Day 165: Long Weekend

Ok, I'm back from my vacation now. The administration looks like it was absolutely terrible in my absence, so I've made some placeholders to document that destruction. I'll try to get to that soon. As for today's news, things were mostly quiet in the lead-up to July 4th.

• Over the weekend, Trump tweeted out a video showing him beating up a CNN-blockhead man. It was very weird, and looked a lot like inspiring violence against journalists. Can you guess where it came from?
• More ethics waivers! The whole fucking administration is on ethics waivers, because they apparently don't need ethics!
• Last week, Trump nominated Eric Dreiband to head up the DoJ Civil Rights division. Here's what the NAACP thinks of this (hint: disgusted), and the ACLU (hint: vomiting).
• In a call with the President of China, Trump has threatened to "go it alone" on North Korea. Great. Just great.
• Defense Secretary Mattis has further delayed the acceptance of transgender troops into the defense forces by another six months. It was due to come into effect early this month, after a year-long delay. There is no readily apparent reason for the further delay. I am sorry for those who this causes anguish.
• We actually got some good news today. The courts upheld an Obama-era regulation on methane, despite Pruitt's best efforts to kill it. The regulation goes into effect immediately. The final line in this article is disgusting: "An EPA spokeswoman said the agency was reviewing the court opinion and its options." Since when does the EPA want to back down on the regulation of greenhouse gases? All I can say is fuck Pruitt, who must be the only one in the entire agency who actually wants this.