Day 69: Gutted

A grab bag of terribleness today, and we're still reeling from yesterday's climate policy awfulness. I'm sorry I don't have better news.

• Trump wants $18 billion in domestic program cuts this year to finance the military and his wall. $1.23 billion of that is from the NIH (what the fuck do you have against the NIH???), $3 billion from educational programs (holy shit), and the rest of it just as bad. This isn't a plan to make American "great". It's a plan to completely fuck up a generation.
• Bowing to pressure from ethics inquiries, Ivanka Trump is being officially promoted to "Assistant to the President" (in an unpaid capacity). Nepotism at its finest!
• Chris Christie has been tapped to chair a commission investigating the epidemic of opioid addiction in the country. Because like everybody else in the administration, he's so qualified!
• A key claim from the Trump dossier has been verified. Alas, it's not the one we were all hoping for, but this does lend credence to the other claims.
• Would you like to know the type of people who Secretary of Health and Human Services Price is hiring? Did you think they'll be staunch anti-abortionists? You guessed right!
• It looks like Nunes could be facing an ethics probe. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
• Lamar Smith, anti-scientist, who is somehow the chair of the House committee on Science, Space and Technology, is continuing to completely undermine scientific research. His hearings today were a farce, and his proposed bills are anathema to anybody who calls themselves a scientist. Obama threatened to veto these bills for the past two years. Sadly, they have a good chance of being rubber-stamped now: the house just passed the first of them (and it's completely bullshit).
• There's reportedly a ban in the Department of Energy against using the words "climate change". This bodes very, very badly.