January 29, 2017
January 27, 2017
SESSIONS REFUSING TO RECUSE HIMSELF:
“Attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions won’t commit to recusing himself from potential Justice Department investigations into controversies involving Trump — from Russia to business conflicts of interest — despite his vigorous campaigning on behalf of Trump during the 2016 election season,” Politico’s Seung Min Kim reports. “In written responses to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions said repeatedly that he is ‘not aware of a basis to recuse myself’ from issues surrounding Trump such as potential violations of the Emoluments Clause, a constitutional ban on officials accepting payments from foreign governments. That differs from Sessions’ vow to recuse himself from any ongoing issues involving the federal probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server. Sessions said during his confirmation hearing that he would step aside from any such investigations because his political rhetoric against Clinton during the campaign ‘could place my objectivity in question.”
The Post’s Editorial Board says the Senate should not confirm Sessions until he agrees to such a recusal: “Mr. Trump has tapped Rod J. Rosenstein, a respected career prosecutor, to be deputy attorney general. Mr. Sessions should have no qualms about entrusting him with these politically vexing issues. It would raise confidence in his Justice Department and save him plenty of headaches.”
"I do believe we regularly have fraudulent activities occur during election cycles.’ …
“President-day civil liberties advocates fear Session’s and Trump’s views on voter fraud could serve as a basis for them to support voter ID laws that disenfranchise poor or minority voters, such as the one in North Carolina that was overturned by the Supreme Court last summer. Studies have shown in-person voter fraud, which the laws are designed to prevent, is exceptionally rare. They are also concerned that Sessions hailed as ‘good news, I think, for the South’ a Supreme Court decision that gutted a critical section of the Voting Rights Act. …
RETAINING COMEY:
Hillary Clinton believes very strongly that FBI director James Comey cost her the election with his two announcements during the run-up to Nov. 8, and she’s angry that he did not publicly discuss evidence of Russian interference on behalf of Trump. Comey’s decisions to discuss the Clinton probe publicly are currently being investigated by the Justice Department inspector general. At a White House reception on Sunday, Trump literally embraced Comey. “He’s become more famous than me,” the president said.
Then the news broke yesterday that Trump has asked Comey to stay on. Normally, this would not be surprising because he’s only four years into a 10-year term. But the president had said previously that he would not decide whether he should stay on until they had a private meeting.
And this is all playing out against a very awkward backdrop: Comey briefed Trump last month on the dossier that alleged that Moscow had gathered compromising financial, political and personal material about him. “The ensuing conversation came with seemingly unavoidable conflicts,” Matt Zapotosky, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Millernote. “It is not clear whether Comey told Trump that the FBI had or was still pursuing allegations made in the dossier, but doing so would have involved telling an incoming president with significant power over the FBI that his associates were potential investigative targets.”
His greatest looming challenge will be presiding over ongoing investigations whose dimensions and direction are unclear. “Those alleged entanglements continue to expand,” Matt, Ellen and Greg write. “U.S. officials said this week that the FBI has scrutinized communications between Trump’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. … U.S. officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said they have seen no evidence of wrongdoing. … The FBI for several months has been investigating allegations that Trump associates or acquaintances, including his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, might have had improper contact with Russian officials or intermediaries, U.S. officials said. The bureau is also still examining allegations in the dossier that Comey discussed with Trump in New York last month, according to a U.S. official.”
January 26, 2017
Donald Trump faced a fresh torrent of criticism on Wednesday as he moved ahead with plans to build a wall on the Mexican border via executive order. Trump also signed an executive order that could slash funding for so-called “sanctuary cities”, and reinstated the “secure communities” program, which encourages broader cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agencies.
President Trump signed an executive action that calls for work to begin quickly on the wall he promised as a candidate. He also signed an order to triple the number of immigration officers and crack down on sanctuary cities. It remained unclear how Trump’s directive would speed up construction or pay for additional border control agents.
Donald Trump has said that he intends to launch a “major investigation into voter fraud”, as controversy continues over his false claim that millions of people voted illegally in last year’s presidential election.
It is unclear who will carry out Trump’s call for a “major investigation” related to his unproven assertion that millions of illegal votes were cast in the presidential election.
The president’s tweets on Wednesday morning did not specifically state a desire to review the 2016 presidential election, which he won in the electoral college despite Hillary Clinton winning about 3m more votes.
Trump cited improper voter registration as the focus of the putative investigation
January 25, 2017
By Matt O'Brien
Donald Trump came to bury the liberal international order, not to praise it.
