TRUMP5

5/17<div>=</div><div>SEE TRUMP 6 2/18</div><div>some lost? 4 horse swamp things?  capt 12/17</div><div>=</div><div>4/19</div><div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/theres-a-clear-connection-between-donald-trump-and-racist-violence-research/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/theres-a-clear-connection-between-donald-trump-and-racist-violence-research/</a></div><div>
</div><div>Racism is a poison that has flowed through the American body politic since before the founding of the republic. The United States was founded on two great sins: the enslavement of black people and the genocide of Native American people. Donald Trump, to say the least, has not tried to find a cure for this poison. Instead he has injected more of it into the country.<div class="p1_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" />Trump has done this in many ways. In general, he wants to reduce and ultimately take away the civil and human rights of nonwhites and Muslims. Trump and his administration are also committed to undermining the basic assumption that nonwhites and Muslims (as well as LGBT people and other marginalized groups) have the same equal protections under the law as white heterosexual Christian men.<div class="p2_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" />Some specific examples: Trump embraces racism and white supremacy through his slurs against Latino and Hispanic immigrants and refugees as a “race” of rapists, gang members and killers. As a matter of policy his administration has put babies and children in concentration camps with the goal of causing them and their families harm in order to deter “illegal immigration” into the United States.<div class="p3_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" />Trump’s white identity politics agenda is prefaced on ensuring that white people remain the dominant social, political and economic group in the United States. He believes that the people of Puerto Rico — a U.S. commonwealth where at least 5,000 people died in the wake of Hurricane Maria — are lazy and do not deserve assistance. As shown by Donald Trump’s other behavior, his attitude is likely rooted in animus towards nonwhite, Spanish-speaking people — who are also more likely to be Democrats.<div class="p4_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" />He suggested after the 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, that at least some of the neo-Nazis, Klan members and white supremacists who gathered there were “very fine people.” These same white supremacists, hate-mongers and domestic terrorists have claimed Donald Trump as their hero and champion.<div class="p5_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" />The FBI, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations have documented a large increase in hate crimes and other right-wing political violence beginning with Donald Trump’s campaign and through to the third year of his presidency. In 2018 there<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/news/2019/02/19/hate-groups-reach-record-high" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"> were at least 1,020 hate groups in the United States</a>. This is a record number, one that has only increased during Trump’s time in office. As seen in incidents across the country, this hate groups have too often unleashed lethal violence.<div class="p6_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />In total, the president of the United States helps to set the moral tone for the nation. In that role he or she gives permission, both active and tacit, for individuals’ and the public’s behavior.<div class="p7_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />New research by University of North Texas political scientists <a href="https://politicalscience.unt.edu/people/ayal-feinberg" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Ayal Feinberg</a>, <a href="https://politicalscience.unt.edu/people/regina-branton" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Regina Branton</a> and <a href="https://politicalscience.unt.edu/people/valerie-martinez-ebers" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Valerie Martinez-Ebers</a> offers additional evidence on the relationship between Donald Trump and racial violence in America. Their new paper, “The Trump Effect? Political Rallies and Hate Crime Contagion,” will be presented at the 2019 meeting of the Western Political Science Association.<div class="p8_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/22/trumps-rhetoric-does-inspire-more-hate-crimes/?utm_term=.4fe8e3f618ae" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Writing in the Washington Post</a>, the authors explain their methodology, writing that they examined a possible correlation “between the counties that hosted one of Trump’s 275 presidential campaign rallies in 2016 and increased incidents of hate crimes in subsequent months.” They included numerous controls for such factors as crime rates, minority populations, educational levels and documented numbers of hate groups prior to the Trump rally.<div class="p9_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" />Feinberg, Branton and Martinez-Ebers summarize their conclusions this way:<div class="p10_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;">"We found that counties that had hosted a 2016 Trump campaign rally saw a 226 percent increase in reported hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host such a rally.<div class="p11_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Of course, our analysis cannot be certain it was Trump’s campaign rally rhetoric that caused people to commit more hate crimes in the host county. However, suggestions that this effect can be explained through a plethora of faux hate crimes are at best <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/us/fake-hate-crimes.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">unrealistic</a>. In fact, this charge is frequently used as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/02/23/an-orchestrated-attack-against-truth-how-clash-over-hate-crimes-has-become-one-more-culture-war/?utm_term=.fdabd8a69b48" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">a political tool</a> to dismiss concerns about hate crimes. <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/cdozo37&div=56&id=&page=" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Research</a> shows it is far more likely that hate crime statistics are considerably lower because of underreporting.<div class="p12_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Additionally, it is hard to discount a “Trump effect” when a considerable number of these reported hate crimes reference Trump. According to the <a href="https://www.adl.org/education-and-resources/resource-knowledge-base/adl-heat-map?s=eyJpZGVvbG9naWVzIjpbXSwiaW5jaWRlbnRzIjpbXSwieWVhciI6WzIwMTYsMjAxNl19" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">ADL’s 2016 data</a>, these incidents included vandalism, intimidation and assault.<div class="p13_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />What’s more, according to the <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">FBI’s Universal Crime</a> report in 2017, reported hate crimes increased 17 percent over 2016. <a href="https://www.ashford.zone/images/2018/09/followtheracist_v2.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Recent research</a> also shows that reading or hearing Trump’s statements of bias against particular groups makes people more likely to write offensive things about the groups he targets....</blockquote></div></div><div>=<div>AN 11/18</div><div>
</div><div>n the final days of the midterm campaign President Donald Trump's camo clown car has all eyes on the southern border as 15,000 American troops are assembled to prepare for the onslaught of a ragtag caravan of refugees.He’s been visualizing a kind of Gaza-like scenario where American troops will get to fire on rock throwing migrants.We look where he points no matter what. We can’t help it. He’s the ‘entertainer-in-chief’. His skilled misdirection has the effect of obscuring his disastrous misrule. You have to always ask what are the things he’s not attending to, or leaving on automatic pilot, that could come crashing down on his watch or somebody else’s later on down the line.So, we should not be surprised that there was scant attention paid last week when the U.S. Treasury Department disclosed that it was going to issue $425 billion in new debt for this quarter, bringing our grand total for 2018 to an eye popping $1.3 trillion in debt. As the <a href="https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2018/10/30/US-Treasury-Borrow-More-13-Trillion-2018" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Fiscal Times</a> pointed out, that reflects “a 145 percent increase from the $546 billion issued in 2017.” That’s the biggest annual issuance of federal public debt since 2010 when Uncle Sam issued $1.586 trillion in debt.Back then the Obama Administration at least had the rationale that they were grappling with a real crisis brought on by the Great Recession and close to nine million Americans losing their jobs. Does Trump’s presidency, in and of itself, meet the “crisis” standard? Perhaps.Of course, this latest explosion in debt is linked to the GOP’s $1.5 trillion tax cut, skewed for the corporations and individuals that have already been doing so well, as the levels of wealth concentration and inequality hit <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/wealth-inequality-in-the-us-is-almost-as-bad-as-it-was-right-before-the-great-depression-2018-07-19" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">historic highs</a>. Working at the behest of their wealthy friends, Trump and the GOP reduced the amount of tax revenue coming into the government and gifted that flow to their already wealthy donors, leaving future generations to deal with the mountain of public debt left behind.By 2028, the <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/26/cbo-us-debt-will-almost-equal-economy-by-2028/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Congressional Budget Office </a>predicts the amount of the government’s debt  will be equal to the size of the U.S. economy, swelling to 96 percent of the GDP, blowing past the post-World War II record set in 1946, when it was equal to 104 percent of the GDP. Similarly, back in September there were no reporters present when President Trump signed a $854 billion-dollar spending bill that included an obscene $674 billion defense budget. The Pentagon budget included Lockheed Martin Corporation’s troubled F-35 which <a href="https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a21957/wtf-35/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Popular Mechanics</a>  described as a “trillion-dollar” albatross.  “For over two decades, the F-35 has been the symbol of everything that's wrong with mammoth defense contracts: behind schedule, over budget, and initially, over-sold,” reported the magazine. “In development for nearly 17 years and seven years behind schedule, total acquisition costs now exceed $406 billion, nearly double the initial estimate of $233 billion,” according to a report from <a href="https://www.cagw.org/reporting/pig-book" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Citizens Against Government Waste</a>, a non-profit government accountability group.  “An April 2015 Government Accountability Office (GAO) <a href="https://gao.gov/assets/670/669605.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">report</a> noted that the lifetime operation and maintenance costs of the most expensive weapon system in history will total approximately $1 trillion.”And also under reported was that just a few weeks after the President doubled down on funding the F-35, the U.S. <a href="https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2018/10/11/F-35-aircraft-grounded-worldwide-over-engine-concerns/8561539267621/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">military grounded</a> all the F-35s on the planet, after one crashed near Beaufort, S.C. The aviation press reported "suspect fuel tubes.” A week after that in Afghanistan, where there are people still shooting at American troops, U.S. Army General Austin Scott Miller, the 17th commander to lead U.S. forces in Afghanistan, barely escaped <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/gunfire-erupts-in-afghan-governors-compound-after-meeting-with-us-commander/2018/10/18/109fc5e0-d2ce-11e8-b2d2-f397227b43f0_story.html?utm_term=.ce62481102c2" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">an attack</a> that left Kandahar’s police and intelligence chiefs dead. The deadly attack came in the run-up to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/10/22/659416400/millions-of-afghans-vote-in-violence-marred-elections" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">parliamentary elections</a> that were marred by violence. The spectacular attack underscored the reality that <a href="https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2018-10-30qr.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">conditions</a> on the ground continue to deteriorate. As the <a href="https://www.sigar.mil/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Special Inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction</a> (SIGAR) reported last month “the Afghan government control or influence of its districts reached the lowest level (55.5%) since SIGAR began tracking district control in November 2015.”Over those four years “Afghan government control and influence over its districts has declined by about 16 percentage points; contested districts have increased by about 11 points; and insurgent control or influence has risen by 5.5 points,” according to the latest SIGAR report to Congress.Meanwhile, the <a href="https://unama.unmissions.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan</a>  reported 649 civilian casualties (313 deaths and 336 injuries) “due to aerial operations by pro-government forces from January 1 to September 30, 2018, a 39% increase in from the same period in 2017 and a record number of civilian casualties caused by air strikes since UNAMA began recording civilian-casualty data in 2009.”SIGAR reports that Afghanistan’s Attorney General continues to resist cooperation with U.S. anti-corruption efforts “by pursuing a number of low-level, rather than high-level, corruption cases.” And as the Afghan government’s control on the ground continues to slip, its defense force is struggling to maintain troop strength now hitting its “lowest level recorded in the third quarter of the year since 2012…. decreased by 1,914 personnel since last quarter and by 8,827 personnel since the same period last year.”  That leaves the ANDSF roughly 40,000 soldiers short of their 352,000 troop target.But have no fear, POTUS has us covered with a surge bearing down on Mexico.</div><div></div></div><div>=<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4436129/venezuela-maduro-coup-trump-officials/">https://globalnews.ca/news/4436129/venezuela-maduro-coup-trump-officials/</a>Trump administration held a series of clandestine meetings with dissident <a href="http://www.globalnews.ca/tag/venezuela" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in 0s;">Venezuelan</a> military officers to discuss the overthrow of President <a href="http://www.globalnews.ca/tag/nicolas-maduro" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in 0s;">Nicolas Maduro</a>, before ultimately deciding not to support their coup plot, according to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/americas/donald-trump-venezuela-military-coup.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-in 0s;">New York Times report</a>.The military officials in question claimed to represent a faction of a few hundred armed forces members who were fed up with Maduro’s authoritarian tendencies.Current and former U.S. officials <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/08/politics/trump-venezuela-officers-secret-meetings-maduro-coup/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in 0s;">confirmed to CNN</a> that several meetings were held with the rebellious officers over the past year.READ MORE: <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4373622/nicolas-maduro-venezuela-rally-drone-blasts/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in 0s;">Venezuela’s president a no-show at rally after drone blasts he said were meant to kill him</a>According to the New York Times, the renegade group of officers were emboldened to reach out to President Donald Trump after he said last August that the U.S. was considering a military invasion of the crisis-stricken South American country.Trump’s remarks attracted a wave of criticism; Venezuela’s defence minister branded the threat “an act of craziness,” while the country’s communications minister called it “an unprecedented threat to national sovereignty.”But it came as music to the ears of the would-be military insurgents, who had previously been rebuffed in attempts to reach out to the Obama administration.WATCH: President Trump says military option could be used for Venezuela [vid]The Venezuelan commander told the New York Times that the group didn’t ask for American military intervention, but material support — they wanted to simultaneously detain Maduro and other senior government figures, and requested the U.S. to provide them with encrypted radios so that they could securely coordinate their plot.Their request was denied.READ MORE: <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4311621/donald-trump-u-s-invade-venezuela/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in 0s;">Donald Trump reportedly asked aides if U.S. could invade Venezuela last year</a>The bombshell report comes amid growing reports of foiled plots to take down Maduro....</div><div>=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/mathematical-analysis-trumps-tweets-reveals-his-true-agenda">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/mathematical-analysis-trumps-tweets-reveals-his-true-agenda</a>network visualizations represent keywords from Trump’s Twitter account taken in 2015 and 2016, leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Links and nodes were resized based on their relative frequency.</div><div></div><div>minutes after CBS aired an interview in which President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2018/07/trump-declares-the-european-union-is-a-foe/" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">declared the European Union to be among America's greatest enemies</a>, the head of the EU struck back.European Council President Donald Tusk (photo, left) took to Twitter, and in an elegant mocking of Trump's favorite phrase, declared, "America and the EU are best friends. Whoever says we are foes is spreading fake news." The European Council represents the European Union.<blockquote data-lang="en" style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">America and the EU are best friends. Whoever says we are foes is spreading fake news.</blockquote></div><div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2018/4/18/americas_1_weapons_salesman_trump_promotes">https://www.democracynow.org/2018/4/18/americas_1_weapons_salesman_trump_promotes</a></div><div>
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</div><div><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/trump-cabinet-climate-deniers-2ff87aba57ec/">https://thinkprogress.org/trump-cabinet-climate-deniers-2ff87aba57ec/</a></div><div>
</div><div>ebruary 11, 2018 <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=9ba93edfe3&e=8710facb33" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1518395082761_8903" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none; font-weight: bold;">Tomgram: Michael Klare, Militarizing America's Energy Policy</a>Think of President Trump and his administration as a den of thieves. There is, of course, the obvious thievery: what they will in the end, as with the recently passed tax “reform” bill, steal from ordinary citizens and offer as never-ending presents to the already staggeringly wealthy, among them the president himself (<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=6d7dcaaf6a&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">possible savings</a> up to $15 million annually) and son-in-law Jared Kushner (possible savings: up to $12 million annually). <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=82332f03d8&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">According to</a> the Congressional Budget Office, government cash reserves are already starting to <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=187b64ccb6&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">fall faster</a>than expected as a result of lost revenue from that bill. And the modest gains offered to ordinary taxpayers to give cover to a <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=7d88f97fcd&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">vast increase</a> in the wealth of the <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=06b9ad274e&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">top 1%</a> will all sunset in the 2020s, while that bill’s corporate tax cuts are <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=c5c466897e&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">meant for</a> eternity.  Think of such moves not as acts of petty theft, but as robbery of the most basic sort, since they involve stealing from the future to fund an increasingly plutocratic present. The Donald, in other words, isn’t just stealing from us but from our children and grandchildren. And if that’s true of his tax bill, it’s so much truer of his energy policies, as <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=07ba9c304b&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">TomDispatch regular</a> Michael Klare makes clear in a newsworthy manner today. That the president’s addiction to fossil fuels, his belief that freeing Big Energy from every form of restriction and regulation, is crucial to future American global domination has, Klare informs us, been embedded in the administration’s recently released <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=983cf3bb18&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">National Security Strategy</a>.  In other words, the exploitation of fossil fuels in North America is now officially the heart and soul of the global policy-making of President Trump and his generals.  This isn’t just a matter of stealing future money from our children and grandchildren, or even of polluting the American environment in which they’ll grow up in a fashion familiar to anyone -- like <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=030b175229&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">Donald Trump</a> (or me) -- who was raised in the 1950s.  It’s a matter of stealing everything from them, including potentially the very environment that’s nurtured generation after generation of children on this planet for all the thousands of years of human history.  If the president and his crew of <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=d9bf1ea70f&e=8710facb33" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1518395082761_8822" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">climate deniers</a> have their way and a fossil-fuelized version of energy “<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=93d0459604&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">dominance</a>” comes to rule our American world, while the path to alternative energy growth is <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=a649b14dc9&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">crippled</a>, then they will have stolen from the future in the most basic way imaginable for the comfort of just a few human beings now.  As part of what can only be thought of as a semi-conscious plan to further warm the planet, President Trump’s energy policy will, without any doubt, represent not just thievery, not just the crime of this century, but <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=4f4d63c3f7&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">terracide</a>, the destruction of the planet itself, which will be the crime of any century. Keep that in mind as you read Klare’s piece today. Tom<blockquote id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1518395082761_8816" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Strategy of Maximal Extraction  How Donald Trump Plans to Enlist Fossil Fuels in the Struggle for Global Dominance  By <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=a7479c1387&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">Michael T. Klare</a>The new U.S. energy policy of the Trump era is, in some ways, the oldest energy policy on Earth. Every great power has sought to mobilize the energy resources at its command, whether those be slaves, wind-power, coal, or oil, to further its hegemonic ambitions. What makes the Trumpian variant -- the unfettered exploitation of America’s fossil-fuel reserves -- unique lies only in the moment it’s being applied and the likely devastation that will result, thanks not only to the <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=97061ce512&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">1950s-style</a> polluting of America’s air, waters, and urban environment, but to the devastating hand it will lend to a globally warming world.Last month, if you listened to the chatter among elite power brokers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, you would have heard a lot of bragging about the immense progress being made in renewable energy.  “My government has planned a major campaign,” <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=e1642412e9&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">said</a> Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the group.  “By 2022, we want to generate 175 gigawatts of renewable energy; in the last three years, we have already achieved 60 gigawatts, or around one-third of this target.”  Other world leaders also boasted of their achievements in speeding the installation of wind and solar energy.  Even the energy minister of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Khalid Al-Falih, <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=d945c0b23d&e=8710facb33" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1518395082761_8895" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">announced</a> plans for a $30 billion to $50 billion investment in solar power.  Only one major figure defied this trend: U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.  The United States, he <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=55242f1c9b&e=8710facb33" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">insisted</a>, is “blessed” with “a substantial ability to deliver the people of the globe a better quality of life through fossil fuels.”<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=ebc68b46b1&e=8710facb33" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1518395082761_8819" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">Click here to read more of this dispatch.</a></blockquote></div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176379/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_american_paths%2C_chosen_and_not%281989-2018%29/#more">http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176379/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_american_paths%2C_chosen_and_not%281989-2018%29/#more</a></div><div>
</div><div><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" padding-top="padding-top" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color">If I were to pick a single decision by an American president and his team in this century as our own August 1914, I would choose the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003. Of course, in that era of the “sole superpower,” there were no other great powers (as in the World War I moment) ready to leap into the fray, so the unraveling that followed across a <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176369/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_seeing_our_wars_for_the_first_time" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">significant part</a>of the planet would prove not to be a world war but a one-power hell on Earth. And it’s continued to unfold over nearly a decade and a half. That invasion, which the geopolitical dreamers and supporters of the administration of George W. Bush guaranteed would be a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2002/02/13/cakewalk-in-iraq/cf09301c-c6c4-4f2e-8268-7c93017f5e93/?utm_term=.7ddd6c1a3e8c" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">cakewalk</a>,” cost <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/us/threats-responses-cost-white-house-cuts-estimate-cost-war-with-iraq.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">next to nothing</a>, and leave the United States forever dominant in the Middle East, that moment when Iraqis were sure to <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3080244/#.Wmn3aUtOlTZ" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">greet</a> their American “liberators” with flowers and hosannas, that moment when hubris would gain new meaning proved an unmitigated disaster. The U.S. would punch a hole directly through the oil heartlands of the region and from that there would be no turning back.<p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" padding-top="padding-top" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color">Occupation, civil war, <a href="https://www.juancole.com/2007/01/ethnic-cleansing-in-battle-for-baghdad.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ethnic cleansing</a>, terror movements, <a href="https://original.antiwar.com/news/2006/02/17/abu-ghraib-abuse-photos/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">abuses</a> of every sort -- and as far as we know, we may still not be near the end of its effects. Parts of the Middle East already lie <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176280/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_the_globalization_of_misery/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">in ruins</a>, city after city reduced to rubble, whole populations <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">in flight</a>.  In 2017, for instance, the Syrian city of Raqqa, the former “capital” of the Islamic State, was subjected, among so many other things, to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/23/us-air-wars-trump" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">20,000</a> “coalition” (i.e. American) bombs.  The U.N. has now declared 80% of it “uninhabitable.”  In the wake of what passes for “victory” over the “caliphate” of the Islamic State (itself <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">born in</a> an American military prison camp) -- one of a number of similar “victories” in these years, starting with the U.S. military’s taking of Baghdad in April 2003 -- ISIS has gone underground, but <a href="http://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/370295-the-isis-defeat-myth-no-one-talks-about-isis-sympathizers-and-us" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">not disappeared</a>.  Meanwhile, all the resentments, grudges, and conflicts that invasion and occupation released are still festering; the money for rebuilding is nowhere in sight; and the next iteration of the ongoing wars in the region has already been <a href="http://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/370344-tillersons-open-ended-syria-war-exposes-america-as-stuck-in-mideast" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">launched</a> by NATO ally Turkey against U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria. So now, the Turks, the Kurds, Syrian and Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites, local militias of every sort, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, ISIS guerillas, various al-Qaeda-linked groups, Russia, and Iran are all in the mix.  And the Trump administration has committed its military to <a href="http://lobelog.com/a-new-decision-to-go-to-war-in-syria/#more-42938" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">remaining</a> in both Iraq and Syria until, it seems, the end of time.  What could possibly go wrong?<p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" padding-top="padding-top" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color">And keep in mind that one other nightmare lurks just offshore (so to speak): Iran. The top officials of the Trump administration, Iranophobes all, are eager to finish the job started by the Bush administration so long ago by taking down Iran. It tells you something about the mood in Washington today that Defense Secretary James Mattis, who as CENTCOM commander in 2011 essentially lost his job thanks to his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/as-a-general-mattis-urged-action-against-iran-as-a-defense-secretary-he-may-be-a-voice-of-caution/2017/01/08/5a196ade-d391-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html?utm_term=.70117e4a1c03" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">urge</a> to go after Iran, is now considered the voice of reason on the subject in Washington.<p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" padding-top="padding-top" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color">In February 2003, I <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/410/the_march_that_wasn_t_to_be" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">marched</a> with <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/414/signage_of_the_times" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">vast crowds</a> protesting the coming invasion of Iraq and the devastation it might bring. We knew that such an invasion couldn’t turn out well -- and so many more reasonable choices were available that would have left us in a better world.  And keep in mind that Iraq was just one decision on the road to Donald Trump. Today, <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176361/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_a_country_addicted_to_war/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">TomDispatch regular</a> Andrew Bacevich looks back over that past world of choices and picks 11 all-American moments between the fall of the Berlin Wall and election 2016 that might have given us a different world and assumedly a different president. Tom<blockquote style="padding: 0px 20px 0px 0px; line-height: 21px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">How We Got Donald Trump 
(And How We Might Have Avoided Him) 
By <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/andrewbacevich" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Andrew J. Bacevich</a>The present arrives out of a past that we are too quick to forget, misremember, or enshroud in myth.  Yet like it or not, the present is the product of past choices.  Different decisions back then might have yielded very different outcomes in the here-and-now.  Donald Trump ascended to the presidency as a consequence of myriad choices that Americans made (or had made for them) over the course of decades. Although few of those were made with Trump in mind, he is the result.Where exactly did Trump come from?  How are we to account for his noxious presence as commander-in-chief and putative Leader of the Free World?  The explanations currently on offer are legion.  Some blame the nefarious Steve Bannon, others Hillary Clinton and her lackluster campaign.  Or perhaps the fault lies with the Bernie Sanders insurgency, which robbed Clinton of the momentum she needed to win, or with Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted, and Low Energy Jeb, and the other pathetic Republicans whom Trump trampled underfoot en route to claiming the nomination.  Or perhaps the real villains are all those “deplorables” -- the angry and ignorant white males whose disdain for immigrants, feminists, gays, and people of color Trump stoked and manipulated to great effect.All such explanations, however, suggest that the relevant story began somewhere around June 2015 when Donald Trump astonished the political world by announcing his intention to seek the presidency.  My aim here is to suggest that the origins of the real story are to be found much earlier.  The conditions that enabled Trump to capture the presidency stemmed from acts of commission and omission that occurred well before he rode down that escalator at Trump Tower to offer his services to the nation.</blockquote><a name="more" style="" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><blockquote style="padding: 0px 20px 0px 0px; line-height: 21px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Here’s the sad part: at each step along the way, other alternatives were available. Had those alternatives been exercised, a Trump presidency would have remained an absurd fantasy rather than becoming an absurd and dangerous reality.  Like the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Vietnam War or 9/11, Trump qualifies as a completely avoidable catastrophe with roots deep in the past.So who’s at fault? Ultimately, we -- the American people -- must accept a considerable share of the responsibility. This is one buck that can’t be passed.Coulda, Woulda, ShouldaSo what follows is a review of roads taken (and not) ultimately leading to the demoralizing presidency of Donald Trump, along with a little speculation on how different choices might have resulted in a decidedly different present.1989: The Fall of the Berlin Wall....</blockquote></a></div><div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/economy/do-you-want-pay-toll-private-investors-when-you-ride-trumps-federal-highways-thats-his">https://www.alternet.org/economy/do-you-want-pay-toll-private-investors-when-you-ride-trumps-federal-highways-thats-his</a></div><div>
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</div><div></div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/donald-trump-just-dealt-major-blow-renewable-energy">https://www.alternet.org/environment/donald-trump-just-dealt-major-blow-renewable-energy</a></div><div>
</div><div></div><div>many civ deaths, thus hu rights violations</div><div>
