TRUMP4 PRES

see other nodes (14 8 22)4/19 new<div class="Homepage-HomepageSubjectSecondaryNode-textBlock" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 16px; width: 247.266px; flex: 1 1 100%;"><h4 class="Heading-heading Heading-light Homepage-HomepageSubjectSecondaryNode-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 0px;">Trump Pushes a New Pipeline Permit as Floods Devastate Native American Tribes</h4><div class="Homepage-HomepageSubjectSecondaryNode-byline" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="PromoByline-byline PromoByline-light" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Alleen Brown</div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div>=</div><div>June 2020<h1 class="video-page-title" itemprop="name" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 2px 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;">Rogues - True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks</h1><div class="initial" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline;">New Yorker Magazine staff writer <a href="https://www.c-span.org/person/?1013714/PatrickRaddenKeefe" style="font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s ease 0s; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Patrick Radden Keefe </a>looked at crime and corruption and his preoccupation with the subject through a collection of his New Yorker essays. The Free Library of Philadelphia hosted this event</div><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?521134-1/roges-true-stories-grifters-killers-rebels-crooks">https://www.c-span.org/video/?521134-1/roges-true-stories-grifters-killers-rebels-crooks</a>... YOU PROFILED MARK BURNETT WHO IS RESPONSIBLE IN SOME WAYS WE HAD DONALD TRUMP AS A PRESIDENT. HE WAS THE MASTERMIND OF THE CELEBRITY APPRENTICE. YOU DO NOT GET TO HIM BUT YOU GET SO MANY WONDERFUL DETAILS ABOUT HIM. THE GOOD NEWS IS MANY PEOPLE ON THE APPRENTICE WANTED TO TALK TO YOU. I WANT TO READ THIS BECAUSE THIS IS EXTRAORDINARY TO ME. THIS IS HOLY MOLY! A WEEKLY SERIES OF BUSINESS CHALLENGES, TRUMP WAS FREQUENTLY UNPREPARED FOR THE SESSIONS. WITH LITTLE GRASP OF WHO HAD PERFORMED WELL, SOMETIMES A CANDIDATE DISTINGUISHED HERSELF ONLY TO GET FIRED ON A WHIM BY TRUMP. THE EDITORS WERE OBLIGED TO REVERSE ENGINEER THE EPISODE SCOURING HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF FOOTAGE TO EMPHASIZE THE FEW MOMENTS WHEN THE EXEMPLARY CANDIDATE MAY HAVE SLIPPED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO ASSEMBLE AN ARTIFICIAL VERSION OF HISTORY IN WHICH TRUMP'S DECISION MADE SENSE. [LAUGHTER] HERE IS ANOTHER THING. THE APPRENTICE PORTRAYED TRUMP AS A PLUTOCRAT WITH IMPECCABLE BUSINESS INSTINCT AND UNPARALLELED WEALTH, I TIGHTEN CLIMBING OUT OF HELICOPTERS OR INTO LIMOUSINES. WE KNOW HE WAS A FAKE, HE WENT THROUGH HOW MANY BANKRUPTCIES BUT WE MADE HIM OUT TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLD. IT IS LIKE MAKING THE COURT JESTER THE KING. THAT IS THE CHEF'S KISS TO ME! WE SAW CHeaP FURNITURE IS, A CRUMBLING EMPIRE AT EVERY TURN, OUR JOB WAS TO MAKE IT SEEM OTHERWISE. HOW DID YOU COME TO THIS STORY ? Show Less Text00:22:41THIS WAS MY EDITOR'S IDEA AGAIN. PEOPLE COME UP WITH THEIR OWN IDEAS AND WHOSE NAMES I WOULD NEVER COME UP WITH THEIR OWN IDEAS. EVERYTHING IS HANDED TO THEM BY EDITORS. FOR ME IT IS ROUGHLY TWO OF MIND TO A MODEL OF THEIR -- TO ONE OF THEIRS. MOST PEOPLE AGREE THAT THE APPRENTICE WHAT THIS REALLY SIGNIFICANT MOMENT IN PUTTING HIM ON THE NATIONAL STAGE AND AMPLIFYING HIS BRAND FOR A LACK OF A BETTER WORD. THE OTHER THING THAT WAS INTERESTING IS WHEN HE CAME INTO OFFICE, HE REALLY STILL THOUGHT ABOUT THE OPTICS OF REALITY TV. WHEN HE ANNOUNCED HIS CANDIDACY, THERE IS A MOMENT WHERE HE AND MELANIA COME DOWN THE ESCALATOR AT TRUMP TOWER, THAT ACTUAL SEQUENCE, THAT HAPPENED IN THE APPRENTICE. IT WAS AN OUTTAKE. ALL OF THE SUPPORTERS WHO WERE THERE THAT DAY WERE ACTUALLY EXTRAS WHO HAD BEEN HIRED TO COME AND CHEER IN THE SAME WAY YOU WOULD FOR REALITY TV. he WOULD SAY  in WH shoot me LIKE THEY SHOT ME ON THE APPRENTICE. MY EDITOR SAYS IT SEEMS SO INTERESTING. THIS GUY WHO WE HAVE ALL COME TO KNOW AND LOVE OR HATE, HE EMERGED FROM THE FORGE OF REALITY TV. THE PERSON WHO DID THIS IS THIS TOTALLY UNLIKELY, ABSOLUTE HUSTLER. THIS GUY FROM EAST LONDON WHO WAS A BRITISH PARATROOPER, HE WAS GOING TO GO AND BE A MERCENARY IN SOUTH AMERICA. HE LEFT THE MILITARY AND HIS MOTHER HAD A VISION AND SAID SHE NOT ONE HIM TO DO ANYTHING INVOLVING DUNN'S -- I WANT HIM TO DO ANYTHING INVOLVING  GUNS. HE WAS AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT, HE BECAME A MALE NANNY WEALTHY FAMILIES IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. HE WAS THE PARATROOPER IT TURNED NANNY. -- PARATROOPER TURNED NANNY. [LAUGHTER] HE HAD A SHOW CALLED ECO-CHALLENGE AND HIS BIG BREAKTHROUGH WAS THAT THERE WAS A CRAZY SWEDISH EARLY PIONEER -- LITTLE KNOWN OUTSIDE OF SWEDEN, THIS SWEDISH SHOW CALLED EXPEDITION ROBINSON WHICH INVOLVED A BUNCH OF SWEDISH PEOPLE WHO WERE ON AN ISLAND AND HAD TO FEND FOR THEMSELVES WITH A BUNCH OF CAMERAS. BURNETT SAW IT AND HE LICENSED THE SHOW AND SAYS I WANT TO GIVE IT A NEW TITLE, SURVIVOR. FROM THERE HE DID THE APPRENTICE, HE AND TRUMP HAD THIS STRANGE RELATIONSHIP WHERE HE RECOGNIZED A CHARISMA THAT TRUMP HAD. HAD THIS AMAZING DYNAMIC. BURNETT ENDS UP IN THE SITUATION WHERE HE DID NOT WANT -- HE WOULD NOT TALK TO ME BECAUSE HE DID NOT WANT TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH TRUMP BECAUSE HE WAS CLEARLY SO SCARED. Show Less Text00:26:42HE IS BORN AGAIN?00:26:45HIS THIRD WIFE, TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL. I LITERALLY MARRIED AN ANGEL! HE IS BORN AGAIN. A FUN DIVE INTO HOLLYWOOD. TO ME THERE WAS A DEEPER THEME IN THAT PIECE WHICH IS AT A CERTAIN POINT EVERYTHING BECAME ENTERTAINMENT. THERE IS NO SUCH THING, POLITICS IS ENTERTAINMENT BY OTHER MEANS. HE WAS AT TH EMMY'S. Show Less Text00:27:34HE CALLED OUT MARK BURNETT AND SAID IF HE GETS ELECTED IT IS MARK BURNETT'S FAULT. IF THERE IS A WALL, WE WILL THROW YOU OVER IT. BURNETT WENT ON TO RUN MGM. WHICH HE IS DOING TODAY. I THINK HE IS LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK....=</div></div>sotu mil/exploit seal widow; had to push back hard on mission botch; dd mad/silent?  intel not useful?  used old footage?
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/03/01/daily-202-trump-s-speech-to-congress-highlights-influence-of-ivanka-bannon/58b627c1e9b69b1406c75d06/?utm_term=.c9f2150544f6">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/03/01/daily-202-trump-s-speech-to-congress-highlights-influence-of-ivanka-bannon/58b627c1e9b69b1406c75d06/?utm_term=.c9f2150544f6</a>=budget cuts foodstamps
<a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/15-heartless-proposals-trumps-budget">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/15-heartless-proposals-trumps-budget</a>0. Yes, that's more than $800 billion in future cuts they're touting. The Obamacare repeal passed by the House takes more than $800 billion out of future Medicaid spending over the next decade. Mulvaney says that will help treat the needy better: “Everyone is interested in seeing the truly needy in their state and in our nation get the care that we promised them in Medicaid. But there's a better way to do it than under current law, which is Obamacare. We can also talk about what a failure that is. But there's a better way to do it, and that's what the American Health Care Act does.”11. They could collect half a trillion in taxes, but will cut safety nets. This exchange from the Q&A part of Mulvaney’s press conference is stunning, as the White House budget director said there are hundreds of billions in uncollected taxes out there, but they don’t think it’s a good thing to collect the funds.<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mulvaney: “The tax gap is the amount of money that we should collect in taxes every single year, but don’t. 2016—that number is $486 billion. Almost enough to close the deficit that year. And we don’t assume an additional penny of that being closed as part of our tax reform. Why is that important? There's probably two reasons that people—well, three reasons people don’t want to pay tax. Number one, they just don’t pay tax, and there's always a certain number of people who don’t want to do that. Number two, it's just too hard for them to do it. It's too complicated for them to do it. Two reasons. Now I feel like I'm a Monty Python skit. But two reasons. And we think that—”Question: “Airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.”Mulvaney: “Exactly. That if it's a simpler tax code, that people are more likely to pay. That simply makes sense. If you can really fill out your tax reform—tax returns on a single piece of paper, you're much more likely to actually do it. It's also easier for us to see if you're paying the right amount. A simpler code is easy for you to pay and easy for the government to see if you're paying the right amount, which would allow us very reasonably to assume a reduction in the tax gap. And we don’t do a single penny of that.”</blockquote>12. The EPA cuts are anti-climate science, but that's not anti-science! Huh? Here, Mulvaney said the Obama administration was overreacting to climate change and the only way to stop that was to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency. “What I think you saw happened during the previous administration is the pendulum went too far to one side, where we were spending too much of your money on climate change and not very efficiently. We don’t get rid of it here. Do we target it? Sure. Do a lot of the EPA reductions aimed at reducing the focus on climate science? Yes. Does it mean that we are anti-science? Absolutely not. We're simply trying to get things back in order to where we can look at the folks who pay the taxes, and say, look, yeah, we want to do some climate science, but we're not going to do some of the crazy stuff the previous administration did.” .... People on SSDI—disability—are not really on Social Security and not really disabled. Trump promised older voters would not touch Social Security or Medicare, but Mulvaney says recipients of Social Security’s disability assistance are not really on Social Security and are just lazy and trying to avoid work. “Social Security disability. It is a welfare program for the long-term disabled. It is not what most people would consider to be Social Security... There are people who are getting SSDI who should not be getting it.”15. Same with food stamps; people pretend to be hungry. This is unbelievable, pretending that there is no such thing as hunger in America, because national economic statistics are saying we’ve emerged from the 2008 recession. “During bad economic times, more people will go onto food stamps. So it's completely within reason to look at that number—it went from 28 million on food stamps before the recession to 47 million at the height. It's 44 or 42 today. Yet here we are, eight years removed from the end of the recession. We've had economic growth, albeit slow. We're at what we consider to be full employment… Why is the number still that high?The White House’s Right-Wing BubbleThe release of the White House’s proposed FY 2018 budget, for the year starting October 1, has prompted plenty of serious analyses—including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/us/politics/budget-spending-federal-deficit.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&r=0" style="text-decoration-line: none;">some</a> saying its assumptions fall apart if its 3 percent growth prediction is off. But those mainstream analyses are playing along as if this is a serious proposal grounded in grown-up governing. It’s not. Mulvaney, you may have noticed, did not discuss real details from federal programs to be fine-tuned.This is another dressed-up version of the only thing this administration wants to do—cut taxes for the rich and make an army of contractors rich via privatization. This budget stops government revenues and blows up federal programs, leaving it up to states to clean up the mess. At the end of the briefing, Mulvaney was again asked by a reporter about cutting food stamps. Only on Monday did NPR air a report on how hunger was widespread throughout Appalachia and in many states that voted for Trump.“Folks who are out there who are on food stamps and want to work, we'll be able to work with them to solve the problem,” he replied. “They are not what’s causing the difficulties in SNAP [food stamps]. It's the folks who are on there who don't want to work. And that's what we're trying to point out to people is, look, if there’s 44 million people on there, eight years from the end of the recession, maybe, maybe it's reasonable to ask if there are folks who are on there who shouldn’t be. That is a reasonable question to ask. I would even suggest to you it's a compassionate question to ask.” <div>=</div><div>epa</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19052017/leaked-donald-trump-budget-EPA-climate-clean-energy-environment">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19052017/leaked-donald-trump-budget-EPA-climate-clean-energy-environment</a></div><div>=</div>= <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/05/10/conservative-groups-pushing-trump-exit-paris-deal-have-taken-millions-koch-brothers-and-exxon">https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/05/10/conservative-groups-pushing-trump-exit-paris-deal-have-taken-millions-koch-brothers-and-exxon</a>The “conservative groups” urging President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement have accepted tens of millions of dollars from groups linked to the billionaire petrochemical brothers Charles and David Koch, ExxonMobil, and the Mercer family.More than 40 groups have co-signed an <a href="https://cei.org/content/forty-four-free-market-groups-urge-trump-withdraw-paris-climate-agreement" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">open letter </a>urging Trump to keep his campaign promise and “withdraw fully from the Paris Climate Treaty.”The groups, including the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/competitive-enterprise-institute" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a> (CEI), <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Heartland Institute</a>, and the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/heritage-foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Heritage Foundation</a>, claim failing to withdraw from the treaty could put Trump’s policy agenda of promoting fossil fuels at risk.The <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-wont-make-decision-on-paris-climate-accord-until-later-this-month-1494356353" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Wall Street Journal</a> has quoted a White House spokesperson saying the president will not make a decision on the Paris agreement until after meeting G-7 leaders later this month.Analysis carried out by DeSmog and the <a href="https://climateinvestigations.nationbuilder.com/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Climate Investigations Center (CIC)</a> shows many of the groups signing the letter have taken multi-million dollar donations from groups tied to the Koch brothers, who own <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-industries-inc" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Koch Industries</a>. Several of the groups have accepted cash from oil giant <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/exxonmobil-funding-climate-science-denial" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ExxonMobil while many also deny the basic science</a> linking fossil fuel burning to dangerous climate change.In the letter, the groups say Trump should withdraw from the Paris deal and “stop all taxpayer funding of UN global warming programs” — two promises made by Trump during his campaign.<h3 style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Paris Deal</h3>As part of the Paris deal, agreed to by almost 200 countries as part of the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change, the U.S. pledged in a document known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, based on their levels in 2005.“Paris then requires a more ambitious NDC every five years in perpetuity,” the groups write.The letter says environment groups and some attorneys general are using court action to try and protect the Obama era’s Clean Power Plan that sought to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.The U.S. participation in the Paris deal is being cited in these lawsuits, the groups claim.“Failing to withdraw from Paris thus exposes key parts of your deregulatory energy agenda to unnecessary legal risk,” the letter claims.Right-wing media outlets including <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/05/08/forty-conservative-groups-urge-trump-to-withdraw-from-paris-climate-treaty/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Breitbart</a> and <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/08/conservatives-urge-trump-to-keep-his-promise-ditch-the-paris-climate-agreement/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Daily Caller</a> have been reporting the letter from conservative groups without mentioning the known links to the Koch brothers and to their denial of the science of climate change.<h3 style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Koch Cash</h3>The DeSmog and CIC analysis, using publicly available IRS disclosures, shows the Koch brothers have donated at least $6.9 million to the groups, much of which went to the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/heritage-foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Heritage Foundation</a>. Exxon donated about $5.9 million to the groups since the late 1990s.Several of the letter signers had roles in Trump’s various transition teams, including the CEI’s <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/myron-ebell" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Myron Ebell</a> and <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/thomas-pyle" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Thomas Pyle</a> of the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/american-energy-alliance-aea" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">American Energy Alliance</a>.In 2014, Freedom Partners (FP) — a group once described as the <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/behind-the-curtain-exclusive-the-koch-brothers-secret-bank-096669#ixzz2hj4y5I8o" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Koch brothers secret bank</a> — <a href="http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/453/453732750/453732750_201412_990O.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">gave some $16 million</a> to <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/americans-for-prosperity" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Americans for Prosperity</a>, another of the letter’s signatories. FP also gave $2.3 miilion to the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/american-energy-alliance-aea" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">American Energy Alliance</a>.<h3 style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Denial Dollars</h3>But as well as accepting millions of dollars from vested interests such as the Kochs and Exxon over the years, another thing the groups have in common is their denial of the clear science linking fossil fuel burning to dangerous climate change — an issue backed by all the major scientific academies around the world.The analysis shows groups have also accepted about $80 million through two linked funding organisations — <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/donors-capital-fund" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Donors Capital Fund</a> and <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/who-donors-trust" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Donors Trust</a> — that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/20/conservative-groups-1bn-against-climate-change" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">academics have confirmed</a> is a key financial source for many U.S. climate science denial groups.The Koch brothers, through a funding group known as the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/knowledge-and-progress-fund" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Knowledge and Progress Fund</a> (KPF), gave more than $7.6 million to the Donors Trust since 2010. The only grants made by the KPF over that period were to Donors Trust.The Heartland Institute, which has been given more than <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/03/27/trump-kingmakers-rebekah-and-robert-mercer-heartland-institute-s-climate-science-denial-conference" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">$5 million in recent years by major Trump financier Robert Mercer</a>, is known for organizing regular conferences where climate science denialists gather. In the run-up to one conference in May 2012, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150219195059/http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/05/03/do-you-still-believe-global-warming-billboards-hit-chicago" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Heartland said in a statement</a>: “The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren't scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”Another signer to the letter is Professor <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/william-happer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">William Happer</a>, the president of the CO2 Coalition — a group that emerged from the disbanded <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/george-c-marshall-institute" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">George C. Marshall Institute.</a>The <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/co2-coalition" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">CO2 Coalition</a> denies the evidence that humans are causing dangerous climate change and runs with the tag line “CO2 — Essential for Life.”Happer, thought to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/feb/21/trumps-potential-science-adviser-william-happer-hanging-around-with-conspiracy-theorists" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">in the running as Trump’s science adviser</a>, has compared what he called the “demonization” of CO2, to the “<a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/02/25/trump-potential-science-adviser-will-happer-carbon-dioxide-demonized-jews" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">demonization of poor Jews under Hitler</a>.”ecowatchTrump Fires FBI Director James Comey: What's Exxon Got to Do With It?By Andy Rowell
Washington, DC is still reeling Wednesday with the news that Donald Trump sacked FBI director James Comey.
Ostensibly, the White House is saying that Comey's firing is all about his botched investigation into Clinton's emails. But everyone knows that is not the truth.
As Politico reported, behind the sacking is an "an enraged Trump, fuming about Russia." Two Trump advisors told Politico that Trump was angry about the ongoing investigation by the FBI into links between the Russians and the Trump campaign.
The Trump line that the FBI Russian investigation has nothing to do with it is being ridiculed in the papers this morning.
As David Leonhardt stated bluntly in the New York Times, "The president of the United States is lying again … First, it's important to remember just how often Trump lies. Virtually whenever he finds it more convenient to tell a falsehood than to tell a truth, he chooses the falsehood."So why fire Comey? A blistering editorial in the paper argued, "The president of the United States, who is no more above the law than any other citizen, has now decisively crippled the FBI's ability to carry out an investigation of him and his associates."The paper added, "By firing the FBI director, James Comey, late Tuesday afternoon, President Trump has cast grave doubt on the viability of any further investigation into what could be one of the biggest political scandals in the country's history."The investigation could have had "potentially ruinous consequences for the administration." So Trump fired the man who could have been about to impeach him.The timing is certainly interesting. As the Hill pointed out too, many people are questioning the timing of Comey's dismissal.There may be other factors at play worth mentioning. Who is Trump meeting today in the White House? The president only has one publicly scheduled item later today and that is a meeting with Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia.As the British Independent newspaper noted, "It will be impossible to separate the meeting from the unfolding political drama in Washington."Before Lavrov meets Trump, he will hold a meeting with ex-Exxon boss and now Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.On the agenda are Ukraine, Syria and "bilateral issues," according to the State Department. It is the highest level meeting between Trump and the Russians since he took office.Also co-incidentally or not, tomorrow Lavrov and Tillerson will travel to Alaska to attend the 10th Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Fairbanks.The Arctic Council is an international forum that promotes cooperation among Arctic states and includes Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the U.S. Under President Obama's administration, the U.S. position focussed on climate change.Working together on the Arctic is ideal to help thaw U.S.-Russian relations, according to some.Indeed, according to the Council, the meeting "will convene to review and approve work completed under the two-year U.S. Chairmanship to improve sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic."But those two years have passed. Obama may have championed environmental protection, but Trump does not. Obama wanted to preserve the Arctic. Trump does not. As the U.S. hands over the baton of responsibility at the Council to Finland, the old order is no more.Trump wants better ties with Russia. In turn, Russia wants Exxon to help explore for oil. There is no doubt Exxon wants Russian oil. Exxon's old boss is now central to the Trump Administration. And by removing Comey at such a crucial time, Tillerson and Lavrov can work on some smoke-filled backroom deals, without the threat of the FBI looking at U.S.-Russian relations.Of course, much of this is speculation and analysis of an unfolding political situation. The Arctic meeting may not have been on Trump's mind, but Russia certainly was. And we all need to keep a watching brief on this fast-moving story, because no one knows where it will end.<a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/10/glenn_greenwald_on_trumps_shocking_firing">https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/10/glenn_greenwald_on_trumps_shocking_firing</a>==We’re 100 days into Corporate Government.While giant corporations have for decades and on a bipartisan basis exerted far too much influence over government decision-making, we’ve never seen anything like the Trump administration.The key officials in the federal government, starting with the president himself, come from Big Business; the administration openly seeks guidance and direction from giant corporations and corporate CEOs on policymaking; and the Trump administration is rushing to deliver subsidies, tax breaks and deregulatory gifts to the giant corporations to which the administration apparently owes its primary allegiance.