There was no invocation of our democratic faith. No paean to a more perfect union. No peroration about the light of liberty we hope to see go up around the world. Instead, Trump's inaugural address was devoted to the idea that “it is the right of all nations to put their interests first” and that “we must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.”
This was a zero-sum view of the world where the winners are the ones selling things overseas and the losers are the ones buying them. Where there are no allies, only competitors. No principles, only power. Everything, in other words, is just a deal where one country is trying to pull one over on another. That's even true of something like the European Union, which Trump said earlier this week is “basically a vehicle for Germany” to get what it wants. Indeed, he seems skeptical of the entire postwar architecture of alliances and institutions meant to make the world safe for democracy and open for trade. As former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt pointed out, Trump didn't talk about leading the “free” world but rather the “civilized” one. There's a Putin-size difference between the two.
Whereas past presidents have thought that our values were our interests, Trump seems to believe that our values have only gotten in the way of them.
January 24, 2017
| By Amber Phillips |
President Trump's first speech to America was short (less than 18 minutes), gloomy (among the words he used to describe America: ("carnage" "tombstones" "trapped" "rusted out") and directed almost exclusively at the white, working-class community that voted for him.
As much as we can read into an 18-minute speech, here are five key lines from Trump's address that illuminate how he might run the country:
1) "For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost." — Seconds earlier, Trump had thanked the Obamas, sitting directly behind him, "for their gracious aid" during the transition.
Then, he proceeded to tear into them and pretty much every member of Congress (also sitting directly behind him). "The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country," Trump continued.
The moment underscored just how much Trump despises Washington — and how he has built a brand on that distaste.
President Trump shakes hands with former president Barack Obama. (Jonathan Newton /The Washington Post)
2) "What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether government is controlled by the people." — Trump's address was zero percent ideological. He mentioned very few, if any, policies he wants to pursue. That resonates with our understanding of Trump: He is not an ideologue nor particularly driven by policy.
It also raises the possibility he'll leave the legislating to others — like, say, the GOP Congress. It's a possibility that would make House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) very happy, given that the two appear to fundamentally disagree on important issues like trade, Medicare reform and Russia.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and President-elect Donald Trump shortly after the election. (Morry Gash/AP)
3) "The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now." — This was vintage Trump. Trump's supporters say the strength of his candidacy lay in connecting directly with working-class voters who are sick of Washington rancor, sick of economic uncertainty and feel like their country has left them behind. Trump's campaign and his inaugural address was directed squarely at these folks, suggesting that he will make easing the middle class's economic anxiety a major focus of his presidency.
The Post's Marc Fisher, who co-wrote a book about Trump, elaborates: "[H]is speech made clear that he intends to govern as he campaigned, in direct communion with his followers, bypassing the usual niceties and channels of power."
Trump waves to the crowd as he is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
4): "Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now." — This was an remarkably dark moment in a remarkably dark speech, which is consistent with Trump's campaign rhetoric that helped propel him to this moment.
5) "We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs." — Trump's address was just as protectionist as it was populist. He mentioned "borders" three times (as many times as he said "great"); all in the context of defending, protecting and strengthening. This, too, is part of Trump's brand: America is struggling because the world is taking advantage of its weakness.
Talk of borders received some of the loudest applause from the hardcore supporters who gathered in the rain to cheer him on.
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More than a million Americans protest at women’s marches as Trump takes office.
More than 2 million people gathered in Washington and in cities around the country and the world Saturday to mount a roaring rejoinder to the inauguration of President Trump. The organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, who originally sought a permit for a gathering of 200,000, said Saturday that as many as half a million people participated.
They turned Washington’s National Mall into a sea of pink on Saturday, sending the first concerted message of grassroots opposition to Donald Trump since he moved into the White House.
In NYC, the mayor’s office estimated that 400,000 people took part in the march along Fifth Avenue toward Trump Tower, and shut down part of Manhattan for the day.
The marches were the kickoff for what their leaders hope will be a sustained campaign of protest in a polarized nation, riven by an election that raised unsettling questions about American values, out-of-touch elites and barriers to women’s ambitions.
David Axelrod, one of Obama’s closest advisers and an architect of his campaign strategies, said it is incumbent upon Trump’s opponents to do more than march.
“This is an impressive display today. But if it isn’t channeled into organizing in a focused way, then it is cathartic but not in the long run meaningful,” he said. “That’s the challenge for the progressive community.”
