Timeline of Fucked Up News: March 2018

In 2018 I began keeping a log of fucked up news stories in an effort to avoid becoming accustomed to how fucked up everything is. This is the log for March.

You may also be interested in the log for February or the log for April.

Protestors at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. on March 24, 2018. Photo by Flickr user mobili (CC BY-SA).

March 1

• Trump announces plans for massive tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. Stocks plummet on the news, trade allies threaten retaliatory measures, and U.S. manufacturers warn that tariffs could hurt sales and lead to layoffs.
• The Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, led by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), leaked private text messages between Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and a lawyer with connections to Christopher Steele to Fox News.
• Vladimir Putin claims Russia is developing new nuclear weapons that can overcome U.S. missile defenses.
• According to an excerpt from an unpublished Newsweek story, Trump took a methamphetamine derivative from 1982 to 1990 that was only intended for short-term use. Long-term use of the drug has a high risk of causing dependency, delusions, paranoia, hyperactivity, sleeplessness, and impulse control problems.
• Republican lawmakers in Georgia strike down a sales tax exemption on jet fuel to punish Delta Air Lines, which is based in Atlanta, for cutting ties with the NRA. According to Delta, only 13 passengers have ever actually used the NRA discount program that Delta ended.

March 2

• Trump’s decision to impose steel and aluminum tariffs was a complete surprise to the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Defense Department, and many of his own staff. The decision had not undergone legal review and there was no diplomatic or legislative strategy in place.
• Carl Icahn, a friend of Trump’s who Trump has called a “special adviser” since taking office, dumped over $31 million of stock in a steel-related company days before Trump’s tariff announcement.
• Electrolux puts a planned $250 million investment in its Tennessee plant on hold due to Trump’s steel tariff, saying that even though they only buy domestic steel, they’re worried the tariff could lead to higher prices in the domestic market.
• In April of 2017 Kushner Companies asked the Qatari Finance Minister for an investment. They failed to reach a deal. A month later Jared Kushner backed Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in diplomatic efforts against Qatar that culminated in a blockade of the country. He then undermined efforts by the Secretary of State to end the crisis.
• A gunman kills two people at Central Michigan University.

March 3

• Trump expresses admiration that Chinese President Xi Jinping is now effectively president for life, saying “maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day”.
• Trump threatens — in a tweet — to tax cars imported from the E.U. if the E.U. imposes tariffs on U.S. goods.

March 4

• Sergei Skripal and his daughter are found unconscious on a bench in England after having been exposed to a nerve agent in an apparent murder attempt. Skripal is a retired Russian double-agent who worked for MI6. As many as 500 other people may have been exposed to traces of the nerve agent.
• The State Department has so far used $0 of the $120 million that was allocated to counter foreign efforts to influence elections.

March 5

• According to “a senior Russian official”, the Kremlin intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State (Mitt Romney) and asked him to appoint someone who would lift sanctions and cooperate with Russia on security issues. Trump then appointed Rex Tillerson.
• The Justice Department files a lawsuit against the State of California claiming that California’s sanctuary laws amount to an obstruction of the enforcement of federal immigration law.
• Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, complained to friends that Trump hadn’t reimbursed him for a payment he made to porn star Stormy Daniels, thereby implicating Trump in the payment.
• The Trump Organization ordered golf course markers emblazoned with the presidential seal, which is illegal. They intend to use them on golf courses owned by Donald Trump.
• In a series of unhinged television interviews, former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg says he will not comply with the special counsel’s grand jury subpoena. He later backs down and says he will comply.

March 6

• Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn, head of the National Economic Council, announces his resignation. Cohn had strongly opposed Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
• The Office of Special Counsel finds that White House counselor Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act during appearances on Fox News and CNN.

