Only last week, Trump claimed that he is doing exactly what he promised to do.

“For decades, politicians promised to secure the border, fix our trade deals, bring back our factories, get tough on China, move the Embassy to Jerusalem, make NATO pay their fair share, and so much else – only to do NOTHING (or worse)….” Trump tweeted.

In a following tweet, he concluded: “I am doing exactly what I pledged to do, and what I was elected to do by the citizens of our great Country. Just as I promised, I am fighting for YOU!”

….I am doing exactly what I pledged to do, and what I was elected to do by the citizens of our great Country. Just as I promised, I am fighting for YOU!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2019

Trump only mentioned the promises he has made progress on. Here are some of the major issues he ran on, and how far he got with them.

Border wall

In his presidential announcement speech in June 2015, Trump stated: “I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall.”

Trump has since claimed he did not mean Mexico was “going to write out a check” to construct it the wall. In early 2017, then-Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said his country would not pay for the wall.

Now halfway through Trump’s term, he is demanding $5.7 billion in funding to build the barrier. Democrats have refused to fund Trump’s wall, instead offering a fraction of that amount for border security. The stalemate has led to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history—and no wall yet.

Trade deals

Trump criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a “disaster” and said that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) “is going to be worse, so we will stop it.” In addition, he promised to confront China about the trade deficit.

The president kept his pledge on TPP, withdrawing the U.S. within a few days of him entering office. Last November, he negotiated the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to replace NAFTA and got the countries to sign it. It still needs to be approved by Congress.

But Trump’s trade promise on China has yet to materialize. The discussions turned into a trade war with both countries imposing tariffs on each other’s goods. The warring paused temporarily in December when the countries agreed to a truce of 90 days.

Saving the coal industry

Trump on the campaign trail promised to bring back coal jobs. “We’re going to put our miners back to work,” Trump said at a rally in Phoenix, and that he would do so by rolling back Obama-era climate regulations.

Despite two years of the Trump administration trying to reinvigorate the coal industry, coal consumption was projected to decline by close to 4 percent in 2018, dropping to the lowest level since 1979, the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced late last year. By the end of 2018, demand for coal staggered 44 percent below the peak of consumption in 2007.

Repealing Obamacare

Trump vowed to repeal Obamacare, officially known as the Affordable Care Act, which was designed to extend healthcare to all Americans who were not insured.

The GOP tax plan passed in December 2017 eliminated the individual mandate penalty for people who did not have health insurance in 2019. Republicans have also shortened the enrollment period and cut out some subsidies, but a full repeal has not happened.

A federal judge in Texas last December ruled that repealing the individual mandate part was an “essential” portion of the law and meant Obamacare as a whole was unconstitutional, but the law remains intact as an appeal goes before the Supreme Court.

Tax cuts

Trump promised huge tax cuts for working class Americans as well as a lower corporate tax rate.

The GOP tax plan passed in December 2017, marking a promise kept by Trump. However, the corporate tax was reduced from 35 percent to 21 percent instead of his promised 15 percent. The tax plan is largely viewed as containing mostbenefits for rich Americans.

Despite Trump failing to keep some of promises halfway through his tenure, the Trump campaign on its website claims that Trump has “promises kept” in the areas of the economy and jobs, immigration, foreign policy, national security and defense, regulations, land and agriculture, law and justice, energy and environment, government accountability, health care, infrastructure and technology, social programs, education and with respect to veterans.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-two-years-promises-made-kept-and-broken-border-wall-trade-deals-1298105

Angelina Marquez fled death threats by MS-13 gang members in her native El Salvador in 2014, with the hope of seeking asylum in the United States. She was detained by Border Patrol agents in McAllen, Texas, during the Obama administration. Marquez—a pseudonym as she is still awaiting a final judgment on her asylum case—shared her story of being detained alongside her 6-year-old son with Newsweek. Newsweek was able to corroborate the major points of her story by reviewing court documents and speaking with her lawyer. What follows is Marquez’s story in her own words, as told to reporter Jessica Kwong.

Fleeing El Salvador for the United States was a matter of life or death for my 6-year-old son and me. It all started with being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was 15 years old living with my family in the province of Morazán when my panicked father woke me up at 1 a.m. to the smell of smoke. He told me and my siblings to evacuate. By then, the flames of a nearby factory fire had already reached the roof of our home.

I was afraid of dying. Once we made it outside, my father and I heard yelling from inside the factory, and we assumed from the regular security guard. Then we saw young men from our neighborhood, who were MS-13 gang members, run out of the burning building. They saw us, too.

