webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

OBAMA 3 post

TARGET EPSTEIN DEEP STATE BS TRAITOR TULSI 7 25

merri ok

see demonization; all problems in trump 2 caused by dems

{818 bak margins}:

---

vs terrorist chalk snowflake scotus

https://www.alternet.org/man-weapons-j6-obama-home/

---

UFC 250 MICHELLE A MAN

-=-=

-=-=

RWW 8 26

Erwin Lutzer claims that former President Barack Obama's statement about "fundamentally transforming" the nation was a sign that he was "beginning the process toward a more socialist America."

-=-=

---

ALSO ATTACK OBAMA RE IRAN NUKE

AN 6 26

President Donald Trump has put another Democrat in his sights by threatening legal action over political differences — and this time, his arguments are particularly ridiculous.

“Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and made clear that he was unimpressed,” wrote MS NOW political analyst Steve Benen on Tuesday. “Indeed, the Rhode Island senator made clear that the U.S.’ interests were far better served by the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA], which Donald Trump abandoned in 2017.” Reed specifically pointed out that President Barack Obama’s plan forced Iran to have so little uranium that it would take them 12 months to assemble one, whereas they will only need one week under Trump’s deal.

“We are negotiating against a country which its leadership has been eliminated. Now we have even more fanatical leadership who has much more invested and much more to leverage their position,” Reed continued. “Abandoning the JCPOA was a bad mistake by the president.”

Trump replied to Reed by calling for his impeachment, arguing that the “Dumocrat” had “lied when stating the the [sic] Deal we just made is not as good as the Obama disaster known as the JCPOA. Reed is either an outright fraud, or incompetent.” After describing Obama as “Obuma,” Trump responded, “Impeach Jack Reed!”

As Benen pointed out, Trump’s missive against Reed is ridiculous for three reasons.

“First, the idea that a U.S. official should be impeached for arguing one policy is preferable to another policy is ridiculous, even by 2026 standards,” Benen wrote. “Second, Trump keeps calling for members of Congress to be impeached despite the inconvenient fact that, at least in this country, members of Congress cannot be impeached.” This is particularly striking because Trump has been president for six years and has had abundant time to understand these political rules.

“But perhaps most important is why the president responded so furiously to Reed’s comments in the first place,” Bene concluded. “The senator was letting Fox News viewers in on a secret that Trump desperately wants to deny: The Obama-era deal with Iran was a generational success story, which Trump abandoned for reasons he has struggled to explain and which created the very problems Trump’s war set out to solve.”

Trump has used his presidential powers to politically target a number of perceived Democratic opponents including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, California Sen. Adam Schiff, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Yet Trump’s targeting of Reed stands out for another reason: Even many conservatives have accused Trump of coming up with a bad Iran deal.

“There’s no denying that Mr. Trump is retreating from his main goals as political pressure has built at home,” The Wall Street Journal wrote on Tuesday. “While he has attempted to portray the deal as “peace in our time,” most recognize it for what it is: “a strategic retreat short of achieving his war aims.” They added that he has essentially abandoned his objective of stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, ignores that Iran is still charging ships for passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

---

---

AN 5 26

On Thursday, a seemingly innocuous social media post by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney touched off an unexpected MAGA meltdown. “Welcome back to Canada, President [Barack Obama]” Carney tweeted along with a video showing the former president’s arrival in Toronto. While Obama was visiting Canada to deliver a keynote speech to a think tank, the followers of President Donald Trump decided there was something more nefarious going on, accusing him of breaking federal laws.

“Why is Barack Hussein Obama meeting with world leaders while President Trump is in office?” posted far-right influencer and prominent Trump ally Laura Loomer. “This is a coup.”

She and others, like conservative influencer Nick Sortor, proceeded to suggest that Obama should face consequences for allegedly violating the Logan Act, which, as the Daily Beast reports, “prohibits private citizens from engaging in unauthorized negotiations with foreign governments.”

“Obama needs to sit down and figure out his freaking place before his a-ss ends up in prison for violating the Logan Act,” Sortor declared. “Trump is our President. You’ve been sidelined, Hussein.”

Numerous comments on and re-shares of Carney’s original post expressed similarly accusatory sentiments, with more than a few bringing back Trump’s old tagline, “Lock him up!”

Others took issue with Carney referring to Obama as the “president.”

“It’s FORMER President zero,” said one commenter. “If he’s claiming to act on behalf of the American people in your ‘talks,’ he’s in violation of the Logan Act.”

“[Mark Carney] so do you mean Barack Obama is still president since you just called him President Barack Obama?” said another. “This should worry the U.S. a little.”

There are several problems with all this MAGA outrage. First, it is common practice for former commanders-in-chief to be referred to as “president.” Second, Obama wasn’t in Canada to negotiate anything, and former presidents frequently deliver keynote speeches and other addresses to organizations around the world.

But third, these angry MAGA followers ignore the fact that Trump himself met with foreign leaders during the Biden administration. In July 2024, he met with then-Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Then that October, it was revealed that Trump had held a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Later that month, Trump held a similar phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

---

trump post ape video michelle 2 26

---

taibbi

Fox News

Obama now 'squarely in Russiagate crosshairs,' journalist Matt Taibbi claims

DNI Tulsi Gabbard's documents place Obama 'squarely' in the crosshairs of Russiagate, according to journalist Matt Taibbi's reporting on...

.

Jul 21, 2025](https://www.foxnews.com/media/obama-now-squarely-russiagate-crosshairs-journalist-matt-taibbi-claims)

---

AN 1 26

President Donald Trump was up early Thursday morning for a Truth Social posting spree that focused largely on his 2020 election loss — but included a dash of claims about 2016's "Russiagate."

