Here’s all the shit we couldn’t cover today:
- On Monday, the State Department announced that it’s ending U.S. funding for the UN Population Fund, which provides family planning and maternal and child health services in over 150 countries and also works to end the practice of female genital cutting and child marriage. The administration’s claim is that UNFPA “supports, or participates in the management of, a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in China,” which is clearly false; the Bush administration made a similar shitty argument. [The Huffington Post]
- The Trump administration called a devastating chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians that killed dozens, including a number of children, “reprehensible” in a four-sentence statement that also managed to blame the Obama administration. The administration did not quite clarify how they will respond differently than their predecessors—seems like a few days ago Sean Spicer was talking about a “political reality that we have to accept” regarding Assad’s regime, which was swiftly followed by… a chemical weapons attack. [Time]
- Two verbally incoherent Putin fans are having a private meeting today, and I would really give one of my fingernails for the transcript. [CNN]
- Sebastian Gorka, a White House counterterrorism advisor with an apparently endless number of fucked up skeletons in his not-very-well-hidden closet, publicly supported a “violent racist and anti-Semitic paramilitary militia” in Hungary, Forward reports. Meanwhile, a Wikipedia user by the name “Sk-Gorka” has extensively edited Sebastian Gorka’s Wikipedia page. [Forward, CNN]
- Here’s why Republicans have been shrieking about Susan Rice all day. [New York Times]
- A majority of Americans—55%—approve of Obamacare. Naturally, the GOP is still trying to repeal it. [Gallup]
- The number of vacancies at the State Department is really astounding. [The Huffington Post]
- Meanwhile, at the other State Department that is located wherever Jared Kushner happens to be, Trump’s ex-bodyguard Keith Schiller—best known for the time he hit a protester in the face—was seated at the table in a meeting with Iraqi officials. [Twitter]
Here are some tweets that the president was allowed to publish:
This has been Barf Bag.