My father testified as a witness in the murder of the security guard. He was killed by the gang two years later for doing so. Gang members were later charged in his death.

I thought I was safe and in my early twenties started combating crimes against women with the Salvadoran Justice Department. That’s when gang members began harassing me again. I received violent threats and survived a sexual assault.

They tried to kill me, too, and I realized it was no longer an option for me to stay in my country. My son and I had to leave.

In September 2014, at the age of 25, I set out with my son, my 16-year-old sister and a map of a route to cross the borders of Guatemala and Mexico, all in hopes of seeking asylum in the United States.

We cleared the dangers of crossing the borders, including human and drug trafficking, and made it across the Rio Grande. After walking for hours, Border Patrol agents stopped us in McAllen, Texas. Truthfully, we didn’t try to run, because we came looking for help. We wanted to apply for asylum.

But being detained was harder than I expected. I am angry and disturbed by the way they treated a lot of women.

I told officials I was running away from gangs, but they dismissed me. “Everyone is saying that, but the gangs can’t do anything to you because they’re just a small group,” one of them told me. The official claimed it was my country’s problem, and that I was “just coming here to work.”

They brought us to cells with temperatures so low we called them hieleras, or iceboxes. The bathrooms were in the front part of the cells, the same area where they brought us food.

After five days, we were transported to a detention center in Artesia, New Mexico. The treatment there wasn’t any better, but at least we had cots.

You had to ask an official for everything, even soap and shampoo to shower. The shampoo made our hair fall out. Menstruating women got only one sanitary pad a day, so we would take turns asking for pads even when it wasn’t our time of the month, and shared with the women who needed them.

A lot of children became ill from the food they provided us. The milk was spoiled, the cereals expired.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, they fed us sandwiches, which were the only real meals our kids could eat. The mothers would also save the chips and cookies we got and trade with each other based on our children’s preferences. When authorities performed their checks, they would take away any snacks we had saved, even if they were sealed, to control rat infestations, so we would try to have them in our hands or hide them.

My son was too young to truly understand what we were living through. He and his friends spent their playtime re-enacting what was happening to us, from detention to our removal proceedings. They would run around saying, “La migra”—the Border Patrol—”is coming,” and they would go to the hieleras. The boys pretended some of them were officials, that others had to go to court, some acted like judges and lawyers. They even set bail amounts.

My son would ask me, “When are we going to get out?” and “Why are we locked up?” It was very difficult for me to answer him because I had always tried to shield him from what I suffered through in El Salvador. Sometimes I would tell him, “We’ll get out and see your aunt,” because he would ask where my sister was taken. But deep down, I didn’t know if we would ever be let out, if we would ever see her again or if they would deport us, which I feared most.

After two months in detention, my son and I were released when family members paid our bail. But my son, who is 10 years old now, has not stopped crying. He has overheard conversations I’ve had with my lawyer and knows I’m awaiting my last court date for asylum and doesn’t want me to go before a judge.

“Mom, don’t go to court because if you go, they’re going to deport you, and I’ll be left here,” he says, because he’s seen families being separated on TV.

https://www.newsweek.com/surviving-american-detention-center-my-6-year-old-son-1012641

“Any suggestion that this may put Stormy Daniels at risk is absurd and without merit,” Avenatti said in a phone call to Newsweek. “Ms. Daniels’s case has never been stronger.”

As Avenatti has earned a regular spotlight on television news bashing both Trump and his lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen, he’s also drawn comparisons to Trump. Both have no reservations firing attacks at their opponents on air and via Twitter, and some experts told The Washington Post on Monday that such tactics could undercut Avenatti’s ability to represent Daniels, who is suing Trump over a nondisclosure agreement on their alleged affair.

“Some people seem to have a difficult time accepting the huge amount of success that we’ve had over the last eight weeks,” Avenatti said. “They need to get used to it.”

The lawyer for Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, declined to comment on claims he is acting like Trump.

Avenatti has proven to be unlike other attorneys in that his arguments go beyond his client’s complaint, New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, whose expertise is in ethics, told the Post.

“Nothing he has been doing in the last four to six weeks with his multiple television appearances advances the interests of his client in the California action,” Gillers said. “He’s catapulted himself to be the story. There are dangers when a lawyer becomes so publicly vocal.”

One of Avenatti’s boldest moves yet came last week, when he exposed Cohen’s banking transactions, suggesting he took payments from a Russian oligarch, AT&T and a Swiss pharmaceutical company into the same account he used to pay $130,000 to Daniels to stay silent about the alleged affair.

