Trump Administration

Environmentalists Disrupt Senate Energy Committee Hearing Over Trump Nominations

May 29, 2017 John Zangas, www.dcmediagroup.us Resist! Environment, FERC, Trump Administration

By John Zangas for DC Media Group - Strickler spoke from her home in Virginia Thursday evening. “The fossil fuel industry has a stranglehold on the Senate with the money it gives to control the political process,” she said. Strickler is concerned that energy policy cannot begin to change toward renewable options as promised in the Paris Climate accords, while FERC and the fossil fuel industry lobby controls Congress.Four of the protesters were arrested, while one was detained. Strickler was the only one released from custody Thursday afternoon after paying a $50 post-and-forfeit fine. The others were held over night. Ellen Barfield from Baltimore and Randy Fenstermacher from Massachusetts were also arrested. All four were initially charged with disrupting a Senate hearing. But at their arraignment on Friday, the charges were dropped for all but Lee Stewart. Stewart was also charged with destruction of government property, involving his attachment to the chair. His court date is set for June 26. BXE has been battling FERC over its approval of virtually every fossil project put before it by the gas industry. As a result, BXE activists have nicknamed FERC the “rubber stamp agency.”

Diane Ravitch: Betsy DeVos Is A Monster The Democrats Helped Create

May 27, 2017 Jacob Sugarman, www.alternet.org Educate! Betsy DeVos, Education, Trump Administration

By Jacob Sugarman for AlterNet - $9.2 billion—that's the amount the Trump administration plans to slice from the Department of Education, according to its latest budget proposal. The carnage includes deep cuts to teacher training, mental health, school arts, anti-bullying initiatives and countless other services, as well as the elimination of Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which affects as many as 400,000 college graduates. Manning the guillotine is Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who has emerged as one of the Trump administration's most reviled figures among Democrats; all 48 senators voted against her confirmation in February. What few are willing to acknowledge, however, is that their party's embrace of the education reform movement helped make DeVos' political career possible. Indeed her proposed voucher system, allowing parents to use public funding for private and religious schools, builds upon a school choice model introduced by Governor Bill Clinton and later championed by President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. In an essay for the New Republic, academic and educational policy analyst Diane Ravitch traces how the Democrats went so horribly astray on education

Trump Administration Arrests Of Noncriminal Immigrants Up 150 Percent

May 27, 2017 Kali Holloway, www.alternet.org Resist! Arrest, Immigration, Trump Administration

By Kali Holloway for AlterNet - For the most part, the Trump campaign was transparent in its xenophobia, playing to the anti-immigrant sentiments of Trump's base with promises to increase deportations of the undocumented. But on one point, Trump pretended to care about nuance: He would not, he stated on multiple occasions, target undocumented immigrants indiscriminately, but would focus on those with criminal records—the "bad hombres,” to use the president’s own ridiculous words. Predictably, this has not been the case in practice. A new report shows that amidst a staggering increase in undocumented immigrant deportations overall, arrests of law-abiding undocumented immigrants shot up the most, by a whopping 150 percent. A report by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement boasts that between January 29 and April 22, agents arrested 41,318 undocumented immigrants. That figure, which breaks down to roughly 400 arrests per day, represents an increase of 37 percent over arrests made during the same period under President Obama, who previously held the title of Deporter-in-Chief. Seventy-five percent of those taken into custody have criminal convictions, but even that notation is potentially misleading.

Trump’s Budget Delivers Big Oil’s Wish: Reducing Strategic Petroleum Reserve

May 26, 2017 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Oil & Gas, Trump Administration

By Steve Horn for Desmog - President Donald Trump's newly proposed budget calls for selling over half of the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the 687 million barrels of federally owned oil stockpiled in Texas and Louisiana as an emergency energy supply. While most observers believe the budget will not pass through Congress in its current form, budgets depict an administration's priorities and vision for the country. Some within the oil industry have lobbied for years to drain the SPR, created in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis. Leading the way has been ExxonMobil, which lobbied for congressional bills in both 2012 and 2015 calling for SPR oil to be sold on the private sector market. The Trump administration says selling off oil from the national reserve could generate $16.58 billion in revenue for U.S. taxpayers over the next 10 years. But EnergyWire's Peter Behr reported that the Trump SPR budget proposal would potentially violate U.S. commitments as a member of the International Energy Agency.

