It is the tenth week of Trump's presidency, and the Trump administration has yet to have a quiet week. Each time an achievement is made (for example an acceptable speed to a joint session of Congress, an active role in health-care negotiations, or the nomination of a new Supreme Court justice) a setback has occurred within a matter of days if not hours. Courts have consistently denied the constitutionality of Trump's travel bans, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act has collapsed, and Trump continued to further undermine his own credibility by tweeting about wiretapping. As a result, Trump's approval rating currently stands at 35%, an all-time low for any president in their first year.
Investigations into Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential election are still ongoing. Michael Flynn was President Trump's former national security advisor (he was fired three weeks into Trump's presidency). This week, he began to ask for immunity in exchange for testifying to the House and Senate intelligence communities regarding Russia's involvement in the election process. The investigation has partisan overtones: on Monday, Adam Schiff (a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee) asked Republican Representative Devin Nunes to step down from the aforementioned investigation. Nunes is himself embroiled in a scandal regarding how he gained access to documents that may or may not indicate that the US may have inadvertently spied on Trump's transition team.
In other news, Attorney General Jeff Sessions held a highly publicized news conference this week, in which he threatened to take away federal funding for "sanctuary cities" that resist the policies of the new administration. In response, the city of Seattle is suing the President. Other cities continue to block Trump's travel ban in their courts. Two different appeals by the Justice Department against the halting of the travel ban are now under review in two different states. Women's healthcare is also a topic of contention: on Thursday, Mike Pence cast a tie-breaking vote in order to advance a bill that would allow states to withhold their federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Meanwhile on the ground, counties that voted for Trump in the 2016 elections are growing increasingly concerned at the President's proposed cuts to welfare systems. By slashing $6.2 billion from the funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Trump claims that he will be able to increase military spending and fund the hypothetical wall along the US-Mexico border. By cutting funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Trump is cutting funding for dozens of programs and agencies that help the poor, including AmeriCorps, the Legal Services Corporation, the Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Community Development Block Grant program (which funds Meals on Wheels and anti-poverty efforts), and the Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity and Choice Neighborhoods programs. As Hal Rogers, a Republican Representative from Kentucky, stated, "While we have a responsibility to reduce our federal deficit, I am disappointed that many of the reductions and eliminations proposed in the president's skinny budget are draconian, careless and counterproductive." The President's budget proposal already faces bipartisan opposition, and is unlikely to pass Congress as it currently stands.