While that was damaging to Trump and Cohen, the latter’s lawyers pointed out that the documents erroneously included a few transactions made by other Michael Cohens, thus spreading information that did not concern Daniels.

Cohen argued that Avenatti, who practices out of California, should no longer be allowed to represent Daniels before a court in New York because he disclosed the private transactions.

Here is the response we just filed in response to Mr. Cohen's baseless charges last week. Facts are stubborn things. #bastahttps://t.co/srLCNCKult

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) May 14, 2018

Also last week, Mark Penn, a pollster and adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1995 to 2000, questioned whether Avenatti’s intention was really to represent Daniels or if he is “just using her as cover to wage a political operation.”

Avenatti called Penn’s piece “utter bullshit.”

On Monday, The Daily Caller reporter Peter Hasson tweeted an email Avenatti sent him that morning warning he would sue the conservative website, him and his colleague Joe Simonson for defamation over a story they published scrutinizing his business deals.

“We will expose your publication for what it truly is. We will also recover significant damages against each of you that participated personally,” Avenatti’s email read. “So if I were you, I would tell Mr. Trump to find someone else to fabricate things about me. If you think I’m kidding, you really don’t know anything about me.”

https://www.newsweek.com/michael-avenatti-critics-accept-huge-amount-success-weve-had-stormy-daniels-927053

One of a couple dozen bite-sized items Levinski is serving up at her Trump impeachment-themed house party are symbolic “Comey cake balls,” made of white Oreo cookies with cream cheese and rolled in powdered sugar.

“Those are next to the sign for obstruction of justice—since Trump fired him,” Levinski told Newsweek, referring to former FBI Director James Comey. “It’s a means to educate people on the different offenses.”

Trump’s firing of Comey because of “this Russia thing” and his request that Comey let go of an investigation on ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn make a clear case for obstructing justice, contend the president’s critics including the “Need to Impeach” campaign that organized the parties ahead of Presidents’ Day.

The campaign was launched by major Democratic donor Tom Steyer last October and has already made headlines with a series of television commercials as well as billboards in New York City’s iconic Times Square. Saturday’s parties are just the latest step in Steyer’s efforts. The campaign sent party hosts including Fairfax, Virginia, resident Levinski a list of what they said were impeachable offenses around which to plan their gatherings aimed at pushing Congress to begin proceedings to remove Trump from office.

Based on that list, Levinski, a swing voter who has supported Democratic candidates for the past few years, also baked up a few desserts to coincide with the ongoing investigation into Russian collusion.

Her “Kremlin cake balls” are red velvet cake dipped in blue candy coating and white chocolate frosting “so when you bite into it, it will look like the Russian flag,” Levinksi said. “Putin pudding cups” include vanilla pudding over a wafer with golden sprinkles on top “since he’s so close to [Vladimir] Putin,” Russia’s president, Levinski added. She’s also preparing “Moscow strawberries” soaked in vodka and rolled in sugar “since of course, everything about Moscow is vodka.”

To go along with another impeachable offense listed by the campaign, directing law enforcement to investigate and prosecute political adversaries for improper and unjustifiable purposes, Levinski concocted a “Lock her up-side-down cake” alluding to Hillary Clinton and Trump supporters’ chant to “lock her up.”

“That’s an offensive type of thing where he shouldn’t be trying to put his adversary in prison for running against him,” said Levinski, who voted for Clinton.

The list of alleged impeachable offenses, and thus the array of tasty treats, did not end there.

To make Trump’s alleged offense of abusing his presidential pardoning power in pardoning former sheriff Joe Arpaio—who was convicted for contempt of court after ignoring an order to stop detaining and searching people based on the color of their skin—Levinski baked “pardon pow(d)er cookies” dusted with powdered sugar.

The provided list of impeachable offenses also included claims that Trump advocated violence and undermined equal protection under law by giving cover to neo-Nazis who rallied in Charlottesville. To signify that action, Levinski created “Trump puppets,” chocolate police badges traced from wax paper.

Even the threat of nuclear war was not beyond marking with a sweet treat. Trump’s fiery threats toward North Korea landed him in Need to Impeach’s impeachable offense of engaging in conduct that grossly endangers the peace and security of the U.S. So Levinski made “nuclear buttons” of brownies with strawberries or raspberries pressed on top of them.

