Trump Administration

‘How Can You Work … For A President That Undermines Your Work?’

July 31, 2017 Mattathias Schwartz, www.propublica.org Educate! CIA, Intelligence, Trump Administration

By Mattathias Schwartz for Pro Publica - Last week, Dan Coats, the former senator from Indiana and current head of the U.S. intelligence community, was interviewed by NBC’s Lester Holt in front of a live audience at the Aspen Security Forum, a gathering where diplomats, journalists and top U.S. officials mingle with business executives in between livestreamed panel discussions on world affairs. (The hourlong discussion was posted on YouTube.) ProPublica has obtained internal talking points, apparently written by one of Coats’ aides, anticipating questions that Holt was likely to ask. They offer a window into the euphemisms and evasions necessary to handle a pressing issue for Coats: how to lead the intelligence community at a time when the president has insulted it on Twitter and denigrated its work while questions about Russian influence consume ever more time and attention in Washington. Sixteen of the 26 questions addressed by the talking points concerned internal White House politics, the Russia investigation, or the president himself. One question put the challenges facing Coats this way: “How can you work as DNI for a president that undermines your work?”

#OutragedAndUnafraid: Undocumented Youth Confront Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Agenda

July 27, 2017 Jake Johnson, www.commondreams.org Resist! Immigration, Trump Administration, Undocumented

By Jake Johnson for Common Dreams - "For the last 20 years, Republicans and Democrats have failed to deliver on promise after promise to the immigrant community. We will not put our trust in them. We are putting our faith in our people." As the Trump administration continues to take aim at sanctuary cities and carry out a "draconian" immigration agenda that has led to a large spike in detentions, undocumented youth immigrants and activists took to the streets of Austin, Texas, on Wednesday to both demand that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) be kept in place and to "pledge their renewed commitment to winning permanent protection, dignity, and respect for all eleven million undocumented immigrants." In a statement, Cosecha organizers said that Wednesday's actions were meant to call attention to the fact that Texas "leads the country in mass deportations and recently passed SB4, the most anti-immigrant statewide law."Wednesday marks the first time undocumented youth have carried out a day of civil disobedience of this magnitude since President Donald Trump took office, according to Movimiento Cosecha, the group that organized the effort.

Trump Administration Makes Key Decision That Threatens Water Supply Of Millions

July 25, 2017 Reynard Loki, www.alternet.org Educate! Trump Administration, Water

By Reynard Loki for AlterNet - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly issuing a proposed rule to undo the Clean Water Rule that was enacted in May 2015, under President Obama’s last term. The rule protects the water supply for more than 117 million Americans. Also known as the Waters of the United States (WOTUS), the Clean Water Rule puts limits on pollution in the wetlands, rivers and streams that feed the nation's larger waterways. Those limits are essential for protecting the safety of the drinking water on which millions of American rely. The rule also safeguards those waters for swimming, fishing and other activities. In addition, the rule helps to maintain the biological integrity of those smaller waterways, in turn protecting wildlife by keeping aquatic ecosystems healthy. When the rule was issued, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers resolved decades of legal debate among politicians, environmentalists and public health advocates, saying that smaller waterways across the nations—tens of millions of acres of wetlands and thousands of streams—actually qualify for legal protection under the Clean Water Act, the primary federal law that protects communities and ecosystems from water pollution.

The Torture-Friendly Trump Administration

July 22, 2017 Medea Benjamin, www.otherwords.org Educate! Torture, Trump Administration

By Medea Benjamin for Other Words - Only stupid people say torture works — and one of them is sitting in the White House. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Donald Trump is pro-torture. He said on the campaign trail he’d approve waterboarding “in a heartbeat,” plus “a hell of a lot worse.” He added: “Only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work.” There are certainly a lot of stupid people then, because everyone from interrogators to researchers have repeatedly concluded that torture doesn’t work. People will say whatever you want them to say to make the pain stop, making torture not only inhumane but also bad for intelligence. A 2009 Senate Armed Services Committee review concluded that torture “damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.” That’s why the Senate voted in 2015 to turn the presidential ban on torture into official law. To his credit, Trump did water down his original support for torture, allowing Defense Secretary James Mattis — who opposes torture — to override him. But if the Trump administration is now opposed to torture, why are they nominating the architects of America’s torture fiasco to key posts?