</div><div><div class="icopyright-ad-placeholder"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/trump-trauma/more-warfare-bombing-deaths-trumps-first-year">https://www.alternet.org/trump-trauma/more-warfare-bombing-deaths-trumps-first-year</a>greatest impact of Donald Trump’s first year as president has been kept out of sight from most Americans. The wars the U.S. waged during Barack Obama’s tenure have sharply escalated under Trump. The result has been a predictable and massive spike in civilian deaths.Boasting in <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/17/politics/trump-isis-raqqa/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">an interview</a> last year about an apparent retreat by Islamic State, Trump declared, “I totally changed rules of engagement. I totally changed our military.” He also touted the “big, big difference if you look at the military now” compared with what it was under the Obama administration. While Obama shares blame for escalating the use of drones, especially in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia, Trump’s military leadership appears to be a return to a more traditional form of war and a complete unfettering of attempts to minimize civilian casualties.This unfettering is evident in an almost 50 percent increase of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria during Trump’s first year in office, leading to a rise in civilian deaths <a href="https://airwars.org/news/airwars-annual-assessment-2017/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">by more than 200 percent</a> compared with the year before. The watchdog group <a href="https://airwars.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Airwars</a>, which has tracked the U.S. war against Islamic State since 2014, remarked, “This unprecedented death toll coincided with the start of the Trump presidency, and suggested in part that policies aimed at protecting civilians had been scaled back under the new administration.” Another analysis by the U.K. organization <a href="https://aoav.org.uk/2018/2017-set-worst-year-civilian-fatalities-since-aoav-records-began/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Action on Armed Violence</a> (AOAV) found that civilian deaths from explosive weapons in Iraq, Syria and Yemen increased by 42 percent in 2017. The group explained that the bigger death toll was largely due to “a massive increase in deadly airstrikes.” While AOAV did not single out the United States, in light of the U.S.’ overt escalation of the wars in those countries, a large proportion of the civilian deaths were likely a result of the new military strategy under Trump.In addition to Syria and Iraq, U.S. military action in Afghanistan also has dramatically increased. As the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-afghanistan-us-airstrikes-20171204-htmlstory.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Los Angeles Times reported</a> in December: “Operating under looser restrictions on air power that commanders hope will break a stalemate in the war, U.S. fighter planes this year dropped 3,554 explosives in Afghanistan through Oct. 31, the most since 2012.” In December, when the U.S. was expected to slow down for the winter, as it had in the past, it instead continued a steady pace of airstrikes aimed at the Taliban. According to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/a-new-us-air-blitz-in-afghanistan-isnt-stopping-for-winter-but-will-it-stop-the-taliban/2018/01/16/c9bb874c-f4cd-11e7-9af7-a50bc3300042_story.html?utm_term=.abc5226903e1" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Washington Post</a>, “For the first time in 16 years, the cold has not slowed the war in the air. U.S. and Afghan forces conducted 455 airstrikes in December, an average of 15 a day, compared with just 65 the year before.”Unsurprisingly, more civilians were killed last year in Afghanistan, compared with the last year of Obama’s tenure. The <a href="https://unama.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/unama_protection_of_civilians_in_armed_conflict_quarterly_report_1_january_to_30_september_2017-english.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">United Nations estimates</a> that Afghan civilian deaths from airstrikes were more than 50 percent higher in the first nine months of 2017, compared with the same period a year earlier. The Trump administration also has approved the increase of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/up-to-1000-more-us-troops-could-be-headed-to-afghanistan-this-spring/2018/01/21/153930b6-fd1b-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html?utm_term=.353224fde902" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">grand total expected to be close to 15,000</a>. The longest war the U.S. has ever waged appears to have no end in sight.Somalia, another U.S. target, also has seen a sharp rise in violence and casualties under Trump. An <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/23/somali-citizens-count-cost-of-surge-in-us-airstrikes-under-trump" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">analysis by The Guardian</a> found that the number of U.S.-led airstrikes in Somalia in the second half of 2017 were double the total number of airstrikes during all of 2016. At least 50 civilians were killed in 2017, among them many children, but the paper said this could be an underestimate, as many deaths go unreported. It explained the increase in airstrikes:<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The sudden increase in the use of air power in Somalia by the US [comes] after the relaxation of guidelines intended to prevent civilian casualties and a decision by the Trump administration to give local military commanders greater authority in ordering attacks.</blockquote>America’s dramatic military escalation also has extended to its indirect role in the bloody Yemen war. According <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/3/27/15073250/trump-pentagon-war-us-yemen-saudi-arabia" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">to Vox</a>, in March 2017 there were reports that Trump was considering ramping up U.S. support to Saudi Arabia in its war on Yemen. By November it <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/11/us-aerial-support-saudi-campaign-yemen-soars-trump.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">was confirmed</a>: The U.S. was indeed increasing logistical support of the Saudi war effort by providing increased refueling support for its bombers. With such help, the Saudis have managed to keep up their deadly toll, with reports in December of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/saudi-raids-kill-70-yemeni-civilians-48-hours-171225130825534.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">more than 70 Yemeni civilians killed</a> over a mere two days. During the nearly 3-year-old war, about 10,000 Yemeni civilians have been killed; thousands more face death from starvation or cholera.The pattern is clear: Trump seems to have given U.S. military generals carte blanche to unleash their maximum military power in a move reminiscent of the “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2003/fyi/news/03/22/iraq.war/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">shock and awe</a>” campaign during the early days of George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. The justification for unleashing this deadly military power has been the spread of Islamic State militants in a number of Arab and Muslim countries. But in the U.K., which is a major participant in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, a government official admitted what most U.S. military members won’t: that it is often difficult to distinguish between an Islamic State militant and a civilian. Clive Lewis, chair of an all-party U.K. parliamentary group on drones, recently <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jan/08/civilian-deaths-from-airstrikes-almost-double-year" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">told The Guardian</a>, “One of the challenges that has emerged from our military efforts against [Islamic State] in Iraq and Syria is a lack of clarity regarding the legal criteria by which the [Ministry of Defence] determines an individual to be an [Islamic State] combatant.”If it is in fact difficult to determine who is an Islamic State soldier, does the U.S. really have a legal or moral basis to kill anyone? Indeed, the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force was a <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/06/492857888/when-the-u-s-military-strikes-white-house-points-to-a-2001-measure" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">discredited justification under Obama</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/10/30/560778907/the-future-of-the-presidents-authorization-for-use-of-military-force" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">remains a questionable source of legality</a> under Trump.As Islamic State’s power appears to <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/09/iraq-declares-end-war-isil/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">have diminished</a> over the past several months, Trump is cautiously declaring victory. During his signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2018, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-signing-h-r-2810-national-defense-authorization-act-fy2018/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Trump said</a>, “We’ve had more success with [Islamic State] in the last eight months than the entire previous administration has had during its entire term.” But he has been hesitant to declare an all-out victory, perhaps because the military may not want to fall victim to its own success. In other words, if Islamic State has truly been defeated, there would be little incentive for Congress to continue to increase military expenditures aimed at it. At the NDAA signing, Trump also said of the bill: “It authorizes funding for our continued campaign to obliterate [Islamic State]. As you know, we’ve won in Syria, we’ve won in Iraq. But they spread to other areas and we’re getting them as fast as they spread.”By “other areas,” Trump may be referring to Afghanistan. <a href="https://www.stripes.com/news/a-10s-join-effort-to-target-taliban-drug-factories-in-afghanistan-1.508011" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Stars and Stripes</a>, a U.S. military publication, reported on the recent deployment of A10-C jets to Afghanistan, which “comes as U.S. Central Command realigns its aircraft, crews and other assets in the region, as the anti-[Islamic State] campaign in Iraq and Syria winds down and as demand for precision strikes and close air support ramps up in Afghanistan under President Donald Trump’s South Asia strategy.”If there is indeed a victory against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, not only has it been achieved at a terrible human cost, it is likely to be short-lived. History shows us that all the U.S. has ever generated by its violence and mass murders of civilians is more anger, resentment and retaliatory violence—what the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/blowback/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">CIA termed “blowback</a>,” a topic the late foreign policy analyst Chalmers Johnson wrote about intensively. Indeed, the rise of Islamic State is in part fueled by the United States’ cruel post-9/11 policies targeting Muslims. For example, Islamic State militants have often filmed their <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/08/28/once-again-militants-use-guantanamos-orange-jumpsuit-in-an-execution/?utm_term=.d0e412c538f6" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">victims dressed in orange jumpsuits</a> to invoke the United States’ illegal detention and torture of Muslim men at Guantanamo Bay.And perhaps this is just fine with Trump, who knows that any retaliatory attacks against the U.S., especially those on U.S. soil, will <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rally%27round_the_flag_effect" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">help keep him and his party in power</a>. Could this be what Trump might be hoping for? A recent <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/17/16893408/donald-trumps-2018-plan" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Washington Post article</a> alluded to Trump speculating that Republicans might retain their hold on Congress, as they did after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.If the past is any indication, we cannot bomb our way out of a crisis. Bombing and killing only creates new enemies. If the Islamic State is wiped out, its defeat is likely to be temporary—a new and potentially more ruthless organization may take its place.The American public’s lack of attention to Trump’s violent and dangerous foreign policy, which is far worse than that of his predecessor, is a big part of the problem of the ongoing wars. Our ignorance of the havoc Trump is wreaking overseas makes us more susceptible to the politicization of future retaliatory attacks. The monstrosities being carried out in our name, and with our tax dollars, are no less our responsibility when we ignore them. Trump’s foreign policy may indeed be the most dangerous game he is playing as president.</div><div></div></div><div> <a href="https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-brings-back-coal-miner-jobs-deaths-soar">https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-brings-back-coal-miner-jobs-deaths-soar</a><div>Newsweek</div><div id="body" itemprop="articleBody">Coal miner Rodney Osborne was towards the end of a double shift at the Gateway Eagle Mine in West Virginia in June when the 32-year-old was <a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4059845-Rockwell-Fatal-State-Report-Sept-2017.html">crushed to death</a> by a rotating drill. A subsequent investigation revealed that Osborne, who had been working at the Boone County mine for just five months, had not received adequate safety training on the device.The state's junior senator, Shelley Moore Capito, said she was heartbroken by the news of Osborne's death, then reminded her constituents that "West Virginia coal miners like Rodney selflessly put so much on the line to ... power our state."Osborne was not the only miner who paid the ultimate price. In all, 15 miners died since President Donald Trump took office in 2017—up from eight in all of 2016.This is the dirty secret of Trump’s much-touted effort to help the coal industry. The president has been quick to celebrate the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-coal-jobs/exclusive-trumps-coal-job-push-stumbles-in-most-states-data-idUSKBN1F81AK">771 workers that were hired in 2017</a>, but the administration's push to support the dirtiest of fossil fuels has been accompanied by a surge in deaths of the workers who procure it. The 2017 death toll was the highest since 2014—when there were roughly 60,000 more miners at work in America.Mining advocates put some of the blame on the president, whose support for mine owners has led to relaxed safety enforcement, scores of inexperienced new miners and inconsistent commitment to training programs and courses. In the meantime,  Republicans in the House want to cut mine safety budgets further, and Trump, who says he supports coal miners, has been silent on a Senate bill that would shore up miners' pensions.“When you look at the Trump administration policies and his ratcheting back of regulations ... this administration has no moral compass about ethics,” said Joe Main, who ran the Mine Safety and Health Administration under President Barack Obama. “Companies now think we have a less aggressive sheriff in town.”Trump’s support for coal is part of a larger economic vision of deregulation—one that he says is responsible for the stock market’s recent boom and higher gross domestic product.“The stock market is way up (because) we took off restrictions and we took off regulations,” he said on January 16.But for coal miners, those restrictions and regulations can be the difference between life and death.A majority of the 15 victims were new to their job site and seven deaths involved miners with one year or less experience at the mine where they died, data show.“There’s been a whole new generation of people hired into coal industry, younger workers who haven’t had the benefit of enough training,” said Phil Smith, spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America. “But companies are resistant to taking time to take them off production to train them.”The results can be deadly—and not only for new workers.In May, Luches “Big Lou” Rosser, 44, was traveling on an electric locomotive deep in a West Virginia mine when his head hit a steel beam, killing him. <a href="https://www.msha.gov/data-reports/fatality-reports/2017/fatality-7-may-18-2017/final-report">The official investigation into his death</a> found that Rosser, a husband and father of three, hadn’t been properly trained on the machine. He knew how it worked, but was never briefed on safety procedures.“Showing someone how to push a button isn’t a training,” said Smith.<a href="https://www.msha.gov/data-reports/fatality-reports/2017/fatality-10-july-25-2017/final-report">In July</a>, Andrew Oxenrider, a 28-year-old with seven years on the job, exited his Caterpillar D9L bulldozer on the slope of a refuse bank. Oxenrider had not been trained in proper parking procedures for that model, and the bulldozer rolled backwards, killing him before falling to the bottom of the embankment. And then there's the case of Osborne, who disabled his drilling machine's emergency shutoff system so he could make a minor alignment adjustment—only to get pinned between the cutter head and the coal seam, suffering "fatal crushing injuries," state investigators revealed.State officials issued seven citations to Rockwell Mining, including two that carry a $10,000 fine. But so far, the Trump administration's mine safety agency has only recommended education.Coal mining is inherently dangerous, with zero margin for error even under the best conditions. The average height of a mine tunnel is about three and a half feet, so miners crawl or duck-walk while avoiding big, mobile electrical equipment. Even a small lapse in safety can be catastrophic.“I have been to too many mine explosions and funerals,” said West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat. “Too many miners have died for us to get to where we are today. We can not go backwards on safety.”Last year’s death count suggests a step back. For the first seven months of the Trump administration, the top position at MSHA remained vacant. Congressional aide and White House adviser Wayne Palmer was finally put in charge of the agency in late August, but he had no experience in mining or mine safety.Under Palmer's oversight,  <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2017-09-12/pdf/2017-19381.pdf">MSHA proposed</a> changing language about when safety inspections must be done at metal and non-metal mines. Instead of mandating the inspection before laborers enter a mine, operators could do the check "as miners begin their work," a wording that allows mine owners to start a shift before an inspection, putting miners in potentially dangerous situations.The National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association, an industry group that <a href="https://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=getFilingDetails&filingID=E2732CFD-D690-4A8B-82B9-FA7F54FA788B&filingTypeID=60">spent $300,000 to lobby for the rule change</a> and featured former Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski as the keynote speaker <a href="https://www.aggregateresearch.com/news/trump-campaign-manager-speaks-association-convention/">at its annual convention</a>, was pleased with the new language, <a href="https://www.nssga.org/msha-proposes-major-changes-workplace-exams-rule/">writing that</a> "it appears that MSHA is willing to listen to the industry."In the fall, Trump finally appointed David Zatezalo, a retired coal mining executive, to run the Mine Safety and Health Administration, but Zatezalo has a questionable commitment to miners’ welfare, advocates say.His Rhino Eastern Eagle mine in West Virginia, for example, was hit with multiple violations in 2010 and 2011. All together, Rhino mines <a href="https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?parent=rhino-resource-partners">have been issued</a> more than $2.1 million in fines for 162 workplace safety or health violations since 2000.Now Zatezalo runs an agency charged with creating training initiatives, monitoring accidents, and, most important, carrying out safety inspections at mines several times a year. Critics say he is a pawn of industry.“He’s a former coal operator, he’s not a mine safety advocate,” said Tony Oppegard, a mine safety lawyer.This week, Zatezalo told Newsweek that the Trump Administration is committed to the health and safety of America’s miners. "At MSHA, our focus is on ensuring that every miner is able to return safely to their loved ones at the end of every shift," he said. "To ensure the health and safety of miners, MSHA will continue to conduct inspections, and vigorously emphasize safety enforcement, education and training."<div class="icopyright-ad-placeholder">Such inspections and training are mandated by federal laws, but miner advocates are not convinced that Zatezalo will aggressively enforce them.“[Zatezalo] might call the district manager in Barbourville, Kentucky and tell them how he wants the agency to run,” said Oppegard. “Influential mine operators might also call MSHA directly and say, ‘Your inspector is giving me a hard time,’ the head would then call the district manager and say, ‘Lay off.’ That kind of stuff happens. It really does.”Main, the former MSHA director, said it is likely to get worse.“If the perception of the industry is these guys are backing off, it won’t play out well for safety,” he said. “Word gets around the industry, and you know what’s going to happen there.”Smith already sees alarming changes at MSHA, such as emphasizing a more-lenient safety check system <a href="https://www.msha.gov/news-media/press-releases/2017/06/19/msha-launches-compliance-assistance-initiative-address">called “compliance assistance</a>," which was a key program under President George W. Bush. If a compliance assistant visits a mine and notices a safety or health violation, he or she does not have the authority to issue a citation or fine, the way an official inspector would.They’re essentially tourists in a mine, said Smith.If such assistants see “something going on in a mine that’s bad or wrong, they can only ask the company to fix it,” he added. “The company can easily say, ‘No we don’t think it’s a problem’ and that’s the end of it. There’s no enforcement.”MSHA responded to the recent surge in deaths by increasing the size of its compliance assistance plan, a voluntary program for mine operators. Advocates say compliance assistance is typically most popular with deregulation Republicans.“You know one administration, a Democratic administration, is interested in enforcement and wants to do enforcement. And a Republican administration wants to do compliance assistance,” Celeste Monforton, a former MSHA official and occupational health researcher, <a href="http://ohiovalleyresource.org/2017/09/01/coal-fatalities-rise-miner-deaths-increase-amid-low-coal-employment/">told Ohio Valley Resource</a> as mining deaths were on the rise last year.MSHA still uses official inspectors to carry out its mandatory inspections of all underground mines four times a year and all surface mines twice a year, and compliance assistance programs existed under Democratic presidents, as well. But the Trump administration has further dulled its teeth.<div class="icopyright-ad-placeholder">In the past, for example, all compliance assistants were to be accompanied by miners' representatives, but that is no longer the case, Smith said.Compliance assistance is “a complete waste of time,” added Oppegard. “You can directly link the reliance on this method of inspection with an increase in mining disasters and fatalities.”Annual miner deaths did increase twice during the Bush administration and were higher than under his successor, Barack Obama, who, in 2009, brought total miner deaths down below 20 for the first time in American history.Manchin expressed his own concerns, telling Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta <a href="https://www.manchin.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/MSHA%20Compliance%20Assistance%20Plan%20Letter.pdf?cb">in a letter</a> in September that MSHA inspectors were being instructed to remove their Representative Status credentials. Without the credentials, inspectors are not allowed to issue violations or remove miners from unsafe conditions."By separating the MSHA inspector from his or her credentials, one is essentially removing the ability of that MSHA inspector to issue an order to remove miners from the unsafe area and issue a violation which, particularly in the event of an imminent danger, can prove perilous," Manchin wrote.He also questioned why miners' representatives were no longer able to walk with compliance assistants. "This is particularly alarming because, no one is better suited to spot inconsistencies or unsafe conditions that the very people who work at the mine day in and day out," Manchin wrote.In the midst of the current mine safety crisis, Congress has proposed to cut MSHA’s coal enforcement budget by $11 million or 7 percent in the next fiscal year, leaving the agency with its lowest budget since FY 2013. Trump originally proposed to leave MSHA’s budget largely untouched but to reduce staffing by 42 positions.“The proposed budget cut is absolutely a move towards reducing the inspectors in the coal industry,” said Smith, adding that the plan will result in an agency staffed by “inexperienced inspectors.”“It takes five years to take an inspector up to speed,” Main added. “These are things that are really important to the life of a miner.”<div class="icopyright-ad-placeholder">Main said he worries about long-term leadership trickling out of the agency. “I was struggling to keep the agency functioning with the budget we had. Any additional cuts would hamper its ability to keep working,” he said.On-site injuries are only one aspect of the job. Sustained exposure to coal dust leads to a number of respiratory diseases, such as black lung disease, a progressive illness with no cure. More than 76,000 miners have died of black lung since 1968.Last month, Trump announced that MSHA was reconsidering rules intended to protect miners from breathing in the dust that causes black lung. And in his first days as president, Trump <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/2/2/14488448/stream-protection-rule">eliminated </a>an Obama-era rule blocking coal companies from dumping waste into streams. Miner advocates say these rule changes and others are all about appeasing mine owners, not workers.“They’re receiving a lot of complaints from coal operators that these rules are wasteful and useless, but that’s just false,” said Smith.MSHA says it is still taking comments about these rules, which went into effect in 2014 and aim to lower the concentration of respirable coal mine dust in the air, but Oppegard believes there’s only one reason to revisit them: “To raise the amount of dust miners can breathe in up again or to create other loopholes where operators could violate the standard.”Smith added that such air quality rules don't get in the way of industry profits and are simply necessary.“All of these regulations exist because someone was killed at work,” he said. “All those laws and regulations are written in a dead miner’s blood.”Manchin disagrees, claiming that there are just too many environmental rules. “Some of the stuff doesn’t make sense and makes it hard for people to do their job,” he said.Manchin is most upset with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who he says refuses to fund the pensions of 117,000 retired coal miners and dependents, who are at risk of losing their retirement funds due to the declining coal industry.A Senate bill <a href="http://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1105/cosponsors">has 21 co-sponsors</a>, but McConnell won't move it and Trump hasn't pushed the issue, Manchin said.<div class="icopyright-ad-placeholder">“We’re not talking big numbers here,” said Manchin. “Most pensions top out at $500 or $600 each month.”Manchin added that Trump has been a sympathetic ear on the issue, but has not acted. To Joe Main, that means Trump's rhetoric about caring for coal miners is empty.“I don't think I’ve ever heard the president talk about this pension,” he said. “These are people who produced the energy for this country to grow, they’re owed healthcare and a darn pension.”Trump’s efforts to prop up the coal industry are bucking decades of decline for the mineral, mostly due to a drop in global demand. Even with hundreds of new miners hired last year, the solar and wind industries still employed <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/clean-energy-more-jobs-than-fossil-fuels-32f615915399/">nearly three times</a> as many people as the coal industry. Half of America’s coal-fired plants have shuttered since 2010 and since Trump took office at least 17 plants have announced they’ll be closing shop. Coal isn’t cost-competitive with cheaper natural gas and it faces new competition as the cost of renewable energy continues to decline.Coal is a leading source of carbon emissions, and many nations are weaning themselves off the pollutant to fight climate change, even as officials in the United States deny some realities about global warming. Exports of coal fell 23 percent in 2015 and another 32 percent through the first half of 2016, though domestic production is slightly up, thanks to a growing economy under Trump.“I’m the one that saved coal,” the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/us/politics/trump-interview-excerpts.html">president said in a year-end interview</a>. “I’m the one that created jobs.”But on the homefront, Trump’s call to end the “war on coal” appealed to his base: wealthy, anti-regulation industry leaders and blue-collar workers nostalgic for a past they likely never knew. Trump’s support for coal countered Hillary Clinton, who was <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/may/10/context-hillary-clintons-comments-about-coal-jobs/">widely misquoted</a> during the campaign that she would intentionally “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”Trump carried eight of the top nine coal-mining states in the 2016 election</div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/trump-trauma/more-warfare-bombing-deaths-trumps-first-year">https://www.alternet.org/trump-trauma/more-warfare-bombing-deaths-trumps-first-year</a>
</div><div></div><div>omg</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/ceq-nominee-white-2524022932.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/ceq-nominee-white-2524022932.html</a></div><div>The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Trump administration</a> re-nominated <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/kathleen-hartnett-white-climate-change-2508066491.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Kathleen Hartnett White</a> on Monday to be chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">CEQ</a>) after she failed to secure a Senate confirmation last year.The CEQ chair oversees environmental policy across all federal agencies. But during Senate hearings in November, White struggled to answer basic questions about the CEQ's <a href="https://twitter.com/EPWDems/status/943931661808521216" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">role</a> and whether she would use <a href="https://twitter.com/EPWDems/status/943933029189373952" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">facts</a> in environmental recommendations to the president. She continues to <a href="https://twitter.com/EPWDems/status/943934981558153216" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">deny</a> that <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/carbon" style="text-decoration-line: none;">carbon dioxide</a> is harmful to the planet....</div><div>=yikes, longterm damage:
<a href="https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/senate-republicans-want-speed-approval-trumps-nutty-nominees">https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/senate-republicans-want-speed-approval-trumps-nutty-nominees</a>It's one of those stories that might be a minor issue in a normal presidential administration but takes on alarming implications in the era of Donald Trump: <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/366260-senate-gop-seeks-to-change-rules-for-trump-picks" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">The Hill reports that Senate Republicans</a> under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are considering changing the rules for confirming appointees to both federal agencies and the district courts, drastically reducing the amount of time that senators get to question the people Trump wants to entrust with these powerful positions.<div>Republicans are considering shrinking debate for non-Cabinet federal nominees down from 30 hours to just eight, and limiting debate on district judges to two hours apiece.</div><div>To be clear, it's not that unusual to shorten debate time on nominations, and Senate Democrats made a similar rule change in 2013 — though only for that session of Congress. The current proposal, offered by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., would be a more permanent change so that rubber-stamping Trump nominees could be the practice not just this year but for as long as Trump holds office. But the larger concern is not just that this would be a long-term rules change being proposed, but who, exactly, would benefit: A president who has been quite clear that incompetence is no obstacle to nomination -- and that being opposed to the mission of the office you wish to run is a bonus.</div>"What we need is not less time, but more time, based on what we’ve seen over and over," Sasha Buchert, <a href="https://www.lambdalegal.org/about-us/staff/sasha-buchert" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">a staff attorney at Lambda Legal</a>, told Salon. "The judicial nominees we’ve seen are so bad, and every day there’s something new that’s revealed. It’s a similar issue with the executive nominations, unfortunately."With Senate Republicans eager to simply vote in everyone Trump tosses their way, the only way to stop at least some of the worst nominees is to make the confirmation process a public spectacle that forces withdrawal from sheer embarrassment. <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-judicial-nominee-matthew-petersen_us_5a37ec14e4b0ff955ad51e82" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Buchert pointed to cases like that of Matthew Petersen</a>, who withdrew his nomination to be a district judge after the confirmation hearing exposed that he was incapable of answering basic questions most first-year law students could handle.<div><div id="postSection-3"><div>Buchert also flagged the case of Eric Dreiband, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/01/politics/eric-dreiband-justice-department-civil-rights-lgbt/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">a lawyer who spent his career defending employers in discrimination cases</a>, whom Trump nominated to be the head of the Justice Department's civil rights division. The longer confirmation process gave human rights groups time to raise the alarm and so far, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/01/03/575123392/key-vacancies-at-justice-department-not-a-recipe-for-good-government" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Dreiband's confirmation seems stalled</a>. But shortening debate might make it easier for troublesome nominees to slide through.</div><div>Drew McConville, a senior managing director at <a href="https://wilderness.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Wilderness Society</a>, linked the proposal to limit debate to the Trump administration's largerhostility toward any kind of public accountability.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"Time after time, we’re seeing the administration look to undermine opportunities for public input," McConville said. “Unfortunately, the administration has shown itself in the first year to put special interests above the public interest.”</div><div>McConville noted that over the past year, environmental activists have documented a downturn in <a href="https://www.nhonews.com/news/2017/may/16/short-public-comment-period-bears-ears-review-coul/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">public comment opportunities</a>, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/states-to-revive-climate-panel-disbanded-by-trump/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the disbanding of advisory committees</a>, and an apparent decision to ignore public opinion on issues like protecting national monuments — in favor of doing whatever oil and gas companies want. Instead, a cult of secrecy has become ingrained in the Trump administration, particularly at the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/western-monuments-set-to-be-reduced-under-proposal-to-trump" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Interior Department</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/politics/scott-pruitt-epa.html?r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the EPA</a>, and the public is being shut out of important decisions that affect it directly.</div></div></div><div><div id="postSection-5"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"The fact that the GOP Senate conference is reacting to Trump's comically unqualified nominees by streamlining the process really should end 'When will Republicans start standing up to Trump?' discussions," said Scott Lemieux, a political science lecturer at the University of Washington.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">He added that "getting conservative judges and executive branch nominees is the main thing Republicans -- both legislators and voters -- are getting from Trump," saying this attempt to fast-track the process "was probably overdetermined."</div><div>Republicans argue that the change is necessary because Trump is lagging behind his predecessors when it comes to getting appointees confirmed, at least to the federal agencies. (He's getting <a href="https://time.com/5066679/donald-trump-federal-judges-record/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">his judicial nominees confirmed at breakneck speed already</a>.)</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"As of Thursday, the Trump administration has had 300 nominations confirmed by the Senate, with an additional 177 currently working their way through the upper chamber's pipeline," The Hill reports. "That lags behind former President Obama who had 418 nominations confirmed by the Senate at the same time, while former President George W. Bush had 493 and former President Clinton had 471."
