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Trump Administration

FOIA Lawsuits Surge In Trump Administration’s First Year

January 20, 2018 Staff, Foiaproject.org , ,
Since the new administration took office at the end of January 2017, there has been a sharp jump in the number of lawsuits filed by individuals and organizations seeking court orders to obtain federal government records.[1] Suits brought by the news media and nonprofit advocacy organizations have fueled a significant part of this rise. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), requesters can file suit when information they are seeking is withheld and they have exhausted administrative appeals, or when the agency fails to even respond in a timely manner. Lawsuits this past fiscal year rose an astonishing 26 percent, and are continuing to climb. FOIA court cases are now up over 70 percent from just five years ago.

Congress Votes To Move Forward With Surveillance Under Trump

January 18, 2018 By Alex Emmons, Theintercept.com , , ,
A CRITICAL MASS of Senate Democrats voted with Republicans on Tuesday to shut down any further debate on a bill that strengthens the government’s spying powers. The bill would renew a key surveillance authority for the National Security Agency until 2023 and consolidate the FBI’s power to search Americans’ digital communications without a warrant. The motion, which passed 60-38, virtually guarantees that the final bill will pass likely later this week and quashes any opportunity to debate whether protections should be added. Eighteen Democrats — including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who had previously proposed an amendment to restrict the FBI’s surveillance authority — voted in support of the motion. They were joined by 41 Republicans and one independent, Angus King, giving the pro-surveillance bloc the supermajority needed to push the bill forward. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Dan Sullivan, R-Ala., did not vote.

Majority Of National Parks Panel Quits In Protest Of Ryan Zinke

January 18, 2018 Lorraine Chow, Ecowatch.com , , , ,
Nearly all members of the National Park Service advisory panel abruptly quit on Monday in protest of the Trumpadministration's policies, which they say have neglected science, climate change and environmental protections. "From all of the events of this past year I have a profound concern that the mission of stewardship, protection, and advancement of our National Parks has been set aside," the head of the panel, Tony Knowles, wrote in a letter of resignation addressed to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who oversees management of the country's national parks and monuments. The letter was signed by nine of the panel's 12 members. The bipartisan panel was appointed by former President Obama. The terms of the members who quit were due to expire in May.

California Is Preparing To Defend Its Waters From Trump Order

January 13, 2018 By Jane Kay, Revealnews.org , , ,
In its first act to shield California from the Trump administration’s repeal of regulations, the state’s water board has prepared its own rules protecting wetlands and other waters. The proposed new rules, scheduled for a vote by the board this summer, could insulate the state from President Donald Trump’s executive order to roll back the reach of the Clean Water Act. That rollback would strip federal protection from seasonal streambeds, isolated pools and other transitory wetlands, exposing them to damage, pollution or destruction from housing developments, energy companies and farms. “When you look at it from a historical perspective, California has lost the vast majority of the wetland resources,” said planner Paul Hann, who oversees the State Water Resources Control Board’s wetlands protection program. “We want to capture the rich diversity of wetlands across the state.

Trump Picks FERC Official With Potential Conflicts Of Interest

January 9, 2018 By Mark Hand, Thinkprogress.org , , ,
By choosing a longtime corporate attorney to head the nation’s top energy regulatory agency, President Donald Trump stuck to his practice of nominating officials riddled with potential conflicts of interest to high-ranking roles in the U.S. government. As a partner with Jones Day, a prominent Washington, D.C. law firm, Kevin McIntyre’s ties to energy companies that fall under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) jurisdiction were so numerous and ran so deep that his swearing-in as chairman of the agency was delayed to give him more time to sever the relationships. After his first meeting as chairman on December 21, McIntyre explained to reporters that unlike most commissioners, he worked in private practice for almost 30 years representing companies that are regulated by FERC.

Trump Ends TPS For 200,000 Salvadorans Seeking Sanctuary

January 9, 2018 By Molly Olmstead, Slate.com , ,
The Trump administration announced Monday it was ending a humanitarian program that allowed nearly 200,000 Salvadorans who fled catastrophic conditions in their home country to remain in the country legally. The program, Temporary Protected Status, was first opened up to Salvadorans—the largest group to benefit from the program—in 2001 after two earthquakes devastated the country and killed more than 1,000 people. The program was repeatedly extended through the Bush and Obama administrations as violence, fueled by gangs, made returning to the country alarmingly dangerous. The danger remains, but the Trump administration has argued that the program was never intended to last as long as it has. The administration has already rescinded the protections for the 59,000 Haitians who arrived after the 2010 earthquake and a couple thousand Nicaraguans.

California Regulations May Hinder Trump Effort To Renew Offshore Drilling

January 8, 2018 By Ellen Knickmeyer, Talkingpointsmemo.com , , ,
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — In the decades since a 1969 oil spill near Santa Barbara tarred sea-life and gave rise to the U.S. environmental movement, politicians and environmental activists have built up ample ways to make it difficult but not impossible for the Trump administration to renew drilling off California’s coast. The Interior Department said Thursday it plans to open most federal waters off the United States to oil leases. In California, where no new federal leases offshore have been approved since 1984, Gov. Jerry Brown joined governors of Oregon and Washington in vowing to do “whatever it takes” to stop that from happening off the West Coast. State officials, environmental groups and oil-industry analysts say California has solid regulatory and legal means to try to make good on that threat.