The rant included a nearly decade-long conspiracy that Trump was spied on by former President Barack Obama. Trump reposted Fox News commentary from far-right host Jesse Watters who claimed Obama personally ordered a CIA spying operation on Trump.

"ARREST OBAMA NOW," one post read.

According to the "Truths," the Obama administration manufactured evidence to undermine Trump's election in 2016, though none of the information about the Trump campaign's ties to Russia was revealed publicly until after the election. Other reports about the Russian hack of Hillary Clinton's campaign, Russian bots and content farms were reported throughout 2016, a Washington Post timeline shows.

Trump on Thursday morning also posted a series of "Truths" showing he's still focused on his 2020 election loss.

Among the posts was a flood of accusations claiming that the election was "crooked."

Trump appeared to post screenshots of random users from X who agree with his sentiment that he actually won the 2020 election.

Another video Trump posted from CNN appears to show a discussion about Trump winning Georgia in 2024, though Trump doesn't explain how that is relevant to his 2020 conspiracy theories about the election.

Trump also shared another conspiracy cited by former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly about the Chinese government funding leftist groups and the Minnesota Immigration Rights Action Committee.

---

---

VID RWW

10/01/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Newt Gingrich claims that "Obama was a major factor in creating a much more racist and much more dangerous America."

Newt Gingrich Says Barack Obama Created A 'Much More Racist' America | People For

---

mma

  1. ### Fox & Friends co-host on Barack Obama calling Zohran Mamdani: “Is Obama going back to his Bill Ayers ways of thinking?”

08/15/25

HE IS DISPLACED BY HILLARY AND SOROS

SEE TRAITOR BS 7 25

NY Times reported John Durham found the “Clinton Plan” emails were likely created by Russian spies. Right-wing media are running with them as legitimate.

Figures have suggested Clinton should be “behind bars,” argued the debunked scandal will “make Watergate look like a jaywalking ticket,” and likened it to a “soft coup attempt” and “treason”

Written by Noah Dowe, Pete Tsipis & Lis Power

:{Published 08/01/25

The right-wing media ecosystem has exploded with false claims about a newly-declassified annex to special counsel John Durham’s report on Russian collusion with Trump’s 2016 campaign. Right-wing media are claiming that the annex provides evidence of a “plot” by the Clinton campaign to undermine then-candidate Donald Trump. However, the newly-declassified assessment found that the documents in question were “not credible” and “likely made by Russian spies.”

Conservative media figures have ignored this assessment, instead calling for Hillary Clinton to be put “behind bars” for coordinating a “soft coup attempt.” And although they previously heralded Durham’s efforts, some in right-wing media are now arguing he “failed the American people.”

Citation

Fox News

Citation

Fox Business

Citation

Fox News

//

  1. ### Fox News has mentioned Obama over 3 times more than Epstein since Tulsi Gabbard released her report

07/23/25 4:07 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News since Monday: 85 minutes talking about Sydney Sweeney, 3 minutes talking about Epstein

07/31/25 2:12 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox News has aired 168 segments about Tulsi Gabbard's revisionist claims regarding Russia, Obama, and the 2016 election

07/30/25

---

---

MMA

Right-wing media use Tulsi Gabbard's flimsy memo to call for imprisoning Obama

The right-wing media efforts to implicate Obama come as Trump tries to deflect from the Epstein files

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Chloe Simon

Published 07/23/25

As the MAGA world continues to rail against the Trump administration over the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a report suggesting former President Barack Obama pressured national intelligence agencies to fabricate or exaggerate Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 election in favor of President Donald Trump.

Right-wing media have reacted to the story — which Trump has seized on as he tries to distract from the Epstein chaos — by demanding or predicting that Obama be charged for “treason” and “seditious conspiracy” in a “military tribunal” or accusing him of orchestrating “a three-year project to overturn the will of the American people and to destroy an administration.”

Tulsi Gabbard suggested Obama pressured intelligence agencies to fabricate or dramatize Russian influence operations in the 2016 election

Trump seized on Gabbard’s claims in an apparent effort to detract from the Epstein files}:

PROJECTION

---

oddly target on epstein deflection?

mma

Trump’s latest attempt to defuse the Epstein revolt: Point supporters at common enemies

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 07/21/25

President Donald Trump is seeking to reunify allies enraged by his administration’s repudiation of MAGA claims about late convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein by offering up spurious attacks on common and familiar enemies: the media — in this case Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal — and former President Barack Obama.

Trump brought together an ideologically diverse coalition and a fractured right-wing media ecosystem during his 2024 campaign based largely on their shared hatred for Democrats, liberal institutions like the press, and the left. His administration’s actions have at times sparked criticism from different factions over the handling of issues like the Russia-Ukraine war, tariffs, U.S. strikes on Iran,immigration enforcement, and, most of all, disclosures in the Epstein case.

The president spent last week failing to tamp down discussion of the Epstein story that seemed to be fracturing the MAGA movement. He tried claiming that his political enemies had “written” the “Epstein Files,” argued that the Epstein case is “pretty boring stuff,” and even lashed out at supporters who talk about it as “weaklings” and “stupid people.” But while the propagandists at Fox News were willing to play ball, Trump’s statements backfired elsewhere, leaving many right-wing media figures and the base alike in a state of revolt.

On Thursday, however, The Wall Street Journal reported that a “bawdy” letter bearing Trump’s signature had been included in an album created for Epstein’s 50th birthday (before allegations of his sexual abuse of girls became publicly known). The document, according to the Journal, had been reviewed by Justice Department officials who handled Epstein’s case.

The Journal report could have focused the right’s attention on Trump’s voluminous ties to Epstein. But Trump redirected them at a familiar target: journalists. responded that night by calling the letter “FAKE,” denouncing the paper, and claiming that he would sue. The following day, he followed through with a defamation lawsuit seeking $10 billion in damages from the two authors of the article; the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones & Co.; parent company News Corp and that company’s CEO; and Murdoch himself.