March 7

• A 17 year old girl is killed and another child is injured in a shooting at Huffman High School in Birmingham, Alabama.
• A meeting between an unofficial Trump transition representative and a Russian official in Seychelles just before the inauguration was an attempt to establish a backchannel between the Trump administration and the Kremlin according to a grand jury testimony by a man who attended and helped organize the meeting.
• Trump asked key witnesses in the Russia investigation about their discussions with investigators on at least two occasions, raising questions about possible witness tampering.
• Trump lawyer Michael Cohen secretly obtained a restraining order to prevent Stormy Daniels from discussing her affair with Donald Trump. Daniels is currently suing Trump over a non-disclosure agreement that restricted her from discussing their affair, which she contends is void because Trump never signed it. The official White House position seems to be both that the agreement doesn’t exist and that Stormy Daniels has somehow violated it despite it not existing.
• Jared Kushner, who has no experience in U.S.-Mexico relations, meets with the president and foreign minister of Mexico and doesn’t invite the U.S. ambassador to Mexico to the meetings.

March 8

• North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, who has long sought the legitimacy of being recognized as a peer of countries like the U.S., invites Trump to meet to discuss denuclearization and normalizing relations. Trump accepts, granting him that legitimacy.
• Trump signs proclamations imposing new steel and aluminum tariffs despite strong opposition from both parties, his own economic advisers, and foreign allies.

March 9

• Trump lawyer Michael Cohen used his Trump Organization email account to arrange the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels. He also used a bank that was in use by the Trump Organization, raising questions about whether the transferred funds may have come from Trump Organization accounts.

March 10

• A gunman kills three women and then himself after a standoff with police in the Veterans Home of California in Yountville.

March 11

• The rushed Republican tax overhaul is full of mistakes and loopholes.

March 12

• Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee conclude their investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, saying they found no evidence that Russia was trying to help Trump when they interfered in the 2016 election. This contradicts the conclusions of every U.S. intelligence agency. The Committee never interviewed former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his deputy Rick Gates, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, or former campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos, all of whom have been indicted in the special counsel’s independent investigation.
• Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL), a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, says the committee has “gone completely off the rails” and has “lost all credibility”. He also says there was evidence that Russia’s election interference was intended to help the Trump campaign.
• The ACLU accuses the TSA of searching the cell phones and laptops of passengers flying domestically within the United States.
• Stormy Daniels offers to return the $130,000 she received from Trump’s lawyer in return for the dissolution of the contract preventing her from discussing her affair with Trump.

March 13

• Trump fires Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and nominates CIA Director Mike Pompeo to take his place. Tillerson had just blamed the U.K. nerve agent assassination attempt on Russia, which the White House had so far refused to do.
• The White House fires Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein after Goldstein publicly contradicts the White House’s account of the firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, saying that Tillerson only learned he was fired when Trump tweeted about it.
• Trump’s personal assistant, John McEntee, is abruptly fired and escorted from the White House after an investigation into his finances leads to the revocation of his security clearance. He is under investigation by the Secret Service for serious financial crimes.
• Gina Haspel, who oversaw the torture of at least one suspected terrorist in 2002 and later was involved in the decision to destroy video recordings of torture sessions, is Trump’s nominee for CIA Director to replace Mike Pompeo.
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman James Schwab resigns in protest of “false” and “misleading” statements made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ICE acting director Thomas Homan.
• Roger Stone may have known WikiLeaks had obtained hacked emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta before that information was publicly known. He was acting as an informal adviser to Donald Trump at the time.
• Three high school students are injured when a teacher accidentally fires a gun in a classroom in California. The teacher is a reserve police officer who has received firearm training.