A day-by-day review of the administration’s <a href="http://citizen.org/trump-100-days" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">first 100 days</a> in office shows that virtually every day there has been a new, extraordinary grant of power to corporate interests and/or another development in Donald Trump’s get-rich-quick-scheme known as the American presidency.America has never seen anything like this.The corporate capture began at the same moment as the Trump presidency. Corporations that have pending business <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/04/19/20827/donald-trump-inauguration-bankrolled-corporate-giants" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">before the president</a> — AT&T, Bank of America, Boeing, Chevron, Deloitte, JPMorgan Chase and United Parcel Service – were among the top funders of the inauguration and surrounding festivities. Giant companies and billionaires heaped more than $100 million on the festivities.New President Trump immediately signaled his intent to deliver on the corporate wish list by signing two executive orders, one designed to start the process of destroying the Affordable Care Act and another freezing all regulatory activity for 90 days.It’s been downhill since then.President Trump has assembled what is probably the least qualified and certainly most <a href="http://corporatecabinet.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">corporate cabinet</a> of all time. By way of reminder, this list includes: the former CEO of Exxon Mobil (Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State); a slew of former Goldman Sachs executives, so much so that the factions fighting for control of the administration each hail from Goldman Sachs (chief strategist Steve Bannon and top economic advisor Gary Cohn); a banker known as the Foreclosure King to run the Department of Treasury (Steven Mnuchin), an Amway heiress and Republican megadonor (Betsy DeVos); and a former state attorney general who allowed the fossil fuel industry to draft letters on attorney general <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html?r=1" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">letterhead</a> on multiple occasions (Scott Pruitt, Environmental Protection Agency).Having a corporate cabinet has apparently not satisfied Trump’s yen to hang out with the corporate elite. Trump started his first full weekday in office with a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/23/trump-pledges-major-border-tax-ceo-meeting-white-house/96949832/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">breakfast meeting with CEOs</a> of a dozen corporations, and the meetings continue at a staggering pace. Trump is <a href="http://www.citizenvox.org/2017/04/17/corporate-executives-swamp-white-house/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">meeting</a> with more than two CEOS every day, on average. These <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/business-leaders-trump-white-house-meeting-2017-1/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">extraordinary</a> gatherings, which have the explicit purpose of providing a way for Big Business to shape the administration’s policies, are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/us/mar-a-lago-trump-ethics-winter-white-house.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">supplemented by</a> the president’s more <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-wedding-super-pac_us_58a1ff7be4b094a129edb356" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">casual interactions</a> with <a href="http://www.wcvb.com/article/patriots-owner-robert-kraft-spends-time-with-president-trump-at-mar-a-lago/8730975" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">corporate leaders</a> at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., where the membership fee is now $200,000.Many of the gatherings reflect the administration’s interest in giving special consideration to the views of specific corporate sectors, such as <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/09/remarks-president-trump-meeting-aviation-industry" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">airlines</a>, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/27/remarks-president-trump-listening-session-health-insurance-company-ceos" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">health insurance corporations</a>, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-pharmaceuticals-novartis-idUSKBN15F13K" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">pharmaceutical corporations</a>, and the<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-autos-idUSKBN1581CA" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;"> automotive industry</a>. One of every five of the corporate executives who met with the Trump administration within the first 100 days represented the banking or financial sector.It’s not just meetings and personnel. The Trump administration is off to a roaring start on delivering the goodies to Big Business.It has taken care of its Dirty Energy friends. By executive order, Trump overturned Obama measures to

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Energy Transfer Partners the final permit it needs to complete the Dakota Access Pipeline. It has also put in place