Trumpcare Is Dead. ‘Single Payer Is The Only Real Answer’

July 21, 2017 Zaid Jilani, www.theintercept.com Create! Health Care, Medicare, Single payer health care, Trump Administration

By Zaid Jilani for The Intercept - THANKS TO A PAIR of defections from more GOP senators late yesterday, the Republican plan to repeal and replace or simply repeal the Affordable Care Act is dead — for now. But the health care status quo is far from popular, with 57 percent of Americans telling Gallup pollsters in March that they “personally worry” a “great deal” about health care costs. Many health care activists are now pushing to adopt what is called a “single payer” health care system, where one public health insurance program would cover everyone. The U.S. currently has one federal program like that: Medicare. Expanding it polls very well. One of the activists pushing for such an expansion is Max Fine, someone who is intimately familiar with the program — because he helped create it. Fine is the last surviving member of President Kennedy’s Medicare Task Force, and he was also President Johnson’s designated debunker against the health insurance industry. Fine, now 91, wrote to The Intercept recently to explain that Medicare was never intended to cover only the elderly population, and that expanding it to everyone was a goal that its architects long campaigned for. “Three years after the enactment of Medicare, in Dec. 1968, a Committee of 100 leading Americans was formed to campaign for single payer National Heath Insurance.

Outraged By FERC “Abuses,” Communities Demand Senators Block Trump Nominees

July 21, 2017 Anne Meador, www.dcmediagroup.us Resist! FERC, Trump Administration

By Anne Meador for DC Media Group - Opponents to the GOP healthcare plan weren’t the only ones paying visits to U.S. Senators on Capitol Hill today. Fracking and gas pipelines are also proving to be contentious issues leading up to a key vote on confirmations to a federal agency. Communities facing the construction of interstate gas pipelines, compressor stations and storage facilities have been raising a ruckus for several years now about the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The agency has been at a virtual standstill since February when Chairman Norman Bay resigned, leaving too few commissioners to approve major projects. Opponents would like to keep it that way. Environmentalists from organizations including Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Echo Action NH and representatives of communities impacted by gas infrastructure dropped off letters and held meetings with Senators, demanding that they block confirmations of Commissioners to FERC until the agency is reformed. “The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is abusing its authority and the law in alarming ways,” says the letter delivered to lawmakers today. “After three decades of FERC’s unaccountable and irresponsible approach to energy development, the trust of the American people has been strained beyond the breaking point.”

Secret Industry Teams Rolling Back Regulations For Trump Admin

July 13, 2017 Robert Faturechi and Danielle Ivory, www.propublica.org Educate! Regulation, Trump Administration

By Robert Faturechi for ProPublica and Danielle Ivory for The New York Times - We’ve found many appointees with potential conflicts of interest, including two who might personally profit if particular regulations are undone. This story was co-published with The New York Times. President Trump entered office pledging to cut red tape, and within weeks, he ordered his administration to assemble teams to aggressively scale back government regulations. But the effort — a signature theme in Trump’s populist campaign for the White House — is being conducted in large part out of public view and often by political appointees with deep industry ties and potential conflicts. Most government agencies have declined to disclose information about their deregulation teams. But ProPublica and The New York Times identified 71 appointees, including 28 with potential conflicts, through interviews, public records and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Renewable Energy Is Becoming So Cheap US Will Meet Paris Commitments

July 11, 2017 Zoë Schlanger, www.qz.com Create! Climate Change, Donald Trump, New Economy, Renewable Energy, Trump Administration

By Zoë Schlanger for Quartz - Research analysts at Morgan Stanley believe that renewable energy like solar and wind power are hurtling towards a level of ubiquity where not even politics can hinder them. Renewable energy is simply becoming the cheapest option, fast. Basic economics, the analysts say, suggest that the US will exceed its commitments in the Paris agreement regardless of whether or not president Donald Trump withdraws, as he’s stated he will. “We project that by 2020, renewables will be the cheapest form of new-power generation across the globe,” with the exception of a few countries in Southeast Asia, the Morgan Stanley analysts said in a report published Thursday. “By our forecasts, in most cases favorable renewables economics rather than government policy will be the primary driver of changes to utilities’ carbon emissions levels,” they wrote. “For example, notwithstanding president Trump’s stated intention to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, we expect the US to exceed the Paris commitment of a 26-28% reduction in its 2005-level carbon emissions by 2020.” Globally, the price of solar panels has fallen 50% between 2016 and 2017, they write. And in countries with favorable wind conditions, the costs associated with wind power “can be as low as one-half to one-third that of coal- or natural gas-fired power plants.”