March 14

• Nobody seems to know quite how Trump’s inauguration committee spent a record-breaking $104 million. But we do know that $26 million went to a month-old event planning firm started by a friend of Melania Trump, that two members of the inaugural committee have been convicted of financial crimes (including money laundering), that the committee’s treasurer was a co-conspirator in an accounting fraud, and that millions of dollars in donations came from “dark money” groups that don’t disclose their donors.
• Britain expels 23 Russian diplomats in retaliation for Russia’s use of a nerve agent to poison a former spy on British soil. The nerve agent used was developed by the Soviet Union and is believed to be significantly more lethal than sarin or VX.
• Thousands of students around the U.S. walk out of their classrooms to protest Congressional inaction on gun control legislation.
• In a fundraising speech, Trump brags about lying to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a meeting and threatens to pull U.S. troops out of South Korea if South Korea doesn’t offer favorable trade deals. It’s possible Trump was lying about lying to Trudeau: the Canadian government says they’re not sure what meeting he could have been referring to.

March 15

• The Trump Organization was actively negotiating a business deal with a sanctioned Russian bank during the 2016 election.
• Two people have been killed and two injured by a series of package bombs in Austin, Texas. The bombs appear to be targeting prominent black families.
• The Treasury Department announces weak sanctions on various Russian individuals and entities. One of the sanctioned individuals tells a Russian news agency that he’s not worried, but “will stop going to McDonald’s”.

March 16

• Attorney General Jeff Sessions fires former FBI director Andrew McCabe less than two days before his scheduled retirement, based on recommendations in an inspector general report. McCabe learns of his firing by reading a press release. Trump gloats about it on Twitter.
• Trump’s lawyers file a motion claiming that Stormy Daniels violated a confidentiality agreement by discussing an affair with Donald Trump, which they insist never happened and also must remain confidential despite never having happened. They now claim — for the first time — that Trump was a party to that agreement even though he was supposedly unaware of its existence, never signed it, and has repeatedly said the events it orders Ms. Daniels not to discuss never happened. Trump, the President of the United States, is seeking $20 million in damages from Ms. Daniels, a private citizen.
• White House Chief of Staff John Kelly inexplicably tells a room full of reporters that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was on the toilet when Kelly called to tell him he would be fired.

March 17

• Cambridge Analytica harvested private data from over 50 million Facebook users without their permission. In 2016 they used that data to help the Cruz and Trump campaigns shape strategy and target voters.
• SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, worked with a Kremlin-supported Russian oil giant in 2014 and 2015. The oil company, Lukoil, was interested in how data could be used to target American voters.
• A White House staff assistant wrote his ProtonMail email address and password on White House letterhead and left it at a bus stop near the White House.

March 18

• A fourth bomb explodes in Austin, Texas, injuring two men. It was triggered by a tripwire.
• Police in Sacramento shoot and kill Stephon Clark in his own back yard, failing to identify themselves as police before opening fire.

March 19

• Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix was caught on video bragging about hiring Ukrainian sex workers to gather dirt on political opponents, bribing and blackmailing political opponents, using proxy organizations to plant negative material on social media, destroying evidence, and more. He also claimed that Cambridge Analytica “ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign” and “informed all the strategy” for the Trump campaign and was responsible for Trump’s win.
• Congressional Republicans remove provisions from the omnibus spending bill that would have prevented members of Congress from using taxpayer funds to settle sexual harassment cases. The provisions had unanimous support in the House.

March 20

• A student shoots two other students at Great Mills High School in Maryland. He then shoots himself in the head just before an armed school resource officer fires at him and misses.
• A package on its way to Austin, Texas explodes at a FedEx facility outside San Antonio. A second package with an explosive device is found at another FedEx facility. Officials say they’re connected to the four other recent bombings in Austin. The White House insists the bombings are not terrorism.
• Trump congratulates Vladimir Putin on Putin’s fraudulent election “win” against the advice of his national security advisers, who had included the all-caps warning “DO NOT CONGRATULATE” in his briefing. On Monday, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley had told reporters Trump did not plan to call Putin.