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Trump announced a review – plainly aimed to be a roll back – of auto fuel efficiency standards. Just a few years ago, a U.S. government bailout saved the Big Three automakers from utter collapse. The modest reciprocity the government demanded was industry agreement to higher fuel efficiency standards – its most important move to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses. Now the auto industry and the Trump administration are colluding to abrogate the deal. Consumers will be swindled in the process; the fuel economy rules that Trump is reversing were projected to save Americans up to $5,700 for every car they purchase, and $8,200 for every truck.Trump has issued an executive order aimed at undoing President <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/26/trump-executive-order-clean-power-plan-coal-plants" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Obama’s Clean Power Plan</a> – his signature effort to reduce climate pollution from coal powered plants; the administration is debating pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement; and administration officials have banned the use of the term “<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/energy-department-climate-change-phrases-banned-236655" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">climate change</a>.” EPA Chief Scott Pruitt and his minions are delivering a host of other gifts to polluters, such as inaugural <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/dow-wants-trump-administration-to-ignore-presticide-risk-study-f56da15ddffe" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">$1 million donor Dow</a>, notably including a refusal to ban a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/29/trump-epa-declines-to-ban-pesticide-that-obama-had-proposed-outlawing/?utm_term=.ae6fad41011a" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">brain-damaging pesticide</a>.The administration is taking care of its Wall Street friends (meaning those who remain outside the administration). Trump has signed executive orders aimed at <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-moves-to-undo-dodd-frank-law-1486101602" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">unraveling the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law</a> (“We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank,” the president told JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon and other CEOs in January) and repealing an Obama administration Labor Department rule requiring financial advisors to give advice based on their customers’ best interests. The Labor Department rule, if adopted, will save consumers $17 billion a year in rip-off fees and bad advice. Contemplated changes in Dodd-Frank rules, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-100-billion-reason-investors-loved-trumps-bank-order-1486321893" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the Wall Street Journal reports</a>, will enable the six biggest banks to return $100 billion of reserves to shareholders. A staggering gift to the shareholders – at the cost of making the financial system far, far more unstable, insecure and prone to another 2008-style meltdown.Although its prospects are dim, Trump proposed a cruel, sadistic and military-industrial-complex-fawning <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-presidential-budget-2018-proposal/?utm_term=.63e85b8a206b" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">budget</a>, featuring $54 billion in increased spending on weapons and war, with gouging cuts to spending on everything from environmental protection to Meals on Wheels.Trump strongly backed the American Health Care Act (Obamacare repeal), and is now angling for it to be revived with slight modifications – which would make it still worse. To pay for a $350 billion tax cut for the super rich and large corporations, the bill would deny health care coverage to 24 million people by 2026. In addition to mass financial hardship, that denial of coverage would have meant that every year millions would suffer needlessly from treatable ailments and tens of thousands would die from preventable illness. Cutting off Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood would have denied provision of care to millions of low-income women. And the bill’s financing structure would have weakened Medicare’s finances, imperiling still more Americans. Happily, bombast aside, odds appear slim of successfully bringing this proposal back from the dead.Perhaps most consequentially, the administration has commenced its full-fledged assault on health, safety, environmental, worker, consumer, financial security, civil rights and other regulatory protections.anti green horror show rollback continueshttps://insideclimatenews.org/news/25042017/donald-trump-climate-change-clean-power-plan-paris-agreement<p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-d75c29f3-a519-70d4-f839-aa225fc93651" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">President <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/donald-trump" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Donald Trump</a>'s planned <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">climate change</a> policies could lead to an extra half a billion tons of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2025, according to a <a href="http://www.climateadvisers.com/trumpbacktracker/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">new analysis</a>. That is equal to the annual electricity emissions of 60 percent of U.S. homes.<p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Climate Advisers, a Washington consultancy, predicts that U.S. carbon emissions, which have been falling, will begin to flatten or increase by 2020 if the Trump administration succeeds in repealing the Clean Power Plan and other Obama-era regulations.<p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">In other words, decisions made today will have a delayed effect—but a prolonged one.<p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">"We found that the 'Trump Effect' really begins to bite into the U.S. emissions trajectory in 2025—since many of the factors influencing today's emissions trajectory can't be reversed quickly," the report said.<p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">The analysis assumes that some regulations are more vulnerable than others to rollbacks. The <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/clean-power-plan" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Clean Power Plan</a> to curb carbon emissions from power plants, methane rules covering the oil and gas industry and a handful of efficiency regulations are "highly vulnerable" in the consulting firm's view, either because they're high profile or because they haven't been fully implemented. If these are the only rules the Trump administration is able to repeal, it would erase 332 million metric tons of carbon pollution cuts, Climate Advisers projected.<p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">If, however, the Trump administration succeeds also in eliminating "moderately vulnerable" rules—those controlling landfill emissions, potent refrigeration gases such as HFCs and several energy efficiency standards—another 229 million tons of projected emissions cuts would not happen, the report finds.<p dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">...=http://www.alternet.org/its-official-koch-brothers-have-killed-trumps-job-plan<a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/president-trumps-corporate-government">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/president-trumps-corporate-government</a> 100 days into Corporate Government.While giant corporations have for decades and on a bipartisan basis exerted far too much influence over government decision-making, we’ve never seen anything like the Trump administration.The key officials in the federal government, starting with the president himself, come from Big Business; the administration openly seeks guidance and direction from giant corporations and corporate CEOs on policymaking; and the Trump administration is rushing to deliver subsidies, tax breaks and deregulatory gifts to the giant corporations to which the administration apparently owes its primary allegiance.A day-by-day review of the administration’s <a href="http://citizen.org/trump-100-days" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">first 100 days</a> in office shows that virtually every day there has been a new, extraordinary grant of power to corporate interests and/or another development in Donald Trump’s get-rich-quick-scheme known as the American presidency.America has never seen anything like this.The corporate capture began at the same moment as the Trump presidency. Corporations that have pending business <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/04/19/20827/donald-trump-inauguration-bankrolled-corporate-giants" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">before the president</a> — AT&T, Bank of America, Boeing, Chevron, Deloitte, JPMorgan Chase and United Parcel Service – were among the top funders of the inauguration and surrounding festivities. Giant companies and billionaires heaped more than $100 million on the festivities.New President Trump immediately signaled his intent to deliver on the corporate wish list by signing two executive orders, one designed to start the process of destroying the Affordable Care Act and another freezing all regulatory activity for 90 days.It’s been downhill since then.President Trump has assembled what is probably the least qualified and certainly most <a href="http://corporatecabinet.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">corporate cabinet</a> of all time. By way of reminder, this list includes: the former CEO of Exxon Mobil (Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State); a slew of former Goldman Sachs executives, so much so that the factions fighting for control of the administration each hail from Goldman Sachs (chief strategist Steve Bannon and top economic advisor Gary Cohn); a banker known as the Foreclosure King to run the Department of Treasury (Steven Mnuchin), an Amway heiress and Republican megadonor (Betsy DeVos); and a former state attorney general who allowed the fossil fuel industry to draft letters on attorney general <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html?r=1" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">letterhead</a> on multiple occasions (Scott Pruitt, Environmental Protection Agency).Having a corporate cabinet has apparently not satisfied Trump’s yen to hang out with the corporate elite. Trump started his first full weekday in office with a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/23/trump-pledges-major-border-tax-ceo-meeting-white-house/96949832/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">breakfast meeting with CEOs</a> of a dozen corporations, and the meetings continue at a staggering pace. Trump is <a href="http://www.citizenvox.org/2017/04/17/corporate-executives-swamp-white-house/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">meeting</a> with more than two CEOS every day, on average. These <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/business-leaders-trump-white-house-meeting-2017-1/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">extraordinary</a> gatherings, which have the explicit purpose of providing a way for Big Business to shape the administration’s policies, are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/us/mar-a-lago-trump-ethics-winter-white-house.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">supplemented by</a> the president’s more <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-wedding-super-pac_us_58a1ff7be4b094a129edb356" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">casual interactions</a> with <a href="http://www.wcvb.com/article/patriots-owner-robert-kraft-spends-time-with-president-trump-at-mar-a-lago/8730975" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">corporate leaders</a> at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., where the membership fee is now $200,000.Many of the gatherings reflect the administration’s interest in giving special consideration to the views of specific corporate sectors, such as <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/09/remarks-president-trump-meeting-aviation-industry" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">airlines</a>, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/27/remarks-president-trump-listening-session-health-insurance-company-ceos" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">health insurance corporations</a>, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-pharmaceuticals-novartis-idUSKBN15F13K" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">pharmaceutical corporations</a>, and the<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-autos-idUSKBN1581CA" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;"> automotive industry</a>. One of every five of the corporate executives who met with the Trump administration within the first 100 days represented the banking or financial sector.It’s not just meetings and personnel. The Trump administration is off to a roaring start on delivering the goodies to Big Business.It has taken care of its Dirty Energy friends. By executive order, Trump overturned Obama measures to <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/24/presidential-memorandum-regarding-construction-keystone-xl-pipeline" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">block</a> the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines. A few days later, the Army Corps of Engineers <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/02/07/trump-administration-to-approve-final-permit-for-dakota-access-pipeline/?utm_term=.b34608ee7cbe" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">granted</a> Energy Transfer Partners the final permit it needs to complete the Dakota Access Pipeline. It has also put in place <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/24/executive-order-expediting-environmental-reviews-and-approvals-high" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">measures</a> to speed approval of other pipelines and fossil fuel projects, and is expected in the coming days to announce measures to upend the Environmental Protection Agency.In March, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2017/03/15/trump-call-review-fuel-economy-rules/99194860/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Trump announced a review</a> – plainly aimed to be a roll back – of auto fuel efficiency standards. Just a few years ago, a U.S. government bailout saved the Big Three automakers from utter collapse. The modest reciprocity the government demanded was industry agreement to higher fuel efficiency standards – its most important move to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses. Now the auto industry and the Trump administration are colluding to abrogate the deal. Consumers will be swindled in the process; the fuel economy rules that Trump is reversing were projected to save Americans up to $5,700 for every car they purchase, and $8,200 for every truck.Trump has issued an executive order aimed at undoing President <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/26/trump-executive-order-clean-power-plan-coal-plants" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Obama’s Clean Power Plan</a> – his signature effort to reduce climate pollution from coal powered plants; the administration is debating pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement; and administration officials have banned the use of the term “<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/energy-department-climate-change-phrases-banned-236655" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">climate change</a>.” EPA Chief Scott Pruitt and his minions are delivering a host of other gifts to polluters, such as inaugural <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/dow-wants-trump-administration-to-ignore-presticide-risk-study-f56da15ddffe" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">$1 million donor Dow</a>, notably including a refusal to ban a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/29/trump-epa-declines-to-ban-pesticide-that-obama-had-proposed-outlawing/?utm_term=.ae6fad41011a" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">brain-damaging pesticide</a>.The administration is taking care of its Wall Street friends (meaning those who remain outside the administration). Trump has signed executive orders aimed at <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-moves-to-undo-dodd-frank-law-1486101602" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">unraveling the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law</a> (“We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank,” the president told JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon and other CEOs in January) and repealing an Obama administration Labor Department rule requiring financial advisors to give advice based on their customers’ best interests. The Labor Department rule, if adopted, will save consumers $17 billion a year in rip-off fees and bad advice. Contemplated changes in Dodd-Frank rules, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-100-billion-reason-investors-loved-trumps-bank-order-1486321893" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the Wall Street Journal reports</a>, will enable the six biggest banks to return $100 billion of reserves to shareholders. A staggering gift to the shareholders – at the cost of making the financial system far, far more unstable, insecure and prone to another 2008-style meltdown.Although its prospects are dim, Trump proposed a cruel, sadistic and military-industrial-complex-fawning <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-presidential-budget-2018-proposal/?utm_term=.63e85b8a206b" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">budget</a>, featuring $54 billion in increased spending on weapons and war, with gouging cuts to spending on everything from environmental protection to Meals on Wheels....=<a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/phony-numbers-and-front-groups-trumps-inaugural-donor-list-contains-massive">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/phony-numbers-and-front-groups-trumps-inaugural-donor-list-contains-massive</a>...one case, Marion Forcht of Corbin, KY donated $50,000 to the president’s inaugural committee. His wife Terry also donated $50,000. Forcht owns Forcht Insurance Agency, with an estimated annual revenue of $134,500. In another, “GLM Development” donated $100,000 to the president—with an estimated revenue of $146,000. In yet another, Isabel T. John of Englewood, NJ donated $400,000. The problem? There’s no record she exists. [img]<a class="TweetAction TweetAction--heart web-intent" href="https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=855144352103923712" data-scribe="element:heart" style="white-space: nowrap; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px;">As the Intercept reports, Trump’s inaugural committee claimed it received $25,000 from NASA mathematician and physicist Katherine Johnson—a claim her power of attorney denies.</a><twitterwidget class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" id="twitter-widget-1" data-tweet-id="855144352103923712" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: static; visibility: visible; display: block; transform: rotate(0deg); max-width: 100%; width: 500px; min-width: 220px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><div data-twitter-event-id="1" class="SandboxRoot env-bp-350" style="direction: ltr; background: 0px 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.4;" segoe="Segoe" ui="UI" calibri="Calibri" sans-serif="sans-serif" color="color" rgb="rgb" white-space="white-space" initial="initial" position="position" relative="relative"><a class="TweetAction TweetAction--heart web-intent" href="https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=855144352103923712" data-scribe="element:heart" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px;">The Intercept also notes the filings reveal a $1 million donation from American Action Network, which NBC describes as a “</a><a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-newest-dark-money-power-player-american-action-network#51001" style="text-decoration-line: none;">dark money power player</a>”—an organization used to funnel money to campaigns while masking the identity of the donor. It also lists a <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/trump-russia-lebow-inauguration" style="text-decoration-line: none;">$300,000 donation</a> from Bennett LeBow, a businessman who partnered with Trump on a failed Moscow real estate venture.Wilkie, with the help of a Twitter call to action, transferred the inaugural committee’s FEC filing to an <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JaV4FmB9eoS78HR1WlHIZ0aw6GEqkYi6ccdiupVmfOA/htmlview?userstoinvite=kegill@gmail.com&ts=58f9af41&actionButton=1&sle=true#gid=2076979633" style="text-decoration-line: none;">open-source spreadsheet</a>. Volunteers are working to verify the identities of Trump’s donors, and leaving comments on the document.==

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/donald-trump-personally-profited-from-missile-maker-raytheons-stock-jump-after-his-syria-attack/

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<div>http://www.alternet.org/environment/5-ways-trumps-far-reaching-reversal-obama-era-protections-risks-our-health-environment</div>

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<div><a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-obama-climate-policies-2333194787.html">http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-obama-climate-policies-2333194787.html</a></div>

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<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">President Trump</a> will travel to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today at 2 p.m. to <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-roll-back-climate-plan-2331820968.html" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">sign a broad executive ord</a>er that will take aim at key Obama-era climate policies, setting the stage for several extended energy fights in the months and years to come.

Ordering a review and rewrite of the Clean Power Plan is the main target in the executive order's crosshairs, but the order will also highlight several other policies in jeopardy, including the <a href="http://climatenexus.org/learn/solutions-policy/social-cost-carbon" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">social cost of carbon figure</a>, regulations on coal plants and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/methane" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">methane emissions</a> and the moratorium on <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-fossil-fuels-public-lands-2332078067.html" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">coal leasing on federal lands</a>.

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"The Trump Administration continues to fulfill its campaign promise to trample on environmental protections and prioritize the jobs of fossil fuel executives under the guise of protecting American workers," said Ken Berlin, president and CEO of <a href="https://www.climaterealityproject.org/" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">The Climate Reality Project</a>.

While the move to scrap the Clean Power Plan raises questions on the efficacy of the U.S. involvement in the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Paris agreement</a>, a White House official said on a Tuesday night press call to review the order that staying in Paris is "still under discussion."

"Trump is sacrificing our future for fossil fuel profits—and leaving our kids to pay the price," said Rhea Suh, president of the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Natural Resources Defense Council</a>. "This would do lasting damage to our environment and public lands, threaten our homes and health, hurt our pocketbooks and slow the clean energy progress that has already generated millions of good-paying jobs."

Michael Brune, executive director of the <a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Sierra Club</a> agrees. "The best way to protect workers and the environment is to invest in growing the clean energy economy that is already outpacing fossil fuels, and ensuring no one is left behind," Brune said. "At a time when we can declare independence from dirty fuels by embracing clean energy, this action could only deepen our dependence on fuels that pollute our air, water and climate."