More Dangerous Than Trump

May 26, 2017 David Cole, www.nybooks.com Educate! Jeff Sessions, Trump Administration

By David Cole for NYR Daily - Tangled in self-inflicted chaos, President Donald Trump has been unable to accomplish much during his first four months in office. His signature executive orders have been stymied by the courts; his legislative efforts have stalled; and now he faces a special counsel investigating him over the Russia affair. But Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is another story. Even amid the scandal of the firing of FBI director James Comey—an action in which Sessions himself had a central part—Sessions has quietly continued the radical remaking of the Justice Department he began when he took the job. On May 20, Sessions completed his first hundred days as attorney general. His record thus far shows a determined effort to dismantle the Justice Department’s protections of civil rights and civil liberties. Reversing course from the Obama Justice Department on virtually every front, he is seeking to return us not just to the pre-Obama era but to the pre-civil-rights era. We should have seen it coming; many of his actions show a clear continuity with his earlier record as a senator and state attorney general. Sessions has been especially focused, and particularly retrograde, on criminal justice. In the Senate, he was to the right of most of his own party...

Students Walk Out On Pence’s Commencement Speech

May 23, 2017 Tommy Christopher, www.shareblue.com Resist! Protests, Students, Trump Administration

By Tommy Christopher for Shareblue - Vice President Mike Pence delivered a pair of commencement addresses this weekend, both of which drew powerful protests. Pence’s speech to small Christian school Grove City College was met with demonstrations outside the event. And his address to the University of Notre Dame drew protests from without and within. Pence’s appearance at the commencement drew throngs of protesters outside the campus, and spurred a sizable walkout by graduates. A seemingly endless parade of Notre Dame students began to file out of the stadium as soon as Pence was introduced: The planned walkout was a highly visible protest, not just of Pence, but of the administration which he represents. The organizers of the protest cited Pence’s own political positions, as well as Trump administration policies, as reasons for the walkout:

Trump’s New DHS Appointment Previously Called For Rounding Up Protesters

May 22, 2017 Derrick Broze, www.activistpost.com Resist! Immigration, Trump Administration, Undocumented

By Derrick Broze for Activist Post - “I’m both honored and humbled to be appointed to this position by Secretary Kelly, working for the Trump administration,” Clarke told McKenna. He said he plans to leave Milwaukee County in June to work with Office of Partnership and Programs as “a liaison with state, local and tribal law enforcement.” The DHS has not confirmed Clarke’s new position, but in a tweet they did acknowledge that the job does not require Senate confirmation. Clarke has been mentioned as a possible appointment to the DHS since the moment Trump was elected. However, the possibility of Clarke working with the feds has not been without controversy. The Human Rights Campaign blasted the news, calling Clarke’s appointment “a grave mistake.” “His homophobic, transphobic, racist and sexist views have absolutely no place anywhere, including and especially in law enforcement agencies or the federal government,” the HRC wrote. What makes Clarke so dangerous? For starters, Sheriff David Clarke is responsible for a prison in which four people have died and been tortured. At least one prisoner died of dehydration after the water in his cell was shut off for seven days.

TrumpBeat: Immigration Arrests Are Swamping The Court System

May 20, 2017 Kathryn Casteel et al, www.fivethirtyeight.com Educate! Immigration, Trump Administration, Undocumented

By Kathryn Casteel, Ben Casselman and Anna Maria Barry-Jester for FiveThirtyEight - Trump’s agenda may have gotten off to a slow start in Congress, but his administration has moved quickly in another area: immigration enforcement. Immigration arrests during Trump’s first 100 days were up 37.6 percent from the same period a year ago, according to a report released this week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Roughly 75 percent of those arrested had been convicted of non-immigration offenses, but approximately 10,800 were noncriminal arrests, up more than 150 percent percent from 2016. Trump hasn’t just vowed to arrest undocumented immigrants, however. He has promised to deport them. And that could be a challenge: The big increase in noncriminal arrests could create frenzy in immigration courts that are already overloaded with cases. “On one hand the administration is saying they have these priorities and they’re going on the worst of the worst,” said Joshua Breisblatt, a policy analyst at the American Immigration Council. “When they came out with these executive orders, all they actually did was make everybody a priority.” When Trump took office, he inherited an immigration court system with a backlog of more than half a million pending cases, with proceedings often taking years to be completed.