60 Days Of Deportations And Detainments Under Trump

July 11, 2017 Yessenia Funes, www.colorlines.com Educate! Deportations, Immigration, Trump Administration, Undocumented

By Yessenia Funes for Color Lines - Tactics once reserved for violent criminals are now targeting undocumented youth and parents. In a cover story published today (June 16), Slate lays out 60 scenes from life as an undocumented immigrant in President Donald Trump’s America, pulled from the Columbia Journalism School’s Global Migration Project. Slate starts with February 20, the day the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued two memos on immigration enforcement. The following day, 25-year-old Edwin Romero, an undocumented youth who would have qualified for citizenship under the proposed (and failed) DREAM Act, was arrested for a traffic violation but, ultimately held overnight in jail on an “immigration hold.” Then, in March, there was a teacher in Honolulu who wrote a staff-wide email that he wouldn’t teach any undocumented student. The examples go on and on—up until April 20, exactly 60 days after the DHS memos. As Slate points out, fewer than 9 percent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees have been connected to violent crime.

Study Undercuts FCC Chair’s Reason For Rolling Back Net Neutrality

July 11, 2017 David Armiak, www.prwatch.org Educate! FCC, Net Neutrality, Trump Administration

By David Armiak for PR Watch - A recent publication in the International Journal for Communication (IJoC) calls into questions the research cited by current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai as his primary justification for plan to roll back net neutrality rules. Dwayne Winseck, Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University and Jeff Pooley, Associate Professor and Chair of Media & Communication at Muhlenberg College examined and found that an influential paper written by economists Gerald Faulhaber, Hal Singer and Augustus Urschel and cited by Pai "is riddled with factual errors and unsubstantiated claims." Winseck and Pooley also revealed that a longer version of the same paper had been submitted twice by an industry-funded group to the FCC earlier, but that was not initially mentioned in the IJoC article. "It is important research, revealing how corrupt and duplicitous the FCC has become in the Trump era," Robert W. McChesney, Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois-Champaign said of the new article. Winseck and Pooley's article undercuts FCC Chair Pai plans to do away with net neutrality after ten long years of grassroots campaigning by democracy...

No SWAT Zone

July 10, 2017 Tara Tabassi And Ali Issa, www.thenewinquiry.com Resist! Militarized police, Police, SWAT, Trump Administration

By Tara Tabassi And Ali Issa for The New Inquiry - A volunteer screams in pain as Hollywood-grade prosthetics litter a football field strewn with body parts and gore. A “Muslim man” just fired from his job returns to his office as a figure hooded in black, takes an ex co-worker hostage, and yells he wants “to hurt the Jews for what they have done to him and his people”; a bucket bubbles over with smoking “chemical weapon” liquid at his feet; a banner proclaims, “We are the 99%” and “No War for Oil” with protesters lurking behind it. These three meticulously scripted scenarios are typical of the “training exercises” demonstrated at conventions for SWAT teams—or Special Weapons and Tactics (previously known as Special Weapons Attack Teams). They are often accompanied by vendors selling the latest in high-tech military weapons, gadgets, and gear. Colt Guns, Boeing, and Combined Systems, Inc. (CSI) are frequent sponsors. These are accompanied by “shwag”: pins that urge to “face-shoot the mother fucker,” t-shirts that read “Black Rifles Matter” or “Keep Calm and Return Fire” printed beneath an American flag, and free bracelets featuring a black and white American flag with the “thin blue line,” symbols long associated with a “War on Cops” and the “Blue Lives Matter” slogan.