For a deeper dive:

General Executive Order: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-moves-decisively-to-wipe-out-obamas-climate-change-record/2017/03/27/411043d4-132c-11e7-9e4f-09aa75d3ec57_story.html?utm_term=.bbc3aa3595a9" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Washington Post</a>, <a href="http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TRUMP_CLIMATE_PLAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">AP</a>, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-sign-executive-order-to-roll-back-obama-climate-change-policies-1490670000" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">WSJ</a>, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-energy-idUSKBN16Z09F" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Reuters</a>, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-trump-order-review-clean-power-plan/story?id=46410430" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">ABC</a>, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/27/president-trumps-executive-order-undo-obamas-clean-power-plan-rule/99697594/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">USA Today</a>, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5900978a-136a-11e7-80f4-13e067d5072c" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">FT</a>, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-28/trump-to-cancel-obama-s-policies-aimed-at-paris-climate-pledge" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Bloomberg</a>, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-clean-power-rules-20170328-story.html" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">LA Times</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/28/trump-begins-tearing-up-obamas-years-of-progress-on-tackling-climate-change" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">The Guardian</a>, <a href="http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/3/27/14922516/trump-executive-order-climate" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Vox</a>, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/27/trump-to-roll-back-obama-climate-actions-power-plant-emissions-rule.html" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">CNBC</a>, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/28/trump-set-to-undo-obamas-action-against-global-warming.html" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Fox News</a>, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/27/trump-kills-obama-s-climate-change-rules-in-favor-of-fossil-fuel-industry.html" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Daily Beast</a>, <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/03/trump-executive-order-climate" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Mother Jones</a>, <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trumps-newest-order-looks-to-block-obamas-climate-legacy/article/2618606" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Washington Examiner</a>, <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/326047-trump-to-undo-obamas-climate-change-agenda" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">The Hill</a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-executive-order-climate-change_us_58b07ebae4b060480e079dc2" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Huffington Post</a>, <a href="http://grist.org/briefly/trumps-environmental-executive-order-is-everything-we-feared/" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Grist</a>

Clean Power Plan: <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/28/519003733/trump-takes-aim-at-a-centerpiece-of-obamas-environmental-legacy" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">NPR</a>, <a href="http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/2/23/14691438/trump-repeal-clean-power-plan" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Vox</a> Paris: <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/03/27/521693394/trumps-plan-to-ditch-clean-power-plan-threatens-paris-agreement" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">NPR</a>, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-28/trump-to-cancel-obama-s-policies-aimed-at-paris-climate-pledge" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Bloomberg</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/2017/03/27/trump-climate-change-executive-order/#Fp7PX8g4Sgq3" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Mashable</a> Planning: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-27/trump-said-to-toss-obama-s-orders-to-prepare-for-extreme-weather" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Bloomberg</a> FAQs:<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/science/what-to-know-about-trumps-order-to-dismantle-the-clean-power-plan.html?mtrref=undefined&gwh=0A50E4C2F27CC56FE9D5021648A3DAB8&gwt=pay" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">New York Times</a> Backgrounders: <a href="http://climatenexus.org/messaging-communication/current-events/understanding-trumps-energy-independence-eo" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Climate Nexus</a>

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Deniers in charge: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/us/politics/climate-change-denialists-in-charge.html" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">New York Times</a>

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<div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/us/politics/climate-change-denialists-in-charge.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/us/politics/climate-change-denialists-in-charge.html</a></div>

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<div>...“It’s just a few years ago, we were talking about global warming, which is — we haven’t seen a lot of warming lately. I remember back in the ’70s when we were talking about the coming ice age. And, look, you know, we have — we’ve had a tough winter. And in the Midwest, we’re — we’re made of hardy stock. We’ve seen these kind of winters before. And we’ll shoulder through them. We’ll leave the scientific debates for the future.”</div>

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<div>MSNBC interview, 2014.</div>

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<div>“There’s no question that the activities that take place in this country and in countries around the world have some impact on the environment and some impact on climate. But Donald Trump and I say let’s follow the science, but for heaven’s sakes let’s not go rushing into the kind of restrictions on our economy that are putting Americans out of work and, frankly, are driving jobs out of this country.”</div>

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<div>Stephen K. Bannon</div>

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<div>The national debt is “not a manufactured crisis like global warming or the health care crisis. This is a — this is an existential crisis.”</div>

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<div>Scott Pruitt</div>

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<div>“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so, no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”</div>

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<div>Mr. Pruitt on carbon dioxide and the environment on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” March 9.</div>

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<div>David Kreutzer</div>

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<div>“A common claim among proponents of action on climate change is that the overwhelming majority of climatologists agree on global warming science. One commonly cited statistic is that 97 percent of climatologists agree on global warming. … The 97 percent statistic is nothing more than a false talking point; no overwhelming consensus exists among climatologists on the magnitude of future warming or on the urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”</div>

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<div>“The State of Climate Science: No Justification for Extreme Policies,” 2016 Heritage Foundation report, with Mr. Kreutzer as lead author.</div>

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<div>James Inhofe</div>

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<div>“The claim that global warming is caused by man-made emissions is simply untrue and not based on sound science.”</div>

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<div>Mr. Inhofe, circa 2003.</div>

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<div>“Obama has built a culture of radical alarmists, and they’ll be back. You and I and the American people have won a great victory, but the war goes on. Stay vigilant.”</div>

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<div>Video address this month to the Heartland Institute, a group devoted to discrediting climate change.</div>

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<div>Lamar Smith</div>

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<div>“Climate change is caused by a combination of factors, including natural cycles, solar variability and human activity. Scientists still disagree about how much each of these factors contributes to overall climate change. What climate alarmists say is sometimes untrue and often exaggerated. We should rely on good science, not science fiction, when we evaluate climate change.”</div>

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<div>Op-ed article in USA Today, 2015.</div>

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<div>Rick Perry</div>

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<div>“It’s all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight. Al Gore is a prophet all right, a false prophet of a secular carbon cult, and now even moderate Democrats aren’t buying it.”</div>

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<div>“Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington,” a 2010 book written by Mr. Perry.</div>

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<div>“I believe the climate is changing. I believe some of it is naturally occurring, but some of it is also caused by man-made activity. The question is: How do we address it in a thoughtful way that doesn’t compromise economic growth, the affordability of energy or American jobs?”</div>

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<div>mercers unhappy</div>

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<div><a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-deniers-trump-mercer-2333225289.html">http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-deniers-trump-mercer-2333225289.html</a></div>

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<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23032017/keystone-xl-pipeline-donald-trump-rex-tillerson-state-department-nebraska" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23032017/keystone-xl-pipeline-donald-trump-rex-tillerson-state-department-nebraska</a>

The White House's approval of the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/keystone-xl" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">Keystone XL pipeline</a> Friday opens a fierce, new battle over a project that has become a front in the fight against <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">climate change</a>.

President <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/donald-trump" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">Donald Trump</a> made reviving the 1,200-mile pipeline, which will transport heavy crude oil from tar sands mines in Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, a key plank of his fossil fuel-focused energy plan. He promised in January to reverse President Barack Obama's rejection of the TransCanada project, one of Obama's signature environmental decisions, within 60 days. The president just beat that <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/24/presidential-memorandum-regarding-construction-keystone-xl-pipeline" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">deadline</a>.

"It's going to be an incredible pipeline, the greatest technology known to man or woman," Trump said Friday in a signing of the project's presidential permit, flanked by TransCanada officials, pipe suppliers and union leaders. "It's a great day for American jobs and a historic moment for North America and energy independence."

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<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20032017/paris-climate-agreement-donald-trump-global-warming-clean-power-plan">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20032017/paris-climate-agreement-donald-trump-global-warming-clean-power-plan</a>

Whether the U.S. meets its emissions-reduction commitments under the Paris climate accord is pivotal to the success of the global agreement, but the Trump administration's policies have all but ensured the U.S. will fall far short. One recent analysis says the country will miss its target by more than 1 billion metric tons.

Under President Barack Obama, the United States pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. That means emissions must be cut about 1.7 billion metric tons, according to figures from the Environmental Protection Agency's latest <a href="https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/us-greenhouse-gas-inventory-report-1990-2014" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">greenhouse gas inventory</a>. The nation is a third of the way to that target, but the rest was to be achieved via an array of regulations, especially the Clean Power Plan, that are now targeted for elimination by President Donald Trump. Not only was the goal dependent on those rules, it would have also required even more rigorous policies from Obama's successor because reductions from those rules would not have been enough, numerous studies have found.

David Bookbinder, a longtime environmental lawyer and a fellow at the libertarian think tank the Niskanen Center, released a new <a href="https://www.clcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/A_Winning_Trade.pdf" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">analysis</a> that puts the shortfall at 1 billion metric tons if Trump succeeds in undoing most of the Obama-era climate rules. Meaning, emissions from the world's second-largest carbon polluter would be virtually unchanged from today. That would jeopardize any chance the world has to set a course of deep and rapid decarbonization over the next critical few years.

"There were people at the [EPA] hard at work on 2.0 [of climate policy], and they were going to ratchet it up, and it was going to be justified by Paris. It all would have worked, except for that whole election thing," Bookbinder said. "Now, it's all over...We're at square zero."

InsideClimate News compiled a chart showing exactly how far the United States still has to go to meet its Paris pledge. We discovered that the U.S. has already achieved an emissions reduction of 572 million metric tons, a third of the Paris target. That was largely the result of coal being driven out of the market under competitive pressure from natural gas and renewables, greater efficiency throughout the economy and a broad range of regulations. Most of the remaining two-thirds counted on the Clean Power Plan and other Obama-era rules. Even if those were implemented, the chart shows, the U.S would still fall 17 percent short of meeting its Paris pledge.

(This analysis is based on estimates by the scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory of the maximum emissions cuts achievable with each of Obama's policies. Other analyses and studies by groups including the <a href="http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/hausker_testimony_070815.docx" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">World Resources Institute</a> and the <a href="http://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY00/20150415/103329/HHRG-114-SY00-Wstate-%20HarbertK-20150415.pdf" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">U.S. Chamber of Commerce</a> have come up with different numbers. But all agreed that further policy would be needed to make the goal.)

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<div><a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/what-war-are-we-buying-another-58-billion-military">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/what-war-are-we-buying-another-58-billion-military</a></div>

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<div>trump drone 4x, yemen starve, cluster?</div>

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<div><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/26/trump-is-getting-payments-from-foreign-governments-we-have-no-idea-what-they-are">https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/26/trump-is-getting-payments-from-foreign-governments-we-have-no-idea-what-they-are</a></div>

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The same day as Donovan, Trump announced the nomination of David Malpass as treasury undersecretary for international affairs. Malpass was the chief economist for Bear Stearns right before the investment bank imploded. He literally wrote an opinion piece called “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118645120890190059" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Don’t Panic About Credit Markets</a>” for the Wall Street Journal in August 2007, noting, “Housing and debt markets are not that big a part of the U.S. economy.”

But it’s not just the presence of ex-bank executives that matters; it’s the policy menu oriented to Wall Street’s wishes.

After dalliances with unorthodox proposals for a Republican, Trump has settled into an agenda of tax cuts and deregulation — particularly for the financial industry. Cohn laid out the new paradigm in an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-plans-broad-rethink-on-regulating-big-financial-firms-1486116003" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">interview with the Wall Street Journal</a> last month, promising lighter supervision and even lower capital requirements for the financial sector. J. Christopher Giancarlo, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/business/dealbook/cftc-christopher-giancarlo-futures-regulation.html?_r=0" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Trump’s choice</a> to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which handles derivatives regulations, <a href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/02/cftc-commissioner-giancarlo-admits-to-hijacking-advisory-committee-to-boost-commodity-speculators.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">hijacked a federal advisory panel</a> to recommend abandoning limits on commodity speculation, of the kind <a href="http://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/01/26/2017/good-news-goldman-sachs-trump-likely-alter-dodd-frank" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">pursued by big banks</a> like Goldman Sachs.

Donovan is expected to play a major role in tax policy, which will be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/23/trump-tax-plan-cuts-wealthy-low-income-inequality" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">overwhelmingly tilted</a> to benefiting the wealthy, despite <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/business/economy/mnuchin-rule-tax-cut.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">claims from Mnuchin</a> that the rich will see “no absolute tax cut.” Even Trump’s flailing health care proposal is really little more than a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/07/the-massive-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-inside-the-gop-health-care-plan/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">large tax cut for the wealthiest Americans</a>, financed by cuts to the low-income Medicaid program.

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<div><a href="http://www.alternet.org/investigations/investors-oligarchs-mobsters-and-capital-flight-inside-shadowy-world-trumps-private">http://www.alternet.org/investigations/investors-oligarchs-mobsters-and-capital-flight-inside-shadowy-world-trumps-private</a></div>

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<div><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/15/headlines/wsj_trump_has_given_cia_expanded_authority_to_carry_out_drone_strikes">https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/15/headlines/wsj_trump_has_given_cia_expanded_authority_to_carry_out_drone_strikes</a></div>

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<a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/15/headlines/trump_to_tap_goldman_sachs_banker_james_donovan_to_be_deputy_treasury_sec">https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/15/headlines/trump_to_tap_goldman_sachs_banker_james_donovan_to_be_deputy_treasury_sec</a>

Trump is expected to tap Goldman Sachs banker James Donovan to be deputy treasury secretary. Donovan would work directly for another former Goldman Sachs banker: now Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Trump has also tapped nearly another half-dozen more people tied to Goldman Sachs to join his administration, including National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, Trump chief strategist Stephen Bannon, Securities and Exchange Commission chair nominee Jay Clayton, senior White House adviser Anthony Scaramucci and senior counselor for economic initiatives Dina Habib Powell.

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Scott Pruitt got in trouble in 2014 when the New York Times revealed that he had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">passed off</a> a letter from an energy company and financial backer as his own work. Apparently, Pruitt is quickly rubbing off on the rest of the Trump administration.

<div>On Monday, the White House issued a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/03/06/president-trump-congratulates-exxon-mobil-job-creating-investment" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">press release</a> congratulating Exxon for making investments in American jobs. Not only did the statement cite investments announced long, long before Trump became president, but the White House press release <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/white-house-plagiarizes-exxon-2304764485.html" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">copied an entire paragraph</a> from Exxon's own statement without acknowledgement. Yes, folks, the White House has now outsourced its communications work to Exxon. Could they at least pretend to be separate entities?

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<div>A Trump campaign aide who argues that Democrats committed “ethnic cleansing” in a plot to “liquidate” the white working class. A former reality show contestant whose study of societal collapse inspired him to invent a bow-and-arrow-<span style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: oblique; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1;">cum-survivalist multi-tool. A pair of healthcare industry lobbyists. A lobbyist for defense contractors. An “evangelist” and lobbyist for Palantir, the Silicon Valley company with close ties to intelligence agencies. And a New Hampshire Trump supporter who has only recently graduated from high school.

<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;">These are some of the people the Trump administration has hired for positions across the federal government, according to documents received by ProPublica through public-records requests. ...;that require Senate confirmation, he has quietly installed hundreds of officials to serve as his eyes and ears at every major federal agency, from the Pentagon to the Department of Interior.

Unlike appointees exposed to the scrutiny of the Senate, members of these so-called “<a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-trump-administration/2017/01/beachhead-teams-agenda-inauguration-day-233774" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">beachhead teams</a>” have operated largely in the shadows, with the White House declining to publicly reveal their identities.

While some names have previously dribbled out in the press, <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/beachhead" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">we are publishing a list of more than 400 hires</a>, providing the most complete accounting so far of who Trump has brought into the federal government.

The White House <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-trump-administration/2017/01/beachhead-teams-agenda-inauguration-day-233774" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">said</a> in January that around 520 staffers were being hired for the beachhead teams.

The list we obtained includes obscure campaign staffers, contributors to Breitbart and others who have embraced conspiracy theories, as well as dozens of Washington insiders who could be reasonably characterized as part of the “swamp” Trump pledged to drain.

The list is striking for how many former lobbyists it contains: We found at least 36, spanning industries from health insurance and pharmaceuticals to construction, energy and finance. Many of them lobbied in the same areas that are regulated by the agencies they have now joined.

During the campaign, Trump said he would have “<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-before-would-have-no-problem-banning-lobbyists-trump-now-youre-hired" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">no problem</a>” banning lobbyists from his administration. But they have nonetheless ended up in senior roles, aided by Trump’s <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-trump-administration-may-be-skirting-its-own-ethics-rules" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">weakening of Obama-era ethics</a> rules that <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/barack-obama-revolving-door-lobbying-217042" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">modestly limited</a> lobbyists’ role in government.That figure is almost certainly an undercount since we only included those who formally registered as lobbyists, a process <a href="https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/04/19/what-is-shadow-lobbying-how-influence-peddlers-shape-policy-in-the-dark/" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">increasingly avoided</a> by many in Washington.