Levinski will also be providing her guests with something to help wash down all those baked delights. Whether it is appreciated, though, is another matter. She said she bought a bottle of Trump Blanc de Blanc sparkling wine “against all my better judgment” for the impeachable offense of violating the United States Constitution’s Emoluments Clause.

“It’s made by their family and they get all the profits for that,” she explained. “He hasn’t fully removed himself from all these business practices.”

Not everything created for the party was for consuming, however. For the final impeachable offense on the list, undermining the freedom of the press, Levinski bought a roll of toilet paper with Trump’s Twitter feed printed on it for the bathroom.

“That’s the fake news that people get to read,” she said.

Besides the treats around impeachable offenses, Levinski was also creating “Fire(ball) and Fury shooters” dedicated to Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, “Dark and ‘Stormy Daniels’” cocktails named after the porn star Trump allegedly had an affair with, and “grab ‘em by the cookie” cookies “since Trump was saying grab ‘em by the you know what,” Levinski said, referring to Trump’s lewd remarks about women caught on an infamous leaked “Access Hollywood” tape.

Not everyone is so happy to discuss their plans to celebrate what they hope will be the president’s impending removal from office. Levinski said that some of her invited guests who are government employees were hesitant to RSVP.

“It’s sad that in a time like today, we’re so politically charged that you can’t go to a party with Comey cake balls because you’re worried what your boss might think because they might see you on Facebook,” Levinksi said.

Indeed, Need to Impeach is encouraging parties across the nation to share their festivities on social media, if they feel comfortable.

“If we say we have a logical reason why you should impeach the president, that is not a powerful statement,” Need to Impeach founder Steyer told Newsweek. “It’s only when the people’s voices get together that it really matters.”

The campaign has collected more than 4.7 million signatures on a petition demanding Congress take action to remove Trump from power. The parties have turned “the average day person into an advocate and given them the opportunity to talk to friends and family members,” Need to Impeach spokesman Erik Olvera told Newsweek.

Food is an “effective way to connect people no matter their political party or beliefs,” Levinski’s cousin Becki Melvie, who owns a boutique cooking school and kitchen store and helped brainstorm the recipes, said.

Levinski agreed and anticipates her party will be filled with healthy an educational discussion.

“I don’t think anybody will be offended because there’s so much humor to the desserts,” she said. “I think everybody is going to feel like they ate too much sugar.”

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-impeachment-parties-try-entice-congress-remove-president-810054

“There will be increasing evidence and increasing urgency with the American people to get this guy out of office as people realize we really can’t survive him,” Steyer said during a recent sit-down with Newsweek in New York City.

“When it happens, I don’t know. Exactly what the next events will be, I don’t know. That there will be next events, I do know,” said Steyer, adding that they will support his campaign’s objective.

Before launching Need to Impeach in October to demand impeachment proceedings, Steyer said he was betting that every day would bring more evidence to back up his case that the president deserves to be booted from the White House.

“And we think that’s happening,” the Democratic billionaire said, citing a recent New York Times op-ed column on 10 ways Trump has obstructed justice.

“We’re going to see more information coming out of the investigations. We’re going to see more attempts to obstruct justice,” Steyer predicted. “We’re seeing them almost on a daily basis at this point.”

According to Steyer, there is no need to wait for the results of special counsel Robert Mueller’s intensifying investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russians in the election because he “obstructed justice and that has always been the primary basis for impeachment of the president of the United States.”

Among instances that Trump critics say show he committed obstruction of justice are his comment to former FBI Director James Comey last February to let go of an investigation on resigned national security adviser Michael Flynn, and that Trump later fired Comey because of “this Russia thing.”

Steyer added that he cannot foresee what steps may lead to Trump’s impeachment because the president constantly commits new, unpredictable offenses.

“I liken it to being on a wild horse,” Steyer said. “We as a country are on a wild horse and we don’t know where it’s going.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Newsweek.

For Need to Impeach, the biggest roadblock has been partisanship, Steyer said, with Republicans “hunkered down trying to defend the indefensible.”

Democratic Representative Al Green of Texas has forced two votes to start proceedings on impeaching Trump. The most recent one in January—after Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries”—drew eight more Democrats in favor, but failed 355 to 66.

“He has lowered the standards for Americans. I mean, just as a glaring example, no other American president used a four-letter word, bathroom language, in meetings,” Steyer said of Trump.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer have opposed pursuing impeachment while Mueller carries out his probe. But Steyer said that more politicians have shown willingness to support a movement against Trump when it doesn’t explicitly involve impeachment.

Steyer said he is relying not on the number of people in Congress whose votes are needed to initiate impeachment proceedings, but on the voice of the American people.