</div><div>But while Republicans want to blame Democrats for this, the reality is far more complicated. As NPR reports, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/01/03/575123392/key-vacancies-at-justice-department-not-a-recipe-for-good-government" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the Trump administration has failed</a> to file paperwork quickly and completely, which is hanging up a lot of nominees. Also, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-administration-appointee-tracker/database/?utm_term=.194d0793ee7d" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">as The Washington Post tracker indicates</a>, a huge part of the problem is that the administration isn't too hasty with its nominations, either. By this point in his presidency, Obama had sent 640 nominations to the Senate. George W. Bush had sent 616. Trump has only sent 477 so far.</div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="postSection-6">Still, the larger issue is competence. Trump has an unmistakable tendency to pick appointees who oppose the mission of the agency they are slated to manage. In many cases, these picks have been laughably unqualified. Sam Clovis, Trump's initial pick to be chief scientist at the USDA (now withdrawn), <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/08/28/trump-nominated-a-climate-denier-as-usda-chief-scientist-heres-why-that-matters/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">is not a scientist of any kind and had no experience with agriculture whatsoever</a>. His pick to head NASA, Jim Bridenstine, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/11/10/trumps-terrible-nasa-nominee-and-the-gop-attack-on-science/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">has no background in science or engineering</a>. That Trump isn't nominating people quickly is probably a good thing on the whole, since so many of the people he does pick clearly have no idea what they're doing.</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="postSection-7"><div>“These positions matter," McConville said. "We’re talking about public officials who are entrusted with stewarding our public lands, protecting the air we breathe, the water we drink and so much more.”</div><div>But as with the tax reform bill, it's clear that congressional Republicans are less interested in doing something well than in cramming through a right-wing agenda at breakneck speed. It's almost as if they don't think they will get a full four-year term to enact the Trump agenda and are making this a rush job, which may not be an  unreasonable assumption when the headlines are dominated by the slowly unfolding Russia scandal and Trump's dubious mental state.</div></div></div>
</div><div></div><div>voter fraud:</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/trumps-vote-suppression-team-doing-gops-dirty-work" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/trumps-vote-suppression-team-doing-gops-dirty-work</a>Anyone who favors expanding voting rights should be relieved by Wednesday’s <a href="https://electionlawblog.org/?p=96747" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">demise</a> of President Trump’s so-called Election Integrity Commission. But the panel’s right-wing agenda to rig the voting process to benefit the GOP will continue.There’s plenty to cheer about when white nationalists like Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the vice-chair, and voter suppressors like the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky were discredited by a panel run in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/01/04/trumps-explanation-for-shutting-down-his-voter-fraud-commission-is-just-as-untrue-and-partisan/?utm_term=.03993d3eb436" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">secretive, conspiratorial and clownish</a> manner. But these Republicans are not giving up on their plan to create new barriers to eligible voters.“Amid many challenges for the institutions of American democracy, this was a rousing win,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice. “No doubt, there is fallout to come… The commission has vanished, but its pernicious objectives persist. The White House has asked the Department of Homeland Security to take up the commission’s work—a dangerous and appalling idea. Earlier this morning, the president took to Twitter to renew calls for voting restrictions.”Indeed, Kobach signaled his next move to <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/03/trump-disbands-voter-fraud-commission-322621" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Politico, which noted</a>, “The Kansas official said he expects officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and political appointees overseeing that agency to take over the commission’s work and begin efforts to match state voter rolls to federal databases of noncitizens. He insisted he was not disappointed with the president’s decision.”“It’s the right move,” Kobach said. “It’s a shifting in tactics from having the investigation be done by a federal commission to having it be done by a federal agency. The agency has a greater ability to move quickly to get the investigation done.”The GOP Strategy UnmaskedKobach’s is referring to a strategy employed by the most fervent partisan Republicans to position red-run states to keep new registrants from voting and do mass purges of infrequent but otherwise legal voters from their rolls. In short, it draws on intentionally sloppy data-mining to creates thousands of false positives that are then used to stymie voters. That porous data has been used in recent cycles in Georgia to <a href="https://politics.myajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/new-georgia-project-releases-financial-records-renews-voter-push/BJoatzFC6XHZQ8GcACOsRN/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">delay approving</a> new registrations and to accelerate <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-georgia-demands-explanation-improper-purge-notice-encourages-other-affected-voters-come" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">mass purges</a> of voter rolls. But it's not just Georgia.In 2014, Florida’s top election official proposed using DHS’s problematic citizenship data to purge voter rolls. In response, county election supervisors <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article2087729.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">rebelled and blocked it</a>—because they still felt the sting of the 2000 election, when Secretary of State Katherine Harris used sloppy data-mining (seeking former felons who could not vote under that state's laws) to purge tens of thousands of eligible voters before that year's presidential election.If Kobach has his way, the contours of that sordid history will repeat itself, including using a DHS <a href="https://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2013/oct/30/league-women-voters-florida/league-women-voters-says-homeland-security-warned-/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">database that was never designed to be an authoritative list of every U.S. citizen</a>. But in the years since Harris’ Florida purge, the right-wing strategy has become clear.Republicans like Kobach strategically target weak points in the voting process. They pinpoint areas in the process that are ambiguous, or where there’s no authoritative national data to counter their claims of purported illegal activity.For example, there is no federal agency that tracks so-called voter fraud, which these right-wingers define as someone impersonating someone else at the polls to vote more than once, and has become the go-to justificatiom for red-run states to erect new barriers to voting century. Since there’s no single federal agency that tracks so-called voter fraud, it becomes a useful propaganda tool for Republicans because it's left to acacdemics and the media to debunk it, which these partisans routinely ignore.The latest high-profile example of this narrative is Trump's thoroughly <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/quotes-on-voter-fraud" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">debunked</a> claim that millions of Democrats illegally voted more than once to deprive him of 2016’s popular vote majority. But that lie, recited again by Trump’s press office when announcing the commission’s demise, resonates among supporters who want to believe all Democrats are crooks despite <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/voter-fraud" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">vast documentation</a> by academics and the press that voter fraud barely exists. In the absence of an authoritative federal accounting, it becomes an easy pretext for red states to pass laws to, as they purport, police the process’ integrity. In reality, they thwart Democratic voters....</div><div>=yikes<a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-packing-courts-unqualified-conservatives">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-packing-courts-unqualified-conservatives</a>Many of Trump’s appointees have drawn scrutiny, including Leonard Grasz, who was the Senate—who the Senate confirmed earlier this month to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals despite a “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association. Grasz is one of at least four Trump nominees the ABA deemed “not qualified.” Meanwhile, Trump’s nominee to a lifetime appointment on the U.S. District Court in Washington withdrew from consideration, after widely circulated video showed he was unable to answer basic questions about the law and had never tried a case in court. This is Louisiana Republican John Kennedy questioning Matthew Petersen at a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing earlier this month....AMY GOODMAN: In today’s New York Times, Reverend Bishop William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/opinion/william-barber-trumps-judge-farr.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">wrote</a> about Trump’s nomination of Thomas Alvin Farr, a protégé of Senator Jesse Helms, to serve on the U.S. district court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Barber writes about Farr’s connections to white supremacist causes and writes, quote, “Mr. Farr’s former law partner, Thomas Ellis, was Mr. Helms’s top deputy for decades. He also served as a director of the Nazi-inspired, pro-eugenics Pioneer Fund and used funding from that organization to create and bankroll a network of interlocking organizations to support Mr. Helms and other political candidates who espoused the notion of a superior white race and opposed civil rights.”...Now, those are the words of William Barber, the well-known civil rights activist. Judge Scheindlin, can you talk about Mr. Farr and the significance of his—Trump’s choice?SHIRA SCHEINDLIN: Well, I can a little bit. I wrote about Mr. Farr also in my New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/opinion/trump-judges-courts.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">op-ed</a>, but in a much-reduced fashion, because I wrote about four nominees rather than one. And I pointed out many of the same things. But one fact that I also pointed out is that President Bush had nominated Mr. Farr in 2006, but he didn’t go through. I mean, then, even then, that Congress said, “No way. This person should not be on the federal bench.” Now he comes back, redux—what is it?—12 years later, and suddenly he’s going to be acceptable.Now, what has changed? What has changed is we don’t have the filibuster rule. This is very important to explain. It used to take 60 votes, but now it takes only a bare majority. Now, that changed under the Democrats in 2013, but they had to do it. They had to use that nuclear option, because their picks were being blocked in the Senate. And while they knew they did that at their own peril, that it would come back to haunt them, there are many who believe, even if they hadn’t done it, it would be done now. The Republicans would do the same thing. So, six of the Trump judges have already been confirmed with far less than 60 votes. They would never have been confirmed before. And that’s going to happen with Farr, if he’s confirmed.Now, the other thing I would say about Farr is that it’s a district court nominee. That’s the lowest court. That’s the trial court. Thankfully, right now, he’s not being nominated for an appellate court. But it wouldn’t surprise me, if he is confirmed, in the next two, three years, they’ll put him up for the circuit court. I have no doubt about that. This is a person who does not belong on the federal bench. His views are unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans. That’s the problem with the Trump picks. They’re simply not mainstream people. They are extremists. And this man is an extremist who doesn’t belong on the federal bench, does not understand fairness and justice. And he’ll turn the clock back. He was a great supporter of North Carolina’s voter suppression law, which the circuit reversed and said it targeted, with almost surgical precision, against black voters. So this is a dangerous person to put on the bench.=-</div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/whats-it-going-take-mainstream-media-call-trump-racist">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/whats-it-going-take-mainstream-media-call-trump-racist</a></div><div><div>=voodoo --> omgAH 12/17 djt dick-ensian:hat same attitude is driving social policy in the United States today.  Only now that the tax overhaul is all but a done deal have we begun to read about why our Republican House and Senate and President seem so little worried about tax cuts that, simple arithmetic tells us, we cannot afford. All month we have been reading about the size of the tax cuts and the plutocrats who will benefit, but there has been very little honest reckoning about what will be the most serious human consequences.Now, however, are we learning the reason. The real goal is eliminating dependency by punishing the poor for being poor.In a short update, <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/blog/gop-budgets-statements-make-plans-clear-costly-tax-cuts-for-wealthy-now-program-cuts-later" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">Chye-Ching Huang of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities tells us</a>: “The congressional budget resolution that Congress approved in October, which created the process and set the parameters for the tax bill, also calls for $5.8 trillion in budget cuts over the coming decade, including deep cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, and other health care programs; basic assistance including food assistance through SNAP (formerly known as food stamps); and non-defense discretionary funding, the part of the budget that funds education and training, transportation and other infrastructure, medical research, child and elder care, and other important priorities.”From <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/08/state-group-usda-mulling-big-changes-to-food-stamps-including-allowing-states-to-impose-soda-ban/?utm_term=.c6a52681414e" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">the Washington Post‘s Caitlin Dewey we learn</a> that Trump-appointed officials in the Department of Agriculture are considering major limitations within the food stamp program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): “SNAP is America’s largest anti-hunger program, providing an average benefit of $125 per person each month to 42 million Americans.  The majority of SNAP recipients are children or seniors, though participation rose sharply across all demographic groups during and after the recession, peaking in 2013 at 47.6 million.”  Officials are considering “new restrictions on purchases of soda and candy,” but also considering more significant cuts: “The agency is also considering a proposal to allow states to reduce payments to some groups of people, including undocumented immigrants’ citizen children…  The secretaries’ proposals would allow states to significantly change how they offer nutrition assistance.  Through the use of the waivers, the USDA could unilaterally enact the proposals on a state-by-state basis without further congressional action….”Why are these proposed changes so utterly devastating?  Here is Harvard University ethnographer Kathryn Edin—from her (2015) book, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America—reporting on the collapse of welfare programs after passage in 1996 of the welfare reform law and the subsequent shift of responsibility for welfare programs from the federal government to the states, which have provided very unevenly for poor families: “Starting in 2001, more and more families with children who were receiving SNAP began to report that they had no other source of cash income to live on—not from work, not from public assistance.  By 2006, the number of such families had grown 143 percent from a decade before. By 2012, 1.2 million families on SNAP told eligibility workers they had no other income.” (pp. 30-31)Earlier this week <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/11/trump-welfare-reform-safety-net-288623" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">POLITICO published a scathing indictment</a> of planning that has been going on in federal departments to reduce federal services once tax reform has been enacted: “The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are hoping to make the most sweeping changes to federal safety net programs in a generation, using legislation and executive actions to target recipients of food stamps Medicaid and housing benefits.  The White House is quietly preparing a sweeping executive order that would mandate a top-to-bottom review of the federal programs on which millions of poor Americans rely. And GOP lawmakers are in the early stages of crafting legislation that could make it more difficult to qualify for these programs… Federal health officials are encouraging states to impose work requirements on able-bodied adults on Medicaid—a major philosophical shift that would treat the program as welfare, rather than health insurance. The Agriculture Department said last week that it would soon give states greater control over the food stamp program, potentially opening the door to drug testing or stricter work requirements on recipients of the $70 billion program long targeted by fiscal conservatives… The president is expected to sign the welfare executive order as soon as January, according to multiple administration officials, with an eye toward making changes to health care, food stamps, housing and veterans programs, not just traditional welfare payments… Although the effort to reshape the country’s welfare system is all but guaranteed to produce powerful political backlash, it appears to have broad backing from conservative congressional Republicans, who are already coordinating with the White House on a legislative agenda to complement expected executive actions.”Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who, for years, has proposed his own miserly federal budget plans, is quoted by POLITICO: “We have a welfare system that’s basically trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work, and we’ve got to work on that.” Not considered in all this planning is whether jobs are available and whether people using programs like SNAP are able to work.<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/opinion/republicans-children-health-chip.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Paul Krugman, the Nobel-prize winning economist and regular columnist for the NY Times, is one writer who has highlighted what all this will mean for our society and our children.</a> As an economist, Krugman believes cuts in programs like the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and welfare programs like SNAP—programs that, incidentally, help children be able to thrive at school—are economically foolish. He also deplores what such cuts to social programs say about the decline in our society’s ethic of social responsibility: “Children who get adequate care are more likely to be healthier and more productive when they become adults, which means that they’ll earn more and pay more in taxes. They’re also less likely to become disabled and need government support… By the way, broadly similar results have been found for the food stamp program: Ensuring adequate nutrition for the young means healthier, more productive adults, so that in the long run this aid costs taxpayers little or nothing. But such results, while interesting and important, aren’t the main reason we should be providing children with health care and enough to eat. Simple decency should be reason enough. And despite everything we’ve seen in U.S. politics, it’s still hard to believe that a whole political party would balk at doing the decent thing for millions of kids while rushing to further enrich a few thousand wealthy heirs.  That is, however, exactly what’s happening.”If you wonder what all this commentary about planned cuts to social service and health and nutrition programs is doing in a public education blog, consider these previous posts—about sociologist <a href="https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2017/12/12/14840/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Sean Reardon, writing about the impact of poverty on education</a>—about Harvard’s <a href="https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2017/10/18/14456/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Daniel Koretz examining how poverty affects test scores</a>—about author <a href="https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/13863/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Jack Schneider reflecting on poverty and public education</a>.</div><div>=</div></div><div><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-deregulation-2519132059.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-deregulation-2519132059.html</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; word-wrap: break-word; line-height: 22px;"><a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-deregulation-2519132059.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; line-height: 31px;">Trump Vows to Kill 50 Years of Federal Health and Safety Protections</a></h1><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url expanded" data-elid="2519132059" data-authors="Union of Concerned Scientists" data-headline="Trump Vows to Kill 50 Years of Federal Health and Safety Protections" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px;"><div class="body-description"><div class="widgetbrief">By Elliott Negin<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">President Trump</a> wants to set the regulatory clock back to 1960, and last week he acted it out for the cameras.Wielding a pair of golden scissors at a White House photo op, he cut red tape strung around two stacks of paper. One was a small pile of some 20,000 pages representing the amount of regulations in 1960; the other a mound of more than 185,000 pages representing those of today.</div><div class="js-appear-on-expand" style="transition: all 350ms; height: auto; overflow: hidden; opacity: 1;">"We're getting back below the 1960 level," Trump <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/12/14/trump-promises-reduce-federal-regulations-pre-1960-level/953072001/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">declared</a>, "and we'll be there fairly quickly."There's only one problem. That mountain of paper Trump used as a prop symbolizes hard-won measures that protect us.To refresh the president's memory, back in the 1960s, smog in major U.S. cities was so thick it blocked the sun. Rivers ran brown with raw sewage and toxic chemicals. Cleveland's Cuyahoga River and at least two other urban waterways were so polluted they caught on fire. Lead-laced paint and gasoline poisoned children, damaging their brains and nervous systems. Cars without seatbelts, air bags or safety glass were unsafe at any speed. And hazardous working conditions killed an average of <a href="https://safetymanagement.eku.edu/resources/articles/an-overview-of-occupational-safety-in-the-united-states/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">14,000</a> workers annually, nearly three times the <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.nr0.htm" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">number</a> today.In response, Congress enacted the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and other landmark pieces of legislation to protect public health and safety. Some of those laws also created the Consumer Product Safety Commission, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Highway Traffic Safety Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and other federal agencies to write and enforce safeguards.None of those laws, or the regulations they spawned, existed in 1960.Trump Grew Up on Dirty AirTrump should remember quite well what it was like in the 1960s. After all, he lived in New York, at the time one of the dirtiest cities in the country. Garbage incinerators routinely rained ash on city streets, while coal- and oil-fired power plants spewed a noxious mix of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and toxic metals. John V. Lindsay, the city's mayor from 1966 to 1973, famously <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/26/nyregion/city-s-air-cleaner-than-in-1960-s-but-pollution-level-is-unknown.html?pagewanted=all" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">quipped</a>, "I never trust air I can't see," but it was no laughing matter. On Thanksgiving weekend the year Lindsay took office, the smog was so bad it killed some 200 people.The waterways coursing around the city's boroughs, especially the Hudson River, were just as filthy. In 1965, then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller accurately <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/nyregion/new-york-city-smog.html?r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">called</a> the Hudson "one great septic tank." Indeed, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/nyregion/new-york-city-smog.html?r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">170 million gallons</a> of raw sewage fouled the river daily while factories along its banks treated it as a waste pit. A General Motors plant in Sleepy Hollow, 27 miles north of New York City, poured its paint sludge directly into the river. Even worse, General Electric manufacturing plants in Fort Edwards and Hudson Falls dumped about <a href="https://www3.epa.gov/hudson/cleanup.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">1.3 million pounds</a> of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a probable human carcinogen, into the river over a 30-year period ending in 1977. Since 1984, a <a href="https://www3.epa.gov/hudson/cleanup.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">200-mile</a> stretch of the river from Hudson Falls to Manhattan's southern tip has been on the EPA's Superfund program list of the country's most hazardous waste sites.Protections Prevent Disease and Save LivesFast forward to today. By and large, the environmental laws Congress began passing in the 1970s have been remarkably successful.Thanks to the Clean Water Act, for example, tens of billions of pounds of sewage, chemicals and trash have been kept out of U.S. waterways since it was enacted 45 years ago. In New York City, harbor water quality has improved so much that <a href="https://www.popsci.com/new-york-city-whales" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">humpback whales</a> have returned for the first time in a century.Thanks to the Clean Air Act, nationwide emissions of six common pollutants—carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter (soot) and sulfur dioxide—plunged <a href="https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/progress-cleaning-air-and-improving-peoples-health#pollution" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">70 percent</a> on average between 1970 and 2015.New Yorkers are breathing easier, too. On Earth Day last April, the city's health department released a <a href="http://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/about/press/pr2017/pr024-17.page" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">report</a>announcing that air pollution in the Big Apple is at the lowest level ever recorded. Between 2008 and 2015, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter declined 23 percent and 18 percent, respectively, while sulfur dioxide levels plummeted 84 percent after the city and state tightened heating oil rules.That's all good news for public health. In 2010 alone, according to an EPA <a href="https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/benefits-and-costs-clean-air-act-1990-2020-second-prospective-study" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">study</a>, Clean Air Act programs that reduced levels of fine particulate matter and ground-level ozone prevented an estimated 160,000 premature deaths, 130,000 heart attacks, and 1.7 million asthma attacks across the country.These accomplishments, however, do not mean it's time to eliminate or weaken environmental safeguards. There is still much left to do. Consider that in just one year—2015—polluters dumped more than <a href="https://www.epa.gov/trinationalanalysis/water-releases-2015-tri-national-analysis" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">190 million tons</a>of toxic chemicals into waterways nationwide; at least <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/resources/whats-your-water-flint-and-beyond" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">5,000</a> community drinking water systems violated federal lead regulations; and some <a href="http://www.lung.org/about-us/media/press-releases/2016-state-of-the-air.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">116 million</a> Americans lived in counties with harmful levels of ozone or particulate matter pollution, which have been linked to lung cancer, asthma, cardiovascular damage, reproductive problems and premature death.If You Can't Kill 'Em, Just Don't Enforce 'EmFortunately, it will be very difficult for the Trump administration to roll back 50 years' worth of congressionally mandated rules protecting the public from industrial poisons, harmful drugs, adulterated food and defective products. Trump's regulation czar conceded the point immediately after the December 14 White House photo op."I think returning to 1960s levels would likely require legislation. It's hard for me to know what that looks like," <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/12/14/trump-promises-reduce-federal-regulations-pre-1960-level/953072001/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">said</a> Neomi Rao, director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget. "Deregulation also takes time. If we're doing something consistent with the law, it takes time to reduce rules."In the meantime, the Trump administration is resorting to the next best—or worst—thing, depending on your perspective: It has cut back dramatically on enforcing environmental laws.A recent New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/10/us/politics/pollution-epa-regulations.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">investigative report</a> compared the number of enforcement actions filed in the first nine months of the Trump EPA with what the two previous administrations did over the same time period. Under <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/scott-pruitt" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Scott Pruitt</a>, the EPA initiated about 1,900 cases, about a third fewer than under Lisa Jackson, President Obama's first EPA administrator, and about a quarter fewer than under Christine Todd Whitman, who directed the agency under President George W. Bush and was not known for aggressive enforcement.The Times also found that the Trump EPA is reluctant to seek civil penalties. In its first nine months, the agency tagged polluters for about $50.4 million for violations. Adjusted for inflation, that amounts to roughly 70 percent of what the Bush EPA levied and only about 39 percent of what the Obama EPA sought over the same time frame.To make matters worse, Pruitt is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/us/politics/scott-pruitt-epa-justice-department-funding.html?r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">threatening</a> to cut off funding for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, which files lawsuits on behalf of the EPA's Superfund program to force polluters to cover the cost of cleaning up contaminated sites. In recent years, the EPA has reimbursed the division more than $20 million annually.In an apparent attempt to blunt criticism, Trump acknowledged at last week's photo op that purging a half century of protections could have an adverse impact, and he assured Americans that he would not let that happen."We know that some of the rules contained in these pages have been beneficial to our nation, and we're going to keep them," he <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/12/14/trump-promises-reduce-federal-regulations-pre-1960-level/953072001/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">said</a>. "We want to protect our workers, our safety, our health, and we want to protect our water, we want to protect our air, and our country's natural beauty."Somehow, I'm not convinced. Given the president's penchant for lying, his administration's abysmal track record, and now his avowed intention to kill nearly 90 percent of federal regulations, the smoke Trump is blowing is as thick as 1960s New York smog.Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Union of Concerned Scientists</a>.<div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/12/14/trump-promises-reduce-federal-regulations-pre-1960-level/953072001/" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px; word-wrap: break-word;">Trump promises to reduce federal regulations to pre-1960 level ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem">