Trump Moves To Open 90% Of Our Coastal Waters To Oil Drilling

January 6, 2018 By Rhea Suh, Ecowatch.com , ,
President Trump has launched the most sweeping industrial assault in history on our oceans, marine life, coasts and all they support, proposing to expose nearly all U.S. waters to the risk of another BP oil spill–style disaster. In a move that would put every American coastal community at risk, Trump proposed Thursday to hand over vast reaches of waters currently protected from drilling—in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans—to the oil and gas industry. If Trump gets his way, iconic fishing grounds like George's Bank, treasured recreational waters like the Florida Straits, and critical marine-breeding areas like those off the California coast would be exposed to the dangers of blowouts, explosions, catastrophic spills, seismic blasting and other perils that come with these inherently hazardous industrial operations at sea.

Show Me Something New In Trump’s Foreign Policy

January 5, 2018 Charles Pierson, Counterpunch.org , ,
“Trump, the Insurgent, Breaks with 70 Years of American Foreign Policy,” the New York Times declared on December 28.  The article, by Mark Landler, describes foreign leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel dismayed at an erratic and uninformed (Landler does not use the word “stupid”) President who not only does not know what he is talking about, but whose public statements and tweets frequently contradict and undercut members of his own administration.  Our long-time allies no longer find the US “reliable,” Landler writes, and, in some cases, have begun charting courses independent of Washington. This is all well and good—or bad, rather—and if Landler had stopped there we would have few grounds for objections.

Homeland Security Uses ‘Crisis Action Team’ In 1st Trump Travel Ban

January 3, 2018 By Josh Gerstein, Politico.com , ,
When protests and widespread confusion broke out at airports across the U.S. after President Donald Trump issued his first travel ban executive order last January, White House officials scoffed at the scenes of turmoil and insisted the president’s plan was smoothly moving into place. “It really is a massive success story in terms of implementation on every single level,” a senior administration official told reporters two days after Trump signed the directive. Top Trump adviser Stephen Miller boasted to CBS that the roll-out was “efficient, orderly [and] enormously successful.” However, Department of Homeland Security records obtained by POLITICO reflect confusion on the front lines about how to implement the order and show that DHS officials deemed the situation a “crisis” requiring a high-level response.

Trump Admin Fires White House HIV Council Members

December 30, 2017 John Lannoye, Gaypopbuzz.com , ,
President Donald Trump’s Administration has terminated all members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA). GPB has learned that members of the council were notified yesterday in writing about the decision and were advised their dismissals were effective immediately. The firings came with no warning.  As many as 12 people may have been let go. “It is a dangerous thing when the administration is eliminating people whose views are based in science and community experience,” HIV Project Director at Lambda Legal in an interview with GPB. News of the terminations comes after the Trump administration prohibited officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.

The State Of The Empire In The Age Of Trumpism

December 20, 2017 Diane Perlman, Transcend Media Service , , ,
Johan Galtung is a Norwegian-born citizen of the world, sociologist and mathematician recognized as the ‘founding father’ of peace studies and conflict transformation as a scientific discipline. He is a frequent Nobel Peace Prize nominee, winner of the 1987 Right Livelihood Award–the alternative Nobel–and of the 2017 People’s Nobel Prize. (Here his Acceptance Speech). He has negotiated with many heads of state, inspired the idea of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe – the OSCE, and has helped resolve many conflicts from families to nations to regions. Johan has made many accurate predictions of world events, including the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Empire, the 1978 Iranian revolution, the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising in China, the economic crises of 1987, 2008 and 2011, and the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Trump Breaks Record Special Ops Deployed In 149 Countries

December 16, 2017 Nick Turse, tomdispatch.com , ,
“We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in October. That was in the wake of the combat deaths of four members of the Special Operations forces in the West African nation of Niger. Graham and other senators expressed shock about the deployment, but the global sweep of America’s most elite forces is, at best, an open secret. Earlier this year before that same Senate committee -- though Graham was not in attendance -- General Raymond Thomas, the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), offered some clues about the planetwide reach of America’s most elite troops.

White House’s Plans For Private Spies To Counter “Deep State” Enemies

December 7, 2017 Matthew Cole and Jeremy Scahill, theintercept.com , ,
By Matthew Cole and Jeremy Scahill for The Intercept - THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency. The creation of such a program raises the possibility that the effort would be used to create an intelligence apparatus to justify the Trump administration’s political agenda. “Pompeo can’t trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official with firsthand knowledge of the proposals, in describing White House discussions. “It is a direct-action arm, totally off the books,” this person said, meaning the intelligence collected would not be shared with the rest of the CIA or the larger intelligence community. “The whole point is this is supposed to report to the president and Pompeo directly.”

Protest On Utah Capitol Day Before Trump Attack’s National Monuments

December 4, 2017 Staff, commondreams.org , ,
By Staff of Common Dreams - On Saturday, thousands of protesters angered by Trump's expected Monday attack on two national monuments in Utah rallied in Salt Lake City, just two days ahead of his visit. “Go Home Trump,” was the message spelled out by 113 protesters dressed in white jumpsuits. Artist Cat Palmer organized the protest Sunday on the south lawn of the Utah Capitol ahead of President Donald Trump’s Monday visit, in which he is expected to dramatically reduce the sizes of Bears Ears and Grand Escalante national monuments. “We don’t have somebody representing our voices right now, right? That’s a problem. Sometimes when we feel helpless we make art hoping our voices will be heard,” Palmer said. “It’s an outlet for people. It’s therapeutic, .... because we are feeling lost right now,” the Salt Lake City Tribune reports. On Saturday, thousands of protesters angered by Trump's expected Monday attack on two national monuments in Utah rallied in Salt Lake City, just two days ahead of his visit. The demonstrators denounced Trump's expected action, many chanting and holding signs with messages such as "Protect Wild Utah." Native American groups danced or formed drum circles.
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