Trump may be best remembered for his use of Twitter as a bully pulpit to stoke controversy or browbeat opponents, but the noise his tweets generated often distracted from the big policy changes he made over his four-year term https://t.co/shNVNMoDfg

During his rollercoaster presidency, the focus was often on what Trump was saying and not on what he was doing. But a review of his policies shows that he had a real effect on people’s lives. Here's a closer look 👇
➖ China:

The Trump administration put China’s rise in the spotlight and helped forge a bipartisan and increasingly adversarial U.S. view of the world’s second-largest economy
From a raft of tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese imports to sanctions against top officials and a muscular use of penalties against top Chinese companies like Huawei, ZTE, SMIC and TikTok owner ByteDance, Trump hit Beijing on a variety of fronts
Tensions have risen especially over the past year with Trump repeatedly blaming China for the coronavirus, which originated in the city of Wuhan. The two global powers are increasingly at odds over a range of other issues, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and the South China Sea
➖ Economy:

The U.S. economy under Trump had two distinct phases: pre-and post-COVID-19.

Before the pandemic hit in March of 2020, unemployment had hit 50-year lows, wages were rising for lower-income jobs, and the gap between Black and white unemployment was narrowing
The landmark tax bill Trump signed in late 2017 pushed economic growth over 3% for a brief period.

Things could have been better, but an 18-month tariff war with China, which cost U.S. companies billions.

Three Federal Reserve rate cuts in 2019 helped blunt the impact
The pandemic, and the administration’s failure to control it, risks leaving the economy scarred long after Trump leaves office.

About 21 million jobs disappeared immediately, and 9 million of those still haven’t come back
➖ Climate Change:

Trump routinely dismissed scientific consensus that industry was causing global warming and gutted federal science agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior, and interfered with their scientific advisory panels
Trump also boasted about removing the U.S. from the global Paris Agreement on climate change. He styled himself as a friend of fossil fuels, courting coal workers and oil executives alike and made good on promises to ease costs for energy companies by rolling back regulations
While oil and gas companies praised corporate tax cuts, they grumbled about Trump’s trade war with China disrupting supply chains and jeopardizing demand for U.S. natural gas exports
Many of Trump’s deregulation efforts were successfully challenged in court due to bureaucratic errors in rulemaking procedures
➖ Judicial Appointments:

Trump wasn’t happy when judges he appointed ruled against his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, but his reshaping of the judiciary in a conservative direction is still one of his biggest legacies
During his four years in office, he appointed three Supreme Court justices, the first time that has been done since President Richard Nixon appointed four in his first term.

The court now has a rock-solid 6-3 conservative majority
President Trump can thank Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who made judicial nominations a priority, for his ability to appoint not just Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett but also dozens of lower court judges
Read more on how Trump's policies have had a real effect on people’s lives in the areas of energy, immigration, race relations, foreign policy and more https://t.co/shNVNMoDfg

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So let's see a show of hands: how many of you even knew Huber was digging into the Clinton Foundation? While he was assisting Horowitz in his digging into the FISC/Steele Dossier/Fusion GPS/Perkins Coie/DNC/Hillary campaign stuff?


I'm sure Huber is coming to DC *only* to discuss Clinton Foundation things with Meadows and his committee.

He for certain, like, won't be huddling with Horowitz or that new guy, Whitaker while he's in town. That would NEVER HAPPEN. [wink wink wink!] 😉

I just spent a year and a half telling you they will SHOW YOU what they are REALLY DOING when they are READY.

Not before.

No matter how much whining is done about it.

I'm exhausted but it's worth it.

Now you know why they're f**king TERRIFIED of Whitaker, the closer tapped by Trump to come in late for the hysterical fireworks that will ensue soon.

Look who's suddenly fund raising for his legal defen- er, I mean, ha ha - his reelection campaign!
My piece in the NY Times today: "the Trump administration is denying applications submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services at a rate 37 percent higher than the Obama administration did in 2016."

Based on this analysis: "Denials for immigration benefits—travel documents, work permits, green cards, worker petitions, etc.—increased 37 percent since FY 2016. On an absolute basis, FY 2018 will see more than about 155,000 more denials than FY 2016."
https://t.co/Bl0naOO0sh


"This increase in denials cannot be credited to an overall rise in applications. In fact, the total number of applications so far this year is 2 percent lower than in 2016. It could be that the higher denial rate is also discouraging some people from applying at all.."

Thanks to @gsiskind for his insightful comments. The increase in denials, he said, is “significant enough to make one think that Congress must have passed legislation changing the requirements. But we know they have not.”

My conclusion:

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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)