March 21

• Trump required White House staff to sign broad nondisclosure agreements. Experts have raised serious doubts about their legality and constitutionality. Staffers who signed the agreements may have even broken the law because the NDAs, which were a personal concession to Trump given as a condition of their jobs, may violate the federal bribery statute.
• The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia bragged that Jared Kushner was “in his pocket” after Kushner made a surprise trip to Riyadh and reportedly shared classified information gleaned from the President’s Daily Brief. The information Kushner provided led to the arrest of dozens of members of the Saudi royal family. At least one of them was tortured to death.
• The Austin bomber blows himself up on a highway after being chased by police.
• A year before Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired him, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe authorized an investigation into whether Sessions lied under oath in Congressional testimony. It’s not clear whether Sessions was aware of the investigation, but if he was, it could be a troublesome conflict of interest.

March 22

• National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster resigns. Trump will replace him with John Bolton, a war hawk and advocate for regime change in Iran and North Korea.
• Trump imposes $60 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese goods, causing the biggest one-day stock market drop in six weeks. China responds by threatening tariffs on U.S. imports.
• Trump’s lead lawyer in the Special Counsel inquiry, John Dowd, resigns after concluding that Trump has been ignoring his advice.
• The State Department approves the sale of $670 million worth of anti-tank missiles to Saudi Arabia, which has been conducting a military campaign in Yemen since 2015 that has killed over 5,000 civilians and left many more injured.
• In a TV interview, former Playboy model Karen McDougal describes a lengthy 10-month affair with Donald Trump that took place not long after his marriage to Melania.

March 23

• Trump issues orders to ban most transgender troops from the military. Those who are currently serving will be allowed to remain, but may be denied the right to serve under their true gender identities.
• A PAC founded by John Bolton was one of the first customers of Cambridge Analytica. The PAC paid CA to develop psychological profiles of voters using the data CA had harvested from Facebook without users’ permission.
• A Pennsylvania school district placed buckets of rocks in its classrooms for students to throw at armed attackers.

March 24

• Millions of people around the country march to demand action against gun violence. The marches were organized by high school students from Parkland, Florida.
• Facebook’s Android app collected detailed data on phone calls and text messages without users’ knowledge.

March 25

• In a 60 Minutes interview, Stormy Daniels describes her affair with Donald Trump and reveals that in 2011 a man threatened to hurt her and her infant daughter if she didn’t keep quiet.

March 26

• The Trump administration announces it will add a question about citizenship status to the 2020 census. This is likely to reduce responses from immigrants — both legal and illegal — which could result in inaccurate counts that would give Republicans an advantage in House races.

March 27

• An analysis of internal documents and news releases shows that Trump and his administration responded much more slowly and dedicated far fewer resources to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria than they did to Houston after Hurricane Harvey.

March 28

• During the final weeks of the campaign, former Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates repeatedly and knowingly communicated with a former Russian spy who is believed to have had active links to Russian intelligence at the time.
• Trump fires Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin. He will be replaced by White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson, who recently gave Trump a glowing health report and said he had “great genetics”.
• House Republicans, who have recently added $1 trillion to the federal deficit, are considering proposing a Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget. The amendment would have little chance of passing, but could help Republicans gain votes in the upcoming midterm elections by making it look like they actually care about balancing the budget.
• Michael Cohen’s attorney claims that Trump was not aware of the agreement with or payment to Stormy Daniels. If true, this means there likely cannot be a binding contract between Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump, since Trump couldn’t have been a party to a contract he wasn’t aware of.

March 29

• Facebook Vice President Andrew Bosworth said in an internal memo in 2016 that questionable practices and even deaths due to suicide or terrorism were justified as long as it resulted in growth for Facebook.
• The Trump administration wants to require all visa applicants to submit their social media usernames for the past five years.

March 30

• U.S. military commanders warn that chaos in the Trump administration and a lack of leadership from the White House are jeopardizing the war against ISIS and may lead to failure even though ISIS is on the brink of defeat.

March 31

• The White House says VA Secretary David Shulkin resigned. Shulkin says he was fired. If he really was fired, there could be significant legal issues because Trump may have overstepped his authority by bypassing Shulkin’s deputy when appointing a temporary replacement.