Trump’s lawsuit is both unprecedented and consistent with Trump’s authoritarian treatment of a free press whose criticism he seeks to curtail through corrupt means. The message it sends is straightforward: If you publish reporting that displeases the president — even if, like Murdoch, your support was crucial to his political ascension — he may try to ruin you, so don’t try it.

While the Journal’s corporate cousins at Fox News mostly avoided the story on Friday, the network’s competitors throughout the fractured marketplace of right-wing media responded by sharpening their knives and attacking the paper. Laura Loomer deemed the Journal story “totally fake,” Charlie Kirk accused the Journal of a “terrible drive-by,” and Benny Johnson claimed that the real “scandal is in who wrote the story,” referencing a baroque conspiracy theory that was circulating on the right at the time.

The same day Trump’s lawyers filed their suit, former Fox contributor and current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard offered even more grist for the right-wing media mill. In a story served up to Fox as an exclusive, Gabbard claimed to have uncovered documents proving “a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government” which aimed “to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup.” She suggested that figures including Obama “must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” and said she was referring the documents to the Justice Department. Leaving nothing to subtext, Trump subsequently posted to Truth Social an AI video featuring Obama beng arrested and imprisoned.

Those documents, however, demonstrate nothing other than Gabbard’s own ignorance and/or malice. They show that Obama received an intelligence report that Russia had not hacked election systems to change vote totals in the 2016 election — which is consistent with what the Obama administration said publicly at the time — then asked for and subsequently received another intelligence report detailing other actions taken by the Russian government in an effort to influence the election. That effort, according to the intelligence community, the Justice Department, and a Senate committee helmed at the time by current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, included hacking and releasing Democratic emails.

Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy, in a withering piece at National Review, described Gabbard’s argument as a “frivolous” attempt to further Trump’s “foolish stance” that Russia had not tried to influence the 2016 election via “overwrought and misleading” language and “thundering claptrap.”

But her attacks served to reignite years of conspiracy-mongering about the Russia “witch hunt,” and thus were credibly regurgitated elsewhere on the right, including by Fox’s stars, with some echoing Gabbard’s demagogic language about purported “treason.” Trump, meanwhile, repeatedly posted Fox clips and articles from right-wing media hyping the purported scandal.

Much of MAGA media seems eager to target the Journal and Obama on Trump’s behalf. But it remains to be seen whether those influencers — or their audience — will be willing to allow the Epstein story to fade away altogether.

That said, Trump’s best hope of keeping his supporters happy may very well be increasing the scale and tempo of his authoritarian attacks — and that means there will be more to come in the months ahead.

---

pol op BS

an 4 25

Republican political consultant Keith Naughton said in an article published in The HillThursday that President Donald Trump was elected by "disaffected Obama voters."

The author said it was hard to determine what the former president is really thinking, adding that he is "tightly controlled as ever" and only sits for "sycophantic interviews."

"He seldom reveals anything of real interest. But his actions point to a man out of touch and befogged by his own delusions of genius," Naughton said.

He acknowledged that Obama enjoys higher ratings compared to other former president, but added that this popularity is "little more than nostalgic." The author went on to say that the former president has "lost his political touch" and needs to quit politics.

ALSO READ:**'What are we doing here?' Democratic 'malpractice' as Whitmer declares 'I do agree' with Trump**

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

"The nation’s politics has moved on. It is past time for Obama to pack his bags and leave town," he wrote.

"When you compare the 2012 and 2016 exit polls and county-by-county results, what stands out are defection and disaffection — defection of Obama voters to Trump and disaffection toward Obama’s chosen successor, Hillary Clinton," Naughton noted.

He added that Obama is no longer popular even among the “youth vote" that once backed him. "Well, those 18-29s in 2012 are now 30-44. That age cohort went from Obama at plus-13 points in 2012 to Kamala Harrisat a mere plus-4 points. In other words, Trump jumped by 9 to 10 points with Obama’s 'special friends'," the GOP consultant wrote.

Naughton further said Harris was the prohibitive favorite to be the next nominee ever since she was elected vice president. "The idea that any VP could be passed over — much less the first black woman to serve as VP — was crazy. Only if Harris was going to meekly accept the lofty judgement of Obama would that work, and why would she do that?"

ALSO READ:**One party’s selling a big lie — and the other can’t sell the truth**

He quoted Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen who revealed in their new book that Obama was thinking the 2024 Democratic ticket should be Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). "He seemed to think that these little-experienced, unfamiliar pols were going to blitz Harris and grab the nomination," Naughton said.

"The fact that the mediocre Harris easily sunk this buffoonish plan shows how truly weak it was."

ALSO READ:**Trump, dementia and the duty to warn**

---

WTF?

April 9, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): We didn't want to kill Barack Obama, we just didn't think he was legally qualified to be president because of where he was born. And then Hillary, we didn't want to kill, we were just so afraid of her, we thought she'd kill us first.

But we do this in other countries. The CIA literally uses the same exact propaganda to stir up cultures in other countries to topple dictatorships we don't like. Now, we're doing it in our own country, and it's like almost working.

---

Charlie Kirk tells men not to listen to “Barack Hussein Obama”: “No real man can or should vote for Kamala Harris. She hates you.”

10/11/24

===

great speech at DNC

August 21, 2024 rww

* After the Obamas spoke at the Democratic National Convention last night, white nationalist Nick Fuentes unleashed a ten minute rant about how much he hates them and their “uppity” ways: “I’m so sick of that attitude we get. They’re so proud, so uppity.”

wingnuttery

an 3 24 note phobes

more eyebrow-raising details are emerging about Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee in North Carolina's K-12 school superintendent race.

