For half the United States population, the president is doing a great job––and he has been since the first day. For the other half, however, the sky is falling––and it has been since the beginning. But during the past few days, it seems that the intensity of the anti-Trump panic is increasing. 

The Washington Post holds that Trump’s mental state has “frayed” since he fired Comey from the FBI, and he gets especially bad when controversy rocks the White House. In light of the Christchurch shootings and the criticism directed at Trump, it’s no surprise that he seems especially unhinged. He re-ignited a beef with a dead man, John McCain. He retweeted conspiracy theories. He complained about an SNL rerun. 

All of these things made Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George Conway, speculate that Trump is deteriorating: “His condition is getting worse.” He’s referring to his earlier speculation that Trump is a narcissist. 

There is also increasing discussion about Trump’s ties to white supremacy. Critics suggest that Trump cannot distance himself from white supremacists because his power depends on them. Digging through Trump’s tweets, Slate figured out that Trump has retweeted four white supremacists accounts that were later suspended. 

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President Donald Trump issued a thinly veiled threat on Monday in an interview with Breitbart News. He said:

“You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump–I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

News outlets have pointed out that these statements are highly authoritarian, but Republicans don’t seem to mind. The Washington Post suggests that Trump’s mention of the police and the military is especially frightening. 

Trump’s boasting on Monday was not a random threat. It must be taken in the context of the week’s political climate. The Mueller report is going to drop any time now, and the House of Representatives just passed a resolution for making the report public with a stunning 420-0 vote in favor. Trump, seeing the potential for a presidency-ending––or an election-killing––report, may be posturing to save his own neck. 

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A recent FBI investigation has revealed the largest ever college admissions scam. 

William Singer, owner of college admissions companies Key Worldwide Foundation and Edge College & Career Network, the alleged ringleader of the scam, has pled guilty to accepting bribes totaling $25 million. He also to have worked with over 750 families.

Parents paid Singer, who would in turn have people take admissions tests for students, ensuring perfect scores. He would get the students labeled disabled in some way. He would fake athletic credentials and bribe coaches. These Bribes were often disguised as charitable donations. 

While most of the students seem to have been unaware of their parents schemes, some did know. Take the case of Isabelle Henriquez, for example. She is the daughter of Manuel Henriquez of Hercules Capital. Isabelle took her SAT at a special location, where the proctor worked with Singer. The proctor sat next to Isabelle and gave her the answers “After the exam, he ‘gloated’ with [Isbelle’s mother] Elizabeth Henriquez and her daughter about the fact that they had cheated and gotten away with it.”

What should be done with these students? To maintain the credibility of higher education, there can be only one option: all students who benefitted from this scheme must be immediately expelled or, if they have already graduated, their degrees must be nullified. If they wish to try again, then they must re-apply to colleges under a pseudonym, carefully monitored by an independent agency. Allowing anyone to benefit from cheating devalues the degrees of the millions of Americans who worked hard to earn those degrees, and it makes a mockery of those who make massive financial sacrifices to attend college. The parents of these students should donate money to provide scholarships for low-income students. 

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On Sunday, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed shortly after takeoff. The pilot issued a distress call after the plane struggled to ascend at a stable speed. The jet was cleared to return to Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, but it lost contact with air traffic control six minutes after takeoff and then crashed. The plane had 157 people on board, including passengers from at least thirty-five different countries. Among the passengers were United Nations delegates.

The crashed plane was a Boeing 737 Max 8. It was the same kind of plane involved in the Lion Air crash in Indonesia in which 189 people died. Both American and Indonesian officials suggest that automated anti-stall software may have caused the Lion Air crash. 

As a result of this second crash, both China and Indonesia have grounded all Boeing 737 Max 8 flights. The Chinese aviation oversight agency said that it had a zero tolerance policy for safety hazards: “Given that two accidents both involved newly delivered Boeing 737-8 planes and happened during take-off phase, they have some degree of similarity.” This is enough of a risk for China to ground all flights. 