</li></ul></div></div></div></div></div></div><div></div></div><div></div><div>trumpocalypse not a metaphor:</div><div>...tom dispatch</div><div>
</div><div>...and speaking of planetary infernos, he also found himself weaponized when it came to a second set of instruments of ultimate destruction about which he was no less <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/03/hillary-clinton/yes-donald-trump-did-call-climate-change-chinese-h/" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">ignorant</a> and to which he was even more in thrall.  He brought to the Oval Office -- Make America Great Again! -- a nostalgia for his <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176222/tomgram%3A_michael_klare,donald_trump%27s_energy_nostalgia_and_the_path_to_hell/" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">fossil-fuelized childhood world</a> of the 1950s.  Weaponized by Big Energy, he arrived prepared to ensure that the wealthiest and most powerful country on the planet would clear the way for yet more <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/01/24/511402501/trump-to-give-green-light-to-keystone-dakota-access-pipelines" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">pipelines</a>, <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/343425-trump-administration-seeks-to-repeal-obama-fracking-rule" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">fracking</a>, offshore <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/04/28/trump-signs-executive-order-to-expand-offshore-drilling-and-analyze-marine-sanctuaries-oil-and-gas-potential/?utm_term=.32aaeef6fd22" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">drilling</a>, and just about every other imaginable form of exploitation of oil, natural gas, and coal (but <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/11/the-republican-tax-plan-is-an-assault-on-renewable-energy/" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">not</a>alternative energy). All of this was intended to create, as he <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/340135-trump-rolls-out-actions-to-boost-nuclear-fossil-fuels" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">proclaimed</a>, a new “golden age,” not just of American energy independence but of “energy dominance” on a planetary scale. And here's what that really means: through his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/climate/trump-executive-order-climate-change.html" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">executive orders</a> and the decisions of the <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/10/climatedesk-the-whole-country-is-being-run-by-climate-deniers/" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">stunning range</a> of climate deniers and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/02/22/oklahoma-attorney-generals-office-releases-7500-pages-of-emails-between-scott-pruitt-and-fossil-fuel-industry/?utm_term=.8f032d8024f2" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">Big Oil enthusiasts</a> he appointed to key posts in his administration, he can indeed ensure that ever more greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels will enter the atmosphere in the years to come, creating the basis for another kind of apocalypse.</div><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" padding-top="padding-top" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color">On the promotion of global warming in his first year in office, it’s reasonable to say, with a certain Trumpian pride, that the president has once again made the United States the planet’s truly “exceptional” nation. In November, only five months after President Trump <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/climate/trump-paris-climate-agreement.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">announced</a>that the U.S. would withdraw as soon as possible from the Paris climate agreement to fight global warming, Syria (of all countries) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/07/syria-signs-paris-climate-agreement-and-leaves-us-isolated" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">finally signed</a> onto it, the last nation on Earth to do so.  That meant this country was truly... well, you can't say left out in the "cold," not on this planet anymore, but quite literally exceptional in its single-minded efforts to ensure the destruction of the very environment that had for so long ensured humanity’s well-being and made the creation of those illustrations of evolutionary progress possible.<p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" padding-top="padding-top" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color">Still, you can’t just blame President Trump for this either.  He’s not responsible for the ingenuity, that gift of evolution, that led us, wittingly in the case of nuclear weapons and (initially) unwittingly in the case of climate change, to take powers once relegated to the gods and place them in our own hands -- as of January 20, 2017, in fact, in the <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/history-donald-trump-small-hands-insult/story?id=37395515" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">hands</a> of Donald J. Trump.  Don’t blame him alone for the fact that the most apocalyptic moment in our history might come not via an <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3372517/asteroid-hit-earth-planet/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">asteroid</a> from outer space, but from Trump Tower.<p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" padding-top="padding-top" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color">So here we are, living with a man whose ultimate urge seems to be to bring the world to a boil around himself.  It’s possible that he might indeed be the first president since Harry Truman in 1945 to order the use of nuclear weapons.  As Nobel Prize winner Beatrice Fihn, director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, recently <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/nuclear-war-may-be-tiny-temper-tantrum-away-nobel-peace-prize-winner-warns-743717" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">commented</a>, the world might be only “a tiny tantrum” away from nuclear war in Asia.  At the very least, he may already be helping to launch a new global nuclear arms race in which countries from <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/north-korea-south-japan-nuclear-weapons-arsenals-kim-jong-un-threat-donald-trump-a8026016.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">South Korea and Japan</a> to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/17/politics/iran-deal-diplomats-congress/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Iran</a> and <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/white-house-may-share-nuclear-power-technology-with-saudi-arabia" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Saudi Arabia</a> could find themselves with world-ending arsenals, leaving nuclear winter in the hands of... well, don’t even think about it.<p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" padding-top="padding-top" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color">Now, imagine that amended evolutionary chart again or perhaps -- in honor of The Donald’s recent announcement that the U.S. was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital -- call to mind poet William Butler Yeats’s <a href="http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">words</a> about a world in which “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” while some “rough beast, its hour come round at last” is slouching “towards Bethlehem to be born.”  Think then of what a genuine horror it is that so much world-ending power is in the hands of any single human being, no less such a disturbed and disturbing one. <p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" padding-top="padding-top" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color">Of course, while Donald Trump might represent the end of the line that began in <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/research/east-african-research-projects/adventures-rift-valley-interactive" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">some African valley</a> so many millennia ago, nothing on this planet is graven in stone, not when it comes to us.  We still have the potential freedom to choose otherwise, to do otherwise.  We have the capacity for wonders as well as horrors.  We have the ability to create as well as to destroy.<p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" helvetica="helvetica" arial="arial" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" padding-top="padding-top" line-height="line-height" background-color="background-color">...<div>=</div><div>
</div><div>omg. so much for deferring to pentagon:</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-climate-change-national-security-2518369455.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-climate-change-national-security-2518369455.html</a></div><div>
</div><div><div class="headline-container" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="headline h1" style="margin: 10px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 31px;">Trump to Drop Climate Change as National Security Threat</h1></div><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-elid="2518369455" data-authors="Lorraine Chow" data-headline="Trump to Drop Climate Change as National Security Threat" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">President Donald Trump</a>'s new national security strategy will reverse an <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/president-obama-climate-change-is-an-immediate-risk-to-our-national-se-1882044520.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Obama-era declaration</a> that placed <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">climate change</a> as a major threat facing the nation.Trump's "America First" plan will instead focus on four themes surrounding economic security for the U.S: “protecting the homeland and way of life; promoting American prosperity; demonstrating peace through strength; and advancing American influence in an ever-competitive world," the <a href="https://www.apnews.com/fe6a15e5d16a40718ad4d80ef22a8864" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Associated Press</a> reported, quoting senior administration officials.“Climate change is not identified as a national security threat but climate and the importance of the environment and environmental stewardship are discussed," a senior administration official explained to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/18/trump-drop-climate-change-national-security-strategy" target="blank" style="text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none;">Guardian</a>.The move reflects the Trump administration's stance— <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/clean-power-plan-repeal-2494810040.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">and downright indifference</a>—towards global warming. In June, the president announced his intention to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trumps-withdraws-paris-climate-agreement-2429436831.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">withdraw the U.S.</a> from the landmark <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Paris climate agreement</a>.Another official explained to the Guardian that Trump's remarks about exiting the Paris agreement “would be the guidepost for the language in the [national security strategy] on climate."Trump had said that June: “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris" and claimed the Paris accord “hamstrings the United States while empowering some of the world's top polluting countries."According to the <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2017/12/15/trump-admin-to-remove-climate-change-from-list-of-national-security-threats/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Federalist</a>, which first obtained a draft document of the national security strategy, the Trump administration would actively oppose efforts to reduce the burning of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels" style="text-decoration-line: none;">fossil fuels</a> for energy."U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth, energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security interests," the document stated, per the Federalist.“Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty."As the Federalist pointed out, the move to nix climate change from the list of national security threats "matches President Trump's vision, sometimes shared using his trademark hyperbole, that the United States needs to emphasize national security and economic growth over climate change."For instance, check out Trump's tweet from 2013 below:In 2015, former President Obama <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/president-obama-climate-change-is-an-immediate-risk-to-our-national-se-1882044520.html" target="blank" style="text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none;">said in a speech</a> to the Coast Guard's then-graduating class that “climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security.""And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country," he said.Climate change, Obama continued, "will shape how every one of our services plan, operate, train, equip and protect their infrastructure, their capabilities, today and for the long term."The new Trump doctrine is seemingly at odds with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis' views on the issue of climate change."Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today," <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/pentagon-climate-change-2485164596.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Mattis wrote in March</a>. "It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning."Incidentally, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-national-security-risk-2517211746.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">just last week</a>, Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law that would require the Pentagon to do a report on how military installations and overseas staff may be vulnerable to climate change over the next 20 years.The following language was included in the act:Climate change is a direct threat to the national security of the United States and is impacting stability in areas of the world both where the United States Armed Forces are operating today, and where strategic implications for future conflict exist.RECOMMENDED<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-us-military-2518373597.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Climate Change Already Hampers U.S. Military Sites Around the World, Government Study Finds</a><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/national-guard-chief-highlights-climate-change-as-pruitt-touts-denial-on-tv-2487495543.html?xrs=RebelMouse_fb&ts=1505916646" style="text-decoration-line: none;">National Guard Chief Highlights Climate Change as Pruitt Touts Denial on TV</a></div></div></div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://www.alternet.org/environment/epa-does-trumps-big-oil-bidding</div><div>
</div><div> Trump administration’s zeal for environmental rollbacks has enabled it to fulfill almost all of the top priorities in a “wishlist” drawn up by the American Petroleum Institute (API), the leading lobby group for U.S. oil and gas companies.In a document called “comments on specific regulations” sent to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in May, API highlighted eight key changes it wanted to ease the regulation of air and water pollution. An analysis shows that the EPA has now so far either partially or wholly delivered on six out of these eight key demands within the first year of the <a data-component="auto-linked-tag" data-link="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/trump-administration" name="auto-linked-tag" id="auto-linked-tag" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Trump administration</a>, which solicited input on government rules from a number of trade groups.This comes as the Guardian and the <a data-link="" href="https://apps.publicintegrity.org/united-states-of-petroleum/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Center for Public Integrity</a> published an <a data-link="" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/12/big-oil-white-house-century-of-influence" style="text-decoration-line: none;">investigation</a> into the way the oil lobby has worked for decades to influence US government policy – and is tightening its hold.Earlier this year a <a data-link="" href="https://www.api.org/_{/media/Files/News/Letters-Comments/2017/5-15-17-API-EPA-reg-reform-final-comments.pdf}" style="text-decoration-line: none;">letter</a> penned by Howard Feldman, senior director of regulatory affairs at API, accompanied the lobby group’s wish list for government, and it stated that fossil fuel companies are thriving “despite the unprecedented level of federal regulatory actions targeting our industry”.Feldman called for the federal government to alter regulations in a way that “promotes access to domestic oil and natural gas resources, streamlined permitting and cost-effective regulations”.The letter is addressed to Samantha Dravis, an EPA associate administrator who previously held a senior role at the Republican Attorneys General Association and was counsel to Freedom Partners, one of the groups in the Koch brothers network.The <a data-link="" href="https://www.api.org/_{/media/Files/News/Letters-Comments/2017/5-15-17-API-Comments-on-specific-regulations.pdf}" style="text-decoration-line: none;">25-page list</a> of API’s suggested regulatory changes places particular emphasis on eight key demands that peel away standards primarily imposed under Barack Obama’s administration. The EPA’s administrator, Scott Pruitt, previously a harsh critic of the agency who has pledged to rein in its “out of control, anti-energy agenda”, has overseen the delay or repeal moves in line with six of API’s eight highest priorities.“There’s no question that energy lobbyists are calling the shots in this administration, which has been all too willing to roll back public health protections,” said Jeremy Symons, vice-president of Environmental Defense Fund. “Anyone who doubts that can just look at their record.”On March 22, Pruitt met with API executives at the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C. Less than a month later, Pruitt <a data-link="" href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-04/documents/oil_and_gas_fugitive_emissions_monitoring_reconsideration_4_18_2017.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">wrote</a> to Feldman, as well as three other oil and gas industry representatives, to tell them he was temporarily suspending regulations that curb leaks from drilling operations while the EPA reconsiders the rule.In June, the EPA <a data-link="" href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/06/16/2017-12698/oil-and-natural-gas-sector-emission-standards-for-new-reconstructed-and-modified-sources-stay-of" style="text-decoration-line: none;">proposed</a> a two-year pause to the rule, which was drawn up under the Obama administration in 2016 and aimed to reduce “fugitive” emissions such as methane, a potent greenhouse gas. In July, a federal court blocked the attempted suspension of the rule.The EPA has fared better in fulfilling other top API priorities. In June, Pruitt signed a <a data-link="" href="https://www.epa.gov/rmp/final-amendments-risk-management-program-rmp-rule" style="text-decoration-line: none;">two-year delay to regulations</a> designed to improve the safety of chemical facilities. API argued that the rule, which followed several disastrous incidents at chemical plants, would be burdensome and do little to improve safety.API said the EPA “should reverse” a separate regulation requiring power plants to follow air pollution rules when they are starting up, shutting down or undergoing maintenance. Pruitt, who previously sued the EPA to halt the rule, is now <a data-link="" href="https://www.natlawreview.com/article/startup-shutdown-malfunction-update-august-8-2017" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reassessing it</a>.Implementation of new standards to reduce ozone, a pollutant that helps form smog, was <a data-link="" href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-extend-deadline-2015-ozone-naaqs-area-designations" style="text-decoration-line: none;">delayed</a> by a year at Pruitt’s behest in June, a month after the API called for the EPA to reconsider the rule. Several states and health groups have <a data-link="" href="https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/filed_complaint_with_attachments.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">launched legal action</a> against the EPA after it missed a deadline to designate which areas of the country are failing to meet the tightened standards on smog.Several of API’s lower priority proposals have also been fulfilled, with Pruitt introducing new rules for members of the EPA’s scientific boards which open the way for more industry involvement and, separately, deciding <a data-link="" href="https://www.epa.gov/superfund/final-action-financial-responsibility-requirements-under-cercla-section-108b-classes" style="text-decoration-line: none;">to not introduce</a> new financial responsibility requirements that API feared may have impacted the petroleum industry.API also secured an early victory in February, when Donald Trump issued an executive order to scrap the “<a data-link="" href="https://www.epa.gov/cwa-404/definition-waters-united-states-under-clean-water-act" style="text-decoration-line: none;">waters of the United States” rule</a>, which was put in place under the Obama administration to protect streams and rivers that provide drinking water to around a third of Americans. The regulation has been opposed by some farmers and owners of golf courses and industrial plants as being too stringent.“Pruitt and his team have no shame,” said Liz Purchia Gannon, former head of communications at the EPA under the Obama administration. “They have made it clear from the start that oil, gas and coal industries trump science, the American people and public health and environmental organizations.“What we can see from his schedule is an alarming pattern of meeting with special interest groups before making policy decisions favoring their bottom line at the expense of Americans’ health and the environment.”When contacted for comment, the API said it was happy for its previous statements to speak for themselves. The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.</div><div></div><div>PARKS 2</div><div>
</div><div>President <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Trump</a> and Interior Sec. <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/ryan-zinke" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Ryan Zinke</a> are continuing their onslaught against American <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-lands" style="text-decoration-line: none;">public lands</a> this holiday month and moving forward with plans to auction off 700,000 acres for <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/fracking/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">fracking</a>, endangering clean air and water, the climate and sacred lands."First it's our cherished <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/national-monuments" style="text-decoration-line: none;">national monuments</a>, now Trump and Zinke are set to give away even more public lands to the fossil fuel industry," said Becca Fischer, climate guardian for <a href="http://www.wildearthguardians.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">WildEarth Guardians</a>. "Rather than giving back this holiday season, this administration is proving that it will stop at nothing to put our public lands in the hands of dirty energy executives and sell off our rights to <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">clean energy</a> and a healthy environment."</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-appears-delusional-modern-day-gop-led-way" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-appears-delusional-modern-day-gop-led-way</a>Trump’s tenuous relationship with the truth has always been somewhat of a mystery, and it has often been difficult to tell whether the president is truly delusional or simply the biggest con man on the planet.Since he announced his presidential candidacy more than two years ago, Trump has peddled conspiracy theories and falsehoods to the public like a false prophet selling hope, displaying an almost pathological disregard for the truth. As a result, many critics have assumed that he is a liar who deliberately and knowingly deceives the public. Others have contemplated whether he truly believes some of the nonsense that come out of his mouth, thus challenging the notion that he is consciously lying.Both of these scenarios are disturbing in their own way — and, of course, they are not mutually exclusive. Trump may be a true believer one day and a liar the next; a credulous crackpot in one tweet, and a con artist in another.Last week, however, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/us/politics/trump-access-hollywood-tape.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">New York Times</a> and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/from-access-hollywood-to-russia-trump-seeks-to-paint-the-rosiest-picture/2017/11/28/9e253bc4-d451-11e7-95bf-df7c19270879_story.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Washington Post</a> published separate articles that suggest the president actually believes in his own BS most of the time, and that he has come to live in his own warped version of reality (call it “Trumptopia”). The coinciding reports, published on the same day, both portray the president as an increasingly deranged man who decides what is true and what is false (i.e., “fake news”), regardless of the evidence. According to both articles, the president has even come to question certain things that he had previously acknowledged as true, including the "Access Hollywood" tape in which he is heard bragging to Billy Bush about sexually assaulting women. “We don’t think that was my voice,” Trump reportedly said to a Republican senator in January — a claim he has repeated in private since.“Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape are part of his lifelong habit of attempting to create and sell his own version of reality,” the New York Times reporters write. “Advisers say he continues to privately harbor a handful of conspiracy theories that have no grounding in fact.”Some of these conspiracy theories, according to the Times, include the "birther" conspiracy about former President Barack Obama (which Trump has publicly disavowed) and the discredited theory that Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton last year because of widespread voter fraud. The president’s friends “did not bother denying that the president was creating an alternative version of events,” the Times reports. “One Republican lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, said that Mr. Trump’s false statements had become familiar to people over time.”The Washington Post <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/from-access-hollywood-to-russia-trump-seeks-to-paint-the-rosiest-picture/2017/11/28/9e253bc4-d451-11e7-95bf-df7c19270879_story.html?utm_term%3D.a4d8441afa77&source=gmail&ust=1512844942770000&usg=AFQjCNH0vqPiha0asV3iNIzV6D39f8gW8A" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/from-access-hollywood-to-russia-trump-seeks-to-paint-the-rosiest-picture/2017/11/28/9e253bc4-d451-11e7-95bf-df7c19270879_story.html?utm_term=.a4d8441afa77" target="blank" title="" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">article</a> is no less disturbing, and the reporters note that even “when presented with irrefutable evidence, Trump finds a way to question unflattering facts.” Whether it’s his defeat in the popular vote, Robert Mueller's probe into possible Russian campaign collusion or Obama’s birth certificate, Trump doesn’t let concrete facts get in the way of his alternative reality. Peter Wehner, a conservative writer who served in the three previous Republican administrations, told the Post that the president “creates his own reality and lives in his own reality and tries to bend reality around himself and his own deep narcissistic needs.” What makes this especially troubling is the fact that Trump is surrounded by enablers who have simply come to accept his delusional worldview as a kind of harmless idiosyncrasy.These reports seem to confirm that Trump is often a true believer in the conspiracy theories and falsehoods that he spreads. This is not to say that the president isn’t a liar, which he almost certainly is, but that he has been a bullshit artist for so long that he has come to believe in much of his own bullshit. When one builds his entire career on fabrications and “<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-no-place-for-trumps-hyperbole-in-the-oval-office/2017/03/08/dfd1c082-fe06-11e6-8ebe-6e0dbe4f2bca_story.html&source=gmail&ust=1512844942770000&usg=AFQjCNH0wPXs78xpj_lLudQrveqqULX6ew" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-no-place-for-trumps-hyperbole-in-the-oval-office/2017/03/08/dfd1c082-fe06-11e6-8ebe-6e0dbe4f2bca_story.html" target="blank" title="" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">truthful hyperbole</a>” — a euphemism coined by Trump himself — it is not surprising that he eventually comes to believe the hype (especially when surrounded by sycophants who would gladly bend the knee and call him “Your Majesty” upon request).It is slightly more surprising that a deluded conspiracy theorist like Trump could vanquish numerous Republican opponents and then win the general election without facing any repercussions for his repeated transgressions against the truth. But it shouldn’t be. The GOP was the party of “alternative facts” long before it became the party of Trump, and conspiracy theorists took over the conservative movement long before Trump launched his campaign. Trump’s meteoric rise wouldn’t have been possible without a longstanding tradition of bullshit and paranoia on the right.Right-wingers have historically been more susceptible to conspiracy theories and paranoia than liberals and leftists. When the historian Richard Hofstadter wrote his seminal essay “<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/&source=gmail&ust=1512844942770000&usg=AFQjCNE4oN5F5bf2zt5D7RMiBbtcIfhPgw" href="https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/" target="blank" title="" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">The Paranoid Style in American Politics</a>” in 1964, it was Trump’s antecedents in the John Birch Society who were espousing elaborate conspiracy theories about the communist takeover of the government. One explanation for this excessive paranoia is the fact that conservatives are <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201612/fear-and-anxiety-drive-conservatives-political-attitudes&source=gmail&ust=1512844942770000&usg=AFQjCNFwLiCm6KdI444Lef87ghRehhL7dw" href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201612/fear-and-anxiety-drive-conservatives-political-attitudes" target="blank" title="" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">driven more by fear</a> than their liberal counterparts. This has been demonstrated by various peer-reviewed studies over the years, including those conducted by Yale psychology professor John Bargh, who found that inducing “feelings of complete physical safety” in conservatives made them more likely to express liberal viewpoints.Even though some on the left have become increasingly paranoid and hysterical since last year’s election, right-wingers remain the leading purveyors of conspiratorial nonsense in the age of Trump. This is partly due to the president’s inability to get anything passed by Congress, coupled with the endless scandals that have plagued his administration. Failing to accomplish even a fraction of what he promised, the president and his defenders deny reality and blame their problems on evil conspirators, whether that means "deep state" agents, the “fake news” media or the globalist elite. In his essay on the paranoid style, Hofstadter observed that paranoids have hopelessly unrealistic goals and, because these goals are unattainable, “failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration.”“Even partial success,” he writes, “leaves [the paranoid] with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.”...=</div><div></div><div>end times embassy jerusalem</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/theological-scholar-explains-horrifying-reason-trumps-supporters-celebrated-armageddon">https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/theological-scholar-explains-horrifying-reason-trumps-supporters-celebrated-armageddon</a></div><div>