According to a recent report by Media Matters for America (MMFA), Morrow has touted her past work for the political action committee (PAC) Liberty First Grassroots, which is a far-right advocacy group that's embraced numerous conspiracy theories. Some of the group's most spurious claims are that school shootings are "false flag" attacks staged by the US government, that the US government secretly played a role in the orchestration of the 9/11 terror attacks, that wealthy celebrities drink the blood of children and that former President Barack Obama is a grandson of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler through his mother.

The PAC — whom Morrow used to work for as a spokesperson — has given Morrow a "100%" endorsement, calling her "the light on the hill."

READ MORE:GOP nominee for NC public schools chief endorsed 'pay per view' execution of Obama: report

MMFA also found documented examples of Liberty First Grassroots PAC endorsing other fringe conspiracy theories like QAnon, Pizzagate (in which a Washington, DC pizzeria was accused of running a child sex trafficking ring out of its nonexistent basement), that Obama was "a political science project by psychopaths" with a "Hitler blood line" and even the belief that public schools are part of a "plan set up by the Illuminati to mold the brains of our children." The group has also endorsed the chemtrails/contrails conspiracy theory, as well as the conspiracy that Obama is secretly a member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

"[Morrow] has been involved with LFG for years and has served as the group’s spokesperson. A 2021 LFG statement described her as 'a long time Conservative Activist Team member' and someone who has been 'quoted by the media many times,'" MMFA's Payton Armstrong and Eric Hananoki wrote. "Morrow has credited LFG with being an integral part of her political journey, telling an interviewer that she first connected with the group surrounding the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, who became a Supreme Court justice in 2017."

In one social media post from 2019, Liberty First Grassroots wrote that LGBTQ marriage was part of the "New World Order" conspiracy, whose adherents believe that "a shadowy elite force is trying to implement a totalitarian world government."

"This is where we are headed... if we let the Left continue," the group wrote on Facebook, sharing an image of a book whose author predicted that the state would raise children instead of parents and that practitioners of all religions would be imprisoned.

---

spoke at dnc

  1. ### On Newsmax, Rick Santorum claims Barack Obama “reinstilled racism in this country by his behavior”

08/21/24

  1. ### Newsmax host falsely claims Michelle Obama “never had a job”

08/21/24

  1. ### Jesse Watters promises to “get the truth” about Barack Obama's birth certificate

08/20/24

---

bash biden and trump for old, but odd whattaboutism to cushion?

WENT ON POP BLK POD TO BLAME bo FOR POLARIZATION VS TRUMP SUPERCUT MSNBC MEX RAPISTS, MUZ BAN... woman pay inequity fix etc etc framed as divisive?

Nikki Haley: Under Obama 'you just felt, people felt like they were being put in camps' - Alternet.org

---

rww

January 16, 2024

---

---

Laura Ingraham warns that Barack Obama will use artificial intelligence to “transform America” | Media Matters for America

---

~ BO

https://www.mediamatters.org/outnumbered/fox-host-attacks-concept-generational-poverty-only-thing-crippling-anyone-country

---

wow // birther 6 23

beast

no lnx

Jesse Watters Throws Abhorrent Accusations at Obama Over Titanic Sub

‘AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE’

The former president’s recent criticism of the wall-to-wall coverage of the doomed Titanic sub had the Fox host up in arms.

William Vaillancourt

Updated Jun. 27, 2023

Fox News

The Five co-host Jesse Watters on Monday went after former President Barack Obama for criticizing the disparity in media attention on the five-person submersible that imploded during its venture to the Titanic wreck last week when compared to the sinking of a Mediterranean fishing boat that was carrying up to 750 refugees and migrants, only 104 of whom have been rescued as of Friday.

Speaking at a conference in Athens, Greece, last Thursday, Obama acknowledged the inherent drama of the submersible.

:{:{}:

}:

“There is a potential tragedy unfolding with the submarine that is getting, you know, minute-to-minute coverage all around the world. And it’s understandable because we all want and pray that those folks are rescued,” he said, hours before it was announced that those on board died instantly after the craft imploded. “But the fact that that’s gotten so much more attention than 700 people who sank—that’s an untenable situation.”

The former president made similar comments in an interview Thursday with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, saying he understood the “obscene inequality in coverage.”

[Fox News Finally Reveals Its Post-Tucker Reshuffle

On Monday, the subject became fodder for discussion on Fox News.

:{:{}:

}:

“When you are a citizen of the world, you always think about the world instead of the United States,” Watters began derisively. “Remember, this is a guy whose father has roots in Africa. This is a guy who spent a lot of his childhood in Southeast Asia… and then spent a lot of time in Hawaii.”

:{:{}:

}:

“He’s never really looking at things from an American perspective,” Watters griped of the 44th president of the United States. “He’s always speaking to the world. Even when he’s speaking to us, he’s appealing to the world.”

Watters—who Fox announced Monday will soon helm its primetime spot formerly held by Tucker Carlson—then listed several reasons why the submersible dominated coverage ”from a raw news editorial standpoint.”

For one, the capsized fishing boat off the coast of Greece had “no Titanic angle,” Watters said. Also, news networks “had guests that knew people that were submerged,” he continued, adding that there was an element of suspense due to the dwindling estimated amount of oxygen remaining in the submersible before its fate was known.

Watters’ fourth reason concerned the location of the Titanic wreck, which is about 900 miles off the coast of Massachusetts in the North Atlantic.

“If there had been a Cuban boat that had capsized and there were Cubans who were drowning off the coast of Miami, that would have been wall-to-wall coverage,” Watters claimed.

“We don’t live in Europe, Barack Obama. This is the United States of America, and it shows how naive, detached, and how snobby he is to not understand that this is the United States,” he complained. “And as sad as it is—and it was a horrible story off the coast—this is not something that concerns most Americans in their spare time.”