January 23, 2017
January 21, 2017
Inequality and the downward mobility of millions of Americans put Trump into the White House. Consider: Counties won by Trump account for just 36 percent of the total national economy; counties won by Hillary Clinton account for 64 percent. This degree of inequality has created large communities of people with no future -- whose only aspiration, understandably, is to turn back the clock.
Trump himself is all ego, hate, and lying bombast. He will do nothing for them. But when so many Americans see no future but only the past, those of us who want to move the nation forward must respond.
January 20, 2017
Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States.
In his inaugural address, Mr. Trump appeared to herald the end of a 70-year American experiment to shape a world eager to follow its lead. In keeping with his insurgent campaign, Mr. Trump dispensed with appeals to unity or attempts to build bridges to his opponents.
Trump’s inaugural address described an “American carnage” that he promised to fix.
The 45th president delivered a fiery nationalist manifesto in which he pledged fealty to all Americans, but made little overt attempt to soothe a nation still wounded from arguably the ugliest election season of modern times. He also signaled that he intends to govern as if waging a permanent political campaign. The president put everyone in power on notice, Republicans and Democrats alike, and said he’ll speak for forgotten Americans. He began his presidency as he ran his campaign — with blunt, searing talk about a crippled nation in dire need of bold, immediate action. This, he made clear in case anyone had not yet gotten it, will be a very different presidency.
Light crowds, gloomy weather and protests welcome the new president to the White House
- The White House ordered an immediate freeze of pending regulations on Friday night until they can be reviewed by the Trump administration.
The order, which directs federal agencies to minimize the health-care law’s “economic and regulatory burdens,” appears to give room for the government to stop enforcing the penalty for people who fail to carry the insurance required of most Americans.
Donald Trump has assembled the worst Cabinet in American history
An extraordinary combination of inexperience, ignorance, ethical problems, and hostility toward the very agencies they'll lead.
January 18, 2017
Manning’s prison sentence commuted
Chelsea Manning, the US army soldier who became one of the most prominent whistleblowers of modern times when she exposed the nature of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who then went on to pay the price with a 35-year military prison sentence, is to be freed in May after Obama commuted her sentence just three days before he leaves the White House. Manning, a transgender woman, will walk from a male military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on 17 May, almost seven years to the day since she was arrested at a base outside Baghdad for offenses relating to the leaking of a vast trove of US state secrets to the website WikiLeaks. Melinda Taylor, who serves on the legal team for Julian Assange, said that the WikiLeaks founder was “standing by” after pledging to agree to US extradition if Manning was granted clemency. Meanwhile NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leave to remain in Russia has been extended for three years, his lawyer has said.
Trump Adviser Had Five Calls with Russian Envoy on Day of Sanctions: Sources — Reuters
It remains to be seen, of course, how much notice Trump takes of what Kelly, Tillerson, and Mattis tell him. If he follows the model of President Obama during his first term, he will largely run foreign policy out of the White House, where he will be advised by a retired general of a different stripe, Michael Flynn, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Some of Flynn’s ties to Russia are well known: in 2015 he attended a banquet in Moscow that Putin also attended. This week, it emerged that late last month, on the day that the Obama Administration kicked out dozens of Russian diplomats in retaliation for Kremlin-inspired interference in the election, Flynn spoke on the phone five times with the Russian ambassador to Washington. Also on Friday, it was reported that Russia will invite representatives of the Trump Administration to join talks on Syria that the Obama Administration had been excluded from.
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January 17, 2017
In Rocky Hearing, Sec of State Choice Rex Tillerson Tries to Separate from Trump — The New York Times
In sum, the shape of Trump’s domestic agenda is already clear: it is largely the agenda of Paul Ryan, the Heritage Foundation, and the Federalist Society. To the extent that any of the populism Trump expounded on the campaign stump remains, it appears to be restricted to browbeating corporations not to move their manufacturing plans abroad. In foreign policy, by contrast, there is a lot more uncertainty, and this week’s confirmation hearings for some of Trump’s foreign-policy and national-security nominees only added to the confusion.
18 Million May Lose Insurance After Repeal, Study Finds.
- The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that repealing major provisions of the Affordable Care Act would cost 18 million people their insurance in the first year.
- The number of uninsured Americans would increase to 32 million in 10 years, while causing insurance premiums to double over that time.