The White House didn’t respond to requests for comment.

There are many former congressional staffers, several top officials from the George W. Bush administration, and even a handful of holdovers from the Obama administration. The list also includes at least eight staffers drawn from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-transition-heritage-foundation-231722" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">forged close ties</a> to the new administration during the transition.

Much about the role of the beachhead teams at various federal agencies is unclear. But close observers of the early weeks of the Trump administration believe they have taken on considerable influence in the absence of high-level political appointees.

“If the public and Senate is in the dark about a team created without a Senate confirmation process, no one will be permitted to shed light on who is hopelessly conflicted or who is obviously unqualified — and who is both,” said <a href="http://cepr.net/about-us/staff/jeff-hauser-executive-director-of-the-revolving-door-project" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">Jeff Hauser</a>, director of the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The beachhead team members are <a href="https://www.chcoc.gov/content/temporary-transition-schedule-c-authority-and-temporary-transition-senior-executive-service" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">temporary</a> employees serving for stints of four to eight months, but many are expected to move into permanent jobs. The Trump administration’s model is based on <a href="http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/19/15264192-inside-the-romney-readiness-project-the-ambitious-plans-for-an-unrealized-administration?lite" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">plans</a> developed but never used by the unsuccessful presidential campaign of Mitt Romney.

“The beachhead teams involve people with considerable authority over the federal government,” said Max Stier, the CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that <a href="http://presidentialtransition.org/ready-to-govern/index.php" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">advises</a> presidential candidates on smooth transitions. “We need clarity about what they’re doing and what their role is going to be.”

The Obama administration also hired temporary staffers after the inauguration. But Trump has brought in many more, Stier said.

The new list of names was provided to us by the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources agency. We received additional names from other federal agencies in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. At least a few people on the list have changed agencies or left the administration, including, for example, the young Department of Housing and Urban Development staffer who was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/us/politics/shermichael-singleton-housing-urban-development.html" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">fired</a> after his anti-Trump writings during the campaign came to light.

Here is a run-down of some of the Trump hires.

<h2 style="margin: 25px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1;">The Breitbart wing</h2>

<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; line-height: 1.4;"><strong style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1;">Curtis Ellis was a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160414050424/http://www.wnd.com/author/cellis/?archive=true" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">columnist</a> for WorldNetDaily, a website best known for its <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2011/04/286329/" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">enthusiastic</a> <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/birther-czar-joseph-farah-i-ve-been-talking-to-donald-trump-quite-a-bit" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">embrace</a> of the false notion that President Obama was born outside the United States. A column headlined the “The Radical Left’s Ethnic Cleansing of America” won Ellis an <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-advisor-hillary-and-obama-want-ethnic-cleansing-of-white-working-people/" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">admiring interview</a> with Steve Bannon, now Trump’s top aide. He is a longtime <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/08/10/curtis-ellis-tpp-is-about-redistributing-the-wealth-of-america-to-the-rest-of-the-world/" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">critic</a> of trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Ellis was hired Jan. 20 as a special assistant to the secretary at the Labor Department. Asked about his role in a brief phone interview Tuesday, he said: “Nothing I can tell you.”

<strong style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1;">Jon Perdue, a self-described guerrilla warfare expert and fellow at a little-known security <a href="http://www.securefreesociety.org/about-sfs/sfs-team/" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">think tank</a>, wrote a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/War-All-People-Radicalism-Terrorism/dp/1597977047" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">book</a> called “The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism.” He is also a onetime <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2010/07/08/chavezs-alliance-with-iran-and-how-to-stop-him/" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">contributor</a> to Breitbart.

Perdue was featured on CNBC’s reality series “Make Me a Millionaire Inventor” for his invention, the Packbow, which Perdue came up with while <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packbow" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">studying</a> “collapsed societies, and what people who lived in those societies came up with to either defend themselves or to survive.” It’s a bow and arrow that <a href="http://packbow.com/" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">doubles as</a> a compass, tent pole, walking stick, spearfishing rig, and water purification tablet receptacle.

Perdue was hired as a special assistant at the Treasury Department. The agency didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jaggers was hired Jan. 20 as senior adviser at the General Services Administration, which oversees <a href="https://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/101606" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">tens of billions of dollars</a> of government procurement every year. But records show he left the job on March 3. He declined to comment.

<strong style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/keagan-lenihan-071b511/?locale=de_DE" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">Keagan Lenihan</a>, also a senior adviser to Price, was a director of government relations at McKesson Specialty Health, a firm that supports independent health providers. Disclosure <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/lobbyist.php?id=Y0000046788L&year=2016" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">records</a> show Lenihan directly lobbied HHS. For Lenihan, the new post represents a return trip through the revolving door between government and the private sector, and a reunion with an old boss. Before registering as a lobbyist, she was a senior legislative assistant for Price, when the now-HHS secretary was in Congress.

Asked about the three HHS staffers, an agency spokeswoman said: “We are not confirming or commenting on personnel at this time.”

<strong style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1;">Justin Mikolay, hired at the Department of Defense, was previously a registered lobbyist for Palantir. His title at the tech firm was “<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-mikolay-375bb02/" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">evangelist</a>.” Mikolay lobbied for the “procurement/deployment of the Palantir Government software platform” throughout intelligence and defense agencies, according to disclosure <a href="https://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=getFilingDetails&filingID=B1AA2EAD-09CE-4157-9747-7DEDA5B89E34&filingTypeID=69" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">records</a>.

Mikolay was a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-mikolay-375bb02/" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">speechwriter</a> to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta between 2011 and 2013, according to his LinkedIn profile. Mikolay also previously served as a <a href="http://theeverybodyletter.com/2014/07/thanks-general-mattis-1/" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">speechwriter</a> for current Secretary of Defense James Mattis. He declined to comment.

Reached Tuesday, Wolf declined to comment. George Rogers, CEO of Wolf’s lobbying firm, Wexler Walker, told ProPublica that Wolf is currently on unpaid leave.

As we’ve previously reported, lobbyists for the <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-watered-down-ethics-rules-let-lobbyist-help-run-agency-he-lobbied" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">construction industry</a> trade association and financial services firm <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/propublica/trump-admin-hired-another-lobbyist-to-work-at-an-agency-whose-regulations-he-onc/10155123953299445" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; position: relative; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">TransAmerica</a> are on the team at the Department of Labor.

Seth Harris, who was on the first Obama-Biden transition team and later became a top Labor Department official, said it’s not uncommon to bring in campaign staff to agencies — “as long as there are senior political people to direct the junior people.”

“This is how you incorporate the people who are your strongest supporters into the government,” he said. “There are plenty of junior jobs in the government that these people can do — public-affairs jobs, special assistant jobs.”

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<div><a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-auto-emissions-standards-2303524715.html">http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-auto-emissions-standards-2303524715.html</a>

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The oil industry and its "deep state" allies in the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Trump</a> administration have lured U.S. auto companies into a potentially fatal political trap, chumming Detroit by tapping into the deeply embedded penchant of the Big Three for chasing short-term market trends at the expense of long term value.

Excited by the arrival of a <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/big-oil" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Big Oil</a> ally, <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/scott-pruitt" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Scott Pruitt</a>, to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the auto industry asked the Trump administration to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/business/energy-environment/automakers-pruitt-mileage-rules.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module&r=1" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">undo the recent Obama Administration rule</a> locking long term, reliable standards for emissions and fuel economy. The industry argued that the standards, which it agreed to back in 2009 as part of the auto bail-out, were now too onerous because consumers were shifting to buy SUV's again with lower oil prices. The argument is utterly bogus. The 2009 rules set separate, if ambitious, standards for each size class of vehicle, so while more SUV sales do drive up average emissions and oil consumption, they do not require the companies to make a single vehicle to a higher standard than they agreed to.

What's really at stake here is the pace of vehicle electrification. Meeting the 2009 standards for each vehicle class was always dependent on a significant portion of those vehicles being zero-emission electric drive. That's an existential threat to the oil industry—and in many ways to Detroit's dealers, who <a href="https://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/16/insiders-tale-auto-dealers-suck-selling-electric-cars/" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">make most of their money</a> repairing the drive trains of internal combustion cars. <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/electric-vehicles" target="blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Electric drive vehicles</a> (EV) have a fraction of the maintenance costs of gas or diesel.

But a rapid deployment of electric drive cars is vital to the long term global viability of automobile manufacturers. Whatever happens in the U.S., global auto markets are going electric and the Big Three need a major U.S. EV market to compete in the 21st century.

...

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==

AN

esistance to President Donald Trump is cropping up in the most unlikeliest of places: the <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/08/25/top-house-republican-calls-on-donald-trump-to-release-his-tax-returns/" style=" text-decoration: none;">House GOP caucus</a>.

At least four Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives, some of whom have been questioned, booed and heckled at recent town halls by their constituents, publicly called for Trump to release his tax returns in order to review for any potential conflicts of interest that pose a national security risk or violate the Constitution.

“It’s something I feel very, very strongly about,” Republican South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford told RollCall this week. Sanford, along with North Carolina Republican Walter Jones, signed a <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/340828667/Pascrell-163-Bipartisan-Colleagues-Call-on-Congress-to-Request-Trump-Tax-Returns" style=" text-decoration: none;">letter</a> from New Jersey Democrat Bill Pascrell calling on the chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee to compel the United States Treasury Department to release Trump’s tax returns for congressional review.

“Disclosure would serve the public interest of clarifying President Trump’s conflicts of interest in office, the potential for him to personally benefit from tax reform, and ensure that he is not receiving any preferential treatment from the IRS,” the letter stated. “We believe the powerful and respected Committees on Finance and Ways and Means have the responsibility to ensure oversight of the executive branch by requesting a review of President Trump’s tax returns and moving toward a formal release of these documents to the public.”

The letter has been signed by more than 140 Democrats in the House.

“Ultimately, it isn’t about Trump’s tax returns. It’s about the continuation of a policy that’s been in place for 50 years by virtue of tradition. What happens at the federal level has real implications at the state and local level,” Sanford said.

Sanford was one of several House Republicans, including House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/08/25/top-house-republican-calls-on-donald-trump-to-release-his-tax-returns/" style=" text-decoration: none;">called</a> on Trump to release his tax returns during the presidential campaign. Sanford even sent a letter in late January to Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, on the matter.

Trump defied a more than four-decade-old bipartisan tradition of presidential candidates releasing their tax returns, insisting that he cannot do so while under audit. He has said that the public doesn’t care <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/11/politics/trump-tax-returns-answer-news-conference/?iid=EL" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none;">“at all”</a> about his returns.

But asked, “Will you call for the release of President Trump’s income tax records?” by a registered Republican at a Pensacola <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/a-conservative-republican-calls-on-trump-to-release-his-tax-returns-at-a-town-hall-thursday/2017/02/24/fd243790-fa4c-11e6-9845-576c69081518_story.html" style=" text-decoration: none;">town hall</a> late last month, freshman Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida folded and responded: “Absolutely.”

Iowa Republican Rep. David Young echoed his Republican colleague at his own recent town hall. “You run for president, you’re president, you should release your tax returns. It’s a distraction and I think the American people should know,” the congressman told a town hall last week, calling the decision a “no-brainer.”

A poll <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/08/25/64-percent-of-republicans-want-trump-to-release-tax-returns-poll/" style=" text-decoration: none;">released</a> during last year’s presidential campaign found that 64 percent of Republican voters wanted Trump to release his tax returns.

Earlier this week Pascrell tried to get <a href="http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/02/house_republicans_dont_want_to_see_trumps_tax_retu.html" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none;">House Ways and Means Committee</a> Chairman Kevin Brady, R-TX, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orin Hatch, R-Utah, to use their jurisdictional authority to push Trump to release his taxes. Pascrell forced a vote on the floor of the House on the issue, but every Republican — including Gaetz and Young — unanimously rejected the motion. Sanford and Jones, who have taken the most concrete steps to force Trump’s hand on tax returns, voted present.

==

Candidate Donald Trump waged a bitter fight with some of the Republican Party’s biggest donors, but President Trump is assiduously courting some of those same donors as he tries to consolidate control of his party and begins preparing for an expensive reelection campaign in 2020.

This Friday evening, Trump is set to speak in Palm Beach to a retreat for the Republican National Committee’s most generous donors. On Thursday evening, Trump's Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made a personal appearance at a Washington gathering of megadonors organized by a political operation fronted by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and his allies.

Perhaps no single contributor embodies Trump’s turnabout as much as Singer, whose announcement of support for Marco Rubio in the 2016 GOP presidential primary prompted Trump to suggest he didn’t want Singer’s support, and to ominously warn of a “lotta controversy with Mr. Singer.”

Singer, in turn, donated $5 million to a pro-Rubio super PAC and then another $2.5 million to an anti-Trump PAC after Rubio dropped out of the race, and warned that if Trump pursued anti-trade policies as president it would be “close to a guarantee of a global depression.”

Yet in the days after Trump’s stunning victory, after some staff-level smoothing, a phone call from the president-elect to Singer was arranged. Singer congratulated Trump on his victory; Trump suggested they should meet. Later, Singer wrote a $5,000 check to Trump’s transition team and then a $1 million check to his inaugural committee, according to someone familiar with the transactions. After the inauguration, Singer reached out for that meeting.

Trump was hanging out in the Oval Office with a handful of his top advisers in mid-February, prepping for his first solo news conference as president, when Singer arrived, according to three people familiar with the visit.

“Bring him in!” Trump bellowed.

Singer was directed to a seat beside Trump’s desk, where he got to listen as senior aides tossed Trump a handful of murder-board-style questions. Then, after everyone else shuffled out, Singer stayed for a one-on-one meeting. They discussed economic policy, according to a person briefed on the conversation.

Singer, whose representatives declined to comment, is just one of many GOP donors who have been the subject of entreaties from Trump and his closest confidants —and the charm offensive appears to be paying dividends.

Several major GOP donors told POLITICO that Trump has shored up their support through his team’s outreach, as well as his performance in Tuesday's address to Congress.

The speech is “going to have a positive effect on donors,” predicted Michigan real estate investor Ron Weiser, a former RNC finance chair who served on Trump’s inauguration committee. “People who might have some questions before about where he’s going, now it’s pretty clear. They like the fact he was very presidential,” said Weiser, who is headed to the RNC donor retreat.

Senior Trump advisers acknowledge the contact with donors, particularly those who did not support Trump, but insist it’s not so much Trump doing outreach as responding to the deluge of donors who wanted on the Trump train, starting election night.

“He was literally inundated with calls starting that night. It was a tsunami,” said one top Trump adviser. “Trump is only reaching out to people who come reach out to him. He’s only getting back to people.”

The White House declined to comment on Trump’s donor maintenance efforts, and the RNC declined to comment on the retreat.