---

---

an 3 23

although former President Barack Obama has often been critical of Fox News, he hasn't avoided the right-wing cable news channel altogether. Obama, over the years, has been interviewed by Fox News hosts ranging from Chris Wallace (now with CNN) to Bret Baier to Bill O’Reilly (who Fox News fired in 2017).

Those appearances underscore Obama's belief that it is important for Democrats to have a dialogue with conservatives, disagreements and all — a belief he shares with President Joe Biden, who has bragged about the productive relationships he had in the past with President Ronald Reagan, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) and other conservative Republicans.

But when Obama, according to The Guardian, GUK made a late March appearance in Sydney, Australia, he called out Fox News' Rupert Murdoch as a divisive figure whose business model is designed to "make people angry and resentful."

READ MORE:Dominion’s damning revelations underscore the 'full corruption of Fox News': former Reagan speechwriter

Speaking at Sydney’s Aware Super Theater on Tuesday night, March 28, Obama told a crowd of around 9000 people, "Here's the good news about the U.S., though: We're not quite as polarized as we seem. Sixty to 65 percent of the country — let's call it 70 percent — does occupy a reality-based world. And that's true within the Republicans."

Obama continued, "There's one other factor that's led to this polarization — this is global, this is not unique to the United States — and that is the shifts in the media and the story that is told to people. And there's a guy you may be familiar with, first name Rupert, who was responsible for a lot of this."

Murdoch, according to Obama, "perfected" a "broader trend" with "the advent of cable (television), talk radio and then social media."

Obama told the Australian crowd, "It's now a wild west and a splintering of media. And if all you're doing is — in America, it's Fox News, here I guess it's Sky, whatever it is — if all you're doing is watching one source of news…. we're going to have our own news and our own perspective…. You no longer have a joint conversation and a shared story….And if you throw in some good old-fashioned racism and xenophobia and sexism and homophobia…. it's very difficult to compromise around identity politics."

---

an 10 22

Former President Barack Obama was the keynote speaker at an event in Milwaukee on Saturday that was organized by the Democratic Party to boost turnout for its candidates in the November midterm elections.

During his speech, Obama excoriated Republican United States Senator Ron Johnson over his recent proposal to put Social Security and Medicare up for congressional review every year. Johnson has also promoted privatizing the programs, upon which millions of Americans' financial stability depends.

Johnson is a two-term incumbent locked in a tight race against Wisconsin's Democratic Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, whom Obama has endorsed.

READ MORE: 'Leftist propaganda': Ron Johnson blames higher education for debate laughter at FBI 'set up' claim

"Some of you here are on Social Security. Some of your parents are on Social Security. Some of your grandparents are on Social Security. You know why they have Social Security? Because they worked for it," a fired-up Obama said. "They worked hard jobs for it. They have chapped hands for it. They had long hours and sore backs and bad knees to get that Social Security."

The 44th commander in chief then delivered an impassioned rebuke of Johnson and his right-wing agenda.

"If Ron Johnson does not understand that – if he understands giving tax breaks for private planes more than he understands making sure that seniors who have worked all their lives are able to retire with dignity and respect – he’s not the person who’s thinking about you and knows you and sees you. And he should not be your senator from Wisconsin," Obama orated. "I mean, the message he's sending is pretty clear. If you're related to him, if you donate to his campaign, you get a deal. And if not, you're outta luck and you're on your own."

Watch below or at this link.

---

220 has not stepped up on gerry as promised w/ eric h (also lame after gaff?

---

~ CU:

President Barack Obama expressed his concern over the Supreme Court's decision during his 2010 State of the Union Address, delivered January 27, saying, "With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections. I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems."[20] President Obama also called the decision, "a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans."[19]

19 and 20

  1. Liptak, Adam (January 21, 2010). "Justices, 5-4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit". The New York Times.
  2.  The White House Press Room, Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address Archived 2010-11-22 at the Wayback Machine, January 27, 2010.

==

corp coup detat not kind to clinton or BO,  mere extension of b2? djt //?

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/how-the-cowardice-of-the-obama-administration-foreshadowed-the-impunity-of-trump/

no lnx

How the cowardice of the Obama administration foreshadowed the impunity of Trump

Written by Rebecca Gordon / Tom Dispatch February 18, 2020

On February 5th, the Senate voted to acquit President Donald J. Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. In other words, Trump’s pre-election boast that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters” proved something more than high-flown hyperbole. (To be fair, he did lose one Republican “voter” in the Senate — Mitt Romney — but it wasn’t enough to matter.)

The Senate’s failure to convict the president will only confirm his conception of his office as a seat of absolute power (which, as we’ve been told, “corrupts absolutely”). This is the man, after all, who told a convention of student activists, “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president. But I don’t even talk about that.” Except, of course, he does.

The day after the Senate vote, a decidedly unchastened Trump spoke at a National Prayer Breakfast, brandishing a copy of USA Today whose banner headline contained a single word: “Acquitted.” After disagreeing with the prayerful suggestion offered by Arthur Brooks, former head of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (and a couple of millennia earlier by one Jesus of Nazareth), that we should love our enemies, the president promptly accused both Mitt Romney and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of inadequate prayerfulness. He lumped Romney in with people “who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong” and accused Pelosi, not for the first time, of lying when she says she prays for him.

Trump’s endless boasting about his invulnerability can certainly be blamed on the dismal swamp of his own psyche, but there’s another at least partial explanation for it — and it lies in the country’s collective failure to hold anyone responsible for crimes committed since 2001 in the “war on terror.” If one administration can get away with confining detainees in coffinlike boxes and torturing them in myriad other ways, why shouldn’t a later one go unpunished for, to take but one example, putting migrant children in cages?

