Day 132: Think of the Parisians

Today's coverage is dominated by news that Trump is "planning" on pulling out of the Paris accords. Axios reported early today that the decision was made. Later, the NY Times reported that Trump was "planning" on pulling out. A further report from Bloomberg suggested that a decision had actually not been made yet. Here's my take.

• First, here's the Bloomberg article, which summarizes the present situation. Highlights from the article: Leaving the Paris accords would be a significant decision that puts the US at odds with essentially the rest of the world, joining only Syria and Nicaragua as being on the outside. Leaving has essentially no political or economic benefit, but significant peril on both regards, particularly with respect to essentially every other nation in the world. Furthermore, it gives rise to significant environmental danger. I'm not going to argue about the stupidity of neglecting climate change here. Here's my favorite bit: "Several of the people familiar with the deliberations cautioned that the decision won’t be final until it is announced. Trump often changes his mind repeatedly when considering major decisions." Great. Just great. We have a fucking idiot in charge who can't listen to reasoned arguments and vacillates hopelessly.
• Even worse, he has no scientific advisors. He's literally taking his cues on this from Bannon and Pruitt.
• I claimed yesterday that Trump is essentially working for Putin. Here's further evidence in the context of withdrawing from the Paris agreement.
• But never fear! America is God's country, and He will save us if climate change happens! Or so a Republican congressman claims. Why the fuck are these lunatics in charge?

The worst part will be that in abdicating the leadership role, the rest of the world is far less likely to fall in line. America first? If Trump follows this course of action, it will be America last in the very near future.

In other news:

• We have a bunch of congressional subpoenas in the Russian investigations.
• Comey will be publicly testifying before the Senate. This is a good thing, but I'm not expecting a whole lot out of it.
• We have a list of ethics waivers provided by the White house. Despite Trump campaigning on tightening up lobbyist rules, he's relaxed them and provided more than five times the number of such waivers than the previous administration.
• Trump is reportedly planning on rolling back relations with Cuba. Is there nothing he doesn't want his grubby hands to tarnish?
• Ice is literally deporting undocumented immigrant grandmothers with clean records who have lived in the country for decades. Here's a story of one such person who has sought sanctuary in a church to avoid deportation.

In case you're curious, here's a list of all the actions the administration has taken to fuck the environment to make rich white men even richer. (Warning: this list is rage-inducing.)