</div><div>In  a Pensacola, Florida rally Friday evening, <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/florida-rally-cheers-when-republican-predicts-trumps-jerusalem-embassy-decision-may-usher-in-armageddon/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Republican state Senator Doug Broxson suggested to supporters</a> of Donald Trump that the president’s controversial decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem may usher in the biblical end times.</div>“Now, I don’t know about you, but when I heard about Jerusalem — where the King of Kings [applause] where our soon coming King is coming back to Jerusalem, it is because President Trump declared Jerusalem to be capital of Israel,” Broxson predicted. The crowd cheered.This week, theological scholar Dr. Diana Butler Bass <a href="https://twitter.com/dianabutlerbass/status/938424631265984513" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">wrote a Twitter thread explaining the link</a> between recognition of Jerusalem, evangelical Christians, and the apocalypse. That is important because rebuilding the Temple is the event that will spark the events of the Book of Revelation and the End Times.”According to Bass, the counsel of evangelical adviser that Trump surrounds himself with take such “End Times” prophecies literally“Of all the possible theological dog-whistles to his evangelical base, this is the biggest,” she continued. “Trump is reminding them that he is carrying out God’s will to these Last Days. They’ve been waiting for this, praying for this. They want war in the Middle East. The Battle of Armageddon, at which time Jesus Christ will return to the Earth and vanquish all God’s enemies.”She warned that for some evangelicals this is considered a “climax of history.”“And Trump is taking them there. To the promised judgment, to their sure victory. The righteous will be ushered to heaven; the reprobate will be banished to hellfire,” Bass went on. “People believe this. Really believe this. Have given their lives to these ideas, sing about them in their churches, evangelize others, teach them in Sunday schools. And, this morning, with the news of Jerusalem, these people are ecstatic. This is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. And Donald Trump is not only acting on a campaign promise, but enacting a theological one.”She went on to explain that the reason many white evangelicals supported Trump to the tune of 80 percent is more than an abortion issue. Many actually believe that Trump is unfolding God’s purpose.“They believe that Donald Trump is God’s instrument to move us closer to the Rapture, the Judgment, and the End,” she wrote. “Because to them, that’s actually the beginning — the beginning of their reward and heavenly bliss.”Other religious groups might raise hell about the disruption of peace and stability, but Bass explained that evangelicals don’t care because they’re anticipating peace in another world than the Earth.“What matters is that Jesus comes back in Judgement,” she continued. “To these sorts of Christians, that Judgment is the only true peace. Everything is phony, deceptive, even evil. Millions of American Christians believe all this. Millions of Trump voters. Sacred history is unfolding right now because of Donald Trump and God. They’ve based their faith, their identity, their purpose, their eternal lives on these ideas. Trust me. There’s no arguing with any of it.”Dr. Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas celebrated Jerusalem officially becoming the capital of Israel because it will be where Jesus Christ returns.“It is the place where Jesus, a Jew himself, was crucified and where he was resurrected. It is the place where he will set foot again on earth at his second coming,” he said in a statement.1. The human race would have the ability to exterminate itself (nuclear weapons)The United Church of God <a href="https://www.ucg.org/the-good-news/seven-prophecies-that-must-be-fulfilled-before-jesus-christs-return" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">names</a> the 7 prophecies that foretell the second coming of Christ.2. A Jewish homeland had to be reestablished in the Middle East (Trump has now proclaimed Jerusalem the capital)
3. There must be two leaders: The end-time king of the North and king of the South<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“At the time of the end the king of the South shall attack him; and the king of the North shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter the countries, overwhelm them and pass through. He shall also enter the Glorious Land [the Holy Land], and many countries shall be overthrown” (Daniel 11:40-41).</blockquote>4. An end-time union of European nations (European Union)
5. End-time rise and fall of Israel and Judah
6. The gospel will be preached in all the world (YouTube)
7. Instant worldwide communications and God’s final witnesses (The internet).<div>
</div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/international-politics-expert-warns-us-sliding-fascism">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/international-politics-expert-warns-us-sliding-fascism</a></div><div>
</div><div>retweet uk neonazi videos fake, shs suports</div><div>m worried about it,” Klaas said. “Retweeting a Britain First account linked to neo-Nazis and provoke a spat with our allies. You have demonization of the press and also attacking CNN, saying we should boycott them. There (are) constant ethics violations, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kellyanne-conway-violated-the-hatch-act-will-she-be-charged/2017/11/27/361f2170-d3bb-11e7-a986-d0a9770d9a3e_story.html" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">violations of the Hatch Act</a>.”Klaas, the author of “The Despot’s Accomplice: How the West is Aiding & Abetting the Decline of Democracy,” said the White House press secretary had given an “Orwellian” response to questions about those anti-Muslim videos Trump retweeted from a British fascist.“Sarah Huckabee Sanders says it doesn’t matter if it’s true, what’s true is what the president says,” Klaas said.He said what’s happening now in the United States lines up with the early stages of authoritarian regimes he’s studied in other countries....</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) -- an organization where corporations and politicians vote on legislation to enact across the nation -- will be holding its 45th anniversary gala at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. </div><div>---</div><div><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176348/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_you%2C_sir%2C_are_no_alexander_hamilton">http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176348/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_you%2C_sir%2C_are_no_alexander_hamilton</a></div><div>
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</div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/13/15789772/trumps-fossil-fuel-all-stars">https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/13/15789772/trumps-fossil-fuel-all-stars</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>Domenech</div><div>White House Senior adviser, DOI</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: ran the Fueling Freedom Project for the right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation</div><div>Daniel Jorjani</div><div>Special assistant to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, DOI</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: worked for both the Charles Koch Institute and Charles Koch Foundation and was general counsel for Freedom Partners, an advocacy group also funded by the Koch Brothers</div><div>Lori Mashburn</div><div>White House liaison, DOI</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: Heritage Foundation</div><div>Dave Bernhardt</div><div>Deputy secretary, not yet confirmed, DOI</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: top lawyer in charge of ethics and legal compliance for President George W. Bush’s Interior Department during a period plagued by scandal and ethical violations</div><div>Scott Angelle</div><div>Head of Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, DOI</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: member of the Louisiana Public Service Commission who served on the board of directors of oil pipeline operator Sunoco Logistics</div><div>Scott Pruitt</div><div>EPA administrator , EPA</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: longtime supporter of fossil fuels and stalwart foe of EPA regulations</div><div>Ryan Jackson</div><div>Pruitt's chief of staff, EPA</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: former chief of staff for Sen. Jim Inhofe</div><div>Andrew Wheeler</div><div>Finalist to be Pruitt’s deputy, not yet confirmed, EPA</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: fossil fuel lobbyist and a former Inhofe chief of staff</div><div>Samantha Dravis</div><div>Head of EPA’s Office of Policy, EPA</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: the Republican Attorneys General Association and its affiliated Rule of Law Defense Fund</div><div>Christian Palich</div><div>Deputy associate administrator in the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations, EPA</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: lobbyist who was once president of the Ohio Coal Association</div><div>Patrick Traylor</div><div>Deputy assistant administrator, EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, EPA</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: lawyer who has defended Koch Industries, Dominion Energy, and TransCanada</div><div>Rick Perry</div><div>Secretary of Energy , DOE</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: former Texas governor and oil, gas, and renewables advocate</div><div>Brian McCormack</div><div>Perry's chief of staff, DOE</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: Edison Electric Institute, an investor-owned utility trade group that fights state-level solar rooftop policies</div><div>Daniel Simmons</div><div>Head of Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, DOE</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: Institute for Energy Research (a pro-fossil fuel think tank) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (a right-wing group that lobbies against progressive policy at the state level)</div><div>Rex Tillerson</div><div>Secretary of State , State</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: CEO of ExxonMobil</div><div>Michael Catanzaro</div><div>Special assistant to the president for Domestic Energy and Environmental Policy, National Economic Council</div><div>
</div><div>Formerly: fossil fuel lobbyist-</div></div><div><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">ENERGY HOLDINGS PERMEATE TRUMP STAFF: Six of President Donald Trump’s senior advisers together own between $3.7 million and $12.3 million in energy company stocks, Pro’s Ben Lefebvre <a href="https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2017/04/white-house-staffers-hold-major-stakes-in-energy-companies-155111" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease;">reports</a>. Those officials — Ken Juster, Marc Short, Chris Liddell, Kathleen "KT" McFarland, Stephen Munisteri and Greg Katsas — have holdings in energy giants Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Kinder Morgan and a host of other companies. Watchdogs say that could create major conflicts of interest for a White House that has pledged to grow the nation's fossil fuel production.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">[ad: chev heart nature]<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">Overall, about a dozen White House officials have some stake in energy companies, according to POLITICO and Center for American Progress analysis of financial disclosure forms. And the holdings would violate conflict of interest laws if any of these Trump staff try to shape energy policy, according to Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at government watchdog Common Cause. “It becomes a legal problem if it causes a conflict of interest. They would have to say, ‘Nope, sorry boss, can’t work on that,’” he told Ben.</div><div></div><div> Friday, the White House stunned many after it released a sweeping <a href="https://science2017.globalchange.gov/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">report</a> concluding that climate change is not only real, but it also poses a major threat to the U.S. and humans are "extremely likely" to be responsible.The 477-page National Climate Assessment, which was mandated by Congress and reviewed by 13 federal agencies, contracted with President Trump's notorious stance on global warming as a "<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-climate-change-hoax-2018812943.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">hoax</a>." It also defied Trump's continued efforts to dismantle environmental regulations on both the national and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/cop23-thousands-march-2506729920.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">international scale</a>.So why did the Trump White House release a report contradicting the president and much of his administration's stance on climate change?Well, as <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-06/how-the-trump-white-house-wound-up-releasing-dire-climate-report" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Bloomberg</a> reports, "don't read much into it":<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Public drafts of the report have circulated for months, making it politically perilous to tinker with the findings. So, with editing a high-risk affair and the report required by Congress, the administration may have just decided to downplay it, said John Holdren, who ran the Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Barack Obama."It would do more harm to block this report than to let it out," Holdren, now a Harvard University environmental policy professor, said in an interview. "They're letting it out on a Friday afternoon, which is pretty much the standard approach for letting out something that you don't want to get a lot of attention."</blockquote>The other reason? Blame Obama. The report has been <a href="https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/climate/us-climate-report.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">in the works since 2015</a>."It is unfortunate that the Trump Administration has released these Obama-era climate reports, without attempting to remove the junk science—and the reports are full of junk science," fervent climate change denier and former Trump EPA transition team leader Myron Ebell told Bloomberg.The White House has also distanced itself from the main conclusion of the special report. In a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-report-says-humans-extremely-likely-to-blame-for-warming/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Friday statement</a>, White House spokesperson Raj Shah used familiar climate-skeptic talking points to dismiss the findings."The climate has changed and is always changing. As the Climate Science Special Report states, the magnitude of future climate change depends significantly on 'remaining uncertainty in the sensitivity of Earth's climate to [greenhouse gas] emissions,'" Shah said. "In the United States, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions have been declining, are expected to remain flat through 2040, and will also continue to decline as a share of world emissions."Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) has <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-climate-website-2498932391.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">removed the phrase</a> "climate change" from its websites and has <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-science-advisors-2504339714.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">prohibited its own scientists</a> from speaking about the issue.Additionally, Common Dreams <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/11/04/ahead-cop23-climate-talks-tens-thousands-march-demanding-end-era-fossil-fuels" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a> on Saturday that President Trump is looking to use the COP23 climate talks as a platform to sell fossil fuels—and coal in particular—as necessary and beneficial.</div><div> <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-pesticides-assessments-2509672274.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-pesticides-assessments-2509672274.html</a> no linkTrump Administration Seeks Two-Year Delay on Pesticide Assessments Following Industry RequestThe Trump administration filed a motion before a federal judge requesting two more years to complete an assessment on the risks of three common pesticides on endangered species.The pesticides in question—chlorpyrifos, malathion and diazinon—are three organophosphate insecticides known to harm the vast majority of the nearly 1,800 animals and plants protected under the Endangered Species Act, according to an extensive federal study.Notably, the Associated Press reported, the administration's motion comes after chlorpyrifos-maker Dow Chemical Co. and two other organophosphate manufacturers asked the government to ignore the findings of the aforementioned study."It's appallingly clear that the pesticide industry is now essentially running Trump's EPA," said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "This disturbing request shows that [EPA administrator Scott] Pruitt and Trump are more interested in protecting the profits of their corporate buddies than the hundreds of endangered species threatened by these deadly pesticides."If the request is granted, it would modify a 2014 legal agreement secured by the Center for Biological Diversity that required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assess the pesticides' harms by the end of 2017.According to a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity: ?"Under the Endangered Species Act, the EPA must consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to ensure its actions do not jeopardize endangered species or harm their habitats.Despite this clear mandate, the EPA has essentially ignored the plight of endangered species injured and killed by pesticides. Only after the Center's 2014 legal victory did the agency agree to comply with this long-standing requirement.Unless the court approves the new delay request, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and National Marine Fisheries services will use those assessments to develop common-sense measures to reduce the pesticides' harm to endangered species—for example by limiting spraying in their habitat—by the end of the year."The Associated Press pointed out that this move "is the latest example of the Trump administration seeking to block or delay environmental rules at the behest of the industry."Dow contributed $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee. President Trump also named Dow CEO Andrew Liveris head of his American Manufacturing Council and received the president's ceremonial pen used to sign the executive order aimed at eliminating regulations that he claims are damaging to the U.S. economy.In March, according to records obtained by the Associated Press, Pruitt met with Liveris for about 30 minutes at a Houston hotel. Later that month, Pruitt announced that he would no longer pursue a ban on chlorpyrifos from being used on food, ignoring his agency's own review that even small amounts of the pesticide could impact fetus and infant brain development.<div>=</div></div><div>=<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-budget-wildlife-2505448120.html?">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-budget-wildlife-2505448120.html</a><div class="headline-container" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="headline h1" style="margin: 10px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 31px;">Trump Budget Undercuts U.S. Commitment to Global Wildlife Conservation</h1></div><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-elid="2505448120" data-authors="Mongabay" data-headline="Trump Budget Undercuts U.S. Commitment to Global Wildlife Conservation" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description">By William H. FunkProposed funding cuts to environmental programs in President <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style="text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none;">Trump's</a> proposed 2018 budget have drawn anxious attention from around the world. But while the biggest numbers deal with rolling back the Obama administration's <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" style="text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none;">climate change</a> initiatives, more subtle withdrawals of federal support from lesser known international programs threaten the continued existence of some of the planet's most iconic <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/animals/" style="text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none;">animals</a>.President Trump's 2018 budget proposes a 32 percent across-the-board shrinkage of U.S. foreign assistance, affecting hundreds of sustainability, health and environmental programs.As comparatively paltry as a few million dollars retracted here and there from a $1.15 trillion federal budget may seem, for those desperately striving through underfunded programs to preserve the world's <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife" style="text-decoration-line: none;">wildlife</a>, the loss of monetary and moral support from the U.S. could be devastating.And wildlife wouldn't be the only victims. The societal havoc wreaked by unchallenged trafficking cartels, and the loss of important tourist income due to vanished <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/elephants" style="text-decoration-line: none;">elephants</a>, <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/lions" style="text-decoration-line: none;">lions</a> and giraffes resulting in abandoned safaris, could directly impact poor communities in Africa and Asia.It remains to be seen if the U.S. Congress will embrace Trump's draconian cuts for 2018. But even if the legislature disallows the reductions next year, the administration still has between three and seven years left to run. And it seems unlikely that the president will shift very far away from his professed "America First" policies...</div></div></div><div>omg why? oh.<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/disappointing-backwards-step-critics-blast-u-s-exit-from-global-oil-gas-anti-corruption-effort-2505846330.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/disappointing-backwards-step-critics-blast-u-s-exit-from-global-oil-gas-anti-corruption-effort-2505846330.html</a>...Bloomberg reported that the withdrawal comes after the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/american-petroleum-institute" style="text-decoration-line: none;">American Petroleum Institute</a>, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/exxon" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Exxon Mobil Corp</a>. and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/chevron" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Chevron Corp</a>. lobbied against a similar regulation compelling U.S. energy and mining companies to disclose those payments, which <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">President Donald Trump</a> rolled back earlier this year."It's pretty disgraceful for the United States," Jana Morgan, director of <a href="http://www.publishwhatyoupay.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Publish What You Pay</a>, a coalition that urges financial transparency in the extractive industry, told Bloomberg. "Chinese state-owned oil companies and Russian state-owned oil companies" are disclosing payments."So you literally have American companies that are less transparent than Russian and Chinese state-owned enterprises," she said.Democrats also criticized the decision. <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/international/358560-us-backs-out-of-global-oil-anti-corruption-effort" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Hill</a> reported that the U.S. joined the agreement in 2011 after a joint effort from Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and former Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.).... =</div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-energy-sector-2501855523.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-energy-sector-2501855523.html</a></div><div>
</div><div><div class="headline-container" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="headline h1" style="margin: 10px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 31px;">Pruitt, Zinke and Perry Target Clean Air and Water Rules to Curb 'Burdens' on Energy Sector</h1></div><span class="js-scroll-trigger js--active" data-target="body" data-triggers="render-rebelbar" data-toggle-class="with-floating-shares" data-loaded="true" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-elid="2501855523" data-headline="Pruitt, Zinke and Perry Target Clean Air and Water Rules to Curb 'Burdens' on Energy Sector" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description">At a speech in North Dakota last month, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">President Trump</a> boasted that his administration is refocusing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/epa" style="text-decoration-line: none;">EPA</a>) to its "core mission: clean air and clean water.""That's what I want—clean air," he continued. "Think of it. We talk about the—I want beautiful clean air, and I want crystal-clean water, right? That's what we want."That statement—based on Trump's nine months of environmental rollbacks, from approving the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/dakota-access-pipeline" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Dakota Access</a>and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/keystone-xl" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Keystone</a> pipelines to gutting the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/clean-power-plan" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Clean Power Plan</a>—could not be further from the truth.In a shocking report from <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-environment-regulation/epa-to-review-how-clean-air-water-laws-affect-energy-sector-jobs-idUSKBN1CU38W?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Reuters</a>, EPA Administrator <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/scott-pruitt" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Scott Pruitt</a>, Energy Sec. <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/rick-perry" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Rick Perry</a> and Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke have each announced separate steps on how they will carry out President Trump's <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-executive-order-weather-underground-2334907513.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">"energy independence" executive order</a> in March to ease regulatory burdens on energy development.One of the most environmentally consequential steps comes from Pruitt's EPA, which will try to pinpoint how the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/clean-air-act" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Clean Air Act</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/clean-water-act" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Clean Water Act</a> affects energy sectors jobs. (Earth to Mr. President: these landmark laws are designed to give us "clean air" and "crystal-clean water.")"We are working to curb unnecessary and duplicative regulatory burdens that do not serve the American people," Pruitt said in a statement.Here are the other steps that Trump's agencies will be taking to boost the energy sector, as detailed by Reuters:"The EPA will also create a task force to simplify the permit process for building new polluting facilities, weigh options to revamp national ambient air quality standards and launch a "smart sectors" program to engage with industries as it crafts regulations.