Forward, Not Backwards

In 2009, Barack Obama prepared to enter the Oval Office promising to end the worst excesses of the previous administration’s war on terror. Although he did close the CIA’s detention centers and prohibit torture, he also quickly signaled that no one would be held accountable for the already well-documented practice of torture promoted by the administration of George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney. A week or so before Obama’s inauguration, the president-elect was already assuring ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos that, although there would be prosecutions if “somebody has blatantly broken the law,” on the whole he believed “that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

In particular, Obama was concerned that government operatives should not be hampered in the future by fear of prosecution for past acts sanctioned by top officials:

“And part of my job is to make sure that, for example, at the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders.”

As it turned out, they need not have worried. On April 17, 2009, as Carrie Johnson and Julie Tate reported in the Washington Post, “President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. reassured CIA employees anew yesterday that interrogators would not face criminal prosecution so long as they followed legal advice.” As Holder put it, “It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.”

The legal advice in question had been contained in a series of infamous memos written by that department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) between 2002 and 2005. In them, the legal definition of torture was “clarified” for a nervous attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, and the CIA. One memo, drafted by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and signed by Assistant Attorney General for the OLC Jay Bybee, explained that to “constitute torture” under the law, physical pain “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” To meet the legal definition of psychological torture, mental suffering “must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years.”

Not surprisingly, despite the previous administration’s stamp of approval on what were euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a three-year investigation by the Obama Justice Department into CIA interrogation practices came to a whimpering end in August 2012, when Holder announced that the only two remaining torture cases, both of which involved deaths in U.S. custody, would be dropped.

A year earlier, as Glenn Greenwald reported in the Guardian, Holder had decided not to prosecute anyone in 99 other cases of “severe detainee abuse.” The two remaining cases concerned the death by torture and hypothermia of Gul Rahman in the CIA’s notorious Salt Pit prison in Afghanistan in 2002 and that of “Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in CIA custody after he was beaten, stripped, had cold water poured on him, and then [was] shackled to the wall” at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Among those Holder presumably chose not to charge were the men responsible for designing and implementing the protocols that led to Rahman’s death, along with tortures like waterboarding and “walling” (the slamming of the back of a prisoner’s head repeatedly into a wall). Thus ended any hope of holding torturers legally accountable in the United States of America, early proof of the kind of impunity that has, in the Trump years, spread elsewhere.

Torturer Redux

Shortly before Donald Trump’s recent triumph in the Senate, one of those “extraordinarily talented people” hailed by President Obama resurfaced in a courtroom not as a defendant, but as a hostile witness. James Mitchell was called to the stand by the defense at pre-trial hearings at the Guantánamo detention facility in Cuba, the offshore prison for detainees in the war on terror set up by the Bush administration in 2002. In the dock almost 18 years later are five men, long held there, who have been accused of involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The most notorious is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, often described as 9/11’s “mastermind.”

Mitchell is one of the two psychologists — the other being John “Bruce” Jessen — who designed the CIA’s main torture program. He has the honor of being considered the inventor of waterboarding, a series of techniques aimed at producing water-induced suffering that have formed part of the armamentarium of torturers for centuries. (Perhaps “reinventor” would be the more accurate term.) Mitchell was, in fact, the first person to perform waterboarding in the war on terror, as well as being the architect of walling, of confining victims in tiny boxes, and of a variety of other grim “enhanced interrogation techniques” first employed at CIA “black sites” set up around the world in those years.

Called by defense attorneys to describe the torture their clients endured, a “defiant” Mitchell told the courtroom, “I’d get up today and do it again.”

As New York Times reporter Carol Rosenberg explained, Mitchell was not actually talking about what he did to any of the five defendants in the dock at Guantánamo, although he did torture some of them. He was referring to the first prisoner to be waterboarded under the CIA torture program, Saudi national Abu Zubaydah who was waterboarded a total of 83 times over the course of a single month. President George W. Bush’s secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, claimed (falsely, as it turned out) that he was “if not the number two, very close to the number-two person in” al-Qaeda and that he had run an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

In fact, as the Obama administration acknowledged in 2010, Abu Zubaydah was never even a member of that group, let alone one of its key lieutenants. Captured in a joint CIA-FBI operation in Pakistan in 2002, he would be shuffled between CIA black sites for the next four-and-a-half years, including the Agency’s secret “Strawberry Fields” site at Guantánamo. In part because of what the CIA did to him, Abu Zubaydah remains imprisoned there to this day. According to CIA recommendations, he is never to be “placed in a situation where he has any significant contact with others and/or has the opportunity to be released.”

Nevertheless, Mitchell oversaw the 83 times Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded in a single month at a CIA black site in Thailand, during which he came close to death by drowning. On one of those occasions, as the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 report on CIA torture revealed, he was observed to be “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.”

Not unlike our president, Mitchell seems to be deeply hurt by what he perceives as unfair criticism. “You folks have been saying untrue and malicious things about me and Dr. Jessen for years,” he complained to defense attorneys at the Guantánamo hearing. People may have said mean things about him, but in reality, far from being held accountable for torture, James Mitchell has luxuriated in his impunity, earning royalties from his book Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying To Destroy America and giving speeches arranged through the Worldwide Speakers Group (which advertises him as “psychologist, CIA interrogator, author”) at $15,000 to $25,000 a pop.

Nor did Mitchell fare poorly while employed by the CIA.  In fact, the Agency paid the company Mitchell and Jessen formed $81 million for their work. In addition, their contract included language guaranteeing that the U.S. government would cover any legal costs they incurred as a result of that work through the year 2021. This would turn out to come in handy when, in 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the two of them on behalf of three of their victims: Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman, the detainee who had died of exposure to cold at the Salt Pit. Mitchell and Jessen settled the case in 2017 for an undisclosed sum, also paid by the U.S. government.