Need to Impeach has collected more than 4.7 million signatures on a petition demanding Congress to begin proceedings to remove Trump. Its largest event to date, Party to Impeach, will take place on Saturday, ahead of President’s Day, with impeachment-themed house parties planned in more than 500 communities across the U.S.

“Obviously, the elected officials don’t want to hear me at all. The only thing they can hear and have to hear is the voice of 4.5 million Americans” and counting, Steyer said. “That is a shockingly powerful statement.”

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-impeachment-just-matter-time-after-more-4-million-sign-petition-tom-807814

The disenfranchisement occurred in Sedgwick County and was a direct result of a law pushed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a member of Trump’s voter fraud commission, which requires disabled voters’ signatures on their ballot envelopes. Until Kobach’s Secure and Fair Elections (SAFE) Act passed in 2011, ballots were not tossed if a disabled person’s signature did not exactly match one on file or if someone else signed on behalf of a physically unable voter.

As a result, 23 unsigned ballots from disabled people were tossed in a local election where only 24,120 votes were cast according to deputy elections commissioner Laura Bianco. Some of the races in the county were decided by far fewer than 23 votes.

“If you’re a person with quadriplegia or a senior and don’t have the same ability to mark a ballot as you did when you were younger,” the ballot would be thrown out, Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, told Newsweek. “It’s really a problem for people with disabilities. We need to get it fixed.”

Jim Howell, a member of the Sedgwick County Commission, which acts as the board of canvassers, said he believes it is an “unintended consequence” of the law.

Despite the result, Howell actually voted for the SAFE Act while on the state legislature, he told Newsweek.

Another county commissioner agreed that depriving disabled voters of a voice in elections is unjust, but that the SAFE Act otherwise is a good law for Kansas.

“We need to have voting requirements that are logically legitimate and make sure that we have people registered to vote before they vote, but I think in our zeal to make sure this is a good, strict law that perhaps we’ve gone overboard,” county commission chairman Dave Unruh told Newsweek. “It’s the only one that I have had a personal issue with.”

Director of Elections Bryan Caskey, who works under Kobach, said that the November 13 election was the first time he had been made aware that disabled voters’ mail-in ballots were not being counted. Changes in state law must go through the legislature.

“If we decide to introduce a bill, the secretary [Kobach] will make the decision, and we can go before the legislature—just like anybody else,” Caskey told Newsweek.

State Representative Blake Carpenter, who lives in Sedgwick County and is vice chairman of the elections committee, said he plans to introduce a bill that can remedy the problem in some way.

“I would think this is not a partisan issue,” Carpenter told Newsweek. “I think that both Democrats and Republicans will be able to agree that this is an issue and will be something that will be able to get fixed pretty quickly.”

Nichols of the disability rights center, which provides free legal services to the disabled, requested the names of the voters whose ballots were discounted and said he left a meeting with Caskey “feeling good about the fact that the secretary of state’s office seemed legitimately and rightfully concerned about this issue.”

The “unintended consequence” is perhaps the only statue of the SAFE Act that stakeholders in the state and voting rights activists are on the same page on.

Most state lawmakers and county commissioners back the more controversial parts of the law—that Kansas residents must prove U.S. citizenship when registering to vote and provide a photo ID when casting a ballot in person—while disability rights activists were opposed to the act as a whole since Kobach introduced it.

People with disabilities struggle significantly more to gather and present such documents, Nichols said.

“We think that’s an artificial barrier, and we think it’s a barrier to everyone, but it uniquely harms people with disabilities,” he told Newsweek.

Little evidence has surfaced that noncitizens were voting in Kansas, as Kobach claimed to justify the SAFE Act. Trump convened his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May to come up with evidence that millions of noncitizens voted in the 2016 election. The panel, led by Kobach, requested voter information from all 50 states but faces multiple lawsuits and will not meet for the remainder of this year.

Howell last week introduced an item for the county’s legislative platform that would cause the state legislature to review and update the procedure for someone with total disability to successfully complete the mail ballot process. It was approved 4-1 by county commissioners last Wednesday.

County Counselor Eric Yost acknowledged the disabled voters’ ballots was a “serious issue.”

“I’m still kind of investigating to see what the cause of it is,” Yost told Newsweek. “If it’s our election commissioner or secretary of state or just the law itself, if we’re following it too faithfully.”

http://www.newsweek.com/disabled-americans-lost-voting-rights-under-trump-election-fraud-commissioners-720492