But sources said a few hundred people were expected to attend. While Trump’s Friday night speech is to be the main attraction, Rubio and Florida Gov. Rick Scott were scheduled to speak Saturday, and donors were abuzz about the prospect of a party aboard the $215-million yacht of casino mogul Steve Wynn. A former bitter business rival of Trump’s, Wynn supported Rubio’s campaign before switching to Trump’s team, and he has said he agreed to become RNC finance chairman after a personal request from Trump this year.

Other big donors getting the personal touch from Trump include Wall Street tycoon Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, who invested $15 million in super PACs supporting Trump’s rivals for the GOP nomination. Greenberg recently got an invitation to the White House, according to someone familiar with the matter. Though Greenberg has yet to visit, he did score a private audience with the president-elect in Trump Tower in December.

Phil Ruffin, a billionaire casino owner and friend of Trump’s who gave more than $500,000 to support Trump’s election in 2016, said of Trump's outreach to previously unsupportive donors, "He's doing the right thing," noting that the president’s outreach would prove “important four years from now.”

In January, for instance, Vice President Mike Pence placed a courtesy call to the billionaire megadonor Charles Koch to ask about hiring a speechwriter who had worked in the advocacy network spearheaded by Koch and his brother David. The Kochs and Trump had traded barbs throughout the presidential campaign, with Trump suggesting his rivals were “puppets” of the billionaire brothers. Charles Koch, in turn, compared the choice between Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton to being asked to choose cancer or a heart attack. His network sat on the sidelines of the presidential race.

Yet Trump’s influential son-in-law Jared Kushner, a top White House adviser who has served as an unofficial liaison to the GOP’s elite donors, reached out to the Koch network during the campaign to set up a meeting, said sources familiar with the call.

Trump’s coddling of the GOP’s most generous patrons is the clearest example yet of his evolution from being an outsider crusading against the political establishment to a politician looking to protect his place at its center. Not only did Trump bash the donor class as a whole for being self-interested puppeteers, he singled out specific donors from his own party — including the Koch brothers and the Ricketts family — for personal criticism in a manner seldom seen in modern politics.

Yet, as Trump closed in on the GOP nomination, he made peace with the Ricketts family and other major donors, while a handful became part of his campaign team — such as hedge fund impresario Anthony Scaramucci, tech billionaire Peter Thiel and hedge fund heiress Rebekah Mercer — even as Trump continued running against the donor class clear through Election Day.

170302-trump-navy-ap-1160.jpg

Trump promises to strike great deals for U.S. military

By NOLAN D. MCCASKILL

Trump boasted that as president he wouldn’t be beholden to donors because he was wealthy himself and poured $66 million from his own fortune into his campaign, which didn’t get much support from big-money super PACs. His side was outspent dramatically by the campaign and super PACs supporting Clinton, but Trump benefited from an unprecedented wave of free publicity that swirled around his unconventional circus-like campaign.

Inside GOP finance circles, there’s a growing recognition that Trump might not be able to run that type of asymmetrical campaign after four years of the types of scandals and critical media coverage that have buffeted him during his early days in the White House. So Trump and his team have set about systematically courting the biggest GOP moneymen with the types of perks typically used to win over new donors and keep old ones happy, among them access and appointments.

Trump has tapped or is considering megadonors who supported his rivals for all manner of positions, from his pick for deputy commerce secretary, Todd Ricketts, to his stalled pick for director of the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, Anthony Scaramucci, to his likely pick for ambassador to Canada, Kelly Knight Craft.

Meanwhile, his Cabinet is a who’s who of Trump’s top donors, including Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon, who gave $6 million to a pro-Trump super PAC, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who was Trump’s campaign finance director and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who gave more than $200,000 to aid Trump’s efforts. Trump’s withdrawn pick for labor secretary, Andy Puzder, was also a major donor.

“Trump has been very methodical and clever,” said one person who works closely with major Republican donors. “The process began within days of the election.”

Sessions recusing himself from Russia probe

Sessions recuses himself from Trump-Russia probe

By LOUIS NELSON, NOLAN D. MCCASKILL and JOSH GERSTEIN

Trump had once chided casino magnate Sheldon Adelson for trying to mold Rubio into a “perfect little puppet,” but after Adelson and his wife spent $20 million boosting Trump, they were rewarded with primo seats at Trump’s inauguration, as well as a February dinner in the White House.

Soon after the election, Trump also spoke with Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman and offered for him to chair a council of business leaders to advise him on jobs creation. Schwarzman had given $4.2 million to congressional GOP super PACs in October after refusing to say which presidential candidate he supported in September. No money went to Trump.

When Schwarzman threw a blowout 70th birthday party for himself in Palm Beach (there were camels and fireworks), attendees included Ivanka Trump and Kushner, and no less than three Cabinet secretaries: Mnuchin, Ross and Elaine Chao.

Other Trump supporters aren’t in the Cabinet but lined up for other unofficial Trump-related posts, such as the one Schwarzman now occupies. Trump friend and major donor Carl Icahn has been named a special adviser for regulatory reform, for instance.

Trump has also floated appointing Stephen Feinberg, who gave nearly $1.5 million to a pro-Trump super PAC, including nearly $1 million in the last week of the campaign, to lead a review of the intelligence community, which Trump has accused of leaking negative information about him. One senior administration official said Feinberg could also still end up inside the administration.

A top Trump aide said the president treats these fellow billionaires and businessmen as his equals in a way that past presidents could not.

“These are his peers,” said the adviser. “There are not President Bush or President Obama’s peers.”

In December, Trump attended a lavish costume party at the home of the family of Rebekah Mercer, who along with Thiel sat on the executive committee of Trump’s transition team.

In remarks to the crowd at the closed-press party, Trump praised the Mercers, telling the family’s guests about just how closely he worked with Rebekah Mercer, who recommended Trump bring on three key members of the brain trust that helped carry him across the finish line — Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway and Dave Bossie.

Trump told a story about how his phone rang in the middle of a recent night and he’d picked up in a daze. The person on the other end just launched into a long discussion. When Trump tried to figure out who it was, she replied, “It’s Rebekah.”

“Rebekah who?” he recounted replying in a late-night fog, despite their familiarity.

Since then, Mercer has been spotted in the White House more than once.

And it’s not just Trump courting the big donors — some of his top advisers have embraced donor maintenance with gusto, including family members like Kushner and Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric.

“I don’t have his cellphone number but I have Donny’s,” said Doug Deason, whose family has been a major Trump donors referring to Trump’s son, Donald Jr. “But I have Reince Priebus’ and Kellyanne Conway’s [numbers]; I have easy access to his staff if I wanted it.”

Deason, heir to an information-technology fortune, praised Trump’s overall donor outreach: “In my eyes, he’s doing a great job about that.”

But where Republicans see a pragmatic and cunning strategy, Democrats see bald-faced hypocrisy.

“Drain the swamp? He’s filling the swamp,” accused Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who glad-handed donors for years as a top fundraiser for the Clinton family. “He ran on something else. The people whom he attacked are the same people he’s put in charge of the government. That is hypocritical. You can call it whatever you want. But don’t think for one second people aren’t paying attention.”

==

groans

<a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/1/in_move_recalling_nazi_era_policies">https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/1/in_move_recalling_nazi_era_policies</a>

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<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-clean-water-rule-2292421509.html">http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-clean-water-rule-2292421509.html</a>

...Passed under former President Barack Obama, the Clean Water Rule extends Clean Water Act protections to streams and wetlands. As The Hill <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/321610-trump-directs-epa-to-reconsider-obama-water-rule" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">observed</a> Tuesday, Trump's move is seen as "an opening shot by Trump against the EPA, which was a frequent target of criticism from Republicans for alleged overreach under Obama's tenure."

Though implementation of the rule has been on hold due to ongoing litigation, the move drew outrage from environmental groups, who see it as a necessary provision for the protection of clean water.

The White House has not yet released the full text of the order but it reportedly directs the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to formally consider rolling back the rule, which Pruitt is <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/02/26/scott-pruitt-vows-rapid-aggressive-attack-epa-regulations" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">sure to oblige</a> given that while serving as Oklahoma attorney general he sued the agency he now heads against implementation of the Clean Water Rule.

..

coc country song ad

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<a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/white-house-bars-spate-outlets-press-briefing">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/white-house-bars-spate-outlets-press-briefing</a>

gaggle

Trump administration continued its steep descent into <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/straight-out-of-the-authoritarian-playbook-journalists-decry-white-houses-outrageous-barring-of-press-orgs/" style=" text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">authoritarianism</a> Friday as several news outlets, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Politico and Buzzfeed among others, were barred from attending a meeting with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Publications that were invited included NBC, ABC and Fox News along with the Washington Times and Breitbart, where Trump's senior adviser Steve Bannon was previously editor-in-chief. Both Time and the Associated Press refused to attend in protest. ...

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<div>trump tiktok:</div>

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<div><a href="http://www.citizen.org/trump">http://www.citizen.org/trump</a></div>

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<div><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24022017/donald-trump-executive-order-regulations-climate-change">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24022017/donald-trump-executive-order-regulations-climate-change</a></div>

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Every federal agency will set up a task force dedicated to quickly finding regulations to eliminate, as mandated by <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3474928-The-WHITE-HOUSE-EO.html" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">an executive order</a> signed Friday by President Donald Trump. It is one of a series of moves the White House believes will free U.S. businesses from the bonds of health, safety, consumer and environmental protections.

Surrounded by executives from some of the nation's largest corporations, Trump made clear his anti-regulatory drive is a large part of his jobs-creation plan.

Although Trump did not mention climate change in the order, this step to rein in the regulators is intended, among other things, to constrain their actions to control emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants from fossil fuels.

"Every regulation should pass a simple test," Trump said as he <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/24/presidential-executive-order-enforcing-regulatory-reform-agenda" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">signed the order</a>. "Does it make life better or safer for American workers or consumers? If the answer is no, we will be getting rid of it and getting rid of it quickly."

The regulatory reform task forces will be required to report on their progress within 90 days.

The White House issued <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/24/president-trump-cuts-through-more-red-tape" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">a statement </a>saying that the Obama administration had finalized more than 3,000 regulations, at a total cost to the American taxpayer of $873 billion. The White House has said the figure was from the <a href="https://www.americanactionforum.org/" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">American Action Forum</a>, a conservative advocacy group run by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who served as director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2003-5.  But the White House did not mention that American Action Forum's figures also show that t<a href="https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/midnight-regulations-push-obama-administrations-regulatory-tally-past-890-billion/" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">he calculated benefits </a>of the Obama era regulations outstrip the costs by more than 3-to-1 ($458 billion annually in benefits to $139 billion annually in costs.)

In taking up the cause of "regulatory reform," Trump is following in the footsteps of virtually every one of his predecessors. It was a central theme of President Ronald Reagan's domestic policy, and President George H.W. Bush established a "<a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/1349800/cowniaancompe00637.pdf" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Council on Competitiveness</a>" in the White House to cut red tape. In President Bill Clinton's administration, the effort was called "<a href="http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/speeches/226a.html" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Reinventing Government</a>," and was headed by Vice President Al Gore. President George W. Bush kept in place an executive order his predecessor had penned, but his White House rejected more agency-written rules during his first year than were sent back to agencies in all eight years of the Clinton administration.

President Obama, too, issued an <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/18/executive-order-13563-improving-regulation-and-regulatory-review" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">executive order</a> calling for a government-wide review of regulations to reduce costs and to get rid of "absurd and unnecessary paperwork requirements that waste time and money."

The Trump executive order cites the previous orders by Clinton and Obama—keeping them in place and directing the new task forces to carry out regulatory reform "consistent with the law."...

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OMG muslim ban, guns for nuts, conflict mineal intel...

<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/opinion/congress-says-let-the-mentally-ill-buy-guns.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/opinion/congress-says-let-the-mentally-ill-buy-guns.html</a>

For all their dysfunction, the Republican Senate and House have managed to act with lightning speed in striking down a sensible Obama administration rule designed to stop people with severe mental problems from buying guns.

President Trump, who championed the National Rifle Association agenda as a candidate, is expected to sign the regressive measure. This, despite the Republican mantra that tighter control of mentally troubled individuals — not stronger gun control — is the better way to deal with the mass shootings and gun carnage that regularly afflict the nation.

The Senate voted Wednesday to join the House in revoking the rule. It would have required the Social Security Administration to add about 75,000 people, currently on disability support, to the national background check database and deny them gun purchases. These individuals suffer schizophrenia, psychotic disorders and other problems to such an extent that they are unable to manage their financial affairs and other basic tasks without help.

allowing them to buy guns poses an inordinate and needless risk to public safety. An existing law bars gun purchases to people “adjudicated as a mental defective” or involuntarily committed to a mental institution. But enforcement of that law has been spotty, because medical records often aren’t added to the federal databases — thus prompting the Obama administration to create the Social Security rule. Congress struck down the rule with Republican majorities — and some Democrats notably up for re-election next year — contending that the Second Amendment rights of these troubled, disabled individuals have to be the prime concern.

Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, <a href="http://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-social-securitys-gun-ban-regulation-flawed-beyond-repair">envisioned people</a> with “an eating disorder” being barred from buying a gun. To the contrary, the rule was focused narrowly on disabled individuals who require a trustee for personal management. They would have had the right to appeal. Senator Grassley himself noted last year the flaws in the background check database when he proposed greater cooperation among federal agencies with relevant information.

“The Republicans are so hypocritical on this issue,” said Senator Christopher Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut. He has fought for both stronger gun controls and better mental health care in the aftermath of the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Conn. A mentally troubled individual used a legally purchased assault weapon and shot to death 20 children and six school workers. The disability rule was a response to that tragedy after Congress refused to tighten gun safety laws.

“I hope something truly awful doesn’t happen because of this,” Senator Murphy said of Congress’s repeal of the new rule. Americans can only join in that hope while Congress continues to bend to the will of the gun industry.

===

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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/donald-trump-keeps-pushing-alex-jones-conspiracy-theories/

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Donald Trump Keeps Pushing Alex Jones’ Conspiracy Theories

brian-tashman-4By Brian Tashman | February 7, 2017 12:16 pm

Donald Trump Joins Insane Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones, Who Calls Him The George Washington Of Today

Yesterday, President Trump told yet another blatant falsehood, alleging that the media has covered up several terrorist attacks, a bogus claim that became even more laughable when the White House released a list of widely-covered attacks in a humiliating attempt to substantiate Trump’s assertion.

Trump, it seems, got the conspiracy theory that the media won’t report on terrorist attacks from InfoWars, the far-right conspiracy theory outlet headed by Alex Jones.

As Aaron Blake of the Washington Post noted, InfoWars has posted several stories accusing the media of supposedly whitewashing, hiding and covering up terrorist attacks.

While running for president, Trump appeared on Jones’ program where he lavished praise on the bizarre conspiracy theorist, telling Jones: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down. You will be very, very impressed, I hope. I think we’ll be speaking a lot.”

Jones is far from the only conspiracy theorist embraced by Trump, but he is among the most influential.