It Never Gets Easier

You’d think it would get easier over time. For almost two decades, I’ve been writing about torture. By now, you might imagine that I’d be at least somewhat desensitized to details about and descriptions of it. Instead, each time I dive into that cesspool, it appears even more disgusting and frightening.

If it’s hard for me, someone who has never been tortured and has spoken face-to-face with only a few torture survivors, imagine what it must be like for those who have survived the Bush-era torture programs, which went on for an unknown number of years. Actually, you don’t have to do too much imagining, since their testimony about how such abuse affected some of them and how lasting those effects were is available. In 2016, New York Times reporters Matt Apuzzo, Sheri Fink, and James Risen published a series of articles under the title “How U.S. Torture Left a Legacy of Damaged Minds.”

One of those profiled was Suleiman Abdullah Salim, a plaintiff in the ACLU suit against Mitchell and Jessen.A Tanzanian native, Salim was picked up in Mogadishu, Somalia, and turned over to U.S. operatives for reasons that remain murky. It’s most likely he was a victim of mistaken identity (and he wouldn’t have been the only such prisoner in the war on terror). We know, at least, that the Americans who bundled him onto a plane were expecting a Yemeni Arab and someone with much lighter skin. He ended up in Afghanistan at a black site he recalls as “the Darkness,” which was, in fact, the Salt Pit. There he was beaten, walled, shackled in complete darkness, exposed to relentless loud music, confined in a coffinlike box, repeatedly hung by the wrists — once for 48 hours straight — and drenched at times with ice water until he feared he was drowning.

Eventually, the CIA moved Salim to a prison at Bagram Airbase outside the Afghan capital, Kabul. In 2008, he was turned loose in Afghanistan with only the clothes he was wearing. The International Red Cross arranged a flight home to Zanzibar, Tanzania, where he still lives, haunted by the Darkness.

In 2010, the Times‘ Risen wrote, “Dr. Sondra Crosby of the Boston University School of Medicine, a physician, a Navy reservist and an expert on torture, was asked by Physicians for Human Rights, a New York-based group, to evaluate Mr. Salim.” She found that he was emaciated “like a skeleton” and “plagued by profound distress, inability to eat, and inability to sleep.” Risen’s report continues:

“‘He describes himself as a ghost walking around the town,’ she added. She noted other symptoms: flashbacks, short- and long-term memory loss, distress at seeing anyone in a military uniform, hopelessness about the future and a strong avoidance of noise. ‘He reports that his head feels empty — like an empty box,’ she said.”

The Times series also chronicled the suffering of another plaintiff in the case against Mitchell and Jessen: Mohamed ben Soud. He, too, was held at the Salt Pit, where his ordeal involved many of the same torture methods Salim had endured. Today, he has full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder. “He is racked with self-doubt and struggles to make simple decisions. His moods swing dramatically,” reported the Times.

First, Do No Harm?

The pre-trial hearings at Guantánamo have also revealed the rarely discussed role of doctors and other medical workers in the U.S. torture program. Apparently the reason we know that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183 times is that, as James Mitchell testified in January, a doctor was indeed present inside the torture chamber and used a little metal click-counter to keep track. According to the Times’s Rosenberg, however, doctors

“did more than count waterboarding sessions. Government investigations and evidence in the pretrial hearings of the men… show doctors conducted ‘rectal rehydration,’ carried out rectal cavity searches, and examined swollen feet and legs of captives who were sleep deprived for days by being shackled in painful positions.”

There is undoubtedly more to be uncovered about the role of medical personnel at the CIA’s global black sites. Indeed, there is more to be uncovered about all the ways in which detainees were stripped not only of their human rights but, at least in the minds of their tormentors, of their very humanity. At one point in his testimony, for instance, Mitchell turned to the attorney for Ammar al-Baluchi, one of the five 9/11 defendants. Speaking of Charlie Wise, the CIA interrogation chief and the rest of his crew, Mitchell said, “Looks like they used your client as a training prop.” According to the Guardian’s Julian Borger, in fact, under Wise’s leadership, “trainees had to use each of their techniques on Baluchi and other inmates in order to earn certification.”

And Mitchell himself used Abu Zubaydah as a demonstration prop, so bigwigs at the CIA would be implicated in what he was doing. Borger reports that “he waterboarded Abu Zubaydah even though he was quite sure the detainee had no actionable intelligence to surrender. It was done purely as a demonstration for the agency VIPs.”

The Price of Impunity

Thanks to the cowardice of the Obama administration, no CIA officer or any higher official in the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, no psychologist, no doctor, no one at all has yet been held accountable for the years of torture practiced on a global scale in the war on terror. Donald Trump himself, of course, got elected while publicly proclaiming about waterboarding that “I like it a lot” and he reportedly considered Gina Haspel’s black-site torture experiences a positive part of her resume when considering her for CIA director. Mitchell, of course, continues to make speeches and collect his royalties. George W. Bush has been rehabilitated as a kindly portrait painter.

Is it really so surprising, then, that we now have a man in the Oval Office who believes he has “the right to do whatever I want as president”? The history of the twenty-first-century war on terror suggests that, if he doesn’t have the right, he certainly appears to have the power.

Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, teaches at the University of San Francisco. She is the author most recently of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes and is now at work on a new book on the history of torture in the United States.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Copyright 2020 Rebecca Gordon

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/heres-why-trumps-incessant-vendetta-against-obama-is-a-losing-proposition/

no lnx

Here’s why Trump’s incessant vendetta against Obama is a losing proposition

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly February 19, 2020

Barack Obama took advantage of an anniversary on Monday to poke at one of the lies being repeated by his successor.

Barack Obama

@BarackObama

Eleven years ago today, near the bottom of the worst recession in generations, I signed the Recovery Act, paving the way for more than a decade of economic growth and the longest streak of job creation in American history.

