WTF Just Happened Today

Friday, September 6, 2019

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1/ The Trump administration is considering a drastic reduction in refugee admissions for next year. One plan would zero out the refugee program altogether, while another would cut refugee admissions by half or more, to 10,000 to 15,000 people. Senior officials plan to discuss what Trump should set the refugee admissions at for the coming year in a meeting next week. (New York Times)

• ???? Day 911: The Trump administration is considering admitting zero refugees next year. The idea was floated during a recent meeting with officials from the Department of Homeland Security, State Department, and the Pentagon. Homeland Security officials at the meeting suggested making the level anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000. The Trump administration cut refugee admissions from 110,000 in fiscal year 2017 to 30,000 in 2018. (Politico / CNN)

• ???? Day 944: The Trump administration is considering a plan to allow states and cities the ability to deny entry to refugees approved for resettlement in the United States. According to the draft order, "the federal government will resettle refugees only where both the relevant state and local governments have consented to participate" in the program. If a jurisdiction does not agree, the federal government will find another location. Trump, meanwhile, is debating whether to decrease refugee admissions starting on Oct. 1. In fiscal year 2016, the limit was 85,000 refugees; in fiscal year 2019, the number was 30,000. (NBC News)

2/ Four states are planning to cancel their Republican presidential primaries and caucuses. Republican parties in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, and Kansas are expected to complete the cancellation of their primaries at meetings this weekend. It is not unprecedented for state Republicans or Democrats to decide not to hold a presidential primary when an incumbent is running uncontested to save party money at the state level. Trump's challengers, however, say the moves are undemocratic and represent the latest illustration of Trump's takeover of the entire Republican Party. (Politico / CNN)

3/ Trump called a Fox News correspondent to the Oval Office to insist that he wasn't wrong when he claimed Hurricane Dorian could have hit Alabama. "He stressed to me that forecasts for Dorian last week had Alabama in the warning cone," said Fox News senior White House correspondent John Roberts. "He insisted that it is unfair to say Alabama was never threatened by the storm" and suggested that Trump was "just looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong for saying that at some point" about Alabama being at risk. Trump later complained on Twitter that the media has not apologized to him for "four days of corrupt reporting" about his false claim that Alabama was among a handful of states that "will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated." Trump attempted to prove that his original claims about Alabama were accurate this week by showing a doctored and outdated hurricane map that had been altered with a ...

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