk as regular milk after Canadian dairy farmers expressed anger over ultra-filtered milk from the U.S. being imported to Canada in the same category as milk powder, which has low tariffs. Trump became aware of this issue and has now announced a new 20 percent tariff on Canadian softwood lumber imports. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is calling this “a bad week for U.S.-Canada trade relations.” (source)
  
  
• The State Department has been receiving criticism after it promoted Trump’s for-profit Mar-a-Lago resort. A State Department official is claiming that the intention of the article was to “inform the public about where the President has been hosting world leaders.” However, the webpage had no discussion of policy and just served as a promotion for the resort. The page has been taken down. (source)
  
  
• Trump and DHS Secretary John Kelly both said that DREAMers will be protected and should “rest easy.” However, attorney general Jeff Sessions is saying the opposite, telling the press in regards to DREAMers that “everyone that enters the country unlawfully,” are “subject to being deported.” (source)
  
  
• Mike Pence said that the U.S. will honor the refugee resettlement agreement forged with Australia despite Trump previously calling it a “dumb deal.” The deal is that Australia would transfer up to 1,250 refugees currently held in offshore detention centers to the United States and in return, Australia would resettle refugees from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. (source)
  
  
• Regular Fox News guest, RNC speaker, and high-profile Trump supporter, Sheriff David Clarke is in hot water as a court decided whether his jail is responsible for a man’s death. Last year, Terrill Thomas was kept in a jail cell for a week straight with his water supply cut off, he died of severe dehydration. A jury will decide if there’s probable cause to charge Clarke’s jail with the’ death of Thomas and it’s possible a civil rights investigation will look into the conditions of this jail. (source)
  
  
• Donald Trump Jr. and Republican candidate for the U.S. House Greg Gianforte shot prairie dogs for sport over the weekend. The outing has received some backlash - while prairie dog hunting isn’t illegal, it is considered unethical considering the prairie dogs are listed as a “species of concern” for endangerment. The director of the Humane Society’s Prairie Dog Coalition also explained that this is peak breeding season and pregnant, adult females are most at risk. Gianforte’s response to the Humane Society’s remarks was, “Clearly they’ve never shot a prairie dog. They don’t know how much fun it is.” (source) 
  
  
• Top Trump adviser, Sebastian Gorka, stormed out of panel discussion after questions on his ties to a Nazi group. Despite literally wearing a medal of the Vitezi Rend during the inauguration and signing his Ph.D dissertation in as “Sebestyén L. v. Gorka” - “L. v.” being initials representing members of Vitézi Rend, Gorka yelled at the audience telling them it’s all fake news. (source)
  
  
• Trump is expected to sign an executive order that will review the prior designations of “National Monuments" under Obama, Bush, and Clinton. The president can declare federal lands of historic of scientific value to be “National Monuments,” which then restricts the use of those lands. This includes things like the Birmingham Civil Rights District, the California coast, Stonewall Inn, and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad. The order will instruct the Interior Department to review national monument designations over the last 21 years, though it’s unclear if the move is to remove protections for the newer monuments. (source)
  
  
• Mexican engineers believe that the construction of the proposed Trump wall might violate a treaty governing the shared waters of the Rio Grande. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has not finalized where the new wall will go but if it blocks the trans-border water movement then Mexico can, and likely will, take the case to international court. (source)
  

If you would like to support “What the Fuck Is Going On” news and it’s almost-daily posts you can support my Patreon, donate, or follow on Twitter.