U.S. Conference Of Mayors Opposes Military-Heavy Trump Budget

June 27, 2017 Staff, www.worldbeyondwar.org Resist! Budgets, Trump Administration, US military

By Staff of World Beyond War - “We are very excited that the entire US Conference of Mayors, from major metropoles such as New York City and Los Angeles to small rural townships, understand that the resources being sucked up by the Pentagon to wage endless wars overseas should be used to address our crumbling infrastructure, the climate crisis and poverty at home and abroad. Congress and the Trump administration should listen to these mayors, as they reflect the needs and hopes of their constituents, not the greed of corporate donors,” said Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK. “The Peace Council applauds the resolve of major city mayors to dramatically cut the U.S. military budget and to take the funds saved to provide money for jobs, education, housing, transportation, seniors, youth, rebuild our roads, bridges, public transportation much more,” said Henry Lowendorf of the US Peace Council. “

The Grizzled, Stubborn Lawyers Protecting The Environment From Trump

June 20, 2017 Nick Stockton, www.wired.com Resist! Environment, Law, Pipelines, Trump Administration

By Nick Stockton for Wired - ON HIS FOURTH full day in office, President Trump signed an executive order that was supposed to settle this whole Dakota Access Pipeline thing—no more delays due to protests, no more reconsidering the route because of environmental worries. And for a while, it seemed to work. The protest camps are gone, and the pipe has been pumping oil since March. But Thursday, a federal judge ordered a do-over on the rush-job environmental review Trump ordered back in January. Trump came into office aiming for a blitzkrieg on environmental regulations. He got trench warfare. That's because firing from the other side of no man's land is a nimble alliance of environmental groups that have spent decades preparing for the likes of him. You have probably heard of many of them: the Sierra Club, National Resources Defense Council, EarthJustice, and so on. Others are smaller, focused on regional issues—like the Standing Rock Sioux that just won a small victory against the Dakota Access Pipeline. What they all have in common are stubborn, attrition-minded legal teams. Trump's assault is just a more bombastic version of what these lawyers have weathered under past administrations. And if there's any green left in the government by 2020, they'll be the ones responsible.

Trump Rolls Back Civil Rights Efforts Across The Government

June 19, 2017 Jessica Huseman and Annie Waldman, www.propublica.org Educate! Civil Rights, Donald Trump, Trump Administration

By Jessica Huseman and Annie Waldman for Pro Publica - Previously unannounced directives will limit the Department of Justice’s use of a storied civil rights enforcement tool, and loosen the Department of Education’s requirements on investigations. Elizabeth Hill, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, told ProPublica that the new “enforcement instructions seek to clear out the backlog while giving every complaint the individualized and thorough consideration it deserves.” Lifting the requirement of collecting three years of data will allow complaints to be addressed “much more efficiently and quickly,” she said in an emailed statement. Read the full statement here. For decades, the Department of Justice has used court-enforced agreements to protect civil rights, successfully desegregating school systems, reforming police departments, ensuring access for the disabled and defending the religious. Now, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the DOJ appears to be turning away from this storied tool, called consent decrees. Top officials in the DOJ civil rights division have issued verbal instructions through the ranks to seek settlements without consent decrees — which would result in no continuing court oversight.

Statement Of Cuba In Reaction To Trump’s New Cuba Policy

June 19, 2017 Staff, www.minrex.gob.cu Resist! Cuba, Donald Trump, Trump Administration, US Foreign Policy

By Staff of Cuba Min Rex - On June 16, 2017, US President Donald Trump delivered a speech full of hostile anti-Cuban rhetoric reminiscent of the times of open confrontation with our country in a Miami theater. He announced his government’s Cuba policy, which rolls back the progress achieved over the last two years since December 17, 2014, when Presidents Raúl Castro and Barack Obama announced the decision to re-establish diplomatic relations and engage in a process towards the normalization of bilateral relations. In what constitutes a setback in the relations between both countries, President Trump, gave a speech and signed a policy directive titled “National Security Presidential Memorandum”, which provides the elimination of private educational “people-to-people” exchanges and greater control over all travelers to Cuba, as well as the prohibition of business, trade and financial transactions between US companies and certain Cuban companies linked to the Armed Revolutionary Forces and the intelligence and security services, under the alleged objective of depriving us from income.

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