The Energy Department said it will focus on streamlining natural gas exports, review its national laboratory policies, review National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations for approving major infrastructure projects and reviewing the agency's popular household appliance standards program.The Interior Department submitted what it called an 'energy burdens' report to the president, which outlines some Obama-era regulations it has started to reverse or reform, or has plans to.This includes lifting the moratorium on coal leases on federal land, reviewing regulations on fracking on federal and tribal land, developing a five-year plan for offshore drilling and streamlining the federal leasing program and permitting process."While the administration claims that boosting jobs and the economy are the end goal, a new feature in <a href="http://time.com/4998279/company-man-in-washington/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">TIME</a>questions if Pruitt's actions—and Trump's by extension—are serving industry interests instead: 
"Since [Pruitt] took office, more than a dozen EPA regulations have been killed or put under review, from fuel-efficiency standards to regulations on the disposal of coal ash to restrictions on toxic metals like arsenic in waterways," the magazine noted. "Moreover, the Trump Administration has proposed slashing funding for the agency's law-enforcement branch, which identifies polluters under existing regulations."All this has aided businesses, propping up the declining coal industry, ensuring profit margins for chemical makers and reducing compliance costs for farmers. But the change has also weakened an agency designed to save lives."'They're trying to deconstruct and dismantle the basic protections,' says Mustafa Ali, a career EPA official who resigned in March after 24 years. 'They're creating situations where more folks are going to get sick, some folks are going to die, more folks are going to be put in harm's way.'"</div></div></div><div><div>=</div><div>bears ears</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-bears-ears-2503802960.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-bears-ears-2503802960.html</a></div><div>
</div><div>mining</div><div>=</div></div><div>=</div><div>clipper tar sands</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19102017/tar-sands-oil-pipeline-approved-line-67-alberta-clipper-enbridge-keystone">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19102017/tar-sands-oil-pipeline-approved-line-67-alberta-clipper-enbridge-keystone</a></div><div></div><div>sum/update</div><div>secrecy fetish Signal app</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/election-2016/10-revelations-confirming-trumps-awfulness-those-who-resigned-his-administration">https://www.alternet.org/election-2016/10-revelations-confirming-trumps-awfulness-those-who-resigned-his-administration</a></div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div><a href="http://time.com/4345367/donald-trump-climate-change-golf-course/">http://time.com/4345367/donald-trump-climate-change-golf-course/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div class="author scale-14 padded margin-24-tb clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 24px auto; letter-spacing: 0.5px; font-family: " pt="PT" serif="serif" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" padding-left="padding-left" px="px" padding-right="padding-right" font-size="font-size" max-width="max-width" none="none" min-width="min-width" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><div class="author-text" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="timestamp published-date padding-12-left" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 2px; display: inline-block;">May 23, 2016</div></div></div><div id="article-body" class="article content body clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto 32px; max-width: 1120px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="padded" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 56px; padding-right: 56px; max-width: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; min-width: 651px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" pt="PT" serif="serif" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" margin-top="margin-top" px="px" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height" letter-spacing="letter-spacing">Presumptive nominee Donald Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=en" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(233, 6, 6) 0px -2px 0px inset; padding: 1px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;">may say he doesn’t believe</a> the science of climate change, but he’s hoping to <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-acknowledges-climate-change-at-his-irish-golf-course/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(233, 6, 6) 0px -2px 0px inset; padding: 1px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;">protect one of his Irish golf courses from its effects</a>.<p style="box-sizing: border-box;" pt="PT" serif="serif" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" margin-top="margin-top" px="px" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height" letter-spacing="letter-spacing">The Trump International Hotel in Ireland applied for a permit to build a seawall on its golf course to prevent erosion. <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-acknowledges-climate-change-at-his-irish-golf-course/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(233, 6, 6) 0px -2px 0px inset; padding: 1px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out;">Politico</a> reports the permit application included an environmental-impact statement that explicitly said the wall would need to be built to combat “global warming and its effects.” The golf course is located at Trump International Golf Links & Hotel Ireland, in County Clare.<p style="box-sizing: border-box;" pt="PT" serif="serif" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" margin-top="margin-top" px="px" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height" letter-spacing="letter-spacing">....<p style="box-sizing: border-box;" pt="PT" serif="serif" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" margin-top="margin-top" px="px" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height" letter-spacing="letter-spacing">---<p style="box-sizing: border-box;" pt="PT" serif="serif" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" margin-top="margin-top" px="px" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height" letter-spacing="letter-spacing"><a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/donald-trump-climate-change-golf-course-223436">https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/donald-trump-climate-change-golf-course-223436</a><p style="box-sizing: border-box;" pt="PT" serif="serif" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" margin-top="margin-top" px="px" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height" letter-spacing="letter-spacing">...The New York billionaire is applying for permission to erect a coastal protection works to prevent erosion at his seaside golf resort, Trump International Golf Links & Hotel Ireland, in County Clare.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; font-family: ff-tisa-web-pro, Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">A permit application for the wall, filed by Trump International Golf Links Ireland and reviewed by POLITICO, explicitly cites global warming and its consequences — increased erosion due to rising sea levels and extreme weather this century — as a chief justification for building the structure.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; font-family: ff-tisa-web-pro, Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">The zoning application raises further questions about how the billionaire developer would confront a risk he has publicly minimized but that has been identified as a defining challenge of this era by world leaders, global industry and the American military. His public disavowal of climate science at the same time he moves to secure his own holdings against the effects of climate change also illustrates the conflict between his political rhetoric and the realities of running a business with seaside assets in the 21st century.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; font-family: ff-tisa-web-pro, Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">“It's diabolical," said former South Carolina Republican Rep. Bob Inglis, an advocate of conservative solutions to climate change. “Donald Trump is working to ensure his at-risk properties and his company is trying to figure out how to deal with sea level rise. Meanwhile, he’s saying things to audiences that he must know are not true. … You have a soft place in your heart for people who are honestly ignorant, but people who are deceitful, that’s a different thing.”<

...“If you’re being responsible you are protecting your property and investing in these things,” said Cynthia McHale, director of the insurance program at Ceres, a nonprofit that works with businesses and institutional investors to promote sustainability. “It’s certainly best practice.” But McHale added that many commercial developers of seaside properties fail to account for climate change in their decisions because they are focused on short time horizons

Trump snatched up the golf resort from a distressed buyer in February 2014, after a winter in which an unusual number of severe storms hit the west coast of Ireland. The businessman immediately took an active hand in advancing and promoting his Irish investment.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; font-family: ff-tisa-web-pro, Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">In April of 2014, Tony Lowes, director of Friends of the Irish Environment, said Trump called him to offer the group help in opposing a proposed offshore wind project in a nearby, environmentally sensitive area. The group, which has since come out against Trump’s proposed wall, declined the businessman’s offer.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; font-family: ff-tisa-web-pro, Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">The next month, Trump gave an <a href="http://www.independent.ie/business/billionaire-donald-trump-is-confident-that-ireland-is-ready-for-a-big-comeback-30270032.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.25s ease; text-decoration-line: none;">interview</a> about the golf resort, also known as Trump Doonbeg, on Irish radio, vowing to invest up to €45m in the property. “If I didn’t have confidence in Ireland I would never have made this big investment,” he said. He also promised to “reshape it and make it one of the greatest golf courses in the world.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; font-family: ff-tisa-web-pro, Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">But Trump has encountered obstacles to that vision. Days before he concluded his purchase, a single storm eroded as much as eight meters of frontage in some parts of the golf course. Since acquiring the property, Trump has been trying to build coastal protection works to prevent further erosion.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; font-family: ff-tisa-web-pro, Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Earlier this month, after failing to win special approval from the national government for the structure, Trump re-submitted a planning application with the Clare County Council seeking permission to build the wall, which would consist of 200,000 tons of rock distributed along two miles of beach. As part of the application, Trump International Golf Links submitted an environmental impact statement — prepared by an Irish environmental consultancy — which argues that erosion is likely to accelerate as sea levels rise more quickly.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; font-family: ff-tisa-web-pro, Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">The statement acknowledges one Irish government study that assumes a steady rate of erosion through 2050, but argues that the study fails to account for the effects of climate change: “If the predictions of an increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct, however, it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal erosion rates not just in Doughmore Bay but around much of the coastline of Ireland. In our view, it could reasonably be expected that the rate of sea level rise might become twice of that presently occurring. … As a result, we would expect the rate of dune recession to increase.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; font-family: ff-tisa-web-pro, Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">The bigger problem, though, according to the impact statement, will be the erosion caused by larger, more frequent storms. “As with other predictions of global warming and its effects, there is no universal consensus regarding changes in these events,” it states. “Our advice is to assume that the recent average rate of dune recession will not alter greatly in the next few decades, perhaps as far into the future as 2050 as assumed in the [government study] but that subsequently an increase in this rate is more likely than not.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; font-family: ff-tisa-web-pro, Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Later, the statement argues that rising sea levels make taking action unavoidable. “A Do nothing/Do minimum option will have the least impact on [natural] processes but the existing erosion rate will continue and worsen, due to sea level rise, in the next coming years, posing a real and immediate risk to most of the golf course frontage and assets,” states the conclusion of an analysis of various options for responding to the erosion.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; font-family: ff-tisa-web-pro, Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Trump’s company has warned not only the county council of the perils of climate change, but also local residents. An appendix to TIGL’s planning application includes a scan of a brochure that the company has distributed to residents to make the case for building the proposed coastal protection works. The heading of one page — emblazoned with a “Trump Doonbeg” logo — is “Need for Coastal Protection.” The page lists four bullet points, the last of which is, "Predicted sea level rise and more frequent storm events will increase the rate of erosion throughout the 21st century."<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 344.859px 1em 0px; font-family: ff-tisa-web-pro, Georgia, Times, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" em="em" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">...<p style="box-sizing: border-box;" pt="PT" serif="serif" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" margin-top="margin-top" px="px" margin-bottom="margin-bottom" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height" letter-spacing="letter-spacing">
</div></div></div><div>=</div><div>11 2016</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/europe/donald-trump-scotland-wall.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/europe/donald-trump-scotland-wall.html</a></div><div><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="261" data-total-count="261" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color">BALMEDIE, Scotland — President-elect <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/donald-trump?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Donald J. Trump." class="meta-per" style="">Donald J. Trump</a> has already built a wall — not on the border with Mexico, but on the border of his exclusive golf course in northeastern Scotland, blocking the sea view of local residents who refused to sell their homes.<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="31" data-total-count="292" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color">And then he sent them the bill.<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="466" data-total-count="758" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color">David and Moira Milne had already been threatened with legal action by Mr. Trump’s lawyers, who claimed that a corner of their garage belonged to him, when they came home from work one day to find his staff building a fence around their garden. Two rows of grown trees went up next, blocking the view. Their water and electricity lines were temporarily cut. And then a bill for about $3,500 arrived in the mail, which, Mr. Milne said, went straight into the trash.<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="466" data-total-count="758" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" max-width="max-width" none="none" width="width" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color">...</div><div>
</div><div><div>=</div><div>https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/business/international/britain-ireland-trump-golf-snail.html</div><div>
</div><div>Of all President-elect Donald J. Trump’s rivals over the past year, the tiny narrow-mouthed whorl snail must be the smallest. Sometimes, though, less is more.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Trump’s real estate organization had planned to build a long sea wall off the Irish coast to protect its golf course in County Clare. But the wall faced opposition from environmental groups who said they feared that it would threaten the two-millimeter-long whorl snail, or vertigo angustior, which lives in the area, as well as coastal dunes. Both are protected by European Union rules.</div><div>
</div><div>Now it appears that the snail has prevailed.</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Trump’s representatives said at a meeting at the club this week that they would replace the planned sea wall with two much smaller barriers.</div><div>
</div><div>“The simple reason for these changes is time,” Joe Russell, general manager at the resort, said in an interview. “The original proposal was going to take too long to push through. I don’t have that time. I have the Atlantic Ocean coming at me.”</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Russell said Eric Trump, one of Mr. Trump’s sons, had overseen the process on behalf of the Trump family.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>In Scotland, Trump Built a Wall. Then He Sent Residents the Bill. NOV. 25, 2016</div><div>
</div><div>With a Meeting, Trump Renewed a British Wind Farm Fight NOV. 21, 2016</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>“This had nothing to do with the Trump election,” he said. “The Atlantic Ocean doesn’t have any idea that an election is going on.”</div><div>
</div><div>In a statement, the Trump Organization said it would be submitting a new application later this month.</div><div>
</div><div>“Large storm events have proven to be costly in the past,” the statement said. “We hope to get approval on the new proposal as soon as possible.”</div><div>
</div><div>The sea wall plan had attracted attention because the Trump Organization’s representatives had used the threat of rising seawater from climate change as a rationale for building it, even though Mr. Trump has referred to climate change as a hoax. Mr. Trump’s golf resort, which he bought in 2014, is near the village of Doonbeg, in County Clare, on Ireland’s west coast.</div><div>
</div><div>The original proposal was for a sea wall about 1.7 miles long. The new proposal includes sheet-metal piling and rock armor stretching for roughly 650 yards in one spot, and for about 270 yards at another end of the dunes, according to the Trump statement. Two of the club’s holes will also be moved inland.</div><div>
</div><div>The new plan has yet to be officially submitted to the local government.</div><div>
</div><div>In a statement, Tony Lowes, director of Friends of the Irish Environment, said “the sense of relief is enormous,” adding that “the threat of Trump’s Irish wall has hung over Doonbeg like a dark cloud for more than two years.”</div><div>
</div><div>But he said his group would need to review the Trump Organization’s proposal after it was officially introduced before making a fuller comment.</div><div>
</div><div>Any new plan will be considered by the County Clare authorities, and could then be appealed to a national planning review board next year. An appeal would lead to an unusual episode in Ireland’s relations with a sitting American president, and could involve a public hearing.</div><div>
</div><div>The Irish wall is not to be confused with the walls Mr. Trump is building to thwart neighbors at one of his two golf courses in Scotland, where relations with locals and political leaders have been tense. Such projects are among numerous potential global conflicts of interest for the incoming president. While he has said he is turning over management of his businesses to his children, it is not clear that he will undertake the kind of divestment that would alleviate conflict concerns.</div><div>
</div><div>An attendee at the meeting this week said the Trump Organization had been eager to avoid further delays.</div><div>
</div><div>“They wanted something built in time to protect the golf course,” said Fergal Smith, a Green Party activist who works with a group called Save the Waves. “The original wall was not going to get through the planning process or was going to take a long time because there had been such a strong objection. So they had to rethink it and find a quicker solution.”</div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Smith said he wanted to see the scientific rationale for the new plan and to make sure it would not create more erosion.</div><div>
</div><div>“The positive note is that it’s great they’ve looked at people’s concerns and come back with a compromise solution rather than just going ahead with what they wanted,” he added.</div><div>
</div><div>While environmentalists have chafed at the planned sea wall, many local residents have been supportive of Mr. Trump’s presence in the area.</div><div>
</div><div>“We have no problem with Donald Trump in Doonbeg,” said Tommy Tubridy, owner of Tubridy’s Bar and Restaurant, in an interview last month. “It’s great that the president of the U.S.A. owns land in Doonbeg.”</div><div>
</div><div>Follow Danny Hakim</div></div><div></div><div>GAO does the math</div><div>
</div><div><div class="headline-container" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="headline h1" style="margin: 10px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 31px;">Government Accountability Office Urges Trump to Act on Climate Change</h1></div><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-elid="2500716868" data-headline="Government Accountability Office Urges Trump to Act on Climate Change" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">President Trump</a> might think that global warming <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-climate-change-hoax-2018812943.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">is a hoax</a> created by the Chinese, but the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress's nonpartisan auditing arm, is urging the administration to craft a plan to confront <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">climate change</a> or else it will have to deal with its massive economic consequences.According to a <a href="http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/687466.pdf" target="blank" style="text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none;">new report</a> released by the GAO, the U.S. government has already spent more than $350 billion over the past decade on dealing with natural disasters and losses from flood and crop insurance. The tally does not even include the economic toll from this year's horrific <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/california-wildfires" style="text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none;">West Coast fires</a> and successive <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/hurricanes" style="text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none;">hurricanes</a>, which is estimated to cost at least $300 billion.Costs will also soar—as much as $35 billion per year by mid-century—if global emission rates are not reduced, the study warns."The federal government has not undertaken strategic government-wide planning to manage climate risks by using information on the potential economic effects of climate change to identify significant risks and craft appropriate federal responses," the study states. "By using such information, the federal government could take the initial step in establishing government-wide priorities to manage such risks."The report, which features interviews with more than two dozen scientific and economic experts and 30 studies, was requested by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME)."The Government Accountability Office—if you will, the chief bean counter—is basically telling us that this is costing us a lot of money," Cantwell told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/climate/gao-climate-change-cost.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">New York Times</a>. "We need to understand that as stewards of the taxpayer that climate is a fiscal issue, and the fact that it's having this big a fiscal impact on our federal budget needs to be dealt with."The Senators hope that the study will prompt Congress and the administration to move towards a bipartisan solution to fight the effects of a warming world."My hope is the administration will take a look at this report and realize there is an economic impact here that is significant," Collins told the Times. "We simply cannot afford the billions of dollars in additional funding that's going to be needed if we do not take into account the consequences of climate change."
Trump, however, has notoriously pulled the U.S. out of the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Paris climate agreement</a> and rolled back several Obama-era environmental regulations designed to address climate change, including the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/clean-power-plan-repeal-2494810040.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">repeal of the Clean Power Plan</a>. The president's EPA Administrator <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/scott-pruitt" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Scott Pruitt</a> has close links to the fossil fuel industry and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/scott-pruitt-climate-change-2307785184.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">once said</a> that carbon dioxide is not the primary driver of global warming.Robert N. Stavins, an economist at Harvard University, cast doubt the study would convince the government to act.“The GAO study is conservative, it's not alarmist, it's realistic and balanced and they go out of their way to point out all of the uncertainties involved," Stavins told the Times. “I don't see any likelihood it's going to be taken seriously."Indeed, the price tag from the GAO's study is drastically lower than estimates from other recent <a href="https://feu-us.org/case-for-climate-action-us/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reports</a>. The non-profit <a href="https://ecowatchroar-secure.rebelmouse.com/core/dashboard/editor/Universal%20Ecological%20Fund" target="self" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Universal Ecological Fund</a> found that <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">extreme weather</a> and public health issues related to burning fossil fuels could cost the U.S. up to $360 billion annually—nearly half of annual U.S. economic growth—within the next ten years. </div></div></div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/government-accountability-climate-change-2500716868.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/government-accountability-climate-change-2500716868.html</a></div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>Trump angrily lashed out at NBC News over its report that he wanted to dramatically increase the United States’ nuclear arsenal by threatening to go after the network’s broadcasting license.“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License?” Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning. “Bad for country!”<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/918112884630093825?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" style="text-decoration-line: none;">October 11, 2017</a></blockquote>The president also said that NBC “made up a story that I wanted a ‘tenfold” increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal,” which he described as “pure fiction, made up to demean.”<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fake <a href="https://twitter.com/NBCNews?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" style="text-decoration-line: none;">@NBCNews</a> made up a story that I wanted a "tenfold" increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal. Pure fiction, made up to demean. NBC = CNN!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/918110279367643137?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" style="text-decoration-line: none;">October 11, 2017</a></blockquote>According to the original NBC report, Trump “said he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation’s highest ranking national security leaders.” The president was reportedly incensed by a chart showing that the U.S. has actually been reducing its nuclear arsenal since the late 1960s.According to NBC’s sources, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron” after this particular meeting. Additionally, the sources claim both Tillerson and the joint chiefs of staff pushed back against Trump, and told him why it would be unwise to start a massive nuclear arms race.https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-wants-revoke-nbc-license</div><div>=</div><div>dedicated golf trphy to hurricane victims?!</div><div>---</div><div>dogwhistle slur on PR cruz mayor lazy, debt</div><div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/opinion/columnists/divert-divide-destroy.html">
</a></div><div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/opinion/columnists/divert-divide-destroy.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/opinion/columnists/divert-divide-destroy.html</a></div><div>
</div><div>cointelpro, Duchin formula, divide and distract chls blow</div><div>
</div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/video/watch-americas-mobster-president-new-evidence-dutch-documentary-trumps-international-money">https://www.alternet.org/video/watch-americas-mobster-president-new-evidence-dutch-documentary-trumps-international-money</a></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>But Rachel Maddow uncovered many other <span id="IL_AD6" class="IL_AD" style="position: static; background-position-x: 0%; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(27, 142, 222) !important; text-decoration-line: underline !important; background-image: none !important; background-position-y: 50% !important; background-size: initial !important; background-repeat: repeat !important; background-attachment: scroll !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-color: transparent !important; cursor: pointer !important; display: inline !important; padding: 0px 0px 1px !important; float: none !important;">examples of the sort on tonight's show. At the USDA, in addition to Sam Clovis, the Trump administration has hired the following people to senior level scientist jobs: a truck driver, a country club cabana attendant, and a scented candle maker. These people are now scientsts who make and evaluate policy and safety of your food. These positions pay up to $175,000 per year.<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="waldo-tag-872" style="">Maddow also found another person named Sid Bowdidge, who she said most recently worked in retail tire sales. She also pointed out that the assistant to the Treasury Secretary, Zachary McEntee, was most recently working as a "production assistant" at That's Entertainment International, a company that says it "helps <span id="IL_AD4" class="IL_AD" style="position: static; background-position-x: 0%; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(27, 142, 222) !important; text-decoration-line: underline !important; background-image: none !important; background-position-y: 50% !important; background-size: initial !important; background-repeat: repeat !important; background-attachment: scroll !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-color: transparent !important; cursor: pointer !important; display: inline !important; padding: 0px 0px 1px !important; float: none !important;">guide you through the event management process without losing focus on your event priorities." A party <span id="IL_AD9" class="IL_AD" style="position: static; background-position-x: 0%; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(27, 142, 222) !important; text-decoration-line: underline !important; background-image: none !important; background-position-y: 50% !important; background-size: initial !important; background-repeat: repeat !important; background-attachment: scroll !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-color: transparent !important; cursor: pointer !important; display: inline !important; padding: 0px 0px 1px !important; float: none !important;">planner?</div><div style=""></div><div style=""><div class="headline-container" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="headline h1" style="margin: 10px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 31px;">White House Considers Green Rebrand</h1></div><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-elid="2488285108" data-headline="White House Considers Green Rebrand" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px;"><div class="body-description" style="">The White House convened a "big-picture" strategy meeting on <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">climate</a> and environment this week, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/21/white-house-trump-energy-environment-policy-strategy-242980" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Politico reported</a>.At the meeting, deputy-level White House officials and representatives from agencies discussed how to frame <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">President Trump's</a> larger environmental objectives beyond simply overturning Obama-era regulations. Per Politico, meeting attendees considered the possibility of highlighting job creation and new energy technology and "how to combat the public perception that the administration is out of touch with climate science."Worry over the administration's environmental PR problem extends beyond the White House: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is conducting mandatory anti-leaking trainings according to multiple reports this week. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-epa-leaks/epa-trains-employees-on-leaks-presentation-shows-idUSKCN1BW31W" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Reuters reported</a> that an introductory slide for Wednesday's training read that releasing unauthorized information "harms our nation and shakes the confidence of the American people."For a deeper dive:WH meeting: <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/21/white-house-trump-energy-environment-policy-strategy-242980" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Politico</a>Leaking training: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-21/federal-employees-are-ordered-to-attend-anti-leaking-classes" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">AP</a>, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-epa-leaks/epa-trains-employees-on-leaks-presentation-shows-idUSKCN1BW31W" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Reuters</a>, <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/351742-epa-holds-anti-leaking-training-for-employees" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the Hill</a>, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-employees-ordered-to-attend-anti-leaking-classes/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">CBS</a></div></div></div><div style="">
</div><div style="">but...</div><div style="">=</div><div style="">solar wall rumor?</div><div style=""><div>but</div><div>tariff threat</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-us-solar-boom-2488025107.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-us-solar-boom-2488025107.html</a></div><div></div></div><div style="">=</div><div style=""><a href="http://www.alternet.org/trumps-maniacal-un-address-has-set-america-course-cataclysm">http://www.alternet.org/trumps-maniacal-un-address-has-set-america-course-cataclysm</a></div><div style="">
</div><div style="">miller, new axis of evil 5 incl venezula; Bebe</div><div style="">
</div><div style=""></div><div style="">paris</div><div style=""><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-united-nations-2486698351.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-united-nations-2486698351.html</a>trump eh post hurricane</div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/pentagon-climate-change-2485164596.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.ecowatch.com/pentagon-climate-change-2485164596.html</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">trump rev ignored?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div><div style=""></div><div style=""><a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/north-dakota/articles/2017-09-06/heitkamp-hoeven-cramer-travel-with-trump-to-north-dakota">https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/north-dakota/articles/2017-09-06/heitkamp-hoeven-cramer-travel-with-trump-to-north-dakota</a></div><div style="">
</div><div style="">9/06/17  Trump did victory lap in ND to celebrate DAPL, but unbelievably in the speech he says he’s fix drought he was surprised to hear about which is causing (?) huge wildfires, AND prayers go out to Harvey vics, but NO DOTS to AGW.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">no mention of fire?</div><div style="">
</div><div style=""><a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/north-dakota/articles/2017-09-06/the-latest-trump-visit-spotlights-big-nd-refinery">https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/north-dakota/articles/2017-09-06/the-latest-trump-visit-spotlights-big-nd-refinery</a></div><div style=""></div><div style=""><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/58-donald-trump-conspiracy-theories-and-counting-the-definitive-trump-conspiracy-guide/">http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/58-donald-trump-conspiracy-theories-and-counting-the-definitive-trump-conspiracy-guide/</a></div><div style="">
</div><div style=""><div class="layout-constrain--narrow" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 47.2222em; padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="page-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; font-weight: normal; hyphens: none; line-height: 1; position: relative; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding-top: 0.5em;">58 Donald Trump Conspiracy Theories (And Counting!): The Definitive Trump Conspiracy Guide</h1><div class="byline" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin-top: 1em;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;"><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post_author/brian-tashman/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img src="http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/brian-tashman-4-35x35.png" class="attachment-author size-author wp-post-image" alt="" srcset="http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/brian-tashman-4-35x35.png 35w, http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/brian-tashman-4-250x250.png 250w, http://files.rightwingwatch.org/uploads/brian-tashman-4-150x150.png 150w" sizes="(max-width: 35px) 100vw, 35px" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; height: auto; max-width: 100%; border: 0px; border-radius: 50%; float: left; margin-top: -7px; margin-right: 10px;" /></a>By <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post_author/brian-tashman/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Brian Tashman</a> | <span style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;">May 27, 2016 1:35 pm</div><div class="post__image" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 2em 0px;"><div class="mce-content-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="layout-constrain--narrow" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 47.2222em; padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em; line-height: 1.5;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump not only <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/trumps-team-bigoted-unhinged-conspiracy-theorists-benefiting-donald-trumps-campaign" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">surrounds himself</a> with conspiracy theorists, he has spent years pushing conspiracy theories himself, much <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-train-is-fueled-by-conspiracy/2016/05/23/22ab1d90-2112-11e6-9e7f-57890b612299_story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">to</a> <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/donald-trumps-supporters-lap-every-conspiracy-theory-he-pushes-out-there" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">the</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/05/the-outlandish-conspiracy-theories-many-of-donald-trumps-supporters-believe/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">delight</a> of his supporters.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">At times, Trump tries to remain evasive about whether he actually believes these conspiracy theories, insisting that he simply “heard” or “read” them somewhere or is just asking a question.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">We found at least 58 instances of Trump promoting false conspiracy theories on everything from immigration to President Obama’s birthplace.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">The number is certain to rise in the coming months.