A variety of airlines––many of which operate in the United States––are still operating 737 Max-8 jets. 

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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said that there is already direct evidence of Trump colluding with the Russians to influence the 2016 election. 

“I think there is direct evidence in the emails from the Russians through their intermediary offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of what is described in writing as the Russian government effort to help elect Donald Trump,”Schiff said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” 

Schiff said those offers look much worse when seen in light of the Moscow Trump Tower deal. Schiff points out the negotiations for that building took place during the 2016 campaign. That means, of course, that Trump was trying to win the presidency and trying to solidify a deal with the Russians at the same time––a clear conflict of interests.  

Schiff did not say that the evidence was enough for impeachment, as that would be total speculation. 

Senator Mark Warner, top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said something similar: “I’m going to reserve judgment until I’m finished, but there’s no one who can factually say there isn’t plenty of evidence of collaboration or communication between the Trump Organization and Russians.” 

It’s impossible to predict whether these kinds of accusations will lead to anything, but with Democrats in charge of the House it’s certain that the heat will stay on Trump.

President Donald Trump and his supporters––whom Hillary Clinton famously, and much to her detriment called a “basket of deplorables”––have often been accused of racism, homophobia, and worst of all, hate-inspired violence. But there has been a disturbing Trend in this, the third year of his presidency: people find it increasingly acceptable to harm physically people wearing MAGA (Make America Great Again, Trump’s campaign slogan) hats. 

It began more subtly––by ruining the lives of some high school boys wearing MAGA hats. The incident began when a viral video appeared to show (as this Reddit post reads): “Guy with a MAGA hat mocking a elder Native American protestor.” Later, fuller videos came out that showed the boys simply stood their ground when approached by the Native American man. Further background revealed that the boys seem to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the incident was exacerbated by the fact that they’re immature teenage boys. 

But two incidents have made national news. In one, a New Jersey teen knocked over an elderly man wearing a MAGA hat. In another, a Brazilian woman accosted a man wearing a MAGA hat. The teen faces charges, and the woman faces deportation.

The Miami Herald makes the controversial argument that anti-Trump violence is not reported on with nearly as much intensity as fake Smolletthate crimes, including the “attack.” Like it or not, the Herald makes a point.

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The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High still feel like it was yesterday when a gunman took the lives of 17 students on February 14th 2018 in Parkland, Florida. The school held a moment of silence and a half-day to commemorate one-year since the deadly attack, reported by ABC News today. For many, they simply …

According to a new announcement made by the company today, the internet giant Google plans to spend more than $13 billion across the United States. The funds will be used to build data centers and offices throughout the country. The story was reported in the BBC today. Google claims that the investments will create some …

The Trump administration has announced they will be boosting their troop presence in Eastern Europe as reported by the Financial Times. The American ambassador to Warsaw said that more American troops would be deployed in Poland to counter Russian influence. Russia has been assertive in the region and the move comes after much Polish lobbying …

Iranians celebrated the 40th anniversary of the fall of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the formation of their Islamic Republic today. The revolution brought to power Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Shi’ite cleric who fundamentally transformed the state into a theocracy and de facto leader of Shi’ite Islam. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians marched in …

The above photo, from USA Today, allegedly features the Democratic governor of Virginia Ralph Northam. The Washington Post published the image, which was in his 1984 medical school yearbook last week. Northam admitted to appearing in the photo, saying in a statement: 

I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now. This behavior is not in keeping with who I am today and the values I have fought for throughout my career in the military, in medicine, and in public service. But I want to be clear, I understand how this decision shakes Virginians’ faith in that commitment.

According to USA Today, Northam admitted to making “other mistakes” in his 20s. That’s why he was so certain that he used shoe polish to create the blackface in his Michael Jackson costume in the above photo.  

Calls for his resignation came in as the news broke. The politician’s 12-year career has been built up until now, on his clean-cut image and soft spoken demeanor. President Trump tweeted his criticism: 

Democrat Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia just stated, ‘I believe that I am not either of the people in that photo. This was 24 hours after apologizing for appearing in the picture and after making the most horrible statement on ‘super’ late term abortion. Unforgivable!