Trump’s NAFTA “Re-Do” Threatens People And The Planet

May 19, 2017 Audrey Fox, www.foe.org Resist! NAFTA, Trump Administration

By Audrey Fox for Friends of the Earth - WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Trump Administration submitted notice to Congress today that it intends to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, according to reports. Bill Waren, Friends of the Earth’s senior trade analyst, issued the following response: Donald Trump built his campaign by demonizing the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he called “the worst deal ever,” and by making assurances that he could rework trade deals to protect the American people. Now he plans to give another hand out to corporations through renegotiating NAFTA. Trump’s leaked NAFTA renegotiation plan describes just what the corporate lobby is demanding: using NAFTA talks to revive large parts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership making NAFTA even worse for people and the planet. Any trade agreement that the U.S. enters must protect public health and our environment. Trump’s NAFTA “re-do,” like the TPP, will encourage corporations to pollute our air and water, poison our food and accelerate climate change.

Rick Perry’s Early Days As Energy Secretary: Bonanza For Corporations And Koch Brothers

May 19, 2017 Alex Kotch, www.alternet.org Educate! Energy, Trump Administration

By Alex Kotch for AlterNet - Most people who know anything about Rick Perry know he’s a friend to the fossil fuel industry. For 14 years, he was the Republican governor of Texas, a state that contains one-third of the nation’s oil reserves and is home to oil giants ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Valero Energy. As a political candidate, Perry received millions in donations from oil and gas companies and their executives. Until recently, he was a board member of Energy Transfer Partners, the co-owner of the dirty tar sands oil transport mechanism, Dakota Access Pipeline, which was approved by Donald Trump in January and runs through Native American lands in North Dakota. Perry supported new coal plants in Texas as well, but he also allowed a major expansion of wind energy and signed a renewable portfolio standard that aided growth in that industry. He appears to favor an all-of-the-above approach to energy production, as opposed to the severely anti-clean energy agenda Trump projects and which the conservative Heritage Foundation hoped he would adhere to. In the past, however, Perry called the science of climate change a "contrived phony mess.”

Pai Needs To Start Acting Like A Chairman Of The FCC

May 18, 2017 Harold Feld, www.wetmachine.com Educate! FCC, Net Neutrality, Trump Administration

By Harold Feld for Wet Machine - In my 20+ years of doing telecom policy, I have never seen a Chairman so badly botch a proceeding as Chairman Ajit Pai has managed to do with his efforts to repeal Net Neutrality. For all the fun that I am sure Pai is having (and believe me, I understand the fun of getting all snarky on policy), Pai’s failure to protect the integrity of the process runs the serious risk of undermining public confidence in the Federal Communications Commission’s basic processes, and by extension contributing to the general “hacking of our democracy” by undermining faith in our most basic institutions of self-governance. Yeah, I know, that sounds over the top. I wish I didn’t have to write that. I also wish we didn’t have a President who calls press critical of him “the enemy of the American people,” triggering massive harassment of reporters by his followers. What both Trump and Pai seem to fail to understand is that when you are in charge, what you say and do matters much more than what you said and did before you were in charge. You either grow up and step into the challenge or you end up doing serious harm not only to your own agenda, but to the institution as a whole.