[huge ...] When it comes to buying access and influence with Donald Trump, lobbyists and corporate CEOs who want things from the government can skip the campaign middleman and put money directly into Trump’s pockets while getting access to him at his most relaxed and sociable. It’s as easy—if not cheap—as getting a membership at one of his favorite golf clubs, and now we know some of the people involved, because USA Today has done important investigative work digging through golf handicap records to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/09/06/trump-gets-millions-golf-members-ceos-and-lobbyists-get-access-president/632505001/" target="blank" title="" style="text-decoration-line: none;">identify members of Trump’s clubs</a>, whose members are not public:<blockquote style="">Members of the clubs Trump has visited most often as president — in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia — include at least 50 executives whose companies hold federal contracts and 21 lobbyists and trade group officials. Two-thirds played on one of the 58 days the president was there, according to scores they posted online. [...]The review shows that, for the first time in U.S. history, wealthy people with interests before the government have a chance for close and confidential access to the president as a result of payments that enrich him personally. It is a view of the president available to few other Americans.Among Trump club members are top executives of defense contractors, a lobbyist for the South Korean government, a lawyer helping Saudi Arabia fight claims over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the leader of a pesticide trade group that sought successfully to persuade the Trump administration not to ban an insecticide government scientists linked to health risks.</blockquote>Of course they deny talking about business while golfing, blah blah blah, but whether that’s true is not even the point. The point is that these rich people who stand to get more rich from government contracts and actions who are, literally, in the club. They’re Trump’s people, the people who simultaneously enrich him personally and are his peers in wealth and golf, and he can see it when he looks around him on the golf course or in the clubhouse or on the member rolls. Lobbying on a specific issue is fine, but having the president see your interests and his as naturally aligned—and having a president interested above all in personal profit know that you are paying him big pots of cash—is a big step beyond that. </div><div style=""><div></div><div>usatoday ref</div><div>
</div><div>...</div><div>Experts on government ethics and federal contracting said there’s no prohibition on executives from companies with federal contracts spending money at Trump’s golf properties, as long they pay the going rate for their memberships and don't hand over money to seek an official favor or to thank the president for taking action on their behalf.Lobbyists face no legal restrictions on golf memberships.Jay Vroom, CEO of the pesticide trade group Crop Life America, said he had encountered Trump once since he became president. The group sought for months to keep the Environmental Protection Agency from banning an insecticide called chlorpyrifos that the agency’s scientists linked to neurological delays in children and other health problems. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in March that the government would not impose new restrictions on the insecticide’s use.Vroom said in a statement that he had not spoken to Trump about the issue. Those fighting to ban the insecticide said they were troubled by the prospect of his having access to the president at all.“Not surprising, I’m sad to say, especially with the current president. And I’m tempted to say — and oh, God help me — par for the course,” said Kristen Boyles, a lawyer for the environmental non-profit group Earthjustice, which is suing to force the EPA to ban chlorpyrifos.</div><div></div><div>AN 817</div><div>
</div><div>2 of 4 horses: </div><div>On August 15, this “infrastructure of fascism” came into clear focus in a bizarre and tragic way. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87ilzMZmRa4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">Donald Trump marched into a conference room in Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in Manhattan to hold a hastily arranged press briefing on the first formal unveiling of his “Infrastructure” plan</a>. He had key members of his economic team in tow—most notably, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, head of Trump’s National Economic Council—both former Goldman Sachs bankers—and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, former Bank of America and Citicorp banker. This announcement of Trump’s “infrastructure plan,” which took only a few minutes, presented even less of a true infrastructure plan than he had floated during the election campaign. This was simply yet <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/climate/flooding-infrastructure-climate-change-trump-obama.html?r=0" style="text-decoration-line: none;">another de-regulation plan</a> dressed up as a plan for infrastructure investment. Effectively, this “executive order” served-up a wish list that would have been compiled by any real estate mogul who doesn’t want any government agency or public group to come between him, his building, and his bottom line. In the name of building more useful infrastructure and generating more jobs, Trump’s executive order is designed to let developers skirt <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-infrastructure-idUSKCN1AV1ZI" style="text-decoration-line: none;">environmental regulations</a>, and most likely, labor, health, and safety regulations as well. The Executive Order will make it a lot easier to build more Trump towers in flood plains, but do little or nothing for the country’s true infrastructure needs.But this roll-out of a fake infrastructure plan was not the most interesting or surprising thing about this event. It was the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-cohn-upset-disgusted-trump-charlottesville-press-conference-2017-8" style="text-decoration-line: none;">press conference Trump held afterwards</a>. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c3IQUnyGps" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Using hisJewish and Asian-American economic team as a photo-op backdrop</a> and the creation of infrastructure and jobs as his bait, Trump took the occasion to assure his neo-fascist, white supremacist and nationalist base that, yes, he was still their man. The reporters at hand, having little interest in infrastructure, wanted to hear a clear statement from Trump decrying the violent and deadly acts committed over the weekend by Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va. But instead Trump used his infrastructure plan and his promise of “millions of jobs” to rally his base supporters, all the while demonizing the counter-protestors (calling them violent members of “the alt-left” who were “at least” as responsible for the violence and mayhem as those on the right).This event, then, tied, in a sinister but clear way, Trump’s infrastructure plan with the racist, anti-Semitic, and neo-fascist members of Trump’s base movement and linked them, in turn, to the bankers and policy makers like Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin who have so much to gain from the tax subsidies and privatization that are the essence of these plans. Gary Cohn was reportedly “furious” about what Trump said and did. But <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gary-cohn-upset-disgusted-trump-charlottesville-press-conference-2017-8" style="text-decoration-line: none;">according to reporters</a>, Cohn, like so many Republicans in Congress, will most likely remain quiet, and soldier on, presumably in the hope of getting a big payoff down the road. (Cohn reportedly wants to succeed Janet Yellen as Chair of the Federal Reserve; and his friends have millions to gain from the privatization schemes.)</div><div></div></div><div style=""></div><div style="">see trump 4 on murk</div><div style="">
</div><div style=""><a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-can-no-longer-make-recess-appointments-thanks-alaska-republican-he-attacked">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-can-no-longer-make-recess-appointments-thanks-alaska-republican-he-attacked</a></div><div style=""></div><div style="">...The president, who has no moral or ethical compass, also continues his disingenuous assault on science. Earlier this month, I <a href="http://priceofoil.org/2017/08/08/as-trump-censors-language-on-climate-scientists-leak-damning-report/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">blogged</a> how in their fight back against Trump, a major report on <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">climate change</a> had been leaked by scientists, fearful that the president would try and suppress it.</div>The executive summary of the report, written by scientists from 13 agencies, said, "The last few years have seen record-breaking, climate-related, weather extremes, as well as the warmest years on record for the globe."Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans," the report continued. "Thousands of studies conducted by tens of thousands of scientists around the world have documented changes in surface, atmospheric, and oceanic temperatures; melting glaciers; disappearing snow cover; shrinking sea ice; <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">rising sea level</a>; and an increase in atmospheric water vapor".The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/08/20/the-trump-administration-just-disbanded-a-federal-advisory-committee-on-climate-change/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.c23b26227b38" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Washington Post</a> reported Sunday that Trump wreaked revenge on the scientists by disbanding the federal advisory panel—the National Climate Assessment—that had drafted the report.According to the Post, "On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's acting administrator, Ben Friedman, informed the committee's chair that the agency would not renew the panel."Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (D) told the Post that Trump's actions represent "an example of the president not leading, and the president stepping away from reality."This is not an isolated incident, though.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/epa" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">EPA</a>) boss, Scott "Polluting <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/scott-pruitt" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Pruitt</a>," has also "purged" dozens of scientists from <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/epa-dismisses-more-scientists-pruitt-trump-7530dc37dcf/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">advisory positions</a>, "leaving a key EPA office without important scientific guidance."As Trump gets rid of real scientists with expert credentials, in their place come his cronies without any scientific knowledge.The person nominated by Trump to be the top scientist at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/02/donald-trump-sam-clovis-old-blog-progressives-obama" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Department of Agriculture</a>, Sam Clovis, used to run a rightwing blog where he called progressives "race traders and race 'traitors'" and likened Barack Obama to a "dictator." He is also a <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-denier" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">climate denier</a> and conspiracy theorist. Clovis, who is perfect for the Trump Administration but totally unfit to hold a top scientific post, joins the downward vortex into the abyss.<div style=""></div><div style=""><a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trump-wants-more-war-afghanistan">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trump-wants-more-war-afghanistan</a></div><div style="">
</div><div style="">dyncorp bw</div><div style=""></div><div style="">fake news russia wikileaks mirror</div><div style="">
</div><div style=""><a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/white-house-signed-bogus-fox-news-story-pushing-seth-rich-murder-conspiracy">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/white-house-signed-bogus-fox-news-story-pushing-seth-rich-murder-conspiracy</a></div><div style="">
<div style=""><a href="http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/donald-trump-polluter-chief">http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/donald-trump-polluter-chief</a></div><div style="">
</div><div style="">...His decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, which obliged this country to reduce its coal consumption and take other steps to curb its carbon emissions, was widely covered by the American mainstream news media.  On the other hand, the president’s efforts to promote greater fossil fuel consumption abroad -- just as significant in terms of potential harm to the planet -- have received remarkably little attention.</div>Bear in mind that while Trump’s drive to sabotage international efforts to curb carbon emissions will undoubtedly slow progress in that area, it will hardly stop it.  At the recent G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, 19 of the leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris accord and <a href="https://www.g20.org/gipfeldokumente/G20-leaders-declaration.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">pledged</a> to “mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through, among other [initiatives], increased innovation on sustainable and clean energies.”  This means that whatever Trump does, continuing innovation in the energy field will indeed help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and so slow the advance of climate change.  Unfortunately, Trump’s relentless drive to promote fossil-fuel consumption abroad could ensure that carbon emissions continue to rise anyway, neutralizing whatever progress might be made elsewhere and dooming humanity to a climate-ravaged future.How the two sides of the ledger -- green energy progress versus Trump’s drive to boost carbon exports -- will balance out in the years ahead cannot be foreseen. Every boost in carbon emissions, however, pushes us closer to the moment when global temperatures will exceed the two degrees Celsius rise from pre-industrial levels that scientists <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/why-2-degrees-celsius-is-climate-changes-magic-number/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">say</a> is the maximum the planet can absorb without suffering catastrophic consequences. Those would include <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/22/sea-level-rise-james-hansen-climate-change-scientist" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">rising sea levels</a> that could drown New York, Miami, Shanghai, London, and many other coastal cities, as well as a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/apr/13/climate-change-threat-food-supplies" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">sharp drop</a> in global food production that could devastate entire populations.Spreading the Cult of CarbonPresident Trump’s pursuit of increased global carbon consumption is proving to be a two-front campaign.  He’s working in every way imaginable to increase the production of fossil fuels domestically, even as he engages in a <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/28/trump-america-energy-dominant-policy.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">diplomatic blitzkreig</a> to open doors to American fossil-fuel exports abroad.At home, he’s already reversed numerous Obama-era restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, including <a href="http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2017/trump-signs-attack-on-clean-water-into-law" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">curbs</a> on mountaintop removal -- an environmentally hazardous form of coal mining -- and on oil and gas <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/04/28/trump-signs-executive-order-to-expand-offshore-drilling-and-analyze-marine-sanctuaries-oil-and-gas-potential/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">drilling</a>in Arctic waters off Alaska.  He’s also <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/trump-executive-order-seeks-reverse-obamas-clean-energy-regulations/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ordered</a> the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt -- a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/22/scott-pruitt-emails-oklahoma-fossil-fuels-koch-brothers" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">notorious enemy</a> of environmental regulations opposed by the energy industry -- to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s program to sharply reduce the use of coal in domestic electricity generation.These and similar initiatives have gotten a fair amount of media attention already, but it’s no less important to focus on another key aspect of Trump’s pro-carbon global initiative which has gone largely unnoticed.  While, under the Paris climate accord, the other industrial powers are still obliged to help developing countries install carbon-free energy technologies, Trump has freed himself to sell American fossil fuels everywhere to his heart’s content.  At that G-20 meeting, for example, he forced his peers to insert a clause in their <a href="https://www.g20.org/gipfeldokumente/G20-leaders-declaration.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">final communiqué</a> stating, “The United States of America states it will endeavor to work closely with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently.” (The “more cleanly and efficiently” was undoubtedly his modest concession to the other 19 leaders.)To spread the mantra of fossil fuels, Trump has become the nation’s carbon-pusher in chief.  He’s already personally engaged in energy diplomacy, while demanding that various cabinet officials make oil, gas, and coal exports a priority.  On June 29th, for instance, he publicly <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/29/remarks-president-trump-unleashing-american-energy-event" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ordered</a> the Treasury Department to do away with “barriers to the financing of highly efficient overseas coal energy plants.”  In the same speech, he spoke of his desire to supply American coal to Ukraine, currently cut off from Russian natural gas thanks to its ongoing conflict with that country.  “Ukraine already tells us they need millions and millions of metric tons [of coal] right now,” Trump said, pointing out that there are many other countries in a similar state, “and we want to sell it to them, and to everyone else all over the globe who needs it.”He added, “We are a top producer of petroleum and the number-one producer of natural gas.  We have so much more than we ever thought possible, and we’re going to be an exporter... We will export American energy all over the world, all around the globe.”In his urge to preserve the reign of fossil fuels, President Trump has already taken on a unique personal role, meeting with foreign officials and promoting cooperation with key American energy firms.  Take the June 26th White House visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  While the media <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/26/politics/trump-narendra-modi-india/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a> on how the two of them took up the subject of future arms sales to India, it made no mention of energy deals.  Yet Secretary of Energy Rick Perry revealed that this topic was crucial to their encounter.  At a Trump-hosted dinner for Modi at the White House, Perry <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/27/press-briefing-secretary-energy-rick-perry-and-principal-deputy-press" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a>, “we talked about the three areas of which there will be great back-and-forth cooperation -- deal-making, if you will.  One of those is in LNG [liquefied natural gas].  The other side of that is in clean coal.  Thirdly is on the nuclear side. So there is great opportunity for India and the United States to become even stronger allies, stronger partners -- energy being the glue that will hold that partnership together for a long, long time.” To put this in context, making deals to sell coal to India is like selling OxyContin to an opioid addict.  After all, in 2015, that country overtook the United States to become the world’s second-biggest consumer of coal (after China).  To keep up the pace of its rapid economic growth, India had <a href="https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis.cfm?iso=IND" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">plans</a> to increase its reliance on coal yet more, which would mean a steady increase in carbon emissions.  India now trails only China and the United States as an emitter of carbon dioxide and its share is expected to grow.  However, it is also likely to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-14/asia-at-risk-of-deeper-poverty-due-to-climate-change-adb-says" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">suffer disproportionately</a> from climate change, which its emissions will only accelerate.  Given that future extreme heat events are expected to periodically destroy crops on which a large part of its population depends, Modi’s government has recently begun seeking ways to reduce the country’s long-term reliance on fossil fuels, in part by becoming a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/01/india-will-be-renewables-superpower-says-energy-minister" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">solar superpower</a>.  In other words, in pitching coal to India -- a true case of bringing coals to Newcastle (or at least Mumbai) -- Trump is functionally working to sabotage India’s struggle to free itself from the scourge of carbon addiction.He similarly <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-south-korea-moon-jae-in-meeting-dinner-white-house-2017-6" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">pushed</a> fossil-fuel exports in his first encounter with newly elected South Korean President Moon Jae-in.  Not surprisingly, press coverage of the event highlighted their discussions about the nuclear threat posed by North Korea.  Some reports also noted that trade issues came up, but none mentioned energy matters.  Yet, shortly before his state dinner with Moon, Trump announced that a U.S. company, Sempra Energy, had just that day signed an agreement to sell more American natural gas to South Korea.  “And, as you know,” he <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/29/remarks-president-trump-unleashing-american-energy-event" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">added</a>, “the leaders of South Korea are coming to the White House today, and we’ve got a lot of discussion to do, but we will also be talking about them buying energy from the United States of America, and I’m sure they’ll like to do it.”  In other words, the president has made it eminently clear how foreign leaders in need of American support can please him.
On the subject of his two meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit (at the second of these <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world-0/us-politics/trump-putin-meeting-russia-us-g20-undisclosed-white-house-confirms-a7848061.html" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">without even</a> an American translator), we obviously know far less.  It is, however, reasonable to assume that his interest in improving ties with Russia is at least partially energy-focused. During the first of those conversations, Trump was <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/07/07/trump-putin-g-20/458210001/" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">accompanied</a>only by a translator and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who, as CEO of ExxonMobil, had inked energy deals with Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil giant, and <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/11/investing/tillerson-exxon-sanctions-russia-iran/index.html" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">lobbied</a> against the imposition of sanctions on Russia’s energy sector.  (Those deals are now being <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/business/energy-environment/exxon-mobil-treasury-russia-sanctions.html" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">investigated</a> by the Treasury Department as possible violations of government-mandated sanctions then in effect.)  Five days later, while flying to Paris on Air Force One, Trump <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/13/politics/trump-transcript-air-force-one/index.html" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none">told</a> reporters that he would like to meet again with Putin, once that became politically feasible, adding, “and, by the way, I only want to make great deals with Russia.”His first overseas trips have also featured versions of such pitchmanship.  During his visit to Saudi Arabia in May, he evidently sought to promotecooperation between U.S. and Saudi energy firms.  Again, press coverage of his meeting with Saudi King Salman <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/middleeast/donald-trump-saudi-arabia.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">highlighted</a> other topics, notably the war on terror, the regional divide between Sunnis and Shiites, and new Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">hard line</a> on Iran.  But the two of them did, in fact, issue a statement <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/05/23/joint-statement-between-kingdom-saudi-arabia-and-united-states-america" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">affirming</a> “the importance of investment in energy by companies in both countries, and the importance of coordinating policies that ensure the stability of markets and an abundance of supplies.”  Where this might lead is anyone’s guess, but presumably to a commitment to the continued dominance of petroleum in the world’s future energy markets.To further boost the export of U.S. fossil fuels abroad, Trump has also leaned on various government agencies to facilitate such efforts.  In a talk he gave on June 29th to energy company officials at the Department of Energy, for example, the president <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/29/remarks-president-trump-unleashing-american-energy-event" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">hailed</a> its approval of two long-term projects to promote U.S. energy abroad: the export of additional natural gas from a terminal in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and plans to construct a new oil pipeline to Mexico -- about which, he assured listeners, “It will go right under the wall, right?... You know, a little like this [gesticulating].  Right under the wall.”And keep in mind that we are undoubtedly catching no more than a glimpse of Trump’s efforts to promote the sale of American oil, coal, and natural gas abroad.  From what little has been reported on the subject in his meetings with Prime Minister Modi, President Moon, and King Salman, it’s reasonable to assume that the topic has come up in most of his conversations with foreign leaders and represents a far more significant aspect of his international policymaking than generally realized.American Energy DominanceDon’t imagine, however, that Trump’s fossil-fueled salesmanship is primarily driven by a desire to enrich American energy firms (though he would undoubtedly consider that a plus).  It’s clearly motivated by a deeper, more visceral set of urges.  Still <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176222/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">trapped</a> in his memories of his 1950s childhood when gas-guzzling American cars were a prominent symbol of national wealth and power, he has a deep belief in the capacity of fossil fuels to propel and sustain the country’s global dominance.  He often recalls that formativeperiod in his musings, <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176254/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">describing it</a> as a golden age when America won all its wars and was dominant on the world stage.  For him, oil equals vigor equals national ascendancy, and no other countries -- least of all an international community united behind the Paris climate accord -- should be able to deprive the U.S. of its carbon fix.All this was implicit in that Energy Department <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/29/remarks-president-trump-unleashing-american-energy-event" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">speech</a>, which offered a genuine window into his thinking on the subject.  Here’s the crucial passage, delivered in his usual extemporaneous style:“Our country is blessed with extraordinary energy abundance... We have nearly 100 years’ worth of natural gas and more than 250 years’ worth of clean, beautiful coal... We have so much more than we ever thought possible.  We are really in the driving seat.  And you know what?  We don’t want to let other countries take away our sovereignty and tell us what to do and how to do it.  With these incredible resources, my administration will seek not only American energy independence that we’ve been looking for so long, but American energy dominance.”Trump’s personal fascination with symbols of excess -- think of those giant golden letters over his properties -- is evident in that monologue.  It’s clear that he’s been especially taken with breakthroughs in the enhancement of American energy abundance, especially the success of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.  That process has liberated vast quantities of oil and natural gas from previously unusable shale formations.  Prior to the introduction of fracking, oil and gas production in the United States had been in decline, but thanks to what’s been termed the “<a href="http://ig-legacy.ft.com/content/e178031e-2cf4-11e4-8105-00144feabdc0#axzz4ng88eJBi" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">shale revolution</a>,” production has soared.  In July 2017, at 9.4 million barrels per day, U.S. crude oil output was up <a href="https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WCRFPUS2&f=W" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">68%</a>over six years earlier, when production was running at just 5.6 million barrels per day.  Natural gas has registered a similar leap.  All this, in turn, generated -- at least for a time -- a feeling of euphoria in the oil and gas industry, with some pundits even <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323894704578114591174453074" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">dubbing</a> this country “Saudi America” and portraying it as a new energy El Dorado.As this sense of euphoria took hold, American energy analysts began viewing the explosion of domestic hydrocarbon output as a crucial source of geopolitical clout.  The immense flood of cheap natural gas has “boosted U.S. economic competitiveness,” <a href="http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/Shale_Revolution_and_the_New_Geopolitics_of_Energy.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">said</a> Robert Manning of the Atlantic Council typically enough, “and by extension, U.S. comprehensive national power, and U.S. capacity for global leadership.” Think of it as Viagra for Washington policymakers.Recently, however, some of this euphoria has dissipated as bargain-basement oil and gas prices, the inevitable consequence of overproduction, have been <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176035/tomgram%3A_michael_klare,big_oil_in_retreat/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">eating</a> into corporate profits and forcing some over-exposed energy companies to declare bankruptcy.  Trump’s belief in the ability of petroleum to enhance America’s global clout has, however, clearly been unshaken.  “We’ve got underneath us more oil than anybody,” he declared in a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/13/politics/trump-transcript-air-force-one/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">conversation</a> with journalists aboard Air Force One on July 12th.  “And I want to use it.”Whatever the sources of his fascination with fossil fuels, six months into his presidency one thing is clear: he’s determined to spread the cult of American carbon internationally and this urge has already become a defining theme of his foreign policy, even if the mainstream media, despite its deluge of Trump-centered coverage, has hardly noticed.   A New American LegacyPrevious American presidents have sought fame through the promotion of freedom, democracy, and human rights abroad.  In fact, virtually every formal presidential expression of foreign policy in the post-Cold War era has ritualistically identified those values as America’s greatest exports (whatever values Washington was actually exporting). Not so for Donald Trump, however.  What he seeks to export are habit-forming, climate-altering hydrocarbons.It remains to be seen how successful his drive to spread the cult of carbon will be.  As time goes on and the effects of climate change intensify in a <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/heat-is-on-for-2017-21011" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">warming world</a>, more countries will undoubtedly begin to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/25/britain-to-ban-sale-of-all-diesel-and-petrol-cars-and-vans-from-2040" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">focus on</a> easing or even ending their reliance on fossil fuels and promoting carbon-free alternatives.  Market forces will play a crucial role in this process, since the price of renewable energy -- especially solar -- has been dropping quickly and is already, in certain circumstances, a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/for-cheapest-power-on-earth-look-skyward-as-coal-falls-to-solar" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">cheaper way</a> to go than using coal to generate electricity. Even if Trump’s fossil-fueled scheming doesn’t succeed in the long run, he will undoubtedly ensure that more greenhouse gases enter the planet’s atmosphere, meaning that temperatures will continue to climb and punishing droughts and heat waves will become ever more the new global norm. ...<div style="">
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</div><div style=""></div><div style=""><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-russia-lawyer-marc-kasowitz-alcohol-security-clearance">https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-russia-lawyer-marc-kasowitz-alcohol-security-clearance</a></div><div style="">
</div><div style=""></div><div style=""><a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trumps-disgraceful-behavior-during-comey-scandal-technique-he-learned-reality-tv">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trumps-disgraceful-behavior-during-comey-scandal-technique-he-learned-reality-tv</a></div><div style="">
</div><div style=""></div><div style="">lied resume</div><div style=""> Trump has tapped his family’s wedding planner to run the largest <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: top;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">HUDoffice in the United States. Lynne Patton has planned events for the Trump family since 2009, including the wedding of Lara and Eric Trump. She has also helped run the Eric Trump Foundation, which is now under investigation by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman over whether the charity took money intended to go to children with cancer and instead funneled it into the for-profit Trump Organization. Lynne Patton has no experience running public housing. On her LinkedIn page, she lied about having a degree from Yale University and Quinnipiac Law School. She’s been tapped to oversee the public housing for New York and New Jersey, which involves managing billions of dollars of federal money.</div><div style="">