Since his administration began, Trump has attacked Obama’s record of job creation and touted his own. Perhaps long-time readers here at the Washington Monthly will enjoy the fact that I intend to expose that lie based on information provided by Steve Benen and Kevin Drum. Here’s Benen:

As we discussed after the release of the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump has now been in office for three full years (36 months), and during that time, the economy has created 6.56 million jobs. In the final full three years of Obama’s presidency, the economy created 8.08 million jobs.

Of course, Drum put the specifics into a chart.

It will surprise no one that data means nothing to Trump.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Did you hear the latest con job? President Obama is now trying to take credit for the Economic Boom taking place under the Trump Administration. He had the WEAKEST recovery since the Great Depression, despite Zero Fed Rate & MASSIVE quantitative easing. NOW, best jobs numbers....

As the saying goes, Obama has taken up residence in Trump’s head—rent-free.

Jonathan Chait recently documented another way that Trump’s efforts to undo Obama’s legacy are failing.

One of the Obama administration’s most effective climate initiatives was tightened regulations of auto emissions, which will reduce carbon emissions by billions of tons. Trump, of course, is trying to roll it back. The good news is that he is almost certainly too incompetent to pull it off in his first term.

When regulatory agencies write new rules, they have to follow some fairly complicated legal procedures, which often have to hold up under judicial scrutiny. Historically, agencies win about 80 percent of the time against legal challenges. But Trump’s regulations lose about 90 percent of the time, because his administration is staffed with incompetent hacks.

The courts will soon be fighting over Trump’s plan to weaken auto-emission standards. Trump is highly likely to lose, because, as two new reports show, the incompetence of his regulators reached almost mind-boggling proportions.

The reports Chait referred to come from an article by Robinson Meyer that details how the Trump administration’s attempt to kill the auto-emission standards has been a “complete debacle” and one from Coral Davenport predicting a dead end for Trump’s efforts.

What also caught my eye was the fact that Trump’s regulations (or attempts to roll back Obama’s regulations) have failed in court about 90 percent of the time. That number comes from the Institute for Policy Integrity, which has been tracking this administration’s record in the courts. Of the 70 cases they have followed, Trump has won four and lost 66. As Chait points out, typically federal agencies have won about 80 percent of the time, so this administration’s record is worse than abysmal.

In writing about the effort to roll back Obama’s fuel-efficiency standards, Davenport identified the problem.

In January, administration staff members appointed by President Trump sent a draft of the scaled-back fuel economy standards to the White House, but six people familiar with the documents described them as “Swiss cheese,” sprinkled with glaring numerical and spelling errors (such as “Massachusettes”), with 111 sections marked “text forthcoming.”

The cost-benefit analysis showed that consumers would lose more money than they would gain. And, because the new auto pollution rule lacks the detailed technical analyses required by law, the regulations would be unlikely to withstand court challenges…

More basic issues holding up the regulations point to another problem: the skeleton crew of inexperienced political appointees who are heading the drafting process may not be up to a job that would usually be handled by career federal workers with decades of expertise.

As Chait rightfully suggested, Trump’s actual goal of humiliating Obama can’t be included in the analysis. So his incompetent staff are left with trying to manipulate the numbers and the science, which don’t support the president’s goals.

For Trump, things like math, science, and expertise are anathema. His only concern is to prop up his own narcissistic ego and demean anyone he views as a threat. That is why Trump’s vendetta against Obama’s legacy will always be a losing proposition. His incompetence overshadows his malevolence.

Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.

==

---

obama2 816

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/us/politics/obama-era-legacy-regulation.html

Mr. Obama entered office in January 2009 determined to make his mark by passing bold new laws, not by tinkering with rules. Rahm Emanuel, his first chief of staff, and other top aides mapped out an ambitious two-year agenda that included a health care overhaul, new banking laws, a remake of the federal student loan program, infrastructure spending and stricter limits on pollution.

The new president had a skeptical streak when it came to the value of regulation, influenced by his friend Cass R. Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor who had long argued that the government should more rigorously assess the benefits of new regulations. Mr. Obama liked that idea so much that he named Mr. Sunstein to lead the White House office that oversees rule-making.

“The president is not somebody who is intuitively or inherently a regulator,” said Howard Shelanski, who followed Mr. Sunstein in that role in mid-2013. He said Mr. Obama conveyed a simple message: “‘If we can get a good result without regulating, let’s do that.’”

But after eight years of a Republican administration, many Democrats were eager for the government to lean more forcefully on the levers of regulatory power, and officials within the federal bureaucracy felt emboldened.

The White House did resist some ideas. It shut down efforts by Lisa Jackson, Mr. Obama’s first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to increase the regulation of ozone, a decision that environmentalists viewed as a betrayal.

...

Betsey Stevenson, a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, took the lead in building a case that contractors who paid higher wages would attract and retain better workers, increasing their productivity.

The theory holds, for example, that if the lunch lines at a federal office building moved a little more quickly because of more competent, motivated cafeteria workers, every employee in those lines would save a few minutes a day and have more time to work, thus increasing productivity.

The idea has its roots in work by George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and his wife, Janet Yellen, now chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, who decided in the early 1980s to pay their babysitter above-market wages as motivation.

With the president’s blessing, the E.P.A. also became more aggressive. The agency asserted federal authority to protect thousands of waterways and wetlands, proposed to cap carbon emissions at new and existing power plants, raised emissions standards for trucks and airplanes, and called for new limits on methane, mercury and ozone.

“He has been much more ambitious and aggressive on environmental regulation than any other president we’ve had,” said Jeffrey Holmstead, a lawyer pursuing legal challenges to some of Mr. Obama’s signature environmental rules.

Courts have now temporarily blocked the administration’s water rules and delayed the power plant limits on carbon dioxide emissions. The next administration will also have considerable leeway to determine how quickly new rules are carried out, and how strictly enforced.

---