Friday News Roundup – Domestic (Joshua Johnson, 1A) 2018-12-21

To avoid a government shutdown, the Senate passed a stopgap spending bill which will keep the government funded until February 8. This measure does not include any of the five billion dollars for the wall that President Donald Trump requested. Trump has said he won’t sign a measure that doesn’t put more money toward the wall.

A GoFundMe campaign for the border wall has raised over five million dollars for the wall after only three days.

On Friday morning, the president tweeted that he’d like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-K.Y.) to use what he called “the nuclear option” to pass funding for the border wall.

But in early 2017, McConnell said he would not “eliminate the 60-vote threshold needed to end filibusters on most legislation under his leadership,” according to Politico.

McConnell stressed that “there’s no sentiment” among Senate Republicans for overhauling the filibuster on legislation, which typically forces the Senate to compromise and get buy-in from the minority.

“Who would be the biggest beneficiary of that right now? It would be the majority, right?” McConnell told reporters. “There’s not a single senator in the majority who thinks we ought to change the legislative filibuster. Not one.”

That was not the only news that broke on Thursday afternoon. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis will resign in February, according to the president’s Twitter feed. Read Mattis’ resignation letter here.

In a surprising turn (something we’ve had plenty of this year), former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s sentencing was delayed this week, and a new date has not yet been set.

The judge presiding over the case laid into Flynn. Here’s an excerpt via The Washington Post:

“All along you were an unregistered agent of a foreign country, while serving as the national security adviser to the president of the United States!” he said. “Arguably, that undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country out!””

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents in a 2017 interview. In the courtroom, Flynn said he accepted responsibility for his actions.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has recommended Flynn serve no prison time, due to his cooperation with Mueller’s investigation into interference in the 2016 election.

And another blockbuster investigation by The New York Times raised further concerns about Facebook’s business practices.

From the story:

Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.

This comes on the heels of an investigation that revealed an “aggressive lobbying campaign,” led by Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg to combat the negative publicity the company was receiving.

This week, the Trump Family Foundation ceased operations. President Trump agreed to shut down his charity and give away its remaining money. New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said her office’s investigation into the charity uncovered “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation — including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” according to The Washington Post.

After another news avalanche, we’re rounding up the week in domestic news.
Interview:
https://the1a.org/shows/2018-12-21/friday-news-roundup-domestic