Here are just five additional instances where Trump, himself a pathological liar and unhinged conspiracy theorist, pushed Jones’ wild and baseless claims:

1) Thousands Of Muslims In New Jersey Celebrated On 9/11

In the campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed that he saw on television “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey taking to the streets to celebrate the 9/11 attacks.

When no one could find any evidence or news reports, television or otherwise, backing up his claim, Trump’s campaign accused the media of covering it up.

Trump, as we reported, “cited a post on Jones’ InfoWars website and told Jones during an appearance on his program that his assertion was correct because people on Twitter told him so.”

2) Hillary Clinton Uses Drugs

Suggesting that Hillary Clinton had been “getting pumped up” with performance-enhancing drugs prior to the presidential debates, Trump advocated for drug tests for the candidates “because I don’t know what’s going on with her.”

The comment seemed to come out of nowhere, but the bizarre belief was repeated over and over by Jones and his frequent guest Roger Stone, a Trump confidant.

3) Massive Voter Fraud

Trump made waves when he claimed that he only lost the popular vote because 3 million non-citizens illegally voted for Clinton.

He still hasn’t revealed any data to back up his assertion, recently saying that people should “forget” about data because “a lot of people have come out and said that I am correct.”

The claim that 3 million non-citizens cast ballots in the election came from a conservative activist named Gregg Phillips, who has said that he won’t release any corroborating evidence, and amplified by Jones, who said it is an “uncontrovertible [sic] fact that 3 million illegals voted” in the election.

4) Justice Scalia May Have Been Murdered

Jones was also one of several right-wing commentators who thought that the late Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered.

“All of these conservatives that are fighting back that are real conservatives, they are all being found with pillows over their faces,” he said, while alleging that the murder was covered up.

Trump, naturally, had a similar take.

When radio host Michael Savage asked him if he thought that Scalia may have been murdered, Trump responded that he found his death to be “pretty unusual” because Scalia was found with “a pillow on his face.”

Scalia, for the record, was not found with a pillow on his face.

5) Cruz Involved With JFK Assassination

Trump’s obsession with the bogus claim that Rafael Cruz, the father of ex-rival and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy was met with a mix of confusion and amusement.

This was not the case for Jones, who claims that Trump listens to his show.

For Jones, it was a point of pride: “Trump picks up our story, now they’ve got major, major, major freak-outs knowing that he’s pointing out that [Cruz’s] father may have been connected to the CIA and been involved with Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Naturally, Trump reportedly called Jones days after the election to thank him for his all of his help getting him elected president.

Tags: Alex Jones Donald Trump InfoWars

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<div style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/02/trump-to-sign-repeal-of-obama-era-coal-mining-regulation/" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/02/trump-to-sign-repeal-of-obama-era-coal-mining-regulation/</a></div>

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Donald Trump is expected to sign legislation repealing a regulation finalized in the final weeks of the Obama administration that would have severely restricted coal mining in Appalachia.

Both chambers of Congress passed resolutions under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) repealing an Interior Department rule on coal mine discharge into nearby streams.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to rollback federal regulations targeting coal mining. Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/01/statement-administration-policy" style=" text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">said he’d sign the repeal bill</a> because he’s “committed to reviving America’s coal mining communities, which have been hurting for too long.”

Trump said in a statement that the $1.2 billion Stream Protection Rule “duplicates existing protections in the Clean Water Act and is unnecessary given the other Federal and State regulations already in place.”

<div class="ob-widget-header" style=" box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 5px 0px 10px; direction: ltr; font-weight: bold;">The Senate passed the CRA repealing the Stream Protection Rule Thursday afternoon. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota joined Republicans in supporting the rule’s repeal. The House passed a CRA on the rule Wednesday.</div>

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Environmentalists –obviously– oppose repealing the Stream Protection Rule, saying the rule protects streams from coal mine pollution.

</div>

<div>

<p class="EDFLetterText" align="center" times="times" new="new" font-size="font-size:" vertical-align="vertical-align:" background-color="background-color:" style=" margin: 0px 0px 25px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: Georgia,;">As you’ve probably heard by now, President Trump has replaced the Obama administration’s <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-record/climate" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in;">Climate and Energy</a> web page with a new one that reiterates our 45th president’s promise to tear down the Climate Action Plan and expand our reliance on fossil fuels.

What you may not know is that this 180-degree policy shift will also undermine efforts to prepare for climate change disasters that are <a href="https://www.edf.org/climate/climate-changes-effects-plunder-planet" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in;">already upon us</a> – at a great cost to public safety and our nation’s economy.

By rescinding Obama’s plan for turning the corner on climate change – in which a main pillar was to prepare the United States for its impacts – President Trump would make it harder for:

<li style=" margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">infrastructure developers to account for changes in <a href="https://www.edf.org/climate/climate-change-and-extreme-weather" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in;">extreme weather</a> and coastal flooding from sea level rise, and to be able to withstand climate surprises</li>

</ul>

<p class="EDFLetterText" times="times" new="new" font-size="font-size:" vertical-align="vertical-align:" background-color="background-color:" style=" margin: 0px 0px 25px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: Georgia,;">In 2016 alone, the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/climate-trends-continue-to-break-records" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in;">hottest year</a> on record, we experienced no fewer than 15 weather and climate change-related disasters – at a total cost of $46 billion in damages.

Storms and other such climate disasters with <a href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in;">costs exceeding $1 billion</a> have increased in the U.S. over the last 37 years.  These are hard dollar facts nobody can deny.

Economically responsible leaders today continue to <a href="http://toolkit.climate.gov/#explore" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in;">build resilience</a> in the face of a changing climate. Critical elements of our society – including businesses, infrastructure, agriculture, and essential water resources – depend on such action.

<h4 times="times" new="new" vertical-align="vertical-align:" color="color:" background-color="background-color:" style=" line-height: 20px; margin: 30px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px;">Keeping citizens safe </h4>

<p class="EDFLetterText" times="times" new="new" font-size="font-size:" vertical-align="vertical-align:" background-color="background-color:" style=" margin: 0px 0px 25px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: Georgia,;">I watched President Trump express his condolences to the families who lost loved ones to the severe weather in the South in late January. But we can do more than just express empathy when American communities are torn apart by disasters.

We can also mitigate such disasters by improving our resilience to climate change and by advocating for climate-<a href="https://www.edf.org/climate/getting-laws-right" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in;">smart policies</a>.

One of the most important ways to increase our preparedness for extreme climate events is to continually improve and refine our understanding of how climate variability and change is <a href="https://www.edf.org/blog/2017/01/06/earth-gets-hotter-scientists-break-new-ground-linking-climate-change-extreme-weather" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in;">linked to extreme weather</a>.

Obama’s Climate Action Plan aimed to do just that by helping federal climate science research break new ground and continue to advance our understanding of impacts from both short-term climate anomalies – such as how <a href="https://www.edf.org/blog/2016/01/05/why-we-cant-blame-el-nino-hottest-year-record" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in;">El Niño</a> and La Niña affect severe weather – and from impacts related to warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Throwing out the this plan is not how we protect the safety of our citizens, which, after all, should be the primary goal of any administration and the first way to keep America great.

</div>

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That would not only be devastating for global efforts to keep our climate safe, but a severe problem for anyone who depends on cutting-edge weather prediction – including farmers, states vulnerable to destructive storms, businesses and our economy as a whole.

The problem is that climate and weather research comprises a “seamless suite” of services. Advancements in climate modeling support critical weather prediction modeling.

Since weather prediction and short-term climate prediction (think El Niño, drought and so on) are important to all Americans, cuts to climate research at NASA would have large economic consequences and negative impacts on efforts to protect American lives and property.

This work is particularly important in dealing with weather disasters occurring across the southern tier of the United Sates. And as the climate continues to change, weather prediction will become ever more important for preparedness and planning.

Cuts to climate research at NASA would have large economic consequences and negative impacts on efforts to protect American lives and property.

</blockquote>

<p times="times" new="new" font-size="font-size:" vertical-align="vertical-align:" background-color="background-color:" style=" margin: 0px 0px 25px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-family: Georgia,;">The bigger picture is that climate change is on a path to cause trillions in damage to our economy, according to <a href="https://www.edf.org/blog/2015/10/07/citibank-how-investments-clean-energy-can-save-trillions" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.15s ease-in;">Citibank estimates</a>. That’s why so many leading businesses want to keep us on track to cut carbon pollution. If we don’t we will be leaving a terrible burden for our children.

Science made America what it is – it helped us win World War II, the space race, the Cold War and made us the preeminent global power.

Weather and climate prediction have provided incalculable value to our economy and saved untold numbers of lives.

Slashing vital research on climate – as suggested by Bob Walker, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who now serves on Trump’s NASA transition team – will hurt everyone, no matter who they voted for.

</div>

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<div>President Trump spoke at a National Prayer Breakfast Thursday, at which he vowed to "destroy" the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 provision that prohibits tax-exempt religious or charitable organizations from "directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office." The provision does not prohibit political activity by churches or religious organizations overall, but it does place some limits on the role of religious institutions in U.S. elections. White evangelical Protestants have long pushed for the amendment to be repealed. This is President Trump.</div>

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<div>President Donald Trump: "Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own beliefs. That is why I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I will do that, remember."</div>

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==

<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-climate-change-website-2209059875.html">http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-climate-change-website-2209059875.html</a>

As the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Trump Administration</a> Sunday descended into a farce of "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/22/donald-trump-kellyanne-conway-inauguration-alternative-facts" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">alternative facts</a>" to try and argue that there had been historic numbers at the new President's inauguration, it is quite clear "alternative" and blatantly bogus facts, will be used on <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/energy-news/" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">energy</a> and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">climate</a> too.

Within minutes of the president being inaugurated on Friday, the White House's webpage got a make-over, reflecting Trump's post-truth, pro-oil agenda.

img]

The White House removed pretty <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/donald-trump-president-white-house-global-warming-climate-change-environment-a7538381.html" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">much all references</a> to <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/leonardo-dicaprio-before-the-flood-2062971522.html" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">climate change</a>.

Out went Obama's message on climate change, where you could see the <a href="http://europe.newsweek.com/white-house-drops-climate-change-info-web-546010?rm=eu" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">ex-president</a> saying "our children, and our children's children, will look at us in the eye and they'll ask us, did we do all that we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner, safe [sic], more stable world?"

That box has now been deleted and replaced by Trump's "<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first-energy" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">America First Energy Plan</a>" which is an oilman's Drill-baby-drill dream come true.

The <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first-energy" target="_blank" style=" text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">page states</a>:

"Sound energy policy begins with the recognition that we have vast untapped domestic energy reserves right here in America. The Trump Administration will embrace the shale oil and gas revolution to bring jobs and prosperity to millions of Americans. We must take advantage of the estimated $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil and natural gas reserves, especially those on federal lands that the American people own."

....

==

hell naugural:

Lewis’ stance earned him a Trump tweet-attack, but he isn’t alone. The congressman is now one of at least 26 U.S. representatives who have vowed to skip the inauguration as a protest against the incoming president.

Here’s who has committed to boycotting the event so far. We’ll update this list as it grows:

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (Illinois)

Follow

Fusion ? @Fusion

For women, for minorities, for Muslims—for justice.

This politician is skipping Trump's inauguration and joining the @WomensMarch:

6:30 PM - 13 Jan 2017

438 438 Retweets   688 688 likes

Illinois’ Luis Gutiérrez was the first congressman to announce he would not attend the inauguration back in December of 2016.

“I could not look my wife, my daughters, or my grandson in the eye if I sat there and attended, as if everything that the candidate said about the women, the Latinos, the blacks, the Muslims, or any of those other things he said in those speeches and tweets, and that all of that is okay or erased from our collective memory,” he recently told the House floor.

Instead, he will attend the Women’s March on Washington.

Representative Katherine Clark (Massachusetts)

Katherine ClarkAP

Clark, a friend of Lewis, is no stranger to protest. She was the first to suggest a sit-in on the House floor for gun control measures in June — something Republicans are still furious about.

On January 5, Clark tweeted a statement confirming she would not attend Trump’s swearing-in.

“Families in my district are fearful that the anti-woman, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and divisive promises that drove the Trump campaign will become the policies affecting the health and safety of every American,” she wrote.

“I do not feel that I can contribute to the normalization of the President-elect’s divisive rhetoric by participating in the Inauguration,”

Representative Jared Huffman (California)

Jared HuffmanAP

On January 7, Huffman wrote in a Facebook post that “it is abundantly clear to me that with Donald Trump as our President, the United States is entering a dark and very dangerous political chapter. I will do everything I can to limit the damage and the duration of this chapter, and I believe we can get through it. But I will not sit passively and politely applaud as it begins.”

He continued: “the way to defeat his dark political agenda is not to sit around complaining and criticizing; it is through active citizenship, principled resistance and positive counteraction.”

Representative Earl Blumenauer (Oregon)

Earl BlumenauerAP

In a Facebook post on January 7, Blumenauer said he wouldn’t attend the presidential inauguration for the first time in his two decades in office.

“There is unprecedented concern by my constituents about the many threats posed by a Trump administration seeking to implement the President-elect’s policies on health, environment, nuclear weapons, and immigration, to name but a few,” he wrote.

“I will forgo the inauguration, spending the day instead in my district talking with Oregonians to hear their priorities, try to answer their questions, and prepare for the coming assault on the values and programs we hold dear. It is hard to think of a better use of my time on January 20th.”

Representative Nydia Velazquez (New York)

Nydia VelazquezASSOCIATED PRESS

Velazquez, the former chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the first Puerto Rican woman elected to Congress, made her stance clear in a short tweet on January 9:

“I will not be attending inauguration of @realDonaldTrump but WILL participate in the @womensmarch on January 21st.”

Representative Barbara Lee (California)

Barbara LeeGetty Images for The Elizabeth T

Longtime progressive congresswoman Lee made her position against Trump clear in a January 12 press release.

“On January 20th, I will not be celebrating or honoring an incoming president who rode racism, sexism, xenophobia and bigotry to the White House,” she said. “I will be organizing and preparing for resistance.”

Representative Raúl Grijalva (Arizona)

Raul GrijalvaGetty Images

Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Grijalva announced on the House floor on January 13 that he would not attend Trump’s inauguration.

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This singer says she'll sing at Trump's inauguration—but only to perform a historic song about racism

“My absence is not motivated by disrespect for the office or motivated by disrespect for the government that we have in this great democracy, but as an individual act — yes, of defiance, at the disrespect shown to millions and millions of Americans by this incoming administration and by the actions we are taking in this Congress,” he said.

Instead, he’ll spend the day meeting with Arizonans and climate change activists.

Representative Lacy Clay (Missouri)

William Lacy ClayAP

Lacy Clay has been in the headlines recently for hanging a painting in the U.S. Capitol building that calls attention to police brutality against people of color — something that’s infuriated the right and sparked an ongoing confrontation.

He’s also decided to sit out Trump’s big day — he’ll be “back at home in St. Louis speaking to school kids,” his spokesman told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on January 13.

