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On the Trump Trail: This Week in Presidential News

Illustrations by Olivia Price

This post was written by Vista Copy Editor Olivia Price.

As per usual, this week’s news headlines were peppered with a healthy dose of coverage regarding the President’s most recent political endeavors. This list serves as a summary to help wade through the continuous barrage of news headlines, and recap what Trump and his administration were up to recently.

This week, the Supreme Court ruled to allow the enforcement of a policy, originally announced by the Trump administration of July 15th, regarding asylum law. The rule states that migrants who traveled through other countries on their way to the U.S., and were not denied asylum in those countries before continuing their journey, can now be turned away when they reach the U.S. border. 

Next up, President Trump this week acknowledged the issue of vaping deaths/related illnesses affecting teens and adolescents. Following the acknowledgment, Health and Human Services Secretary for the Trump administration announced that the sale of specific, flavored, vape cartridges would soon be banned in the United States. This will be done in an effort to lessen the occurrence of these lethal vaping incidents in young people. 

Earlier in the week, President Trump warned Alabama citizens of a hurricane coming their way. To do so, he used a map of the hurricane path, which onlookers speculated had been altered using a Sharpie marker, making it appear as if the hurricane would reach the Alabama coast. When forecasters at the Birmingham, Alabama office of the National Weather Service corrected this assertion, the President allegedly pressed several aides and secretaries, and in turn, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to rebuke the Alabama office for correcting him. The NOAA did so in a statement they issued later.

On Tuesday, John R. Bolton, the now-former National Security Advisor, left his post at the White House. Although Trump announced in a tweet that he had asked Bolton to leave, Bolton had written a resignation letter, leaving whether the departure was on good terms or not uncertain. It has also been speculated that Bolton and Trump’s foreign policy differences may have contributed to Bolton’s exit. 

Finally, this week President Trump insulted couple Model Chrissy Teigen and Singer John Legend in a tweet, saying basically that, although they have shown open support for criminal justice reform recently, he doesn't feel they deserve as much credit for it as they are getting, because they didn’t vocally support a bill which he championed passing through Congress last year. The result was essentially a twitter fight, in which Teigen called the President a p**sy a** b**ch and Legend asked that Melania Trump intervenes in her husband’s behavior. 

*The New York Times reporting was used as a reference for this piece.