Reddit Politics Summary Saturday Dec 23rd 17

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This is a digest of the top posts on reddit/r/politics over the last 24 hours.
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Comey: FBI officials being 'attacked for partisan gain'

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• The new FBI director, Christopher Wray, is reorganizing some of the top leaders at the agency as he forms his own team of senior advisers, The Washington Post reported. It is common for a new director to reorganize when taking charge of an agency.

Democrat: Reorganization at FBI part of ‘larger Republican effort to undercut Mueller’

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• Wray is reorganizing senior officials within the agency, a common practice for new directors, but is also reportedly under pressure to remove officials who are seen as loyal to Comey.
• James Baker, who is stepping down as FBI General Counsel, served our country incredibly well for 25 years & deserves better," Comey said in a tweet Saturday.

Trump tweets 'thank you' to head of group accused of illegal political activity, racial bias

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Donald Trump's Approval Rating At Christmas Makes Him The Least Popular President Ever

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• Heading into the Christmas holiday, the former reality TV star had the worst approval rating in the history of modern polling for any president at this point in their first term.
• Dating all the way back to President Harry Truman in 1945, at Day 337 of their first term every president had an approval rating at least ten percentage points better than where Trump stands now at the same point in his first term, according to FiveThirtyEight.
• To put that in perspective, at this point in his first term President Barack Obama had an approval rating of about 50 percent, which wasn't stellar but still at least a dozen percentage points better than where Trump stands.

The richest 1 percent now owns more of the country's wealth than at any time in the past 50 years

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• If you have a $250,000 house but you still owe $200,000 to the bank on it, and you have no other debts or financial assets, that means your net worth is $50,000.
• For the sake of illustration, let's say that America is a country of 100 people, and all of the wealth in the country — the homes and land and financial assets — is represented by 100 slices of pie.
• But they're still doing better than the bottom 20 percent of households, who are actually in a state of pie debt: Their net worth is underwater, meaning they owe more than they have.

Government scientists blocked from the biggest meeting in their field

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• He helped organize events at the conference, was slated to participate in multiple sessions and had already booked a plane ticket and reserved a hotel room when he was denied approval for his travel.
• The annual AGU meeting is the biggest geoscience conference of the year, featuring more than 22,000 scientists from all over the world, and USGS has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to send roughly 450 researchers for the past several years. Attendees say the conference gives them an opportunity to share their research, meet with far-flung collaborators, find out about funding opportunities and keep up to date with the most advanced science and technologies in their fields.
• This year’s attendees included 252 scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – roughly the same as last year – and 735 researchers from NASA, down 13 percent from 2016.

Report: Trump suggested Haitian immigrants to US 'all have AIDS'

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Pruitt drives out EPA staff, hires unqualified former banker pal

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Judge Orders Trump’s Voter Fraud Panel To Hand Over Documents To Democratic Member

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Saturday Morning Political Cartoon Thread

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