10 Reasons Trump Should Not Strengthen U.S.-Saudi Ties

May 18, 2017 Medea Benjamin, www.informationclearinghouse.info Resist! Saudi Arabia, Trump Administration, US Foreign Policy

By Medea Benjamin for "Information Clearing House" - Donald Trump has selected Saudi Arabia as the destination for his first trip abroad, strengthening U.S. ties to a regime that is fueling the very extremism, intolerance and violence that the US government purports to eradicate. Here’s 10 reasons why the United States should not be closely allied with the Saudi kingdom. The Saudis export an extremist interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism, around the globe. Over the past three decades, Saudi Arabia has spent about $4 billion per year on mosques, madrassas, preachers, students, and textbooks to spread Wahhabism and anti-Western sentiment. Let's not forget that 15 of the 19 fanatical hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks were Saudis, as was Osama bin Laden himself. The Saudis fund terrorism worldwide. A Wikileaks-revealed 2009 cable quotes then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying, "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide … More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar e-Tayyiba and other terrorist groups." In Syria the Saudis are supporting the most extreme sectarian forces. And while the Saudi government condemns ISIS, many experts, including 9/11 Commission Report lead author Senator Bob Graham, believe that ISIS is a product of Saudi ideals, Saudi money and Saudi organizational support.

FCC Chairman’s New Initiatives Will Restrict Access To Information

May 18, 2017 Staff, www.rsf.org Educate! FCC, Internet, Open Access, Trump Administration

By Staff of RSF - To ensure net neutrality, the US government must guarantee equal access to the Internet, regardless of which subscription people are using. If this principle is threatened, ISPs could for example, decide to limit the broadband speed allocated to certain users – especially, of course, if they have opted for a cheaper Internet plan. For example, an ISP could decide to slow down the Internet speed of one search engine, i.e. Google, in favor of another search engine, i.e. Bing, because that ISP has a financial stake in promoting Bing over Google. This would impact both news providers and the broader public and make it harder to access a diversity of sources of information on the web. Gus Rossi, Global Policy Director for Public Knowledge, a not for profit organization that promotes freedom of expression and open Internet, told RSF why regulation under Title II is essential for Internet freedom: "the Internet is not open and borderless by an act of god, it’s a political and social construction. It’s about consumer rights, rights as a consumer to get the whole Internet, not a piece that my Internet provider thinks I should access.”

President’s Comments Should Inspire Press, Not Intimidate It

May 17, 2017 Staff, www.rcfp.org Resist! Media, Press, Trump Administration

By Staff of RCFP - The New York Times has published a story with details of a memo written by former FBI Director James Comeydocumenting a conversation he had with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in February. The memo was shared with senior FBI officials and close associates of Comey, and read to Times reporters. According to the story, the president told Comey that he should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information. Reporters Committee Executive Director Bruce Brown made the following statement: "The comments attributed to President Trump cross a dangerous line. But no president gets to jail journalists. Reporters are protected by judges and juries, by a congress that relies on them to stay informed, and by a Justice Department that for decades has honored the role of a free press by spurning prosecutions of journalists for publishing leaks of classified information. "Comments such as these, emerging in the way they did, only remind us that every day public servants are reaching out to reporters to ensure the public is aware of the risks today to rule of law in this country. The president’s remarks should not intimidate the press but inspire it."

Trump On His Way To Becoming Largest Weapons Dealer In World History

May 17, 2017 Jason Ditz, www.news.antiwar.com Educate! Donald Trump, Trump Administration, weapons

By Jason Ditz for Anti-War - The Pentagon has issued a statement today confirming that the US State Department has signed off on a $2 billion sale of US-made Patriot missiles to the United Arab Emirates, adding to the tiny Gulf nation’s ever growing military arsenal. The sale includes 65 PAC-3 interceptors and 100 GEM-T missiles. It is unclear when the UAE intends to do with all these missiles, though the State Department was willing to sign off on it being in the “national security” interest of the US to make the sales. That process virtually goes without saying at this point, as for years the US has been signing off on growing sales of arms across the Middle East, and anything but an immediate approval is extremely rare, and usually extremely temporary. The UAE has shown interest in increased military operations abroad in recent years, both regionally and into Africa. It’s unclear what, if any, military value such massively expensive missiles would have in such operations, however.

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