Representative Jose Serrano (New York)

House Democrats Along With Veterans And Current Service Members Call For Immigration ReformGetty Images

Congressional Hispanic Caucus co-chair Serrano, whose district in the South Bronx is one of the few majority-Latinx constituencies in the country, said he would not go to the inauguration in a tweet on January 13.

“I will not attend the #inauguration2017 next week- cannot celebrate the inauguration of a man who has no regard for my constituents,” he wrote.

Representative Mark DeSaulnier (California)

Follow

Mark DeSaulnier ? @RepDeSaulnier

When #Trump places his hand on the Bible & takes the Oath of Office, he will in that moment, be in violation of that oath & the Constitution

6:30 PM - 13 Jan 2017

7,250 7,250 Retweets   12,616 12,616 likes

DeSaulnier outlined his reasoning for sitting out Trump’s inauguration while standing before portraits of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. in a video.

“I have failed to see… a belief in common American decency and a respect of law and a respect of the Constitution (in Donald Trump),” he said. “This President, I believe, when he puts his hand on the Bible… he will be breaking that oath, and breaking the Constitution of the United States during that time that he is being sworn in.”

Representative Kurt Schrader (Oregon)

Kurt SchraderAP

Schrader told Oregon Public Broadcasting on January 13 that he would not attend Trump’s festivities.

“I’m just not a big Trump fan. I’ve met the guy and never been impressed with him,” he said.

“I’ll do my best to work with him when I think he’s doing the right thing for the country. But he hasn’t proved himself to me at all yet, so I respectfully decline to freeze my ass out there in the cold for this particular ceremony.”

Representative Jerry Nadler (New York)

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 12:  U.S. Represetnative Jerrold Nadler joins members of MoveOn.org and members of Congress at an event to demand congress renew an assault weapons ban, along with delivering more than one million signed petitions, at United States Capitol Building on July 12, 2016 in Washington, DC.  (Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for MoveOn.org)

Nadler won’t be attending the inauguration and will release a statement about it next week, his spokesman told Gothamist.

In response to Trump, Nadler tweeted “@realDonaldTrump stands with V. Putin. I stand with @repjohnlewis” on January 14. Nadler has been an outspoken Trump critic and has published a manual called “How We Resist Trump and His Extreme Agenda.”

Representative Mark Takano (California)

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., speaks at the Congressional Forum on Violence Against the Transgender Community on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2015 in Washington. (Kevin Wolf/AP Images for Human Rights Campaign)

Responding to Trump’s tweets on January 14, Takano tweeted “I stand with @repjohnlewis and I will not be attending the inauguration.”

Takano is the first openly gay Asian American member of Congress.

Representative Yvette Clarke (New York)

Yvette Clarke

In a tweet January 14, Clarke announced, “I will NOT attend the inauguration of @realDonaldTrump. When you insult @repjohnlewis, you insult America.”

Earlier, the Brooklyn congresswoman, who chairs the House Multicultural Media Caucus and co-chairs the Black Women and Girls Caucus, had tweeted “Cowardly @realDonaldTrump isn’t fit to polish hero @repjohnlewis’s boots.”

Representative Ted Lieu (California)

Ted Lieu

Lieu, a former Air Force Colonel now representing California’s 33rd congressional district, released a statement on January 14 explaining his decision not to attend Trump’s inauguration: “I cannot normalize his behavior or the disparaging and un-American statements he has made.”

Lieu noted Trump’s “racist, sexist, and bigoted statements,” as well as Trump’s attacks on Gold Star parents, veterans, intelligence personnel, and John Lewis. Lieu also said “On January 20, Trump will be in violation of Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution because of the massive conflicts of interests he has with his global business holdings.

“For me, the personal decision not to attend Inauguration is quite simple: Do I stand with Donald Trump, or do I stand with John Lewis? I am standing with John Lewis.”

Representative Adriano Espaillat (New York)

Adriano Espaillat

Espaillat, the first Dominican American U.S. congressman elected in 2016, wrote on Facebook on January 14 that he would boycott the inauguration to protest Trump.

“Many have given their lives and dedicated their lives to working to fulfill Dr. King’s dream and make it a reality, and it is up to us to preserve his legacy and the legacy of President Barack Obama to ensure that we do not go back in time!

“President-elect Donald Trump is trying to take us back! And the people Trump is appointing– Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions – are trying to take us back!

“That’s why I am not attending the presidential inauguration. Donald Trump and the hate-filled rhetoric that plagued his election simply will continue in his administration. THIS is not Dr. King’s Dream!”

Representative Judy Chu (California)

Judy Chu

Chu, the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress, tweeted on January 14 that she would not attend the inauguration.

“After much thought, I have decided to #StandWithJohnLewis and not attend the inauguration,” she wrote. “I stand with those who have fought for us and encourage future leaders to act with inclusion and respect.”

Representative Pramila Jayapal (Washington)

Pramila Jayapal

Jayapal, a progressive civil rights activist from Seattle who recently became the first Indian American woman elected to Congress, confirmed on Twitter that she would not attend Trump’s inauguration.

In a direct reply to Donald Trump on January 14, she wrote “@repjohnlewis stands for best of everything in America. If anyone knows about action not words, it’s him. #ImWithJohn”

Representative John Conyers (Michigan)

John Conyers

Conyers will not attend Trump’s inauguration, his staff confirmed to multiple outlets on January 14.

He is the longest-serving member of Congress, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and was the first to introduce a bill to make Martin Luther King, Jr. Day an official holiday in 1968, 4 days after King’s assassination. That initial effort was defeated, though the holiday was finally signed into federal law in 1983.

Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman (New Jersey)

Bonnie Watson Coleman

At a town hall on January 14, Watson Coleman told a crowd of around 150 people she would not attend Trump’s inauguration, reports TAPInto.

“I am very concerned with this administration coming in,” she said. “When this inauguration is taking place, we will pray for our country and the most vulnerable people, and we will pledge to stand together against evil wherever we see it, even if it comes out of the White House.”

Instead, she’ll be joining the Women’s March on New Jersey. “We will stand against any aspect of dismantling of rights for women and anybody else… I can think of no more important place to be than supporting my constituents and renewing my energy to fight for their freedoms.”

Representative Zoe Lofgren (California)

Zoe Lofgren

Lofgren, the congresswoman from San Jose who famously called a law professor an “ignorant bigot” for giving transphobic testimony during a House hearing, won’t be attending Trump’s swearing in.

“I acknowledge the fact that he is the incoming president, but I’m not in the mood to celebrate that fact,” she explained to the Los Angeles Times in a story published January 15.

Representative Mark Pocan (Wisconsin)

Mark Pocan

Originally planning to attend Trump’s inauguration, Pocan announced he had changed his mind on January 15 in a Facebook post.

“After long consideration based on reading the Classified document on Russian hacking and the Trump candidacy on Thursday, the handling of his conflicts of interest, and this weekend’s offensive tweets about a national hero Rep. John Lewis, I am no longer attending the event. At minimum, it’s time for Donald Trump to start acting like President Trump, not an immature, undignified reality star with questionable friends and a Twitter addiction. I hope for better, but will not hold my breath.”

Pocan is an openly gay former businessman who identifies as a progressive Democrat.

Representative Marcia Fudge (Ohio)

Marcia Fudge

Fudge went on the AM Joy show on January 15 to announce she would boycott the inauguration of Donald Trump. During the interview, she also defended John Lewis against Trump’s attacks. “John Lewis has done more for Atlanta than probably any one single individual,” she said.

Joy also confirmed in a tweet: “I will not be attending #Inauguration. I will be at home in Cleveland. #IStandWithJohnLewis.”

Representative Maxine Waters (California)

Maxine Waters

Waters, the longest-serving black woman member of Congress and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, confirmed she would not attend Trump’s big date on January 15.

“I never ever contemplated attending the inauguration or any activities associated w/ @realDonaldTrump. I wouldn’t waste my time,” she tweeted.

Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard (California)

Lucille Roybal-AllardAP

Roybal-Allard will not attend Trump’s inauguration, her office told Fusion in an email on January 15.

“I thought long and hard about attending the Inauguration because I value our democracy and respect the office of the presidency, regardless of party. However, the disparaging remarks the President-elect has made about many groups, including women, Mexicans, and Muslims, are deeply contrary to my values. As a result, I will not be attending the Inauguration. For the sake of our nation, and a world which looks to America for moral leadership, I hope the President-elect will change the tone of his rhetoric, and govern responsibly, respectfully, and compassionately, in accordance with our American values.”

Roybal-Allard is the first Mexican American woman elected to Congress.

===

<a href="http://www.alternet.org/labor/kentuckys-attack-unions-provides-glimpse-gops-impending-war-workers">http://www.alternet.org/labor/kentuckys-attack-unions-provides-glimpse-gops-impending-war-workers</a>

...

For 95 years—all the way back to 1921, when Warren G. Harding was president—Kentucky Democrats had maintained control of the state House of Representatives.

When Tea Party darling Matt Bevin, who ran as the “right-to-work” candidate, rode the national GOP wave and succeeded Democratic Governor Steve Beshear in 2014, the Kentucky House became the sole bulwark blocking the implementation of his anti-union agenda. Naturally, heading into the 2016 elections, the right wing turned all its firepower against the Democrats’ six-seat house majority. It worked—<a href="http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article113464563.html" style=" text-decoration: none;">and it wasn’t even close</a>. Republicans won an astounding 13 seats to gain a commanding 64-36 majority, making Kentucky one of 25 states with GOP trifecta-control.

It didn’t take long for Republican legislators to introduce their stable of anti-union measures: a right-to-work bill that bans unions from requiring mandatory dues for all workers covered by their contracts; a repeal of the state’s prevailing wage law, meaning that public construction projects would no longer be required to pay their workers based on a community survey (usually meaning a union pay-scale); and banning public-employee unions from striking and from using member dues for political contributions.

It’s also the first of many attacks on unions that will materialize during the Trump presidency.With Democrats completely out of power, unions had little recourse—beyond workers protesting in the chambers—to combat the legislative onslaught. Over the weekend, <a href="http://www.whas11.com/news/bevin-new-laws-will-be-in-effect-by-monday/383510069" style=" text-decoration: none;">Republicans passed all three bills</a> (in addition to a 20-week abortion ban) with emergency clauses ensuring they would be implemented immediately after Bevin signs them into law. Kentucky is now the 27th right-to-work state, and the last state in the South to pass such a law. “It’s an attack on the working people,” Chris Kendall, a member of a Kentucky Plumbers and Steamfitters Union local <a href="http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article125140549.html" style=" text-decoration: none;">told the Lexington Herald-Leader</a> as he protested right-to-work at the state capitol in Frankfort on Saturday. “It’s almost like we’re the enemy somehow, that it’s the politicians against us. And all we’re trying to do is earn an honest day’s wage.”

In public, conservatives argue that right-to-work is about ensuring freedom in the workplace by using fear-mongering rhetoric about mandatory union membership. But they fail to mention that, by law, union membership can’t be mandatory; it’s the payment of union dues for collective bargaining services—which benefit all workers in unionized shops—that is required with union security clauses. The reality, as <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/right-to-work-states-have-lower-wages/" style=" text-decoration: none;">research consistently shows</a>, is that, on average, workers make less—about 3.1 percent—in states with right-to-work laws compared with states without those laws. Right-to-work’s other effect is to create a “free rider” problem for unions, which are forced to provide services for all workers in union shops without any compensation from the non-members they bargain for and represent in disputes with management.

Conservatives also argue that prevailing wage laws are a leading cause of bloated government spending. What surveys have shown, however, is that <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/bp215/" style=" text-decoration: none;">there are no adverse affects</a> associated with government projects that pay a prevailing wage.

Attacking unions is a top GOP priority not because of actual concern for workers or public services. Rather, it’s about undermining the left’s most effective tool for convincing working people to vote for more pro-worker candidates, who are almost invariably Democratic, and curtailing unions’ ability to finance Democratic candidates. Right-to-work laws and bans on political contributions from dues are primarily about draining unions’ coffers and breaking up concentrated worker power.

Kentucky was once a union stronghold, thanks to strong membership density in the state’s heavy-industry sectors like coal mining and manufacturing. But, as those types of jobs have disappeared and the GOP’s war on unions ramped up, Kentucky’s union membership dramatically eroded—a trend that has played out across the country. The state’s union membership <a href="https://www.bls.gov/regions/southeast/news-release/2016/pdf/unionmembership_kentucky_20160226.pdf" style=" text-decoration: none;">reached its peak</a> in 1989, but has fallen since then. In 2015, 11 percent of Kentucky’s workforce— about 187,000 workers—was unionized, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Right-to-work will only further accelerate that decline.

With Trump’s win and the GOP’s continuing majorities in the House and Senate, the party now has unified federal control for the first time since 2006—and in those 10 years, the party’s anti-union strain has become even more mainstream and vitriolic. Republicans in the House and Senate will soon begin pushing for a national right-to-work law and a repeal of the Davis Bacon Act (the federal prevailing wage), bringing to the national stage what has for the past decade been limited to state-level fights. Trump has already <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-i-like-right-to-work-better/article/2583977" style=" text-decoration: none;">indicated his support</a> for a national right-to-work law and his top allies, from Vice President-elect Mike Pence on down, have close ties to the Kochs’ anti-union political crusade in the states.The Bevin-led attack on Kentucky workers comes straight out of the right-wing playbook for states. Since the 2010 elections, Republicans, with ample funding from the Koch brothers, have pushed through right-to-work and prevailing wage repeals in such former union strongholds as Indiana, Michigan, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. With statehouse gains in 2016, Republicans are also expected to pass right-to-work measures in Missouri and New Hampshire. But that’s not all.

The challenge for unions in a right-to-work landscape becomes a battle for relevance—and convincing members that the services unions provide are still important. Whether they can do that in Kentucky, and soon, nationwide, is a question that looms large for the future of the labor movement.

Justin Miller is a writing fellow for The American Prospect.

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<div>note he only opposes the timing (is it b/c not his idea/priority? ~ drain the swamp?</div>

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<div>https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-03/house-gop-votes-to-strip-ethics-office-of-independent-status</div>

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<div>House Republicans dropped their bid to weaken the independent Office of Congressional Ethics after President-elect Donald Trump blasted the move as counter to his call to "drain the swamp" of corruption in Washington.</div>

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<div>The amendment was stripped from a rules package by voice vote, three lawmakers said, in a last-minute meeting called Tuesday as criticism mounted. The controversy over the office that investigates lawmakers’ alleged misconduct was starting to overshadow the opening of the 115th Congress, normally a day of glad-handing as lawmakers bring family members to the floor to join the festivities.</div>

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<div> Follow</div>

<div>Donald J. Trump ?@realDonaldTrump</div>

<div>With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it</div>

<div>  5,5335,533 Retweets  17,96517,965 likes</div>

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<div>Donald J. Trump ?@realDonaldTrump</div>

<div>........may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance! #DTS</div>

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