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has also called on Northam to resign: “Northam must resign, and those who try to help him stumble past this deserve scrutiny,” she wrote in a tweet. 

But Northam has refused to step down. He said that, upon closer inspection, the photo was not of him. Until that moment, Northam had a reasonable case for refusing to resign. He could have said that he made a mistake, and that he learned from it. He could have denounced racism and worked hard to right racial wrongs in his state. Instead, he’s thrown his own integrity into question. As Slate pointed out, there have been three versions of his story after he recanted his confession. In the first denial, he said that he knew immediately that he wasn’t in the photo. That obviously doesn’t jibe with his initial confession. Then he said he knew he couldn’t have done it––of course, another contradiction to his explanation that he absolutely knew he could do it. Finally, he said he could tell just by looking. Instead of simply taking responsibility for a mistake, he became a coward and tried to lie. Or, alternatively, instead of denying that he was in the photo from the start, he caved to political pressure and took the fall for something he didn’t do. Either option does not look good for him. 

Slate’s point was a powerful one. In his attempts to walk back his confession, Northam rendered himself a liar. Either he lied during the initial confession, or he lied during one of his recantations. 

As a side note, CNN, in what was hopefully a mistake, called Northam a Republican. Conservatives are accusing CNN of assuming Northam was Republican because of accusations of racism.

Before Donald Trump was elected president, Jared Kushner was an investor, a real-estate developer, and a newspaper publisher with no political experience. His FBI background check was complicated and raised red flags for the White House security specialists who were investigating him for top secret security clearance. He was not granted clearance at first, but a Trump official overruled them.

Carl Kline, a former Pentagon employee appointed director of the personnel security office in the Executive Office of the President, approved at least thirty people for top secret security clearance who had been originally denied it. 

Now, there have been “grave breaches in national security at the highest levels of the Trump administration” and Democrats are investigating. Two House Democrats––Reps. Don Beyer (Va.) and Ted Lieu (Calif.)––have also called for Kushner’s security clearance to be revoked:”We urge you to immediately revoke the security clearance of Senior White House Advisor Jared Kushner, and to comply with past and future oversight requests from Congress related to security clearances, information security, and other matters of national security” This is not the first time the two have done so––they called for revocation of Kushner’s clearance in 2017. 

But Kushner is far from Trump’s only problem. He received a stunning rebuke today from the Senate, which warned today against a “precipitous withdrawal” from Syria. The resolution, put forth by Mitch McConnell,  advises the administration to conduct a thorough assessment of the risks of withdrawal and to guarantee the permanent defeat of ISIS and al-Qaida. This follows the resignation of several key officials. The Senate is also attempting to block the Saudi government from interfering in Yemen. 

To recap, House Democrats are investigating how Kushner got security clearance when he should not have gotten it, Senate Republicans are pushing back on some of Trump’s most significant foreign policy maneuvers, and top officials have resigned in protest of those moves. 

It doesn’t end there, though. Trump recently embarrassed himself by criticizing an intelligence report he didn’t read. He then attacked the media for their reporting on his comments. In a series of tweets, he wrote: “The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong! When I became President Iran was making trouble all over the Middle East, and beyond. Since ending the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal, they are MUCH different, but……..a source of potential danger and conflict. They are testing Rockets (last week) and more, and are coming very close to the edge. There economy is now crashing, which is the only thing holding them back. Be careful of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”

It’s difficult to find an example of a president ever having experienced such turmoil in office. While Trump is certainly among the most politically divisive presidents of all time, partisanship does not account for these problems. These are problems of Trump’s own making. After promising that he would choose excellent people, he instead chose compromised people and now there’s been an information leak. After promising to solve worldwide political issues (by the way, Kushy, aren’t you supposed to on that?), he’s been criticized by experts in foreign affairs. After claiming to be the smartest man ever to be president (or whatever he claimed, it’s hard to keep track), he can’t even read intelligence reports. 

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