</div><div style=""><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2017/6/16/headlines/trump_taps_his_familys_wedding_planner_to_run_largest_hud_office_in_us">https://www.democracynow.org/2017/6/16/headlines/trump_taps_his_familys_wedding_planner_to_run_largest_hud_office_in_us</a></div><div style="">
</div><div style=""></div><div style="">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09062017/five-shades-climate-denial-donald-trump-scott-pruitt-rex-tillerson-jobs-uncertainty-white-house</div><div style="">
</div><div style=""><div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Whether dismissing global warming as a hoax, questioning humanity's role in it, exaggerating the unknowns, playing down the urgency of action, or playing up the costs, President <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/donald-trump" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Donald Trump</a> and his team have served up every flavor of climate denial.Although the arguments varied—as if they were different shades or stages of denial—they all served the same purpose: to create an exaggerated sense of dispute in order to bolster a case against decisive climate action. The latest gambit is to avoid the subject entirely.In his announcement last week that he would pull the U.S. out of the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/paris-climate-agreement" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Paris climate agreement</a>, Trump didn't bother addressing temperature trends, carbon concentrations, sea level rise, extreme weather or changing wildlife and vegetation patterns, the kinds of climate change information that his administration has also been <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09052017/foia-donald-trump-interior-department-missing-climate-change-data-websites" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">scrubbing from government websites</a>. He certainly didn't talk about the 2-degree Celsius goal of the Paris accord or the carbon budget for keeping that goal within reach. Trump didn't even use the words "<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">climate change</a>."In Trump's retelling, the negotiators of the Paris deal were not grappling with a planetary crisis, but plotting against the United States. "The Paris Accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risk and put us at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world," he said.Environmental Protection Agency Administrator <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/scott-pruitt" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Scott Pruitt</a> said the question of climate science hadn't come up during the decision making. "All the discussions we've had for the past several weeks have been focused on one singular issue: Is this good or not for the country?" Pruitt  said.To help understand the arguments, we have developed a guide to what the science says about the five types of climate denial we've heard from Trump, his team, and their supporters, and how each served as a stepping stone on the path of a retreat from Paris.<h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">'It's Not Real'</h3>The deepest shade of denial—outright rejection of global warming—is embodied by Trump's infamous 2012 <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=en" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">tweet</a> that called global warming a Chinese plot to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. That same year, Sen. James Inhofe, the longtime climate denier and Oklahoma Republican who has been a mentor to Pruitt, released his climate change book, "The Greatest Hoax."<div class="media media-element-container media-image_full" style="box-sizing: inherit; width: 532.766px;"><figure id="file-268673" class="file file-image file-image-png" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 100%; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><img alt="Trump's infamous climate hoax tweet" title="Trump's infamous climate hoax tweet" height="288" width="628" class="media-element file-image-full" typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/styles/icn_full_wrap_wide/public/trump-tweet-china-hoax_1.png?itok=qro2e85M" style="box-sizing: inherit; border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%; display: block; width: 532.766px;" /></div></figure></div>To the hard-core unbelievers, climate scientists are conspirators in it for the grant money. They are not to be trusted, deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland suggested last month by giving Trump a print-out of a purported 1970s TIME magazine cover predicting a coming ice age. (The cover is an <a href="http://science.time.com/2013/06/06/sorry-a-time-magazine-cover-did-not-predict-a-coming-ice-age/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">internet fake</a> that has been circulating for years. It was cited last year by White House strategist <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16112016/steve-bannon-trump-white-house-climate-conspiracy" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Stephen Bannon</a> <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16112016/steve-bannon-trump-white-house-climate-conspiracy" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">in a radio interview</a>he did while running the conservative media outlet Breitbart.)Such extreme denial has become less politically palatable as global warming causes record heat and weather extremes, and <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/206030/global-warming-concern-three-decade-high.aspx" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">most Americans</a> believe it is happening. Opponents of climate action have reshaped their arguments, embracing the lighter shades of denial instead—for instance, acknowledging the observed temperature increase (the planet warmed by more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit from 1880 to 2012, and in 2016, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-noaa-data-show-2016-warmest-year-on-record-globally" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">the third record-breaking year in a row</a>, the temperature was 1.69 degrees higher than the 20th century average), but denying other integral points of the science. These include such basics as the scientific consensus that warming is caused by fossil-fuel burning, or that unabated emissions will have a profound effect on humans and the natural world.  "It could be they just don't know and it's not malevolent," said Michael Oppenheimer, atmospheric scientist at Princeton University. "Another possibility—more likely—is that there was a kind of decision made ... that they would look like fools if they didn't acknowledge global warming exists. But instead, they don't go too far in acknowledging a human role or that there is anything the government could or should do about it."<h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">'It's Not Our Fault,' and Other Lighter Shades</h3>Pruitt, the EPA administrator, has raised doubts about humanity's role in global warming, contradicting not only many decades of scientific research, but also his own EPA. So has Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke. Both agency heads have set a course to eliminate climate policy and rules that restrict fossil fuel development."The climate is changing and human activity impacts our changing climate in some manner," Pruitt said repeatedly during his confirmation process. When asked in a <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/09/epa-chief-scott-pruitt.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">CNBC interview </a>about carbon dioxide, Pruitt said, "I would not agree that it is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see."Zinke said during his confirmation process, "Climate has always changed."But in 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN's chief scientific advisers to climate treaty negotiators, said there was "<a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/climate-changes-1995/ipcc-2nd-assessment/2nd-assessment-en.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">a discernible human influence</a>" on the global climate. Since then, the consensus has become even more robust—not only from direct measurements of CO2 and temperatures from land and satellite instruments, but from studies of oceans, ice cores and tree rings."Human influence on the climate system is clear," <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WGIAR5_SPM_brochure_en.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">the IPCC said in its most recent assessment, in 2013</a>. "It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together."What about the notion that the planet has always warmed? The rising temperatures, rising sea levels and diminishing snow and ice that Earth has experienced since the 1950s are "unprecedented over decades to millennia," the IPCC has said.<div class="media media-element-container media-image_full" style="box-sizing: inherit; width: 532.766px;"><figure id="file-268669" class="file file-image file-image-png" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 100%; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit;">[graphic]</div></figure></div>From a policy standpoint, denying humanity's dominant role in warming has the same inherent "do nothing" prescription as denying warming exists at all.Stephen Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Bristol in England who has studied efforts to sow doubt on climate science, said go-slow rhetoric has gained credibility because of the contrast with Trump's "hoax" Tweet or other deeper shades of denial."[Tillerson] comes across as very responsible because he's not accusing scientists of cooking up a one-world government," Lewandowsky said. "People breathe a sigh of relief—'He's not crazy'—but people don't follow through to see what he's saying is complete nonsense."<h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">The Science Is Just Too Uncertain. Really?</h3>"The increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are having an effect," Secretary of State <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/rex-tillerson" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Rex Tillerson</a> said during his confirmation hearing. "Our ability to predict that effect is very limited."The long-invoked scientific uncertainty argument exploded once again into the public sphere when The New York Times' new conservative columnist Bret Stephens launched <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/climate-of-complete-certainty.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">his column</a> with a broad swipe at climate scientists and activists for "claiming total certainty about the science."Stephens characterized the observed temperature increase so far as "modest" (even though the IPCC called it "unprecedented in decades to millennia"), and asserted that this warming was the only indisputable fact in climate science (ignoring other observed changes that don't rely on models, like ocean acidification, movement of species, and the atmospheric carbon concentration.)After Trump's Paris announcement, when Pruitt was asked about his own views on the science, he cited Stephens' column as a reflection of his view: that the science is uncertain and should be debated further. "People have called me a climate skeptic or a climate denier," Pruitt said. "I don't even know what it means to deny the climate. I would say that there are climate exaggerators."But contrary to Stephens' argument, the IPCC does acknowledge uncertainties. That's why it presents a range of estimates for past warming and also several scenarios for the path of future warming based on unknowns, scores of climate scientists wrote in an <a href="https://www.climatefactsfirst.org/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">open letter</a> in response to the column."Stephens suggests that risk management should only be guided by the possibility that warming and its impacts could be less than the best estimate, and not the possibility that it could be more," they said.Advocates of climate action say that by relentlessly invoking uncertainty, fossil fuel producers have kept the U.S. policy debate stuck on purported unknowns—<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">long past the time when enough was known</a> about global warming to compel national and international action. In fact, studies have shown that scientists have been far more often <a href="http://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/sociology_pubs/25/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">conservative in their projections</a> on climate change impacts rather than alarmist—particularly IPCC assessments of the physical science, which go through several <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/ipcc-backgrounder.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">stages of outside review,</a> including by industry experts and governments.Scientists are almost weekly making new discoveries about climate change and its impacts that bear this out—in recent months, researchers have expressed surprise about <a href="https://phys.org/news/2016-12-scientists-arctic-prone-storms.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">how dramatically weather patterns have changed</a> in the Arctic, on the potential for a <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/potential-collapse-key-atlantic-current-21024" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">slowdown or stalling</a> of the Atlantic Ocean current in response to warming, and by the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-weather-climatechange-science-idUSKCN1061RH" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">rate of temperature increase</a> in the past three record warm years. "There is a peer-reviewed <a href="https://www.wur.nl/upload_mm/2/0/b/f2601035-3fa4-41cb-b0f5-77de713695fc_erring.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">study</a> by @NaomiOreskes that shows climate scientists are biased; yes, we tend to UNDERESTIMATE climate impacts," Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, wrote in a <a href="https://twitter.com/KHayhoe/status/804444575645347840" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">recent tweet</a>.<h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">Urgency, Shmurgency</h3>One key element of climate science overlooked—or ignored—by all of the deniers, no matter their shade of denial, is the urgency of taking action. The IPCC in its last assessment of the science used the concept of a "<a href="http://www.wri.org/ipcc-infographics" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">carbon budget</a>" to explain that there is a finite amount of carbon dioxide emissions that can be added to the atmosphere if civilization wants to limit the global temperature rise to much less than 2 degrees Celsius and <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20140213/climate-change-science-carbon-budget-nature-global-warming-2-degrees-bill-mckibben-fossil-fuels-keystone-xl-oil" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">avoid the worst impacts</a> of climate change.If emissions continue at their current rate, the world is on track to blow this budget in 30 years. To avoid a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the more conservative course that governments agreed should be their ambition, the carbon budget will be spent in <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-only-five-years-left-before-one-point-five-c-budget-is-blown" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">five years,</a> according to at least one analysis.A study in <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7533/full/nature14016.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Nature</a> last year calculated that, globally, a third of oil reserves, half of natural gas reserves and 80 percent of current coal reserves need to remain in the ground to have even a 50-50 chance of limiting warming to relatively safe levels.<h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">What About Jobs?</h3>Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center, thinks he has a unique insight into climate denial.He spent 23 years at the libertarian Cato Institute arguing against climate action, but he had a change of heart after more deeply studying the science and now argues in favor of a carbon tax. "Scott Pruitt—when he says the science isn't settled, well, some of the science is reasonably settled. And of course, strictly speaking, scientists would tell you no science is ever settled, so what the heck does this exactly mean? He's implying something that isn't true."Taylor said those who say acting on climate will be too costly ignore the costs of not acting, and they overlook the fact that policies can address the economic burdens of higher fossil fuel costs.Trump cited <a href="http://accf.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/170316-NERA-ACCF-Full-Report.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">a study sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce</a> to make his case that the Paris treaty would cost the U.S. economy billions. But the study's assumptions—or example, that there would be no increase in renewable energy to replace coal—are extremely pessimistic.Numerous other studies have found that dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions will yield economic benefits in the form of new jobs in clean energy and related infrastructure, reduced health costs, reduced dependence on foreign oil, and avoided damage from sea level rise, drought, and other climate change impacts. Last month, an analysis by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development concluded that the  world's major economies could <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24052017/economic-growth-climate-change-policies-oecd-donald-trump" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">boost their long-term economic growth</a> by 2.8 percent to 5 percent with policies that lower greenhouse gas emissions and boost resilience to climate change. Failure to act, on the other hand, will result in a loss of jobs and economic output in the long run, the study said."Reducing greenhouse gas emissions does indeed impose a price," Taylor said. "But the price is very modest. And the price of ignoring warming is far greater. So costs will come. The only issue is, do we want them to be modest, or do we want them to be large with a not insubstantial risk of them being catastrophic?"</div></div></div></div><div class="tagged-with" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><label style="box-sizing: inherit; display: block; line-height: 1.2;">PUBLISHED UNDER:</label><div class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/denial" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">CLIMATE DENIAL</a></div> <div class="field-item odd" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/politics" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">POLITICS</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/donald-trump" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">DONALD TRUMP</a></div> <div class="field-item odd" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/scott-pruitt" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">SCOTT PRUITT</a></div> <div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/rick-perry" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">RICK PERRY</a></div> <div class="field-item odd" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">CLIMATE CHANGE</a></div><div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/paris-climate-agreement" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT</a></div></div></div></div></div><div style=""></div><div style="">several art'ls on withdraw from int'l ledership:</div><div style=""><a href="http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-new-world-order-global-alliance-oil-and-gas-producers-and-hell-our-allies-green">
</a></div><div style=""><a href="http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-new-world-order-global-alliance-oil-and-gas-producers-and-hell-our-allies-green">http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-new-world-order-global-alliance-oil-and-gas-producers-and-hell-our-allies-green</a></div><div style="">
</div><div style="">=</div><div style=""><div style="">=</div><div style=""><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/06/12/qatari-crisis-shows-grave-implications-trump-s-twitter-account/216873">https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/06/12/qatari-crisis-shows-grave-implications-trump-s-twitter-account/216873</a></div><div style="">
</div><div style="">President Donald Trump’s staffers have excoriated the media for covering the president’s tweets and for questioning his use of the platform, claiming that "it's social media," not official government policy. However, the Qatari government’s bewildered reaction to Trump’s tweets criticizing the Persian Gulf state over terrorism financing, followed by the president contradicting his secretary of state’s call to ease a recent blockade against Qatar by other Arab nations, demonstrates that journalists should ignore White House staffers’ admonishments and treat Trump's social media comments as presidential statements.On June 5, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka made television appearances where they <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2017/06/05/trump-advisers-try-downplay-trump-tweets-pushing-muslim-ban-because-its-social-media/216780" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">lectured journalists about their coverage of the president’s tweets</a>. When hosts on NBC’s Today and CNN’s New Day asked Trump’s staffers about tweets he had sent earlier that morning, they derided the hosts for their, as Conway put it, “obsession with covering everything [Trump] says on Twitter.” Gorka also repeatedly told his interviewer that the interviewer was “obsessed” with Trump’s tweets and tried arguing that “a hundred characters is not policy. … It’s not policy. It’s social media.”Enter <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/05/saudi-arabia-and-bahrain-break-diplomatic-ties-with-qatar-over-terrorism" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">the sudden diplomatic crisis</a> between Qatar, which hosts <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/05/middleeast/qatar-us-largest-base-in-mideast/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">America’s largest military base</a> in the region, and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Several Arab nations cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and cut off access routes to its territory <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/05/saudi-arabia-and-bahrain-break-diplomatic-ties-with-qatar-over-terrorism" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">because of the nation’s supposed support for radical Islamist groups</a>. Trump reacted to the volatile situation by posting a series of tweets <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/middleeast/trump-qatar-saudi-arabia.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">taking credit</a> for the move to isolate Qatar -- while also explaining why he uses social media to communicate:</div><div style="">
</div><div style=""></div><div style="">AN Paris:</div><div style=""> Trump’s decision to <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/donald-trump-exit-paris-agreement-21500" style="text-decoration-line: none;">withdraw from the Paris climate agreement</a> provides no clear benefits to American workers or industries. His announcement on Thursday merely hands a symbolic victory to his political base — nationalists who resent internationalism and global cooperation.During a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/01/statement-president-trump-paris-climate-accord" style="text-decoration-line: none;">28-minute speech</a> announcing that the U.S. — which has released more climate pollution than any other country — “will withdraw from the Paris climate accord,” or try to renegotiate it, Trump said the move would put America first.“The Paris Agreement handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country’s expense,” Trump said. “They don’t put America first. I do, and I always will.”For a president who cherishes victories but has suffered political and legal setbacks in his attempts to build a border wall and ban Muslims from traveling to the U.S., withdrawing from the Paris agreement offered an easy win, and one that’s unlikely to be hampered by lawmakers or the courts.“It’s one of the few things that he’s able to do,” said <a href="https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/ccoglian/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Cary Coglianese</a>, a professor of law and political science at Penn Law. “For Trump supporters it looks like he’s delivering on a campaign promise — it looks like he’s standing up for Americans against the rest of the world.”Trump announced his intended withdrawal to polite applause amid the pageantry of the White House’s rose garden — fitting pomp given that the announcement was largely symbolic.Under the terms of the Paris agreement, Trump could not pull the U.S. out of it until around the time of the 2020 election. He needs to provide only <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/trump-could-abandon-paris-climate-agreement-20711" style="text-decoration-line: none;">one year’s formal notice</a> beforehand. A future president could rejoin.“A lot of the rhetoric in his speech was us against them,” Coglianese said. “There’s an insularity and a shortsightedness of a segment of the American public that’s unable to see that, actually, America can win when we can have expanded global markets and have leadership on vital issues.”Trump’s announcement came days after he held meetings abroad that raised tensions with European leaders and longtime allies, prompting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/28/world/europe/angela-merkel-trump-alliances-g7-leaders.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">warn her citizens</a> that “the times in which we could rely fully on others — they are somewhat over.”After it was reported that Trump was preparing to pull out of the pact, <a href="https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/bette-grande" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Bette Grande</a>, a researcher at the Heartland Institute, which opposes efforts to protect the climate, <a href="https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/press-release-heartland-institute-experts-react-to-reports-president-trump-will-pull-us-out-of-paris-climate-treaty" style="text-decoration-line: none;">said in a supportive statement</a> that “globalism would take a big hit” from the move. “Angela Merkel and what is left of the E.U. are not happy (itself a victory).”Indeed, condemnation from abroad was swift and united on Thursday, with France, Germany and Italy <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-eu-idUSKBN18S6GN" style="text-decoration-line: none;">issuing a joint statement</a> rejecting his bid to renegotiate the pact. The European Union and China <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/31/china-eu-climate-lead-paris-agreement" style="text-decoration-line: none;">plan to issue a joint statement</a> supporting climate action....<div style="">
</div><div style="">=</div><div style=""><a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-white-house-orders-federal-agencies-blow-requests-info-all-democrats">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-white-house-orders-federal-agencies-blow-requests-info-all-democrat</a>s</div><div style=""></div><div style="">The White House released its budget request for the 2018 fiscal year on Tuesday, the Trump administration made good on its promise to target deep cuts to federal spending on climate, energy, science, research and other programs widely seen as critical to America’s ability to adapt to a warming world and reduce its impact on the climate.White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters Tuesday that the government has been spending too much money on climate change and Trump’s <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BUDGET-2018-APP/pdf/BUDGET-2018-APP.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">proposed budget</a> intentionally rebukes the Obama administration’s support for federally funded climate research.“We want to do some climate science, but we're not going to do some of the crazy stuff the previous administration did,” Mulvaney said.Trump, who has called climate change <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/trump-could-abandon-paris-climate-agreement-20711" style="text-decoration-line: none;">a hoax</a>, has strenuously objected to the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas emissions regulations created by the Obama administration. His budget reflects his vow to hamstring the EPA’s ability to control and monitor climate pollution by cutting its budget by about 30 percent — more than any other agency.The $4 trillion budget proposes massive tax cuts for the rich and major corporations while boosting defense spending and it attempts to pay for both with cuts to nearly everything else. The budget eviscerates Medicaid and other social safety net programs, eliminates federal arts support and slashes environmental programs that are unpopular with the administration and its supporters.*
Congressional hearings on the budget <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/long-budget-process-impact-climate-change-21464" style="text-decoration-line: none;">begin this week</a>, and deliberations in the House and Senate are expected to last into the summer. If the process is not completed by September, lawmakers can pass continuing resolutions to keep the government operating into the next fiscal year, which begins in October. If no agreement is reached, the government will shut down.Other big proposed cuts to federal climate, environment and energy programs that were outlined in the administration’s <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/trump-wants-to-zero-out-epa-programs-21212" style="text-decoration-line: none;">“skinny” budget</a> in March are largely intact in the final version. Compared to <a href="http://democrats.appropriations.house.gov/sites/democrats.appropriations.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_uploaded/FY17%20Omnibus%20Summary%205-1-17.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">2017 levels</a> approved by Congress in May, the budget calls for a 9 percent funding cut for the Department of Energy and a nearly 7 percent cut for the Department of Interior. NASA saw a cut of about 3 percent, including 8.7 percent from its earth science programs, and the National Science Foundation saw an 11 percent cut, according to the American Geophysical Union.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the government’s key climate science and meteorological agencies, is targeted for a 16 percent cut. NOAA’s climate research program received a 19 percent cut, according to AGU.The U.S. Geological Survey’s <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/science/mission-areas/climate-and-land-use-change" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Climate and Land Use Change</a> program, now known as the “Land Resources” program, is targeted for a 24 percent cut, and the agency, part of the Interior Department, is proposed to receive a 15 percent cut overall.The cuts to NSF and USGS were particularly surprisingly large because their budgets have mostly stayed flat and haven’t been part of the more rancorous policy discussions, said AGU public affairs director Lexi Shultz.The budget calls for numerous programs to be killed entirely, including the the EPA’s Energy Star Program energy efficiency program and the DOE’s National Sea Grant College Program. The Energy Star Program certifies consumer electronic goods and buildings for energy efficiency. And the National Sea Grant College program pays for university-based efforts to shore up coastal economies and communities against the ravages of climate change and extreme weather.The Trump administration is calling for the elimination of four DOE energy research and development programs, including those focusing on energy efficiency, renewables, nuclear, and electric power grid modernization. Also targeted is the DOE’s Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy, which supports research for cutting-edge clean energy technology. Its tasks can be best handled by the private sector, <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BUDGET-2018-MSV/pdf/BUDGET-2018-MSV.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the administration said</a>.Five climate-related NASA satellite missions are also targeted for elimination. The missions help scientists learn more about the earth’s climate system and how global warming is changing it. They also monitor the health of the nation’s coasts and provided early warnings of drought stress in crops.Deeply unpopular with scientists, the budget is now in the hands of Congress, which is broadly expected to give the White House few of the cuts it is asking for. Congress <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-energy-program-budget-repreive-21412" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ignored Trump’s call </a>for deep cuts in federal programs when it passed a budget for the last five months of the 2017 fiscal year in early May, funding the government largely at 2016 levels.“If the White House budget plan were to become law, it would devastate America’s science and technology enterprise,” <a href="https://www.aaas.org/person/rush-d-holt" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Rush Holt</a>, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a former New Jersey congressman, told reporters Tuesday. “The White House does not make appropriations. It is Congress that makes appropriations. Congress has made it clear that they do not buy into this really harsh and abrupt approach to science funding.”Shultz said Congress has pushed back against Trump’s previous budget proposal and it’s likely Congress will do so again.If the cuts in the skinny budget had made it into law, they “would’ve really decimated the federal sciences,” and not just what the agencies do themselves, but in academia as well “because that’s where the grants come from,” Shultz, said.<a href="https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/20930/antonio-busalacchi-named-president-of-university-corporation-for-atmospheric" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Antonio Busalacchi</a>, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, said UCAR is concerned that the proposed budget cuts for federal earth systems science programs will undermine scientific progress needed to protect the U.S. from natural disasters.“This would have serious repercussions for the U.S. economy and national security, and for the ability to protect life and property,” he said.<a href="https://www.ghgpolicy.org/about/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Danny Cullenward</a>, an energy economist at Stanford University, said the proposed budget is an attack on the integrity of both U.S. environmental protection and the nation’s leadership in energy innovation.“The proposed budget includes massive cuts to national environmental remediation programs, earth sciences, and basic energy research,” he said. “At a time when advanced science and technology is so important to solving our national challenges, this budget would force the United States’ smartest researchers out of public interest science.”</div><div style=""></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>