NY TIMES
Donald Trump’s alleged ties with Russia overshadow confirmation hearings
Donald Trump’s picks to lead the CIA and the Department of Defense both sounded warnings over Russia’s growing global ambitions during their confirmation hearings before the Senate on Thursday. Mike Pompeo, Trump’s choice for CIA director, sided with intelligence officials who accuse Moscow of attempting to skew the US election. His comments came amid an increasingly bitter row between Trump and US intelligence agencies. James Mattis, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, told the Senate armed services committee that Russia had “chosen to be a strategic competitor, an adversary in key areas”. Meanwhile, Eric Swalwell, the ranking member of the CIA subcommittee of the House permanent select committee on intelligence, has called for an independent bipartisan commission to investigate Russian influence on the US election. The commission was needed to “to set the record straight on what happened, and to recommend how best to protect ourselves from now on”, Swalwell writes for the Guardian. Trump’s inauguration is next Friday, though some have already begun to wonder what happens now and to speculate as to whether he could be impeached.
Trump lashes out over Russia claims.
Donald Trump’s first press conference since July had originally been called to demonstrate how he would avoid conflicts of interest involving his business empire. But the event was heavily overshadowed by news that the FBI had been handed unverified but potentially damaging intelligence, including claims of alleged sexual impropriety in a Moscow hotel room. The president-elect attacked intelligence agencies and specific news organizations, notably CNN, which reported that Trump and Obama had been briefed about a summary of a memo on Trump’s alleged links with Moscow, and BuzzFeed, which published the document – that claimed Russian operatives had gathered compromising material against him – in full. Trump called the dossier “fake news”. The person who produced the dossier detailing the allegations against Trump was named on Wednesday as 52-year-old former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, who co-founded the London-based firm Orbis Business Intelligence. Here’s the story of how the documents came to light.
January 16, 2017
January 11, 2017
January 10, 2017
NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON.
If it turns out that Russian operatives have compromising information on Trump, and that he and his campaign collaborated with Russia on intervening in the presidential campaign on his behalf, that's treason.
BUZZFEED
DAILY BEAST
January 7, 2017
Putin Ordered a Cyber Campaign of Leaks and Propaganda to Help Trump, Report Says
Russia carried out a comprehensive cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential election, an operation ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin that “aspired to help” elect Donald Trump by discrediting his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a declassified report released today. The report depicts Russian interference as unprecedented in scale.
NY TIMES, DAVID SANGER
January 6, 2017
Americans can spot election meddling because they’ve been doing it for years
America gets taste of its own medicine?
While accusations of the Russian government attempting to interfere with the US election are troubling and should be taken seriously, the US is no stranger to election manipulation, writes Owen Jones. “The US is a world leader in the field of intervening in the internal affairs of other countries,” he writes. The US has intervened in a number of foreign elections, with the post-cold war Russia among the most notable.
THE GUARDIAN
January 4, 2017
Finland trials basic income for unemployed
Finland has become the first country in Europe to pay its unemployed citizens a basic monthly income, amounting to €560 (£477/US$587), in a unique social experiment that is hoped to cut government red tape, reduce poverty and boost employment. Olli Kangas of the Finnish government agency KELA, which is responsible for the country’s social benefits, said the scheme’s idea was to abolish the “disincentive problem” among the unemployed. The trial aimed to discouraged people’s fears “of losing out something”, he said, adding that the selected persons would continue to receive the €560 even after obtaining a job.
Cuomo Proposes Free Tuition at New York State Colleges for Eligible Students
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo seized on a potent issue that energized younger Democrats during the presidential race, pledging on Tuesday to cover tuition costs at state colleges for hundreds of thousands of middle-and low-income New Yorkers.
Under the governor’s plan, college students who have been accepted to a state or city university in New York — including two-year community colleges — would be eligible, provided they or their family earn $125,000 or less a year.
Mr. Cuomo, a Democratic centrist thought to have presidential ambitions, has tracked left on a series of issues during his second term, championing a higher minimum wage and paid family leave, though he continues to face criticism from some progressive groups over sometimes working closely with Senate Republicans.
New York already offers in-state students one of the lowest tuition rates in the nation. Current full-time tuition at four-year State University of New York schools for residents is $6,470; at two-year community colleges, the cost is $4,350. Full-time costs for City University of New York schools are about the same. The state also provides nearly $1 billion in support through its tuition assistance program, which has an adjusted gross income limit of just under $100,000. Those awards top out at $5,165; many grants are smaller.
The tuition plan will require legislative approval, a potential challenge when the governor and lawmakers have been at odds over a raise and other issues. On Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans offered qualified support for the plan, saying they wanted more details on the proposal and adding that each party had also worked to lower tuition.
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